Deepak Chopra – Consciousness Drives Evolution
Scientists use these words complexity and emergence all the time, but when you ask them what drives the complexity, they don’t have an answer.
They say, “Oh, it’s in emergence.” So, what drives the emergence? “Oh, it’s the complexity.” Well, there’s got to be some driver of that. It’s a cop out. It’s a total cop out, this using complexity to dismiss what you don’t know, and also being afraid of introducing teleology into evolution.
Last week there was an issue with this. I was at a conference in Helsinki called Two Word, the Science of Consciousness that was attended by 700 people. I made my case over there for everything I’ve told you, and I’m happy to send you my abstract.
Obviously, the traditional mechanistic people totally disagreed with me. But, I am rallying now all people who can be sympathetic towards this idea. And what I’m finding is there are a lot of biologists in the closet, and a lot of scientists in the closet who are slowly going to come out and favor this worldview.
Christopher Buck: I agree. I personally think that the scientific definition of consciousness is – and I’m sure the scientific community would hate this term – one of the current Holy Grails of the scientific community.
Dr. Deepak Chopra: Yes.
Christopher Buck: I also know, and you touched on this earlier, that we reach levels of scientific advancement which then allows us to measure and test and define things that we just could theorize about before that allows us to take it to the next level. For example, before the Hadron Collider we couldn’t prove the existence of quarks, which are the building blocks of protons and neutrons, although we theorized there would be something. My next question is: where do you see us in the understanding of consciousness, and in your opinion what steps or advances do we need to get to where we can scientifically define consciousness?
Dr. Deepak Chopra: Okay, just coming back here, Hadron Collider, when you measure these particles where there’s quarks or whatever, what you’re really measuring is a space-time event in your consciousness, these quarks, these subatomic particles of fleeting events. And by the time you measure it, the event is no longer there.
