Deepak Chopra – Consciousness Drives Evolution
That’s the ephemerial nature of subatomic particles that are simultaneously spread out as waves and as particles. We’re still trying to figure out what is the essential fundamental nature of these things that have to be called things, but they have no “thingness” about them. What we do is we study inferentially. A lot of what we study now is inferential.
So, in the case of consciousness – well, if we are conscious beings studying consciousness, then we’d have to go back to the traditional spiritual traditions that would say only consciousness can know consciousness. Only consciousness can explain consciousness, only consciousness can know consciousness.
That is true spiritual practice, but we can get a very good idea of consciousness inferentially by looking at what happens in your brain when you have a thought, by looking at what happens in the brain when you have an emotion, by looking at the biological correlates of shifts in consciousness with emotions, with love, with compassion, with joy, with equanimity, with creativity. We can look at biological expressions and then we can make inferences from that.
So all scientific study of consciousness will have to be, at some level inferential, which is what we’re doing. The direct experience of consciousness is self-awareness because the self is a conscious being. Sentience may pervade all of the species, but we’re the only species that says, “Who am I?”
I don’t think other species are asking that question, even though they are sentient. So, when we get to the consciousness of consciousness, which is a human trait, then we develop techniques for exploring consciousness, I cannot predict what the future science will bring.
But, right now, even things like fMRI and all them, they’re very indirect, you know, all they measure is blood flow to the brain. So, I think now that we are looking at inflammatory markers here, we are looking at epigenetics, we are looking at the microbiome, we are definitely studying consciousness.
Christopher Buck: It’s absolutely fascinating what all is going out there right now. Another aspect of the scientific process is falsifiability, which is the potential for a theory to be proven incorrect. In your opinion, what evidence could invalidate your theory of consciousness?
