Based on quantum theory, Cardiologist Pim Van Lommel, in his landmark book on Near-Death Experiences 'Consciousness Beyond Life', posits that consciousness actually exists in a non-local space where time and distance play no role. Quantum theory suggests that all matter can exist as either a wave of spread out energy or as a discrete particle located in space and time. Furthermore, consciousness seems to play a decisive role in the transition from a wave of spread out energy to its collapse into a discrete particle located in time and space. For instance, an electron around the nucleus exists as a wave of probability until it is observed, whereby the numerous possibilities collapse and the electron is concentrated in a particular spot for everyone to see.

Underlying reality, therefore, is a sea of infinite energy where all possibilities exist. If we want to describe consciousness, we could think of it as an infinite sea of light where everything is connected non-locally. The light acts like a unified field, whereby every part of the field is connected to every other part without the need for energy transfer. In the words of Van Lommel, “non-local space could also be called the absolute vacuum:  it lacks structure, has no time, and is an empty space in which quarks (elementary particles and fundamental constituents of matter), electrons, gravity, and electricity have all become one and as such do not exist. This space forms the foundation for an infinite number of possibilities.” 

Consciousness can therefore be likened to an infinite field of intelligent light that holds all knowledge, or information, encoded in wave functions. The material world, which we are so familiar with, can be seen as the collapse of these wave functions into a particular possibility.

In Van Lommel’s words, 'The physical aspect of our consciousness in the material world, which we experience as waking consciousness and which can be compared to the particle aspect of light, stems from the wave aspect of the “complete” and “endless” consciousness created by collapse of the wave function in non-local space.'

In essence, an infinite consciousness underlies and forms the basis for our material world. This consciousness is in direct control of all energy manifest in the material realm because it is the source of that energy. It literally forms the material world by creating information, or specific patterns of energy, from an infinite number of possibilities of that energy configuration. The material world is but one manifestation of this consciousness and there is evidence that there are many more dimensions created by this consciousness. This process of creation is an ongoing and never ending process.

Our consciousness is essentially identical to this one consciousness, which can be labelled 'Source Consciousness'. The brain, then, operates as a receiver of an aspect of this Source Consciousness into the material dimension of space and time.

In Van Lommel’s words, “The brain and the body merely function as a relay station receiving part of the overall consciousness and part of our memories in our waking consciousness in the form of measurable and constantly changing electromagnetic fields.”

It appears as if our waking consciousness is essentially the light from Source Consciousness manifesting through the brain and body to experience the energy patterns of the brain and body. However, that energy is not just experienced by consciousness, but in-formed by consciousness. In other words, consciousness is in control of how that energy is configured. Consciousness is the creator of information. The electro-chemical processes in the brain operate much the same way as DNA or language, on the idea of specified information which consciousness provides.

Consciousness is the intelligence operating within the body to produce these specified energy patterns, which equates to information. So, consciousness underlies and collapses the energy in your brain to produce conscious experiences of thought, emotion, and action.

 

Experiments have also shown that people can control their emotional responses to stimuli which are designed to invoke an emotional response by consciously trying to detach themselves from that event. As Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary say in their book The Spiritual Brain, “It appears that, in principle, normal humans are not feeling robots, but are quite capable of adjusting their emotional reactions.”

Other studies have shown that experienced meditators can adjust their brain waves through meditation. In one study, Buddhist monks, by focusing their thoughts on loving compassion for all living things, were able to shift their brain waves into a gamma-ray state and sustain that state. This state is characterized by heightened awareness, when the brain is in a state of rapt attention. Furthermore, the monks experienced “permanent emotional improvement, by activating the left anterior portion of the brain - the portion most associated with joy.”

Not only can conscious intention activate or de-activate parts of the brain, but studies show that you can cause permanent changes in the brain through focused attention. Neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Sara Lazar, scanned the brains of 20 Buddhist meditators who had long been practicing mindfulness meditation, whereby the practitioner focuses on heightening his/her perceptions of the senses in the current moment. She found that "those portions of the brain associated with attention, awareness of sensation, sensory stimuli, and sensory processing were thicker in the meditators than in the controls." Furthermore, she found that the longer the practitioner had been practicing meditation, the thicker these areas of the brain were.

There is also evidence that consciousness plays a decisive role in the energy configuration of the brain. Although the brain is influenced by the environment, consciousness can control the brain activity through focused thought and belief. Study after study shows that processes within our bodies can be controlled and manipulated through conscious intention. We now know that the brain is not a fixed entity, but has a considerable degree of plasticity. It is our consciousness that can control the neuronal pathways developed in the brain.   

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In a similar vein, psychic Ingo Swann, who is well known for his gift in remote viewing - the perception of objects or events outside of one's sensory awareness - was tested to see what his brain activity was like when he used his psychic power. In the experiment, run by Dr. Michael Persinger, he was hooked up to an EEG machine and asked to identify objects in a distant room. "At the very moment that he was able to 'see' the items remotely, his brain showed bursts of fast activity in the high beta and gamma range...Those bursts of activity occurred primarily over the right occipital region, the portion of the brain relating to sight."  Furthermore, an MRI scan showed that the large parieto-occipital right-hemisphere lobe of his brain, which is involved in sensory and visual input, was 'unusually large'. 

Again, as with the Buddhist meditators, we see that advanced awareness and perception are associated with gamma-ray brain activity, which is the highest level of electromagnetic frequency. Moreover, we see that areas of the brain can grow and strengthen their neural connections through performing tasks that utilize those brain areas. Most importantly, it is conscious intention that lies behind it all.

This all shows us that by consciously focusing our thoughts we can control the flow of energy in our brains and even control the brain's development; clearly, consciousness is the director of matter.

The brain appears to produces conscious awareness while you are in a physical body, your conscious awareness being what you actually experience. However, this electromagnetic energy of the brain is the result of consciousness operating through the brain. Consciousness is the light that sustains the body and moves the energy within it. Without conscious light, the body dies. The brain is constantly transmitting information about the body and outside world, as received through the senses, to conscious awareness. The brain is also being guided by consciousness to produce emotions, thoughts, direct awareness to certain sensations, memories, or other areas of focus, or to move some part of the body. A conscious thought could be said to be received by the brain, as if there were some transfer of energy.

Consciousness is the intelligence using the brain as a medium to operate through. Consciousness, therefore, has no need to transfer anything to the brain. Rather, consciousness produces a thought by directly moving the energy of the brain to create the energy pattern associated with that thought. Since consciousness underlies and forms the energy, it is in control of how that energy is formed, or the pattern that it takes.

Consciousness is like the ocean, and the waves on the ocean are the energy that we see manifest in physical reality. The wave rests on the ocean and the ocean can direct that wave and manipulate it in any way it sees fit. So too can consciousness direct the energy of the material world. As the basis of the material world, consciousness can create any energy pattern it wants.

Our individual aspect of consciousness can do the same with the brain, creating specific energy patterns in the brain to create the desired experience. Furthermore, consciousness stores all of the information ever experienced via wave patterns. When the brain is no longer functional (when you die), then consciousness no longer has an interface to operate through and so separates from the body and returns to its Source.

Now, we are ready to tie all of the preceding sections together. There is a Supreme Consciousness at the base of reality. It is an Intelligent Consciousness containing infinite possibilities. This Consciousness contains infinite energy in potential and manifests the energy of the material world from this infinite potential, at the same time determining the patterns which that energy takes. It directs the material universe via what we know as the laws of nature, which are really like habits of mind of the Creator. The laws of nature are no more than the ideas about how to run the universe in the Mind of God. DNA and cellular structures show clear evidence of intelligent design.

Now, based on this model we can easily postulate that the Consciousness underlying reality is the Intelligence that forms and directs all the energy of the material world. It is in direct control, not through some sort of transfer of energy, but because it manifests the energy in the first place. Instead of random evolution, then, we may speak of intelligently directed evolution of life.

DNA was created by the consciousness underlying reality creating specific patterns of energy, or matter. DNA can then be said to be an intelligent formation of cosmic consciousness, just as our consciousness forms the energy patterns in our brain. Our individual consciousness is but a tiny aspect of this overall consciousness. Our brain acts as an interface for this aspect of consciousness to experience material reality.

                       
Each of us, consciousness, uses a body (a vehicle) to interact. For example, the physical body allows us to interact with the physical dimension when we pick up a glass of water. We also have non-physical bodies, as it is the case of our energy body. Several cultures have indicated some level of understanding of non-physical energies, and many names were used to reference it, for instance, chi, prana, vital energy, and orgone.

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We, consciousness, can also have experiences outside the physical body, and interact with the psychosoma in that dimension. We will find numerous references and names assigned to this experience: astral travel, astral projection, and spiritual journey, and OBE, to name a few. To say that the consciousness can interact in multiple dimensions is to say that we are multidimensional.

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Another pillar of consciousness paradigm is the theory of multiple lives. The physical body has a limited existence and defines “one life” as we know it, in this physical dimension. The consciousness, however, does not cease to exist after the death of the biological body. We, consciousness, will live on, but in a non-physical dimension, until the next physical life. To say that the consciousness had many lives and that it will have many more is to say that we are multiexistential.

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Once we understand ourselves as a multidimensional and multiexistential consciousness, we can start thinking about how we can learn and grow in this context. Evolution of consciousness is a process that goes beyond one life and includes the complexity of past life experiences and past life relationships. Self-knowledge, questioning, reasoning, and personal experiences with other dimensions are key elements in this process.

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Studying oneself, researching the non-physical world, questions of life-and-death, destiny, karma, and spiritual life has often been addressed by religion, mystical traditions, or occultism throughout history.

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For most of us, the everyday experience is dualistic. There seems to be a separate, subjective ‘me’ who witnesses objects, thoughts, events, emotions…

 

Yet by means of meditation we can glimpse the true reality of a unified field of consciousness. Everything is one, and everything is many – at the very same time and without any contradiction whatsoever.

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As modern science progresses, it offers more and more conceptual understanding of this beautiful experience of transcendence.

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Unified field of consciousness from the perspective of NEUROSCIENCE

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In Pim van Lommel's work published in the renowned medical journal The Lancet, his take on the unified field of consciousness centres around the concepts of non-locality and interconnectedness:

“The mind seems to contain everything at once in a timeless and placeless interconnectedness.

The information is not encoded in a medium but is stored non-locally as wave functions in nonlocal space, which also means that all information is always and everywhere immediately available.” (van Lommel, p. 224, 244)

The implications of this hypothesis challenge dramatically the perception of individual consciousness as something limited and folded upon itself:

“In this new approach, complete and endless consciousness with retrievable memories has its origins in a nonlocal space in the form of indestructible and not directly observable wave functions.

These wave functions, which store all aspects of consciousness in the form of information, are always present in and around the body.

The brain and the body merely function as a relay station receiving part of the overall consciousness and part of our memories in our waking consciousness in the form of measurable and constantly changing electromagnetic fields.

In this view, brain function can be seen as a transceiver; the brain does not produce but rather facilitates consciousness.” (van Lommel, p. 265)

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Unified field of consciousness from the perspective of QUANTUM PHYSICS:

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What sounds radically new in the field of neuroscience, has been a familiar paradigm in modern physics.

The seeds of the theory were laid already by Albert Einstein himself when he postulated that everything in the universe is relative and the existence of different worlds and forms and phenomena can only be accounted for in terms of relativity.

One of the first physicists to take this perspective to its logical and scientific conclusion was David Bohm.

The founding father of quantum physics proposed several metaphors for what the reality of energy/matter continuum looked like.

“The universe and everything in it – including us – may, in fact, be part of a grand cosmic pattern where all portions are evenly shared by every other.

Encapsulating this unified view of nature, Bohm simply stated, “The new form of insight can perhaps best be called ‘Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement.’” (Braden, p. xiii)

Towards the end of his life, David Bohm relied mostly on the concept of a hologram to explain the workings of a unified and undivided cosmos:

“Reflecting on the interrelated nature of creation, he became more convinced that the universe works like a grand cosmic hologram.

In a hologram, every portion of whatever the object is contains that object in its entirety, only on a smaller scale. From Bohm’s perspective, what we see as our world is actually the projection of something even more real that’s happening at a deeper level of creation.

It is this deeper level that’s the original – the implicate.

In this view of “As above, so below” and “As within, so without,” patterns are contained within patterns, complete in and of themselves and different only in scale.” (Ibid.)

Bohm’s theories have been gradually sculpted out with experimental evidence and theoretical detail. Beneath their different names and shades – superstrings, compactification, Kac-Moody algebras – all these complex, numerical models point to the same basic truth: everything blossoms out from an underlying unity.

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Unified field of consciousness from the perspective of MAHARISHI’S VEDIC KNOWLEDGE:

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Of course, nothing new in this for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a descendent of a long lineage of Indian yogis.

Like all spiritual sages down the ages, Maharishi was fully aware of this unified field, and characterized it in very specific terms:

 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, disciple and lineage holder of Guru Dev, taught the technique of Transcendental Meditation to tens of thousands of people in the Western world.

“The unified field is fundamentally a field of consciousness.

The field is known as atman, meaning “pure consciousness,” or “self,” since the unified field constitutes the deepest reality and hence the true identity of everything in nature.

The term “consciousness” is clearly distinguished from the highly individualized and anthropocentric sense of the term common to everyday experience: it is used to denote a completely universal field of “pure, self-interacting” consciousness — consciousness aware of itself alone, devoid of any individualizing influence or external objects of experience.

Due to its essential nature as consciousness, Maharishi explains, the unified field has the dual characteristics of existence and intelligence.” (Hagelin, p. 8-9)

Maharishi’s perception of the transcendental field of unified consciousness is fully in line with the advances briefly outlined here above. In fact, he had predicted in 1963:

“The discovery of the field of this one basis of material existence will mark the ultimate achievement in the history of development of physical science.

This will assist in turning the world of physical science to the science of mental phenomena. Theories of mind, intellect and ego will supersede the findings of physical science.

At the ultimate or the extreme limit of investigation into the nature of reality in the field of the mind will eventually be located the state of pure consciousness, the field of the transcendental nature lying beyond all the relative existence of material and mental values.

The ultimate field of Being lies beyond the field of mental phenomena and is the truth of life in all its phases, relative and absolute.

The Science of Being is the transcendental science of mind. The Science of Being transcends the science of mind which, in its turn, transcends the material sciences which deal with the diversity of material existence.” (Maharishi, p. 212-213

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