Consciousness is defined as the state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings or an individual’s awareness or perception of something. But is consciousness limited to people? Is consciousness inherent in all life forms or does it perhaps extend beyond the animate to the inanimate? Join Dr John Demartini for a deep philosophic discussion on the topic of consciousness that will stretch your mind and open your heart with inspiration.

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Consciousness is a magnificent expression and may be the very foundation of our

whole existence.

Well, today I have an opportunity to share a webinar, a presentation,

a message,

on a topic that's pretty discussed today and that is consciousness.

You know,

with all the AI and the artificial intelligence and

that's going on out there, the new technologies, it's,

it's making people ask the question, what exactly is consciousness?

Is something made out of silicon, can it become conscious,

instead of just carbon? And is there, is it substrate neutral?

Does it matter what form it's in? Is it,

and what is this thing called conscious? Do we have a universal conscious?

Do we have an individual consciousness,

the one universal or the many individual conscious?

These are all kinds of controversial questions.

So I'd like to address that today.

So if you have something to write with and write on, that would be fantastic.

Consciousness is

something that I've been fascinated by since very young .

And it's one of the great mysteries because no one can really claim they've

solved it completely.

But we certainly have various theories and principles that we can apply to it.

And so I'd like to share with you some of those things and my ideas at this

stance, where we are today.

Typically when we think of something conscious,

we depict it in terms of degrees of wakefulness.

So you can have down to a deep coma where you're completely unawake and you're

basically shut off from the world, you can't even wake yourself up.

To a light coma where you might have a little bit of response to stimuli,

but you're pretty well asleep. To a stupor,

to basically a, you know, a drowsiness or sleep state,

which you could be awakened from, but you're maybe drowsy,

to all the way alertness.

And that alertness can go all the way from an alertness to an external

environment where you're, you might say,

you're reflexing and responding to stimuli in the external world,

and then you may wake up that consciousness further where you're now

intrinsically or interoceptively, not just exteroceptively,

but internally aware of your environment within you,

to eventually reflective awareness,

where you're realizing that the difference between the outside world and the

inside world is really murky. It's the seer, the seeing,

and the seen are the same, and you're fully awake.

You almost come to the point where you realize that everything around you is

you. And so you come to the conclusion that it's one mind,

instead of just an individual mind that's isolated.

And there's different degrees of this and there's different writers and

different names for different stages, but that's just a basic thing.

So we have degrees of wakefulness,

and that is a quantitative scale, you might say, and the degrees of

awareness or alertness to the environment.

And that can be then divided further into degrees of conscious and unconscious.

Because you could be infatuated with somebody and be conscious of the upsides

and unconscious of the downsides,

or resentful to somebody and be conscious of the downsides and unconscious of

the upsides. And so you're kind of a half awake and sleep.

We know that the brain is at all times, day or night, awake or asleep,

half on and half off,

even during the day it's half off and during the night it's half on. So,

it's sort of a ratio more so than an absolute, off or on.

Even in a coma there's some historical documents of people being able to

access information after the coma of what happened and they

weren't awake at the time, but then they have recall of certain things.

And we also know that we have, you know,

subconscious and unconscious and conscious and super conscious states or

gradations of awareness or and awakeness.

So I'd like to elaborate on that because now the question is,

is what exactly is that and how does that work?

Is it a brain function and only a brain function? And if so,

is it the cortical function or subcortical, or is it a down to a neuron?

Is the neuron responsive? You know, in single cells,

we know that with a single cell paramecium amoeba can seek something or

avoid something, and it can go for food, tonins, and avoid waste,

toxins. And so it has a seeking and avoiding, kind of a morality,

a minimal morality of good and bad, right and wrong,

whatever it will allow it to support itself for the fear of loss of food will

can kill it, and the fear of predator eating it can kill it.

So it has sort of a, in a sense an intelligence or at least a reflex.

And there's varying degrees of debates about whether something is really

conscious or not. Because we can have reflexes go off like a knee reflex,

stimulating our knee and causing a jerk,

without being consciously controlling it.

So there's very murky answers on what is the boundary of consciousness.

Is it something that's just showing intelligence?

Is it something that you're fully awakened and you're doing something at will?

Is it something that's a reflex? You know,

is a tree conscious of its environment, ? Is it aware of its environment?

Well, it's responding. You know,

Aristotle in Da Amina talked about one of the aspects of the mind is it has the

ability to sense and respond, and to interpret that.

And we have evidence of that in plants and definitely in animals and trees.

We see this responding. It responds to its environment,

it secretes hormones and transmitters and chemistry, if you will.

So where exactly is the boundary?

We even go into Freeman Dyson at the Institute of Advanced Studies before he

passed was thinking about it in terms of quantum.

Thomas Nagel thinks the entire universe is that way.

Michio Kaku says that it's basically the universe is made out of intelligence.

It's fundamental, all space, time,

energy and matter's made out of consciousness.

There's some even go as far as saying that the consciousness is the most

fundamental thing. A panpsychism where consciousness underlies space, time,

energy, matter, everything. So the question is,

is what is it and how can we account for that? You know, there's evidence,

we've been trying to reduce it from the idea of a brain down into, you know,

the lobes of the brain down into the sections of the brain,

down into the, you know,

the little compilation of neurons,

we call memes if you'll or neural associations, down into the neuron,

down into the synapse, down into the axion and the dendrites,

and down into the cell body, and down into the microtubules,

down into the centrioles,

and reduce it down into the quantum events and molecules, the electronics,

now down into the DNA and the proteins, which are now down to photonics,

all the way down to quantum entangled events,

down into particles and subatomic particles and virtual particles.

And there's a theory for every one of those layers, on consciousness.

And from what I can tell, they're all accurate.

They all have some piece of the jigsaw puzzle and what consciousness is.

I I don't want to say that it's,

it's purely universal without describing it particularly because we can make

people unconscious and then there's no signs of reaction. But at the same time,

we don't want to limit it to just that response because whereas responses that

occur in collective societies, just like in birds and animals,

and they respond very, very rapidly to things and they work as groups.

So there must be some sort of field of a collective consciousness.

And then there's epigenetically stored information that causes impulses and

instincts to make us seek and avoid that are multi-generational passed on

through epigenetics that we are born with that is making us respond that we

think we're consciously doing, but we're actually subconsciously responding to.

So it's a very, very wide open mystery,

you might say that science,

there many people under materialistic mechanistic science wants to believe that

we're going to figure out the patterns and spike patterns of neurons in the

brain and figure out consciousness from just figuring those out.

And there's been the electromagnetic theory of it,

there's been the quantum theory of it,

and they all have a little piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

I've written about every one of those fields,

every single aspect from the macro to the micro and written about and studied

articles on it and and applied it.

And they all have little bits and pieces and of the big jigsaw puzzle.

All of those do indicate, as Nagel describes,

maybe there's a field of intelligence.

Maybe there's intelligence in the universe. Some believe that.

Some think that the universe is just non teleological,

it has no purpose behind it, it's just what we choose to make out of it,

and that it's purely in the mind of a human being,

which is not even an individuality,

it's just a series of feedback loops and complex reflexes

that make up what we have been labeled consciousness in the mind.

Others believe it's a field of mind that we're just part of it,

we're tuning into it.

There's recent information since 2017 showing that the DNA is

communicating by bio photons over to proteins,

where the proteins are changing shape.

They're sending bio photons back to the DNA, and the DNA is coding it.

The DNA is then sending feedback photons out into the environment

and picking up on photons from the outside environment and adjusting and there's

this, this wonderful homeostatic feedback system in there.

The brain has vast numbers of homeostatic feedbacks to help us

become our most productive, useful self, which we call the authentic self,

or what they used to call the soul, the most inspired self.

But then the question is, is that, is that a boundary?

If we own everything as reflective in consciousness,

is there a boundary on self or is other and self the same?

This has been a question that even Aristotle addressed

the ages have addressed and mystics.

So where exactly is this thing called consciousness? Is it located in the brain?

Is it a field around the brain?

If you cut off a flatworms head and it has a memory of something and then

you cut off its head, theoretically it should lose the memory of it,

but it still has the retention of the memory.

What exactly is memory and imagination? Is it a field phenomenon?

Is it a particle phenomenon? A wave phenomenon?

Is it something that's phenomenal, that's measurable?

Is it something epiphenomenal that's something that

by combinations of things and integration?

Is it something that is basically nominal as Immanuel Kant said,

something that's transcendental and something that's metaphysical?

These are questions that all of them have bits and pieces that

referenced it to consciousness. Is it the glial cells more than the nerve cells?

There's glialogical theories of consciousness. There's particle,

there's ratios of molecules that make up consciousness.

Everybody's hitting it from different angle.

Quantum physicists come in from an angle, neurologists come in,

biochemists come in it.

It's like if you go to a doctor and you go to a

physician, you're probably going to get a biochemical pharmaceutical approach

answer. If you go to chiropractor, you'll get an adjustment,

a subluxation answer. You go to a nutritionist,

you're going to get a nutritional answer. You go to a radiologist,

you'll get a radiographic analysis.

Everybody's going to filter through their value system and their model of the

world and give you an idea of what is consciousness.

The answer is it seems to be including all of it. There's

actually things that describe it as holographic,

Pribram and Paul Peach and others have gone in there and cut out parts of the

brain and found out other parts of the brain was able to adapt and pick up those

things.

So somehow the memory that was supposedly stored in the neurotransmitters and

the synapsis and the patterns of firing and the synchronicity of those patterns,

somehow they're now manifested in a different area. So we have,

we know that there's field phenomena. We know that there's particle,

we know that there's neurons.

I don't think you can take anything really away without having some effect on

this thing called consciousness.

And we certainly don't want to dis-acknowledge that

intelligence to it.

If you go down into the eukaryotic cells that have nuclei and you go and study

those on a very in depth level, they're extremely complex, they're humbling.

I mean,

all the Nobel Prize winners together could not put together a cell .

And our, we would consider ourselves conscious and highly intelligent maybe,

but if the cell is far more sophisticated than us,

it must be some sort of intelligence. Now that question is,

is that purely evolutionary design that just happens to be through trial and

error?

Or is there some sort of intelligence in the universe that's making it happen?

You know, one of the Nobel Prize winner, the French Nobel Prize winner,

Luke Montague or whatever his name was,

he basically was looking at the idea of DNA being able to store its information

in the form of water molecule movements.

And so maybe it's inherent in the vibrations, but

Atoms are protons, electrons and neutrons. But what are protons? Well,

they're quarks and gluons and mesons and they're interchanging

particles coming out of an uncertainty field of probability according to

Heisenberg's idea. So what exactly is the thing called conscious?

What is the brain? What is the neuron? What is the molecules that make it up?

What is a transmitter? What are all the different types of transmitters?

What do they do? They all have charges on them.

Are charges quantum entangled and they creating fields inside the brain that is

all involved in this thing called consciousness?

I've looked at all of those different aspects, ,

and your head is probably spinning, what the hell is consciousness ?

Well, it's still a mystery to some degree,

but what we do know is that you can become more aware and more

awake and more fully conscious by doing certain activities.

And that's really what bottom line is. We may not quite solve the mystery.

We may come up with new technologies and new constructs. I mean,

I think it was Stephen Hawking, he says, whatever it is,

and this is before he passed away, whatever we are at this state,

by no means have we solved all the mysteries of this thing and consciousness

still hasn't been solved. If we look at it,

I mean Max Planck at 1905 or so was believing that it's fundamental,

that's the fundamental basis of everything. And you know,

I think that as Kaku says that it's the fundamental. And as Christian Duve said,

it's, there's a cosmic imperative for consciousness.

And some believe that water itself has within it vibrations that give rise to

DNA formation.

And so abiogenesis and the formation of life may be inherent in the right

environments. Or if some people want to just limit it,

consciousness to an advanced part of the brain, the cortex.

We have sensory information, it comes in,

it gets correlated as it goes up the brain stem in the spine and it gets into

the thalamus. It's a relay center, it's a gating center.

It's allowing only certain amount of information go up to the conscious

awareness, most of the other stuff is unconscious.

But is that unconscious available to be brought up consciously? If so,

it's still accessing it consciously.

I was doing a presentation to 400 dentists when I was 24 years old,

and I'd been devouring every book on temporomandibular joint dysfunction

prior to that to do this presentation, hundreds of books.

And and all of a sudden I get asked this wild question by this guy that was kind

of heckling me in the class.

And all of a sudden a photographic memory came in that I didn't know,

I was not conscious I knew this information.

So I realized that that information was unconscious,

but then when I needed it and I had a purpose for it,

it rose up to conscious levels. So if it was down there,

it must have been available, but I wasn't conscious of it.

So am I filtering consciousness, and if so, how is it stored ?

Is it neuron synapsis that are firing? Well, that's pretty slow.

Is it ephaptic connection by electronics?

Is it bio photons going on between the cells? How do we synchronize?

And when there's a gamma synchronicity in the brain and there's a complete

synchronicity of the cortex, is that, how's that occurring?

Is that some sort of a quantum entangled state?

Is that a photonic state at the speed of light?

Is that electronic at the speed of electricity?

Is it synaptic at the speed of chemistry? All of those are going on,

there's scales of those are going on to make up this thing called consciousness.

So the question is how do we maximize this consciousness?

That's really the bottom line because all this will make your head spin.

And I have in one of my programs,

the Prophecy 1 Experience I go through the layers and all the different aspects

that I just mentioned in much more detail and clarity,

but it's not easy to do in 30 minutes or so .

But the question is,

when you meet somebody and you are infatuated with them and you're conscious

of the upsides, but unconscious of the downsides, you can be fooled,

and you're part asleep,

you're kind of asleep and having missing information and blind to some of the

downsides at that moment.

So you're conscious of one and unconscious of another,

and that is still part of consciousness.

It's a stage or a degree of awakeness and alertness

and awareness. But then at the same time,

if I let my intuition whisper to me the questions to make me conscious

of the part that I'm unconscious of,

I can become fully conscious and see both sides of somebody.

In the study of epistemology, the study of knowledge,

you really don't know somebody when you infatuate because you're ignorant of the

downside. You don't really know somebody that you're resentful to, you're,

you know, ignorant of the upside.

But when you see both sides simultaneously as Wilhem Wundt says,

now you're fully conscious. You're fully conscious of both sides and you love.

It appears that the fully conscious state is a state of grace and love,

a state of awe, a gamma synchronicity in the brain,

a state of simultaneity of opposites being brought together in union.

As Heraclitus said in the 6th century BC,

it's the union of complementary opposites. That's a full conscious awareness,

and consciousness is striving for that integration.

One thing we can see that consciousness has evolved throughout the history of

the, on the planet, on this planet at least,

and it's been gradually integrative and reflective as it goes,

becoming more integrative, more reflective, more comprehensive,

more encompassing.

And we're moving from an unaware state to an aware state.

And so the more we ask quality questions to make us aware of what's unconscious

and wake up full consciousness,

the more we illuminate ourselves and become enbrightened

of asleep and darkened, and we wake up. And some people say,

lighten up, as you wake up,

as you become aware and you become fully conscious and have

fulfillment. You know, when we,

I always say that we become our true self to the degree that we make everything

else ourselves. And at the highest level, nothing's missing in our awareness.

At the lowest level, there's scarcity, there's things missing in our awareness,

not an abundance of awareness.

And so we could say that at the moment we are actually able to see all of it and

be fully aware of something we're perceiving in the

we now have a love for this. I always say, when you really love something,

you're fully aware of both sides simultaneously. When

you're aware of only part of it,

and you're unconscious or asleep to some of the parts. And you know,

the thing that stops us from being fully aware is the parts that we're too proud

or too humble to admit that we see in other things around us, inside us.

Whenever we judge and look down on something,

we're too proud to admit what we see in them inside us. We look up at something,

we're too humble to admit what we see in them inside us.

And then what we do is when we fully come aware and we actually have reflective

awareness and we have an intimate relationship and there's now no separation

between our individuality and the world around us, we now have the one mind.

Erwin Schrödinger in his book On the Mind and Matter, described one Mind,

and that all of this is just an illusion of separateness.

So we could say that that's the highest level of consciousness, fully awakened.

We're now one with panpsychism. We're one with a universal intelligence,

in stead of us being illuminated only by a degree,

a small degree and blind and reactive to things. To me,

I would rather go through life and see that whatever I see in others,

I see in me. It was biblically described in the New Testament in Romans 2-1,

that whatever you judge in another individual beware for it is you that

you're judging and what you see in them, you have within you,

you do the same things. And that's so true.

I've taken people through the Breakthrough Experience Program,

which is my signature program, and the Demartini Method,

which is my key methodology that I do to help people wake up their

consciousness,

and I basically show them that whatever you perceive in another individual that

you infatuate or resent, if you go and look at yourself,

you find out you have the same equivalent. And then if you do, you realize,

well, who am I to judge them?

And then the realization of the self and the other, the seer, the seeing,

and the seen are the same.

And then you just expanded your consciousness of yourself.

You realize what you see out there is you.

And if you could do that to everything around you as the hermetics,

hermeticists described,

then when they realize that you see that everything is an expression,

this intelligence of the universe is you, it's just reflective,

you have full consciousness .

And it may be that the consciousness may be individualized all the way to an

approximation in probability all the way to the infinity. We're on a pursuit as,

as Hardy basically described,

we're in a magnificent infinite pursuit of the divine perfection,

the magnificent perfection of life.

And the perfection is the fully conscious awareness and a state of love.

So I like to think of it that way and that our pursuit of that is the journey of

our experience.

And now I don't ever do a presentation without something on values.

You have a hierarchy of values when you're living by your very highest values.

You have the most objectivity, the most reflective awareness.

You wake up the most part of the brain, you have the most gamma synchronicities.

You have the most overall integration of all those layers that we described on

consciousness awakene simultaneously.

And you're illuminated and you have fulfillment and grace and gratitude for

life.

And that's one of the reasons I do the Breakthrough Experience to help people

have full consciousness and have tears of gratitude.

Because when you are fully aware, you are aware of the the magnificence and awe,

the eureka moment of the existence,

and all of a sudden you now transcend the average construct that most

people are trapped in in their life.

Because we're in bondage to anything we infatuate or resent.

They occupy space and time in our mind and run us.

But the moment we transcend it and have full consciousness,

we become aware and we end up loving. And to me, that's what it's about.

That's why I teach the Breakthrough Experience.

That's why I've developed the Demartini Method to help wake up full

consciousness. So we have an awareness of it,

and I believe that the more you end up doing that,

the more you comprehend what Schrödinger described as that there's one mind out

there that we're part of, and that it's all a reflection.

And then if we go and break it down into the subatomic and reduce it, right,

the reductionist and the mechanist and materialist,

we can also find it'ss down at the quantum level and even at the quantum level

and there's quantum entanglement, these particle systems,

which are just waves of probability,

they're basically measurable by these entanglement,

which has no boundary in space and time entanglement. So quantum entanglement,

these non localities may be, again,

the universal mind now particularized by some measurement that we've arbitrarily

defined.

It's really quite blessing to go and explore this mystery called consciousness.

I could go for more hours on it, but I just didn't, I didn't want to,

I didn't want to, you know, I want your head spinning a little bit,

but at the same time,

I want you to know that there's a science on how to wake up your full

consciousness.

There's a science on how to awaken up a deep love and appreciation,

an inspiration and enthusiasm, a certainty and presence in life,

a transcendental awareness, the noumenal level beyond the epiphenomenal level.

And there's a way of actually integrating the pairs of opposites in the brain,

the neuro associative complexes and the anti memories and memories and integrate

the conscious and unconscious and become fully conscious.

Consciousness is a magnificent expression and maybe the very foundation of our

whole existence, everything may be conscious. And some people say, well,

there's a boundary between the inanimate and the animate. Maybe not.

Maybe there is really,

the more we probe into the deeper ministries of the

down into the particles and virtual particles of mathematical abstractions,

they will discover that, that it's subtly intelligent at all these levels,

and maybe all of the different theorists about consciousness have all been

adding pieces to it. But ultimately,

as we keep exploring the mysteries and go further into higher levels of quantum

at depths, and we go all the way to Plancks mathematics,

and even trans-Planckian mathematics,

we may discover that there's just nothing but a matrix and field of love that

we're participating in and no matter what you've done or not done,

you're worthy of love. And that may be the very core essence of it,

which religions and philosophies and sciences will all unite in that respect,

at that highest level. That's what I'm interested in,

in the Breakthrough Experience.

That's what I'm interested in doing the Demartini Method to help people get a

glimpse of the potential that lies within every human being.

Even though that idea of a human being may be an artificial, murky,

elusive separation of possibilities.

Maybe we're just a field of possibilities. Maybe it's big dream.

Maybe the whole thing is a conscious imaginative thought .

Some people believe it's a simulation, who knows? I don't know about that,

but I do know that this whole thing seems to be a loving matrix.

All the things that go inside us are feedback systems to help us become

maximized in our efficiency and effectency of potential,

most efficient way of expressing our love.

And all the things around us are trying to get us to do that.

And wisdom is seeing everything out there and in there,

the external internal systems feedbacking us to our most authentic,

most empowered, loving self.

So I just wanted to have a little fun with some consciousness today.

I hope you enjoyed this . Probably your head is spinning.

You're probably thinking that was a wild one, but I just,

I think it's an important topic.

And AI may be also reaching the point where it starts to get into the same

field of consciousness, whether we are using carbon or silicon, ultimately,

we may access the same field, it may be at the most highest quantum level,

we may actually get to that Planck level,

which is 1 x 10-33rd centimeters length.

We may find out that there's just a ground substance of the field of conscious

underlying this whole thing.

And we may actually be participating in a magnificent manifestation,

an infinite variety of experiences of love on all scales of existence

for eternity. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed today.

If you want more about how to apply this and mastery in your own consciousness,

come to the Breakthrough Experience and come learn the Demartini Method.

And let me elaborate on this,

where it's really clear and take you through it and make a difference in your

life.

It will help you empower all areas of your life and it'll help you have more

gratitude for life. Until next week, Dr. Demartini, see you then.