Everything
Any Consciousness Belief System (CBS) must answer the following four questions about consciousness:
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What is it made of?
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Where is it?
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How do we explain all the different aspects of consciousness?
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How does it connect to the body?
My answers to these questions result in a consciousness belief system (which is just that: a belief system. It is not a theory).
The notion that the mind is equal to the brain, that the mind is literally the brain is wrong. We really know that, but because we have no alternative to turn to we persist in our mistake. How do we know it? MRIs (magnetic resonance images — pictures of the brain) and fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance images — movies of the brain) prove it so. The brain is a lump of organ meat cradled in the skull, with no room for some strange thing we call the mind.
We do know that various bits of the brain “light up” when we feel certain things, and so we say, for example, “The brain feels love,” getting confused, rather than saying, as we should, “I feel love for you and my brain is registering that emotion,” where the “I” is the “I” of my consciousness.
Let’s try a “thought experiment,” literally. Have a thought, any thought. For example, “I am reading this note.” Now, you can think it straight out; “I am reading this note.” You can think it in a high thought-voice, in a deep thought-voice or, even, if you know another language, in another language. You can even thought-sing it to the tune of your choice. Let’s say you managed two of those choices. Each of those thoughts is clearly different from each other, they are unique to you, you recognize you had them, you could do them again, and they are not in your brain, so where are they?
What produces thoughts? What we are really talking about is consciousness. After all, all of us invoke the subconscious at some point to explain things we don’t understand, like how we drove home while thinking of something else and how can you have a subconscious without a conscious(ness)?
So thoughts are produced by consciousness. My thoughts are produced by my consciousness, your thoughts are produced by your consciousness, and in general and as most of us would claim neither of us can read each other’s thoughts. We use “read” here and not “hear,” which is interesting. People are said to “hear” voices in their heads and yet when we come to talk about each other’s natural thoughts we use the term “read,” as though our thoughts are projected actually onto some screen somewhere and this is how they are represented in thought bubbles in cartoons. Even in this simple visual representation we think of thoughts as connected to, but not part of, the brain.
(There’s a whole debate about whether mind and body are separate or not. This note does not so much cut that Gordian knot as dissolve it. It takes a while to get there and we skirt some edges as we go but by the end of the note you’ll see what I mean.)
So what do we have now? We have the brain, consciousness, and the thoughts it produces. What happens when we sleep? Somehow dreams are produced. Let’s call them night-thoughts. They are stranger than the thoughts we produce during the day, but we recall them in the same way.
Consciousness is not just about producing thoughts of course. It produces other things. The “I” of consciousness feels love, for example. A question to start thinking about is this: Can the subconscious and the primary consciousness feel different emotions at the same time? Can I love someone and at the same time hate them?
Now “love” lights up the brain like nobody’s business, and I think it’s easy to see at this point that we are beyond saying the brain “feels” love. I (the consciousness that is me) feels love and my brain circuits register changes measurable by machines. Now the big question: Where is the consciousness that is me? It is in the physical universe we hope, because if it isn’t then we ain’t got nuttin’. Somehow it’s connected to the brain, because if it isn’t then when the-consciousness-that-is-me feels love my brain circuits wouldn’t light up, but how it’s connected is not the first question. The first question is: Where is the-consciousness-that-is-me in the physical universe?
Max Planck was a German physicist who lived between 1858 and 1947. He was the father of quantum theory and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918 for that achievement. The Planck length and the Planck time are the smallest possible units of length and time in the Universe. Trying to measure time and length below the Planck scale has no meaning.
In 1994, Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg published a paper called The Planck Aether model for a unified model of elementary physics. The abstract says this: “A dense assembly of an equal number of two kinds of Planck masses [ … ] is proposed as a model for a unified theory of elementary particles. The dense assembly of Planck masses leads to a vortex field below the Planck scale having the form of a vortex lattice, which can propagate two types of waves, one having the property of Maxwell’s electromagnetic and the other one the property of Einstein’s gravitational waves.”
(The post on my old blog where I discuss this in more detail is here. I wrote to a theoretical physicist about this paper and he replied that there is no clearly understood answer to what happens below the Planck scale, that this is just one speculation and there is no layman’s guide to the topic.)
That’s it, with a twist. My first idea is that the-consciousness-that-is-me consists of a vortex below the Planck scale. All consciousnesses exist as vortices of energy below the Planck scale. I used to believe in the vortex lattice but now I’m not so sure.
Your first response is, I imagine, that’s ridiculous. So let’s examine that. Where is consciousness else to be found? We have examined the Universe from the quantum level to the realm of the maximum limits of our view of the Universe and speculated beyond (with the idea of the multiverse, the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes) and we have found no thoughts. Think “I have a thought” again. Where is it? Below the Planck scale is the only place left. And see the Unified Field page on this site. Note especially the symbols at minute 22.50.
Let’s say you still think it’s ridiculous. I suggest you still might like to read on. The second big idea might be at least interesting.
The next question is — does the idea of consciousness-as-vortex appear anywhere else in the knowledge of the world? The answer is “Yes.” Take this quote from Western Buddhist Review, going back to 1994:
“Each vortex represents an individual human life. We come into being, take shape from the conditions available to us: the cells, chemicals, and biological matter and all the other conditions of our lives give shape to our being. Different fragments of the ideas of Marx, Christ, Thoreau, the Beatles, Rousseau, Walt Witman, Raymond Chandler, Freud, Picasso, Adam Smith, Jefferson, Keats, Einstein, the advertising industry, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Henry Ford, Chaucer, Ian Fleming, and the Buddha drift in this Sea of Conditions. They flow into our vortex, give it shape, flow down and flow out. The history of our parents and our culture, flows in, flows down and flows out. All our inherited ideas of good and bad; all the cells which replicate and die in our bodies; all the viruses which effect our health; all the colours, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and ideas we ever experience, flow in, flow down and flow out. All our memories, sensations, emotions, desires and actions flow in to the vortex, shape it and flow out.
“In reality we are not ultimately separate from the rest of the Sea of Conditions, from all the vast immensity of life itself. But we don’t see it like that. ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality’ [9]. In order to get by from day to day, to get on with the apparently urgent business of survival, we narrow the scope of our vision to more manageable proportions.”
Here is the related post. The same arrticle also mentions Indra’s Net, with this description from Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, Francis H. Cook, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.
“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.”
I mention this reference to Indra’s Net for another reason. Google Books got started in only 2002 and is continually growing. Although I do not have qualifications in consciousness studies and theoretical physics (I am, after all, just a regular guy) I do have access to this library and other Internet services.
But back to Indra’s Net. There is a tantalizing resemblance to Dr. Winterberg’s lattice but it could be coincidence. As may be the references to vortices representing spiritual and other energies around the world such as those at Sedona in the US. If this is all coincidence then what are we left with? Still nowhere to put consciousness in the physical world, so let’s just call it the vortex suggestion and go on from there.
René Descartes (1596-1650) could be considered, perhaps, the father of modern dualism, the notion that the mind and body are not identical. He held that the mind was a nonphysical substance. “Nonphysical substance” lovingly describes a vortex existing below the Planck length/time. It might seem that I am offering a dualist perspective. But of course there’s more than that. Descartes also believed that the mind interacted with the body at the pineal gland and I’ll come back to that.
Before I go on, let’s just check in with the neuroscientists. What do they have to say? I think it’s fair to say that they believe the “mind” is somehow generated by the physical processes of the brain, leave it at that and go on from there, which seems to me the “hard problem” ignored. See works by Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, such as Who’s in Charge?
Let’s try answering question three, attempting to explain all other aspects of consciousness (such as the subconscious, the split-brain experiments of Dr. Gazzaniga, the experiments of Dr. Libet and then Dr. John-Dylan Haynes and many brain conditions, in certain cases described as “mental illnesses.”).
Let’s start with the subconscious. If consciousness is the thing that’s somehow connected to our brains or generated by them and is in fact a vortex of energy existing below the Planck length/time border, then what’s the subconscious? When you drive home from work (I don’t drive so it will have to be you) and think about the meeting with your boss the whole time and then on arriving think: “Why, how did I do that? How did I drive home, make all those decisions to put the car in gear, stop at the lights and for pedestrians all the while thinking about that meeting with Jane (or Bob)?” You shrug your shoulders and answer, “I guess I did it subconsciously” and go on in to dinner.
But what does that mean? You made decisions; put your foot on the brake, move your foot off the brake, look the right for pedestrians, look to the left for pedestrians, put the car in gear, check the rear-view mirror … Who made thosedecisions while you were thinking about something else? When pressed you might say, “Well, I did, but subconsciously.” But that doesn’t really mean anything, does it? It just means I don’t know how I did it, so I am going to call upon this idea of a secondary consciousness, a subconscious that did it for me that I can’t explain either. See? It evaporates.
So here’s the second idea:
We each have a second, fully-functioning consciousness which has until now between described vaguely as a subconscious (which we have never understood). It, too, is a vortex of energy, co-centered with the first consciousness vortex and existing below the Planck length/time border. It makes decisions just like the consciousness of the everyday (which I call the C1) but the C1 and C2 are rarely in communication. It is much more powerful than the C1.
Furthermore it is, in most of us, a fundamentally “good” consciousness, which speaks to the idea of “guardian angels,” the “prick of conscience” and a host of other ideas. Here, for example, is David Brooks talking about a reflection of this in a short TED talk:
Doesn’t that seem to answer a lot of questions? All those things your “subconscious” did we can now just ascribe to a second fully-functioning consciousness.
To recap the picture: two consciousnesses existing as vortices of energy, co-centered, existing as vortices of energy below the Planck length time/border connected to the brain somehow, one the consciousness of the everyday (the C1) and the second (the C2) another consciousness humming along (ha!) making decisions as necessary.
What I’m trying to do now is build up a picture of how I believe consciousness works. I’ve already told you what it is and given you one dividend — there is no such thing as the subconscious.
Time for an even more startling claim which will pay us even more dividends.
Benjamin Libet conducted a famous experiment in which he showed that activity in the brain associated with making a decision to push a button occured shortly before participants reported that they had made the decision to push the button. In 2008, in a study published in Nature Neuroscience and relayed to regular guys like me through WIRED magazine: “brain scanners could predict decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.” (“WIRED, Brain scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them,4.13.08). Here’s a quote from the article from one of the neuroscientists at the NIH about the unease that people feel as a result of these kinds of experiments. He maintains that there is a misconception of mind as separate from the brain: “A different way of thinking about it is that your consciousness is only aware of some of the things your brain is doing.” The two statements seem to contradict each other.
[Update July 2014: The WIRED article has disappeared from their site, but here’s another article describing the experiment, in Nature, August 31, 2011.]
Here’s what I think. The C2 consciousness operates ahead of the C1 consciousness. There. That’s the outrageous claim. Note that this does not do away with free will. The C2 is making decisions when asked (as in the experiments described above) and decisions when the C1 is off doing something else (like thinking while driving). The C1 has the power of veto. It all comes down to decisions.
Think of the way you are sitting right now and the position of your legs. Why did you put them in that particular configuration? Apart or crossed, right leg on left or vice versa? And how fast did you do it? “Instinct” you might say, or “I always sit that way” except for the times you don’t, “I do it subconsciously.” Or we could just say that the C2 makes that decision if your C1 is reaching for the remote and doing it just ahead of it all that you don’t miss the chair. That is, thedecision the C2 makes is the right one for you. Every decision the C2 makes is the right one for you, “right” in the sense of “that which fits the occasion,” not in the sense of correct. (This gets weirder by the way.)
But what does it mean physically to say that the C2 operates ahead of the C1? It simply means that the C2 is spinning faster than the C1 and interacting with the Universe faster than the C1. We already know that because of the way our brains work we “live” 80 milliseconds or so in the past. If we don’t know how consciousness is connected to the brain how can we then say that we know consciousness is connected to the physical universe?
My contention is that my C1 consciousness, the rather dim-witted, slow consciousness, acts through a limited interpretation of the Universe using the slow processing speed of my brain (albeit with an 80ms or so lag) and the C2 consciousness (which is also associated with me as well, remember; it is just me, sharing the same memory banks, connecting to the same brain) just operates by getting all the information faster and processing it faster and relays the results of its calculations back to the brain. To quote from Douglas Adams again, this time from this book and mentally replacing “the mind” with “consciousness”:
“We know, however, that the mind is capable of understanding these matters in all their complexity and in all their simplicity. A ball flying through the air is responding to the force and direction with which it was thrown, the action of gravity, the friction of the air which it must expend its energy on overcoming, the turbulence of the air around its surface, and the rate and direction of the ball’s spin.
“And yet, someone who might have difficulty consciously trying to work out what 3 x 4 x 5 comes to would have no trouble in doing differential calculus and a whole host of related calculations so astoundingly fast that they can actually catch a flying ball.
“People who call this “instinct” are merely giving the phenomenon a name, not explaining anything.”
I explain it. It is the C2. When I (the C1) look around (for example) I (the C1) don’t “see” infra-red rays although we know (for example, through the use of night-goggles) that they are out there. More simply, when I look at something everything else is out of focus. We have a famous blind-spot between the eyes. This is the province of the C1. The C2 just gets everything, stores everything and does it faster.
So here’s the dividend from that claim (apart from explaining a knotty experiment). This explains “instinct,” “hunches,” “doing things without thinking” and being “in the flow.” Because, if you think about it, all of those things involve part of you (the C1) getting out of the way (sometimes very rapidly) while other parts of you (directed by the C2) do what needs to be done. I’m not talking about laboriously learning to throw a jump-shot in basketball and practicing for a long time and being able without too much thinking to be able to hit them 80% of the time. I’m talking about the last second of the championship game when you’re under extreme pressure, the score is tied and time seems to stop without you realizing it and you let go and jump-shot and you know the moment the ball leaves your hand it’ll be nothing but net. My contention is that, simply, the C2 has collected all the information necessary to make the perfect throw, the C1 has got out of the way and the C2 operates the perfectly-trained body to make the throw.
Think of it this way. The C1 and the C2 are two cars traveling at high speed in convoy down the same lane of the multi-lane highway of life. At certain moments the C2 speeds up and passes the C1 and leads the way and then drops back behind.
“I don’t know how I did that,” we say more prosaically when we play a stroke in tennis above our pay-grade and the answer is we (our C1) were distracted by a bird-call or we had taught ourselves to get out the way and play the ball on “instinct” (our C2 did it).
So far, I hope, so good. We’ve romped through what consciousness is actually made of, where it is, what the subconscious is, the fact that the C2 is actually making the decisions and what instinct is. Where next?
Before we go somewhere I just want to say a little something about decision making. I said that the C2 makes decisions and that when it does every decision it makes is the right one for you. But where does it stop? Or, rather, where does it start? Let’s say I’m looking for a book. I go into my study and later I say to my wife, “I happened to glance up and there it was on the top shelf.” I would say now, quite simply, the C2 directed my gaze. The C2 quietly, in an interval when the C1 let go of controlling the head started the process of moving the head and eyes in the direction of seeing the book because the C2 has registered and knows every single piece of information about my study down to the microscopic tear on the cover of The Origins of Consciousness … and the pattern of age spots on the yellow cover of my rhyming dictionary.
So do I just then get out of the way all the time? Let the C2 do all the talking as it were? The answer is “No.” I live, we live, after all, in a C1 world. C1s make decisions themselves all the time running rough shod over attempts by the C2 to restrain us. The C1, if you like, has the power of veto as I slipped in above. The C2 can’t stop me from buying a 64 ounce soda and drinking it in one go. It can urge me not to (“there was a small voice in the back of my head telling me not to” — how often have you invoked that phrase?) but it can’t stop you.
But if I (the C1) have only the power of veto that means I (the C1 consciousness, the one that exists in the everyday world) am not really running my own life. At all. The C2 (the other fully independent, non-communicative, all input absorbing consciousness) is running the show. In other words it’s really a C2 world and we’re just living in it. This hearkens back to Julian Jaynes and answers his questions with a different explanation.
I asked, before this digression, where next?
How about this? We don’t exist. Here’s why. If there is a C1 and C2 and I hope I have persuaded you that’s at least a possibility, then either the C1 is doing the driving (so to speak) or the C2 is (literally in the example above). Either the C1 is thinking and the C2 is making all the decisions with respect to how the body moves, reacts and interrupts or the C1 is vetoing the C2s decisions and performing certain actions. So the unitary I, the Me that I think I am, ain’t there. Sometimes the I is the C1, sometimes the C2. “I” don’t exist. There is no “I,” just two consciousnesses co-existing through the same brain.
This was to me when I realized it, or began to believe it I should say, more than a little unsettling. There was a tearing, a wrench in the Universe, in both senses of the word. It’s a C2 world and “I” as the C1 bumble along behind, sometimes sweatily exert myself. But the C2 is also me, making the decisions that are right for me, for us. See? Confusing.
So when I discovered or realized, further, that I was in fact one with the Universe (so to speak) I was kind of ready. In fact I had known this for a long while but could only, to use Heinlein’s term, grok it when I realized “I” didn’t exist; “I” was/am either the C1 or the C2 at one time or another. Because, you see, what exists below the Planck length/time border forms the basis of the Universe. Everything from sub-atomic particles on up is “made” of this stuff. So there we are. When I look around the café in which I sit and observe the twin consciousnesses working through the single brains of the people in the café and rest my head on my elbow on the wood table as I write I believe that the wood is made up of the same stuff as I am. So is the air. So is light. So are the stars. We are such stuff as dreams are made on …
What does this mean specifically for the problem of whether the mind and body are two or one? It dissolves it. For if consciousness makes up all matter then there it really doesn’t matter. It’s all energy, some organized in lumpy ways and some not. The brain does what it does because it’s made of the same thing as the consciousness that drives it. So they are two and, at the same time, one.
That is, my belief systems circumvents the hard problem. Since in my CBS consciousness is made up of energy below the Planck length/time border then it necessarily makes up the Universe (and hence the brain). So consciousness both operates the brain as a machine and is the brain.
On to the next topic which we can dismiss fairly swiftly, although it needs more exploring. What is the soul? Clearly the notion of mind and soul also seems to line up with the notion that there are two fully independent consciousnesses, one being the consciousness of the everyday (the C1) and the other a second, fully-functioning consciousness (the C2).
Let’s talk about gods and ghosts. What are ghosts? Consciousnesses without bodies. In my belief system, when a person dies, two things happen. The C1 stops revolving and the C2 detaches from the body. The C2 carries the memory system of the C1 with it and continues its existence in the Planck space/time vortex field. I turned to the Bardo Thodol and looked at it in the light of my belief system. If, during a person’s lifetime, the C2 is persuaded to slow down enough to capture the C1, or the C1 speeds up enough, the combined vortex will continue to exist in the vortex field. A combined C1 and C2 during a person’s lifetime I call a C3, an idea which steers towards something like “enlightenment,” whatever that really means now. To understand that one does not exist and yet, at the same time, is a part of a seamless Universe has meant that one has passed through some kind of door of understanding.
My reference to the Bardo Thodol illustrates the far reaching consequences of taking this belief system into the Real World. I see hints of the system in other belief systems spread throughout the ages without respect to geography. For example, spirals, two dimensional representations of vortices, occur in different times and places and, in Celtic designs, in threes. I am not saying that these occurrences are evidence for the “truth” of this belief system. There can be no truth. What I am saying is that they are elements that could be regarded as distortions of this belief system as people struggled to come to terms with the idea that there is something else beyond a single, unitary consciousness.
But back to ghosts. After a person dies the C2 either is no long connected to the individual brain or the C3 is not so connected. A not-connected vortex consciousness I call a C4 and there may be other ways for C4s to exist than the way I have just described. So ghosts (whether you believe they exist or not they are prominent in other belief systems; for example, in Tibet) are C4s made visible. I believe the C2 attaches to the brain at a specific time and that the C1 an induced spin-up that occurs later, which idea dove-tails with ideas of re-incarnation spread around the world. And we all know of children described as “old souls”; in this belief system those are they whose C2s are more prominent at the beginning.
I am not advocating any belief in re-incarnation or ghosts: I am trying to link ideas related to consciousness to my belief system and vice versa in an attempt to show that my belief system is not withering on the vine when confronted by those other ideas: to show that it stands up.
Where and what are the Gods?
Before I go on to discuss this question I want to say that the simple idea that’s so hard to grok, that there are two fully independent consciousnesses (in fact I believe there are more than that, but that’s for later) working through our bodies and brains, opens up a wealth of new ideas and possibilities. This note is not designed to fully explore all those. It is designed to just point out a possible new pathway that leads from where we are now to a possible new valley of knowledge nestled in the mountains.
So, back to God and the Gods. Where is God? Given that in this place where it is meaningless to talk of place and time I’ve put consciousness (the C1, the C2, the rare C3s and the C4s) and above that is the material world, all the way up to the multiverse, assuming it exists, and let’s allow it does, then where is God? What is God? The still, small voice that answers us (I would say a C2 or C4 communicating with a C1)? The surging rush of emotion we feel as directed by an unseen hand (the unseen hand the C2 or C4)? The decision made for us (our C2)? Serendipity (C2s working across space/time to achieve same) ? A blessed sense of peace descending (the C2 generating appropriate response in the brain, with feedback to the C1)? God is, simply, the interaction between the C1 and the C2 and a mixture of the C4s, who could also be called Gods, if you like.
I recommend reading the introduction to The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles, in the Penguin Classics edition for a discussion of how the Gods interact with humans. Their interaction is translatable to an interaction between C4s and the C1.
Let’s talk about communication between the C1, the consciousness of the everyday and the C2s and C4s. In general because we think that we are unitary (in my belief system we think we are only C1s) we don’t understand communication with the C2s or C4s and I have explained some of the terms, including “God” and “instinct,” we use on those rare occurrences when they do, in the general population, happen. There is, however, another population, a select population where those occurrences are more frequent and more general. This is the population who have certain kind of brain adaptions. If the connection between the C2 and the C1 is mediated by the brain and something changes in the brain it is feasible that the communication channel between the C2 and the C1 can open and communication can begin and, indeed, communication between the C4s that exist in profusion and the C1, the consciousness of the everyday, could take place. This would be called auditory hallucination by those who seek to understand these things who do not have a belief system like mine. Or perhaps not if they belong to an organization likeIntervoice.
Since the C2 is a vortex and operating a short time ahead of the C1 a C3 mode is entered if the two vortices begin to spin at the same rate. This relates to the concept of “enlightenment” (which is in quotes because it is an “extraordinarily imprecise construct“).
Let’s come, finally, to the “hard problem” and I’d like to reference a TED talk first. For those who haven’t heard about TED, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and the talks are primarily 20 minute talks on all kinds of fascinating subjects. If you search for “The brain in your gut” at TED you’ll find it. There are neurons in the lining of the gut so extensive that some scientists have nicknamed it “the second brain.” In this article we get this:
“The second brain doesn’t help with the great thought processes…religion, philosophy and poetry is left to the brain in the head,” says Michael Gershon, chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology and author of the 1998 book The Second Brain (HarperCollins).”
Nevertheless this is a tantalizing glimpse of mind, I mean consciousness. For if neurons in the brain imply a connection to consciousness, why shouldn’t neurons in the gut?
Where am I going with this? Having pointed out a superficial resemblance between Indra’s Net, vortices and the Planck length/time I started poking around a bit and found this here:
“Chakra is a concept originating from Hindu texts and used in Hindu practices. Its name derives from the Sanskrit word for “wheel” or “turning”[…] Chakra is a concept referring to wheel-like vortices which, according to traditional Indian medicine, are believed to exist in the surface of the etheric double of man. The Chakras are said to be “force centers” or whorls of energy permeating, from a point on the physical body, the layers of the subtle bodies in an ever-increasing fan-shaped formation. Rotating vortices of subtle matter, they are considered the focal points for the reception and transmission of energies. Different systems posit a varying number of chakras; the most well known system in the West is that of seven chakras. […] Texts describing the chakras go back as far as the later Upanishads, for example the Yoga Kundalini Upanishad.
“The study of the chakras is a part of many philosophical and spiritual traditions, as well as many therapies and disciplines. In eastern traditions, the theory of chakras is a central part of the Hindu and Buddhist tantra, and they play an important role in attaining deep levels of realisation. In Hinduism, particularly in tantric Laya Yoga and Kriya Yoga, the concept of chakras is part of a complex of ideas related to esoteric anatomy. The chakras are described in the tantric texts like the Sat-Cakra-Nirupana, and the Padaka-Pancaka, in which they are described as emanations of consciousness from Brahman, an energy emanating from the spiritual which gradually turns concrete, creating these distinct levels of chakras, and which eventually finds its rest in the Muladhara chakra. The energy that was unleashed in creation, called the Kundalini, lies coiled and sleeping at the base of the spine. It is the purpose of the tantric or kundalini forms of yoga to arouse this energy, and cause it to rise back up through the increasingly subtle chakras, until union with God is achieved in the Sahasrara chakra at the crown of the head.
“The central role of the chakras in this model is the raising of Kundalini, where it pierces the various centers, causing various levels of realisation and resulting in the obtention of various siddhis or occult powers, until reaching the crown of the head, resulting in union with the Divine. The methods on how to raise kundalini are generally secret, but a number of methods have been published, for example the tantric school of Laya Yoga begin with a number of preparatory practices such as asanas and pranayama to purify the nadis (meridians), and then a number of practices and meditations specific to each chakra, and finally the raising of the kundalini through special kriyas, which terminate in the vision of ones causal self.”
So “God” is associated with the Sahasrara chakra at the crown of the head (and the notion of a compressed vortex as a coiled serpent is obvious). What I am doing here is just trying to see if I can come up with some kind of link between, now, the physical and consciousness. I am not advocating belief in chakras. This is the final push up the cliff of this consciousness system.
This is pretty much where I stop on this topic. Theosophist writers were, as far as I can find out so far, the first to link the endocrine system with the chakras and in various descriptions of the pineal and thyroid gland chakras certain connections can be made to my belief system as described here.
So, by a leap of imagination and daring-do, what if there are, in fact, not just two consciousnesses, the C1 and the C2, but a host? The coordinating one, the C1, working at the level of the everyday, the C2, accepting all input, connecting out to the C4s and occasionally across the divide to the C1 and the housekeeping consciousnesses, like the consciousness of the gut, doing the housekeeping? It’s not that I am saying the system of chakras is right. What I am saying is that a group of people thinking hard over a long period of time in certain parts of the world using the language, concepts and history available to them constructed a belief system surrounding consciousness which they could use to explain the world beyond the brain. Things advance. We know there are quantum effects in the blood. There is a possibility I think that chi energy is quantum energy.
Thank you for reading.
September 2 2012.
minor edits 2012-2015-2016
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