[ConsciousnessIsAll]The Reason Is

[Guest guest]

This article may be of interest here. Summarizing doesn't quite cover

all the bases, but after it's read, there are some good questions it

raises. His thesis, which he thinks proven by physics, shows that

consciousness being primary, it has a causative relation to matter.

What surprises me is how this leads him to the conclusion that there

is free will, thru this downward causation of consciousness

interacting with the more often assumed primacy of the upward

causation exerted by matter.(He still asserts that matter, once

created, is real and has properties or "attributes".)

This excerpt is about that aspect of primacy:

It was my good fortune to recognize it within quantum physics, to

recognize that all the paradoxes of quantum physics can be solved if

we accept consciousness as the ground of being. So that was my unique

contribution and, of course, this has paradigm-shifting potential

because now we can truly integrate science and spirituality. In other

words, with Capra and Zukav—although their books are very

good—because they held on to a fundamentally materialist

paradigm, the paradigm is not shifting, nor is there any real

reconciliation between spirituality and science. Because if

everything is ultimately material, all causal efficacy must come from

matter. So consciousness is recognized, spirituality is recognized,

but only as causal epiphenomena, or secondary phenomena. And an

epiphenomenal consciousness is not very good. I mean, it's not doing

anything. So, although these books acknowledge our spirituality, the

spirituality is ultimately coming from some sort of material

interaction. But that's not the spirituality that Jesus talked about.

That's not the spirituality that Eastern mystics were so ecstatic

about. That's not the spirituality where a mystic recognizes and

says, "I now know what reality is like, and this takes away all the

unhappiness that one ever had. This is infinite, this is joy, this is

consciousness." This kind of exuberant statement that mystics make

could not be made on the basis of epiphenomenal consciousness. It can

be made only when one recognizes the ground of being itself, when one

cognizes directly that One is All. Now, an epiphenomenal human being

would not have any such cognition. It would not make any sense to

cognize that you are All.

http://www.wie.org/j11/goswam1.asp

......I'm fully aware of how contrary or just plain stupid I may seem

in resurrecting this old free will issue. However, I do so because

Goswami seems to me to be missing a point,by personalizing the

impersonal consciousness to human beings. Thus he appears to make the

very mistake he accuses other scientists of: making consciousness only

secondary, an epiphenomenon of material existence, even while he

claims to do otherwise.

What I do like about his approach is that he restores an emphasis on

consciousness being not only causative and primary, but creative, and

how creativity not only implies, but requires freedom. To me, it seems

the issue of some agency of will entering into this creativity is

moot, creativity only requires the possibility of multiple

possibilities. Otherwise, consciousness is limited and becomes itself

subjected to some more primary agency of determinism.

Well, it raises as many questions as it purports to answer, still it's

nice that physics is even raising them.

Gloria

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