@Matias Yes, the things you experience have to do just with you—your memories, your subconscious makeup, your genetic propensities. If you have awareness of your experiences though, that conscious awareness itself is generic or universal.

When meditating, if a person can block off all thoughts and emotions he is able to experience pure consciousness. He realizes that there is nothing about consciousness that is peculiar to himself. It is not HIS consciousness—it is just consciousness, the same for everyone and everything through all of time.

I certainly don’t understand it and I can’t prove universal consciousness—it’s something that appeals to me on an intuitive level. I think to get any glimmer of insight you have to be willing to let go our normal way of thinking about reality, but that is true for other fields also—relativity for example.

Here’s an interesting article that discusses the concept:

[huffpost.com]

@Matias I agree that intuition alone is a poor guide, yet about every scientific discovery was preceded by intuitive ideas. There is certain evidence also, but not conclusive evidence obviously. It is perfectly understandable that you would be skeptical.

An analogy is a radio. Someone who had never heard of radios would probably think that its sounds were being created solely by the radio itself. And hearing voices, they might conclude that the radio was conscious. They might point out that different radios make different sounds, which precludes Universal Consciousness. They might argue that when the radio is turned off or dies it shows no sign of conscious awareness.They would be both right and wrong because the sounds themselves are indeed created inside the radio. But without signals, encoded with information, the sounds would not be possible.

@TheAstroChuck I think a physicist would would be as much out of his depth in this situation as another looking for the Higg's Boson..

@TheAstroChuck I doesn't matter a whit if the instruments are not designed for this kind of communication. And by the way, it's 'au contraire'.

First – we don’t know how the brain works. We’re only in the beginning stages. I would hesitate to assign one procedure to a certain parts of the brain and say that’s that.

Second – if drugs are affecting the brain, the person doing may be damaging their own transmitter.

Third – the two hemispheres of the brain are only beginning to be understood in terms of their relationship to each other. There is no reason to believe that consciousness exists there. It may well be that the two halves interpret the information communicated by consciousness and do it in different ways which when joined together produce a complete concept.

I got very annoyed at the first person being so arrogant about a subject so little is known about. I’m disappointed to see the same attitude coming from you.

@TheAstroChuck I take it you're so sure of yourself that you're not even reading my comments. I'll say it once more - I don't believe we can pick up those signals. Perhaps if we did, we could read people's minds.

@TheAstroChuck I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. I'm talking about a theory that tries to grapple with the idea of something that is hardly understood at all. I understand your knee-jerk reaction now you've brought god into it. I'm talking about a theory that suggests the way consciousness and the brain work. Your negative attitude to things we don't understand, ruling them out as impossible or belonging to superstition, will not serve science at all.

@TheAstroChuck Ok, you’re just twisting my words now.

I’ll tell one thing – somebody will come up with a provable theory some day but I doubt it will be anyone who has no imagination. You’re locked into physics as it’s now understood and that understanding is incomplete. I suspect your notions of science have become sacred to you.

@Matias I think you have to differentiate between bodily sentience and deep awareness. A robot can be made to detect stimuli and can be programmed to react appropriately, but no robot has true awareness of itself or anything else.

It is this seeming impossibility for some mechanistic process to create awareness that leads people into the concept of universal awareness.

Can anyone explain how our brains cause conscious awareness?

@TheAstroChuck Yes, that our cousins are aware does not detract from the concept of universal consciousness. It reinforces that concept IMO.

@TheAstroChuck Mr Picky here! The plural of octopus would be octopodes as oktopous is a Greek word not Latin, or Anglicised as octopuses. Just sayin'

@TheAstroChuck If we don't know how (or if) brains cause consciousness, the hypothesis needs to be tested before we reach a conclusion, otherwise it is no different to a religious conjecture.