Consciousness: The Bridge Between Science and Spirit
Video Soundtrack
Growing up in England I thought I had no interest whatsoever in spirituality–I never thought I’d be speaking at places like this–or even an interest in consciousness. In my youth I was fascinated by mathematics, theoretical physics. I quit church when I was about 13, when I was brought up regular Anglican-Protestant. Which meant kind of going to church with my parents about once a month or so. That was considered enough to clear any sins we’d committed.
Then I went through the process of confirmation. First we were told the facts of life, which was wonderful. And then what we were meant to believe. I suddenly realize this thing I was chanting in church every Sunday morning, at least once a month or so, The Nicene Creed, I was actually meant to believe it. This was The Creed. This is what I actually meant to believe it. I just realized it didn’t go with what I was learning in physics. With all this stuff that had been laid down in 300 AD about what was meant to believe, the basics. And what physics was telling me about the universe–it wasn’t created about 4000 years ago, it was millions of years old and there wasn’t a heaven up there and all that stuff. So it was a choice. And I decided physics was my way, mathematics and physics. So I told my parents, "That’s it," I was quitting church. Fortunately, they were fine. They just said that’s great. And interestingly enough, when I gave an advanced copy of my new book, From Science to God, to my mother she said, "You know I never believed that stuff my self really."
So I went off to university and I was studying physics, well applied mass theoretical physics. I was actually fortunate enough to be in the same place as Stephen Hawking. He was actually my tutor for a while. He had just completed his own research. He could still walk and talk then. He had to have a stick. But his disease was only just beginning to come on and he hadn’t actually published any of his major work. It was just wonderful just sitting with him and working with him.
I had reached the stage where I could solve Shrödigner’s equation, which–for most of you unless you majored in physics–means absolutely nothing and I’m not going to try and explain it to you. But what it does signify though, which is just fascinating, is that just from pure mathematics you can start deducing the structure of the hydrogen atom, of any atom, and from that the universe starts to unfold. It’s like how mathematics underlies the universe. Then I realized there was a much more interesting question, which was ‘How come I could do that?’ Not how come I could do the mathematics, but how come there were beings in the universe that could actually begin to understand the universe and do the mathematics. I was studying hydrogen–the universe had started off from the simplest element, clear colorless gas. How did that evolve into all the other elements, into life and into beings such as myself who could actually stop and do the mathematics of hydrogen structures. So, to put it another way, ‘how had the universe become self-reflective?’, how had consciousness arisen? And how could I actually stop and ask that question and wonder how I could study hydrogen. So more and more I started getting interested in consciousness and what consciousness was doing in the universe, how it had emerged, because that was the really fascinating thing. I think Einstein had put it very wonderfully himself when he said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" –the fact that we can actually understand it, how it has arisen.
Science, then and pretty much still today, didn’t want to engage with consciousness. It didn’t know what to do with consciousness. And science has ignored it, for very good reasons for it’s own part. First you can’t measure consciousness. You can’t weigh it. You can’t put a ruler up against it. You can’t time it. It doesn’t fit into the things that science likes to get a hold of and measure. You can’t put numbers against consciousness. Also, science wants to be objective. It wants to look at the objective world. The very essence of consciousness is that it’s subjective. And science tries to get rid of all that subjectivity, which is so variable. You can’t control it. Thirdly, the universe according to modern science seems to work perfectly well with out any need for consciousness. It doesn’t need to engage it. It can understand atoms and living cells and what’s happening out in space. Everything works pretty well without having to explore consciousness.
So there seems to be no need for science to explore consciousness. And yet, this is the interesting thing, consciousness is the one thing of which we are absolutely certain. And we can doubt everything else. I mean right now, who knows, it could be your brain is plugged into some virtual reality machine, which is giving you this experience. We could all be sitting in the Matrix. But even if you’re sitting in the Matrix, you’re still a conscious being having a different experience.
(...)
http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/CVid/ConscV... 
