A Beginner's Guide to Consciousness

You may be wondering why this project is called "The Dimensions of Consciousness"? For me, this title sums it up. I am presenting a whole new paradigm of consciousness; one in which consciousness is more fundamental than space or time. It is the ultimate building-block of everything! You could be forgiven for thinking that, perhaps, I was about to present some form of new religion. I am not.

Several people have told me that they find some of the topics I've covered so far a bit difficult. They can't see where I'm going with what seems like a science lesson! When I talk to them about my theories of consciousness, I quickly introduce spirituality into the conversation. That topic is going to be the next direction of this blog. So far I have simply (or maybe not so simply?) laid the scientific foundations for the blog. This post is therefore a round-up of the subjects I've covered to date. I describe how the latest thinking in science sounds more like science fiction and introduce some ideas that may at last link science and religion. I offer a definition of consciousness that could be accepted by both factions.

My background is in applied science and mathematics  but I'm also a spiritual person. I present my credentials for writing about this subject in my first post "About this blog and its author". I am a free thinker who ignores taboos and dares to think outside the box. I speculate about the philosophical meanings of scientific theories; in particular quantum theory. Such talk frightens some of the very people who created these theories and they run-scared-from or attempt to ridicule anyone who attempts to draw-out a meaning beyond the pure numbers.

This new understanding about the nature of consciousness comes from an interpretation of "String Theory" or "M-Theory". We can now, at last, explain the relationship between the science of the infinitely large and that of the infinitely small: a feat that even Einstein was unable to achieve before he died. There is one BIG issue to deal with, however: these theories require the universe to be ELEVEN dimensional!

The blog therefore begins with two posts that are intended to help you get your head round the theory. "Why we think there are multiple dimensions" explains how Einstein's special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics were originally unified using an elegant 10-dimensional mathematical model. The theoretical physicists who were involved with the development of string theory  became nervous when confronted by practical questions about what the extra dimensions might actually be.

One of those pioneers, John Hagelin stood out from the crowd and claimed that consciousness came from the higher dimensions and in fact, that consciousness was the "ground of all being". A Transcendental Meditation guru, Hagelin was disowned by some in the scientific community because he had dared to tackle one of the taboos of the conservative establishment.

The following post "10 spacial dimensions: what does that mean?" attempts to take you conceptually through an understanding of dimensions and introduces, for the first time, the amazing Rob Bryanton, whose project "Imagining the 10th Dimension" has caught the attention of millions of YouTubers around the world. His background as a musical artist has given him the vision to describe all 10 physical dimensions in terms that we mere 3D mortals can understand.

The 11th (non-spatial) dimension is Time and in the next two posts I attempt to offer clues as to what time might actually be. In "Is time a dimension?" I put the case for whether time should be thought of as a dimension. Rob Bryanton thinks it is but he's re-labelled it as "Duration" in order to get away from the idea that time only moves in one direction. The videos in this post show that even some of the top scientists in the world can't agree on a definition of time. My own frustration with defining time leads me to the conclusion that it's inextricably tied up with consciousness.

I examined that idea in the next post "A Subjective View of Time" I explained the "time dilation effect" which formed part of the theory of Special Relativity but then showed that this proven theory implies we all live in our own individual realities, separated by different Planck frames of time. There's something very strange about the whole concept of time. I think time requires a conscious observer because the only way to detect its passage is to compare two different points in time and, surely, a conscious record of each of the previous moments is required to do that? Notice that I have not suggested here that human consciousness is required for this.

Consciousness seems to be inextricably linked to reality. In my next post "The Quantum Observer" I described the well-known "double slit experiment" which seems to prove that the act of observation causes a particular reality to manifest from an infinite set of possible realities . The quantum observer doesn't have to be human: consciousness itself is the universal observer. In the posts that followed I renamed the human perception of consciousness as "conscious awareness" which is just a very narrow band of a much bigger spectrum of consciousness that underpins everything.

That leaves unanswered a very obvious question. If consciousness underpins everything, then everything must, in some way, be consciousness - even a rock. After several years of pondering this question, I announced my theory of the Spectrum of Consciousness in the post "A New Definition of Consciousness". No longer can we claim that we humans are so special that we invented consciousness! We are tuned-in to a small part of a whole spectrum. I suggested that the field of consciousness is one definition of God!

Of course, if we are to think of consciousness as originating outside the body, you have to ask what role does that leave for the brain? In "Consciousness and the Brain" I described the brain as a type of dynamic 3D holographic plate. When combined with the field of conscious energy, it produces a the representation of space-time which we perceive as reality. I acknowledge that we may never be able truly to understand what the brain is and how it actually generates the impression of conscious awareness, but I am adamant that the brain is NOT the source of conscious awareness (and obviously not the source of consciousness itself). It is the organ we use to interact with the field of consciousness and thereby, to give us our sense of being.

I spoke earlier of taboos and there's none so pervasively pernicious as the scientific establishment's dismissal of psi phenomena as a serious cause for study. There is so much experimental data that demonstrates that these phenomena exist that you have to conclude that it's downright unscientific not to accept that data and set up further studies to understand it. In "Fields of Consciousness", I discussed the scientific evidence and theories about the existence of supernatural phenomena. The Global Consciousness Project has proved with a probability of better than 1 an a billion that the human race collectively generates a field of consciousness that can be detected by fluctuations in the output stream of set of random number generators situated throughout the world. This in itself should be enough for similar studies to be undertaken without prejudice. Regrettably, scientific and religious taboos are still acting against such a move.

So, where is this blog going from here? I have offered a scientific framework that will allow us to understand the mysteries of consciousness which, until now, have been the exclusive domain of religion and esoteric philosophy. The addition of only one extra dimension is enough to explain almost all the supernatural phenomena which have been reported on Earth. We have an extra SEVEN to play with!

There are several ways in which we can describe the realm of the higher dimensions but as I will discuss in my next post, we should perhaps call it "The Spirit World".

From the perspective of THIS universe, I am "The REAL" Jeff Hall