Al Link

Integrating Your 4 Freedoms (Part 4 of 9) - Ultimate Reality: Consciousness

Consciousness is original and fundamental, everything considered to be “reality” comes out of that consciousness. As the forgoing examples illustrate, Western science is moving closer to Eastern perceptions of reality, wherein all is one. Body, mind, and spirit are not separate entities.

Ultimate Reality: Consciousness

If the difference between particles and waves is so slippery, and if time and space are so easily transcended, what is the fundamental nature of reality? What is real? One answer is consciousness. Consciousness is original and fundamental, everything considered to be “reality” comes out of that consciousness. In his book The Self-Aware Universe,i Dr. Goswami presents a philosophical argument known as monistic idealism to explain his theory that both matter and mind have their origin in consciousness. He draws on the ancient Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta as his authority for using the term consciousness, as The Ground of All Being.

Consciousness is fundamental.

As the forgoing examples illustrate, Western science is moving closer to Eastern perceptions of reality, wherein all is one. Body, mind, and spirit are not separate entities. Not only mystics but also an increasing number of scientists, philosophers, and medical doctors are talking openly about subtle energy, consciousness, and God. Candace Pert refers to subtle energy as “a still mysterious fifth force beyond the four conventional forces of physics…to scientifically explain anomalies such as the power of love.” And according to Robert Gottesman, M.D.:

If information exists outside of the confines of time and space, matter and energy, then it must belong to a very different realm from the concrete, tangible realm we think of as ‘reality’. And since information in the form of biochemicals of emotion is running every system of the body, then our emotions must also come from some realm beyond the physical. Information theory seems to be converging with Eastern philosophy to suggest that the mind, the consciousness, consisting of information, exists first, prior to the physical realm, which is secondary, merely an out-picturing of consciousness….Consider that the body itself may be a metaphor, just a way of referring to an experience we all have in common. Maybe it’s that we don’t have consciousness, but consciousness has us.

In Eastern science, philosophy, medicine, and mysticism, body, mind, heart, and soul are treated as inseparable and indivisible (non-dual). In the West, physicists, psychologists, and neurologists now largely agree that mind and body operate as a single system. From this perspective, the brain is just another organ, albeit more intricate than the rest of the body. Thoughts and emotions that subjectively bestow meaning on our reality are the result of complex electrochemical and biochemical interactions within and between cells throughout our body as well as in our brain. What happens in the body affects our mind and our hearts, and what takes place in the mind affects the body and the emotions in an endless series of feedback loops.

If science has come to see that we are not isolated elements but essentially one though inexplicable whole, isn’t that inspiration for us to apply this same approach to ourselves and our lives? If everything is ultimately a unique vibration of one fundamental string, isn’t it time for you to treat body, mind, heart, and soul as one undivided system?

Excerpted from our new book Sensual Love Secrets for Couples: The Four Freedoms of Body, Mind, Heart and Soul, by Al Link and Pala Copeland, Llewellyn, 2007.

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