The Structure of Consciousness
In our article on consciousness-based alternatives to biotechnology we established that consciousness has a three-in-one structure:—The Togetherness of Knower, Process of Knowing and Known. The Vedic literature of ancient India explains that the whole creation emerges from the self interactions of universal consciousness—consciousness knowing itself, which creates this three in one structure of life called in Sanskrit the Samhita of Rishi, Devata and Chhandas. This inner self-referral dynamic of consciousness knowing itself is sometimes referred to as Prana, the life force or primordial frequency of subtle vibration. In fact, all living systems share a 3-in-1 structure of perception, it is what defines ‘life’. It is the familiar structure of our everyday existence.
In our article “The Sacred Cell and Conscious Genes“ we discuss how this same 3-in-1 structure is found in every living cell, comprising nucleus, cytoplasm and membrane in one whole cell. At the scale of the cell, quantum mechanical effects take over which reveal the foot print of consciousness. The functional essence of cellular life can only be understood in terms of the quantum fields which underpin the deceptively solid four dimensional world that we experience through our senses. Fundamental physical experiment and theory demonstrate that these quantum fields necessarily involve the conscious observer—our Self.
Echoing the Vedic Literature, quantum cosmology theorises that primordial interactions between the observer and observed give rise to an expanding horizon of impressions and relationships which in turn give rise to the perception of a tangible space-time whose material expression involves a dense quantum entanglement. In the Vedic Literature these entanglements are referred to as the result of Karma or action. From this perspective, the world around us is a condensation of universal consciousness. The whole universe is a living system in which organisms engage in observations, decisions and interactions which in turn create further impressions and relationships. These multiply and build up into phylogenetic trees during an evolutionary process. Just as the colourless sap of actual trees and plants pervades the whole tree, so the essence of phylogenetic trees is consciousness itself.
The picture of the universe which arises is one of complete integration within the oneness of universal consciousness. Everything happens within the embrace of universal consciousness or BEING. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s phrase “all is well and wisely put” sums up this total integration. Nothing is out of place because nothing lies outside of the oneness of BEING.
At every level of the material creation, individual consciousness assumes forms and experiences in different lifetimes, like a bird flitting from branch to branch of a tree. Recent research has found that living cells maintain a complete molecular ‘memory’ of their embryonic origins which can under certain circumstances be switched on to aid physiological regeneration. Professor Shivdasni, author of the Harvard study, explained that over the course of embryonic and fetal development, as cells evolve to take on the specific characteristics of the hundreds of types of adult tissues, cells “are constantly making choices about what kind of cell they will become,” based on their earlier development. But it doesn’t stop there, the science of epigenetics suggests we pass on to our offspring and descendants not just responses to illness and trauma – but also feelings like trust and compassion too. The UK Guardian summarises recent research findings:
“Complex traits such as temperament, longevity, resilience to mental ill-health and even ideological leanings are all, to some extent, “hardwired”. Environment matters too for these qualities, of course. Our education and life experiences interact with genetic factors to create a fantastically complex matrix of influence.”
In other words, ‘what goes before’ is tremendously important in shaping our our responses to today’s experiences. In the Vedic Literature this is known as Smriti or memory. We are subject to a matrix of genetic memory which was ultimately all created by conscious decisions taken throughout the infinite evolutionary past. As if life is a long dream that we need to wake from.
An analogy will help understand the relationship between the cell and consciousness in its simplest terms. Universal consciousness is like an ocean, unlimited in extent. Individual life is a wave on the ocean. Prana is like the internal currents or self interactions of the ocean. Karma is like the wind which blows the surface of the ocean. All the waves are connected to the ocean and actually made from the ocean. Our cellular genetic structure, which supports the expression of universal consciousness in individual life, contains a memory (Smriti) of our past actions (Karma).
As we wrote in our Hatchard Report article The Fall of the House of Biotechnology, genes can be likened to piano keys which require a pianist to play them. Our genes have to do with expression and action, whereas universal consciousness is field of infinite silence. This is not the dull silence of sleep however, but a field of pure potentiality, fully awake BEING. It is our inner BEING which like the pianist ultimately creates and guides genetic processes formed through the innumerable perceptions, decisions and actions of history.
Quantum genetic fields
Our 37 trillion cells have a special property, they all naturally connect together to support the expression of a field of individual consciousness—the self. Our awareness is not limited to one point in space, it registers even the tiniest pin prick anywhere in our body. A collaborative research program I participated in shows that this property of intimate cellular connectedness or coherence is not limited to the individual physiology, it supports levels of collective consciousness—family, community, city, nation and world.
In the course of travels you become aware that each city has a different feeling—compare the energy and edgy feeling of New York with the laid back ambiance of Los Angeles. When you arrive in a city you notice the difference immediately and begin to act differently. This illustrates the effect of the fields of collective consciousness. The individuals in a city create the collective consciousness and are in turn influenced by it. Climate and geography also play a role. Unhappy, unhealthy, stressed individuals will produce tension in the collective consciousness of a family, city, or nation which will in turn negatively affect all the members of the group. Conversely positive individual traits are reflected in collective consciousness. We have discussed this in our article “The Long Read: What is a Human Biofield?“ and offered evidence of a field modulated by genetic characteristics shared by populations.
My earliest research on this effect shattered once and for all any feeling of individual helplessness in the face of the vagaries of the external world. Riding in a boat on Lake Lucerne in January 1975, the saintly man who introduced me to meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, reflected on the result of a scientific study which he predicted could open a window to a new age. In four small college towns in the US, when 1% (one in a hundred) of the population learned meditation, crime fell abruptly. Being a scientist, I was keen to test this idea for myself. I returned to Cleveland Ohio where in 1971 I had helped to set up a centre for meditation instruction. Over the intervening four years thousands of people had come to learn meditation.
In the ensuing months I worked to complete a research project whilst I was living in an apartment at the back of Bordonaro’s supermarket on Shaker Boulevard. I had gathered data and analysed crime rates in suburban Cleveland which has a population of about three million. On completing the analysis of crime statistics by suburb using FBI data, I found a highly statistically significant correlation between reductions in crime rate by suburb and percentage of people practicing meditation—more meditators more crime reduction. This finding was the culmination of a detailed analysis which included interviews with police to verify the authenticity of crime reporting procedures. I published the results in a paper entitled “Influence of the Transcendental Meditation program on crime rate in suburban Cleveland” which documented reduced crime rate in suburban Cleveland during 1974 to 1976. This became the subject of a documentary film called Ideal Society in Greater Cleveland. Newspapers reported reductions of up to 70% in violent crime in areas of the city where one per cent of the population practiced Transcendental Meditation.
The results were nothing less that a personal revelation. I realised that the material world in which I had thought I lived, where a myriad of interacting influences gave rise to a semblance of solidity and incremental progress, was actually a world of consciousness. That afternoon, I walked out of the back of my building into the parking lot. It was a sunny day and the lot was surrounded by trees. A light breeze blew the leaves around and I saw that that the real world was a flow of consciousness, and that is my consciousness. In the world of consciousness where I now lived, that wind became the flow of awareness pulsing through every living and material thing. The wind blowing through life was a wave of consciousness pervading and constituting all things, and that was my own SELF.
Highly sophisticated and significant mathematical verification of these effects in different places became the subject of papers I have completed and published, which in turn became a major focus of my PhD Thesis. These are explained in accessible lay terms in my book Your DNA Diet. The effect sizes are large and the statistical certainties huge, at a level rarely seen in the social sciences. I have not been alone in investigating and testing this effect. To date there have been 55 papers published in 24 peer review journals and 38 in research anthologies. More than 60 scientists have collaborated to complete this research. As you can imagine there has been a great deal of scepticism, but the results speak for themselves.
Crucially, when you look at the results of these studies, there is a curious asymmetry in the magnitude and extent of effect sizes. In localities or cities where the population has been relatively settled for generations and hence share historic genetic characteristics and ties, the effect sizes of reduced crime etc. through meditation participation are more concentrated in the local area as happened in Merseyside.
Where populations are more mobile and genetically diverse, effect sizes are spread over a wider population and geographic area such as happened in USA for example. In both cases the statistical significance of the relationship between meditation participation and reduced problems is very high. This indicates that the field effects of meditation are modulated by shared genetic characteristics. More research is needed to investigate this, but the existence of genetic fields is an intriguing possibility. The collective effect of meditation offers great hope to the world and highlights the need to incorporate meditation as an educational practice, as it has been honoured in many civilisations and cultures in the historical past.
Systematic investigation of consciousness
In this article we have begun to understand the universal character of consciousness as the 3-in-1 structure of knower, process of knowing and known shared by all life forms. Any worthwhile investigation of consciousness does not merely involve intellectual consideration, but requires a fusion of subjective personal experience, the objective scientific method and historical wisdom. Crucially, any valid scientific understanding of consciousness must include the experience of the least excited state of consciousness through practice of meditation itself, along with research into the record of experiences of higher consciousness available in cultural historical literature.
There is a big picture here, the universe is awake. It has a living presence. Anything that is alive has a form, a name, a function and dare we say it, a personality. Think of the playful character of the wind, the warmth of sunshine, the hunger of fire, the rich smell of freshly turned soil, the restless sea, the roar of thunder and the soft touch of snow. Many have felt their plants asking to be watered or offering fruit to be picked.
These are all qualities we associate with the moods of consciousness. In contrast, the last 400 years of modern science has introduced us to a dull lifeless conception of reality. That needs to change. From a scientific perspective a house is just a collection of lifeless building materials, but it becomes a home which cherishes its occupants and is loved in return. The house is more that the sum of its parts, building a house awakens life in materials. The door to the living world lies through the experience of consciousness itself which sees behind the veil of merely material existence.
Rik Ved is an ancient record of seers who recognised the operation of the laws of nature in their own consciousness. This was written down as series of precise verses. There is a verse (1.164.39) which says:
“Richo akshare parame vyoman
Yasmin deva adhivishve nisheduh
Yastanna veda kimricha karishyati
Ya ittadvidus ta ime samasate”
In English:
The laws of nature, the impulses of creative intelligence (devas) responsible for the whole manifest universe exist in the collapse of fullness (the kshara of ‘A’) in the transcendental field, the Self.
He whose awareness is not open to this field, what can the verses of the Veda accomplish for him? Those who know this level of reality are established in evenness, wholeness of life.
The Kshara of ‘A’ is the collapse of infinity to a point. This is precisely the mechanics of perception. Our awareness collapses to the point of attention. But for those that are not awake to their transcendent nature, the object of attention dominates and as if hides or over shadows the unbounded nature of consciousness. The process of transcending allows finer and finer aspects of the object attention to be experienced and then transcended, leaving the meditator fully awake in self-referral consciousness. With daily practice over time the unbounded blissful nature of consciousness becomes a permanent experience that is never lost in the object of experience. Thus this Rik Ved verse records the mechanics of research in consciousness.
Conclusion
The self-interactions of universal consciousness give rise to the physical universe. The structure of the whole cell, including its nuclear DNA, enables the expression of universal consciousness as individual consciousness. It also supports the capacity of individual consciousness to connect with universal consciousness through the experience of transcending which is recognised in many ancient traditions around the world. In this relationship, the individual self is a reflection of the 3-in-1 structure of universal consciousness, the togetherness of knower, process of knowing and known. The individual is as if a hologram of universal consciousness. In religious terms ‘man is created in God’s image’, or from the secular view ‘as is the macrocosm so is the microcosm’. We have had a glimpse into the densely integrated or unified nature of life which enables self-referral experience and contact with the universal. The experience of self-referral consciousness should be a fit and proper study of education. It will bring fulfilment to the purpose of education to enliven the basis of intelligence.
There is also a cautionary tale here; referencing to our previous posts at Substack and at the Hatchard Report which explain how genetic manipulation can disrupt this fundamental holistic integration of life including human life. Genetic sequences support the expression of consciousness. We can’t know the entire effect of editing genetic sequences or making new sequences. These can create effects which lie outside the integrated nature of life. They can disrupt our connection with the universal .
We will be continuing this theme in later articles. Subscribe to our channel to receive updates of forthcoming articles.