Quick Answer
Consciousness is the subjective experience of being aware. Science approaches it through theories like Integrated Information Theory and Orch-OR. Spiritual traditions from Vedanta to Buddhism describe it as the ground of all being. You can expand your awareness through meditation, breathwork, and intentional sleep practices.
Key Takeaways
- The hard problem remains unsolved: David Chalmers identified that explaining why brain activity produces subjective experience is fundamentally different from explaining how the brain processes information, and no mainstream scientific theory has fully bridged that gap.
- Multiple legitimate scientific theories compete: Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and Orch-OR each make testable predictions, and ongoing experiments (the Templeton World Charity Foundation's adversarial collaboration) are designed to distinguish between them.
- Consciousness has a spectrum of states: Waking, dreaming, deep sleep, hypnagogic, flow, and deep meditative states each show distinct neural signatures and offer different windows into the nature of mind.
- Spiritual traditions anticipated modern findings: Vedantic descriptions of pure awareness, Buddhist mind-moment analysis, and Western mysticism all point to aspects of consciousness that neuroscience is only beginning to address with precision.
- Non-local consciousness research is statistically significant: Decades of controlled experiments at Princeton's PEAR lab and by Dean Radin at the Institute of Noetic Sciences have produced effect sizes that, while small, consistently exceed chance under rigorous conditions.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
In 1995, philosopher David Chalmers drew a line that separated the science of mind from everything that had come before. He called it the hard problem of consciousness, and the name stuck because the problem itself refuses to soften with time.
Chalmers distinguished between what he called the "easy problems" and the genuinely hard one. The easy problems, which are not actually easy in any practical sense, include explaining how the brain integrates information, directs attention, controls behaviour, and reports its own states. These are problems about function. Given enough time and enough sophisticated brain imaging, most researchers believe they will eventually be solved through conventional neuroscience.
The hard problem is different in kind. It asks: why does any of this processing feel like anything at all? Why, when light of a particular wavelength hits your retina and triggers a cascade of neural firing, do you experience the redness of red rather than simply processing a code? Why is there something it is like to be you, rather than nothing?
Philosopher Thomas Nagel posed a related question in his 1974 paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" His argument was simple and devastating: even if we knew everything about a bat's sonar system, we still would not know what echolocation feels like from the inside. The first-person perspective, what philosophers call qualia, seems to slip through any purely third-person account.
Why This Matters Beyond Philosophy
The hard problem is not just a thought experiment for seminar rooms. It shapes how we think about artificial intelligence, animal welfare, end-of-life care, and the nature of mental illness. If we cannot say what generates consciousness, we cannot say with confidence whether a given system has it or lacks it.
It also sits at the intersection of science and spirituality in a way that few other questions do. Every spiritual tradition that has grappled with the nature of mind has, in its own vocabulary, encountered the hard problem. The fact that modern philosophy has now named it precisely gives us a useful meeting point between ancient inquiry and contemporary research.
Why the Question Will Not Go Away
Neuroscience can map which brain regions activate during a conscious experience. It can trace the flow of information across cortical networks. What it cannot yet do is explain why that flow of information is accompanied by awareness at all. Chalmers called this the "explanatory gap," and closing it may require either new physics or a fundamental revision of what we mean by matter itself.
Leading Scientific Theories
Three theories currently dominate serious scientific discussion about consciousness. They make different predictions, start from different assumptions, and appeal to different research communities. Understanding them does not require specialised training, only a willingness to think carefully about what experience actually is.
Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, developed Integrated Information Theory over the course of the early 2000s. His central claim is that consciousness is identical with integrated information, which he quantifies using a measure called phi (pronounced "fee").
The core intuition is that a system is conscious to the degree that it integrates information in a way that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. A brain has very high phi because its regions are richly interconnected and each part influences every other part in a causal web. A hard drive stores enormous amounts of information but has near-zero phi because its bits operate independently.
IIT makes the bold claim that phi is consciousness. Not a correlate of consciousness, not a necessary condition, but the thing itself. This leads to some surprising implications: simple systems with the right architecture might be minimally conscious, while highly complex systems with modular, feedforward organisation (like current deep-learning networks) might have very low phi regardless of their apparent sophistication.
Critics note that IIT is difficult to measure in practice and that the theory's axioms, while intuitively appealing, are not derived from empirical observation but from philosophical reflection on the nature of experience itself.
Global Workspace Theory (GWT)
Cognitive psychologist Bernard Baars proposed Global Workspace Theory in 1988, and it has since been developed into a neuroscientific framework primarily by Stanislas Dehaene and Jean-Pierre Changeux. Where IIT is a theory of what consciousness is, GWT is more a theory of what consciousness does.
The proposal is that the brain contains a "global workspace," a kind of central broadcasting system. Most brain processing happens in specialised, local modules that operate below the threshold of awareness. When information becomes globally available through this workspace and is broadcast widely across the cortex, that is when it enters consciousness.
Neuroscientific evidence supports several GWT predictions. Conscious perception is associated with a late cortical response (around 300-500ms after a stimulus) that spreads across widespread brain networks, while unconscious processing remains local. The prefrontal cortex and its connections to posterior sensory areas appear to be the anatomical seat of this global broadcasting.
Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR)
The most radical mainstream theory is Orchestrated Objective Reduction, proposed by physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff. Their argument begins with Penrose's claim, laid out in "The Emperor's New Mind" (1989) and "Shadows of the Mind" (1994), that human mathematical intuition cannot be fully captured by any algorithmic process, implying that the brain does something beyond computation.
Penrose argued this non-computational element must involve quantum gravity, specifically a process by which quantum superpositions resolve (collapse) according to a physical principle not yet fully understood. Hameroff proposed that microtubules, protein structures inside neurons, could serve as the site of these quantum computations. The "orchestration" in the theory's name refers to the way biological processes inside neurons would regulate these quantum events.
Orch-OR has faced significant scepticism, primarily around whether quantum coherence could be maintained in the warm, wet environment of the brain long enough to matter. However, discoveries of quantum coherence in biological processes (photosynthesis, bird navigation) have made this objection less decisive than it once seemed. Research published in 2022 found quantum vibrations in microtubules consistent with the theory's predictions.
The Adversarial Collaboration
In 2019, the Templeton World Charity Foundation funded a landmark adversarial collaboration between teams supporting IIT and GWT, designed to produce experiments capable of distinguishing between the two theories. Initial results, published in 2023, found stronger evidence for GWT in some experimental conditions, though neither theory was definitively ruled out. This kind of rigorous testing is exactly what consciousness science needs to mature.
The Spectrum of Conscious States
Whatever consciousness is, it is not a single, uniform thing. It changes with the time of day, with sleep and waking, with practice and experience. Mapping these states gives both science and spiritual practice a common vocabulary.
Waking Consciousness
Ordinary waking consciousness is characterised by beta-wave brain activity (13-30 Hz) in the EEG, active default mode network (DMN) operation for self-referential thinking, and a sense of being a subject located in space and time. This is the mode most people identify as "me." It is, however, only one among several natural modes.
REM Dreaming and Non-REM Sleep
During REM sleep, the brain is almost as active as during waking, but the prefrontal cortex shows reduced activity, which is why dreams feel real without triggering ordinary critical thinking. During deep, slow-wave (delta) sleep, consciousness does not simply turn off. Tibetan Dream Yoga practitioners and advanced meditators report maintaining a bare awareness even in delta-wave sleep, suggesting the substrate of consciousness may be present even when ordinary content is absent.
Hypnagogic States
The transition between waking and sleep produces the hypnagogic state, characterised by vivid imagery, auditory hallucinations, and a loosening of ordinary cognitive control. Many artists and inventors, including Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali, reportedly used this state deliberately by allowing themselves to nearly fall asleep while holding an object that would drop and wake them, capturing the imagery and ideas that arose at the threshold.
Flow States
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described flow as a state of complete absorption in a challenging task, accompanied by a sense of effortless action, loss of self-consciousness, and altered time perception. Neuroimaging shows flow is associated with reduced DMN activity and increased connectivity between task-relevant networks, a pattern somewhat similar to certain meditation states.
Meditation States
Meditation research now distinguishes at least three qualitatively different practice modes: focused attention (FA), where awareness is directed to a single object; open monitoring (OM), where awareness remains broadly receptive without selecting any particular object; and non-dual awareness, a state reported by advanced practitioners in which the distinction between observer and observed temporarily dissolves.
Each mode produces distinct neural signatures. FA practice tends to strengthen activity in areas associated with sustained attention. OM practice increases activity in networks associated with receptive, panoramic awareness. Non-dual states, studied by researchers including Zoran Josipovic, show a unique reduction in DMN activity alongside sustained awareness, quite different from the simple relaxation or drowsiness that might produce similar DMN suppression.
Altered States and Their Neuroscience
Beyond ordinary sleep-wake variation, consciousness can be dramatically shifted by substances, breathing practices, and intensive meditation. Understanding the neuroscience of these shifts does not reduce their significance. It gives us better tools for working with them.
Psychedelic Research
The renaissance in psychedelic research, centred at institutions including Johns Hopkins, Imperial College London, and NYU, has produced some of the most striking neuroimaging data on altered consciousness in decades. Studies with psilocybin, the active compound in "magic mushrooms," show that moderate to high doses produce dramatic disruption of the default mode network, the brain's self-referential hub.
This disruption correlates with the subjective sense of ego dissolution, the temporary loosening of the felt boundary between self and world. In clinical studies, this experience, when it occurs in a supportive context, is associated with lasting reductions in depression, addiction, and existential anxiety in individuals facing terminal illness. The "mystical experience" questionnaire, a validated research instrument, captures the features of these states: unity, noetic quality (a sense of learning something real), sacredness, and transcendence of time and space.
It is worth noting that these effects are not produced by the substance alone. Set (the person's mental state and intentions) and setting (the physical and relational environment) are consistently found to be as important as the pharmacological action itself. This points toward consciousness as an active participant in the experience, not simply a passive screen on which chemistry projects images.
Breathwork
Holotropic breathwork, developed by Stanislav Grof after the scheduling of LSD in the early 1970s, uses accelerated, connected breathing combined with evocative music to produce non-ordinary states. Practitioners report experiences qualitatively similar to psychedelic states, including biographical, perinatal, and what Grof called "transpersonal" experiences extending beyond the individual's own life history.
The physiology involves hyperventilation-induced changes in blood carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, shifts in cerebral blood flow, and activation of the limbic system. More recently, coherence breathing (5-6 breaths per minute) has been shown to synchronise heart rate variability with respiratory rhythms, producing a calm, alert state associated with increased parasympathetic tone and, in some studies, increased alpha-wave activity in the EEG.
A Simple Breathwork Practice for Heightened Awareness
Sit comfortably with your spine long. Breathe in through the nose for 4 counts. Breathe out through the nose or mouth for 6 counts. Continue for 10 minutes without pausing between the in-breath and out-breath. The extended exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system. With consistent daily practice, many people notice increased clarity and a subtle expansion of perceptual awareness in everyday life.
Explore binaural beats audio as an accompaniment to breathwork sessions for deeper entrainment effects.
What Spiritual Traditions Teach
Science and spirituality approach consciousness from opposite directions. Science asks: what physical processes produce awareness? Spirituality asks: what is the nature of awareness itself, prior to its contents? These are not contradictory questions. They are complementary lines of inquiry that can inform each other when practitioners on both sides remain genuinely curious.
Hindu Vedanta
Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual school developed by the 8th-century philosopher Adi Shankara based on the Upanishads, holds that Brahman, pure, undifferentiated consciousness, is the only ultimate reality. The apparent multiplicity of individual minds, objects, and experiences arises through maya, a principle of differentiation that is neither wholly real nor wholly unreal.
The individual self (Atman) is, at its deepest level, identical with Brahman. The practitioner's task is not to create this identity, which already exists, but to recognise it through direct investigation of the nature of awareness. The Mandukya Upanishad describes four states: waking (jagrat), dreaming (svapna), deep sleep (sushupti), and a fourth (turiya), the witnessing awareness that underlies and pervades the other three. This fourth state, in Vedantic understanding, is not itself a state but the stateless ground in which all states appear.
Buddhist Teachings on Mind
The Buddhist approach to consciousness is both analytical and experiential. The Abhidharma literature catalogues 89 types of citta (mind-moments), each with its own quality of consciousness and associated mental factors. This is not metaphysical speculation but a system derived from careful meditative observation, refined over centuries.
The Buddha's teaching of anatta (non-self) does not deny the existence of experience. It denies that there is a fixed, permanent self who is the owner of experience. What exists is a stream of dependent arising, each moment of consciousness arising in dependence on the previous moment and on contact with sense objects. Vipassana meditation trains the practitioner to see this arising and passing directly, rather than constructing a narrative self on top of it.
Tibetan Buddhism adds the concept of rigpa, the natural state of mind, described as luminous, aware, and empty, the quality of awareness present before conceptual elaboration. This maps onto what Dzogchen and Mahamudra teachers describe as the ground of being, and what some contemporary neuroscientists studying non-dual awareness are now beginning to find correlates for in the laboratory.
Western Mysticism
The Western mystical tradition, running through Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism, and later the Hermetic current, consistently describes a peak experience of unity with a divine or universal consciousness. Plotinus described the henosis, the soul's absorption into the One. Meister Eckhart wrote of the Godhead as a ground beyond both God and soul. Jakob Boehme described the Ungrund, the groundless ground from which all being springs.
Rudolf Steiner, whose thinking informs much of Thalira's work, synthesised Western esotericism with a rigorous epistemological method he called spiritual science. For Steiner, consciousness was not a product of the physical brain but the other way around: the physical world is a kind of condensed or "frozen" spirit. He described the evolution of human consciousness through distinct historical phases, with modern intellectual thinking representing one stage of a longer arc toward a new form of participatory, imaginative knowing.
Where Science and Tradition Converge
The convergence is not superficial. When neuroscientist Judson Brewer studies the neural correlates of selflessness in experienced meditators, he is measuring something that Buddhist teachers have cultivated for 2,500 years. When Tononi's IIT proposes that consciousness is intrinsic to the nature of integrated information, it echoes the Vedantic claim that awareness is not produced by matter but is its very foundation. When Penrose argues that consciousness involves physics beyond computation, he approaches, from a completely different direction, what mystics have always said: that awareness cannot be reduced to mechanism. The language differs. The territory described may be the same.
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Consciousness and Matter
One of the deepest questions in philosophy is the relationship between mind and matter. The standard scientific assumption, called physicalism or materialism, holds that matter is primary and consciousness emerges from sufficiently complex physical arrangements. This view has enormous practical success. It underlies neuroscience, medicine, and most of our working assumptions about the world.
But physicalism faces genuine philosophical difficulties. The hard problem is one. Another is what philosophers call the combination problem: if proto-conscious properties exist in elementary particles (as panpsychism suggests), how do they combine to produce the unified, integrated experience of being a person?
Idealism and Neutral Monism
Idealist positions, held in various forms by Vedanta, Bishop Berkeley, and contemporary philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, invert the standard picture. They propose that consciousness is primary and matter is what consciousness looks like "from the outside," or rather that what we call matter is a pattern within consciousness rather than the substrate of it.
Neutral monism, proposed in different forms by Bertrand Russell and William James, suggests that both mind and matter are aspects of a single, more fundamental stuff that is neither mental nor physical in the ordinary sense. Some physicists exploring the interpretation of quantum mechanics find this position attractive, particularly given the role of observation in quantum state collapse.
Quantum Consciousness Debates
The measurement problem in quantum mechanics states that a quantum system exists in superposition (multiple possible states simultaneously) until it is observed, at which point it "collapses" into a definite state. Some theorists, including John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner in the mid-20th century, argued that the observer's consciousness was what caused this collapse. This interpretation is now a minority view among physicists, though it has never been fully eliminated.
More broadly, quantum mechanics suggests that the physical world at its foundations is not made of solid, localised objects but of probability waves, correlations, and entanglements that seem to defy ordinary spatial logic. Whether this has implications for consciousness is debated, but it does at minimum dissolve the simple billiard-ball materialism that once seemed to make physicalism obviously correct.
Non-Local Consciousness Research
If consciousness is not simply a byproduct of local brain activity but has properties that extend beyond the individual skull, this would be one of the most significant findings in the history of science. The research in this area is contested, but it is not negligible.
The PEAR Lab
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, founded by aerospace engineer Robert Jahn in 1979, operated for nearly three decades studying whether human intention could influence the output of random event generators (REGs), electronic devices producing random binary sequences. Over thousands of experimental sessions involving many operators, PEAR documented a small but statistically consistent effect of intention on REG output.
The effect sizes were tiny, around 1 part in 10,000 above chance. But across a massive database of trials, the cumulative statistics were highly significant. Critics raised methodological concerns; defenders pointed out that the protocols were designed specifically to address standard objections. The lab closed in 2007, but the Global Consciousness Project, a related initiative, continues running a worldwide network of REGs and analysing their data during periods of major collective human attention.
Dean Radin and the Institute of Noetic Sciences
Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), has conducted and catalogued experiments on phenomena including presentiment (the body's apparent physiological response to a stimulus slightly before it occurs), remote viewing (perceiving information about distant locations), and the influence of directed intention on plant growth, water crystallisation, and random processes.
His meta-analyses, published in peer-reviewed journals including Psychological Bulletin and Explore, find consistent, statistically significant effects across many independent replication attempts. In "Entangled Minds" (2006) and "Real Magic" (2018), Radin argues that the accumulated evidence points toward a model in which consciousness is not strictly local to the brain but participates in a broader field of information.
The scientific mainstream remains sceptical, for good reasons: the effects are small, replication outside dedicated psi-research labs is uneven, and no accepted physical mechanism explains how they could occur. But "no known mechanism" is not the same as "impossible," and dismissal without engagement does not serve the quality of science.
Supporting Consciousness Research
IONS, the Rhine Research Center, and similar organisations fund scientific investigation of consciousness at its edges. Thalira's Consciousness Research Support collection contributes to ongoing inquiry. Wearing these designs is one way of signalling that these questions matter to you, and of supporting the researchers who take them seriously.
Practices to Expand Conscious Awareness
Whatever your theoretical orientation, the direct investigation of consciousness requires practice. Reading about states is useful for orientation. Experiencing them is something different entirely. The following practices are drawn from both research-validated approaches and long-standing contemplative traditions.
Consistent Meditation Practice
The most well-studied method is meditation. Research by Sara Lazar at Harvard showed that long-term meditators had greater cortical thickness in the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula, areas associated with attention, interoception, and self-awareness. Richard Davidson's work at the University of Wisconsin found that experienced practitioners showed dramatic increases in gamma-wave synchrony during states of open awareness.
For beginners, a simple starting point is 10-20 minutes of daily breath-focused attention. Notice the breath. When the mind wanders, notice that it has wandered and return. This sounds simple. Done consistently, it trains the very metacognitive faculty, the capacity to observe one's own mental processes, that all deeper contemplative work depends on.
Working with Sleep States
The nightly transition through hypnagogic, REM, and deep-sleep states is an underused resource for consciousness exploration. Setting a clear intention before sleep (sometimes called incubation) increases the frequency of lucid dreams, a state in which the dreamer knows they are dreaming. Tibetan Dream Yoga offers a complete system for maintaining awareness through all sleep states, ultimately aiming to recognise the luminous nature of mind that persists even in dreamless sleep.
Practically: keep a dream journal. Write whatever you remember immediately upon waking, before moving or checking any screen. Over weeks, this alone significantly increases dream recall and the richness of your experience in these states.
Binaural Beats and Brainwave Entrainment
Binaural beats work by presenting two slightly different frequencies to each ear. The brain generates a third frequency equal to the difference between them, a process called the frequency-following response. Theta-frequency binaural beats (4-8 Hz difference) promote hypnagogic-like states useful for creative insight and deep relaxation. Alpha beats (8-12 Hz) support relaxed alertness. Gamma beats (40+ Hz) have been associated with states of heightened clarity in some studies.
Thalira's binaural beats audio provides carefully designed soundscapes for different meditative and exploratory states. Used with headphones in a quiet setting, they offer a practical entrainment tool for deepening meditation or supporting breathwork sessions.
Ormus and Mineral Support
Within the framework of consciousness research at Thalira, ORMUS minerals occupy an interesting position. Proponents suggest that monatomic forms of certain elements may support coherent energetic states in the body. While rigorous clinical trials remain limited, many practitioners report enhanced clarity and presence when working with quality ORMUS preparations alongside established contemplative practices.
Thalira's Ormus Monoatomic Gold is one of our flagship offerings for practitioners interested in exploring this territory. As with any supplement, personal experimentation combined with attentive self-observation is the appropriate approach.
Meditation Tools and Environmental Support
The environment in which you practice shapes the quality of your attention. Dedicated meditation tools, from singing bowls and crystals to carefully selected objects that anchor intention, help create a consistent context that the nervous system learns to associate with the state you are cultivating.
Explore our meditation tools collection for items chosen to support the full spectrum of practice from breath-focused sitting to more expansive awareness exploration.
A Daily Awareness Expansion Routine
Morning: 10 minutes of breath-focused sitting, following the natural breath without controlling it. Afternoon: 5 minutes of open awareness, sitting outdoors if possible, allowing sensation, sound, and thought to arise and pass without interference. Evening: 5 minutes of body scan before sleep, followed by a written record of any insights or imagery from the day. Over 30 days, this three-part practice builds a continuous thread of self-observation across the full day rather than restricting practice to a single session.
Your Inquiry Is Legitimate
Consciousness is the one thing you have direct and certain access to. Everything else, the external world, other minds, the past and future, you know only through inference and memory. Your own awareness is the single undeniable datum. That makes the investigation of consciousness not a niche academic interest but the most intimate inquiry available to a human being.
The hard problem may never be fully solved by science alone. The mystical traditions may never fully satisfy the philosophical demand for rigorous explanation. But the combination of careful empirical research, honest contemplative practice, and genuine philosophical reflection gets closer than any single approach on its own. You are part of that inquiry simply by taking it seriously.
If you want to go deeper, explore Thalira's Consciousness Research Support collection or begin working with our Ormus Monoatomic Gold and binaural beats audio to support your practice.
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by McGilchrist, Iain
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What is the hard problem of consciousness?
The hard problem, named by philosopher David Chalmers in 1995, asks why and how physical brain processes give rise to subjective experience. While science can explain brain functions (the "easy problems"), explaining why there is "something it is like" to see red or feel pain remains unsolved. Chalmers distinguished this from functional questions about how the brain integrates and reports information, arguing the subjective, first-person quality of experience requires a different kind of explanation entirely.
What are the main scientific theories of consciousness?
The leading theories include Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which links consciousness to information integration (phi); Global Workspace Theory (GWT), which proposes a central broadcasting system in the brain that makes information globally available; and Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR), developed by Penrose and Hameroff, which ties consciousness to quantum processes in neuronal microtubules. Each makes different predictions, and an ongoing adversarial collaboration funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation is running experiments designed to test them against each other.
What are the main states of consciousness?
The primary states are waking consciousness, REM dreaming sleep, and dreamless deep sleep (delta-wave sleep). Beyond these, researchers identify hypnagogic states (the threshold between waking and sleep), flow states of total absorption in skilled activity, meditation states (ranging from focused attention to open monitoring and non-dual awareness), and altered states induced by breathwork or other practices. Each state shows distinct neurological signatures and offers different access to the nature of mind.
What does neuroscience say about meditation and consciousness?
Neuroimaging studies show that meditation produces measurable changes in brain structure and activity, including increased grey matter density in the prefrontal cortex and insula, reduced default mode network activity (the "mind-wandering" network associated with self-referential thought), and increased gamma-wave synchrony associated with focused awareness and insight states. Long-term practitioners show structural differences from non-meditators, and even short-term training programmes (8 weeks of MBSR) produce detectable changes in brain function and self-reported wellbeing.
How do psychedelics alter consciousness?
Psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD work primarily by activating serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, disrupting the default mode network and reducing ordinary ego-boundary maintenance. This leads to heightened sensory integration, dissolution of self-referential thinking, and in clinical studies, lasting reductions in depression and existential distress. The quality of the experience depends heavily on set and setting, not just pharmacology, suggesting consciousness actively shapes what is experienced rather than simply receiving chemical inputs passively.
What is non-local consciousness research?
Non-local consciousness research investigates phenomena suggesting awareness extends beyond the individual brain. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab ran decades of experiments testing mind-matter interactions, finding small but statistically consistent effects of intention on random event generators. Researcher Dean Radin at the Institute of Noetic Sciences has documented statistically significant effects in studies of presentiment, remote viewing, and intention on physical systems. The effects are small and mechanistically unexplained, but the accumulated data across many independent studies exceeds what chance alone would predict.
What do Hindu Vedanta teachings say about consciousness?
Advaita Vedanta holds that pure consciousness (Brahman) is the sole ultimate reality. Individual awareness (Atman) is not separate from this universal ground but appears separate due to maya (illusion of duality). The Mandukya Upanishad describes four states: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and turiya, the witnessing awareness underlying all three. The goal of Vedantic practice is direct realisation of non-duality, recognising that the witness-awareness one already is has never been bound, limited, or separate from the whole.
What does Buddhism teach about consciousness?
Buddhist teachings describe consciousness as a stream of momentary arisings dependent on causes and conditions, with no fixed self at the centre. The Abhidharma tradition catalogues 89 types of citta (mind-moments). Practices such as vipassana (insight meditation) aim to observe the arising and passing of mental events directly, eventually revealing awareness itself as the nature of mind. Tibetan Buddhism's Dzogchen and Mahamudra traditions speak of rigpa, the natural state of luminous, open awareness that is present before conceptual elaboration begins.
What is the relationship between consciousness and matter?
This is one of philosophy's oldest debates. Materialist views hold that consciousness arises from matter. Idealist views (held by Vedanta, Berkeley, and contemporary philosopher Bernardo Kastrup) hold that matter arises within consciousness. Panpsychism proposes that proto-conscious properties exist throughout nature. Neutral monism suggests both mind and matter arise from a single, more fundamental substrate. Quantum mechanics has complicated the simple materialist picture by showing that at the physical foundation, the world is not made of solid, localised objects but of probability fields and correlations that seem to involve observation in a fundamental way.
How can I practically expand my conscious awareness?
Evidence-based practices include consistent meditation (particularly mindfulness and open awareness styles), breathwork techniques such as coherence breathing (5-6 breaths per minute) or holotropic breathing, spending time in nature to reduce default-mode hyperactivity, sleep hygiene to honour the full spectrum of sleep states, dream journalling to increase metacognitive awareness, and working with supportive tools like binaural beats audio technology. The most important factor is consistency over time rather than the intensity of any single session.
Sources & References
- Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200-219.
- Tononi, G., Boly, M., Massimini, M., & Koch, C. (2016). Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrate. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17(7), 450-461.
- Penrose, R., & Hameroff, S. (2014). Consciousness in the Universe: A Review of the 'Orch OR' Theory. Physics of Life Reviews, 11(1), 39-78.
- Carhart-Harris, R. L., Leech, R., Hellyer, P. J., Shanahan, M., Feilding, A., Tagliazucchi, E., Nutt, D. J., & Bharat, B. (2014). The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 20.
- Lazar, S. W., Kerr, C. E., Wasserman, R. H., Gray, J. R., Greve, D. N., Treadway, M. T., McGarvey, M., Quinn, B. T., Dusek, J. A., Benson, H., Rauch, S. L., Moore, C. I., & Fischl, B. (2005). Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. NeuroReport, 16(17), 1893-1897.
- Radin, D. (2006). Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Paraview Pocket Books.
- Josipovic, Z. (2014). Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1307(1), 9-18.