CONSCIOUSNESS – WHAT IS IT MADE OF?

Energy medicine maintains that within the core of human beings exists a spiritual being. It is essential to our healing and our growth to acknowledge our spiritual nature and the spiritual quest that we’re on, having been awakened to the fact that we’re on a great journey of Spirit intermingled with an exciting Ah ha of self-discovery.

Dr. Deepak Chopra is a great healer who to my mind could help us go beyond our physical self, beyond our thoughts and emotions, then reach a realm within us that is pure consciousness or pure potential. He has dedicated his life to exploring and teaching ways to tap into this unlimited field of possibilities so that we can redirect and improve our lives materially, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

According to Deepak Chopra, famous author of books on energetics governing human consciousness, there is a way to regain the soaring joy of unlimited potential. All we have to do is understand the true nature of reality, a willingness to recognize the inter-relatedness and inseparability of all things. Then, aided by specific techniques, you will find the world opening up to you, and the good luck and opportunities that popped up every once in a while will occur more and more frequently. Let’s examine the three levels of existence that would constitute human consciousness.

First, we go through the physical level of existence—the Physical Domain. This is the world we know best. It is composed of matter and objects that we experience with our 5 senses – all that we can see, hear, taste, or smell. It includes our bodies, the wind, the earth, water, gases, animals, microbes, molecules, and these dot com. series of information. In the physical domain time seems to flow in a line so straight that we call it the arrow of time, coming from the past, to the present and the future. This means that everything in the physical domain has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and therefore impermanent or temporary. The physical world as we experience it is governed by immutable laws of cause and effect, so that everything is predictable as supported by Newtonian physics, allowing us to predict action and reaction. Scientists can calculate precisely when a solar eclipse will occur and how long it will last. But as we are prone to be 'stuck' in the first level of physical existence, we do not ask why. Our schools do not teach us to look for information about solar and lunar eclipses coming from a higher and inner level of knowingness. All we do is look outside of ourselves, we are never taught in school to look inward to seek energy as information.


At the Second level of existence, which we call the Quantum Domain, everything consists of information and energy. Everything at this level is insubstantial, meaning it cannot be touched or perceived by any of our 5 senses. Your mind, your thoughts, your ego, what you consider the “self,” are all part of the quantum domain. Your thoughts, your ego have no solid frame, and yet you know yourself to be real. Everything in the visible universe, in fact, is a manifestation of the energy and information of the quantum domain, and is a subset of the quantum world. In Albert Einstein’s famous equation E= MC^2, we find out that energy (E) equals (M) times the speed of light (C) squared. This tells us that matter (mass) and energy are the same thing only in different forms – energy equals mass.

In school, we are taught (science) that every solid object is composed of molecules, and molecules are made up of even smaller units called atoms. This seemingly solid chair we sit on, for example, is made up of atoms so small that they cannot be seen without the aid of a powerful microscope. Then these tiny atoms are made of subatomic particles which have no solidity at all. They are literally packets of waves of information and energy. At the second level of existence, the chair you are sitting on is nothing but energy and information.

Question: How can invisible waves of energy and information be experienced as a solid object? Answer: Events in the quantum domain occur at the speed of light, and at that speed our senses simply cannot process everything that contributes to our perceptual experience. We perceive objects as being different from one to the next because energy waves contain different kinds of information which are determined by the frequency or vibration of those energy waves. A radio station for instance may be tuned in to 101. 5 FM might play only classical music like that of Mozart or Beethoven, while another when changed to a slightly different frequency of radio waves by tuning in to say 101. 9FM might play only rock and roll. Energy is coded for different information depending on how it vibrates.

So the physical world of objects and matter is made up of nothing but information contained in energy vibrating at different frequencies far too fast that we don’t see the world as a huge web of energy. Our senses, because they function so slowly are able to register only chunks of this energy and activity, and these clusters of information become “the chair,” “my body,” “water,” and every other object in the visible universe. If we were capable of perceiving everything that was happening at the quantum level, we would see that we are all parts of a great “energy soup” Each one of us, and all the objects in the physical domain are just clusters of energy floating in the energy soup as Deepak Chopra would call it. I would call it a "Hall of Mirrors" where time stands still, and we find our entry point into the Great Mystery.

In this place of no time, time out of time, in the endless reflection of self, you ask, "Who am I?" The crack between two worlds beckons you to enter and the question answers, "I am."

Address a part of yourself that you may have been avoiding or have not seen clearly. See the unclear, the unacknowledged, the illusion of problems. See the shadowy parts of yourself that show you what stands between you and the light. Use the world and other people as symbolic mirrors for your discovery process.

Back to Deepak's scientific analogy. When you touch an object, it feels solid, as though there was a distinct boundary between it and you. Physicists would say that we experience that boundary as solid because everything is made up of atoms, and the solidity is the sense of atoms bumping against atoms. Our eyes are programmed to see objects as three-dimensional and solid. In the reality of the quantum domain, there is no solidity. Is there solidity when two clouds meet? No. They meld and separate. Something similar happens whenever you touch another object. Your energy fields meet as electron clouds meet, small portions meld and then you separate. Although you perceive your self to be whole you lost a bit of your energy field to the object and have gained a bit of its energy in return.

At this point let's shift the image of "energy soup" where we are all dunked in soup, into some other image that's more symbolic and relevant reflection to my mind as I am more artist than scientist, which is the "the hall of mirrors." Here, in your brilliant simplicity you can reflect back the truth to yourself. For doesn't energy speak of the truth about ourselves? The hall of mirrors' reflection is seen by some as beauty, by others as distortion just to show you the problem of Duality in our physical existence which has brought the confusion. Duality as you know concerns our sense of polarities -- good and evil, night and day, female and male, left and right, big and small, black and white, etc. So journey with me now, to the center of my hall of mirrors in the quantum level by being empty, simple, still, freed from the endless circling of the maze of mental illusions in the world of appearances.


With every encounter we exchange information and energy, and we come away changed just a little bit. In this way we can see how connected we are to everything else in the physical world. We are all constantly sharing portions of our energy fields, so all of us, at this quantum level at the level of our minds and our “selves,” are all connected.

With the clear intent of the spiritual warrior you approach the quantum mirror, whispering "Truth, truth, call out my new name." And a powerful vibration held within the void speaks. Realities and dimensions converge. The mirrors dissolve, you step through the mirror, free, into the greater reality. There you see a stepped pyramid of light, and you in your emptiness, scale the heights with clear intent.

As you ascend you are drawn to a lit pattern in the center where you gaze heavenward, in the ecstacy of evolving wholeness, flowing unity and timelessness, you are a luminous being of light, light penetrates your darkest illusions.

So it is only in our consciousness that our limited senses create a solid world out of pure energy and information. If we had “quantum eyes” we would see that everything we think of as solid in the physical world is actually flickering in and out of an infinite void at the speed of light, just like the frame-and-gap sequence of a motion picture. Thus the continuity and solidity of the world exists only in the imagination, fed by our five senses that cannot discern the waves of energy and information that make up the quantum level of existence. In reality, says Chopra, we are all flickering in and out of existence all the time. We appear, and then disappear, and then appear again. The sense of continuity is held only by our memories.

There is a Zen story in which two monks are looking at a flag that is waving in the wind. The first one says: “The flag is waving in the wind.” The second one says, “‘No, the wind is moving.” Their teacher comes over and they pose him the question. “Who’s right? I say the flag is moving. He says the wind is moving.” The teacher says. “You are both wrong. Only consciousness is moving.” As consciousness moves, it imagines the world into existence.

So Deepak Chopra says the mind is a field of energy and information. Every idea is also energy and information. You have imagined your physical body by perceiving energy as distinct physical entities. But where does the mind responsible for this imagination come from?

The Third level of existence consists of intelligence, or consciousness. This can be called the Virtual Domain, the spiritual domain, the field of potential, the universal being or nonlocal intelligence. This is where information and energy emerge from a sea of possibilities. This is the most fundamental basic level of nature which is not material, it is not even energy and information soup, it is not a hall of mirrors, it is pure potential. We call it nonlocal according to Deepak Chopra for it cannot be confined by a location – it is not “in” you or “out there.” It simply is.

Without consciousness acting as an observer and interpreter, everything would exist only as pure potential. That pure potential, according to our guru Deepak is the virtual domain, the third level of existence which is spiritual. It is nonlocal meaning it is spaceless and timeless and can’t be depleted; it is unending and all-encompassing. Tapping into that potential is what allows us to see miracles manifesting coming from the Source, the Spirit, God-Goddess.

For example, look up at the sky on any summer’s day, and wait for a flock of birds. Like a school of fish, they all seem to be moving in formation when they change direction. They all execute the same motions synchronistically, that means, matter, mind and spirit are unified. A single flock of birds can include hundreds of individuals, yet each bird moves in harmony with every other bird without an obvious leader. You never see birds bumping into each other in flight. They climb and swoop so that they look like a single organism as if some unspoken command was issued that they all obeyed at once. In this sacred chamber of our physical world where two pyramids of light and distortion meet (duality) where the more discerning people among us ask how is that happening? Here, both believers and nonbelievers are suddenly sacramentally purified. By whom? By the wordless information of the birds in flight. Energy is information, remember? There’s not enough time for any exchange of information, so any correlation of movement among the birds must be happening nonlocally. It appears that the birds are not using their "minds" unlike people, they are instinctive in their nonlocal intelligence, they are always connected to the Creator, unlike people, who by using their minds that nourish their egos to greater or lesser degrees, are separated from the Source, the Spirit that moves all things.

The complexity and precision of the birds’ behavior stumps physical science every time. Engineers in car manufacturing have long desired to see if they could harness the sensory mechanism used by the birds to see if they can discover principles that might translate into guidelines for road or car design, then there might never be another car accident or any traffic jam. This project will never succeed however, because there is no analogy in terms of reason and logic of the Left-brained beings that we are that can be brought to the mechanical world. The instant communication we commonly see in flocks of birds and schools of fish comes from the spiritual level, the organizing nonlocal intelligence in the virtual domain where we connect when we choose to being Right-brained exists. In this moment of illumination, you know yourself as once more in the crystal pyramid of light where the other pyramid of distortion of non-belief has been dissolved having been freed from the darkest illusions of the physical world. This would be our dream in the physical level of existence that we can arrive at a synchronicity in Nature like a flock of birds. That we can become beings who are totally in tune with our environment in consciousness and with each other, dancing to the rhythm and light of the cosmos.