How Quantum Explains Human Consciousness
Published on : Monday 06-09-2021
Our consciousness is a consequence of the complex neural activities in our brain, but that does not explain many other fundamental things, says Utpal Chakraborty.
Although I have been hearing these spiritual jargon like ‘The Consciousness’, ‘The Self’ (Atman – in Sanskrit language), from my grandparents since my childhood, but due to my ignorance or whatever, I never paid any attention nor did I make any serious attempt to even understand the deeper meaning of those terminologies. Honestly, I kept aside those spiritual items for my post-retirement life.
Incidentally, a few years back while digging into some deeper concepts of quantum physics, somehow I was confronted by the so-called ‘The Self’ (The Consciousness or Atman) again somewhere in a book. But this time, I could not ignore it. The more I dug deeper into understanding the concepts from different books, I found it so profound and rational that it compelled and dragged me into a hostile yet revolutionary thought process that I had never experienced in the past. To my astonishment, these concepts started challenging each and every concept of mine about the ‘Material World’ and ‘Classical Physics’ exactly the way when I had started understanding the concepts of quantum physics many years back.
I will try to share my understanding about ‘The Self’ or ‘Pure Consciousness’ in this article. I would also like to highlight here that this is not a spiritual or religious article, nor has any attempt been made to uphold any particular religion or mysticism.
Let’s take a few steps back to understand the concepts better.
The mystery of our existence and the fundamental nature of the universe compelled human beings from time to time to explore the unknown and the truth in many different ways since time immemorial.
Out of those many approaches; the evidence-based and experiment oriented approach flourished as ‘Science’ as we know it today, keeping its entire focus on exploring the material world. This later branched into technology that centred on the application of science to solve real world problems in many different areas aimed for the betterment of humanity.
On the other hand, another approach continued to explore the other dimensions that are ‘Not Perceivable by our Six Senses’, or the dimensions beyond the material world. Surprisingly the practitioners of this approach somehow convinced that there exist other dimensions that are beyond the scope of what we perceive through our sense organs. They also realised the fact that it needs a different method altogether to explore such dimensions, which cannot be accessed through material means or tools. I would say, this realisation by itself was a great invention at that time which took a couple thousand years to realise and gain acceptance by a group of classical physicists today.
Astonishingly, the outcome of such explorations of the unknown dimensions resulted in some amazing findings that can be directly correlated with the modern Quantum Physics and quantum behaviour of subatomic particles.
I will try to highlight only a few of those in this article.
It was highlighted that the core of the material world is actually non-matter, and it manifests into material form, to be precise, it’s just a manifestation or we can even say an illusion. Quantum physics today says exactly the same thing which we have been completely missing before in classical physics.
To put it straight, we were so engrossed with the material world and its exploration that we missed out a very fundamental deeper dimension which is non-material in nature. This non-material dimension that manifests itself into the material frame of our body is explained as our ‘Consciousness’ or ‘Atman’, the true essence of who we are beyond our physical or social identity. It also holds good for non-living beings, and that is what exactly Quantum physics indicates – every matter has a non-matter nature at its core; and the phenomena it apparently exhibits is just the epiphenomena (a secondary or just a by-product).
Now we can correlate this with what is written and available in some of the ancient texts that this non-matter dimension that exists within human or any living being is ‘Not Perishable or Destroyable’; because those apply only to material things like our biological body. The non-matter aspect within us remains unaffected even after our biological death. So, what that means is, there exists something even after our death. Isn’t it amazing? In fact, this is the core of all religions that exist on this planet. The core of any religion, spirituality or mysticism is based on the belief that ‘There is something that is beyond our death’.
Our ‘Pure Consciousness’, which is non-matter in nature, remains and manifests again into some material frame, probably acquiring a new life. This theory or hypothesis explains consciousness much more convincingly than what biological or medical science explains. As per medical science our consciousness is a consequence of the complex neural activities in our brain, but that doesn’t explain many other fundamental things like quantum challenging traditional scientific view of the universe and the material world today.
We will explore a few deeper dimensions like how pure consciousness or the self is ‘All-Pervading’ (meaning everywhere) and what is a quantum explanation of the same in the next article.
(Views expressed above are personal opinions of the author.)
Utpal Chakraborty is Head of Artificial Intelligence at YES Bank. He is an eminent Data Scientist, AI & Quantum Researcher and Strategist, having 21 years of industry experience, including working as Principal Architect in L&T Infotech, IBM, Capgemini and other MNCs in his past assignments. Also a well-known writer, and speaker on AI, IoT, Agile & Lean speaking at conferences around the world.
His recent research on machine learning titled “Layered Approximation for Deep Neural Networks” has been appreciated in different premier conferences, institutions, and universities.
