Today’s science cannot find an answer to how consciousness is created from matter. Perhaps this is because we seek the answer to the wrong question. Today the popularity of the theory that postulates that matter is the result of consciousness (and not vice versa!) gains popularity. Everything that we believe that “exist” are aspects of our senses. In this sense the tree that I "see" is something that my brain has created and realized after interpreting the signals of my sensory organs.
The “real” world is the result and therefore not the cause. On the other hand, Consciousness seems to be far more fundamental in its essence then matter. You may claim that this post that you see here does not exist (e.g. in the simplest case of someone who is blind and cannot see), but you can never doubts the ability of all people to talk about the "I", as conscious beings. In other words Consciousness has primacy over the matter and not vice versa.
Modern science (particularly quantum physics) has showed the role of the observer in the formulation of “reality”. The observer is no longer a mindless being with no will but the one who actually decides what will be seen. Consciousness has been transformed from a “result of matter” (something which scientism-lovers believed dogmatically without any proof due to their allegiance to the doctrine of materialism) to a “source of reality”. Even the structural components of matter, atoms, are now considered to be probability waves the existence of which depends on interaction with beings with consciousness. In this sense the atoms are more something like “ideas” rather than “balls bouncing from here to there” [Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death, Chris Carter].
The mystical wave function produces a set of possibilities that all exist simultaneously (
quantum supersposition). Only when a conscious observer observes, does the function collapse to a single "reality". (e.g. in the double slit experiment, no interaction with the gravity field, with electromagnetic fields or with other particles of the air or of the detectors can results in the collapse - only when a human observer observs do we have that collapse)
Consider the following experiment (
Schmidt, 1976). A binary generator produced blocks of 201 random decisions. These were recorded simultaneously on two cassette tapes, with the random numbers produced at the generator been recorded as signals in the right or left stereo channels respectively. From that random process we expect the same number of right and left signals in the tapes. When the recording were completed, one of the identical tapes was placed into a safe, while the other tape was used in an experiment. During this experiment, a subject listened through headphones to the tape, perceiving the signals as clicks in the right or left ear. The subject's goal was an increased rate of clicks in the right ear, corresponding to an excess of generated heads. After the subject had worked on many tapes, the tapes were evaluated to see whether there was, indeed, a bias towards right signals as aimed for by the subject. The result showed that 54.6% of the tape blocks were successful. This is statistically significant with odds against chance of 100:1. And what is really important: The second tape in the safe was also affected! (see the "PK Effects with Pre-Recorded Random Events" section at
http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/strange.html)
Something similar is observed in the Quantum Zeno effect (Κβαντικό Φαινόμενο Ζήνωνα) in which an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay! [
source] And let us not forget Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, where our conscious choice to observe something, actually affects the formulation of the reality of that something, back to its past! [
source]
We affect reality! And despite to what many believe, this is an actually proven scientific fact!
Modern theories of morphogenetic fields [see. Sheldrake] indicate that humans can affect via their will fields running through space and as a result affect matter with the mind (thus making the nerve synapses open and close when we want), affect others from a distance (animals were observed to learn a “trick” when other similar animals learnt the same trick thousands of miles away), have Near-Death Experiences [Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death, Chris Carter], maintain memory in a brain which does not appear to have any special place to store its memories [see. Francis Crick, "Memory - From Mind to Molecules" by Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel], get different organs from cells which all share the same DNA everywhere, manage to still be the “same person”' even after complete accidents resulting in complete amnesia, et cetera.
Much research has been conducted on animals from which scientists have removed up to the 60% of their brain but they still continue to remember things the have learned (the animales, not the scientists)
[Boycott, "Learning in the Octopus", p.44] [source]. When we remove a section of the brain which "seems" to be the one which holds the memories, another part of the brain takes on that role. Scientists removed surgically sections of the brain of chickens where they "saw" (via radioactive substances put into the brain) that some new tricks that those chicken had learnt were stored, but the chickens still remembered how to do the tricks [Sheldrake, The presence of the past, p.165].
If memory is stored "in" the brain, then the cells and/or at least their structure must remain exactly the same for years in the sections where the memory is stored. But this does not happen - all the cells of the brain change ("brain plasticity") [Francis Crick, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
11].
The cells of our brain change every day. How do we remain the "same" person if matter is all that we base our existence upon?
If the area of the brain which is related to learning is destroyed, then the brain recreates this region in another place! [
source] How can you interpret more easily this phenomenon, if not with the existence of a immaterial "something" which resides OUTSIDE the brain and controls the material substance of the mind?
All modern observations are more compatible with the view that brain is just a medium for the transmission and/or the expression of consciousness (actually a medium limiting the full potential of consciousness), than with the view that brain is the source of consciousness.
And needless to say that the function of the brain as FILTER (which limits our viewing of reality) is the only possible theory which can sufficiently explain the various reported Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and other paraphyscological phenomena modern science does not want to investigate (I do not want to look into the cellar, I am afraid of what I might find there)...
Schiller himself thought that "matter is admirably calculated machinery for regulating, limiting and restraining the consciousness which it encases", while according to Bergson "the brain canalizes and limits the mind"...
[Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death, Chris Carter] [9,
10]
Experiments from known scientists and universities have shown that consciousness is not synonym to brain functions. (see
Non local concsiousness. Being God.) People seeing things thousands of miles away or affecting other people or machines far away from them, show that there is more than meets the eye.
The conscious observer affects the cosmos and reality. This is something accepted or heavily discussed among scientists today. The cat seems to be both dead and alive until an observer observes it. [
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24]
Mind is not the slave of matter, but its master. And it seems that modern science will soon shift to a new paradigm (see
here) and towards more holistic forms of thinking (see
Noetic Sciences). An electron is an electron. Many electrons are many electrons. How on Earth could some scientists “think” that these particles could ever be something more that what they are? Why didn’t all scientists believed what they feel but instead were carried away by artificial materialistic dogmas?
From the old days we were seeking our purpose in life. We were seeking our soul. And as Blaise Pascal once said “You weren't be looking for me, if you hadn't already found me”…
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