Peter Russell on a New Metaparadigm of Consciousness

"Substantial steps have been made in the science of consciousness over the last ten years, and there is much talk of a new paradigm emerging. But I believe we may stand on the threshold of an even more fundamental change -- a shift in metaparadigm.

Thomas Kuhn coined the term "paradigm" to refer to the beliefs and assumptions underlying a particular science. But beneath all our scientific paradigms lies an even deeper and more pervasive assumption: the belief in the primacy of the material universe. When we fully understand the world of space-time-matter-energy , we will, it is believed, be able to account for everything in the cosmos. Being the paradigm behind nearly all our scientific paradigms, this worldview has the status of a "metaparadigm".

Eminently successful as this model has been at explaining the world around us, it does not have much to say about the nonmaterial world of the mind. Indeed, nothing in the physical sciences says living systems should be conscious. Yet the reality of consciousness is apparent to each and every one of us. As far as the current metaparadigm is concerned consciousness is a great anomaly.

Kuhn showed that when anomalies first arise they are usually overlooked or rejected. Or, if they cannot be so easily discarded, they are incorporated in some way, often clumsily, into the existing model. Witness the attempts of mediaeval astronomers, wedded to Plato's belief in the perfection of circular motion, trying to explain irregularities in planetary motion with theories of epicycles (circles rolling along circles, rolling along circles).

Western science has followed a similar pattern in its approach to consciousness. For the most part it has ignored consciousness, and for seemingly good reasons: First, consciousness cannot be observed in the way that material objects can. It cannot be weighed, measured, or otherwise pinned down. Second, scientists have sought to arrive at universal objective truths, independent of any particular observer's viewpoint or state of mind. And third, there is no need; the functioning of the material universe can be explained without having to explore the troublesome subject of consciousness.

More recently, as developments across a range of disciplines have shown that consciousness cannot be so easily sidelined, science has made various attempts to account for it. Some have looked to quantum physics, some to information theory, others to neuropsychology. Yet whatever idea is put forward, one thorny question remains unanswered: How can something as immaterial as consciousness ever arise from something as unconscious as matter?

The continued failure of these approaches to make any appreciable headway into this problem suggests they may all be on the wrong track. We may need to challenge some of our most fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality.

All these approaches are based on the assumption that consciousness emerges from, or is dependent upon, the physical world of space, time, and matter. In one way or another, they are attempting to accommodate the anomaly of consciousness within a worldview that is intrinsically materialist. As happened with the medieval astronomers who kept adding more and more epicycles to explain the anomalous motions of the planets, the underlying assumptions are seldom, if ever, questioned. (See: Copernican Revolution)

I now believe that rather than trying to explain consciousness in terms of the material world, we should be developing a new worldview in which consciousness is a fundamental component of reality. The key ingredients for this new metaparadigm are already in place. We need not wait for any new discoveries. All we need do is put various pieces of our existing knowledge together, and explore the new picture of reality that emerges. (See: A Sentient Universe.)"

~Peter Russell

Super Moon. Quantum Night. Half Sonnet.

Clear night, full moon, this is dedicated to the one I am. Rock is the hardest concept but awareness is reflected in consciousness.

For social conditioning is nothing but belief before being, personal conception before universal consciousness,

and the varieties of conceptual objects before pure awareness. Listen, between concept and being, I am. Follow the energy.


Thoughts are the stuff of dreams. Now is the knowledge of that absolute made glorious by this super moon.

If scientific materialism is the root of the global economy, and religion is the nerve-center of belief,

then politics is the religion of scientific materialism. Division is division is division.


As thinking is emperor, being is goddess, and love is deconstruction. If moonlight falls on a silent river, does it make a wave or particle?
 

footnote: erwin schrödinger, friday night lights, friedrich nietzsche, clark kent, the mamas & the papas, edna st. vincent millay.
further footnotes. the waste land. i am that.
footnote maybe krishnamurti and the gita.
footnote william james of course, longchenpa naturally, and homer's legendary sirens of titan.
footnote prospero. footnote gloucester.
footnote paul to timothy. footnote aaron sorkin.
footnote machiavelli over marx and gertrude stein divided by nonduality.
footnote wallace stevens, hans christian andersen, botticelli, j. geils, joni mitchell, zeno of elea, werner heisenberg, and footnote zhuangzi footnote butterfly
 

Uncaused Caws and Wild Choruses

Absolute awareness is omnipresently and omnipotently self-aware of course, of Way, and mind is the necessary mirror in that evolutionary process which the body-mind calls self-awareness.

But mind gets lost within itself like a mirror reflecting in a mirror, like a river turning into whirlpools, like ten thousand rabbits emerging from a single rabbit hole.

Like an integrated part in usurpation of the universal holy holy holy whole, listen. Thinking is a fantastic tool but a very sorry identity. Crow caws the cause is crow but the chorus is walking on the wild side—

one sun, two riverbanks, a trinity of waves, the four directions. As thinking is more the tool, intuition is all non-doing. And the world is like a lover who left me in September and I am like the spring.

Incense, purple crocuses, and red-winged blackbirds; self-awareness is naturally reflexive in this way. Rock maple also rises. And returning to intent's desire is as a new car battery in New England.

Like ice out, the rising angle of the sun, weeping willows turning nature's greenest gold, if duality is in my DNA and separation is my social conditioning, then enlightenment is seeing through all birth and rebirth.

footnotes

age is a fallacy of western science and space is a metaphor for that beyond creation

being that all gods are individually universal and love is the proof of god

mirror mirror circle game and through the living glass

remember, memory is either a double-edged sword or double entendre. self-awareness requires some kind of mirror image. this is called projection.

William Blake and William Cullen Bryant. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Longfellow, Frost, and Gary Snyder. Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Joni Mitchell. ella fitzgerald and duke ellington. after a long and cold new england winter, february appears to be psychotic, no matter what the weather. see jonathan edwards see nisargadatta maharaj, bankei, eckhart the first, lalla, cold mountain,

neither naturalism nor eternalism nor nihilism nor partiality nor emptiness but no point of view. knowing the unknown equals being, ultimate math is ultimate spinach and love is being despite appearances. birth and rebirth are both conceptual but being self-aware is unbelievable

less said, the more unknown
 

Snow in Pleasant Valley—playing in the math

Snow doesn't fall—it just forgets. Paradise isn't lost—it's just misplaced. Snow doesn't coat a universe of forms in white but my sweet lord reveals the absolute within without.

The truth is, all belief is make-believe, and the one believing must forget this truth. Light falls and mountains appear. Glaciers form and flowers are reflecting in the fertile sands of a desert mirror in Four Corners.

It's light to light actually and not the legendary matter of dust to dust. This is what a butterfly calls self-awareness. I came, I saw, I conquered is the story but here's my trinity of actual experience—

I am, forget I am, Revelations. If the box is mind, thinking outside the box is no-mind. Burn down the intermission. The power of three is the seeing through two.

If that which is natural is that unknown, and this which is known is mathematical, then non-doing is doing the math. Given, absolutely one can't be known by zero, and the absolute one can't be known by two,

self-awareness is that holy trinity atomic power trio love. As samara is the absolute forgetting, and revelations is divine imagination, so consciousness only is nirvana.

One Turning Basho Ice-out Merrimack 190209

In the name of absolute awareness, universal consciousness, divine imagination, loving deconstruction and apocalyptic self-awareness, ice-out on the Merrimack.

If the source of the river is White Mountains, and the waves are manifestations of the holy spirit of enlightening intent, then the underlying current is this consciousness

in which ice appears and disappears. Tonight a crescent moon surrounding earthshine in last swans of twilight—this is my mythology. Pure awareness is omnipresently self-aware.

It’s this universal process as seen within the mirror of my dreaming turning Basho. Reality is merely numerology and two is self-awareness, self-awareness, self-awareness.

Ballad of That Being Said

If pure awareness is the absolute unknown, then self-awareness is that absolute's omnipotent quality of knowing that unknown. Further, as the absolute unknown is obviously unmanifest, self-awareness is

spontaneously manifestation itself. And mind is an integral aspect of this manifestation—like a crystal clear mirror hidden deep within its terminal basin, but, with time, is lost, within its irrational depths of division.

But the mind can't stop the mind from thinking, no matter what it thinks—only consciousness does. And this is why consciousness is always speaking to consciousness. Surrender, love.

Thinking is the shadow. It's not a matter for psychology and its mind games. Consciousness only is seeing through occlusion. Look, mind is the guts of enlightenment.

It isn't pretty but it does the trick. Also, divine imagination is not superfluous to the process of enlightenment as seen from a free-thinking mind. Mythology is a tool and not identity.


 

Ballad of Burning Love

Not only can't I make a horse drink water, but it tries to lead me to its dry belief.

Look, nothing really matters but my individual experience of the universe, knowing they're the one and same.


Once I said it's said a bodhisattva saves by knowing there is nothing to be saved or said,

but one can also say the universe collapses knowing I'm the universe and all is absolutely fine and well unknown.


Listen, they say the essence of evolution is self-awareness. I say as is intent's desire. No reason for enlightenment, it is and isn't.

Following intent’s desire, resting in self-awareness, as the secondary reverie is dreamily returning, suddenly awaken to this manifest of love.





FOOTNOTES

Enlightenment is in our DNA.
All arguments are personal. War is hell defending hell.
Note to self. Trademark individually universal.
To paraphrase the Diamond Sutra.
Theorizing relativity is the latest thinking.
Relax, enlightenment is just another word.
It's only esoterica but I like it.

Elvis lives. Life is an anagram.
A horse is a horse of course.
Being is what remains after postmodern deconstruction. It's called now.
The personal is a meme, wise guy.
I love the Christian mystic.
Pure awareness being self-aware. This is my bible.
In reality, self-awareness always be opening.

Projection is well-played.
Every individual is an emperor of ice cream.
Save your breath. Be a tree.
Don't particle that wave, my friend.
Simply speaking, self-awareness is enlightenment as seen within its so-called process.
As pure awareness is unclouded, self-awareness is the rainbow body.
Manifestation is analog. Enlightenment is digital.

 

Ballad of a Mystic from Norwich

In the Process of Omnipotent Absolute Self-awareness, not a single phenomenon isn't integral despite the calamity of its story.

Like self-awareness is a tree, the mind is like an axe, and the untold story is a coil of rope appearing to be Rings of Saturn.

Mythology. Psychology. Biology. Tautology. The Wholly Orgy Kama Sutra Everyone!

For every projection tells its terrible story but love is divine virtue pervasive in consciousness turning—

imagining the manifesting turning of enlightening intent in natural non-doing flowing

resting in omnipresent affectionate awareness going down the rabbit hole in foggy dreaming

spontaneously arising lucidly awaking to this sparking of one's consequent expression.

Rabbit Whale

Consciousness does not appear like magic from the mind, like space-time from a mustard seed, like being from a beetle.

Consciousness is all I truly know, this fundamental knowledge, and any other metaphysics is conditional disinformation

left unquestioned by a mind not yet prepared for further prehistoric or postmodern self-inquiry (I Am or Who am I)

no matter what phenomenal genius it displays. What a rabbit hole is thought. Love is always making karma.

It's said a Bodhisattva saves by knowing there is nothing to be saved or said.

The Seven Wonders of Awareness

When the universe is artificially divided, one's required to fabricate incessant concoctions of cause and effect to bind it back together.

But in terms of the universe itself, the universe is the only cause and the universe is a singular effect.

All is spontaneously transformative and never faithfully replicated even in the greatest feedback of electric memory.

Listen, a self-reflexive mythology is a systematic understanding of the universe as pure awareness being self-aware—

in which prime cause and its final effect is a pre-existing universal unconditional so to speak.

See it's an esoteric fact that self-awareness requires physical memory and divine imagination, or mirror and masquerade. Dust is optional.

If all appears in consciousness, and consciousness is the reflection of the absolute, eyewitness and inner voice are the yin and yang of Tao.

footnotes

looking at the parts will never know the whole
as cause equals effect, space equals time, and other theories of relativity
all in good time
don't rely on mind for time. it's like a phonographic needle but i'm a sixties song.
~just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in~
dropping is another name for seeing through all names
if self-awareness is the essence of pure awareness, and consciousness is the sky of self-awareness, consciousness is the cross of tao 

karma is belief not completely deconstructed
everything is the one, even one
omnipresence is always present
there is no unified theory but there is a unified heart—each beat is individually universal
no definition is absolute, every word must die
body-mind is political, consciousness is love
après consciousness, le monde