Eckhart Tolle argues consciousness isn't created by the brain but received through it, like a radio tuning into a signal. He says perception creates the universe and each person is a spark of universal consciousness. Mainstream science, he claims, wrongly treats consciousness as a byproduct of brain chemistry.
What they fail to realize is that, yes, on a physical level, we are very small, but every human represents a spark of the one universal consciousness without which there wouldn't even be a universe. For even to be a universe, there must be a perceiving consciousness for the This room, there wouldn't even be a room if we were not here to perceive it. What is this table, the flower, this atoms and molecules floating around vast space, 99.999% empty space and a few atoms and molecules floating around empty space. It's not a room yet, but then we come, or you come, and suddenly you interpret the atoms and molecules. So it's a creative— the perception of the universe is a creative act, and it's the one consciousness acting through you and then experiencing itself as a world. Amazing thing. So you are, as consciousness, You are of infinite importance. You are an expression of the one universal consciousness that underlies the sense-perceived universe. Now, obviously, the mainstream science will still— well, not that they know very much about the mind yet. Don't let them tell you that they know a lot about the mind. We don't know what a thought is. Nobody knows what a thought is. What is the relationship between the material brain? The big question: what is the relation between the physical brain and consciousness? Mainstream science will tell you probably that consciousness— it doesn't even like to use that word, but if it did, it would say It's a byproduct of brain chemistry, whatever that means. A byproduct of brain chemistry. Oh, I don't know what that means. Or you can go deeper and say, well, it's the atoms and molecules in your brain that make up your brain, and they produce consciousness. Hmm. That's the belief in mainstream science with a few exceptions. Some scientists are beginning to doubt that, that consciousness is a byproduct of matter. We don't even know what thought is. What is a thought? Does a thought have material existence? Nobody knows. Does a thought exist as an atom or molecule in the mind? Nobody knows. I can ask you, do you remember when you were 10 years old, do you remember the living room of the place where you lived, your house or your apartment? Do you remember? Can you mentally go to the living room that when you were 10 years old and explore the room in your mind? and most people can, and I can, although it was a long time ago. I can go there. Where was that living room before I suddenly asked the question? Did that living room exist in my mind as a collection of certain living room atoms or molecules that were just waiting to be rediscovered? And I'm just Is it just one memory? Where did this living room, where did it survive all these years in my mind? And this is just one example of millions of memories that you still have. Do they exist? Do they have a physical existence somewhere? Or is it something that goes far beyond anything physical? Is the brain perhaps no more than a transducer, receiver of consciousness, like a radio receives? And so the music comes out of the radio, but the radio does not produce the music, and yet the radio is necessary for you to hear the music. But when you destroy the radio, you haven't destroyed the music, you've just destroyed this particular manifestation of it in the same way that if a brick falls on my head now, I will stop speaking. And yet the consciousness that produced these words is not really affected by it. Just this brain can no longer work as a receiver of consciousness, and so it stops speaking. Sometimes one manifests things, but hopefully Hopefully not in this case. You have to be careful with these things.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
