Higher dimensions of consciousness
Seeing | Cosmology | 2023-12-31
Natalia Vorontsova, MA
Prof. Bernard Carr, PhD
Our brains do not produce consciousness, they ‘filter’ it and consciousness is related to the higher dimensions in string theory. In this thought-provoking conversation, distinguished Professor of mathematics and astronomy Bernard Carr explains his theory of consciousness and psi-phenomena. Happy new year from all of us at Essentia Foundation!
In this final video of 2023, Natalia Vorontsova interviews Bernard Carr, emeritus professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), about how physics can accommodate consciousness. Carr started his career as a pupil and close friend of Stephen Hawking and has combined a distinguished career in cosmology with a serious interest in consciousness research and psi-phenomena like telepathy, out-of-body experiences and precognition. Long before it became an acceptable idea amongst physicists, Carr became convinced that a unifying theory of physics should accommodate consciousness. From his work in Brane cosmology—a branch of cosmology that builds on the higher dimensions of string theory and M-theory—Carr argues that it is completely reasonable to argue that consciousness relates to a higher dimension from which spacetime emerges. If so, his theory is highly compatible with objective idealism and paves the way for a future physics that can make sense of the qualities of experience.
In this long conversation, Carr not only shares his views on psi-phenomena, consciousness and Brane cosmology, he also touches on the specious present: the shortest time span of immediate consciousness. For humans, under normal mental conditions, the specious present is around one tenth of a second. According to Carr, the concept of the specious present could account for the fact that separate, localized forms of consciousnesses experience the same world. Also, the specious present opens the idea of levels of consciousness with a much expanded or contracted specious present, which could account for well-documented cases in which people experience the slowing down of time, or the extreme speeding up of time. Could it be that, to the universe as a whole—say, the universal Mind—billions of years pass in the blink of an eye?
As 2023 comes to an end, Prof. Carr’s insightful views on the passage of time might be a nice way to look back and celebrate what is to come. Whatever 2024 holds in store for us, wonderfully enough, we find ourselves in exactly the same specious present, which makes it possible to consciously interact within an objective world that most probably is Mind.
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As any essay on free will, the present one is bound to be polemic. We believe the debate on free will is important and the present essay meaningfully contributes to it. Nonetheless, we feel bound to clarify our editorial position here: as a foundation dedicated to promoting objective formulations of metaphysical idealism, we endorse the existence of a reality beyond the seemingly personal self, which behaves in a predictable, lawful manner. An implication of this view is the impossibility of libertarian free will: we do make our own choices, but our choices are determined by that which we, and the universe around us, are. Yet we believe that there is a very important sense in which free will does exist: under idealism, the universe is constituted by the excitations of one, universal field of subjectivity. The impetus towards self-excitation that characterizes this field of subjectivity is free will, for it depends on nothing else. The entire dance of universal unfolding is a dance of universal free will. This is the sense in which, for example, Federico Faggin and our own Bernardo Kastrup defend the fundamental existence of free will in nature. This understanding of free will is entirely compatible with the understanding that our choices are determined but that which we truly are. Finally, objective formulations of metaphysical idealism deny, just as the author of the present essay does, the fundamental existence of a personal self. Instead, the latter is regarded as a transient, reducible configuration of the underlying field of subjectivity. As such, there cannot be such a thing as personal, egoic free will, for the personal self itself isn’t a fundamental construct.
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