An underlying reason for the movement toward panpsychism is perhaps due to Thomas Nagel’s popular definition of consciousness from the 1970s: “Consciousness is what it’s like to be something.” In other words, consciousness is what it’s like to be a human or a dog or anything that has consciousness.
At first glance, this seems reasonable. But as noted by philosophers such as Rupert Spira, embedded in Nagel’s definition is a big, unwarranted assumption. It assumes that there exists a human that could be conscious—that there is a human from which consciousness arises. See the issue there? He’s assuming physicalism in his definition.
On the contrary, the One Mind model suggests that all reality is just one universal consciousness. There is no human or dog or insect or plant or stone that could be conscious. Rather, as Spira says, “Only consciousness is conscious.”8 And that one consciousness—the One Mind—experiences an apparently physical world through the vehicle of humans and other physical vessels.
The One Mind is the infinite, silent context underlying all experience—the field of reality and the ground of all being. Spira often compares it to an infinite screen. The screen’s pixels are colored when a movie is playing and various characters appear (for example, humans). But no matter what happens to the characters on the screen and no matter what colors light up the pixels, the screen is untouched.
The One Mind is the substrate of all experience. The apparent diversity in the world is a reflection of “modulations” of consciousness9—like waves appearing in an ocean.
Our Ultimate Identity Is Not Our Body
What are we? This answer seems obvious. Our everyday experience suggests to us that our identity is our body. That’s what our perceptions show us. It's also how our mind interprets reality and certainly what modern society teaches us. I’m a human being named Mark Gober. Easy.
But based on the One Mind model, our identity at the Absolute level is not our body or our personality; rather, it’s our consciousness—the one consciousness at the core of all existence. Our identity is the full “stream” itself, the One Mind. The body is just something that consciousness experiences. We inhabit the body, but we aren’t identified as the body.
That said, at the Relative level of reality, it sure feels as if we are a body and a personality. That’s the way we live day to day. So in order to buy into the One Mind model, we have to hold the paradox of feeling like an individual in the context of being the totality of existence. We are both a whirlpool and the stream simultaneously.
That is one of the most earth-shattering implications of the One Mind model: we’ve been thinking about our very own identity incorrectly! As is often stated: “We aren’t human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Or alternatively, as author Suzanne Segal phrased it: “We are sense organs of the Infinite.”10The shift away from physicalism toward the One Mind is likely a bigger revolution in thinking than any other in human history. The realizations that Earth isn’t flat and that Earth isn’t at the center of the solar system were enormous paradigm shifts, but they pertained to how we viewed the external world around us while preserving our identity. What I’m talking about here is shifting how we think about who and what we fundamentally are.
The One Mind Could Be Likened to “God”
God is a term with lots of baggage. The Judeo-Christian cultural view anthropomorphizes God. God is often depicted as a white, bearded male in the sky who exists separately from us; and who often exhibits vengeful, judgmental, and bellicose behavior. We are here, and God is “up there” in the heavens. Obey “him”... or else. People throughout history have justified murder and mayhem in “his” name.
Debates rage on as to whether or not God exists. However, a first step that people often skip is to make certain we’re using a consistent definition. Let’s be sure we’re talking about the same guy before we argue!
The model in this book is not claiming that there exists a separate God having the characteristics just described. Rather, I’m arguing that the One Mind—a genderless, impersonal, infinite field of consciousness—is the basis of reality. There is one infinite stream in which we are localized whirlpools. If one wanted, one might call the One Mind—the entire stream—“God.” Rick Archer has often stated as a rebuttal to atheistic views: “I don’t believe in the same God you don’t believe in.” Or as I like to say, “They got the wrong guy.”
If we were to employ this One Mind definition of God, there are some important implications. Since each us is made of the same water in the same stream, then it would logically follow that each of us is an aspect of God. This aligns with the spiritual notion that God is both immanent (within) and transcendent (beyond). There is no separation between God and us. And yet there is separation because we don’t access the full stream in daily living. Both are true. Another paradox.
Returning to our discussion about identity, we could reframe my previous comments using God-centric terminology. We could say that we are “tentacles of God” or “instruments of the Divine.” This is why spiritual author Ram Dass advised: “Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
Certainly in Eastern religions we see ideas like this. But they also appear in the West if we look closely. For example, consider Jesus Christ’s quote: “I and the father are one.” Translation: Jesus, as an individual whirlpool, is one with the stream. And consider his quote: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Translation: Even though you are an individual whirlpool, you are comprised of the same water that makes up the full stream of reality. Words such as father and God have become so culturally off-putting that we can overlook what’s actually being said.
In my life, the term God has been a turn-off. I used to immediately shut down when I heard it. Even when I began my explorations several years ago, I would become viscerally disturbed anytime someone used the word, even if I knew they weren’t talking about a personal God. Now, I’ve come to terms with it as long as it’s being defined properly. Too often people use it without specifying what they mean.
So why not just do away with the term God to avoid possible confusion? Some claim that the “Ah” sound in the word God creates a frequency that keeps us in alignment with the greater stream of consciousness. Why that would be the case, I’m not sure. Interestingly, when we look at religions around the world, we find that the very same “Ah” sound is found in words that represent divinity: Allah (Islam), Brahman (Hinduism), Hashem ( Judaism), and so on.
As spiritual teacher Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “I was taught that the expression of the word or sound, which means God, brings us into contact with God. God is the basic fact of the universe, symbolized with this most natural and comprehensive of all sounds. It’s no accident that the words omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent contain the sound of God”11 [emphasis added].
However, regardless of whether or not that idea is true, I will generally use the term One Mind in this book—unless I’m making an explicit tie to religion.
The One Mind Is Intelligent
A basic fact of our individual existence as humans is that we are intelligent. The degree of intelligence can vary from person to person, but each of us has some intelligence.
If each of us is intelligent, and if we are individually part of the One Mind, it seems to follow logically that the One Mind is intelligent. Stated another way, if the whirlpools are intelligent, and the whirlpools are part of the stream, then by definition the stream has intelligence.
Let’s take a further logical step. If all reality is just the One Mind, then all reality—ourselves and everything around us—is conceivably embedded with intelligence as well.
Everywhere we look in the universe—whether it’s a flower, a human being, mathematics, the greater cosmos, or anything—we find immense complexity. And in light of this unthinkable complexity, it seems reasonable to assume that the One Mind has unthinkable intelligence.
So perhaps this is what religious traditions mean when they make statements such as “God is omniscient” and that we should “see God in everything.” When we depersonalize “God,” it all starts to make more sense.
Randomness Is an Illusion
The universe
As previously discussed, the physicalist view of reality tends to view the universe as random. However, if the universe is embedded with unthinkable intelligence, should we question the “randomness” hypothesis? I think so.
We have to ask ourselves: Why is the universe exactly balanced for life? Robert Lanza, MD (a stem-cell researcher who was named one of TIME magazine’s top 100 most influential people in 2014), and physicist Bob Berman examine this question in their book Biocentrism (2009). In a chapter titled “Goldilocks’s Universe,” they state:
By the late sixties, it had become clear that if the Big Bang had been just one part in a million more powerful, the cosmos would have blown outward too fast to allow stars and worlds to form. Result: no us. Even more coincidentally, the universe’s four forces and all of its constants [tables follow] are just perfectly set up for atomic interactions, the existence of atoms and elements, planets, liquid water, and life. Tweak any of them and you never existed.12
List of Constants (as shown in Biocentrism)13
(...)
The universe is configured “just right” for life to exist. Somehow, life emerged from nonlife. Given what we’ve discussed about the One Mind, do we think the universe’s fine-tuned structure is a function of the One Mind’s inherent intelligence? Or do we think it’s a “jackpot” event that emerged from pure randomness?
Physicalists say it’s just chance. Lanza and Berman summarize what the physicalist perspective is asking us to believe:
The entire universe, exquisitely tailored for our existence, popped into existence out of absolute nothingness. Who in their right mind would accept such a thing? Has anyone offered any credible suggestion for how, some 14 billion years ago, we suddenly got a hundred trillion times more than a trillion trillion trillion tons of matter from—zilch? Has anyone explained how dumb carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules could have, by combining accidentally, become sentient—aware!—then utilized this sentience to acquire a taste for hot dogs and the blues? How any possible natural random process could mix those molecules in a blender for a few billion years so that out would pop woodpeckers and George Clooney? Can anyone conceive of any edges to the cosmos? Infinity? Or how particles still spring out of nothingness? Or conceive of any of the many supposed extra dimensions that must exist everywhere in order for the cosmos to consist fundamentally of interlocking strings and loops? Or explain how ordinary elements can ever rearrange themselves so that they continue to acquire self-awareness and a loathing for macaroni salad? Or, again, how every one of dozens of forces and constants are precisely fine-tuned for the existence of life? Is it not obvious that science only pretends to explain the cosmos on its fundamental level?14 [emphasis in original]
It seems much simpler, to me, to explain the precision of the universe as a manifestation of the intelligent One Mind. While previously I was sympathetic to the randomness argument, I now see it as its own form of religion. It’s like a Hail Mary. Sure, it could be right. But it seems very, very unlikely.
An End to Upside Down Living
Mark Gober
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