Do universal laws constitute "Consciousness"? Good question.

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Sep 24, 2016 at 04:04

Hi, Moh. You said,

"Yes - you are right - it would take a while to do it justice and possibly I can't do it.. But a short version - all the talk of 'enlightenment' and 'inner light' by sages down through the ages - describes the light of consciousness. People give it various names. It is at the core of and sustains all phenomena. You might be familiar with : "God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all". So this primordial 'light' - is what superstring theory gets close to describing."

It is true that some pagan religions speak of "enlightenment". and Jewish mystics also carry on this line of thinking. This is not the message of the Bible, though. Indeed, as the scriptures say, Indeed,
"God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all"; but "enlightenment", as it is usually spoken of, entails receiving esoteric knowledge, usually through a process of multiple initiations -- or, in Eastern religions, through some meditative exercise such as Yoga or Zen. That is the usual understanding of "enlightenment", and that is why I took issue with what you said.

There is a Biblical tradition of "revelation", of course, stemming back to God speaking to Adam and Eve, to Noah, to Abraham and to the patriarchs. Sometimes, Godly men and women sought out these revelations, such as Daniel and Hannah (mother of Samuel). Hannah cried out from the depths of her heart, about her distress at being barren; and God answered her through the word of Eli the priest. As Jesus' brother James said,

James 5:
[16b] The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

You went on,

"But back to quantum phenomena and a 'physical' explanation things- transistors in the PC you're using now rely totally on electrons tunneling through 'holes' in semiconducting material... Similar processes are perhaps occurring in the interchanges in the synapses in our billions of brain cells - allowing us to experience consciousness and therefore existence."

The basis of quantum "tunneling" is that in semiconductors, many discrete energy levels of different but closely separated energies for virtually continuous "bands". When thermal energy excites these bands, even at room temperature, a bell-shaped distribution curve happens, and some electrons seem to "tunnel through" energy barriers. In fact, they are not "tunneling", but "leaping over" the barriers, because they have higher energy than the other electrons (properly, than the other probabilities of electron presence). As a semiconductor is heated, the probability of electrons "tunneling" increases, so it becomes more conductive. I'm not very knowledgeable about how electricity is conducted in the synapses of our brains; but since our brains function much like computers, the comparison you made may be valid.

Science has yet to fully determine, how someone receives divine revelation. Did Noah hear from God in dreams? Did Abraham see and hear a vision? The Bible isn't always clear about these things. Some, or perhaps all, of Biblical revelations might well be described as very good logical deductions, based on very astute observation.

Noah may have seen the dissipation of the world around him, and intuitively known that certain doom was about to strike. He had a pretty good window in which to await the fulfillment of his expectations (about 100 years), just like true prophets and false prophets alike in our own day and age. The false prophets, of course, are the ones who guess incorrectly; so perhaps Noah was "lucky" concerning the details. Fortunately, he took his convictions seriously enough to build the ark; and his life was spared.

There are other prophecies, such as those of Daniel and John, which various people might interpret various different ways -- something like those of the Oracle of Delphi. Sometimes, they are amazing in their prescience: Zechariah 14 minutely detailing the effects of a nuclear blast, for instance. As was the case with Noah, one must take these things seriously in order to benefit from them. Others scoff at them, and suffer because of it. Still, it's difficult to know these things intuitively beforehand.

My wife did some study of gut bacteria, which have been found to affect our mental processes (giving us "gut feelings" that often turn out to be correct). Perhaps this is how some receive revelations. We will likely learn more of these things in the future. What I am concerned with, is not so much HOW people receive this revelation (the important aspects of which are already recorded in the Bible), but the fact that Biblical revelation, the laws of Physics and all the stuff of the Universe come from God and are therefore part of His "word". That word itself, however, though it is the the basis of all "enlightenment", is not what I would consider "consciousness". It may be, though, that we are just arguing about semantics.

I am therefore not surprized that, as the site you referenced said,

"worlds-smartest-physicist-believes-consciousness-will-remain-a-mystery/"

A Biblical take on this might be:

John 1:
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

That seems to EQUATE the "word" (upon which the universe is held together) with the consciousness of God; so perhaps you are more scripturally correct than I am. The is seemingly no end of theological controversy about the above verse. For instance, the word, "word", is described in both English and Greek as a "thing", not a person; yet God is described as a person. Are we, just to cite one problem area, to consider "persons" as "things", or visa versa? This can lead to pretty weird thinking, to say the least.

Shalom shalom :-)

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