Copernican Revolution - With the Sun at the Center

Are we in the midst of a consciousness revolution? The answer depends on our understanding these two terms.

WHAT IS A REVOLUTION?
The word revolution means a reverse movement a complete change in perspective – originally as applied to celestial bodies. It come from the old French and was latter and aptly to the  impact of the Copernican “revolution.”

“Nicolas Copernicas had introduced the idea that the earth might revolve around the sun – the reverse of what had previously been believed. This created a complete turnaround or “revolution” in our vision of the cosmos. The same word was latter applied politically, as in the French revolution, the American Revolution and also the Russian, Mexican and Chinese Revolutions – among the most popular applications of this term. There was also an Industrial Revolution and a Scientific Revolution. It was therefore applied to the vast changes in our ideas in many other fields, especially a revolution in our paradigms of physics. We also have the terms cultural revolution, market revolution, information revolution and sexual revolution. Interestingly enough, political revolutions tended to follow the ideological – including even the Copernican. Thus when Copernicus introduced his novel ideas, they later led to a loss of a degree of faith, culturally, in the Bible as the final say or arbiter in our understanding of the universe. During the Middle Ages, the power of the Pope in Rome was to delegate authority to rule of countries in Europe. This was dependent on the deepest faith in the Pope as receiving that vast authority directly from God and through divine inspiration.  When the dominance of the biblical worldview was challenged by Copernicus and later by the new scientific vision of Newton, Galileo and Descartes, there followed a derivative revolution in political authority. The entire royal lineage of Russia was murdered one night in the Russian Revolution. This overturned that countries political rule, among others and in the French and American revolutions.

ARE WE IN THE MIDST OF A CONSCIOUSNESS REVOLUTION?
Are we really undergoing a consciousness revolution or is this just a comforting phrase? That depends on how we understand consciousness and its dynamics. I’ve repeatedly emphasized and elucidated that, in essence, consciousness forms a potentially universal relationship of connection in all of nature. Now why is that, in and of itself, a revolutionary perspective? Well we all know consciousness interacts with our mind. Our mind forms outline images (which are translated into written and spoken words). These help us to focus consciousness in endless directions. They help separate elements of our consciousness. This can happen again in universal directions.

Now what if the more silent, quiet, meditative, integrative, pre-conceptual, word-empty mind (our right-brain) were to suddenly dominate our whole consciousness? Our worldview would then become more holistic and spiritual – as in the Buddhist traditions. On the other hand, if the conceptual mind predominates (the left brain), I would predict that an opposite material worldview would become dominant as more “rational.” I would also argue it ultimately becomes quantitative. Rational comes from the word “ratio,”  a mathematical term. This is because math symbols represent the very highest, most universal of all inner pointing tools of the mind to separate elements of consciousness and thus to point to separate matter. I think of this as the surface appearance of things, reverse postured as the most objective or depth view.

ON THE CUSP
It is finally my orientation that we are on the cusp of moving away from that current dominance of the present math-bound vision of nature, of physics, chemistry and biotechnology (the dominantly left-brain view of the cosmos) – and derivatively of a primarily commercial society. If this indeed occurs, it will be a genuine turnaround of the inner foundations of our modern world, of our modern consciousness. It will represent a true reversal in core brain polarities, and thus a true and real “consciousness revolution.”

Definition of Consciousness

We can diligently and carefully search the web to find many of what l call “standard definitions of consciousness.”  Here are a few examples of such definitions of consciousness, with critiques.

SOME  STANDARD DEFINITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

An cognitive state
This makes the assumption that consciousness is tied to cognitive functions and thus much of what plants and animals experience would be considered unconscious.

A feature or force of life
Some Vedanta traditions see consciousness this way. Certainly some form of consciousness is a universal feature of life, but what does that really tells us? If bubble gum sticks to a wall, does that define the stuck-to wall?

The state of being aware
This is a very redundant definition. Awareness can be called consciousness and consciousness can be called awareness. It doesn’t really tell us very much. It offers no deep insight into what is the nature of consciousness.

Alert perceptions
To be alert is to be in a state of feisty awareness, which again doesn’t tell us very much.

Awake and self-aware
A living organism can be sentient, or present to its surrounding, and grounded in a time and space framework/reference without necessarily being self-aware. Does self-awareness really define the full spectrum of what is consciousness or in its absence, unconsciousness?

Higher order awareness
This is tied to a mix of cognition, self-awareness, and being awake or in advanced levels of consciousness – including having greater inner peace and heightened, clear and brilliant perceptions. But what give us the hubris or vain authority to be so selective in this  elite view of consciousness?

By-product of neuron firing
This reduces consciousness to various physical mechanisms. This implies certain organisms which do not have such neurons then do not have consciousness. Nevertheless they are sentient and aware, unlike rocks.

HOW TO GO  BEYOND THIS STANDARD LIST
We could go on with this standard list and related critiques. Keep in mind that with a valid definition we must ask:

a) Does it give us an objective, trans-personal, outside-ourselves point of view of consciousness itself?

b) Does the definition of consciousness have practical, proving and valuable applications?

None of the above seem to meet these tests for me.

MOVING TO AN ALTERNATIVE
Thus I’ve evolved an alternative definition of consciousness. This came to me after an inner experience as a teenager when, subsequent to a high fever, my left-brain shut down and I was thrown, outside of my mind, into a wordless and oceanic, connected and whole experience of consciousness. What I learned from that experience is the following definition of consciousness. It is one that yields revolutionary implications and also vast practical applications – mainly for the healing ourselves (as when we fall prey to consciousness illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, and diabetes) and the healing our planet. Such applications are  really the acid test of definition, understanding or theory of consciousness.

Alternative Definition
The alternative as well as extended definition is as follows:

Consciousness forms a potentially universal relationship of connection in nature.

This includes our own human nature and the nature of the world around us. Imagine consciousness underlies the thin surface appearance, the illusion of a world  fundamentally composed  of hard, separate, mechanically-acting, math-defined physical forms or “matter.”

Imagine thus that the underlying oceanic consciousness is at the real depth core of nature, of everything existing in the cosmos. We really never experience anything outside our consciousness so anyone who tells you this is far-fetched are themselves out of touch with their own inner consciousness. They are locked into the surface appearance. In my experience,  consciousness really forms nature’s ultimate and primordial essence and quintessence. Because “laws” are what “connect” events (as in the laws of cause and effect or the laws of action and reaction – including billiard balls bouncing off each other) then consciousness so defined as above suddenly underlies the taproot foundation of all connections in nature an thus of nature’s laws. This means that consciousness forms the authentic and abiding “principia” of nature, contrary to Newtons core thesis in his Principia Naturalis Mathematica or his “laws of nature as mathematical.”  Math symbols do expertly abstract separation and therefore cannot truly point to what connects nature in its essence – namely consciousness. Newton very abysmally and foolishly lost sight of this simple common sense. He was self-engrossed, bedazzled by his own newly invented calculus.  This critique of Newton’s vision may seem harsh, but I must beg to differ. We do need to revisit his old, stale, moldy premises, the ideology of his that took root to form our modern world. It is a vision that is now failing to work and falling apart. We do need, quite urgently, to make some vast and revolutionary inner shifts in our visions. Then we can uncover or bring out more fully out (as when we water seeds), nurture and discover the underlying laws of consciousness, life, and connection – rather than of the mechanical, death-delivering, math-defined, separative patterns that now almost totally predominate our prevailing industrial/commercial/material worldview. We need to re-structure our collective consciousness from the ground up or from its 17th century crumbling foundations. Why? Because those foundation stones has mislead a building process of the Industrial Revolution. That metaphysics has yielded a failing medical system, helpless in the face of pandemics, and focused on surface symptoms plus  misdirecting us towards a disintegrating, dying parade of living ecologies. These are not minor problems or crises. We need to thus face the root inner cause of global pollution, global warming and a more massive destruction of life and consciousness on our earth than ever before, and which is proceeding at ever faster and faster paces.

Going Past Current Definitions
Lame definitions of consciousness will not help us on this score or to extricate us from the larger, self-created problems of our modern world. They fall short in giving us the simple needed insight to  turn around our major looming planetary trends, derivative of an extraordinarily and extended loss of wisdom.

For more information on such a philosophy and definition of consciousness – and its implications  – visit http://www.raw-wisdom.com

Consciousness in Nature

DEFINING CONSCIOUSNESS
An effective study of Consciousness In Nature is dependent on how we first define the term “consciousness.” A word is an invention of the mind that serves as a pointing tool of our consciousness. How do we uniquely point that consciousness, using words, to nothing but itself? If we associate this word with an advanced human cognitive function then “consciousness”  becomes something narrow or severely constrictive to point to. It becomes just a human attribute. In my experience, this may only help us feel superior when in reality this is a deep illusion born of  what I call a left-brain dominant ”hubris.”  Hubris is a wonderful  ancient Greek term that means overbearing pride, presumption and arrogance. Yielding a sense of superiority, it feeds the drive to dominate and control. When we are so driven to conquer “it” – or something outside of us including nature – then that outside “it” becomes separate from us. When we are at one with something, there is no inside/outside group to contend with. There is no need to conquer and no need for a sense of superiority or inferiority.  When we fall out of this loop, we are estranged.

CONSCIOUSNESS AS BELONGING TO ALL OF NATURE
My life-long study of consciousness has yielded a very different if not opposite conclusion, namely that what we experience as every  day “consciousness” is not a special attribute that belongs to us humans. It is rather proprietary to all of nature that formed us. In fact  my view goes further. It states that consciousness also makes up the essential essence of nature or  the cosmos we live in. Nothing in conventional mechanical science teaches us this proposition. In fact, we need to actually learn a different language than “matter and energy, defined mathematically” to understand this viewpoint deeply. Again words are but pointing tools and changing the language to point with changes the focus of consciousness and life. When the focus is unconventional it will of course be challenged. Yet  I stand firm in my conviction that, really and truly, atoms and sub-atomic particles do not represent the essence of nature (rather they represent the cultural-ideology of a math-based view of nature) and that instead consciousness lies at the very core of our world and of ourselves.

DIFFERENT THAN THE DOMINANT WESTERN VISION
Naturally this stance puts me at odds with chemistry and physics, the mathematical and the systematically mechanical viewpoint. We have been culturally convinced that the latter holds the key to the ” really true”  unifying laws or objective principles of nature.

My experience tells me otherwise, and definitively.

THE SHELL OF THE TORTOISE
What I know of nature is symbolized by a tortoise and its shell.

This is a metaphor for the difference between the surface appearance of nature (like that of a hard shell) and its depths.  The shell exhibits not hardness and relative lifelessness. Separate from the turtle, it cannot function other than mechanically. Imagine that the depth of nature work  exactly on the opposite principles. The flesh of the turtle is soft. It is consciousness, not mechanical. It is self-moving. It does not stay fixed, unmoving or dead. If you try to transplant the principles of the shell, of the surface, to the depths, what happens? If we inject into the turtle’s blood vessels only the hard shell’s minerals, the turtle will die.

In my opinion, western civilization is on a like path. It has mistaken the illusion of nature’s surface mechanical appearances for the essence of all of nature and thus has begun to supplant and displace surrounding nature’s inner conscious and living depths.

If we assume all is mechanical and then try to remake everything in that image, the result will naturally be to destroy the bounty of living Eden.

HOW THIS COMES ABOUT
Imagine that “consciousness” is not something amorphous, that is without a unique identity. If we can identify that identity, we can familiarize ourselves more deeply with that consciousness, evolve a science, and then help support and nourish rather than destroy consciousness/life in nature. Let me describe this identity as best I understand it. Not to be treated lightly, this definition is the result of about a half a century of inner explorations:

Consciousness-in-nature forms a potentially universal relationship of connection.

Now when two things are glued together they connect. When we think of how this works conventionally, we think of a chemical formula for the glue. However, the glue  may be generating a strong relationship of connection on the surface bond but not necessarily in regard to deeper kind of connective consciousness. The glue is dead. It does not respond or connect to its surroundings. The glue shows no signs of alive awareness.

BADGE OF ORGANICITY
Imagine a flower with pedals that radiate outward in 360 degree directions. The radiations then also point inward to a single center to unify the whole. Now imagine that not  just a flower but most all organic life wear or display one or another surface badge of its connective essence  and organicity- at least while alive and consciousness. Afterwords they may turn to dust.  This includes  the swirls of a snail, the veins of a leaf, the radiance of our own human eye. Suppose we now work on bringing out this consciousness to sustain life, and rather than what is mechanical. We can begin by constructing a very different global view of the nature and nature’s Oneness and derivative laws. What this implies is a vision that is very different from the mathematical ideology of machine principles that currently dominates modernity – and that is taught virtually everywhere to be believed in.

WHY ARE WE HARMING NATURE’S CONSCIOUSNESS?
Obviously the mechanical view of nature, math-defined, is a not an especially consciousness-centered vision of nature. I would argue that its core principles actually stand in opposition to what is consciousness at the core of nature. Would it then be surprising that we are ubiquitously destroying life all over the planet? To understand this innate opposition, let me explain the following. Western civilization has, since the 17th century, been on a course of progressively adopting a math-based vision of nature, the mechanical whose ambassadors are physics, chemistry and biotechnology. Brought into the fold are geology, oceanography, and atmospheric sciences – all ultimately helping to reduce all of nature to mathematics or the principles of a machine.

MACHINES
Machines are distinctly “Alzheimerish”  or unconscious.  We sense this best when speaking to a telephone machine that can’t distinguish between someone saying a thing or two lovingly or in an angry voice. “May I have your credit card please?” We curse at it, and the machine can’t make it out. We also sense can get a sense of this when a bulldozer tramples over a life-form with no real consciousness, feeling or remorse. In this context, mathematics abstracts how to, with potential universality, separate all elements of consciousness. To count objects is to consider each as separate units. The three apples that make up a cup of applesauce cannot be counted as three anymore.  There are endless examples of how mathematics dominantly abstracts relationships of separation, and geometry of spatial separation. Now imagine that consciousness in its essence , and with the same potential universality, represents the opposite or what connects most deeply. Symbols are not mystical tools to discover nature with. They are just inner pointing utencils. Thus mathematics, because of the limitations of what those symbols represent, will not be able to point to consciousness in nature.

Trusting the pointing path of those symbols to blindly – which is what ideologies do -  we end up then adopting a worldview that solemnly claims “objectivity” but actually points in a bias away from the very quintessence of our world. What math symbols do point to well and design even better is machines -  things made most distinctively of separate parts – thus easily math-defined. Bottom line following this ideology of nature, we then either begin to supplant or impinge what is life  and consciousness, and with the opposite principles that really deliver and represent death in nature. We see this with chemical pollution concentrated in supertoxic waste sites that kill all of life and the proliferation of atomic weapons that can do the same.

Our sense of already knowing the core secrets of nature offers a good feeling or sense of a hubris-endowed superior knowledge that ultimately blinds us.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESCUE
Thus to  urgently rescue us from both our  inner global foolishness and our outer global environment crises we urgently need a what may be called a global mind change or paradigm shift. This means a universal shift in inner perspectives. It is the same as a central or core paradigm shift, one which redirects us from a new core to something universal. Historically there have been very few such shifts One occurred in the transition from the medieval Bible-centered to the present mechanical/ math-centered orientation of our modern times. Imagine we will make the subsequent shift, this time from th math-based view as pinnacle (Principia Naturalis Mathematica) to a consciousness/life based vision.

SPLIT-BRAIN VIEW
In a study of our split brain, this same shift can also be considered a transition from a left-to-right brain dominant view. We can shift from a dominant separative consciousness to a dominant connective consciousness. In the process we can literally reconstruct, transform and revolutionize the whole of our essential vision of the cosmos.

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
This, first and foremost, happens to be a really vital question, especially when we are trying to help a diabetic person suffering from neuropathy (loss of feeling and awareness in some part of their  body), dementia (as with Alzheimer’s patients) and metastatic cancer (where cancers spread silently, unconsciously to kill).

There is a whole movement to try to answer what is consciousness or to develop a real science  of levels of consciousness that considers this the “hard question” or the hardest of unanswered riddles of science. Some call this the last major frontier of science. A discovery of what is consciousness will likely be the most significant finding of not only this century but the whole millennium.

WHY PHARMACEUTICALS FAIL TO HEAL
The fact that we don’t really understand consciousness or a conscious mind is quite obvious in a typical modern nursing home where over half of the residents over the age of 85 suffer from Alzheimer’s.

Nobel Prize winning physicists have succumbed to Alzheimer’s, indicating the laws of physics don’t necessarily reveal what is consciousness. Also if you give an Alzheimer’s patient a cocktail of the very “best” pharmaceutical or synthetic chemical drugs, they tend not to work, indicating furthermore that the discoveries of chemistry also appear to fail us. Despite extraordinary efforts of modern science, we continue to have dementia patients walking the halls of nursing homes in zombie-like unconscious states. There is too often a dullness rather than brilliance to their eyes.  “No one is at home inside” and to the extent that they may be unable to recognize their children or spouses. But the next miracle discovery in physics, chemistry or genetics  may be  around the corner about a higher consciousness mind!  Without going into details, the current science of what is consciousness is, for me, quite unsatisfying. That emerging science as yet doesn’t help those in greatest need. Therefore if we can regularly effect a turnaround of Alzheimer’s,diabetes and cancer patients’ altered state of consciousness, this becomes an acid test. Personal opinion and ideologies matter less.

TOWARDS  A REAL SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
There are several  international organizations working “toward a science of consciousness” and I have presented my ideas about what is consciousness at two of these organization’s conferences  - one in Tuscon, AZ and the other in Taipei Taiwan. The usual academic approach is to define consciousness scientifically or within a conventional lab-generated  understanding, e.g. some reflex reactions numerically expressed or electric and chemical reaction (neurons firing mostly in the brain) or via neuroscience. This tries to define what is consciousness within our most familiar or comforting mechanical models of nature. In my experience, we are going up the wrong alley so that such efforts are doomed to fail.

SINGLE GREATEST DISCOVERY
The single greatest discovery of my own life offers a solution to this most stumping problem. It is an answer which, when applied, breaks through what I consider the deepest illusions (breakdowns in the integrity) of consciousness and can thus truly reverse chronic consciousness-illnesses in ourselves, in others, in our society at large and for the benefit of  life on our planet. This huge discovery led me to make it a major aim of my life to bring out this understanding. The subsequent applications are again the acid test. Can we take someone from a lower to a higher state of consciousness via a real science? The shocking commentary here is: not within the model of science we currently have. Actually that model stands in the way.

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
In my youth I was a math prodigy. Then one day something traumatic happened. No, an apple did not fall on my head! Rather I had a high fever that caused my left-brain to shut down. This was similar to what occurred to Jill Bollte Taylor, a Harvard brain researcher who had a stroke and subsequent left-brain shut-down. For a while I was aphasic or could not talk in whole sentences as the left-brain is both the verbal and the mathematical. For myself from then on, however, I began to study the nature of consciousness as if it was the single greatest urgency of my life. This was because, for a while, I had lost not only typical left-brain skills but all of my inner bearings. I was lost in a new ocean of consciousness without an anchor. Looking fo an anchor I was greatly helped by living in a community called ”The Barn” and which taught me consciousness-observation techniques developed by the Russian philosopher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. After a decade of pursuing such studies or trying to discover “what is consciousness,” I came to unique and independent conclusions. Among these was my deep conviction that consciousness is not just a human-possessed or elite attribute. I saw human consciousness as an off-shoot of the greater consciousness that belongs to all of life on earth an in our cosmos.

Secondly, and still more profoundly, consciousness expressed for me the “essence of nature” – and whether an element of nature appeared to be living or not. When something permeates through and through it forms an “essence,” like brown chocolate forms the essence of a brown chocolate bar. Thirdly for me,  consciousness also forms nature’s universal relationship of connection. This is why it can assume the status of being an “eco-essence” as it permeates then throughout. Consider this, if two events are connected, might consciousness be the basis  of that connection? Usually we think math-formula-defined or mechanical causality explains phenomena, but math symbols abstract how to separate elements of consciousness. This makes math-defined causality actually illogical, implausible, foolish and even impossible. On a far deeper level, for me it is the phenomenon of consciousness that connects all of nature’s surface appearances, and “together as one” (being a universal relationship of connection). Lastly that same consciousness, when concentrated, brings out the most profound of all natural phenomenon: living organisms or life!

Living organisms then express, display, and bring out nature’s essence, rather than machines displaying, expressing and bringing out mathematical order!

This is a revolutionary and profound shift in visions.

IMPLICATIONS OF THIS REVOLUTIONARY VIEW
There are vastly potent  implications to answering the core question, what is consciousness. Here we express a derivative consciousness-centered view of nature or where consciousness thus again is the essence of nature,  not what is pictured with math-formulas integrated as one. This is a step beyond the philosophy of panpsychism.

Panpsychism sees consciousness as present within all of nature’s matter, but often as a subordinate attribute of matter or with matter and the mechanical orientation of chemistry, physics, and biotechnology remaining primary. The consciousness-centered view, however, creates an entirely different core understanding of  nature. It departs from rather than creates another subsidiary branch of the 17th century-outlined view which was formed via the inspirations of Galileo, Descartes and Newton. It offers again a countering vision  to that of chemistry, physics and biotechnology. It does not, for example, focus on atoms and subatomic particles and their interrelationships expressed mathematically nor on genes at the core of each cell.  It sees all chronic illnesses as surface manifestations of inner lowered consciousness – especially diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s.  Thus to reverse such illnesses we re-elicit entirely different natural approaches rather than surgery, radiation and chemotherapy/drugs in order to return us to connectedness, wholeness, and healing.

LIFE-CENTERED
Since living organisms, not machines, are seen as representing nature’s depth-essence, this again forms a evolutionary consciousness and life-centered vision of nature.

MECHANICAL
Machines then and again no longer bring out or express a “discovering” of nature’s quintessence, nor the related mechanical principles via mathematical formulation as supposedly representing the laws of nature (Newton’s Principia Natualis Mathematica that guided the Industrial Revolution). They rather represent a math-constructed, and actually non-objective, culturally-created ideology for the depths of nature.  Because math symbols point us to an exactly opposite essence in a reversal illusionnature simply by being symbols for how to separate all elements of consciousness, it follows then that we can predict unavoidable problems arising, especially with aggressive, self-certain global applications. These problems can be extremely serious. As I see it, they may actually threaten life’s long-term sustainability on Earth. The dilemmas include the development of  atomic weapons plus a level of global chemical pollution that yields ubiquitous toxic residues. These can cause, among other things, the present pandemics of cancer.

UNDERMINING CONSCIOUSNESS
Chemical cocktails bring out and represent this mathematical ideology and generally do not  support consciousness or life in nature and ourselves. Thus drug-based medical care merely can mask surface symptoms (in lieu of depth-healing) while there is a simultaneous undermining of consciousness.

COMPOST HEAP
A compost heap or where all possible plants may be thrown in to disintegrate and later reintegrate  to form new living plants, symbolizes an unbroken circle of unity in nature. However, throw in any large random mix of chemicals to test the whole math-based vision which creates synthetic chemicals and the circle is broken. Life in the heap dies. We see this with super-toxic waste sites. Nature’s premier unity is violated. For example, Monsanto’s Roundup is symbolic of the modern thrust that kills what is green around it.

EXTINCTIONS
Since the 17th century, we have followed a death-delivering or “thanoptic” vision of nature.  The proof is in the pudding. Life extinctions on earth have skyrocketed. It is predicted that half of all species will be dead and gone forever by the end of this century. We are destroying Eden.

HEALTH DECLINING
In regard to the healing arts or where healing connects us to wholeness and awakens consciousness,  the mechanical approach fails.Thus surgery, which cuts the body apart, is not a true depth-healing/connective modality nor is the prescribing of chemical drugs or radiation. Again the proof is in the pudding as health pandemics (cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and other ailments) are on the rise.

COMMERCIAL SOCIETY
A commercial society is one where monetary (math-bound) relationships dominate. It doesn’t matter who owns the means of production, (corporate or socialist rulers), not if they both follow the same essential vision of the 17th century and at the expense of  the earth.  The underlying worldview has not changed an iota. It is not life-centered. It is not concerned or knowledgeable  about what is consciousness to help evolve our lives. At the same time, socio-political relationships have suffered intensely as a result. For example, the single person living alone is now the  largest growing social statistic. At the same time the political arenas are ever more corrupted by monetary influences, in capitalist and socialist societies, that have both consolidated and merged their power and influence internally and externally around the globe.

GLOBAL MIND CHANGE
The GREAT NEWS is that we can turn around all our greatest health, environmental, social and politically trends by making a global mind change. This means changing the deepest soul of our culture. Such a change occurred  in the 17th century or in the shift from the Biblical to the current math-bound view. This was triggered by the discovery of an external reversal illusion by Copernicus (helio rather than geo-centricity) and corroborated  by Galileo. We really need a similar global mind change.This is because our vision actually reverses, in my experience, the universal essence of nature – life and consciousness – and thereby creates a looming “culture of death” This is not something to take lightly. What is consciousness and derivatively what is life are among  the most important if not the most important of all questions to ask in our times. This, therefore, needs to be answered with the greatest of possible knowledge and the deepest of wisdom.