Peter Russell and Eckhart Tolle on What is Consciousness?

Peter has a background in science. He did a PhD and his supervisor, I think, was Stephen Hawkins in Cambridge. And so because he combines deep insight into spirituality with knowledge about science, which I don't really have, I think we can have a useful conversation and I can ask you a few innocent, childlike questions to do with science. Well, perhaps we can start with the most fundamental question really of the nature of consciousness. Now, as far as I know, science or scientists really don't know much about consciousness. It's not really something that they are concerned with or some may even deny that even there is such a thing as consciousness. And consciousness perhaps would be considered by scientists as an epiphenomenon, so to speak, of brain activity, a byproduct of chemical reactions in the brain or molecular activity in the brain. And that may be a very limited view. So maybe you can talk a little bit about whether in how I see, how you as a scientist and a spiritual person see the nature of consciousness, whether it is produced by the brain or whether the brain is an aspect of consciousness through which consciousness flows. Big questions. It's actually the question that started me off years ago on this quest when I was at Cambridge, that whole mind-body philosophical problem. I think I've come to the conclusion there's two questions here and they get confused. And this is the problem with scientists is they think there's one question, which is does the brain produce consciousness? One question is how does the brain modify consciousness? And there's no doubt whatsoever that what goes on in the brain affects our consciousness. So if I'm solving a mathematical problem, there's a certain thing going on in the brain. If I'm falling in love, something else is happening. If I'm looking at a sunset, something else is going on. And that's clearly established. We don't know what it, our understanding of the brain is still like a fraction of a percent of what goes on. And maybe in 20, 30, 40, 50 years, we will understand the brain enough to know what goes on when we have a particular experience. But that isn't doubted. Then the question is, does the brain also produce the faculty, the capacity to have an experience? Does it produce the knowing itself? And I think most scientists, like most people in the world, don't distinguish between the contents of experience, the forms that are arising in the mind, and the capacity for experience, just that knowingness. Yes, in other words, one could say, the terminology I use, consciousness and the content of consciousness. Yes, yes, yeah. I used, I talk about content and the capacity, the ability to have an experience. We're talking the same thing, that knowingness, the awareness. And because they are caught in the contents, that's what they study, and probably in their own lives, they have not had the opportunity to step back and just noticed the knowingness that's always there. They just see it's one problem, one question. How does the brain create the experience rather than how does the brain condition experience? But where does the knowingness come from? Where does the consciousness come from? To me, that's the interesting question. And I think it's even wrong to use the word consciousness because we make it a thing, we make it a noun. And as soon as we add ness to anything, we turn a quality or an attribute into something which we can talk about. It's useful for language. Yes, it becomes an object again. Exactly. A mental object. Yes. But so, can one talk about it all? Is there a better word that doesn't have that? That the Tao or? Well, I think we should not use nouns for it because as soon as we use a noun, whether it's Tao, consciousness, awareness, whatever, as soon as we use a noun, we're making it a thing which implies we're beginning to look for another object, another form of perception. And so even the question, what is consciousness, which they're asking, to me is a wrong question because it's like we are knowing, we are conscious, then we're asking, what is it? We're looking for something other than what we are. The question immediately makes it into an object again. So I prefer to use verbs for it. There is. So let's see what that sounds like. Well, I am aware and there is a wearing. I mean, what I know is there is, we could call it a wearing. There is experiencing. Conscious, consciousing doesn't work quite, but. Well, a wearing, so you have to create a new word to get rid of the inherent error in nouns and so on. Yes, or even knowing. I mean, knowing is a word we do have. There is that knowing. I know my experience. There is this experience now, being here, talking to you, and there is the knowing of that experience. And that to me is, that's what we're referring to as consciousness. And that is, as you pointed out many times, that's what is always there that is unchanging, just that knowing or the knowingness.