Lecture 5: The Evolution of Consciousness: A Window on to Invisible Worlds?

The regularities of the physical world, be they the Euclidean geometry of three dimensional space or the three degrees of freedom shown by terrestrial illumination, strongly indicate (as Roger Shepard has shown) that there must be universal principles of mind.

Such a conclusion is also consistent with the striking convergences amongst sensory systems. Ironically, this only exacerbates the problem of understanding consciousness, a question that represents one of the great grave-yards of ambition. The debate continues, but are we asking the wrong sort of question, albeit one that if correctly answered will also sound the death-knell to materialism?

The evidence from evolutionary convergence, not least in terms of intelligence and music, is that the trajectories towards consciousness are embedded in a universe that in some ways is strangely familiar, where personal knowledge (to use Polanyi’s phrase) is valid, but one that has become increasingly alien to main-stream science (except perhaps at the wilder fringes of string theory). At present all attempts to understand consciousness remain stubbornly refractory, but suppose that before matter there was mind. What are the consequences?

Could it be the immaterial is just as real, that our little world is just one peninsula in a far larger universe? One clue that this might be correct comes from the “splintered light” of language, and Owen Barfield’s neglected ideas set out in his Poetic diction. So it may transpire that consciousness itself is more like an “antenna”, a way of finding our way into other realities, including the spiritual. If so, then the many curious stories of other worlds may be far from being quaint legends.

This lecture has been recorded on MP3: