From Science to God by Peter Russell

“The more souls who resonate together the greater the intensity of their love, and,
mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.” – Dante Alighieri

“When I discover a teaching that resonates with my inner knowing, clarifies my

understanding of the mind, or adds helpful elements to my inner practice, I quite
naturally integrate it into my own thinking. This is reflected in the ideas and
insights I later share with others, which may resonate with their own thinking and
clarify their own understanding. We are fine-tuning each other’s comprehension
of the essential spiritual wisdom, drawing each other closer to a common
appreciation of our inner worlds.” – Peter Russell

As I was reading Peter Russell’s brief book (129 pages), I felt very much about
his ideas, especially in the first half, as I’ve quoted from him above. “When
science sees consciousness to be a fundamental quality of reality, and religion
takes God to be the light of consciousness shining within us all, the two world
views start to converge.” My own explorations of mind & spirit prepared me to
appreciate his elegant association of light with consciousness, which I can now
incorporate into my own evolving understanding of Cosmic Consciousness.
Recipient from the University of Cambridge (UK) of an honors degree in
theoretical physics & experimental psychology, Russell completed a post-
graduate degree in computer science (there he conducted “some of the early work
on 3-dimensional displays, presaging by some twenty years the advent of virtual
reality”). “Numbers … were to me magical…. Most intriguing of all was how the
whole world of mathematics unfolded by the simple application of reason. It
seemed to describe a preordained universal truth that transcended matter, time,
and space. Mathematics depended on nothing, and yet everything depended on it.
If you had asked me then whether there was a God, I would have pointed to
mathematics.” Afterward he studied meditation & Eastern philosophy in India,
which prepared him for research into the neurophysiology of meditation at the
University of Bristol. At his website www.peterussell.com I read further: “Peter
Russell is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, of The World Business
Academy and of The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The
Club of Budapest.”
“If we want to find God, we have to look within, into deep mind – a realm
that Western science has yet to explore,” Russell asserts: “I believe that when we
delve as fully into the nature of mind as we have into the nature of space, time,
and matter, we will find consciousness to be the long-awaited bridge between
science and spirit.”

In expanding our world view to include consciousness as fundamental to the

cosmos, this new model of reality not only accounts for the anomaly of
consciousness; it also revalidates the spiritual wisdom of the ages in
contemporary terms, inspiring us to dedicate ourselves anew to the journey of
self-discovery.

At times the second half of the book became a little too fuzzy with new-
ageishness for me – e.g., after stating that “When we stop doing all the things that
obscure the peace that is there at our core, we find that what we have been
seeking all along is there, waiting silently for us,” he quotes from Epictetus:
“People are disturbed not by things, but the view they take of them.” Some
“things,” regardless of the view we take of them, are dangerous, potentially fatal.
One cannot face a hurricane or tornado, a flood or earthquake, famine or disease,
a hungry lion or marauding tribesmen pillaging one’s village, with equanimity.
Attempting to perceive oneself through the eyes of the beast or a murderous
enemy does nothing to quell the trembling soul. Even if one is at peace with the
prospect of death, the pain & suffering of being torn to bits or tortured before
finally dying, can’t be easily dismissed.
“God is often said to be the creator and the source of all creation,” writes
Russell: “So is consciousness.”

The faculty of consciousness is … the only absolute, unquestionable

truth. Whatever is taking place in my mind, whatever I may be thinking,
believing, feeling, or sensing, the only thing I cannot doubt is consciousness.
God, likewise, is often said to be the one absolute truth.
God is universal. So is the faculty of consciousness. It is a primary
quality of the cosmos, an intimate aspect of all existence.
Like God, consciousness is omnipresent.

The central mystery, which eventually led to his re-conceptualization of the

existing metaparadigm of our comprehension of the cosmos, was the question: “How can
something as immaterial as consciousness ever arise from something as unconscious as
matter?” Russell employs an analogy to demonstrate his concept of the faculty of
consciousness: “The faculty of consciousness can be likened to the light from a video
projector. The projector shines light on to a screen, modifying the light so as to produce
any one of an infinity of images. These images are like the perceptions, sensations,
dreams, memories, thoughts, and feelings that we experience–what I call the ‘contents of
consciousness.’ The light itself, without which no images would be possible, corresponds
to the faculty of consciousness.”

We know all the images on the screen are composed of this light, but we
are not usually aware of the light itself; our attention is caught up in the images
that appear and the stories they tell. In much the same way, we know we are
conscious, but we are usually aware only of the many different perceptions,
thoughts and feelings that appear in the mind. We are seldom aware of
consciousness itself.

“The underlying assumption of the current metaparadigm is that matter is

insentient,” Russell begins his explication of the futile attempts of scientists &
philosophers to explain how from purely material processes consciousness could
emerge: “In one way or another, they are attempting to accommodate an anomaly
of consciousness within a world view that is intrinsically materialist. As happened
with the medieval astronomers who kept adding more and more epicycles to
explain the anomalous motions of the planets, the underlying assumptions are
seldom, if ever, questioned. I now believe that rather than trying to explain
consciousness in terms of the material world, we should be developing a new
worldview in which consciousness is a fundamental component of reality.”
Our inner reality as human beings is much less than physical reality &
much different from the inner realities of other species. “Other species experience
qualities of which we know nothing.” Russell offers numerous examples, from
dogs to dolphins to reptiles.

Dogs, for example, detect much higher frequencies of sound than we do,
and their sense of smell is estimated to be a million times more sensitive than
ours. If we could put ourselves in a dog’s mind we would find ourselves in a
different world. Imagine what it might be like to be able to detect the scent of a
person hours after they have passed by, and to be able to follow that scent,
distinguishing it from hundreds of others, for many miles…. With their highly
developed echolocation abilities, dolphins experience qualities of which most of
us know nothing. When a dolphin perceives me with its sonar, it does not
perceive a solid body. Its sonar image is more like the ultrasound scans used to
monitor the fetus during pregnancy. A dolphin can sense the shapes and
movements of my internal organs. The beating of my heart, the churning of my
stomach and the state of my muscles are all visible to the dolphin mind. It sees
my inner reactions as clearly as I see the frown on a person’s face…. Most
snakes have organs sensitive to the infrared range of the electro-magnetic
spectrum, and so "see" the heat emitted by their prey. Bees see in the ultra-violet
range, and are sensitive to the polarization of light. Sharks, eels and other fish
can detect minute changes in electrical fields. The realities that they construct
contain qualities totally unknown to human experience.

Before I came to the following passages, I wondered: Does lifeless matter

“sleep” & eventually “awaken”? From his intuition that “The alternative is that
the faculty of consciousness is a fundamental quality of nature,” Russell makes
the leap to: “Consciousness does not arise from some particular arrangement of
nerve cells or processes going on between them, or from any other physical
features; it is always present.”

If the faculty of consciousness is always present, then the relationship

between consciousness and nervous systems needs to be rethought. Rather than
creating consciousness, nervous systems may be amplifiers of consciousness,
increasing the richness and quality of experience. In the analogy with a video
projector, having a nervous system is like having a lens in the projector. Without
the lens there is still light on the screen, but the images are much less sharp.
In philosophical circles the idea that consciousness is in everything is
called panpsychism [or panexperientialism, meaning that everything has
experience]... Its basic tenet is that the capacity for inner experience could not
evolve or emerge out of entirely insentient, non-experiencing matter. Experience
can only come from that which already has experience. Therefore the faculty of
consciousness must be present all the way down the evolutionary tree.
We know that plants are sensitive to many aspects of their environment–
length of daylight, temperature, humidity, atmospheric chemistry. Even some
single-celled organisms are sensitive to physical vibration, light, and heat. Who is
to say they do not have a corresponding glimmer of awareness? I am not
 implying they perceive as we do, or that they have thoughts or feelings, only that
they possess the faculty of consciousness; there is a faint trace of sentience. It
may be a billionth of the richness and intensity of our own experience, but it is
still there.
According to this view, there is nowhere we can draw a line between
conscious and non-conscious entities; there is a trace of sentience, however
slight, in viruses, molecules, atoms, and even elementary particles.

“God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and
awakens in man.” – Sufi teaching

“In much the same way as Copernicus’s insight turned our model of the
cosmos inside out,” Russell writes, “the distinction between the physical world
and our experience of the world turns the relationship of consciousness and the
material world inside out.”

In the current metaparadigm, consciousness is assumed to emerge from

the world of space, time and matter. In the new metaparadigm, everything we
know, including space, time and matter, manifests from consciousness.
We think the world we see around us is composed of matter–that the
stuff of the world is, for the want of a better word, matterstuff. As far as the
actual physical reality is concerned, this may be so–uncertain though we may be
as to the ultimate nature of this matterstuff. But the world we see around us is not
the physical world. The world we actually know, is the world that takes form in
our mind. And this world is not made of matterstuff, but mindstuff. Everything
we know, perceive, and imagine, every color, sound, sensation, thought, and
feeling, is a form that consciousness has taken on. As far as this world is
concerned, everything is structured in consciousness.

Matter is derived from mind or consciousness, and not mind or

consciousness from matter. – Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation

[The philosopher Immanuel] Kant argued that this was even true of space
and time. To us, the reality of space and time seems undeniable. They appear to
be fundamental dimensions of the physical world, entirely independent of my or
your consciousness. This, said Kant, is because we cannot see the world in any
other way. The human mind is so constituted that it is forced to construct its
experience within the framework of space and time. Space and time are not,
however, fundamental dimensions of the underlying reality. They are
fundamental dimensions of consciousness.

The eternally separate paths in Euclidean geometry of two seemingly

parallel worlds, science & spirit, suddenly appear to converge when perceived
through a brilliant new geometry. Russell relates on his fortuitous decision to
study physics in conjunction with psychology: “Theoretical physics took me
closer to the ultimate truths of the physical world while my pursuit of
experimental psychology was a first step toward uncovering truth in the inner
world of consciousness. Moreover, the deeper I went in these two fields, the
closer the truths of the inner and the outer worlds became.”
 The bridge that linked them was light.
Both relativity and quantum physics, the two great paradigm shifts of
modern physics, started from anomalies in the behavior of light. And both led to
radical new understandings of the nature of light. Light, it seemed, occupied a
very special place in the cosmos; it was in some ways more fundamental than
space, time or matter.

From his explorations of Eastern philosophy – “The one ‘I am’ at the heart of all
creation, Thou art the light of life,” from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad – Russell
began to perceive some uncanny similarities with Western science: “The more I
explored this inner light, the more I saw close parallels with the light of physics.”

Physical light has no mass, and is not part of the material world. The
same is true of consciousness; it is immaterial. Physical light seems to be
fundamental to the universe. The light of consciousness is likewise fundamental;
without it there would be no experience.
I began to wonder whether there was some deeper significance to these
similarities. Were they pointing to a more fundamental connection between the
light of the physical world and the light of consciousness? Do physical reality
and the reality of the mind share the same common ground–a ground whose
essence is light?

According to Russell, this appears to be the case. We are not beings who are
conscious; we are consciousness. “This core identity has none of the uniqueness of the
individual self, just the opposite–it is the same for all of us. Being beyond all attributes
and identifying characteristics, your sense of I-ness is indistinguishable from mine. The
light of consciousness shining in you, which you label ‘I’ is the same light that I label ‘I.’
In this we are one. I am the light. And so are you.” Similarly, he points out: “Every
photon of light is an identical quantum of action. The same is true of consciousness. The
light of consciousness shining in me, is the same light that shines in you – and in every
sentient being.”

Those wise ones who see that the consciousness within themselves is the same
consciousness within all conscious beings, attain eternal peace.
– The Katha Upanishad

“These parallels suggest that the physical world and the world of mind share a common
ground–a common ground that we experience as light,” Russell continues: “Monotheistic
religions call this common ground God–and, not surprisingly, this God has many of the
attributes and qualities of light.”

When we considered physical light from its own frame of reference, we found
that distance and time disappeared. The realm of light seems to be somehow
beyond space and time. Likewise, when we consider the nature of pure
consciousness, space and time disappear. In both cases there is only the ever-
present moment. In physics, light turns out to be absolute…. The new absolutes
are those of light – the speed of light in a vacuum [186,262 miles/sec] and the
quantum of action [the Planck constant of 6.62618 x 10-27 erg.secs] of a photon.
 Russell then considers Scripture in this new light. “God’s first command in
Genesis was ‘Let there be light,’ and from this light the whole of creation was born.”

It might, however, be more accurate to say, "the whole of creation is

born," for light underlies everything that happens. This is true in the physical
world, where every interaction involves the exchange of photons. And it is true in
the subjective realm, where the light of consciousness is the common ground of
every experience.
I am not suggesting that light is God, but that light may be the first
manifestation of the underlying ground of all existence, the subtlest level of
creation, the closest we can come to that which lies beyond all form. In the realm
of conscious experience, the pure self – the inner light that lies behind the
countless forms arising in the mind – is where we touch the divine. This explains
why many of those who have explored deep within and discovered their true
nature have made one of the most contentious and confusing of all mystical
claims – the assertion that "I am God."

“This sheds new light on the Biblical injunction ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’”
Russell flips the switch: “I do not believe it means: ‘Stop fidgeting around and recognize
that the person who is speaking to you is the almighty God of all creation.’ It makes
much more sense as an encouragement to still the mind, and know, not as an intellectual
understanding but as a direct realization, that the ‘I am’ that is your essential self, the
pure consciousness that lies behind all experience, is God.”

This concept of God is not of a separate superior being, existing in some

other realm, overlooking human affairs and loving or judging us according to our
deeds. God is in each and every one of us, the most intimate and undeniable
aspect of ourselves. God is the light of consciousness that shines in every mind.