Fundamental awareness: A framework for integrating science, philosophy and metaphysics

ABSTRACT

The ontologic framework of Fundamental Awareness proposed here assumes that non-dual Awareness is foundational to the universe, not arising from the interactions or structures of higher level phenomena. The framework allows comparison and integration of views from the three investigative domains concerned with understanding the nature of consciousness: science, philosophy, and metaphysics. In this framework, Awareness is the underlying reality, not reducible to anything else. Awareness and existence are the same. As such, the universe is non-material, self-organizing throughout, a holarchy of complementary, process driven, recursive interactions. The universe is both its own first observer and subject. Considering the world to be non-material and comprised, a priori, of Awareness is to privilege information over materiality, action over agency and to understand that qualia are not a “hard problem,” but the foundational elements of all existence. These views fully reflect main stream Western philosophical traditions, insights from culturally diverse contemplative and mystical traditions, and are in keeping with current scientific thinking, expressible mathematically.

KEYWORDS:

• awareness
• complementarity
• consciousness
• cosmology
• emergence
• idealism
• monism
• mysticism
• philosophy
• process
• quantum physics

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful for figure art provided by Jill K Gregory, MFA, CMI (Manager, Academic Medical Illustrator, Mount Sinai Health System, New York, NY, USA) and for generous and constructive insights from Deepak Chopra, Subhash Kak, Bernardo Kastrup, and William Bushell.