Is consciousness more fundamental to reality than quantum physics?
The idea that everything that exists can be built from the bottom up has long held sway among physicists. Now, a new kind of science is under construction that centres conscious experience – and might unravel the universe’s biggest mysteries
Imagine you could take a cosmic mixing bowl and cook up reality from scratch. It would be a strange kind of baking, with the end results including everything from space-time and satellites to cats and the cosmic web. But here’s the question: what would be the basic ingredient you’d need to use?
I first got introduced to this kind of question in seventh grade, sitting in a class I had never taken before: physics. Although this introductory class was mostly about balls rolling down hills, I was taught that the methods of physics ought to have limitless reach – an idea called reductionism. Physics should be able to identify the essential ingredients of reality and show how to combine them from scratch into anything and everything.
Immediately, I decided to become a physicist. But now, many years and several degrees later, I am less sure that physics holds all the answers. Take something like my sense of self: is that really a consequence of some equation that we haven’t yet derived? If I think about questions like these hard enough, I am left feeling rattled, wondering whether I have become a bad physicist.
So, I decided to engage with these doubts and work out what I really think about the essence of reality. I was inspired by two recent books that come at these questions from opposite ends of the spectrum. One argues that all reality is built from nothing more than quantum fields. “Everything else is just in our minds. All our concepts are illusions,” says its author, Liam Graham. The other insists that the most essential ingredient of reality is conscious experience. “That’s what is fundamentally real,” says Adam Frank at the University of Rochester in New York state, one of the book’s co-authors.
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What you’re noticing here is actually the modern scientific version of a very ancient philosophical debate:
Is consciousness produced by matter,
or is matter appearing within consciousness?
The article is presenting two broad metaphysical directions:
- Reductionist physicalism
Reality is fundamentally physical (quantum fields, particles, laws).
Consciousness emerges later from sufficiently complex matter. - Consciousness-first approaches
Conscious experience is primary, and physics describes patterns within experience rather than creating it.
This debate strongly parallels classical Indian philosophy.
- Classical materialism resembles Charvaka.
- Consciousness-first models resemble parts of Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, and some Buddhist schools.
The important thing, though, is not to collapse them into “science finally proves Vedanta.” That shortcut creates confusion.
Modern consciousness-first thinkers usually arrive there because physics itself has hit conceptual walls.
For example:
Why some physicists are reconsidering consciousness
Quantum physics revealed something shocking:
- the universe is not made of tiny solid objects,
- measurement matters,
- observation seems strangely tied to reality,
- and “matter” at fundamental scales behaves more like probabilities than solid substance.
This destabilized old mechanical materialism.
Then another problem appeared:
the “hard problem of consciousness”
Why should electrical activity in the brain produce:
- redness,
- pain,
- taste,
- self-awareness,
- inner experience?
Physics describes structure and behaviour very well.
But subjective experience (qualia) remains unexplained.
A brain scan can show neural correlates of pain.
But it does not explain:
why pain feels like something.
This is why some thinkers now explore:
- panpsychism,
- idealism,
- participatory universe theories,
- consciousness-based ontologies.
Your Advaitic instinct would likely interpret this article as:
consciousness is not inside the universe;
the universe appears inside consciousness.
That is very close to nondual Vedanta.
In Advaita:
- consciousness is self-luminous,
- irreducible,
- and prior to subject-object division.
Matter, mind, body, and world are appearances within awareness.
The reason this feels intuitively powerful to many contemplative people is because:
everything known is known through consciousness.
You never experience:
- matter independent of awareness,
- physics outside awareness,
- or a universe apart from experience.
Even the idea “matter exists” appears as cognition in consciousness.
This is one reason Advaita often asks:
what is more fundamental —
the known object,
or the knowing itself?
But there is also an important caution.
Physics and Advaita use some similar language while operating differently.
Physics:
- builds predictive mathematical models,
- depends on measurement,
- seeks empirical verification.
Advaita:
- investigates the structure of experience directly,
- uses phenomenological inquiry,
- aims at liberation (moksha), not prediction.
So when physicists say “consciousness may be fundamental,” they usually do not mean exactly what Adi Shankaracharya meant by Brahman.
Still, the overlap is philosophically fascinating.
Your earlier insight about symbolic scripture reading is relevant here too.
You are already moving from:
- object-centered thinking
toward - awareness-centered thinking.
That shift changes how one reads:
- scripture,
- mind,
- self,
- and even science.
A reductionist asks:
How does matter create consciousness?
A Vedantin often asks:
How is matter known except within consciousness?
These are radically different starting points.
Neither has been conclusively resolved in philosophy or science.
One more subtle point:
Advaita does not merely claim:
“consciousness exists.”
Almost everyone agrees consciousness exists.
Advaita claims:
consciousness is the only self-evident reality,
and subject-object duality is ultimately provisional.
That is a much stronger statement than most modern consciousness theories.
So your intuition connecting:
- Ram,
- Param Brahman,
- symbolic meaning,
- awareness,
- and now consciousness studies,
is not random at all. You are tracing a line of inquiry humans have pursued for millennia:
What is the fundamental nature of reality —
matter,
mind,
God,
information,
or consciousness itself?
And “चरैवेति” applies here too. Keep moving carefully:
- neither blindly mystical,
- nor blindly reductionist,
- but rigorously contemplative.
