A LITTLE BOAT

Important Disclaimer: "Bear in mind that what we deem mental or physical is a description we have come up with; in nature there is no distinction— everything simply exists as it is." -- Tom Bunzel

Schrodinger's Cat is out of the Bhag

The word 'Bhag' in the title is a Sanskrit term which has "17 different meanings in Sanskrit, ranging from sun, moon, beauty, fame, freedom to vagina!" (Rajendra Gupta) -- which makes it a particularly suitable, if somewhat obscure, pun with which to tease Schrodinger's famous cat out of the quantum rabbit hole... (continue)

'Atoms cannot be trusted. They make up everything.' -- Anon. (continue)

MOVEMENT, wouldn't you know that's where it starts

'You can't catch movement in the here and now, even though the here and now is reality. Do you see that movement as such is artificial?' -- Douwe Tiemersma, Professor of Advaita Philosophy

"The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts."
-- Werner Heisenberg, big daddy quantum physicist

"Take the Primum Mobile of the Ptolemaic astronomers, please. What do we do with our little souls as soon as they come in? We hang mobiles over their heads to lock in their attention. Welcome to space-time, kiddies, the entrainment starts right here." -- Sri Baba Ganoosh

If it moves, if it manifests, watch out, it can getcha! We are all the timeless observer. That's where we're looking FROM. Even to say that is misleading, even if it points at a contiguous truth, for the simple reason that nothing meaningful whatsoever may be attributed to that which is the active, ultimate observing principle looking through (not with) all eyes AND, ultimately, as all eyes.

Don't get mad at me. I didn't make a universe in which everything is distinct and nothing is separate.

Downstream from this ontically transcendent source, aggregates of sense modulated neural feedback loops hum in the human body creating a remarkable apparition -- a reflexively propagating sensorium that calls itself 'me,' taking itself seriously enough to at least generate a few good stories.

Similar neural loops also create a sense of independent existence for chickens, pigs, lambs and cows, which is why there's more suffering involved with killing and eating them than there is, say, with pulling a screaming carrot from the soil. (See: Cleave Backster's 'The Secret Life of Plants' for more data on screaming carrots).

Identifying this self-reifying egocentric apparition as one's true self, we (a.k.a. self-fixated Narcissus) lose touch with the formless, timeless awareness without which consciousness of the objective realm is not possible in the first place. Unblissfully ignorant of our prior true nature, we present as seven billion plus cases of mistaken identity, enjoying and suffering the consequences of attachment to what is impermanent, sometimes woefully so. Our suffering seems every bit as real as our confused sense of self.

Locking in our self-identity as Perceiver of Things, we remain strangely untouched by things. The most gentle, amiable little old lady can chow down on a tasty veal parmigiana without the slightest care for the agonies of a foreshortened life lying inert on her plate in a tangle of angel hair spaghetti. Yet, no object we perceive is separate from us. All 'stuff' out there arises within consciousness, as quantum physicists from Heisenberg to Goswami to Greene point out. How can we even label it mere stuff? It's within consciousness. It should humble us and fill us with wonder that we have no clue how any of what we perceive arises, nor from what it has arisen, nor its purpose in arising... healthy indeed the paradoxical realization that our potentials for wisdom and for delusion both seem limitless. Well, maybe the former prevails in the end. To cite Michael Kosok...

'Paradox and the simple fool of innocence;
Paradox Lost and the clever fool of delusion;
Paradox regained and the wise fool of illumination:'

NEWS FLASH

HIGGS BOSON LOCATED

IN TUMMY OF SCHRODINGER'S CAT

Sighting with a really big eye!

An article in The Journal of Science states that in our Milky Way galaxy alone, the number of planets like ours that are the right distance from their sun to support life is now calculated to be more than the number of people on earth. The current number stands at around 8.8 billion planets deemed capable of supporting carbon based life forms like ours. And that's in our galaxy alone! A recent German supercomputer simulation puts the number of galaxies in our universe at around 500 billion. And don't get me started on the nine different types of multiverses that current astrophysics literature describes, based on some very complex math. The idea that we are all alone in the multiverse may one day be deemed as deluded as the notion of a flat earth.

Is the so called solid world of matter the most fragile, least potent of all possible states?

"Physicists tell us that which we call a vacuum is actually saturated with “zero point energy,” one cubic centimeter—approximately the dimensions of a sugar cube—of which contains the energy equivalent of 10 to the 94th power grams of matter. For those of us not conversant with exponential mathematics, that amount far exceeds all the energy-as-matter contained in our galaxy, the Milky Way."
-- Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin

One begins to suspect that this physical universe which we take to be so all fired important, primary, challenging and REALITY DEFINING... is, in fact, the miniscule crest of a very tiny wave skirting an immense ocean of energies far too potent to appear in gross physical form. In 1936, the sage, Ramana Maharshi, had already pointed out that modern science was telling us that what we call matter is really just patterns of energy, and that it is consciousness which generates the defining contexts of experience.

Fun questions to ask in your next science class...

"The theoretical claim is made that space and time ‘began’ with the Big Bang. Yet it seems that the most obvious meta-physical questions raised by this theory do not so much as occur to physicists as questions. Examples: how can time as such be said to have a dateable beginning ‘in’ time? How can we speak of ‘dating’ the Big Bang or claim that everything ‘began’ when to speak of ‘beginnings’ already presupposes the existence of time. And if space too ‘began’ with the Big Bang, where exactly in space could it be said to have occurred? If the Big Bang is claimed to have occurred everywhere, simultaneously, through an instantaneous but on-going ‘expansion’ of space, not only is it forgotten that the very term ‘expansion’ already assumes the existence of space, but the question remains as to what exactly space is expanding into?"

-- Wilberg, Peter "The Science Delusion"

Questions that got me kicked out of high school physics class:

Does entropy make any sort of effort?

Why can't I see that which sees light?

When I touch my right index finger to a mirror, it's my left index finger in the reflection. Does this mean that left and right are conceptual and relative only and that there's actually nothing without those two qualifiers?

Advaitin Physics

T h e p a r t i c l e i s j i v a t m a n
T h e w a v e i s A t m a n
T h e S e l f , a s a l w a y s , i s P a r a m a t m a n

a chat with Sri Baba Ganooshji helping to clarify...

FRE: Would you please explain a bit what Maharaj means by the three phases of the unfolding of human consciousness?

GANOOSH: In a word, these are: Jivatman, Atman and Paramatman.

FRE: That doesn't help much. This is going on a website for westerners.

GANOOSH: Jivatman is the least evolved of the three. It describes a conditioned consciousness wherein I believe that I am nothing more than a tiny meat based body-mind set against a great big, largely indifferent universe.

FRE: That pretty much describes where I'm at right now.

GANOOSH: ... where everybody is at right now. Don't take it personally.

FRE: How can you blame anyone for thinking that? All first hand evidence screams in our faces that's who we are; that's ALL we are.

GANOOSH: Who said I was blaming anyone?

FRE: Sorry.

GANOOSH: When one realizes that one's mind and body are being lived moment to moment by a process that animates all life, one awakens to the Atman state of beingness. One tactily realizes that the Universal I AM is far more central to one's being than is the tiny dude who grunts and humps for three score and ten, then kicks the proverbial bucket.

FRE: How does one awaken from Jivatman to Atman?

GANOOSH: I don't know.

FRE: Excuse me?

GANOOSH: It is different for everyone. I am not running this show. Are you?

(pause)

FRE:  Okay, and the transition from Atman to Paramatman?

GANOOSH: Maharaj says, when it finally dawns that the Universal I AM animates the life and awareness of all beings, you abide in THAT. The shift is from Little Me trying to get somewhere to Big Me who is everywhere. You do not tell THAT what to do. How could you presume? From the POV of the little doubt riddled, egoic, agnostic me, we know dick all.

(Pause: through the cafe window, paramedics load a collapsed homeless person into an ambulance. FRE notices and asks...)

FRE: Where does the soul go when the body dies?

GANOOSH: Where does the ocean go when a fish dies? Abide in THAT, in the Universal I AM and let it instruct you. The more you let go into it, the more it teaches you. It is the inner mentor. It will take you beyond itself, beyond the Universal I AM, which is a paradox because you cannot go beyond the universal I AM and still maintain identity as a self-important self.

FRE:  Paramatman is the Absolute state beyond being and non-being?

GANOOSH: That is what Maharaj points to.

FRE: That seems a hell of a long way from where I'm at right now, let me tell you.

GANOOSH: Yet, the converse is true. Where you are right now is a long way from your natural state.

FRE: Okay, this is probably a good place to stop. Would you like to try one of their sesame-carob desserts?

GANOOSH: If it does not contain tofu.

He ain't heavy, he's my Boson

'Gravity Sucks', said a t-shirt I saw years ago. Suction requires mass. Physicists have calculated that the distribution of mass in our universe averages out to about six hydrogen atoms per cubic inch of space. As Brian Greene points out in 'Hidden Reality', if that cubic inch of space were expanded to the size of our earth, the amount of mass within that space would be the size of one rain drop. The universe is emptier than Dodger Stadium at World Series time.

Clearly, if matter were uniformly distributed at six atoms per cubic inch throughout the universe, there would be no stars, no planets, no life, no Viking helmets and no Monaco valets slicing Lamborghini tires in the casino parking lot. It seems that atoms, like people, tend to cluster together in large, dense groups that mysteriously give rise to all the observable stuff, including sentient life, that we presently Hubble-ogle in the universe. This observable mass amounts to about 27% of the total mass-energy, the other 73% being dark energy and dark matter. We call these 'dark' because we can't see them and because we know nothing about them, only that they're out there -- kind of like knowing that your eyes represent only about 27% of the eyes reading your personal email every day.

The fascinating thing is that when a big bunch of atoms get together, enough to form a massive thing like a planet, smaller clusters of local atoms are fiercely attracted to its center. If that attraction weren't occurring, the planet and all lesser clusters upon it would fly apart, having no sense of up or down, right or wrong, Republican or Democrat. Gravity sucks and life absolutely depends upon that sucking not missing a beat.

There are reasons why Physicists bequeath to elementary subatomic particles such odd monikers as 'strange' and 'charmed'. Gravity possesses even stranger charms. Consider: The closer one gets to the center of a very large gravitational field, such as that to be found at the core of a Black Hole, the more time slows down. Why should that happen? Isn't time an invisible, abstract no-thing that we make up to keep appointments from colliding or disappearing? How could time itself possibly change depending on the force of the sucking, to put it scientifically.

What if time slows down to no time at all at the center of of a black hole? Is that Eternity? Funny that it's the one place to which we are all naturally attracted. If we let go, we fall toward that center, and letting go is precisely what meditation teachers advise. Duality, to paraphrase Simone Weil, may be an unresolved tension between gravity and grace. Of course, grace involves believing in something descending (or pulling) from above and most of us don't believe in that. We do believe in something sucking from below because, hey, it keeps us bound to a nice solid surface and we seem to like bondage. Yet, we count as one of our proudest achievements, the building of rockets to break free of it, free of gravity, which raises the question, what on earth are we looking for?

(Venice, Italy, September 2013).

How to differentiate among artificial intelligence, conceptual intelligence and non-dual awareness -- some random notes based on reading 'The Quantum & The Lotus' (Ricard and Thuan) and Samuel Avery's, "The Buddha and The Quantum'

IBM's Deep Blue computer beat world champ, Gary Kasparov, at chess. The computer didn't know it was playing chess.

A concept cannot be formulated without simultaneously creating that which is not the concept, that which refutes or qualifies the concept, that which nullifies or contradicts the concept and that which supports the concept in embarrassing itself even further.

Non-dual Awareness has no need of a body, nor of a machine, nor of concepts. This pure subjectivity cannot be described. Countless brilliant theoreticians and researchers have yet to formulate a single convincing explanation of what it is.

Wokking The Planck

What if appearances were only apparent?

In one episode of the TV series, 'Through The Worm Hole' hosted by Morgan Freeman, a Berkeley Physics professor seriously proposes that we are living in a virtual reality, essentially no different from a computer simulated world, a video game landscape.

At the subatomic level, says the professor, everything is pixelated. Particles flash on and off like ones and zeroes in a binary computer world. If you've ever wandered around a computer SIM world like 'World of Warcraft' or 'Second Life' you know that each locale appears when you enter it. Your entering it, i.e., perceiving it, is integral to its process of appearing. When you teleport or perambulate your avatar to another area, the one you just left disappears into cyberspace, only to reappear if you go back. This, argues the prof, is how the real world works as well. That place you visited last summer? The room you just left? They vanish into quantum wave function land when you're not perceiving them, just like a SIM locale dissolving into cyberspace when you're not there. Our acts of perception play an integral role in concretizing the non-local programming, so to speak.

'Total nonsense!' I hear you cry. 'I know damn well my hubby is in his office at 57th and Bleer even though I can't see him.' Well, yes he is because you've just put your attention on him. Out of mind, out of sight and substance, says the good professor. And he goes even further, concluding that our entire world, down to every last campaigning person, scritchy insect and chlorophyllizing leaf, is a computer simulation created by our future god-like selves. The fact that our physics and computer technologies are rapidly reaching a threshold of proofs that would render such a wild hypothesis scientifically viable, only adds to the hair raising likelihood that he's right.

Of course, like most seemingly radical new ideas, the good professor's theory is neither wholly new nor wholly radical. It is, in essence, a technological variant of philosophy's theory of Phenomenalism, which proposes that things exist only in the act of perceiving them to exist. By a rather nifty coincidence, Bishop George Berkeley, the 18th century philosopher after whom the professor's university is named, is remembered for his theory of Subjective Idealism which holds that all objects are ideas in the mind and therefor exist only as they are perceived. If all these theories are correct, then we have to ask 'Where is Mind?'.

RECENT NEWS ITEM: PUMPING IRON AIDS YOUR BRAIN

If you want to give your aging brain added protection and even add points to your I.Q., you may need to work those weights. A new study found exercises that strengthen muscles can help stave off mental decline and even make your brain function more efficiently.

At last, a possible explanation for the secret shared by the world's smartest guys!

Not 3D + T, but 4D

For a long, long time -- or should I say, a long series of perceivable events -- many physicists have been laboring to point out what it means to view time as a fourth dimension of space. Meanwhile, many other physicists and the rest of us, carry on as though time remains some kind of independent variable that exists as an entity of some sort, if an invisible one. We think the ticking clock stands for something that's really HERE and THEN. In fact, all that's THERE is a bunch of motion and the ticking sound that measures agreed upon intervals which, in turn, enable us to keep track of the numerical order of ticks that events take to unfold. We call these tick aggregates 'time' and turn our attention to other matters, ignoring the fact that our perceptions are so contracted that we never fully catch up with what's happening right now. Much easier to pigeon hole it all into a past and future 'time line.'

The eight people having a conference call from the cities in this clock graphic are all vocally PRESENT to one another in THE NOW. Once, on a conference call, I pointed out this curiosity of being separated by hours and hours of something that doesn't actually exist. This was followed by a pause, then derision from someone who wanted to know what I was smoking, and a different reaction from a few others who found the sudden collapse of time differences into The Now rather disconcerting. Personally, I'm disconcerted about that all the time. I mean space.

In a recent paper that appeared in Physics Essays, Amrit Sorli, Davide Fiscaletti, and Dusan Klinar from the Scientific Research Centre Bistra in Ptuj, Slovenia, pointed out what some of the great scientific minds of the early 20th century have been trying to tell the rest of us slow pokes -- there is no time dimension! What we call time is but the appearance and order of motion of 3D quantum space events . Put more simply, the universe is timeless and pulling a rabbit out of a hat is child's play compared to pulling time out of space.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-04-scientists-spacetime-dimension.html#jCp

As Ouspensky pointed out long ago, in order to perceive three dimensions, the perceiver must already be in a fourth. Similarly, to perceive four, one must already be in the fifth. The true unified field theory will come about only with the marriage of mathematics and hard science with the insights of inner science adepts (visionaries, meditators) and this for the precise reason that, beyond our observable spatial continuum, higher dimensions either collapse our mathematics or require initiation into a different species of mathematical thinking; one that involves qualitative, as much as quantitative elaboration.

The ancient Greeks sat around on rocks and changed how we view the universe in a hundred different and exciting ways. Imagine what they could have accomplished if they'd had TV and smart phones!

THE NEW MUSEUM OF THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS, GREECE

Spend more than 15 minutes touring this museum
and you may well be seized by a mythopoetic morphogenetic field
that will pop the lid off your repressed psychic data
rendering dreams that will rock your world.

THE HIGGS BOSON IS THE DEVIL! latest CERN findings

Professor E. Pluribus Von Neutron, head of the Large Hadron Collider Facility at CERN in Switzerland told a crowded press room today that in all likelihood, the Higgs Boson is functionally, if not substantively, identical to the figure called the Devil or Satan in Christian Myth. In Von Neutron's own words, "Think about it. The entire universe is filled with something called a Higgs Field. This field is made up of countless little particles called Higgs Bosons which appear and disappear in nanosecond time frames. In their appearance phase, they slow down fundamental particles of matter. They act like those belts on the deck of air craft carriers that catch landing jets and slow them down.

What we call mass,or matter, is the aggregate force of the hindering effect of bosons on streaming particles. If there were no bosons, everything would be moving at the speed of light, happy and free, unfettered by mass.   No one likes this dense, massy stuff. It falls prey to entropy. It grows old, suffers and dies. It is the Devil's work. And, ironically, what do we do when we realize our terrible Higgs mediated afflicted state? We get all religious and go to mass! Bite my crank, y'know what I'm saying.

                                                                  FURTHER PROOF
The Higgs Boson was dubbed the 'God Particle' by a nervous publisher who would not go with physicist, Leon Lederman's, original title for his book which chronicled  the extraordinary frustrations encountered by scientists in the quest to find the elusive boson. Lederman had titled his work, 'The Goddamn Particle'.  Say no more.

Off Planet Text Messages

If you do anything based on perpetuating memory, you are dead to the degree that you do that only. Endless duration in time is the deluded version of eternity.

Practical communication serves practical purposes. Almost all other earth side communication is based on coping with the vital shock of finding oneself in a mortal meat body.
You are not the meat body. More specifically, not the meat body only. The difficulty in discerning this lies in the fact that those aspects of you which transcend the physical are not amenable to measurement or analysis because they are not entirely within the field of consciousness. Consciousness, as we presently know and love it, is so limited that we are normally aware of what is going on in only one brain at a time, i.e., the one we call MY brain.
Dependence on any person, Deity or agency for salvation or liberation guarantees the persistence of helplessness. This is how highly the Divine Process thinks of you, so to speak.

Messages presented by non-local meta-servers of the Jack Sarfatti Post-Quantum Conscious Computer Network, a Division of Binky Winlaw's Bhangra Band.

Attention equation buffs: Check out Dr. Jack Sarfatti for a walk on the Physics wild side.

The Showdown Between What Shows Up and What Doesn't

Science tells us that matter and antimatter must remain separate if they are to have any chance of surviving intact in this death wish universe where opposites attract. Why do I put it in that cheerful way? Well, if opposites attract then, matter and antimatter, having opposite electrical charges, are doomed by that attraction, for science also tells us that when a particle of matter and a particle of antimatter collide, they annihilate each other. But here’s the interesting point, in the process of annihilating one another, pure energy is produced.

Existing as pure energy… it sounds a lot better than mincing around as a particle of matter, scared stiff of bumping into that fatal attraction opposite.

Tai Situ Rinpoche:
“There is a good that transcends the duality of good and evil. No evil transcends that duality, for evil is the creation of duality in the first place.”

Let’s call the pure energy realm ‘Eden’ or non local equanimity. This energy can be converted into mass a.k.a. matter. Physicists have observed it happening in particle colliders. And take the Big Bang, please. What else but energy was being converted into all that mass in the biggest explosion of all time; an explosion so huge that the only event that could possibly match it would be Adam throwing up after he realized what was in that apple he just ate.

In sum, one can only wildly speculate… if pure energy is produced when matter and antimatter collide and annihilate one another, then just possibly, we might be imposing a biased take on the event by referring to it as a collision. Sure, it’s destructive from our side of the fence where Mr. Matter and Ms. Antimatter really matter, but from the Pure Energy perspective, it looks kinda like nondual bliss.

entangled photons: not married just good friends

Uncertain Principals

"While the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics says that what we know is only our interpretation of reality (including the reality of the scientist), the interpretation does not, however, doubt the reality of the scientist who makes such an assertion."
-- Prof. B.S. Sarma, Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
-- Nietzsche ( 40 years before the Copenhagen Interpretation was formulated).

Beyond the Higgs Boson

Not to be outdone by a physicist from Scotland, proponents of Supersymmetry Theory say their math proves the existence of at least five additional subatomic particles of equal importance to the Higgs Boson.

The Funk Fermion
While the Higgs functions to slow down streaming particles, creating mass, or at least the sensation of same, the Funk Fermion, first postulated by Wilfred D. Funk of MIT's Block, Tackle and Lever Substrate Lab, performs no known useful function in our space-time continuum. Its presence indicates strongly, however, that our continuum rubs gnosis with a dimension presided over by chattering creatures called Machine Elves. DMT psychonauts regularly report meeting these verbose elves at what they call 'the cosmic membrane in the hall.'

The Mavis Dupuis Meson
Named after the French Mistress of Belgian particle physicist, Aldebrecht De Smet, this as yet undiscovered shadow particle is the subject of heated conjecture and peremptory dismissal. The Dupuis's unique testo-rotary spin participates in turning on ATP energy cycles in mammalian cells, as well as neuropeptides and hormone precursors required to optimize scrotal endocrine pathways. In short, without the Mavis Dupuis Meson, no animal would get horny. An anonymous European philanthropist has offered 10 million Euros to De Smet if he can find a way to bulk concentrate the mesons into a suppository.

The Fenlo Baryon
The Baryon, actually a Hadron, actually composed of Quarks, is so infinitesimally small that 38 trillion of them could pass through an air port metal detector wearing size-scaled Beyonce charm bracelets and not set off the alarm. One theory says that the Fenlo makes up 65.3% of the Dark Matter that makes up over 94% of the matter in our universe. No one accepts that theory. Wait five years.

The Squark Negason
While quarks have not been observed directly, theoretical predictions based on their existence have been confirmed in experiments -- another fine quantum physics example of stuff that can't be proven to exist somehow proving that it does. A Squark, on the other hand, defined as a quark with an electric charge of -1/3, a mass 988 times that of an electron and a strangeness of -1, has neither been observed directly nor proven experimentally. If it had not been for the fact that one guest hosted Leno last week, their existence might well have been denied once and for all and their Wikipedia entry deleted... eventually.

QUARK IN THE MACROCOSM "AS BELOW,SO ABOVE" -- Hermes Bohr

The Minsky Chronoson

First proposed by Prof. Tenesmo Minsky of the St. Petersburg Laser Holography & Watch Repair Institute, the theory is that all space in our universe is pervaded by a Minsky Field. Minsky Chronosons appear and disappear millions of times per second, functioning to slow down the subjective sense of the passing of time. Initial experiments have found high concentrations of Chronosons in exam halls, airports and dental offices. Much work remains to be done.

CERN Not An Oil Pipeline
-- Swiss Government Reacts to Greenpeace Claim

Is it Time to Drill in the Dark?

Data from NASA's Fermi Telescope suggests that WIMPs make up almost all of the universe!

Standing for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles WIMPs, like every other sub-atomic thingy in the Cosmos, appear to behave like a wave, a particle or a DMT elf, depending on whether the scientist studying them is a liberal, a conservative or an adventurous mycologist. The interesting thing is that, however they exist, WIMPS appear to make up about 96% of the universe. Imagine that much matter and energy lurking invisible, while everything we can see, grab, use, exploit, eat and hump is less than 4 measly percent! Can you even begin to fathom the oil and gas resources that must be oozing through that 96 percent?! And none of it owned by Saudis, Iranians or Russians. What are we waiting for? Carpe Oleum, amigos!

painfully obvious things we ignore

What we call solid matter at the macro level appears to be energy moving in various patterns the closer we look at it. The more minutely these energies are studied, the less material they appear to be, to the point where -- at the threshold of the wave function -- they appear indistinguishable from thought or consciousness.

Whether one subscribes to the view that complete determinism governs events in our universe or, on the other hand, that randomness (the chance success of a creative play of accidents) is the disorder of the day, what's the difference? If the variables governing both are infinite, or, in more Buddhist terms, continually co-emergent from beginningless interdependent causation -- then both randomness and determinism are relativized to the point of emptiness.

No science, including neuroscience, offers anything even close to a full account of the phenomenon (or noumenon) of conscious experience. How many neural processes do we have to map before it becomes obvious that such mapping cannot, by dint of the very direction in which it applies its tools, offer up an explanation of subjective experience? Even the term 'subjective experience' is something of an oxymoron. Once anything is experienced, it is an object.

'Let me remind you
That the perceived
Cannot perceive.'
- Huang Po (ca. 845 AD)

And this, from a brilliant scholar whose work deserves to be much better known.... Upon a bit of reflection, it will be seen how appropriate it is to post this on a page featuring quantum physicists and Zen adepts:

"One of the most fundamental and pernicious effects of the polarized cosmology we've inherited is our inability to discriminate among various kinds of subtle realities. We think things are simple - or- we think they are merely complex. Our senses for the subtle have atrophied. We recognize as fully real a very limited range of phenomena. We have no sense of depth, no sense of the positive realities of mystery and enigma. Thoughts have no body; bodies have no presence. We are unable to understand either matter or intellect, let alone their relations. This unknowing ignorance is catastrophic."

-- Tom Cheetham, 'Anima Mundi Essays and The World Turned Inside Out.'

Only the insubstantial comes and goes.
Long live the insubstantial.

Any unified field theory worthy of the name has to include Awareness as foundational. Everything else is an object of awareness, including thoughts ABOUT awareness. Awareness is too present to be noticed by minds that insist on finding some THING by means of which to construct a theory that satisfactorily accounts for the non-reducible thingness of things. Subatomic particles that promise to be that thing, routinely vanish into non-material energies when we search them out with ever more precise instruments. Instead of noticing the obvious, we shift to calling these energies THINGS... which they are, but not for reasons most scientists have postulated so far, with such notable exceptions as Richard Feynman, Amit Goswami, Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Erwin Schrödinger, Samuel Avery and this guy...

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein

... all of whom exhort us to notice that the illusion consists, in no small part, in mistaking the appearance of things for actual things. This may be true even of Consciousness itself:

VISITOR:                Why does consciousness come and go?
NISARGADATTA:    It doesn't. It appears to come and go.

Nisargadatta then goes on, at great length, to point out the profound importance of having, at least, some sense or intuition of that which notices the coming and going of appearances. No instrument will ever find that, for it is precisely that which looks through all instruments and through all conceptual minds that ruminate about what they see through instruments.

"The existence or non-existence of phenomena within the domain of the empirical cannot be established unless they rest within consciousness. In fact, phenomena which rest within consciousness are apparent. And the fact of their appearing is itself their oneness with consciousness because consciousness is nothing but the fact of appearing."   -- Abhinavagupta, 10th Century CE.