Chapter Ten: Consciousness and Conscience: The Ethics of Enlightenment (2014)

The physicist Brian Greene explains how he first became interested in explaining the world of appearances in terms of physics. It was all due to mirrors. The multiple images reflected in the two mirrors in his bedroom created an illusion of realities that extended back as far as the eye could discern (2011: 3). He uses this picture to symbolise the possibility of infinite universes; yet the story could equally well shed light on the structure of different states of consciousness, each one overlapping the other and potentially available to those who are sufficiently aware to perceive-and experiencethem. Just as many children may have mirrors in their bedrooms, but not necessarily the clarity of awareness to these youthful flights of fancy as Greene puts it (2011:3), and devote a career to discover the exact physical laws that define those multiple universes. What's at the heart of the subject, he explains, whether there exist realms that challenge convention by suggesting that what we've long thought to be the universe is only one component of a far grander, perhaps far stranger, and mostly hidden, reality (2011: 5).If there was any doubt at the turn of the twentieth century, by the turn of the twenty-first, it was a foregone conclusion: when it comes to revealing the true nature of common experience is deceptive. [...] Through physical insight and mathematical rigor [... ] we've established that space, time, matter and energy engage in a behavioral repertoire unlike anything any of us have ever directly witnessed. (Greene 2011: vii)The fact that contemporary physics emphasises the hidden nature of reality, that is to say of the universe(s), defies philosophies based entirely on observable and is reminiscent of the Upanishadic notion that three fourths of the universe are unseen; only one fourth is manifest (see for exam- pie Rig Veda 10.90.4 and Chandogya Upanishad 3.12.6). This concept is further endorsed by suggestions that black holes, cosmic dust, and other current mysteries may occupy a great proportion-even ninety per cent-of the universe.In literary theory and fiction, the notion of or alternative universes is usually the domain of science fiction or fantasy. In more Earth-bound fiction, writers are still trying to emphasise the parallel realities of different cultures, races, and societies that co-exist (or should be able to co-exist) on our contemporary planet. Recent theories in literary and cultural studies involving gender, feminisms and masculinity highlight the individual and local, yet shed light on the necessary preoccupation with globalisation and transnationalism. To be part of today's cosmopolitan, globalised world is to be simultaneously aware of its increasing fragmentation (Appiah 2006)-a situation that calls out for a more widespread and profound understanding of the nature of consciousness and the need for raising individual and world consciousness. These cutting edge fora help reveal the concept of consciousness as both locatable and transcendental, both sub-atomic and galactic in scale.Consciousness, creative writing, and the of the Higgs bosonThe most recent excitement in the world of quantum physics-the discovery or indication of the existence of the Higgs Boson is not without relevance here. The Higgs boson is responsible for, or involved with, the process of spontaneous symmetry breaking of the unified field. Without this process, the fields (and particles) of matter and energy remain unmanifest (at the level of subatomic physics, mass and energy are interchangeable). The role of the Higgs Boson is to ascribe mass to the otherwise mass-less particles. Thus, without the Higgs Boson matter would have no mass. So the boson is involved in the process of manifestation, and the process through which the manifest world attains mass, and thus comes into existence as the observable creation. The observation or confirmation of the Higgs Boson will be regarded as confirming the standard model of the quantum fields, which is the commonly accepted theory of the fundamental quantum fields and their relationship to quantum gravity to provide a fully unified field theory of nature (Clements 2013). …