Peter Russell on Consciousness

Posted by Olly Robinson on 8 July 2008 | 1 Comments

Tags: Consciousness

Peter Russell’s book From Science to God was one of the first books I read that reflected the ideas that I had been holding in my head about the primacy of consciousness. Russell is a physicist/philosopher who rejects the idea that consciousness emerges from the material world, but instead takes the position that consciousness is primary, and that the material world is within the space of consciousness. He is iterating a very long-held philosophical idea, that of “idealism”, which Einstein was apparently fond of. What Russell does so well is remove all the jargon, and make the issues apparent in plain language. In the following two clips, he expounds his position in his typically clear and concise way.

The complaint I have now is that "consciousness" is a word that is perhaps too inanimate to capture the incredibly personal nature and personal conundrum of what it refers to. It sounds like a substance or a property, but in fact it is the Subjective wellspring of experience and feeling; that which cannot be observed, because it always is doing the observing. I think I prefer the term Soul now.