written 9 November, 2025
published 16 November, 2025
My entire life, I have been a left brained, plan-acholic, living primarily in the world of concept. I have been educated in science and trained as a mechanical engineer, with a rewarding career. But I am also driven by curiosity about the world. Over time, I became aware of the limitations within the western scientific paradigm, specifically, the consideration of consciousness.
I define consciousness as the combination of awareness and volition: input and output.
Western science had to dig out from under the lethal dogma of the Church. In order to thrive, science limited itself to just objective reality. This perspective of the physical world eventually prevailed, but abandoned serious consideration of subjective reality. Consciousness, if considered at all, was described as nothing more than a consequence of material complexity, a view still widely held in western biology today.
A little over a century ago, two revolutions in western thinking shook the world: psychology and quantum mechanics. Psychology recognizes that what we think affects our experience of life, and that our waking, self-conscious, mind is but a small part of a larger constellation, containing individual and collective subconsciousness, and an overriding super consciousness. Quantum mechanics recognizes material reality is both a particle and a wave, arising from a vast unity of energy. We experience particles or waves depending on how we choose to examine the world. Consciously observing physical reality changes it, challenging the assumption that consciousness arises from matter.
Eastern science understands consciousness transcends material reality. I suspect this is because eastern religious thinking is more inclusive, accepting there may be many understandings of the divine. This is not to say there are no eastern fundamentalist fanatics, but there is more institutional tolerance than in the west.
Our experience of material reality can be described by four dimensions, three of space and one of time, but modern physical theories consider 10 or more dimensions, most of them beyond our direct experience. Chaos theories of disordered physical systems postulates stable patterns in higher dimensional fields. There is more to the world than just our waking experience.
Each level of dimension has a new quality associated with it, not available to lower dimensions. A line (one dimension) has extension, while a plane (two dimensions) also has area. Volume has density, and time adds endurance. We can consider consciousness the quality of a higher dimensional form, which transcends and includes all the lower dimension forms we experience as matter. Thus, material reality resides within consciousness.
Remember, what is normally considered consciousness is really only the small self-conscious part of the larger quality of consciousness. Whomever we think we are, that is actually only a part of something much larger.
But this is all just words: logic chopping. Is there any objective proof of any of this?
In 2004, Masaru Emoto wrote the "The Hidden Messages In Water", which chronicled his efforts to demonstrate that proof. As described in Wikipedia, "his water crystal experiments consisted of exposing water in glasses to various words, pictures, or music, then freezing it and examining the ice crystals' aesthetic properties with microscopic photography". The resulting pictures showed water exposed to positive thoughts and words formed elaborate, symmetrical crystals, while water exposed to negative thoughts and words formed asymmetrical, relatively simple crystals. He found the two most positive words were Love and Gratitude, qualities that show up in all spiritual traditions.
Of course, mainstream science has dismissed this work as pseudoscientific and eccentric, the same dogmatic rejection early scientists received from the Church, but without the lethal consequences, which shows some form of progress.
I have chosen to embrace Emoto's work, and live my life as an experiment. I am grateful to live where it still rains each season. I feel drawn to experience the rain as often as I can, especially after the long dry summer. This last week, during our first strong rainfall, I sat on our covered deck, thanking the rain with each inbreath, and blessing it with each outbreath. I could hear the rain pounding and experience the energy of the storm. I imagine this blessed rain flowing into the groundwater, and on downstream, enhancing everything it touched, and could feel my connection with all life.
Does it matter? Who knows. Objective proof is impossible. But I feel better, perhaps helping heal the planet, if just a tiny bit. Imagine if we all did this?
Crispin B. Hollinshead lives in Ukiah. This and previous articles can be found at cbhollinshead.blogspot.com.
