“What is Consciousness?”

00:07 The speaker, Edgar Mitchell, an Apollo 14 astronaut, had a powerful experience while coming back from the moon that caused him to focus on the nature of consciousness.

00:39 For 400 years, since Descartes’ philosophy of separating mind and body, the scientific community has not considered consciousness and the mind as proper subjects for scientific study.

01:06 However, in the late 19th century, quantum mechanics emerged, which is all about consciousness, and it has taken the entire 20th century and into the 21st century for this to be accepted.

02:02 The speaker uses the example of a mother’s intuition about her child to illustrate the concept of quantum entanglement and the fundamental role of consciousness in nature.

02:51 The speaker argues that we should now describe the universe in terms of matter, energy, and awareness (consciousness), rather than just matter and energy as in Newtonian physics.

…the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.