NOTE: I would not have been able to create this video without the incredible talent of all the artists who did all the (absolutely amazing!) celebrity impressions. I am forever grateful to all of them. Please check the credits section at the end of the video for references and links.
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~ Dolors ~
Introduction
33 celebrities disguised in well-known works of art read Deepak Chopra’s and Erwin Schrödinger’s philosophical musings. Will Professor Brian Cox pass the Cosmic Consciousness Test or will he end up being kicked inside the Big Black Hole? Can he manage to tell the difference between the words of physicist and Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger and those of his favourite foe, Deepak Chopra?
This video is a follow-up to "Brian Meets God". Click on the link below to watch it first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SafG5oPctjs
Warning: I made the test very tricky on purpose! I once came accross a website called Wisdom of Chopra: Random Deepak Chopra Quote Generator. The idea being that all the stuff that comes out of Deepak's mouth is nonsense, and can be easily replicated by a machine – it is quite funny actually. I am not a fan of Chopra, but me being me, I decided to challenge that view! This is the whole point of my channel: to push boundaries so we can see things from another perspective. And so these two videos were born!
We are often prejudiced towards the messenger and hence tend not listen to what they are saying; simply because we don't like them. It is very easy to classify certain ideas as nonsense when they come from someone we dislike. Chopra is such an easy target… And I understand why! (I can see the funny side too). However, Schrödinger is not such an easy target and have never heard Brian Cox rant about him like he does with Chopra! And yet, the ideas discussed in the quotes are practically identical. They are not New-Age mumbo-jumbo but very deep philosophical musings about the nature of reality, consciousness, identity, mind, life, free will, etc. Many of the ideas originate from Eastern traditions… as Schrödinger was very much into mysticism.
Food for thought Quotes cover these (very interesting!) topics of discussion: consciousness, life, free will and determinism, science, the self, God, philosophy of mind, the laws of physics, nature of identity, oneness, subject and object, subjectivity and science, the pitfalls of materialism, universal mind, the illusion of separation, etc…
Without further ado, here are the test questions!
Cosmic Consciousness Test: Who Said It… Deepak or Erwin?
1.
"You – and all other conscious beings as such – are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole."
2.
"At the core of existence, consciousness operates with no separation of observer, observed, and the process of observation. They come as a three-in-one package. The fallacy all along was to assume that the observer could be erased from the picture. He can’t."
3.
"A moderately satisfying picture of the world has only been reached at the high price of taking ourselves out of the picture, stepping back into the role of a non-concerned observer. […] The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it."
4.
"The unconscious reactive mind has very little strength or power. Regarding the overall philosophical question of free will – I don’t think the dichotomy of free will or determinism accurately captures the essence of our experience of reality."
5.
"Living matter, while not eluding the laws of physics as established up to date, is likely to involve other laws of physics."
6.
"I — I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt 'I' — am the person, if any, who controls the 'motion of the atoms' according to the Laws of Nature."
7.
“Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty."
8.
"Consciousness is the meeting place between perception and reality."
9.
"Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. There is only one thing and that which seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian Maya)."
10.
"Once we ask, 'Who am I?' it becomes evident that 'reality as given' doesn't suffice. […] The prejudice that science holds against all subjectivity is the result of Maya-based thinking. Having placed its trust in 'reality as given', science overlooks the self-evident fact that nothing can be experienced without consciousness.
11.
"Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."
12.
"Consciousness is fundamental. The world exists only in consciousness."
13.
"There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousness. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind."
14.
"You can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you… For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."
15.
"Thoughts, feelings, memories, perceptions, sensations. […] They are the sum total of everything that we call reality."
16.
"Situations seem to happen to people, but in reality, they unfold from deeper karmic causes. The universe unfolds to itself, bringing to bear any cause that needs to be included."
17.
"The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence."
18.
"The multiplicity is only apparent. […] The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way."
19.
"Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge… It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma."
20.
"Each of us has the indisputable impression that the sum total of his own experience and memory forms a unit, quite distinct from that of any other person. He refers to it as 'I'. What is this 'I’? If you analyse it closely you will, I think, find that it is just a little bit more than a collection of single data (experiences and memories), namely the canvas upon which they are collected."
21.
"The brain operates in time and space, having linear thoughts that are the endpoint of a selective filtering process. So whatever is outside time and space is inconceivable – unfiltered reality would probably blow the brain's circuits, or simply be blanked out."
22.
" 'I' usually refers to someone inside your skin, but it cannot be located the way the brain, liver, and heart can be located. […] So assuming that 'I' is inside your body is just that – an assumption – not provable as fact."
23.
"We have got used to localising the conscious personality inside a person's head […] It is very difficult for us to take stock of the fact that the localisation of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic, just an aid for practical use."
24.
"You cannot find the location of the one who decides to move your arm. You can find in the brain the execution of the command, but not the one who decides to move the arm."
25.
"There is no sight or sound 'out there' in the world […] no touch or taste, no beauty or ugliness, no sensation of light or objects. All these things are created in subjectivity, which is to say, they exist only in consciousness."
26.
"Colour and sound, hot and cold are our immediate sensations; small wonder that they are lacking in a world model from which we have removed our own mental person. […] The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist’s objective picture of light-waves."
27.
"No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors … This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory."
28.
"The observing mind is not a physical system […] Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the 'world of energy'."
29.
"Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist."
30.
"Memory creates the illusion of continuity. Both you and the universe are born anew every moment."
31.
"The scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously."
32.
"Science filters out and discards a huge portion of human experience – almost everything one would classify as subjective. Its model of external reality, the cornerstone of Newtonian physics, is as selective as the model which shapes a religious or metaphysical reality. […] Classical science does of course offer huge successes in our interactions with the objects around us and is built on methods that are repeatable. But still, these methods do not give us the full reality, only filtered representations of reality."
33.
"No personal god can form part of a world model that has only become accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. We know, when God is experienced, this is an event as real as an immediate sense perception or as one’s own personality. Like them he must be missing in the space-time picture."
(Answers will be revealed on Monday 13th June 2016. Stayed tuned!) 🙂
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