Making the “Hard Problem” Really, Really Easy
By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, FRCP
It is impossible to imagine a master chef who doesn’t know how to cook, a cabinet maker who doesn’t know anything about carpentry, or a pianist who can’t read music. All three sound like contradictions. But we find ourselves in the same contradiction when it comes to the human mind. No matter how brilliant a thinker you are, you will find it impossible to explain where a thought comes from or even what a thought is.
That’s because a thought is the product of something fundamentally mysterious, which is consciousness. From it we derive our thoughts, feelings, sensations, mental images, insights, dreams, wishes, and fears. The Upanishads in the Indian tradition offer a metaphor for consciousness. It is the gold from which all gold objects are created. No matter how different each gold object is, it is made of gold. Likewise, the “stuff” of the human mind, no matter what it is doing, is consciousness.
Consciousness can make anything conceivable by the mind, but what made it? That’s the heart of the contradiction. Nothing anyone has ever found is the “stuff” from which consciousness can be made. The whole riddle has come to be known in recent years as “the hard problem.” Philosopher David Chalmers, who coined the term, says, “There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain.”
The situation is especially frustrating because we all depend upon consciousness for everything. If we were unconscious, the world would literally disappear in a puff of smoke. This obvious fact implies something that isn’t so obvious: Maybe consciousness and the world appeared at the same time.
What if the hard problem is hard because we start with the wrong assumptions? Take the assumption that seeing occurs in the brain. The difference between being blind and being able to see lies in the mechanics of how the brain processes light — that much is clear. Yet what matters the most is the conversion of light into vision, which is mysterious. No matter what you see in the world — an apple, cloud, mountain, or tree — sunlight bouncing off the object makes it visible, but how? No one knows. The same photons of light bounce off other physical objects but have no effect. They bound off plants to create photosynthesis, but that’s not the same as seeing. Why not? What makes light visible under one circumstance but not the other?
The secret of sight is immersed in consciousness itself. Without being conscious of light, photons are invisible. Yet it is mistaken to say that light becomes bright in the brain through some physical process, because the brain has no brightness. It is as dark as outer space.
Even though the brain does not experience smells, textures, tastes, sounds, or images, something is going on there. But the actual nature of sight is elusive. The same is true of the other four senses as well. All the qualities of Nature, from the luxurious scent of a rose to the sting of a wasp and the taste of honey, are produced in consciousness. It is only a small step, therefore, to realize that these qualities are created in human consciousness.
The whole universe exists on that basis. The most distant star, billions of light years away, has no reality without our consciousness, because everything that makes a star real — its heat, light, and mass, its position in space, and the velocity that carries it away at enormous speed — requires a human observer with a human nervous system.
If no one existed to experience heat, light, mass, and so on, nothing could be real as we know it. Because we are conscious participants, we are the creators of reality, and yet we have no idea how we do it — the process is effortless. When we see, light gains its brightness. When we listen, air vibrations turn into audible sound. This implies that setting consciousness apart as a problem, the so-called hard problem, may be totally wrong. Fish can’t set the ocean apart as an interesting topic, because their entire life is involved in water. If a scientific fish asked, “What makes water wet?” the question would be invalid. “Wet” is simply how water is. Can’t we say the same of the cosmos, that it simply is consciousness?
We can’t set consciousness apart as a “problem” because it is innate, like the wetness of water. In a word, consciousness must be the same as existence. There is no right or wrong answer to the hard problem because answers imply questions or riddles, and consciousness is neither. There’s an axiom that applies here, which says that reality is never wrong. Whatever is, is. Our explanations and theories, when they come along, have no existence without consciousness, so all theories of consciousness are like the ancient symbol of the snake biting its tail.
At this moment, there’s a growing body of cosmologists developing theories of a completely new universe, one that is living, conscious, and evolving. Such a universe fits no physical model. Consciousness doesn’t need the physical; it’s the other way around — the physical can’t exist without consciousness. It’s not the cosmos of quantum physics or the Creation described in the Book of Genesis. A universe made in, of, and by consciousness responds to how we think and feel. It gains its shape, color, sound, and texture from us. Therefore, the best name for it is the human universe.
The universe solved the hard problem right off the bat by setting up creation so that consciousness cannot be set apart and examined like a separate thing. I haven’t been outlining a pet theory. The human universe, if it exists, is the real universe, the only one we have. The hard problem seemed logical at the time, but it became null and void when the primacy of physical matter was deposed, seen once and for all as a false assumption.
DEEPAK CHOPRA, MD, FACP, FRCP, is a Consciousness Explorer and a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is the co-founder of DeepakChopra.ai, his AI twin and well-being advisor. He also co-founded Cyberhuman, a transformative suite of personalized health and well-being solutions. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is also an Honorary Fellow in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He is the author of over 95 books, translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers.
For the last thirty years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution. His mission is to create a more balanced, peaceful, joyful, and healthier world. Through his teachings, he guides individuals to embrace their inherent strength, wisdom, and potential for personal and societal transformation.
In his latest book, “Digital Dharma” (Harmony/Rodale), Chopra navigates the balance between technology and expanded awareness, explaining that while AI cannot duplicate human intelligence, it can vastly enhance personal and spiritual growth. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of their top 100 most influential people.” www.deepakchopra.com.
