Thoughts as Drops from a Greater Consciousness

Thoughts as Drops from a Greater Consciousness

An essay on thought, mind, and the cosmos as a fabric of awareness

By Peter Næss

Introduction: The Enigmatic Source of Thought

We live with an assumption so ingrained that it rarely gets questioned: our thoughts belong to us. We wake up, plan our day, worry, dream, reflect. This endless theater of ideas and images, we call our mind. But who is really the playwright? Are we truly the originators of the thoughts that appear in consciousness—or are we witnesses to a stream flowing through us from a deeper source?

What if our thoughts are but small drops, fragments of something larger? What if consciousness itself is the very substance of the universe—not a byproduct of matter, but the primordial fabric out of which everything else arises? And what if what we call extraterrestrial life already exists within this same field, not necessarily as flesh and blood, but as vibrations in the great ocean of awareness?

This essay attempts to weave together these possibilities. We will travel from the laboratories of neuroscience to the ancient insights of Vedanta, listen to the voices of mystics like Meister Eckhart, consider modern philosophers like Bernardo Kastrup—and glance toward the mystery of non-human intelligences in the universe. The aim is not to prove, but to expand horizons: to hint at the ocean behind the drops.

Part I: The Mystery of Thought

Libet and the Hidden Decision

In the 1980s, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment that continues to unsettle our sense of free will. Participants were asked to press a button whenever they felt like it, while their brain activity was monitored. The startling discovery: the brain began preparing for the action several hundred milliseconds before the participant consciously decided.

This means that our sense of "I chose" is delayed—a commentary on a process already underway. Thoughts we call "ours" may be reports, not causes.

Later Studies

Subsequent experiments, including those at the Max Planck Institute, confirmed this. Using brain scans, researchers could predict a person's choice up to ten seconds before the subject became aware of it. The brain seems to operate on its own logic, and consciousness receives the news afterwards.

This shakes the comforting image of a little "self" inside our head producing thoughts. We may be more like commentators on a deeper flow.

Part II: The Brain as Filter, Not Generator

Western science has long assumed that the brain generates consciousness, like a motor producing energy. But alternative views exist.

William James, often called the father of psychology, suggested the brain might instead filter or transmit consciousness, rather than create it. Aldous Huxley later expanded this in The Doors of Perception, describing the brain as a "reducing valve," protecting us from an overwhelming flood of awareness. Psychedelics, he argued, temporarily open this valve, letting more of the field through.

If so, thoughts are not manufactured by neurons, but are drops from a larger ocean, tuned by the brain's filtering system.

Part III: Consciousness as the Ground of Reality

The Hard Problem

Philosopher David Chalmers articulated the so-called hard problem of consciousness in the 1990s: how can physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience? Why should there be an "inner movie" at all?

No materialist theory has provided a sufficient answer. Daniel Dennett famously claimed that consciousness is an illusion—but illusions, too, must appear to something. Consciousness remains the undeniable foundation, more fundamental than matter itself.

Advaita Vedanta: Atman = Brahman

In Advaita Vedanta, one of India's most profound philosophical traditions, this problem is resolved by turning it upside down: consciousness is the only reality. Matter, space, time, and thought are all appearances within it.

The self (Atman) is identical to the Absolute (Brahman). What we call the "individual" is a wave in the ocean. Our thoughts, therefore, are not private possessions, but ripples of the same source.

Buddhism: The Mind-Only Doctrine

In Buddhist Yogācāra philosophy, we find a parallel: reality is "mind-only." Everything we perceive is projection within consciousness. Awakening is the recognition that the division between inner and outer is a construction, not a truth.

Part IV: Neuroscientific Parallels

Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (IIT) proposes that consciousness is a fundamental feature of systems that integrate information. He quantifies this in terms of "phi," a measure of how much information is unified.

While debated, IIT suggests consciousness is not accidental, but intrinsic to reality—like mass or energy.

Orch-OR Hypothesis

Physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff proposed that consciousness arises from quantum processes in neuronal microtubules. While controversial, their Orch-OR theory implies consciousness is woven into the very fabric of spacetime.

If true, consciousness would not merely emerge—it would be a principle as fundamental as gravity.

Part V: Mystical Testimonies

Meister Eckhart

The German Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) spoke of a light in the soul that is "uncreated and uncreatable." This was the spark of God—a point where human and divine are one.

This resonates with Vedanta's declaration that Atman is Brahman. Thoughts, with their fleeting forms, are shadows. The true essence is the luminous consciousness that cannot be destroyed.

The Sufi Tradition

Sufi mystics like Rumi and Ibn Arabi also taught that God and consciousness are not two but one. The human being is a window through which the Divine experiences itself.

Part VI: Thoughts as Drops from the Ocean

With these perspectives combined, the metaphor of drops becomes powerful. Thoughts are not isolated events but droplets from an infinite ocean of awareness. Filtered through our individual histories, memories, and languages, they appear unique—yet they all share the same source.

This may illuminate phenomena such as:

• Inspiration: Artists and scientists often describe ideas as "arriving" rather than being made.

• Synchronicity: Two people arrive at the same idea simultaneously.

• Mystical experience: The silencing of thought reveals the ocean behind the drops.

Part VII: Extraterrestrial Consciousness

Life Beyond Earth

When we ask whether intelligent life exists beyond Earth, we usually imagine beings like ourselves—biological organisms in spacecraft. But if consciousness is fundamental, life may assume entirely different forms: energy-beings, fields of intelligence, or consciousness itself not bound to matter as we know it.

Communication Through Awareness

Accounts of alleged contact with extraterrestrials often involve telepathy or direct thought-transference. Whether factual or not, they reflect the possibility that consciousness itself is the universal medium of communication.

Perhaps the "gods" of ancient myth, the "angels" of religious vision, and the "aliens" of modern culture are cultural masks for the same phenomenon: encounters with intelligence outside our ordinary framework.

Part VIII: Philosophical Consequences

The Return of Idealism

Philosophers like Bernardo Kastrup argue for "analytic idealism": everything we experience exists within consciousness. The concept of matter as a thing-in-itself is incoherent—we never encounter matter except as experience. Thus, the universe is not a machine but a mind.

Ethical Implications

If true, ethics gains a profound foundation. If all beings are expressions of the same consciousness, harming another is ultimately harming oneself. Compassion and love are not merely moral virtues but logical necessities of unity.

Part IX: Humanity as a Gateway

Within this vision, the human being is not an isolated accident but a portal. We are openings where the ocean of consciousness takes form. We are waves that forget the sea, only to rediscover it again.

To realize this may be the deepest sense of "becoming human"—not producing thoughts endlessly, but listening for the ocean behind them.

Conclusion: Hearing the Ocean Behind the Drops

So what is it that humanity does not know?

That thoughts are not private possessions, but droplets from a greater field.
That consciousness is not an afterthought of matter, but the ground of all.
That extraterrestrial intelligences may already be here—not in ships, but in other manifestations of the same awareness.

If we grow still enough, we may hear the ocean's voice behind the drops. And then we discover that we were never separate. We were always waves in the same infinite sea of consciousness.

References

• Libet, Benjamin. Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness. Harvard University Press, 2005.

• Tononi, Giulio. Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul. Pantheon, 2012.

• Chalmers, David. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press, 1996.

• Kastrup, Bernardo. Why Materialism Is Baloney. Iff Books, 2014.

• Penrose, Roger & Hameroff, Stuart. "Consciousness in the Universe: Neuroscience, Quantum Space-Time Geometry and Orch-OR Theory." Journal of Cosmology, 2011.

• Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception. Harper, 1954.

• Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings. Penguin, 1994.

• Rumi, The Essential Rumi. Trans. Coleman Barks. Harper, 1995.