THE ANSWER

When we moved back to Southern California in 1987, it was as if we had died and gone to Heaven. Over a period of ten years, our little family—comprising Jacqui, our son Joshua, who was ten years old in 1987, and myself—had  experienced a series of relocations that took us from Tampa Florida to Tennessee, Missouri, Colorado, and California; then to Europe, Saudi Arabia, and India; back to Missouri, back to California, back to Saudi Arabia, to Massachusetts, and finally back to California again.  During  those ten years, Jacqui survived a life-threatening bout with cancer, Josh survived the confusion of a variety of very different schools, and I survived a battle with the company that employed me as an environmental engineer because I tried to save a fragile desert ecology located on the Red Sea about half-way between Jeddah and the Holy Land. And we survived the Whitier earthquake that destroyed the house we rented north of downtown LA. Our lives had been like the hot-and-cold burning Hells of the Tibetan board game known as Rebirth! For us, coming back to Southern California and relocating to Rossmoor just north of Seal Beach was wonderful! We thought we’d probably stay there for the rest of out lives. But, God had other plans for us.

A popular bumper sticker in LA in 1987, something I saw while driving from our home in Rossmoor to my place of employment as a hydrogeologist in the offices of a Long Beach consulting firm, read: “Jesus is the answer!” with the iconic Christian symbol of a fish. I had to laugh out loud when I saw a counter bumper sticker emblazoned with the star of David, and “What was the question?” In my mind, I heard this quip humorously verbalized with a Jewish accent.

The bold, perhaps even rash title of this commentary is “The Answer”; so, if this blurb is ‘the answer’, then what was the question?  In my opinion, the key question that both science and religion should try to answer is: “What is consciousness?”   Why is this such an important question?  Because consciousness is the only thing we normally experience.  It’s our direct connection with Reality. Therefore, for sentient beings, Consciousness is Primary. So, the question becomes: ‘What is consciousness?’ and the answer is: Consciousness is Primary. Period, full stop, end of story.  As Max Planck once said, Consciousness has to exist prior to anything we can talk about. He said: “We can’t get behind consciousness.” But, of course, that is not the end of the discussion, so please read on. While you’re here, you may want to browse the more than 600 posts in the archives of the blog dealing with many more questions and answers relating science and religion to consciousness. Reply to any of them if you will; comments are always welcome.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS PRIMARY

Exactly what do I mean when I say consciousness is primary? Mathematically, it means that consciousness is the only truly independent variable there is. Scientifically, it means that consciousness is ultimately the only thing that actually exists. Spiritually, it means that literally everything is part of the reality that many people call God.

Over the years since 1987, I have proved, - at leat to my satisfaction and that of a few others - with mathematical logic and physical science, that a measurable non-physical reality exists behind all things, and Dr. Vernon Neppe, the first mainstream scientist to understand my proof and endorse it, named it Gimmel. Now, some on the atheistic left question whether I am a scientist, and others on the fundamentalist right question whether I am a Christian. While I have earned degrees in mathematics, engineering, and science, and I have studied philosophy and the world’s major religions, --- and I have supported both progressive and conservative ideas ---I do not identify as a scientist, mathematician, engineer, philosopher, theologist – or as a Republican or a Democrat. These labels relate to things that I have been involved in, done, and will probably still do in the future, but they are not who I am.

I am retired now, living in my beloved native land, in the Mark Twain National Forrest of the Southern Missouri Ozarks. But, if I am not any of those things mentioned above, then who or what am I? The answer is very simple:  I am consciousness.

ERC   9-16-2025, Close Waldheim, my home in the woods