Heralding the third Copernican revolution

How visionary scientists have arrived at a vital new understanding of consciousness by repudiating the ‘metaphysics of materialism’

The nature of a ‘Copernican revolution’ is to change everything for everybody. The understanding that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, that, like the other planets, it was in orbit about the sun, resulted from the work of the Renaissance polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543).

The second Copernican revolution was caused by the theory of evolution, proposed by Charles Darwin (1809–82), and the acceptance of deep time. Surely, the twenty-first century will see the third such revolution: the acknowledgement of consciousness as primary, fundamental and causal, and the overturning of the prevalent materialist paradigm of reality.

This would change our whole attitude to life and existence, most crucially, to dying for, if consciousness exists independently of the brain, then one’s individual consciousness could continue into an ‘afterlife’; instead of vanishing at the point of bodily death, human consciousness would actually expand into the universal consciousness. If death is not the end, then perhaps — since a part of us does not actually die — it should not be feared, and we could live happier lives without dread.