It’s perplexing to me how physicists speak about measurements and consciousness as if they are separate and distinct things when they are not. Ontologically speaking their source reveals the clue to their natures. They are in fact two sides of the same coin whose nature was described by Einstein: yeah, that guy again. It is none other than the illusory nature of reality. More specifically it is the conscious experience of flowing time, a flow that can only be consciously experienced through the fundamental ‘now’ moment between past and future.
It is no accident that the ‘now’ is where all measurements, and by extension, conscious observations take place. The two sides of this coin are the ‘measurement’, a snapshot at an arbitrary ‘now’ moment in time, and ‘consciousness’ which only exists at this self-same ‘now’ moment in time. “I was “and “I will be” only make sense because “I am” NOW. This shows us that both consciousness and measurements are ‘manifest’ phenomena. Conscious reality and observed measurements only exist, they manifest, in the ’now’ moment. But let’s be clear, illusions, whether described by Einstein or by David Blaine, are phenomena that are only observed and experienced by conscious beings. This lets us see that Reality, with a capital R, or what we might call the ‘Indivisible Source’, is something different from consciously experienced reality, which is illusory. That being said, Reality, which is not illusory, is a ‘non-manifest’ phenomenon. In other words, it exists, it IS, without the requirement of a special place and/or time. It exists outside of, or beyond, any ‘time’ that we manifestly experience as real. And so, the ‘place’ from which we consciously observe the universe, the ‘now’ itself, isn’t Real.
The conscious ‘now’ is not a fundamental attribute of Reality. Yet we use it to take measurements that we treat as objectively Real while we grapple with the enigmatic and subjective experiences of consciousness. In fact, there is no place from which a measurement can be taken by conscious observers that will reveal an un-manifest Reality. The Copenhagen interpretation aside, Reality with a capital R, is really the Holy Grail of scientists and philosophers, as well as others, who are seeking to know, as Einstein said, God’s thoughts. Unfortunately, such a Reality can be neither measured nor observed by such a time dependent, manifest consciousness. The best we can do is to sweep such knowledge under the rug and hope none of the funding agencies notices.
