Do EM fields across and around the body and brain correspond to and contain information about our experience of consciousness? Can resonance help explain how larger and smaller systems with consciousness can harmonise into a single field of consciousness? Does mind evolve as matter evolves?
Today we have the possibility that consciousness relates to electromagnetic fields to look into. So, we get into the arguments for why consciousness might be baked into the physical world as panpsychism holds; we compare General Resonance Theory to other electromagnetic theories of consciousness; look at how GRT solves some of the problems of panpsychism like the combination problem and the boundary problem; and how we might use resonance to theorise about consciousness at various levels of existence above and below our single organism subjective experiences; we get into why the hippies were right about vibration, fields and resonance, and also what the hippies got wrong; And we also get into some of modern science that seems to show an alignment between science and spiritual ideas rather than an incompatibility.
For this broad range of topics we are fortunate to have the polymath, environmental lawyer, author and philosopher at University of California Santa Barbara, Tamlyn Hunt. He’s written over 40 academic papers and 3 books for the general public, “Eco, Ego, Eros”, “Mind, World, God” ,and his brand new book “The Hippies Were Right”, which we focus on today.
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro.
06:00 The omission of mind from our sciences of nature.
10:30 Panpsychism is the least crazy explanation.
14:30 Analogies between scientific theories and spiritual traditions.
27:30 As matter evolves, mind evolves.
31:40 The Wattsian Vedanta approach.
34:30 General Resonance Theory explained.
40:30 The brains nested hierarchies of EM Fields contain the information about consciousness.
46:00 EM effects are 5000 times faster than neural firings.
55:30 “The hippies were right” about consciousness.
57:00 Schrödinger was influenced by vedanta.
01:05:30 Nested cognitive systems - Micheal Levin’s ‘bioelectric code’ Vs GRT.
01:10:00 Neurones are not the only electricity generating cells - all cells are basically batteries.
01:15:45 EM theory applied to huge structures like stars and galaxies.
01:21:00 Cosmic consciousness and deep time.
References:
Tam Hunt, “The Hippies Were Right!: About consciousness and Everything else.” 2026
Tam Hunt, “Mind, World, God: Science and Spirit in the 21st Century” , 2017
Tam Hunt & Jonathan W. Schooler, ‘The Easy Part of the Hard Problem: A resonance Theory of Consciousness’, 2019 paper.
Tam Hunt & Mostyn Jones, ‘Fields or Firings? Comparing the spike code and electromagnetic field hypothesis’, 2023 paper.
Douglas Hofstadter, “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid”, 1979
David Skrbina, “Pansychism in the West”, 2005
David Ray Griffin, “Unsnarling the World-knot”, 1998
Stephen Jay Gould - Non-overlapping magisteria, NOMA
Stephen Strogatz, “Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order”, 2003
Tam Hunt, ‘Mapping the Resonome’ article.
John Joe McFadden - Conscious Electromagnetic Information (CEMI) Field Theory
John Joe McFadden, “Quantum Evolution: life in the multiverse” book.
Susan Pockett, ‘The Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness’, 2012
Colin Hales, ‘ The origins of the brain’s endogenous electromagnetic field and its relationship to provision of consciousness’, 2014
Wolfgang Klimesch - Binary Hierarchy Oscillation theory of consciousness.
