If we start with the assumption of a universe and try to fit consciousness into that model, we end up with the classic panpsychist statement that all things have a degree of consciousness or, more simply, that the universe is conscious. However, from the perspective of consciousness there is no all’. From consciousness’s perspective there is just its own seamless, indi­visible, unified, infinite whole.

The belief that the universe is conscious is New Age non-duality, and it is this confusion that leads so many people who would otherwise be open to the consciousness-only model to reject it. The belief that the universe is aware is simply an extension of the materialist belief that the body is aware. Fleas are not aware; fish are not aware; dogs are not aware; trees and rocks are not aware; human beings are not aware; the universe is not aware. Only awareness is aware! Only consciousness is conscious.

The word ‘universe’, from the Latin uni-, one’, and versus, ‘turned’, means ‘combined into one; whole’. What is it in our experience of the so-called universe that is whole, one, undivided? Only consciousness! Everything else we know about the universe comprises a multiplicity and diversity of objects. The only element of experience that is one, undivided and whole is consciousness itself, or self-aware being. The universe is not con­scious; consciousness is the universe!

In fact, the more scientists look for a universe, the less they find it. The more they look for matter, the less like matter it seems to be. Why? Be­cause they are looking for it in objective experience. Sooner or later sci­ence will realise that consciousness is the reality for which they are seeking in objective knowledge and experience.

~ Rupert Spira

The Nature of Consciousness