Consciousness: does it create matter?

We like to believe the world is real. That it exists outside of us. That matter behaves in predictable ways. That consciousness lives inside the brain, watching it all unfold.

But quantum physics shatters this idea.

In the famous double-slit experiment, a particle passes through two slits. Until someone observes it, it behaves like a wave.

The moment we measure it, the wave collapses into a particle. It’s as if our observation made it real.

What does this mean?

At the quantum level, matter is not solid. It does not exist in a definite state. It exists in probability until observed.

The act of looking changes what is.

Some scientists believe this means consciousness collapses the wave function. That the world does not exist independently of the mind. That matter is not out there, but in here, inside your awareness.

Others argue that measurement alone is enough. That consciousness is not special. But no one agrees on what counts as a measurement if there’s no observer.

Either way, classical physics is gone. The neat world of billiard balls and linear causation no longer applies.

Which brings us to the idea of the self.

If matter arises only when observed, what is doing the observing? Who draws the line between what is me and not me?

In systems theory, that boundary is called the Markov blanket. It separates internal states from the external world, allowing a system to survive.

But the boundary is not fixed.

Psychedelics, trauma, meditation shift it. What feels like me can expand, dissolve, or fracture.

So perhaps matter and consciousness are not two things. Perhaps they are one and the same.

The world you see in colour, sound and shapes is a representation.

A useful one, but still a map, not the territory. The deeper you look, the more the lines blur. Maybe the universe is not made of matter.

Maybe it is made of mind.

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