Notes on universal conscousness

New Study Claims “Universal Consciousness” Existed Before the Big Bang—and Still Shapes Our Reality

Tim McMillan·December 1, 2025

• https://thedebrief.org/new-study-claims-universal-consciousness-existed-before-the-big-bang-and-still-shapes-our-reality/

For centuries, the nature of consciousness has remained one of the most stubborn mysteries in science. Neuroscientists have mapped brain circuits, physicists have probed quantum vacuums, and philosophers have sparred over whether subjective experience can ever be explained solely by material processes.
 
A recent peer-reviewed paper published in AIP Advances now throws a bold contender into the ring by suggesting that consciousness is not a by-product of the brain at all, but a universal field underpinning the very structure of reality itself.
 
The study, authored by Uppsala University nanotechnology professor Dr. Maria Strømme, proposes that consciousness operates much like a fundamental physical field—one that existed before the Big Bang, seeded the formation of space–time, and continues to shape the emergence of individual awareness today.
 
The theory aims to bridge the longstanding divide between quantum physics and non-dual philosophical traditions that treat consciousness as the bedrock of reality.
 
Dr. Strømme’s model for universal consciousness lays out a conceptually bold and technically detailed framework in which consciousness functions as a universal field—one that differentiates into the observable universe, including individual minds, through mechanisms analogous to symmetry breaking, quantum fluctuations, and state-selection processes familiar to physicists.
 
It is, to put it mildly, a dramatic departure from mainstream neuroscience.