What if Galileo had decided to go one step further?

Galileo wrote, "I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we locate them are concerned, and that they reside in consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated” (The Assayer, 1623).  I find Galileo’s words rather profound if not also beyond his time. 

From my Buddhist perspective, Galileo’s words cause me to think that consciousness could be far more fundamental than the biological body.  It may even be the case that consciousness comes first before the world of physicality (nāmarūpa). 

If we remove the body (let’s say it dies) we don’t necessarily also remove consciousness (this is verified by NDEs in my opinion).  As we Buddhists understand, it is consciousness or in Sanskrit, vijñāna, that is the samsaric transmigrant from one life to the next. It doesn't die with the carnal body.

The only way this samsaric consciousness ends is by being absorbed into the original One whereupon it becomes the One’s reflection into itself.  This is a higher consciousness, nirvana.

Where consciousness is signless, boundless, all luminous. (DN I.223).

This is also the Buddha’s Mind which is beyond transmigration/rebirth which for us is inconceivable in our unawakened state.

So, what if Galileo had decided to go one step further and postulate that all things reside in consciousness, even human bodies with their brains, including spacetime.  Where would we be as a culture?   I speculate that the West would be far more advanced than it is today.  It would be closer to Buddhism in this regard.  Back to our time, we haven’t been successful at proving consciousness comes from our brain.  Frankly, it's been a failure.

Comments

[Jung]

Where would we be as a culture?

We would probably be a Type II on the Kardashev scale that measures a civilization´s level of technological advancement.

More can be read here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

[dave b]

But Buddha taught in the Pali canon that physical things are real and made of the 4 elements which are real and actually physical; his theory was like Jainism and even Samkhya that view matter as real and the soul as really in bondage to it and in need of real liberation. The stoner-logic hallucination theories came from corruption centuries later, and so-called "science" like "quantum physics" is not legitimate science but is a dogmatic atheist Buddhist attempt to dupe the public by semi-secularizing the metaphysics of their corrupt Mahayana stupidity of emptiness and everything being emptiness. In reality we have two real principles at war with each other: spirit and matter. The corrupt notion that matter is brahman is absurd, for then there could be no non-self. In the corrupt Upanishads they say everything is brahman, dogshit, trees, semen, puss, urine, grass, boogers, your soul, everything. If so then your body with all its piss and puss is as much the ayman as your soul is, which contradicts Buddha's statement that the body is not the self. The body not being the self requires that the distinction between matter and spirit is real, and not that spirit juat imagines matter and spirit.