A physicist proposes that consciousness is the fundamental basis of reality, with matter and spacetime emerging from it.
What if consciousness is not produced by the brain, but instead forms the foundation of reality itself? That is the premise of a new theoretical model introduced by Maria Strømme, Professor of Materials Science at Uppsala University, in the journal AIP Advances. In her framework, consciousness exists first, and time, space, and matter emerge from it.
Strømme is best known for her work in nanotechnology, studying materials at extremely small scales. In this new work, she shifts focus to the largest possible questions, including the origin and structure of the universe. Rather than treating consciousness as a side effect of neural activity, she describes it as a fundamental field that underlies everything we observe, including physical matter and the flow of time.
Is this a completely new theory of how reality and the universe are structured?
“Yes, you could say so. But above all, it is a theory in which consciousness comes first, and structures such as time, space, and matter arise afterwards. It is a very ambitious attempt to describe how our experienced reality functions. Physicists like Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and Planck explored similar ideas, and I am building on several of the avenues they opened,” says Strømme.
Uniting quantum physics with philosophy
Over many years, Strømme has developed a quantum mechanical model that connects modern physics with non-dual philosophical traditions. The core idea is that consciousness is the most basic component of existence, and that individual minds are expressions of a larger, shared field.
Within this framework, experiences often labeled as unexplained or unusual, including telepathy or near-death experiences, are interpreted not as supernatural events but as possible outcomes of this interconnected field.
“My ambition has been to describe this using the language of physics and mathematical tools. Are these phenomena really mystical? Or is it simply that there is a discovery we have not yet made, and when we do it will lead to a paradigm shift?”
Strømme compares her proposal to earlier turning points in scientific history. Humanity once believed the Earth was flat, and later assumed the Sun revolved around the Earth. Both views were eventually replaced by models that reshaped how people understood their place in the cosmos.
A new picture of the nature of reality
She suggests that her theory could represent a similar shift. The paper outlines several predictions that could, in principle, be tested within physics, neuroscience, and cosmology. By doing so, she moves well beyond her traditional field of materials science into questions about consciousness and the structure of the universe.
The model also proposes that individual consciousness does not end at death, but instead returns to the broader field from which it emerged. Strømme expresses this idea using quantum mechanical concepts rather than religious language.
“I am a materials scientist and engineer, so I am used to seeing matter as something fundamental. But according to this model, matter is secondary – much of what we experience is representation or illusion,” says Strømme.
A theory that reconciles science with ancient knowledge
Although the work is presented entirely through mathematical reasoning, Strømme acknowledges similarities with themes found in major religious and philosophical traditions.
“The texts of the major religions – such as the Bible, the Koran, and the Vedas – often describe an interconnected consciousness. Those who wrote them used metaphorical language to express insights about the nature of reality. Early quantum physicists, in turn, arrived at similar ideas using scientific methods. Now, it is time for hardcore science – that is, modern natural science – to seriously begin exploring this,” she says.
Reference: “Universal consciousness as foundational field: A theoretical bridge between quantum physics and non-dual philosophy” by Maria Strømme, 13 November 2025, AIP Advances.
DOI: 10.1063/5.0290984
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55 Comments
Is she attempting to differentiate nano mites from AI, as the former being conscious and the latter being sentient with her paper?
This idea/theory/concept is neither new or without foundation. We find these concepts live in thousands of years of advanced African culture. The article is interesting, however, we must learn to give credit where credit is due. I recommend the writings of Fu Kia.
This isn’t science, it’s modern day metaphysics Which is just religion posing as science.
No, it’s actually stripping science of its materialist ideological baggage that has been deliberately lumped on it over this last century.
Spot on. Open minded science taking nothing for granted.
“Spot on.”
Not even close. What is being discussed in this article is not science. It’s religious pseudoscience BS.
“stripping materialistic ideological baggage”
Care to elaborate? Because that sounds like the kind of nonsensical word salad that the religious metaphysics nuts like to go around spewing when they talk about science. In my experience, people who say stuff like that don’t have the slightest clue what science actually is, or how it works. And they think putting together a bunch of random big words makes them sound smart, when really it’s just a bunch of gibberish.
And you can’t possibly be mistaken? People are allowed different theories. It is odd how your materialistic theories allow you to use rude and dismissive terms for others, while the so called “pseudo-science’ theories promote respect for all. Respect even for people who speak disrespectfully to them.
@Kalara ….it is not a question of allowing (or) not different theories. The issue is suggesting a theory without any evidence nor providing any way to TEST said theory experimentally to validate it.
@Kalara
“And you can’t possibly be mistaken?”
As a human, I make mistakes all the time. That being said: As someone with a formal education in multiple scientific fields, I am not mistaken about the topic of this article not being science. It is pseudoscience. Whether you like it or not.
“People are allowed different theories.”
The topic of this article is not a scientific theory. By definition. It is speculation. There is nothing wrong with speculation, so long as people don’t attempt to pass speculation off as a scientific theory.
“It is odd how your materialistic theories allow you to use rude and dismissive terms for others”
This is exactly what I was talking about in my last post. Stop throwing random words together to attempt to appear smarter than you really are. “Materialistic theory” is gibberish. There is no such thing. And if you think telling the truth about people using words they can’t actually define, when discussing a subject they do not know anything about is “rude” – then I guess I’m rude.
“while the so called “pseudo-science’ theories promote respect for all. Respect even for people who speak disrespectfully to them.”
First of all – it’s not “so called pseudoscience”. It IS pseudoscience. By definition. Secondly, where is this respect you’re talking about? The first person to respond to me was disrespectful, and so were you. All because I had the audacity to tell the truth about this article, and call it what it is — pseudoscientific religion, posing as science.
I am disappointed when I waste time reading this garbage. I agree it is pseudo science.
1966, as a boy of 14 years, I thought a lot about life. My conclusion came closest to the ideas of Maria Strømme in a non-scientific way. But – as you said above, this all is nothing new.
In modern times it was Burkhard Heim (1925 – 2001) who developed a unique field-theorie, based on a 6-dimensional model of the world. One of these 6 dimensions was said to be consciousness, as part of the world with which live – whatever it is – interactivates.
(English is not my native language. Hoping it will be understood what I’m trying to tell)
Simple creatures have consciousness
Consciousness must exist outside the brain. Our brains tune in tomit
Nice work, but the idea occurred to millions
But few had propesd it in global wide
It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
Not an illusion, rather a hallucination.
So… Consciousness is a field that exists prior to life, even though only a conscious being can measure it, which to be alive require the reality to exist, even if such reality is ab illusion of consciousness.
To be frank, this scientific article seems to me just a well designed scheme to start a cult under the wrap of scientific work.
Then again… She is 🔥.
.
You could argue that materialism is a cult of its own.
Hmm little close to Truth human, You’re kinda close but the language you were using is wrong itself. Keep researching maybe in millions years y’all can find truth.
You’re correct. It’s just religion posing as science.
Thank you for this thoughtful article.
Lol. Reread Spinoxa!
So, we are not actually “here”, making choices, developing discipline in ourselves and dealing with the discipline or lack thereof all around us or learning to utilize the fundamentals of science in reality? Humorous how this meta-physics erupts in increasing instances as our “scientific” community grows ever larger!!
🧠 Maria Strømme’s “Consciousness-First” Theory — Science or Metaphysics?
Let’s cut through the hype.
The proposal published in AIP Advances suggests:
Consciousness is fundamental.
Space, time, and matter emerge from it.
Individual minds are localized expressions of a larger universal field.
Death = return to that field.
That’s essentially idealism dressed in quantum language.
Is This New?
No.
This idea goes back to:
Erwin Schrödinger
Max Planck
Werner Heisenberg
Even pre-scientific traditions like Vedanta and Neoplatonism
What is new is trying to formalize it mathematically within modern physics.
That’s ambitious.
The Core Question: Is It Science?
Here’s the hard truth.
A scientific theory must:
Make clear, falsifiable predictions
Be experimentally testable
Produce measurable differences from existing models
Right now, consciousness-first models struggle with that.
If you can’t experimentally distinguish:
“Matter produces consciousness”
from
“Consciousness produces matter”
…then you don’t yet have physics. You have metaphysics.
That doesn’t make it wrong. It makes it untested.
Where It Gets Interesting
There are cracks in strict materialism:
The measurement problem in quantum mechanics
The hard problem of consciousness (why experience exists at all)
The fact that physics describes structure, not subjective experience
Materialism hasn’t solved these.
So people are exploring alternatives.
That’s not cult-building. That’s intellectual pressure testing.
The Telepathy / Near-Death Claims
This is where credibility becomes fragile.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
If the model predicts measurable nonlocal cognitive effects, then great — design the experiment.
But until reproducible data appears, those claims remain speculative.
Science doesn’t care how beautiful a theory is.
It cares whether nature agrees.
Big Picture: What Would Actually Change?
If consciousness were fundamental:
Physics becomes a study of informational structures
Death becomes transformation, not annihilation
AI consciousness debates get flipped upside down
Neuroscience stops looking for “where consciousness is generated” and starts looking at “how it filters”
That’s revolutionary.
But we’re not there yet.
My Straight Assessment
Right now this is:
Philosophically sophisticated
Mathematically framed
Not experimentally confirmed
It’s bold. It’s provocative.
It is not established physics.
Since you’re someone who thinks deeply and questions narratives, here’s the real question that matters:
If consciousness is fundamental —
why does brain damage reliably alter personality and awareness?
That’s the strongest materialist argument on the table.
If someone can convincingly solve that tension, then we’re in paradigm-shift territory.
Until then?
It’s an elegant hypothesis waiting for proof.
Totally agree with what you’re saying. Very nice. Som other material problems:
1. The time problem…humans believe in beginnings and endings, but then what existed before the begining and what will be left in the end? This points to something beyond simple human experience.
2. The bigger/smaller problem…humans can’t find the smallest element of material or the largest element of material. We see that everything can be broken down to smaller parts and that smaller parts can be combined to make larger things. This also points to the existence of “one thing” not many things.
3. Empathy vs. egotism….was my helping someone else, a selfless act or did I do it because I fear my own selfishness or am programmed to be that way. This points to just energy attractions. Just patterns that are ways that all eectrochemical patterns dynamically move. Again, points to “one thing” being the truth.
4. I could go on with “archetypes” “dreams” “de javu” but then we would be in the realm of metaphysics for sure!
Maybe brain damage is just a damaged antenna. In other words, humans are already a small drop of water waiting to be returned to the ocean and it happens within a 50 to 100 years cycle most of the time. Every human has brain damage because they actually believe they are something other than a tiny drop temporarily seperated from the whole…..like a tiny drop of condensation on a leaf. So brain damage is just another hallucination, not so different from the one we already experience. IDK? Maybe.
Well said. Though I would argue that it’s not a hypothesis — it’s just speculation.
I wholly agree with, “well said,” however, I would add, “Science is just speculation that material reality is analytically objective.”
“Science is just speculation that material reality is analytically objective.”
Care to elaborate? Because that doesn’t make much sense. Science is a system used to understand reality, using empiracle evidence.
It’s sense is that it turns classical mechanics upside down.
It, one way of narrating it, turns ‘science,’ into ‘psi~hence,’ where psi is Greek wave~function spelled-out.
It’s sense is that objectivity is a cult and quantum~wave~functionality is a better way to represent reality.
I am saying reality is not objective, reality is quantum~wave~functional.
Dr. Stromme, to me, appears on much higher ground than classical science can ever be.
That is just my opinion. I am not omniscient.
@Paul – Ok, so you’re yet another metaphysics whackjob who strings together a bunch of words he can’t actually define, to talk about subjects he knows nothing about, and thinks it makes him sound enlightened/intelligent. Got it.
Most of what you said is complete gibberish. And the little that isn’t gibberish – is blatantly false.
Re: “Brain Damage,” read Paul Pietsche’s Shufflebrain.
the core question for me in that case might be: is it true anyway? because i experienced exactly that
Nate,
Isn’t there a simpler fundamental test we can use to show how consciousness is materially fundamental?
Permit me a gedanken experiment:
Assume a space craft which can maneuver accurately between earth and moon.
Assume said craft can hover and sustain itself at gravitational libration.
Assume a sentient being is aboard said craft.
Said sentient has a pencil in his vest pocket.
Said sentient is proximal libration and can position said pencil at libration.
There are many ephemera involved here, but let’s assume said pencil can stay at libration for a few seconds.
Now sentient moves pencil 25 centimeters closer to moon: pencil will start moving toward moon.
But sentient wants to demo pencil’’s ability to choose.
Sentient grabs moving pencil and moves it 25 centimeters from libration closer to earth: pencil will start moving toward earth.
Is at least awareness fundamental? May we choose to infer consciousness is fundamental.
Others may choose to tell rest of story…
Yep. I noticed that on several acid trips in the ’60s and ’70s.
This is the subject of Dan Brown’s 2025 book ‘The Secret of Secrets’. Almost seems like the heroine in the book is based on the author of the paper.
🙃 i also hear about those.. but i had it through meditation in 2022 but nevertheless it might be a similar/same experience 🤷🤸
It’s nice to see a well respected & time serverd scientist risk ridicule & possibly future funding in attempting to describe consciousness, something no one’s achieved successfully without it starting a following . . .
How will the professor describe the almost inevitable complex explanation of consciousness without touching heavily on what has already been well documented & will her theory rely heavily on the assumed existence of dimensional states without physical evidence . . ?
Did FatherTimeSDKP framework touch on this?
not even remotely “new” or “original”
A field is inherently spacial, which seems problematic for a pre- spatiotemporal theory.
“My ambition has been to describe this using the language of physics and mathematical tools. Are these phenomena really mystical?” Yes, they are termed as Mystical, but the point to make is they are not Magical.
If you approach from the Mystic’s perspective you might say Science is finally catching up with Metaphysics and the Perennial Wisdom Traditions. There is the thought, not voiced here, that actually we are experiencing a Scientific Renaissance of the Lost Knowledge that actually informed the ancient traditions of Metaphysical Idealism.
If SciTechDaily sinks this low againc shall stop visiting.
They’ve been posting a bunch of nonsense like this, lately. This site has gone down hill big time. It won’t be long until they become a metaphysics version of Answers in Genesis.
Why does she cake on so much makeup if everything is just an illusion?
That face is not symmetrical.
Crank checklist
– is author publishing in a field they are not an expert in?
-does hypothesis seek to explain multiple problems in multiple fields?
-does hypothesis appeal to ancient wisdom
-does hypothesis make you feel good to believe it?
-is hypothesis falsifiable through experiment?
Hogwash. While science makes stick-drawings and geometries of what is imagined and pat themselves on the head and have Nobel prizes, and animals make mental images of things (so we don’t bump into the couch) – there is a reality outside our little pea-brains and it is profoundly more than people and ‘scientists’ remotely understand. Of course this low-talent capacity is performed by all the animals and bugs that crawl around – but it is humans who wish a God who made the whole Universe just for humans so they won’t be so afraid. This consciousness ploy is old; and stupid.
More stupid.
Waaw creo que tiene razón aún que no creo que la consciencia regrese asu lugar de origen 🤔
This is what ancient Hinduism texts document already, and in a much more elaborate manner. All souls/consciousness are part of a whole, dividing like atoms from the param-aatma (master consciousness) for expanded learning and merging back into it after going through several cycles of learning in various lives. Question is, what’s the master consciousness working towards? Think of ourselves as atoms in someone’s body, willed into creation for a purpose. Some are skin cells, some form vital organs, some help reproduce–but all work towards the same goal. Scientific evidence is a very unidimensional, human way of looking at things that are far beyond our comprehension. Perhaps by delving into the metaphysics, you might be able to convince skeptics. Believers already believe.
I found this article especially interesting because I’ve read Nursery of the Gods by James Cobban, and it covers much of the same territory, but in a broader and more developed way. Maria Strømme’s proposal that consciousness is fundamental, and that time, space, and matter emerge from it, will feel very familiar to readers of that book. What I appreciated in Nursery is that it does not treat this as an isolated scientific curiosity, but places it within a much larger picture of reality. It argues that physical life is only one narrow band of experience within a far greater system of inner reality, and that phenomena like telepathy, near-death experiences, and the persistence of consciousness make more sense when seen in that wider context. Nursery of the Gods explores the same questions with more philosophical depth, more examples, and a much bigger map of what consciousness may actually be.
this article is quiet interesting to me because i also came up with that theory aswell after i had a widening consciousness experience through meditation which i later found out is described as spiritual awakening.
also somehow exciting to read a few replies and to see how passionated, emotional you are talking about your believes/facts.
thank you for all that sharing
As mentioned by others, this approach is not new. Amit Goswami catalogued these ideas in The Self Aware Universe years ago.
If consciousness is fundamental, and that time, space, and matter emerge from it, why aren’t things on our planet better than they are?
If we are part on an overall universal consciousness why do treat each other badly?
RobinC,
I do not know.
However Robert M. Pirsig in his 1974 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance conjectured that Greek dialectic reasoning is responsible for our premature knee-jerk judgments of others.
Pirsig wrote, “Dialectic (bivalent, either-or, determinate) reasoning is a genetic defect in human reason.
Stromme’s approach may find a way to eliminate dialectic in human reason, or perhaps mitigate its use.
Thank you for a great comment!
Take a read of Kafatos and Nadeau’s Conscious Universe.