If there's one thing everyone knows for sure, it is that they exist. This knowing is only possible through consciousness.
What is less certain is whether reality is real. A lot of people, including science, speculates that it isn't real, or it isn't as real as we experience. When drilling down to the quantum level, only energy, as potential, can be found, and it is necessary to observe it before it materializes. The fact that there's nothing, merely potential, until observed or measured, reflects the self-evident importance of consciousness (“an observer") as a prerequisite for anything to exist.
The world's major religions regard consciousness as the creator of reality: God, the source, or your true face before you were born. As reality arises only in consciousness, never outside it - a fact that can easily be checked by anyone examining their own direct experience - then consciousness is not only more fundamental than anything else, including the supposedly physical Universe, but is ultimately all that exists.
Science doesn't define consciousness the way the world's major religions do. According to Science, a simple definition of consciousness is “experience.” The major religions, on the other hand, define consciousness as that to which experience appears.
According to the scientific definition, consciousness, as experience, can therefore be studied. What Science now wants to know, is how any kind of experience is even possible. The invention of artificial intelligence reveals that experiencing is ostensibly unnecessary for effective functioning in the world, which raises the question why anyone experiences anything! The self-evident answer is because consciousness is the creator of everything, including science itself. That explains why there is experience. Without it there would be nothing at all: no Universe, no space-time, no life, and certainly no artificial intelligence.
The Buddha’s contribution to the world's major religions is his discovery of the holographic, selfless nature of reality. Whatever can be experienced, is devoid of any independent existence, and is related to everything surrounding it, taking its being and existence from its surroundings. This is known as causality: cause and effect, which is otherwise known in religion as karma; you shall reap what you sow!
The holographic, selfless nature of reality is itself evidence of the existence of a single Being (often called God) made only of consciousness. We all share this identical consciousness, which is therefore not your consciousness versus my consciousness, but simply consciousness (no owner). The infinite numbers of “owners” are of mind, which provides the reflection of consciousness in the world through an infinite number of perspectives. Thus, there are an infinite number of minds, as might be expected from an infinite Being of consciousness, but there's only one consciousness and one existence. The one existence that there is, is multi-dimensional, and the so-called physical one is the least fundamental of them all. We are just visitors: physical existence is not our home, just a training school.
Since consciousness is at the very center of everyone's existence, being a point of awareness - called in Genesis “the Tree of Life” - from which experiencing occurs, it is self-evidently the biggest and the most important topic in all of existence, material as well as non-material.
Although consciousness can't be studied based on the religious definition of it, it's nature can be uncovered and clarified through spiritual practices (skilful means). The dissolution of the body-mind as self or your essence, reveals the holographic, selfless, empty nature of the world as the universal Being of consciousness. In this undistorted reflection of the world, you see your original face before you were born. You thus directly apprehend the nature of consciousness as formless, deathless, unconditioned, love, absolutely free, above cause and effect.
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