Establishment of ‘Centre for Consciousness Studies’

C. Establishment of ‘Centre for Consciousness Studies’

Dayalbagh Educational Institute has established Centre for Consciousness Studies with the Inaugural Workshop, CONCENT 2011, held in October 2011. Student activities were organized in the run-up to the Inaugural Workshop such as a quiz competition on role of microtubules in the brain on consciousness in which nearly 800 students from all disciplines took active part. Since then, the Centre has been host to leading luminaries in the field from across the world such as Prof. Stuart Hameroff, University of Arizona; Prof. Jack Tuszynski, University of Alberta; Prof. Elizabeth Behrman, Wichita State University; Prof. Anirban Bandyopadhyay, NIMS Japan; Prof. Vlatko Vedral, Oxford University and Prof. Lajos Diosi, Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Budapest.

The research is progressing along very healthy lines and some of the suggestions made by experts have already found practical shape. This augurs well for promoting Consciousness Studies in true scientific sense as was visualized by Param Guru Maharaj Sahab, the third Revered Leader of the Radhasoami Faith, through his writing in Discourses on Radhasoami Faith. Pursuing that line, we are now homing in gradually, but surely, on making an impact on the world community internationally. Some of our preliminary efforts at building spiritual-psycho-physical quantum system model of the grand universe or cosmos, which is all inclusive, is a step in this direction. All Departments of the Institute have been taking considerable interest and have responded very positively to the floating of the interdisciplinary programmes towards consciousness studies. The centre involves researchers from all cross-sections including Botany, Zoology, Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science, Mathematics, Psychology, Management, Languages (English / Hindi / Sansrkit), Theology, Commerce, Education, Engineering and Medical Science. This is growing by leaps and bounds, and within a matter of a couple of months or so, it has made unbelievable progress to be noted by the international community so swiftly.

Brainstorming by Core Group on September 7, 2011

A brainstorming session was organized at the Centre for Consciousness Studies among core group of 11 researchers from various disciplines. A summary of the ideas that emerged from the discussion appears below.

Information-Centric Ideas :

-      Organization of courses, seminars, workshops and summer programmes in the field (like CONCENT 2011) and a fortnightly colloquium / discussion forum to maintain regular interaction among interdisciplinary researchers in the field

-      Develop a library of books and journals on consciousness at the Centre

-      Support original research (both theoretical and experimental) in Consciousness Studies

-      Develop interdisciplinary graduate courses in Consciousness Studies

-      Have an online web support system (like vidayaprasar) with online courses, conferences and other resources

-      Establish a lecture series in Consciousness Studies at DEI

-      Promote a dialogue between Science and Religion

-      Collaborate with other centres doing similar work in traditional and scientific ways

Experimental Ideas :

-      Develop a First Year Undergraduate Lab on Microtubules where young students can experiment and be encouraged enough to pursue research later on at Master’s and Doctoral levels

-      Develop a whole-head SQUID system with superconducting magnetic shield for consciousness studies in the brain

-      Develop Instrumentation facilities like ECG, EEG, MEG, Functional MRI, GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) for studies of consciousness levels

TRACKS

A few tracks were identified where focused research groups can start working with regular interaction as well as discussion among the tracks :

1. Synthesis of Microtubules (from tubulin and GTP) starting with simple experiments for undergraduate students and ultimately leading to research developments like qubit realization
2. Modelling of Microtubules (e.g. as Quantum Hopfield Nets) and development of novel microtubule-based neural networks with far greater computational capabilities than present day ANNs
3. Consciousness Studies in the Brain (e.g. whole head SQUID system) to extend the existing work in the field of indirect measurement of spirituality
4. Quantum System Modelling of Mind : Spirit-Mind-Brain Interactions
5. Analytic research in areas relating to literature, arts and media to exploration of consciousness. Courses have been proposed on ‘Consciousness, Media, Arts and Literature’, ‘Quantum Uncertainty and Consciousness in Modern Literature’ and ‘Post Humanism and Consciousness’