For some scientists, consciousness originates in quantum-mechanical activity and hence is a quantum-mechanical phenomenon. For others, it is an ingredient throughout the universe, permeating all levels of being- not only the human brain, but also individual subatomic particles. This takes us to the view that energy is the ground of the physical world.
Apart from being the source of the physical phenomenon energy is also the source of mental phenomena. So, during the past 15 billion years, potentials for both physicality and mentality have been actualized (Laszlo, 1987).
Schelling and Hegel maintained that the mind and nature are both simply different movements of one absolute Consciousness that manifests itself in its own successive stages of unfolding. So, Consciousness is infinitely expressing itself in the process of evolution. Consciousness or energy is the ground and source of all. Schelling also asserted that consciousness knows itself objectively as nature and subjectively as mind.
The process of evolution with regard to consciousness can also be described as follows (Laszlo, 1987):
"Neuronal systems generate mental metaphors of the physical situation and bring them together in one mental space. A selective attention mechanism allows the mental fields to be scanned in terms of survival significance and neuronal correlates are arranged to become available for unconscious processing."
According to this view, the creation of a mental workspace allows information to come together in a subjective arena in which selective attention enables a scan of data. Based on different kinds of relevance of data, mental images, thoughts and feelings are used as input for further processing. Although all the process seems to be done by neurons, between the physical events the information is transduced into mental form. So, the conscious field is a great and required simplifier. It is not epiphenomenal.
