By virtue of the way we've defined the physical, consciousness is not physical by definition, and worse yet, it cannot even be reduced to the physical because of that definition. You see, we define the physical as basically that which has no phenomenal qualities, that which is exhaustively described in terms of a list of abstract quantities, such as mass, charge, momentum, spin, geometric relationships, frequency, amplitude, and so on and so forth. And of course, there is nothing about these abstract quantities in terms of which we could deduce the quality of seeing a red apple or tasting the apple or the quality of feeling a bellyache or falling in love. So by definition, we've turned these two domains into incommensurable domains.
One is a given experience, the qualities of our inner life, and the other is a conceptual creation, the physical world. I think the way this divide came about was that quantities are very handy for describing the relative differences of the qualities of experience. For instance, if I see red, that's different from seeing blue. and there is a very handy way to describe this difference in terms of a frequency delta, which is a number. But then we've taken this description, this handy description of relative differences between qualities, and we said, well, this is actually an existence.
It exists in and of itself, and we called it matter and energy or the physical world out there. We gave it an ontological reality that it didn't have in the beginning. It was a mere description of something else. And worse yet, we not only edified it as an independent ontological reality, we now try to reduce The qualities which is where we started to that conceptual creation of consciousness, which exists in consciousness, and that of course cannot work. It is obvious that there is a world out there, independent of my mind, your mind, anybody's mind.
There is a world out there that has an autonomous, independent existence. It exists in and of itself. So it's outside our individual personal minds. But then we very discreetly put an extra unexamined step on this statement.
We said not only is this world outside anybody's individual mind, it is outside mind as an ontological category. It is something else. What's something else?
Well, those numbers that we used in a very handy way to describe the relative differences of experience. That's where it goes wrong. I think the objective world out there exists. But it is constituted by transpersonal mental states, which present to us in the form we call physicality, just as my phenomenal inner life presents itself to you in the form of the matter that constitutes my body.