Hi wwcj! Please be patient with me! This article by Prof. Raman is the sketchiest, bare-bones presentation of a speculation on consciousness as a universal field. It's great merit (from my point of view) is that, while recognizing the physical basis of consciousness in biological entities, it does not make consciousness an epiphenomenon (or simple by-product) of that physical basis exclusively; i.e., brain activity. The Universal Thought Field (UTF) and the Particular Thought Fields (PTFs) of individuals are able to interact on this model. Personally, I disagree with Prof. Raman's statement that PTF-to-PTF communications require physical media such as writing, language. The UTF itself may mediate this sort of communication.
As to defining what consciousness is, as I mentioned there seems to be a tendency among Eastern European scientists today to just generally regard anything that falls under the head "consciousness" as a spiritual phenomenon because they want to make plain its non-physical nature.
Of course, over here if you say "spiritual," everybody starts thinking "religion," and then you usually get into the same-old silly dust-up between atheists and believers, and the thread blows up. I hope that will not happen here. For while Prof. Raman's paper certainly does not rule out religious belief or religious experience, as a physicist, such speculations go beyond his pay grade. They are not his topic here.
I'm working on a more extended reply, wwcj. Boop will be back later. Thank you so much for writing!
Post-Gita religion is something else, social in intent, a set of effective rituals, purely mechanistic behavior. Pre-Christian Mediterranean religion, if it was indeed religion by our modern understanding, was highly symbolic ritual, individual in intent. Christianity allows both of these approaches simultaneously. The spiritual entity is a religious object, but not exclusively religious. The spiritual entity can be seen as a material thing as proposed in the essay at the top of this thread, the essence of this material thing yet to be determined.
In The Nature of Personal Reality (one of many Seth books) some of the "Consciousness" topics discussed are:
The conscious mind, ego as an offshoot, as ever-changing, evolution of, function of, inner knowledge and, matter and, meeting of unconscious and, physical body and, preconceived ideas and, spontaneity.
There is also a good deal of information available at