The origin and location of consciousness have long been a mystery. However, recent research on the physics, anatomy, and geometry of consciousness has begun to reveal its possible form. In other words, we may soon be able to identify a true architecture of consciousness.
The new work builds upon a theory Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose, Ph.D., and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, M.D., first posited in the 1990s: the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory (Orch OR). Broadly, it claims that consciousness is a quantum process facilitated by microtubules in the brain’s nerve cells. Penrose and Hameroff suggested that consciousness is a quantum wave that passes through these microtubules. And that, like every quantum wave, it has properties like superposition (the ability to be in many places at the same time) and entanglement (the potential for two particles that are very far away to be connected).
The Orch OR theory has been questioned by many experts. However, a recent experiment suggests that the brain is not too warm or wet for consciousness to exist as a quantum wave that connects with the rest of the universe. The experiment also implies that our very own consciousness can interact with the whole universe.
According to Hameroff, quantum-level consciousness is capable of being in all places at the same time. That means your consciousness can connect or entangle with quantum particles outside of your brain—anywhere in the universe, theoretically.