Cosmic Consciousness
An Original Podcast
Professor Mickūnas discusses topics from Philosophy to Politics, Zen to the Cosmos, Communication to Democracy, and much more. Listen to this much-celebrated philosopher as he takes you on a journey of learning, understanding, and discovery.
Episode 1 (27 Jan 2026)
The birth of philosophy as a search for the ways we understand the world, resulting in the discovery of diverse levels of consciousness--from empirical to rational.
Episode 5 (22 Feb 2026)
The previous debate resulted in the acceptance of the universe as composed of "atoms" and that all objective reality is physical parts. All other features of consciousness became "subjective," from qualities, through values and even mathematics.
Episode 9 (29 Mar 2026)
Contemporary global understanding is using a language of "perspectivity." It is a modern philosophical "discovery" of the universe as infinite. The issue: infinity has no center; therefore, any point one selects can be a chosen perspective from which the universe is seen. Meanwhile, infinity can be quantified into infinitesimal divisions such that everything can be interpreted mathematically. The issue: numbers are ot temporal and cannot measure time.
Episode 13 (26 Apr 2026)
The question for intersubjectivity: how is it that being different individuals in different times and places, we can communicate? How can we transmit "the same" awareness? Can we say that consciousness and its objects are very different from the things of the world?
Episode 17 (24 May 2026)
Infinity and time concepts--signs pulsating and returning of the same: sum of particles. East: nothing--the oceanic metaphor. Cosmic events are rhythmic--musical and dancing myth.
Episode 21 (21 Jun 2026)
Infinity has no direction and implies that we can take any point as its central perspective. All such consciousness can assume any perspective allowing for multi-perspectivity. Yet the connection between them is problematic. Given this problem, 20th-century scientists turned toward the East: Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, Schrödinger began to study Eastern texts and discovered another dimension of awareness: mythological. Here appears a difference between visual-light consciousness and rhythmic-dancing consciousness.
Episode 2 (1 Feb 2026)
To reach the rational consciousness, classical philosophers argued for universal education--Plato established a school called "Academy." The quest for rational consciousness is also a quest for freedom of discussion and responsibility.
Episode 6 (01 Mar 2026)
And now comes the question of time. Back to classics. What is time, and what are the ways that time is experienced? If everything is "now," what happens to past and future? The issue is discussed by Aristotle and very profoundly by St. Augustine.
Episode 10 (05 Apr 2026)
The basic issue of time as being fundamental to all experiences: despite all efforts to explain time physiologically, mathematically, psychologically, assume time consciousness which is not a feature of anything. How do we extricate ourselves from the "thing mentality"?
Episode 14 (03 May 2026)
The invention of modern subject ended with the conception of time as the projectionist of future possibilities. Among the latter is a possibility of human non-being. But future is seen as infinite, and yet we have not discovered awareness of how infinity is given.
Episode 18 (31 May 2026)
Interpretation: method. Excess infinity--other modern cultures. Infinity of infinities. Kant's question: formed systems are empty. Parts and wholes question: many articles speak of different levels of events, such as quantum physics' interaction at a distance--all within a world. But, what is world and what is consciousness of it?
Episode 22 (28 Jun 2026)
Extend visual metaphors to include distance, which is space-visual measure. But measure of time is not possible because by the "time" we finish measuring, it changed. Visuality also gives us "thing mentality". Time as emptiness and resultantly time awareness reveals empty consciousness. Zen practice and emptiness--consciousness without things: sound, silence, and empty Zen bell.
Episode 3 (8 Feb 2026)
In this episode, the discussion focuses on the main arguments for the place of reason: is it distinct from the body or is it a form and essence of embodied rational consciousness?
Episode 7 (15 Mar 2026)
This discussion focuses on the modern subject and what methodological and theoretical means it has to establish in order to access the material world. The method had to be mathematical which, in correlation to the homogeneous reality, could treat the latter with indifference to qualitative, perceptual environment. The latter could be reconstructed in terms of mathematically calculated conditions and material results.
Episode11 (12 Apr 2026)
The prevailing explanation of consciousness is reductionism to modern materialism in such forms as biology, chemistry, physiology, which, in fact, fail to explain time awareness and even how we access scientific hypotheses.
Episode 15 (10 May 2026)
Timeless imagination transmitted despite different beings or space-time locations--ontology as a cover over time awareness. Metaphysics--mathematics introduced position to explain time awareness. Let us begin differently. If the cosmos began and is evolving from past to present into future, in what time is it evolving?
Episode 19 (07 Jun 2026)
Emptiness: At the human level--why do we conquer, destroy others, as if we do not have enough, to the point of destroying all that we have created? What infantile emptiness--answer: time emptiness, future empty possibilities, empty projects, empty utopias, empty time across all civilizations; i.e., time awareness is not the same as awareness of time.
Episode 23 (05 Jul 2026)
Coming soon . . .
Episode 4 (15 Feb 2026)
In this episode, the fundamental question is what constitutes the most basic components of reality: is it an experienced thing or the parts of which the thing is composed? The resolution is indefinite.
Episode 8 (22 Mar 2026)
This discussion shows the failure of one universal mathematical "language" resulting in a fragmentation of discourses and multipledisciplines. The latter are empowered to construct the environment in accordance with their mathematical definitions and thus increase the power to use the constructed material reality as means for novel constructs: here we have progress. Finally, to regard everything "objectively", including humans, the latter were also redefined in terms of diverse disciplines--physiology, biology, chemistry, genetics.
Episode 12 (19 Apr 2026)
The issue with "in" metaphor--being "in" space and time locations. First effort to "exit" this metaphor is imagination and images, which cannot be located--they are "intersubjective", but not psychological.
Episode 16 (17 May 2026)
Rational consciousness: empirical. Material scientific: math. What is math: what is awareness of math? What does it mean to say "let us look at the world mathematically" all the way to infinity?
Episode 20 (14 Jun 2026)
Time awareness and the awareness of time: the "objective" time of the universe. It began in the past and has moved to the present and is moving into the future. Question: is there anything apart from the universe? No. So in what time is the universe moving? Result: the universe is not moving "in" time. It is a question of infinite time and infinity of the universe. The proof is math: math as a constant is empty and is one among many constants.
Episode 24 (12 Jul 2026)
Coming soon . . .
Episode 25 (19 Jul 2026)
Coming soon . . .