The Hidden Field of Awareness: A New Way of Thinking About Consciousness

By Ashkan Farhadi

Sep 2025

The Puzzle of Consciousness

Why do you feel joy when you hear a favorite song? Or sadness when you recall a memory? Neuroscience can track brainwaves, map circuits, and measure chemicals. Yet it still can’t explain the most basic mystery: How do physical and chemical interactions in the brain create the feeling of color, coldness, or pain?

This puzzle is known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness. For centuries, thinkers have debated whether the mind is nothing more than brain activity or something beyond it. Neither view has fully satisfied scientists or philosophers.

Enter a new perspective: the Quantum Trilogy Theory of Consciousness (QTTC). This model does not claim the brain magically produces awareness, nor does it separate mind and matter into different worlds. Instead, it suggests that consciousness arises from a hidden field of awareness that interacts with the brain.

A Universal Awareness Field

In modern physics, even “empty space” is not empty. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) shows us that space is filled with invisible fields that give rise to particles and energy.

QTTC borrows this idea as a metaphor. It proposes a Universal Awareness Field (UAF) — a kind of invisible background that is:

  • Timeless – not bound by clocks or calendars.

  • Non-local – not tied to one place or neuron.

  • Selfless – existing without any sense of “I.”

This field does not think or choose. But when the brain and body engage with it, experiences arise.

From Awareness to Consciousness

QTTC describes a step-by-step process:

  1. Preselection – Countless signals from the world, thoughts, and memories float in the background.

  2. Selection – One signal is chosen, either deliberately (attention) or automatically (a reflex).

  3. Transformation – That signal turns into a personal, felt experience — the spark of awareness.

  4. Post-Transformation – Awareness fuels intentional acts such as remembering, reasoning, and making deliberate decisions.

This journey shows how a neutral awareness field becomes the living experience of awareness. But to move from awareness to consciousness, something more is needed.

Awareness becomes the fuel of intention through Awareness-Based Choice Selection (ABCS) — our capacity for free will. Together, awareness and intention create the sense of agency, or the “I.”

Consciousness, then, is a combination of three elements:

  1. Awareness – the raw subjective experience.

  2. Intention – the deliberate will to act.

  3. Self-reflection – the ability to recognize and evaluate oneself.

Unlike awareness, which is timeless and selfless, consciousness is tied to identity, time, and place.

This raises a fascinating question: Can one be aware but not conscious? The answer is yes. Dreaming during sleep is a clear example. A dream can be vivid and filled with sensations — timeless and selfless — yet without intention or reflection, the dreamer remains unconscious.

Lessons from Quantum Fields

To make sense of this, QTTC borrows structural ideas from physics:

  • Symmetry Breaking → Intention
    In physics, symmetry breaking selects one path from many possibilities. In the mind, it is the moment intention arises — when one decides to act.

  • Gauge Fixing → The Self
    Physicists use gauge fixing to set a stable reference point. In QTTC, it explains how a steady sense of “I” forms out of shifting experiences.

  • Field Excitation → Experience
    Just as particles are excitations of a quantum field, QTTC imagines each moment of awareness as a tiny excitation in the UAF — a “quantum of experience,” called a noëton.

Why This Matters

QTTC doesn’t ask, “How does the brain create awareness?” Instead, it asks:
“How does the brain interact with the awareness field to shape experience?”

This shift has major implications:

  • Consciousness isn’t just computation. It’s a field-based process tied to choices and intention.

  • Free will has a central role. Decisions aren’t side effects of brain chemistry but expressions of field-driven awareness.

  • Ethics and meaning gain new depth. If awareness is part of a universal field, every act of attention may carry more significance than we realize.

Not Physics in the Neurons

It’s important to be clear: QTTC is not saying quantum mechanics literally runs inside your neurons. Unlike some theories that search for “quantum effects” in microtubules or DNA, QTTC uses the structure of quantum fields as a model for how awareness might function.

Think of it as a bridge of ideas — a way to connect neuroscience, philosophy, and physics in a common language.

Looking Ahead

QTTC is in its early stages. It does not yet have equations or experiments, but it opens promising directions:

  • Could biological structures act as “gateways” to the awareness field?

  • How does QTTC compare with theories like Global Workspace Theory or Integrated Information Theory?

  • Could artificial intelligence ever access such a field, or is it exclusive to natural life?

A New Lens on Ourselves

At its heart, QTTC offers a bold idea:

Awareness is like an invisible field that fills the universe. Consciousness is what happens when the mind shapes that field through choice, intention, and reflection.

By reframing the Hard Problem of Consciousness, QTTC encourages us to see ourselves not just as brains running code, nor as isolated souls, but as participants in a deeper field of awareness.

And perhaps, by studying that field, we can move closer to answering the oldest question of all:
What does it mean to be alive and aware?