Consciousness is the primary and most immediate experience we all have. Before being able to recognize any specific experience I am undergoing, the immediate realization that “I am” is always there.

Yet this fundamental first person experience sits uneasily within the boundaries of our scientific third person description of the world, and its relation with matter continues to be deeply puzzling.

After discussing the limits of the physicalist view of consciousness, I will propose an essentially panpsychist perspective in which consciousness, life and quantum indeterminism are intimately related.

Shantena Augusto Sabbadini was awarded his PhD in physics from the University of California in 1976. He worked as a theoretical physicist at the University of Milan and at the University of California. In Milan he researched the foundations of quantum physics. In California he contributed to the first identification of a black hole.

In 1990s he was scientific consultant for the Eranos Foundation, an East-West research centre founded under the auspices of C.G. Jung in the 1930s. In that context he studied Chinese classics and produced various translations and commentaries in Italian and English, including the Yijing and the trilogy of Daoist classics, the Laozi, the Zhuangzi and the Liezi.

Presently he is director of The Pari Center and leads workshops on the philosophical implications of quantum physics, on Daoism, and on using the Yijing as a tool for introspection. His latest book, Pilgrimages to Emptiness, has been published by Pari Publishing.