Maria Strömme, professor of materials science at Uppsala University, has published a theory in the scientific journal AIP Advances in which consciousness is not a byproduct of the brain–but the fundamental field from which time, space, and matter arise.
Maria Strömme sees deeply enough to recognize what the mystic has always pointed toward–and is brave enough to formulate it in her own language. What the Vedas, the Bible, and the Quran approached through imagery and silence, she approaches with equations. Not as a translation–but as her own testimony from another side of the same reality.
It takes courage. Not because the theory is wrong–but because institutions always protect what they have built. In the past, they defended the dogma of the Church. Now they defend the scientific paradigm. The mechanisms are the same.
But the true scientist and the true mystic are fundamentally very similar–just in different coats. The paths they walk may at first glance seem different, but if they walk long enough they will see that they are on the same path and that reality resembles a Möbius strip*. In the end, both see reality with the same gaze.
* A Möbius strip is a surface with only one side–if you start walking along the edge, you will return to the starting point without having crossed any edge. What appeared to be two sides turns out to be one.
But between them–always present–are those who have stopped halfway and declared their side of the coin to be the whole truth. Absolute truth changes form and depends on which side of the coin collective understanding currently resides. The movement is always the same–to kill what moves in order to examine it, to name what is nameless, to turn the circle into a square. It sits just as often behind an academic title as behind an altar. Life itself is opposed by those who believe they own the map of it.
And in truth, it can never be anything but temporary. For everything moves, and must move–but people need firm ground. A shared understanding is not an error–it is a necessity. Knowledge must be institutionalized to be carried by many. But the moment it solidifies, the living truth becomes form. And as form, it quickly becomes dogma. Anyone is free to break out of it–but it requires a strength that very few possess. And those who control the narrative gain power.
We laugh at the old. Build new stories. And someone else in the future will laugh at ours–with the same certainty that the cycles continue.
Those who follow the chain too far risk–no matter how true their observation is–ending up outside what is institutionally permitted to be seen. Recognition comes afterward. The Earth was not flat.
Maria Strömme follows anyway. And in a world that moves quickly, she will hopefully receive the respect she deserves. Even if the insight she carries–that we are all already one–makes the recognition itself a gentle irony. She will hopefully accept the prize with a smile. Perhaps with an insight she speaks of quietly–to herself and others. The character plays its role in the story. And the shadow of the deepest insight must sometimes be set aside for anything to have value at all.
She is a materials scientist who has arrived at the conclusion that material is secondary. That is no small shift. It is to follow the scientific path so far that one ends up on the other side of the coin–where the mystic has always been waiting.
Maria Strömme formulates the same idea in quantum mechanical terms and concludes that it is “time for hardcore science to seriously begin exploring this.” She asks: “Are these phenomena really mystical? Or is there a discovery we have not yet made?” Freely quoted from source: UU.se
We search, find, and forget in cycles. Quantum physics’ path into consciousness is in fact that same ancient mystical insight–but found within a new narrative. Insight arises sometimes in the spiritual, sometimes in the material... The coin rotates. The story continues to be woven... a new link in the chain is forged.
In the end, we may realize that the closest we can come to a formulation that human understanding can carry lands somewhere here:
Truth is the sum of all perspectives.
And even though I am not Christian in the institutional sense–but still nodding toward Christian mysticism–“Love thy neighbor” points to something structurally true. It is the only way to hold all perspectives at once. The fool and the genius are parts of the same truth. In this text represented by the mystic and the scientist. And as others have noted throughout history, they tend to be both at the same time–which may not be so strange since consciousness itself is built on an illusion of separation in order to experience.
And yet–or precisely because of this–there are always paths from one side of the coin to the other. If there were no paths, no order could arise. Consciousness would not be able to turn all of existence into its own little game of hide-and-seek.
The discovery may be great. The recognition greater. A paradigm shift where a new chapter is added to the infinite story. But based on its own logic, we simultaneously forge a new link in the chain that leads into the darkness where we cannot see it. In that darkness there is no absolute truth–only a possibility for consciousness to create the next thing to be observed. And that is science’s own solipsism.
I accept it–do you?
We seek the anchor, but the anchor is in fact ourselves.
That is exactly as far as we can go.
Yet the coin is turned so that the next chapter can be written.
And that is no small thing.
Published May 6, 2026