Science & Tarot... Maybe?

What is consiousness? That is a very thorny question and one to which neither science, religion or philosophy has ever had an answer. Neuroscientists don't even know if consciousness is housed in the brain, and it is consciousness and tarot reading, rather than the brain and tarot reading  that this blog is about. 
. For the purposes of this blog, I begin with  the agreed definition of consciousness. You may understand onsciousness differently, I reiterate, what it is exactly, is up for debate amongst the best scientific and philosophical brains. But the (mostly) agreed definition of consciousness is: your awareness that you exist as a seperate entity, and that you are aware that things exist outside of you.
Outside of this loose definition, opinions differ on what can actually be called consciousness.

In the past consciousness was defined as your inner self, your thoughts, feelings and imagination, All good tarot reading stuff. More recently it includes any kind of cognition, feeling, experience or perception. This is due to the need for an agreed clinical diagnosis of death.
It is true, that science can now 'see' brainwaves and the electrical synapses moving in response to thoughts or outward stimulation. But that is not consciousness, that is the electrical activity in the brain responding to thoughts and outside stimulus. Neuroscience still cannot 'see' or measure consciousness. To date, nobody has been able to say where your consciousness lives. In fact, neuroscience and quantum science is heading back towards Plato's theory of consciousness being outside the brain, and towards Carl Jung's idea of a Collective Consciousness somewhere out in the ether. 

Plato (428/427BCE -348?347BCE)
was the first person in history, as far as I know,  to believe that the soul (consciousness) was the source of life and the mind. However some would argue that the Vedic manuscripts ( approx 1500 - 1200 BCE) are a consciousness outside of the body.
 Don't think of the word 'soul' in religious terms, but as consciousness.
Plato believed that at death the soul leaves the body. Plato also believed in reincarnation. The point is that Plato believed that your soul was the knower, (i.e the mind) the bringer of thoughts and ideas and that it was immortal. If you substitute the word concsiousness for Plato's use of the word soul, then you have: Plato believed that in death consciousness leaves the body, it brings thoughts and ideas, and consciousness is immortal.

I am not for one moment suggesting that neuroscience is 100% allied to the Platonic idea, but it is where we begin in searching for an answer to how a tarot reading works.
To me it gives first inkling that consciousness, whatever it is, possibly does not reside in the body, but outside of the body. So where does it 'live' ?

Carl Jung 1875 - 1961.The collective conscious and unconscious
 For the purposes of  tarot reading we are interested in Jung's theory of  "The collective unconscious". The term 'collective conscious' was also coined by Jung, and they often get mixed up. The collective conscious is a shared set of beliefs and values that a family unit or society have. It is achieved through family, education and the society in which the person lives. Jung believed that the collective unconscious is a part of the mind containing memories and impulses that each person is not aware of. 
Jung saw the collective unconscious as a reservior of psychic resources common to all humans, these resources known as architypes are passed down through the generations, and they are inherited, not learned. As tarot cards are illustrated with common architypes, it could be that in a tarot reading you, (the querent,) are connecting into the psychic pool of knowledge known as the common unconscious via the architypes illustrated on the cards. The tarot reader is just a translator. Like getting a letter in a language that you do not speak, you need a translator! That explanation makes some sense to me, and also clearly illustrates why a tarot reader cannot 'predict' your future, because a tarot reading is a conversation with yourself, your psyche.
 Jung  differed from Plato in that he thought that consciousness was within the brain, and not outside the body

The famous double slit experiment.
Enough of ancient beliefs and philosophy, what does science have to say about conscience?
Quite a lot! let us begin with Quantum Physics and the  famous double slit experiment.. 

It appeared that although single photons were fired at the slits, pairs of photons  went through the screen at the same time. It seemed as if single particles could go through 2 slits at the same time.

Welcome to the wierd world of quantum physics and quantum mechanics!

Stranger still, scientists found that the particles seemed to 'know' when they were being watched and performed accordingly.
When testing for particles, the scientists got particles, and when testing for light, they got light!
There appeared to be some sort of intelligence, or consciousness at work either in the particles or some thing in the universe controlling the particles. This some thing, semed to know before the scientists did what was wanted from the particles. This famous experiment for me is the first inkling that what we call 'consciousness' is not in the brain, or even in the body but somewhere 'outside'. 

Since this experiment defied the Newtonian model of Physics and challenged major established scientific theories the debate rolled on. Many attempts were made to disprove the double slit experient and prove some sort of bias, there have been many more sophisticated experiments since the original double slit experiment. The authors of each paper were convinced that their experiment offered conclusive proof of an outside consciousness or that the Newtonian theory was correct, only to open the whole scientific debate again. Meanwhile quantum  mechanics just kept getting weirder.

Next came String Theory This is a very, very complex form of quantum physics called quantum mechanics. It does bring quantum physics more in line with Einstein's theory of relativity, and also begins to explain quantum gravity. 
For the purposes of tarot reading, it does two things. It shows that point like particles (and they are super tiny) form 'strings and can communicate through vibration, right across the universe. To me this demonstrates again the possibility that what we call consciousness is somewhere outside our brains in the Universe, or even beyond the universe. Is it the immortal soul that Plato said existed? 
Talking of Einstein, remember that in his theory of relativity he states that time is not linear, it just appears to humans like that. Einstein stated that everything in time happens all at once. If the entire history of this Universe, everything that has ever happened or will happen, everything that has ever been born or will be born, happens all at the same time, then theoretically somewhere and somehow we should know what we are going to do next, is a tarot reading tapping into this 'knowing'?  If time is happening all at once, then the idea/model/concept that you have about your future is/has already happened. In which case it is not surprising that the thoughts have come to you. If time happens all at once then you or I would know which cards were going to be drawn, that would be in line with the original double slit experiment whet the photons 'knew' when they were being observed and what the observers wanted, waves or particles.

Multiple Universes
This theory interests me in relation to tarot reading because it theorises that there is either a sort of GroundHog Day effect happening, or the multiple universe in your life are an ever growing decision tree. This brings us right into the realms of your thoughts, your choices and your decisions, which is what a tarot reading is all about! It makes your life a sort of decision tree, but at the same time encapsulates the concept of destiny, free will and also the idea of living in a matrix (of sorts).
The idea is that there is multiple versions of you, in multiple universes, each living out a different life based on alternatives to the life decisions you have made. Supposing you stayed at home on the night that you should have gone out, and therefore didn't meet your life partner? What if you passed that exam you failed? (Or vice versa). In both cases you would live a different life.
The Groundhog Day theory would be that the same opportunity (in different guises) keeps presenting itself to you, until you get it right. As a tarotist, I favour this version. This would be related to soul contracts. Each time an aspect of your soul embodies in flesh, you have certain tasks to achieve in your life. The same task is presented over and over in subtly different ways until you get it right. 
To go with this, then you need to believe in reincarnation, and a Universal soul, where just an aspect of your soul reincarnates in each life. It's more complicated than that, but it touches on spiritual, so a subject for another blog, lets stick to the science and just call it Groundhog Day type multiple universes.

But the universes multiply more. Taking the stay home and not meet life partner scenario, that is only one decision, but you make multiple decisions every day. Here we get onto destiny. If there is some deciding force in the Universe, some consciousness or matrix outside of your body that says that you must meet that life partner, then another opportunity will arise in your life to fulfill this destiny/life lesson. And, that is only one posible outcome of this theory, as it is debated by scientists. An alternative theory is that you would never know, and you meet someone else and have a different life, with no further opportunity to meet your life partner. Remember the Christmas film, "It's a Wonderful LIfe", that shows what happens if someone is never born, but it also shows alternate life paths for all the characters in the film.
The thing is, there is free choice in making the decisions you make, and either you get another chance because some force has predestined this, or you just live a different life. In either case each time you make a decision then there is another universe where another you has a different life!
Multiple Universe theory does neatly tie up, Plato's immortal soul, consciousness living outside of the brain, destiny and free will, and it has also been suggested as an explanation for ghosts!