Fairy Note – Non-Duality, Consciousness Fields, and Phenomenological Fracture in Dementia

I. Non-duality through the lens of Maria Strømme’s 2025 theory

Maria Strømme’s AIP Advances article, Universal consciousness as foundational field (2025), proposes a fundamental reorientation of scientific ontology. Instead of treating matter as primary and consciousness as a secondary by-product of neural complexity, Strømme argues that consciousness is the foundational field from which physical reality emerges. She writes:

“Consciousness is not produced by the brain but is the underlying field from which all physical forms, including the brain, arise” (Strømme 2025, p. 2).

In her account, the universe begins as an undifferentiated consciousness field. Through processes analogous to symmetry-breaking in quantum field theory, this field differentiates into locality, embodiment, temporality, and the appearance of discrete minds. While articulated in a contemporary scientific vocabulary, this structure is deeply continuous with the philosophical tradition of non-duality.

Classical non-dual philosophy asserts that the apparent divisions between mind and world, self and other, subject and object are not ontological separations but phenomenological expressions of a single underlying reality. This view is central to Advaita Vedānta, where Śaṅkara affirms that “Brahman alone is real; the world is appearance; the individual self is not other than Brahman” (Śaṅkara 1978). Similar notions appear in Mahāyāna Buddhism, where Nāgārjuna argues: “There is no duality in what arises through dependent origination” (Nāgārjuna 1995). In Western philosophy, Spinoza’s monism, Schelling’s identity philosophy, and Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology all articulate variations on the same theme: mind and world are different modalities of one substance or “flesh.”

Strømme’s theory therefore represents not a departure from non-dual metaphysics but its scientific re-articulation. She writes:

“Individual consciousness is a window or aperture onto the universal field, not an isolated Cartesian entity” (Strømme 2025, p. 5).

Thus, differentiation—rather than duality—constitutes the basis of experience.

II. Non-duality and phenomenology

Phenomenology offers a natural bridge to non-duality because it suspends assumptions about an objective world independent of experience. Husserl’s principle that consciousness is always consciousness-of situates the subject and world within a single intentional structure. Merleau-Ponty later radicalises this by arguing that the body does not inhabit the world but opens it:

“The body is our general medium for having a world” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 146).

This implies that self and world co-emerge.

Non-duality deepens this phenomenological insight by reframing duality as a surface effect of deeper unity.

III. Non-duality, dementia, and worldhood fracture

When this framework is applied to dementia, the phenomenological fractures characteristic of the condition gain new interpretative depth. Dementia disrupts the structures—memory, embodiment, temporal orientation—that ordinarily sustain the unified appearance of the world. As these weaken, the unity of the consciousness field becomes unstable, and the world begins to appear doubled, fractured, or internally inconsistent.

From a non-dual standpoint, these are not signs of two separate realities but of a single consciousness field losing its integrative coherence. The emergence of “dual unreality” in dementia—such as shifting identifications of home, the appearance of a recognisable-yet-not-recognised spouse, or the collapse of temporal order—reflects the destabilisation of differentiation, not the emergence of a second world.

This perspective illuminates confabulation as well. Instead of treating it as a pathological error, non-duality conceptualises confabulation as a reparative gesture: a creative, meaning-making attempt by consciousness to reconstitute coherence when its usual anchors fail. Strømme’s own claim supports this:

“When individual consciousness loses local coherence, the universal field continues to generate patterns that strive toward order” (Strømme 2025, p. 6).

Thus, confabulation becomes a form of field-repair rather than delusion.

IV. Embodied intelligence and the psychic snapshot

Embodied intelligence emphasises that cognition and world-making arise through bodily engagement rather than internal representations. When dementia compromises the body’s capacity to orient itself, the world disintegrates accordingly. Non-duality clarifies this by positioning embodiment not as the source of consciousness but as one of its differentiated expressions.

The notion of the “psychic snapshot” can be understood within this same framework: a moment where affect, memory, and perception crystallise into a single configuration of the consciousness field. Dementia disrupts the temporal continuity of such snapshots, while AI-generated imagery—produced through patterned statistical archives rather than embodiment—mirrors the structural recombinations seen in confabulation, albeit without lived subjectivity.

This convergence creates a unique conceptual space for understanding dementia, affect, and artificial imagery as different modalities of world formation within a field that is fundamentally unified.

V. Synthesis

Non-duality provides a powerful lens through which to interpret the phenomenological ruptures associated with dementia. It reframes the collapse of worldhood not as a collision between two independent realities but as the destabilisation of a single consciousness field undergoing differentiation failure. Confabulation becomes an attempt to restore coherence; embodiment becomes the hinge through which the world holds together; phenomenology describes how this unity is lived; and AI-generated imagery offers a parallel structure of recombined meaning without subjectivity. Dementia does not create duality—it exposes the contingency of the dualities we ordinarily take for granted.

Harvard-Style Bibliography

Primary Source

Strømme, M. (2025) Universal consciousness as foundational field: A theoretical bridge between quantum physics and non-dual philosophy. AIP Advances, 15(11), pp. 1–12.

Non-Dual Philosophy

Śaṅkara (1978) Crest-Jewel of Discrimination (Vivekachudamani). Translated by J. Haldar. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama.

Nāgārjuna (1995) The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Translated by J.L. Garfield. New York: Oxford University Press.

Spinoza, B. (1996) Ethics. Edited by E. Curley. London: Penguin.

Schelling, F.W.J. (1988) Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Phenomenology & Embodiment

Husserl, E. (2012) Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. London: Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell.

Dementia, Memory & Confabulation

Berrios, G.E. (2000) ‘Confabulations’, in Baddeley, A. et al. (eds) Handbook of Memory Disorders. Chichester: Wiley, pp. 383–407.

Cipriani, G. et al. (2020) Dementia: Presentations, Differential Diagnosis, and Nosology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

AI, Embodiment & Consciousness

Müller, V.C. (2021) ‘Embodiment and the limits of artificial intelligence’, AI & Society, 36(3), pp. 1–14.

Clark, A. (2016) Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Suggested Reading List

Non-Duality & Consciousness Studies

Rupert Spira – Being Aware of Being Aware David Bentley Hart – The Experience of God Thomas Metzinger – Being No One (for contrast) Anil Seth – Being You (consciousness as controlled hallucination)

Phenomenology & Embodiment

Dan Zahavi – Self and Other Shaun Gallagher – How the Body Shapes the Mind Evan Thompson – Mind in Life

Dementia, Memory & Lived Experience

Sabat, S.R. – The Experience of Alzheimer’s Disease Kontos, P. – Ethnographic Reflections on Embodied Selfhood in Dementia Anne Davis Basting – Creative Care (useful for the experiential side)

AI, Cognition & Ontology

Kate Crawford – Atlas of AI Huw Price & Andy Clark – essays on predictive processing N. Katherine Hayles – Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious Luciano Floridi – The Philosophy of Information