The Connections I Could Not See Before: Reflections on Science, Nature, Consciousness, and the Gradual Unfolding of a Life

Day 468 of Meditation – Nov 2, 2026

This morning, as I was walking through the desert landscape surrounding my home in Mendoza, Argentina, something began to make a little more sense. Not in the sense of arriving at a sudden revelation or discovering an answer to the questions I have carried for so many years, but rather through a gentle recognition that many of the seemingly separate directions my life has taken may never have been as disconnected as I once believed. Chemistry, applied physics, psychology, nature, forests, mindfulness, meditation, spirituality, and my ongoing exploration of consciousness have occupied different periods of my life, each demanding my attention in its own way. For many years, I understood them as distinct interests, sometimes even as departures from one another. Yet walking this morning, observing the desert around me, I began to recognize how each has contributed something to the next, how the questions I once asked in one field have gradually transformed into questions belonging to another, and how, perhaps, I have been investigating something remarkably similar all along, although through very different means.

I do not wish to suggest that I have finally discovered some underlying truth connecting all these disciplines. If anything, the longer I live, study, and experience, the less inclined I am to make such declarations. Rather, I am beginning to recognize a continuity in my own curiosity, one that was difficult to perceive while I was immersed in the individual stages of my journey. Perhaps this is one of the peculiarities of human life: we experience events sequentially, often without understanding their significance, and only much later, when sufficient distance has formed, do certain relationships become visible. Even then, what we recognize is necessarily a partial interpretation, shaped by who we are at that particular moment.

Since I can remember, I have been a rather timid and shy person. In many respects, I remain so today. I have never felt particularly comfortable drawing attention to myself, speaking extensively about my achievements, or presenting my personal journey as something extraordinary. Over the years, I received scholarships, pursued degrees in different countries, conducted scientific research, and eventually worked in academia. Yet I rarely felt the need to speak about these experiences beyond the circumstances in which they were relevant. Perhaps this was partly due to my personality, but I suspect there was also something more fundamental behind my hesitation. I have never felt that possessing knowledge in a particular field entitled me to claim a complete understanding of reality, nor that academic qualifications made my perspective inherently more valuable than that of another person.

I have also rarely been inclined to argue with others about philosophical concepts, spiritual beliefs, or what constitutes the ultimate truth. This is not because I have no convictions or because I believe all explanations are equally valid. Rather, I have always been aware, perhaps sometimes painfully so, of how incomplete my own understanding remains. How could I insist that another person accept my interpretation of existence when I possess only fragments of knowledge about the world, and perhaps even fewer about myself? Every person approaches reality through a particular history of experiences, education, relationships, emotions, and cultural influences. Even the most carefully developed intellectual position remains situated within the boundaries of what its author has encountered, considered, and understood.

My scientific education strengthened this awareness rather than diminishing it. Science is sometimes perceived as a discipline that provides certainty, but those who engage deeply in scientific investigation learn how provisional many explanations can be. Scientific knowledge is not arbitrary, nor does it become meaningless because it is open to revision. Its strength lies precisely in the possibility of testing, questioning, correcting, and refining our understanding in response to evidence. Some scientific explanations are exceptionally well established, while others remain tentative. What science does not offer is a guarantee that our present models exhaust everything there is to know. A theory may describe a phenomenon extraordinarily well within particular conditions and still leave important questions unanswered. New discoveries may extend, refine, or occasionally challenge what previously seemed sufficient.

During my studies in chemistry at NTU in England, I investigated molecular structures, chirality, and organic conducting materials. Later, during my doctoral research in applied physics at Tohoku University in Japan, I studied the electrical properties of conducting polymers, particularly the ways in which their conductivity could be influenced by changes in their organization and physical conditions. My investigations required me to move beyond what a material appeared to be and examine the relationships among its constituent structures, electronic states, and surrounding environment. Electrical conductivity was not simply a matter of what a substance was made of. Its behaviour depended upon how its components were arranged, how charge could move through the material, and how different physical and chemical conditions influenced those processes.

At the time, these were scientific problems requiring experimental methods, theoretical explanations, and careful interpretation of results. I was not thinking about consciousness, spirituality, or the philosophical implications of unity and separation. Yet now, many years later, I find myself returning to certain principles that my research helped me understand. Something can appear independent while its behaviour is deeply dependent upon relationships and conditions. A structure can possess properties that are not adequately explained by considering its individual constituents in isolation. A relatively small change in organization can produce a significant change in how an entire system behaves. These observations belong to the study of physical matter, and I would be scientifically irresponsible to present them as evidence for a spiritual understanding of existence. Nevertheless, they provide a language through which I can reflect upon the relationships I have gradually encountered in other areas of my life.

Quantum mechanics, which forms part of the theoretical foundation of chemistry and condensed-matter physics, adds another dimension to these considerations. At the microscopic level, physical reality does not always behave according to the intuitions developed through ordinary human experience. Electrons are described through quantum states, and their behaviour requires concepts that differ considerably from our everyday understanding of objects moving through space. Yet quantum physics must not be turned into an explanation for every mysterious aspect of human experience. The existence of quantum phenomena does not demonstrate that consciousness creates reality, nor does quantum entanglement establish the spiritual unity described in some contemplative traditions. I remain interested in the possibility that our understanding of consciousness may eventually require discoveries that extend beyond existing explanatory frameworks, but possibility and evidence are not the same thing.

The question that increasingly interests me is not merely how matter behaves, but how it is possible for there to be an experience of existence at all. How does conscious experience arise? What is the relationship between the physical body, the activity of the brain, and the awareness through which we experience ourselves and the world? Is consciousness entirely dependent upon the organization of biological matter, or is there something about its nature that we have not yet learned to understand? My education in physics does not provide the answers to these questions. It does, however, remind me to distinguish observation from interpretation, experience from explanation, and intellectual possibility from established knowledge.

Psychology introduced another way of approaching the human condition. Whereas chemistry and physics directed my attention toward the properties and interactions of matter, psychology invited me to consider perception, emotion, cognition, behaviour, and the extraordinary complexity of human experience. It revealed how our understanding of the world is influenced by processes that frequently operate outside deliberate awareness. We do not simply encounter reality as detached observers. We interpret, anticipate, remember, fear, desire, compare, and construct meaning. Our experiences are shaped by the interaction between what happens around us and what occurs within us. Psychology therefore provided another perspective on the relationship between the individual and the surrounding world, one that was neither reducible to molecular structures nor entirely independent of the biological processes through which human experience becomes possible.

And then there was the forest.

My relationship with nature did not begin as an academic discipline or professional undertaking. It developed through experiences that gradually became increasingly important to my understanding of life. Spending time in forests, observing their rhythms, and allowing myself to be present without the constant demand to accomplish something introduced a different kind of inquiry. Unlike scientific research, which often requires the investigator to define a question, select a method, and seek evidence, my encounters with nature frequently began without a particular question at all. There was simply the experience of being there, of noticing, listening, and gradually becoming more aware of the relationship between myself and the surrounding environment.

Over time, my interest in nature developed into my work with Shinrin-Yoku, forest bathing, forest therapy, nature connectedness, and mindfulness. What had begun as a personal relationship became a professional commitment to helping others explore their own relationships with the natural world. Here, my scientific education and my personal experiences began to support one another more visibly. Psychology helped me understand the possible pathways through which contact with nature may influence human wellbeing. Scientific research encouraged me to evaluate evidence critically, recognize methodological limitations, and avoid making claims beyond what existing studies could support. My own experiences in forests reminded me that quantitative measurements, however valuable, cannot fully communicate what an individual encounter with nature means to the person experiencing it.

I gradually came to appreciate that knowledge about nature and a relationship with nature are not the same thing. One may understand the biological processes of a tree, its ecological functions, and its place within a particular ecosystem without necessarily feeling connected to it. Equally, one may experience a profound emotional relationship with a tree without possessing detailed botanical knowledge. Neither form of understanding must invalidate the other. When approached with humility, they may enrich one another, allowing scientific knowledge to deepen appreciation while direct experience gives personal meaning to what science describes.

My transition away from university life, however, was far from straightforward. For many years, I struggled with the decision to move in a different direction. I had invested a considerable part of my life in academic education and scientific research. Becoming a professor and working within a university represented not only a professional position but also an identity shaped by years of effort, intellectual development, and expectations about what a successful life might look like. To gradually move away from that path was therefore not simply a practical decision about employment. It required me to reconsider what I valued, what I wished to contribute, and whether the direction in which I was moving genuinely corresponded with the person I was becoming.

The transition happened gradually. I moved from a more established academic role toward part-time lecturing, while increasingly dedicating myself to work connected with forests, mindfulness, education, and wellbeing. There were moments of uncertainty, hesitation, and doubt. I questioned whether I was abandoning something valuable, whether I was making a mistake, and whether following what felt closer to my heart was sufficient justification for changing a path I had spent so many years developing. I did not always possess the confidence to explain these decisions, even to myself. Sometimes the direction felt clear emotionally while remaining difficult to justify intellectually or practically.

Now, looking back, I am beginning to understand that perhaps I was not leaving my previous education behind. I was carrying it with me into another field of inquiry. The scientific training that taught me to question assumptions became essential to my work in nature-based interventions. My understanding of psychology informed the way I considered wellbeing, emotional regulation, and human relationships. My experiences in forests created space for questions that could not be answered entirely through academic literature. Gradually, these different areas of my life began to interact, not because they were identical, but because each approached some aspect of the relationship between human beings and the reality in which we exist.

Meditation has taken this inquiry somewhere I did not anticipate.

Through sustained daily practice, I have begun to explore consciousness not primarily as an abstract concept but as something directly experienced. The questions have become increasingly personal and, at times, difficult to articulate. What is this awareness through which thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and perceptions arise? What exactly do I refer to when I say I? Where does the experience of individuality begin, and what happens when the familiar boundaries through which I identify myself appear to dissolve? During meditation, I have encountered experiences of profound peace, love, apparent unity, and a diminished sense of separation between myself and what I experience as a greater reality. I have also encountered fear, uncertainty, discomfort, and moments that have challenged my previous understanding of myself.

These experiences have not made me certain about the ultimate nature of consciousness. Quite the opposite. They have deepened my awareness of how difficult it is to distinguish the experience itself from the interpretations that arise afterward. Something may feel unquestionably meaningful without providing an unquestionable explanation of reality. I may experience unity without knowing whether that experience reveals an underlying metaphysical truth, reflects a particular condition of the human nervous system, or involves dimensions of experience that our present understanding cannot adequately describe. Perhaps these possibilities are not all mutually exclusive, but I do not yet know how to establish their relationships.

I have also been cautious about reading extensively from ancient spiritual and philosophical texts while developing my own meditation practice. This may seem unusual, particularly because many traditions have spent centuries investigating precisely the kinds of experiences and questions I now encounter. My hesitation does not arise from a lack of respect for their wisdom. On the contrary, I recognize that these traditions contain extraordinarily sophisticated reflections on consciousness, suffering, individuality, and the nature of existence. Yet I have felt a strong desire to encounter my own experiences before adopting the language or interpretive frameworks provided by others.

I do not want to enter meditation expecting to experience what an ancient text describes. I do not want to identify a particular sensation as evidence of spiritual progress merely because it resembles an account written centuries ago. Nor do I wish to force an unfamiliar experience into an established philosophical category simply to make it appear more understandable. At least for now, I wish to observe what arises, describe it as faithfully as possible, and allow my understanding to develop without prematurely deciding what it must mean. Reading may come later, when I feel ready to compare my observations with the insights of others and examine both their similarities and differences.

Yet even this attempt at independence contains a contradiction that I am increasingly unable to ignore. Can any experience or interpretation truly belong to me alone? My language, education, memories, culture, relationships, and scientific understanding have all been shaped by countless influences beyond myself. Even my decision to avoid certain philosophical texts has emerged from a particular history of experiences and ideas. I cannot remove these influences entirely, nor can I step outside the conditions through which my present consciousness has developed.

I find myself returning to a peculiar question: if I am consciousness, and consciousness is what I am attempting to investigate, then who or what is conducting the investigation? There is an apparent circularity here. The one who observes is also, in some sense, the subject of observation. Every attempt to understand consciousness takes place within conscious experience itself. Even when I turn toward the external world, study scientific evidence, or read the reflections of another person, the resulting understanding must still arise within the field of my own awareness.

And yet, is that awareness entirely mine?

I cannot answer this question with certainty. The fact that my experience is accessible to me in the first person does not establish that consciousness exists independently of my body, nor does it prove that awareness is shared in some universal sense. Nevertheless, I increasingly recognize that the person I call myself is inseparable from a vast network of relationships and conditions. My body is sustained through interactions with the environment. My thoughts, partially,  emerge through processes influenced by biology, learning, memory, and social experience. My understanding develops through encounters with other people and the world around me. Even the words I use to question my existence were inherited from languages and cultures that existed long before I was born.

In this sense, whatever I understand about consciousness cannot be entirely the accomplishment of an isolated individual. It is, in many respects, a collaboration. Perhaps not necessarily a collaboration between separate conscious entities in some metaphysical sense, but certainly a collaboration among innumerable physical, biological, psychological, cultural, and relational processes. The very possibility of questioning who I am depends upon conditions that I did not create and cannot fully control.

There is something profoundly humbling about recognizing this.

For many years, I approached different areas of knowledge as distinct disciplines, each with its own questions, methodologies, and boundaries. Chemistry investigated substances and their transformations. Physics investigated the behaviour of matter and energy. Psychology investigated human experience and behaviour. Ecology examined the relationships among organisms and their environments. Mindfulness invited attention to the present moment. Meditation opened a more intimate inquiry into the nature of awareness itself. Spirituality, as I have gradually come to understand it through personal experience, raises questions about meaning, existence, love, and the possibility of a reality that exceeds our ordinary understanding.

Today, I do not see these fields as interchangeable, nor do I wish to dissolve their important differences. They provide different forms of knowledge, operate under different standards of evidence, and answer different kinds of questions. Yet I increasingly recognize how they can support one another. Physics reminds me that reality is not necessarily organized according to human intuition. Chemistry reveals how structure and interaction influence the properties of matter. Psychology demonstrates how perception and experience are shaped by processes that are not always consciously accessible. Ecology reminds me that living organisms exist within networks of interdependence. Nature connectedness invites me to experience those relationships rather than merely describe them. Meditation allows me to observe how the sense of self, thought, emotion, and awareness change through direct experience. Philosophical reflection helps me consider what these observations might mean, while also reminding me how much remains unresolved.

Perhaps the relationship among these fields is not that they lead toward one final conclusion, but that each reveals the limitations of the others while offering something they cannot provide alone. Scientific explanations can tell me a great deal about the mechanisms through which living systems function, but they do not necessarily tell me how I ought to live. Direct experience can reveal something deeply meaningful about my relationship with the world, but its personal significance does not establish a universal scientific truth. Philosophical reasoning can help clarify assumptions and possibilities, but its conclusions remain open to criticism and revision. No single perspective seems sufficient to encompass the entirety of what it means to exist.

Walking through the desert this morning, I found myself thinking about the apparent simplicity of the landscape surrounding me. At first glance, the arid ground, stones, grasses, shrubs, mountains, and open sky may seem to exist as separate elements. Yet every part of this landscape is involved in processes extending far beyond what I can immediately perceive. Geological formations reflect transformations occurring over immense periods of time. Plants respond to water availability, soil conditions, temperature, light, and relationships with other organisms. The stones beneath my feet preserve traces of processes that began long before human life appeared. Even my own presence in this landscape is part of a continuing exchange with the surrounding environment, through breathing, movement, perception, and the countless physiological processes that sustain my body.

I do not need to attribute a spiritual meaning to every scientific relationship in order to find this extraordinary. The physical reality itself is sufficiently remarkable. Yet my experience of being within it adds another dimension, one that cannot be fully captured by describing the landscape’s measurable properties. There is the desert, and there is my experience of the desert. There is the body walking, and there is the awareness of walking. There are physical interactions that science can investigate, and there is the subjective experience through which they become part of my life.

Somewhere within this encounter, the distinctions I have drawn between my different journeys seem less rigid than before.

What I once interpreted as a series of departures was, in fact, a gradual widening of my inquiry. I moved from studying matter to studying aspects of human experience, from investigating physical interactions to cultivating relationships with nature, and from learning about consciousness through academic perspectives to exploring it through sustained meditation. Each transition brought new questions without entirely replacing those that came before. The earlier stages did not disappear. They remained, sometimes quietly, within the understanding I carried forward.

And it may be that this is also why I no longer feel the same need to define myself through a particular profession, qualification, or intellectual identity. I have been a student, researcher, lecturer, educator, writer, and guide, but none of these roles fully describes who I am. They are expressions of a life unfolding through changing circumstances. Even the person who once believed that becoming a university professor represented the culmination of an academic journey could not have anticipated the questions that would eventually lead her toward forests, meditation, and the exploration of consciousness.

I still do not know whether the direction I have taken will eventually lead me toward a clearer understanding of what consciousness is. Perhaps there is no final understanding available to us, or perhaps there are aspects of reality that will remain beyond the reach of human investigation. I cannot know. What I can recognize is that the desire to understand has remained remarkably constant throughout my life, even as the objects of my attention have changed.

I was once trying to understand how electrons move through conducting materials. Today, I find myself asking how awareness arises within a living human being, how the sense of individuality is formed, and why, during certain experiences, that individuality seems to give way to an extraordinary sense of unity. These questions are not scientifically equivalent, and the answers to one cannot simply be transferred to the other. Nevertheless, both have emerged from the same curiosity about a reality that continually exceeds what I presently understand.

There is also something reassuring in recognizing that I do not have to choose between being scientifically minded and remaining open to the spiritual dimensions of my experience. I can preserve intellectual discipline without dismissing what I cannot yet explain. I can acknowledge the depth of an experience without turning it into a universal claim. I can approach ancient traditions with respect while allowing myself the freedom to investigate before adopting their interpretations. I can accept that certain questions may remain unanswered while continuing to explore them with sincerity.

Above all, I am gradually learning that understanding does not always arrive through the acquisition of more information. Sometimes it emerges through a change in the relationships we recognize among things we already know. What once appeared fragmented begins to reveal a certain continuity. Not necessarily because reality itself has changed, but because our perspective has widened sufficiently to perceive connections that were previously beyond our attention.

This morning, during my walk and meditation,  the desert did not offer me an answer about consciousness, existence, or the ultimate nature of reality. It simply gave me a space in which to recognize something about my own journey. Many of the paths I once believed were taking me in different directions have, in their own ways, contributed to the questions I am asking today. The scientist, the psychologist, the forest guide, the meditator, the writer, and the woman walking through the desert are not separate people. They are different expressions of the same life, shaped through relationships with a world that keeps teaching me how little I know.

And for now, this recognition is enough.

I do not need to establish that everything is one in order to appreciate the connections among things. I do not need to deny individuality in order to recognize interdependence. I do not need to abandon science in order to explore spirituality, nor must I abandon the intimacy of direct experience in order to remain intellectually responsible.

Years ago, I could not see how these different parts of my life belonged together. Even today, I cannot claim to understand their relationship entirely. But as I walked this morning, something became a little clearer: perhaps I have not spent my life searching for entirely different things. Perhaps I have been approaching the same fundamental mystery from different directions, learning different ways of asking questions, and gradually discovering how much remains to be understood.

Simply a growing recognition that the journey itself, with all its apparent changes, uncertainties, contradictions, and unexpected turns, may possess a continuity I was unable to recognize while living through it.