Theories of Consciousness Put to the Test: Science, Humility and the Witness

Imagine two rival schools of thought agreeing, in writing, on what would prove each of them wrong, and then handing the experiment to a neutral team. That rarely happens in science. In 2025 it happened to two leading theories of consciousness, and the results are a lesson in humility worth sitting with.

Two theories of consciousness, one fair fight

There are more than twenty serious theories of consciousness. Two of the most influential are Global Neuronal Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory.

Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, associated with Stanislas Dehaene and Bernard Baars before him, proposes that an experience becomes conscious when information is broadcast widely across the brain, with the prefrontal cortex playing a key role. A conscious moment, in this view, involves a kind of ignition: a sudden, brain-wide sharing.

Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi, starts from the structure of experience itself and argues that consciousness corresponds to how much a system integrates information as a unified whole. It predicts that the physical basis of experience sits mainly in posterior regions at the back of the cortex, with sustained synchronisation there.

The Cogitate Consortium, an international team led from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, designed an adversarial collaboration. Proponents of both theories pre-registered their predictions. Seven labs tested 256 people using fMRI, MEG and intracranial EEG. The results appeared in Nature in April 2025.

What the data said

Neither theory came through intact. Integrated Information Theory's prediction of sustained synchronisation in posterior regions was unsupported. For Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, the teams found some conscious content represented in prefrontal cortex, yet the predicted ignition at the end of an experience failed to appear.

Lucia Melloni, one of the leaders, put it beautifully: "If we're serious about understanding consciousness, we have to let the data lead." The dataset has been released publicly so other theories can be tested against it.

I love this result. It shows science at its most honest: careful people building the best tools they can, pointing them at the deepest question we have, and reporting that the answer remains open.

The witness in Vedanta

The traditions I draw on approach the same mystery from the inside. Advaita Vedanta speaks of the sakshi, the witness: the awareness that observes thoughts, sensations and perceptions while remaining unchanged by them. The Mandukya Upanishad describes waking, dreaming and deep sleep, and points to turiya, a fourth, as the awareness present through all three.

Theories of consciousness in neuroscience mostly ask which brain processes make a particular content conscious: this red, this sound, this face. Vedanta asks a different kind of question: what is it that knows any content at all? These are complementary lines of inquiry. One maps the machinery of experience from outside; the other investigates the fact of experience from within, through disciplined attention.

I hold Vedanta as a tradition and a phenomenology, a sophisticated record of what humans report when they look closely at awareness. Its claims sit outside what a brain scanner can currently test, and I think that is part of its value. It keeps a door open that a premature scientific answer might close.

Why this matters for hypnosis and trance work

In my work, I watch awareness change shape every day. In trance, a person's sense of agency softens; time stretches; the boundary between suggestion and experience thins. Each of these is a change in consciousness that any complete theory will eventually need to explain.

The Cogitate results remind me to hold my own explanations lightly. When I tell a client "your critical mind is quieter now," I am offering a useful map, grounded in research on executive control, and I keep in mind that the map is still being drawn. That humility is a form of respect for the person in front of me.

A practice: finding the witness

This is an old inquiry, adapted for ten quiet minutes.

1. Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Take five slow breaths.
2. Notice a sound. Then ask silently: "What is aware of this sound?"
3. Notice a sensation, perhaps your hands. Ask: "What is aware of this sensation?"
4. Notice a thought as it arises. Ask: "What is aware of this thought?"
5. Each time, let the question hang without searching for an answer in words. Rest in the openness that follows.
6. Finish by feeling your feet and opening your eyes slowly.

Many people report a sense of spaciousness, a background calm behind the changing contents of the mind. Treat whatever you notice as data about your own experience, worth exploring with curiosity.

Explore trance, awareness and ecstatic states in depth at the Ecstatic Hypnosis Retreat in Portugal, 24 to 30 April 2027, with early bird pricing for the first places.

Related reading

• We Are Closer Than We Think: What Brains in Sync Reveal About Intimacy
• The Prediction Machine: Why Hypnosis Works, and What Maya Got Right
• What Is Hypnagogia? The Creative Trance at the Edge of Sleep

Sources

• Cogitate Consortium, Ferrante, O., et al. (2025). Adversarial testing of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theories of consciousness. Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08888-1. PubMed
• Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (30 April 2025). Rethinking consciousness: when science puts itself to the test. Press release
• The Mandukya Upanishad (classical text, various translations).
• Advaita Vedanta tradition on the sakshi (witness consciousness).