Ancient Indian philosophers held that consciousness is not a product of the brain, but rather the mind, brain, and even the environment are products of universal consciousness.
SupplySider, thank you for this most interesting observation. I've been pondering the resemblance between this ancient insight of universal consciousness as the source of structure in the universe and Grandpierre's universal vacuum field/primary consciousness of the universe myself lately. I also caught resonances to this Eastern cosmological view in Evan Harris Walker's The Physics of Consciousness, and even Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Perhaps physics will demonstrate the accuracy of this very ancient description in due course.
One thing the ancients did not wonder about, however, is how the universe came to have this structure. The issue never comes up, for the thinkers of both ancient India and classical Greece considered the universe to be eternal, not having any beginning in time. It "just is" the way it is: It's pointless to ask why it is the way it is and not some other way.
Yet physics tells us the universe did, indeed, have a beginning; and it would appear to have been a beginning of a nature or quality that structures the evolution of the universe in all its parts. In other words, the universe has a logos (to use the ancient Greek word) that gives it its structure as it evolves in time. The "picture" of that evolution may closely resemble what the ancient Indian philosophers describe.
It seems to me that if we speak of a logos of the beginning, then we are speaking of intelligent design. Which to my mind at least, implies an intelligent, willing designer.
This never was a problem in Indian philosophy, as far as I can tell. The question "what consciousness," what will or intelligence lies behind the order of the universe, doesn't come up. The question of ultimate cause may not be a proper question for science per se. But that doesn't make the question "go away."
Just some stray thoughts.... Thank you so much for writing, SupplySider.