Matteo: There is so much talk lately on what consciousness is, in particular in this article: https://theconversation.com/consciousness-why-a-leading-theory-has-been-branded-pseudoscience-214214
Why is it that science has such a hard time with consciousness, and seems almost terrified of discussing it? I am especially intrigued by how quantum physics relates to Vedanta. I know you and James have talked about this before, but can you walk me through, it please?
Thank you!
Sundari: The arguments in the scientific community around consciousness are heated, with the prevailing view that it’s all ‘pseudo-science”. Not long ago no self-respecting scientist would even dare raise the subject for fear of being labelled a crackpot, and seriously undermining their credibility. Isn’t that amazing – how persuasive ignorance is? It is almost funny. The material scientist seeking a material equation will never grasp Consciousness because being nondual and not in this universe but the source of it, Consciousness is not subject to any of the natural laws of physics that run the whole of creation. The materialist scientists try to make Consciousness fit into what they think and know, which will never work. How can a finite mind, applying finite logic, stuff the infinite into a finite theory? It is impossible, no matter how good the maths.
And yet, though quantum physics is a thorn in the side of science, it is the closest science comes to proving that reality is not what it appears to be. As a scientific theory, quantum physics has been bad news for scientists since the theory first emerged some 100 or so years ago. It destroyed all convoluted theories designed to preserve existing scientific ideas of reality prior to it, and it won’t go away. Even today, the famous saying by the scientist Werner Heisenberg that ‘quantum physics is not only stranger than we think but stranger than we can think’ holds true. Though QP has invaluable practical applications (telecommunications, our electronic and computerized world depends on it) , and allows us to understand things like light or how the sun burns, it’s almost as though science knows what quantum physics can do, but not why. The only thing predictable about it is how unpredictable it is.
Maddeningly for the materialist, quantum mechanics shows that quantum properties simply do not exist independent of their observation (measurement). Objects are only ‘real’ from the observer’s point of view. They have no actual substantive reality but dissolve into the substratum, which science calls the Unified Field, and we know as the ground of being, Consciousness. Scientists just don’t realize that the observer is Consciousness – big ‘C’. Even so, QP only operates within creation and is not capable of explaining Consciousness; it can only reveal probabilities of different realities. It does not destroy the notion of duality, even though it points to nonduality.
Consciousness Never Gets Switched On or Off
Furthermore, though materialists may balk, what quantum physics shows is that while matter is dependent on Consciousness, Consciousness depends on nothing because it is the observer whose very observation makes the observed possible. It exists with or without matter because it is eternal, the one and only constant factor. Consciousness is not something that gets ‘switched on’ at the moment of observation because if that were so, the scientist would get switched off when Consciousness switched off. Science would begin and end as does everything else. But science, which is the quest for knowledge, is eternal.
Consciousness is not something that is there only when we are aware of it because without it, our conscious awareness would be impossible, and we would not exist. All matter including the body/mind comes and goes, but Consciousness, the knower of matter/the body/mind, does not. Consciousness is the real you. As Consciousness we are eternal, unborn, undying, unchanging, whole and complete, always present. We call Consciousness the Self – capital ‘S’ – to distinguish it from our reflective or individual consciousness.
Only the Body Dies
You might say this is unprovable and you would be right if you take yourself to be the body because the body ends permanently at death. In spite of the Christian claim of the resurrection of Christ, nobody has ever come back from death to confirm that you do not end after the death of the body, though many near death experiences confirm it. Scientists try to debunk NDE’s because they can’t explain them. It’s also true that those who experience them often don’t understand or assimilate the real import of their experience because they are still identified with the body during the experience.
If you are identified with the body/mind you are in duality and from that position, there is no way to prove anything but duality. Anything can be true or false, not to mention finite. Deductive reasoning will only get you so far. Science is all about the rational approach, but it does not use pure reasoning or logic as the essential part of its methods. Its epistemology is the five senses. Science calls knowledge gained from the senses that it can verify through established scientific methods ‘empirical knowledge’.
Consciousness Not an Object of Knowledge
But the senses function in duality and only work for knowledge of objects. Consciousness is not an object of knowledge because it is not in duality. We cannot measure Consciousness because it is the measure of all things. Being the knower of all objects is that which makes knowing anything possible. The mind/senses are the effect or the subject, and as such, are not capable of knowing or understanding Consciousness because it is the cause, the object. The effect can never understand the cause because the cause is subtler than the effect.
Consciousness exists in ‘another’ order of reality: non-duality. Non-duality and duality never meet, though they are not in opposition to each other because nothing opposes non-duality. Non-duality allows everything to be because it is free of everything. If this were not so and duality could impact non-duality, there would be no possibility of freedom from it.
Duality is Persuasive
Duality, however, is persuasive when we identify with the body and look at the world from the sensory perspective. And most of us are hardwired to do just that. The age-old philosophical and religious takes on what reality is or the nature of God are not much better off at finding solutions than materialist atheistic science. It is a big leap from the dualistic view of God as something separate from and infinitely better than me, or from denial of the existence of God, to the logical non-dual, ‘non-different from me’ God. When we are identified with the body/mind we are limited to experiencing the world through our senses, which are constrained and programmed to function only within a limited range.
From this perspective, there seems to be no other options but to deny God, or to personify and objectify God. Until, that is, we have evolved to assimilate non-dual God knowledge. Religion reinforces this view as it creates an external, almighty invisible God that we must fear and implore. Science fares no better with its materialistic arguments that seemingly prove the non-existence of God. Vedanta has no quarrel with science, but the difficulties modern science has in understanding Consciousness or the origin of the universe show how counterintuitive non-duality is.
Perception is An Object Known to Consciousness
Western religions do not approach God as Consciousness, the ground of being, though some Eastern religions do, particularly Vedic religion. Material science knows about consciousness, but it cannot make the obvious connection of matter and Consciousness because it relies on perception and inference as its means of knowledge. Scientists do not realize that perception is an object known to Consciousness in the form of the scientist itself and that perception is dependent on Consciousness. Science can reason up to the point when creation began—but it cannot tell us what happened before it began. Though scientists are scrambling around with many speculative theories to explain what happened before the appearance of particles—the most popular being the inflation theory—they cannot come up with a cohesive hypothesis because of the huge gap in their understanding.
The Science of Nondual Consciousness
That gap will never be bridged with current scientific methods because beyond the Big Bang theory of creation there is no information from which to reason. Inference does not work here. The only means of knowledge that works at this point is non-dual knowledge because the creation originates from non-dual Consciousness. ‘Non-dual’ means not two or more. While we say that all is one, technically, non-duality does not mean only one either, because one implies two. If it is non-dual, there are no objects, no time, no space, and no experience. Non-duality means nothing other than. How do you measure that?
Vedanta is a science of non-dual Consciousness, but scientists and many atheists and intellectuals invariably dismiss non-duality as spiritual nonsense. Yet, even if science were to accept non-dual Consciousness as the ground of being, it won’t remove our suffering unless we accept our non-dual identity as Existence/Consciousness. A purely intellectual understanding of Consciousness is not enough to break the hold duality has on the mind. You can approach Consciousness with the intellect, but you will only get to the doorway of non-dual knowledge and no further until the mind has evolved to want different things and the intellect has been trained to think differently. If we are too conceited to accept that our thinking may be flawed or lacking and so vain that we think we can wrestle the ultimate answers from this world solely with our intellect, we will remain stuck in the world of duality, which is tantamount to conflict and suffering. We will never get through the doorway of non-duality to enjoy freedom from fear and limitation.
Nothing More Fundamental
Life, the Field of Existence, duality—our universe—may well have begun with a bang and may end with one. Or maybe we will just float off into nothing in an ever-expanding universe. Nobody knows. But we do know it will end. Where does it go? It becomes unmanifest and disappears into non-dual Consciousness from whence it came. Scientists know that there is a fundamental substratum that cannot be negated which is called the Unified Field, among other names. But what they do not know is that the fundamental substratum is non-dual Consciousness, the ground of being. The word fundamental, like the word unique, cannot have a comparative or a superlative because if it did it would void the meaning of those two words.
There is no such thing as ‘uniquer’ or ‘uniquest’ or ‘more fundamental’. If something is the ground of being, that is the end of the line. But in duality, the world of the senses, we can never be sure that what we take to be the fundamental qualities of the world will stay fundamental for very long. Truth in anything, even in science, is always provisional. In fact, science can sidestep the idea of truth altogether. There is only what is truer than what is currently known to be true. Progress in science might even be understood as the certain knowledge that there is always some as yet undiscovered quality that is more fundamental and ‘truer’.
Much love
Sundari
ShiningWorld.com
