The Self and Consciousness, II

Quantum Models of Reality

The search for spiritual reality should be an essential part of any self-examination. We want knowledge. Ignorance, after all is slavery. Knowledge is freedom. In the Brahma-sūtra it is said, “Inquire after the supreme cause of this world. Search!” From where has everything come? How is everything maintaining its existence? By whom? And ultimately, where does everything enter after death? That is brahma, spirit, the most fundamental plane from where everything springs up, remains, and ultimately enters.

“Where is brahma? The Brahma-sūtra advises us to inquire after the prime cause, the biggest, the all-accommodating.

In a sense, this conception of self is also superficial. Argument and metacognition can reveal but a partial understanding of the truth.

Existence devoid of consciousness is meaningless. But a fuller view of consciousness will need to take into consideration the very food of consciousness, which is ecstasy. In Sanskrit, this is called sat, or being, cit, or conscious awareness of that being, and ananda, or ecstasy. Enlightenment and awareness devoid of ecstasy and joy is an empty experience of spiritual reality. But leaving aside for a moment the question of ananda  or ecstasy, please allow me to continue my reflections on the self and self-realization.  

How can we know the self?

Am I alone in this quest? 

Am I alone in the universe?

The problem of self-realization is often thought to be entirely personal. After all, I am the one who has to die when it’s time for me to die. I am the one who has to live and make decisions for myself. Self-realization would appear to be the most selfish of acts.

And yet, it is unavoidable for an honest seeker to consider the place of the infinite. If I am a particle of infinite consciousness, what is my relationship to the infinite? Is this a question I am left to answer for myself, or is it possible to seek help from the infinite.

The infinite perfect is not so if it lacks the capacity to reveal itself to the imperfect finite. If communication is possible for the finite conscious individual why should it be impossible for the infinite perfect?

Let us continue our consideration of the Upanishadic version. Please be patient if the answers don't seem so simple. Sometimes the questions are more powerful.

According to the Upanishads this communication takes the form of divine sound.

At a recent lecture I was confronted by an intellectual who demanded to know how I could maintain faith in a spiritual life, given that the universe is silent.

She wanted to know what evidence we have that the universe hears us? In spite of all our prayers and meditations, the universe is silent in reply.

I found her answer in one word: Oṁ,ॐ. I told her she had only to listen closely to the universe and automatically she would have her reply. Oṁ is the universal sound, the background hum of existence.

The syllable Oṁ is characterized as divine sound by the Upanishads. A mystic syllable, considered the most sacred mantra, the word Oṁ appears at the beginning and end of most Sanskrit recitations, prayers, and texts. And what is the meaning of this “divine sound?” Om means 'Yes.’

You may try this as a meditation exercise while trying to understand the nature of consciousness. Close your eyes and listen. See if you can hear the universal sound, Oṁ. If you listen, you can hear it.

So, if we listen closely to the universe, we will have our answer, and that answer is 'yes.'

As we meditate on divine sound and consciousness we find our answer in the universal sound of ॐ. According to the Upanishadic wisdom, this sound is confirming something. The sound ॐ is saying “Yes! What you are searching for exists. You are searching for happiness, pleasure, joy, fulfillment. You are in want, and in one word—yes—ॐ fulfillment is there.

Of course the syllable ॐ has a deeper more esoteric meaning. We shall take this up later.

But the idea is that consciousness is a self-evident truth; Infinite consciousness is another self-evident truth. These truths are apparent to one who listens. The universe is not a void, empty of meaning. Only highly evolved, highly educated philosophers could invent such a nihilistic theory. All life forms experience the existence of a higher force, from amoebas to mammals. Only human beings in their extreme hubris posit the nonexistence of a higher power. But the divine syllable ॐ provides self-evident experience of consciousness and its connection to a higher consciousness to anyone who meditates on the divine sound. Try it.

Again, we are defending the experience of divine truth as it was felt by the ancient seers who composed the Upanishads. This is a non-dogmatic, non-sectarian experience. Is there something more at work in the universe than atoms in the void? The Vedic viewpoint determines that there is.

Is consciousness only an epiphenomenon of the neural functions of the brain? Quantum physicists like Paul Davies have concluded that the 21st Century demands a “new way of thinking that is in closer accord with mysticism than materialism.” Fritjof Capra explored this idea in “The Tao of Physics,” and many popular works on the new science have drawn clear parallels between Western science and Eastern mysticism.

Let us begin by stipulating then, the wisdom of the Upanishadic version, just for the sake of argument. Turning the modern materialistic view of the universe on its head for a moment, let’s consider consciousness as the background of reality.

Good scientists have good questions. Obviously populisers of scientific ideas are left to defend many of the advances made through scientific inquiry. In their enthusiasm to ensure that we don’t return to the dark ages of Galileo vs. the Catholic Church, men like Richard Dawkins and other atheists attack dogma and defend what they consider to be science. Strangely, science often develops its own dogmas, as “paradigms,” scientific models that have proved useful over time. But true scientists are capable even of questioning the paradigms upon which theories are based.

An example would be the Ptolemaic paradigm which sustained astronomy until the development of better observational techniques and tools like the telescope revealed the Copernican universe. The paradigm “shifted” from the view of “flat earth as center of the universe” advocated by followers of Ptolemy to the idea of “earth as globe circling the sun.” Today only a fool or a madman would question the Copernican view, but in 1633 Galileo was famously tried for heresy for just such a notion.

Soon, Newton developed his theories of gravity and the laws of physics and thermodynamics governing ordinary objects. Generations of observations demonstrated the validity of his conclusions to the exclusion of other paradigms.

And yet, Einstein’s theories of relativity changed our ideas about how gravity works. And advances in Quantum physics and Einsteinian relativity blew apart the Newtonian paradigm.[1] We know now that gravity may affect time and that the velocity and location of subatomic particles depend on subjective observation.

Without referencing the Upanishads Physicist Sir James Jeans came to a conclusion not dis-similar from their conclusions:

“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.

“I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe... In general the universe seems to me to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine.

“It may well be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to be compared to a brain-cell in a universal mind. What remains is in any case very different from the full-blooded matter and the forbidding materialism of the Victorian scientist. His objective and material universe is proved to consist of little more than constructs of our own minds. To this extent, then, modern physics has moved in the direction of philosophic idealism. Mind and matter, if not proved to be of similar nature, are at least found to be ingredients of one single system. There is no longer room for the kind of dualism which has haunted philosophy since the days of Descartes.”[2]

As Fritzof Capra points out, the two basic theories of twentieth-century physics, quantum theory and relativity theory, transcended the principal aspects of the Cartesian worldview and of Newtonian physics. Quantum theory showed that subatomic particles are not isolated grains of matter but are probability patterns, interconnections in an inseparable cosmic web that includes the human observer and his or her consciousness. Relativity theory revealed the intrinsically dynamic character of this cosmic web by showing that its activity is the very essence of its being.

Current research in physics aims at unifying quantum theory and relativity theory into a complete theory of subatomic matter.

But this is a quandary. Modern physicists are stymied in advancing the so-called “unified theory” or “theory of everything,” precisely because of the failure to properly incorporate the idea of consciousness in their calculations.

 Of course, it may be argued that physics generally deals only with the space-time continuum of atoms and subatomic particles and their movements over time. While external forces such as gravity may play a role in the physical universe, there is no scientific grammar or vocabulary that contemplates including the metaphysical universe, if it indeed exists. The extreme skepticism required for the rigorous discipline of a science that has handed us so many technological advances demands a distance from personal introspection or subjective consideration of reality.

Unfortunately subjective reality plays such an important role in quantum physics that it becomes impossible to determine either the velocity or the location of a moving subatomic particle without taking into consideration the observor of the phenomenon.

And so we return to the Upanishads for further insight as to the nature of consciousness and its evolution as inherent facets of reality that demand our attention.

Evolution is usually thought of in an objective way.  An infinite concentration of mass exploded into the big bang, creating balls of hot gas which congealed into stars. Stardust solidified into planets, gases cooled and became water, and life appeared as a consequence of the proper combination of amino acids electrified by lightning in a kind of primordial soup. The oceans were the original source of life which evolved over millions of years from primitive bacteria and aquatic forms to plants and jellyfish, followed after millions of years by amphibians. The amphibians crawled out of the sea and evolved as the ancestors of the dinosaurs. And so on. Apes evolved into human beings. We can establish without much difficulty the idea that ape-forms preceded human forms, but cannot pin down the exact mechanism by which “evolution” works. It seems to have to do with the “survival of the fittest” or “natural selection” but what exactly that means is left to evolutionary biologists like Dawkins who insist this paradigm is correct, even if it leaves many questions unanswered.

One such unanswered question is how “space-gas” or “star-dust” becomes “life.” If only we had access to the original “building blocks of life,” we could solve the conundrum, we’re told. And yet, it would seem a simple thing to create life from “building blocks,” given that we have so many millions of examples of life forms. Having invested millions of dollars in scientists like Dawkins would it be asking to much for him to leave aside his lecturing on the importance of Darwin and produe a single viable life form in the laboratory?

In any case, the science of fossilism is a material science and we are concerned with consciousness and its evolution.

How inert matter evolves into living tissue is a fascinating question which we are told not to ask, for it violates the taboo on questioning the authority of the established paradigm.

Very well. Evolution, then, is normally thought of as a process by which matter creates life, or in other words an “objective” process.

According to the ancient wisdom traditions of India, however, this is a misconception. It is inaccurate to think that “matter” creates “spirit,” or that the “object” creates the “subject.” Objective evolution is a misperception of reality.

By “Subjective evolution” we understand the process by which consciousness evolves into objective reality.

While it may trouble the populizers of the current scientific paradigm to think that “design” in the universe may be evidence of a “creator,” the alternative, namely to attribute the properties of design creation to inert matter is patently absurd.   

And this is not merely a dry exercise in academic argument. If the soul, or consciousness, exists and we deny ourselves participation in spiritual life on the basis of a misguided philosophy, are we not cheating ourselves?

It is hardly sectarian to assert that consciousness exists and that it is the very fiber of existence. Consciousness comes first and then matter. The basis of all things material, according to the ancient wisdom traditions of India and even many modern scientists, is consciousness, which is spiritual. 

Of course, we are not entirely satisfied intellectually by this knowledge. We live in a technological society. We want to know how things work. Knowing this we can manipulate matter. So how does consciousness evolve or “devolve” into matter? By what mechanism does the metaphysical reality influence physical reality?

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[1] http://www.fritjofcapra.net/the-unification-of-physics/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism