Self and Consciousness XVI: Let there be light.

Thoughts on Subjective Evolution

As I understand it, a blog is a platform for writing which is not quite as formal as a book or a published article.  I use this blog to rehearse some ideas and see what kind of response they get, before taking those ideas to a more formal level of discourse; something like a thoughtful lecture to my students. I don't insist on the veracity of everything I publish here. 

At Guardian of Devotion Press, 1983

But at the moment I'm writing it seems to make sense to me. This gives the blog an ephemeral quality. And yet, in the future, I may take up these notes again and try to edit them into a more substantial work. It is in the nature of thinkers to entertain different ideas and try to reach the truth about them. If that sometimes seems contradictory, so be it. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today." This may seem a bit extreme, but Emerson contributed much to American education of which I am a product. So, if at times, my argument may seem "over the top," keep in mind that I am writing to my friends and that if, some day, I edit these musings for a wider audience, I may perhaps shall try to moderate the most extreme of these opinions.

I was asked by a friend of mine to write more about consciousness and what Śrīdhara Mahārāja called "Subjective Evolution of Consciousness." I'm trying to work Let me take a moment to summarize some of the ideas I’m working on.

How does spirit become matter? Think of spirit as light. 

When light becomes clouded and filtered we see various shades of color. Again, we may take the example of water vapor. Vapor is invisible. Yet when it cools it becomes a cloud. Cooler still and the water drops fall to earth as rain.

Cloudy consciousness forms the material cosmos with the help of time. What is it that “clouds” consciousness? Our karmic propensity clouds consciousness with an exploiting tendency that can only be fulfilled with the existence of an object. The subject-soul wants an object. The creation of objective existence is a function of the karmic propensity of the individual souls, who collectively form the known universe.

The individual consciousness called jiva originates in the undifferentiated world of cosmic consciousness called Brahman. The oneness or undifferentiation of Brahman begins to break down into multiplicity as individuation takes place through the karmic propensity.

As the karmic tendency solidifies the jiva begins to move through different phases of dimmed or covered consciousness into an embodied state. This is how the process of reverse evolution occurs.

As the jiva becomes engrossed in the matrix of objective reality the subjective evolution of consciousness moves from light to dark, from oneness to differentiation. From differentiation the movement is to solidification, from spiritual to subtle to gross.

This evolution takes a downward movement. And yet true evolution must take an upward path: not light to dark, but from darkness to light.

While from one point of view we are interested in the origin of consciousness and how spirit creates matter; how consciousness creates the world, in the end we are searching for the real food of consciousness which is happiness.

"Happiness is the real food of the soul." Śrīdhara Mahārāja

Consciousness does not take place in a void. The soul is everpresent throughout this infinite universe and beyond.

And yet the individual consciousness is also dependent on the Supreme consciousness. To become aware of that relationship and to advance toward the Supreme is the ultimate task of individual consciousness everywhere. Not only are we concerned with how soul consciousness hardens into the objective world, we want to know, “if soul is eternal, what is our final destination?”

But before taking up this essential point, it is important here to demonstrate that matter begins with consciousness. Evolution begins with the soul.

Materialists posit that the void produces matter which creates consciousness; this somehow evolves into complex life forms and then disintegrates into nothing. Ashes produce life which turns to ashes. Spacedust evolves into millions of species only to return to space-dust. When challenged, the materialists explain that these questions are metaphysical and ultimately unworthy of study.

Man everywhere is searching for purpose. The universe is not without purpose. Even Einstein said he did not believe that God place dice with the universe.

To discard questions of purpose as unworthy of discussion, to place taboos on how and where one can bring up the idea of spirit, is the strategy of fools and cowards.

Atheist Philosopher Bertrand Russell

Consciousness is not a mere interlude between stardust and ashes, conjured from the void. Neither is consciousness a creation of matter. If that were so, it would be an easy matter to combine the proper material elements to produce life. But this has never been done. Scientists want proof. There is no evidence that matter produces consciousness. Arguments that state otherwise are mythology.

Atheist Physicist, Stephen Hawkings

Some so-called spiritualists try to pacify the scientists by agreeing that matter evolves into consciousness. They try to demonstrate that evolution begins with primitive life forms which evolve into more conscious beings who further into God. But this is not the case. Matter does not evolve into consciousness. Matter cannot be manipulated into living energy.

Not only is this physically impossible but the idea violates the laws of thermodynamics. In nature, you can’t get something for nothing. There are no perpetual motion machines. Physicists complain of the “woo” factor in metaphysical arguments. But there is no greater “woo” factor than blandly asserting that matter produces consciousness and then doing nothing to prove the axiom. 

This is made more intellectually dishonest by setting the problem back in time. “It happened millions of years ago. Biological processes were set in motion millions of years ago. Since then, life has been evolving.” This argument can’t be negated, since we can’t return in time to investigate the subtle mechanism that set those biological processes in motion. That biological processes have evolved since millions of years ago is not in question. 

But if life is everywhere and is constantly reproducing and self-duplicating, there ought to be a simple method for analysing and detecting life’s origin and then reproducing life artificially. But evolutionary biologists cannot create a living mosquito. And yet, they want to challenge the existence of God. It’s easier teaching college students that God doesn’t exist than it is to create life from matter. And so Dawkins and company make easy money on lecture circuits instead of in the laboratory.

Of course what most angers Dawkins and the atheists is the Biblical story of Creation. They appear to say, “You must accept our version. What is your alternative? The biblical creation story?”

The story of creation as given in the Bible apparently lacks the subtlety of the Upanishads, unless we learn to read the metaphorical language of the scriptures.

What, for example, does "light" mean?  In the biblical creation story God said “let there be light and there was light.” Was there no light before this? What if light is a pre-existing condition? Light didn’t need to be created by God, since the universe is surrounded by eternal spiritual light. Spiritual light is eternal. There’s no need to create spiritual light. I can understand why scientists find the Biblical creation story insufficient.

In fact, the material light of which this cosmos is created is but a dim reflection of spiritual light. It is not that light is created out of darkness. First there’s light, spiritual light. When spiritual light grows dim there is the darkness of material. When the clouds lift there is light again. With the conscious evolution of the soul, one returns to higher spiritual nature. This is the message of the ancients.Evolution, then, is not a question of matter producing consciousness: evolution is the movement of the individual soul from light to dark and back again.

If spirit is eternal, and if consciousness is the background of our material cosmos, we may think of consciousness as a kind of bright force as counterposed to so-called “dark” matter. Through a process of corruption or illusion there is a kind of negative evolution whereby the individual soul moves away from the light and invests itself in the world of misconception, shadowy consciousness, a dimming of the light.

This is how "creation story" or the negative evolution of consciousness has been described by the ancient seers of the truth who composed the Upanishads and, ultimately, the Bhāgavatam, as I understand it.