Stardust and Memories

Bergson and Einstein: Time and Consciousness

The great debate between Bergson and Einstein centered on the question: What is the relationship between duration and consciousness? The soul is transcendental to time--our sense of self remains and persists even as the measurement of its duration is ticked off in hours and minutes. But more to the point, our sense of self is stable--we remain the same self, even while the situation around us changes. The entire material cosmos is in constant flux, constantly changing, readapting and evolving. And yet, even while my own body changes before me--I transit the stages of birth, growth, reproduction, infirmity and old age--I myself remain. The self remains, transcending even the change of death, according to the ancient wisdom tradition of Bhagavad-gita. My personal consciousness persists; it continues on even after death--in defiance of clocks.

Consciousness is a hard problem since it defies the laws of nature. It cannot be created or destroyed. Nor can it be studied through ratiocination. But when even time eludes analysis, how can we expect to understand the nature of the human soul through mundane measurements? Since we refuse to consider the larger dimensions of time, we must reduce time to “stuff,” a mere aspect of space.

We dispose of the time problem by viewing time as a substance that can be sliced and diced and measured in segments: “take 2 aspirin 3 times a day”, or “the train arrives at 5:00.” “Time is money.” Time is merely a convenient way of cutting action into segments, like a film strip. Like the rising agent in bread, time is a convenient element to add to the “mix” of space to give it an extra dimension.

We study space to determine its “nature” and function. Time is merely a measurement of objects in motion. How long does it take an object to get from here to there? If a pitcher throws a baseball at ninety miles an hour, how long does it take the ball to reach the plate?But by considering time as just another element in the mix, by applying to time the same conclusions that we reached with regard to space and matter, we miss its metaphysical element. What about “lived” time? The duration of consciousness is not merely another aspect of matter; it is felt as memory. Memory is the proof of the duration of consciousness. If there were no memory we would have no true understanding of consciousness. But memory is simply another metaphysical construct with no significance, according to the physicalists. It is a “psychological” problem, not a scientific one. The attempt to see time as just another element of matter fails when we are forced to consider the function of memory. Memory demonstrates the duration of consciousness. For this reason, both memory and duration must not be taken into consideration by physicalists. As Einstein put it “The time of the philosophers does not exist.”

But is “Time” merely an aspect of matter? How matter moves through time is the subject of physics, but physics refuses to define time. Space is defined as elemental matter moving through 3 dimensions. We think we know something about the movement of elemental matter. But since particles function also as waves at the subatomic level “matter” may be seen in terms of solid particles or waves of energy. Matter after Einstein and Niels Bohr is more elusive than we once believed. And if the “uncertainty principle” applies to matter at the subatomic level, what of time? What is time? We’re not at liberty to say.

Duration cannot be defined. We can measure duration in units, borrowing a system of measurement from the language of space and matter. We measure matter in terms of volume and weight, height and length in kilos and liters or pounds and ounces. We apply the same terms to time and measure time in hours and minutes. But what is it we are measuring? You can touch matter; its measurement is purely physical. There is nothing metaphysical about a liter of water. But what is an hour of time?

Henri Bergson debated Einstein on just this point. The doubts he raised were enough to deny Einstein the Nobel Prize for his General Theory of Relativity at the time. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". He was denied the Prize for his General Theory because the French philosopher questioned his understanding of time. Bergson had no argument with Einstein’s calculations. A polymath and a brilliant mathematician, he had gone over the formulas. But while Bergson admired Einstein’s handling of Relativity in general, he disagreed with the hidden ideology. He felt that while Einstein was taken credit for new insights into the measurements of time, he had broken no new ground in understanding time as a philosophical principle. By concentrating his efforts on the measurement of duration, Einstein had cleverly avoided the question: what is time? In fact, he uttered the famous statement, “The time of the philosophers does not exist.” Einstein not only avoided the question, but blandly stated that philosophers have no business considering the metaphysical aspects of reality that are unfathomable by engineers and technologists.

While Bergson won the debate that Paris that afternoon at the Societé Francais de Fhilosophie, Einstein had his revenge. Bergson´s days were coming to an end. The debate marked a turning point for his philosophy. After Einstein´s General Theory, his Special Theory of Relativity was lionized by intellectuals. Bergson´s reputation fell. Einstein´s friends and promoters smeared Bergson with terms like “unscientific, mystic, crackpot, sentimental,” and so on. Bergson, who accepted Einstein’s scientific views had philosophical misgivings about shunting the definition of time into oblivion. As a philosopher he disagreed with the idea that physicists would invade his field and discard the work of generations of philosophers. Bergson felt that Einstein’s mysticism was intellectually dishonest.

Nevertheless, while winning the battle in Paris in 1922, Bergson lost the war. History would recall Einstein as the man who bent time and showed us how time travel was possible. He was a genius who rode on a beam of light and showed how time dilation was a scientific principle. Bergson, on the other hand, was a mystical crank from the 19th century. His senile brain couldn’t possibly understand Einstein’s subtle mathematics.

But Bergson felt that while most theories of space and time are counterparts of one another, Einstein had avoided the problem of duration. By focusing on things and their movements, his physics avoided any discussion of transition and the duration of consciousness to the detriment of philosophy.

In his work Matter and Memory, Bergson insisted that “Lived time” is what we experience. “Measured time” is what is useful for experimental science and time management, but has nothing to do with the human condition. What could be more real than “lived time”? And yet, Einstein and his followers had banished “lived time” from science. Bergson was determined that it would not be banished from philosophy.

Human language everywhere has sophisticated systems for handling time. Einstein’s Gedankenexperiments or thought experiments would be impossible without them. Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, Russian, English, all have in common the ability to view time from a number of different angles. There are real, possible, improbable, and impossible conditionals for discussing “lived” time.

An example of an impossible conditional: “If she had known he was poor, she wouldn’t have married him.” This statement supposes that we go into the past and change someone’s knowledge. The marriage then doesn’t take place because of the knowledge. It is called an “impossible conditional” since we cannot go back in time and change events. And yet “could have, would have, should have” are so quotidian that sports fans have an expression, “coulda, woulda shoulda” for Monday morning quarterbacks lamenting their team’s loss. “If only they had the ball for three more minutes--coulda woulda shoulda.” Of course this is a metaphysical concept, but these metaphysical concepts are baked into human language.

This sophistication of time concepts is native to all Indo-European languages--which makes their learning so difficult. Anyone who has spent hours going through a grammar book knows what I mean. Verb tenses are often the most difficult thing to study in any language. But language encodes very subtle ideas about time--past, present, future and all kinds of impossible conditional concepts of duration.

It may be argued that the subtlety of time consideration as it is developed through human language--our ability to process metaphysical ideas in past, present, future and imaginary time--is what distinguishes human society from animal society. Language indeed is another “hard problem” for science since it cannot be explained.

A recent scientific article on the subject inspired a new book by Tom Wolfe, “The Kingdom of Speech.”

The article points out that after centuries of study, we are no nearer to understanding the nature of language than we were before. The conclusions of the study are worth quoting:

Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language's origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00401/full

Author Tom Wolfe was so astonished by the article that he penned a book on the subject, “The Kingdom of Speech.” He begins, “It seems that eight heavyweight Evolutionistsb—linguists, biologists, anthropologists, and computer scientists—had published an article announcing they were giving up, throwing in the towel, folding, crapping out when it came to the question of where speech—language—comes from and how it works.

“The most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever,” they concluded. Not only that, they sounded ready to abandon all hope of ever finding the answer.”

But if language is another “hard problem” for science, the sophisticated handling of time within language is another. Duration through memory is processed in an ordered form in language. Human speech is capable of expressing innumerable imaginary scenarios like the ones found in Einstein’s thought experiments. The capacity of language to discovery the metaphysical underpinnings of duration and time is itself an ontological argument for the

existence of a deeper spiritual dimension animating our existence.

Materialistic science seeks to study duration by stopping time. This is impossible. But we may try to stop time in freeze frames, analyzing moments or units of duration as “living time” itself passes us by. We can take “snapshots” of reality. But the snapshots we have frozen have nothing to do with time’s flow. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus pointed out that it is not possible to step into the same waters twice. The river of time is always moving. Wherever you sample it, it has already changed as soon as you analyze your sample.

Technology comforts us. Ever since humans crawled out of caves, technology has given us fire, aid and comfort. But technology is based on measurement. And so we love measurement. It gives us control. It provides a light in the obscurity of constant change. But, as the French philosopher Henri Bergson argues in Creative Evolution, there is a distinction between moments measured as seconds and minutes and life itself.

Subjective Evolution is the constant creative evolutio nof the living entity by which sentient reality inhabits, consumes, and transforms the inert elements of matter through the constraints of space and over the course of time. A higher, conscious subjective evolution is the process by which consciousness itself becomes more and more self-aware and transcends space and time--going forever beyond this four-dimensional world of forms, extension and temporal duration.

To say that what is beyond measurement is unworthy of study is ignorance. By ignoring the immeasurable we comfort ourselves, seeking enjoyment in the world of the measurable, the world of exploitation. But by ignoring the existence of the immeasurable we cannot wish it out of existence. Hard metaphysical problems like duration, consciousness, and language will continue to haunt us for they strike at the core of human existence and meaning. Technologists assure us we have no need for meaning; our heart tells us otherwise.

Bergson felt that science is like a film-goer who stops the projection and analyses the frames of a moving picture, evaluating each image separately. His analysis ignores the director’s intentions. Such analysis ignores the story and the characters. Sometimes an amusing game in see comic strips:”Spot the 10 differences in the 2 drawings.” By close study, we find that in one drawing the chair only has 3 legs and the picture on the wall is crooked. We feel triumphant when we spot the differences and move on to the crossword puzzle. Scientific analysis of the frames in a film-strip is something like this kind of approach. But if a freeze-frame approach to time measurement works at some mundane level, a stop action analysis is not at all the way to understand “lived time.” Science is almost autistic in its ignorance of significance and meaning.

Consider a recent experiment done with autistic patients. Scientists studied the eye-movements of autistic subjects watching a movie. Given a film with highly charged emotions, patients focused on differences in continuity from one scene to the next. They noticed whether the picture on the wall was crooked or whether the light switch was on or off. They focused on everything but the emotionally charged conflicts between the characters. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/11/health/experiment-offers-look-through-eyes-of-autism.html

The study showed that in highly dramatic scenes subjects paid more attention to the color of the chairs and the position of the light switch than to the actors. They had the same approach to the film that scientists have when studying the freeze-frames of time duration. By focusing on the frames of a film, we overlook its content. By exclusively focusing on the measurement of duration, we make an understanding of time impossible. Why should we restrict our study of time, the essence of experience, in such a way?

By looking at space and time as a linear progression, we may learn many things. But why should the linear point of view be our only perspective? Bergson felt that this was a distortion. By viewing reality exclusively through the lens of scientific measurement, we overlook its content. By avoiding the problems of the human experiences as seen in language, consciousness, and the persistence of memory, we overlook the most important aspect of reality: life itself.

Our fascination with seeing only measurable or “Objective” reality reveals blindness to lived or “subjective” reality. This weakness in vision forces us to divine the film of reality into its fragments--we analyse successive “images” while failing to see the whole. By cutting frames into filmstrips we lose the ability to interpret the story of the film.

The need for analysis is paramount for technology, but the language and symbolism of “science” as an ideology has now dominated philosophy so thoroughly that we look to physicists for spiritual truth. Physicists are by definition materialists: they are experts in the study of matter. But why concede to them the right to opine about the spiritual condition, if they deny its existence as a premise for studying matter? And yet, their platitudes become the koans of the 21st century: “We are nothing but billion year old stardust.”

Are we nothing but dust?

In part, our surrender to the materialist point of view is a consequence of a poverty-stricken view of consciousness.

The debate between Einstein’s measured time and Bergson’s lived time has had deep influences on modern thinking. If duration exists only as minutes and seconds and not as “lived” time, then consciousness has no part to play in reality. But such a stark vision of physicalism leads only to emptiness and nihilism.

Time Management

Time, Physicalism, Duration, and Consciousness

Bhaktivinoda Thakura, writing in 1893, says, “[A materialist] cannot reduce the material world to a single underlying principle. He must accept the simulatenous existence of many principles. What is time? That he has no power to say.”

Bhaktivinoda Thakura

One hundred and twenty four years later, we still have no power to say. Idealism seems very easy to refute. Samuel Johnson wanted to refute Berkeley with a kick. Bishop Berkeley’s idea that "matter, after all, is nothing but an idea" enraged Johnson. He famously gave a stone great kick with the tip of his boot and said, “I refute Berkeley thus!” But where is Mr. Johnson now? Samuel Johnson is dust. His boot is dust. The stone itself may have crumbled to dust. It has been destroyed by time. If we could do a time-lapse film of Mr. Johnson and his boot over the two and a half centuries that have elapsed since the kick and speed up the film so we could see the whole thing in a minute, we would see him disappear into thin air. His disappearance into thin air hardly refutes Berkeley.

Samuel Johnson's "kick" in bronze. But where is Johnson's bones? Taken by time.

Matter appears at first glance to be hard, cold reality. But we overlook the time factor. 20th century scientists headed by Einstein took it upon themselves to incorporate the time-factor as an element in the time-space continuum. But were they successful?

After all, what is time? If matter moving through space seems to be self-evidently “real,” and objective, time has a particularly subjective reality about it. Of course, there is “clock-time” or what can be measured with a mechanical instrument, but our “living time” seems to have a different quality: a subjective quality. If matter is entirely “objective” what about time? Have we advanced since the time of Bhaktivinoda? What is time? Does now exist in the brain? Or only in the mind?

An important debate took place in 1922 at the Société Française de Philosophie— Paris between the German physicist Albert Einstein and the French philosopher Henri Bergson. The physicist and the philosopher clashed, each defending opposing, even irreconcilable, ways of understanding time. At the Société française de philosophie—one of the most venerable institutions in France—they confronted each other under the eyes of a select group of intellectuals.

The “dialogue between the greatest philosopher and the greatest physicist of the 20th century” was dutifully written down. It was a script fit for the theater.1 The meeting, and the words they uttered, would be discussed for the rest of the century Its repercussions are still being felt in philosophy, science, and the humanities, especially in film and literature.

Their debate on the nature of time is documented in “The Physicist and the Philosopher” by Jimena Canales, Chair in the History of Science at Chicago University. But before looking into that debate, let us consider the position of materialism.

Modern “materialism” prefers to be called “physicalism.” Its doctrine is laid out nicely in a book called “Now” by Richard A. Muller:

“Does now exist in the brain or only in the mind? We take this truth to be self-evident: if it isn’t measurable, then it isn’t real. That ‘truth’ is not provable, of course, any more than are the rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. But it is not a hypothesis and certainly not a theory; it is more like a doctrine, a thesis figuratively nailed to a physics department door, a dogma that, given faith, will lead you to a mastery of the physics world. Philosophers call this dogma physicalism. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. Physics itself is not a religion. It is a rigorous disciplen, with strict rules about what is considered proven and unproven. But when this disicpline is presumed to represent all of reality, it takes on aspects of religion. Not only is there no logical imperative between physics and physicalism, but there is no logic whatsoever linking them. The dogma that physics encompasses all reality has no more justification than the dogma that the Bible encompasses all truth.”

The debate between Bergson and Einstein pitted the greatest philosopher of the time against its most brilliant scientist. Bergson objected that Einstein would appropriate measured clock time as the only form of time, avoiding the issue of time as we live it. He found that scientists of the day were meddling in philosophy and introducing metaphysical ideas through the back door, even while ridiculing man’s search for meaning as “metaphysical.”

Scientists use imaginary numbers, quantum amplitudes and wave functions, all the while apologizing for them. While Gödel showed that any mathematical model is incomplete, Hawking replies that “in the future,” it will not be so, since we will solve the incompleteness. “Trust science,” we are told.

Atheism, by itself, is not a religion. It is a denial of a particular kind of religious belief, theism, that posits the existence of God. Atheism becomes faith when it incorporates belief, as for example, the notion that all of reality is defined by physics and math, and that everything else is an illusion.

Bhaktivinoda Thakura, in Tattva-viveka, points out, “No one has ever seen consciousenss created from dull material elements...no one has ever seen a being spontaneously manifested from inert matter. If life is manifest from the spontaneous interactions of material elements, then in the course of the centuries of human study at least one living being would have been spontaneously manifested from inert matter.” While no evidence of this is forthcoming, we see scientists continue to claim that they can generate life.

But to question the dogmas of science is heresy against the religion of the physicalists.

Even Einstein himself was the object of opprobrium when his fellow scientists found that he outstepped the bounds of physicalism. Rudolf Carnap criticized Einstein´s mysticism by asserting, “Since science in principle can say all that can be said, there is no unanswerable question left.” But science cannot answer some very basic questions, as we have seen, for example: “What is consciousness?” or “What is time?” Or even “what does blue look like?”

Your experience of color is distinct from my experience of color. And this is true not only for color, but pain, sight, sound, and all subjective experiences. To dismiss the subjective simply because it cannot be measured is dishonest.

The “scientific religion” of Physicalism becomes extremism when it claims as dogmatic truth that what cannot be measured is an illusion. Time is an important example. We know that time flows like a river. The Greek philosopher Parmenides pointed out that you cannot dip your foot in the same water twice. Time rolls on. And yet, physical scientists believe this is not so. There is no flow. It can’t be mapped onto a diagram of time and space, so it isn’t real. It doesn’t fit the mathematical model of reality. Whatever doesn’t fit the mathematical model must be discarded as “metaphysical.”

Curious, then that so many of the great minds that created 20th century science deviated from the dogma of physicalism. In fact, the advocates of the new physical theories science of space and time held curiously mystical views. In criticizing Neils Bohr’s version of quantum physics, Einstein was famous for saying things like, “I do not believe God plays dice with the universe.” Erwin Shrödinger wrote in that he had “no hesitation in declaring quite bluntly that the acceptance of a really existing material world, as the explanation of the fact that we all find in the end that we are empiricially in the same environment, is mystical and metaphysical.” ( 1925 My View of the World, Erwin Shrödinger)

Of all the mystical metaphysicians among quantum scientists, the most mystical was also the most practical.

Oppenheimer and his creation

J. Robert Oppenheimer conceived, designed and built the first atomic weapon in Alamagordo New Mexico as the head of the Manhattan Project. He was surrounded by the greatest minds of the 20th century, scientists who were determined to make the atom speak. Assisted by Enrico Fermi, the inventor of the controlled chain reaction, by Leo Szilard, Ernest Lawrence of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and a score of geniuses, Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb.

And when Oppenheimer had realized his dream, the bomb came to life one afternoon at Trinity.

When he saw the glowing fireball of the mushroom cloud blossoming over the valley of Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of Death, Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad-Gita. He had chosen the 32nd verse of the 11th Chapter of the Gita. In that verse, the Godhead makes his plan known. Krishna says, “I am Time. I have come to devastate the worlds.”

कलो’स्मि लोकक्षय कृत् प्रवृद्धो लोकम् सम हुर्तम् इह प्रवृत्तः

kalo’smi lokakṣaya kṛt pravṛddho lokam sama hurtam iha pravṛttaḥ

Long before the Egyptian pharaohs had their thrones carved in stone in the valley of kings by the Nile river, Krishna uttered this verse at the battle of Kurukṣetra. What is Time? Time is God. Time devastates all, from Samuel Johnson and his kick to the gathered kings who fought the ancient war at Kurukṣetra.

Time is inconceivable. Time is God. Krishna, God, says, “I am Time. And time destroys all.”

When Henri Bergson, the great French philosopher, confronted Einstein over his metaphysical presumptions in the theory of relativity, he point out that there is a difference between clock time that is measured in seconds and minutes and real time. Real time is time as we live it. Clock time is useful. But is isn’t “Real.”

Clock Time

Bergson drew attention to the problem of measurement. Measurement must stop something in time. “Real” time eludes measurement since it cannot be stopped. : “Real time eludes mathematical treatment, its essence being to flow...Duration is measured by the trajectory of a body in motion and that mathematical time is a line; the line one measures is immobile--Time is mobility. The line is made, it is complete; time is what is happening.” The paradox is important. To stop time we must freeze it, but time will not stand still. Time and tide wait for no man, as King Canute discovered when he ordered the tide to retreat.

Lived Time

Physicalism believes only in what can be measured. Time cannot be measured, since the measurer is also living within time. Measuring time never deals with time directly: we may count intervals or moments--short halts in time--but “time” itself is immeasurable and uncontable.

We believe that our measurement of time relies on “constants.” But we have no way of knowing if our “constants” or units of time are truly constant. Millions of years ago a second might have been longer or shorter. In the future there may be some universal time dilation that we are unable to comprehend. Since we won’t be around millions of years from now, there is no way to verify our measurements.

And even if our “constants” of measurement are absolutely accurate, we can count seconds or minutes, nanoseconds or ages of geological time. But we are only measuring units. Time itself cannot be divided into units. Time is an indivisible flow. Memory is never divided into minutes and seconds. Your memory of your mother is important to you, but your memory of her baking cookies is a montage of different occasions. The smell of the cookies, their taste is palpable. The moments you spent with her are real. But it cannot be measured in minutes and seconds. Movies and novels tell stories in fragments of time. But the fragmented time of our experience is not the same as linear, measurable, 4-dimensional time.

Do you have time? Or does time have you?

Life and consciousness defy measurement. We can study a life form completely only by killing it and dissecting it to see what makes it tick. A study of time demands that we stop time to dissect it. But this is impossible. Physicalism cannot apply to time, since we have no power to stop it, to dissect it. Any assumptions we make about time cannot therefore be free of metaphysical assumptions about epistemology and ontology.

Science wants to make predictions. By dissecting and analysing cloud formations, we try to understand the weather. Henri Bergson objected to Einstein’s attempt to establish measured time as the only concept of “real” time. He remarks in Creative Evolution, “Science extracts and retains from the material world that which can be repeated and calculated and consequently that which is not in a state of flow. Thus it does nothing but lean in the direction of common sense, which is a beginning of science; usually when we speak of time we think of the “measurement of duration” and not of “duration” itself. But this duration which science eliminates and which is so difficult to conceive and express, is what one feels and lives.

Bergson tried to signal the importance of lived time as distinct from what scientists measure when they concern themselves with the velocity of a baseball. We measure water in liters, but are not exclusively concerned with its measurement. Water is life. Its flow is poetry. It is much more than liters. We measure rice in kilos, but rice is food, kilos are simply units of measurement. Likewise, we measure time in minutes and seconds, but minutes and seconds are not time, any more than kilos are food or liters are water. There is a distinction between the unit and the thing measured. Time lived and “measured duration” are two distinct realities, according to Bergson. By imposing the dogma of physicalism to time, we believe we have solved an important existential question through measurement. But we avoid the problem of duration.

This gets back to the hard problem of consciousness, since consciousness outlasts the passing of minutes and hours and demonstrates an existential duration for which science and its measurements have no vocabulary. If we avoid the discussion of consciousness as being a “hard” problem, while avoiding the discovery of “duration” as another “hard” problem, then it is impossible to discuss the “duration of consciousness.” But the duration of consciousness is life itself. How consciousness plays itself out over time is the entire drama of our human existence. To ignore this for the sake of measurement is to avoid the central problem of human life.

While the idea of developing units for the measurement of duration is certainly valuable in the exploitation of the physical world, our real concern should be a more central question: what is the relationship between duration and consciousness?

This relationship is explored in the ancient mystic texts of the Bhagavad-gita (2.13):

देहिनो ऽस्मिन् यथा देहे कौमारं यौवनं जरा

तथा देहान्तर-प्राप्तिर् धीरस् तत्र न मुह्यत्

dehino 'smin yathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā

tathā dehāntara-prāptir dhīras tatra na muhyat

As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.

Swami Prabhupada comments:

Since every living entity is an individual soul, each is changing his body every moment, manifesting sometimes as a child, sometimes as a youth, and sometimes as an old man. Yet the same spirit soul is there and does not undergo any change. This individual soul finally changes the body at death and transmigrates to another body; and since it is sure to have another body in the next birth—either material or spiritual—there was no cause for lamentation by Arjuna on account of death, neither for Bhīṣma nor for Droṇa, for whom he was so much concerned. Rather, he should rejoice for their changing bodies from old to new ones, thereby rejuvenating their energy. Such changes of body account for varieties of enjoyment or suffering, according to one's work in life. So Bhīṣma and Droṇa, being noble souls, were surely going to have spiritual bodies in the next life, or at least life in heavenly bodies for superior enjoyment of material existence. So, in either case, there was no cause of lamentation.

Any man who has perfect knowledge of the constitution of the individual soul, the Supersoul, and nature—both material and spiritual—is called a dhīra, or a most sober man. Such a man is never deluded by the change of bodies.

The Māyāvādī theory of oneness of the spirit soul cannot be entertained, on the ground that the spirit soul cannot be cut into pieces as a fragmental portion. Such cutting into different individual souls would make the Supreme cleavable or changeable, against the principle of the Supreme Soul's being unchangeable. As confirmed in the Gītā, the fragmental portions of the Supreme exist eternally (sanātana) and are called kṣara; that is, they have a tendency to fall down into material nature. These fragmental portions are eternally so, and even after liberation the individual soul remains the same—fragmental. But once liberated, he lives an eternal life in bliss and knowledge with the Personality of Godhead. The theory of reflection can be applied to the Supersoul, who is present in each and every individual body and is known as the Paramātmā. He is different from the individual living entity. When the sky is reflected in water, the reflections represent both the sun and the moon and the stars also. The stars can be compared to the living entities and the sun or the moon to the Supreme Lord. The individual fragmental spirit soul is represented by Arjuna, and the Supreme Soul is the Personality of Godhead Śrī Kṛṣṇa. They are not on the same level, as it will be apparent in the beginning of the Fourth Chapter. If Arjuna is on the same level with Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa is not superior to Arjuna, then their relationship of instructor and instructed becomes meaningless. If both of them are deluded by the illusory energy (māyā), then there is no need of one being the instructor and the other the instructed. Such instruction would be useless because, in the clutches of māyā, no one can be an authoritative instructor. Under the circumstances, it is admitted that Lord Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Lord, superior in position to the living entity, Arjuna, who is a forgetful soul deluded by māyā. (Bhaktivedānta Swāmi Bhagavad Gītā As It Is, 1972)

Creencias

Credo

La palabra Sánscrita dharma provoca una cierta fascinación en Occidente: rima con karma. Dharma y Karma están relacionados. Simplemente sitúa, karma es “lo que haces”, mientras que dharma “es lo que tú eres”, es decir, “lo que te define# Karma se piensa mayormente como la ley de acción y reacción. Karma se deriva de la Sánscrito krit que se convierte en la palabra  “crear” en Inglés. Karma no sólo es la reacción del trabajo, sino la propia acción, la energía creativas.

Entonces “lo que haces” es una buena forma de pensar de karma.

Dharma es diferente. Tiene que ver con lo que le da sustento a una cosa, dhrit. Significa “esencia, naturaleza interna o característica, núcleo orgánico, rasgos innatos, puede significar “quién eres” en un sentido general: tu nacimiento, tu nacionalidad, y tu religión. En la medida que un destino o karma determina la propia existencia o dharma, los dos están relacionados. Pero en un sentido superior, es el ser innato propio espiritual. Puesto que el karma siempre involucra la acción y la reacción dentro del mundo material siempre es una consideración material. Puesto que nuestro carácter innato espiritual está atado con nuestras acciones y reacciones en el mundo material, el karma influye en el dharma.

El uso común de la palabra dharma en realidad se refiere a la religión, en especial a la colección de acciones y deberes que son conductivos hacia un estado de existencia superior. De acuerdo ocn la propia concepción “religiosa” el estado más elevado ha de ser el cielo o un estado de conciencia superior, o la disolución hacia el monismo no diferenciado. Así las distintas prácticas religiosas incorporan tanto al dharma como al karma  como una forma de progresar a lo largo de la senda.

Según la escuela Vaiṣṇava de Caitanya Mahāprabhu hasta Bhaktivinod Ṭhākura y sus seguidores, el verdadero dharma va más allá de la mera religión mundana. Mientras que las manifestaciones espirituales diferentes pueden ser el resultado de las diferentes prácticas como una cuestión de desarrollo de niveles de conciencia. El verdadero dharma ha de tomar en consideración la condición innata y eterna del alma.

Esto puede decirse que es el “credo” de Gaudiya Vaiṣṇava. He adaptado este resumen de las enseñanzas de Bhaktivinod halladas en su Krishna Saṁhita al igual que de la antigua fuente del Brahama-Samhita.

Nuestra realización personal de Dios. Los materialistas ordinarios son incapaces de comprender la Personalidad de Dios, quien es trascendental a las formas materiales, pero es la personificación de belleza absoluta en la divinidad. El nombre de Dios asociado con la hermosa realidad es Krishna. Y la encarnación del dulce absoluto, Krishna invita a las almas caídas condicionadas atrapadas en el ciclo vicioso del karma a unirse a él en una danza divina a través de la rendición y la dedicación.

Desafortunadamente las almas condicionadas (jīvas) hipnotizadas por el milagro de la atracción fenomenal se han hecho adictas al disfrute de los sentidos en el mundo del karma, y así sufren el nacimiento y la muerte repetidos. Incluso grandes filósofos están sujetos a la esclavitud, especulando acerca de la naturaleza del mundo fenoménico, incapaces de ver más allá de la jurisdicción transitoria del conocimiento empírico. Incluso el misticismo esotérico no es capaz de llegar a los niveles más altos de conciencia conocidos como sat-chit-ananda. 

Cuando la meditación los conduce hacia la contemplación de lo eterno, frecuentemente identifican el alma inmortal con Dios y caen bajo el dominio del monismo. Bajo la influencia de esta noción, asignan como la divinidad al monismo impersonal no diferenciado. Y por eso ellos consideran que la divinidad última carente de forma, inmortal e incapaz de ser conocida a través de la percepción de los sentidos. Nosotros sostenemos que el Absoluto Supremo, es la Hermosa Realidad, Kṛṣṇa. Como el sublime Govinda, Él es el Dios Supremo. Su forma es trascendental, bienaventurada y eterna (Sat-Cit-Ananda). Él es el origen  de toda realidad, espiritual y material. No tiene otro origen. Él es la causa primera de todas las causas. Kṛṣṇa es la entidad Suprema exaltada quien posee un nombre eterno, una forma eterna, atributos eternos y pasatiempos eternos. El propio nombre “Kṛṣṇa” implica la naturaleza amorosa-atrayente del dulce Absoluto.

La forma humana de vida ha de ocuparse en redescubrir la propia posición constitucional en relación a la Verdad Absoluta. El dharma verdadero o completo del alma humana es el de reencontrar la propia relación con la divinidad, la hermosa realidad, el dulce absoluto, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. El verdadero dharma significa ocuparse en la búsqueda  de Śrī Kṛṣṇa a través de la rendición y la dedicación.  Este es el propósito del verdadero auto-conocimiento.

Atma-jñana o auto-conocimiento encuentra su desenlace en el conocimiento e Paramātmā. El verdadero conocimiento del ser halla su culminación en la realización del Ser Supremo. No somos “Uno con Dios” Compartimos algunas características de divinidad tal como los rayos del sol comparten algunas características con el propio sol, pero son distintas. Hay una distinción entre el sol energético y la energía del sol en la forma de rayos. Bajo el mismo entendimiento, el Paramātmā o súper-consciencia Súper-sujeto es distinto de y superior a la jiva individual. Tal vez puedan considerarse como energía prakṛti u “objetos” del Sujeto Supremo. 

Cuando el alma individual queda atrapada en la ilusión hipnótica de maya, se considera a sí misma el centro del universo, actúan como “sujetos”. Aparentemente nosotros somos los sujetos y el mundo es una realidad “objetiva”. Pero en realidad, somos los objetos o energía prakṛti del Súper-Sujeto. Cuando las entidades vivientes se conciben a sí mismas como los sujetos del mundo material conjurado por la energía externa del Súper-sujeto interpreta el papel de una “realidad objetiva”. Pero todo el cosmos existe como una forma de un holograma cuántico traído a la existencia a través de la hinópsis de las entidades vivientes. Esta hipnosis es creada a través de la agencia del Súper-sujeto cuya creación del universo material se lleva a cabo en una especie de sueño místico o trance a través de la evolución subjetiva de la conciencia.

 Así las miríadas de formas y especies llegan a existir. Este cosmos material entero es una proyección holográfica, una imagen espejo de la realidad espiritual en donde las entidades vivientes, o la energía-objeto (prakṛti) del Súper-sujeto que se concibe a sí misma como el “sujeto” tomando el mundo inconsciente como la “realidad objetiva” Este mundo no puede existir sin la conciencia y depende de ella como una máquina de cómputo depende de su software. La materia no crea conciencia. Lo que se llama “materia” es un subproducto de una evolución subjetiva de conciencia el cual se inicia con el Súper-sujeto. Cuando el alma condicionada pervierte la relación sujeto-objeto y trata de experimentar la realidad como sujeto, la experiencia de ānanda o el principio del éxtasis atraviesa el prisma del ego falso como como felicidad material  y angustia en el mundo del nacimiento y muerte. Obsesionados con la idea de disfrutar de la ilusión en el plano de la explotación, los seres vivientes cabalgan la rueda del nacimiento y muerte repetidas llamado saṁsāra, atrapados en un ciclo sin fin de mortalidad. 

Las entidades vivientes o jīvatma siendo conciencia pura espiritual, (chit) en su posición orgánica como energía del Súper-sujeto no tiene nada que ver con el llamado “mundo material” o proyección holográfica cuántica. Encantada por esta ilusión, maya, atma- la conciencia asistida por Paramātmā refuerza la realidad del “mundo-objeto” el cual existe como una función de la evolución de la conciencia. El mundo material sin embargo, existe sólo en el plano temporal; se manifiesta y se retira durante un período de millones de billones de años y luego se manifiesta y retrae de nuevo, mientras que la conciencia es eterna. Lo temporal no posee existencia absoluta. La conciencia eterna no es el producto de este mundo ilusorio temporal. El mundo material es una residencia temporal para la conciencia de las entidades vivientes ocupadas en jugar el papel de Sujetos. La absorción en el plano material es causado por el ego. La reintegración hacia la conciencia espiritual verdadera involucra el reconocimiento del plano Súper-subjetivo y la sumisión o rendición ante Dios (Kṛṣṇa) a través de su agente y representante, el guru. El verdadero dharma o religión es hallado a través de la rendición Śaraṇāgati. 

La rendición es la senda verdadera para la iluminación espiritual y ānanda, bienaventuranza. Esta senda lo llevará a uno por encima de los planos de la iluminación y conocimiento ordinarios hacia el plano más elevado de éxtasis. La verdadera liberación es el logro de la realidad innata propia a través del abandono del ego falso y la realización de la senda séxtuple de la dedicación. Esto significa hacer todo lo favorable por el amor divino y evitar aquello desfavorable; depender de la voluntad de Dios y arriesgarse a uno mismo mientras se espera su protección, la completa auto-abnegación, y la humildad total. La liberación es la verdadera libertad espiritual como es expresada a través de servir a Dios en rendición y el descubrir la propia posición innata de servicio en la senda devocional. El servicio de uno será finalmente revelado a través de la ayuda y la intervención divina del guru quien otorga tanto el santo nombre y mantra divino. 

De acuerdo a la propia cualificación y la propia necesidad interna, la posición de uno de servicio en el mundo de Kṛṣṇa será revelada. Esto ha sido elaborado en el Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu de Rūpa Goswāmī al igual que en su Upadeshamrita. El cultivo del sistema arriba mencionado de Amor Divino se realiza a través de la práctica del sādhana. Esto involucra la vibración del santo nombre, el mantra divino y las 64 variedades de prácticas devocionales mencionadas por Rupa Goswami. Esto incluye el escuchar, el cantar y el recordar a Kṛṣṇa especialmente a través del mantra: Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare.  Otro proceso incluido es la dedicación a sus pies sagrados, la adoración, la oración, el servicio personal, la amistad y la rendición completa. Cuando se practica perfectamente, la devoción regulativa puede convertirse en espontánea únicamente cuando la misericordia es otorgada por el plano elevado. 

Y así la devoción puede desarrollarse de acuerdo a los distintos humores como por ejemplo, neutralidad, servicio, amistad, paternidad e incluso amor conyugal divino. A través de la práctica de la devoción uno eventualmente empieza a cultivar intuición y atracción espontánea y devoción la cual puede culminar en prema o amor divino. Cuando uno está completamente absorto en el amor divino se puede decir que ha alcanzado la “conciencia de Kṛṣṇa”, la cual es la forma más elevada de samādhi o iluminación divina. Esto es altamente confidencial y no es fácil de alcanzar. Es la perfección del dharma, la perfección de la entidad viviente, alcanzar este samādhi perfecto en conciencia de Kṛṣṇa, siguiendo el humor de los residentes de Vrindaban por la práctica del kīrtana inspirado por Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, el avatar dorado de Kṛṣṇa por Nityananda Prabhu ylos residentes de Nabadwip-dham. 

Al entender los principios arriba mencionados, por realizar la propia naturaleza de la relación con Dios, Kṛṣṇa y la ontología del amor divino, uno puede iniciar la práctica perfecta de Śaraṇāgati, rendición la cual lo conduce a uno hacia la meta última, el amor divino de Rādhā y Kṛṣṇa  al seguir la práctica otorgada por gurudeva quien es un representante autorizado de Śrī Caitanya cuyas enseñanzas fueron registradas por Kaviraja Goswāmī y difundidas a través de Bhaktivinod Ṭhākura, Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, Bhakti Raksaka Sridhar dev Goswāmī y Bhakti Sundar Govinda Mahārāj  y sus seguidores.