Ancient Wisdom, Modern Questions: Vedāntic Perspectives in Consciousness Studies

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Questions

Vedantic Perspectives in Consciousness Studies

A man must have not only faith, but intellectual faith too.

Swami Vivekananda

Introduction

Once St. Augustine was asked to define 'Time' and he replied, 'If you

do not ask me what time is, then I know. If asked, I know not!' He

could very well have been speaking of consciousness.i There are some

things we cannot speak of, simply because we do not know enough about

them. And there are other things which we feel we are very familiar

with, and yet, when asked, we are entirely unable to give a

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satisfactory account. To the latter category belong things like time,

space, matter, mind, love, self ... and consciousness. One reason why

we find it so difficult to adequately define them is that we formally

define a concept with concepts that are yet more fundamental, and

when we come to the most fundamental concepts of all (like time,

space, matter, consciousness etc.) we are left without the conceptual

bricks with which to construct formal definitions. And from a

subjective point of view at least, what could be more fundamental

than consciousness itself? That is why it is so difficult to say what

consciousness is although it is the very warp and woof of all

experience.

Perhaps it is this very difficulty in defining the field that has

inhibited the scientific study of consciousness till recent times.

Interest in consciousness studies has picked up considerable pace in

the last quarter of the twentieth century. And with this increasingly

vigorous scientific investigation has come the awareness that

consciousness has been of abiding interest to the philosophies and

spiritual traditions of world civilizations since ancient times.

Today consciousness studies is truly mutlidisciplinary – brain

science, computer science, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and

spirituality are all collaborating in what may be the grandest and

most fascinating quests that humanity has ever engaged in – the quest

for ourselves.

Indian philosophy has had a deep and enduring interest in

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consciousness. It seems that Heidegger held the philosophy of

consciousness to be an entirely western project – in this, he was

most certainly entirely wrong!ii In fact, the English word

'consciousness' has no Greek equivalent. The Greeks did not probably

have a fully developed concept of consciousness.iii Investigations

into consciousness are found in the most ancient of texts – the

Vedas. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the

philosophical investigation of consciousness was a prime concern of

Indian philosophers long before the dawn of civilization in the West!

Each school of Indian philosophy, each darsana, has as its goal and

raison d' etre the attainment of release of the subject from worldly

suffering, termed variously as apavarga, kaivalya, nirvana, moksa. These

schools are concerned with the emancipation of the subject, and

subjectivity being associated with consciousness, consciousness

becomes a fundamental concern for all these schools. Or as

Chakravarthi puts it, '... subjectivity requiring consciousness,

consciousness is an unavoidable factor in any soteriology.'iv

Further, many of these schools made knowledge an essential part of

their project of obtaining final release for the subject. Ignorance

was regarded as the root cause of bondage, and when knowledge removes

ignorance, bondage is destroyed. The relationship between knowledge

and release then became another issue of vital concern, and knowledge

being inextricably linked with consciousness, a theory of

consciousness became an indispensable precursor to epistemology. Even

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among schools as diverse as Nyaya realists and Yogacara idealists,

Samkhya dualism and Madhyamaka absolutism (nihilism?), we find a

common central concern – consciousness. But it is to Advaita Vedanta

that we must turn to find a philosophy of consciousness, par

excellence.

In Advaita Vedanta, consciousness is identical with being itself, it

is the ground and possibility of all knowledge, and finally, the

source of all value – bliss – in life. Consciousness is thus the

focus of advaitic metaphysics, epistemology and axiology. There is

no philosophy found in all the civilizations known to human history

which has invested consciousness with such ultimate significance as

has Advaita Vedanta.

The plan and purpose of this paper may be mentioned in brief. First,

the central philosophical problem in consciousness studies, the so

called 'hard problem' will be considered. Next, we shall review the

fundamental tenets of Advaita Vedanta. This will be done primarily by

reading a key passage from the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad with the

commentary by Sankaracarya. Finally, we shall see if this ancient

philosophy of Advaita Vedanta can help us with the 'hard problem' of

modern consciousness studies.

The Hard Problem

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The so called Hard Problem (Chalmers 1995) of consciousness is the

problem of explaining the relationship between the objective physical

world and our subjective conscious experience. It seems to be

difficult to satisfactorily explain conscious subjective experience

in purely objective physical terms, say in terms of brain activities.

Such explanations (of subjective experiences as the firing of neurons

in the brain for example) always seem to leave out an essential

ingredient of experience – that it feels a certain way to the subject

having that experience. There is something ineffable about the

subjective nature of conscious experience.

Chalmers distinguishes between this hard problem and 'easy problems'

of consciousness. The easy problems concern the objective study of

the brain. The matter for investigation here is how the brain causes

the wide variety of cognitive, affective and conative activities of

humans (and other creatures too). It involves mapping brain states

with observed or reported behaviour. Of course, these problems are

easy only in a philosophical sense – practically speaking,

neuroscientists have to work very hard indeed, using ever more

sophisticated technology (fMRI is in fashion now), to solve the so-

called 'easy' problems of consciousness. Take the example of pain –

it can be understood as a state that is typically caused by bodily

damage, and which makes us want to avoid further damage.

Neuroscientists can then show how A-fibre and C-fibre transmissions

occur during pain, and presumably, cause the pain sensations.

Similarly, objective studies can be made for vision, hearing,

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attention, language, memory and so many other areas of conscious

activity. But none of this actually explains the subjective feelings

involved. These are 'easy problems' – the hard problem is to explain

the feelings themselves – where do they come from? Why does pain feel

like something?

Scientist Roger Penrose begins his well known book, The Emperor's New

Mind, with a little story. A child confronts a super 'intelligent'

computer, touted to have knowledge enough to answer all possible

questions, with a very simple question,'What is it like to be a

computer?'. The computer founders, unable to even comprehend the

question, let alone answer it. Yet it is a question any human, even a

child, can understand easily. This story dramatically points to the

nature of the hard problem.

To understand the hard problem better we must first distinguish

between two components/aspects of conscious experience – the

subjective feelings and the objective features. The philosopher

Thomas Nagel made this significant point in his now famous paper,

'What is it like to be a bat?' Bats fly about with the help of a

sophisticated version of sonar – echo-location. Nagel asks - imagine

if we were bats - what would this experience be like? Would we hear

many sounds echoing from objects? Probably not. Just as our

experience of vision is of objects and not of light waves (though,

technically, all that our eyes receive is light), bats would

presumably be aware of objects, not sounds. What this would be like

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is beyond our imagination. The point is that it is impossible for

human beings to grasp the exact quality of bat-experience. There is

something like 'being a bat' which no amount of objective description

or imaginative effort can quite recreate. All the scientific

knowledge about the physiology and neurology of bats cannot help us

experience 'being a bat'— the way a bat experiences it subjectively.

Nagel's thought experiment strongly argues against a strictly

objective view of consciousness.v

There is a gap between the descriptions of science and our personal

experience. The philosopher Joseph Levine calls this the 'explanatory

gap'. According to Benjamin Libet, ' There is an unexplained gap

between the category of physical phenomena and the category of

subjective phenomena.' V R Ramachandran author of the popular book,

Phantoms in the Brain, says that,'... despite two hundred years of

research, the most basic questions about the human mind... remain

unanswered, as does the really big question, What is consciousness?'vi

Responses

The hard problem is the modern variation on an older philosophical

debate. Descartes' cogito ergo sum led to the mind-body dualism which

persisted in western thought well into the twentieth century.

Descartes, and probably most of his contemporaries, firmly believed

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in the existence of two very different, but interacting, realms – the

realm of the mind (or spirit or soul) and the realm of matter.

Subjective experience was attributed to the first realm. But, then

the question was how such very different realms, mind and matter,

could interact. Mind versus Matter debates were popular giving rise

to quips like, 'What is matter? Never mind! What is mind? No matter!'

Bishop Berkeley offered a radical solution – idealism. He simply

denied the existence of a material world, reducing all to mind. Esse

est percipi – Existence is perception. All that we experience is mind

itself, there being no mind-independent reality 'out there'. The

mind-matter interaction problem disappears, there being no matter at

all!

It is worth noting here that Advaita Vedanta has sometimes been

presented as an ancient version of Berkeley's idealism. This is a

misunderstanding of the Advaita position. Advaita, in common with

other Indian darsanas, considers mind to be jada – insentient matter.

In the empirical realm, the Advaita position is in fact akin to

realism rather than idealism. In fact, Sankaracarya is vigorous in

his critique of Vijnanavada, which takes a position very similar to

i Gupta, Bina (2003) CIT, Oxford University Press, p.1ii Ibid., p.11iiiIbid., p.5iv Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (2007) Indian Philosophy and the Consequences of

Knowledge Ashgate Publishing Limited p. 52v Papineau, David and Selina, Howard (2002) Introducing Consciousness IconBooks UK

vi Hick, John (2006), The Fifth Dimension, Oneworld, Oxford pp.32-34

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Berkeley's idealism.

In the twentieth century, the tide turned firmly against idealism.

Advances in science strengthened the explanatory power of the

scientific materialist paradigm. All our mental life and subjective

experiences are identical with, or an epiphenomenon of, the brain.

There is no need to posit an entirely separate special realm of

mind/spirit/soul to explain consciousness. Consciousness is simply a

product of the changing states of the brain. Matter is the only

reality, consciousness can be reductively explained as a product of

matter, science seems to proclaim. This is a kind of monism – a

materialistic monism, where matter is the one and only reality. Many

neuroscientists and philosophers expect advances in brain science to

ultimately explain how the brain can produce consciousness. The major

hurdle they have to confront is the hard problem.

Incidentally, the Advaita position can be viewed as a mirror image of

modern scientific materialistic monism. Swami Vivekananda once made

this remarkable observation,

I am a materialist in a certain sense, because I believe that

there is only One. That is what the materialist wants you to

believe; only he calls it matter and I call it God. The

materialists admit that out of this matter all hope, and

religion, and everything have come. I say, all these have

come out of Brahman.vii

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We may add that the Advaita position has the added advantage (over

scientific materialistic monism) of offering a radical solution to

the hard problem of consciousness.

At the risk of oversimplification, one may thus summarise the present

state of affairs in consciousness studies – the scientific

materialist seeks to explain consciousness in terms of matter (brain

states) but is unable explain subjective experiences (the hard

problem). Various dualist approaches seek to address the hard problem

by positing that consciousness is something special, irreducible to

brain states, and attributing subjective experiences to this special

type of phenomenon. But then they have to explain how this unique

irreducible consciousness can interact with matter, specifically,

with the brain. Consciousness studies seem to be caught between the

Scylla of the hard problem and the Charybdis of the mind-body

interaction problem.

At this point, we shall turn to a very ancient text and try to

understand the profound philosophy that it propounds, with a view

towards new answers to the hard problem and the related mind-body

interaction problem.

Katama Atma – Which is the Self?

viiSwami Vivekananda, The Absolute and the Manifestation, Jnana Yoga, Complete Works Volume 2, Advaita Ashrama

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In the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, that is among the most ancient of the

Upanisads, we find a dialogue between Janaka, King of Videha, and the

sage, Yajnavalkya, on consciousness and the self. When this dialogue,

remarkable in itself, is read with the extensive commentary on it by

Sankaracarya, we find, at source, as it were, almost all the central

tenets of the Advaita Vedanta conception of consciousness.

The king asks the sage the following question – 'What serves as light

for a man?' Yajnavalkya answers that the sun serves as light for all

the activities of man. When the sun sets, moonlight takes its places

and serves man in all his activities. Upon being pressed further,

Yajnavalkya ventures that fire can serve as light when there is no

moonlight or sunlight. When the sunlight and the moonlight are not

there, and the light of the fire is absent, speech serves as the

‘light’ by which man performs his activities. Finally, when the

sunlight and the moonlight are not there, fire is extinguished, and

speech is hushed, what serves as the light? At this point,

Yajnavalkya answers that the Self of man serves as the light. Then

arises the question, ‘What is this Self?’—katama atmeti.

Katama Atmeti; yo ayam vijnanamayah pranesu hrdyantarjyotih purusah; sa samanah sannubhau lokavanusancarati, dhyayativa lelayativa;sa hi svapno bhutvemam lokamatikramati mrtyo rupani. (Brh. Up. 4.3.7)

Janaka: 'Which is the Self?'

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Yajnavalkya: 'This infinite entity(Purusa), that is identified with the intellect and

is in the midst of the organs, the (self-effulgent) light within the heart(intellect).

Assuming the likeness (of the intellect), it moves between the two worlds; it thinks,

as it were, and shakes, as it were. Being identified with dream, it transcends this

world - the forms of death (ignorance etc.).' viii

Here light (jyoti) means that which helps us to know something. Speech

(or sound) or odour, or indeed any sensory input can help us in

knowing something of the external world and so they qualify as

'light'. When all such external lights are unavailable (and there is

no external sensory input as in dreams or artificial sensory

deprivation environments), it is the consciousness of the Self

(atmajyoti) that is the only guide. Now Janaka's question Katama atma iti

is an attempt to locate this atmajyoti – which one of these – body,

sense organs, organs of action, mind, intellect – is the atmajyoti? The

question is quite subtle. In each of the earlier cases, the jyoti -

sun, moon, fire and speech – was of the same nature as the objects

they revealed, i.e., all were jada – insentient, material. But this

atmajyoti is quite different from the objects it helps reveal. It is

not material, it is pure consciousness. This pure consciousness,

which is the Self (Atman), is reflected in the antahkarana (in the

buddhi to be precise). What we experience as consciousness in daily

life, and what consciousness studies is actually investigating, is

this empirical consciousness. This empirical consciousness is

viiiBrhadaranyaka Upanisad 4.3.6 and 4.3.7 with the commentary of Sankaracarya translated by Swami Madhavananda, Publisher: Advaita Ashrama

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technically called chidabhasa, and is identified with the buddhi. This

is the jivatman, the individual who designates himself as 'I'. This 'I'

then identifies himself with the rest of the body-organ-mind complex.

Sankaracarya comments,

The intellect, being transparent and next to the self, easily

catches the reflection of the light of the self (the pure

consciousness). Therefore even wise men happen to identify

themselves with it first; next comes the Manas, which catches

the reflection of the self through the intellect; then the

organs, through contact with the Manas; and lastly the body,

through the organs. Thus the self successively illumines with

its own light the entire aggregate of body and organs. It is

therefore that all people identify themselves with the body

and organs and their modifications indefinitely according to

their discrimination. ix

Being thus identified with the body-organ-mind complex, the empirical

consciousness carries on all activities in the waking and dream

states. Incidentally, this explains why empirical consciousness is

not found in deep sleep. Since the intellect, the reflecting medium,

is not found manifest in deep sleep, the reflection chidabhasa

(empirical consciousness) too is not found in that state. But Advaita

holds that pure consciousness persists in deep sleep too. Pure

ix Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 4.3.7 commentary of Sankaracarya translated by Swami Madhavananda, Advaita Ashrama p.428

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consciousness is unchanging, eternal, different from the body-organ-

mind (and by extension the entire external universe), unlimited by

time and space. Empirical consciousness is changing, transient,

identified with body-organ-mind complex and located (and limited) in

time and space. Swami Vivekananda remarks,

Now we see that the body, the external shape, has no light as

its own essence, is not self - luminous, and cannot know

itself; neither can the mind. Why not? Because the mind waxes

and wanes, because it is vigorous at one time and weak at

another, because it can be acted upon by anything and

everything. Therefore the light which shines through the mind

is not its own. Whose is it then? It must belong to that

which has it as its own essence, and as such, can never decay

or die, never become stronger or weaker; it is self -

luminous, it is luminosity itself. It cannot be that the soul

knows, it is knowledge. It cannot be that the soul has

existence, but it is existence. It cannot be that the soul

is happy, it is happiness itself. That which is happy has

borrowed its happiness; that which has knowledge has received

its knowledge; and that which has relative existence has only

a reflected existence. Wherever there are qualities these

qualities have been reflected upon the substance, but the

soul has not knowledge, existence, and blessedness as its

qualities, they are the essence of the soul.x

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The two terms dhyayativa lelayativa are crucial. Dhyayati iva means

'meditates as it were' – generalising we may say 'knows as it were'. Lelayati ivameans 'shakes, as it were' which generalised stands for 'acts, as it were'. In

other words, empirical knowledge and action cannot be ultimately

predicated to the Self (pure consciousness), but only to the

empirical consciousness, chidabhasa. The iva 'as if' makes these two

terms for the Advaitic interpretation of the scripture.

The dream experience, svapnam, is entirely in the mind and the

physical body and external world of the waking state are not there.

Consciousness transcends the physical body, and it is the light which

illumines dreams (since external lights are not there). The term

imam lokam, literally this world, refers to the body.

Several key features of the Advaita theory of consciousness emerge

from this text and its commentary. Pure consciousness is the Self and

the Self is pure consciousness. Consciousness is independent of the

body and it transcends the mind too. It gets identified with the body

and mind and thereby, acts as if it is a knower and doer.

Discriminating consciousness from the mind raises a new question—How

is empirical knowledge possible?

Pure consciousness is ever effulgent and never changing. Therefore

x Swami Vivekananda, The Cosmos: Microcosm, Jnana Yoga, Complete Works Volume 2,Advaita Ashrama

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all objects of knowledge should always remain illumined! We should be

able to know everything all the time. But this is not how we have

knowledge. Our knowledge is episodic, always changing, and it is

knowledge of specific objects, not of all objects. How can Advaita

explain this?

To answer this question, Advaita Vedanta introduces the concept of

vritti jnana. A vritti is a modification of the antahkarana, and the

antahkarana is simply the upadhi or limiting adjunct of the Atman. The

vrittis have specific contents which constitute the contents of our

various knowledge episodes. The vritti is illumined by the light of the

chidabhasa, the empirical consciousness which pervades the antahkarana

(and which in turn is a reflection of pure consciousness in the

antahkarana), and this illumination of the vritti constitutes empirical

knowledge (vritti jnana). Pure consciousness itself is called swarupa jnana

to distinguish it from vritti jnana. Or, to put in other terms, the Self

which is pure consciousness, gets reflected in the mind (as

chidabhasa) and illumines the modifications of the mind and this is

what constitutes empirical knowledge. The vrittis, modifications of the

mind, rise and subside but consciousness shines eternally illumining

all these knowledge episodes (or the lack of them, as in deep sleep).

Regarding consciousness and empirical knowledge, Sanakaracarya says,

'There are two visions, one eternal and invisible and the other

transitory and visible ...Through that unfailing eternal vision,

which is identical with It and is called the self-effulgent light,

the Self always sees the other, transitory vision in the dream and

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waking states, as idea and perception respectively, and becomes the

seer of sight....'xi

Advaita Perspectives on the Hard Problem

The theory of consciousness advanced here has a distinct advantage in

that it longer has to contend with the mind-body interaction problem.

Mind (antahkarana) is held to be a form of matter; subtle matter, but

matter nevertheless. Hence, mind can influence the body and vice

versa. Both being matter, there can be no objection in principle.

While this is a step forward, it creates a new problem too. The

antahkarana is matter, how can it interact with consciousness which

is so very different from it? The standard answer is that the

antahkarana can reflect consciousness because it has a predominance of

sattwa guna which makes it pure and superfine. But this won’t do –

because sattwa guna, no matter how pure and fine, is still matter.

According to the Advaita's own doctrines, Atman is the true subject,

chit, eternal, unchanging and all pervasive, while the antahkarana is

objective, jada, ever changing and limited in space and time. How

could two such diametrically opposite entities interact in any way? A

material mirror can reflect material light – but how can a material

antahkarana even reflect the immaterial Atman?

xi Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.4.10 commentary of Sankaracarya, translated by Swami Madhavananda, Publisher: Advaita Ashrama

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Thus, the mind-body interaction problem morphs into the

consciousness-matter interaction problem. We now have to explain how

consciousness, which has been discriminated (shown to be separate)

from mental phenomena, can interact with mind (which is now regarded

as matter)! This problem arose in the Samkhya and Yoga philosophies

too. Paul Hacker, an eminent German Indologist, writes

This Samkhya theory has one advantage over the traditional

Western notion of soul(mind). There is no split between the

body and the soul (mind), in so far as the soul (mind) is the

Inner Sense (antahkarana)....But if there was no split between

body and soul (mind), there was the idea of another split

which proved much more fatal than the differentiation of body

and soul (mind) has ever been... The Vedanta theory of the

self is greatly indebted to the Samkhya.xii

(Words in italics have been inserted in the text above to

link it to terms used in the present discourse)

Hacker is obviously referring to the split between consciousness and

matter (Purusa and Prakriti in Samkhya). But the split is perhaps not

that 'fatal' as Hacker terms it. In fact, the split proves to be very

useful, for, in order to resolve it, the Advaitin gets an opportunity

to bring in adhyasa – superimposition – a key concept. It is an

istapatti – a desired objection, in the parlance of ancient Indian

xii Halbfass, Wilhelm (Ed.) (1995) Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Tradition and Modern Vedanta, State University of New York Press. p.180

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dialectics. Mircea Eliade makes an astute observation on the

difficulties of Purusa-Prakriti interaction -

It is nevertheless true that Samkhya's position on this point

is difficult to maintain. Hence, in order to avoid this

paradox of a Self absolutely devoid of contact with nature

and yet, in its own despite, the author of the human drama,

Buddhism has entirely done away the 'soul-spirit', understood

as an irreducible spiritual unity, and has replaced it by

'states of consciousness.' Vedanta, on the contrary, seeking

to avoid the difficulty of the relations between the soul and

the universe, denies the reality of the universe and regards

it as maya, illusion. Samkhya and Yoga have been unwilling to

deny ontological reality either to Spirit or to Substance.

Hence Samkhya has been attacked, principally because of this

doctrine, by both Vedanta and Buddhism.xiii

Sankaracarya makes this problem the linchpin of Advaita. He begins

his principal work, the Brahma Sutra bhashya, with a statement which

is a philosophical tour de force in itself:

It being an established fact that the object (matter) and the

subject (consciousness), that are... by nature as

contradictory as light and darkness, cannot logically have

any identity... the superimposition of matter and its

xiiiMircea Eliade, Yoga – Immortality and Freedom

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attributes on consciousness... should be impossible.xiv

The opening proposition of the bhashya can be read as a statement of

the consciousness-matter interaction problem as well as a proposed

solution.

Sankaracarya sets up the impossibility of interaction between

consciousness and matter by noting how absolutely different they are

(as different as light and darkness – tamah prakasavat viruddha svabhava)

and then frankly admits that, in fact, they do appear to interact all

the time in our daily transactions. That which ought to be impossible

and yet appears can only be false. To the question as to how two

absolutely different entities can apparently interact in this

impossible fashion, Sanakaracarya proposes the following solution –

we are to understand that one is a superimposition upon the other.

Thus the body (and more crucially, the mind) is superimposed on

consciousness and the world on Brahman. Such superimposition is a

consequence of ignorance (of the nature of Self) and it can be

sublated by true knowledge of the Self. This sublation leads to

moksa, freedom, which is the central concern of Advaita Vedanta.

From the concept of superimposition the Advaitin derives this

corollary – that which is superimposed must be false, the ground of

superimposition must be real. Body-mind and the whole external world

xivBrahma Sutra bhashya of Sankaracarya, translation of first sentences adapted from Swami Gambhiranandaji's translation. Advaita Ashrama p. 1

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are mithya while Atman (Brahman) alone is real – Brahma satyam, jagat

mithya. The term Advaita, non-dualism, is now justified since there is

no second reality besides consciousness. Or, to put it differently,

the two - the world (jagat) and the individual (jiva) have no

existence apart from Consciousness – hence Advaita, 'not-two-ism'.

The true nature of the jiva and jagat is Brahman. We are that Brahman,

each one of us. This is expressed by the famous Vedantic mahavakya Tat

Tvam Asi (That Thou Art).

This would translate into our discourse as - consciousness is the

sole reality, matter (the whole material universe not excluding our

bodies, life and even mind which is subtle matter) is a

superimposition. That which is superimposed is false. Hence the whole

panoply of matter is false – it has no reality apart from the ground

of superimposition, consciousness itself. A radical unity (identity

to be precise) between the universe, the individual and consciousness

is discovered. And this is what Advaita calls God. '...we find that

the idea of God in the Advaita is this Oneness'xv

Now we see how this world view can lead to a way out of the

consciousness-matter deadlock. Consciousness itself projects matter,

matter evolves into worlds, bodies and finally, minds which can

reflect consciousness (which is then experienced as empirical

consciousness, chidabhasa). And these minds (and organs, bodies and

xv Swami Vivekananda, The Absolute and the Manifestation, Jnana Yoga, Complete WorksVolume 2, Advaita Ashrama

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the external universe) are superimposed upon consciousness. The

empirical consciousness with its superimposed adjuncts (mind, sense

organs) gets empirical knowledge of the world and feels itself to be

a knower (jnata), an agent (karta) and enjoyer (bhokta). The subjective

aspect of experience which brain science is unable to pin down and

which is the main stumbling block to scientific materialistic monism,

is due to consciousness itself, the atmajyoti Yajnavalkya speaks of,

whose very nature it is to subjectively illumine everything. The

highly problematic interaction of the subjective and objective,

though not explained or accounted for by the theory of adhyasa,

superimposition, is seen in an entirely new perspective in which

consciousness is put at the centre stage as the one and only absolute

reality.

The Greek and the Brahmin

Swami Vivekananda narrated the following anecdote during one of his

lectures in London.

I remember a story told by Prof. Max Muller in one of his

books, an old Greek story, of how a Brahmin visited Socrates

in Athens. The Brahmin asked, "What is the highest

knowledge?" And Socrates answered, "To know man is the end

and aim of all knowledge." "But how can you know man without

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knowing God?" replied the Brahmin.xvi

Replace man with 'empirical consciousness' and God with 'pure

consciousness' and the point of the anecdote (as well as this paper)

becomes obvious.

The problem of consciousness studies at the present juncture is that

it does not seem to recognize the possibility of pure consciousness.

It is interested in the consciousness manifestation in daily

transactions – empirical consciousness. Since this empirical

consciousness is a reflection of pure consciousness in the Advaitic

parlance, we cannot formulate a satisfactory theory of consciousness

if we limit ourselves to empirical consciousness and discount the

very possibility of pure consciousness. By admitting pure

consciousness, a powerful solution to the intractable hard problem of

consciousness may perhaps be found, the Gordian knot could finally be

untied.

I may make bold to say that the only religion which agrees

with, and even goes a little further than modern researches,

both on physical and moral lines is the Advaita, and that is

why it appeals to modern scientists so much. They find that

the old dualistic theories are not enough for them, do not

satisfy their necessities. A man must have not only faith,

but intellectual faith too. --- Swami

xviSwami Vivekananda, Privilege, Complete Works Volume 1, Advaita Ashrama

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Vivekananda

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