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Such is the climate of cultural ignorance in which we live that it
seems as if the historical consciousness of the modern
scientific mind does not even stretch back to the 20th
century, i.e., to phenomenology and to the profound
phenomenological critique of ‘scientism’ articulated by Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger. It was they who first showed that the
modern scientific world outlook replaces knowledge based on our
immediate sensual experience of phenomena with models abstracted
from that experience - and then used to ‘explain’ it. The historical
consciousness of the modern scientific mind certainly does not reach
back to the rich and highly sophisticated scientific tradition of
Indian philosophy - 10th Century Shaivist Tantricism in
particular - which affirmed consciousness itself as the fundamental
reality behind all realities. Indian philosophy alone is enough to
put the prosaic, superficial and historically ignorant
argumentation of the most notable modern ‘thinkers’ to shame. Great
thinkers such as Abhinavagupta and the inspired author of the
Shiva Sutras implicitly understood that consciousness cannot
be understood as an ‘attribute’ of either pre-existing
material bodies or pre-existing beings, whether human beings
or gods. Instead both bodies and beings, mortals and divinities, are
individualised self-expressions of an unbounded consciousness
field – a field which itself constitutes the very essence of
divinity as such.
The ‘big name’ scientific minds of our day such as Daniel Dennett
continue to do battle against their own philosophical naivety and
historical ignorance. They begin by assuming as given a
meaningless and non-aware universe of matter. They then pit their
great minds – or rather hit their heads - against the supposedly
‘elusive’ question of how meaning and above all consciousness can
possible ‘emerge’ from such a universe. This is rather like seeing a
book simply as a material object of paper and ink then posing and
pondering the question of how its pages can come to have ‘meaning’
in the minds of its readers? Is there some point at which the
chemistry of this ink becomes so complex as to ‘produce’ intriguing
patterns of marks endowed with meaning? For ‘book’ read ‘brain’ and
the same false ‘question’ of consciousness poses itself. They begin
by seeing the brain as some purely material object - devoid of
consciousness like any other - and then wonder about the mysterious
ways in which its 'neural networks' might generate or provide a
model of consciousness. They do not recognise that in this game
what they are effectively doing is to turn what is already an
object or construct of consciousness – the brain and its neural
networks - into an explanation of consciousness.
Alternatively our ‘great minds’ might oppose the idea of
consciousness as an ‘emergent’ phenomenon and be led to consider
consciousness as some basic ‘attribute’ of matter on a quantum
level. It does not occur to them that in positing a quantum basis
for consciousness they are turning the mental-mathematical construct
that is quantum theory – itself a product of consciousness –
into an explanation of consciousness in general! Nor does it
occur to them to question their root assumption – that the starting
point of scientific and philosophical enquiry into the question of
consciousness is not an ‘objective’, pre-given universe of
matter and energy devoid of meaning and consciousness. Rather the
true starting point of all scientific and philosophical inquiry into
the universe is consciousness itself - our subjective awareness
of that universe or any universe.
The question of consciousness is only ‘elusive’ as long as the
recognition eludes us that consciousness itself is the primary
reality - the starting point and not the end-stage of a complex and
mysterious material process. An explanation of ‘consciousness’ will
always elude us if instead it is reduced to a secondary
attribute, quality or phenomena in need of explanation. The
question of how to ‘explain’ consciousness is therefore an ‘elusive’
one only for those who themselves elude consciousness from their
explanations of the universe. For what needs to be explained is not
how consciousness and meaning emerge from a non-conscious and
meaningless cosmos of matter and energy, but rather the converse –
how matter and energy arise from the primary reality of
consciousness itself?
In the West too - and centuries before our great minds began pitting
themselves against the ‘elusive’ question of consciousness - this
quite different question had already received an answer so
profound it put all modern ‘explanations’ to shame. Not only Hindu
but Christian thinkers understood nature not as a set of causes,
effects or invisible quantum fluctuations but as a language.
Nature was seen not as a machine but as a book -
giving material expression to the consciousness of its Creator,
offering a rich source of meaning to all its Creatures - and
endowing them all with the same consciousness that was Nature’s own
Divine source. Today on the other hand we constantly read reviews of
the latest clever ‘books’ on the elusive question of how
consciousness ‘emerges’ from the machine like workings of nature,
and whether machines will spontaneously generate mind –‘artificial
intelligence’.
How ‘artificial’ and superficial our intelligence has now become –
now that intellectuals no longer even consider the possibility that
nature might not merely be a set of material bodies whose mechanics
need to be explained. No longer even considering the possibility
that - like books - all material bodies in space and time are but a
material manifestation of consciousness itself, giving expression to
countless layers and dimensions of meaning. No longer
conscious of the fact that physical objects themselves are as much
symbols as the words we use to describe or explain them. The ‘Book
of Nature’ can therefore no more be ‘explained’ by the mathematical
equations and symbols of quantum physics than a book can. To even
attempt such ‘explanation’ is to seek to explain one set of
symbols with another. The attempt is made without even
attempting to sense the meaning of symbols directly and
wordlessly. Yet this is something we do naturally in order to
understand the letters and words of any book – whether by
Dennett or Derrida - or any of the sensual languages of
nature and art.
Consciousness is not some ‘thing’ in need of explanation through
some other ‘thing’. Instead it is the field condition for our
experience of any ‘thing’, ‘being’ or ‘phenomenon’ whatsoever. Not
being in need of explanation, consciousness is ‘beyond
explanation’. It is not there to be explained, but to be
expanded and explored more deeply, expressed and embodied more
fully. The scientific attempt to ‘explain’ consciousness as if
it were some ‘thing’ betrays a profound lack of
consciousness. It is this very lack of consciousness that
explains our scientists’ pressing need to have consciousness
‘explained’. Yet as long as the larger reality of their own
consciousness - and of consciousness as such - eludes them, the
‘question’ of consciousness will always be seen as an ‘elusive’ one,
requiring ever more sophisticated ‘explanations’.
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