October 2011 - Advaita Ashrama

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humans would need to be revised. Often social
scientists question this, since they believe their
study is only of manifested behaviour. But as has
been stated in many ancient texts, consciousness
is both internal and external, transcendent
and immanent. Has it ever been considered
by science that consciousness can be an energy
that manifests as form, which includes words,
thoughts, and other conceptual and symbolic
ways? Consciousness is not a thing, so how can
anyone possibly examine it with the tools of empirical
science? It should require another methodology.
The mind has the capacity to examine
itself by looking at its creations as reflections of
consciousness. It is like studying subatomic energy,
which is examined only by the way it manifests
and not in a particular context at all times.
We also need to consider that as consciousness
is primordial, it has always existed—there is no
primitive or advanced consciousness. Within this
framework all beings are equal, though apparently
different. It is this view alone that may transform
the way we see the world around us. This clearing
up of all false identifications, of the illusion of
narrow visions, takes place effortlessly, on being
awake. But who is awake? We are told that it is
that personal-impersonal Being, infinite, eternal,
to whom no thought or word can describe.
Therefore, consciousness cannot be grasped
intellectually, although as manifested form it
identifies and locates itself within the biosocial
memory patterns symbolically encoded. While
it is beyond words, sometimes it is intimately
expressed in poetry, music, and other aesthetic
creations, in some works of science, and of
course in authentic mystic experiences. These
moments of communion with that Being occur
when the limited ego disappears and they bring
about immense peace and tranquillity, that ineffable
experience in which there is neither the
ex periencer nor the experienced, because both
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Prabuddha Bharata
are one. This happens when there is stillness of
the mind. Such impersonal revelations of consciousness
are truly objective, speaking in academic
terms, while the objectivity, in normal
scientific discourse, is relative. The moments in
which the individual perceives consciousness are
authentic moments, while the pseudo-scientific
ones are not. The former are not quantifiable,
yet available at any time. Thus, authentic communication
at this level of awareness, which is
impersonal, allows for true understanding with
regard to situations, events, and persons.
A Play of Consciousness
Most explanations of the external world are mechanistic
interpretations of the processes of life.
Exam ining the mind in this manner is like looking
for an operator in a television set or in the
integrated circuits of a computer. But the mind
does not exist apart from consciousness. Those
who try to prove that the mind begins and ends
in the brain can prove it only in an intellectual
way; that is, through their minds. Is this ‘knowing’
to be located in the individual’s brain or in the
mind? Is the knower a by-product of biochemical
workings? Surely the knower cannot be a transient
derivative arising out of atoms and molecules
of lesser known matter, because if it were so we
would not be able to enquire about creation or existence,
about what is real and what unreal. Could
it not be then that matter is nothing but the universal
mind, a manifestation of consciousness? It
is itself the known, the knower, and the knowing.
Thus, understanding consciousness is crucial in
all aspects of life. This has been expressed in many
lives down the ages and it is the grand expression
of all civilizations. Once again, consciousness cannot
be accessed by a limited rational-empirical,
positivistic, and reductionist philosophy, and
much less by gross tools of measurement.
(Continued on page 646)
PB October 2011