Consciousness: Science, Society, Technology and Spirituality

[Krishna Keshava Dasa]

Prepared by Dr. Come Carpentier, India Foundation

"Consciousness has become the focus of increasing scientific investigations because it is being acknowledged as the very core of reality as far as we humans (and all forms of intelligent life) are concerned. Bertrand Russell among others pointed out that all that can be observed and known about the universe and about ourselves passes is processed through the filter of consciousness, whether aware or not. Some more recent scientific papers demonstrate that consciousness logically and ontologically comes before ‘Reality’ (Space-Time-Matter-Energy) and thereby transcends the very old epistemological debate between nominalism and realism. In philosophies and spiritual traditions of East and West differences are made between, and divergent interpretations exist for various kindred terms such as Spirit, Soul and Mind in western languages; Logos, Nous and Psyche in Greek; Atman, Manas and Chitta in Indic tongues, Akl, Ruach-Ruh and Nephesh-Nafs in semitic idioms. In modern scientific parlance consciousness is the preferred word as it avoids the more religious connotation of Spirit and is less personalized than mind,although in Latin languages it carries a moral charge that is found in the English cognate ‘conscience’.

However, what was regarded until rather recently as an essentially supra-natural entity – or an abstract concept for many materialists, when not another kind of physical substance like air or a force similar to electricity – is now being analysed through various scientific disciplines, for epistemic, therapeutic, biological, physiological and military purposes. Many have come to the fundamental conclusion, as we have already hinted, that it is impossible to comprehend the nature of Space-Time and all that is ruled by it, which means the universe and anything possibly beyond it, without unravelling first the mystery of consciousness. 

In the last century Benjamin Libet came to the conclusion that the mind is independent from the brain although it operates in the brain. Challenging the materialist theory that the consciousness consists in a brain generated process and questioning the notion of free will he proved through experiments that a subconscious impulse precedes the will to perform an action. That discovery was confirmed and refined by Bechara and Damasio and others. Outside the realm of human psychology it has become increasingly apparent following the work of the Santiago school founders Maturana and Varela that animals and plants, down to the level of monocellular organisms process and use information to develop strategies for survival, perpetuation and propagation and very interesting observations have been made about the behaviour of blobs (physarum polycephalum) which expand and find the shortest path to nourishment by avoiding or overcoming obstacles, operating like simple neural networks. More evolved organisms such as vertebrate animals evince highly sophisticated abilities for analysing their physical surroundings and communicating messages within and bet (and ween species. Their evolution is also found to be selectively (and immanently) guided for optimal adaptation to changing circumstances. 

This understanding of nature as an infinite web of information links connecting all beings, as neurons are networked in a brain is summed up by eminent physicist Philippe Guillemant in these words: ‘the universe is a field of physical information in ten vibrational dimensions and out of which consciousness extracts reality by perceiving it as space, time and matter’. Likewise, Antoine Suarez at the CERN posits that ‘matter emerges from consciousness’. In this he echoes the Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhist description of everything being a perception of consciousness, in the sense that observation by measuring (maya) reduces the quantum state of things to their physical manifestation. However, Guillemant and other contemporary scientists don’t limit the meaning of that revelation to the philosophical and psychological sphere. They are already exploring its technological potential by creating new tools to ‘study how the creation of the physical world takes place out of information pervading space-time, at the interface between the virtual and real worlds’.

Just as Jacques Vallee, another pioneering scientist called for a new physics: the physics of information, Guillemant proposes to bring into physical parameters a new definition of (non-linear, a-causal) Time, (described by Michael Talbot as T-time in his book The Holographic Universe) over and above the known ‘physical’ and ‘psychological’ notions of it, and a third law of conservation applying to information and memory. Reality is then perceived through the lens of Quantum Consciousness and in that perspective the past and the future influence and change one another simultaneously.

The convergence between current theories and ancient metaphysical and mystical teachings gives India, the home of many of those psychological and epistemological traditions, the opportunity to play a prominent role in the pursuit and application of the new sciences that are at the core of Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Quantum Computing and related technologies. That is an essential part of the endeavour to build a sustainable, just, balanced and enlightened global society.

The major objectives [...] :

-Arriving at a ‘consensual’ definition of consciousness in relation to Reality, Life and Energy by cross-referencing the input from traditional philosophies and methods of spiritual enlightenment
and the contemporary discoveries in physics and the life sciences.

-Considering and envisaging applications of the emerging understanding of consciousness to healthcare, environmental/ecological policies, ethics, education, socio-political institutions and
systems, the economy and culture.

-Assessing the Impact of AI, Quantum Computing, Machine Learning, IOT, Augmented and Virtual Reality and the Metaverse on the human condition, with regard to fundamental notions such as freedom, dignity, security, justice, equality et al. and to structures such as the family, the corporation, the job market, the social welfare system, the military-industrial complex and
defence forces and the state."

Humbly in service,

Krishna Keshava Das

Serving Assistant to

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph. D.

Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute

of Spiritual Culture and Science

www.bviscs.org // linktr.ee/bviscs