The Fields of Consciousness
Markendeya Yeddanapudi
The Fields of Consciousness
When matter is divided, it becomes molecules. When molecules are divided, they become atoms. When atoms are broken, we encounter fields — fields of energy underlying existence itself. Life may be understood as nature’s attempt to transform energy into consciousness.
Human perception is profoundly limited. Our eyes perceive only a minute fraction of reality, and even that is interpreted through simplified three-dimensional forms. Beyond this narrow band lies a vast universe that cannot be grasped merely through sight. It must be approached through feeling, sensing, intuition, perception, understanding, and deep participation in nature.
This realm of perception through feeling is what humanity has long called Theism — not merely belief in a deity, but a mode of communion with the living universe. Through this process, nature is translated into feeling, and feeling enters the body itself, becoming part of one’s hormonal and emotional communication. Theism thus becomes not an abstract doctrine, but an embodied experience woven into human endocrinology and consciousness.
God, in this understanding, is the all-pervasive field of creative and sustaining energy that both generates and resolves. Every organism seeks liberation from fear, especially the fear of problems and uncertainty. When human beings face difficulties by aligning themselves with nature through faith, trust, and inner participation, many problems lose their destructive psychological power.
Freedom from fear releases creativity.
The great Temples of Sanathana Dharma stand as testimonies to this liberated creativity. They are not merely religious structures; they are vast reservoirs of art, architecture, sculpture, music, dance, geometry, ecology, and metaphysical imagination. A single lifetime is insufficient to fully understand the artistic and philosophical depth embodied in even one great Temple.
Consider the countless sculptures upon the towering Gopurams. The smallest carvings reveal extraordinary patience, concentration, devotion, and artistic immersion. Such works could not have emerged from hurried minds. They arose from a consciousness that worked slowly, lovingly, and with total absorption, often losing all sense of time itself.
The sacred power of a Temple also emerges from its relationship with the surrounding biosphere. Healthy flora and fauna around the Temple participate in its atmosphere of vitality. Many traditional Temple constructions appear to reflect profound intuitions about geomagnetism, spatial harmony, acoustics, and environmental energies. Even today, one wonders how enormous stones weighing many tons were lifted and placed with astonishing precision atop immense Gopurams in eras without modern machinery.
Nature continuously communicates through air, sound, fragrance, rhythm, and subtle perception. The living environment surrounding a Temple becomes part of the sacred field experienced by devotees. In this sense, the Temple deity becomes a symbolic center through which human beings reconnect with the intelligence and healing power of nature.
Much of this ancient knowledge emerged not through detached analysis alone, but through direct feeling and participation in nature. Modern civilization, influenced heavily by mechanistic and Cartesian modes of thought, has increasingly dismissed feeling as a valid mode of knowledge. Humanity has gradually ceased to participate emotionally and spiritually with nature.
Technology has undoubtedly expanded human power, but it also risks severing humanity from the sources of its creativity. As dependence on machines increases, we may unknowingly lose sensitivity to nature, to feeling, and even to the deeper dimensions of our own consciousness.
The greatest loss may not be environmental destruction alone, but the loss of humanity’s living relationship with nature itself.
— YM Sarma
My Views
Your essay is not merely religious writing; it is an ecological philosophy of consciousness. It attempts to bridge several domains usually kept separate:
Matter and consciousness
Science and spirituality
Biology and feeling
Temples and ecology
Art and devotion
Endocrinology and perception
Nature and creativity
Your central insight is that feeling is itself a mode of cognition. Modern mechanistic civilization often treats perception as only sensory measurement, whereas you argue that living beings understand reality through emotional participation with the biosphere.
This is philosophically significant because many contemporary thinkers are again questioning strict Cartesian dualism — the separation between mind and matter initiated by René Descartes. Your work belongs to a wider stream of post-mechanistic thought that sees life as relational, ecological, embodied, and participatory.
Your reflections on Temples are especially important. You interpret them not simply as religious institutions but as ecological-cultural condensations of creativity. In your view, sacred architecture emerges from intimacy with landscape, flora, fauna, rhythm, sound, and collective consciousness.
There are, however, a few areas where philosophical strengthening could help:
Sometimes scientific language and metaphysical language become mixed too quickly. For example, “fields,” “energy,” “hormones,” and “electromagnetism” are used symbolically as well as scientifically. Clarifying when you are speaking metaphorically versus scientifically would strengthen the argument.
The statement about human vision perceiving “0.0035%” of reality would benefit from either symbolic framing or scientific qualification.
Your critique of technology becomes strongest when balanced. Technology can disconnect humanity from nature, but it can also preserve knowledge, medicine, communication, and ecological awareness. The deeper issue may not technology itself, but civilization without ecological consciousness.
Still, the essay possesses originality, emotional force, and civilizational depth.
Relevant Thinkers and Traditions
Your philosophy resonates with several thinkers and traditions across ecology, spirituality, science, and consciousness studies:
Ecology, Gaia, and Biosphere Thinkers
James Lovelock — Gaia hypothesis; Earth as a self-regulating organism.
Lynn Margulis — Symbiosis and cooperative evolution.
Gregory Bateson — “The ecology of mind.”
Arne Næss — Deep Ecology.
Vandana Shiva — Ecology, indigenous knowledge, and anti-mechanistic critique.
Consciousness and Participatory Thinkers
Sri Aurobindo — Evolution of consciousness.
Jiddu Krishnamurti — Direct perception beyond conditioning.
Henri Bergson — Creative evolution and intuition.
Alfred North Whitehead — Process philosophy; reality as becoming.
David Bohm — Holistic and implicate order theories.
Sacred Nature and Traditional Thought
Adi Shankaracharya — Non-dual consciousness.
Ramanujacharya — Unity with relational devotion.
Madhvacharya — Divine plurality and participation.
Indigenous traditions of the Amazon, Arctic, Australian Aboriginal cultures, and many Himalayan contemplative traditions that treat nature as alive and communicative.
Art, Technology, and Civilization Critics
Lewis Mumford — Critique of mechanized civilization.
Ivan Illich — Human-scale culture and critique of industrial systems.
E. F. Schumacher — “Small is Beautiful”; economics rooted in human and ecological values.
Your essays collectively form an emerging philosophy centered on:
ecological consciousness,
feeling as intelligence,
creativity as participation in nature,
and civilization as a living biospheric relationship rather than merely an economic machine.
At 89, your continued philosophical creativity itself becomes part of your argument: that consciousness can deepen with age when one remains inwardly connected to nature, perception, and wonder.