01 - Human Consciousness - An Introduction

Of late, I have been attending few philosophy meetups, where everyone keeps discussing about life and its myriad complexities. Before attending these discussions, I never realized that "philosophy" was a big "thing" in the West and somehow life's wisdom is determined by how much philosophical acumen one possesses and their knowledge about what past philosphers have written and spoken on matters of life and existence. In this process, I have encountered so many terminologies that one must know if you are considered an intellectual and pretend to be philosophicaly smart. This culture and perspective is both alarming and amusing at the same time. I will explain through these blogs why I think so. I will also try to put forward my opinions on some philosophical topics from the POV of human consciousness and spirituality.

Approach of the West:

Whether it is a religious person, philosopher or scientist, everyone is trying to understand the outward creation and its nature.

The basis for a religious person to understand the creation is, what is written in a holy book. Anything that is not spoken or not written in that holy book is blasphemy and simply doesn't exist. The basis of these holy books is the message received by one holy figure who is considered as the messenger of God. Unfortunately, the religious people never questioned the fact as to why did that one person only receive this message and why we normal folk cannot receive such information. Somehow, that one person is special and God spoke through him. And we have seen how many ways these holy messages have been twised and fabricated by power hungry people to oppress others. Because of this religious dogma, the society slowed evolved to a place where people were not allowed to think on their own. Even if someone said that the earth is round, the had to face the wrath of the holy people who had intellectual property rights over God's word. 

When the European society got fed up of this religious dogma and wanted to break free and start thinking for themselves, a wave of renaissance and reformation spread through the European society. The small set of people who were called "thinkers" started propagating their own version of God, No God, life and beyond. By partly borrowing stuff from Greek philosophy, oriental philosophy and also their own personal experience, they started creating their own literature and body of work that explains the plethora of topics that encompasses life and its varied intricacies.

On a parallel track, science started evolving which started explaining the nature of the universe in a more consistent, repeatable and deterministic way. As a consequence of this, various technologies emerged which have made our lives more comfortable and convenient . It is due to the advent of tools and technologies that have impacted our lives directly, that modern science is considered as the final authority on aspects of universe and life. However, even till today, science cannot explain everything about life and many religious aspects which God spoke about in his holy book have been proven to be unscientific. So the marriage between religion, philosophy and science has never happened and these are viewed as separate entities even till today, with a few overlaps in some places. Even within science, different sections of scientists have specialized in different aspects of creation. So, its still quite a fragmented view of creation.

Approach of the East:

The eastern part of the world, particularly the Indian sub continent never went through these phases of religion->philosophy->science. The one common aspect of these 3 traditions of the west, is that the universe is separate and the human being is separate. They are using their intelligence(predominantly the brain) to study the outside creation. But in India, they evolved a diametrically opposite approach regarding understanding and experiencing the universe. It is a hard core pagan culture(the only one left on the planet with substantial population) who studied the creation in a different way.

Their fundamental understanding was that the microcosm and the macrocosm are the same. That's because the universe functions as per certain laws, the same laws created the galaxy, the solar systems, the planets, water, soil, air, plant life, an amoeba, aquatic lie, amphibious life, mammals and even the human being. Which means, if you need to understand the design of the creation, all you need to do is look into oneself. The source code of the existence is written into our very being. Even the religious scriptures say, we have been made in the image of God. This means that the whole universe, is in itself a giant laboratory which functions as per certain cause and effect laws and our very existence is a consequence of these laws. May be there are other universes with different laws, I DO NOT KNOW :)

So, how does one understand thyself and infer the truth of external creation. Well, if we were to use the western approach, which is brain centric, we would need to rip open everything and study piece by piece. This is how modern medicine functions unfortunately. But, we know by even basic experience that when it comes to life, the sum of the parts does not add up to the whole. We cannot define a human being, by studying their physical parts like liver, heart, kidney etc.. A human being is much much more than the sum of their individual parts. A human being is a organic, homogenous, general equilibrium system that mirrors the creation.

So, the approach of the west of trying to study the universe piece by piece may work for physical part of the universe but is very very restricted when it comes to studying life as a whole. Unfortunately, the generic understanding of many people is that, we are made of our physical bodies, some thoughts and emotions and there is nothing to a human being beyond this. The entire spectrum of philosophies,religion and science operate only within these 3 layers.

So, how does one conclude that a human being is much more beyond these 3 layers. It's obvious if we pay attention to a few things.

1. We were just born with a brain and a body and the same brain picked up the thoughts during our life's journey and it will drop it when we die, along with our body. The mental and physical structures go through certain cycles in life(childhood, teenage, midlife, old age). But a larger intelligence literally manufactured our brain and body in our mother's womb(again driven by the intelligence of the creation). When some intelligence can piece together neuron by neuron, cell by cell, tissue by tissue, organ by organ and create a complex mechanism like a human being from scratch, it's obvious that it is far too complex and is actually driving these 3 layers of our life.

2. If we were to make this assumption that we have been created as a reflection of the cosmic happening, lets observe how the universe is structured. If we look up in the night sky, even if we combine all the solar systems together, its just 4% of the universe. This fact has been acknowledged even by modern scientists. So, the parts of the universe where physicality is concentrated is 4% of the whole universe. But the whole galaxy is held in its place by some force. That is why all the solar systems are moving around the supermassive blackhole at the center of the galaxy. We can call this force as dark matter, dark energy etc.. but the reality is no scientist knows its properties, but they know a mysterious force exists. Infact even galaxies are moving towards/away from each other. It is estimated that in a few billion years from now, Milky way and Andromeda galaxy will say "hi" to each other. So, if 96% of the universe is empty space with some mysterious behavior and if we are mirror image of the universe, it is easy to conclude that 96% of our own self is actually meta physical or non physical in nature. And just 4% of ourself is physical. This is true not just in the cosmos, but in an atom as well, and in every living cell, because the fundamental design is the same.

So, the conclusion that eastern traditions came to is that, we are a piece of intelligence(including but not limited to our brain) that has its hardware provided to us by the creation(energy, matter, elements etc..) and software designed by the laws of creation(using the hardware ofcourse). And this intelligence of the outer and the inner are in constant transaction, starting from our breath, to our involuntary processes to literally everything about us. 

So GOD is nothing but the intelligence of the creation manifesting in our deepest core. We can call it consciousness, divinity, GOD or any other word, its the same. When someone experiences that innermost core(by inference, the whole creation and how it is transacting / influencing us), we call them a realized being.

So, only the messengers of GOD got the message in the West because they touched their innermost core. But if every human being works hard, its possible for every one of us. So, the approach of the Indian culture to experiencing the nature of creation was not to listen to Jesus Christ or Ram or Krishna blindly and repeat what they said, but to practice what they said using a spiritual process under the guidance of a GURU and become one of them, with YOGA being used as a tool in this direction. It's 90% practical and 10% theory. It's because of this culture of seeking and exploring the depths of the universe through your own inner reflections and not encouraging translators in between, that has prevented any kind of systematic religious conflict in the east(although there have been sporadic instances of the same)

That's why I find it fascinating to listen to Yogi's, Guru's and Mystics.

Unfortunately these enlightened beings, who have explored the very depths of human consciousness get a bad branding because of our ignorance. People end up expecting answers from them, for everything happening on the globe. It's like asking Cristiano Ronaldo about the mosquito menace in a remote African sub-urb. He wouldn't know and he wouldn't care either. It's better to ask him questions on football or some other sport, so that we can learn from his experience. So, genuine Guru's(there are plenty of charlatans as well) facing an internet backlash due to some inadvertent statement on some irrelevant topic, is no different than nailing Jesus Christ to a cross. Our attitude has not changed one bit. Instead, if we focus on asking questions to them on how human intelligence functions and what an individual can do to break his barriers of body, mind, emotions and energies to interact with the universe in profound ways, that would be a wise utilization of a living master.

It is because of our ignorance of asking irrelevant questions to irrelevant people, that many fake Guru's also enter the market. At the end of the day, if we create a demand, a supply is inevitable.

So, if one understands human consciousness at a high level, it's easy to know why human beings are, the way they are. All these explanations about human consciousness have been picked up by me, by reading books on spirituality, listening and watching content on the internet from yogi's and mystics and partly by my own experience.

But it is imperative to know that these descriptions and explanations are not linear in nature. We are expecting a linear explanation because we are using our brains to understand it. Like I have already mentioned, the logical aspect of ourselves which is driven by the brain, is a small part of our intelligence and the part can NEVER fully understand the whole. Because human software intelligence exists in various layers spread across the hardware of non physicality and physicality(energy and matter), who so ever has viewed these layers in varying proportions have expressed it in their own ways.

Through these series of posts, I will try to explain western philosophies through the lens of human consciousness, which is a consequence of a systematic, experiential and scientific understanding of the self. Since this is derived from an experiential scientific methodology, I will refer to them as Yogic sciences in the future posts.