SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
(Chapter 2 of Yoga -- A Vision of Its Future)
The evolutionary process tending towards this development cannot be neglected or ignored with impunity. It would be like neglecting or ignoring the growth of a child. Nature has taken every precaution to ensure that human beings do not by their ignorance or recalcitrance impede or obstruct the operation of the great law. Deep-rooted urge for transcendental experience, hunger for occult powers, curiosity about the supernatural, lure of magic, thirst for spiritual knowledge, love for religion, desire for worship and prayer, and the impulse of self-reformation are all devices installed by nature to draw human beings to the target of evolution without exactly knowing the reason responsible for the urge or the hunger which they experience.
Yoga is designed to fulfill this unspoken demand of nature and to meet this unwritten law by prescribing a way of life which is in conformity to the process of evolution working in the system. It is therefore obvious that Yoga is not what it is or has been held to be-a system of discipline for personal salvation, efficacious on account of certain unknown or magical properties, dependent for its success on the favor or grace of a guru. The actual position is that Yoga, as we know it at present, is merely the first step of a long process aimed to enlarge the capacity of the human encephalon, ultimately resulting in the establishment of a super-science for the exploration of transcendental realities. This exploration, conducted through Yoga, of the super-sensory planes of existence, which are the real cause of creation and the basis of the extremely complex phenomenon we call life, will have far greater fascination for the intellectual elite at no distant future than exploration of the material world has for them today.
There are millions upon millions of people whose love for religion is only skin-deep, whose attendance at the church or temple is motivated merely by desire to conform to a convention, or whose interest in God or the Hereafter is only superficial, without exerting the least influence on their daily thought or act. There are millions upon millions of other people whose interest in Yoga or the occult or the supernatural is cursory, the outcome of a passing curiosity, when they observe others' interest in these subjects. In contrast to these there are others deeply imbued with love for their faith or keenly interested in Yoga and the transcendental who make serious efforts to conform their lives to the ideals of their creed or the disciplines they undertake.
On the other side, too, there are legions for whom Yoga, worship, prayer, as also dabbling in the occult or the supernatural, or interest in magic represents merely a peculiar bent of mind in some people or a hobby or fad and they allow them to indulge in their fancies without evincing any desire to imitate or emulate their taste. There is another category of human beings, including statesmen, industrialists, scholars, thinkers, scientists, writers, teachers and others whose number too is large, for whom religion, God, Yoga, occult or the supernatural have no significance. They often applaud their own mental acumen in not being led astray by what they believe is an irrational pursuit, a mental aberration, hysteria or superstition from which they are happy to be free. There are millions of practical, hard-headed men and women who do not even give a thought to the occult or the Beyond and continue in their round of duties as if they do not exist at all. This disposition the Indian masters ascribe to tamas, the downward pressing force which retards evolution.
On the other side, those who practice some form of spiritual exercise or regularly attend the church as a duty, with faith and love, or daily worship and pray carried away by the ego, not unoften congratulate themselves for their observances and faith in God. In some cases this self-applause has the adverse effect of increasing vanity which makes them consider themselves more blessed and privileged than others for their good way of life and conduct which is denied to the rest. These attitudes of mind and active thinking have as pronounced an effect on the evolutionary career of human beings as spiritual discipline and cultivation of virtue. The law of gravitation operates uniformly in every nook and corner of the universe. Similarly do the laws of light and motion and similarly the laws of life.
The Law of Evolution acts precisely in the same way in every human being and in all intelligent forms of life in all parts of the universe. The skeptic who applauds himself for this practical common-sense in not subscribing to, what he calls, superstition or softness of the brain in the religious-minded, is as under the operation of the law as the one who flatters his ego for his piety and goodness, thinking himself superior to those who lead a different life. Whatever the idea and way of life of a human being, he is always under the operation of this mighty Law. Just as, while sitting, sleeping, walking, running, or flying in an airplane, we are every moment under the operation of the law of gravitation and can never escape its force all our life. In the same way, from birth to death, every human creature, thinking, acting, sleeping, waking, laughing or grieving is under the sway of the Law of Evolution, ceaselessly working in his body and brain.
The force of gravitation penetrates to each particle of earth and into every atom in our system, holding every cell and molecule in its place. A sudden cessation of this law would create an inconceivable situation, an explosion of which no one can visualize all the consequences. In the same way a sudden cessation of the law of Evolution will have unpredictable results and gradually transform mankind into an inconceivable species of life, making its survival as an intelligent creation entirely out of the bounds of possibility.
In order to obtain a clearer idea of how the forces of life and the Law of Evolution can be conceived of, in the context of the current theories about the elemental forces of matter, it is sufficient to say that the classical concepts of extremely minute solid objects which combined, like diminutive bricks, to form molecules and compounds has been demolished. The material world has now to be imagined as a stupendous ocean of wavelike patterns of probable interconnections of which it is not possible to form a precise image by any means possible to man.
"A material particle, such as an electron," says Hermann Weyl," is merely a small domain of the electric field, within which the field strength assumes enormously high values, indicating that a comparatively huge field energy is concentrated in a very small space. Such an energy knot, which by no means is clearly delineated against the remaining field, propagates through empty space, like a water wave across the surface of a lake; there is no such thing as one and the same substance of which the electron consists at all times."1
From this plain description of the invisible levels of matter, we can readily form the image of a human being as he actually exists-as a fluidic field of interconnected and interacting forces devoid of the form, shape, size, color and substance, presented to our mind by the senses and the brain. With this picture the world of name and form vanishes away completely. This dissolution of the objective world into Consciousness is a phenomenon known to yogis for thousands of years. Universal Consciousness (Brahman) with its maya-Shakti, existing behind the energy-field of the universe, lies completely beyond the range of our observation, the real source of all creation, yet entirely aloof and unaffected by its constant movement and activity. The Law of Evolution springing from the maya-Shakti of the Creator is operative at the finest levels of our organic structures, subtler than the neurons and their constituents or, in other words, in the invisible energy fields to which they owe their existence, shape and form. The issue has been touched in passing to bring out the colossal implications of the law of Yoga as a discipline designed to remodel the human brain at its deepest levels, completely hidden from our knowledge and sight.
We are seldom conscious of the Grace that keeps us alive every moment of our life. "My delusion is destroyed . . . and I shall do your bidding," says Arjuna at the end of the Gita because, humbled by the Vision, he sees the Lord in every atom and event of the Universe. The mighty discipline of Yoga, by melting the ego and extending the horizon of human consciousness, reveals the ineffable Presence of one Omnipotent Intelligence behind the infinite variety and ceaseless activity of the cosmos-a Vision so overwhelming and magnificent that the human mind reels under the impact.
The all-embracing Cosmic Law of human evolution is still unknown to modern savants. The reason is preponderate attention to the outer world at the cost of the inner. Man has forgotten himself in his excessive love for the body. It has been an error to explain the origin and evolution of different species of living creatures with hypotheses and assumptions which completely ignore the fact that a superintelligent cosmic law, governing life, is in operation throughout the universe. There is no awareness that it is a natural law and not accident that brought about the change in the storm-swept surface of the earth and made it the abode of the marvelous organic kingdom, full of the variety and wonder we find everywhere, each form perfectly suited to its habitat. The reason for it lies in the fact that the Almighty Force of Life is imperceptible and will continue to be so until the capacity of the brain is enhanced to include super-sensory perception of other levels of creation.
Even at the present advanced state of science, apart from its action on the body, we cannot, by any means whatsoever, perceive mind or consciousness in a living creature, as a tangible reality, visible to the eye or to the most delicate instrument devised so far. From this constantly observed fact, it should be easy to infer that it is equally impossible to perceive, by any means, the all-pervading Ocean of Consciousness and Intelligence, present as an invisible medium in every part of the universe, and in every atom and molecule of matter of which it is composed.
It is unfortunate that a fact, observed and understood more than three thousand years ago, should be lost on those savants who reject consciousness as a subject beyond the scope of science. The position has been anticipated by the enlightened and the answer provided. "How can we know the Knower, how can we hear the Hearer, how can we see the Seer, how can we smell the Smeller . . ." sang the Upanishads, at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ. In fact, how can we apprehend and study the intangible principle which, acting as the observing mirror in us, reflects the visible universe with all its numberless constituents, perceptible to our senses or conceived by our intellect? To hold that a marvelous stuff, like mind, is purely the product of neuronic activity in the brain, is to stick to an absurdity which has perhaps no parallel. As Plotinus put it, it is a fallacy to suppose that awareness can be born out of insentience.
The tragedy is that, even at this stage of advancement, scholars have only a rudimentary knowledge about neuronic activity. The structure of the brain is so elaborate and complex that it has to be treated as a universe in itself. Every neuron of the brain is connected with other neurons by means of hundreds of microscopic fibrils, and the whole marvelous structure has a possibility of combinations and permutations which exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. Neurons are the smallest working units of the brain. They possess incredible powers. When stimulated they discharge fusillades of tiny electrochemical pulsations whose shifting patterns, in a mysterious way, find expression in our fields of consciousness. To believe that such a staggering instrument of observation and thought could be developed and perfected by a blind force, i.e. matter, is to hurl an insult at intelligence itself.
The last picture of the extremely complex mechanism of the brain, the most organized lump of matter in the universe, presented by neuroscientists, will remain only a picture without explaining Mind which creates it. Here we are at the last frontier intellect can reach. "It now seems highly plausible," says Keith Floyd, "that the 'seat of consciousness' will never be found by a neurosurgeon, because it appears to involve not so much an organ or organs, but the interaction of the energy fields within the brain. These patterns of energy would be disrupted by surgical intervention, and have long since disappeared in cadavers. Neuro-physiologists will not likely find what they are looking for outside their own consciousness." 2
Human consciousness will remain inaccessible to observation except through the methods advocated by Yoga. From the mind-body dualism, an essential feature of our very existence, we have failed to draw the conclusion that there has to be duality in their methods of observation also and that the methods of one cannot be applied to the other. The subjective and objective worlds, in our normal state of cognition, lie distinctly apart, constituting the duality which, from ancient times, has been classed as the 'Knower' and the 'Known'. The pool of consciousness we name as the 'Knower' has an extremely complex and marvelous territory of its own.
It is now an accepted premise that emotions like anger, grief, passion, hate, joy, excitement, and the like, have no existence in matter or the objective world, but are a property of life itself. There might be physical or physiological factors to cause these emotions, but the effect is a construction of consciousness itself. In the same way colors, sounds, smells, tastes, shape, form, figure, time, and distance are the fabrications of mind. All that we know, still very imperfectly, is that certain peculiar states or conditions in the energy fields, we call matter, give rise to these events, images, and ideas in consciousness.
Any intelligent human being, well-informed about the latest advances in science, when reflecting on mind, cannot but come to the conclusion that we have in it an element of creation entirely different from the physical universe of which it is the mirror and the receptacle.
We often fail to notice the wonder of consciousness, the wonder of our being, as the Knowers, or the wonder of the multiple power of observation which we possess, because we are accustomed to take our existence for granted and seldom care to reflect on it. On the other hand, we are thrilled, astonished or amazed when we come across a wonder-exciting phenomenon of the objective world. The sight of a grand spectacle of nature, as for instance of a cascading waterfall, a storm-swept sea or a panorama viewed from the top of a mountain, not unoften creates a sense of awe and wonder which thrills a susceptible onlooker to the core.
But do we ever stop to think that this thrilling joy, wonder or amazement does not reside in the scene or in the elements behind the scene, but in our own self-that is, in the 'Knower'? The present world is almost dead to the most wondrous plane of creation, namely, the plane of mind and consciousness which does not, in reality, consist of separate points of awareness, thought and observation, in the form of individuals and persons, but is one stupendous Ocean of Intelligence, spread everywhere, of which each individual is an infinitesimally small drop. The wonder of Yoga lies in that it is the only way by which this tiny droplet can become cognizant of the boundless ocean which acts as the 'Knower' in every form of life from the most lowly creature to man himself.
We never stop to think that we are the universe which overawes us with its complexity and size. Seldom do we know that we are the lovely landscape before our eyes, the dulcet music that we hear, the delicious fragrance that we smell, the tasty dish that we eat, the soft, voluptuous body that we caress in the transport of love. A body stricken dead by a sudden total failure of the heart or a damage to the brain, with all its sensory organs intact and whole, while still flooded with impressions from the outside world, now lacks the ponderous element that interpreted those impressions to create the marvelous world of our thought and imagination, the world of desire, passion, anger, joy, beauty, and the thrill of love. It is for this reason I say that we miss the wonder of consciousness, as we lavish all our care and attention on the 'Known' and not the 'Knower' which creates it from the diffused, unaesthetic energy fields that make up the Universe.
The testimony of hundreds of sages, seers, and mystics, born in different countries and different periods of time, brought face to face with this inner marvel, provides unshakable evidence for what I say. "I am the Vedic ritual," says Krishna (Universal Consciousness) in the Bhagavad Gita. "I am the sacrifice, I am the offering to the departed, I am the herbage, I am the sacred formula, I am the clarified butter, I am the sacred fire and 1 am verily the act of offering oblations and the sacrificial act . . . I am the sustainer and ruler of this universe, its father, mother and grandfather, the Knowable, the purifier, the sacred syllable Om and the three Vedas-Rig, Yajur and Sama . . ."
Toward the end of his discourse, Krishna explains the surpassing nature of consciousness in these words: "The Lord dwells in the heart of all beings, O Arjuna, by His illusive Power causing all beings to revolve, as though mounted on a potter's wheel." The importance of the teaching is lost on the world because an expression of this nature is treated either as an act of Divine favor or a state peculiar to yogis and mystics having little relevance to the common man or woman. But what would be the impact when it is demonstrated that every human brain is being pushed up from within to reach this marvelous state of perception which brings meaning and homogeneity to the cosmic scene? The spark of divine fire which knows, hears, sees, thinks, and plans is the wonder of wonders and the secret of secrets of the Universe. The herculean discipline of Yoga is designed to explore the stupendous mystery of man himself and to experience the wonder of the 'Knower' in him face to face.
In spite of the fact that millions of people have deep faith in religion, and millions more practice spiritual disciplines in one form or the other, the misfortune of our age is that almost all of our activity and thinking is directed towards the outer world. Except for a few notable exceptions, does any man-made institution of today, devoted to education, politics, science, literature or social issues recognize the basic fact that the study and exploration of this mysterious inner world is as necessary for human welfare and progress as that of the outer one? How can the advance of Knowledge of all these subjects be conducive to harmony and a balanced view of creation when the 'Knower' is basically ignorant about himself? Humanity, as a whole, is completely extroverted and one-sided in its approach not only to the riddle of existence but also to the solution of its everyday problems of survival and its efforts to create happiness and fulfillment for the species. The present-day world is in a precarious state of imbalance, in danger of destruction by self-created monsters, because of pronounced partiality for material well-being at the cost of the even more important inner harmony.
Yoga, or by whatsoever name the discipline comes to be called, provides the only key to open the door that bars our passage to the marvelous universe of consciousness. The 'wonder' which mirrors the universe and serves as the repository for all our knowledge and art, of our emotions, passions and thoughts cannot be approached by extroverted application of our senses, but only by introspection which turns the attention of the mind on itself. This is what Krishna means when he addresses Arjuna with these words at the end: "Fix your mind on Me, be devoted to Me, worship Me, bow to Me, and in this way shall you doubtlessly attain to Me. This I truly promise you for you are very dear to Me."
The advice of Krishna is designed to draw the attention of the devotee from the external to the inner world, for the Lord, the intangible and ineffable 'Knower', the wonder of creation, resides in us. The crude material instruments of science, however delicate, precise, and sensitive they might be, cannot reach this holy of holies, this Knowing principle which, lying disguised in the brains of the savants, is himself their inventor, designer and architect. It is not material science, but a loftier discipline that alone can hope to explore this most mysterious inner universe. Present-day Yoga, cultivated with love, dedication and reverential care would slowly flower into the new Super-Science of consciousness, the guiding light of mankind in the near future, for it is only this Sovereign knowledge that can harmonize the present imbalance and ensure a more judicious and disciplined use of the products of exuberant technology.
Written by: Gopi Krishna
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