Psychology and Spirituality

On a Quest to Understand Consciousness

Psychology and spirituality, prima facie, appear as two diverging fields. The concepts formed in psychology are based on empirical observations and reasoning and the concept of Ultimate Reality does not fit into its framework. On the contrary, in spirituality the concepts do not have underpinning of reasoning and empirical observations, the observations are internal, subjective experiences or mystical experiences. The concept of Ultimate Reality is central to spirituality. Despite so many basic differences in psychology and spirituality what binds them together and what is that strong bond which has been carrying two disciplines together and has become even stronger in modern times after the comeback of spirituality in the West. This bond is of ‘mind and consciousness’. Both exist in reality and both occupy supreme position in psychology and spirituality. Within the domain of mind, there is also a concept of ‘the self’, which is also of central importance in psychology and spirituality and that determines the behaviour of a person. The concept of ‘the self’ is much older than the history of psychology. Until middle of nineteenth century, the discipline of psychology was non-existent and its concepts such as mind, consciousness, the self, human behaviour and ethics were discussed in a branch of philosophy. But as  new concepts and new experimental methods began to develop in Natural Sciences, the empiricism of science outweighed the rationalism of philosophy and with efforts of 3 W’s; Wilhelm Wundt, William James and Watson, Psychology came into existence, just 150 years ago! Psychology treats ‘consciousness’ as a literary term and the ‘self-consciousness’ is a personality trait in which a person is excessively conscious of her / his looks, appearance or manners, which when escalated can become a psychological problem. In positive context, a person can be self-conscious of his weaknesses and tries to overcome it by improving himself and in turn achieves boosted self-confidence. Further, details of ‘self-consciousness’ can be found in any text books of psychology.

Apart from the psychological usage of ‘self-consciousness’. There is a philosophical and spiritual usage of ‘self-consciousness’. It is the awareness that, one exists as an individual being. From ‘self-consciousness’ derives a concept ‘the self’. It is a congregation of one’s life-experiences, learning, values, thinking and everything that is stored in subconscious mind and it determines the behaviour of a person. I have specifically underlined the meaning of ‘the self’ because many other religious and spiritual interpretations exist in literature. Since psychology has emerged from a branch of philosophy, it is imperative to discuss thoughts of western philosopher on ‘mind, consciousness and the self’. The most ancient concept of the ‘the self’ can be found in the aphorism ‘know thyself’ that is inscribed in the forecourt of temple of Apollo at Delphi Greece. The interpretation of this aphorism attributed to Socrates is as follows: ‘We should examine our life, as the unexamined life is not worth living’. Persian scholar and physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna) suggested that self-awareness (consciousness) is not sensory in nature, a view different from psychology and neuroscience, which treat consciousness as related to sensory system of body only. He devised a thought experiment to prove it. ‘A person floating in air and cut off from all sensory organs can still be aware of his self-existence’. Italian scholar, thinker and theologian Thomas Aquinas stated that ‘ for self-awareness, only the presence (existence) of mind is required and no sensory organs are needed’. Great mathematician and philosopher Rene’ Descartes said ‘I think and therefore I am’.

In Hinduism the concepts of ‘the self, mind and consciousness’ has been existing since prehistoric times. One of the most significant messages of Bhagwad Gita (the most read Hindu scripture worldwide) it that ‘self-knowledge’ (Atma-Gyan i.e. knowledge of ‘the self’) alone eradicates misery; self-knowledge alone is the means to highest bless and that self-knowledge alone can lead to perfection in life. According to Advait Vedanta, the mind is an internal sense organ (in Sanskrit Antarindriya) which senses the presence and content of thoughts in a similar way it senses signal from five sense organs. Every normal person can know and can communicate to the external world what thoughts are running in the mind. It sounds paradoxical that modern psychology does not recognise mind as a sensory organ.    As a scientist my analysis is as follows: The thought is a phenomenon in mind, which is of subjective nature. It is not possible empirically to measure a thought i.e. to read a thought within specified accuracy, although its presence can be detected by its physiological effects. On the other hand, functions of five sensory organs can be verified empirically. For example, if N number observers are observing a flower, then all the N number of observers will describe the flower in the same way within considerable accuracy. This is not true in case of a thought because the thought is observed by a single person who also describes it. His description cannot be verified. This is not a true empirical method of observation in natural science. Inspite of the fact that mind exists in reality and thought process is a natural phenomenon, the functioning of mind is not subject of study in natural sciences and still a philosophical issue.

For last three decades, neuroscience is playing the role of a objective science to study a subjective phenomenon, the mind and consciousness in a hope to get a treatment for mental disorders which appear to be consciousness related, such as schizophrenia, with help of brain imaging techniques such as functional MRI and PET scan. Neuroscientists are trying to understand consciousness in terms of neural activities induced by a train of Action Potentials, triggered by a stimulus through computer computation and modelling. Even if some valid pattern of neural activity is recorded and its relation with stimulus is also established through some algorithm, how it can provide any clue about consciousness is a big question. Scientists do not even know the causal property of consciousness: Is it a ‘cause’ or is it an ‘effect’. Though large number of papers on research on consciousness is being published in scientific journals and many dedicated research institutes for study of consciousness have come into existence, scientists are very far from understanding consciousness. Some scientists are sceptical while others who are optimistic say it may take another 100 years to understand consciousness.

According to me, if a scientist is exploring the nature of consciousness, he should have a first-hand experience of it, after all it is so easily accessible. We, all are, in very close touch with consciousness even then scientists are relying heavily on technologies such as fMRI, PET scan etc. Most of neuroscientists are materialistic who believe that the consciousness emanates from matter and their entire approach rests on this proposition. Whereas the great scientists who were also spiritual have the opposite views. According to Max Planck, originator of quantum theory and founder of Modern Physics: “[I regard consciousness as fundamental, I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness ……]” Eugene Wigner, who laid the foundation for theory of symmetry in quantum mechanics stated “ It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum theory in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” American neurosurgeon who experienced the Near Death Experience  asserted that consciousness is non material. Thinker E.F. Schumacher writes in his book “ Guide To The Perplexed” for the materialistic scientists “There is need for such scientists to take recourse to seeking self-knowledge of inner world.” In this scenario, spirituality can play decisive role because the consciousness is the central theme there. The experiences of spiritual practitioners and neuroscientific experiments on these practitioners can reveal a great deal of information about consciousness. By spiritual practitioner, I mean those mediators who have attained the extreme meditative states such as Samadhi or those who have fully awakened their Kundalini because these meditators have full control on consciousness and they can play with it. Also, these meditators can maintain a meditative state for sufficiently long time required for experimentation. This idea prompted me to pursue  spirituality  very  seriously and in fact, views of Max Planck and Eugene Wigner about consciousness have greatly influenced and inspired my spiritual journey. Now, I find that ‘Mind and Body’ is a great laboratory to study consciousness. I remember, during the school day I used to attend Satsangs with my father and Guruji used to tell “whatever you are searching in outer world is present in the inner world and there is need to open the inner eye”. At that time, I could not understand the hidden meaning of this piece of preaching but now I am able to understand the hidden meaning  and also experience the truth of it.                                                                                                                     

MY PERSPECTIVES OF SPIRITUALITY 

In the beginning, I found spirituality very perplexing because many of its concepts I found irrational, unrelated and even contradictory with each other and out of tune with science. Soon, I realised that spirituality is an umbrella term which encompasses various activities and concepts and it might be the reason why spirituality could never be defined uniquely. I treat spirituality as having many dimensions so that it could be studies systematically without perplexing any one. These dimensions are as follows:

  1. Religious Dimension
  2. Tantric Dimension
  3. Intellectual Dimension
  4. Personality Dimension
  5. Philosophical Dimension
  6. And the latest, Adhyaatmic Dimension

The ontological description of spirituality is very useful for a beginner for understanding and creating interest in the subject. I will be discussing these dimensions of spirituality in detail later in my posts in this blog, at present I am giving only a brief account of each dimension.

Religious Dimension

Though the spirituality has sprung from religion (by religion I mean institutionalised religions), the two are quite different from each other. There are two aspects of a religion. The first one deals with rituals, beliefs, prayer and services and majority of followers believe in performing  rituals  with a hope that by performing  rituals  God will be pleased and offer his blessings. This is the most prevalent aspect of a religion. The second aspect deals with preachings and improving the quality of life by subsuming the preachings. This second aspect of religion is related with spirituality but rituals and beliefs greatly affects the spiritual practices. For example in India, many schools of meditation teach concentration by chanting the names of deities or mantras. In ISCON devotees meditate on ‘Hare Krishna’ Mantra. The consumption of alcohol and non-vegetarian food is strictly prohibited following a belief of the religion.

Tantric Dimension

This dimension of spirituality has its root in religion but the focus is on attaining so-called spiritual powers ( and not the peace of mind ) by using various bizarre techniques as support for meditation ( called Sadhana in this dimension ) such as Yantras (instruments), animal sacrifice, use of taboo substances such as alcohol, meat, cannabis, maithuna (ritual sexual union). People who involve in this type of sadhana live ascetic and very disciplined life. Aghori Babas of India also practice similar spiritual techniques. They use human skull and human bones as yantra. They meditate on cremation grounds and smear cremation ashes on their body and allegedly consume human flesh of parts of body left unburnt. I also include in this dimension paranormal activities such as calling the spirit of dead person and claim treating some psychological disorders by tantric techniques. This dimension of spirituality is really mystical and its techniques are esoteric. There is no rational and scientific explanation for its activities and concepts.

Intellectual Dimensions

The intellectual dimension is the most popular dimension of spirituality, which has developed into billion dollar industry in America.  Spirituality is inherently experiential, but it is being presented as an intellectual discipline mainly through internet, where one can find tons of blogs on spirituality discussing mysticism, esoteric techniques, awakening, enlightenment, non-attachment and Samadhi state of meditation without having any experience of it. Bloggers use alluring text to impress and attract customers. They convince them about  large number of benefits of meditation. They are teaching various techniques of meditation with the aid of mobile apps, which is the only innovation in meditation by the West. But meditation is not only about learning different techniques of concentration: this  reduces stress, anxiety and depression only marginally and for short time. Long term peace of mind, equanimity and other health benefits are possible only when individual purifies his cognitive processes, overcomes  ego, becomes empathetic  and surrenders to the Ultimate Reality. Many brands of meditation with intellectual knowledge can be found in market of spirituality. These  brands are so powerful that they have made their entry into clinics and big hospitals of America despite the fact that American Medical Association has not accepted the claimed efficacy of this type of meditation and refused to recommend meditation for the treatment of mental disorders. As pointed out earlier that the commercial  form of meditation is a mere practice of concentration, a mental exercise and one should not expect the benefits or the results of an exercise as equivalent to that of a treatment. For example, a physical exercise may lower the glucose level in blood but can not cure the diabetes. A 2013 research by the scientists of John Hopkins University published in Journal of American Medical Association confirms this.

Personality Dimension

The personality dimension of spirituality is personal in nature. The seat of spirituality is in the mind of a person and not in literature. As I quoted earlier that most of great philosophers and scientists whom I have read were inherently spiritual which implies that persons are born spiritual. Not all great thinkers might have sat for meditation. They need not to either because they are spiritual by nature, by their thoughts and by their behaviours. All spiritual persons have almost the same personality traits. They are cool, reserved, calm, relaxed, stable, sober, serious, conscientious, imaginative, forthright, experimenting, self-sufficient, self-disciplined, kind and full of perseverance. These traits serve as markers on the scale of spirituality and by studying these traits in a person, the extent of spirituality in that person can be assessed. If I am asked to arrange the great thinkers on the scale of spirituality, then I would rank Max Planck on the top. Max Planck, father of modern physics and the originator of quantum theory was deeply spiritual and considered spirituality and science as the two sides of a coin. His thoughts were instrumental in my transformation from an atheist to what I am today. The potential and importance of spirituality in life and in science can be understood from some excerpts from his book titled ‘Where is Science Going?’ (In the following text word religion is used for spirituality).’’There can never be any real opposition between religion and science, for the one is the complement of others. Every serious and reflective person realises, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognised and cultivated if all powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony and indeed, it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls”.

He further writes his observation on complementary relation between spirituality and science. “The one does not exclude the other; rather they are complementary and mutual interacting. Man needs science as a tool of perception; he needs spirituality as a guide to action”.

Philosophical Dimension

Philosophical dimension deals with ethical aspects of spirituality and is very significant for the progress on spiritual path. Starting with Socrates, Aristotle, Stoic philosopher Epictetus, Kant, Rene Descartes and Spinoza posited their ethical systems and resolved the questions of human morality by defining the concepts such as ‘good and evil’, ‘right and wrong’, ‘Virtue and Vice’, ‘justice and Crime’. This is now an independent branch of philosophy known as Moral Philosophy and is related to Moral Psychology. The significance of moral Psychology in spirituality lies in the fact that when the behaviour and thoughts are ‘right’ (Positive), the wandering of mind is less and it is easy to focus the attention and for more duration of time, because there are no worries about the consequences. In Hindu Philosophy the place of ethical system is taken by Dharma (not to be mistaken for institutionalised religion). It is a Sanskrit word meaning Duty. Dharma is an inseparable part of Indian spirituality and not an intellectual discipline as in the West. In India Dharma was an essential part of Vedic education system because ancient scholars (the Rishis) realised that the spirituality and hence the meditation was incomplete without the knowledge of Dharma. This could be the reason why meditation was in such an advanced stage at that time. There is no place of Dharma in contemporary meditation and it is the reason why today the meditation is lacking behind very far from the original form of meditation as described in ancient scriptures. I will elaborate ‘Dharma’ in a separate post entitled ‘Dharma, Religion, Purusharth and Renunciation’.

Adhyaatmic Dimension of Spirituality

Adhyaatmic dimension of spirituality is the result of rigorous study of mind and consciousness with perspectives of psychology, physics neuroscience and Advait Vedanta through my system of meditation, which got spurred from ‘Modified Relaxation Technique,’ as mentioned in introductory post. I am systematically advancing this system of meditation with an intention of coalescing neuroscience, psychology and spirituality into a novel discipline.

To understand the Adhyaatmic dimension of spirituality it is necessary to know the real meaning of the word Adhyaatma. The word ‘Adhyaatmic’ should not be confused with ‘spiritual’. According to English dictionary both words are equivalent to each other, but in fact this is not so. The sanskrit word Adhyaatma is a composite word comparising of two words ‘Adhya’ and ‘Atma’. The word ‘Adhya’ is derived from the sanskrit word ‘Adhyayan’ which is equivalent to english word ‘study’ or ‘to study’. The word ‘Atma’ is translated into english as ‘the self’. Thus the meaning of ‘Adhyaatma’ is ‘to study the self’. In this way ‘Adhyaatm’ is a discipline under which one studies the self through meditation to find out if his thoughts and behaviour are according to Dharma or not. Adhyaatma is very near to science and not connected to any religion, hence secular in nature. On the contrary, the word spirituality is derived from ‘spirit,’ the soul and has its roots in religion and so it is not secular in nature and unlike Adhyaatma, it is poorly defined word. In this way the word ‘Adhyaatma’ and ‘Spirituality’ convey altogether different information and meaning   therefore they cannot be equivalent to each other. I consider the translation of ‘Adhyaatma’ as ‘Spirituality’ in English as a serious etymological mistake. Therefore, in order to preserve the meaning of Adhyaatma I will continue to use this Sanskrit word as it is in the English text. The use of Sanskrit word in English language is inspired by the tradition of adopting Latin and Greek words in English text of science and it is a homage to ancient Hindu scriptures Vedas and Upnishads which are composed in sanskrit and from where the present work is inspired. In fact carefully studying the Vedic literature reveals that in ancient India Adhyaatma was a discipline in the education system and Indian scriptures, Vedas and Upnishads were the ‘Text Books’ of the discipline Adhyaatma. The purpose of Adhyaatma was to study the thoughts and behaviour of ‘the self’ in order to identify ‘Mental Distortions’  (known as Vikaras’ in sanskrit) and to rectify them through Meditation. According to Advait Vedanta there are five Vikaras of mind which are main obstacles in spiritual and physical progress of human beings. These are: (1) Kama (the Lust), wish to get or getting things unethically, in wrong way, (2) Krodha (the Anger, irritation), (3) Lobha (the Greed),(4) Moha (the Attachment with worldly things; money, property etc.),(5) Ahankar (the Ego), I am only right. During meditation, it is not possible to concentrate without overcoming those vikaras. These five vikaras are components of a single word of sanskrit ‘Agyaan’ the nescience, lack of knowledge which is the cause of stress, anxiety and human suffering. In short, Adhyaatma is a way to overcome our shortcomings, to work with our full potential, and to live a happy life. Adhyaatma conjugates well with Humanistic Psychology. It teaches how to execute in practice the concept of ‘becoming fully functional person’ posited by psychologist Carl Rogers and the concept of ‘Self-actualisation’ put forward by Abraham Maslow. Rogers and Maslow posited their concepts but could not explain how to execute their concepts and now Adhyaatmic dimension will complete this task. One of the founders of modern psychology Wilhelm Wundt introduced the concept of ‘introspection’ in psychology, which is also a concept in Adhyaatma.

Adhyaatmic dimension of spirituality is a vast and multidisciplinary field encompassing psychology, neuroscience, technology, physics, electronic, philosophy of Advait Vedanta and understanding of religions. There is a complete theory of this scientific form of meditation which I have named Adhyaatmic Meditation and to make a differentiation, I will refer to all other forms of meditations as ‘Spiritual Meditation’ which is a mere mental exercise, a practice of concentrating the attention on different objects or being mindful of one’s presence, without any specific goal to achieve. In contrast, Adhyaatmic Meditation is a mental process with steps laid down in theory of meditation. Since a process aims to achieve a goal, the process of Adhyaatmic meditation has specific goals to achieve in succession. The specific goals are nothing but various meditative states described in the theory. There is a measurable parameter to monitor the progress of process of meditation and the theory of meditation also defines a parameter, a quotient and a mathematical expression which defines and quantifies the progress of meditation. Co-related approximate value of this quotient can be measured experimentally by a device, specifically developed for this purpose. The device records the breathing pattern during the meditation and generates an output which is called EBG (Electro Breathing Graph) which is similar to ECG used for Cardiac investigation. A software analyses EBG and can assess the long term progress in meditation during a specified period of time. The EBG is a reflection of mental state of meditator produced as a physiological response of sum of neural activities of brain. The device will be known as breathograph and it will be mandatory for all who opt to learn Adhyaatmic meditation and for this reason the device is made very cost effective, costing less than an ordinary smart phone. The mental state of meditator recorded in EBG will be stored in the memory of smart phone and can be used later for comparison to assess the progress in meditation. This entire theoretical, experimental and technological development is an effort to present meditation as a discipline for academic learning and providing an alternative system to ancient and an ultimate tradition of teaching the meditation by Guru-Shishya Parampara which is not feasible in the present context.

Adhyaatmic discipline is not only about the scientific transformation of meditation it will also scrutinize earlier concepts and aspects of spirituality on a rational and scientific scale, in order to put forth a true, clear and easily understandable picture of spirituality. Unfortunately, there had been a tradition according to which earlier philosophers, spiritual gurus and religious authorities have intentionally presented spirituality a field of esoteric techniques, shrouded in secrecy; they made explanation of its concepts mind boggling and presented the path of spirituality an extremely difficult to follow and that it was meant for the privileged ones only, to prove themselves and present themselves as possessing supreme knowledge and supernatural powers. The scriptures in India on spirituality too are composed in the forms of verses with multiple meanings. There  has  never been any sincere and serious efforts for teaching meditation in a simplified manners for an attempt to make humanity free of stress, anxiety and suffering and to foster love among human beings. Unfortunately, all self-proclaimed spiritual gurus of India who popularised and exported meditation to West, only cultivated their personality in the name of meditation and piled up wealth. They only preached meditation. Meditation should not a thing for preaching, it should be a thing for teaching:  This has been my sole motto and an inspiration force behind developing the Adhyaatmic Meditation. Along with developing Adhyaatmic discipline, I am also constructing a Brain Mind model to explain psychological and transcendental functions of mind. During the construction of this model, I found psychology and spirituality converging into path, which may lead to understanding and explaining consciousness, the Brahma.

NOTE: I thank Sri H.S. Vora, my friend and colleague from earlier organisation Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore who is collaborating with me in the development of technology and software of Breathograph. I am also looking for a collaboration from the field of experimental neuroscience for advancing this work further.

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THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The inquisitiveness about consciousness is as old as the inception of homo sapiens species and it is as prevalent and mysterious as god. Philosophers are contemplating on it for thousands of years but the more it is studied the more confusing it becomes. Since most of scientists are either atheist or agnostic, they were never interested in this topic, also because they did not foresee any potential in the research of consciousness. Scientist largely found this topic ‘unfit’ for science. Although the topic of consciousness was discussed in psychology, but psychology was never considered a mainstream science because of lack of empirical research. Finally, a scientist of mainstream science Dr. Krick, Nobel Prize winner for discovery of double helical structure of DNA, veered off from molecular biology and put great efforts to start research on consciousness. As on today about 100 research papers on this topic are being published every year and research on consciousness has been established a full-fledged discipline of science.

I have bifurcated the discussions on consciousness based on conceptual difference on consciousness in East and West. In the first part I have discussed studies on consciousness by the West and in the second part I have discussed the studies on consciousness by the East. The conceptual difference arises because of difference in approach of study. The Western world has been largely materialistic traditionally which is reflected clearly in their scientific approach to study nature. Therefore, most of scientists think that in physical world there is nothing beyond matter and and consciousness has emerged from matter, i.e. compex assembly of neurons in the brain. The scientists are studying consciousness with this premise.

The study of consciousness started in the East i.e. India in prehistoric period, perhaps 7000 years ago when Rishis (ancient Indian Scholars) started the tradition of meditation. Many Rishis studied nature of mind and consciousness through meditation and the knowledge they generated by meditation is compiled in Vedas of which Advait Vedanta is a part. Advait Vedanta is not a philosophy but Western philosopher consider Advait Vedanta as a philosophical concept. Veda and thus doctrine of Advait Vedanta is based on experiential knowledge or more accurately the Adhyaatmic knowledge.( I have defined the word ‘Adhyaatmic’ in the previous post ) I consider experiential as equivalent to experimental knowledge. Therefore, the description of mind in Vedanta which can be considered as the first ever model of mind is much more advanced than the model of mind proposed by Sigmund Freud which could not survive even decades. Vedantic approach to study consciousness and mind will be discussed in detail in future post. In this post I have discussed scientific approach and status of research in the field of consciousness.

The earliest study of consciousness in the West is attributed to Greek philosopher Plotinus, who proposed that consciousness is related to the experience. According to him the self is made up of different layers of consciousness, each layer representing a different experience. Thus, Plotinus was the first to introduce the notion of subjectivity. In addition to subjective experience, Plotinus may be the first to attribute consciousness to divine soul and introduced the idea of hypostasis, which is akin to concept of ‘Brahman’ given by ancient Indian Rishis and seers and is basis of Advait Vedanta.

Aristotle used the word ‘mind’ for ‘consciousness’ and proposed the theory how mind senses the external objects and events and make an impression in mind. His work can be considered as laying foundation of science of mind. He used the word soul for psyche. Because of efforts of Aristotle, the soul, which was thought to be a divine thing, became a subject of science of Nature. Aristotle can be regarded as father of ‘materialism’ though he did not use the word ‘materialism’. According to him anything that exists, even the soul (psyche), there must be embodiment of it in a material. He also defined the material as the one which can have form or the formulable essence. Aristotle may be regarded as pioneer in setting the terms of reference for the future discussion of problem of consciousness.

Rene’ Descartes, a renowned mathematician and philosopher discussed ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ through a famous ‘mind-body problem. He identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness. He considered the brain as the seat of intelligence. In his views, mind is a non-physical and therefore non-spatial substance. Descartes went ahead of previous philosophers and said that mind cannot be discussed without reference to the body (brain). According to him, mind and body are distinct and separable, and this duality of mind and body is known as Cartesiam Dualism.

Discussion on consciousness was limited to philosophical debate till the time of Sigmund Freud who was first to discuss consciousness in the realm of science. He used the concept of consciousness while developing a model of mind based on which he proposed the psychoanalytic theory of personality. Though the model of mind and Psychoanalytic theory faced harsh criticism and collapsed but it paved the way for future research.

The study of consciousness became a subject of scientific investigation when American Psychologist William James, one of the foundation pillars of modern psychology, first coined the phrase “stream of consciousness” of which thoughts are the content. In this way he was quite close to understand the nature of consciousness.

I believe the credit of speeding up research on consciousness should also be given to Mahesh Yogi, the Indian spiritual guru, who taught and popularised the meditation in the West. Since meditation is nothing but the control of consciousness, many scientists started designing experiments to study the effect of meditation on mind.

But it was Francis Krick who launched a sort of campaign to convince the scientists that consciousness is really a subject of main-stream scientific research as he was aware that the subject of consciousness was viewed with deep suspicion in scientific community. Therefore, he wrote in a 1979 editorial of scientific American “……the time has come for science to take the previously forbidden subject of consciousness……”. As a part of his campaign, he wrote a book “Astonishing Hypothesis : the scientific search for Soul”. According to the book, emotions, ambitions and sense of identity are results of behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. He was first to outline an empirical approach to study consciousness for which he chose visual consciousness. He collaborated with Chistof Koch and introduced the concept of “Neural Correlate of Consciousness” or in short NCC.

David Chalmers posed the ‘Easy problem’ and ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness. Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist proposed integrated information theory (IIT), which he claims can predict whether a system is conscious and and upto to what extent. By this time (2004), the consciousness research was established as full-fledged multi-disciplinary field integrating psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and physiology. Large number of research papers are being published every year in mainstream journals and journals dedicated to consciousness study. A centre for consciousness study in University of Arizona and many similar research institutes have been established with an objective to bring together disciplines like philosophy, cognitive sciences, neuroscience, physical science, and medicine.

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness is a very broad term with multiple meanings. Oxford dictionary defines consciousness as “The state of being aware of and responsive to surrounding or a person’s awareness or perception of something”. Merriam Webster dictionary defines consciousness as “the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself”. According to Cambridge dictionary, consciousness is a state of understanding and realizing something. Psychologists, scientists, and doctors adhere to this dictionary definition of consciousness. Every normal human being has the experience of being conscious of its surroundings via sensory organs and conscious of what is going on in the mind and body. For scientists and psychologists, human being has the ability to be conscious because of a quality or state of brain which they call ‘consciousness’. The scientists consider consciousness a physical entity that has emerged from brain and they even have proposed a mathematical expression for it which is denoted by symbol ɸ. According to their assumption the consciousness is a physical entity like heat, light and sound etc., but so far, they have not found any physical property of consciousness which is normally attributed to well-known physical entities under the realm of physics. The widely agreed notion about consciousness is the intuition that it exists. Perhaps this may be the reason why consciousness is not a topic of research in Physics. Although there is no well-established physical property of consciousness, the psychologists have agreed upon various states of consciousness. Here I have differentiated consciousness from conscious-ness. The conscious-ness is an abstract noun derived from the adjective ‘conscious’ and consciousness is a hypothesized physical entity. Psychologists, based on observations categorized many states of conscious-ness:

          1) Fully conscious, when person is fully wake,

          2) Fully unconscious, when person is in deep sleep, or when person is

under influence of drug or anaesthesia or he is under coma,

          3) Inter-mediatory conscious when person is in sleep but dreaming

          4) Altered state of conscious-ness when person is under effect of

recreational drug

There are other usages of the word ‘conscious’, when a person drives the car first time, he is fully conscious but when he learns driving the car completely, he becomes less conscious and he starts using mobile. These states of conscious-ness have anything to do with consciousness is a matter of research. However, some modern scientists are so confident in treating consciousness as a physical entity that they are talking of consciousness as having information and have proposed integrated information theory.

Many ancient philosophers expressed their views on consciousness which are different from that of modern scientists who relate consciousness to awareness and subjective experience only. The philosophers who advocated Physicalism like Aristotle regarded consciousness as a matter, he used the word soul or psyche for it. Many philosophers used the words ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ interchangeably. For example, Rene’ Descartes did not distinguish between mind, consciousness and self-awareness. According to him consciousness is a non-physical and non-matter entity but still can interact with matter (brain). Baruch Spinoza though not used the word ‘consciousness’ but according to him everything that exist is a substance, a substance of God and the thoughts which appear in the mind are given by God.

There are not many physicists who expressed their view on consciousness partly because most of them are materialistic hence either atheist or agnostic. But Max Planck who is considered father of modern science and quantum physics expressed his idea on the consciousness. According to Planck, consciousness is all pervading and matter has evolved from the consciousness. Another physicist Eugene Wigner has similar views as of Planck. He said, “he could not have completed his research on quantum mechanics without postulating consciousness”. The proponents of Panpsychism have similar views on consciousness, but they use the word ‘mind’ for consciousness. According to theory of Panpsychism, “the mind is fundamental nature of the world which exists throughout the universe’.

The concept of consciousness was first given by Rishis (Indian ancient scholar) and is extensively discussed in Vedas. In Sanskrit it is known as Brahman (ब्रह्म) which is all pervading, infinite, eternal truth, and bliss which does not change and is the cause of origin of universe. In Vedas, Brahman is discussed with concept of Atman (आत्मा). When translated in English Brahman is translated as Universal Consciousness and Atman is translated as consciousness. According to Advait Vedanta, Brahman and Atman are not two (Advait) but one and same. They differ in quantity only; while Brahman is infinite, Atman is finite. When Lord Krishna says in Bhagvad Geeta to Arjun, “Atman is eternal and indestructible……” it is a big hint to modern scientists that “consciousness is a form of energy, which is fuelling (giving life, prana) every living being.

PROGRESS OF RESEARCH ON CONSCIOUSNESS

It is really a matter of concern and amazing that after three decades of research (and about 100 research papers being published every year), there is still no universally accepted definition of consciousness. Scientists offer an unscientific sort of description of consciousness instead of defining it. There is a general agreement that “Consciousness is a quality or a state of being aware of an external object (surrounding) and something within oneself (mental phenomena) such as thoughts, feeling, emotion, sensation and subjective experience.”

It is not because of proper understanding of consciousness but because of properly and scientific designing of experiments, that consciousness research has proven to be actual and functioning discipline and reproducible and meaningful results are being obtained. Despite such results, research on consciousness is still at surface level only. Some of the objectives of current consciousness research are as follows:

          1) To understand inner working of brain to find a possible treatment

of mental illness and psychological disorder,

          2) To develop the model of mind in respect to mind-body problems, and

          3) To understand origin of consciousness.

PROBLEMS IN CONSCIOUSNESS RESEARCH

Before discussing the problems in consciousness research, it is required to discuss briefly what research is being conducted and how. There are mainly two types of researches being conducted; (i) finding the NCC, neural correlates of consciousness and (ii) measuring the level of conscious-ness i.e. to what level a person is conscious. The framework for research on NCC was devised by Krick and Koch, the founders of consciousness research. Neural correlate of consciousness is defined by Krick as the minimal neuronal activity jointly sufficient for any specific conscious experience. In plain language, NCC is physical footprints of conscious experience. NCC can be elucidated with some more detail like this; Any subjective experience such as tasting a dish, listening to a piece of music or fantasizing, gives rise to a physical activity (in terms of electro – chemical changes) in brain, called neural activity. Consciousness comes into picture only because a person can have subjective experience when he is conscious, i.e. conscious-ness is must for subjective experience to take place. The subjective experience takes place in mind, but corresponding (co-related) neural activity takes place in the brain. Theoretically, there is one-to-one relationship between a subjective experience and neural activities which can be measured by brain imaging tools. In a single neuron, the neural activity can be thought of as a pattern of changing electrical and chemical parameters in amplitude and time. In fact, a single subjective experience activates a group of large number of neurons, so a neural correlate is integration of electro-chemical changes of all neurons in the group. Since there are activation thresholds and phase shift involved, the entire mathematical job of integration is extremely tedious and demands very complex computer computation which itself is very challenging. The estimate of neural activities calculated in this way necessarily and regularly correlates with specific subjective experience. In this approach of research there are many problems and challenges:

(i)       It is not evident from this procedure, where the consciousness, the physical entity, is involved. If a person is listening to high pitch-sound, the auditary signal produced in kochlea is of high frequency and so the time variation in neural correlate will be fast which is a physical phenomenon and nothing to do with consciousness. If a person is unconscious, there will be no subjective experience and hence no neural correlate. That means the consciousness functions like a switch or a gate and what we are getting is a neural correlate of subjective experience and not of consciousness. To study the effect of consciousness, it will be necessary to vary the amplitude of consciousness and study the effect of variation on neural correlates. But a person is either completely conscious (fully awake) or completely unconscious (deep sleep). This will require to vary the consciousness level from outside to perform an experiment. Alas ! the nature has not provided any knob on head to vary the level of consciousness.

(ii)     In order to establish a relationship between subjective experience and neural correlate, it is necessary to know subjective experience accurately which is a challenging task. How truly the subject is reporting the experience cannot be ascertained. Thus, the approach for finding NCC is not truly empirical and hence not fully scientific in nature in the sense that the conclusions cannot be drawn with same accuracy as in the case of research in the field of pure sciences.

Another empirical research on consciousness was initiated by G. Tononi. He pioneered a technique, called Zap – Zip, to probe whether a person is conscious or not. In this experiment a sheathed coil is placed in contact with scalp and a pulse of magnetic field is sent into brain by passing a pulse of high current in the coil, a process which they called Zapping. The response of neurons in the brain was recorded by an array of EEG sensors. The pulse of magnetic field perturbs the normal value of tiny currents of neurons and EEG records a perturbed response from neurons. Analysis of output from EEG revealed a mess of damping oscillations from a bulk of neuron. There was no regular or completely random pattern to draw any conclusion. The data of EEG was compressed using an algorithm generally used to zip a file in computer or mobile. The compression of EEG data yielded an estimate of complexity in the mess of oscillations, which is called “Perturbational Complexity Index”. The index provides a very crude approximation of consciousness but reasonable enough to confirm the behavioural evidence of consciousness.

Since brain is highly interconnected and extremely complex structure, the data obtained from any experiment is expected to be complex. G. Tononi made use of this complexity to develop integrated information theory (IIT) to quantify consciousness. Tononi postulate that consciousness has intrinsic causal power associated with complex mechanism such as brain. As an example, he quotes “in cerebellum, the mechanism lacks integration and complexity, so it is not conscious”. IIT theory derives a parameter which quantifies consciousness, from complexity of underlying interconnected structure of brain. The IIT theory is yet to be verified experimentally.

In addition to IIT theory, the ‘Talk of the Town’ in scientific community engaged in consciousness research is “Hard problem of consciousness” formulated by David Chalmers, a mathematician turned philosopher. On the issue of understanding consciousness, he formulated the “Hard problem on consciousness” in contrast to the “Easy problem of consciousness”. The easy problem is to explain how mind has ability to discriminate, integrate information, reports mental state, and performs different functions. The requirement is to specify a mechanism that can perform a function of mind. Although most of the easy problems are yet to be solved but there are less challenges. The hard problem of consciousness is related with the experience or Qualia – a term used by philosophers for subjective experience. The hard problem of consciousness is about explaining why and how we have subjective experience while interacting with the environment. Why people have phobia, and why phobia are so powerful. We know very well that some events are innocuous, still we do not dare to face them. Subjective experiences have power, they feel like something pushing us back. According to Chalmers, Hard problem will persist even when all easy problems are solved, and it may take another 100 years to solve the hard problem of consciousness. I strongly disagree with him. In fact, the philosophers are there to pose the problems. It is a scientist who solves the problem. In my view philosophers are like politicians who create problem and linger on it to take benefit from it. If all problems in nature are solved what will philosophers do, so they create and pose problems for survival.

Biggest problem in consciousness research stems from ambiguous nature of consciousness. As I pointed out earlier, we must confirm whether we are studying Consciousness – a hypothesized physical entity or Conscious-ness – an abstract noun derived from adjective, ‘Conscious’. This point is supported by writings of Dr. Krick, in which he describs consciousness as ‘conscious awareness of subjective experience’. This description of consciousness does not appear to suggest that consciousness is a physical entity. At another place Dr. Krick mentions that there are specific neurons in brain which are responsible for consciousness and he refers to it as awareness neurons. This notion of consciousness itself limits the functional significance of consciousness because it would imply that the role of consciousness to generate awareness and subjective experience.

Neuroscientists and philosophers both accept the problems and challenges in consciousness research and express their helplessness in resolving them. As Anil Seth, Prof. of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, rightly says, “It looks like scientists and philosophers might have made consciousness far more mysterious than it needs to be”. In my view, when there is too much research on a topic than reasonable, with no output it becomes mysterious. He adds further that instead of finding neural correlates of consciousness, one must try to find explanatory correlate which actually accounts for subjective experience. According to Morton Overgaard, “One major obstacle for consciousness research is lacking consensus of how to optimally measure consciousness empirically” and to identify neural correlate of consciousness which is not possible unless we can measure consciousness. A scientific tradition and procedure demand that it is necessary to define a parameter before measuring it. Thus, it is yet to be established that consciousness is a physical entity. It is a big paradox that extensive research is being done for last three decades on an entity which is not yet identified as a physical identity.

We should also not overlook the views on consciousness expressed by Max Planck, father of Quantum Physics. He was such a big brain that present scientific development owes to him. He quotes, “I regard consciousness as fundamental; I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind the consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness”. Not only Planck, many renowned scientists and philosophers also treat consciousness as fundamental. The idea of Panpsychism is nearly same as idea of Max Planck on consciousness. Greatest philosophers of all time like Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, William James, and Bertrand Russell have advocated the idea of Panpsychism. It is a matter of great surprise that present research on consciousness is based on the idea that consciousness has emerged from matter (neurons) – an idea opposite to idea of greatest minds of all times.

When I personally look at the whole scenario of consciousness research, I am reminded of an analogy which I heard in very young age of about 14. I used to accompany my father to Satsang for discourse by Sant Kirpal Singh (Maharaj Ji), a saint from Radha Soami Lineage. In one of the discourses, Maharaj Ji described how people are searching for God and to explain that He used to tell a story according to which five dwarf and blind persons are asked to investigate the shape of an elephant; one person has approach for the trunk, second person has approach for huge ears, third person can access the middle portion of body, fourth person can only investigate the tail and fifth one can touch the foot. After the search is over, they are asked to describe the shape of elephant. Each person could describe their part only, nobody could describe the shape of elephant as a whole. Likewise, the mind is equivalent to an elephant and to completely understand the mind, all aspects of mind are required to be studied because study of different aspects may may reveal different aspects of consciousness. These aspects in short are mental events, mental function, mental properties, consciousness, and relationship of mind with body. In the layman’s language, mind has to be studied to understand human behaviour, mood swings, emotions, motivation, and cognitive activities – thought forming, root cause of stress, depression, anxiety, mental disorders, mental illness, origin of conscious awareness, problem solving capability and everything that human being is capable of doing. This also includes various mental states of meditation such as bare concentration, state of pure consciousness (zero thought), state of Samadhi (zero-breathing) and Kundalini activation and propagation (non-diaphragmic breathing). The research on consciousness to study Qualia or subjective experience is only equivalent to investigating the tail of elephant only.

It is my intuition, that a solution to mind – body problem to explain the above-mentioned functions and properties of mind might be possible through Advait Vedanta. The intuition is not out of a prejudice, but it is based on my study of Advait Vedanta. I have not only studied Advait Vedanta extensively but I have found from my experiences on meditation of more than 20 years that concept of consciousness and description of mind is true experientially. There is a need to advance the ancient work on consciousness by Indian Rishis with help of modern scientific developments.

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Note : Please keep on visiting this site for receiving gifts of knowledge. If you are interested in science of spirituality, the forthcoming posts in the blog will be of interest to you.

(1) Consciousness and Advait Vedanta

(2) Understanding Spirituality Scientifically

(3) Yog, Yoga and meditation – in light of Advait Vedanta

(4) Gyan Dhyaan Duality

(5) Journey of an Atheist to spiritual world

(6) An introduction to Adhyaatmic Psychology

(7) My experiences with Adhyaatmic Meditation

(8) Advait Vedanta and Adhyaatmic Psychology

(9) Negative feedback and stability of Universe

(10) Spiritual Vocabulary

(11) Consciousness and Mind-Body problem

 

Hello

I am Ved Prakash Gupta, a retired scientist and now I am developing the science of meditation.

My Beginnings

I started my career in 1977 as a scientist in the reputed Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, India. I studied Particle Physics and Quantum Electrodynamics in my post-graduation. During the studies I was very much fascinated by the wave-particle duality and I used to contemplate for hours on it. I realised that the Physics only explains the behavior of matter, it does not explain the nature of matter and how it evolved. I wished to pursue research in this direction but in a Government owned organisation you cannot choose the field of your interest as funds are provided for the sanctioned projects only.

Consequently I became associated with a project named Indus-I which is Particle Accelerator developed to work as Synchrotron Radiation Source. I was heading a team responsible for developing very high power pulsed supplies for powering the electromagnets for injecting and extracting the electron beam at various input and output ports. I had to veer off from Physics to Electronics, but since Electronics is my second love after Physics, it was not difficult for me to carry out this work.

The work was challenging and I was enjoying it thoroughly and I was successfully heading towards completion of project. Unfortunately, I became victim of lobbying, internal tussle and ego of higher authorities. I had to work under extreme stressful conditions which continued for more than a year and because this I was in the grip of extreme depression. I had to undergo psychiatric treatment and simultaneously I was learning relaxation techniques from a mentor, the clinical psychologist because my breathing had become fatally irregular.

I started to practice relaxation techniques very regularly for 2 years but still I was not able to relax because I could not focus my attention as guided by my mentor. The discursive thoughts continued distracting my mind and my breathing problem escalated further. I discussed the problem with my mentor many times but it was of no use. I was observing  the whole situation as a scientist and I was reading books and literature in search of a solution to this problem.

The Journey

One day, I came across a book on positive thinking by Norman Vincent Peale in which the author had explained that the mind wandering occurs because mind searches the solutions  to problems you face in your environment and if an appropriate solution is provided to mind by auto-suggestion, it stops wandering. When I incorporated this idea of auto-suggestion with relaxation techniques, it really worked. Within a month, I was feeling remarkable improvement in me. I stopped psychiatric medicines and my depression had cured to a large extent and I was feeling energetic as before.

I had realised by now the effectiveness and novelty of this ‘Modified Relaxation Techniques’( MRT ) and its potential in the treatment of psychological disorders. I decide to veer off again from technology to Psychology. As I devoted more time to the MRT my thoughts stopped for some time and I was having weird but delightful experiences and after each session there was a joyful feeling of sedation. This feeling used to last for few hours and then tapered off. But I wished to have more of it. In order to maintain this feeling I used to go for many sessions a day. It was a sort addiction. This feeling was really intriguing. One day I happened to read a book on meditation by Christina Feldman and after reading the book I found that the techniques of meditation and its after- effects resembled with MRT. I realised that what I was practicing was a sort of meditation and the weird experiences were the mystic experiences normally associated with meditation.

Knocking at the Spiritual Door!

Unknowingly I was in the spiritual world! The meditation changed my life entirely. I had learnt to fight the stress so I was remaining more relaxed, my health started improving in magical way and I was getting rid of very old health issues like migraine, acute asthma and very frequent throat infection and fever. I could now work much more than before and without any fatigue. The most significant transformation which was taking place within me is described as follows: During the college days I had become an atheist under the influence of excessive scientism. During meditation I  was  experiencing strongly and beyond doubt the existence of an entity which was controlling my mind and body which I could not explain from my knowledge of Physics. I had found an explanatory gap is Physics. My belief in spirituality had opened a path which could lead me to explore this explanatory gap. I had found the purpose of my life!

This idea inspired me to study all those subjects  which could help me in this exploration. For last 22 years I have been studying thoroughly  Psychology, Neuroscience, Spirituality, Advait Vedanta, Philosophy and views of great thinkers on God like Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Spinoza, Eugene Wigner etc. I am developing a new scientific form of  meditation based on reasoning, neuroscience, and Advait Vedanta and technology. I am also developing the technology required for this meditation. Along with this I am  working on a Brain – Mind model based on Psychology, Neuroscience and Advait Vedanta with an intention to explain higher functions of mind such as: motivation and emotion related functions, cognitive functions, and transcendental functions. The purpose of starting this blog is not only to share my spiritual experiences and what I have learnt so far but also to:

  • Communicate with other researchers with a possibility of collaboration
  • Communicate with other aspirant spirituals who have actually experienced ‘Samadhi’ and ‘Kundalini Awakening’
  • Present the concepts of spirituality in a way which is simple, scientific and easy to understand.

Though the Spirituality is a vast and multi-disciplinary field but one can always acquire a LITTLE Spirituality to improve the quality of life to a very LARGE extent. [/su_expand]