Editor’s note: This is the first of the two-part series on mathematical, quantum mechanical and consciousness-based analysis
One of the strong pillars holding the edifice of Indian philosophy is its declaration of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’,
which means “the world is one family”. This focal point of Indian philosophy originates from not much well known Mahopanishad (found in Samaveda, one of the four Vedas) through the following verse:
अयं बन्धुरयं नेति गणना लघुचेतसाम् । /
उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् ॥
(Mahopanishad, 6.71)
ayaṃ bandhurayaṃ neti gaṇanā laghucetasām l / udāracaritānāṃ tu vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam ॥
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam teaches that we are all connected, regardless of our nationality, race, religion, or ethnicity
and share the same planet, and we have a responsibility to care for it and for each other. In other words, its message
is that there is only one ultimate reality and that we are all connected to it. The wisdom of the Mahopanishad and
its profound concept of ‘the world is one family’ transcends time and space. In a rapidly shrinking world, where technology connects people across continents, the idea of the world as a family will have even more significance. It will lead us to find peace and happiness in our lives helping us to connect with the divine. The Bhagavad Gita classifies material world as follows:
Bhumirapoanalovayuhkham / mano buddhireva cha / ahankara itiyam me bhinna prakritirashtadha
which means the earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect, and ego are eight components of my material energy.
Image Courtesy: Wallpapers.com
PANCASIDHANTHIKA AND MODERN SCIENCE
Matter is considered as part of God’s energy called prakriti. This energy is further divided into eight forms, as listed in the verse above, as the Panchamahabhutas plus three other components related to individual mind. It is amazing how insightful the knowledge was in these ancient scriptures in comparison to the developing trends in modern science. For example, Albert Einstein was the first to propound the concept of Mass-Energy Equivalence in 1905. In his special theory of relativity, Einstein showed that it was possible to convert mass into energy and vice versa, described by the famous mass-energy equivalence equation, E=mc2.
While explaining photo electric effect, Einstein also showed that light can be described as a stream of particles
called photons. Thus, light has dual nature of particles and waves. During the decade of 1920s, physicists like Louis de Broglie, Niels Bohr, Max Born, Dirac and other scientists developed quantum mechanics, which attribute dual particle-wave nature for matter also. Ever since the discovery of the dual nature of both light and matter, scientists
have been on the lookout for a single field or Unified Field Theory (UFT). UFT could expound on the relationship
between matter and all forces of the universe leading to a grand unified field theory or GUTS. The crux of the UFT
is the creation and annihilation of matter. Matter can be created from photon field (electromagnetic field) and can be annihilated back into the photon field.
It is surprising that more than 5,000 years ago, long before the development of modern science, Lord Krishna disclosed a theory of universe which is perfectly in tune with the Unified Field Theory. According to the Bhagavad
Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘All that exists in the universe has manifested from My material energy. Just one material energy has extended itself into myriad shapes, forms, and entities of this world which ultimately will return
to Me.’ The Taittiriya Upanishad (2.1.2) has elaborated on this:
“From My material energy the akash (aether) was created, from aether the air; from air, fire; from fire, water; from water, earth; from earth, plants; from plants, food and from food, man. Thus, man is made of food-essence.”
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra provides us with special knowledge to unlock the secret of nature. The most fundamental
dimension of Yoga is to master this element of magic. The Bhagavad Gita states: ‘The three states of material
existence—tejas, rajas, and tamas—are manifestation of My energy.’
Even though the entire creation originates from God, He is beyond His creation and independent of it by creating the elemental magic of Panchamahabhuthas from where the diversifications originate. Essentially, when people want to be physically robust, then earth would be important, but for one who is on the spiritual path, the most important factor is akasha. The human form consists of 72 percent of water, 12 percent of earth, 6 percent of air, 4 percent of fire, and the rest is akasha.
The Panchamahabhuta of akasha is interpreted by many physicists, including Prof ECG Sudarshan (1931-2018), as composed of aether to which Sudarshan attributes super fluid properties. Most important property of superfluid is its absence of resistance to any moving object. As aether is super fluid, it will enter into any nook and corner without experiencing any resistance. This means that akasha as the manifestation of superfluid will fill our body after entering through nine openings or navadwaras. Our body is therefore directly exposed to the whole cosmos.
AKASHA WITH SUPERFLUID AETHER
Even though aether with its superfluid nature will not be experienced by our body, any localised disturbances in aether will be experienced at infinite extension of akasha, which makes the whole universe as one single unit of family like Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
Now we will discuss the topic of universal consciousness which is a state of awareness in which the individual Yogi’s consciousness becomes one with the universe, or Brahman, the Ultimate Reality. It is the goal of Yoga and of the eightfold path of Yoga that Patanjali describes in the Yoga Sutra as yamas (correct behaviour), niyamas (ethical principles), asanas (physical practice), and pranayama (breathing exercises) all of which prepare the Yoga to explore deeper consciousness. The last four limbs take the Yogi ever deeper: pratyahara (turning the senses inward), dharana (focused attention–beginning meditation), dhyana (deeper meditation) and samadhi (union with the divine or universe). In some traditions, samadhi is the state of universal consciousness, while in others, it is the final stepping stone.
UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Universal consciousness is sometimes called the universal mind, especially in non-Yoga contexts. It is widely accepted that consciousness, or more generally, mental activity, is in some way correlated to the behaviour of the material brain. Since quantum theory is the most fundamental theory of matter that is currently available, it is a legitimate question to ask whether quantum theory can help us to understand consciousness through three basic approaches: (1) Consciousness is a manifestation of quantum processes in the brain, (2) Quantum concepts are used to understand conscious mental activity without referring to brain activity, and (3) Matter and consciousness are regarded as dual aspects of one underlying reality. As regards to quantum physics, there can be no reasonable doubt that quantum events occur and are efficacious in the brain as elsewhere in the material world—including biological systems.
Recently, Chalmers and McQueen developed the idea by combining a mathematical theory of consciousness (integrated information theory) with an account of quantum collapse dynamics (continuous spontaneous localisation). It is widely accepted that quantum-mechanical systems are describable by a wave function. The wave function need not assign definite position, momentum, and other definite properties to physical entities. Instead, it may assign a superposition of multiple values for position, momentum, and other properties. When one measures these properties, however, one always obtains a definite result. First, there is a process of evolution according to the Schrodinger equation, which is linear, deterministic, and constantly ongoing. Second, there is a process of collapse into a definite state, which is nonlinear, nondeterministic, and happens only on certain occasions of measurement. Another of the hardest philosophical problems arising from contemporary science is the mind-body problem. What is the relation between mind and body, or more specifically, between consciousness and physical processes. A mental state is conscious when there is something, it is like to be in that state. One central aspect of the problem is the consciousness-causation problem: How does consciousness play a causal role in the physical world?
There is a long tradition of trying to solve the consciousness-causation problem and the quantum measurement problem at the same time, by saying that measurement is an act of consciousness, and that consciousness plays the role of bringing about wave function collapse. The most well-known of these theories is Tononi’s integrated information theory (Tononi, 2008), which specifies a mathematical structure for conscious states and quantifies them with a mathematical measure of integrated information. One common reason (Chalmers, 2003) is that physical theories explain only structure and dynamics while explaining consciousness requires more than structure and dynamics. These reasons have led many theorists to adopt consciousness as a fundamental property like spacetime, mass, and charge. Theory of consciousness gives fundamental psychophysical laws that connect physical properties to consciousness. Putting these theories together might yield a mathematically precise version of property that specifies the conditions under which consciousness arises and the role that it plays. Consciousness causes physical effects, and hence consciousness is physical.
Works of scientists such as, from left, ECG Sudarshan, Roger Penrose and Massimo Tononi, have contributed to our understanding of the physical aspects of consciousness
Independently of consciousness, so that nonconscious systems such as ordinary measuring devices can collapse the wave function. Going beyond this framework, a number of alternative interpretations have been developed that give no role to the notion of measurement. These include spontaneous-collapse interpretations (e.g. Pearle (1976); Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber (1986)) which retain a collapse process but dispense with the need for measurement as a trigger, and hidden variable interpretations (Bohm 1952) and many-worlds interpretations (Everett 1957), which eliminate collapse entirely. One is not forced to accept a role for consciousness in quantum mechanics. We focus especially on what we call super-resistance models, according to which there are special properties that resist superposition and trigger collapse. When these models are combined with the consciousness-collapse thesis, we obtain models in which consciousness or its physical correlates resist superposition and trigger collapse.
On a standard understanding, many different observable quantities (e.g. position, momentum, mass, and spin) can be measured and thereby serve as the locus of collapse. Every observable is associated with an operator. Upon measurement, the wave function collapses probabilistically into an eigenstate of that operator, (such as a specific position for the particle). Consciousness represents certain objects and properties in its environment. When consciousness represents observable properties of an observed object, the object collapses into a definite state of those observables.
The idea is that there are special superposition-resistant observables, which as a matter of fundamental law resist superposition and cause the system to collapse onto eigenstates of these observables. The corresponding class of models are super-resistance models of quantum mechanics. There are super resistance models of collapse that give no special role to consciousness or measurement. On well-known super-resistance model is Penrose’s model (Penrose 2014) of quantum mechanics on which spacetime structure is superposition-resistant. When the structure of spacetime evolves into superpositions over a certain threshold, these superpositions collapse onto a definite structure. Super-resistance models work well with measurement-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the context of these interpretations, we can think of a super-resistant property not as a measured property (e.g. particle). On this position, human-like behaviour can be produced computationally, and indeed enacting the right computation will give rise to consciousness, but neither a computational account nor a physical account alone will explain consciousness. It might seem odd that computation should evoke but not explain consciousness, but this is nothing odder than the corresponding position that neurophysiology might evoke but not explain consciousness. In either case, consciousness emerges from some underlying basis, but we need a further element in the theory to explain just how and why it emerges.
*The author is Visiting Scientist, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi. He can be reached at nampoori@gmail.com.
