The self, or the Atman, is extensively spoken about in Indian culture. Our civilization is uniquely centered around Atma jnana, or Knowledge of the Self, which is at the core of the four Purusharthas: Artha, Kama, Dharma, and Moksha.
While Dharma and Moksha are directly related to atma jnana, even Artha and Kama are to be perceived within the boundaries defined by Dharma such that we don't stray from the path of Atma jnana.
And yet, this rich legacy is more or less lost on us even though we are its blessed inheritors. The knowledge repository of our shastras is today reduced to museum artifacts with no legislative authority. No wonder, despite the pivotal importance, it is not part of our national discourse. Neither our constitution nor our academic curricula have anything to say about the Self. The former simply endorses the beliefs of the European Enlightenment focused on the betterment of the human condition. But what about the betterment of the soul which transmigrates from one life to another? How can we claim to build a knowledge-driven society when the knowledge we pursue is flawed and inadequate?
Deeply disturbed by this biting irony, as also the contagious spread of its consequences, Advaita scholar and revered thought leader Chittaranjan Naik has set about a selfless endeavor of working towards reinstating the lost glory of our Vedic knowledge, knowledge that goes beyond the confines of religion, caste, creed, and nationalities, knowledge founded on holistic inclusivity and devoid of insular agendas, unlike the saffron jingoism and clarion calls running riot in the name of rediscovering India.
This endeavour has manifested itself in the form of two books: On the Existence of the Self And the Dismantling of the Physical Causal Closure Argument and the one preceding it, Natural Realism and Contact Theory of Perception : Indian Philosophy’s Challenge to Contemporary Paradigms of Knowledge
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Naik sir’s conviction that the Indian shastras speak of eternal truths has evolved over a span of four decades of deep study, ever since he was introduced to Vedanta. He was always intrigued by the fact that Western philosophy and science should trace the origins of consciousness in the neural firings of the brain. He was sad to see how even some of our Vedantins are trying to forcefit a non-existent similarity between Western and Indian thought which are in actuality at loggerheads.
Vedanta talks of consciousness as the only reality, whereas neuroscience calls the brain the only reality. In Vedic philosophy, the Atman is distinct from the manas. It is a nirvikar, nirguna, nirakara, and nirvishesh entity, even distinct from the panchkoshas: annamaya kosha, pranamaya kosha, manomaya kosha, vijnanamaya kosha, and anandamaya koshas that cover it.
Absolutely pure and devoid of attributes, Atman is the cognizer, or the seer, while the mind and matter are the cognized or the perceived. Vedanta’s 'brahma satya jagan mithya' dictum is explained in terms of bimba-pratibimba. Brahma is the bimba, and the whole world is the pratibimba, akin to the reflections seen in the mirror.
Neuroscience has inverted the bimba-pratibimba, where the bimba is the brain process and consciousness is epiphenomena without any reality to it, which implies it has no causal power and efficacy. All causal powers are assumed to come from brain processes which underlie consciousness. So, Western philosophy is focused on the neural functions of the human brain towards putting human cognition in perspective.
Initially, Christianity also believed in reincarnation, inspired by ancient Greek philosophy which spoke of the soul as being incorporeal and put forth the theory of reincarnation. Here, Naik sir asutely points out the key differences in Western and Eastern beliefs about the soul, primarily the conflation of mind and soul in early Western thought.
The Cartesian dualism of soul and matter as two entities was on the face of it like the Sankhya dualism of purusha and prakriti but it had a fundamental problem even before its dismissal by the army of empiricists like David Hume and Immanuel Kant who made it an anathema and likened it to occult sciences. Cartesian dualism treated soul and mind as one entity and gross matter as another. Sans the notion of panch kosha, all matter was gross matter. All thought that arises internally in humans was defined as consciousness. Soul was the thinking machine, and matter an extension of the soul.
So, Western philosophy concluded that the physical world is a closed system and capable of explaining all phenomena. This is called the physical causal closure argument, which underlies all scholarly and scientific advancement, including artificial intelligence.
When consciousness is explained through a stimulus-response process, all signals are believed to arise from the world onto our retina and eardrums, which are transmitted through neural signals to the brain, which in turn generates an image that is the representation of the external object. This implies that all we perceive is a representation made by the brain, which means none of us have seen the real world. In that case, we are living in some virtual reality which is the handiwork of the brain.
This hypothesis creates a logical problem. Our bodies themselves must be part of the same representation, so also the brain itself, which we claim to know in great detail. The brain is supposed to be the one transforming but is presented as the one being transformed in the ultimate analysis, which is why it becomes a reductio ad absurdum argument, there is no way you can surmount this logical absurdity in the stimulus-response theory of perception.
The only way to remove the absurdity is to accept that the Self has the power of light which helps us perceive things. In Indian shastras, it is called arthapatti, which alone gives us a coherent explanation of perception. Yet it is a weak proof, not because it is weak per se, but because we are so religiously wedded to the concept of bodily knowledge and physical causality that the proof doesn't create the desired impact on our minds.
The author has hence given the proof of kriya shakti, which is closer home for us in terms of comprehension. It forms the main part of his book. According to the second law of thermodynamics, everything in this world undergoes decay: buildings collapse, cars rust, stereos break down, humans grow old and die. The law postulates that disorder always increases; if at all order can be restored, the probability is very low, like once in a billion years.
Is the probability really low? questions the author and point out that some order is created from disorder all around us, but we are so fixated on the disorder theory that we don't have eyes to see the contrary.
Cars rust, stereos break down, and buildings collapse, but do we not see them getting made? Do we not see sand being used to create microchips and computers? Wherever there is life, we see order getting created from disorder. But we don't see it thanks to the dogma of the causal closure argument: presuming the body as entirely about material processes, it is made to follow the second law of thermodynamics.
The author thus gives a new definition of order. When we make an assembly of parts to make a clock or stereo, disorder goes up, but some order is indeed created. What is it?
Order is created from the rearrangement following the random spatial dispersions of matter. The probability of this happening can be calculated in two ways: one under natural causes and two with human beings entering the fray. If the latter probability is significantly and consistently higher, then we can infer that there is something happening over and above natural occurrences following natural laws. This is the verifiability criteria.
The author provides a formal framework: assuming 1,000 locations and 1,000 directional orientations for 100 parts of a product to be manufactured , the probability works out to 10 to the power of minus 105. But when human beings bring in intentionality, the probability tends to one. As bias is introduced which leads to the intended assembly, the periodicity of this probability is not once in a billion years but on a regular basis.
When human beings enter the picture, there is a collapse of the probability function. As irrespective of the curve, probability tends to one. Why?
All living beings have goal orientation, which is intentionality or iccha shakti as our shastras define it. The action emanating from iccha shakti can't be purely physical. We can say the iccha shakti manifests into the object through jnana and kriya shaktis which makes it develop the needful bias towards frutiton; the alert guides the inert in an elusive unfathomable process.
Thought leaders like Naik sir are a rare species; they don’t stake claims to any path-breaking knoweledge, they simply abstract the living principle from the obvious. This abstraction is called Viveka in our shastras, which helps us distinguish between the Self and non-self. And more importantly, Naik sir is open to healthy debates, not combative arguments with vested interests who have taken military positions even before probing the subject matter.
I asked him a couple of questions that came to mind on an impulse, which he answered with inimitable poise and purpose:
When a product is not made i.e. order is not created even with human intervention - what has gone wrong? Can iccha shakti fail or lie dormant - does prarabdha have a role to play? “If the intent is there and the product is still not made, then yes it can be attributed either to iccha shakti becoming dormant (getting overtaken by sleep or sloth) or to the muddying of jnana or the deflection of kriya (the improper functioning of the karmendriyas) due to prarabdha. Prarabdha certainly has a role to play in it. The Nyaya texts mention it using the word adrshta.”How is viveka produced or is it always inherent in Atman? Does ichcha or jnana have a role to play in creating or unlocking it? “I would say that it is the inherent knowledge in the Atman that filters through the intellect as viveka and that it is the impurities in the mind that obstruct its manifestation. Those impurities have the potential to affect both iccha and jnana in the sense that they can carry away one's desires in the wrong direction or cloud one's viveka to take one's knowledge in the wrong direction.”Hope Naik sir soon takes to writing piercing thought pieces in the mainstream media on burning issues like:
- The need to reinstate the knowledge of the Self into the mainstream national discourse.
- Rubbishing the Richard Dawkins' “jumbo jet from junkyard” absurdity as also the laughable dogma "we don’t know but one day science will prove". The world has zero tolerance for the real shraddha and saburi of a devotee but is keen to accommodate the unreal belief that science will always answer all questions when it clearly cannot. It is amusing how they embrace entropy to show that disorder is imminent and how they conveniently ignore the atrophy to prove that order gets created from purely natural causes and with no human intervention.
- Exposing the flawed foundations guiding modern research and innovation that consciousness is an epiphenomenon with no causal power and efficacy, as also the hope and possibility of course-correcting deep learning experiments by weeding out the reductio ad absurdum argument presenting the human brain as both: the one transforming and the one being transformed.