Book Title: Elusive Consciousness
Author(s): Narendra Bhandari, Surendrasingh Pokharana, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Page 112
________________ 11. All living organisms have similar potential powers and abilities but every living organism is in a different state of manifestation. The development of the soul is determined by his purifying efforts and other karma related factors. 12 There is no place in loka where soul is not present either in subtle or gross form. 2 Soul: The Subject and the Object In the absolute sense the soul can only be conscious of itself, because it alone exists as that state of pure singularity. When we say it is conscious of itself', we separate the intellectual level into two aspects: (1) the aspect that it is observer and (2) the aspect that it is observed (although they are one and the same). Intellectual examination, in fact, reveals the existence within consciousness of three values, inherent in any process of conscious experience or any process of observation: (1) the observer, (2) the observed, and (3) the process of linking the observer and the observed. Even though there is nothing but one consciousness, this principle of three emerges. Consciousness being awake to itself experiences itself, and is at once the knower, the process of knowing, and the knownobserver, process of observation, and observed; or subject, object, and the process of linking them. In this state of absolute consciousness, these three values are one and the same, yet they represent these aspects of the same singularity. It is obvious that every relative experience requires a subject coming together with an object. This coming together takes place both on the level of attention as well as on the sensory level of perception. When the subject comes together with the object through the process of observation, then the experience occurs- the subject knows the object. Knowledge therefore, is the result of the coming together of the observer, the process of observation, and the observed. As one consciousness leads to three aspects, the interaction between the three and the resultant aspects, relationships, and their interaction, etc. leads to an infinite number of ever-expanding possibilities. All these possibilities, all these forces of interaction and relation, exist in the soul. The interaction of forces, even though within the soul, creates a dissymmetry, as if a distortion, in the flat and homogeneous- yet infinitely flexible- absolute singularity of soul. The virtual pull and push, rise and fall, vibration and silence, dynamism and silence, leads to the formation of virtual 112

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