Elusive Consciousness

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

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Consciousness is the word or verbal label used for referring to the idea or concept of presence of energy as an entity of the universe, representing life, from which the material universe came into existence, with all the diversifications. The issues that are considered are the universality of the energy and the association between life and matter, when it can propel the mater as a living entity. Ideas are proposed to convey that universe came from nothing, or from a vacuum, though it has limitations as shown to be present in quantum vacuum. What is truly important in this endeavor is an attempt to propose and prove that life is a separate and independent entity and it cannot be considered an outcome of chemical or physical changes that occurred in the matter. Philosophically, consciousness was considered an independent entity and all forms of energy emanated from this, as mentioned about Parabrahma. People matched this energy with soul of the individual, and an individual ceases to live when consciousness leaves the body. Thus consciousness was considered as everlasting force, which could survive even after the destruction and decay of the body. The related ideas supported the top down philosophical view that we have always entertained about the presence of a super power creating the universe and managing the business of running the world. The game changes altogether when the same word "consciousness" as used in philosophy, is used to refer to a state of wakefulness in all living beings, especially animals and human beings, which needs to be studied from a scientific perspective.
The most difficult aspects of perception and knowing of the universe were related to the differences in perception and knowing, even though knowledge was always elicited from the perceptual notions received. Knowledge was only information, obtained through sensory-motor experiences and their semantic interpretations, and knowledge always helped control and executions in further sensory-motor processing. Knowledge provided information drawn from sensorymotor signals regarding relationships of the components of the universe. The relationship are to be always measured in the dimensions of space and time. Even though all space and time measured have been always related and limited to the difference between two or more points in space and time, we developed an illusionary notion of infiniteness of space and time and that matter exist in space and time. These illusionary notions of space and time, in turn, influenced all our thinking strategies, and we accepted infiniteness of space and time as an absolute condition of the universe. All human senses indeed have limited capacities to look into space an ad time, which are in fact, inferior to that of many animals on the earth. All philosophical thoughts about the origin and the existence of the universe have been intensely influenced by consideration of these illusionary notions.