Sambodhi 2013 Vol 36

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 33

Vol. XXXVI, 2013
Consciousness : A Critical Observation
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form of material energy. Consciousness of the observing scientist most probably affects the quantum particles, but in another way. Consciousness or Thought (which is one form of manifestation of consciousness) itself is non-physical or non-material, but it works through brain. Its own field interacts with the electro-magnetic field of the brain waves at a very subtle level, perhaps, at the level of photons. It is those brain's waves whose voltage can be measured and field can be determined that affect the quantum particles. 18
Therefore Matter and Consciousness interact and influence each other; but they are not convertible into each other.
(iii) David Bohm has used the concept of 'Holon' in his theory of matter where
he called it 'An implicate order? The scientists have felt that the inclusion of consciousness as a factor in determining external reality, as Geoffrey Chew has suggested, is an indispensable necessity. Famous scientist Fritjof Capra has asserted that Consciousness is an essential feature of David Bohm's Holon Theory, according to which the movement of one single particle is connected with the movement of the entire universe.19
B. K. Jagdish puts his statement : If all these assertions mean that it is necessary to understand that beside Matter, Consciousness also exists as a primary reality and in order to understand the universe, it is essential to understand Consciousness also, then that also is alright. But, if by making the above statements, one means to say that consciousness and Matter are inter-convertible or that souls and matter are one and the same entity, one changeable into the other, even as the Monists say, then their these assertions are without any foundations. They are mere
assumption, unsupported by logic or science.20 (iv) Erwin Schroedinger has also given the argument or statement on the
concept of consciousness. He contends: “Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular... How does the idea of plurality so emphatically opposed by the Upanishadic writers arise at all ?... Consciousness finds itself intimately connected with and dependent on the physical state of a limited region of matter - the body ... The only possible alternative is simply to keep the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which that plural is unknown, that there is only one thing and that, what seems to be a plurality, is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing produced by a deception (Indian