[Advaita-l] Reconciling current research with Advaitic theory of mind

[Shyam]

Pranams Mahesh-ji
  Advaita is not a theory.
  It is simply the truth about a unitary nondual entity which is eternal and of the nature of consciousness.
  The term consciousness in advaita refers to this vastu.
  It is the support of all of this manifest universe - including animate and inanimate objects.
   
  Whereas in relation to medical science, consciousness is a property of any sentient entity where it is able to indicate an awareness and an ability to independently interact with the environment.
   
  So a tiny virus or ameba which is nothing other than a protein strand - as long as it is able to demonstrate these properties - is said to be conscious or possess consciousness.
   
  So you can see that we are talking about two different things here, even though we are using the same word.
   
  Vedanta says the chit in sat-chit-ananda is the only satyam; everything else is name and form. Matter and the absence of matter are both "in" consciousness. This is not theory - this is fact.
   
  Science wants to believe that matter when aligned in a peculiar way will "produce" consciousness. or "consciousness is in matter"  
   
  Science by its very definition has to be objective - it has to rely on an objective process - it has to formulate theories and these need to get proven or disproven and this is the way it prgogresses or proceeds - all this involves working in a subject-object construct. Science can never claim absolute knowledge of anything. It by default can never have the "last word". One Nobel laureate mathematician once said in an interview "No one can never prove anything;one can only put up hypothesis which as yet cannot be disproven" - this is the so-called scientific method.
   
  Vedanta is not science. It is simply a statement of fact. This needs an understanding and an elucidation because it seems contrary to deeply-rooted notions that we entertain about ourselves. Hence it needs an unfoldment and a teaching.
   
  A unifying approach to science and vedanta is perhaps best avoided. They both work in different realms.
   
  With regards to your well thought-out posers, what vedanta says is that how consciousness manifests is dependent on the manifesting medium much like how electiricity manifests depends on the medium. Changes to the medium in any way do not cause any change to the underlying consciousness. In fact the very change is predicated on the changeless underlying substratum.
   
  Hari OM
  Shyam
   
   
  
Mahesh Ursekar <mahesh.ursekar at gmail.com> wrote:
  Pranams to all:

In a recent issue (Jan 19, 2007) of TIME magazine, the following article
appeared entitled 'The Mystery of Consciousness':
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1580394,00.html

While the author categorically claims that currently they *do not* have
answers to what consciousness actually is, he does say:

"neuroscientists agree ...[that the feature they] ... find least
controversial is the one that many people outside the field find the most
shocking. Francis Crick called it "the astonishing hypothesis"--the idea
that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of
physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. *Consciousness does not
reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is
the activity of the brain*."

To support his claim, he makes the three following points:

"Using functional MRI, cognitive neuroscientists can almost *read people's
thoughts from the blood flow in their brains. They can tell, for instance,
whether a person is thinking about a face or a place or whether a picture
the person is looking at is of a bottle or a shoe *."

and

"*And consciousness can be pushed around by physical manipulations*.
Electrical stimulation of the brain during surgery can cause a person to
have hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality, such as a song
playing in the room or a childhood birthday party. Chemicals that affect the
brain, from caffeine and alcohol to Prozac and LSD, can profoundly alter how
people think, feel and see. *Surgery that severs the corpus callosum,
separating the two hemispheres (a treatment for epilepsy), spawns two
consciousnesses within the same skull, as if the soul could be cleaved in
two with a knife*."

and

"*And when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone
can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence*. Attempts to
contact the souls of the dead (a pursuit of serious scientists a century
ago) turned up only cheap magic tricks, and near death experiences are not
the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms
of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain. *In September, a team of Swiss
neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and
off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily
sensations converge*."

While I was able to think of counter arguments to the first and third
arguments keeping Advaitic theory intact, I could not find any such argument
against the second.

According to my understanding of Advaita, the mind is manifest due to the
power of Brahman behind it, just as the moon shines due to the power of the
sun. In other words, it is not an epiphenomenon of the gross body (as the
Charvaks would have it) but has an independent existence.

However, in relation to the second point of the author (in bold above) how
does one explain the 'splitting of the mind' when the brain is split? For
more details, on split-brain patients see the below link:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro00/web1/Vasiliadis.html

Can any of the more knowledgeable readers on this list share their thoughts
on how one can explain the second point of the author keeping the Advaitic
theory of mind intact? Or if my understanding is in some way flawed, I would
be grateful for due correction.

Many thanks in advance,

Pranams, Mahesh
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