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An Exploration into Consciousness
(aka The Materialist Delusion)
Thousands of years ago, somewhere in the mists of time in the history of human life on this planet, people started asking the core existential questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? What am I doing here? What's the meaning of it all?
The first primitive collective expression of this enquiry was nature worship (based on ignorance and fear). This morphed into polytheism (the personification of nature into gods and goddesses), then monotheism (God-fearing religion), and now atheism (materialism). We've come a long way!
For whatever reason, we are now living at a point in time when we've given up on the concept of a higher consciousness in our modern world view; where our Western science has come to a very mechanistic take on the universe and existence.
We've lived with dogmas before, of course. There's been all the religious ones, which probably had a lot to do with our current materialistic reactionism. But there have been plenty of scientific ones as well. For example, the square earth theory, and then the earth as the centre of the universe theory. And now we've got materialism and the big bang theory.
Recently Rupert Sheldrake, a leading scientist and thinker wrote, “Modern science is based on the principal, 'Give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest.' And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy of the universe, and all the laws that govern it, from nothing in a single instant.”
In other words, in a purely mechanistic world view, where did all the substance of the universe come from? We've got an incredibly vast and complex universe that we're expected to believe just appeared out of nothing. It's like expecting us to believe that our phones or laptops just fell into place, without anyone designing them or putting them together.
For modern science to discount the existence of a higher consciousness on the basis that it can't be proven is also a dogma. It is our present-day materialist dogma. You also can’t prove the existence of a mother’s love for her child. But it still exists.
Despite the current hardline materialism of supposedly enlightened thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, there have been, like Rupert Sheldrake, other beacons of hope. Sir James Jeans, a British physicist, wrote about 80 years ago, “The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.”
Having personally practiced the intuitive science of meditation for over 20 years now, I am convinced that the matter of the universe must have come from something greater than itself, and that our own consciousness cannot merely be the product of the physical synapses of our brains, but is an integral part of a greater consciousness which encompasses the entirety of existence. That this greater consciousness is inherent in, controls and is the essence of each and every particle of this entire universe.
I am furthermore convinced that, on a personal level, the only way to attain complete and permanent fulfilment is to realise that higher consciousness as the essence of one's own consciousness; to identify with it as the core of one's being; as the self of one's self; to make the deepest connection with it so as to be able to experience what we are all searching for in the depths of our hearts: the deepest love; infinite happiness; perfect peace and contentment; bliss.
This process is called devotion (love for the infinite). It is the introversion of mind towards the one all-encompassing entity, rather than the extroversion of mind towards many limited and disparate objects of desire (and hence limited and disparate fulfilments).
To quote the great modern-day tantric guru Shrii Shrii Anandamurti: “Cosmic Consciousness abides in the very sense of existence, in one’s very heart’s desire.”
What we are ultimately looking for is not outside us. It is within. In fact, it is more than that. It is us. We don't actually have to find anything or be anything other than what we already are. We just have to realise the essence of our own existence; our deepest selves. We only have to realise ourselves as the Greater Self.
To quote Father Thomas Keating, from the movie One: “The beginning of the spiritual journey is the realisation that there is a higher power: an Other. The second step is to try to become the Other. And finally there is the realisation that there is no Other. You and the Other are One. Always have been. Always will be. You just think that you weren't.”
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