On Consciousness

Welcome to  excerpts from The Age of Ananda on the nature of consciousness.

What is Consciousness?

First, what Cit (=Consciousness) is not:

“…(C)it is not an epiphenomenon mysteriously oozing out of matter at the tail end of the evolutionary pipeline.  It is exactly the other way around: It is our universe that is an epiphenomenon of consciousness.  In fact, all universes are epiphenomena of consciousness.  There can be no universe without consciousness.  Cit seeds, sustains, and evolves all of them, like foam on the ocean’s surface, and after the cosmic cycle has run its course, dissolves them back into its infinite depths.” (TAOA, page 86)

And as to what Consciousness is,

“Yajnavalkya: “I’ll give this short and simple definition: Consciousness is the eternal existential reality that seeds, sustains, and survives all manifestation.”

“…Now the wags will ask, “Where does this all-inclusive consciousness of yours come from or out of?”

“Luckily for us, our universe is not built on an infinite regression.  Therefore we can cut to the chase and declare that consciousness is fundamental and eternal.  Cit does not emerge out of anything.  Cit is the original cause of all causes.  All regressions end with Cit.  Consciousness has always been, and will always be, whether or not we have planets or pumpkins, people or particles.” (TAOA, page 88)

“…the world’s spiritual traditions tell us of an eternal dimension of reality, a unitary noumenon, which transcends and subsumes all physical and material phenomena.  From the Rishi’s exposition yesterday, you know that cit, consciousness, is that numinous reality.  In passages too profuse and numerous to list here, but always with one constant and consistent refrain, the Vedas affirm the primacy and eternality of consciousness time and again.

“Consciousness — theprobability-wave bursting enigma of quantum mechanics, the so-called hard problem that keeps the brightest philosophers awake at night, the ultimate seer and knower, the eternal presence behind and beyond it all — is what the Veda reveals to us as the ultimate eternal reality.

“Now if the physicists have discovered that energy is eternal and the rishis have proclaimed that consciousness is eternal, how do we reconcile these claims?  How do these two — consciousness and energy — relate to each other?

“It turns out that Einstein’s E=MC**2 is happily a spiritual cum physical equation that gives us the vital clue we need to resolve this quintessential question.  It is the bridge linking the Consciousness and Energy shores of reality.” (TAOA, page 79)

Click here for essay:  Dawn of The Age of Conscious Evolution