Even today modern science is struggling with the why and how of the
working of the cerebral cortex.
As neuro-biologists Eccles puts it, "we are compelled to consider the
behaviour of the individual particles of matter in the active cerebral
cortex as something "outside physics".
What all this amounts to is that we are still asking the question that
Aristotle was asking two thousand years ago:
"How is the mind attached to the body?
What is the nature of the thinker?"
The endeavour to discover the nature of thought is basically misconceived .
Because that which is thinking and this which is thought about, are one
and the same.
Because there can be no subject-object relationship in such quest.
Because that which is sought is this which is seeking.
In the absence of a mirror, how can the eye see itself?
The development of a newborn infant is a fascinating panorama.
A single cell, during the period of nine months has progressed through
the successive embryonic states and has culminated into a human
personality.
The process of development automatically continues without interruption
even after birth.
In the course of the next few days, weeks and months the infant rapidly
increases its weight and develops the other capacities gradually,
including the mental capacities which create in the infant the sense of
the exercise of will and volition.
This development of the infant, like that of a plant, is not really
through an outside source but its own inherent energy contained in that
single cell which has thus developed.
This inherent vital force within the growing embryo contains the self-
regulating properties which ensure that the end-product will be
according to norm in spite of any accidental hazards that may arise
during the course of the development.
It is the genetic code of the fertilized egg and the impacting
conditioning which that fertilized egg received through it's
existence....which determines the potential of the new individual
....and its actualization.
Yet one is so thoroughly identified with one's body..... that to the
posed question...
.. "apart from your name and form, .......who (or what) are you?"...
.is met with derision, bewilderment and even fear, which expresses as
defensiveness.
We are accustomed to think of our body as that solid, material stuff
with a certain volume and weight which is susceptible to pain and
pleasure and ultimate decay and death.
But is the body really solid?
However solid the body may appear to be, the established fact remains
that it is from a single cell that the body has been developed.
The electron-scanning microscope, with a magnification of several
thousand times, shows the human body.....
.... as a sort of phantasy, ......
......a seascape as different from our perception of the body with our
eyes as could possibly be imagined.
The pores of the skin open like ocean caves.
A bundle of nerve fibers curving its way across a section of muscle
tissues appears like a sea serpent lying on a giant walrus.
What appears as thousands of tadpoles swimming furiously against the
current are,....... sperm cells struggling for survival against
incredible odds.
The whole ......presenting a sea spectacle.
Based on what the electron microscope has so far revealed, it would seem
to indicate........ the "solid" flesh dissolving into a sort of
condensed vapour, muscle fiber assuming a distinctly crystalline aspect
showing that it is made of long spiral molecules interconnected and held
in place by imperceptible waves pulsing many trillions of times a second.
Within molecules would be atoms, their interiors veiled by vague clouds
of electrons.
Then the shell dissolves and it is all emptiness.
Deep, deep within that emptiness, the subatomic physicist tells us, is a
nucleus ....
....which being an oscillating field, begins to dissolve, showing
further organized fields, protons, neutrons
and even smaller particles, each of which also dissolves into nothing
but the rhythm of the universal pulse.
This pulsating rhythm ....is what the mystic has apperceived.
In considering the question of what the body is made of, the ineluctable
conclusion is that there is no solidity at all either at the most
sublime level of the body, or at heart of the Universe.
This would seem less astonishing if it could remember that the
characters in your last night sleep dream appeared equally solid.
The compact nucleus at the very heart of the atom, then, is nothing
solid but rather a dynamic pattern of concentrated energy throbbing and
vibrating at incredible speeds, beyond imagination.
A veritable frenzied dance, the Dance of Shiva, in which creation and
destruction take place continuously and simultaneously.
As particle physicist James Jeans avers....... the universe is mental
rather than material.
In ancient times, the mystic declared....... the glorious or worthless
external world (depending on the innate conditioning viewing that world)
as "chittamatra (mind-stuff only) .......or vijnaptimatra
(representation only)
The astronomer also presents us with the same beguiling pointing when he
observes.....
.....that when galaxies sometimes meet head-on, all they do is pass
through each other like two summer clouds.
The human body, like all living objects, has its own electromagnetic
field, and therefore, we are affected to a varying extent one way or
another by the pulsating fields that criss-cross one another throughout
space, .....
....not only by the nearer events like the turning of the earth on its
axis, the tides and the seasons, but even by the distant solar flares
known as sunspots.
It would seem that as the mystic has always held ....each one of us is
in direct or indirect relationship with all that is.
It is through the senses that the various organized fields of rhythm
(that apparently constitute the totality of an individual entity) are
connected with
one another and with the rhythms of the entire universe.
It would thus seem that there cannot be a separate personal identity ....
....if every human body is nothing but emptiness, a concentrated pattern
of energy.
But the wonder that which-is.........is........ has so contrived that
each emptiness,
each individual body and each personal identity has an essential
characteristic
that distinguishes it from all others.
The botanist tells us that every leaf on a tree is in some way or
another at least slightly different from all others.
The chance of two fingerprints being identical has been computed at less
than one in sixty billion.
Brain wave patterns are observed to be clearly distinctive.
An effective voiceprint definitely identifies the speaker through the
recorded voice frequencies.
A new born baby's breathing pattern is said to be as distinctive as a
fingerprint.
It would seem therefore that the evolutionary process itself has ensured
individual variations within each species by means of a series of
rhythmic wave functions composing a personalized inner pulse that
synchronized in varying designs with everything else and everyone else
in the world.
It is this inner pulse and the extent of its synchronity with the other
person or thing which produces instant attraction, revulsion or total
indifference.
The all-in-one-ness of the mystic has been now clearly accepted by the
modern scientist.
A formulation made by the physicist J.S. Bell- Bell's Theorem-
particularly emphasizes that "no theory of reality compatible with
quantum theory can require spatially separated events to be separate".
This means, simply, that ever events distant or local.....are
interconnected.
What is more, it already implies that each electron must know what every
other electron in the universe is doing ....
..in order to know what it itself has to do every moment.
It further implies that each subatomic particle within is in touch with
all that IS.
The mystic intuitively understands the problem and the solution that is
contained in the problem:
All there is, is the primal ENERGY which is nothing other than
CONSCIOUSNESS ....
...which has produced on or within itself the MIND-STUFF.....
of the universe (chittamatra) as a representation only (Vijnaptimatra).
In other words, all there is, is CONSCIOUSNESS which in the case of
sentient beings may be called SENTIENCE, an aspect of consciousness
which enables it to cognize other sentient beings.
If the body is scientifically seen as emptiness, a throbbing energy, the
question would arise:
What then is a "sentient being"?
The question answers itself.
In the sentient being, if the being is merely emptiness, then the being
that is sensorially perceptible .....
....must be a mere appearance like a mirage on the sands, and the
"sentient being" must be what remains....... SENTIENCE.
If the physical being is merely an appearance, an object, a phenomenon,
it is quite obvious that it cannot be expected to perform any action as
an independent entity on its own initiative.
The fact is illustrated by the Chinese Master Chuang-Tzu's story of the
sow who died while her piglets were suckling- the little piglets just
left the inanimate body.
The body became inanimate because the animus was no longer within.
This animus, the sentience in the body, regarded by the mystic as the
consciousness ( or the "Heart" or the "Mind")
which is not the personal element in each sentient being ........
.....but the universal, primal energy which pulsates in all sentient
beings and indeed in every particle in the entire universe.
The biological object........as "a" particle of the
Universe...........is ......."an" expression of the pulsation.
This impersonal or universal consciousness is, therefore, what the
sentient being really is.
And, indeed, all there is, all that exists, is nothing but the universal
consciousness.
This impersonal consciousness, in its static state of rest, is the
Absolute unmanifest subject.
When movement arises in it, it becomes conscious of itself.........."I
AM".....
... and in that first split-second of awareness the universal
consciousness concurrently comes
into manifestation by objectifying its pure subjectivity into the
duality of subject and object.
When the manifestation occurs, the universal or impersonal consciousness
becomes identified with each object, and thus arises the concept of the
egoistic "me " in human beings ,........
......because of which the phenomenal world appears to be "real".
"Real"-ly glorious, wondrous ......or..... "Real"-ly lousy, pathetic,
source of suffering.
This process of identification of the Consciousness with an individual
object
and considering that object as "me" in the subjective sense (as opposed
to all other objects)
means in effect......... the objectivizing of pure subjectivity,.....
... thereby creating an apparent separation, between "me" and the "other".
And it is this "me-concept" or self or ego which is the "bondage" from
which "liberation" is sought.
Sought.... again by Consciousness which identified itself.
Whatever appears to be done by a sentient being can only be conceptual
......
....because a sentient being, objectively, is only an appearance, an
illusory dream-figure.
All actions in the framework of space-time are dreamed by a dreamer that
can have no objective
existence..........aka the universal consciousness in movement.
Sentient beings may imagine themselves as causative instruments but they
are only an integral part of the hypothetical emptiness of the
universe....one of the multitude of manifestations.
It is universal consciousness which produces within itself the totality
of the manifestation.
The sentient beings are illusory objects from the point of view of the
phenomenal manifestation, mere dreamed figures and therefore "nothing".
But they are also "everything"......because, noumenally , anything,
dreamed can be nothing other than the dreamer.
The dreamer is the subjective aspect of consciousness..... while all
manifestations ....its objective aspect.
The sentient being, therefore, dreams the manifested universe-including
himself (as in a personal dream)....
.....by objectivising it.
And it is as this subjective aspect of consciousness that the sentient
being can be said to BE.
As the phenomenally present illusory object, the sentient being is nothing.
But, as the phenomenally absent- and noumenally present- "
".... is everything.
Creation and dissolution of phenomenality, of which this Universe is one
mere bubble ...
....mere aspects of the Dance.
Where the "Danced" and the "Dancer "......are really aspects of the Dancing.
The Dancing....
.....while........
......ever being........
....... transcendent to the very Dancing.
