01:01

Swami S.

Thank you for having me, and for this wonderful event.

01:49

Swami S.

Yes, big question. I’ll start with a little story. Consciousness is something that’s very common to all of us. We all know it, and we are using it all the time. The story is like this. There was this washer man, a very familiar traditional Indian Dhobe, who would take the dirty laundry out and wash it on the bank of a river. He came across a diamond. He didn’t know what the diamond was. But he thought it was just an interesting piece of rock. And he used it for scrubbing dirty clothes, you know? And this is how he went on. One day he was curious. He took this peculiar rock to a friend of his, the vegetable seller. Thought, “He’s wise, he knows more than me, he should be able to tell me what it is.” And the vegetable seller said: “Yes, this seems valuable. I’ll give you 10 rupees for it.” Luckily the washer man, Dhobe, didn’t sell it to him. He took it to somebody else and then somebody else. Finally he took it to a diamond merchant who said, “Oh my God, this is the biggest, most wonderful diamond I’ve ever seen. I’ll give you 1 crore rupees for it, or 10 crore rupees for it.” And all the wants of the washer man, the poor Dhobe, they were all gone forever. He was fulfilled.

Now, that diamond, we all have it, and we are using it all the time. But like the Dhobe, we don’t know what it is, and like the Dhobe, we are using it to wash or clean our dirty laundry. What are we doing with it? It’s consciousness. What are we doing with it? We are seeing right now. We are seeing. We are hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. We are thinking, remembering, enjoying, suffering. We have desires, we fight, we are jealous, we hate. All of that—including science and religion and spirituality—all of that is made possible by this consciousness.

Now, what Vedanta says this is not a rock with which you can only—you can scrub your laundry with it, but if you truly know what it is, it will solve all your problems at a deep existential level. So to put it in classical terms, ātyantika-duḥkha-nivṛtti, the utter cessation of suffering, paramānanda-prāpti, the attainment of fulfillment, deep lasting fulfillment and bliss. This is what is promised if we know that this rock is actually a diamond, the consciousness that we have and we are most familiar with all the time, we realize what it truly is. So to come to know truly what we are, that is the journey in consciousness and journey in Advaita Vedanta.

05:40

Swami S.

Not just two. There are multiple traditions.

05:44

Swami S.

Yeah, I know. Then this will be endless. There’s a very nice book by Swami Tapasyananandji, Bhakti Schools of Vedanta. So there are multiple schools of Vedanta other than Advaita Vedanta—Vashishta Advaita, Dvaita, Shuddhadvaita, and so on and so forth—which are, one common characteristic is that they are dualistic in some sense, and they all rely on bhakti rather than on gyan or knowledge.

So how is it related? It’s sort of like this, using Vivekananda’s own words: instead of looking inwards and trying to see what we are, suppose you project it outwards. Instead of trying to find out that we are this limitless consciousness which Advaita Vedanta will take us towards, we say that it is God. Instead of deconstructing yourself, you see it as the ultimate reality of this entire universe. Then you have a dualistic path. Then you set up a relationship with that God—God is my master, I am the servant, like Hanuman, or God is my friend, I am like Arjuna and Krishna and so on. So this is how the same thing can be seen dualistically or non-dualistically.

There was a monk who put it very beautifully. In Hindi he said—I’ll translate—[Hindi] In Sanātana Dharma, in Hinduism there are two paths broadly. One is the path of knowledge, jano. Either you know it, or you don’t know it; take it on faith. So most of religion, including in Hinduism and outside Hinduism, especially in the West, it’s all the religion of manu. Believe it. In fact, in the United States the word used for religion is faith: something to be believed.

08:14

Swami S.

There are different theories of consciousness. We can’t say that, the Indian tradition—why Vedanta? Multiple schools of Vedanta, Samkhya Yoga, multiple schools of Buddhism, Jainism. Many schools in ancient India, they all had an overwhelming interest in consciousness, and they did come up with different theories. So I can’t just sit here and claim we have the answer to everything. But we do have extraordinarily profound insights into the nature of consciousness, into the nature of who we are. And those insights, the claim is: if we get those insights and we live it, it will transform our lives tremendously. It will give us fulfillment and it will take us beyond suffering.

So the Advaitic, if you can narrow it down and let’s focus on the Advaitic perspective, which is something that I’m most familiar with, and it’s also the one which takes the idea of consciousness most seriously. So there the idea is that first you start with yourself and notice that—if I may take a couple of minutes?

09:20

Swami S.

Notice that whatever we do, we are conscious. So right now we are all seeing. We are all seeing. But we are aware. We see many things, but one thing common to all seeing is that I am aware. And we hear. But there’s awareness. We smell, taste, touch. But behind everything there is awareness, there’s this consciousness, which gives us all this multiplicity of experiences. Turning inwards: we think, we remember, we enjoy, we suffer, we understand, we believe. But notice what’s common to all of them. It’s the same consciousness.

And then Advaita says there comes a time in our day when we fall asleep. The famous Indian siesta in the afternoon, or during the conference itself. So you fall asleep and we dream. It’s the same consciousness. See, what Advaita is doing is: it’s making a distinction between consciousness and mind. This is something that I would like to stress upon. In the modern philosophy of mind, in the world philosophy of mind, as yet, the distinction between consciousness and mind is not appreciated. This was well appreciated in multiple schools of ancient Indian philosophy: that mind and consciousness are different.

At this point someone may say: okay, we’re talking so much about consciousness—would you like to define consciousness? Precisely what is it? And in modern consciousness studies (which is very big today) there is no clear definition. But in Advaita Vedanta there is a clear definition. And I’m going to share it with you, and you’ll see how elegant it is, how precise and elegant it is.

What is consciousness? The definition of consciousness is anidam chaitanyam: the multiple ways of approaching. Ane way is this: “not this.” Now, it works like this: in our experience right now, every one of us, in our experience, whatever we can label as this, that’s not consciousness, that’s an object to consciousness. So this glass, since it’s this, it’s an object to consciousness. This shirt, since I’m saying “this,” it’s an object to consciousness. This body, since I’m saying “this,” it’s an object to consciousness. I’m aware of it.

And now it becomes even more interesting: mind. You know, all of us, we are thinking, remembering this thought, this feeling, this memory. Because we are saying, “this, this, this.” Thoughts, feelings, memories are also objects (phenomenologically speaking) to consciousness. That which is not an object, which is irreducible to objects, and yet you cannot deny it, because that is what gives you the experience of all objects, that is consciousness. So that’s the definition.

12:33

Swami S.

And note how intuitive it is. It’s not difficult to get. And one interesting thing you will see is that this non-objective, indubitable consciousness, if we try to understand it, grasp it, we won’t be able to do it. Because it’s not an object. Yes.

13:08

Swami S.

I wouldn’t even say outside. It’s behind your sensory perception. It’s that which makes all sensory perceptions possible.

15:50

Swami S.

Right. You said many things there, but I’ll focus on a couple of things. First of all, the question of science, especially neuroscience today. And it’s an exciting time to be alive if you are doing neuroscience, if you’re doing consciousness studies, and if you’re doing Advaita Vedanta also. It’s an exciting time to be alive. And it’s exciting time to have this kind of a conversation, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s only in the last twenty years or so—twenty, twenty-five years—that scientists have taken an increasing interest in consciousness; in what consciousness is. For multiple reasons. One reason is new technologies there which can closely scan the brain: fMRI scans and all of that. The whole emergence of computers, and nowadays AI. So that again brings into question what exactly we are. So for multiple reasons, consciousness has become sort of center in neuroscience, in computer science, in consciousness studies. There’s a book, Waking, Dreaming, Being, by a professor of philosophy in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. There he says that consciousness studies is not a new subject. It’s as old as the Upanishads. 5,000 years ago in India, they were talking about consciousness. So it’s a very ancient subject. And not only that. This professor, he says—sorry, the name Thompson, I think. I forget.

17:32

Swami S.

So he says there that the Upanishads are so significant in the history of human thought that we would do better to mark human history not as AD and BC, but we should say “before Upanishad” and “after Upanishad.” So, you know, that kind of importance. Now, what is it? Why now? What’s so important right now?

And just, by the way, another one I just recalled: Oxford University Press. You can Google that. The five great unsolved questions in philosophy. It’s a gimmick, all questions in philosophy are more or less unsolved. But anyway, the five great unsolved questions in philosophy. And I noticed, out of the five, four are directly related to consciousness. “Who am I?” “What is free will?” “Can we know anything at all?”—skepticism. “What happens after death?” So four questions are directly related to question consciousness. And the fifth one was about justice; questions of justice.

So now, why is it that we say that science cannot do this? For this, I’ll rely on a scientist and a philosopher, David Chalmers, who coined the term, the phrase, the hard problem of consciousness. It’s precisely this. As you said, we experience a variety of things. And the sensations we experience, they are called qualia. And you will notice those are very clearly connected with brain activity. If you taste the sweetness, there’ll be some neurons firing in some part of the brain, and the neuroscientists will be able to correlate. Taste of sweetness is correlated to this part of the brain firing. Pain is correlated to this part of the brain firing. Memory, you think you’re trying to recall something, and some part of the brain is firing. Okay.

Now, notice: bring back the advaitic definition of consciousness. Taste of sweetness: object. Pain: object. Memory: object. All these are objects to consciousness. And then these objects are presented to consciousness—they’re subtle objects presented to consciousness—different parts of the brain are firing. But the one common thing to all of them is that they all feel like something. They feel like something. Why is there subjectivity at all?

You notice—I’ll give you an example, the very example which you used. You say that there might be a part of the brain linked with our experience of sweetness. And if that part stops working, then we will not be able to experience sweetness. Then you said that that part of the brain created our experience of sweetness. What’s the big deal about it? Notice something: I was able to experience, suppose, taste or smell. This is a very good example. In COVID, a lot of people lost their sense of smell. Taste also, I think. So I was able to experience taste and smell. Now I’m not able to experience taste and smell. Taste and smell are gone. Taste and smell are gone. You are able to experience the absence of taste and smell. Did you become unconscious because you can’t taste or smell? No. Consciousness continues.

So that part of the brain which generated that particular object called smell or taste, that was not generating the subjectivity behind it. This is what David Chalmers calls the hard problem of consciousness. You can correlate conscious experiences with the activities of the brain. But at all, why should there be subjectivity? At all, why do we have first-person experiences? That is a mystery. And, yeah—sorry.

21:16

Swami S.

Okay. And I’ll tell you why it’s not a mystery from the Advaithic perspective—not just Advaithic. Sankhian, Buddhist. From the ancient Indian perspective of consciousness it’s not a mystery. I’ll tell you precisely why. It’s very easy to understand now.

As I said, everything that we experience is an object. By very definition, it’s an object to you, the consciousness. Now, when we say we explain something, we are explaining complex objective phenomena in terms of more simple objective phenomena. So we are explaining the experience of sweetness in terms of firing of the brain. That’s also objective. The experience of sweetness is also objective. But what is not objective is the very subjective thing of experiencing, of being aware at all. And that you cannot explain in terms of objective activity like the brain activity.

22:31

Swami S.

Absolutely.

23:38

Swami S.

Okay. First of all, the global workspace theory and Tononi’s integrated information theory, you say: what is your take on it? I firmly and without any qualifications reject both of them—without knowing too much about it. They are very complex. But I’ll tell you one thing. One thing I look for whenever you come across these explanations of consciousness: every now and then, your newsman says: “Consciousness explained.” And I always say: you should add “away:” “Consciousness explained away.”

You will notice one thing about all of these theories, without exception. One thing: at one place they make a jump from the objective to the subjective. They will describe something objective, like a global workspace, and then say: you, the consciousness, is because of that. How? You come back to the same problem: the hard problem of consciousness. Integrated information theory: they will say that the more the complexity that you generate—I’m oversimplifying—but you generate consciousness. A more complex system can lead to the appearance, the emergence, of consciousness. Again, from an Advaitic perspective, you’re making a jump from the objective to the subjective. You are unable—it’s a very elegant way of seeing things.

I remember seeing this cartoon of some PhD student explaining his thesis to his guide, maybe. And so he has got a lot of mathematical calculations. Step one: mathematics. Step two: mathematics. Step three: mathematics. Step four: a miracle. Then step five: mathematics. In between it’s a miracle. And the guide is saying: “I think you need to work on step four.” All of these theories, without exception—all of these theories, without exception—are basically step four theories, or miracle theories. Water into wine theories. People understand the biblical allegory of what is water and what is wine, but how that jump happens, nobody knows. And Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya will say you’re making a category mistake. The consciousness is fundamentally different.

And now some people—David Chalmers, Bernardo Kastrup, Donald Hoffman—these are the people I have just spoken to recently (and there are others) who are sort of coming around to the radical idea—radical in modern philosophy of mind, in modern science, not in ancient India—the radical idea that consciousness may be a fundamental reality of the universe.

Okay, death. The next question is death. We play a trick on ourselves. You see, all religious traditions—not Advaita Vedanta only; Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Christianity, Islam—all religious traditions, without any exception, they all have one thing in common. They say that something survives death. Physical death is the end. That’s materialism. There’s the ancient Charvakas: nothing is there after that. But all religions, they in fact operate on this one common premise. Tremendous differences among them, but something survives death. And they have logic on their side. I’ll tell you why.

Right now—follow this closely, it’s a subtle trick that we play on ourselves—right now, when we are communicating with each other, we don’t think we are communicating just with bodies. I think there’s a person there. Just like I feel like a person in here, I think there’s a person there. I think there are persons there. It’s automatic we feel we are communicating with conscious beings. Now, when death comes—and death means death of the body, no one doubts that. That’s all doctors will tell you. It’s physiological death. When we see the dead body, we jump to the conclusion that the person is also gone. How do you know that? How do you know that? We know the body is gone. But we never said that the body was the person. The person was embodied there, in that body. And the linking assumption, the presumption is, somehow the body was generating that person. But that’s the materialistic reductionism. That’s what’s under serious question now. The hard problem of consciousness; a number of thinkers are seriously questioning whether the brain actually generates consciousness. It generates experiences for consciousness. But does it generate consciousness? If it does not, in that case, when the body is dead, how do you know consciousness is dead? We can’t access it. The body’s dead, the door is shut. But consciousness may not be dead. So—yeah?

28:22

Swami S.

We’ll all find out. We’ll all find out. Not to be morbid, but we’ll find out someday.

29:14

Swami S.

Were the mystics high? Were they on weed? Where I live they certainly are on weed. Not me, personally. But since I’m in the Vedanta Society in New York, and Central Park is just across the street, so I went—five o’clock afterwards, you go, they’re all having spiritual experiences. Because they have legalized marijuana, so people are—you know in the 1960s there’s this drug culture. And the hippie culture started off in Berkeley and Berkeley University. We have an ashram right there, and the Swami there at that time—Swami Ashokanandaji, 1960s, late sixties—he said: “Berkeley. Blessed place. An avatar on each street corner!”

But seriously, even the Yoga Sutras mention the use of psychedelics to generate extraordinary experiences. But they they strictly forbid you to use it. See, the point of spirituality is not to have a variety of extraordinary experiences. The extraordinary experiences just opens you to the fact that this experience also is a kind of extraordinary experience. It’s completely constructed by our sensory system. More and more cognitive scientists—I mean, Donald Hoffman (who is in UC Riverside, I think), he is working on this. He says that actually what we are seeing here is being generated by the brain. And it’s actually being rendered continuously by the brain. He’s using virtual reality metaphors. So it’s not out there. What we are seeing what is out there is incredibly different from what we are actually seeing. It’s being reconstructed. And no scientist disputes that.

Now, mystical experiences, they have their value. There are genuine mystical experiences. How will you distinguish someone on psychedelics from a genuine mystical experience, arrived at truth, meditation, and samadhi? One thing is the effect on character. So, you know, a fool can go into a psychedelic high and come out a fool. But a fool can go into samadhi and come out a saint. These things, you might say: what’s the proof? The proof is our entire tradition in every religion. Every religion in the world stands testament to the fact that there have been men and women of extraordinarily high character, and who say that they have had certain extraordinary spiritual experiences.

However, let me add something. Here’s the beauty of Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta does not depend on extraordinary mystical experiences. You may have, it you may not have it. Advaita Vedanta depends on our quotidian daily experience. See, right now you are seeing and hearing. That’s enough for Advaita Vedanta to begin. You know, drink Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka: “The Analysis of the Seer and the Seen.” We all have the sensation of a body, of the prana, of the mind thinking, intellect understanding. That’s enough for you to begin the process of pancha kosha viveka, the analysis of the five levels of the human personality. And all of us, we wake, we dream, we sleep. This is called avasthātraya. This is enough for us to begin the process of inquiring into who we are, and understand the limitless dimensions of consciousness. So at no point—you know, asking for… depending on or using mystical experiences as a premise for your argument.

33:09

Swami S.

Yes. Bring in AI.

33:59

Swami S.

Okay. Many people know the story, actually, but it’s very interesting. When Swami Vivekananda—we all know; he went to the World Parliament of Religions in 1893. On the ship was Jamsetji, and he was going there in search of business opportunities in the United States. And they got to know each other. Remember, at that time Swami Vivekananda was not Swami Vivekananda. Nobody knew him at that time. Jamsetji found him very intriguing, this young Bengali sannyasi, and they got talking. And what did they talk about, this Parsi businessman and this young monk? They talked about science and technology, the future of science education in India. And Vivekananda said to Jamsetji it would be good to set up an institute for scientific research, fundamental research in science and technology in India. Years later, Jamsetji writes back to Vivekananda. The letter’s available. It’s on the Tata’s website also. Jamsetji writes to Vivekananda: “You may recall that we were on the ship together, and I’m seized of this idea of starting an institute for fundamental research in science. And I can think of no better person to be the president of this than you.” But of course Vivekananda did not go there, but he passed away when he was barely 39 years old. And that institute finally became the Indian Institute of Science which we know today. It was known as—yes!—Tata Institute. Look up the history. Even now in Bangalore, if you go there, the [???] will say Tata Institute. Yeah.

35:45

Swami S.

Absolutely. And she asked me that suppose something comes up in science and it’s shown that your precious consciousness has a completely material basis in the brain and nervous system. What would you do? I would have to accept the truth. I would have to accept. Wherever science leads and truth leads, we have to go there. Vivekananda himself said: “I’m firmly convinced that religion must be put to the same rigorous standard of truth that science is.” If, on the way, some doctrine or some dogma—no matter how comforting—has to be discarded, it is better to let it go. No matter how nice it is, untruth can never be ultimately good. So if science can do that well and good—I don’t see how it can. It’s not just me. It’s people like David Chalmers or, you know, Donald Hoffman. Many others. [???] and many others today are beginning to think that consciousness is fundamental in a deep sense.

37:34

Swami S.

Yeah. Here I’m very careful. Fools rushing [???] to tread. So I am no scientist at all. I certainly don’t pretend to understand quantum mechanics. But luckily, even the cutting-edge quantum mechanics, the professors, also don’t pretend to understand it. So I was just reading this book. Carlo Rovelli. It’s translated from Italian. it’s called Helgoland. It’s on the beginnings of quantum theory and the mystery of what it really means—the science apart—what does it really mean for us? And he talks of, for example: Schrödinger, he says—Carlo Rovelli points out—he was absolutely fascinated by Vedanta. And this book on quantum mechanics finally ends with—I was amazed to find out—it finally ends with a long discussion of Nagarjuna, the Mādhyamaka Śūnyavāda philosopher who lived in India nearly 2,000 years ago, who wrote the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. So Carlo Rovelli says: “Whenever I talk about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, people keep asking me: have you read Nagarjuna?” So he finally said: “Let me try it.” And he was fascinated. And he actually read an explanation by, he says, an American analytic philosopher immediately knew who he meant. It was Jay Garfield, under whom I had studied Mādhyamaka Buddhism. So I wrote to him immediately, and he said, “Yeah, Carlo Rovelli is a good friend, and we are going to have a discussion about this.”

So how is it 2,000 years ago, an ancient Indian philosopher, Nagarjuna, and his texts and the layers of commentary by Chandrakirti and others after that, have some bearing on the interpretation of quantum mechanics in the twenty-first century? How? It’s an amazing thing. I asked Brian Greene, who is a very well-known cosmologist in Columbia: so what do you think of these ancient Indian philosophies and your theories in modern science in cosmology? He said—I’m quoting him precisely—“What you have got is not science, but it is a poetic rendition of the same principles we are now exploring.” That’s what he said. That’s not somebody who’s coming from a Buddhist perspective, Hindu perspective—nothing. No Eastern perspective. Purely an agnostic or atheistic perspective, purely on the basis of modern cosmology and quantum mechanics. So: yes.

40:06

Swami S.

Yes. See, for me, AI is one more proof of the uniqueness of consciousness, and I’ll tell you why. Notice what AI is doing now. It is replicating, imitating the highest functions of the human mind. You know, creativity—though what Javedji and others said—you know, there’s one question you missed yesterday. Sonu Nigam, Javedji said: you’ll never have AI doing poetry or music at the level of Sonu Nigam or Javed Akhtar. True. But what they also said was: the ones who will be in trouble at the next level, the ones below that. So what about the B-grade and C-grade writers and poets and artisans and artists? How is it that AI is able to replicate, do work, at that level?

I was at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan a few weeks ago, and when you enter it there’s an AI. The first thing that you see is a big display like this. And AI has been fed all the art in MoMA. And when you go in there, it’s continuously generating new “art.” And it’s hypnotic. I stood there for a minute. You can see whole crowds. Is it art or not? So AI is doing that. AI is writing. Nowadays, here I’m sure, and all the United States, and in Canada, all university departments, they are scratching their heads how to know whether the assignments written by the students are written by ChatGPT or by the students. So AI is doing that. Creativity at multiple levels. Sora: somebody demonstrated that to me a few days back, and you saw it here.

So my point here is: every one of the higher faculties of the human mind—memory, intelligence, decision-making, self-driving cars, creativity—all are being demonstrated by AI at some level. Not at [???] level, but at some level, some level, they have been demonstrated—except one faculty: consciousness. These machines are not conscious. You say: how do you know, Swami? Are you in Silicon Valley? No. Ask the people in Silicon Valley. Ask people in Google and OpenAI; Sam—by the way (I don’t know how true this is) somebody told me if you look up Sam Altman and his Twitter feed, X-feed, so somebody asked him: tell us one thing that we don’t know which you believe to be true. And Sam Altman said, “Ātman is Brahman.” He said that. Look it up.

So now, consciousness is not there in any one of these machines. My question here is this—precise question. Nobody’s asking this question. Why not? If consciousness is just one more faculty of the mind which can be explained by the brain? See, creativity is complex. Decision-making is complex. And you are able to model that, imitate that, algorithmically. Consciousness is simple. What does consciousness do? It does only one thing and only one thing: it gives you first-person experience. Anubhava: experience. Why can’t you model that? Why is it so difficult? And if you ask the programmers, they will tell you something terrible. They will say: let alone these machines being conscious. We have no idea where to begin. We have no traction on the problem at all. Doesn’t that tell you that consciousness is something unique? Not quite like all the other faculties?

43:53

Swami S.

First of all, if you ask me I’ll say: we don’t die> None of us. Good news. None of us are going to die. Bodies die. And we will—to be a little morbid—very soon, sometime or the other, in the next twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty years, each of us will realize that guy was right. I didn’t die. The bodies die. Yeah. And nobody is born a cockroach. Nobody’s born. You get a human body or some other kind of body. And that’s the general story which we are learning, all the Indian religions, that multiple lifetimes. Advaita has a radical take on it. Advaita says: yes, you go from lifetime to lifetime, then you attain spiritual evolution, and you realize who you are, and then you are free of this cycle, and the whole thing is a story. The whole thing is a story. Yeah.

44:48

Swami S.

Thank you for having us. Thank you.