The great debate

Indian civilisation is characterised by what might be called "the great debate" that continues to this day. This debate is very relevant to cutting edge science and philosophy today-- but much of science at least, is not looking in this direction. 

This post is a small attempt to introduce this great debate-- from my perspective. 

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Among the top-most scientists and philosophers today, a burning question that is hotly debated is about consciousness. How does consciousness and its complex constructs like identity, desire, morality, etc. develop from material reactions in the brain? 

This question gains even more significance today, with rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking over several aspects of our lives. If a human were to act recklessly or irresponsibly, we have several mechanisms to deal with it. We could appeal to their sense of empathy, humanity or conscience to reflect upon their actions; we could "shame" them into regretting their actions; and so on. But when an AI robot acts irresponsibly-- none of these options are available to us. Sure, a form of "shaming" is possible with negative reinforcements, but while this may bring about a behavioural change, it does not lead to self-reflection and a heightened sense of morality in the robot. 

More than 5000 years ago, Indian philosophers had hotly debated about this problem of consciousness, which had resulted in several schools of thought. The Charavakas held on to the currently held notion among scientists-- that consciousness is an emergent property of material interactions in our brains. Just like modern science, for the Charavakas, material reality is all there is. 

However, the Charavakas were just a small minority among the several other schools of thought in this regard. Most other schools of thought argued that consciousness is a "simpliciter" entity-- in that, it exists on its own, and is not derived from any form of material interactions. 

The Samkhya school of thought for instance, proposed a "dualism" model of reality. According to them, reality is made of two kinds of fundamental elements, called the Prakriti and the Purusha. Prakriti refers to material / physical reality and its causal interactions, while Purusha refers to the non-causal realm of reality of the consciousness. Purusha refers not just to consciousness, but all forms of information objects-- including numbers, concepts, etc. Information objects are not subject to time and space constraints like physical objects. While biological life may exist only on earth, and only since the last few million years, prime numbers for instance, exist everywhere, and have always existed. No physical law can affect the primality (or otherwise) of a number. 

Samkhya was one of the most widely taught subjects in ancient India, along with Vedanta. Buddha is said to have extensively studied Samkhya. 

According to the Samkhya model, there are an infinite numbers of Purusha-Prakriti pairs that make up reality. But, this infinitude of information objects creates several forms of confusion. If the concepts in my head are completely unconnected with the concepts in someone else's head, how is it we can understand one another? It also brings up other strange questions like whether the number 5 on planet Earth is the same number 5 on Mars? And so on. 

The philosophy of Vedanta, which are summarised in this vast body of text called the Upanishads, take another radical step in our understanding of consciousness. The Upanishads heralded such a radical change in human civilisation, that thousands of years later, the American philosopher William Irwing Thompson, who studied the Upanishads extensively, remarked that we ought to divide civilisational epochs as "Before Upanishads" and "After Upanishads" (BU and AU respectively), instead of the current BC and AD: 

“The Upanishads is a watershed in the evolution of consciousness. Instead of being ethnocentric and dividing all global history between B.C. and A.D., we should really divide it between before Upanishads and after Upanishads—B.U. and A.U.—because the sophisticated psychology of consciousness in the Upanishads represents a quantum leap forward in human development.” -- Excerpt from Evan Thompson, "Waking, Dreaming, Being"

The Upanishads argued that there is only one Purusha in the universe! Not only consciousness exists on its own in the universe-- there is only one instance of this universal consciousness! We are not independently conscious-- but we all reflect the same consciousness. 

To give an analogy, consider a set of bowls filled with water kept in the sun outside. Inside each bowl is a reflection of the sun, each of which may be bright enough to offer illumination. But the reflection of each of them is of the same sun up above! 

Similarly, our individualised consciousness is not our own, but our reflection of the universal consciousness. The universal consciousness is called chit, while the individual reflection is called the chidaabhasa. Sentience is defined as our ability to form an image of the universal consciousness. As an analogy, in the daylight, every object reflects light from the sun, but some surfaces like glass, water, etc. also form an image of the sun. Sentience is this ability to form an image of the universal consciousness. Of course, such images can be distorted, or incomplete-- but it is an image nevertheless.

The Vedantic model itself gave rise to several schools of thought-- including some contrarian schools, which rejected the core argument of a single universal consciousness. 

The Advaita or the non-dual school of thought, goes one step further into the Vedantic argument, to not only say that there is just one universal consciousness-- but also that the universal consciousness is all there is! Rather than considering consciousness as a creation of material reality, Advaita argues that material reality is a creation of this universal consciousness! According to Advaita, material reality is basically the universal consciousness trying to look at itself-- somewhat like in the picture below. So, all of the universe-- all our wars, kingdoms, travails, adventures, etc are essentially about the universal consciousness trying to look at itself from different angles! 

Some other schools of thought-- which are broadly called the Sramanics, of which, Buddhism and Jainism are most well known-- reject the core argument of Vedanta that there is one universal consciousness, and that as individuals, we just sport images of this one, sole consciousness. 

Vedantic thought is so old, that it has gone through multiple phases of degeneration and rejuvenation. During Buddha's time, Vedantic thought had become so degenerate that philosophers and thought leaders spent most of their time trying to realise the oneness of their self with the universal consciousness, when there was rampant suffering all around them. Siddharta Gautama, who later came to be called as the Buddha, argued that it is futile to spend out lives trying to experiences this oneness of reality, when there is so much suffering all around. Instead, it is better to understand how suffering is manifested in our lives and how to remove it. He went on to further argue that the core of our existence is not the universal consciousness, but a void or shunyata. 

The Buddhists and the Vedantic philosophers are said to have had a thousand-year long debate, during which time, Buddhism spread beyond India to Afghanistan, China and much of south and east Asia. 

The arrival of Adi Shankaracharya around 1200 years ago, heralded a revival of Vedantic thought-- especially Advaita Vedanta. It was once again to become the most dominant worldview in Indian thought for about 700 years. Some very well known Advaita philosophers like Vidyaranya have written several introductory texts about this philosophy that are still taught today. 

But as before, in a few centuries after Shankaracharya, the focus on realising oneness of existence, had started to degenerate into a form of nihilism. When the material reality is considered unreal, with the only reality being the universal consciousness, which is the core of our own being, the motivation to address existential issues like suffering, defending against attacks, etc. is not all that strong. 

By the 12th century CE, foreign invaders had finally managed to enter India. (It is worthwhile to note that several great conquerors like the Greek king Alexander, or the Mongol Genghis Kahn, or the Roman empire, had never been able to conquer Indian kingdoms. While the Kushans are called an Indo-Greek empire, they were not a result of Greek invasion, and there is ample evidence that their kings like Kanishka, were of Indian origin than Greek). 

As foreign conquests started to make its way into India from the north, some kingmakers like Vidyaranya, helped build mighty kingdoms like the Vijayanagar Empire that withstood this onslaught. But a few centuries later, they too crumbled. 

Some philosophers like Madhwacharya, felt that this is due to a fatal flaw in the core of the dominant worldview at that time-- which was Advaita. As a major critic to Advaita philosophy, Madhwa came up with the dualistic Dvaita philosophy. The core of our self, is completely contained in our worldly existence, he argued. No matter how well a bowl of water makes an image of the sun, it can never be the sun itself! Similarly, no matter how well we reflect the universal consciousness, we can never be the universal consciousness itself. We are our limited bodies with our limited existence, and we had better focus on worldly issues that affect our survival. We can at best, practice bhakti or devoted service towards the supreme, in order to reflect the universal consciousness as best as possible. 

Madhwacharya's philosophy also fit in well with the Bhakti movement that was very popular at that time, that advocated devotion, submission and surrender to the divine, as a means for spiritual enlightenment. 

Despite all these philosophical efforts in redefining ourselves, history shows that Indian society succumbed greatly to foreign invasion, followed by colonisation by European powers. 

A few centuries later, during. the freedom struggle against the British, Vedantic thought once again saw a revival through the efforts of Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda is known for his address in the Chicago Congress of Religions, and to have brought authentic Indian thought directly to the West. Until then, the population in the West were exposed to gross misrepresentations and exotic perversions of Indian thought (something which continues to this day). 

Swami Vivekananda criticised too much emphasis on bhakti, devotion and surrender. He argued that too much of an obsequious conduct may rob us of our sense of ownership and assertion of our rights. But he was also aware of the shortcomings of pure Advaita and the criticisms it had received. 

He formulated his own philosophy called Integral Advaita (which I have explained in detail in another post), that strives to bridge between the non-dual and dualist schools. Vivekananda defined religion as the manifestation of the divine that is already within us, not through renunciation, but through active engagement with society and by addressing its problems. 

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Philosophical debates from India are radically different from their counterparts in the West. Western philosophy and science mostly focuses on the object, and tries hard to remove the subject from the picture. While this gives us very useful constructs like stoicism, Socratic methods, Analytic philosophy, etc, it also brings us to the state where we are in today-- where we effortlessly build machines that can easily destroy us several times over, and struggle to understand human societies beyond their power dynamics. 

Indian philosophy and its debates are more relevant today, than ever before, as we stare at a future, where the lines between truth and falsity are getting blurred.