Consciousness is the ultimate rabbit hole.
Years of philosophical inquiry. Centuries of religious thought. And now, a growing area of scientific research. Yet, the ‘hard problem of human consciousness’ stays hard. The more we seem to know, the less we understand. As one famous philosopher put it, “You could blow up the brain to the size of a mill, and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness.”
In modern conversations about consciousness, Swami Sarvapriyananda is a recurring presence, fielding questions about the unexplainable with a smile. He has a series of popular lectures on YouTube. He pops up on podcasts with renowned atheist Sam Harris. He was a monastic-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. He has given talks at Google. Swami, as he is often called, has spent a lifetime considering consciousness. Who we are, what makes a human, what constitutes our inner awareness – whether we are finite or limitless.
A monk trained at the Ramkrishna Mission for 25 years, Swami is now the spiritual head of the Vedanta Society of New York. A long way from Bhubaneshwar, where he grew up surrounded by books and without television or the internet. His early readings were spiritual, the Bhagavad Gita and books by Swami Vivekananda. His only two dreams for adulthood were “to be a pilot and to find God”.
To students of Vedanta, Swami presents himself less as a seer, more a scholar. Vedantic thought derives from the Upanishads, texts central to Hinduism. Swami believes that what makes Vedantic philosophy especially relevant for modern scientific study – which is finally interested in the inner experience – is the perspectives it provides on consciousness.
Swami’s school, the Advaita Vedanta, advocates the centrality of consciousness. That it cannot be reduced to just the brain. Or the mind. That it is one – many bodies, many minds, but one consciousness across all beings.
And that it is “non-dual” – there is nothing apart from consciousness and everything the mind-body experiences is because of this inner awareness. Swami elaborates, “Whatever we can see, hear, taste, smell, think is not consciousness. Whatever we are aware of is not consciousness. All experiences are consciousness illuminating an object.”
The object could be your own eyes, the screen in front of you, the book in your hands, your reflection in the mirror. Or your mind free from thought.
And it doesn’t hurt that Vedantic philosophy is based on logical reasoning. “Though it is rooted in Hindu traditions, Advaita Vedanta doesn’t require a person to have faith. Rather it is about understanding yourself from daily lived experiences.”
All of which still begs the question – what exactly is consciousness? Brain scientists believe consciousness has neural origins. Another theory argues for a mathematical model: any highly networked information system can give rise to self-awareness. (It has even been suggested that our entire cosmos may be conscious.) Yet others hark to a ‘soul’, or the divine.
If cracked, the secrets of sentience could herald the holy grail of knowledge. And the next wave of artificial intelligence game-changers – finally, thinking machines. Actual humanoid robots. Self-aware, self-correcting algorithms.
For now, at SYNAPSE, Swami Sarvapriyananda will lead us down the rabbit hole. What ancient texts say, what the most cutting edge science claims, whether there is a bridge between spirituality and science. And, in an age of AI, whether consciousness can be modelled into machines. Or if there’s something beyond what human brain or transformers can divine.
