“It’s almost as if science said, “Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.”’ The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it.” ― Rupert Sheldrake
According to what we call science today, the Universe appeared out of nowhere. Everything fell perfectly into its place — the matter, the energies, and all the laws that govern them.
While only a few of us take time to question this hypothesis, it’s worth contemplating. Whether this statement is true or not will determine what kind of lives each one of us leads.
To give you an analogy, thinking that the Universe came out of nothing would be like saying that the device you’re reading this article on also appeared out of nowhere — where all the hardware and the batteries running the device fell into a perfect position governed by the laws of circuits that were also defined out of nowhere. Seems crazy, right? Thought so.
But before even trying to find out the truth of the statement and whether the Universe actually is the result of a random event, it’s worth asking why we even care about it.
The reason is simple. Let’s consider how our individual lives would be affected depending upon the worldview that we pick.
If you choose to believe that the Universe came out of nothing, then it is natural for you to feel isolated, alienated, lonely, fearful. In a world created haphazardly, all of us would be deemed as separate entities that also were born out of nowhere, and there would be every reason to care for your own survival at the cost of others.
The more you believe this worldview, the easier it would be for you to justify actions that most of us would consider immoral.
Now imagine, if man alternate worldview in which a central force created the Universe. This force not only guides the planets, stars, and all the celestial bodies in the Universe but also guides your life.
This then comes with the realization that all of us are in fact, one. We are not separate entities here to ensure our own survival at the cost of others. The same force that resides in me also resides in you and every other thing in this world. There’s no reason not to feel connected, loved, hopeful, and peaceful in a world like this.
Sadly, science, for most of its existence has tried to validate the former worldview. The more they validate their worldview, the more you feel fearful and disconnected from your inner reality. And even if you don’t feel it yourself, you see it in the malaise of the people around you.
On the other hand, the latter worldview has always been confirmed by yogis, saints, sages, and a lot of religions. In yogic science, the force from which the Universe came from and the force which guides our lives is known as Consciousness.
Consciousness is probably not a new term for you. Just like your lives are run by your individual consciousness, the Universe is created and governed by Cosmic Consciousness.
Traditional science has always been affirming what has been discovered by the yogic science millennia ago. Sooner or later, we come to natural conclusions that always end on what yogic science stated from the beginning.
And, if you think about it, it has to be that way. Every discovery should lead us to the Truth.
Perhaps skeptics would ask why hasn’t science been able to validate the existence of consciousness. And that is justified — for I’ve also been wondering about this.
Let’s see why
Mulla Nasreddin was a Sufi mystic who lived in the 13th century in present-day Turkey. His methods of teaching were different and he mainly taught through stories.
His stories were full of jokes and humorous anecdotes followed by a moral. Yet, even though most people stop at the moral, there’s usually something else in the story that brings the consciousness of a potential mystic closer to realization.
One of his stories goes like this.
Once Nasreddin lost his ring in the living room. He searched for it for a while, but since he could not find it, he went out into the yard and began to look there. His wife, who saw what he was doing, asked: “Mulla, you lost your ring in the room, why are you looking for it in the yard?” Mulla stroked his beard and said: “The room is too dark and I can’t see very well. I came out to the courtyard to look for my ring because there is much more light out here”.
That is precisely why we aren’t able to validate the presence of consciousness and why we can validate matter.
You see, the only difference between matter and consciousness is that we can measure and see matter with the mind, but consciousness has to be experienced internally.
Most of the researchers are looking for proof of the existence of consciousness outside themselves. But what they don’t realize is it cannot be perceived with the intellect or the mind alone. It’s a matter of the heart.
Take the case of a light bulb. A light bulb can shine the light on everything around it but not on the power that illuminates it. Similarly, you can see everything around you but not the consciousness that emanates from you. It’s beyond the normal functioning of the mind, the limits of intellect, and beyond thought.
And since we cannot validate its presence outside us or cannot contemplate it using our intellect, we deny its existence. This doesn’t seem right, does it?
Can you quantify or measure a mother’s love for a child? No. But does it mean it’s not there? No, again.
So that is the case with consciousness.
Now, even though I’ve bashed science for their follies, there are a few prominent individuals who’ve acknowledged the presence of this higher reality.
Max Planck was a Nobel Prize-winning German physicist and the father of quantum theory. His work in the field of theoretical physics led the way to many advances throughout the 20th century.
He said,
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Next, consider what James Jeans, a physicist, astronomer, and mathematician had to say,
The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter — The Mysterious Universe
Further, when he was asked in an interview with Observer, “Do you believe that life on this planet is the result of some sort of accident, or do you believe that it is a part of some great scheme?” he said,
I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe… In general the universe seems to me to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine. It may well be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to be compared to a brain-cell in a universal mind.
And to bring more weight, to my argument, let me quote Einstein, the person who wanted to express God in an equation:
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty — Written in a letter as consolation to Robert S. Marcus, political director of the World Jewish Congress, whose young son had just died of polio
Interesting right? Well, even though Einstein wanted God on a piece of paper, he realized that even if he got a near-perfect equation, it would be useless — or doing something like this would be like describing Mozart’s music in the form of sound waves. You could potentially do it, but would you really grasp the spirit and the meaning of the music?
He often called his belief system a “cosmic religion” because for him “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
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Eben Alexander became famous after his book* Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife* became a New York Times bestseller. He described his experience in the afterlife before coming back out and into consciousness.
In 2008, he became ill with acute bacterial meningoencephalitis. His condition with a rapid decline in neurologic function conferred a 90 percent mortality rate.
For one week he was in a coma, brain dead. Yet, on the seventh day, when he opened his eyes his expressions were startling.
He writes in his personal account,
“A family friend who was there could not get over how my amazed expression looked more like the astonished gaze of an infant, not like what one would expect from an adult returning from an unconscious state.”
A person recovering from such a state is not expected to live let alone remember his coma’s memories. “Thus, you can imagine my surprise at remembering an elaborate and rich odyssey from deep within coma that comprised more than 20,000 words by the time I had written it all down during the six weeks following my return from the hospital”, he continues.
While I won’t go into the details of what he saw exactly, he was clearly transported to a different consciousness level. For him, God seemed too puny a word described the power, majesty, and awe he had experienced.
He further says, “I originally referred to that deity as Om, the sound that I recalled from that realm as the resonance within infinity and eternity.”
All his experiences can be conveniently disregarded as hallucinations as the traditional scientific community has been doing for ages. Yet, Eben argues that “The conventional reductive materialist (physicalist) model embraced by many in the scientific community, including its assumption that the physical brain creates consciousness and that our human existence is birth-to-death and nothing more, is fundamentally flawed.”
For Eben, the world will never be the same and he’s trying to convince the scientific community to graduate from Kindergarten and explore the possibilities of consciousness.
As you can see from Eben’s experience, those who get a glimpse of such consciousness cannot shut up or stop talking about it. It is not therefore a hallucination but is very real as much as the material reality around us.
You can read about a similar experience here.
These Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have long remained a source of mystery for science since they’re always unable to explain what happened.
Eben himself came up with several models in neurophysiology and neuroanatomy but none could explain what he experienced.
Key characteristics of such NDEs include a sense of profound peace, unconditional love, leaving the physical body, light,
Yet, NDEs are not the only way you can go into such states.
There’s a scientific method and yogis and sages have been telling us for millennia — meditation.
It’s how you can calm the senses, still the body, still the mind and your thoughts. Once you do that (a herculean task in itself), then you can experience what many people have reported previously.
You can only find the Core Reality behind the fringe of your mind, once everything comes to a halt — that is, everything that makes you human and brings you into matter-consciousness.
If Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” the yogis would say, “When I stop thinking, then I really am.”
In that sense, everything you’re experiencing is just a delusion trying to get you away from experiencing that Reality. And if that Reality is the source and the essence of our being, there’s no reason to not try to know that.
Just as with the development of technology, the world has become a smaller place, with the development of meditation ability and “technology” the Universe can become a smaller place.
P.S. This article was largely motivated by Dada Gunamuktananda’s TED talk.
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