Consciousness as a foundation for Happiness

What drives us? In our day-to-day activities what drives us is happiness. Happiness is so basic to us that we have rarely attempted to ask this question that what exactly is the happiness? However as time pass and society experience turmoil and tough situations, we tend to address this question on why are we suffering?Why the happiness which is the intrinsic need seems to so rare and impossible? Why the suffering has become predominant over happiness? Such questions has probably led to a systematic study of happiness. The UC Berkely course on happiness address the content related to happiness. 

A link to the course:  https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/online_courses_tools/the_science_of_happiness

We would like to address the same problem in light of Bhagavatam and Vedic wisdom. What and How the Vedic literature has addressed the same problem? What kind of solution it offers and how does it make sense in the current time? We will post our analysis and understanding here in the further articles. 

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Clarity on Consciousness

The understanding of consciousness among the scientific community is at a very nascent stage. The advancement of neuro science has provided some hope of conducting a scientific study of consciousness. However, due to lack of an appropriate approach so far there has been no breaking on the fundamental questions on either origin or nature of consciousness. The contention is that whether the brain gives rise to consciousness or it is a fundamental than matter itself. Or does the existence of matter and consciousness is parallel, means, the matter exists alongside consciousness. At some point of time, matter and consciousness interact and give rise to activities - force and action.

Vedic literature has a lot to provide on this.  A systematic study of Vedic literature on this content might provide a way to formulate a solvable problem on consciousness study. Therefore, the way forward would be to synthesize the scientific approach with that of the Vedic wisdom. We hope to explore this direction to address the problem of consciousness.

Jaynarayan, Tirupati, India

Existence of Life and Consciousness in Spectrum of Entity

The consciousness has been a non-trivial problem for the scientists of modern time. Not very long, since around last 30 years or so the problem has gained a serious attention from neuro-biologists. Not only the neuro-science, the computer science and quantum physics has also started to investigate the problem. And, of course the philosophy is involved since long. The interesting development is the integration of science and spirituality in search for a new science to address different problems of consciousness. The approach of synthesizing the science and spirituality has been invented and applied by H H Bhaktiswarupa Damodara Maharaj in search for the answers to the question of consciousness study. One of problem of consciousness is whether consciousness is limited to human being alone? Or in other words does the other creatures such as trees, plants, microbes etc poses consciousness? 

The problem stated has been investigated by Sir J C Bose long back in the year of 1900 (the history of this research goes back to 1848 by German philosopher Gustav Fechner). Sir J C Bose has demonstrated using an interesting experimental setup that plants are sentient. The plant do respond consciously to the external stimuli. The result has indicated that plant has some mechanism of being able to communicate the feelings of pain, suffering and happiness. (Well, here we may need to appropriately define what we mean by feelings. This subject we will discuss further.) Taking it from here, recently a work has been published in a book "Finding the Mother Tree" authored by Suzzane Simard which investigates the problem of plant consciousness. The work provides a set of evidences based on the authors examination of a Mother tree in a deep forest where the author studies the behavior of those trees that seems to be exactly like a mother in human being. The way they communicate about their survival, their food, friends and foe, health etc reveals a different kind of phenomena underneath in the forest society. These studies and observations lay a foundation for plant consciousness.

Reference: 

   1. https://www.the-scientist.com/reading-frames/book-excerpt-from-finding-the-mother-tree-68727

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India