Page 29 - NAMAH-Oct-2022

Namah Consciousness — the Need for a New Paradigm

physical processes. Science in its progress as each model represents a partial truth.
reaches a point where it exhausts itself and It is in this context that the wave models
often needs some non-mechanical paradigm of light were not rejected in favour of the
for bridging explanatory gaps. After all, the particle models. This led to the proposition
old physics, which believed in the inviolability that matter-energy models and mind-
of its laws, had to undergo a paradigm shift spirit-consciousness models can also turn
to accommodate more flexible and intuitive out to express complementary aspects of
approaches. Sri Aurobindo clarified, “Matter existence (4). Like the physical sciences, the
itself can no longer be explained by Matter biological sciences have also accommodated
alone, for it does not appear to be self-existent”; non-physical factors, marking a departure
“….. the universality of Matter can no longer from mechanistic biology. It now seems that
be held as giving any sufficient explanation imitation and genetic programming cannot
of the existence of Mind” and thus, “….. we account for all animal behaviours. Some
are thrown back from this easy and obvious behaviour may be influenced by invisible
solution to other hypotheses (1)”. morphogenic fields operating across space
and time, and appearing to resonate a
The inadequacy of the mechanistic paradigm cumulative record of past behaviours
and the necessity of accommodating subtle consisting of trial and error learning of all
insights is now explicit in all the disciplines the past generations of a particular species (5).
of science. Thus, at the level of the physical Somewhat similar experiments in the realm
sciences, it is now realised that the world of human behaviour have been conducted
described by physics is not an independently in para-psychological research.
existing structure. If we do not find a new
physics to account for this, then we might
hazard a suggestion that the world is an
empirical manifestation of a non-mechanical
mode of existence (2). Similarly, the theory
that space came into existence at the moment
of the Big Bang cannot justify how space can
emerge from non-space. If we conceptualise
a pre-spatial level of reality to account for Neuro-physiology has its grey areas too. Thus
the Big Bang, then logically we have to NDE or Near-Death-Experiences reported by
trace the origin of consciousness to those subjects resuscitated from coma (in the form
properties of the Universe that antedate of traversing tunnels, seeing life-reviews,
and explain the occurrence of the big bang. meeting Beings of Light, having a pre-
If so, consciousness can turn out to be older knowledge of future events, etc.) and OBE
than matter in space (3). or Out-of-Body Experiences reported by
subjects just after anaesthesia (in the form of
The introduction of complementarity in visualising surgical operations being conducted
quantum physics has facilitated the acceptance on their own bodies or visualising events at
that various models of reality can be regarded a distance) are reported to occur when the
as complementary rather than contradictory reticular activating system is ostensibly not

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