Page 31 - NAMAH-Oct-2022

Namah Consciousness — the Need for a New Paradigm

Ostensibly, the whole gamut of evidence
cannot be accounted using materialistic
tools; a significant amount can only be
acknowledged through non-materialistic
paradigms, albeit, through some technique
of consciousness.

Pre-programmed antecedents

It is true that science has been able to demystify
denote “a dynamic intuitive conviction in many of our myths that have emerged from
the inner being of the truth of supersensible ignorance. That is how psychiatry was freed
things which cannot be proved by any from the clutches of witchcraft. There are
physical evidence but which are a subject also unique situations when science itself
of experience (9).” Such an experiential ends up with puzzles which can be illumined
faith cannot merit an ‘a priori denial’ on by spiritual insights. One is reminded of
the ground that it contradicts scientific the famous experiment by neuro-surgeon
theories because “it rests on a great mass Benjamin Libet and physiologist Hans
of human experience which has been Kornhuber, who demonstrated that the
accumulating through the centuries and the brain was in a state of readiness potential
millenniums as well as the personal intuitive a full three-quarters of a second before a
perception (10).” Rather than denouncing subject exercised his free-will to initiate a
faith, it would be more judicious to study particular action.
and understand the supra-physical and
supra-rational techniques of acquisition of Ramachandran generalised that it is the
knowledge which have hitherto remained brain who is really in charge and what we
in the domain of mysticism. call free-will is in all possibility a post-hoc
rationalisation, albeit a delusion (12)! Even
It is expected that the first rule of science without this experiment, many people all
should be to account for all the data, over the world would vouchsafe that a
experience, information, and facts that moment before a vehicular accident, one
can be gathered for a particular topic. If sometimes felt uncanny or uneasy and
a scientific theory cannot account for all made the correct movement to prevent
the facts, it may represent a limited, even a mishap. This fact, that the brain is in
if useful way of thinking, but not the final readiness potential even before an action is
truth. The materialistic equation of mind conceived and executed, was not unknown
with the brain is inadequate as it does not to the spiritual tradition.
take into cognisance all the data, facts and
experiences. Even from the scientific point One of Sri Aurobindo’s Aphorisms written
of view, it is an incomplete endeavour to in 1913 stated that, “Men see events as
simply acknowledge materialism without unaccomplished, to be striven for and effected.
considering all the evidence (11). This is false seeing; events are not effected,

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