ज्ञानाक्षर
The Hard Problem Of Consciousness: A Different Perspective Through Gyanmarg
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One of the most challenging questions in modern philosophy concerning consciousness is known as the “Hard Problem of Consciousness.” In general, this problem is presented as the question of how consciousness or subjective experience emerges from the physical brain and its physical processes. The brain consists of neurons that engage in electrical and chemical activities, process different kinds of information, and yet, alongside all these processes, we experience colours, tastes, pain, pleasure, sorrow, happiness, and a sense of our own existence. Science can describe these processes in great detail, but one fundamental question remains unanswered: Why is there experience associated with these physical processes at all? For example, we can understand how light enters the eye, activates retinal cells, sends signals to the brain, and triggers specific neural activities. We can even identify which parts of the brain become active during a particular experience. Yet, after all these explanations, one question remains: What exactly is the experience of seeing the colour red? Understanding the neural correlates of pain does not fully explain where the actual feeling of pain comes from. However, there may be an entirely different way of looking at this problem. Perhaps the problem itself lies in the question, “How does consciousness emerge from physical matter?” This question already assumes that physical matter and consciousness are two fundamentally different kinds of reality, and that consciousness emerged from matter at some later stage. If this underlying assumption is incorrect, the entire nature of the Hard Problem may change. From the perspective of Jnana Marga or Advaita, we can ask a more fundamental question: How do we actually come to know the matter that we consider separate from and independent of consciousness? When we see a stone, what is present before us is the experience of a stone in the form of colour, shape, and spatial dimensions. When we observe the body, the body too is known to us as an experience. Similarly, when scientists examine the brain and study its neurons and electrical activities, that brain is ultimately being known through seeing, touching, measuring, and thinking--all of which take place within consciousness. On the other hand, thoughts, memories, imagination, emotions, pleasure, and pain are generally classified as mental experiences. Thus, from an ordinary perspective, we seem to have two separate worlds: one external, physical world and another internal, mental world. But when we examine this distinction more deeply, a common characteristic emerges. Both are known. Both are present as experiences. From this perspective, it is no longer necessary to assume that the physical and the mental are two fundamentally different substances. The experience of the body is within consciousness, just as the experience of a thought is within consciousness. The experience of a stone is within consciousness, just as the experience of pain is within consciousness. Both the external world and the internal world are known through experience. This does not mean that stones, trees, bodies, or brains are merely imaginary or that they have no practical existence. At the level of everyday experience, they are undoubtedly real. We interact with them, measure them, and formulate scientific laws based on them. The question is not whether their practical existence should be denied. The real question is whether they can be regarded as an ultimate reality existing independently of consciousness, outside consciousness, when we have never directly known anything outside consciousness. We cannot step outside consciousness in order to know something. Whatever is known is necessarily known in some form of experience. Even the idea that “a physical world exists outside consciousness” is itself a thought that arises within consciousness. This is where the entire approach to the Hard Problem begins to change. From the materialist perspective, the question is how consciousness emerged from matter. But from the perspective of Jnana Marga, an even more fundamental question can be raised: What is the basis for assuming that matter exists independently of consciousness? If all our knowledge of matter appears within consciousness, then assuming matter to be an independent fundamental reality and subsequently attempting to explain how consciousness emerged from that matter may only make the problem more complicated rather than solve it. It is somewhat like first assuming that an object exists independently of experience and then asking where the experience of that object comes from. At this point, we must return to the fundamental structure of our knowledge itself. Everything before us is known in some form. Everything is an experience, and experiences keep changing. The body changes, thoughts change, emotions change, memories change, external objects change, and even our understanding of the body keeps changing. Yet, for all these changes to be known, there must be knowing. This is where the concept of the Witness (Sakshi) comes into the picture. The Witness is not an object that can be seen, touched, or located somewhere in the same way as other objects. If we turn the Witness itself into an object, the question immediately arises: Who is the one that knows that object? The question would simply begin all over again. Therefore, the Witness does not mean some invisible entity or a subtle individual sitting inside the body. It refers to that by virtue of which all experiences are known. From this perspective, consciousness does not necessarily have to be something that is physically produced. Things that are produced are those that did not exist before but came into existence due to certain causes. However, if consciousness is itself the basis within which the concepts of creation, change, causality, time, matter, body, and brain are known, then treating consciousness as something produced by another object may be a category mistake. Here, we find an interesting reversal between Jnana Marga and the modern debate on consciousness. The modern Hard Problem asks: How does subjective experience emerge from the physical activity of the brain? Jnana Marga can ask: Within what is the brain, which we consider a physical object, itself known? Have we created a problem by first assuming that experience and the experiencer are two separate entities? This does not mean that neuroscience becomes meaningless. The scientific study of the relationship between the brain and consciousness is entirely meaningful. Brain injuries can alter experiences, drugs can change mental states, and deep correlations have been found between neural activity and conscious states. However, correlation and ultimate explanation are not the same thing. Establishing a relationship between a particular brain state and a particular experience does not finally explain why a physical process is itself subjective experience, or why experience should emerge from it in the first place. Therefore, it is possible that the deeper crisis of the Hard Problem does not lie in the question, “How did consciousness emerge from matter?” but rather in the more fundamental question, “Is matter an ultimate reality independent of consciousness?” If both matter and mental experiences are experiences appearing within consciousness, then the rigid distinction we ordinarily make between the physical and the mental no longer remains absolute. The physical and the mental may be different categories of experience, but their fundamental status is the same: both are known. The question then is no longer how consciousness entered inert matter. Instead, the question becomes: Where and how is the inertness of what we call matter actually known? The brain that we call the producer of consciousness--within what is the existence of that brain known? And the consciousness that we consider a product of the brain--is not the entire concept of the brain itself present within consciousness? Perhaps this is why the problem of consciousness cannot be adequately addressed by keeping it entirely within the domain of physical science. Science can provide extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the physical changes associated with experience. But Jnana Marga goes a step further back and asks: Who is the knower of this world that we call physical? And is it even possible to treat the knower itself as an object of knowledge? Ultimately, the matter may be quite simple. Ordinarily, we think that first there was matter, then the brain evolved from it, consciousness emerged from the brain, and only then did the experience of the world become possible. Jnana Marga invites us to reverse this entire narrative and look at it from a different perspective. It says: First, examine where and how you know matter, the brain, the body, thoughts, and the world. If the knowledge of all these things takes place within consciousness, then considering consciousness to be merely a product of matter is not the only possible explanation.