Being Conscious

WHEN WE ASK THE QUESTION, “Is the universe conscious”, sooner or later, a collateral question also arises. For whom is it conscious? Or, even more fundamentally, who is—or would be—conscious of it?

For without a subject, even if there are objects, who would be conscious of them?

That, indeed, was the crux of the famous conversation between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore. Their meeting took place on July 14, 1930, in Caputh, a small Brandenburg village outside Berlin. Luckily, this fascinating conversation was recorded and exercises our curiosity to us to this day. I wrote about it myself in a paper discussing another famous debate between the Mahatma and the Poet, “‘Natural Supernaturalism?’ The Tagore- Gandhi Debate on the Bihar Earthquake.” Originally published in 2011 in The Journal of Hindu Studies, I included a revised version in my book Cultural Politics in Modern India (2016). More recently, Deepak Chopra in You Are the Universe (2017), co-authored by Menas C Kafatos, also returns to it.

Einstein sets the ball rolling by asking Tagore, “Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?”

Tagore responds, “Not isolated. The infinite personality of man comprehends the universe. . . the truth of the Universe is human truth.” Tagore goes to say, “Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them, but matter may seem to be solid without the links in spaces which unify the individual electrons and protons… The entire universe is linked up with us, as individuals, in a similar manner—it is a human universe.”

Though Einstein concedes that Tagore is right as far as the perception of beauty is concerned, he finds it hard to go along with the poet when it comes to truth or the nature of reality itself. No wonder, because Tagore’s “human universe” theory goes quite contrary to the main thread of materialist science.

In a way, the conscious universe theory may be considered a variation of Tagore’s human universe theory. Because science is very much a human activity as are questions such as “Is the universe conscious?” Other creatures do not ask such questions.

But that does not mean that they are not conscious. It is only that they perceive the universe differently from us even when they share our habitat as well as a degree of understanding and communication with us. This is not only true of our very human-like pets, but also of non-domesticated species such as monkeys or squirrels.

Even lower down in the neurological scale, reptiles and insects are aware of us as we are of them. Our feathered friends on treetops or higher up in the sky also perceive our presence, usually keeping a safe distance from us. Can anyone deny that they are conscious of us and of their surroundings, even if not to the degree and manner akin to us?

That is why when we ask if the universe would be the same without us, we are falling into the familiar trap of naïve realism. Both in science and in daily life. We imagine that the world would continue to be the same even if we are not in it only because we assume that there would be others like us to perceive it even if we ourselves are absent or removed from it.

But this idea that there will always be others like us is actually the admission that we cannot conceive of a universe without consciousness being a part of it. Or, at least, a universe without conscious beings in it.

For if there were no conscious beings, who would perceive the universe in the first place?

What it mostly comes down to is human or human-like conscious beings. Because when we think of consciousness, we don’t necessarily think of lizards or ants or lichen. Our perceptions are so entrapped in and circumscribed by how we, as human subjects, perceive and experience the universe.

It is partly this “human error” that clouds our thinking of consciousness. I would dare to call this, contra David Chalmers, the real hard problem of consciousness.

Imagine this. You have been out of touch with a dear friend, your elder by several years. She lives far away, perhaps in another country. You speak to each other on important occasions, such as birthdays or the New Year. Suddenly, you stop hearing from her. You try to call, but there is no answer. You send an email, but it also goes unanswered.

You are worried. You are not sure if your friend is all right. After all, she is over 85 years of age. You try to call her again. When the phone rings, you have a sinking feeling.

At that moment, can you be certain whether your friend is alive or dead? Should we call this the human version of Erwin Schrödinger’s cat call?

In fact, at any point of time, can we be sure that even a person in the same house, but in another room, is still alive? Let me push the point a bit: whether they are alive or not is not even a question till we think of them.

To put it differently, as long as you are not conscious of something, it does not exist. At least to you.

Don’t we notice this time and again in our daily lives? There may be the most beautiful fresh rose blooming in your garden, but it doesn’t exist for you till you become aware of it. Or, till you do not notice the glorious colour of the sky at sunset, you are not alive to it.

Without further ado, it is time to offer my “consciousness sutra”. Let me call it, pace Chalmers, the soft sutra of consciousness.

It comes with a harder version too.

The soft version first: what you become conscious of becomes conscious to you. It follows that what you stop being conscious of ceases to be for you.

And the more radical version: what you become conscious of becomes conscious of you.

I hope this answers the question “Is the universe conscious?”

Albert EinsteinbeautyBeing ConscioushumanismperceptionRabindranath Tagorereality