Reincarnation 3 – Five intuitive contemplations for self-discovery
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our discussion on the mystery of reincarnation part three. We are discussing today about the phenomena of consciousness.
Consciousness as we discussed in our last talk based on David Calmer's quote that it is most familiar and yet most incomprehensible. The phenomena of consciousness eludes scientific definition and yet that does not mean that it is in any way unreal. We can all intuit the point, the truth that we are conscious and we can intuit that others are conscious, that all of us have consciousness is something which you can intuitively understand and intuition is a foundational mode of acquiring knowledge.
An authority no lesser than Albert Einstein himself has stated the value of the intuitive mind. He said that the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. So what we intuit that we try to understand rationally and we intuit the existence of consciousness even if through rational mainstream material science we will not be able to quantify or define consciousness still it is a reality.
Now what are the intuitive ways in which we can understand that there is consciousness and that there is something which is the source of consciousness. So let us look at five simple intuitive meditations. The first who perceives a rose.
When we look at something say we see a beautiful rose the visual information goes from our eyes through the optic nerve into the brain but who is it the brain is ultimately simply chemicals whether the brain can perceive or not we will discuss a little later in detail but suffice it to say that the brain in terms of composition is made of the same chemicals as same atoms and molecules similar atoms and molecules as the rest of the body. So the it cannot perceive just as the hand itself cannot perceive there can be information that can go in but the experience of seeing a red rose that is the essence of consciousness. A computer can be made to see I see a red rose I see a red color or I see a red rose but the computer does not experience redness.
So what is it that perceives and experiences? Now if we say it is just the brain then the brain is present in the dead body also and yet the dead body doesn't experience. So we can intuit there is something within us which makes us conscious and which enables us to experience things. What is that? The second intuition that we can do is who is the owner of the body? When we look point to something which we possess that's my house that's my car you know we point to things and say that's my similarly this is my finger this is my head so now we all we are just as we are possessors of the car or the house similarly we are possessors of our finger or head but where am I? So we say even some people may say that this is that I am this but then we say my body so who is the I that is different from the body and somebody may say this is just a matter of are we quibbling over words no we are not this is not just a matter of verbal gymnastics or verbal prestidigitation actually it is a experiential reality just as we could our car could be in front of us and we would understand I am different from that car suppose we had an accident god forbid is accident happening but suppose the accident happens and say a finger gets cut off now we could see the finger lying outside and that is my finger now in this case we can clearly understand that I am different from that finger so now that could happen to the whole hand the hand could be cut off and the hand could be right in front of us in some sometimes in some surgeries in the brain we'll discuss about brain surgery much more detail later actually the the patient is not even aware that my brain is being operated so sometimes a part of the brain can be brought out and can be shown to the patient this is your brain so now we can understand I am different from my brain so it's not just a matter of words but the words indicate a deeper reality that there is something within us that is different from everything around us that is from our body and the things around us so who is the owner of the body who is the I who says that this is my hand this is my legs who is it who exerts owner's rights over all these the third meditation is who's gone when a person dies we say he has gone away she has passed away so now if we were just the body and the body is still there right in front of us so the body is still there why do we say that the person has passed away because we understand that something vital within the person is no longer there and we know that that vital thing within the person was the real person and that real person has gone so there is something inside the body which is different from us and that has now left the body similarly we could have another intuitive meditation when the body changes who is the I that remains the same from the moment we are born till the moment we die our body keeps undergoing continuous changes there is every single cell in the body is changing even brain cells which were earlier thought to be unchanging now science has discovered that even they change even they are replaced they grow and they change so what does this imply Dr. Pim Van Lommel in his book the science of near-death experience explains our cells may be seen as our body's physical building blocks yet every day some 50 billion cells in our body are broken down and regenerated this is the equivalent of 500,000 cells per second every two weeks all of the molecules and atoms in our body cells are replaced and yet we experience our body as a continuity how can we explain this experience of continuity of the ever-changing body so if we are the body then the body is completely changing and yet we remain unchanging so where is the where is the I who is the I and where is the I that is the unchanging locus of awareness that is something which we need to introspect in order to be able to understand what is the unchanging I within the changing situations all around me so another the fifth introspection that we could do is am I just a bag of chemicals now our body is made up of nitrogen carbon and these are the sulfur potassium and these are the chemicals now does sulfur potassium carbon do all these sound like you it's a lot of water in our body so do we say that I am watery you know during the course of our life a lot of water comes into the body and leaves the body and yet despite the water's entry and exit we remain the same so we if we did a sum of all the chemicals that are there in our body we would find that those chemicals don't amount to much we they are probably less than what a person spends in one day for basic substance and intrinsically we know that we are something much more precious when a person is about to die we are ready to spend millions of rupees to save that person so why is that what is it that makes the body with its chemicals alive what is it that gives enormous value to a person when the body is not of that much value another intuitive meditation that we could do is from the phenomena of dreams if we were the body itself then every night when we dream we may dream that we are being chased by a tiger or we may dream that we are cavorting with the princess whatever but now in this case our we are if he has the body are lying in bed and the body is not experiencing anything and yet we experience so if we think about this we will understand that the body is not the experiencer if the body were the experiencer then we should not be experiencing dreams when the body is not experiencing anything so there is something non-material to our identification what that is who is the experiencer that is something which we need to introspect and discover after is in after these intuitive contemplations in our next session we will discuss hardcore scientific research that points to a similar conclusion that neurochemical explanations that means explanations of consciousness in terms of brain phenomena how they fall woefully inadequate in explaining the phenomena of consciousness.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.