At the “Gaurchandrika” of my article I thought of two classes of readers who would object to my approach. One of the two seems to fit you the best - those who have a solid acquaintance with matters spiritual and do not like to dissect them.

But you are on very solid grounds. If you have Vedanta in your heart (generally after one or more bouts with at least “Sabikalpa Samadhi”) then you find yourself beyond all intellectual debate and discussion. As a matter of fact Prof. Sobottka of the U. of Va (whose book, “A Course in Consciousness” appears in and deals quite a bit with Quantum Mechanics) once said to me, “You folks are trying explanations when there is nothing to explain”. And he too was right.

But I have not found truth yet. And since you quoted Sri Ramakrishna, let me remind you that he went through major practices, both with Totapuri and with Bhairabi Ma - and I believe with others. So he was working towards something - at least to convince himself and others that what he started with was right.

There is a major risk at quoting the Vedanta as beyond all effort and understanding before complete enlightenment - that of being trapped in hypocrisy. So my choice (at least till my own experience dictates otherwise) is to understand and explain what the Vedanta is saying (and I have been told by scholars that in addition to some of the Upanishads if not all, one needs to include the Brahmasutra and indeed the Gita) in terms of our other experiences and understanding. And since the Gita has detailed instructions on meditation and the different Yogas, I would prefer not to accuse Shankara and Vivekananda of being off the mark.

I have indicated, at least at the end of my article that I am directing my article to those who either lead and follow in the path of science. And I would like to defend my article as an effort in that direction. The reason I chose this audience is two-fold: (1) I am in the sciences and hence hope to speak that language credibly and (2) Scientists, as the present-day leaders of thought need to receive my message (vide ultra)

Before I start, let me fall into one temptation - of answering your question about why I did not include string theory. I believe the question was put rhetorically with a bit of sarcasm; but the best way to answer that would be to take the question seriously and answer it honestly. So let me do that.

First, I do not know string theory to any depth, and I have not seen anybody who knows it in depth say anything to interpret its results in the way we are (again, at www.swc.com/hswift/swc ) by positing consciousness as the fundamental ontological entity. I do believe, and I think correctly, that string theory is a development on quantum theory (or is it quantum electrodynamics?) - once more built on the interpretation of wave amplitude as probability (Heisenberg’s theory is not on that basis, but I believe that his theory gives identical results with Schroedinger’s). So merely mentioning quantum theory was enough for me - I was merely following Goswami in putting some Ontological bones on the Copenhagen interpretation of the wave-particle duality.

I do not believe I mentioned EPR - though I know that some people do. I would have quoted it if the need arose. But EPR also is inside quantum theory, although it started as a thought experiment to challenge it. And Alpert Et al’s experiment I believe did indicate the correctness of quantum mechanics in that respect.

But please realize that I did not mention EPR. So I do not see why you had to raise EPR in your critique of my article. As I have asked some previous correspondents, let me ask you - are you responding to what I wrote or to what you thought I wrote?

Let me continue on what I did write. I did not conclude logically that there is an universal consciousness. You will probably agree that no axiom of science is concluded logically. Newton did not “see, feel or measure” (to quote you) the gravitational field “to conclude logically” that gravitation is the cause of the planetary trajectories. What he did (as all scientists do) is to exhibit ad hoc that if one constructs certain axioms then many observational results can be deduced logically from them. It would be clear to any student of logic that the same set of observations can be deduced from various different axiom systems. The choice of the theory agreed upon depends to a very great extent on the paradigm of science accepted at the time. Kuhn, in “The structure of scientific revolution” has described what amount of strain science endures before there is a change of paradigm. I have discussed some such shifts in classical physics in the past just to make this point. You may recall that I had decided early in the article not to try to do things logically - not because logic is irrelevant (perish the thought!) but that it is not logic but the tension between paradigms and observations that guides the formation of theories.

Hence my use of Goedel’s result - the continuous choice between alternative extensions of theories to accommodate undecidable statements, the resulting risk of making the wrong choice based on risky paradigms (and still facing incompleteness - I have not discussed the Phenomenologists insistence on direct experience and its relation with Eastern thoughts: that was not my line of discussion in the article. But given a knowledgeable person to talk to: that is another line to yogic practices one can discuss).

By the way: you probably know that Pravabananda and Isherwood’s annotation of Patanjali discusses things on Vedantic lines although Patanjali himself was a follower of the Sankhya school. They refused to enter the debate, and so have I. My own belief is that the Quantum Mechanical line of reasoning about consciousness is much more along the Sankhya lines - but then, I am no authority on philosophy).

Chaos theory I needed to bring Sheldrake’s idea of Morphogenetic fields in line with Goswami’s view of the separation of individual consciousness from universal consciousness. (Biologists have treated Sheldrake’s work even less kindly than you have treated my article. They didnot call it just “hilarious”, they called it “fit for burning”. Not being a biologist, I did not feel obliged to follow them). Sheldrake’s argument deals with a different phenomenon is science (also studied by people interested in large systems) - that of emergent properties of a system which are entirely different from the properties of the components. The theory if the components predict the possibility of several stable states of the system. As to what state the system takes is very strongly dependent on initial conditions, which themselves are subject to quantum uncertainties. It is here that Chaos theory shows us even a small difference in the collapse of the probability can lead to entirely different system configurations. That is where Sheldrake brought in the concept of the Morphogenetic Field guiding the configuration leading to the correct morphogenesis. I confess that my discussion of this phenomenon in my article was even more sketchy than what I am giving here - both paucity of knowledge and time dictated that.

You are absolutely right in complaining that words and concepts do not establish truth. On the other hand, they often establish the way people behave. And that behavior, as well as its repercussions on the health of a society, is something I wanted to emphasize (although it seems you either did not read that part or did not find it of interest).

If I have a quarrel with anything in science, it is with the confusion some people feel between scientific rationality (I realize that rationality is a mere concept which is of no use to the Atman, but I have already confessed to not being in communion with Atman at all - so please allow me to continue with unreal things) and materialism, i.e. the belief that everything depends on the properties of matter. I have said a number of times in my article that this belief is not included among any of the axioms (“hypotheses”, “laws”) of science - it is merely a mind set which has guided scientific work to date. Having said that, I stated that the idea of quantum collapse by observation (by the materials of the sensory system of bodies) poses a conundrum which disappears if the primacy of consciousness is accepted as a scientific axiom. I have agreed that in doing this, we may fall into some paradoxes regarding the identity of the part and the whole (the very idea of “Tat-twam-asi”) - and I have argued (concepts again, but please let us not dwell on that - I have already explained my reason for that: and also the reason why you go to face your classes every day) that we need to accept it to go beyond the incompleteness of logic. I have tried to justify to the scientist the concept of “Karma” in terms Goswami’s result in “Quantum Mechanics for Observer Systems”, Physics Essays, 5 (1992), pp. 526-529. Then I have mentioned chaos theory (see above) to unify this with Sheldrake’s Morphogenettic Field, and then with a jump of imagination, identify the morphogenetic field of the created universe with God. Many flights of imagination here (I have carried out no detqailed calculaions - my hope is that some serious scientists will eventually either put some meat on these bones or demolish the bones).

But instead of all this, I would like to draw your attention to a different part of my article - a part to which none of my critics so far has even paid any attention.

It is my belief (which I have aired, if not established in my article) that modern society in the westernized countries (which probably includes the entire world, except perhaps a few small aboriginal pockets and perhaps downtrodden Tibet) is influenced strongly by science, which have been identified with materialism. Our entire view of life therefore circles around material possessions; our self image is that of some kind of advanced machine. Things like idealism, love, compassion are some kind of epiphenomena arising out of the need for evolutionary survival or at best, some epiphenomena of the brain. I also believe that this view of the world does not lead to a stable, happy society. And I would not describe modern society as a stable, happy one. Yet, this form of society is considered as one running along scientific lines - scientists are the leaders of thought to-day. It is therefore my belief that unless the scientists disavow materialism, society will eventually destroy itself. I have argued for a spirit-centered (and perhaps I in my ignorance have not made any distinction between consciousness and the spirit) science.

I do not think I need to write any more. Thanks for reading my article. I would request you earnestly (since you yourself are a scientist just like me) to read the article once more with some sympathy and compassion.