Does Supreme Consciousness exist?

The first question ended with a fair objection. If the purpose of life is to reach the Infinite, we had better ask whether the Infinite exists, because a longing, however strong, proves nothing about its object. Elementary Philosophy raises this objection itself, straight after concluding that human dharma is the search for the Infinite.

One kind of proof is ruled out from the start. We measure land with chains, grain with scales and heat with a thermometer, and the instrument always has to suit the thing measured. Every instrument is built from matter, and what is claimed here is subtler than matter. So no laboratory reading will ever settle the question, either way. That leaves two routes: careful reasoning about something each of us knows at first hand, and direct experience.

The reasoning starts with seeing a book. The eyes do not see by themselves: under anesthesia they stay open and undamaged, and see nothing. It is the mind that sees, through them. Look more closely and the mind has parts. One part takes the shape of the book, one does the seeing, and one gives the feeling “I exist,” without which nothing could be seen at all. But that feeling is itself known. Something is aware that “I exist.” This knower, which watches the mind and is not a part of it, is what Ananda Marga philosophy calls the átman, unit consciousness. Every mind implies one. The one consciousness reflected in all of them is called Paramátman or Brahma: Cosmic Consciousness.

Reasoning can show that a witness must be there. It cannot show what the witness is like when it is known directly. For that, Ánanda Sútram points to experience. When the mind is wholly absorbed in consciousness it records nothing, because for that time no mind is left to record; but a deep bliss lingers after the mind returns, and that bliss, sútra 1-24 says, is the proof of the state. It is a proof the way an experiment is: open to anyone who does the work, and never a matter of taking someone else’s word. The practices that lead there are the subject of the fourth question.

If consciousness is real, what is it like? Ánanda Sútram opens with three words: Shivashaktyátmakaḿ Brahma, “Brahma is the composite of Shiva and Shakti.” Brahma is the whole, the Cosmic Entity. Shiva, also called Puruśa, is consciousness as witness: the knowing that is present in every entity and does nothing but know. Shakti, also called Prakrti, is the operative principle: the force that acts, shapes and binds.

Why two, and why one? Because a witness with nothing to witness, or a force with nothing in which to act, would make no sense. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti’s images are everyday ones: fire and its heat, or the two sides of a sheet of paper. You can speak of each side separately, but you cannot tear one side away and keep the other. Prakrti works in three ways, called the three guńas. Guńa means a rope, a binding principle: each one ties consciousness a little more tightly into form.

Where the force cannot bind consciousness at all, Brahma is called Nirguńa, without qualities. Where it does bind, Brahma is called Saguńa, with qualities, and that is where a universe begins. Elementary Philosophy compares the two to an ocean and an iceberg. The iceberg is the same water, frozen in one place, and the ocean around it stays free.

Where does the universe come from? The argument runs in three steps. First, if Brahma is infinite and has no beginning, nothing existed outside it from which a world could be made, so the material of the world can only be Brahma itself. Second, consciousness is subtle, and something wholly subtle cannot hold a solid world inside it like a seed. Third, there is one way a subtle thing produces solid shapes without containing them: the way a mind imagines. Sitting in one city, a person can picture a street in another, and while the picture lasts, the mind takes the shape of that street.

So in this philosophy the universe is a thought-projection of the Cosmic Mind. As Prakrti binds consciousness more tightly, the three steps of any thinking happen on a cosmic scale. Consciousness first feels “I am” (Mahattattva), then “I do” (Ahaḿtattva), and then takes the shape of what it is doing (citta, mind-stuff). Together these three are the Cosmic Mind. Its mind-stuff goes on thickening, and that thickening is the physical universe.

This outward movement, from subtle to crude, is called saiṋcara. It is the first half of a circle that Ánanda Sútram calls the Brahma Cakra, the Cosmic Cycle. Its center is Puruśottama, the nucleus consciousness: everything moves out from it, and everything is drawn back toward it.

As the binding grows tighter, the Cosmic mind-stuff becomes five fundamental factors, the mahábhútas. They are not chemical elements. They are five states of matter, each cruder than the one before, and they can be told apart by what our senses receive from them. Ether carries only sound. Air carries sound and can be felt. Fire can be seen as well. Liquid can be tasted too, and solid matter can be smelled. The more ways a thing can be sensed, the cruder it is.

This simple test explains the first point on this page. Every measuring instrument is made of these five factors, all of them crude, so none of them can measure consciousness, which is subtler than all five. Mind is subtler too: nothing about it can be touched or weighed, yet nobody doubts having one.

The solid factor is the far end of the outward flow: consciousness bound so tightly that it looks lifeless. A stone shows no sign of being conscious. In this philosophy it is consciousness asleep under the heaviest bond, and the story does not end there.

Then the movement turns. Solid matter is under so much pressure that forces clash inside it: some push outward and would break it apart, others pull inward and hold it together. Ánanda Sútram calls this play of forces práńa, energy. Where the inward pull wins, a body forms a center of its own, and where the surroundings allow it, life appears. The coordinated vital energy of a living body is called práńáh.

Where the clash is stronger still, some of the matter is ground so fine that it becomes subtler than ether. That subtlest stuff is mind; Ánanda Sútram calls its particles cittáńu, specks of mind-stuff. Mind, in other words, is born of matter. Materialist thinkers say the same, and Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti agrees with them this far. The difference is that here matter itself is consciousness in its crudest form, so nothing is produced out of nothing.

From there the inward movement, pratisaiṋcara, runs from crude to subtle. The first minds are almost all mind-stuff, citta, as in plants and simple creatures. Then the sense of doing (aham) develops, and then the pure sense of “I am” (mahat); in developed animals and in human beings all three are present. Each step of evolution is a clearer reflection of consciousness. A stone shows none, a plant a little, and a human being enough to ask where it all comes from.

Each individual mind, the unit mind, is a small part of the Cosmic Mind. In its properties it differs from the Cosmic Mind only in scope: both think, both feel, and both are lit by the same consciousness. Ánanda Sútram adds that Puruśottama is linked to each being individually and to all beings together, so no one is ever outside it.

This answers an obvious doubt. If the universe is a thought, is it unreal? No. A thought is not nothing: when a mind takes a shape, it really has taken that shape. And our minds are inside the Cosmic Mind, so what is real to the Cosmic Mind is real to us as well. We do not imagine the world. We are inside the imagining.

Ánanda Sútram puts the conclusion in one line: Brahma Satyaḿ jagadapi satyamápekśikam. The world is true, but relatively. It changes with time, place and person, so it cannot be the final truth; only consciousness, the witness of every change, does not change. This rules out two errors at once. One says that the world is all there is. The other says that the world is an illusion and does not matter. In Ananda Marga philosophy the world is real enough to work in and to serve, and not final enough to rest in.

Put the two halves together and you have the Brahma Cakra. Consciousness moves outward and becomes mind, then the five factors, then solid matter: the One becomes many. Then it moves inward, through life and mind, back toward its center: the many become One. Nothing falls outside the circle. Every atom and every creature is somewhere on it.

Why a universe at all? Elementary Philosophy gives a direct answer: the outward phase forms countless units of consciousness, and the inward phase exists to set every one of them free. In a talk late in life Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti adds a warmer reason. One entity alone would have no bliss, so the One became many, the way a family wants to grow.

Here the human being has a special place. Below the human level, plants and animals are carried along the way back by the will of the Cosmic Mind. In a human being, ego and will are developed enough to choose a direction: toward the subtle, which speeds the journey, or back toward the crude, which turns it around for a while. So the answers on this page are not abstract. Where we come from and where we are going turn out to be the same place, and a human being can walk that road knowingly. The next question asks what makes the walking hard.