Descartes' conclusion that humans are devoid of conscious experience runs counter to the deeply rooted sense in all of us that we all have conscious experience—quallia, sentience, sapience—and that such experience is the essence of any meaningful life. John Searle says it well when he writes, “ . . . if your theory results in the view that consciousness does not exist, you have simply produced a reductio ad absurdum of your theory.”

Andrei Linde is the co-inventor of the theory of eternal inflation, which holds that the universe expands or inflates very quickly at first and that this sort of event may have occurred many, many times, perhaps an infinite number of times, in a universe that is constantly self-reproducing. Linde is a physics professor at Stanford University. Russian born, his spiritual attraction lies more with Hinduism than the Abrahamic religions.

Brahman, Paramatma, and Bhagavan are well known Vedantic terms referring to the Absolute—terms that are often considered synonymous. However, while Gaudiya Vaishnavas agree that Brahman, Paramatma, and Bhagavan are different names for the Absolute, they emphasize that the three are, at the same time, not synonymous. They are God’s effulgence, his manifestation as the oversoul of the world, and his form for lila in the world beyond, respectively. The Gaudiyas further contend that the former two manifestations arise from the latter.

We might translate Gaudiya Vedanta’s acintya bhedabheda as “trans-rational monistic dualism.” It is a form of substance dualism, but one in which the natural world (maya-sakti) is also one with consciousness (jiva-sakti), despite their larger difference from one another. They are one with one another in that they are both saktis of Bhagavan. They are different from one another in that one is experiential and the other is non-experiential.

We yearn for unity, but we also yearn for diversity. So if we move from one polar opposite to the other, is this uncommon knowledge? To deny diversity in the name of unity is a shallow idea of unity. In musical terminology, we see harmony. What is harmony? Is it one note? No, it is many notes. The more notes that are harmonized, the better. It is one song, but it is full of many notes. So, systems of thought, like Adwaita Vedanta, say that relative to this one note, you and I, we are all that thing and that’s the end of the story. Jiva Gosvami says, that’s true, we are that, but there’s a whole lot more to the story. And this more makes for a truth that is inherently beautiful, a truth that we can live in and easily embrace.