Movers and Shapers

At first sight, dualism appears palpable in the world of Mahavisnu, from whom the universes eminates. There is consciousness and there is matter, two different substances very much unlike one another. Consciousness is the mover, while matter is moved. In today’s world some would be quick to ask that if consciousness moves matter, why can’t we observe the interaction between the two? Perhaps the best answer to this query, which implies that dualism is false and consciousness is not causal, lies in exploring the depths of the implications of the very power to observe. In other words, the act of observation itself is above matter’s pay-grade, and when it is understood as such through spiritual practice, the reality of consciousness’ causal role becomes evident. One has to do the spiritual math—sadhana.

However, in Mahavisnu’s world, matter, having been moved, also moves itself, and to a large extent. The Gita states that through misidentification with matter the jiva thinks that it is the doer of that which is in actuality done by matter.¹ In other words, the brain is responsible for much of what we mistakenly think to be a product of our volition—for much, but not for everything. Nor are we a brain. The neural causal connections discovered by modern science are as influential to our behavior as neuroscience claims to be, but they are not the cause of consciousness itself. Consciousness is only dependent upon the brain in the manner that a driver’s speed is dependent upon the particular car he is driving. Consciousness expresses itself relative to the body it identifies with. And it experiences the world vicariously, witnessing through neuronal causal connections involving interactions between subtle (mind) and gross (brain) matter, which in and of themselves do not experience at all. And as macrocosmically there is power in the glancing—the witnessing of Mahavisnu—microcosmically there is also power in the witnessing of the individual observer, the jivatma. Indeed, often something particular happens only because someone is present as a witness.

Thus, arguably substance dualism in the strictest sense is not entirely at play in Mahavisnu’s world. While consciousness is causal, at the same time matter causes much of what we mistakenly attribute to consciousness, and furthermore both consciousness and matter are not entirely different substances. Matter “shapes” the extent to which consciousness is expressed and in this sense alone consciousness is partially dependent upon matter, an idea not foreign to a number of today’s prominent thinkers.² Furthermore, both matter and consciousness are saktis of Bhagavan and therefore the world of Mahavisnu is a nondual/monistic world consisting of God (the energetic) and his saktis (its energies) that have no existence independent of him. Jiva-sakti and maya-sakti are different from one another in that one is animate and the other inanimate, one conscious the other unconscious, but they are united as energies of their energetic source, with which they are both one and different.


1. Bhagavad-gita 3.27
2, Edelmann, Johnathan B. Hindu Theology and Biology, Oxford Press 2012 p. 88