Is Science Catching Up to Vedanta? The Evolution of Consciousness Studies | Swami Sarvapriyananda

that this consciousness studies, what we are going to talk about, is a very, very ancient question, and this subject goes all the way back to the Upanishads.

I've often quoted Professor Evan Thompson in Waking, Dreaming, Being, in that book, where he says, consciousness studies did not start just now.

It started, in fact, 5,000 years ago on the Indo-Gangetic plains in the texts called the Upanishads.

And he says these texts are so important in the history of human thought.

They are so significant that really our history should be dated not from AD and BC, but it should be dated before Upanishads and after Upanishads.

So not a practical suggestion because the Upanishads don't have a specific date.

But what it means is that they are very, very significant.

And look, here is this.

The nature of consciousness, nature of existence, non-duality, everything in one short phrase.

The nature of ultimate reality is consciousness, existence, limitless.

Infinite consciousness and existence.

Now to unpack that, you get all of the Upanishads.

You unpack that, you get all of Vedanta, of Advaita Vedanta.

So it goes all the way back.

Swami Vivekananda, I was just reading yesterday, He gives context for this.

After all, in the Vedanta society, as spiritual seekers, why should we be interested in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, modern consciousness studies? Why? It doesn't seem to be directly connected with our concerns.

Swami Vivekananda said, I was reading yesterday, he says, the time is coming when those mental, the study of those mental phenomena which are called, which are labeled religion, those which are under the banner of religion, they must shake hands with, be harmonized in harmony with the material sciences.

The way he describes it is very interesting.

Those sciences which had their feet on the ground but their heads are already piercing the secrets of the heavens, beginning to pierce the secrets of the heavens.

That's the material sciences.

They must come together.

He says there will be a period of adjustment of sometimes painful acknowledgement of, you know, where we must give up something on both sides to come together.

The knowledge of what is within time and space, Vivekananda says, will one day be harmonized with that which is beyond time and space.

The knowledge of this world of duality and the knowledge of non-duality.

They must come together at one point.