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Problem of consciousness
For Bernard Baars who developed the global workspace theory it is an original fascination of the human thought and only when the question is a personalized one (mine ,yours)the question of Mind-body paradox arises and the dialogues of this dualism is like the dialogue of the deaf,and will go on for ever without arriving at a solution.For Ned Block it is the technicolour phenomenology.For David Chalmers who coined the term hard problem ,it has to be looked in the third person perspective of science and not in the first person perspective .Science is objective and consciousness is subjective according to him.For Francis crick ,the easiest way is to talk about qualia,while DanDennettsay we have to get rid of qualia altogether.These are just some examples of how the world’s best brains look at consciousness as given in Susan Blackmore’s book conversations on consciousness.

I have looked at human consciousness both from the subjective and the objective way,as suggested by the scientists and try to correlate my personal consciousness with the consciousness of the best brains of the world,both ancient and modern.
For this I analyse my visions(lucid visions during naadalayayoga),my dream visions,and also my cognitive powers in various subjects that span from art to science,from 6000BC scriptures and cave writings to most modern science concepts in various branches.
This is what we in Indian Advaitha philosophy call swanubhoothy(one’s personal experience)compared to the world’s experience(para anubhoothy)When you look at your own consciousness and try to communicate to our fellow travelers in the journey of life naturally we have to use the term I (first person)or Aham in Sanskrit.Then when we compare that with the world’s experience we understand the biological I (aham)is the part and parcel of the cosmic Aham which we call the brahma and hence the dictum of Aham Brahmasmi.(I am the cosmic I).I am not drawing any comparison to the china brain of the modernist here.But if you think a little deeply,the Indian Aham brahmasmi treats each individual brain(not only of humans,but of other living things and even of nonliving things though they do not possess a brain but the essential elements and atomic structures for the building blocks of our biological world)and every object in the universe as part of a coordinate or correlated neuronal network of the cosmic purusha (Brahma).
In my study ,I have included Jyothisha (astronomy,cosmology,mathematics,astrophysics,quan tum mechanics)music,protomusic,linguistics ,protolanguages and protocultures of the world,medicine and protomedicine of the world,etc.For these I have taken a few brains from the east and the west and studied their writings in detail(which are their thoughts and hence consciousness).
The questions whether brain is causing an experience or an experience is causing a brain activity,whether the neuronal event is the cause or the behaviour is the cause of the event had been controversial from time immemorial.In my childhood there was a famous Tamil song which asked
Kodi asainthathum katru vanthathaa
Kaatru vanthathum kodi asainthathaa
(did the movement of the te.0ndril cause the air movement(wind)or did the wind caused the tendril to move?)When Francis Crick ask the question did the sunrise cause the **** to call or the cock’s call caused the sunrise,I just remembered this song.So the nobel laureate and codiscoverer of the DNA structure francsis Crick’s consciousness has asked the same type of question like the artist poet Kannadasan and their brains though functioning in entirely different spheres of activity,and though they live in two continents and speak different languages ,have something in common .This ekam in Anekam(unity in diversity )is the beauty of our world.This is the answer my consciousness gives me and what I infer from the experiences of others.The conscious knowledge and unconscious knowledge in the global workspace theory is really interesting.Stephan Laberge’s self transformation through dreaming has several parallels in history ,as well as in my biological life experiences.The meditational experiences,imagery and lucid states created by music is my favourite experiment with myself and with many of my acquaintances and students and patients. I am very much impressed by the binocular rivalry .In 1890 William james raised this subject first in the western scientific world.The image of a monkey’s face in left eye,and that of a sunburst in right eye,you cannot see both at the sme time,you see it either as the one or the other.This later on found place in the duck-rabbit picture of Wittgenstein,and in quantum mechanics appeared as schrodinger’s cat ..This is an image we often see in advaitha as Rajjusarpa.there is a piece of rope which is seen as rope by someone.Another(either due to dim light or lack of eyesight )see it as a snake and is afraid of it.Once the man understands his folly and recognizes it as a rope,the truth of sarpa(snake)vanish.The truth is sometimes like that .When you are conscious of the rope you are not conscious of the serpent.when you are conscious of the serpent you are not conscious of the rope.This allows to compare the two state s of dream and consciousness.or an unconscious representation and a conscious representation.Just as any other scientific question this is a testable question.
When I was dealing with the theory of multiple intelligences and its uses in educational system I found that some people have a predominant musical intelligence ,others have a predominant logical mathematical intelligence and so on.Why this disparity?Because some of the brain areas may be having a better function.Gerald Edelman had put forth a Neural Darwinism theory which postulates cooperation and competition between massive number of neurons in the brains and the winning neurons (coalition)are the conscious ones,the others are also functioning but not in the limelight of the stage of activity.So all of us have all the potentials for development of artistic and scientific faculties and possibility of one developing only one faculty is due to the neural Darwinism or dynamic cor e hypothesis. Suppose there is a person in whom the two sets of neuronal coalition for art and science(we will say ,right and left)function equally balanced,and none is taking the upper hand he/she can understand or cognise both arts and sciences and in such a brain the duality of art and science /spirituality and worldly life can get nullified.Budha,Krishna,Christ etc ,the lucid intervals of meditational life of several people in the past and present including could be such states as a postulate. This is what Indian and Chinese and Kabbala meditational techniques claim.
The variations in sensations make worth beautiful,just as variations in human personalities,variations in fauna and flora ,multicolours and multiple arts and intelligences decorate our life and makes it enjoyable.Understanding the basic unity and ,then enjoying the multiplicities of our earth around is probably what a human being can do to lead a blissful existence.
How do we discriminate a singer’s voice from others?Some say because of familiarity.But how it became familiar?They say because he/she has been singing for several years and we have been listening all these years.But ,how could he stay in the field so long with this much competition,and how come that the listeners like us still are fascinated by the same voice,and we do hear the same voice?How in the first place this voice became like this?
The singer’s voice is what it is because it has a particular power spectrum.And that makes one voice attractive and another not attractive.The power spectrum is a modern word in English language.The musicology of India in Sanskrit will use the word sakthy for power and Varna for spectrum.The good spectrum (suvarnam)according to saamaveda traditions is what we cal l the swara.But swara is not the voice of a particular individual alone.It is the spectrum of saptaswara or the octave as we call it now.Now the second line of questions come.How do you discriminate between the different notes in a spectrum?All music lovers claim they can discriminate the notes.But how?
Each note has an internal structure,just like the colours of a spectrum.Our brain is sensitive to that internal structure and that is how we discriminate the notes.The sound of middle C is a compression wave train of frequency 263 .If C 7 is played it is actually not a single note but a C,E,G and B flat played simultaneously.It is actually a fournote ,or C7 is foursome,and chathusruthy.Just like the colour yellow which is a composite colour..,an activation vector of three different types of cells.
When we speak of a vector of three or four types of cells instead of thrishruthy or chathusruthy,we come to certain properties and operations like changing the length of vector by rotation of it.
Now we are talking about consciousness and we are speaking of hearing(acoustics),seeing,(optics)colours(chromati cs) (,sruthy,darsana,varna),in terms of mathematical formula.This is exactly what was done by the Sanskritspeaking ancestors.
When we look at someone elses brain,don’t think that we are seeing his/her brain ,understand that we are seeing or having an awareness of our own brain.When Ilook at Sankara’s brain,or at Einstein’s brain or Tyagaraja’s brain through their works and life, I am looking at my own cognition ,my own brain and its awareness,and consciousness.This process of selfawareness ,can happen with conscious effort,or unconsciously in sleep or altered states.The fact is knowing our brain events by virtue of their belonging to one’s own conscious biography ,as they are themselves ,from inside ,by living them,by selfreflectively being them.(or because they have a internal structure we recognize them and are aware of them).Intrinsic attributes are disclosed by awareness.They are selfrevealed ,in the sense that our own awareness reveals them to us,but for that revelation a specific and appropriate type of conscious activity or lifestyle may be needed as yoga science teaches us. To directly gaze at our own self,without allowing the mind to wander is the technique.and for this ,the best is music ,since it is inherent in human beings to forget everyother thing when one listens to music and enter a transcendental plane.This naadalayayoga of saamaveda or Gandharva music was the essential teaching of Krishna also.
Awareness is likened to a lamp or light sweeping around the inner landscape of the brain by modern thinkers and scientists.The ancient also likened it to a lamp ,and to the allrevealing light of the sun.The light is only revealing the already present qualities or parts of the landscape of our brain.The quality of awareness is already there in the brain.It is the being.Not becoming.And it is revealed to us in a flash of lightening .We do not see the searchlight .We see only see what the light reveals.
Translating that into a mathematical language , which the ancients used to measure the stars and observables of the cosmos(Rasichakra)where real numbers exist on a infinite horizontal line and complex on a vertical The negative sign show corresponding imaginery numbers.The Mithuna or couple is Rathantharasaaman and Brihadsaaman (devi and Vishnu )for the rishi.

Multiplying a number by another on this is equivalent to rotating or changing length of vector.
Multiply by 2= double length of vector
By –1=rotate through 180 degree
By –2=rotate through 180 which is also doubling the vector
Multiply by I which is squareroot of –1=anticlockwise rotation by 90 degree.
Complex number 1/squareroot of 2+.1/squareroot of 2 =45 degree anticlockwise rotation.45 degree X 6 times=270
8 times =360.

Real numbers and complex numbers,identifiable sapthaswara and the weak unidentifiable multitudes of sruthies,identifiable colours in the spectrum and the varius shades in between,and the 72 melakartha raga scheme itself with the complex vivaadi scales and simple samvadi,vaadi scales are following thiis rule of the cosmic raasichakra.Now it is called the Argand diagram .Earlier that name was not there.But the principle was used in every science and art of our land.
When I look into the consciousness of a musician for studying the musical intelligence of Howard Gardner I am surprised to see this awareness revealed to me,but I know that it had already been there in me ,in my brain cells,waiting to be revealed at the right time of my life.

Regarding the problem of Scrodinger’s cat ,if we consider a God’s eyeview(or that of a man with superbrain)He can perform a thought experiment and then put into practice ,with a time reversal analogue of the system in one hour,so that there is no collapse of wave function,and find the cat alive and well,container of the cyanide unbroken,radioactive atom intact.Repeatedly this can happen,every time yielding the live cat.At the time (end of one hour)cat is in superposition of both live and dead.both negative and positive.Then why the observer does not remember it?The observers amnesia is explained quantum mechanically,by appealing to interference between trajectories,in which the cat was observed to be live and the one in which it was observed to be dead.That imply the observer’s branching of biography followed by reconvergence.Or superposition of histories.The microscopic superposition as well as a macroscopic superposition of history is possible at the same time.Taking ,biography as history,Biography of any person is only a straight line on a solid cylinderlike structure with time on the vertical axis.(given as in Ms Susan's book on consciousness)


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The green zone is from our biography starts and we observe it.blue and yellow are two possibilities into which it can branch. But they can reconvergeBiography is a single stream of consciousness with which continuous infinite parallel systems/streams can be replaced That is it is not branching ,but only differentiating that is taking place with time.I think we can compare it to a tree,where the seed differentiate into what it was destined to be,into a fullgrown tree,and then branching also occurs naturally.The proble, of branching or differentiating biographies is thus at the level of microcosm.There can be a preferred basis on which different biographies may differentiate or branch.What is preferred here is from the point of view of awareness itself,it could be genetic at microlevel,or brain related at macrolevel,both being interconnected as correlates.
This also explains problems of amnesia of dreams after a sleep,amnesia of long term memories of the past in Alzhemer,and also amnesia of multiple births.In Gita,Krishna says ,Arjuna,I and You had been here for several times,I do remember each of it,but you don’t.This is what I mean by a God’s eyeview .When time comes ,if we are having an appropriate lifestyle,and if we deserve it,the amnesia is taken away with God’s grace and we do get revelations of this kind.So when we study consciousness in our biographical notes,not only the things we do in day-to-day life of waking states,but also our dream ,lucent interval.neardeath experiences,our samadhi experiences etc also count ,and then only we get the entire picture of differentiation of our life from infancy to adulthood,not in physical sense,but mentally,intellectually and spiritually.My autobiography is trying to unfold my inner life and its differentiation and branching into various art and science subjects as a banyan tree,sometimes spreading roots from trunk into depths of archeology and cultural heritage,sometimes making tiny leaves and red shoots which embrace the most modern concepts and ideas of humanity.It is an open approach.Never does it close to knowledge and to asking questions and to finding out answers.Never does it forget to take in the ecstacy of music and keep its energy level at optimum for fresh enquiry.Even without conscious efforts these have gone on continuously without break .In dream visions and in samadhilike experiences.