A plane once landed on a muddy-wet ground,
And after a while, it flew back in the air.
Where it rolled on the ground, tracks could be found,
That was all that seemed to be there.


Some said the tracks came from the mud and the air,
And surely it could have been so.
Others claimed something else was out there.
Who was right, nobody can know.

From the "gnothi sauton" (know thyself) of Thales to the "naan yaar" (who am I) of Ramanamaharishi, the question of the mystery of the self and of consciousness has baffled the best minds and spirits over the ages. Sages and mystics have recognized that this mystery (as long as we are confined to the physical body) cannot be fully resolved by reasoning and analysis, but only by contemplation and meditation. This, because the mode of analysis and reason cuts everything down, whereas I-ness is an experience of totality.

Now this is question: Is this experience (of self) inextricably tied to and is a mere consequence of physico-chemical reality (complex molecules existing and evolving in space and time in accordance with well defined laws), or is it in fact the interaction of a reality in a higher dimensional realm with the physico-chemical. We have as yet no incontrovertible answer to this question. But the following analogy (stated in the verse above) might help us see latter as at least plausible:

Consider an aircraft periodically touching ground. The ground may be looked upon as the physical world (of space-time and matter-energy). The tracks it creates correspond to consciousness. After some rolling on the ground the aircraft takes off. The tracks cease to continue, the road remains. Our efforts to fathom the nature of consciousness are like the tracks trying to grasp the nature and reality of the aircraft: interesting and commendable, but not very easy, if not perhaps impossible.

V. V. Raman

e-mail <VVRSPS@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>