It was Saturday afternoon. I logged in to Skype to listen the first online discussion meeting of "Indian School of Thoughts on Consciousness" . I must appreciate the efforts of Eswar to organize such an online discussion. This is the second active event from our Institute for Natural Philosophy.
It was an introductory meeting. Eswar explained various aspects of the consciousness. Even though I didn't actively participate in that discussion, I had many thoughts on consciousness.
I feel that consciousness is highly subjective. It's not a measurable quantity as well. We are in a world, where people live comfortably with varying degree of consciousness. Some not even heard the world "consciousness". They knew how to earn their bread and butter, that's it.
The problem of consciousness can be addressed in many ways. As I understood they were not discussing about the basic level of consciousness every one has. It's also called survival instinct, which prevents us from exposed to dangers and protects us in life threatening situations.The point of discussion is beyond survival, because we are not just born to survive.
Is it possible to have "complete consciousness"? I mean the highest form of consciousness. It's not an easy question to answer. The idea of consciousness is triggered by "non-trivial questions". These are the fundamental questions.Buddha asked him self "Why people have suffering?, Is there a way to stop it?". He started his search and finally found an answer, and he reviled the truth to the world. Now we all knew the answer to those questions, but why we can not reach the state(level of consciousness or enlightenment) of Buddha? My answer is simple,IT IS NOT THE ANSWERS ,WHICH LEADS TO ENLIGHTENMENT. IT IS THOSE QUESTIONS AND THE PATH HE TOOK TO FIND THE ANSWERS. Does he attain the "complete conscious sate"?. No . He is no different from a person, who doesn't ask such questions and strongly believes there exists no such answers or consciousness.They both have different level of consciousness, but the point they both BELIEVE in it.
A child's ignorance could be compared with the enlightenment of the mind. Until a child knows that he is ignorant, he is perfectly happy. Once we know that we are ignorant, we try to get rid of the ignorance by asking questions. If someone finds answers to all those questions, he is happy and enlightened. Does this mean that there aren't any questions to answer?. Certainly not. He is also now like a child, but relatively bigger world of knowledge, that's all. This is true even in the case of Bhddha or who ever believed to attained enlightenment.
This concept is beautifully explained in the book "Siddhartha". The protagonist of that story tried several paths to attain enlightenment.Even once he was a student of Buddha At the end he met a ferryman called Vasudeva, who has done nothing but ferrying all of his life time. He took him as his Guru, and finds answers to his search. At the end he says about Vasudeva that "he is no different than Buddha".
One must find his own way to achieve consciousness. It would be dangerous to follow the footprints, without knowing where it leads to. When you follow the footprints, you believe the guy walked before, but when you take a new path, you believe in your self.
