Meditations
Explorations of Science, Genetics and Indian Philosophy. All opinions expressed are my own personal views.
Here is a short story “The egg” by one of the greatest science fiction writers of our generation, Andy Weir. An animated YouTube video by the famed channel Kurzgesagt on this same story has 31 million views. You should check out both.
If there was the briefest synopsis of Advaita – non-dual Hinduism, this story is all you need to read. It is astonishing that the mind-boggling story created by Andy Weir in the 21st century has been discussed thread-bare in the Vedas 8000-5000 years ago.
My thoughts as I watched the video:
1) The “I” is the Brahman, the “you” is the Atman. Both the Atman and the Brahman are the same, this is the fundamental tenet of Advaita philosophy, something which Silicon Valley founders like Steve Jobs and Sam Altman swear by.
2) The mistake Andy makes is that he called the Brahman as God. There is no connection between God and the Sanskrit term Brahman, other than a western mistranslation. The Brahman is a highly esoteric term which has been trivialized by the West under the term “God.” The term “God” is a Semitic historical construct which should not be indiscriminately used to describe Eastern belief.
3) Every life form in the world is linked, as per molecular biology. All life shares an extraordinary number of genes. As an example, humans and bananas share 60% of their genes. All life on earth also arose from a common ancestor. There is no escape from the fact that all beings, bacteria, plants and humans are interlinked in the massive web of life. To pretend that humans are somehow magically different is an exercise in inanity.
4) All humans are veritably clones of each other. We are among the least genetic diversity among animal species. All modern humans have a common ancestor (MRCA) who lived just 2000 years ago. All people we see around us are distant cousins. There is a case to be made that all humans share the same consciousness.
5) To understand the Atman and the Brahman, there is nothing to study in the external world. The Atman is not a soul, and the Brahman is not God. Both refer to the innermost consciousness inside each living being. In Hindu thought, the Brahman refers to an infinite consciousness of the universe which is beyond description.
6) Consciousness is a topic science has little to no understanding. I am the biggest fan of science, but science has no tools to investigate the world of ontological experience. Even the greatest scientists and physicists in the world have no idea about the topic of consciousness. Watch this video by Professor Brian Greene from Columbia University. He is my favorite author and I have read each one of his books on astronomy. However, it is interesting how clueless he seems to any question about the self, and he proposes (rather wishfully) that a material study of the mind will one day reveal all the answers. The truth is that about 150 years of modern scientific research has yielded close to nothing pointing out that something is wrong with the current approach.
7) Both Hinduism and Buddhism are very clear in the way to get deliverance (called Moksha or Nirvana) from an endless circle of births and rebirths (Samsara). Both posit that the only activity in life worth pursuing is deliverance from Samsara. This involves a conversation about modern scientific reincarnation and what could even possibly mean.
I will share my thoughts in detail later, but there is something really wrong with the way we create the human construct and story of our own life. We (as individual humans) arise from trillions of ancestors across trillions of species tracing back all the way to the common ancestor of all living beings. There are genes inside us and all other living forms which trace all the way from the earliest common ancestor. Note that this ancient ancestor never died. Life arose only once in the history of the cosmos and inside this common ancestor and this is the same life that lives inside us today. All other life forms that existed in the past and future are progeny of this one ancestor and therefore derivative in nature. There is a lot more about endless rebirth in Indian thought, which is material for other future essays.
I personally think that progress can be made by coming up with a new arsenal of tools borrowed from experiential research. Hinduism and Buddhism have studied the space of consciousness for many thousands of years and have found incredible insights. I really hope that Science takes up consciousness more seriously.
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