Part 1 - Consciousness: A New Paradigm | Dr. Tony Nader, World Yoga Festival 2023

we've got somebody really special for you now Dr neither and I don't know of a single person who's done more in terms of this knowledge base and the organization Dr neither is head of the Transcendental Meditation organization I I didn't say I'll say organization because I don't know any better is that they're operating 120 countries right not just one or two 120 countries and the person who leads them is sitting in the chair in front of you all right and he's going to be he's going to be talking obviously uh the subject of his own choosing and then but I won't tell you a little bit he has if you imagine the east coast of the United States and all the major academic institutions along the east coast of the United States he has either a doctoral degree or a man of medicine from practically each of those institutions is the most learned man I've ever met he's absolutely fantastic and I'm sure thank you very much indeed Dr nether for taking the time out to come and speak to us today thank you very much indeed thank you wonderful to be with all of you it's a joy to be here this is um discussion with already enlightened group that's how I see it looking into the reality of life and the existence and what we can do to make our personal life better and the life on our planet in our universe even and that is from the field of mind and body and behavior and relations as yoga embodies all of these values and I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me it's a real Joy I know you have been through a lot of knowledge and maybe many of the things we will discuss are familiar to you but I would look forward that we have time to think together and ask questions and make it Interactive I'd like to have a theme though and my theme usually my discussion which I am working on in my podcasts and my books and my teachings and the teachings of our organization are basically vedantic they are on the level of teaching that the Ultimate Reality is consciousness rather than matter now you have heard a lot about this I am sure and I know the previous speakers are very much knowledgeable and great speakers in this field I thought we can rather address questions about the importance of the vendantic perception of reality and try to address what we can call the big questions in life there are no questions in my mind there are unimportant every question is important when you sit at a table and you want to say I eat this chocolate or this cake or that thing that is a question it's an important question there is a more important question than that it's like where do I see this and the perspective of my health what is good for me now in terms of a short term interest versus tomorrow and a year in 10 years in terms of my long term taking care of my well-being my health so that is a more important question on which that smaller question builds its meaning now there are more important questions than that is that why should I even take care of my health why why we are here and this become more and more fundamental and important questions in our life many times the big questions fade away from our awareness and the main reason is that we don't really have answers to them in general we ask them when we are generally in our teens and adolescents discovering life and discovering things and we ask big questions why are we here what's the meaning of life are we free why there is suffering um why there is sin who brought us here after all these are the very big questions that we end up all of us kind of generally all of us not this group kind of saying there are no answers or the answers are based on subjective teachings or beliefs that we have been told in our schools by our religious background and often the answers are in a kind of mysterious a little bit way so I suggest we kind of try to spend this time answering some of these questions and as we go along why don't you yourself feel do I have a question that I have never been able to answer a question about existence about being about the nature of Life about anything and then when we come to the time of question and answer hopefully you can feel to ask me and challenge the knowledge that we are gonna be discussing today and see whether we can come to some conclusions so this put us in a framework of as I speak and discuss with you you are also wondering what's going on where do I stand and in this context it's important to realize that we all have what we can call a world view a world view our world view depends on our instincts our education our Inspirations our knowledge what we've heard and our intuition of course and our intellect so it depends on a lot of factors but we all have a world view for example one important big question was an important implication on our life is are we free are we actually free human beings to decide what we decide and before I ask how many think we are free I want to say that [Music] um there were many possibilities about freedom and I'd like to actually share with you my own experience um and how my world view personally developed and it's not to talk about myself but I'm sure many of us have been through similar or even very different World Views as we grow up and it's good to review that even though you must be very familiar with this when I was at school and my kind of background and education I was told that and I understood and actually believed that there were two actual realities ultimate realities in existence one is physical material and one is non-physical the physical material is our body and it's the universe as we know it from the perspective of energy and Fields of energy and how it developed from The Big Bang Etc and the other aspect is non-material non-physical which we can call spiritual or we can call Consciousness it is that aspect of ourself that is um not amenable to our senses we can't touch it we can't smell it we can taste it we can't see it it's an experience in other ways we can call it a subjective reality our own subjective sense of being I am here I have a name I exist and I have a soul I have a being and that aspect is a reality and there is another reality which is my physical reality which is constantly changing always changing never the same really we know that of course from the physical reality even if you go to the level of the atoms they're always moving and changing the stone that you see the mountain that you see it looks to be the same for a long time but it's constantly changing everything is constantly changing so the physical is a field of change of energy and there is a field which is the spiritual field which we can call our soul or our Consciousness our being something that's different and as you know this is the perception of Duality or dualism and from a philosophical perspective there are two realities and we remember Descartes who in the Cartesian system who was one of the first to say there are these two realities and they somehow interact with each other we don't know how they do it but they somehow interact with each other now there are entities in reality according to the dualism perspective at least at that time when I was being taught and in many many kinds of beliefs there are entities that are purely physical material and for this obviously the stones the mountain the and they consider also the trees and even the animals and there are entities that can be purely spiritual like Angels or demons and those exist also so reality had this kind of General categories now I was also taught that the spiritual is something that takes us up towards heaven towards higher values we can surmount our physical needs and our physical pleasures and limitations and get into something that elevates us whereas the physical is something that actually brings us to the Earth brings us down and its pleasures and its realities take us more on a kind of what we used to call the animal kind of thing now at that time also this world view led to the understanding that animals and trees and and reality and even environment they don't have a spiritual content so we have these three categories humans which have the two values and um animals and plants and objects that have only material existence and then you have this Spiritual Beings which you know can be there and they have their own existence so there are these Realms and in this Realms there are these mixtures of things that are there so this is how it came about that we can as humans actually dispose of the physical things for our own subsistence for our own well-being as we curb as we like because they're just physical entities that's why we dispose of the environment we dispose of animals we dispose of everything the water the air and all of that as we like to support us they are only physical things after all and then I don't have a soul they don't have a reality beyond their existence on a physical level so this is dualism now where this Duality comes from of course there are different theories depending on your belief maybe there is a supernatural because all of these actually are part of the natural reality of our existence we have a mind we have a physical reality they are natural but who brought them who conducts them who makes them work the way they do what is their Dynamics there is a concept of a supernatural Powers some of these spiritual powers of course are considered Supernatural also but as we know there is always the idea the reality the thought of a creative power God or an entity that brings this forward and that actually manages it that manages all of these aspects and so this is one perception of reality when I went to medical school and I started to study science it was realized that there are so many opinions about all of these values and it depends on so much the subjective perception of certain belief systems of how actually um these interact with each other and what brings them and even about the sense of the Divine being maybe biased maybe jealous maybe happy maybe makes their own decisions about reality and so there are so many factors that are conceived as being the powers that move things from different perspectives that science said wait a minute it doesn't really make sense so in science what we discovered is that there are laws of nature and these laws of nature are very specific they are present everywhere they conduct everything and we can analyze the movement of the planets we can analyze the movement of the Stars we can analyze our daily life the relationship between nature and US between our mind and body from a very physical objective scientific way and so science decided to put aside all that is called spiritual or on the level of Consciousness and decide that actually it's the physical that is real and everything else comes from the physical so we have a nervous system the nervous system starts working in a complex way and it creates our mind our language our Consciousness and we call this immersion qualities that emerge from the physical reality so science decided there is only one reality not two not spiritual and physical but only one reality and that reality is physical it's material that's what we call monism in contrast to dualism so there is a monistic one entity now the problem here came when we try to understand what is consciousness what is the subjective feeling of being of our existence that is very different from the physical material reality how can a complex physical interactions create Consciousness and as you know this is the problem which has been defined philosophically as the hard problem of consciousness the hard problem of Consciousness why is as David Chalmers who the philosopher said there is the easy problem of Consciousness and there is the heart problem of Consciousness the easy problem of Consciousness is that one day we are going to discover the mechanics of the brain and how the brain works and what it does and that we will completely understand and that's the easy problem of Consciousness this easy problem of Consciousness is extremely difficult we are still working on sorting out how the brain works and how it creates uh The Impressions the feelings the whole thing but the hard problem of Consciousness is how to go from matter to non-matter which is consciousness awareness and that hard problem of Consciousness is actually belongs to the perception that everything is physical and therefore Consciousness emerges from a physical reality now the physical reality that we have our bodies our reality is something that seems to be absolutely real completely real of course we're sitting on real chairs we're talking we have lights we have feelings if we pinch yourself you feel pain so this is very real and it's unquestionably real and therefore the physical is real then how the physical creates the non-physical is a heart problem scientists have been now for let's say 25 30 years because before that there was no interest into studying how the brain creates consciousness they have been trying to find out how the physical can create something non-physical and I can tell you there is absolutely no hint even of any possibility yet of any mechanism that makes sense in terms of understanding how Consciousness can emanate from something physical now this is one one reality the other aspect that can be simplified and for me personally it there is no hard problem of consciousness at all and the reason is that the question to start with is the wrong question and why is that is that because the brain does not create Consciousness so there is an alternative to the monistic which means one entity one reality one Ultimate Reality that is a physical monism so monistic physicalism which is one reality Ultimate Reality and it's a physical reality there is another alternative and that is you can say monistic idealism idealism not in the sense of ideals of having good things and good ideals but in terms of ideas which means the primary value of life is not physical but it's consciousness now we as humans we experience Consciousness and without consciousness we have nothing imagine when you're in coma what is there what exists even when you sleep you don't feel anything if the world there is an explosion and there is let's say a war or a catastrophe and you're sleeping it doesn't exist for you so we live our life through Consciousness this is one thing that's absolutely sure for us as humans and that is consciousness is and we're not the first one to realize this I mentioned Descartes and you all know this I think therefore I am what he actually meant I am conscious therefore I exist because they were starting to discover that the field of the relative changing reality is never the same it's always changing and it can be imaginary you know and you're dreaming you think the tiger and the dream is real and who says that we are not just dreaming right now all of us and we are in a dream we could be in a dream if you take a second and say oh you have to shake yourself and wonder yeah am I in a dream imagine you're in a dream you could be in a dream and actually we are in a sense in a kind of a dream because we are creating reality in the bay on the basis of how our nervous system works so we see colors from red to Violet we don't see infrared we don't see Ultra infrared or ultraviolet we hear certain frequency of sound we don't hear other frequencies of sound so we are taking the world from only a certain level of perspective and our brain and science has shown that reconstructs reality based on the brain itself and its way of working and so what we call reality is very personal it depends on our nervous system what is the reality for a bird what is the reality for a bat what is the reality for a cat what's the reality for a tree it can be very different indeed it is very different so what we see reality really depends on how our system works and that is to say that the one thing that is absolutely sure is our consciousness without Consciousness there is no sense of reality and there is no reality now everything else is therefore a color and Consciousness equality and Consciousness so when we go through all of this we find that there is another potential idea which this is what vedanta is and what you've heard about and I'm repeating it's okay to put it in a in a framework is that actually Consciousness is primary so Consciousness is all there is I wrote an article about this in in the mid 2000 something 10 or so and it was titled Consciousness is all there is so if you say Consciousness is all there is foreign problem also we had a heart problem of consciousness now we have a heart problem of physicalness right you know we say Consciousness is all there is and it's a wonderful idea and it's a vedantic and they've been thought through and there are many philosophers who say that Consciousness is primary and Consciousness is all there is that there is no duality in fact but there is only one reality but then how does the physical world come and that is the hard problem of physicalness and for me this is how the problem should be formulated because the one thing we are sure about is we are conscious the our interaction with the world is limited by our system and how it perceives the world so it can all be a dream and in reality it is a kind of a dream and the reality changes based on our Consciousness when you are drowsy you see things different than when you're awake when you're in a dream state you experience certain reality which is not there when you are in a waking State when you're in a waking State and you're very alert you can see things from a certain perspective and if you are not so alert you see things from a more limited perspective you're drowsy you're not clear you don't experience things in the same way your Consciousness changes its colors now everything we experience is actually a color in Consciousness a color of consciousness when you experience love you're feeling love what does it mean s you're conscious of a certain set of emotions feelings physical mental even bodily feelings you're conscious of them and all of these together create the sense of love when you look at the flower simple vision what happens is something projects on your nervous system and your Consciousness now is aware of a certain object which you call flower and therefore everything is colors of consciousness generally if you are in the vedantic perspective and you have this problem of physicalness which means where does the physical reality come from if everything is consciousness where does physicalness come from you have an answer which is usually said to be an illusion you know the Maya feeling so it's an illusion for a scientist it's not satisfying because this illusion takes over all our reality you know this is where we live this is the chairs we're sitting in this is the universe this is our life is lived through an illusion so how can we find peace and Harmony and unity between these values and my feeling is that this term illusion is a misinterpretation of what this problem of physicalness is misinterpretation in the sense that there is some sense of Illusion but the illusion is not where we think about it and I want to propose to you that all of these aspects are actually real so we're coming to a stage of being in reality here and accepting the physical reality yet accepting the Ultimate Reality as being consciousness now we have a problem also how to resolve these two how to resolve this Duality as if of the physical aspect versus everything is consciousness and this has been a problem I have been looking at and I have worked with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who is in the tradition Vedic tradition vedantic tradition from the Himalayas from ramananda Saraswati who have expounded the total knowledge of Veda and Vedic literature and also the vedantic perspective of course yoga and the Heart of it and the Ashtanga Yoga the eight limbs and all their values and their importance on different levels and this was a question that was raised and discussed and he asked me to continue to research that and I came out with some solutions which I can share with you and we can discuss them as you like and they have implications on happiness freedom suffering you know Destiny Karma and all of these values so first let's start with the Paradigm of Consciousness that I like to present to you take yourself into an imaginary time before the Big Bang so we're regressing in time now 14 about 14 billion years that's what the scientists say um that the age of the universe is and imagine that there was absolutely nothing so a field of nothingness yet that field is a field of consciousness field is like an ocean you know that's just to have a metaphor to understand what the field is imagine there is an ocean and imagine that ocean is unlimited unbounded infinite which means there is no boundaries to it you might have questioned what happens after that or before that we can answer that also and the simple answer is because it actually in terms of physical reality it is nothing then you cannot ask where it starts because nothing starts nowhere right if I say there is nothing you don't have a problem telling me where does nothing start there is nothing to start there must be something to be in time located somewhere there must be something from a physical perspective but what we're saying that it's nothing from a physical perspective it's totally shunya totally nothingness absolute nothingness and yet it's Consciousness so that is the Ultimate Reality which we can call the unbounded ocean of Consciousness one Unlimited non-bound ocean of Consciousness now I'm calling it consciousness of course and that has a reason because it is consciousness as as the vedantic and Vedic perspective says the yogic through Ultimate Reality it's called sat chit Ananda it's a field of pure through Consciousness and they add they add Ananda Ananda of course as you know means Bliss and what does it mean Bliss if it's just Consciousness and nothing else Bliss is the result of fulfillment that there is nothing missing when you know when you're happy is that you have something that fulfills you when you're totally fulfilled and there is nothing missing in your life there is nothing you are feeling is lacking there is total fulfillment on every level we can call this Bliss and since that field is all by itself it is limited by nothing it is unbounded and it is consciousness pure being it has that quality of being Bliss being absolute fullness nothing is missing good fine we started there so where do we go from there well we have consciousness so the question comes what is it conscious of what is it conscious of what could it be conscious of anyone itself right so it's only conscious of itself but Consciousness means there is somebody who is conscious of something right when we are conscious we are conscious of something therefore there is a flavor is created of the knower or a person or an entity that is conscious of an object of which it is conscious so this is what we call a self-reflective aspect of this reality of Consciousness it looks at itself it turns back onto itself and in The Vedic literature is described that it goes back onto itself go back onto the self go back on itself so by by curving back on itself it creates the three values of Observer observed and process of observation it is observing itself yet in one mode it is the Observer in another mode it is the object of observation and if there is an object and an observer they must be connected to each other somehow and that connecting value is a process of observing thus you have three values in the Oneness of pure being and this is the beginning of what we can call a moment of awareness A Moment Of Consciousness I have called it a bit of Consciousness borrowing the term bit from the um computer science bits you know not from a bit small amount but just the you know a moment of experience a bit of Consciousness so there is a bit of Consciousness and that will be helpful for us to start understanding how the actual Universe emerges and so reality in fact is a moment in which your experience something a moment of experience it's a bit of Consciousness a moment of experience and the first moment of experience is the first bit of Consciousness where this unbounded Consciousness experiences itself to exist so pure existence starts to actually physically in a sense between quotation mark not physically I shouldn't use that term at this time it starts to exist by the effect of it observing itself when it observes itself it knows it exists any problems with that you know if you want to say something exists it must be something acknowledges the existence so it is consciousness therefore what is its nature its nature is to be conscious what is it conscious of there is nothing else but by itself except itself so it is conscious of itself yet being conscious of oneself automatically means there is an observer a process of observation and observe the three values so the Trinity and Oneness emerges from that Oneness without stopping from being Oneness it remains Oneness by its nature it curves on itself and experience itself as an existent aspect of reality and therefore recognizing its own existence means it has three values in it this has been taken by some traditions as we know three in one Trinity in the Veda and other in other belief systems and traditions also and that is how we can explain this fundamental curving back onto one oneself and curving back unto itself then it sees these three values one is the Observer which is a silent Witness one is the object of observation and one is the process of connecting to this silent Observer to the object of observation now the process of connecting to the object is a dynamic process it's a dynamic process because there is a movement that is the curving back onto itself that means even though it is there is a silent Observer there is a dynamism of curving back onto itself to observe itself that's a dynamic process and then what does it see it sees itself and that object flavor that object quality what we say hides The Observer and the process of observation what does it mean stay with me I don't want to lose you when you look at the flower let's go back to reality as we know it you look at the flower you look at the mic you look at me you look at your friend in this moment of observation which we have called one bit of Consciousness what is there that is you let's say the flower we all look at the flower look at the flower look at the flower for few seconds forget about me and what I'm saying just see the flower everybody saw the flower now try to remember that when you saw the flower did you think of yourself or where you are and why you are here or what am I saying it might have floated in your awareness but what was there in your awareness when you look at the flower the flower it's obvious not the difficult question there was the flower so what did the flower do to you the object of your awareness it was hiding you you were no more there you forgot your own existence you forgot why you are here how you came here what is the relationship between you and the flower these are there subliminally but your conscious attention was taken over by the flower that was a moment where all that there is was the flower so what does the object do the object hides The Observer and hides the process of observation and takes over the awareness that is what the object does so the object of perception hides The Observer and the process of observation and becomes the overwhelming reality so what is the nature of objects when we say an object it's hiding it hides The Seer the knower and that is actually what is called in The Vedic tradition and Vedic knowledge and yogic tradition that is boundary you are bound by the object of observation you see a flower you become the flower you see a planet you become the the planet the object takes over the awareness and the object hides The Seer hides the knower that is boundary you're bound by the object of awareness you must have heard of course you know about Liberation Moksha to be liberated what does to be liberated mean it means that you'll never forget the self when you are engaged in the process of observing anything so your own inner self as an observer is never lost even when you are engaged in observing in acting in thinking you are always aware of yourself and that is what actual Enlightenment is and Liberation is but we can come back to that

Channel: Tony Nader MD, PhD

Views: 6,967

Keywords: DrTonyNader, TonyNader, ConsciousnessIsAllThereIs, Consciousness, Physiology, Science, Spirituality, Vedanta, Meditation, Transcendence, TranscendentalMeditation, Yoga, ConsciousnessPodcast, WorldYogaFestival

Id: NNu6fXHA9Zo

Length: 44min 22sec (2662 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 28 2023