Namaste.
This famous assertion of Advaitic Unity of life and consciousness behind all manifestations is known to us only metaphysically and experienced mystically. Now that we are discussing the physical expression of Consciousness, can we check the validity of this truth?Originally Posted by yajvan
Here, I look at the golden bangle and know that whether form or substance, it is a metal. I look at a plant, at my puppy and then at myself or at a friend sitting opposite me. I wonder: how can they all be the same? Surely there is something nutty with metaphysics that asserts there is the same identical life force and consciousness present in all these--okay, manifestations.
If you want me to carefully look at a golden bangle and ask me what exactly do I see, my obvious answer would be that it is a bangle first and then only gold. My physical sense of vision, my eyes do see the bangle and the gold in it, sure, but the form overwhelmingly hides the content. If you want me to perceive it as gold, I would need to have it flattened into no shape or form. All the while, though, I know that it is just gold, that the form is only superficial, but I don't realize the truth with conviction. I don't think I shall ever have such realization, unless I do something special (spiritual?) about it.
Such being the case with me, the assertion that the bangle and the plant and the puppy and I are the same is bewildering to me. Unless I have physical and scientific proof, I would rather find it impossible to get convinced in the physical waking state, so that wherever I look, I would learn to look for the same life and consciousness. If some empirical proof at least to their fundamental similarity if not identity could be given it could go a long way for me.
Is there any such empirical proof? There is.
The first empirical proof is that the gold bangle and plant and puppy and I are identical at our atomic and sub-atomic levels. We are all made of the same bricks of matter.
But what about life and consciousness? Am I not smarter than my puppy which is smarter than the plant which for its part is smarter than the glittering gold bangle, which is obviously is the dullest--though most glittering--of the lot? And is not smartness a measure of life and intelligence?
Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose, a famouse Indian scientist, developed an apparatus that he called Crescograph and conducted experiments on how the above four classes of existence (the mineral, vegetable, animal and humand kingdoms) react to stimuli. To the astonishment of the world, he found and proved that the reaction was very near identical with metal and plant and animal and man! Here are some quotes from his research papers he submitted to the scientific community, as presented in Annie Besant's book A Study in Consciousness:
Professor Bose's experiments were followed up by other scientists.Tetanus, both complete and incomplete, due to repeated shocks, was caused, and similar results accrued, in mineral as in muscle.
Fatigue was shown by metals, least of all by tin. Chemical re-agents, such as drugs, produced similar results on metals with those known to result with animals - exciting, depressing, and deadly. (By deadly is meant resulting in the destruction of the power of response.)
A poison will kill a metal, inducing a condition of immobility, so that no response is obtainable. If the poisoned metal be taken in time, an antidote may save its life.
A stimulant will increase response, and as large and small doses of a drug have been found to kill and stimulate respectively, so have they been found to act on metals. "Among such phenomena," asks Professor Bose, "how can we draw a line of demarcation and say: Here the physical process ends, and there the physiological begins? No such barriers exist."
Professor Bose has carried on a similar series of experiments on plants, and has obtained similar results. A fresh piece of cabbage stalk, a fresh leaf, or other vegetable body, can be stimulated and will show similar curves; it can be fatigued, excited, depressed, poisoned. There is something rather pathetic in seeing the way in which the tiny spot of light, which records the pulses in the plant, travels, in ever weaker and weaker curves, when the plant is under the influence of poison, falls into a final despairing straight line, and - stops. The plant is dead. One feels as though a murder had been committed - as indeed it has.
With such proven scientific experiments that seek to establish the fundamental unity and identity of life and consciousness between all that I have been taught hitherto as animate life and inanimate objects, I think that the next time I would be careful not to drop my metal tumbler when I pick it up to drink water. I would water my plants daily and be wary of over pruning them (the last time I did too much pruning to my hibiscus plant, it refused to blossom for a whole fortnight though it was blooming all over until the previous day!), treat my puppy with love and try to be less moody with myself and others.Mr. Marcus Reed has made microscopical observations which show the presence of consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. He has observed symptoms as of fright when tissue is injured, and further he has seen that male and female cells, floating in the sap, become aware of each other’s presence without contact; the circulation quickens, and they put out processes towards each other.
More than three years after the publication of Professor Bose’s experiments, some interesting confirmation of his observations arose in the course of M. Jean Becquerel’s study of the N-rays, communicated by him to the Paris Academy of Sciences. Animals under chloroform cease to emit these rays, and they are never emitted by a corpse. Flowers normally emit them, but under chloroform the emanation ceases. Metals also emit them, and under chloroform the emanation again ceases. Thus animals, flowers, and metals alike give out these rays, and alike cease to emanate them under the action of chloroform.
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