A Dialogue on Consciousness | Swami Sarvapriyananda and Bernardo Kastrup

0:07 [music] Uh we've already [music] heard Swami G talk this morning but I will again give a short introduction of him and also Bernardo. But before I do so, let me first say uh thank you to the organizers, that is to say in magazine, Inside Magazine and Sams books for organizing this wonderful event and also for inviting me to moderate this dialogue. I feel honored to be in the

0:52 presence of these two uh brilliant spiritual and intellectual minds. Now, let me tell you what we're going to do for the next hour and a half or two hours if we include the Q&A uh so you're primed a little bit and know what to expect. So these two gentlemen will go into a dialogue um with regards to the theme of mysticism, science and non-duality and more specifically I will hope to steer them a little bit in the direction of uh well first their own respective traditions. I will ask them to summarize briefly their um tradition of analytic idealism and advite vanta and then we'll zoom in on the meaning of consciousness and the role of consciousness in these traditions and maybe also look for similarities between the two traditions and we'll ask is there maybe something

1:38 such as the unconscious does that exist in these traditions and what is phenomenal reality in these traditions then we'll move to the hard problem of consciousness as it is called we will first explain explain what that is and then is there actually a problem? Let's see in the discussion and after the hard problem of consciousness we'll turn to artificial intelligence. How does consciousness relate to artificial intelligence and if there's time and we have 90 minutes which sounds like a lot of time but time flies in these discussions if there's time I would also like to address the contemporary meaning crisis. the fact that more and more people nowadays seem to have lost the source of meaning and purpose and are looking for alternative sources of meaning and purpose among others in spirituality. But let's see if we get

2:25 there. Uh first let me introduce both speakers starting with Bernardo Kustra. Bernardo is a double PhD a philosopher and a a computer engineer a PhD in both domains. He is also the director executive director of the Essentia Foundation and in his uh books and also online interviews he engages the connection between consciousness and reality and through his many books he's a prolific author um and arguably his most famous book is why materialism is baloney through his many famous books and interviews he reaches a global audience and inspires a global audience uh approaching non-duality from in many ways a secular and scientific perspective.

3:12 Welcome Bernardo. Thank you for having me. >> Thank you for having me. >> Swami G. Swami Sarva Priya Priyaandanda. We've already been introduced to Swami G this morning. We've had a wonderful lecture. But let me briefly summarize again his background. Swami G is a monk in the Ramachrishna order and the head of the Vanta Society of New York and the spiritual leader of the Vidanta society and he gives many lectures on Advita Vanta. He's also very well informed about Hindu and Indian philosophy in general, western philosophy, very very well informed and he's arguably one of the most eloquent speakers of uh and representatives of Advita Vanta today and he too inspires audiences worldwide through his lectures where which are also freely available online. Now without further ado, let me stop talking

4:00 and give the word to you. So starting with the first question gentlemen uh could you briefly summarize your own philosophy starting with you Bernardo analytic idealism please. >> Okay so analytic idealism is an idealist philosophy the main idea is that all reality is of an experiential nature. It does not deny the existence of an external world. There is an external world out there that would still be there even if I were not here as an individuated form. But that world out there too is made of mental states, experiential states, conscious states if you wish, which appear to us uh when we observe them in the form that we refer to colloially as the physical world, the

4:46 material world. So from that perspective, the physical world is a kind of dashboard representation of the real world that is out there. It's like if we were airplanes with sensors and a dashboard. The sensors measure the states of the sky and present those measurements to us in the form of dashboard indications. That's the physical world. It's a dashboard indication we create by interacting with the real world which is then a world of mental states, experiential states, conscious uh states if you wish. And in that context of say one field of subjectivity that reality is if you postulate many you run into all kinds of insoluble problems. It has to be only one. Um what are we in that context of

5:32 this one field of subjectivity one field of consciousness. Um one way to understand this is to uh leverage the concept of dissociation in psychiatry. Uh we all dissociate not pathologically. Some people dissociate pathologically and they get what is used to be called multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder. But even if you're not pathological, every time you dream, you dissociate. You think you are the avatar in your dream and not the rest of the dream. When you wake up, your dream avatar is gone. Uh and you realize that you were the whole dream. You were doing the whole thing. So under analytic idealism, that's what's happening right now. we are dissociated uh uh complexes dissociated alters of

6:18 this one field of subjectivity and what this dissociation looks like on a dashboard is biology metabolism so that's pretty much a summary of it thank you Bernardo Swami G could you again summarize advantanda but then very shortly because we already had a lecture you of you this morning and then maybe look for overlap with what Bernardo just said with analytic idealism. you know summarizing adanta like [laughter] I was just going to say what he said. Okay, then next I'll put it. It's pretty a pretty uh uh it can be done in a very elegant way. There are these uh sentences called mahavakia, profound sentences, identity

7:05 sentences. You are that. So what adita wants to say is that there is one limitless consciousness or being it's called being consciousness existence consciousness and it appears as mind body and world very much like a dream. The dream metaphor is used again and again in advant for example uh in one of the commentaries on the mandukish gorapad uses one whole chapter based on the dream metaphor as an argument. Um just as in the dream we are there there's a world we are also there we can see we have a body and a personality and yet when we wake up I the dreamer the dreaming mind was the subject and the object and everything in that world in

7:52 the same way here we don't wake up from one state to another state but we realize that there is one underlying reality which is appearing as all of this and in essence we are that underlying reality or you are that and by the way it's wonderful to be here with Bernardo because when you see someone on screen and you read his books you feel you know know them already but we really haven't met until then right now. >> Yes we have always known each other we've always known each other. [laughter] Yes. >> So basically the underlying foundation of each of your philosophies or uh traditions are very uh very similar. Basically consciousness is all there is. Now let's um

8:38 explore that a bit further. So what is consciousness then in your philosophy in analytic idealism? Bernardo >> I I have to scrutinize the question first. >> Please. >> Uh when you when we ask what is that what we are asking for is a reduction. We want to explain that in terms of something else. Right? Uh the problem is we can't play this game forever. We can't keep on explaining one thing in terms of another forever because it becomes circular and that's fellacious. So there has to be a primitive. There has to be at least one thing that you cannot explain in terms of anything else. It just is. And then you perhaps can explain everything else in terms of it. But you need that starting point. Um

9:24 consciousness is that not your personal consciousness or my personal consciousness but consciousness as a field of subjectivity I would claim is that in terms of which you you can explain everything else. Everything else are excitations of consciousness configurations uh um topologies of consciousness. Consciousness is consciousness itself is that whose excitations are everything else. Consciousness is that whose excitations is everything else. [snorts] Um let's explore that even further. But before we do, let me ask Swami G, do you have anything to add from the perspective of Advita or is this also

10:10 what he said? >> Well, primarily what he said. I was just thinking um St. Augustine he was he writes famously um when I'm uh when I'm asked what is time I cannot say what it is but when I'm not asked I know what it is. >> Yeah. >> So a fundamental reality we all know this but we can't express it when we are asked to express it. Why? We can't explain it when we are asked to explain it. Why not? Because as Bernardo said, explanation is of something complex in terms of something more fundamental. You can explain this pillar in terms of the bricks constituting the pillar. But there's a limit to that game you can play. You can make it more and more

10:55 finer. But you must come to a fundamental reality which you cannot explain in terms of a more fundamental reality because there is no other more fundamental reality. So uh that's what science also does. Science is also trying to find the most foundational reality. Uh in Adita Vanta consciousness is that fundamental reality uh which appears as all else or is expressed as all else. What would I say is um peculiar to consciousness? It is that which enables us to have firsterson experience. That is the essence of what the atman is our first person experiencing self. Combine it with what Bernard Karup said

11:42 that it is that of which everything else is an excitation. That would be a new way of putting what Brahman is. And Adita says both are the same thing. That which gives you the first person experience of self right now and all the time and that which is the fundamental reality of the entire universe. They are one and the same. >> Yeah. >> So, Brahman consciousness is the foundation of reality and it relates to experience. Um, as Thomas Nel will probably say, the feeling of being me. So, what it's like to be something, >> right? >> So, that begs the question about unconsciousness because in western psychology we tend to talk a lot about uh unconscious drives, feelings, emotions, etc. [snorts] Uh, then the

12:30 same question for both of you. Is there such a thing as the unconscious or unconsciousness? And let's start with you Swami G. >> Yes, this is a good point to make a distinction between consciousness and knowledge. There is there are things which are known and there are lots of things that we do not know. For example, you right now you know what's behind me. I don't know. And now okay, I now I now know. So there are there's enormous amounts of things in the world which we do not know. And there's only a narrow band which we know what we see here what we have understood through our science and all. Now what Vanta wants to say is all that we know or can know and all that is unknown

13:15 to us all of those are appearances in consciousness. To understand this very easily take the example of a dream. If you're walking in a dream, I imagine I'm walking through Central Park in a dream and I can see people and places and you know and I also have this vague sense of New York beyond what I can see and a whole world beyond that. Galaxies and stars or maybe atoms and protons which I cannot see. All of that is in the range of the unknown for me. But when I wake up, I will see from the perspective of the dreaming mind. The entireity of the known and the unknown in the dream was a product of the dreaming mind. Similarly, here there's one underlying reality, call it being, call it consciousness,

14:01 that appears to us in all these ways. And as modes of that being, as individualizations of that being, we know a particular part of it through our instruments of knowledge. We particularize it and the rest of it remains apparently unknown to us. Yeah. And that also goes for the so-called division between the conscious and the unconscious. In this particular form, there might be parts of of this biological being and our minds which we know directly now and there might be layers which are not known to us and yet all of those could be and the claim is they all are appearances or I like that word excitations in consciousness. If we relate that to analytic idealism, Bernardo, could you uh elaborate on this but then use the uh the concept of

14:49 disassociation that you introduced earlier? >> I was about to say it's what he said, but now you now you asked >> and it's going to be a very short dialogue. What he said, [laughter] >> then I run out of questions. >> Um I can try to use um sort of scientific metaphors. Um, under physicalism, a physicalist would say all there is is unconsciousness. Consciousness is an illusion. Of course, this implodes immediately. It's a self-contradictory statement because illusions must exist in consciousness. You cannot have an illusion if there is no consciousness. But the other way around is coherent. Everything can be consciousness and the unconscious can be an an illusion. The parts of consciousness that you don't know of.

15:36 Now what does that mean to know of u in modern metaphors? Um take your breathing. You're breathing all the time. You are experiencing the inflation of your rib cage. The air flowing through your nostrils all the time. But only now because I brought your attention to it do you know that you are breathing. But you were conscious of your breathing all along. There are some people alive today who would say no no no unless I place my until I place my attention on it I'm not conscious that I'm breathing. I think that is easily contradicted by direct experience because you can remember before you place your attention on it you can remember what it felt like uh to breathe. So knowledge of something is

16:23 the explicit awareness of it in in psychiatric language it entails a re-representation. So we have an original experience A and then when you tell yourself I am having the experience A that is the re-representation of A. It's usually the outcome of attention. When you place your attention on something you re-represent it and then now you know of the experience but you have been having the experience all along. I am very good at not knowing that I am in pain. Very very good at this. And then two days later, wow, it occurs to me that I've been in pain for two days. So that's one way in which things are conscious but not known. They're not metacognitive, which is the technical word. Another way

17:08 in which they can be conscious and and and not accessible to your knowledge. It's because there are no cognitive associative links that can bring you there through a chain of associations. When you are dreaming um and you think you're a dream avatar, there is no chain of associations that can bring you to the knowledge that you're in fact doing the rest of the dream as well. That's a dissociative state. Uh we always have dissociative states. When we dream, when we forget something, we know that we know. Um, when we deal with trauma, when we go to work and park our problems in order to be effective of at work, that's a dissociative state. Those

17:54 problems, those feelings, the the anxiety, the worry, you're still experiencing them, but you've sparked them. So now you do not have an an associative chain that brings you to that that dissociation. Ultimately what we call the unconscious is just a mixture of these two things. Lack of metacognition lack of associative links. It is not unconscious at all. If I can add reminded of professor Garfield uh who is an expert on Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. He said fish are the wrong people to ask about water. >> [laughter] >> In the same way, we conscious beings are the wrong people to ask about consciousness because we are so much immersed in consciousness all the time.

18:39 It's very difficult for us to recognize what it is. >> Yeah. So to summarize basically um what we call unconsciousness are simply uh elements of consciousness that are not immediately accessible to us. So we we're not aware of it, we don't know it, but it's not actually unconscious. Okay. Now if consciousness is so fundamental if it's the fundamental aspect of our reality and and pardon my phrasing here what then is material reality the our phenomenal phenomenally experienced reality uh Swami G so the way Vanta looks at this and it's something borrowed from another philosophy Sanka it defines consciousness as not this so

19:26 whatever in our experience and it's the very first person way of looking at things whatever Whatever in our experience you can label as this is not consciousness. So um for example this hall this body this breath this thought this emotion this idea. So we have come to areas which are we normally take to be consciousness but these are also you can label them as this and that to which all these this this this appears that is consciousness. So now we have made a clean analytic division between the object and the subject. What is the definition of the object in vanta? The what is material

20:12 nature? Instead of material nature, what vanta says just stick to your own experience. In your own experience, it's just things appearing to you. You are consciousness and to you things appear. Whatever appears is called object or in Sanskrit jada which is the word for material nature. So material nature would then include not only the physical nature of the universe but also the biological body also the mind ideas these are also part of material nature according to uh sananktha what adita so this is the division between material nature and consciousness. Now what what Adita does is go one step further and asks what is the relationship of this material nature to consciousness and finds that remarkable

20:59 shocking realization that what appears to us as other than us is nothing but us. What appears to us as an object is actually the subject itself appearing as the object. So there's a nonduality of consciousness but appearing as a duality of subject and object. Bernardo, same question. And and please don't say what he says. [laughter] >> Okay, I will not say that, but I I'll make a disclaimer. I I I will say things in a way that you may think is more direct, more accessible, but it flattens what he said. So you're you'll be missing out on nuance and subtlety. Um so now I feel comfortable to try to articulate it in a different way. Um it's essentially the same thing just flattened. Um,

21:46 matter is what conscious processes look like when observed from the outside. In other words, when observed from across a dissociative boundary, what you consider to be the material world are contents of perception. In other words, they are experiential states. You experience colors, your experience shapes, your experience melodies flavors smells textures. It's all experiential. It's all conscious stuff. But in the case of the material world, it's conscious states that represent other conscious states. In other words, matter is watches from the outside as opposed from a direct first person perspective.

22:32 Now, this has a lot less nuance than what he said, and I can't go as deep as what he's hinting at. I can smell what he's hinting at, but I I can't go there. >> And yet many people will say, "But there is a material reality." Um, could you explain why we have this particularly in western cultures, but nowadays I would argue globally, why we have this persistent notion of an external material reality. Can I start with you, Swami G? >> Okay, good. Um you know these questions they remind me of this u debate which goes on what is the essential difference between waking and dreaming. We clearly intuitively feel waking reality. This is

23:18 real and what I was dreaming is not real. That's a dream. This is this is this is reality. But when we are pushed to tell us give us the reasons why and we have we can have a series of reasons. None of them really work. Uh for example, you use the word persistent. So one of the arguments is well waking reality is real because it persists. uh I go to sleep in the same bed and I dream dreams and I come back and it's the same bed so it is there from waking reality to waking reality to waking reality what was there in the dream disappears it does not come back um so the dreams are individual private personal projections and reality waking reality is reality

24:03 but in the dream if the answer to that is in the dream it does not seem like that in the dream it seems it has been a persistent reality When we go into a dream and we forget that we are sleeping. It does not feel like oh so it's a dream it's just been created now doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like it is a world we are inhabiting just like the waking world. Other people there would also seem to persist and similarly multiple arguments for example another argument is no no this is reality because it's a public shared reality. We are all sharing the we are all seeing each other. Here is a hall here are the people same people. We all agree on this. So it is real and quite apart from subjects like us. It exists by itself. In a dream it's only in your

24:49 mind or in my mind. Nobody else sees it. So those are dreams. But again that doesn't work in a dream. When we go into a dream suppose you're having a cup of tea with a friend sitting by the canal and having a cup of tea. Your friend will not say I can't see the tea. It must be a dream. I can't see the canal. It's all in your head. I can't. No, in a dream it's again a shared reality. Nowadays, we understand it better with virtual realities. Uh but that makes it no less a dream. It's still a projection. So like this, I have at least an inventory of 10 to 12 objections which separate dreams from um waking which speaks to this that it's a persistent reality outside. Is it

25:35 is it not a persistent reality in your consciousness? I I've told this so many times u our senior most member in uh vantu society New York is Bill Conrad he's a physicist he's 100 years old last last month and he is a committed materialist and a spiritualist I don't know how but he is so he says swami the world is not in consciousness you you the world is there and we come into it as conscious beings I will prove it to you he says we will leave this room I will put on a camera and we will leave this room There will be no conscious being in the room. We will come back into the room. I will show you the picture in the camera. Empty room. Nobody was there. So it is not in your consciousness and my consciousness. Room exists. Then we come into it as conscious being. This is the common

26:21 sense view of the world. I said to him, Bill, in your consciousness, you designed this experiment. In your consciousness, you put up a camera. In your consciousness, you told me to come out of the room. In your consciousness, we went back into the room. In your consciousness, you opened the picture in the camera. And in your consciousness you saw an empty room. Where did you step outside consciousness? Can you even step outside consciousness in that sense? Difference between known and unknown you have to maintain. But conscious and not conscious in that sense impossible. You can't jump out of your skin. I mean I could give a different more nuanced answer to this but is I would be quoting word for word from why materialism is [laughter] what is the logical problem with realism

27:06 what it claims the four points but I'll yeah the the bill's experiment is fundamentally dependent on an assumption that Swami G denies and the whole advite tradition denies which is that consciousness is restricted to us to in individual uh living beings. Only under that assumption does the thought experiment sort of gain some mild coherence. Um, of course, something holds the state of the room when no living being is there. That doesn't mean that it's not being held in consciousness, not your consciousness or my consciousness, but the field of subjectivity that nature is. Um, the

27:51 next question is, does the room exist as a room when no individual consciousness is looking at it? Um, or I can translate that into a more appealing question. Does the moon exist when nobody's looking at it? The analytic idealist answer would be if what you call the moon is that shiny silver disc that you experience, no, it does not exist if nobody's looking at it. because nobody's having that experience of a shiny lit disc in the night sky. But does the mental process or the conscious process that modulates your perception leading to the perception of the moon does the conscious process that underlies what we

28:39 call the moon exist when we are not looking at the moon? I would say yes. Yes, there is a fundamental reality that does not depend on the particular dissociative processes of consciousness. But that fundamental reality does not look like a shiny disc in the night sky. It's something we cannot articulate in in concepts because language evolved to describe this and not what lies underneath or beyond that what that which is imminent in this that we can't describe. We don't have the language for that. to me and I'm pretty sure many in this audience um this sounds very convincing and very appealing and compelling and yet and that's what I started with many

29:26 people still believe there is a material reality outside um and why is that idea so persistent when they are confronted with alternatives like advant and analytic idealism Bernardo >> most people who consider themselves I well Many people who consider themselves materialists do not know what materialism actually is. They think that according to materialism, my thoughts and my emotions are inside my head. But the colors, the melodies, the flavors, the smells, the textures are really out there. No, that's not physicalism. Physicalism says all experiential states are inside your head. So the church that you perceive right now as you perceive it is inside your head. The inner

30:12 surface of your skull is outside this church under physicalism. It's the only way for physicalism to be coherent because thoughts and emotions are experiential states and seeing the church is also an experiential state. So if experiential states are magically created by your brain inside your skull, then the world as you perceive is entirely inside your head. That's physicalism. Now, if you describe it consistently like I just did, I think a lot of the people who identify as materialists go like, "Oh, I I I I didn't know that that's what I I was believing." Um, materialism is also incoherent in the sense that it makes a claim. The brain creates mental states or experiential states, but it doesn't tell you how, not even in principle. And

31:00 absurdly in our culture that is a strength of materialism because you cannot refute that which you can't pin down. If materialism doesn't tell us how brain states create experiential states, you can't you can't defeat it because you can't pin it down. You don't know what it's saying. If there is a one neuron active somewhere in your brain, oh you whatever experience you have is explained. Why did we do this? Why did we embark in this insanity and we now think that this is the only solid intellectually valid uh alternative? It is the most intellectually ridiculous alternative that has ever been on the table. How did this happen? That's a studying history and so sociology in the west, you know,

31:46 in the early days of science. Um the church could burn you at the stake like they burned Bruno the year 1600. Um, and the church had domain over psyche, the Greek word that translates into mind, but also consciousness, also, spirit, soul even. Um, so scientists felt that in order to not threaten the church, they had to carve out a sort of domain that isn't psychic, that isn't mind, isn't consciousness, isn't experiential. Um, and and the move was very smart. We always had numbers to describe the world. 50 kilograms, 10 kilometers. These are descriptions of experiential state. What it feels like to lift 50 kg,

32:33 what it feels like to walk 10 km. And then we said, "Oh, no, no, no. They are not descriptions anymore. These numbers are no longer descriptions. They are the thing in itself. The 50 kg exist prior to consciousness. The map exists prior to the territory. And they knew it was absurd. uh uh one of the authors of the lion the founding document of the enlightenment he is on record saying yeah no it doesn't work but we have to use it against the church >> he is on the written record uh saying that um so it was a political move um but as we as the enlightenment uh gave way to the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century and the bourgeoa became a socially dominant class because before it was the peasants and the

33:18 clergy now there was the bourgeoa in between and they were vying for social influence and economic influence against the clergy. So around beginning to the middle of the 19th century starting at the July revolution of 1830 or so it's a continuum. We can't pin down a date. 1830 is a good date to say here there is a clear transition. uh what was just a convenient story so scientists wouldn't be burned at the stake became something that they started to believe in. Why? Because that would rob the clergy of any social economic influence. If the psyche is derivative from matter and it's the bourgeoa scientists that understand matter now who why do we need

34:04 the church? The problem is towards the end of the 19th century you completely forgot this entire history and we started drinking our own snake oil when we started believing the nonsense. Nze recorded that point in the history of western culture when we started believing that kind of nonsense and he he understood what the implications would be which is the meaning crisis which we are going to talk about later. So there are social, economic, political and psychological reasons why we find ourselves in this dilemma today. It is very temporary. Uh it's been going on for 400 years and deep deep belief in materialism less than 200 years, maybe 200 years. This is nothing. This is a page uh in an epic. Uh we would turn

34:52 that page quickly. The problem is that we have very short lives. We are like mayflies. So we may live our entire lives under this nonsensical ethos that we will get rid of very quickly very passionate and compelling answer to that question. Um but if I come back to that then so on this page this brief moment in history when we are um convinced by the materialist narrative we're living that right now in many ways and for instance in neuroscience. So making a link to the hard problem of consciousness that starts from a premise that we just addressed from a materialist premise. But before we uh

35:38 unravel that, let's start with identifying what the hard problem of consciousness is. And I would like to ask you Bernardo to uh explain it in your own words. And then Swami G, I would like you to respond from the perspective of a diet. So Bernardo please. >> So I'll just define the problem. I'm not going to argue against it and then I pass it on to >> afterwards. Let's first make clear what the problem the hard problem of consciousness entails. >> So in one sentence, the problem is the following. There is nothing about physical properties in terms of which we could deduce in principle the qualities of experience. So I can elaborate a little bit just to get people time to let it sink in. There is nothing about charge, momentum, spin,

36:24 mass, uh uh um speed, direction. There is nothing in terms of there's nothing about physical properties. kilograms, kulons, jewels. Nothing about that in terms of which we could say [snorts] these kilograms, these jewels, uh these kuloms is red or is falling in love or is having a belly ache. Nothing. It's an impassible casing between the two. Thank you, Bernardo. So just to summarize again just to make sure this is crystal clear before we respond and both of you I will also allow you to respond because you were eager to jump in there already because on its own terms the heart problem basically says then um well it states that how can you

37:12 explain that from matter something qualitatively different emerges that we identify as consciousness. How is that possible? And I'm just basically repeating what you said. That's the hard problem. Now let's approach it from your respective traditions. Swami G what is the respond from advita vanta towards the heart problem? >> Yes we uh start with the basic sanankian intuition that uh the subject and the object are very different. Shankara's um commentary on the brahutras he starts with the uh subject and the object the the he uses the word the wei idea and this idea or the you idea. They are as different from each other as light and darkness. And when you I mean he will

37:59 retract all of this later on but first of all he starts with this clear distinction. Now to say that from the object you will produce the subject makes no sense at all. Um I remember this argument I had with a biologist who's also a philosopher in New York. He said look um consciousness is a product of the living brain. uh and I'm convinced of this. Why I'm convinced of this I can't tell you now but I'm convinced of it and give us some time and we will demonstrate. This is called promisory materialism. That means uh out of and then he g the example that uh life used to be considered a mystery and now we understand life down to its molecular levels and that's a good enough

38:46 understanding. Similarly, I promise you that in 50 years or 100 years, we will understand the whole of this phenomenon of consciousness down to its absolutely you know molecular level of brain activity or neuronal activity how we have no idea right now but it will happen. Now my answer to that from that answer would be actually it's a sanankian answer is that you can't why not it's not a technological problem it's a problem in principle and that becomes very clear when you take the sanken position you don't even have to go to adita the sanken position whatever you can label as this is an object to consciousness so can you label the brain as this brain of course you can and then to say that

39:33 the the brain will produce consciousness does not work. Why not? The example of life does not apply here. Life from an adic perspective or kank perspective life is life is also this life. This b series of processes is called life. And if you are able to explain life in terms of more fundamental molecular processes, good for you. You've explained something complex in terms of something um fundamental. You've explained a complex objective phenomenon in terms of more fundamental psych uh objective phenomena but now you are saying like that I will explain this entirely sub this pure subject consciousness itself in terms of

40:18 objective phenomena you're can you see the jump you're making you're explaining this in terms of that but now you're saying that you will explain this in terms of that I mean the awareness itself to which both of them are appearing as this this life these molecular phenomena good no problem ad does not see any problem or san does not see any problem but when you say this awareness which objectifies the whole universe and in which science religion everything is possible that awareness you're going to find out from one bit of the universe there is the problem so did that impress the biologist not one bit I don't think he saw from an adic perspective or sanankin perspective the the matter is very clear. It's it's very

41:03 dramatic. It can't be can't be done. It's like you have arranged the chess pieces and now from the chess pieces you'll say the chess man the player will be produced or explained. No way. You can make an even more complex arrangement of the chess pieces on the board. That will still not explain the player of the uh of the chess game. Yeah. >> Before you respond to please do. Yeah. [applause] >> Yeah. I mean I remember reading this I've quoted this again and again but very nice half humorous half serious piece by Gallen Strawson who is not an idealist by any stretch but still he says there is no hard problem of consciousness because he says that uh we have convinced ourselves that the brain produces consciousness then we can't figure out how and hence hard problem

41:49 [laughter] >> so the biologist >> he's my friend I love him but you're right [laughter] >> the biologist whom you refer to Swami Gene um he would equate easy problems with hard problems then saying that in the long run we can answer the neural correlations between the brain and specific functions like memory speech etc and the same will apply to the heart problem at some point we'll be able to figure out how the brain produces consciousness this biologist would say that now coming to you Bernardo how would you respond >> it's what he said >> what he said okay next question >> I I use my own words because you will get your cents worth. Um, I'm not going to be saying more than what he said just just in my own words. The hard problem is not a problem to be

42:36 solved. It's an internal contradiction of a silly line of thought. Um, but the people who adopt that silly line of thought do not want to admit that it's an incoherent line of thought that brought them to a wall. So, they call the wall a problem and they promise themselves that one day they will address it. trying to do that like a dog chasing its own tail at light speed and saying that next century I'll catch my tail. Look here here is the brief history of why we speak of a a hard problem of consciousness. In the early days of science, early science was not materialist. Early science was religious at best dualist. Um,

43:21 we realized that it's very useful to describe the world in terms of numbers and relationships between numbers. Mathematical equations, physics, it's very useful to do that. It allows us to predict the future states of the world and it allows us to account for the present states of the world and even past states. Extremely useful numbers as descriptions of the experience we call the world. Then at some point we said no no no no no the numbers are not descriptions they are the world that's the real world and the world of perception that's created by the brain somehow inside our head so the numbers precede the world the problem is that the meaning of the

44:07 numbers is anchored on perceptual experience. What is the meaning of 50 kg? It's lifting a bag that weighs 50 kg. It's looking at the needle of a balance move when you put the bag on the balance. It's watching an object sink in water or in a viscous fluid that weighs 50 kg. That's the meaning of 50 kg. It's the output of an instrument. It's an experience. You we perceive experience the output of instruments. The meaning of one kilometer is a geometric relationship between perceptual states. the length of a a ruler. The meaning of numbers is resides fundamentally in experiential

44:54 state. But when we say the nonexperiential state, they lose their semantic reference. They lose what grounds their meaning and now they mean nothing. Of course, you cannot deduce the qualities of experience from something that means nothing. We made a mistake in our thought line. That's all there is to it. It's not a problem to be solved. It's a silly mistake that we resist acknowledging. >> Can I just add something please? >> I'm just reminded of it's actually an actual challenge which was there in 1999. David Chas and Kristoff. >> Yeah. They had a debate in which finally this kind of debate in which it came to a head. There was none of that what he

45:40 said. It was just the opposite of what he said. So, so finally it came to a very precise challenge. Kristoff Ko said the way neuroscience is proceeding within 25 years we will solve the hard problem of consciousness. We will show you exactly how which part of the brain which activities produce consciousness. We'll show it 25 years David Thomas said you can't why in principle it's impossible. That's what I was trying to hint at from a sanankian perspective. He he didn't use the word sank or anything. He said in principle it's impossible because you're trying to deduct deduce you're trying to discover the subjective in purely objective processes. In principle you can't. All right. Cut to 2024. They had all forgotten about the challenge. Somebody pointed out to them it's 25

46:26 years now. What's the state of the art? What's the state of the debate the challenge? And so they decided to meet again in NYU uh last year and Kristoff Ko and David Chas. And Christo straightforward he admitted neuroscience has advanced a lot but we are nowhere close to solving the hard problem of consciousness we haven't been able to do it I think he handed over a crate of champagne to David Chamas or something >> good wine very expensive wine >> expensive wine but he said give me 25 more years same problem I will live at least 25 more years maybe I will try to solve it in next 25 years >> so basically uh from the perspective of advant the shared perspective of advant ideal um analytic idealism the hard problem of consciousness is based on a false

47:12 premise the fact that there is a material reality and then we have to explain how does material reality create consciousness so it's a a mistake in thinking and conceptual or uh an error in principle as you said Swami G let's move on to the next topic something that's emerging uh nowadays AI artificial intelligence with things like chachi and swam already mentioned or referred to it in passing in his lecture. Now before we discuss this, u let's first define or explain what we mean by AI. Bernardo, could I ask you to paraphrase in your own words what is artificial intelligence? There is a soft and a hard definition. The hard definition is what we call AGI or artificial general intelligence. The

47:57 soft definition is AI is a clever way of processing information and making decisions that is analogous to how humans process information and make decisions. There's nothing wrong about it. It's a perfectly harmless thing. It's a tool like any other. An AI is a tool like a nuclear power station. It can it's a very useful tool but can be dangerous. So we have to take safety measures. That's all there is to it. And then there is AGI, artificial general intelligence, which which tends in some corners to come with the extra claim that not only does this thing process data like humans do, it is sentient in the sense of having a private subjective point of view of its own, like we do. Its data processing is accompanied by experience like our data processing.

48:45 that I think is a very deluded um idea based on false premises and lazy logic. >> I'll come back to you momentarily. Uh Swami G, could you explain the relation between consciousness and artificial intelligence and maybe also bringing in human intelligence? >> Yes. >> Um let's first look at the relationship between consciousness and intelligence in our own case. So in uh in advita that part of the mind which processes information that's called actually called the mind in Sanskrit manus and there's another part in fact what we call the mind it's a very ambiguous cloudy term you know in Sanskrit there's a precise term it's called antarana

49:31 inner instrument so it's like an internal processor inner instrument because there are external instruments eyes and ears that which contacts sense objects they are called external instrument struments but the mind is the inner instrument and the mind has these multiple um um capacities. One is intelligence. Intelligence is called the determinative faculty. So that part of the inner instrument which processes information and comes to some understanding, some conclusion, some clarity about what reality is about itself and all the other. But my point is that's also an object. It's something that you can be aware of just you as we are aware of the body uh of of the table of the body of the breath of the mind

50:19 you're aware of the intellect too. So the intellect is also entirely objective although at a very subtle and sophisticated level it's still objective. It is it is it is an appearance to consciousness. Consciousness gives you the firsterson experience. So when you're struggling with an intellectual problem and you get the feeling I get it that that conclusion you reach is intellect but that feeling of I get it that's because of consciousness. Consciousness gives you that that burst of exhilaration or of you know the first person experience of getting it of understanding because that um intellect is objective in principle Sananki or Adwita will not have any um any objections to say a

51:07 machine duplicating or replicating. Let's be clear machines are not doing what's going on here. The way the machines do it, they they imitate what's going on here. Uh they imitate our processes. They're algorithms. They are not working the way our minds are actually working. But they deliver similar results. They deliver similar results. And from an adic perspective, there's no problem at all. Intellect is a set of objective processes. Therefore, an artificial intelligence is entirely within the realms of of possibility. But was that your question? >> It was. Yes. Um, let's move to Bernardo because you already hinted at something um before I asked why would you to respond. You said um some people say that AI at some point might become

51:53 conscious or attain consciousness and you said I doubt that. Can you elaborate? >> Yeah. when when they make the claim or when they when they raise the hypothesis that AI might become consciousness, they're not only saying in that it generates consciousness but it generates private consciousness uh dissociated consciousness if you will like like you and me. Um so they mean these two things um under idealism and under vanta. Um some people misinterpret both uh uh philosophies by saying well if under idealism and under vanta there is always one consciousness then everything is conscious every object is conscious. No to say that everything is in consciousness is not to say that

52:38 everything has a private subjective point of view of its own. It's not to say that a glass is consciousness, that my shoes um are conscious. Um there aren't even shoes in glasses. We mistake the world, the structure of the world for the structure of our language. We think that everything we have a name for is a separate thing. No, it's just our own epistemic construction that has evolved for convenience. You want to buy a car, you needed to have a name for that subset, that segment of the world that we call a car. It doesn't mean that a car exists. There is no car. There is no glass. There's no shoes. There's just the world. Everything else is nominal. It's the structure of language that we mistake for the

53:24 structure of reality. So there are no computers. So there is nothing there to have a consciousness of its own. Um the argument for AI is uh for sensient AI is ludicrous in a way that we all understand if we talk about anything else. But when it comes to consciousness, we get very confused and we become lousy. Uh our our logic becomes very very loose. It goes like this. If it quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, then it is a duck. >> On that account, a shop window mannequin is conscious. It looks like a human. So, it's human. It's conscious like a human.

54:11 No. Why? Because it was made to look like a human by construction. So, you can now you cannot use the that which you constructed is evidence for something totally else. An AI simulates the patterns of information processing in a human brain by construction. Therefore, chat GPT talks like a human. It was trained on human data. Does it mean that it's sentient like a human? No. For the same reason that we have no reason to think that the shop man is sentient like a human even though it looks like a human. Another mistake people make is mist is conflating the simulation with the thing simulated. We never make this mistake anywhere else. For instance, I can simulate kidney function on my Apple

54:58 iMac at home down to the molecular level very accurately. That doesn't mean that my iMac will pee on my desk because a simulation of kidney function isn't kidney function. But when we simulate the human brain, oh no, the simulation is sensient. You see we [clears throat] the most dangerous kind of nonsense is that which comes from authority and unfortunately authorities sometimes get so deep into their own sort of tunnel view that nonsense comes out and this the culture at large latches onto it. >> Thank you. Um [laughter]

55:46 [applause] I have no other questions about that [laughter] or maybe I do. I'm going to ask a question tongue and cheek to Swami G. So let's say that chat GPT a large language model uh that's increasingly becoming better at mimicking human uh communication. Let's say that 101 15 years from now it's so good it can mimic a spiritual teacher like yourself and people spiritual seekers in particular could go to chat GBT and have a spiritual conversation about advant what do you think about that >> it's already happened back >> I in university of Texas in UT Austin there's this uh uh computer postgraduate

56:33 computer science group uh a stu particular student so What they did was they fed um a large language model with it's not public it's within the university they they fed it with 1,000 hours of my videos and then they called it the servap prian the AI and then and also it has access to the internet at at large up to 2021 or 2022 or something all information is there and then they demonstrated it to me so ask it any question vanti question and it'll give you an answer a beautiful answer and not only that unlike the uh freely available chat GPT models what this does is it will give you its sources it will say you said this in this lecture at this time stamp so I

57:22 can't say it's wrong it's I have said it and uh and it pulls together from different sources immediately within seconds plus it accesses the internet at large and supplements that answer and gives a very rich answer every time you ask it Um, I wonder if I could ever match that level of [laughter] So that's that's the server on the AI. No. Is it uh so is going am I out of a job? Well, yes and no. Um I I'm reminded of this news article I saw. It's very cute and sad at the same time. A Buddhist temple somewhere in Taiwan, I think, um where they don't have monks anymore. So the last monk recorded his lectures into

58:08 a little toy robot. And so the temple is there. There are no monks. They all died. And the robot rolls around and if you feed it a penny uh it will play back one of those sermons to you of those dead long ago dead monks. Now [snorts] that's what it's uh it's like uh why I'm saying it's uh not entirely useful. It is useful in a certain way. You can it's always available to you. I may not be always available to you and it can sometimes give you much more detailed answers than I can give you. However, there is something that happens in the presence of a living teacher. We go to the teacher. We have read a lot. We have read all the books. We have understood all the arguments. We need to listen to that

58:55 teacher give the same teaching to us attentively. We attentively notice something else is happening which just playing back those things cannot do and that's why the ancient masters always recon in fact the word upanish from which vanta has come the ethmology of that is very interesting means to sit near it literally means sitting near the teacher and the deeper More esoteric meaning of sitting near the teacher is not just physically sitting near the teacher. Sit where the teacher is sitting. That is I am Brahman. That limitless awareness. Sit there. And that has to be a direct

59:42 conscious experience. It can't be words played back by a computer. So you have to sit near the teacher physically have that physical expression the body language the tone of the voice and um I remember my genstein teacher at Harvard University he's a senior most uh philosophy professor at Harvard University all other philosophy professors and all professors have their websites and um you know handouts and tests everything is you know on the internet he not so much he says come to class. Come to class, sit there, look at me when I talk, listen to me, watch me. There's something very subtle I'm telling you that will not come by reading a handout.

1:00:29 And this is what the ancient teachers were uh pointing towards. You must sit near a teacher, absorb it and they used to say live with the teacher. And um in a deeper sense, what is meant by sitting near the teacher? Not even just even physical presence with the teacher. It is uh uh the that first person conscious realization of the teacher. That's where you must sit. [applause] So AI tools like chat GBT will probably never put you out of a job in the end. A lot of people well that's a good thing I would say a lot of people nowadays um

1:01:16 and this is moving to the next topic the meaning crisis a lot of people nowadays turn to physical spiritual teachers sit in their vicinity um for meaning purpose wisdom but there and that is because a lot of people have lost a source of meaning and purpose many scholars say the same but in popular culture this is also a widespread notion now how do you think Bernard O this happened what has contributed? So causal connections are always hard but what do you think contributed to this contemporary meaning crisis? >> I begun the story already how science began and how the enlightenment went into the industrial revolution and how in the 19th century we started believing stuff that had only social, political

1:02:02 and psychological [clears throat] reasons to be put forward. at around middle of the 19th century with Darvin uh the bourgeoa thought that the kudigrass against the church because they still had domain over the origin of life and and now no longer so okay now we got rid of them right and in the early 20th century you saw the we saw the reflections of that in logical positivism [clears throat] the notion that um the only reality is that which we can directly access through experiment or through observation which is incredibly arrogant. Why would monkeys be able to perceive everything that is salient about the world and about reality? Right? Um and then we saw

1:02:47 that in behaviorism towards the middle of the 20th century. Behaviorism is one of those fantastic uh uh dilemmas that only the depths of nonsense can can can arise which is uh we we can't explain consciousness right? We can't explain. So we would say that it doesn't exist. Consciousness is behavior. All there is is behavior. Everything else doesn't exist. Now when you can't explain something in order to not lose faith, you have to say it doesn't exist. Even though the thing saying that it doesn't exist is the very thing that supposed not to exist. Um there is a reason for that trajectory. Uh it still holds momentum.

1:03:34 we collected a handsome payoff because of that in terms of um economic prosperity you could say and also psychologically we've we've ripped the biggest psychological payoff in the history of humanity which is we got rid of the fear of what we will experience after we are dead. Uh that is the single greatest fear humanity has always had. The church used it for a thousand years to have complete control over the west since the fall of Rome all the way into the beginning of the Renaissance. That's, you know, from 400 to 1400. That's that's a thousand years in which an institution without an army, well, they had the Templars for a little while, but an institution without an army

1:04:20 controlled an entire continent on the back of this one greatest fear. Well, we we got rid of it because you're not going to be there after you die. There will be no other conscious state. There's nothing to fear. All of your problems, all of your regrets, all of your anxieties are guaranteed to come to an end at the moment of your death, whether you believe it or not. And lo and behold, we do believe it today. Now, the problem is it's been long enough that we now take it for granted. We no longer realize that we purchased this at a great price. We no longer see what we purchased. Now we only see the price. And the price is you got rid of that anxiety but your life has become

1:05:05 meaningless and now we only see that because the other one we think we we we cash that in. You know we take it for granted. Um now the price is too high. uh it is an unsustainable state of affairs in any culture. It's not going to last 300 years. Uh something is going to give because it it contradicts reality. It flies in the face of reality. It is based on a set of in set of incoherent assumptions and incoherent derivations from incoherent assumptions. Uh it's not going to live long. Uh very short. Uh in in fact the problem is we live even shorter. So we don't feel the eb and flow of cultural history. Um it's

1:05:53 already changing. Um eminent neuroscientists are no longer physicalists. Eminent physicists are no longer physicalists. One came out online the other day. I don't know whether you saw that. Neil Toro the director emeritus of the um perimeter institute for theoretical physics in Canada which is the world's cathedral of theoretical physics like CERN is the world's cathedral for experimental physics he came out and said yeah I sympathize with this idealist folk I'm not a physicalist he said that to Curt in theories of everything >> yeah a month or two ago >> and there are more I can't tell you because you know

1:06:40 a lot of people still require that certain conversations be held in confidence which I understand there are careers at stake uh um personality is at stake um but no it's not going to last thankfully so the meaning crisis is a temporary illness uh it's going to it's going to be cured >> so you see already uh maybe a tentative shift emerging towards a new world view uh away from the world view that that contributed or maybe even caused the meaning crisis but at least contributed to it. So, do you also see uh people in search of sources of meaning and purpose because they've lost it? Yes, that's true. Perhaps a little more here in the west than in India, but it's

1:07:26 becoming a very much a flat society all across the world. Similar culture everywhere. And here we do have a crisis of meaning. Um Sri Ramak Krishna used to say that if you have a string of zeros you still have zero. If you put a one before the zeros then every zero has some value and even if you don't have any of the zeros the one still has value. And he didn't explain any further. But I remember this uh young scientist, Bengali scientist, he had gone for a multi- international conference in Japan and he came back and he told this story to me that the organizer of the conference was a Japanese uh Japanese scientist. So they were loosening up over drinks after the sessions and this Japanese scientist

1:08:12 confided in this youngster that you know I'm at the top of my field. I have written all these books. They are recommended in university departments. I organize international conferences. I have the maximum citations. I have a family, good car and place. And then he said, "But it's all zero zero zero." And he started crying. And then this young man, he said, "I don't know what, but I just told him the story of the one and the zeros." And uh he this Japanese scientist said, "Who said that?" And I told him that this Bengali mystic in the late 19th century, he's a smart guy. [laughter] Yeah. So we we are all searching for that one which will hold the all the zeros of our life together. Um the more sensitive we are the thing

1:08:59 is we also have a world of distraction. So you can spend several years being distracted by social media and you know the things which are happening around a fast life. Um Manhattan New York is said to be the city that never sleeps. So everybody's sleepd deprived there. You don't have much time to feel the emptiness of life before it's quickly covered over with this or that distraction. But you can't deny it forever. It'll creep up on you sometime or the other. And so we are all searching for that one which will give uh value to the zeros which we keep on collecting in life. >> Thank you for that answer. Many spiritual seekers or many people at large will maybe for some time be able

1:09:44 to run away from this feeling of um nihilism or avoid a loss of meaning. But at some point they do turn towards this question. What is the meaning of life? And maybe not even my life but my life in general. And when they do some of them turn to advant and at least in non-Jewish circles in western countries mosha is seen and realization enlightenment as the ultimate source of meaning and purpose. Could you explain what is mosha? >> Moka is liberation there. There are two ways of putting it. One is the it makes good sense in the Indian context. This is in the Indian context multiplicity of lives. life, birth, death, rebirth and many many lives. This is taken as

1:10:29 exomatic. Um all the Indian traditions be they as different as Hinduism, various schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jinism or Sikism, they all believed in this multiple lives. This is sort of

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