Science and the Upanishads

Science postulates the evolution of consciousness from an inanimate world - there was a big bang, then
the formation of the solar system, earth and then years of volcanic eruptions, thunderstorms etc before
the first life arrived. Gradually this life evolved into higher levels of awareness or consciousness.

What science is still silent on, is the leap from the inanimate to living, it presupposes that life is merely
an accident; to quote Schrodinger:

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of
factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent
about all and sundry that is really near to our heart that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word
about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful
and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these
domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.

The logic of the Upanishads is - to proceed from the inanimate makes no sense, or that an objective
existence without a subject makes no sense at all. In other words, what difference is there between an
inanimate universe and no universe at all? An inanimate world also does not contain any information or
knowledge at all. Or as Wittgenstein says:

The world is a totality of facts, not of things

What Wittgenstein is trying to say is – the world (or existence) constitutes of facts (knowledge of things)
and not things in themselves.

Let me try to clarify here what is being talked about.

When a layperson is asked, what the world is (or what existence is) the answer would be:

It’s all composed of the birds, the animals, sky, plants, trees, water, human beings and various other
things. And this person is saying this answer, because he has in some or the other way experienced
these things through one or more of his senses – or in other words he has knowledge of this.

In philosophy, the term knowledge is not limited only to learning from books, teachers or classrooms
but extends to experience. In fact, we know what we experience more closely than we know what we
read. For instance a person who has eaten an apple knows more about an apple than a person who has
merely read about it or seen its photos.

Everything that is alive, knows – through one or more senses, only inanimate matter does not know.
Even in the smallest of life forms (microbial intelligence) there is a faint understanding of surroundings,
which inanimate matter cannot have.

Thus, Wittgenstein says, the world is not what it is, but a summation of sensory experiences,
perceptions and memories (facts to us)
The ancient seers of the Upanishads ask themselves, “Just as all that which is made of gold can be
understood through one nugget of gold, what is that one thing through knowing which, everything else
can be known.”

The Upanishad's view of the reality is that it's not inanimate matter which is fundamental, but it is the
subject (observer) which is fundamental. Matter and consciousness arise from this fundamental reality
which is called Brahman.