Preface
It takes a lot of perseverance to dig a well. It is a risky and strenuous undertaking in which you never know whether you will reach water or end up buried inside it. In my own well, I was searching for an answer to the question of what consciousness is. I have spent over forty years on that stubborn quest, which, in the end, has shaped me completely.
If you glance through the book, you will see that a big part of its content is related to physics. Do not let that intimidate you – this is not a book about physics, nor am I a physicist. The need for that scientific discipline came from a totally different reason. But let us start from the beginning.
Although I loved the natural sciences, I was especially drawn to questions of what consciousness and fundamental reality are. My interest was directed toward the exploration of Indian religious and philosophical traditions, with a particular focus on Vedanta. I was deeply immersed in meditation and religious practice, and I was also part of the vibrant Brahmin community, which I thoroughly questioned. All schools of thought that originated in Indian culture were subjects of my interest and inquiry. Translating texts from that domain of interest has taken the last fifteen years of my life. Over time, a large number of texts accumulated, all sharing a common characteristic that kept drawing me in, deeper and deeper. Because of that, I could not stop, finish the project, or begin publishing. All these texts originated across a wide historical span and came from different philosophical and religious traditions of India.
All these texts describe what consciousness is and how experiences of different states of consciousness ultimately lead to the realization of fundamental reality. In all of them, I refined and reduced diverse different terminologies to a common denominator by comparing their meanings and carefully calibrating the core ideas around which philosophical and religious texts were built. Naturally, all these texts convey almost exactly the same message – and most fascinating of all, these insights are the result of personal experiences of numerous individuals from diverse traditions and historical periods. I eventually stopped, realizing that there is a statistical basis for an argument which affirms the truth and credibility of human experience in claims about the nature of fundamental reality.
The first question that arose in me after that was: what happened to our Western philosophy and modern science, in which physics stands as its flagship discipline? Why has physics largely failed to seriously engage with the question of consciousness and its status in the realization of the holy grail of modern science – the unified Theory of Everything, which seeks to encompass and explain all phenomena in the universe? There is a story from not-so-distant Indian history about a world-renowned flutist who mastered the art of playing his instrument very early on and with great ease. He once asked his teacher which instrument he should learn next. The teacher replied that there was no need for a new instrument – he should simply switch the flute from the right side of his mouth to the left. The student was stunned by the difficulty of this seemingly simple task. He realized that the challenge would not lie in mastering the technique alone, but in confronting himself.
That is more or less how I felt when, after many years of studying philosophy and religion, I decided to shift my focus to science – particularly to physics. I was convinced that even within physics, there must be theories capable of accounting for the insights found in Eastern philosophical and religious traditions, which have long been dedicated to the exploration of consciousness.
Why did I decide to take that path? Although I am fully aware of the changing nature of human consciousness, it nevertheless possesses the capacity for objective insight based on its intuitions about reality. Human experience lies at the foundation of our entire evolution – an evolution that has given rise to the cultures we live in and the technologies we use. Human experiences are credible, and there is no justification for relativizing or excluding them from research in order to impose a scientific paradigm whose consequence would be the dehumanization of both the individual and society. It is my firm conviction that physics, even within its existing theories, has already implicitly answered the question of what consciousness is. The reason we lack an explicit answer lies in the failure to fully interpret the data – due to certain prejudices. As a result of being denied clear answers, doubts have deepened and questions have emerged that have led us in an uncertain direction regarding our understanding of humanism.
That is why the first part of this book includes physics – because within existing theories, it is possible to find and formulate a model through which the question of consciousness could be answered explicitly. The second part of the book deals with the philosophical and religious traditions of India, which, with almost statistical precision, recorded human experiences and, based on them, developed conceptual frameworks in which this question was addressed. I am convinced that there is a point of contact between these two approaches to acquiring knowledge: the scientific and the philosophical-religious. The content is not overly difficult to follow. I wrote in chronological order not only because the physical theories themselves developed that way, but also because that is the order in which I came to understand them – and that order helped me reach the final answer. I believe the truth can be reached in simpler ways. Just as Eratosthenes, on the summer solstice at noon, discovered there was no shadow in a well in Syene, and the following year, by measuring the shadow of his stick in Alexandria on the same day, managed to calculate the circumference of the Earth – so too can today’s physical theories be sufficient to arrive at an answer to the question of what consciousness is. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I was digging in vain. And yet, even as I pass the time at the bottom of the well, I continue to marvel at the seductive light of the stars.
I am thankful to Tomislav Jantol for his great help in preparing and editing this text, to my dear Tihana and Julia on their deep faith and patience, as well as to my Masters.
You can find more texts on this topic on my blog zorankrneta.com. Please feel free to send me any questions, remarks or corrections on krneta.zoran@gmail.com
Thank you!
Veli Vrh, March 3rd, 2025