The dualistic conflict of the matter and the mind has been existing since the earliest times amongst the discussions of philosophers.The first school of philosophy propounds that the matter isinsentient and has no life. It is ever existing and its origin can not be explained. On the other hand , this school opines that the mind is conscious and is also ever existing along with the matter. Both the matter and the mind jointly operate this world. The Sankhya philosophy of the sage Kapil fits into this category. In his famous treatise Sankhya Karika, the sage Kapil calls these two entities by the name, Prakriti and Purusha. So the philosophy of the Sankhya is considered dualistic in nature. Kapil has not postulated the concept of God as the creator, operator and destroyer of the world. On the other hand the Vedanta philosophy holds totally contrary views about the matter and the mind. According to the Vedantic philosophy the real Entity is Brahma in which both the matter and mind co-exist.

 

There is no separate existence of the matter and the mind apart from Brahma. This concept of reality is expressed in the Upanishadic philosophy. The famous dictum that what exists in the macrocosm also exists in the microcosm is the essence of the Vedanta - Yatha Brahmande tatha Pinde. Shankaracharya has explained it very beautifully in his Advaita Vedanta. According to Shankaracharya, this world is just an appearance of Brahma, the supreme reality. So it is not real. His oft quoted example is that of the appearance of a snake inarope. The moment one sees the rope properly, the appearance of the snake disappears. There can not be two parallel supreme powers. The great votary of the Vedanta, Swami Vivekananda propounded the oneness and wholeness of the universe. He emphasised the Upanishadic fact that things differ from one another externally, but they are the same and one internally. In the words of Vivekananda, “These are fictitious limitations that never existed. The externalities and internalities are destined to meet at this same point, when both reach the extremes of their knowledge." He declared that there is no real distinction between the matter and the mind, the matter and the energy, the subject and the object.

 

They are the different expressions of the same reality. Vivekananda propounded that the body melts into the mind and the mind melts into the body. So both are fundamentally the same. When we examine the conclusions of astro and quantum physics, strikingly the same findings are obtained there. The great quantum physicist David Bohm said that there is an unbroken wholeness which denies the analysability of the world into the separately and independently existing parts. In his celebrated book, The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra concludes that the universe is an interconnected web of physical and mental relations whose parts are only defined through their connection to the whole. The great physicist Freeman Dyson asserts that the mind is already inherent in electrons and the process of human consciousness differs only in degree.

 

The Nobel scientist Richard Feynman said that atoms are consciousness. The famous scientist Roberts Austen admitted that metals have life. The famous Indian scientist J C Bose confirmed that in many investigations he was amazed to find boundary lines vanishing and to discover points of contract emerging between living and non living. Thus we find that the Vedantic pronouncement that the same energy vibrates both in the matter and the mind has found a very strong echo in the experiments of astro and quantum physics.