Gomatam’s GV Vedanta Consciousness

According to Ravi Gomatam, a quantum physicist and a monk of the Gaudiya Vaishnava (GV) Vedanta school of India, GV Vedanta is monotheistic, with a pluralist ontology that distinguishes between the energetic personal God (shaktiman) and the diverse energies (shaktis), such as consciousness and matter, which emanate from God. Both the energetic personal God (the Universal “I”) and his diverse energies, which include consciousness and matter, are ontologically real. While the material atoms lack consciousness and therefore are indistinguishable, the plane of non-material consciousness comprises innumerable individual units of consciousness, each with its own unique “I” (Gomatam, 2021).

Compatibility with Cognitive Science

Yet, Gomatam says, GV Vedanta is uniquely compatible with the materialistic perspective informing modern cognitive science—namely, that thinking, feeling, willing, intelligence, and even our present sense of “I” spring entirely from matter. This is via the GV Vedanta idea that many properties of consciousness can be separated from consciousness and instantiated in appropriate complementary “levels of matter,” a novel technical concept that Gomatam is introducing through his work in the foundations of quantum mechanics. He says it is different from the prevailing idea of hierarchy of matter at various scales in physics.

Levels of Matter and Illusion (Maya)

The color, size, and shape of an apple can be instantiated on paper. A plastic apple may instantiate even further properties of the apple, such as its 3-dimensional shape, weight, and texture. In either case, the apple itself is not reduced to the painting or the plastic object that instantiates its properties. Similarly, Gomatam explains, GV Vedanta allows various traits of consciousness to be instantiated sans consciousness in matter at various “levels” of matter, which are mutually exclusive, causal realms that complement one another, with each higher level not being constituted by its lower levels (Gomatam, 1987).

Even though matter instantiates properties such as thinking, feeling, experience, and even an “I” via an apparent self onto these levels of matter, matter itself is not aware it carries these cognitive and affective properties. Only consciousness can know matter has these properties.

GV Vedanta further explains that we mistake these materially instantiated traits to be part of our intrinsic consciousness due to maya (illusion), imposed upon the individual souls in the material world by the Universal Person (purushottama), from whom all individual “I”s emanate, but who is different from them. In this way, Gomatam suggests that GV Vedanta can contribute novel, sophisticated notions of levels of matter to instantiate various features of consciousness without reducing consciousness itself to matter.

Gomatam points out that here GV Vedanta differs from Advaita Vedanta, which holds both matter and individual “I”s to be ultimately nonexistent and admits only an impersonal Universal “I.” Jainism and Buddhism, two other schools of Indian thought, additionally treat the Universal “I,” personal or impersonal, to be also nonexistent (Gomatam, 2021).