Unfolding Consciousness

There are very few books, if any, that can serve both as path-breaking, inspiring and motivating texts as well as a complete and comprehensive four-volume textbook for the student of the unfolding Science of Consciousness. Edi Bilimoria’s Unfolding Consciousness is such a work and a prime example of an up to date and well-studied treatise on the subject that is both engaging and informative.

Undoubtedly, we live at a historical moment where scientism is rapidly exhausting its power to propel a worldview by which the nature of human beings, and beings at large, has been rendered irrelevant to the unfolding of the cosmos. It is exactly this utilitarian, one sided, myopic view of science that Bilimoria in his quadrilogy dissects and de-constructs in order to establish science in its truth-seeking role. It is little wonder that the prevailing modes of knowledge, which treat nature and life as a mindless, random and mechanical blind evolutionary process, put us in such dire straits today. The author aims at revealing the true nature of science and at correcting its path. Indeed, he succeeds in this via a meticulous exposition of the root causes and shows us how we can put science back on its tracks, so that it reveals truth, rather than being exploited merely for its utility.

His abiding goal is solely to uplift, with utmost seriousness, both science and the perennial philosophy to their mutual benefit. He offers us a brilliant articulation of principles and ontological arguments that elevate the dignity of human beings in a world still largely driven and riven by scientism at the expense of eternal verities. Bilimoria heralds indeed a new kind of science and offers a great service in bringing forth such an enlightened view of science.

One of the notable achievements of this book is to show, with every evidence and testimony from science, philosophy, and neuroscience, that establishment science makes unsupportable assumptions; specifically that materialism, essential in its rightful context, is nonetheless an unsupportable worldview to explain the profound aspects of life and especially the enigma of consciousness. Reading this work, along with Emilios Bouratinos’ Science Objectivity and Consciousness, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary, and Arthur Young’s Reflexive Universe, one clearly finds a golden thread that helps us understand how our consciousness operates in a dual-aspect yet unified, monistic, fashion. For me, these books can provide the prerequisites of the curriculum that will constitute a sound and creative foundation of the fast-approaching new Science of Consciousness.

What Bilimoria offers is a meticulous exposition adorned with an engaging literary style and real jewels of wisdom from Eastern and Western perennial wisdom in a unique and rare synthesis. It is by no means accidental that the author of this quadrilogy is a prominent example of this new consciousness that is arising. He is a first-class engineer and concert level pianist with great decades-long service to a number of learned societies whose inter- and multi-disciplinary erudition shines throughout this work. That’s why he can balance left and right brain hemispheres, East and West cultural heritage, philosophy, art and science.

The first volume is exactly what the title announces, A Panoramic Survey – Science Contrasted with the Perennial Philosophy on Consciousness and Man. This is a bird’s-eye perspective dealing with the real fundamental questions of existence and human nature. He takes us on an enlightened exposition of the inevitable underlying assumptions and limitations of any human endeavour, and in particular the esoteric core of science and religion come into focus. He gives a detailed and informed timeline on how, and why, we arrived at today’s state of affairs in terms of the physical and biological sciences. As I read this part of the quadrilogy I became aware that the fine line of a liberating and fruitful approach to such ever-present, difficult to the core, questions rests on the primacy of discerning. In other words, the author guides us to take science and tradition very seriously, but not at all literally.

The second volume, Peering Down the Microscope – Man’s Internal Landscapes deals with the human condition. This reminded me of the freshness of Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, why one has to become a philosopher to receive the pure joy of realising and traveling through our inner landscapes. But Edi Bilimoria offers also an important addition and critical comparison with the teachings of the East. Something to cherish and read over and over again is his ‘take’ on Antahkarana (the bridge between the mortal and immortal aspects of man’s being—from the small ‘I’ to the infinite ‘I’).

And in the third volume Gazing Through the Telescope – Man is the Measure of All Things is where his synthesis becomes even more forcefully inspiring for the future of scientific thought. It is a tour-de-force from the summits of modern science to the core problems ahead, the “hard problem” of consciousness, i.e. from external sensation to internal experience, the awakening of our latent faculties and his knowledgeable articulation of what awaits us – embarking on the unfinished journey of our limitless evolution. What really surprised me pleasantly and deeply enlightened me in this part was the author’s insight into a double-edged approach to the nature of consciousness as an “Element”. This was backed by his very convincing discourse as to how the World as Mind—a fundamental precept of the perennial philosophy—is strongly alluded to by mathematics.

Here Bilimoria is in good company, Sir Roger Penrose, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton (to name a few) are all found in agreement with the Platonic /Mathematical essence of the cosmos. Yet, the author offers his fresh and novel support to this thesis in a clear and convincing way.

‘Mathematics’, a word invented by Pythagoras along with ‘philosophy’, comes from mathesis, the desire to learn the act of knowing. In that sense there is a subject and object interplay inherent in the world. Definitely, it is not the mathematics we learn at school. The mathematical nature of the cosmos is something that has to do with its ontological basis, consciousness, argues Bilimoria in this part. This brings us to an especially important point in contemporary thought. As Kurt Gödel and Gregory Chaitin have demonstrated, and have proved mathematically, truth cannot be entirely enclosed in any formal axiomatic system, no matter how complex this system may be. Which points to the fact that there is always an inner, experiential aspect of mathematics. Today, when the whole of science tends to be reduced to mere information, starting from quantum mechanics, up to biology and ‘big-data’, the next generations have to deal with the vexing dogma that ‘information is all there is’. If all is information, then who is the One who is informed? I can imagine Bilimoria tasking them with this question. Then the readers of this luminous quadrilogy of his will have a good companion in the near and far future, to help them to realize the need of asking the right questions for what really matters.

The fourth volume comprises the Index (104 pages), Definitions, Glossary, Profiles and Bibliography. It provides a comprehensive ‘roadmap’ allowing readers to navigate their way seamlessly through more than 2000 references, copious tables and diagrams (many in colour), plus individual chapter summaries and sidenotes.

In summary, these volumes, spanning the time periods from antiquity to the modern age, possess a breadth and profundity one rarely sees in modern esoteric literature. They expound the esoteric philosophy and occult sciences from arcane sources to the latest expositions from worldwide sources and diverse cultures, whilst substantiating their indispensable complement (not alternative) to science, at the same time supporting their affirmations with evidence and references. Given the original writing and novel manner of presentation, readers will not only find this work challenging and enjoyable, but eminently useful in their own research into consciousness and its limitless unfolding.