Science, Philosophy, and Contemplation

• Through science, which is based on observation, analysis, and synthesis – the instrument being the (rational) mind – higher and higher syntheses can be reached, but all of them are of an empirical order, dealing with phenomena, objects of observation, where the subject is the observer and phenomena the observed – these two are separate.

  Phenomena include, apart from external objects, judgments, relations, emotions, etc., and can change or be replaced by other phenomena. They are always objects for the mind. In the case of a progressive understanding – be it in science or in philosophy – observations, theories, and conclusions are sublatable or stultifiable, which means potentially or actually replaceable by other concepts, theories, etc. The mind itself is an object for consciousness, and, consequently, is sublatable. Only consciousness is unsublatable.

  All science – and conventional, Western philosophy – is of the mind, where the dichotomy subject-object always obtains. Only in contemplation or intuition of reality or consciousness itself, can it be said that the separation (duality) disappears. ‘To be that which knows and to know that which is’. Mind, and philosophy (and the occasional scientist, like an Einstein or a Heisenberg) can get to that point or realization, whereby they, philosophy and mind, will annul themselves of themselves. This is the teaching of Advaita Vedanta.