Recorded at the Vedanta Society of Western Washington on November 27, 2011.

Swami Atmajnanananda examines consciousness through both Vedantic teaching and contemporary Western inquiry, showing why the subject remains central in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and religious thought. He outlines Vedanta’s twofold use of the term: cosmologically, as a primary principle from which mind and the elements of matter evolve; and philosophically, as identical with Brahman—existence, consciousness, and bliss—by whose light the senses and mind function. Turning to Western discussions, he notes the ongoing difficulty of explaining how subjective experience arises from physical processes, highlighting the “hard problem” and the “explanatory gap” raised by modern philosophers. He also describes current research exploring unusual forms of perception and communication at a distance, and he surveys near-death experience reports as suggesting that awareness may not be confined to bodily function, including accounts of “life review” that resonate with the moral logic of karma.

Returning to Vedanta, he emphasizes ignorance (avidya) as the fundamental obstacle—mistaking the properties of one thing for another, and treating multiplicity as ultimate. The remedy is knowledge of oneness, cultivated through meditation, disciplined study, and guidance from an illumined teacher, so that awareness of the Self becomes clearer amid ordinary experience.