Panentheistic Cosmopsychism

Summary

This chapter addresses the hard problem of consciousness—how conscious experience arises—by reconstructing Vivekananda's Sāṃkhya-Vedāntic solution. It first presents Ramakrishna's mystical views and those of five Western contemporaries, then examines Vivekananda's critique of materialism. Vivekananda defends panentheistic cosmopsychism, holding that Divine Consciousness is the sole reality manifesting as the universe.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Chapter 9 concerns what contemporary philosopher David Chalmers has called the “hard problem of consciousness”—the problem of explaining how conscious experience arises. The chapter provides an in-depth reconstruction of Vivekananda’s Sāṃkhya-Vedāntic solution to the hard problem of consciousness and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary philosophical debates. The chapter first outlines Ramakrishna’s mystically grounded views on consciousness and the views of five of Vivekananda’s prominent Western contemporaries: John Tyndall, T. H. Huxley, William James, W. K. Clifford, and Alfred Russel Wallace. It then examines Vivekananda’s own approach to the hard problem of consciousness and his critique of modern materialist theories of consciousness. Combining elements from Sāṃkhya, Advaita Vedānta, and the teachings of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda defends a metaphysics of panentheistic cosmopsychism, according to which the sole reality is Divine Consciousness, which manifests as everything in the universe.

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