Vedic Science of Consciousness

Vedic Science of Consciousness.The following quote is from this webpage:

http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/aa072101a.htm


Begin quote: Professor Ashok Sharma, a former Indian professor of Applied Physics, who was also a scientist at Harvard University, has formulated some path-breaking theories and postulations based on the ancient Vedic Sciences that give us some powerful insights into the gray regions of the human mind, and help us understand our consciousness.

Even after treading for long in the realm of science, Prof Sharma feels that science fails to understand consciousness as an independent entity. He says, "Science cannot integrate a non-physical entity, like consciousness, into its conceptual framework, and views human personality as a non-conscious physical system."

What is Consciousness?
Consciousness, according to Prof Sharma, is a non-physical entity, which is essentially different from the four basic entities of space, time, energy and matter of the conventional science. Consciousness does not have any physical attribute or property or action, but is endowed with autonomous will power of creation, retention and annihilation of the knowledge of an individual or that of the universe.

Quoting the Upanishads (Shvetashwar, 6/19), he says that consciousness itself is non-differentiable, inactive, placid, indescribable and non associative:

"Nirajanam Nishkriam Shantam Nirvadyam Niranjanam"

But again, consciousness manifests itself in the form of knowledge. endquote.

I was reading about the passing of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who sort of popularized the whole India thing through the beatles in the 1960s. The Vedic Science of Consciousness was the basis for Transcendental Meditation as I understand it. Yes, there were Yogis like Yogananda in Southern California who came to the U.S. 40 years earlier but he and others didn't seem to venture that much out of places like California or New York City or Chicago until the Beatles and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi popularized these kinds of thinking throughout the western world.