Knower

In Chapter 13, Krishna tells Arjuna that the body (and by extension, the entire universe) is the "field" (kṣetra), and the one who understands this field is the "knower of the field" (kṣetrajña).

He then says, "Know Me as the Knower in every field."

This essay seeks to understand the characteristics of the "Knower" exploring modern physics and computing alongside ancient Vedic philosophies of Sāṃkhya and Advaita Vedānta.

Sāṃkhya vs Advaita debate

The Sāṃkhya school of thought posits a perpetual duality of Prakriti and Purusha—the potential and the observer. In contrast, Advaita believes in a non-dual Brahman (God) as the only truth. But they are not at odds...

The modern point of view about these two ancient schools of vedic science appears to be misguided - and that includes the AI chatbots. The AI synthesis is : Sāṃkhya was atheistic vs the blind devotion of Advaita in singular God - much like the science vs religion debate of today. This line of thinking is based on our current divisive experience. We are simply juxtaposing on past our own reality of divergence of science from faith. Modern interpretations are based on semantic argument that the name "Advaita" means "Not Two" (non dual) contrasting the hallmark duality of Sāṃkhya. They miss the point that Advaita's mission was to help society get over a rigid belief system of hundreds of deities and demigods, often hindering social mobility. The society was locked in watertight castes. The message of non duality was necessary to bring the people together.

Advaita didn't refute the duality of Sāṃkhya. Quite the opposite, it reinforced the indivisibility of Purusha as one singular form of consciousness - often termed "Nirguna Brahman". In Sāṃkhya, Prakriti is described to have three fundamental qualities - Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. In Sanskrit - these qualities are collectives termed as "Gunas". A Purusha that is not influenced by "Gunas" is called "Nirguna" Brahman in Advaita. On the other side, the one that is under influence of "Gunas" is called "Saguna" Brahman.

In fact, Advaita expanded the scope of Purusha from individual droplets of consciousness to an immense universal field. This single field acts as the basis that supports all the "mind and matter" complex (manifest Prakriti). In essence "Nirguna" is like the vast ocean and "Saguna" are like the ripples of waves. Advaita did add a philosophical underpinning that the nature of the manifested, like ripples, is transient (time decay), and hence it is unreal (Mithya). To its semantic success, it was the first attempt to name the manifest as Matrix (Maya). For Maya acts as a jail to an untrained mind. Pure consciousness as Brahman is thus the only truth.

Let us understand the core concepts with Sāṃkhya. This path is easier for the scientifically-predisposed mind, and it satisfies the question that haunts both science and religion: "What was there before the universe began - before the Big Bang?" In other words, Sāṃkhya is designed for a logical closure. It is an analytical view of Vedic science. The word "Sāṃkhya" in Sanskrit literally means "a number." Sāṃkhya thus means: based in rational logic. Advaita implements this rational logic as faith. Think of Advaita as physics and Sāṃkhya as the math behind its theories.

Knowledge vs. Information

To understand the Knower, we must first understand what is meant by "knowledge."

The easiest way to comprehend knowledge is to contrast it with information.

Conventional definitions often see "information" as a nudge to predict next event (say an imminent stock market crash, perfect weather for the beach etc.); and "knowledge" as the concrete universal reality (speed of light is a constant). For this essay, we will flip these definitions to align them with the probabilistic quantum world. Probability is a useful tool. As observers, our predictive faculties lack certainty. That makes probability a universal theme - to handle uncertainty.

• Information is the data from events that have already occurred—the outcomes of repetitive trials. If you flip a coin a million times, the record of say 501,000 heads and 499,000 tails is information. It is concrete record of outcomes. It is the past. In Sāṃkhya, this is called Bhūtādika (manifested realities of the past). Manifest can be both, physical as well as abstract.
• Knowledge is the awareness of all options and their respective probabilities. For example, the simple idea that a fair coin may land on either heads or tails with a ~ 50/50 probability is knowledge.

Knowledge is the menu of potential options. For example: these are the "only" items available for dinner tonight-nothing else. It is a way to let observers frame "what to look for" or "what to measure"-a set of permissions or degrees of freedom. In Sāṃkhya, this is called Prārabdha (the destiny that is yet to unfold but we are quite sure of the likely scenarios).

A rather watered down analogy would be the example of a casino. In that very limited scope of slot machines and games, a casino has the knowledge as to how much edge it has (per hand), though it can't pick up gains against a specific player. It has control over final outcome but not on individual play. A gambler, on the other hand, is someone who is changing his bets based on the "information" of the individual outcomes - fully aware that probability is stacked against him. This design is useful because even though the game is rigged it is not so in favor of a specific player. Even the casino manager couldn't predict individual hand if she wished to try her own luck. Sāṃkhya thus, despite being atheistic, accepts divine incarnation, albeit such incarnation is as tied to the physical laws as an ordinary player to the rule book of casino - there are no special privileges except for the knowledge.

To design a fair system, where every player is equally likely to win (or lose) , the system must be probabilistic, but to make sure there exists a direction, the options must be narrowed down to a binary choice.

Knowledge doesn't strive to be accurate in terms of absolute occurrences - heads may be slightly more than tails in a flipping trial, or vice versa - but it is super accurate in a large sample size. It is thus a core driver of decentralization - many players on the same slot machine (beings). Or conversely infinitely many samples of the same slot machine (species) - they all collectively realize the probability distribution of the setup, assuming the setup stays put.

Knowledge can't predict the next outcome but it never misses a change in setup. A change in conditions immediately changes the odds - without fail. There is no way to bluff the knowledge: if you flip a coin in air, it can't just fly to outer space! Or can it?

It can! In the truest spirit of probability it can. Say if earth lost its gravity for a split second just when you flipped the coin! There is definitely a probability of such an occurrence, howsoever small it may be, but when we consider a flipping experiment, the pre-existing manifestations - such as gravity of earth - are the assumed preconditions. These conditions make sure that out of infinite possibilities, only two are permitted - Heads or Tails. All other "Not Heads" or "Not Tails" are constrained by the "setup" of our experiment. Awareness of all such preconditions that led to a binary option pair is knowledge. In essence "setup" is as important as the outcome. If we repeat the same setup, we will observe the same probability distribution - again and again. Outcomes are deterministic but probabilistic. The keyword here is binary choice. This is important as we will see down the line in this essay.

To put the idea of "knowledge" in context, let's look at the Bhagavad Gītā. Krishna suggested a binary option to Arjuna: if you die in the war, you shall gain exit (Nirvāṇa); if you win, you will enjoy the vast kingdom. Life and death were choices like those in an air-borne flipping coin. However, Krishna clarified that "not fighting" wasn't a valid option. The chances of Arjuna not fighting were akin to a coin flying to the outer space. Even if Arjuna were to abandon the fight, his conditioning would force him back in. It is in the "geometry" of a coin to be flipped as much as that in the nature of a warrior to fight.

Krishna is seen as the "knower" because he not only knew the options that fate (prārabdha) had on offer, but that these choices belonged only to Arjuna—not to thousands of other warriors. And that the options opened up (conditionally) once the manifest reached the battle of Kurukshetra. The Gītā had to be told only after reaching the center stage, from where entire universe could hear.

Even if it may conflict with formal epistemology, let us restate the definitions once again:

For the sake of this essay, "Knowledge" is the set of rules governing the probabilities, while "information" is the record of individual outcomes.

For an external observer, knowledge unfolds with every new piece of information. For example, if it was your first time flipping a fair coin, you would soon realize that Heads or Tails were only options. For a binary pair such as coin toss, "Not Heads" exists (like flight to outer space) but eventually it means "Tails", and vice versa - because of the constraints of the setup. You can name "Tails" as "Not Heads" depending upon what you are looking for. You would also see that Heads and Tails are random occurrences - independent of what showed up in last flip. But there is an order in that randomness. If you flipped enough times, the occurrences of two options converge towards the average - half and half. If there were three probable outcomes, the outcomes shall gravitate towards "one third". These are proven laws of probability theory but the amazing thing is:

No one ever told "the coin" how to behave. It didn't take probability theory lessons :-) Einstein famously said "God doesn't throw dice".

Knowledge to maintain an intricate balance of outcomes must be pre-embedded somewhere into the geometry of the coin. Knowledge is something built into apparently chaotic potential. It is the basis for weather patterns to emerge, stock markets to function, from traffic in busy down town to the orderly flock of birds flying - everything has knowledge prebuilt at the most granular level.

The gradual unveiling of knowledge (for an observer) is thus akin to "decrypting" a puzzle through repeated trials and errors.

Knowledge means you build the system inside out, not outside in. While a well "informed" may cite event(s), knowledge is the means to hypothesize. It can predict things or lay down prophecies. Knower is an insider. It is so deeply entrenched that it is invisible even to ardent observers. An observer is collecting information (past), a knower is choosing the direction of the future.

While potential is perfectly random, "what to observe" creates a narrative - an order emerges. We always look for a Head or Tail in a coin flip. No one is counting bananas after flipping a coin. There are waves in the ocean because we are counting the waves.

The Act of Observation - locking attention

This is where Quantum Mechanics provides a crucial insight: an act of measurement collapses the wave function.

A "wave function" is just a fancy way to account for "all the possibilities" (in a mathematical equation). The quantumness, however, is a fascinating idea. It means all the possibilities exist together in a state called "superposition". An observation breaks this "possibility cloud" into one unique state. This one chosen possibility is a tiny increment in our reality. It is a concrete event - the information. It is like Monday morning when you were still half asleep imagining it was a lazy Sunday. The weekend quantum dream wouldn't collapse till Alexa announced it was eight a.m. to kickstart the work week, and then it all suddenly gets real! Monday happened.

In Sāṃkhya, the quantum state is represented by Prakriti. Prakriti, an equilibrium of potential, manifests but there is a mandatory requirement: the proximity of Purusha - an eternal but random observer. This observer, in both QM or Sāṃkhya, need not be "conscious" (like a human)—it can be an automated act of measurement. Just the way Alexa, though not conscious, measured your Monday morning to let loose the reality!

While the concept of Prakriti is well understood in modern science—all elementary particles (quarks, bosons, electrons, etc.) exhibit quantumness—the idea of an "elementary observer" is conspicuously missing. Why should Purusha seek to observe? What motivates it to take a measurement?

Sāṃkhya's answer is profound. It says Purusha wants to know, "Who am I?" This impulse to "know itself" is what separates Purusha and Prakriti. Prakriti is "all possibilities" because it doesn't seek to know; Purusha is the fundamental awareness because it yearns to know itself. Think of a pottery maker - the clay is prakriti. The fire that is used to heat up the pottery is Prakriti. The hands that make the pottery is Prakriti - even the mind that plans what to make is Prakriti. Purusha is the element that artist is trying to express - to portray through his art as to who he is - Purusha is the elemental consciousness.

The collapse of a wave function leads to manifestation (information). The information, through sheer chance (no genius), may unlock knowledge about the nature of the underlying potential. These are the cases where Purusha finds what he is trying to express. A tiny part of Knowledge is now decrypted—that the wave belongs to an electron, the conditions are a vacuum, and that the probability of electron spinning up or down, just like our flipping coin, is fifty-fifty. Once this knowledge is decrypted, a small piece of the entire knowledge is said to be decrypted. It is like solving one piece of a huge jigsaw puzzle at a time. Or adding a block to the decrypted knowledge chain.

But the question remains, how do things manifest when we make an observation? Quantum Field Theory uses the word "decoherence" to describe this phenomenon. The universe that we see is the result of decoherence. Science is pretty good at describing what happens, but "how" is a bit fuzzy. Maybe it is lost in super-complex mathematics. Sāṃkhya, on the other hand, provides a rich mechanism for the play of creation (decoherence) through the inter-operations of the three Gunas.

The best part: You don't need to be a string theorist to understand this play!

As we noted earlier, the quantum state of Prakṛti is defined by three guṇas: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. This might feel as if Sāṃkhya posits a three-dimensional possibility space (as opposed to two dimensional Hilbert space of "Coin Flip") , but the framework of the three guṇas CAN represents infinite dimensions. How? Because "Gunas" are descriptors—not the possibilities themselves.

• Tamas represents a state of zero self-awareness, sometimes described as darkness because it is directionless. This state is recognized through its inherent inertia because multiple dualities acting together leave no wiggle room. Important thing to mention here is: Every possibility always comes with a mirror image - "Heads" and "No Heads". These dualities (rather than independent possibilities) are superimposed over each other to form knots. In this state "prakriti" is said to be tied in its own doubts.

• Rajas represents the motivation to discriminate, choosing ONE duality from the chaos of hundreds of dualities of Tamas. It is the state of rigor because it is untangling the complicated knots, and doubt because it is always dealing with dualities. Finally, if it succeeds, Rajas picks up one duality and offers a choice to the observer. In our coin-flipping experiment, choice is not "Heads v/s Tails" - it is one of two resolutions: "Heads or No Heads" vs. "Tails or No Tails." To make this idea simple, think of yourself as an investor in the stock market. You have thousands of choices. You can't really make an investment if you want to analyze all the opportunities. This is a state of Tamas-analysis paralysis. Rajas is the grind to finally get you to a place where you want to place all your eggs in, say, a Bitcoin ETF. When you are presented with this choice, you still have a duality: invest or not?

• Sattva represents resolution—the choice of one option from the binary pair presented by Rajas. It overcomes duality and leads to manifestation. Continuing with our example, if the duality was "Heads or No Heads," Sattva may choose "Heads." If it chooses "No Heads," then Rajas must provide another duality: "Tails or No Tails." Likewise, Sattva may choose "Tails" at this point or let Rajas keep on grinding the wheels. Think of these as the flips in the air. When the coin finally strikes a hard surface, bounces a couple of times, and settles—that is when we say Sattva took a shape in the manifest - "Prarabdha" happened. And of course, if you are an investor, congratulations—you invested your money in Bitcoin.

The journey of manifestation is thus from many tangled dualities (Tamas) to a single duality (Rajas) to finally one option of the duality (Sattva). The collapse of the wave function means symmetry is broken. One side of the duality turned into real stuff (information), and the other is retained by the system as "Knowledge." Think of it like Casino knows the daily loss or gain of all the slot machines - that awareness keeps validating casino's assumptions. It keeps refining the probabilities whereas individual player has information of a few hands she or her friends played.

When Sattva makes a resolute measurement, Purusha gets entangled in the middle of the decoherence it caused. It "gets stuck," and the time begins - which means the time is a measure of how long attention stays locked. In Vedic terms, this is the fundamental bondage of observation—Bodh Bandhana - the bondage of awareness. The very state of knowing is a bond at this level, different from the Karmic Bondage we normally refer to in traditional Vedic teachings. In some traditions, "not knowing" is considered ultimate freedom. Buddha was often called "BodhiSattva" because he had freedom from the bond of knowing. Like karmic manifest, time does pass in this bondage - there is a notion of rise and decay - but duration of this bond is exponentially longer. You just can't "unknow" that easily.

BTW, this is exactly how an AI Large Language Model works: It is a great way to comprehend what QM framework is missing a very important formalism - the observer!

In an LLM such as Google Gemini, all the "words" (tokens) that are used to train the model are suspended in a vector space of thousands of mathematical dimensions. Of course, these are not real physical dimensions like length or width—they are mathematical dimensions (x, y, and z coordinates).

The whole idea of training a model is to align the vectors (representing the text tokens) based on their meaning - often known as the dot product. For example, the vector for the word "cap" is aligned closer to that of word "hat" and away from the word "cat". The model learns the relationship between words but here is equally important construct: there is another algorithm called the "attention mechanism." The attention mechanism is a separate process that helps the model decide which words in the prompt are most important for generating the next word. It works by weighing input tokens so that relevant ones have more influence on the model.

The prompt that we give to an LLM thus runs through the attention mechanism. Attention, clubbed with the vast model of trained tokens, then probabilistically renders one word at a time to provide a response to your prompt. In this example, think of Prakriti as the trained state of the LLM and Purusha as the attention mechanism. When potential and attention join together, they manifest an artifact. The only difference is that in our quantum computer of Prakriti and Purusha, the manifests are real things, while in LLMs, it is a poem! Or cat pics. :-) Is there really a difference between artificially generated world and our natural world ? Food for thought but the point here is - at a very generic level - AI works exactly like Sāṃkhya model of potential and observer.

The scripture states the cycle has no definitive beginning or end or order because there is no notion of Time before the manifestation occurs. The time (Kala) is an emergent behavior of the manifested. It is the way we present the information flow - from one event to another. Thus, before the manifestation happens, there is no order of the events. We can start from any state to any state.

Let us assume Prakṛti begins in a state of Tamas (pure equilibrium of knots). The proximity of Purusha creates an excitation, giving control to Rajas, which leads to a definitive option pair out of a multitude of possible pairs. Sattva then resolves this by selecting one side of the duality. This is where Purusha's attention gets locked into a scalar (non-dual) state of Prakṛti, which is then called the "manifest."

The other side of the chosen duality holds the knowledge. For example, if the manifest is "Heads," then the knowledge is the awareness that "I am not Heads" - just the way you believe you are not your image in the mirror - yes you two look alike but image is chiral - means left side is right and vice versa. Think of your chiral image as unmanifested side of your own duality of being - knowledge locked in the system. In QM this idea is represented as "complex conjugate" though much lucid math. If a manifest (particle) is always locked on its image such that the manifest and its image are entangled (for a duration), such a particle is a spin half particle. It takes 720 degrees for the manifest and its image to take a full circle. Such particles bear attention as mass. You are because your attention is locked with your image - it is one system.

This split of physical and knowledge also means the probability of "Not Heads" in the next trial increases by one vote. It is important to be careful here because in classical world every "toss of the coin" is independent of previous toss. We CAN'T increase the probability of Tails based on the results of past trial, but we can sure increase the probability of a "thing" that is NOT a designated outcome. So "Not Heads" is a way to circumvent the formalization of probability theory. In truth "Not Heads" in this case is same as Tails because there are only two "real" options. In the next trial, thus, Sattva is likely to choose "Tails" for the observer, but if it didn't, "Not Heads" now has two extra votes and thus an even higher probability of "Tails".

The idea of saying "NOT-HEADS" as the knowledge is a crucial point here. It means "knowledge" may represent a proxy vote in the probabilistic disposition of the trial but it can't manifest (in real) on its own. It must take on the shape of "Tails".

Keep in mind that the three Gunas are not some external monitoring system. These are the inherent properties of Prakriti—manifest or unmanifest—just like Quarks have three fundamental color charges: Red , Blue and Green.

• Sattva <=> Green - creativity
• Rajas <=> Red - action
• Tamas <=> Blue - inertia.

Together, these three qualities bear the force of creation - akin to strong nuclear foce - the strongest force of the four force.

Connection with Quantum Mechanics and deeper mathematics

The Advaita model has a striking parallel to Quantum Feild theory (QFT) . Except that, the QFT posits seventeen different fields - not just one! But still the idea that an underlying feild bears the the knowledge of which manifest emerges makes sense. So we have a notion of an ocean of Nirguna of which Saguna emerges as it interacts with the three qualities of Prakriti.

But the question remains - how do we explain the three fundamental qualities of Prakriti? QFT explains the three-ness through an arbitrary mathematics of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) . QCD is used to explain the strong force, the very reason of manifestation, through an arbitrary assumption of three color charges - Red , Blue and Green - akin to three qualities of Samkhya. It works very well but it has no structural underpinning.

String theory, luckily, solves both the problems - the duality of Samkhya ( Prakriti and Purusha) and the three qualities of Prakriti. There are two types of strings - open strings and closed loops - representing Prakriti and Prurusa. Open Strings emerge into three types based on the types of Branes they are attached to!

A Geometric Tapestry: How String Theory Weaves the Colors of the Strong Force

In the heart of every atom, the universe’s most powerful force is at play. Known as the strong nuclear force, it binds tiny particles called quarks together to form the protons and neutrons that make up our world. The theory describing this force, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), is a cornerstone of modern physics. It tells a peculiar story of "color charge," a property of quarks that comes in three varieties—whimsically named red, green, and blue. These are not literal colors, but labels for a type of charge that governs how quarks interact, mediated by force-carrying particles called gluons.

For decades, the rules of QCD have been accepted as fundamental truths because they perfectly predict the outcomes of experiments. Quarks have three colors; gluons carry color and can change a quark's color; and no particle with a net color charge can ever be seen in isolation—a phenomenon called confinement. But a deeper question has always lingered: why these specific rules? Why three colors and not two, or five? Physics, in its quest for ultimate understanding, seeks not just the "what" but the "why." String theory, a candidate for a unified "theory of everything," offers a startling and elegant answer, transforming these abstract rules into a tangible, geometric picture.

The first step in this new perspective is to abandon the idea of particles as infinitesimal points. String theory proposes that the fundamental constituents of reality are not points, but unimaginably small, one-dimensional vibrating strings. Different vibrations of these strings correspond to different particles, much like different vibrations of a violin string produce different musical notes. For this framework to be consistent, it requires a universe with more than the three spatial dimensions we experience. Within this higher-dimensional space, string theory introduces another crucial ingredient: vast, sheet-like objects called "branes" (short for membranes).

The relationship between strings and branes is the key to unlocking the mystery of forces. The theory contains two types of strings: closed loops and open strings with two endpoints. Closed strings are free to travel throughout all dimensions, and their lowest vibrational state corresponds to the graviton, the particle of gravity. Open strings, however, are different. Their endpoints are not free; they must be anchored to a brane, like threads stitched onto a tapestry. It is the vibrations of these open strings, confined to live on branes, that manifest as the particles and forces of the Standard Model, including the strong force.

This is where the geometric explanation for color charge emerges. To construct the strong force, string theorists imagine a stack of three distinct branes placed together in the extra dimensions. Each of these branes corresponds to one of the three colors: a "red" brane, a "green" brane, and a "blue" brane. The force-carrying gluons of QCD are then revealed to be nothing more than the vibrations of open strings that have both of their endpoints attached to this stack.

A string that begins and ends on the same brane (say, the red brane) behaves like a certain type of gluon. More importantly, a string can stretch from one brane to another. A string stretching from the red brane to the green brane corresponds to a gluon that can interact with a red quark and change its color to green. The complete set of all possible open strings that can exist on this three-brane stack—strings starting and ending on the same brane, and strings stretching between different branes—perfectly reproduces the properties of the eight gluons required by QCD. The abstract rule of three colors is no longer an axiom; it is a direct consequence of the existence of three branes.

This elegant model also provides a natural origin for quarks. If gluons are strings with both ends on the color branes, what are quarks? The answer lies in introducing a second, separate group of "flavor branes" at a distance from the color branes. A quark, in this picture, is an open string that stretches across the gap, with one end attached to one of the three color branes and the other end attached to a flavor brane. This immediately explains why quarks feel the strong force—one of their endpoints lives in the world of color. It also gives them a distinct identity from gluons, which are confined entirely to the color brane stack.

In this way, string theory provides a profound reinterpretation of the strong force. The seemingly arbitrary laws of color charge are revealed to be a reflection of a deeper, geometric reality. The number of colors is the number of branes. The properties of gluons and quarks are dictated by where the strings they are made of can end. This translation of abstract quantum rules into a physical model of strings and surfaces is one of the most powerful and beautiful ideas in theoretical physics, suggesting that the very fabric of our universe is woven from a hidden, higher-dimensional geometry. ---- WIP ----

The Universal Computer - Mahat

The gunas model at its core reduces the multiplicity of quantum states to a binary choice. That makes this quantum apparatus more like a classical computation device. Manifestation is like a classical transistor in "ON" position where observer is locked in like a tiny spark of current, and the opposite is barren "off" state without any attention.

That raises the question - what exactly is consciousness. The answer is in another question that we left unanswered in the starting paragraphs - why does Purusha wants to know who it is? Consciousness is ability to discriminate between I and the rest - The Identity.

The Rise of Identity (Ahaṃkāra)

The Mahat is thus a computer, but it is capable of producing real stuff—not just mere poems or answers to your questions. It does that too, but for that, we might just use our simple computer :-) But our universal quantum computer, as grand as it may be, does need attention. Attention is like the electricity. There is no manifestation without the curious observations of Purusha. The question is, where does attention come from? How does Purusha arrive at the scene?

The answer is surprisingly simple though circular: the physical stuff (the information) that Mahat creates from a patternless chaos cobbles together to form complex patterns. Pattern emerges out of randomness. These patterns aspire to know what they are because the very meaning of a pattern is something that could be identified! But the questions are rarely at the level of subatomic particles, just the way we don't ask an individual transistor to flip into 0 or 1.

You may say the logic is circular because attention can't be there without Identity but Identity can't emerge without attention at the granular level. A chicken and egg situation. This however is not a limitation but a proof of the model. As we said earlier Sāṃkhya posits an everlasting play of Prakriti and Purusha. There is no end or no beginning because the time itself is an emergent phenomenon of the manifested. Attention is as fundamental a field as the Higgs field - beyond time.

Ahamkara is thus the application paradigm over Mahat that lets manifested stuff recognize itself. This higher level of abstraction represented by an Identity asks, "Sure I have a name, but who I really am? How did I reach here?" The quest "to know who am I" supplies the attention to the underlying system. The role of Ahamkara is like the "inference engine" of the AI LLM example. It translates the prompts of an identity into thousands of questions for our underlying quantum switches. Some of them resolve the color, others the smell, and some more create new matter. The more questions Identities ask, the more manifestation happens and consequently, more knowledge gets decrypted.

Asking "who am I" is not very different from asking "what is this universe" - it is same as saying Heads is same as "Not Tails". In essence, the real world that we see around us (information) collectively is a mirror image of the collective decrypted knowledge.

The Random Observer (Manas)

If the goal is to decrypt knowledge from a perfect chaos of potential, the most effective strategy is random sampling. That is where Manas comes into being—the fickle mind. Ahamkara, being the Identity, seeks to know "who am I" and thus supplies attention to the underlying potential, but it must do so in the most random fashion. To better understand this idea, we can look at a real-life example—Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin mining uses random sampling—or more precisely, trial and error with the nonce—because of how the proof-of-work mechanism is designed. In Bitcoin mining, miners must find a nonce value such that when it is combined with the block's header and run through the SHA-256 hash function, the resulting hash is below a certain target value defined by the network's difficulty.

The SHA-256 hash function produces output that is unpredictable and essentially random. For any given input (including a specific nonce), there's no way to know in advance what the output will be, nor is there a way to get closer to a valid result by choosing nonce values in any particular order. That means each attempt to find a valid nonce is independent—the outcome of the hash function cannot be predicted from previous attempts and does not follow any discernible sequence.

Therefore, miners use the nonce as a random or incrementing value to keep generating different block header hashes until one meets the required criteria. This process is purely a guessing game—akin to buying lottery tickets—where miners continuously try different nonce values, sometimes in order and sometimes randomly, hoping to "stumble upon" the right one. If all possible nonce values fail, they change other elements in the block (such as the extra nonce or timestamp) and continue the process.

This approach is fundamental to the security and fairness of Bitcoin: it makes the mining process probabilistic and unpredictable, preventing any miner from having a guaranteed shortcut or advantage beyond raw computational power.

Think of Manas as a secure and fair method to determine "Identity," except this means "hard work." We will delve into the connection of this idea with "Karmayoga" in later chapters—suffice it to say here that this hard work provides Rajas its industrious nature to choose one duality out of many possibilities. This also means our minds are designed to chase random desires for us to determine who we are. Controlling the mind is hard. How then can we do something useful with a focused mind? That is where the idea of consciousness comes in—our senses are there to ground us in reality, to make our observations as objective as possible.

The Evolution of Consciousness

The obvious next step in evolution is to support the fickle mind with tools to observe Prakriti with a focus on the condition of the physical world—the dynamic circumstances of the vicinity. The tools to measure reality—the sensors—are called Indriyas: our senses, the eyes, ears.

The observer, now equipped with senses (indriyas) to assess the environment, then develops the action organs to protect those senses. This is how the observer becomes a fully interactive but bound agent.

This state of vigilance is called consciousness. Consciousness drives survival and aspires to the longevity of a manifestation, but the downside is that "knowledge" becomes encrypted to conscious beings. Why? Because the purpose of conscious beings is to engage with manifested reality. The flipping nature of the underlying universal computer has access to all knowledge, but this knowledge is invisible. Think of a conscious being as a user of a complex computer. It can ask for the next step but doesn't know how the machine truly works.

In essence, a conscious being becomes a part of an organization to drive efficiency. You should not do the work I have already done. We can define our separate roles to scan the surroundings. These rules give rise to ever-improving communication within conscious beings. Standardization is key to communication. This is the rise of "Intelligence." While Intelligence represents communication, Knowledge becomes a method of value exchange for mutual growth. Every piece of communicated information has a value attached. Better rules deserve better value—they attain standardization first.

Consciousness drives centralization and order. This state is the exact mirror image of "knowledge." In a way, it is the chiral manifestation of knowledge. Knowledge, by definition, stays decentralized, watching pure potential. It is the set of assessment rules for manifesting the righteous (the right choice). Consciousness, on the other hand, is the ability to scan the environment for something better. Sometimes, decay is also a better choice. Knowledge is eternal; consciousness is the poster child of the happy matrimony of Purusha and Prakriti.

The formation of Mahat, Ego, and Mind is not a one-time event but a continuous, layered process. With each layer, more knowledge is decrypted into stable reality. As an entangled observer learns, it also develops tools for quantum purification and detachment. In other words, only conscious beings may strive to realize the hidden knowledge of pure potential. These more detached observers then begin to formulate a new, higher-level rulebook over the existing, bonded reality. In essence, information expands as more and more knowledge is decrypted.

This is the engine of evolution. Every new layer is a "quantum jump" in consciousness. Vedic science illustrates this through the incarnations of Vishnu: from the great fish (Matsya) to the tortoise (Kurma), the man-lion (Narasimha), and finally to a complete human (Rama), each representing a new evolutionary layer of intelligence.

Intelligence

Intelligence is the standard for communication between conscious agents. Every layer of conscious beings develops its own set of sensors to perceive reality. Not only the successive layers, but within each layer, there can be millions of conscious beings to perceive reality differently. For example, dogs perceive reality differently than we humans. Bats have a totally different take on reality. Accordingly, they develop action organs to protect the senses. Since the whole point is to drive efficiency in understanding the overall decrypted knowledge, it is very important to communicate with each other. These standards of communication are what we call intelligence.

The important thing to note here is that within each species, the meaning of reality may be very different. For example, I may perceive the color green very differently than you, but it works as long as we both point to the same color as green. Thus, intelligence (a.k.a. communication) is detached from reality. It is just a way to express information. No wonder abstract things such as love are harder to communicate than ground reality.

The origin of intelligence, however, is deeper than mere communication between two humans. As we alluded to earlier, intelligence is the mechanism of communication from a lower layer to the next. The standards are forged in the lower layer. For example, AI robots shall inherit standards of communication from us. They will need to recognize colors based on our standards of communication. This opens up profound opportunities for us to explore if we can communicate with other species. A difference in sensors and action organs is a clear impediment, but talking to trees is certainly not beyond the realm of the possible.

Advaita Vedanta

The rookie mistake is to think that these probabilities exist as a mix of percentages - like heads 40 percent and tails 60 percent in an isolated system of coin flip. No ... they both exist in full. If we take away the time aspect these states may be represented as radius of a sphere - infinite radius are possible. Lets say Heads is a possibility at say polar angle thirty degree and Tails at sixty degree. What is the rest of the sphere filled in then? The remaining sphere represents the "Not Heads" or "Not Tails" as the case may be - all those possibilities that are constrained. For example coin is not allowed to fly away - 10 meter or 20 meter or simply out to to outer space. It is not allowed to stand on the edge because of the unique shape. It is not allowed to simply evaporate in thin air. When you take the "knowledge route", awareness of constraints leads to available options. Think of the "Information" (a specific outcome) as a tiny stamp on the surface of the vast sphere. The entire sphere, with that little notch represents the knowledge. The notch itself - that little dent caused by a specific observation - is information inscribed.

Advaita fully agrees with Sāṃkhya's elaborate scheme of potential and manifest, but it adds one simple question:

Why is the sum of all probabilities "One"? And if it is, what does ONE look like?

The idea that all probabilities sum up to one is sent to us from the bottom-most layer of quantum systems, but it took us thousands of years to formalize this concept in mathematical language—to decrypt this aspect of knowledge. The axioms of probability theory were formalized and introduced by the Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov in 1933. These axioms have since become the foundational basis of modern probability theory, providing a rigorous mathematical framework for how probabilities are assigned and manipulated. Kolmogorov's work unified earlier concepts into a consistent measure-theoretic approach, which is now universally adopted in both classical and quantum probability formulations.

Before Kolmogorov, probability ideas were often intuitive, informal, or tied specifically to frequencies or subjective beliefs. Kolmogorov unified and formalized probability as a mathematical measure on a sigma-algebra of events within a sample space, satisfying three clear axioms of probability:

• non-negativity,
• normalization,
• countable additivity.

His contributions include:

Mathematical rigor and generality: Kolmogorov's axioms applied to abstract sets and measures, allowing probability theory to be consistent and extendable to very general spaces, not just discrete or frequency-based settings.

Measure theory basis: By formulating probability as a measure, Kolmogorov connected probability with analysis and integration theory, enabling powerful tools and theorems to be used in probability.

Unified framework: Earlier notions of probability varied—classical (equally likely outcomes), frequentist (limits of relative frequencies), and subjective (degrees of belief). Kolmogorov’s axioms brought these under one rigorous umbrella.

This shift allowed probability to mature into a precise mathematical discipline applicable in many fields, including statistics, physics, and finance, and to underpin quantum probability as well.

The idea that the sum of all probabilities is just "one" has profound meaning in Advaita. Advaita literally means "non-dual," i.e., just One. Since all the manifestations of individual dualities of Prakriti combined lead to just One, Advaita posits that the purpose of decrypting the knowledge is to know "One."

How do we do that?

The question that Advaita seeks to answer is to see everything as a constituent of One eternal being. This being is referred to as Brahman. The path to Brahman is the knowledge that all manifestations flow into one ocean as streams. In other words, manifests emanate from ONE, and they dissolve into ONE. The play of the three Gunas is a mere drama in the transient. It is for this reason that Advaita calls Prakriti (and its three Gunas) Maya—which means Matrix.

The goal is to exit from this matrix, and the path is to control our senses. Advaita posits that ONE sits at the center of all possibilities. It is the soul within all conscious beings. And it is what we need to know.

The Knower: The Mirror of the Universe

: In string theory, we find a possible echo of fundamental observer though there is still total lack of scientific recognition. I think most QM Practitioners miss the point that idea of "probability" (on which the entire field is based) has NO meaning without a measurement (observation).

• The strings are basically of two types. Closed strings and open strings. Open strings may act like vibrations of Prakriti because they cling together to form Branes. Closed strings normally called gravitons (at spin 2 massless excitation) may be seen as Vedic Purusha.
• Call it an accident or sweet coincidence that both Sāṃkhya and String Theory are (at the most granular level) based on timeless paradigm of two - Open and closed strings v/s Prakriti and Purusha. Must I say the later naming convention appears far more poetically refined!