The easy conclusion that consciousness must be an output of the brain in us, is severely suspect. Consciousness is the energy of LIFE, because of which alone we think, feel, act and react. Like flesh, bone, blood or heart, brain too is matter, derived from food and structured as another organ. Matter is inert, insentient, DEAD. How can life emerge from molecules of matter?

Energies manifest through equipments, but are not produced by them. Consciousness is for ever. It exists prior to the body, plays for a life-time through the body, and continues to exist after the body dies. A corpse is a fused bulb, a broken machine. How can consciousness die?

Can evolution be the working of blind chance? Or must there be a purpose and direction, a charting of intelligence, an unfoldment of intent? What enduring factor contributes continuity of meaning and method to an eternity of change? How does continuity of purpose survive when individuals die? If it abides in consciousness, how does it negotiate the barrier of the death of the body equipment? What is the rationale of reincarnation?

Mind is a ceaseless flow of thoughts. The I-AM-ness in personalized consciousness is the clue and guide to solve the riddle of creation. Therein lies salvation. Let us reexamine the identities of brain and mind.

Born in 1924, a post-graduate in Science (L.S.U., USA), Dwaraknath Reddy was thirty five when relentless life raised haunting questions about Creator and created, birth and death. About ultimate meanings and methods that encompass all our lives. He listened, studied, contemplated, and remained alertly concerned. Prosperity, position and prestige came, but there was a soul in search of its beginnings in order to unravel its ends.

He understood that the relative cannot contain the Absolute. The 'knower' is not a thing amongst the known. Consciousness is not an effulgence from matter. In the mind and through the mind, must the riddle be solved. This calls for transcendence from objective knowledge to subjective experience.

He came across the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, the great sage of the 20th century, and was flooded with an inner conviction that Ramana was the epitome of all scriptures and proof of their promise of attainable perfection, the abidance in the Absolute.

He therefore lives and strives as a seeker at the sanctified shrine, Sri Ramanashramam, at Tiruvannamalai, South India.

It opens very much like the Shvetashwatara Upanishad of Krishna Yajur Veda - in the hushed silence of the hall where the top- most philosophers are gathered to discuss the deep issues of the beginnings of creation. Time, Nature, World-order, Universal will, Matter, God, are some of the principles proposed for, and later deposed from, the hoary seat of the Origin of things. The writer of the present work, Shri Dwaraknath Reddy has evidently imbibed the spirit of the Upanishadic teachings and is ready to rub shoulders with the Brahmavadins of the space age. The compulsions of this age inspire the writer to present the ancient vision of the ultimate Truth in the garb of modern science. And, one may be tempted to say, he goes one step further and induces the vision to perform a stunning cat-walk to impress how well the new garment fits its elegant form.