There are two interpretative traditions that have a long history in India:

• A theory where consciousness is the ground-stuff from which time, space and matter emerge.

• A theory where consciousness is a field separate from time, space and matter. The duality in this conception is more apparent than real having taken form after the first separation of the two categories. According to these traditions mind itself must be seen as a complex structure. Whereas mind is emergent and based on the capabilities of neural hardware, it cannot exist without the universal self. One implication of these ideas is that machines, which are based on classical logic, can never be conscious . It is not well known that this model had an important influence on the development of quantum mechanics. Writing in 1925, before his creation of wave mechanics, Erwin Schrodinger wrote: This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the "whole"; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, / am this entire world." (Schrodinger, 1961 (1925); Moore, 1989, page 170-3) Schrodinger's influential What is Life? also used Vedic ideas. According to his biographer Walter Moore, there is a clear continuity between Schrodinger's understanding of Vedanta and his research: The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great ma­chine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on superimposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One. The Vedic theory of mind is part of a recursive approach to knowledge. The Vedas speak of three worlds, namely the physical, the mental, and that of knowledge. Consciousness if the fourth, transcending world. There is also reference to four kinds of language: gross sound, mental imagery, gestalts, and a fourth that transcends the first three and is associated with the self. Plato's ideas are less comprehensive than the Vedic model, but they go beyond the common-sensical dichotomy of body and mind. He enlarged this dichotomy by speaking of a third world of ideas or forms. In his parable of the cave, Plato speaks of ideas that have independent existence of which our senses only see the traces or shadows on the wall. Mathematical   World The three worlds: physical, mental, mathematical Plato's model represents the lower four levels of the Vedic model with the second level of interface forces subsumed into the mental world. It has exercised great influence on Western philosophy and its variants have been examined by many writers. In contemporary debate (Popper and Eccles, 1977; Goswami, 1993; Penrose, 1994) the world of ideas has been interpreted as objective knowledge. There is a possibility of three worlds: the physical, the mental, and the world of mathematical or scientific ideas. The puzzle is: How is a part of the physical world which generates the mental picture which, in turn, creates the scientific theory is able to describe nature so well. This has been termed by one scientist as the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. In truth, objective knowledge consists of many paradoxes.  Accumulation of knowledge often amounts to making ad hoc choices in the underlying formal framework to conform to experience. The most fundamental, and a very ancient, antinomy is that between determinism and free will. Formal knowledge can at best be compared to a patchwork.

New models  -  Considering that the physical world is described at its most basic level by quantum mechan­ics, how can classical computational basis underlie the description of the structure (mind) that in turn is able to comprehend the universe? How can machines, based on classical logic, mimic biological computing? One may argue that ultimately the foundations on which the circuitry of classical computers is based is at its deepest level described by quantum me­chanics. Nevertheless, actual computations are governed by a binary logic which is very different from the tangled computations of quantum mechanics. And since the applicability of quantum mechanics is not constrained, in principle, by size or scale, so classical computers do appear to be limited. Why cannot a classical computer reorganize itself in response to inputs? If it did, it will soon reach an organizational state associated with some energy minimum and will then stop responding to the environment. Once this state has been reached the computer will now merely transform data according to its program. In other words, a classical computer does not have the capability to be selective about its inputs. This is precisely what biological systems can do with ease. Most proposals on considering brain function to have a quantum basis have done so by default. In short the argument is: There appears to be no resolution to the problem of the binding of patterns and there are non-local aspects to cognition; quantum behavior has non-local characteristics; so brain behavior might have a quantum basis. But these models do not explain the self-organizing part of brain structure. Other quantum models consider the organization of the brain itself to be a quantum variable. Since a model of mind (i.e. Vedic) was influential in the early development of quantum theory, it is very fitting that quantum mechanical ideas should, in turn, shape the unfolding of new ideas in brain science. How one might go about devising a system that is more capable than a classical system? If one takes the parallel with the early development of quantum mechanics, it is necessary to speak of vectors—rather than scalars— carrying information. The unit of analysis for brain function has classically been the neuron. The present proposal for a two-process mechanism recognizes an additional unit: the neuron junction, whose activity can become part of an organization (the slow potential microstructure) temporarily unrelated to the receptive field of any single neuron. Neural junctions are thus much more than just way stations in the transmission of nerve impulses; they compose, at any moment, a neural state that is operated upon by arriving nerve impulses. In turn, nerve impulses generated by neurons are influenced by this state. Newer analysis has led to the understanding that one needs to consider reorganization as a primary process in the brain— this allows the brain to define the context. Does a field govern the process of reorganization? The signal flows now represent the processing or recognition done within the reorganized hardware. Such a change in perspective can have significant implications. Dual signaling schemes eventually need an explanation in terms of a binding field; they do not solve the basic binding problem in themselves but they do make it easier to understand the process of adaptation.