The Scientist Who Lost Consciousness
- Madhukar Dama
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
A rational dialogue between Dr. Niranjan, a neuroscientist, and Madhukar, a former physicist turned hermit.
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SCENE
A quiet afternoon in Yelmadagi.
Madhukar, a hermit known for his calm presence and fierce clarity, sits outside his mud home under the shade of a fig tree.
Arriving on foot is Dr. Niranjan, 47, a leading researcher in cognitive science and consciousness studies. After two decades of inquiry, he's arrived at a devastating conclusion: he understands nothing about consciousness — and worse, that everything he was studying might be a mirage.
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1. THE COLLAPSE OF A THEORY
NIRANJAN:
I’ve tracked brainwaves.
Mapped neural pathways.
Studied attention, sleep, meditation, trauma, awareness.
For years, I believed we were inching closer to unlocking consciousness — that final “I” inside.
But I’ve reached the end.
And I find… nothing.
No observer. No soul. No center.
MADHUKAR:
That’s a good place to begin.
NIRANJAN:
It’s terrifying. I spent my life proving that “we are conscious beings.”
But now I feel… we are just mechanisms reacting to stimuli.
MADHUKAR:
Worse.
You are mechanisms trained by other mechanisms.
You don’t even react freshly.
You just replay.
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2. THE TAPE RECORDER CALLED MIND
NIRANJAN:
What do you mean?
MADHUKAR:
Let’s begin with thought.
You assume thoughts are your own, yes?
NIRANJAN:
Of course. That’s what defines me — my thoughts, ideas, opinions.
MADHUKAR:
You didn’t invent a single one of them.
Every thought in your head was installed — by culture, language, family, media, school.
Your mind is a tape recorder.
It plays back what has been recorded.
What you call “thinking” is just rearranging old recordings.
NIRANJAN:
That sounds harsh.
MADHUKAR:
That sounds accurate.
Tell me one thought — just one — that is original to you.
One thought not influenced by fear or reward.
NIRANJAN: (silent)
Even my question, “Who am I?” came from books.
MADHUKAR:
Exactly.
You’re not a thinker.
You’re a repeater.
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3. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ILLUSION
NIRANJAN:
But I do feel aware. I feel like I am sitting here, I am speaking to you.
MADHUKAR:
That’s not consciousness. That’s self-consciousness.
A particular mental construct — the feeling of being separate from everything else.
It’s not awareness — it’s a kind of isolation.
Installed by language and culture.
We say: me, my body, my thoughts, my experience.
As if there is a "me" apart from the world.
But remove the label — and what remains?
Sitting is happening. Listening is happening.
But the "listener" is just a story the mind tells.
NIRANJAN:
So there’s no “I” inside us?
MADHUKAR:
None.
There’s a body.
A nervous system.
A brain conditioned to survive.
And a loop of thought that creates a narrator to make sense of it all.
But no separate, stable self.
Just a storyteller made of stories.
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4. PROGRAMMED ACTIONS, PREDICTABLE LIFE
NIRANJAN:
Still, we make choices, we act — surely that points to agency?
MADHUKAR:
We act exactly as we’re trained to act.
Not freely — but predictably.
NIRANJAN:
Trained how?
MADHUKAR:
By fear and enticement — the two leashes of society.
You speak politely because you fear rejection.
You work hard because you're enticed by success.
You donate because you fear guilt.
You meditate because you want peace.
Remove the fear, or remove the reward — and most human behavior stops.
NIRANJAN:
Then free will?
MADHUKAR:
Is just a comforting label.
You’re conditioned to desire certain outcomes — and then you choose them.
It’s not freedom. It’s preference dressed as choice.
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5. THE END OF CONSCIOUSNESS RESEARCH
NIRANJAN:
But we study all of this — in labs, in science. Surely some of it helps?
MADHUKAR:
Yes — it helps you realize how little there is to find.
Consciousness cannot be found because it’s not a thing.
It’s just an idea produced by a self-conscious brain.
All your research is measuring behavior, attention, states of arousal.
You’re measuring the ripples, not the ocean.
And there’s no self in the ripples. No observer in the storm.
Just a system running on memory, language, reward.
NIRANJAN: (quiet)
Then why does this feel like a death?
MADHUKAR:
Because the “you” that was chasing this… never existed.
Only a program did.
And it’s now run out of tricks.
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6. AFTER THE COLLAPSE — LIFE RETURNS
Dr. Niranjan stayed for a few more days.
He didn’t meditate.
He didn’t philosophize.
He didn’t quote neuroscience.
He chopped firewood.
Washed his plate.
Stared at ants carrying rice.
He didn’t feel enlightened.
But he also didn’t feel lost.
Back in Bengaluru, he closed his lab.
He now works at a small school, where he teaches children how to observe leaves without naming them.
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CONCLUDING INSIGHT
We are not conscious.
We are trained.
Trained to think, react, desire, fear, and speak like individuals.
But there is no fixed self inside — no “I” behind the eyes.
Only memory, conditioning, and the illusion of control.
When we see through this — not philosophically, but viscerally —
the search ends.
And quiet participation in life begins.
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DETAILED SUMMARY QUOTE
“Consciousness is not a mystery to solve, but a cultural illusion to drop. The mind plays recordings. The body performs routines. And the ‘I’ is just a clever name we give to this pre-programmed loop. What remains after seeing this is not emptiness — but relief.”
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no one is home
— after charles bukowski
they told me to
look within
so I did.
peeled the skull
like an orange,
dug into the folds,
searched every corner
for a “me.”
found nothing
but rewound cassette tapes,
old slogans,
my father’s voice,
a priest’s warning,
a lover’s shame.
the mind’s a clever jukebox—
but all its songs
were written by someone else.
we don’t think.
we recycle.
we don’t choose.
we are chosen
by fear
or by a flashing carrot.
the scientist with ten degrees
came to the hermit
to explain the mind.
the hermit just
boiled rice
and pointed
at an ant.
"there’s no ‘I’ watching that ant,”
he said.
“just watching.”
and I wept
for all the years
I tried to find a throne
where there was
only a revolving door.