Finding the Common Ground Between Science and Spirituality or low, things that we can perceive with our senses are called material or physical The world of the inanimate falls into this category What about the animate? In this case, in addition to the perceptible material reality that makes up the outer visible world, there is an inner reality that is considered non-physical and non-material This reality is capable of being conscious whereas material or physical reality is generally considered not to be so This reality is called mind It is not sense-perceptible but, once conscious, it can perceive itself It is considered subtler than the subtlest material or physical reality We cannot perceive it with our senses but we know that it exists Our mind knows that it exists because it can perceive itself The awareness of the mind by an animate being in itself is a validation of the existence of its mind The mind drives the activity of the animate Mind is thus thought of as active, while body is passive and inactive Is there a mind in the domain of an inanimate? We get the answer if we ask ourselves this question again: “Do the inanimate behave in a specific way in their environment?” If they don’t, why a handful of elements on the periodic table combine variously to produce an infinite number of diverse compounds? Again we ask: What drives them to spend existences together in different combinations with other elements and compounds in their environment? The answer seems to lie in the interior of the configurations of their atoms Thus, inanimate objects have a mind in the form of energy, which animates them in a limited but crucial manner As we established earlier, sub-atomic particles called electrons, protons, and neutrons are held together by energy inherent in them These sub-atomic particles are the interiority of the atom and drive the behavior of the element Mind is the interiority that drives the behavior of the exterior forms It is so in the animate and it is so in the inanimate as well An exploration of the complete story of existence must encompass both interior and exterior: mind and matter 37