Consciousness is eternal, and consciousness is the symptom of the soul. Soul is eternal. When the soul takes shelter in the matter, then the matter develops, not that that combination of matter, you can produce soul. That is not possible. If that would have been possible, then there are many great scientists and many scientific laboratory, especially in your Western countries, in Europe and America... But nobody could produce a single living being in the laboratory, scientific laboratory. That is not possible. You could produce great, complicated machinery, but you cannot produce the machine driver. The machine can be produced, but machine driver cannot be produced. And without machine driver, all machines are useless. All machines are useless. A child may see in the street, oh, how a nice motorcar is passing with so much speed. He is struck with wonder that "Without any horse how the motorcar is going on?" I mean those who have no experience how machine works. Just like in India... Of course, I heard this story from my professor when I was a student of logic in my I.A. class. And this example was given by my professor, Dr. Purnachandra Sena. I still remember that when first railway was started from Howrah to Burdwan, about sixty-four miles, during British period, say, about two hundred years before, now the cultivators on both sides of the line, they were seeing the railway engine going with wonder: "Oh!" So somebody... This story was cited in connection with chapter of hypothesis. In logic there is a chapter of hypothesis. So somebody suggested that "There must be horse within the engine. Otherwise it cannot go." Because they have got experience that without horse nothing can be pulled on. It is horseless, so the hypothesis was that "There must be horses within the engine. Otherwise it cannot go." So similarly, the machine, the machine, however wonderful it may be, so if not horse, at least if there is no driver it cannot move. It cannot move.
The whole world is moving by combination of matter and spirit. That's all. The whole material world. Just like my body is moving due to the presence of my self as soul, similarly—it is very easy to understand—the whole cosmic manifestation is working due to the presence of the Supreme Soul, whom we call God or the Supersoul or Paramātmā or Bhagavān. Whatever name you may call, that doesn't matter. But you must understand that as without presence of the soul, the body cannot move, similarly, the whole materialistic world, cosmic atmosphere, is moving due to the presence of the Supersoul.