Center for Inner Sciences

a message for you

12/23/2013

Dear SpiritMag Reader,

Thank you very much for reading our newsletter with so much dedication. The year 2013 had been very interesting and challenging for me. The average age of the students became much lower as some 16 year olds joined the Patanjali Meditation classes here in the UK. Moreover, average educational level shot up with PhD scholars also joining us. On another side of spectrum, we walked some steps to bring benefits of Patanjali Meditation to homeless people too. We added some new locations as well.

Some new faces came to our classes just for a couple of weeks as they were in the midst of their travel. Some of them wrote back to me that they would like to continue to attend these classes if held through internet. Some of them went a step further that they intend to organise such classes in their countries. We hope to meet their requests and organise internet based classes soon that will take the benefits of the Vedic spiritual science worldwide, beyond human boundaries.

CIS youth have interesting ideas to prepare more films and podcasts that would make certain complex concepts easy to grasp. I look forward to more new exciting things in 2014 and continued support from all students, alumni, volunteers, donors, friends of CIS! Thanks very much for everything!

- Dr Harish Chandra B. Tech. (IIT Kanpur ) Ph. D. ( Princeton , USA )

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Will we ever find a soul?

10/15/2013

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The treatise by Patanjali on Yoga is based on the Vedic philosophy that we are a composite of body, mind and soul. His statement no. 2 and 3 are: Yoga is total cessation of activities in the mind, and then the observer (the soul, the presiding entity) is in its true self.

Thus, Yoga is the practice to bring mind to a calm state of total inactivity (called Dhyana, meditation – a state beyond mindfulness) but what is prevalent mostly is Hath-Yoga, the body postures of therapeutic Yoga. As a meditation teacher in true Patanjali tradition, there is a great deal of task ahead to spread the true knowledge that Patanjali wrote in his treatise, the first ever on Yoga. On the other hand, the scientific community is struggling to define the nature of our consciousness. As is true with any community, for about 1000 members acting as passengers, one or two act as drivers as is seen in a train.

Most of the investigators study brain and its functions as if it is the ultimate seat of our consciousness without leaving any room that brain functions may not be the cause of consciousness but are caused by our consciousness deeply embedded within it. It is heartening to see that there are researchers who have tried to explore such a possibility although much work needs to be done for a conclusive study: “First Few Minutes After Death”.

Further works are being carried out and the results are eagerly awaited. “We have installed shelves with pictures on them near the ceiling in various ER rooms across the US and Europe. We want to find out whether people who claim to be hovering close to the ceiling can really perceive what’s going on in the room. We will publish our first set of date in November” in Back from the Dead .

I may not agree with their approach but must appreciate their open-mindedness that the consciousness may be further inside the brain, not being its part. Going by Patanjali’s theory it may be presumed that the soul is made of non-material (a concept still difficult for us to grasp), it is impossible for non-material to “see” material objects without the help of a matter and non-matter intermediary called Mind (Manas). There must be parallel investigations to explore the soul as the ultimate seat of consciousness which is a non-material singularity as visualised by Patanjali. Some scientists must follow the prescription of Patanjali and master the practice of meditation to truly understand what Patanjali is saying. Patanjali’s treatise should be treated as a scientific laboratory manual by the scientists, the human system being the laboratory.

- Dr Harish Chandra
B. Tech. (IIT Kanpur )
Ph. D. ( Princeton , USA )

Picture courtesy Open.az

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From Your Gut – New Cutting Edge Ideas

7/31/2013

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We dis-cover knowledge and do not invent it. Knowledge exists though it remains covered until we remove its cover.

Knowledge is probably the most significant pursuit for humans after survival. Indeed, even survival requires knowledge based functions. We have important questions to ask: How do we acquire knowledge? What is its origin? There is much to learn from the Vedic spiritual science in this context. It is worthwhile to begin the discussion from the point that we discover knowledge and do not invent it. It implicitly means that knowledge exists and may be unknown to us that it bears a "covering". Once the covering is removed, we say that we have "dis-covered" it.

Newton and Archimedes came up with new brilliant ideas when their minds were relaxed and blank and so is true with most philosophers, scientists and thinkers.

We know that the great scientific strides were made when the scientists were in most unlikely situations. Newton came up with the idea that the earth has its gravitational pull when he was leisurely under an apple tree. Archimedes came up with the idea of buoyancy force that a liquid pushes everything upward as a thing begins to sink when he was about to enter into a bath. These are just a couple of examples that great philosophers, scientists, and thinkers come up with new brilliant ideas when the human mind is absolute relaxed and restful almost blank!

· There is recent increased awareness that we should become more natural and respect our ‘gut feeling’.

Now there is increasingly more interest in being natural and following the instinct. One recent article bears the title: In decision-making, it might be worth trusting your gut’. Erik Dane of Rice University, lead author of a study published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes said, “Even if you’re an expert, intuitive decision-making is better for some types of tasks than others. Tasks that can be solved through predetermined steps, like math problems, are not as conducive to intuitive decision-making as less-structured tasks, which may include certain strategic or human resource management problems.”

o Patanjali Yoga meditation emphasizes a blank state of mind that captures a flash of intuitive knowledge. Whereas instinctive knowledge is given to all members of a species, intuitive knowledge is given to selected deserving ones.

Patanjali talks at length about Samprajnata Samadhi, a stage after deep meditation. He says that once mind is void of thoughts/activities (meditation) then a flash may appear on the mind screen due to the Infinite Soul and this is its way of communicating to us. This is called as the intuitive knowledge in Patanjali's philosophy of Yoga. Instinctive knowledge is given to all members of a particular species whereas the intuitive knowledge is given to the selected ones. As you practice meditation more, you benefit more from it. Rather than scratching your head to pull out an idea which will be just one of them that you had yourself put inside, you need to clean the mind screen so as to capture the flash of intuition!

- Dr Harish Chandra
B. Tech. (IIT Kanpur )
Ph. D. ( Princeton , USA )

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Will we ever find a soul?

From Your Gut – New Cutting Edge Ideas

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