Metavibes

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Mind Hacks - 1: Realms of Unmanifest

The trigger for this longish article came through National Geographic's TV serial - "My brilliant brain" The first episode was telecast today here in India. (Catch it at 10.00pm everyday for next week or so.) The first one covered case study of women chess world champion Susan Polgar - who was taught to become a chess genius by her father in a very systematic manner. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László Polgar - her father's thesis, and he groomed from the very beginning as child.

One of the points the episode made was that playing chess is essentially a pattern matching problem, like face recognition problem. And the theory was tested using MRI scan of brain taken during the process.

A normal person can remember approximately 7 units of information in "temporary memory" i.e. something that we will be recalling almost immediately. Some people who seem to remember a lot of things quickly. A person in a restaurant was studied - who could remember about 20-22 orders without having to write them down. This was pinned down to the fact that we organize information in connected bundles so that we don't have to remember individual details, and upto 7 such bundles can be stored. In the episode, Susan couldn't remember the chess board done in somewhat random manner.

Now some personal experiences. My residential high-school teacher Mr. G.D.Kale remembers all the people of all batches with their names, roll numbers, houses where we stayed etc. and tracks and remembers them. Each of us stayed there for 7 years. He is probably remembering some 4000 of us spread over about 40-50 batches (i.e. till he retired in mid 90's).

Our laundry person in IIT's dormitory would just accept all our clothes (for ironing), and one look was sufficient to remember all our clothes, and return them as single bundle. He was accepting at least few hundred clothes everyday, and they would typically be all mixed up.

So, what really is a genius? Is it state of deeply developed brain? Is it part of mind? Is mind different from brain?

Reality as depicted in Indian Philosophy

Interestingly, Indian philosophy has a 5-layered Kosas as model of reality, and it is an interesting study in itself - all the more so because you can actually experiment with it. (My interpretations are however weighed down by my background in computer science.)

These 5 different layers allow the unmanifest to manifest into reality, mind being 3rd, and the observable reality as 1st (with energy layer called Prana in between). Like a computer program which is not yet written, unmanifest represents that asects of reality which is not in human consciousness as yet. A high level idea at conceptual level then manifests at physical level. For example, a mass of wood becomes cognized as a table. Which comes first? Concept of table or concept of wood? What allows you to create a table using myriads of physical entities - be it wood or steel? It is similar to first creating a computer program in your head, and then finally instantiating into a physical computer to see the results.

So we say that reality flows from mental level to physical, as part of creation process. Neverthless, a concept is still in realm of mental layer, and very distinct - with origins in unmanifest. Higher layers of "Kosas" work to ensure that the reality produced thus-far survives. These are essentially "creation", "maintenance" and "destruction" processes. So if one wants to go beyond, he focuses more on destruction represented by God Shiva.

In modern science, they have concluded that mind is result of chemical reactions in brain, i.e. reality is only the result of evolution after a big bang. In Indian philosophy, reality is merely a projection (or "Maya") of the consciousness. I think the plain way to understand is to ask: How do we get back to the "original program" from its assembly representation? We know it is tough. It is same problem in Genomics study: If genes came about due to higher level program being imposed, then how can you easily get an idea of that program in its pristine form - which is in abstract reality?

So from this background, let us analyze more about mind and "genius" processes.

Mind is interesting entity: Its main role is to receive sensory reality through brain and allowing us to think in terms of concepts. We say we see a table and not wood, and we are able to switch contexts easily when we have to reference wood. This simple aspect already requires a great deal of conceptual world view, so we are adjust the boundary of our consciousness to focus on "right" detail of reality. As per the "Kosas" view, the brain is simply bringing the right information up the sieve, rather than it "resulting" in mind. Remember, mind is a different layer altogether, and can't be "seen" in physical terms here. Pattern matching is an aid in this process, but the conceptual reality comes from mental layer and reflected in brain.

Mind also receives from unmanifest layers and typically presents that information into our consciousness as intuitions. Intuitions are not pattern-matching based (which are still physical, coming from brain). Intuition can be seen as "directly" becoming aware of something - out of no reason. Similar thing happens when we "see" something with our eyes, when you consider that everything as abstract reality. Mind is just a particular way the consciousness operates so that it facilitates the goals it has been set as part of higher level koshas. And if higher levels allow, it can get information directly from reality that doesn't belong to the body. It is like an operating system being able to access any program's memory. And this results in we hearing about several people reading minds, foretelling events etc. (Remember, in abstract, there is no time or space, it is all one abstract continuum.)

Now, how can you hack your mind?

I happened to be in Satsang with a well revered yogic Guru this week, what is done there is essentially to delve into unmanifest. There are practices which ensure your mind stops reacting to external senses and thoughts in brain, and starts to receive experiences of unmanifest from higher layers. Essentially you are hacking into your system, and allow unmanifest to become manifest.

So in this context, the genius capabilities are nothing but deeper exercising of mental faculty. For e.g., Sadguru said: "Simultaneously multiple perceptions are possible, and you will remember them all; or you can switch to any number of personalities and so on (as if one "downloads" right software into the system)". He even said he can simply "download" higher aspects of reality directly into our system if right conditions are there in energy levels, body and mind.

However, like a program in computer which can access anything and everything, mind can also be made to do a lot of things. For example, you may never want to forget anything. Or, you might be able to know anything that happens elsewhere in world. But these capabilities will ultimately not fulfill the design goals of the system (i.e. ourselves) - Too much information will make you restless, will not reduce your worries etc. So a guru tells you not to care for those qualities until you have a capability to become independent of qualities like fear. Moreover, if you focus too much on physical reality, then you can't go beyond to know more about ultimate reality.

So how do you actually hack into mind? Well, simple idea is to not use mind itself to hack, or our existing models. When mind becomes quiet, our conscious automatically becomes aware of higher levels of reality.

So how do I believe that this is indeed a possibility? Well, I have only experienced a little, but
I have lots of close friends and easy-to-approach everyday people who can tell you the kind of experiences, higher energy levels they are undergoing. You even have really serious Gurus coming on various religious TV channels giving a lot of details of the theory, processes, and hand-holding necessary for you to explore that other dimension. You have people narrating their experiences in public. And if you are lucky, you will even come across the physical manifestations like "Nadi Astrology" which are astonoishing - they have your future written up thousands of years back by some rishis, and you can explore it yourself.

For those who are interested in mind-hacking, India is truly a place to be.

And if you still distrust all these, there are "pure Jnana" ways i.e. using only reasoning to go beyond. That still remains my truly ultimate approach. I duly recommend books like UG's "Unrational ideas of man called UG" and "I am that" book by Nisargadatta Maharaj (Chetana Publications, Mumbai) to delve into these.

While I am interested in mind hacking, I still feel that this model is not ultimate reality. It is like a path created where there can be no path. Ultimate reality has absolutely no rules that it has to manifest this way!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home