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About Consciousness
Research and
How We Can Help Save the World
By Gopi Krishna
Yoga
is the generic name employed in India to designate all forms of mental,
physical, and spiritual, disciplines necessary to explore the incredibly
wondrous world of consciousness. From this point of view, all efficacious
methods of spiritual discipline, adopted in any religion of the world, can be
classified as yoga.
Used in this sense, yoga
is the master-science of the future, the door of entry to intelligent levels of
creation impervious to the five senses and unapproachable to the intellect. Why
yoga is as important for the hard-boiled, practical man of the world, as it is
for the seeker after God and self-awareness, is because it is only
self-knowledge and discipline that can help modem scholars and scientists to
know more about consciousness and the profound depths of the human psyche.
And because it is only
yoga that provides effective methods for the opening of the sealed super-sensory
compartment in the brain which, when opened, can lead to illumination or to the
florescence of genius and psychic gifts in human beings.
The Gateway to An
Elevated Humanity
Yoga is the only
gateway to a more elevated humanity, to a well-provided, progressive, war-free,
harmonious and happy world. It is the only vessel in which one can cross the
stormy ocean of existence to the other shore, where eternal life and unbounded
happiness await the passenger.
Yoga, in short, is the
methodology and the science by which the embodied soul can become aware of its
own identity and of the glorious world to which it belongs. Material science
unearths the laws of matter; yoga reveals the secrets of the soul.
The present-day world is a
strange compound of opposites, a fantastic blend of anomalies and contrarieties.
We establish democratic institutions to raise autocrats to power, and profess
faith in God to ignore Him in our actions and elude Him in our thoughts. We
profess concern for human beings and yet devise methods for their total
destruction at the same time. And we proclaim love for our nation while bleeding
our weaker brethren white for gain.
A Great Anomaly of Our
Time
We applaud fair play
in order to have the larger share, and we honor justice in order to outwit the
rest. We express brotherly love for our neighbors often just to malign him, and
we show our burning desire for peace by secretly preparing for war.
Our science-oriented,
glamorous culture has created a peculiar social environment ideally suited for
highly sophisticated minds with a strongly marked polarity that makes them talk
in one way and act in another. We have developed minds which, without a single
qualm of conscience, can sacrifice all that they profess of religion, faith,
God, morals, virtue or lofty ideals, if that helps in our day-to-day pursuit of
the objective dear to our heart, be it position, power, pleasure, fame or
wealth.
Another great anomaly of
our time is that while science has succeeded in overcoming the barriers of time
or distance, demolishing geographical frontiers, and created conditions that
make earth one vast neighborhood, the political heads of all countries still
adhere to parochial and chauvinistic ideas of the times of the Greeks and
Romans.
A Thousand Years Out of
Date
In other words, the
evolution of political thought has not kept pace with the speed with which
knowledge has expanded and technology overhauled. Socially, politically, and
mentally, man is where he was a thousand years ago.
Science has created a
milieu of such lightning speed, mechanical wonder and complexity around us that
we now need a much more balanced and penetrating intellect than is operating at
present in order to adjust the society to it.
This anomaly has a marked
subconscious effect on every man and woman in our time. Each person experiences
the effect without awareness of the cause behind it. Whoever be the head of
state whom we elect or vote into power, once installed, soon loses the favor of
those who elected him. The ardor and the glamour of the election fade rapidly
and, in the limelight of publicity, spots and blemishes begin to appear where
all looked stainless before.
Speedily the process of
disenchantment accomplishes its task. After only a few years, or even sooner, he
meets their disapproval and they fret and fume first under their breath and then
openly. The temper of the people is reflected in the papers and periodicals,
rumors circulate, whispers and knowing winks become a common sight, until the
inevitable comes to pass and someone else is lifted to the chair to start the
same cycle over again.
A State of Uncertainty
Prevails
Apart from leaders
of state, the ministers and high dignitaries, more often than not, suffer the
same fate. The heads of various departments of administration seldom continue
for long to earn the goodwill of their subordinates or the people with whom they
deal in the various spheres of their operation. Pulls and pressures, plots and
intrigues, fall to their lot without respite to the end.
Professors, teachers,
scholars, thinkers and writers only in a few cases retain their popularity and
influence for long. A meteoric quality has attached itself to success. A state
of ephemerousness and uncertainty seems to prevail in every sphere of life.
Strikes, lockouts, riots,
demonstrations, mutinies, revolts and rebellions, the harvest of this
discontentment and disenchantment, plague the life of people everywhere. Why
they should occur in such proportion in an era of material comfort and
affluence, compared to previous times, is a mystery.
Antipathy towards men and
women who hold exalted positions anywhere, administration, industry, business,
the church, university etc., or in any way influence the life of people with
whom they associate is a common feature of our time.
The mass of humanity no
longer feels happy or satisfied with its leading lights in any sphere of
activity for long, except rarely, and seeks their replacement by others of its
choice, only to be disappointed. This creates constant eddies and whirlpools in
the swiftly flowing current of life in every part of the world.
The Main Reason for Our
Discontent
The main reason why
there is seething discontentment in almost every country in the world, including
the richest and most advanced, in every field including religion, is not because
the leaders are less competent than before or less efficient in the performance
of their duty, but because the human mind has attained a degree of sensitivity,
and the environment a state of bewildering complexity, where a more evolved,
superior type of men and women are needed to create confidence and enlist the
cooperation of the masses.
With every advance in
knowledge and every addition to the products of technology, the normal
intellect, however powerful, is sure to fall short in meeting the choice of the
masses for creating a stable order in the society.
What I am forecasting is
likely to become more and more apparent in the years to come. By no political
revolution, by no change of government, by no enactment of new laws, by no new
discoveries of science, by no new teaching or preaching, can the recalcitrant
mind cease to express its resentment and dissatisfaction in some way.
Hence there must occur an
increase in acts of violence, sabotage, aggression, terrorism, etc., and an
increase in unrest and tension. Humanity stands at this moment on a parting of
the ways.
Second Thoughts About Man
To take an instance,
commenting on the disenchantment that has occurred in the domain of science,
Time magazine in an article entitled 'Second Thoughts About Man,' makes this
statement: After years of sunny admiration, science suddenly finds itself in a
shadow. No longer are scientists the public's great heroes or the beneficiaries
of unlimited funding. Unemployment runs high in many scientific disciplines; the
number of young people drawn to the laboratory in certain key areas has
diminished significantly.
Indifference to scientific
achievement is the mood of the moment. Even such bold ventures as new voyages to
the Moon or Mars, construction of giant atom- smashers, and journeys to the
depths of the sea, fail to excite a public that is half-jaded, half-doubtful of
the future benefits of such extravagant undertakings.
In part, the turnabout
came from an increasing awareness of the environmental ravages that seem to
accompany technological advance. On a more philosophical level, the reversal is
the result of a new mood of skepticism about the quantifying, objective methods
of science. Moreover, there has begun to emerge, even within the laboratory, a
new fascination with what traditionalists consider the very antithesis of
science: the mystical and irrational.
Says Harvard
biologist-historian Everett Mendelsohn: "Science as we know it has outlived
its usefulness."
The Faustian Side of
Science
It is this Faustian
side of science, with its insatiable drive to conquer new fields, explore new
territory and build bigger machines, regardless of costs and consequences, that
worries so many critics,î says Time.
The current disenchantment
is also rooted in the growing gulf between scientists and laymen. In an earlier
age, one man alone might dare take up a host of scientific challenges. Now
science has been sub-divided into so many cubbyholed disciplines that not even a
Galileo or a Newton could keep pace with all developments.
Some 25,000 books and a
million scientific articles are published each year. Most of them are written in
such abstruse jargon and abstract mathematical terms as to be incomprehensible
except to specialists. Even computer systems seem unable to cope with the
onslaught of information, to say nothing of translating it into an
understandable language.
These few quotations
should be sufficient to show the disenchantment that has occurred and the
controversies that are raging in the heretofore unchallenged domain of science.
Similar states of
disenchantment and conflict of views exist in other spheres also, and the reason
is that the human intellect has almost reached its tether and is not able to
move beyond the field of its observation into the hidden causes that rule our
lives and the destiny of mankind.
It is a state of stalemate
from which there is no escape, unless a new channel is opened to explore the
extra-sensory levels of the universe. This is also what the reputed German
physicist, Werner Heisenberg, suggests when he says that rational science may be
limited in its ability to comprehend nature, at best it can only arrive at
certain statistical probabilities in determining say, where an electron is at
any given moment.
To know the cause of
discontent and instability the inner world of consciousness must become as
important a subject of study and research as the outer one. The men and women
who offer themselves or are chosen for positions of honor and trust must have
gained an awareness of themselves to guide the footsteps of the race on the path
to accelerated evolution.
The most pressing need of
humanity is not to spend billions on launching projectiles into space or
devising more lethal instruments of destruction, but in removing killing
poverty, ignorance and disease and in restoring the balance of the world. It is
futile to expect that the present heads of state, or the elite of society, will
come to the rescue.
Nature may have to resort
to some other way to achieve the end
There appears to be
little hope that this idyllic dream would come true, not because it is basically
Utopian and impracticable, but because it needs a more elevated class of human
beings to actualize it, without using coercive or violent methods, but only
their spiritual and intellectual prowess.
We need not wait for a
chance combination of genes inherited and passed on through centuries, as in the
past, for the appearance of spiritual prodigies who are competent to handle the
affairs of mankind in the way they must be handled to ensure stability and
peace.
This exceptional class of
men and women can come into existence, regularly and in increasing numbers from
year to year, with the steady practice of yoga, meaning all spiritual
disciplines, directed to activate the paranormal center in the brain and
employing that genius in the service of humanity.
I call yoga the master
science or the key to the mysteries of the universe, because it is through such
spiritual practices that genius can be cultivated. Genius is the source from
which all knowledge, science, art and philosophy, has sprung.
What we desperately need
now are political geniuses to bring in line the existing systems of politics
with the present-day needs of millions of fast-evolving human beings. What we
need are geniuses in jurisprudence to revise the outmoded, cumbersome systems
dating from the Romans, geniuses in science, geniuses in healing, and geniuses
in social science, to remedy the present imbalances and to eradicate the evils
and diseases in society and plant it firmly on the path to the sublime state
which is its destined goal.
I know that except for
some intuitive men and women I will not be readily believed. They are not to
blame, because what I say is radically different from what they have been taught
to believe. But history is a witness that neither Copernicus nor Bruno, nor
Galileo, was believed in his time for what he premised.
On the contrary, each was
criticized, castigated and ridiculed for his ideas. Bruno was burned at the
stake and Galileo, in his old age, had to recant what he had written to save
himself from torture and imprisonment. What is now the position of the ideas and
concepts they introduced into the thinking of their contemporaries for the first
time? Are they not accepted with gratitude and have they not become a part of
everyday thinking?
What I assert, however
farfetched, fantastic or incredible it might appear, will prove to be a most
important and urgent branch of empirical investigation, a budding new science,
demanding all the knowledge and resources of the older science for its progress
from year to year.
We cannot deny the fact
that we have been dilatory in investigating consciousness, the wonder-stuff
behind all that mankind has achieved. It is for this reason that we still
believe in the myth that mind, as we know it, and matter alone are the realities
which need an explanation to solve the mystery of creation.
The problems arising out
of extra-sensory perception, as we know, bother sober scientists, because if
they are accepted they will require a fresh evaluation of the universe. ESP
cannot be explained on the basis of any known laws, either of the mind or the
physical world. As the eminent psychologist McDougall has remarked, if psychic
phenomena are accepted, physiology will have to be rewritten.
It is not science but we
ourselves who are responsible for our arbitrary interpretation of the universe.
And it is only research on consciousness that can correct the error and open new
vistas of creation beyond our dreams. It is only this new vision and the effort
directed to gain it that can keep the restless intellect calmly on its course.
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