Chapter 10: Leap of Faith

 In the previous chapters we came across the most bewildering questions of all times, who or what part of us is experiencing the experiences. To try and answer this question, let us modify the question a bit. Instead of asking who is experiencing the experiences, let us ask who is observing these experiences. Changing the construct from experiencing to observing takes away the enjoying element from the question and makes the experiencer a dispassionate observer. Whether the entity enjoys the observations or not can be taken up as a subsequent question.

One of the probable candidates is our brains, but then we saw that by brain we mean the neuronal masses, with their cell bodies and axonal projections. Assuming the neuronal masses as observing the experiences is difficult to accept, still it remains as a possible candidate from the material reductionist perspective.

There is another candidate from the perspective of eastern philosophy. Let us now try and understand this observer. We understood from previous chapters that one can enter the state of no-experience through one or more techniques of meditation. People who have achieved that state through numerous meditative processes have all said that it is a blissful state and very addictive in nature. One experiences nothing here. If one now tries to realise who is observing this nothingness, without dozing off or introducing thoughts and arguments, then one may start becoming aware of something distinct. At this juncture one should be left with only two entities, the experience of nothingness and the awareness of someone observing that nothingness. At this instant, if the person drops both these entities then it is said that the person will get pointed towards something infinitely vast and profound, calm and blissful. It is something like one becoming aware of one’s face without looking into a mirror. One may not be able to hold onto the reference for more than a second and may not be able to define it as well, but it is what is called by eastern philosophers as the consciousness.

This consciousness cannot be observed or experienced by anyone, or else the recursive question would crop up of who is observing this consciousness. The consciousness is said to be the eternal observer, ever present and infinite in nature. It is same for everyone. It observes the birth, the death and every other experience in between. This observer is a constant, unlike our material universe, which is forever changing, moving from one shape to the other. It existed before the birth of our universe and will exist long after the universe is gone. Finally, they say that our true selves are this consciousness and not the image of ourselves that our brain creates as Ego.

The consciousness only observes the dance of our universe, second to second and eons to eons. It does not enjoy any of our experiences, because the construct of enjoyment is material in nature, while consciousness is non-material. It is like the proverbial screen on which the movie of life is played. The analogy between a screen and the movie being played on the screen is that of the consciousness and our collective experiences called the mind. The mind is a material construct and can be reduced to the parts of the brain, but the consciousness is not a material construct and cannot be reduced any further. It is the only infinity which cannot be broken into parts.

The consciousness is forever same and hence the eternal truth. Anything that changes cannot be considered as the truth. Let us see why. Let us assume the statement that sun rises in the east and sets in the west, is a truth. However, somewhere down the line, billions of years later actually, the sun will no longer exist. The earth would have gone much before that time. Hence, billions of years later, when the earth is no longer there, then the statement that sun rises in the east and sets in the west will not be a truth anymore. Same is true for every human being, for every plant and animal, for every inanimate object from stone to molecules to atoms and so on. All these truths therefore have a shelf life and come with an expiry date. The only thing that remains unchanging for ever is the consciousness and hence it is the only truth.

We had concluded in chapter 8 that our universe is a façade, a lie - Jagat Mithya. We see in this chapter that consciousness is the only truth. Consciousness is also called Brahma in eastern philosophies and hence, Brahma Satya. Thus, the famous proverb, Brahma Satya, Jagat Mithya.

At this juncture, it is imperative to point out that both the candidates that are observing our experiences are difficult to accept. However, we know intuitively that someone or something is observing our experiences and hence no matter how bizarre, one of the two should eventually turn out to be the observer.

Chapter 9: Playing with our minds

 We now have some understanding of our minds and its bearing within us. We know that our lives are a constant stream of experiences played in our minds. Our waking and dreaming states can be clubbed into a single state of dream, while the dreamless sleep is one where we get the experience of no-experience.

Why do we have a never-ending stream of experiences in our minds? Why are our minds so restless? The reason being that our minds are a real time construction of our interactions with external objects and internal constructs (thoughts, ideas, memory etc.). For lack of better word, we will henceforth refer to the internal constructs as internal objects. Since our lives are a constant stream of interactions with external and internal objects, we have a constant stream of experiences played in our minds. Our minds are restless because we are restless. The only time we don’t have any experience is when we fall into a dreamless deep sleep. We say that our minds sleep only when we enter the deep sleep phase.

How do we control the dance of experiences in our minds? From above we can say that we can reduce the stream of experiences, calming our minds, by reducing our interactions with the external universe and minimizing our interactions with internal objects. If you close your eyes, then the entire universe of vision will go away. If you can reduce the sound getting into your ears by sitting in a soundproof room, then the experiences related to the auditory signals will disappear. Same is true with the sensations of taste and smell. It is, however, difficult to remove the sensation of touch completely because we cannot levitate in air and hence the sensation of touch associated with the seat where we are sitting quietly or the bed where we are lying down cannot be done away with completely.

It is relatively easy to do away with sensations coming in from our sensory apparatus, sans the tactile sensations, through mechanical interventions, i.e., close your eyes, sit in a soundproof room that does not have any odour and keep your mouth shut, to achieve desired results. However, eliminating interactions with internal objects is a very difficult game. Elaborate processes have been developed for this purpose which are collectively known as the process of meditation. It has also been observed that breathing plays an important role in calming the minds. Calming the mind through breathing techniques have a scientific explanation and is now well documented in the annals of neurosciences.

It is also important that the body is healthy when one is trying to reduce the sensations in the mind or else the body will send signals of discomfort or pain. Patanjali’s yoga postures are based on the principal of holding a particular posture for maximum amount of time, so that when a person sits in meditation in that posture then the body will not send internal sensations for that duration.

Let us try and understand what happens as one starts reducing the stream of sensations into the mind? With steady decrease in elements of the experience universe, the mind slowly calms down, till the stage is reached where there are almost no sensations felt. Initially, the mind assumes that it has drifted into the deep sleep state, and one invariably sleeps off. However, with a lot of practice, the mind can be made to remain alert in the no-experience state. Those who have experienced it say that it is a blissful state which is almost addictive in nature. One wants to stay in that state for longer and longer durations. Another end game in the practice of meditation is to have only a single sensation, either visual or auditory (a vision of a deity or of a sound) for a prolonged duration. Those who have experienced this state of a single sensation also say that it is a blissful state which is addictive in nature.

Calming the mind also has many biological advantages. It is always associated with reduction in stress in our bodies which means no creation of glucocorticoids in our adrenalin cortex and activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. Reduction in stress in our bodies is always associated with good health and longevity. In fact, most of the lifestyle diseases has a positive correlation with high stress levels in our bodies. Secondly, calming of our minds is possible only when our physical health is above a threshold. Holding of postures as defined in the yoga system, has a direct bearing in improving our overall health.

In conclusion, there are many procedures adopted in reducing the constant stream of experiences flowing in our minds. We can thus control our minds and experience the no-experience state without falling asleep. Experiencing the no-experience state, without falling asleep, is said to be a blissful state by those who have achieved it.

Chapter 8: Our Universe

 In the last chapter we came across the most bewildering questions of all times, who or what part of us is experiencing the experiences. This is a deep philosophical question that has no clear answer. The scientific quest of claiming that the constituent of our brain is experiencing our mind has also not given any satisfactory explanation. We therefore leave aside this question for some time and concentrate on the things that we seem to understand – the external universe.

What is our universe? We perceive the universe through our sensory perceptions and is nothing more than what our brain creates as experiences. We understand a stone as that what the reflected EM wave brings into our sensory apparatus. Same is true with sound and so on. Our brain creates a virtual reality environment of sensations and experiences that we call as the external universe (our external universe starts from our body outwards).

We have our thinking apparatus which involves logic and calculations which are patterns observed in our experience factory. We have created the language of mathematics that weaves in a logic derived from the observed patterns. We also think pictographically, through sound and other sensory perceptions with the help of pattern recognition in each of these areas.

We have developed a mapping paradigm of languages which labels sounds and pictographic symbols to different auditory and visual sensations. We have defined labels for the way these objects interact with each other and with us as perceived in our experience universe. Finally, we have defined laws by which these labels can be strewn together to explain our experiences to each other and to a larger group of population. The paradigm of language has been able to integrate our efforts to collectively address our common problems related to survival in this world. This feature has been so successful in the evolutionary sense that it has become a part of our genetic code. We are born with an innate ability to speak and comprehend sounds which are further honed by our society to make us a contributing adult.

This then is our definition of the external universe. A virtual reality of experiences, a paradigm of language to label objects and their interactions to communicate our experiences with fellow humans, and the world of logic that identifies patterns creating its own laws of mathematics. However, this is not the reality of the external universe. We are still grappling to understand its true nature with the help of quantum physics, general relativity, molecular biology, philosophy, religion, and a host of other interrelated areas. With every breakthrough in our understanding of the universe and new series of contradictions and complexities gets unfolded. It looks to be a never-ending saga. We have however been able to get a great deal of information about the external universe (the molecular environment, the bacteria’s, the quantum reality etc.) without any direct experience, through the paradigms of logic, language, and patterns.

Logic, language, and patterns have greatly enhanced our understanding of the Universe, yet what we believe as the external universe is still our universe of experience. The universe experienced as an individual or at a collective humanity level using the tool of communication is not the true reality out there. How far away it is from the truth is also not known and we believe there is a long way to go before we can truly bridge the gap.

Whatever is experiencing this virtual reality environment created as our minds is not experiencing the truth. It cannot understand the true nature of the universe with the help of the sensory perceptions created inside our minds and since this is the only way available to it, it has no way out.

Thus, we now have two basic entities, 1) a collection of experiences that we understand as the universe 2) one who is experiencing these experiences.

Between these two entities, we now know for sure that the first entity, our definition of the universe is untrue, is a façade, a lie – Jagat Mithya.

Chapter 7: Inside our minds – constituents

 Our lives are a constant stream of experiences played in our minds. Our waking and dreaming states can be clubbed into a single state of dream, while the dreamless sleep is where we get the experience of no-experience.

However, where is the mind? What are its constituents and how is it produced?

The mind is a strange place, different from our bodies in construct. However, it is the place where all our experiences are played. A nice analogy to understand it will be that of the screen where all plays are orchestrated. Limitations of this analogy however is that the screen and the plays on the screen are two different entities, while the mind is nothing but a collection of experiences, including the experience of no-experience. Another analogy to understanding the mind is the concept of the space-time fabric in physics where the actors of the universe play their roles. However, these are just analogies to grasp the abstract nature of our minds. Strangely, it is as real as our existence and as imaginary as the proverbial ghost.

We now know that experiences are codes stored in our memories and orchestrated when neurons trigger those areas of the brain. Hence, the memory areas of the brain should be a part that helps in creating our minds. We also know that our thoughts are constructed through the stored memories, and we can control some aspects of our experiences by thinking. Hence, the thought producing portions of our cortex helps in creating and controlling our minds. We also think in languages and hence the language producing and comprehending portions of our brains are involved in creating our minds. Our hormones and emotions colour our experiences and thus these areas are also involved in manipulating our minds. We experience pain, hunger, taste, satiation, pleasure, and a host of emotions. All these areas of the brain are directly related in creating our mind. Finally, the external stimulus receiving areas of the brain (vision, taste, sound, smell, and touch) creates the sensations of experience and therefore these too should be the part that creates our minds. Thus, we see that a major part of our brain is involved in synthesizing the complex array of experiences that defines our minds. To the question of where our mind is, the answer is simple, in our brain. It is distinct from the brain but a creation of our brain.

How does our brain create these experiences that together constitutes our minds? This is where we have no clue. We are not clear how the experience filled mind is created, but we know that if parts of our brain are damaged, then for ever we will not be able to create the associated experiences. The approach that neuroscience is taking is identifying the areas of the brain that gets triggered when a particular experience is felt. It has been able to broadly identify neuronal masses that can be associated with a particular type of experience, e.g., the occipital region of the brain is activated during the sensation of vision, while amygdala activation is associated with the experience of fear. However, why does the activation of amygdala give us the experience of fear is still unknown. Neuroscience gives us the correlation but not the process of creation of experiences.

The relationship between the brain and the mind is somewhat like that of a computer hardware and the software running in it. We know for sure that the computer hardware does not experience a software running in it but does our brain experience our minds? Most probably, our brain does not experience our mind. It only creates it. Surely the mind cannot be enjoying the experiences. It is a collection of experiences. It cannot experience itself. Our bodies also cannot be experiencing the experiences, they send sensory and other stimuli to the brain that creates those experiences and stores them as codes for future reference. Among the three probable candidates of the brain, the mind and our bodies, the brain looks to be the only possible candidate to be enjoying the experiences. Let us then assume it to be true that our brains create and experience the experiences.

To understand the implications of the above assumption, let us analyse a specific case, the experience of fear. We know from neurosciences that stimulation of the part of brain called amygdala gives us the sensation of fear. Now amygdala is a bundle of neuronal cell bodies which makes its axonal projections to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the hypothalamus area, hippocampus region and the nucleus accumbens. Neuronal cell bodies from these regions in turn project their axonal fibres into other regions, e.g., the ventromedial prefrontal cortex makes projections to dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the projections keep moving from one region to the other in a complex network. The projections from the amygdala neuronal cell bodies are not limited to the above-mentioned regions of the brain but these are some of the well-known bundles of projections from the amygdala. The above-mentioned regions also return their neuronal projections into the amygdala region. Now, when we say that the amygdala is creating the sensation of fear, we mean electrical signals in the amygdala region gets projected into other parts of the brain. Why passage of electrical signals from the amygdala neuronal cell bodies to other regions of the brain creates the sensation of fear is a mystery. However, when we say that our brain experiences that sensation, we mean that these neurons and their projections into various parts of the brain is experiencing the sensations, because there is nothing more to our brains than the neuronal cell bodies and their axonal projections. Assuming that our neuronal cell bodies and their projections are experiencing the sensations is truly bizarre.

This brings us to the most bewildering questions of all time, who or what exactly is experiencing the experiences played in our minds. 

Chapter 6: Inside our minds – our dreams

 

The sum and substance of our lives is that we live inside our minds and are essentially trapped inside our own creation. Since our lives are defined by our experiences and because our experiences are played inside our minds, let us now turn our attention inwards.

Dreams are possibly the most powerful tools to understand our minds and hence it is but natural that we investigate this phenomenon first in our quest to understanding the working of our minds.

We all know that dream is a process that happens only in the sleeping state. We also know that in the sleeping state, all our sensory systems are shut down. Hence, we can safely assume that in the dream state none of our sensory organs are working. We don’t interact with any of the external objects, yet we are able to feel many of the experiences associated with the waking state while dreaming.

The dream process involves activating some of the stored experiences (codes) without any external stimuli pouring in through the sensory organs. The process invokes many of the experience producing circuits without any external stimuli. If it happens during the waking state, then we call the phenomenon as hallucination but if it happens during the sleeping state then the word reserved for it is dream. Hallucinations happen due to the automatic triggering of the experience producing circuits in the waking state while dreams happen due to automatic triggering of the same circuits in the sleeping state.

The important point to note here is that it is the same experience producing circuits in our brains that gives us the experience associated with external objects in the waking state, the experience of hallucination without any interactions with external objects also in the waking state and the experience of dreams, where we don’t interact with any external objects. One will therefore not be wrong to club all the three scenarios under one heading. Modern neuroscience likes to club it into the heading of hallucination while Vedantic philosophy clubs it under the heading of dream. This is a shocking perspective and hence needs some pondering over in the next two paragraphs.

Let us conceive of a scenario wherein we can create an advanced virtual reality environment where one can not only visualise the 3D perspectives but also associate the sensations of smell, sound and touch to those perspectives through new age electronic interfaces. Such an environment is possible to create with today’s technology. If we immerse ourselves into such a virtual reality environment, it will be impossible to say whether we are in a real world interacting with real objects or in a VR world interacting with controlled stimuli. We will be both awake and dreaming simultaneously.

One can also induce hallucinations by injecting synthetic drugs or by consuming natural hallucinogens. The hallucinogens create an altered state of the mind where one may be awake but experience a dream like reality.

Thus, we see that the states of waking and sleeping can be clubbed into a single state called dream. Our lives are one continuous dream, interspersed with deep sleep which is also known as the dreamless sleep.

Now that we have a grip on our dream state, let us analyse the dreamless sleep. Let us start with the question of what we feel in our dreamless sleep.

We feel nothing during our dreamless sleep, no sensations, and no experiences, absolutely nothing. It is as if the world vanishes in front of our eyes. In the dreamless sleep, the experience producing circuits are not triggered, the stored codes of experiences are not invoked, and we settle down into a state of nothingness. Once we wake up from the dreamless sleep, we somehow seem to know that we had a dreamless sleep. We can remember the last set of experiences (while awake or dreaming) that we had before we drifted into the dreamless sleep and then after waking up, we record the fresh set of experiences felt again. Our minds can understand this gap in time when there was no experience, from the two sets of experience data separated over time. Whatever maybe the underlying mechanism, our brains have evolved a way to understand this state of no-experience. We experience this state of no-experience, every time we fall into a dreamless sleep. Deep sleep is not a void of experiences, but it is an experience of the void. It is also an experience in our arsenal of experiences.

Using the analogy of set theory, if we think of all our experiences as elements of a universal set, then what we experience in the dreamless sleep of no-experience is the null element of this set.

To conclude, our lives are a constant stream of experiences played in our minds. Our waking and dreaming states can be clubbed into a single state of dream, while the dreamless sleep is one where we get the experience of no-experience.

Chapter 5: What about our bodies

 

Our interactions with the external world are identified and stored as a collection of experiences (codes). The experiences do not show the true nature of the reality of the universe. Our sensory perceptions, which do not capture the true reality of the external objects are however, good enough for us to navigate in the world that we live in, survive and procreate. This is all that is there as far as the external world is concerned. But what about our bodies?

Like external objects the cells, tissues and organs in our bodies send stimulus to our brains which are also stored as specific experiences. Though we cannot experience vision, smell or taste for entities inside our bodies, yet we have other types of sensations that our peculiar to our bodies. The sensation of hunger is unique for our bodies. Same is true with the experience of thirst. The sensation of pain, however, is a common experience between the external universe and the internal world of our bodies. Though we could categorise the sensations and the corresponding experiences as that associated with external objects or those internal to our bodies, yet they all fall under the larger universe of our experiences. The process by which sensations gets created may differ between the outside world and our internal bodies but there is no difference in the structure of the sensory experiences whether originating outside our bodies or inside it. The same principal that holds true for external objects, also holds true for the sensory experiences originating from within our bodies, i.e., drive towards the good experiences (eat when feeling hungry) and avoid the bad experiences e.g., pain.

From the perspective of these experiences therefore there is no difference between our bodies and the external universe. Our brain perceives them as same though we have been able to identify and label each of the experiences and know whether they originate from within or outside our bodies. We can label different experiences based on their points of origin and the objects associated with them.

What about our brains? Surely the brain is a more complex piece of our biological system, but it too is same as any other parts of our bodies in the sense that it too sends sensory stimulus which are then stored as an experience in our memories. Don’t believe me … think of headaches. Hence, from the realm of our universe of experience, the body with all its parts, including the brain, together with every relevant object in the universe that our bodies interact with is one continuous entity. The definition of our outside world does not start from our skins outwards but from our internal organs outwards.

The pertinent question to ask now is where the external world starts and our internal world ends. A property of this demarcation would be the boundary that demarcates the place where our experiences are played with the place that sends sensations and stimulus for creating the experiences.

All our experiences are created and played in our minds. Hence, the boundary that we are thinking off will be between our minds and our bodies. Thus, our minds are a separate entity which hosts our world of experiences while the rest of our bodies and objects outside it forms a separate group.

It is quite heretical to think that there is no difference between our bodies and the objects in the external world. One obvious objection would be that our experience universe takes actions to preserve our bodies but not of external objects. How is it then that we don’t do anything to preserve our nails or hair. To the contrary we spend a lot of time getting our hair trimmed and our nails cut. We happily do the above activities because we don’t get any bad experience in letting go of unwanted body parts. Try doing that with some other part of the body and the associated pain will not allow us to do so. Our experience universe does not always take actions to preserve our bodies, in fact, many a times our experience universe takes actions contrary to preserving our bodies. Think of the scenario wherein a person has developed a tumour in his body which will be fatal. The person’s experience universe fights tooth and nail with the doctor to avoid surgery that will cure the disease. The fear of pain associated with surgery is so intense that as part of the medical procedure, one must be anaesthetised before the life saving surgery can be performed. In this example our experience universe was trying to avoid the bad experience of pain at the cost of our lives !

Our bodies move away from pain whether created internally or externally. The process of moving away from the pain producing experience may differ, taking us to a doctor for an internal injury or simply moving away from a path of a moving stone thrown at us. Our experience universe is only interested in avoiding the bad experience of pain.

Also, if we think deeper then we will realise that it is quite appropriate to think this way. The entities that create the external objects (like molecules, atoms, subatomic particles and so on) also creates our own bodies. They are subjected to the same laws of nature and behave the same way as any other material object in the universe. It is the mind, however, that is a strange place. It is here where the dance of experience is played out.

To conclude, from the point of view of our world of experiences, our bodies, through appearing to be a part of us (and often the only thing that we think as us) are a part of the external universe.

Chapter 4: Nature of our lives

 

We now understand that the world of experience that our brain creates is not the reality of the external universe. This world of experience is however good enough for us to navigate in the world that we live in, survive, and procreate.

Our lives, from birth to death, is a series of interactions with the external world synchronised with the rotation and revolution of the earth. We interact with the same type of objects from morning till evening with variations thrown in intermittently. For example, we wake up from the same type of bed in the morning, eat food for breakfast, do some work where we interact with other human beings and so on. In winter we wear woollen clothes followed by light clothes in summer and then again winter sets in when we get back to the woollen clothes. So, you see our behaviour predominantly has two sets of periodicities, one related to the day and night cycle of the earth and the other related to its yearly cycle around the sun. We call this the daily ritual and the yearly routine.

The point of emphasis here is that we interact with almost the same set of objects in our daily ritual and another set of objects characterising our yearly routine.

Our world is however defined by experiences. Our brain, in the initial phase of our lives, identifies and stores the code for each of these interactions in the form of sensations and experiences. It would have created a rich world of virtual reality where experience defines the game. For every interaction with an external object, we have a corresponding experience, a code. When we say that our lives are defined by two sets of interactions, one related to the day and night cycle and the other the yearly revolution of the earth, we mean two sequence of experiences, one corresponding to the day and night cycle of the earth and the other its yearly revolution. Since we understand only experience, our waking lives are a continuous series of experiences. You can think of them like the waves in the ocean. They come and go with every moment of our interacting lives.

Our experiences can be broadly classified into two categories, one that is good for us and the other which we want to avoid. Eating food when hungry, a mother nursing her new-born child and even getting up from bed once our sleep cycle is over are some of the examples of the good category. Getting eaten by a predator, a stone hitting us and getting slapped are some of the examples of the category that we want to avoid.

What drives our lives is the desire of good experiences and avoidance of the bad ones. We want to experience good food and once satiated, a good sleep, post which maybe a good conversation, and then perhaps a good music and so on. Nature however does not allow such a series of goodies and instead throws a series of bad experience to us like the experience of hunger which drives us to get food (hunt, collect, work, steal, …). We are not driven by the urge to interact with external objects but are driven by the experiences associated with those interactions.

Our game of life is played in this ocean of experiences, to seek some and avoid others. People are driven to the act of procreation to experience pleasure and not the fact that it will give rise to a new life nine months down the line. People eat food to experience taste and avoid the experience of hunger pangs. They don’t eat because it will allow their bodies to generate energy which will help them move or think. The twin experience of taste and hunger pangs hides the fact that eating allows the body to generate energy to move. They act as a façade to the reality of digestion, absorption and the energy producing Krebs cycle. Our brain creates a virtual reality of experiences, and our lives are driven by them.

In conclusion, the sum of all experiences is what defines our external facing lives. Every aspect of our external facing life has a corresponding experience playing its part inside our minds. Every act of ours, related to the external world, is done to enjoy good experiences and avoid the bad ones. The truth is that we live inside our minds and are trapped inside our own creation.