EWS #118 Occult Secrets - Part XI Future Tech + Q&A

June 11, 2022

Alina (0:00:33):
Namaste and good evening everyone. Namaste Sraddhalu.

[Sraddhalu] Namaste, happy to be with all of you.

We are happy to continue our weekly series, every Saturday. Today is the 11th of June and we are exploring secrets of occult science. Today, we will take up some questions on the technological bridge between the physical and the occult worlds. During our conversations you may freely ask questions in our chat box on YouTube. We will take up a few questions that we received from Trinetra related with our topic.

Trinetra is asking, “can a fresh cadaver not too damaged be used to host a deity as a medium so that it can function, that is talk, walk?”

Sraddhalu (0:01:40):
Very interesting question. It is also very provocative because it opens a whole domain of possibilities that normally we don't think of. The answer opens us to a wider discussion and I think we will explore the full scope of this as well as the next two questions which build on this.

As we have already seen from past discussions, from the subtler grades of consciousness to the most dense gross physical, there is a gap. There are so many layers in between which need to be bridged. So let's say when you are in an exteriorized condition out of body, if you try to seize a physical stone you won't be able to. If you're close enough to your hand, you will see the stone, your hand will pass through. If you're still closer to the most dense physical grade, you might be able to touch or feel the friction of entry into the stone. And then if you reach the most dense grade then you have literally materialised your subtle body. You will be able to lift the stone and so on.

But the strength you will gain from the subtle physical body will be far greater than the gross physical body. And lifting the stone would seem to you to be something very light, very easy to do. And so from your subtle physical body you will find you can lift a huge stone with very little effort because the power, strength, even density of the subtle physical is far greater than the gross physical. Now all this of course explains many mediumistic phenomena where a partially materialised being is able to do pretty amazing things including moving very heavy objects and all this because the subtle physical has a far greater strength than the gross physical. The gross physical strength is limited by your muscles, subtle physical is not. It is directly substance into which you are infusing force and so it is able to do far more. So all this is first to give you a background of the picture from the other side. But if you had to then take on a form, you still have a problem.

So the question really is, if a form is given to you ready-made, can you infuse yourself into the form and then take over?

There are couple of stories from history which relate to this question. I will touch upon one which is very well known in India. When the great yogi Adi Shankaracharya was challenged by a householder in a debate on philosophy. The yogi answered all the questions but then the householder said, now I ask you questions about family life, marital life and emotional and sexual relations and the condition of the whole debate was, you don't talk theory; you have to talk from experience. The problem was that here was an avowed celibate, how can he have experience? So Shankaracharya said, yes, give me a few days; I think he asked for a couple of weeks and said we will continue the debate after two weeks or so.

He goes back, goes into a state of trance, projects out of his body and the king has just died. He takes over the body of the king. So from the perspective of the king's wives, suddenly the king who had just died comes back to life. Now he spends a few days in the relationship with his wives, family life, children, rule of the kingdom etc. And then when his time is up, he comes off, he leaves the body and returns to his physical body. Now there is another side to the story that the king's minister figures out that something is going wrong. It's not the same person: this man is talking high philosophy, not the same personality. So he knows someone has taken over the body. He sends out people to try to find this person who has taken the body and the disciples are trying to protect the body from being destroyed.

So all this is to give you a background that yes, it is possible that a freshly dead body can be taken over by someone who has the skill, the capacity. It can't be done as easily. And you will recall our discussion from last time, the Mother saying how the entry involves a huge pain of friction of entry, even as the exit might involve some discomfort. So this is one example.

I give another example which I have mentioned before in one of the earlier talks. This was narrated to us by somebody who was in the Indian Army, in the Border Roads Organization (BRO), where they build roads high in the Himalayas, on the borders. And at some point they were breaking the mountain to cut a road using explosives and having just exploded one part of the mountain, they were walking around and they discovered there was a little hole which as if opened into a cave. They approached it and they could hear a humming sound from inside as if someone is chanting Om. They go in and find this yogi, his body almost entirely shrivelled up and he is chanting Om. And when they come to him, they realise they have disturbed him, so they ask forgiveness. He opens his eyes and says, “don't worry, anyway it was time for me to quit this body. Can I ask you a special favour?” So they said, “Yes, anything for you”. He says, “Go down this mountain and on the other side in the valley there is a river. As you approach the river, you will find a dead body floating nearby. You take it onto the land, cut a tiny piece of the flesh from the thigh, on the right thigh I believe, and bring that to me”. So they said, this is a weird request. They go there, they find a cadaver, they cut off this little piece of flesh and bring it to him. He takes the piece of flesh, pops it into his mouth and promptly dies.

So they are very upset, they don't know what to make of this whole strange incident. They closed the cave and then went on with their thing. That evening the villagers who were present when the body was taken from the river, they said at the same time that and this synchronised the time, at the same time that this yogi took the piece of flesh in his mouth, that body got up. The so-called dead young, it was a young man, dead person, he gets up and walks away. So obviously the piece of flesh was used as a link by the yogi to transfer his consciousness to that cadaver and take over a young body to give up his decrepit body and then continue whatever he wanted to do with his sadhana. Now this was narrated by somebody, who I think now he's no more. This was told to us in the 80s, 1980s. Such things are possible. And once you understand the rationale, you can see obviously yes, it is easy to do.

(0:09:27):

Now the question really goes to whether you could host a deity as a medium?

Yes, it can function, it can talk, walk and so on. But would you be able to get a deity in? The challenge really is of what you mean by deity, host whom, who would accept and I will approach it on many levels here. One is that you could have beings from the vital worlds who can pretend to be any deity, beings from the mental worlds or the spiritual. The spiritual will not, most often: and this is the case because for them to incarnate binds them into darkness, ignorance, dulling inertia which comes with the physical body and means losing their spiritual purity, freedom, light, etc., a wideness, and most of them refuse. They would rather put out an emanation to help, which is much simpler.

Second, beings of the mental world. Again, generally, because the freer, wider mental consciousness is so much more clear, why would you bind yourself when you can achieve the same result by directly inspiring someone with thoughts? And you can, even without bothering with one person, you can infuse thoughts in the, lets say, human consciousness and whoever is most ready will pick it up and actualize it. Why would you want to incarnate, to do what finally?

Beings of the vital world, again the higher ranges of the vital, too comfortable, too pleasurable, too beautiful to want to dull yourself into this darkness of the physical body. And so generally the only beings who might be interested would be beings of the lower vital and for what again? What would they gain? To have a brief experience of what it's like to be in a human body with the dulling limitations. You have to understand and some of this you will understand better if you can recall your dream experiences of the vital worlds. Those worlds are so much more plastic, sometimes so much more beautiful, so much more powerful, so much more exciting. Even the grade of experience of excitement will be a hundred times or a thousand times more intense than what you can experience in your dulling physical body with its dulled and limiting nervous system which is so poor compared to the direct vital experience. So what would they want in a human experience? Mostly it's not very interesting.

And the lowest of the vital beings might say, okay let's see what it's like, but even then they fear being bound. So all this is to say that any of the beings of anything worthwhile would find it easier to make a partial materialisation instead of taking on a whole body; it is simpler, less painful and less binding to the inertia. So yes, while it's possible, no deity would accept, generally speaking. They would rather link with a human being, inspire a human being, lift their consciousness with their inspiration and act through them, through the inspiration than by identifying with cadaver and so on. And yet that also has happened, it does happen, it's very rare though.

And I give an incident here which was which took place in the ashram; there was an old lady and she was on the brink of passing on. Mother had been told and everything was done in preparation and then suddenly at some point instead of passing on, something shifted and they saw, the people, I don't know if it's a family or people who are looking after her, they saw that her personality changed completely. She was barely communicative and she was as if a different person and the only thing which she wanted was to eat; kept demanding food and kept on eating. After a few days of this, somebody said, we need to report to the Mother. And they reported to her and mother said, it is very strange, she has passed on many days ago, she came to me many days ago. And this is obviously not her, it is some being which has taken possession of the body. And so Mother said, just refuse the foods that she is asking. And after a while, the being found it's no more interesting to have this experience and left the body. So this actually took place and if it had not taken place here I would have wondered at some of these possibilities.

(0:14:12):

So all this is to say that in answer to the question: deity- no, lower vital beings- yes. The point of course is the body can be resuscitated if somebody with sufficient life energy chooses to identify and take on such a body. Now here comes the key word which Trinetra has used, fresh cadaver. What does it mean fresh? How far, for how long and after how much time can you get in or not? So this discussion gets into also a very interesting area of discussion. You will recall because we had discussed this just last time, Mother speaks of how she, over the last two times, how when she was in an exteriorized condition up through 12 levels, the link was cut by Theon in his anger; and it took her a very painful effort to reconnect and re-enter the physical body.

At that point she explains how, in the physical body there is the subtle grade which is closest to the physical. I think this is what she refers to as the spirit of the form, which is the layer which needs to remain intact for the resuscitation to take place. If that is damaged, then you cannot come back. Now I will explain a little bit of these finer gradations of layers and link it to something else that the Mother speaks of. She says, the body does not die just like that and then she quotes, refers to some of the newer medical explorations, where they say that there are parts of the body which continue to live for quite a while, sometimes even for days and Mother confirms this. And she says it often takes a few days for the entire thing to break down, during which time there are many parts which continue still and of these the most material physical and that's the grade which she said needs to remain intact for the body to be resuscitated. But then she said there are finer grades which also are very close to the physical, which also can be there for a while, which take time to die out, so to say. And that's when she made this comment of, ideally a body should be kept for many days to allow that whole breakdown to be completed before it is cremated or buried.

But in India, she said, they rush to cremate quickly because they don't want ghosts. And explaining that it is from these layers that the ghost forms are typically let's say projected or released. And she mentions there how somebody who had passed on was in front of her in the subtle body. Of course at that point just having passed on, very close to the physical, so in one of the gradations of the subtle physical. And then suddenly she saw the body undergoing a kind of a shiver of discomfort and she recognized that it was timed with the time that the body was cremated. So because the link had not been completely severed. There was still some registration which was there and that's when she said, it's always better to wait longer until the link is separated.

Or to which we can add a different angle: one can consciously sever the link. Now it could be done by the person who has passed on if he has the skill or it can be done by somebody else who is there and who has the capacity. And it's not a difficult capacity. If you think of it again as gradations of a continuum of substance; if you are conscious of a certain level of gradation, you can feel, so to say, and what you can feel you can influence. So you can concentrate as if and release, create a separation once the person has already passed on, create a separation, to as if release. And I know of people who have this capacity, who have done it and there are various ways by which they may do. The idea is to assist in the release to complete the part which is separating to finish the separation.

I personally had an experience relating to this which was when Panditji's younger sister passed away. I think this was in 2007. At the time we had requested Kumudbhen who was looking after the Mother's room to send flowers from the Mother's room and she had sent a rose and I brought, I took that to to Mitra-akka as she was known. Mitra-akka meaning Mitra was her name, akka is sister. I took the rose to her and I was led to place the rose before her nose as if she was breathing. I had the sense that I could feel her consciousness very much in the physical still. And I placed the rose and I could feel, I will just describe this without hesitation. You can take it for what it's worth for you. But I could feel her subtle body literally breathing in the rose and instantly as the breath was completed, it was released from the physical and I felt it separating and soaring off as if making the transition into the subtle world. It's as if that domain was really opened and she made the transition.

This was pretty early. It was within a couple of hours, two or three hours after she had passed on. Normally it takes much longer for that release to take place. And then there was somebody who came who always comments, oh after people pass away there is a glow and she was feeling that. She came and said, what happened? Earlier there was a glow, now it's gone. I said, ‘yeah, because she's been released. Subtle body has been disconnected. It's no more there now. That's what was giving the glow that you were interested in’. But this is to say that it can be as simple as that, as easy as that for the release to take place. Once that is done, there is no more the link, the cremation is, in fact there will be immediate rapid deterioration of the physical body; because it is those layers very close to the physical which keep it going.

(0:20:58):

I link this to a current research because now we have tools which are far more advanced which did not exist even 20 years ago where we can watch the brain through what is called fMRI magnetic resonance imaging; functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. You can watch the brain and this was done recently. I had seen a report, I don't know offhand how you can find it, but I had saved the link somewhere.

As a person was passing on, he was already in the fMRI machine and they watched the transition take place. What was interesting was the person died biologically, because the heart stops; but the brain continued to function with deteriorating functionality. I believe they were able to recognize the images which were forming in the mind by the patterns which the fMRI was catching. So there's a whole interesting domain of exploration here where they put these sensors on the brain and they show pictures through the eyes and in the sensor they, the pattern of sensors they catch the brain pattern associated with each image, and with AI you so to say link the two; so that watching the brain patterns you should be able to predict what is the image seen. Or by extending it you reconstruct the image that's being seen by association of brain patterns.

This being done with eyes open, later they try to monitor this in dream state to catch what is this sight in the dream. Of course, it does not quite work because physical sight registering in the physical brain does not mean mental sight registering in physical brain. Mental sight registers in mental consciousness which may partially reflect in physical brain or physical brain may follow its own chaotic associated images or subconscious habitual images, while the subtle body may be wandering and seeing completely different images. But the idea is that with this kind of experiment, they were hoping that they would be able to see what the person is seeing in dream state. The match is not very good, but it's an interesting approach.

So using a similar approach, they were trying to assess what the person would be seeing during the period just after technically the body is dead. But what is interesting is there was a time they gave the brain continued to function, specialised cells which functioned for much longer while other cells broke down sooner. So confirming Mother's observation that actually there are gradations, finer, more dense and more fine, which have their own pace of breakdown, depending on the separation of those finer gradations of the subtle physical.

And all this is to say, once that is completed or if it is accelerated, the separation, the biology very rapidly declines, because that was the supporting force– the subtle physical bridging to the vital and mental. Now it is possible for the subtle body to separate almost completely keeping only this thread, and it is this grade of this densest subtle physical which is holding the physical body intact. During that time the breathing could slow down, the heart rate could slow down to what is practically one beat per minute and the oxygen supply at that point to the cells is so low that technically biology should not be able to survive. And yet in laboratory conditions such people in cataleptic trance are found to be alive and that shows you that the primary source of energy is not the physical oxygen, but the life force at a very dense grade of substance of the subtle physical. We will call it the subtle physical opening to the vital and through that it can absorb the life force and it is through the link held on that level that the person who is now projected out of the body is ensuring the physical body's continuance.

So, all this gives us a very deep understanding of these finer gradations and their relationship with the physical. So, I, so to say, drifted off from the keyword ‘fresh cadaver’ and understanding what that means and of finer gradations they are required.

So we can speak of subtle physical, of course with many gradations, and a vital physical, which is the vital consciousness plugging into physical and again finer gradations. The mental physical, that is the mind consciousness, the mental body leaning to fuse into the gross physical or the physical body turning to mind and the bridge formed on these. And Mother also speaks of this psychic physical, the influence of the psychic on the physical. That's not very strong in most people and it is only in those in whom it has been consciously cultivated that this can be actually a strong influence at a physical level. There is a particular grade of, I will say, quality of consciousness or light of consciousness, that as one becomes more familiar with the psychic consciousness one can actually begin to sense that or perceive that even in a human physical body.

Of course something of that is felt in flowers; and that's why Mother spoke of flowers as representing the vital consciousness in the natural world, particularly in the trees and plants life. So the part of their physical vital consciousness turning to the psychic and allowing a psychic infusion or a glow of the psychic influence to reflect, to glow out, there's a particular vibration in the flowers which one can feel, one can catch and then you can as if find that correspondence in a person in whom the psychic influence is strong in the physical body. Not everyone may have it; it's only if you have worked on the physical from the psychic influence. It may correspond to certain parts of the physical body, not even all the parts. A lot depends and there are many possibilities there.

(0:27:36):

There's one example which was given to me by my teacher M.P. Pandit. He said that his teacher, Kapali Shastriyar, used to have a bright red patch in the centre of the chest, circular. And it was because of the sustained concentration on the psychic presence and I would assume as a result the infusion, a strong infusion of the psychic influence in the physical body itself in that part. And so these are interesting observations, they give us an insight into the complexity of these gradations and the way the human body has been organised. Remember: for the body to be capable of what it is, as we all are today, without any effort, we can think, feel, act, speak etc. or receive a psychic influence within us and feel it. For this, this biology substance had to go through, I would say easily a billion years of evolution.

A billion years perhaps simply for matter to be able to become more responsive to life force, Prana, which is what you see in plants. From plant to animal where that life force acquires a mental turn, I don't know how many billion years and then from the animal to the human, where the mental consciousness acquires almost a freedom from matter and life force and acquires an independent identity that can sustain in the biology, which would require in the biology, substance which is so refined as to be subtly influenceable by the mind or which can nudge mind. Mind can nudge it, it can nudge mind, and yet it is as if evolved from physical.

Think about what that means: to gather substance like that, to organise it, to structure it and to make it stable enough that a mind could plug in and you could have push and pull, vice versa. And before that, equivalent gradations for the vital and so on. Think about what that means. How much, because all of that whole evolution has been by the push, instinctive push of nature. As we have come all the way close to mind, mind itself now can begin to engage with this push and participate and speed up. This is where we are as human beings.

And therefore within a few years you are able to actually lift this substantiality to a finer grade and open to still finer gradations within limits of what physical substance could take. But potentially there could be physical substance into which there is enough infusion of a higher light that it becomes responsive to the intuitive consciousness and even the supramental consciousness. And the part of the mind which is open to the supramental and now interfacing with the physical, that part of the mind which is actually in the physical and yet opening to the supramental, that Sri Aurobindo refers to as the mind of light. Very interesting!

This mind, although still bound in the physical body, although not yet transformed into a divinized supramental mind, and although the biology itself has not been supramentalized, this mind could act as a link sufficient that you could have a human biological mental life that is free of ignorance, because lit by the supermind, although not transformed into the supramental consciousness totally. It's a very interesting point. And this is what Sri Aurobindo worked towards in the last few years of his life, built this, what he called the mind of light, infused it, built it within himself. And since the Mother was the link point for humanity, he built this when it was ready at the time when he left his physical body, he transferred this into the Mother's consciousness. And the Mother says it was literally as if what he had built, he infused into her and through her, because she was plugged into humanity; the imprint of that was gifted to humanity. Mother of course, continued to work on it and the development of that is largely recorded in her Agenda, but not understood entirely by people.

Many people read the Agenda as if she is talking of her spiritual experience. No she is talking of experience of her physical consciousness opening to the spiritual and the most material physical. It's not even the general physical which was already quite subtilized to an extraordinary degree and the subtle physical was already transformed. So it is in the physical consciousness and its gradations which open to the higher. It is those experiences that she is recording in her Agenda. So I think this, I use the question as a starting point to give a very broad picture of these gradations and the nature of or the role of these different parts.

I think from this we will go into the next question, which will allow us to explore further.

Alina (0:33:16):

Trinetra is writing, “in Evening Talks part 4, on science you mentioned Prana Pratishta of deities in idols and its possibility to inhabit intelligent robots. Mother tried bringing down her force into computers back in the days, but the computer got fried. With machines converging with animal brain cells, such as intelligent systems used to navigate aerial vehicles, are our high-tech computers now ready to accept Mother's force, or even host the deity effectively. What will be the effect when and if the first AI merges with Mother's force?” It's a very interesting question.

Sraddhalu (0:34:17):
Yes, so one correction I will have to make. It's not that the computer got fried. The incident I have narrated in one of those, I think that was part 4 of the series, when the computer centre in the ashram, which by the way, she insisted that the computers were to be brought, this was going back 1969, I believe, when one of the students who had grown up in the ashram was working in the United States with what was at that time the most advanced computer technologies and they were gigantic machines and still they were more crude and less capable than what you might have today in a little programming inside a washing machine probably. But he was working with that, it was called the Star computer. He sent an article to the Mother.

And in 1969, Mother said, “Come back and bring with you the Star computer and this is exactly what is needed for Auroville”. Now remember, Auroville was still pretty much a desert land, a city which was being built. And she says, this has to be brought. And you will recall, I've mentioned, to her great grandson, she said, instead of doing engineering, take up computers. And he came back and started the first computer company in Auroville, which became one of the premier computer companies in India. I was present at that time as a child, 12 years old, I used to go during my vacations every day and work with the computers there. So I saw their R&D, the technology they were developing and they made innovations which were new, cutting edge around the world.

All this is to just give you the backdrop of the computer itself. So at that time, I think it was in those early days when they had made some demonstration, circuits of logic, in the computer center of the ashram; the Mother had gone to see one of these exhibitions and she looked at the person who was in charge and she said, it must be very complicated, isn't it? The lady was very happy to hear that. But what I was told by somebody else was that at that time, the thing didn't function too well. So they understood it as an erroneous functioning of a digital circuit.

And what Mother said later was that she was experimenting to see how it would respond to the higher force and she was doing this with all kinds of devices and machines. There used to be a machine that was used to press steel. There was a steel, I don't know what is the term used, still steel forming machines which were set up, all kinds of industries the Mother started in the ashram, which unfortunately in the later years our foolish people sold off. And it is very sad because Mother took these as part of the spiritual work and with that particular steel machine, she said to Udar I believe, that she brought down the higher force on the machine and there were experiments she was doing to see how they would respond.

So the computer, well malfunctioned you will say, with the action of what she was trying to do. But on the other side she would have found it responsive to her consciousness. But now from that point to now things have moved to a level of subtlety and complexity, where we can actually speak of the possibility of a more direct and a more complex influence from a spiritual or even a mental consciousness operating on these machines.

(0:38:04):

So this comes to the larger question of Trinetra: Is it possible to infuse some consciousness or conscious being and host it into biological machine?

We are continuing from the first question, which was hosting in a biological machine and now, can you host it into a technological, physical, artificial intelligence computer, not biology? So it's a continuation of that discussion. What would be the effect for an AI machine, if consciousness were to be brought into it? Can it be brought in?

So I'll again address this question on many levels and will open to a whole complexity of possibilities. I was in a meeting in the United States, where there was a researcher who's one of the world's renowned in parapsychology-based research and there was somebody else who was a renowned medical doctor and somebody in the audience raised this question of is it possible to create a device that would be influenced by mind? And the person who was specialising in parapsychological research because he is so fixed in the material validation did not think it interesting. The doctor did not think it interesting. And I responded saying this is one of the most important questions for the future of humanity. Why? Because if you can... The question was what is the mechanism by which the mind influences matter. I said it's the most important question because if you can understand the mechanism of this influence, you can build machines which would be influenced by thought or which would be able to conversely influence thought.

So understanding this mechanism, for me personally, has been one of the, let's say, longest pursuits of life and the pursuit started when I was still in teenage. I read a lot of literature, studied a lot of things from the... that's how my interest in occult sciences also went in and particularly the aspect where it approaches the technology or the science behind what is the mechanism as well as the rationale for these minglings of multiple layers of consciousness.

So I will touch upon a few things here and which will give us an idea of what could be possible links and then we will find our answer to the question itself. There is a very interesting experiment which dates back to the 1980s, where a physicist who is famous because he has discovered a particle, so that's hardcore physics, sets out to prove once and for all that parapsychological phenomena are fake. So he designs what is for him the ultimate test and if this fails then it proves parapsychology is fake. And he builds a machine where 1000 ball bearings are distributed evenly in a slot along the slat of metal and then that is tilted to drop them all simultaneously. As they fall, there are channels cut through which they bounce around and evenly divide through random, bouncing around, eventually evenly divide into two buckets. So 1000 ball bearings should even out to 500, 500 with some statistical variation which is within the range of statistical errors.

So the machine is run automatically at various fixed hours. You count the number of ball bearings by weighing them very easily. You find them pretty much equal most of the time with some small variations, which is accepted statistically. Then he calls somebody who claims to have what they call psychic powers, makes the fellow sit in front and says, now concentrate to have more ball bearings going to the right bucket or more on the left and then push the lever to start the fall. So the idea is you have an intense concentration, when you are ready you push the lever and the thing is done within a few seconds. So you don't have to hold concentration for too long.

What was fascinating was he found that these people who were concentrating could make a tilt on demand to the right bucket or left bucket and a substantial tilt of I think 5, 10, 15 percent. But these are all statistically impossible, and repeatedly. Now here was a scientist who came to prove that this is impossible and ends up proving not only it's possible, but then he extends the experiment and catches people at random from the street and says, come and do this experiment. And he found every human being had the ability to sway, some more, some less. He ended up proving that parapsychological phenomena are valid.

I don't know why this experiment has not been done more often or replicated by others but since it came from somebody who was so well known and so rigorous in the implementation, it is dramatic. Now, this gives you one clue. Had you put two balls or ten balls drop them and have tried to influence, it would be difficult. Difficult because, to move a heavy ball is difficult. Okay, you put 10 small balls. You might get some result but again limited. Why? Because to be able to measure a 10% variation out of 10 balls, you have to actually move one ball substantially. But with a thousand ball bearings, you can move all of them minutely and the end result is amplified a thousandfold and therefore allows you to have a valid dramatic result.

So here is your key: your mind as it is, is not able to move a physical object. I can't for example take a piece of paper and push it. Or with a subtle physical you have to densify enough to be able to make it move a little bit. And that people can do. But again it requires a special effort, not everyone gets to do it immediately. But with your mind as it is and with whatever influence it has in this vital subtle physical and its finer grades, with your existing capacity, if you have a thousand ball bearings bouncing around around pretty much at random, tiny nudges simultaneously on the thousand, a tiny nudge on a thousand can be made and tiny enough that you could not register it on a single ball, but the combination of the thousand gets sufficient registration.

(0:45:06):

Here's your key. So first what this shows you is as we are our mind is already influencing matter except a tiny subtle grade. Your brain in order to be able to plug into mind and receive the mind's influence or push back on mind's influence needs to therefore develop a refined substance of a grade which is so fine, that the mind could easily nudge it slightly and in your brain you must have not hundred, not a thousand, maybe a million, maybe a billion or a few hundred billion cells, all of which are receptive to the mind's nudge and which nudge then can combine through a structure of the brain cell arrangement to produce a particular outcome. For this Nature had to struggle to evolve the brain.

What is interesting is, our current scientists have always thought of the brain as a computer, which is not the case. The brain is a receiver, more than a computer. Yes, it has certain basic computational abilities, but they are relatively crude. You cannot have complex thought with those computational abilities. There is some processing, yes, but it is limited. It is as I say, a reduction from a million fold or a billion fold influence, a kind of a reduction as we saw in the experiment earlier from a thousand ball bearings to buckets. So, you could have put a million ball bearings and 10 buckets. So, that process of reduction, that is the processing that the brain would do, to boil or reduce to specific things and then complex interrelations between them. All of that is part of the brain, yes. But none of those could produce a complex creative thought.

So the brain you have to see more as a receiving organ. So the problem is as long as you look at the human brain, you can say, ah yes so many billion cells, computation, yes we can explain; but when you look at a cockroach, which I believe the cockroach has some 300 or 400 brain cells, and then you consider the complex flight of a cockroach, just maintaining its balance while flying, and then navigating from one part of the room to another, chasing after prey and doing complex tasks while flying, you cannot explain this by just three or four hundred neurons, and this is part of the problem of our understanding of the brain. So they say yes, perhaps within the neuron there are more complex quantum processes. And this word quantum is a catch-all; it's actually a label that allows you to cover up your ignorance because within quantum phenomena there are things happening which you can't explain physically and you say, ah yes, but that is quantum physics. You say, I can't explain, but the explanation is that that's how it is; you see how stupid it sounds when you say it like this.

But that's really what's happening in quantum physics, when they speak of so many of these peculiarities of quantum physics where you have, what they call non-locality and the connection between two particles at a great distance and so on. But that's reality they say. But you've explained nothing. You've just claimed that's reality. And so quantum is a catch-all word. It's like saying by chance. You basically cover up your ignorance and say, yes there's a quantum phenomena inside the brain cells which accounts for, and that's it, you've covered up. So that also is there by the way as an attempt to explain.

But this is to show you that brain cells alone cannot explain the complex behaviour in creatures. In human beings, the brain cells are far more complex in their arrangement and processing and therefore we have the illusion that we are able to explain, but actually it does not explain.

(0:49:08):

So, here we get another hint. If you wanted to create a link between mind and a machine, you would need a large number of very fine subtle sensors and you would have to find a way to combine them to be able to pick up something interesting. In fact such an experiment does exist and I've mentioned this before so I will not go into detail and it is called the global consciousness project where you have 65 computers all over the world, in the last count that I saw, with tiny computer chips designed to produce random numbers.

Now, how do you produce random numbers? In a computer, as you have, or inside your mobile phone, there are also random number generators, but they operate differently. They're called pseudo-random. There's actually a mathematical formula which is spewing out numbers one after another, it's not truly random. In fact, it is one of the biggest problems of physics and mathematics and technology. How to produce true randomness of numbers? We can't, because all the means by which we do it are dependent on a prior process and therefore predictable from the process. So the only way you can do, and this is how they do it with a computer chip there, they measure the vibration of a single atom and amplify that and convert that into random pulses. Now basically it is not random, it is vibration of the atom influenced by other atoms around it.

But because it goes into a domain where you cannot know the position of other atoms, you cannot know the outcome of this, effectively you have a randomness for all practical purposes. But you must understand the randomness measured is a measure of the current balance of interrelations between these, this group of atoms in the computer chip. So this experiment basically takes the stream of random numbers from 65 computers spread out over the world, combines them to produce one graph, mathematical analysis to show overall randomness which grows or drops. And what is found is that when a large number of people are aligned in thought or in emotion, when for example, there are some natural disasters, there is a tsunami or there is an earthquake, people in that region or people who are watching the news about that region are aligned, you find a drop in randomness.

For those of you who are interested, please look at the past discussions. I don't want to spend half an hour because it's a whole discussion, very interesting. But just to summarise, these random numbers are measuring the vibrations of physical atoms not just in the computer chip, but in a way all the physical atoms around you. And what this experiment proves is that when you think strongly or when you are aligned strongly to a certain emotion or an idea as an individual or as a collective, all the atoms around you including inside your brain and your body and your desk are all as if pushed or nudged to greater harmony. When your thoughts and emotions are chaotic, all these atoms are nudged to greater disharmony. This process taking place in your brain is actually the means by which your thought-emotion imprint is being converted to biological signals, eventually electrical signals and so on.

So here you get a clue. If you could, for example, and this would be one way of doing, there would be other ways, create a very large number of such random number generators or rather random number measurements or measurements of individual atoms spread out over a computer chip but measure all of these separately, and find a way to combine that overall measure mathematically or otherwise, yes, you could have someone concentrate on this and influence. So this is actually done with these random number generators. It was a single one. They will place it before you and say, now concentrate and try to influence. There are some people who can influence, there are some people who can't.

Interestingly when people try to influence it to reduce the randomness they end up increasing it. And I'll share with you the technique, the correction to be made. What they try to do is they go, ‘hmm, I'm pushing with my thought, hmm’. What are you doing? You're creating tension, amplifying confusion. You see if you try to build something delicate, if you try to do with a lot of force, you will break it. You have to first make yourself extremely calm and still and then you can act subtly. So the people who were able to influence, one of them who was a strong vitality, he was asked well what did you do? He said, I didn't try to influence that object. I tried to make myself calm and the random number generator became more harmonious in its pulses.

Most others went into tension to try to influence and amplified the chaos. So now you know how to influence it. Next time you get a chance, do attempt. I believe Bangalore SVYASA has one of these. And there is a project which is put by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, online, where they have a random number generator which you can watch from the web and try to influence. So many such experiments. But the key would be to have a large number of small variations which then you amplify.

So here is as regards the overall question of Trinetra: Can you make a consciousness inhabit an intelligent technological, biological robot?

Yes, in principle you can make it open to influence. The question now is will it be open to just your influence or anybody's influence?

What if you have this little device which is now registering, let's say, your influence of mind and there are four of us now, fighting over who will influence it. Let's say you have made this technology, linked it to a lamp. So whenever you concentrate on this, the lamp goes on. You concentrate again, it goes off. And yes, this also has been done by the way. What happens now if two of us in the room concentrate with different intentions? Which one will it align to?

(0:55:44):

And that brings you to a very interesting area of experimentation. I believe there is one scientist, I forget his name now, his name is, I think, Tillerton, who's doing experiments like this. What they do is they take these random number generators and infuse into it your consciousness. You hold it, you carry it. The way your mobile phone which you carry is infused with your consciousness because you're carrying it, at least 12 hours in the day more often. And if somebody picks up your phone, they can feel your vibes on it. But the circuitry inside is soaked in with your vibes. And one of the things you have to do with electronics is, digital electronics, you have to make it immune to glitches. So they deliberately have to ensure in the circuitry that there cannot be influences which create glitches. You're removing random influences.

If you reverse that process and allowed randomness and a special chip which measures that and then allowed somebody to infuse his personal consciousness into it, make it yours so to say, and build an emotional bond with it, infuse with your consciousness, that thing would be more responsive to you than to others. So I'm giving you a whole path of an exploration of technological possibilities which are now bordering on the occult, while still linking with the physical technology and then perhaps when that technology is sufficiently mastered, you could look at the computer at your mobile screen and with your thought intention switch apps, push buttons and so on. Potentially yes, it's possible, it's doable and I believe it has been done in certain specialised experiments not open to public, but that's my belief.

Sri Aurobindo in fact refers to something of the trend of technology moving in such a direction. So I will read from, where else but the Life Divine, which is one of the most exceptional texts, as is many of most of Sri Aurobindo's writings, but it is one of the most exceptional because, he is actually presenting to you the whole framework of the cosmos, the complex interplay, the whole rationale of evolution and thereby even the means. But he goes to all the key essential problems, conflicts, difficulties of Reality itself and lays it out like a scientist describing how things work. So I'm going to, that in the current edition of the collected works is page 18 or 19. I'll read from this.

He's describing how the whole push of current science is actually driven by a certain intention of Nature and a higher divine Power even working to assist in the awakening of certain possibilities.

And he says,

“It is this vast cosmic impulse which the modern world, without quite knowing its own aim, yet serves in all its activities and labours subconsciously to fulfil.” –In other words that thing is what's guiding even modern technological and scientific pursuit. And he says,

“But there is always a limit and an encumbrance,-- the limit of the material field in the knowledge, the encumbrance of the material machinery in the Power.” So in the material field, your knowledge reaches limit and in the material machinery the power has certain limitations in its action.

“But here also the latest trend is highly significant of a freer future.”

Meaning both of these limits are going to grow towards a greater freedom. What is this?, remember he is writing this in 1918, actually 1900, this would be 14/15, because it's one of the early chapters, so 1914 and recall the world at that time electricity has just been harnessed as an active Force changing shaping motors, electric cars and gigantic machines, dams all these things are suddenly coming in and human life has had the burden of struggle removed: In the middle of the night you can light it up like daytime and the entire city is being lit up and it's being done how? Earlier they would bring oil, pour into these little lamps every day. You had someone going in pouring oil every day, lighting the lamps, nothing. You flick a button and the entire city is lit up. From what? From a waterfall which is a thousand miles away. And electricity brought over wires. What moved? Nothing moved! Where earlier you would carry oil, you would have horses pulling, pushing, nothing moving. What's moving? The water is falling there and here I have light! Isn't it miraculous? You have to actually go into the mindset of that period. It was such a shock for humanity. Wow! Science can do this, science can do anything. That was the mood.

And Sri Aurobindo is pointing to this and says this is just the beginning:

“But here also the latest trend is highly significant of a freer future. As the outposts of scientific Knowledge come more and more to be set on the borders that divide the material from the immaterial, so also the highest achievements of practical Science are those which tend to simplify and reduce to the vanishing-point the machinery by which the greatest effects are produced.”

(1:01:33):

He gives an example: “Wireless telegraphy is Nature's exterior sign and pretext for a new orientation. The sensible physical means for the immediate transmission of the physical force is removed; It is only preserved at the points of impulsion and reception.” So here you push physically, there it pushes physically, in between there is no physical force, no physical movement. It's all been pushed to vanishing-point, “wireless” telegraphy. Remember before that there was wired telegraphy, and before that there was only mechanical piston wires pulling, pushing.

So let's say for example, in the earlier phase you would tie a wire to an object, let's say to a bell which is 100 metres away. Through pulleys, the end of the wire comes here or a rope. You pull here, the physical rope has to move, go through the pulleys, pulling, pulling, pulling until the bell there gets pulled by the rope and the bell moves. So your hand moves here, the bell rings there and in between is the physical link of a movement.

Next stage, that physical link is replaced by an electrical wire. So physical link is there but the physical link does not move. There is no physical transmission of force. I turn, a little generator, which produces electricity; the electricity flows through the wire and over there it pulls it energises an electromagnet which pulls the bell and the bell rings. So here I turn, my mechanical energy effort is converted to something, which transmits with no movement or they say electricity moves. Do you see it? No. Does it really move? Not really. According to your physics, electricity moves or the electron gas as they call it, drifts about 6 centimetres per second. But the electricity has hit there instantly at the speed of light.

And Sri Aurobindo comments on this. He says it is the example of transmission of pure force with no physical content. And electricity is the almost material representation representation of the pranic life force. What's happening? Your electron field is pushing another electron field which is pushing another electron field, fields pushing fields, electron barely moves. It's the push of force which is pure field, pushing field. The push of pure force transmitting in the wire as electrical pressure, not electricity as substance. Remember electricity as electron gas is moving 6 centimetres per second, the pressure of the electric field which is pure force pressure, is going at the speed of light.

So I turn my generator here, pure force is transmitted at the speed of light, in what is the material thing is only like a guide, the force itself is non-material. On the other side it is converted into electric field, electromagnetic field, which pulls the bell and rings it.

Third step, you have removed the physical wire. Now you are transmitting force through a medium which is your normal, it's not even physical layer. It's the underlying medium what we call Ether which although science has removed is still valid. Sri Aurobindo says it in the Life Divine very clearly, even though our present instruments can't detect it, because that's what they claimed then in Science, he says the Ether can exist, it does exist, is real and is the underlying substratum of physical reality. He says that very clearly.

Implied is the fact that eventually the means will be found also to measure and validate and even harness the ether. But right now that's what we are doing with wireless telegraphy. Now you've knocked out the physical wire. I'm turning my little thing here. Can't even call it a generator. But yes, there's some electricity being produced. The electricity is made to pulsate an electric field, which creates a ripple in the underlying Ether. Ripple is going everywhere, all over the universe in all directions. Over there is something else which is tuned into this frequency of pulsations which, when it is tuned the ripples of that frequency, it senses or it feels as a force acting upon it, pulsation of electricity which is then converted into a direct current which is then made to pull with the electromagnet the bell.

So, I push a button here with my battery, bell rings over there. What's in between? Nothing! Wireless! It is a huge discovery, huge invention, huge liberation. It's the beginning of a whole new world of possibilities. If everything could be made wireless. Remember today you are even told your phone can be charged wirelessly. What happens at that point? Think of the implications when everything becomes wireless. We'll come to that a little more shortly.

So “This wireless telegraphy is Nature's exterior sign and pretext for a new orientation” and the whole turn has happened because nature said, okay now you're ready for the next step. “The sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed.” The sensible physical means removed but the force is still there. “It is only preserved at the points of the physical of impulsion and reception. Eventually even these must disappear;” This is something fantastic that he is telling you. What must disappear? The point of impulsion and reception where you are putting physical force and receiving physical force.

Even these must disappear:

“Eventually even these must disappear; for when the laws and forces of the supraphysical are studied with the right starting-point the means will infallibly be found for Mind directly to seize on the physical energy and speed it accurately upon its errand.”

(1:08:09):
So the means will be found by which your mind will be able to direct the physical energy and guide it to the particular outcome that you desire.

“There, once we bring ourselves to recognise it, lie the gates that open upon the enormous vistas of the future.” So he's writing in 1914, he says this is just the beginning, it's opening a certain possibility. This is the form that possibility will be taking. Once you get through this, you will be able to do so much more; “enormous vistas of the future”, that means your mind can directly direct physical energy to specific outcomes.

What are the enormous vistas potentially? Think about it. Not just you can move objects with the power of the thought, you can form objects, you can materialise objects, you can shape objects, transmute objects, unending. Matter literally becomes putty to your hands the way you take a lump of plasticine or clay, shape it. With your thought you will not only be able to shape, you will be able to transmute, change properties, evoke properties, invoke, modify- potentially.

Okay, we're still far from that but before that happens there are intermediate steps. Just as we saw before wireless telegraphy, there were intermediate steps. So right now what we can do is with the mind you can nudge an object through your hands which nudges an object which nudges an object which does what you want. These intermediate steps becoming less and less or becoming finer and finer is what we are seeing today. And the best example is your mobile phone. So not only your wireless telegraphy here, you have something far more. I push a button here and the bulb comes on. You have Internet of Things, you have heard the term, IoT, where all the gadgets in your house are connected through the Internet to your phone.

The phone now is a representative translating your mind's intention to the signals needed. Where earlier you needed to use your hands, now you don't need to use your hands in that sense. You are well, touching a screen, but you're not even pushing a button, which you can program now with your mind's intention and exactly at 6:30 the light comes on, at 7:30 it goes off. As your mind commanded it, well five days ago, but now it's following the command automatically isn't it? Think about what technology is actually doing. It is subtilizing, layer by layer, all the intermediate physical links.

Even with your hearing, when you're speaking to somebody now across the world, right now there's a transmission taking place through the Internet. Finally what's happening, mind translating to physical speech and somewhere else physical speech through a loudspeaker translating to mind a thought.

Progressively removing these will lead to something extraordinary. Now I have spoken about this briefly in one of those early talks where I said a point is coming very quickly where you are, so to say plugged in to the electronics. Some of the most advanced jet fighters today are made in this way that they respond to your thought intention, because when you are doing a very strong gravity turn, going into 4G, 5G, your blood is as heavy as lead, your hands can't move, your hand is literally crushed against your seat, you can't even move a finger, how do you move a joystick? So if you want a plane to turn that fast, you have to use other means and that's where the sensors on the brain detect your mind's tilt, you intend to tilt right or left, it picks up and tilts the plane.

So you sit in the plane, you put on this headset, intending a turn of your body without physically moving is sufficient to detect in the brain neurons the patterns and you enunciate a command. ‘Enunciate’ means as if you were moving your lips but not moving the physical lips, not moving the tongue but in your physical consciousness you go through the action of as if speaking. That's enough to register in the brain the words that you spoke and that can be picked up and typed out for you. So there's a point where your mind will have to be trained to hold its focus. You can't be flying your jet and then daydreaming about doing a somersault. It will put the plane into a very strange behaviour. So you need to control your mind to be able to control the electronics that are connected to it.

(1:13:21):

There's a whole new technology which is being opened by Elon Musk, who is making this possible with a project he calls Neuralink, where a chip would be so to say plugged into your brain to receive the brain signals, detect sufficiently and to translate that into electronic signals that would then be put on your mobile phone or other computers. So in that case with no physical link, in your mind you would enunciate the words and the chip would detect enough signals to be able to convert into the words to be typed out and so on.

Of course, people fear that the reverse would happen, that the chip would control your brain. No, it doesn't work. It's been tried. There have been too many attempts made to try to control brain behaviour. The brain is so much more complex. The moment there's a push made on it, the brain reorganises itself. The mind senses, what's this? And the mind reorganises the brain working and bypasses that push. If you fix a chip there, the brain will quickly disengage and not allow its influence to act on you, even if you tried. On the other hand, the chip would, if it registers the brain signals, would be an output, not an input.

You could, of course, train the chip also to transmit data, images, for example. This also has been done by plugging chips into your, the part of the brain that is involved with physical vision. And those who are physically blind, you can stimulate certain spots. The brain quickly organises the points where the chip stimulates to create a proper picture and you can project directly into the brain a kind of a crude image in the part of the brain that's associated with images. Now all of this is again an intermediate transition. Why does the chip need to touch your brain?

If the sensor could detect at a distance you don't need to touch. But for you to master your technology through such means you would have to master your own thoughts or at least have a reasonable control. So in a sense technology is forcing your mind also to grow even as your mind uses the technology as it moves towards these possibilities. Remember the physical point of impulsion and reception has to thin out, must disappear. And now comes a very important phrasing Sri Aurobindo uses, “When the laws and forces of the supraphysical are studied with the right starting-point, the means will be found for this, for Mind to seize upon physical energy.”

What is this “right starting-point”? And in very simply put, we are on the wrong starting point by thinking of mind as product of brain. Right starting-point would be to recognize mind in itself as the creator of matter. So that to put it very simply, but a lot of what we have discussed would be the natural implications of that “right starting-point”. And then from there you could go much further. Some of the things we've discussed about the way the mind can influence matter. As I said, all of us can influence matter in tiny bits. Once you've understood that you can build your thousand ball bearings or million electrical sensors on a single chip and therefore receive a mind impulse and so on. Even that could eventually bypass with the mind directly influencing and so on.

I will just complete this text which we are reading from Sri Aurobindo. The next paragraph he says:

“Yet even if we had full knowledge and control of the worlds immediately above Matter,” he is speaking of the subtle physical, “there would still be a limitation and still a beyond. The last knot of our bondage is at that point where the external draws into oneness with the internal,” so I have an intention, I want to objectivise it. That's the external, this is the internal, that bridging point. That's where he says that would be the last knot of our bondage.

“...the machinery of ego itself becomes subtilised to the vanishing-point and the law of our action is at last unity embracing and possessing multiplicity and no longer as now multiplicity struggling towards some figure of unity. There is the central throne of cosmic Knowledge looking out on her widest dominion;”.

So very interesting, discussing a technological evolution he is actually connecting it to the spiritual evolution because this link between I and other, the knot of ego itself at some point has to reach vanishing-point where I and other is experienced in a continuum in the spiritual oneness and the unity embraces and possesses therefore, the multiplicity. That would be the mastery. Now I found this text by remembering the keyword wire. So it was page 18. But then I said where else does he use the word wire? I found one more place in the Life Divine and that's very interesting and very suggestive.

(1:18:38):

So I will read from that. It's not directly of this but it relates to the larger part of our discussion. There he is speaking of the soul's emergence in Nature, this is page 928, and the psychic personality.

“...if that emergence is as yet small and defective, the psychic personality also will be stunted or feeble. It is too, by the obscurity of our consciousness, separated from its inner reality in imperfect communication from its own source in the depths of the being;” - so the psychic personality which is forming is limited, stunted, unable to draw directly from the psychic origin within us.

“For the road”, the road from inside to the personality forming, “for the road is as yet ill-built, easily obstructed, the wires often cut or crowded with communications of another kind and proceeding from another origin: its power to impress what it receives upon the outer instruments is also imperfect; in its penury it has for most things to rely on these instruments and it forms its push to expression and action on their data and not solely on the unerring perception of the psychic entity. In these conditions it cannot prevent the true psychic light from being diminished or distorted in the mind into a mere idea or opinion,” and similarly for the psychic feeling and the psychic will, all these being limited and distorted; I don't read more.

But you see here exactly the same analogy and the psychic being as if the true person trying to put out its influence, the road is not built or easily it is obstructed, wires are often cut or crowded with communications of another kind. That is we have certain links but they're full of so much other clutter of thoughts, emotions, preconceptions, desires and all kinds of suggestions from everywhere. So the psychic suggestion is lost in that, crowded out or blocked, cut off completely. And the analogy with what we have just discussed with the way the communication works will be interesting for you to think about.

So I set aside now this passage from the Life Divine. Recognize that the technology itself is subtilizing, helping us more and more to link consciousness with consciousness and even where it acts on matter to link directly consciousness to the material outcome. Implications for technology, I have given one example of how these subtle nudges of mind could be caught by a random number generators. But in principle, you could have many other approaches simultaneously. So you can for example nudge a physical object like ball bearings. You can nudge electric fields which should be more sensitive. You can nudge the life energy which modifies the electric field that would be even more sensitive, more close, better integrated with your consciousness and so on. The geometry of the sensors also might be relevant as long as you are in the domain of form. A helmet would specifically surround your head, therefore tuned in to you. But when you move to these finer grades of life force nudging electric field, nudging electricity, then it need not be bound to geometry because now life force is outside domain of form; it could be far away from you and still receive your impulsion.

(1:22:32):

In the 1950s already a lot of these experiments had started on a secret level. I believe in the 60s many attempts were made to use occultism to try to influence and for military objectives of course. There was at that time an experiment which was done. I don't know now which year it was, perhaps in the 60s or 70s.

One of the problems for military communication was that when a submarine goes deep underwater, you cannot receive electromagnetic waves. Now that is done by passing, by putting very long wave electromagnetic waves which do tend to go through water, but very slow in communication. So one of the experiments that they did, they wanted to see whether thought can transmit and then can we make the thought transmission reliable. So they tried to organise; this was at that time the first astronauts the Russians had put in space, were asked to make telepathic contact with certain subjects and there mediums or sensitive people trying to catch the thoughts he was projecting and they found it successful. So that was one interesting.

The other part was how do you transmit to a submarine. Thoughts they attempted but not so reliably. One of the things they did, it's not nice experiment, but it proves the way the thing works. They took a rabbit, separated its mother, a newborn rabbit from its mother, took the newborn rabbit in the submarine and went deep underwater and at a particular given time they killed the rabbit, and immediately on the mother there was a response in her nervous system. So you had an almost physical life force link between them and she sensed this link physically registering. So of course these are well one of the early crude experiments.

Similar experiments were made by one, I believe it was William Baxter or some Baxter. In the late 60s he was experimenting with plants and approached to cut a leaf and the leaf was connected to a sensor of the resistance on the leaf, lie detector as you would call it in crude terms, but as he approached to cut it, the plant gave off a very strong response. He stopped. He said, did it respond to my intention to cut, because he had not touched the plant, how can the plant see me? It's not got any eyes or sensors. Oh must be a chance. So he says, let me check. He approaches the scissors slowly. No response. Tries again no response. So must be a random freak, I go ahead and he approached again to cut and the plant responded. What he figured out was the plant is not watching you with physical eyes. It doesn't care about how close the scissors are, it was registering your intention. It's only when you approach with the intention to cut or harm that the plant registered the intention and responded to it. And so around this he developed a whole series of experiments and he bonded with that particular plant then went out, did all kinds of activities, calm, soothing activities, then going on a one of these circus rides which gets his heart pumping, various kinds of activities and noted in detail in his diary notes, comes back and find the plant's responses matching perfectly with his state of emotions.

So like a pet, you know, a dog who loves you and senses that you're going to come home now and already goes to the door, the plant had built up a bond emotionally, energetically and was responding to his experiences.

This has massive implications, not just that you can communicate with plants and will encourage them to grow. But one of the most profound implications for me is that by so uniting with the human consciousness, the plant is absorbing something of the human quality. You see this most obviously in pets. Dogs look at you, they wait for your order and they're so happy when they can give a response to your order and do things which approach human behaviour. They are literally absorbing from you something of the human mind consciousness which they feel on the edge beyond the limit of their mind but just on the edge and they want as if to absorb and that's how they prepare for the human life, as do some of the other animals who are very close to humans.

But it's not just these animals, even the plants receive from us something of that influence of the mind consciousness and grow from it. It is nourishing and if into that there is a psychic influence that is nourishing and it can be mutually nourishing with a plant, that the plant gives you something of its flower psychic consciousness or its life force even and you give to it something else and the two together can mutually assist each other. And then one of the implications would be not just plants not just the dogs but all creatures in Nature; you walk into a forest, every single plant, every single bird, every single animal or every snake or other insect, all of these represent distinct qualities of consciousness in evolution, all of which are organised within the human being.

You are like a microcosm to the whole forest or to the universe for that matter, but now to the forest. And if you tuned in and united with the forest consciousness, and they felt you, not as an aggressor, but as an embracement of love, they opened to you, you so to say, grow with them, they grow with you, and there can be a kind of a collective growth of a kind, where everybody is as if assisting everyone else. We understand this at a human level among human beings as a family, as a community, as a nation, as a humanity we are so to say supporting each other, nourishing each other, growing. But it exists far more deeply on all these other levels of overall evolution.

One of the implication is when you destroy something in Nature, when you break the balance of the ecology or push a species to the brink of extinction or even extinguish it, you have just destroyed something within your own consciousness or at least its overt expression has been lost in the collectivity of Nature and that leaves a gap, a hole in us. Think about these things. I'm just giving these as starting points for thought, for introspection, because it goes quite far out from the discussion that we're having, but think about it because there are massive and profound implications.

(1:29:33):

And so I come back to the question itself: is it possible for an intelligence or a subtle consciousness to inhabit machine?

Yes, potentially. But inhabiting won't be so interesting. It would be even more dulling than inhabiting a human body. But influencing, yes, certainly. And that's how we would perhaps influence technology and machines and build a sort of a connection between them and us.

An equivalent to this takes place in certain temple rituals and I'll end with this idea. You will see sometimes if you go to certain temples they have a little idol in front of the main idol and you will find little pieces of leaves or little leaves stuck in different parts of the idol. And often a family or a couple or an individual sitting there and waiting, pretty much daydreaming or sometimes they are repeating some mantra. And after a while a leaf falls off and then the priest will come and say something and the man will go away satisfied. This is a technique of asking a question to the deity.

So you take a smaller deity and you stick leaves with water or some other sacred substance, blessed substance, stick it on different parts of the body and you wait with your question, you have articulated your question and depending on which leaf leaves leaves falls off first, you get an answer of yes, no or whatever else and they have their own system of what that answer is. It's a bit like dowsing, but it's being done with sacred substance, sanctified substance and the idea is the deity is somehow able to influence the degree of the stickiness and allow it to reduce faster in one place than another to represent the answer that is communicated.

Of course much more simple would be that a person goes into a state of attunement with the deity, receives the answer or the cruder form of it is when the priest or other they invoke the deity and get possessed and speak in an exalt, what they call an exalted state, and answer questions and so on. But all of these really are examples of what the first question would be.

This is closer to the second question, a more technology physical based communication. That sort of thing also one could play with, but they are very crude, very simplistic and very much open to distortion. Because somebody else sitting in that same space putting a strong will or a thought could easily modify the outcome that you get. If you were to say that well the yes answer means this leaf falls first and the no means that and somebody wants to interfere, well they could easily put a strong will and modify it. After all it's life force. Your life force is stronger than what's being manifested through the deity which is primarily of a different grade, does not have the density of physical life force that you have in your biology. So you can interfere much more easily and so on.

I think this is enough to give us a very comprehensive answer to this question. It's a very fascinating field. For me personally, I wish I could have done more work in this experimenting with these kinds of technologies. Unfortunately, perhaps lacking resources or time, I don't know, I've not been able to do, but if there were people who would do that, I would be very happy to be a part of that experiment, that kind of experimentation.

I think, the last question, we can just finish it, that'll close the subject. I'll give a very quick answer.

Alina (1:33:08):
Okay. Trinetta is asking, “are synthetic biology and synthesised humans ethical as per integral yoga? Can a person, in order to extend lifespan, combined with electrical components, be equally supramentalized?”

Sraddhalu (1:33:40):
Yes, a very simple answer: Supramentalizing what? When you say supramentalize, so we were speaking of supramentalizing the mind first and then the life energies, prana and eventually the physical body. Because the physical body is sufficiently conscious to respond to your mind which can bridge with it or even it can awaken in the physical consciousness itself an aspiration to open. But if you had a prosthetic finger, let's say, or prosthetic hand or arm, does not have that consciousness and so that cannot be supramentalized. It is only substance which is willingly opening to a consciousness consciously that could open to supramental consciousness, first mental and then supramental consciousness to receive its influence and be modified by it. Therefore you can conceive of prosthetic limbs. Those would not immediately have any spiritual value.

What you could do is infuse into it a certain element of your life energy as already your mobile phone exists as an extension of your consciousness in a physical substance but only infused with your life energy not even much with your mind except indirectly and representationally through the way you program it. But otherwise it has no particular value. And so, there's no question of ethics here as far as the Integral Yoga is concerned. If you need the prosthetic limb, well you add it to use it, but there's not much you can do in terms of consciousness with this.

Of course once the technology is developed to regenerate a limb, then it would be a biologically conscious limb and you could do a lot with it. Can you extend lifespan in these ways with electrical components? Yes, you can to some extent I suppose, but there's a point where life force needs resistance in physical limb because it cannot infuse into it and it creates an imbalance in the flow of life energies generally and so while you could extend your convenience physically in terms of consciousness what would change. Let's say even we push one step further, you reprogram with some technology of the DNA, you are able to regenerate your cells enough to keep your physical body somewhat young.

After a point your mind will age, your life force will age, the personality becomes rigid as happens in time for all of us. And there will be a point where you will yourself feel your personality too suffocating. Although your body is strong and young, you are fed up with this personality which is unable to change because it has become rigid. And how do you plastify it? You can't with technology. So there may come a point where the soul says, ‘okay I've had my 200 years, this personality is now too rigid. I need a completely different kind of experience of personality and since I can't shape this I switch’. But instead if you could make your personality plastic and start now, it's never too late if you've already started, it's good. But push the boundaries now; make it more plastic then it will reflect in the biological working and make your body also more plastic and its life force more youthful and actually lead to extension of lifespan or at least extension of quality of life in the lifespan.

So yes, if you have external means do use them but the real worth from an evolutionary point of view would be to make your consciousness more plastic and then if you can amplify the plasticity of your instruments of consciousness, wonderful. And that would be the direction in which we would want to go in our evolution.

I think with this we will close our discussion. All three questions are very important, very provocative with lots of implications and I have only just touched the beginning. So think about these things. Don’t just accept what I have said. Rather take the pointer and see what are the further implications. I will not have time to see the questions which have been put in the chat box, but I will, there were some very important ones which I will take up perhaps another time. For now, let us just keep this in mind that your physical body is the product of billions of years of evolution of matter awakening to life, manifesting life, manifesting mind and now yearning to spirit.

And in the human body as it is presently evolving in all of us, we are able to touch and open to spirit. It's a huge achievement in evolution, because now we can open to the action of the spiritual and it coming down can hasten what Nature took billions of years to build and rapidly within a few years, transform top-down all our levels of consciousness into its higher terms. This is the potential which we have, because of the effort made so far. It's the reason why this evolution brought us to where we are and from above from the divine consciousness, it's the reason why the universe was created and we are at that point where we are able to fulfil the purpose for which the universe is born.

And this is the life where you have the awareness of this and the capacity for it. The question now will remain, how much time will you give to it? How much effort will you give? And considering the human lifespan that we have, consider how many years you have spent and how many years remain and what should be your priorities now and choose. When you make the choice, you have the help, because Spirit is waiting, waiting for this awakening. And for this individual's awakening that says ‘here I am ready, I want to participate’ and so from above all the help is waiting and all the power as we saw in the passage we read in the Life Divine, all the limitations that may be here can be overcome by the action of that higher Power and we are here just at that point of the contact.

How much time, effort do we give, how much importance do we give to this and the possibility that it offers us. Think about it, dwell on it, make a choice and receive the help and leap forward to the future that is waiting.

As we unite in aspiration, wherever we are in the world, all the atoms around us in our physical space and eventually across the world fall into harmony with that aspiration in their physical vibration. Literally, we are influencing the physical vibration of our atoms as we concentrate in an aspiration.

Namaste and thank you.

[Alina] Namaste, thank you.