ANESTHESIA, DEEP SLEEP, DEATH AND CONSCIOUSNESS – Part 1/3

Recently there was an interesting question about the disappearance of ‘me’ when a patient is administered anesthesia in preparation for a major surgery.  It is quite intriguing where the missing ‘self’ has gone and when under anesthesia (Q. 313).

Peter, Sitara and Dennis answered the question very ably explaining the Vedantic philosophy behind the various states of consciousness (as we usually understand the term).  The false concept of the sense of a separate ‘self’ we think we possess and the reality of an eternal Self; the misunderstanding that arises if we take the word Consciousness to mean the same in psychology (& medicine) and Advaita;  the possible existence of multiple ‘minds’ which derive their illumination from an unchanging, everlasting, self-effulgent One Brahman were dealt with by them. Hardly can anything be added to their clear exposition made from the stance of Non-duality beyond saying a word of our appreciation and gratefulness to them.

I would like to use this opportunity, if I may, to bring to the notice of a wider audience an approach I developed in 2004 relating the state of our alertness to our body-mind system in order to understand who we really are. We shall also in the process examine what are Deep Sleep and Death and what is the condition of the brain under different states, including awake, dream, deep sleep, death, coma, anesthesia etc.

Let me call this as “A Model for Nirvana.”

Four Outcomes

Four Outcomes

 

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Under Anaesthesia (Q. 313)

Q: I recently had an experience that leaves me baffled. I have read your books, the sections on deep sleep consciousness, and it does not seem to match. The incident occurred when I will was given anaesthesia for hip replacement surgery. I went from eyes open in the operating room to who eyes open in the recovery room without any sensation in between at all. The experience was seamless and continuous from one consciousness to another. Time was absolutely absent. There was no reflection possible on the three-hour interlude. There was no interlude. There was no feeling of having slept well or otherwise.

  This experience has left me with a problem. This was the nonexistence of any kind of consciousness, even in retrospect It seems neither the small self or the real self existed at all. Please comment. Continue reading

Pleasure of Sex vs. Bliss of Self in Brain Scans

Khajuraho Temple Sculpture – 10th – 12th Century

Khajuraho and Kamasutra fire the fancy of any foreign tourist to India.  Add Spirituality and the heady mix becomes a killer app for seekers of quick-fix salvation for paying a visit to India!  Biologically sex evolved as a reproductive mechanism to possibly capture the advantageous heritable genetic traits from a partner.  Only humans and a few animals like bonobos and dolphins indulge in recreational sex.  Sex is closely tied to sensory perceptions and lies within the realms of the mind. Salvation transcends both senses and mind. “Rajneesh, the ‘horse’s mouth’ concerning the topic of enlightenment for Westerners for many years,” regrets James Swartz, “wedded two largely incompatible concepts, sense enjoyment and enlightenment.” One may lose ‘self identity’ and get enwrapped in an inexplicable joy in either of them as Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says. But the bliss of enlightenment and the pleasure of sensual gratification are totally different. Our brains can show it all very clearly!

Human brain is a mass of interlinked neurons piled up in three layers. At the bottom is the most primitive brain common to all animals. Continue reading

How can we know Advaita is right? (Q. 312)

Q: One thing that has been troubling me is how I can know that Advaita is not just another interpretation of the world and self. For example, and to put it simply, a psychologist might explain the world using concepts and ideas in the field of psychology; a physicist might explain the world using ideas and laws found in physics etc. How do we know that Advaita is essentially ‘right’? Yes, a psychologists interpretation of the world and a physicists interpretation of the world are both ‘right’ in their own context, but *ultimately* they are wrong because, if Advaita is right, Brahman cannot be conceptualised?? But how do I *know* that Advaita is correct and not just another interpretation, another ‘way’ of seeing the world? Continue reading

Science and the nature of absolute reality (Part 4)

Read Part 3

Science is not a pramANa (means of knowledge)

While philosophy may remain satisfied with the conceptual comprehension of the absolute and science with the never-ending search for it, religion points out the way to its immediate apprehension. Swami Satprakashananda (Methods of Knowledge according to Advaita Vedanta, Swami Satprakashananda, Advaita Ashrama, 1965. ISBN 81-7505-065-9. Read Extract from this book, which is highly recommended.)

Science relies on making observations as its fundamental starting point. From these, inferences may be made, theories postulated, predictions made on the basis of those theories and experiments devised to test those predictions. But, again, those experiments rely upon further observations. No definite, conclusive statements may be made because further observation might show them to be false. A classic example of this was the belief that swans were white. So entrenched was this belief up to the end of the eighteenth century, because every swan that anyone had ever seen had always been white, that one text book on logic used the statement ‘All swans are white’ as an example. And then an exploration to Australia found a black swan… Continue reading

Where lies the “Person” of our personality?

A queer accident happened about four years ago in 2008.

A long iron rod pierced through the chest of a 25 year old young man in a driving mishap.  Fortunately, the person had access to one of the top hospitals in New Delhi, India. Thanks to the developments in the surgical techniques, he survived the accident, was out of the hospital in a couple of weeks with a sound body and mind. He was Mr. S. Dutta, a software engineer. Neither his expertise nor his personality was affected by the accident. He retained his memories, his knowledge and skills and his temperament also did not change. In effect he continued to be the same person as before the gruesome accident.

S. Dutta, 18 July 2008

Wind backward 160 years. Continue reading

Science and the nature of absolute reality (Part 3)

Read part 2

The world is mithyA

The universe and everything in it, including the objects that are being investigated, the person doing the investigation and the discipline of science itself are all mithyA – they are not themselves real at all. Here is a short definition of mithyA that I give in the new edition of ‘Book of One’:

Literally, the word means ‘incorrectly’ or ‘improperly’ and this refers to our treating things as independently ‘real’ when they are not. The word ‘independently’ is important here, because we are not saying that the chair on which you are presently sitting is illusory – obviously it is not! What is being pointed out is that it is not a substance-in-itself. It is probably made of pieces of wood, connected together by special joints and adhesive. The final form is designed to be suitable for sitting upon comfortably. In theory at least, you could disassemble the chair and use the pieces to build a table. ‘Chair’ is simply the name that you give to this particular form. The actual substance is wood. Continue reading

Science and the nature of absolute reality (Part 2)

Read Part 1

Although science is good at investigating objects, even there it is doomed to fail – because the essence of objects, too, is ultimately the same non-dual reality. As Atmananda Krishna Menon puts it, in his ‘Notes on Spiritual Discourses’: “As long as the least trace of subjectivity remains, objectivity cannot disappear. And until objectivity disappears completely, the real nature of the object can never be visualized. This is the fundamental error committed by science as well as philosophy, both in India and outside, in trying to approach the Truth through the medium of the mind.” (Vol 3 Notes, 1386)

Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda: Volumes 1, 2 and 3, Shri Atmananda and Nitya Tripta, Non-Duality Press 2009, ISBN 978-0956309129 (Vol 1) Buy from Amazon US or Amazon UK. Continue reading

Science and the nature of absolute reality (Part 1)

(Note that this was published to the restricted distribution for my ‘akhaNDAkAra’ journal in Jan 2010)

As an adolescent…I craved factual certainty and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life – so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. M. Cartmill

There seems to have been a growing trend (since the publication of Fritzjof Capra’s book ‘The Tao of Physics’ in 1975) to claim that science is both willing and able to investigate and understand the non-dual status of reality. More and more, science-based books and essays are appearing, but none seem to be actually founded in the proven methodology of Advaita. This is understandably symptomatic of the present time, in which science is seemingly able to supply all of our needs – if not already, then at least as a promise for the near future. Philosophies such as Advaita on the other hand are based on ancient scriptures, written in Sanskrit which no one can understand. ‘Where is the contest?’ the uninformed seeker is clearly going to ask. Continue reading