Contrary to common perception, Yoga has more to do with Meditation than physical exercises. There are lot of misconception about these real aspects of Yoga. Lack of knowledge and willful distortion by many commercially motivated Gurus, have earned the name pseudoscience to Yoga. This is quite unfortunate.
In this episode, we will discuss how the entire Yoga, including the meditation, can be scientifically studied and verified. Our current knowledge of neuroscience and the gadgets that we have at our disposal, empower us to undertake such an objective study.
Before one starts the practice of meditation, one has to climb the first 6 steps of Yoga systematically as we discussed earlier. A quick jump into the meditation step without proper preparation may not take you far. You may end up struggling with an unruly mind. That could result in frustration and disillusionment about Yoga.
Assuming that you have developed a conflict free and almost focused mind by following the prior mentioned steps, you are ready for meditation. But you can’t achieve success unless you pursue for a prolonged time by regularly practicing meditation. Regular practice is a must.
Let us assume that you start meditating using Pranava as your target of meditation. We discussed Pranava in the previous episode. Sitting comfortably, with your body erect and steady, keep repeating the Pranava mantra mentally. Synchronizing your breathing with the memorization of Pranava will be more beneficial as we discussed earlier.
Initially, the mind is not all that calm. It may not have thought wars, but it could still be hankering for some food for thought. Feed it with the abstract notions associated with the Pranava sound, that we discussed in the previous episode. That will keep the mind focused for some time. Thoughts would arise, but they would be around those abstract notions. Other thoughts if any, would gradually die down.
Lesser thoughts, means stress free mind. That induces bliss since there is nothing that perturbs you. It is believed that the mind by its very nature is peaceful unless disturbed by stress. You will also be aware of whatever you are doing, but you feel very pleasant. You gradually get engrossed in that blissful state.
Patanjali calls this state as Vitarkaanugata samadhi. There is Vitarka since thoughts still get produced and they circle around various concepts woven around this Pranava sound. Mind is not completely calm, but it is more or less composed. So, it is a kind of Samadhi with awareness of what is going on.
As you continue to meditate, the mind starts focusing on subtler aspects of the Pranava sound. It could be, the way the sound rising and gradually falling, it could be the breathing pattern that is synchronized with the sound variations, and so on. But the scope of the thoughts generated would be restricted to fewer and more subtle things. You continue to feel blissful as before. You are still aware of what is going on. But you now have a calmer mind than before. Patanjali calls this state as SavicharaSamadhi.
How long the mind can keep circling around the subtle aspects of the Pranava or the breathing process? Sooner or later, mind gives up even this, and the thoughts almost stop altogether. There would only be experience of bliss left. No thinking whatsoever. You are blissful, and completely aware of what you are doing. Patanjali calls this as Anandanugata Samadhi. Ananda means bliss. And Anandanugata is a stage where only Ananda is left.
As you progress further, mind gets more and more absorbed. In such a deeply absorbed state, it even fails to recognize the bliss which was present in all the previous three stages. No thoughts, no experience of anything blissful or otherwise. But you still would be aware that you exist as someone who is sitting and meditating. You recognize your individual identity. This individual identity is called Asmita. So Patanjali calls this stage of meditation as AsmitanugataSamadhi.
I have been using the word Mind as if it were synonymous to brain. As we see later, this may not be the case. I will talk more on this distinction later.
For the moment, let us focus on what goes on in our brain during meditation. That may help us in scientifically analyzing and verifying Yoga in the light of our current understanding of the brain, using the gadgets that we have at our disposal.
Brain is not just one lumped entity. It has various layers or regions each having a specific role. At the outermost, there are various sense input processing regions. They process the inputs from various senses. But as we saw in a previous episode, when the brain is totally focused, these regions that process sense inputs gradually stop processing, for reasons that we discussed in that episode. This is the Pratyahara stage.
We progress further with no external inputs perturbing us. But the internally produced thoughts are still going to be there since that is the preoccupation of our brain, left to itself. But if you have practiced Yama and Niyama properly, and continue to practice it, there would be fewer thought wars. That results in complete freedom from stress. Freedom from stress implies a blissful state for lack of any hindrance to it.
When you focus your brain on the Pranava or some such subtle target, the thought production further gets minimized as we saw above. The brain moves towards a calmer and calmer state. The faculties of the brain that recognize feelings would still be active initially, but even they stop, as we go further. There would be no thoughts, nor any feelings in such an advanced state. But there would still be a recognition of individual identity.
What part of the brain maintains this notion of self-identity is not very clear. There are some experiments done, which seem to point to the fact that this self-identity is maintained in certain part of the brain. When scientists electrically stimulated those regions, it is said that an individual loses the sense of self identity. Though these experiments are not conclusive, and are often interpreted variably, it is possible that some part of the brain maintains this notion of self-identity.
In the Asmitanugata samadhi, this region of the brain is still functioning though the rest of the brain involved in awareness has almost shutdown. So, the individual at that stage of meditation, still recognizes his existence and sees himself as separate from other things around.
But if this awareness is also shutdown, one reaches a completely tranquil stage bereft of any perceptible brain activity. That means that the awareness of whatever happens in the brain evades our experience.
Patanjali calls such a stage as Asamprajnyata Samadhi – a samadhi with no awareness. This is in contrast with the prior stages where there was awareness of whatever was going on. Patanjali calls those stages as Samprajnyata Samadhis – Samadhis with awareness.
Please note that we are still talking about what goes on in the brain. Though we are yet to fully understand the functioning of the brain, neuroscience has reached a stage that allows us to observe and verify each of the happenings that I discussed so far, using sophisticated gadgets like functional MRI scanners.
This applies not only to various stages of Samadhi with awareness that I explained so far, but also to all steps of Yoga since I have explained all of them neuro=scientifically. There is no mumbo-jumbo, no mysticism, no magic anywhere. That is the reason I always term Yoga of Patanjali as science – almost completely explainable, verifiable, repeatable, and meeting all the criteria for calling it scientific.
Well, we have not yet reached the final stage of Yoga. We only discussed up to the stages of Samadhi with awareness or Samprajnyata Samadhi. All of them can be verified using our current understanding of the brain. But there are stages further. Patanjali calls them as Asamprajnyata samadhi. They are beyond awareness. And obviously, they may not be directly amenable for scientific validation.
What about them? How do we understand them? We will discuss that in the next episode.
© Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2024
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