Steering Mind In Futuristic Science
FUTURISTIC SCIENCE
Just as the cosmos, SCience, the knowledge of its functioning too can be broadly viewed to have gone through various stages of evolution in the last 10000 years, since the end of the last ice age, i.e since the start of the present glacial melt down.
*Cosmic Science Before Common Era (Before 2000 years ago)
*Traditional Science-Pre Renaissance Era (2000 to 500 years ago)
*Modern SciencePost Renaissance Era (500 to present times)
*Futuristic Science Post Modern Era yet to take off, from Mind Era onwards)
While the era of Modern Science has belonged to the West, much of Cosmic Science and Traditional Science have all shown a deep rooted trace to India.
India also seems to have it in her to steer most of the developments in Mind Science and is a better bet to do so too.
Futuristic Science and Post Modern Era can belong to India.
Why is India better poised to steer the world in Futuristic Science, in the Mind Era?
A CORNUCOPIA OF MIND BASED KNOWLEDGEBASE
No other civilization in the world has continuously been researching on the mind and meticulously recording it in palm leaf manuscripts, in legends, in applications, in various other forms, including the mind itself, for over 7000 years continuously. There is a cornucopia of India has had a long history in the understanding of the mind, with information on understanding the mind and engineering it.
A LONG UNDERSTANDING OF THE MIND
India has had a long history in the understanding of the mind , with generation after generation having transmitted it down the line.
CONCEPT OF A MIND LEADER
Mana, the mind
The very words “mind”, “man”, “human” etc. are rooted in the word Mana for mind, which differentiates man from the rest of the animals, giving human race the classification Manava, one who knows to use his mind.
Manushya
Manushya is another word for humans but with the connotation of people. Manushya are humans with a more humanistic, humane mind
Manu
In Indian thought the leader of man, Manava is a Manu. Manu is no a king, but is a thought leader.
The fundamental idea is that, in every civilization, emerges a though leader who will lead them from one level of existence to another.is a leader who will guide people when the needs of time change, whes the civilizational focus changes from one theme to another.
Manvantara
The flow of time in Indian thought is also measured as Manvantara,ie the period between 2 Manu. Antara means inter, intervening, between Manu + Antara is Manvantara, the intervening time between 2 Manu. This measure may be on an astronomical scale based on cycles of the Sun or it may be based on earthly scales of evolution of civilizations.Both are similar units differing in time span.
The fact that the time between 2 Manu has been taken as a milestone measure, shows the significance given to thought leadership in Indian thought.
Many Manu
What is compelling in the story of Manu, is how, many civilizations have a Manu like story and all have names that sound similar, besides being thought leaders of their respective cultures.
*Minos of Crete
*Moses and Musa of Israel
*Menes of Egypt
*Manes of Persia
*Mannus of Germany
*Menu, the Indian Law Giver Manu, as referred to, by the English.
ENGLAND
GERMANY
CRETE
PERSIA
EGYPT,
ISRAEL
INDIA
MINOS
MANU/MENU
ULD
MANU
MENES
MOSES/MUSA MANES
MANNUS
What distinguishes the Indian concept of Manu from the others is that, Indian thought lists not one but many Manu, atleast 14 and identifies them with unique names.
Each Manu has a name that means something specific, for instance,
• Daksha means one who is quick and dexterous,
• Indra for one who is endowed with all Senses, colourful as the rainbow
The time span of 14 Manvantara is referred to as a Kalpa. The cycles of 14 Manvantara keep repeating, one Kalpa after another. In the astronomical scale of measurement, 1 Kalpa is the lifespan of a Sun.
True enough, looking deeper at the cycle of 14 Manvantara and the names of the Manu, also reveals a connection with the nature of light its visibility, colour, intensity, heat etc. The nature of light to be progressing from origin through successive stages of darkness, brilliance, visibility, colour, heat to glow and so on.
The current Manvantara in the Indian thought, is that of Vaivasvata Manu.
Vaivasvata means the son of Vivasvan, i.e. one who has a nature of changing frequently. It comes from the root Vivas meaning to change / don – abode, clothes, form etc. Vivasvan is another name for Sun.
whose light is subject to colour change say, typically at dawn, dusk etc.Thus from the point of view of the astronomical scale, we are in an epoch where we can see the light of the Sun changing colours.
In other scales of measurement, each Manvantara or each Kalpa denotes major milestones in evolution which affect human thinking, living and hence need a Manu to lead the people out of the rut.
Vaisvata Manvantara in this scale seems to denote a time window when civilizations change colours rapidly – their culture, thoughts, ideals, goals, looks, values, priorities etc. and its seems to be a quite, close enough description of the trend today.
Rather than ask, “what has been changing in the world in recent times to make this window a Vaivasvata Manvantara”, it might be easier to ask the question, “What has not been changing in Vaivasvata Manvantara?” and answer it with “Nothing!.”
It has always been acknowledged in Indian psyche that change is what is permanent in this world. Vaivasvata Manu denotes such an epoch in mankind’s evolution where such changes are fast and rampant.
INDIAN VIEW OF EVOLUTION – MIND AND FORM
The Indian way of looking at Evolution has been to look at it not only as an evolution of physical form but also as an evolution of mind. Hence, Evolution is expressed by the word Parinama, meaning that which is the effect, which is the result, which is a change.
But an effect has to be caused. What causes the effect? It is a mind which sees a need and has an urge to satisfy the need.
The effect may eventually manifest in a change of form or change of a gene internally or a change in lifestyle. But it is the mind from which stems the need to shift and to change. India has therefore showcased evolution by selecting 10 avatars, incarnations of the divinity Vishnu to show how life has evolved and sustained itself on earth using both physical transformation as well as the shift in mindset.
Since it is hard to express sound intonations in script, to prevent the Veda mantra sounds from being limited and distorted, thereby not being effective, the Rishi had designed for it to come down orally to generation, rather than writing them as scriptures.
Lest the Veda Mantra words themselves get corrupted during oral transmission, they had also designed a self, error detecting recitation scheme to flag off the errors and indicate how to correct them, much like the error detection and correction techniques used in encryption of communication messages today. The Rg Veda, focussing on the mind, was encoded in maximum different ways to ensure its perfectness.
This design of the Rishi has withstood the test of time and the Veda have come down to us without distortion of sound, word and meaning. The test is the same manner in which Veda are recited all across India.
This is truly a world marvel in mind engineering.
BALANCED USE OF GROSS AND SUBTLE POWER
Furthermore, despite possessing all this technical capability and capacity, an analysis of the Indian civilization shows them to have exerted prudence and balance in the deployment of these technologies. The esoteric ones were set aside for extreme needs such as transcending human contexts, wars, natural calamities, life & death etc. whereas for down to earth needs such as transport, navigation, farming, metallurgy and other industries etc. they had been content with deploying “gross” technologies.
The need for cultivating a balanced mind and judicial temper even before the development of the prowess be ever under estimated. exert mind power cannot be ever under estimated.
AVAILABILITY OF LITERATURE
Yet another peek into ancient Indians’ minds reveals their handling of abstract Sciences and Technology. India has produced many
works that dwell upon how to formulate theories, proofs, logic, rational thought, debate, documentation etc. all of which helped them advance in abstract subjects such as Mathematics. All of these, plus more, become essential in the pursuit of a domain that is intangible, i.e. the mind.
Does anyone have to labour more on the latent understanding of the mind in India and hence its ability to steer the field of Mind Sciences for the future?
POWER TO DEVELOP MIND POWER
One has seen how it is access to thought and knowledge from India that has shaped the scientific temper of the West.
One can also show how it is access to Indian manuscripts and knowledge from India that has triggered many of the inventions during the World Wars and Industrialization era.
With all its strength in dealing with the mind, India can steer the world in developing Mind Power too.
SO MUCH SCOPE
5% Vs 95%
Many reports from a decade ago suggested that we tend to use on 5% of our brain.
While neuroscientists have debunked this claim, showing how all regions of the brain fire with signals when activities have to be performed, they however accept that of all the cells in the brain, onk 10% of the cells are neurons. The remaining 90% are called glial cells which only encapsulate and support the neurons. The functioning of these glial cells is however yet unknown.
If we do not know about the working of 90% of the brain, how do we know if we are using those functionalities or not?
Are we capable of using them or not?
So, we may be using all regions or parts of the brain but not to its full potential. There seems to be close to 90% of the brain’s ability that we not putting to use today.
And knowing how only a few amongst us show exceptional as prodigies, the claim that an average person uses only 5% of his brain’s known capability, scems to hold good.
Given what all the brain is currently capable of with just this 10% of known functionality, the remaining 90% is a huge unknown and unused potential of the brain which holds potential for a vast scope of further research and utilization for mankind.
The brain may not and need not grow bigger in size. This brain size is ideally sized, designed and evolved for this species of Homo Sapiens, for this planet, for this Solar System.
Hence more brain power has to come, not from a bigger brain but from better utilization of the same brain.
Furthermore, it is another fact that, neurons associated with similar function, tend to cluster together. For example, neurons associated
with the thumb and the forefinger are found next to each other since they often work together. Those associated with vision, hearing, walking etc. all form individual clusters.
Neuroscientists further admit that while they can identify and map the neuron clusters associated with individual functions, they have as yet, not been able to uncover how these different clusters, spread all over the brain collaborate to form consciousness. They tend to conclude that consciousness, rather than being a specific, single location in the brain, is a collective effect of the activity of the neurons.
Here, in India’s civilizational practice of harnessing mind and consciousness, perhaps lies the mapping to this 90% unknown functionality. It is a practice that had fathomed the depth of the brain, mind and consciousness and fashioned it into systematized techniques to harness different forms of energies, not just decades or centuries but millennia ago and for millennia to come.indians still practice the technique of Avadhana, meaning “paying attention”. From Avadhana comes the popular word Savadhan, meaning attention.
There are many in India even today who demonstrate ability to multiplex attention across multiple subjects simultaneously. Some can multiplex 10 subejcts – Dasavadhani, some even 100 – Shataavadhani etc.
Avadhana is an ability that can be gained through training, indicating India’s understanding of mind and ways to control its workings.
Why not use the Indian mind to explore and leverage the remaining functions of the brain?
Indra – Vrtra Fight
In Puranic lore, in the fight between Indra, the Deva and Vrtra, the Asura, which happened in the Cosmic Egg, Hiranyagarbha, before collective consciousness, overpowering the cloud like,
Creation, it was the act of Indra overcoming Vrtra, that led to Creation.
In Vedic thought, it was the act of Indra, the sensory power, collective mind power, resistive, holding back, inertia like Vrtra, which led to Creation.
In modern scientific terms, it is described as the case of matter overcoming anti-matter which caused the Creation to spew out of the Cosmic Egg.
4% vs 96%
After all this research, cosmologists now say that of all the matter estimated to be contained in the cosmos, we know of and are able to account for only 4%. The balance 96% of matter is unknown to us, which for lack of any other term is defined as Dark Matter, Dark Energy etc.
Understanding of this Dark Matter, Dark Energy et al, seems to have been discussed as Kala, Kali, Kala Bhairava and so on, in the voluminous treatises of India’s Shaktaism school of thought.
5% and 4%
The correlation here of average person’s utilization of only 5% of the brain and knowing only 4% of the Cosmos is interesting indeed.
The 5% of the brain’s capability that we use has been focussed mainly on the gross.
The 4% of the cosmos that we know is also only the gross matter.
The gross, thus seems to make up only 5% of existence as well as knowledge of it. The overwhelmingly enormous 95% is what needs to fathomed by the mind. Perhaps, it will happen in the oncoming Mind Era, Thinking Era, Space Era.
O to oo – The Hidden Potential
The knowledge of this 5% of matter itself is comprised of many things Infinity and many a things in between, albeit, with many a twists in that the Indian civilization has shared with the world – from 0 to infinity and many a things between too. And we have still, only scratched the tip of the iceberg as afar as India’s influence on the world is concerned.
At the risk of sounding pompous, if it takes so long to go through just the interesting bits of what our ancestors had contributed to the
world, which has still kept the human brain utilized at only 5 to 10% of its capability, then imagine how much longer the list will be in
future, when the brain starts using a lot more of its capability based on further inputs from India!
Our descendants will find it very tough to track and keep count.
If the just 5% of utilization of brain’s capability has caused so much of developments in the fields of Sciences and Technologies, which in
turn have had such a great impact on trade, commerce, lifestyle etc., then imagine what the start of utilization of the remaining 95% of the brain’s capability can do!
If the just 5% of utilization of brain’s capability and all that it has given birth to, have happened with waves of thought from India, then imagine the potential that the beginning of utilization of the remaining 95% of capability, has for India and for the world!
Also imagine how much more will have to go from India to kick start this leap!
For, this is going to have to be a giant leap for mankind since all this capability of the brain so far, has been used mainly in the realm of
gross, a more tangible space. But we seem to have hit a ceiling here. To cross over into the remaining 95% zone is going to need a different mindset, literally.
-LINGARAJ PANDA,BARIPADA
