The Future of Humanity - A 14,000-Year Old Prediction.

Prophecies of Acharya Bhujender. Sholapur (India), 30 January 1982.

Queen being introduced to Shri Mataji circa 1975

Shri Mataji: Khandhavara, [Unclear].
Sahaja-Yogini: You choke it a little bit. [It seems that they are cooking]
[Laughter]
Shri Mataji: The median one, that means [unsure], that is based on the Moon. See, the Moon is the moodiest thing. And so we, we the Indians, follow the Moon. And here they have tried to establish how astrology is so correct and whatever is predicted 14000 years back is also today coming up.

Shri Mataji: is based on the Moon. See, the Moon is the moodiest thing. And so we, we the Indians, follow the Moon. And here they have tried to establish how astrology is so correct and whatever is predicted 14000 years back is also today coming up.
But this is about two thousand years back. One of the great astrologers of this place, not Sholapur, but little downward, Karnataka, he described about this thing so clear-cut that, I mean, you’ll be amazed that, he said that this great Yogi will come on this Earth on the Mina Rasi, is the Pisces. So I’m just on the cusp of the Pisces and the Aries, you see. But that’s not so important. Then he says that gradually we’ll start seeing some miracles from 1964 to 66, which he says that, maybe little bit. But he says, the real change, Mahan Mankar, in the age, the New Age, he will start from 1970.Sahaja Yogis: Ah, Mother’s Grace.
Shri Mataji: And by 1980 it will take its grip. All right? That time, by this new method, the New Age will be formed and this, the old one, Vaivastav. You see, there’s one another- we have yugas, you see. One of the yugas will be over and that yuga is in Kali Yuga. So that’s how Kali Yuga will be finished from 1970. Will be start receding back, Kali Yuga, and a new age of active Divinity will start, Krita Yuga. New age of active Divinity, Krita Yuga will start, alright. That time, that time the Sun will rule in a new way, the Sun.
The axes of earth will be reduced and the speed of the Earth will be reduced gradually. And that time a great Maha Yogi will be born who will be completely Parabramha, completely Parabramha. That’s Me. [Laughter]
Sahaja Yogis: Bolo Jaganamata Shri Nirmala Devi Ki Jai
Shri Mataji: And He, He will possess all the powers to do or not to do. I mean is Mahakali and Mahalakshmi, all the powers, all the powers.
Before this, people used to go into Bhakti, devotion, Gyana, means reading, Patanjali Yoga, and then they used to get their Mokshas. But with this new method that this Maha Yogi will bring in, the pure power within you, in your chakras, will rise and as a result the Kundalini shakti will be awakened and will be enlightening.
Sahaja Yogini: What’s his name, Mother?
Shri Mataji: His name was [Shri Mataji speaks in Hindi] … Bhujender, Bhujender Kaka, Kaka Bhujender. His name was Kaka Bhujender. Acharya Kaka Bhujender.
Sahaja Yogi: Acharya Kaka Bhujender. Satwachari.
Shri Mataji: Satwachari. Satwachari.
You don’t have to sacrifice this body. Many people, great saints, sacrificed their body in living condition. They went into a cave and shut themselves and died. That’s not necessary with this new method. And you won’t die either, means you will achieve your Spirit. And the “Sakshatkari Santvara shabdakari ka sant”, the Realized Souls, the saints who are Realized, the Brahmananda, the joy of the Brahma, by this new Yoga. And they won’t have to go into Samadhi. Samadhi is where people just sit down, go on meditating for hours together and the ants grow up on them, and all that is not necessary. Just without do anything like that they will get their Realization. And they will enjoy the joy of Brahma.
Sahaja Yogi: Sahaja Samadhi
Shri Mataji: The Sahaja Samadhi, this is Sahaja Samadhi, according to him.
Among millions, first one will get Realization. So you understand your own positions. You see, the way sometimes we flitter away our attention in nonsensical things, you realize that among millions you are one. This is written here. We flitter away our attention in useless things, like my husband, my wife, my children, this, that and that. So it is written here that among millions one will be selected. Do you follow that point?
A Sahaja Yogi speaks in Hindi.
Then the, all the human race can get over their death or their destruction by this Yoga. You’ll have to lead a life, a married life, a normal life, maybe may not marry but like a normal householder. Otherwise you cannot get this Yoga sisthi. Like if you become a big saint and a Sadhu Baba, or a guru or something great, you cannot get it. You have to be a normal householder, maybe married, may not be married, it is not the point. Samsari means living on this earth, in the “brass tacks”, as you say.
Sahaja Yogis: Brass tacks. Brass roots. Grass roots.
Shri Mataji: Grass roots. Is grass roots. But brass tacks are also. Brass tacks.
Sahaja Yogi: Brass tacks, yes.
Shri Mataji: Brass tacks
Sahaja Yogi: Down to the basics.
Shri Mataji: Down to the basics.
I’m getting American now. [Laughter]
Sahaja Yogini: But I think that’s British, Mother.
Shri Mataji: Is it? Is it?
Sahaja Yogini: Brass tracks is British,
Shri Mataji: And what is the American for that?
Sahaja Yogini: I’ll have to think about that…
Shri Mataji: Alright, think it over.
Sahaja Yogini: I’ll tell you.
Sahaja Yogini: Nitty gritty.
Shri Mataji: Nitty gritty. [Laughter]
Then all your diseases will disappear so fast with this Yoga that you won’t need anything like a hospital. In the beginning, these great Yogis, you people also, only by touching people, you can cure people. It’s a fact.
Sahaja Yogi: Yes.
Shri Mataji: Like the Ardhanari Nateshwara is the Shiva that will be the state of human beings. Their old age will disappear, their body will remain as it is and they will have a body which is divine. What a promise! . [Laughter]
So don’t worry too much about your bodily comforts, alright?
Then maybe some of you, if you want, you can fly in the air also, . [Laughter] with that, with that body. Also they can become subtle and can enter into the body – That already you are doing – enter into the body of others to get them cured – That already you are doing. They will not be touched by the fire and any weapons. Also you will be able to see these subtle things with your own eyes: you can see them. This will not only happen in India, but all over the world.
India is a country of great punyas. That’s why there are powers, which will look after the protection of this country and this country will gradually rise. He says that the third world war, that was…. [Speaking aside]: When was that time?
Sahaja Yogini: Two. We had two so far.
Sahaja Yogi: Second World War finished in ’45, Mother. Maybe there will be none. Third World War. [Laughter.].

Shri Mataji lecture on Sahaja Yoga (UK, 1970s)

Because of these new method of Maha Yoga you will see with your own eyes and you’ll get it in this body in your lifetime, the Realization. And you’ll get the joy of Realization. Imagine, two thousand years back. He’s greater than Blake, I must say.

Shri Mataji: They may have go for a Third World War and they will have to suffer for it. After that this great Incarnation will interfere and all the countries will come together with the understanding of collective oneness. And they will understand that war is so horrible. In a very big- I don’t know which one – in a very big city a conference of all the countries will be held. There, not the politicians, but the Yogis will direct them, Yogis. There he calls you Yogis throughout. This might be the third war we had with China, maybe.
Sahaja Yogi: The Korean War, Mother?
Shri Mataji: No, maybe China because he says that because of China’s aggressive policies and the Third World War, we’ll have to bear lot of a-
Sahaja Yogi: Line?
Shri Mataji: No, lot of a-.
Sahaja Yogi: Responsibility?
Shri Mataji: No, no, you will have to bear lots of problems, you see. And these we will have to fill up the gaps in. But by true prayers, we will be able to unite all the countries.

Sahaja Yogi: Could be the Vietnam War.

Shri Mataji: By the new inventions of science, the Divine Knowledge and the science will become one. With the science we’ll be able to establish the existence of God and of Spirit. That is how there will be no difference. There will be coordination between the science and the- co-relationship between the science and the Spirit or, or the Divine Knowledge.
Already we are getting it because, you see, on My photograph people get vibrations.
Then he says that because of ignorance and because of Maya, Yogis had to suffer a lot to become collectively conscious, Brahmayate, to feel the Brahma. But now – and they had to do lot of penance, that was so difficult -they’ll become Sahaja.
Sahaja Yogis: Ah!
Shri Mataji: This is the word, Sahaja, Sahaja prapta [complete;mature], Sahaja. And you have to give up anything to achieve Brahma.

It’s a science, you see. On the television, mantras, all that, if you start curing through scientific methods, you’re also using the science for that purpose. We can prove that these things can be carried by magnetic forces, by sound, by all these things, you see. We can prove it.

In the new Yoga system, when it will manifest in the different countries, in the New Age, the administration will be governed by people who have their own powers of Yoga. Depending on how far you are in your Yoga, and their qualities as Yogis, that will be the determining fact. They will be able to create a society, which will completely fulfill their desires and their necessities and people won’t need to have money accumulated with them.
[Shri Mataji seems to read the sentence in Hindi before translating it]
The poverty and sickness will be completely finished and in their absence the country, the samaja, the society will be healthy and restful and without any anger. They have described here about the China attacking India and all. These are other places but this is a quite a good thing. They have also given the name of Jacqueline Murray. She’s an American lady. Jacqueline Murray.
Sahaja Yogini: M U R…
Shri Mataji: They don’t spell. This woman had depicted about Me. And she had said that, she had said that a great personality will be born in India, a lady. She said about 1924. I was born in 1923. About correct. But Cheiro [a numerologist] has said that by 1980 the new Advent will start a New Age. There’s a difference of ten years.
This is good [Towards someone who is cutting something].

Shri Mataji: There’s a lady called Alice Bailey. She’s supraconscious, I believe.
Sahaja Yogi: Yes, she is, Mother.
Shri Mataji: And in supraconscious state she, she has said that there will be a new- you see, because Indians have all their attention on Yoga, you see, so there will be a new Yoga which will come by which people will be connected to the Holy Ghost. She has said it, this horrible one, Alice Bailey. There’s a danger of a Third World War and is inevitable. But it may be avoided if people develop love for each other with this Yoga.
Sahaja Yogini: It’s up to us.
Shri Mataji: May God bless you.
There’s lot of things but I’ve just read a part of it.
Sahaja Yogi: Let this be a prayer that it all comes true, Mother.
Shri Mataji: Yea…Now this is a-. another thing, ha. What’s that?
This one is a tape about what Gyaneshwara has said about this New Age, what will happen. The translation of that is with Me, but it is in Marathi. I have to translate it in English, you see. That how people will become Realized and what will happen and how they will love each other and all these things He has said, Gyaneshwara. And this is sung in this record by a very well-known singer of India, Lata Mangeshkar. And this they want to give. Side one is Gyaneshwari and another is “Om Namo Ji Addya , Addya Devi” and Pasaydan, that is the second part. Now this is one they want to give it to Warren. And you can tape it and give it to everyone.
Sahaja Yogis: Thank You. Wonderful.
[Applause]

Click here to listen to the full 1982 audio recording. 

Sakshat Shri Nirmala Devi, Namoh, Namah!

How to be Happy and Never Get Sick or Grow Old.

Is science on the cusp of confirming the existence of the elixir of youth?

If you want to stay younger for longer and remain healthy all the way into a youthful longevity, then paying some attention to your  sleep, diet and exercise, as well as avoiding chronic stress, and meditating, all have a part to play. This is the advice contained in the new  book, 'The Telomere Effect' by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel laureate and President of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, and Dr. Elissa Epel, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, at University of California, San Francisco.

But, in an increasingly health-conscious society, most people are already aware of the benefits of all the prescribed paths to self-maintenance.What may not be so widely-known is that all these life-enhancing activities merely support but do not cause youthful longevity. Irrespective of our life-style choices, the body has an  in-built capacity for a disease-free, non-ageing existence. The mechanism for this is at cellular level in the 'caps' at the ends of chromosomes, which are called 'telomeres'.

We age because our cells age. Cellular ageing or cellular senescence occurs when the telomere lengths shorten to a critical point with each repeated cycle of cell division until the number of divisions hits the 'Hayflick limit' and the cell stops dividing.

Since cell division is a 'rejuvenating' function, when the cell stops dividing, then it's downhill all the way and the body becomes subject to all the illnesses and diseases attendant on ageing, such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, arthritis and Alzheimers.

However, the body has a certain class of cells that are not subject to the Hayflick limit and these are the stem cells. Furthermore, the Hayflick limit can be overidden in ordinary cells due to the presence of an enzyme called Telomerase, which restores the length of telomeres and so preserves them and therefore preserves cellular rejuvenation. It's this exciting potential that's the subject of the book, The Telomerase Revolution, by Dr. Michael Fossel, former Professor of clinical medicine at Michigan State University.

So is Telomerase the elixir of youth and can we bottle it?

The answer may be a No. Despite the fascinating nature of the discovery, the suggestions for capitalising on it seem relatively prosaic, such as the recommendation to meditate. But could the ability to 'meditate' have a larger role in the human scheme of things than we currently fully understand?

It was Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn herself who discovered the anti-ageing effect of meditation. In her book, the negative impact of  stress is discussed at some length, as well as certain habitual mental modes most of us exhibit such 'wandering mind' and rumination which actually age us.

If thinking can have it's downside, then the ability to 'rest the mind' by not thinking must have an upside. And indeed it does . In some recent research[1] Dr Katya Rubia , Professor of Neuroscience at King's College, London , and colleagues  showed the positive neuroplastic effects from achieving a state of mental silence.

While mindfulness and other forms of meditation have also been shown in other studies to have similarly postive effects, there is a qualitative difference between learning how to focus in the present moment which mindfulness teaches and the ability to switch off the mind altogether in mental silence/'thoughtless awareness' - see below:

The state of mental silence is referred to as 'nirvichar samadhi' in the source book of yoga , The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. In the canons of yoga there is a practice called 'Khechari Mudra' which purportedly leads to the flow of a 'rejuvenating nectar' from the crown of the head into the throat during deep meditation.

So, in review, we have a biological mechanism for rejuvenation/non-ageing represented by telomeres and telomerase. This has been linked to meditation. And meditation has been linked to an Elixir .

To make the leap, the following could be suggested:

It is possible in the future, that people will no longer have to suffer old age or illness, but live a pleasant life of healthy and youthful longevity. This will come about as a result a of a new and effortless ability to be in a state of 'thoughtless awareness' or mental silence.

 How far into the future before we reach this elysian existence?

To quote the author William Gibson: " The Future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed"

And this 1 minute video record may be the proof: How to be Happy and Never Get Sick or Grow Old.

Ref:
 [1] Gray Matter and Functional Connectivity in Anterior Cingulate Cortex are Associated with the State of Mental Silence During Sahaja Yoga Meditation.

Solution to Projected Global Food Shortage? It's the Water.

According to United Nations projections, the population of the world is set to hit about 9.8billion in 2050. It raises the obvious question of how the world is going to feed itself, given that the total arable land available for food production is fixed or could even shrink due to creeping urbanisation and climate change, amongst other things.

We're clearly going to have to increase food production.  According to Agronomist Mitch Hunter,

"The common prescription is for a “sustainable intensification” of agriculture that both increases yields and reduces the harmful side effects of tilling and fertilizing billions of acres of land. " 

This seems like a tall order since ramping up production necessarily entails putting more strain on the land. Indeed, the term 'sustainable intensification' itself may be an oxymoron. The only real sustainability it could be argued is where human intervention is solely to direct Nature's beneficent hand.

Just such an arrangement has been proven in a remarkable agricultural experiment carried out in Vienna where  'vibrated ' water was used to increase crop yield. A write up of the experiment is given below bur first what is 'vibrated' water?

What is 'vibrated' water?
 As all schoolchildren know, a water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom and written as H₂O.

The structure of the water molecule can be depicted as below:

The angle betweeen the hydrogen atoms is shown as 104.45 degrees, which is described as being part of the stereochemistry information about the molecule.

It turns out that the stereochemistry of a molecule has a big bearing on the properties of that molecule. Just how big a bearing is demonstrated in the stereochemical property known as chirality or the concept of left-handedness or right-handedness in a molecule.

An everyday encounter with chirality is when we purchase citrus fruit from the supermarket. The lemons and oranges may smell different but it's the same limonene that produces the smell. What's different is that the limonene in lemons and oranges are chiral twins - in lemons, the limonene is "right-handed" and in oranges it's "left-handed". The twins are called stereoisomers.

It's well-known in drug research that the one stereoisomer of a molecule could have biological effect whereas the other stereoisomer might have none. This is shown in illustration below:

 So what this shows is that some modification to the stereochemistry of a water molecule could give it properties that have a biological effect that it would not otherwise have.



Slideshow of results of agricultural experiment viewable here.

The Sunflowers at Pratisthan

Comments by H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi:

In Sahaja Yoga, you take the ordinary seeds and you vibrate them. If you vibrate them, then what happens that you start getting seeds which are even better than hybrid. I tried an experiment with a sunflower; so I developed a sunflower about 2 kilo weight, about one foot diameter and such big, big seeds, that you can’t make them out to be sunflower seeds, so the collective was so amazed at it and they felt that this kind of seed will solve all of our oil problem.
(Shri Ganesha Puja, Madrid, Spain, 6/11/87)

Material development is much faster and in balance when you get Self Realization. These vibrations help agriculture very much. We have a scientist, Dr. Hamid, in Austria, who has experimented with vibrations and has found out that even non-hybrid seeds give you greater than hybrid seeds. In my own field I sowed about 60 kilos of rice in one acre of land. And they told me: “It’s a special rice. It won’t grow here.” But it turned out to be 1700 kilos. One of the best rices. And even the sunflower was so big, two feet diameter. You could not lift; one person could not lift. Giving oil six to ten times more!
(Press Conference, Sofia, Bulgaria, 25/7/90)

Dr Hamid's (Hamid Mehrani-Mylany) account of experiment with 'vibrated' water.

The effect of vibrated water on plant growth

The first study we made to test the effect of vibrated water on different kinds of plants took place on 27th May, 1986. The experiment was made on a 300m2 block of land with the foundations of a building nearby.  We were able to use the electricity supply from this building to construct an automatic watering system.  This small farm was situated about 15 kilometers east of Vienna, Austria.

1. Climate
The weather data was provided by the weather observation station in Enzersfield.  It was a rather rainy summer with an average rainfall of 54.5mm during the test period.  The average temperature during the test period was 24.50C and in this area quite a strong north-west wind was blowing which dries the soil very rapidly.  Because of the late setting up of the test area it was heavily overgrown with annual and perennial weeds.  That is why the field was sprayed with Gesaprim on the 25th May.

2. Preparation of the soil
The soil type was brown earth i.e. sandy, clay and loam.  For this experiment we did not analyse the soil because it was not necessary or helpful.   As we began late it was not possible to supply any sort of fertilization.

3. Pattern of experiment
The test area was divided into four strips, each 4m x 20m = 80m2 in size.  Each strip was sub-divided into four plots each 4m x 5m = 20m2 in size.  I selected sunflowers which grow well in this type of soil and maize which is planted by the local farmers of this area.

4. Irrigation
The “drip irrigation” system from the firm “Salen”, Vienna 21, was chosen.  Normal drinking water from the building was brought to the field via a 1 inch hose, from which 3 half inch hoses were connected.  In order to cut out the possibility of human error, the irrigation equipment was automated with the help of one seven day timer and two 24 hour timers and three magnetic valves.  Seven days after setting up the farm, on 4 June, 1986, the irrigation was put to operation.  The test area (i.e. vibrated and unvibrated areas) was irrigated for 1½ hours from 1.00 a.m. to 2.30 a.m. early in the morning.  After 30 days irrigation took place once a week, also for 1½ hours each time.  On 26th October, 1986, irrigation was suspended.  The water was vibrated at a certain point in the test area.

5. Discussion
Photographs and graphs were  taken at different stages of the plants development, the vibrated plants were greener, more vital and showed significant lead in their growth over the unvibrated plants.  The vibrated water not only activates the growth of the plants, it also enlarges and improves the sprouting potential of the seeds.  For example, the sprouting ratio of sunflowers rated normally between 75% – 80%.  Through the use of vibrated water the ratio was increased to about 95% – 100%.  Because of the high germination ratio and the strong growth of the plants in the vibrated portion of the test area, you can well imagine this caused a severe competition for space, water and light.  Such a condition usually inhibits the growth of plants but despite the density in the vibrated plot, its harvest was about 20-25% better than the control plots.  

"I Believe I Can Fly"

Jai Shri Hanumana!

In his wonderfully ambitious book, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, geneticist, Adam Rutherford, in dismissing a future possibility of human unaided flight, says:

" We fly all the time. We have no need to fly unaided. There is no ecological niche that could be filled by aerial people...If by some incomprehensibly reality defying mutation a child was born with the nascent power of flight..."

For all the sound scientific reasoning in the rest of the book, the above quote seems a rare lapse in rigor. It's the kind of false argument against something that a lay-person, bereft of any scientific specialisation, might make. Essentially what is being argued is that something is not technically feasible because there's no need for it.

But the road of human advancement is littered with things that started out as having no conceivable use. When Fred Flintstone was chiselling a circular object that later became a wheel, Barnie and the other neighbours must have been laughing at him because it was going to be no good in the hunt against the woolly mammoth. Similarly, and perhaps with a bit more historical accuracy, the development of number theory was at first regarded as 'pure'(ie. abstract and non-applicable) mathematics until it's usefulness was discovered in cryptography which underpins today's cybersecurity.

But to be fair to Adam Rutherford, the question of the possibility of human unaided flight itself seems like a non-starter. On the face of it, it's a pointless question because it's so manifestly obvious that we can't fly because we're too heavy and we don't have wings. And are unlikely to develop wings anytime soon.

However, in the realm of science, categorical statements on matters of speculation have been shown to come a cropper, as if by making them, we throw a challenge down to the gods of scientific discovery. Two examples being, the belief for a long time that the earth was flat and, at the beginning of the era of aviation, that it would be impossible to travel faster than the speed of sound.

In both the aboves cases, as in most cases of scientific breakthroughs, a change in perspective led to the 'paradigm shift' as Thomas Kuhn called it in his seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The history of aviation provides an even more pertinent illustration of this paradigm shift as it relates to the possibility of human unaided flight.

When the original 'renaissance man' and polymath, Leonardo da Vinci sat down in his studio in 15th century Italy, and began to sketch out his ideas for human aided flight, he drew on his 'scientific' observation of the flight of birds and their wing action.

There is no historical record from that time of this approach having worked. Nevertheless, all subsequent attempts at human flight followed a similar line of attack of the problem and were variations on the theme of bird wing action.

That was until Orville and Wilbur Wright came along and demonstrated that the fixation on mimicking the bird's wing flapping had been a dead-end. What was actually required was the ability to generate sufficient power to create uplift.

The result is that today we are able to make airborne, commercial aircraft weighing in at hundreds of tons, with no frantic flapping of wings in sight.

This was all because the focus of the problem of flight shifted to the idea of buoyancy or uplift.

It is this established scientific phenomenon of buoyancy that provides for the possibility of unaided human flight.

Delhi, India, 1996. The heat of the sun is abating towards the end of the sahaja yoga open-air public program and Garima and a couple of her friends decide to remain outside and continue to meditate together for a little while longer.

As the girls' kundalinis come up and they begin to get the indication of this as the cool wind sensation on the palms of their hands and above their heads, something else begins to happen. At first Garima thinks that it's just her experiencing it, but then notices the other girls also clutching on to something.

What Garima later describes was of a very strong feeling that with the meditation her body was beginning to feel so light and weightless that if she hadn't grabbed onto something she would have involuntarily began to float off the ground.

This is just one instance of sahaja yoga practitioners reporting a feeling of 'bodiless-ness' while in deep meditation.

There's quite a difference between getting a subjective feeling of floating and actually have your body lift off the ground, so the above accounts are easy to dismiss as just that, a feeling.

However, these sensations are occurring with just a minute fraction of the kundalini's potential expressing. It's like the difference between the energy of a battery to run your bedside alarm clock and the energy required to power a Tesla over a distance of 60km.

In centuries-old treatises about the kundalini, there is mention of siddhis or superhuman abilities, one of which includes flight as a result of the body becoming weightless or bouyant.

Long before Stan Lee of Marvel Comics conceived of Superman and other super heroes, India had her own stories of a character of incredible strength who could fly. Ironically, given that this question of human unaided flight is in the context of human evolutionary advancement, this character that could fly is a monkey. Hanumana is celebrated all across South Asia and China as the folkloric Monkey-King. Jai Hanumana!  


 

Built for Bliss.

Apparently, the geeks in silicon valley are keeping themselves ahead of the competition by micro-dosing  LSD. Not enough to be strung out on an acid trip, but just enough to flush the brain with creative juices and come up with the next killer app.

Good or bad, here's why the practice highlights a feature of brain function which is suggestive of our human potential. This is that despite all evidence in the human condition to the contrary, every man, woman and child on the planet, by virtue of birthright, is actually built for bliss.

Exhibit A: Serotonin 

Serotonin is a major neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger that, amongst other functions, plays a large part in how happy we feel. Low levels of serotonin has been linked with depression, although the direction of causality has not been confirmed.

LSD has been found to activate the serotonin pathways in the brain and central nervous system. Also,in some recent research using imaging techniques to track the effect of LSD on the brain, Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris and his team at Imperial College, London, have shown that LSD 'lights up' what were thought to be unrelated areas of the brain, possibly accounting for the synesthetic 'psychedelic' experience of a 'trip'.

This relaxation of brain 'rigidity' induced by LSD is reminiscent of our brains as infants. Robin Carhart-Harris says, "Our brains become more constrained and compartmentalised as we develop from infancy into adulthood, and we may become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature. In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained. This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind."

So that's where the boost in creativity may be coming from: an enhanced ability to make novel connections between unrelated things.

What the research might also explain, according to Carhart-Harris, is the sense of 'ego-dissolution'  or 'being one with the universe' that is sometimes experienced: "Our results suggest that this effect underlies the profound altered state of consciousness that people often describe during an LSD experience. It is also related to what people sometimes call 'ego-dissolution', which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world. This experience is sometimes framed in a religious or spiritual way - and seems to be associated with improvements in well-being after the drug's effects have subsided."

The insights gained from this research, it is said, can be added to the arsenal of  treatments for the increasing mental health problem of depression.

Some indication of the size of the problem is given by the World Health Organisation, which is leading a 2017, one-year global campaign on depression. According to the WHO website:

• There are more than 300million people of all ages worldwide, suffering from depression.
• This represents an 18% increase between 2005 and 2015.
• It's a leading cause of suicide in 15-29year olds.
• It's the leading cause of disability worldwide
• 80% of disease burden falls mainly on people in low and middle-income countries.  

So depression is a large and growing global problem. The main treatments are with 'talking therapies', such as cognitive behavioural therapy(CBT)  or medication, such as with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors(SSRIs). It is based on the success with SSRIs that LSD offers hope for a similar treatment path.

However, this may be limiting the scope of what LSD is telling us about how we work. Set in the context of pointers about our human potential, the effects of LSD on the brain could be the equivalent of shining a torchlight into a dark room. Not to make out the contours of the room; but to locate where the light switch is.

The light switch - your kundalini.

Recalling the capacity of LSD to lead to what has been described as a mystical sense of  'ego-dissolution', here's the description of just such a state by Yang Lili, a young Chinese yogi on a tour of India : "So strong feeling here (indicating top of head). It's like a hole. It's like  we're all in the universe. It's like we really melt into the universe.."

Being interviewed alongside Yang Lili, is her friend Zhang Yi who adds about the experience: " ..felt full of love. All is love. No other words. Just love..."(translated from mandarin).

What Yang Lili and Zhang Yi are both describing, is not a shared LSD trip but the pill-free, clear-headed experience of a kundalini meditation based on a genuine kundalini awakening.

But what is the kundalini and what is 'genuine awakening' ? According to one of the most influential texts on hatha yoga, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika written in the fifteenth century, the kundalini is the means of human 'liberation'/'self-realisation'. A definition from an online source gives this:

 “Kuṇḍalī Sakti[feminine energy] sleeps on the bulb[base of spine], for the purpose of giving moksa[liberation] to Yogīs and bondage to the ignorant. He who knows it, knows Yoga.” (śl. 107) and “Kuṇḍalī is of a bent shape, and has been described to be like a serpent. He who has moved that Śakti is no doubt Mukta (released from bondage).” (śl. 108)

 Although the concept of kundalini and it's function does not exist in western medical science, anatomical naming (see Grey's Anatomy)  may hint at some esoteric understanding of the human body in the distant past.

For example, the kundalini, which has been described as the 'feminine divine',  is said to exist in a dormant (potential ) state in the tail bone in the human spine. This bone is also known as the 'Sacrum' - etymologically related to 'sacred' .

Also, the kundalini, on awakening, rises upwards and passes through the top of the skull and can be felt as a rising cascade(fountain) of a cool breeze sensation (pneuma). The name of the bone at the top of the skull is : 'Fontanel' , which derives from 'fontaine' , French for 'fountain'.

The actual effect of kundalini's rising can also be correlated with a recognised cognitive state. This state is given in the  second line of the quote above from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which says : "He who knows it, knows Yoga".

The authoritative definition of yoga contained in the original source book of yoga, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, defines yoga in sutra 1.2 as : "Yogas chitta vritti nirodha." . This is translated from the sanskrit as : " Yoga is a stilling of the flactuations of the mind/attention". This is technically known as nirvichar samadhi or 'thoughtless awareness'.

This thoughtless awareness state is one we have all habitually experienced but have forgotten about. It is the mental state of our childhood; before we acquired language and which corresponds to the 'sensorimotor' stage in Jean Piaget's cognitive development. 

In a child, the state of nirvichar samadhi is more commonly called 'pratyaksha' , which is a sanskrit word meaning: 'just seeing without any accompanying mental activity' or 'just witnessing'. This shines new light on Robin Carhart-Harris's observation above about how LSD puts the brain in a state it was in during infancy: free from the rigidity of thinking.  

So genuine kundalini awakening can be gauged from these two features: 1. A fountain-like sensation (of  coolness) above the head and 2. An accompanying spontaneous inducement to a mental stillness/silence/ absence of thoughts/ inner peace.


The thousand-petalled lotus

Apart from feelings of mental quietude, the kundalini is also said to produce a feeling of 'bliss'.  From an ancient text the Lalita Sahasranama, the following descriptions have been given of the kundalini: 

Param-ananda-mayi  - source of supreme bliss; Nirvana-sukha-dayini - giver of the enjoyment of nirvana; Sahasrara-ambuja-arudha - mounted in the 'thousand- petalled lotus' (at crown of head); Sudha-sarabhi-varshini - sending down a shower of nectar.

The 'thousand-petalled lotus' appears to be a poetic rendition of the brain limbic system. Studies have shown the activation of the limbic during meditation. In a 1993 paper entitled, Plasma beta endorphins in humans: effect of sahaja yoga, Dr. Ram Mishra of McMaster's University, Toronto and others, reported an observed increase in beta endorphin production of up to 70% with kundalini meditation (sahaja yoga).

Other studies based on EEG measures of sahaja yoga subjects, found brain activation patterns consistent with subjective feelings of thoughtless awareness (nirvichar samadhi) and happiness.

To highlight other positive effects seen, a 2001 study by Dr Adam Morgan : Sahaja Yoga: An ancient path to modern mental health? showed significant improvement in the symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to use of cognitive behavioural therapy.

For all the millennials out there in silicon valley who have considered going the LSD microdosing route to enhance their creative edge, there's also a 2016 study that shows boost to grey matter from sahaja yoga meditation .


Philosopher's stone.

Could the awakening of kundalini have been the secret 'holy grail' in alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry and the scientific method, via Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691), whose Boyle's Law is still in use today? Ostensibly, the goal of alchemy was the transmutation of base metal into gold but this may have been coded language for the pursuit of human perfectibility by discovery of the philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone was also known as the elixir of life or the elixir of youth.

In 2009, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and others published research identifying the part played by telomeres, which are DNA caps at the ends of chromosomes, in the cellular aging proces. The shortening of telomere length is a marker for aging and meditation was shown to affect the telomeres in a way that led to an anti-aging effect.

If vanilla meditation or mindfulness practice has been demonstrated to have an anti-aging effect, then what even greater effect might a meditation juiced with kundalini awakening have? The effect of kundalini in this regard is  suggested by the line above from Lalita Sahasranama: Sudha-sarabhi-varshini - 'sending down a shower of nectar'.

'Sudha' (nectar) is a synonym for the more commonly-used sanskrit word 'Amrita' which is cognate with Ambrosia , the food of the gods in Greek mythology. In Indian mythology, Amrita, also has divine origin which resonates to the present day.

According to the Guiness Book of Records, the largest gathering of people on earth is at the Kumbha Mela festival held every 12 years in India. At the 2013 kumbha mela , an estimated 40 million people  squeezed into an area a third of the size of Manhatten, which has a population of just 2 million and feels packed.

The Kumbha ('pot') festival is a remembrance of the divine origin of Amrita. It is said that as Lord Vishnu, the power of sustenance, preservation and the evolutionary urge, was travelling airborne over earth, four drops of Amrita fell from the pot he was carrying and landed at four locations in India. These locations are where the Kumbha festival is held in periodic rotation.

The story of the origin of Amrita may symbolise the yogic process of Khechari Mudra , which occurs when the kundalini touches the crown of the head and engenders a downward flow of 'nectar' into the thoat.

This action of the kundalini has been described by one of the earliest writer-practitioners of kundalini yoga, Sant Dnyaneshwar(1275–1296) , who, in chapter 6 of one of his most prominent works, Dnyaneshwari, says of  khechari mudra:

"Body gets rejuvenated The skin which covers the lustre of this nectar and is brightened by it is shed and all the organs show their bright aura. (6:250, 252-253). Now even Death is afraid of it (the body) and the aging process gets reversed and the yogi gets back his bygone childhood and he looks like a boy."

Evolutionary growing pains?

All this may seem far removed from the ordinary man or women on the street going about their daily business, but what if the stresses of modern living that is producing such a worrying uptick in the global incidence of depression is simultaneously acting as a push in the other direction?

And is that other direction showing up as more and more people globally having an interest in  meditation as a coping mechanism for stress?

While a coincidence of two things does not necessarily imply a causal link, the graph below taken from google trends and showing where in the world keyword searches for 'meditation' were coming from does make interesting viewing.

In his book, Your Inner Fish, paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, Neil Shubin describes his expedition to find the missing link between marine life and land mammals. His expeditionary team discover the fossil of a 'fish with hands', Tiktaalik.

It may be fair to assume that fish don't mass in shallow water and then develop limbs to crawl onto land without some evolutionary pressure on them.

Similarly, the increasing stress in modern human society and indicated by the growing problem of depression, may in fact be evolutionary growing pains. When there is a problem the species are bound to seek out the lowest threshold solution.

And this is probably how an evolutionary mass phenomenon spreads through a population. The google trends graph above can be viewed in that light.

Tipping-point


Are we on the cusp of a transformation in human awareness? If the experiences of a few statistical outliers - the Yang Lili's and the Zhang Hi's are scaled up to a critical mass of the population, might we see an overall improved mental health across the globe and therefore a better society?

In 2011, the snapshot below of web traffic to an email-link accessed sahaja yoga website, showed that sahaja yoga meditation was being practised in 993 cities around the world.

Today, the number of sahaja yoga practitioners has significantly increased thanks to programs of global outreach, such as the one shown below.

If we are, as human beings, indeed built for bliss then we may gradually begin to see the evidence of that


 

 

A Strange Happening in Cauldwell Street.

At about 9:15pm on Thursday, 7^th October, teenager, Jason Haynes was riding his motor scooter back home from his part-time job at Sainsburys, when he was involved in a collision with a car on Cauldwell Street, Bedford.

The driver of the car, and one other motorist, got out to attend Jason who was lying on the ground injured. Given the obvious pain Jason was in and not knowing whether any bones had been broken, they decided not move him but wait for the ambulance, which had been called.

It was while lying there waiting, that Jason recalls a lady in a long white garment coming to him, speaking to him briefly and then placing her hands over parts of his body. The lady then left and shortly afterwards the ambulance arrived to take Jason to the hospital.

The doctor who examined him was surprised to find no injury, given the nature of the accident. Jason attributed this to the lady at the scene of the accident who had seemingly healed him with her touch . However, he could still feel some pain in his lower back, where the lady hadn't touched.

A few days later he saw a photograph of Shri Mataji in the paper advertising a public lecture on sahaja yoga in Guildhouse and recognised her immediately as the lady who had come to help him at the accident.

The only thing was: the date of the lecture was the 7^th October. Shri Mataji was at Guildhouse in the middle of delivering the lecture at the same time as the event Jason described was happening.

Ross Francis, the journalist who investigated the story and who interviewed witnesses at the accident, could find nobody else who had seen the lady healer at the scene.

Below is an old photocopy of the front-page report Ross Francis filed in the Bedfordshire Journal, October 12th, 1982: A strange happening in Cauldwell Street.

 So Jason Haynes got cured; Ross Francis went on to write other regular features for his local newspaper. That incident, after being a key topic of conversations in the local pub and supermarket  for a while, probably got filed away in most people's memory as one of life's unexplained events . Except , of course, for any local people who attended Shri Mataji's lecture, that night in October 1982 and then went on to spend time with Shri Mataji to learn sahaja yoga.

For them, as with other sahaja yogis,' miracles' became the common but extraordinary experience in different encounters with Shri Mataji. Some of these encounters are captured in a book by Linda Williams, available on Amazon. Personal accounts of nine different people contained in the book are shown below.

1. Curing leukaemia with kundalini awakening - Gautam Sarkar

2. Commanding the ocean waves and calling forth light at Ganapatipule - P. D. Chavhan

The power of the meditation photograph - Ravindranath Saundankar

3.Protection from a distance - Jayant Patankar

4. Removal of doubt - Gregoire de Kalbermatten 

5. Only a 'Himalayan Master' knew who Shri Mataji really was - Sandeep Gadkary

6.  Mountain Villagers in Himalayas waiting for Shri Mataji over generations - Auriol Williams.

7. Bandhan works on inanimate object - Tarachandra

8. A mother's scolding of her children in a place outside of time - John Henshaw.

9. Christ resides on Agnya chakra - Niranjan Mavinkurve.

Avoiding the Robot Apocalypse

As Apocalypse scenarios go, this one is quite familiar : Somebody builds a robot that can actually 'think' for itself; then in flagrant disregard of Asimov's 3 Laws entailing doing no harm to humans, the robot runs amok and proceeds to wipe out the entire human race.

Luckily, we've watched that movie, come out of the movie theater (alive) and managed to put our Terminator and Skynet fears to bed.

Not so Elon Musk, and other AI futurists, who envision bad things happening as a result of the rapid advancement and unintended consequences from developments in artificial intelligence. This is according to Maureen Dowd, writing in the March issue of Vanity Fair magazine : Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade To Stop The A.I Apocalypse.

The premise of the idea of  humans inventing robot overlords is that human intelligence and ability is at statis; that we'll be able to incubate super intelligence in machines that will, to our detriment, surpass our own.

The best guard we have against rogue A.I, according to some of the Silicon Valley luminaries interviewed in the piece, is to have a 'kill switch' to shut them down. Or, in a strange case of 'if you can't beat them, join them', it's suggested that we turn ourselves into cyborgs: half human, half machine.

If A.I is going to be this much of a threat to the survival of the species, then, like in Jaws - the movie, we're clearly going to need a bigger boat. This bigger boat may be provided by our own unexplored human potential.

For all the human ingenuity that has brought us to this stage of technological development, where we're capable of creating our own likeness in machine form,  no human invention so far surpasses the prototypes found in Nature. Is the camera a better piece of design engineering than the human eye, for example? 

Nature hides the complexity of her design genius in the cloak of simplicity, efficiency and economy. By comparison, our most vaunted inventions have a primitive crudeness that we cannot see.

On that basis, the human being, the current pinnacle of Nature's iterative design improvement process(evolution), is more marvellous and wonderous than any robot or 'super' intelligence, humans themselves could hope to create.

We were not given the user manual for how we work, so, since the beginning of the biological sciences, we've been trying to piece it together with reverse engineering. Neuroscience can't fully explain how the brain works, or where consciousness and the sense of personal identity come from.

If we could somehow get hold of Nature's user manual for humans, might there not be a chapter at the back entitled 'Advanced Functions'? There's enough scope in our ignorance, for us not to rule out the possibility that there's more to us than meets the eye.

After all, only 2% of our DNA actually codes for the protein of which our bodies are made. Is the remaining 98% really 'junk' DNA? In recent years within genetics, it is being discovered that the term 'junk' DNA is a misnomer or fig leaf for our ignorance. And that, in fact, there is some hitherto unknown function in this non-coding DNA.

Some of this function is regulatory  - the equivalent of a traffic cop directing the traffic of gene expression that makes us who we are and which could determine illness, ageing* and a range of different abilities .

Here's how New York Times bestselling author, Yuval Noah Harari, summarises the idea of unrealised human potential, in his book Homo Deus:

"Biological engineering starts with the insight that we are far from realising the full potential of organic bodies. For 4 billion years natural selection has been tweaking and tinkering with these bodies, so that we have gone from amoeba to reptiles to mammals to Sapiens. Yet there is no reason to think that Sapiens is the last station. Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neurons were enough to transform Homo erectus - who could produce nothing more impressive than flint knives - into Homo sapiens who produces spaceships and computers. Who knows what might be the outcome of a few more changes to our DNA..."

So how might Superhumans avoid the Robot Apocalypse?

The answer may relate more to survival. When a calculus of human existential risk is done, catastrophic climate change, a pandemic as a result of  anti-microbial resistance or a geopolitical-related nuclear mishap, are more proximate than being done in by the robots.

So if we can survive or avoid the first 3 risks, then outsmarting the smartest robots will be a piece of cake . We must have been rehearsing it for some time now, in the popular imagination, through all the marvel movies we've been watching.

* Superhumans are really coming - unpacking junk DNA