 Data means repetitive things, nothing new can ever happen in data. Consciousness means it is a memoryless intelligence, intelligence beyond memory. Aren't we denying ourselves the fundamental nature of life itself simply because our instruments are not up to the mark? As you already said and everybody will agree that human mechanism right now is the most sophisticated piece of technology on the planet. So should we not learn to use it? You cannot slap one meaning from your mind upon a limitless possibility which is the very basis of our existence. So this is what is the fundamental mistake that we are trying to take a piece of our psychological process and trying to understand what is consciousness. Whether it is death, coma, anesthesia, in my understanding and my experience of things, they are not very different. It is just different levels of profoundness of the same thing. When you become completely unaware, that means you are dead. Good morning. Namaskaram. Namaste. My name is Balasubramaniam and here we are for a very exciting session with very interesting and also exciting personalities. So it will be a great session I think and something close to my heart as well. And I want to introduce briefly about myself. I am a neuroanesthesiologist. I work at Beth Israel Degnes Medical Center, a Harvard teaching hospital. And I had my initial training in Puducherry, India. I did my MBBS in Jepma followed by anesthesiology at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in Nuteli. Then I spent a year in UK doing critical care medicine. Then I came to Beth Israel Degnes Medical Center. I trained at the School of Public Health. Currently I'm also an associate professor of medicine and endowed chair at the Harvard Medical School. It is my privilege to introduce Stephen Loris, a Belgian neurologist. He's recognized worldwide as a leading clinician and researcher in the field of neurology or consciousness. Stephen was born in Leuven, Belgium and is married to a psychologist. They have five beautiful children. While specializing in neurology, he did research in parallel in pharmaceutical pain, working on pain and stroke. He moved on to functional neuroimaging for more than two decades now. Stephen has a full MD-PhD and is a full professor, is a founding director of Jigar Consciousness and Coma Science Group at the University of Leage. He holds several international collaborative leadership positions, editorial and reviewing activities, multiple TV shows with CNN, ABC, BBC, radio shows, acted in a movie, Ted Speaker and keynote and research lectures, including the ones notably the Nobel forum in Stockholm. His books include The Neurology of Consciousness and notably is The Meditation is Good for Your Brain and I think he has recently come out with something called No Nonsense Meditation Book. It's a bestseller in Netherlands and Belgium. I find him as a very impressive personality who is in his quest for consciousness scientifically and he also is a meditator. So it is my pleasure to introduce him. Stephen. Thank you so much, Bala, for this wonderful introduction. Too flattering. Stephen, you want to say why you wanted the title to be Mind and Brain? Because that's what drives me. I think as a teenager, like many, I think asking these questions about what am I doing here in this universe, these big questions. I'm so happy that I made my job out of that terribly difficult question about what is consciousness and then to translate that knowledge into our clinical activities as a neurologist and in particular trying to care better for the damaged brains. But actually the more I learn about the brain and the mind, I think the more I'm just fascinating and I look at it with marvel and it's incredible how much actually we ignore about the mind and the brain. Great. So Guru, are these one and the same? Mind and brain? Well, in the yogic sciences, we do not accord the kind of significance that modern physiology accords to the brain. We see brain just as body. It is just body, it is one more aspect of the body. But mind or what we are referring to as mind, the English word mind is not specific, it's kind of too general. Normally we identify four parts to what we now talking about as mind. The moment you use the English language, you kind of speaking when it comes to anything internal, we are talking in more generalities, not specific. So if you want specifics, well, we identify something called as buddhi, which is the intellect, which I feel largely in modern societies, they are considering intellect as mind. Essentially, I mean, I'm not saying this with any prejudice because I'm talking in terms of where these things have evolved, the European culture has recognized intellect as mind. In the yogic sciences, we see intellect only as an instrument of survival, which functions on the basis of the limited data that we have gathered through our sensory perceptions. Intellect is quite a useless thing if you do not have data. If there is no data, intellect cannot function. So intellect is very much like why today your phone has an intellect of its own. Yes, it has, it has data and it can use it. If it doesn't yet have, I don't know what you're shaking your head, Stephen, I think you're using a bad phone. You still are Nokia, I think. I think even the best iPhone is still quite stupid, isn't it? It has no subjective experience. So because we talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning and... Yes, yes, but I'm talking about intellect. Intellect means it has data, using the data, it will do permutations and combinations, which the phone is beginning to do, maybe not to the same level as a human intellect, but it is beginning to do that activity. Even among human beings, not every human being is able to process the same amount of data and with the same complexity and sophistication. So, well, you have the brain of a monk, but you must also have a brain of a politician and then you would know what I'm talking about. It's classified. But... No, no, these days they are smart, it's not like old times, okay? So, I'm saying this intellectual process is being generally spoken of as mind. That's not how we look at it. We see intellect is called buddhi, which is essentially functioning out of limited data that it has gathered, largely conscious data. Sometimes it excesses data, which is not very conscious, but largely it functions only out of conscious data. You will see if somebody is having little trouble remembering something, suddenly intellect goes helpless for a period of time. I can't remember this, means there is nothing I can do about it. Though unconsciously that memory is still there, just because you are not able to retrieve it, intellect feels helpless for that little bit of time. So, this is called as buddhi. The next dimension of intelligence, or... I'm using the word intelligence instead of mind so that there is a distinction in language. The next dimension of intelligence is referred to as hankara. This means there are many ways to look at it. People usually say it's ego, but essentially it's identity. Because the way you identified, that is the way your intellect will function. Now if you say, I belong to this nation, your intellect will function just to protect that identity. If you say I belong to this religion or race or caste or creed or gender or whatever, accordingly your intellect functions because intellect is essentially guided, it is a survival process. If you identify with something, intellect will consciously or constantly go around that trying to protect that identity. So, in the yogic system we consider the hankara or the identity that you take on far more important than the nature of the intellect itself because intellect is a slave of the identity that you have taken. Once you take a certain identity, intellect will function in a specific way, only towards that and what is right for you, what is wrong for you, everything is dependent upon how you're identified. So, the third dimension of intelligence is called manas, where there are eight dimensions of memory, starting from elemental memory, atomic memory, evolutionary memory, genetic memory, karmic memory, articulate, inarticulate memory is conscious and conscious memory is like this, eight dimensions of memory. Now, how you access this huge silo of memory, right now we have a human form only because of the evolutionary memory that's invested within us. If there is no memory, well if you eat you may change the human form into something else, only memory is so strongly instilled in every cell in our body, that is why it doesn't matter what we eat, even if we eat dog food, right now because we are under lockdown, you know it can happen. Even if we happen to eat dog food, we will not become dogs, we will still remain human simply because of heavily invested memory, evolutionary memory in our system. Similarly genetics, it doesn't matter, you eat Indian food, you won't become like me, I eat European food, I won't become like you, because there is a genetic memory which clearly is established. Like this there is karmic memory and other aspects of memory, but how you access this vast amount of memory simply depends upon how you are identified. In which way are you identified, how strong your identity is. Accordingly you access this memory. Though this data is there, this data is processed based on your identity. If your identity is very nationalistic, now this data functions in that way, you're willing to live and die for that identity. These days people are here in Europe, they're even identified with their football club, they're willing to live and die for it. So it may look ridiculous for somebody else, but football club is more than a nation for someone else, it's more than a religion, it's more than a race or whatever else, which anyway people are willing to live and die for. So essentially the identity, if it is consciously established, then there is a bigger possibility. So in yoga always we are trying to establish a cosmic identity. Because if you establish a limitless identity, your ability to access this vast amount of memory, which is there in every cell in our body, is greatly enhanced and that is how a human being suddenly seems like way above what everybody else is functioning. One human being functions way above that because his ability to access this enormous amount of memory which is recorded the whole evolutionary process on this planet. The very development of life on this planet is living within us, but can you access it or not is the only question. So a very limitless, at least we cannot see the limits. To that extent you take the identity, you take the identity with the world or with the universe or the cosmos or whatever you think is the biggest thing out here. So the next dimension of intelligence is called chitta. Chitta means it is an intelligence which is unsurled by memory, there is no memory at all. This is just pure intelligence, this is the basis of creation that today if we eat a fruit, this becomes a human being within us in a few hours simply because the fundamental intelligence of the creation itself is functioning within us and it is free of all memory, there is no memory in it. No memory means it is limitless. Memory is a boundary that we have set. Now this is in my memory means this is my boundary, that is not in my memory means that is not in my boundary. So a dimension of intelligence which is free of memory means it is a limitless possibility. So in the yogic sciences, the mischievous expression of this is if you access your chitta or this dimension of intelligence which is free of memory, this we say God will become your slave. Thank you, sir. Do you want to follow? Yeah, thank you for that. You refer to the yogic sciences. And so how, because in science we always want to verify and actually find ways to prove us wrong. So, you know, I'm this hard-nosed scientist and trying to confront everything I think to understand. Hard-nosed, hard-nosed is not a good thing during the COVID time. It's not a good thing to have a hard-nosed. But so this, you know, way of looking at nature and to make objective observations and then to verify. And so to come up with theories of the mind that have explanatory value, that have predictive value. So I'm a bit surprised to call it in that way sciences. And as I maybe understand, it's something you have experienced which is for me as a scientist, the next big challenge to somehow reconnect with the form of spirituality. So how could we know that what you explained is correct? Or could it be wrong? Or could we find ways to test this? We can. See, right now if we... is it true that human beings, the moment they get identified with something, it is everything to them. Is that so? Yes, D. Whether it's nation, religion, race... I follow you for the identity ego part. I just took on an identity. No, no, no, not the... not ego. It's just identity. I'm... I'm an Indian means I'm willing to live and die for this country. That's how it is. And that's what is expected also if you're part of a nation. So... So you know identity determines how a person thinks, feels, everything. Just a piece of cloth just flies like this, people shed tears. It's a flag, you know? A national flag does this. People stand there, grown-up men shed tears. What is there in the cloth? There is nothing, it's... it's just the identity that you have taken on, which makes you feel like this. So entire human experience is determined by an identity that one takes. When one sleeps, there is no identity. When dreams, there is identity, but in sleep there is no identity. In death there is no identity. Well, you can always talk about your anesthesia and there is no identity. I'm not the person to talk about that. But I'm saying the... in conscious experience of life, one's identity is determining everything. Well, does it show up in your blood? Does it show up in your chemical analysis? I don't know, that's for you guys to say. But it is a fact that people's way of thinking, feeling, working and what... how they live is determined by their identity. So is it scientific enough, I'm asking? When the whole world is demonstrating it. So the next thing is memory, the manas. Now we were talking about many things. The... Steven, do you remember how your great-great-great ten generations ago, how your great-grandfather looked like? Do you remember? How? And somehow, yes, I know I have the nose on my face. Yeah, yeah, you've been listening, you're not remembering. Absolutely, and so we kind of understand that a little bit in terms of the genetics and... As you say, it all comes down somehow to the language we use and then it can become very confusing. But so... In terms of your comparison to my brain and my iPhone and the way it deals with data, I think there's something fundamentally different with how I... No, no, no, no, it is... it is a question of lack of complexity and sophistication when it comes to the iPhone. It is not as sophisticated and complex as your intellect. I did not use the word brain, I said you're intellect. The difference between the iPhone and the data processing and us having feelings, right, my iPhone is not... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I said. I said between your intellect, see this is the problem. Right now, English language is using the word mind in a very general term. Now if you go more specific, in this mind there is intellect, there is identity, there is a huge volume of memory and there is a dimension called chitta. Right now I don't want to call consciousness because the word consciousness needs some cleaning. It's kind of absorbed all kinds of stuff in the... you know, in the medical lexicon. So we will leave that aside. These three together or these four together, you're calling it as mind. But if you look at the intellectual process alone, that and your iPhone are not fundamentally different but very different in terms of sophistication and complexity, very, very different, another world altogether. So, I'm very excited about the brain, it's my favorite organ. That one, that one you have on the table or...? That one I have up there. Oh, not on the table. No, because that seems to have more gray matter, that's why I asked you. That is probably maybe true because this is the brain of an experienced meditator and I'm just an amateur, but these brains are important, of course, right? And there's other organs that I like, but without this one it's less fun. So also when we talk about organ transplantation and by the way, are you an organ donor? I told you I gave away my brain a long time ago. I also gave away my heart. No, but seriously, it's because you have so many followers. So, you know, we redefined death and we now have brain death criteria and there's, well, lives that can be saved thanks to organ donation. So are you okay to after death give your organs? I'm not right now planning to die so soon, so let's see when it comes, huh? By the time I die, at least I have my brains, I would have used it up fully. Steven, I thought I will... Sorry, go ahead, Steven. No, no, no, no. So I think that the example of transplantation is of course interesting in a sense that it shows kind of the importance of the brain, right? Because you can replace nearly every organ and we can now indeed even replace the heart and it would still fundamentally not change the way you think and feel and perceive emotions. But of course, for the brain, it's different. So there is something special about this organ, but and there we shouldn't be too arrogant when it comes to the big question of consciousness and explaining thoughts and perception and emotions. We just have a terribly hard time to go from something material that is this brain and to this very first person subjective experience. So there for you I understand that the brain is not the whole story, right? If I'm correct and that there's... I generally think through my whole body, really. And that is true, that is true. That is why I can do two dozen things at the same time and don't feel any stress because I use every cell in my body. Okay. Because what you're referring to as intelligence, essentially in most people's experience, I... I'm not somebody who's propounding this, but in most people's experience, a certain combination of memory and intelligence is what they're calling as mind, isn't it? Yes, it's... it's difficult because we're talking about definitions, but yes. So tell me, in every cell in your body, there's much, much more memory than it's there in your brain. And the number of complex functions that every cell in your body is functioning, you can never figure it out in your brain, the amount of chemical reactions that are happening across, not necessarily managed by your brain, it's happening of its own nature. So, when they're able to do so much, there is an intelligence. So in yoga, we don't say mind is here or there. We say there is a mental body. As there is a physical body, there is a mental body. There's a... there is a whole scape of memory and intelligence spread across the system. But now I believe, you know, we've always given lot of significance to this, but I understand now these days doctors are saying there is quite a bit of brain in the stomach. Am I right? Yes, what we... What do they call this? Bala, what do they call that? I heard that... The second brain, some call it and so indeed we have a lot of these nerve cells in our guts, yet if I have to choose between losing those or those nerve cells, I think I rather have the brain and I think again, we can transplant your guts and it wouldn't really fundamentally change who and what you are. I'm not so sure about the gut transplantation. It's not so widely done. No, no, no, of course, but we... Every brain has no transplantation. Anesthesize them, you can... you can change the activity of... of that autonomous system and the impact would be very different, right? Then whether you change the activity of those brain cells. So, I think we all agree that the brain is... is something important, right? And... and... No... no question about that. There's no question about whether brain is important or not, but brain is important and it's functional only because of the connectivity to the rest of the body with the neurological system. Suppose you cut something in your spine, then the brain cannot function by itself and it's meaningless, what it does. Only because it's connected. So how yoga sees brain is, not as an organ per se, it is part of the neurological system. It's like one big knot where more is happening in one place and the rest of the places. But it doesn't mean it is not happening in the rest of the place. So, that's why I said, I think through my body, this is why even if you're doing two dozen things at the same time, you don't have any level of stress because it is like... if you're just thinking just here what it means is, you bought a car with four wheels, but you drive it on one wheel all the time. Obviously, one will wear out very quickly and there's too much stress. Every time people have to do something, simple things, if they have to decide what clothes to wear, where to go, what to do, they get so stressed on a daily basis because they're using just one dimension of their intelligence, not exercising other dimensions of their intelligence. And that you can train through yoga is... Oh, definitely, yes. And I'm, as I said, struggling to understand consciousness. And again, we shouldn't be too arrogant. It's to me one of the big mysteries for science to solve, right? With this objective scientific method, some would even say it's impossible and we will never be able, with our limited mind, to understand the mind. But I'm naively optimistic. But it is true that, as you said repeatedly, maybe we should be more emphasizing the experience, right? And that is why I'm listening to these athletes of the mind and these traditions being your tradition or Buddhism or... And I think we have, first of all, considered consciousness as a taboo. It was just impossible when I started in the 90s even to find money to study consciousness and that is finally changing, but still. And next, maybe now we're too excited because we have these machines, functional MRI, and we can, you know, 3D print brains and look at how parts of the brain light up and so on and so forth. But maybe we ignore a little bit too much the phenomenology. So when I have these Buddhist monks in my machine and they talk about these different levels of consciousness and you just mentioned something like pure consciousness or intelligence, for me it's very, very difficult because I never had that experience, right? And so I think I should... No, no, no. What you're saying is... No, what you're saying is, it is difficult for me because it's not there in my memory. That's exactly what I said. If something is not in your memory, your intellect is helpless about that aspect of life. So how will it come into your memory unless it has come into your experience? You know, what is red, blue, yellow has come into your experience. That is why it's in your memory, otherwise it wouldn't be there in your memory. If you see a certain kind of food, certain kind of drink, certain kind of situation, you know what it is only because it's there in your memory, otherwise you wouldn't know. So right now something that is not yet... something that is not yet in your memory, you are trying to sort it out in your intellect. That's never going to happen. It is not that you will never be able to figure this, that's not the point. You will never be able to figure it with the kind of instruments that you're using right now. First instrument that you're using is intellect and all other instruments, whatever scientific stuff in your lab, this is all products of intellect. They all function only from data. So data means repetitive things, nothing new can ever happen in data. Consciousness means it is a memoryless intelligence, intelligence beyond memory. Unfortunately, because of the type of modern education that we have, we are making people misunderstand that memory is intelligence. You know, if you... if you read a textbook and keep it in your gut and you go to the examination hall and puke it on the paper, you will be first rank, all right? Simply because you have memory. So memory is being misunderstood as intelligence. But intelligence doesn't need memory, intelligence functions of its own accord. Intelligence can generate memory, intelligence can store memory, but it is not the basis of memory which is intelligence. Intelligence is the basis of memory. Memory is not the basis of intelligence. So would you agree that we could try to get the best of both worlds? Which... where are the two worlds? I am living in only one, which is the other one. So this... Where are you? Are you talking to me from Mars or something? I'm talking about my lab and the machines and the rational approach, but linking it to the phenomenology to, as you say, the memory, the experience. And indeed that we maybe have been ignoring it too much, right? See, in your lab, Steven, in your lab, is there any instrument which is finer than the human mechanism that you are? No. Then why are you using crude instruments instead of using the finest instrument that you have? I'm trying to combine them. I'm trying... Why? Because... so what you're saying... No, no, no, there's nothing no, because the only reason is we have all gone through an education system which doesn't trust the finest instrument on the planet. So, I wanted to ask this question because I face this a lot, Steven. Especially when I talked to neurologists and my own friends and colleagues, because they don't experience this, they... they doubt it. They doubt whether this actually exists, right? The consciousness or the intelligence part that Sadhguru is talking about. The science is all about reproducibility and repeatability, showing that again and again. Well, human beings are repeating themselves for generations. Isn't that good enough? I'm coming to that straight because they want to see that as a traditional data form. But because we don't have any instruments as of now to say that or show that or given us a PowerPoint presentation, but there are millions of people who are experiencing this and are talking about the same thing. Why don't we trust that in scientific world? Because the first question I face is, oh, there's no data, what you're talking is all nonsense. So, again, you're very open to it. That's why I'm asking you this question. Why do we go with this so-called definition of science that keeps on saying, it's not seen outside, I can't demonstrate. But we can put ourselves into that state and experience. There's a lot of people who are talking about it. So, I'm not sure why we don't account for it. And I think you're right. We should listen more to... And I think if we want, as neurologists, you anesthesiologists or psychiatrists or... So, we need to link back to that subjective experience, whatever you call it. Now, I think, and that's what I try to say to combine the best of both worlds and approaches, that if we only go with experience, well, maybe we could be limited or maybe playing wrong. No, not with one person's experience. If it is repeated in 10,000 people, is it good enough? Well, I will be here, the scientist saying it's not good enough. Because maybe 10,000 people, a million people, billions of people could somehow have false beliefs, right? It could be. And there were... No, no, we're not talking about belief, unconnected people. See, for belief you need flock, unconnected people. You can check hundred people who are not connected with each other. If we put a certain input, if the same thing is happening in all the hundred different people, is it not... is that not repeatable proof? Yes. Right now, do... is there any scientific evidence that you're alive? It's... it's... it's... the definition of life is actually still challenging for us, right? I think it's these... what is matter, how does it organizes in life and then two countries is the big questions. So, I... I'm following you in this importance of what these, whatever the number is, people are experiencing and that we really should be carefully listening to that. And sometimes I feel when talking to people like you who have... Can I say... can I say something, Stephen? I'm not saying you should listen to me. It is not necessary to listen to me because if you listen to me, it's just hair-say. I'm saying something. It may be a bloody line, who knows, all right? I'm not asking you to go by my word. I'm just saying, if you do certain thing and those results happen to you, then that is true, isn't it? You don't have to believe what I say. I'm saying, all of us, we are here, how... how are we here? The basic thing is our parents have given us what they have given us and we became that. And now we gathered our own thing in our own experiences and complex... make it much more complex. This is how we are living. So, what is the proof of this? This living is a substantial proof because it's there. It's been repeated for million generations, so it can't be questioned. So, right now the instruments that you have in the lab, whatever you said, nineties, the instrument that you had in nineties and the instruments that you have now, are they very different, more sophisticated? They are better, they always get better. They're always getting better. So, even today what you're using, definitely not good enough instruments, maybe in another twenty years they'll get much better. So, I'm saying, aren't we denying ourselves the fundamental nature of life itself simply because our instruments are not up to the mark? As you already said and everybody will agree that human mechanism right now is the most sophisticated piece of technology on the planet. So, should we not learn to use it beyond our thought, beyond our emotion, beyond our identities, beyond our prejudices, if you learn to use it, then this will clearly tell us what is what because this is the most competent machine that's out here. Yes, and yet, I'm trying to imagine a world where we would all be Sadguru's, right? Imagine... You're talking about a very, very competitive world for me. It's your work. So, I chose at one point in my life not to become neither a priest or a guru or a philosopher, but a scientist and then to use that as a medical doctor. And I'm still happy with that choice because I do think and I believe you will agree that the scientific knowledge and the technology and modern medicine has really incredibly improved our quality of life and our life expectancy and that's very important to appreciate. So, I am very happy that there are these scientists and that we have the technological advances, but at the same time, I think we should try to find some and reconnect to the spirituality or the pure experience, as you say. Would you agree with that, that it's this kind of balance? See, it is like this, if you take a motorcycle mechanic, he's very good with the motorcycles, let's say. But now you ask him to fix a computer. Well, he can use his screwdriver and open the cover. Beyond that, he doesn't know a thing about it, all right? This is just like this. Objective sciences are like this. It is always one plus one is two. That's the only way objectivity can work. You cannot say one plus one is eleven also, forget about a million, all right? You cannot say that because this is the nature of objectivity. And our objectivity is coming from our intellectual process. Intellectual process, as again I said already, it's coming from memory. So memory cannot be forged. If you forge the memory, it's a mess. I remember this is one and this is one. And now I put these two things together and say this is two. Now this has a memory basis. If I forge this, then my intellect becomes useless, all right? So intellect is handling one aspect of our life, which essentially we call it as self-preservation. For our self-preservation, our intellect is vital. Without it, we cannot function. Right now, all the things that you said, it has improved our life expectancy, it enhanced our life in so many ways. No, it has not enhanced the quality of our life at all. It has only enhanced the comfort and convenience levels in the world and definitely life expectancy. All this is definitely self-preservation, isn't it? It's survival process. So when it comes to self-preservation, our intellect is vital. Without this one functioning, you cannot survive in this world. All the five senses are functioning. They are feeding the data into your intellect and from there you're using it. How efficiently you use it will determine how efficiently you survive. So your life expectancy enhanced means your efficiency of survival has increased. That's all it is. So you are more healthy than what people were in the past. I don't think so, but suppose we are, it simply means your survival process is little more efficient. So leaving the survival process, now you're talking about consciousness. Consciousness means, see the English word consciousness is very loosely used. If you say somebody is in anesthesia, if they come back, you say, oh, he's come back to his consciousness. No, he's conscious because there are no alternate words, we use the same words. Language is a different aspect. Language is also a product of our intellect. So it can only talk in opposites. Without polarities, there is no language. Without polarities, your intellect cannot function. But when you talk about consciousness, you're not talking about two polarities. There's no A consciousness and B consciousness. There's no positive consciousness and negative consciousness, there's just one. So what doesn't have a polarity cannot be dissected with your intellect. Intellect is a sharp instrument, it can only dissect. It cannot absorb something. See, if you are using your intellect upon something, if you ask any human being, do you want your intellect sharp or blunt? They will say, I want it sharp. Why? Because it's a cutting instrument. If you're cutting instrument, if your knife is not sharp, what is the use of such a knife? So now you want to stitch your clothes, but you try to stitch that also with your knife. Then all you have is tatters. That is showing almost everybody is wearing tatters around the world today. You see, everybody spans her tone. I don't know, you are... I'm not seeing the whole of you. That's very good. If you are blue denim, say it'll be tone. So you're using your intellect to handle a subjective dimension of life. That's never going to happen. Simply because you're using a telescope to look at the virus. It's not going to work. Hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm. Okay. Um... Stephen, while you're here thinking about it, I thought I'll bring in a relevant point because you have remarked in some of your lectures that you've made a historical mistake by calling consciousness as a binary term, right? S or no. And then with your experiments and also your attempts to recover patients in coma with the instruments that you've had, now you've recorded at least four or five distinct states of consciousness or wakefulness you want to call that. The Sadhguru is saying consciousness is one. There is no polarity to it. So how do you reconcile these? So again, the term comes back to consciousness term. Just call it wakefulness or whatever. You are in all these guiding, guideline committees. You're like the president of many of these committees. And we even change that as just wakefulness and leave it there. Because it's so... So we're... Thank you for that question. Well, we are definitely struggling. And I think we have no definition of consciousness that we all agree upon. What we try to work on are somehow practical measures that, well, you and I as clinicians, when we say the patient is unconscious, what do we mean? What is the language we speak? And we will there reduce this complexity to, first of all, wakefulness, the first dimension. And that's what you see and what we all experience when we fall asleep, when you make them fall asleep during anesthesia, they somehow seem to lose awareness of their environment and then their self. During sleep, there is already this notorious exception when we dream. And I think that's fascinating. And there's lucid dreaming and illustrating the challenge for us as observers, seeing meaningful things about awareness in another person. And then these patients, as you say, in coma, who can no longer be awakened and that simply looked at from the outside as looking at eye-opening. They will never open the eyes even when we stimulate them. And then observing their behavior, which is then reduced to reflexes. But it's true that when you think about it, it's frustrating. And that is exactly why I started this research because I was not satisfied with how, as a clinician, I could say meaningful things about consciousness, the mind, subjectivity, while the only thing I'm doing at the bedside is making inferences based on some motor activity and the absence of proof is there not always proof of the absence. So to me, it seemed a historical error that we had this black and white view that the patients we see with severe brain damage were unconscious or not. And now we see all these more nuanced states like you can be more or less awake, you can be more or less awake. And we describe these very strange conditions where patients survive, eyes open, but completely unaware that we called vegetative state, we now call them unresponsive wakefulness, and then some of these are minimally conscious, which again is very frustrating because you can't communicate with them, but you know that sometimes they have, very probably, when we look with these brain imaging techniques, functioning brain and hence a functioning mind that can perceive emotions, including pain. So I'm trying to be a little bit more precise about what we consider as awareness of the environment, of the self, and how we can link it to brain networks, which is what we try to do with this global neuronal workspace in the front and the back and trying to capture it by all possible means to help clinicians reduce the uncertainty and have prognostic value, but it's still a tremendous challenge to go from there, and they're still, I think, descriptive and they have a big practical value, but I am not satisfied in terms of the explanatory power because they're truly to explain how we're having this wonderful discussion. And I'm thinking that I know for sure some things in my mind now, but how this happens to me is still a big challenge. And as you know, we also listen to patients who have a coma and we thought they were fully unconscious, but afterwards they tell us they had these wonderful experiences called near-death experiences, very, very intense, very, very positive, often, but not always, seeing themselves from the outside, this notion of light, and for some this is proof of life after death. I think it's a challenge because death is still a big, big barrier for science to study, but all of that somehow makes me more humble and look at everything with a little bit more of the amazement from, well, I, despite all my theoretical knowledge, I'm not able to explain this. And will we ever? Well, there to me, it seems very interesting that the scientific community links to this community of what I would call the athletes of the mind, right? And that's also why I myself try to do meditation so that I maybe can experience this a little bit better. And maybe we can compare it, and my initial area of research was sleep and dreaming, and I dream a lot. And then to me, it's easier to connect, but my supervisor at the time very rarely remembered his dreams, and so his approach was very different. And so imagine that I would have no dream, never, how could I, even with the best possible theoretical knowledge, understand dreams? It's, I think, important that we have the experience and the memory, as said Guru Seth, to really get to an understanding, or imagine I would be a scientist looking at color vision that me myself would only see in black and white. So even the most perfect understanding of color from a theoretical perspective in this colorblind scientist wouldn't be different the day I would truly see in color. So that's the kind of frustration I have when talking with big experts who have, I don't know how many 10,000s of hours of meditation and I know you're a very expert meditation yourself, and I'm just this little athlete, right? Trying to understand what you mean when you're talking about all these different states and nuances. And so you write, I see consciousness not even less black or white or on this gray scale, but rather all the colors of the rainbow. And it's so multi-dimensional that it's very different, difficult for us to collapse it, to reduce it, and to grasp the holiness of the experience. If I can say something, can I? Sure, sir. See, Steven, as we sit here, this is my body that is your body, distinctly established. Right now it is one hundred percent like this. I don't know what you're drinking, I can't see, but whatever you're drinking, what's in the cup is not you. The moment you drink it, after some time it becomes you. It's happening right now. So, though what you think is your body and what I think is my body is just a piece of this planet, right now it is distinctly clear this is my body that is your body, hundred percent. This is my mind and that is your mind, these are my emotions and those are your emotions, these are my experiences, those are your experiences. But there is no such thing as my consciousness and your consciousness. This is a living consciousness. We blew our own bubble. I'm sure you have that little wonderful boy who came on the screen, I'm sure he's blowing soap bubbles at you sometime. So, if you blow a soap bubble, this is my bubble, that's your bubble. Poop it went, then there is no such thing as my bubble and your bubble, there is no such thing as my air and your air. Consciousness is just like this. Right now you have blown your bubble, I have blown my bubble. This is me, that is you. But when this goes poop, there is no such thing as my consciousness and your consciousness. It is just that we are holding a certain amount of... if you want to call it as consciousness, I would prefer to call it as life because the word consciousness, as you are speaking, I'm seeing that even last time when we spoke to all Balas friends, what I see is, wakefulness and consciousness there is no clear distinction in medical terminology. See, everything that you do with your anesthesia has nothing to do with consciousness. It has something to do with body and various functions of the body. You're shutting down certain aspects of the bodily functions. One of them is transmission of pain, which is the main interest when somebody is going to surgery. You don't want to stop their heart, you don't want to stop their brain. You would like to see the transmission of pain stops. Whatever is being cut is being cut, whatever damage or fixing is that is happening, is happening. Whatever parts of the body may be being removed, what is not vital may be being pulled out, all that is happening. Only transmission of pain is not happening. This has got nothing to do with losing consciousness and gaining consciousness. There's no such thing. So we're using the word wakefulness and consciousness in a little different way and not only that, especially not just in medical terminology, generally in English language, there is no distinction between somebody's unconscious and he became conscious and consciousness as a larger possibility. So, my body, your body, my intelligence, my mind, your mind, my memory, your memory, my experiences, your experience are all different. But there is no such thing as my consciousness and your consciousness. It is just that it is only the human creature on this planet who has the neurological capability and sophistication of mechanism that if they allow it, they can access this dimension of consciousness. No other creature is really capable of accessing it. This doesn't mean there is no consciousness in them. Without that, the life process wouldn't happen. There is, there is consciousness even where there is no body, all right? Only thing is, you need a certain sophisticated instrument to access that, which is the human mechanism. This is why we consider being human is a great privilege because you have access to dimensions beyond your physical boundaries. That is the fundamental significance of being human. So, let us not misunderstand the instrument and what we see. If you take a telescope and see, you saw another galaxy. But the galaxy is not produced by the telescope. The galaxy is there. The telescope only gave you an access. Similarly, your body, your brain, whatever, I don't want to identify different things. From your hair to your toes, everything is body as far as I'm concerned, including your brain. It is just another dimension of the body. So, this body, if we keep it in a certain way, if we do not contaminate it with too many ideas, philosophies, identities, if you keep it in a certain level of openness, this will become an access point to what we are referring to as consciousness or the basis of the life that we are in a way. So, somebody can call it consciousness, somebody can call it a being, somebody says, this is God. Well, we can use as much vocabulary as you want. Essentially, we are trying to put a meaning on something which cannot be defined, which has no meaning. Meaning is a consequence of human psychological process. Psychological process is a consequence of accumulated memory. So, you cannot slap one meaning from your mind upon a limitless possibility, which is the very basis of our existence. So, this is what is the fundamental mistake that we are trying to take a piece of our psychological process and trying to understand what is consciousness. Consciousness is not something that you can understand. Understand means there must be a meaning. There is no meaning to it, there is no meaning to the existence. It's just a tremendous phenomena, but you can experience it. You have the necessary instruments to experience it, not the instruments in your lab. You as a person, you have the necessary instrument to experience this. Will you allow it or not is the only question. As I said in the beginning, it all depends on how you are identified. If your identifications are limited, you have lost the ability to experience it. If your identity is, you know, not identified with anything, you kept yourself loose like that, then there is a possibility of experiencing it. A whole lot of people under drug-induced conditions, they are claiming they experienced many things. I'm not questioning that at all, it's very much possible because one thing that I have seen happening to people under the influence of alcohol or drugies, they've lost their sense of identity. What they think they are usually is not there in them, they've become little boundary-less. Because of that, they might have accessed a certain dimension, but will that make them competent to access it whenever they want? No, hundred percent not. In fact, they may lose their faculties because they forced it upon, chemically forced something to happen. So that may not… that may damage the instrument for good and you may not be able to experience anything beyond a certain point. Can I ask you two questions? Yes, sir. So, you mentioned this instrument that permits us to access this… whatever we call it, consciousness, intelligence, but you say it's… it's for humans. So, what do you think about animals and how they perceive the world? And then the second question is this terribly challenging one. If you say that somehow, and you make the comparison with the bubble and that there is no such thing as your consciousness, my consciousness, it could be an illusion. So, how do we somehow deal with, well, what was there before you were born and what will there be when you're dead? So, these two are still burning questions about animals and the before and after this living. See, when it comes to animals, an animal is programmed in such a way that largely its life is fixed around its survival process. Let's say, for any creature for that matter, their stomach is full, their life is settled, they just sit there happily. But that's not the nature of the human being. Stomach is empty, only one problem, stomach is full, one hundred problems. This is the nature of the human being because survival is not the end game for us. Only when survival is taken care of, what is human kicks in? Till then, we are also just one more creature. When we are absolutely hungry and survival is in question, we are like any other creature. Human beings fight like any other creatures when survival is in question. Only when those things are taken care of, other dimensions of being human become a possibility. So, survival is not the end game for us, it is the beginning for us. It is the A of life. But for all other creatures, survival is the end game for us. But even among them, certain creatures are far more capable of accessing or at least being sensitive. I wouldn't say accessing, they're little more sensitive to consciousness. Wherever there is consciousness, certain creatures behave in a certain way. In India, in the yogic culture, in the Indian mysticism, everywhere you see there will be a cobra, always. Simply because we've always seen wherever there is a little bit of, you know, access to consciousness, these creatures somehow sense it and they arrive. What makes them sense it? One thing I'm guessing, this is not a certain science for me, I'm just guessing because they're stoned af. I think they're super alert and some other, in some other sense, they're very, very alert. This is a fact, this has been checked by a few people. See, for example, a cobra in southern India, it has no ears at all, no hearing mechanism. So, it has got the whole body to the ground and literally ear to the ground, you know? So, if there is going to be an earthquake in California, which is literally twelve hours away, that means almost on the opposite side of the planet, if there is going to be an earthquake in the next two days or three days, this cobra will start behaving in a certain way. If you observe it carefully, if you have mastered that observation sufficiently, you can clearly tell that there is going to be an earthquake in approximately this kind of latitude. There are people who can do that by simply observing the serpent, how it behaves, they say, there is going to be this kind of movement in some part of the planet. So, because any littlest, in even the minutest vibrations in the planet, it is able to sense. So, because of this, it has a certain awareness or rather sensitivity to certain vibrations, probably when somebody excesses what we are referring to as consciousness, the other vibrations which are normally everybody's throwing out on a day-to-day basis, their physical staff, their psychological staff, probably that becomes minimal. Lack of that reverberation is something that a cobra senses. If you become very meditative, well, it won't happen in Belgium because there are no cobras there, but if you are in India, if you become very meditative, you sit in a forest and become meditative, cobras will gather in front of you. They will come and sit there as if they are waiting for you. This is my personal experience any number of times and this is… this will be vouched for by any number of yogis in the tradition always because they are able to sense that lack of vibration in the person. When the vibrations become very minimal or very fine, somehow they are drawn to that. I feel for a variety of reasons, because in my experience I don't want to go into the detail now, but in my experience all venomous creatures, those which create venom in their system, all of them are able to sense this. Probably, you know, I'm just doing guesswork here, it's just guesswork. See, some creature generates venom within itself as a evolutionary process, probably because in some way his physical features and things are such that without a deadly venom he wouldn't have survived. He's constantly threatened. So, because he's feeling so threatened, it's also true in human beings. Those who are feeling always threatened, they will carry a lot of venom within themselves. So looking at human behavior, I'm just guessing, maybe in the evolutionary process because they don't have limbs, let us say the snakes don't have limbs, they don't have the same capabilities that other creatures have. So, they might have developed venom over a period of time because otherwise they wouldn't have survived, otherwise they wouldn't have got food to eat, everything around them moves faster, but still they manage to hunt and live only because of the venom that they carry. All venomous creatures, I've noticed this with bees, you know, the honeybees, the way they behave around me many, many times I've noticed is very strange. In the beginning when it happened I couldn't believe how these insects seem to be sensing something which nobody else, you know, human beings don't know most of the time, but they're able to see it. I've generally noticed this with all venomous creatures because to generate that venom, there is some special process going on within them from what I hear from other scientists and, you know, people who are working in the field, they are saying venom is one of the most complex proteins that are produced on the planet and today for various neurological ailments the experiments are going on how venom could be a solution in the future because, you know, in my personal experience, consuming venom has done miracles to me in terms of rejuvenating my body and doing things with myself in so many different ways. If you are... I don't know if you aren't Bala, not aware of this, there are certain type of yogis who always carry these mountain scorpions which are almost like nine inches long in a box. Once in a way, they will decide when they will take a sting from the scorpion, your whole neurological system will jangle. It'll go for twenty-four hours to forty-eight hours, it won't let you sleep, it will just keep you up and between pain and pleasure, there is very little distinction. Once the neurological system gets tangled, you know, like jangled in a certain way, you can make it into pain, you can make it into pleasure consciously. So they will cry, they will laugh, they will cry, they will laugh, they will go through this for whole twenty-four to forty-eight hours because they are using the venom to just shake up the whole neurological system. So, having said that, somewhere certain creatures have little more access to these things, they may not have access to consciousness, but where there is access to consciousness, they are able to sense that. In my understanding, or I would rather say my presumption is that, that they are able to mark out those creatures or those bodies who are least amount of reverberations in them. Where there is least amount of reverberation is like a little bit of a vacuum for them. So they are drawn towards that and at the same time they will not harm that, you know, that kind of reverberation because they feel very passive. Like I don't know right now in the video, as I was watching it, there is a video where I'm holding a king cobra, not by the head, but in the body, it is not a pet cobra or something. We've just caught it three, two, three days before that is being filmed there. And king cobra, if it bites you, you have six to eight minutes to live. That said, it has enough venom to kill an elephant, but it will not bite. It all depends, if you show a little anxiety, it will bite you. If you are just absolutely calm, it will not touch you because it's going by the reverb that you generate. So, having said that, this consciousness as a dimension, let's call it a dimension, let's not call it as an experience of wakefulness and sleep, different levels of wakefulness. Well, even when you're awake, not everybody is awake to the same extent, isn't it? Suppose you're teaching in a university, right? Do you find all the students awake to the same level? When I teach, when I teach, yes, high perfectionism. He actually uses that analogy in his lectures. He uses it analogy where he picks his participants in a lecture and he analyzes and tells them, you're not this much awake and you are this much awake and alert to invent his own techniques. So, no two human beings are awake to the same extent. So, this whole dimension, if we change the terminology a little bit, probably it will fall into a little better place of understanding, maybe not entirely, but little better. That is, right now when we talk about anesthesia or even coma, for that matter, they may be very similar, I don't know medically how you differentiate between the two. Essentially, bodily functions have dropped step by step. In one person, a certain number of functions might have dropped, in another person it might have dropped further and I will take it further. Even what you call as death is just further drop in the bodily functions. So, whether it is death, coma, anesthesia, in my understanding and my experience of things, they are not very different. It is just different levels of profoundness of the same thing. When you become completely unawake, that means you're dead. You're a little bit awake means you're in coma. You're a little more awake means you're under the influence of anesthesia. Little more awake means you just had a drink. And your experience, but you have not yet died. Let's not go into that now. We'll go into it some other day because you… are you in Brussels? Yes, close to Brussels. Okay, so unless… unless you serve me French fries, I'm not going to talk all those things to you right now. I will offer you French fries and Belgian chocolate. Well, about when you said before being born and after the death process has happened, see, death is a social thing. It is not existentially right to say death because a certain life, like I… we were talking about bubbles as an analogy. Let's continue that bubble. So right now you've blown that big bubble. This bubble has a material, the soap. Depending upon the soap quality, the tenacity of the bubble and how long it lasts is determined by the type of soap and the quality of soap and whatever. So this soap or this structure for this is what we are traditionally referring to as karma. What karma means is accumulated memory, which is giving us a shape and a form. So as long as this karmic memory is there, it will contain this life inside. So right now, let's say you were born as this big bubble, but this time around you really made some efforts and made this into a… this big bubble, possible. So suppose now, let me not take you as an example, let's say I die. Okay? It's easy for me to die. So if I die right now, well, I leave the body here because the body is just what we have collected from this planet. It has to go back. It's just a material that you've picked up to walk through this planet, to do activity in this planet. But the life that you are is still contained in your karmic bubble. Life itself is not yours. That we are referring to as consciousness or life is not yours. It is always there, but you have captured this much. Depending upon how much life you capture, see it is not just about the data, it's not about the intelligence. Depending upon how much life you capture, accordingly the significance of your life will be determined by that. When I say significance, you as a life, not socially significant, not significant in the world, that is just a consequence. In certain times, people may recognize that significance. In another time, they may not recognize. If you came here a thousand years ago and you say, I'm a neurologist, they will say, they'll just dismiss you. Can you wield a sword or not? That's all they would ask you in Brussels, all right? If you cannot, you're out. So I'm saying today, in 21st century, you being a neurologist is important because there is a situation, it's a consequence of time. So let's not take that activity as the basis. But the profoundness of your experience is determined by how much life you have captured, how significant you feel when you sit here, not in the context of society, not with reference to somebody else, not comparing myself to somebody and saying, I'm bigger than somebody. But when you simply sit here, this is why closing eyes is so important. When you close your eyes, you shut off the world. When you sit here, what is the significance of your existence? This is determined by how much life you capture. So the entire yogic system or one important dimension of yogic system is to see how I capture more life into this one. So that if I sit here, this is a very significant life. Whether others will understand the significance, whether the significance will find expression in the world or not, these are subject to variety of outside realities. But in your experience, you are phenomenally significant because you captured such an immense possibility of life. So once this happens, now it is held together by this karmic bubble or let us say it's a kind of a software. Most of the software may be gathered unconsciously, but it is a certain kind of software which holds this together. Even if we die, the body gets left here, discerning mind goes with the body, rest of the information and this is already there. But now because there is no discerning mind, this bubble cannot go where it wants to go. Now it will just go by its tendencies. It's very beautifully described. In the yogic culture, we call these tendencies as vasanas. The word vasana literally means smell. So it depends what kind of smell it has. Accordingly, it gets drawn to certain things. Accordingly, it will draw certain things towards itself, depending upon how vibrant this karma is. Accordingly, it stays in a limbo for that kind of period. If it has already become very feeble, it will try to find another form, physical form. If it has not become feeble, it exists by itself for a certain period of time. When I say period of time, when we are in the body, see right now, for you to know what, how long we've been sitting here, you don't have to look at your watch. You just ask your lower back, it will tell you how long you've been sitting here. Or you ask your urinary bladder, it will tell you how long you've been sitting here. So body is keeping time. Time is a concern for us only because we have a physical body. If we did not have a physical body, we can sit here for ten thousand years. There's no problem. So once you don't have a physical body, the time-space experience is not the same. But still, the experience of being pleasant or unpleasant is still there. There's a whole dimension to this. I think Bala, you must send Stephen the death book. I just published a book on death. It's been an eight-year work and it's just come out. And I'll ask Bala to send it to you or we can send it from UK probably. Thank you. Stephen, so... couple of questions to Sadhguru, right? So what determines... I hope I have not said something very unscientific that keeps you... Oh, oh, oh, yes you did, oh, yes you did. That was the idea. That's why I'm here. That was the idea. What determines how much life you capture, Sadhguru? One thing is, you must have enough software. That means you must have enough karma. So most of the time, people are trying to avoid karma. When I say avoid karma, people are trying to minimize their imprints in life in so many ways as to what they take in. Suppose... let's say I don't like you, Bala. That's not a fact, I'm just telling you as an example. Suppose I really don't like you. I just can't stand you. So what will I do? I will avoid you. This means what? I'm trying to avoid some nasty impressions that may come upon me if I meet you. Now you're avoiding karmic material. So this is why in yoga we say, you... you... somebody comes and says, I don't like this person, then I put those two people in the same department so that every day they build some karma and learn to transcend that. This is not a social process. There is an internal process to this that you're taking in imprints but not reacting to it because your experience becomes beautiful or nasty depending upon how you react to it. So first and foremost fundamental training that you need to go through is you learn to respond, not react. Reaction is instinctive. Reaction... reaction is based on past memory and conclusions that we have made. Response is happening out of your conscious response right now. So you learn to respond, not react. Once you learn to respond and not react, you will take a tremendous amount of material because you have no hesitation about every... anything for that matter. Once you have so much karmic substance, now you can blow a big bubble. You need good soap to make a big bubble, not air. There's no dearth for air. There's a whole bubble of atmosphere out here. But what you need is a certain tenacious soap which will blow a big bubble for you. Otherwise, if you have... No, I don't want to name any brand. Some brand came to my mind. If you have a bad soap, only this big bubble will come. If you try to make this, it'll go put. So if you want to blow a big bubble, what is needed is not air because air is anyway there. At least in the context of who we are, it is a limitless amount of air. It is not really limitless but still it is limitless in... from the context of our lungs at least, it's quite limitless. So there is limitless amount of air, there is limitless amount of life and consciousness in the universe, but the question is, do you have the necessary quality soap to blow it big and hold it? So you don't avoid anything when... when something outside of you does not determine the nature of your experience, that is when you are willing to take on everything. When something outside of you makes you either happy or unhappy, you will try to choose only those things which give you pleasant experiences, those things which give you unpleasant experiences, you will try to shun. So if you really look at in the world, most people, if you look at people's experiences in the world, most people can't stand almost the entire humanity. Their neighbor means must stop there only. Friend means still here, but he must stop here. If he crosses this line, there will be trouble. Well, a spouse means here. If they cross that, there will be trouble. A child means here, but if he crosses that, that also will be trouble. I'm saying for everybody, there is a boundary. If they cross that boundary, there is trouble. So in a way, if you really look at it, actually nobody is hundred percent okay with anybody. So this is the fundamental thing we need to change. People are trying to teach this in roundabout ways. They're saying, you must love everybody, you've tried, it doesn't work. People say, you must be compassionate, be this, be that. All you're trying to do is that you are not in a state of reaction, but you will consciously respond. Or in other words, you want to make your experience of life so pleasant within yourself, no matter who comes, how nasty they are, it will not cause nasty experiences within you. Once you have this insurance that somebody else and something else, either a person or a situation, cannot show the experience of who you are, only then you're truly open to every kind of experience. Now you have a super soap. You can blow up very big bubble. But can I ask something? Yes, sir. Is that... So you would advise somehow that meditation can help us blow a bigger bubble? See, once again, this is a very vague term in English language. When you say meditation, if somebody sits here with us closed, in English language we say, he's meditating. But with us closed we can do many things. We can do japa, tapha, dharana, dhyana, samadhi, sunya, samyama. Or you may just, as you know, in the universities they have mastered the art of sleeping in vertical postures. No, no, not in your class, no, no. So there may be horizontal in your programs. So it's true that then it becomes... the term meditation becomes kind of meaningless is what you say, because it stands for... It is not specific. It's generally saying something. So, let us say you're chanting something. People say that's also meditation. No, that's called japa. Japa, if you do it in another form, the same chanting is called tapha, because tapha is used to generate heat in the body. What you were talking about Tibetan monks, most of them are doing tapha because they're using it in a certain way to generate heat in the system. Because if you generate a certain kind of prana or life energy in a certain form, which is called as samat prana, if you generate that, body generates enormous amount of heat. And this heat is not just as temperature, it's called usna. It activates a certain level of perception. It makes you very healthy. It will allow you to live with very minimal amount of food and water. All these capabilities will come because your samat prana or samana prana is high. That is what generally they are trying to do. They are trying to do tapha. So that is… you want to call that meditation? No, it is tapha. If you do the same thing with a different tilt to it, it becomes japa. If you do dharana, that means you're focused on something, you're concentrating on something, that's called dharana. So if there are… if there is you and there is something else, an object and you're very well focused and you and the object are connected, that means it is dharana. So you are so focused, one of you disappeared. Either you disappeared or the object of focus disappeared. It is either just the object or just you. It is merged into one in your experience. Then we call this dhyana. Suppose both disappeared. The observer and that which is observed both disappeared and there's an explosion of energy. This we called as dhyana. Samadhi is called something else and… I'm sorry, that is called samadhi. And further samyama, there are various other aspects like this. So I don't want to go into all that stuff. But fundamentally, the word meditation is not saying anything particular. So if we have to put a definition to that, what I would say is meditation is a certain quality. It is not an act. It is not an act that you perform. It's like fragrance of a flower. The fragrance is a consequence. But because today the world as humanity has become so goal-oriented, they want the consequence. They are always aiming towards the consequence. No, you cannot create the consequence. If you do the process properly, consequence happens. Right now, we have eaten well, we are breathing and everything is fine. So life is happening. In a way, our experience of life is a consequence. We are alive because of a consequence of various processes that we are doing right. If you do any of those things wrong, the consequence of experience of life will not be there. So similarly, meditation is a consequence. It is a quality. It cannot be done, but it can be made to happen. If you cultivate your body, if you cultivate your thought process, if you cultivate your emotion and your energies to a certain level of maturity, you become meditative. It is not like in the morning, evening you do meditate, not like that. You become meditative as a quality you carried with you. So, if we want to further technically define this, essentially I would say because I am assuming meditation means dhyana. It is an assumption. Because somewhere you have to fix it, otherwise it is all over the place. If you call it as dhyana, that means if you sit here, in your experience clearly, the body is here, your mind is here, what is you is somewhere else. There's three clear distinct identities. That means there is a distinct separation or space between what is you and what you have gathered in your life. Once this space is there, this is the end of suffering. Because there are only two kinds of suffering in human life. Physical suffering and mental suffering. Once there is a distance between you and the body, between you and the mind, this is the end of suffering. Once there is no fear of suffering, that is when you will naturally access what we are referring to as consciousness or chitta because now you have no fear of suffering. Once there is no fear of suffering, you are willing to climb any peak. It's only the fear of suffering which curtails a human being. Once this possibility of suffering is taken away from you, you would also like to go and see how hell looks, what hell looks like. Because anyway you cannot suffer, actually Gautama said this. When people were all talking about going to heaven, attending to this, he said, you say in heaven everything is wonderful, what will I do there? In hell everybody is suffering, let me go there and see what I can do because anyway I cannot suffer. So once there is no fear of suffering, you walk full stride in your life. Otherwise, no matter how adventurous people think they are, they are only half a step all the time because the fear of suffering is always lurking in their minds. And Sadhguru, do you think that the patients I see in my consultation who are suffering, they have migraine, headaches, anxiety, depression, that they could benefit from meditation and as now is very popular in western countries, these mindfulness techniques? They are already suffering because their minds are too full. They need to come to... They need to come to some sense of abandon, you know. So each person may be in different level of development, it's not like a general prescription I can make, but becoming meditative will help, absolutely. But can you make them meditative in a clinic? I doubt that because you can't suddenly make them meditative. Some people may, some people may be ready for it and it may happen. But can you make everybody meditative or doctor can make somebody meditative with just a few instructions? No, because it will need a certain amount of induction. They have all the ingredients for it to happen, but still it doesn't happen because there's no induction. So there needs to be some charge for them to, you know, get into that place. Somebody may be ready for japa, somebody may be ready for tapha, somebody may be ready for dhyana, dharana. This is an evaluation that has to be made for each individual. If suppose I met somebody, they are twenty years of age, I may teach them something. The same person, he practiced for three, four years, he was feeling great and then he gave it up for whatever reasons. Now at forty years of age he comes. Now I will teach him something totally different because he's not the same person anymore. He may think he is the same person, but he is not the same person anymore because everything has changed. His perception, his experiences, his accumulations, everything have changed. So accordingly one has to do this. This is the… this has always been the traditional significance of having a live guru so that he will mix the right cocktail for you. Otherwise there's no punch. Thank you. I will go do my yoga. Don't tell me now. It has been a very fascinating discussion. I can go on and on, I have so many burning questions, but I think it's been more than an hour and a half. So I would like to wrap up. At least one thing I would like to see you, Stephen, do is at least bring it a discussion about using the term wakefulness as a way of different levels of wakefulness in your practice and in neurology world and then leave consciousness out completely. And that way probably you can explain so many things in your lab and what you're finding and how you have been successful in restoring some of the Kamantho's patients back to their normal lives. So thank you so much for doing your work and also being open to explore this aspect with Sadhguru and us. You know, it's just… there's so much more. He's an ocean by himself. As you… as your… as your lab machines improve, one day you may be able to raise the dead, huh? Because it's just another… another level of wakefulness and sleep. Like my favorite philosopher says, James Bond, never say never. I didn't think you were English, huh? I added to a Canadian psychologist. After the brex… after the Brexit, you must change your philosopher, okay? Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Bala, thank you very much.