 Sushupti means it is a dreamless state, but there are dimensions of consciousness that you are aware of. The neurological system in the body, if we have a way of monitoring that, I think the entire art of anesthesia could raise to a different level at a very minimum interference. When you disengage with memory, suddenly there is no past, present and future. So there is no time, because there is no time, there is no space. So I will tell you why this started. Two years ago we were in a conversation with Sadhguru and I asked him, we all know that anesthesia works, but we really don't know how it works and can you share some light on it? And he talked to me briefly and then he said, a statement which is anesthesia, correct me if I'm wrong, Sadhguru, because sometimes I may be wrong. If I'm quoting you specifically, anesthesia cannot touch consciousness, it can only take away memory. I was blown away by that answer because that's not the way we think consciousness is off. And maybe I thought several days I've had sleepless nights thinking about, maybe it's time for us to redefine the term consciousness itself. And having gone through several programs with him, I think there are some glimpses here and there to know that there's much more than what we know of. That's how this started and so Emery, you were the one who has been doing a lot of work in this area, so you can probably start off telling me what we know now of how anesthesia actually causes lots of consciousness. Okay, so I'll start and so again, it's a pleasure to share the stage with Sadhguru and with Niko. So how does anesthesia work? Actually, how many people here had anesthesia? Oh, great topic, right? Yeah, right, right. Thought of the plants out there. Exactly, right, all right, fantastic. So what happened to you? Some people say we turn the brain off or we make you unconscious, we put you in a coma. So we've tried to really understand what's happened. And we've done this by doing a number of studies in humans as well as in animals. And so I'll just give you the quick back of the envelope way to think about it. When you take the anesthesia drugs or when they're given to you by the anesthesiologist, the brain isn't turned off, you know, it's not like all of a sudden the switch flips. If you look at what happens to the brain, it's actually in a highly, highly dynamic state. The actual circuits in the brain are oscillating, they're creating waves. And to give you some sense of this, if you look at my hands like this and they're oscillating now, this is the way your brain is in a normal state of, forgive me, consciousness, right? All right, all right, all right. As I understand it, my little limited way, all right, all right. But then what happens is the drugs take over the circuits and now the circuits oscillate like this. And as long as you keep the drugs there, they're doing that. Now what does that mean? It means that if this brain area was communicating with that brain area so that you could be conscious, it can no longer do that. When you turn the drugs off, the brain returns. As long as you keep the drugs on it, it does this. It creates these oscillations. It's very much like this YouTube video, which I'm sure some of you have seen where you have a bridge in Tacoma, Washington. I don't know if you've seen this, the bridge in Tacoma, Washington. And all of a sudden it starts to oscillate in a perfect sine wave just like this. And no traffic can go across the bridge. It's the same thing that happens under anesthesia. And what happens is that these oscillations, because they're so strong, they take over the brain, they're not natural. One of the things that Bala mentioned was that after anesthesia, our brains often don't work the way they did beforehand. So now you can see if you've been in a state like this for four hours, six hours, eight hours, and look, I got my AARP card about 12 years ago myself, so I'm in that category too. You can understand why your brain may not work. And basically that's it. And what's good about that, what's good about what I'm telling you is that we as anesthesiologists can see this state. We can see it on the EEG of patients in the operating room. And we can use it to change the way we deliver our drugs. That's the practical implication of this. And then the other practical implication of it is that as we take anesthesia seriously, in other words, don't say, oh, we just give you drugs and you go away and you come back. As we take it seriously and study it, then we can start interacting with our neurology colleagues and make links between problems that they're working on. We can actually begin to have conversations with distinguished individuals like Sadguru who can help us understand what is it we're actually doing on a deeper level. But if we haven't taken what we do seriously in terms of what's happening in the brain, we're not in that position. And that's where I'd like to think that we're trying to move the research now. To, in other words, use anesthesia, the study of anesthesia to help us connect with some of these deeper ideas about the brain, the mind, and also consciousness. David, do you have any thoughts on that? Do I have any thoughts on how we are doing? How we're connecting anesthesia to the... Yeah. So what we work on as neurologists or what I work on is very related and very connected in that we're trying to understand how patients who lose consciousness because they've had a structural brain injury or a cardiac arrest or some other kind of problem can reestablish the process of a conscious state in a brain that's been injured. And what are the rules of the recovery and what are the ways in which it can happen and what are the limitations and how do people get stuck along the way and could we help them? And it turns out that there's a lot of, you know, variation. Sir Guru. Dr. Brown and Dr. Schiff highly accomplished doctors in their areas of proficiency that I am completely on school. So because for me the only way I know anything I know is from my own experience. So my language and my expression could be a bit abrasive or if it seems abrasive, please pardon me because I'm nearly illiterate. So this first of all the nature of the language that we are speaking, I'm talking about the English language. This language is very good for describing and defining external things that is very limited when it comes to internal dimensions of many aspects of who we are. So if we have to use yogic terminology for this, what you're referring to as consciousness is considered as jangruti, that means wakefulness. We do not consider wakefulness as consciousness. Wakefulness is the state of the body. Wakefulness is the state of the mind. Wakefulness is the state of the bio energies within us. But that's not consciousness. What you're seeing as physical body, well one thing I would like to clarify is we do not look as brain as a very significant aspect because we see intelligences right across the system. Generally in most people's understanding I believe a combination of memory and intelligence is considered as mind. If you take this as a definition, it is a fact that every cell in our body carries millions of fold much more memory than the entire brain can carry because these cells in the body remember even what happened a million years ago, it remembers the skin tone of your forefathers from a million years, nothing has changed. It never gets confused. So what you can carry in the brain as conscious memory what every cell or every DNA is carrying is phenomenally more and the chemical dimension of what is being conducted in every cell is far more complex than you could ever figure with your entire brain. So both in terms of intelligence and memory, the spread is much more. I think this entire focus on brain has come mainly because somewhere probably pre-Renaissance time we broke into this because that region largely we're talking about Europe where it was hugely dominated by very dogmatic belief systems. When people broke through that nobody was supposed to think for themselves. Everything was already said and done. When people broke through that and started thinking for themselves thinking little freely looked like absolute liberation for those people. And I think that hangover still lasts in our education systems, in our medical sciences in the very way we approaching even fundamental sciences that hangover, that thought is everything is very profoundly influencing our social structure and our way of exploration. In the yogic sciences we don't attach any significance to your thought. Whatever you're thinking it's of no consequence to me. This is why I, whatever somebody is saying we don't listen to them. We just feel them, we just feel them. What is their chemistry, what is their, how they are right now. I don't care what they are saying. This is how maybe it's an evolutionary problem with me because I've been in jungles by myself and I've seen most creatures judge you just like this. I've, you know, I think they showed a picture of me having a king cobra. I've been very slowly involved with all kinds of creatures particularly cobras and things. Their sense of our chemistry is so keen. You can just go in the wild and just pick up a cobra. As you saw I'm not holding him by his head. He's not a pet cobra, he's a king cobra. If he bites you he won't give you more than twenty to forty minutes before you're done. But I'm just picking him up like this. He will do nothing because he's feeling my chemistry. If I show little agitation he'll go for me. If I'm just, okay, he's fine with me. So we don't attach any significance to thought because thought is recycling of the data that we have already gathered. No thought can come which is absolutely fresh. Permutations and combinations of the data that we already have. Right now a lot of people coming up to me very fearfully and saying sattguru this artificial intelligence is coming if they come they will take over the world. I said if they take over and run the damn thing you're on a holiday, isn't it? But it is a fact that everything that we can gather as information analyze and express and use it in many ways all these things machines will be doing it better than us in the next ten to fifteen years time. Everything that is data-based processing, machines will do way better than us. So there is this fear, I think it's a very good time. This is the time we need to explore an intelligence beyond intellect. Because we have become so intellectual we have become so brain oriented in our approach to everything. As you rightly said, nothing is really turned off, we've just broken the communication. After all the purpose is to go through something which is generally extremely painful without pain. That is how the entire anesthetic sciences come up. So you're just breaking the communication and that's not happening itself that purpose. So being wakeful and being conscious are two different things. This is described like this. For wakefulness we have a word or a jagrati. Jagrati means you're awake. If ten people, let's say we take example of ten people, they all fell asleep, don't do it, okay? They all fell asleep and they came awake. When they come awake, all of them will not be equally awake. One person may be instantly awake, another person may take two minutes as you will notice with anesthesia. Another person will take an hour to wake up, another person needs a strong coffee, otherwise she won't wake up. Am I right? Like this, different levels of wakefulness is also there. Professors must have noticed. Yes, yes. In fact the first few minutes of the day can be like that. Different levels of wakefulness in a classroom. So this is jagrati. So we are calling wakefulness as consciousness now. The next dimension of consciousness is called swapna. This means a dream state. A dream state is far more vivid than wakeful state for most human beings. It's like going to a cinema. If you go to a cinema, the key factor of the impact of the cinema on you is turning off the lights. This is something most people don't understand. If you don't turn off the lights, cinema will be no good, it doesn't matter how well it's made. Turn on the lights and watch the cinema, you will see a great cinema becomes nothing. So turning off the lights is important. So turning off the lights in our experiences, the eyelids, you down the shutters, the world is off. Now you start your own world. So dream state is like a cinema. It's far more impactful. People love their cinema stars more than the people that they've lived with for twenty-five years. But they have not even seen them. All they saw was play of light and sound. But that is far more impactful simply because lights are off. So eyelid is that. If you roll it down, light should be off. World should be closed. But right now the problem is this mental faculty has not been taken to your office. So it's running wild all the time with eyes closed. So this dream state is considered a more powerful state than jagrati. Jagrati or wakefulness is important for performing action in the world. But for human consciousness, in terms of profoundness of experience, dream is always more profound than walking on the street. Yes? Most of you have experienced this. The next state is called as susupti. Susupti means it is a dreamless state. But there are dimensions of consciousness that you're aware of. It's a totally dreamless sleep state, but you're aware. There is no picturization. There is no video running in your mind. There's no pictures. There are no people. There are no words. But you're conscious in your sleep. This is a very powerful state. If you really want to manifest something in your life, this is something to be explored. And the next one is called as turya. This is consciousness where there is no memory involved of any kind. Essentially in the yogic sciences, we are looking at consciousness as an intelligence beyond memory. If there is memory, memory is considered a boundary in a sense. This is one person, this is another person, simply because this embodies one kind of memory and that embodies another kind of memory. This has become one kind of person, this has become another kind of person. Essentially, it is in the memory. Memory does not mean just what I remember and you remember. Genetic memory is there, evolutionary memory is there, elemental memory is there, atomic memory is there, karmic memory is there. Inarticulate and articulate memories are there. But generally we are thinking memory means consciously what we can remember. But today, if we eat dog food, we will not become dogs. Something within us remembers, no matter what you eat, this has to be only transformed into a human being. It doesn't matter what you eat. If you and a cow every day eat a mango, no merger will happen. Perfect memory is established, evolutionary memory is absolute. So these different dimensions of memory are playing on a daily basis. People are thinking their thoughts are free. It's a joke because your memory is determining everything. So largely in one single word we call this karma. Karma means the residual impact of all the memory that you have. How it is impacting every thought, every emotion, every action, the very way you sit and stand. See if you see somebody walking far away, let's say half a mile away you see someone walking. If he's your friend, just the way they're moving their body, you say, oh, that's him. There are seven billion plus people. But this particular man walks in a unique way. All right? Just do like walking, everybody walks but still it is so unique. So this is what we are referring to as karma, that the residual impact of memory, varieties of memory. We recognize memory as eight basic forms of memory which are determining how you are right now. The very way you sit, stand, breathe, understand, perceive, life is determined by this memory. But there is an intelligence beyond memory, which we call as Turiya or Chitta. This is consciousness. Now every one of us is conscious. The question is only of degree. Even a rock is conscious, a dog is conscious, a pig is conscious. The question is only of degree, how conscious? Even among us, how conscious is different from person to person. So this degree of consciousness determines everything. Now if we have to give an analogy, what is memory is like? I'm sure to every one of us at some stage in our life, I don't know if you're still doing it, we blew soap bubbles, did you? Hello? Come on, everybody raise their hand for Anastasia. So when you blow a soap bubble, the soap part of it, which is very little, just a tiny drop, the large part of it is air that it captures. So how big a bubble? When you were children, who can blow the biggest bubble was a big deal. And it has a certain amount of technique. Yes. How you do it? Somebody blew this big bubble, somebody got only this much. So how big a bubble, this bubble is like this, the kind of soap and how it gathers is your memory. It forms a, it gives it a form. But when the memory bursts, there is no such thing as your air and my air. There is no such thing as your consciousness and my consciousness. There is something called as your body and my body. There is something called as your memory and my memory. There is something called as your intellect and my intellect. But there is nothing called as your consciousness and my consciousness. How much of it did you capture? How big is your bubble? Will determine the scale of your life. The scale and possibilities of your life or determined by how big a bubble did you blow? Well, let me pose you a question, Sahagura. So we can perhaps work as individuals to, now that I know I take away wakefulness and not consciousness, right? To move towards consciousness. And that's an individual's decision to maybe train in this particular way. So is there some way that we can harness these insights like you have? Harness these, this understanding. And use it as anesthesiologist to take care of patients? Because if we can reduce it to, or if we can adapt it, I should say reduce it, we can adapt it in that way. You know, that would be very, very helpful because we would be using the powers in a way that would control, half use the word, the brain, in a way that would be perhaps more physiologic. I'm not the expert in the subject, but because you are asking me the question and say something, but you are the expert in anesthesiology, is it? Yes. I'm sorry. I, in my simple understanding, anesthesia as a process has come into being in this world or is existing right now because there is pain. Pain, when it happens to us, is a bad thing, nobody wants pain. But at the same time, if there was no pain, most people would not even know how to preserve their own body. See, wherever there is no pain in how many ways they've cut it. Suppose there was no pain in your nose, they would have cut it in various shapes, this part of the fashion. There's no pain at all, believe me, they would have pulled out intestines and swing it on the street and go. You have any doubt about that? None whatsoever. So, essentially because there is pain in the body and pain is a protective mechanism because most human beings still don't have the necessary intelligence even to preserve themselves. If there was no pain, even if a bicycle comes, people step back, don't think this is out of civilization. Consequence of pain. Because no pain, even if a truck comes, they would just walk. Yes, they would. So, because of pain, so pain is essentially a protective mechanism for us. Without it, people wouldn't know how to stay alive, how to stay in one piece, they would have cut themselves into pieces. So, but sometimes, as what is called a surgery is in some way cutting people up. So you… it has become a necessity to cut someone, how to cut them with minimum amount of disturbance to the system. That's the whole effort. So in this effort, as you said, essentially you're disengaging different parts of the brain. I don't know if it's an exact science or it's generally getting disengaged, whichever way. Is it getting effectively disengaged that people go through surgeries without even knowing what happened when something major was done to them, their ribs were opened up, ribcage was opened up, heart was opened up, brain was opened up, they don't even know what happened. Very innocently they wake up after a day or so, whatever the amount of time. So this is anesthesia. How could we use… See, one dimension, because when you… when we were speaking in the room, when you said, essentially, if I'm wrong, please correct me, you're monitoring the physiological systems of heartbeat, blood pressure and temperature and brainwaves, whatever else, the physiological factors. If… I don't know if it's even a possibility, but if you find a way to monitor the neurological system, ignoring the physiological system completely, see, the concern maybe, the moment you put somebody on the table and start opening the body, the concern of a doctor or a surgeon may be that you don't want him dead on the table. So you're watching his heartbeat, you're watching his pulse and you're watching his all the other parameters. I understand and appreciate that concern, but instead of, okay, let's leave the physiological monitoring as it is, but if we have a way, I don't know if there is a way in the medical science, if we monitor the neurological system, not just the brain, the neurological system in the body, if we have a way of monitoring that, I think the entire art of anesthesia could raise to a different level at a very minimum interference. It could happen because why I'm saying this is, there is something called as marma in yoga and also in what is called as khalari in South India, it's a certain form of martial art. Marma is a way of creating... killing the pain completely at certain moments when we want to, just by touching certain parts of the body, handling body in a certain way. So essentially what we're doing is the neurological system, we're shutting it off and there is no pain at all. We can go ahead and do what we have to do and only when we release it, the pain will come back. So using that as a basis, I'm saying, if medical science has a way of monitoring the neurological impulse as it's happening and if there is some way to introduce... introduce anesthetics in whatever form that you use, I don't know all the cocktails that are used, but if it is done properly, probably... I'm just guessing, I'm not an expert on this, probably with 2% or 3% of your medicine, you could still have the same effect on the patient because how you use any medicine on the body and how you use it on the neurological system, I would say 1% of what you use on the muscle, if you use it on the nerve, it would produce equal effect. But it's interesting because I think what you're saying has contact also with the work that we do in the recovery phase and there are people now looking very carefully at cardiac and brain interactions and they do signal some of these changes and it's suggestive that maybe more of the body could be engaged in the way we think and measure and that makes a lot of sense to me actually. Can I ask you another question? So, I did a little reading about you and he's not as uneducated as he would have you believe, he's actually quite an expert here and I was curious because I think it was back in 1982 when you had your first enlightenment experience, I think and there's a story here. So, you mentioned how it seemed like only 10 or 15 minutes had gone by but what had happened is that you'd been out in this state for like maybe four hours or so when you actually came to and looked at your watch. The analogy is this is what people under anesthesia report all the time. In other words, they have this sense that no time has passed. You were not around that day. Maybe I'm reaching but they report a very similar phenomenon that it seems like they'll wake up sometimes from anesthesia and they'll go, have you started yet? You're done? They're actually quite surprised. I'm sure our timekeeping mechanism is, right? It's actually, it's different from sleep. It's noticeably different from sleep because often when you sleep except in some rare instances, you have a sense that time has passed. You know, you went to sleep, you woke up, you may not be able to judge it exactly but characteristically under anesthesia when people come to they feel like no time has passed. Any thoughts? See our sense of time, the only way human beings know time is by the cyclical moment of things that are happening. If the earth spins once, we call it a day. If the moon goes around the earth, we call it a month. If the planet goes around the sun, we call it a year. Or if the clock goes around, we call it an hour. So only by cyclical moments, we know time. What cyclical moment means is all physical dimensions of the existence from atomic to cosmic exists only because of cyclical moments. Anything physical in the universe is naturally cyclical. So the entire yogic process is just about this how to transcend the cyclical moment of our existence because cyclical moment means we are going in circles. If I tell somebody you're going in circles, what does it mean? It means you're not getting anywhere. So this is the fundamental ethos that once you're attached to cyclical moments of life you're not really getting anywhere. But it feels like you're going somewhere. Today everybody knows this experience because most of them walk only on the treadmills. I was in conversation with Ed Bagley who is an environmentalist and he said if somebody from another planet comes here some aliens come here and see we drive to the gymnasium and then cycle inside the gymnasium on a stationary bicycle, what will they think? So cyclical moments signifies physical existence. Physical existence as today fundamental physics is talking about it forever the yogic sciences have been saying this it is a minuscule of the larger space. It is just some 0.000 some percentage, negligible percentage all of us together and the planet and the universe and everything. The physical universe is just way below 1% of the cosmic space. That is true even with the individual atom even in the individual atom the substance is way below 1%. So this minuscule is our engagement. How I see in my experience is it's only the footprint. We are so engaged with the footprint. You know I have been in the jungles of south India for long periods of time. At one time I was involved in tiger census. So for days on end we followed the tiger's footprints. We saw only the footprint, we have not seen a damn tiger. So till you see the tiger by footprints whatever imagination you have tiger breaks it for you. When it growls at you, it's all common. You know you studied the footprint, you thought you understood how he does things, his behavior, everything you understood by his footprints how he moves, what he does. But when you see him all this knowledge together vanishes in one moment. Fortunately he didn't make breakfast out of you. But even just seeing him everything vanished. So right now we are just studying the footprint. Consciousness the remaining 99 point whatever percentage that is there in the atom that's there in the cosmos. Consciousness and atom has captured a miniscule of consciousness. You and me have captured the largest amount compared to any other creature on this planet. That's why we are at the peak of evolution that we have captured the largest. But time we know only because of our involvement with cyclical movements. Once there is no cyclical movement or in some way if you get disengaged with the physicality of your existence. When I say physicality everything that's physical about you is accumulated over a period of time, isn't it? It's an accumulation. Now everything that's mental about you is also accumulated the content I'm saying. The framework may be there but the content is all accumulated. What you accumulate cannot be you, isn't it? It can be yours but it can never be you. So once there is a little disengagement with the physicality of what you have gathered suddenly there's no sense of time nor space. What is now is then, what is then is now. What is here is there, what is there is here. Everything gets like this. It's very beautifully expressed the Adiyogi, the first yogi or fifteen thousand years ago he said this. People, his disciples squeezing him asking what is the nature of this existence? Where does the cosmos begin? Where does it end? He laughs at them and says, I can pack your cosmos into a mustard seed. Wow. So just make sure we understand. If I understand the experience that you had that Emery's asking about and perhaps the experience that might not be passed through in memory in the language of the patient and anesthesia from this point of view would be one in which it's outside of time maybe interior as it said in the video but space has sort of a time like aspect where present and future are in the same distance. Is that kind of a restatement in any way? This could seem contradictory to what is generally believed in fundamental physics. Modern physics is looking at space and time. The yogic sciences look at only time. There's only time, there is no space. Because there is time, there's a consequence of space. If there was no time, there would be no space. So time is the basic, not space. Space is an illusion that's been created because we are engaged with our physical natures. So if you disengage with your physical nature, suddenly there is no time, so there is no space. So suddenly what is here is there, what is there is here. People think something miraculous has happened, nothing miraculous happened. It is just that you kept your accumulations aside for a moment, that's all. What you accumulated and who you are sat separately. The very basic program what we're teaching as Inner Engineering is just this, what we're training people for is if they sit down here, body's here, what you call as your mind is somewhere else, what is you seems to be little away. Once there is a little space between you and your body, between you and your mind, suddenly there is no time. Once there is no time, there is no space, there is no possibility of space. This needs to be understood. We have a common word both for time and space, we call it kala. Kala means time. Kala also means emptiness. So emptiness means space. So this hall is empty, that means there is space here. We say when the hall is full, we say there is no space here, that's what we mean in a simplistic way. But the same word is employed both for time and space because space is read by the time. If there is no time, there is no space. Right now we are understanding time as cyclical moments. So we are looking at time in two different dimensions, kala and maha kala, the greater time. The greater time has no cyclical moments. Cyclical moment is because of physical nature. Because of physical nature, there is time in terms of birth and death, in terms of initiation and expiry of everything that happens. Every atom, every electron, every proton, somewhere has a age. Even the very planets and the solar system and the sun has an age. Sometime it is big and sometime it's going to end. Whether it's going to be a bang or it pitas out, is something we can debate. But physicality is not perpetual. It begins and ends. Because of that we are looking at time in that sense. But there is time beyond cyclical nature. This we call maha kala. Is there some logical way of explaining it? No. It is just that when you disengage with physical nature, which is the main purpose of yoga, because otherwise when you engage with your physical nature, you engage with your memory. Your body is just memory, variety of memory. Eight different dimensions we are talking, whether we see eight or four or one, it doesn't matter. This has taken a particular form only because of memory. It is functioning in a particular way only because of memory. So when we disengage with physical form, we are disengaging with memory absolutely. When you disengage with memory, suddenly there is no past, present and future. So there is no time. Because there is no time, there is no space, there is no distance, there is no possibility of this and that. Since I have you here. I have yours. No, thank you. Professor sir. No, no, no, no, no. You know, the world has a lot of problems, right? And you know, one of the things that we need to solve when we were talking about some of this, you know, just as we were sitting down there before the program started. Can I correct that question a little bit, sir? Sure. The world doesn't have too many problems. It has only one problem, human beings. Okay. So if we could focus on that one issue, what do we do? How do we use, like, you know, the insights, the understanding, the enlightenment that you have to go after some of these issues, because they're very real and they threaten us. So yeah, by every definition that we have made, we have defined ourselves as the most intelligent creatures on the planet. These are all our definitions. I don't know if the insects agree with us. But by our own definitions, we are the most intelligent of the species. So our understanding is, right now, whoever dominates must be most intelligent. So for which we are paying a lot of price. Whoever is right now in domination is the most intelligent. If you go by that, we are the most intelligent. Maybe we are the most intellectual, yes, of all the creatures. But we are not the most intelligent because we don't even know what to eat after these millions of years. Hello? Even now research is going on, what is the best thing to eat? If you put something in front of your dog, one sniff, he knows whether to eat or not to eat. So this is mainly because this is a new happening. This cerebral activity is a new happening. We're a bit too excited. Just like, you know, people are all engaged with their smartphones all the time. Walking like this everywhere. They're not looking at the sunrise. Even that they look in the phone screen. They look at the whole cosmos in their phone screen. Because the instrument is new. Next generation may not even look at it, probably. Right now it's new. Everybody is engaged with it and they're calling it a smartphone. Generally, someone will refer to someone else as smart. When they find that person is smarter than them. Right? So unfortunately for a whole lot of people, the phone is the smartest thing about them. So this is a new gadget. This... You should know more about this thing if you have the right names for this. The brain? No. In the brain this cerebral development... The cerebral cortex and other... Yes, yes. This is a new happening. So we're a little excited about this. This can boom, boom, boom, you know, they've solved those figures of blue lights flying all over the place and we're excited about those things. But fundamentally, intelligence always has been. All right? It might have found expression in the form of thought, which gave us the capability of language and many other arts and music and things. It gave us various capabilities. There's no question about that. So only a very few, very small percentage of people used it that way. Rest of the people are using their intellect just to freak the hell out of themselves. You're only handling injuries or you're also handling people going off? I'm... You know, I only do neurology. I'm not forced to provide a psychiatry. That's the question. If they're neurotic, you don't deal with them. Not trained for that. Not professionally trained. A lot of them come to me. You're lucky. So this is essentially like you have a new gadget, but you have not read the user's manual. You're doing something with it. Human suffering that you see, human beings are suffering on various levels. As a doctor you're probably seeing physical suffering in terms of ailments and surgeries and whatever they go through, injuries and stuff. But I'm seeing a different level of suffering. People who have no ailment to complain about, but they suffer deeply. People without any ailments suffer far more than people with ailments. At least if you have an ailment, you have a good excuse. Most people don't have an excuse. Simply sitting, standing, they suffer. Everybody has found a reason. Why? Somebody is suffering because they're poor. They're suffering their poverty. You make them rich. They'll suffer the taxes. They're not educated. They couldn't get into a school. They will suffer. Get them into the school. You've seen them suffering here. To the best school they will get in and suffer. They're not married. They suffer. Get them married. So they're not suffering their life. This is something that needs to be understood. They're not suffering their life. If you ask them what they're suffering, they're capable of suffering what happened ten years ago. Yes or no? Ten years ago, something happened, they can still suffer. And they're capable of suffering what may happen day after tomorrow already. So essentially, their suffering is not about life. They're suffering two fantastic faculties. That only human beings have. No other creature has such a vivid sense of memory as we have. No other creature has a kind of fantastic sense of imagination that we have. They're suffering their memory and their imagination. They're not suffering their life. Isn't it? They're only suffering their memory and their imagination. If you take away a part of their brain, you definitely know which part it is. If you take out some part of their brain, whatever that part, they will all sit very peacefully, maybe even happy, I don't know. Because I find, you know, I just met a lady a few months ago. I was in my home town. I just went to visit someone and I was just entering a building, a very small built old lady, maybe she's over seventy-five. She came smiling at me so sweetly and just asked me, how are you? I said, ma'am, I'm well. How are you? And then I went up. I never forget faces, but this is not a face that I know. Then I went up and after half an hour I came down. Again she came to me with a very sweet smile and she said, how are you? I thought, okay. And then I said, okay, I'm doing well. How are you doing this? Then somebody came and said, poor lady, she's just lost her memory. But I said, it seems to have done wonders to her. She's just so exuberant and joyful. So a whole lot of people, a whole lot of people, when they lose their faculties, they become better. This is the unfortunate nature of our existence that our capabilities have become our problems. If our incapability is our problem, that is understandable. But when our capabilities become our problem, we are heading for a disaster. Yes or no? This is a tremendous capability. This cerebral development is a tremendous capability, but now that is what we are suffering. Our fantastic sense of memory and imagination, we are suffering this. And no wonder so many people are losing their memory because many, many times in their lives, consciously and consciously they are wishing they could forget something. And they will forget one day. When they forget, suddenly it becomes an ailment. But they were always wishing for it. Every day a whole lot of human beings are continuously wishing and praying, I wish I can forget this. But when they forget it, then they become a case. So, this dimension of what we are looking at is not about forgetting, it is not about reducing your thing. See, every day people are taking their own anesthesia. They call it whiskey, they call it wine, they call it their own thing. They kind of, you know, just dull your memory, dull your imagination, simply sit there. It feels peaceful. Every day morning again everything is back anyway, unless you have a hangover. But people have found their own ways of anesthesia. And people are using many things, of course more advanced developments have happened in that level of anesthesia also, in recent times. So, essentially, whether you pray I want to forget all these things and live happily, or you drank a glass of wine, or you doped yourself, or you're an LSD, or you put them on anesthesia, essentially they're all moving in the same direction. You're doing it for a specific purpose, for a limited period of time, but they're trying to do it to their life. And one day when they lose their memory, in a way, unfortunately, they've succeeded their intent. This is a misfortune, because people are driving themselves towards that. People are trying to think, I mean, today in the world, people think there is something called a sanity and insanity. There's no real line there. It's a line that you manage by yourself, with your own discipline and your own perception. Is there really a line called sanity and insanity? Tell me. Is there? See now, it's like this, what you think is normal, somebody else thinks is crazy. Is it not happening all the time? Older generation thinks younger generation is crazy. Younger generation thinks old people had for sure lost their marbles. Everybody is making these judgments. One culture thinks another culture is crazy. So it is just a line that we artificially create and manage, because we know if we cross that, we will not be able to control ourselves. Even when people get angry, the term that they use is just always, I'm getting mad, so they know it. So they know that they've crossed their line. The line is not same for everybody. What is my line and what is somebody else's line is different places people have drawn their lines. Somebody thinks it's all right, once in a way at least three times a day I shouted somebody it's okay. If I ever shouted somebody, then I will withdraw probably for many years because such a thing cannot happen. If it happens, I've lost it. So what is your line, where is your line is something that you have drawn, there is no existential line that this is sanity, this is insanity. There's no such thing. The question is just this, if you're in control of your mental faculties, this is called sanity. If you're not in control of your mental faculties, this is called insanity. Suppose, right now, we can make an experiment with all of them, can we? Sure. I'll give you ten seconds, next ten seconds, nobody. The simple thing what you have to do is, you can think of anything in the universe you want. The only thing is don't think of monkeys for the next ten seconds. Okay? Ten seconds no monkeys. You will count millions of only monkeys. So, our faculties are not totally in control. The question is only how crazy are you? Okay? You are little more crazy than me. That's about it. But there's no such thing as somebody is absolutely sane and somebody is absolutely insane. What means a lot to me looks like insanity to somebody else. Is it not happening every day? What means a world to you? Somebody else thinks this is insanity. What means a world to them, you may think it's insanity. All kinds of things are being done in the world and it looks perfectly normal for that person. It's only others who are making this judgment that he is insane. Only thing is, if what is out of control goes to a point where it causes active harm to himself or to people around him, then we are diagnosing him as totally insane. But there has to be some sort of agreement and I'll just call it that so that we can have a functional social structure, right? So, you are saying sanity is a social thing. I'm asking, I'm afraid to assert here. No, no, it is so. See, even in terms of sanity and insanity, what is crime and what is not is a social thing, isn't it? Right. It's a very social thing. So, when we are talking about social things, social things keep on evolving from generation to generation. It keeps changing. What you thought was wrong has become right. What you thought was right has become wrong. In one generation it happens, isn't it? So, social realities we don't have to debate because it's a flux that all of us create. It's called generally called culture. Culture is not some something that dropped upon us. What mess we create today is tomorrow's culture. What the previous generations did, they did not do everything consciously. They did some mess. That's our culture right now. So, if I understand the answer, it's a very hopeful answer because no matter how bad things look, they present to us a problem we can solve. Is that in the next generation? Is that sort of the point? You have teenage children or something? I'm not trying to define that. All I'm saying is do what you want. You cannot define this because as you said it's a social process. Social process, today we are democratic countries so it's decided by the majority as to what is right. What majority decides may not always be a perfect solution but we have agreed that if the majority says this, we do that, right or wrong. Works or doesn't work. We do just that when the majority says that at least with certain aspects of life. With certain other aspects, we have retained the authority in some kind of experts. Let's say in anestheology if you say something maybe that's the right thing. Some... let's say somebody has come up just today. He passed his medical exam and he's come. If he says he will be put through thousand tests but if you say people will accept it simply because of a certain record and a certain reputation and whatever but it may not always work. Reputation and records may not always work but we are looking at largely what works. So these are all social processes. Without going into that when we talk about anesthesia, when we talk about disengagement or when we talk about meditativeness this word meditation in English language has to be cleared because we've been going through that. See the English word meditation does not say anything specific. I know it's become a popular word but it doesn't describe anything in its specific. If someone sits with their eyes closed in English language we say they're meditated. See with eyes closed there are many things to do. You can do japa, tapha, dharana, dhyana, samadhi, sunya, samyama. There are many many things so you might have just mastered the art of sleeping in vertical postures. It happens in the universities, in spiritual programs and people learn to sleep with their spine erect. So meditation doesn't say anything specific. Somebody is focusing on something and they think they're meditating. Somebody is uttering a mantra and they think they're meditating. Somebody is thinking about something and they're saying they're meditating about something. Essentially if we translate meditation as dhyana which is what generally, at least in India what people believe, when we say the word meditation people expect that you are speaking about what is called as dhyana or dhyana or dhyanam depending upon how far south you are. If you're up in the north it is dhyan. If you come down it becomes dhyana. If you come to Tamil Nadu everything becomes dhyanam. So the same word, the same word went to China and became dhyan and somewhere else it became and became zen. The same word we're expecting when you say meditation you're talking about dhyana. If that is so, what dhyana means is if you sit here there is a clear space between what is you and what is not you in the sense what is you and what you accumulated. Body you accumulated, content of the mind you accumulated. If there is a little separation between these two if you can maintain that awareness now we say you're in dhyana. So this is meditativeness. This is not something that you can ever do. If you create the right conditions this will happen as a consequence. It is like flowers in a plant. If you go sit in your garden and do flower meditation flowers are not going to come. If you want flowers, you need to handle the soil, manure, water, sunlight. If you do these right things, flowers will happen. Well the soil doesn't look like a flower, manure doesn't smell like a flower, water or sunlight doesn't feel like a flower but only if you do those things right this will happen. If you're right now this whole thing has become convoluted because we've become such a goal-oriented society. That means we are interested in the consequence, we are not interested in the process. So we have… we'll move on to the question answers for the audience and also the researchers here. We began this conversation with a discussion of levels of consciousness of maybe I'm taking us down to a lower level that befits my character but I'm wondering, one of the things doctors give you asked is as people are recovering from certain kinds of processes maybe they're entering different states of consciousness that science has not yet learned about. I'm wondering if that theory is necessary because we know about the plasticity of the brain. I think Bakirita is that the gentleman who talks about plasticity of the brain and extraordinary things that the brain can do to recover functions in different parts as its damage. That's one… and maybe that's a more technical question. I have a larger question for Satguru. You spoke very eloquently about memory, intellect, asking us to put those aside and I'm trying to understand exactly what you mean because I haven't caught it, I'm sorry to say because it seems to me those are the unique or extraordinary things about us as human beings. The fact that we have this historical memory going back to Mesopotamia and beyond, you know, in India thousands of years and also as individual human beings and intellect which allows us to build spaceships in addition to sit here and listen to you. So I'm not quite sure how you mean for us to leave those aside or place less value on them. I did not talk about devaluing them or leaving them aside. What do you think? Is this planet round or flat? I suspect it's quite round. Really? You suspect it's round? You're not sure? No, I think… No, yes, I'm sure it is round in fact. In fact, I think that is how matter has to collect around gravity. No, no, don't go there. That's gravity is another thing. But today we know it is round though if I walk up and down this place in my experience it feels flat but we know it is round. We debated this for thousands of years, all right? But we couldn't figure it. But it became very clear to us only when we took off. We created some distance from the planet. You flew up there and looked very clearly at look round. You went and stood on the moon and looked round. Hundred percent it's clear it's round. So what gave you this clarity is the distance. When you were in it, you thought any number of ways but you couldn't figure it. But the moment you had distance, you had clarity. So only in that context I said you must know how to keep your accumulations aside. If you're carrying a bag, when you don't need it, you must be able to keep it aside. If all the time if you carry it, it will become a torturous process. That's what is happening to people. Nothing wrong with your mind. It's just that all the time it's on and it's becoming torturous. Not knowing how to do, they're sozzling it out with alcohol or drug or something else. Essentially they are unable to bear the activity of their own mind, isn't it? If they could keep this bag aside for some time, all we have accumulated, it would be nice. You won't lose it because nobody is going to pick it up and go. It's there for you. But once there is a little distance, you have an absolute understanding of the nature of what it is. Only then you can handle it the way you want. Right now you're handling both your body and mind accidentally, accidentally. When you do things accidentally, anxiety is normal. And that's what is happening because everything is accidental. Because there's no clarity about anything. Because the nature of intellect is such, if I ask you, would you like your intellect to be sharp or blunt? You must choose right now. I'm going to bless you. Sharp or blunt? Sharp. So you understand intellect is a cutting instrument. It's like a knife. The sharper, the better. If somebody is very sharp, if we say, oh, he's a razor sharp, intellect, very sharp. So cutting instrument, cutting instrument can be used for dissection. With dissection, we know many things. But did you do science in your high school? You cut open that frog and saw how the heart was pulsing. I mean the frog didn't think much about it. That's another matter. But you came to know so many things in this world. Slicing a human body, slicing a flower, slicing an atom, we discovered so many things. But is this a complete way of knowing? Can I know you by dissecting you fully? Is it possible? Maybe I will know you better by including you, by engaging you rather than dissecting you. By dissecting you, I may know your heart, liver, kidney and spleen, but I will not know anything about you. Only by inclusion, I know. So you are using a cutting instrument or let's say you take your knife and try to sew your clothes, you will have tatters. So this is what is happening with approaching everything intellectually. Everything is going into tatters. We are trying to sew with a knife. It's not going to work. There are other dimensions of intelligence. We, in the yogic way of looking at things, we look at human intelligence as sixteen parts. Out of the sixteen parts to make it simpler, we can make it into four categories. It's called Buddhi, Ahankara, Manas and Chitta. Buddhi means the intellect. It's a front-end. This is essentially a survival kit. Without your discriminatory intellect you wouldn't be able to survive on this planet. You have to discriminate. Now here a deer came and here an elephant came. You should know which way to go, otherwise you wouldn't survive. Discrimination is constantly on which is keeping you alive right now. Otherwise you wouldn't know whether to walk into the... you know, whether to walk on the sidewalk or in the middle of the road, you wouldn't know. So there is a discriminatory process which is keeping you alive. It's a survival instrument. Without it you cannot function. How does this survival instrument function? What is its nature? We will not go too much into that because they are timekeepers. But it is something that everybody knows. The next dimension is called Ahankara. Ahankara means identity. What kind of identity you fix, that is how your intellect will work. Right now you sit here and say, I'm an Indian. This thinks and acts like an American all the time. Or I say, I'm an Indian. It thinks and acts like an Indian. In India there's a classic thing happening in our own generation. It was all one nation. Somebody drew a line and said, this is India, this is Pakistan. Suddenly some line that somebody drew and nobody knows where exactly the damn line is still the dispute is going on. All right? But suddenly if you're on this side you have one kind of emotion and thought if you're on that side you have a completely different emotion and thought. Just a piece of cloth. I mean a flag. If you look at it tears will come to you. People are willing to live for it and die for it. All right? So that is how it is, identity. The moment you identify with something your intellect serves that identity always. If you say I'm a man it always functions as a man. If I'm a woman it functions that way. If I say I'm this or that or whatever race, religion, nationality, anything the moment you identify with something your intellect is striving only to protect that identity and support that. That's how your intellect is functioning. In modern societies we've done nothing about this. People are getting identified with football clubs. They're nations by themselves. Yes? Football club is a nation by itself. People are willing to fight for it and die for it. Because we have not cultured an identity. When a culturing an identity means in India there was a system now unfortunately it's largely gone though still some part of India still has this first thing before we start education it's called Vidyarambam. Before you start education the first thing is you must take a universal identity cosmic identity. Only then education is given to you because education is empowerment. You should never empower a limited identity. If you empower a limited identity violence is a natural consequence of that. Just tell me what is it that we are fighting for on this planet? My identity versus your identity it may be race, it may be religion it may be nationality it may be region essentially my identity fights with your identity because I'm identified with this you're identified with that. So before you empower a human being with education and knowledge first thing is you must fix a cosmic identity for that person. This used to be called as Aham Brahmashmi first thing is a child must say my identity is cosmic I belong to the cosmos not to these parents who are sitting with me right now I love them they've nurtured me but my identity is cosmic the child has to utter this only then first alphabet is taught to him because it was education as seen as an empowerment just tell me today in the world or uneducated illiterate people causing more damage or educated people on the planet causing more damage to the entire planet. So it is just unfortunately empowerment is happening without fixing the identity with my limited identity if I study all kinds of nuclear science what am I going to do I'm going to bomb you that's all I'm going to do to you what else will I do to you that's all I will do to you because this is my identity you stand against me suddenly I have to do something about that so whatever capability I have I'm going to use it that's what is happening so identities have not at all been worked at that's a big problem but intellect functions according to your identity if you have to use and continue the analogy intellect is like a knife he is a knife suppose we don't give a knife to a child's hand why? knife is not dangerous child's hand is not steady that is the problem isn't it you are in the surgery rooms all the time tell me on this planet are knives taking more lives or making more lives hello? really it's taking more lives are you a surgeon? it is making more lives both in the kitchen and the surgery table it's making many many lives here and there in an irresponsible hand it's taking a life isn't it so knife is not dangerous it is the hand it is the identity which makes the knife dangerous if there is no knife just with the hand we will kill yes or no? sure so the third dimension of intelligence is called as manas this manas is the silo of memory which we were talking about eight different dimensions of memory elemental memory, atomic memory evolutionary memory, genetic memory karmic memory inarticulate memory articulate memory and conscious memory eight dimensions of memory everything that's happened from the beginning of creation here on this planet from amoeba to now everything the memory of it is there in the body in some form and every day you are using this memory in an unconscious way you are using this memory otherwise if you forget one day suddenly you may start going like a reptile no, it remembers the entire revolutionary process and do not underestimate this now that you also said the planet is round it's a simple thing with two legs to walk on a damn round planet which is spinning it's not a easy thing do you know how much is involved the physics of it is very, very super complex those of you who are on binges of alcohol you understand how difficulty is to walk on a round planet or if you have a vertigo or something then you understand because it's a very, very complex process to walk on a round planet which is spinning but we are doing it effortlessly because of this evolution it's not a simple thing moving from four legs to two legs is not a small development a whole lot of neurological development has happened only because of that we are able to walk on two legs so now this memory is acting all the time and the access point is the identity how you are identified that is how you choose the memory whatever kind of memory both of us may have same kind of memory but if I am identified one way and he is identified another way we will choose memory differently organize memory differently and act differently for the same education aren't people going different ways in the same house two children are born same genetics, same food, same school are they not going in like this because depends on what kind of identity one has chosen this disciplining or limitless setting a limitless identity not a small limited identity must happen at an early age if this doesn't happen our intelligence will work against us that's what is happening in the world today the fourth dimension of intelligence is called chitta this is unsullied by memory this is an intelligence unsullied by memory there is not an aiuta of memory in this this is what normally in English language is passing off as consciousness so where there is no memory there can be no boundary memory is the basis of boundary this is me and that is you this is my memory versus your memory this is me and this is a table this is only by memory if there is no memory there is no boundary so going beyond those states of memory is necessary for every human being whatever capabilities you have right now because of our explorations, our knowledge our science, our technologies well this is what is eating the very basis of our life also isn't it so the planet is going away we have no solution for that but we are going on simply because we have explored bits and pieces without grasping the entire dimension of what it is consciousness means that you went beyond the boundaries of your memory and grasped life as it is now it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have you will do what is needed and nothing more than what is needed and that's what needs to happen in the world so want to hear about your thoughts on near life experience in surgery you said that middle of the surgery they could come out and see what is happening see the conversation what the doctor is doing so just a thought do people really die at the time or they reach some moksha or heaven come back you mean near death you have life so when I saw you I saw life near death experience there is near death experiences where let's say is about to die very often we've read these accounts like Dr. Sanjay Gupta's book talks about these like cheating death in which case they then have these experiences where they may see lights or what have you so I just want to distinguish them because they are two different cases anyway when we say death the definition of death on one level is you lost your body so I mean let's not go into other areas they'll get you into very fuzzy places about near death experience it's what is being referred to as meditation we have a certain type of meditation called shunya that means shunya literally translates as emptiness that's not the right translation appropriate word in English so it's emptiness or nothingness so if you settle down into shunya meditation it's not near death it's actually death but conscious death suppose you're riding a bicycle you are a new rider with little balance so you will go like this some other kid is riding he'll leave his hands free and whistle and look here look there and ride and do all kinds of things stand up on the handlebar and turn around jump all this why? it's a certain mastery certain balance and mastery now you can jump off the cycle and again jump back and do all these things similarly with your body if you have a certain amount of mastery you can jump off and jump back quite effortlessly now it is happening accidentally because of some medication or for many people during 60s 70s the lsd time there were a whole lot of people talking about this thing sir it's your time it was your time oh okay metaphorically so a whole lot of people talking about this and it really happened to them it's not that they were imagining things many of them but it was also because it was hallucinatory nobody knows whether it's this or that there's no way to for sure say it actually happened to them or not but I've met many people of those times who genuinely experienced things with which their lives got transformed in many different ways in a crazy way but suddenly everything about them changed simply because somewhere they perceived this you know this body a little bit if you wish it's not a permanent thing just that little awareness changed the way they perceive life and they behave and they do things in their life so this near death I'm not really looked at any of the thing but some people have told me some popular books so they were saying there's the angels and there's a tunnel going see one thing is you must understand when somebody is going on the surgery table doctors may be confident the patient always fears that he may die hello doctors may be confident in the case they know what they're doing 99% of the time they're confident what they're doing but the patient once he closes his eyes and hands over his life to somebody he always fears what will happen so every small thing he thinks is death it happens to people if you put a gun to somebody's head and just shoot and miss them or it's a blank they almost died near death experience they'll blank out for some time and then they come back they really think they went away and they came back and they saw the scene also from the top because that's because of the Hollywood so human mind is capable of creating many dimensions of experiences it need not be construed as death it's life first of all anyway I'm coming out with a book on death an inside story I'm doing this for six and a half years it's not complete yet hope in the next year or so I will come out with this why I'm saying this is in in reality there is no such thing as death it's life life and life alone moving from one dimension to another another dimension to another so if if I lose one dimension it looks like that is death right now it is a medical fact that they say approximately every fortnight you're losing seven kilograms of your existing body and something new has come in in one fortnight whatever your weight you must just calculate in how many fortnights you're completely lost everything that you have in your body is being lost continuously and something else is coming in there are so many different experiences that every meal and every day you empty your bubbles you must experience it as near death but that doesn't happen to you but this happens to you because there is some disengagement in your experience particularly because of anesthetic impact the disengagement with various faculties that you're normally used to suddenly makes you feel you're dead nobody died it's a politically wrong perception yes every moment of your life if you are willing if you are not entangled with situations and your own thoughts and emotions there are many many things you can perceive right here right here sitting here you can look at your life from there okay? this is not near death this is life but because as I said lots of faculties works out well for a lot of people it's not a good thing this happened a man met a close friend of his that he knew very well when they were in the university together after twenty-five years break so he invited home for dinner he went and being an Indian household the wife was serving and these two men were eating and every time he wanted to ask for something from his wife he said my honey my boo boo boo my boo boo boo and whatever else your tamils or my tangam and my choo choo all those things so after the dinner was over the friend was leaving and he said you are having an amazing life aren't you? I'm married with my wife for fifteen years we can't even look at each other's face the way the Indians you're showering upon your wife so what are you talking about? he said you called her boo boo you called her tangam you called her this oh man I forgot her name seven years ago lots of faculties unfortunately work very well for a lot of people because they are suffering their faculties the greatest faculties that have come to us after millions of years of evolution unfortunately we suffer because we have not read the uses manual