Analysis of Meditation and its effect in understanding consiousness

Though my direct interest would be in harnessing it to apply over computers, What is the systematic way to harness it accross the physical world.

To answer this question I would need to understand how my mind works better. Meditation would be a good point to start with.

This problem is very challenging because of the following problems at start of analysis.
1) Is there really a mind. Is mind a illusion of brain activity.
2) If we get past the first question and if the answer is affirmative about mind then, Does mind has a physical significance on physical world. To be more detailed, Can mind or thought excert any kind of physical force on world.
3) If we get past first two questions. Is the physical force strong enough to make a significant impact.


The problem of answering these questions is that we can only answer it in the reverse order. If our mind does not have any significant impact on the world we probably cannot detect it. That is if the third question fails then Second fails and we cannot answer the first one.

We have to come up with ingenious experiments to prove the existence of mind and other practical meditation techniques to use it the way we wanted. According to me the Indian sages and gurus were one of the biggest scientists because of the work they have done in this field centuries ago. But the problem with the method they practiced is that it is not re constructable. Even they themselves had little words to explain what they were doing. I have to be considerate of the fact that the problem they were dealing were of such a high complexity.

What Vedic literature gives us is a string of logically beautiful assumptions. They used meditation as a tool to ponder around this space. Meditation was what connected them from this level of consciousness to one that they considered superior.

We have to fine tune ,maybe sharpen or reconstruct such a tool from scratch to be able to answer these questions. Let us examine the tool that we use,namely meditation. Meditation is to observe passively at yourselves. What it would do is that once your thoughts subside you would be able to see yourselves as you who is separated from the world. That is you would be able to realize you independent existence. Instead of me recognizing me as sancho doing master's in computer science at University of Texas dallas , I recognize myself as a consious being which is able to take decisions completely independently.

Here is a term that we have to define before proceeding. Independence. What does it mean when i say I am independent. It means I can take whatever decisions I want. But let me tell you there is big catch in that. Consider your computer CPU. The definition for a CPU is to be a machine that executes instructions. So from our point of view it is not independent but only executes what we asks it to do. But things are different when we look from a different angle. Imagine to be your computer CPU at this point of time. You know you have the power to execute instructions. Once you get started you will execute instructions at regular intervals. To look for what to do you search your brain (Which is your memory, the only place you have) and do the next thing that comes up. We may argue that humans have a choice of doing that task at that point of time. This is becuase our brain is multitasking and this advantage will disappear if we consider multiprocessor systems. If I have two instructions running at same time and the first instruction is choose or not the second one, The illusion of independence can be converted into a program instruction were there is no independence at all. This is exactly the point where all religions give different answers. The religions that believe in fate (Christianity,Hinduism) believes that we do not have independence and that it written previously. They may modify the argument to be logical with world in giving partial independence, (Like god has chosen you to be here(a good place);;;; but god has given you the choice of doing sin and you did sin.). But this cannot be true. There is no partial independence. The basic stuff that runs us cannot suddenly change back and forth. We are either independent or we are totally dependent.

Please forgive me here in using the words such as god and religion. I do not have any religious implications here and I am not here to prove a religion. What I would be deriving is logical explanations and examples of god and religion are only used as abstract concepts which would be easier for the reader to understand. Let me continue.

Now comes the next catch. Suppose we say we are given complete independence. We should understand that we wont be able to ever realize this. Only our god someone above all of us can realize this. So according to this super guy we are independent. It does not end here. Suppose there is a super super guy above this guy who designed the super guy to make us work exactly as he wants. Then still we are not independent.

Independence is not something we can ever verify from our level of consiousness. Infact it is not something we can verify at any level of consiousness. Becuase if there is such a level of consiousness there could be a level of consiousness above it from which it might be dependent.

Let us try to define meditation. Suppose a state of computer CPU. Consider the state when you dont have any instructions to execute. Your search for instructions returned empty. That is the state when you realize something is amiss. The CPU suddenly rises to a new level of consiousness when it realizes that it was being fed with instructions and there are no more instructions.

What meditation hence is trying to do is put us to extremes of our consiousness and try to elevate our consiousness by strecthing its borders. What could be the other extreme. It would be a state when we have so much on our mind that nothing extra will go in. That is also a state when we realize that something external is coming as we are not able to accomodate it. But probably such a state may be insanity and thats why sages preferred the first one. But i am sure this state would have streched the borders of our consiousness in different directions other than meditation.

But this second reason may be the reason why very complex things sometimes gives us a pleasure. For example music. Music actually sets our mind into its own vibration that our mind is filled with it and nothing else comes in. There are chances here that we hit the other extreme of meditation here.

Either of the methods we use the strategy is to ponder over the consiousness at its borders to realize what it is. Now this would be as good as in knowing about earth by sailing accross the continent borders and drawing its map. Sure we will be able to see the map. Infact that is exactly what we have till now. Partial incomplete maps of consiousness. But it does not tell us anything about what the whole thing is about.

To know that we have to examine what our consiousness is really made off. We should at this point of time understand that meditation will not help us realize what we are. It only leaves us at the border.