…  nothing happens randomly in the universe.
    “Chance is only a measure of our ignorance” – Poincaré

…when he dies, and they place him on the (funeral) fire, then he is reproduced out of that fire.
[Here, it is the fire  (of the deepest desire) that separates the subtle purusha component from the physical body, and Agni that maintains that subtle purusha body in the yonder world, whatever that is, until it finds a new home  – Satapatha Brahmana, 2.3.3.5]

ātivāhikadehātmā mana
The migratory universal self (brahman) localized to individual body is called the mind – Yogavasista 3.4.46

What if there is nothing like a subtle body (ātivahika body)? That’s the other choice we can go with.  That’s where we left off in the last blurb, and we will wrap up this topic with some notes on that possibility.  Basically, no subtle body hypothesis forces us to accept that a lot of things that happen around us can be just random events.   At the least, we need to figure out which events are random and which events have a driving cause. Putting it in another way,  every outcome has to have at least one driving action for that event to be non-random.  There can be more than one, undertaken at different times.

Now, look at these news events – who decides which kids are in this bombed hospital at that very precise moment?  Random?

Let’s think about a simpler question:  how does a large tree grow out of a tiny seed?  The tree that yogis typically use in this analogy is the banyan (nyagordha) tree.  An entire tree from a seed?  Water, soil, fertilizer etc. help out but can’t do anything without that seed.  The blueprint, the support for the scaffolding that holds up the tree – the yupa – must be inside the seed!

As a world renowned physicist, John Archibald Wheeler had apparently said:

It from Bit  

“Otherwise put, every it — every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself — derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely — even if in some contexts indirectly — from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits. ”   

Another famous Evolutionary Biologist, Richard Dawkins said:

“What lies at the heart of every living being is information, words, instructions.  If you are looking for a metaphor, think of a billion discrete digital characters carved into tablets of crystals…”

That information tablet-quilt is called the subtle body (ativahika sarira) in yogic lore – the remaining question is what happens to this information tablet-quilt immediately after death.

Going back to our tree-from-seed analogy, this blueprint inside the seed holds a lot of information about the present and future states of the tree (or an offspring) – where is that specific information which makes that tree unique coming from? Could it be that it’s s all random?

We already know that the offspring is not just a combination of the parents, and they express some things that are different from the sum of parents and grandparents – the evolutionary part. Our understanding of genes, hereditary and all that is about how in a mechanistic sense, but details of the specific mutations and their selection is sketchy.  Modern scientists state that it’s the adaptation that drives the evolution process.  Ancient yogis state the same thing in a slightly different way – it’s the desire (to adapt or to be something) that drives the mutations.  But, more importantly yogis imply that those mutations are not  random after all, but are driven by strong desires.  By extension, evolution is driven by a strong collective desire. Those desires are programmed into the subtle body, which the seed carries, and it’s physical manifestation could be through genes.

If there is no subtle body, the information body, then the information scaffolding in the seed has to be assembled from different randomly-chosen information chunks.  But, how can all those random information chunks come together that belong to a banyan tree, for example?  Can some information chunks that belong to a tiger combine with the tree-information chunks?  If yes, the information chunks at that level are either non-specific to any animal or a tree, or there is some other deeper basic information that precludes such skunk-work assemblies, meaning not all is random.

So, yogis’ answer to pure randomness is a resounding NO – nothing happens completely randomly.   There’s always a driving cause however weak it maybe.  They would have readily agreed with the famous mathematician Henry Poincaré, who said – “chance (or probability) is only a measure of our ignorance”.  Things are not random, but they are just non-computable, given our abilities and capabilities. Yogis’ subtle body concept is a consequence of that thinking.

Here’s Vasistha to Rama on fate/luck (or the way some even view god – someone with a magic wand), in Yoga Vasishta:

Sloka 171 (2.8.11): Daivam asat sada (Fate, or luck, or “anyone with a magic wand” is non-existent, always)

Sloka 172. (2.9.3): Daivam na kinchankurute, kevalam kalpanedruśi: Fate does nothing.  Only imagination is such.

Okay, we got the message.  What’s the meaning of daivam ? Because the modern meaning  of that word is very different.  Vasishta takes several verses to clarify, but what he means it in terms of fortunate or unfortunate labels we ascribe to the result.  The following verse from Yoga Vasishta makes this very clear:

Sloka 181 (2.1.16): Whichever firm action was performed formerly with intense force, that alone is described here by the word fate sometimes.

And then Vasishta goes on to teach Rama that it’s the strong self-effort that drives everything.  Nothing is bestowed upon anyone or anything for free_/\_

The key is the connection between the past and present, which is not always obvious  to us.  Firm action (of ours) in the past sometimes appears as fate now!  We always assume that our actions will yield results on the time horizon we focus on, and forget about them later.  Not the universe – the action plays out in time, on its own volition, based on natural laws (karma).

What if that action comes to fruition after say two centuries?  Who experiences that? Can’t be a random person, even if it ricochets off of a couple of other subjects and scene.  It has to be actor, otherwise, the universe has to pick who receives the fruits of that actor’s actions.   That means there must be a mechanism to carry forward action account, which is payed out as consequences into the future.   That mechanism is the subtle body – it is that body that carries the action imprints, deepest desires, including our intentions forward …

There’s is a lot that we don’t understand.  But we can look at some interesting subjective experiences that may make us to think of a subtle body – phantom limbs and Out of Body Experiences are two closest examples, and science started exploring these concepts in a little more scientific way.

Phantom Limbs

We already talked about this:  our mind has an image of the body, and when suddenly something goes missing, like a limb, the mind’s map throws a signal to the brain/body that that part is missing – typical result is anywhere from an imaginary limb to severe pain.  Some biologists and philosophers call this mental model the “phenomenal Self Model”.  Fortunately, neurobiologists are finding simple ways to manipulate this subtle body, as living organisms have the ability to influence their own subtle body, through focusing the mind.  This mental map is a manifestation of the subtle body at mind-level.

Out-of-body Experiences

Thanks to some doctors who actually took the time to document out-of-body experience (OBE) cases, we are now finding that these experiences are not as rare as we once thought.  Most of these cases are recorded by patients in hospitals, trauma centers, accident sites, etc., with their minds are possibly stressed thinking about death.  One of the drivers at the physical level is ultra low blood pressure.  Cardiac arrests can send patients to have an OBE along with a near-death experience (NDE) apparently.  NDEs are a little more understandable as they resemble more of a dream state.   However, OBEs have something unique – the senses somehow organize themselves to operate from a different vantage point that is different from the physical body: for example, from the ceiling looking down on the physical body.  It’s important to note that Subtle body is not necessarily all localized to our physical body only, as entanglement information can all be non-local.  Some artistic renderings show it as a body-shaped thing floating in space – it’s just that, an artistic rendering.   Googling this word can provide a lot of information, including notes from medically trained staff.  But the only reason for the mention of this phenomenon is to suggest that mind can switch modes when driven.  How is this related to yoga?

Yogic Meditative States

On the way to those extreme conditions lie a number controlled states that yogis experience.  Yogis turned this into a science.  One of the key knobs they use is the breath – slowing down the breath.  It is then that the brain gets rid of all the useless thoughts to conserve the lowered oxygen and hence energy supply. Only those that are required for survival, self-protection (rakshasa), remain.  It is important to note that this has to be done in a very controlled manner, and nothing should be sudden. Brain should never starve for oxygen; we first need to calm down the mind to lower the oxygen demand.  It is then that apparently we can enter meditative neutral states, again in a controlled way.   We need strong nervous system to control the lungs, intercostal muscles and the lower brain for this.  That’s our goal.  More on this later.

May we be blessed with “control” on our breath and mind! _/\_/\_/\_