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What’s the most important thing in life?
…an opportunity to contribute to the society.  

what’s the purpose of life?
…to enjoy the fruits of our actions, driven by own desires at that time
…and to set the tone for future by leaving this place with a smaller karmic account balance than when arrived

How to live in a society?
…meet together, talk together, let your minds comprehend alike
Common be the prayer, common be the purpose, common be the intention …

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What? The most important thing is an opportunity to contribute? My current state is a result of my past desires, thoughts and actions – really? Not random?  What was I thinking?  How could I have missed out on asking for all these other things that I want now?  How could I have not known that penthouses and yachts would be big? … Long story, yogis go to great lengths to tell us that boon seeking or wishing for anything based on the desires and preferences at that moment is a futile exercise, and even dangerous.  Most powerful and purposeful boon we could ever ask for is “sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ” (may the entire creation be happy).” 

Secondly, if we are here to enjoy the results of our past actions, what happens to the results that we did not experience yet?  Have no doubt – we will experience them when they materialize.  Unlike how it appears to our senses, the actor and the action are not separate, and similarly the action and its results are not separate. You and your actions are entangled, and by that, you and the results of your actions are entangled, forever. No one can steal the results of your actions from you.  Their exact manifestation depends upon the environment you are in at that time, the “not mine” variable. Follow the age old adage – always surround yourself with good company (satsang).  That will lighten any impacts of unexpected results of your past actions.

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To illustrate, a short story:

Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu, kills a tyrant king called Vali by shooting an arrow from behind.  It had to be done that way for several reasons, and we will leave it at that for now.  He did that with a good intention as he assessed it, but it still had a karmic residue.  For reasons we cannot calculate, Rama did not experience the result of that action in that life time.  In the next incarnation, as Krishna, he experiences the result of that action – when he was lying down in a wooded area, a forest dwelling hunter, Vali in a later birth, shoots Krishna in his foot, from behind, which becomes the nominal cause of the end of that (Krishna) incarnation… Not even gods are beyond the laws of karma.

Notice that the backgrounds (the Not-Mine corner) in which these events took place are very different.  A lot of details are skipped over here for brevity, but yogis’ message is clear – no one is outside the physics of karma – superheroes included.  Krishna being a master yogi, and an awakened person himself, prepared for the moment much better, with precision.  All that he wanted to accomplish in that incarnation had been accomplished by that time.  He was ready to go back! 

And that math, when action histories of all living and non-living beings are included, becomes non-computable – back to the first tenet of Karma Yoga!

The bottomline is to never get frustrated and do something that you would not do otherwise.  Be awake, all the time!

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Don’t you suddenly feel a lot more powerful? And in more control of your own destiny? No luck, nothing random, or anything like that.  The events happening to you and around you are not random at all. They are direct results of your past desire-action sequences.  Our future actions are in seed form within each of us right now, at this very moment. This’s our chance to set the direction for future. This is an outcome of the yogic model of the whole.  Yogis had this grand vision for the whole, and everything derived from it. As we will learn, they didn’t wing it either; they meditated on a series of everyday observations, and came up with some extremely insightful axioms, axioms for us, not for them, which formed the basis for this model.   That model is the model of Brahman.

“The most intelligent Sankhyas term It Atman; the Vedantins of pure Jnana call It Brahman; the Vijnanis say It is Vijnana; the atheists give It the pseudonym of Void; and so on” (in Yogavasishta). 

brahman – modern science

So, where does this concept of Brahman stand when juxtaposed with modern theories.  Although there are some nice parallels, there’s one fundamental difference between the ancient yogis and the modern physicists – the first question or the underlying question they tried to anwer:

Modern Physicists: what’s matter made of? Result: Zero point field
Ancient Rishis what am I made of? Result Brahman

The difference? It’s the way these two concepts – Brahman and Zero point field – deal with consciousness.  In yogic thinking, that is integral to their model, while for (most of the) physicists, it is largely a conundrum. For yogis, thoughts bridged the gap between the two realms. For yogis, consciousness everywhere, since Brahman is everywhere.  That ubiquitous consciousness/purusha is the seed for everything.  The zero point field however acts as the plenum for everything we sense.  We as in every bit of us is in constant communication with this field.  That is common between the two.  The following analogy lays out this model in a little more detail.  

Brahman – Ocean as an Analogy

Let’s go back to the yogic fundamental – existence (sat) emanates from non-existence (asat). Existence as defined by who?  Sounds enigmatic?

Yogic rishi’s definition is more rigorous- brahman is actually neither this-nor that state; neither existent or non-existent  Since this is a little difficult to refer to, we will lump everything that’s not existent as non-existent.  In a true sense, there’s no true “non-existent”.   It’s just behind some curtain that represents the potential state, potential to manifest. Let’s wait further discussion until we talk about the element fire (tejas).  

Consider the nascent and evolving modern science of how stars may be born out of blackholes [1].  More subtle yet obvious is the emergence of a specific thought in your mind, from the moment just before when that thought wasn’t there!  Therein lies the foundational nature of non-existence.  In this underlying non-existent, in this potential state, knots of entanglement reside, which formed due to stresses/karmic residues from the past – the seven rishis.  These knots, when manifested, being from the same source, identify each other as individual entities.  The sum of this non-existent, existent and everything in between is the brahman.

So, the concept for whole is at the center of all this is- the brahman.   Let’s use their analogy to outline this model – think of the unmanifest, or the stuff from which we manifest, as an ocean.  [Unmanifest can also be thought as a potential].  Waves form, make short journeys and break up, or merge with others or crash into the shore.  Even though the wave is disappearing from what we can record with our limited senses, all the information and the history, and the water that made up that wave are all still in the ocean, and new waves show up against the backdrop of that whole, which includes all that information and the water.  In fact, the water and information are not two different things, but come from the same unmanifest (ocean).  That ocean is nothing more than the infamous brahman.  

The other waves know the presence of this wave, and vice versa.   The state of ocean (sat) in the next moment is a result of all the past moments…(both past and future moments actually). That flow is called ṛta – another huge topic.  In that infinite cosmic ocean, whether waves pay attention or not, they are all connected.  Moreover, the connecting material is the same material as that which makes up the waves.  This is the crux of modern physics as well! We actually understand a lot more about this principle by viewing everything including ourselves as bundles of waves or vibrations than distinct physical entities moving in sensory space: frequency domain vs. time domain description of things.  

The universe maybe a little more complicated than the simple ocean analogy, but the principle is the same.  The flow of the universe from one moment to the next in a nutshell is governed by the physics of karma, and the flow itself is called ṛta.  There are a lot of implications to this karma hypothesis, including the introductory statement about the purpose our lives.   To resolve the karmic residue from the past is the central purpose, and to add as little to account along the way.  To completely erase the karmic residue is mōksha, and the result is a complete merger with the cosmic background.     

The Nature of Realty

In a beautifully laid out logic, yogis concluded that what we call realty is a series of superpositions on top of that One, that truth, which is brahman.  It is these superpositions that make the realty different for each of us.  These superpositions are projected by our mind onto the scene, and they very much depend upon how the mind is trained.

A simple example they give is the common mistake a human mind makes in calling a rope a snake.  This happens more often in woody areas for us, right? Our mind’s  mistake lasts for a duration of few seconds to forever… depending upon everything else. 

Let’s say you see a twig or a dried up piece of a vine that’s shaped like a slithering snake.  The protective mind first superimposes our prior “knowledge” or jnana onto that to say that it’s a snake.  That way we can prepare to protect ourselves, which is our minds’ first job.  Another part of the mind then begins to collect further information.  If this whole scene lasts only a few seconds, that conclusion lasts, i.e., our perception of reality is limited by time (temporal information). Mathematically speaking, the mind integrates the information over that time period.

Now imagine if you don’t see the whole thing, but only a part of it.  Like something that resembles the tail of a tiger.  Our minds paint the rest of the tiger, again to prepare to protect ourselves. This limitation of spatial information affects our perception, and even our world model, sometimes.  So, the limitation on the space we see/sense is yet another cover,or veil; that is the limitation of the spatial information aspect.  In that way, there are five layers or covers (kancukas) that shroud the ultimate reality.  They are doership (kala), what we know (vidya), our attachments (raga), time (kaala) and space (niyati).  If we can peel these layers off, we will be able to see the unconditioned, space-time-knowledge-attachment-doer independent realty, which is Brahman!   

This limited view of the whole we have is also the very reason for our own goals with limited and narrow scope for our individual lives.  As we demystify the realty from the limitations of our own minds, our goals expand to include a more comprehensive and richer experience, and thus allow us to lead happier life-journeys. 

Now…

Is Brahman Conscious?

Any doubt? If this brahman includes all of us conscious beings, is there a reason to suspect that the whole (the brahman) is not conscious?  This is the genius of the rishis.  Eons ago, way ahead of their time, they were very adamant that the space that we see between us for example, and that we can only imagine, the not-mine background, is highly potent, fully active, i.e., not passive at all!  If you bang your fist in the air, it will make a sound, and that imprint will live on forever.  We may not hear the sound nor see the imprint, as our senses are not sophisticated enough for that, but both happen. 

We need Quantum Mechanics, or the wave-nature descriptions of everything in and around us to understand this a little more easily. Since all are waves in this ocean of brahman – more specifically, wave functions in boxes, they add and subtract as events happen. We influence each other, and these effects are incorporated into the background wave function/s that live on forever.   

Now, if the creation, the universal-I, is self-aware, just like each of us, then how would that person behave?  Just like us, right? In self-interest.  But that self-interest of the universal ego includes all of us. Not in an individual sense, but in a all together sense.  In “may good things happen to everyone” sense.  

 Now, with that doubt put to rest…

What is an individual life – Jiva?

This model is very clear… For example, from Yoga-Vasista (translated by Narayanaswamy Iyer): through a slight motion in the one Jnana, (a fluctuation in the information pool), the Jnana- Sakti (power of knowledge; at some point, information coagulates into knowledge) in it becomes transformed in a moment into various Saktis of many powers when they are associated with the three potencies of Space, Time and Karmas. Though resting in its eternal seat of Brahmic Reality, this Jnana- Sakti  will contemplate upon itself as conditioned. While contemplating upon itself thus, there will come upon it, in its train of ideas, the conception of the limitation of names and forms. Associated as it then is with excessive Vikalpas, it is bound by the conceptions of space, time and actions. It is at this stage that the Jnana Reality passes under the appellation of Jiva…

How to lead a life?

Yogis’ ultimate goal is to find the best way to lead one’s life.  As stated in the “about” page, one has to feel absolute freedom to be able to enjoy life.  How can one achieve that?  Yoga.  But understanding the paradigms through real life events forms the basis – yama and niyama of yoga.   

Yogis (or the ancient rishis) asked a series of shrewd questions about what we call life.  They were more fascinated by the question – how are we here in the first place, as opposed to why are we here.  The first question can begin to answer the second.   It turns out that that question can only be understood when  “we”, “I” or “you” is deemphasized and decode the “here” part – the ocean. We are making a huge jump here, but this can happen only when we get a grip on the process of death and subsequent dissolution – without that, our instinctual mind is knotted up in keeping us away from that perceived endpoint. Intuitively realizing that death is not an endpoint, but only transitory point, as in the case of a single wave, is critical to reorganizing our goals and actions. 

Now, if the ocean analogy/brahman is the model, what’s the recommended path to lead one’s life?  Again, it’s relative, and differs from person to person.  That’s why the ancient rishis didn’t leave behind a lot of “how to” books.  (Manusmrti, Narada smrti, Yajnavalkya smrti,etc. were all  much later writings, which were intended to dumb it down for us; in that process they actually did more harm).  In general, rishis stayed away from phrases like “thou shall”, because that ignores the “environment or not-mine” corner, the third corner of the Me-Mine-NotMine” triangle.

Long story, a marvelous outcome of this thought process is the last sukta of Rg veda – on how to live. After a collection of more than 1000 suktas, i.e., over 10,000 verses, they conclude this ancient veda with this profound sukta. This  sukta is to the universal power Agni, which is responsible for interconversion, between any two things.  So the question is, if we are all connected, everything is a part of that ocean, what is the best way to live?  What is the best thing to strive for?  There are only four verses in this sukta, three of them are listed below. [Robert Griffith’s translation]     

X.191.2 Assemble, speak together: let your minds be all of one accord,
As ancient Gods unanimous sit down to their appointed share.
X.191.3 The place is common, common the assembly, common the mind, so be their thought united.
A common purpose do I lay before you, and worship with your general oblation.
X.191.4 One and the same be your resolve, and be your minds of one accord.
United be the thoughts of all that all may happily agree

That’s it – syncing up with everyone and everything around is the solution.  Work to achieve commonality in speech, place of assembly (in mind space), mind, thoughts, purpose, resolutions… Are they asking us to brainwash ourselves into a homogeneous mass? No.  They want to learn about how to contemplate on that Ocean.  Understand the methods, share information.  Less focus on what meets the eye, and more emphasis on digging deeper. That is because, it’s one ocean!  We are all waves in it, including other species! Not just humans. Hence the only thing that will work is when we are in  symbiotic, harmonious,  mutually aware relationships – none else.  They are not asking us to chase truth, austerities, celibacy, none of that.  They are all byproducts of syncing up with others and being in resonance with surroundings.   

Purpose of Life – to exercise your freewill

Now, back to the purpose of life – to enjoy the fruits of our past and present actions, resulting from own desires at that time.  Control your future actions to control your journey.  Control your instincts and emotions, because they control your actions.  You are in control of your own destiny. No luck or randomness.  You can control it, albeit very difficult, but yes you can.   Difficult because it requires laser focused effort, to overcome the background karmic activity. We actually do that in spurts, depending  upon how strongly we will it, or desire it.

Again, for beginners, choose your desires very carefully, because everything else follows that.  Yoga is that method which gives us the tools to control your instincts and  emotions – again, very difficult.  Particularly, controlling instinctual responses is extremely difficult.  That is a prerequisite to be able to exercise freewill.    

What action you undertake is  a part of the freewill.  So are the  degree of focus and amount of effort.  But karma sets the level that  you need to exceed to gain that control, what we call destiny, luck or even god.  Observe how elegantly the yogic model weaves freewill with predeterminism.  You are at the center of it! If you are not awake, the whole thing works according to a predetermined mess.  On the other hand, if you can somehow awaken yourself, you will start seeing things more clearly, that which is moving things, and even reveal the knobs to control the situation. 

Shrink the karmic account balance.  Takes a lot of effort, because karma transactions are not only dependent upon our actions, but also upon our thoughts and intentions!  Hence, we need to gain control of our thoughts – meditation!

Brahman and quantum “fields”

Several founding fathers of quantum physicists (like like Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Bohm, Wheeler) had explored these parallels and possible connections.  There are a lot of differences, but bt a high level, the biggest difference is that the Brahman is conscious, where as the Quantum fields (from which the elementary particles emerge) are not.  Herein lies an important clue – yogis in a way used thoughts and mental activity to underlie the perceived physical reality. Thoughts and intentions are a part of this Brahman. For example, our collective desires and intentions shape the physical realty! As we get into the derived fields of the Brahman, we will see that they are proposing an information field (purusha – masculine) and an carrier field (prakruti – feminine) to emerge from this Brahman, to form the physical realty.  All manifestations from that point on, like the photons, and quarks et.,, are interactions of those two fields.  We know the story from there on.  What is interesting is the language the rishis and physicists talk about their respective fields – physicists say that their fields do not have to be created, and they are always there, and what emerge are the particles through the excitation of the corresponding fields.  What rishis say about Brahman is very similar if not identical – Brahman is always there, and that from which the physical universe emerges and dissolves back into.  This is an active area of interest for several physicists and philosophers.  See for example “The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World by Amit Goswami”.  

Yoga, brahman and “God”

Finally… we ask this generic question yet again.  What do these ancient yogis think of “God”, and how does God fit into their concept of brahman?  Is it inside brahman or outside?  In a simple way, both are infinite in every dimension you can think of, and there is no inside or outside for infinities.  In that sense, if there is a God, that God has to be the same as Brahman.  At least based on the little we know about infinities…

The more interesting argument that yogis bring forward is the concept of God; the word God is in quotes because we all define God differently.  Most humans define God as something or someone that’s capable of addressing the sum of all their desires, fears and explain that which is all beyond their comprehension – God (That) starts where You (Thou) stop. Or where your contemplation stops. Now, consider the following analogous question:

Question: Does god exist?
Analogous question: Is the sky blue?

To both questions, a common answer is yes, right?  Try answering the questions to yourself, again, this time while focusing on the facts behind those answers.  Our responses are conditioned by our focus.  In the analog of “is the sky blue?”, our answer is strongly dependent upon our assumption that sky exists!  Actually the definition of sky is very fluid.  It’s actually nothing more than the shell of air or atmosphere around us.  It’s just the sun light that scatters, and when the sun is above us, and blue light scatters the most, and red-side of the spectrum scatters less (except during sunset and sunrise).  During sunset and sunrise, as the sunlight goes through thicker atmosphere (longer path), red-side colors also scatter. Given these factoids, now think about the definition of sky, and its color.  Essentially the existence of a sky is dependent upon the sun, where you are, what time it is, and the presence of that atmosphere, similar to those  superpositions we were talking about before.

Now think of God  The situation is very analogous.  A long story, but what we are probably calling God is the projections, reflections and scattering of our own consciousness.  All these reflections and projections live in a kind of a sky called chitta-akasa!  It is the sky of individual mind-stuff [different from the sky of consciousness] that exists within ourselves that reflects everything!  The very fact that we are answering questions about God means this concept is dancing around in our inner space!  We will discuss this more when talking about the element akasa or space.

Therefore, for yogis, answering this  question is a moot exercise. Instead they ask us to shift the  contemplation from “exist – yes/no?” to “what is God“, and continuously refine the  definition that is in our inner space. Make it more precise and definitive.  More importantly, one of the requirements for their model is that that model has to be applicable to both theists and atheists.  After all, atheists are here too! 

Similarly, God, and by extension Yoga, is for all – both theists and  atheists! Contemplation about “God” is a lot more important than belief in “God”. 

Final seed for contemplation goes to the very core of yogic thought – the zero. They did not need this to count their millions, but to define nothing as a state of existence.  The theory is that our minds are built upon polarities, complementaries, a bunch of -1/+1 or yes/no [true/not true] responses.  So, if our minds put someone on a pedestal, that same mind will definitely put someone else down, because that mind has developed certain criteria, to make measurements and judge.  We have to somehow judge what’s in front of us is “god” or “devil”, right?  Therefore, yogis theorized, the only stable harm-free state that allows not having to create a judgemental criteria is the zero state.  Neither-nor state; and I-am-that state! Now, dawn the yogic attitude, and contemplate on the concept of god. Not very straightforward, right?

There are some perks to this contemplation exercise… As we asymptotically approach this zero state, we transition through a bunch of bliss states.  Human peak experience is one such short-lived, neutral state (Neurobiology of bliss – blurb 13).  Stabilizing that state and making progress is all about progress on this path [yama 4: Brahmacarya – blurb 22].      

How Things Work

We are skipping a bunch of intermediate steps here, but below are some key insights on how things work according to yogis, which may help in seeing things differently, and acting accordingly to meet our goals:

1. Things go in circles, and all phenomena are continuous – things go in circles, not grow or shrink, up or down in one direction forever; this eliminates the complexity of setting the initial condition, which is a big deal in mathematics.  That is, it eliminates the question of what was before…, like before big bang.  Karmic residue from the previous cycle, just like individual histories. Reincarnation is the key outcome of this thinking. 
2. Life as a phenomena can be better understood in Frequency Domain – to understand how a human (or universe)  functions, one should get a frequency domain perspective of it, rather than just the sensory domain (or time domain) perspective – that’s exactly what yogis did.  Mantra, tantra, kriya yoga, yoga nidra are some of the important outcomes. 
3. Mind can be focused several fold to gain significant insights– this yogic model is a great example of their achievements.  it’s just a matter of signal to noise.  This requires localizing our mind in terms of  space and time, as our minds are dispersed over those.  Meditation is the outcome of this line of thinking.  In the dhyana stage of yoga, we apparently experience laser focused thought stream.  No question or nothing is beyond that level of probing.  
4. Sex and Spirituality are two sides of the same coin.  Modern society seems to demean the former and extoll the latter.  In fact, they are the same.  For example, for men, Sexuality path uses the external feminine (the other polarity) and spirituality accesses the inner feminine, but practiced with complete focus. It’s the opposite for woman. Soma is the connector. Tantric aspects of Kama Sutra is the outcome.  It is just that we don’t understand sex at all.  Both can lead to the same place if practiced properly.
5. Breath is the stick that beats the drum called “life”. Breath is the rhythm that maintains life in the body (not just the oxygen in air). When that breath rhythm stops, all other bodily rhythms including heart beat stop. The concept of prana is the outcome of this thinking.  Yajnavalkya calls this prana the “god” in Satapata Brahmana. 
6. Everything can be done in two ways: consciously and unconsciously. Living beings, both sessile and non-sessile (ćara and aćara), tend to rely on the latter unconscious mode, using preprinted stored procedures. That minimizes the energy expenditure. Yogis say – be awake.  Otherwise, we are deluding ourselves into  thinking that all our actions are in accordance with our volition – they are not. So,

Let’s strive to live consciously!

Yoga is that path; it is not a discipline of twisting and turning into shapes, but a lifestyle choice that enables us to live consciously.  It’s for all!

May we all be blessed with the knowledge of the whole_/\_/\_/\_

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from Yogavasista

A demon asks a king and his minister the following questions as the riddle to gain their freedom from her spell.  Non-dualistic brahman is the answer to all the questions, with examples cited.  Visit this version (link) for details.

1. What is that atom which is the cause of the origin, preservation and destruction of the myriads of heterogeneous universes springing up like bubbles on the surface of the ocean?  
2. What is that which is Akasa and yet is not? 
3. What is that which, though it is unlimited, has yet a limit? 
4. What is that which, though moving, yet moves not?
5. What is that which, though it is, yet is not?
6. What is that which manifests itself as Cit (consciousness) and is yet a stone (or inert):
7. What is that which portrays pictures in the Akasa ?
8. What is that atom in which are latent all the microcosms, like a tree in a seed ?
9. Whence do all things originate, like undulations in water, being not different from that cause, like the foam in the ocean?
10. And in what will these two (undulations- and water) become merged as one ?

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further reading

1. Yogis’ footnote to seekers: take nothing for granted, however intricate, reasonable and elegant the theory is; take in the theory with mindful attention, and contemplate deeply in order to grasp it intuitively for yourself. Achieve your own vision for the whole.  Don’t borrow someone else’s.
2. “The Hubble telescope just spotted a black hole giving birth to new stars” (a simplified version of the original journal article from Nature – https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/hubble-telescope-just-spotted-black-025600829.html

3. Maybe the Universe Thinks. Hear Me Out: https://time.com/6208174/maybe-the-universe-thinks/