Near-death Experiences – The evidence and the implication

Hangout talk to University of Cincinnati students

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you all for coming today evening. And I’ll speak on this topic of near-death experiences. I have a PowerPoint and I’ll speak based on that.
So what are near-death experiences? How they point to spirituality? How they comprise science pointing to spirituality? So the first question that comes up is whenever near-death experience comes up, how can we be conscious when we are not conscious? That means when we are biologically in a state of unconsciousness, people have reported accurate perceptions. That’s what is near-death experiences. Near-death experiences are the extraordinary perceptions of physically unconscious people who were close to death because of cardiac arrest, because of any kind of surgery.
They were near-death and they were unconscious and after they came back to consciousness, they told say the surgeon spoke this or this is what I saw and those perceptions turned out to be accurate. Let me give some examples of what I mean. So in the near-death experiences, there are two aspects to them.
There are otherworldly perceptions. Some people claim that oh I went to heaven and I saw so and so person. Maybe I saw my dead grandmother.
I saw my sister who had died long ago. I saw this person, that person. So there are these otherworldly perceptions which are scientifically unexaminable.
How can we know whether they really saw it or it was a dream or it was a hallucination? But there are thisworldly perceptions. That means if they say that I saw the surgeon speaking this to his assistant or I saw the nurse removing my dentures and putting them here. Did it actually happen that we can examine scientifically and find out how accurate they are and then we’ll see what the implication of this is.
So some people often when they hear of near-death experiences. So there are cases when a person who is near-death sees certain things, hears certain things and reports them after they come back to consciousness. Some people dismiss them as hallucinations or it is just a hallucination you had.
But no, there is a big difference between near-death experiences and hallucinations. Hallucinations are disorderly, disturbing and not life-transforming. Whereas near-death experiences are very orderly.
This happened, this happened, this happened. Just last year or in fact this year in fact when I was in National University of Singapore I gave a similar talk on near-death experiences and after that a lady professor from there, a Chinese lady, she came and told me that she had a near-death experience almost 18 years ago and she had unanswered questions about what that was and she narrated her experience to me and then she asked me what does it all mean. So before answering her question I asked her how was her experience and she said it was all it was the most peaceful time of my life.
So suddenly it’s not disorderly, it’s not disturbing, it’s peaceful. That’s the universal description of near-death experiences of most experiencers. Normally if somebody is near-death because of a trauma, because of a heart attack, because of some physical damage, that is the least likely time when we would expect them to be peaceful but they are peaceful.
So how does this happen? So Pim Van Lommel is a researcher who has extensively studied near-death experiences and he writes in an article in Lancet some people say that this near-death experiences are simply caused by some chemicals. So he asked that with a purely physiological explanation for NDE such as cerebral anoxia that means absence of oxygen most patients who have been clinically dead should report one. So if the near-death experiences are caused simply by some biochemical or chemical or biological factor, then all those people who are having that biological situation they should have that experience but everyone doesn’t.
About one-tenth of them have that. So why is this difference? Actually it doesn’t have simply biological cause. There is something bigger going on over here.
By the way, before I move on can I just know how many of you are from a science background? That will help me understand how much science I should go into. So how many of you are from a science background? Yeah, how many of you are from a science background? Oh, almost 60-70%. Okay, fine.
Thank you. So then I think I should be able to go into adequate detail in science also. So now Dr. Michael Sabom in his book Recollections of Death he describes a particular near-death experience.
There was this Air Force officer who was brought into the brought in emergency after having had a heart attack and as he was being resuscitated he described in detail what happened. So some of you may have seen in movies when people heart has stopped functioning then they give a electric shock to the heart in order to make the person person’s heart to function once again to give a jolt. So now that device is called a defibrillator and this particular person whom Dr. Sabom saw the situation was like this that this Air Force general this case happened in America Dr. Michael Sabom is an American researcher and this patient was lying down unconscious and then afterwards when he came back to consciousness he described that I saw from a perspective above I saw myself lying on the ground and I saw this big device and he reported that he had two needles and one needle moved up very fast and the second needle moved slowly upwards now this is a particular kind of defibrillator that was used 30-40 years ago now this defibrillator is not very common in fact not at all common so the two needles where for what purpose is sorry so the two needles where for the purpose of first needle would indicate how much electric charge is to be put in that device and the second needle indicated slowly that much charge coming up and once the device was charged up to that level then the probe would be put on the patient’s chest and the electric shock would be given to jolt the heart to start functioning once again so there is no way that a person could have known the kind of defibrillator that was going to be used and because this was an out of fashion defibrillator and he was a layman he did not have any knowledge of medicine specifically so he described something which would have been impossible for him to know even if he had been conscious because he was lying on the ground flat and his device was at some distance from him and just the probe was brought close to him but he described seeing it from above from overhead so Dr. Sabom raises this question how could he have seen this so could this have been by prior general knowledge but the problem with prior general knowledge is the idea of prior general knowledge is that actually this is very specialised knowledge and this is not the kind of knowledge that a lay person would likely have so actually this is a long presentation over several at least an hour or so so I may not be able to go over everything I will speak overall sketch and I will go into some cases so the point we are trying to analyse through this is that in the near death experiences there strongly seems to be some component to our being that exists beyond our body when the body stops functioning still somehow we keep functioning and what is it that makes us function that is the question that we are trying to address so before that we are giving some examples of cases when people are biologically known to be unconscious and still they are not just conscious but they are very sharply precisely conscious so this is another case of a woman named Maria that was reported by Dr. Kimberly Clark again this was in America and Kimberly Clark was a medical social worker and one night late at night this Maria was brought into the hospital unconscious near death and next all night she was practically in coma unconscious hovering between life and death and the next morning when she came back to consciousness she described to Clark that there was a tennis shoe hanging on a window ledge in the hospital and she described where it was now Clark couldn’t believe this because Maria had come there in the dark the previous night and she had been unconscious throughout that night and she had just come back to consciousness still Maria described the tennis shoe in such details she went and investigated and she peered out from the windows at several floors and finally when she peered out she saw a shoe lying out there and she got a holder and then pulled out the shoe and the shoe had all the details which Maria had described and the shoe was placed on the window ledge outside far away from where a human hand could reach and far away from what a person could see from a window unless they stretched out far out from the window and looked towards what was on the ledge the only way Maria could have known this is if she had been seeing it from the side of the building floating near the window so what exactly happened how did this happen this is a question which has eluded answer so now the point is some people may say maybe they were conscious maybe the patients they were conscious and they heard something they saw something but even if Maria had been conscious it is well documented that she was not conscious but even if she had been conscious how could she have known something that was lying on the ledge of a window in a hospital a ledge which was inaccessible and a ledge which was surrounded by darkness even more intriguing are certain cases of NDEs near death experiences of the blind this is a book written by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper where they call it Mindsight so here there are cases of people who were born blind so Vicky Umipeg was a woman who was born blind and she never could see throughout her life and yet she had two near death experiences and during those near death experiences she was able to see and that was the only time she was able to see so when during her birth there had been excessive oxygen given to her womb and that had caused permanent damage of the optical nerve and that’s why there was no way biologically speaking that her eyes vision could have been restored and yet she was able to see accurately and she was able to see only during those times and there are many cases like this described by Ring and Cooper in their book so not only can normal people see what they should not be able to see but even blind people who normally can’t see are able to see during their near death experiences so how does this happen and this is the most important case we will look at now this was an operation stand still case of Pam Reynolds so Pam Reynolds was again a lady in America she had a giant bacillary artery aneurysm that means there was a big swelling at the bottom of her brain and doctors told her that there is no chance for you this is a fatal thing but then she came to know of a doctor, Dr. Spetzler who had pioneered a procedure called operation stand still what does that mean? Because the aneurysm is at the bottom of the brain so the whole brain has to be picked out of the cranial cavity and that aneurysm has to be removed and to pick out the brain is not easy so what has to be done? The whole body has to be brought to a stand still and these are the steps involved in that the body temperature is lower to 60 degrees to extremely low degree then the heart beat and breathing are stopped.
How? An artificial cardiac arrest is induced in the person by which the person’s breathing stops then the brain waves are flattened and then all the blood from the head is drained out so now there is complete stoppage of the body by body functioning and just to make sure that the brain has stopped completely there are ear pieces which are inserted in the ears and they emit 90 to 100 decibel clicks at the rate of 11 to 13 clicks per second that means this is the sound of a train whistle or a huge or a very strong kettle drum that’s 11 to 13 clicks per second and the purpose of this is to make sure that there is no consciousness remaining at all even if we are fast asleep if we hear a loud sound we come back, we get awake so when this loud sound is coming slow fast then if there is even slight consciousness remaining then the person will jolt out of consciousness and this operation cannot be performed if the patient is conscious so to ensure that the patient is unconscious throughout and there is no mistake in discerning the patient’s unconsciousness, these ear pieces are inserted. Now after all this is done there is just no possibility biologically speaking of the patient being conscious and yet during this time Reynolds reported a near death experience, she saw herself from a perspective above her body and she heard a female say she was at her feet and they were cutting in her groyne area and she was alarmed, she said this is a surgery of the brain, why are they cutting in the area of my legs and then she heard a female voice they said that the veins here on the left side are very small and then she heard a male voice and they said okay try on the right leg and then the right leg worked and she observed the surgery and she described many specific details so the doctors were actually when they had to do a bypass they had to do a cardiac arrest to stop her heart’s functioning so at that time they needed a pathway for the blood that’s why they were creating a pathway through the veins from the thigh to the heart so the point is she did not know anything about these details before and she saw this and she reported this and Dr. Spetzler who had done the surgery, he reports at that stage in the operation, nobody can observe here in that state and I find it inconceivable that your normal senses such as hearing let alone the fact that she had clicking modules in each ear, that there was any way to hear through normal auditory pathways, I don’t have an explanation for it, I don’t know how it’s possible for it to happen considering the physiological state she was in, at the same time I have seen so many things that I can’t explain that I don’t want to be so arrogant as to be able to say that there is no way it can happen so how does this happen so I’ll just move forward some things so now how does this happen the Vedic scriptures offer us a model of the self which can explain how this happens, it’s a tripartite model of the self, tripartite means three levels within this model of the self the body is the hardware, the mind is the software and the soul is the user, so what happens at the time of death is, or at the time of near death experiences is that the soul along with the mind come out, so that I’m illustrating with a diagram now this is how we normally see is this diagram clear to everyone is it visible screen is not being shared all this time the screen was not being shared, are you saying all this time the screen was not we are listening to you really you should have told me oh god so I was reading out things bandwidth was low oh sorry, so none of these things you saw no ok fine no problem, good at least I asked I wanted to have all this shown ok so here I’m showing, is this diagram visible now yes so here this is how the normal vision takes place you see the eye here this is the outside world and from where perception is coming in this is how we normally see whatever we see the visual information comes into the eyes from the eyes it goes to the optic nerve to the brain from the brain it goes to the subtle eye and through the subtle eye it goes to the subtle body ultimately to the soul so now what this means is that there is a whole mechanism beyond the eye and the brain which enables perception to take place of course the eye and the brain are the normal channels through which perception happens but actually the experience of perception happens here in the subtle body to give an example for this say normally if you have a house, if you have a big house then you may have a security camera which shows us who is coming at the door is somebody knocking at the door somebody is coming in through the door we see through the security camera who is coming in so that is the mechanism through which a person sees but that person also has their own eyes and even if the security camera doesn’t work at a particular time they can just look directly through their eyes and they can see oh this person is coming now, this is a friend this is suspicious looking character so they can see this using the security camera and if the security camera is not working they can see it themselves directly so normally this is the mechanism by which we see but in some special cases this mechanism doesn’t work and then we see in another way so this is what happens in the case of near death experiences this is the NDE vision so what has happened during near death experiences, the soul along with the subtle body has left has come out of the body the soul along with the subtle body has come out of the gross body so there is the eye, there is the brain but there is nothing inside and because there is no source of consciousness the person is unconscious now here the soul and the subtle body they still have the capacity to see normally the capacity is channelled through the physical structure of the brain and the eye but in the case of near death experiences that capacity is not used because that capacity is broken down the body is damaged at that time so the soul and the subtle body come out of the body and then there is vision so this is how near death experiences can be explained using the Vedic model of the self if we consider that consciousness comes only from the brain as is proposed by materialism then there is no explanation at all for near death experiences how can they happen? they just cannot happen but they have happened not only can they happen but they have happened for thousands of times there are literally thousands of cases of near death experiences reported by people all over the world so rather than dismissing the cases we can look for explanations and this is a explanation that is offered by the Vedic model of the self so now the spiritual knowledge that is given in the Bhagavad Gita that is a higher dimensional science a higher dimensional science means it is a science which deals with higher dimensions of reality so here is the science normally we have science as two components theory and experiment spirituality also has two components there is philosophy and there is religion so philosophy is like the theory component of science and religion is like the experiment component of science what this means is that science gives us some postulations about the nature of material reality so for example Newton observed a fruit falling and he thought that maybe this fruit fall is caused by some factors and then he postulated the theory of gravity to explain that and in the experiment he tried with various objects do they fall and based on that when he saw they fell he concluded that the theory of gravity is verified so spirituality offers us philosophy which gives us theoretical propositions about the nature of reality so for example philosophy tells us that our core self is non-material we are at our core spiritual beings and as spiritual beings we are we have higher faculties of perception which we normally don’t have which we normally don’t cognise, we are normally not aware of and religion gives us practises by which we can realise these higher realities so for example now I talk about near-death experiences these are experiences which a significant number of people have but not all of us have them so during near-death experiences if people introspect on them they can perceive that there is something higher to life beyond the biology of the body and now the people who go through near-death experiences they have this experience but what about the rest of us for all of us also if we practise the recommendations of yoga that are given in the Bhagavad Gita those recommendations can help us to experience a higher reality so religion is not just a set of rituals meant to give us religion is not just a set of rituals meant to be followed blindly actually the original purpose of whatever practises are given in religion they are meant to raise our consciousness to a higher reality where we experience things which we cannot experience normally I’ll give an explanation of what this means if we actually don’t have a spiritual conception of life what happens then we have a material conception of life and the result of the material conception of life is Martin Luther King said this famously that we have guided missiles and misguided men our scientific power has outrun our technological power and one tragic example of this is the spiralling suicide rate in the world a million people commit suicide every year and this figure of million is actually more than the number of people who are killed in terrorist attacks in murderous crimes and in wars all combined together that means more than the number of people who are killed by others are the number of people who are killing themselves why are so many people so frustrated with their lives that they are ready to end their life the reason for that is that they there can be many complex reasons at an individual level for why a person may take this extreme and tragic step of ending their lives but at a universal fundamental level the cause is an exclusively materialistic conception of life when we think that my success, my happiness my progress all of them depend only on material things and if I don’t get them then what is the use of my life if I don’t get into a particular university then what is the use of my life if I don’t get a particular job what is the use of my life if I don’t have a particular relationship what is the use of my life when we have a material definition of life we actually very dangerously base our self conception and self worth on things that are not in our control if I base my self worth on what kind of job I have what kind of career I have what kind of relationship I have and if those things don’t work out sometimes they may not work out because they are external they are not in our control and when they don’t work out we become devastated if we understand that we have a spiritual side to ourselves a side that is indestructible, a side which can be a source of happiness for us irrespective of what happens to us in the external world a source of inner strength and solace and satisfaction and that can become our greatest power in the journey of life this power of inner spiritual awareness can enable us to face life’s ups and downs life will always have ups and downs but if we understand that at our core we are indestructible then we can face life’s ups and downs with far more stability and maturity and that is what actually spirituality offers us that’s why what spirituality offers us is the ultimate positive thinking the ultimate positive thinking is that when we understand that I am indestructible we go beyond positive perception of reality to the perception of positive reality so positive perception of reality means that if a glass says half empty and I say it’s half full I am perceiving positively, I am optimistic that is good now of course if the glass is empty as this is and I say that it’s full then that is not optimism that is actually stupidism that is foolishness if I am thirsty and somebody tells me drink from this glass, I tell this glass is empty oh why are you so pessimistic just drink from the glass I am thirsty give me some water, there is no water in this why do you think so negative just drink well optimism is not going to make an empty glass full, optimism I can use it even when I have an empty glass, my optimism can make me think oh maybe if I just search around I can find some water and I can drink that water but optimism itself doesn’t change the immediate present reality, so what spirituality offers us is the understanding that even when we have difficulties and reversals in our outer world in our inner world our core is indestructible and this vision is very empowering suppose you are, suppose we find ourselves in a disaster zone last week I came to America from India and I came right into the hurricane Harmai so as the hurricane was sweeping around Florida knocking down trees, causing floods leading to power breakdown, suppose it was not such a big hurricane but suppose there was a very big hurricane in which there is a disaster everywhere the area has been declared a disaster zone and somebody who is trapped in that area, they will be in great fear, they will be in great tension, great worry but suppose at that time an aircraft comes and lifts them up, as they are lifted up, up, up now they are in the safety of the helicopter above the disaster zone so when they are above the disaster zone, at that time they don’t have that same insecurity that they had earlier they will still have concern because maybe some relative is there, maybe some friend is there below, I want to check it, I want to help them if possible but that same sense of being personally threatened and endangered that is not there because they have understood that they have been raised above similarly, for all of us life will bring problems in our life but if we have spiritual understanding of ourselves, then we rise above the circumstances that we are in yes, whatever things go wrong around me, actually I have a higher side to myself and that higher side, when I experience that, when it’s like I am airlifted out of disaster zone, and when I am airlifted out of the disaster zone then I feel immediate relief and we all can experience our spiritual side through mantra meditation, mantra is empowered spiritual sound, some of us may have heard of mantras and they may have been chants which are parts of religious ceremonies and that’s how we might have thought of them earlier, yes, they can be chants as parts of religious ceremonies but mantra is a special sound which has special power, and that power is to raise our consciousness, to heighten our awareness from our present circumstances to a more spiritually evolved condition just like an elevator can swiftly raise a person from the first floor to the even the 100th floor or just as an aircraft if it drops down a rope, it can lift up a person from the ground high up into the sky similarly, when we meditate on spiritual sound when we practise mantra meditation our consciousness gets elevated from where we are to higher up, and once our consciousness is elevated up, then we experience profound peace we experience inner strength, we experience sublime satisfaction and with that peace, strength and satisfaction we become empowered to function more effectively in the outer world be it in a scientific area be it in a social area, be it in whatever area of work we work in spiritual awareness will enable us to become more effective so, I’ll conclude with one point our ability to tap our ability is enhanced by our spirituality our ability to tap our ability is enhanced by our spirituality now we all have certain abilities in life but if our minds are unsteady, if we are filled with negativity, if we worry too much if we are distractible then all these are problematic mental patterns and because of these mental patterns we are unable to tap our ability, we have ability but we are not able to tap it now suppose, sometimes in sports, say in cricket, some batsman may be very talented, but that batsman is very temperamental, just hits one loose shot and gets out that batsman can’t do justice to the talent, and then the coaches and critics they are telling, you have to improve your temperament, so they have ability, but they need to tap the ability, and that inner calmness that inner composure, that inner focus comes when we get a spiritual understanding of our core so, that’s why our ability to tap our ability is enhanced by our spirituality so, I’ll summarise then we can have some questions I started by talking about near death experiences, since I did not show the powerpoint earlier, I’ll just go over the powerpoint now or you could not see the powerpoint earlier, although I was trying to show it so, I started with near death experiences where science points to spirituality, the question was, how can we be conscious when we are not conscious, that means when the body and the brain are biologically unconscious how can some people be conscious that is the basic mystery of near death experiences then we discuss specific cases and we focus in those cases cases on this worldly perceptions not otherworldly, because otherworldly perceptions somebody says I saw my grandmother I saw my dead relative how can we verify that, but if people say I saw the surgeon, I saw the nurse and they were doing this that can be verified, thereby we can understand whether these experiences are for real or not some people may discuss these near death experiences as hallucinations but hallucinations are disorderly disturbing and not life transforming and these are orderly they are peaceful and they are profoundly transformational we discuss how these cannot be explained in terms of biochemical causes because then all the people who are in those biochemical situations say like lack of oxygen and everybody who is in situation of lack of oxygen they all should have near death experiences but they all don’t have so when people say I saw this I heard the doctor talking like this could they have just guessed it yes, in some cases possible we discuss a case where the patient described precise details of how a defibrillator worked and that too it was a defibrillator which was a long time ago, which was not popularly available at that time, it is unlikely to be known from prior general knowledge then we discuss the case of Maria who described the details of a shoe that was suspended on a windowsill there is no way that she could have known it herself then even the blind people are able to see as I described in the book Endes of the Blind called Mindsight by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper I discuss the case of Vicky Umepeg who had been born blind and could never see throughout her life except in her two near death experiences then I discussed about Operation Stancil now this whole case is being described so that it has been biologically verified that the person was unconscious there was no possibility that the person could have been biologically conscious the whole operation success depends on ensuring that the patient is unconscious and in such a case of total unconsciousness if a person is able to perceive something as Pam Reynolds was able to that indicates that she is perceiving in some way other than the normal Dr Spencer also said that there is no way that one can be conscious at such a time but still she was conscious then we discussed we expanded from here the Vedic model of the self, the body is like the hardware the mind is the software and soul is the user and diagrammatically I described how the normally we see through the eyes the brain, the subtle eye and the soul that like say in a normal security setup if the main gate is far away from the house the people see through the security camera setup whoever they want to check who is coming in but even the security camera breaks down the person themselves the security in charge or the owner they have their own eyes and they can see through their own eyes also so like that the soul normally uses the subtle eye and the brain and the eye to see but in the case of near death experiences the soul and the subtle body they leave the gross body they come out and then the subtle eye sees directly and then we discussed how spirituality is a higher dimensional science so through the philosophy we understand about higher spiritual truths intellectually and through the practises we are able to experience those higher truths experientially somebody says I won’t get into all this business of spirituality then we have the tragedy of guided missiles and misguided men, the tragedy of a million suicides every year more people are killing themselves than being killed by others that happens because when we have only a materialistic conception of life when things go wrong in life then we feel that is the end of life what is the use of living the ultimate positive thinking is when we understand that we are at our core indestructible and this takes us beyond thinking that empty glass is full to actually filling the glass that means rather than imagining that there is nothing beyond matter we experience non-material side and that’s becoming so when we experience a non-material side the peace the fulfilment, the strength that we experience that is like a person being airlifted out of a disaster zone and we can experience this through mantra meditation mantras act like spiritual elevators elevators of consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level and I conclude by saying that when we practise meditation when we experience the peace clarity and composure at our core then by that our ability to tap our ability becomes enhanced thank you very much, are there any questions this is a time that normally everybody wants just to ask questions let’s take it easy and ask one by one who has questions anybody if you want to write down questions you can you can talk louder question about how spirituality and noetic sciences are spirituality and is there any mention of weight of the stone in our books were you able to hear that question Prabhuji not really, the relationship between spirituality and noetic sciences but there was something about the weight of stone I didn’t get that part weight of soul weight of soul characteristics of the soul like weight of the soul ok, so the soul is a non-material being that’s why the soul does not have any physical weight, in fact there have been some researches done and if you compare the weight of the body just before the moment of death and after death there are no significant differences found, it is not that a certain chemical pops out of the body and the important point is to recognise that the soul is not a physical object in some cases because of certain biochemical factors certain changes may happen in the body because of which there may be some differences in some physical dimensions but the soul is a spiritual being and when we talk about a spiritual being it does not have a physical dimension like weight so the soul is non-material and that’s why it is means in the Bhagavad Gita in the 2nd chapter 18th verse it is beyond any form of material measurement the soul itself does not have any weight ok any other questions? was your question anything more specific? ok, good question I was expecting this when I talked about the soul being immeasurable so when you have heard that the soul is 110,000 the tip of a hair so now if you look at it it is primarily indicative it is not literal if somebody says that the soul is it is 110,000 the tip of a hair now how are we going to measure the size of a tip of a hair how do you decide what is the tip is it this much or this much and then how do we decide how much are we going to divide it into so the important point is this is not a in this case the emphasis is not on the literal size the emphasis is on the number is given as an indicator of minuteness so the soul is it is beyond material measurement and the 110,000 of a tip of a hair that is not a precise mathematical calculation because the tip of a hair itself is not a precise mathematical dimension so the idea of saying 110,000 is to convey the minuteness of the soul in a visually evocative way but the soul is beyond material dimensions and just its minuteness is conveyed in a in a indicative way by giving a dimension whenever we hear any statement in scripture we cannot take one statement and see it as the absolute truth because the same scripture say the same Upanishadic body of knowledge which talks about this particular dimension of 110,000 of a tip of a hair that same Upanishadic body of knowledge also states that the soul is it is immeasurable so immeasurable means it is not talking about immeasurable in the sense of being immeasurably large but it is talking about immeasurable in terms of being immeasurably small so this is an indicative dimension not a literal dimension any other questions yes please yeah ok so how do we learn to do everything for Krishna how do we do something selflessly see firstly we have to know that to be selfless that is not less for the self to be selfless is not less for the self normally whenever we think of selflessness the idea is ok if I have some food and I give the food to someone else then I have less food if I have some money I give it in charity then I have less money that is the experience at the material level of reality where when I become selfless often it becomes less for the self but at the spiritual level of reality things are different so when we cultivate selflessness actually selflessness is enriching because selflessness is what connects us with Krishna and Krishna is the source of ultimate happiness sarva sarva akarshati iti krishna it is said one of the source of all attraction is Krishna so when we connect with Krishna we experience higher happiness so firstly we shouldn’t worry too much about being selfless we should focus on connecting with Krishna when we start connecting with Krishna and start experiencing non material fulfilment through that connection then the selflessness will automatically come in the relationship if we do meditation, if we study scripture we understand philosophically our non material side and then we have spiritual practises which gives us experience of that then there are direct spiritual activities such as coming for spiritual programmes, studying spiritual books practising spiritual meditation these are direct spiritual activities when we do these direct spiritual activities our consciousness gets connected with higher spiritual reality once that has been done then when we are doing other activities in our life say for example if we are students and we are studying at that time we can see that as students my studies I am in a particular position I am studying in a particular subject ultimately this is also by the arrangement of Krishna so I can see my studies as an opportunity to serve Krishna in 18.46 in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that by your work worship him and thus you can attain perfection sometimes this verse is translated as work is worship but Krishna is specifically saying worship him by your work he is not saying work is worship if work itself were worship if work itself were worship then the donkey would be the greatest worshipper so if work itself were worship then a thief may say I am robbing that’s my work, is that worship so work is worship is a good principle if it is seen as a ethical idea for imbuing people with a sense of dignity of labour if work is worship is also good if it is used for imbuing people with a understanding that they should do their work seriously but work is worship is not a philosophical truth, work itself is not worship, what the Bhagavad Gita teaches is work can be made into worship and how does that happen so when we connect with Krishna in a mood of service through direct spiritual activities then a mood of service gets infused in our whole life and then our studies, our job our family, we see them all as opportunities to connect with God through service so that means we have certain talents, we have intelligence we have memory, these are gifts given to us by God and we use them in a service so when we have this mood of devotion then how do we envision life we see it as what we are is God’s gift to us what we become is our gift to God what we are we have certain talents, we have certain abilities, many of those talents and abilities may right now be in an unrefined stage, so what we are is God’s gift to us what we become is our gift to God so when we have this mood then we see that our studies, our profession all these are also opportunities to serve God to use the gifts that he has given us in a mood of contribution in this world and thus we can see our spiritual connection with God not just in direct spiritual activities but also in other activities which we do in a mood of contribution and service does it answer your question? any other questions? yes please so my question can you just take me back to the slide where you showed the area which was pervaded by consciousness you have to show the satellite of that slide I had a question on that sure ok can you see it now? see it now? screen is not shared right now I am just doing that so here my question is the shaded area does not include the soul ok so does it mean that the user the soul in the body it does not by itself has any consciousness but it gives a consciousness to the soul or I don’t know how to explain ok so does the shaded area here does not have consciousness does that signify that the soul does not have consciousness no see the soul is the the soul is the subject of consciousness and the world around it is the object of consciousness so is the soul conscious of itself yes when it is the consciousness is reflected through some reflector the soul becomes self aware just like if I have a mirror in front of me I can see myself but otherwise it’s not that I can turn my eyes on myself I can look at myself so the soul is the subject of consciousness the soul is not the object of consciousness the world is the object of consciousness normally the soul cannot perceive itself but when we become so this is talking about the embodied condition this is talking about the conditioned situation this is not talking about a liberated situation when the soul is no longer conditioned by the body the soul’s consciousness is no longer attracted towards external material things then the soul can perceive itself yatra uparamate chittam niruddham yogasevaya yatra chaivatmanatmanam paschanatmanitushyate sukhamatyantikam yathat buddhigrahaya matindriyam vetti yatra chaivayam siddhashchandra tattvataha krishna says in bhagavad gita 6.20-23 in this four verses he describes the stage of samadhi, perfect spiritual realisation and that time he says yatra uparamate chittam at this stage the chitta, the moment of consciousness stops niruddham yogasevaya by the steady practise of yoga yatra chaivatmanatmanam paschanatmanitushyate at that time the soul turns inwards and soul can perceive itself the soul in the conditioned stage at the present stage soul is conscious but it is the subject of consciousness that means it is the person who is being conscious it is at present not the object of consciousness in the liberated stage similarly the soul can become the object of consciousness also, when its consciousness is no longer dragged by outer material stimuli then it can become the object of consciousness does it address your question? yes sir so at the liberated stage how the consciousness gets transferred you said like in the liberated stage the soul itself is conscious of itself ok yeah i understood yeah at the liberated stage how does the soul’s consciousness get transmitted see now there is there are two kinds of liberation there is videha mukti and there is jivan mukti videha mukti means the soul leaves the body and goes back to the spiritual world videha, at that time there is no body so this kind of liberation happens after death and there is jivan mukti jivan mukti means there are some souls who may become so spiritually evolved that even in the present stage they may be able to perceive themselves as different from the body they are able to perceive themselves spiritually so to explain this consider an example say a person is watching a tv and on the tv a cricket match is going on and that cricket match is so consuming, this person is so caught in watching the cricket match that that person forgets the whole reality that ok i am sitting on a sofa and i am sitting in a room and there might be somebody there are so many other things in the room they forget all that and they focus completely on the cricket match and get totally lost in the cricket match but if somehow they gradually become aware oh actually i am sitting in this room and there are so many other people over here or there are so many other things over here so that may happen maybe say if their favourite team start losing the cricket match and they get frustrated with it or it may happen because if there is some upheaval in the room around them and they see what is happening otherwise they are consumed in the whatever is being displayed on the tv so like that at present for us the soul, say the soul is here and the soul is at one place and the tv is like the body mind complex into which the soul’s consciousness is going and is going outwards so as long as the soul has to function in the body the soul is going to use the body mind complex but the soul who is liberated is not attached to the body mind complex just like to go back to the earlier example of cricket some people may be so lost in the cricket match that they just forget everything else others may be watching the same tv but they are watching it to get some news update but they know I am different from the tv, I am different from whatever is happening on the programme but for getting information of a particular thing I am watching that programme so like that the liberated souls who are there they also as long as they have to function in this world they need the body and the mind because the soul for functioning in this world requires that as the instrument but they don’t misidentify with the instrument, they are not attached to that instrument but for functioning in this world they use the instrument and the soul ultimately becomes liberated, so this is the state of Jeevan Mukti where one is using the body and the mind but is not identifying with it whereas at the end of life there is Videha Mukti when the soul leaves the body and the mind here and returns to the spiritual world and attains the spiritual world where it has a spiritual form to perform spiritual activities to perform spiritual activities of love with God Krishna, does it answer the question? Yes, yes because the soul because the soul is no longer captivated with the body-mind complex so the soul has the capacity for self-reflection and self-perception but as long as the soul is captivated by the body-mind complex it does not have that capacity for self-reflection ok yeah there are couple of other questions here next, just next to you yeah hmm are you asking that the yogis when they attain samadhi at that time is it at that time they become detached from the body and the mind yes, yes no, not necessarily detachment can come from multiple purposes, multiple sources one is of course what you said when a person becomes spiritually realised at that time they become indifferent from the body-mind but it doesn’t necessary that detachment has to come only when one is fully spiritually realised even if one understands the gravity and the urgency of one’s, of life’s spiritual side, at that time they may get a spiritual calling and a spiritual calling is not the spiritual culmination they are not necessarily attained spiritual realisation fully but just the deep understanding of the urgency and the importance of life’s spiritual side that may also inspire some people to detach themselves from the world and focus on God but there is another possibility that some people may just turn towards spirituality or make a pretence of turning towards spirituality just because they are frustrated with life and they want to avoid life’s responsibilities and that kind of thing is not recommended in Bhagavad Gita Bhagavad Gita says in 18th chapter 6th verse that sakrutva rajasam tyagam naiva tyaga phalam labed dukha mithya evayat karma kaya kalesha bhayate jit so if somebody simply gives up work because they find the work too troublesome and they use spirituality as a subterfuge as an excuse for avoiding responsibility then that is unhealthy and that the Bhagavad Gita does not approve so we cannot assume that just because somebody is detached they are automatically spiritually perfected now we have to look at the way they are actually living so detachment can come because of spiritual perfection, detachment can come because of strong spiritual call which is the beginning or which is the starting point for journey towards spiritual perfection or detachment can also be a cover up for one’s irresponsibility so we shouldn’t assume that just detachment has come because of spiritual perfection alone does it answer your question? certain real yogis attain that capability to leave their body on their own will if they have this ok can yogis leave their body at their own will? yes it’s possible that sva-iccha-mrtyu by one’s choice one can decide the moments of one’s death so basically how this works is that the body is a tool that we have been given it’s like a rented house normally when we rent a house there are some terms which comes ok you pay this much rent and you can stay here for this many months so now the difference is that we are in a rented house which is our body but we don’t know how much is the term so for the yogis by spiritual growth they come to know the length and then they plan how they will live so in that sense sva-iccha-mrtyu means that actually by their mystic powers they can come to know how long they are going to live and then they plan their death in such a way that death happens in auspicious way ok so but maybe some people were interested in getting some of your books so if you can tell us how we can get some of your books if there is a way for us to purchase the books online oh yes ok all my books are available on amazon.com and they are also available in create space from which you can directly get a pdf hard copy also so on my website there is a whole link on the spiritual scientist slash books where you can get link information of where you can get these books spiritualscientist.com slash books yeah just before we close out the session probably you can just give us maybe one minute tip to all the students how they can improve their focus because they are all in studies and they would appreciate some guidance from us how can we improve our focus i would say two main things there is reminder and reorientation the whole when a plane when you have a plane which is flying from say mumbai to new york 90 to 95 percent of the time the plane is off track how it reaches the destination is the pilot knows i have to go there and the pilot keeps reorienting because of the atmospheric conditions because of the wind pressure because of the clouds the plane will go off track but because the pilot knows where i am to go and pilot keeps reorienting that’s how the plane reaches the destination Bhagavad Gita also Krishna says yato yato nishchalati manas chanchalam asthiram tatas tato niyam yaita atma niyavasham nahi yaita that wherever and whenever the mind wanders bring it back under the control of the self so like that you know whatever we want to focus on whatever we want to achieve in life we need reminder and reorientation so if we have these two things we keep reminding ourselves and then reorienting ourselves then we can become much more effective and productive in our lives so thank you very much for your participation Hare Krishna can we loudly chant Hare Krishna Hare Krishna thank you very much thank you very much so at this time i would like to invite Abbey back so she can lead us to the next part of the programme so this time we have a very special special guest we have a different kind we have the Krishna and also the Krishna programme so at this point right now we are going to start off with a sweet that has been offered to God it’s a wonderful