​Near Death Experiences – Where science points to spirituality

​Talk at the University of Singapore

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Good evening.
I welcome all of you. Am I audible to everyone behind? Okay. So I welcome all of you to today evening’s programme.
I will be speaking on, as I mentioned, about consciousness, the mystery of consciousness and drawing from one particular issue, I will talk about the general patterns of the interaction between science and spirituality. So the topic I will focus on is near-death experiences and how they comprise evidences where science points to spirituality. So the mystery that is raised by the phenomena of the near-death experiences is, how can we be conscious when we are not conscious? That means when people have these near-death experiences, at that time, biologically they are unconscious and yet they are conscious of their circumstances.
So what exactly are near-death experiences? They are the extraordinary perceptions by people who were on the verge of death and they see certain things, they hear certain things and they return from the verge of death back and report these things. So medically they have had a heart attack, they have had some other physical accident because of which the brain waves indicate that they are unconscious and yet they are conscious. So how exactly are they conscious? The NDEs, as they are called, near-death experiences, they have two aspects to them.
There are the otherworldly perceptions and quite often in the popular media, they are focused on. Sometimes some child is sick and unconscious for seven days and the child comes back and says, oh I went to heaven and I saw Jesus there and Jesus talked with me. Different people have different ideas of what they saw in some otherworld somewhere.
And excessive focus on the otherworldly perceptions that happen during near-death experiences, excessive focus on them undermines their scientific potential. Along with what somebody might see in some other realm of existence, that is not capable of being subjected to scientific scrutiny. But along with that there are thisworldly perceptions and they are what can be scientifically examined.
What does thisworldly perceptions mean? A typical near-death experience scenario is that a person is brought to a hospital because of a cardiac arrest and while the person is unconscious, people are struggling, medical staff is struggling to revive the patient and after the patient is revived, the patient tells that I saw myself from a perspective above the operating table. So I saw myself, I saw the doctors, I saw the nurses running around, I heard what they were talking and then typically I felt myself being raised by a force and I went out of the window, I went into the sky and went far, far away and there I saw certain things. So what they saw over there at some other level of reality, that is not the focus of our discussion.
What we will focus on is what they see in the operating theatre or its vicinity and we will see what are the ways in which they could have known that. Is there any ordinary explanation for their perceptions during such situations? So now in this I will discuss, we will take the sceptical perspective here towards all near death experiences and we will discuss four explanations, normal explanations of near death experiences and we will see how they are inadequate for specific cases of near death experiences. The most common explanation that sceptics give is these are simply hallucinations and they say that when people are near death, when the brain, when the people are in a state of trauma, at that time people often have some hallucinations.
It’s possible, but there are three features about near death experiences which differentiate them from hallucinations. Hallucinations are disorderly. Sometimes something, some image pops up, some image goes off.
All sorts of strange things are seen that they don’t make any coherent sense. Whereas, near death experiences are very clear. In fact, experiencers describe that whatever they perceive, they call it as realer than reality.
It’s so crystal clear. It’s very clear and orderly. Secondly, after the hallucinations, people feel disturbed, but most often after near death experiences people, the subjects are serene, very calm.
They have had a profound experience, but it has been profoundly calming. And thirdly, many near death experiences are life transforming. People change their values.
Hallucinations bring about no such transformation. And most importantly for us, as we, for the course of our discussion, is that scientifically that is not an adequate explanation. Dr. Pim Van Lommel is a prominent cardio surgeon and cardiac scientist.
He has written a book, several books. One of the articles he published in Lancet, a prominent science magazine, he describes that with a purely physiological explanation for NDE, such as cerebral anoxia. Sometimes they say that when there is no oxygen enough, then people imagine, get hallucinations.
But if anoxia could explain NDEs, then all the people who are near, who go through near death, they all get anoxia. Then everyone should have NDEs. Everyone should have these extraordinary perceptions.
So, all, most patients who have been clinically dead should report one, but not everyone reports. In fact, a very small, but significant percentage of people report the NDEs. So, if it’s simply a biochemical explanation, then it should be universal, but it is not universal.
And more importantly for us, during hallucinations we cannot come up with factual perceptions. And what defines, or what will be the focus of our study is the factual perceptions that the subjects have had during near death experiences. So, the second explanation, first explanation is simply hallucination.
Second sceptical explanation they give is that this is simply prior general knowledge. You know, people see, okay, in operating theatre, this is how the patient’s body is opened, this is what the doctor might speak, this is what they might do. And based on that, the patients imagine and come up with some explanation.
Now, Dr. Michael Sabom was the pioneer in near death experience studies. And he wrote a book called The Recollections of Death. And as he compiled the evidence together, his scepticism was eroded away.
One particular case, which he himself found impossible to explain by ordinary means, was with one truck driver who came in because of cardiac arrest and after he was revived, he described the defibrillator that was used. Now, in that particular hospital, the defibrillator was atypical. It was not what was commonly used in most hospitals.
And what did he say that I saw, he said now he is, this patient is lying down, unconscious. And he described that there was this defibrillator and it had two needles to it. So, one, first the doctor, first the medical staff, they pressed something and one needle went up.
And then after that, they kept pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping and the second needle went up. And then finally, when the second needle went all the way up till it touched the first needle, then they touched it to my body and I just jumped up. Now, defibrillator is a device when people have got a heart attack and their heart stops moving.
So, by giving a severe electric shock, the heart is shocked into motion. So now, this was a particular defibrillator which was atypical. Most defibrillators don’t have these two mirrors to it.
So, he described these two panels, sorry, two needles, not mirrors, two needles and he described in detail. Now, he was lying unconscious, there was no way he could have seen this. So, Dr. Sagomar raises the question, how could a person who is almost certainly unconscious, in the middle of cardiac arrest, about to be jolted by electric shock and lying down in such a way that he could not see the defibrillator metre, observe minutely, how could such a person observe minutely the motions of the needles on the drain? So, now, so, some people say, okay, maybe, if it’s not general knowledge, maybe the subject was not yet unconscious.
The phase when the subject, during medical treatment, goes from consciousness to unconsciousness, that may vary in different situations. So, maybe the subject was conscious and because they were conscious, they were able to perceive certain things. So, now, in some near-death experiences, now, for each of these cases that I am giving, there are scores of, hundreds of cases similar, which are available.
I have taken simply the strongest cases, which I’ll be describing over here. So, if somebody is partially conscious, there was this, Dr. Kimberly Clark was a psychiatric social worker and she reported the case of Maria. Maria was a young woman.
She was rushed to a hospital one night in a critical condition and she was treated and she survived but throughout, she was brought in unconscious, she remained unconscious and the next morning, when Clark came to see her, Maria told her, that last night, I saw myself rising out of the hospital bed where I was being operated and I floated out, I floated out and I went out from a window and I saw myself floating outside the hospital building and then she described a tennis shoe that was lying on a window ledge and now, there was no way she could have been unconscious because she had been brought in unconscious and after she had been survived, she remained unconscious, almost like in a coma condition. So, Dr. Clark went out and she peered out of each of the windows on every floor and she couldn’t see anything. Finally, she stuck her neck out and she saw on a window ledge, the outside surface of the window, lying there, a shoe.
She got some assistance and she picked the shoe out and when she picked the shoe out, she described in detail, precisely what the design of the shoe was, what the colour of the shoe was, how many holes it has, how the lace was it, how the lace inside it was. So, even if she had been conscious, nobody from the hospital could have seen all these details. The only way these details could have been seen is, if somebody had been looking eye to eye facing the shoe from outside the building.
It’s literally floating outside the building. So, partial consciousness cannot explain such paranormal perceptions beyond one’s immediate vicinity and beyond any conscious person’s normal perception also. Going further, even more amazing are perceptions among the blind.
In fact, so significant are these perceptions that two researchers, Dr. Kenneth Ring and Dr. Sharon Cooper, they have written a full book about it called NDEs Among the Blind called Mindsight. So, I’ll explain later through a visual display what Mindsight means and how it works out. But, Vicky Umipeg is one case, one of the many cases in their books.
Vicky Umipeg was a young woman when she was 45. She had two successive near-death experiences while she was sick. Now, when she was just a few months old, in the first three months of her life itself, no, actually even before she was born in the incubator, when she was there in the early stages of her life, she had been too much oxygen and because of that, there had been damage to her optic nerve and she had been blind throughout.
And yet, during her near-death experiences, there were two near-death experiences she had. Those were the only times in her life that she saw. And she described precisely how the doctor looked, what the doctor’s haircut was, what kind of scalpel the doctor was using.
And she described distinct personal details which she had never seen and which she could not have known. So, here, not only is partial consciousness not a possible explanation, because even with the patient fully conscious, the patient is blind. How could they see in such a situation? Going further, this is one of the strongest cases.
This is of a subject called Pam Reynolds and she was subjected to an operation called Operation Standstill. So, she had a giant bacillary artery aneurysm. That means, in simple language, at the bottom of her brain, an artery had ballooned out and it could explode at any moment.
And when it would burst, it would cause instant death. And most doctors said there is no hope of recovery, but there was Dr. Robert Spenzler. He has pioneered a technique for dealing with such aneurysms.
It was called Operation Standstill. Operation Standstill because the whole body was brought to a standstill. What was involved in this operation? First of all, the body temperature is reduced to an extremely low temperature, 60 degrees Fahrenheit is described here.
Then after that, through an artificial device, there is a cardiac arrest that is induced, so that the heartbeat stops, the breathing stops. And now, what is the purpose of this? Because they want to open up the brain. And if the blood is flowing through the brain, then the whole thing will become very messy.
So when you stop the heartbeat, then blood stops flowing into the brain further. After blood stops flowing into the brain, after that the brain waves are flattened again through artificial means. And then all the blood is drained out from the head.
Because they want to take out literally the full brain and reach to the bottom of the brain. And at such a time, when she was, no breathing, no heartbeat, no blood supply in the brain, normally if the blood supply goes on in the brain, we start becoming dizzy, we start feeling groggy, vertigo we get. So now here she had no brain waves at all, no blood supply in the brain.
And at that time, she reported having a near-death experience. Now, near-death experiences, this particular phenomenon which we have been studying are called as out-of-body experiences. So near-death experiences can have many factors, many features in them.
But the feature which we are focussing on is when people see themselves from out of the body and they describe certain things. So she had out-of-body experience and she noticed that her hair had been cut in a very peculiar way. And then she saw that someone was operating near her groyne.
She was alarmed. This was supposed to be a brain surgery and why was somebody operating near the groyne? And then she heard a female voice saying that, oh, on the right side, the veins are too small. Then the male voice said, let’s try the other leg.
Now, basically, in order to induce a heart attack, when the heart attack is induced artificially, after that when the person is brought back to consciousness, so for that purpose, they have to do a surgery. They have to put a tube from the thighs upward to the heart. That’s why she was being operated over there.
She had no idea of this procedure. And more importantly, how could she have heard this, not just because she was unconscious, not just because there was no blood in her brain, but more importantly, because this was such a dangerous operation that the doctors have to make sure that there’s absolutely no possibility of consciousness. So what they do is that they put speakers which are practically riveted in the ears.
And those speakers, the earpieces, they emit 90-100 decibel clicks at a rate of 11-13 clicks per second. Now, 90-100 decibel means it’s like a loud tea kettle, or if a vehicle, if a train is moving near a station, and it comes very close, the kind of sound that comes. So that sound was directly being injected into her ears.
Why is that? Because if there’s even a little bit of consciousness, that level of sound will cause some response in the brain. And that way, the doctors will understand the patient has not yet become unconscious, we cannot start the surgery. So throughout the surgery, this decibel sound was being continuously clicked into her ears.
And normally, if right now you are speaking, if I was speaking something and suddenly a tea kettle blows, whatever you are hearing will be obscured, will be interrupted at least, if not obscured. And if that tea kettle is blowing, a whistle is blowing, say, 11-13 times per second, then you will not be able to hear anything. And yet, Pam Reynolds heard this conversation.
This conversation was simply at a normal conversational value. The cardiac doctor was asking the main surgeon, Dr. Spenzler, what to do? How to go ahead? And she did not report the clicks at all. She did not report the clicks at all.
She did not report any difficulty in hearing it. It was normal conversation, which she heard very easily. And Dr. Spenzler is a prominent surgeon who has pioneered this operation standstill.
And what was his explanation of this? He says, 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, it happened.
The evidence is there that it happened. She reported factually. And how can it happen? Normal explanations are not adequate.
So, we discussed till now three explanations. One is hallucinations. The second is prior general knowledge.
Third is partial consciousness. And when none of these explanations work out, there is one possibility that always lurks in the background. That’s fraud.
Could all these just be, maybe the subjects and the researchers, they all connive together to make a giant conspiracy? Now, that is also possible. But Dr. Emily Williams Kelly, she has written a book called Irreducible Mind, where a vast array of evidence talking about the non-material nature of consciousness has been compiled together. And she says that deception is certainly always a possibility to be guarded against in individual cases.
But when this suggestion is used repeatedly and without supporting evidence as a blanket defence against the entire body of evidence, it should be recognised for what it is, which is simply an unwillingness to examine the evidence in a truly scientific spirit. So, one case, two cases, three cases, it could be deception. But there are hundreds of cases like this.
And there are hundreds of cases not just in one part of the world. They have been experienced in practically all the continents all over the world. I’m just publishing a book called The Mystery of Reincarnation.
And I have reported many more cases, compiled together many cases from practically every continent. India, Australia, Africa, America, Russia, Europe, every part of the world people have had these experiences. And overall, they all raise questions that are not easily answerable.
So science progresses when it examines borderline evidence. Normally, there are theories which explain certain phenomena. And scientific knowledge expands only when we confront the evidence that those theories don’t explain.
Let’s look at the history of science for this purpose now. So the implication before this, Dr. Sam Parnia is also a prominent researcher. And he started off as a sceptic.
And he says, what is clear is that something profound is happening. The mind, the thing that is you, your soul, if you will, carries on after conventional science says it should have drifted into nothingness. There should be no consciousness, but still there is something going on.
What is it? How is it? So expanding the frontiers of science. If we study the history of science, in the start of the 20th century, Lord Kelvin, he said that all the explanation that is there for the natural world, it has already been given. And the biggest threat for physicists in the future is going to be unemployment.
Because all explanation has been given, there is nothing more to be done. The only work that they will probably be able to do is fill in the details a little bit more. So basic picture is already clear.
This was in 1896 he made a statement. Dr. Peete has written a book called From Certainty to Uncertainty. How science changed over the 20th century.
So at the start of the 20th century, there was this hubris that we know everything. And there were just two unexplained phenomena. One was the blackbody radiation and the second was the ontological explanation of gravity.
Where does gravity come from? And these two unexplained phenomena, they thought they are just some obscure thing which we will just find out. But they were actually clouds which impended the arrival of a storm. And from the blackbody radiation, the whole phenomena of quantum physics came up.
A whole branch of quantum physics developed to explain the blackbody radiation. And to explain the origin of gravity, Newtonian physics had to give way to relativity physics. So the classical physics, which is Newtonian physics, that was able to explain the observed reality as we normally see it.
But on the fringes of reality, there are phenomena which were not explainable. And from those fringes, science made quantum leaps. Similarly, phenomena like near-earth experiences, these are some things which are experiences that not everyone has.
But still, there are some people who are having it. A significant number of people are having it. And they call for an explanation.
So now, we’ll see an alternative model of the self which can explain near-earth experiences. The problem with the materialistic model of the self is that if our consciousness comes from the brain, then when the brain is not functioning, there should be no consciousness. So the materialistic model of the self cannot explain consciousness.
And especially it cannot explain phenomena like near-earth experiences. The Vedas, the Vedic scriptures describe a tripartite model of the self. Tripartite, three levels of reality.
That is the body, the mind, and the soul. A rough equivalent of this would be, the body is like the hardware, the mind is like the software, and the soul is the user. How does this model, I’ll explain this model further in a little bit, but let’s see first, how this model can explain near-earth experiences.
So here, according to this model, how does normal perception takes place? So there is this, you can see the outside world here, and normal perception happens through the eyes. We see with the eyes. But what happens through the eyes? Through the eyes, the signals go to the brain.
The signals go down to the optic nerve, to the brain, and then the subtle body is basically what is called as the mind. So if you consider three levels of circular things, so three concentric circles, the outermost circle is the gross body, what we see right now, that is the hardware, that’s what we see in a computer. Then the inner circle is the subtle body, that is the mind, that’s like the software.
And the innermost circle is the soul, that is the source of consciousness. So how does normal perception take place? The outside world, the visual data goes in through the eyes, stimulates the optic nerve, that goes to the brain. But even when it goes to the brain, what happens after that? At that particular point, the brain, the brain has certain areas which are stimulated, but where does actually the perception happen? So that even mainstream science is not able to explain that.
Science magazine, of its anniversary editions, it talked about the biggest unexplained questions in science. So the first question they said is, where does the universe come from? And second unexplained question in science is, where does consciousness come from? So even mainstream science recognises that this is not explainable. So the Vedantic model, the Vedic model explains that from the brain, the signals go to the mind.
And from the mind, they go to the soul. It is the soul which perceives. Now, with this basic understanding, let’s see, this is the normal way we perceive.
Now let’s see how things are perceived during near-death experiences. So the soul is different from the body. The soul and the subtle body, soul and the mind, they can leave the body.
So here we see, the person is unconscious. So there is the gross body, there is the eye, there is the brain. But the person is unconscious.
And the soul and the mind, they have left the body. The soul and the mind, they have gone out of the body. And when outside world is being perceived, so the soul is perceiving with the subtle body.
And the subtle body has the subtle eyes. So actually, our cognition, our vision, it happens at three levels. We see not just with our eyes, there is a subtle eye in the mind, and the soul itself has the eye.
So when all three eyes are in one line, that’s when we are able to see. So right now, say if you are looking at me, I am looking at you. But if you are looking at me, if you are thinking about something else, then you won’t see.
Why does that happen? That is because the eyes are focussing on a particular object, but the mind is not there. So the mind is not there, then the line of vision is interrupted. And that’s why we are not able to see.
So, this model of the self can explain near the experiences that the source of consciousness and the soul is a root of consciousness, R-O-O-T. And the mind is the root, R-O-U-T, of consciousness. So, the soul’s consciousness is channelled through the mind into the body, and then it moves outwards.
So, at the time of near-death experiences, the soul and the mind move out of the body. Normally, the soul perceives with the body. So, a simple example is, to understand this, this is a simplistic example.
Suppose, you are at your home, and you see that some visitor has approached. Then you may have a security camera through which you try to observe, who has come here? Now, suppose the security camera is not functioning. Then you may yourself move out, go to some window and look from there.
Security camera may be the normal way in which you see who is visiting. But, if the security camera is not working, we still have our normal eyes which you can see. So, like that, the soul normally sees through the body, through the brain, through the eyes.
That is a normal channel of vision for the soul. But in extraordinary circumstances, such as near-death experiences, the soul does not depend on this bodily channel. It sees directly.
Now, let me complete this. We can have questions after that. We’ll have time for that.
So, now, this is a theory. And what this spiritual wisdom that is given in the Bhagavad Gita, that is akin to a higher dimensional science. It doesn’t ask us merely for belief or blind belief.
It offers us a method for verifying what is being described. So, science has two aspects to it. There is theory and there is experiment.
So, there is theory and there is experiment in science. And similarly, in spirituality, there is philosophy and there is religion. So, philosophy, this has theory within science, gives us possible models for explaining observed reality.
And it is the experiment which proves or disproves the theory. Similarly, the philosophy gives us possible models for explaining reality. And then the religion is often, may be performed as simply as some blind rituals.
But that is not the essence of religion. Religion essentially means, it’s a set of practises meant to help us either verify or disprove whatever has been postulated by the philosophy. So, when the practises are performed with this scientific clinical attitude, in this spiritual science, the experiment is done on the experimenter.
It is we ourselves who subject ourselves to the experiment. And that’s why the experiments in spirituality are not experiments on something outside, they are on ourselves. They are experiences.
So, our consciousness is presently at the material level of reality. But as we become purified, as we subject ourselves to the experiment of spiritual science, our consciousness becomes purified and elevated. And when the consciousness becomes purified and elevated, we ourselves start perceiving higher reality.
We start perceiving higher reality, which we are not able to perceive right now, because we are caught in the material level of perception. So, imagine somebody is watching a movie. Now, people can watch movie at their home also.
But if they are watching movie in a theatre, when a theatre movie is going on, two things happen. First is the lights go off. And second is a light goes on.
Isn’t it? So, all other perceptions are blocked out when the other surrounding lights go off. And then the light on the screen goes on. And people’s consciousness gets caught in whatever is being displayed on the screen.
And somebody might be sitting next to them. If they are caught in watching what is on the screen, they may not even notice that somebody is there next to them. That person is doing something else.
So, like that, right now, in the Bhagavad Gita, it is described in 13th chapter, 22nd text, purushaha prakriti sthohi, bhungte prakriti jan gunan karanam guna sangosya sadasadyon janmasu. So, purushaha prakriti sthohi. Purushaha is the source of consciousness.
Prakriti is matter. So, purushaha prakriti sthohi. The soul is caught, the soul’s consciousness is caught in matter.
Why? Bhungte prakriti jan gunan. Just as we come to watch a movie, because we want to enjoy the movie. So, like that, our consciousness is caught in matter.
And, sometimes, say a child is watching a horror movie. And a child is comfortably in one’s own room watching the horror movie, but if the consciousness is caught in the horror movie, the person will be terrified. And the mother will come and shake hands, shake the child.
And draw the child out of the spell of the movie. And the child says, oh, I am comfortable, my mother is with me. Child will just pull the hands around the mother and embrace the mother and feel safe.
So, just as if a person is caught in watching a movie, then there is a process for getting their consciousness out. So, like that, our consciousness is caught in matter right now. And we can get the consciousness out of matter by a particular process.
That process is the process of yoga. Yoga is not just physical exercises. Yoga, physical exercises are just the first stage of yoga.
They are bodily postures. In cricket matches, when a batsman is batting, the batsman stands in a particular posture. Now, the purpose of the posture is not just to stand in the posture for all time.
The purpose of the posture is when the ball comes, hit the ball properly, powerfully hit the ball. So, like that, if somebody just sits in the yogic postures, that is just the first stage. The purpose is, the purpose of those yogic postures is to propel one’s consciousness upwards, to propel one’s consciousness to the spiritual level of reality.
And at that level, we can ourselves experience higher truths. So, now, we discuss scientifically how the materialistic explanation for the self is inadequate in explaining phenomena such as near-death experiences. Now, we will discuss in terms of practical sociological consequences that if we understand the spiritual side of life, our conception of happiness and of our progress changes.
Martin Luther King, he talked about the paradox of today’s world. He said that we have guided missiles and misguided men. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
So, we have had progress, but it is imbalanced progress. It is unidimensional progress. It is not holistic progress.
And that holistic progress can be achieved if we redefine first of all, our conception of the self. And not only that, when we have a materialistic conception of life, when we have reversals, when we have failures, they just appear crushing. And one very tragic evidence of the harmful effect of the materialistic worldview is in terms of people destroying their own lives.
One million people, according to WHO statistics, one million people commit suicide every year. This works out to be one suicide every 40 seconds. That means since we started this talk, almost 50 to 60 people have committed suicide.
And of course, this is only the reported number of suicides. Many others are not reported. And to give another example of how sobering the statistic is, one million people, the toll of one million is more than the number of people who are killed in wars, murders, and terrorist attacks combined together.
That means more than the number of people who are being killed by others are the number of people who are killing themselves. Why is that? Now there is fear of terror, and because of the fear of terror so much security measures are taken care of. So more than the number of people who are being killed in terrorist attacks, the number of people who are killing themselves, we need radical rethinking to address this problem.
And one aspect of that radical rethinking is redefining our conception of ourselves. When we understand that we are spiritual, at our core, spiritual beings, how does that change our vision? This brings the ultimate positive thinking in our life, because we understand that we are indestructible. No matter what happens, no matter how big a problem we face in our life, no problem can even hurt us.
In the Bhagavad Gita, second chapter, 22nd verse, Krishna says that the soul cannot be destroyed by anything. It cannot even be scratched by the most powerful atomic weapon or nuclear weapon. It is utterly indestructible.
And we are that soul. So just by understanding that we are souls, we get innate sense of security and innate sense of decrease in anxiety. And what does this do? Many people talk about, think positive.
Yes, we should all think positive. Suppose, say, if this bottle is half full. Right now it is full completely, but say it is half full.
And if somebody says this is half full or it is half empty, so to say it is half empty is pessimistic. But suppose this bottle were empty and I imagine this is full. Imagining that it is full, that is not optimism.
That is stupidism. So by imagining that it is full, my thirst is not going to be quenched. I recognise that it is empty, then I can ask someone, please fill this bottle.
So like that we need to go beyond simply the positive perception of reality. Okay, there is some there are suicides, there are these problems. Oh, but there is so much progress in life also.
There is so much technology, there is so much success. Yes, that is there. But there is a higher reality which you can perceive.
That is not just we look at the reality, look at the you may say that why are you talking about suicide? Just you are looking at negative side of things. Look at the positive side of things. Yes, we can look at the positive side of things but beyond this polarity of positive and negative, there is another reality which is entirely positive.
And that is the spiritual reality. So by raising our consciousness we can perceive the ultimate positive reality. Suppose there is a disaster, there is a flood or there is a fire and we are running around trying to save ourselves and at that time a helicopter comes along and the helicopter lifts us up.
Then while we were down there, we would be disturbed, we would be frantic. But once we are airlifted, the sense of threat to ourselves is not there. We may still be concerned but we will not be disturbed.
And that is what spirituality does. Understanding spiritual wisdom, imbibing spiritual practise that enables us to go through life. We will be concerned but we will not be disturbed.
Because we understand at our core, we are indestructible. And that way we can function much more productively in our life. So this is what we all can do.
So I will summarise and then we can have some question answers. Now I started by talking about how spirituality and science can come together. How science itself pointing to the reality of something non-material, something spiritual.
As a sample for that I took the study of near-death experiences. So near-death experiences, the fundamental mystery is that how are we conscious when we are not conscious, when we are unconscious. And we discussed that rather than focussing on the paranormal perceptions of heaven or some other celestial beings which are often touted in the media, we will focus on the what science calls the veridical perceptions.
Veridical means those which are factually refutable or verifiable. And in that we discussed, so people from outer body perception they see, okay the surgeon said this, they did like this, they did like that. How are they able to explain this? And we looked at various explanations for that.
The first explanation was, could it just be hallucination? No, because hallucinations are disorderly, they are distressing, they are not life transforming. And hallucinations if they are what near-death experiences are, then everybody has those stimuli. If it’s brain oxygen shortage is causing it, then everybody who has near-death experiences should have hallucinations.
Everybody who has been near-death should have had hallucinations but everybody does not. Then we discussed second explanation of prior general knowledge. And discussed how Dr. Sabom described the defibrillator which was out of fashion, which was unusual, which was unlikely to be known to any patient.
And the patient described it specifically. Then we discussed the hypothesis of partial consciousness. And therein we saw how the two cases, one was of Maria where she saw a shoe hanging on a suspended on a ledge which could not be seen from the hospital at all.
And the second case of Pam Reynolds where she had a so her breathing was stopped, her heartbeat was stopped, her body temperature was reduced to freezing practically, there was no blood in the brain and there were ear pieces making a loud sound and yet she heard the conversation, precise conversation, between the heart surgeon and the brain surgeon. So how could she do that? And then we discussed could it be fraud? For one or two cases it’s fine, but if it’s a blanket explanation, then it is simply a refusal to consider the evidence and that will block the progress of science. We saw how quantum physics and relativity emerge.
These two giant developments in science happened because the fringe evidence, black body radiation, the ontological explanation for gravity, these were considered. And similarly when there is consciousness when there should be no consciousness, when the brain is not functioning that raises questions about what is the origin of consciousness. And then we looked at the, so the materialistic model does not explain this.
So we looked for an alternative model and one alternative model is offered in the Bhagavad Gita. What is that model? The three level model, that is the body, mind, soul which are like the hardware, software and the user. So then we saw that figure about how normally we perceive the soul, perceives through the mind and through the eyes.
But in those cases the soul comes out of the body and perceives directly. So that is how near death experiences happen. And then what is the implication of this? We look at the consequences of the alternative.
Materialism, what are its sociological consequences? We have excessive materialism because of which people are ending up destroying others. We have guided missiles and misguided men and people are ending up destroying themselves. More suicides, more number of people are killing themselves than are being killed by others.
And if you want to avoid the negativity that comes from materialistic world view we can seek the positivity that comes from spiritual wisdom. By understanding that we are indestructible at our core we can be concerned but not disturbed. And we can march confidently through life.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions? Applause Just one minute. Okay.
Yeah, please. That’s what it says. And I think my question is more to you mentioning about the soul and how it’s indestructible and all that.
My question is how can one cover epistemologically sound experience that what you are saying that the soul is indestructible. Or perhaps the subtle aspect of the soul is true. And then from there on you can make it back to what is reality after death what happens and who God is.
How do you come to a certain epistemological certainty without these questions? Okay, good question. So how can we come to epistemological certainty about the nature of the self about the reality of the soul? The first thing is that any kind of knowledge, epistemology refers basically to the knowledge about knowledge. It is the methods by which we acquire knowledge.
So one principle of epistemology is that we need the appropriate apparatus for perceiving particular things. So for example, I cannot measure the temperature of a body by standing on a weighing scale. That is something very simple to understand.
I just moved. No, it is fine. So what we can do is look for appropriate method.
So if I have a fishing net which has say holes of the size of say 2 cm by 2 cm. Then any fish that is smaller than that size will not be caught by the fishing net. No matter how much, how long I keep the fishing net in the river.
So we need the appropriate apparatus. And modern mainstream science primarily focusses on looking for material explanations for material phenomena. And whenever the non-material comes up, science tries to sideline that, neglect that.
So we need consciousness itself has to be experientially perceived. A simple example of this. Suppose there is a famous brain surgeon and his brain surgeon specialist, he comes home and he finds his wife is upset with him.
Now will he tell her that let me do a brain scan to find out why you are upset. She will tell him you go and scan where you lost your brain. Isn’t it? So there is an experiential aspect to our life which cannot be perceived through any technological instruments.
There is an experienced first person reality. So that is the level of consciousness. And that consciousness cannot be perceived through any external experiments.
It is we have to subject ourselves to the necessary experiment. So when we practise yoga, when we try to raise our consciousness, spiritual sound especially the sound of mantras is like an elevator for consciousness. We say somebody is on the ground floor and at the first floor there is a feast and you can get the fragrance of some delightful desert.
Now we can sense that but if you want to go there, you have to rise to the first floor. So like that consciousness is what is coming from the first floor of reality. Whereas we are presently at the ground floor of reality.
So at the ground floor of reality we cannot taste that delicacy. We have to rise to the first floor of reality. So that means to raise to the first floor of reality is yoga.
One of the practises in yoga is mantra. So when we repeatedly receptively utter the mantras basically we situate our consciousness in spiritual sound and that spiritual sound raises our consciousness upwards to the spiritual level where where we directly perceive the reality. This requires a process of growing spiritually.
To give a biological example for this, when a baby is newborn, the newborn baby she doesn’t understand anything. For her, all of existence is potential food. Whatever she says, she puts in her mouth and tries to taste it.
Now initially when she is newborn, she may not even understand that there is my mother who is breastfeeding me. Something, somewhere, some nice liquid is coming. But as she grows, then she starts understanding, this is my mother.
Now suppose it’s cold at night and the baby is sleeping and she is shivering. And then the mother comes and puts a blanket on the baby. At that time the baby, she may not even understand this is my mother and because of her love, she put the blanket over me.
But what she will experience is, oh, I’m feeling cosy. Trembling, now I’m feeling cosy. And as the baby grows up and she understands, this is my mother.
My mother loves me. And then when she feels the blanket on her, at that time she will be able to connect. Oh, my mother must have come here, mother must have put the blanket on.
She has not yet opened her eyes but she is able to make that connection between the warmth of the blanket and the love of the mother. Not just the love of the mother, the presence of the mother. My mother is there and she has put the blanket on.
So similarly for us, when we practise spirituality, when we raise our consciousness through spiritual sound, in this world there is agitation, there is anxiety, there is stress. But when we raise our consciousness upwards through spiritual practise, we experience relief from that stress. It is like a comforting blanket being put on us.
And this is a repeatable experience. Millions of people all over the world and billions throughout history have experienced the relief, the peace, the satisfaction that comes through yogic meditation, through meditation on spiritual sound. And initially the baby just feels the relief.
But as the baby grows up, she makes a connection between the comfort of the blanket and the presence of the mother. So like that, as our consciousness keeps getting raised consistently, we start making the connection between the experience of peace, the experience of satisfaction, the experience of joy and the presence of a higher reality. And that is something which no one else can do for us.
It is we ourselves have to experience the reality and by experiencing that reality then it becomes a lived reality for us. So just as in any scientific experiment, first there is a theory, then there is an experiment and after the experiment we come to a conclusion. So like that, the philosophy is a theory and the practise of mantra yoga is the experiment which will give us experiential verification of the higher spiritual reality.
Thank you. Any other questions? So the soul leaves the body during near death experiences. Is it still connected with the body? And if not then how is it different from the dead body? Yeah.
See the soul’s connection to the body is not just in location. The soul’s connection is primarily in disposition, in attachment. The soul is different from the body.
And the soul’s connection with the body is not just because it is present inside the body. Just like say recently there is a T20 World Cup in India. Now somebody might be here and they are watching a cricket match which is going on there.
So they might be here in Singapore but through the TV set their consciousness is on say the cricket field in Wankhede in Mumbai. So now what is happening? They are physically not there but their consciousness is there. And now somebody might be in Singapore, somebody may go on a flight and they may go to Perth.
From Singapore they may go to Perth but still throughout they are watching the match. And their consciousness is still caught in the cricket match over there. So like that the soul’s connection with the body is primarily through its disposition, through its attachment to the body.
And that’s why whether the soul is physically in the body or not in the body, it doesn’t make much difference. Now sometimes because of the trauma, normally the soul is physically located in the body. That is a normal situation.
Physically located in the sense that it is in the region of the heart usually. But that is not necessary for the soul’s consciousness to be coupled with the body. Because the mind is not limited by the normal laws of physics.
The mind is a subtle entity and it can facilitate the soul’s projection of consciousness into the body even when the soul is not nearby. So the connection is primarily because of the attachment. And when the person dies, that means there is an irreversible damage to the body.
And at that time, the soul has no hope of coming back into the body. And that time the soul leaves. So here because the damage is repairable, I did not tell about another case where there was another person who was brought in unconscious in Switzerland and he stayed in coma for seven days after that.
And after that when he came back to consciousness, he remembered seeing how the nurses and the medical staff had been trying desperately to revive him and when they were not able to revive him, they were about to give up hope. And he said, I want to tell you, I am not dying. I am here.
Please continue to try. Please continue to try. But he had no means to communicate to them because he did not have the physical apparatus to communicate with them.
But fortunately one of the nurses said, no, let’s continue. And then they were able to save him. So the soul can in one sense be outside the body and perceive from outside the body but still have a connection with the body because that attachment is still there.
The connection with the body is primarily through attachment. And when the body is irreversibly damaged, then the soul realises this body is not of any use to me. So although the attachment is there, the functionality is not there.
And that’s why the soul may agree to leave the body at that time. Does that address your question? Yes? I have a question on memory. Memory is of a lifetime.
One question is, is memory attached to the overall mind? So where is memory stored? Is it stored in the brain or is it associated with the soul? Actually it’s both. It is, to give a simple example, say, if you use a computer. Now on the computer we have our own data.
Now suppose, through the computer say, we have a gmail account. Now in the gmail account, there are certain of our data. If you log into google, you have your bookmarks, your preferences, your search auto-completes, all those things are there.
Now if I go into another computer, there is some of the data which is stored in the computer. If it is not transferred, then that data will be lost. That is stored in the computer.
But some of it, such as these details, they are not stored physically in the computer. I just log in with that data on another computer and that data becomes available to me. So similarly, there is some aspect of our memory that is stored in the brain.
But especially those things which are very deep rooted for us, they are stored not just in the brain, but they create impressions even in the mind. And it’s like our login information and things are very directly connected with us. They are stored in the mind and that’s why some aspects, they can be recollected by people even in the next life.
Some people have past life memories. That happens because some memories get stored in the mind. Now, actually speaking, what I explained is an imprecise explanation.
The point is, all impressions are formed in the mind. But some impressions are deep rooted, some impressions are very faint. And those impressions which are very faint, they are not recollected very easily.
So the brain is simply the biological mechanism for the body to interact, for the soul to interact through the body. And if there is brain damage, then it’s like the functionality being damaged. The capacity for the function is still there.
Like a person is an accountant for a company. And say the accounts of the company are wiped out. That person still has the capacity to do the accounting.
But the information is gone. So like that, sometimes when the brain is damaged, the person cannot do certain functions because the tool for doing those functions is not there. But still the soul has the capacity to do those things, but the necessary biological tool is no longer there.
So memory is primarily stored in both the brain as well as the mind. It’s not stored in the soul. The mind is the place where the memories are stored.
And especially those memories which are very deeply related with us, closely related with us, they are stored more and more in the mind. And those which are primarily related with the body and bodily reality, these patterns are stored in the brain. Any other questions? Yeah.
Regarding the subtle eye, then you have the mind and soul. So we’ve got some senses, so you know, when the soul gets detached from the body, is it capable of all, like he can see, can hear, can, you know, is it capable of everything without maybe touch? Okay, yeah. Is the soul capable of everything without the physical body? If it can see, can it do other things also? Yeah, there is there is the sense and there is the sensory organ.
So the eye is a sensory organ. And the sense means the capacity to see is not just there only in the eye. When I talked about why consciousness is an unexplained mystery, what actually happens biologically? In science, in physics, it is called as the binding problem, neuroscience.
Binding problem is what? That if I see a bird, say a parrot moving in front of me and the parrot is chirping. So now here, actually, I can see the parrot chirping but there are four distinct stimuli that are being seen. One is the colour, second is the shape, the third is the motion, the fourth is the sound.
Now, all these four information, four data, they actually go to different parts of the brain or rather they are processed by different parts of the brain. One part of the brain focusses on sight, on motion, another on shape, another on colour, another on sound. And in the brain, there is no one part which is connected to every single other part.
So where does the integration of all this happen? In which physical locale does this happen? There is no physical locale which is capable of integration. Now to explain what this means, what I am talking about integration is, suppose sometimes we may have some homemade videos where say, they are not very professional. So if something is being recorded, sometimes the visual and the audio is not synced properly.
So say a fight is being reflected and say one person beats the other person and even before the fist touches the other person, the other falls down. Boom! Fall sound comes up or the bang sound comes up. That’s out of sync.
So there is synchronisation, integration that needs to be done. So where does the integration happen in the brain? And this is a problem which arises from the fragmented nature of the processing of information in the brain. But where does the integration happen? So the brain is simply the area where information is brought in.
It’s something similar to, say a computer may have various sensors and then the information is displayed on the computer screen and there is somebody who perceives. So the mind In the 15th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, in the 8th verse, it is stated that the mind is the integrator of the information from the senses. On the screen, the information from various sensors will come and then there is the observer who observes that information.
That observer is the soul. So now what this means is that even if the sensory organs are functional, there has to be someone who has to be capable of perception. That is different from the sensory organs.
So can the soul do everything which it can do with the body? No, not everything. The soul can perceive because there are subtle senses. But the subtle senses cannot experience gross objects the way we can experience them with the physical body.
The physical body is, as you rightly said, about touch. Touch requires a particular stimulus, that is skin. Now skin is not present in the subtle body.
So vision is something which is a very profound phenomenon. And that requires a subtle eye. So there is this capacity for sensing touch that is there in the soul.
If the capacity had not been there, the soul would not have been able to sense anything at all. The capacity is there, but the mechanism that is required for it, if that is not there, then as I said, he was able to see. This particular patient was able to see that, oh, they are abandoning.
But he was not able to speak. He could not utter a verbal sound by which he could communicate to others. Yeah.
So that means that the nature of the integration of this soul and mind with the body, that is subtle and complex. And the way it will work out, the way it is analytically to be understood, that is something which we, at our present level of consciousness, are not able to perceive very easily. But suffice it to say that the locus of consciousness is not in the brain.
That is, as the famous Nobel Laureate neurosurgeon, Dr. Wilder Penfield, he said that the, what we can say for sure is, the source of consciousness is extra cerebral. The source of consciousness is beyond the brain. It is extra cerebral.
The exact mechanisms are quite intricate, and there are different subjects for that. Any other questions? Yes. You see there are like five sense, knowledge acquiring senses.
So these are like filters to our inside, like whatever, certain body and… So five sense, knowledge acquiring senses obtain five kinds of… Are those the only information available in the entire universe? Or is it just a filter? Five things are filtered out and known to us, that is perceivable to us. Or is there any other kind of information that we can perceive, which is there, but we are not able to perceive because of these five filters? Okay. Yeah.
So the, we get five kinds of information from our senses. Is that all that is the information that is there in the cosmos, or is there more which we are not able to perceive? Yes, definitely there is more to reality than what is perceivable through the senses. The senses give us certain kind of information.
There have been, I’ll give two pointers which have happened even in mainstream science, that there is something in the universe which is beyond what we see. That is what is called as the staring phenomena. Staring phenomena means, say if I am sitting here right now and somebody is staring at me from behind.
Now I don’t have eyes at the back of my head to know whether I am seeing, if somebody is there or not. But somehow, people almost everyone has an uncanny awareness. When I feel that somebody is staring at me, I look behind.
And maybe that person looks away then, if they don’t know. Now, there are some people who are able to do it more. They get it 90% right.
If it was simply guesswork, you know, 50% right, 50% wrong. But almost everyone when experiments were done, they get it at least around 60-70%, more than the average if it was just guesswork. So, some people have a very high ability.
Now, how does it happen? There is just no way. If we just reduce ourselves to physical reality, there is no way. So, there is some other way by which we sense things which we are not aware of.
Another experiment was done in Princeton University on random number generators. Random number generators, as the name says, they are going to generate one number by random from 0 to 9. So, the probability of one particular number coming out is one-tenth. Now, if there is an observer and the observer stands in front of the number generator and says, let it come out 6, let it come out 6, let it come out 6. Intensely they desire that over a period of time when these trials are repeated millions of times, a statistically significant deviation came up.
That means if normally it would have been just one-tenth, if a person is consciously desiring, intensely desiring that let it come 6, the percentage will be significantly more. And what was astonishing about this is that the person did not have to be in the room also. The person could be at home and the experiment would be going on in their lab.
In fact, eventually they did it in such a way that the person was in Europe and the experiment was going on in America. And still the statistically statistically significant deviation happened. Not only that, the person desired on Monday, the experiment was on Friday and still the deviation happened.
So how did all this happen? That is something which is not explainable at the material, at the physical level of reality. There is definitely much more information in the universe, much more layers of information that are there. And there are various, there are yogis who are able to see in paranormal ways.
So they are able to see something, some people, there is a whole branch called clairvoyance. Clairvoyance means being able to see what we cannot see in normal. And there are well documented cases of people being able to have clairvoyant abilities.
So these are all phenomena which indicate that our current modes of perception, they are prominent but they are not exclusive. There are other modes of perception, there are other forms of information that are also available in the universe. Does it answer your question? Yes, please.
Okay, good question. So if you have to take a decision between yes and no, who takes the decision? Is it the soul or is it the mind? The decision maker is the soul, but the decision proposer is the mind. Just like say A, we are working on a computer and we are surfing one particular website.
At that time, suddenly a pop-up window comes up. Now when the pop-up window comes up, it doesn’t automatically take us to that website. We have to choose.
We click on it, then we go to that window. We go to that site. But the pop-up comes up on its own.
On its own means how does it come up? There is some programming over there and probably if it is customised advertisement, then based on the kind of searches we have done earlier, then on those sites on the same page if I visit, when I am logged in with my ID, I might get to see something and on the same page, you might see some other advertisements. So that is customised. So like that, the mind has its own default settings.
There may be default settings in our computer, in our browser, in our machine. Similarly, the mind has its default settings and based on its default settings, certain pop-ups come up. So for example, if I feel hungry, I can eat any food, but if there is a default setting for say gulab jamun, the mind says, come on, take a gulab jamun.
You could eat anything else. You could eat salad, you could eat fruit, but that is a pop-up window that comes up. So then it is for us to propose.
Now sometimes, if we are not alert, then we are just reading something and we click on it and we just go one, two, three, four. We might just surf 50 websites and not even realise where we are. So there was a survey done that people were asked how many, on a daily basis, how many food choices do you make? Should I eat this or should I eat this? Should I eat this much or should I eat that much? So, survey was done in America and they said, people reported that they had done around 12 food choices.
And actually, when they revisited the whole day, they found that in an average day, they had made 227 food choices. But most of these choices were practically speaking not choices. Because they were not conscious of choosing it.
So in some cases, the proposal and the acceptance of the proposal may happen so quickly that we don’t realise that we are deciding. But still, it is we, the mind cannot take decision from us. The mind cannot act for us.
It is we who have to accept the mind’s proposal. But the mind can propose in such a persuasive way that we may not even realise that we are being persuaded. But that is what self-awareness.
When you practise meditation, you may feel, oh my mind is going here, my mind is going there, I am not able to concentrate. But even the awareness that we are not focussing is also one level of awareness. So that is also progress.
So we need concentration, we need at least some basic concentration to be aware that we are not concentrating. Isn’t it? If I am totally distracted, I am distracted, I am not even aware that I am distracted. So even the attempt of meditation, even if not successful, that also promotes self-awareness.
And that way as we become more and more self-aware, then we become aware of the dynamics within our actions. The proposition comes and then we make the, we deliberate and then we make the right decisions. So the mind is the proposer and the soul is the decider.
Does it answer your question? Thank you. Any other questions? Or… Yeah. … … … … … … … … … … … Okay.
I understood. So, can these two souls swap their bodies? Can the soul change its location from one body to another body by its own volition? Yeah. Swapping bodies is very unlikely.
Because there are different people who have different cognitional capacities. Capacity for cognition. So, just like in our own day-to-day experience, some people have a very photographic memory.
Some people have mediocre memory. So this is just the soul’s consciousness is directed and focused in two different degrees in different people. Based on their particular bodily mechanisms.
So like that, there are some people who do have the capacity to project their consciousness. Not just in a conceptual sense, but in a literal sense. There are people who have reported simulated out-of-body experiences.
In near-death experiences, really people are going out and it is not voluntary. It’s involuntarily happening. But voluntarily people can simulate, people can replicate out-of-body experiences.
You can imagine that I am going there and literally go there. This is the ability which very few people have. This paranormal ability like clairvoyance or any of these abilities, these are exceptional and only people who have certain unusual karma from their previous life, they have these kind of capacities.
So, one soul entering into another body, that is possible. But that soul entering into this body, that is extremely unlikely. Because for two people to be there, two people to have those capacities and those two people to have that desire to experience another body and to cooperate, it is an extremely unlikely thing.
But in principle, in exceptional situations, there are certain souls who can project themselves out of their bodies. Okay. The question is, can we improve the intelligence of people by giving appropriate external inputs? Yes, definitely.
It’s possible. Because there is intelligence as a potential resource and there is intelligence as an activated resource. So, we all have a certain capacity which quite often we do not tap.
One of the major causes of intellectual underperformance is distraction. So, if especially students are trained in concentration, meditation is one powerful way to train oneself in concentration. By that, one’s capacity to absorb whatever stimuli are coming from outside, that becomes greater.
And that memory has many faculties to it, but one basic faculty is concentration. It’s only when I concentrate, then I can, that information goes inside, then there’s a possibility of recollecting. So, definitely, firstly, by spiritual practises itself, we can increase our focus, our concentration, and that increases the memory aspect of the intelligence.
Now, beyond that, our intelligence is like muscles. Just as by muscles, by regular exercise, the muscles can be improved. Similarly, whatever exercise we do, so it is said that especially people who are suspected of having brain degenerative diseases, then if they are, if they do regular mental exercises, then they are able to maintain their cognitional capacity for much longer.
So, they may have some degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s or whatever, but if they do regular exercises, then they solve crossword puzzles or they read challenging books or they do some mathematical exercise, whatever, something stimulating, then the brain muscles are activated, and by that they stay active, they don’t get atrophied. They can even be strengthened. So, definitely, doing specific activities for strengthening specific aspects of the intelligence, that can strengthen intelligence.
Now, having said that, there are also certain innate resources that we have. That means all of us have different talents. So, we, by regularly doing mathematical sums, we can improve our mathematics.
But, it is not that this improvement is going to be infinite. There are some people who can, in the mind itself, multiply two 13 digit numbers and give an answer instantly. No matter how much you practise, we may not get to that capacity.
So, there are limits based on natural endowments of how much things can be improved. But certainly, whatever is our present capacity, first of all, we can tap that capacity more by learning concentration and by specific training we can increase that capacity also. Does it answer your question? Do we have time? One last question.
Okay. The question is, what happens when the soul’s consciousness is projected into another body? Two souls, can they exist in one body? Yes, they can, but one soul is usually the dominant soul. So, that is what is called the phenomena of possession.
Possession means that there is a soul in the body, but some other soul comes in that body. When that other soul comes in the body, then that soul takes control of the body. And there are, the pioneer of the theory of evolution is often thought to be as Charles Darwin.
But along with Charles Darwin, there is another scientist, Alfred Wallace. He also was one of the co-founders of that theory. But later on, he retracted.
He felt that it did not have adequate explanatory value. So, that is why he is not prominent. But Alfred Wallace also experimented extensively with the spirit world.
And he wrote an extensive book on this. It is considered a classic in the field of paranormal studies. And he says that we don’t ask you for belief in what we are saying.
We ask you simply for doubt in the infallibility of your present conceptions. And he says that what they did, they documented various cases. A person who was born in Switzerland, or Sweden specifically.
A person who had never gone out of Africa. And suddenly, for three months, that person was speaking Swahili. And he had never met anyone who knew Swahili.
And most people could not even figure out what he was speaking. When they went to a linguist, he said, he is speaking Swahili. Not only was he speaking a language he did not know, he was also speaking in a tone which was not his own tone.
So, there are cases like this where people not only behave in abnormal ways, but people also exhibit knowledge which they did not have in their normal ways. And then, at a particular point, it stops, and then they go on and they return to their normal personalities. These are again very unusual phenomena, but they do happen.
So, if there are two souls in the body, that means one soul becomes the dominant soul and the other soul becomes the suppressed soul. And then the person is said to be possessed at that time. So, thank you very much.
Let’s thank Chetan Chandru with a big round of applause. For his wonderful session and also lot of question and answer session. So, he presented this topic which is very profound with so many analogies, and that may help us to understand the topic better.
And now, there are some of the books written by him, which are displayed outside, and you can go and have a look at them. And also, there is an offer. So, they are providing 800 lectures of him, arranged systematically in different sections, and that is available in a pen drive for $10 only.
So, you can go and have a look at that. And if you have any more questions outside, after the programme, you can sit outside and ask Chetan Chandru. Any personal questions, and some questions, some of you may not get a chance.
And Chetan Chandru mentioned about Hare Krishna Mahavantra Yoga, he talked about that. And we are going to have a 5 minutes experience of that. So, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna