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Welcome to Prakash’s blog site! This blog was written sometime in 2018, and maybe quite naive. It has been edited a few times, but has been kept purposefully simple, so that it’s spirit does not get diluted.

There are lots of ongoing debates on consciousness, meditation, neuroscience towards an underlying unifying theory. My emphasis is on a neuroscientific approach towards understanding human consciousness via a better understanding of the unconscious first, i.e., sleep and dreams. And create a reference framework that can be further explored and vetted by the scientists and meditators or any interested person!

Let us have a fundamental perspective via Yoga ( from Patanjali’s Yogasutras). Yoga has eight limbs or stages (not strictly sequential, just like a baby comes out with all limbs, but with varying development degrees). The first five stages of Yoga lead to a state where the person can have a high degree of concentration (‘Dharana’ in Yoga) or focusing. Most successful people in the world can attain this capability of being immensely concentrated on their work or task at hand, without ever doing any meditation. People with no meditation experience have sent a man to the moon, decoded the human genome, and created terrific symphonies and art. Technically speaking, most successful people are already in the sixth stage of Yoga. Hence, meditation is not a pre-requisite for success, though it can be an aid.

However, meditation (or Dhyana in Yoga) and inquiry bring clarity to mind. And it is beyond being just focused or alert and is not “Concentration”. Meditation is being more aware, attentive, and relaxed, leading to silence of the mind or “Samadhi”. The Holy grail of meditation stops the continuous stream of thinking and attains no thought or gap between thoughts with no mental chatter.

When the stream of thoughts stops for the first time, it is called Satori in Zen tradition. It is a profound experience with no mental chatter. However, Satori has a beginning and an end. It can be for a few seconds and is finite. There is a dimension of time to Satori or no thought.

True Samadhi is infinite. The mind is in a state of pure silence or thoughtlessness with no mental chatter. There is complete mastery over thought. It is a very dynamic phenomenon that leads to great tranquility. This state is extremely rare and is associated with Awakened people. The important thing is not who the people are but what one can do to go to a higher dimension of awareness. And can we create a scientific framework that is verifiable without resorting to grandiose visions of religiosity or spirituality? And maybe then we can have a simple framework of spiritual progress. One may not reach the other shore in this lifetime, but at least have a taste of being inside the river, and not just get stuck in the bank of Samsara, forever.

Themes like Content Free Awareness, Turiya (Upanishadic/Advaita), Samadhi (Yoga Sutras of Patanjali), Shoonyata (Buddhist) schools like Dzogchen have multiple references to ‘no thought’ and ‘no mind.’ There are numerous schools of meditation and inquiry that point to this state of pure silence’ in Eastern and Western traditions and cultures throughout the world. A thorough study on this subject can help more than half of the world’s population that believes in the concepts of awakening/nirvana/moksha but have negligible neuroscientific models on these subjects. Ignorance leads to atheism as much as dogmatism leads to organized religion. Both are flawed ways of thinking, in my opinion. A better answer is “I don’t know”. Only then is there a possibility of self-inquiry. Else, it is only borrowed knowledge. Which may seem very useful for objective expertise but does not have much use in meditativeness.

Direct knowledge derived from the inner silence leads to understanding, which is the foundation of true spirituality. As many leading Awakened beings have emphasized across ages, Science and Spirituality are not antagonistic to each other but complement each other. Only an immature, dogmatic and unaware intellect denies prematurely without making a proper inquiry and putting in the necessary effort.

We can have a verifiable frame of reference that maps the phenomenology of consciousness states described in current neuroscientific language with the phenomenology of consciousness states described in ancient texts like Mandukya Upanishad. There have been commentaries written upon this small book across ages. So, there is a sense of consistency in descriptions, if not the exactness of modern neuroscience. The goal is to investigate every state of human consciousness described in any literature across cultures and traditions and test whether it has any real substance or was just a figment of imagination. Nevertheless, these should be cataloged and brought into the purview of the scientific community and the world.

I dream of a world devoid of so-called religious, spiritual charlatans and moral police. But have foundations of true spirituality based on experiments and data. In my opinion, spirituality or “personal well-being leading to universal well-being”, can come only when a person has gratitude. And gratitude is difficult if people are suffering from proper sleep. So, let us address personal well-being by addressing sleep first. And have a playful approach to developing awareness in daily life!