Christopher Calder:

"Meditation techniques do work (see Meditation Handbook), and with effort average individuals can push themselves ahead in consciousness to the equivalent of 10%, 20%, or even 30% of a fully enlightened state. Consciousness comes in degrees of intensity and fullness, and it is far better to be 30% enlightened than not enlightened at all. Tibetan Buddhists take 4 and 5 year old boys and stick them into monasteries in order to grow their brains to become enlightened monks like so many hothouse tomatoes. This strategy works to some degree due to the neuroplastic nature of the brain. If you start early enough, while the central nervous system is still forming, you can grow the brain to function in a way that is conducive to meditation, but not much else. There is a tradeoff in loss of practical brain function when you devote your entire life to the vegetative state of meditation. Meditation is a passive and vegetative flowering of brain function, thus no society can afford to have more than a small percentage of its young men turned into celibate monks. This was part of the reason the Chinese had such an easy time when they leisurely waltzed into Tibet in 1950. Tibetans had dedicated too much of their cultural energy to their religion to survive in a hostile world.

Our brains change and adapt with our behavior. If you meditate day after day, year after year, your meditation becomes easier and more powerful as your brain structure changes itself to accommodate your lifestyle. This is what is meant by the term "neuroplasticity." Tibet has produced many semi-Buddhas through the wholesale grooming of children to become Buddhist monks, but India has always been the powerhouse for producing full Buddhas, not just half Buddhas or near Buddhas. Indian sages are almost always lone individuals who are born destined to become enlightened. They are not part of any theocracy or army of monks, and they usually become enlightened completely alone. Their enlightenment does not come from virtue or past life experience, but from the Indian brain structure which is the most suited to the superconscious state. History shows that the genetic oddity of enlightenment is most prevalent in India males, and this is a mystery scientists should explore in further detail. Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese monks have practiced meditation for centuries, but on average they have had to work twice as hard to achieve half the results. In the West, aside from George Gurdjieff, enlightenment is almost in total absence. To date, the West has produced many great scientists, philosophers, artists, and scholars, but very few living Buddhas. "

http://home.att.net/%7Emeditation/

Deepak, I know you don't meditate full time like the Buddhist monks, since you are an Indian male and you seem to be destined into a spiritual path, did you accomplish enlightenment?

Your personable experience would be great benefit for all of us than what "science" tells or what "faith" tells.

Thank You

Aloha Deepak

The brain is a very funny device, it can convince us we are our mind and there is nothing, know thing, there. I have found that someone with the condition of Alzhiemer's is no different when I used to have a black out from drinking. Mahalo for waking us. love patty

When science follows the trail of cause and effect it always eventually leads to nothing
~Infinite Play the Movie

Some where from within the nothing, the intangible realm, is a cause giving rise to the appearance of particles.

Since we can't directly measure them we label them virtual particles since we can't see them, we can only measure their effects.

Yet when we reach the realm of nothing there is something else that is there, something that could be the intangible cause we cannot see or measure, and that thing is the observer.

I would go as far as to say the observable universe is only an effect, the observable universe does not contain cause, that part of the universe that cannot be observed is the cause. One part of the universe that is beyond observation is the observer.

As for the virtual particles, the error may be in the assumption that they have a particle nature. As I have submitted before, I think virtual particles are the label science has given to consciousness.

As for seeing with touch, its same information different input device or channel converted into some symbology by the mind.

I think the clue or key can be found in our ability to control our attention which requires intelligence. Our attention is like the pointer on the information stack in a processor giving life to the current operation. A computer is just a bunch of switches until it is embedded with intelligence by a conscious being.

Where or what is the central processor in the brain? If it can't be found there where is it?

I have yet to understand how mechanical cause and effect can produce intelligence. I do understand that intelligence can create mechanical systems.

I have yet to understand how a group of chemicals can have a desire or make a prediction.

I suspect science and religion are talking about the same thing, it’s just the fictions attached to it are different.

I am also perplexed as to, if we are spiritual beings separate from our bodies, in other words our identity and being is not dependant on the body how is it that chemicals can affect our mood, behavior and feelings?

How is it I can turn someone into a killer using serotonin inhibitors? Or create a sense of well being and compassion and love feeling with ecstasy?

The one possible angle I have put forth before is that "feelings" are an information state. We wrongly portray pain as a physical feeling, it is actually just information. How can an intangible being feel something? It can only know something.

The other angle as to the biochemical having an effect on our mind and being is that the body being a communications device, transceiver and receiver it is subject to malfunction or signal interference. So not all the information gets sent back and forth or it is distorted.

Probably just a waste of time to think or write about, better to just go out and experience the universe, why question, how the playing field works as long as we can play on it?

Hi Deepak,

Being in the field of blindness, I keep up with this stuff as well. I believe Erik Weihenmayer http://www.blindsightthemovie.com/film.html
tested out the Blind Port. Also Mike May who just is the subject of Crashing Through tells the wonderful story of his experience of being blind and having an operation to restore his vision and his perceptions of his world after.

The Man that Mistook his Wife for a Hat was written I beleive by Sachs and it a great story of perceptions and its "blindness" despite the physical part of the the eyes that are intact. It is all really interesting. Thank you for bringing this to the limelight on Intentblog!

Love, Joanie

Dear Deepak,

There will soon come a related account about sensory substitution
on CBC television, end of January. A video preview is at the URL

http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/scienceofthesenses/video.html

Best regards,

Peter Meijer

Hello Deepak and Everyone,

I don't know nuttin about the brain but I have been able to meditate and still my mind and what I have noticed is that it seems that all this new technology with the hand eye corordination that is required to play the video games where you are predominately using the eye focus and finger dexterity at the same time is akin to meditation in the way that having to bring ones attention back to the present moment during meditation because it is the nature of the wandering mind to go where ever the heck it wants to when it wants to... so one must be very focused and dexterous in aligning body mind while meditating....I have thought that this new technology is somehow preparing us...preparing our children's brains...that what is actually happening to them while they are playing these games is a lot more than meets the eyes and thumbs....that brains are being prepared....that evolution is working quite efficiently through all that is being manifest and that enlightment is the real name of the game.....realization...to realize...to be realized..what else is there.....really?

So the next time you see the kids playing those video games with those eyes focused and thumbs moving know that all the action is taking place behind the so-called third eye....it is being exercised....being prepared...for the mass opening...or awakening...of....the knowledge of our true SELF...our future.

anyway...it is fun to ponder...don't you think?

have a great day everyone, ruth

Good morning, Deepak:

Arcing in connection wherever you are on the planet and my brain doesn't have to know in this space/time anything about that linear information. Heart/mind connection IS and this is true for all who sense it/see it/think it/Be it. We create our reality -- transcending.

Thanks for this encouraging post. It and the responses to it brought up a lot of questions about "enlightenment."

Is enlightenment a destination or a journey?
Is enlightenment a noun or a verb?
Is enlightenment exclusive -- for a selected few?
Is each one on the path of enlightenment...is that the course of matter?

Can one think oneself into enlightenment?
Can one meditate oneself into enlightenment?
Can one love oneself and others into enlightenment?
Can one catch the thread of enlightenment and follow its lead?

Is enlightenment the engagement and union of Mind and Heart? Is it connection of two opposite "wires"? And when wires meet and cross do vortexes creating wind-fire waves?

Is enlightenment a micro/macro web that embraces all matter?
Is enlightenment our birthright.

Is the Awakening Body on Earth spreading enlightenment and heating up the planet so that evolution can transpire?

And why is there so much resistance and reaction to enlightenment? What forces are behind that? Is it a sci-fi conspiracy of galactic proportion?

Enough with the questions that can go on forever....enjoy this day in paradise! If we sense it/think it/know it/ Be it -- it is so.

Trish~~

There's many areas of discussion touched upon both in Deepak's post and the responses. I will try to speak to one or two things from the post only.

So, the first thing I thought of (being a musician) is blind musicians. When I was college-age I studied about three years privately the system of blind jazz pianist/educator Lennie Tristano of NYC fame from the bebop era, from one of his direct disciples.

Interestingly, one of Tristano's main techniques was teach students to LOOK at the keyboard when practicing for the purpose of fixing VISUAL PATTERNS of scales and chords in their minds. He was absolutely insistent on this and would say "I had to develop these patterns without sight, but you have eyes, what a waste to not use them."

So clearly, Tristano was visualizing, even if he wasn't physically seeing. And there have been others - Ray Charles was known for his antics. One day he shocked his family by driving around the block in the family car, and when confronted he said he just wanted to show them it could be done.

Similarly, what Ruth was saying about hand-eye coordination and video games is right in the pocket. I worked in a computer lab at a community college in 2000. The faculty was having a debate as to whether or not to let students do networked gaming on the schools intranet. It consumed alot of resources, slowing the whole network down. The solution was to give them a Saturday schedule and a closed network in a couple of classrooms.

Some teachers thought that the gaming was ruining the kids minds, was a waste of time, etc - all the usual rehashed arguments that we've heard since the 1980's and Pac-man.

But some of us defended the kids, because there was no evidence to back up the idea that video games corrupt kids and destroy their minds.

In fact the opposite was heavily supported by the evidence: the gaming club contained all the top achievers in the computer science program, and these kids had superior programming skills, and a far better understanding of computer networking principles that the kids who were not gamers.

It was also interesting to note that at the time, yr 2000, we were experiencing the bursting of the "internet bubble" and many sectors of the computer industry were showing slowed growth. Except for one: the gaming industry, which is what these kids were interested in.

So we easily made the case to adminstrators that the games were an important part of the kids development in the computer sciences, and in fact would lead to industry opportunities for them.