CONSCIOUSNESS

186 5. Experiential Approaches
276 The Consciousness Conglomerate: Eastern Insights and Scientific
Revalidation Vibhas Chandra, N.A. (Philosophy,
M.G.C.G. University, Chitrakoot, M.P., INDIA, Allahabad, Chitrakoot, M.P., Uttar Pradesh
India)
Major breakthroughs in the scientific study of consciousness would elude us if we continue
to explore it in terms of physical attributes. Wald (1988) has rightly concluded that consciousness
does not emit any physical signal and that mind cannot be assimilated in science.
The Vedic seers had unanimously proclaimed consciousness as a fundamental entity,nonassociative,inactive
and indescribable, yet informed with the power of will, a creator and destroyer
of all knowledge,etc. The whole array of consciousness incorporates the ego,deemed
as material substance and evolved from the buddhi(Samkhya),thus ontologically dependent
upon it.We have to grapple with the paradox of ego which turns empirical consciousness into
the subject of knowledge, at the same time making it the owner of its own knowledge. To
undertake a scientific study of consciousness, it is profitable to scour the rich,Vedic metaphysical
accounts of consciousness and its related subsidiaries and critically expound them in
a new idiom, credible and convincing to us. The concept of Prana or life force, till recently,
had not entered the thinking of Western thinkers. This Pranic force, readily convertible into
psychic energy, is crucial for the operation of empirical consciousness. This is the bio- plasma
of the Russian scientists, who observed an energy body, a living double of man,when they
hooked the Kirlian equipment to an electron microscope.The sages had long declared that
Prana is witnessed by the jiva (empirical self) which is floating in Prana. This may provide
clues to the location of the seat of consciousness and its related functions and progressions.
Consciousness is observed as fluctuating between at least five states or versions – real perception,
illusion, imagination, sleep and memory. Correspondingly, there are five types of human
afflictions which form part of the infrastructure that shapes the human mind. What are the interlinks
between the two? Why does consciousness fluctuate at all? Locke in his Essay, Bk.II,
showed that consciousness always accompanies thinking and that reflexive consciousness is a
salient feature of the self. Bhartrihari had also shown that consciousness can exert only after
it is preceded by Speech. The metaphysical speech-essence, eternal Sound or Shabda-Brahma
operates at four different stages-para, pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari. These four levels
of Sound correspond to four states of consciousness-para(transcendental,pashyanti(intellect
ual,madhyama(mental) and vaikhari(physical. These states correspond to the four states viz.
wakeful, dreaming, dreamless and the transcendental. Lev Vygotsky, exploring the genetic
roots of thought and speech, struggles to establish that ontogenetically,the relation between
thought and speech development is much more intricate and obscure as we have also to deal
with the phenomenon of inner speech.Modern psychology is clueless as to how the change
from overt to inner speech is accomplished or by what process it happens.I suggest that a
Linguistic self informs us which is also a shelter of meaning.The inflexion point, from the
physical to the mental is found here. P5
277 Shaktipat-Related Synchronization Between Brains?: Statistical Analysis of
Simultaneous High Density EEG Recordings of Shaktipat Sender and Receiver
Subjects Arnaud Delorme, Rael Cahn (CERCO, UPS-CNRS,
CERCO, UPS-CNRS, Toulouse Cedex 9, France)
Studies of synchronization of EEG between subjects are rare but have begun to emerge as
means to study social interaction. Here we studied the correlation of spontaneous EEG data
between the brains of spatially separated human subjects during states of intentional energetic
transfer (Shaktipat) vs. rest states. Three subjects participated in the experiment; one spiritual
teacher (S1) was a “sender” and was alternately intending vs. not-intending a Shaktipat/engergetic
transfer first in concert with the receiver subject R1 and then with the receiver R2. S1
described the process of sending Shaktipat as a “channelling”-like phenomenon whereby he
enters into a meditative/”no thought” state and Shaktipat begins to flow. Both R1 and R2 were
students of teacher S1 and were not informed as to when S1 was directing Shaktipat towards
them or any aspects of the block-designed experimental paradigm. Two distinct 128-channel
Biosemi EEG recording systems were used, one for the sender and one for the receivers. The