Consciousness, the Yoga Sutras, and Remote Viewing

Since the millennium, first person accounts of experience have been accepted as philosophically valid, potentially useful sources of information about the nature of mind and self. Several Vedic sciences rely on such first person accounts to discuss experience and consciousness. This paper shows that their insights define the information structure of experience in agreement with a scientific theory of mind fulfilling all presently known philosophical and scientific conditions. Experience has two separate components, its information content, and a separate 'witness aspect', which can reflect on all forms of experience, and with training be strengthened until its power of reflection identifies it as the innermost aspect of 'self'. The Vedic sciences, Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta develop these themes. Sankhya identifies the different aspects of experience, outer and inner; Yoga practices lead the mind to inner states without information content (samadhi) in which the experience of the witness (sakshi) is strengthened and deepened. Vedanta states the nature of the 'self' is to know itself directly without intermediary. All this requires the witness to have a singular loop structure. The information structure of experience therefore has two aspects, information content plus a singular loop endowing it with a subjective sense of 'Self'.

The purpose of this article is to acquaint the reader with those types of consciousness which are considered as higher than self-consciousness, and in a general sense considered part of spiritual consciousness. In the tradition of the teachings of Alice A. Bailey and the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, these higher types of consciousness are clearly distinguished from each other as regards their level of influence as well as their nature and quality. In this article knowledge about their existence is sought firstly in the Upanishads, then in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with special references to occult meditation, considered as the surest means of arriving at higher levels of consciousness. Lastly, an attempt is made to clarify the nature of the higher consciousness of the Spiritual Triad, by means of discussing and referencing select passages from the works of Alice A. Bailey.

In his Pith Instructions for the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitopadeśa), Ratnākaraśānti—also known as the Mahāsiddha Śāntipa—explicitly links the four yogas of Yogācāra with the four stages of meditation described in the commentarial literature for the Guhyasamāja Tantra. While his presentation of the four yogas in the Pith Instructions for the Ornament of the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāropadeśa) does not make any direct reference to tantra, it closely follows the same pattern laid out in the former text. Crucial to his account of these stages is the notion of “luminosity” (prakāśa), an epithet or synonym for reflexive awareness (svasaṃvitti). Thus, for Ratnākaraśānti, reflexive awareness has two overlapping valences. First, it is an essential element of Buddhist pramāṇa theory; and second, it is a key facet of meditation—including tantric forms of meditation—on the nature of reality (tathātā). A question thus emerges in relation to recent engagement with the concept of reflexive awareness among Western-educated scholars of Buddhism, namely: in light of this relationship between pramāṇa epistemology and meditation, to what extent is an understanding of reflexive awareness as intentional, i.e. as structured by subject-object duality, intelligible? Whether or not one follows Williams (1998) and Arnold (2005) in maintaining that reflexive awareness is analogous to the Kantian unity of apperception, and therefore necessarily entails the existence of a transcendental subject, the dominant trends of contemporary interpretation generally cast reflexive awareness as an intentional or object-oriented feature of consciousness. Thus, as Coseru (2012, 264) writes, “Even assuming that Dignāga has in mind a nonobjectifying or intransitive type of experience when he describes [reflexive] awareness… it is still the case that this is an intentional experience… Even assuming, on metaphysical rather than phenomenological grounds, that there could be non-intentional modes of awareness, these could not serve as the basis for intentional experience.” However, as my paper will demonstrate, while such a view may be in accord with the insights of the Western phenomenological tradition, it is simply irreconcilable with the Buddhist understanding of the nature of the mind, at least as promulgated in Indian Buddhist pramāṇa theory and developed by the scholar-yogis of Vikramaśīla such as Ratnākaraśānti. Simply put, according to Śāntipa, not only can non-intentional modes of awareness (specifically, reflexive awareness) serve as the basis for intentional experience—they do form the basis of intentional experience. Moreover, it is precisely this non-intentional basis that forms the bridge between sūtra and tantra, since recognizing the nondual, luminous nature of experience ends up being the ultimate form of meditation on the nature of reality. As Ratnākaraśānti writes, “The experience of the luminous nature of all phenomena, empty of duality, is the authentic realization of the ultimate” (chos thams cad kyi gsal ba’i lus gnyis kyis stong pa myong ba gang yin pa de nyid don dam pa yang dag par rtogs pa yin). Dualistic or intentional interpretations of reflexive awareness therefore additionally fail to account for the key role svasaṃvitti plays in mediating between sūtric philosophy and tantric meditation.

This article is based on the knowledge contained in the Vedas and Upanishads and is regarding the portrait of Consciousness captured in our body. From Consciousness are created the fundamental words, from the words are created the qualities, and from the qualities are created the matters. The references of the verses in Upanishads, along with the word-word meanings have been provided, and wherever possible references to the findings of modern science have been mentioned.

THINKING WITH THE YOGA-SŪTRA OF PATAÑJALI

Forthcoming Volume: THINKING WITH THE YOGA-SŪTRA OF PATAÑJALI (Lexington Books) In their paper “Realism and Omniscience in the Yogasūtras,” Kevin Perry Maroufkhani and Arindam Chakrabarti defend, based on passages that are traditionally taken as arguing against idealism, a strong Sāṃkhyan-Yoga realist reading of the YS against the absolute idealism usually attributed to the Yogācārins. Theirs is an original and comparative argument that arises from the need to reconcile two seemingly contradictory positions in the Yogasūtra: the idea that there is something independent from consciousness, i.e. the material principle, and the idea that omniscience is possible. There is nothing beyond the consciousness of an omniscient being, yet realism about the external world is, according to these authors, best in accord with Yoga’s metaphysical dualism. To solve this puzzle, Maroufkhani and Chakrabarti gloss the alleged anti-idealist passages in the Yogasūtra with Davidsonian lenses, strengthen the realist arguments found in Vyāsa and Vacāspati Miśra, and propose a modal understanding of omniscience within the Yogasūtra.

Cracking the Enigma of Consciousness, 2020

This article proposes a dualist model of consciousness and finds its relationship to the mind and matter. In doing so, special note of two dualist theories from two different arenas has been taken; one is Pātañjala Yoga, a major dualist school of classical Indian philosophy, and the other is the Dualist Interactionist Theory of Consciousness, advanced by Sir John C. Eccles. The theory proposed herein is not a foolproof one since the existence of the psychons is not experimentally proved. It helps to resolve the doubts in both the Yoga school and the modern dualistic theory of consciousness, and tries to show that a dualistic model following the Yoga ontology with a psychon-dendron model of interaction may lead to a reasonable theory of consciousness, mind and the relationship between them.

2017

In this paper I reflect on the mind-body relationship as presented in or at least linked to the yogic texts synthesized in this volume. “Yogic body,” a key chapter in this volume, addresses the issue of a visualized body that interacts with the flesh, creating a mesocosmic platform for a dialogical infusion of the habit-oriented Hathayogic practices and cognitively-focused contemplative practices. The emergent structure of the yogic body also makes a case for the study of yogic tradition through the lens of contemporary cognitive science, with its central focus on the dynamics of the mind-body complex. Exploring the synthesis presented by Mallinson and Singleton, and at times exploring the scope of textual reference outside of these parameters, I explore the contribution yogic traditions can make for the contemporary studies of consciousness and the body. Inspired by McMahan and Dunne, I conclude that the practices that inform the construction of yogic bodies, can be categorized as either Innateist or Constructivist. Innateist tradition employ apophatic strategies for stripping away false concepts (vikalpa) that distort our recognition of Self. Constructivist tradition utilize the imagination powers (bhāvanāśakti) to construct subtle energy worlds and bodies in which the practitioner can roam as a kind of super being. Neurological studies indicate that Innateist yogic practices seem to activate the metabolic processes of the pasympathetic nervous system, associated with rest and regeneration. Constructivit practices seem to activate the metabolic processes of the sympathetic nervous system, associated with bodily activity and the combustion of energy. When simultaneously activated, as in advanced Tantric practices, the autonomic nervous system produces a host of positive neurological registers. I conclude that it is indeed this positive-impact-on-the-body that is the means by which Tantra Yoga makes possible the ultimate recognition of the poure consciousness that is one’s innate Self.

2022

This essay explores the profound isomorphism between Tantric Buddhist teachings-particularly as expressed in Yogācāra and Vajrayāna traditions-and the quantum-consciousness resonance framework. Despite their different linguistic and cultural expressions, both traditions fundamentally describe consciousness as a self-reflective, resonant field that generates all experiential phenomena through structured differentiation. The analysis reveals that these seemingly distinct approaches to understanding consciousness are united by their recognition of reflexive awareness, non-duality, and symbolic transformation.