While modern deterministic science - after losing its ability to identify direct causal links - appears to grind to a halt in the quantum field of infinite possibility, the mind-body science of meditation and yoga started its journey at this very psychophysical juncture in ancient India and carried them over to a satisfactory, logical conclusion.
The mind-body science started its journey in prehistoric India among the dedicated, detached seekers of truth, called Rishis. Rishis recognized early on that our own self-conscious mind or intellect is the basis of truth itself, and that the relative truth that we experience is a construct of the observer's own conditioned mind.
While the subject-object distinction dissolves in the quantum field, further journey toward the ultimate truth takes place in the mind of the investigator, where the end point is reached with endless joy of joining the truth face to face.
The investigator himself becomes the truth at this point as he realizes his own divine nature and becomes free from material bondage forever.
The Rishis found that the ultimate reality is the ever pure, ageless consciousness that pervades this entire universe and interpenetrates everything within it.
They also found that the human being has dual natures: the ever-changing physical body that dissolves after death and an eternal, incessant consciousness as the all-pervading reality.
Versatile mind-body technology brings harmony between the high-tech objective science and the organic, subjective science, bridging the existing gap and helping to explain the diverse spectacle within our own universe and beyond.
Yoga and meditation, the scientific techniques that the ancient Vedanta philosophy introduced for such self-investigation, are well known now, and with proper dedication and self-discipline anyone can verify the eternal truth within.
The techniques were developed to steady the usually unsteady intellect as well as to acquire acute feeling within an individual, so that one can study through proper self-investigation without interruption.
To this end, Hatha yoga helps to generate the appropriate bodily feeling under different postural conditions when the mind is kept temporarily steadfast.
However, it is essential to have a totally steadfast mind for realization of the end truth that can be achieved through prolonged meditation practice assuming a secure posture.
The Vedanta philosophy clearly says that intellect alone cannot take us to this domain of holistic conscious truth; we must integrate our own true feeling into such an act of intellectual investigation in order to become the truth ourselves with our whole being, while feeling the universal love within.
According to Vedanta, our self-conscious universe is a unity consisting apparently of the following two interlinked pools: a common material pool and a universal energy (or Prana) pool, though they are one and the same in the ultimate analysis by the celebrated Albert Einstein in modern times.
Also according to Vedanta, permutation and combination of these two pool materials produce this spectacular holographic universe based on its own self-making rule.
The infinite numbers of individual souls are the products of the creative universal consciousness of this self-conscious universe and work on their own mind-body mini-universe through self-creation and self-destruction, generating the pattern of grand evolution for fun, freedom and glory.
Following the scientific protocol of Vedanta, an individual soul resolved to find the uninterrupted harmony in one's own life could reach such a goal while realizing in the end that being a soul, he is essentially deathless and has always been embraced by this universal love.
This state of realization is known as Kaivalya in Vedanta, when a person lives spontaneously in full freedom and harmony like a 5-year-old child without any mental inhibition whatsoever.
This is, as it were, as if he suddenly wakes up from a lifelong dream of pleasure and pain of a common man.
Tushar Ray, Ph.D, is an adjunct professor at the ASU School of Life Science, and can be reached at Tushar.Ray@asu.edu, or through his Web site at www.centralyoga.org
