Dear friends,
Yes, comprehension is the fundamental capacity of the design of the brain.
This we derive purely by experimenting in ourselves. The Gita talks about
शान्ति as the ground state. The vedas are advocating शं as a state.
The model suggests that this is tranquility, silence. The objects exist,
they are comprehended, बोध, an "is" state. These words come later, the
states are biological in the scale of evolution.
I believe than the brain is the distinction that creates a man different
from an animal. The animal is survival oriented, looks for food. The man
has the brain to understand. This might have gone for a period of time
to develop the conscience in the brain. The conscience is the ability
to discriminate right and wrong called प्रज्ञा in yoga. Everyone is endowed
with it. The right is the rules of the universe which are imprinted in our core
neurological structures. This has been called ऋत. A baby knows a mountain
and the trees and their relationship.
Imitation comes for artificial man-made objects. It is an animal instinct, but
is a capacity शक्ति for survival. It creates transient structures that perish
quickly, we forget or don't carry along. Most of the world operates through
imitation. We make artificial high and low, create our own scale away from
ऋत logic. ऋत continues in the brain in the form of
Of course it's easy to theorize the states but difficult to show their co-existence.
I had a long conversation with a young Sanskrit professor from India. What
I found out that we stay in सुख through our imitation. It is an artificial world. It
operates on a transient "I" which is created through imagination. When there is
a realization that "I" is imaginary, we get आनन्द. There are methods
and techniques to achieve this, but most importantly a realization of the
falsity of "I". आनन्द has action in it, but the universe is in शं . When we merge
with the universe, we are in शं . This is when we lose our body-consciousness
and we are in full control of our mind. In the शं state, we become a channel
for the universe, in its expression. How good a channel we are is our own
industry to read our brain, through reducing entropy. It is organic and not
automatic, but we may show the state computationally.
Yes, it can sound a bit out of the way from what we are taught. But if you think
carefully and experiment, you may see the logic. It is the brain that carries
one's capacity and every person carries it equally.
Sorry for the long mail.
Best regards,
Bijoy Misra