A TIMES OF INDIA PUBLICATION SPIRITUAL PROMOTIONAL FEATURE | KOLKATA, SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2016, PAGES: 8 PRICE 3.00http://www.speakingtree.in

Normal and paranormal — everything is a projection of our consciousness

— Deepak Chopra

The Independent reports: ProfessorStephen Hawking says he be-lieves pollution and human ‘stu-pidity’remain the biggest threats

to mankind.The world’s leading theoreti-cal physicist argued that ‘we have certainlynot become less greedy or less stupid’in ourtreatment of the environmentover the past decade. In a popu-lar TV show, he also outlined hisconcerns about the use of artifi-cial intelligence in warfare:‘Oncemachines... (are) able to evolvethemselves, we cannot predictwhether their goals will be thesame as ours.’

In another unrelated report,PM Narendra Modi is quoted assaying repeatedly,especially in his talks dur-ing the recent Africa tour, that the gravestthreat to humanity is terrorism.

According to Prof Noam Chomsky,there are two grave threats to the world:cli-mate change and nuclear weapons.

Aakar Patel in a column recently ex-pressed his puzzlement over various per-ceived ‘gravest’ threats including armedcombat.Numbers-wise, that is, taking into

account the number of victims and fatali-ties, all of the above threats are no matchfor the vast numbers destroyed or debili-tated by poverty,which is what seems to bethe most dangerous threat to all of human-ity. Patel quotes figures to back his deduc-tion:“In Europe, a continent of 750 mil-

lion, a total of 150 people diedin terror attacks in 2015. But inthe 1970s,over 400 Europeans ayear died for many years, killedby various non-Islamist terrorgroups, including Irish andBasque separatists.So it would beincorrect to say terrorism is a big-ger threat there today.In the US,the number of fatalities from ter-rorism is in the single digits an-

nually on average”.So why is terrorism seenas a grave threat?”

Patel answers the question why terror-ism is such a big deal:“The answer is thatit is an issue which angers many of us, un-like malnourishment, poverty and illitera-cy. I am not surprised when my uncle inSurat bangs his armchair and says we haveto ‘fix Pakistan’ and hang terrorists.”

So many people, so many more per-

spectives. But it might be instructive tocome back to Prof Hawking’s observationabout human ‘stupidity’being in danger ofposing perhaps the biggest threat to…well,humans and the rest of the world.Does hemean ignorance when he says ‘stupidity’?

Maybe — because most misperceptions,misconceptions and misunderstandings thatwe knowingly or unknowingly endorse andencourage, seem to arise out of sheer ig-norance.In an article titled ‘Ignorance is notbliss’,The Economist in its May 28, 2016 is-sue points out that it is not the ‘unknownunknowns’ that catch people out, but thetruths they hold to be self-evident that turnout to be completely wrong.

“On many issues,the gap between pub-lic perceptions and reality is wide. Pollingcompany Ipsos Mori found that Americansthink 33% of the population are immi-grants, when the actual number is 14%.A2013 poll found that Britons thought 24%of the population was Muslim — almostfive times the correct figure of 5%,”reportsThe Economist.The article says that some ofthis is because “people are also heavily in-fluenced by anecdotal evidence and by fearsfor themselves or their families”. ■

Banish Back PainCould mindfulness and meditationbe more powerful than opioids for

lower back pain? Melissa Day of theUniversity of Queensland School ofPsychology is conducting a projectthat will test that possibility and

could even save lives.“Chronic painis experienced by millions,” she says.

“Pain medications become lesseffective over time as individuals

develop tolerances to opioids.“Manyof the side effects of these drugs are

unpleasant — nausea, possible

addiction, sedation and cognitivecomplaints.“Most do not have accessto coping skills training to manage

the pain and its effect on their mood,sleep, relationships and social

functioning — and so they sufferalone.” She has a free eight-week

course promoting nonpharmacologicalpain-management skills for chroniclower back pain that incorporates

evidence-based applications ofmindfulness, meditation and

cognitive therapy. Research suggeststhese approaches changed the waythe brain processed pain.The side-effects are positive — improving

anxiety, depression and sleepproblems — as well as pain.

— www.uq.edu.au

BRIEFLY

THE SPEAKING TREE draws from various reports on what we think are ‘real’ threats

Gravest Threats To Humanity

The story goes that eachtime Ramakrishnawould sit down tomeditate below abanyan tree,a huge hu-man with bloodshot

eyes would come down the tree and tellhim about future events.Ramakrishnareferred to this being as Betal.There isthis popular story of Vivekananda con-fronted by a luminous being while hewas meditating in his room.Frightened,he ran out of the room.Later on,he re-ferred to this as a visitation from theBuddha.

In my own life, too, there havebeen times of great despair and thensuddenly things take a turn for thegood.You can explain these as themind becoming focused and sudden-ly gleaning opportunities that it couldnot see earlier. But it could also indi-cate that they are forms of help thatcome from a Higher Power.

Ghost SightingsEvery civilisation reports ghost

sightings,poltergeist incidents,produc-tion of materials from thin air, out-of-body experiences and other paranor-mal phenomena.Some are dismissed astrickery or sleight of hand-type events,but a few of these have remained a mys-tery.They all point towards a realityclothed in several layers that are beyondour level of perception and four-di-mensional world.What could be thenature of this reality and ‘paranor-mal’entities and why should we be in-terested in knowing about them?

As humans, we have an inherentlycurious nature to know more about theunknown.Also,most people’s fear of theunknown leads the vulnerable to getinfluenced by so-called tantriks andwitch doctors who promise to controlthese entities.With greater awareness of

the subject,perhaps suchcommon fears can bereduced.

In some cases, en-tities or spirits may re-side in your subcon-scious and influenceyour thought process.In other cases,their actionshave changed the course of his-tory.There have been claims thatHitler, otherwise a mediocresolider would suddenly showsparks of brilliant war strategyas if guided by a shining be-ing. It was also rumouredthat he was a mediumthat could channelsome of these enti-ties.

Another unex-plained phenomena isthat of people getting sudden visions ofgreat ideas and inventions in theirdreams or at unguarded moments. Isthis the power of a prepared mind? Oris this an unexplained occurrence forwhich we can find no answers?

M K Gandhi would often say thathe was an ordinary person but some-times ‘truth’spoke through him — thesewere times when he reached the levelof a super human being.

Is it possible to perceive these lay-ers of reality by expanding our con-sciousness through a powerful brain? Apowerful brain (or processor) is onewhich can focus and concentrate on asingle thought for a long time.This iscalled Sanyam in Patanjali Yoga. Such apowerful mind can process informationfrom sensory inputs effectively andhence becomes ‘hungry’ for more in-formation and experience. This is amind-expanding process.

Such a powerful and evolved brainbecomes acutely aware of its surround-

ings. It becomes an en-hanced signal receiver able to get in-formation and knowledge from exter-nal sources including the knowledgespace (KS).As the name implies, KS isfilled with knowledge both from pres-ent and past civilisations and this knowl-edge can be assessed by the preparedmind.

This expansion of our horizons or

this yearning for Universal Conscious-ness gives us awareness of the reality oflife in different dimensions.Patanjali hasdescribed this reality in his shlokas:Whena yogi is fairly advanced in his sadhana hewill be approached by celestial beings.Theyogi should be careful about such a contactand there should be neither attachment norsurprise for undesirable connections can oc-cur again. Patanjali does not discuss thenature of these beings and what theirattributes are.

Nevertheless, the fact that evolvedyogis like Ramakrishna,Vivekanandaand Aurobindo have spoken about theseentities and stressed that one should notget entangled with them,does indicatethat such exist.

What are these layers of reality?Are energy packets in ghost form dif-ferentiated into their layers of exis-tence by the energy they possess?Compare them to the quantum stateof an electron in an atom where theelectron energy level corresponds tovarious levels of its existence.

The higher energy level electronsare farthest from the nucleus whereasthe lowest energy level ones are clos-est to it. Similarly, lower entities re-main attached to the earth’s gravityfield and for their stability, they feedon the psychic energy of individuals.This could be the basis of Shamanicrituals and religion. It is possible thatthe concept of ‘sacrifice’ of life andfood and offerings to gods might haveoriginated from this concept.

Strong MemoriesAnother theory is that ghost forms

are strong memories of physical beings— both humans and animals — and of-ten manifest in cases of unnatural deaths.When these psychic energy structures

interact with humans and animals,they are capable of influenc-

ing their minds and swaythem to exhibit latenttendencies of their past

existence.Thus theycontinue to ‘live’

through the medi-um of a host’s body.

These are described as‘possessions’ that have

been described in almostall societies since ancient

times. They get attached tothose who ‘will them’and it is re-

portedly difficult to get rid of them.How are these entities formed? It

is possible that the ghost form is a tem-plate of the physical being and takes

time to ‘dissolve’ even after the entity’sphysical death.This entity is further fedby psychic energies of the new hostbody. In Indian mythology, this ghost

form is sometimes called Suksh-ma shareer, ethereal body.This is similar to Pri-

gogine’s dissipative structure that re-mains stable because of the energy feed-ing it. One example of a dissipativestructure is convection currents in abody of water heated from below.Theheated water rises in the container andis replaced by the cold water from topand thus convection is developed andexists as long as the container gets en-ergy from the heat source.

Higher DimensionIt is believed that many of these

higher energy entities eventually losetheir negative attributes and becomebenevolent gods that almost all religionstalk about.

Awareness of a higher dimensionalspace and reality can remove our fearof death — since death is a simple tran-sition between various forms and di-mensions.This is also the lesson of theBhagwad Gita.With fearlessness comesthe ability to do new things and followuncharted paths that can give us a quan-tum jump in our spiritual and techno-logical developments and understand-ing of natural forces. ■

Post your comments at speakingtree.in

Paranormal Society founderGaurav Tiwari’s sudden andmysterious death at his homein Delhi has revived publicdiscussion on the subject of

ghosts, poltergeists and relatedphenomena. ANIL K RAJVANSHI wonders if a‘powerful, focused mind’ could receivesignals from such mysterious phenomena

No one except Gujjarsand Jats are native toDelhi. The rest who

have come to live here over thepast thousand years, are outsiders,who came and lent their lan-guage and lifestyle to the city,turning it into a pluri-culturalsociety over the years.

We learn this by studying thelanguages spoken in Delhi andtheir evolution, particularly ofHindustani.

“Some consider Hindustanito be Hindi,others think it’s Urdu,and sceptics deny that it’s a lan-guage at all, yet Hindustanievolved as a ‘communicative in-tention’ in Delhi over centuries,”says Alok Rai, a culture com-mentator. He was speaking at apanel discussion on ‘Languages ofDelhi’, the second in a series ofprogrammes organised by IndiaHabitat Centre, Delhi, as a run-up to the 6th Indian LanguagesFestival (ILF) in November.

“Language is a living thing; it

evolves in an urban setting whereyou interact with people differentfrom you.Although grammars anddictionaries try to freeze it in time,it is important to tune into thewisdom of language for what itcan tell us,” said Rai.

Hindustani developed by im-bibing words from Turks,Persians,Afghans,Pakhtuns,Uzbeks,Tajiks,and later the Portuguese andDutch who came to Delhi at dif-ferent times, said Sohail Hashmi,heritage activist. It evolved in car-avan sarais where traders met; atdiscourses between Nirgun andSufi poets; in army camps whereTurk commanders interacted withsoldiers from Rohailkhand,Bun-delkhand,Bhojpur,and Mewat.Ittravelled to Gujarat with Turkishsardars and eventually,became theofficial language of Bijapur andGolconda. It returned to Delhiagain via poetry.“Mughal courtsdid not patronise Urdu. Au-rangzeb wrote love poetry for hisfavourite queen in Braj,” he said.

As the city evolved, so did itslanguage.With the first train fromKolkata to Delhi in 1856,Marathiand Bangla-speaking people ar-rived; later, Partition brought aninflux of Punjabis. New coloniesand cultures sprang up and Delhigrew.“There are pockets in Del-hi which became home to certainlanguages and cultures: Bengalisin Chittaranjan Park, babus andbureaucrats from Kerala and TamilNadu in R K Puram;Mangolpurihas blocks where Tamil is spokenbecause of the Tamil workers liv-ing there,” said Hashmi.

Language carries the stamp ofa community, its culture, history,and future, said Rai.To map theever-evolving linguistic space inDelhi, ILF has embarked on anaudio-visual documentation proj-ect to show the city as a pluri-cul-tural, multilingual space.

“It is our response to count-er growing intolerance in the city,”said Rizio Y Raj, creative direc-tor of the festival. ■

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The language spoken in Delhi shows that it is apluri-cultural society. MONA MEHTA reports

Many Tongues

WHEN A YOGI IS FAIRLY

ADVANCED IN HIS SADHANA

HE WILL BE APPROACHED BY

CELESTIAL BEINGS....HE

SHOULD SHOW NEITHER

SURPRISE NOR ATTACHMENT

— SAGE PATANJALI

PARANORMALACTIVITY

©GETTY IM

AGES