April 06 2005

Title:

Mind of a Mystic || Satsang || 06 April 2005

Link to Video:

Transcript:

(0:34)

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I am Dr. Murali Krishna. I am the president of Integris, Mental Health, Integris James El Hall Centre for Mind-Body-Spirit. This is Centre we started about eight years ago originated from the bombing recovery where we thought we will do something good for our community to help, discover the healing power that is existing within each one of us and in doing so, we brought many International speakers from all over the world and continue to do so giving seminars and we are so grateful to have Swamiji come and join us today. We will have formal introduction of Swamiji in just a few minutes and He requested me to do something. He wanted me to give some of the scientific basis of what is going on when you meditate and I’m going to talk for a few minutes about that.

(01:20)

Before that I would like to ask you to turn off your cell phones and your pages because some of the meditations you are going to do, you will be a great service to your neighbors. Shut those off for a few minutes. I think the world can live without them for a while. I also want to give…all of us to join and give a round, warm applause to the people who have arrived at 6:30 and have been patiently waiting. (Applause) Thank you very much. That is so kind of you that you waited for half an hour to get the other batch come and join us. So we are so excited about that.

(02:02)

The last year when Swamiji came, I had requested him to do one thing. I asked Him, “Would You be willing to undergo some scientific investigation of the meditation process?” Because…because if a meditation process is doing something to your brain, we should be able to detect that. You know, just like the genetic code in you and me and everybody in the whole world, they found out through modern science that 99.99% of genetic code of all human beings is exactly same, no matter where you are, what language you speak, what height you have. Brown, blue, yellow, green, black, whatever color we are all, we have the same genetic code. So scientific findings are verifiable. They are replicable. You can replicate them, duplicate them. If you do that study in Alaska, you will get same results. If not, there is something missing somewhere. I would look at something different.

(03:08)

So all of us know for long time that when you relax in this stressful world, some changes happen in your body. When you are stressed out.... all of us experience stress in our life. Our heart goes faster. We become very tense. Our breathing goes faster and shallow and irregular. Our pulse rate goes higher, our muscles become tense, blood supply is taken away from certain parts of the body like, the digestive organs like stomach and intestines and re-distributed back to other parts of the body like the muscles of the legs. All these changes happen instantaneously. Just imagine you are driving on I-40 heavy traffic, fast traffic and suddenly you found the flashing lights of the police car in your rear view mirror. Tell me what happens in your mind, your body? Let alone mind, the body! Heart beating faster immediately right? Instantaneously it starts beating faster. The blood pressure goes high. Pulse rate goes high. Perspirations go high and these changes happen in a fraction of one second. Not even one second, in a fraction of second before we can even think what happened. These changes happen automatically and that is the typical stress response.

(04:35)

Some danger is recognised by part of the brain called Amygdala, an old part of the brain and the same part is seen in very primitive animals. That is a primitive response. It’s been there for ages. We are born with it. Our parents had it, grandparents had it. We need that response to survive as human beings. Our ancestors, when they were fighting for life in the thick forest being afraid of lions and bears, they needed that reaction to survive so that they could run away, they can't fight or fight if they can or be frightened. Fight- flight- fright reaction, but unfortunately in the modern day world we don't need that reaction except in rare situations. You know, we don't see lions unless you go to the zoo. You don't see bears unless you go to the zoo. For us stress reaction is regular events in life. Disagreements, mortgage rate going up or down depending upon where you are in your life. Economy, the weather, unfortunate events, whatever and they elicit stress reaction so many time in each day that research is showing that each one of us probably will go through forty to forty five stress reactions in a day. We may not even know that is happening in our body.

(06:00)

So what is wrong with it? What is right about, what is wrong about it? It is right if you are facing a life threatening situation to have that kind of a reaction because you have that to survive. It is wrong if you have too frequently unnecessarily happen in your body because you are turning out toxic chemicals that are not necessary. Your body producing hormones are not needed to produce. It is like putting in a high gear and trying to climb a hill in your car. That puts strain on the body, heart, your lungs, your brain, your kidneys. All of it is strained and it also, you know, suppresses the immune system. Now studies are showing very clearly stress suppresses the immune system. The stress hormones decrease the white cells that we need to fight infection with cancer. They decrease white cells that we need for repair and defending our body. It postpones healing mechanisms. So we don't heal as fast if stress mechanism is evoked frequently. So we are really literally everyday we are creating a bathtub full of acid and jumping into it everyday over and over and over and over!

(07:09)

So what you would learn today from Swamiji is some techniques, meditation techniques that come from ancient times from evolved, greatly evolved human beings that Swamiji has Himself received through His own evolution. He is going to be sharing with us. And last year when we asked Swamiji to go through the trouble of being subject to scientific investigation, He very cheerfully agreed without one complaint. He went for three repeat sessions for PET scanning and three repeat sessions for Quantitative EEG sessions and these are really not very easy tests to go through. It requires lot of patience and lot of willingness to do that. So we did that and Dr. Pamperdosi, is she here? She has been very helpful along with Dr. Ruvi in arranging the Quantitative EEG and the huge team of people, Neuropsychology team at Jim Thorpe center at the Integral Southwest Medical Center and they have found some wonderful things for us. I will show some pictures.(Doctor shows some images of the brain on the screen)

(08:14)

We went through three sessions of PET scanning. Normally when you go and get a CAT scan done, MRI scan done, most of the time, you will get the structure of the brain. You know, like what is the shape of the brain, what is the structure of the brain. We were not looking at the functioning of the brain. So new technology has come out that studies the actual functioning of the brain as and when things happen, not ten months later, not one hour later unlike you know, our X-rays. They studied the structure of the brain. The PET scanning what they do is, they inject a dye which is very active dye, positron emission, very active dye and that goes and sits in the parts of the brain that are active or working at that time.

(09:05)

Let us say, if I am looking at you right now, my visual cortex is active right near the back. So if you inject the dye into me right now, that dye directly goes there and sits right there, attaches to all those cells that my vision is working on and there are some lot of experts here that know more than I do. Except that it is one of the most modern technologies that is helping human beings to understand what exactly happens when you think, when you feel, when you smile, when you frown, when you are hopeful, when you are healing, when you are not healing, when you are disappointed and you are frustrated. Some wonderful, wonderful, new findings are coming out that would help prepare for improved healing mechanisms and future evolving discovering who we are. You know, it is almost like a great treasure chest that we are discovering. Modern science is helping us to do that.

(09:58)

So Swamiji went through those sessions and we found some interesting findings. Normally when you and I, when you are awake, usually the brain is so active. There are hundred billion brain cells there and they are so active all the time. They receive input all over the strata, eyes and ears and touch, smell and feel and they are active. If you take average brain wave test, awake fashion, it will be chaotic like a jungle, you know. It is like millions of people, millions of children crying and talking at the same time but what meditation does is something very interesting. First about the PET Scan: physiology, the functional part of the brain. It shows the frontal lobes getting more active. The frontal lobe is where you have judgment, wisdom, reasoning. If somebody does not have frontal lobe, you can really write him off because it is not much life left without frontal lobes. Unfortunately some of you are driving cars! (Everyone laughs)

(11:14)

So I define a Mystic as someone who believes the existence of realities beyond human comprehension. In that sense, Albert Einstein was a mystic. He was a little clerk in a patent office and he visualised how life would be if he sits at the front of the light beam and travels along with the light beam and discovered the theory of relativity that transformed mankind forever. He was a mystic. He is somebody that believed in the existence of realities beyond normal human comprehension for average human being, one who inspires a sense of mystery and wonder.

(12:05)

Here are some of the brain scans I am going to share with you. (Doctor shows images of brain on the screen) This is alert non-meditative state. If you look at it, let me see…okay, click at the top. It is not very active, not very red and yellow. You know, yellow and red being most active front. It is not alert in the back where you are seeing visual cortex is alert. So as I was talking where you see that is active in the back. There is a front that is left and that is right. Next... okay, this is the first one, okay? The second one is thirty minutes into… thirty minutes meditation. Look at frontal lobes how they are lighted up. They are lighted up big time. It is almost like it has got extra so much energy going in there. It is a very clear cut indication. From the previous picture I will show again, previous picture. See how it is and how the next one is. Okay, can you see that? That is in the thirty minutes deep meditation.

(13:24)

Next sixty minutes deep meditation. See how one side quietens down and other side remains very active. Sixty minutes of deep meditation, there is something else happening right here in the middle, in the middle right here in the frontal area, in the middle. It is called mesial frontal area And here is a deep, deep level of meditation where it lights up significantly right here, right in the middle probably inch and a half inches deeper. It is called mesial frontal area where both front lobes come and join together like that. What is interesting was Swami was inside and that is last part of that one. See that light right here, lighting up right here in this area. So what is interesting is, I have never seen that before in my life. So the other parts I have seen may not be to the extent that Swamiji showed but this is something interesting.

(14:22)

There is something called Dopamine which is a chemical our brain is involved. Dopamine is produced mostly in this area and when you have any pleasurable feeling in your body, it is mediated through dopamine. It is a narrow receptor. You know, It is a chemical that transmits messages of pleasure basically evokes pleasure. You eat gourmet food. It is dopamine that tells you it is gourmet food. If you have no dopamine, you may eat gourmet food but you think, “O! it looks like horrible cookie.” Same thing is with, you know, your pleasures you have- beautiful cookie food, beautiful sceneries, nature, whatever gives you pleasure. It is mediated through dopamine. Incidentally alcohol and chemicals mediate the dopamine and you know, everything that human beings experience involves dopamine but what is interesting is, that you and I have the potential to create our own dopamine in a big way!

(15:25)

So I named it for a lack of a word in the past, the D spot, which is a dopamine spot because I know that in America they like good names. I am not going to name the other spots but..... if we can discover your D spot, we call it XXX The D really stands for Divine spot. The D also stands for delight and the dopamine that is what is seen right there. I think future researches will confirm and they may name it something different, some better name than whatever I named but that will be very interesting.

(16:14)

What is also interesting is that, you know, He could at will go in and out of the states. So we asked Swamiji when He came from the scanning room, when we saw this one we asked, “Swamiji, what were You exactly doing when sort of this thing happened?” He didn't know what is there. He did not see the pictures yet. He said really interestingly, there were three people there. He said, ”I opened My third eye.” And that is stunning because I don't know about third eye since childhood and didn't read about for a long time what it is but what He said was, you know, I asked Him to describe more in detail what does He mean by third eye and He said it was a deep meditative state. It is probably very, very deep state but He said, you know, it looks like a small petal on one side going and joining. Another side of the petal comes and joins and it joins together and it becomes the third eye like a blissful state that you experience when you open the third eye. It is interesting that exactly same area He was saying He was open.

(17:17)

We are not seeing with naked eye what is going on but with sophisticated modern technology, we are able to see that some parts of the brain is activated that you know, we normally can't see. So that is really very, very interesting, fascinating finding and we are going to talk about a long time is this finding and there are many other findings but I don't want to take time away from Swamiji's wonderful presentation tonight and briefly I will give you in a nutshell what happened with the brain wave test QEEG, Quantitative EEG with a computerized analysis of the brain waves. You know, brain goes through several stages- the Alpha, beta, theta, gamma states. Delta is sleep, deep sleep state. You know, alpha is kind of very relaxed, attentive state. Beta is normally what you look like really a alert state. Theta is really the one that you want to be, you know, it's really a deep, deep, deep meditation relaxation, a wonderful feeling. He could go in and out at will anytime.

(18:20)

That's wonderful but there is another one that is really, really interesting for scientists, sportsmen, for performers and for nobel laureates in future and that is, there is a special wavelength between twelve to fourteen megahertz. Very, very few scientists know about it even today. We won’t talk to every scientist; they won't know what it means. It is called the SMR range, sensory motor rhythm range. It is a special narrow band in brain waves. You get into that when you are in the zone. You know, those of you that are golfers probably Tiger Woods in the zone or Vijay Singh in the zone. We talk about Pete Sampras in tennis and football, you have so many people in that zone. Basketball Championship, you saw them throwing those balls and effortlessly it goes in no matter where they are throwing the ball from. That means they are in the zone.

(19:16)

What happens is the ultimate coordination of the muscles and the nerves in the body, entire body organs and the chemistry and the hormones. They become so cohesive to the point that anything is possible at that time. You want to be in the zone. For example, if Oklahoma University football team or OSU football game whichever you support, they found the secret of how to get to the zone, they will be national champions every year and they will be probably undefeated for hundred years. The secret is, how do you find that zone and what's interesting is Swamiji was able to go in and out of the state at will. That is really fascinating for me. You know, that's something that's going to be talked about in the future: the SMR range.

(20:05)

Then the other thing that's really interesting that intrigued the specialists in QEEG, Dr. Fredis in the team was that when you go from alert state to meditative state, you go through various frequencies and they are represented in various colors and I have never seen that myself in my life. When He was going from alert state to deep meditative state, you go in the same color range in the same order as the rainbow, the VIBGYOR- violet, indigo, blue, green, red, yellow, vibgyor, same orange and red and then when you come out of that range, you would come in the exact same range opposite and He did that several times that can't stand us at that time and those are some of the findings I want to share with you. There is so much more to talk about physiology of mind and brain in the body. It is a fascinating field that, you know, this is something that all human beings can relate to, can apply in our own lives, not only is sophisticated knowledge but these things have application in daily life for all of us.

(21:14)