Focus: Feb 27, 2021

Our topic of focus on Feb 27 will be yogic contemplation of antiquity and a couple of related modern topics from physiology and psychology. The modern are executive function of neuropsychology and relaxation response of Herbert Benson M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Yogic contemplation is a unique gift of the Vedas to the world. It is a comprehensive, multifaceted, far reaching and transformative discipline of practice leading to various ends including exploration, research and knowledge creation and acquisition; authentication of knowledge; creativity; realization of a purpose, whatever the purpose may be including self-realization, self-actualization, god-realization; prevention and reversal of physical, mental, learning and executive disorders; physical culture; cultivating the mind; mental focus; cultivating attention; raising of human consciousness; cultivating character; cultivating boundless love and compassion; and so on including various combinations of them.

On the national and global scale, a culture of yogic contemplation can lead to happy, productive, healthy, effluent, just and caring people living with high degrees of peace, coherence, cooperation and harmony with each other without conscious or unconscious bigotry of any kind.

Our subconscious mind is related with and is the result of our phylogenetic memory of our early life conditioning and natural instincts of survival, sustenance, procreation, herd identity and self-centred love. As such, it keeps the unconscious mind over-active. The strategy of yogic contemplation is based upon an uncanny understanding of our neurophysiology and neuropsychology. It begins with making the conscious mind over-ride the activity of unconscious with the result of slowing it down appreciably. Slowing the activity of the unconscious mind reduces or eliminates distractions caused by the subconscious pulling the conscious towards sense gratification, imagined fears, habits, appetites and addictions. Relatively free of inner distractions, the conscious mind can explore the object of contemplation with full attention. This explains the comprehensive benefits of yogic contemplation. Effective inactivation of the unconscious and subconscious creates an inner ambiance of unique stillness freeing the conscious mind from its natural subjugation of its two associates. It then can discharge its executive function well.

There are eight integrated components of yogic contemplation which lead the practitioner from the waking state to the state of contemplation. The only requirement for success in yogic contemplation is human will, regularity of practice, and exercise of inhibitory discipline on sense gratification.

Executive function from the modern discipline of neuropsychology is a study of how our executive brain, the prefrontal cortex or our conscious mental faculty can lead us in the realization of a purpose. For a human being to attain a specific purpose, there is a time dimension. Most of us cannot stay focused on the attainment of our purpose for an appreciable length of time. Executive function lists a set of capabilities or functions we need to develop of our thinking brain in order for it to lead us successfully to our purpose.

Recently around 1970, Herbert Benson of Harvard School of Medicine, having studied some practitioners of transcendental meditation in his laboratory, identified what he termed as the relaxation response as the opposite of the fight and flight response of the body identified some forty years earlier in the same laboratory. He knew that a regular elicitation of the fight or flight response is harmful for our health in many ways. He theorised that the meditators elicit the relaxation response regular elicitation of which can prevent or reverse disease in its early stages. While the fight or flight response is elicited naturally in a state of stress, conscious effort is needed to elicit the relaxation response. Conscious practice of breath regulation, which is an essential component of yogic contemplation, is an evidence based method of eliciting relaxation response. 

We will talk about this focus in scientific terms.