Alex Hankey
Professor, SVYASA Yoga University, Bengaluru, India.
alexhankey@googlemail.com

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Abstract

The biophysics of meditation suggests that as the mind turns inwards in the process of Dhyana, feedback between thalamic nuclei and the cortex increases until feedback instability is reached. At the feedback instability, phenomena associated with the Devata of the sense begin to be experienced – the Cosmic ‘AUM’, or the experience of pure white light. Such phenomena are also characteristic of the state of pure consciousness, in which consciousness is aware only of Itself as unbounded, and thus infinite and eternal.
The association of pure consciousness with feedback instability is natural. Quantum excitations at the instability can be shown to be self-observing – that is to say that the feedback loops enable them to feed information about the system back to be registered in the system itself. In all biological systems, phenomena of complexity tend to drive regulatory systems to their feedback instabilities. This means that, even in molecular systems, organisms naturally gravitate to states where some element of ‘mind’ can couple to them.
Recent work by Ford has underlined the extraordinary levels of intelligence of which single cells are capable. He has pointed out that such abilities as that of an amoeba to build a surrounding wall of microscopic ‘bricks’, and of paramecium to do a ‘courtship dance’ and merge in an act of reproduction, require more than simple digital programming. They seem to imply some kind of awareness. The form of mind-body connection proposed above could apply to genetic networks in single cells. Might they apply in such cases?