The Himalayan Hospital of Jolly Grant was a coming up complex near Dehra Dun during early nineties with modern facilities for conducting physiological tests. I was one of its sponsored visitors in April ’93.  My department was keen about health of brains of its General Managers! The tests were not very comfortable for the physiologist who would not agree to my explanation about them. For example, her suggestion to stop thinking while measuring activity of my brain produced a reverse result. Instead of   an expected fall in the signal output from brain, there was a drastic increase. She was astonished.

I explained that the pattern she expected was true only for a common man. It will not apply to a Yogi who moves his consciousness in his body at will. I have stopped thinking by simply pressurizing the cortical area of brain by a command in the corpus callosum, beneath the cerebral cortex. My brain has stopped thinking at my command, which is not possible for a person other than Yogi. Yog, by definition, gives the potential to stop thinking at will (1). However, terminating thinking by this process will show a gain of signal in the monitor due to pumping of neutral consciousness in cerebral cortex.

 Can a professional doctor believe and agree to my suggestion? Yogis are not interested in their tests because they add nothing to their life. I too was a sponsored candidate. There is little data, therefore, on the consciousness pattern of brains in elevated Yogis.

There was a second observation also about my physiology where the doctor was stuck. It was my breath – extremely shallow with hardly any intake of air into  lungs.

“You see, those who inhale consciousness directly from the environment around themselves don’t need much oxygen. Through a long practice of Pranayam in the fourth step of Yog, I cut down intake of oxygen during 1973-74. The body system has stabilized subsequently with a limited intake of oxygen, although Pranayam was abandoned later” I explained to her. She was not impressed.

The Himalayan Hospital experiments were of great relevance to me, however. My days at Bordeaux flashed before me. I had landed at Bordeaux with a body weight of 60 kilos in the October ’83. I was feeling suffocated and hungry all the time. During the day, I used to stand for almost half an hour in sun with a hope of gaining some energy from noon Sun. It wasn’t of much help, however. Soon I turned into a glutton, adding almost eight kilos in a month. My breathlessness vanished at 68 kilos.

There were two inferences from experiments above: first, in India, when a person subsists on low food intake almost 10 to15% of consciousness energy is absorbed by the body directly from atmosphere. Through practice, this could be increased further during penance when people continue on near-foodless life for months. In high latitudes like France, free consciousness energy is quite low in the environment. There, we cannot sustain ourselves without an equivalent food and added effectiveness of physical body.

 Physical body derives consciousness through food and oxygen and the main user of its energy is the causal body. On the other hand, consciousness energy absorbed from environment sustains, essentially, the astral body.  Based on my personal experience, I fixed the outer boundary of high consciousness energy zones as 33°±2° latitude. Yog and Brahm are too intimately related to astral body and due to this geographic disparity in consciousness regime none can develop into a Yogi north of 33°N or south of 33°S. Experiential realization of Brahm is also ruled out north of 33°N and south of 33°S accordingly.

Variation of consciousness on earth has influenced human perceptions, quality of mind and concepts in thinking. In the zero-gold-medal-zone (Fig. 1.9), the tenth book of Rigved differentiates between two consciousness attributes of man – intelligence and manojav (mind generated force = psychic potential). The first is linked to the quality of brain while the second is essentially related to the   spiritual strength. It was also understood that   manojav varies in the range of ankle-deep to neck deep ponds among the colleagues of equal mental caliber (2). Contrarily, people north of 33°have talked only of intelligence and philosophy from Democritus though Russell for about 2500 years, and, for them, there is no psychic property like manojav. Indeed, Democritus “insisted that man has no soul” (3). North of 33°N level of manojav is too low and   experiential perception of soul as a Brahm, independent of body, is unimaginable.

Yog, by definition is a ‘process that stops thinking’ (4). It is an anti-thinking instrument operating through energy of manojav in a powerful spirit. In the eight steps of Yog, the first one is Yam that implies ‘stopping speech and thinking’ (5). The last step of Yog is samadhi, which takes a person to ‘null mind meditation over half an hour’ (6). By the concept of Upanishads, wordy thinking and intelligence constitute ‘non-knowledge’ while silent   manojav and Yog are knowledge. Yog is neither a subject of classroom lecture nor a practical session in a hotel or ashram environment, therefore.  It requires withdrawal of person from   social life to isolation; and, in higher steps even a sound-free environment (7).

If a proper and qualified individual desires for   strengthening of manojav and Yog he must be first in a suitable geographic location. Then, he has to take to silence and stop thinking   to reach samadhi. Such a person alone can succeed in experiencing Brahm or body-free-soul in his head, like the bards of Upanishads. He could also verify experiential aspects in the functions and structure of soul discussed here. Faiths and religions with aim and prayers of material prosperity or heavenly abode will have a negative role in his success. Unless one takes to Upanishads and Yog, a person will best end into an active spirit after death like Mevlana of Turkey. He will not experience Brahm; he will not experience Eternal Life; and, he has little chance to become a Buddh or Virajapar. These states are available while living and   not after death.

 Model of soul, presented in the pages to follow leans heavily on my own observations in the domain of manojav, Tantra and Prajna. Photographs and the gathered information serve as its building blocks. Their arrangement to reconstruct the most likely model of human soul takes into account my prolonged operations in energy transfer during Prajna between several individuals either directly or through a medium. The topic is slated to be discussed later elsewhere (Yog and Tantra for Moksh).