Anyone who has tried some hand at meditation or introspection must have felt the deep surge within of almost inexpressible feelings and emotions, besides concomitant physiological effects. The deep reserves inherent in human mind become patent, and one can begin to think that:
a) are these possibilities being realized and experienced by us for the first time? OR
b) are these latent in put system and being unearthed OR
c) these were always there and we have somehow over a period of time forgotten them.
Since we have records of many saints and godly people, who have described these experiences at least over last 5000 or so years, we can assume, we are not experiencing these for the first time.
Now science has variously put man’s presence on this planet since 2 million years. Now just as a child is having inadequate control on limbs, we as adult men and women have feeble control on our thinking and other faculties. So could we reason that, the advanced of human species, since last 10-20-30 thousand years, were the first to focus on this problem: having better control on mind. After all, man has been explicitly trying to have better control on himself and on his environs, so that he can dictate and decide what happens next.
The efficacy of coming up with thought constructs that help one focus and concentrate better, and thus watch the thought itself, must have worked best with various exercises and concept of God as uni-focus. Just like in other endeavors of man, there have been various schools in Hinduism and other religions, shpowing experimentation with various approaches and theories. As an adolescent goes through many changes, not understanding many of the changes, our forefathers too felt the need to comprehend potentialities of mind. They had most success with constructs of God. The yogi could try to unravel layers of evolution to primordial stages, sensing a unitary binding thread of God’s impulse. It could also have been many such different stands. The Darwinian evolution may have coded all these potentialities in our bio-system.
As a freshly sprouting seed or a bud flowering into adulthood, the surging and driving vital force is no doubt immensely powerful and so very harmonious with rest of the universe. Look at last 400 years of knowledge that has come forth across fields, and all that has happened without any overt help from God or alien intelligence. By parallel, the quantum of what we feel we know of God and related concepts or entities seems very possibly a cumulative creation of men and women over 10-20-30 thousand years.
Only we need to see beyond the mysticism that is thrust on us.
Authors: Amit Kapoor and Sandeep Mann
