Happiness Express Read online

  Dreams about the past: You dream about stuff that has happened to you.

  Dreams about fantasies: Your wishes, desires and fears unfold in your dreams.

  Dreams bought on by the place you are sleeping in: We have all experienced this at some point in our lives. Go to some new city and you might dream of things quite alien to your experiences. These dreams are bought on by the energies of that particular place. A classic example is vicious dreams in certain hotel rooms where violence has happened. We are a very sensitive species and can pick up on these subtle energies, especially when asleep.

  Prophetic dreams: You dream about an event that’s going to happen in the future. There are many instances when you wake up with an instinctive knowledge about what’s going to happen soon.

  A mix of all of the above.

  As dreams don’t begin with a drum roll and a label proclaiming which of these types they’d belong to, the safest bet is to ignore them. Otherwise you might mistake something you picked up from the environment or some fantasy as a prophecy and wrongly act on it. Dreams are entertainment. Enjoy your dreams, don’t take them seriously.

  Then there is something called lucid dreaming. I classify this as state of consciousness 3A. It’s when the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming and can influence his dreams to a certain extent a là Inception. We’ll let that be for now and jump right into that amazing fourth state of consciousness.

  Most of us are familiar with being awake, sleeping and dreaming. These three states are more or less automatic and hardwired into our system. The fourth state is the meditative state, one in which you experience deep rest and scintillating awareness. This one is something that needs to be learned and practised. It is my theory that in a few generations, babies will be born with the ability to meditate hardwired into their systems, just like the three other states. Evolution has not yet caught up. Until that happens, meditation is a skill that you will need to acquire.

  The Mind

  Before we begin our journey into meditation, we need to figure out exactly what meditation is, and for that we need an answer to a question I have been asked very often. What exactly is the mind? Let’s take Maharishi Patanjali’s help to answer this question.

  In his Yoga Sutras, Maharishi Patanjali talks about the five modalities of the mind which could create pleasure or pain within you.

  Pramana

  The mind looks for proof. It needs constant reassurance that what is going on is indeed going on. I am flying to Mumbai from Bangalore. How do I know I am in an aeroplane? I look outside the window. I see clouds, the wings of the airplane, the jet engines. I hear the throb of the jet. . . Ahh. . . I am flying. How do I know I am in Mumbai once I land? I hear the announcement inside the aircraft. I see Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport written on the building. I hear people talking in Marathi. I feel the heat and humidity. Hmmm. . . Feels like Mumbai. When the mind takes in stuff from the environment and concludes correctly about what’s going on, it is in Pramana mode.

  Viparyaya

  The mind reels in wrong knowledge. It misguides you with wrong perceptions. You see two people you know sitting close together, whispering and giggling. Your mind thinks, they are gossiping about you and laughing at you. It becomes upset.

  Someone looks at you and smiles. Your mind assumes they are interested in you. When the mind takes in varied elements from the environment and jumps to very wrong conclusions, it is in Viparyaya.

  Smriti

  The mind remembers past experiences. It will drag you to your yesterdays and make you re-live certain parts of your life. These could be wistful, happy, neutral or sad memories. Smriti is the mind visiting the past.

  Vikalpa

  The mind fantasises. It wishes for things. It revels in the joy of how it would be to have some wishes fulfilled. It may conjure up harrowing and hideous nightmares. It will shudder and feel terrified about something going horribly wrong. All these flights of fancy and reverie happen when the mind is in Vikalpa mode.

  Nidra

  The mind sleeps.

  The mind is involved in one or more of these five activities at all times. There is no sixth thing the mind does.

  And what is meditation? When all the five activities cease, you have entered the fourth state of consciousness. You are meditating.

  Plastic Brain

  It’s been established that we are born with approximately 100 billion neurons. Neurons are unique in the human body because they cannot reproduce and multiply. Living fries a few thousand neurons every day. A few thousand from a 100 billion is not much, but over time, this number adds up. (On a side note, drug abuse, alcohol, smoking, etc. are known to add a zero or two to the number of neurons killed each day.)

  Earlier it was believed that as we grow older, we would gradually have a lesser number of neurons in our brain. A groundbreaking study on the brain sometime in the 1990s turned this theory on its head. It established that the human brain has the ability to regenerate itself. Many interesting studies that followed showed that the brain can not only regenerate itself, but it can make parts of itself bigger or smaller depending on what activities the person is engaged in. This neuroplasticity of the brain is not a new concept. Way back in 1793, an Italian anatomist Michele Vicenzo Malacarne trained one of a pair of animals extensively for a while. The other he left untrained. When he dissected both the animals and observed their brains, he found that the cerebellums of the trained animals were substantially larger. This finding was largely forgotten for a long time. Two hundred years later, technology developed machines that let us peer into the brain, and neuroplasticity came of age.

  London’s Black Cab drivers are supposed to pass an incredibly tough exam about the city’s roads, so they can take their passengers along the fastest possible route. Scans of the brains of London cabbies revealed that they have a larger hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with learning routes and spatial representations. The size correlated with the time that they had been driving cabs. This meant that being a Black Cab driver in London changed the size of the hippocampus.

  All orchestral violinists, for the sake of visual symmetry and orchestral aesthetics, use their left hand and fingers to press down on the strings and find notes and their right hand to bow. The right hand is almost sedentary compared to the left which frenetically moves along the strings. Brain scans of violinists show areas related to the left hand are significantly more developed than the right. Brain scans have established that the volume of grey matter cortex is highest among professional musicians, intermediate in amateurs, and lowest in non-musicians.

  In another study, a group of people had their brains scanned and were then asked to learn how to juggle. They built their expertise at juggling over a few months till they could keep three balls up in the air for at least a minute. There was a control group that didn’t do any juggling. The brains of the jugglers showed a significant increase in an area of the brain called V5. V5 is associated with the processing of visual movement. The control group, of course, didn’t show any significant change. What would happen if these newly acquired skills were allowed to stagnate? The jugglers were then told not to practise their skill for a few months. Their brain scans now showed a decrease in the grey matter in V5 implying that the brain has a use-it-or-lose-it system in place.

  The use-it-or-lose-it system was not news to me at all. Before the advent of mobile phones, I knew more than 50 phone numbers by heart. Enter mobile phones, and I didn’t need to remember phone numbers any more. Today, I barely remember around five numbers. Use it or lose it. What I didn’t know and what these studies have established is that the brain physically changes depending on usage. Our brains are plastic!

  The Three Brains

  We have three brains. Each sitting on top of the other. As we evolved, so did our brain. At the base of the brain is what I like to call the reptilian brain. It is all about reacting and survival. All the basic life-support systems of the body are governed from
here. Heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, digestion are all automatic thanks to the brain stem. Thank God for this, else people would die because they were too busy to remember to breathe. This part of the brain has the ability to override everything for self-protection when faced with an immediate crisis. Have you ever accidentally touched something super hot and recoiled? That recoil is the brain stem at work. Notice that you had no control over that recoil.

  The middle brain is the mammalian brain. It creates the fight, flight or freeze response to perceived danger. If the brain senses danger, it presses the buttons to initiate one of these responses. Blood is drained from the stomach and pumped into the extremities. The heart beats faster to get more blood into the system and so on.

  Right on top is the human brain. It deals with social engagement. Keep a few babies together and they will play with each other. They engage socially. A bunch of reptile babies will just lie there doing nothing. This is something only humans and higher mammals do. This social engagement, however, only happens when the brain doesn’t perceive threat. If there is threat, social engagement stops and flight, flight or freeze is initiated. We have explored this in Brain 101. We noted, too, that the brain is not able to distinguish the danger posed by a ‘real’ threat, like the attack of a wild animal, from that of an angry boss or a disgruntled girlfriend. It simply feels threatened and goes into fight, flight or freeze.

  Most people don’t have any control over the fight, flight, freeze evolutionary response to perceived danger. The good news is that meditation allows you to override this crazy response of the brain to stress. The not-so-good news is that you need to learn and practise meditation regularly and over a long period of time for this to work. You are, after all, fighting against the brain’s response to danger developed over millions of years of evolution. For you to start seeing the benefits of meditation, you may need to practise for as little as two months. But the important thing to note is that almost anyone can do it. They just need the commitment and the time.

  The Meditation Advantage

  When I became a teacher of meditation at Art of Living in the early 1990s, many people thought that meditation was primarily for ‘old’ people. Or weird people. It was airy-fairy, freaky stuff done by those who may not be totally all right in their heads. My own friends couldn’t understand what I was doing or why I was doing it. Sitting somewhere with eyes closed seemed such a waste of time. . . It was definitely not for people who were go-getters and achievers. Successful people didn’t have the time to meditate!

  Really?!

  Imagine a scenario where two people equally qualified and who have studied more or less the same material head to an interview for their dream jobs. The first person walks in and is faced by a very hostile interview panel. A group of people determined to give him a hard time and stress him out. His brain will feel threatened and start pushing the fight, flight, freeze buttons. In this critical time, this person has to appear his best yet his brain is screaming run, run, run or punch them in the face. Both terrible interview strategies. You can imagine this individual’s performance in this situation.

  The second person meets the same unfriendly group of people. They have the same intention, to overwhelm and stress the interviewee out. However, this guy has been meditating for a long time. Even though his brain feels the danger and wants to press the fight, flight, freeze buttons, he has developed the ability to remain calm and poised. He will be able to shrug off that feeling of doom, and perform at his peak even in that extremely stressful situation.

  Guess who is going to get that job?

  Guess who is going to rise to the top?

  Guess who will be living their dream?

  Guess who is going to be truly successful?

  Gurudev once remarked: Spending more than half your health to get your wealth and power and then the rest of your life trying to get back your health is not the sign of a successful or intelligent person.

  What is the point of becoming the CEO of a multinational in your early forties and having high blood pressure or diabetes or heart problems? All these are stress-related diseases and can be easily avoided if you can figure out a way to deal with the low-level stressors of everyday life.

  Through my own personal experience and the experiences of most of my students, if we were to state the benefits of meditation in one sentence, it would be this: ‘Meditation enhances life.’

  Thousands of studies and research papers support this.

  Here are some obvious benefits that anyone who dedicates just half an hour a day to meditation can enjoy:

  You feel good about yourself and don’t need a reason to be happy. You have truly boarded the Happiness Express!

  Fewer things bother you. You experience less stress. You get the ability to effectively deal with pressure.

  You get a vastly improved immune system. You don’t fall sick so often. Even if you do, you recover quickly.

  You focus better and things get done faster.

  Your memory improves. At age 50 you can have the memory of a 20-year-old.

  Your relationships improve. You feel more empathy.

  Meditation can reduce physical and emotional pain. A study concluded that meditation is considerably better than morphine in decreasing the feeling of pain.

  Your confidence and creativity go through the roof. You start doing things you never thought you could. Latent talents manifest themselves.

  You become more powerful. If you have an addiction, it’s much easier to get over it.

  You blossom, as the highest ideals and values take root, grow and flower within you.

  Pizza tastes soooooo much better after meditation ☺

  The Meditating Brain

  Remember plastic brains?

  If jugglers, London cabbies and musicians manage to physically alter their brain because of what they do, what about the brain structures of people who meditate?

  I would like to mention here findings from a series of studies carried out by Sara Lazar of the Neuroimaging Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Sara is an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.

  The brains of long-term meditators were compared with those who didn’t meditate.

  It was found that there was increased grey matter in the insula and the sensory and auditory cortices, implying that meditation enhances our senses. Meditation helps us get so much more from the present moment. Sunsets look prettier. Music sounds more melodious. Food is tastier.

  The frontal cortex is the area of the brain associated with working memory and executive decision-making. It’s well documented that it shrinks as we age, making it increasingly harder for us to remember things and solve problems. Studies have shown that the brains of 50-year-old meditators have the same amount of grey matter in their pre-frontal cortex as normal 20-year-olds do.

  Wow!

  Playing the devil’s advocate, however, maybe these 50-year-old meditators simply had more grey matter to begin with. What then?

  A second study took a group of people who had never meditated in their lives and put them through an eight-week program where they learned and practised meditation.

  It was quite amazing what their before and after brain scans revealed.

  Their brains showed significant ‘thickening’ in four regions:

  The posterior cingulate gyrus, which is associated with mind wandering and self-relevance. Meditation could make you more attentive and feel great about yourself.

  The left hippocampus, which assists in learning, cognition, memory and emotional regulation.

  The temporal-parietal junction, which is associated with empathy, compassion and perspective. Meditation will make you more compassionate and you will be able to see life from a broader perspective. . . small things will not bother you as much.

  The pons, an area of the brain stem which is involved in the production of regulatory neurotransmitters.

  The amygdala, which is associated with the fight or fli
ght response of the brain, and relevant for anxiety, fear and stress, in general actually got smaller. This change in the amygdala was correlated to experiencing a reduction in stress levels.

  These were people who had just begun the practice of meditation and did it only for eight weeks, averaging about half an hour each day. As you can see, neuroplasticity verifies the benefits of meditation that my students and I have experienced personally.

  Gandhiji and Meditation

  If these dramatic changes can happen in just eight weeks, can you even begin to imagine the brain of a long-term meditator? Let me introduce you to Pandit Sudhakar Chaturvedi.

  Panditji was Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary for a long time. At the time of writing this book, he is still alive, quite active and lives in Bangalore. Panditji was also Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Sanskrit teacher. Thanks to him we know quite a few stories about Gandhiji that have never found their way into history textbooks.

  Most people don’t know that Gandhiji was a meditator and used to find the time to meditate every day. He once remarked to Panditji, ‘I am so busy today, I have so much to do, I don’t have the time to do my one hour of meditation. I will have to do two!’ Gandhiji was well aware of the benefits of regular meditation.

  Panditji tells us another story. . .

  ‘We were travelling to Darjeeling in a toy train. I was sitting next to Gandhiji. There was a sudden jolt as our carriage came unstuck from the rest of the train. It started rolling downwards, slowly gathering speed. . . There was chaos in the compartment. Screaming, crying, praying. . .

  Gandhiji calmly looked at me and told me to take the dictation of a letter. I couldn’t believe my ears. We could die in the next few minutes and you want me to take dictation??!! He looked at me and said, if we die, we die and there is nothing much we can do about it. If we don’t die, we are wasting time. Start writing!’

  I hope by now you are convinced that you need to learn and practise meditation. There are just too many wonderful things that happen when you meditate for you to continue to ignore this astounding fourth state. The return on investment for just half an hour a day is incredible.