My Spiritual Experience

Auroville

Sadhguru says "Spirituality is something that you can't concoct, it is something that you explore". If you want to become spiritual, you must dissolve all your limitations of being an individual. The process involves renunciation of likes and dislikes and the wavy path of ordinary life. The divine at the top can be achieved by knowing the purpose of our existence and living in a space with a sense of oneness. The best tool to explore self is by practising mediation that allows us to connect with our higher self.  During extreme endurance events like low-earth orbit operations, it is advised to practice mindfulness and relaxation techniques to prevent the development of cognitive or behavioural symptoms. With this post, I am sharing my understanding of spirituality.

Being a mechanical engineer and experience in the automotive domain, my job was to characterize the ride and handling of a vehicle. Typically, there are two ways to assess a vehicle's performance. Firstly, subjective testing by keeping drivability, steering control, comfort and safety in mind. In short, the driver scores the vehicle based on observed response for a given steering, throttle and brake inputs while performing driving tasks whereas the second one deals with the objective method.

This method relies on obtaining real-time data from transducers fitted to a vehicle conducting some specified manoeuvre. An example is the peak lateral acceleration achieved after applying a step or sinusoidal input to the steering wheel. A mathematical model can be derived to model such a response.  It is a general practice to invite journalists at the time of vehicle launch for a test drive and I have witnessed different ratings for the same model. The correlation between subjective and objective is non-linear. The satisfactory rating of a car is determined by subjective handling whereas it can only be analysed and designed for objective handling. why I described the subjective-objective way of describing the vehicle because we can apply a similar analogy to inner engineering practices i.e. the spiritual (subjective) and neuroscience/psychology (objective in nature).

My spiritual journey began in Auroville, where I enrolled for a sound healing program. At the beginning of the program, the head of  Svaram Institute Aurelio presented the role of music in healing and introduced us to various African instruments. We chanted “AUM” for some time and then did upscaling and downscaling of these letters powerfully. After having a few sessions on cymatics and sonic play by the institute members, we participated in “drum circle”. It was my first magical healing experience, we sat in a circle and played drums and hand percussion instruments. A group rhythm was created with the help of a master just by following the simple steps. Immersion in music as a form of healing and spiritual connection was something that I started exploring after the drumming circle. The steady, repeating beat helped me to relax fully. That event motivated me to buy the Djembe instrument. A day later, we had an invitation to attend the spring full moon at Matrimandir (designed by Roger Anger). There is a profound and spiritual connection between the full moon, the tides, and our emotions which I experienced during the sound performance by the svaram team. It was a moon bath and I expressed my deepest gratitude for attending the event.

To touch upon the objective way of understanding how our brain operates for a given input. I would suggest watching the documentary "The Mind Explained". The subject attempts to explain the spiritual experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms. Some studies detail the wave, neuroimaging techniques including functional magnetic resonance imaging that explain neurobiological mechanisms associated with spiritual practices. The subject is evolving very fast. Recently, Elon Musk introduced a brain chip which can enhance the brain-machine (computer interface). There are videos with this technology that announce "Telepathy" (laugh). There are many such instances described in Indian mythology, how did we do that a thousand years ago? Is it still a mystery or known to some?