Speaker 1: 0:53

So I guess what I've been having a few things is, when I'm in roof-mare, it's always so much stronger than when I'm doing like I'm sitting by myself in the evening, and I just, I guess, want to delve deeper into why that is and why I can drop and not be. I guess sometimes I don't. I just I feel that there's more of an energetic connection to dropping and, like I don't know, it just feels like it's more powerful at the moment than, um, when I do it by myself. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Yes, it certainly does, it's a whole thing. So it's a whole thing and the that this experience actually underscores the, the foundational understanding of reality from the Vedic worldview, which is this that human consciousness is an emergent phenomenon out of an underlying foundational reality whose primary quality is infinite, unending consciousness. It's a difficult one for us to wrap our head around, but if we can imagine reality as a field that moves in all directions simultaneously for infinity, and within it is infinite creative potential, and simultaneously that potential manifesting, becoming actualized, and it's structured in an infinite ray of universes filled with a level of complexity that is utterly unimaginable to us, filled with a level of complexity that is utterly unimaginable to us, and we as human beings are a part of this fabric of infinite potentiality, manifestation and intelligence. This is what we aren't taught at school, but this is the fundamental reality of our human experience, and as meditators, we are able to start detecting this experience. We're able to start having this experience directly in our consciousness when we go really deep and we lose sense of our localized identity. Our individuality starts to blur into this abstract, vast expansiveness that still feels like myself, but somehow it extends way beyond, in fact, if I was to examine it closely, what I would notice is it doesn't seem to have any beginning or end. It's an abstract is-ness, it just is. And this is the early stages of detecting this underlying infinite reality Unmanifest becoming manifest.

Speaker 2: 4:30

And so I'm explaining this because, when localized consciousness states, aka human beings because that's what we are, if we were to break us down to what we are at our most fundamental level, we are localized consciousness experiences. I'm here, you're there, you're there, you're there, you're there, you're there, you're there. We're all conscious, we are all aware of our position relative to each other Relative consciousness experience. Relative consciousness experience localized in particular places. As localized consciousness states begin to entrain through a willingness to sit together, be together and practice something that elicits an effect in consciousness that is very, very similar, if not almost exactly the same. Almost exactly the same, whereby the individual experience moves from a localized state of awareness down into ever closer to the underlying universal, non-local consciousness experience. When we do this together, something extraordinary happens there is an amplification of the effect. It's referred to as the Maharishi effect. It's named after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced transcendental meditation into the West in the 50s, where he identified initiating thousands and thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people at the same time, in the technique of transcendental meditation in stadiums, would notice, would observe this happening, observed this happening.

Speaker 2: 7:00

And they did a whole bunch of extraordinary experiments, including bringing meditators into an airport hangar in Washington at the height of Washington's crime period in a year in summer, where everyone seems to go cuckoo, and they hypothesized that they could bring the crime rate down by about 20% to 25%. And over the course of the four weeks of practicing meditation where they increased the numbers of meditators over that period of time, at the peak of the participation of 4,000 meditators, the participation of 4,000 meditators they brought the crime rate down by 23%, 23.7%, which is like unheard of the police. Commissioner said if you bring it down by 1%, I'll go on national TV. He went on national TV and he proclaimed the whole thing. They sent them into Beirut. From the time that the group meditating, there were no fatalities for the periods of time in the middle of combat and war.

Speaker 2: 8:10

So you know, there's a very interesting science for us to understand and discover here. But as it relates to your experience, caroline, there's a very simple and discover here, but as it relates to your experience, caroline, there's a very simple and obvious thing that occurs when we understand the nature of human consciousness. The nature of human consciousness is that we all share in a consciousness. There's not many different consciousness. There is the appearance that your consciousness and my consciousness are different. What's happening inside my head is different to what's happening inside your head. But what we understand is that as we move into higher states or deeper states, however you want to look at it to higher states or deeper states, however you want to look at it we become more inclusive of what's happening down towards the base of the wave. We look at individual consciousness as a waveform.

Speaker 2: 9:09

At the peak of the wave is our sense of individuality and as our awareness moves down the face of the wave, we start to detect the more fundamental layers of human consciousness experience, which includes the experience of others, which explains why, when people start meditating, they start becoming more emotionally intelligent, empathic, compassionate, because they are, on the level of their own nervous system, detecting the experience of others. I feel you, I see you, your experience and I can I can relate to the experience you're having. Why? Because I'm detecting the experience in my own consciousness. I'm not just hedonistically obsessed with satisfying my own whims. You know, I'm choicelessly, sensorially aware that you exist and you're having an experience and it's affecting me and I'm affecting you. And oh, I think we have some responsibility to each other to like really honour each other's experience here.

Speaker 2: 10:19

And this is where human beings start to behave better as a result of meditating. It's simply through the agency of awareness, consciousness. And when we do this thing together, where we deliberately and elegantly lead our consciousness, detect the theme of what's happening, there is a reason why I get us all to breathe together simultaneously. It's causing a kind of entrainment where our biological rhythms start to sync up. Breath is a basic biological rhythm and we are simultaneously de-exciting and I, at least one consciousness state, is simultaneously aware of everyone. That's participating, and that's all it requires to link our consciousness. We become networked. In me leading that exercise, we become networked and then we just go about practicing as we would individually. But we're no longer practicing individually, we are transcending in a networked state. And so when we all start going, there's this greater power like a vacuum, pulling us into that experience. And it's not to say that this is everybody's experience all the time, but it's the general experience.

Speaker 2: 12:28

You know, I tell a story, I love to tell it. I'll tell it again because I'm sure there's a bunch of people here that haven't heard it. We, we were doing a mass meditation in Bali on a beach. I'll tell the short version there was about 800 or 900 people. I'm sure that number changes every time. I tell it that was a conservative amount. At the time. I'm sure I've said it's like 5,000 people, let's say 800 or 900 people, and they're all led simultaneously in a in a beautiful meditation. And I remember, as I was leading it, we had some beautiful harmonium and a sitar and some other instruments. So there was an atmosphere that was all amplified. So, and it was a busy Sunday afternoon down at this particular beach, everyone comes down. So there were a lot of people standing around watching it, going what's going on here, and I noticed, as I was leading everybody into the meditation, more and more people would come and they'd sit down and they just spontaneously start participating. They didn't know what was going on really, they didn't know what the event was, but they sat down and started getting into it anyway. Needless to say, it was a magnificent experience.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Everyone, like we, felt the whole thing just go boom into this very deep, coherent state and then at the end of it, I remember I was talking to some people you know, wow, isn't that? And this woman, kind of mid-50s, beelines it straight for me. She's in like you know, not Balinese, get up like some Lululemon exercise gear. And her mascara was all running down her face and I was like, oh okay, I'm in for something here, because she was quiet. And she came right up to my face and she was like what just happened? Then I said I don't know. You tell me, are you okay? It seems like you've been crying. She's like yes, I have been. I've been bawling my eyes out uncontrollably. She was English. What's going on here? And I said well, tell me what happened.

Speaker 2: 14:34

She's like I'm off on my afternoon walk and I'm like what are these people doing over here? And I judged you and I stood there going what are you doing? This is ridiculous. And the next thing I know I'm sitting down and I don't know why. And then you said close your eyes. And I listened to you and I closed my eyes and she started getting worked up and I said and and she's like well, I don't know what happened next.

Speaker 2: 15:00

Next thing, you know, I come out. I've had an experience and I'm bawling my eyes out and I said, oh, you've just had a really big stress release. Have you been a bit uptight lately? She's like, well, yes. And I said, can I give you a hug? I gave her a hug and she had a little sob again and I said, listen, you just had a really beautiful experience of connecting with yourself. And she's like but I don't know how to meditate and I just went somewhere. I had an experience.

Speaker 2: 15:31

She started describing what she experienced. It was just a profoundly deep meditation, deep experience of herself. Experience was just a profoundly deep meditation, deep experience of herself. She connected with her heart, her feelings, had a release, felt amazing, but was so confronted because she was actually quite unwilling to participate on the surface level of her mind. Yet the power of the group pulled her in and she was just one of probably maybe a couple of hundred people that I know that hadn't signed up for this thing, that kind of came and sat down and you know we couldn't get rid of that group that afternoon. Everyone just stayed there, no one wanted to leave. It was just this beautiful energy and everyone was talking and hanging out. Yeah, it was magnificent and you know, this is the power of it and I've done many, many mass meditations and I've got so many stories like this where you watch the effect, you know, at festivals and the stallholders that can't leave their stalls, that are watching this thing happen, and they kind of come up to me afterwards and go. I was sitting there watching it. I found it so difficult to keep my eyes open, I just wanted to close my eyes and I'm serving people, you know, chars and things, and it was like this pulling effect from the collective consciousness state.

Speaker 2: 17:01

And what's interesting that we've discovered in the kind of age of Zoom and video conferencing and all of that, is that time and space don't seem to be a barrier. Well, time seems to be a thing Like we're all you know. There's probably a one or two second lag in this video, pretty inconsequential to the effect Space you're all in. I can see at least six countries that are present here, six different time zones, and yet here we are experiencing and feeling the group effect, and consciousness knows no bounds. It's not limited or contained by the relative laws of time and space. Light travels at the speed it does.

Speaker 2: 18:14

Consciousness is said to be instantaneous. It can travel from one end of the universe to the other instantaneously. Why? Because that's all there is is consciousness. Int's like saying, you know, experiencing the sensation. Why? Because the finger is connected to my nervous system and my organs of sensory perception and it instantaneously delivers that experience, because it's all part of one body. Our human consciousness is part of the universal body of consciousness and so time consciousness instantaneous. There's countless accounts of people getting together and wishing somebody speedy healing and the account of miraculous, what we would refer to as miraculous healing because a big group of people sat, came into their hearts and had an imagining where it was filled with heart, intention, love, a palpable energy broadcasted from an individual state towards someone in need. And the account of profound healing occurring as a result of a collective intent directed. I've witnessed that on many occasions prescribe it often and often hear of wonderful things occurring. That's the power of human consciousness.