Thank you to those who made donations. My heart beats more fervently when I feel the support. Bless each and every one of you!

Now, continuing with our saga on memory, I would like use a few more computer analogies. Let's say you are working on a project and save it. Where does it go? It is saved on some kind of memory card, portable device, or a hard drive. Now, let's move to a different computer. The files you carefully saved are not exhibited in the list of files to be found on the new computer. You are absolutely sure however that the work was saved. Nada! Zilch! Oh, but you have the memory saved on an external device and you plug it in and voilà!

In a kind of way, we can now say that the original computer used was like your body. You are no longer using it but your work was saved and you can recover it on the new computer. This is rather like reincarnating. The point is, memory is immortal whereas the machine or body is not. We must avoid thinking the body is somehow more real than consciousness or memory. The analogies can be carried quite far. The RAM may be lost but not the memories you saved.

So, now, what is this RAM in relationship to the selves with which we are identified. Try also to keep in mind that the original question I had posed to various priests and pundits was which parts of ourselves die and which live? The question was serious. If we look back some 15 years before the great loss in my life, I had given a lecture on Fate versus Destiny in which I proposed that the way the theories were constructed, it is possible that when we die, the subconscious goes to hell and the superconscious goes to heaven. I was asking what is the relationship between the subconscious and the superconscious and no one dared to answer.

Of one thing I was certain, the conscious mind dies. It is like RAM and once gone, it is gone. However, this conscious mind is like a go-between that processes impressions from the sub- and superconscious parts of ourselves. These are not physiological but they depend on mechanisms in the brain in order to be recognized by the conscious mind.

This might seem complicated unless we try to understand non-verbal communication or what goes on in the invisible realms of persons who have brain injuries or medical conditions such as autism spectrum disorder or Alzheimer's disease. Occasionally, there is someone who has recovered completely who explains everything he or she experienced at the time when there was no verbal communication with others. Similar stories are often reported by people who have had near death experiences. They can often give vivid accounts of what happened in an operating room or sometimes far away, such as when calls were made to relatives to notify them of accidents or comas. All these cases point to the fact that some part of us continues to experience and remember even when there is no evidence at all that the body is functioning.

So, I will try to make a case for continuity of consciousness beyond the body and to suggest that when people are not exactly coherent, it is equivalent more or less to an error reading on a computer. The information may be correct but the computer is not processing the information properly. If we reboot, we may lose some of our work or we may recover it, perhaps in safe mode or something like this. Keep in mind, we humans designed machines and made them in a way that reflects some of our own intelligence. You can see how far this thought may go but, for now, let's not go there but rather stick to the known.

If the computer malfunctions, you try various things and perhaps resort to sending it to a technician or buying a new computer. Then, just like reincarnating and having to learn to eat, to walk, and talk, you start all over again installing your programs and making lists of passwords and so on and so forth. For a month or two, you are probably playing catch up, but eventually you find the new computer is actually better than the old one, kind of like getting a new body that is not diseased or riddled with aches an pains. I am not being flippant at all. The difference, of course, is that the way we try to repair the brain differs from how we approach the computer. I have yet to offer any computer some Brahmi Elixir, but this has a surprisingly nice effect on brains!

Well, I wrote that yesterday but will try to pick up the train of thought, maybe with a digression, but for those of you who are trying to see how my dots connect, I will describe my first assignment in India and the reason for the trip to Ankara. USAID has a very large "Food for Peace" program that the French disparaging called "surplus agricole". The food was mainly distributed to schools, and my assignment was to determine whether any difference could be found between children who received free school lunches and those who did not. The scope of the study was exceedingly broad, and it turned out to be the largest study ever done in India. Basic questions about height and weight were fairly obvious but had to correlate to age. General health, school attendance, impact on other family members, and IQ were also included. For example, were those family members who ate at home able to consume more because one or more children were eating at school. The purpose of the trip to Ankara was to meet with a biostatistician. I was also obsessed with developing a culture-free IQ test because showing a rural Indian with a bullock cart a flat tire was not quite a measure of his IQ but rather of his familiarity with a mode of transportation he had probably never used.

If I had to make a rather general statement, it would be that after studying the ways in which bias can be exhibited as a result of how questions are asked, I concluded that all species are probably equally intelligent but each is adapted to the unique peculiarities of the particular species an locale in which it lives. Likewise, most people are probably intelligent but their brains may or may work effectively, especially if the subject matter is not interesting. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to study mathematics or chemistry when hungry or when one's mother is ill or one's father is out of work. The common tests used probably ignore such factors and thus we can read in the press that the reason for the problems in Syria is the low IQ. Good grief! I wonder if there is anyone who is able to live a normal life?

Not to skip around too much, but remember the videos about a gorilla named Koko that I posted many years ago. When she was asked (using sign language) who is more intelligent, apes or humans, she answered apes and then reached for a banana as a reward. But no banana was given because the answer was considered incorrect. Koko signed back by touching her forehead and adding an "s" and the researcher was baffled. Koko was telling the highly educated academician to brow-se because she knew that is what humans do when looking for information. So, Koko had demonstrated a rather interesting observation about people but she flunked the test. She then asked the researcher if her feelings had been hurt, thereby exhibiting an incredible sensitivity and tenderness rather than resistance to being seen as somehow less intelligent. What I would like to suggest is that the curriculum in a jungle school should be expected to be vastly different than in Silicon Valley. We are each trying to equip ourselves to live in this world and that requires different strategies depending on the species and living situation.

Plants mutate and produce noxious chemicals if overharvested. Animals that are friendly may become hostile such as when offspring are taken away from them. In short, I am sure that both plants and animals have some unpleasant thoughts about people that they are often too polite or too fearful to express. Anyway, I am wandering pretty far off topic, but when I was trying to find my soul group, I discovered that there were only two humans in a group that consisted of approximately a thousand members. I was quite stunned and a dolphin suggested that being a human is not all it is cracked up to be. In short, get over the idea that humans are top of anything but some food chain developed by textbook publishers.

So, now what is consciousness? It obviously has nothing to do with reading books or studying. It does however relate to the attention given to any particular activity in the now. Right this second, some of you are relating to what I wrote in the previous sentence and some of you are thinking about Koko and perhaps hunger or loss. Each of you stopped paying attention at whatever grabbed you at a particular point and that is where your consciousness is right now. Thus, even if your eyes just read the word "eyes", your mind may be somewhere else. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but the interesting point for me is that when people do write to me about posts, many will start telling stories because the post triggered a memory. That is important because it explains how memory is triggered.

For instance, if I mention death or loss, some people will start thinking, i.e., exhibiting conscious behavior, and if the reader stays with the energetics of that feeling, he or she may go into a highly personal space in which a memory from the past arises. In Buddhism, there is a great deal of attention placed on what is called mindfulness. This means that we can develop the skills to watch our own minds. Then, we see how the mind and its observations relate to experience, memories, and feelings. When we observe, we are not reacting. We are allowing a process involving a great deal of nuance to supplant knee jerk reactions that are based of feelings, some of which are unwelcome. No one is trying to suppress or deny either thought or feelings but by taking the time to assess, we are developing the potential for choice, i.e., we are choosing when and how we would like to respond rather than allowing a spontaneous reaction to occur. This does not cost us any authenticity, it simply brings more parts of ourselves into a coordinated response rather than giving reflexes center stage. As with all exercises, we do not expect to master a skill the first time we try. We expect that practice makes perfect.

A few of you know that I wrote a book on memory called "Shadows on the Soul". It is still unpublished. It was actually the first book, well, second if we count my book on parakeets written when about seven years old and bound together with my shoe laces. It was sent to dozens of publishers, some of whom actually said it was the most interesting book they had ever read but they did not know how to market it. In short, write another dictionary because the publishing industry does know how to market dictionaries.

It's probably good that there has been such a long delay but I still want to publish the book. The shadow referred to in the title was actually quite prophetic but no one close to me at the time liked the title, least of all Kay Ortmans who was something like the grandmother of the book because thanks to her work, an entire world opened for me. However, as we are now living in the era of "fake" everything, it is time to understand the nature of the shadow. It is a sort of miasm that prevents us from seeing things as they are. We therefore see what we have been prompted to see and therefore to believe.

So, I will continue this thread for several more installments, probably not all sequential. In the meantime, à propos what Patanjali called "conditioned consciousness", I would like to let you know about a discussion between Steven Greer and David Wilcock. Though dated April 17th, the conversation must be older because they talk about the Obama administration, but what was interesting for me is that Dr. Greer insists we have nothing to fear from aliens. I agree with his assessment and have more or less provided my reasons. It relates to this thread because the reason is what is sometimes called "higher consciousness" and the view we have of advanced technology. We assume it takes "higher consciousness" to produce advanced technology, but this is not actually true. It only takes a particular kind of intelligence and the requisite skill set In the context of "fake news", we must consider the motivations for disclosure as well as who wants to disclose what. NASA has rolled out some nonsense on life on the moons of Saturn. It is sometimes hard to differentiate Walt Disney from NASA, but observe. These are just modern versions of gladiator games. The public is using horror to entertain people and to keep them endlessly distracted from all that is important as well as real.

If we are not conscious, we will fall for the party line . . . which is, indeed, what the news is. In the meantime, if we have brain fog or brain fatigue or synapses that are not firing right, we can consider herbs to improve the way the brain works. This would be like refreshing your RAM. I think we are now full circle.

I am very concerned about the brain because of the wild increase in autism and ongoing use of wifi devices. Alzheimer's disease is rampant and is now found in people in their thirties (some sources actually say twenties) so we need to keep our brains in the best working condition possible. However, just because an individual does not respond in the way we consider normal does not mean that there is no consciousness. There is however a malfunction, much of which can be corrected. I love Brahmi Elixir. Formulating it was a joy. The primary herb is gotu kola. It is one of the safest herbs in widespread Ayurvedic use. It is given to pregnant women and newborn children as well as the elderly. It enhances memory, concentration and clarity, but it is also antiparasitic. Ashwagandha improves stamina and is neurogenerative. I even included tamarind to help the pineal gland and guduchi because the literature says that if you take it regularly for three years, you will increase resistance to toxins and live longer. It's a beautiful formula and is very well tolerated.

http://ayurvedicbazaar.com/mind.php

Blessings,

Ingrid

The following link is for the Institute and can also be used to make donations:

http://invisibleepidemics.com/

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2017

Design by Damien Francoeur