Aryan Invasion Theory, Fact or Fiction?

In the preceding article we found out that there must have been a mingling of population and cultures of the people of ancient India (Bharat) and Europe, and we were pondering about the "direction" of migration. An article by Sri Subhash Kak, The Gundestrup Cauldron and its Indian Connection, discusses about this diffusion of culture in his article well.

Few other evidences worth mentioning here [Source: Recovery of the Foundations of Indian Knowledge Systems; IIT, Kharagpur]. The Vedic culture and Indus Valley Civilazation dated back to 7000 to 1500 BCE, much earlier  than the European relics were found; and there are concrete evidences to prove this point. The colonial rulers were desperate to disprove this obvious fact to promote their racial agenda and philological superiority. 

It is also however important to mention at this point that like many other nations, the left-leaning politicians and 'woke' elements are always there to discredit any indigenous systems/history for favor of something which feeds their agenda to make them appear "politically correct". An account of such an attempt at assassination may be found here.

But why was this Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) forged and forced, first of all? The colonial invaders found out 'millions of similarites' between Indian languages and the European language tree, and it suited them best to design an invasion, which was the easy way out. But ancient Vedic civilisation or Indus Valley Civilisation never actually believed in any kind of aggression or invasion, rather they always fostered brotherhood and unity.

"In what Veda, in what Sukta, do you find that the Aryans came into India from a foreign country? Where do you get the idea that they slaughtered the wild aborigines? What do you gain by talking such nonsense?"- Swami Vivekananda: The East and The West

Not only in the context of PIE languages, India had a lot to offer to the World for its developments, not even bothering for anything in return. For example, consider the Brahmi scripts, from which the English and the so called Arabic numerals evolved. The concept of zero (0) without which we couldn't use computers operating in binary logic; the Vaisesika philosophy (concept of atom, time and space and many other great features which were discussed in an article in East-West, April, 1934, wherein a summary of its scientific knowledge was given); concept of Yoga [the underlying principle of original Christianity] which the Western world is now recognizing; the basis for the invention of radio transmitter [Acharya J. C. Bose was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves]; fields of medicine and surgery including plastic surgery and ophthalmologic procedures which predated Western methods; fields in astronomy; Spiritual philosophy including the first true monotheism [ATHMAN=BRAHMAN; Erwin Schrodinger: What is Life]; the birthplace of many religions and countless more. 

Regarding India's contribution in Arithmetic, Laplace, the famous French mathematician, statistician, physicist, a versatile polymath had this to say: 

"It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity.'

[Kumar, Raj (2003). Essays on Ancient India. Discovery Publishing House. pp. 196–. ISBN 978-81-7141-682-0.]

Now, this second installment of AIT and Sanskrit is also timely, considering that there are recent papers coming out to suggest and consequently prove that Sanskrit originated from outside India. It's as if saying that humans came from Saturn! Certainly, as one would expect, the woke Indian media will only be very happy to toe the line.

But does all this discussion about an invasion that never was make any difference? No! In Sanskrit it is said "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam": Maha Upanishad. The World is one family, we are all related. Let us evolve as one, that should be our motto, keeping aside all prejudices. 'Till we set up a colony on Mars riding on a Elon Musk rocket, the Earth is our one and only home.

Additional Reference: Autobiography of a Yogi

Tags: Language, philology, philosophy, India, Aryan Invasion Theory

The Circle Of Life And Soul

Before embarking on this arcane topic, let us talk about death first. Clinically, death is said to occur when the heart and the lungs stop working (cardio-respiratory failure). However, with the advent of modern life support systems (such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, artificial ventilation), quite a few such 'dead' persons have been brought back to life. Legally, death is now defined as when the activities in the brain stop: brain death. The EEG signals may cease completely or fall to undetectably low levels. Body organs may be taken from the 'dead' person and transplanted onto a 'living' recipient. Certainly, death does not mean that all the body tissues and organs die at once. However, death is considered an 'all or none' process and is irreversible. That some tissues remain alive in a dead person, it may be assumed that some as yet unexplained binding energy that keeps track of the living system, is amiss.

If you worked with computers, you may have noticed that there's a 'registry' which keeps note of the hardwares, softwares and other machine configurations vital to the computer's health. These informations are kept in the form of a 'tree' and are referred to as 'hive keys' (e.g. HKLM, HKCU etc). Should anything go wrong in the registry, the computer won't work; its dead. The hard disk is OK, the RAM is fine, even the CPU is intact; but the computer is dead. A similar analogy may be drawn with the BIOS (basic input output system) flash memories of the computer.

Do we have anything like this in our bodies that coordinate functions among various tissues (separated at a distance)? Could it be something like covalent or electrostatic interaction or some form of quantum entanglement between the tissues that works in an analogous way the system registry in computers does? Perhaps, interactions like the one observed among microtubular assembly (interactions at 'hydrophobic pockets') might be involved in a broader scale.

Looking from a different perspective, living systems may be thought of as a combination of different compounds and elements. They can be broken down into molecules, which may again be divided into atoms--> the so called 'elementary particles' like electrons, protons and neutrons. These can again be broken down into quarks and gluons and finally into the 'vibrating strings' of string theory.

Thus the whole gamut of living and non-living things may be construed in terms of a vast network of vibrating strings. This reminds of 'cosmic consciousness' of Carl Jung. Living beings may 'tap' onto this 'server' network by some form of electromagnetic resonance or quantum phenomena (disregarding decoherence for the moment). Life stops when we are 'off resonance', as if we get a DNS server error 769 or destination unreachable. May be there is some self sustaining oscillation that runs amok and cause a kind of 'thermal runaway' and entropy rises unmanageably.

Honestly, any endeavor to delve deeper into the topic will be futile at this point. First, we are bound by our senses and interpret things in the light of our past experiences. Second, we are prone to introduce Heisenberg's uncertainty errors, the closer we get to it. The more accurately we determine the location of 'soul' (if there's any) the further off we are to notice its properties. Thirdly, you can't really judge the velocity (not speed!) of a moving bus from inside (and blindfolded). You need to look from the outside.

Persons with 'near death experiences' (out of body experiences) and those who have undergone dissociative anesthesia (using ketamine) have reportedly 'seen' their bodies from a different dimension. Finally, intuition and not intellect, should be invoked to address this delicate issue as the former's approach is holistic, while the latter breaks an event down into its component parts (in the light of present knowledge) and analyzes them (and thus inherently error prone).

May be the souls is indestructible; it just relocates into another 'braneworld' having a few more dimensions and hence hidden from our views. As long as we can not definitively answer what life is, we certainly can not hope to speculate on what 'spirit' or soul is. A few more interesting points to ponder upon: Does a pregnant woman have 2 souls? Do individual cells and molecules have their own soul equivalents?

Disclaimer: While the facts described are true (hyperlinks given), this article is mostly a speculative 'synthesis' of sorts and largely reflects my own view.
Related: Is Science Killing the Soul? by Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker

Last modified: never
Reference: hyper-links, unless specifically mentioned

Meditation and Physiology

Meditation is the process of concentrating upon one's own self, fathoming deep down into the labyrinth of one's own consciousness. Scientists wanted to see whether meditation had any demonstrable effect on the physiology of the performer. They took eight long term Buddhist practitioners (monks), who used to practice regularly, for this purpose. They also took ten healthy volunteers, who did not practice it, in the study (as a control group, for comparison and for judging the statistical relevance of data.)

They recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity of both the groups and analyzed them. They found higher (statistically significant) gamma band activity in the monks, while they were in the act. Their relative baseline gamma band activity (25-42 Hz) over low frequency activity (4-13Hz), was also better. Both relative gamma power and absolute gamma power were greater in them, than the controls. Not only that, long distance gamma synchrony in them was far greater.

Since it is known that gamma synchrony plays an important part in the formation of consciousness [1, 2], it can be only inferred that they stay more alert and attentive than the control population. Also, long distance gamma synchrony, being more well developed in them, it is only natural that the integration intensive functions like memory, intelligence, and other cognitive faculties are better developed. Its no mambo jumbo, the research has been thoroughly studied with established scientific methods and substantiated statistically. No wonder, that transcendental meditation helps patients of AIDS or hypertension.

Meditation can be beneficial to our mental, spiritual and overall physical help. It is a great de-stressor.

Ref:
Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice
Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Nancy B. Rawlings, Matthieu Ricard, and Richard J. Davidson
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0407401101

[1]. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.119.2469&rep=rep1&type=pdf

[2]. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10867-009-9148-x

Consciousness: An Inside Story

It is a daunting task to explain what is consciousness, for there is no consensus in this regard. Though many different definitions exist; it can simply be defined as the feeling of ones own lively presence with in oneself. How this feeling is brought about in the living beings, including humans, is not precisely known and many a hypotheses have been propounded. The most appealing as well as the most tenable among these is that it is due to the processes and interactions that occur in the hydrophobic domains of dendritic proteins in the neurons of the brain. Proteins are chains of amino acids (like beads in a string) which have different shapes depending on what the constituent amino acids are. Amino acids containing hydrophobic side chains such as valine, isoleucine etc. and amino acids containing aromatic rings such as phenylalanine, tyrosine are (by definition) very much insoluble in water. Thus dendritic proteins which bathe in the extra cellular fluid consisting of water fold themselves in such a way so as to make an infolding, an inward pocket where these particular (hydrophobic) amino acids are located. It is with in this microcosm of pockets strange things happen.

As we all know, that in the nano world, weak forces such as van der Waals become increasingly relevant where as those of gravity begins to take a backseat. In these pockets an interaction occurs between these adjacent non polar (hydrophobic) molecules. Just like the south pole of a bar magnet would induce the formation of a north pole in a ferromagnetic substance there is the creation of opposite charges on the nearby molecule by the action of 'transient dipoles' (the hydrophobic molecules behave as transient dipoles in which charges oscillate/interchange between the poles. The charges occur as a result of imbalances in the electron clouds of the molecules). This attractive force that exists between transient dipoles is also known as London force, a kind of van der Waals force.

The oscillations that occur in the dendritic proteins are synchronized in a global scale with in the brain. As a result 'binding' occurs, which means that there is consolidation in a global scale within the brain about all the attributes of a thing. For example, when someone gets hurt he feels pain by the help of his thalamus and locates the painful stimulus by the help of his cerebral cortex. Binding helps us to feel both simultaneously, as shown in the example. It is necessary as the brain processes tasks parallely. It is much akin to the clocking in a computer to a fixed frequency.

Exactly how this clocking/synchronization is done is not known for certain. This synchronization is also known as the gamma synchronization as it is reflected as gamma waves in the EEG (electroencephalogram), having a frequency in the range of 30-70 Hz. This synchrony can occur as a result of electromagnetic coupling between regions within the brain and this would explain why it is done almost instantaneously. That the brain radiates electromagnetic waves is well known.
Another possibility is quantum coupling by the processes of entanglement. According to quantum mechanics it is possible for a particle to learn about another one, in no time, without ever having to go to that particle physically. This 'instantaneous/in no time' phrase is important as we do not want any phase lag to creep in so that a decoherence state does not occur. In the leaves of plants too, the electrons sparked off by photons/sunlight go hopping (by mind reading!) to the place where actual photosynthesis is taking place by previously reading the quantum state of other electrons by entanglement.

The association of hydrophobic pockets assumed with the formation of consciousness can be inferred from the fact that swamping these charges by external electric fields as in electro anesthesia, would result in 'unbinding' and anesthesia. Again, chemicals such as anesthetics which dissolves the hydrophobic pockets cause anesthesia by disrupting the London forces attempts to strengthen our notion.

References: The Brain From Top to Bottom
Quantum Consciousness & Orch-OR

Crazy Little Thing Called Life

Scientists have recently discovered a body of evidence regarding the existence of water on the red planet and has, for obvious reasons, gone gaga over it. They are conjuring up all the possibilities of existence of life on it.

Well, what are the basic ingredients of life? Are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and similar molecules extremely essential (mandatory) for life? What constitutes life and above all, how is life defined? If prions, (which are nothing but misfolded proteins, the cause of a myriad of illnesses like mad cow disease, kuru, scrapie and various other diseases) can be counted as living organisms, then perhaps any complex molecule or even radioactive elements like Polonium 210, which disintegrates on its own, to form many other elements, which in turn disintegrates (reminds me of Iron Maiden's 'Seventh son of a Seventh son' song), may be said to have life too, for they undergo an automatic activity. If you pore into the inside of an atom, you can see interactions in the nucleus: mesons; orbiting electrons around them, dutifully obeying Pauli's principle and many such activities that mimic life. Or are they living things themselves?

( En passant: Polonium 210 is found in tobacco in minute quantities; it was used to poison the famous Russian political dissident Alexander Litvinenko).

Life on earth perhaps needed the carbon skeleton, or it may even have been due to a chance occurrence. Microorganisms have been discovered in conditions in places, hitherto considered inviable for life (Bacillus stearothermophilus, B subtilis, Thermus aquaticus for example). The constituent of life could be molecules other than the conventional ones, even anti-matter! If we zoom in, we find tissues, cells, microtubules, mitrochondria, nucleus, the DNA and various other things which themselves are teeming with life. Zooming further still, we enter the constituent molecules to find the hadrons and the leptons, deeper still, quarks and gluons etc etc. They all seem full of life to me.

Look at the celestial objects. The sun is said to be a middle-aged star. So? Heavenly objects sometimes die a violent death: in supernova, or turn into neutron stars or black holes or some 'dwarf's. And the universe is said to have been born in the form of a major birth pang called the Big Bang. Are they living things then?

We know that there is a very small probability of finding two exactly similar humans, having all identical attributes. Likewise, no two electrons orbiting the nucleus can have the same quantum state, as per Pauli's exclusion principle (teleportation using entanglement/twiddling is an exception, for here two particles at a distance have the same properties) . This only shows that like unique human minds, the not-so-living things can also have their own uniqueness. Can they be said to have a life too, for they too move, have mass and energy. What about a cellphone or a computer or anything having AI(Artificial intelligence).

Let's be introspective. You are as much life as I am and we are made up of molecules arranged in a particular configuration: just matter; but where is the life? It may be here, in the entity called consciousness. Consciousness may be explained in terms of interactions among material elements. When we are dead, what exactly is missing? We may be brain dead, but the transplant surgeon may take out the kidney or cornea to transplant on others. Thus even after we die, we still continue to live in some of our tissues: they remain alive!

The question of life has to be addressed holistically, if we want to arrive at a sane and unanimous conclusion. Till then controversy will rage.

Universe MUST Expand !

Lying idly under the starry night sky, atop the rooftop of my village home, is a rewarding experience for me. It seems to instill upon me it's vastness, the same awesome infinite which inspired many a philosophers' souls. I, like every little kids, was also spellbound at the beauty of the universe. Where did it end, I used to ask myself ( I still do now!). I reasoned that if it ended somewhere, then what/where is it's boundary and more importantly, what is that boundary wall? If it ends, then what lies beyond can NOT be a part of the universe. If there is one universe, which is more appealing (and less appalling than the multi-universe concept), then it automatically suggests that the universe is expanding, because a static universe would mean that it has an end.

Universe is thought to have been created 12-14 billion years ago from a cataclysmic event called the 'Big Bang'. NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) measures the heterogeneity (anisotropy) in the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR). WMAP has determined how fast the universe is expanding. If you were curious about the oscillating 'cepheid variable stars' so far away from us, you may visit HubbleSite and may be see some videos there.

The occurrence of Big Bang may have been paraphrased by ancient religious scholars. Hindu sages' words ' tamaso ma jyotirgamaya' meaning from darkness (nothingness) to light (something); and 'let there be light' in Genesis, The Bible, are examples in point. What religion is doing on a science site can be understood when one considers what the great science fiction writer Isaac Assimov said: ""Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."" Now, lets navigate from spirituality to the realms of 'science' again.

Albert Einstein proposed the cosmological constant (to his repugnance) to fit into the theory of general relativity to achieve a stationary universe. He was fiercely against an expanding universe and the general theory of relativity needed a stationary universe to operate. But he knew that all the matter would attract each other and the universe would finally collapse. To remedy this he invented an anti-gravity force called the cosmological constant or the dark energy. It is not to be confused with dark matter which is attractive. Later, it was found out that the universe did expand, going by the observation of the Hubble redshift (due to moving of celestial objects away from the observer).

The expansion of the universe and its infiniteness is hard to comprehend. Einstein suggested that the space time was curved and if one started a journey he would come back to where he started from. One of the way it may be looked upon is in the form of the Moebius strip. This strip seems apparently unending.

Now if the universe is unending, then which/what is it expanding into? Then do we have to accept the existence of multiple universes? It's too mind boggling. We can not even employ something faster than light to investigate; for Einstein won't allow us to break the speed of light. So expecting that we will live that long to receive and (analyze) billions of miles (SORRY light years) away would be even beyond our wildest imaginations.

I sincerely think that this puzzle will remain unresolved. Immortality may be achieved by the help of stem cells, cloning of organ systems and (re) transplantation thereof and various other techniques, but the nebulous universe will probably continue to give us the slip!

Modified: April 1, 2009

Frozen frame

When we take photographs of our near and dear ones or that of a beautiful scenery, we freeze the happenings at that moment. Whatever may be the size of the photo (in bytes/pixels), all the informations had to come through the lens via the focal point. If there were no aberrations (spherical/chromatic etc), then all these bits of informations will have passed through the focal point only (theoretically). How is it possible? A point (just a point, mind it) holding so much information? If there be simultaneous data transfer, the information density will be maximum at this point, whereas if we think of sequential data transfer, the speed of data transfer at this point had to be maximum. (We just cannot change the speed of light in a specific medium at will, can we?)

My profound ignorance in optics won't allow throwing any light on this. Perhaps data congestion/bottlenecks in the nodes of the internet may be addressed to when this is found out. (Presently locomotive behavior of ants are being investigated to find the best net traffic algorithm).

Radio Waves And Reincarnation, A Strange Connection

It is said that Jesus Christ rose from his grave. This may not be an Alfred Hitchcock potboiler.

The radio part: I listened to many short wave radio stations, in my younger days, in my native village, where the reception is excellent. The undulating sound due to ionospheric altitude changes had a special appeal to the inveterate dx-ers (dx refers to distance unknown) like me. I was also thrilled to 'listen' to the falling meteors (yes! meteors heat up intensely as they enter the earth's atmosphere due to friction, thereby ionizing the gases around. This in turn causes electro-magnetic fields
which can then be tuned by a radio.) and what not. The signal which is meant for the end users (earthlings) are actually thrown skyward! Funny, eh! Well, the signals bounce back to earth following the laws of reflection. There is a mirror in the sky, called the ionosphere, a canopy of charged particles that reflects electromagnetic radio waves in the short wave band.

Albeit, some fractions do penetrate the layer through and through. We can now receive the information that bounces back, and hear Tommy Vance (BBC: Rock Salad), Ray MacDonald (Voice Of America) or Michael Wagner (Radio Australia) and dance to the fantastic music they broadcast.

But this reflection doesn't end here. The wave again bounces back to the ionosphere (this time from the Earth's surface) and thence again to earth. This process continues infinitely, at least, theoretically. Does the signal strength ever becomes zero? NEVER. If you divide one (1) by two(2), you'll get half. Divide it again and again... Never does it become naught. Another thing in point is that information is never lost, as this is the fundamental principle of quantum mechanics which assumes that the information is 'imprinted' on a quantum state.

Don't see the point?: Well, I , you and all other in our lifetime leave traces of our thoughts and other abstract ideas in the form of electromagnetic waves (alpha, beta, theta, Gamma waves of the EEG, for example), which reverberate forever, as explained above. Anyone who can tune to this frequency, can theoretically 'feel' the same as the original . Thus, there could be so many "virtual identities" (electromagnetic wave patterns) floating in space. That is the electromagnetic identities keep bouncing back and forth between ionosphere and earth. Just as a monkey can compile a Shakespeare, in an indefinite number of tries; one person among say, quadrillions may likewise tap/tune to a specific frequency, which is already in the air--> thus may resonate with his own thoughts, thereby ensuring maximum energy transfer. The living person may now 'acquire' (by tuning) a long-dead person's thoughts. This is tantamount to 'reincarnation'. It is as if the person goes back in time. Doesn't the theory of relativity allow you, theoretically, the 'absurdity' of 'going back in time' ? (The theory of relativity would even permit you to shake hands with Alexander the Great, only if you could crack the speed of light and of course, given Alexander agreed to it :-)

Genetically, when you think of a clone, (say Dolly, that Ian Wilmut created using cells from a cow's udder), where the offspring's genes are identical to the parental genes; then it could be possible to imagine some degree of chromosomal parallelism among the huge populace on earth. Such type of genetic makeup doesn't usually occur normally but in the same vein we can not deny the existence of 'atavism'. Though the possibility of an exact genotype by normal means is infinitesimally low, but not impossible. The idea of reincarnation should not be debunked as long as science disproves its existence, authoritatively. In one research, carried out by Ian Stevenson and colleagues on reincarnation, it was found that birthmarks correlated precisely with wounds in the previous life.

I am a huge fan of Iron Maiden. Read the lyrics of this song (infinite dreams) about his view on reincarnation here and listen to it if you like:

"There's got to be just more to it than this
Or tell me why do we exist
I'd like to think that when I die
I'd get a chance another time
And to return and live again
Reincarnate, play the game
Again and again and again."

Modified on 25 March 2009
You may visit: Wikipedia article on Reincarnation

Back to the Future

Is it really possible to go back in time? Well, that's a question where even established scientists would differ in their opinions. What would it be like breaking the speed of light? I don't know. No one knows. But we do know what it is like breaking the sound barrier.

Imagine a supersonic jet lying stationary on a runway (taxiway) making a horrendous noise of its whirring engines. The sound waves around the plane travel at the speed of sound and thus go away from the plane. Now as the plane moves, the plane narrows down the distance between it and the sound waves that lie in front of it. When the plane is traveling at the speed of sound, then it can hear the sound that's being produced in real time, as well as all the sounds it produced in the past, as it is now flying at sound's speed. (We presume here that the 'past' sound is still audible and it is flying in a medium where sound can travel,among other things). What a horrible Frankenstein of a creation! We hear more sounds, in addition to the present one. This is the sonic boom.

Lets gather more speed now. Now we leave those awful noise behind. We leave history (of past sound) behind, which we can re-live. Should we stop the engine now (in God we trust), we could hear the sounds that the plane made in the past: (as those sounds were behind us when we were flying at more than sound's speed), as they now travel ahead of us.

How about this scenario? Imagine a little boy lighting a firecracker. You can see the smile on his face as the firecracker explodes in a multitude of colors. Wait, didn't you hear the sound much later? Yeah, and that's because light travels the fastest, while sound's speed is much slower, in comparison. If you were to fly away from the scene by a concorde jet, at the speed of sound, you could hear the firecracker's sound forever. If you flew at more than the speed of light, you would have left that event far behind, so far that I could see it again when you stopped. Aren't we relieving the past, or going back to the past for that matter? That's precisely why physicists (and of course, the traffic police) are unwilling to let you fly at that breakneck speed for you will end-up in another universe (the other side of light).

The above is a simple way of trying to explain such a tough poser, which honestly I don't understand. It is not exhaustive by any means and reflects my views only. Help me enrich myself with your own views in the form of valuable comments, suggestions or corrections.

Alice In Stephen Hawking's Land

Come, switch on darkness
Null all the fractals of runaway thoughts in antiphase
To bask in the serene divinity

Come, throw open the doors of perception
and look beyond the event horizon
wake up to a new dawn

Soak in the black body radiations of the super consciousness
only to merge with the microcosm of quarks
discover your real self
as you have wished for ages
in your subconscious.

Paradise Regained

Explaining my stand:

We can switch on light and not darkness. But it could be possible, if we mixed vibrations of a waveform of equal frequency and amplitude, but 180 degree out of phase. Do we see those crest and troughs anymore? The light has been extinguished by its own cousin in antiphase. We could also produce darkness using strong gravitational field of a black hole, for example.

Darkness opens a vast new window for us, as it did in Hellen Keller! Because, by stopping all the visual inputs, any visual 'trespass' messing up with the thought process will be prohibited. We may even be able to 'look' beyond the forbidden event horizon, where time (age) stands still. A thought is bounded by no limits.

Black holes do radiate, but this radiation do not give out any 'meaningful secret' that we may hope to decipher. Basking in this beam incognito will be real grand, isn't it?

Telepathy: The Nebulous Domain Of The Mystique

When we listen to the radio, see the TV or use a cellphone, do we ever give a damn why we need to resort to these gadgets to see or listen; when the informations, digital or analog is already there? Why do we need these tuners (devices) to 'hear or see' them? You may say, these gadgets help us tune and to decode the encrypted algorithm!

Some animals like dogs or birds can anticipate natural disasters like earthquakes beforehand. It is documented how the Jarwas of Andaman islands, India, sensed the tsunami (huge tidal waves of the sea due to undersea earthquakes), took shelter and saved themselves from extinction: they are already a dwindling tribe!

Analogy aside, we all have heard about ECG's , EEG's etc.. At different levels of brain activity (thinking, sleeping or dreaming) the brain does what is expected:-restarts after a dream (like defragmenting the acquired informations in scattered-chunks of memory and consolidating it in one contiguous and linked place: just as a computer does); hibernates in deep sleep and maintains just the minimum action such as breathing circulation; or opens new applications when in the awake state it hyperthreads:- relates to another program, which again relates to still another, as in a software process) as needed.

Since these are all electrical phenomena (electromagnetic, of ionic origin); they emanate electromagnetic emissions, which we so deftly capture in the form of EEG (EKG in the case of the heart) to our rapture. All electromagnetic radiations, as occurs in radio transmission, have to have some frequency. What we now need is a tuned circuit radio receiver, to get into the desired frequency, by resonance, for maximal transfer of energy.

Likewise, when a person thinks, due to the activity of the cerebral cortex, the frequency (EEG, for example) continuously varies as he emits the Electro-Magnetic waves. This can be intercepted by someone who happens to have the same frequency (smells like entanglement of quantum mechanics; though any quantum phenomenon at this distance is highly unlikely due to environmentally induced decoherence). But the prospect of a resonant energy transfer is much increased if the person is a yogi due to a streamlined and coherent thought process, so that the electro-magnetic emission could be like a pure sine wave.

Mono-zygotic (having a similar genetic make-up) twins raised in a common environment; women/mothers:- as in them the right hemisphere of the brain, responsible for arts and intuition, is more active (sixth sense) and logic is less active (in general); in lower primates (more intuition, less logic-->due to less well developed neocortex); tribals (more intuition, less logic); drugs like cannabis, mescaline (which depress the left brain more than the right) are some individuals who are more prone to pick up telepathic waves, albeit theoretically. It is presumed that persons with more intuitive (and having empathy) abilities will be able to receive or transmit these faint signal waves better. A logical person may try to 'overide' subconsciously any 'noise' that might affect his cortex.

Aldous Huxley, who wrote his famous book:'The Doors of perception' : about his experience on mescaline and Indian yogis who used these intoxicants for religious occasions (they probably did not fear the FBI), are some examples in point. Prospective study and retrospective study needs to be undertaken to validate these, as we can NOT rely on anecdotal evidences.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Get ready for a thought reader or a foolproof lie detector in about a decade. PET scan, SPECT scan, magneto-encephalogram, human genome mapping, cloning, measurement of ions across biological membranes, are among the few we have in our armory now, to address the issue.
Disclaimer: The above represents my views, however unscientific they may seem.

Update on the power of thought: 1. Scientists have used electrocorticographic signals (electrocorticography is like EEG, only difference is that the electrodes are placed on the cortex rather than on the scalp) to manipulate accurately computer cursors accurately placed at a distance.

Ref: A brain–computer interface using electrocorticographic signals in humans. Eric C Leuthardt et al 2004 J. Neural Eng. cite_volume">1 63-71 doi: 10.1088/1741-2560/1/2/001 A female monkey in North Caolina,US, controlled a robot in Japan using only her brain activity.

Ref: Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans