Mathematics of Spirituality

LAW OF LOVE AND MATHEMATICS OF SPIRITUALITY

Brain, Mind & Consciousness and the Prakriti-Ishwara Paradigm: This part of the book will summarize the current thinking among neuroscientists on the relationship between brain, mind and consciousness and the difficult unresolved problems they face, especially the ‘mystery of experience’. Against this backdrop, the basic concepts of Vedanta will be presented culminating in the Prakriti-Ishwara paradigm of jeevas that resolves many of the difficulties confronting the scientists.

Geometrical Representation of the Prakriti-Ishwara Paradigm: Here we present the basic two dimensional representation of the Prakriti-Ishwara paradigm and show how it captures concepts such as the Known, the Knower, Perfection, spiritual detachment, and suffering. From this we derive a fundamental law of spirituality: A jeeva suffers less and less as it grows more and more in Knowledge and Love. We also see how the path of spiritual progress of a jeeva, and the concepts of Brahmalok and Realization, are mathematically represented.

Sri Ramana’s Principle of Personal Will: A probabilistic model is presented to reflect Sri Ramana’s view that everything in creation happens at the Will of Ishwara and the only decision left to a jeeva at any time is to choose between identifying with the creation vs. identifying with the Self. The model is used to express the probability of a jeeva identifying with the Self (or non-Self) as a simple function of its spiritual detachment at that moment.

Mathematical Representation of Vasanas: We start with a brief presentation of vasanas, the ’spiritual DNA’ of a jeeva. Concept of vasana spectrum and its psychological significance are discussed, drawing support from Kunadalini Yoga theory. This leads to the key step in the mathematical model, namely the definition of ‘Vasana Function’ to represent the intensity of vasanas of a jeeva over the vasana spectrum. We proceed from this to discuss concepts of mind, mental energy with its in-flowing and out-flowing components, and spiritual progress. The mathematical relationship between spiritual detachment and the vasana function is established based on Sri Ramana’s Principle. Using the vasana functions, we show how vasanas affect the desires, decisions, and (happy and unhappy) experiences of a jeeva. Finally we derive an equation that captures a basic teaching of Vedanta: Our ’suffering’ at any time depends on the three factors of expectations, alertness of mind, and spiritual detachment.

On Questions of Life: We wrap up the ideas of the previous chapters showing how they lead to answers to some of the most difficult questions of life such as evil, purpose of life etc. The mathematical approach is also useful in graphically visualizing some of the abstract Vedantic concepts, such as the Theory of Creation, Realization, Brahmalok etc. We discuss implications of the ‘Law of Love’ to the modern materialistic world. Finally, we remind ourselves that, notwithstanding all the mathematics and its novel ways of looking at truth, spiritual practices, or sadhanas, taught in the Gita and other scriptures remain absolutely essential for attaining true happiness.