'Autobiography of a Yogi' and 'Interstellar'

                                

Autobiography of a Yogi by Swami Paramahamsa Yogananda, written way back in 1920s, and then Interstellar now; what can be the connect?

They are two works of genius, not like only in terms of creative genius, not comparable at the basic level, but in being able to push the boundaries of thought into what can be, or what is. Enable a seeing.

Two days back Dhruva and I went to watch Interstellar, both for the second time, and I wouldn’t be too wrong in saying, we yet again, came out enriched for the experience. Of course one was the imax experience itself. If you haven’t watched it in imax, it’s worth a second watch, for instance, the water expanse and waves from the first potential planet of Miller if you can recall, that was an unmatched experience.

Anyways, to move on to the connect.

Paramahamsa Yogananda is a true yogi, an evolved soul who through his life knew he had a higher calling. He writes of his experiences, which read like fantasy , miracles, a reality of a seemingly different dimension. There is the esoteric and sublime philosophy, but with a difference; While it does have a high level of spirituality, and a lot of apparently miraculous occurrences, he folds in to it a natural process of physics and evolution. He writes:

'Among the trillion mysteries of the cosmos, the most phenomenal is light. Unlike sound waves, whose transmission requires air or other material media, light waves pass freely through the vacuum of interstellar space.Even the hypothetical ether, held as the interplanetary medium of light in the undulatory theory can be discarded on the Einsteinian grounds that the geometrical properties of space render the theory of ether unnecessary. And not abstractly eternal as hitherto considered, time and space are relative and finite factors, deriving their measurement validity only in reference to the yardstick of light velocity. In joining space as a dimensional relativity, time has surrendered age old claims to a changeless value. Time is now stripped to its rightful nature-a simple essence of ambiguity. 

Light velocity is a mathematical standard or constant not because there is an absolute value in 186,000 miles per second, but because there is no material body, whose mass increases with its velocity, can ever attain the velocity of light. Stated another way, only a material body whose mass is infinite could equal the speed of light.

This conception brings us to the law of miracles.

The masters who are able to materialize and dematerialize their bodies or any other object, and to move with the velocity of light, and to utilize the creative light rays in bringing into instant visibility any physical manifestation, have fulfilled the necessary condition of: their mass is infinite. The consciousness of a perfect yogi is effortlessly identified, not with the narrow body but with the universal structure. Gravitation, whether the ‘force’ of Newton or the Einsteinian ‘manifestation of inertia’ is powerless to compel a master to exhibit the property of ‘weight’ which is the distinguishing gravitational condition of all material objects. He who knows himself as the omnipresent spirit is subject no longer to the rigidities of the body in time and space. Their imprisoning ‘rings-pass-not’ have yielded to the solvent Í am that’ .....'Tat Tvam Asi’. '

In another instance he says: Intuition is soul guidance in man during those instances when his mind is calm. Nearly everyone has had the experience of an inexplicably correct hunch or has transferred his thoughts effectively to another person.

The human mind, free from the static of restlessness, can perform through its antennae of intuition all the functions of a complicated radio mechanism, sending and receiving thoughts, and tuning out the undesirable ones. As the power of the radio depends on the amount of electrical current it can utilize, so the human radio is energized according to the power of will possessed by each individual. 

Charles Robert Richet, Nobel prizeman in physiology said ‘Very strange, very wonderful, seemingly very improbable phenomena may yet appear which, when once established, will not astonish us more than we are now astonished at all that science has taught us during the last century . It is not about understanding as much as about what becomes familiar. ‘

And that’s what books like 'The Autobiography of a Yogi' and movies like 'Interstellar' do. They enable the astonishing to become familiar, they enable a move, a step closer to the seeing.  Both, in their own ways enable that change in 'seeing', from telepathy, teleportation, worm holes, black holes, actualization of will, energy as a force of human will,  a blurring of lines between mind and matter, an opening up of possibilities....... and that’s where the connect between the two, where spirituality and science fiction talk a common language, and point in the same direction. Fascinating stuff !!