In2-MeC

Groningen, The Netherlands
22 October 2003

namas te nitya vilasad
vaisnavastra-niketana
avarya-viryam yad rupam
visnons tat pranamamy aham

I offer my obeisances unto the brightly shining Sudarsana Cakra, which never fails to offer all protection to the vaisnavas. I humbly bow before Lord Visnu's weapon of irresistable strength.

namas te jagadadhara
jagad-atman namo 'stu te
kaivalya trigunatita
gunanjana namo 'stu te

I offer my obeisances unto You, Lord Jagannatha, who are the support of the universe. To You, the very soul of the universe, I humbly bow. You are situated above the three modes of material nature as well as above the impersonal brahman, yet your Person is decorated with wonderful qualities that are completely transcendental. To You I offer my humble obeisances.

Now Vidyagati and I are sheltered in the home of Sri Dharmaksetra Prabhu and his good wife Pitambara dasi. As always when we are here, it is very peaceful. Our vaisnava-grhasta hosts, who are the epitome of kindness, provide all that is required for a comfortable stay.

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A professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) has scientific evidence that experienced Buddhist meditators are happier than ordinary people. A comparitive study of brain scans done by Professor Richard Davidson at the university's Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience shows that the left prefrontal cortex of the brain, associated with positive emotions and good moods, is unusually active in meditators who practice the method of contemplation taught in the Buddhist religion. The left prefrontal cortex is known as "the happiness center" of the brain.

This is surely interesting; I wonder what such a study would determine about the brains of persons who regularly chant 16 rounds of the Hare Krsna mahamantra each day. But in reading this news report I was more astonished by a remark made by a professor at Duke Univerity in North Carolina. Dr. Owen Flanagan is quoted as saying, "We can now hypothesize with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places like Dharamsala really are happy. "

Let me translate that statement into simple English: "We can now speculate with some faith that Buddhists who seem happy, really are happy. "

If this is supposed to be a scientific statement, then one is left wondering just what kind of knowledge science is, and what kind of people scientists are. A man who feels that a bunch of brain scan prints gives him the go-ahead to announce, "Oh yes, now it seems all right for me to guess that some persons may be as happy as they look", seems to may have something missing, perhaps, from his own brain.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Only reincarnation can explain this: in a town called Janakipur near Lucknow, lives a 3-year old girl named Shraddha who can recite by heart 3000 sutras from the Ashta Adhyayi, a Sanskrit text on grammar and linguistics. She started reciting when she was 2. 5 years of age.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Instant karma: Ranvir Singh lives in Nagia Pal village in South India. He was bothered by a mouse in his house. After catching the mouse in a wire cage trap, he tried to kill it by tying a kerosene-soaked rag around its tail and lighting the highly flammable cloth. But when the cloth was ablaze the mouse escaped and raced around the house, setting different objects on fire as it went by. As a result Mr. Singh's house burned down to the ground. Ravana tried the same thing with Hanuman, and the beautiful Lanka was torched.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Remember, "dosha" means "fault" in Sanskrit: in Clearwater, California, a 10-month old dog named Dosha was hit by a car in the street on 15 April 2003. A policeman arrived on the accident scene. Taking pity on the injured animal, the cop shot the dog in the head to put her out of her misery. Thinking the dog was dead, authorities from the town animal shelter put Dosha into a plastic bag and stuffed the bag into a freezer for later disposal. Two hours later she found standing up inside the bag, shivering. Dosha was given emergency medical treatment and survived, even though the policeman's bullet remains lodged in her brain.

kaler dosa-nidhe rajan. . .

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bhrgu Muni, a great supporter of Daksa, was awarded the beard of the goat's head which was substituted for the head of Daksa. It appears from the exchange of Daksa's head that the modern scientific theory that the brain substance is the cause of all intelligent work is not valid. The brain substance of Daksa and that of a goat are different, but Daksa still acted like himself, even though his head was replaced by that of a goat. The conclusion is that it is the particular consciousness of an individual soul which acts. The brain substance is only an instrument which has nothing to do with real intelligence. The real intelligence, mind and consciousness are part of the particular individual soul. (Bhag. 4. 7. 5p)

In 1980 a British neurosurgeon named Professor John Lorber (University of Sheffield) announced that he had a patient named Roger with an I. Q. of 126, who was a wizard at mathematics. But Roger had a small problem. Ninety-five percent of his brain was missing. Professor Patrick Wall of University College in London supported Lorber's findings. He had seen many autopsy reports of seemingly ordinary adults who turned out to have missing brains. An autopsy performed on a janitor in New York in 1970, for example, revealed the man's skull to be empty. Yet he lived to be 35 years old, and friends and relatives thought him to be completely normal.

Because these pieces of evidence are decades old and therefore cannot be easily verified now, some professionals in the field of neuroscience minimize them. But in the year 2002, a woman named Sharon Parker from the north of England was discovered to have only 5% of a brain inside her head. In all other respects she is completely normal. Early tests suggest that her brain keeps working by using a complex and little understood form of rerouting and job-sharing between those few parts that still remain intact.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They had normal brains, but look what they used them for:

A 24-year-old unemployed man, identified by police only by his last name, Kim, was found dead on 8 October 2002 in the lavatory of an Internet cafe in Kwangiu, South Korea. He had been playing computer games non-stop for 86 hours, without taking sleep or meals in all that time.

Eleven days later in Fengyuan, central Taiwan, 27-year-old Lien Wen-cheng was found foaming at the mouth and bleeding from his nose in the lavatory of an Internet cafe after playing video games for 32 hours straight. An ambulance came for him but he died on the way to the hospital.

In a game center in Hong Kong on 13 January 2003, a 28-year-old unnamed man was found dead at a computer terminal after playing "Diablo II" for 5 hours.

86 hours, 32 hours, 5 hours. The difference between the first 2 numbers is twice the difference between the last two. . .

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