Avatār Effect

the Collective experience

The Harder Problem

We have seen the hard problem of consciousness, how to objectively characterize subjective experiences for an individual, and here we discuss the harder problem for the experiences of the collective Mind.

Yoga is typically thought of as a hyper-individualistic ascetic pursuit, and is in fact, a very good first step to clean out the microcosm before attempting to serve society.

Of course, the Internet has made it easy to spread subjective experiences, but since the core of the experience remains the individual, there is another jump needed to transform the collective.

The collective story then becomes enduring across time, when we are able to wrap the psyches of large groups around the tale - then no longer is the tale merely subjective but as a shared version of reality, it is now made objective!

Collective Ideals

The Avatār

In modern tech parlance, an avatar is our digital persona to navigate the online world, but here in Yoga, the Sanskrit word Avatār literally means a conscious Being that descends to Earth (terra), from a highly idealized plane of existence of a Rishi's Mindscape, into a group psyche.

In its original usage in the Yoga model, Avatārs represent collective Ideals appropriate to the needs of the age we find ourselves in.

As another vivid personalized example, when all the cells in the human body feel they are part of just one narrative, that is the one person who embodies them, then it is like the cells and the person are all having an Avatār experience:

So too when a group of individuals, such as families or teams, are fully synchronized in the above manner is when we have an Avatār effect, and the collective conscious Being forms.

Conflict Free Growth

With our detailed perspective on Avatār manifestation, its power can be brought sustainably to bear and without conflict for enduring accomplishments of the highest of ideals.

Noble visions aside though, we could also easily be led astray by groupthink and particularly in our modern world where we throng in online filter bubbles that are ideal echo chambers for pernicious propaganda.

Hence the techniques of Yoga for spotting any errors of perception that could lead to delusionary, hence unsustainable, thinking.

Grand Ideals

Many types of Avatārs are described in different stories that serve such collective Ideals, for example, to: 

Any well-chosen mental construct can eventually become an Avatār scale grand idea, for example a whole nation or an enduring corporation even, with their own grand narratives come to life.

Organizations

As an example, when the leaders of any organization, such as a corporation, embody its ideals with complete coherence then the power of their presence kicks in and flows through to energize the rest of the enterprise.

All members of the organization are imbued with clarity of vision, steadfast purpose, and even their leader as an Avātar’s little tricks & nuances of navigating the world of competitive collaboration.

This is what happens in all highly motivated organizations, but at times conflict arises because grand vision is not sustainable. Witness so many failures in high-flying corporations where the leader is deified as God - except until catastrophically proved mortal, bankruptcy ensues, and workers are let go!

National Ideals

When looked at through this powerful lens, it is clear that even nation-states can be re-energized by manifesting an Avatār and creating appropriate grand narratives. 

The Avatār approach is to embody a Conscious Being with all the ideal characteristics that inspire the entire collective to advance their Natural Intelligence.

But oops, careful not to conceive of this Conscious Being as

Mythical Stories

When no one knows how to manifest an Avatār then all we can do is entertain ourselves as though these were mere mythical stories, wait patiently for one to magically appear, and parrot religious texts in the interim, for example:

For example, in much of Hindu civilization today we are awaiting the Kalki Avatār to take us out of the Kali Yuga, a word which may have two meanings, related:

But actually, through Yoga, we can erase any past, and flower into any future - our choice!

For another example, in Biblical culture we await the second coming of the Saviour to save us

Of course such a revelation will shake up the existing world order so most are reluctant to wish for one - whether accompanied by physical floods & the plague is a different matter.

History

Unfortunately Itihās has been mistranslated as ‘history’, a factual recounting of events, that happened uniquely in the past, and this “His”-story is usually told of conquering Kings written by men in their employ, which are really no more than hagiographies, or paeans to royalty, by loyal court poets.

The word "History" of course, begs the questions then, of where is :

Thus, history-based narratives although undeniably useful from a shared national cultural perspective, could also become divisive tools to fragment society by propaganda, because they ignore the "lesser" narratives.

As a counterpoint, great Itihās scripts also have sub-scripts embedded from related stories, and the mark of a great storytelling raconteur is how they are able to jump across sub-scripts while still keeping the overall thread hanging coherently.

Although these stories are portrayed as having stemmed from the Yogic Mind, we are also not ruling out their past historicity, albeit embellished with poetic license, for these characters could very well have had actual lives too.  

Conversely, we ourselves could all be characters living right now in some cosmic virtual reality play!

The Yugas

A Yuga is the collective subjective experience of Time. 

Psychological Group Time

Of course physical time exists in a one-way flow, but large groups of society feel as though they are together stuck in a particular experience of Time - maybe it's prosperous, or difficult, or mundane.

From the perspective of Yoga, such a feeling of Time is actually psychological. Just as much as we could step into Sukha and Dukha spaces, by cultivating the sense of the Now, so too societies can shift their Yuga experience.

Thus we we are spiralling in this dimension of psychological Time called युग Yūga cycles.

There are considered to be 4 Yūgas that repeat in cycles:

Together these constitute a महा Mahā Yuga.

The Yuga is actually a collective choice we make, so in order to pick which Yuga we wish to experience we need to shift the societal awareness. 

Psychic Group Time

The famed Avatār effect can shift the Yuga in a long-lasting experience which is why a particular type of Avatār is associated with each type of Yuga.

These Yuga periods are said to, thankfully, increase from Kali to Satya in the ratio of 1:2:3:4.

In psychological Time, the Yoga model indicates that we should be spending a lot more time crafting the desired Avatār, rather than tearing our hair out waiting for the next Avatār to somehow magically land on Earth.

There are different mentions of the exact number of years in physical time, which of course we are meant to transcend. 

Most of these physical time periods fall into the multiples of the number :

In other mentions of Yuga periods we will see other such factorization into prime numbers, and it's obvious that these are also symbolic, and simply need to be mapped thoughtfully into the different dimensions we have observed of the Yoga mind.

Realizing that Time is but a mental concept means that at some point, while we incrementally work in physical Time towards a “psychological evolution”, reaching for a projected Future with a limited Mind, the end goal is always just out of reach.

When we realize this charade of incrementalism, then one day it all just clicks as a psychic jump, and we transcend these time periods.

Remember, psychic means the emergence of a novel experience in the psyche, hence a psychological evolution.

In other words, incrementally seeking happiness is a tiring endeavor, and at some point we realize that we might as well go for the perpetual bliss of Ananda itself.

Sandhyā

Sandhyā literally means San (perfected) + Dhyā (to do meditation), and it is typically used for the start/end time periods of any Yuga.

Typically considered to be 1/10th of the whole Yuga, they are considered really important times in which to get into the really deepest meditation to invoke the next Avatār we desire.

So for example, if we are living a life embodying a particular Avatār, for say 10 hours in the day, then one of those hours should be to invoke the next Avatār, and this period would be the Sandhyā period.

Typically the Sandhyā times are aligned with daily transition times of dawn, midday, dusk.

Yoga stories at Scale

Prophets

It’s a widely prevalent notion that Avatārs manifest but rarely - but this is because the art & science of Avatār manifestation has not been detailed & propagated thoroughly. 

Many self-realized beings on this planet have stumbled upon a massive and spontaneous neuropsychological experience, but may not have had the cosmology of Yoga in which in to explain it.

When they descend from the mountain top or emerge from a cave in the desert, they do so bearing prophetic messages and claiming to be the sole messenger of 'God'.

When others around get a whiff of this bliss energy, they too start to shift, and when there is a critical mass then the Avatār comes into full play, and the nearby collective shifts to a new Yuga.

Story Web

In Yogic model, an Avatār is an involution of a highly idealized Self into Human form, accompanied by instilling of a grand mental narrative as a single, but composite, conscious Being into our Mindscape - and this impacts a whole collective.

In evolutionary Biology, there is something called the co-evolutionary vortex, when one particular mutual co-evolution pair draws in other species, creating a larger web of interactions where they all co-evolve with each other.  

So too, an Avatār is a full web of idealized characters, instilled with one main character alongside which all the other characters fit in their stories, and feels very personalized to all in the collective.

These characters interact in our Mindspace as neuropsychological processes, rubbing off on each other, and as we use this knowledge to resolve our relationships with the people/objects around us, thus too these characters all co-evolve in our Mindscape.

Eventually these characters no longer need to tell stories, so too our Mind stops telling stories, at least this particular one, which means we have liberated them, given them Moksha.

Samudra Manthan

This is one of the oldest of Yoga stories called the समुद्र मंथन Samudra Manthan, or the churning of the ocean of Consciousness. 

Samudra means an Ocean. 

Manthan, means to churn.

Contexts

Here we can think of as the energy field of Consciousness, not just body of waters.

In the modern context the word Manthan is used to describe a conference of intellectuals who churn ideas in public forums, to arrive at fresh insights, typically about solutions to modern socioeconomic ills.

We present here the Yoga interpretation of the original lyrical description of the primordial Yajnya as narrated in the incredibly hoary Vishnu Purāna.

The Purānas literature applies Yoga concepts to how the whole Universe itself was formed, a time when there were no human beings, and possibly no Earth even, but the insight here is that these self-same principles manifest at different levels of reality, right down to the society, and to individual lives. Even today.

The Issue

The Devas are losing their “light” because their chief Indra has been "cursed" by a seemingly short-tempered Yogi called दुर्वासा Durvāsā (meaning that which comes from a "bad" space).

Seemingly because, from a Yogic interpretation, it means that our "inner-Indra’s" commitment is being tested as to whether we are consciously aware of our sense-abilities. 

Recall Indra is the super-sense organ that consolidates all other sense-organs. In other words, are we in fact seeing the situation correctly or have our faculties been clouded over by layers of psychological conditioning.

The situation becomes dire as, sensing the Deva's weakness, the Asuras have dislodged Indra and taken over the kingdom of the Devas. 

In other words, we are being ruled by a purely mechanical Mind, no longer the domain of the usually creative, organic, etc. Indra. 

Consequently our Natural Intelligence has ebbed tremendously and been replaced by a Mechanical, or Artificial Intelligence.

The Devas rush to Brhma for a solution, and on his advice the Devas then approach Vishnu. 

Brhma is when we need a new Thought Form from scratch, like in a startup, and not for a full working process which is the domain of Vishnu the all-pervasive energy, and Shiva the dissolver/transformer - which responsibilities are clearly divided as such even in the Ramayana story.

The Yajnya

Vishnu advises the Devas to do a Yajnya and churn the ocean of Consciousness.

Yajnyas are characterized by:

And many twists in the tale, for there is no formula / template when it comes to conscious transformation!

A Yajnya is the core process of intense transformation.

Outcome is Immortality

The objective of this Yajnya is to help the Devas get some Amrit nectar of immortality.

अमृत Amrit = A (to negate) + Mrit (literally mortality) meaning immortal.

In story-speak, all our conscious Beings desire to be immortal.

This is exactly equivalent to laying a claim for an idealized Identity, like a Brand in the material world, because once we build a brand the grunt work to accomplish objectives is far easier. Everything will just flow, nearly immortal.

Using the terminology from our System of Thought, all our Thought Forms lodge themselves in our constructed identity that they wish to propagate themselves forever, in immortal fashion. 

Of course, some Thought Forms that: 

Psychic Apparatus

This particular section is to be understood really deeply, for it is the core concept on which transformation hangs.

A churning stick in the form of the mountain मंदार Mandāra = Man (Mind) + Dāra (like in tear/rip), in the sense of a set of core values which will hold strong, even as we rip apart the accumulated fossilized fabric of the Mind.

A rope in the form of a snake coiled around Shiva’s neck called वासुकि Vāsuki, the living Pranic energy that threads the whole system together.

Key Participants

Vishnu advises the usually enlightening Devas to get their counter-forces, the machine-like Asuras, to participate because it takes two forces to pull on the rope.

It would be tempting to think of this duality of Devas & Asuras as good vs evil, and that we need to retain the good and throw out the evil.

But counter-forces amp up the churning of our consciousness, like adding lemon to milk and we churn out the butter.

Incidentally the use of clarified butter called Ghee in the Yajnya ceremonies is an allegory to our clarified consciousness that we pour into the flames, maybe someone who has done their own work of inner transformation to assist in the collective churn.

The Churn

Visualize, if you will, the: 

As the churn happens the mountain starts to collapse so Vishnu takes the form of a turtle and goes underneath the mountain to support it.


Poison

As the Universe goes through this intense process first some poisons are generated. 

Shiva is brought in to center stage now, to consume the poison which he expertly transforms, turning his throat chakra dark blue but Pārvati the embodiment of nature, and thus our own rising Natural Intelligence, stops it from infecting the body, and the poision is neutralized. 

Now we are able to finally accept and tell the Truth to the world.

Gifts

All kinds of magical & and “other worldly” entities emerge from the churning - our psychic gifts engendered by various psychic intelligences.

Then the much awaited Amrit nectar of immortality is generated.

The Trick

To prevent the Asuras from grabbing the Amrit, Vishnu transforms into Mohini an enticing female form to distract the Asuras, the existing fossilized stakeholders, while she quickly distributes the Amrith to the Devas.

Remember the Asuras are easily satisfied by surface level phenomena - because that's how they are also able to scale with machine-like efficiency since everything is simplified, but at the risk of becoming too simplistic they disconnect from the spiritual essence.

Except for one trickster.

Twist

One of the Asuras called Rāhuketu disguises itself as a Deva and tries to steal some Amrit, as the Asuras want to be immortal also.

However, the Sun & the Moon notice this and warn Vishnu of this devious tactic who then lops off the head of this snake-like Asura. 

But a few drops of the Amrit still enter Rāhuketu, and therefore we partially deify the 

In the cosmos today, Rāhu & Ketu are invisible astronomical points where the Sun & Moon orbits cross, and help the human psyche interact with the psychic Universe.

The Yoga implication is that the points where the Sun (Pingala Nādi) & Moon (Ida Nādi) cross over in the body are in the Chakras, and thus it is that our Intent and Purpose act in harmony to manifest deeply held desires, each taking the nature of the particular chakra.

This is what is meant by "balancing/aligning Chakras", for when Intent & Purpose are integrated Dharma truly flourishes, and thus it is that Yogis are not under the influence of astrological events. 

Most Humans are impacted by Rāhu and Ketu, because few are Yogis, so:

Result

Both are useful to support, but not the end goal, of our core transformation.

The core of the Yajnya extracts the intelligence of the Asura (templates, frameworks, rules, etc.), and helps Devas to structure their intelligence, because although the Devas are true Natural Intelligence, however they need some structure to guide them, albeit not overpower them.

It would be more appropriate to classify these extracted bits of Asuric intelligence as meta-frameworks, guiding principles rather than rigid rules, which prompt reflection rather than allegiance to strict order. 

In the western model these would be loosely referred to as Ethics, but lacking a fundamental transformational model rooted in Yoga, these becomes challenging to agree upon, let alone implement.

The Cosmic Yajnya essentially helps us to balance Universal Dharma with individual Sva-Dharma, and the host of other related Dharmas.

In other words, the quagmire of "moral relativism", "subjectivity", etc. - all derided terms in the Western model - are integral to the Yoga model of transformation, a web of individually crafted psychic Universes, yet harmonized, affording sustainable Freedom to each who commits to their own transformation, and the evolution of the whole.

Indeed, a multi-verse!

Itihās 

A first-person grand narrative of an Avatār's complete story, actually experienced by a RIshi, is called as इतिहास Itihās in Sanskrit - or literally “actually happened”. 

These grand stories weave a plausible & entrancing plot that also reveals the structure of the collective Mind, such as the story of the Rāmāyana, the Mahābhārata, or the ultimate plot that the Universe itself could be a Conscious Being.

The Story as a Conscious Being

The Conscious Being architecture can be applied to the entire Story of the Itihās itself, that is literally modeling it as a single composite Conscious Being that contains other Conscious Beings as part of the same package.

This is how we characterize the collective experience.

The Kosha model from the Taittiriya Upanishad is useful to model this, starting at the outermost level from the Anna-maya Kosha, which is the most obvious, to the Ānanda-maya Kosha which is the most subtle.

Annam - mythical Legend

Annam typically means food, so initially at this level we see but the most obvious material interpretation of the story, and thus it is factual history, with a particular timeline in specific places and actual characters.

But, since many of these stories are so ancient there is sometimes no water-tight evidence of such a story having actually taken place in the material plane.

Furthermore, because of the need of Itihās to entrance its listeners, these tales have fantastic plot lines, and thus are considered as "mere" Myth - entertaining surely, but the modern meaning of Myth has been deprecated to a cooked-up story, although in the original Greek “mythos” means simply a “story”.

Ah, little do they know what they have lost in the Greek and other pagans gods now relegated to dusty museums, without giving them their due scrutiny.

Prāna - inspiring Tale

The word Prāna indicates the “energy of Life” and has the same root sound as to “inspire” which harks back to the word spirit itself, the essence of who we are as conscious Human Beings.

Beyond mere entertainment, these tales have also been interpreted for their ethical & moral lessons, as inspiring tales of valor in how to live a good life. Prāna indicates breath-taking, which is of course intrinsic to any physical Yoga practice.

Manas - religious History

The nature of the plot that spins out from these Yoga stories is that amazing characters pop up in the fertile imagination of the Mano-maya Kosha.

Thus, these tales have also been deified as religious texts of god-like Beings that walked on this planet in a specific place at a specific time, at a unique moment in history. 

Of course such deification is useful to preserve and transmit across millennia, however these very tales have become the cause of communal strife whereas the whole point is to reduce human conflict - the sheer irony!

Vijnyāna - deep Insights

Now in this layer of the Story dawns a key insight, as warrants the clear intelligence of the Buddhi working in this Kosha, as we understand that these are stories actually describe Yoga as a Mind Science, particularly Hatha Yoga & Rāja Yoga techniques, which are encoded cleverly in Sanskrit words and also in the personalities & actions of the characters. 

The entire perspective here is that these are timeless & universal lessons on human behavior and shared experiences.

Ānanda - blissful Realization

This is when we come to the realization, having absorbed the entire story, that the tale is actually running live in our own Selves. 

Every aspect of our so-called Lifes can be mapped into the storyline, and our Dreams are encoded in this symbology, and this entire life is just a simulation built out of the most amazing simulator.

This is the Bliss of Ānanda as we realize we are indeed the storytellers of our own grand narrative, no longer under the thrall of others’ propaganda.

The essence of Annam, the material nourishment that sustains the conscious Being we are, now nourishes our Mind fully.

Darshana

The application of Yoga, individually and collectively, can enable each of our stories to express itself in a harmonious way, thus engendering the entire Grand Narrative of the collective to spontaneously emerge in a harmonious fabric.

Such a grand vision, which when defended in healthy debates, and creates a school of ardent students to realize the vision, is called a दर्शन Darshana. 

This is how the Darshana becomes our very own, and we exclaim “Iti-hās - this actually is happening right Now, within me!”

It can be seen that all of the world's cultures, in one way or another, can be explained in a Yogic storytelling model, but tuned to the local culture.

That is, whether they actually originated from a single racial stock or not, the patterns we see are universal across humanity. 

This grand narrative of Humanity attracts not just ‘mere’ mortals, but all manners of psychic Beings show up in the theater of our collective mind because they all want to have a role in this life-changing epic.

But we remember to not get too attached to these Beings, for their stories eventually end; these are all mental concepts like props, helpful indeed, yet we also stand perfectly well residing in our own true nature.

Super-coherence

Such a grand involution creates a sense of coherence in our own life story because the Avatār’s storyline, a living mental narrative, completely drives our personal existence and thus our Sva-Dharma is fully realized.

Earlier we saw the effect of simple Yoga stories, but the Avatār brings in such a level of coherence that it takes over all our thinking processes and we become the Avatār itself, the living embodiment of a grand vision.

At the physiological level, given the plasticity of our brains, it is quite likely that the Avatār effect brings in the peak experience of super-coherence in our neurological circuitry..

When there is a critical mass of people that are collectively inspired by a particular Avatār’ storyline, the Avatār effect spreads in society and entire communities thus evolve.

Any individual can become the seed for this collective effect by manifesting an Avatār with sufficiently intense practice which then cascades through their surrounding community like a chain reaction.

The Avatār becomes the collective experiencer.

Deification

Ishwara

Ishwara is the perfected psychic Being, recommended by Patanjali to meditate upon, as the absorber of all Karma.

Ishwara has the following properties:

In Ishwara the three Gunas are in total balance, so there are no feelings or emotions to deal with.

However its story may entrance only hardcore Yogis.

More Vishnu Avatārs

Hence Vishnu Avatars as an example, with their elaborate stories.

There are considered a total 10 Avatārs of Vishnu, whose forms interestingly parallel those seen in the natural evolution of Biology over millions of years.

Unfortunately most consider only this interpretation of sequential appearance of Avatārs, and worse, because of incredibly hoary history to these stories, they also claim to be superior to scientists that have painstakingly discovered the details of natural evolution in recent times.

In our Yogic model, whether or not the ancient sequence of Avatārs reflects the physical truth is mostly irrelevant.

For us, we must consider the other Avatārs of Vishnu as also occurring simultaneously, and not merely as a sequence of Avatārs occurring solely in geological time, otherwise :

Let's look at these Avatārs, observe their parallels in natural evolution, and their relevance today in the external world and internal psyche:

When each of these Avatārs are manifested by a collective - simultaneously - then entire group experiences a Mahā Yuga shift, to a new Satya Yuga altogether, not just an intermediate Yuga.

Universality

These tales are so engaging that they proliferated afar, enacted in auditoriums in the forests and towns, on open stages and inside caves; surely traveling theater companies, as they traversed the land, must have added local embellishments to their tale - the ultimate Yoga adventure reality show!

Because of lack of insight though, such tales have sadly languished as fossilized religious texts, or sanitized academic expositions on ethics or morality, or just inspiring fantasies of human valor. 

All ancient cultures are replete with legendary tales but, over time, much has been obscured by the steamroller of hyper-rationalized industrialization, and so these fantastical legends are now considered 'mere' myth, to be seen only in musty museums & old libraries.

Even though such stories seem very different across the globe, views are divided in Western academia as to whether there are universal themes across cultures in these stories, or there is no such universality.

Although individual stories are indeed unique to each culture, for such legends define the very identity of these civilizations, but when we look at the broad themes from the lens of Yoga we shall see that there is strong commonality across the world.

Quite possibly Yoga's broad appeal owes much to such universal themes behind the legends.

The instilling of an entire portfolio of psychic intelligences into society, and of course surfacing the hidden viruses to be cleansed in the light, creates massive changes in societal mindset - just through Yoga Stories!

However, these stories are organized in a particular way:

Software

Networks of AI's, sentient Beings, can also experience a shared collective sentient experience in their own way, but will never be classified as a collective Conscious Being.