Mass Hypnosis

Bhagavad-Gītā

Chapter 14

Continued…

 

The Laws of Material Nature

BG 14.5

सत्त्वं रजस् तम इति

गुनः प्रकृति-सम्भवाः

निबध्नन्ति महाबाहो

देहे देहिनम् अव्ययम्

sattvaṃ rajas tama iti

gunaḥ prakṛti-sambhavāḥ

nibadhnanti mahābāho

dehe dehinam avyayam

“Sattva, rajas, and tama are the “modes” or “qualities” (guṇas) that characterize prakṛti or material nature: the embodied soul becomes conditioned by these qualities when he becomes involved in the world of exploitation.”

The guṇas are the primary constituents of material nature and the basis of all substances and situations in the perceived world of exploitation. The “qualities” of material nature are dependent on the perceptive cognizance of the conditioned soul and cannot exist without consciousness. And yet, once the soul has been somewhat conditioned by the exploiting tendency, the constituent qualities of material nature afford the opportunity to dwell within the hypnotic illusion with much greater detail.

Consider the metaphor of a holographic projection.

How is “imaginary” reality constructed? The material world has often been compared to a dream.  When we dream, we are asleep to the “real world.” Thanks to modern anaesthesia, we may dream very pleasantly while a doctor performs heart surgery. Unconscious to objective reality, we live in the subjective world of imagination.

But a dream is personal. My dreams and yours are very different.

How could we all possibly have the same dream? 

It is something like “mass hypnosis,” where everyone buys into the same illusion.

It’s hard to believe. But we are constantly involved in the suspension of disbelief. When we wish to escape from mundane routines, we might read a book. As we read, we try to imagine the author’s world. Reading is highly subjective. In reading, everyone has his own idea of what a hero might look like, for example.

People are often unsatisfied when the see the movie version of a book, because the movie actor is not exactly the hero as they imagined him. In fact, we are disappointed because we identify ourselves as the hero.

A more visual medium involves an artist’s conception. A graphic novel or comic book is a step removed from pure text.  As we project ourselves into a world of fantasy and adventure and read a comic book, we sacrifice some imagination to share the artist’s idea of the hero. We know what Spiderman or the Hulk looks like, because we have seen the artist’s idea. 

Spiderman

We can still identify ourself with the hero, but we have a more specific idea of how he looks. We can imagine ourselves flying through the sky like Superman, but can see more clearly the “S” on his blue uniform. 

There is less connotation involved; we don’t have to use our imagination so much. But the denotation is clearly laid out; we can see the details, so we don’t have to create our own subjective version. The so-called "Objective Reality" created subjectively in collusion with the three modes wants our complete suspension of disbelief. We are not supposed to reflect on anything, but simply accept the perceived world as absolute truth.

Marshall Mcluhan, writing in the 20^th Century, describes the different “Media” in terms of “hot” and “cold.”  He considers both “media” and “technology” to be extensions of the physical, social, psychological functions of human beings. For example, the wheel extends our feet, the phone extends our voice, television extends our eyes and ears, the computer extends our brain and electronic media our central nervous system. He is particularly interested in the electronic extension of consciousness. Writing in the 1960s Mcluhan predicts the advent of the internet.

“Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extension of man—the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and nerves by the various media.”

His argument vis-à-vis “hot” vs. “cold” media is interesting in terms of the metaphor of the holographic universe.  Mcluhan defines as “hot,” media that heats the brain: that is media that itself being less denotative, leaves something to the imagination. Radio “heats up” the brain, since the listener, must supply the heat to decode the message.

A “hot” media then will be print, a book, or radio, where the listener, apparently passive supplies all the imagery within his brain. Topographical brain scans have demonstrated that certain areas of the brain, for example, “light up” when we read a story or imagine a melody. Media is “hot” when it lights up the brain. A good example is the story of Alice in Wonderland or “Through the Looking Glass,” where we need to wrap our head around riddles, enigmas, puzzles, mathematical paradoxes, chess problems, word-games and puns, all of which heat the brain. The mental effort required to solve the puzzle is rewarded by the "montessorian explosion" of discovery which accompanies real learning.

A “cool” medium on the other hand provides no such discovery. Nothing is learned and no effort is required. It leaves nothing  to the imagination. All the imagery is supplied to us. An example would be the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, where we are seduced by colorful images, cartoons, and songs based on the book’s ideas, but with no room for real contemplation of its meaning.

Returning to the idea of the mass hypnosis influenced by the  “modes of nature,” and how these 3 qualities or dimensions color our world and influence us, we can consider the metaphor of a holographic 3D projection, created simultaneously by the subject and the supersubject.  It seems unquestionably real. But consciousness has passed through "hazy consciousness" to produce a kind of "mass hypnosis."

Consider a “rave” party where thousands of people high on LSD or MDMA are subjected to a 3D holographic light show. Little imagination or thinking is involved. The subjective capacity of each audience member is diminished by drugs and powerful media displays until the experience becomes total.  The more powerful and “cool” the medium, the more each individual becomes trapped in an organic mass experience, a “tribal” event. 

Perhaps this is an extreme example of “mass hypnosis,” but I think it works. 

"Propaganda" has a similar effect on our view of reality. When a false premise is repeated long enough and loud enough on a number of “media” our worldview becomes influenced to the point where we are ready to act. This problem is widely explored in Orwell’s 1984. As Jacques Ellul points out in his seminal work, “Propaganda, the Formation of Men’s Attitudes,” we subscribe to the propaganda we think defines us, while the propagandist’s job is to tailor the message to suit our attitudes. The modes of nature affect us in a similar way: we are drawn to exploit in a particular way and the modes suit the object to the subject according to our attitudes.

सत्त्वं रजस् तम इति

गुनः प्रकृति-सम्भवाः

निबध्नन्ति महाबाहो

देहे देहिनम् अव्ययम्

sattvaṃ rajas tama iti

gunaḥ prakṛti-sambhavāḥ

nibadhnanti mahābāho

dehe dehinam avyayam

“Sattva, rajas, and tama are the “modes” or “qualities” (guṇas) that characterize prakṛti or material nature: the embodied soul becomes conditioned by these qualities when he becomes involved in the world of exploitation.”

The point is that the “modes of nature” are not objective forces that shape us; rather they are products of our own subjective projection of exploitative reality. They have to do with a kind of “suspension of disbelief.” We know that we are not God; we know we are not the creators of the universe. We know that death is an imminent force. We know that we aren’t going to be here forever. We know that we aren’t all powerful. Still, it’s fun to pretend. This material world is effectively a kind of fantasy-land where we try to play at being gods.

 

When we read, we construct a kind of literary fantasy world. I’ve always been addicted to reading. Sometimes my parents would say “he lives in his own little world.” Readers of the Lord of the Rings create their own versions of “Smaug the Dragon” or Frodo or Gandalf. 

Harry Potter addicts create their own Hogwarts. But as readers our intimate imagination of a particular literary world is subjective. Once it becomes a film, the experience of a particular “world” becomes more and more objective as millions of viewers participate in the creation of an imaginary event.

Hogwarts

The “Star Wars” phenomenon is well-known. George Lucas has created an imaginary world with its own languages, laws, politics, and mythology. “Star Wars” has been seen by millions who know exactly how Han Solo and Darth Vader look. I attended a 3D high-tech simulator ride at Universal Studios in California that made me feel I was really flying through other planets at top speed.

 

Star Wars

Where it’s easy to look up from a book and have a conversation or answer the door, leaving behind the special world of literary fantasy, a movie allows us to suspend our disbelief more forcefully and enter into the trance of mass hypnosis.

Ordinary movies pale when we step into a 3 dimensional holographic experience. Still we know that it’s all in fun. Anyone who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality is a candidate for the psychiatric ward.

Still fantasy dies hard. And as we suspend our disbelief in materialistic pleasures, we are easy prey to mythology and propaganda of advertisements that convince us that sense gratification equals happiness.  Our penchant for fantasy and entertainment drives a multi-billion dollar industry that strives for a total “virtual reality” experience. 

Probably the most powerful “virtual reality” trip is internet porn, which provides perverted and imaginary sexual experiences for millions of men worldwide on a daily basis. And the propaganda which flows from all these different forms of virtual experience serve to hold us in sway, serve to adapt our  individual consciousness to a society in self-denial. As we submit our imagination to these “modes” or “media” we fall into a kind mass hypnosis designed to hold us to a certain living standard, designed to make us believe in a product, a country, or a political figure.

Karl Rove, the famous political operative who guided George Bush to the presidency of the United States once famously commented “Perception is Reality.” George Bush was no war hero, in fact he disappeared from his national guard unit during the war. On the other hand, John Kerry his opponent was demonstrably a “war hero,” having served under fire on a swift boat on the Mekong River in Vietnam. Nonetheless, thanks to propaganda people were convinced that Kerry was a coward and Bush a hero.  Berkeley originated the expression, and Samuel Butler, kicking a stone said, “I refute Berkeley thus.” http://thomasjaredfarmer.blogspot.mx/2013/08/the-kick-of-refutation-samuel-johnsons.html

Well, Samuel Butler is no longer with us and the stone he kicked is nowhere to be found. And while it is easy to quibble with Berkeleyan idealism, the meme that “Perception is Reality” is very much alive.

According to Jacques Ellul, propaganda is a kind of mass hypnosis that aims to  involve us in a social activity aiming to make the individual serve and conform.  The propaganda of virtual reality aims at a kind of inner control to maintain conformity to the social or national force.

All of these forms of “entertainment” or “virtual reality” however, are useless without our willful suspension of disbelief.  We need to stop believing in divine nature and invest faith in material nature in order to enjoy the sensory world of sex and death.

As long as we pretend to believe in “virtual reality” it has meaning. The particular media of “virtual reality’ may vary according to our own inclinations. The genre of propaganda or "mode" that attracts us has to do with our own psychological makeup, affected in turn by our spiritual level of consciousness.

The Modes of Nature: Artist's Conception

According to our own particular investment in the perceived world, or the “world of exploitation,” certain realities are unfolded to us, colored by our own clouded consciousness. All “reality” is “virtual” in the sense that it is perceived and interpreted differently according to our circumstances, our  capacity for sensory perception, our motives and biological framework.

A dog sees color differently than a human being; so does a bee. A realized soul sees God in everything; an economist sees only money. The glass is half-full for an optimist, half-empty to the pessimist, poison to the cynic, H2O to the scientist, and the flavor of purity to the devotee of Kṛṣṇa. Which is true?

It is difficult to explain how the subjective world becomes objective. Do the rods and cones in the vegetable eyeball produce vision? Or is it a product of the neurons and synapses in the brain. Or is vision itself a mental condition dependent on consciousness?  Constructing an explanation for the origin of the subjective world is just as difficult; in fact it is impossible for  a materialist to explain the origin of vision. The best one can do is to try to get at the mechanics of seeing: how does it work?

So, here in the 14^th Chapter of Bhagavad-Gītā, Kṛṣṇa is explaining the quantum mechanics of consciousness.  

सत्त्वं रजस् तम इति

गुनः प्रकृति-सम्भवाः

निबध्नन्ति महाबाहो

देहे देहिनम् अव्ययम्

sattvaṃ rajas tama iti

gunaḥ prakṛti-sambhavāḥ

nibadhnanti mahābāho

dehe dehinam avyayam

“Sattva, rajas, and tama are the “modes” or “qualities” (guṇas) that characterize prakṛti or material nature: the embodied soul becomes conditioned by these qualities when he becomes involved in the world of exploitation.”

The trimodal influences or guṇas facilitate the subjective evolution of mental processes as the metaphysical world congeals into the physical world through a kind of suspension of disbelief.

We want to believe in the eternal reality of material nature; we want to believe that we can go on living in the material world forever, exploiting and enjoying. We want to continue as the subjects, the center of the universe. And because we cling to this psychosis, we are willing to do anything to perpetuate it, even to deny the very existence of the self.

Self-denial is the core of our  illusion; our determination to exploit the world flourishes at the expense of our self-awareness.  The “modes of nature,” are subtle effects of conscious states that harden into experience according to our talent for self-denial.

The “modes of nature: are threefold: Absolute denial of the self is ignorance, darkness, “tama.” Partial awareness of the self is called raja.  A less hazy consciousness is called sattva.  Another way to see this is that  sattva  is sunlight, raja  is light refracted across the color spectrum in various shades and hues, where twilight, tama is twilight, shadow, darkness and the relative absence of light. 

This is a much subtler approach to the problem of good and evil than that given in the Judea-Christian-Islamic world. Ordinarily we tend to think of ethical problems in dualities of sin and piety, good and evil, black and white. But the Bhagavad-Gītā is not reading morality in terms of black and white, but in full color.

Our thoughts, words, and deeds are not to be classified as exclusively good or bad. Kṛṣṇa does not preach “hell hot and sin black.” He tells Arjuna that our thoughts, words and deeds evade easy classification. Thoughts, words and actions done in the light, with a higher cognizance of spiritual awareness are more sattvik; actions colored with a lack of light are darker and rajarshik. While actions done in darkness are tamasik.  The same applies to the variety of species: the higher species are closer to illumination, the lower species live in darkness.

At the same time, it is difficult to be “sattvik” and “live in the mode of goodness,” while still laboring under the illusion of being the center of the universe. Denial of the self is the root of our sojourn in the material world; sattva-guna  itself is a covered form of consciousness. Mere materialistic piety is not enough to break the chains binding us to the wheel of birth and death.

Equally important is the idea that our normal existence involves a complex combination of these  three elements. Just as all the color known to the human eye may be broken down into three primary colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow, so in the same way the elements of our experience within this world may be decoded with reference to these three different influences on consciousness.

सत्त्वं रजस् तम इति

गुनः प्रकृति-सम्भवाः

निबध्नन्ति महाबाहो

देहे देहिनम् अव्ययम्

sattvaṃ rajas tama iti

gunaḥ prakṛti-sambhavāḥ

nibadhnanti mahābāho

dehe dehinam avyayam

“Sattva, rajas, and tama are the “modes” or “qualities” (guṇas) that characterize prakṛti or material nature: the embodied soul becomes conditioned by these qualities when he becomes involved in the world of exploitation.”

DNA: the double helix

The modes of material nature comprise in a certain sense the DNA of the universe, according to this 14^th Chapter of the Bhagavad-Gītā.  Just as the linear sequence of DNA whose double helix determines genetic characteristics may be broken down into A,C,G, and T nucleotides, in a similar manner the hazy consciousness that creates the holographic universe of exploitation  may be defined by the threefold absence or presence of spiritual “light.”

This absence or presence of illumination conditions our attachment to this material world in such a way that we are bound to material existence.  Our “karma” leaves an impression, a trace, on the mental body. It is something like the “black box” of an airplane. When an airplane falls from the sky and crashes it leaves behind a “black box” which explains the conditions of the plane at the time of its destruction. In the same way, the soul carries with it a karmic impression, coded in terms of sattva, rajas, and tamas, that determines its placement in the next life.

In this way the “trimodal qualities” encode an exact karmic DNA for the next birth experience on the wheel of birth and death according to the level of consciousness inherent in the prakṛti -conjoined being. The jiva  soul, conditioned by this “karmic DNA” is bound to a particular body as evolved through time from primordial prakṛti  itself.

Technically speaking, then, the soul itself is never bound by the “modes of material nature.” But by giving tacit approval to involvement in the exploitation world, by “suspending disbelief” much in the way that we do when we see a 3 dimensional holographic show, we agree to allow the modes to influence our perception of virtual reality. And so it is that the individual living being becomes bound within the restrictions of corporeal existence.

Bhaktivedānta Swāmī comments, “The living entity, because he is transcendental, has nothing to do with this material nature. Still, because he has become conditioned by the material world, he is acting under the spell of the three modes of material nature. Because living entities have different kinds of bodies, in terms of the different aspects of nature, they are induced to act according to that nature. This is the cause of the varieties of happiness and distress.”