While creating an online course on “Memory Skills Improvement”, I got interested in knowing more and more about our brain and memory. One of the most exciting concept which I came across was “Mind Uploading”. I read about it and saw some youtube videos. Fortunately during the same time I was also creating some courses on yoga, pranayama and meditation. This helped me visualize few things which I thought is worth sharing with my readers.
The concept of “Mind Uploading” treats everything in our brain just like some data and it talks about transferring all that data to a large storage in a finite span of time. To give you some idea about the size, people are trying to read state of about 86 billion neurons and 1500 trillion synapses or neural connections and then transfer its state in real time to some form of digital storage in a way that its 3 dimensional positioning can also be retained. Which means transferring that many number of voxels (3D pixels). The problem in not just the shear size of data, but it is not digital data with 1’s and 0’s. Every such information piece might have many states. The relative positioning of information may also be important to remodel the information in another device. The idea grew strength when some scientist got success in making a robotic model based on neuron combinations found in round worm (Caenorhabditis elegans). The neuron count in round worm was limited to 302 and the synapses count was around 7500. People started believing that someday as the technology grows the way it has grown by even defeating the Moore’s law, human mind upload and transfer may also become possible. People have started giving concepts like “Whole Brain Simulation”, “Mind Copying”, “Consciousness Transfer” etc. The reverse transfer concepts of computer wanting to embody in human like biological forms also started to appear in fictional writing and movies.
All this started a mad debate. I do agree that such mad debates do have seeds of society changing innovations in the future but! let us dig few things from the eastern knowledge base too.
All of us know that an extremely tiny seed can also grow into a giant tree. A single nano size biological cell can also grow into very large size animals. And all adult versions have most of the representative properties of that particular species. This means that the entire code could be preserved in that tiny seed or small cell. Sometimes this tiny seed may also look like, something in non-living form or a dormant form. The eastern belief endorses the concept of “Soul” to be such a miniature code form for all the living beings. The belief extends itself to the claim that such form of code is formless, dimensionless and thus it is possible to transport it to heavens in timeless boundaries. The philosophy of ‘Yoga’ talks about the unison of living form with the ultimate form. The living form is encoded in a form called the ‘Atma’ or the soul and the ultimate form is what which may not have a finite code and is the nature’s ultimate form which might have created all other forms and might destroy all other forms to reshape into other forms. This is defined by the term ‘Paramatma’ or the ultimate soul. Some of the techniques in yoga, like ‘Dhyan’ or meditation help us to make a pathway from conscious to subconscious state. Our brain chemistry changes during this state. With the practice of ‘Yoga and Meditation’, we may be able to feel the existence of a miniature encoded form within us. For computer geeks I can say it like a compressed digest of entire code of life, not just brain. Eastern philosophy, the Indian Philosophy in particular gives thrust on such form being present in the physical body of any creature and the term death actually means release of this form or the soul from one creature to reach in control of the ultimate form the ‘Paramatma’ who in turn decides to give this form some another embodiment at some other place. This is a sort of preservation of life code for eternity. That is why it is said that the soul can not be destroyed. It takes a different physical form. The metaphysical form remains the same. Yoga techniques are a way to have a genuine feel of existence of that metaphysical form. Within the realm of Yoga the last commandment called ‘Samadhi’ is like a phase to touch that metaphysical form. Today modern science is also in search of dark matter and dark energy. The term dark itself means things on which known laws of physics as applied on touchable matter and quantifiable energy do not apply. The western science is having clear indications of presence of a metaphysical world, about which the eastern theorists always believed and experimented about.
So the concept of ‘Mind Uploading’ or ‘Transfer of Consciousness’ is also leading us to some knowledge that already existed, but instruments based experimentation and universally understandable proofs are in the process of being unfolded. Hope that the knowledge of both the worlds unite well to help us reach and feel the truth.
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