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Writer's pictureAnoop Kumar, MD

Ancient Wisdom & Modern Health 4

Updated: Sep 20

Kenopanishad


The teacher had declared:

The ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of speech, and the life energy behind life energy. Being free [knowing this], the wise, on departing this field of experience, become immortal.


What is this life energy the teacher speaks of? In Sanskrit, it is referred to as prana. The word prana has become relatively popular in English, especially in yoga and complementary medicine circles. In fact, there are many pranas, not one. There are pranas associated with movement, circulation, digestion, and so on. We can think of prana as as the energy behind physiology that drives the body. 


When we think of the body's physiological energy from the perspective of medical science, we immediately think of its chemical source: adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, produced in the mitochondria of our cells. These molecules are potent power structures. When a phosphate bond is cleaved off, converting the molecule from a triphosphate to a biphosphate, or from a biphosphate to a monophophate, it releases energy that the human system can use to function. But where does the energy that is released through the breaking of the phosphate bond come from? Where does the energy of bowel peristalsis come from? Where does the energy that beats the heart come from? Where does the energy that moves the neonate through the birth canal come from? What is this prana?


Prana is a subtle concept and experience that has similar correspondences that go by different names in most indigenous cultures. It is only natural that as the mind develops over time and becomes settled, it recognizes the underlying currents of life and gives name to them. In the Western world, the ancient concept of prana can be associated with the development of vitalism in the 18th century. Each points to a non-physical basis and governing principle of biology. Eventually the concept of vitalism was discarded, but based on what evidence?


The evidence for prana and subtle energies is exhibited in the exact same courtroom as the evidence for physical anatomical structures–namely, in our minds. Depending on the level of subtlety of the mind, perceptions differ. Gross shared perceptions, such as what we call physical anatomy, occur at a level of perception that is nearly standardized in our species. Over innumerable generations across time and space, these tendencies of perception have occurred over and over so consistently that they are now hardwired as physical anatomy.


The very same happens for prana, but with a smaller population. Take a group of yogis or other introspective practitioners, and you are likely to see an acknowledgment of something called prana, even if there may not be technical agreement on what it is. The lack of technical agreement simply reflects that each mind is at a different level and that the overall society is not operating at the same level of perception. In this case, the appropriate course of action would simply be to create a curriculum to experiment with another level of mental perception while elucidating the pitfalls in our language and thought that prevent us from identifying, naming, and labeling prana even as we experience it.


As the teacher did when guiding the student's mind back from itself, the student's ear back from itself, the student's eye back from itself, and so on, the teacher is now guiding the students life energy, or prana, back from itself.


David Bohm drew a correlation between information and energy. He suggests that information literally in-forms, or gives shape to, energy. From this, we can infer that energy itself is a kind of active information. But what is information? Here, we can draw on Claude Shannon, who suggested that information is a way of removing uncertainty, or reducing uncertainty. Therefore we can think of energy, in this case prana, as a particular directional reduction of something much greater. The teacher's words are asking the student to retrace the path of their awareness from the current reduced state that is recognizing prana in its current form to the original irreducible integrated state. What that is cannot be communicated in words, so again, the teacher is building the bridge from a (any) particular place to the infinite.


All of these words are merely echoing the sentiment pulsating vividly in the heart of the teacher: bring your attention back to the place from where it springs. Trace the physical back to the mental, then trace the mental and its life energy back to the fountainhead of health.


Tomorrow, we examine the teachers view of our field of experience. 

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