commentary of Isavasya Upanishad

Sudhasindhu

Harikrishnan had asked me to write on Upanishads.I would do a translation of my own work Sudhasindhu .This was a book on the major 12 upanishads which I finished in 1998 and was released in 2003 ,published by D.C.Books ,Kottayam.The bookrelease was on May 18th of 2003 in Amritheswari Hall by Dr .K.J.Yesudas and the first copy was received by Poojya Poornamrithaswami in the august presence of C.Radhakrishnan,Asha Menon ,and Prof D.M.Vasudevan..R.K Damodaran introduced the guests and D.C Ravi and administrator of Amritha institute of Medical sciences Mr Ron spoke a few words about the venture.

Sankara had done the commentary of the 10 upanishads(dasopanishad)I took these as the base for my work and added two more,The Thaithareeya and Swethaswethara Upanishads and thus made it the dwadasopanishad swadhyaya.
The 12 upanishads were grouped into six separate parts under 6 captions.The title of the book sudhasindhu goes to the 6th part .
The division is like this.

Part 1 Madhumathi

Thaithareeya Upanishad(Krishnayajurveda)
Kathopanishad(Krishnayajurvedam)
Aithareya Upanishad(Rgveda)

Part 2.Agneya

Swethaswethara Upanishad
Narayana Upanishad

Part 3 Krishnavairajam
Mundaka Upanishad
Prasnopanishad(both Atharvaveda)

Part 4.Pragnaavaisakham
Mandukya Upanishad and kaarika (Atharvaveda)

Part 5 Suvarnam Veda

Kena Upanishad
Chandogya Upanishad
(both saamaveda)

Part 6 Sudhasindhu

Isavasyaupanishad
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad ( both Suklayajurveda)

The preface is written by Dr Sukumar Azheekode.

Here I am translating the Isavasya Upanishad for Harikrishnan’s community.This is because ,there are a few writings on the translation of its verses/manthra by others in the community so that I need not waste my time for repeating them .Instead I can straight away start with the commentary or swadhyaya.I would request the readers to go to the verses given by the others in the community .


Sudhasindhu

Isavasya Upanishad.

Each particle or paramaanu behave in a particular way.There need not be a specific cause for its behaviour as understood by us.Similarly it is very difficult toassess the reason for a certain behaviour of a human being in certain situations.Have you heard of Schrodinger’s cat?Just like that the living and nonliving can be equal.Mathematics and truth sometimes baffle the minds .The understanding of kaala(time)and desa(space)of the ancients and of the modern men is teaching us this fact.Whenever something dies in this universe another thing is born in another universe like a schrodinger cat,and thus the contradictions of the experience is negated by mathematics and science.This rebirth into a new universe is a topic for discussion for ancient philosophers and scientists of India.But is very new for modern science and philosophy.Julius Robert Oppenheimer said “The general notions about human understanding ,which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar,wholly unheard of or new.Even in our own culture they have a history,and in Budhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place.What we shall find is an exemplification,an encouragement,and a refinement of old wisdom..”
Minskousky considers his universe akin to an advaithin’s prapancha.Mitchell Talbot in “Mysticism and the new physics”considers thanthra as a old quantum physics theory.The naada,bindu and naadabindu concepts(vibrations)as wave ,particle and wave particle are being studied now.And the sphota as a big bang .What Is common for a schrodinger’s cat and a naadabindu or wave particle.The primordial substance of the universe appears to be these wave particles and quanta .But wave particles and quanta do not possess any reality ,at least in the terms we are accustomed to dealing with it in classical physics.They are both wave and particle ,two mutually exclusive types of entities and this complementarity places them ,in a category alalogous to a schrodinger’s cat.One can understand the nature of any object in its naada(wave state)avastha,Bindu (particle)avastha,and in naadabindu (wave particle)avastha depending upon one’s ability of cognizance .In Thanthra siva,sakthi and sivasakthi are also like this.When the vyomakesa spreads the kesa each hair forms a line expanding from the center in radiating energy waves.That is light or expansion.When the hair is shaved,in mundane ,siva is in a contracted or linga state and is avyaktha .The sakthi prakaasa state and the siva avyaktha state is only two states of existence of the same energy.When electric lines of energy(force)converge on a region of space ,they do not just criss-cross.But seem to converge and sink into the fabric of space like threads being pulled through a funnel or down a bath of drain.Wheeler suggested that that they must be passing into a wormhole.A classical geometro-dynamical electric charge is a set of lines trapped in the topology of space.This is very startling because the Thanthra also speaks of space as being permeated by lines of force known as the hairs of siva(saivathanthra)and of Kesava (Vishnu).In mysticism and the new physics page 118 you can see this comparison.The sivabindu is a blackhole into which the entire universes disappear in time of destruction(samhaara).The origin,sustenance and destruction of the universes is the topic of majority of the Upanishads.For a person living in the present century ,the upanishadic version and its comparison with the most modern scientific theories of the origin of universe ara therefore interesting.

Suklayajurveda has two major Upanishads in its credit.One is the exhaustive Brihadaranyaka and the other is the short Isavasya Upanishad. Sudhasindhu (6th part)deals with these two Upanishads.With this short introduction we will proceed with the Isavasya Upanishad.


Shaanthimanthra of this Upanishad is the famous Om Poornamada:Poornamidam
Poornaad poornam udachyathe
Poornasya poornam aadaaya poornam evaavasishyathe.

Om shanthi shanthi shanthi:

That and this are poornam.From poornam ,originated the poornam.From poornam ,poornam was taken,but poornam remained.

In Sidhanthasiromani Bhaskaracharya defines zero (Khahara)like this.Kha is the akaasa or spacetime in Indian astronomy.Hara is the process of division or taking away.Bhaskara says,like Achutha(Vishnu)who during the Pralaya(delusion )when all the Raasi(zodiacs)are withdrawn into him,and in prabhava(creation)all the raasis originate from him,remain the same all the time ,perfect and poorna,and endless,beginningless(anantha,anaadi)the zero has to be understood.Those who have heard that zero is the invention of the Indians might now understand how spiritually and mathematically the Indians had arrived at the definition of it,and how it is not an empty thing but a timespace continuum resplendent with energy so that everything ,multitudes of prapancha can be created out of it ,and withdrawn into it and sustained in it .It is not asat,but sath and from sath only sath can be created .(As the samkhya philosophy tells us)

Verse 1

The very first verse is important ,not only because the first two syllables give the Upanishad its name ,but it fully expresses what the Rishi wants to expound in detail.Isa or Iswara(God-the seat of all the Aiswarya )is in all this,in everything.The entire universe is God only.The word sarvam and Idam are used here.Idam means this.This universe which we are seeing,we being a part of it.But then he adds,Sarvam.Everything.Not only this seen and known universe but even the unseen,uninhabited multitudes of universes are God only.This is the concept of Ekeswara in India.The Ekeswaravaada of all other philosophies say.There is only ONE GOD.We need not worship or respect any other God.India said.Yes .There is only one God.But ,it added.There is nothing but God.Everything is God.This sarveswaravaada makes Indians see God in everything,seen ,known,unseen and unknown.Even in a tree,in birds,serpents and animals,in human beings etc God dwells and wherever you look,you are seeing God only.But ,unless you realize that,you will not be attaining perfect truth and wisdom.Because of this the gnaanayoga,bhakthiyoga and karmayoga of India can be carried out simultaneously without any contradictions.
Jagath is a term for the universe.Jagath also means that which is moving .The prakrithi.Prakrithi is always changing and moving and parinaami.But she is inhabited by the allpervading changeless, movementless,aparinaami Brahma .Therefore Brahma is and can be seen in prakrithi.Both are equivalent.Then the rishi shifts his focus from the theoretical explanation to practical life based on it.He says,[protect everything by the habit of sacrifice.Once we understand that God dwells in us as well as our neighbour,it becomes easy to love our neighbours and all other objects in nature and to protect them.If we don’t know the basic reason for love and protection ,we may not do it.Hence the rishi says,the entire creation is God.Therefore,love and protect it ,and sacrifice your ego for that.Do not desire what is in possession of others and create unpleasant feelings of hatred,envy etc .Thus the first two lines give a scientific explanation for the need of universal love and peaceful co-existence and the second half gives gives an account of how to practice it in life so that people live in harmony.This is the general message of the first verse.

God dwells in everything and is the one who determines everythings nature and behaviour.The growth of plants ,animals,birds,their cyclical behaviour and movements are all due to the forces of nature/God.Even the rotations and revolutions of the earth and other planets and stars is determined by an overall law of force which is equated to God .Movement of prakrithi is because prakrithi,though it looks like jada (dead inert)has an indwelling athma(jeeva or Brahma)in it.It is this indwelling force which we call the natural law.Therefore Indian ancestors thought the earth and the other celestial objects even as Jeeva with indwelling God.Earth was given special reverence because man ,dwells on its surface and without its sustaining food and water and the mandala of wind around,no one can live and think and act.Therefore she is the center of all human activity.She is thus given the status of mother.The originator and sustainer of all life.Jagathyaam jagath means whatever is moving in this universe.This includes not only birds ,animals and men and women but also the moving celestial spheres with earth as the center of activity of human life.

We can enjoy the fragrance of the sandalwood,when a piece of sandalwood is rubbed against a surface and it becomes lesser and lesser in mass and volume.Similarly,when we live in this world of samsaara,we come in contact with a hard surface,our ego and our love for the samsara become less and less and ,our Godliness become more pronounced .Till then ,the fragrance of God was hidden in us.To expose it,we have to sacrifice our ego,our desire for the worldly things and life.To sacrifice the worldly things is not that easy for a human being.So the rishi suggests a practical ethical dharma.Do not desire what is not yours.Sacrifice the desires in your neighbours possessions.You will be less and less of envy,less and less of hatred and anger and other base qualities by that sacrifice.Then you will be able to protect your neighbours possessions as your own,as God’s property.This cooperative and loving lifestyle is the essence of a harmonious existence on earth.The only possession worth having is the Athmavidya.All other worldly possessions are not worthy of possession.Therefore avoid desire and greed in such things.Both you and your neighbour will be saved .
The entire universe belongs to God.We are only trustees of it for a short period.Even our near and dear ones are belongings of God.We are just trustees .Hence sacrifice overattachment to all material objects and relations and see them as God and God’s property and resignedly protect them and respect them.God alone is absolute truth and energy.Every other thing is relative truths and matter with gathi(movement)Both are the same.Hence go for the absolute and not for the relative.But understand that even the relative truth is part of absolute and respect it.When absolute truth is there,the relative truths become lesser and hence equivalent to illusions(maaya)and this terminology is a comparative one in a scientific logical sense.

Verse 2

The questions Why should we love our neighbours?And how?Are answered in the first verse itself.If the whole world is safe in your hands and mind and words ,you have loved God properly.Now the second verse says :Live for a hundred years ,doing your karma in the best possible way.The karma will not bind those who do karma perfectly and without attachment.There is no other way for liberation.

This is a very practical advice for all of us.Because no one is expected to sit idle and meditate forever.Everyone has to do the karma.When we do a karma without the desire for its effect,people think that it would be having no initiative in it for the individual and thus would become imperfect.But the rishisays otherwise.When you are bound to the effects of the action you are frustrated when you do not get the desired effect,and when you get the desired effect yoou become proud and vainglorious.One leads to anger and frustration and the other to pride and boasting and both are not good for a perfect action.When you are having quiet and silent mind without desires,and a involvement in the work without desire for the fruits of it,your work become more fruitful and also for the entire benefit of the world.Because there is no selfish motive,and it is done for Lokakalyana.And it is done with a perfect peaceful mind which feels work itself is worship.This is what Krishna in his Geetha calles Nishkaamakarma.The modern management experts also will agree that a person with such a turn of mind would be an asset to any institution where he/she works.The first verse speaks of Nivrithidharmalakshana and the second verse of pravrithidharmalakshana.The first is called sanyasapatha(the way to renunciation)and the second is called the way to kriya(action)or kriyamarga.Kriyamarga is a preliminary step to nivrithimarga for those individuals having more of rajasic qualities in them as a preparation for the next step,the nivrithimarga ,or mokshamarga.They are actually having the same aim or goal.Only difference is in the individuals having more of sathwik and rajasic qualities respectively .The way is chosen by our own nature ,our own proportion of guna,and tendencies so that it suits us.

Verse 3

There are several worlds covered by darkness.They are names as Asurya(because the sunlight does not penetrate these areas of spacetime).One who kills the self,reaches these dark worldswhich is engulfed by thamas.In common parlance ,the sthavara world(the stones,mountains ,trees etc)are considered to be less bright because the vibrations of light and sound are less in these structures.The people who have more of thamoguna and less of rajas(for action)and satwa(for gnaana or knowledge)goes to such worlds due to their predominant thamoguna.But,it is a tree which gets the sunlight and makes annam(food)for itself and become selfsufficient and give food to animals ,and birds and human beings.It does not have the power of thought ,or the power of action by its own will.The action of making food is an unconscious act and the action of giving away food and shelter also is a natural action .It is therefore included under the classification of the sthavara world .And in the taxonomical category of asurya by the rishi.It means the people with more of thamas in them have to adopt such an existence.The Athmahana(suicide of self) reach such a state of darkness and therefore,the rishi asks us not to fall prey to such tendencies and live for hundred years and work ,do action without desire for its fruits.(as said in the second verse)This is also indicative of the ability for us to determine our future or our future life.

Avidya and attachment to worldly pleasures kills our self day by day.This bondage to avidya is a form of suicide.The thick dark curtain of avidya makes their minds and intellect dark and impenetrable to the sunlight of knowledge and wisdom.The eternal and ever youthful light of the self is not understood by them.And we wont be able to see this in such individuals(though it is in them too).In the first verse the rishi said God is everywhere.Now he explains why God is not revealed to all though He is everywhere.It is because of the darkness of avidya.The dirt of actions accumulated over the past has made a thick curtain and obscured the view of self. Such an existence in the world,though in human form is equivalent to the existence of a stone,plant or a worm.Because one does not know one’s self.And goes on repeating the cycle of samsaara as these jeeva.This according to the rishi is suicide or Athmahatya.

The people in the northern pole think I am facing the sun.I am in the world of lights.The people opposite to me(in the south pole)are in dark worlds.They are asura and I am sura.But,the people in the south pole also think the same.They think they are the sura and those in the north must be asura.In the earliest phase of astronomical knowledge,the eastern hemisphere(including India )was considered the sura or world of knowledge .The western hemisphere was named the Azorez(or asura)and the asura were thought to be living in the Athala(The present Athalantha)by the people of the east.Now,the western hemisphere thinks that the east is in dark ages and the west is the sura .This inversions of roles is due to the revolution,rotation and constant cyclical movement of the earth.Really all of us have periodical surya and asurya experiences of day and night .Thamas or sleep and rest is needed for the human brain at times .It should not be permanent ,but.The sleep of Kumbakarna is mere laziness and immersion in worldly pleasures.That is not good.Have everything in moderation.Never kill the spirit of knowledge of the self.

The Andhena Thamasaa avrutha Loka(The worlds engulfed in the darkness of thamas)called the asurya ,are also the blackholes at a cosmic level.This is a modern concept for the western science.And a very ancient concept for the ancisnt scriptures.The rishi says the pretha(the one who dies or commits suicide)goes to these dark holes where he/she has to cyclically rotate without any choice or willpower to regulate ones future.
Raajasa can regulate the future by sacrificing the fruits of action by own will,but the thaamasa since they have no willpower just rotate and repeat the cycle of existence in the darkness of samsaara without any choice or knowledge of their plight.

The actions or lack of action,the knowledge or lack of knowledge ,the willpower or lack of it all are thus due to the proportion of the three gunaas in us and the thriguna is a quality of the prakrithi .

Verse 4

After talking about the three types of human tendencies due to the predominant guna,and the nature or prakrithi in three verses,in the 4th verse the Rishi starts to talk about the nature of Brahma.

It is Eka,Achala,and has more sped than the mind.It is before (poorvam)everything.Therefore,the devathaas of the senses cannot reach it.It is movementless and speedier than the mind.It is before all lights and before all senses .And it is with its power (force or energy)alone that Mathariswa makes the jeeva move.

In this verse ,there is a definite change in the stream of consciousness and its flow .According to Gobilakaarika this is the third verse and the third verse mentioned above(strting with asuryaa)is the 12th.Ej means kampana.The one with the quality of vibration is Brahma.But it is also movementless.The movement or vibration is beyond the grasp of senses and therefore it looks movementless or vibrationless.The vibration is beyond the world of the lightrays and their speed.That is ,it is beyond senses,mind and the sunlight and its speed.Before all this,the achala(movementless one)expands and this expanding endless and spreading principle is considered as Vyoma.But this truth(satha)which is chith(energy)is felt as emptiness in the eyes of the mooda minds.And sometimes they mistake it for the samsaara and prapancha .(vikshiptha mind)And this illusionary feeling is the Maaya.

Mathariswa is the son ,Vaayu and it moves within the boundaries of its mother’s form (the spacetime expansion)and is equivalent to the nityavasthu (chith)from which it originated.It is the one which gives praana to all.And makes everything function.It is seen as the crisscross of threads in a cloth ,in everything and is called the soothraathmaa.In this form mathariswa wears the jagath which is moving.It is this praan athat divided the karma of the praani(living thing)into its signs of cheshta(function).Agni,Aditya,Parjanya etc with karma of jwalana,dahana,prakaasa and abhivarshana and its powers(forces) are given by Mathariswa.
This is a passage which shows that the Rishi knows the unification of all natural forces (A grand unification theory of forces of nature in modern physics) and its principles.
The nature of vibratory sound/light waves and its subtle nature so that the senses with grosser vibrations and the physical solar system and its vibrations cannot reach the first vibratory force etc are scientific truths and not mere fiction or myth.The inability of certain types of minds to comprehend the subtle truth also is mentioned showing the psychological acumen of the rishi.

Verse 5.

It vibrates and moves.But it does not move.It is far away.But it is very close too.It is within everything.But it is outside everything too.

Brahma vibrates and therefore it has movement .But gross senses and intellect cannot detect those most subtle vibrations and hence it is considered as movementless by the sense organs.Spacetime continuum is beyond solar system and the zodiac and is before everything too.But it exists within everything in the past ,present and future also.So it is far away as wellas most near.Even with crores of years a scholar cannot reach it .Therefore it is far away.It is beyond hundred crores of lightyears from even sunlight.And hence it is away.But this expanding universe and its cosmic energy is grasped by the heartspace of one who thinks or meditates upon it.It is revealed to such a yogic mind.And such a mind directly visualize it within him and in everything outside him too..Such a yogic mind see it as niranthara(without anthara or interval between)or as a continuum .This avastha is called Pragnaanaghana(dense with pragna or consciousness energy).Because of its vyaapakathwa(expansile and spreading nature)there is gross or very large spacetime continuity.But ,it is also subtle and its nirathisayasookshmatwa(the most subtle nature which cannot be surpassed by any other thing)is also explained in the commentary.Sankara thus visualizes both the modern cosmological worlds of relativistic astrophysics and the subtle quantum mechanics of it.Both these worlds _sookshma and sthoola exist inside the consciousness of a concentrated meditating mind and outside of it and he comprehends it as a whole .But a mind without the capacity for concentration (mooda,kshipta and vikshiptha)cannot realize this truth and for such minds the worlds of duality is real and the world of Advaitha is not approachable.Therefore it is most near and most far off.The power or force which is described in the 18th chapter of Bhagavad Geetha as near and far,moving and nonmoving is comparable.

What is the importance of Advaitha? Why should one be able to see Brahma as a single whole?The 6th verse answers this.

Verse 6

That person who see all the elements within his own self,That person who visualize his own self within all the elements,can never dislike or hate anything.

The liberated souls see “I”or Aham in everything,moving and nonmoving,in all living and nonliving things.And all these(sarvam)exists within him .Such a soul realize the oneness or Ekathwa of me and you,of me and the world ,and becomes compassionatye to all.The Bible asks us “Love thy neighbour as Thyself”.But ,does not give an explanation for the questions why should I and How should I practice it?This is the answer for that questions.We have to love our neighbour because there is God within him,as much as God is within you.Everything is Brahma.Everything is Athma.There is nothing else but Brahma.This vision gives us the oneness of the spacetime continuum,the oneness of the biological and inorganic energy,and the power which binds this world with the other worlds,this universe with other universes.That power which represents the vibratory waveparticle like pranava,is visualized as the power of wind or mathariswa which is the soothraathma that binds all elements together.

Then how can such a person hate anything?How can such a person kill or destroy anything?How cannot such a person show compassion and love to everything?This is the principle of Maithri,Karuna,Muditha etc which are signs of the great yogin in yogasoothra,and of the sthithapragna in the Bhagavad Geetha.And these develop due to the vision described above.See Thyself within everything and everything within Thyself.

In the modern age we know that this vision is not a myth but a scientific truth.Einstein has shown us that Energy is mc2.Or mass multiplied by its squared velocity.The different types of forces of nature including our bioenergy is One .But this remains a theoretical knowledge as far as the majority of the human beings are concerned.Noone has understood the fact that if we really understand this,we would be or we should naturally become compassionate and loving to nature and to our fellow beings.This body with its movements,is only a mass with movement which can stop at anytime,and can be destroyed at anytime,but the energy in it will not be destroyed (law of conservation of energy)and will recycle in a new shape and name (punarjanma in Sanskrit) and this continuity of existence of everything makes one more wise and compassionate to all.Without compassion what is the use of mere scholarship?

Since energy or the Chith (in sansckrit it means oorja or prakaasa)is the only sath(truth)and the only ananda(bliss)Brahma is given these thre attributes by the ancient Indians.Sath Chit Ananda is the definition of Brahma or the Godhead.

Energy is the only changeless truth and is the only blissful state and that energy is within us as bioenergy and is outside us as cosmic energy and there is a everlasting continuity between us and the universes and we are part of this entire multiverse,as the universe is part of us.It is a beautiful viswaroopadarsana,a beautiful dance of energy ,a beautiful vision of an ocean of everlasting energy and bliss and truth..This Brahma experience is the most coveted and sought after by all seekers of truth.Even the sthavaraloka(inorganic world)which is considered as the dark asura worlds where light cannot penetrate ,even the blackholes which are considered empty,become vibrating energy fields and the liberated scientist of ancient India see only chaithanya (energy)even in those thamoloka or thamogartha .The modern scientists also visualize it as photons and superstrings of energy in these dark spaces but does not connect it to the compassionate bioenergy level.The modern world is becoming more and more technological and mechanical with knowledge,it does not convert energy of scholarship into energy of compassion for all.If we can do this we also can someday reach the ancient Indian philosopher’s state of sath,chith,aananda .(Brahma and Aham as one.)We too can see Brahma in everything inside and outside and love and live harmoniously loving our neighbours as we love ourselves because in our neighbours reside the same Brahma .

This is the message of ancient India for ahimsa,love and compassion and for world peace and lokakalyaana.

Verse 7.

Once a human being understands and feels that every element is ones own Athma,for that person where is moha(desire)and soka(sorrow)?He has realized Ekathwa(Oneness )of creation.
The moment the oneness of all creation is visualized and felt,all desires of worldly existence,all the greeds for aquiring this and that ceases.Since desire is the cause of sorrow,by the visualization process both sorrow and its cause desire are uprooted.Such a person does not covet another person’s possessions because worldly possessions are nothing for him.This state has two effects for the person
1.He has lost all sorrows and desires and is perfectly happy and blissful which is what every being wants to be.
2.He/she does not covet anything from others or harm anyone for anything and thus aparigraha and ahimsa and karuna has become his nature.With this verse the rishi comes back to the first verse and its explanation fully.Everything is permeated by Isa(God)Therefore do not covet the possessions of others ,was the first verse’s message.Now the rishi has said the method to obtain that state .The privileges it offers to the one who practices it and to the society and institution where he/she lives and works.
Thus the rishi proves his point raised in the first verse.
The order in which the rishi does this is summed up like this.
In verse one he raises his statement and an advice ,how to live in the world peacefully
In verse two and three he describes the rajasic and thamasic predominant natures and the different methods through which they too can reach this state of perfect harmony by a gradual stage by stage process.In verse 4 he describes the nature of Brahma and of Mathariswa,the praana and the oneness of energy.In verse 5 he describes how this is visualized by the saadhaka .(both within and without)And how this changes his/her vision of the world totally and transforms him/her to the most compassionate individual.
And finally in verse 6 and 7 he tells us the advantages of such a transformation to the individual as well as to the society and the world.

Verse 8

The 8th verse says,Athma is omnipresent and expands to everything(sarvam).It is akaaya(without a physical body)Sukra(white)avrana(without any defect)asnaayu(without ligaments )sudha(pure)and sinless(paaparahitha)It is Kavi(rishi)maneeshi(pure intellectual wisdom)and swayambhoo(originated on its own)It is saparyagaa.(Paryaya or paryagaa means that which revolves in its own kakshya or spacetime)It gives birth to equally divided and eternal sama (equals )order(karma).

The stars and graham (graham means which makes us understand our laws of movement and laws of universes and not just planet) revolve in their kakshya(their orbits)and this is called Bhaganaparyaya.(revolution of the groups of bha or lights).The orbit of the Brahma is beyond all these orbits of known stars ,and includes several multiverses with an order of time of its own for each.In all these multiverses,just like an emperor inspecting and visiting the territories of his subordinate saamanthaas (kings)Brahma with its resplendent thejas,expands and reaches.It is thus sarvavyaapi and in this sense it moves.For sukra ,the meaning is not just white.Sankara says Sukram is sudham jyothishmadheepthimaanithyartha:It is respelendent as the jyothisha or stars in the sky and the whiteness is that .The Brahma thus is equivalent to the spacetime and the sama which are equally divided in the Brahma are Aswathy etc (Aswatheebhya samaabhya:)That is why the adjective Paryagaaschukra is equivalent to astronomical spacetime.Since it has no physical body,it is akaaya or asareeri and naturally this makes it avrana and asnaayu.One without a physical body cannot be cut or cannot have ligamental unions .Since it has no physical body it is not touched by sin or sorrow .It has no dualities of dharma or adharma.

Brahma is Kavi.Kavi is not just a poet who can make verses in rhymes.In Sanskrit the word means a kraanthadarsi and sarvadrik(one with a capability for subtle visions a visionary and one who can see everything).Maneeshi is the eeshithaa(darsaka,seer)of the mind ,the sarvagnapurusha whois the psychologist par excellance .Paribhoo is above everything .Swayambhoo is one who originated on his own without a mother and father and therefore not created by maithuna .The one who became without a prior cause.This power called Iswara or Brahma or Athma ,according to the karma performed divided the spacetime for the samaas equally.Sama are samvatsara and saman is samvatsaran in Jyothisha.And it is from sama ,the saama or music is heard(the music of the spheres).The sama like Aswathy are the prajapathy .Prajapathy as the sama existed in prior yugas and the Iswara or the power of Brahma allots them a karma according to the previous karma of them .This is said in the Rgveda as ,Brahma created the universe Yathaapoorvam(as before).At that time there was no human being to grasp the laws of universe .And ,the first human being who grasped it was termed the saman or samvatsaran ,a synonym for the Jyothishagnaani.The first human being who had a consciousness of spacetime is given a special status because he is understanding the origin of time.When this consciousness is born a vidya to give this to the coming generations(an educative system )also is born.
But,one must understand that all human beings cannot at any time ,will be able to understand such profound truths.Only an Einstein or a Stephan Hawking understands it too well even in this yuga.So the number of 18 jyothish Acharyas mentioned in the veda and Upanishads must be considered really great.

A very important verse comes after this.

Verse 9.Those who meditate on avidya reaches the dark universes (thamoloka)But those who meditate on vidya reaches greater darker lokaas.

This verse has been confusing to several scholars over the years.Many have tried to explain itwith more confusing thoughts.The question is if avidya leads to dark thamoloka,how can vidya lead to darker lokas?

Since the 8th verse is speaking about the astronomical division of zodiac after origin of spacetime and the first human being who had a consciousness developed to understand these laws of universe,we have to assume that this sloka is also about the astronomers.Then there is some meaning in it which is not contradicting each other.Those people who meditate on the avidya of samsaara ,are born and reborn in the thamoloka of the sthaavara and this pertains to the birth and rebirth cycles of Paryaya (revolution in different wombs in samsaarachakra).But those who meditate on vidya reaches far away universes which they cannot visualize with their naked eyes and these are the dark thamodwaaras.These thamogartha are areas where the sunlight cannot enter ,and where words cannot enter.Where intellect cannot enter.These are called the Krishnamandala where Krishna resides.And to these dark krishnamandala is the way through the kaalavidhaanasasthra(jyothisha)The paramapada of Vishnu(sarvavyapi)is even beyond these Krishnamandala .

In another way also a jyothishi can enter dark worlds.That is by using the science and art for moneymaking.Karma is avidya.And those who do this karma for money reach the dark worlds of avidya and not the dark worlds of vidya.Both types of people are in dark worlds.But how different are those dark worlds from one another !!One is arepeating cyclical series of births and deaths.And the other is an expansile and spreading out lightpath,reaching at a boundary of the boundary which appears as zero ,but is actually resplendent energy unseen to ordinary eyes and misinterpreted as emptiness.


Verse 10.The thamas one achieves due to Vidya,and thamas into which one falls due to avidya are different.We have heard so from the dheera(the wise people).

One reaches through vidya the worlds which are beyond ordinary knowledge and beyond those thamasaloka are the bright worlds of the Deva.With avidya one reaches the thamoloka of the pithru ,and both are avyaktha and dark.

Verse 11.One who grasps both vidya and avidya simultaneously,wins over mrithyu(death)with avidya ,and then achieves amrithathwa(eternity)by vidya.

The pithruyagna and prajapathyavratha are done by such people to satisfy the ancestral worlds of mrithyu,and the same people do sarvakarvatyaaga and with vidya attains amritha(deathless state)..Since pithrukarma is done only by householders this verse gives importance to Grihastha over sanyasa.

Verse 12.
The people who meditate upon the unborn,enter thamas.Those who meditate on things which are already born,reaches greater thamas.

In verse 8 we saw two types of thamas.One was vyakritha(vyaktha)and the other was avyakritha(avyaktha).How do people meditate upon these easily?

The seen world is sambhootha(already born .both past and present)There is a cause for this universe.This cause is avyaktha and is the seed for all desired actions.And this is called the moolaprakrithi.It is unknown and unseen.The astronomers are meditating on the moolaprakrithy the cause for all the known and seen universes.They plunge into darkness.But those people who meditate upon seen things with desire ,and with fruits of action which will be achieved later(in future)or what is asambhootha also enter dark worlds of repeating births and deaths.
Both are dark worlds.The dark world of the scholar is darker than the dark world of the common man.But,it is more selfless and more expanded and though with punaraavrithy(cyclical repetition)the time period between two births is prolonged and the vidwaan lives in the unknown worlds for more periods and comes back to earth only when it is needed to uphold dharma,and that toowith his own choice.The other people come and go repeatedly at shorter intervals and without any choice or remembrance of what had happened in their previous existence,just like inert objects.They have a world with sunlight ,because they come back to earth often,and so their darkness when compared to that of the scholar is less .But,less preferable than the greater darkness and free willand sarvavyapithwa of the vidwan who has overcome mrithyu with his actions of upaasana of both pithru and deva universes.

Verse 13.The born and the unborn are meditated upon.And the effect of these meditations are different .We have heard it from dheera.Those who meditate upon saguna and on objects of prakrithy gets animaadisidhi.But those who meditate on nirguna ,the absolute truth beyond prakrithi and her qualities and the most subtle principle only achieve amrithathwa.
Consider that Gobilakaarika reads the third verse (asuryanaama the loka)as the 12th verse.Read it as 12th and then read this sloka .Then it becomes clear that from the meanings about the thamasic guna in human beings .Those with pure sathwik intellect alone can attain Samadhi and wisdom of Samadhi.And among those who achieve Samadhi there are two groups sampragnatha and asampragnatha.Only asampragnathasamadhi experience will give amrithathwa.With others we achieve certain things or capabilities,but it is not perfect.The astronomical knowledge spoken about earlier is a knowledge or sidhi due to meditation of the sambhoova (past and present)worlds of existence and is thus a sampragnaathasamadhi knowledge.It is not the asampragnaathi state of existence.In asampragnathasamadhi one has already experienced sampragnathi and therefore he has both knowledge,both experience and has become sarvagna.While one with sampragnathasamadhi alone has no experience of asampragnatha and has to achieve something more.His karma is not over.But his way is cleared for liberation .

Verse14. Meditating on Brahma as one having origin and end(Saguna)and as one without these(Nirguna),we can cross death by the end(of saguna)and attain amrith(eternity)by asambhoothi(no birth).By meditating on the avyakritha(avyktha)which has no birth,nectar with the lakshana of Prakrithilaya is attained.(as mentioned in the pathanjalayoga)The position of a prakrithilaya is the greatest attainable by all the riches of humans and the devaas.Beyond that the samsaaragathi (the movement of the worldly life)does not cross.Beyond that exists the position of the sarvaathmabhava as explained in the 7th verse..In this way the meaning of the veda is revealed in two ways,the pravrithy and the nivrithy.We cen do this,we cannot do this etc are pravrithilakshanaroopa.This type of vedaartha(as commandments and do’s and do nots)is expressed in the pravargya.Brihadaaranyaka expresses the vedartha with nivrithilakshana.From the period of nisheka(the inception and union of sperm with egg)upto the funeral pyre ,for people who wants to do karma,the 11th sloka says you can cross death by avidya and attain amritha by vidya.

If vidya alone can give us amrithathwa,what Is that path of vidya to amrithathwa?Sankara says:-Sathyam asou sa aadityoya esha ethasmin mandale purushoyschaaya dakshino akshan purusha ethad ubhayam sathyam . Means sathya is surya.The purusha in the suryamandala or the solar field and his chaaya or shadow.Therefore the rishi who has done all the karmas according to satisfaction and perfection ,towards the end of life meditate on his own athma which is the swaroopa of sathyathma thus:

Verse 15.

Hiranmayena paathrena sathyasyaapihitham mukham
Thathwam chooshanapaavrinu sathyadharmaaya drishtaye.

The face of truth is hidden from view by a golden vessel.He,pooshaan,remove that covering.Let me ,who has made sathya my dharma,see it .

The one who has lived according to the injunction of sathyam vada and dharmam chara has made his word and deed same.Such a man is meditating.Therefore the words of confidence that I have made sathya into my dharma.And also that he has the right to see the face of truth and noone can deny him that.

Verse 16.He ,Pooshaan,Ekarshe,Yama,surya,Praajaapathyaa,Reduce your rays into thyself.Let me see your form which is resplendent(thejomaya)and auspicious(kalyanathama)Because I am that purush.

Sa asou purusha soham asmi .That purusha in the sun’s center is me.Aham brahma is experienced by this individual.By that adhikaara he asks his upaasanaamurthy,the sun,the energygiver of the world of existence ,to concentrate his rays to the center and allow him to see himself as the true self,as the solar purusha and enter him to become one with him.This is the prakrithilaya of yoga.

Synonyms of sun are used here.
1.pooshaa .The one who sustains and fills the jagath with anna and jeeva
2.Ekarshi.The one who travels alone as a rishi.
3 yama.The one who does samyama of all
4.prajaapathya.The son of prajapathi
5.surya.One who receives rasmi(ray)rasa(waters)and praana (life)and one who lets out these and creates and sustains and destroys these .The one who is responsible for the samsaarachakra on earth.The one who gives light to earth which is otherwise a thamograha .The human being as part of earth knows that he/she too is a thamograha by birth into the earth,but that is not the true nature and the true nature is energy or light from the sun.That is why one says I am you,to the sun.Iam energy.I am surya.Therefore,the rishi does not beg ,but rightfully asks surya to reduce the rays so that he can see and enter his own dhaama or swaroopa or prakrithi.The purusha with vyaahrithi as organs ,existing in the solar mandala,in the akaasa(spacetime)is existing within me (within my city or kshethra of this body)also as praana,budhi and athmaroopa.Therefore,I am naturally you.And,I have lived a life of satya and dharma,in words,thoughts and deeds and am having a right to see my swaroopa in you .

This is a very extraordinary confidence and the sense of own swaroopa and this is seen in the people who meditate on sagunabrahma as their own self.
The rishi is ready now to enter into the suns orb and leave his mortal body.Therefore he continues:

Verse 17.
Let my praana become one with the vaayu .Let my energy be one with the agni.Let my body become bhasma(ashes)And let the body be ended.OM.Kratho smarakritham smara kratho smara kritham smara.

Om.Kratho,remember.Remember the kritha(the deeds).Kratho,remember.Remember the deeds.

During the last rites let my biological praana which is cosmic vaayu become one with it.Similarly my energy and my body become one with cosmic energy and the elements of the earth.Let the panchabhootha of the physical body merge with that of the cosmic body.Let the subtle body(sookshmasareera)with only the gnaanasamskaara and its tendencies reach by uthkranthi(going upwards)into the sun and merge with energy there.(The jeevathma to the kaalaathma surya)Then the rishi requests the sookshmamanas to remember all the good deeds he had done from childhood upto the day of death .It is the satya and dharma and the gnaana which accompany the final journey of athma.Nothing else can accompany him.No riches,no relatives,sons or consorts or friends.Only the good deeds,word and thoughts.Only the satya and dharma and gnaana.Therefore the sookshmamanas is asked to remember them while merging with the self in the cosmic suryaNaraayana.The rishi is sathyasamkalpa.What he thinks becomes truth.Therefore his journey to his own self has been successful.

Verse 18.

Agne,You know all our deeds and all our gnaana.You,the light of the universes,Lead us through the path of vidya.Let us be free of all defects(sins).Our namaskaara to you again and again.

The dakshinamaarga is the way to the pithruloka under the moon’s control and under the attraction of the earth.And those who follow that comes back since it is having endless cycles of deaths and births.Therefore the rishi wants to enter the path of the sun and then from there to the path of the cosmic paramapurusha .The worship of agni (energy)within oneself and in the cosmos is a symbolic karma for worship of universal energy.Now,during his last breath,he says I am now unable to do the external worship,but by thoughts and words I remember and do obeisance to you again and again ,and you,who is knower of all the worlds knows my deeds and my words and thoughts.Therefore,lead me ,The light of the world,through the path of vidya to the paramapada which has no punaraavrithy,is the last wish.

This is a very short Upanishad with only 18 verses but in a nutshell it gives very profound thoughts which purify our minds and intellects and makes our athma resplendent .

Amnesia in elderly and music therapy

Smrithy (Memory ) and Smrithinaasa :-

In second chapter of Geetha Smrithinaasa and as a result of it Budhinaasa(loss of intellect) are mentioned by Bhagavan Sri Krishna.Samsara leads to this Aamaya (disease)and to be Niraamaya,bondage to samsara has to be lost .

When my mother’s sister Poet Balamani Amma lost her memory in old age ,my son wrote a poem (Which appeared in Keralasahitya Academy journal Malayalam Literary survey Oct –Dec 1996 No :4 page 96).He wrote :-

For me,
She was art
Which as they say
Is impersonal ;.
And that day
Her croaked voice
Faltering,
Breathless in spurts
Recited through the recorder
Some rare moments
Reduced
To a Laser-magnified page.

I longed for life;
The real
Just as she too
Would have longed for it.
Only the spools
Of the tape worked
That of the memory
Didn’t.












It was a sad sight to see her like that.The pain which we suffered was intolerable .She could not recognize her own daughters and sons and used to call them Ammini,which is my mother’s name.The only memories that remained were that of her ancestral house with Ammaman(her uncle and Guru Poet Narayanamenon),her mother and sister Ammini.No one else existed in her memory.Sometimes she spoke of a temple and a Devi inside and also that her husband is taking a bath and requires dress when he comes back (and kept dress ready for him.He was dead several years back and she did not remember it).
I tried some old poems and when I sang Kannuneerthulli she recognized it as Ammaman’s poetry.When I recited four lines from her own poetry she said that must be by Vallathol.Only Vallathol can write such beautiful verse.She remembered her aesthetic sense but not her own creation.When my brother Asokan visited her and said “I am Asokan”she didn’t recognize him but recited a verse from Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava starting with the word Asoka.And when I tried Lalithasahasranaama her favourite which I remembered her reciting every day morning (while I was a child) she was able to recollect some of the verses and recited them along with me.That was in the middle stage of her illness in 1998-99. Then after sometime she became totally forgetful and continued like that till her end.

I had seen such incidences of amnesia in my family and in others .
1My father’s elder sister ( mother –in-law of KamalaDas)
2.Younger sister Leelavathy Amma .
3.Another sister Kamalakshi Amma
4.A brother of him .
And I had heard of such incidences in the great intellectuals like Kuttikrishna marar ,a great friend of Ammaman and the greatest literary critic Malayalam literature has ever seen.So this can occur to common man as well as intellectuals alike.But it is not mandatory that all in the family should have it.My mother,my grandmother’s mother,my father etc lived upto 92-93 and even more ,with excellent memory till the day of death.I had taken histories of 9 elderly people in a carehome and found different results with music and related activities in them.And in my book Music therapy in management ,Education and administration (Readworthy publications New Delhi )I had given a project for such institutional documentation and a case history of music being useful in a person with Alzheimers dementia.Here I discuss the amnesia ,its pathways ,its uses as well as disadvantages to individual and society .There are some clues given to keep a good memory at the end which may be of help both to students and professionals,for housewives and for every one.

Amnesia or loss of memory :-

Normal human beings have a memory that is selective,vague and we forget certain things and if not so we would not have survived so long.Remembering every wound inflicted by every one and trying to pay back an eye for an eye would have wiped out the races .So forgetting and forgiving is inherent in human organism for survival of the races.The races which perpetuate violence and bloodshed is doing this only.The sages of India practiced this and Christ asked his disciples to forget and forgive but modern scholars are perpetuating illfeelings against remote crimes which they think had been committed by ancestors of one race to another thereby perpetuating violence and separatisms.So forgetfulness of certain things are essential for human race for survival.
Why are the past happenings and experiences recorded as history? Just to learn from it and shape a better future,a better world.Not for perpetuating feelings of enmity and perpetuate misery.The recording of past experiences as history is just to make us remember from that narrative that we have to learn to live as aco-operative unit of human race to survive on earth.
Here amnesia of a separate type is discussed.For daily routine life each one of us need to remember certain things.The words(language of communication,)names of people,places,dates for doing certain important actions,to carry out certain plans and locations and time for that etc.A driver has to remember the technique of driving a car and the traffic rules.A doctor or an engineer has to know his profession and remember it .Similarly every professional has a special memory of what is his/her day to day activity so that it is carried out efficiently .We have to remember the places where we have kept our things at home and office ,and methods of keeping our body and premises clean.The foods which have to be eaten and the methods of its preparation and so on.In onld age we find several people loosing this common day to day memory and this amnesia is called dementia .This is a major problem that we encounter in modern world.
Another problem of memory that we encounter is the perpetual remembrance of the painful traumatic incidents of individual as well as social and national life.The pain as a recurring memory is made perpetual by annual celebrations of painful memories .This replay after the injury has healed is like re-opening a wound after it has repaired well .This also is a problem which is leading different types of terrorisms and upheavals and violence in the world today.
How to reduce such painful memories?How to bring back memories that are needed for a day to day existence in the old age ?How to increase memory in a child who is learning in any educational institution? Can we use music for this purposes?Raagachikitsa has been addressing these questions .

Memory ,learning and Recall of learning:-
Memory is not a database of information storing but is a dynamic process.Storage is only one aspect of it.Thoughts,emotions,perceptions and actions (all cognitive functions intertwined)are functioning as memory and therefore it is a dynamic process.There are minimum three stages in the process.
1.Selection:-Only a very tiny fraction of our daily experience is selected by our brain to be stored.Vast majority are not selected by brain and they are therefore as good as never experienced by us and forgotten soon.
2.Lay-down:- The selected ones are encoded (stored)for just a split second for a lifetime.Only those that go through an elaborate process of consolidation for at least a period of two years do stay back.
3 Recollection:- The memories thus stored may be inaccessible for re-collection.That is re-collection is faulty.Recollection is not a simple matter of reactivating stored information.It involves changing memories to incorporate new information.The fluidity of thought which help us to act intelligently come by this change.Sometimes forgetting of bad experiences in life is thus a good change for a human being.Forgetting the good things is a bad things to happen to any individual or society or culture.

Fig 1 Cortical areas of memory .(Canadian surgeon:- Wilder Penfield)
Table 1.
The world we experience does not really exist.Grass,sunshine,rivers,a melody,a fragrance does not exist as such green,warm,pleasant or beautiful but our brain makes them so.Everything outside and inside is energy only and the external energy in these things is converted by our bioenrgy into such experiences .So the signals from outside is constructed by brain into pleasant and painful .The sights,sounds and smells etc are thus felt by us.When a lightray touch a eyeball nerve cells transform it to electrical and later to neurochemical energy . The same energy touching the ears is also converted in the same way but felt as a sound wave.The brain has a specialized function in each part of the sensory area corresponding to the sense organ of receipt of external cosmic energy.

Figure 2 Pathway of brain in constructing a visual image :-
This is the forgetting curve devised by German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus which shows rapidity of loss of nonsignificant memory.Forgetting takes place soon after learning.If it sticks for three days at least,it is set for a long future.Meaningful information has a far less steep forgetting curve.How to keep memory ?By repetition.
The repetition or practice(Abhyaasa)and japa (repeating names)and gunakoshta(multiplication tables )every day was for this purpose.A short term memory remains onlytill the time it is repeated.If we continue to repeat it even after we need it,it becomes a long term memory .If we do it with your brain you will never forget it.If you do it with your calculator your brain will never store it and without a calculator you cant do anything.So mental arithemetic is more useful for human race than a calculator .Eric Kandel of Columbia university(2000 Nobel prize winner)showed that short term memory involves changes in already existing synapses.He did experiments with mollusk Aplysia which ahs relatively few and large neurons.
Molecular changes that underlie memory are not directly observed in human brain.Researchers of Uty of California,Santiago found that when a neuron is stimulated once a molecule called Actin moves towards neighbouring neurons.Actin is present in many cells throughout body and is associated with growth and cellular restructuring.The activity of the first cell stimulate the stimulate the neighbouring neurons.The changes are temporary and last for 3 – 5 minutes and disappear within 5-10 minutes.If the neuron is stimulated four or more times within an hour the cells creates new docking points or synapses with the neighbours creating an irreversible alteration in the cells wiring.The links between individual cells are formed by a process called long-term potentiation.Figure show cell 1 as initially stimulatd activating cell 2 in a alert state of stimulation from cell 1 for hours or even days.Each time the 2 cells fire together their mutual sensitivity or link is re-inforced.Eventually they are bound together so firmly that they may fire together for the rest of the lifetime in brain.When their combined activity is enough to trigger a cell to which both are attached,even if the links are weak with it and if this happens repeatedly the 3rd cell is also bound with the link of the first 2 cells.Memories are formed in firing of networks of neighbouring cells linked in this way.

Figure 3 of LTP The hippocampus is a formation whichlies in the brain and records conscious experiences and then files some of them in other parts of the brain.Damage to hippocampus can cause profound memory disorders.The hippocampus does lot of Lay-down work when we sleep.During jagrad(wakened state)it is busy with selecting,processing and storing current information.In sleep this bombardment stops.The hippocampus starts to trawl over what it has recently dealt with.The neural pattern replay spontaneously and some of them appear as dreams.So in REM sleep if I have been dealing with astronomy an astronomy pattern is replayed.If I am dealing with chopping vegetables,a chopping vegetable neural pattern only will replay.The patterns of music and astronomy are jyxtaposed in dreams of me when I deal with both .And if I deal with medicine as well that pattern also is juxtaposed and integrated.In the REM of a person who chops carrots chopped carrots are juxtaposed in dream with images of other vegetables and other day to day activities.The hippocampus thus acts consolidating experience into memory even when we are in sleep ,in a stage when we think we are unconscious of anything .It is in this state that it links the new experiences to the old experiences ,filling in the web .So for a person who integrates knowledge this sleep stage is as important as the jagrad state when he/she learns .The storing of memories in different parts of the brain as a huge cobweb has to be thus understood.Each element of a memory –the sight,sound,word or emotion that it consists of-is encoded in the part of the brain that originally created it.Each one is the same as current perception,except that the information that created it comes now from within the brain ,instead of externally via the sense organs.
If we want to remember a dravya .The colour is in the visual cortex.The name of the dravya is in the language storage part of Broca.The sound of the dravya is in the acoustic area.To get a memory of the entire dravya each has to be linked and integrated.Think of a swara as a dravya.Its varna or colour ,its dwani or acoustic part,and its form with length,breadth,area,height etc and its specific name and designation has to be correlated.All are one .But being stored in different areas by different sense organs these have to be integrated for perfect understanding.So with different disciplines in a sarvagna brain.The astronomy and musicology,the literature and philosophy,medical knowledge etc are stored and integrated in the same way.If you have only one sense developed and one area of brain associated with it developed , the knowledge remain imperfect.One thing reminds on eof another if we have learned both or heard or seen or experienced both .The memory system allows new events and experiences to be integrated to old ones.The present with the past .A map of memory is made so that every time we need it we can recall it .A mother’s image in a child is a combination of her sound,form,colour and moods and love and care and her softness or harshness integrated by all such sense organs and sensory areas.Even if the mother is no more the memory of the mother lives in every adult.Similarly with other loved persons/people/places/subjects etc.The use of this is that long term memories are made indestructible by storing them at different places in the brain.If in a single area of brain,and if that area is damaged,entire memory will be eradicated with one stroke.
According to Diana Deutsch experiment (California uty Santiago)when neutral sound tracks were presented to volunteers repeatedly the listeners started to hear voices that were not on the track.She thought it is subjective reflecting the listeners current state of mind.She likened this to Rorschhach inkblot test in which people see meaningful images in a randomely splashed blob of ink.Women hear words of a romantic nature whereas men do not and people hear the words in their native language more than an alien language .But this is not true.People can hear words which they have never heard before in another language and also before they have learned anything at all,in infancy itself.From where does the sounds come form a chaos of sounds to create a balance ?Why listeners hear only words which are meaningful to them?Deutsch played listeners two different pitched test tones that are separated by a time interval during which other tones are heard.Under these test conditions the listeners found it difficult to tell whether the two test tones are the same or different in pitch ,even though they can ignore the other tones.But when spoken words are presented during this interval instead of other tones ,most listeners had no trouble recalling the pitch of earlier tones.This experiment showed a striking dissociation between musical tones and spoken words in memory and indicated that separate memory stores are responsible for retaining different aspects of sound.

Pictures of overtime memories encoded in outer cortical areas of brain(sound and words in temporal cortex in red) and working memory in frontal lobes pulling out and selecting long term memories to guide current actions (red colour )

Subsystems within the system of memory:-
All the subsystems work in close relation and are interactive and integrated.The declarative memories are those about which we can talk about and bring to mind consciously.But memory is more than that.We have a vast store of learned information that is not consciously learned and without which we would be lost forever.

1Episodic memory:- Are replays of personal experiences of events especially of sounds and sights .Therefore the individual is the center of these memories.Personal memories of sounds and sights of each individual is person centered.They are unique to each person.They may infold with time as if in a movie or may be like a sudden flashback.
In Music therapy when we assess the musical life panorama(MLP)of an individual we are starting with this type of memory.How episodic memory works?It though appearing as a mental act is reproducing a physical state that the person was in when the event occurred.That is ,when a old man remembers a music which he loved in his teens the physical state of that age is being recreated in his brain cells .The same type of firing of neurons happen and the cell returns to a younger state.Thus the person gets invigourated as if in youth and feels healthy.The experience of the youth is relived in brain .But it is not a hallucination but a remembering of a healthy past ,a re-living of most cherished days of life giving same state of happiness which takes one away from the stress of life.The two hemispheres of brain are connected by a thick band called corpus callossum.This allows information sharing between left and right hemispheres.Episodic memories are suffused with emotions.Semantic memories do not have that emotional content.The episodic memory therefore requires more inputs from right hemisphere.(Which specialize in emotional aspects of perception).The role of right hemisphere in episodic memory enhancement is demonstrated ,and people by hereditary reasons having more fibres in corpus callosum bring more right hemisphere information to bear on what they remembered.Since both hemispheres work together ,people with more communication fibres remember emotional events better than they remember facts .

2.Semantic memory:- Laying down and retrieving of facts .For example the fact that mangoes come from mango trees and coconut from coconut tree and New Delhi is India and Kennedy was US President etc are memories of all alike and it has no personal episodic nature.The memory of me and you are alike in such facts.
The personal built-in encyclopedia of knowledge differ in individuals.Yet a person remembering a scientific or geographic fact need not be emotioanally connected to it.You don’t know how you learned or knew it.Somehow you have learned it and now you can state it as a fact .The same event is thus described as a fact as well as an experience emotionally connected(the language of a scientist and that of a poet/artist) by the same person.The hook is usually in the languge area of the brain ,in the left hemisphere in majority of people .Language is the area where people hold factual information and semantic memory.
So the episodic and semantic memories ,though treated as separate categories are very closely related .Semantic memory as core piece of information is left,when the context in which it is learned(the emotional personal side or episodic memory )has faded away.Hippocampus is the area of semantic memory.Word storage is in the left hemisphere.Because it was first learned as an episodic memory ,complete and perfect with emotional ,sensory content and hippocampus is needed for firing up sensory areas in brain.While learning for the first time we are emotionally attached to the word Amma(mother) to all the sensations we associate with her but in adulthood it is extracted as a fact or a language term devoid of emotional relationships.(As a known or collection of letters).An emotion thus becomes a fact .When we ask the person to remember the MLP ,/or when we play a tune that the person liked in his/her childhood ,the hippocampus is springing back into action and recollecting all emotions that were associated with the first learning process.This helps in persons with severe memory loss to rewind the memory and recollect the language and motor skill associated with it too.
3.Working memory:-Capacity to hold information in ones mind long enough to work out what to do with it.For example keeping a telephone number long enough to dial it.Most of our day to day tasks are based on working memory which sorts out our thoughts ,guides our actions,organize cognitive processes so that we can do several motor as well as sensory functions at the same time.
The brain have short term and long term plans to be executed.The memories of what has to be done at each level,how to do them,have to be kept warm until the act is accomplished.If we forget what a cofffejar is and how to open it and what to do with it suddenly ,you will hold it and gaze at it without any action.Sometimes this happens with old people.In day to day working schedules they forget what they are doing and how to do it .Working memory is situated in front of the brain and has 3 main components .
One is a tiny spot that holds the main plan in mind ,the information needed for the rest of the brain to complete the task.We can call it the central executive.There are two neural loops that keep the main components of the plan conscious by repeating the pattern of activity that matches them.One of these holds verbal information and the other holds visual information.(Sruthy and darsana in Sanskrit).These are like scratchpads or black boards that can be wiped after doing the task ,so that next task is done.If the item is very very important it is relayed to hippocampus for processing into proper memory.But if it is an information like pick up the cofeecup,it is done and then it is simply thrown out and replaced by next command.
The scratchpads of working memory can hold between 5 to 7 items a time and in some experiments it was only 2 to 3.Very short term memory is related to intelligence.Like a computer with larger working memory solve problems more quickly,people with greater brain capacity to hold images in brain are expected to have better reasoning power and problem solving skills.
Working memory lasts for 30 seconds only.The emotionally significant things are sent to hippocampus for processing as long term memory while emotionally boring things are sent out within 30 seconds .
4.Procedural memory.The which allow us to carry out actions everyday without having to think about it much consciously.For example most of the motor functions like walking,swimming,bathing etc are procedural memories we do without much thoughts due to long term practice rather unconsciously.
The procedural memory is unconscious.The “how to “ knowledge that allows us to make physical movements,the acoustic knowledge of pitches and sounds are all learned in this way unconsciously .Learning to distinguish pitch and tone and sound starts in utero.And learnig to walk ,manipulate objects ,feed themselves etc are learned while we are infants unconsciously.What we do as adults are mostly learned by us ,as a race ,unconsciously .That is,they are in the genes of the human race.It is a species memory.But each person has to practice them to perfect them.
But physical skills like typing a letter,driving a car,playing a piano are not in our genes and have to be learned with deliberation and with conscious efforts.
Procedural memories are created and stored in a different way from declarative memories.The raw materials(conscious perceptions)constructed along an assembly line of declarative memory.But that assembly line is only one of the many.A different assembly line carry information through another part of the brain ,the parietal cortex where it is used unconsciously to guide our body to act appropriately.Seeing a cup,picking it up,making coffee,drinking it all are done by sensory and motor co-ordination of the procedural memories rather unconsciously .
There is a part called Putamen in brain which is connected by a complex bundle of nerves to pre-motor cortex, which instructs the body to move in a particular way.Procedural memories are in the putamen.When we undertake a new skill the conscious instructions ar essential.When you first learn to make coffe or to hold a cup ,when you learn to drive a car or pedal a tricycle these work .Learning a skill by repetition is happening .Then once it is learned it is left to the unconscious memories.So ,procedural memories are learned as any other skills or kinds of memory by repetition and later become part of the unconscious memory pool.But whereas event memories are stored and retrieved by hippocampal action,procedural memories are stored in putamen.
5.Implicit memory.This too is unconscious.They affect our actions in subtle ways.Sometimes with no discernible reason we feel uncomfortable in some situations,or in someones presense or we feel happy in someones presence.
Nostalgia,sudden anger,or sudden fear – a strong emotion that influence our behaviour yet cannot be brought consciously to mind –are in the realm of implicit memories.Some of these may be relics of past events.Some may be aspects of past experiences which the person did not realize when it first occurred.The surge of neurotransmitters that occurred at the first event/experience and all neuronal activity associated with it including processing is amplified suddenly.The original event is forgotten but this remnant of strong emotion that occurred at first sight or first hearing of a sound persists bringing about a implicit memory later on.Most of our likes and dislikes (love and hae)relationships with strangers are actually due to this.The deeply buried context-dependent memories are brought to surface as nostalgic love or fear or anger etc.
One example of implicit memory published by French physician Edourd Claparede (1911) was of a patient with amnesia.The patient never recollected his earlier visits.The doctor had a pin in his right hand when he visited the patient once and when they shook hands the pin might have hurt the patient .The next time the doctor visited,when they were trying to shake hands the patient did not wish to shake hands but he did not recognize the doctor since his amnesia was not cured.that shows the patient remembered the pinprick but not the doctor.
I will give another curious example of a case of trauma victim who lost consciousness and memory.He was a college student from Devagiri college.He was totally in amnesia and could not recognize his own father or sister .When the neurosurgeon visited the patient on the third day the boy started to speak of Shakespeare and his plays and his birthplace .Every body thought he was incoherently speaking .But the neurosurgeon said that he is regaining his power of memory and will be alright within a day.How did the neurosurgeon say that ? My husband Dr Udayabhanu explained it like this . This neurosurgeon was called Shakespeare Kumar during his college days due to his physical resemblance to the great poet. When the boy started to recite Shakespeare during his visit,the doctor recollected his college nickname and knew that the boy is able to memorise the picture of Shakespeare or image of Shakespeare form his memory and that had triggered his speech on Shakespeare so that the brain is on its right track of memory. Recognising a face from unconscious familiarity is known among experimental psychologists as the priming effect.The boy became normal within two days .
Implicit memories need not affect long term behaviour.
If a person can hear a familiar and loved and emotionally important music and then recall all the positive memories associated with it ,a string of such positive memories will by themselves start a self-healing process in music related activities of therapy.

How to build up a strong memory? Samuel Johnson said:-The true art of memory is the art of attention.
By attention or Sradha one enhance memory as well as learning .. But attention is an automatically captured rather than deliberately applied thing.Only if it is an interesting and catching attention thing we pay attention to it.Music is such a thing for entire human race .No other discipline can boast of such a universal attention from all alike.Music is emotionally related to our brain right from the time we are within the womb of our mother.
How can we correlate memories,emotions,and brain chemicals ?
Table 2
Thus different types of emotions and memories are linked with brain hormones.And a love or compassion generates oxytocin (the love hormone)while a stress hormone produced by negative emotions and memories.

Age-related memory loss:-
We can have a perfect replay of our life only if we can find the stored files when we need it ,in correct times.We forget a name on the tip of our toungue.The thing we want most from a supermarket shelf.The safe place we have kept a important document,or the car key or the salt bottle in the kitchen shelf.This sort of memory failures increase with age.
The younger people recall minute details of recent events,names etc .The older people are better in recalling external details which are having less details of recent event but general factual information which is extended knowledge about it .This is the wisdom of experience.In the history of human race the first hunter-gatherers and first cultivators had to remember and learn certain things.The youngsters had to learn how to thrust a spear,which tree to climb and how to pluck fruits ,and how to plough a field sow seeds etc.The youngsters of a seafaring tribe had to learn the spatial intelligence and vibration mechanics of the ocean quite early.The youngsters relied upon elders for knowing where the prey was most likely to be found,and in which season,and where certain fruits and leaves and trees are seen and in which part of year they grow best,the monsoon winds and its vibratory changes in ocean and the selection of seeds according to soil and climate and winds and seasons etc.That is on a wisdom based on previous years of experience,probably experience of generations of human races,which goes beyond the event of hunting,gathering fruits and making foodgrains itself.

The difference in memory is a general shift in the style of cognition.As the brain ages it shifts workload to distribute it evenly across both hemispheres of brain .It is just like using both hands to lift a heavy object rather than lift it with just one hand.This is a compensatory or balancing act for muscles of hands.Like that the use of both hemispheres is a balancing act .
The tasks that older people find difficult:-
Attending to a specific thing for example ;learning a new list of things without being distracted
Learning a new thing
Retrieving names and words on demand
Recalling details of past events clearly

By way of compensation they are better than younger people in :-
Making sense of new information by placing it in a meaningful context
Finding alternative words or phrases for a forgotten word
Using memories of a specific situation to draw general conclusions.
The elderly draw on both hemispheres to solve a problem while the young ones use only that specific area of brain suited for that task.Left hemisphere is best in perceiving and thus recalling details.Right hemisphere is best for looking at the whole situation .
When a person look at the figure below


One person concentrates on the L shape and another on the D or the details.The first is confined to right and the second to left hemisphere.The combined view of both hemispheres will make a complete perfect picture.The young and old people represent the two aspects and a combination of both makes up a perfect view of a nation and therefore both aged and younger individuals are both needed for any nation for problem solving.

Can you remember any event before age of three?Majority do not remember anything before three years .So lack of memory is there even in younger people.The toddlers learn hundreds of new exciting things and words a day and all these have been forgotten by them in teenage ,though it remains as a nostalgic emotion and surfaces again in old age .So old age is a second infancy.Autobiography is a memory which places an abstract version of ourselves within events that are recalled.Our past self is part of that memory and the feeling it gives of being there makes the autobiography distinct from a narrative of a story from a cinema or drama. Very young infants are good story tellers but they cannot create an autobiography because the brains have not matured sufficiently to form a necessary model of themselves.They do lay down events but they cannot recall it at will in an orderly way.
The older brains are becoming like that of an infant .The frontal lobes are susceptible to non –Alzheimer’s age-related degeneration and this makes the elderly less able to lay down new autobiographical memories.If proper mental exercise is there (just like muscular excercise0disuse atrophy does not happen to brain cells so that the loss of memory is not an inevitable thing.All people need not develop it.
The prefrontal cortex distinguish us from other mammals.It is the last part of brain to evolve in humans and last area to mature in an individual.It combines current perceptions with past memories to make judgements and decisions.In this process it creates a model of world in which it places oneself and thus guide our ations just like a road map for a journey.The right prefrontal cortex is more involved in producing an autobiographical smrithy which includes the sense of self.The left one contains memories that does not include the personal element.When we recognize an image of ourselves the right prefrontal cortex is activated.When we look at another rface this part is not activated usually.(A differentiation or the mine ,yours exists).And when the right hemisphere see the self in all as the Upanishads and Geetha says ,a integration and synthesis and a wisdom of oneness of entire creation happens.
When the hippocampus is injured by a stroke or any other reason the the navigation area of brain is lost and the ability to lay down new roués (of neuronal channels)is lost .But memories of places they knew years before,memories of music which they loved in their childhood etc may remain quite clear because they are in the cortex in the long term memory area.This fact is made use of when we get the MLP of a person from the relatives and we are trying to evoke such old memories and rewind the pools of memory.
ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a condition in which the brain’s natural impulse to scan the environment for information 9flitting attention from one thing to another in quick succession)cannot be controlled.We control the roaming by chithavrithinirodha (as in Yoga terminology) and by this we concentrate on a particular subject and learn it thouroughly and then shift to next in our younger ages .In adult stage once we have mastered the attention process and concentration,we can shift attention from one to another as and when necessity comes.Th ebest example I can give is a Pathologist’s day to day activity.
A experienced pathologist shifts attention from one diagnostic material to another with perfect control.The first slide may be a lesion of the liver and the second a lesion of kidney and a third that of lymph node and fourth that of skin and so on.With perfect ease one shifts from one to another after giving proper attention to each and solving each problem.
.People with ADHD cannot do this type of attention and concentration on a subject and then after solving a problem shift attention to the next with control.Their attention wanders from one to naothe rwithout concentration on anything. 2 to 6 % people have a difficulty in remembering numbers alone and this is called dyscalculia ,the numerical equivalent of dyslexia.
A small patch of cortical cells behind the ear,on fusiform gyrus of brain is called face area since this is activated by human faces.When this is lost the person fails to recognize even the dearest people (like daughter or son).
People who are tone deaf are not deaf to tones .They just cant tell them apart.People who are colourblind just cant tell colours apart .Similarly a person who has lost function of face area do see faces but cannot tell them apart .
Total amnesia occur when all memories are wiped out.
Retrograde amnesia:-One cannot recall memories that occurred before amnesia.
Anterograde amnesia:- cannot remember incidents that happened after onset of amnesia.


Table 3



Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder when a person cannot forget the appalling traumatic experience.The symptoms are
Nightmares
Flashbacks
Memory and concentration problems
Jitteriness and overreaction to ordinary events
Inappropriate fear and alertness constant anticipation of danger
Intrusive memoriesavoidance
Being startled at things that most people would ignore for example a rustle in the leaves
Extravagant reaction to mildly perilous event for example a funfair ride is treated as a lifethreatening event.
Which is the brains best witness of truth or lie –detector /Is it darsna or sruthy?Is it the visual cortex or the auditory regions?
Indian sages were very accurate when they said sruthy as best for any pramaana of doubtful cases.Harward university researchers of Massachussets found that auditory regions of brain are more accurate and active during accurate recognition than the visual cortex which sometimes gave mistaken or inaccurate results .Although a mind in conscious or jagrad state make mistakes about what is seen,the unconscious areas that actually sensed the original are not fooled.

Jamais vu is a condition opposite to Déjà vu .Here instead of being familiar with a totally strange one,person feels unfamiliar in most familiar surrounding and fail to recognize own kith and kin.They ask who are you to a daughter ,son ,or husband or wife with whom they have spent entire life .
All these things a music therapist will come across when they start practicing with real life situations.It is not just singing for a elite group of rasikas alone.It is working with people who suffer from various conditions and help in a most efficient and possible way to reduce their suffering.
Age associated memory impairment (AAMI)and Alzheimer’s disease.
Table 4
Naama and roopa of a person /object /world and its linking for knowledge:-
The naama and roopa is the prapancha or world.And the linking of the two happens best when we are in sushupthy when the knowledge or gnaana is given as a darsana or internal perception akin to a Samadhi vision .This is the most ancient teaching of India.How does we compare this with modern scientific view?

1.During waking state (jagrad)the name Suvarna and a face of me is registered .This is fed to association area in your brain and to hippocampus.Acetylcholine is high during waking which prevents hippocampus from feeding signals back to cortex.So information is not merged or distorted with other incoming stimuli.Instead they link together and are locked or encoded in hippocampus.
2.During sushupthy(dreamless sleep)Acetyl choline falls and this allow the newly encoded memory to be fed to association cortex.There is no information coming frm outside to cortex.(due to a blockade of all sensory organs in sleep similar to chithavrithinirodha in yoga).The feedback from hippocampus therefore re-triggers neural patterns that were activated during previous waking .Including the sight of my face and its neural pattern corresponding to name suvarna.As these two cortical patterns fire in unison they become linked and the neuronal linkage forges a new connection between the concepts such that if one(the form or face)is triggered ,the other (the name)is likely to fire up too.Thus the name and form is consolidated.In the same way a word and its meaning become consolidated (Vaak and its artha)during sushupthy /Samadhi.Thus Naamaroopaathmaka prapancha is consolidated in sushupthy/Samadhi state by human brain .

Keys for a good memory:-
1.Interest,attention and emotional and personal involvement .
The wider the interests of a person,the more actively one engages with such interests,the denser and richer will be one’s memory network in brain.Thus new information is likely to find a place to lodge in your brain even in old age.
2.ordering our experiences
Experience is doubled by thinking about them.When we make a mental note of an (musical)experience we want to keep (in our brain network/or a notebook for later use)it will focus our attention,organize the information into a form that will make it easy to access later .This enhance memory
3.Repetition and rehearsal:-
Everytime we recall something ,we are fixing it more firmly in our memory.For this the best method is to think of what we want to remember always at the beginning of the day and end of day (The two sandhya ) .Japa is arepetition .In olden times students were doing along with sandhyavandhan,repetition of Gunakoshta(multiplication tables)and other things to be learned like seasons,etc.
4.Learn often,but little by little,step by step.
Give time for brain to assimilate and process new information.Several short sessions,punctuated by periods of review is best for this.By this we are not cramming the brain.
5.Keep socially,intellectually,mentally and physically in touch with likeminded ,good people (Sajjana samgha) called Sathsangha.Avoid contact with people who distract mind and intellect.
6.create memory games from every day experiences itself.
One can remember street names or district names or city names as we travel from one place to another.My father used to encourage this as we traveled by car from Punnayurkulam to Thiruvananthapuram or to Calicut.
Another game which children can do while traveling is to add the numbers on numberplates of vehicles that pass by and quickly decide which is odd and which is even .This will increase our number sense.I used to do this even after my marriage and my husband used to make fun of me for this pastime.
A jigsaw puzzle or a Gnan choupad(Leela)a chathuranga etc were used in ancient times to increase ones attention and problem solving ability.The scrabbles is for increasing vocabulary of children.

Some external aids:-
1 Reminder notes.
List of grocery items for shopping,organization and flow charts for office use,list of things to be done in a special date /week/month/year and so on .Look at them regularly.
Lecture notes and discussion notes of teachers
2.Visualise the colours,forms ,locations in mind when one visits a place or when one has a special musical experience etc .This will be more useful for making a memry connection and recall than a note prepared as a list.
3.An alarm clock or timer.Mobile phone alarms to remind something.
4.Wall planners and electronic organizers
5.Alarm device on keys,purse which you are likely to forget .
6.Labels on cupboards,drawers and on kitchen jars
7.A pill organizer for medication
8.Keep a journal.This is a hobby as well.This help you organize your entire life.
9.Pocket cassette recorder
10.A camere
11.Suppose you have found something very interesting in a new location and you want to measure it .You don’t have a measuring device .The best measuring device is your own hand and feet ,fingers etc.This is notan external aid but is a very valuable aid which you can carry anywhere you go.


When to use an external database?

When you don’t want to clog brain with lot of information which you can store somewhere else.A library is such a storehouse.
A telephone directory
An appointment list made long time in advance
Report of an event
To present a bulletin within a short prescribed time limit on radio or TV or in a speech
A lecture class .The points to make it more sensible
When no time for a rehearsal or repetition,when you are busy ,you can rely upon the note .
One important aspect for remembering things is by the puns which are abundant in all Indian languages as the literature and music suggests.the examples are voluminous and caanot be cited here.The modern use of Onamatopoeia and Mnemonics are used by such ancient authors.
Here I will consider Mnemonics.
When a medical student is taught the preliminaries of clinical medicine he/she is taught (for treatment of fainting):-

If face is red ,raise head
If face is pale ,raise tail.
(This depends upon the blood flow to head ).The rhythm and rhyme in this help student to remember the treatment .This technique was used in all sciences of India (Ayurveda,Jyothisha which show lot of rhyming verses and rhythmic poetry easy to memorise and keep in brain in a oral culture ).Rhythm and rhyme help storage in both hemispheres when combined with language.So music with a vocal literature has this property.When we recall rhythm or tune ,the words/sahitya /language also pop out of it and vice versa stimulating the two hemispheres simultaneously to function in unison.

When we remember our Teacher /Guru ,and the voice of the Guru ,accompanied by the melody ,rhythm,rhyme and emotions that evoked within us,when we first heard him/her ,we are visualizing our first experience with the music and reliving it and recreating the same emotion in us after several years .The voice of mother,her lullaby,her love,care,face and even the smell of her dress come back to an adult when he/she visualizes such an emotional musical experience.It is the same with the musical experience with the Guru.The feeling of ecstacy,security and peace thus recreated from a sound and visualized and experienced again and again become fixed in our memory .That is how the musical life panorama works .
Creating a link:- Before the printing press and recording devices,only oral teaching/instructions were there.This could be achieved only with Mnemonics and visualization of musical lessons/rhyming sloka or sahitya.Brain retain and recall by creating links of language and for this Puns was used.Anotehr very interesting practice was to give a letter a number which was widely used in Astronomy and music of India.Now we use such a device for computer language .So the originator of the binary system as well as attributing number to letter ,both started in human computer brain millennia before the modern devices evolved.
Some methods of using mnemonics:- If you can remember SARCASM you can remember the list of mnemonics techniques .(The first letter of each )
1Sentences/Acrostics;-
To remember the order of the treble clef EGBDF a sentence
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour .
2.Rhymes and songs .
Rhymes,rhythms,melody and repetitions of it aid memory .Therefore music enhance memory.Word in left hemisphere9sahitya)and melody in right hemisphere (sangheetha)a combination is achieved with vocal music using both sangheetha and sahitya.Linking these two effectively so that information spreads equally throughout brain in a balanced way .This technique was a vinoda(leela or play/fun )for learned and creative people of India.But it was also a technique to keep cognition,intellect,memory and traditional knowledge intact through generations of mankind..The rhyme of the song draw auditary memory so that tunes,songs and poems are learned easily (Sruthy).Thus through that sciences and languages are interlinked .

Mnemonics of modern pilots to temperature and pressure drops at low and high altitude is comparable to that of medical students learning technique mentioned above.

High to low ; Look out below.
Low to high; Clear blue sky.

A weather tip:-
Rainbow in morning-Travellers warning
Rainbow at night-Travellers delight.
(Rainbow indicate humid air.In the west in morning a rainbow indicate storm which come from west .In the evening in east it indicate the storm is over and weather is good.)

3.Chunking is for remembering large numbers.One can remember upto 5-7 things at a time.Suppose there is a large number .

044 45500078
It is easy to remember this telephone number by splitting it into three chunks like



44455000 78 .This is my phone number and this is how I remember it .
Suppose it is 64831996
One can split it as 4 easy to remember chunks as
64 83 19 96
Or as three chunks
64 83 1996
Now adding and finding out even or odd is also easy .It is done as a mental exercise quickly.

4.Method of Loci:-
The way in which ancient bards and speakers/orators remembered their music/epics/speeches/commentaries etc.This combines use of organization ,visual memory or visualization and association and hence is a complex procedure achived by human brain.

I will give an exercise here for all readers.This is done in music therapy visualization procedures .
First ask your friend to sing two lines from a poem/song at a slow steady pace ,say one word per second.Concentrate on the words alone and remember.
How many words you can remember just by hearing once?
2.Think of a vast location.Or distance mapped in your memory.Visualise each river,mountain,greenery,each gurgling stream in the landscape.Then listen to the same lines again connecting each word with the landscape scenery one has visualized in order.( A krama or orderly arrangement of words ).Now the traveler know the visual imaginery landscape as well as the location of each on the song.This is how the epics of India are constructed.Almost similar process is used by Austalian aborigines in mapping the long and distant landscapes and geographical places.The Indian epics give landscapes of entire cosmos,of the globe earth and of Indian subcontinent in detail associating each with seasons,plant and animal varieties,fragrances,spices and human nature and customs etc .
The Indian music also has the same technique of relating each raaga with season,time of year and day,of a star,and a graham,to days of week and to human organs and panchabhootha,including living and nonliving objects like jewels etc.If one can know ones birthstar,the animal,plant and graham associated with it,the raaga associated with that star,and with each season,and with the organ of ones body affected by some illness etc ,one can use an assortment of Raaga suited for each for a perfect understanding of the problem and for solution of problem.Thus the method of loci is applied in Raagachikitsa.

5.Acronym :-I had left out the A which is used twice in SARCASM .This is the most common abbreviation that we now use.

Example :- RSPCA is Royal society for prevention of cruelty to animals.

In ancient India Panchadasi was called Lopamudrasuthra (after name of Agastya Rishi).This is a magical square (in which Srinivasa Ramanujan was expert) and this was called LOSu or Losoo.This was known to China from ancient period in this short or abbreviated form itself showing its origin.
Another rexample is Hora.People think that it is an adaptation of the Greek word Hour.But is not so.It is an abbreviation of the word Ahorathra. The first letter A and the last letter thra are removed and the middle word is used in order and in reverse order to create two words .One is Hora(or 15 degree) and the other is Raho or Rahu the node which creates the division of time which is indivisible.It is more likely that hour was derived from Hora because such an acronym practice was there in India.

The way of remembering parts of leg by a zoology student of modern times is :-

Cockroaches Travel Fast Towards Their Children

Coxa,Trochanter,Femur,Tibia,tarsus,claw .That make up an insects legs.
So both ancient and modern man alike use such techniques in learning and our brain has not changed much in the capacity of cognition and memory.And it is possible for one to learn by ancient methods and with music of ancient India which is riddeld with puns and praasa and rhymes,rhythms,repetition of sangheetha and saahitya alike to stimulate all parts of brain and nervous field of all living organisms.It is needed ofr balancing of our health and mind and body as well as intellect and spiritual development to be a perfect individual.

Feeding our brain adequately:- A nutritious food rich in cereals ,fruits,vegetables,nuts and if necessary and unavoidable a little bit of nonvegetarian food and milk,yoghurt etc and less of fats,oils is needed to keep memory acccordingto modern standards.But the use of butter and ghee in infancy and childhood is essential for brain formation and hence in infant diet,milk and milk products is a very important factor.

Can an adult brain grow and have new knowledge storage or memory ?Yes .How ?By synapse formation and synapse plasticity which cause structural and functional correlates of memory ,learning ability and intelligence is the answer of new neurobiology.(Sara Mariani conference report :The biology of memory and learning .Highlights from the annual meeting of the American society of Cell Biology Dec 13-17 ,2003 San Franscisco California .Medscape Molecular medicine 6(1 ) ,2004).By repeated stimuli (repetition )and by experience there is new protein and synaptic synthesis and the remodeling due to experience-dependent plasticity (EDP)leads to long term memory formation has been proved .So japa ,and repetition of the same learning for a period of time (practice)can lead to memory storage for longer periods.And the perpetuation of memory of tradition and culture is based on individual as well as archetypal memory of entire human race .Music and musical memory of India is here utilized for the purpose of improving memory in normal and compromised children for development and in people who have lost memory (amnesia) for retrieval of memory on such principles.

References.
1.Bhagavad Geetha second chapter
2.Keralasahitya Academy journal
3.Music therapy in management ,Education and administration (Readworthy publications New Delhi )
4.Papers of Dr Eric Kandell,Dr Karel Swaboda,Dr Yukiko Goda . Sara Mariani conference report :The biology of memory and learning .Highlights from the annual meeting of the American society of Cell Biology Dec 13-17 ,2003 San Franscisco California .Medscape Molecular medicine 6(1 ) ,2004).

Lec-Dem Music Academy

SYNOPSIS - MUSIC THERAPY

1.Music therapy is An interdisciplinary approach.and part of integrated medicine.When a new discipline is introduced there are some questions we should ask.


1.How does this discipline work ? What are the basic principles ? It works on principles

of ayurveda (thridosha balancing) and yoga.

Is it result oriented or not ? Are there any side effects ? Yes .It is result oriented and there

are no known side effects .

Is this a cost-effective procedure which can be implemented on a mass scale ? yes
2.The basic difference in the principle of Ayurveda and Allopathy medicine


The sound and swara as a dravya having the three guna and balancing of thridosha with it

build up immunity .

No killing of external life forms,only co-existence with them.

Increasing defence by balancing thriguna/thridosha according to the time

./season/day/night

Naada,laya,and yoga principles are incorporated.
Spirituality,physicality,aesthetics,mathematical cosmic order are integrated for physical,mental,intellectual,and spiritual health .But we have to combine the 21st century research methods of allopathy medicine also .

3.Research principles .

To the individual-centered family centered approach we have to include the hospital-based research protocols of Allopathy medicine
Statistics and proper documentation is a must .open approach .Discussions for growth of discipline


5.The physics of Raagachikitsa.
Our receptive sense organ being the ear ,we have to know the physics of hearing.What is good for ear and not.

ATH –Absolute threshold of hearing

S P L –Sound pressure level.

Comparison of dB SPL and distance and origin of sound –(Tables

Above 80-85 decibel is pollution level.So therapy cannot be done above this level.
60-80 is a lecel in a busy office and busy restaurant and most of the modern electronic instruments start from this level.(Can go up .In some traditional instruments can go down also)Usual vocal music is from 20-30 decibel level.30- mother and child in a silent house
20 – forest with rustle of leaves(below 16 and over 20000 are considered inaudible to normal human ear)
10-breath sounds(praanaayama)
0 the silence mouna.It is in silence the yogi hear and see sounds.



6.Four Examples -2 of them hospitalbased. Hospitalbased studies two case histories (personcentered familybased in two age groups ,and in two different situations).


On patients undergoing colonoscopy RCT 78 patients.Oct-2003 to Feb 2004
46 % vocal raagabased
10 % instrumental ragabased
56 %raagabased
Rest bioacoustics(natural sounds)and focal mappilappaattu
Mooladhararaaga majority .73. %
Pain,discomfort and anxiety was less in persons with music .The dose of Drug also less.

On autistic/CP children
Severe cerebral palsy ,brain damage with spasticity.24th Feb 1999(birthdate).Contacted me in 2006.Teacher was giving symphony orchestra.Mother ,a trained classical music singer noticed he responds to classical music and contacted me through a common friend.
In Oct 2009 the boy responds to sapthaswara of Mayamaalavagoula(15th mela).Shouts,make a stop when she stops,when she reach a higher octave he is most active.When she sustains thaarashadja and stress the nishada (sudhanishada)then again go to tharashadja he also makes these notes.
Seeing his improvement now the mother is asked by the teacher to come and help the other children in her school.
Interpretation:-trying to converse with mother musically
Turntaking is being learned.trying to interact with his sounds to the mother that he is recognizing what she communicates musically
First social skill he has learned
Cognition,sign of listening,so slowly brain function is improving .

On alzheimers patients..

On old and young approach is not same.We are trying to rewind memories.The other we are teaching to learn some basic skills.In both role of family is important.In the young the parents ,siblings help.
In the geriatric ,the children,spouse,siblings if they know the musical preferences ,they can help.

On anxiety,blood pressure as pilot projects
On volunteers and clients done.Subjective and objective parameters analysed .Pulse pressure ,difference between systolic and diastolic /Hamiltons anxiety score /significant.The high blood pressures brought down very effectively.Low blood pressures brought to normal,after an initial rise of pressure.

Importance :-for the risk factors of cardiovascular disease,for cerebrovascular strokes,for diabetic complications ,and for professional stress,and domestic stress and for stress related to hospital stay,and cancer chemotherapy etc we can use this.


4.Cosmic time and music .

Chakra ,seasons,ahorathra and raaga . North Indian Thaath and South Indian

Melakartha. Human anatomy according to this division of chakra. (Will show pictures

only .On powerpoint presentation). Bhava and rasa for total laya or layana (merging).


(The presentation done with power point .Demonstration of Subhapanthuvarali raaga ,a composition in Malayalam language was done)