26 Spirituality Studies 9-1 Spring 2023 In our model, an application can be imagined as a being (e.g., deity, asura, human, animal, insect, animate objects, etc.) that lives in a “world” (Sa. loka) created by Prakrti. From a “dualistic” (Sa. apara) point of view, the higher lokas (Woodroffe 2017, 25), such as Satya loka, are inhabited by deities who are willing the help one in one’s sādhanā if one’s maturity is satisfactory enough. Purusa and Prakrti are inseparable so altogether they are viewed in our model as a runtime environment that allows for creating, sustaining and destroying life processes, applications, simply put, beings. Each application is a composition of bytes, just like all the animate and inanimate objects that are the expressions of the spanda (Sa. spiritual dynamism without any movement in itself but serves as a cause of all movements) principle (Vasugupta 2014, xvii, 112). So, a specific byte (e.g., the hexadecimal C3 is the decimal 195) can be considered as a letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, which is a spanda in itself. The only difference that the multiplicity of a byte (8 bits) is not 50, but 256 as 0 and 1 can be represented in 256 different ways on 8 bits, which is a historical foundational data unit of computer architectures. From this point on, the similarity between words, mantras, instructions, or data sequences is inevitable. For example, the byte of C3 can be evaluated as a 1-byte-long instruction (e.g., ret, return) on CISC (i.e., Complex Instruction Set Computers) architectures. Similarly, the “h” (Sa. visarga) letter on its own refers to the specific operation of “reflection” (Sa. pratibimba) (Laksman Joo 2020, 40). However, the mantra of “sauh” comprises three letters “s”, “au”, and “h” just like the 0F 01 D5 (XEND, transaction end) instruction of certain Intel CPUs (i.e., central processing unit). Thus, the entire instruction set of a computer architecture can be viewed as a collection of words (Sa. vāk) or mantras that is capable of expressing the nature of our very existence. Our “attention”, or “cognition” (Sa. jñana shakti) can be viewed as the position of the instruction pointer that tells the CPU what instruction to run next. We could go even further with more subtle details; however, the goal of the paper is only to give a framework to help move forward with a real sādhanā the attempt of which is expanded in the following chapters. 3 Reality Escape Using Sankalpa One of the very first steps to enter the “detached state of mind” (Sa. vairāgya) is to direct one’s attention to a meditation object, for example, a mantra. However, most of the time the mantra is repeated by one’s willpower and effort, which create an extra noise in the process and let the mind wander in its earlier “impressions” (Sa. samskāras). Our goal, however, is to create a well-established approach, where the mind gets automatically absorbed into the “meditation object” (Sa. ekāgra mindset). As we cannot use our logical way of operation here, we have to bend upon on our strong belief coming from nearly all spiritual traditions, that we are also members of a dimensional hierarchy where patrons, angels or other higher beings are willing to react to our request to help us. Thus, we are also going to use their help to resolve our karmic boundaries that disable us to experience a higher state of mind without tamastic adhesives. At this point, we have to make a clear difference between a sankalpa and willpower. While the former is more related to an intention, which can be handled as an asynchronous request where one doesn’t expect an instant response from the recipient (i.e., a deity living at a higher reality) allowing one to relax from the outcome of the process. The latter, however, bounds and leaves one unsatisfied until the result arrives. Another key aspect of yoga sādhanā is to get detached from the results of our actions. One of the most efficient ways to do this is to offer the “fruits of our actions” (Sa. karma phala) to a higher cause or, in our case, a deity. This simple attitude carries various advantages. Firstly, we relax from our expectations even more, thus our sankalpa will be indeed an intention and not a mundane will. Secondly, we give forward something for our chosen deity for the help they give us. Lastly, due to the non-dual nature of “pure consciousness” (Sa. Chit), anything we give forward will get back to us multiplied. If we carefully analyze the nature of this aforementioned process between sankalpa and offer it creates a loop between the native and the deity enabling a continuous resonance between them. Additionally, the separation between the native and deity is only illusionary due to the karmic bondages and limiting powers, the loop takes place within me.
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