Is Everything Random or is There Perfect Order?

Is Everything Random or is There Perfect Order?

Something is Ordered. Something is Not Ordered.

Thank you for listening to my podcast, the Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knoles. Today we’re going to talk about entropy and order. Orderliness and entropy, randomicity versus orderly things.

[00:00:58] And I have to say at the outset that I’m not a physicist and I’m not intending here to redefine all the definitions used in physics, but I am a person of common sense and I know a little bit of physics.

[00:01:12] My own master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had a master’s degree in physics from the university of Allahabad in North India and had a great and deep understanding, as a result of that, of the relationship between experiences in consciousness and the human mind and the laws of physics.

[00:01:37] But let’s not dive into physics right away. Let’s go into some kind of a concept first of what order or orderliness means.

[00:01:47] Order is an interesting concept. It’s one that is not without its biases. If I take a blanket and fold it and place it on the end of the bed, I might look at that compared with the blanket, being all in, here’s the word disheveled, and say, “Well, the blanket now is in an orderly state.” But an orderly state for whom or by what standard?

[00:02:15] There’s a standard that is implicit in my idea of what order means. In the world around us, we have an idea about what kinds of sequences in time and what kinds of arrangements of things, or in some cases, people, in space, spatial arrangements, or sequences of time, equate with the idea of order or orderliness.

[00:02:46] All right, so we have the idea of something is ordered, something is not ordered.

Entropy – Decay

[00:02:52] And then we have another idea of disorder and in science, the word that was coined sometime early in the last century was the word entropy, E-N-T-R-O-P-Y. Entropy. Something entropic means something that is having its order decay, go into decay.

[00:03:16] And so a room that is perfectly ordered will, over a period of time, if you’re using the room, begin to go into disorder and then presumably you have to order it again. And so ordering the room, making the bed and folding the blankets and sweeping the floor and putting everything in their “right places,” this is the idea of order. Order versus disorder.

[00:03:44] Randomicity or randomness are ideas that things are not in a particular sequence, which to me, or to the knower is “orderly.” And so random is another word that has, built into it, certain biases.

[00:04:07] Something is random if something doesn’t have order in it. And so we have our ideas of orderliness, our ideas of randomness or randomicity, as it’s sometimes said in science.

[00:04:22] Randomicity has a relationship with entropy. Entropy is the way in which an ordered state over a period of time, decays and disorder appears.

Advantages of Order vs Disorder

[00:04:37] So let’s look at a few ideas about order that have come up in science. We say that when we have any kind of ordered state that over a period of time, the order declines.

[00:04:53] So let’s just use an analogy. If we park a beautiful brand-new car in our driveway, and we just leave it alone for the next, say, 50 years, probably the car will begin over a period of time to decay and to lose its ordered status. The tires will go flat. The car will turn eventually into a pile of rust.

[00:05:18] And so we would consider the pile of rust to be a disordered state compared with the ordered state and arrangement of all of the particles of steel and the engine parts and the fuel and the tires and all the rest of it that make up the car.

[00:05:33] We have a desire for all of those things to be arranged in such a way from which we can get some mechanical advantage.

[00:05:41] Something that is ordered in a particular way that can bring us a mechanical advantage would be one way of defining the word order, and compared with that, the entropy, that is to say when it starts to fall apart by itself, because there’s no maintenance of any order taking place, then that thing goes into an entropic state and there’s no particular mechanical advantage for us, for the one who is the client of the order.

[00:06:14] And so now we have a concept of a couple of things. There’s a knower, who could be thought of as the client of the perceived state of orderliness. Will there be any kind of advantage to the client of the conceived of ordered state?

[00:06:32] And is there a client of the entropic state? Is there anything that could gain advantage from the entropic state, and some other kind of a picture, perhaps a larger-scale version of time, of sequences, and of who is to benefit from this thing? Order versus disorder.

The Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics

[00:06:55] There’s a field of science known as Thermodynamics. Thermodynamics has to do, particularly, with the behavior of forms and phenomena at certain temperatures.

[00:07:09] And the First Law of Thermodynamics, I’m not going to bother you with, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, we’ve already stated, a thing which is orderly left alone over a period of time, will begin to become disorderly.

[00:07:26] And now we have to look at if there are any exceptions to this.

[00:07:30] And along comes the Third Law of Thermodynamics. Scientists began, during the Victorian era of science, and mostly during the last century and right into this century, to become fascinated by the ways in which the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that states that everything that is orderly over time will decay into entropy, it’ll become entropic, that is to say it will lose as orderly status and its advantages mechanically…

[00:08:02] And the Third Law of Thermodynamics comes along and says, if you take a system and reduce its temperature, if you make it colder, then elements of order may begin to increase.

[00:08:19] In fact, you can reverse disorder in certain fields, and in certain forms and phenomena, if you simply decrease the temperature.

[00:08:29] Now I have to say right here that decreasing temperature means, in the rawest physical terms, to decrease the excitation of a system. To make the excitation less and less and less.

Absolute Zero

[00:08:42] And scientists have studied the phenomenology of the movement of atoms becoming less and less and less at lower and lower temperatures, so excitation, decreasing and decreasing, and a formulation is made regarding what is the least-excited state, the coldest state, the state with the least amount of atomic movement that can take place, available anywhere in the universe.

[00:09:13] And it turns out that this thing has a name. Absolute zero.

[00:09:19] Absolute zero is a theoretical state. It’s a state that is equivalent to negative 459.67 Fahrenheit or negative 273.15 Celsius. But absolute zero temperatures are measured in another scientific temperature measurement system referred to as Kelvin. Kelvin has absolute zero at zero.

[00:09:49] Absolute zero is a state of coldness that, though it theoretically exists, has never actually been achieved.

[00:09:58] The processes of refrigerating things to levels of coldness that are cold enough to reach near about absolute zero, these processes of refrigeration all require energy. And it was discovered very quickly, and I’m now giving you decades of research into refrigeration techniques in a matter of a few seconds in sentences, that as you keep approaching absolute zero, the amount of energy that it takes to reach the next reduction of even 1/1000th of a degree Celsius is something like a thousand times more energy of refrigeration energy than it took to achieve the last one degree.

A Theoretical State

[00:10:45] So with each progressive fraction of a degree in the direction of absolute zero, the amount of refrigeration that it takes in order to make a thing even colder increases exponentially, not just geometrically, but exponentially.

[00:11:03] Thus it’s been calculated that to reach actual absolute zero the amount of energy that it would take to refrigerate any form to that cold temperature would be more than all of the energy in all of the stars in all of the billions of galaxies that exist in the entire, known universe.

[00:11:27] That means that absolute zero is a theoretical state. It can’t quite be achieved. Things have been brought down to close to absolute zero, and I’d like to just describe to you a few phenomena that we have noticed when close enough to absolute zero has been reached in certain forms.

Helium as a Superfluid

[00:11:46] Helium under normal room temperatures is a gas, which we all know is lighter than air. You may have even played around with helium when you were a kid. If you get a helium balloon and let the gas go into your voice box, then your voice suddenly gets higher because the helium is so thin compared with air that it makes your vocal cords vibrate at a much faster vibration rate than the regular atmospheric air does.

[00:12:16] When you put helium into a container like a balloon, because that container is now filled with something that is lighter than air, then it will start to float in air. If you let go of it, it’ll float up to the ceiling or keep floating up into the sky, with certain limitations.

[00:12:33] And so helium, as a lighter than air gas, it’s a very thin substance at room temperature. When you bring helium down to close to absolute zero, it ceases to be a gas. It turns into a thing called a superfluid.

[00:12:52] It makes a phase transition, a sharp phase transition, from gas into a fluid state. But this fluid, superfluid helium, is a very, very interesting thing to observe.

Uncontainable

[00:13:07] For one thing, you can’t contain it. The atoms of helium in superfluid helium are trying to do something it appears. It appears that they’re trying to spread themselves one atom thick over every surface.

[00:13:26] Instead of being contained with any verticality at all, the atoms of helium are trying to spread out horizontally, with reference to gravity, over whatever the horizontal surfaces are in which it exists.

[00:13:41] An atom is an incredibly small thing and so a very small amount of helium could, theoretically, spread itself over a very vast surface. And it appears to try to do that.

[00:13:52] So for example, if you take superfluid helium and put it into a jar, then the helium will creep up the sides of the jar, find its way through the screw threads of the lid of the jar and make its way out of the jar and spread itself one atom thick, right over every surface that’s outside the jar. Provided that all of this is in a contained space that’s kept at very close to absolute zero.

Zero Viscosity

[00:14:20] Helium in it’s superfluid status has, what we call, zero viscosity. A thing is viscous to the extent, relative to how hard it is to stir it. So, think of honey and you put a spoon into the honey and try to stir it and it resists the stirring.

[00:14:43] And so the honey is relatively viscous compared with a glass of water, where you can place a spoon in the glass of water and stir it with, relative to the honey, a lot less resistance.

[00:14:57] What about a glass of just air? A glass with nothing in it, as we would say, but it’s actually got atmosphere in it. Put a spoon into that and stir it and there seems to be no resistance at all, relative to water, relative to honey.

[00:15:12] But in fact, scientifically, there is a difference between the viscosity of air in a glass and the viscosity of water and honey. So the viscosity of air in a glass seems to be very little to you, but it can actually be measured.

[00:15:27] Of course, if you stir air at a fast enough speed, you would discover that there was resistance to it. And in fact, we rely upon this for airplane propellers to get any traction moving through the air. That’s another subject.

Zero Resistance

[00:15:43] What is the viscosity of superfluid helium? When we take helium and cool it right down to it’s close to absolute zero temperature, it becomes a superfluid, and that superfluid has exactly zero viscosity. That is to say it’s resistance to stirring is zero. It has no resistance in it. It is a frictionless material.

[00:16:12] It provides no friction, but also it provides zero traction. Zero friction, zero traction, zero viscosity, and, as a superfluid, attempts to spread itself one atom thick in a layer right across whatever horizontal surfaces are around it.

Lead as a Superconductor

[00:16:34] Let’s look at another element that makes a sharp phase transition into a highly ordered state when it gets close to absolute zero.

[00:16:44] If I were to take a lead bar, a bar of lead, and stick the end of it into an electrical outlet, a socket that had relatively high voltage in it, if the lead bar was about three or four feet in length, then that lead bar, I’d be safe holding it. It will not conduct electricity very well.

[00:17:08] The electricity enters the end of the bar and it finds that the atomic arrangement in the lead is not conducive to conductivity. The electricity will only conduct a very short distance in lead. And so you could hold a lead bar by one end and stick it into an electrical socket and not be electrocuted if it was long enough.

[00:17:30] But if you take lead and you cool it and cool it and cool it down to near about absolute zero, then lead becomes a superconductor. The lead, unlike other metals at the same temperature of near about absolute zero, lead, very specifically, becomes a superconductor when it makes its phase transition into what we’re going to call quantum mechanical behavior.

[00:17:56] Superfluidity is quantum mechanical behavior, we’ll get into that in a minute, and superconducting lead is also quantum mechanical behavior.

Infinite Electrical Circulation

[00:18:07] Superconducting lead provides exactly zero resistance to the flow of electrical current. At room temperature gold has very high conductivity. Copper is also very conductive metal material. But compared with those things, super-cold lead is a superconductor. It will conduct electricity with no resistance whatsoever.

[00:18:34] If we take lead and form it into a donut shape and cool it down to superconducting temperature, close to absolute zero, and we place a small battery current into the circular donut-shaped lead, that electrical current, provided the temperature stays very low, will continue to circulate around the lead infinitely.

[00:18:58] That is to say it will never lose that charge, because there’s no resistance whatsoever to the electrical current. Whereas if you put an electrical current into a copper donut wire, then it will lose its voltage over a period of time because there’s a certain amount of resistance to the electrical current, and you’d have to keep recharging it.

[00:19:20] Superconducting lead has zero resistance to an electrical charge passing through it. It’s a superconductor and with superconductors you can make very fancy things.

Levitation

[00:19:32] If you make an electromagnet out of a superconducting lead, then that electrical force, it produces a positive and a negative either repulsion or attraction value, and you can use the repulsion value in superconducting lead to cause a thing literally to float or to levitate, if it is an opposing value of charge put against another opposing value of charge.

[00:20:01] If you were, as a child, ever fascinated, by the way that you could take two magnets and they would attract to each other, if you held the poles of the magnets in the right way together, if you turn them around, you’d feel the magnets pushing apart. That is that magnetic force of repulsion that can be harnessed.

[00:20:22] Using superconducting lead and keeping it a very cold temperature, two poles pushing apart would actually create a force where the two objects that were being treated in this way wouldn’t be able to touch.

[00:20:37] And so an entire train, for example, can be levitated off of a track using superconducting magnetic technology. No matter how heavy the train is, it can’t press down and cause those two poles to make connection.

[00:20:53] So there are lots of practical outcomes from the reduction of entropy in an item.

[00:21:00] Entropy, according to the Third Law of Thermodynamics, decreases when we decrease temperature, when we decrease excitation. So we have to keep in mind that excitation and temperature are the same thing from a physics point of view.

Restoring Order Through Vedic Meditation

[00:21:18] Let’s take a quick look at the effect of meditation. We have a certain state of consciousness where our thoughts are perhaps, relative to the way we’d like them to be, not ordered in sequence, this is outside of meditation, and perhaps not ordered in the sense of there being, not just a sequential elaboration of thought, but spatial, that is to say, at what particular parts of the mind are the thoughts laden into our awareness.

[00:21:52] So somebody with a disordered mind sits and practices Vedic Meditation. They introduce the mantra, and the mantra is that meaningless, but very sympathetic resonant sound that is used in the practice of Vedic Meditation. Different mantras work more resonantly with certain people than others do. And so people receive a mantra that has a sympathetic vibration or resonance with the thinker of it.

[00:22:21] And then innocent, effortless use of the mantra, with a very particular technique, emphasizing effortlessness, will cause the mind to decrease its excitation. When the mind decreases it’s excitation, the body goes into a state of deep restfulness.

[00:22:40] That deep and profound restful state of the body is identified as a state that allows the body to restore its balance, to restore its order. A living system, which is exposed to high excitation, loses orderliness very quickly.

A Superconscious State

[00:22:59] A living system that is exposed to lower states of excitation, temporarily through meditation, we typically recommend people practice their meditation for about 20 minutes each morning, and about 20 minutes each evening, the mind going to those more highly ordered states, those less excited states, has a body that follows it into those highly ordered states.

[00:23:24] And so we have the situational effect of meditation where our mind reaches its least-excited state, it’s zero-entropy state, when we “transcend.” To transcend means to step beyond the thinking process entirely.

[00:23:42] Then the mind goes quantum mechanical. The mind makes a phase transition into that superconscious state. It’s a state of super consciousness. Super in this case means beyond.

[00:23:54] So superconscious, that means going beyond regular human waking state into a superconscious state. A state that is conscious, but beyond the specificity of being conscious only of a particular category of thought. Going into a state that is free of thought, in which there is zero friction, in which there is superfluidity of the mind.

The Physiological Advantage of a Meditator

[00:24:20] When the mind touches that state, momentarily, in meditation, then the body reaches its own relatively least-excited state, that equates with deep, deep restfulness. The disorder that has been introduced into the body in the form of overloads of experience that cause distorted memories in the cells, these are stresses in the cells of the body, the cells of the body, in their least-excited state are able to restore order, to restore perspective, to restore balance.

[00:24:57] And this restoration of balance that is acquired in that highly rested, least-excited physiological state is the physiological advantage that meditators get from practicing their technique.

[00:25:10] And we refer to this in terms of the release of entropy or release of stress from the human physiological condition.

[00:25:18] And so then the mind, when it returns back to the challenges of daily life, outside of meditation, brings with it a body that has had restoration applied to it through de-exciting the body.

Professor Ilya Prigogine and the Thermodynamics of Living Systems

[00:25:33] For those of you who might be interested in the laws of thermodynamics as they apply to living systems, I strongly recommend that you read whatever popularizing work you can find on the work of Ilya Prigogine.

[00:25:51]Professor Prigogine was a Belgian scientist who, in the 1970s, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in the thermodynamics of living systems. And Prigogine basically asserted the idea that living systems are able to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

[00:26:12] Let’s remember the Second Law states that everything just left to its own devices goes into decay. But living systems seem to have a means whereby, through resting, through decreasing excitation, they can restore orderliness and bring order back into being, and thereby a living system can go into a restorative mode, heal itself, and be back online and develop itself and be ready for activity again.

[00:26:43] Whereas something like a car that’s just sitting and rusting, on its own doesn’t have this ability to self restore. A living system does.

[00:26:53] And Prigogine goes into quite a bit of detail about how he thinks this occurs through the application of the Third Law of Thermodynamics, to decrease the excitation systematically in a living system, is part of a living system’s restorative mechanism whereby it’s able to get itself back online and, as it were, heal itself in order to have a period of longevity.

[00:27:17] So for as long as that living system exists, it has the ability to restore, which defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and it must do so by applying the Third Law is Prigogine’s  argument.

Is There Such a Thing as Disorder and Order?

[00:27:29] So let’s now look at whether there are such things as, from the largest possible perspective, and from a completely impartial point of view, I’m not going to use the word objective, I’m going to say impartial…

[00:27:44] From an impartial point of view is there such a thing as disorder and order? Is there such a thing as entropy versus perfect orderliness? Is there such a thing as randomicity? Is there randomicity in what we call disordered states?

[00:28:05] And for this, we have to really exercise our consciousness somewhat.

[00:28:10] When the mind goes regularly to the least-excited state during the practice of Vedic Meditation, when the mind transcends regular consciousness, makes the quantum leap, the phase transition into superconsciousness, into the transcendent state…

[00:28:30] And we’re going to call this a fourth state of consciousness because it’s physiologically completely distinct from the waking state and all of its physiological signatures. It is physiologically distinct from the dreaming state and all of its physiological signatures. And it is physiologically distinct from the sleeping state and all of its physiological signatures. This fourth distinct wakeful hypo-metabolic state is a fourth condition, different to waking, dreaming and sleeping.

Suspending the Second Law of Thermodynamics

[00:29:01] When the mind touches that transcendent state, we do see a decrease in entropy, a decrease in order, by the means through which we measure these things. The ordered state is restored and the “entropic state” is decreased dramatically during the meditation period.

[00:29:21] And so we have this fourth state of consciousness regularly applied, creating this suspension from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, from the entropy or disorder of the state.

[00:29:36] Now let’s look at what happens if we continue practicing Vedic Meditation regularly. As we regularly, systematically, on a daily basis, twice a day, experience that least-excited state, meditators begin to report that they, as it were, awaken that least-excited state, that once upon a time was available only if you went beyond or transcended the thinking process.

[00:30:03] That least-excited state has a status of its own that can be experienced simultaneously with, in the very beginning days of meditation, along with very faint thinking, and so one can feel, “I have ‘transcended’ thought, and there’s a part of my mind, which is in that state of just pure Being, but there’s another part of my mind, which is at the same time, experiencing some slight thinking.”

Superconsciousness Coexisting With Specificity Consciousness

[00:30:34] Very, very faint thinking can coexist with the state of Being. So we have a superconsciousness state coexisting with specificity consciousness.

[00:30:47] Co-existing with thought sequences, co-existing with, provided that they’re not too strong, this coexistence can be noticed by meditators somewhere in the six-month to one-year range of practice of Vedic Meditation, people begin to report this, that “I’m having, thinking along with the state of Being and what is that?”

[00:31:08] And the meditation teacher typically will answer, “Well, you’re beginning to develop the ability to have that simultaneity of consciousness.” And what is our explanation of that?

Multitasking 

[00:31:17] For this, we have to use a neurological model that describes the way in which our human brain likes to have its cake and eat it too.

[00:31:27]When we were little children, we may not have been able to walk, but also carry a younger sibling on our shoulders and also walk. We could just walk and that was it. We may not be able to walk and carry a toy at the same time. We may not be able to walk and speak distinctly.

[00:31:48] But with practice our brain develops the capacity to do all of these things with simultaneity. Things which our brain learns to do one thing at a time, only in sequence, you can do this but not that, the brain doesn’t like that.

[00:32:05] Our brain likes to be able to use its plasticity, which is a scientific term for the way that the brain can learn how to combine and permute functions so that you can do two things at once.

[00:32:19]The common term that’s used for this in the non-scientific parlance, is the word multitasking, to be able to do both things simultaneously, where both of them can be done with just as great efficiency as they could be done if they were done just on their own.

Learning to Drive

[00:32:38] So you can drive a car. You learn how to drive the car. Look in this mirror, look in that mirror. Look in that mirror. Three mirrors to look into. Watch the speedometer. Watch the road ahead of you.

[00:32:49] Think of the speed. Remember what your feet are doing. Right foot on the accelerator pedal, left foot just sitting alone, unless you’re driving a standard manual shifting thing, which it makes it even more complicated.

[00:33:01] The brake is over there, the accelerator’s over there. Listen to the engine, listen to the gears.

[00:33:06] Now, if the driving instructor were to say to you, “Would you like to listen to me give a lecture on a Bach Cantata, which I’m going to play to you on the car’s musical playing thing while I’m teaching you to drive?”

[00:33:18] The answer of the young driving student is going to be, “No, thank you very much. I’d prefer just to drive, thank you.”

[00:33:25] But given enough practice in driving, and one gets one’s learner’s permit and beginner’s license, and then the more advanced, full license, and then you become more and more professional at driving, you don’t think about driving anymore.

Relegation

[00:33:38] A phenomenon known as relegation has occurred where your brain, if you’re a good driver, has relegated the entire phenomenology of driving to a secondary function that does not require primary awareness at all times.

[00:33:56] One of course has to keep one’s eyes on the road but, above and beyond that, one could give a very elaborate lecture, like the lecture I’m giving right now, while driving perfectly functionally. And perhaps even with some music in the background.

[00:34:11] And so then the capacity to do many things at once is a gift of the neuroplasticity of the brain.

[00:34:19] The brain loves to learn how to combine and permute activities with the specific goal of simultaneity. To be able to keep all things going simultaneously, as many things as possible.

Our Brain is a Massive Computer

[00:34:34] Our brain is designed to do this. Our brain is a massive computer. Its capacity to compute is almost beyond imagination.

[00:34:45] Inside of our cranial brain, that is to say, the part of the brain that exists inside the cranium, 10 to 12 billion neurons working with trillions of inter-neuronal connections. But if we look at the entire brain, the central nervous system outside the cranium, outside the skull bone, we have about a hundred billion neurons working for us and trillions and quadrillions of potential inter-neuronal connections to give us the talents of, the gifts of neuroplasticity, where we can subconsciously, semi-consciously and fully consciously, engage in a vast variety of functions, with the whole goal being to have simultaneity of function. To be able to operate with simultaneity.

[00:35:34] Once our brain recognizes the neurochemical pleasure of transcendence, when we dive beyond, we go beyond thought and we experience that least-excited state, then that least-excited state is accompanied by neurochemical pleasures.

[00:35:51] Our brain begins to produce, for itself, very yummy bliss chemicals. These are chemicals that are associated with heightened consciousness states, with states of extreme satiety and contentedness. And these chemicals give the brain a reward for touching on that superconscious state, once the phase transition into transcendence has been made, but the brain wants even more.

Developing Cosmic Consciousness

[00:36:21] It doesn’t want to have to let go of its superconscious transcendent state, just because it is now time to come out of the 20 minute meditation and re-engage in thinking. And so the brain very rapidly learns how to maintain that least-excited state as a background.

[00:36:42] We think that perhaps an entire echelon of neurons and inter-neuronal connections are assigned to the task of relegating transcendence to a background state, while thinking, in a sequential logical fashion, is now able to occur simultaneously in a foreground state.

[00:37:03] What one is developing here is Cosmic Consciousness. Cosmic means all inclusive. We often think of cosmic either as words written on the side of a hippie VW van, or words that come out of the mouth of somebody who has an orientation to that lifestyle, or cosmic meaning very big.

[00:37:25] But in fact, Cosmic is not simply big. It is smaller than the smallest to bigger than the biggest. It means everything-ness. Cosmic. Cosmic all inclusive.

[00:37:37] Cosmic Consciousness is a translation of a word from Sanskrit, ancient language of the Vedic traditions, that means all inclusive. All-inclusive consciousness.

Transcendence and Thinking Simultaneously

[00:37:51] That consciousness, which progressively develops over a period of time of practice of Vedic Meditation, where the mind begins to have that capacity to maintain a backdrop of pure Being while increasingly complex and increasingly elaborate forms of thinking are superimposed on top of the state of Being.

[00:38:14] This is first noticed during meditation. “While I’m meditating, I begin to notice that, even though I feel transcended, I’m still able to think. But if I think too much, then it overshadows the transcendence. So I continue practicing morning and evening.

[00:38:32] “And then with some practice, I notice that I’m able to have that backdrop of Being right throughout the entire meditation. The mind may be experiencing a variety of thoughts that are coming while meditating and yet there’s this backdrop of Being, so long as I keep my eyes closed.

[00:38:47] “But at the end of meditation, if I open my eyes, then that’s a little bit too much of a perceptual overload and the backdrop state of transcendence may disappear. So I continue practicing morning and evening, morning and evening, developing that inner stability and simultaneity of that state of superconscious transcendence.

[00:39:07] “And what happens eventually is that I can open my eyes at the end of the 20-minute session, and even though I’m thinking, and now with my eyes open and my senses of perceptional stretched out into the room, I’m still in the transcendent state while experiencing the room.

The Fifth Consciousness State

[00:39:23] “But if I get up and walk to the door, perhaps the activity of walking is a little bit too much to handle that, so the transcendence gets overshadowed and I’m back in the regular waking state, when I walk around.”

[00:39:35] Continue practicing morning and evening, morning and evening, and eventually, the superconscious transcendent state is able to sustain itself even when you walk to the door. Maybe it wears off after an hour, but then it wears off after two hours. And then with more practice it wears off not at all.

[00:39:54] From one meditation state to the next, the backdrop of pure transcendence or Being is maintained, along with all activities of waking, and indeed dreaming and sleeping.

[00:40:09] This is the establishment of a fifth consciousness state. So we have waking, dreaming, sleeping states. We talked about them being physiologically distinct, then we have the fourth transcendent state, which is absolutely meditation dependent.

[00:40:25] And then, with practice of meditation regularly, it starts to combine itself, the fourth state combines itself, with waking, with dreaming, and even with sleeping, until eventually a superconscious transcendent condition is noticeable by the meditator 24 hours a day, permeating all consciousness states.

Recognizing Order

[00:40:48] Now we have to get back to our concept of order versus disorder. Of perfect orderliness versus entropic states, in which it’s implied that there’s randomicity.

[00:41:02] As we grow our inner consciousness of transcendence more and more into a stable state where it is no longer transcendental…

[00:41:11] By no longer transcendental I mean, transcendental means you have to step beyond something in order to experience it, but it can’t be experienced simultaneously with other things. It’s beyond. It’s no longer beyond.

[00:41:24] Is now being experienced as permeating and pervading. Every thought, every activity, every function of the human condition of life and living.

[00:41:37] This is that Cosmic Consciousness status. And in that Cosmic Consciousness status a very, very interesting phenomenon takes place.

[00:41:46] That state of superconsciousness is able to recognize order, even in, what you may have said in earlier phases of your consciousness development, or which others currently are continuing to say, is a disordered state.

[00:42:04] After all disorder and order, these are, in fact, and they must be, biases. Randomicity means that there’s no evident, ordered approach to time sequences or to the placement of things in space. Randomicity.

A Perfect Hiding Place for a Snake

[00:42:22] But there appears to be no randomicity. If, for example, I don’t fold the blankets and place them on the base of the bed, the blankets are disheveled, but that’s from a human perspective.

[00:42:35] What would, supposing a serpent were to come into your room and see that pile of disheveled blankets, what would a serpent think about that? “Well, that looks like a perfect hiding place for a snake. A folded blanket doesn’t look as good.” In fact, the folded blanket might be a disrupted state from the serpent’s point of view.

[00:42:56] But from the human perspective, with regard to the biases that we have about what kinds of things we want done, a disheveled blanket might get in the way of other things we want to do.

The Cosmic Perspective

[00:43:08] What is the ordered state from the perspective of Cosmic Consciousness? In Cosmic Consciousness, all things, all behaviors, all sequences, all placements, have relative levels of order at their own level of desirability.

[00:43:33] Someone in Cosmic Consciousness, doesn’t turn into a slob. I’m not telling you that because they think everything is orderly, that they’re not going to fold their blankets or vacuum their floor or whatever.

[00:43:43] In fact, people in Cosmic Consciousness tend to have a higher degree of what the average person would call orderliness or what the average person would call cleanliness. A higher degree of that.

[00:43:56] But in Cosmic Consciousness, when things don’t go a particular way that suits the human condition, the person in Cosmic Consciousness is not viewing these sequences in the way that the average waking-state consciousness would view them.

[00:44:12] It’s viewing them from a Cosmic perspective. What’s the Cosmic perspective? Well, an infinite amount of time, all the time in the universe, and an infinite amount of space.

[00:44:25] From the largest spatial perspective and from the largest time sequence perspective, can a thing be disorderly? Can a thing be entropic? This is a rhetorical question. The answer to it is no.

[00:44:42] From the Cosmic perspective, there’s no such thing as randomicity or disorder. All things are playing a role. All behaviors are playing a role with reference to a forward-moving, evolutionary, progressive change agenda.

The Creation Operator

[00:45:01] We’ve talked about this in other places. Progressive change involves inventiveness, improvisation, creativity, and connectedness. Realization of connectedness.

[00:45:13] So these realizations of connectedness, where you connect the dots between things that you didn’t realize before had a connection, or you invent something utterly new, or you improvise from existing elements, we refer to all of this as creativity, and this is the creation operator function. Very important function for us to have continuous expansion into more and more sophisticated states.

The Maintenance Operator

[00:45:42] Then there’s the maintenance operator function. The maintaining of the steady state of those elements, those forms, those phenomena, that continue to provide for progressive change. Maintenance operator.

[00:45:57] Without the maintenance operator of stable states that continue to contribute to evolution, there cannot be any evolution.

The Destruction Operator

[00:46:05] And then the third thing, the destruction operator whose specific intelligence goes into the process of dismantling, dis-integrating, any form, any function, any relation or any style of relating that is no longer serving the function of progressive change.

[00:46:26] Something that may have once had a pivotal and crucial role in evolution has a shelf life in holding that position.

[00:46:36] After a certain period of time, whether that’s seconds, minutes, or eons, whatever that form or function is, has reached its shelf life, it’s use-by date, as it were, and, if maintained, that form or function, that style of relating, may now become an obstacle to further progressive change, and so it has to be disintegrated or dismantled.

[00:47:05] And we refer to this function as the “destruction operator,” but we have to place an emphasis on what is being destroyed. That which no longer is relevant to progressive change is being dismantled. This is not wanton destruction. This is very specific, very intelligent destruction.

[00:47:26] The way in which the T lymphocytes, the T cells of your body, can identify overproduced metastasizing cancer cells and dis-integrate them before they become neoplastic disease or cancer, this is the destruction operator function, one of the greater functions of your immune system.

[00:47:46] And so we have creation, maintenance and destruction going round and round and round in a cycle. Wheels within wheels, lots of miniature cycles and big, big cycles.

Evolution is the Only Thing That’s Happening

[00:47:58] From the Cosmic perspective, all that is ever happening is evolution. Evolution is the only thing that can happen. Evolution is the only thing that is happening. From what perspective are you looking at a thing?

[00:48:14] So this explains why someone who’s in Cosmic Consciousness, though they can identify their preferences, though they will lean into their preferences, and though in the highest percentage of times their preferences will come into manifestation, come into being…

[00:48:31] If things don’t go that way, then the person in Cosmic Consciousness has zero friction, zero rigid attachment to specific timing and specific outcomes, because the person in Cosmic Consciousness can sense that in the larger picture, an evolutionary function is going on and that order is present at every level of every performance.

[00:48:58] Creation operator functions are orderly, maintenance operator functions are orderly and destruction operator functions are orderly. And this can be seen with that Cosmic perspective in someone who has gained what we now will call enlightenment.

[00:49:15] Enlightenment is the Cosmic Consciousness state that, the first stage of enlightenment we refer to as Cosmic Consciousness, the fifth state of consciousness that is acquired through regular practice of Vedic Meditation.

Does Entropy Exist?

[00:49:29] So in answer to the question, is entropy in fact a random state, we can even take it a little further and say, does entropy actually exist, or is it simply a bias?

[00:49:41] Entropy turns out to be a bias of a less conscious state. Somebody who’s in a highly conscious state, cannot find any entropy or find any randomicity at all in any direction that they look. They find that everything is behaving according to its nature, and according to its time, and according to the state of consciousness of that thing.

[00:50:07] And so then what is the purpose was served by being in such a state? Absolute freedom. Absolute peace. Absolute, though one might live a very dynamic life, absolute contentedness, and in this case, warranted contentedness.

Accurate Expectations

[00:50:26] The worst thing one can have is contentedness that is premature or not warranted. We would call that complacency, in which we’re not aware of the deterioration of things around us. We’re simply complacent and we’re not conscious enough to do anything about the extreme demand for change.

[00:50:47] So someone in Cosmic Consciousness can engage, better than anyone else in a regular waking state, in being a change agent and being a dynamic change figure. Someone who can bring about change very powerfully.

[00:51:03] But in Cosmic Consciousness, there are no disappointments because there are no expectations that are unrealistic.

[00:51:12] In Cosmic Consciousness, one’s expectations about the way things behave, about the way people behave, about the way that sequences elaborate, expectations always are accurate.

Perfect Order is All That Exists

[00:51:25] And so that really sums up my talk on the subject of orderliness and entropy, randomicity versus perfect order. And the summary is, perfect order is all that exists and you have to be in a particularly high consciousness state in order to be able to see that.

[00:51:45] Vedic Meditation provides that consciousness state. I highly recommend, if you haven’t learned it yet, to get straight to your local Vedic Meditation instructor and learn this technique.

[00:51:56] And if you are practicing it already, do continue your practice with great regularity and continue to take the knowledge courses and intellectual understanding courses that will enhance your capacity to really understand how your experiences are changing progressively with each  passing day.

[00:52:28] Jai Guru Deva