“One option they suggested was silencing your autonomous nervous system but that might react with the way your brain sees the dream; so the procedure has to be conducted without numbing your autonomous system. This would mean that we would have to tie you up to the chair so that you don’t injure yourself. Do you think you are ready for such a procedure?”
Raghav looks at Kutty and then sat down on the chair thus providing the much needed acknowledgement to Kutty. Without hesitation Kutty called upon the doctors who were standing outside the tent to come and start the procedure.
The team of doctors and scientists led by Dr Khurana entered the tent. Raghav was already in the chair ready for the procedure to start. The doctors first monitored his blood pressure and basic vitals. He was initially put on sedatives to bring him to the state of unconsciousness. After this the team of doctors performed a surgical procedure and inserted probes into Raghav’s brain. They made a small hole in the back of Raghav’s brain to insert the electronic probes to monitor Raghav’s brain activity.
By carefully increasing and decreasing the doses of the sedatives and giving some electrical impulses, the doctors tried to bring Raghav’s level of the dream to the steady state ready to take in signals from the machine. For three hours they tried to get the right signal from the brain but his mind did not go into the REM stage. Once they were satisfied with the results, Dr Khurana said,
“We need to push the data into his mind from the machine. The machine comprises of ten years of information. Since the mind does not understand everything in time-domain, it will not take ten years to feed the data.”
“But based on the quality of the band-pass filter that modulates the signal in frequency domain and Raghav’s response, it might take up to a week or ten days.During this period we need to see him suffer and it would be very nasty experience for us. He will neither sleep nor wake up during this time.”
The process of feeding data into Raghav’s mind continued for more than 12 days as Raghav often slipped into the REM stage and the data feeding process had to be halted. Raghav sometimes shouted loudly or moaned during the entire process. After two days of screaming his voice cord collapsed. He rapidly threw about his hands and legs but the straps held him; so that he could not injure himself. Kutty could not handle Raghav’s moans after just a day and did not venture into the tent.
After twelve days Raghav was woken up by Dr Khurana. Following basic checks Dr Khurana sent a message to Kutty that the vital signs of Raghav were all satisfactory. As Kutty entered the tent Dr Khurana said,
“Now Raghav knows the truth about what actually happened in the last ten years but in his quest you might have lost your friend. Things will not be the same again.”
Kutty moved towards Raghav who was still unconscious and said, “Only God knows how much his body has to suffer now. May the Almighty give him the strength to endure all the knowledge that he has collected.”
7.2: Accessing the Subconscious
Raghav recovered after a week from the surgery. The doctors were continually monitoring his health during this period. Dr Khurana asked Kutty to join in the conversation and explain to Raghav the entire process. Dr Khurana quietly woke up Raghav from his sleep. Kutty noticed that there was another person in the tent with them whom he had never seen before. Kutty asked Dr Khurana who that individual was.
Dr Khurana introduced him,
“His name is Dr Venkatraman. He has a degree on hypnotism from United States. He will help Raghav to understand how memory can be recovered from the depth of the unconscious; this was what Raghav wanted – why he went through all this procedure.”
Kutty made Raghav sit up on his back. Raghav said,
“I just feel the same way as when I woke up from the Manipur facility.”
Kutty replied,
“I understand. I must say that the whole procedure was very successful and all the information is in your brain now. The only catch is that you cannot access the data without external help. Let me introduce you to Dr Venkataraman who will help you to understand the process. From here on Dr Venkatraman will help you train your mind to get what is there inside.”
Kutty looked at Dr Venkatraman and said,
“Now he is all yours.”
Dr Venkatraman took a chair and sat down next to Raghav. He spoke in a deep and composed voice.
“Raghav I hope you are feeling well. I am here to help you understand what actually you must be feeling. For the last few weeks these scientists over here have been experimenting with your brains and have fed a lot of data into your mind.”
“The problem is that you will not be able to access what is in your mind without understanding the whole process.”
He moved his hand over Raghav’s head trying to see if his wounds had healed. He asked,
“Are you following what I am trying to tell you?” Raghav nodded.
Dr Venkatraman continued,
“Most of the data that is fed into you is part of your subconscious mind. Now the subconscious mind is like the main memory of your computer but you can only access the things that are in the Random Access Memory unit just like in the computer.”
“To shift the chunks of memory from your subconscious mind to your conscious will require an effort from your side. I am here to explain to you the process of how this can be done and how to control this exercise.”
Dr Venkatraman continued
“It is said that there are many ways to access one's subconscious mind but the most simple and direct method is called meditation. Well actually it’s called dhyana. Now I will explain to you what happens in the state of dhyana or meditation as the West understands.”
Raghav tried to grasp what Dr Venkatraman was saying, but he was still under the influence of sedatives and he felt confused. Dr Venkataraman continued,
“Meditation takes you deeper into your consciousness allowing one to enter a state of being that is akin to dreaming. In this state your brain becomes relatively slow. Now I will help you to meditate with the help of hypnosis but eventually you should be able to do it consciously. To understand the memory that is stored, you need to train your consciousness to understand what is inside.”
Dr Venkatraman paused and asked for a glass of water. Then he continued,
“In normal life, the brain functions in the ‘beta’ state which is the state of alertness. This causes stress in one's nerves. In the state of meditation, the brain pattern slows and calms down first to alpha and then to theta; in deep meditation it follows delta patterns.”
“As one enters into the state of meditation one will understand the changes in thought process; you will be accessing random memory strains drawing from the depth of your subconscious mind. It will begin to assert itself on your consciousness. Your thoughts will jump from one stage to another and in the case of the iota of data that is stored in your mind it might depict different events.”
“In this point one needs to take note of these events and there will probably be a connection between these things that your conscious mind has not perceived. It is very important that you learn to let your thoughts flow and expand in this state. You must not try to repress any thoughts during this process. The more they come, the more will they enter your consciousness.”
Dr Venkatraman looked at Raghav and asked,
“Are you following what I am saying?.” Raghav nodded.
Dr Venkatraman continued,
“Now you need to master this practice of meditation so that your consciousness becomes the observer of these events and then memorize the event. This is when you can reap the benefits of understanding what is stored in your mind. You will now try to figure out the answers to your problems. In this process I will teach you to understand how to trust these thoughts and how to memorize these for later verification.”
Dr Venkataraman looked at Kutty who was listening with rapt attention while taking detailed notes. Looking back at Raghav Dr. Venkatraman continued,
“But there is a
catch. Accessing one's unconscious mind is a very difficult task but retaining the memory could be even more troublesome. I don’t know why you insisted in filling your mind with such horrific information! The human mind has difficulty getting over traumatic events. I can help you with this condition.”
“Initially with hypnosis I will take you to a stage where your subconscious is governed by my mind and this will help at least erasing the memory as only I will know about it. You will only know from my description of what you had explained to me. But I can only help you on events that you already know off but there are so many that you may not be aware of.”
“For remembering those events you need to work on it yourself. Through hypnosis I will only show you what the beta and delta stages are and also show you how you could do the same on yourself to reach this stage of samadhi. That is all I can do for help but I warn you that the more you try to penetrate the more you will be disturbed.”
Dr Venkatraman looked at Kutty and said,
“I have made some arrangements in the next tent for Raghav. You must get Raghav to that room so that I can start with the first few steps of hypnosis to understand if he still identifies himself among the so many personalities that he has been. I need to make his subconscious understand who he is; otherwise we might have a split personality disorder problem.”
As asked Kutty helped Raghav move from one tent to the other. Kutty slowly made Raghav enter the tent and seated in the center of the table. Dr Venkataraman quickly lit up the candle in the middle of the room and asked Raghav to look into it. He followed his routine and slowly Raghav became hypnotised. Dr Venkatraman asked,
“Who are you?”
Raghav identified himself correctly without hesitation. Kutty seemed to be happy with this response that he still understood himself. Through many such questions Raghav talked about many events of his life and of his wife. Dr Venkataraman started delving more into his intellectual pursuits right from his Princeton days and he was able to explain everything.
Dr Venkataraman looked at Kutty and explained,
“It seems Raghav is still able to distinguish himself from the other personalities very effectively. It is a sign of a very strong will power that he possesses. But I need to understand if he recognizes about his present state. The time gap of ten years might create some confusion.”
Kutty asked Raghav about the fateful night when the ambush happened. Raghav described the event of that night without missing out on any details. He talked about the bomb blast and how he was shot. At this point Raghav suddenly screamed and sat up with a blank stare.
Dr Venkatraman jumped out of his chair and started shouting, “Raghav you are still alive. You survived the ambush. Come back. You are alive and fine. You did not die in the ambush.”
Dr Venkatraman signed to Kutty to keep the medical team ready if Raghav needed to be revived. Dr Venkatraman hoped that such a situation would not arise because if it happened Raghav would lose his identity. Dr Venkatraman shouted,
“Raghav you survived. Remember - you ran out of the Manipur facility? Try to remember that it was you who survived and ran from the Manipur facility.”
Raghav started moaning at this point and Dr Venkatraman started feeding in more information. Dr Venkatraman took the help of Ganguly who also started screaming,
“Raghav do you remember your stay in Kolkata? In Kolkata you contacted me and then you fled to Orissa. Do you remember that Raghav?”
Raghav was still moaning but was also to understand what was being told. Kutty continued,
“Raghav we planned to avenge that attack and kill all the people responsible for it by destroying their facility in Manipur. Do you remember that my friend? You are still alive remember that?”
Raghav continued to moan for a while and then lifting his head said, “Yes we destroyed the facility.”
At that moment Dr Venkatraman snapped his fingers to bring Raghav out of hypnosis and back into his consciousness. He saw that Kutty was down on his knees with tears in his eyes. Dr Venkatraman said,
“Raghav this is you and remember that you are still alive!”
For next few days Dr Venkatraman continued with the same experiment superimposing on Raghav’s identity so that he did not confuse his-self with images of others. After being satisfied that Raghav’s subconscious recognized his conscious, Dr Raghavan started teaching him tricks of going into meditation through continuous breathing.
He also taught him the technique of memorizing events irrespective of his state of confusion. Dr Venkatraman also placed Raghav under strict exercise regime during the days of experiment while monitoring his feeding routine to take on the excessive stress on brain neurons.
After about two weeks of training Dr Venkatraman left Raghav to himself saying that he would not be of anymore help from now on. He told Kutty,
“It’s now up to Raghav’s sub-consciousness to take a decision so that it either engulfs Raghav’s consciousness or destroys it completely.”
Raghav had spent a lot of time going through the newspaper clippings to understand the reality of the events during the last ten years. The problem was that his conscious level had imagined these situations though through its constraints. Now when Raghav tried to delve deep inside the subconscious he now has two different reflections of the same event from two angles. One was the reality and the other was the imagination.
In this case how does Raghav’s conscious level distinguish between the two? Raghav had now developed the ability to truly understand what had happened in the last ten years but to do so he had to fill his conscious mind with accurate information and erase the wrong memories. Now the most essential part of the exercise was that Raghav had to learn how to forget.
The best thing Raghav had done hitherto was to draw a chart following the sequence of events from the newspaper clippings. On this chart he detailed the timeline of all the events that he had surmised to have happened. But now he needed to know that all these were incorrect; it was necessary to erase all this information and messages before delving into the subconscious. Forgetting something that he had memorized so thoroughly was not going to be an easy task. Raghav chalked out a plan to do so.
He handed over the chart to Dr Venkatraman and asked him to perform another set of experiments on him. Raghav said,
“What I want you to do is to ask me about the events in the chart one by one when I am conscious. I will be able to recreate the whole scenario on this. Then you need to put in my hypnosis and ask me about the same scenario again.”
“In this case I need you to note if my explanation is just the same as it was during the time I was conscious or not. If so it is your task to feed into my mind that this information is wrong. You need to continue doing this till my mind acknowledges it.”
Dr Venkatraman responded,
“I think it would be a long and tedious process but since you insist I will follow suit.”
Raghav, Kutty and Dr Venkatraman sat down in the same tent for another session of hypnosis. The experiment started as Dr Venkatraman went from one event to another getting explanations from Raghav and then moving him in the state of hypnosis to understand if he built up the same scenario in Raghav’s mind. Dr Venkatraman did not let him go into deeper states of hypnosis just so that he did not delve deep into his subconscious.
The moment Dr Venkatraman felt that Raghav was moving into deeper layers, he woke him up and started the process all over again. Each time Raghav gave the right explanation, Dr Venkatraman and Kutty shouted back saying that what Raghav was saying was wrong. They repeated this process till Raghav subconsciously knew that this thought in his mind was wrong. At this point Dr Venkatraman would push him deeper into his subconscious to extract the real information about this event.
Kutty endured the stress of the entire process shouting, pacifying, consoling Raghav who sometimes broke into fits of despair and started to profusely cry in this hypnotic state.. Another two weeks passed with the experiment. Dr Venkatara
man visited the room where Raghav was recovering . Dr Venkatraman told Raghav,
“You know what - we have done the best we could and nothing more is possible. Now you must be knowing that your imagination has not been erased but whenever that imagination will crop up, you will realize deep inside you that it is fake. You must now proceed to a peaceful location where you would be all by yourself and be able to build up a new truth about yourself.”
So saying Dr Venkatraman left the tent.
Raghav waited for a week in the camp focusing his mind on menial works to help stabilize his mind from the turmoil of the past few weeks. During this time he also scouted for a place in the nearby jungle where he could sit peacefully and meditate so as to mentally relive the last ten years.
He found a cave inside the forest which he thought would be ideal for his meditation and where he would not be disturbed by the outside world. Only Kutty knew about this location and took care of Raghav’s food and other requirements during the entire period.
Raghav went inside the forest after a week just carrying his timeline of events and few notebooks to write down his understanding so as to correct the timeline. Everyday Raghav went into deep meditation trying to delve deep into his subconscious to understand the random thoughts that surfaced. He started to docket these thoughts so that later they would come in handy. He rejected anything that smacked of imagination.
THE MYSTIC: PART I - THE SEEKER (Part 1 - THE SEEKER) Page 18