Not using your mind? Don't worry, even Einstein used less than 5% of his mind!

It's time to think of a 'mind gym', says Ms Kruti Parekh, India's first
test-tube baby, while speaking at the last meeting

"baby, while speaking at the last meeting India.s first test-tube baby absolutely flummoxed members of the Rotary Club of Bombay as she started her engrossing presentation at the last meeting.

What percentage of our mind do we use, she asked. Ten percent, fifty percent, seventy percent or hundred percent?

Well, believe it or not, one of the greatest geniuses of all time, Albert Einstein, used only 4.87% of his mind!

Looking around at the members seated in the Ball Room of the Taj she said, .I see a lot of people laughing and many scratching their heads and wondering, how much percentage do I use!.

Ms Kruti Parekh, who was making an interesting presentation on .Change the way you think . Yoga, mind power and beyond., regretted that human beings devoted more time and importance to those parts of the body that were less important and less time to those that were much more important, such as the mind.

He actually did it! Pranay Vakil held on to a bulb and broke it with
his mind . and with the help of Ms Kruti Parekh.s mind

If they felt that they were physically .out of shape., they rushed to the nearest gymnasium.

But if they suffered lack of concentration or even a memory loss, they would say, .Oh, that.s the way I am.. They did not say, .I think I should do something about my mind..

Perhaps it was time somebody came up with the concept of a .mind gym., Ms Parekh said (see her introduction on Page 2).

Beginning her talk with the axiom, .The universe is within all of us., Ms Parekh said that very few people were in control of their minds. Actually, their mind controlled them.

To prove her point, she requested members to stretch their hands, hold them apart and close their fists, keeping just one finger pointing out. Once this was done, she asked them to let the two fingers meet.

.How many of you missed it the first time and then adjusted and joined (the fingers) again? Most of you? Well, this is what we do in our daily lives. It.s a simple task, joining two fingers. But we missed the goal, made some adjustments and then said, yes, we.ve done it. That.s what we show to the world, that.s what we actually do in our daily lives.

.This shows that we are not in control of our mind. The mind controls us. But it would be wonderful if we are able to control our mind. We have all the powers of the mind at our disposal and we can achieve anything that we want in life..

Quoting from the Bhagwad Geeta, Ms Parekh repeated the adage that happiness was a state of mind.

If one was happy, then even a moment or two of sadness would not change one.s mood. But if the mind was disturbed, then even happy events would not change one.s mood.

After listing the various states of the mind as per the Geeta, viz., delusion, illusion and hallucination, Ms Parekh described the connection between human beings and God.

The Geeta stated that every human being had a .hierarchy of power .. The first source of energy was the body; the second level was the senses; above that was the man (or mind); and then the buddhi (intellect). Over and above all was just one source of power . and that power was God.

But how did one differentiate between the man and the buddhi? Ms Parekh said man (or mind) was the external mind and buddhi (intellect) the internal mind. The man interacted with things happening in the outer world, while the buddhi interacted with all that happened inside.

Most people did not achieve their goals because their man went in one direction and their buddhi in another.

.We want to do something but we end up doing something else. We say, .I don.t have the mind to do it today ., but we still go ahead and do it. There is no unison between the man and the buddhi. That.s why we don.t achieve our goals..

There were many phenomena that went beyond the mind and the intellect, Ms Parekh said, listing some of them as telepathy, teleportation, ESP, intuition, prediction, telekinesis and so on. Several of these were yet to be fully explored.

She then went on to demonstrate, with the help of .volunteers., including President Ashish Vaid, Pranay Vakil and Rajendra Jain, the potential of the power of the mind.

The first volunteer was Rajendra Jain who was asked to close his eyes and attempt to levitate. When several .attempts. failed, Ms Parekh asked him to imagine that he was going out of the room, going down the stairs and leaving the Taj.

After confirming that he had indeed .walked. out of the Taj, she asked him to .apply some powers of the brain and get off the ground.. She told him to imagine that he was going off the ground and flying. flying out of Bombay over the Arabian Sea... and approaching another land.

Confirming, this time, that he had .landed., Ms Parekh took a piece of paper and wrote something on it.

Rajendra Jain was then asked to close his eyes and to think of a dream destination, a foreign location. Once he had .reached. that foreign location and said that he was seeing an object, he was told to open his eyes and reveal his foreign location.

A view of the head table, with the new Club banner and with President Ashish Vaid calling the meeting to order. Others from left are Dr. Rajesh Parikh, who introduced the guest speaker, Programme Chairman Pranay Vakil, Ms Kruti Parekh, Joint Honorary Secretary Jacob Abraham and (Dr.) Indu Shahani, who celebrated her birthday last week

He said that he was in South Carolina and that he could see his sister there. Ms Parekh then picked up the paper on which she had written her prediction and asked him to read it out.

And this is what Rajendra Jain read out: .You are in South Carolina and you see your sister..

The hall erupted in applause at this achievement and lauded Ms Parekh.s prowess. .Thank you very much. But I must say that it was very difficult to read his mind!.

Ms Parekh next turned to telepathy and explained its working by drawing an analogy with electricity. When the wires were connected to a source and an electric bulb, the bulb would glow. Similarly, mind waves were a medium; they were electromagnetic waves through which there was a transfer of thought from one mind to another.

She then invited President Ashish to join her and said she would attempt to .read his mind. through ESP or extrasensory perception. Here, two people communicated with each other without talking, without any verbal or non-verbal communication but only through thoughts.

A copy of the book The Da Vinci Code was given to Ashish and Ms Parekh went to three members in the room and requested them to write any three-digit number from 100 to 500.

Once three members had written a number each, Ms Parekh turned to Ashish and asked him to pick any one of the three numbers, making sure that he did not reveal it to her. He was then asked to open the page corresponding with the number he had chosen and to read and remember the first two words on that page.

.Keep the book aside and now mentally transmit the words from your mind to my mind. Try to connect it from your mind to my mind. Okay? No words, no communications, no lip movements. Is it about a number or is it about a place? A place? Okay. I.m getting a word in my mind.

.Is it United Kingdom? Yes? Thank you very much!. Once again the hall erupted in applause.

How were such powers attained? Were they simply a .gift., were they accomplished through efforts? Or was it a combination of the two?

.We all have these powers; we.ve always had these powers; we.ve had intuitions and everything . but we don.t realise it, we don.t understand these phenomena of life, we are too busy doing other things in life,. Mr. Parekh said.

.We have not attuned ourselves till now, we have not taken the effort to do that; that.s the reason why we see all this as a wonder and ask, how does it happen? We do not say, .I can do it...

Revealing the secret of attaining such .power., she said it was very important to go for .unconditioning of the mind..

In one experiment, a bee was put in a big jar and the lid closed. It was under observation for 48 hours. The bee went up and down, up and down, for 48 hours. At the end of the experiment, the lid was removed and the bee was expected to fly away. But to everybody.s surprise, it just went up and down, up and down, as before.

This was because it had conditioned itself to believe that it could not move beyond the restricted contours of the bottle. Had it tried to go beyond the limits it had come to believe in, it could have done so.

Rajendra Jain is about to be .transported. out of the Taj and to South Carolina where he is going to see his sister. (Second picture) For Ms Kruti Parekh it was probably a piece of cake. But perhaps not for President Ashish who had his mind read by her. Finally, Sabira, Shailesh, Ajay and others spread out their hands and try to realise the power of their minds. Many of them did succeed

.We all have such conditioning of our minds. We say, .No I cannot do this.. The word .no. comes first. It.s not .let me try., it.s always .no.. We do not even want to try to venture out into something we have not done before.

.We are scared. We are not scared that we will not be able to do a thing, but scared about what others would say of us. That is the fear that actually stops us from growing..

In this context, Ms Parekh showed photographs of two .extraordinary achievers., viz., Helen Keller and Sudha Chandran.

The last demonstration pertained to the .break-point., and quite literally so.

After Pranay Vakil stepped forward as a volunteer, Ms Parekh gave him an incandescent bulb, asked him to hold it and to .take a picture of the bulb in your mind.. The bulb was then put in a polybag.

.Now, with your mind, I want you to strike this bulb and break it. I.m going to assist you. I.m going to assist you with my mind. Come on, use your mind to break this bulb..

And in a moment or two the bulb broke up inside the polybag!

Ms Parekh ended her programme by asking her audience to perform a little exercise. She asked everybody to stretch their hands and to exercise the power of their minds.

For this, they had to tell their mind to imagine that the left hand was the north pole of a magnet and the right hand was the south pole of a magnet. Soon, it would be seen that the right and the left hand would be attracted towards each other.

.Do not move your hands. Let your mind command it. Close your eyes, leave your hands loose so that your mind can command them. And tell your mind to say, my left hand is the north pole of the magnet and my right hand is the south pole of the magnet, and both the right hand and the left hand are attracting each other..

She repeated this half a dozen times. Lo! And behold! Soon, several members agreed that they had felt .the power or the force. of their mind.

.Did you imagine that you had magnetic forces in your body? It is just your mind which commands and controls,. she added.

Ms Parekh concluded her programme with the statement, .If wealth is lost, something is lost; if health is lost, everything is lost; but if focus is lost, you are lost..

The vote of thanks was proposed by Sameer Tapia.