>> Stanford University.
>> All right, let's begin.
Hacking consciousness, session number six.
Consciousness and architecture.
First of all I'd like to thank our audience
for always coming here and every week
you're supporting us.
It means a lot to me and of course all our
speakers that are coming.
So, thank you for making the effort.
I really enjoy having your presence here,
especially during group meditations.
Quick logistics thing, the class code for
this week is architecture.
So, if you're taking this class for a
unit, please make
sure to have that code when you're filling
out the survey.
So, let's also do a quick review of the
theme of
the course so you have some type of
perspective where we've been.
So, we've talked about nature being
structured
in layers, from the gross levels, to, you
know, atomic levels to sub atomic levels
and
then at the bottom really having that
field.
That unified field at that level.
Which we've discussed is consciousness.
And there's a way to access
that consciousness through a technique of
transcending.
And we've covered various research on why
that's beneficial.
Why accessing that field of consciousness
is beneficial.
We've also talked about the hard and
easy problems, in cognitive science, and
we presented
with you a thesis that everything is
consciousness and that matter is just an
appearance.
Very big ideas.
And today we will cover another big idea
of
how your physical built environment,
architecture, influences your
consciousness, which
brings me to our very esteemed guest
speaker, John Lipman,
let me cover a little bit of his
bio.
He is a Frank Lloyd Wright expert, and has
written a seminal
work that has been praised by the New York
Times a couple times.
He's also been the president of the Frank
Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
And has done lots of great work in
architecture, various
design aspects, has gotten a lot of praise
for his work.
And what he's done recently, or, rather,
the last 17
years, is to focus on a particular style
of architecture
called Maharishi Vastu architecture, which
he'll go into a little
bit more of, why he's done that, what it means
etc.
And we'll really talk about how
that particular style of architecture
influences
your behavior, your consciousness, your
way of being in a particular environment.
So, without further ado.
Let's welcome our guest speaker.
Thank you.
>> Thanks.
Can you hear me well?
Sound okay?
What on Earth do buildings have to do with
consciousness and
how do they really fit in to the theme of
hacking consciousness?
It turns out that buildings.
George?
Hi, good to see you.
A friend from fifth grade.
[LAUGH]
It's lovely to see you here.
[SOUND]
What does architecture have to do with
consciousnesses?
It turns out quite a bit, because we spend
90 or, perhaps in California,
where we spend so much time in cars, 80%
of our time in buildings.
And buildings have a pretty dramatic
effect upon
the flow of consciousness on our ability
to
use it to bring it to bear in
our activities and I'm going to look at
two aspects
of that and I'm going to make the case for
why my assertion is true and then what we
can do about it, what the technology is
that allows us to use the influence
of buildings on us for our own good.
I'm, of course, I'm going to be speaking
from the Vedic perspective, eh, because
that is something
which has illuminated my own spiritual
journey and
my practice of architecture for my entire
adult life.
And I'm going to first give you a few
terms and
then I'll just speak without reference to
slides for a while.
So first of all, as I think you have
probably already reviewed multiple times,
the word Veda, which is a Sanskrit
word, is commonly translated as meaning
knowledge.
But I, I'm in the lineage, one particular
lineage which has been represented in
recent decades by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
and his preferred definition or
translation of the word veda is total
knowledge, and what he means by that is
that it is the compactified intelligence
at the basis of reality.
And one of its aspects, because it
has different aspects, is the aspect of
establishing
the structures of nature and the word
sthapan
is a Sanskrit word that means to
establish.
And so, one of the aspects of Veda and
Vedic literature is the establishing
quality, or sthapatya veda,
which we can say then literally translates
as the total knowledge of establishing,
but what the heck does that phrase mean?
And, a much more understandable phrase is
the
architecture of nature, or natural law
based architecture.
And there's a synonym also from Sans, the
Sanskrit, which is the word vastu.
And, literally, though it has multiple
meanings, the pertinent
meaning is that, in any structure in the
natural
universe, there are some laws of nature
that maintain
the balance between the parts and the
whole of it.
And whatever those laws of nature are, in
Sanskrit we refer to by the word vastu.
And so if we can build a building, a
house that also maintains balance between
the parts and the
whole, and by the whole I'm also referring
to
the unified field of consciousness at the
basis of life.
That would be very valuable and we would
say then that the quality of Vastu is
lively in that building so we commonly, in
India, refer to such buildings as, as
Vastu buildings.
And, of course, I've already mentioned
the, the particular lineage that I'm
representing, when Maharishi examined the
system of Vastu as it has survived
for thousands of years in India, he didn't
find any single tradition.
Any single family lineage of architects
who seemed to
have all of the information, and so he
worked with
the different families and with the vedic
texts for many
years to reconstruct it so it would be
fully effective.
And so what I practice is therefore we
associate with his name.
And so we refer to it as Maharishi Vastu
architecture.
So, that's it for the slides for a while.
I said that there are two ways in which
buildings
potentially have important effects upon us
and upon our consciousness.
And the first I'm going to build a case
for it, initially.
We exist within a whole nest of structures
in nature.
We exist within a galaxy, within that we
exist within a solar system.
Then we exist on a planet and then the
next level
of structure of nature is our own
physiology and within it there's
another level of structures of according
to nature which are the cells in our body.
With them, within them, there are the
molecules
including DNA, and within them there are
atoms.
All of these are structures according to
natural law.
The entire universe is nested structures,
all organized according to natural law.
And, and, when we experience the universe,
our experience of
these structures is one of continuity, and
one of balance.
Even though quantum physics tells us that
the reality is
that all of these structures that we
perceive and experience
and inhabit and that inhabit us, are
composed of elementary
particles, which have life spans of a
billionth of a second.
And then are replaced by others that arise
out of the unified field.
And so, there are some laws of nature that
create for us this experience
of continuity when the reality is,
anything but that.
Particles, dissolving billions of times
per second being replaced by others.
But then, there are a few other structures
in nature that are not structured
according to natural law, see all
of the structures that I described to you
are all
direct reflections of the organizing
intelligence at the basis of nature.
John Hagelin talked to you, I
assume, about the parallels, the precise
parallels,
the precise ways in which the discoveries
of quantum physics map over Vedic
knowledge.
That the ancient perspective of
consciousness as the basis of all of
reality precisely maps over quantum
physics
understanding of the nature of reality.
One to one correspondence, as there should
be.
And so, it's within this context that
all structures are reflections of that
underlying intelligence.
All structures that is, except for those
structures
that we then spend 90% of our lives
within.
I'm talking about buildings and cities and
for that matter, cars.
We spend maybe 99% of our lives in these
humanly made structures.
Now, I'm an architect.
I went to a very fine school.
I was there for eight years and I
didn't learn anything about nature's
architecture in that school.
During that time, because architecture,
unlike any field of engineering, is not
based in natural law.
What do I mean by that?
Well,
are you worried that the ceiling above you
is going to collapse on your head?
No.
Maybe now that I mentioned it, but.
You were not [LAUGH] worried about it.
And that's because we're quite confidant
that the
trusses above that ceiling were designed
by structural engineers.
And we're quite confidant that structural
engineers' work,
is successful 100% of the time, why is
that?
Because they are simply using laws of
nature.
Physicists, starting with Einstein,
starting with Newton, mapped
out how gravity works and, and gradually
material scientists.
Were able to analyze the strength of
materials and a relationship
between the failure of materials and the
force of gravity and
ultimately, structural engineers using
these laws of nature are able to
design beams and know exactly how much
weight they're going to support.
And just so that you feel comfortable.
There's always a, a safety factor of about
100% in anything that's actually built.
So, similarly, when this room was opened
up to us,
about a half an hour ago, someone flipped
the switch and
the lights came on and that person was not
surprised,
did not say, oh good, today the lights
came on, why?
Because the electrical system was designed
by an electrical engineer who was applying
the laws of nature in laying out that
system to deal with obviously electricity.
And material science and...
And, so, the point that I'm making is that
all of the fields of engineering, and
there are many.
Are, applications of laws of nature.
And, when in a law of nature is universal.
It is consistent, it is true, whether we
are familiar with it or not.
And if we're familiar with it, it's true
whether we believe it or not.
Okay?
And so you can deny the reality of
structural engineering,
but that doesn't make the ceiling collapse
on your head.
Now, the several fields of engineering are
very closely associated with architecture.
They're necessary components of it.
And so, I always work with structural
engineers
and electrical engineers on the buildings
I design.
And I know that those things are going to
work perfectly.
But the architecture itself is another
matter.
What is the actual core of architecture?
And let me stop and ask for a minute,
are there any architecture students or
architects in the room?
How many of you are in the class and how
many of you are just visiting to hear the
lecture.
In the class.
Okay, all right.
The reality of architecture is, it's about
enclosing space.
Space is everywhere, everywhere in the
universe.
What an architect does at her or his
essence is enclose a
bit of space by putting up walls, a floor
and a ceiling.
So this room became a room by virtue of
the enclosure,
but the space, which is actually this
room, was always here, but was it
usable for this purpose, for a lecture,
before it was enclosed.
No, of course not.
So the real essence, the purpose of
architecture is to enclose space.
For a purpose, and that purpose might be
to live one's life in a house.
It might be to learn things in a
classroom.
It might be to recuperate in a hospital
room.
And so the true way to measure the success
of an architects' work, is by
asking how successful are the functions of
those bits of space that,
that architect has enclosed over the
course of her or his career.
it's pretty straight forward, pretty
obvious.
And you know, it's, it's a parallel to any
field of engineering.
We measure the success of an engineer by,
if it's
the structural engineer, whether their
roofs collapse, and they never collapse.
Maybe one in a million eventually
collapses within, within a 100 years,
and so, engineers' success rate is
generally about 100%.
What is the success rate of architects?
It varies widely, hugely.
Every architect, I'll let you in on
a secret, in school studies examples of
buildings
that are widely accepted as being very
successful and other buildings that are
universally condemned.
Are understood to have been complete
failures.
For instance there was an apartment
complex
built in St. Louis in the early 1950s.
Every architect studies that apartment
complex.
It was, why?
Because it was torn down 17 years after it
was
built because the quality of life in it
was so poor.
So we study the good ones, buildings that
have been lauded for
generations, for the spiritual quality of
experience inside them for example.
Great ecclesiastic spaces for instance,
Chartre Cathedral as an example.
And, we study the failures.
And the hope is that through the study of
the good and the
bad, that young architecture student, in
their own career, is going to design
buildings that are more like the successes
and less like the failures, through
some process of osmosis, they're going to
absorb
the laws of nature that cause buildings.
To have different kinds of effects.
Well, can you imagine if a structural
engineer was educated in that way?
By looking at beams that succeeded and
looking at beams that failed and
then being told now in your career I want
your beams to succeed?
That would be intolerable.
And it would be pretty unpleasant for
those of us who
occupy their buildings, because they might
collapse it at any moment.
Maybe not here where there's no snow, but
where I
live and there is snow, every winter,
buildings would collapse.
And that would be very unpleasant for us.
So, the difference is that.
Well architects know very clearly, and,
and, and many lay people
know that buildings have different kinds
of effects upon quality of life.
We don't know what the rules are.
Buildings have effects upon consciousness.
We, many of us in our travels have
had experiences in, in buildings that
we've visited.
Maybe famous buildings.
Maybe spiritual buildings.
We felt something very different inside
and we have felt very unpleasant
experiences perhaps sometimes or another
in
certain other buildings we can think of.
And so it's a very dramatic and real
thing.
But we don't know what the rules are.
Every architect knows it has something to
do with sunlight,
and how sunlight enters and is experienced
in a building.
Every architect knows it has something to
do with the floor
plan, with, in other words, what is where
in the building.
It has something to do with proportions
and measurements of the building.
It surely has something to do with the
materials of which the building is made.
And finally it clearly has something to do
with
the site with the location, where a
building is built.
But we don't know what the rules are, and
yet there are rules.
I'm going to make up a hypothetical now to
drive that home.
Lets say that in the course of your life,
you,
some of you are biology majors because
this course is.
Partly being offered through the biology
department.
So maybe some of you some day will be
affiliated with a hospital
and some day you might be on the board of
trustees of the hospital
and you may be on the building committee
and it seems to be the
nature of hospitals to expand and so every
few years they build another wing.
And so you might be on the committee.
For expansion of the hospital for a couple
of years, and
that means that you're going to, at some
point in time, probably interview
three different architectural firms to
pick one, they all specialize in hospital
buildings, to pick one to design the new
wing of your hospital.
Wouldn't it be logical.
Would it be efficient in those interviews
for you
to ask the architects, okay you specialize
in hospital designs.
Will you give me the statistics for the
recovery rates of
the patients who have been admitted to the
hospitals that you've designed?
That would be very sensible and yet it's
almost
laughable, it's such a kind of startling
proposition to make.
And I can assure you that if any architect
were asked that
question they would stammer and say they
have no idea, they don't keep the results.
And why is that?
Because we don't actually think that we
can reliably control
the outcomes because we don't know what
the rules are.
Unlike any engineer.
We don't know what the rules are for
creating different influences in spaces.
And yet if an architect who specializes in
hospitals was serious
about it and they spent some time going
through pub med.
Which is the international database of
medical studies that
have been published they might run across
a study.
That was published 20 years ago in a
medical journal in Europe that we found.
And it was very interesting.
Let me tell you about this study.
It looked at one ward of a hospital.
What is a ward of a hospital?
It's a corridor with identical patient
rooms on both sides.
Right?
Pretty simple thing.
This particular
ward, the corridor ran north south, just a
coincidence, happened to.
All the patients admitted to this ward had
one of two conditions.
The researchers examined the historical
records of the
patients who had been treated in this
ward.
And they found something very unexpected,
which is that
for one of the two conditions half of the
patients
who were admitted got released from
treatment three and
a half days faster than another half of
the patients.
Three and a half days.
Can you imagine, so there, there's
something,
something that caused half of the patients
to
get release from treatment to be cured
three
and a half days sooner than the others.
Can you imagine if we knew what that was?
All the pain and suffering in the world
that could be reduced
and perhaps billions of dollars in
healthcare expenses that can be reduced.
Well.
What was the difference?
Has anybody figured out from a clue or two
that I've given.
What it might have been?
What the difference might have been
between these two populations of the
patients?
You're nodding your head, do you want in
white?
You want to tell me?
>> Yeah, I would just guess that the
people
on the south side of the building healed
faster.
Because there's more sunlight available to
them in those rooms.
>> You're, you're you're thinking about
the right things.
The corridor runs north south though, from
north to south.
>> The rooms are east west.
>> How about you in green.
>> East.
Yeah, it was, it was the patients who were
randomly
assigned, checked into rooms on the east
side of the corridor.
Who were released from treatment three and
a half days sooner than the
patients who were randomly checked into
rooms on the west side of the corridor.
Wow.
Now, why did I tell you about that study?
Did you want to say something?
>> It's three and a half days but what was
the average done?
>> I don't know and I'm going to get the
actual, it didn't say in the abstract.
And I just tracked down the original
study, and I was just corresponding with
my assistant today, and we're going to get
the full study, and I'm going to find out.
It was bipolar disorder, and I think
typically treatments for that are fairly
short, so.
But I don't know exactly, and one needs to
know because if it was three and a half days
out of a week that's hugely significant,
and if it's three
and a half days out of two months, well
it's pretty good.
But it's not as, as significant.
So I want to find out and I will before I
give this talk next.
But this finding did not surprise those of
us who are familiar with the Vedic
literature because.
In the texts of Sthapata Veda
or Vastu, is the following information.
And now we get into hacking consciousness
pertinent to buildings.
That there's an influence that comes from
the east on
planet Earth, which is nourishing, which
is good for our health.
>> And because we don't inhabit the
surface of the Earth
but we actually inhabit intermediaries
between us and the earth these buildings
it's ideal for a building to have plenty of
east
windows east openings to let that
influence from the east.
Penetrate deeply into the building, and
so,
that is probably what was being documented
in that study.
I'd like to see a few more studies done
that can really tie it
down, but that's very suggestive to us,
and gives us a little bit of reassurance.
About this ancient system.
So let's move on to another subject that's
very closely related to it.
If it is possible for buildings to have
different kinds of effects and
if it is really not a matter of a placebo
or superstition but it's.
It's laws of nature that are causing these
effects.
Then, a question to ask is well, what's
the most
powerful influence of natural law on the
surface of this Earth?
And I would say the answer to that
question is the sun.
It rises in the east, it passes overhead,
it sets in the
west, and we all experienced the different
qualities of the sun's energy.
Every day, if we happen to get up early
one
morning, and we're out when the sun is
rising, that's
very nourishing, and it's a really good
start for the
day, we feel the difference many times,
all day long.
Mid day sun is very intense, the setting
sun is an influence of decline.
Now the Vedic literature actually has a
record of from this paradigm.
Each of the different qualities of the
sun's energy over the course of the
24 hour diurnal cycle and there are 12
every two hour period of the sun's.
passage around the Earth or the Earth's
passage.
Rotating on its axis, are associated with
a different
quality of the sun's energy, and we use
them.
Now, that would be useful if, if this is
true, if this paradigm that I'm starting
to construct is, is a real paradigm, then.
It might be that, for instance, the
direction in which we face makes a
difference.
If we face east, there might be some
different effect than if we face west.
And actually, all of us at this moment and
at every moment.
Are on a vehicle.
And that vehicle is moving at, I think,
24,000 miles an hour.
Somebody in this room may know exactly.
And that vehicle that I'm talking about is
the surface of the Earth.
Because it's spinning, it's rotating on
its axis and
its direction of travel is from west to
east.
I actually like to always know when I'm
talking what direction I'm facing.
Does anybody know?
>> It's West.
>> I'm facing west?
I'm opening my compass.
Ideally I always face east.
Because, as I'll explain to you, brain
coherence
is greatest, is maximized, when you're
facing east.
Now we're getting into hacking
consciousness.
Well, this says I'm facing north.
That's okay.
No.
[LAUGH] It's not working.
It got stymied by being deep in this
building.
Okay, I don't know, but I'll assume that
I'm facing west.
So I'm building up a case, I'm making a
claim that the direction that we face
makes a difference.
And if this is true.
You would expect that life would have
evolved such that there'd be some part
of, of us that is sensitive to
orientation, that is monitoring what
direction we're facing.
And there is.
And it's a very, very important part of
our physiology, from some
perspectives the most important part of
our physiology, and it's the thalamus.
It's where my fingers intersect at the very
center of the skull.
The cerebral cortex sits on top of it, the
cerebellum behind it.
It is the head of the limbic system, which
includes the hypothalamus,
the pituitary, the thyroid and extending
down from it, is the spinal column.
And it is composed of neurons.
And communication between the brain and
the
rest of the physiology, passes through the
thalamus.
The neurons of the thalamus are the
gatekeepers between mind and body.
It turns out that many, many hundreds of
thousands of those neurons in the
thalamus are direction sensitive, and
actually transmit their information.
At different rates when we face different
directions.
So, the thing which is the link between
mind and body and which controls the
limbic system which is responsible for all
flows and changes chemical secretions in
the body.
Spectacularly important and which is also
responsible for the self, the fact that
there is a self, in a human physiology, is
a, product of the thalamus.
If the thalamus stops working, we don't
know who we are.
We've lost the self.
It's the, this core aspect of our
physiology.
And it functions differently when we
face different directions very very
interesting.
So something's going on on planet earth
that caused life to evolve this way.
So if this is true if orientation makes a
difference here's a question for you.
What's the single thing that we do within
every 24 hour day, in which we spend
the greatest amount of time facing a
single direction, oriented one way?
>> Sleeping.
>> Sleeping.
Ideally that's a third of the day, maybe
for some of you students, it's a little
less.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Certainly was for me in architecture
school,
and that did my display of consciousness
no good.
And, so it would not surprise you then,
that
the Vedic literature has opinions about
what direction to sleep.
Okay?
You can, you can try this out at home and
it's real easy, you don't even have to
write it down.
This way is east, we think, that's good,
all of you are facing east.
That's the best direction to sleep.
What do I mean by that?
I mean pillow-end of the bed to the East,
okay?
Now I'm going to rotate clockwise 90
degrees at a
time, and I'm going to go from best to
worst.
So, very easy to remember.
I'm facing East, I think, that's best.
I'm facing South, that's good, but it's
actually, particularly good if you're
recuperating from illness.
I'm facing west, not good.
I'm facing north, that's the worst.
Okay?
And as I said, you can try this at home and
people commonly report to me that
upon rotating their bed, or putting the
pillow at the other end, according to this
ancient information, which every indian
family knows,
you know mother, grandmother told you,
always sleep
never sleep with the feet to the south,
always sleep with the head to the east.
And, you know, was it, is it a
superstition in, in your family, or is it
real?
Well, so here's the research.
A neurophysiology at a university, a
neurophysiologist, was curious about this
and so he put lab animals in very narrow
cages at bedtime.
And then he oriented half the cages so
that half the animals were sleeping
with their heads to the east, and half
with their heads to the north.
The best and the worst.
In the morning he took blood samples from
them.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And he assayed them for levels of
stress hormones.
What's a stress hormone?
It's secreted by the limbic system which
is controlled by the thalamus.
And stress hormones direct the organs of
the body to work harder.
If an organ of the body is made to work
harder
for a long period of time, what's going to
happen to it?
It's going to fail sooner, it's not a good
thing.
But, if we're under stress then it's
useful, the organs
need to work harder in order to maintain
homeostasis, okay?
So, what did he find out in, in assaying
the blood of those animals?
Those animals who are made to sleep with
their heads to the
east, in the morning had reduced levels of
stress hormones in their bloodstream.
Those animals who were made to sleep with their
heads to the north,
had elevated levels of stress
hormones in their bloodstream.
He then put them back in the cage and
had a research assistant watch them
interact during the day.
And they reported that the animals who
had been made
to sleep with their heads to the east were
peaceful, and those who were made to sleep
with
their heads to the north fought with each
other.
Now this was a pilot study, it hasn't been
published.
And I would like to see someone follow up,
do a large sample, and publish it.
But the preliminary results are very
tantalizing.
So a physician heard about this and she
was
curious, and she did a survey of her
patients.
And she analyzed the results and published
it in a good peer review medical journal.
And the results were that, among her
patients who are unfamiliar
with Vedic technologies, those who happen
to sleep with their heads to the
north have the worst mental health, have
the most depression and anxiety.
So I do recommend to you, as a take home
from this course in hacking consciousness,
that you seriously consider sleeping with
your heads to the East or to the South.
By the way if the building that you occupy
is
not on the grid, does not face one of the
cardinal directions,
and by that I'm talking about
true solar directions,
not magnetic which is off quite a bit in
Palo Alto.
If you do this, people report to
me commonly having switched their bed
around, that they are sleeping better now,
and frequently that they feel more rested
and more alert during the day.
So I always make a mess of hotel rooms
when I stay in a hotel.
I always make sure, before I book a hotel,
what direction the
hotel faces for reasons that I will
describe to you in a minute.
And Google Earth makes that very easy to
find out.
But I don't have control ahead of time
over the direction the bed faces.
Now, okay, so that's interesting, so one,
one aspect
of Vedic or Vastu architecture is that we
design houses
so that it will make sense for the beds to
have the headboard to the east or to the
south.
And there are other things that we do that
are important parts of our day, is that
we also have information about what
direction they should
face, according to this ancient tradition,
this ancient paradigm.
The ideal directions to face for primary
activities when
we're awake, is to the east or to the
north.
Okay?
Different than sleeping, but we all know
that being awake is different than
sleeping.
Now the next thing,
that we do in Vastu or Vedic houses is
that we bring plenty of east light into
them.
And we've already talked about one study
that maybe gives us some
insight into why that's a nourishing
thing, why that's a good thing.
In fact, we will commonly elongate
buildings so that
the long sides are the east and west
sides.
But that has another effect, which is a
good effect.
And that I will talk about next.
The strongest effect of the sun on us when
we're in that intermediary building
is the most improbable.
It's really surprising to most Americans,
though it is not at all surprising
to people from quite a few other cultures,
including several Native American tribes.
And that is that the direction that the
building faces is the single
biggest factor about a building that
affects consciousness,
that affects the quality of our lives in
the building.
Now, different traditions have different
opinions about
what's the best and what's the worst.
The Vedic traditions says emphatically
that East is the
best direction for a house to face, that
it creates
influences of success and coherence and
enlightenment, and that
South is the worst direction for a house
to face.
Now in many Feng Shui traditions
associated
with East Asia, South is considered good,
and I can, if you're interested and we
have time for some questions and, and
you want to ask me, I've done quite a bit
of probing and spo, spoken
to Feng Shui masters, and, and I have, I
have some, some insights into that.
But the Vedic, perspective, which is the
one that
I represent, says, east is best, south is
worst.
So, what's the data say?
There have been four studies to date,
three of
these four have been published in peer
review medical journals.
But the fourth was, a pretty large sample,
and it was done
by a, physician very carefully, and so, I
think it's probably quite credible.
He's trying to do a sample of a thousand
now so they can submit it for publication.
Here are the results.
These are all, first of all, we haven't
done any research on people inhabiting
Vastu homes.
Why?
Any ideas?
The placebo effect.
If you're living in one, you know you're
living in it, and you
know what the benefits are supposed to be
and that may bias your experience.
And so you don't do good research by
measuring effects
upon people who know what the outcome is
supposed to be.
So the research that's been done to date
has been on randomly selected, non Vastu
homes.
And then comparing, the orientation of
those homes, to some objective measurement
of
quality of life, that can be obtained for
the occupants of those buildings.
And, the results to date, are, that
mental health correlates with house
orientation.
South facing houses, the people who live
in
them have the highest incidences of
depression and anxiety.
The second is, heart condition.
The likelihood that you're under the care
of a cardiologist,
is strongly correlated, with the direction
that your house faces.
And again, the highest percentages in
south facing houses.
The third is prosperity.
When people randomly selected fill out a
survey that
documents their prosperity, again, it
correlates with house orientation.
Again, with south scoring the worst.
And finally, and this is the most
improbable, and yet it was very
statistically significant
and it was, it was accepted for
publication in a good, in a good journal.
Burglary rates, strongly, strongly
correlate with the
direction that houses face, even in cities
that
are on the grid, where there are equal
number of houses that face all four
directions.
So we, I think we have to take this
seriously.
That it is verifiable at least from you
know, some initial studies
that are consistent enough to make us want
to take this body of knowledge seriously.
That the direction a house faces has an
effect upon the quality
of our life, and in hacking consciousness
one thing that we want
to add to the list of take homes from this
course is pay attention
to what direction my home, my dorm, my
office building faces.
East and north are the best.
Simple as that,
but there are more factors.
The next is also because of the influence
of the sun.
I described the different qualities of the
sun's energy over the course of the day.
We should make use of those different
qualities of the sun's energy, by putting
different functions, in different
locations in the
house, according to these qualities of
energy.
For instance, we may as well dine where
digestion is best.
We may as well put our living room where
conviviality is greatest.
If we meditate, and obviously more people
in this room meditate than in the
average classroom, we should do it in
the part of the house that promotes
transcendence.
The famous 20th century modern architect
Le Corbusier said
very famously, a house should be a machine
for living.
It's one quote that many late people have
heard from a famous
architect, but he didn't know how to
actually make the machine work properly.
For him it was kind of a metaphor for,
for buildings expressing the, the
zeitgeist of the machine age.
And his, his beautiful houses looked very
machine like.
But what he said is true that a house
should
be a machine for living, but it can only
be
so if the machine can be designed
according to laws
of nature because those are the only
machines that work.
Right I mean, any Stanford engineering
student knows that.
And this gives us the possibility of
actually designing
working house machines to have nourishing
influences on us.
So what is where makes a difference.
Dinning ideally south center living room
ideally west center.
Meditation ideally in the north east, for
example.
More of these are on our website and I'm
not here to promote the website but
that's, that's where some follow up is,
and it's MaharishiVastu.org.
The next way in which a building has
effect upon consciousness is through its
proportions and measurements.
Now this is not a surprising thing.
In fact, the architects of many cultures
throughout history have
independently of each other analyzed the
beautiful, perfect seeming
structures of nature, seashells, feathers,
the human proportion, eggs.
And they've found certain measurements and
proportions that
recur, again and again in these,
apparently perfect objects.
And they concluded in many cases that
there must be some underlying intelligence
which is using proportion and measurement
in some way to have some good effect.
And they're many names for this.
It's, sacred geometry is one common
reference for this perspective and, and
that is correct, that is correct and, and
it is, it is also the case that as many
architecture students learn in school many
of
the great buildings that we study, if you
sort of analyze them you can find these
proportions applied because the architects
just felt well.
These proportions used in nature's
structure must be of some
value so I'll try to incorporate them in
my building.
And that was a good attempt, and, that
is a major part of Vedic architecture of
Sthapata Veda.
It's a huge subject, learning the
proportions is a vast.
A vast field, but in the end it's, it's
basically invisible.
If you visit, and I'll show you some
photos if you want to see a Vedic house.
You're not going to notice the proportions
or the measurements of
it, but, and if, and they're very
flexible, you know.
If a house wants to be about 30 by 40,
then we find a number.
We find some proportions that are very
close to that, might
be off by a few inches, maybe a foot, from
the desire.
But when the proportions and measurements
are set according to nature's patterns,
then it is, as an analogy which may have
some actual truth to it.
I don't know.
It's like a stringed instrument, a violin
or piano that's properly tuned, where by
you pluck one string and you get
sympathetic overtones in the other
strings.
What we understand from the Vedic literature
about proportion and measurement is that
it maintains balance and harmony in the
structures of
nature and we can promote balance and
harmony in the
structures that humans create through
using the same, the same formulas.
The next subject that we refer to is not
so complex.
It's very straight forward.
Very simple.
How many of you have heard of the term
sick building syndrome?
Most of you.
It refers to a phenomenon which has
occurred only in recent decades.
As we have been able to for the first
time in human civilization build buildings
out of synthetic materials.
This carpeting for instance, you know is
not made of wall
or paints or made of petrochemicals that
are distilled, and many
of these chemicals out gas volatile
organic compounds, a little less
so in California than other states,
because California regulates air quality.
But, then, buildings have, are very tight
to be energy efficient.
And that means that indoor air is not
exchanged constantly with outdoor air, and
the result is that according to published
statistics, the air quality in the
average new house is six times more
polluted than the average air quality
outside
of that house in the same neighborhood,
which is a very bitter unpleasant thing.
So the solution is very straight forward,
just two words and one phrase, "Natural,
nontoxic."
And operating windows.
I don't see any operating windows in this
room.
[LAUGH] To have cross ventilation.
And of course, you know, seasonally we, we
can't we're spoiled.
We are used to such a narrow thermal and
humidity comfort
zone that we have to heat and cool, and
dehumidify our houses
now much of the year, so if we do that
then at
least we should have constant fresh air,
24/7, going into the house.
So that's, that's it for natural and
nontoxic materials, and that's something
that we're
very vigilant on in creating environment
houses
that support the pure flow of
consciousness.
Now the next, is the site.
For instance, based on everything that
I've told you,
do you think it would be a good thing or
a bad thing to build a house on a site
that has a hill to the east of it.
This is a test of whether you've been
paying attention.
Good or bad.
How many say good?
Nobody.
Good.
One person, I won't say who it was.
[LAUGH].
Why?
Because a hill will block that influence
of the cosmic energy coming from the east.
Not a good thing.
So in the work that we do, and I had this
consultation service, as Michael
mentioned, for the past 17 years that
provides this information to builders,
architects,
developers, and potential homeowners
across North America.
We're done third or a half a billion
dollars worth of projects.
We always hope that people come to us
before they bought their lot.
And then we do a site evaluation, and
thanks to Google Earth.
We don't have to go to the site, in
order to do the site evaluation, it's very
handy.
Topography is one of the main things we
look at
and there are several others,
including, where water is based.
[SOUND] So with these different factors,
that I've
talked about, does this really amount to
hacking consciousness?
Do these factors really alter how we
perform inside of a building.
The best study that's been done to date is
another pilot study and I am waiting, I am
hoping that the researcher will follow it
up
with a full study that he's able to
publish.
He's a, a statistician and professor of
business and he's published a
lot of studies so I'm hoping he's going to
do a larger survey but.
This is, this is what he wanted to know,
he asked the question okay, this body
of knowledge, I'm a business professor,
how good
are you at predicting how successful
businesses will be?
So an associate of mine, a woman who is
also
a Vedic architect looked at aerial
photographs of corporate headquarters.
And he collected the financials,
the annual statements, from these
corporations.
Now in order to get strong correlations,
he randomly
selected businesses from a database of
very small companies.
Why?
Because he wanted to make sure that each
company occupies only a single building.
Why would that make a difference?
Well, if the company has two buildings,
one faces east and the other faces west.
What is the orientation influence going to
be on the success of that company?
It's muddled.
It's not going to show up clearly so, so
he randomly
selected 30 companies that each occupy
only a single building.
And that are all publicly traded so that
it
can go through five years of of financial
statements.
And according to him, there's there's one
statistic that you can extract from a
financial
statement which is the best regarded
measurement of
how financially efficient the company is
and that's.
How much income they make per employee.
It's a measure of the success of the human
capital,
of how effectively people are operating
inside of that building.
Through the lens of money, which is
the lens of measurement of successful
companies predominantly.
So my associate, looked at aerial
photographs,
and she was able to ascertain, five,
predictors.
Obviously, the direction the building
faced.
Second, the shape of the building.
I haven't talked about that yet.
Third.
A pattern, and there are a bunch of
patterns in Vedic buildings.
One, is that they, we always, make sure
that they have a fence or a wall
around them, with the gate to the east,
possibly with a secondary gate to the
north.
That reinforces that eastern, orientation
effect.
Sounds like ooga booga, or sounds like
superstition, but
I can tell you some, stories that will
make.
The hair stand up on the back of your head
about the fences.
So these, most of these businesses did
have fences.
So she had a third factor and the fourth
factor is the topography.
Where is the nearest hill and the fifth is
where is the nearest water?
Now this researcher is Danish and he did
this research on businesses in the Faroe
Islands.
Which are small volcanic islands in the
North
Atlantic. All settlement is around a
perimeter of
the building, the islands and so every
business
had a strong water influence somewhere
nearby, a large
body of water, the North Atlantic was
somewhere
quite close to the building and they all had
a, a mountain or a large hill somewhere
quite close so those two factors were
really measurable.
So she had five factors and then she
scored
each of the thirty buildings and in the
meantime
he did the statistical analysis of them
and then
they compared their lists and she had
accurately predicted
the degree of financial success of 27 out
of the 30 companies.
So this seems to be a very high
correlation.
Now 30 is not a hugely statistically
significant population and as I said.
I am waiting for a follow up with 100
companies but it's still, it's, it's very,
it's very tantalizing.
It suggests that when you combine multiple
factors from this ancient body of
knowledge in analysing the influence of
buildings on us, multiple factors
correlate with higher and higher degrees
of influence on us as predicted.
Remember when we were only looking at one
thing at, at, building orientation?
What was popping out from that was the bad
one.
That the worst direction seemed to every
time associate with the worst quality of
life.
But it didn't further finally discriminate
between the other three.
But, when we have five factors then, it
seems
to be really very statistically, I
shouldn't use that
phrase, it seems to be a, to produce very
strong correlations with each of the four
directions etc.
So,
it seems to be a very useful technology
well worthy of considering.
Now, I think you have an understanding of
why an architect was asked to speak in
this course, because it is actually my
assertion
that buildings have very dramatic effects
upon consciousness.
They have very dramatic effects upon our
success, our happiness, our health,
our personal relationships and our growth
to enlightenment.
That's what the texts say and anecdotely I
can assure you, the hundreds
and hundreds of houses we've done and
we've done many post occupancy studies
that.
And I, of course have been living and
working in
these buildings for many years as you
should expect me
to do that this is people's experiences,
so let's have
a look, okay, do you want to have a look?
All right.
We'll take a quick tour around the world.
This is a complex of buildings that we
built
in Japan, and its a very traditional
Japanese structure.
It is, post and beam, it's actually the
largest as is traditional in Japan.
It's actually the largest post and beam
structure in Japan,
and you'll recognize Japanese details in
it, but it's built.
It's obviously east facing
proportions, materials, placement of different
functions,
evaluation of the site are all according to
this body of knowledge.
This is a project actually that I'm
working on
right now with clients in Japan and China
rather.
And I'm doing a couple of projects in
China.
And one project in which we're building a
building in China and bringing
it to the U.S. And we're modifying
traditional Chinese architecture to
incorporate these principles.
And it's a fine fit and-
On these projects, the projects have feng
shui consultants who are
blessing what I'm doing so there seems to
be some, some good fit in, in those cases.
In India, this is of course the original
home of this organization that Maharishi
founded and.
And one of the things that, that he had
done there was founding many schools.
Actually, it's the largest private school
system in all of India.
And these are just a few snapshots of, of
some fairly crude, but
large Vastu schools all across India.
Here's a house in Australia that was just
finished about a year and a half ago.
Now, here's something dramatically
different from this, here's a
house in Spain that was built 15 years
ago.
Very, very according to the traditional
architecture of Spain, it's
stone walls and clay barreled tile, rooms
as we know so
well, and at Stanford, I believe, but it
is, it is,
exactly, a Vastu home according to
Maharshi's revival of that knowledge.
Here is a Chalet in Switzerland, but it's
a very modernist Chalet, it's also a good
passive solar design, the side to the left
is the south side and has lots of glass.
But that glass is all shaded so that
the summer sun doesn't enter through the
south.
But the winter sun does.
By the way, we understand that light from
all
directions is nourishing, and we favor
windows on all sides.
But there's a certain special quality to
east light, as I've described.
Here's a house in Brazil.
I just have a couple of details, because
as is common in, in this location,
there's,
a wall very tight around the house and
it's not possible to get a, get a good-
View of the house.
Here's a school that we're building in
Kenya, it's not complete
yet in this photograph, but the kids are
already using it.
And it will be plastered when it's
complete, and I'm,
I'm, just now starting work on a school in
Tanzania myself.
I did not design this.
We as a part of this revival of Vedic
knowledge that Maharishi has
spearheaded, we create schools around the
world with consciousness based education.
Usually for orphans, and, or, poor kids
who can't otherwise be in school, and-
So, this is one and the one I'm about to
work on will be another.
Now to the United States.
Here we are in Wyoming, in the mountains.
And so, so kind of basically a log cabin,
technically it's post and beam.
It's in Jackson Hole and here's an interior
of that house.
Here's a house on the East Coast for
couple who kind of love
Japanese architecture but they are both
also very creative,
they're both artists in themselves and on
the inside they went kind of wild.
Doing everything they wanted to do.
Here's a very sedate house.
Also on the east coast.
Very traditional kind of Scottish medieval
revival house.
Here's a fairly conventional house in
Cincinnati.
The water's to the north by the way which
is a good direction for water to be in.
That's why they picked this lot.
One thing which is a little bit unusual
about
this house which is commonly done in
Vastu houses
weather permitting is that it, the house
wraps around
a court yard and here is a view of that.
I live in Iowa in a small town where a
quarter of the population meditate.
Many of us meditate in, two domes, twice a
day, hundreds of us, and, it's a.
It's an intentional community a very large
one.
I actually live in Maharishi Vedic city.
A town that we founded and by law the city
council every building built in that town
uses this technology, every one is a Vastu
building.
So here is one of the homes there and here
is an interior of it.
Closer to your home if you live here, is
the home that I spent last night in.
in-
>> Corralitos.
>> Corralitos.
Just completed a few months ago.
And the request for this house was that it
be in the Santa Barbara mission style.
Here's a house on the east coast.
It's it's a vacation house for a family
that, that through a
combined two former marriages have six
kids, so they wanted a large loft.
And everybody sleeps on the floor in the
loft when, when everybody's there.
Here's a view down from the loft.
Here's a house in the Colorado Rockies.
And next is the very first house that was
built as these.
Principles were just starting to come out,
if we
didn't get all of them into this house,
just
a few of them, and then we went back
later as more information came out and did
some remodeling.
This was I, as, as Michael mentioned, the,
the first half of my career was largely
devoted
to the work Frank Lloyd Wright and this
couple
found me because they had seen a drawing
of
a house, and they loved it and they wanted
a house similar to it, and after some
research they figured out that it was a
particular
house by Frank Lloyd Wright that they had
loved.
And so I knew the owner, and arranged for
them to go to Chicago with me and have a
look at the house, and then we designed a
house
for them using these principles that also
is very much.
Influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, and
here's one interior of
it, with Wright reproduction furniture
and, here's the living room.
Now in Florida, we have a community of
about six homes, and I wanted, the last
thing that I'm going to talk to you about
is what happens when you don't have just
one.
What is the effect on consciousness, what
is
the effect on our functioning in, in the
world if we are in an environment where
there are a number of these homes built?
'Cause it, it's the literature suggests
that there are very specific.
Good effects.
And so I'm going to spend my last few
minutes, a little bit of time talking
about that.
But first I'm just mention, that this,
though
it's a rendering, of a house that has
since been built in a community in Florida,
where
there are six Vastu homes in close
proximity.
This is a rendering done by one of my
European
associates for a European home, a very
classical Paladian revival style.
Here's a house that I built in,
Lincoln, Massachusetts, it's a rendering
because the trees are so thick
there I haven't been able to get a good
photograph of it.
But it's in a historic district, on Paul
Revere's ride, it's
overlooking Paul Revere national park, and
I was instructed that I
would have to design something in the
federal, compatible with the
federal style, and so that's what I did in
this case.
And this is a house that just came to me
deep in meditation one day,
and then I went to dinner and then I
sketched this out on a napkin and.
It's since been built, but the view from
the street, you can't see that it has a
courtyard.
So, I like to show this rendering of it.
This is another rendering.
But, it's, it's just your classic
bungalow, which
there are so many of in the Bay Area.
But it is, it is a Maharishi Vastu house.
And the placement of the rooms, the
proportion, the orientation.
The materials are all according to this
knowledge and the site, of course.
And I, I didn't design it, but I, I got to
house sit in it for a week.
And it was a very wonderful experience.
I, I haven't really talked about the
experience of.
Living in these, of applying this
knowledge and what
the effect of it is on us, I accept that
it is true, it seems to be very accurate
that
as the ancient texts predict that good
health is improved.
I can tell you cases of chronic diseases
that actually abated when people moved
into Vastu
houses or even just closed up an
inauspicious
door and just started using the auspicious
back door.
And it's powerful stuff.
And happiness it is a, it is a universal
of people
who live in these homes that they are,
they are profoundly happier.
They speak of the quality of bliss which
is that kind of.
Beyond happiness that's associated with,
with pure consciousness, and
success, prosperity, we've had a few
cases, two cases of business that have
moved in and out and in and out Vastu
office buildings
because we've built about 15 now, and
they've actually seen their
success go up and down as they were in and
out of the Vastu
building, so you know, it really looks
like, that, that prediction is being born
out.
And enlightenment, growth to
enlightenment, this is again
the common experience of people living in
these homes.
If that's interesting enough to you, I can
spend a few
minutes on it, but I think I'll just wait
until the end.
And if anybody wants to ask a question
about that I'll be happy to answer.
This is a house that's under construction
now so it's obviously
a rendering but its a house that I
designed in Kawaii that's
why it looks like it's in Hawaii and the
wife is of
Japanese ancestry so at her request it's a
very Japanese influenced home.
I'll quickly show you a, a few larger
buildings.
Some others.
This is a nine-story commercial office
building in suburban Washington, DC.
By the way, one thing that the average
person in America thinks of when they
think of
the concept of buildings in accord with
natural law
is they think well they must be energy
efficient.
They're environmentally efficient, they're
sustainable.
And this is a concern which of course is
only risen within our
generation within the last three decades
or so as we for the first time.
Become focused on, on natural resources
and air quality, carbon footprint of
buildings.
And that is certainly an important
consideration in
designing a natural-law-based building
that it be environmentally
sustainable that it had a smaller carbon
foot
print so we have simple adopted the values
of
sustainability as a principle of Vedic
architecture it
is so obviously a principle of nature's
own architecture.
And so, I was mentioning that right now
because the, the
predominant standard for measuring the
degree of sustainability of a building in
the United States is promulgated by
something called LEED, and the
highest of their standards is platinum and
this building earned that standard.
Here's a detail of one of the corners.
And the lobby.
Should be some people.
But when architectural photographers take
pictures of the
interior buildings, they always scoot the
people out.
All the desks are oriented to the east and
to the north.
And all the desks in this building get
plenty of sunlight.
There's no bullpen at the interior of the
building with no window.
This is the bullpen.
Closer to you in Bakersfield is this blood
and
cancer center, where people go to be
treated for cancer.
This is one of our first projects.
I was the consultant on it.
I, I was not the architect, but it dates
back 16 years.
But, it's the, the founder of it has been
very struck by the effect upon moving into
this building.
And it's been very good for business and,
and
we're working now on the third addition to
the building.
And I talked to him first about six
months after they had first moved into the
building.
And he said well you know I think our
outcomes are improving but I don't.
I don't have a double blind set of data
to, to validate that.
So I'm not claiming it but that does seem
to be the case.
And certainly our employee satisfaction
is, is way up.
Our employees are happier working in this
building.
But the thing that was most noteworthy to
him was that
as we all know when you're treated for
cancer you're being poisoned.
Radiation and chemotherapy are both
killing cells in the body and
they are poisoning hopefully the bad cells
more than the good cells.
But a result of being poisoned that many
people experience if
they get chemo is that they get nauseous
after the treatments.
and, so, people normally are after several
treatments for
cancer, don't want to go back to the
building.
Their body doesn't want to go to the place
that made them nauseous.
And what he found is that his patients who
were
in between treatments were coming to the
building for visits.
And so that to him was the most telling
effect.
Now, I'm going a little over, so I'm going
to skip the physics lesson.
But I'm simply going to say to you, I'm
going to assert to you that there are many
systems in the physical universe where if
the particles that
compose the structure can become coherent,
can be aligned with each other.
Then that structure becomes kind of
invincible.
It repeals negative outside incoherent
influences.
And Maharishi told us that the same thing
would
be true if we could build a Vastu city.
And we built a number of communities, and,
this is one.
That I live very near which is completely
off the grid
because he, from the first promoted
getting energy directly from the sun.
And this is one community we built
which is completely off the grid.
This is a community in England.
26 homes and a community center and a
couple of photos of the, of
them and, they're very traditional English
homes according to that part of England.
We have had quite a few at this point five
incidents where
there's been some natural disaster in the
proximity of groups of Vastu buildings.
And in each time that disaster such as
this forest
fire, in Eastern San Diego county, that
some of you remember.
Bypass the Vastu buildings.
They stop right at the fences, don't
damage the fence, don't damage the
building.
And so it seems and this is obviously not
science.
And we have no explanation.
Through a scientific paradigm yet, and we
have no double
blind study, but it seems that even, our
interaction with
the natural world seems to be affected by
building
buildings which are coherent, which are
structures according to natural law.
We are structures according to natural
law.
Our solar system is, the cells in our body
are, the galaxy is.
And when we can inhabit the immediate
environment that
we do inhabit, which is our homes and our
cities.
That are also structures according to
natural law.
Then, it is as though we have been
listening to
a radio in the proximity of something
that's causing static.
And for the first time, the cause of the
static is removed.
As though we tuned that radio more
precisely
and suddenly the signal is coming through
clearly.
It is a coherent signal, the effect is
very powerful.
And if you take one thing from
this lecture in hacking consciousness it's
pay attention
to the buildings that you live in because
they have a real effect upon you.
So thank you very much [APPLAUSE].
Any comments or questions?
Which one of you wants to go first?
What is the effect of Wi-Fi?
Well, you're not asking me what the effect
is, but you're concerned about
the effect and you want to know what our
relationship with that is.
It gets harder and harder with each
passing year, but we strongly promote no
use of Wi-Fi in these homes, we always
have every room wired for ethernet, and
obviously your iPad can't, you know, it
only communicates
via Wi-Fi or cellphone communication, and
so we discourage them being used.
And we also follow all the good
protocols to avoid electromagnetic
radiation pollution in houses.
We use shielded cable.
We have kill switches that ensure that at
bedtime
you can kill all the electrical current
surrounding the bedroom.
We do all of those protocols.
To try to minimize but those which are
broadcast from outside
the house we don't have control over and I
think this
is what you're asking me, we do not have
any reason
to think we don't, we certainly don't have
any data to suggest.
That the effects of VMF are reduced by
virtue of being in a Vastu home, I'd
like to think they are but we have no
evidence of that.
The question which I'll repeat was, we, I
spent quite
a bit of time talking about why we should
sleep in
certain directions and not in others, and
your question then
was about waking activity, creative work,
or other kinds of work.
What direction should we face.
Well I'm not a physiologist and I'm not a
physician but
so I'm giving you completely in part a lay
persons answer.
My impression being no more founded than
any of yours, is that
we would never seek out a situation that
would subject our physiology to stress.
That would make the organs work harder for
that goal.
Certainly we, we do athletics which make
our heart
pump harder for instance and that has
benefits to us.
But
no, I would, I maintain that for brain
coherence,
for activities that we really want to
perform at a high level,
unless we're sleeping while we're doing
them, we should see
whether there's a possibly to face east or to
face north.
There isn't from our perspective, any
reason to seek out an orientation
that would cause the organs of the body to
work harder, no.
Yes
>> So I was curious about the Feng Shui,
idea you said that it's very auspicious
with the directions itself in Feng Shui,
and it is not so of course, with Vastu.
So what was, you know, the conversation
that you
had with those people on why, what are
the reasons?
>> Well, I am not an authority on Feng
Shui,
and I have quite a bit of regard for it.
All I can do is share with you.
Two or three things that I've learned, one
is that there
are different schools in Feng Shui and the
predominant school in the
United States is one that according to its
founder is been
quite a bit of it has been created within the
last decades.
And so it's, it's substantially different
from some of
the ancient schools that exist in China
for instance.
And as I said, a couple of projects that I
worked on in China the Feng Shui
masters of my clients, whom I never met,
examined
my designs and didn't make any changes to
them.
So there, so there seem to be some schools
in China that are quite harmonious.
I asked one Feng Shui master is there
any, any actual historical relationship
between the two
disciplines and he said, oh yes, our
discipline records that Feng Shui comes
from Vastu.
And maybe it came over to China at the
same time that Buddhism did and Chinese
Orient, Indian Brush
painting, I don't know, I, I cannot claim
that I'm
simply passing on something that a Feng
Shui master said.
Now in my last conversation with the Feng
Shui master which was only, about three
weeks ago,
we, we had, we spent quite a bit of
time together and it was, it was really
delightful.
And and I, we were sort of talking about this
and he
said, well yes, we know that there is a
special quality
to the influence of the energy coming from
the east, from
the sun at the time of sunrise, that's the
most nourishing thing.
And we figure that if the sun is good, and
you're on the northern
hemisphere, and the sun spends most of its
time in the southern part of the sky.
That's it's probably best then to have
lots of openings to the south, and so, you
know, that's just a conclusion and it's
not
our conclusion, and that may be, you know,
the explanation, I, I would love to learn
more, but I think that, that the real
answers are, are, are lost in the, the
myths of history and will probably never
be known.
Yes.
>> Two questions or three questions.
Number one, what time do you meditate at,
at
your field in the morning what time do
they suggest?
>> We, I have to actually do a calculation
to tell you.
[LAUGH].
So give me just a second.
10, 7:35.
>> Okay, that's after sunrise then.
I'm just thinking about meditation and.
>> Yes.
>> Then the raising in the sun, right?
>> Yes.
>> And you face the east, right?
>> Yes, yes.
>> Okay.
Number two, if you want to put a
water fountain, or waterfall, or whatever
on your property,
>> Yes.
>> Which place on the property would you
put it?
Would you put it in the north corner?
>> Well, a, a single ideal place is in the
northeast, um-hm.
>> Is in the Northeast.
>> Mm hm, yeah.
>> Okay.
>> There's more, there's more to it, but
that's, that's a good take home, yeah.
>> If, if you were going to build a home
along the
ocean or a lake then which, how would you
orient that?
>> Well, I wouldn't build a home close,
very close to the Pacific Ocean
when the Pacific Ocean is to the west,
because of a negative influence from that.
If we get far enough away then it's fine.
We water to the east, water to the north
is nourishing.
So I'll, I'll recount the question very
briefly for those who couldn't hear.
There were two parts.
The second part was why does where you
have different activities
in the house have effects, so I claim that
why, why, what could be the explanation?
And the second, the first question was
really what are the,
what are the explanations within science
for why these things happen?
I'm so glad somebody asked that and we
don't know.
And the reason we don't know is because
this has just been coming
out in the west in recent years, and you
know the way science works.
The step number one in science is
observation of natural phenomena.
Collecting data on them to rigorously
to determine whether there is something
happening.
And at that point it becomes the purview of
science, the goal of
science to consider why that thing may be
happening and to propose some hypotheses.
And then based on the hypothesis, you can
test the hypothesis.
And that process, which is the process of
science,
takes a long time, and it requires the
world
of science to see that there is some
naturalistic
observation that is significant and then
start, start studying it.
And that's just starting now.
John Hagelin who spoke earlier in the
course, so you, you missed him, is a
quantum physicist, and he's been probing
this, and he's actually got a hypothesis
that is based on quantum physics for what
is the value in an Eastern orientation.
But at this point, it's just his
hypothesis,
it hasn't been subjected to any study yet.
I mean this is the cool thing about
the Vedic knowledge.
It's been preserved for thousands of
years.
It was arrived at, not through science,
but arrived at subjectively.
That is, people deep in meditation, people
highly evolved, at deep points in that,
some of them have direct cognitions of
natural law.
And they come out, and they're able to
record that.
And if we regard that tradition, we may
regard their assertions about
the nature of the vibrations of
intelligence.
But it's completely subjective.
Now, that sounds on the face of it,
completely inimicable
to Western Science, until we read the
memoirs of our greatest scientist.
Albert Einstein, for instance, described
that when he
had his insight into what became known as
general relativity that it was, and I'm
paraphrasing,
but it was basically a cognition that he
had.
He just knew inside nature must work like
this, and he declared it.
And then after he published it, the next
time there was a solar eclipse.
Researchers trained their telescopes on
the, on the,
on the sun at the time of the eclipse.
And they were able to determine that in
fact the rays of the sun were bent by the
proximity of the moon between us and the
sun
and they accepted that as a validation of
general relativity.
And they rush to Albert Einstein and they
declared
to him, You were right, we have proved it.
And his response, paraphrasing again, was,
I'm not interested in
your verification, I don't need to hear
about your observation.
I saw this inside, I know that it is true.
And in fact many of the great advances in
Western
Science were arrived at through the direct
cognition of natural law.
But then science exists to test them to
validate them and then to figure out how
to use them and so we are at a junction
point in world history.
Where in this generation, and maybe some
of you
in your own careers as biologists, those
of you
who are, have an opportunity to bring the
objective
methodology of science to bear on these
subjective traditions.
And I hope that many of you do that in
your careers.
It will be a good thing for the world.
This is probably a good question to end
on, so thank you very much.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> For more, please visit us at
stanford.edu
