Abhyasa: The Power of Practice

Human life is a profound gift. We are the caretakers of this land, and the well-being of all species is incumbent on us because we have the ability to make or break the planet. How did this happen? How did humans take such a quantum leap?

What sets us apart from other species is our unique ability to train our minds quickly.

While animals adapt to new environments over many generations, humans, on the other hand, flourish with astonishing speed. For a technology-driven species like ours, evolution is the expansion of our collective knowledge base. While deep knowledge in any given field is often limited to a few experts, the tools they develop become available to the masses. For example, very few people fully understand MRI scanners in their entirety, but the machines are available to all, even in rural cities. This creates an evolutionary leap for all mankind. The same holds true for open-source code, AIs, and even mass-produced commodities and currencies.

Individually, our minds are general-purpose intelligences, capable of acquiring diverse skills. Our brains are not only good at learning new things but also at retraining—a trait that has allowed us to spread geographically, and now, to look toward the stars.

The all-important question is: How does this work? How do we learn? How do our minds acquire concrete skills? Let's begin with something we know for sure. We've all heard the saying "practice makes perfect," but why is that? What is the fundamental mechanism that allows us to improve with each iteration?

The answer lies in a philosophy of action and the incredible neural engine we carry in our heads.

The Philosophy of Action: Karma Yoga

The Bhagavad Gita offers a powerful framework for understanding action. It's called Karma Yoga, which literally means "connecting with action."

In most scenarios, our focus is on the outcome when we act. We become attached to the results. The key is to let go of this attachment, detach from the craving for specific goals, and focus purely on the action itself. This isn't about despising sensory pleasures or hating the senses; they are necessary for our survival. It is about dedicating time to action for its own sake—think back to your childhood playtime. When the action itself becomes our focus, desire automatically takes a backseat. Karma Yoga is not about what you do, but how you do it.

Krishna says:

"One who initiates actions by regulating the senses with the mind, engaged in Karma Yoga with active work organs, and detached from the outcomes, that person is special. He excels."

"Regulating the senses with the mind" means managing our emotional responses. We need to distinguish the metaphysical from the physical. Desires exist primarily in the metaphysical realm. Actions are always physical—even coding. By focusing on the action rather than its potential fruits, we connect with the real. We make practice a ritual, a Yazna, and unlock our potential for excellence. Such actions are known as an offering to the divine.

The Learning Engine: Our Neural Network

Our brain is a sophisticated learning engine. In Hath Yoga, it is symbolized by the Sahasrara Chakra—the crown chakra with a thousand vritties (expressions). It is a neural network of staggering complexity. To put that in perspective, a human brain has roughly 86 billion neurons, and each neuron has an average of 7,000 synaptic connections. This amounts to approximately 60 trillion parameters, give or take. Compare that to a large AI model like GPT-3, which has about 185 billion parameters. This means each of us has a neural net around 300 times larger than a typical large language model!

Sure, man made AIs shall improve exponentially, but there are over eight billion of us, collaborating and always learning in real time. In fact, the pace of our learning doubles up with smartphones and AIs. In a way we now have access to larger brains outside our own. This immense neural cloud of natural intelligence is continuously reconfiguring and evolving. The evolution is happening inside our brains—at a pace that dwarfs anything physical. In a way, the physical world is our training environment. And now, with artificial intelligence, the evolution of consciousness is further accelerating.

Furthermore, this incredible processing power is seamlessly integrated with our "action organs." Our hands alone are connected to 200,000 neurons, translating to nearly one and a half billion synapses. The famous "Homunculus Man" illustration, which depicts the human body in proportion to the cortical area dedicated to its parts, shows our hands as enormous, highlighting their importance in our interaction with the world. This is very important because AIs may increase our meta-physical space, but the action-space is always the physical realm. With increasing processing capacity, we must double down on our Karma.

In nutshell, we are a complete package: a system designed for data collection, optimization, and testing through a continuous feedback loop. We are fundamentally built to explore our reality. This raises the question: what exactly is our reality? Is it the entire observable cosmos, or the tiny sliver we influence with our actions? And isn't the goal not to change that tiny box, but to learn from it? Think of your tiny box as your lab. We are here to run our experiments. In the process we do have capacity to impact a positive (or negative) change, but that is a mere byproduct - for if we didn't learn from our action experiments, then this human life is a wasted opportunity - not only for ourselves, but the countless species that help us run our game and seek a benevolent disposition from us. Let's keep our lab clean and caring. Let's make it a place to heal.

The Mechanism of Mastery: Yazna and Sleep

How do we train this biological beast? The process involves two key components: the ritual of action (Yazna) and the neural rearrangement that happens during sleep.

When we repeatedly perform a set of actions—our Yazna—we are feeding our brain training data. Modern science has shown that during the REM stage of sleep, our brain gets to work. With the senses and motor controls temporarily offline, the mind rehearses the past day's activities, running millions of simulations and tweaks to find the most efficient neural pathways. This is why tasks often feel simpler when we wake up. Each cycle of Yazna and sleep refines our abilities, making us more perfect with each iteration.

Evolution has prioritized REM sleep, even though it makes us vulnerable—a potential prey for predators—and arguably less productive. But productivity is a matter of definition. Do we define it by the desirous work we perform, or by the training we impart to our brains? Getting work done may be important for survival, but learning is the very purpose. This is our evolutionary advantage. Advantage? - not as an ulterior selfish motive, but an ability to bring peace to all species. We must not let go the idea that we are the keepers of this land. We are what we are thanks to sacrifices of countless generations of mankind, and infinite support of our fellow beings. Every single thing in our tiny space, from furniture to food, from smartness to smartphones, is a gift - a lab with most expensive instrumentation that maintains itself.

When we act on a specific problem set, with action as our goal, the mind trains itself efficiently. However, if we let it brood over desires for specific outcomes, we divert its immense power to a simple, probabilistic computation. It does try to predict the chances of success, which, in a complex world, often results in a 50/50 guess. This uncertainty creates doubt, or Sanshya. In a way, we are wasting most sophisticated neural engine to run in circles.

By providing our mind with the clean data of action, it becomes a self-learning supercomputer. By asking it the wrong questions—those about outcomes—we create a mess of doubt that often requires sedatives to quiet it down. In our modern, distraction-filled world, Karma Yoga thus offers a proven path forward. BTW - A doubtless mind sleeps well!

The Uniqueness of Skill

The result of this iterative process—actions and sleep—is called a skill. It is a marriage of intelligence and knowledge. Intelligence gathers the training data, and knowledge is the optimized routine our neural engine produces. The knowledge is deeply personal and cannot be communicated. Fire cannot burn it, and air cannot dry it, for it exists beyond the manifested realm.

This is why a skill is uniquely yours. You can write down the steps to swim, but you cannot transfer the embodied understanding of how you swim. That knowledge is decrypted from your personal copy of the universal consciousness, the Brahman. We each hold a small, unique piece of the whole. By mastering even one tiny skill, we bring something to the "potluck party" of collective knowledge, granting us access to the entire evolutionary feast. The process of mastering the skill is ultimately more important than the skill itself. As Krishna advises:

"Nityam Yazne Pratishtitam"

"Be steadfast in your Yazna every day."

He doesn't specify the type of ritual, because the nature of the work is secondary to the dedication of the practice.

Redefining Purpose

This brings us to the concept of "purpose." We often define purpose as a future state or an accomplishment we must chase. This is Sakaam Yazna—action performed with a desired outcome in mind. While not inherently bad, the Gita suggests it is not the optimal path to peace and knowledge.

Instead, consider "purpose" as a complete focus on the actions your present situation requires to train your mind. It is a shift in perspective from "Where should I be?" to "What does this moment ask of me?" Millions of choices have led you to where you are now. Purpose is not about changing into someone else; it is about realizing who you are through mindful action in your current reality.

The ignorant and the wise may perform the same actions, but their motivations differ. Krishna explains:

"The way ignorant people, attached to outcomes, perform their duties with passion, the learned must do the same for the greater good (evolution), but without any attachment."

Knowing Yourself Through Action

Ultimately, developing a skill is a process of knowing yourself. A marathon runner knows their own heart rate, the limits of their knees, and the fuel their body needs. By making every aspect of life—breathing, eating, sleeping—a skill, you come to know yourself intimately. Such a lifestyle is Karma Yoga.

A Practical Test

Let's approach one activity in a new way. Choose a fairly complex task you've wanted to try—cooking a difficult dish, running a 5k, or singing a challenging song. For one month, dedicate 30 minutes to it every day.

Do this not to achieve an outcome, but simply to provide your mind with training data. You are not trying to become a master chef or win a marathon. You are simply giving your mind a chance to work. Do not let expectations creep in. You might be pleasantly surprised by the improvements you make as your body and mind optimize the routine.

So we now understand how practice makes us perfect.

But the question remains: what prompts us to practice? Who is the one asking this large model to do something? And keep on repeating till perfection is reached. If we are advised not to focus on outcomes, who is actually enjoying the outcomes?

Who is the true consumer of all our sacrifices?