Mental awareness in comatose patients and sleeping newborn infants

Until recently, comatose patients who did not regain awareness in a few weeks would be written off as hopeless, but advances in neuroimaging technologies have revealed that comatose patients continue to display a degree of mental awareness. Scientists have found that disorders of consciousness are not an on-off phenomenon but span a continuum. These results validate remarks made by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother several decades ago. That is the subject of the first section below. The second section discusses the surprising learning abilities exhibited by sleeping newborn babies.

Predictions of Sri Aurobindo

This article brings together some predictions and uncanny observations made by Sri Aurobindo that were fulfilled later in time.  To preserve chronological fidelity, I will only draw on remarks which predate the actual occurrence of the event.  If the modern tech-savvy yogi had to record predictions about the future, he or she could use Trusted timestamping(digital notary), a cryptographic technology which is now available in commercial software products.   Such technology was unfortunately not available in Sri Aurobindo’s time nor did he care to impress others with his yogic abilities.  Nevertheless, the original manuscripts from which these remarks are drawn are preserved in the Archives Department of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry.

The existence of vital signs during sleep or coma

When we fall asleep or go into a coma, the greater part of our consciousness recedes from the surface and plunges into the depths of the subliminal being.  But there still persists a life-force within the body which can remember and respond when presented with an external stimulus.  Writing in the early part of the twentieth century, Sri Aurobindo had outlined this condition of consciousness in his work The Life Divine. Medical science is now offering experimental validation of his observation as adduced from a couple of experiments discussed in this article.