“Boy, boy, crazy boy Get cool, boy.”
- Stephen Sondheim, “Cool,”
Indeed, there is something to be said for being cool. But by cool, I don’t mean, as it’s so often misinterpreted, to be uninterested and uncaring. Sadly, there are many women who’ve been wildly attracted to the so-called “cool” guys who could care less about them or much of anything else for that matter. Cool is much cooler - and ironically, warmer - than that. More on this later.
Dictionary.com defines chillin’ as “relaxing; being quiet and carefree.” Because knowledge is structured in consciousness, there are different levels of interpretation of this concept of being cool or chillin’. A nasty child might be given a “timeout” by his mother so that he can sit quietly in his room for a while and cool out or chill. Each side of an intense work stoppage negotiation, say between municipal workers’ union representatives and their management counterparts, can have a cooling off period to let strong emotions like anger subside. And, more pleasantly, you can relax in a hammock on a tropical island, pina colada in hand, just chillin’ by the Caribbean. You, too, would be cooling off from the intense grind of your daily workaday world. We call this timeout a vacation.
Yoga Cool
I’ve been blessed since the age of 20 to have been able to teach meditation - first Transcendental Meditation, and since 2010 Higher Self Healing Meditation - and have watched many hundreds of people chill out in the deepest way by letting their entire body come to a level of rest that’s deeper than sleep, while the mind expands to its full unbounded status as it connects to the higher Self within. This brief cooling off, or chilling out, is known in Yoga circles as Samadhi, a fourth state of consciousness, as unlike waking, dreaming, and sleeping as each is from the other. It’s a momentary state of deep relaxation, way beyond any strife or agita - in fact, beyond any perception, thought, or emotion. Beyond time, it’s a state of serenity in the timeless Now of eternity.
Quantum Physics Cool
Interestingly, this concept of cooling out is known not only in yoga circles, but in quantum physics, as well. The third law of thermodynamics, for example, states that entropy (or disorder) in a system decreases as the temperature drops, and reaches zero, as temperature touches absolute zero (approximately minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit). This state of perfect orderliness is known as the ground state of the system. In such a state of - shall we say super chillin’? - a gas like helium takes on the status of superfluidity. In other words, matter takes on the behavior of a liquid with zero viscosity (no resistance to being deformed; honey’s thickness makes it highly viscous). Moreover, it demonstrates the ability to propel itself and travel in such a way that gravity itself is defied. In short, by chillin’ out in the most remarkable way known to physicists, a gas can behave outside the laws of physics, as we know them. A longtime practitioner of the TM-Sidhi program, I can say from experience that when the mind/body are cooled out in a very deep way, the body can literally raise itself off the ground and hop through the air, propelling itself in a way beyond gravity and not directly explainable by the laws of physics either.
Hollywood Cool
This profound kind of cool has been hinted at by Hollywood, as well. The movies have given us many embodiments of what I like to call Hollywood Cool. Some of the most memorable stars from the past, who’ve demonstrated in very different ways a kind of untouchability, include, in my humble opinion, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Sean Connery, and Clint Eastwood, among others. Their film characters portray an ability to be at ease with whatever takes place, a flair for taking things in stride, for not getting rattled or shaken. Sometimes this confidence comes about through wealth (Grant), sometimes through physical toughness (Brando), sometimes through inability to express much emotion (Bogart), sometimes the ability to handle any life-threatening challenge (Connery as 007).
Some of their cool manifests as an inability or a lack of inclination to express themselves emotionally. This holding back often has been very attractive to female moviegoers. By being their own men, they remain as cool as the proverbial cucumber. In a way, they’re Hollywood’s equivalents of the Enlightened Cool that I’ll describe below. They don’t have to be told like viewers of Gillette’s Dry Idea old deodorant commercials, to “never let them see you sweat”. Deodorants help us not to sweat; these cinematic icons just seem not to sweat at all.
Enlightened Cool
The deepest and permanent cool comes not from emotional detachment (Hollywood Cool) but by having your consciousness anchored in the transcendental depths of your inner Being, to your higher Self. Unlike the momentary Samadhi cool described above, Enlightened Cool is permanent. This means that the nervous system has become freed of stress, and as a result operates with tremendous flexibility, terrific resistance to the stresses and strains of daily life, so that it flows with whatever takes place. In other words, the detachment isn’t on the emotional level, but on the spiritual level. That’s because your higher Self, being located in the transcendental realm, which doesn’t change, is separate from your changing individuality, like your perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, as well as the rest of all life itself, which is forever changing. Consequently, your Self lives in an ongoing cocoon untouched by anything. It’s not as if nothing touches your emotions - things do - it’s that nothing touches your true Self, because it’s separate from everything in life that changes. This creates a cosmic security, a natural cool that inspires you to care more about making the world a better place. In other words, the more spiritually cool you are, the more you warm up to solving the problems of the world. It also enables you to appreciate others more, so that the ability to be emotionally expressive is greater than the characters portrayed by Brando, McQueen, or Eastwood. The highest spiritual cool makes you a very warm emotional person indeed.
