Tesla As a Metaphor for Dhyāna Yoga

Press enter or click to view image in full size

Infographic generated by Google Gemini

Here is the summary of my talk at the Indica Advaita Academy on November 30, summarized by Google Gemini

Tesla As a Metaphor for Dhyāna Yoga

Modern Insights on Meditation

In the lecture “Tesla As A Metaphor For Dhyāna Yoga | Modern Insights On Meditation,” technologist and writer Sundar Rajan addresses an enduring puzzle: why does meditation feel effortless for some, yet impossibly difficult for others — even when they are intelligent, disciplined, and sincere?

Delivered for Advaita Academy, the talk proposes an arresting answer. Deep meditation (Dhyāna Yoga) does not function like a manual skill that improves only with effort. Instead, it behaves more like an autonomous system — once correctly initiated, it runs largely on its own. To explain this, Rajan turns to an unlikely but surprisingly precise metaphor: the Tesla car.

Executive Summary

Rajan’s central claim is bold yet simple:

The spiritual journey of Dhyāna Yoga is self-driving.

Using features from early Tesla vehicles, he maps two classical Vedantic ideas into modern language:

• Lifetime Charging → Guru’s Grace
• Full Self-Driving (FSD) → Spiritual Autonomy

He further distinguishes between secular meditation (stress reduction, wellness) and spiritual meditation (Self-realization), and presents an unusual experiment in which ChatGPT is used to validate criteria for genuine meditative progress using Bhagavad Gita Chapter 6 as a reference.

1. The Tesla Metaphor

Lifetime Charging = Guru’s Grace

Early Tesla models famously included lifetime free charging — a benefit that, once granted, was never revoked.

Rajan equates this with Dīkṣā or Guru’s Grace. Once a seeker receives initiation or inner orientation from a realized teacher, that spiritual charge remains available permanently.

He illustrates this with a deeply personal anecdote: meeting his mentor — a Siddha Purusha and engineer — in the late 1970s. Over the next 45 years, Rajan admits to long gaps, inconsistencies, and even misuse of practice. Yet the inner access point never disappeared.

Key insight:
Grace is not transactional. Once imparted, it does not expire.

Full Self-Driving (FSD) = Spiritual Autonomy

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system uses cameras, sensors, and internal navigation to reach a destination with minimal driver input.

Rajan argues that Dhyāna Yoga works the same way.

Unlike Śravaṇa and Manana (systematic study and reflection), meditation is a solitary path. Once the destination — Self-realization — is implanted, an internal guidance system takes over.

He cites Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 6, where Krishna assures Arjuna that even a yogi who falls short continues the journey in future lives.

Key insight:
Meditation is not fragile. Once begun correctly, it resumes automatically — across breaks, failures, and even lifetimes.

2. “Meditation” vs. “meditation”

One of the talk’s most provocative lines is:

“Yoga is not yoga. Meditation is not meditation.”

Rajan draws a clear boundary:

Secular meditation (lowercase m)

• Mindfulness apps
• Stress reduction
• Productivity or wellness practices

These are useful and legitimate — but limited to psychological well-being.

Spiritual Meditation (uppercase M)

• The Dhyāna of the Upaniṣads and Gita
• Aimed explicitly at Self-realization

Confusing the two, he argues, leads to frustration — people expect transcendence from tools designed only for calmness.

3. Measuring the Unmeasurable

If meditation is autonomous, how do we know it is working?

Rajan rejects external metrics like posture, duration, or silence. Instead, he proposes three internal markers of authentic Dhyāna Yoga:

1. Absorption — How fully attention is drawn inward
2. Peace (Śānti) — A causeless, inner tranquility
3. Bliss (Ānanda) — A subtle but unmistakable joy

His most controversial assertion is also the clearest:

Without Bliss, it is not Dhyāna Yoga.

4. Validating Wisdom with AI

In an experiment that startled many in the audience, Rajan tested his framework using ChatGPT.

The Experiment

He asked the AI to:

• Compare meditation systems (Mindfulness, TM, Art of Living, Patañjali Yoga)
• Score them against Absorption, Peace, and Bliss
• Use Bhagavad Gita Chapter 6 as the evaluative lens

The Result

The AI produced a bubble chart ranking practices hierarchically — placing Samādhi at the highest level and app-based meditation at the lowest.

Crucially, it did this without being prompted to privilege traditional spiritual endpoints.

Conclusion:
Large Language Models, trained on vast corpora of spiritual texts, can act as coherent mirrors of inherited wisdom — not realized beings, but powerful tools for validating philosophical hypotheses.

Conclusion: Self-Driving to the Self

Rajan’s lecture succeeds because it reframes spirituality without diluting it.

The takeaway is both comforting and demanding:

• Comforting, because progress is not lost through inconsistency.
• Demanding, because genuine Dhyāna requires the right destination, not just effort.

Once grace is received and the inner destination is set, the system moves on its own — quietly, persistently, across time.

The journey to the Self is not a manual climb.
It is full self-driving — powered by grace.

For a generation fluent in AI, autonomy, and intelligent systems, this metaphor may be one of the clearest modern bridges yet between ancient Vedanta and contemporary life.