Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.15

Series 1

II - 6: The Totality of Existence

Mind is a tangled web.

Use it to catch the world.

Try to comprehend the infinite complexity of it all…

…elegantly embedded in the fabric of space and time.

Open your eyes in amazement.

Be Aware.

See.

Brain:

Astrocytes

Two groups of researchers — one at MIT, the other at Harvard — have shown that the star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes get the blood pumping to parts of the brain that are thinking hard. These cells may use blood flow and other tricks to rev up communication between neurons or slow it down, and may even play a role in storing information. The findings indicate that astrocytes are not just supporting actors for neurons; they deserve recognition as true costars. Neurons have typically gotten the most attention from researchers because they are the brain cells that do all the thinking. But neurons cohabit the brain with a class of cells called glia, which means “glue” in Greek. Glia outnumber neurons in the human brain by a factor of 10 to one, and astrocytes are the most abundant type of glial cell.

Think.

Astronomy: Termination Shock

Learn.

Voyager 2, launched in 1977, approached the inner edge of the solar system on Aug. 31, 2007. Its signals reveal that at a distance of 83.7 astronomical units (1 AU is the average Earth-sun separation), the venerable spacecraft had at least five encounters with a turbulent region known as the termination shock. That’s the place where the solar wind — the sun’s hot supersonic wind of protons and other charged particles, which carves the heliosphere, a bubble in space extending well beyond the orbit of Pluto — slams into cold interstellar space and abruptly slows. Analyzing the encounter is critical for understanding how the bubble interacts with surrounding space, and how the bubbles carved by other stars affect their surroundings. More is to come as the Voyager craft, along with its sister Voyager 1, continues its journey past the termination shock, to the outermost edge of the solar system during the coming decade.

Imagine.

Understand.

Evolution:

Ediacaran Survivors

Fossils recently found in southwestern China may be of a lineage that originated long before the Cambrian explosion of biodiversity, when most major groups of animals first appeared in the fossil record. The frondlike animals were up to 7.5 centimeters long and anchored themselves to the seafloor with a hollow stalk. The rocks bearing the fossils were deposited on an ocean bottom about 520 million years ago during the Cambrian period. These animals appear very similar to older organisms; creatures with multiple frondlike structures lived at least 20 million years earlier, during the Ediacaran period, the interval that immediately preceded the Cambrian. The Cambrian fronds could be members of a lineage that survived the Ediacaran period.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Quantum Physics : Quantum Entanglement

Belonging to the realm of quantum weirdness is a particular quantum property called entanglement. It’s a consequence of quantum physics that was first fully noticed in the 1930s by Erwin Schrödinger and also by Einstein, neither of whom liked it very much. Entanglement is a sort of quasiphysical tie that binds, a link between two quantum particles that time and space cannot sever. It means that when particles of light — photons — interact and then go their separate ways, their ways are not really separate. The quantum math describing them retains an overlap, so that the fate of one depends, in a certain sense, on the fate of the other. One can think of entangled photons as something like pairs of spinning coins. If one turns up heads, the other will show tails, no matter how far the first is from the second, the quantum rules say. And it doesn’t matter which coin is viewed first. There’s no way to get a message from one to the other, no possible physical influence that can be transmitted to enforce this heads-tails mismatch — it just happens, instantly, as soon as one or the other photon is recorded.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Pollution:

Toad Demasculization

Toads and other amphibians throughout the world are under siege. Disease plagues many populations, while others suffer high rates of deformities or immune suppression. In some regions, species have simply vanished without a trace. And then there is gender hopping where males of the species tend to resemble the females. A new study of cane toads links proximity to agriculture with feminized — even intersex — males. At sites associated with heavy agriculture across Florida, only about 40 percent of the males had typical he-toad gonads and coloring. An equal number were intersex animals, possessing both testes and ovaries. The primary suspect is atrazine. It is a weed killer used by farmers, generally, but especially by those raising sugar cane, a primary crop in the heavily agricultural Florida settings.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Medical Research: Skeletal Muscle Stem Cells

Penetrate.

A new study used skeletal muscle stem cells to rebuild brawn in mice with faulty muscle-making genes. The technique could provide a promising treatment for disorders like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common form of the muscle disease. The results offer hope that one day skeletal muscle stem cells from healthy people could be grafted into those with muscle disorders. People with other kinds of muscle damage or degeneration could benefit as well. Unlike ordinary cells, which each serve a specific purpose in the muscle, skeletal muscle stem cells are generalists, able to transform into any of the types of cells that make muscles. Different organs have different pools of stem cells. Some research has tried to use bone marrow cells to regenerate organ cells for the liver, the heart and other organs. But the new work shows that drawing stem cells from the same type of organ being repaired is more effective.

Wonder…

But Beware!

Don't get caught in the mighty maze of your own mind.

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

Meditation is perfect when meditation is dropped. You have arrived when you have even forgotten about enlightenment. Total relaxation this is.

Impatient never be. Trust life. Go in deep trust.

We go on projecting, we go on seeing things which we want to see. To be as it is we never allow reality. We never allow that which is to be mirrored in us.

Before you can see persons as they are you will have to see yourself as you are. The first step has to be taken in self-awareness, self-remembering.

The heart goes nowhere, it knows no journey, no pilgrimage. It is simply herenow. When all head trips dissolve, you reach.

Meditation is to be in harmony. Meditation is to be the harmony. Man has lost himself because he has lost this harmony.

Meditation is to be one piece, and when you are one piece you are in peace.

Happiness is a shadow of harmony, it follows harmony. No other way to be happy there is.

When you are one you can see the one — only then can the one be seen. Clear then the eyes are, the clarity you have.

10.

One is not doing anything, one is not thinking anything, one is not feeling anything, one simply is. This isness is the ultimate experience of bliss.

11.

A man confined in the head loses all juice, loses all joy.

12.

When your totality participates with the totality of existence — a peak experience it is.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

The sexual is a very great thing. By sexual I mean whenever your body is alive, sensuous, throbbing, pulsating — then you are in a sexual state. It may not have anything to do with the genital. For example, when you are dancing you are sexual; a dancer is sexual, the dance energy is sexual energy. It is not genital, you may not be thinking at all about sex, you may have completely forgotten all about sex; in fact, when you forget everything about sex and you are dissolved into any deep participation with your total body, it is sexuality.

- Osho