Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.22

Series 1

III - 4: That Pristine Purity

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.

Astronomy:

Comet-like Object 2006 SQ372

A huge comet-like object has been spotted inside the orbit of Neptune. The object, at least 30 miles wide, is on the return leg of a 22,500-year journey around the sun. Catalogued as 2006 SQ372, the interloper is just over two billion miles (3.2 billion km) from Earth, though its elongated trek takes it to a distance of 150 billion miles (241 billion km), or nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. The only known object with a comparable orbit is Sedna — a distant, Pluto-like dwarf planet discovered in 2003. But 2006 SQ372's travels take it more than 1.5 times farther from the sun. Its diameter is estimated at 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 km). It's basically a comet, but it never gets close enough to the sun to develop a long, bright tail of evaporated gas and dust. Comet tails form when solar energy boils material off a comet. 2006 SQ372 could have formed, like Pluto, in the belt of icy debris beyond Neptune, then been kicked to large distance by a gravitational encounter with Neptune or Uranus. However, it seems more probable that SQ372 comes from the inner edge of the Oort Cloud. The Oort Cloud is a huge spherical cloud surrounding the solar system. It extends about 18 trillion miles (30 trillion kilometers) from the sun and was first proposed in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort.

Think.

Alternative Energy: New Design Windmills

Learn.

From Holland, the country famous for its windmills, comes a new design for home wind power. Looking like an eggbeater, it spins quieter and at lower wind speeds than a lot of traditional propeller-type turbines. It's now standard for big wind turbines to have propeller blades. Much of the turning force is generated at the tips, which slice perpendicularly through the air, causing a swooshing noise that some residents nearby may find unnerving. By contrast, the so-called Energy Ball, sold by Dutch-based Home Energy International, has rotors bent around in a ball shape so that they primarily move parallel to the wind. This generates less noise. The noise from an Energy Ball is always less than the sound of the wind. And what's more, the device continues to work even when the wind speed dips down to as slow as 4.5 mph (2 meters per second), whereas the average turbine needs roughly twice that wind speed to turn.

Imagine.

Understand.

Mind:

Robot with a Biological Brain

Scientists have created a robot controlled by a biological brain made of rat neurons. The robot, named Gordon, is not exactly an Einstein but represents a remarkable bridging of the gap between biology and technology. The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer. Its sole means of control is from its own brain. The brain drives the robot's movements. This new research can enable us to investigate how the brain learns and memorizes its experiences, moving forward our understanding of how brains work, and could have a profound effect on many areas of science and medicine. One of the fundamental questions that scientists are facing today is how we link the activity of individual neurons with the complex behaviors that we see in whole organisms. This project gives scientists a really unique opportunity to look at something which may exhibit complex behaviors, but still remain closely tied to the activity of individual neurons.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Paleontology: Oldest Embryo Fossils

Roughly 600 million years ago, thousands of embryos of primitive animals drifted into seawater laced with sulfides and died. But in addition to potentially killing them, the sulfides protected the microscopic nascent creatures and permitted the process of fossilization to occur. Research in the Doushantuo Formation in China uncovered these fossilized embryos — among the rarest of finds both for their fragile nature and depth in past time — and new imaging techniques have provided a window into the internal workings of the most ancient animals yet discovered. An interdisciplinary and international team of scientists isolated 162 of the most well-preserved specimens. Each showed evidence of an intact fertilization envelope — the surrounding membrane that kept the dividing cells together — as a change in the encompassing rock. The embryos are not deflated or deformed. Using x-ray computed tomography as well as scanning and transmission electron microscopy, the scientists peered inside these ancient animals and created three-dimensional models of their innards. The models revealed intricate structures inside the cells, including a lack of stiff cell walls as are typical in the fossilized remnants of fungi and algae. Although the scientists are reasonably sure the fossilized embryos are real, they have no idea what kind of animals these embryos represent.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Technology:

Invisibility Cloak

Mere months after proposing a technologically feasible way of rendering objects invisible, a research team has demonstrated a rudimentary example of an invisibility cloak. Concentric rings of so-called metamaterial caused microwaves to partially bend around an enclosed object like a water flows around a stone. A metamaterial is a composite structure, built of metal rings and wires embedded in fiberglass, that makes light behave in weird ways. Metamaterials can be used, for example, to bend light sharply or to focus it to a higher resolution than is normally possible. More recently, researchers pointed out that the technology should make it possible to construct spheres or cylinders capable of cloaking an object almost perfectly from detection by a single wavelength of light. When light strikes a metamaterial it causes the electrons in the metal pieces to vibrate; these vibrations in turn affect the speed of the light. A metamaterial shell with the right gradient of metal elements should cause light of a particular wavelength to wrap around the shell's interior. Although the prototype worked surprisingly well, creating a spherical shell or cloaking shorter wavelengths of light, such as the visible spectrum, are likely to be very challenging tasks.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Biology: Cloning Potential of Cells

Penetrate.

Cloning relies on a process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, in which the nucleus of a donor cell is transferred into a fertilized egg that has been emptied of its chromosomes. That egg now contains an exact duplicate of the donor's genome, and if all goes well when it is implanted into a surrogate mother, a clone will result. Researchers examined the cloning potential of three different types of cells: hematopoietic stem cells, progenitor cells and granulocytes. Each represents a different stage in the differentiation process of blood cells; stem cells can become any kind of blood cell, progenitor cells are already on a particular track and granulocytes are a specific type of white blood cell (further specified as neutrophils). The researchers expected that nuclei transferred from stem cells would be the best in creating clones. However, only 4 percent of stem cell transfers produced nascent embryos compared with 8 percent of progenitor cells and 35 percent of granulocytes. Out of 1,368 granulocyte transfers at least 34 percent reached the blastocyst stage, and two actually resulted in living pups (who did not survive for long).

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

In you meet all the mysteries of existence — you are a meeting-place, you are a cross-roads. On one side the whole world, on the other side the whole of God.

Speaking when you are, there is also something silent in you. Lusting when you are, there is something beyond lust. Desiring when you are, there is somebody who is not desiring at all. Watch it.

Just disconnect. Some time once a day, sit silently and disconnect yourself of all connections.

Clouds come and go, and the sky abides. You are the sky and the clouds thoughts are.

You are no more asleep, you are no more identified with the clouds that come and go. Now you know you abide for ever.

These things come and go, just ripples on the surface they are. Deep in your depth, not a single ripple ever arises. And you are there, and you are that.

Thoughts come and go, feelings come and go, dreams come and go, moods come and go, climates change. All that changes is not you.

Is there something that remains unchanging? That's you. And that is God. And to know it, and to be it, and to be in it, is to attain to realization.

Suppose you are not a son to your parents, nor the husband to your wife, nor the father to your children, and so on — then you get you-in-yourself.

10.

Disconnect all. Then you ARE in yourself.

11.

Suddenly you are there in all your aloneness — and that purity of aloneness, that pristine purity of aloneness.

12.

Now ask yourself: What is this 'you-in-yourself'? You can never answer this question — unanswerable it is …This way one stumbles upon the unknowable; entering into meditation this is.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

BRAHMACHARYA is the growth of your sexuality, the ultimate growth. BRAHMACHARYA is not anti sex, it is the fragrance of sex — when the flower has bloomed and disappeared and only fragrance is left. That's why impotent people cannot become BRAHMACHARIS. Impotent people should become BRAHMACHARIS immediately — they are — but they cannot because they cannot flower.

- Osho