Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.30

Series 1

IV - 3: With a Deep Silence in Your Eyes

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.

Technology:

Converting Paraplegic’s Thought into Action

Matthew Nagle lost the use of his limbs following a knife wound that severed his spine in 2001. But in 2004 the 25-year-old regained the ability to transform thought into action with the help of a new, implanted sensor. A similar sensor had previously enabled monkeys to move a computer cursor simply by thinking it across the screen but this marks the first time such a device has been demonstrated in humans. Neurologist Leigh Hochberg of Massachusetts General Hospital and his colleagues—including sensor co-inventor John Donoghue of Brown University—placed the tiny sensor containing 100 electrodes, each thinner than a human hair, onto the surface of Nagle's motor cortex, the part of the brain that governs movement. The sensor registered electrical signals from nearby neurons and transmitted them through gold wires to a titanium base on Nagle's skull. Cables connected this base to a set of computers, processors and monitors. The hardware assessed the firing of the neurons—sometimes as much as 200 times a second—and converted it into action. After personalizing the array by having Nagle track a cursor moved by a technician, the computers generated a neural cursor that he then used over the course of 57 subsequent sessions to open e-mail, draw circles and play a version of Pong. It also enabled him to open and close the fingers of a prosthetic hand as well as use a robotic arm to pick up pieces of hard candy and drop them into a technician's hand. He could even control his television, all while conversing with those around him.

Think.

Brain: Sleep Enhances Memory Retention

Learn.

Sleep aids memory. Whether tested in animals or humans, studies have shown that sense memories—such as learning a certain sequence of dance steps—take root more solidly when paired with adequate rest. Now new research shows that so-called declarative memories—such as a sequence of facts—also benefit from slumber, especially when subjects are challenged with subsequent, competing information. A team of researchers recruited 60 healthy subjects—excluding night owls, the restless and the lethargic—and asked them to memorize 20 pairs of random words, such as blanket and village. The participants were assigned to one of five groups of 12 and had unlimited time to learn the pairings. Two of the groups began learning at 9 A.M and returned for testing at 9 P.M. that evening—with no naps allowed—and two of the groups began learning at 9 P.M. and returned for testing at 9 A.M. the following morning after a night’s sleep. The sleepers barely outperformed their sleepless peers in the first comparison: sleepers accurately recalled 94 percent of the pairings compared to just 82 percent for their peers. But when the researchers added a twist—forcing subjects in two of the groups to learn a new set of word pairs 12 minutes prior to testing—the well-rested radically outperformed the sleepy; sleepers recalled 76 percent of the initial pairs compared to just 32 percent for their peers who had gone without shut-eye. The researchers propose that sleep "orchestrates the strengthening of memories and thereby renders them less vulnerable to interference."

Imagine.

Understand.

Geology:

Focus of an Earthquake

The point within the Earth along the rupturing geological fault where an earthquake originates is called the focus, or hypocenter. The point on the Earth’s surface directly above the focus is called the epicenter. Earthquake waves begin to radiate out from the focus and subsequently form along the fault rupture. If the focus is near the surface—between 0 and 70 km (0 and 40 mi) deep—shallow-focus earthquakes are produced. If it is intermediate or deep below the crust—between 70 and 700 km (40 and 400 mi) deep—a deep-focus earthquake will be produced. Shallow-focus earthquakes tend to be larger, and therefore more damaging, earthquakes. This is because they are closer to the surface where the rocks are stronger and build up more strain. Seismologists know from observations that most earthquakes originate as shallow-focus earthquakes and most of them occur near plate boundaries—areas where the Earth’s crustal plates move against each other. Other earthquakes, including deep-focus earthquakes, can originate in subduction zones, where one tectonic plate subducts, or moves under another plate.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Mind: The Effects of Psilocybin

A new, rigorous, double-blind study has reopened the doors of scientific investigation, reporting spiritual effects and long-term impacts from the use of the psychedelic drug psilocybin. Neuroscientists Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University and his colleagues tested the effects of psilocybin—a drug derived from certain mushrooms that appears to mimic the effects of serotonin in the brain—on 36 middle-aged Americans who had never tried psychedelics before. The majority of these subjects were college graduates, successful in their careers and participants in some form of spiritual activity. In each session, the subjects lay down on a couch in a comfortable, living room-like environment and were encouraged to use an eye mask to block out visual distraction and headphones that offered classical music. Monitors were instructed to soothe patients via supportive talk or touch if they experienced any anxiety. Immediately following the roughly eight-hour sessions, the participants were asked to fill out a series of questionnaires designed to probe the nature and quality of the experience. Twenty-two out of the 36 volunteers described a so-called mystical experience, or one that included feelings of unity with all things, transcendence of time and space as well as deep and abiding joy. In follow-up interviews conducted two months later 67 percent of the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as among the most meaningful of their lives, comparing it to the birth of a first child or the death of a parent, and 79 percent reported that it had moderately or greatly increased their overall sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Physics:

Atom Interferometry

In spring 2010, the military plans to embark on a road trip across the country to test a new way of navigating. Instead of taking a path marked by a dog-eared road atlas, a compass, or even global positioning satellites, the vehicle will follow one mapped by supercold cesium atoms. This cross-country trek will be a field test for the Defense Department's Precision Inertial Navigation Systems program to navigate by measuring the Earth's rotation using atoms that behave like waves. The vehicle won't drive blind, but the machine guiding it could make such a feat possible. And someday the new system could also improve the accuracy of gyroscope navigation in airplanes 200-fold. The atoms' direction-finding powers come from a technique called atom interferometry. Once a lab curiosity, atom interferometry is now becoming the Swiss Army knife of physics. It has the potential to steer airplanes and submarines, uncover buried caches of oil and diamonds, and perhaps hunt down cave-dwelling terrorists. The technology is also helping scientists probe the very nature of the universe, from detecting theoretical waves of gravity sent out by exploding stars to measuring deviations in the strength of gravity at superclose distances. Physicists are even rallying to put an atom interferometer in orbit to test theories like Einstein's general relativity with unparalleled exactness.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Cosmology:

Phantom Energy

Penetrate.

If cosmologist Will Percival of the University of Portsmouth in England is right, the universe will end about 60 billion years from now, when every molecule and atom will be torn asunder by a mysterious entity that opposes gravity’s pull and turns it into a cosmic push. The cosmic killer is a runaway version of what astronomers call dark energy, an unidentified substance that pervades all of space. Dark energy appears to cause the universe to expand at an accelerated rate. Many studies have found hints that the density of dark energy is constant over time and that it therefore exerts a constant repulsive force. But Percival and his collaborators, studying cosmic expansion by measuring sound waves generated in the early universe, have found the first sign that dark energy could be growing stronger over time. Dark energy that grows stronger with time has been dubbed phantom energy by theorist Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College. Phantom energy would cause a runaway expansion, in which the universe would become infinitely large and time would effectively cease at a cosmic age of 70 billion years. A billion years before the absolute end, phantom energy would tear apart clusters of galaxies. The Milky Way would succumb about 100 million years before the Big Rip. A few months before the end of time, the dark energy content of the empty space between Earth and the sun would overwhelm the sun's pull, and Earth would float off into space. An hour before the end, Earth itself would fall apart. Finally, 10^-19 seconds before the Big Rip, molecules and atoms would break up.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

That's something worth attaining — when you are moving and nothing moves in you, when you are running and nothing runs in you, when you are talking and still you remain quite silent.

You are to live in the world, but you have to live here with great awareness.

Yes, sometimes sit silently, and sometimes move into action. And by and by between inaction and action create a bridge.

When you do a thousand and one things and you are not a doer at all, then you have achieved the synthesis I call spirituality.

Never settle: be moving. A pilgrimage life should be. Live in houses but don't become householders.

Remain moving, flowing, entering into the unknown. Yes, that's what I do — the moment you start feeling settled, I unsettle you.

I am here just to give you an urge to seek — just an urge to be an adventurous being, an urge to take the jump into the unknown.

Cling to the old you want to, and destroying it I am, and I am giving you some new idea, some new path, some new urge.

A mystery Life is; no solution it has. And every day, in many ways, you come across this riddle.

10.

Life comes from God; the very source is mysterious.

11.

The only thing that can be said about the ultimate, categorically, is that nothing can be said about it.

12.

Existence has no utility, it is not something that you can buy or sell. Existence is non-utilitarian, existence is purposeless. Existence has to be observed with a deep silence in your eyes.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

All great artists have suffered much. A Dostoevsky is a very ill person. Out of his illness, contradiction, out of his inner conflict, comes a great piece like Brothers Karamazov. So is Van Gogh very insane. But out of his insanity come great paintings. In fact, it may be that because he was painting it kept him closer to the normal. If he had not been allowed to paint he would have gone mad sooner. If Dostoevsky had not been allowed to write he might have committed suicide, he might have gone mad sooner. These are like vomits. And I am not saying that there is something condemnable in it, I am simply stating a fact: ninety-nine percent of art is pathology. So if man becomes healthy, if man becomes normal, if man becomes more meditative, this kind of art will disappear. Hence there is a fear in the artists' minds that if people are REALLY meditative then what will happen to art? There will be no good poetry and there will be no good novels and there will be no good paintings and no good music. No, they need not be afraid — one percent of art does not come out of pathology, it comes out of silence. The Ajanta, the Ellora, Khajuraho, they come out of an inner meditative consciousness, they come out of meditation. The great statues of Buddha have not come out of pathology, they have come out of a great inner experience. The great temples of the world, the great cathedrals of the world, have not come out of pathology. They are great aspirations, rising higher and higher towards the sky — towards the superconscious, towards God.

- Osho