Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.35

Series 1

IV - 8: Where Bliss is Natural

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.

Biology:

Microbes in the Air

The air is a hostile place for a microbe. Often dry, lacking in nutrients and filled with deadly ultraviolet radiation, the atmosphere would seem to be the last place a microbe would want to find itself. Yet, a new genetic census of some air samples from Austin and San Antonio, Texas, finds that as many as 2,000 different kinds of microbes may be present in the air we breathe on any given day. A group of microbial ecologists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory collected air samples in the two Texas cities over a period of 17 weeks. They then used a specially designed microarray—a small chip roughly the size of a quarter that carries probes to detect specific genetic information—to search for a gene involved in the making of a protein (16S) that is found in many microbes. The researchers designed a 500,000-probe array to identify up to about 9,000 different groups of bacterial and archaean organisms. It looks at the differences in the 16S sequence to identify a specific type of prokaryotic organism. In the air samples, the researchers uncovered at least 1,800 different types of microbes, including those such as the diarrhea-causing Arcobacter and ulcer-inducing Heliobacter genera that can be dangerous to human health. Previous efforts to determine microbe counts in the atmosphere had relied on culturing the air to see what grew. However, this method cannot recover over 90 percent of the organisms even though they are present and viable. The new study puts the diversity of microbes in the air on par with the diversity of microbes in the soil, a fertile environment for such life-forms. In fact, there is a large crossover between the microbes in the air of a city and the microbes in its soil. The ecologists found that airborne microbes were broadly the same in Austin and San Antonio as well, and varied more depending on the weather than any other factor.

Think.

Neuroscience:

Tracking Scents

Learn.

When it is necessary to sniff out a trail—be it to a bomb, a drug stash or even to a pie sitting on a windowsill—the task is normally better left to our canine companions. And while our four-legged friends still hold the crown for tracking scents, a new study proves that humans may not be bloodhounds, but they can follow a scent—and they get better with training. In addition, there is evidence that mammals make comparisons between what is sensed by each of their nostrils to synthesize information on scent much the same way that they use both ears to hear. A team of neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, designed a series of experiments to uncover the mechanisms involved in tracking odors, working with human subjects. The results proved that humans, though inefficient at doing so, could follow the path of a scent. The team found that after some training odor detectors were able to stay closer to the trail mapped out by the scent, without zigzagging wildly around it, and that they finished the course twice as fast in their last attempt as they did the first time around. The researchers note that as the participants began tracking faster, they also began sniffing faster, presumably to gather information more quickly. The humans, however, still sniffed much more slowly than dogs, which may partially account for canines' greater efficiency at scent tracking. A second question addressed by the Berkeley study was how the human nose processes scents. The researchers took rapid snapshots of airstreams while subjects inhaled them. The results showed that the two nostrils draw air from separate regions of space. Thus, in principle, they could carry different information about odor concentration in two regions. While the Berkeley study does show a benefit to the "dual-nostril configuration" the exact utility is not yet clear.

Imagine.

Understand.

Astronomy:

Comet Origins

Once thought to have been born in isolation on the cold outskirts of our solar system, new evidence indicates that comets may actually have had company when they formed. Recent analysis of comet dust, the first ever collected and brought back to Earth, revealed a mix of particles from the region beyond Neptune as well as the area closer to the sun. The finding is significant because it indicates that more mixing of ingredients occurred when the solar system was forming than scientists originally believed. Comets formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago, at the same time as the sun and planets. Some comets, such as Wild 2 and Tempel 1, were thought to have developed exclusively in the outer solar system from ice and dust particles similar to those found in interstellar space. After forming, they were pulled into orbit in the planetary neighborhood where some comets are visible to us here on Earth. But when researchers recently analyzed the comet dust, they discovered that it contained minerals that likely originated in the inner regions of the solar system as well as particles typically found in materials formed farther away. One of the grains analyzed also contained minerals formed under superhigh temperatures found close to the sun. The discovery supports earlier suggestions that materials that developed there were mixed together with others in the far reaches of the solar system where these comets formed. The evidence came from comet dust collected by NASA's Stardust mission. The samples were returned to Earth in a capsule and scientists around the world began to analyze the comet material. Their findings forced the scientists to re-consider what they could learn about the outer solar system from comets.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Cosmology: GLAST

Explosions pouring out as much energy in seconds as the sun does in its entire lifetime. Invisible beams of radiation sweeping across the sky like giant searchlights. Supermassive black holes emitting powerful and highly variable jets of radiation. The universe truly looks different when viewed in gamma rays, the highest energies of the electromagnetic spectrum. In mid-2008 NASA’s Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, will be on its way to a ringside seat for observing these fireworks. From an orbit 565 kilometers above Earth, GLAST will see the gamma-ray sky with a breadth and clarity never before possible. Every three hours, the observatory will re-examine every gamma-ray source in the sky, checking for bursts or any other changes. Monitoring all of these gamma-ray sources for very long periods of time is going to add a whole new dimension to understanding these objects. GLAST will also measure the abundance and location of gamma rays at energies from a few billion to 100 billion electronvolts — a range that had not previously been well observed by other gamma-ray detectors. Because gamma rays in this range easily lose energy when they interact with ultraviolet and visible light, the relative abundance of these gamma rays is expected to provide new clues about the history of star formation in the universe. More speculatively, gamma rays with energies of about 100 billion electronvolts might also reveal the nature of dark matter, the invisible material that constitutes some 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. According to some models, when particles of dark matter meet, they annihilate and create gamma rays. The observatory will also examine gamma-ray bursts — the short-lived outbursts that constitute the most powerful events since the Big Bang — across an unprecedented 7 orders of magnitude in energy.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Mind:

Subliminal Distraction

What you don't "see" may distract you anyway. A new study shows that subconscious signals interfere with concentration, causing people to become easily distracted and falter on even the simplest of tasks. When people concentrate, they focus on the task at hand and filter out information irrelevant to what they are doing. A new report, however, says that sometimes unrelated info slips through, even if it is not consciously processed. A team of researchers performed a series of experiments that show how bits of irrelevant information sneak past people's attention-focusing mechanism. Study participants were told to report the pair of numbers in a string of six letters and two numerals that they saw on a computer screen, and to ignore the dots bouncing around them. Some of the dots moved about randomly and others traveled in fixed directions. Sounds simple. However, ignoring the dancing dots turned out to be easier said than done. The participants did well on their task when less or more than 5 percent of the dots moved in specific patterns, but their success rate dropped off at around 5 percent. This is because, researchers say, at 5 percent the pattern was apparently below the threshold of conscious awareness, but the subjects still picked it up subconsciously. The subjects did not pick up on any pattern in movement below 5 percent. In one fixed-direction pattern above 5 percent, they noticed the dots but were able to ignore them. Invisible signals can distract. When people are distracted, they have fewer resources to allocate to what they are doing and, as a result, their performance suffers, the scientists say. They speculate that stronger messages prompt the lateral prefrontal cortex to jump into action, batting back the potentially distracting signals.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Evolution: Dino Luck

Penetrate.

Dinosaurs' long reign on Earth may have had more to do with lady luck than with superiority. A new study challenges the old notion that dinosaurs out-competed their reptilian contemporaries. It is a longstanding mystery why dinosaurs became and remained so plentiful for more than 180 million years. The traditional theory: dinosaurs suddenly replaced other land animals because of special traits that gave them an evolutionary advantage, such as being warm-blooded, nimble and able to occupy varied habitats. This new research presents a fresh mathematical analysis of previous fossil data that indicates that ancestors of modern-day crocodiles had as diverse body types as early dinos, with whom they co-existed for some 30 million years. The fossil record shows that dinos lived alongside comparable groups of reptiles for millions of years without overtaking them. For example, the early dinosaurs were contemporaries of crurotarsans, croc ancestors, during the late Triassic period about 230 to 200 million years ago. If dinosaurs were more fit for the environment, they should have had a higher rate of evolution and more diverse body types. Instead the researchers found that the two groups evolved at similar rates and that the crurotarsans had a wider range of body types, suggesting that they had actually adapted to more lifestyles and ecological niches. If one could travel back to the Triassic one would have guessed that the crocodilians would have won out. But an extinction event at the beginning of the Jurassic some 205 million years ago—like runaway global warming or an asteroid crash—may have just been bad luck for the crurotarsans.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

You go silent, unchoosing, your eyes just ready to see what is, not in any way hoping to see some of your wishes fulfilled. Don't carry wishes.

Move without opinion. Move naked, with no clothes, with no opinions about truth, because truth abhors all opinions.

Don't choose. Accept life as it is in its totality.

Enlightenment can happen in a single moment — because it is not a question of how to bring it, it is a question of how to allow it.

The greatest thing will happen to you only when you are not there. And if you are doing something you are bound to be there.

You are a whole world within you; you carry the whole world.

All that exists, exists within you. You are a whole universe, not a small thing —

Everything is as it should be; just you have to settle in it, only you are unsettled. Everything is as it should be...

Everything is balanced. Only you are the problem; the world is not the problem at all.

10.

Can you think of a better universe than this? If you are wise you cannot, if you are a fool you can.

11.

This clarity, these eyes without opinions and prejudices — and you have become enlightened. Then there is no problem to be solved.

12.

This is what heaven means: where you are not expected to do anything, where you don't try to earn bliss — where bliss is natural, where it showers on you.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

Everybody is trying to dominate. That is the nature of the ego: to make every effort to dominate the other — whether the other is husband, wife, or children, or friends, makes no difference — to dominate, to find ways and means to dominate. And if everybody is trying to dominate and you are also trying to dominate there will be struggle. The struggle is not because others are trying to dominate; the struggle is because you are not trying to understand how the ego functions. You drop out of it! The others cannot be changed, and you will be unnecessarily wasting your life if you try to change the others. That is their problem. They will suffer if they are not understanding, why should you suffer? You simply understand that everybody is trying to dominate, "I drop out of it, I will not try to dominate"... your struggle disappears. And a very beautiful thing happens. If you don't try to dominate, the wife starts feeling foolish, and by and by she starts looking silly to herself — because the other is no more there to fight. When you fight you strengthen the other's ego, and this is a vicious circle. When you don't fight then the other feels he is fighting alone, in a vacuum: fighting with the wind or fighting with a ghost, but not fighting with anybody. And then you give an opportunity for the other also to see, to understand. Then the wife cannot throw the responsibility on you, she has to carry her own responsibility. The same is the problem with everybody because human nature functions similarly, more or less; the differences are only of degrees. If you try to understand, you become a dropout. Not that you drop out of the society, not that you become a hippie and go and make a commune — that is not the point. Psychologically you are no more in these trips of egos, domination, aggression, violence, anger. You are no more part of it. Then a distance is created, a detachedness.

- Osho