Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.37

Series 1

V - 1: The One is Revealed

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.

Medical Research:

Nano Photofrin

Call them laser-guided smart bombs for brain tumors. Researchers at the University of Michigan announced the testing of a drug delivery system that involves drug-toting nanoparticles and a guiding peptide to target cancerous cells in the brain. Their study finds that via this method more of the drug can be delivered to a tumor's general vicinity. The researchers used a pharmaceutical called Photofrin, which is photodynamic, meaning it is activated by a laser after it has entered the bloodstream. As its primary side effect, the drug renders patients photosensitive, and they must remain out of bright sunlight and even unshaded lamps for up to 30 days after receiving treatment. Despite this major drawback, Photofrin is used in the treatment of esophageal, bladder and skin cancers. But a novel delivery system, which relies on the intravenous delivery of 40-nanometer-wide particles to carry the drug, may actually avoid much of the photosensitivity, because less Photofrin circulates in the bloodstream thanks to a peptide called F3. A sequence of 31 amino acids broken off of the protein HMGN2 (high mobility group protein 2), F3 has the ability to penetrate cell membranes. This peptide acts as a "zip code" in that it enables the binding of the nanoparticles only to blood vessels within the tumor and not normal blood vessels. F3 can detect the expression of a protein called nucleolin, which is a marker on the surface of tumor cells.

Think.

Neuroscience: Marijuana Muddles Memory

Learn.

Marijuana—and its active ingredient, Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) —has muddled memories for millennia. But how exactly the wacky weed interferes with remembrance of things past—as well as attention span and speech, among other things—has never been clear. Now neuroscientists have discovered that cannabinoids diminish the brain waves of rats—and disrupt the symphony of synchronous brain cell firing that may be essential for memory. A team of neuroscientists tested the impact of THC and a synthetic cannabinoid on rats that had their heads restrained. The drugs affected certain brain waves: the theta (four to 12 hertz) and fast ripple (100 to 200 hertz) waves diminished significantly, whereas the drug had a slightly lesser impact on gamma (30 to 80 hertz) waves. Because theta and gamma oscillations are thought to play a critical role in creating and storing short-term memories—and fast ripple oscillations may allow such short-term memories to be moved into long-term storage—this suppression could mean missing memories for the rats. In fact, rats that had been trained to follow a specific series of turns to get water—and did fine on the test before being intravenously injected with the drug—found themselves wandering in a daze under its influence. And when the researchers injected the synthetic cannabinoid directly into three rats' brains, it completely disrupted the otherwise synchronized pattern of the firing of their neurons: they fired as much as before, but in a more random pattern. And other types of brain cells, such as interneurons and pyramidal cells, fell out of step as well, although, interestingly, their overall activity actually increased (perhaps an explanation for the random nature of thoughts generated by use of the drug).

Imagine.

Understand.

Cosmology:

Excess Positrons

Cosmologists are agog about the possibility that an orbiting observatory may have discovered particles of dark matter — the proposed, invisible material that researchers believe makes up most of the mass of the universe. Researchers analyzing data from the Russian-European observatory PAMELA, short for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, reported preliminary evidence that the device had recorded more positrons from the Milky Way than could be accounted for by the standard model of elementary particle physics. At the International Conference on High Energy Physics, held in Philadelphia, PAMELA researcher Mirko Boezio of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Trieste suggested that the surplus of positrons — the electron’s antiparticle, which is equal in mass but opposite in charge — could be accounted for by the annihilation of pairs of dark-matter particles. According to an existing theory, when dark-matter particles collide, they decay into a spray of ordinary, visible particles, including an abundance of positrons. PAMELA findings appear to be consistent with the existence of a proposed dark-matter particle known as minimal dark matter. The minimal model introduces a set of five new elementary particles that interact only through a weak nuclear force. The theory suggests that a dark-matter particle is about 10,000 times heavier than a proton. The model adds to the standard model of particle physics the minimal amount of new ingredients that allows researchers to explain the existence and the properties of dark matter without ruining the good features of the standard model.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Genetics: Transgenic Mice Live Longer

Since 2003 scientists have known that warm-blooded animals on calorie-restricted diets had lower core body temperatures and could live longer lives. Now, researchers at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., report that solely by lowering the core body temperature of mice, they could extend the lives of their experimental subjects by as much as 20 percent. They accomplished this feat—conferring an extra three months of life to the animals, which typically live just over two years—without varying diet. In cold-blooded animals, body cooling is easy—you merely drop the ambient temperature in their surroundings. But in warm-blooded species, which continuously regulate body temperature, the task is more difficult: The brain must be tricked into thinking the local temperature—which it senses through clues like blood flow—is too hot so that it lowers the body temperature a few fractions of a degree. To accomplish this deception biologically, researchers genetically engineered mice to overexpress uncoupling protein 2, which causes the mitochondria in cells to produce heat instead of ATP, the fuel source of cellular activity. They focused this effect on the hypocretin neurons, which are brain cells in the lateral hypothalamus. As the heat diffused through the brain, it reached the preoptic area, an anterior section of the hypothalamus and the specific region that regulates body temperature. Feeling the heat, the preoptic area caused core body temperatures in the mice to decrease by 0.3 degree Celsius to 0.5 degree C. The transgenic mice could consume whatever they pleased. The study raises the question of whether mild hypothermia of 0.3 degree C to 0.5 degree C might be easier to tolerate than a lifetime of starvation as a way to increase longevity.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Alternate Energy:

Syngas

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a new, carbon-neutral way to convert vegetable-based fuels to syngas, a breakthrough that could allow producers to power hydrogen fuel cells or create a replacement for America's dwindling supplies of natural gas, all without relying on fossil fuels. We've all had the experience of watching cooking oil smoke once a pan reaches a certain temperature, and suffered the indignity of having to scrub off the caked-on, carbonized gunk that results. A similar problem plagued researchers trying to convert biofuels: When heated, they clogged the pores of the catalyst used to transform them into syngas, which is a mixture of gases that include hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The breakthrough came with the perfection of a technique that heats fuel to a temperature so hot that the smoking reaction is bypassed. A team of researchers built a reactor capable of producing hydrogen from soybean oil, biodiesel or sugar water without any of the buildup that would have resulted from a conventional process. To get the reactor warmed up, the researchers ignited a mixture of methane and oxygen in order to bring the catalyst to a searing 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Although methane is a fossil fuel, there are other ways to heat the catalyst that don't involve burning petrochemicals. What's more, once the reaction is running, it's self-sustaining, and methane and oxygen are no longer required. A fuel injector like those used in a car atomized the biofuels into tiny droplets that landed on a hot rhodium-cerium catalyst, which converted the fuel to syngas. This reaction released energy and heated the catalyst. The heat and ratio of carbon and oxygen in the reaction kept the buildup from sticking to the catalyst. For each type of biofuel, nearly all the fuel was converted and about 70 percent of the hydrogen bound up in the fuel molecules was given off as gas. The whole reaction takes less than 50 milliseconds.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Brain: Smooth Visual Experience

Penetrate.

The world you see around you appears perfectly stationary, even though your eyes dart back and forth two to three times every second in little hops called saccades. For more than a century researchers have assumed that the brain must keep track of the impulses that cause these tiny motions, so as to subtract their effect from our visual awareness. Now researchers have identified a circuit in the monkey brain that seems to play this role. Ignoring the motion of our eyes allows us to focus on changes in our environment. The alternative would be chaos. Researchers believe the brain solves this problem through a process called corollary discharge. Every time the brain sends the eyes a signal to twitch, it sends a copy, or corollary signal, to another location in the brain. Researchers stumbled onto the presumed corollary discharge pathway while stimulating the brain region that controls eye movements in live monkeys. A current applied to this area, called the superior colliculus, elicited a delayed response in the frontal cortex, which is associated with attention and decision making. The delay suggested a relay of neurons ending at the frontal cortex. Researchers had already observed that brain cells in this region seem to anticipate where the eye's center of focus will move to after an impending saccade, making it a reasonable place for corollary discharges to end up. By probing the animals' brains with electrodes, the researchers now discovered that the signals from the superior colliculus to the frontal cortex passed through a portion of the thalamus. To see if the thalamus is the source of corollary discharges, they injected a small part of it with a compound that blocks neuron firing. As would be expected for the corollary pathway, the frontal cortex of the injected monkeys consistently displayed less of the saccade-anticipating activity.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

How to renounce thinking, and how to convert the energy that was moving into thinking to become awareness. Delicate and subtle it is, if you miss a step you fall into infinite ignorance.

Tree is just a fact; a fact is just a covering of the truth. The bird is another fact… Sometimes the truth appears as a bird, sometimes as a tree, sometimes as a rock, sometimes as a man.

Everything is alive, no thing is empty. Everything is filled with consciousness, different types of consciousness —

A thinker is never here and now, he is never in the present, he is always somewhere else. A meditator is always here and now, he is nowhere else.

Everything in the world is full of God; nothing is empty.

Thinking is the only barrier in meditation. You have to become aware, and by and by, the more you become aware, the more you stop cooperating with thinking.

A rose is there — you be with it. Don't create any activity, subtle or gross. Thinking is a very gross activity, feeling is a subtle activity.

One infinite is there, the formless is there — and that is the truth.

Neither thinking nor feeling, just being with reality, and suddenly you are not there and the world is not there. The One is revealed.

10.

Truth is not a philosophic conclusion, it is an existential experience. It is neither thought nor feeling, it is existential — with your total being you are in it.

11.

The Force is everywhere. Every atom vibrates with it, every atom celebrates it. Everything is nothing but it.

12.

Because of this mind which is always on a journey you can never be in touch with the real.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

There are two types of people and both will be in misery. C.G. Jung divides humanity into two types: one he calls extroverts, the other he calls introverts. Extroverts are interested in the outer. They are active people, worldly — after wealth, prestige, position, power. They become politicians, they become social reformers, they become great leaders, great industrialists. They are interested in things, the outer world; they are not interested in themselves. Then there are introverts. They are not very active people. If they have to do something they will do, otherwise they have no inclination to do. They would like to remain with closed eyes. They become poets, mystics, meditators, contemplatives. They are not interested in the world, they are interested only in themselves; they close their eyes and they introvert their energies. These both are wrong because they are divided. A person who is an extrovert will always feel inside that something is lacking. He may become a very powerful man; deep inside he will feel he is impotent, powerless. Outwardly he may accumulate much wealth, inwardly he will feel poor. He may be a great success in the world; deep down, if you inquire, he knows he has been a failure. He is unbalanced, he has paid too much attention to the outer. He has moved in one extreme, and whenever there is extreme there is imbalance. And the person who has been the poet, a contemplative, a mystic, who has always remained within himself, will always feel something is lacking, because he is not rich in the outer world. And the outer world is also beautiful. Flowers are there, and stars, and the sun rises there, and rivers flow and waterfalls sing. He is poor because the whole universe he has been denying; unnecessarily he has lived in his own cave when he could have moved and known the many mysteries, the million mysteries around. He has remained a closed man, enclosed in himself, imprisoned. These two are the extremes. Avoid extremes. Don't make a distinction between outer and inner and don't become one of Jung's types, either extrovert or introvert.

- Osho