Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.41

Series 1

V - 5: A Deep Core of Truth

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.

Space Exploration:

Water on Mars

Water on Mars was once widespread and long-lasting, providing environments with the potential to support life. Previously, scientists had strong evidence that liquid water chemically altered the Red Planet’s crust at certain times and locations. Those locations hold the mineral traces of water and preserve in the rock the planet’s past organic chemistry. Those locations are also “really important” because the rocks there could hold possible evidence of past life. Using the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, and other instruments aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a team looked for specific types of phyllosilicates, or clay-like minerals, that can form only in the presence of water. The team suggests the water was present early in the solar system’s history, between 4.6 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, based on where in the planet’s rocky layers the minerals occur. Scientists previously identified a few types of these minerals at about 100 sites, but the sensitivity of CRISM picked up a large variety of the phyllosilicates at thousands of locations across Mars’ southern highlands. It will take years of scientific study to understand what these sites mean for the history of Mars, and whether these sites hosted life.

Think.

Astronomy:

Brownleeite

Learn.

Researchers have found a new mineral within an interplanetary dust particle. The substance — a manganese silicide named Brownleeite — appears to have come from comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup. Originally seen in 1902, the comet reappears every five years. In 2002, NASA space scientist Scott Messenger predicted that as they pass, comets shed dust grains that fall into Earth’s upper atmosphere. Using a high-altitude spacecraft, NASA performed periodic dust collections in the stratosphere and gathered 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup’s particles in April 2003. Studying the sample, the science team began to tease out what mineral made up the individual grains. But a few months ago, researchers saw one substance they hadn’t seen before: Manganese silicide. It has a strange composition. It’s hard to make synthetically. And, it’s never actually been seen in nature and was certainly not thought to be found in comets. Seeing this mineral amidst the dust grains means scientists must now figure out how this unexpected substance could have formed and been trapped in a comet. Comets coalesced about the time the solar system began to form, so what really makes this discovery intriguing is that it adds an extra dimension to trying to understand how things got started. This odd mineral could offer clues to solar system's origins. After its identification, the manganese silicide became mineral number 4,325. The International Mineralogical Association christened it Brownleeite after the astronomer Donald E. Brownlee (Compound minerals are given names in the same way as, for instance, copper zinc alloy is called brass).

Imagine.

Understand.

Mind:

Wandering Thoughts

Some people seem to continually have their heads in the clouds. Perhaps they are pondering during their drive to work the next pickle 24 protagonist Jack Bauer will find himself in. Or maybe they are assessing while buttering toast the Indianapolis Colts' chances of finally making it to the Super Bowl. Or considering where they will dine that evening as they tap out an e-mail. The question is: What makes their minds veer from the task at hand? Researchers at Dartmouth College may have the answer. They found that a default network of regions in the brain's cortex—a grouping known to be active when the mind is completely unoccupied—is firing away as a person is engaged in routine activities. The researchers trained subjects in verbal and spatial memory tasks that after four days of continual repetition became quite banal—perfect conditions for thinking about something unassociated with the work at hand. The subjects reported more daydreaming when performing the rehearsed sequences rather then when the tasks were tweaked slightly to introduce a novel stimulus requiring a bit more focus. On the fifth day, the subjects performed these activities while being surveyed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While the subjects were not performing any task, there was activation in several cortical regions, including parts of the medial prefrontal cortex (involved in executive functions), the premotor cortex (which coordinates body movements), and the cingulate (part of the limbic system that is implicated in memory and learning). When the subjects were asked to perform their well-rehearsed tasks, many of these areas were recruited once again, but when the job was slightly altered, the signals from these areas attenuated. The research team speculates that when engaged in a mundane task, mind wandering allows people to remain properly aroused. The study seems to imply that daydreaming is really the default state of the brain.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Alternative Energy: Geothermal

The Geysers—a geothermal power plant in northern California operated by Calpine—has been pumping out electricity harvested from steam heated deep within Earth since the 1920s. And since 2000 the plant began producing more than six million megawatt-hours—enough to power 750,000 homes—annually, all while operating nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Tapping this geothermal resource is the subject of a new study prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). The researchers estimate that more than 13 million exajoules (EJ), or 1.23 x 10²² British thermal units, lurk deep beneath U.S. soil and 200,000 EJ—or "2,000 times the annual consumption of primary energy in the United States in 2005"—is recoverable. In some places, such as the Geysers, cost is minimal as nature does much of the work: fracturing the subsurface rock, filling it with fluid and heating it. In such locations, one merely has to build the conversion apparatus to turn the heat in steam into electricity, typically at a cost of $1,700 per kilowatt. But the M.I.T. team is proposing a much more ambitious plan that calls for constructing geothermal plants where none naturally exist, drilling down into heated bedrock, creating an open reservoir, and pumping water into it to be heated. The biggest cost is basically in drilling the wells. Of course, the know-how for such deep drilling already exists in the oil industry, which shells out roughly $9.4 million a pop for its 18,000-foot-plus deep wells. In return, such a man-made geothermal power system would harvest 40 percent of the heat in that bedrock and then convert 15 percent of that heat into useable electricity. There is an environmental impact when the heat has to be rejected but that's still a lot cleaner than burning coal or having to dispose of nuclear waste.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Nanotechnology:

Futuristic High-density Chips

Researchers announced that they have constructed a memory circuit from molecules and nanometer-size wires that is as dense as what manufacturers expect to be building in 2020. The circuit, which stores 0s and 1s by switching clusters of molecules between two states, contains 160,000 bits jammed together at a density of 10¹¹ bits per square centimeter. Conventional microchips are at least 10 times less dense. The prototype is not yet as stable or reliable as commercial computer memory, and building it would require manufacturers to learn to harness materials other than silicon, the workhorse of computing technology. But the scale of the device dwarfs any electronic circuit previously constructed using nanotechnology. Researchers are exploring nano-size electronics systems because silicon circuits cannot be packed with wires at increasing densities—yielding higher numbered Pentium processors—forever. Eventually, electrons will start seeping between wires and lithography techniques for stamping out silicon circuits may reach their physical limit. The Caltech group combined two approaches: molecular electronics (transistors made of molecules) and nanowire crossbars, which are perpendicular junctions of ultrathin wires. The device has pushed far beyond previous limits of integration density and bit numbers realized previously in the field of molecular electronics.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Medical Research: Data Mining Herbs

Penetrate.

Over the past several years, scientific journals have been abuzz with reports of the chemical constituents of Chinese herbs used in traditional medicine. Think ginseng, Ginkgo biloba and ginger, to name a few. A group of researchers at King's College London decided to use a computer screening to construct a single database both to catalogue the chemical makeup of 240 species of herb and to indicate which target enzymes and receptors implicated in diseases—such as HIV/AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer's disease—those components may be able to regulate. The team used a screening algorithm called Random Forest, which is a type of decision tree, to compile its database. The algorithm involves each entity being screened with a set of questions—in this case, mostly about the herb's constituents—to tease out which of the biological targets it could possibly effect. The targets the researchers chose fell into five categories: cell signal regulators, implicated in cancer, asthma and depression; nitrous oxide overproduction or overexpression, which is associated with the hardening of arteries and inflammation as well as Huntington's and Alzheimer's diseases; cyclooxygenase and lipooxygenase, two targets of anti-inflammatory agents that are tied to Alzheimer's, cancer and arthritis; aldose reductase, an enzyme responsible for complications from diabetes, such as eye disorders; and the viral enzymes HIV-1 integrase, protease and reverse transcriptase, all implicated in catalyzing the HIV virus's life cycle. Of the 240 herbs sampled, 62 percent of them were found to have constituents that could be useful in treating one of these targets. Fifty-three percent of the plants may be able to tackle more than one disease. The researchers will likely try to isolate, purify and screen some of these constituents from the herbs—such as flavonoids, which produce yellow or blue pigments in plants, and terpenoids, plant fats known for antibacterial qualities. Clinical studies of their effects could then be studied in animal or human models.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

Everything is alive and throbbing. And this throbbing is not a fragmented process, this throbbing is a whole throbbing.

God is just a metaphor — the metaphor that the things in the world are not like things, they are persons. Deep inside a subjectivity is there.

The universe throbs and beats through you. You are not, the universe is.

The universe is not a totality of objects, it is a subjectivity. It exists as a person. It is alive, conscious.

Things are around you because of you. You attract them. If you feel hell around you, it is you who has attracted it.

Remember always that whatsoever is happening around you is rooted in the mind. Mind is always the cause.

You think you are the mind. So how can you drop it?

You are not the mind, you are beyond mind. Identified you have become, that's true, but the mind you are not.

This is the purpose of meditation: to give you small glimpses that you are not the mind.

10.

Even for a few moments the mind stops... you are still there! On the contrary, you are more, overflowing with being.

11.

When the mind stops it is as if a drainage which was continuously draining you has stopped. Suddenly overflooded with energy you are.

12.

If even for a single moment you become aware that the mind is not there but "I am," you have reached a deep core of truth.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

The whole Gurdjieff method is how to get unidentified. Next time when a desire comes, look at it. Say within yourself, "Okay, I will watch where this mind is moving." And you will feel a distance, you are looking at it. Who is this looker, the spectator? And the desire moves and creates dreams. Sometimes you may forget, sometimes you may become one with the desire. Pull yourself together again, look at the desire again: the desire is moving on its own. It is as if a cloud has entered, a thought has come into the sky of your being. Just look at it, watch it. And remember, if you can be unidentified even for a fragment of a second — the desire is there and you are here and there is a distance — suddenly there is illumination, a light has happened to you.

- Osho