Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.6

Series 1

I - 6: Like Dreams They Are

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.

Global Warming:

Tropical Cyclones

New analyses indicate that in the strongest tropical cyclones — also known as hurricanes in the North Atlantic and typhoons in the North Pacific — peak wind speeds increased as much as 3 meters per second each decade from 1981 to 2006. In other words, the strongest North Atlantic hurricanes in the 1990s had peak wind speeds about 10 kilometers per hour faster than those in the region’s strongest storms of the 1980s. Wind speeds measured for the largest storms from 2000 to 2006 were faster still. Researchers found that the largest increases in cyclone peak winds were in the North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific oceans, regions where sea surface temperatures had warmed from 1981 to 2006. Cyclones are essentially heat engines that extract power from warm seas. The larger the temperature difference between the ocean surface and the upper atmosphere, the larger a cyclone can become.

Think.

Neuroscience: Top-down Modulation

Learn.

The capacity to ignore irrelevant information — such as most of the faces in a crowded room when one is looking for a long-lost friend — and to enhance pertinent information — such as the face of a new acquaintance met during the search for the old friend — is key to memory formation. This process is known as top-down modulation. Brain's capacity to ignore irrelevant information diminishes with age.

Imagine.

Understand.

Quantum Physics:

Quantum Weirdness

Even today, many knowledgeable physicists have a hard time coping with the rules of reality that quantum physics imposes. Most famous of those rules is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which asserts the impossibility of measuring an entity’s position and velocity at the same time. Flowing from that principle are other rules that read like riddles: Nature’s basic building blocks can be particles or waves, depending on how they are observed. A particle can be in two places at once, a cat can be simultaneously alive and dead, a particle can hop from one side of a wall to another without passing through it. Quantum weirdness encompasses a diverse repertoire of confusing curiosities. Of greatest concern is the quantum insistence that the future is not precisely determined by the past, as it allegedly was in the clockwork universe quantified by Newton. In a quantum universe, multiple outcomes are allowed, with precisely determined odds, like a cosmic horse race in which Big Brown usually wins, but not always.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Evolution: Dinosaurs and Crurotarsans

Dinosaurs appeared about 230 million years ago, during the Triassic Period, and competed for 30 million years with a group of reptiles called crurotarsans, cousins of today's crocodiles that grew to huge sizes and looked a lot like dinosaurs. The crurotarsans were a fabulous bunch of monsters. The North American phytosaur Smilosuchus grew to 39 feet long. New Research indicates that the two groups were evolving at roughly the same pace and the crurotarsans actually had a larger range of body types, diets and lifestyles. The dinosaurs may have won out because some type of planetary calamity 200 million years ago — dramatic climate change or maybe a large meteorite impact — nearly wiped out the crurotarsans while sparing the dinosaurs. The event that toppled the crurotarsans 200 million years ago enabled dinosaurs to become the reigning form of land animals for a long time, until their luck ran out too. An asteroid struck Earth 65 million years ago and doomed the dinosaurs.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Technology:

Cybernetics

Cybernetics developed as the investigation of the techniques by which information is transformed into desired performance. The science arose out of problems that were encountered during World War II in the development of so-called electronic brains and of automatic-control mechanisms for such military apparatuses as bombsights. Systems of communication and control in living organisms and those in machines are considered analogous in cybernetics. To achieve desired performance from human organs or from mechanical devices, information concerning the actual results of intended action must be made available as a guide for future action. In the human body, the brain and nervous system function to coordinate the information, which is then used to determine a future course of action; control mechanisms for self-correction in machines serve a similar purpose. The principle is known as feedback, which is the fundamental concept of automation.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Alternative Energy: Hydrogen Power

Penetrate.

Hydrogen-powered cars run on fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen from the air to produce electricity. The only waste emitted is water. By contrast, engines that burn gasoline emit pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, that cause global warming. U.S. vehicles consume 383 million gallons of gasoline a day — or about 140 billion gallons annually. That's about two-thirds of the total national oil consumption, half of which is imported from overseas. Hydrogen can potentially be produced from domestic resources without emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is an attractive vision for a future fuel source. Once hydrogen is produced, transporting and storing it becomes a problem. As a gas, it requires a lot of energy to compress into a volume small enough to fit into a car. New research uses computational methods to screen a large number of possible storage materials, leapfrogging what could have been a decade of work to test the same materials in the lab.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

Man creeps, crawls. Although he is born with wings, aware of those wings he is not.

When you become aware at the innermost core of your being, it happens as a sudden illumination. Just a moment before all was darkness and a moment afterwards all is light.

Deeper than your mind is your heart. Deeper than logic is love. Deeper than science is art. Deeper than mathematics is music.

When you reach to your innermost core, all the boundaries disappear... you have entered the unlimited, the unbounded and the infinite. That infinite is called God.

Truth is not a question of knowing, it is a question of being. How much you know is not the question, how much you are is the question, it is not about your mind but about your consciousness.

Thoughts come and go — and you abide. Like reflections in the mirror thoughts are, clouds passing in the sky, but the sky is not the clouds. Desires, memories, imagination, they all come and go.

A form the body is, a form the mind is too, and a form the heart is too. The ego is the hold-all, the bundle of all the forms. And forms are not true, like dreams they are.

Every adventure brings its own fears. If one wants to live without fears only in the grave one can live. Life can mean only one thing and that is constant adventure —

When you go inwards you go alone, absolutely alone; nobody can accompany you. You lose all contact with the outside world: deeper as you go in, the outside world starts disappearing.

10.

The moment you reach the very center of your being, the whole world disappears: the people, the mountains, the starships, they start receding back and a moment comes when no more they are.

11.

Not one who has no fear is the courageous person — only idiots don't have fear — the courageous person is one who has fear but goes on the journey in spite of it.

12.

There is something in existence which is irreducible to the known, which is not unknown but unknowable.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

The ego is an effort to disconnect yourself from the whole, although you cannot disconnect yourself from whole, but you can live in the belief that you have succeeded. Your belief is the cause of your hell. Drop the belief of the ego and suddenly you will see messengers running between you and the whole continuously, every moment, day in, day out.

- Osho