Mind, Body, Spirit , and Chaos: The Interconnectedness of All Things

I recently attended a workshop titled, " Mind, Body, Spirit ,and Chaos: New Perspectives from the Frontiers of Science". The workshop was led by Ralph Abraham and Bruce Lipton. Ralph is a brilliant man and is one of the co-founders of the Chaos Theory. Bruce is very impressive as well.

The workshop was very interesting and provided me new thought-provoking insights. Following are my random notes (you may have to read this post multiple times to find the interconnectedness of the thoughts shared):

Ralph & Bruce discussion

1. The third leading cause of deaths in the US is the medical profession.

2. Cancer occurs due to lifestyle induced changes. Kids who get adopted by cancer patients are highly likely to develop cancer. Less than 10% of cancer is heredity based.

3. Thoughts can create 30,000 variations of gene expression.

4.  In the right state of mind, one can drink poison and not die. For example, some religious cults in the US used to drink strychnine during ceremonies with no effect on body.

5. The world of thoughts is a Complex Dynamical System.

6. 95% of human life is dictated by subconscious (i.e. we don't think about what we do) 

7. Consciousness living is living in the present.

8. Mystical literature explains another reality which we don't see.

9. Genetics teaches that you are a victim i.e. your genes are what they are and you can not do anything about it.

Ralph's thoughts:

10. To understand where we are today, one should study the Paleolithic age. This is the time when agriculture was discovered and huge technological progress was made including the development of first stone tools.

11. Shanidar Caves are last known habitats of Neanderthals.

12. Shamanism (a belief system re communication with the spiritual world) started 200,000 years ago in South Africa.

13. First Art, which is 77,000 year old, was discovered in South Africa.

14. Shamanism is based on rituals of music, dance, meditation, and isolation.

15. Music predates homosapiens.

16.  Lascaux caves in southwestern France have paintings which are 17,000 year old. The paintings are believed to be of spirit animals.  

17. According to Lewis-Williams theory, Shamanism has three levels- Sub, Ordinary, and Super-Reality. [How I understood it is sub = subconscious/mind; Ordinary = physical world; Super-Reality = God]

18. Shamanism rituals occurred in the caves. The cave walls act as membranes between the sub and ordinary levels. The rituals of chant, music, dance, and psychedelics were used to change levels.

19. The Shamanism priests are now referred as ritual specialists.

20. Homosapiens developed language between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. 

21. In the beginning,  homosapiens had vocabulary of grunts and moans and then came Proto-language which helped develop the frontal lobe of the brain and that enabled language processing. 

22. Catalhoyuk (large neolithic settlement which existed between 7500 BC and 5700 BC in current Turkey) had Shamanic ceremonial centers and caves with animal paintings. 

23. In ancient Egypt, it was believed that pyramids are cannons to shoot souls to the stars. 

24. Sumer was an early civilization in southern Mesopotamia (current Iraq) during the Chalcolithic age. It was the first civilization to practice year-round agriculture  (5000 BC). The first known writings (cuneiform ) are from Sumer (2600BC). 

25. Sumerians made big advances in mathematics. They were the first ones to calculate the area of a triangle and the volume of a cube.  The advances they made in metrology  (4000 BC) resulted in creation of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Algebra. Abacus was invented by Sumerians.

26. Sumerians developed a sexagesimal (base 60) numerical system. They were the first ones to use a place value numerical system. Furthermore, they used a slide rule to do astronomical calculations. And, this is the first evidence of any astronomical calculations. 

27. Sumerians were the first to organize the society in a city-state form (3000 BC).

28. Sumerians believed in a four tiered cosmos- God-World, Sea, Earth, and Underworld. And, they were the first ones to write down their beliefs. 

29. Vedas are the first Indo-European texts (1700 BC). However, since Hinduism/India had oral literature tradition, Vedas are believed to have existed thousands of years before that.

30. Vedas created mythology and vibration metaphors (mantras, hymns, etc.). 

31. Kashmiri Shaivism (KS) came into existence around 1,000 CE. The science believes that the Universe to have three dimensions- Space, time, and matter. KS believes the universe to be in 36 different levels (tattvas) of tiered cosmology. The KS belief system was developed based on experiments. 

32. KS is very deep [I am still struggling to grasp it]. The basis idea is that the 36 tattvas can be divided into three different groups. 

 i) At the top is Shiva and right behind Shiva is Shakti. Shiva is abstract and can be thought of as Supreme bliss and Shakti is vibration and it can be thought of as ultimate energy.

ii) At the bottom are five five tattvas related to human psychology. 

iii) In the middle are 29 tattvas which obstruct the vision of the top group. This group is called maya.

33. Another fundamental belief in KS is that consciousness is the one reality. Matter is not separated from consciousness, but rather identical to it. There is no gap between God and the world. The world is not an illusion, rather the perception of duality is the illusion.

34. According to the Kosha system in Yogic philosophy, the nature of being human encompasses physical and psychological aspects that function as one holistic system. The Kosha system refers to these different aspects as [5] layers of subjective experience. Layers range from the dense physical body to the more subtle levels of emotions, mind and spirit. Psychology refers to the emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of our being. Together, all aspects make up our subjective experience of being alive. 

 

35. During different times in Greece believes were led by different philosophers and varied on structure of the universe: 

i) Pythagoras, 572 - 497 BCE
Three tiered Universe: Ideas, souls, harmony

ii) Plato, 429 - 347 BCE
Four tiered Universe: The one, ideas, soul, nature (the cave)

iii) Ficino, 1433 - 1499 CE
Five tiered Universe: The one, ideas, soul, spirit, nature

36. The mind-body problem is a problem of interactionism. It states, "How can an immaterial mind cause
anything in a material body, and viceversa?" Where mind being consciousness and nonphysical; body being the brain/intelligence and is physical. 

37. There was no mind body problem until 1,400 CE. It started with Descartes when he came up with the idea of dualism. 

38. Nondualists think that all world problems exist because of believe in duality.

39. Collective Unconscious operates like a Complex Dynamical System.

40.  There is no such thing as vacuum or emptyness in the physical world. According to Quantum Field Theory (QFT), the vacuum state is not truly empty but instead contains fleeting electromagnetic waves and particles that pop into and out of existence. 

41. Schrodinger's cat experiment is an observation problem.

42. Time is an illusion. Future is not determined. Past is determined. Only the observation creates time. Furthermore, space and time are created out of consciousness.

43. Language, thoughts, and information processing occurs in the mind (not in the brain). 

44. Soul represents consciousness and the unconscious mind. Furthermore, soul and mind are connected. 

45. Nonlocality has been around in mysticism for a long time and is a recently discovery in physics. It enables telepathy. 

46. Chaos Theory is a study of Complex Dynamical Systems where bifurcation is an integral part of a system. 

47. Complex Dynamical Systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved^. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable^. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

 48. To better understand the relationship between Time and Dynamics using Chaos theory. See http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%2367.Time/time2.html

49. A big part of world problems is the lack of mathematical understanding of the Universe.

Bruce's thoughts:

50. Life of a human cell is ~200 days. 

51. In biology it used to be believed that the nucleus is the brain of the cell. So, if you remove the nucleus, the cell will die. The latest experiments show that after you remove the nucleus of the cell, not only it does not die but also it keeps on performing its function as before.

52. Genes are linear blueprints and they do not activate anything.

53. Human body has ~50 Trillion cells. 

54. Cells have the same functions as the entire human body. Hence, cells are like mini people. 

55. Proteins are made of 20 different kinds of Amino Acids and they are are folded linear strings. All proteins are unique and there are around 150,000 in the human body. 

56. Proteins provide for the organismic structure of the body.

57. Cells are made of proteins. 

58. Life comes from changing in the shape of the proteins. 

59. Quantum Mechanics (QM) affects the structure of the protein. Specifically the following three wave charactericts of QM:

i) Tunneling 

ii) Coherence

iii) Entanglement

60. When two waves are in same phase they result in constructive interference and when they are out of phase it results in destructive interference.

61. Field is defined as the invisible moving force that influences the physical world. This concept is similar to the concept of a Spirit.

62. The field is the sole governing agency of matter. 

63. Proteins are influenced by environmental signals i.e. molecules and the field. That is why the same cell can become bone, muscle, or fat depending on the environment. 

64. There are three levels of consciousness: 

i) Super-Consciousness is interactive i.e. always evolving based on various interactions

ii) Self-Consciousness is manual i.e. active. It is influenced from instincts and experience 

iii) Subconsciousness is on auto-pilot i.e. it records the behavior and plays it back. It is a linear process which takes input, processes, and produces output

95% of human life is dictated by subconscious (i.e. we don't think about what we do)

65. Cave of Brahma  is considered the eye of the mind and it is a concept that goes back thousands of years.

66. Buddhism teaches you to be present and mindful i.e. live a life of [self] consciousnesses. 

67. There are three ways to reprogram your subconsciousness: 

 i) Hypnosis 

ii) New habits

iii) Super-learning 

68. Talking to one's subconscious does not work because it is not a machine.  For example, if you keep on saying to yourself that I will be happy, it usually does not make you happy.

69. ~50% of one's personality is developed before one is born. If the mother has a pattern of emotions then the child will have the same emotional pattern. See http://www.whylovematters.com/ for details.

70. 5% of known human diseases are due to birth defects. Rest are the result of the environment and habits. 

71. Epigenetics is the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.

72. Stem cells are embryonic cells which can grow into various phenotypes. Perception creates the fate of stem cells.

73. Proteins wear out like parts of a car and that is why the body has to continuously replaces cells.

74. EFT is a technique to change gene expression. 

75. Changing the organizational culture is similar to changing the belief system of a human. 

76. A cell has 50k+ receptors.

77. Digestion is a selective process. The body only takes from the food what it wants. 

78. When dealing with people feel the "vibe". Constructive interference with another person gives you good vibes and destructive interference gives you bad vibes (see #60). People can change the words but not the vibe. 

79. US government spent $20M to study Remote Viewing.

80. The allopathic medicine sees the human body as a machine and is good at fixing the body when it breaks. However, it is not good at anything else.

Ralph & Bruce discussion

81. Modeling of the world economy is bogus. It is just not possible to predict. 

82. According to chaos theory, stock markets are unpredictable. 

83. Glacerization (ice age) on the earth is imminent. It should be a bigger worry than global warming. 

84. Nothing is going to happen in 2012.

85. Dalai Lama said that the one thing that can change the world is American Women (because 80% or all purchases in the US are made/influenced by women and the rest of the world follows America in materialism). 

This blog post has taken more time than any other blog post (so far) and I still don't understand the concepts well:-) Maybe you will.  Enjoy!