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This page is about the Soul and what it is "made of" and about its motivators, feelings and emotions; its Psyche. |
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In the beginning my dear, this universe was Being (Sat) alone, one only without a second… It (Being, or Brahman) thought: ‘May I be many; may I grow forth.’ It created fire.
That
fire thought: ‘May I be many; may I grow forth.’ It created
water.
The words Soul and Spirit often are mixed up. This is because the soul is called our spiritual body, The word spirit is used by some instead of the soul and vice versa. But there must be a difference;
Spirit and Soul have to do with each other; they're both forms of energy, but they, apparently, can be separated. The word Spirit is used in many ways; guts, temper, liveliness, a certain mood you're in, a certain atmosphere, the spirit of an age. On this Site however the word Spirit is used in the original sense; a form of healing, creative energy emanating from God; his Holy Spirit, Love, which when overshadowing your soul, or better yet; illuminating or enlightening your soul, becomes part of you; your very own spirit, a direct line to God. This spirit, same as your soul, takes on the shape of your body because it, in higher or lower degree, fills the soul which is its vessel and the soul fills the body which is in its turn is its vessel.
Spirit stands to soul like soul stands to body.
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THE SOUL
There are two sides to the human brain; the analytical left brain and the intuitive right brain. Analytical scientists usually show a greater left brain activity, while intuitive people like artists and theologians show a greater right brain activity. Some value one half more than the other. In olden days the left hand was considered evil and the right hand considered good. The truth is, that, whether it was evolution or providence that has equipped Man with these two halves, it must have been done for a good reason.
It would appear as if Man has been blessed with an intuitive side of knowing "hidden things" as well as an analytical side of investigating the truth of it and is constantly balancing between the two. Peculiar however is, that theologians, learned in the immaterial world of good and evil forces, view the soul as a more or less material object, while, from the corner of material minded scientists, psychologists view it as an immaterial realm of struggling forces. * In most religions, mystics pointed out that a soul has to do with water. Not water, as we know it, but primal water that was created by God out of his living Spirit before any matter was formed. (Just bear with me.) Waters are a collective noun, used as metaphors such as a "fountain of Life", a "sea of Love", "Gene pool" even and an "ocean of energy", or Ocean of Chi. At the Big Bang an ocean of energy and light was released and divided into seas or waters of creation; forms of energy or different manifestations of Spirit, which is another word for energy.
This Spirit gradually dewed into denser forms of energy, that, on a larger scale, indeed behave like water. Light is flowing from our rotating Sun like water from the sprinkler in your garden and takes about eight minutes to reach the earth. This rotational effect is shown clearly in the arms of a galaxy. Your dew is a dew of light. Isa 26:19
Light traveling through the vastness of space, takes time to get from A to B, but twin particles are able to influence each other instantaneously over galactic distances. So what is causing that to happen.
It is from the energy that was released at the Big Bang, that all Galaxies, planets and stars were formed. All matter was "born" from this primal "water" (Gaea was born from Chaos), the way ice crystals are formed in the clouds and gather themselves to produce snowflakes, or the way vapor produces drops of rain, that turn into hailstones gathering themselves to form even bigger hailstones. In the same way, by adhesive, cohesive and gravitational forces the stars, planets and galaxies were born from this soup of particles as we call it, or primal water (Nammu or “Apsu and Tiamat”) as it was called by the Sumerians and Assyrians.
Hydrogen is the most common atom in the universe. Hydro (Hydor) is Greek for water.
Of course, this soup of particles, or primal water is "only" energy, namely the very energy out of which these sub-atomic particles are consisting.
We, our bodies, are made up out of living cells. Cells are made up out of molecules. Molecules are made up of atoms. Atoms are made up of particles that aren’t actual particles of matter, but little energy “clusters” that are like wrapped in Electrons, that aren't material either.
The mass they have is only the result of interactions between energies, Like magnets pulling or pushing each other, ...but without the magnets. These are however, the building blocks of what we like to call "Matter"; the building blocks of the world we live in.
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And I gave the command; Let there be taken some of the Light and some of the darkness. And I said; become thickened and wrapped around with light, and I spread it out and it became water. 2Enoch 27
From the waves I created rocks, solid and big, and from the rocks I assembled the dry land, the dry land I called earth. 2Enoch 28;2 . (All the solid planets are made of earth; (matter) the Hebrew word for earth; Eretz literally means "to be firm" and represents the Planet as well as the soil; matter.) . .
“Some of the light and some of the darkness, wrapped around with light”, may very well refer to Neutrons and Protons that are wrapped in Electrons. Although it’s all energy, Protons seem to be much more “solid” than Neutrons (they last longer). The more solid something is, the harder it is for light to penetrate it, which, on a much larger scale, explains the darkness; the shadow or at least a shift in color. Even the clearest Diamond (from Gr; Adamas; invincible), for example, will slow down light to 125,000 km (78,000 miles) per second, causing a Brilliant to burst out into colors. Our bodies and brains are regulated by means of electricity. Electricity in truth is the life force (soul) that keeps our bodies alive. We traditionally think of electricity in terms of electrons; (point) particles, which makes it seem like it's something material, but there is nothing material about it. They are said to have mass, but there's no volume. Electrons do not take in any space at all. (That's why they define Mass in terms of inertia.) The Electrons, the lightest “particles” and especially the free Electrons, are flowing around the Nucleons, the Atoms and eventually around the Molecules that form our bodies, like water is flowing around foam bubbles. Relatively slow, but they also generate an electric field, (or an electromagnetic field if you will) and that's where it gets interesting. Electromagnetic waves can reach the speed of light; as fast as lightning. This field is pure energy; spirit, and to us it is our life-force. In a hospital they declare people dead when they are brain-dead and there is no more electric activity going on in the brain. All life is gone from the body and it has to do with electricity. I know it sounds almost banal, but well, there you go.
It is sometimes said that Life consists of three components;
water, H2O an energy source, in our case the Sun, and organic compounds; carbon atoms.
OK, but tell me, if all three are available, what is death? ... what is missing?
(Mouse-over) We now theorize, that life on earth was caused by the unending pounding of the waters, the seas and oceans by lightning. It may not be a coincident that the ancient life-creating upper-gods like Zeus, Marduk, Cernunnos, Lugh and Jupiter were also gods of electrical storms; rain and lightning.
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This does not mean that a soul or rather; a ghost, which is a soul without a physical body consists of nothing more than electricity. Life force energy includes a different kind of energy that cannot be detected (yet) with current instruments. It appears not to obey the inverse-square law which describes how most electrical forces dissipate rapidly with distance. So it's more then just electricity. Maybe this is where Spirit comes in. Plasma also has a lot to do with it. Plasma is electrically charged gas; ionized gas. Lama Dondrup Dorje in this video however, describes the Chi as an electromagnetic force. Plasma may very well provide an ethereal vehicle for a soul when outside the physical body. Outside the body the soul is sometimes observed as a nebulous form; a ghost. Inside the body, it's an energy field; the physical contours of our bodies at the same time are the contours of the vitality; life force that is being contained by them. That’s the reason this life force is called “Soul”, from; Seola, hall, and; Saiwala, which means inland sea or lake.
. These little lakes of life force, our souls, form energy- or spiritual bodies that (while in the body) match our physical bodies. .. . As surely as there is an animal body, so there is also a spiritual body. 1Co 15:44 WEY . .
That’s why the soul is sometimes called our “Twin”, (not to be mistaken with the Dark Twin) because we tend to look upon ourselves as physical beings, but there is an energy body as well, that matches our Physical body. The bones, teeth, the flesh, the nervous system and the veins, every last brain cell; every Neuron where our memory is located...
even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Matt 10;30
...not in the last place because of the blood which provides oxygen and nutrients (energy); life to every cell of the body. . . For the soul (Nephesh) of the flesh is in its blood. Le 17:11 . . And yes, all matter in principle is drenched with this same energy. Animals have life-force, plants have life-force, even minerals seem to be alive; they grow into all kinds of beautiful shapes (if you let them) according to strict laws of Physics, (like we ourselves do) which is pretty steep, considering the fact that all matter in essence is nothing more than energy. ..... There really must be a shaping will power behind it all.
the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. 47The first man is (BQ)from the earth, (BR)earthy; the second man is from heaven.
The radiance that surrounds all living and "dead" objects is likely to be caused by the exchange of free electrons. This electrical aura is a manifestation of the universal soul inhabiting all things. In living creatures this soul, or electrical field, is the life force that keeps them going. Because of the physical, material state of the body, emotions are regulated by fluids; chemicals, while the senses and the brain itself function by means of ... electricity. The higher a life form is organized, the higher the individual soul is organized. Bound to the body, it takes on the same shape to the detail, like an exact duplicate, a twin, made of energy, including the brain. So, the soul will manifest itself first of all; because of, and through the body, its vessel. You may have the temper of your mother and the wits of your father, but you may also display unexplainable skills, talents and character traits, or unexplainable fears and memories that point back to past life experiences. And that is where your reincarnated soul manifests itself; on the inside, not on the outside. It is sometimes said, that the body fits the soul like a glove fits a hand, but it is just as soon the soul that fits a body, like water fits a vessel. It is obvious; we look like our parents; you may have the eyes of your mother and the nose of your father. In the afterlife we look just like we did on earth. The body is the matrix of the individual soul, not the other way around. The spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. 1Cor 15;46 You might have grown a leg that you were missing, but you will (at first) be recognizable as yourself; the son or daughter of your parents. Its only after a while that ones appearance begins to change and this has to do with whether we choose light or darkness, and this has to do with our psyche.
The Psyche is that part of the soul with which man identifies himself. The psyche thus is the EGO, the Self, which can be divided into a higher EGO and a lower ego; the human soul, which differs itself from the animal soul because of the spirit that resides in it. The spirit is part, or a ray if you will, of the Spirit or consciousness of God, and as such it provides the soul with a higher consciousness. Since the arrival of modern psychology however, the emphasis has been placed more and more on the emotional life of a person (mixing the higher and lower self up), rather than the form it might take on as our spiritual double; our spiritual body. They study the soul but do not believe in it, so it's no wonder they pin everything down to Hormones, Pheromones, chemical receptors and what have you. Of course the physical brain is influenced by chemicals, but that has nothing to do with an inhabiting soul working in the unconscious background. That there are people who do fine without any brain whatsoever, doesn't seem to bother them either. Generally speaking of course. Parapsychologists would be the exceptions to the rule, but they still aren't taken very seriously by their colleagues and only a few of them "have the faith". The higher the brain of a life form is developed through the evolution of species, the stronger the mind has become along with the free will (It develops a mind of its own so to speak), and the ability to reason. Most animals aren't, but some species definitely are capable of thought, reasoning and showing self-awareness to some degree, there is no denying. Dolphins have been reported to defend shipwrecked people against sharks and help them reach the shore. They obviously are very smart. But to a certain degree, that is. They are great jumpers and acrobats but it doesn't occur to them to simply jump over the edge of a floating driftnet when caught in it, what would be the first thing humans would try. (to climb over that is...) Some however do display a remarkable degree of intelligence and skills.
Click on image. Amazing movie of Dolphins blowing and playing with bubble rings. You try do that.
What animals lack, however, is the ability to discriminate in moral affairs. They may know what is allowed and what not, but they have no concept of good and evil. Dogs may not care what their bosses look like, but they don't care what they do either. This concept of good and evil is what defines a Human from the animals and this has to do with a higher consciousness. Such think that the earthly and material things of which man's outmost nature is composed are what makes the man; and that apart from these man is not a man. But let them know that it is not from these that man is a man, but from his ability to understand what is true and to will what is good. Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, section 2 (p 24) In our physical world, the world we live in, the development of consciousness is caused by evolution. Creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. Rom 8;19 And the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become as one of Us, to know good and evil. Ge 3:22
The higher the brain is developed, the higher the intelligence and the stronger the consciousness; the self-awareness will be, which should develop into god-awareness. Who am I? Where do I come from? How can this world exist, if made from mere energy? Am I manifesting this infinitely complex world I live in, or is there some other intelligence at work here?
* According to the Bhagavad-Gita we are all subject to perceptions of desire, (lust) fear, shame, hatred, pleasure and pain, as well as the senses for sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Next to these, comfort (laziness), egoism and curiosity (the urge for truth) play a big role. In the past these were called the three Gunas, today psychologists would call these our Motivators. The mind and the intelligence are manifestations of the soul and though they are sometimes called vessels, it is a mistake to view them as separate bodies.
The higher the mind and intelligence have developed, the greater the influence of the negative emotions often become. (The greater the mind, the greater the beast.) How smart you are is determined by the brain, how shrewd you are, by the way you use it. But due to the growing awareness, also the drive to do well; the “Yetzer ha tov” as the Rabbis would say, will grow. We all mean well, don't we? The drive to do evil, or the “Yetzer ha ra” is a lower quality, bound to the body, because it is fed by emotions like fear, greed, shame, guilt, pride, grief, hatred, lust and egoism in general. These are negative emotions that may be running our minds. Positive emotions are; happiness, interest, affection, hope, optimism and persistence. Modern psychology in general counts six Basic Emotions; Anger, Joy, Sadness, Fear, Abhorrence and Surprise.
Strangely enough, Love is not named among them. The drive to do well however is fed by the unselfish Love for other beings. Every other emotion has to do with the self. Love has to do with the other. All emotions enhance the will of the self, true love provides free will to the other. I'm not talking about an mere infatuation which, given the physical state of the body, is caused and regulated by Pheromones and other chemicals and is a means of finding the right partner. I'm talking about unconditional, unselfish Love. This kind of love does not have its origin in the body which only produces selfish urges. Love does not have its origin in the soul either, because the soul in principle is only a mirror of the body, enriched with experiences from passed lives. Since love is a pure and unselfish emotion, it must come from “Above” (or actually, from within which translates into the same), from the source of everything; from the primal Light that started it all. This original pure energy is called spirit or Atma, (Hindu) Atum, (Egypt) and Ataom (Mani). You cannot split it up or unravel it any further; It is undividable; atomos. It is ONE. God is One. This is the real atom, unlike the prematurely named particles we think we know as atoms. It is the original, creational, healing energy flowing constantly from the source; the breath of God; his Spirit.
It is all a MATTER OF SPIRIT.
The Egyptians called the Spirit Atum. The German word for breath is Atem. The Hebrew word for spirit; ruach also means breath. Without this breath of God everything would seize to exist; the life-force itself would run dry. Every living organism; every body needs life-force; soul, Prana or Chi to sustain it. (Everything you see and touch is in fact life-force, soul Prana or Chi, but in a denser form.) Every human soul needs spirit, Atma to sustain it. (Souls are in fact spirit, Brahman or Atma, but in a denser form.) Every human soul can breathe in this timeless Spirit by opening up to the source, (like a flower opening up under the sun) by opening up in prayer to God. Just allow his Spirit to flow through your soul, to sustain your soul, and you, your soul that is, will be sustained and enabled to live forever. This Spirit of God is like a direct line to God. It provides you with your own human spirit; a higher consciousness; a higher Self guiding you by means of a silent voice in the background. Should you have no spirit at all, you, when your time comes, would die like all the (other) animals do, and your soul would simply fade away as water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry. But people have spirits; that is what differentiates us from animals. This is the principle of reincarnation; even when your body, or the vehicle you live in dies, you, your soul, that is, provided with spirit or Atma will live on and, sooner or later, be attracted to other opportunities to expand your consciousness; other lives to live and explore until you reach a higher level and move on from there. * A lot of scientific research is being done on the survival of memories after death. if you train rats in a new trick in Prague, then rats all around the world should learn the same thing quicker just because the rats have learned it in Prague. Now, there is already evidence from studies done on rats in laboratories that this kind of effect actually happens.... In fact, it is surprising how much evidence there already is for this principle. The hypothesis also applies to human beings. It should be getting easier for children to solve or play video games of a particular kind just because so many have learned them . . . or for people to learn new sports, new skills like windsurfing. In the human realm I am suggesting that what we learn is facilitated by morphic resonance from all those who have learned it before. This also leads to
several other rather surprising implications. One is that if we tune into
lots of people in the past, occasionally we could tune into particular
people in the past who are now dead and through morphic resonance pick up
memories of past lives.
On
this note, there is quite good evidence from the work of Professor Ian
Stevenson at the University of Virginia that some young children remember
incidents from previous lives. They have memories which can not be explained
normally and which seem to be valid when checked up on. There is also some
evidence, which I think is less reliable, from hypnotic regression of
past-life memories.
Usually this evidence produces a polarized response: on one side, a lot of
people, usually dogmatic mechanists, say this is impossible therefore the
evidence is wrong. We can not explain it, therefore it can not happen. That
is one reaction I am sure everyone is familiar with. On the other side are
people who say this is reincarnation, which is exactly what we believe
anyway. But I am suggesting a middle path. It is possible to accept this
evidence for past-life memories in terms of people tuning-in to people in
the past, but it does not necessarily prove that you were that person. That
is another question. It leaves that question open.
Survival After Death This question of
memory has many other implications. It has a great relevance to all
religious theories of survival. All religions that I know of suggest that
there is some form of bodily survival of death, some kind of personal
survival—either in some shadowy ancestor realm or underworld; or through
reincarnation or rebirth; or as in the Judaic, Christian, or Islamic
traditions, through some kind of after-life. None of these theories would
make sense if memories are stored in the brain, because obviously when the
brain decays, all memories would be obliterated. Materialists like the idea
of memory storage in the brain—not because it is strongly supported by
evidence, it is not—but because it is such a simple and convenient argument
which can be used to refute almost all religions. If memory is in the brain,
the brain decays at death and that is the end. It would not make much sense
if you arrive at the Last Judgment, for example, and you have totally
forgotten who you are and what you have done.
However, if memories are not stored inside the brain, then the question of
survival of bodily death is left open. This is one of those areas where
changing the boundaries of science changes the boundaries between science
and religion. Even though we like to think we make our own decisions, there is some research that indicates we might not even do that. One study found that by using brain scanners, researchers were able to predict how a person would act a full seven seconds before the person knew a decision had been made. However, researchers acknowledged that the study was best suited to a simple test that involved pushing a button, as opposed to a more complicated decision such as accepting a job. In 1985 Benjamin Libet performed a study which shocked the scientific world. He showed that the preparatory brain activity that occurs as you make a ‘free’ choice about something is actually made a few hundred milliseconds before the decision reaches your conscious awareness. In other words, your brain makes a decision before you do, and ‘free will’ is an illusion. How he interpreted his data drew criticism from his peers. Some thought that the tiny amount of time in which this brain activity occurred was too short, and could be accounted for by inaccuracies in how his participants reported their decision making. In Germany in 2008 a similar experiment was done only the test subjects could choose from two buttons. The researchers could predict exactly which button would be pushed by which test subject and they could do this 7 seconds before the test subjects thought they decided to do so. A study by Chin Siong Soon et al, published in Nature Neuroscience recently has replicated Libet’s results by using modern brain imaging techniques, a more accurate way of measuring decision making in the brain: “There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively ‘free’ decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness. “ The BPS research digest reports on the study: “Participants had their brains scanned while they decided to press a button with their right or left index fingers. Participants referred to a constant stream of changing letters, visible on a screen, to indicate when they’d made their decision. Around ten seconds before participants reported making their conscious decision, patterns of brain activity in two areas correlated with the decision they would go on to make. These regions were in the frontopolar cortex and the parietal cortex.
The conclusion was that we do not have a free will, but this conclusion is based on the assumption that we are our brain, while it may in fact be part of the vehicle we live in. We are much more than our brain. Our bodies do have memory storage in the board computer that is called our brain, but all the evidence shows, that it is our immaterial soul that is taking decisions on where to steer it and gives the brain the command to act upon it. Who else would be taking these decisions?
God is spirit. The Holy Spirit is the essence of God emanating from Him as Solar wind from the Sun. It is like His breath. It is from this Spirit this energy that the world this universe was created. His Spirit crystallized into the world we live in. All the stars and planets are made of it; the whole universe and all the living creatures that dwell in it and develop minds of their own; with free will and consciousness and may stray from truth; make mistakes doing so. Your soul is like a vessel that is meant to be pervaded with God's Spirit. The more spirit your soul has, the more enlightened it becomes. Your spirit inside you is some of that Holy Spirit. It is both His energy and consciousness. Your soul's guide and life-force. It is a direct line to God.
It is God.
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In the late seventeenth century…science and religion worked out an unwritten social contract of non-relationship… religion agreed that the 'natural world' was the sole province of scientists. And science agreed, in turn, to keep its nose out of the spiritual - or for that matter, anything to do with values. Indeed, science defined itself as "value-free". So for the past three hundred years there has been a state of profound separation between religion and science. ... The very word "evil" requires an a priori value-free science to deal with the subject. ... For a whole variety of factors, the separation of religion and science no longer works. M. Scott Peck M.D., The people of the Lie, p40.
Science is getting to close to God to keep denying Him.
*
Did you know that the lifespan of all animals, amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and people can be counted in number of heartbeats, and that number is about 1 billion. Humans live in average 65 years, hamsters in average 3 years and Artic whales as many as 150 years, but the number of heartbeats stay the same. Because whales can have as few as 10 heartbeats a minute and hamsters as many as 450, during a lifespan the number of beats averages, still, at about 1 billion. Ref. *
Within Christianity, the human soul in general (that is; the ones who follow Christ) is often referred to as the Bride of Christ or the Bride of the Lamb. In Greek mythology, Psyche, or Psykhe; the goddess of the soul is wife of the primordial great god Eros, Love, who is also called Phanes, Light. Psyche was pictured as a mortal princess who rivaled Aphrodite, the goddess of physical love, in beauty. When Eros fell in love with her, Aphrodite put her, Psyche through many trials before she was accepted into the immortal company of the Olympian fold. It is these trials we, our psyches, our souls have to face before we are allowed to enter the heavenly realm and we can only do that if we are connected not to earthly but to heavenly Love, Eros or heavenly Light, Phanes, for that is what will set us free from this earthly illusion of richness fame and glory empowered by pride, hate and greed and fear of loosing what we have. Only if we are able to let go of all that can we be liberated from it and become united with Christ, who is called our Messiah, our Savior for the same reason. * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Certain squirrels, whose ecological niches require them to remember the locations of thousands of caches, often following radical changes in the environment. Several species of corvids have also been trained to use tools in controlled experiments, or use bread crumbs for bait-fishing. Research in 2007 shows that chimpanzees in the Fongoli savannah sharpen sticks to use as spears when hunting, considered the first evidence of systematic use of weapons in a species other than humans. It is clear that animals of quite a range of species are capable of solving a range of problems that are argued to involve abstract reasoning; modern research has tended to show that the performances of Wolfgang Köhler's chimpanzees, who could achieve spontaneous solutions to problems without training, were by no means unique to that species, and that apparently similar behavior can be found in animals usually thought of as much less intelligent, if appropriate training is given. Causal reasoning has also been observed in rooks and New Caledonian crows. The sense in which animals can be said to have consciousness or a self-concept has been hotly debated; it is often referred to as the debate over animal minds. The best known research technique in this area is the mirror test devised by Gordon G. Gallup, in which an animal's skin is marked in some way while it is asleep or sedated, and it is then allowed to see its reflection in a mirror; if the animal spontaneously directs grooming behavior towards the mark, that is taken as an indication that it is aware of itself. Self-awareness, by this criterion, has been reported for chimpanzees and also for some other great apes, the European Magpie, some cetaceans and a solitary elephant, but not for monkeys. Some animals are capable of distinguishing between different amounts and rudimentary counting. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas have been taught to use sign language and symbols to communicate with us, often with impressive results. The bonobo Kanzi, for instance, carries his symbol-communication board with him so he can "talk" to his human researchers, and he has invented combinations of symbols to express his thoughts. Nevertheless, this is not the same thing as having an animal look up at you, open his mouth, and speak. Certain skills are considered key signs of higher mental abilities: good memory, a grasp of grammar and symbols, self-awareness, understanding others' motives, imitating others, and being creative. Bit by bit, in ingenious experiments, researchers have documented these talents in other species, gradually chipping away at what we thought made human beings distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities came from. Scrub jays know that other jays are thieves and that stashed food can spoil; sheep can recognize faces; chimpanzees may use four sticks of different sizes to extract the honey from a bee's nest and even use weapons to hunt small mammals. And in captivity, they can figure out how to position several boxes so they can retrieve a banana hanging from a rope. Dolphins can imitate human postures; the archerfish, which stuns insects with a sudden blast of water, can learn how to aim its squirt simply by watching an experienced fish perform the task. And Alex the parrot turned out to be a surprisingly good talker. In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, a recent graduate of Harvard University, did something very bold. At a time when animals still were considered automatons, she set out to find what was on another creature's mind by talking to it. She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language. Pepperberg walked to the back of the room, where Alex sat on top of his cage preening his pearl gray feathers. He stopped at her approach and opened his beak. "What's same?" she asked. Without hesitation, Alex's beak opened: "Co-lor." "What's different?" Pepperberg asked. "Shape," Alex said. His voice had the digitized sound of a cartoon character. Since parrots lack lips (another reason it was difficult for Alex to pronounce some sounds, such as ba), the words seemed to come from the air around him, as if a ventriloquist were speaking. But the words—and what can only be called the thoughts—were entirely his. In other words, because Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird's basic understanding of the world. She couldn't ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex's eye. For the next 20 minutes, Alex ran through his tests, distinguishing colors, shapes, sizes, and materials (wool versus wood versus metal). He did some simple arithmetic, such as counting the yellow toy blocks among a pile of mixed hues. And, then, as if to offer final proof of the mind inside his bird's brain, Alex spoke up. "Talk clearly!" he commanded, when one of the younger birds Pepperberg was also teaching mispronounced the word green. "Talk clearly!" "Don't be a smart aleck," Pepperberg said, shaking her head at him. "He knows all this, and he gets bored, so he interrupts the others, or he gives the wrong answer just to be obstinate. At this stage, he's like a teenage son; he's moody, and I'm never sure what he'll do." "Wanna go tree," Alex said in a tiny voice. Most owners talk to their dogs and expect them to understand. But this canine talent wasn't fully appreciated until a border collie named Rico appeared on a German TV game show in 2001. Rico knew the names of some 200 toys and acquired the names of new ones with ease. The wild-caught crow Betty a glossy-black bird with a crow's bright, inquisitive eyes solved a test before her: a glass tube with a tiny basket lodged in its center. The basket holds a bit of meat. A scientists had placed two pieces of wire in the room. One was bent into a hook, the other was straight. They figured Betty would choose the hook to lift the basket by its handle. But experiments don't always go according to plan. Another crow had stolen the hook before Betty could find it. Betty is undeterred. She looks at the meat in the basket, then spots the straight piece of wire. She picks it up with her beak, pushes one end into a crack in the floor, and uses her beak to bend the other end into a hook. Thus armed, she lifts the basket out of the tube. To communicate with the dolphins, Herman and his team invented a hand- and arm-signal language, complete with a simple grammar. For instance, a pumping motion of the closed fists meant "hoop," and both arms extended overhead (as in jumping jacks) meant "ball." A "come here" gesture with a single arm told them to "fetch." Responding to the request "hoop, ball, fetch," Akeakamai would push the ball to the hoop. But if the word order was changed to "ball, hoop, fetch," she would carry the hoop to the ball. Over time she could interpret more grammatically complex requests, such as "right, basket, left, Frisbee, in," asking that she put the Frisbee on her left in the basket on her right. Reversing "left" and "right" in the instruction would reverse Akeakamai's actions. Akeakamai could complete such requests the first time they were made, showing a deep understanding of the grammar of the language. Ref. Wikipedia and National Geographic * . .
.. . . . . . . . . . . .Antonio Damasio on Consciousness; Consciousness requires A conscious mind is a mind with a self in it. A self introduces a subjective perspective in the mind. We are only fully conscious when self comes to mind. There are three levels of
self; The
autobiographical self has prompted; * ., , , , . . . . . . . The Proto self and the Core self both belong to the Animal self or lower self. The Autobiographical self is a big step towards the Higher Self but is still only a smart animal's self and heavily influenced by the Proto- and Core self; the Lower self. It is the level of the human soul that is constantly being forced to make choices between good and evil, integrity and deceitfulness. Significant, however, is that all over the world the instruments of culture, writing and language are reported to have been conveyed to humans by gods, angels or in fact by God Himself, resulting in guidelines in Holy Books on what is right and what is wrong and laws on how to behave. Even more significant here is that the decisions we make, that have always been ascribed to our minds; our brains, are in fact being taken up to ten seconds before our brains show any sign of it. . . . . . . . . . Free will; It is said that; it is not our mind, this chatterbox, this little voice in our head that is constantly commenting us on everything we do or think, enticing us or holding us back, that is yearning for something or doesn't want to have anything to do with somebody, that represents our free will. The chatterbox that we call our mind is constantly being unconsciously influenced by the world we live in. True, but that does not mean we don't have a free will. It just shows that you may be influenced in making a choice. If you didn't have a free will, this wouldn't even be possible. Experiments have been done at the Californian University in 2010 with test subjects being plugged in to a MRI-scanner while being advised about the benefits of sunburn oil. The results showed a more reliable outcome as to whether the subjects would use more or less sunburn oil, then they themselves said they would. The conclusion was that we're not making the decisions that make up our free will but someone else is pushing the buttons that had nothing to do with our physical brain. Could that someone else be our very own immaterial soul being able to move or dwell in an other dimension? *
Check out this video of Jill Bolte Taylor, a scientist, a neuroanatomist who at first thought she was permanently damaged by a stroke but instead received a true revelation of oneness with the sea of life force filling our universe bubble. |
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This
is Acarus electricus, a mite first noticed by Andrew Crosse in 1837. Crosse
was an amateur scientist, and was conducting experiments on the growth of
crystals by subjecting certain minerals to long term, low-level electric
currents. The mineral sample, an iron oxide, was imbibed with a toxic mixture
of hydrochloric acid and a silicate of potash solution, and continuously
electrified by means of a battery. Several weeks into the experiment,
filaments began to appear on the stone, which apparently resembled insects.
Eventually, Crosse noticed movement, and detected a great number of living
mites on the sample. “On the twenty-eighth day these little creatures moved
their legs. I must now say that I was not a little astonished. After a few
days they detached themselves from the stone and moved about at pleasure.” .He
repeated the experiment under closely monitored conditions using sterilized
and sealed equipment. Again, the mites appeared. Word soon got out, and
popular opinion was that living creatures had been synthesized from inorganic
matter. Crosse, mainly because he was an amateur, was called everything from a
blasphemer to a Frankenstein despite the fact that he never made any claims
that he had created life, or even discovered a new species.
