Sam Harris on the Paradox of Meditation and How to Stretch Our Capacity for Everyday Self-Transcendence
Montaigne believed that meditation is the finest exercise of one’s mind and David Lynch uses it as an anchor of his creative integrity. Over the centuries, the ancient Eastern practice has had a variety of exports and permutations in the West, but at no point has it been more vital to our sanity and psychoemotional survival than amidst our current epidemic of hurrying and cult of productivity. It is remarkable how much we, as a culture, invest in the fitness of the body and how little, by and large, in the fitness of the spirit and the psyche — which is essentially what meditation provides. In Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (public library), neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris argued that cultivating the art of presence is our greatest gateway to true happiness. Harris writes: We know that the self is a social construct and the dissolution of its illusion, Harris argues, is the most valuable gift of meditation:
Vitamin D: evolutionary, physiological and... [Curr Drug Targets. 2011
Jack Kerouac on How to Meditate
Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas — The Physics arXiv Blog
There’s a quiet revolution underway in theoretical physics. For as long as the discipline has existed, physicists have been reluctant to discuss consciousness, considering it a topic for quacks and charlatans. Indeed, the mere mention of the ‘c’ word could ruin careers. That’s finally beginning to change thanks to a fundamentally new way of thinking about consciousness that is spreading like wildfire through the theoretical physics community. And while the problem of consciousness is far from being solved, it is finally being formulated mathematically as a set of problems that researchers can understand, explore and discuss. Today, Max Tegmark, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, sets out the fundamental problems that this new way of thinking raises. Tegmark’s approach is to think of consciousness as a state of matter, like a solid, a liquid or a gas. Tegmark does not have an answer.
How Buzz Aldrin's communion on the moon was hushed up | Matthew Cresswell
Neil Armstrong will be remembered at Washington National Cathedral today. It's a good moment to look at one eccentric Apollo story: the tale of Aldrin's hushed-up communion on the moon. Before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped out of the lunar module on July 20, 1969, Aldrin unstowed a small plastic container of wine and some bread. He had brought them to the moon from Webster Presbyterian church near Houston, where he was an elder. Aldrin had received permission from the Presbyterian church's general assembly to administer it to himself. He then ate and drank the elements. He also read a section of the gospel of John. The story of the secret communion service only emerged after the mission. After the Apollo 8 crew had read out the Genesis creation account in orbit, O'Hair wanted a ban on Nasa astronauts practising religion on earth, in space or "around and about the moon" while on duty. And as for O'Hair? But in a sense, she need not have worried.
Missing link found between brain, immune system -- with major disease implications
Implications profound for neurological diseases from autism to Alzheimer's to multiple sclerosis In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer's disease to multiple sclerosis. "Instead of asking, 'How do we study the immune response of the brain?' 'Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?' now we can approach this mechanistically. New Discovery in Human Body Even Kipnis was skeptical initially. 'Very Well Hidden' Alzheimer's, Autism, MS and Beyond
If our Founding Fathers were to write the Second Amendment today, how would they phrase it?