The Transcendent Ape

Do not dismiss the power of the myth ... but keep your brain on as well...

2011-09-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/magazine-14944470?SThisEM

http://www.russian-translation.com.au/

http://www.russiantranslate.org/

http://patrushev-publications.web.officelive.com/default.aspx

About Pyotr Patrushev

Clearing the Smoke: The Science of Cannabis

2011-08-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

Watch the full episode. See more MontanaPBS Presents.

Of course when they make expensive synthetic version of cannabinoids, they will suddenly become legal and available....

http://www.russiantranslate.org/

About Pyotr Patrushev

We are all from Africa says great great grandson of naturalist Charlies Darwin after testing his DNA

2010-02-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

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Chris Darwin, great great grandson of naturalist Charlies Darwin stands next to a portrait of his ancestor / Alan Pryke

Ancestors left Africa 45,000 years ago
Darwin "would have been delighted"
Proves his "wild" theories
CHARLES Darwin may have been prone to the odd wild theory, but even he probably never imagined that DNA technology could help determine who his ancient ancestors were.

However, 200 years after his birth, the technology seems to have achieved just that, with an experiment involving his great-great-grandson apparently revealing that the family's ancestors left Africa about 45,000 years ago, The Australian reported.

Chris Darwin, 48, took a cheek swab test analysing his Y chromosome, with the test revealing that he, and therefore his paternal great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, are from the Haplogroup R1B, one of the most common European male lineages.

Mr Darwin, a tour guide from the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, said his great-great-grandfather would have been both delighted and relieved, given he had gone "out on a limb" with his assertions that Africa was the "cradle of humankind".

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"When you look at it, he made some really wild statements - I mean, saying we're all from Africa, he simply looked at the great apes around the world and considered that the similarities between the chimpanzees and the gorillas were greater with us than the similarities with the orangutans," he said.

"And he then said we must be from Africa - but that is a pretty wild shot in the dark so he was really going out on a limb."

Mr Darwin said the quest to find out what we are and where we come from was just as important as the work that went into the now acknowledged theory that Earth was not the centre of the universe.

" At some stage surely, don't we need to decide what we are? Are we an image of a god or are we an ape from Africa?" he said.

The experiment, known as The Genographic Project, is a research partnership between National Geographic and IBM with field support from the Waitt Family Foundation.

The project's test results show Mr Darwin's paternal ancestors would have migrated from northeast Africa to the Middle East or North Africa about 45,000 years ago.

Men belonging to Haplogroup R1B are direct descendants of the Cro-Magnon people who, beginning 30,000 years ago, dominated the human expansion into Europe and heralded the demise of the Neanderthal species.

Bill Maher on Catholics and Organized religion's pedophilia

2008-12-02T16:12:00.000-08:00

Chapter 3. The "Sacred Disease" And Other Paranormal States

2008-03-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

Chapter 3. The "Sacred Disease" And Other Paranormal States

I. The Varieties of Epileptic Experience

Epilepsy is Nature's way of conducting neurological experiments. The wide variety of phenomena, which are associated with the epileptic seizure, can teach us a lot about how brain functions affect our perception and behavior.
The history of epilepsy presents one with a truly confusing picture. On one hand, it was nearly always associated in the popular mind with such things as demon possession, sorcery, ability to prophesy and so on. A story from the Bible immortalizes this attitude to the
"sacred disease." A man brings his son to Jesus to be healed and says: "Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit: And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth and pineth away..." Jesus then "rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, 'Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried, and rent him sore and came out of him: and he was as one dead... But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose." 70
On the other hand, the first treatise on epilepsy available to us, written 2500 years ago by the Greek physician Hippocrates, already refers to epilepsy as the "so-called sacred disease" and attempts to give this condition a purely scientific explanation. And so this curious conflict between the popular and enlightened opinion continues to the present day: the specialists are trying to assure the lay public that epilepsy is caused by "cold fumes rising from the head" (medieval explanation), or "abnormal, excessive electrical discharges of neurons" (modern explanation). The lay public listens politely, but still continues to view the "falling sickness" with fascination, awe, and sometimes fear and hostility.
The amount of suffering this attitude by people afflicted by epilepsy must be staggering. An ancient historian tells us that one way in which the disease used to be diagnosed was to put the suspect into a goat's skin, plunge him into the sea, and observe whether he sank or not. If he did, the diagnosis was confirmed. 71 Even during more enlightened times (last third of the 18th century) castration and clitoridectomy were still considered to be of good therapeutic value in cases of stubborn epilepsy, since this disease was sometimes thought to be caused by the "pernicious habit" of masturbation. The practice of trephining (making a hole in the skull) was used in cases of epilepsy and may have possibly been practiced for this purpose even in prehistoric times.
However, not the whole of the history of past attitudes to epilepsy has such a gloomy character. At certain times epilepsy was associated with special gifts such as high intelligence or creativity. Perhaps the best-known advocate of this view was the Spanish psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909). In one of his books he wrote of
...the numerous men of genius of the first order who have been seized by motor epilepsy, or by that kind of morbid irritability which is well known to supply its place. Among these we find such names as Napoleon, Moliere, Julius Caesar, Petrarch, Peter the Great, Mahomet, Handel, Swift, Richalieu, Charles V, Flaubert, Dostoyevski and St. Paul.72

Here, of course, Lombroso has stretched the definition of epilepsy a bit too far in some cases, or based his diagnoses on scanty evidence.
Another author who gave epilepsy a very prominent place was Tommaso Campanella. In his Utopian City of the Sun quite a number of citizens were epileptics. Campanella describes this unusual feature of his Utopia thus: "This is a sign of great talent, wherefore Hercules, Socrates, Mohammed, Scotus, and Callimachus suffered from it”.
What is the current understanding of epilepsy? It comprises such a number of diversified conditions that a simple and straightforward answer to the question of its origin seems impossible. In one of the books on epilepsy, the classification table contains 27 separate types of seizures, the last one being "unclassified." (This, however, is intended for clinicians and is obviously too finely graded for any other purpose.)
Most commonly, all epilepsies are subdivided into three clearly distinguishable types: grand mal (in French — big sickness), petit mal (little sickness), and psychomotor epilepsy. The grand mal is what people most often associate with epilepsy. It is accompanied by convulsions of the whole body, loss of consciousness and falling to the ground. Sometimes immediately before the attack the grand mal epileptic emits a shrill cry, caused by sudden contraction of the breathing apparatus. The seizure then proceeds automatically through the "tonic" phase, when the patient turns blue in the face and is immobile, to the final "clonic" phase, when his limbs start jerking and he may experience incontinence and tongue-biting. There is nothing much one can do about the fit until it has run its full course, usually in a few minutes.
Petit mal fit is also known as a "short absence," which conveys the nature of the disorder. A person who suffers from this type of epilepsy may be engaged in some task when, all of a sudden, his consciousness lapses and he will have a "blank" period generally lasting only a few seconds. This may happen a dozen, or in some severe cases, several hundred times a day. Children are particularly prone to this type of epilepsy.
The last type of epilepsy is called "psychomotor" (or "temporal lobe," or "limbic"). It is more widespread than the previous two varieties. Perhaps 60% of all epileptic seizures are psychomotor. Like all epileptic fits they are often preceded by a peculiar sensation, which is called, an "aura" and which is usually repeated before every attack.
After experiencing the aura the psychomotor epileptic becomes unresponsive and may indulge in some automatic, stereotyped (like moving things randomly on the table) or even aggressive behaviour. The last one is not as typical of psychomotor seizures as was once thought.
There is one more feature associated particularly with psychomotor epilepsy, which is of special interest to us. Sometimes the aura experienced by epileptics is associated with very powerful sensations of bliss and tranquillity which are usually interpreted within a religious framework and which often lead to cases of sudden religious conversion. A 17th century English scholar described a typical case of an apprentice boy who was badly beaten over the head by his tutor and acquired epilepsy which eventually led to "ecstasies":
As soon as he was out of a fit, the first thing he would do, was to sing divers songs and hymns (though it was not known that he had ever learnt any) very melodiously. From this singing he would now and then pass abruptly to some strange relations, but especially of such and such, lately dead, whom he had seen in Paradise; and then fall to singing again. But when he was perfectly come to himself, and had left singing, then would he sadly and with much confidence maintain that he had been, not upon his bed, as they that were present would make him believe; but in heaven with his Heavenly Father, having been carried thither by Angels and placed in a most pleasant green, where he had enjoyed excessive happiness, and had seen things that he could not express; &c.74

By the middle of the 19th century a sufficient number of such accounts was accumulated to convince some historians of the basic similarity between these epilepsy-provoked religious revelations and the supposedly authentic ones. A typical case in question is that of Mohammed. When the circumstances of his famous conversion were shown to be indicative of epilepsy, some scholars denounced him as a fraud. The more moderate critics realized, however, that the epileptic is completely convinced of the reality of his vision and should therefore be at least given credit for honesty.
Another famous case of revelation through an epileptic fit is that of Dostoyevski. He described how his first attack and accompanying revelation occurred. It was the night before Easter Sunday and Dostoyevski (who was then in exile) spent the whole night with a close friend arguing hotly about the question of God's existence. The friend was an atheist, Dostoyevski a believer, and both were firmly convinced in the veracity of their views. Becoming excited, Dostoyevski shouted: "God exists, yes he does!" At this very moment the air around them became filled with the ringing of the bells in a neighboring church. "And I felt," Dostoyevski tells, "that the sky had descended on earth and swallowed me. The nature of God was directly revealed to me and became part of me." "Yes, God exists," he shouted and lost his consciousness.75 Dostoyevski was very preoccupied with the religious experiences of Mohammed in which he found parallels to his own. He also indicated very clearly that the most important feature of his aura was indescribable bliss. He emphasized that this sensation of bliss had intensity, which would be completely incomprehensible to those people who know only "earthly joys." There is even an air of haughtiness when Dostoyevski talks about his experiences:
All you, healthy people...you don't even suspect what real happiness is, that happiness which we, epileptics, experience during that second which precedes the fit. Mohammed tries to tell us in his Koran that he really saw paradise and visited it. All the clever fools are convinced that he is just a liar and a fraud. Oh no! He is no liar! He really was in paradise during epilepsy from which he, like myself, suffered. I do not know whether this bliss lasts seconds, hours, or months, but believe my word, I would not forfeit it for all the joys which life can offer.76

This idea of the profound superiority of bliss experience in epilepsy to that found in ordinary life was so embedded in Dostoyevski's mind that, whenever he brought this subject up in his novels, he reiterated it almost ad verbatum. In his novel The Idiot the epileptic Prince Myshkin exclaims to himself: "Yes, for this moment, one can give away all one's life."77 In another novel The Possessed a hero describes an epileptic aura: "During those five seconds I lived through a lifetime, and for them I would give away my whole life because it's worth it.78
These experiences are so far removed from the lives of the vast majority of people that, I suspect, many regard them as a product of Dostoyevski's imagination. Many people do not know that very similar experiences occur all the time, though perhaps in more mundane settings. The research, which has been done into this subject, concerns mainly the temporal lobe epilepsies. Researchers who study this type of epilepsy report that mystical experiences associated with it are remarkably common.
Out of 69 patients analysed in one study, 26 were found to be preoccupied with religious ideas. Prior to the onset of their illness, only 8 patients had any religious interests at all .
Some of the epilepsy-provoked conversion experiences were quite dramatic. A bus driver who had been demoted to conductor as a result of his epileptic predisposition had, during one of his trips, a feeling of profound bliss. He collected the fares correctly, telling his passengers at the same time how pleased he was to be in Heaven. He told his G.P. later that at first he felt "as if a bomb had burst in his head." The patient was examined in a hospital and a possibility of degeneration in the right temporal lobe was indicated. Some years later this patient had another revelation experience which, this time, convinced him that the ideas of Heaven and Hell were unreal and that Christ could not possibly have been conceived in any other manner except by his mother and father. The second revelation brought to him a sense of joy, well-being and clarity of mind.
Another patient had a vision of flying in an airplane over some mountains in France. Then the aircraft climbed higher and brought him into "a land of peace," in which he had no cares or burdens and felt the power of God upon him. Being discharged from the hospital, the patient went to listen to a talk at a Billy Graham meeting and became a firm member of the Pentecostal Church. He used to walk the streets with a banner saying, "Be prepared to meet thy God" and acquired a tendency to bring any conversation around to a religious topic.
An even more dramatic conversion happened to a patient who began having epileptic fits at the age of 17. When he was 33 he stopped taking anticonvulsants and the frequency of his fits increased. Around this time "he suddenly realized that he was the Son of God; he possessed special powers of healing and could abolish cancer from the world; he had visions and believed that he could understand other people's thoughts." During the following five years he experienced himself as being operated by some higher power (which he variously termed as "God" and "electrical power"), and communicated with his dead father and with God.
These contemporary cases have some well-known historical precedents. The conversion of St Paul is often quoted. The incident on the road to Damascus involved falling down, hearing voices, seeing things, and experiencing temporary blindness. More complete information is available in the case of another Christian mystic — St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). As noted by her biographer, she experienced visions, suffered from chronic headaches and had temporary lapses of consciousness. When she was young she used to see diabolical apparitions. At the age of 24 she fell into a coma and was considered dead. Upon recovery her tongue was found to be bitten, her joints strained and she was covered in bruises. She told later that there were constant noises in her head: "a number of rushing waterfalls within my brain; while in other parts, drowned by the noise of the water, are the noises of birds singing and whistling." This sort of phenomena is usually caused by some pathological process in the temporal lobe — a part of the brain, which is intimately involved in auditory experiences.
Another well-known mystic, St Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) began to have experiences, which resembled temporal lobe epilepsy when she was about 9 years old. There were "strange and violent tremblings all over her body" from which she thought she was going to die. She suffered from terrifying hallucinations, which only gradually changed to visions of a religious nature.
In Florence, another saint, St Catherine dei Ricci (1522-1590) had visual hallucinations, suffered from stigmata, and regularly lost consciousness for prolonged periods of time. A few other Christian mystics are also implicated in having epilepsy because of the symptoms, which accompanied their religious experiences. They include St Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510), Mme Guyon (1648-1717) and St Marguerite Marie (1647-1690). The symptoms in question were: "sensations of extremes of hot and cold trembling of the whole body, transient aphasia, automatism, passivity feelings, hyperaesthesia, childish regression, dissociation, somnambulism, transient paresis, increased suggestibility and an inability to open the eyes."
One can of course object to this linking of mystical experience with epileptic conditions by saying: but could not these experiences, no matter what their physical manifestations, be of "higher" origin? They may be superficially similar to certain pathological conditions but, surely, there is much more to it than that! This argument can of course be reversed. Why is it that these "higher" states had to manifest themselves through conditions, which were identical to those, linked with definitely established cases of clinical epilepsy? Naturally, the elaboration upon their experiences is going to be different in the case of a Dostoyevski and in the case of some semi-literate bus driver. Most of the traditional mystics were quite remarkable individuals in their own right. Thousands of other "mystical" epileptics must have vanished without a trace, even though their subjective experiences were probably no less powerful than those of St Paul or
Dostoyevski. They were unable to express them and utilize them to their full capacity; it is only natural that sensations of peace and blissfulness of an unusual intensity would be, in most people's minds, readily converted into the customary notions of Heaven, Heavenly tranquillity, etc.
We have seen from our discussion of brain stimulation that an unusual degree of pleasure can be experienced through stimulation of certain brain structures. Many people are unaware that stimulation of various other brain centers is capable of evoking other extremely unusual and complex sensations, which we would ordinarily be unwilling to link with any physical structure.
When Penfield found that stimulation of certain parts of the human brain was making his patients perceive whole strands of memory bits in an orderly fashion, it caught him completely by surprise. This was despite the fact that, by that time, there was already voluminous literature on the symptoms accompanying epileptic fits. Even though the irritation in the brain was due to some very small physical lesions, the symptoms manifested themselves as rather complex mental states. Feelings of persecution, fear, anticipation of some disaster, desire to be alone, and overwhelming sadness, feelings of familiarity or estrangement and even feelings of "unnecessariness" — these are some of the symptoms found in descriptions of temporal lobe epilepsy.
It makes one think that in our brains there are locations in which we have the various ordinary sensations contained in their pure form. During an act of perception, these various sensations will be "fed in," in a diluted form, to give our perceptions their familiar or unfamiliar, pleasant or unpleasant, real or unreal, necessary or unnecessary quality. It is hard to see how one can otherwise explain the presence of these pure undiluted sensations in epilepsy, in mystical states and during artificial stimulation of the brain. The similarities between epileptic and mystical experiences are often quite striking. There is, for example, an aura of "depersonalisation" which makes the individual feel estranged from himself and his surroundings while watching them as if from outside. This feeling is very close to the mystical experiences of "detachment."
It is also known that these and similar experiences sometimes accompany administration of hallucinogenic drugs which, obviously, affect not messages from higher planes of existence, but neurotransmitting messages. Of course, one can conveniently envisage that God, in His Wisdom, has provided us with two identical sets of neural ganglia, one of which is to provide us with mystical experiences of the profane and the other one of the sacred variety .
Presumably, only those that are destined to pursue traditional religious paths (and particularly those who belong to whatever creed we ourselves happen to subscribe) are providently endowed with equipment suitable for "proper" transcendence. Those who get off on wrong tangents (no matter how similar their experiences might be to the "sacred" variety) are obviously deluding themselves and are prey to tricks of imagination.
There is a description of one state, also caused by an epileptic irritation, which I find almost disconcerting. A patient, described by Paul MacLean, had an epileptic condition (with a focus in the left medial temporal region), which was preceded by a vivid sensation of "knowing the absolute truth." As the patient says, "Each time this happens, thoughts occur very clear and bright to me...as if this is what the world is all about...[this is] the absolute truth." As MacLean summarizes: "Here is evidence that a primitive system of our brain that represents an inheritance from lower mammals is able to generate, all out of context, a feeling of what is real, true, and important.”80 Dostoyevski also mentions an epileptic aura, which provided a sensation of "existence in the most intense degree.81 I suppose this is about as far as one can go in localizing "pure" aspects of our ordinarily diluted and intermingled perceptions of reality.
Apparently, the perception of these intense varieties of ordinary sensations out of context is not confined to cases of clear-cut pathology or recognized mysticism. In one national survey in the U.S. 29% of all people asked reported having déjà vu experiences at least once or twice in their lives and 6% had them often.82
The tapping of these ordinarily subconscious reservoirs of powerful sensations contained in the limbic structures might, in some cases, bring a subjective feeling of expanded awareness and greater clarity. The importance of the subconscious in a creative act has often been emphasized. It is known for example that the German chemist August Kekule discovered the formula of the benzine ring on the basis of a dream he had. Henri Poincarě, the French mathematician, could not solve a difficult mathematical problem by conscious effort but came to a creative insight while taking a walk by the seaside. However, a lot of conscious exploration usually occurs before the subconscious creative insight can take place. It is true that Charles Darwin discovered his theory of evolution while taking a ride in a carriage but this would have been hardly possible had he not spent many years gathering and evaluating masses of concrete material.
Dostoyevski gives us a glimpse of the creative potentialities felt by an epileptic:
There was one stage right before the attack (if it happened when one was awake) when, all of a sudden, right in the midst of sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain was momentarily as if set aflame and his whole life force enlivened to an unusual degree. The sensation of living and of being conscious would increase nearly tenfold during these lightning-like moments. His mind, his heart would become aglow with an extraordinary light; all his doubts, all troubles would suddenly subside and resolve themselves into some higher quietude, which was full of transparent, harmonious joy and hope, full of wisdom and total understanding.

But this was only a prelude to that final "unbearable moment" of the appreciation of "the highest synthesis of life."83
It is interesting that here Dostoyevski, speaking through the words of one of his heroes, also draws a line between these supposedly sacred revelations and the profane stupefying influences of "hashish, opium and wine."
We realize that the potentialities so lucidly described by Dostoyevski do not automatically flow out of a transcendent state, when we compare his case with that of the epileptic bus driver, quoted earlier. He also had a vivid subjective feeling that his mind was "cleared." However, when he put down his religious ideas in a letter to his wife they turned out to be completely unintelligible.
This is an appropriate moment to remind the reader that we have been talking only about a relatively small number of epileptic cases. Even among the temporal lobe epileptics, only about a quarter become newly preoccupied with religious ideas, and out of those only a third have vivid conversion experiences. This comprises about 5% of all epileptic cases, which is probably an overestimate. This would mean that in a nation of 200,000,000 people, about 50,000 people might have undergone religious conversion as a result of temporal lobe epilepsy. (It is considered that, on the average, one person in 200 suffers from epilepsy.)
In most cases auras consist of unpleasant odours or tastes, fear, peculiar gastric sensations and various auditory and visual distortions. (See Fig. 14c) The attacks usually leave a person in a shattered state and, with frequent repetition, may lead to the more general physical and psychological disorders. I doubt if even Dostoyevski himself quite meant it when he spoke about giving his whole life away for one moment of his aura. It is hard to say whether he would have been taking anti-convulsions had he lived in our times. He had of course sincerely believed that he, like Mohammed, really visited Heaven in those moments. But he also had his reservations. He spoke of dullness, mental turbidity, and debility, which were the inevitable consequence of these "higher moments."
In clinical literature one does not often come upon cases of self-induced epilepsy, and only in a minority of these cases is there any blissful sensation involved. Some specialists put the percentage of self-induced epilepsy as low as 0.1%.85 An epileptic discharge is a stab in the dark. Only in rare cases does one hit a jackpot and even then a high price is being extracted for it. The important lesson is, however, that the jackpot can be hit.
I hope it has now become clear that stimulation of the pleasure centers through crude electrode implantation is providing only a vestigial echo of the powerful potential these areas possess. During some epileptic discharges, they are stimulated in a more "natural" and wholesale manner. I hardly expect critics, who hold results of intracranial stimulation of the pleasure circuit ambiguous, to call the preceding testimonies ambiguous.

II. In the Beginning There was the Rhythm

Are the phenomena described above relevant as far as the majority of human population is concerned? Or are they just curious examples of human pathology?
Beginning in 1946, W. Grey Walter, one of the pioneers in the field of electrical studies of brain activity, found that epilepsy-like phenomena could be experimentally produced in entirely normal subjects. At the end of the war, Grey Walter and his collaborators began to use bright flashes of strobe light in conjunction with EEG (brain wave pattern) recordings. The rate of flashing could be regulated by turning a knob. It was found that at certain very precise frequencies (e.g. not 9, or 10.5, but exactly 10 flashes per second), the electrical potentials evoked in the brain of the experimental subject by rhythmically flashing light were spilling over across the usually impassable borders in the brain. The flashing light might for example provoke a ringing sensation in the subject's ears - thus breaking down physiological barriers between the visual and the auditory regions of the brain.
This is precisely the mechanism, which underlies most forms of epilepsy: a strong discharge, originating in some area of the brain tends to spread around and involve greater and greater numbers of neurons, which would ordinarily not take part in a synchronous discharge. Flicker stimulation (or "photic stimulation") became an accepted tool in the diagnosis of epilepsy.
Grey Walter and his collaborators wanted to see what percentage of the normal subjects would respond to the flicker. They tested several hundred people who came from all walks of life and who had never had an epileptic fit. In 3-4% of all cases tested, scientists were able to find the frequency, which triggered off responses that were similar to those found in epileptic subjects. When the right frequency was hit people would report "strange feelings," "swimming in the head," faintness and even brief periods of unconsciousness. Some jerked their limbs in synchrony with the flashing light; some reported sensations of "tingling" etc. As soon as these responses occurred, the flicker was turned off. This technique proved that epilepsy-like symptoms could be produced in completely normal subjects. We must remember that the general incidence of epilepsy among the population is only 0.5%, which is way below the percentage reported by Grey Walter.
Later, a more sophisticated flicker apparatus was constructed. It had a built-in triggering mechanism, which fired the flicker in synchrony with brainwaves. A feedback system was devised to keep the flicker and the constantly fluctuating brainwave pattern in tune. With this piece of equipment, Grey Walter writes: "In more than 50% of young normal adult subjects, the first exposure to feedback flicker evokes transient paroxysmal discharges of the type seen so often in epileptics. 86
These observations are backed up by reports of epilepsy-like phenomena, which occur sometimes in perfectly normal people and under natural circumstances, in response to flickering light. Grey Walter quotes a case in which a person experienced a violent jerk as he was being driven through a forest with the sun flickering through the trees. Another person found that the flickering on a movie screen was provoking violent impulses and dimmed consciousness in him. When tested in the laboratory, he developed powerful jerking of the limbs when the frequency of stimulation was brought up to about 50 flashes per second - which approximates the flicker rate of a movie projector. Another curious case concerns a cyclist who nearly "passed out" a few times as he was cycling in the forest with the sun's rays flickering through the trees. A temporary loss of control would make him slow down and bring the frequency below its effective range. This would terminate the dimming of consciousness.
One can compare the mechanism by which rhythmic stimulation breaks down barriers between different regions of the brain with the well-known cases of powerful reverberations produced, for example, by a platoon of soldiers marching in step across a bridge. If they continue to march in step and reinforce the vibration, the structure of the bridge is affected and may even collapse. This is the reason why marching columns are allowed to break the step when passing over a bridge. The kind of feedback flicker described above is capable of producing an even more perfectly synchronized oscillation of the brain rhythms. After a certain point, the oscillation becomes too powerful to be contained within one brain structure and starts to spill beyond the normal physiological pathways in the brain. With people who are predisposed to epilepsy, these runaway oscillations can be produced relatively easily. With them, a flickering picture on the television screen, to give one example, may be enough to provoke an epileptic fit. As a matter of fact, specialists regard television 87 as one of the worst offenders in children's epilepsy. Not only the fragmentary sensations already described, but also complete and organized hallucination-like feelings involving more than one sense were provoked by flicker stimulation. A distortion of time sense may occur: the subject may find that he was being "pushed sideways in time." Even an experience of religious conversion, with all the complex sensations and emotions involved, can be provoked by flicker stimulation. The conversion experience in a case quoted earlier (the patient who flew into Heaven in an airplane and who later became a member of the Pentecostal Church) occurred during a photic stimulation test in a hospital.
Not only visual, but also other types of rhythmic stimulation were shown to initiate the spillover processes in the human brain. This was done with the use of a rhythmic clicking sound. The effective frequency of stimulation was similar to visual precipitation, even though different brain rhythms and receptor structures were involved. The frequency for visual flicker stimulation was usually in the range of 10 to 20 per second88 and for auditory - less than 30 per second.89
Cases of "musicogenic epilepsy" (epilepsy caused by exposure to music) are sometimes reported in literature. In many cases only classical music or music with a strong rhythm seems to be effective. Sometimes the emotional associations provoked by music ("sad," "sentimental") appeared to play a role. Even cases of epileptic precipitation by church bells (Dostoyevskil) were reported.90 The effective frequencies in this case were found to be in a band between 290 and 1120 cycles per second. In one case, emotional excitement was involved in an epileptic response caused by ringing church bells.
We can now take a closer look at the anatomical structures, which may be involved in some of the experiences described above. It has been noticed that some people subjected to flicker stimulation experienced feelings of fatigue, confusion, disgust, anger, and pleasure. It is natural to assume that, in these cases, the discharge involved various structures in the limbic system, which have been shown to regulate these various emotional states.
We also know that the temporal lobe and the limbic system are located close to each other and are interconnected. Involvement of the limbic system is also indicated by the fact that emotional upsets and particularly fear are some of the most common triggers of epilepsy. Even in animals a sudden loud noise may precipitate something like an epileptic fit. Specialists have grouped these epilepsies under the title of "startle" epilepsies. One investigator emphasizes that the fear which an epileptic feels is not fear of something in particular, but "fear which comes by itself - the symptom fear" (in other words, "pure" fear).91
An even clearer connection between many epileptic disorders and the limbic system is indicated by the fact that the sense of smell is often involved. Smell is one of the most "limbic" senses (as pointed out earlier, the limbic lobe used to be called the "smell-brain" and was supposed to deal primarily with smell perception). The capacity of certain pungent smells to elicit fits in epileptics was well known throughout the ages. An old poem, attributed to mythical Orpheus, describes how burning jet (black mineral, resembling coal) affects epileptics:
Jet too he flees, which through ascending vapors
All mortals makes to suffer with its pungency
Smoke-hued and flat, not large to look upon, It flames up brightly like some dried up fir,
Yet to the nostrils brings destructive power; and man
Will not escape the test thou settest
To prove them sufferers from the sacred ill.
For quickly will they bend and forward tilt,
As to the earth it draws them. Smeared by froth
From their own mouths, hither and thither will they turn,
And wallow on the ground.92

The belief that strong odours can trigger epilepsy was so widespread that slaves used to be tested for potential epilepsy by exposure to burning jet. The ancient physicians were also not too far behind the achievements of modern experimental physiology: they used to test predisposition to epilepsy by exposure to a light flickering through a potter's wheel. Epileptics were advised by their physicians to avoid looking at turning wheels of carriages in the street. The physio-logical mechanism, which underlies the influence of odours on an epileptic, was most elegantly, if not sufficiently scientifically, summed up by the Aristotelian philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias:
For the thickness of the particles of the odours carried up through the nose, thickens and condenses the psychic pneuma, which is already thick and cold, and renders the psychic pneuma unfit for functions of the soul. Now the body, if not supported by the soul, is overcome by its own weight and falls down.93

Another Greek physician, Arotaeus, had with great acuity pinpointed symptoms all of which are indicative of the limbic system involvement: "The patients feel their ears ringing [temporal lobe], they smell bad odours ["smell-brain"], are irritable and become angry without reason" [limbic structures such as amygdala, which were shown to provoke anger experimentally].
Nowadays, the importance of odours in precipitating epilepsy is played down. Some experiments prove, however, that the electrical activity of the temporal lobe shows spike discharges characteristic of epilepsy when people are exposed to perfumed air.95 The peculiar odours frequently reported by epileptics as part of their auras are probably internally produced. In other words, they result from the excitation of neurons in the smell-regulating areas in the brain itself, and therefore represent one more example of a "pure" undiluted sensation. Typical is the case of an epileptic patient described earlier (the "Son of God" case) who told his doctors that he could perceive a "holy smell." Usually the smells reported by epileptics are, however, unpleasant and difficult to describe.
It has already been mentioned that the sense of smell is located in the brain in close proximity to the centers, which regulate sexual functions. This is due to the importance, which was placed upon the sense of smell in the sexual repertoire of mammals from which we evolved. As can be seen from Fig. 10 the areas which produce pleasure in intracranial stimulation (septum and medial forebrain bundle) are also intimately interconnected with the olfactory bulb.
We may summarize by saying that in the case of epileptics, as well as in normal subjects in experimental and natural settings, a rhythmic stimulation of a particular frequency may break down normal physiological barriers between different regions of the brain. When this happens, people become aware of such sensations as intense pleasure or pain or peculiar sensations ordinarily associated with mystical experiences. These sensations can be traced down to certain limbic structures whose involvement is supported by the influence of smell and emotional excitement upon precipitation of an epileptic fit.

III. But what do I love, when I love Thee?

If what was said at the end of the previous section corresponds to facts, then we should be able to observe milder versions of the phenomena discussed, not only in cases of confirmed epilepsy or in an experimental laboratory, but in everyday life. That this indeed is so can be confirmed by examining a beautifully systematized collection of ecstatic experiences in Marghanita Laski's book Ecstasy. 96 This book contains descriptions and analyses of ecstatic experiences reported in literature and also in response to Laski's questionnaires. Laski makes it very plain that the experiences recorded by her have nothing to do with any "morbid conditions" and that they presumably emanate from some higher realm of the human psyche. She quotes approvingly a memorable passage from William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Medical materialism finishes up St Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out St Theresa as a hysteric, St Francis of Assisi as a hereditary degenerate. George Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle's organ tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh.97

I propose, at this stage, not to get involved in any emotional condemnation or support of either the "medical materialist" or the opposite point of view. The question of normality or otherwise of these experiences will be dealt with at the end of this chapter. First, we must try to look objectively at the exact circumstances, which provoked ecstatic experiences described by Laski.
One is tempted immediately to recognize some experiences as fairly straightforward descriptions of psychological phenomena, which accompany some epileptic fits:
This ecstasy lasted from half an hour to an hour, and whether his souls were in the body, or out of the body, he could not tell. But when he came to his senses it seemed to him that he returned from another world. And so greatly did his body suffer in this short rupture that it seemed to him that none, even in dying, could suffer so greatly in so short a time. The Servitor came to himself moaning, and he fell down upon the ground like a man who swoons and he cried inwardly heaving great sighs from the depths of his soul and saying, 'Oh, my God, where was I and where am I?1 And again, 'Oh, my heart's joy, never shall my soul forget this hour!' He walked but it was but his body that walked, as a machine may do.98

Some other experiences, such as that of Tennyson ("thick night came down upon my eyelids, and I fell") are also suggestive of epilepsy. However one can argue endlessly, especially in the cases of historical personalities, whether we are dealing with epileptic phenomena or ambiguous descriptions. I suggest that we should look not so much at isolated incidents as at the whole spectrum presented by these experiences.
What were the most frequent triggers of the ecstatic experiences reported by Laski's correspondents? Music is mentioned more often than any other art form. Another frequent trigger is flickering light or flashes of light. Here are some of the key phrases, which describe circumstances, which acted as triggers: "When the light and the smell and the scene is just right"; "the newly-risen sun sent flickering...a series of elastic reflections" "the shining waters glittering in my dreamy eyes"; "flickering red flames"; "the lights of the sun shining on the metal of the cars was dazzling." There is also flickering on the water, which seems to flash through the body of the person describing his experiences; sunlight flickering through leaves; fires flickering in grates and flickering starlight. As Laski notes herself, "It would be possible to multiply almost indefinitely examples of sudden or flashing light appearing both in actual triggers to ecstasy and in images used to describe the feelings of ecstasy."99 There are also feelings of "thrills, shudders, and tingling" associated with the flashes. Laski attributes all this to possible effects of atmospheric electricity during stormy weather.
Two people mentioned in Laski's book had their experiences triggered by a film. Another frequent trigger mechanism was "regular rhythmic movement." An authority on art and inspiration, quoted by Laski, explains this connection:
It is possible that the rhythmic movement of a carriage or train, or a horse and to a much lesser degree of walking may produce on sensitive minds a slightly hypnotic effect conducive to that state of mind most favourable to the birth of ideas.100

It is also extremely interesting that among "literary" triggers there were mostly poetic works (endowed with rhythm and emotion?), fiction being mentioned only by one person. "Scent — the odour of flowers, trees, the earth, etc.," writes Laski, "is often mentioned in accounts of trigger circumstances." In one particular case smell was reported as the only trigger. Another person writes that after his experience, "All creation gave another smell unto me than before." "Can scent to any extent act as an intoxicant in inducing ecstasy?" wonders Laski.
Storms and bad weather are mentioned by some correspondents (possible fright?). Wind, breeze or air are mentioned by eight people. Even though in modern literature the association between these factors and epilepsy is not brought up, it used to be regarded as one of the important triggers. Hippocrates, for example, considered that cold, sun, and winds changed the consistency of the brain and therefore affected epileptics.
Some of Laski's correspondents reported feelings, which were strikingly similar to those, found in limbic epilepsy. There are for example, "dreamy mental states" and feelings of "having been here before" (dėjá vu). There are various other sensations reported, some of which resemble epileptic auras. There is a "terrific constriction in the throat and stomach," "something...inflating my entire being," etc. Experiences of refined breathing and peace are also very common. People spoke of a "standstill feeling," a "complete calm," a "tranquil ecstasy."
Laski was surprised that so many people reported negative or mixed feelings together with ecstatic ones. People spoke of "sadness mixed with joy," "disturbing presence," "great agony...and terror," "a violent throb of emotion." This is perhaps less surprising if one keeps in mind the close anatomical proximity of the structures which mediate pleasure and. pain. An uncontrolled discharge brought about by rhythmic stimulation may spread across the boundaries and involve both of these areas, producing "mixed" feelings.
A connection between ecstatic feelings and basic drives, such as hunger or sex, was sometimes mentioned. In two cases ecstatic feelings were actually provoked by eating pleasant foods. More tenuous - some would say only metaphorical - connection, as well as differentiation, between basic needs and their ecstatic counterparts can be inferred from St Augustine's description of religious ecstasy:
But what do I love, when I love thee? Not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, not the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, nor manna and honey, nor limbs acceptable to embracement of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, and melody, and fragrance, and meat, and embracement, when I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, embracement of my inner man; where there shineth unto my soul, what space cannot contain, and there soundeth, what time beareth not away, and there smelleth, what breathing disperses not, and there tasteth, what eating diminisheth not, and there clingeth, what satiety divorceth not.101 (See Fig. 14f)

Here, I think, one finds an eloquent confirmation from no lesser authority on psychology than St Augustine, that ultimate rewards are closely linked to basic drives, and yet transcend them in some way, which we will attempt to define later.
As could well be expected, some people connected their ecstatic experiences directly with sex, while others expressed their feelings through similes full of sexual overtones. It is interesting to note in this connection that Kinsey reported in his investigation of sexual practices that one out of every six pre-adolescent boys and a small proportion of men sometimes experienced violent convulsions during and after orgasm. All ancient authorities, almost without exception, elaborated upon the close connection between sex and epilepsy. Most often, sexual activities were supposed to aggravate epilepsy. Only very rarely sex was regarded as a cure. It was noticed that many epileptic disorders disappear around the age of puberty; if they continued after that the prognosis was considered to be much worse. Some contemporary investigators also point out connection between epilepsy and the level of sex hormones in patients' blood.102 Inferring cause and effect relationship between
the onset of puberty and the disappearance of epilepsy, some ancient physicians even "did violence to the nature of children by unseasonable coition" in order to effect an early cure. This permissive attitude was rather exceptional and most attempts to cure epilepsy by alteration of sexual behavior centered around, as befits general attitudes of those days, such things as enforced abstinence and, occasionally, castration or clitoridectomy.
The confusion between the sacred and the sexual is indeed a time-honored one. At the ancient Anatolian town of Catal Huyuk (circa 6000 BC) we find some of the earliest Neolithic representations of the hieros gamos, the "sacred marriage," depicting two deities locked in a tight embrace. The phallic festivals of Egyptians, the Dionysiac celebrations of ancient Greeks, the Saturnalias of Romans, the sexual frenzy of Russian Khlysty (the Whips) — all bear testimony to the recognition of the significant overlap between man's highest aspirations of religious transcendence and the supposedly lowest "animalistic" drives .
An even more significant confirmation of this overlap comes from those who have actually had the "peak experience" towards which all mystics strive.
Oh night that was my guide!
Oh darkness dearer than the morning's pride,
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved bride
Transfiguring them into each other.

What is this? The ravings of a Cupid-struck honeymooner? The sublimated longings of some second-rate poet of the Age or Romance? No, these are the words of the celebrated Christian mystic, St John of the Cross, trying his best to describe his union with the Divine in our limited earthly vocabulary.
"Let me do my pleasure," he said, "There is a time for everything. Now I want you to be the plaything of my love, and you must live thus without resistance, surrendering to my desires, allowing me to gratify myself at your expense."

Thus another saint, this time a female (St Mary Margaret Alacogue), describes her vision of God speaking to her like a seductive and demanding Casanova.
Some mystic’s describe the actual experience of transcendence in terms, which denote sensations suspiciously orgasmic in nature. St Teresa of Avila speaks of a vision in which an angel came to her with a long and fire- tipped golden spear, which he repeatedly "plunged . . .into my deepest inward. When he drew it out, I thought my entrails would be drawn out too, and when he left me I glowed in the hot fire of love for God. The pain was so strong that I screamed aloud but simultaneously felt such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last forever. It was the sweetest caressing of the soul by God."
St Francis of Sales speaks of religious rapture in terms, which are suggestive of ejaculation:
...as melted balm that no longer has firmness or solidity the soul lets herself pass or flow into What she loves...The outflow of a soul into her God is a true ecstasy by which the soul transcends the limits of her natural way of existence, being totally mingled and engulfed in, her God.

The nature of the "communion with the Divine" assumed frankly physical connotations in some forms of American Revivalism, where converts were sometimes deliberately encouraged to "come through" to Jesus, this being considered a sign of God's grace.
As reported by Laski, sexual love appeared to be a frequent trigger of mystical experiences, being mentioned by nearly half of the people surveyed by her. Some of them made quite explicit references to sexual intercourse, while others alluded to it in a more oblique fashion. Laski herself, in common with other religiously inclined commentators, tries to separate somehow the mystical and the erotic or at least to make them appear casually rather than causally related. One of her chief arguments is as follows: The religious mystics usually assume a passive female role in their love relationship with God; "In sexual intercourse," writes Laski defiantly, "whether ecstatic or not, no male, so far as I know, feels himself to be playing the part of the female and his female that of a male." No comment.
However, is there any real reason to suppose that the mystical and the erotic are connected in more than a purely accidental fashion? If we look at the diagram of the human brain, we see a picture, which strangely upsets our understanding of the geography of the human body. In the brain, our mouths and our genitals (as well as our anuses) are not separated by the respectful distances which we tend to regard as being God-given, but are actually crowded into one tightly interconnected neural ring. As Paul MacLean wryly observed, "Civilized man long suspected that the world was round before Columbus sailed to America, but how could they have imagined that the limbic lobe [our animal brain] was a closed ring and that in voyaging in one direction the head would be reached by the way of the tail and vice versa." The centers of pleasure, sex, fighting and hunger all lie in this innermost part of our brain in close proximity. No wonder that confusion between some of these areas arises.
In the same ancient part of the brain there are also sites which, when excited during epilepsy or electrical brain stimulation, provoke sensations indistinguishable from those reported by religious mystics. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle with the seemingly incongruous pictures of embracing gods and epileptic saints and Secrets of the Universe begin to fit together surprisingly well.
Yet, can we unreservedly equate transcendental bliss experienced by a mystic to a purely sexual orgasm? There must be some fire behind the smoke and some truth in the unanimous observation by recognized mystics that their "spiritual marriage" is of a different order than the mundane sexuality of their lay brethren. What is it that makes the "fragrance, meat and embracement" of St Augustine and other mystics different from our own fleshy variety?
Could it be that it is the breathlessness, the "peace that passeth all understanding," the "oceanic feeling," the "tranquil ecstasy," the "standstill feeling" that differentiates the two types of experiences?
Certainly, the emphasis on complete passivity is one of the most frequently encountered components of a profound mystical experience.
Usually, the pleasant feelings which we experience while listening to music, for example, or after having a good meal or intercourse or both are associated with a passive state of mind and body. Sexual orgasm represents one of the very few exceptions where Nature was obliged, so to speak, to reward us generously even though we were in a state of extremely vigorous activity. Here, a neurological compromise had to be struck because of the tremendous importance of fighting behavior as a preliminary to mating. No wonder orgasm resembles an epileptic fit!
Now if we could tap the same reservoir of pleasure but in a passive state, the rewards would be so much greater. Thus, another piece of the jigsaw puzzle falls into place: bliss which the mystic experiences is derived from the same source as the one which in tapped to reinforce sexual and other drives, only its quantity and quality are vastly different due to the state of extreme passivity in which the mystic receives his Heavenly Reward.
Ignorance of the physiological discrepancy between the orgasm and transcendental ecstasy led to a tremendous amount of confusion among the seekers of "heavenly rewards." The follower of the sexual practices of Tantric yoga (or the sex-orientated follower of the Occult) could not overlook the obvious connection between the transcendent and the erotic and decided to reach the former through exaggerated emphasis upon the latter. The ascetic, on the contrary, discerned the superior nature of transcendental bliss and decided to reach it through suppression of carnal desires. In reality, as we can see, profound mystical experience is only indirectly connected with the sexual drive and can co-exist, barring excesses, with either sexual activity or its absence, in the same way that it can co-exist with relative satiety or hunger. As we shall see, either the suppression of sexual desire or its excessive promotion must, if anything, hamper the arrival of a profound mystical experience.
The sexual rites of either Tantrism or the Occult almost invariably seem to lead us to the deep chasms of what even the most liberated will be obliged to call perversions. In certain Tantric practices, the devotees are required to perform necrophilic (corpse-defiling) rites at cemeteries. To inspire a suitable amount of terror, which is deemed to be necessary for attainment of success in subsequent practices, the practitioners of Tantric rites are required to contemplate the destructive aspects of Siva as a black-limbed, wrathful, etc. being, accompanied by ghouls, demons and ogresses. Hashish is often taken before the ritual intercourse, which is then performed by a number of couples sitting in a circle. While this is going on, sacred mantras are chanted. A great deal of fuss is made of semen discharge, which is either completely eliminated, or is meticulously collected and reabsorbed (through the mouth) to prevent the loss of this magical substance.
In a well-documented case of the occultist Aleister Crowley, ritual intercourse was usually performed until complete exhaustion was achieved. Any means whatsoever were used to obtain further orgasms. Homosexual intercourse, sadistic mutilation, drinking of semen mixed with menstrual blood, etc. were practiced. There is no doubt that these practices could produce an altered state of consciousness (Crowley used to affectionately label it "Eroto-comatose Lucidity"). There can also be little doubt that it is severely detrimental to the physical and psychological well being of the person who practices them. Crowley himself died a ruined man, hopelessly addicted to heroin.
As a sideline, it is interesting to note that both the Tantric adherents and Crowley emphasized the need for great passivity during sexual rituals, which in the former case was achieved through breath control.
Let us now look at what the Ascetic Path has to offer. The history of ascetic, practices is almost too well known to need further elucidation. Some gems, however, bear recapitulation. One of them is a yogic practice called Vajroli Mudra, aimed at achieving the state of Brahmacharya (sexual celibacy in this context). It entails drawing into one's urethra first milk, then honey, then mercury!
An eyewitness at one of the penitent festivals in India describes the following practices:
Every inch of one man's body was pierced with small hooks...A few naked women had arrows penetrating their breasts, stomachs and buttocks, so that they could neither sit nor lie down... A woman was handing from hooks attached to her breasts and vagina, the two centers of desire.104

It may well be that the superior rewards obtained by a few mystics made sexual satisfaction unnecessary and unattractive to them. We know from experimentation with animals that pleasure centers' activation makes them, at least for a while, oblivious to the "worldly pleasures" of sex and food. However, some recent long term experiments have shown that after the novelty of the experience wears off, these experimental animals begin to incorporate direct brain stimulation into their normal routine, alternating it with sex and food intake. (See Folio 178) In another interesting experiment by two Swedish researchers, the mating behavior of 15 male albino rats was shown to be unrelated to direct brain stimulation. The rats naturally preferred to self-stimulate, rather than copulate, but the frequency of their mating, and the rate of self-stimulation were not related to each other in any meaningful manner.105

Transcendental Meditation (TM) A Chapter out of my book The Transcendent Ape.

2008-02-07T16:00:00.001-08:00

IV. Transcendental Meditation (TM)A Chapter out of my book The Transcendent Ape.

This technique is easier to analyse than most others because it has been subjected to quite an unprecedented amount of independent scientific scrutiny, and also be¬cause its main exponent, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, presents a fairly clear and unambiguous picture of his teaching.

The theoretical foundation of TM is based on a new interpretation of the sacred Indian scripture The Bhagavad Gita.202 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi also maintains that his teaching springs directly from the most ancient Indian scriptural writings - the Vedas. Once again, the essence of these teachings is claimed to have been misinterpreted and misunderstood for countless ages, with the current exponent setting out to put the record straight.

To anyone who reads The Bhagavad Gita with an impar¬tial eye, it will be immediately clear that it was written by someone who advocated the traditional Indian approach to renunciation, withdrawal of the senses, abstinence from bad habits etc. as a path to realization, and not as a result of it. The verse, "For an undisciplined man, Yoga is hard to achieve, so I consider; but it can be gained through proper means by the man of endeavour who is disciplined," can mean only one thing: Yoga is a hard grind. It is difficult to see how something as straight¬forward as this can be misinterpreted.

Nobody can misinterpret what Maharishi says in this respect. His teaching is unequivocal: do not put the cart before the horse; no practice of the virtues will get one anywhere until one has repeated experiences of Bliss-consciousness, which will make those virtues part of one's nature. Until that experience is achieved, forced practice of the virtues will only mean strain and hypocrisy. It is a pity that Maharishi tried to force this lively bit of wisdom into the Procrustean scriptural bed. His commentary on some verses (the one above, also Chapter 6, Verses 10, 13, 35 and 45, among others) amounts to virtual distortion of the original text. One understands of course that for an Indian to claim that he (or his tradition) has come up with something new is simply inconceivable. Everything must hark back to the Ancient Scriptures to be of any value.
The message Maharishi brings out is indeed in vivid contrast to most spiritual guidances: meditation, he says, should be fun. The mind wants, by itself, to go in the direction of greater bliss. Give it a suitable medium to focus attention on and it will begin its march towards the source of thought, which is also the source of bliss.

It will be noticed that the mantras given to beginners in TM are meaningless one or two syllable words, which should at least in theory be able to generate the fast "cross-talk frequencies" we spoke of earlier.

In TM the process of meditation is defined as, "...turning the attention inwards towards the subtler levels of a thought until the mind transcends the experi¬ence of the subtlest state of the thought and arrives at the source of the thought.”203 The perception of the subtler levels of thought is accompanied by greater bliss and relaxation. Using our terminology, it can be said that the gently pulsing mantra creates the "cross-talk" effect and activates a more direct circuitry to the pleasure centers. This circuitry, as pointed out earlier, is probably similar to that utilized for indirect reward procurement through satisfaction of our ordinary needs (sex, food, etc.).
It has been observed that during TM the dominant alpha frequencies (8-13 hz), supposedly associated with states of relaxation and pleasure, gradually shift forward, towards the frontal areas (one can say, roughly in the direction of the direction of the pleasure centers). Occasionally, and usually with more experienced meditators, trains of theta waves appear in the frontal leads. Theta waves (4-7 hz) have been termed "the pleasure scanners." In an ingenuous experiment by Grey Walter (who coined the above term) a male subject was stroked by an attractive female assistant while the EEG record was being taken. As soon as she stopped stroking, trains of theta waves occurred ("Please keep doing this, I like it"). It was also noticed that in meditation both cerebral hemispheres become quickly engaged in highly synchronized rhythmical alpha activity. This may suggest that as the mantra is allowed to join the limbic reward circuit (the frequencies of short TM-type mantras were found to be in the theta range) the focus of nervous activity shifts toward the frontal and deeper areas of the brain. The synchronously functioning cerebral hemispheres begin to resemble a twin resonator for the more powerful activity, which occurs in the limbic system. The processes of "unstressing," desensitization, and increased pleasure and relaxation can then occur.

Here we also have the elements of an extremely subtle built-in biofeedback system. The pulsating mantra adjusts its frequency to “feed through” into the conscious brain the maximum amount of pleasurable “ seepage.”

The diminution of inputs from the environment (closing the eyes, assuming a relaxed posture) and from the cerebral hemispheres (absence of coherent thinking, lack of conscious associations with the mantra) will facilitate the activation of the subcortical limbic circuitry. Once "the seepage" of pleasurable sensations directly from the pleasure centers has begun, the process of meditation becomes truly effortless. The powerful pull of the bliss areas is sufficient to keep the attention glued to it. Or at least so goes the theory.

The element of non-interference with the natural tendency of the mind to go in the direction of greater bliss is much emphasized by Maharishi. Any conscious effort or analysis will not only impede the progress of attention towards the source of bliss, but may even bring some undesirable sensations. Attention which has already begun to penetrate the deep non-verbal limbic circuitry is apt to stray into areas, which may provoke adverse re¬actions. Maharishi issues a clear warning about the negative influence of conscious interference with the meditation process:

The intensity of thought is very great at that subtle level of thinking where the mind is slipping out of thought and is about to lose the experience of the relative field. If the process is not disturbed and is allowed to go by itself in a very innocent manner, then the mind slips into the Self. If, on the other hand, pressure or force is applied in any way to check the mind or to control the process, the mind will be thrown off the course on which it is naturally set and off-balance into agitation and a feeling of discomfort.

If this rule is followed, supposedly nothing untoward can happen. Left to itself, the attention has no inclination to deviate onto any other path, except the path of greater bliss. The principle “no peace — no bliss” is clearly delineated by Maharishi. The degree of peace necessary for perception of ultimate bliss is truly remark¬able. In meditation, the breath "...becomes more refined and eventually comes to a standstill." However, the full attainment of this peculiar physiological state of "restful alertness" is initially impossible. As the body attains greater degrees of restfulness it tends to throw off some "strain in the nervous system." This strain will manifest itself as a thought and will push the attention back to the surface level of the mind. Only gradually will the blissful nature of the Self get infused into the ordinary consciousness. The thoughts which arise in meditation should be disregarded, one should simply go back to one's mantra and proceed with meditation "in a relaxed way."

In general, Maharishi's attitude to conscious thought is very similar to Krishnamurti's. "Transcending thought," he writes, "is infinitely more valuable than thinking." Thought is intimately implicated in the production of "insatiable desires." Abstract thought springs from the mind and develops into a concrete desire on the basis of past impressions, which are the "seed of desire that leads into action." This action will, in turn, create a memory to serve as a seed of future action. Thus man is bound to a cycle of impression, desire and action, which keeps him acting in a puppet-like fashion. The natural forces ("the gunas of Nature") employ man's consciousness as a stage for their interplay, while he mistakenly assumes the authorship of his action.

The desire for fleeting joys, prompted by thought, can only lead to sorrow, "there being no point in rela¬tivity to satisfy finally its craving for greater happiness." Maharishi's answer to this problem of perpetual frustration and discontentment is not to control or reduce the desire, but to fully satisfy it by reaching a state of permanent Bliss-consciousness. In that state, even though the mind still entertains thoughts, they do not exert any binding influence upon the individual. His senses are sharper than before, for the constant anxiety and the resultant stress have been lifted, but the experience of the sensory pleasures fails to create an emotional memory, which would serve as a seed for future action and involve¬ment. The individual's consciousness is too dominated by the perception of inner bliss to register sensory impressions. The binding cycle of impression, desire and action has been cut asunder.

From a neurophysiological viewpoint, it is conceivable that a circuit as powerful as that, which would connect cortical awareness to the pleasure centers, would change the customary motivation and memory traffic. Cortical motivation will no longer have a binding influence because the "carrot" which was used to lure it along is now freely available at any time. The emotional memories have been neutralized through the process of "unstressing" during meditation.

The physical state of the body has also been changed. The state of calmness, which was at first experienced only during meditation itself, tends to become more and more persistent. At first, exposure to activity would shatter the inner peace, but repeated exposures "harden" it, not unlike the way in which the colour of a piece of cloth becomes fast after it has been alternatively exposed to the sun and dipped in the dye. As Maharishi succinctly summarizes: "Self-awareness acts as a shock-absorber on the mental level, while the state of restful alertness of the nervous system acts as a shock- absorber on the physical level." Neurophysiologically it is conceivable again that the powerful parasympathetic activity, provoked through the direct activation of the pleasure centers, will be superimposed upon whatever activity the body is engaged in. Its superimposition upon the ordinary sympathetic/parasympathetic oscillation will produce a peculiar physiological state. The constant background of calmness throughout all types of activities makes it organically impossible for a "fight or flight" memory to be filed. The "hypothaiamic tuning" is permanently on the "calm" mode, which prevents this.
Maharishi himself explains the relaxation, which accompanies the process of meditation as a result of diminution of physical activity, which is proportionate to the diminution of mental activity produced by perception of the mantra on a more "refined" and subtle level of thinking. This could be another way of saying that, as the mantra regresses towards subcortical non-verbal levels, it is appreciated as becoming "finer." As the appropriate "restful" circuitry also becomes activated during this process, the physical activity correspondingly diminishes.
Alertness also seems to go together with the restfulness and pleasure. Heath, in his human experiments with implanted electrodes, noted that "with septal stimulation the patients brightened, looked more alert and seemed to be more attentive to their environment during, and for at least a few minutes after, the period of stimulation."

Like Krishnamurti, Maharishi claims that the new level of consciousness profoundly alters not only waking, but also dreaming and sleeping stages. The attractiveness of Bliss-consciousness is such that in time it is maintained uninterruptedly, "through all the activity of the waking and dreaming states and through the silence of the deep sleep state." It is true that in our primitive brains there are centers, which maintain awareness around the clock. The visual example quoted is that of a mother who will sleep soundly through the noise of heavy traffic but will immediately wake up when the baby stirs or cries. There must be some center in the brain, which has been maintaining awareness all the time.
The attainment of permanent Bliss-consciousness (or “Cosmic-consciousness”), which would be regarded as many as a pinnacle of personal evolution, is looked upon by Maharishi as only a half-way house to the ultimate state of “Unity.” In a sense, Cosmic consciousness highlights the duality between the permanent nature of the Self and the impermanency of the manifest world as perceived by the senses. As Maharishi puts it: “The eyes cannot see Being, the tongue cannot taste It, the ears cannot hear nor the hands touch It.”208 The estate of consciousness has been changed, but the separation of the inner Being from the world of gross material phenomena is still perceived. At this stage the notion of Yoga (“Union”) becomes relevant: finally there is something to unite. This is accomplished through the conscious practice of “the most refined activity of all, the activity of devotion to God,” when “everything is naturally experienced in the awareness of God.”
It is fascinating to speculate about the possible neurophysiological substratum of this process if it indeed exists, as Maharishi and other mystics claim. The emotions of love and reverence are cultivated in one’s transactions with the world. So while it could be said that up to the stage of Cosmic-consciousness the self-assertive emotions of the bottom half of MacLean’s ring (see Fig. 10) were brought under control, in this later stage, the top part of the ring — the self-transcending one — is being activated in a peculiar manner. This is being done while the various sensory inputs impinge upon the mind. Gradu¬ally, the traffic, which carries the emotions of love and reverence, becomes an inseparable part of the perception of the outside world. It is also possible that at this point a neural area, which deals with the sensations of unity, is being directly activated.
The adjective "pure" which Maharishi attaches to the various aspects of the transcendent perception ("pure awareness," "pure bliss," "pure intelligence," "pure creativity," etc.) confirms the earlier expressed notion that in the human brain there are areas which house undiluted perceptions which are similar to, but much stronger than, those of ordinary awareness. The situation here is similar to that discussed in relation to drugs and creativity. Whether the "expansion of consciousness" or "tapping the creative source of thought" in TM can have any direct influence on creativity is something which may need further investigation by impartial observers.
Even though TM appears to utilise the physiological mechanisms favouring transcendence in the human brain, all the qualifications , which have been discussed in relation to the relative inaccessibility of higher states of consciousness to people with low T.Q.'s would, naturally, apply here as well. It is said that Maharishi used to indicate that five years of regular meditation, should be enough to take one to the level of cosmic consciousness. It is nearly two decades now since Maharishi, brought his technique to the West. Literally thousands of people should be, if Maharishi's estimate was correct, enjoying the tremendous energy and creativity , which were open only to a few selected saints in the old times. Yet this hope, like the hope of initiating 1% of the world population into TM during the first 10 years, prove to be grossly overoptimistic. The literature, which emanates from the Maharishi's international University (MIU), which should supposedly have the concentration of these people with highly expanded consciousness is amazingly unimaginative and intellectually simplistic. It seems to be completely dominated by Maharishi's own curious blend of Western science and Vedic mysticism.
The attempt by Maharishi to stimulate the dwindling interest in his technique by announcing his extraordinary claims of miraculous capabilities for TM practitioners resulted in discrediting the cult among most serious observers and accelerated its decent into obscurity.

INSTEAD OF EPILOGUE

“And the last word must meet an anxiety that arises out of this very confidence. Darwin was right. It is--not exclusively, but mainly--the struggle for life that has begotten higher types. Must every step of future progress be won by fresh and sustained struggle? At least we may say that the notion that progress in the future depends, as in the past, upon the pitting of flesh against flesh, and tooth against tooth, is a deplorable illusion. Such physical struggle is indeed necessary to evolve and maintain a type fit for the struggle. But a new thing has come into the story of the earth--wisdom and fine emotion. The processes, which begot animal types in the past, may be superseded; perhaps must be superseded. The battle of the future lies between wit and wit, art and art, generosity and generosity; and a great struggle and rivalry may proceed that will carry the distinctive powers of man to undreamed-of heights, yet be wholly innocent of the passion-lit, blood-stained conflict that has hitherto been the instrument of progress.

We don't have to search for a new God or make God out of science. We just have to clearly see who we are and where we came from. Both science and religion, in very different ways, can help us to do that.”

The above chapter was written in the 70’s.

See also my humorous essays The Electric Dog Goes Buddhist http://patrushev-publications.com/Documents/Pyotr_Patrushev_buddhist_dog.htm
, and Burping and Enlightenment – in Memory of Maharish Mahesh Yogi on http://patrushevhumor.blogspot.com/2008/02/burping-and-enlightenment-in-memory-of.html

Jesus Freaks

2008-02-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

Jesus Freaks

http://www.harpercollins.com.au/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0061118044

Bruce Elder, reviewer
February 1, 2008

This true crime story is also one of the best accounts of the history of the sect known as the Children of God.
The cover says it all ... Jesus Freaks.

The cover says it all ... Jesus Freaks.
Advertisement

Author
Don Lattin
Genre
History
Publisher
Harper One
Pages
236
RRP
$39.99

It is a pity that this book is subtitled True Story Of Murder And Madness On The Evangelical Edge and declares on the cover: "On January 8, 2005, a woman was found stabbed three times with her throat slit by a young man christened to be prince and future prophet of a bizarre Christian sect. The story leading up to this crime is one of messianic delusions, free love, and blind faith ..."

This murder is only peripherally what this book is about. It is actually one of the best accounts of the history of American wacky Christianity (not the fundamentalism of recent times but the way-out, sex-fuelled evangelism) in the 20th century. It is, on the surface, the story of Moses David (the adopted prophetic name of David Berg) and his 1960s-70s sect known as the Children of God or The Family.

But Berg didn't emerge from a vacuum and author Don Lattin, who has spent most of his life investigating American religious cults, traces Berg and his family back to the 1920s, when evangelical Christianity boomed. In 1925 in less than a year, for example, Berg's parents went from preaching in a tent in Miami to owning, and filling, a 4500-seat "church", the Gospel Tabernacle, in the city.

This is the era when the famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson was busy preaching piety and practising wild sex. And it was a time when the pre-teen David Berg was being regularly fellated by his Mexican nurse (until his evangelist mother caught them at it), supposedly so that he could enjoy his afternoon nap.

It was therefore an easy step for Berg to grow his hair, wear hippie gear, declare himself a prophet, gather around him the Children of God (remember for some hippies Jesus was cool - witness Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar), insist on polygamy so he could satisfy his huge sexual appetite (of course he always described it as "the love of God") and spend a lot of time running from the law.

Is anyone surprised that in 2005 his son and heir (named, hilariously, "Davidito") went on a murderous rampage?

Bill Maher on Religion

2008-01-21T14:33:00.001-08:00

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Bill-Maher-Religion-in-Politics

2008-01-21T14:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.truveo.com/Bill-Maher-Religion-in-Politics/id/2944488874

Paradoxes of life and the great chain of being

2007-12-16T01:27:00.000-08:00

I am constantly amazed at the paradoxes of life. One stems from the utter vulnerability of the individual being’s existence. A tiny virus, a large earthquake, a small meteorite, or even something as silly as coconut falling from a tree can extinguish it, be it life of a tiny gnat or a mighty king. At the same time, the resilience of DNA, of life in general, is equally amazing. It had sustained itself through all the travails of Earth’s existence, all its volcanic eruptions and its Ice Ages, and even cosmic calamities that periodically wipe out most life forms. Everyone of us can claim unbroken heritage of all the life forms, starting with the amino acid soup some 4 billion year ago, and even beyond, to the basic chemical components of life in the stardust. We have an amazing amount of knowledge about how matter and life developed, from the structure of the human brain, with all its Pavlova’s layers of cells, to the structure of galaxies and atoms. We can trace these details with mathematical precision to within the tiniest fraction of a second (to be exact, within 10-43 from the moment of creation). But in that last moment and before it, everything is shrouded in mystery. Was it a continual rebirthing of expanding and contracting universe? Or a mysterious emergence from some sort of a black hole? The primate brain, with its limited range of perception and even imagination, will never know “the answer”. We can only marvel at paradoxes, and coin elaborate metaphors, whether scientific or “spiritual”. We can try to enhance our senses through the instruments of science and technology or through mind-expanding practices or substances, or through prayer and fasting. But to no avail. Our vision of the universe will be ultimately as circumscribed as that of an ant.

Another paradox that affects all of us, no matter how smart or dumb, is the clash between the joy of life that new and innocent life forms enjoy, and the subsequent pain of existence. Gradually, our pain and our anguish, conscious or unconscious, gel into symptoms and then into structural or functional deficiencies that we call “diseases”. Each being’s diseases metaphorically reflect its DNA’s life path, its “karma”. Can we heal ourselves if we retrace our evolution, consciously and experientially, from our birth as individuals, to our birth as a DNA strand, and ultimately as a mote of stardust? Can we do it first through our imagination and finally, through some form of “time machine”? This quest will be a form of religion (“re-ligare”, re-connecting to the source). It will also be science. We will be spurred onto this quest by the many paradoxes of life. We may call the source of these paradoxes God or Mystery.

This Simian World by Clarence Day -- A Lucid and Penetrating Expose on Us, the Blogging Apes

2007-11-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

See the full text:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6882

A Short Sample: What would our world be if we had descended from a race of Great Cats, instead of Great Apes?

VI

Let us take the great cats. They are free from this talent for
slavehood. Stately beasts like the lion have more independence
of mind than the ants,--and a self-respect, we may note, unknown
to primates. Or consider the leopards, with hearts that no tyrant
could master. What fearless and resolute leopard-men they could
have fathered! How magnificently such a civilization would have
made its force tell!

A race of civilized beings descended from these great cats would
have been rich in hermits and solitary thinkers. The recluse would
not have been stigmatized as peculiar, as he is by us simians. They
would not have been a credulous people, or easily religious. False
prophets and swindlers would have found few dupes. And what generals
they would have made! what consummate politicians!

Don't imagine them as a collection of tigers walking around on their
hind-legs. They would have only been like tigers in the sense that
we men are like monkeys. Their development in appearance and
character would have been quite transforming.

Instead of the small flat head of the tiger, they would have had
clear smooth brows; and those who were not bald would have had
neatly parted hair--perhaps striped.

Their mouths would have been smaller and more sensitive: their
faces most dignified. Where now they express chiefly savageness,
they would have expressed fir and grace.

They would have been courteous and suave. No vulgar crowding
would have occurred on the streets of their cities. No mobs.
No ignominious subway-jams.

Imagine a cultivated coterie of such men and women, at a ball,
dancing. How few of us humans are graceful. They would have
all been Pavlowas.

Like ants and bees, the cat race is nervous. Their temperaments are
high-strung. They would never have become as poised or as placid
as--say--super-cows. Yet they would have had less insanity, probably,
than we. Monkeys' (and elephants') minds seem precariously balanced,
unstable. The great cats are saner. They are intense, they would
have needed sanitariums: but fewer asylums. And their asylums would
have been not for weak-minded souls, but for furies.

They would have been strong at slander. They would have been far
more violent than we, in their hates, and they would have had fewer
friendships. Yet they might not have been any poorer in real
friendships than we. The real friendships among men are so rare
than when they occur they are famous. Friends as loyal as Damon
and Pythias were, are exceptions. Good fellowship is common, but
unchanging affection is not. We like those who like us, as a rule,
and dislike those who don't. Most of our ties have no better footing
than that; and those who have many such ties are called warm-hearted.

The super-cat-men would have rated cleanliness higher. Some of
us primates have learned to keep ourselves clean, but it's no
large proportion; and even the cleanest of us see no grandeur in
soap-manufacturing, and we don't look to manicures and plumbers for
social prestige. A feline race would have honored such occupations.
J. de Courcy Tiger would have felt that nothing /but/ making soap, or
being a plumber, was compatible with a high social position; and the
rich Vera Pantherbilt would have deigned to dine only with manicures.

None but the lowest dregs of such a race would have been lawyers
spending their span of life on this mysterious earth studying the
long dusty records of dead and gone quarrels. We simians naturally
admire a profession full of wrangle and chatter. But that is a
monkeyish way of deciding disputes, not feline.

We fight best in armies, gregariously, where the risk is reduced;
but we disapprove usually of murderers, and of almost all private
combat. With the great cats, it would have been just the other way
round. (Lions and leopards fight each other singly, not in bands,
as do monkeys.)

As a matter of fact, few of us delight in really serious fighting.
We do love to bicker; and we box and knock each other around, to
exhibit our strength; but few normal simians are keen about bloodshed
and killing; we do it in war only because of patriotism, revenge,
duty, glory. A feline civilization would have cared nothing for duty
or glory, but they would have taken a far higher pleasure in gore.
If a planet of super-cat-men could look down upon ours, they would
not know which to think was the most amazing: the way we tamely live,
five million or so in a city, with only a few police to keep us
quiet, while we commit only one or two murders a day, and hardly
have a respectable number of brawls; or the way great armies of us
are trained to fight,--not liking it much, and yet doing more killing
in wartime and shedding more blood than even the fiercest lion on his
cruelest days. Which would perplex a gentlemanly super-cat spectator
the more, our habits of wholesale slaughter in the field, or our
spiritless making a fetish of "order," at home?

It is fair to judge peoples by the rights they will sacrifice most
for. Super-cat-men would have been outraged, had their right of
personal combat been questioned. The simian submits with odd
readiness to the loss of this privilege. What outrages him is
to make him stop wagging his tongue. He becomes most excited and
passionate about the right of free speech, even going so far in his
emotion as to declare it is sacred.

He looks upon other creatures pityingly because they are dumb.
If one of his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy.
Even that mere hesitation in speech, know as stammering, he deems
a misfortune.

So precious to a simian is the privilege of making sounds with his
tongue, that when he wishes to punish severely those men he calls
criminals, he forbids them to chatter, and forces them by threats
to be silent. It is felt that his punishment is entirely too cruel
however and even the worst offenders should be allowed to talk part
of each day.

Whatever a simian does, there must always be some talking about it.
He can't even make peace without a kind of chatter called a peace
conference. Super-cats would not have had to "make" peace: they
would have just walked off and stopped fighting.

In a world of super-cat-men, I suppose there would have been fewer
sailors; and people would have cared less for seaside resorts, or
for swimming. Cats hate getting wet, so men descended from them
might have hated it. They would have felt that even going in
wading was sign of great hardihood, and only the most daring young
fellows, showing off, would have done it.

Among them there would have been no antivivisection societies:

No Young Cat Christian Associations or Red Cross work:

No Vegetarians:

No early closing laws:

Much more hunting and trapping:

No riding to hounds; that's pure simian. Just think how it would
have entranced the old-time monkeys to foresee such a game! A game
where they'd all prance off on captured horses, tearing pell-mell
through the woods in gay red coats, attended by yelping packs of
servant-dogs. It is excellent sport--but how cats would scorn to
hunt in that way!

They would not have knighted explorers--they would have all been
explorers.

Imagine that you are strolling through a super-cat city at night.
Over yonder is the business quarter, its evening shops blazing
with jewels. The great stock-yards lie to the east where you hear
those sad sounds: that twittering as of innumerable birds, waiting
slaughter. Beyond lie the silent aquariums and the crates of fresh
mice. (They raise mice instead of hens in the country, in Super-cat
Land.) To the west is a beautiful but weirdly bacchanalian park,
with long groves of catnip, where young super-cats have their fling,
and where a few crazed catnip addicts live on till they die, unable
to break off their strangely undignified orgies. And here where you
stand is the sumptuous residence district. Houses with spacious
grounds everywhere: no densely-packed buildings. The streets have
been swept up--or lapped up--until they are spotless. Not a scrap
of paper is lying around anywhere: no rubbish, no dust. Few of the
pavements are left bare, as ours are, and those few are polished:
the rest have deep soft velvet carpets. No footfalls are heard.

There are no lights in these streets, though these people are
abroad much at night. All you see are stars overhead and the
glowing eyes of cat ladies, of lithe silken ladies who pass you,
or of stiff-whiskered men. Beware of those men and the gleam
of the split-pupiled stare. They are haughty, punctilious,
inflammable: self-absorbed too, however. They will probably not
even notice you; but if they do, you are lost. They take offense
in a flash, abhor strangers, despise hospitality, and would think
nothing of killing you or me on their way home to dinner.

Follow one of them. Enter this house. Ah what splendor! No
servants, though a few abject .monkeys wait at the back-doors, and
submissively run little errands. But of course they are never let
inside: they would seem out of place. Gorgeous couches, rich colors,
silken walls, an oriental magnificence. In here is the ballroom.
But wait: what is this in the corner? A large triumphal statue--of
a cat overcoming a dog. And look at this dining-room, its exquisite
appointments, its--daintiness: faucets for hot and cold milk in the
pantry, and a gold bowl of cream.

Some one is entering. Hush! If I could but describe her!
Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything.
An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were /her/
lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious
and sudden, how hostile, how ecstatic, how violent!

Think what the state of the arts would have been in such cities.

They would have had few comedies on their stage; no farces. Cats
care little for fun. In the circus, superlative acrobats. No clowns.

In drama and singing they would have surpassed us probably. Even
in the state of arrested development as mere animals, in which we
see cats, they wail with a passionate intensity at night in our
yards. Imagine how a Caruso descended from such beings would sing.

In literature they would not have begged for happy endings.

They would have been personally more self-assured than we, far
freer of cheap imitativeness of each other in manners and art, and
hence more original in art; more clearly aware of what they really
desired; not cringingly watchful of what was expected of them; less
widely observant perhaps, more deeply thoughtful.

Their artists would have produced less however, even though they
felt more. A super-cat artist would have valued the pictures he
drew for their effects on himself; he wouldn't have cared a rap
whether anyone else saw them or not. He would not have bothered,
usually, to give any form to his conceptions. Simply to have had
the sensation would have for him been enough. But since simians
love to be noticed, it does not content them to have a conception;
they must wrestle with it until it takes a form in which others
can see it. They doom the artistic impulse to toil with its nose
to the grindstone, until their idea is expressed in a book or a
statue. Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic impulse
seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts
us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is labor.
With the cats, art is joy.

But the dominant characteristic of this fine race is cunning. And
hence I think it would have been through their craftiness, chiefly,
that they would have felt the impulse to study, and the wish to
advance. Craft is a cat's delight: craft they never can have too
much of. So it would have been from one triumph of cunning to
another that they would have marched. That would have been the
greatest driving force of their civilization.

This would have meant great progress in invention and science--or
in some fields of science, the economic for instance. But it would
have retarded them in others. Craft studies the world calculatingly,
from without, instead of understandingly from within. Especially
would it have cheapened the feline philosophies; for not simply how
to know but how to circumvent the universe would have been their
desire. Mankind's curiosity is disinterested; it seems purer by
contrast. That is to say, made as we are, it seems purer to us.
What we call disinterested, however, super-cats might call aimless.
(Aimlessness is one of the regular simian traits.)

I don't mean to be prejudiced in favor of the simian side.
Curiosity may be as debasing, I grant you, as craft. And craft
might turn into artifices of a kind which would be noble and fine.
Just as the ignorant and fitful curiosity of some little monkey
is hardly to be compared to the astronomer's magnificent search,
so the craft and cunning we see in our pussies would bear small
relation to the high-minded planning of some ruler of the race
we are imagining.

And yet--craft /is/ self-defeating in the end. Transmute it into
its finest possible form, let it be as subtle and civilized as
you please, as yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets
itself over against the wholeness of things; its role is that of
the part at war with the whole. Milton's Lucifer had the mind of
a fine super-cat.

That craft may defeat itself in the end, however, is not the real
point. That doesn't explain why the lions aren't ruling the planet.
The trouble is, it would defeat itself in the beginning. It would
have too bitterly stressed the struggle for existence. Conflict and
struggle make civilizations virile, but they do not by themselves
make civilizations. Mutual aid and support are needed for that.
There the felines are lacking. They do not co-operate well;
they have small group-devotion. Their lordliness, their strong
self-regard, and their coolness of heart, have somehow thwarted
the chance of their racial progress.

Intelligent design?

2007-11-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

Exhibitionist spiny anteater reveals bizarre penis
Movie Camera

* 16:50 26 October 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Nora Schultz

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The spiny anteater reveals a penis that is bendy and has four heads - two of which are used in any act of copulation
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The bizarre sex life of the spiny anteater has been exposed by researchers – the male ejaculates using only one half of its penis. New findings about the creature’s sex life may seem salacious but they could help shed light on an evolutionary mystery.

It seems that the way the mammal ejaculates is similar to the way reptiles do – by shutting down one side of its penis before secreting semen from the other side. Reptiles have a pair of male members called hemipenes for sex, and they use only one of the two during each act of copulation.

The spiny anteater (Tachyglossus aculeatus), also known as the short-beaked echidna, is a primitive mammal found in Australia and New Guinea. Like the platypus, it is a monotreme, laying eggs instead of bearing live young.

Monotremes have many features in common with reptiles, and the hope is that by studying them, scientists may find clues as to how mammals evolved.

The spiny anteater, however, is notoriously difficult to observe in the wild and shows little enthusiasm for breeding in captivity, so nobody had managed to observe them ejaculate before.
Four-headed phallus

Then Steve Johnston of the University of Queensland in Gatton, Australia, and his colleagues inherited a male spiny anteater that was not so shy. The creature had been ‘retired’ from a zoo as it produced an erection when being handled at public viewing sessions.

By filming this animal, the researchers have been able to describe the unique spiny anteater erection and ejaculation behaviour for the first time.

The spiny anteater's four-headed phallus had been puzzling scientists. "When we tried to collect semen by [electrically-stimulated ejaculation] before, not only did we not get a single drop, but the whole penis swelled up to a four-headed monster that wouldn't fit the female reproductive tract, which has only two branches," says Johnston.

“Now we know that during a normal erection, two heads get shut down and the other two fit," he told New Scientist. The heads used are swapped each time the mammal has sex.
Sperm competition

The evolutionary significance of one-sided ejaculation is unknown, but may play a role in sperm competition – where sperm from many males may compete to fertilise an egg. Indeed in the spiny anteater, up to 11 males may form a queue behind one female to copulate with her.

The researchers have also observed that hundreds of sperm team up to form bundles that swim much faster than individual sperm in the spiny anteater’s semen – another possible adaptation for sperm competition.

"We can now study echidna sperm much better, which should offer fascinating insights into the evolution of mammals", says Russell Jones from the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, who first dissected sperm bundles from dead echidna in the 1980s.

Journal reference: The American Naturalist (DOI: 10.1086/522847)

Another sample chapter of The Transcendent Ape

2007-10-31T02:20:00.000-07:00

IV. The Inside Out of Abnormality

We have finally come to the whole question of "normality" or "abnormality" of the experiences discussed. I realize that the analysis presented above can be taken to prove the supposed morbidity of certain spiritual experiences. However, it may just as well serve as an indication of "normality" of some supposedly pathological conditions. In many cases the dividing line is supplied by our emotional prejudices and by cultural norms. It is therefore practically meaningless. Let us take a closer look at this dividing line in relation to epilepsy.

As already pointed out, it is possible, with the aid of a specially constructed apparatus, to induce epilepsy-like states in 50% of all people who have never had any epileptic fits and will probably never have one. An injection of sub-convulsant doses of the drug Metrazol (which raises the level of excitability of brain cells and therefore facilitates the spread of neural discharges) prior even to a crude version of the flicker test can provoke epileptic jerks (Myoclonic epilepsy) in any perfectly normal individual and, if the stimulation is continued, precipitate a full-scale seizure.

Some authorities state quite emphatically that, in principle, epilepsy is not a disease but a syndrome, something some people have more of than others. A well-known and respected neurologist, W. Ritchie Russel, writes: "In most respects the brain of the epileptic and of the normal person are alike, but the one is more easily forced into convulsions than the other.106 W. Grey Walter also regards epilepsy as a natural phenomenon which may occur whenever a very large number of nervous cells are clustered together, rather than a degenerative disease. He says, "...when we have enough data...we may get a statistical answer indicating to what extent epileptic seizures may be a necessity for this or that degree of complexity of combination between the myriad million units of our Olympian nerve-net." In other words, epilepsy is a condition, which goes together with the large brain. Grey Walter even hints at the possibility that our coming down to the ground in the primeval jungle may have been due to the frequency of epileptic fits to which the swelling brains of our arboreal cousins became prone. It is doubtful that this was the case. The forces of natural selection would have quickly weeded out individuals who would have had a predisposition to epilepsy, which, as might well be imagined, would have been somewhat dangerous to a tree-dwelling species. Rather, perhaps, our brains only began to grow as rapidly as they did after we had descended to the ground and could therefore remain unconscious for a few brief moments without dropping down from great heights straight into the mouths of waiting predators. A big — and epileptic — brain is a luxury only a ground-dwelling creature can afford. This is another paradox of evolution: only after being thrown out of our tropical paradise could we embark upon a brain-growing spree.

Man had to fall (literally and metaphorically) in order to become the thinking, powerful, creative, unhappy, epileptic, transcendent creature that he is.
There is a study108, which proposes to view epilepsy as an evolutionary atavism (a reappearance of a characteristic belonging to a remote ancestor), which may have had something to do with adaptive behaviour of early man. Comparisons are drawn between compulsive behavior of a frightened deer mouse and human epilepsy. Supposedly, "playing dead" (while having an epileptic fit) could have been of survival value. An even more untenable explanation depicts epilepsy as a protective device against oxygen starvation to which a rapidly growing brain became prone. By falling prostrate on the ground the oxygen supply to the brain is supposedly increased and the danger of brain asphyxiation avoided.

These theories ignore the difference in the degree of complexity of the human brain compared to the animal brain, and a correspondingly more complex picture of epilepsy in man. We do not know of any natural counterparts to the petit mal or temporal lobe fits in any wild animal. Yet it is these two varieties of fits and not the grand mal convulsive seizure that represent the bulk of epileptic disorders of human species. What survival value could one place on them? Two brain structures, which have comparatively recently developed in man to a unique degree — the hippocampus and the lateral temporal lobe — are also frequent loci of epileptic discharges. The hippocampus in man is larger, both relatively and absolutely, than in any mammal, elephants and whales included. It is also the most unstable structure of the brain and has the lowest seizure threshold.109 The hippocampus is involved in dreaming and could be linked up with both the “dreamy state” of epilepsy and schizophrenia which has been compared to a “waking dream”.

One of the most frequent auras – that of déjà vu – most probably arises in the hippocampal circuit.110

Between them, the temporal lobe and the hippocampus are involved in the highly complicated tasks of hearing, verbal interpretation, information retrieval and storage, and perceptual integration. It seems that the prise of speedy development of larger and more complex neural structures necessary for performance of these operations was a predisposition to epilepsy. Most probably, epilepsy never had any adaptive function; it was always a liability. But the natural selection “tolerated” this liability because greater net benefits were afforded by a growing brain. At the same time, such a widespread and debilitating imperfection of structure could only develop in a species, which was not allowed to evolve at a leisurely pace.

The simplified picture of epilepsy begins to look like this. Epileptic phenomena can be provoked by a) internal foci of excitation such as a brain tumour and b) external agents such as rhythmic stimulation, stress, fright etc., which tend to aggravate or even cause abnormal discharges. Needless to say, genetic predisposition, imbalances of metabolic and hormonal processes etc., can all make a person more susceptible to epilepsy. So on one hand, we may have a fairly straightforward case of epilepsy caused by abnormal processes (such as a head injury), while at the other extreme, we have a "normal" person who, by exposure to a multitude of loosely defined influences — hormonal, hereditary, nutritional, etc. — was made susceptible to epilepsy or epilepsy-like states. A chance combination of environmental factors — e.g. an emotionally aroused state and an exposure to just the right frequency of rhythmic stimulation — may tip the balance. The mental states provoked need not at all resemble the picture of any classical epileptic fit, and have really nothing to do with clinical epilepsy. I have been using the term "epilepsy" because there is no other overall generic term under which we could group many of the phenomena discussed above. It would really be much better to eliminate the term "epilepsy" completely, at least for the purposes of our discussion, and introduce a notion of something like a "neural cross-talk potential." This could be defined as the "susceptibility of brain structures to excitation and subsequent spill-over in physiologically unaccustomed directions." Whenever I have previously spoken of epilepsy, even though no overt clinical picture of epilepsy could be inferred, the reader should now substitute this notion of the "high cross-talk potential."

One can object on theoretical grounds to the use of the phrase "unaccustomed directions." For practical purposes, however, this definition will suffice. We know that something unusual is taking place when someone starts talking about a visit to Heaven after hearing the church bells ring, or when one reports that his lips feel swollen like balloons, or that he feels as if he is being "pushed sideways in time." There are, of course, many borderline cases.

The high level of "cross-talk p6tential" (or, to coin a more familiar, if somewhat imprecise, term, the "Transcendence Quotient," abbreviated as T.Q.) is of course of fundamental importance to the possibility of having, spontaneously or otherwise, some form of "mystical" experience. How high must it be to produce noticeable alteration of normal awareness and what proportion of the general population could be expected to undergo its more profound varieties?

We know that 3-4% of normal, healthy subjects will experience sensations resembling some symptoms of the "sacred disease," when subjected to a simple flicker test. However, only a very small minority (perhaps less than 0.1%, which is also the percentage representing the incidence of self-induced epilepsy) will experience sensations, which can, with any approximation, be called blissful. In non-laboratory situations, this percentage would be even lower, as indicated by comparatively rare incidence of spontaneously-provoked ecstatic experiences.

The occurrence of mystical-type sensations and feelings of neutral or even unpleasant emotional hue may be somewhat more frequent. As pointed out earlier, in one national survey in the U.S. 29% of the people asked reported having experiences of déjà vu at least once or twice in their lives and 6% had them often. The comparatively high incidence of this particular experience is probably explained by the fact that the hippocampus, where this sensation is most likely to arise, has the lowest epileptic threshold.

There is a variety of indicators which can help one to estimate approximately (a more precise methodology is suggested in the Appendix) one's T.Q. How often have you experienced sensations which appeared to be a strangely intensified variety of those we have normally ("having been here before," "detachment," "realness" or "unrealness" of whatever is happening, loss of identity, etc.)? Do you have frequent memory flashbacks, which vividly bring back past experiences, together with their corresponding odours, feelings, etc.? Have you experienced time distortion, false awakenings (hallucination-like dreams indistinguishable from reality), lucid dreams (dreams in which you are aware of yourself dreaming), out-of-the-body experiences? If you have had many of these experiences or have had them often, you are probably fairly high on the T.Q. scale.

If you are more experimentally-minded, you can, at your risk, construct a portable flicker apparatus, in the privacy of your own home. Place a paper cylinder, with approximately 30 vertical slots cut into it, on top of a record player. Suspend a bright light bulb into the cylinder. Start the record player. This should give you, at 33 1/3 r.p.m., the average effective trigger frequency. Watch the flashing light with your eyes closed. Experiment by changing the speed or number of slots. If any unusual sensations arise, turn away from the light and stop the play.

Another useful procedure for determining the T.Q. level is the so-called eye roll test designed by the hypnotherapist Herbert Spiegel. The subject is asked to roll his eyes upward, as if trying to look at the top of the head. The higher the eyes roll, the greater the subject's hypnotisability (barring cases of psychopathology). There are both theoretical and practical reasons to suspect that the eye roll test may correlate positively with T.Q. Both hypnotic and mystical trance require an unusual capacity for maintaining awareness (in hypnosis, rapport) while being in a state of deep regression to a much more cortically primitive level of functioning. Normally, the upward roll of the eyes indicates loss of consciousness (in sleep, epileptic seizure, etc.). Therefore, the ability to roll the eyes upward while remaining conscious may indicate a biologically in¬built capacity of the individual to maintain states of severe dissociation in his psyche. This indicator is particularly attractive because it is both quantifiable and independent of subjective distortion.

It might be useful to remind the reader again that we have been mostly talking only about a particular aspect of a small number of cases where exceptionally high levels of cross-talk in a specific direction were found. A vast majority of epileptic auras, for example comprise niggly little sensations like dizziness in the head, or movement of the intestines, or some insignificant, usually unpleasant memory. A vast majority of the so-called "transcendental" experiences we ordinarily describe as psychosis. (See Fig. I4d) Some of these experiences are also caused by rhythmic stimulation. In the case of Jesse, made famous by R. D. Laing, the psychosis-like transcendental "voyage" began after listening to some bouncy tune on the radio.111 In this particular case the trigger was felt to be significant enough to be reported. In most cases, things like that are probably considered accidental and are not mentioned. A number of cases of ecstatic experiences, which were part of a full-blown psychosis, are reported. In one case a 38-year-old teacher of music who happened to be under great stress reported alteration of subjective awareness, which made him, view familiar things as if for the first time and invest them with a "profound, exciting meaning." He found that he could understand nature, people and animals better and had felt that "God actually touched his heart." However, the following day he experienced a mixture of "horror and ecstasy." Finally, he made a serious suicide attempt.112

Another case concerns a 21-year-old college student who was also under stress, which led to the following psychological developments during a week prior to his admission to a psychiatric institution (this case is fairly typical and will be quoted extensively:

Before last week, I was quite closed about my emotions; then I finally owned up to them with another person. I began to speak without thinking beforehand and what came out showed an awareness of human beings and God. I could feel deeply about other people. We felt connected. The side which had been suppressing emotions did not seem to be the real one. I was in a higher and higher state of exhilaration and awareness. Things people said had hidden meaning. They said things that applied to life. Everything that was real seemed to make sense. I had a great awareness of life, truth and God. I went to Church and suddenly all parts of the service made sense. My senses were sharpened. I became fascinated by the little insignificant things around me. There was an additional awareness of the world that would do artists, architects, and painters good. I ended up being too emotional, but I felt very much at home with myself, very much at ease. It gave me a great feeling of power. It was not a case of seeing more broadly but deeper. I was losing touch with the outside world and lost my sense of time. There was a fog around me in some sense, and I felt half asleep. I could see more deeply into problems that other people had and would go directly into a deeper subject with a person. I had the feeling I loved everybody in the world. Sharing emotions was like wiping the shadow away, wiping a false face. I thought I might wake up from a night¬mare; ideas were pulsating through me. I became concerned that I might get violent so I called the doctor.113

He was admitted to a hospital in a severely agitated state expressing delusional ideas and ideas of reference (believing that whatever was happening around him was in some mysterious manner connected with his personal preoccupations.)
This case is typical in many respects. As in some mystical states, perception of "realness" was sharply increased. As pointed out earlier, there is evidence that in our old brain there is a system which, when stimulated directly, will provoke, completely out of context, a feeling that literally everything that impinges upon one's perception is endowed with an extraordinary sense of "realness." Aldous Huxley expressed this sharpened sense of reality when he spoke of seeing "Eternity in a flower, Infinity in four chair legs and the Absolute in the folds of a pair of flannel trousers."

Objectively speaking, there is no more validity in this distortion of perception than there is in seeing everything, say, "larger" or "more rounded." We often talk glibly about "tapping the hidden resources of the unconscious." We naively forget that in psychology, as well as in physics, ecology and economics, there is an immutable law, which states, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." In other words you have to pay for everything, in one way or another. If you tap one resource to a greater than usual degree, something else becomes "untapped." If you see everything greener than usual then you might not see yellow as sharply; if you see all colours more sharply, you may start missing on some sounds. If you hear sounds better and see colours better, it means that some higher integrating perceptual function is going to suffer, and so on. In this particular case, the sense of reality was increased out of all proportion and yet the person recognized that he was losing his touch with the outside world and becoming disoriented in time. His senses were supposedly sharpened, arid yet he felt that there was "a fog around him" and that he was "half asleep." He felt that he loved everybody and yet was afraid, probably with good reason, that he might become violent.

In some circles there is a tendency to regard these psychotic experiences as "super-sane," as something we should almost strive for. In the popular mind this trend in psychological thought is usually associated with the name of R. D. Laing. One of the latest examples is a more moderate but still emphatic attempt to highlight the creative and renewing aspects of psychosis, undertaken by John Weir Perry.114 While it is true that our superior-minded attitude towards mental patients is totally unwarranted, and that our treatment of them is often callous and damaging, I also believe that anyone's mis¬conceptions about "super-sanity" of the mentally ill will be quickly cured by extensive encounters with people who suffer from psychosis, even if this happens outside the supposedly harmful confines of the mental institution. Their distress is evident and real, as is their incapacity to manage even simple interpersonal relationships. The only "super-sane" people in mental institutions are the malingerers, who would immediately discard their view of reality when threatened with a potentially hazardous treatment such as electrical or insulin shock. A schizophrenic will, on the contrary, be unable to manage his environment successfully and will suffer as a result.

It appears that the vast majority of cases of the so-called "expanded awareness" into the subcortical areas are, like most genetic mutations, detrimental to the well-being and health of the individual. Because most of us are not aware of the underlying universal mechanisms of "transcendence" (see Fig. I4e) we tend to single out only the relatively beneficial experiences and forget the detrimental ones. I suppose that people who have undergone the negative type of transcendental experience are much less likely to write ecstatic reports about it. But even in the description of the "good" experiences there is a fair admixture of "bad" components. The symptoms of saintliness described on Folio 101 can hardly be considered desirable by most people and have even given rise to the notion of the "saint's malaise." Careful reading of many autobiographical accounts of the so-called transcendental experiences will convince most people that they are dealing with something, which is far from a straightforward blissful affair. They are, at best, a mixed bag. I am not at all sure if many people will find the following account terribly inspiring:
Side by side with the suffering, however, I have also tasted moments of incomparable happiness, supreme moments which liberally compensated me for long periods of pain and anguish, as the mere act of waking to reality instantaneously compensates a sleeper for the awful agony suffered in a prolonged nightmare.115

All the cases of spontaneously provoked transcendence — in epilepsy, psychosis, accidental "ecstasies," drug-induced experiences — are a stab in the dark. Only very seldom and in most cases by sheer chance, do we hit the jackpot. There are far more psychotics who have known the terrible agony of reality slipping away from under their feet than there are mystics who have known the "supreme joy" of reality lost and found. (See Fig. 14d) That this is so is hardly surprising. The limbic system, and the human brain as a whole, is a highly complex and unstable structure. Any gross inter¬ference into its working will usually result in havoc. The recent emphasis on "expansion of awareness at all costs" is ill-founded. If we become, for example, conscious of the hypothalamic functions which regulate water or heat balance, we would probably create complete chaos. Even the largest computer would be unable to perform all the actions, in the right sequence, which are necessary to digest a potato. If we leave things to themselves, these tremendous feats of efficiency are usually accomplished quite easily.

Heightened cross-talk and rechannelling of awareness into unaccustomed paths can be brought about not only by physical but also by chemical means. One example of this, an injection of Metrazol, has already been given. Other better-known examples concern the use of such psychotropic substances as LSD, psilocybin, mescalin, DMT, STP and a host of other agents which are supposed to induce chemical ecstasy. It is a fact that their ingestion can produce experiences indistinguishable from those, which the traditional mystics report.

In one study116, twenty graduate students from a religious seminary were administered a psychotropic substance in a carefully conducted double-blind experiment. Some subjects were given an inactive placebo (nicotinic acid), which provokes a feeling of warmth and tingling of the skin. This was done to balance out the possible influence of autosuggestion. This experiment was conducted on Good Friday in a lounge beside a private chapel. The subjects listened to a 2% hour religious service (trans¬mitted to them through loudspeakers from the main chapel) consisting of organ music, four solos, reading, prayers, and personal meditation. It was found that those subjects who received a psychotropic drug had experiences, which are ordinarily attributed to mystical consciousness. The differences between them and the control group were quite striking and could not be explained on the basis of chance probability.
In another study117 involving 194 subjects, LSD was administered in a non-religious setting, to rule out the effect of suggestion completely. Even 10 months after this experience nearly a quarter of the subjects considered their experience as having been "religious" in nature and more than half of them reported that their experience was of lasting benefit.

The connection between, on one hand, psychosis and aberrations of metabolism of certain cerebral amines (such as catechol and serotonin) and, on the other, the capacity of such drugs as LSD to interfere with these metabolic processes in the brain is now well known, even 'though the exact mechanics of this interaction are still far from clear. The effect of substances such as LSD upon metabolism of the cerebral amines in relation to the limbic system has also been experimentally shown.118

One investigator described effects of LSD on the human brain in this fashion:
From the existing evidence it appears that the entire brain is not involved. It is in the diencephalon, or mid-brain, that the extra¬ordinary events occur. This region contains the limbic system, which modulates emotional responsivity; the reticular formation, which regulates awareness; and the sympathetic and parasympathetic centers, which control dozens of physiologic functions, from pupil size to body temperature.119

It seems certain that such psychotropic substances as LSD loosen physiological barriers in the brain and allow the individual to gain perception of psychological functions which are ordinarily either inaccessible to the conscious perception, or are available in integrated and highly "diluted" form. Those who have taken such drugs will testify as to the difference between a sense of unity in ordinary awareness ("we are from the same town") and the powerful state of unity ("I am all and all is me"), which is experienced in drug-induced states. Again, there is nothing intrinsically valuable about this alteration of perception and, as pointed out before; it is achieved at the cost of impairment of some other function. Psychotropic drugs open up neural pathways in a random, unpredictable manner. The "expansion of consciousness" which they bring is about as predictable as blowing up a dam, which was holding a river in check. One gets fascinating fireworks, though. (See Fig. 14e)

At the same time, it would be impossible to deny that many experiences of a mystical nature, whether in psychosis or drug experiences, are viewed, at least subjectively, as beneficial. R. D. Laing's Jesse, even though he ended by being locked up in a mental institution where, with a bit of bad luck he could have remained for the rest of his life, still thought that this event heralded a meaningful change in his psychic life. The music teacher, whose case was quoted earlier, and who nearly ended his life in a suicide, still regarded his experience as being profoundly meaningful and memorable. It appears that subjectively almost anything we do to alter our ordinary state of awareness, no matter how objectively damaging, is regarded as a breakthrough. This is primarily an indication that something must be drastically wrong with our ordinary states of consciousness. The widespread use of psychotropic substances and even cruder conscious¬ness-modifying substances such as tobacco and alcohol attests that this is the case. Apparently, this con¬sciousness-modifying urge has been with us for a long time: there are even reports of some Stone Age beer jugs being found.120

As can be inferred from frequent reports of pleasant or even blissful experiences provoked by both marijuana and LSD, these drugs activate the pleasure circuits in our brain. Just as in the case of electrical brain-stimulation, major psychotropic drugs have been used for alleviation of suffering in cases of incurable disease. The effect was similar and just as striking. A woman patient with a terminal breast cancer received LSD to relieve her pain and anxiety. Coming out of her first session she breathed deeply and said: "You know, for the first time, I can breathe again." Later she described her impressions:

I cannot remember the logic of the experi¬ence, but I became poignantly aware that the core of life is love. At this moment I felt that I was reaching out to the world — to all people — but especially to those closest to me. I wept long for the wasted years, the search for identity in false places, the neglected opportunities, the emotional energy lost in basically meaningless pursuits...121

Here we obviously have something more than the mere pain diminution through pleasure. Even though the physical activation of the pleasure circuit appears to produce a stronger pain-killing effect, it seems to lack the insight and creative aspects afforded by the chemical intervention. We will now look into the question of this drug-induced creativity.

The effect of psychotropic drugs on creativity was investigated on a number of occasions. In one study, four prominent artists were given LSD before a painting session. A panel of art critics reviewed their efforts. As it turned out, the paintings were bolder and more colour was being used, but the technical execution was somewhat inferior. However, the paintings were judged to be of better aesthetic value than the artists' usual work. Subjectively, the experience was also judged to be of positive value. As one artist expressed it, "I looked out of the window into the infinitely splendid universe of a tiny mauve leaf performing a cosmic ballet."122
In another study, psilocybin was administered to a number of creative individuals. Even though subjectively the experience proved to be extremely rewarding, it was found that as the effects of the drug began to wear off, the work which they were so impressed with a few minutes ago was losing its attractiveness. As one artist summed it up: "I have seldom known such absolute identification with what I was doing - nor such a lack of concern with it afterwards." 123

Application of psychotropic drugs was also tried in the case of a creative deadlock. A number of professional people who unsuccessfully worked for weeks or months on their particular problem were instructed to find a solution while under the influence of mescalin. Nearly all subjects came up with a solution which was subjectively judged to be highly creative and practicable, About half of these solutions led to a practical outcome (such as acceptance of a design by a client), while another half opened up new avenues of investigation. Again, three factors should not be forgotten: a) the individuals concerned did a lot of preliminary research on their projects; b) they were highly skilled and were in the fields of research which are, on the whole, permissive towards unusual solutions; c) the subjects were put into a stimulating situation which alone could have accounted for at least some of the breakthroughs. (There was no control group.) However, there can be no doubt that some significant alterations of ordinary creative processes were observed and that reports of enhanced creativity continued even after the drug wore off.

At one stage optimistic reports like the one above led some people to believe that they could open up some dormant resources of creativity by just taking psychotropic drugs. One study performed on an unselected group of people tested not only creativity, but also performance in various psychological tests. The group consisted of volunteer graduate students who were not especially prominent in any particular field. The only test, which the LSD group did significantly better, compared with the control group, was one for originality of word association. Tests, which required visual attention and concentration, were, on the contrary, performed very poorly by the LSD group. The authors of the study had to conclude that "the administration of LSD-25 to a relatively unselected group of people for the purpose of enhancing their creative ability is not likely to be successful."124 This conclusion is born out by practical observations. After more then a decade of mass experimentation with consciousness-altering substances we are still waiting for a cornucopia of freshly-baked Huxleys, Baudelairs and Dostoyevskis which, as it was widely hoped, it would produce. Apparently one has to be more or less a genius before one can greatly benefit from a transcendental experience, however induced.

It is conceivable that in a society, which places extraordinary emphasis on originality and even bizarreness, ingestion of consciousness-altering substances could enhance the self-image of the creative person and even his social standing. There is no doubt that "normality" for some people also implies mediocrity, and the connection between "madness" and "genius" is emphasized by some. The "shamanistic" professions (artists, musicians, actors, physicians, psychologists, priests, educators, etc.) would perhaps stand the best chance of benefiting from such an experience. There may, of course, be some undesirable side effects, which will have to be discounted by the individual himself. Reports are available which point to a definite causal link between drug use and the onset of schizophrenia.125 Even mild euphoria-producing drugs such as marijuana may have potential hazards, such as interfering with the immune or hormonal systems of the user, or making him more accident-prone.126 Unfortunately, it really seems that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

At the same time it is hard to draw a line between the "natural" and "unnatural" consciousness-modifying methods, The traditional mystic or a yogi who is indulging in forced breathing, fasting, flagellation, sensory deprivation and so forth, is judged by some to act strictly in accordance with the natural order of things. The drug user who produces similar states through more direct interference with the brain biochemistry is seen as violating this supposedly preordained order. Entire books have been written to prove the difference between the two types of experience. Of course the differences can be found. Upon careful analysis, no two "natural" transcendental experiences are identical. If anything, the side effects of a drug-induced religious experience, if done under careful guidance and in congenial settings, are probably less damaging to the mind and the body, than the masochistic, paraphernalia-ridden mystical pursuits of the past. One may also successfully argue the use of psychotropic drugs in far gone and therapy-resistant cases of psychosis and terminal physical illness.

More information in my article “Are Drugs Experimenting With Humans?” http://patrushev-publications.com/Documents/Pyotr_Patrushev_drugs_experiment.htm
And DRUGS, MEDICINES AND POWER
From Dependence and Control to Intelligent Use
http://patrushev-publications.com/Documents/Pyotr_Patrushev_drugs.htm

Everything you wanted to know about the human brain (well, almost)! Interactve diagrams.

2007-10-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/brain

Your Yearly Dementia Test

2007-10-25T02:56:00.000-07:00

Have fun!

Your Yearly Dementia Test

It's that time of year to take our annual senior citizen test.
Exercise of the brain is as important as exercise of the muscles. As
we grow older, it's important to keep mentally alert. If you don't
use it, you lose it! Below is a very private way to gauge your loss
or non-loss of intelligence.
Take the test presented here to determine if you're losing it or not.
The spaces below are so you don't see the answers until you've made
your answer.
OK, relax, clear your mind and begin.

1. What do you put in a toaster?

Answer: "bread." If you said "toast,"
give up now and do something else.
Try not to hurt yourself.
If you said, bread, go to Question 2.

2. Say "silk" five times. Now spell "silk."
What do cows drink?

Answer: Cows drink water. If you said "milk," don't attempt the next
question. Your brain is over-stressed and may even overheat. Content
yourself with reading a more appropriate literature such as Auto
World. However, if you said "water", proceed to question 3.

3 If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made
from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a
black house is made from black bricks, what is a green house made
from?

Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass. If you said "green bricks,"
why are you still reading these???
If you said "glass," go on to Question 4.

4. It's twenty years ago, and a plane is flying at 20,000 feet
over Germany (If you will recall, Germany at the time was politically
divided into West Germany and East Germany ) Anyway, during the
flight, two engines fail. The pilot, realizing that the last
remaining engine is also failing, decides on a crash landing
procedure. Unfortunately the engine fails before he can do so and the
plane fatally crashes smack in the middle of "no man's land" between
East Germany and West Germany . Where would you bury the
survivors? East Germany , West Germany , or no man's land"?

Answer: You don't bury survivors.
If you said ANYTHING else, you're a dunce and you must stop. If you
said, "You don't bury survivors", proceed to the next question.

5. Without using a calculator - You are driving a bus from London to
Milford Haven in Wales . In London , 17 people get on the bus. In
Reading , six people get off the bus and nine people get on. In
Swindon , two people get off and four get on. In Cardiff , 11 people
get off and 16 people get on. In Swansea , three people get off and
five people get on In Carmathen, six people get off and three get
on. You then arrive at Milford Haven.
What was the name of the bus driver?

Answer: Oh, for crying out loud!
Don't you remember your own name? It was YOU!!

Now pass this along to all your friends
and pray they do better than you.

PS: 95% of people fail most of the questions!!

Your Brain and Your Memory in 3-D

2007-10-25T02:53:00.001-07:00

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-11/memory/brain-interactive.html

Your Brain and Your Memory in 3-D
Mapping Memory (NGM.com)

This month, National Geographic has a fascinating cover story on memory and why brains sometimes remember things and often forget. It starts off with a woman who remembers almost every minute of every day of her life since the age of 11, as well as a man whose brain, riddled by disease, knows nothing but the present.

After you read the article, be sure and check out the cool three-dimensional Mapping Memory graphic. It’s worth clicking around the entire image, but don’t miss the “forgetting” tab. It offers an unforgettable, albeit scary, glimpse of how memory loss progresses with age. The first image you’ll see is a flurry of synapses and flying neurons that represent a 16-year-old brain. Move the slider at the bottom of the frame to see how memory gradually declines with age. Another slider allows you to see the frightening progression of Alzheimer’s.

If you’re not too depressed, play the Memory Game. The game gives you 10 seconds to memorize the placement of nine tiles of different animals, landscapes, numbers or letters. The tiles scatter and you’re timed for how quickly and accurately you put them back. My first scores on all four games ranged from 7 seconds on the letters to 11 seconds for the scenery. Unfortunately, the site didn’t tell me if those scores are a sign of a healthy brain or one in decline.

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* On Your Mind, aging, alzheimers, b

Stephen Colbert interviews the Father of the Intelligent Design -- Michael J Behe!

2007-10-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.colbertondemand.com/videos/Guest_Interviews/Michael_J_Behe

Contents and sample chapters from the Transcendent Ape

2007-09-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote this book in the 70's for Basic Books. They finally did not print it because they felt that there was no market for balanced books on evolution and religion -- only for either New Age style literature or the skeptical, debunking exposes.

Of course now there are hundred of books in this genre. A quick look through the www.amazon.com category list will suffice to convince one in how thriving this topic is:

My ms is different because it explores the nature of religious and mystical experience in depth while adhering to the most current theories of evolution. It also has a humorous approach (judge for yourself from chapters below).

I plan to update this ms and publish it. I want to introduce even more humour, cartoons, and personal vignettes (I have personally known spiritual gurus and scientists working in this area.

Constructive comments are welcome. Bear in mind that I wrote this ms in the 70's when there were almost no books of this kind. I was living on a farm in New Zealand, having finished my stint as a science writer for Radio Liberty in Munich. I was so high on this book, I still regard it as my best work. It took me about 8 years to write. Those were some of the happiest years of my life, full of a sense of wonder, discovery, and mission....

Chapter 1. The Eighth Day Of Creation. 4

I. Body. 4

II. Mind. 10

Chapter 2. An intelligent Man's Guide to his Schizophrenic Brain. 18

I. The Computer That Went Haywire. 18

II. The "Stick" and the "Carrot". 24

The "Stick". 25

The "Carrot". 38

Chapter 3. The "Sacred Disease" And Other Paranormal States. 46

I. The Varieties of Epileptic Experience. 46

II. In the Beginning There was the Rhythm.. 55

III. But what do I love, when I love Thee?. 59

IV. The Inside Out of Abnormality. 66

Chapter 4 The Sanskrit Cookbook. 77

I. To Seize the Moment…... 78

II. The Way of the Simple Regard. 83

III. To Scour the Windows of the Soul 87

IV. The Yogi and the Wolf 91

V. Non-attachment 92

Chapter 5. Some Selected Messiahs. 96

I. Primal Therapy. 96

II. Hare Krishna. 111

III J. Krishnamurti 114

IV. Transcendental Meditation (TM) 118

PREFACE

(To be updated)

Chapter 1. The Eighth Day Of Creation

I. Body

Films run backward are inherently funny. The faster they are run, the funnier they are. I am about to describe the fastest and therefore the funniest backward-run movie in the world.

We begin with an innocuous shot of a man walking fast (backwards) away from the supermarket. In the very, beginning of the sequence we see how the goods which he has bought jump out of his shopping bag and deftly re-arrange themselves along the shelves.

It will come to most as a bit of a surprise when, in the next sequence, we see the man's shirt and trousers disappear from his body, only to be quickly replaced by loosely fitting animal skin. There is almost no other change in the man's appearance, except that his facial expression, which bore a mark of permanent anxiety in the first sequence, now relaxes a bit.

But already the more perceptive in the audience are noticing further subtle changes: the man's skull, though still large, flattens, his forehead becomes lower, his eyebrows cross over the bridge of his nose, his jaws become heavier and his chin shrinks. His general appearance becomes somewhat brutish. He is seen catching a spear, which bounces back from a bison's hide.

The next shot takes us to a place in Asia where, in order to juxtapose the impressions of the historical and geological realities, we see some hieroglyphic-splattered posters on the wall quickly disappear, and the wall itself crumble to the ground and disperse, stone by stone, into the swelling bodies of the neighbouring rocks. We see a cave, which is gradually filling in. In front of the cave a man sits in a squatting posture, stuffing the brains of another man back into his skull. As he withdraws a sharp stone from his companion's head we see how the hole in the skull closes rather neatly, and how both men get up and run backwards into the bush just a short distance away from each other.

Both the pace and the action quicken. Now the man, who has become much shorter and lost some of his majestic vertical stance (and, with it, a chronic backache and a predisposition to hernias), retreats along a narrow and twisting path marked "For Hominids Only." We see a large blow-up of our creature's footprints. We notice that he becomes much less flat-footed and now walks almost entirely on the outside of his foot. The picture which will confront him every morning on the bathroom tiles hundreds of thousands of years later suddenly acquires a new meaning.

As he hurries along with a plodding sort of gait, becoming increasingly squat and hairy, his arms slowly outstrip his legs in length until he begins to walk on his knuckles. We pay a fleeting glance to a track leading off the main thoroughfare. It is marked "Dead End."

Out of this blind alley comes, also walking backwards, one of our own extinct relatives. On reaching the intersection he blends perfectly into the silhouette of what has now become of our man. Some viewers become aware of the fact that we may have had a twin brother (brothers?) who was equipped just as well (as badly) as ourselves to survive the rigors of the next few million years. Or had we perhaps helped to tilt the balance of the evolutionary scales a bit by occasional indulgence in fratricide?

Finally we come to a first major intersection, which does not bear a "Dead End" sign. Instead we see a mysterious sign saying "Pongidae." Things become a bit clearer when we see an ape, looking every bit like the creature that we have been following all the way from the supermarket, rush backwards from his track and, again, blend perfectly into his twin's silhouette. We realise that this intersection is the one where, some twenty-five or thirty million years ago, the ape line (represented today by gibbon, orang-utans, chimpanzee and gorilla) has split off from the Hominid line, which led to man. For the first time, it dawns on some viewers that man and his nearest relatives, the apes, have been evolving along separate evolutionary lines for thirty million years. To expect apes to evolve in the direction of man — as some people naively do — is the same as to expect a windmill to turn, in time, into an atomic reactor. Both of these devices are, in their own way, adapted to the task of producing energy. We are no longer sure that it would have been inherently better for all the windmills to evolve into atomic reactors.

More junctions fly by. Monkey, Tarsier, Lemur, Tree shrew. At each of these intersections an animal, which looks vaguely like a representative of these contemporary species, blends into its twin - the ancestor of man still retracing his evolutionary steps. Some thoughtful viewers are struck by a sudden realization: for seventy-five million years the monkey managed to stay, though in a somewhat different form, a monkey. And it survived! It refused to grow bigger and brainier, it did not progress towards an erect posture, or tool-use, or conceptual thought. And it still survived. It seems like a terrible affront, a slight to the prearranged evolutionary sequence, which should have automatically led in the direction taken by man.

Primitive mammals, reptiles, amphibious creatures, fishes, chordates. The retrospective metamorphosis on the screen continues, but now, without the aid of flashbacks and explanatory diagrams, it appears remote, almost irrelevant. However, the viewers' attention is held by the flow of information, which they can immediately relate to their own understanding (or misunderstanding) of the functioning of their bodies.

They learn that their fingernails, which seem to have evolved for easier penknife opening and head scratching, are really remnants of horny scales, which covered the bodies of reptiles. They see that their unique fingerprints evolved not for the benefit of The FBI, but to prevent their fingers from slipping off tree branches. They learn that their tree-dwelling existence accounts for many peculiarities of their muscle and bone structure.

The bones in man's skull are shown to undergo modifications, but still retain their basic functions and shape right back to the stage of the fish. In fact, nearly every bone in what we regard as peculiarly man's skull was already present in the skulls of our fish ancestors who lived in the Devonian seas over three hundred million years ago. (See Fig. 1) The hard rounded shell that houses the most conceited brain in the universe evolved in the oldest fish-like ancestors of man in order to protect their humble brain structures against predation by crab-like enemies.

A series of dramatic cartoon-like changes: the fine ear-bones of man are gradually traced to the fish's gill bars; the jaw and face muscles are shown to have come from the fish's breathing apparatus; the glands of internal secretion become gill pouches; a human leg and arm, retaining most of their bones in the original order, but slightly changing proportions, are gradually turned into a leg and arm of a primitive land animal which lived millions of years ago. (See Fig. 2)

Another mystery, which has baffled many thoughtful laymen and even philosophers, and disgusted many romantics, is presented in its clear evolutionary perspective: why is it that nature has located our organs of reproduction in such close proximity to the organs of elimination? In man it is even the same channel, which conducts the most precious material of his body, the sperm cells, together with the waste matter from his bladder. Now the origin of this unseemly arrangement becomes clear: in the course of the evolution, the testes are shown to have borrowed a disused part of the kidney system for their own purposes. In passing, a smaller conundrum is resolved: why is it that one of man's most vulnerable structures, the testes, is located in a pouch outside the safe protection of his warm body? Has this curious arrangement evolved solely in order to bring business to the manufacturers of athletic supports? As it turns out, it is precisely the warmth of the body that is the cause of the curious downward journey which our testes had to undertake in the course of evolution and which they still have to repeat during our individual prenatal development. The heat of the body was simply too much for the sensitive sperms. The scrotum is nothing but nature's way of providing our reproductive system with an external air-cooled radiator.

Those of the viewers still retaining their belief in the Creator who is behind all these mysterious doings (and there is nothing intrinsically incompatible in all that has been said above with a belief in such an external Agency) begin to appreciate the true grandeur of the no doubt voluntarily imposed frugality, the utter humbleness of the Almighty. To have begun the experiment with internal placement of the testes and then, having realized the mistake, to correct it in such an obvious, physically palpable fashion! He could have easily adopted a far more elegant solution by having, for example, lowered the temperature body by a degree or two, and no one would have been any wiser. But no, unconcerned about His reputation, He, like many a time in the past, refused to go to the Heavenly Storeroom to get new and better fixtures. Carefully chiselling here and chopping there, He made marvellous use of what was already at hand. And the surprising thing is that it worked! To this sense of self-provoked awe, to the pride a handyman takes in having manufactured a complicated gadget out of odd bits and pieces that were lying around the garage, can no doubt be attributed the otherwise inexplicable parsimony of someone who has truly unlimited potentialities.

The film ends with a visually effective, if not very informative shot: in a series of colourful concentric and gradually diminishing circles the simplest imaginable vertebrate is shown to blend first into a worm-like, then jellyfish-like, and then, finally, a simple protozoan organism. The voice of the announcer, in suitably dignified tones, impresses upon the viewers the fact that the content of salts and minerals in their blood is remarkably similar to that of seawater. Together with other vertebrates we carry within our veins an undeniable reminder of our humble beginnings in the depths of Paleozoic ocean. The curtain falls.

Why, the reader may rightfully wonder, have we covered again, albeit in a novel fashion, the familiar ground of our evolutionary drama? Because, I feel, the vast majority of books on the subject have either slurred, or altogether omitted some of the uncomfortable implications of the discoveries made by our students of evolution. In these times of reappraisal of some of the established dogmas, certain facts, which have a bearing upon the future of our species, must be stated in an uncompromising manner. These facts are:

(1) All species from man to the "lowliest" worm, existent now upon the earth, are equally evolved. There is no high and low. Evolution means adaptation to changing environment, sufficient to permit the continued propagation of a particular species.

(2) No species is perfect or can exist forever and, as paleontological records show, most of the big-brained species were particularly short-lived. Our nearest relatives — the apes — are failing everywhere in comparison with the supposedly more "primitive" monkeys. We also know that, for mysterious reasons, a sharp decline in the number of ape species occurred about ten million years ago.

(3) The relatively fast rate of vertebrate and especially Hominid evolution can be viewed from another perspective: the ancestral line which led to man was subjected to extraordinary selection pressures because at some early point it embarked upon a path which has not permitted it to achieve a homeostatic relationship with its environment. (Compare with such animals as the horseshoe crab, the New Zealand tuatara, the coelacanth and the opossum, which have not changed appreciably for hundreds of millions of years. The opossum, particularly, shows great capacity for survival even in urban environments, with a minimum of brain-mass.)

It is really impossible though and perhaps meaningless, to compare "rates of evolutionary change" of different species. Certain facts may, however, be of interest. The size of the horse's tooth has, during a period of some thirty-five million years, changed by about four percent per million years. The human brain, as will be discussed later, has possibly increased threefold during one million years. Out of the tens of thousands of vertebrate species, which lived during the Mesozoic Era, only two dozen have left descendants. Ninety-eight percent of all the vertebrate families, which live now, originated from only eight species, which lived during the Mesozoic Era. If horses had produced eight genera during sixty million years, Hominids have managed to produce three during one million years. This is, comparatively speaking, fifteen times as many. By lengthening his life cycle man may have become more susceptible to mutagenic effects of ionising radiation. The price he has to pay for a fast rate of evolution is an increased mutation rate, which is bound to bring about many abnormalities and a host of diseases and weaknesses noticeable especially at old age and not generally recognized as genetic in origin. While man's mutation rate may be generally high, he is increasing it even further by introducing mutagenic substances into his environment.

The unbelievably subtle and widespread bias, which tends to represent man as a crowning point of evolution can be seen in virtually every book, which deals with questions of evolution. Let us look at the typical way in which the primate evolutionary tree is represented. (Fig. 3) All the species marked on this tree are still in existence. Why then the upward grading from left to right? What is the quality, which is being measured along the vertical gradient? Perhaps man's conceit? This is how the same diagram could have been re-drawn by a tree shrew. (Fig. 4)[1]

Could it be, perhaps, that man's superiority lies in his ability to exterminate other species? Does his claim to fame lie in his reputation as a super-killer? If so, this fame has sad historical precedents. Towards the end of the Cretaceous we find Tyrannosaurus, the "tyrant reptile," which reached nineteen feet in height, and was the largest flesh-eater that ever existed. Surely it walked upon the earth unafraid of any other living creature. And yet it is now extinct. In contrast, man is still being successfully preyed upon by, among others, sharks, snakes, various insects, and finally, man himself.

Is it, perhaps, his ability to propagate his species numerically that sets man apart from the rest of the animal kingdom? But, surely, locusts, for one, could lay similar claim if we could communicate with one of them during an outbreak of locust plague. Also, who has done a head count on the number of flies and cockroaches and frogs and lice? Have their populations’ experienced exponential rise, similar to that of human populations?

There is, of course, one last, seemingly weightiest argument in the repertoire used to support the thesis of man's superiority: intelligence. But intelligence for what, one is tempted to ask? For scoring on Binet or Wechsler scales? For solving "learning set" (insight-measuring) puzzles designed by humans? Or for coping with one's natural environment? How would humans perform on a "learning set" experiment, which involved not the sense of vision (which is most frequently used and which is well developed in man) but, say, a sense of smell? Any laboratory rat could outscore man on such a test. It is interesting to note that even some of the well-intended attempts to show innate "intelligence" of animals (particularly primates) have centred on specifically human ways of adaptation. There are, for example, arduous and lengthy experiments with teaching chimpanzees to communicate with humans by using sign language or plastic chips. We should perhaps regard these attempts as being as misapplied and pig-headed as we would have regarded the ape's futile attempts to prove that humans, though generally inept, have just as good a tree-climbing potential as his own.

Man prides himself on having adapted to a self-created environment, which no other creature could, or would, tolerate. But has his adaptation been all that successful? Psychosomatic disease is man's unique plight. The effect which some of his recent activities (such as the manufacture and dispersal of mutagenic substances, tampering with radioactivity, interference with patterns of natural selection, alteration of global climatic conditions, to name but a few) will have on his biological future is uncertain only as to the degree of its ominousness.

As for man's physical attempts to gain control over his environment, we also begin to realize that so many of them were complete or nearly complete disasters. Flush toilet, internal combustion engine, synthetic fertilizer, aerosol spray, plastics, DDT — this inventory is being added to almost daily — have all undergone a magical transformation from great technological breakthroughs into even greater ecological disasters.

Even one of the oldest practices of mankind — use of domesticated animals for meat — is becoming uneconomical due to rapidly swelling human numbers and the inevitable loss of nutritive potential involved in transforming large quantities of plant tissue into small quantities of animal flesh. Agriculture itself begins to look like a purposeful long-term attempt to destroy the forests and poison the soil. The emergence of mad-cow disease and the potential for avian flu pandemic add to the list of detrimental consequences of human activity that have not been foreseen, although the advent of intensive agriculture, combined with human overpopulation and, in the case of avian flu, rapid mobility laid the foundation for such calamities long ago.

Yet Nature —and man is undoubtedly part of Nature — has an amazing
capacity for self-repair and creative transformation over long spans of time. Who could have guessed, over a hundred million years ago, at the close of the magnificent Age of Reptiles, that a little rat-like creature, subsisting on a meagre diet of worms, insects and stolen eggs was destined to be the predecessor of man?

[1] Some specialists tend to cast the tree shrew out of the primate club altogether, which makes the point at hand even more salient.