Buddha in Your Brain

BREAKING up is hard to do. Even after our worldviews have betrayed us, they still cling like burrs to our psyche, despite all reason.

Recall the insistent flat earth and geocentric crowd, and creationist belief that the Earth is only ten-thousand years old. The list is long.

Ideas of new age healers and psychics, too, can be wildly exaggerated, and even the bibles of modern science are littered with the remains of failed sacred cows.

Until recently, for example, it was asserted that the brain cannot grow new cells — when they’re gone, they’re gone!

The cliché that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks may be obsolete because now, science confirms, adult brain cells keep growing after all!

Neurons

Back to Basics

“The scale of change is much smaller than what goes on during the critical period of development,” said the studies co-author Elly Nedivi, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) —

“… but the fact that it goes on at all, is earth-shattering.”

The word Science comes from the Latin word Scire, which means to know. It is supposed to be a systematic, organized way of investigating the world. The catch is when specialized learning turns into a dogmatic worldview, it then becomes an end-in-itself — distorting what might have resulted in a more holistic truth.

The truth today is that neuroscientists are completely baffled by how the brain is able to organize itself so perfectly:

The Miracle Brain Organization

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West Meets East

In the emerging science of neuroplasticity and growing brain cells, we’ve come full circle again — in this case back to Buddha, who maintained it is “thoughts” that reign supreme over the physical brain and body.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought,” says the opening verse in the Dhammapada:-

“… all that we are is founded on our thoughts and formed of our thoughts.”

And if our thoughts can and should grow, it follows logically that the medium through which they are expressed, the neurons (brain cells), should also grow.

But what is it that initiates and orchestrates these changes if not the “thought producer” — the perceiver within?

Theosophy maintains there is a higher directing power, above the intellect and functional brain mind, that often accomplishes what seem like miracles.

Scientists Study Tibetan Monks

A clip taken from the History Channel documentary about a Buddhist monk of Tibet who some how mummified himself through meditation, and whose body has somehow been miraculously preserved.

Scientist set out to discover what happened and study the monks preforming meditation under scientific test conditions, with amazing results.

Tibetan Buddhist Monks – Meditation and Science

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Brain Plasticity

Is there is a Master Planner working behind the scenes in our brain?

One of the most convincing proofs is in the brains almost limitless resilience and capacity to adapt to changing conditions, to heal itself and restore order in the body— from the inside.

“We are beginning to harness the brains incredible ability to invent itself, and then reinvent itself throughout life,” says the commentator in this video clip.

This is the true story of young girl, Jody Miller, who “leads an idyllic life for a nine-year-old girl.” Yet she underwent, when all other measures failed to cure her life-threatening illness, some of the most drastic surgery imaginable — half her brain was removed.

Brain Plasticity

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The Plastic Atom

Brain cells, like all substance, is built on the notion of “atoms” which were once thought to be “indivisible,” over the objections of H. P. Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine.

That reductionist view of atoms changed completely in the first few years of the 20th Century. The idea of rigidly unchangeable brains may well have been a stubborn carry-over from the earlier view about atoms, and had simply not been challenged until recently. It’s ironic how similar the words “neutron” and “neuron” are.

Laboratory scientist Dean Radin describes the relationship between mind and body as seen through both Eastern and Western sciences:

“If West meets East, could science verify our deep union with the universe that mystics have been talking about for thousands of years?”

Eastern Science

“Gain Siddhis for thy future birth.”

-Voice of the Silence

Dean Radin

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The Fickle Atom

The illusion of solid matter “was shattered in 1897,” writes David Pratt, in his article The Infinite Divisibility of Matter,”with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle”…

…the “uncuttable” had been cut. This was followed by the discovery of the proton in 1911 and the neutron in 1932, the two particles that make up the atomic nucleus. In the decades that followed, subatomic particles began to proliferate like bacteria, and today over 200 are known.

Neutrons & Protons

“This is sufficient to show how absurd are the simultaneous admissions of the non-divisibility and elasticity of the atom. The atom is elastic, ergo, the atom is divisible, and must consist of particles, or of sub-atoms.

—And these sub-atoms?”

- H. P. Blavatsky

“They are either non-elastic, and in such case they represent no dynamic importance,” Blavatsky went on to write, “or, they are elastic also — and in that case, they, too, are subject to divisibility. And thus ad infinitum.”

“But infinite divisibility of atoms resolves matter into simple centres of force, i.e., precludes the possibility of conceiving matter as an objective substance,” says Blavatsky:

“This vicious circle is fatal to materialism.”

Buddha and The Atom

An interview with Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Columbia University.

Buddha and the Atom_ Everything Is Infinitely Divisible

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Empty Space?

The belief that space is a vacuum, in which gravity is the only operational force, persists to this day. The only truly empty space is the minds of those who concocted the idea, and still refuse to part with it.

Again, the gauntlet was cast to science by The Secret Doctrine 1:289, in another occult aphorism:

“There is not one finger’s breath (angula) of void Space in the whole Boundless (Universe)…”

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)

It is now predicted by frontier physicists that most of the interplanetary space, and of the entire cosmos, consists of plasma—another name for the disputed “luminiferous ether” of the 19th Century. In 1888, Blavatsky predicted that the ether would soon be rejected.

The Fabric of Reality

Dean Radin

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Sure enough, Albert Einstein dispensed with “ether” in 1905.

But Einstein revoked his stand on the non-existence of ether in 1952 (shortly before his death in 1955), after the British Nobel Prize winner Paul Dirac, founder of quantum field theory, re-asserted its existence.

New insights into this “phlogiston,” now we suggest may be called “plasma,” have spawned a new field of study: Plasma Cosmology.

From Hannes Alfvén, the 1970 Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, came the idea of a plasma universe based upon synchrotron radiation. Yet Alfvén’s work has been disputed for many years.

Hannes Alfvén, Plasma and Electromagnetism in Space

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Uprooted Beliefs

“Science is on its way to discoveries,” that will go far towards explaining many mysteries of life, Blavatsky writes. And “chemistry and physiology [biochemistry?] are the two great magicians of the future, who are destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths.”

By being able to peer into the complex machinery of the cell, old beliefs are being uprooted. Darwin never intended the wild speculations of his later followers, Blavatsky observes, and on the dogma of undirected natural selection she wrote (SD 2:260):

“…there is every reason to doubt whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave such an importance to his law — as is given to it now by his atheistic followers.”

Using The Right Tools

“Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne’s thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries,” Blavatsky wrote:

Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of physical scientists can ever boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon which she proceeds. (SD 2:153)

Theseus, about to enter the Labyrinth, holds Ariadne's thread in his hand

Peeking Under the Covers

It was the microscope that rescued the reputation of the lowly cell, which had always been thought of as filler material, a blob of inert protoplasm. Biologist Michael Behe’s explosive best seller, Darwin’s Black Box, opened our eyes to an “irreducibly complex” microscopic world, and gave instant birth to the ongoing, hotly contested dispute between Neo Darwinists and Intelligent Design proponents.

Questioning evolution theory

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Left-Brain Learning

“Even ignorance is better than Head-learning, with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it.”

-The Book of the Golden Precepts

In 1878, physicist Johann von Jolly advised one of his students at the University of Munich, Max Planck, not to go into physics, saying,

“… in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.”

Planck disobeyed, and went on to become the father of quantum physics. Almost as incredible, is former Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, Charles Duell, who is quoted as saying:

“Everything that can be invented – has already been invented.”

Ideology in science imprisons truth, as do fanatically held religious beliefs. Where rigid belief rules, misinformation is inevitable.

The tragedy is that we frequently act on our limited beliefs, with damaging results. Religious ideologies, especially, become violent obsessions—from the bloody Crusades of Christianity, to today’s terrorist cults.

What is surprising, though, is the tenacity of our flawed self-images. Wherever we go, we take our idea of “self” with us, and that self is endlessly thinking from cradle to grave. Yet instead of using this free gift for increasing our self-awareness, we fail, because our energies are so often outer-directed.

Frederick C. Frieseke - "The Bird Cage"

The Lifetime Meditation

This trap will continue, until we begin to recognize that we are “ceaselessly self-deceived,” Blavatsky wrote in her article Self-Knowledge. Lasting wisdom, she explains, requires something more than belief, or dogged persistence. The task, she says, is

“…unattainable by what men usually call ‘self-analysis.’ It is not reached by reasoning or any brain process; for it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine nature of man.”

We are blessed with a natural and continuous stream of thought potentials, what Theosophy calls a “lifetime meditation” (Notes on the Gita, 148) — this is our own personal university. Knowing how to focus and master the thought language of the soul is the objective of all the great masters. Acceptance leads to self-healing, mentally, emotionally and even physically:

How We Heal

Living Matrix How We Heal

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The Book of the Golden Precepts

Secrets to Gaining Wisdom

“The light of the ONE MASTER, the one unfading golden light of Spirit, shoots its effulgent beams on the Disciple from the very first. Its rays thread through the thick dark clouds of matter…

“Yea, ignorance is like unto a closed and airless vessel; the soul a bird shut up within. It warbles not, nor can it stir a feather; but the songster mute and torpid sits, and of exhaustion dies.

“The seeds of Wisdom cannot sprout and grow in airless space. To live and reap experience the mind needs breadth and depth and points to draw it towards the Diamond Soul.

“For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects. It needs the gentle breezes of Soul-Wisdom to brush away the dust of our illusions. Seek O Beginner, to blend thy Mind and Soul.

“Shun ignorance, and likewise shun illusion. Avert thy face from world deceptions — mistrust thy senses, they are false.

“But within thy body — the shrine of thy sensations — seek in the Impersonal for the “eternal man;” and having sought him out, look inward: thou art Buddha.”

A Global Mind?

“The mind of Gaia has always been there. We weren’t quite clever enough until now to have an inkling of it.”

-Dean Radin

Dean Radin_ An Electronic Membrane

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Towards a Soul Science

“Look inward: thou art Buddha.”

-Voice of the Silence

Lao-Tze

The familiar Zen Kōan of Hakuin Ekaku, “one hand clapping,” is kin to the “soundless sound” of the Voice of the Silence.

The teachings of Lao-Tze, who lived in the 6th century BC, a generation before Confucius, are epitomized in Tao Te Ching, and opens with a similar paradox.

The Tao that can be named, is not the true Tao, Lao-Tze declares, admonishing us always to dig deeper—never to be satisfied with surface appearances.

“The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name.”

Related Posts:

The Holographic Life

Science or Spirituality?

Heaven in a Wild Flower