Saturday, November 26, 2016

Human body is a busy chemical plant

By opening the gates of publishing to all, the internet has flattened hierarchies everywhere they exist. We no longer live in a world in which elites of accredited experts are able to dominate conversations about complex or contested matters. Politicians cannot rely on the aura of office to persuade, newspapers struggle to assert the superior integrity of their stories. It is not clear that this change is, overall, a boon for the public realm. But in areas where experts have a track record of getting it wrong, it is hard to see how it could be worse. If ever there was a case that an information democracy, even a very messy one, is preferable to an information oligarchy, then the history of nutrition advice is it. [...]

But it is a biological error to confuse what a person puts in their mouth with what it becomes after it is swallowed. The human body, far from being a passive vessel for whatever we choose to fill it with, is a busy chemical plant, transforming and redistributing the energy it receives. Its governing principle is homeostasis, or the maintenance of energy equilibrium (when exercise heats us up, sweat cools us down). Cholesterol, present in all of our cells, is created by the liver. Biochemists had long known that the more cholesterol you eat, the less your liver produces. Unsurprisingly, then, repeated attempts to prove a correlation between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol failed. [...]

A scientist is part of what the Polish philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck called a “thought collective”: a group of people exchanging ideas in a mutually comprehensible idiom. The group, suggested Fleck, inevitably develops a mind of its own, as the individuals in it converge on a way of communicating, thinking and feeling. This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. [...]
We tend to think of heretics as contrarians, individuals with a compulsion to flout conventional wisdom. But sometimes a heretic is simply a mainstream thinker who stays facing the same way while everyone around him turns 180 degrees. When, in 1957, John Yudkin first floated his hypothesis that sugar was a hazard to public health, it was taken seriously, as was its proponent. By the time Yudkin retired, 14 years later, both theory and author had been marginalised and derided. Only now is Yudkin’s work being returned, posthumously, to the scientific mainstream. [...]
Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

In the past, we only had two sources of nutritional authority: our doctor and government officials. It was a system that worked well as long as the doctors and officials were informed by good science. But what happens if that cannot be relied on?

Ian Leslie, the author of Curious: the Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It, is a regular contributor to the Long Read. Twitter: @mrianleslie Thursday 7 April 2016 

Hindustan Times-9 hours ago
Dietary combination of protein and carbohydrate may help promote good gut health as such a diet encourages cooperation between ourselves ...

Savitri Study Camp 19-13 “The Deformed Dwarf” "One day I will return, a bringer of light; Then will I give to thee the mirror of God; Thou shalt see self and world as by him they are seen Reflected in ...

RECENT POSTS

  • Savitri Study Camp 19-13 “The Deformed Dwarf”
  • The Siddhi Day – Part 2 (video)
  • 4.2 Illness – An Inner Disequilibrium (Part 2)
  • The same pathology may express itself in very different ways and through very different outer manifestations. Let’s take the case of hypertension. The outer recordable anomaly is the elevated blood pressure. However, even when we reduce the blood pressure, the damage carries on in other systems due to a common underlying cause, say of atherosclerosis. Also the outer manifestation of elevated blood pressure may be due to a number of inner causes. This much is very obvious to all physicians. If we extend the logic a little deeper, it may not be very difficult to surmise three or four common roots for all illnesses and perhaps just one common seed corrupting the tree of human life and afflicting disease and death upon this planet. Tackle this seed of death and we have finally uprooted the whole tree of diseases for the human race. Remove the roots and we have effectuated a lasting cure for the individual. True, it may take a while before the shoots shrivel up, deprived of nourishment, but the surgery is radical and the cure permanent. In contrast, leave the roots and the seed while trimming off the wild and ungainly branches and the problem returns again and again in another form and name.
  • The Yogi on the Whirlpool
  • 4.2 Illness – An Inner Disequilibrium (Part 1)
  • A day may come when we may understand diagnosis by relating and describing the disequilibrium at each level and prescribe a corresponding therapy. Thus, we may consider a particular patient with blocked coronaries as reflecting a psychological attitude of blocking his emotions and holding things back. We may go on to see that this has led to congestion of vital force in some parts and depletion in others and also, we may notice, an altered energy field at the ‘heart chakra’ leading to an imbalance. The healing too will follow at multiple levels of which physical intervention through Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) surgery would be only one aspect of the treatment. The other levels also need to be addressed simultaneously. In a strictly physical model of disease, we may mock this whole exercise by simply saying that it makes no difference so long as the clot is removed and the heart has resumed its function. That may or may not be so for the physician, but it makes a difference to the man who returns after a few weeks or months or years with another heartache. In our infant enthusiasm and over-eagerness, we forget that man is not just a body and except for the most crude and animal side of humanity, we cannot be simply satisfied by our heavy bellies and empty hearts. We are more and we need to be more. [...] 
    It is said and rightly so that half knowledge is a dangerous thing. An absence of knowledge can be compensated by a right kind of faith. But an arrogance of ignorance passed off as knowledge is a very dangerous thing, since it closes our doors of higher perceptions. We can, for example, have trust that the All-Knower will pull us out of a difficulty or disease and distress if we understand nothing or know not what do about it. Often it helps, sometimes powerfully enough to look like a miracle. The truth of the matter is simply that by not knowing and therefore opening the doors to the All-Knower we invoke a much greater power and its far-reaching intervention. But by knowing a little we may develop a false sense of security and thereby close the doors to other forms of a higher intervention.
    What we often and perhaps unwittingly do by our half knowledge is to instil fear, through the use of terms, which do little good to the patient except creating anxiety. They only help in creating in the patient an even greater sense of helplessness. After all how can one fight an enemy whose very name is a mystery, evoking unknown fears, and whose sword of terror seems to be hopelessly stuck in our cells and our genes or whatever else. The word of the physician only makes our fears grow worse by giving strange powers to this demon of disease. How often do we hear a physician talk about only the negative side of an illness? How often do we hear him blaming it all on the genes and chemicals beyond our apparent control? We need to inspire the faith of the patient in his own abilities to help himself, in the great wisdom and power of Nature that is conscious and not just a blindly driven machine, and in God who is the caretaker of every destiny. By doing these together we may create the best possible conditions for a cure. What we often and perhaps unwittingly do by our half knowledge is to instil fear, through the use of terms, which do little good to the patient except creating anxiety. They only help in creating in the patient an even greater sense of helplessness. After all how can one fight an enemy whose very name is a mystery, evoking unknown fears, and whose sword of terror seems to be hopelessly stuck in our cells and our genes or whatever else. The word of the physician only makes our fears grow worse by giving strange powers to this demon of disease. How often do we hear a physician talk about only the negative side of an illness? How often do we hear him blaming it all on the genes and chemicals beyond our apparent control? We need to inspire the faith of the patient in his own abilities to help himself, in the great wisdom and power of Nature that is conscious and not just a blindly driven machine, and in God who is the caretaker of every destiny. By doing these together we may create the best possible conditions for a cure.
  • Savitri Study Camp 19-12 “Mother of Might”
  • Science and Unknowable

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Visceral, lived experiences best activate emotional circuits

Why Leadership Development Isn’t Developing Leaders
And how to fix it. Deborah Rowland hbr.org OCTOBER 14, 2016
Make it experiential. Neuroscience shows us that we learn most (and retain that learning as changed behavior) when the emotional circuits within our brain are activated. Visceral, lived experiences best activate these circuits; they prompt us to notice both things in the environment and what’s going on inside ourselves. If leadership development begins in the head, leaders will stay in their heads. We can’t simply think our way out of a habit. But in experience, and novel experience in particular, our intentional mind can be more engaged as we make conscious decisions about our behavior.

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
Organized around key topic areas of modern psychology such as brain functioning, perception, development, memory, emotion, intelligence, learning, personality, mental illness, and psychotherapy, this book will help students and laypersons ...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
Yuval Noah Harari - 2014 - ‎No preview - ‎More editions
In Sapiens, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical -- and sometimes devastating -- breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.

Love, healing, and beyond - Indian Psychology Institute
www.ipi.org.in › texts › others › suneet-l...
Non-violent ways of relating: Love, healing, and beyond. Suneet Varma. Abstract: The paper begins with a brief outline of the Indian Rasa and Bhava perspective on emotions given by Bharat in his Natya Shastra.
Suneet Varma
In general, I can confidently state that the most essential pre-requisite on the part of the therapist/spiritual guide for healing to take place, is a posture of and groundedness in unconditionallove. Without this, healing cannot begin, and thus the importance of self work/sādhanā. This has been notedin the Western context by the eminent psychotherapist Carl Rogers (1961) in his emphasis on the absolute necessity of the attitude of "unconditional positive regard‟ on the part of the therapist toward the client, and more explicitly by the eminent psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (1978) in his well known work, "The Road Less Travelled". A moment's reflection on healing in the traditional Indian context immediately reveals that when individuals in distress approach their guru, the healing process begins with the love and unconditional acceptance of the person in distress by the guru. Thus, at the risk of overstating, I again underscore the key importance of self-work on the part of the therapist/guru. [...] More generally, a genuine spiritual outlook fosters greater harmony and promotes a healthy and vibrant co-existence. It thus becomes important to examine what is it in spirituality that helps in reducing conflict.

Academic psychologists have shied away (with some notable exceptions) from enquiry in the spiritual domain, but interestingly, many among the founders of academic Psychology in India led double lives — they practiced Psychology as a western science in their professional lives, but in their personal lives they derived guidance and insights from traditional scriptural sources. Not only that, they even published in non-academic settings, writing on the efficacy and potency of Indian spiritual Psychology. I suspect that the situation today may not be very different. At this point it may serve us well to be reminded of the Mahabharata as a treatise par excellence depicting the nature and dynamics of group conflicts.

A cursory glance at the history of social movements on the sub-continent reveal that over the centuries, some of the most prominent movements have had a spiritual foundation as their inspiration — one that emphasizes the oneness of all humanity and which paves the way for lowering barriers along religion, caste, as well as gender lines.

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Divya
That human relationships are complicated would be a huge understatement. They are much more than just complicated, they are often dark, murky, and messed up. Who of us has not experienced the sheer frustration and despair of not having our … Continue reading →
Unlike the usual parameters of attachment, selfishness, insecurity, desire, fear that define most human relationships, the Guru-disciple relationship bases itself on some of the most beautiful ideals of human existence. It is a relationship that is built on profound love and respect, real trust and freedom and a natural and simple obedience. The central purpose of the relationship is to help and guide the disciple to undertake his inner search for the Self.

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Aditi
Psychology as a discipline is now more than 100 years old in India, still the term ‘Indian Psychology’ is new to us and is interpreted differently by different people; some believe it to be limited to the natives of the … Continue reading →
While answering this question, it is essential to understand the literal translation of the word ‘guru’, which is described as someone who takes us away from darkness and leads us towards light. In the light of Indian Psychology, it is not a physical body in the form of a guru but your belief in those thoughts and ideas that take you away from darkness. It can be in any form and if you really are a self-aware individual then you will find the guiding light within you which will help you solve all your problems. As they say all knowledge is an unfolding, so the essence of the ‘guru’ is present in each one of us. If we operate from that state of awareness, our life will be full of light and we will be able to walk on the sunlit path with our guru forever in our hearts. It’s not an external phenomenon, it’s internal. Tuning into our inner guiding light is being constantly in touch with the guru within.

[PDF] Ecopsychology: Remembering the True Source of our Consciousness
GA Parry - Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social …, 2016 ... The Indian sage Sri Aurobindo said something quite similar. Page 7. COSMOS AND HISTORY ... Something like this happened when Jean Gebser and Sri Aurobindo (contemporaries who never met), both wrote about the structures of consciousness in the mid-twentieth century. ...

Off the beaten Tracks: the neglected significance of interiority for sustainable urban development
C Woiwode - Futures, 2016
Interiority, the inner being, consciousness, is the core theme of this essay. My main concern is the application of rather marginal approaches to address future. [...] A key argument is that as much as we recognize the outer built environment of cities to address major challenges of our times like the ecological crisis, we also need to integrate the much more subtle interior dimensions of human existence to address them adequately. On the one hand, this research inquires about the potentials of social urban pioneers and change agents, intentional communities and such transnational initiatives like the transition town movement, which are discussed within the context of their global relevance in developed and developing countries illustrated by the case of India. While on the other hand, it is a quest to develop a conceptual-theoretical approach to what may be called integral transformative urban development planning.

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

Vedic hymns could also be read as metrical poetry

How to understand the world is a perpetual challenge and philosophy will survive because thinking doesn't require much material assistance.
On the whole, though one's philosophical treasure can't assure unadulterated truth, it would help in showing right direction and lighting path.
Interesting that while writing a previous tweet, I have valorised two terms, right and light, quite normally, as if they are self evident truth.

I’ve either forgotten who the Alien Ecologies blogger is, or never knew it. But THIS POST HERE is one of the best interpretations of my first book that I’ve ever seen.
https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/graham-harman-an-ontology-of-forces-and-actions/
As I was revisiting Graham Harman’s early Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects it struck me again that his work is not so much about objects as it is about those invisible forces locked away from direct access to our philosophic and scientific reason. As if there is this world of forces just below the surface of things that none of us would believe or accept if we were to make them visible. And it is not just Harman, as I look back over many of the current trends in philosophy I see this antagonistic relation to the visible and the phenomenal traditions.
In the last century postmodern philosophies lead us down the path of a hyper-romanticism that took the inner turn toward mind to its ultimate limits in post-structural irony and endless disquisitions on the blindspots of mind and (inter)text(uality). What Dryden and Pope were to the neo-classical age the hyper-nihilists of late pomo-romanticism (cum post-modernist) crowd were to an era in obscurity to its own demise.
Some in the sciences say philosophy is a doomed enterprise in an era where the neurosciences are doing in fact and deed what philosophy only surmised. But philosophy is not bound to any one field of endeavor, never was. Plato and Aristotle set up the first academies, and believed they were offering an education and value to their society. In our age the academy, humanistic endeavors, and philosophy in particular are coming under fire. Will they survive in a world where capital accumulation rather than the accumulation of wisdom is more important? Who know? Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom as it was then and shall be in the future. And wisdom is an illusive enterprise, indeed; yet, one at least, I believe, is still worth pursuing if only because it helps me get on with my life, gives me that quality of thought I need to sustain my existence against the forces that would seek to command and control my mind and life. Philosophy still holds out that life of the independent and free thinker, which is part of the human heritage I hope we never lose sight of. If we do then we might truly become mindless appendages to the external systems that seek to have their way with us. That would truly be doom writ large.
[HTML] The Info List-Round Table Conferences
MZ Khan, AKF Huq, R Srinivasan
... Social reformers. * Gopal Ganesh Agarkar * BR Ambedkar BR Ambedkar * Baba Amte Baba Amte * Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo * Ayyankali Ayyankali * Vinoba Bhave * Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty * Gopal Hari Deshmukh * Gopaldas Ambaidas Desai * Mahatma Gandhi ...
Implications for Social Work Chathapuram S. Ramanathan and Subhabrata Dutta CS Ramanathan - Spirituality, Culture, and Development: Implications for …, 2016
... Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama Page 278. Chathapuram S. Ramanathan and Subhabrata Dutta 262 have time and again stressed the importance of peace. Sri Aurobindo has observed that the divine works through harmony and peace and not by conflict. ...
Chathapuram S. RamanathanSrilatha JuvvaSubhabrata Dutta,Khadija Khaja
Rowman & Littlefield15-Oct-2016 - Social Science - 298 pages 0 Reviews
This book explores culture, development, and spirituality from the perspective of social work. This framework serves as foundation and guides analytical deliberation through the use of case studies from around the world. With emerging trends in development, synchronistic synthesis between the inner self and interventions, it is anticipated to contribute to advancing well-being of all people. The book reflects global experiences from both the social work professions and development practitioner’s perspectives, as it pertains to economic and social development. 
The book serves as a guide to those who want to better understand and incorporate spirituality into successful social work interventions, practice, and research. It examines social development in the daily lives of children and families by looking at larger national and international phenomenon that can affect the well-being of communities. The book further discusses natural disasters, poverty, war, migration, human trafficking, war, violence and other factors with suggestions of innovative global interventions that have been utilized to assist diverse marginalized groups and communities.

ritam - Scribd

https://www.scribd.com › document › rit...
We thank the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry for granting permission to print material from the .... of which the right principle of action and the right spiritual and divine result of works emerged naturally like a ...

Feb 8, 2016 - Ritam "The Word in the Rig-Veda and in Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri" ... In regard to the Veda it must be said right from the outset that there exists the special barrier of the Sanskrit language in ... In this context it is also necessary to mention the fact – of which hardly anyone even in India seems to be aware today – that besides the so-called Vedic chanting (which most likely was developed millennia ago to simply preserve the text and allow a single human being to retain by heart without distortions thousands of verses) these ancient hymns could also be read as metrical poetry. That Sri Aurobindo knew this – and even implied this fact when time and again he refers to the Veda in his work The Future Poetry – can be ascertained by his mentioning the need to restore the metre of some verses while he worked on their translation. And also Western academic scholarship – even though until today it is not able to appreciate the esoteric meaning of these inspired hymns – has recognized this from the 19th century onwards and in recent years has created the website "The Rigveda Metrically Restored Text".

Feb 5, 2016 - Ritam "Evolution towards Human Unity: Some passages from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother with ... ear', doing what seemed right at the time, improvising, and being ready to change according to  ...

Ritam "Sri Aurobindo Comes to Auroville" - Auroville Wiki

wiki.auroville.org.in › wiki › Ritam_"Sri...
Feb 8, 2016 - The power of Sri Aurobindo's presence most people find in his eyes, each eye radiating a very different light. Like the Mother's eyes, the right one is piercing, all seeing, while the left is remote ...

Nature of SpaceTime | Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother

https://auromere.wordpress.com › spaceti...
This is denoted as Triple Time Vision (Trikal-drishti) by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Mirra Alfassa and was .... Only right at the top of the ladder, when one reaches what could be called the centre of the universe, the ...

From the Tapas comes out first Ritam ca Satyam, that which is Truth and the Right. This is the first. In other words, out of the Sat–Chit–Ananda, by the power of Tapas comes out Supermind. Satyam, Ritam, Brihat ...
Savitri Era of those who adore, Om Sri Aurobindo & The Mother.