Monthly Archives: March 2016

Buddhist Superpowers

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Harvard Goes To The Himalayas – Monks With ‘Superhuman’ Abilities Show Scientists What We Can All Do

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monk

It’s fascinating to consider just how many ancient teachings tell us that humans have the capacity to gain extraordinary powers through various techniques. Some of these techniques, known as siddhis in the yoga tradition (from the Sanskrit, meaning “perfection”), include meditation, static dancing, drumming, praying, fasting, psychedelics, and more.

In Buddhism, for example, the existence of advanced powers is readily acknowledged; in fact, Buddha expected his disciples to be able to attain these abilities, but also to not become distracted by them.

A Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, Donald Lopez Jr., describes the many abilities ascribed to Buddha:

With this enlightenment, he was believed to possess all manner of supernormal powers, including full knowledge of each of his own past lives and those of other beings, the ability to know others’ thoughts, the ability to create doubles of himself, the ability to rise into the air and simultaneously shoot fire and water from his body. . . . Although he passed into nirvana at the age of eighty-one, he could have lived “for an aeon or until the end of the aeon” if only he had been asked to do so. (source)

Again, there are numerous historical anecdotes of people with, as the Institute of Noetic Sciences calls them, ‘extended human capacities.” Since this article is focused on Buddhist monks, here is another example from the lore as written by Swami Rama in Living with the Himalayan Masters:

I had never before seen a man who could sit still without blinking his eyelids for eight to ten hours, but this adept was very unusual. He levitated two and a half feet during his meditations. We measured this with a string, which was later measured by a foot rule. I would like to make it clear, though, as I have already told you, that I don’t consider levitation to be a spiritual practice. It is an advanced practice of pranayama with application of bandeaus (locks). One who knows about the relationship between mass and weight understands that it is possible to levitate, but only after long practice. . .

He (also) had the power to transform matter into different forms, like changing a rock into a sugar cube. One after another the next morning he did many such things. He told me to touch the sand – and the grains of sand turned into almonds and cashews. I had heard of this science before and knew its basic principles, but I had hardly believed such stories. I did not explore this field, but I am fully acquainted with the governing laws of science. (source)

A lot of these stories exist within the literature and lore, but they are just stories, up to the readers to decide if they hold any actually credibility. Of course, one who subscribes to various ancient teachings would be more inclined to believe that these are more than just stories and tales. With science shedding light on the possible truths of ancient mysticism, it’s not implausible to think that, at one time, these abilities were more common knowledge.

Today, there have been a number of studies within the realms of parapsychology that have yielded statistically significant results, especially when examining the findings that’ve come from quantum physics. This is why Max Planck, the theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, stated that he “regards consciousness as fundamental” and that he regarded “matter as derivative from consciousness.” He also wrote that “we cannot get behind consciousness” and that “everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness.” And the Dalai Lama has supported this viewpoint:

R.C. Henry, Professor of Physics of Physics and Astronomy at John Hopkins University, explains things further:

A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual. (source)

For a selected list of downloadable peer-reviewed journal articles reporting studies of psychic phenomena, mostly published in the 21st century, you can click HERE.

Harvard And The Himalayan Monks

During a visit to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Harvard Professor of Medicine Herbert Benson and his team of researchers studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo (a yoga technique), raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It is still unknown how the monks are able to generate such heat. (source)

And it doesn’t stop there — the researchers also studied advanced meditators in Sikkim, India, where they were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent.(source)

In 1985, the Harvard research team made a video of monks drying cold, wet sheets with body heat alone. Monks spending winter nights 15,000 feet high in the Himalayas is also not uncommon.

These are truly remarkable feats, and not the first time science has examined humans who can do extraordinary things. We published an article a couple of months ago showing that factors associated with consciousness can influence our autonomic nervous system. You can read more about that in the article linked below, as it is heavily sourced and provides links to several papers that clearly indicate how factors associated with consciousness can influence our biology.

Study: Factors Associated With Consciousness Can Influence Our Autonomic Nervous System

If you’re further interested in this subject, I recommend reading Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities by Dr. Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

from:    http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/03/01/harvard-goes-to-the-himalayas-monks-with-superhuman-abilities-show-scientists-what-we-can-all-do/

The Politics of FEAR

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Trump Couldn’t Have Asked for a Better Media Climate: All Fear, All the Time

03/01/2016 11:19
  • Dan Gillmor Professor of Practice, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Arizona State University

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof weighed in on who is to blame for the poisoning of American politics.

“The G.O.P. Created Donald Trump,” blared the headline. In recent decades, Kristof wrote, Republican leaders “pried open a Pandora’s box, a toxic politics of fear and resentment, sometimes brewed with a tinge of racial animus, and they could never satisfy the unrealistic expectations that they nurtured among supporters.”

True enough, but incomplete. The lies and predations of the power elite have given voters ample reason to be angry. Almost every major institution in American society, including government and big business, has failed in some fundamental ways. That so many voters have gravitated toward a bigoted, egomaniacal liar like Trump — and may do so again today on Super Tuesday — points us toward another failed institution with which Kristof is intimately familiar: the nation’s newsrooms.

Crime-infested local news programming has continued even in an era of plummeting crime rates in America.

I know this terrain, too, as a longtime journalist — and, more recently, as someone who’s trying to help people navigate the flood of information and misinformation in a digital world. And I’m not talking here (for the most part) about the Rush Limbaugh-led radio cadre, more recently joined by Fox News and a host of right-wing websites that can be counted on to spew fear and loathing. Their role has been corrosive enough, but at least they’re not pretending to be fair or balanced.

No, I’m talking more about the traditional media organizations — newspapers and local TV news in particular — that have spectacularly failed to do their jobs in recent decades. They, too, have contributed to the accelerating meltdown of societal norms.

They’ve been outright complicit in creating the current political environment. When news organizations haven’t been obsessed with celebrities — Trump was an expert celebrity before moving into politics, they’ve catered to fear. When their coverage of politics and policy hasn’t been about who’s winning and losing, it’s been stenography, writing down the words of the powerful and quoting “two sides” in a story even when one is lying. And nuance? What’s that?

For the most part, local TV news would need a huge upgrade just to achieve mediocrity. But its willful badness deserves special mention and no small amount of contempt. It’s been years since local stations made any pretense of serving the public trust. Sure, they provide the services of the weather report and sports scores, along with some infotainment — mostly celebrity voyeurism — and, occasionally, the kind of news and information their communities truly need.

The old cliché about local news’ obsession with murder and mayhem is still accurate: ‘If it bleeds it leads.’

But by and large, the old cliché about local news’ obsession with murder and mayhem is still accurate: “If it bleeds it leads.” On a recent visit to Phoenix, I watched an early-morning news show that went from one crime story to another. Oh, there was a fire, too.

Crime-infested local news programming has continued even in an era of plummeting crime rates in America. And so, over the past 20-plus years, the local news helped feed a tough-on-crime atmosphere that stripped away crucial civil liberties — including most of our Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures — and kept other serious issues off the air.

Network and news-channel journalism has devolved, meanwhile. Terrorism, far less likely to affect an average citizen than domestic crime, has become all too much the focus. After the shootings in San Bernardino, CNN adopted coverage that could be called “all fear, all the time” (my expression, not theirs). When I could stomach tuning in, I saw segment after segment that made a foul-enough crime sound like an attack for the ages, presaging truly mass jihadist carnage on our streets.

Even Kristof’s Times, normally the finest of our journalism institutions, has jumped aboard the Be Afraid bandwagon. The newspaper invited its readers to write in about how much they feared being targeted in a mass shooting and never mentioned in the subsequent story the extreme unlikelihood of this happening to any individual.

Terrorism, far less likely to affect an average citizen than domestic crime, has become all too much the focus.

The Trumps of our culture couldn’t have asked for a better media climate in which to wage war on the political establishment, immigrants, Muslims and truth. Our media lap it up, handing the demagogues the megaphones; they drive ratings and mouse clicks.

Journalists are having qualms, at least. In the past few months, there has been quite a bit of “what should we do about Trump?” conversation in public and private settings. At some level, journalists recognize that they can’t — or at least shouldn’t — sit still as Trump and other candidates lie and pitch the kinds of authoritarian “solutions” that would lead to drastic curbs on liberty.

The right response, however, would take most political reporters and editors out of their comfort zones, where they profess what my friend, the press critic and reviewer Jay Rosen, calls the “view from nowhere” — being above it all and opting not to know or care who’s telling the truth. Reporters behave as if they have an absurd obligation to let politicians attack fundamental liberties, without which robust journalism can’t exist in the first place, without pushing back.

The Trumps of our culture couldn’t have asked for a better media climate in which to wage war on the political establishment, immigrants, Muslims and truth.

Issues such as freedom of expression, freedom to associate and more are in jeopardy in an era of pervasive surveillance and increasingly centralized control of technology and communications. If journalists want to keep their jobs, journalists have to be activists on these very issues, and shouldn’t call themselves journalists if they don’t.

Media people should see candidate extremism as an opportunity, not a dilemma. “Trump may well represent one moment where clickbait and accountability journalism form a partnership,” Erik Wemple, Washington Post media critic, wrote a few days ago. “To understand Trump’s wide-ranging awfulness, after all, you need to present wide-ranging coverage.” (A comedian recently made a good-faith effort to do just that.)

So what should journalists do about Trump? They should do their jobs.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-gillmor/trump-media-fear_b_9352554.html