"I had tried just about everything. Hypnotherapy, Raiki, Kinesiology, Aural Healing, even Jesus. If only I had found The Muktarium earlier. - Catherine Ng Development Manager
Delusion
The word delusion comes from the Latin “delusio” and is defined as a false belief held with absolute conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. Delusion is usually associated with psychiatric disorders, and in particular schizophrenia. Ironically, of what little “superior evidence” humans actually have, remanding delusion to the custody of the insane is about as delusional as you can get. The fact of the matter is all humans practice delusion, every day, all day long. Of course we don’t call it delusion. Just like we don’t call it prostitution when a woman or a man marries someone because they’re wealthy. Stealing becomes “white collar crime”. Misleading electorates is called “spin”. An imaginary rabbit gives some people a great reason for exchanging chocolate at Easter. These are but a few example of how loosely we humans play with reality and semantics when we are engaging each other.
Humans And Human Society
Humans operate within an organizational context known as society upon which the success of every human enterprise is hinged, from the most frivolous to the most vital. In one sense, human society is an aggregate because it involves multifarious human engagements, which occur at the level of two or more humans interacting. In another sense human society is an aggregate because a considerable portion of humanness occurs via symbolic interaction among humans, which require mass subscriptions – that is, a lot of people have to subscribe to a set of beliefs in order for the thing to exist. Corporations are a good example of this. Here today, because a group of people believe themselves to be employees or customers. And then gone. Look at Enron, Bear Sterns or the Montreal Expos. As Corporation exist because we believe they do, so does the drama of your life. Your experience of living is fed to you through your senses, and arranged by your brain. Are you taking advantage of the opportunity to arrange your reality in ways that bring you power, love and happiness? Are you exercising your experience of Freedom?
Symbolic Interaction And The Production of Reality
The reason human beings are the dominant species is certainly not because of physical prowess. As a species, when it comes to running, climbing, fighting, digging, or flying without the use of machines, compared to other animals, humans are not the most impressive beasts in the animal kingdom. However, we must be doing something right because “we run dis” as the rappers would say. The reason we “run dis” or are the dominant species is because of our superiority at symbol usage compared to other species. Written and spoken language is an example of our superior usage of symbols.
When humans interact symbolically, the symbols, themselves are rarely important. What is important is what the symbols represent. In terms of intrinsic reality, when you read words, what you see is just a collection of graphic configurations. However, these graphic configurations are much more than that. They are letters that form words that form sentences that represent thought. Why is that? It is because we have agreed that certain graphic representations, on the basis of design, order, and proximity to other similar graphic configurations have specific meanings. In other words we have created a consensual reality by reifying (making real) on the basis of consensus and mass social subscription. That is, our symbols mean what they mean because we all agree upon it.
What you are seeing on this screen is just an arrangement of blinking coloured pixels. However, these coloured pixels do more than blink. They are agents of creation that bring my presence - my thoughts – into contact with you and your brain. Your brain stitches the pixels into my presence, effortlessly. It’s as if I’m talking to you. Whenever we consume television or movies, we buy into a suite of delusions; the first and most automatic is the delusion that you are watching people. You are not. You are looking at an illuminated screen. The delusions that follow may be… the fictional characters are real people, the politicians are on your side, the products or services being advertised are what you need…
The tricky thing is that some of these delusions are close to being real. Others are not. But they are all delusions.
Just like when a Shakespearean actor dons a costume and assumes the roll of Henry V he becomes Henry V on stage because the actor and the audience agree to subscribe to the consensual reality that the actor is actually Henry V and the stage is actually the time and place in which Henry V lived. The performance is commensurate with how successful the actor is at convincing himself, and subsequently the audience, that he is Henry V.
Such utilitarian value is just one of many reasons creating consensual realities, subscribing to them, and interacting symbolically through those consensual realities have always been a copious human enterprise. In the business of symbolic interaction as we previously discussed, it is not the symbols in and of them selves that are important, but what they represent that is important.
In written and spoken language the intrinsic reality is that we have “created a false belief and held it with absolute conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.” That is, we have taken a group of graphic configurations and said this is not just graphic configurations (although that’s really what they are) this represents an object or an event. In a television show, what we are watching is not actual persons, objects and events, but a digital images that represents actual persons, objects or events. How often do we think about that? Never. Why would we? It would conflict with the purpose of television, i.e., entertaining and informing us via sophisticated symbolic interaction. So the bottom line is, symbolic interaction requires “creating a false belief and holding it with absolute conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.”
And where did we hear that? Oh yeah, that’s the definition of delusion. Yeah but, by virtue of the fact that televisions are on all around the world, and this is being written and read, as are volumes of other material, these types of delusions are working for humans—and have for a long, long time. Okay, fair enough, but lets be clear here. Not only do all humans participate in delusion, delusion is one of the signature human traits.
A spiritual pathway is something that must be travelled with the body, not just the mind. The mind will be cramped by the defensive mechanisms in the brain that resist change. Spiritual growth requires physical and mental discipines to be undertaken together, so that EXCHANGE may occur. This is purpose of YOGGING.
Yogging facilitates a process in which your emotions and negative memories rise up into consciousness and are processed out in order to achieve BALANCE and SYMMETRY at the neuronal level. You will allow the molecules of your experiential memory and emotion to catch up to your life.
This isn’t carnival mumbo jumbo. This has been proven scientifically. People absorb information when they are relaxed. It’s been proven in education studies that people can’t really learn when they are afraid. Being in a calm, pleasurable, but alert state is the most efficient way to absorb information. Absorbing information effectively is the best way to live the healthiest, happiest, life. You simply can’t do that if you are holding negative emotions at the cellular level. Therefore yogging is not a trendy hobby or a fun past time like so many hot-today-old-news-tomorrow behaviors. It is an essential way of intervening on the interruption to your body’s natural way of maintaining its health.
IMPORTANT: See the Disclaimer at main menu, above, before attempting any Yogging movements.
Order
Even when early scientists peered “through a glass darkly” and saw the earth as being the center of the Universe they knew that the Universe was the sum whole of everything. Everything included space, time, matter, energy, planets, stars, galaxies, intergalactic space and “beyond”. According to the archeological evidence (e.g. hieroglyphics) the ancients worshipped the sun. In worshipping the sun they observed that sun had a distinct motion, i.e., it moved about the sky in a distinctive fashion as opposed to randomly. There is a preponderance of archeological and historical data substantiating this. There is also an ample literature confirming that the ancients made the same observations about the moon. Later, when humans began to sail the seas they discovered that the moon had an effect on the tides. From these observations humans were able to build essential early tools, such as the sundial, sextant, calendar, etc. This would not have happened if the Universe behaved randomly. Think about it. If the sun was like a teenager, and got up whenever it wanted, stayed up longer than it should, or didn’t get up at all, sundials and calendars would be useless. What if the invisible, geometric meridians of our Planet’s geomagnetic field did not exist. Compasses wouldn’t exist because they would serve no purpose. It is as simple as that. However, there are calendars, sextants and compasses. That is certain.
There is order, and while there is dynamism, ebb and flow, within this order, there is a rhythm; a truly Universal beat with which we can be in sync, or not; wholly or partially.
Welcome to the Muktarian. We invite you to join us in a discussion aimed at learning to recognize the order that exists in the Universe and the laws that are manifest at all levels, from subatomic particles to galaxies and beyond; from theories of how the experience of life is constructed, to practices that will shape your body and mind to live a life of freedom, power, love and happiness.
Mukti means Freedom. Our ultimate aim is to help you free your mind, your body and your spirit.
Science: The Search for Simple Truth
The sextant was used by sea captains to help them know where they were and where they were heading.
The magnificent Jantar Mantar, is a collection of astronomical instruments in the form of majestic architectural structures, built in the 18th century by a visionary Maharaja. It is a cousin of Stonehenge, hewn on a different continent and built with more evolved knowledge and instruments.
Such tools and buildings exist because there is an observable and measurable Order to the Universe that can be replicated. They were created to feed an insatiable desire to learn, to understand and to know. When something is observable, measurable and replicable it is admissible to the body of scientific evidence because it is in accordance with the principles or Laws of science. Astronomers, astrologers, astrophysicists, biologists, chemists, economists, farmers, housewives, geologists, meteorologists, sociologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, physicians, etc. etc. etc., have all observed a distinct measurable and replicable Order existing in various forms throughout the Universe that is responsible to a set of principles or Laws.
Therefore, by the existence of Order, there are Laws. In this context, Laws do not exist because they have been legislated or agreed upon. Laws exist to help us understand and interact with the Order that is. Laws help us to appreciate and work constructively with the building blocks of Order.
Physics
Physics, which comes from the ancient Greek “physis” for nature, is the study of matter and its Motion through space and time along with adjacent concerns such as energy and force. In other words, physics is analyzing nature in Order to better understand the Laws of the Universe. Thus, the next chapters in the train of thought will rely on the Laws of physics.
The Human Brain and The Human Mind
When asked about his boxing strategy, Muhammad Ali said, “kill the head and the ass will die.” Although most neuroscientists would not necessarily articulate that truth like that, Ali was right on the money. The human brain is the most important organ. Since this discussion is about humans, we should start with the brain.
The human brain and the human mind are not the same. The human brain is part of a visible, physically tangible world known as the human body. Most human brains weigh 3-pounds or less. The external contour of this 3-pound organ is extremely folded and convoluted. Neuroscientists refer to these convolutions as gyri and sulci.
Aesthetically speaking, the surface of the human brain is ugly, at best. However, while these convolutions may not be pretty, they vastly increase the brain’s surface area, subsequently increasing the number of possible connections between brain cells, and thereby increasing its computing power. Microscopic examination of the brain has revealed that the brain’s 100 billion cells make approximately 60 trillion connections (synapses) with other brain cells. These synapses weave an intricate tapestry of living, brain-cell fibers creating a rich and complex communications network called the human brain.
Conversely, the human mind is part of the invisible, transcendent world of thought, feeling, attitude, belief and imagination. The human brain is the physical organ most associated with the human mind and human consciousness, but the human mind is not confined to the human brain. Intelligence in the human mind permeates every cell of the human body, not just brain cells. It also extends to the environment and the Universe. Consequently, the human mind has tremendous power over all human bodily systems and is dynamically engaged in most enterprises in the Universe’s commerce. This level of engagement thereby makes the mind a fundamental currency in the Universe’s economy.
Connecting the Dots
There is a body of evidence called admissible scientific data that has proven all things (space, time, matter, energy, planets, stars, galaxies, intergalactic space and “beyond”) are contained in what we call the Universe.
The Universe as observed for centuries by multiple scientific disciplines (physics, geometry, mathematics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, astrology, neuroscience, physiology, biology, psychiatry, sociology, paleontology, meteorology, pharmacology etc.) operate according to a body of principles or laws.
Humans are comprised of particles and energy like other objects in the Universe. Therefore, humans, human behavior and human life outcomes must also be responsible to the laws of the Universe. Just like circumnavigating society is easier when you understand how the laws work, circumnavigating the Universe (or living your life) is easier when you understand how the laws work.
Scientific and academic disciplines, events, and objects present categorically according to a set of scientific principles known as taxonomy. Again this is about the order and science of the Universe, i.e., the truths of biology are measurable and observable on a biological or cellular level, astrophysics on a celestial or astronomical level, sociology at the societal level etc. Evolutionary phylum’s and species are a great example of taxonomy at work, e.g. reptiles, mammals, amphibians etc.
Therefore there must be an organizational taxon for approaching thought and behavior according to the principles of the Universe. There is, and basically it can be divided into five areas: Motion, Exchange, Purity, Balance, and Symmetry.
Towards A Unified Theory of Emotion
Former Chief of Brain Biochemistry at the U.S. National Institute of Health, Dr. Candace Pert’s experiments have shown that the hippocampus, which is part of the limbic brain system, is the gateway to the human experience of emotion. Dr. Pert identified nearly every type of peptide receptor in the hippocampus.
The best way of understanding how peptide receptors work is to the think about of bunch of different locks—they would be the receptors on the surface of the cell. Receptors on the surface of the cell kind of look like a stained glass window, various shapes and colors. For each of these receptors there is only one key that fits it. The keys are called ligands, most of which are neuropeptides. Whenever you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste something the way that external information is translated internally on a cellular level is by specific ligands or peptides binding to specific receptor sites on the surface of the cell. The process is called chemo taxis—and can be thought of as cellular sex. Now depending on which keys are in which locks on the surface of the cell, different processes occur on the inside of the cell (e.g. glucose metabolism, calcium channel firing etc.) Depending on which keys are in which locks, (i.e., the binding status of the receptors and ligands on the surface of the cell) the informational substances of your body (your hormones and other messenger chemicals behave in specific ways. So in a word this process is how information from the exogenous (outside of the body) environment is exchanged with the endogenous (inside of the body) environment.
Peptides, Mood, and Memory
Through the peptide network, which is anything that has peptide receptors on it you can access different memories, mood states or developmental stages. The decibel of associated emotion is the key variable that determines whether or not, or how well, we remember objects or events in our lives.
There is a lot of evidence that memory occurs at the synapse (junction where a neuron passes an electrical or chemical signal to another cell—neural or otherwise). There are changes that take place in the receptors. When an event occurs it triggers the pre-synaptic firing of a neuron. If the proper chemical situation exists (e.g. sufficient glutamate receptors for the post synaptic cell to become depolarized etc.) it causes an association between the cells.
The general idea is that any two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend to become associated, so the activity in one facilitates activity in the other. When one cell repeatedly causes firing in another, the axon of the first cell develops synaptic knobs (or enlarges the pre-existing ones) when contact occurs with the soma of the second cell. Generally speaking, this process is called Hebbian Theory.
Hebbian Learning
“Hebbian Theory” or “Hebbian Learning” is basically a description of the process of plasticity. Let us say a particular event causes Cell A to keep firing over and over again, so much so that it causes the cell to undergo cellular changes for the sake of creating stability. The purpose of this process is how neurons balance themselves and achieve symmetry in the brain at a cellular level.
When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased. This causes a bond between the cells, or as they say in Hebbian theory, “the cells that fire together wire together”. This is yet another example of the brain’ s proclivity for consolidating, simplifying and anticipating. Remember the primary goal of the brain is to maintain the internal milieu or homeostasis. Hence, consolidating, simplifying and anticipating are a way to achieve that mor e effectively.
It is also an example of how what we do and say (cause those things translates into neuron firing in our brain) effects what we become.
The Making of Emotional Memory
The sensitivity of the receptors is a part of memory and pattern storage. But the peptide network extends beyond the hippocampus, to organs, tissue, skin, muscle and endocrine glands. They all have peptides receptors on them and can access and store emotional information. This means this emotional memory is stored in many places in the body, not just the brain. The autonomic nervous system is pivotal to this entire understanding. Its importance is much more subtle than scientist used to think it was. Every peptide that scientists have mapped in the brain can be found in the autonomic nervous system. Thus, there is an emotional coding to the way our autonomic patterns are articulated in the body.
When you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system you automatically relax the body, sending healing ripples throughout the body, metaphorically speaking. One of the cheapest and most readily resources for accomplishing this is by long, deep controlled exhaled breaths.
The Nodal Points And The Chakras:
There are high concentrations of neuropeptide receptors wherever large amounts of information, from the five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell), enter the nervous system. In Western Medicine and Neuroscience these areas along the spinal cord axis, from the top of the forehead to the base of the spine are known as nodal points. In 1987, Dr. Candace Pert discovered that the classical chakras corresponded to what Western Medicine and neuroscience called nodal points, thereby establishing Western scientific credibility to Eastern medicine.
The autonomic nervous system includes the spinal cord and the ganglion that are down either side of the body. So it is absolutely possible that emotion could be stored in these areas indefinitely. Emotional memories are our earliest memories. They are long term memories stored where we need them for survival.
You can access emotional memory anywhere in the peptide/receptor network, in any number of ways. For example, if you have a memory that has to do with food and eating, you might access it by the nerves hooked up to the pancreas. However, you can access emotion and memory through any nodal point in the neural loop. As we previously said, nodal points are places where there is a lot of convergent information with many different peptide receptors. In these nodal points there is potential for emotional regulation and conditioning. Therefore, we are programmed for the capacity to repeat emotional experience that can be accessed through our body in various ways. This of course raises the question of what happens to emotions that can’t be fully expressed through the body.
Emotional Distillation
Emotion is not fully expressed until it reaches consciousness. Consciousness includes the entire body. Unexpressed emotion is in process of traveling up the neural access, i.e., coming from the periphery, up the spinal cord, up into the brain. When emotion moves up, it can be expressed. It takes a certain amount of energy from our bodies to keep the emotion unexpressed. There are inhibitory chemicals and impulses that function to keep the emotion and information down. I think unexpressed emotions are literally lodged lower in the body.
So another way of thinking of emotion is as “e-motion” or energy in motion.
According to Dr. Pert, and this author concurs, the mind has levels of integration. You are integrating lower brain areas when you move the emotion up and get it into consciousness. That is the beginning of comprehension as we know and think of it. For example, you’re having a romantic dinner with your spouse. You drop some hot candle wax on your leg. The first reaction is to be alarmed by the pain. The emotional reflex moves up the body until it reaches the thalamus and you say, “Good goglioshus! This is hotter than a ten-dollar I-POD!” Note: it is not until the signal reaches the thalamus that you can start figuring out how to make the whole thing your spouse’s fault. (Putting a spin on emotions is called thalamic response; blaming it on your spouse regardless is called marriage).
The thalamus is where we begin to put the spin on emotions. Unexpressed emotions are interred deep in the body in the circuitry of the organs, or the GI tract, or a loop in a ganglium. Scientists even know what the memory storage looks like. It's protein molecules coupled up to receptors—it’s a lot like a lap dance. Some thought it only gets stored in the brain. But it also looks like that in the body. So memories can get stored that same way in a pancreas, the kidneys, the lungs etc.
Unexpressed emotion (be it positive or negative) is harmful to the mind and body. If you haven't fully grieved a loss, for example, your weakened immune system might make you a candidate for an illness, like cancer. There is no coincidence that the rise in cancer in this world is commensurate with social horrors and the disintegration of the family unit. There is overwhelming evidence that unexpressed emotion causes illness. Basically, it’s the old theories of Reich at work on a molecular level.
Molecular Reichianism
Reich had a model of working with emotion that is sometimes called the "conflict model" of catharsis. Reich believed that two psychic forces were at work in every individual. According to Reich, one force wanted to express emotion and the other force wanted to resist it. So he thought the two forces were at a stand off and he designed his therapeutic technique to weaken the resistance, thereby allowing emotional expression, or as we previously said, “e-motion” to occur.
Thinking of it in molecular terms, the raw emotion is working to be expressed in the body. It's always moving up the neural access. Up the nodal points on the spinal cord that Dr. Pert discovered to reside in the same place as the chakras. The Reichian need to resist this is coming from the cortex. It is all in the brain; everything always is, if only for a moment. Rationalizations are pushing the energy down. There is a good reason for this. The cortex is resisting overload. We live in a world that inundates the cortex with way too much information considering what it is designed for. The problem with cognitive overload is that it creates imbalance. Imbalance is the enemy of the organism and of the Universe. There is no science where the goal is to end up in a state of imbalance.
Thus the brain is niggardly about what information is allowed up into the cortex. It's always a struggle in the body. The real, true emotions that need to be expressed are in the body, trying to move up and be expressed and thereby integrated. That's why psychoanalysis in a vacuum doesn't work. You are spending all your time in your cortex, rather than in your body. So effectively what you are doing is adding to the resistance.
Therefore, a vertical model of catharsis, letting the emotion move up the body, perhaps finding ways to relax the cortex to allow the unexpressed emotion to be first experienced and then cognitively integrated is the only way to go. Let the emotion rise up.
There are Five Freedoms and four levels of ownership.
The first Freedom is the Freedom to BE. Mukti astu is the sanskrit translation. The Freedom to Be is the foundational Freedom. The Freedom to Be who you are, as you are, in this moment now. The attainment of this Freedom brings with it a sense of self.
The second Freedom is the Freedom to LIVE. Mukti jVati. How is Free to BE different from Free to LIVE? When we own our Freedom to LIVE, we are free from fear. When the mind experiences itself as Profoundly Free to LIVE, there is no fear, doubt or anxiety. The attainment of this Freedom brings with it an openness to all that life offers. It triggers curiouslty and play.
The third Freedom is the Freedom to LOVE. Mukti dayate. Being Free to LOVE connects us to the most powerful energy that can be experienced by a human being. Being Free to LOVE means allowing your feeling towards people, activities and even objects to exist and energise you.
The fourth Freedom is the Freedom to GIVE. Mukti sampradAtvya. The Law of Exchange tells us that Giving is Balanced with Recieving. When the GIVING happens from a place of LOVE, you are in alignment with the Universal Laws and RECIEVING is the natural outcome.
The fifth Freedom is the Freedom to THRIVE. Mukti poSam. This is your unlimited license to suceed and prosper. When your success in driven by GIVING, motivated by LOVING, coming from a place of fearless LIVING, because you own your Freedom to BE, your prosperity will be PURE and just. You are Free to enjoy your success.
When you experience yourself to be Profoundly Free to BE, to LIVE, to LOVE, to GIVE and to THRIVE you will be contributing to the well-being of your loved ones, to your community, your nation and indeed all creation.
To say you owe it to yourself is naff. To say you owe it to those around you, runs counter to the notion of PURE Freedom. Discover your Freedom. Exercise it. Freedom is it's own reward.
Owning the Freedom to BE is so important. If you have ever spent any time in a place that you don't feel you deserve to be, then you'll know what we mean. If ever there was a Freedom that was our birthright, it is our Freedom to BE. You are a human BEING. You think, therefore you BE. No one can take this Freedom from you while you have consciousness.
Be you for the right reasons. Be you, because you are you. No one can Be you, like you can Be you, so Be you. It's what the Universe wants from you.
This Freedom can be pacticed using the yogging exercise - muti astu; which means "freedom to be".
The famous dramatic monologue - To BE or no to BE - depicts the mind of a man who questions his Freedom to BE. He's not debating suicide, because the argument is between putting up with the present and dealing with whatever will come up in the next life; "the undiscovered country". Its a strangely reassuring argument.
The second Freedom is the Freedom to LIVE. Mukti jVati.
When we own our Freedom to LIVE, we are free from fear. When the mind experiences itself as Profoundly Free to LIVE, there is no fear, doubt or anxiety. The attainment of this Freedom brings with it an openness to all that life offers. It triggers curiouslty and play.
You are alive now. Clearly, you are free to be alive in this moment. The future is not here yet. The past has happened. You live in a world where many people are engaged in professions whereby they will actively strive to keep you alive.
The fear of not living is a deep seated survival mechanism designed to keep the human brain safe. Trouble is, it often won't switch of when it's no required. Human being should spend the majority of their lives free from the far of dying.
To practice owning your Freedom to Live, use mukti jVati.
The heart is the seat of LOVE in the body. It is also the most critical organ when it comes to feeding the body with the nourishment it needs; in terms of the nutritional energy and oxygen that is carried by the blood, but also it drives MOTION through the cells of the body, rattling them into life. No heart. No life.
The same is true for LOVE. No LOVE and your life will be without energy. Why are you not free then to LOVE?
It may be that you have bought into the story that to LOVE is merely frivilous. It may be that someone has told you that the object of your LOVE is beneath you, or not worthy of you. They have it the wrong way around. As the classic Queen anthem says it; "Find Me Somebody to Love." This songwright knows the true power of LOVE.
If the obstacle to LOVE is a social convention, then it is obsolete and should be discarded. Exercise your Freedom to LOVE through mukti dayate and then turn your LOVE light onto someone and connect. You'll discover the wisdom of this advice through surrendering to it.
Sonnect 29 is a combination of the Power of Delusion and owning the Freedom to LOVE.
When people profoundly own the Freedom to GIVE, they are no longer afraid of being in need. It is Freedom from the poverty of the mind and worth practicing using mukti sampradAtavya.
The Universe wants to EXCHANGE itself with you. As you GIVE so you shall receive.
One must practice the Freedom to THRIVE when living in cultures that do not trust success. This is a big shame. The more successful, THRIVING people there are in the world, the greater the opportunities for Freedom for all people. It is lost, unhappy people who do the greatest damage to themselves and their environment. THRIVING people can achieve a sense of perspective and see far beyound their personal survival and happiness, to serve the needs of others.
One doesn’t have to argue the validity of motion in science. Aristotle started that discussion long, long ago with his theory that objects have their natural place in space. Galileo begged to differ. Newton didn’t beg at all, he just did some meticulous experiments that systematically cracked Aristotle’s theories apart in the same way a kookaburra cracks open a crab. Later, Euler and Descartes added to the discussion. Now many years later, physicists have been proving and reproving the Newtonian theories of motion, and using them along with other theories, e.g., Keppler‘s theory of planetary motion, to better understand Motion in the Universe.
Physicists describe motion as a change in the position of an object in respect to time. Physicists typically describe motions in terms of velocity (the measurement of the rate and direction of change in the position of an object), acceleration (the rate of change of velocity over time), displacement (the shortest distance from the initial position to the final point) and time (a measuring system used to sequence events to compare durations and intervals).
Newton’s three physical laws of motion are the basis for classical mechanics. Newton’s laws describe the relationship between the forces acting on a body and its motion due to those forces.
Newton’s First Law
The velocity of a body remains constant unless an external force acts upon the body. In other words, a body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest unless something happens to it.
Newton’s Second Law
The acceleration (a) of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force (F) and inversely proportional to the mass (m). Therefore, F= ma.
You want to move something – you gotta apply some force.
This principle applies to objects, people and ideas.
Newton’s Third Law
The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear. In other words, for every action there is an equal, and opposite, reaction.
So if do apply force to an object, a person or an idea, expect a bit of bounce back.
Motion as a Universal Truth for Humans
Humans are bodies that change positions in respect to time. We get up in the morning (unless we’re teenagers) and we go about our daily routine—definitely changing positions in respect to time.
What about the bodies within our bodies, i.e., the cells, and the molecules that make up our cells? They are all bodies changing position in respect to time as well.
For example, when we experience something in our environment, (i.e., a sound, sight, taste, visceral sensation, or smell) it is translated on a cellular level by sensory mechanisms swinging into action (motion) with chemo taxis (more motion) of ligands towards the receptor sites on the surface of the cell.
As Dr. Candace Pert articulated in “The Molecules of Emotion”, the binding status on the surface of the cells have a bi-directional relationship with endogenous and exogenous stimuli. The binding status of specific ligands (neuropeptides mostly) on the cell surface, determine how the “informational substances” (hormones, neurotransmitters, etc.) move throughout the body in conducting the business of interoceptive awareness (how we feel what we feel), emotion, health status, perception, etc.
Therefore, in accordance with Newtonian physics, a thought, which is comprised of mass, force and acceleration and occurs in the newly developed prefrontal cortex, … which is then reconciled in the amygdala and the hippocampus in the old mammalian brain… has the power to change the status of a body’s inertial state according to the laws of Newtonian physics. And it does exactly that in the pathophysiology of stress (how the brain turns stressful events into disease by overusing the body’s protective mechanisms, thereby making them go from promoting health to demoting health). An example of this would be how the surge in blood pressure used to prepare the body for the eventuality of fight or flight becomes hypertension when it is overused in responding to a constant stressor.
In terms of human behavior and effecting life change, the third law of motion in Newtonian physics is the most important: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You press on a mattress with your thumb and it makes an indention in the mattress, but the mattress also presses back on your thumb. You insist that your significant other contributes more to the running of the house – that they pick after themselves and help with the washing – expect the relationship to change, as an equal and opposite reaction is heading in your direction.
Beyond that simplicity though, what happens when you have a thought, e.g., you imagine that the world is at peace, and everybody is happy. For as long as you can maintain that thought, without the pre-frontal cortex or the hippocampus injecting some data to the contrary, there will be a definite affect in your cortisol levels. This is very old news to neuroscientists, i.e., thoughts affect body chemistry. Therefore scientifically speaking state of mind = state of body because as Dr. Candace Pert and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins proved, your body is your subconscious mind. Since the laws of motion govern all bodies in the Universe, it is scientifically sage to incorporate the notion of motion as a guiding tenet of your life philosophy.
The Universe is driven by bi-directional exchange. One of the best examples of this is covalent bonding created by the sharing of electrons in non-metals. Using the Wave Theory, the covalent bond involves an overlap of the electron clouds from each atom. The electrons are concentrated in the region between the two atoms. In covalent bonding, the two electrons shared by the atoms are attracted to the nucleus of both atoms. Neither atom completely loses or gains electrons as in ionic bonding. So the atoms share the electron by bouncing it back and forth. The stability (covalent bond) is created because the electron is bounced back and forth at such a great rate of speed that before one atom feels the affect of the electron being gone (changing its valence) the electron is back again.
Breathing in aerobic organisms is another good example of exchange. Aerobic organisms, such as humans, need oxygen to release energy via respiration. We breathe in oxygen and we exhale carbon dioxide. The plants in turn take that carbon dioxide and turn it back into oxygen. In a word that is an energy exchange between humans and plants.
Speaking of humans, we participate in exchange at multiple levels. In government we participate in political exchange of ideas. In society we participate in the exchange of various social behaviors: we fight, have sex, tell jokes, go to war, make peace, pray together, stand in supermarket lines, share freeways. In short, society occurs when two or more humans gather and exchange. Humans are a social species and exchange is how we accomplish that.
Using satellites, astronomers and meteorologists discovered that Earth orbit was ideal for measuring the exchange of energy between Earth and space. The surface temperature of Earth is in energy balance when the solar radiation absorbed by Earth is balanced by the emission of thermal energy from Earth to Space. So, if Earth gains energy from space, the surface temperature will warm up until the energy exchange with space is again balanced. This is how the Universe transfers energy between celestial bodies.
Exchange is how energy moves about the Universe. Exchange can be thought of as the Universe’s bookkeeping system for energy. Like any bookkeeping system exchange’s ultimate goal is to achieve balance. At the molecular level the Universe balances its energy budget by the sharing and transferring of electrons. At the biological level in aerobic organisms it does it through respiration. At the planetary level it does it through radiation and thermal emissions. Subsequently, any life philosophy that does not factor in the balanced exchange of energy is going to inevitably overspend and eventually bankrupt its energy sources.
