Learning concentration can be considered analogous
to a baby learning to crawl. It is only the first
phase of a process that ends with attaining a
freedom of movement. Just as we find walking and
running to be superior ways to arrive at a given
location, we will find attaining the ability to
experience states of Meditation and Contemplation
to be superior ways of arriving at infinite
varieties of locations.

While concentrating and meditating we are placing
limits on our actions -- we are commanding our
mind, body, and emotions to stay focused on the
task we have assigned and not distract us. In a
way, this control, though beneficial and necessary
for our success at concentration and meditation,
is the exact thing that we need to let go of to
attain Contemplation. Contemplation requires a
complete surrender -- a non-control by our finite
ego/mind and a complete taking over by the infinite
Cosmic Consciousness. Even though "control" may give
us a way to excise some "inner demons", like
compulsive behavior, distracting thought patterns,
or sadness, it is limited. Only an action of
unlimited qualities can lead to a completely liberated
result. To fly high, we cannot tie ourselves to the
ground in any way. The more we let go, the more we
soar and the moment we let go completely is the moment
we attain the infinite.

Concentration and Meditation not only give us
greater control over our lives but also allow us
a chance to practice witnessing our life as it
occurs. Witnessing, which can only happen here
and now, will ultimately lead to the recognition
of our Real Self, which is none other than the
source of all consciousness, and thus, the ultimate
Witness of all. Contemplate that.

By request, from the Meditation Technique Archive
section of our website:

Reverse Evil to Live

Relax wherever and in whatever way you have
come to know best lets you meditate without
your mind, body, or emotions distracting you.
Visualize a healing, loving, soothing light
coming from every direction and object in the
universe filling every cell in your body with
a radiant glow. As your body gets brighter and
brighter with light, an aura of healing,
positivity, and goodness radiates out from
your heart to the infinite reaches of the
cosmos as the energy of perfection continues
streaming into you. In your minds eye, as
vividly as possible, see the person who is
causing you the most pain right now. There
are specific and general ways they have caused
you pain. For instance, they may be humiliating
you, saying things that are hurtful, bullying
you, etc. But whatever way it is demonstrated,
they are causing you physical, mental, or
emotional suffering. There is something within
them that has caused them to act this way. See
their body clearly, covered with a veil of
sadness that has caused them to act diseased
and has made you to become the target of their
dis-ease. It would be appropriate to consider
them as victims of a spiritual heart attack.
Their heart is cold and painful. See this sick,
scarred heart as the cause of the negative energy
radiating out towards you.

The reality that they have to suffer with their
own evil, ignorant, inhumane presence every
second of the day gives you an understanding
that allows compassion to flower within you.
Visualize and send healing light to them from
your loving and forgiving heart. With every breath
that you inhale, receive the healing energy the
universe is beaming towards you. With every exhale,
send this holy energy to the one whose pain and
suffering was intended to cause you suffering.
See their damaged spiritual body and injured heart
start to glow and be healed. See their heart
turning warm and soothed, their body, mind, and
emotions becoming more and more comfortable and
healthy. As the cycle of holy breath continues,
feel the union of loving well-being that unites
you spiritually and know the healing from your
interactions has started.

Know that a person's mind causes them to act more out of habit then reaction to
reality. Thus, they may continue to act inappropriately in spite of your
meditative effort. Continue to do what is right. Send loving compassion and your
hopes and prayers for a full recovery for all who are suffering and for all who
cause suffering. There is no better protective and healthy force in the universe
then compassion. Bath in it, feel it, share it.

A Mantra's Benefits

"A mantra has two purposes. One purpose is to
make your mind strong, clear and collected.
The other purpose is, when you concentrate on
a mantra for a long time, it slowly dissolves
and you are no more repeating the mantra. Even
that goes away, and your mind becomes still.
That means that, through the mantra, your mind
is collected and focused on one point at the
cost of all other thoughts. Your final goal is
to make the mind 'thought-less,' or free of
disturbances. You start with a mantra and then
the mantra brings you the real benefit: It slowly
dissolves, leaving your mind completely still and free."

"God bless you. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti."

Follow Swami Satchidananda on Twitter at
twitter.com/SwSatchidananda for daily inspiration.

God Wants You to Live

"God is already using you as an instrument.
You are kept alive because God has a purpose
for you. If the purpose is over, God will not
waste even an ounce of breath on you. When
your job is over, when it is time for you to
die, God will simply tell the breath,
`Okay, don't go in.' So the fact that you
are still alive means that God wants you to
live, to do some of God's work. God is not
keeping you alive without reason; you should
know that. You are not even living by yourself.

"God bless you. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti."

Follow Swami Satchidananda on Twitter at
twitter.com/SwSatchidananda for daily inspiration.

"You are not simply a biological entity.
  To think so is an illogical inanity."

UPANISHADSARA – MUNDAKA-(The various aspects of Brahman the primary source).
GREETINGS AND BEST WISHES IN YOUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY THE LATEST VOLUME OF THE
SPIRITUAL WEB SITE www.ahwan.org (or www.ahwan.com) : VOLUME 122, March 2011
ISSUE,  has been published and uplinked with "UPANISHADSARA  – MUNDAKA-
- (The various aspects of Brahman the primary source)."
- If you visit the site, and have any observations to make, I shall be grateful.
In this issue we have also interesting questions from readers dealing with 
"Should Hindus fight out?" , "Is Dharma frustrating?", "Is spiritualism a
hoax?", "Is religion an individual matter?", "When love is spurned."etc.
You can also browse the previous articles by clicking on the ikon `articles'.
Please share it with your friends and dear ones.  God bless you-  Sri Bimal
Mohanty. (bimal_mohanty@...)
PS – To continue spreading the benefit of AHWAN to all, we need your assistance
if you please. Click on `special information' on the homepage of www.ahwan.org.
If you do not wish to receive this information about future issues, please
e-mail accordingly - Thank you.
If you wish someone to receive this information as compliments from you please
indicate his/her e-mail address.
____________________

You can usher a qualitative change in your life, the spiritual way- the
effective way. Visit the website www.ahwan.org. or www.ahwan.com.
regularly. Share it with your friends and dear ones in any manner convenient-
through discussing, speaking, writing, inter-netting.

Watch Your Mind

"Who will liberate you? Nobody except you,
yourself. If you put yourself as your body-mind,
you are not liberated. By being the witness,
what's happening? You are watching your mind.
When you begin to watch your mind, the mind
becomes careful. It's almost like when you don't
watch your children, they're ready to get into
some problems. If you keep an eye on them, they
will be quiet. The minute you turn the other way,
the child is ready to get into some mischief.
The mind is like that, like your baby. When the
mind knows that you're watching, it will be careful.

"God bless you. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti."

Follow Swami Satchidananda on Twitter at
twitter.com/SwSatchidananda for daily inspiration.

And yet, they bombed Pearl Harbor...and the Japanese warrier is known for cruelty with no compassion. How they kept prisoners is well known.

I prefer to not put halo's around any country or people.

How are you Sandeep? I missed your birthday...again.

Faithe

--- In meditationsocietyofamerica@yahoogroups.com, sandeep chatterjee <sandeep1960@...> wrote:
>
>
> Not one but three cruel ironies are being played out in Japan as the country tries to comprehend the apocalypse of the past 10 days.
>
> The Japanese prize nature, beauty and order, yet the tsunami has mocked all three.
>
> It has been distressing to see a people whose culture values cleanliness, refinement, delicacy and graciousness, wandering around in the clothes they fled in and sitting on the street near giant saucepans waiting to be served from soup kitchens.
>
> The love of nature is the very basis of Japanese aesthetics.
>
> They show their joy at the arrival of ‘sakura’ or cherry blossoms with picnics, tea ceremonies, musical concerts and special meals.
>
> The Japanese cherry tree is not cultivated for its fruit â€" it is not fruit-bearing â€" but purely for the ephemeral beauty of its blossom.
>
> In Japanese homes, the sliding partitions are invariably painted with scenes from nature.
>
> Traditional wooden homes, often flimsy-looking, are not built as fortresses against the elements but rather intended to blend in with the surroundings because the Japanese approach to nature is different from the western desire to subjugate it to man’s will.
>
> They are taught that there is no dichotomy between man and nature and this temperament finds expression in traditional scrolls or ink drawings where nature dominates.
>
> The artist, instead of treating the natural scenery merely as a backdrop for depicting people, lets nature take pride of place while relegating humans to marginal figures. (Although the ultra-controlled Japanese garden with its clipped and pruned trees and raked stones is the opposite â€" an attempt to bring some order into
> nature’s occasional unruliness).
>
> The passion for beauty and exquisite refinement immediately strikes any new visitor to Japan.
> You enter another universe in which the most subtle aesthetic sensibility is woven into the fabric of daily life.
>
> Everywhere you look, you see delicate mannerisms: the ticket inspector on a train who turns to the seated passengers and bows before leaving the compartment; the supermarket sushi parcels covered in persimmon leaves; shop assistants wrapping mundane purchases in beautiful paper with as much care as they would a
> sacred offering for a temple.
>
> Anything that offends their aesthetic sensibility is shunned. Worshippers’ shoes outside Hindu temples may be strewn higgledy piggledy but outside Buddhist and Shinto shrines in Japan, the slippers that you put on before entering are tucked into each other and arrayed neatly in a line on the steps.
>
> If a monk at the shrine chances upon a pair that is even slightly askew,he will instantly bend down and straighten it.
>
>
> Visitors have been known to observe this elegance â€" particularly among Japanese women whose elegance is simply extraordinary .
>  
> The television pictures of devastated towns and mile upon mile of debris would be agonizing for any nation but it has to be excruciatingly painful for a nation that has turned love of beauty into something that is as unconscious and reflexive as blinking.
>
> Japanese conduct in public is a perfect manifestation of how this pursuit of refinement, transported into the external domain, creates harmony and order. Very rarely do you hear anyone speaking loudly.
>
> There is no aggression; their manner is gentle.
>
> There is no coarseness; no scratching, yawning or stretching. And they most certainly never push, elbow or jostle. Even now, surrounded as they are by horror and calamity, they are unlikely to abandon their customary decorum.
>
> It is this consideration and respect for others that allows almost 130 million people to live together peacefully, despite one of the highest population densities in the world, and boast of a crime rate that is one of the lowest in the industrialized world.
>
> These qualities of politeness, honesty and gentleness will enable the Japanese to come through this catastrophe with their dignity intact.
>
> They are already on display: no one is looting (unlike New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or during the Gujarat massacre) or panicking and people are queuing up for water and food.
>
> In the midst of flattened towns and muddy fields where their homes once stood and without water and electricity, people are shown on television channels still bowing and speaking to one another with formal courtesy.
>
> Even in normal times, vending machines stand undamaged by vandals.
>
> Pedestrians bend down to remove a tiny scrap of paper from an immaculate pavement.
> Taxi drivers in black suits look at you if you mistakenly hand over far too much money and hand the extra back.
>
> A Tokyo resident who was in a restaurant when the earthquake struck on Friday reported that everyone ran out onto the street. But when the tremors subsided, they walked back in and formed an orderly queue to pay their bills.
>
>
> An awareness of the transience of things and a melancholy wistfulness at their passing has always been central to Japanese cultural tradition.
>
> The tsunami has sadly bequeathed them with abundant experiences reflecting the truth of this axiom.
>
> It has also brutally demonstrated the truth of another Japanese principle, the aesthetic principle of ‘wabi sabi’ which postulates the beauty of things as “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”.
>
> An apt description of modern civilization, with all its sophisticated gadgets, when faced with nature’s fury?
>

Last September, a thought-provoking study
appeared in the Southern Medical Journal
(2010; 103:864–9). Researchers from Indiana
University showed that proximal intercessory
prayer (PIP) by evangelical Christians
improved auditory and visual acuity in
patients from rural Mozambique with poor
hearing and sight. PIP's effects were greater
than that produced by sugg­estion or hypnosis,
which can also sharpen auditory and visual acuity.

PIP involves touch – such as an embrace or
the placing of hands on the patient's head –
and praying close to the patient. Praying or
knowing someone cares enough to pray for you
may make you feel better by enhancing well-being,
optimism and confidence (Medscape General
Medicine 2007; 9:56). So, PIP could trigger
placebo responses – bolstering the body's innate
ability to heal itself. But several studies
now suggest that intercessory prayer (IP, or
asking a higher power) speeds healing – even
if patients don't know that they're the subject,
if other people prayed from a distance or, most
remarkably, prayed retrospectively. Not surprisingly,
these results proved deeply controversial. IP
doesn't just challenge established medical and
scientific beliefs – it rips them to shreds!

The scientific study of IP began in 1988,
when doctors in San Francisco split 393
patients admitted to a coronary care unit into
two groups. The first group received no organised
prayer. Christians outside the hospital prayed
for the second group's recovery. When admitted,
the two groups were equally ill. But the IP group
developed less severe heart disease, were less
likely to need mechanical help breathing, and
consumed less medicine in the form of antibiotics
and diuretics (Southern Medical Journal 1988;
81:826–829). Then, in 1999, researchers in
Kansas City found that IP reduced heart disease
severity by 11 per cent (Archives of Internal
Medicine 159:2273–2278).

A year later, the British Medical Journal
(2001; 323:1450–1) published even more startling
results. In 2000, Leonard Leibovici (Rabin Medical
Centre, Israel) randomly divided 3,393 patients
who had had septicæmia between 1990 and 1996
into two groups. He arranged remote retrospective
IP for one group. One in 50 fewer people died in
the IP group (28.1 per cent mortality) than in
the control group (30.2 per cent) – although
Leibovici couldn't rule out that this was the
play of chance. But the lengths of hospitalisation
and fever were shorter in the IP group. Statistical
ana­lysis suggested these weren't chance findings.

Other studies tell a similar story. Patients
left unconscious after severe head injury recovered
better if they were the subject of IPs (American
Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care 2009;
26-264-269). Another investigation examined
bush babies (Otolemur garnettii), small African
primates, which injured themselves (as in humans,
a sign of distress). Self-inflicted wounds healed
quicker in bush babies which were IP subjects
compared to animals which were not. The IP group
also showed improved blood quality – such as
increased red blood cells and hæmoglobin – and
more normal behaviours, such as time spent
grooming (Alternative Therapies in Health and
Medicine 2006; 1242–8). This finding is important.
Bush babies presumably don't have strongly
held beliefs about religion and medicine that
could contribute to the placebo effect and
complicate human studies.

Furthermore, other distance healing techniques –
such as spiritual healing, noncontact therapeutic
touch and external qigong – also seem to work.
For example, in AIDS patients, distance healing
reduced the likelihood of new AIDS-related
illnesses (by 83 per cent), visits to doctors
(by 30 per cent), hospitalisations (by 75 per
cent), time spent in hospital (by 85 per cent)
and illness severity – while improving mood
(Western Journal of Medicine 1998; 169:356–363).
In 2000, researchers (Annals of Internal
Medicine 132:903–910) examined 23 trials involving
2,774 patients; 13 studies sugg­ested that
various types of distance healing worked.

You could argue that benefits in one, even two,
studies are flukes. But as several – although
not all – studies show similar results, the
findings are harder to dismiss. An authoritative
review by the Cochrane Collaboration (which
usually assesses medicines, surgical techniques
and so on) looked at 10 studies of IP. So, if
IP is ineffective you'd expect clear evidence
to emerge. Yet the authors commented: "The evid­ence
does not support a recommendat­ion either in favour
or against the use of intercessory prayer." Critically,
they add that the lack of "clear effects does
not mean that intercessory prayer does not work".

In other words, we can't unequivocally claim
distance healing works; but equally, there's
no compelling evidence that distance healing
does not work – and that's remarkable. And
discrepancies between studies are understand­able.
Perhaps the study designs are more appropriate
for investi­gating new medicines than distance
healing. The Cochrane Review notes that problems
with the IP studies' designs "are enough to hide
a real beneficial effect". Perhaps distance
healing works only for certain healers (prayers)
and patients. After all, prayer is intensely
personal. Perhaps differ­ent techniques have
different effects. Perhaps dist­ance healing
works in only some medical situations – boosting
the immune system so people recover more quickly,
but not regenerating amputated limbs. But if
further investigations show distance healing has
an effect – however small in however few studies
– it's hard to overstate just how radically the
results will revolutionise our understanding
of the Universe.

---------------------------------------------------------
This article is being shared for non-profit educational
purposes only and thus is allowed under the rules of the
Fair Use Statutes.

Once Nasrudin worked in a large corporation.
One day he was invited to a big meeting with
all the supervisors in the company. At the beginning
of the meeting each person there was required to
present him or herself and something about him
or herself to the others present.
"Hi, I'm John Smith", said one, "and I supervise two people".
"Hello, my name is Mary Jones", said another,
"and I supervise five people."
Each person at the meeting took his turn presenting
themselves and over and over again, each ended
up saying their name and how many people they
supervised. Then came Nasrudin's turn.
"My name is Nasrudin", he said, "and I supervise three people..."
Everyone in the room looked at each other perplexed.
"How could this man say he supervises three people?
He isn't even a supervisor in this company.", they thought.
Nasrudin continued, "...me, myself, and I."

This is a really brillant sharing. Much appreciated!
If asked "How" this or that happens I could probably
tend to speak about "it", but if I added not knowing
"Why", most likely I think my grand daughters would
then ask "Why don't we know why?"

sandeep chatterjee <sandeep1960@...> wrote:
>
>  
>  
> I was at the park with a friend, her daughter and her young grand daughter,
who was the ‘why’ stage of life.
>
> As I sat talking with my friend, I overheard her grand daughter ask her mother
why I was in a wheel chair.
>
> After gently shushing the young girl, she said in a subdued voice that I’d
had a stroke and couldn’t walk.
>
> Of course the little girl asked, “Mommy,what’s a stroke?”
>
> Erroneously believing that this old guy, who somewhat proudly jokes about his
being a crip, might be hurt or offended, the mother diverted her daughter’s
attention to a lady bug that had just landed in the clumsy lady bug manner upon
the grass.
>
> As they both got down upon their knees to inspect the bug, it nestled and
disappeared in the deep grass.
> Mother and daughter fingered the grass assiduously as they searched for the
lady bug, which they could not find.
>
> Frustrated, the little girl asked the universal why kid question, “Mommy,
why is grass green?
>
> Her mother proceeded to explain as simply as she could about how sunlight
comes down to the grass and something called chlorophyll in the grass makes it
look green; a standard struggling answer parents give to this question when
asked by their young children.
>
> I too had burdened both my young boys with this complexity when they asked
that question, much to their glassy eyed confusion.
>
> Understandably bored with this answer, that was way beyond her young mind’s
comprehension, the girl ceased looking for the lady bug, got up, came over to me
and asked, “Why did you have a stroke?”
>
> Not even the neurologists know the full the answer to that one, and I
answered, “Strange things happen and I just had a stroke, not even the doctors
know why.”
>
> This seemed to satisfy the little girl’s curiosity and she ran off to rejoin
her beckoning mother.
>
> This brief encounter got me thinking as she ran off that so often we adults
answer children’s ‘whys’ with ‘hows’.
>
>
> That whole chloropyll rigamarol is not why grass green.
>
> It is green because it’s green.
>
>
> Young children will understand that answer because it’s the simple truth.
>
> Does anyone truly know why grass is green?
>
> I doubt it.
>
> The sunlight/chlorophyll explanation is how the grass is green.
>
> My neurologists spent days believing they were trying to figure out why the
first of my strokes occurred when in truth they were searching for the causes of
how it occurred.
>
> Do any of us truly know why we had our brain injuries?
>
> Sure we know how and many of us love to share our stories of that event
repeatedly in great ‘how by how’ detail of how the event happened, but it
certainly is not why.
>
> Why did we get stroked? Why did the accident happen? Why did the scalpel cut
the wrong thing during the operation?
>
> Who knows? 
>
> The more we stop believing the how is the why, the easier it is to accept what
is and move on just as this little girl did when she went back to lady bug
searching.
>
> Think how glassy eyed and flummoxed she would have been had I gone through the
whole routine of blood clots, artery blockages and brain bleeds that would have
in no way explained why I got stroked.
>
> I don’t know where I’m going with this other than I’m probably boring
you as much as I would have that little girl.
>
> The incident did get me thinking that all the why questions of a child are a
young soul’s first steps on it’s life quest for meaning in life ....
>
> ...and we adults blunderingly muddy up the waters with answers of how life
happens ...
>
> ...and thus misguidedly teach them that how their lives happen is why their
lives happen.
>  
>  
>  
>

Someone once said that the pen is mightier
than the sword. This would indicate that the
thoughts a pen communicates are stronger than
any other weapons. But what if the thoughts
are as unfocused as a machine gun being
fired by a monkey? And what seems to be the
case with virtually all people is that
it takes special yet natural skills to use
either swords or thoughts appropriately, or
great damage will be the result.
To see this concept being played out, stop by
our table at the Valley Forge Gun Show this
week-end. Along with hundreds of dealers of
all sorts of weapons, we'll be displaying and
selling hand made knives that have somehow
appeared after some steel and brass and
varius handle materials have been transformed
into man's oldest tools. And this will take
place while discussing meditation concepts
and techniques like those found on this group.
So, if you are in the area, stop by and say
hello and let's see just how mighty meditative
states can be in extraordinary environments.
Peace and blessings,
Bob

New Video - The Vedic Way of Knowing God

In this powerful half-hour video, Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya (Dr. Frank
Morales, Ph.D.) explains how the finite can know the Infinite, how we can
directly experience and know God, according to the teachings of the ancient
Vedic tradition. He also discusses his new best-selling book: "The Vedic Way of
Knowing God".


WATCH THE FULL VIDEO HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti-wz05ljd8



Please share this message will everyone you know.


Aum Hari Aum

Demystifying Meditation, Brain Imaging Illustrates How Meditation Reduces Pain
06 Apr 2011

Meditation produces powerful pain-relieving
effects in the brain, according to new research p
ublished in the April 6 edition of the
Journal of Neuroscience.

"This is the first study to show that only a
little over an hour of meditation training
can dramatically reduce both the experience
of pain and pain-related brain activation,"
said Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the
study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake
Forest Baptist Medical Center.

"We found a big effect about a 40 percent reduction
in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in
pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater
reduction in pain than even morphine or other
pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce
pain ratings by about 25 percent."

For the study, 15 healthy volunteers who had
never meditated attended four, 20-minute classes
to learn a meditation technique known as focused
attention. Focused attention is a form of
mindfulness meditation where people are taught
to attend to the breath and let go of distracting
thoughts and emotions.

Both before and after meditation training, study
participants' brain activity was examined using
a special type of imaging -- arterial spin labeling
magnetic resonance imaging (ASL MRI) -- that captures
longer duration brain processes, such as meditation,
better than a standard MRI scan of brain function.
During these scans, a pain-inducing heat device
was placed on the participants' right legs. This
device heated a small area of their skin to 120°
Fahrenheit, a temperature that most people find
painful, over a 5-minute period.

The scans taken after meditation training showed
that every participant's pain ratings were reduced,
with decreases ranging from 11 to 93 percent,
Zeidan said.

At the same time, meditation significantly reduced
brain activity in the primary somatosensory cortex,
an area that is crucially involved in creating
the feeling of where and how intense a painful
stimulus is. The scans taken before meditation
training showed activity in this area was very
high. However, when participants were meditating
during the scans, activity in this important
pain-processing region could not be detected.

The research also showed that meditation increased
brain activity in areas including the anterior
cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the
orbito-frontal cortex. "These areas all shape
how the brain builds an experience of pain from
nerve signals that are coming in from the body,"
said Robert C. Coghill, Ph.D., senior author of
the study and associate professor of neurobiology
and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist.

"Consistent with this function, the more that
these areas were activated by meditation the
more that pain was reduced. One of the reasons
that meditation may have been so effective in
blocking pain was that it did not work at just
one place in the brain, but instead reduced pain
at multiple levels of processing."

Zeidan and colleagues believe that meditation has
great potential for clinical use because so little
training was required to produce such dramatic
pain-relieving effects. "This study shows that
meditation produces real effects in the brain and
can provide an effective way for people to
substantially reduce their pain without medications,"
Zeidan said.

Funding for the study was provided by the Mind
and Life Institute in Boulder, Colo., and the
Center for Biomolecular Imaging at Wake Forest Baptist.

Source: Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
--------------------------------------------------
Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/221411.php
This article is being shared for non-commercial
purposes only and thus falls under the fair Share statutes.

by Agence France-Presse • April 7, 2011

WASHINGTON — Everyone knows that liberals
and conservatives butt heads when it comes
to world views, but scientists have now shown
that their brains are actually built differently.

Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the
brain associated with understanding complexity,
while the conservative brain is bigger in the
section related to processing fear, said the
study on Thursday in Current Biology.

"We found that greater liberalism was associated
with increased gray matter volume in the anterior
cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism
was associated with increased volume of the right
amygdala," the study said.

Other research has shown greater brain activity
in those areas, according to which political views
a person holds, but this is the first study to
show a physical difference in size in the same regions.

"Previously, some psychological traits were known
to be predictive of an individual's political
orientation," said Ryota Kanai of the University
College London, where the research took place.

"Our study now links such personality traits with
specific brain structure."



The study was based on 90 "healthy young adults"
who reported their political views on a scale of
one to five from very liberal to very conservative,
then agreed to have their brains scanned.

People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive
to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening
situations with more aggression than do liberals
and are more sensitive to threatening facial
expressions," the study said.

Liberals are linked to larger anterior cingulate
cortexes, a region that "monitor(s) uncertainty
and conflicts," it said.

"Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a
larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate
uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept
more liberal views."

It remains unclear whether the structural
differences cause the divergence in political
views, or are the effect of them.

But the central issue in determining political
views appears to revolve around fear and how
it affects a person.

"Our findings are consistent with the proposal
that political orientation is associated with
psychological processes for managing fear and
uncertainty," the study said.

Thanks to Sri Sandeep's excellent posts,
I have found a few Rabbi stories I think
are worth sharing. Enjoy!
----------------------------------------------------------------
How Do We Know?

Some students of the Baal Shem Tov came to him
one day with a question. "Every year we travel
here to learn from you. Nothing could make us
stop doing that. But we have learned of a man
in our own town who claims to be a tzaddik,
a righteous one. If he is genuine, we would
love to profit from his wisdom. But how will
we know if he is a fake?"

The Baal Shem Tov looked at his earnest hasidim.
"You must test him by asking him a question."
He paused. "You have had difficulty with stray
thoughts during prayer?"

"Yes!" The hasidim answered eagerly. "We try to
think only of our holy intentions as we pray, but
other thoughts come into our minds. We have tried
many methods not to be troubled by them."

"Good," said the Baal Shem Tov. "Ask him the way
to stop such thoughts from entering your minds."
The Baal Shem Tov smiled. "If he has an answer, he is a fake."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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UPANISHADSARA-MUNDAKA Continued ( Brahman as the focus of all consciousness)

GREETINGS AND BEST WISHES IN YOUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY THE LATEST VOLUME OF THE
SPIRITUAL WEB SITE www.ahwan.org (or www.ahwan.com) : VOLUME 123, April 2011
ISSUE,  has been published and uplinked with "UPANISHADSARA-MUNDAKA Continued
(Brahman as the focus of all consciousness)."

- If you visit the site, and have any observations to make, I shall be grateful.
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Mohanty. (bimal_mohanty@...)
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How does reincarnation square with biological evolution?