woensdag 27 februari 2008

Science and Religion: Two Sides of Existence

Religion is a 'connection' a connection to the origin of what we call as soul, spirit, core. The body is the physical manifestation of EXISTENCE.

The soul, spirit, core is the metaphysical manifestation of EXISTENCE. Like two sides of one coin the body and the soul create together the being, in our case the human being.

In the beginning these two sides were accepted as indeed what they are: inseparable. As no one can separate the two sides of a coin the body and the soul are just inseparable. This was a truth that all the ancients knew. The aborigines, the Native Americans, tribes in the Amazon the ancient Greeks, too. When medicine was applied to heal the physical body, the spirit was also taken into consideration and was also healed in an equal way. Healthy mind in healthy body (spiritus sano e corpora sana) is a clear example of how these two (mind = spirit, soul, core) were accepted as two parts of one.

Then during a dark time of the human kind (this statement is my personal opinion), came the Church and the Science to do the impossible: separate the two that were NOT meant to be separated. That is when the good and bad also were separated because the good and the bad or Good and Evil are also inseparable sides of one and the same coin: the divine, the god, the source of ALL EXISTENCE.

The Good and Evil are nothing more than the separation and domination of the Good = the Male. If one understands the principles of Yin and Yang, you will know that Yin is the Dark, the night, the female and Yang is the Light, the day, the male.

These two (Yin and Yang) need each other as sides of the same coin because by being equal and extreme opposites, they keep the world, the cosmos, in an eternal motion. Pan Rehi = all flows said the said ancient Greek Philosophers. This eternal motion, the interaction of day and night, is what creates life. Without the two sides, BOTH sides there is no balance and there is no life, NO EXISTENCE.

During the dark times, human separated the Good and the Evil, separated the Body from the Soul, and separated the Male from the Female. They gave domination to the Good, the day and Male. They forgot the Female, the night, the so called Evil (?!?!) which is not evil it is actually the dark side of good, but to separate it from the good they gave it its own name: Evil.

God became Male, and the witch (Female) became the symbol of Evil as the one who connects to the opposite of God: the Satan. All these names are concepts that were created by man, not the divine, the creator of the universe, the source of EXISTENCE.

The source is BOTH male and female, as it is BOTH Yin and Yang, and as it is BOTH Good and Evil. Embracing one is like separating the sides of a coin = it is impossible. To understand good we need to see and accept the bad that is also there, there is good and bad inside all of us as there is God and Satan.

We are human because these two are inside of us because we are made in the image of the divine which is also BOTH.

There is no heaven and there is no hell. Both of these are also concepts created by man (human beings) and not by the creator of EXISTENCE. The heaven and the hell are states of being not an actual place. We create this state of being inside our own mind, soul, spirit. When we are in heaven we are in harmony with the source of EXISTENCE, when we are in hell we are not in harmony with that source.

Life of Earth is still life in the womb. Earth is the womb of the cosmos. We humans are still embryos bound on the Earth like a fetus is bound on the placenta. The blood that circulates and feeds us is the water; it is the same water that fed the dinosaurs and the same that fed the Egyptians. It is the 'blood' of the 'mother' Earth. The nutrients are the air, the atmosphere around us is like the embryonic fluid, and we need this to survive.

Death is the true birth. Once released from the womb of the Earth, the spirit is born into the cosmos, the true state of EXISTENCE. The cosmos is the world, where we as true being can grow and expand.

The tunnel and light at the end of that tunnel are the birth canal and the outside world.
This is the truth that all who knew told, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, and many others. This is the truth that I want to share with you.

There is no religion and no science as separate just as there is no body and mind=soul, spirit, core, as separate. When money became the god we trust, we lost our way. When one looses the way also looses the connection to the source of EXISTENCE. When one looses the connection to the source one is alone. When one is alone he/she is in fear because he/she is vulnerable. Vulnerability brings forth the need to create false gods like the golden calves, (have you seen the symbol of Wall Street? It is a golden bull! Accidental? I not think so!!!)

When the connection to the true source was lost we (human beings) made Golden Bulls = money, our God and protector. The more we did that the more imbalances we brought and this imbalance is now visible: the environment is suffering, the Earth is in pain. We gave mother Earth sepsemia, we poisoned her 'blood' the water, we melted the ice on the poles, and we are killing her womb and the amniotic fluid the air.

We will be aborted.

And neither science not religion can save us. Only we can save this situation. We must find our inner connection to the source of EXISTENCE, the divine parent on whose womb we now still live. This parent as I said is BOTH male and female. As it creates life without the need of an outside being, ALL exists inside the source.

As above so below, and as below so above. If we heal ourselves the Earth will heal, if we heal the Earth we will heal. We are connected to this placenta. We need the water and we need the air.
We need the good and we need the bad (evil) to continue existing. We need the animal inside us (our body) as we need the enlighten human being (the mind, spirit, soul, core). We need the Yin female as we need the Yang Male. We need to unite the two sides NOT separate them.

Separation creates war, union creates love. Make love not war. We need to unite the religion (spirituality) and the science (medicine). We need to understand that they are BOTH necessary for a balanced existence. We need to understand that they are BOTH right as they are BOTH wrong. They must be so to interact and keep the cycle of life going.

Both the Bible is correct as it gives a metaphorical idea of existence AND science is correct because it gives a factual idea of existence. Separating these makes BOTH wrong! Because each misses a piece of the whole. The can exist NO COIN with only one side!!!

Love is the energy that binds (unites) and non-love (we call that hate as we call non-good evil but these are wrong terms) is the separation. The dynamic created between the union and separation, is the same as the dynamic of attraction and repulsion that exists between the poles of a magnet. The Earth is such a magnet.

Without this difference between the (-) and the (+) there would be no movement, the Earth would NOT rotate, life would not exist.

Fighting between the two sides is like arguing with ones mirror image, it goes nowhere. Uniting and accepting the two, accepting the good and non-good, the light and the non-light is accepting existence. We live in a binary code. It is the binary code of EXISTENCE! It is the nature of the source: binary, male and female, light and non- light, both (-) and (+).

Autism and Neurotypicality are again the two sides of the same coin. If Science is the Male, the light, the visible and physical then Religion is the Female, the dark, the invisible and metaphysical. Autism is the manifestation of the Female side, while Neurotypicality is the manifestation of the Male side. These are equal but opposite to each other.

The human brain has also two sides. The left and the right side. The left side of the brain is the one that controls the right side of the body, while the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body.

The left side 'houses' several specific functions. This is also known as the logical hemisphere because it deals with details, processes language, calculations, math and linear analysis.

The right side also 'houses' specific functions. One of these functions is gestalt (meaning whole processing as compared to linear) and the right hemisphere deals with images, rhythm, face recognition, visual imagery, music, emotions and intuition.

The two hemispheres work together, are connected and share information through the corpus callosum.

It is known that autism creates a dominance of the right hemisphere where images and a visual language is used to think and communicate. The visual language is also what dreams are made of. They are 'created' in the right hemisphere of the brain.

What Science is trying to figure out is why Autistics think predominantly with the right hemisphere, while neurotypicals think with the left (the language processing) hemisphere.

The key to this 'switching' is something that Science has already found to be largely connected to autism: testosterone. The research that Simon Baron-Cohen is conducting involving the testing of the amniotic fluid of embryos and measuring the testosterone levels has led him to believe that there is a strong correlation between the level of testosterone and the percentage that there fetuses will grow into children with autism.

What Science has not yet found is why and how exactly does testosterone assists the 'development' or better said, onset of autism.

The connection is one that has already been researched and found, but to link the different research done that falls outside the umbrella of autism, is not something that is usual. Sometimes it seems that Science is so stuck in its left brain hemisphere of reality and linear processing that its ability for gestalt has vanished into thin air!!!

The piece that is missing is how testosterone (which is a product of fear and the fear chemical processing in our body) affects the state of the brain. Not just the state of thought, but also the state of being as in awake or asleep: connected or disconnected to the physical self.

In a state of awake we are fully aware of the physical self, the 'I,' the self, the ego. In a state of sleep we are disconnected from the physical self and connected to the collective subconscious of the cosmos, which is also our own personal subconscious because the knowledge and the memory of the cosmos, the source of EXISTENCE is stored in our own body, our own cells.

In a state of awake, we interact with the cosmos from the point of view of the self. It is ME and the others. We are aware of this separation and this awareness of the separation comes paired with the instinct of survival, which is the instinct of Fear. Fear is the safety and self-preservation that we all need. Fear is protection, or what triggers the need to protect ourselves.

Without fear we would not survive, we would engage in reckless behavior that would eventually injure and kill us. Nature has no doctors and hospitals. Fear is the only shield we have against all our natural enemies.

After all, human beings are in the middle of a food chain. As much as we are predators and can kill to eat meat = the source of protein that enabled us to grow bigger brains and evolve, we are still vulnerable when it comes to other predators that are able to kill us for our meat! Fear protects us because it makes us think twice and seek ways to survive when the ME meets the OTHER!

Nature has equipped us with yet another tool to survive besides the instinct of fear. This tool allows us to better our margin for survival. Part of this tool is our ability to learn, store knowledge in the form of memories and the ability to access that stored knowledge when necessary. This learning occurs in the brain, it is conscious learning.

There is another kind of learning that occurs in a molecular level and that subconscious learning.
Each time we face fear, we engage in the production of hormones that will give us the ability we need to counteract the threat that is presented.

The level (quantity) of hormones produced is stored as a memory in the mitochondria of the cell (this is the molecular level learning). While the amygdala regulates the amount of the fear hormones, the memory of that level is stored elsewhere. It is stored in the fabric of our organism, the cells and in particular the mitochondria.

Each time we face fear, and survive it, the level of testosterone is recorded and adjusted. The adjustment occurs so that there is always a margin in case of error. If the last encounter and fear reaction produced an X amount of testosterone, the following encounter will produce and X + Y amount, and the next an X + Y + Y. With each encounter the amount of testosterone is increased not only to ensure success but to ensure superiority!

The survival of the fittest!

Fear hormones are steroids. And as we know there is also a negative side to steroids. They can cause side-effects. nature has foreseen this and created an equal but opposite measure that is able to counteract the effect (or side-effect) of testosterone and neutralize it. With the fear hormones, opiates are produced. These create the calming and pleasure effect that neutralizes the aggressive and stressful effect of testosterone. This effect Freud called the Eros and Thanatos.

The fear of pleasure of danger. The love and hate reaction towards something we see as dangerous, the attraction and repulsion towards as threat that can injure and kill us.
This dual effect is known also as the fight and flight reaction to fear/danger. The fight, to engage, interact and in a way unite (in battle) with the 'enemy' is a situation that enables us as species to learn all we can about the other species: their weaknesses and strengths, their abilities and talents, and our abilities and talents. War is the source of new advancements in technology, science, medicine. It is ONE of the TWO the sources of evolution.

The other comes from the flight reaction. That is the maximum survival reaction that creates the maximum protection. By removing ourselves from the vicinity of danger we ensure maximum survival. This offers a different kind of learning. The learning to choose. Which enemy or threat to engage and create a situation of risk, and which danger to avoid. Both of these are equally necessary if we want to BOTH survive and evolve by bettering our weaknesses and enhancing our talents.

The problem is that we, human being, do not live as we were intended. The tools of survival that Nature gave us where not meant to be used in the framework of the life we have created. We do not have natural enemies any more, at least not as we had when we lived in close proximity with all the other species and shared the food chain principle.

Now, because of our fabricated life, we have created other 'enemies' such as the daily stress we encounter, the terrorist threat, the environmental threat, the nuclear war threat, etc.
We encounter fear in larger doses and with that the testosterone levels we produce are steadily increasing.

It has reached the X + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y + Y .... level!

With it has increased also the level of opiates that the brain produces in an endless effort to neutralize the effects of the fear hormones and steroids!

We have become Eros and Thanatos junkies!!!!

We have developed an insatiable hunger for stress, we make movies that give us our stress/fear dosis, we engage in multiple relationships, sex and porn to counteract and neutralize the stress effects or better said side-effects of stress and the testosterone/steroids!

Then here enters another factor. The position of the female. The moment women entered the social arena of world corporate life, the entered also the rat-race of stress. Women are more vulnerable to stress because our bodies can handle (are used to) much lower levels of testosterone. Steroids are much more harmful to the female body than to the male.

The increased (toxic) levels of testosterone when inside the female body can have yet another effect: the hormonal imbalance that many women encounter. Their menstrual cycle is affected, they tend to have more negative side-effects such as pain, cramps, premenstrual syndrome, etc.

When yet another factor is added, that of a pregnancy, then the scenario for autism is created and the stage where the switching of the brain will occur is set.

If a pregnant woman with a predisposing to high levels of testosterone encounters stressful situations during:
- pregnancy
- labor
- post-natal complication
Then the percentage of an an outcome of autism becomes very significant.

Research done with war veterans that have encountered high stress situation in Vietnam has found that when the human brain reaches testosterone levels that are far beyond what is considered normal and safe, the brain enters a safety mode: in enters a sort of REM sleep mode.

This mode was found to have a great deal of common ground with the effects of autism. The veterans behavior was diagnosed as autistic and they were found to safer from the same dysfunction found in persons with autism.

The hypothesis is that during pregnancy and/or a difficult labor and birth, the level of testosterone inside the mother's blood becomes the reason that the embryo's brain switches from left-side dominant to right-side dominant, the side that controls visual language, and DREAMS!

Not only it switches but it also remains in a state of REM sleep, with all the physical effects of such a situation. The body-brain relationship during REM sleep state is different than the body-brain relationship during the awake state, this can explain why autistics have bad physical coordination and a bad sense of left and right. The physical sensory system is during REM sleep is a 'low power' or 'shut off' state, which can explain why autistics have sensory integration problems.

The right brain hemisphere dominance also expalins the language problems, the emotional problems, the bad face recognition, etc. etc.

If one thinks about this, I have found the origin of autism while Science was sleeping
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