Spirituality Guide

By: Seeker
Bruce Lipton is an interesting speaker. Google for his videos to see him in action. But his subject matter is thought provoking in ways that lead directly towards a recognition of us being more than just a body.

If cells are response units, which biology says is the case, then from where do we get original actions or thoughts? You see, there’s a problem with the idea that everything can be explained by chemicals and physical mechanisms. Cells don’t originate anything – they respond to signals. So from where does the signal come? Well, another cell, which in its turn was also triggered by an input signal, which came from another cell which also was triggered by an input signal… and so on.

So where does the original input signal originate? It can’t be from cells. We’ve never found a cell that can trigger its own DNA or that starts a process without being told to do so.

Lipton’s idea is it has to be fields. That we are fields that ‘own’ our bodies and the field initiates the actions and thoughts and the body follows the initiating trigger.
He found some confirmation in a surprising area. Transplants have, apparently, been generating some interesting side effects. There are cases recorded of people having a personality change after getting a transplant organ or limb. Without knowing the donor in any way, the recipients pick up characteristics of the donor.

It seems a strange thing, that, having just explained how we are fields who use and inhabit physical bodies, I would not maintain that personality can be transferred by changing a body part. But maybe it isn’t quite as strange as it may at first appear.

By: Seeker
Another biologist who has moved out of centre field biology is Bruce Lipton http://brucelipton.com/ who has also found the standard physical models don’t explain what he found in his work. Lipton noticed that stem cells will change what they become based on the environment. He went looking further and found most people have an incorrect view of how cells function.

Ask the average person and even many scientists just what part of a cell controls what a cell does and they will respond with DNA – we have been educated into thinking that DNA is the brains and the purpose of cells. But in biology they know different – DNA is a blueprint, fantastically complex and not at all well understood, even though the Human Genome project (and a number of others) is complete.
DNA sits in the cell, like a blueprint sits on a desk. Blueprints don’t build anything and neither does DNA. Cells actually function because of the membrane. What happens is a signal is received at the membrane which triggers a cell reaction which (usually) then causes a DNA readout to produce a protein. The protein then does the work required by the signal.

Signals are usually chemical – molecules with a specific shape for which there is a receptor on the surface of the membrane. But solid standard science also tells us signals can be fields as well. There are documented effects in cells caused by electrical and magnetic fields as well as radiation.

Sp what Bruce Lipton found is that cells, far from being autonomous units that collaborate as a society, are actually response units, triggered into activity from the environment in which they are located.

By: Seeker
Rupert Sheldrake has moved on from his basic start into the strangeness’s of species behavior. He has more recently been running experiments on humans. You can participate in these – he runs online versions of several of the ones he tried on TV in the UK, Europe and the USA, as well as others.
You can look for yourself to find out what he has been up to in detail, but where it has led him is to propose that Life is about fields, what he terms morphogenetic fields, which are the substrate of both individuals and species.

For those who have read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, think of a morphogenetic field as a Philote. For those who haven’t, think of it like a little piece of Consciousness that exists in the centre or as the basic for everything that exists. Philotic connections explain (in the books) how people and things connect to each other. For Sheldrake, morphogenetic fields are connected philotes, capable of directing the organism or species.

For example, the South American butterflies that have a reptilian eye on their wings to help their survival rate against the predatory birds didn’t need to spend thousands of generations developing an effective camouflage if there was an awareness directing their evolution.

If morphogenetic field exist it helps to explain a bit of a mystery about evolution – just how, after each ELE (Extinction-Level Event) through history, did Life manage to rebound so quickly? If evolution is governed solely by random mutation, there would seem to be nothing about the aftermath of an ELE to cause a massive surge in mutation rates so that Life spread almost instantly (in geologic time) to fill in all the niches left vacant by the wholesale slaughter.

By: Seeker
Rupert Sheldrake is an interesting man – he has followed his scientific conscience even though it has moved him to the outer borders of his chosen profession. But he has stayed true to his beginnings – even though his hypotheses are ‘out there’ compared to normal Biology, he applies rigorous scientific method to them.

Some of the things he has found and explored are fascinating in themselves but he has tried to maintain a path to bring them into a coherent whole.

There were birds in Holland before the 2nd World War which learned to peck holes in the tops of milk bottles to extract the cream before the householders came to the door to get the milk. Those birds don’t live very long, so when WW2 interrupted milk deliveries a couple of generations of birds lived and died before deliveries began again. Shortly after the deliveries began the birds were back pecking holes again.

Now there is no way we know of that the birds after the war could have learned to get the milk. But somehow they knew there was food there and very quickly found out how to get it.

The 100th Monkey event in Africa is another example. A chimp in a small chimp tribe discovered she could wash the mussel meat she’d dug up to remove the gritty sand. Slowly the rest of her tribe learned how to do this as well. Then it was noticed that a neighbouring tribe was starting to wash their shellfish as well. This was strange because there wasn’t any known communication between the tribes – but it was feasible perhaps that a member of one tribe had gone to live with the neighbours – feasible that was until it was realized that chimps many miles away were starting to do the same thing!

By: Seeker
Is there evidence that there is actually anything more going on than what can be accounted for by physics and chemistry as understood in the early 21st century?

Rupert Sheldrake started out in straight Biology. Working as a scientist, he began to come across mysteries. For example he found, by accident, that plants react to outside stimuli in ways that defy the idea of them being basic chemical factories and structures. He found reactions to cutting leaves or stems, and even changing the evnvironment so as to include a toxin would get a reaction. And it went further than that… simple organisms can detect and react to a threat in ways that can be recorded by a polygraph or similar machine even when it is only the intention of a threat!

Think this through – it leads down some very interesting pathways. A plant can pick up the mental intention of a human about to do it damage. It gets better. The plants didn’t react to a non-real intention – in other words, pretending to intend to do damage didn’t get the same reaction – you have to honestly intend to hurt the plant.

And an even better step followed not long after – the plants can react to the threat of damage to organisms other than themselves. Killing off laboratory brine shrimp caused the plants to react as well.

Now Sheldrake has gone much further down the path of just what makes up life. The plant experiments were decades ago and he has spent the intervening years chasing down possibilities that come from his initial observations. It’s worth googling to see what he has done since.

By: Seeker
I called this series of thoughts The Science of Spirit, yet so far I haven’t really gone into just what I mean with that title.

If we are ‘of the Spirit’ (whatever that means) then the implication is we are more than just a body, that what makes us who we are is something other than blood, cells, neurons and electric charges. There would seem to be two immediate views if this is so.

It’s possible the spirit’ side of us is totally unknowable to the physical side, that whatever it is comes from outside this existence and never partakes of it save by the connection we have with our bodies. If it doesn’t interact with physical laws, can’t be detected or tested, then it is outside of what we can know – at least while we use the filter of our physical experiences.

It’s also possible that we are here for precisely this reason – to come to know and understand our ‘self’ and how it functions, to find ways to describe what is otherwise simply an Awareness that gives us a point of view to which we refer when we say ‘I’ and that, at some point in our futures, we will find ways to interrogate our spirit side and discern how it relates to the Universe we see around us.

Of course there are those also who think that our Universe is all there is, and that everything, including who we are can be explained by coming to know, in ever greater detail, the rules and functions of the cosmos in which we live.
There are also those who think that all is spirit, that everything we see and experience is pure spirit and that the presence of Awareness is what makes it ‘real’ and physical.

By: Seeker
I have gone through just how religion has failed us, how it was corrupted very early on into a tool for the powerful to keep control of the masses. We grow up believing in the corruption as Truth and the powerful use that corrupted belief to manipulate us and get us to go kill on command - hardly a path of Light by anyone’s description.

But there are many people out there who hold other views than those of Christianity. Some are lapsed Christians and here we need to be careful to distinguish between those who have found alternate views out of guilt for their lapses and those who have found new ways to live and think based on superior knowledge or results.

I’m not sure which camp I belong in although I try earnestly to seek a path that leads to Light through knowledge; perhaps because of how I have lived my life, it seems to me the logic of our existence and the lessons we see all around us, and even the traits which distinguish Man from animal all point towards knowledge being the path the wisdom and/or enlightenment.

I think that, perhaps like the beliefs of those persecuted throughout recent history (ie. since the Christ) by the established Church, I lean towards there being a Light and a Dark path, but I’m unsure as to whether either of them are ‘evil’ in the Christian sense. It may be more simple than that – Light is the path that leads to mastering the physical cosmos and moving on to ‘higher’ realms to start over at a new level, while Dark is the path that involves staying bound ‘in the flesh’ and with full focus on the physical as being all there is of the Universe.

By: Seeker
You may be wondering what I meant in the previous post about an example of a new paradigm being hijacked. Those who have read earlier posts of mine should be able to guess to what I am referring.

The message of the Christ was of love and personal connection. Over and again he told us that salvation comes from oneself, from how we see and what we accept into our lives. And over and again he tells us the path is through only him, that the connection is to God from each individual. It is quite clear when you read it and it is hard to see him as meaning anything else other than what he said.

So what happened? Well, it seems, although those times are a little murky a difficult to see due to time passed and the destruction of the evidence, that for the first few decades, the message was passed out via the apostles and disciples that salvation was available. The Gnostics maintain it is through knowledge, that one needs to find their path with open eyes and learn as one travels the harder road. Mystics throughout the ages have said much the same thing.

But what has come down from those times to the mainstream societies is something wildly different. Now the message is we need an intermediary, a person of authority to stand between us and salvation, to accept our confessions and grant us absolution, to explain in precise detail just which laws we need to follow to ensure that when we get to those Pearly Gates we will be allowed access.

And if you fail in even the slightest way to obey every command or even wish of the Authority, you get to burn forever in a Hell never even mentioned by the Christ.

By: Seeker
What is going on in the world? Why is it that religion has largely become irrelevant yet the science that has replaced it is not bringing more happiness to the world?

Well when one tries over and over to achieve something, and keeps failing at the job in spite of earnest efforts, there are a couple of possibilities as to what is happening.

One is that there is someone else working to ensure the efforts do not achieve results. The other is that one has an incorrect view of things, that the basis on which one is exerting effort is false or misleading in some way, leading to the effort being misdirected or wasted. Or both.

We have, in the West, an outstanding example of how a new paradigm can be hijacked, with a new way of doing things and seeing our lives being co-opted by the powers-that-be to assist them in their control of the population. And it relates directly to this forum.

We can debate the origin of the new paradigm endlessly, we can find points of contention almost ad infinitum, but to me, this is separation, this is the limiting of connectivity similar to that which led to the Jonestown massacre or the Waco tragedy. What we need to do is recognize that each of us seeking a new way, each Being who is engaged in traversing this life and learning about this universe, is a valid Being. They have a point of view and they have value.

If you and I are exactly the same, one of us is unnecessary.

By: Seeker
A problem many people have in trying to find a better way to live is that the reality in which they are embedded is so pervasively aligned into the indulgence of the physical senses. Every day, every hour, we are exposed to influences designed very carefully to guide us into buying more, into letting our physical senses dictate what will fill our lives.

This is arguably the exact opposite of the way to go. Our society is distinctly NOT filled with happy and contented people, rather the opposite. We export our way of life to countries that have histories that beggar the short span of our ‘democratic’ world as if we have discovered something special and worth having. It seems from the results however, that all we’ve done is export our misery to them.

It seems so worthwhile to be able to afford anything we want to make our lives easier and happier. The new technology around us is stunning in its complexity and facility, and it isn’t difficult to see how they could change our lives, yet somehow we seem to head steadily in the direction of more people looking for escape, more people turning to drugs, legal and illegal, longer queues in the medical centres and escalating levels of violence across the world. Accompanying all this, and perhaps the cause of most of it, is a mounting helplessness in affecting the world in which we live.

Anyone who thinks things through can tell you how useless it is to have elections to select our leaders – I doubt there is a ‘democratic’ country on Earth where a citizen could give a meaningful explanation of the differences between the two political parties for whom they can vote.

By: Seeker
In the New Age movement, there appears on the surface to be little coherence. Anyone interested in finding a new way of life is faced with a spectrum of ideas and methods for achieving it that ranges from the subl;ime to the truly ridiculous and even to the downright dangerous.

People convinced they were heading for a personal Nirvana willingly took the cordial in Jonestown, dying for their belief. Others suicided so they could get picked up by the spaceship travelling behind the Hale-Bopp comet. People in Waco managed to find a way to so scare the authorities they got attacked by the FBI and died in bullet-storm and fire.

So trying to find a new way can be hazardous to one’s health. What does seem, to me at least, common among the ones that have shown as dangerous is they lead towards severing contact with others. When I look at the groups involved, they appear to be concentrated on exclusivity and being special, rather than reaching out for greater and closer contact with others or the universe around them.

Like the fanatical among the various religions in the world, these are people who are pulling in their horizons, finding ways to see themselves as having a special relationship with their beliefs and so losing contact with reality. This makes it easy for someone to guide them into paths that are low survival ways to live.

It seems to me that any New Age life, any development in the path to enlightenment or a better future, must necessarily involve breaking down barriers, needs to open the individual up to greater contact and involvement, rather than limiting them to a specific set of thoughts.

By: Seeker
The modern scientific world in which we live seems to be rooted firmly in the purely physical. In the Western world it would seem that the battle between religion and science has been fought and won. We see the results of the investigation into the rational and observable all around us. And yet, there are signs that things are not what they may seem to be.

When the word fundamentalist is used, most in the USA think of Muslims, yet many in the West outside the US see a large percentage of the US population that same way. The whole ‘let’s teach Intelligent Design as Science’ has a tendency to provoke incredulousness from those who are outside the US.

We can go further back – in the 1930’s there was a fundamentalist wave of fervor that swept across the western world – Pentecostalism was like a drug that had found a ready market. The ‘crusade’ eventually died down and became more mainstream, but to this day there are many who find their relief in such places.

The 1960’s brought a renewal of Consciousness in the form of the Love generation – a whole generation found Love in a new way, looking for alternatives to the old ways of doing things, they came close to derailing the capitalist views and perhaps setting the world on a new course towards togetherness. Looking back I can’t help but wonder if it was the ready acceptance of psychedelic drugs that caused the movement to peter out as it did. Many of those who are now in positions of power came through those times swearing to make change – instead they got absorbed into the mainstream and nothing came of their lofty good intentions.

What did come of it however, was the whole New Age phenomenon which, to this day, is still blossoming out in unexpected directions.

By: Seeker
How likely is it that we are living in a system which is travelling through space towards and away from a companion to the Sun? A few years back the concept would have been a bit ‘out there’ as it was thought that the Sun wasn’t special, that most stars would be singular. More recently, with better instruments, we are finding that the Sun is highly unusual if it is truly a single star – most of what we see out there are multiple star systems and some of the companions are very strange indeed.

Walter Cruttenden speculates in his book ‘Lost Star of Myth and Time’ that maybe the importance of Sirius to our ancestors is indicative of a possible companion. He has more than myth to go on. The book is definitely worth a read.

Taking his cue from the past, Cruttenden speculates that there is more truth than we give credence to in the old stories. Is it possible that once we had a far more spiritual life, that in the past we lived differently, with less reliance on the physical and more understanding of our place in the cosmos?

It would explain many puzzles about our existence if, at some past time, we had abilities that no longer are under our control. It could give answers to how supposed primitives were able to build as they did, and maybe explain why all our early known civilizations seem to begin full-fledged’ rather than spending long periods developing the sophistication we see in the earliest cities.

Add in the possibility of a series of major disasters at the close of the last Ice Age and we are looking at possible answers to the questions asked earlier.

By: Seeker
One of the things that come from myth as well as religious texts that have come down to us from the past, is the concept that, in the past, things were better. That, once upon a time, there was a Golden Ages, when Gods walked the Earth and were known to us, or sometimes when we ourselves were as Gods, capable of thinking and doing things that have since been lost to us.

The Fall of Man is a story repeated in most of the old religions and civilizations for which we have records. The bible tells it twice – once when Adam and Eve fell from the Garden and again when God destroyed it all with a flood and Noah had to start things off again.

The Vedas, the history of those who became the Hindu race, tell of cycles of existence. They call them Yugas and tell us there are four descending yugas and four ascending yugas. In each half cycle there are the Satya (or Krita) yuga, Treta yuga, Dvapara yuga and the Kali yuga. In the Greek tradition these are the Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron ages – both lists are shown in descending order.

Walter Cruttenden wonders if maybe the old stories of ages and cycles may perhaps link into Precession and if maybe the yugas or ages are referring to the approach and departure from the companion to the Sun. He speculates that just as the energy of the Sun currently sustains us, affecting not only the seasons and weather but also our moods and vitality, perhaps the extra energy from another source as we grow closer to it would provide heightened awareness, extra energy with which to find and understand the world and universe around us.

By: Seeker
We know Precession of the Equinox occurs, we can measure it. We know the Ancients knew of it because they use precessional numbers in their stories and myths and incorporate it into monuments and buildings. But Precession is apparently not caused by the things currently assumed to cause it.

Precession is an orbital phenomena; ie. You need to have an orbit for it to be seen at all. What isn’t common knowledge is that we don’t really have a very good idea of the motion of the solar system through space. Recently we have noticed that it seems likely that our Solar System isn’t actually a native member of the Milky way galaxy – it seems we’re immigrants. So are a number of nearby star systems. This explains, for example, why the Milky Way in the sky is at an oblique angle to the ecliptic when we look at it; it seems likely that, were we native to the Milky Way, our Solar System would be rotating in the plane of the Milky Way.

So if earth is precessing across the constellations as it orbits, but it isn’t precessing as compared to things within the Solar System, what is going on?

Cruttenden and his team think the Solar System is doing the precessing. This implies the Sun is actually in orbit around something other than the centre of the galaxy. Or maybe, as well as the centre of the galaxy. In the book ‘Lost Star of Myth and Time’ he explores possibilities of just what we may be orbiting as well as a more complete picture of the reasons behind why they think this way.

So, what does this have to do with Spirituality? Or even with our history as it perhaps really was instead of how we are taught to view it in school?