By Advaita Mihai Stoian

Yoga Final Destination and Spiraling Evolution

Patanjalis Yoga Sutra is divided into four sections or Padas. Even if the structure described in it is a holistic one, each part is having their role just like the organs in the body are having their particular role while fulfilling their general place in the whole. And since the definition of the whole in itself becomes quite difficult Patanjali does not get to talk about the Ashtanga Yoga, the Yoga of Eight Limbs, until the 29th verse of the second Chapter Sadhana Pada. And even there it is only sketched because, without the right context and preparation based on direct experimentation, such a complex system will easily become only a self limitation.

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The whole will become a separate category that will exclude its component parts, a fortress that is heavily defended by the zealots of this concept in their attempt to keep it away from the waves of diversity that are coming from everywhere.THE WHOLE risk to become a dot in the ocean of EVERYTHING.

This is a widespread symptom today among the modern practitioners. Many are those claiming today to have invented a holistic approach on spiritual evolution. They are so fast and keen to affirm their holism that they lock themselves into that concept. Busy to find new ways to display their wide views upon spirituality they are ignoring basic elements of the evolutionary mechanisms. And this is mainly appearing when wanting to make a system that can be easy for everyone, without involving much transformation and personal efforts for the spiritual evolution to take place. As in his YOGA SUTRA, perfectly in tune with the modern quantum view upon the world, Patanjali is starting the presentation by defining the goals on the yoga practice in the opening chapter Samadhi Pada.

This will not only create clarity upon the goals but in the same time will put the beginning of the path as the source of all evolutionary process and not the other way around as too often we hear today. It is the spirit that generate all the existential means and not the other way around. Here the author deals with the prerequisites of Yoga practice while already setting the course toward the final destination. From a practical perspective, the structure of the work is describing, from the core toward the periphery, different zones of the human existence and their way back toward a state of perfect balance and unity. The closer we are to the center, the more direct will be the path and simple the methods. The further away we are going from the center of our own being, the more complex and technical will be the path and longer the evolution. The whole first section is a Yoga unto itself. In fifty-one verses Patanjali deals with what many call Samkhya Yoga, Kriya Yoga or even Jnana Yoga.

Patanjali enunciates also a kind of Yoga cosmology within the Samadhi Pada. It is however a very practical analysis of the mechanisms of the consciousness into the process of becoming, serving the individual consciousness on the integration effort. From another perspective, also depicted into this simple yet very accurate model, the evolution is viewed as an ascendent spiral that is unfolding its ciclic movements around a position of neutrality (an axis of the human being, sushumna nadi that exists in every human being at a subtle level, identical with the axis of the world, axis mundi or mount meru). This ciclic movement of the evolution that is unfolding in spirals is discovered nowadays by science at the foundation of all that exist in the physical universe, from the vibrating strings (spirals) of energy in the core of the elementary particles that are forming the very fabric of the universe up to the clusters of galaxies that are spinning around the central core of the known universe (taking a shape that is amazingly similar with the mythical Iggdrasil, The Tree of Life from the nordic traditions).

Yoga Sutras give at its core a depiction of this universal pattern of the universal evolution in the first chapter. Directly stating that the very essence of the human being is a spark of the Supreme Consciousness of God the Supreme Being, the text is setting course toward the final destination: finding through direct experience this essence that is in fact the very source of existence in the first place. Evolution from this perspective reveals to be an amazing journey that begins and ends in the same place, just like in the later representations of this process as a wheel of becoming or the famous ouroboros snake that is biting his own tale. It is all just a spontaneous game of the Supreme Consciousness that is called maya.

Ignorance and Self-Realization

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Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Root of Integral Yoga (part two)

Chloe Miller finished with 15 points and 14 rebounds for Webster Thomas as the Titans handed Pittsford Sutherland its first loss of the season, 51-45 on Tuesday in a Monroe County game.

Candaisy Crawford had 24 points for the Titans (6-9).

Liz Greendyke scored 15 points for Sutherland (15-1).

WEBSTER THOMAS: Kelly Weeks 3, Candaisy Crawford 24, Chloe Miller 15, Mandy Skrypka 4, Kira Ashton 0, Allie Diehl 5, Amber Breedy 0, Jessica Boddery 0, Marissa Yokajty 0.

PITTSFORD SUTHERLAND: Allie Panara 3, Abby Judd 6, Bayley Axelrod 9, Vicky Beatham 0, Liz Greendyke 15, Ally Judd 3, Meghan Fennell 0, Grace DiGiovanni 2, Santita Ebangwese 7.

3-point goals: Crawford 2; Greendyke 2, Axelrod 2, Panara.

Senior Margot Hetzke scored 36 points (14-2), breaking the school record for most points in a game. She broke her own record of 35 from 2011.

GREECE ATHENA: Brooke Testa 6, Taylor Sheehan 5, Ajia Mcintyre 5, Tara Marcello 5, Baylee Capezzuto 0, Carina Pringle 8, Krysten OLeary 3, Bria Wilson 1, Sara Ciotti 5, Jayme Pupatelli 0, Courtney Swozer 2, Jordanne Meier 0.

PENFIELD: Sophie Loewenguth 0, Jill Pancio 2, Sandra Catanzaro 0, Emma Guy 4, Margot Hetzke 36, Mary Doyle 0, Lucy Covley 13, Kristen Baumer 0, Alexa Bartosiewicz 6, Makaila Wilson 5, Ali Fitzgerald 3.

3-point goals: Sheehan, Marcello, OLeary, Ciotti; Colvey 3, Hestke 1, Fitzgerald.

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Tuesday's high school girls basketball results

Hordes of oglers by the 3-D printers. A media mob around 50 Cent and his me-too headphones. Ad hoc TED-style talks. Dishwashers that tweet. Acrobats.

Walking the floor of last months Consumer Electronics Show was like wandering a Turkish bazaar. Only busier. I finally found an oasis of peace and quiet in a $7,000 massage chair (that nearly put me to sleep). And then, later, within the solitary, white plastic igloo in the middle of the exhibition floor.

I am seated inside that inflatable tent. The door is zipped closed. A wraparound headband is fitted across my temples. I am handed an iPad, my brain waves undulating on the screen.

A male, Siri-inflected voice commands me to imagine as many countries as I can in 30 seconds. When the device is calibrated, I am directed to close my eyes, slow my breathing, andimagine nothing. When my thoughts deviate, I hear thunder and storms from the iPad. When I am serene--and, rarely, I am not--I hear birds chirping, the sound of a trickling brook.

The Muse, invented by the Toronto-based InteraXon and available to consumers this year, could be big. I say that because the crusade for quietude has suddenly become a public fixation. A cause. Is this Susan Cain's doing? Maybe. "Mindfulness" made a February cover of Time--a lengthy piece that looks at how to mitigate stress in an age when virtual and literal reality vie for attention. The idea of mindfulness (in one case, brought to you by Goldie Hawn) also figured prominently at the 2014 World Economic Forum.

"Only two years ago, mindfulness and mindful leadership were discussed at Davos for the first time. Since then, almost all of the mindfulness-related events there have been oversubscribed, wrote Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT, on the Huffington Post. This year at least 25 sessions in Davos were dedicated to wellness and the adverse impact of technology on the human brain.

The Holy Grail of modernity, then, may just be serenity. The Muse and other mediation apps, like Get Some Headspace, are evidence that entrepreneurs are turning their talents toward bringing humanity into balance with the "Self."

What does this mean for the youngest, wealthiest generation of entrepreneurs that this country has ever seen? For one thing, a market opportunity. From Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskowitzs productivity company Asana, which lists "reason balanced with intuition" and "balance" in its top three values, to "neural self-hacking" at Google, to fresh takes on long form journalism, we are now deeply in the mindful mogul era. Look around at all the meditating, unplugging, chia seed-chomping masters of enterprise and it seems only a matter of time before the new hot yoga move is Downward Facing Alpha Dogs.

"I love what I do because ideas can change the world," says Chris Hughes, publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic. "We reach over 3 million people in any given month. That kind of reachits an immense opportunity to really have an impact."

Hughes, 31, whose net worth skyrocketed with the Facebook IPO, could have done anything with his fortune. Instead, he bought The New Republic in 2012--when print media was already in a free-fall, including the circulation of TNR, which had plummeted by nearly 50% and 50,000 from 2000 to 2009.

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Downward Facing Alpha Dogs: The Mindful Rise Of The New Tech Humanists

Feature Article of Wednesday, 5 February 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

Clearly, scholars as well as well-informed lay proponents of sociology of knowledge, Afrocentric theory, and relativism have long discredited or disallowed intromission of cultural and epistemological universals into their systematized enterprise of scientific hypothesizing and theorizing. However we may want to put it, even Eurocentrism vigorously rejects any formalized epistemological imputation to relativism except, perhaps, its self-promotional investiture in the emotional realm of carefully-crafted perspectival, if universalist, exclusivism, sort of taking a steep psychocultural dive into an ideological ocean of epistemological and cultural universalism. Importantly, Eurocentrism mischievously ingratiates itself into human consciousness as though it represents an ideological heliocentrism of collective human wisdom as well as the pinnacle of cultural and intellectual excellence. In fact, the analytic weight of historical facts doesnt always angle these self-serving epistemological attributes toward the cultural West.

Quite often, as is the case with white supremacy, Eurocentrism, on the other hand, essentially embraces positivism, if we may arguably put it at that, while, on the other hand, keeps intuitive and introspective knowledge at investigational arms length. Yet these forms of knowledge may assume the same cultural plinth of intellectual affirmation as the evidence of empiricism and rationalism. Alternatively, we hold the opinion that, in theory, intuitive and introspective knowledge, strictly evaluated from an African perspective, does not, of necessity, subscribe to the imperial majesty of Eurocentric scientism. Meanwhile, the epistemological heuristics we are wont to employ here affords us an explanatory vista across the ideological lane dividers sandwiched between Eurocentrism and Afrocentricity, and, by extrapolation, finds a locational contrast in two major works, Dr. Molefi Kete Asantes The Afrocentric Idea and Dr. Antonio Damasios Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain.

The former, Dr. Asante, seeks an ontological understanding of the layered constitution of humanity, material and nonmaterial, especially the latter, an analytic task evaluated purely from an African perspective, Afrocentricity, that is, while, the latter, Dr. Damasio, explores similar questions through the scientific method. Evidently, the scientific approach, it turns out, is not demonstrably evaluatively superior to the ontological or phenomenological approach utilized by Dr. Asante. Seemingly, part of Dr. Damasios aggregate attempts to elevate the analytic forehead of the scientific method via meticulous biological resolution of the mind-body conundrum, a philosophical question whose evaluation captured the minds of Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, found themselves in the fog of unproven conjectures and high-flown speculations. That is, there is so much about human spiritually, human psychology, and human personality science simply does not understand, let alone explain, if adequately.

Therefore, lets not deceive ourselves into swallowing the universalist claims of Eurocentrism that, among other misguided proposition, the scientific method is necessarily superior to intuitive and introspective knowledge in every single evaluative circumstance. Creationism and evolution are two other good examples. Creationists generally claim science confirms creationist propositions. Interestingly, creationists also say scientific investigations offer sufficient evidential affirmation of Gods existential ontology though they are yet to tell us who this God actually is, whether he is the Yahweh of Judaism, the Jesus of Christianity, or the Allah of Islam. Evolutionists, on the contrary, claim evolution is the institution of science itself though much of what the Afro-Arab scientist and writer Al-Jahiz, an intellectual precursor of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, said about biological diversity merely derived from conjectural gropings based on perceived, if nuanced, phenotypic variances in the architectural anatomy of animals.

Then again, another controversy brewing between creationists and evolutionists over whether the presence of chromosome 2 backs up creationism or evolutionism demonstrates the fluidized applicability and political insincerity of science. The debate, however, continues unabated. What do all these mean? They mean science is not necessarily all about critical thinking. They also mean scientific or empirical evidence may be doctored, invented, or transformed to conform to the wooden ideology of institutional or personal idiosyncrasies. In that context, we shall argue that science, again, is not necessarily a negation of spirituality. Further, there is no analytic connotation here saying the African world should not vigorously, if simultaneously, pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). We need not exclude a responsible push for progressive industrialization and computerization of the African world.

But industrialization is not without its shortcomings. Namely, among other problems, industrialization kills or tames spirituality, deities, and religions; sends animals to the graveyards of extinction; pollutes the environment; and breeds corruption, scientific racism, and organized crime. Besides, computerization is no different: Pornography, identity theft, industrial espionage, illegal data mining, etc., constitute a few serious problems we may associate with the illegal use of computers. Ideally, we need to clearly define our national priorities so as to put us in a better strategic position to strike a critical balance hovering over questions of moral propriety between want and need. Making better, responsible, effective, advantageous, or cost-effective choices in life, be it community, personal, or national, is part of the intellectual technology of critical thinking.

Lets push ahead. Curiously, though, Asian communities, for instance, place more intellectual and investigational premium on science, engineering, and mathematics than on the arts. That is to say, science, engineering, and mathematics have catapulted India, China, South Korea, Japan, to name but four, to economic and industrial heights of power, not through the totality of medals received at Olympic games. These countries have taken decades to accomplish what the West took centuries to accomplish, lifting hundreds of millions of their citizens out of the rusty borehole of deadening privation. Yet not every student can be a mathematician, scientist, or engineer. Some have to be custodial workers, dancers, rappers, babysitters, instrumentalists, traders, maintenance personnel, singers, writers, secretaries, fishermen, laborers, machiners, plumbers, evangelists, farmers, messengers, sports men and women, priests, carpenters, cooks, welders, fitters, and what have you.

However, it does not imply individuals should get bogged down in these occupations if creative opportunities for occupational improvement or scholarly advancement present themselves. Still, it does not mean that because society generally looks down on these occupations they do not entail critical thinking, far from it. They evidently do, in fact. In effect, that ill-informed subpart of society which refuses to countenance these occupations lacks the evaluative accoutrements of critical thinking itself. In fact, the educational models designed by Molefi Kete Asante and Howard Gardner have connotatively made this claim abundantly clear. Accordingly, this is to gainsay theoretical and practical
advocation for gullible acceptation of Asian or Western educational models because they have worked for them, an idea we wish to reinforce following the contextual contours of the foregoing arguments.

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The Power of Critical Thinking(2)

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Newswise (Salt Lake City) A group of researchers at the University of Utah has launched a new project aimed at understanding how the brain operates in people with deep spiritual and religious beliefs.

The Religious Brain Project, which kicked off this week, aims to foster dialogue and understanding among people with diverse viewpoints on religion by learning how private religious experience may affect the social brain, and how religion may affect social behavior. The new project is a broad, multidisciplinary effort that engages many religious and scientific communities from the University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah Valley University, and Westminster College. The projects first initiative revolves around studying the brains of people who have returned from serving missions on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of neuroradiology at the University of Utah who is also the projects director, said the study is among the first of its kind in trying to uncover the neuroscience behind the brains of religious and spiritual people.

Religious and spiritual stimuli are among the most profound influences on behavior that exists. The neuroscience of spirituality, however, is almost completely unknown, said Anderson. We want to study what happens in the brain when someone has a spiritual experience.

Anderson is the principal investigator on the study along with University of Utah researchers Michael Ferguson and Jared Nielsen. In addition, Julie Korenberg M.D. ,Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah, is consulting on the project. Researchers are currently in the process of recruiting 15 to 20 volunteers to participate in the study.

Participants who agree to participate in the study, once accepted as a research subject, would arrive at a University of Utah laboratory to have an MRI scan. During that procedure, researchers would provide them with an opportunity for scripture study, prayer, and other church-produced video content that would stimulate their brains. Eligible candidates must be healthy young men and women, ages 20 to 30, who have completed an LDS mission; are active, believing members of their church; and who think they might be able to experience spiritual feelings in the controlled environment of an MRI scanner.

While the projects first study focuses on members of the Mormon faith, research will extend to other religions as the initiative continues to grow, Anderson said.

Religious and spiritual experiences are among the most powerful influences on individuals and entire cultures. We are all shaped and defined by our experiences with religion. Yet the neuroscience of religious and spiritual feeling is almost completely unknown. We are seeking answers to fundamental questions, like What happens in the brain during religious or spiritual experiences? and How is the brain changed by religious experience? said Anderson. He added that researchers hope to find deeper discoveries related to evidence that religious people score higher on a range of pro-sociality metrics such as low criminality, donation to charity, and low divorce rates.

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Newly Launched University of Utah Religious Brain Project Seeks to Uncover Brain Activation During Religious and ...

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This we cant argue: Bill Nyes debate with Ken Ham on Tuesday night in Kentucky sparked healthy discussion about heady topics. After that, well it gets tougher.

Heres what all the fuss was about. Nye we all know. Hes the Science Guy of TV fame. Winner of Emmy awards, dancer with the stars and best buds with some guy named Obama.

Ham is popular in his own right, too. Hes CEO of the Answers in Genesis ministry and founder of the Creation Museum, a facility thats boasted two million visitors since 2007.

They posted dueling YouTube videos last year, with Nye suggesting kids must be protected from creationist thinking. Ham countered with a roster of accomplished scientists committed to the Bibles version of events.

They continued the argument on Tuesday in Petersburg, Ken., inside the Creation Museum, speaking for about 2 hours.

Heres where the debate focused: Iscreation a viable model of origins in todays modern scientific era?

Declaring a clear winner isnt going to happen because both sides are firmly entrenched. Still, since youve lasted with us this long, we should probably get off the fence and tell you this: Nye won by a landslide.

Why? He presented evidence while Ham relied upon the Bible. Ham said he relies on Genesis for his answers, and Nye offered easy-to-understand science lessons. Among his best was counting the rings on trees.

It seems plausible to anyone who has ever chopped firewood that each single ring of a tree stump represents roughly one year in that trees life.

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No debate about it, Bill Nye dissected Ken Ham in creation-evolution discussion