Joy in Life and its effect on Brain Centre

Joy in Life and its effect on Brain Centre

Our brain is having billions of cells cramped together in a small space in our head. But the cells do not touch each other physically. There is a gap between each cell. This gap is called as synapse. The cells are having hair like filaments by which they touch the hairlike filaments of other cells. These hairlike filaments are called dendrites. The dendrites vary from person to person, from cell to cell. They may be 50 in some cases whereas in some other cased they may be 1000. They are not fixed. And through these dendrited they are able to communicate. The scientists have not been able to ascertain as to why some neurons that is brain cells have 50 dendrites for sending messages – that is communicating with other cells while some other neurons have 10,000 dendrites. Scientists are still investigating as to why it is so. They have got one very interesting finding and which is of particular interest to us in Sri Anand Yoga. And that is thay have observed people who are mentally active – old people who are mentally active – they are actually growing new dendrites all the time. This was finding by Marian Diamond at Barkley, who had done experiments on rats and he had shown that the brains of rats grew or shrank according to the environment in which they were there. Rats which were confined to the small cages and had no social interaction, there was no fun in life as compared to the other rats – their brain, i.e. their cortexes show shrinking and they had lot of loss of dendrites. On the other hand, rats which were put back with their friends, in their society and given lot of stimulation – their brains expanded and grew more dendrites. So this gave physiological explanation as to why lonely or isolated old people are much more likely to get confused, disoriented and seem to living in void than other old people who are actively involved with family and friends.

There is one other interesting angle to this aspect. One is tempted to conclude that having more dendrited means having more developed brain. But it is not so. Very very curious and interesting observation and which in Sri Anand Yoga we are very much interested is that the babies – small babies are born with many more dendrites than their grown adults. So this is very curious. When we say that the old people get mentally active, they grow more dendrites – but babies are already having far more dendrites than the grown up people. And as they mature their dendrites fall away – their dendrites become less and less. So maturing means the lowering of the count of number of dendrites which the baby is having. Ultimately it settles to the level whereby it had whatever its needs are – in other words how much a human person is using his brain. Whatever use is there  of a person for his brain that much dendrites he will be having. We can not put any mathematical equation for this but this has been ascertained that baby is having more dendrites and it goes down and it settles as per the use of the brain and along with this we have to see that the old brains – brains of older people – they are capable of growing more dendrites as their social interaction increases.

Now why the dendrites on the brain cell of the babies are more and it goes down ? This can be compared to an experiment which we can do anywhere. Put a ball and bounce it on the floor. When we bounce it on the floor, it bounces back to almost the same height to which we bounced it. and slowly it goes on bouncing bouncing bouncing on the floor and with every bounce its height goes down down down untill  at the end of say 9^th bounces it goes flat on the floor. This is like in the case of the babies. Initially we are energetic, we are active – babies want to ask so many questions, they are active, they are joyful, they are playful, they want to enjoy life – but then we put restrictions on them, we try to discipline them, we try to culture them, we try to train them in our own way. With the result we put restrictions, we tell them don’t do this, don’t do that, do this, do that – thereby killing their spontaneity of a child. And this results in a lessening of  dendrites. If we are able to bring up a child, not putting lot of restrictions on him and grooming it carefully, nurturing it with love then we will be able to keep the dendrites count at very high level. This is supported by the scientific finding. I do not know if anybody has done this experiment, but scientists have known that babies are having more dendrites and the dendrite count goes down as they grow adult.

There is a common understanding or common perception amongst scientists that our brain lose around a million neurons i.e. brain cells every year. As we grow older, the brain starts shrinking. But this is not provable because nobody can count the brain cells of a living brain. They can only have a deductive logic by having the brain weighed of a dead person and then draw conclusions out of that. But this is in doubt. It is very much in doubt whether we are really losing a million neurons every year without any replacement. We may be losong but there are replacements. Mr Robert Terry, a neuroscientist at te University of California at Santiago. He had some interesting finding in this respect. What he has observed is that there is no significant decline in neuron density in very three important areas of the brain – what he has said is that the number of large neurons does decrease but that is offset by the increase in smaller neurons. And large neurons also appear not to be dyeing but shrinking. There can not be any conclusive proof because of the limitations in doing experiments on living brain cells. But this is very interesting finding. Other neuroscientist Samuel Weiss and Brian Reynold of the University of Calgerry in Albetta – they have done experiment on brain and they have found that they can stimulate dormant brain cell to active life. What they have done  - they have cultivated mouse neurons in the laboratory and gave them a chemical called Epidermal Growth Factor causing the immature inactive brain cells to divide and form mature ones. And human brain is almost certainly storing such dormant cells for use as a replacement reserve. What we say is that we are having lot of dormant cells because of non use. We do not use full capacity of brain. We do not live our life to a full extent. That is why we are having these dormant cells. And it is possible to bring these dormant cells into life. What the scientists have done chemically we can do it without chemicals.

Brain has its own natural mechanism for activating itself in old age. It is very interesting to know that after you pass the age of 80, new dendrites grow longer and sprout more new branches. It is very interesting. It becomes more and more complex after they pass 80. So as neurons shrink, they create new synapses which in turn stimulates more endocrenical activity in the brain. There is a protein called Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). This is natural substance and this natural substance stimulate the growth and repair of a brain cell. At John Hopkins Laboratory this NGF experiment was done and it was shown that NGF prevented the degenaration of old neurons in rats and monkeys when this was injected into the brain of old rats. This improved to a very significant extent the spatial memory – i.e. memory related to the space.

The study was conducted at this university it was a very long term study and it was found out that there was no general decline in intelligence amongst old people unless they are suffering from high blood pressure. Till the age of 120 – which is our natural biological age – if we do not fall sick, we will live upto the age of 120. And scientists have more or less concluded that sickness, not the ageing process itself is to create decline in mental functioning.

Sri Anand Yoga – 4

Sri Anand Yoga  –  4

…….. Originally written on 25 March 2004

The response of our body to external threat can be compared with how a country responds to the threat from across the border. At the time of war, the country’s economy, social system, political system, fiscal system, all system go into a war mode. That is the normal conditions, normal functioning is suspended. And the whole energy of the country is focused on winning the war.  May be the parliament is suspended, may be the hot debate in which the opposition and the ruling party fight each other – that is suspended so that we have to show unity to the enemy. Similarly, taxes may be raised, common man is expected to contribute more, so that the war machine required to fight the enemy can be purchased. Similarly, the supply of essentail commodities is reduced for common man and diverted to the war effort. All essential requirements like electricity, food etc, all those essential requirements are curtailed and diverted to war- so all these things take place. Because our sole object during that time is to win the war. This is similar to the response of the body when it is having a external threat. Another example can be given of a factory manufacturing goods. When the power supply is cut, we start the power generators. However, the power generators do not produce enough energy to meet the full requirement of the factory – because it is not economical to have large capacity in generators because it is not a usual situation of continuous power cut. Power cut happens only sometimes. So the limited power generated by the generators is utilised on essential functions. Like computer room for example where data is not lost, so some supply is given, or depending upon the manufacturing activity, power is given like pharmaceutical industry sufficient power is given just to see that the chemical composotion, chemical compound which is already in the process do not get spoiled so the essential processes are kept continuing, or in the case of hospital for example, the power is supplied to ICU, or to heart patients so that the minimum survival functions are ensured. This is what is being done when it goes – either a hospital or a factory – during power shortage or a country during the situation of war – this is what happens when there is an external threat or there is a condition of a crisis.

Now in the case of human body, a similar thing happens. During the state of external threat we mobilise massive amount of energy. We have got increased cardiovascular activity, our digestive process is suppressed because the energy which is used for digestion is diverted towards your muscles in fight or flight situations. Similarly the muscles, the cells which do activity for growth or reproduction – this is also suppressed and that energy is used for fighting the enemy. Similarly the immune response of the body which is required to fight the germs inside the body to protect the body from the environment – that also is suppressed because more essential at the time of external threat is to fight the enemy outside the body rather than to fight the enemy within the body in terms of germs. Similarly we need to have a quick response, we need to have the alert mind so that we can watch the moment of the external threat, may be an animal and give a quick response, so that our survival is ensured. All these activities take place. This is in a special – we can call it an alert mode, survival mode, during that mode these things take place. And it does result in our survival. It does help in our survival. So it is very essential part of it. Again I am stressing, it is not an error to have these type of responses  is very very essential part of our responses. However, what we have to note is that in a continuous state of such external threat when our body is in this alert mode or in a survival mode, there is a cost to pay. I tdoes not come just without a cost. Our survival is ensured. But survival at that particular point of time have result only by paying I would say high cost. We will see how.

For example, the increased cardiovascular activity, the increased heart rate, the heart pumps more blood to give more energy, the cost of this is that, though at the time of threat it gives us extra energy, but subsequently stress induced hypertension. Similarly a suppressed digestion results in alceration – ulcer. Suppressed growth results in psychogenic dwarfism. Suppressed reproduction results in impotence, cause of libido that is sexual drive, interruption of menstruation – monthly cycles of women, this is as a result of suppressed reproduction. Similarly suppression of immune response results in increased risk of disease. Extra mobilised energy results in fatigue, muscle destruction and also of diabetis. Sharpening of thought and perception – being alert – results in neuron damage or even death. These are long term consequences of stress. So short term at the time of threat, we gain our survival. But long term we have to pay the cost. All these responses taken together result in aging.

It should be noted that we can not continue in a stressed state for a long time. It is like a sexual activity. The actual sexual activity is a very short term phenomena. We can not ramain in that state for a long time. Because body will exhaust itself. Similarly in the stressed situation, we can not ramain in that situation for a long time. the body starts aging. And our response to stress deteriorates. Our body fails to respond as it should to the external threat if the threat continues for a longer time. It is interesting to note that as we age, as we grow older, the eficiency of our response to stress goes down now gradually but in exponentially. Like when from the age of 30 we go to age 40 – the ten years are added, but the response to stress – it does not go down by 10 years, it goes down by 20 years. It goes off exponentially. In other words, in older people, the response to stress is very very little. A small stress can cause a great deal of harm to older people.  – than it would cause to younger people.  In case of very old people for example, a small event can result in their death because they can not cope with stress, than they would have 3 years earlier.

I have mentioned that we can control the stress response by having a cultivated mind. A higher mind can take charge of our body and its response to stress. Because the stress response is basically  a mental response, it is a reaction towards external threat.  Earlier it used to be by physical mind during our animal days , now the same thing continues for most of the people. – but for use who are on the path of Sri Anand Yoga we can take charge, we can control our mind and very much reduce or eliminate the cause of stress and also the response of our mind and body toward stress. This is possible. and I will give you one example of what scientists have done experiment on two monkeys.

We should understand a hysical – chemical process happening in our body.  At the time of stress our body release glucocorticoid. These are called stress hormones. At the time of starvation our body break down the muscles tissue and from that we generate energy if we do not get food from outside. However, this results in our aging and ultimately in our death.  When scientists made experiments with tow monkeys, they stopped giving them food.  – and these monkeys started starving. As a result their body reacted, as expected, by releasing glucocorticoid, that is stress hormones. And this resulted in monkey’s body breaking down their muscles and generate enough energy for survival. Upto this point it is fairly logical. We know that stress has resulted in this response of the body and we are tempted to conclude that this is an automatic response . It is a chemical response one can say. That it just happens that during starvation we generate stress hormone called glucocorticoid and our muscles are broken down and generate energy. But it is not so. It is not as simple as that. There is still an element of choice between the stress and the body’s reaction to the stress in terms of generating glucocorticoid which ultimately result in breaking down the body muscles and aging and death. We have got a choice between these two events. 

We do not exercise this choice because basically we do not know that there is a choice. It all happens automatically and it was fair enough. During jungle days it was fair enough because then we did not even have developed mind to exercise this choice, because this choice is exercised only by a developed mind.  It did not exist during the jungle days.  Naturally it functioned automatically and it was good.  – for the survival o fman at that time.  Even though it might result in – our ancestors payd a very heavy price in terms of ageing and earlier death, that is why the average age was very low during that time, we used to age fast. Probably our jungle man survied not above 40 years of age – 40 is highest, they used to survive  may be 25 to 30 years of age at that time because of these stress situations.

To illustrate further, what scientists have done in these two monkeys, they have selected one monkey and given this monkey artificially sweetened water. Now this water had no nutritional value. It was artificially sweetened water. It did not even had sugar. As this water did not had any nutritional content we should assume that the body’s response of this monkey will be the same as the other monkey because both the monkeys are equally starved of nutrition of food.  But it is not so. The monkey who has been given sweetened water  - his levels of glucocorticoid did not rise.  In other words he did not breakdown the muscles in order to survive. That is he did not age or he did not die out of that situation. Now this is beyond the normal logic. This was indeed a very shocking finding for the scientists.Because in the scientifically system of explaining things logically, mathematically, they could not give an explanation to this. The explanation is beyond the scientific terms. What happens to the monkey who gets artificially sweetened water is that he perceives that his situation has improved , though actually it has not improved because he does not get any calories or nutrition. And it is enough to signal his body that the starvation period has gone.  Perception is our mental response. It may need some cause – in this case it is sweetented water -  which generate a ‘feel good’ factor.  And because of that factor he has got better management of his stress. This proves that there is a choice.  We take this clue from this point and see that what happens to this monkey unconciously, we can mange consciously – that is our body response to stress.  This is what we are trying to achieve in Sri Anand Yoga .

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Sri Anand Yoga 3

Sri Anand Yoga 3

…… Originally written on 25 March 2004

During normal situations, that is when there is no external threat for survival, our cells are engaged in the activity of renewal.  That is building up new proteins and creting new DNA and RNA.  It is interesting to note that about the 90 % of the energy of the cell is utilised for this new creation. However, during the fight or flight situation, that is when there is an external threat, the body need a massive burst of energy to equip itself to take fast, quick and decisive action because your survival is at stake. This is I am talking about the animal response. It existed thousands of years ago during our good old jungle days. the physical body we are still ingeriting very much like our ancestors during the jungle days. And our response is still conditioned of those times. The normal activity of the cells which creates new proteins, manufactures new DNA and RNA is called anabolic metabolism. However, during the situation of external threat the body respond by producing adrenaline. During such time our normal metbolic activity gets converted to the opposite of anabolic metabolism.This is called catabolic metabolism. The catabolic metabolism instead of building up the proteins – it breaks down the tissues. this is done to generate the massive dose of energy which is reuired during fight or flight situation. It should be remembered here that this is an automatic physical response. We do not think about the fight or flight situation. It just happens. The physical mind of the body takes over and directs our body to produce adrenaline and go into the mode of catabolic metabolism to generate massive dose of energy. This is very much essential for our survival. Otherwise we sould be eaten. by animals. So it should be noted caredully that this response of our body to external threat is an essential part of our survival during jungle days. Now in today’s situation we do not have fight or flight situation in terms of physical danger. However, the stress response of our body is still created our of mental conditions of anxiety. During our jungle days our mind was not fully developed like today. The developed state of mind is a very valuable asset which we posses today.

It is for us to consciously take charge of this response of our body and ensure that the stress related syndromes are controlled. How to do it we shall see later on. If we still get governed by the same old responses of our physical mind then it is an error.

But this will not happen naturally. We have to consciously take charge. The purpose of Sri Anand Yoga is to equip to train your mind to take charge of your body so that it does not create these automatic stress responses which result in aging and premature death or diseases. How it happens, we can elaborate still further.

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Sri Anand Yoga 2

Sri Anand Yoga 2

Originally written on 25 March 2004

Stress causes ageing. It is a known scientific fact for over five decades that stress causes the body to age quickly. And stress is physical as well as mental. Our main concern is not just the physical stress. Physical stress can result in exhaustion. But the mental stres willresult in ageing.

Scientists have done experiments on mouse. They have given it mild electric shocks. at random for few days. These mild shocks have resulted in the mice dyeing in a very few days. The cause of death was not the electric shocks by itself but the mental reaction of the mouse to the electric shocks. As far as the physical survival is concerned, the response of our brain is physically conditioned by our animal stage. which existed hundreds of thousands years ago. During that stage we only had two options when posed with a threat – fight or flight. During the state of alarm the brain releases adrenaline from the adrenal cortex. This adrenaline then races through the blood stream and completely overtakes the usual business of the body.

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Divine Consciousness Penetrating Matter

Divine Consciousness Penetrating Matter

This note was written on 1 April 2006. It is now published on this blog on 8 March 2012.

The Goal is not to lose oneself in the Divine Consciousness. The goal is to let the Divine Consciousness penetrate into Matter and transform it.

… The Mother

Losing oneself into Divine Consciousness is leaving the material world un-transformed. The knot of matter is not untied. The original purpose  behind the creation of this world – i.e. to have Bliss in Consciousness based on the foundation of Truth – Sat-Chit-Anand or Sadchidananda remains unfulfilled. The individual salvation at best can be achieved. In most cases even that is not achieved on permanent basis. The soul has again to return on this life to complete his unfinished job.

Losing into Divine Consciousness is an attractive proposition as it leaves aside the job making the Divine Consciousness penetrate this material world and transform it into divine consciousness.

The reason one is tempted to opt for the first option of ‘losing into divine consciousness’ as against the second more important way of ‘making the divine consciousness penetrate into the material world and transform it’ is because the soul who has got the call of his Innerself and Overself tends to have disgust for the anarchy of this material world. He feels himself helpless in doing the job of transforming this material world. He feels that to penetrate this material world is to ‘step down’ in the ladder of his spiritual progress instead of ‘step up’ of the losing oneself into the divine consciousness. To go to God is considered as the final destination. To realise God here in this world in this material body is considered as the job best to be done by some Avatar, by some supreme divine intervention. It is supposed to be not the job of Man but that of God. Moreover, it is not the pleasant job. It involves getting oneself into strife and discord.

Hunger of Life ... Fountain of Youth Part II

Hunger of Life .....................................................................Shrikant Soman
Fountain of Youth - Part Two
My Experiments with Life

The Scientists have been able to extend the life span of a worm named Caenorhabditis Elegans (CE) by 6 times over. As against the normal life span of CE of 24 days, the Scientists were able to make the worm survive for 124 days. If we were able to apply the same technique to the humans, we would live for 500 to 600 years ! This feat was achieved by altering the signaling pathways for a protein called Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1). This same protein controls the longevity in humans. This is an extreme case of treating human body like a machine – completely and totally different and independent from our own Self. This is horrible – simply horrible. I am not talking of any ethical or moral issues involved. If we were able, with the help of science alone, to increase our life span without any corresponding life system development, it would drive us to commit suicides, get killed by accidents or kill each other in anarchy. To give you a simple example, consider the case of a car. If we were to produce a car which has an exceptionally high speed of say 400 km per hour, and if we, who are used to drive at 200 km per hour start driving the car, how far can we go ? We are already having cars which give much higher than even this speed of 400 kms. But for these cars to drive safely, we have racing car drivers and specially made racing tracks. The scientific research in all directions, including longevity research, is very helpful and good part of human development. However, if other part of our life systems does not cope with this research, it will cause stress and strains and will cause more damage than good. It will be like a very fast racing car with wrong alignment of wheels.
Interestingly, the subsequent research on CE has revealed that in much the same way that we humans do, the CE worm has sagging muscles and a growing middle as it ages. The survival does not automatically bring with it robust life system. Even if we assume that with some scientific breakthrough in future, we are able to have good muscle strength of CE worm even at its old age, still, for us the humans, the basic problem of improving the level of our life system needs to be tackled.
We need to develop our life system in a robust and healthy manner in all its aspects. The joy of life is an integral part of our life system. Without joy, what is left is only the survival. Even if we do not fall physically sick and live for say 200 years, it will still be a sick life nonetheless, unless there is a joy in life. Joy in life is in the beginning, it is in the middle and it is in the end – it is everywhere. The life of cells give a very interesting insight to the life system on a larger level.
A very important process involved in digesting the food is called ‘metabolism’. It is commonly understood that metabolism indicates uptake of nutrients from the blood and their conversion to energy usable for cellular activities. Actually metabolism involves two diverse processes – anabolism and catabolism. Anabolism is constructive metabolism. It builds up tissues by the construction of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Anabolism is destructive metabolism. It causes the chemical breakdown of complex substances to produce energy as well as waste matter. This process of metabolism is present in our whole life system. It holds the key to good health as well as to longevity. The commonly held belief that lack of sufficient nutrients in our food causes malnutrition is absolutely wrong. It hold good only in about 5 % of the cases. In 95 % of the cases, the problem lies not in the insufficient amount of nutrients in our daily food, but in the lack of our capacity to effectively metabolise the food intake. The effectiveness of metabolism depends, among many other things, our love and respect for food and for life in general. Sri Anand Yoga has yogic practices to increase the metabolic effectiveness by many fold. It is founded on thankfulness for all the players in our Universe – our parents, the persons cooking the meal, farmers, the Mother Earth, our House and this beautiful life in general. It is powered by our ‘hunger’ for food. We need to have the same intensity of hunger as the hardworking poor man earning just enough to feed himself and his family. It is made joyful by the blessing of the food we eat. Eating food is a very important part of the life system of Sri Anand Yoga.
Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is a key molecule that powers our cellular activities. Cells produce ATP from glucose and glucose is derived from sugar (carbohydrates). Another key hormone is insulin. It influences the glucose used by the cells. It serve s as the key that opens the cell doors to the sugar. Metabolic processes involving glucose and insulin greatly influence life span. It is a paradox that while ATP is absolutely essential for cellular life, the abundance of it is also the cause of cell degeneration. We need to have ATP just in right quantity. The caloric restriction reduces the supply of glucose to the cells. It helps in keeping ATP in check. However, in Sri Anand Yoga, we believe that the culprit is not caloric abundance but our inability to make good of the calories available to us. Any excess amount of calories need to be thrown out of our bodily system. If we are not able to do this, the science wrongly advises us to eat less food. Overeating is certainly bad. But under-eating is equally bad. The ‘right’ quantity and type of food is not decided by any ‘table of nutrients and their calorific values’ and the ‘calorie burning’ activities. It is naturally and spontaneously decided by our body if we treat food as an integral part of our life system.
Here we again come to the black sheep ‘free radicals’. Much of the free radicals are produced by the ATP making machinery of the cells. All this leads us to the absolutely absurd and stupid hypothesis that the food we eat is the culprit. If we have this attitude towards food, how on earth can we improve our life system ? It is certainly true that meat, excessive oils, aerated soft drinks, junk food etc are bad for health. However, there is no point in making a fetish of the ‘nutrition’ theory of food.
It is interesting to learn as to how the calorie restriction is supposed to help us. The reduced amount of the food intake is taken by the body as a signal of famine. The cells then shift their gear to self-preservation mode. Its main focus now is only in cell maintenance and repair. The other major activity of reproduction is neglected. This way the cells are able to make the maximum use of the scarce energy. This hypothesis of ‘virtual famine’ in cell world is confirmed by the production of hormones that protect cells from excess heat and other stresses – similar in real life when actual famine happens. In Sri Anand Yoga, we ask the question – why the hell we have to ‘simulate famine’ in order to live longer ? Are we ‘cursed’ by the abundance of food ? The master key to this paradox lies in looking beyond ‘mathematics’ of ‘calorific values’ and into the ‘life values’ of food and everything else that this life offers us.
Similarly, insulin is essential for the cells to convert glucose into energy. Insufficient insulin will deprive us of the sufficient energy and excessive sugar in the blood. Paradoxically, the same insulin can contribute to heart disease and to undesirable cell proliferation – cancer. It is an interesting topic as to the real role of insulin in our health and life system. It will be covered sometime later. At this stage we just mention that in Sri Anand Yoga, we look beyond physical process of insulin and into the spiritual aspect of it.
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