Human attitude towards Nature throughout History – interesting overview November 22, 2009

The earliest phase was characterized by a conception of the universe as extremely small and of the Earth as the only inhabited planet. The world, however, possessed, besides our physical plane, a number of other planes, also material but with a materiality of a different nature and possessing different properties than ours. None of the planes, including ours, were thought to evolve. They had been created once and for all and were inhabited by good and evil beings. Humans lay at the center of those beings’ interests and were, so to speak, their apple of discord. Humans were not conscious of Nature as something distinct from themselves and did not contrast themselves with it. Individual natural phenomena evoked, of course, one or another feeling-fear, pleasure, awe-but it seems that Nature was almost never perceived as a whole, or was perceived so in a purely aesthetic sense, and even then only by individuals who were highly gifted artistically. For that reason, one rarely finds among artistic works of those eras lyrical poetry about Nature, and even more rarely does one find landscape painting. In the main, the cultures of antiquity, as well as certain later cultures in the East, belong to that phase. As for religion, polytheism was typical of this first phase.

Typical of the second phase were the monotheistic systems, which either ignored Nature or else were hostile to it. The growth of individuality led to the conception that humans could grow spiritually. Nature, on the other hand, showed no signs of spiritual growth. It was stagnant and static; it was amoral and irrational; it was under the power of the demonic; and if the spirit itself was not to be vanquished, that part of a person’s being that was cosubstantial with Nature had to be vanquished by the spirit. This was the antinature phase. The Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu peoples all passed through it; Jewry (meaning believers in Judaism) still remains in it. The latter, however, like the Muslim peoples, did not so much declare war on Nature as simply snub it.
The Semitic attitude to nature has, generally speaking, been marked by a poverty of feeling. It has long been remarked how lacking the authors of the Bible and the Quran were in their feeling toward nature compared to those who wrote the great epics of ancient Greece and of India in particular. The Semites gave Nature what they considered its due, sanctioning procreation with the blessing of their religion, but in their religious philosophy and art they strove to ignore it, and with grave consequences.

The Cosmonautics Memorial Museum in Moscow November 15, 2009

My father is  the “sky” person who has always been dreaming about flying as high as possible… Since he could not become a pilot for health reasons,  he became a paratrooper officer and made 2000 jumps with parashute. The space exploration has been fascinating him for ages. I obviously inherited some fo this fascination, since I love airplanes and everything that can take me higher .

This time when I was visiting my parents in Moscow my father was delighted to show me and my mom the new Space museum. As you can imagine, Russia has something to show in that area…

This museum, the only one of its kind, situated inside an enormous monument to the explorers of the cosmos, is well worth the visit, not least for the nostalgia it should inspire in anyone who grew up in the heady days of the space race. The displays trace the history of space exploration, including the first interplanetary satellite flights, the first dogs in space and man’s journeys to the cosmos.

Let me show you some shots I made inside the museum.

My parents – by the way, they now live just next to the  Zvezdnyi Gorodok ”Startown” by Moscow, where all cosmonauts are being trained:

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We saw an interesting documentary about the history of Space exploration. Juri Gagarin, the first ever human in space:

 his smile is unforgettable!

The typical space costume live:

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The clothes cosmonauts wear inside a spaceship:

There’s plenty of fun gadgetry, plus an excellently conceived display explaining how astronauts survive a space flight, all of which should be interesting for children. The food in the space freezer:

7 basic questions Science cannot answer November 2, 2009

Only 7 questions that seem to be essential for the understanding of how humanity lives and operates, and no answers…

1. Does the Source, the Creator, God exist? Unknown
2. Does such a thing as a soul exist? If so, is it immortal? Science does not know the answer.
3. What is time, space, matter, energy? Opinions are sharply divided.
4. Is our world eternal and endless or, on the contrary, is it limited within time and space? Science does not possess the necessary data to give a definite answer.
5. Why should I do good and not evil, if evil appeals to me and I can be sure of escaping punishment? The answers are totally unintelligible.
6. How can science be used to avert the possibility of wars and tyranny? Silence.
7. How can social harmony be attained with the least human cost? Mutually exclusive proposals are put forward that resemble each other only in that they are all equally unrelated to pure science.

Agriculture enlightened: a modern Japanese sage brings “do-nothing farming” July 25, 2009

Another beautiful encounter with an enlightened soul of modern times: Masanobu Fukuoka (1914-2008) was a Japanese farmer who developed what many consider a revolutionary method of sustainable agriculture. The fascination about this method is that it is not only practical and efficient, but also very spiritual.

Fukuoka started as a microbiologist and worked for the Japanese customs until his transformation following an illness and an ecstatic illuminating self-realisation experience. His central insight was: “There is nothing, really nothing at all whether this be the mundane world or God’s world.” After that he gave up science and come back to his father’s farm where he developed his unusual method. In 1975, distressed by the effects of Japan’s post-war modernization, Fukuoka wrote The One-Straw Revolution. In his later years, Fukuoka was involved with several projects to reduce desertification throughout the world. He remained an active farmer until well into his eighties, and continued to give lectures until only a few years before his death at the age of ninety-five.

Today I’ve read The One-straw Revolution  -an extraordinary book that distills the deepest of philosophical and spiritual truths into a practical approach to farming that was called natural or do-nothing farming. Since its publication in 1978 in English, the book has shot up to cult status, mandatory reading among advocates of alternative living. I literally “swallowed ” the book, as it was so fresh and meditative…ultimately, it is about quieting our cleverness in a way that allows us to see how we really can do more with less.

I especially enjoyed the way Fukouka came to his conclusions on farming:

“The usual way to go about developing a method is to ask “How about trying this?” or “How about trying that?” bringing in a variety of techniques one upon the other. This is modern agriculture and it only results in making the farmer busier.

My way was opposite. I was aiming at a pleasant, natural way of farming [Farming as simply as possible within and in cooperation with the natural environment, rather than the modern approach of applying increasingly complex techniques to remake nature entirely for the benefit of human beings] which results in making the work easier instead of harder. “How about not doing this? How about not doing that?”- that was my way of thinking. I ultimately reached the conclusion that there was no need to plow, no need to apply fertilizer, no need to make compost, no need to use insecticide. When you get right down to it, there are few agricultural practices that are really necessary.”

(I wonder if this could be the brilliant hint for a modern man in general, in other spheres of of life?

So what is that special about his natural farming? What makes it that revolutionary?

I should have everything that is good, genuine and beautiful! June 23, 2009

“I should have everything that is good, genuine and beautiful!”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Those who are familiar with Mozart life story and character will immediately recognize him in these words. He was not only a genius but something much more… The vibrations of his death place are tremendous like of a swaymbhu… Very special! Apparently they say that his horoscope at the death point was even more impressive than of the birthday. That may mean that he could not only fulfill his life mission but had given us something much more…the eternal character of the music.

I would claim that of all western classical composers Mozart is the only one whose music does not awaken emotions and does not make one think (normally the Western classical music is conceptual, full of thoughts and emotions).

I believe his music has almost the same impact as the classical Indian music - it awakens the happy spirit, washes thoughts away and makes one feel light and joyful.

But that is not all! You must have heard of “Mozart effect” :

The concept of the “Mozart effect” was described by French researcher, Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis in his 1991 book Pourquoi Mozart?. He used the music of Mozart in his efforts to “retrain” the ear, and believed that listening to the music presented at differing frequencies helped the ear, and promoted healing and the development of the brain.

Want to live longer? – find a purpose in life, a new study shows. June 22, 2009

I love the scientific evidence of things that seem logical to me. Here is another good piece of news I want to share with you:

“It can be anything — from wanting to accomplish a goal in life, to achieving something in a volunteer organization, to as little as reading a series of books,” said study author Dr. Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“We found that people who reported a greater level of purpose in life were substantially less likely to die over the follow-up period — only about half as likely to die over the follow-up period — as compared to people with a lower level of purpose,” Boyle said. The follow-up period averaged nearly three years.

Boyle and her colleagues studied 1,238 older adults already participating in two ongoing research studies at Rush, the Rush Memory and Aging Project and the Minority Aging Research Study. The participants were all dementia-free when the study began and averaged 78 years old.

At the start of the study, the participants answered questions about their purpose in life, rating themselves on different areas meant to measure the tendency to derive meaning from life and to feel that one is working toward goals.

Why I see the world through the rose coloured glasses – study results June 6, 2009

An interesting scientific prove of what I always knew: Optimists Literally See Better! As you can see from my posts and photos, I am a hopeless optimist. And here comes the new study proving the nature of my (and many others’!) life perception.

 (image by me)

Beware of bad moods as they can worsen the way you perceive the world, says a new study.
“Specifically our study shows that when in a positive mood, our visual cortex takes in more information, while a negative mood results in tunnel vision, said Adam Anderson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto (U-T) who led the study.

Anderson’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how our brain processes sensory information when in good, bad and neutral moods.

Researchers first showed subjects a series of images designed to generate a good, bad or neutral mood. Subjects were then shown a composite image, featuring a face in the centre, surrounded by “place” images, such as a house.

To focus their attention on the central image, subjects were asked to identify the gender of the person’s face. When in a bad mood, the subjects did not process the images of places in the surrounding background.

Meditation: a placebo or a real thing? Interesting scientific results in a 9-year evaluation March 17, 2009

  (image by me)

Scientific studies have consistently found that meditation does not give better results than taking a short nap, listening to pleasant music or thinking pleasant thoughts. However, according to recent research, the application of a new definition of meditation involving “mental silence” appears to have effects substantially greater than this, especially with regard to the impact of stress.
Although more than 3,000 scientific studies exist on meditation within the major scientific databases, only about 4% are reports on randomised controlled trials (RCTs) ¾ the only way to reliably exclude the placebo effect.

Researchers who have systematically evaluated these RCTs consistently find that meditation, as it is practised and defined in western society (eg. relaxation, attention focusing and mindfulness), is little more than a sophisticated way of generating a placebo effect. Descriptions of the meditative experience that originated in ancient India, however, reveal that a key feature of meditation is the experience of mental silence. Western definitions have not emphasised this feature.

Currently, the Royal Hospital for Women’s Meditation Research Program (MRP) is systematically evaluating the mental silence perspective of meditation. Over the past nine years, a multifaceted evaluation program has been conducted to evaluate the effect of mental silence on a variety of health and behavioural factors, especially stress.

What do you know about Goethe’s Theory of Colours? March 12, 2009

We all know Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  (1749-1832) as the greatest of Germany’s poets (comparable to Shakespeare and Dante). But he was not only that! Goethe was also an avid amateur scientist and displayed through his careful observations and his keen, what might now be called phenomenological, mind an ability to discern the depth of the phenomenon in question. As we all learned Newton’s theory of colour formation. at school, it was very interesting for me  to discover that there was a contradiction to it, a contradiction made by a poet!

Goethe, being fascinated by the colours generated from the prism conducted his own investigations and found to his great surprise that Newton’s colour theory was, if not incorrect, but rather mechanical in nature and based on an “interpretation” of the phenomenon rather than the truth as it stands.

 Goethe’s Colour Wheel

 His 1,400-page treatise on color  Theory of Colours ( Zur Farbenlehre) was published in 1810. The work comprises three sections: i) a didactic section in which Goethe presents his own observations, ii) a polemic section in which he makes his case against Newton, and iii) a historical section. It contains some of the earliest and most accurate descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.

Goethe reformulates the topic of color in an entirely new way. Newton had viewed color as a physical problem, involving light striking objects and entering our eyes. Goethe realizes that the sensations of color reaching our brain are also shaped by our perception — by the mechanics of human vision and by the way our brains process information. Therefore, according to Goethe, what we see of an object depends upon the object, the lighting and our perception.

 In fact, Goethe’s theory is being widely used today but only few of us are aware of his discovery (reminds me of a story with Nicola Tesla).

What I personally liked about this theory is the Goethes’s explanation of the pastel colours:

Why by saying “I forgive” we can stop thinking? February 6, 2009

image by axinia

We learn how to think all our childhood. Later on we learn how to think “better” – how to develop the ability to analyze, evaluate, generalize, etc.

Until at some point we understand that we are sick of thinking. I keep meeting successful businessmen who are desperately looking for the ways how to stop their excessive thinking.

The easiest way to stop thinking is at the same time the most sufficient one: Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi found out that it is FORGIVENESS that makes our heads free. When thoughts keep coming back to certain situations or people, this does not let us enjoy the present moment – and it is a problem. It simply means that there is something that we could not forgive and forget! Thus “I forgive everyone and myself” is a powerful mantra against headaches and annoying thinking.

But what makes forgiveness that powerful? Recently my husband gave a brilliantly simple explanation: Forgiveness is a kind of a shock for our mind. The humanity has never learned to forgive (although it has been 2 millennium since Christ brought that message!), and it is something very “unnatural” for our mentality – the first spontaneous reaction to a hurting behaviour towards us it to hurt back. It is the first impulse, unfortunately. That is why by saying “I forgive” our mental computer simply shuts down   - our brain software does not operate in that mode and can not produce such a command spontaneously.