"There are approximately one hundred billion neurons in your brain, about the same number as there are stars in the Milky Way. Neurons sprout tendrils that can reach from the very bottom of the brain stem to the frontal lobes, forming a pulsating tangle of fibers laden with amino-acid-rich juices that are in turn soaked up by other tendrils connected to other neurons. There are perhaps five hundred trillion of these synapses; the number of possible circuits among neurons is thus, as one scientist has put it, "hyperastronomical": in the neighborhood of ten followed by a million zeros. By comparison, the number of particles in the known universe add up to ten followed by a mere seventy-nine zeros."
--from "A Mind of Its Own," Harper's magazine, June 2008
I'm so glad you posted this... because we humans limit ourselves (with "incurable psychiatric dx"--nonsense!)as well as our disbelief in our native abilities for creativity, solving any problem in front of us, or even creating "miracles" (Christ, himself, said we would be able to do more than He--and He raised people who had been dead for four days!)... but it all gets mixed up in power-struggle, greed, and such... the reason "religion" is necessary (even religion knows not what it has... and can be exploitative)... but not religion in the sense of its limiting features--but in the broad sense of our beginning knowledge of the good that can be done per our capacity for goodness. Many have outright contempt for the lessons learned in the past ages--but they still pertain--at least most of them... especially those things learned through rigorous inquiry and discipline (yes, ascesis). The baby really shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater! When the "mainstream" gets wind of the new work in neuroplasicity.. when they read enough quantum theory--perhaps some of this arrogance will be helped... "pride is the driver of all sin." Nothing is more humbling that receiving a mystical experience of the "one-ness" of the Cosmos... and knowing our puny individual numbers of molecules and atoms contribute to the "turning of the planets and suns on the axis of LOVE!", and that we are continually adding our molecules to the "brown dirt from which Adam was created." Bless you all, and thanks for allowing this expression of my appreciation,
ReplyDelete