Fellowship of the Cosmic Mind > Fellowship of the Cosmic Mind (Public)

Learning the Prayer of the Soul.

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Johnno:
I've just learned this after a bit of practice. I had the prayer written out in large 26 point type and on the side of the fridge where I can see it every day. I knuckled down today and learned the prayer word for word.

I had a prompt sheet once I "sort of had it" with the words.

Oh
Holy
Carried
Ruler
Savior
Live
Be
As
Help
Of all
Clear
That
Clear
That
Cleanse
That
The Holiness
Divine

This helped remember the sequence. I then went back reciting it compared to the original.

Hope this of use to some folks.

Buddy:
In the Eíriú-Eolas - Breathing Program thread, Laura posted an interesting article.

After reading that article and some posts referencing the pineal gland and head pain/pressure related to the breathing meditation, I wanted to do some research to see if there was a scientific connection between the pineal gland and head pain/pressure during meditation. I haven't found anything specifically dealing with pain and pressure in the forehead, but I found some other interesting information relating to prayer, meditation and the pineal and wanted to post it here.


There is also a related post regarding Andrew Newberg which looks at serotonin levels and spiritual experience, as well as a SOTT article about selflessness and the neuropsychological connection.

Additionally, there is a thread on melatonin and the pineal gland where SAO ends a post with some good questions related to connections:


--- Quote from: SAO on January 17, 2008, 05:37:34 AM ---Ok, so if you don't sleep much, you lack serotonin (at least for people who normally sleep more, but in your case Simmi, maybe 2-3 hours is all your body needs?). So how do all these things connect: Pineal gland, serotonin, melatonin, "openings", channeling, sleep deprivation, psychic abiltities, and the noise in your head? I'm really tired and dense right now, but based on all of the above it seems like a matter of just connecting the dots and understanding the interrelationships. There may be other pieces of the puzzle needed, I'm not sure. But it may help resolve/explain some of what is going on with you.
--- End quote ---


Maybe some of the information in this thread can address some of these issues as well.


First, Andrew Newberg seems to be on the leading edge of the scientific research to date, with two books publishing his research results:

Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Hardcover)[1]
_http://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Wont-Go-Away/dp/0345440331

How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist (Hardcover)[2]
_http://www.amazon.com/How-Changes-Your-Brain-Neuroscientist/dp/0345503414


--- Quote from: bibliotecapleyades.net ---•  Areas of the brain activated during meditation
Tracing the Synapses of Spirituality
June 17, 2001 - Washington Post



In Philadelphia, a researcher discovers areas of the brain that are activated during meditation. At two other universities in San Diego and North Carolina, doctors study how epilepsy and certain hallucinogenic drugs can produce religious epiphanies. And in Canada, a neuroscientist fits people with magnetized helmets that produce "spiritual" experiences for the secular.

The work is part of a broad new effort by scientists around the world to better understand religious experiences, measure them, and even reproduce them. Using powerful brain imaging technology, researchers are exploring what mystics call nirvana, and what Christians describe as a state of grace. Scientists are asking whether spirituality can be explained in terms of neural networks, neurotransmitters and brain chemistry.

What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with the universe? It could be the decreased activity in the brain’s parietal lobe, which helps regulate the sense of self and physical orientation, research suggests. How does religion prompt divine feelings of love and compassion?
 
Possibly because of changes in the frontal lobe, caused by heightened concentration during meditation. Why do many people have a profound sense that religion has changed their lives? Perhaps because spiritual practices activate the temporal lobe, which weights experiences with personal significance.
•   "The brain is set up in such a way as to have spiritual experiences and religious experiences," said Andrew Newberg, a Philadelphia scientist who authored the book "Why God Won’t Go Away."
•   "Unless there is a fundamental change in the brain, religion and spirituality will be here for a very long time. The brain is predisposed to having those experiences and that is why so many people believe in God."
The research may represent the bravest frontier of brain research. But depending on your religious beliefs, it may also be the last straw. For while Newberg and other scientists say they are trying to bridge the gap between science and religion, many believers are offended by the notion that God is a creation of the human brain, rather than the other way around.
•   "It reinforces atheistic assumptions and makes religion appear useless," said Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.
•   "If you can explain religious experience purely as a brain phenomenon, you don’t need the assumption of the existence of God."
Some scientists readily say the research proves there is no such thing as God. But many others argue that they are religious themselves, and that they are simply trying to understand how our minds produce a sense of spirituality.

Newberg, who was catapulted to center stage of the neuroscience-religion debate by his book and some recent experiments he conducted at the University of Pennsylvania with co-researcher Eugene D’Aquili, says he has a sense of his own spirituality, though he declined to say whether he believed in God because any answer would prompt people to question his agenda. "I’m really not trying to use science to prove that God exists or disprove God exists," he said.

Newberg’s experiment consisted of taking brain scans of Tibetan Buddhist meditators as they sat immersed in contemplation. After giving them time to sink into a deep meditative trance, he injected them with a radioactive dye. Patterns of the dye’s residues in the brain were later converted into images.

Newberg found that certain areas of the brain were altered during deep meditation. Predictably, these included areas in the front of the brain that are involved in concentration. But Newberg also found decreased activity in the parietal lobe, one of the parts of the brain that helps orient a person in three-dimensional space.
•   "When people have spiritual experiences they feel they become one with the universe and lose their sense of self," he said.
•   "We think that may be because of what is happening in that area ‚ if you block that area you lose that boundary between the self and the rest of the world. In doing so you ultimately wind up in a universal state."
Across the country, at the University of California in San Diego, other neuroscientists are studying why religious experiences seem to accompany epileptic seizures in some patients. At Duke University, psychiatrist Roy Mathew is studying hallucinogenic drugs that can produce mystical experiences and have long been used in certain religious traditions.

Could the flash of wisdom that came over Siddhartha Gautama ‚ the Buddha ‚ have been nothing more than his parietal lobe quieting down? Could the voices that Moses and Mohammed heard on remote mountain tops have been just a bunch of firing neurons‚ an illusion? Could Jesus’s conversations with God have been a mental delusion?

Newberg won’t go so far, but other proponents of the new brain science do. Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, has been conducting experiments that fit a set of magnets to a helmet-like device. Persinger runs what amounts to a weak electromagnetic signal around the skulls of volunteers.

Four in five people, he said, report a "mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near" them. Some weep, some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons and evil spirits.
•   "That’s in the laboratory," said Persinger. "They know they are in the laboratory. Can you imagine what would happen if that happened late at night in a pew or mosque or synagogue?"
His research, said Persinger, showed that "religion is a property of the brain, only the brain and has little to do with what’s out there."

Those who believe the new science disproves the existence of God say they are holding up a mirror to society about the destructive power of religion. They say that religious wars, fanaticism and intolerance spring from dogmatic beliefs that particular gods and faiths are unique, rather than facets of universal brain chemistry.
•   "It’s irrational and dangerous when you see how religiosity affects us," said Matthew Alper, author of "The God Part of the Brain," a book about the neuroscience of belief.
•   "During times of prosperity, we are contented. During times of depression, we go to war. When there isn’t enough food to go around, we break into our spiritual tribes and use our gods as justification to kill one another."
While Persinger and Alper count themselves as atheists, many scientists studying the neurology of belief consider themselves deeply spiritual.

James Austin, a neurologist, began practicing Zen meditation during a visit to Japan. After years of practice, he found himself having to re-evaluate what his professional background had taught him.
•   "It was decided for me by the experiences I had while meditating," said Austin, author of the book "Zen and the Brain" and now a philosophy scholar at the University of Idaho.
•   "Some of them were quickenings, one was a major internal absorption ‚ an intense hyper-awareness, empty endless space that was blacker than black and soundless and vacant of any sense of my physical bodily self. I felt deep bliss. I realized that nothing in my training or experience had prepared me to help me understand what was going on in my brain. It was a wake-up call for a neurologist."
Austin’s spirituality doesn’t involve a belief in God ‚ it is more in line with practices associated with some streams of Hinduism and Buddhism. Both emphasize the importance of meditation and its power to make an individual loving and compassionate‚ most Buddhists are disinterested in whether God exists.

But theologians say such practices don’t describe most people’s religiousness in either eastern or western traditions.
•   "When these people talk of religious experience, they are talking of a meditative experience," said John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University.
•   "But religion is more than that. It involves commitments and suffering and struggle ‚ it’s not all meditative bliss. It also involves moments when you feel abandoned by God."
•   "Religion is visiting widows and orphans," he said. "It is symbolism and myth and story and much richer things. They have isolated one small aspect of religious experience and they are identifying that with the whole of religion."
Belief and faith, argue believers, are larger than the sum of their brain parts:
•   "The brain is the hardware through which religion is experienced," said Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist who studies the effect of religion on people.
•   "To say the brain produces religion is like saying a piano produces music."
At the Fuller Theological Seminary’s school of psychology, Warren Brown, a cognitive neuropsychologist, said,
•   "Sitting where I’m sitting and dealing with experts in theology and Christian religious practice, I just look at what these people know about religiousness and think they are not very sophisticated. They are sophisticated neuroscientists, but they are not scholars in the area of what is involved in various forms of religiousness."
At the heart of the critique of the new brain research is what one theologian at St. Louis University called the "nothing-butism" of some scientists ‚ the notion that all phenomena could be understood by reducing them to basic units that could be measured.

And finally, say believers, if God existed and created the universe, wouldn’t it make sense that he would install machinery in our brains that would make it possible to have mystical experiences?
•   "Neuroscientists are taking the viewpoints of physicists of the last century that everything is matter," said Mathew, the Duke psychiatrist.
•   "I am open to the possibility that there is more to this than what meets the eye. I don’t believe in the omnipotence of science or that we have a foolproof explanation."
--- End quote ---
Source: _http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_brain01.htm



-------------------------------------------------------------
[1]
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Over the centuries, theories have abounded as to why human beings have a seemingly irrational attraction to God and religious experiences. In Why God Won't Go Away authors Andrew Newberg, M.D., Eugene D'Aquili, M.D., and Vince Rause offer a startlingly simple, yet scientifically plausible opinion: humans seek God because our brains are biologically programmed to do so.

Researchers Newberg and D'Aquili used high-tech imaging devices to peer into the brains of meditating Buddhists and Franciscan nuns. As the data and brain photographs flowed in, the researchers began to find solid evidence that the mystical experiences of the subjects "were not the result of some fabrication, or simple wishful thinking, but were associated instead with a series of observable neurological events," explains Newberg. "In other words, mystical experience is biologically, observably, and scientifically real.... Gradually, we shaped a hypothesis that suggests that spiritual experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven with human biology." Lay readers should be warned that although the topic is fascinating, the writing is geared toward scientific documentation that defends the authors' hypothesis. For a more palatable discussion, seek out Deepak Chopra's How to Know God, in which he also explores this fascinating evidence of spiritual hard-wiring. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly
The collaborative efforts of science writer Rause, radiologist Newberg and psychiatrist d'Aquili (Newberg's late colleague at the University of Pennsylvania) result in a murky and overspiritualized remix of what should be a compelling scientific investigation into the neurology of mystical experience. The book's best material is its summary of Newberg and d'Aquili's research using advanced imaging technologies to study brain activity during "peak" meditative states, which not only suggests a characteristic radiological profile but also uncovers some specific correlations between brain function and subjective religious experience.

For example, in subjects who reported a feeling of infinite perspective and self-transcendence during meditation, the researchers identified decreased activity in the brain's "object association areas" where perceptions of the boundary between self and other are normally processed. The authors conclude that these experiences are the result of normal, healthy neurophysiology, not to be dismissed as pathological or random events a point that believers and practitioners will doubtless appreciate. But the broader questions these results suggest questions about the origins and significance of human religious behavior lead the researchers quite out of their depth into a speculative rehash of Joseph Campbell, comparative religion and sociobiology. This culminates in a confused and confusing discussion of what it means to accept that religious experience is "neurologically real" or that spirituality "does us good."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

[2]
Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Over the past decade or so, numerous studies have suggested that prayer and meditation can enhance physical health and healing from illness. In this stimulating and provocative book, two academics at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Spirituality and the Mind contend that contemplating God actually reduces stress, which in turn prevents the deterioration of the brain's dendrites and increases neuroplasticity. The authors conclude that meditation and other spiritual practices permanently strengthen neural functioning in specific parts of the brain that aid in lowering anxiety and depression, enhancing social awareness and empathy, and improving cognitive functioning. The book's middle section draws on the authors' research on how people experience God and where in the brain that experience might be located. Finally, the authors offer exercises for enhancing physical, mental and spiritual health. Their suggestions are commonsensical and common to other kinds of health regimens: smile, stay intellectually active, consciously relax, yawn, meditate, exercise aerobically, dialogue with others and trust in your beliefs. Although the book's title is a bit misleading, since it is not God but spiritual practice that changes the brain, this forceful study could stir controversy among scientists and philosophers. Illus. (Mar. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Wray Herbert Gus was not a "meditation type of guy." He was more of a Joe Sixpack, a Philadelphia mechanic not much interested in religion. He hauled himself into Andrew Newberg's clinic for one reason: His memory was failing. Newberg, a neuroscientist and memory expert, has a special interest in spirituality; he has scanned the brains of worshipers ranging from Franciscan nuns to Pentecostals speaking in tongues. So why was he bothering with Gus?

Well, Newberg explains in "How God Changes Your Brain," his studies (with coauthor Mark Robert Waldman) had convinced him of a link between spirituality and cognitive health: The neurochemical changes that he observed during meditation and prayer appeared to improve brain function. But Newberg had studied mostly devotees with years of spiritual training; he wanted to see whether a novice might benefit, too. So Gus learned the basics of Kirtan Kriya meditation. Rooted in 16th-century India, Kirtan Kriya involves conscious regulation of breathing as well as repetitive movements and sounds. Gus picked it up right away, practicing 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. That's a blip compared to what many students of meditation do. Even so, Newberg writes, Gus had greater clarity of mind, empathy and emotional equilibrium. What's more, his working memory improved as much as 50 percent on some tests.

Gus's case may be inspiring to readers worried about the mental decline that comes with aging. But those looking for the loftier answers promised in the book's title may come away unsatisfied, and a bit confused. At times Newberg seems to be writing about a broad notion of spirituality, while at other times he focuses on rituals -- the mantras and mudras and prayer beads -- without any spiritual content or commitment. He doesn't want to leave anyone (even atheists) outside the tent, so his definition of God is whatever any individual's neurons are conjuring up at the moment -- or the next moment or the next, because God is "constantly changing and evolving."

Inclusiveness is all well and good, but loose theology doesn't necessarily make for rigorous testing. The second half of "How God Changes Your Brain" is a how-to book. There are lists upon lists here, and even lists within lists: eight best ways to maintain a healthy brain, including five essential reasons for yawning; nine steps for dealing with anger; six strategies for improving communication and six more for creative problem-solving. You get the idea. Aging baby boomers are hungering for good science writing on both brain health and spirituality. Happily, there are excellent books on this important topic, notably Sharon Begley's "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain" and Daniel Goleman's "Social Intelligence." Start with them. Unhappily, this bloviating volume will leave most readers still seeking.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Buddy:

--- Quote from: Pryf on August 17, 2009, 10:42:23 PM ---So, What changes in a man who is meditating, what is really happening?
--- End quote ---






--- Quote from: Manuscript ---
Correlation between Pineal Activation and Religious Meditation Observed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Chien-Hui Liou, Chang-Wei Hsieh, Chao-Hsien Hsieh, Si-Chen Lee, Jyh-Horng Chen & Chi-Hong Wang

    Manuscript
Date:
    Received 15 November 2007 17:24 UTC; Posted 15 November 2007
Subjects:
    Neuroscience
Tags:

        * pineal gland
        * fMRI
        * meditation

Abstract:

    The human brain possesses plenty of functions but little is known about its scientific relationship with mind and spirit. Conferences1,2 focused on the connection between science and religion were held very recently in which neuroscientists, Buddhist scholars and Dalai Lama discussed attention, mental imagery, emotion, mind, brain functions and meditation, suggesting religious meditation offers an effective means to investigate the mystery of mind and spirit. In the past decade, scientists struggled to obtain brain mappings for various meditation styles using different brain imaging techniques and stimulating results have been observed3-17. In this letter we report that, together with other brain regions, pineal body exhibit significant activation during meditation process, supporting the long lasting speculation that pineal plays an important role in the intrinsic awareness which might concern spirit or soul. Pineal is known as an endocrine organ which produces substrates including melatonin and has been ascribed numerous even mysterious functions but its activation during meditation has never been observed by brain imaging technique. In seventeenth century, based on anatomic observation, Descartes ventured to suggest that pineal serves as the principal seat of the soul 18-20. Inspired by its geometric center in the brain, physiologists, psychologists, philosophers and religionists have been speculating for centuries about pineal’s function relevant to spirit and soul. In this study, we chose Chinese Original Quiet Sitting, one style of meditation, to explore this long lasting speculation by functional magnetic resonance imaging technique. Our results demonstrate a correlation between pineal activation and religious meditation which might have profound implications in physiological understanding of the intrinsic awareness.

NOTE:
What is Nature Precedings?
Nature Precedings is a permanent, citable archive for pre-publication research and preliminary findings. Documents on Nature Precedings are not peer-reviewed.
--- End quote ---
Source:
_http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1328/version/1
_http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1328/version/1/files/npre20071328-1.pdf (18 pgs, 4.7mb)


Here are some high points from another article. The full article is sourced below this quote.


--- Quote from: Richard Bennett ---
Overview: the Pineal Gland Center of the Physical Brain

By Richard Bennett, Ph.D.

This solid cone-shaped structure located at the roof of the posterior third ventricle is about the size of a grain of rice and weighs approximately 100 - 180 milligrams.
...
The gland is part of the circuitry involved in the translation of all visual messages received through the retina. Even though pineal glands have until recently been considered functionless phylogenetic relics, vestigiality has been imposed on the gland for no valid scientific reason as many advances in the past few decades have demonstrated its multi-faceted functions in humans and mammalians.
...
The pineal appears to be involved in synchronization of bodily functions(s) with the environment as a regulator of regulators and more recent research has demonstrated that the gland performs a pivotal, and perhaps critical role, in the identification of specific patterns of malignancies to include breast cancer and lymphomas. Strikingly, it has been changes in pineal activity that have been useful indicators in the identification of these other diseases and we see that changes in pineal activity and expression are indicators in compulsive behavior that leads to substance abuse and affective disorders.
...
A lack of similarity in a normal functioning gland is of little or no importance, but when similar markers appear in specific forms of disease or in those who exhibit dramatic changes in behavior, it would seem imperative that the gland be examined in order to determine if its main function, that of synthesizing serotonin to melatonin, be impaired.
...
 The synthesis of melatonin from serotonin takes place in the pineal gland. An N-acetylating enzyme converts cartooning to N-acetylserotonin; the latter is O-methylated through the action of hydroxyindole-O-methyltransferase (HIOMT). It is then metabolized to 5-hydroxyindoleacetaldehyde by the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO). The activity of MAO in the destruction of serotonin and that of hydroxyindole-O-methyltransferase in the O-methylation of N-acetylserotonin provide convenient vehicles for controlling the amount of melatonin, N-acetyl-5-methyoxytryptamine, present in an organism at anyone time. The presence of melatonin can now be quickly and accurately measured in bodily fluids and tissue,
...
 Pineal melatonin plays a major role in affective disorders such as Seasonal Affective Disorder and Binge Eating Disorder.
...
Depression and self-imposed isolation are accompanied with little or no regulation of day/night cycles - a circadian rhythm - and are symptomatic of melatonin imbalance.
...
Interactive Light Therapy that resets the biological clock is one way to induce a melatonin response as can the administration of endogenous melatonin.
...
Although conclusive evidence supporting the genetics of compulsive behavior that leads to substance abuse - whether infradian, ultradian, or circadian rhythms be a factor - is still in the research and mapping stage of the genome, we are finding that hormones and neurotransmitters as genetic components appear to be a result of genetic interaction on behavior.
...
As demonstrated over and over again, if the instruction is faulty from the very instant the cell begins to divide, the end result will be faulty. Not enough to cause cell death, but enough to build a protein that will build the being that will be predisposed to the behavior. With that thought, let us presume that altered synthesis of serotonin to melatonin as a result of a genetically altered pineal gland will certainly affect and alter circadian rhythms because of that gene expression. Should altered circadian rhythms parallel the schedule of one who is inclined to compulsive use of drugs, it would be a fair assumption that it would be easier for those with genetically induced non-circadian rhythms to slip into compulsive substance abuse or other forms of compulsive behavior that have a dysfunctional circadian component. That component - the relationship with day and night - ties to a common denominator: the Pineal Gland! Quite a role for something so small and once considered insignificant!

Copyright: Richard W. Bennett, Ph.D., Granada Hills, CA / 2002
--- End quote ---
Source: _http://www.mindmachines.com/AVsJournal/article-ThePinealGland.htm


Here's another interesting publication:


--- Quote from: _www.pubmedcentral ---
The Scientific Basis of Integrative Medicine (CRC Press, 2005)[Hardback: 279 pages
Publisher: CRC Press (September 17, 2005) ISBN: 084932081X]

is one of the first books to elaborate on the nascent field of subtle energy medicine. First, a summary of the classic physiological systems serves as a review and provides uncommonly known facts regarding cellular and, thus, systems communication. The book examines the scientific underpinnings of the mind–body connection or psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), documenting the numerous interactions of the endocrine, immune, nervous and stress systems that so profoundly impact human functioning. Utilizing PNI research (i.e. from the perspective of the physiology of the mind–body connection), the book next explores the mental and emotional issues pertaining to stress and relaxation and how each impacts the physical body.

Stress and relaxation not only are underlying factors in much illness, costing millions of dollars in health care, but these conditions currently also are conventionally acceptable areas for discussion with regard to their impact on a patient's physical health (e.g. Dean Ornish's work on reducing heart attack risk) (1). Scientific justification for broad integration of mental/emotional issues into the practice of medicine is presented. Stress and relaxation also are ideal precursors to looking at the role of spirituality in health care.

A chapter on the pineal gland segues the reader from the well-established fact that the mind and body are inextricably connected to the cutting-edge field of subtle energy medicine. The authors take this line of research to unchartered territory, making the case that the pineal, not the pituitary, is the body's master gland and presenting the pineal gland as the physiological site of the interface between that which exists outside of the body and the hormonal and electrical cascades that are experienced as thought, emotion or spiritual in nature.


The Pineal Gland
The chapter on the pineal gland, arguably, is the pivotal point of the book. This chapter presents an analysis of how events outside of the body are translated, commonly referred to as transduced, to a form that the body can read. The pineal gland is the way station or link between our external environment and the network of internal body systems—the tiny but mighty gland that is a liaison with the world around us. The pineal gland takes environmental information and converts it into chemical and electrical signals within our bodies.

In the last 20–30 years, a more accurate understanding of the functions of the pineal gland has emerged, largely as a result of the isolation of melatonin, the major pineal hormone. Convincing evidence is presented showing that the pineal, and not the pituitary, is the master gland of the endocrine system. It converts light, temperature and magnetic environmental information into neuroendocrine signals that regulate and orchestrate body functions. It regulates our internal clock—determining our daily sleep–wake patterns and influencing our broader lifetime rhythms.

The pineal gland is draped in ancient lore as the mysterious third eye and the site of the sixth sense. Curiously, it may well be the physiological interface between the mind–body connection and subtle energy experiences—the likely gatekeeper of experiences that transcend the five senses. The book offers a theory regarding the way in which the pineal gland may interface with bodily energy portals discussed in Eastern medical systems. In brief, while the pineal is the energy transducer that sends hormonal and electrical messages throughout the body, the chakras, as described in Eastern religious and medical systems, may well be the energy transducers for subtle energy. Therefore, various forms of energy, such as light, sound, electromagnetism and the putative energy behind the healing effects of prayer, are translated into electrical and chemical signals within our bodies.

Many little known subtle energy modalities and treatments are reviewed, which by this point in the book can be understood in a more scientific light. In addition, scientific studies on prayer and distant healing are presented, substantiating the impact of spirituality on physical health. The reference section provides resources and contact information.
--- End quote ---
Source: _http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1142191

Ana:
[
--- Quote from: Buddy on August 20, 2009, 02:36:46 AM ---
The Pineal Gland
The chapter on the pineal gland, arguably, is the pivotal point of the book. This chapter presents an analysis of how events outside of the body are translated, commonly referred to as transduced, to a form that the body can read. The pineal gland is the way station or link between our external environment and the network of internal body systems—the tiny but mighty gland that is a liaison with the world around us. The pineal gland takes environmental information and converts it into chemical and electrical signals within our bodies.

In the last 20–30 years, a more accurate understanding of the functions of the pineal gland has emerged, largely as a result of the isolation of melatonin, the major pineal hormone. Convincing evidence is presented showing that the pineal, and not the pituitary, is the master gland of the endocrine system. It converts light, temperature and magnetic environmental information into neuroendocrine signals that regulate and orchestrate body functions. It regulates our internal clock—determining our daily sleep–wake patterns and influencing our broader lifetime rhythms.

The pineal gland is draped in ancient lore as the mysterious third eye and the site of the sixth sense. Curiously, it may well be the physiological interface between the mind–body connection and subtle energy experiences—the likely gatekeeper of experiences that transcend the five senses. The book offers a theory regarding the way in which the pineal gland may interface with bodily energy portals discussed in Eastern medical systems. In brief, while the pineal is the energy transducer that sends hormonal and electrical messages throughout the body, the chakras, as described in Eastern religious and medical systems, may well be the energy transducers for subtle energy. Therefore, various forms of energy, such as light, sound, electromagnetism and the putative energy behind the healing effects of prayer, are translated into electrical and chemical signals within our bodies.
Many little known subtle energy modalities and treatments are reviewed, which by this point in the book can be understood in a more scientific light. In addition, scientific studies on prayer and distant healing are presented, substantiating the impact of spirituality on physical health. The reference section provides resources and contact information
Source: _http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1142191.
--- End quote ---


(Enphasis mine)

Very interesting, that would explain many of the physical symptoms we are experiencing.
Maybe while meditating we are activating the natural and proper functioning of this gland.

Thak you Buddy!

hottcherri:
floride hardens , crystalizes the pineal gland.

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