I know that the very idea of being in an actual Matrix as depicted in the movie is a difficult pill to swallow. We have been taught so many things from so many sources throughout history that tend to blame humanity itself - in the human state exclusively - for all the ills of mankind. Now, yes, it may be so that this state was chosen by a "group mind," but the fact is, as the Prodigal Son who wanted to visit the Far Country, we now find ourselves, more or less, in the pigsty. In the Grand Cosmic Scheme of things, we probably did it just to enrich our soul with experience and knowledge, and that is all fine and good; but here at this level, where we are still experiencing the Far Country individually and collectively, we need to go about assessing our condition and coming to some understanding here.
The exact wording of the parable may give us some clues. We read in Luke, Chapter 15, (3 X5) Verse 11 (!):
There was a certain man who had two sons; And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the part of the property that falls to me. And he divided the livelihood between them. And not many days after that the younger son gathered up all that he had and journeyed into a distant country, and there he wasted his fortune in reckless and loosed-from-restraint living. And when he had spent all he had, a mighty famine came upon that country, and he began to fall behind and be in want.
So, he went and forced (glued) himself upon one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed hogs. And he would gladly have fed on the carob pods that the hogs were eating, but they could not satisfy his hunger and nobody gave him anything better.
Then,when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father have enough food and to spare, but I am perishing here of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired servants.
So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity and tenderness for him, and he ran and embraced him and kissed him fervently.
And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son - I no longer deserve to be recognized as a son of yours! But the father said to his bond servants, Bring quickly the best robe - the festive, honor robe - and put it on him, and give him a ring for his hand and sandals for his feet; And bring out that fattened calf and kill it, and let us revel and feast and be happy and merry; Because this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!
...But his older son was in the field, and as he returned and came near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And having called one of the servant boys to him, he began to ask what this meant. And he said to him, Your bother has come, and your father has killed that fattened calf, because he has received him safe and well.
But the elder brother was angry - with deep-seated wrath - and resolved not to go in. Then his father came out and began to plead with him, But he answered his father, Lo, these many years I have served you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me so much as a little kid, that I might revel and feast and be happy and make merry with my friends; but when this son of yours arrived, who has devoured your living with immoral women, you have killed for him that fattened calf!
And the father said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But it was fitting to make merry, to revel and feast and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead, and is alive again! He was lost and is found!
There is marvelous and rich implication in this story, but we are not going to analyze it completely here. We want to look at that crucial part of the story where it says:
And when he had spent all he had, a mighty famine came upon that country, and he began to fall behind and be in want. So, he went and forced (glued) himself upon one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed hogs. And he would gladly have fed on the carob pods that the hogs were eating, but they could not satisfy his hunger and nobody gave him anything better.
This describes the conditions of the Matrix, and it is most curious to me that the word that is translated from the Greek as "forced," (or "joined" in the KJV), kollaw is derived from kolla which means, literally, "glued."
He "glued" himself to a "citizen" of that country. I can't help but think of all the many people who "glue" themselves to belief systems... Well, we aren't going to go in that direction. Suffice it to say that this "gluing" suggests a bond of some sort exactly as described by Topper in his "ethereal filaments." It is also very reminiscent of the medieval figures from the woodcuts in the last section.
But, the fact is, the story tells us that this solution - this gluing/faith - did not work. In fact, he ended up in the deplorable state of having to eat with the pigs. "And nobody gave him anything better."
So, in this condition, finally coming to the realization that he was not going to get anything better living with the pigs and eating with the pigs, he comes to some very hard realizations:
Then,when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father have enough food and to spare, but I am perishing here of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired servants.
Now, what we would like to know is this: what does it mean when he says "...when he came to himself... [he realized] I have sinned against heaven and in your [the Father's] sight?"
The clue is given to us in the figure of the pig. So, keep that in mind as we go along here. Remember that the condition of being with the pigs was a result of "gluing" himself to the citizen of that country.
{snip}
The human brain is probably the most complex structure in the universe; in a sense, it might be thought of as a universe in itself. At birth, the infant brain contains about 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons. This number is comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, just to give you an idea of what we are dealing with here.
Now, just think about what a huge electrical potential such a number implies!
But it is not the number we want to think about just now, but what these neurons actually are doing in this microcosm of our head.
Unlike your average body cell, such as a cell in your stomach or pancreas or the fat in your "love handles," the neurons constantly carry on complex conversations with one another. Each neuron has, on the average, several thousand contacts with other cells. Some neurons can have as many as 200,000 connections. Can you imagine talking on a phone line that connects to that many other individuals and keeping track of all the conversations. (And yes, that is exactly the analogy that scientists use: a "phone company." And a "cell phone" company at that!)
Dr. Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health writes:
...Whether we are awake or asleep, our brain cells are doing the neuronal equivalent of a mass phonathon, sending and receiving chemical messages triggered by electrical impulses. They do this by means of specialized appendages. Each nerve cell has a single long fiber called an axon for transmitting information and a fine filigree of fibers called dendrites for receiving information. The length of a given neuron's axon varies. Some are quite short, but others may extend up to three feet, carrying an electrical impulse from, say the base of the spine to the tip of the big toe. Three feet may not sound like much until one imagines the nerve cell as a kite three feet across - with an axon tail that's forty miles long. [States of Mind, New Discoveries About How Our Brains Make Us Who We Are; Edited by Roberta Conlan, 1999]
<snip>
Now, it is at the terminal of the axon that the electrical impulse is converted into a chemical, the neurotransmitter, which sort of floods the area around the "receivers" or dendrites of the adjacent neuron. The thing that is important here is the fact that the receiver neuron has many little fibers for reception of neurotransmitter signals, BUT it can be in communication with literally thousands of other neurons. So, how does it decide which one to listen to? And why does it matter?
Well, here is where it gets interesting. Back in the early days of the 20th century, it was realized that a drug must work in the body because they could "attach" themselves to something in the body. They decided to call this place of attachment a "receptor." Nobody really knew how this "attaching" worked, or why it led to a whole cascade of changes in the body, but it there it was. You take a drug, and all kinds of things happened in the brain and/or other areas of the body.
It is now known, after long years of research, that the receptor is actually a single molecule! Not only that, but it is singularly complicated. Keep in mind that a molecule, by definition, is the smallest possible piece of something that can still be identified as that specific substance.
<snip>
Getting back to the single molecule receptors on cells, we can understand from the bonding principles we have discussed that these receptors have very particular shapes that define precisely what chemical will be attracted to them, or vice versa. We can understand that there are atomic forces which cause one molecule to be attracted to another. Receptor molecules on the cell respond to these energies by "wiggling, shimmying, vibrating and even humming as they shift back and forth from one favored shape to another." Receptors are attached to a cell, "floating" on its surface, like a lotus flower on the surface of a pond, with roots extending into the interior of the cell.
<snip>
Now, what do these receptors do? Well, we already know that they "attract" other molecules and respond to the atomic/chemical forces of various kinds of bonds. Dr. Pert writes:
Basically, receptors function as sensing molecules - scanners. Just as our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, fingers, and skin act as sense organs, so, too, do the receptors, only on a cellular level. They hover in the membranes of your cells, dancing and vibrating, waiting to pick up messages carried by other vibrating little creatures, also made out of amino acids, which come cruising along - diffusing is the technical word - through the fluids surrounding each cell. We like to describe these receptors as "keyholes," although that is not an altogether precise term for something that is constantly moving, dancing in a rhythmic, vibratory way.
All receptors are proteins... And they cluster in the cellular membrane waiting for the right chemical keys to swim up to them through the extra-cellular fluid and to mount them by fitting into their keyholes - a process known as binding.
Binding. It's sex on a molecular level!
And what is this chemical key that docks onto the receptor and causes it to dance and sway? The responsible element is called a ligand. This is the chemical key that binds to the receptor, entering it like a key in a keyhole, creating a disturbance to tickle the molecule into rearranging itself, changing its shape until - click! - information enters the cell. [Pert, 1997]
<snip>
Receptors are the first components of emotion.
A ligand is any natural or manmade substance that binds selectively to its own specific receptor on the surface of a cell. The ligand bumps onto the receptor and slips off, bumps back on, slips back off. When it is bumping on, it is binding, and each time it does it transfers a message by its molecular properties to the receptor.
Dr. Pert writes:
Though a key fitting a lock is the standard image, a more dynamic description of this process might be two voices - ligand and receptor - striking the same note and producing a vibration that rings a doorbell to open the doorway to the cell. What happens next is quite amazing. The receptor, having received a message, transmits it from the surface of the cell deep into the cell's interior, where the message can change the state of the cell dramatically. A chain reaction of biochemical events is initiated as tiny machines roar into action and, directed by the message of the ligand, begin any number of activities - manufacturing new proteins, making decisions about cell division, opening or closing ion channels, adding or subtracting energetic chemical groups like the phosphates - to name just a few. In short, the life of the cell, what it is up to at any moment, is determined by which receptors are on its surface, and whether those receptors are occupied by ligands or not. On a more global scale, these minute physiological phenomena at the cellular level can translate to large changes in behavior, physical activity, even mood.
...As the ligands drift by in the stream of fluid surrounding every cell, only those ligands that have molecules in exactly the right shape can bind to a particular kind of receptor. The process of binding is very selective, very specific! In fact, we can say that binding occurs as a result of receptor specificity, meaning the receptor ignores all but the particular ligand that's made to fit it. The opiate receptor, for instance, can "receive" only those ligands that are members of the opiate group, like endorphins, morphine, or heroin. The Valium receptor can attach only to Valium and Valium-like peptides.
...Ligands are generally much smaller molecules than the receptors they bind to, and they are divided into three chemical types. The first type of ligand comprises the classical neurotransmitters, which are small molecules with such unwieldy names as acetylcholine, norepinephrine, dopamine, histamine, glycine, GABA, and serotonin. These are the smallest, simplest of molecules, generally made in the brain to carry information across the gap, or synapse, between one neuron and the next.
...A second category of ligands is made up of steroids, which include the sex hormones testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen. All steroids start out as cholesterol, which gets transformed by a series of biochemical steps into a specific kind of hormone.
...My favorite category of ligands by far, and the largest, constituting perhaps 95 percent of them all, are the peptides. ...Like receptors, peptides are made up of strings of amino acids...
...Peptides are tiny pieces of protein and the word protein is derived from proteios, which means primary. Proteins are recognized as the fundamental materials for life. A peptide consists of a string of amino acids joined together like beads on a string. The bond that holds the amino acids together is made up of carbon and nitrogen. This bond is so strong that it takes hours, and in some cases, DAYS of boiling in strong acid to break it apart! When there are approximately 100 or more amino acids in such a protein, it is called a polypeptide. After it reaches 200 amino acids, it is then known as a protein.
...If the cell is the engine that drives all life, then the receptors are the buttons on the control panel of that engine, and a specific peptide (or other kind of ligand) is the finger that pushes that button and gets things started. [Pert, 1997, emphases, mine]
Now, remember what we started with here: chemists came up with the idea that drugs worked in the body by attaching themselves to something in the body. And now we know about receptors and that they are receptive to chemicals manufactured by the body itself. More than this, we find that, in addition to the electrical based transmission of nerve impulses, the "telephone system," the ligand-receptor system represents a second nervous system. And it seems that this chemical based system is "far more ancient and more basic to the organism."
Until this "new cell phone company" was brought into focus in the 1970s, most scientific attention had been given to the neurotransmitters and the little "jump" they facilitated across the synaptic cleft. The basic neurotransmitters seemed to carry a basic message of either "on" or "off."
The peptides ... can act like neurotransmitters, diffusing across the synaptic cleft, but their primary function seems to be to move through extra-cellular space, flowing with the blood and cerebrospinal fluid, traveling great distances in the body, and stimulating complex and fundamental changes in the cells when they lock onto the receptors.
In 1984, breakthroughs in biochemistry enabled science to understand the receptors as a bodywide network of information; the biochemical basis of emotions. More research has demonstrated that the receptors and ligands are the "information" molecules of a language used by cells throughout the organism. This communication connects areas of body function that include the endocrine systems, neurological, gastrointestinal, and most importantly the immune system.
...The musical hum of the receptors as they bind to their many ligands, often in the far-flung parts of the organism, creates an integration of structure and function that allows the organism to run smoothly, intelligently. [Pert, 1997]
I think that the reader may already be realizing that Unified States of Consciousness, or the Dwelling of the Mystics, has a great deal to do with which receptors and ligands are binding, and that frequency resonance has a lot to do with which "song" is being sung by the cells, and that this is clearly the understanding that the Cassiopaeans wished to convey in their mysterious remarks about "prime numbers" and "cell phones." But, of course, the question is: what are the precise "desirable" chemicals one might wish to produce, and exactly how might this be done?
It is in answering these questions that we find our way out of the trap of the Predator's Mind.
Remember that "no drug can act unless fixed." This means, that if a drug works, it is because there is a receptor for it in the body. This, then, suggests that the receptor is there because it binds to a ligand
produced by the body itself, which suggests that the body CAN produce its own drugs, stimulating its own healing, under the proper circumstances.
Looking in another direction, when we consider drugs that change "behavior," such as heroin, marijuana, Librium, "angel dust," or PCP, and so on, which precipitate radical changes in emotional states, must also be able to bind because there are receptors for similar substances produced by the body. LSD and other hallucinogens, which produce changes in cognition must also do so because there are receptors specific to them; suggesting again, that such chemicals may, under proper circumstances, be produced by the body itself.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Pert has taken the position that a change in emotional state relates to a change in "consciousness," because it is clear that drugs produces many temporary emotional changes and result in a general decline of overall consciousness; whereas what we are looking for is the connection to produce lasting changes in consciousness - true consciousness - and not the imitation of the Predator's Mind - the addiction to emotion that keeps us asleep in the Matrix, the lunchbox of 4th density STS.
After an accident that put her in the hospital, Dr. Pert was given first hand experience with a drug that alters emotion:
There was no doubt that the drug's action in my body produced a distinctly euphoric effect, one that filled me with a bliss bordering on ecstasy, in addition to relieving all pain. The marvelous part was that the drug also seemed to completely obliterate any anxiety or emotional discomfort I had as a result of being confined to a hospital bed and separated from my husband and young child. Under its influence, I'd felt deeply nourished and satisfied, as if there weren't a thing in the world I wanted. In fact, I liked the drug so much that, as I was ending my stay at the hospital, I very briefly toyed with the idea of stealing some to take with me. I can see how people become addicts!
...I remember marveling at how there were tiny molecules on my cells that allowed for that wonderful feeling I'd experienced every time the nurse had injected me with an intramuscular dose of morphine... [Pert, 1997]
Dr. Pert supplies the example of "rats in bliss."
One of my favorite slides... three rats, rolled over on their backs, limbs floppy, eyes closed, obviously in a deep swoon. ...You can tell by their body language that they are totally satisfied and don't have a care in the world - the result of injecting our furry friends with a substance called endorphin, the body's own natural morphine...
...A shocking, but exciting fact revealed by the opiate receptor findings was that it didn't matter if you were a lab rat, a First Lady, or a dope addict - everyone had the exact same mechanism in the brain for creating bliss... [Pert, 1997]
Unfortunately, Dr. Pert again mistakes this "mindless bliss" as "expanded consciousness."
Back in the 1950's, behavioral psychologists had discovered that by electrically stimulating certain centers of the brains of rats, the creatures would behave in ways that indicated that they were in pain. They also found that other points in the brain processed pleasure, and if the rat was wired to be able to self stimulate this pleasure area, it would do so for hours until collapsing from exhaustion.
There is an area in the brain called the "periaqueductal gray," located at the juncture of the third and fourth ventricle in the midbrain. It is a nodal point where many nerves converge for information processing. Although it was not considered, in classical terms, a part of the limbic system, it has neuronal pathways that hook it into the limbic system. This is an area where opiate receptors are highly concentrated - it is also the area of the brain where pain thresholds are set.
[The next few paragraphs should be skipped by the squeamish.]
As the research progressed, it was realized that, for a drug addict, the first intravenous injection of heroin hits the brain like a sexual orgasm. From this observation, it was thought that the pleasure experienced during orgasm was accompanied by a surge of endorphins into the bloodstream. Experiments were undertaken to measure the levels of endorphins in the blood relating to different behaviors.
Hamsters were used for one study because they are very "predictable" in sexual terms. As Dr. Pert baldly phrases it:
...Two minutes of licking this or that, three minutes of humping, etc., and the act was complete. The males... ejaculate about twenty-three times per cycle. [Pert, 1997]
The animals were injected with a radioactive opiate before copulation, and then, at various points in the cycle, decapitated. The brains were removed and autoradiography was used to see where the endorphins were released during orgasm, and in what quantity. It was found that blood endorphin levels increased by about 200 percent from the beginning to the end of the sex act.
Well, I was pretty green to learn how science discovers things in this particular instance. So, let us hope that if any good comes from this horrible work, that it will, in some way, bless the sufferings of those poor hamsters. And, let us also keep in mind that similar experiments may be being done on human beings...
Dr. Pert continued her experiments with the chemistry of emotions for many years. She developed a conceptual understanding based on her assessment that "these biochemicals are the physiological substrates of emotion, the molecular underpinnings of what we experience as feelings, sensation, thoughts, drives, perhaps even spirit or soul."
In Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin wrote about the fact that people everywhere have common emotional facial expressions, some of which are also shared by animals. A wolf baring its fangs uses the same muscles of the face that a human does when angry or threatened. It seems that the same "physiology" of emotions has been preserved and used over and over again throughout eons of time and across species. On the basis of this observation, Darwin theorized that emotions must be a key to the "survival of the fittest."
There is clear scientific experimental evidence that the facial expressions for anger, fear, sadness, enjoyment, and disgust are identical whether an Eskimo or an Italian is being studied. Facial expressions that register other emotions such as surprise, contempt, shame/guilt are likely also pancultural. This suggests that emotions have inborn genetic mechanisms for their expression.
There are other distinctions made in these studies relating to distinguishing between emotion, mood, and temperament. Emotion is the most transient; moods can last for hours or days; and temperament is that which lasts for life. Temperament has been shown, experimentally, to be genetically based, and it is likely that the parameters for mood and emotion are similarly based in our genes.
When talking about emotions in this way, it has to be understood that it includes all the familiar human experiences of anger, fear, sadness, joy, contentment, courage; as well as the "sensations" of pleasure and pain, and the "drive states" such as hunger and thirst. All of these are measurable in chemical terms.
However, Dr. Pert, as I have already noted, goes even further and refers to more intangible states, or subjective experiences, such as "spiritual inspiration," awe, bliss and other "states of consciousness."
I think that she has failed to make the distinction between chemicals that produce states and states that produce chemicals. But, we will come to that.
Getting back to our opiate receptors and the limbic system: it has been shown that core limbic brain structures such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and limbic cortex, believed to be involved in emotional behavior, contain 85 to 95 percent of the various neuropeptide receptors. Wilder Penfield, working in the 1920s, experimented during open-brain surgeries undertaken to control severe epilepsy. He found that when he electrically stimulated the limbic cortex over the amygdala (the two almond-shaped structures on either side of the forebrain, about an inch or so into your brain from your earlobes), he could elicit a whole gamut of emotional displays. His patients gave powerful reactions of grief, anger, joy and more as they relived old memories! Their bodies would shake with rage or laughter, they would weep copious tears, and their blood pressure and temperature would fluctuate appropriately in accordance with whatever was being "experienced."
NIMH researcher Paul MacLean popularized the idea that the limbic system was the "seat of the emotions." His triune brain theory held that there are three layers to the human brain, as we have already discussed in psychological terms of imprinting. MacLean proposed that these three layers represent different stages of humanity's evolution. The brain-stem, or 1st circuit, is called the reptilian brain (isn't THAT interesting?) This is the seat of autonomic functions, including the "fight or flight" response. It is here that "safety" of the organism is monitored and, if certain threats are perceived, it will trigger an automatic cascade of responses designed to preserve life of the organism.
The limbic system, or 2nd circuit, encircles the top of the brainstem and is, as we have already discussed, the seat of the emotions. The cerebral cortex, or 3rd circuit, the forebrain, is the seat of reason. But it can also manifest emotions!
This leads us to the fact that opiate receptors are also very dense in the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex of the human brain, and this part of the brain shares many connections with the amygdala, one of the limbic structures, or part of the seat of emotions.
The frontal cortex, theoretically the most newly evolved, the most HUMAN, of the brain structures must "forge" pathways" between itself and the rest of the brain to enable humans to learn to control their emotions and act unselfishly. Although the capacity to learn this is present to some extent in even the simplest of creatures, willpower is the uniquely human element. And, it is thought that it resides in the frontal cortex.
William James theorized that emotions originate in the body and are then perceived in the head, where we "invent" a story to explain them. Writing in 1884, he concluded that the source of emotions is purely visceral, originating in the body and is not cognitive, and that there is very likely no brain center for emotions. He thought that we perceive events and have bodily feelings, and after the perception, which joggles our memories and imagination, we label our physical sensations as one or the other emotion. He believed that there is simply perception and bodily response based on memory of other events that relate to the "present" experience. He thought that their immediate sensory and motor reactions that occur in response to the perception, such as a pounding heart, a tight stomach, tension and perspiration, ARE emotions.
Walter Cannon posited that they originate in the head and trickle down to the body. Writing in Wisdom of the Body, he explained the workings of the sympathetic autonomic nervous system. A single nerve called the vagus (wandering) nerve exits the back of the brain through a hole in the bottom of the skull called the foramen magnum. There, it splits to run down the bundles of nerve cells, or ganglia, along either side of the spinal cord to send branches to many organs, including the pupils of the eye, the salivary glands, the heart, the bronchi of the lungs, the stomach, the intestines, the bladder, the sex organs, and the adrenal glands.
When Cannon stimulated the vagus through electrodes implanted in the hypothalamus in the bottom of the brain just above the pituitary gland, he demonstrated physiological changes in all these organs consistent with what would be needed by the body in an emergency. Cannon was able to measure how much time it took from the moment the hypothalamus got the jolt to the moment the bodily changes in blood flow, digestion, and heartbeat began to occur as a result. The conclusion was that these changes were too slow to be the cause of emotions rather than the effect. Not only that, but animals whose vagal nerve had been cut, and presumable were incapable of sympathetic visceral bodily changes, still seemed to behave just as emotionally when placed in a threatening situation.
It took over a hundred years to realize that both James AND Cannon were correct.
Biofeedback is demonstrative of this fact because it is a technique that can enable a person to gain conscious control over physiological processes previously thought to be autonomic and not susceptible to volitional modification.
Elmer Green, a pioneer of biofeedback stated: "Every change in the physiological state is accompanied by an appropriate change in the mental emotional state, conscious or unconscious, and conversely, every change in the mental emotional state, conscious or unconscious, is accompanied by an appropriate change in the physiological state."
And it is in this idea that we find a key. If it is true that our physiological state can be manipulated causing a change in our mental/emotional state, then what we must do is learn to control the emotional and physiological state by conscious will.
There is a tiny cluster of cell bodies in the hindbrain called the locus coeruleus. It projects its norepinephrine-containing nerve endings into the forebrain, and it seems that all the norepinephrine in the forebrain comes from this one source. It was discovered that what is known as the pleasure center - the area that, when electrically stimulated, will cause rats and humans to ignore the need for food and sleep in a frenzy of pleasure - is contained within this locus coeruleus.
It seems that, unbeknownst to the earlier researchers, the electrical stimulus for pleasure had worked by causing the release of norepinephrine from the nerve endings along the pathway. Amphetamines and cocaine also work by amplifying this same "pleasure pathway" by blocking the re-uptake of the body's own norepinephrine, and thereby increasing the ligand binding to the norepinephrine receptors.
The problem with this idea was that, if peptides and their receptors were only communicating across synapses, the should be only very tiny distances apart. But, the evidence indicated that many of the receptors that were responding were located too far away to be part of specific synaptic gaps. The conclusion was that the greatest source of control of information in the brain - that which determines its "state" - is the specificity of the receptors and their ability to bind with only one kind of ligand.
In other words, it seems that less than 2 percent of neuronal communication actually occurs at the synapse. It was seen that the way in which peptides circulate through the body, finding their targets all over the place, makes the brain's communication system itself more like an endocrine system. As Dr. Pert baldly states it: "The brain is like a bag of hormones!"
Yeah. A lunch bag!
And what is being communicated by these peptides is crucial to everything in the body! For example, receptors for sex hormones were identified as the means by which, if testosterone or estrogen is released into the fetus during pregnancy, determines the neuronal connections in the brain and permanently affects the sexual identity of the child. Females fetuses exposed to testosterone like steroids aberrantly produced by their pregnant mothers adrenal gland are more likely to become tomboys. Conversely, excessive estrogen can orient a male fetus to more "feminine" pursuits in later life.
One very interesting discovery made by Rita Valentino of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the nucleus of Barrington in the hindbrain, formerly believed to control just the emptying of the bladder, has axons continuing the neuropeptide DRF that extend through the vagus nerve all the way to the most distant part of the large intestine, the anus. It has been proven that the sensation of colonic distention, or the feeling of needing to empty the bowels, as well as genital arousal is carried back to the nucleus of Barrington. From there, there is a short neuronal pathway that connects to the locus coeruleus, the norepinephrine source of the "pleasure pathway" which is also loaded with opiate receptors! Once again, Dr. Pert says it plainly:
The pleasure pathway hooks up to the control area of these bathroom functions, which is located in the front of the brain. Goodness, is it any wonder... that toilet training is loaded with emotional stuff! Or that people get into some unusual sexual practices involving bathroom behaviors!
...If we accept the idea that peptides and other informational substances are the biochemicals of emotions, their distribution in the body's nerves has all kinds of significance... The body is the unconscious mind! Repressed traumas caused by overwhelming emotion can be stored in a body part, thereafter affecting our ability to feel that part or even move it. The new work suggests there are almost infinite pathways for the conscious mind to access - and modify - the unconscious mind and the body...[Pert, 1997]
As I have already mentioned, it has also been discovered that other areas of the body have high concentrations of almost every neuropeptide receptor known to exist. These areas include the "dorsal horn," or back side of the spinal cord in a pattern analogous to the chakras. In fact, virtually every location where information from any of the five senses enters the nervous system, there are high concentrations of neuropeptide receptors. They are called "nodal points." The already mentioned nucleus of Barrington is a nodal point and, depending on what neuropeptide is occupying its receptors, feelings related to sexual arousal or bathroom functions can be switched or modified, made unconscious, or made a priority. Thus, emotions and bodily sensations are intricately intertwined in such a way that each can alter the other - usually at the level of unconsciousness. It can also emerge to consciousness spontaneously, or be deliberately brought to consciousness.
All sensory data coming into the body goes through a "filtering" process that may or may not reach the frontal lobes. It is in the frontal lobes that the sensory input enters our consciousness. The efficiency of the filtering process, which chooses what stimuli we pay attention to at any given moment, is determined by the quantity and quality of the receptors at these nodal points. The quantity and quality of these receptors is determined by many things, one of the most important being your experiences.
In other words, biochemical changes wrought at the receptor level is the molecular basis of memory. When a receptor is flooded with a ligand, it changes the cell membrane in such a way that the probability of an electrical impulse traveling across the membrane where the receptor resides is facilitated or inhibited, thereafter affecting the choice of neuronal circuitry that will be used. This principle is important not only for understanding how memories are stored in the brain, but that they are also stored in a psychosomatic network extending into the body itself! It is also the underlying principle of imprinting. Just like a printed circuit is embedded in a computer chip, so are our brains AND bodies programmed by chemistry and electricity. The decision about what becomes a thought, rising to consciousness, and what remains an "automatic circuit" pattern is buried in the body and mediated by the receptors. And memories are stored with their respective emotional content. The emotion can bring up the memory, and conversely, a single "cue" element of the memory can bring on the emotion - even if the memory itself never becomes conscious!
What this means, in the clearest of terms is this: many memory processes are emotion-driven and unconscious; but, they can sometimes be made conscious.
Donald Overton of Temple University documented a widespread phenomenon in animals which was later shown to be equally true in human beings: A rat that learns a maze or receives a shock while under the influence of a drug - which you now know is merely a synthetic ligand - will remember how to solve the maze or avoid the shock most efficiently if it is re-tested under the influence of the same drug. Dr. Pert elaborates:
When we consider emotions as chemical ligands - that is to say, peptides - we can better understand the phenomenon known as dissociated states of learning, or state-dependent recall. Just as a drug facilitates recall of an earlier learning experience under the influence of that same drug for the rat, so the emotion-carrying peptide ligand facilitates memory in human beings. The emotion is the equivalent of the drug, both being ligands that bind to receptors in the body. ...Just as drugs can affect what we remember, neuropeptides can act as internal ligands to shape our memories as we are forming them, and put us back in the same frame of mind when we need to retrieve them. This is learning.
...Emotional states or moods are produced by the various neuropeptide ligands, and what we experience as an emotion or a feeling is also a mechanism for activating a particular neuronal circuit - simultaneously throughout the brain and body - which generates a behavior involving the whole creature...[Pert, 1997]
What this translates into is that you will automatically "run the maze" when the "emotion-ligand" is present. Or, if you find yourself in the maze, and the "chemical" was one produced by your own body when you first learned the maze, you will produce the same chemicals again - repeatedly.
What this also means in the plainest of terms is that you can "feel love" when the right ligand bonds to the right receptor stimulated by whatever you are programmed to be stimulated by; you will feel it in all the areas where these receptors are clustered; and you will be certain that it IS a positive experience because it "feels so good." It doesn't matter if the ligand is being stimulated by a logically consistent experience or by an illogically inculcated program. And until the element of knowledge and logical analysis are brought into the picture, it's anybody's best guess where the feelings come from.
And, that is all fine and good IF it is a positive experience. But statistics of our world in practically every arena of life clearly demonstrate that it is very likely that most of humanity DON'T experience "real love" when their "love ligands" are binding. Just take a look at divorce and child abuse and neglect statistics to get an idea about how terribly wrong we human beings can be about our assessments. And, if we are really paying attention we will take a long hard look at our own lives and experiences and try to determine what our personal track records are. If they aren't good; if we spend more time being unhappy than happy; if we keep making the same "open hearted" mistakes over and over again, we need to take a good look at how our "programs" may be being activated and used to keep us in the lunchbox of the Matrix.
More frightening than that is the fact that higher level negative beings can most definitely control our emotions by controlling our chemistry as we have already described. This means that they can cause us to feel love or hate or aversion or attraction based on their agenda, not our own.
Going back to the "filtering" of reality," it seems that most of our bodymind attention shifts are directed subconsciously by our ligands and receptors. They direct our attention by their activities and we are not consciously involved in deciding what gets processed, remembered, or learned! But we DO have the possibility of bringing some of it to awareness with the help of various types of "intentional training." But, of course, no one undertakes intentional training until the system is so bogged down and there is so much suffering that a "cure" is sought, and, for the most part, the cures are sought in pharmacology which merely exacerbates the problems. As the prodigal son sought to "glue" himself to a citizen of the far country, we seek our cures in religions of all kinds, including the religion of the AMA. This amounts to being sent to feed and live and eat with the pigs. And only when we have suffered that condition a sufficient period of time will we "come to ourselves."
Clearly, based on research, we can see that repressed emotions are stored in the body via the circuit creation effected by the release of neuropeptide ligands. It is also proposed that when the soul finally "seats" in the body, it's "wounds" or "scars" will energetically affect the body, producing any number of neuropeptide stimulating frequencies that then "lay circuits" of their own that cannot be related to present life experiences. Hypnosis, yogic practices, deep tissue bodywork, can all be methods used to heal or change the circuits without the conscious mind ever figuring out what is going on. The drawback to this is that, not knowing what is going on prevents the conscious mind from avoiding recurrence.
Emotions constantly regulate what we experience as reality. The research suggests that the nervous system scans the outer world for material that it is prepared to find by virtue of is already laid circuits, its internal patterns of past experience including early imprinting in infancy. The superior colliculus in the midbrain, another nodal point, controls the muscles that direct the eyeball, and controls which images are permitted to fall on the retina! This means that an emotional center of the brain literally controls what we SEE!
For example, when the tall European ships first approached the early Native Americans, it was such an "impossible" vision in their reality that their highly filtered perceptions couldn't register what was happening, and they literally failed to "see" the ships. Similarly, the cuckolded husband may fail to see what everyone else sees because his emotional belief in his wife's faithfulness is so strong that his eyeballs are directed to look away from the incriminating behavior obvious to everyone else. [Pert, 1997]
...The fact is, we read and understand what we are programmed to BELIEVE, regardless of what we are actually reading. Until, like the alcoholic who finally admits he IS an alcoholic, we admit that we are an addict to our emotional beliefs.
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Unfortunately, this happens to be the way it is for most human beings - they are computers running programs that are controlled by someone or something other than themselves. We can no longer think of emotions as necessarily "of the soul." While it is likely that the consciousness CAN enter into the emotional process, for most people this never happens. Their emotions are simply cellular signals that are involved in the process of translating information into physical reality - generally an unpleasant one which can include all kinds of illnesses, aches, pains and transpersonal suffering.
Neuropeptides and their receptors are in constant communication with the immune system and there are many studies that show a powerful link between emotions and illness, even to a specificity of emotion-disease link. Immune cells constantly squirt out peptides that either increase or decrease the buildup of plaque in coronary blood vessels. Viruses use the same receptors as neuropeptides to enter a cell. Depending on how much of the natural peptide for a particular receptor is available to bind, the virus that fits that receptor will have more or less difficulty getting into the cell. This clearly indicates that the state of our emotions even plays a part in whether or not we contract a viral infection!
I'm sure that most readers have heard of some of the amazing feats of yogis of the East who have achieved control over not only their conscious minds, but also over what are considered to be solely autonomic systems of the body. Various disciplines are used, and we have already talked about the Way of the Yogi, the Fakir and the Monk, so we know the basic principles involved. And, we are going to take this principle and apply it in a new way here.
Taking just one example of what yogis and fakirs can do, i.e. consciously control pain, let's look at what might be happening.
In the brain, there is an area called the periaqueductal gray, located around the aqueduct between the third and fourth ventricles of the midbrain. It is filled with opiate receptors, making it a control area for pain perception. It is also loaded with receptors for virtually all the neuropeptides that have been studied.
What seems to happen when yogis and fakirs learn to control their perception of pain is that they are able to gain access to this area of the brain with conscious intent and to RESET the pain threshold. That is to say: reframed by conscious expectations and subconscious beliefs, pain can be abolished by being interpreted as either a neutral experience or even pleasure.
And this is our Ace in the hole. We can make ourselves unavailable as food; we can change our systemic responses so that the Matrix "unplugs us" and dumps us out of the system just like Neo was unceremoniously plucked from his pod when he "woke up."
But, more importantly: we can train ourselves to NOT BLINK. With knowledge and awareness of what IS, and what might be, we can never be confronted with a situation, either in the body or out, that will cause us to fall into a negative state.
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It seems, from all the studies that are done, that an elevated mood - one of happy expectation of the possibility of adventure - is the greatest protection against illness. Perhaps it is also the one that makes one "inedible" to the Matrix?
In 1990, Howard Hall demonstrated that the immune system could be controlled. He instructed his subjects in cyber-physiologic strategies. The word cyber comes from the Greek "kybernetes," (kubernetes) which means "to steer" or The Navigator. It is interesting that one of the names for the goddess Isis is "The Navigator." And the process of "unveiling Isis" is that of acquiring knowledge.
Wilhelm Reich, in the 1940s, proposed that cancer is a result of the failure to express emotions, especially sexual emotions. Reich was not only ridiculed by the scientific community, he was persecuted in the most reprehensible way. One of the most shameful acts of the government of the United States was when they called for all copies of Reich's life's work to be rounded up by the FDA and incinerated. An "official book burning" in the "land of the free!"
I rather suspect that Reich was onto something!
Another study showed that cancer patients who failed to release their anger had slower recovery rates. Another trait common to cancer victims was self-denial; this amounts to unawareness of their own, basic, emotional needs.
It seems that emotions that are generated and/or suppressed due to lack of knowledge can be deadly. Since emotional expression is always tied to a specific flow of peptides in the body, the constant generation and suppression of emotions results in massive disturbances of the psychosomatic network. Many psychologists have said that depression is really suppressed anger or even anger redirected against the self.
Identifying, releasing and expressing emotion that has been suppressed is a significant step in the direction of taking charge of your ship and learning to navigate it. But, at the same time, it is essential to learn to transform emotions. We can learn to only have positive emotions!
In the East, part of the training of many paths of yogic wisdom includes meditating in graveyards. Now, a graveyard in the East is quite different from a graveyard in the West. In the East, it is the custom to expose the bodies to the elements so that they will be devoured by birds and other predators. To meditate in such a place is to be confronted by physical horrors that Westerners may find difficult to contemplate. At the same time, there is the superstitious fear of specters and demons that the meditator must deal with.
In Tantra yoga, one practice is to make love in a graveyard.
In both cases, the object is to train the consciousness to achieve higher states of mind in the face of the cold, hard facts of life in the material world; to gain mastery over the physical, programmed emotions; to become The Navigator.
It is in this sense that the Cassiopaeans teach us that knowledge protects. To have a full field of awareness is to be in control of your ship no matter what may erupt into your life. Information is the bridge between consciousness and matter and without this bridge, matter and its programs - the Predator's Mind - will dominate. The "bodymind" of the Predator is like the whirlpool of Charybdis and the temptation of the Sirens of ancient myth put together. Liky Ulysses, we must lash ourselves to the mast of our ship, stuff the ears of our rowers with wax, and call upon knowledge/nymphs to help guide us through the dangers.
Information transcends time and space. It is, as Gregory Bateson has said, "the difference that makes a difference." Consciousness exists "prior" to the physical realm which is, literally, an out-picturing of consciousness. Denying the realities of the "real world" - denying the reality of the naturalness of the existence of "darkness," is the same as being manipulated to have negative emotions while, at the same time being taught to suppress them. It will still exist; and it will "back up" in your system and become the chief part of your reality because, like blocked emotions, it cannot be "released" so that positive emotions can take its place.
...we must find appropriate ways to divest ourselves of the manipulated negative emotions that are backed up in our systems and learn how to use our reason and will to make sure that we only have positive emotions!
With increase of information the Navigator steers the ship by constantly adjusting the tiller in response to the information. Constant feedback is required for the Navigator to do the job and that is why, along with knowledge in terms of facts and understanding must be combined with self-monitoring so as to have a more intelligent grasp of what is happening in the physical system and in its relation to the reality that the individual experiences. The faster and tighter the feedback loop, the more intelligence is available to the system. The body itself is a metaphor of our unconscious state. As more of it becomes conscious, there are fewer and fewer "unexpected" elements cropping up in our lives.
The body is a battlefield for the wargames of the mind. And these games are, very likely, planned and executed from higher densities.
As above, so below. To think otherwise is to suffer the stress of separation from our Source, to experience lack of Unity. And what is it that flows between us all, linking and communicating, coordinating and integrating all of the Cosmos?
Knowledge.
Just as neuropeptides flow among the cells of the body, causing all the receptors to vibrate in response to information, so does knowledge act on our consciousness the way the strings of a resting violin are set to vibrating when another violin is played. Knowledge produces resonance among different people who are Unique, but Unified in their diversity. With knowledge we can truly feel what others feel - not just assume that they feel what WE feel. The oneness of Life is based on the simple fact that with knowledge, we are all vibrating together.
