Our Promethean Conquest

victoriousvocabulary: PRANA [noun] (प्राण, prāṇa) the Sanskrit...

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:31:24 -0500

PRANA

[noun]

(प्राण, prāṇa) the Sanskrit word for “vital life” (from the root prā ” to fill”, cognate to Latin: plenus “full”). It is one of the five organs of vitality or sensation, viz. Prana “breath”, vac “speech”, chakshus “sight”, shrotra “hearing”, and manas “thought” (nose, mouth, eyes, ears and mind; ChUp. 2.7.1).

In Vedantic philosophy, prana is the notion of a vital, life-sustaining force of living beings and vital energy, comparable to the Chinese notion of Qi. It is a central concept in Hinduism, particularly in Ayurveda and Yoga, where it is believed to flow through a network of fine subtle channels called nadis. Its most subtle material form is the breath, but it is also to be found in the blood, and its most concentrated form is semen in men and vaginal fluid in women. The Pranamaya-kosha is one of the five Koshas or “sheaths” of the Atman.

Prana was first expounded in the Upanishads, where it is part of the worldly, physical realm, sustaining the body and the mother of thought and thus also of the mind. Prana suffuses all living forms but is not itself the Atman or individual soul. In the Ayurveda, the sun and sunshine are held to be a source of prana. In the Hindu philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism, prana is regarded as an aspect of Shakti (cosmic energy).

[krystleyez]

Time consumption

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:36:21 -0500

I haven’t been on in awhile due to the article grabbing from reddit (mixed with work and lack of time).

I have been working on my website, and trying to get it all ironed out. I am not sure exactly what i am going to have on it, but it will be some amalgamation of my own thoughts ideas and representations of the world.

It is still FAR from complete, or even presentable, but i figured if anyone feels like poking around. I will probably set up links to links that i have been researching.

www.itheuniverse.com

if you feel like checking out the pdfs i came across, look in:

www.pdfs.itheuniverse.com

Happy hunting.

onlyexperiments: Dont really agree with the sentiment but I do...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:39:26 -0500

onlyexperiments:

Dont really agree with the sentiment but I do like the picture

fullfrontaljewdity: phocookie: Holy shit. Pokemon would be...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:59:11 -0500

fullfrontaljewdity:

phocookie:

Holy shit. Pokemon would be scary as fuck if they were real. I’d be scared to go outside. I don’t own any artwork.

dude

I enjoy his takes on crazy, especially the baked potato analogy...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:59:50 -0500

I enjoy his takes on crazy, especially the baked potato analogy :D

push crazy (as well as stupid) back on to people

The Fuhrer has appointed his Chief Assassin

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:20:38 -0500

The Fuhrer has appointed his Chief Assassin

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 01:00:35 -0500

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies:

Interesting research into mind altering substances.

Photo

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:12:20 -0500

nastypants: Warning: this blog will give you a...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:03:53 -0500

nastypants:

Warning: this blog will give you a laugh-attack.

This is what America thinks about our current presidential candidates. Google’s search engine algorithms cannot lie.

This is why voting doesn’t matter.

Photo

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 10:51:22 -0500

"We only experience time as a relationship between a succession of sensations."

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 09:44:06 -0500

“We only experience time as a relationship between a succession of sensations.”

- John Locke (via piecesoflogic)

bioguru: SEM of a spinal cord sample showing axons, the long,...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 09:43:38 -0500

bioguru:

SEM of a spinal cord sample showing axons, the long, single fibers extending from the soma of the neuron to conduct nerve impulses away from the cell body to propagate an electrical current down the membrane, which will stimulate target cells such as other neurons, glandular tissue, or muscles.

"Some people would always rather be somewhere else. There “here” is never good enough. Through..."

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 09:41:50 -0500

“Some people would always rather be somewhere else. There “here” is never good enough. Through self-observation, find out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now.”

- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (via sevenlittleindians)

Photo

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:27:33 -0500

samsaranmusing: Giordano Bruno: Bruno was a philosopher,...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:12:30 -0500

samsaranmusing:

Giordano Bruno: Bruno was a philosopher, astronomer and Dominican Friar who lived in Italy in the 16th Century. He was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600. Bruno was well ahead of his time. He believed that not only was the sun not the center of the universe but that it was a mere star like all the others and that other stars with planets with life must exist. Bruno was a pantheist believing as Albert Einstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson did that God was in all things and at the same time transcended all things. His lack of faith in a personal God, his heretical astronomical theories along with his criticism of the corrupt and venal Medici Papacy resulted in his execution at the hands of church authorities.

“All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity.

It is manifest that every soul has a certain continuity with the soul of the Universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity. The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the Universe. It is not mixed, yet is there in some presence.

Anything we take in the Universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way, the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.”

—Giordano Bruno

So, does this Christian cleric sound like any Buddhas of our acquaintance?

futurescope: agri-cube compact hydroponic unit produces 10,000...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:05:18 -0500

futurescope:

agri-cube compact hydroponic unit produces 10,000 vegetables per year in the space of a single car park

via diginfo:

agri-cube utilizes unique technologies, including the Variable Height Illumination System, which can provide a specific amount of light for cultivation, and the Fertilizer Circulation and Drainage System, which makes cleaning cultivation racks easy. Air-conditioning and other equipment is also provided as a package. So, even people with limited experience in vegetable cultivation can use the agri-cube easily.

[read more]

jtotheizzoe: Klimt under the neuroscientist’s microscope I’m...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:47:55 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

Klimt under the neuroscientist’s microscope

I’m amazed by the message above, a neuroscientist’s take on our unconscious responses to viewing art. It suggests that most of our reactions to art are invisible, which is both an obvious idea and a shocking one. Many feel that they can deeply and objectively analyze art, but is our reaction more like an iceberg, mostly beneath surface?

Nobel winner Eric Kandel is not just an eminent neuroscientist, he’s a scholar of art and European culture in the golden age of Vienna. One of Kandel’s favorite subjects is Gustav Klimt, a highly erotic and symbolic painter famous for his golden-hued explorations of the female form. Above, looking at Judith and the Head of Holofernes, Kandel offers a glimpse of the neurotransmitters that silently influence the reaction of our brains, and our bodies, to works of art.

Check out Kandel’s masterful book The Age of Insight for more on how the scientific revolution of 19th century Vienna changed how we look at both the brain and art.

(↬ zenpundit)

joshbyard: Rate of Technological Change May Be...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:24:32 -0500

joshbyard:

Rate of Technological Change May Be Outstripping Humans’ Ability to Manage and Adapt to It

Our relationship with tools dates back millions of years, and anthropologists still debate whether it was the intelligence of human-apes that enabled them to create tools or the creation of tools that enabled them to become intelligent.

In any case, everyone agrees that after those first tools had been created, our ancestors’ intelligence coevolved with the tools. In the process our forebears’ jaws became weaker, their digestive systems slighter, and their brains heavier.

Chimpanzees, genetically close to us though they are, have bodies two to five times as strong as ours on a relative basis and brains about a quarter as big. In humans, energy that would have gone into other organs instead is used to run energy-hungry brains. And those brains, augmented by tools, more than make up for any diminishment in guts and muscle. Indeed, it’s been a great evolutionary trade‑off: There are 7 billion people but only a few hundred thousand chimpanzees.

In the distant past our tools improved slowly enough to allow our minds, our bodies, our family structures, and our political organizations to keep up. The earliest stone tools are about 2.6 million years old. As those and other tools became more refined and sophisticated, our bodies and minds changed to take advantage of their power. This adaptation was spread over more than a hundred thousand generations.

(via Virtual Reality Is Addictive and Unhealthy - IEEE Spectrum)

"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike and yet it is the most..."

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:16:33 -0500

“All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

- Albert Einstein (via mysticsoul)

"The traditional God is a patriarchal, controlling authority figure, an often angry man who you..."

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:09:47 -0500

“The traditional God is a patriarchal, controlling authority figure, an often angry man who you should live in fear of, as the Old Testament suggests. This God is a projection of the human mind.”

- Eckhart Tolle, The Power Of Now (via meditationsinwonderland)