Fractal Enlightenment

In 1948 a German zoologist H.M. Peters was studying spiders and faced a problem. The Spiders weaved their nests between 2AM and 5AM in the morning. He questioned a friend Dr. Peter Witt, a German born Swiss pharmacologist, what they could do to get the spiders to weave webs during feasible day times.

According to Rainer Foelix, in his book “Biology of Spiders”, Dr. Witt prescribed amphetamine. Unfortunately or fortunately that didn’t work. The spiders continued to build in those early morning hours although, the drugged spider’s webs were amazingly different as compared to the sober spiders.

Finding the outcome of the experiment very interesting, Dr. Witt performed more experiments on the spiders with other drugs like LSD, mescaline, and caffeine. The forms of webs depended on which substance they were given.

“Then Witt tried mescaline, strychnine, caffeine, and others. Low-dosed caffeinated spiders produced a smaller but wider web with a normal spiral but radii at over sized angles. At higher doses, like with the other drugs, web regularity got distorted. Only with low doses of the hallucinogen LSD-25 did the spiders spin webs of greater regularity,” R. Foelix, Biology of Spiders.

They also tended to look much the same for each specific drug they were given. Because of these findings. Dr. Witt proposed that law enforcement could identify confiscated drugs in a cheaper manner than traditional chemical analysis.

Another interesting take on the web change is the increase of the spiders body weight after consuming one hundred and fifty mg/kg of psilocybin per os, 1 g/kg of mescaline per os, or a 30% increase in body weight made spiders build webs the following day with a shorter thread.

The weight increase also caused a thicker thread measured as higher nitrogen content per meter thread. This can be explained by assuming that the heavier spider has to build a thicker thread to hold its own weight while it has not enough material to build it of equal length.

Removal of weight led only after 3 and more days to a return to thread thickness and length of control webs. However, these heavier spiders repeated their web-building at a normal frequency. You can read more of the drugged spiders weight and webs.

The strange part is LSD-25 has been claimed to be a wonder drug by people, as it helped them professionally as well as spiritually to boost mind expansion.

Here’s a humorous take on the drugged spider experiment below.

Resources:

Spider Web Pictures

Sound is a vibration that resonates with the soul, which can be felt in every cell of our body. Sound has the power to heal not only on a physical level but also on emotional and spiritual levels.

The Tibetan Singing bowls, which are standing bells, rather than hanging inverted or attached to a handle, that rest on the bottom surface. The sides and rim of singing bowls vibrate to produce deep and soothing sound.

Traditionally, singing bowls were used throughout Asia as part of Bön (Lhasa dialect, the word bon means ‘religion’ and is the oldest spiritual tradition of Tibet.) and Tantric Buddhist Sadhana.

Chinese Buddhists use the singing bowl to accompany the wooden fish during chanting, striking it when a particular phrase in a sutra is sung.

In Japan and Vietnam, singing bowls are similarly used during chanting and may also mark the passage of time or signal a change in activity. Today they are used for meditation, relaxation, chakra balancing, health care, personal well-being and also in religious practices.

Our Experience with the Tibetan Singing Bowl

The moment I began to use the singing bowl, I knew it had a deeper purpose, you start off by banging the stick on the side of the bowl, then you rub the stick around the bowl in such a way that you take control of the vibration and by rotating this vibration around the bowl with speed and altitude of the friction you can create different frequencies and sound.

But what was more interesting is the way your body reacts to the vibrations that are flowing in through your hand. The feeling of peace descending through you as you churn the bowl and focus on the sound and the control of the vibrations in your hand. It seems so magical its pretty unbelievable what the bowl can do to you.

The Old and the New:

Traditionally, antique singing bowls were made of Panchaloga (meaning five metals in Sanskrit), a bronze alloy of copper, tin, zinc and iron and other metals. Antiques often include silver, gold and nickel, they produce multiphonic and polyharmonic overtones which are unique to the antique instruments.

The subtle yet complex multiple harmonic frequencies are a special quality of the high quality bronze alloy. Singing bowls are no longer made in the traditional way and is considered a lost art.

Antique singing bowls are highly prized and collected worldwide. Their popularity is due to their fine craftsmanship and remarkable sound. The aging process seems to improve the tone and centuries old antiques produce an incredibly rich and beautiful sound.

While the new singing bowls are made from industrial quality metal, mainly copper and are exported widely from Nepal and India. New singing bowls and crystal bowls do not produce the warm and complex tone of fine antiques. They sound like clear and simple bells, without the warm undertones and bright harmonic overtones for which antiques are famous.

Benefits of Tibetan Singing Bowls

“If we accept that sound is vibration and we know that vibration touches every part of our physical being, then we understand that sound is heard not only through our ears but through every cell in our bodies. One reason sound heals on a physical level is because it so deeply touches and transforms us on the emotional and spiritual planes. Sound can redress imbalances on every level of physiologic functioning and can play a positive role in the treatment of virtually any medical disorder.” ~ Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, director of Medical Oncology and Integrative Medicine, the Cornell Cancer Prevention Center in New York.

When there is a blockage in the flow of energy in our body, it leads to diseases as a particular organ or tissue has stopped vibrating at a healthy frequency. This imbalance, in parts where it is required, can be restored using the sound frequencies created by Tibetan singing bowls.

Modern medicine is beginning to understand the effect of sound healing using vibrations and frequencies. Dr. David Simon, the medical director of the Deepak Chopra Center in California, found the sound from Tibetan Singing Bowls as well as chanting chemically metabolized into ’endogenous opiates’, that act on the body as internal painkillers and healing agents.

The harmonic resonance of Tibetan singing bowls also help to reduce stress and pain, balance energy and induce meditative states.

The video below is for healing the root chakra.

Image Source

Sound healing

Its very rare that we write about movies, the only other movie I wrote about was waking life. Perhaps you watched that movie and really enjoyed it, or did not as you found it rather complex. But here’s a movie that everyone needs to watch, shot in 69 places in 24 countries from 6 continents.

What is Baraka?

Baraka has a several meanings around the world, similar, except in Turkish where it means barracks.

Baraka, also berakhah, in Judaism, a blessing usually recited during a ceremony, in Islam and Arab-influenced languages, meaning spiritual wisdom and blessing transmitted from God.

“Baraka”, a rarely used French slang term for luck, derived from the Arabic word and ‘Blessing’ in Kiswahili. Baraka seems to be a quite a well used word that breaks the boundaries of language.

According to the spirit of Baraka, a site dedicated to the movie Baraka as well as other movies like it, “Baraka is an ancient Sufi word, which can be translated as, a blessing, or as the breath, or essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds. For many people Baraka is the definitive film in this style. Breathtaking shots from around the world show the beauty and destruction of nature and humans. Coupled with an incredible soundtrack including on site recordings of the monks of the Dip Tse Chok Ling monastery.”

What can you Expect?

Apart from spectacular sunsets, sunrises, nature, people, cities and life existent at this moment around the world on a 70mm film that will completely blow you away and make you question your reality and things you have never scene from a top level perspective, opening up your mind to a world that is larger than just you and me.

There are moments in the film, where we as humans can we be seen just as ants, our way of life and the harm that we as the most intelligent uncompassionate species on earth you will be slapped hard on your face by the attempt this movie makes to get you out of your slumber.

If you eat chickens and eggs there’s something special for you there. I am a non vegetarian and I just had some chicken for lunch, this movie will make you think it made me think hard as well.

Here’s a clip from one of my favorite sequences from the movie, take a look at it. Its the Kecak performed in front of Gunung Kawi, Tampaksiring, Bali Island, I seem to notice a change in body colours of the people who lay down also get astonished by the synchronization.