ANNOUNCEMENTS
[Walter Driscoll asked to interview me in order to preserve on video some of the latest modifications and evolutions in the versions of the message offered here since 1989. He would label the discussion, "Unlearning with Floyd Henderson."
Please note: For those who have a problem hearing what is being shared, the video offers a fairly accurate set of closed captions which some listeners might want to activate.
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1. [See the offer in gold text following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all seven of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
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THE PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS AND THE CALL BY THOSE CONSEQUENCES FOR REALIZATION AND A NISARGAN PERSPECTIVE
To continue with the pointers offered in the Sapolsky film “STRESS: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER.”
Narrator: “In real life, for so many of us primates - including Robert’s baboons - control is not an option.”
Sapolsky: “You get some big male who loses a fight, and chases a sub-adult, who bites an adult female, who slaps a juvenile, who knocks an infant out of a tree . . . all in fifteen seconds. Insofar as a huge component of stress is lack of control, lack of predictability, you’re sitting there and you’re just watching a zebra and somebody else is having a bad day and it’s your rear end that’s going to get slashed. [It’s all] so tremendously, psychologically stressful for the folks further down on the hierarchy.”
Narrator: “One of Robert’s early revelations was identifying the link between stress and hierarchy in baboons. Some baboon troops are over one-hundred strong. Like us, they have evolved large brains to navigate the complexities of large societies. Survival here requires a kind of political savvy - with the most cunning and aggressive males gaining top rank and all of the perks:
females for the choosing, all the food they can eat, and an endless retinue of willing groomers. Every male knows where he stands in society: who can torture him; who he can torture; and who, in turn, the ‘torturee’ can torture.”
Next, Sapolsky offers his revealing take on the baboons that he has come to know firsthand, and his take on some baboons adumbrates comments made throughout history regarding some humans as well:
Sapolsky: “Well, this sounds like a terrible thing to confess after thirty years, but I don’t actually like baboons all that much. I mean, there’s been individual guys over the years who I absolutely love, but most are these scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards.
[See? Baboon behavior often mirrors human behavior, and human behavior often mirrors baboon behavior.
I was enjoying a lunch in an outdoor restaurant on a mountaintop near The Cape of Good Hope. There was a canvas covering over the dining area held in place by heavy strapping. Halfway through the meal, a troop of baboons arrived, moving along under the canvas by grabbing one strap after another.
Soon, one was swinging back and forth directly overhead and then it dropped onto the dining table where I was seated and began stealing the food on the table. As it stuffed the food into its mouth, it showed its teeth and gave me a menacing look, like “Don't even think about interfering with what I'm doing.” See, just like a lot of humans.]
Sapolsky continued: “They’re awful to each other, so they’re great for my science. I mean, I’m not out here to commune with them. They’re perfect for what I study.”
Narrator (referring to Sapolsky’s decades of research): “His early work - measuring stress hormones from extracted blood - led to two remarkable discoveries.
A baboon’s rank determined the level of stress hormone in his system, so if you’re a dominant male, you can expect your stress hormones to be low. And if you’re submissive, much higher.
[Imagine the stress levels from my being bullied by Donnie Leone for three years, including every morning, including sometimes during lunch breaks, and including many times after school as well. Some claimed it was pretty “low life” the way that I had given him a “sucker punch.”
I pointed out that I had not administered a “sucker punch” but that I had merely ”punched a sucker” instead. Yet ”fighting back” within a hierarchy - whether that involves baboons or humans or any other species - is rare (or rarely successful);
thus, stress is not rare. It is common. It is, in fact, pervasive. What roles do personality types play? Personality Type Sixes seldom fight back but will on occasion; Type Nines almost never fight back; and Type Fours are the most prone of all to stand up to abusive authority and fight back.]
Next, the Sapolsky study reveals some additional costs of being trapped at the lower end of a hierarchy and staying there:
Narrator: “But there was an even more astonishing find in Sapolsky’s sample: low rankers - the have-nots - had increased heart rates and higher blood pressure. This was the first time anyone had linked stress to the deteriorating health of a primate in the wild.”
Sapolsky: “Basically, if you’re a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop (or a human in a society plagued with the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, namely “ignorance, stupidity, and insanity,” per Maharaj), you’ll have high blood pressure, elevated levels of stress hormones, an immune system that doesn’t work as well, and your reproductive system will be more vulnerable to being knocked out of whack.
Your brain chemistry is one that bears some similarity to what you see in clinically-depressed humans. And all that stuff . . . those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age.”
Narrator: “Could this also be true for that other primate?”
Ah. A key query, yes. More on that later.
[NON-DUAL NOTE: As noted, there are some things that the understanding can address and some things the understanding cannot address. Limitless effort can be made to guide persons to differentiating true from false, but if the hypothalamus is under functioning, which it is in probably 98% of all humans, then nothing will help.
It has been observed with one team I work with that in some cases, the use of a hypothalamus supplement for ninety days straight has shown remarkable shifts in one’s ability to differentiate true from false.] Now to continue:
From earlier:
Sapolsky: “Basically, if you’re, you know, a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop, high blood pressure, elevated levels of stress hormones, you have an immune system that doesn’t work as well, and your reproductive system is more vulnerable of being knocked out of whack.
Your brain chemistry is one that bears some similarity to what you see in clinically-depressed humans. And all that stuff, those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age.”
Narrator: “Could this also be true for that other primate?”
Ah. A key query, yes. More on that in the next chapter.
To continue with the pointers offered in the Sapolsky film “STRESS: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER”:
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS AND THE CALL BY THOSE CONSEQUENCES FOR
REALIZATION AND A NISARGAN PERSPECTIVE
Narrator: “As Robert Sapolsky was monitoring stress in baboons, Professor Sir Michael Marmot was leading a study in Great Britain that tracked the health of more than 28,000 people over the course of 40 years.
The study was named for Whitehall, citadel of the British Civil Service, where every job is ranked in a precise hierarchy - the perfect laboratory to determine whether in humans there might be a link between rank and stress.”
Narrator: “Kevin Brooks is a government lawyer.”
Kevin Brooks: “I think I’ve been under chronic stress in this organization simply because I’m a square peg in a round hole.”
Narrator: “His rank - ‘Level Seven’ - means he has little seniority in his department. He lives the life of a subordinate.”
K.B.: “One of my cases wasn’t wholly under control.”
(Then Brooks entered the office one Monday morning and was told his manager wanted to see him.)
K.B.: “So we find a room, he shuts the door, then he says, ‘You know what you’ve done?! You know what happened while you were away?! We couldn’t find one of your files!’ He just gave me a darn good kicking, you know? Psychologically, he did me over. At the end of it came more threats. I left the room, crossed over the corridor to my own room, and I just burst into tears.”
So that’s an example of the view from the bottom of Britain’s rigid hierarchical system. What’s the view like from the top?
Narrator: “Sarah Woodhall also works for the government. Unlike Kevin, she is a Senior Civil Servant.”
Woodhall: “There are about 160 people reporting to me ultimately one way or another within the sector. I do really enjoy working in civil service. It’s quite a dynamic environment, and it can be quite exciting. I like working with lots of people, so, yeah, I do really enjoy my job.”
Narrator: “Such dramatically different reflections dramatize one of the most astounding scientific findings in the Whitehall Study.
Marmot: “Firstly, the study showed that the lower you were in the hierarchy, the higher your risk of heart disease and other diseases. So people second from the top had higher risks than those at the top, people third from the top had a higher risk than those second from the top, and it ran all the way from top to bottom. We’re dealing with people in stable jobs with no industrial exposures. And yet your position in the hierarchy intimately related to your risk of disease and length of life.”
Woodhall: “I’ve been very lucky. I haven’t ever experienced any problems with
my health. Since I’ve been in the Senior Civil Service, I haven’t had a day off
with ill health. So I’ve been very fortunate.”
K.B.: “In my own situation, I think that my career is pretty much tainted. It’s
pretty much arrested. Out of the last three years at work, I’ve been off sick
for probably half that time.”
Sapolsky: “This particular study is sort of ‘the Rosetta Stone of the whole field’ because it’s the British Civil Service System. Everybody’s got the same medical care. Everybody’s got the same universal health care system. It’s just like the baboons in that all the baboons eat the same thing and they have the same level of activity. It’s not this stuff that, oh, if you’re a low-ranking baboon, you smoke too much and you drink too much. Both of these studies rule out all those confounds, and they produce virtually identical findings.”
Narrator: “On both sides of the primate divide, there are soul-wrenching stories and life-threatening consequences. For every subordinate (like Kevin, living a life of baboon uncertainty), there is an alpha strutting his stuff, glorying in power, over someone else - someone unsuspecting, someone low-ranking.”
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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THE EXPLANATION
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
"There is no hell."
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
