Researchers made a mysterious discovery in Chile’s Atacama Desert in 2003. This tiny skeleton looked human, but had many features that left scientists scratching their heads. The most mysterious thing about this skeleton was its length. It is only 15 centimeters (6 inches) long.
When the images hit the internet, many people assumed the only explanation could be aliens. However, scientists didn’t want to believe in such claims so they took the skeleton in their own hands (literally).
Imaging showed that the chest cavity still had the remains of lungs and a heart inside.
However, even after years of research scientists still can’t figure out what this skeleton actually is.
The preliminary genetic results do indicate the skeleton is definitely of human origin, but about 9% of the DNA tested did not match the human genome reference.
Scientists threw away many possible scenarios like dwarfism, progeria, mummification, because things just don’t add up. For example in case of dwarfism the smallest person ever confirmed was 54.6 cm (21.5 in) tall while the ‘atacama alien’ is only 15 cm (7 in).
Many initially speculated that the remains were from a premature birth or miscarried fetus, though others disregarded the whole thing as a hoax. One of the most amazing discoveries from the analysis was that the ‘atacama alien’ was NOT a fetus and certainly not a hoax.
There were mature teeth present in the mouth and the bones were well-developed, with the leg bones showing growth plates that one would expect to see in a 6-8 year old child.
While the testing did provide answers, it also raised many more questions. How could a 6 year old child only be 6 inches long?
For now that’s all scientists can say. All in all, we still have no idea what this mysterious, tiny, alien looking thing really is. Here are some images:
FlowComposer is an AI tool based on machine learning: an intelligent assistant able to help you composing new songs in any style, automatically or interactively.
While FlowComposer does string together notes, it has no idea what combinations sound good to the human ear. So on a catchiness scale from 1 to 10, its songs rate about a, well, 0. On a different note (no pun intended), it’s extremely interesting to see what comes out when artificial intelligence tries to mimic creativity, art and emotion.
Basically, after analyzing a body of work by a human songwriter, FlowComposer attempts to generate new music based on the characteristic traits of the person’s work. This one is called “Daddy’s Car,” and is based on The Beatles’ music:
Neuroscientists at Oxford just discovered how your brain moves memories into long-term storage. It’s called an anti-memory, and it’s more helpful than it sounds.
Memories, at their most basic, are electrical impulses. But what happens if those impulses are always firing? Would they overload your brain the same way that running too many programs on your computer would fry its RAM?
The answer is yes. Scientists think that these overly excited neurons could be the culprits behind conditions like epilepsy, schizophrenia, and autism. The balancing agent that keeps that from happening are anti-memories.
In order for your brain to form a memory it needs a certain rest from that particular pattern of neural activity. This is where anti-memories come into play. They are responsible for your brain making a memory just as much as the memory is.
Think of them as defragging the brain’s RAM. Anti-memories are neurons that lower the electrical activity generated by memory creation and keep the brain from getting overloaded.
They don’t affect memories; they are like the ‘counter opposites’ responsible for balancing your brain’s activity and health.
They do not look different from other memories, in fact, they do not ‘look’ at all. Just like darkness is an absence of light they ‘look’ like an absence of brain activity.
When you form a memory, your brain assembles it from different parts, rebuilding it each time from scratch.
Every time you retrieve a memory, you increase your brain’s ability to recall it by strengthening the neural pathway to that memory. That makes the memory stronger and easier to recall in the long run.
However, every time you remember a certain event you don’t remember the event per se, but you recall the last neural activity associated with that event. This is what strengthens but also slightly distorts our memories.
Like everything in life, this relationship clearly shows the importance of counter opposites in order for balance to be maintained.
Just as much as you need to work, you need to play; just as much as you need to exercise, you need to take a rest; just as much as you need to keep a healthy lifestyle, you need a ‘cheat’ day; just as much as we need the day, we need the night; and just as much as your brain needs memories, it needs anti-memories.
Religion and science don’t often mix. But in the case of religious experiences — bright lights, booming voices, visions of God, angels, devils or other religious figures — scientists found a surprising overlap in a recent case study.
Researchers from Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem examined a 45-year-old male epilepsy patient back in May. The patient has temporal lobe epilepsy, a type of epilepsy with seizures involving intense “feelings, emotions, thoughts, and experiences” and even “hallucinations of voices, music, people, smells, or tastes” according to the Epilepsy Foundation.
The episodes had afflicted the patient since he was seven and relapsed at 23. He came to the hospital seeking relief and stopped taking his medication for the tests.
The doctors put him into an electroencephalogram (EEG) scanner to observe his brain patterns. As they were watching, he saw God.
Doctors Shahar Arzy and Roey Schurr wrote what happened next in the neurological journal Epilepsy and Behavior:
“While lying in bed, the patient abruptly ‘froze’ and stared at the ceiling for several minutes, stating later that he felt that God was approaching him. He then started chanting prayers quietly, looked for his Kippa and put it on his head, chanting the prayers more excessively. Then, abruptly, he yelled ‘And you are Adonai (name of the Hebrew God) the Lord!’ stating later that God had revealed to him, ordering him to bring redemption to the people of Israel.” (source)
After that, the patient ripped the EEG electrodes off and ran through hospital, telling whoever he found “God has sent me to you.”
He didn’t have a specific plan for accomplishing his newfound mission, but he was “sure that God is going to instruct him what he and his followers should do on their way to redemption.”
The patient was not a religious man. He was a factory worker with ‘low-level’ education who practiced religious rituals regularly, “as is common in his surrounding society, without any special religious involvement, deep religious feelings, or scholarly interest,” the study reports.
The researchers gave him an anti-psychotic medication and the episode ended a few hours later.
The episode was surprising, but had scientific precedent. Religious experiences like the one this patient had have long been documented in epilepsy patients, but the exact location underlying the neural mechanisms causing them were unclear until now.
THIS patient’s experience gave them clues.
They found an increase in activity in the low-gamma band (30–40 Hz) brain waves in the left prefrontal cortex of the patient’s brain suggesting that this could be the key to unveiling what all religious episodes have in common.
After making tests on hundreds religious people while praying, meditating or ‘speaking in tongues’ scientists made a surprising discovery!
It turns out that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for concentration, attention and focus, plays a major role in religious experiences. When the person reported seeing God the left prefrontal cortex activated.
This is interesting considering that scientists discovered the ‘Self’ is associated with the right frontal lobe. (source)
Whenever we lose the sense of Self the frontal lobe shuts (decreases activity) while other parts of the brain become more active. However, when someone is getting a vision of God only the left part of the prefrontal cortex activates.
So the Self and God could most likely live as ‘neighbors’ in our brain’s prefrontal cortex.
But how do science and psychology explain this?
The key could lie inside our hearts. Literally!
Recent research shocked a lot of scientists when they discovered that the heart has almost 40,000 neurons (which is a lot less than the brain). However, the real shocker was the discovery that the heart sends signals to the brain that are not only understood but obeyed by it. (source)
This means that even though the heart has a lot less neurons than the brain it most likely controls what the brain will think, or at least plays a major role.
Tests done on the subjects showed that the heart appeared to receive the intuitive information before the brain. This could be the basis of saying ‘Follow you heart and you will never go wrong!’
It also might prove something really cool:
Both the Self and God might live as one inside our hearts. All religions might come from the deepest levels of our unconscious mind existing as a defense mechanism for us to thrive.
Psychologists claim that at the deepest levels of our psyche lies the unconscious mind (the closest thing to our Soul). So in order to simplify the complexity and mystery of The Universe we were born into, our psyche separated the purest part of ourselves as something separate from us so we can have a guide. This is what we call God.
What represents God to us can be different for everyone else based on what their mind can associate this pureness with. However, because most people perceive this reality in a similar way the representation of God slightly differs. This is how they explain the incredible similarity across religions.
In the case where the patient had an epileptic episode claiming that he ‘saw God’ and that ‘God ordered him to bring redemption to the people of Israel’ could be that the patient revealed to himself what he knew deeply in his heart, at the very depths of his unconscious mind. It could be something that he felt a purpose of doing only he was unable to process it with the brain because of various psychological factors. So the only way his heart could have reached him was through the vision of God in his left prefrontal cortex.
God gave him the confidence of accepting this quest. This could be the case of many religious missions. And this could explain why so many religions are distorted from their real purpose once accepted by people who blindly study the ‘tip of the iceberg’ instead of the root cause at the depths of each religion.
And if you try to study, each religion comes from a single purpose, love. We can safely assume that everything you do out of love could most likely be a foundation of a new religion by itself.
So what’s the connection here?
Spirituality is unveiling of the layers of our psyche in an individual way, while religions use established methods and rituals.
It is interesting to see how closely that kind of religious experience is to an epileptic seizure. Here’s an anonymous patient testimony from the Epilepsy Foundation’s site:
“I get the strangest feeling, most of it can’t be put into words. The whole world suddenly seems more real at first. It’s as though everything becomes crystal clear. Then I feel as if I’m here but not here, kind of like being in a dream. It’s as if I’ve lived through this exact moment many times before. I hear what people say, but they don’t make sense. I know not to talk during the episode, since I just say foolish things. Sometimes I think I’m talking but later people tell me that I didn’t say anything. The whole thing lasts a minute or two.” (source)
When this happens the patent loses the sense of Self.
Seeing deeper into this we can unlock a powerful truth: We are beyond the Self.
We don’t need the Self to be, but the Self is a powerful part of ourselves that help us thrive in this reality.
This discovery can explain the link between religions, between God and the self, between spirituality and religion.
Anyway, it’s still a mystery, maybe even a bigger one, where does our Soul come from. Are we guided by a God from the deepest layers of our Soul, or are we the ones who create it? Is there a consciousness existing separate from our brains or is the activity of our brains what creates it? Or maybe, both of these statements are somehow true.
Coffee is something most people start their day with (or better said, for most people the day starts after they had their coffee). And that’s good. Coffee is one of the healthiest beverages you can drink, according to recent studies.
Eggs are considered as a powerful food. Ancient Taoists say that one of the few ways to rejuvenate your Jing (the force that keeps you healthy and young) is to eat eggs. Eggs are a very good source of inexpensive, high quality protein along with vitamin B2. They are rich sources of selenium, vitamin D, B6, B12 and minerals such as zinc, iron and copper.
Combine these 2 super ‘supplements’ and you get SUPER COFFEE that keeps you awake, concentrated, is full with nutrients, vitamins, rejuvenates your Jing and supercharges your energy. The best part is that it’s REALLY easy to make!
Making egg coffee requires just three ingredients:
How many videos, articles, research papers, documentaries, activists tried to warn us? How many options we had to prevent THIS? And some people still don’t even believe that the climate change is VERY real and CO2 levels are off the charts!
Well, ‘congratulations’ people, Earth has reached the point of no return!
According to a new update from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “it already seems safe to conclude that we won’t be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year, or ever again for the indefinite future.” (source)
What’s so terrifying about this number? For several years now, scientists have been warning us that if atmospheric carbon were allowed to surpass 400 ppm (parts per million), it would mark a serious “milestone.” One from which we won’t be able to return in the time required to fix this mess.
Scripps notes that numbers are hovering around 401 parts per million!
So in light of that, here are some of climate change’s permanent effects:
Extinction. While difficult to estimate, extinction rates have accelerated to 1,000 times their rate before the existence of modern Homo sapiens. The World Wildlife Fund guesses 10,000 species could become extinct every year. Due to climate change, The Nature Conservancy suggests one fourth of Earth’s species could be on their way to extinction by 2050.
Food chain disruption. Nature has a system in which, if one thing is disrupted everything feels the shock. In the Arctic, for example, rising ocean temperatures are impacting the growth of sea algae, which in turn, deprives populations of zooplankton, cod, seals, and polar bears of vital nutrients. THIS is just one example of MANY! And with 10,000 species getting extinct every year it’s undeniably worse.
Ocean acidification and coral bleaching. The planet’s oceans are constantly absorbing excess CO2, causing their pH to decrease, literally acidifying the water.
Rising sea levels. By 2100, approximately 13 million people in the US are projected to lose their homes due to rising sea levels. In some parts of the world, such as the Pacific Ocean, that’s already started to happen.
Pollution in cities, health problems. With higher levels of CO2 everything and everywhere gets more polluted. This CO2 pollution causes health problems for anyone who needs air to survive. CO2 levels will get so high that we’ll have to wear masks, all the time!
New humanity. We’ll have to evolve in a certain way so we can survive in this polluted environment. So get ready for transhumanism and merging your body with a robot!
And all of this could have been avoided if people reduced driving their freakin’ cars for just a tiny little bit and drive a bike. Or if the majority of the world stopped supporting the meat industry. Or save on electricity. Or save on water. Or reduce the number of factories. Reduce warfare. Or plant more trees… but it was easier to blame than take an action.
If there’s an inkling of a silver lining here, it’s that scary numbers could scare people into action. If not, than we deserve to be extinct, or robots, or leave this beautiful planet and find a different ‘piece of rock’ to ruin.
You’ve probably read something like “NASA Just Updated The Zodiac Signs For The First Time In Over 2,000 Years” or “Your Astrological Sign Has Shifted” which of course, is not true! (NASA?! Really?! NASA doesn’t care about the zodiac!)
“We didn’t change any Zodiac signs, we just did the math,” stated Dwayne Brown, a NASA spokesperson in an exclusive report by Gizmodo.
“The Space Place article was about how astrology is not astronomy, how it was a relic of ancient history, and pointed out the science and math that did come from observations of the night sky.”
Deborah Houlding, a well respected astrologer, researcher, writer and teacher amongst the global astrological community, is an avid activist about this topic and the nonsense that surrounds it!
She says that this false assumption is spawned from the misinterpretation of 4 elements: the ecliptic; the zodiac; the constellations; the moving axis of the earth;
Because most people don’t understand these 4 elements and how they interact, they make unreasonable assumptions that twist the truth of reality.
Most people don’t even know what the zodiac is.
Here we gonna try to explain everything, as simply as possible, easy to be understood!
What are constellations really?
The constellations are patterns we’ve assigned to groups of stars that have nothing to do with each other in reality.
The stars in one group are light years apart from each other.
But because it’s easier to measure the position of earth around the sun with some kind of external parameters, we’ve created patterns to guide us.
The patterns we’ve assigned to these groups of stars are what we call constellations. (it derives from the Latin con, ‘together’ + stellas, ‘stars’)
The signs derived from these patterns, constellations. However, a constellation is not a sign!
A sign communicates information while a constellation is a visible pattern.
What is The Ecliptic?
The ecliptic is a line of constellations around the sun.
The red line shows the ecliptic;
Because the earth orbits the sun we perceive a different constellation behind our sun each month.
There are originally 13 constellations along this line. However, they are different in shape and size.
Because it’s easier to divide 1 year into 12 parts instead of 13, astrologists wanted to remove one constellation from the ecliptic. One of these 13 constellations which was the smallest was left out.
That’s why we have 12 months and 4 seasons. It’s easier to calculate like this.
The original astrological zodiac was used to measure the time of the year instead of predicting who you’ll meet this week.
What is The Zodiac?
The zodiac astrologers use today is derived from this astronomical measurement of the year.
One part of the zodiac is “The Tropical Zodiac” (the one you most likely obtained your sign from) determined by the position of the sun referenced against the position of the Earth’s equator; simply said, it’s looking at the seasons of Earth.
The other is “The Sidereal Zodiac” determined by the position of the sun referenced against the star background.
Both the tropical and sidereal zodiacs present consistent systems. Just as different languages can have their own grammatical rules that don’t apply to each other and yet still lead to the effective communication of information.
The one is looking from the sun towards earth, the other is looking from the sun towards other stars. They complete each other.
Now here comes the tricky part that confused a lot of people.
The earth has an axis, in reference to the sun it’s tilted 23 and a half degrees.
This is why, as the earth orbits around the sun it seems that the sun is going above the equator, the day is getting longer; and below the equator the day is getting smaller. This is why there are seasons, equinoxes and solstices.
However, the axis of the earth rotates too. Very slowly, 1 degree shift every 72 years, but accumulated with time it makes a significant difference.
Because of this rotation, the sun seems to be slightly off from the starting constellation of the ecliptic, each year. For us, observing from earth, it seems that the constellations are rotating. In reality, the axis of the earth is rotating.
It makes a full circle each 26,000 years and many cultures believe that this marks the end of one civilization and beginning of another.
Spring is always considered a start. Spring starts when the sun begins ‘climbing’ up to the equator.
2000 years ago people decided to make this the starting point of measurement through the zodiac. At that time the sun was facing the Aries constellation. That’s why it is called the ‘zero degree’, or ‘0° Aries’, because Aries is considered the first of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
However, because of the rotation of the earth’s axis the sun is not facing Aries anymore when the spring starts. It has ‘shifted’ more to the constellation of Pisces and it will keep ‘shifting’ through all the constellations, making a return to Aries each 26,000 years, and so on.
But your zodiac sign is NOT shifting!
It’s just the position of the sun in reference to the constellations at a certain season.
By the tropical zodiac Aries is the beginning of spring, no matter what constellation spring starts with. Aries communicates the archetype of spring.
And you’ll probably think ‘but doesn’t the fact that the axis moves means the seasons will change too?’ And it’s pretty smart to think like this. People thought of this too when they were creating the calendar.
Each day, our calendar is gradually ‘precessing’ in time by 0.008 seconds to keep up with the new locations of the equinoxes and solstices so no matter where we are in the precession cycle ,winter will always happen in December, and Summer in June. Our calendar keeps up with the axis cycle.
By the sidereal zodiac the Aries constellation stays the same. The constellations don’t change positions between themselves.
The confusion comes when we link the 2 zodiacs with each other. It’s like putting grammatical rules, that don’t apply, from one language to another.
For the one zodiac the variables are the sun and the equator of the earth. For the other are the sun and the star background. The signs can shift ONLY if a zodiac measures these 3 variables together: the sun, the equator of the earth and the constellations. And that’s NOT the case!
There are 12 zodiac signs:
The other false assumption which says there are 13 signs comes from the fact that there are 13 original constellations on the ecliptic.
First of all, that’s a hit to the sidereal zodiac not the tropical zodiac which cares about the seasons of earth (and most people obtain their signs from it).
Second, the constellation is small enough so astrologers removed it from the measuring system, or better said, they’ve overlaid it with its neighboring constellations. They still consider those stars, the pattern is just removed.
Third, every constellation is shortened or lengthened in some way to fit the 12 aspects of the measuring system. They are just imaginary patterns to help us measure the movement of earth in reference to the sun.
It’s not that the constellations have changed, people just want to split 12 and 13 on the same ‘ruler’.
Think like this, if you had a bucket with 1l of water, and suddenly the measuring system changed so 1 litter is 3 litters now, you will have a bucket with 3l of water. But, in reality you won’t have any more water molecules than you had before.
In reality, the activity of the stars is exactly the same. And that’s what sidereal astrologers measure.
Conclusion:
People took all of this and linked it with the fact that the sun is ‘drifting’ because of the movement of earth’s axis and created an unreasonable assumption.
The 13 signs of the ecliptic and the slow shifting of the starting constellation, have nothing to do with each other nor with the 2 zodiac systems.
Across history, many cultures and civilizations created different kind of zodiac signs. Some people used the seasons and some the constellations to create their signs.
The Celtic Zodiac has 13 signs; The Mayan Zodiac has 19 signs; most of the other have 12 like the one we use.
But the earth circles the sun always at the same pace. The seasons are the same. My point is, even if the ‘ruler’ which we measure a revolution around the sun with changes, what we measure doesn’t change.
Even if someone updates the zodiac signs, you will remain as unique as the time you were born at!
Up until now, we knew about the 5 steps in the “Hierarchy of Needs”. But there is a 6th secret layer, on top of all the others, that was never published. It makes things so much clearer about our role in life! (and no, it’s not “Internet Connection”)
The first level are “Physical Needs” like air, water, food, warmth… and if those are not met everything else falls off.
The second level is “Safety” meaning that, after we make sure we’ve acquired our basic needs, we seek security of our body, of resources, property, morality, family, health… after these are met we climb to the third level.
The third level is “Belonging”. We seek to belong, we crave for friendship, love, intimacy, sense of connection with others. After we establish belonging, the center point of our motivational drive climbs one level higher.
The fourth level is “Self Esteem”. We seek achievement in various areas of the community, we crave for confidence and respect. This is where most people get stuck, driven by their egoic nature, forever trying to satisfy their need for respect like filling up a black hole. The ones who manage to establish a solid structure of self esteem inside themselves, ascend to the next level.
The fifth level is “Self Actualization” and most people consider it to be the highest layer. After establishing a solid structure of basic needs, safety, belonging and self esteem, we seek to find ‘Who we really are?’. We dive deep into our self and hunt for our truth. We seek creativity, spontaneity, we have lack of prejudices and we accept the facts of the world as they are. We try to know ourselves, to master ourselves, to elevate ourselves.
For many years people believed that that’s it. That’s where the hierarchy ends. But they were wrong!
Abraham Maslow had another piece of this puzzle that he never made public. He passed away before publishing the complete “Hierarchy Of Needs” which had 6 levels.
Without further ado, the sixth step is “Self Transcendence”
Not an elevation of the self, but a subverting of it.
This takes us to different perspectives on human psychology itself. Achieving self actualization means resting comfortably inside the boundaries of human psychology, accomplishing what is knowable and testable, while self transcendence means pushing beyond them.
Whether through spiritual meditation, self denial, or more recently through technological means, challenging the definition of consciousness to expand into new areas of knowledge, beyond self knowledge, may be the ultimate stage of human development.
Transcending oneself is similar to what advanced meditators tend to describe. When they reach that ascended state they report being ‘everything and nothing at the same time’. This is one way to go with this.
Another, more technological path toward self transcendence is the singularity, an event in which human biology and computers become one. This is an opportunity to literally overcome our present physical limitations.
Overcoming the narrow confines of the self may be as simple as giving yourself over to others: their dreams, their goals, their passions. And by doing so, you become one with them.
Whichever way we choose, it seems that our journey doesn’t end with ‘knowing thyself’ but there is a lot more to embark toward.
After we discover our truth, we need to transcend with it. We are like a source for this unique essence. We pour our purpose into The Universe and we need to find ways to transcend without neglecting it.
However, what awaits us then, is as mysterious as The Universe and its vastness.
