(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) Deepok Chopra, M.D. writes about Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., discoverer of the opiate receptor in the early 1970's:
"Her pioneering research has demonstrated how our internal chemicals, the neuropeptides and their receptors, are the actual biological underpinnings of our awareness, manifesting themselves as our emotions, beliefs, and expectations, and profoundly influencing how we respond to and experience our world." [Introduction to Pert's book, Molecules of Emotion, 1997]
[Comment - Pert's research hasn’t necessarily demonstrated anything of the sort. Yes, there is a correlation and association between the dynamics of neuropeptides and the coloring, shaping and orienting of consciousness.
However, something causes the neuropeptides to begin flowing in a certain manner, and neither the initiation of this flow, nor its structural character is necessarily due to the neuropeptides themselves, and nothing more. Possibly, the hermenutics of experience leads to changes (how this happens is not known) in neuropeptide flow, and, this hermeneutic is a function of the condition of the soul.
Rather than conceive of neuropeptides as the generators of awareness or of emotion,one might consider the neuropeptides to be biological messengers which shape consciousness and awareness according to a hermeneutical orientation that employs neuropeptides to give biological expression to what is felt by the soul’s manner of relating to experience at a given point in time and under a given set of circumstances. On this view, the hermeneutics of the soul provides the template which guides the production of neuropeptides, their distribution, and, eventually, their dissipation.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) A neuron sends an electrical pulse down its myelin-insulated axon to the axon terminals where chemicals called neurotransmitters are released to float across the synapse to the dendrites of the receiving neuron. If the sum of all incoming signals is sufficient, the receiving neuron will fire, sending an electrical pulse along its own axon to the next neuron in line.
[Comment - What constitutes ‘sufficiency’ with respect to the adding of impulses and whether, or not, a given neuron fires? What establishes these conditions of ‘sufficiency’? Are these conditions capable of changing over time so that the requirements of ‘sufficiency’ change? If so, how does this transformation in conditions of sufficiency take place? What is it, if anything, in the neuron that has a “memory” of this condition or conditions of sufficiency? How is this memory stored? Where is the calculation done which compares or totals up the number and kind of incoming messages with the condition of sufficiency which marks the threshold that determines when a neuron will fire?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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?
[Comment - What are the dynamics of the conversion process which transduces an electrical signal into a chemical signal? Is it the reverse of the process which transduces chemical messages received from other neurons into an electrical potential? Or, is it a different mechanism?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) The most important atom in biology is carbon. It has been discovered that, in the case of carbon, the four bonds extend out from the central atom toward the four corners of a regular tetrahedron. As we noted, carbon has valence 4, and it happens that the most stable configuration of an atom is a filled outer shell of eight electrons. This is, normally, the largest valence any atom can have.
I know that some of you are noticing right away the significance of these numbers and thinking about all of the "mystical terms" in the world of metaphysics that somehow never manage to make much sense; and now we are beginning to look at these things and realize that such numbers may have a very deep meaning, though not in the ritual and magickal sense. We are getting an idea that, perhaps, all the myths and so-called "secrets" that are veiled so heavily in analogy and allegory, may just be real science. As Jessie Weston remarked, we may be dealing with the "disjecta membra of a vanished civilization." And even if it is not garbled information from some ancient peoples who were technically more advanced than we are, it could be information from legitimate "higher sources" that has been hidden in allusion and mystery. It may be that all the hoo-doo stuff that has been passed down to us is just the mythicization of significant scientific information. And, if that is the case, we need to peel off all of the ritual, the religious nonsense, the woo-woo stuff, and get down to business and discover this "science of the soul" in real terms.
[Comment - “May have”, “perhaps”, “may just be”, “could be” - well, lots of things are possible. There is a cavernous chasm standing between, on the one hand, such words as: ‘perhaps’, and, on the other hand, the truth of things - a chasm which needs to be bridged by plausible and verifiable evidential and hermeneutical considerations of a rather complex nature.
Are our present day myths merely veiled stories which contain remnants of an ancient scientific teaching that has become lost or hidden and, now, is being alluded to through various myths and folk tales which, across the centuries, have been told and changed for various reasons? For example, perhaps such changes are introduced because the people who are passing on the story either do, or do not, understand the nature of what is being passed on, and, as a result, various distortions are introduced into the story - sometimes innocently and sometimes not so innocently and sometimes in order to protect the secrets to which allusions are being made.
The foregoing scenario may be true, but does whether this is so or not really matter? Are there other spiritual tools currently available that are not, yet, lost in the fog of time, distortion, veiling, and corruption?
Another question that needs to be asked is: what does Laura mean by science? Is science a methodology that necessarily leads to truth, or, is it a way of generating data sets which can, then, be subjected to hermeneutical reflection that gives rise to hypotheses, theories, principles, paradigms which may, or may not, accurately reflect the nature of things?
Is science necessarily a rational process or is it possible to have trans-rational sciences, and if the latter is the case, what does it mean to speak of a trans-rational science? What would be the nature of such a science?
Is science a matter of description, or explanation, or understanding or modeling? - Do any of these possibilities necessarily permit one to have access to the truth of what one is describing, explaining, modeling, or allegedly understanding?
Is science a process of removing biases? How do we know when something is a bias rather than an aspect of the truth? Can one be objective without, first, becoming spiritually purified?
Is objectivity rooted in value considerations? What assumptions does science rest on? Is it possible to have a science without assumptions? Is science possible without mathematics? Even if one accepts the idea the physical/material world has a structure which is amenable to being described through mathematical language, does it necessarily follow that all other realms are equally amenable to mathematical description?
Is there a difference between technology and science, and, if so, what is it (or, what are they, if there a plurality of differences)? Are the sciences of the occult necessarily synonymous with the mystical sciences, and if not, what would some of the differences be?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) There are many types of receptors on the surface of the cell, and if they were color coded, the cell surface would look like a wild mosaic made up of at least 70 different colors. The numbers of "tiles" in the mosaic are staggering - 50,000 of one kind, 10,000 of another, 100,000 of still another, and on and on. A typical neuron can have millions of receptors on its surface.
[Comment - What determines which kind of receptors, and the amount, that will appear on a cell surface? Will there be changes, over time, in either kind or quantity, and, if so, what factors would affect such changes?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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."
[Comment - Do these receptor molecules ‘reach out’ - that is, are they dynamic in ‘seeking’ interaction with surrounding neurotransmitters, or, are they passive and just wait for things to happen? Do all the vibrations, movement and wiggling of the receptors send out some kind of message or modulate the surrounding environment to some degree and, as a result, sets up some sort of gradient (to use the terminology of ‘Star Wars’, creates a disturbance in the field of the Force) which neurotransmitters can sense and use as a sort of honing device or alerting system?]
(From Candace Pert) 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]
[Comment - Just what information is it that enters the cell and how is this recognized and interpreted so that transduction takes place and the chemical information is translated into electrical information?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) Receptors are the first components of emotion.
[Comment - Receptors may not be the first components of emotion because there has been a whole sequence of events - not all of them necessarily biological - which took place prior to a receptor receiving information. As much as reductionistic/materialist oriented science may dislike the possibility, one may never have an adequate or complete understanding of issues such as consciousness, intelligence, understanding, creativity, and language as long as one restricts oneself to facts involving only brain activity or neurological functioning.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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."
[Comment - Moods and emotions are not necessarily the same. Moods can be heavy, light, intense, closed-off, sensitive, pleasant, or painful, and, as such, they modulate or orient consciousness to be receptive to certain kinds of emotions. However, moods set a generalized context or milieu within which, or against which, emotions - which are specifically directed - are played out.
Secondly, not only would one like to know how the channeling of certain chemical messages to the interior of a cell becomes transduced into changes within that cell, but one also should keep in mind that something else has set the ligand-receptor dynamic in motion - and, this ‘something else’ is not necessarily a biological event. The way a cell has been set up - both on the surface, as well as within the cell, beneath the membranes - to establish a complex decoding process that leads to vectored events pushing the cell chemistry in one direction rather than another, indicates that ‘something’ has organized or wired the cell to respond, in certain ways under various circumstances, and, once again, this something else may not have biological in nature (e.g., random evolutionary forces or even genetic experimentation).
Even in the Cassiopaean perspective, if one is going to trace things back to Transient Passengers that are Thought forms, then, one is left with the problem of how does one translate thought forms into biological forms. One possibility here is that biological and material forms are themselves thought forms of a particular kind - that is, one is not dealing with a difference in kind (i.e., thought and materiality, but, rather, materiality is, itself, an expression of thought that is structured in a particular way.]
(From Candace Pert) ...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]
[Comment - What directs whether or not the ‘finger’ gets pushed because the mere presence of a peptide does not automatically result in a receptor passing on information to the cell interior. There are many factors which shape, color, orient and modulate a cell and affect whether or not the cell fires in one way or another. What is the dynamic which brings all this information together and “decides” whether or not to fire, and what is the dynamic which ‘decides’ which receptor information to process and when, and what is the dynamic which ‘decides’ which neurotransmitter to secrete across the synapse?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) ... 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."
[Comment - Why should one suppose that the ligand-receptor system is far more ancient and more basic to the organism? The whole system is what makes things operational. Every part has a role to play, and when parts go missing, then, usually some kind of pathology arises? Everything depends on everything else. None is more basic.
On what assumptions is the claim based that the ligand-receptor system is more ancient - sounds like an evolutionary model which maintains that the first proto-cell probably arose as an amalgamation of a set of interacting ligand-receptor-like processes. If so, there is not a great deal of plausibility to such a set of processes having randomly occurred to produce a functional cell which is capable of reproducing itself - no matter how many billions of years one is working with to randomly generate such a result.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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.
[Comment - What is the nature of the intentionality or awareness which co-ordinates these molecular words (bytes of information) into intelligible sentences so that widely dispersed cellular systems are able to participate in the communication which is going on and, thereby, modulate the structure of the conversation which is taking place? Is it all mindless, or is there an underlying intelligence (e.g., some level of the soul) which has a blueprint that interacts with the biological system and establishes the degrees of freedom, limitation, and set of possibilities which can be activated through such communication?
Is consciousness the manifold or medium through which hermeneutical processes are linked or put in contact with biological events? Is it possible that such consciousness permeates biological processes, thus, permitting an exchange of information - once properly transduced - between the two ... that is, between mind and body, or, between body and one, or more, of the spiritual faculties?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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.
[Comment - Laura may be jumping to unwarranted conclusions with respect to some of the claims which appear in the foregoing. For example, Unified States of Consciousness may have little, or nothing, to do with the nature of receptor-ligand binding, and the latter may have nothing to do, in a causal sense, with achieving unified states of consciousness.
Secondly, the whole issue of ‘frequency resonance’ may be more a function of spiritual orientation than a function of ligand-receptor dynamics. Moreover, neither Laura, nor anyone else, has been able to provide a detailed explanation of how the translation and transduction of chemical communication actually gets started and how this relates to conscious activity and, among other things, which came first, so to speak, the chicken (biological functioning) or the egg (conscious activity which leads to biological changes).
Finally, I’m not convinced that the whole realm of DNA and cellular activity encompasses the topic of prime numbers which the Cassiopaeans raised. And, even if it did, how does knowing such information help one with respect to the realizing the mystical journey.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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.
[Comment - Are we to suppose there are receptors on the cell surface which are dedicated to various kinds of spiritual experiences and related healing? Are we to suppose that different modalities of spiritual understanding are a function of the dynamics of ligand-receptor activity? What evidence is there to demonstrate or prove this?]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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.
[Comment - The foregoing chemicals are all artificially introduced into a biological system. However, none of the listed chemicals - despite many claims - necessarily has anything to do with spirituality although they may modulate the nature of conscious experience.
To claim that all transitions in understanding, knowledge, insight, experience, or mystical experience are a function of some kind of ligand-receptor dynamics is, at the present time, more than just a bit of a reach. The dynamics of our interior, spiritual faculties (such as the heart and spirit) cannot be shown to be reducible to the occurrence of certain kinds of ligand-receptor activity, or even that the former will necessarily generate changes in ligand-receptor activity.
Just as there may be a manifold which links consciousness with biological activity, so, too, there may be a manifold - a different manifold - which ties together consciousness and the different spiritual faculties within our being (and being is not synonymous with body). There is no reason to suppose - at least, not on the bais of what is currently knownj about brain chemistry - that spiritual dynamics must be modeled upon the ligand-receptor idea.
Certainly, there is little, or no, evidence to demonstrate such a necessary linkage, even though there is considerable evidence to indicate that there can be biological correlates which accompany certain kinds of altered states of consciousness. Nevertheless, just because there is some degree of correlation between certain altered states of consciousness and bodily function, this does not mean that all spiritual conditions will be accompanied by such biological processes or that the latter necessarily can affect or cause the former.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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.
[Comment - First of all, irrespective of whether conditions affecting the quality or character of consciousness are temporary or long-lasting (and Laura might speak with people who have been placed on neurolepitcs - anti-psychotic drugs - to learn about some of the negative, long-lasting side-effects of such drugs), anything which renders the human being vulnerable to being controlled by others or by circumstances, or which makes possible lethal, destructive acts toward oneself or others, is problematic. Only a very short time is needed to kill, rape, or abuse someone.
In addition, I think the language being used by Laura is a little too loose and imprecise. More specifically, while the presence of various kinds of neuropeptides is associated with, and, to some extent, can color or modulate or orient the phenomenology of consciousness, what is less clear is whether one can equate the presence of such neuropeptides with specific emotions - that is, if one has so much serotonin, then, this translates into one kind of emotion, and, if there is some other amount of serotonin present, then, this translates into some other kind of emotion, and if one has some combination of serotonin, dopamine, and some other neuropeptide present, then, this is experienced a further kind of emotion.
What is missing in all of this is the ‘mechanism’ or process which determines how much of one kind of neuropeptide or some combination of nerutopeptides are to be produced on any given occasion to give expression to an appropriate emotional reaction to a hermeneutical rendering of phenomenological events. The fly in the materialistic ointment which keeps haunting the discussion is that this missing factor seems to, possibly unavoidably, point in the direction of non-material, non-physical occurrences that set in motion correlative biological activity.
At the very least, one would have to conclude that if the whole of consciousness, emotions, intelligence, and so on can be reduced down to purely biological and material functioning, we don’t have much insight into how it all works - especially, in light of the work of John Lorber. To make a longer story shorter, the work of Lorber strongly suggests that one may not need a brain to either be conscious or to speak or to think or to experience emotions because there are individuals who have been suffering from hydrocephaly whose brain has pretty much been squeezed out of existence (and this has been shown through various kinds of brain scans) and, yet, they are capable of accomplishing such things as graduating with honors in mathematics from a prestigious university and leading ‘normal’ lives ... all done without much of a brain (everything has been compressed against the skull down to a few millimeters in thickness by the build-up of cerebral-spinal fluid). - For a further discussion of Lorber's work, please link to: Emergent Properties]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) 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]
[Comment - Euphoria is not an emotion, but a mood. Euphoria is more akin to depression than to: jealously, envy, pride, courage, revenge, desire, enmity, shame, embarrassment, guilt, and the like. Moods can modulate and color emotions, but the specificity of emotions is quite different than the generality of moods.
Furthermore, blocking out anxiety is not the emotional opposite of anxiety. In other words, the absence of anxiety is not an emotion, but, at best, a mood.
One can induce moods through the introduction of chemicals and the manipulation of body chemistry. However, I know of no chemical which can, in and of itself, produce specific emotions such as: pride, enmity, jealousy, envy, shame, courage, guilt, embarrassment, or the like, when injected into the body. Almost invariably, in addition to such drugs, there must be the use of some ancillilary tool such as suggestion or hypnosis in order to generate specific emotions.
Yet, no one knows how hypnosis works, or why, to varying degrees, we are susceptible to suggestion, or how such phenomena can be used to bring about a change in either biological or emotional functioning. We are a considerable distance - as far as current or forseeable scientific knowledge is concerned - from knowing whether one could plausibly reduce hypnosis down to a purely biological phenomenon which is a strict function of ligand-receptor activity.]
(From Candace Pert) 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]
[Comment - To suppose that chemically induced bliss is precisely the same as authentic, mystical/spiritual bliss may be an unwarranted assumption. Not only may the phenomenology of the two conditions be different (there is often knowledge, wisdom, insight, or unveiling which takes place during spiritual bliss which is completely absent during just biological bliss), but the etiology of the two conditions may be quite different. Biologically induced bless is purely a function of the repercussions of ligand-receptor dynamics, whereas spiritual bliss may be initiated independently of biology, and only subsequently, if at all, bring about ligand-receptor dynamics that are clearly not the cause of the initial experience of bliss, but, rather, take place after the fact.]
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