Medley

Tim Wyatt – England

The author

Curiously, one thing unites totalitarianism and traditional spirituality, especially when dished up as religion. This is a complete and total lack of humour. Dictators and the religiously fundamental absolutely hate levity. They don’t like jokes or the joie de vivre they bring. They don’t like comedy in any form. And they don’t like laughter. Humour in general poses a grave threat to the authoritarian mind-set and always has done.

Apart from being generally subversive, humour is infectious, constantly replicating and re-inventing itself like this canny virus itself. Get one person laughing and everyone else follows suit. As well as a potential act of liberation, it’s also a key evolutionary tool.

Older, happier ......

People say life gets better with age. Now research suggests this may be because older people have the wisdom and time to use mindfulness as a means to improve wellbeing.

Leo Babauta – USA

Making changes at a broader level

Most of this series on Theosophy Forward is focused on the individual — how we can make changes in our individual lives — but can and should we be thinking on a broader level? Is it possible to change society as a whole to one of fewer distractions and a greater degree of simplicity? Is that something we should even desire?

A mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course was found to benefit patients with chronic pain and depression, leading to significant improvement in participant perceptions of pain, mood and functional capacity, according to a study in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. Most of the study respondents (89%) reported the program helped them find ways to better cope with their pain while 11% remained neutral.

Ananya Sri Ram Rajan – USA

Relationship is the only thing we have with each other.

                                                                                                            --J. Krishnamurti

“We cannot escape relationship.” From the moment of conception, there is relationship. It may not be a conscious relationship for the fetus, but the life form has some innate intelligence that it is dependent upon the mother for its continued existence. Therefore, relationship exists.

As conscious beings with the ability for a deeper awareness, humans, in general, take relationship for granted. If this were not the case, we would not be warring over race, religion, land, or whatever we feel passionate about. Nor would we be decimating the precious resources of this one and only beautiful planet we live and depend upon. At the same time, our personal relationships would hold more significance to us.

Rhythms produced by the brain can reliably be used to predict how sensitive we are to pain, new research shows.

The living brain is constantly producing regular rhythmic patterns of activity, which can be compared to musical notes. Scientists at the University of Birmingham in the UK, and the University of Maryland School of Dentistry in the US, have successfully demonstrated that one particularly prevalent pattern of brain activity, called alpha waves, strongly relates to the body's susceptibility or resilience to pain.

Imagine reading by the light of an exploded star, brighter than a full moon -- it might be fun to think about, but this scene is the prelude to a disaster when the radiation devastates life as we know it. Killer cosmic rays from nearby supernovae could be the culprit behind at least one mass extinction event, researchers said, and finding certain radioactive isotopes in Earth's rock record could confirm this scenario.

A new study led by University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign astronomy and physics professor Brian Fields explores the possibility that astronomical events were responsible for an extinction event 359 million years ago, at the boundary between the Devonian and Carboniferous periods.

The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.