--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "PaliGap" <compost1uk@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > > > > "The condemned man may live for several days or even weeks. > > > But, he believes so strongly in the curse that has been > > > uttered, that he will surely die. It is said that the ritual > > > loading of the kundela creates a "spear of thought" which > > > pierces the victim when the bone is pointed at him. It is as > > > if an actual spear has been thrust at him and his death is > > > certain." > > > > Anxiety is a powerful thing. > > So it seems. The "cause" of the anxiety was of course a purely > mental thing (or a thing in the realm of "meaning"), and > NOT a physical thing. And the anxiety was the effect, not > the cause.
When I think "anxiety" I think "adrenalin" which is physical. The idea of what is frightening is held as a memory or instinct, which is an obvious evolutionary advantage. what to be scared of can also be learned, did you know it only takes two events of any sort before the brain makes a neural link to alert the rest of the system how to behave next time the stimulus is encountered. For instance, if you get nearly run over once the adrenalin dies away and the typical brain will put it down to experience. Twice and you will start to get anxious going near a road. Simple as that, and the funny thing about adrenalin is that when you are pumped up it changes the way you perceive the world, it heightens sound and movement, it changes the way blood flows in the brain so you can't think logically but can only think of running away or fighting. To enable this it drags sugars out of the liver and into the blood and draws blood from the stomach into the muscles. Best of all, any experience you have when in an aroused state gets tagged by the brain as being threatening and will cause a similar reaction if you keep having the same stimulus. This is how neuroses develop, like agoraphobia or social shyness. Anxiety can and does pollute the whole brain, mind system. Your voodoo cult member is primed from childhood to die on command. The point I'm making is, I don't see it as mind and matter, it's all the same thing to me, you can't seperate them, they don't work without each other. This is what I'm saying about consciousness, it's a function. Once you have enough brain cells you have consciousness. Emergent phenomena and it can no more be understood in terms of individual brain cells than wetness can be understood in terms of individual water molecules. > > Why do you think this proves > > something pertinent to the argument here? It's like you've just > > googled odd stuff about the brain and drawn some whoppingly > > unnecessary argument out of it. > > It's about the world of the mental and the world of meaning > (the latter I think I'd prefer), and about how those worlds > can, sometimes, extinguish the world of the "merely" physical. > Because they are equally (or maybe more) real.
