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10
Neuroscience & Kamma
4. Translation and Transmission of Programs
Organization is the essence of a living organism. An organism continuously acts to maintain its organization because it receives from its past lives the plan or program to survive. Primarily determined by ayusya karman. Programs for other activities such as religion, beliefs, learning, cultural behavior etc. would be influenced and determined by other majer karman. All those programs are embodied in the subtle microbody- kārmana sarira --of the organism. The language of the program must be such that it can be translated and transmitted to produce the right actions by the gross physical body for the self-maintenance of the living system, and must be interpreted by some in-built mechanism which acts as a translator and transmitter.
Programs of vertebrate organisms (samiñi pancendriya) are translated on two levels :
1. The basic level is inherited, written in the triplets of bases of the DNA code which is transcribed and translated during development and throughout life, enabling the organism to react appropriately with the environment.
2. The second level is embodied in the structure of the brain. Its units are various groups of nerve cells which deal with breathing, eating, sleeping as well as perceiving, thinking and communicating.
Two more levels are added to these in the case of human organisms (samjñi manusya pancendriya) :
3. Speech, culture and mathematics represent the third level of the buman life program largely embodied in the verbal spoken expression ic. spoken and written language.
4. Reasoning mind is the fourth level of the human life.
