Neuroscience and Karma

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 73

Rhythmic Living and Living Clocks
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urge of aggression from the endocrine, that will start war and not the brain, because no reasoning mind will ever wish to kill or injure. All the passions, emotions and impelling forces are the actions of the endocrine expressions. The reasoning mind itself has no emotions but many a time the powerful impulses from the endocrine can overwhelm and continue to tinge the supposed reasoning. Urges and impulses, the precursors of the emotions, are not produced either by brain or by endocrine. In fact, these are forces more subtle than those found in the physical body. They are produced in the microbody (kārmaņa sarira) as a result of the rise of the bonded karman (karmaphala). Thus kārmaņa sarira is the origin of all impulsive forces and the mundane soul is always enveloped by karmana sarira. The radiations of psychic energy have to pass through this enveloping field and their interaction (called adhyavasāya) proceeds further towards the gross physical body. At the border of the subtle body, they are transformed into urges and impulses which will later produce fellings and emotions in the physical body (see diagram).
4. Living Clocks/Hormonal Rhythms
"Many features of our life operate with periodicities of from seconds and minutes to months and years."1 The brain and (endocrine) glands, between them, generate these rhythmic programs and there has been a great advance in understanding of how they do it.
Basic rhythms are a very fundamental feature of human programs and several of them arise by cells in the hypothalamus acting as clocks and controlling the pituitary gland. The operations of the pituitary are themselves controlled by the overlying hypothalamus, as stated earlier. The hypothalamus, besides carrying electrical nerve signals, also control the pituitary by the production of special active chemical substance, the process known as neurosecretion. The hormones of the cortex of the adrenal gland have fundamentally important influence on every cell of the body. These adrenal secretions are produced in man, mainly just before dawn, as if to be ready for their job of toning us up throughout the
1. Halberg F., Implications of Biological Rhythms, (1977).