According to various esoteric, occult, and mystical teachings, living beings are constituted of a series of spiritual subtle bodies, each corresponding to a subtle plane of existence, in a hierarchy or great chain of being that culminates in the physical form.

It is known in different spiritual traditions as the resurrection body in Christianity, the supracelestial body in Sufism, the rainbow body in Tibetan Buddhism, and the immortal body in Hermeticism. The various attributes of the subtle body are frequently described in terms of obscure symbolism. Tantra features references to the sun and moon as well as various Indian rivers and deities, while Taoist alchemy speaks of cauldrons and cinnabar fields.

Clairvoyants say that they can see the subtle bodies as an aura. The practice of astral projection, as described in various literature, is supposed to involve the separation of the subtle body from the physical. The theosophical movement was important in spreading such ideas throughout the West in the late nineteenth century. The existence of subtle bodies is unconfirmed by the scientific community.

H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophical teachings combined the Vedantic concept of five koshas with Western esoteric traditions, particularly Neoplatonism. She refers to a number of subtle bodies or vehicles of consciousness as Linga Sharira the astral body, Kama rupa the desire form, Manas the mind, and Buddhi the vehicle of the spirit.

The Linga Sarira is the eidolon of the Greeks, separated from the physical plane by a formless center. It is the invisible double of the human body elsewhere referred to as the etheric body, etheric double or bioplasmic body and serves as a model or matrix of the physical body, which conforms to the shape, appearance and condition of this double.

It can be separated or projected a limited distance from the body. When separated from the body it can be wounded by sharp objects. When it returns to the physical frame, the wound will be reflected in the physical counterpart, a phenomenon called repercussion. At death, it is discarded together with the physical body and eventually disintegrates or decomposes. In contrast, the Mayavi-Rupa,  is an illusory body. Apparitions of the dead are often projections of the Mayavi-Rupa.

Theosophy was further systematised in the writings of C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant, who established the Adyar School of Theosophy. They described seven bodies, but they divided Blavatsky’s higher and lower astral and Manas into two bodies each. Each body has its own aura and set of chakras, and corresponds to a particular plane of existence. Annie Besant wrote that the Linga Sarira corresponds to the Etheric Double, contrary to earlier theosophical teachings. The Linga Sarira is considered the vehicle of prana.

The Yogic, Tantric and other systems of India, the Buddhist psychology of Tibet, as well as Chinese Taoist alchemy and Japanese Shingon esoterism are examples of doctrines that describe a subtle physiology having a number of focal points, chakras and acupuncture points connected by a series of channels and meridians that convey life force.

These invisible channels and points are understood to determine the characteristics of the visible physical form. By understanding and mastering the subtlest levels of reality one gains mastery over the physical realm. Through practice of various breathing and visualisation exercises one is able to manipulate and direct the flow of vital force, to achieve superhuman or miraculous powers and attain higher states of consciousness, immortality, or liberation.

Stoicism, a school of philosophy, was founded in Athens in the early third century. It concerns the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will that is in accord with nature. The Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual’s philosophy was not what a person said but how they behaved.

According to the Stoics, the senses are constantly receiving sensations as pulsations which pass from objects through the senses to the mind, where they leave behind an impression. The mind has the ability to approve or reject an impression, to enable it to distinguish a representation of reality which is true from one which is false. Some impressions can be assented to immediately, but others can only achieve varying degrees of approval which can be labelled belief or opinion.

Stoics believe in the universe as a material reasoning, substance known as God or Nature, which they divided into two classes, the active and the passive. The passive substance is matter, which was interpreted as a substance ready for any use, but sure to remain unemployed if no one set it in motion.

The active substance, which could be called Fate, is an intelligent aether or primordial fire, which acts on the passive matter. The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul. It is this world’s guiding principle, operating in mind and reason, together with the common nature of things and the totality which embraces all existence.

Everything is subject to the laws of Fate, for the Universe acts only according to its own nature, and the nature of the passive matter which it governs. The souls of people and animals are emanations from this primordial fire, and are likewise subject to Fate.

A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism. All people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one another. Each human being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth, but is also a member of the great city of gods and men, where of the political city is only a copy. This sentiment echoes that of Socrates, who said “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”

They held that external differences such as rank and wealth are of no importance in social relationships. Thus, before the rise of Christianity, Stoics advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all human beings. Stoicism became the most influential school of the Greco–Roman world, and produced a number of remarkable writers and personalities.

The Stoics provided a unified account of the world, consisting of formal logic, non dualistic physics and naturalistic ethics. Of these, they emphasized ethics as the main focus of human knowledge, though their logical theories were to be of more interest for many later philosophers.

Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions. The philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universe. A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving the individual’s ethical and moral well-being.

The Stoics believed in the certainty of knowledge, which can be attained through the use of reason. Truth can be distinguished from fallacy, even if in practice only an approximation can be made. 

Radiolaria are a subclass of single celled organisms which are distinguished by their intricate mineral exoskeletons, usually made of silica and often with many spines extending outward. The outer shells are generally spherical, symmetrical and sometimes several millimeters wide. Radiolarian skeletons are extremely diverse, and they are the key feature on the basis of which the subclasses are classified into smaller orders, families, genera and species. Most species vary slightly from one subclass to another, and the skeletons of radiolarians are generally organized around spines, which are sharp, dense outcroppings from the main skeletal mass.

The outermost skeleton is formed from the fusion of many spines to create the cortical shell. Connecting this shell to the many concentrically organized inner shells are bars or beams, which also serve to strengthen and support the entire structure. Within and extending into the many chambers created by this complex structure is the single cell of the organism. The siliceous bars or rods merge with each other leaving empty spaces between them. The perforated holes allow the pseudopods to extend for capturing food. When radiolarians die, their shells sink, forming the radiolarian ooze of deep ocean floors that has generated many formations of sedimentary rock over the course of geological time.

Because of their rapid evolution, their skeletons are important diagnostic fossils found from the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago. Since radiolarians are well preserved in sediment after death, they have been instrumental in their application to paleontological studies. Radiolarian fossils in sediments allow a variety of studies, including determinations of the age of the sediments that contain them, analyses of the spatial relationships between sedimentary layers (of particular importance for the oil industry), and studies of the geological evolution of the continental land masses and ocean basins. Furthermore, studying the changes in the morphology of radiolarian skeletons through time yields first hand information on the evolution of the group, and on the rates and modes of the species formation and extinction. This information can yield important facts pertaining to climatology during a certain time period including the present.

A radiolarite is a sedimentary rock with fine grains presenting an alternation of dark and light layers. It is primarily made up of siliceous hulls of radiolairia known as Actinopode in warm seas. The red color is due to the presence of iron. Sometimes the iron is in ferrous form, which gives the rock a green color.

Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 was a name intended for a Swedish child who was born in 1991. Parents Elisabeth Hallin and Lasse Diding had planned to never legally name their child as a protest against the naming law of Sweden which reads, “First names shall not be approved if they can cause offense or can be supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it, or names which for some obvious reason are not suitable as a first name.”

Because the parents failed to register a name by the boy’s fifth birthday, a district court in Halmstad, southern Sweden, fined them 5,000 kronor. Responding to the fine, the parents submitted the 43 character name in May 1996, claiming that it was “a pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation.” The parents suggested the name be understood in the spirit of pataphysics. The court rejected the name and upheld the fine.

Pataphysics is a philosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. It is a parody of the theory and methods of modern science and is often expressed in nonsensical language. It is the science of imaginary solutions, as defined by Alfred Jarry, the first thinker to explore its foundations. It is an extension of metaphysics, the same way metaphysics is an extension of physics. The central concept is to take an idea, assume its veracity, and see where that gets you.

In essense, pataphysics is a degree of separation from reality. So, for example, if we see someone we know on the street and believe they are ignoring us even if it is not true, and then begin to imagine a reason they are doing so, we are essentially thinking pataphorically. So pataphors and pataphysics may also be said to describe the world of our fears, mistaken assumptions and belief systems run amok. They are worlds built of assumptions based on assumptions.

As an example, the neutral interpretation of an event might be “Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line.” A metaphorical interpretation would be “Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line, two pieces on a chessboard.” A pataphorical interpretation would “Tom took a step closer to Alice and made a date for Friday night, checkmating. Rudy was furious at losing to Margaret so easily and dumped the board on the rose colored quilt, stomping downstairs.” Thus, the pataphor has created a world where the chessboard exists, including the characters who live in that world, entirely abandoning the original context.

A pataphor attempts to create a figure of speech that exists as far from metaphor as metaphor exists from non figurative language. Whereas a metaphor is the comparison of a real object or event with a seemingly unrelated subject in order to emphasize the similarities between the two, the pataphor uses the newly created metaphorical similarity as a reality with which to base itself. In going beyond mere ornamentation of the original idea, the pataphor seeks to describe a new and separate world, in which an idea or aspect of a concept has taken on a life of its own.

Like pataphysics itself, pataphors essentially describe two degrees of separation from reality, rather than merely one degree of separation, which is the world of metaphors and metaphysics. The pataphor may also be said to function as a critical tool, describing the world of assumptions based on assumptions, such as belief systems or rhetoric run amok.

In the 1960s pataphysics was used as a conceptual principle within various fine art forms, especially pop art and popular culture. Actual works within the pataphysical tradition tend to focus on the processes of their creation, and elements of chance or arbitrary choices are frequently key in those processes. Select pieces from Marcel Duchamp and John Cage characterize this.

A meteoroid is a small sand to boulder sized particle of debris in the Solar system. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere is a meteor, commonly called a shooting star or falling star. On reaching the ground, a meteor is then called a meteorite. Many meteors are part of a meteor shower. The root word meteor comes from the Greek meteoros, meaning high in the air.

During the entry of a meteoroid or asteroid into the upper atmosphere, an ionization trail is created, where the molecules in the upper atmosphere are ionized by the passage of the meteor. Such ionization trails can last up to 45 minutes at a time. Small, sand sized meteoroids are entering the atmosphere constantly, essentially every few seconds in a given region, and ionization trails can be found in the upper atmosphere continuously.

The Peekskill meteorite broke up over the United States on October 9, 1992, an event witnessed by thousands across the East Coast. The meteorite broke up over Kentucky and landed on a parked car in Peekskill, New York. The meteorite traveled northeast and had a pronounced greenish color. The meteorite has been captured on 16 different videos and remains as one of the most famous meteorite sightings.

Eyewitness accounts indicate that the fireball entry of the Peekskill meteorite started over West Virginia at 11:48 pm est. The fireball, which traveled in a northeasterly direction had a pronounced greenish colour, and attained an estimated peak visual magnitude of -13, brighter than a full moon. During a luminous flight time that exceeded 40 seconds the fireball covered a path of 450 miles.

Numerous people have over the years reported sounds being heard while bright meteors flared overhead. This would seem impossible, given the relatively slow speed of sound. Any sound generated by a meteor in the upper atmosphere, such as a sonic boom, should not be heard until many seconds after the meteor disappeared. However, in certain instances, for example during the Leonid meteor shower of 2001, several people reported sounds described as crackling, swishing, or hissing occurring at the same instant as a meteor flare. Similar sounds have also been reported during intense displays of Earth’s auroras.

Many investigators believe the sounds to be imaginary, essentially sound effects added by the mind to go along with a light show. However, the persistence and consistency of the reports have caused others to wonder. Sound recordings made under controlled conditions in Mongolia in 1998 by a team led by Slaven Garaj, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne, support the contention that the sounds are real.

How these sounds could be generated, assuming they are in fact real, remains something of a mystery. It has been hypothesized that the turbulent ionized wake of a meteor interacts with the magnetic field of the Earth, generating pulses of radio waves. As the trail dissipates, electromagnetic energy could be released, with a peak in the power spectrum at audio frequencies. Physical vibration induced by the electromagnetic impulses would then be heard if they are powerful enough to make grasses, plants, eyeglass frames, and other conductive materials vibrate. This proposed mechanism, although proven to be plausible by laboratory work, remains unsupported by corresponding measurements in the field.

Even very small meteoroids can damage spacecraft. The Hubble Space Telescope has about 572 tiny craters and chipped areas.

Memory is the brains’s ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Sensory memory corresponds approximately to the initial period after an item is perceived. The ability to look at an item and remember what it looked like with just a second of observation is an example of sensory memory. With very short presentations, participants often report that they seem to observe more than they can actually report. In early experiments, subjects were presented with a grid of letters arranged into three rows. After a the brief presentation, subjects were then played a tone, cuing them for which of the rows to report. Based on these experiments, it was shown that the capacity of sensory memory was approximately 12 items, but that it degraded within a few hundred milliseconds. Because this form of memory degrades so quickly, participants would see the display but be unable to report all of the items. This type of memory cannot be prolonged via rehearsal.

Short term memory is believed to rely mostly on an acoustic code for storing information, and to a lesser extent a visual code. I has been found that test subjects have more difficulty recalling collections of words that are acoustically similar, such as dog, hog, fog, bog, log, etc. However, short term memory has been an unexplainable phenomenon with certain individuals gifted to remember large amounts of information quickly, and to be able to recall that information in seconds.

Long term memory can store much larger quantities of information for potentially unlimited duration, sometimes a whole life span. For example, given a random seven digit number, we may remember it for only a few seconds before forgetting, suggesting it was stored in our short term memory. On the other hand, we can remember telephone numbers for many years through repetition. This information is said to be stored in long term memory. While short term memory encodes information acoustically, long term memory encodes it semantically. It has been discovered that after 20 minutes, test subjects had the least difficulty recalling a collection of words that had similar meanings such as big, large, great, huge, etc.

Short term memory is supported by patterns of brain communication, dependent on regions of the frontal lobe. Long term memories are maintained by more stable and permanent changes in neural connections widely spread throughout the brain. The hippocampus is essential to the consolidation of information from short term to long term memory, although it does not seem to store information itself. Rather, it may be involved in changing neural connections for a period of three months or more after the initial learning.

One of the primary functions of sleep is improving consolidation of information, as it can be shown that memory depends on getting sufficient sleep between training and test, and that the hippocampus replays activity from the current day while sleeping.

The best way to improve memory seems to be to increase the supply of oxygen to the brain, which may be accomplished with exercise. Walking for three hours each week suffices, as does swimming or bicycle riding. One study found that frequent eating, such as five small meals a day, promotes a healthy memory by preventing dips in blood glucose, the primary energy source for the brain.

Hearing is not a purely mechanical phenomenon, but is also a sensory and perceptual event. When a person hears something, it arrives at the ear as a mechanical sound wave traveling through the air, but within the ear it is transformed into neural actions. These nerve pulses then travel to the brain where they are perceived. Hence, it is important to take into account not just the mechanics of the environment, but also the fact that both the ear and the brain are involved in a person’s listening experience.

The inner ear does significant signal processing in converting sound waveforms into neural stimulus, so certain differences between waveforms may be imperceptible. MP3 and other audio compression techniques make use of this fact. In addition, the ear has a nonlinear response to sounds of different loudness levels. Telephone networks and audio noise reduction systems make use of this by nonlinearly compressing data samples before transmission, and then expanding them for playback. Another effect of the ear’s nonlinear response is that sounds that are close in frequency produce phantom beat notes, or intermodulation distortion products.

There are true psychoacoustic effects introduced by the brain. For example, when a person listens to crackly and needle on vinyl hiss filled records, he or she soon stops noticing the background noise and enjoys the music. A person who does this habitually appears to forget about the noise altogether, and may not be able to tell you after listening if there was noise present. This effect is called psycho acoustical masking.

The brain’s ability to perform such masking has been important for the adoption of a number of technologies, though in this age of digital signaling and high fidelity playback the effect is typically used to hide losses in compression rather than to cover up analog white noise.[citation needed] As another example of a psychoacoustic effect, the brain appears to use a correlative process for pattern recognition; much like is done in electronic circuits that look for signal patterns. When the threshold for acceptance of a correlative match is very low a person may perceive hearing a sought after pattern in pure noise or among sounds that are similar, as the brain fills in the rest of the pattern.

This is a psychoacoustic phantom effect. For example when a radio operator is straining to hear a weak Morse code signal in a noisy background, he or she often perceives hearing the pitch of tiny dots and dashes even when they are not present. In general, psychoacoustic phantom effects play an important role in any environment where people have heightened perceptions, such as when danger may be perceived to be near. The psychoacoustic phantom effect is conceptually distinct from hallucination, where the brain automatically generates perceptions.

Psychoacoustics is presently applied within music, where musicians and artists continue to create new auditory experiences by masking unwanted frequencies of instruments, causing other frequencies to be enhanced. Another application is in design of small or lower-quality loudspeakers, which use the phenomenon of missing fundamentals to give the effect of low frequency bass notes that the system, due to frequency limitations, cannot actually reproduce. 

It is also applied within many fields from software development, where developers map proven and experimental mathematical patterns, in the design of audio systems for accurate reproduction of music in theatres and homes, as well as defense systems where scientists have experimented with limited success in creating new acoustic weapons, which emit frequencies that may impair, harm, or kill.

Dopamine is a hormone and neurotransmitter occurring in a wide variety of animals, both vertebrates and invertebrates. In the brain, this phenethylamine functions as a neurotransmitter, activating dopamine receptors and their variants. Dopamine is produced in several areas of the brain, including the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area.

It was discovered in 1952 by Arvid Carlsson in Sweden. Carlsson was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for showing that dopamine is not just a precursor of adrenaline but a neurotransmitter, as well.

Dopamine has many functions in the brain, including important roles in behavior and cognition, motor activity, motivation and reward, sleep, mood, attention, and learning. A common hypothesis is that dopamine has a function of transmitting reward prediction error. According to this hypothesis, the responses of dopamine neurons are observed when an unexpected reward is presented. These responses transfer to the onset of a conditioned stimulus after repeated pairings with the reward.

Further, dopamine neurons are depressed when the expected reward is omitted. Thus, dopamine neurons seem to encode the prediction error of rewarding outcomes. In nature, we learn to repeat behaviors that lead to maximize rewards. Dopamine is therefore believed to provide a teaching signal to parts of the brain responsible for acquiring new behavior. In insects, a similar reward system exists, using octopamine, a chemical relative of dopamine.

In the frontal lobes, dopamine controls the flow of information from other areas of the brain. Dopamine disorders in this region of the brain can cause a decline in neurocognitive functions, especially memory, attention, and problem solving. Reduced dopamine concentrations in the prefrontal cortex are thought to contribute to attention deficit disorder.

Dopamine is associated with the pleasure system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities. Dopamine is released by naturally rewarding experiences such as food, sex, drugs, and neutral stimuli that become associated with them. This theory is often discussed in terms of drugs such as cocaine, nicotine, and amphetamines, which seem to directly or indirectly lead to an increase of dopamine. Recent studies indicate that aggression may also stimulate the release of dopamine in this way.

Abnormally high dopamine action has also been strongly linked to psychosis and schizophrenia. Evidence comes partly from the discovery of a class of drugs called the phenothiazines that can reduce psychotic symptoms, and from the finding that drugs such as amphetamine and cocaine which are known to greatly increase dopamine levels can cause psychosis. Because of this, most modern antipsychotic medications are designed to block dopamine function to varying degrees.

Polyphenol oxidases are a family of enzymes responsible for the browning of fresh fruits and vegetables when they are cut or bruised.  The natural substrate for the oxidation in bananas is dopamine. The product of their oxidation, dopamine quinone, oxidises to other quinones. The quinones then condense with amino acids to form brown pigments known as melanins. The quinones and melanins derived from dopamine help protect damaged fruit and vegetables against growth of bacteria and fungi.