Pseudoscience in Spirituality, Sadhguru

[Leo Gura]

Sadhguru is basically talking about selective breeding and artifical selection, which is how we create different dog breeds and domesticated animals.

But also, Samskaras are not just genetic. Family lineage has a huge cultural and memetic component. Things get passed down through culture, not just genes.

If you have a giant family of goldsmiths, they will certain infect your mind with goldsmithing memes. Just like how a family history of sexual abuse is likely to pass on to the children. Not via genes but via parental abuse.

To reduce Samskara to genetics is to misunderstand it.

African Americans have a collective Samskara due to slavery, even though one's genes might not have slavery encoded into them.

[bejapuskas]

This is fascinating, if people taught us this in psychology and biology classes at school, that would be awesome. 

Does goes beyond Samskara (Death?) also have some genetics to it? I wonder how that would look...

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Sadhguru is basically talking about selective breeding and artifical selection, which is how we create different dog breeds and domesticated animals.

Selective breeding and artificial selection is traditional Mendelian genetics that involve gene sequences. Sadhguru is also pointing beyond that to epigenetics. There are important mechanistic differences between Mendelian inheritance and epigenetic inheritance. . . The experiments Sadhguru talked about with how mice inherited a fear to cherry blossom smell is not selective breeding or artificial selection. The parent mice that received electric shocks learned to fear to cherry blossom smell. They passed this on to their offspring - not through genetics or teaching their offspring - They passed on the fear through epigenetic modification of chromosomal structure - which is a mechanism distinct from selective breeding and artificial selection. 

Epigenetics is one form of "teaching" and "memory". The parent mice learned to fear the chemical acetophenone (the cherry blossom smell) due to electric shocks. The parents responded by altering their gene expression to detect and fear the smell of acetophenone. For example, they produced more M71 receptors to detect very low levels of acetophenone so they can avoid it. They also epigenetically altered the chromosomal structure in their sperm and eggs - to transmit this "memory" to their offspring and "teach" them to avoid acetophenone. There were no alterations in gene sequence, no selective breeding or artificial selection. . . . The parents learned to fear acetophenone and passed this fear on to the offspring epigenetically. The epigenetically altered sperm and egg produced offspring mice with brains constructed to fear and avoid the smell of acetophenone. For example, the offspring upregulated the expression of the M71 gene. . . If mice could think they might think "I have no idea why I'm afraid of cherry blossoms. Maybe I was terrorized by a cherry blossom in a previous life. Haha.". . . 

28 minutes ago, bejapuskas said:

This is fascinating, if people taught us this in psychology and biology classes at school, that would be awesome. 

Epigenetics is still relatively new, yet the fundamentals are mainstream now. It should be taught as standard genetics in high school and university curriculum. 

1 hour ago, Codrina said:

@Serotoninluv Thank you. I can see what Sadhguru says, but I don't know the science

I only addressed a portion of what Sadhguru talked about - the part relative to epigenetics. He was speaking in a much broader context that included much more than epigenetics. 

 

[bejapuskas]

@Serotoninluv  Does purifying yourself of trauma and thought stories make any difference on your genes?

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, bejapuskas said:

@Serotoninluv  Does purifying yourself of trauma and thought stories make any difference on your genes?

This is a complex question. Keep in mind that I am only talking about the genetics here. This is just one piece of the puzzle. There are many variables at play.

At a genetic level, we know that trauma induces epigenetic alterations. This is a simplified example. . . . The gene cortisol produces the hormone cortisol which causes stress and anxiety. At times we want the cortisol gene turned on at various levels. For example, if I am trying to be productive a little bit of cortisol is a good thing to keep me going. If I am lost in the woods with bears, high levels of cortisol can be a good thing to help me survive. . . When someone goes through trauma, genes like cortisol can get misregulated. Imagine a normal level of everyday cortisol is 2/10. A person with PTSD might be at a 5/10. They have chronically higher levels of cortisol and are more vulnerable to spiking up higher to a 9/10. 

The trauma induced an epigenetic alteration. The quality of the cortisol didn't change, the quantity of it changed. This is due, in part, through methylation. Small methyl (-CH3) groups are placed on regulatory regions of genes that alter the quantity of the product. Things like neglect/abuse/trauma tend to hyper-methylate regions throughout the genome. This causes widespread alterations in the quantity of gene expression. This altered methylation pattern can exist through one's lifetime and passed on to children. 

So your question is essentially: Can purifying yourself correct the altered methylation patterns? Imo, this is a really important question in terms of neuroscience and therapy. It is a cutting edge question and we just don't know. I would love to see more research go into this area. For example, what is the effect of psychedelic therapy on these methylation patterns? What about yoga? Meditation? Walks in nature? Improved diet? Shamanic breathing? Therapy? Acupuncture . . We know very little. We do know that practices like yoga and meditation alter brain activity that persists. For example, in one study non-meditators practiced meditation for a few months. The participants had increased brain mass/activity in a region of the brain associated with empathy and reduced mass/activity in a region of the brain associated with fear. . . However there haven't yet been studies looking at specific gene methylation patterns. I wish these studies could occur, yet they can be difficult to do and it's hard to get funding. Yet early studies are promising. For example war veterans with PTSD that showed improvement with EMDR therapy showed reversal of hyper-methylation patterns in a few key areas, suggesting reversal is possible. . . Personally, I think we are just scratching the surface. I think various types of spiritual practices such as yoga and meditation can correct hyper-methylation. As well, researchers are now designing drugs to correct hyper-methylation patterns. We currently have a crude map. We will learn better how to do it. . . Decades in the future, we will have much higher resolution maps and they will be personalized. For example, a war veteran with PTSD would have their own unique profile. Perhaps his profile includes hypermethylation patterns that can be relieved through EMDR combined with a type of medicine. Another person that has childhood PTSD may have a different profile and might respond better to Reiki and a different med. Another person with another profile might respond better to a support dog and meditation. Another person with psychedelic therapy. We just don't have high resolution maps at this point.

I also want to stress again that this is just one variable of many. People tend to get tunnel-vision and think "So that's my problem, I'm screwed up epigenetically from my trauma. Now I am programmed this way". This is a major misinterpretation and can make the person's condition worse. . . It would be like a Chinese person embarking on a trip through Europe and thinking "Ahh, I just need to learn German and then I'll be able to travel through Europe without a problem". Learning German is great and would be helpful, yet it is just one component of being able to travel through Europe successfully. 

[bejapuskas]

@Serotoninluv  Wow, thanks for this amazing reply! I even feel like I understand what you've just written  This world needs more professors like you.

What would be the other factors? I always wonder about this, because we can basically fix our mood and psyche with these very abstract and woo woo practices that are hardly based on any science and everything ends up working just fine, but at the same time we cannot ignore the physiological side of things if we want to further increase our understanding - where do these things overlap? 

Is there any serious research being done on the topic of the nervous system's relationship to spiritual practices, like how hormones, neurotransmitters, electromagnetic waves change with meditation, yoga etc...? It kind of seems to me that the changes in behavior that lead to spiritual growth happen intuitively, but maybe we can enhance these effects? What do you think?

[Derek White]

@Serotoninluv I guess I was wrong and stand corrected. Thanks for all the information.