How 160,000 People Physically Turned Into Light Bodies

How 160,000 People Physically Turned Into Light Bodies

by Gregg Prescott, M.S.

Many people in the spiritual communities have heard about light bodies but has anyone ever truly achieved this? Surprisingly, there have been approximately 160,000 documented cases of people doing this. Most recently, this happened in 1998 when Reverend Francis V. Tiso witnessed the metamorphosis of a Tibetan monk, Khenpo A-Chos, into a literal “Rainbow Body”.

Khenpo A-Chos

Tiso interviewed Lama Norta, a nephew of Khenpo Achos; Lama Sonam Gyamtso, a young disciple; and Lama A-chos, a dharma friend of the late Khenpo A-chos. They described the following:

A few days before Khenpo A-chos died, a rainbow appeared directly above his hut. After he died, there were dozens of rainbows in the sky. Khenpo A-chos died lying on his right side. He wasn’t sick; there appeared to be nothing wrong with him, and he was reciting the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM over and over. According to the eyewitnesses, after his breath stopped his flesh became kind of pinkish. One person said it turned brilliant white. All said it started to shine.

Lama A-chos suggested wrapping his friend’s body in a yellow robe, the type all Gelug monks wear. As the days passed, they maintained they could see, through the robe, that his bones and his body were shrinking. They also heard beautiful, mysterious music coming from the sky, and they smelled perfume.

After seven days, they removed the yellow cloth, and no body remained. Lama Norta and a few other individuals claimed that after his death Khenpo A-chos appeared to them in visions and dreams. (1)

You can read more about his testimony on his website here.

Throughout the past 1,200 years of so, there have been approximately 160,000 documented cases of people turning into literal lightbodies.

One of the first documented cases involved a saint that went by the name of Padmasambhava, and achieved light body status along with many of his disciples. On his way to becoming a light body, he was also able to fly in the air as well as transform his body into forms that would frighten evil spirits and demons, while transforming them into Dharma protectors.

He was also the first (of many) to leave his footprint embedded deep into stone before transforming into a light body. Many of these footprints are still visible in these same Himalayan rocks, today!

Padmasambhava footprint in stone

Padmasambhava was also known in human form as Guru Rinpoche and may be the origin of the saying, “Everything he touches turns to gold.”

 

Padmasambhava aka Guru Rinpoche

When Guru Rinpoche visited the palace of King Trisong Detsen, the King was over-joyous. He prostrated and gave him many offerings. When the king gave him gold-dust, which was the currency of those times and the customary offering for great masters, Guru Rinpoche flung it away and told the king, “I don’t need your gold. The whole world is like gold for me.” In that moment he touched a rock that was lying on the ground with his big toe and the king and all people who were present experienced that the entire area seemed to turn into gold. (2)

The key to turning into a light body is based on one simple, but hard to do premise: love everything, all the time.

Of course, it goes much deeper than that such as the recitation of mantra, performance of mudra and visualization; as well as wisdom awareness, observing the egolessness, emptiness, and impermanence of all phenomena. All sound is heard as mantra, awareness of thoughts is the primordial dharmakaya, and appearances are the mandala of deities.

At the highest levels of this teaching, telepathy and clairvoyance are achieved, along with complete enlightenment. (3)

The lightbody transformation is known in many cultures by various names:

• Sufism: the most sacred body or supracelestial body
• Taoist: the diamond body, the immortals and the cloudwalkers
• Yogic schools and Tantrics: the divine body
• Kriya yoga: the body of bliss
• Vadanta: the superconductive body
• Ancient Egyptians: the luminous body or being (akh) or the karast
• Gnosticism: the perfect body
• Hermetic Corpus: the immortal body
• Alchemical tradition: the Emerald Tablet calls it the golden body
• Tibetan Buddhism: Rainbow Body

Tibetan Buddhism has ongoing reports of the “Rainbow Body” to this very day – in which people transform their physical bodies into a new, rainbow-colored energetic form after many years of practice. In many cases, they would complete this process of transformation by meditating in a cave. When they come out, and are ready to graduate to this next level of there own evolution, they will often push their hand or foot directly into the stone. They can now easily flip the stone molecules into time-space, and leave an impression behind – and some of these handprints and footprints have been photographed and published online. There are fully 160,000 documented cases of the Rainbow Body in Tibet and India alone.

Body of Light: Tibetan, ja-lus. Also known as the “rainbow body.” Certain realized beings achieved the transformation of their ordinary bodies into a Body of Light. In this process, the physical body dissolves into its natural state, which is that of clear light. As the elements of the body are purified, they transform from their gross manifestation (body, flesh, bone, etc.) into their pure essence as the five colors: blue, green, white, red and golden yellow. As the body dissolves into these five colors a rainbow is formed, and all that remains of the physical body are fingernails and hair. Twentieth-centry practioners of Dzogchen who have attained the Body of Light include teachers and family members of Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche – for example, his uncle Urgyen Danzin (Togden), his two teachers Changchub Dorje and Ayu Khandro, and Changchub Dorje’s master, Nyala Pema Dendul. (4)

In the following video, David Wilcock goes into more detail about these light bodies:

Wilcock also talks specifically about this phenomena on GaiaTV.

We’re entering a very unique period in time where many esoteric texts believe that we will become light bodies as we complete the cycle of the Precession of the Equinoxes, which is a cycle of 25,772 years. These years are broken down into 12 ages as we are currently exiting the Age of Pisces and are entering the Age of Aquarius. Many believe that these are the days of physical and spiritual transformation.

According to Dr. Simon Atkins, CERN is being used to ward off these incoming transformational energies (1:09:20 marker). Despite that, Dr. Atkins believes that between 10-20% of the world’s population will start to experience an increase in metaphysical abilities due to these intergalactic waves beginning in September of 2015 (1:02:00 marker).

Additionally, Dr. Atkins’ research has shown that during times of solar flares (bringing us positive ions), there is a correlation of angst, anger, and chaos while times of coronal mass ejections (negative ions) bring us peace. (0:36:24 marker) This is similar to walking on the beach near crashing waves that create negative ions, which makes us feel so good when we’re at the beach.

It’s possible that the incoming energies may transform us into the literal light bodies as seen on the Star Trek episode, “Transfigurations”.  You can read more about this in the article, “Moving Into 5D, Hidden In Plain Sight“.

This particular episode shows a race of beings on the verge of transcending their current form into Lightbodies, but the ruling elite were desperately trying to keep them under subservience, control and conformity:

Excerpt: My species is on the verge of a wondrous evolutionary change. A transmutation beyond our physical being. I am the first of my kind to approach this metamorphosis. They tried to convince us it was a sickness we would never survive, that the pain and energy pulses would kill us. They claimed we were dangerous so they destroyed anyone who exhibited the signs of the transfiguration.  You saw the mutations as a threat to your authority. You were terrified of something you couldn’t understand. Some suspected that what was happening to them was not evil.  Others will listen… now that you can no longer prevent me from telling them the truth. Those who are willing will follow me. 

Perhaps these incoming intergalactic energies, which Dr. Atkins calls “Wave X”, will be the platform for lightbody transformation?

Time will tell!

References:

(1) Father Francis Tiso; http://www.ippolito-desideri.net/indici/father-francis-tiso/
(2) Guru Rinpoche – A Short Introduction to His Life & Activities; http://www.dharmadownload.net/pages/english/Natsok/0010_Teaching_English/Teaching_English_0064.htm
(3) The Sixfold System Of The Mahasiddhas; http://www.turtlehill.org/khen/zong.html
(4) The Rainbow Body; https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=42664

About the Author:

Gregg Prescott, M.S. is the founder and editor of In5D and BodyMindSoulSpirit. He hosts a weekly spiritual show on In5D Radio and promotes spiritual, metaphysical and esoteric conferences in the United States through In5dEvents. His love and faith for humanity motivates him to work relentlessly in humanity’s best interests 12-15+ hours a day, 365 days a year. Please like and follow In5D on Facebook as well as BodyMindSoulSpirit on Facebook!

From In5d @ http://in5d.com/160000-light-bodies/

For more information about immortality see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/immortality

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Culture as Phenotype and Evolution's Crystal Ball

Culture as Phenotype and

Evolution's Crystal Ball

 

The issues are in the tissues.

 

A massage therapist once shared with me that piece of trade wisdom.  She was making a point about the interplay between mental and physical discomforts. She was not the first to see a relationship between bodily and psychological experiences.

Scottish Psychiatrist R. D. Laing in the 1960s and '70s, following onto Freud and Jung, proposed that early experiences inform not only personal psychopathologies but also the myths of the tribe. 

He was interested particularly in myths that share a pattern with the earliest—prenatal and early postnatal—experiences and suggested that these stories might recapitulate the adventures of zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. 

Uterine Endometrium Adopting
The Newly Arrived Blastocyst‏

   

In The Facts of Life, Laing cited the story of Sargon. As an infant, the future king was placed by his parents in a reed basket and sent down river. He drifted until AKKI, the gardener, rescued him and raised the foundling to adulthood. Sargon then stepped into the world to become king of Assyria. Laing, as have others, pointed out the parallels between this story and that of the biblical Moses. The infant Moses also was placed by his parents in a basket and set adrift, was adopted and raised by his rescuer and eventually left the home of the rescuer to assume a position of prominence. 

Laing could have included among his examples a more contemporary hero, Superman, whose parents placed him as an infant into a "basket"—a rocket ship—and sent him downstream—through interstellar space—from the doomed planet, Krypton, to Earth, where the Earthlings Jonathan and Martha Kent discovered and adopted him. The Kents raised the infant, whom they named Clark, to adulthood. The adult Clark Kent then relocated from Smallville to Metropolis, where he assumed his superhero identity.

The stories recapitulate the journeys and development of the zygote, embryo, and fetus, suggested Laing. That is, the stories parallel the prenatal story: A zygote, encased in a membrane, called the zona pellucida, travels downstream—down the fallopian tube—until, as a blastocyst, it is adopted by the uterine endometrium. Attached to the uterus, it matures into a fetus and then is born.

Laing also cites correspondence between Freud and Jung in which the psychoanalysts discussed another natal motif, that of the doppelganger, the hero's atrophied and subordinate twin. Examples of hero/doppelganger pairs include Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Romulus and Remus, and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Cain and Abel could be cited. The psychoanalysts interpreted the weak or unfortunate twin as representing that lost, discarded companion, the placenta.

Jung is most associated with the idea of the collective unconscious, but even Freud toyed with the idea of a phylogenetic memory. In a manuscript he shared with colleague Sandor Ferenczi and which was published posthumously as A Phylogenetic Fantasy, Freud speculated that some psychopathologies developed as reactions to conditions that prevailed during the ice ages.

From DNA to Phenotypes

The arrival of the first neurons provides the embryo with a mechanism, prospectively, that can record experiences, that is, with a memory. But the developmental stages prior to the appearance of the first neurons must record experiences by other means (if at all). Some other means must come into play also if phylogenetic memory can be a realistic prospect.


Aside from neurons, the physical medium that manages information during development and from ancestor to descendant, is DNA. As an organism develops, epigenetic regulatory mechanisms, such as methylation, preserve patterns of genetic expression and repression. Such control systems enable a single genotype to produce the many cell types that make up the body of a complex organism. The zygote possess all of the genes needed for nerves, muscles, skin and the other tissues that make up a body. The necessary genes express themselves or get expressed, and repressed, in a predictable sequence as the organism develops.

It turns out that epigenetic controls work in much the same way during evolution. They enable relatively slight genomic variations to produce the Earth's wealth of species. DNA turns out to be highly conserved during evolution, with epigenetic mechanisms shouldering much of the responsibility for the diversity of phenotypes. This is so much the case that some researchers have proposed that science adopt the model of a "universal genome," referring to the stock of DNA that is conserved across species. In Universal Genome in the Origin of Metazoa (Cell Cycle 6:15, August 2007) researcher Michael Sherman argues precisely for such a common genome. His case rests largely on the presence of genes in descendant species that are present already in remote ancestral species.

Sherman's insight was anticipated in 1999, in an article by researcher W. H. Holland that appeared in Nature (Vol 402, Supplement, December 2, 1999) titled The Future of Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Holland says,

"So many examples of [DNA] conservation have now been found that it is no longer considered surprising. We can now state with confidence that most animal phyla possess essentially the same genes, and that some (but not all) of these genes change their developmental roles infrequently in evolution."

Holland's assertion looks increasingly on target, as researchers catalog a growing number of genetic "toolboxes" and "master genes" common across species.

What goes unremarked in "universal genome" proposals is that they imply a state of affairs that conflicts with science's current view of nature.

Namely, such proposals imply that evolution constitutes the unfolding of pre-programmed developmental stages, which implies that evolution is a process of development, an ontogeny.

And that implies that DNA harbors information about not only the evolutionary past of species, but also about the evolutionary future of species, in the same (or in some similar) way as it harbors information about not only the developmental past—e.g., totipotent and pluripotent cell phenotypes—of a fetus but also about the kid's developmental future. And just as myth and ritual, the "deep grammar" of culture, can express or encode developmental stages, as Laing and others have suggested, so too might they express or encode evolutionary stages, past and future.

Evolution's Crystal Ball . . .




Transfiguration
+ Ascension
= Stellar Metamorphosis

Leveraging this insight, the star larvae hypothesis proposes its own interpretations of tribal lore.

Astrology, for example. Why did ancient peoples the world over attach so much significance to the night sky's twinkling dots? Stars served navigators as references, but beyond that what inspired the ancients to conclude that those dots held sway over human fortunes and misfortunes? The dots gave off no heat, nor any sound. They could not be touched. They emitted no scent. Why imagine that they had any practical consequences at all?

The star larvae hypothesis suggests that the history of astrolatry, astrotheology, astral religion, and astrology, the last with its persistent following, all express an intuition of humankind's collective calling, which is to participate in the stellar life cycle. The star larvae hypothesis takes the star as biology's imago and so gives stars a stake in human affairs. The varieties of astral concern suggest that the ancients intuited such an intimate relationship between stars and humans.

Another oddity is the religious sentiment that takes the astral world to be one of prospective human habitation, whether in the flesh or in the spirit. What possessed the ancient world to conceive of the skies, turf of the twinkling dots, as not only a hospitable, but an essentially utopian, habitat, something to long for and work toward? The association of heaven with the sky and the promise of human ascension to it, in their various forms, via flesh or soul, are peculiar religious conventions. From what wellspring of imagination do such wild ideas arise?

The star larvae hypothesis suggests that the mytheme of "heaven above" anticipates the literal ascension of space habitation. Heaven, the astral planes of the occult traditions, and other intuitions of rarefied, extraplanetary realms reveal something in the genes that looks forward to a celestial, weightless world.

  

Traditional Rendering of Transhumans

The world's folkways also report a grade of extraterrestrials intermediate between humans and stars, the angels. These winged, weightless entities get rendered variously, but a persistent form is that of the putto, the winged infant. What is behind the convention that uses flying babies to represent evolved spiritual beings?

The star larvae hypothesis suggests that the putto is an evolutionary signpost, that the infantilized extraterrestrial anticipates the morphology of human descendants in space, which the hypothesis expects to become radically neotenous, due to the effects of weightlessness on the developing organism.
. . . Reveals Also The Past

A related folkway, with precedents that include the incubus, the succubus and the dove that impregnated the mother of Jesus, is that of the Ancient Astronauts, extraterrestrials who screwed with human culture and human genes.

UFO enthusiasm and conspiracy theory dovetail here, where extraterrestrials breed with humans or otherwise modify human stock to create a hybrid race. Conspiracy theorist David Icke proffers a model in which this hybrid race conceals its reptilian nature, constitutes the ruling class of the Western world, and sports a bloodline that winds its way back to ancient Babylon, or at least to that cold-blooded Vlad, the Impaler.

It turns out that about 8 percent of the human genome consists of nonhuman DNA. These alien DNA sequences are viral, evidently inserted into the human genome by infections suffered in antiquity. Viral DNA sequences, such as these, that become part of the host genome, are widespread among creatures. They are called endogenous retroviruses.

At the cellular level, it turns out that only about 10 percent of the cells in a human body are human. The other 90 percent are bacterial, symbionts without which human metabolism would cease. Researchers studying the complex ecology of the body have coined the term microbiome to designate the body itself as a complex ecosystem harboring dozens of species.

So, the human body plays host to alien genes and cells. But did the aliens arrive from outer space? The circumstantial evidence continues to grow.

Stowaway on a Meteorite

 
From the ongoing discovery of more, and more complex, organic molecules in space, to the discovery of extremophile organisms that survive in environments to which terrestrial selection pressures could not have forced adaptation, to apparent remnants of micro-organisms in meteorites, the circumstantial case for panspermia—the infall of viruses and micro-organisms from space—becomes more solid every day. The Ancient Astronaut stories might be onto something, even if the extraterrestrials that penetrate human bodies in no way resemble the expected humanoids.

Culture As Phenotype

The point of all this is to suggest that the evolutionary program is available for reviewing and previewing through myth and lore, and perhaps through psychopatholology, as is the developmental program, which is to suggest a reappraisal of evolutionary psychology.

The star larvae hypothesis suggests that DNA carries, or transceives, information pertaining to the psyche's archetypal forms—heroes, demons, initiatory transformations, and so on—just as it carries, or transceives, information pertaining to the anatomical forms of mouths, hands, hearts, and so on. This is a conservative formulation. It shouldn't rock any boat in the world of evolutionary psychology. It adheres to the scientific dogma of materialism and method of reductionism. It suggests a sub-discipline: Evolutionary Archetypal Psychology.

Where comparative mythology finds cross-cultural patterns—ubiquitous mythemes—parallel characters, plots, and storylines—there evolutionary psychology should propose evolutionary causes while recognizing that information about potential form—that is, about possible future forms—commingles with information about extant and extinct forms.

(This formulation also recalls the Platonic doctrine of Forms, which regards this world as the translation of abstract potential into a set of physical actuals. The physical forms are determinate variations, or particularizations, of indeterminate potential. As the Platonic Form of "triangle" includes three angles, excludes curvature, and is indeterminate regarding area, the genome of a species of shark, or the genotype of a particular shark, includes fins, excludes lungs, and is indeterminate regarding spatial volume. Specific cultural renderings of, say, the heroic journey, similarly represent particularizations of indeterminate, archetypal forms. The stories share common patterns but vary in detail by local custom.)

If ethology and/or sociobiology and/or gene-culture coevolution and/or evolutionary psychology and/or behavioral ecology and/or niche construction are to be taken seriously as science (sorry, but the evolving vocabulary seems more politically correct than scientifically expedient, though one can hardly blame the scientists, because the notion of behavior's genetic roots aggravates sociocultural tensions—see for example the recounting of sociobiology's reception at Harvard in Promethean Fire, by E. O. Wilson and Charles Lumsden), then culture must be seen as a phenotype, which is to say that history is in the genes, which is to find the issues in the tissues

From Star Larvae @ http://starlarvae.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/culture-as-phenotype-and-evolutions.html

For more information about space migration see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/space%20migration

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Space Migration: The Heavenly Ascent

Space Migration: The Heavenly Ascent

Mother Earth has come to term. It's time to leave home

The moon rocks that the Apollo missions brought back revealed the moon to be a perfectly stocked construction supply depot. The lunar surface is rich in industrial metals, including iron, aluminum, titanium, and magnesium. But the most abundant element, accounting for 40 percent of the moon's surface by mass, is oxygen. The moon is an amalgam of rusted metals. 

After oxygen, the most abundant element is the ever-useful silicon. Oxygen, silicon, and a lode of metals: It would have been a challenge to custom order a stockpile of materials better suited for creating an industrial boomtown in Earth-orbital space, and ultimately beyond. Intelligent Design strikes again? We could soon have homes, electronics, vehicles, and even garden furniture made from lunar materials—in space.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to develop space as residential and commercial real estate poses obvious technical and political challenges. But ultimately humankind will have to face these challenges. Each generation will see the idea as less fanciful and more commonsensical than the previous and will feel a stronger urgency as Earth becomes increasingly crowded, polluted, and inhospitable to democratic ideals.

A new order of urban life is possible in space. Solar collectors the size of football fields (already being developed in Japan), manufactured from lunar materials and driving an economy of abundance—this is the vision of the future shamefully absent from political debates about space policy. But it might be the most promising alternative to a centralized technocratic banking/military elite running the show. Democratic utopia will find little room to grow in a world that rations resources to its energy-poor, planetbound population. 

Even the ambitious space objectives announced by President George W. Bush in January 2004 lack purposeful vision. A mining operation on the moon could have broad practical value, but burning resources to plant a human footprint on Mars is cold-war thinking. Nonetheless, the Bush plan at least helped refocus NASA’s energies on a human presence in space, though the plan did not go nearly far enough. A visionary plan would reject the assumption that living beyond the Earth necessarily means moving to another planetary, or a lunar, body.

Claiming economic necessity, President Obama unplugged the Bush plan. In January 2010, he defunded it and directed NASA to underwrite private development of space taxis, which the agency then will rent back from the private developers. As the "public" and "private" sectors of the economy continue to merge, history will see who becomes the greatest beneficiary of Obama's redirection.

A more uplifting prospect was envisioned early in the twentieth century. Some thinkers looked at the sky and imagined free-floating cities in orbit around the Earth. Powered directly by the sun, they might operate independently of Earthly control.

But not until the 1970s was this vision translated into a plan. In 1969 Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill convened a freshman seminar to address the inspired question, as he later phrased it, "Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?" The class researched the relevant facts and projections and calculated the answer to be a resounding NO. The research revealed crippling expenses associated with any form of big geology. Planets per se turn out to be uneconomical real estate for long-term development. O’Neill estimated, for example, that one-fourth of the energy consumed in the United States for transportation goes to fighting gravity and atmospheric drag. 

"A mass program of inner-voyaging will certainly shrivel into Ganges mysticism unless the visions can be precisely expressed in outer-space migration."

— Timothy Leary
Changing My Mind,
Among Others

In 1977 O’Neill published The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space an exposition that laid out the technical and cultural dimensions of space colonization. O’Neill went on to become chief spokesman for the merits of expanding humankind’s ecological range to include the orbital space around Earth. He imagined and developed detailed plans for autonomous encapsulated ecosystems, each a mile or so in diameter and housing communities of from one thousand to up to fifty thousand inhabitants. The space colonization movement that coalesced under O’Neill’s tutelage attracted unlikely cohorts, including conservative U. S. Senator Barry Goldwater and counterculture impresario Timothy Leary.

Despite the cheering of a handful of high-profile advocates, however, within a decade O'Neill’s vision came and went as a popular cause. Nonetheless, the central premise of The High Frontier remains cogent. It is the premise that the surface of a planet is not the most suitable real estate for a sprawling industrial civilization, let alone several of them. So far, few people of influence in the political arena or in the scientific community have been willing to pick up the torch and advance O'Neill's vision. But few endeavors could be more critical or timely. The bridge to space will have to be crossed, and better sooner than later.

Beyond the technical and political challenges lie others, including the need to come to terms with the biological effects of weightlessness. This seeming bugaboo turns out to be the environmental trigger for an evolutionary mutation that turns humans into angels. As long as weightlessness is seen as a problem to be mitigated, and normal Earth gravity a norm to be preserved, then space will always seem like a place in which humans are not supposed to be. Heaven beckons, but Mother Earth pulls back. 

Vintage 1970s toroidal space colony design, cutaway view, from studies conducted at NASA Ames.

A more recent design

 

Bodies in Space: Biology in the Colony

 

A potential problem with any space colonization or long-term spaceflight proposal is the atrophying of bodily tissues. "During space flight, bone minerals (calcium and phosphorus) and their support matrix are slowly lost. . . . Muscle atrophy [also] represents a significant biomedical problem with special implications for long-term space flight," researchers caution in a NASA life-sciences bulletin. The writers concede that even regimens of vigorous exercise, "do not arrest the progressive atrophy that continues throughout expeditions into zero gravity." It seems that deterioration of load-bearing tissues is an inevitable consequence of living in space long term. From the terrestrial point of view, this weakening and loss of tissue amounts to a pathology.

"The 'mechanical age,' which to some appears as the very negation of the soul, is, on the contrary, the age of supreme psychical achievement. Science and invention are for ever annexing fresh regions of the universe and subjecting them to the free play of our mental faculties. The process of bringing material things into subjection to our will is a process of sublimation, which does not drag us down to the dust, but raises up dust into the realms of immortal spirit."

— E. E. Fournier D'Albe
Hephaestus or the Soul of the Machine 

"We have already clarified the meanings of flight and ascension in folklore, in the history of religions, and in mysticism; and we were able to show that the imagery in question was always that of transcendence and freedom."

— Mircea Eliade
Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries.

O'Neill was aware of space's atrophying effects on certain bodily tissues, and to protect against them he proposed that orbiting cities should spin. Centrifugal effects then would simulate normal Earth gravity and hold things "down." The ground under one’s feet in an O'Neill-type colony would be the inside wall of the spinning structure. As one approached the axis of rotation, the "pole" of the colony, the sensation of gravity would lessen, and at the pole it essentially would disappear. O’Neill imagined zero-gravity resorts and sports arenas at the poles. Others promoting the cause advocated spas and honeymoon hotels.

O'Neill assumed that prospective space colonists would insist on some kind of simulated gravity. For one thing, the colonists might want to return to Earth—in which case they would need their bones and muscles to work normally. What O'Neill did not seem to anticipate was that native extraterrestrials—inhabitants born in the colonies—might have little interest in the ancestral haunts. The prospect of going permanently gravityless is rarely addressed in space-habitation scenarios. Even science-fiction writers tend to assume that our extraterrestrial descendants will want somehow to simulate the effects of gravity and preserve the terrestrial human form. The minds behind neither Star Trek nor Star Wars included in their fables any suggestion that freedom from the drag of gravity and the established human form might itself attract space settlers.

Native extraterrestrials might reject the McEarth model of the space colony, discard artificial gravity as an environmental kludge, and settle into their natural state of weightlessness. Any colony population that does so will discover something amazing and profound: that growing up weightless not only shrinks load-bearing skeletal and muscle tissues, but it simultaneously expands experience-bearing brain tissue. The current understanding of neurological development suggests that brain tissue will tend to hypertrophy, or bulk up, if it spends its formative years weightless. This is because brains are sensitive to and are programmed to adapt to their environments. This adaptability, a literal plasticity of the physical connections among the cells, the synapses, ought to predispose brains to develop with unusual vigor in weightlessness. Such enrichment should occur rapidly and show itself conspicuously already in the first generation of native extraterrestrials.

Released from the tether of gravity, brains are free to move their bearers in ways more varied and complex than possible on Earth, as NASA publicity footage shows. Extraterrestrial brains will have to become proficient at orienting and conducting their bearers dynamically in three dimensions. The familiar developmental milestones of childhood—rolling over, crawling, standing up, walking—will be eclipsed by the need to develop a repertoire of acrobatic competencies. Weightlessness essentially preserves intrauterine conditions, and will force extraterrestrial brains to tap resources that are left to spoil when brains develop normally on Earth.

Space brains will have to avail themselves of as much and as complex and dynamic a network of internal circuitry as they can muster to navigate in their spatially complex environments. A well-established body of research supports this contention of the star larvae hypothesis—the contention that as brains adapt to weightlessness they will evolve increasingly dense and baroque wiring and that this neurological enrichment will shape their experience in ways fundamentally alien to that of their Earthbound relatives. The enriching effects of weightlessness on brain development, and the impoverishing effects on other tissues, marks an evolutionary break, a metamorphosis of the human phenotype and sets the stage for the development of a posthuman species.

From Star Larvae @ http://www.starlarvae.org/Space_Brains_Space_Migration.html

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