Nerves
_AM: We have one last system to go through, and it could probably be considered the most important of all.
_I: Which one?
_AM: The Nervous System.
_I: Why is it the most important?
_AM: Close your eyes... Take a deep breath... Bring your hands to your chest... Feel your heart beat... Imagine that your heartbeat expands beyond your body... It invades your being, awakening a memory, a memory... That memory is the most pleasant you can you remember... Do you feel it?
_I: Yes…
_AM: Nothing you have done now could have been done without the nervous system.
_I: That is to say... That this system is responsible for breathing, beating, moving, thinking, imagining, feeling, remembering...
_AM: And he does it simply because of a fundamental skill: networking.
_I: But... Don't other cells do the same thing by creating networks?
_AM: There is a big difference between the cells of the nervous system and the general cells of the body. Nerve cells are called “neurons” and, unlike other neurons, neurons do not divide. Neurons can only be created, and they age with the age of a person, but they do not share genetic material by multiplying, but once they are created, there is no longer room for new ones. This forces the neurons to seek a different development than normal organic cells. While the latter use the assimilated energy (ATP) for cellular reproduction functions, neurons share information through a data exchange network, through a mechanism called “synapse” (from the Greek “syn” = with; “aptein” = touch, connect, join; and “sis” = action). Synapsis is the action of two things touching or joining together. In the case of the neuronal synaptic network, these cells have developed the ability to be unique and unrepeatable, but their infinite capacity lies in their ability to share that information with others.
_I: But, if there is only a specific amount, then when are they formed?
_AM: All my life. From the first 7 weeks of pregnancy, a fetus begins to produce up to 250,000 neurons per minute, a number that will grow during the rest of the fetal development process, and even during the first months of life outside the uterus, but despite this , the production of neurons begins to decrease after adolescence, although thousands of new neurons never stop appearing, even reaching 80 or 90 years of age. The originality of these neurons is that they will not die and multiply, but rather they will always be the same, since you were a fetus.
_I: Oh, so this is what memory allows!
_AM: Exactly, because each cell saves the data that it has assimilated, and they will always remain in the network, although the greater the number of neurons, the original data can be modified until it is almost unrecognizable, and sometimes even forgotten.
_I: How is this data stored?
_AM: The 5 senses are responsible for receiving data from the environment, do you remember?
_I: Oh, yes... Sight, Taste, Touch, Smell and Hearing, which received external information through electrical pulses...
_AM: These electrical pulses are those that are recorded in neurons. They are connected to each tissue of the body to receive the vibrations that it perceives through the senses, and those pulses or beats of the vibration waves, depending on their wavelength, whether color, sound, heat, particles, aromas, are They record in neurons using electrical pulses, as if they were Morse code readers, or computer analysts recording each small pulse, sharing the data in a block chain. Neurons share this information through chemical and electrical reactions at the ends of their bodies. The neuronal body is made up of a cell with normal content (not its nucleus, genes, organelles, mitochondria, cytoplasm and other structures), but whose coverage is provided with branches called dendrites. Through an axon (thick end of the cell) the Myelin Sheath emerges, a kind of long trunk covered with tiny cells organized like train cars, at whose opposite end more dendrites branch out again.
_I: It's like a tree with roots, trunk and its crown with branches...
_AM: That's right. In the roots and branches of this tree, the ends of each dendrite have synaptic buttons, where electrical pulses generate a chemical reaction that passes information from one neuron to the other. These buttons are like a kind of joints between the bones, where instead of synovial fluid, you find chemical receptors, responsible for receiving molecules called neurotransmitters, arising from tiny sacs called synaptic vesicles, which are filled with these neurotransmitters through some internal filaments that perform a function similar to the marrow inside the bones.
_I: Wow… And everything is so tiny… So microscopic and fast…
AM: Specifically, each signal emitted by neurons from any part of the body to any other part of the body travels at an average speed of 360 km per hour generating at least 50 impulses per second.
_I: I didn't expect it... Almost like a plane taking off multiplied by millions in each direction and every second...
_AM: That's right... Data, information, pulses, exchange of neurotransmitters throughout your body at every moment. But above all in the central organ made up of neurons, the only organ incapable of feeling pain, only of imagining it.
_I: What? Which!?
_AM: The Brain. It is made up of neurons and is the main structure of the nervous system. Because it is made up of neurons that store data, it does not have cells capable of perceiving the pulses of the 5 senses, but only of processing them. For this reason, it does not have cells capable of assimilating pain or pleasure. The brain does not suffer, but it can make you suffer, because everything you interpret as pulses of pain and pleasure are interpreted by the brain. The nervous system is divided into two fundamental parts: the Central and the Peripheral. The Central is made up of the Brain, protected by the skull in the head, which is divided into 5 parts: Brain, Cerebellum, Midbrain, Pons and Medulla Oblongata; and at its other end is the Spinal Cord, protected by the vertebral column in the back. The Peripheral is made up of all the nerves born from the spinal cord directed to the organs and muscles, and also all the neurons that connect to each part of the body, including the cells. The electrical pulse that moves like rays through the body is possible thanks to the polarization of the axon membranes in the neurons that, as if it were a wave, change from positive to negative and back to positive, constantly, thus generating the boost of energy and therefore data. These impulses are formed as chemical reactions, which give rise to neurotransmitters, with names that you have surely heard at some point: serotonin, acetylcholine, dopamine, norepinephrine and endorphin, among others.
_I: Yes, I have heard them commonly.
_AM: Each one with a specific function related to happiness, tranquility, anger, action, general pulses that manage data in its incessant combination.
_I: It's like reading the function or chemical reality of our thinking... That is, understanding that what we are, what we feel, life itself, is nothing more than a simple chemical and electrical reaction of specific molecules...
_AM: Exactly. And this transmitted information usually occurs in two ways: through the so-called Somatic Nervous System and the Autonomous Nervous System.
_I: What are their differences?
_AM: The Somatic is the one that is easier to understand, since it is in which the neurons are responsible for transmitting voluntary signals, those that involve a movement of your own desire, like what you are doing now when you touch the keys to write. this text.
_I: Of course... It is the one of which we are fully aware, and that we move at our mercy.
_AM: While the Autonomous system is in charge of everything visceral or vegetative, which works without consciousness, beyond our will in order to keep the organism alive, and is subdivided into two classifications: Parasympathetic and Sympathetic. Along the spinal nerves, the upper end and lower end of the spinal cord are responsible for parasympathetic signals, while the central ends of the spinal cord are responsible for sympathetic signals.
_I: How to understand their differences?
_AM: In general, the parasympathetic is responsible for relaxing the functioning of the body, while the sympathetic is responsible for activating it. We could say that the parasympathetic distends and dilates, while the sympathetic contracts and presses. Thus, the first prepares us for situations such as secreting digestive and urinary fluids, dilating sphincters, dilating blood vessels, promotes excitement, regulates vision, inhibits escape, reducing the frequency of heart palpitations. On the other hand, the Sympathetic aims to activate the body to escape, which stimulates the heart to beat faster, accelerates breathing, stimulates the adrenals, inhibits relaxation, increases the firmness of the sphincters and, in males, produces sexual orgasm during ejaculation.
_I: Oh, I understand... All the organs of the body are conditioned by these electrical pulses that make each organ and gland react.
_AM: Each electrical pulse activates the endocrine glands to secrete hormones, or presses the heart cells to beat, or to digest, to remember, to move at will... It is a network of infinite networks, where you will recognize something very important.
_I: What?
_AM: That everything is Mind. The same biological body with which you coexist is a direct and natural projection of the Universe and its networked cosmos. The Mind of the universe that drives cosmic information lives in you. Therefore, each sensation is an idea, it is simply a reaction to a pulse...
_I: Now that we look at it like this, the existential question is: where is the spirit? That is, by seeing this week that the body is the set of organisms that formed a superior one, and by understanding that each emotion of the soul, the energy of the being that travels through time, being born in different lives, is nothing more than a hormonal reaction. , that is, we can only feel the soul as humans thanks to the chemical reactions of our bodies; and that the spirit, the divine mind, the imagination, the idea of being, are nothing more than an electrical and chemical interaction of neurotransmitter molecules, where does that leave that essence of being?
_AM: Can't you see it yet?
_I: See what?
_AM: Tell me, what is your need to think that even seeing the wonder of existence that makes you up, there must be something else that can allow you to be what you are? Isn't it enough for you to see the wonderful manifestation of your body? Is it, perhaps, an incessant denial of what you are, waiting for a paradise? Is it, perhaps, the magical idea that God, the Spirit, must be something transcendental to the prison of a body? Can't you see the divinity in who you are because you deny your inner power? Don't you see it yet? That the essence does not live external to what you are, but rather lives in the capacity for connection between the parts that make up what you are?
_I: Sorry... How?
_AM: The Universe does not know what the Cosmos is until it makes synapses, until it does not know who it is, recognizing the One only by its ability to perceive the Two. Unity cannot be understood without polarity. God is born from interaction, being, essence, does not exist by itself. For there to be a verb, you need a subject to realize it, for there to be an I am, you need an I. It is only in the interaction of the I and the Am that the I AM arises. It is the Network that allows existence, that enables the idea of essence. It is the network that designs all the possibilities like the Brain that cannot feel, but creates itself in diverse networks capable of interpreting what pain and pleasure are. Feel. The nervous system is the closest thing you have to understanding what essence means, not because of its neurons or its brain, but because of its connector function. Be channels, eternal bridges.
_I: Oh, I understand… The body is another extension of the universal body, which seeks the cosmos itself through the harmony of its parts, and it is in this interaction that “It Is.” The body is perfection, it is the closest key to seeing and feeling the wonder of the divine.
_AM: Well, the spirit is the waves and vibrations that make up the pulses that make a neurotransmitter molecule exist, which will have the objective of registering that spiritual wave, making the rays of nervous energy that mobilize the being react, awakening what you call the Soul. , which gives coherence to the actions that the cellular organism called the Body will carry out. You see it?
_I: I see it… “Know thyself”…
_AM: And you will know the Universe. Go inside…
_I: And you will understand the outside... And as long as I meditate on my interior.
_AM: You will be able to activate your exterior. Just join both ends...
_I: Make synapses…
_AM: The synapse between I and I am.
_I: Who create the Essence of the Divine Mind…
_AM: Here and Now, Time and Space, Up and Down, Inside and Out, Left and Right, Black and White, Etheric and Physical, Heaven and Earth...
_I: I am the channel that unites all extremes, the synapse that leads the Universe towards the Cosmos, to the paths of reality to find order...
_AM: …Awakening the full consciousness that you are already the divine. Just observe yourself, accept it, and enjoy living it.
_I: I have the Connection in me… I have the Source in me, I have the Home in me, I have the Temple in me.
_AM: I Am the Eternal Channel.
_I: I am.