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ADEPTS 20: AMPLIFICATION
By William C Bushell, PhD
In installment 19 of the Adepts series (ie, the previous installment), we were continuing the description of our initial synthesis of the yogic sciences with Western (cosmopolitan) basic life and health sciences into an integrative scientific model. This model is beginning to reveal how the yogic (including adept) sciences may be significantly engaging fundamental biological mechanisms – bioelectrical*, molecular biological, and even quantum – mechanisms to produce healing, regenerative, tissue-protective, and functionally optimizing outcomes in practitioners. One major focus has been on how adepts engage with innate piezoelectricity that is naturally produced in the normal functioning of organs in the abdomen, produced through the movements of the circulation (including the heart), the lungs and diaphragm, and peristaltic movements of the digestive system (piezoelectricity is electricity produced by mechanical force; see above, and Dagdeviren et al 2014, 2017; Bera et al 2021; Tel Aviv University News 2021; and see Yue et al 2024).
We further noted that, moreover, the adepts appear to amplify this abdominally located piezoelectricity by increasing mechanical force through gaining control over and intensively and repeatedly working muscles in this area – and then they appear to be able to channel and guide the bioelectricity (1) throughout the body, and (2) to focused areas where more of the bioelectricity is needed, eg, allegedly for healing, regeneration, and/or tissue-protective purposes. This guiding they appear to do by learning to amplify initially subtle, even subliminal, sensory signaling, through meditatively enhancing interoceptive sensory-perceptual mechanisms which increase the “signal-to-noise ratio,” in the formal terms of signal detection science (eg, see Ma 2010 for review of the relevant principles). This is, in brief, the basic schematic model of the adept use of bioelectricity in the yogic systems that employ this profound resource, most notably perhaps in what we have been referring to as Taoist yoga-based systems, like those found in the Mo Pai and related traditions (above, and Bushell et al, in progress). The quintessential principles, put simply, are to allow (1) access of the energy to tissues, (2) of a sufficient magnitude, to produce beneficial outcomes (above installments, and Bushell et al, in progress).
We have been discussing the acute need for the appropriate recognition of this innate human dimension of the newly discovered fundamental existence and power of bioelectricity in the Western/cosmopolitan life and health sciences, in what is being formally heralded therein as “the bioelectricity revolution” (eg, Adams et al 2019; Funk & Scholkmann 2023). Indeed, in the nascent science of bioelectricity in the current Western life and health science context, applied amplified bioelectricity has been demonstrated to enhance healing and functioning in a growing number of studies in the emerging field of “bioelectronic medicine.” The application of beneficial (bio)electricity in this field is accomplished through the use of a range of machines, implantable devices, so-called “nanobots,” and a relatively new class of drugs known as “electroceuticals,” as well as through other biotechnological means (see reviews in Sanjuan-Alberte et al 2018; Levin et al 2019).
In other words, why is the apparent priority, the emphasis, on the seeking of biotechnological means of utilizing such profound resources? This question brings us back once again to a major theme of this series, which is the failure of Western science, and culture, to recognize the true magnitude and range of endogenous resources of the human potential, in general as well as in the exemplars of the same, ie, the adepts. While of course there is now in the West a field of study concerned with human potential, for the most part its findings have often been of a rather modest magnitude and scope ( and especially when considered in the context of sthe science of adepts; see Bushell et al, in progress). It is this cultural deficiency, indeed eccentricity, that has led to a significant degree of circumventing, bypassing, this area of human nature. In its strongest form, it is due to some extent to ignorance based on arrogance, a form of radical intellectual and cultural chauvinism (Bushell 1990). And in this emerging age of radically expanding biotechnology – of transhumanism – such ignorance and arrogance may indeed, for many, eclipse the extraordinary potential that has already been in existence for some considerable time in many parts of the world, as we will further consider in future installments. And in fact there is an intense need to find appropriate ways to successfully interact with adept traditions, one that can be profoundly mutually beneficial (see Bushell et al, in progress).
*As discussed in previous installments, we use the term “bioelectricity” as a form of heuristic shorthand for (1) what also includes bioelectromagnetism and other forms of related energy; and as (2) a working equivalent of Asian terms such as qi, prana, etc. Also as stated previously, much scientific and scholarly exegesis ultimately will still be required to adequately elucidate these terminologies.
References
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Bushell WC, 1990. “Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs) and Enhanced Psychophysiological Functioning (EPF): Psychobiology, Anthropology, History,” HYPNOSIS, TRANCE AND HEALING IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE. American Anthropological Association (Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness). New Orleans, LA.
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