Benefits of cannabis, for anyone who thinks it's harmful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlRf1Q832SI

The shortest video I could find of this eminent speaker. There are many if you find him interesting.

For anyone who is convinced that cannabis is harmful. Ethan Russo gives a breakdown of many government studies intended to prove that this is the case. None of them proved that it was harmful, indeed many showed the remarkable benefits of cannabis.

Babies who were born to mothers who smoked cannabis while pregnant were found to be healthier than mothers who didn't; cannabis added to tobacco reduced the incidence of lung disease in cigarette smokers, etc.

Such was the failure of the government-funded projects to prove harm, that it was finally abandoned as futile. Many books on these researches are now unavailable in American libraries.

This single book he recommends as a source for these studies is: 

Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence (Paperback)

by Lynn Zimmer (Author), John Morgan (Author)

True Education

The child in utero dreams its way through human evolution. Biology recapitulates Phylogeny.

When it's born it has no sense of 'you and me', it is a pure, appetival being. It is all 'me'. Its mother is 'me', and it wants what it wants when it wants it, and after it has got it, it sinks back happily into its essential self.

Soon after birth however, it is drawn into the external world. It loses itself into the world of accident, of contingency. It becomes reliant on contingent relations, which change with time. The stuff of time changes. It learns tricks by which it seeks to control the external world. It may learn that please and thank you can be used to great effect. As it evolves it may learn ever more ways with which to get what it wants ... a clever smile, the raising of an eyebrow, a pleading expression or maybe emotional blackmail. Persevering along the line of verbal diplomacy, it may even aspire to the dizzying heights of being an MP.

What it has forgotten in all this time stuff is its essential being. It has been led out of its essential Self (e-ducted, educated), into the prevailing paradigm (accepted pattern) of its environment.

These paradigms change with each succeeding generation. It might look back less than 50 years with a condescending chuckle at some earlier 'cutting edge discoveries'. But even so, it now has a firm belief that all the answers that it has been taught, are ultimate and true.

Because there is still a deep insecurity, it continues to seek control over its environment, including the other people in it.

What happens when its control is taken away? The diagnosis of a serious illness creates an even greater whirlwind of uncertainty in the being. When the initial storm dies down, this illness can be seen as something which can only be cured by external aid, or it can be seen as an opportunity for looking internally to find out just what forces are bringing about this illness.

Headaches don't come about because of a deficiency of aspirin, just as cancer doesn't come about because of a lack of chemotherapy drugs.

 In its quest to overcome the disease, if the now adult child perseveres in its research, it will discover that its education hasn't been a true one. The child has always tried to control its external world. But it now discovers that other beings seek their own form of control.  Beings with more mental clarity, but perhaps with very little compassion. And its education has been trickled down from these other power seekers.

Abandoning its reliance on externals and connecting with its inner Self, the child, if it's wilful enough and intelligent enough, now analyses what's been fed into the body, materially, mentally and emotionally, and proceeds to make corrective adjustments.

Follow the money.

It's said that money is the root of all evil. This is not strictly so. It's the love of money that's its root. And once a man has all the money that he can ever spend, what then? Love of money is overtaken by the love of the power that it feeds.

"Chemotherapy began in 1946 when the American Department of Defense funded Dr. Goodman and Gilman at Yale University to find a medical use for mustard gas. They tested it on  rats and reduced tumors. They tested on a patient with lymphoma and all his tumors regressed. He did die within a couple of months, but no-one had ever before seen cancer tumors regress with a drug. That started the whole chemo regimen. They tried it with other forms of cancer, but ironically lymphomas are some of the few cancers that respond to chemo. Because of that single, extraordinary response in a patient for a few weeks, the entire chemo industry came into being." [Nicholas Gonzalez]

'Science' means 'knowledge', and that's all it means. The true scientist performs his experiments in order to simply see what happens, to increase his knowledge. 

Consciousness is a catalyst. Despite what the laboratory researcher might tell you, there is no such thing as an absolutely objective science, because all scientists must include the bias of their own power and sentience in the subject matter of their investigations. 

The pharmaceutical scientist today is further biased in his experiments because of his pharmaceutical agenda. Hired by the company, there will always be some pressure, whether heavy or light, to produce a profit for the power hungry people, who guide the company, which pays him for his work. There will be a tendency to be less exacting, to ignore results which do not fit in with what's looked for, and to highlight what is profitable. 

When one's life is on the line, to put one's faith into such methods is not like just straying too close to crocodile-infested waters, it's more like jumping in and hoping for the best.Neither should you put too much faith in what the oncologist tells you. You don't get a second chance to try something else this time round. A friend of mine was persuaded to take chemo for her leukemia, given the prognosis of 4 months life without chemo, and 10 years of life with it. She accepted and subsequently died only 2 months later. Had this been at the hands of an alternative practitioner, it would have made headline news, as it is she was simply another statistic.

The following is from the Lancet, '... a weekly peer reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's oldest and best known general medical journals'. [Wiki]

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1/fulltext?rss%3Dyes

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures, such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct..

Pleasure and Pain

Pleasure and Pain

Hedonists believe that the pursuit of pleasure holds the meaning of life. Even amoebas swim towards food and away from a drop of lemon juice. Can running away from pain and towards pleasure be what it's all about? Quite often we can enter a painful situation, knowing that there's a benefit to be gained from it. A parent will abandon their safety to save a child. Even this can be viewed like the case of the salmon swimming upstream against the current in order to spawn. This does tend to cloud the meaning of pleasure, and pain. 

"Endless pleasure cannot challenge a man to self-examination."

When does an apparently endless pleasure end? 

The appetite for the pleasure of more refined sugar may eventually lead to certain types of diabetes. Perhaps unaware that it's the sugar consumption which has ultimately brought about the loss of sight or surgical removal of a limb, vast quantities of pleasant, refined sugar may continue to be consumed. 

Alcohol is a solvent. There may be an increase in awareness of the fact that excessive alcohol consumption, in effect, dissolves the liver. Nevertheless, even this often does not bring about a change in its rate of consumption when cirrhosis sets in. One noted football celebrity continued with his pleasure of alcohol even after having a replacement liver. 

In these types of individual, and in others, there is an indication that a process of self-examination has been lacking. In conditions which creep up slowly, there is a tendency to continue in the same old way. 

Pain does raise awareness. In the case of a tumour development in my body, after its surgical removal, I was considering an alternative approach to chemotherapy, but didn't really have any idea what course it would take. My family urged me to go with chemo. I feel now that it was the right choice. Not because it was the best option for directly healing the body, but because I needed all the pain of so-called 'side-effects', including hearing loss, in order to provide the motivation and strict adherence to the protocol of my choice. I doubt that without it I would have had as much resolve.

 

The cultivation of seeing positives in every negative is a worthwhile pursuit. Not paying lip service to an idea, but looking and feeling deeply into oneself, and seeing the value that's present in every experience.

Looking back at my decision for either the devil or the deep blue sea, I initially chose chemo, the devil. When we're truly honest with ourselves, even what is generally regarded as a mistake will ultimately have been proven necessary.

Conversation on Creation V Evolution group.

This is just a snippet from an ongoing conversation I had
with a scientist on the creation/evolution Yahoo! group.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks Eric,

You’ve answered many of my questions.

Snipping again ...and popping on down

to a couple more observations ...

<snipped>

J:
>> But we must always bear in mind
>> that for every benefit effected by a drug
>> there are countering, often copious, negative properties
>> ... euphemistically termed `side-effects.' >>

E:
>In the industry we refer to them as "adverse events" or "AEs" -which is
>not a euphamism at all. And no, certainly not all drugs have AEs. I
>mean, just look at insulin for a diabetic. What are the negative
>effects of proper doses of insulin for the person who would die without
>it?

J:
It’s true isn’t it, that it only takes

one contrary fact to refute an argument?

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/insulin/insulin-side-effects.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<snipped>
J:

>> With regard to physical health it is better to focus
>> on the psyche and its effect on the bio-magnetic field
>> ... which is the force that lays down and influences
>> the chemistry of the human body.
>>

E:

> Actually, this is not at all true.

J:

I don’t feel that the data is yet available

to help us truthfully make such a negation.

Or perhaps you can enlighten me?

For example, under a microscope, when we see

the nerve end burrowing through the flesh of the developing foetus,

how does it know the direction in which it should burrow

if there is not already a bio-field pattern laid down,

the gradient of which it is following?

The same with injuries, how does the

nerve, vein, artery and other tissue reknit itself almost perfectly

when there is no apparent direction laid down

along which to follow?

If it were DNA, then what is the mechanism used

by the DNA in each cell to orient its multiplication

in line with the pattern of rest of the body?

The answers to these questions are casually overlooked

.... aren’t they?

Or do you have an answer to refute my premise?

Isn’t it as if there is a subtle body pattern that is being followed

... a phantom image that guides the process?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

J:

>> Where a symptom, an isolated symptom, is attacked
>> by a drug which is known to cause that symptom to disappear,
>> it has not caused the cause of the symptom to disappear,
>> it has caused that symptom to regress, and the energy
>> that was then appearing spreads through the body
>> and appears as other symptoms.
>>

E:

>Perhaps you might think of one or two maladies where this sort of thing
>is the case, but for the vast majority I'd say this is simply untrue.
>That is not to say that some treatments don't have unintended
>consequences perhaps on other organ systems, but it does not work how
>you assert, with the energy of the repressed sumptom moving off to
>create a problem elsewhere.

J:

Then it could be that a paradigm shift is required

in order to at least affirm it as a possibility.
Hey, Ho.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

J:

>> The first disease is then said to be cured,
>> and the patient then has something else.
>> And this is simply the holistic balancing fact
>> that if you stress one and you beat it,
>> a revolution goes through the whole being
>> and alters the relation of all the parts.
>
>> To put it another way,
>> drugs are actually energy packets,
>> so they have their own frequencies.
>> It is a well known fact whether in music or in physics
>> that if you introduce a tone of a certain frequency
>> into the midst of some other tones,
>> ALL the tones have to adjust to this newly introduced tone,
>> and some of them condense and some of them disperse.
>> When you insert a drug into a patient,
>> that dispenses its own resonance,
>> it dispenses the bio-chemical energies causing the symptoms
>> so that the patient becomes symptom-free
>> ... but the basic problem still remains.

E:

>Nope. Complete bunk. It doesn't work that way. If you really want to
>minimize adverse event and unintended consequences of medicines and
>other treatments it would be best to actually seek to understand how the
>body really works rather than rely on this New Agey pseudoscientific
>malarkey, John.

J:

Chuckles ... thanks for the synopsis.

Such a view gives man the status of a mere machine

... a view diametrically opposed to that of Planck’s.

Perhaps we’ll label him New Age also

... wicked grins

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<snipped>

J:

>> Ah, yes, the X Files, "The truth is out there".
>> I don't believe that the truth really is out there. >>

E:
>Sad. Then you have resigned yourself to going through life believing in
>and relying on falshoods? That's such a shame. I can't think of a
>bigger waste of one's time here on Earth.

J:

Then you’re not thinking hard enough

:)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

J:

>> Spiritual handbooks written thousands of years ago
>> like the Tao Teh King, The Secret of The Golden Flower,
>> the Bhagavad Gita, and The Gospel of John
>> exhibit an understanding of the world
>> that Max Planck gives voice to in the quotes I offered.
>> Wisdom is within,
>> "the kingdom is within".
> >

E:

>All these spiritual and philosophical works are wonderful and
>fascinating and I am a big proponent of contemplation, meditation and
>self-examination. BUT, if you don't start with some truths, some
>examination and observations of the world around you then all this
>contemplation and working out of meanings will NOT lead to anything like
>wisdom. All this philosophy, meditation and thinking are forms of
>processing, informational and emotional processing. You've got to have
>the raw materials to process if you want to generate anything of
>substance and worth.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~





J:

>> As a race, we may know more and more.
>> As individuals dedicated to a scientific particular,
>> we learn more and more about less and less.

E:

>Yes. That is another way of saying that our knowledge is becoming more
>and more detailed. And then every now and then sweeping correlations
>and syntheses are made across broad fields of inquiry... and the process
>is continually repeated.

J:

That’s the trick: first we analyse, then we synthesise.

We use the left side of the brain to analyse,

and the right hand to synthesise.

http://www.perthnow.com.au/fun-games/left-brain-vs-right-brain/story-e6frg46u-1111114517613

I see the dancer turning clockwise

(seen from above)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

J:

>> To gain `understanding', we must `stand under'
>> and fully appreciate all that we see, feel and do,
>> ... whatever our life's direction.
>>

E:

> OK, but note here that you include "see." This is observation;
> information gathering; collecting of real-world data. That is one of
> the key steps to science, to unveiling the truth 'out there'- which you
> above say you don't even believe in...

J:
I’m right there wit’ ya bro’.

Remembering that sight is a superficial experience.

But if we want to become absolutely conscious

we must become more and more sensitive in the feeling.

It is no good trying to do it by being sensitive

in the logical department only,

because that is merely a matter of external formal equivalence.

Remember that when your eye registers a message

... it might look at a triangle, and that triangle

goes in the back of the eye and meets another

picture of a triangle engrammed on the brain.

If that triangle corresponds with the one outside exactly,

that kind of equivalence is the one that we would call

the equivalence of the rational mind,

basing its conclusions on empirical data.

And that itself is not very, very sensitive

compared with the feeling centre, properly educated.

Don’t forget the appreciation of what we feel and do, Eric.

Without that we are not living life fully.

By ‘feeling’ I mean feeling sensitivity ... sentience.

Perhaps then we can agree that there are three phases of development?

(1) The sense organ stimulus;

The sense-organ stimulus gives the gross,

physically identified sentience

a form to which a reaction is required ... or not.

(2) Language, built with words;

Language substitutes words for sense-organ stimuli.

(3) The symbol.

Symbol allows transcendence of both present sense-organ stimulus

and of the established referential value of words,

with ‘value’ here meaning ‘indicator-power’.

Symbols enrich our conception of the real.

They allow us to make an absolute beginning,

a fresh start freed from all earlier starts.

They extend infinitely man's potentialities

of thought, aesthetic appreciation and action. 

It may be that you are still busy

in the first two phases of evolutionary development.

And that’s perfect too.

Good to know you Eric.

You really are exhibiting a wonderful amount of patience.

Love, john

***