About the sexual activity of St. Augustine, the psychedelic that the human body produces by itself, and the divine nature of orgasm in women.
In the triad of "sex-drugs-religion", only the latter conflicts with its neighbors, and for a long time, fanatically and not without perversions. All world confessions restrict us in walking along other, except for faith, paths to highs. Or it is completely forbidden to meddle on them, even if these are the paths of harmless pleasure and sincere groans for the glory of the Almighty. Prohibitions are imposed for the following reasons: it is sinful, from the Devil, far from the purity of consciousness and experience of unity with God (underline the principle for each religion in red). However, neurobiology says: "the hell was swimming there." And she is not the only one.
Oh, close your pale legs, fear god
Everything is roughly clear with the ban on drugs. Start a respectable church-going accountant to play heroin, very soon he will creep into the brothel to lay the employer's papers, the family icon and the kidney of his wife. But if he looks at the cross under the starched collar in time, the temptation to get upright may disappear. So, religion acts as an ideal abbot, saving the soul of an accountant, and at the same time of society as a whole, from wandering around pawnshops and dubious Tor links. But why did sex go wrong?
Unlike drugs, the sexual sphere is not totally prohibited and will never fall into this category.
One of the modern scientific theories even calls sex the true cause of the emergence of religion.
“Be fruitful and multiply”, as the first commandment of the Torah says, for that is why everything was started. Following this logic, the initial strategic goal of any religion is to make a man and a woman love each other under the flags of reproductive function and without any perversion. To do this, it was enough to invent ethics and quality porn. However, starting with the folklore of various cults, that is, the stage preceding the compilation of the scriptures, religion really took the topic of sexuality seriously. And she came up not empty-handed, but armed with dogmatism.
The Abrahamic religions still have the greatest obsession to this day. Taken together, they spawned an incredible amount of absurd recommendations.
Catholicism at one time regulated the permissible postures (no blow job, no doggy style, not even standing). Judaism forces women after the end of critical days and men after ejaculation to perform the ritual of ablution in the mikvah (and also, what is the context, those who touched the dead are sick with gonorrhea, etc.). A Muslim, having a harem of concubines, cannot afford group sex, even if everyone is “for” and loves each other more than life. You don't even need to mention homosexuality.
On the one hand, most religions glorify sex as a sacred act, because life is sacred and must go on. Take, for example, the fact that one of the canonical books of the Bible - the Song of Songs - is sustained in an erotic genre and tells about the joy of marriage. On the other hand, the sheer amount of taboos and detailed absurdity reinforces the sex-guilt and sex-shame associations. There is some delightful contradiction in this desire to sit on both chairs.
If we equate religion with the concept of church, then it is easily removed: the institution seeks to preserve its power, and the potential of the mind freed from dogmas would be enough to overthrow this power. But we know that religious practice is not reduced either to the regulation of society, or to moral education, and the category of the divine exists even without the commentary of the Pope.
In the field of theory, the discrepancy can also be eliminated, but in a terribly perverse and even more absurd way: by separating the divine nature of man and his sinful flesh.
In this case, life-giving sex becomes a connecting link. And if, for example, unorthodox Judaism calls it a sacred portal between body and spirit, then most denominations, especially Christianity, view sex as a functional, but so-so way to prolong the life of the mind. The most powerful argument in this war is the concept of the Fall.
In the early days, the story of Adam and Eve was not interpreted as the fall of woman and man. Moreover, antiquity, with its cult of flesh, festivities and poetry of both, was ashamed of the legend about the magic snake and two naked asexuals and interpreted it allegorically. Eden - as an ideal state of mind, the world of Platonic ideas. Exile is like the loss of the golden age, the integrity of the personality, Nabokov's childhood of the Earth. The legend of the lost paradise was read in any way, but not literally - as a punishment for lust. So it was until the end of the 4th century, until the star of Aurelius Augustine of Ipponis lit up in the theological-literary sky.
Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt, in a promising article titled "How St. Augustine Invented Sex," analyzes in detail how and why a Christian theologian creates the concept of the Fall.
An extremely sexually active man, Augustine, already in adulthood, adopts Christianity and vows to monasticism. As an aspiring philosopher writer, he also decides to substantiate effectively and convincingly why anyone might want to give up orgasm in the name of God.
To do this, he unfolds the Book of Genesis 180 degrees and interprets the expulsion from Eden as a reliable event, and therefore real retribution for a very specific action. Thus, he radically changes the traditional view of a number of beautiful concepts: he interprets passion as lust, the body as branded evil, and sex for pleasure as a morally unacceptable occupation. The interpretation took root, grasped the culture and upbringing like a tick, and to this day causes a lot of neuroses, as well as the image of the punishing God as a whole.
But we are interested in the root cause of this story. Blessed Augustine loved sex no less than God, so what exactly made him give up bodily pleasure, and even forever and ever pinned to him the banner of universal human sin?
The Confession, the work of St. Augustine's entire life, clearly marks the turning point, where the author moves from a biographical opus to a philosophical and theological treatise. This is an episode of dialogue between Augustine and his mother with the following central thought: no bodily pleasure can compare with the bliss of a saint. The conversation ends with what might be termed a "divine coming." According to the "Confession", the hearts of the son and mother ascended to the heavenly spheres and at the same time to the depths of their own souls, from where they made a leap into eternity, where there is neither time nor space. Thus, Saint Augustine, first theoretically and then practically, made sure that the "divine coming" would be more abrupt than sex.
Since bodily pleasures are too strong a temptation, and lust cannot be controlled, all this should be taken to hell in order to make it easier for believers on their way. What Saint Augustine did, equating sex, God's main rival, with the devil's providence. That is, on the one hand, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and on the other, all means are good in the competition.
Including cooperation.
Many Eastern teachings have a different view of sexuality. Hinduism includes kama in one of the four purusharthas, that is, the main goals of human life (albeit on the terms of not the most sublime).
Taoism views a woman as a source of endless energy that increases with each orgasm and opens the way to immortality, the highest goal of the Tao warrior. Tantrists have completely turned on the disclosure of the Divine Nature through sexuality. These and many other teachings are united by the same understanding: corporeality is a portal to a more subtle world, and orgasm is equivalent to a mystical experience.
Oh, open your pale legs, fear the brain
“Spirituality, sexuality and the brain are linked together by passion. Lovers have a mystical experience, ” says Daniel J. Amen, a neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist who pioneered the use of CT of the brain in psychiatry. He states this during a roundtable discussion, where a Harvard psychiatrist and four esoteric specialists (among whom were a Catholic, a Jew and a representative of Islam) spoke in the same spirit. With some humor, he adds that "lovers often use the same means as religious leaders to induce a state of romantic ecstasy: music, candles, poetry and unity." This is how Daniel J. Amen summarizes the fascinating thesis of "sexual ecstasy is analogous to the divine", which he put forward on the basis of neurobiological research in this area.
In support of the theory, Amen cites data on scientific studies of the right hemisphere of the brain, in particular, the temporal lobe, which many scientists associate with spiritual experiences. Its unofficial scientific name is "God's zone".
For example, neuroscientist and natural philosopher Michael Persinger believes that the ability to experience the experience of oneness with the divine originated in the evolution of the brain. Moreover, it also has a specific neurotransmitter - the temporal lobe transients (natural electrical bursts in the temporal lobe). In the course of Persinger's experiments, it turned out that when the desired area is stimulated by a low voltage impulse, its owner experiences a religious revelation: he feels union with God or his actual presence nearby.
Daniel J. Amen also refers to the research of Finnish scientists, who recorded a more spectacular and indicative result for us. According to their conclusions, the outer side of the right temporal lobe begins to be active not only at the moment of spiritual experience or under the influence of low-frequency tension - it wakes up at the moment of orgasm in women. Moreover, all other areas of the brain in admiration reduce their own activity, only the "zone of God" is seriously plowing.
Thus, and divine ecstasy from the point of view of our brain are phenomena of the same order (at least in women).
The connection between mysticism and orgasm begins to strengthen even at the preparatory stage - at the moment of foreplay. Modern neuroscientists, who have studied the brain inside and out, agree that lust is not an ordinary feeling. We know where and how fear, anger or joy are formed - all of them, in one way or another, involve the amygdala, which is responsible for specific emotions. At the moment of excitation, impulses pass to another part of the brain - the ventral striatum. In other words, to the “reward center”, which is activated both during orgasm and at the moment of gastronomic pleasure. Falling in love, as far as it can be tracked with the help of scientific instruments, materializes in the dorsal striatum - a region of the brain that works especially actively among experienced junkies.
The striatum, in both its forms, is part of a larger part of the brain, the basal ganglia, associated with the processing of movement, feeling, and pleasure. Dopamine is one of the main stimulants in this area. Inseparable ties with this cheerful neurotransmitter are just "butterflies in the stomach" or, more precisely, "butterflies in the dorsal striatum", as well as cocaine.
Interestingly, during studies of the effects of cocaine, the drug is treated with radioactive isotopes to track which part of the brain is activated under its influence. Only one area is highlighted on the screen - the basal ganglia.
And now we will make the reverse move according to the principle "a needle in an egg, an egg in a duck, a duck in a hare." The basal ganglia include the striatum, which, as we mentioned, is divided into dorsal and ventral parts. The latter contains the nucleus accumbens, or "pleasure center". It is here that the circle "lust - drugs - religious experience" is closed.
A group of scientists from the University of Utah conducted a study with 19 followers of the Mormon Church (in the United States - the fourth largest). During the experiment, believers initiated a religious experience by listening to mission speeches, reading passages of scriptures, watching films on biblical subjects, etc. pacification and a feeling of warmth). The fMRI imaging showed that at the moment of the greatest inspiration (the subjects pressed a special button), the area of the nucleus accumbens was also activated.
Thus, our brain registers orgasm, drug use, and religious feelings in a similar way. However, the mystical experience described by Saint Augustine (and not by him alone) has a much stronger effect than simple ecstasy or pacification.
To use Maslow's terminology, we are talking about “peak experience”.
This is how the American psychologist defined the phenomena associated with the feeling of the fullness of existence, universal unity and the consciousness of "absolute truth." According to Maslow, the leitmotif of all spiritual scriptures is a metaphorical description of such conditions, created by those who experienced them, for those who were not lucky. Peak experiences, firstly, are more often experienced by people who have successfully realized their personal potential, secondly, such an experience can radically change the perception of any person, and, thirdly, it introduces into a state of altered consciousness. As you can imagine, the vocabulary approaches the category of "drugs as a self-discovery experience." Indeed, the main activator of "peak states" are psychedelics, which has been repeatedly confirmed by scientists and creative personalities from all over the world. In addition, it is known Large-scale scientific research in this area experienced a boom in the 50s, then smoothly rolled into turmoil due to the hysteria of the rock 'n' roll 60s and briefly went into oblivion. Interest in the gigantic potential of psychedelics has gained a renaissance already in our time with the development of neurosciences, which appeared thanks to these psychoactive substances. But of the entire spectrum of substances, we are only interested in one, the main thing in this Pink-Floyd parade - dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.
He earned the title of the main DMT as the only psychedelic that the human body produces on its own (by the way, we also produce other "drugs" - for example, endorphin, which is close to morphine).
No wonder Pelevin said: "the human body will itself develop all the necessary chemistry." Geographically, the magic factory is located in the very center of the brain - in the pineal gland (also known as the pineal gland, or pineal gland). It is interesting that it is this part that many mystical and religious teachings describe as the main one for self-knowledge. In particular, the Eastern Ayurvedic traditions place the highest chakra here, and the Kabbalistic one - Keter, the perfect center of human development.
Judging by the data of legalized research on humans, the DTM-trip (that is, an artificial increase in the amount of production of a molecule by the body) is a reflection of the experience of St. Augustine with references to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and out-of-body travels of yogis of the major league. Unsurprisingly, (at the suggestion of Rick Strassman, MD) DMT came to be called the "spirit molecule." Still Descartes called the epiphysis "the receptacle of the soul."
Thus, in order to know God, the Universe and oneself, one will either have to go into serious spiritual practice, or wait for the final results of psychedelic research with subsequent legalization and reach the nearest pharmacy (somewhere in the near future, where there is neither time nor space). As well as instead of serving in church, you can go to bed with a hot partner, and vice versa. Or to a huckster, if someone is ready to exchange will, health and well-being for addiction and empty pockets. The main thing is, in any of these layouts, first perform an important sacred-narcotic-sexual ritual: allow yourself to think wider.
In the triad of "sex-drugs-religion", only the latter conflicts with its neighbors, and for a long time, fanatically and not without perversions. All world confessions restrict us in walking along other, except for faith, paths to highs. Or it is completely forbidden to meddle on them, even if these are the paths of harmless pleasure and sincere groans for the glory of the Almighty. Prohibitions are imposed for the following reasons: it is sinful, from the Devil, far from the purity of consciousness and experience of unity with God (underline the principle for each religion in red). However, neurobiology says: "the hell was swimming there." And she is not the only one.
Oh, close your pale legs, fear god
Everything is roughly clear with the ban on drugs. Start a respectable church-going accountant to play heroin, very soon he will creep into the brothel to lay the employer's papers, the family icon and the kidney of his wife. But if he looks at the cross under the starched collar in time, the temptation to get upright may disappear. So, religion acts as an ideal abbot, saving the soul of an accountant, and at the same time of society as a whole, from wandering around pawnshops and dubious Tor links. But why did sex go wrong?
Unlike drugs, the sexual sphere is not totally prohibited and will never fall into this category.
One of the modern scientific theories even calls sex the true cause of the emergence of religion.
“Be fruitful and multiply”, as the first commandment of the Torah says, for that is why everything was started. Following this logic, the initial strategic goal of any religion is to make a man and a woman love each other under the flags of reproductive function and without any perversion. To do this, it was enough to invent ethics and quality porn. However, starting with the folklore of various cults, that is, the stage preceding the compilation of the scriptures, religion really took the topic of sexuality seriously. And she came up not empty-handed, but armed with dogmatism.
The Abrahamic religions still have the greatest obsession to this day. Taken together, they spawned an incredible amount of absurd recommendations.
Catholicism at one time regulated the permissible postures (no blow job, no doggy style, not even standing). Judaism forces women after the end of critical days and men after ejaculation to perform the ritual of ablution in the mikvah (and also, what is the context, those who touched the dead are sick with gonorrhea, etc.). A Muslim, having a harem of concubines, cannot afford group sex, even if everyone is “for” and loves each other more than life. You don't even need to mention homosexuality.
On the one hand, most religions glorify sex as a sacred act, because life is sacred and must go on. Take, for example, the fact that one of the canonical books of the Bible - the Song of Songs - is sustained in an erotic genre and tells about the joy of marriage. On the other hand, the sheer amount of taboos and detailed absurdity reinforces the sex-guilt and sex-shame associations. There is some delightful contradiction in this desire to sit on both chairs.
If we equate religion with the concept of church, then it is easily removed: the institution seeks to preserve its power, and the potential of the mind freed from dogmas would be enough to overthrow this power. But we know that religious practice is not reduced either to the regulation of society, or to moral education, and the category of the divine exists even without the commentary of the Pope.
In the field of theory, the discrepancy can also be eliminated, but in a terribly perverse and even more absurd way: by separating the divine nature of man and his sinful flesh.
In this case, life-giving sex becomes a connecting link. And if, for example, unorthodox Judaism calls it a sacred portal between body and spirit, then most denominations, especially Christianity, view sex as a functional, but so-so way to prolong the life of the mind. The most powerful argument in this war is the concept of the Fall.
In the early days, the story of Adam and Eve was not interpreted as the fall of woman and man. Moreover, antiquity, with its cult of flesh, festivities and poetry of both, was ashamed of the legend about the magic snake and two naked asexuals and interpreted it allegorically. Eden - as an ideal state of mind, the world of Platonic ideas. Exile is like the loss of the golden age, the integrity of the personality, Nabokov's childhood of the Earth. The legend of the lost paradise was read in any way, but not literally - as a punishment for lust. So it was until the end of the 4th century, until the star of Aurelius Augustine of Ipponis lit up in the theological-literary sky.
Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt, in a promising article titled "How St. Augustine Invented Sex," analyzes in detail how and why a Christian theologian creates the concept of the Fall.
An extremely sexually active man, Augustine, already in adulthood, adopts Christianity and vows to monasticism. As an aspiring philosopher writer, he also decides to substantiate effectively and convincingly why anyone might want to give up orgasm in the name of God.
To do this, he unfolds the Book of Genesis 180 degrees and interprets the expulsion from Eden as a reliable event, and therefore real retribution for a very specific action. Thus, he radically changes the traditional view of a number of beautiful concepts: he interprets passion as lust, the body as branded evil, and sex for pleasure as a morally unacceptable occupation. The interpretation took root, grasped the culture and upbringing like a tick, and to this day causes a lot of neuroses, as well as the image of the punishing God as a whole.
But we are interested in the root cause of this story. Blessed Augustine loved sex no less than God, so what exactly made him give up bodily pleasure, and even forever and ever pinned to him the banner of universal human sin?
The Confession, the work of St. Augustine's entire life, clearly marks the turning point, where the author moves from a biographical opus to a philosophical and theological treatise. This is an episode of dialogue between Augustine and his mother with the following central thought: no bodily pleasure can compare with the bliss of a saint. The conversation ends with what might be termed a "divine coming." According to the "Confession", the hearts of the son and mother ascended to the heavenly spheres and at the same time to the depths of their own souls, from where they made a leap into eternity, where there is neither time nor space. Thus, Saint Augustine, first theoretically and then practically, made sure that the "divine coming" would be more abrupt than sex.
Since bodily pleasures are too strong a temptation, and lust cannot be controlled, all this should be taken to hell in order to make it easier for believers on their way. What Saint Augustine did, equating sex, God's main rival, with the devil's providence. That is, on the one hand, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and on the other, all means are good in the competition.
Including cooperation.
Many Eastern teachings have a different view of sexuality. Hinduism includes kama in one of the four purusharthas, that is, the main goals of human life (albeit on the terms of not the most sublime).
Taoism views a woman as a source of endless energy that increases with each orgasm and opens the way to immortality, the highest goal of the Tao warrior. Tantrists have completely turned on the disclosure of the Divine Nature through sexuality. These and many other teachings are united by the same understanding: corporeality is a portal to a more subtle world, and orgasm is equivalent to a mystical experience.
Oh, open your pale legs, fear the brain
“Spirituality, sexuality and the brain are linked together by passion. Lovers have a mystical experience, ” says Daniel J. Amen, a neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist who pioneered the use of CT of the brain in psychiatry. He states this during a roundtable discussion, where a Harvard psychiatrist and four esoteric specialists (among whom were a Catholic, a Jew and a representative of Islam) spoke in the same spirit. With some humor, he adds that "lovers often use the same means as religious leaders to induce a state of romantic ecstasy: music, candles, poetry and unity." This is how Daniel J. Amen summarizes the fascinating thesis of "sexual ecstasy is analogous to the divine", which he put forward on the basis of neurobiological research in this area.
In support of the theory, Amen cites data on scientific studies of the right hemisphere of the brain, in particular, the temporal lobe, which many scientists associate with spiritual experiences. Its unofficial scientific name is "God's zone".
For example, neuroscientist and natural philosopher Michael Persinger believes that the ability to experience the experience of oneness with the divine originated in the evolution of the brain. Moreover, it also has a specific neurotransmitter - the temporal lobe transients (natural electrical bursts in the temporal lobe). In the course of Persinger's experiments, it turned out that when the desired area is stimulated by a low voltage impulse, its owner experiences a religious revelation: he feels union with God or his actual presence nearby.
Daniel J. Amen also refers to the research of Finnish scientists, who recorded a more spectacular and indicative result for us. According to their conclusions, the outer side of the right temporal lobe begins to be active not only at the moment of spiritual experience or under the influence of low-frequency tension - it wakes up at the moment of orgasm in women. Moreover, all other areas of the brain in admiration reduce their own activity, only the "zone of God" is seriously plowing.
Thus, and divine ecstasy from the point of view of our brain are phenomena of the same order (at least in women).
The connection between mysticism and orgasm begins to strengthen even at the preparatory stage - at the moment of foreplay. Modern neuroscientists, who have studied the brain inside and out, agree that lust is not an ordinary feeling. We know where and how fear, anger or joy are formed - all of them, in one way or another, involve the amygdala, which is responsible for specific emotions. At the moment of excitation, impulses pass to another part of the brain - the ventral striatum. In other words, to the “reward center”, which is activated both during orgasm and at the moment of gastronomic pleasure. Falling in love, as far as it can be tracked with the help of scientific instruments, materializes in the dorsal striatum - a region of the brain that works especially actively among experienced junkies.
The striatum, in both its forms, is part of a larger part of the brain, the basal ganglia, associated with the processing of movement, feeling, and pleasure. Dopamine is one of the main stimulants in this area. Inseparable ties with this cheerful neurotransmitter are just "butterflies in the stomach" or, more precisely, "butterflies in the dorsal striatum", as well as cocaine.
Interestingly, during studies of the effects of cocaine, the drug is treated with radioactive isotopes to track which part of the brain is activated under its influence. Only one area is highlighted on the screen - the basal ganglia.
And now we will make the reverse move according to the principle "a needle in an egg, an egg in a duck, a duck in a hare." The basal ganglia include the striatum, which, as we mentioned, is divided into dorsal and ventral parts. The latter contains the nucleus accumbens, or "pleasure center". It is here that the circle "lust - drugs - religious experience" is closed.
A group of scientists from the University of Utah conducted a study with 19 followers of the Mormon Church (in the United States - the fourth largest). During the experiment, believers initiated a religious experience by listening to mission speeches, reading passages of scriptures, watching films on biblical subjects, etc. pacification and a feeling of warmth). The fMRI imaging showed that at the moment of the greatest inspiration (the subjects pressed a special button), the area of the nucleus accumbens was also activated.
Thus, our brain registers orgasm, drug use, and religious feelings in a similar way. However, the mystical experience described by Saint Augustine (and not by him alone) has a much stronger effect than simple ecstasy or pacification.
To use Maslow's terminology, we are talking about “peak experience”.
This is how the American psychologist defined the phenomena associated with the feeling of the fullness of existence, universal unity and the consciousness of "absolute truth." According to Maslow, the leitmotif of all spiritual scriptures is a metaphorical description of such conditions, created by those who experienced them, for those who were not lucky. Peak experiences, firstly, are more often experienced by people who have successfully realized their personal potential, secondly, such an experience can radically change the perception of any person, and, thirdly, it introduces into a state of altered consciousness. As you can imagine, the vocabulary approaches the category of "drugs as a self-discovery experience." Indeed, the main activator of "peak states" are psychedelics, which has been repeatedly confirmed by scientists and creative personalities from all over the world. In addition, it is known Large-scale scientific research in this area experienced a boom in the 50s, then smoothly rolled into turmoil due to the hysteria of the rock 'n' roll 60s and briefly went into oblivion. Interest in the gigantic potential of psychedelics has gained a renaissance already in our time with the development of neurosciences, which appeared thanks to these psychoactive substances. But of the entire spectrum of substances, we are only interested in one, the main thing in this Pink-Floyd parade - dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.
He earned the title of the main DMT as the only psychedelic that the human body produces on its own (by the way, we also produce other "drugs" - for example, endorphin, which is close to morphine).
No wonder Pelevin said: "the human body will itself develop all the necessary chemistry." Geographically, the magic factory is located in the very center of the brain - in the pineal gland (also known as the pineal gland, or pineal gland). It is interesting that it is this part that many mystical and religious teachings describe as the main one for self-knowledge. In particular, the Eastern Ayurvedic traditions place the highest chakra here, and the Kabbalistic one - Keter, the perfect center of human development.
Judging by the data of legalized research on humans, the DTM-trip (that is, an artificial increase in the amount of production of a molecule by the body) is a reflection of the experience of St. Augustine with references to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and out-of-body travels of yogis of the major league. Unsurprisingly, (at the suggestion of Rick Strassman, MD) DMT came to be called the "spirit molecule." Still Descartes called the epiphysis "the receptacle of the soul."
Thus, in order to know God, the Universe and oneself, one will either have to go into serious spiritual practice, or wait for the final results of psychedelic research with subsequent legalization and reach the nearest pharmacy (somewhere in the near future, where there is neither time nor space). As well as instead of serving in church, you can go to bed with a hot partner, and vice versa. Or to a huckster, if someone is ready to exchange will, health and well-being for addiction and empty pockets. The main thing is, in any of these layouts, first perform an important sacred-narcotic-sexual ritual: allow yourself to think wider.
God is something that integrates EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE (the entire universe) into the ONE integral SYSTEM, subject to certain LAWS. ?
