Where Did the Road Go?: Consciousness, Speculation and Seeing the Un-see-able.

An article to support the idea that there is more than ordinary reality:

Where Did the Road Go?: Consciousness, Speculation and Seeing the Un-see-able.

Patrick Harpur's Interview

Patrick Harpur, author of Daimonic Reality and several other wonderful books, is worth a listen. Here's a link to the show Where Did the Road Go?

Valley of the Skookum article

Jeffery Pritchett interviewed Sali Sheppard-Wolford in this article.
It's a good read.

Calculating Soul Connections

I'm working on a book called Calculating Soul Connections, which looks at how we are connected to one another. The book has lots of details about the life force and how our souls use it in our daily lives.

In the book, the soul is described as having seven parts, which are derived from the Hindu concept of chakras. Each chakra processes life force in its own way. In discussing the model with colleagues, we've found that it provides a valuable new vocabulary for discussing interpersonal relationships and new ways for looking at ourselves.

The first draft was finished a couple on months ago. After getting some reviews and suggestions for changes, it looks like I'll be revising it over the next month or two. Stay tuned for information about the changes.

Those who cannot remember the past...

are condemned to repeat it.

We all have heard this, and, of course, it is true.

It is also true that those who remember the past too well are condemned to go on fighting the same battles for 4000 years (or more).

When history is remembered with absolute accuracy, old injuries are never forgotten. We see this happening in the Middle East and Africa. Tribe one killed someone 300 years ago so tribe two needs to even the score. Somehow the injuries are remembered better than the revenge, so there is always a score to settle.

This seems to happen most often in places who use oral history (which is transmitted with great accuracy) and written history where there is one important holy book to record the history.

In Western cultures there is a tradition of rewriting history. When intelligent victors write the books, they can say things like, "Japan was once our enemy, but now they have changed and are our friend." It only takes a generation or so before this is the general belief. There are some real advantages to this. The biggest being that it is possible to switch alliances relatively quickly and create peaceful relations where there once was war.

So, when we look at history, it's good to remember it to avoid repeating it. We need the ability to remember. However, it's also good to be able to forget some of the past so that memories of old injuries don't also condemn us to repeat history.

Sheldrake's Sense of Being Stared At

Over the years I have been following Rupert Sheldrake's experiments on the sense of being stared at with interest. I asked him today about the following two questions:

1. Power of the stare: I was wondering if you had tried a variation on the classic staring experiment where the starer varies the strength of the stare. I would use the same basic experimental design, but change the two conditions. In both cases the sender would be looking at the receiver, but one case would be a "casual glance" and the other would be a "hard stare." The question I am trying to answer is how much we can change our morphic field with our intention. My casual experience is that there is an effect and I was hoping you might have tried this already or might be willing to have some of your experimenters try this variation of the design.

2. Results from delayed staring: I seem to remember that you tried a series of experiments with video tape where the stare came after the receiver had marked down his/her answers. I couldn't find the experiment when I went to look for it so I have remembered the time-delay part of the experiment incorrectly. What I remember is that you found significant abilities to detect the stare even thought he stare occurred later. My question is what happens when a second (third, etc.) starer looks at the receiver at an even later time. The implications of continued significance in the results would pose some interesting questions about causality. To assume that causality exists, one would have to propose that the answers of the receiver influenced the randomization of the looking/not looking at a later time. (If you haven't tried a delayed stare, I hope you will.)

It's All in the Wetware

From Recovering the Ancient Magic by Max Freedom Long p. 230:

"The physical brain is a better vehicle for thinking and remembering than is the vehicle of either a spirit unihipili or uhane — this, as proved repeatedly by the inferior memory or reason exhibited at seances."

We're all here for the wetware.. and maybe the bodies, too.

Three Kinds of Kahunas

Kahunas are the magic workers on the Hawaiian Islands. According to Max Freedom Long in Recovering the Ancient Magic there are three groups of kahunas.
1. Various kinds of mediums, few of which ever accomplish any results of value.
2. A group using the lesser magic. Better than psychologists in the West, but not all that great.
3. Those who can use the powers on the plane of realization (out of chakra seven, Sahasrara, in another terminology). These kahunas perform feats that are miracles to Western eyes.

Max Freedom Long's book can be accessed through my Amazon Associates link


You can get started learning about chakras here
Sacred Centers
Sahaja Yoga

Giving Back the Apple from the Garden of Eden

I wonder what God was thinking when He put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Then He said don't eat its fruit. Then He let the tempter convince his creation to try the fruit.

I think that's what He really wanted us to do, but He was kind enough to give us the choice.

And what have we done with the knowledge? As far as I can tell most of humanity spends its time trying to give the knowledge back. Since this is a life force group, I'll use one brief example from that area to explain.

The life force is a powerful tool that can be used for healing disease. In their own ways people, such as Edgar Cayce and Mary Baker Eddy, used the life force to heal. Sometimes they were successful and sometimes not, but the failures are what we remember, what we are taught in school, and what practitioners of healing arts using the life force are prosecuted (and persecuted) for. As a culture it seems like we do not want to know about the life force and are always trying to deny the knowledge.

Other cultures have similar attitudes. In Zen there is prohibition against using magic. One story tells of two Zen monks standing on the bank of a river. One of the monks takes off his hat, throws it in the water, steps in the hat and floats across the water. The other monk says something like, "If I had known you were that kind of person, I would have killed you." The second monk was perfectly capable of doing the same thing; he just chose not to. The choice of Zen is to not use the magic that comes from the life force, at least not in this way.

For now, I'll leave it to you to come up with reasons why.

Rupert Sheldrake and the Sense of Being Stared At

If you haven't read about Rupert Sheldrake's set of experiments on staring, you should. Here's a link to his site:
http://www.sheldrake.org/

I recently saw another attack on his experiments in Richard Shermer's column in the Scientific American. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00022BBF-C300-1353-830083414B7FFE9F

Many people are quick to point out that the experiments have been replicated many times -- just as scientific protocol demands. Objections have been taken into account and changes made in the experimental design, still with positive results. Here's one example,
http://dailygrail.com/node/2143

(You will notice in Sheldrake's response that he says he does not endorse the idea of a "universal life force." As you know, I think there is one. It does not change the quality of his evidence.)

What I haven't seen (I've probably missed it) is a discussion of the not-too-recent, failed attempts by skeptics to replicate the experiment, which was cited by Shermer. In that experiment they found a case where the results appeared no better than random. I don't find this too hard to believe. From that they concluded that the effect did not exist. I have two thoughts on this:

1. The trivial one is that non-replication is not the same as refutation. They got the result they wanted and quit.

2. The non-trivial one is that the skeptics assumed that every starer is equal and that finding one person who was not effective at staring is the same as proving no one can stare effectively. If you know about behaviorist training, imagine what the results would be if you intended to train a rat to press a bar when a light came on and the light was burned out. Failure... but success was within reach if only you replaced the light bulb.

Here's the real joke, in the skeptical replication experiment, the first sender got weak positive results and they replaced her for the second set of trials where they found no effect. Dim bulbs, all.

Defense of the status quo is a good thing. New ideas do need to prove themselves. I'll have more to say about how ideas come to be accepted later.

Martyrs and the 72 Virgins

A brief thought for all those who seek shortcuts to the pleasures of heaven. The Koran's promise of 72 virgins for martyrs of Islam may be true. What the leaders fail to tell the faithful is that, being heaven, the virgins remain virgins...forever.

For a more scholarly take on the issue you might look at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,631357,00.html

If you get bored, at least skip to the bottom three paragraphs. The thought of martyrs getting 72 raisins is amusing.