Review of Chris Carter's book, Science and Psychic Phenomena

The following is a review which I wrote of Chris Carter's Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics (2012), on the Amazon website:

Chris Carter provides extensive evidence for the existence of awareness and sensitivity beyond what can be explained by conventional models of consciousness and physics.

His discussion and analysis of this evidence (and of those who have created experiments to attempt to demonstrate the existence of psychic phenomena) is fascinating in and of itself. Equally important, however, is his careful analysis of those who have attempted to deny the possibility of the existence of such phenomena. He provides substantial evidence which illustrates that these skeptics often employ double standards and in many cases appear to be motivated by their desire to assert their skeptical dogmas rather than to provide an honest assessment of the data.

He also provides evidence showing that many of the most ferocious critics do not conduct actual experiments themselves but confine themselves to attacking the experiments of others. In the cases in which skeptics have conducted experiments, Chris Carter shows that their results appear to confirm the existence of psychic phenomena. Even these results, however, do not change their minds but are publicly proclaimed to have reinforced the evidence against such phenomena!

Thus Chris Carter's book is important for (at least) two reasons: it provides extensive calm and deliberate analysis of the evidence supporting the existence of powers that go beyond the conventional "scientific" paradigm, and it also provides a fascinating look at the extent to which some skeptics will go to deny such a possibility, even to the point of what can only be seen as either self-delusion or deliberate dishonesty. 

Chris Carter's book provides the results of experiment after experiment which provide evidence that the hasty dismissal of the possibility of any form of psychic awareness in humans or animals is premature and ill-advised.  

Some of the results appear to be strong enough to qualify as actual "proof" that some such abilities exist, but one need not go that far -- it is sufficient to simply say that more research is warranted and that (in light of all these results) keeping an open mind on this subject is absolutely justified.

Also documented in Chris Carter's book is the extent to which skeptics and "debunkers" will go to deny the possibility of any abilities that do not fit within their worldview.  Of course, the existence of such abilities, which are difficult if not impossible to reconcile with the very foundations of the modern materialistic paradigm, would require a complete retooling of those foundations.  

If such powers are proven to exist, it would in fact suggest that some of the core tenets of that materialistic paradigm would have to be jettisoned altogether (such as the assertion that consciousness is a completely physical phenomenon, merely a byproduct of chemical and electrical interactions within the physical organ of the brain -- an assertion that Chris Carter challenges quite thoroughly in this essay, which I have also referenced in previous blog posts).  

This possibility is quite threatening to the "skeptic debunker" worldview, as it opens up the possibility of consciousness that is separate from the physical world -- with implications for the possibility of life after death, etc. -- and ultimately upends the entire materialistic "faith."  The threatening nature of these implications to this worldview probably explains the vehemence of the reaction by the defenders of that worldview against evidence showing the possibility that psychic phenomena (or "psi" for short) could exist.

Chris provides evidence of this angry and often irrational backlash by those who don't want to admit that further research is warranted, and of the regular double-standard that is employed to discredit any results that might show psi activity (no matter how well-constructed the experiment) and to inflate the importance of any results that appear to deny the possibility (no matter how small the sample or how problematic the methodology).

One of the most powerful quotations that Chris cites in the book is from a retired US Army colonel who was involved in a US Army Research Institute-sponsored investigation of psi phenomena (called the "EHP study" for "Enhanced Human Performance") and who was disgusted by the double-standard that he saw employed.  The colonel's lengthy critique of the biased study ends with these words:

What, then, are we to conclude about the EHP report? ... First, it is significant that a determined group of psi debunkers could find no "smoking gun" and no "plausible alternative" to the psi hypothesis. . . . Second, we should worry about the fact that the highest scientific court in the land [the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences], operated in such a biased and heavy-handed manner, and that there seems to be no channel for appeal or review of their work.  What, we may ask, are they afraid of?  Is protecting scientific orthodoxy so vital that they must deny evidence and suppress contrary opinion?  94 [ellipses in original].

This is a question one could ask about many subjects (such as the evidence that the timeline of ancient human civilization is quite different from the conventional paradigm taught in history classes from kindergarten to the university, or that contact across the Atlantic and Pacific with the Americas started thousands of years before Columbus). It is certainly appropriate to ask it in regards to psychic phenomena, as the Army colonel quoted above did.  

It is also interesting to consider the possibility that the answer to the colonel's question ("What, we may ask, are they afraid of?") might be the same in all of these apparently different fields (the field of psychic phenomena and the field of ancient human history).  In other words, is it possible that the answer will show that human beings are "something more" than some people want us to know?  That we have capabilities that some people would prefer we never knew we had?  Is it possible that feeding people the materialist fiction seems to some to be preferable, even if it is not the truth?  Why would some people want so badly to tell the general public, "don't get any ideas about humanity being anything but what we tell you it is"?

Aside from these extremely important and interesting questions, the research presented in Chris Carter's book resonates strongly with some other news items explored in previous blog posts here, such as the recent report of two herds of elephants traveling a great distance to mourn the death of their friend and benefactor Lawrence Anthony.  How did they know he had died?  

The evidence that animals may have awareness that is difficult to explain from a strictly physical or materialistic framework also resonates with the work of Rupert Sheldrake, who wrote the foreword to Chris Carter's book, and whose experiments (and the reaction of the skeptics) are discussed in the book (the graph above is based upon the results of one widely-reported series of experiments involving a dog in Manchester, England named "Jaytee," who appeared to demonstrate sensitivity to the return of his owner, even when she was driven to random places miles away and given signals to return at random times, being driven home in a variety of unfamiliar modes of transportation).

In sum, Chris Carter's book is an extremely interesting and well-presented analysis of a topic of great importance.  Highly recommended.

Moving report of elephants mourning the passing of "Elephant Whisperer" Lawrence Anthony

Here is a beautiful and moving story about a procession of wild elephants who arrived from miles away to pay their respects upon the death of their friend and benefactor, Lawrence Anthony, remaining for two days in an elephant vigil.  Mr. Anthony's family said that these elephants had not been seen in the area of his house for about fifteen months prior to his sudden passing from a heart attack.

Mr. Anthony, the author along with Graham Spence of the Elephant Whisperer, as well as of  Babylon's Ark and the Last Rhinos, lived with his family in a remote rural compound in the Thula Thula game preserve in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.  He died of a heart attack on March 2 of this year; he was 61.

His family reported that after his passing, two herds arrived after a trek of about twelve hours and remained in the vicinity of the compound for two more days.  Here is a touching article about the incident from the Delight Makers website.  Here is a link to a photograph that the family posted.

Besides being incredibly moving and heart-rending, this story is extremely important.  First, this type of grieving behavior is by no means unknown among elephants -- many other examples exist (see stories here and here, for instance, as well as the well-publicized and moving story of Shirley and Jenny -- see video one and video two).  This in itself is important.  That wild elephants would display such grieving for a human who befriended them is also important.  There are also other stories of domestic animals displaying powerful grief and mourning after the loss of a human friend and companion, such as those discussed here.

Second and even more amazing is the implications of the report that two herds of elephants many miles away somehow perceiving the death of a human -- and traveling for twelve hours to his location.  There is no easy explanation for such perception that I know of being offered by the promoters of an absolutely materialistic worldview.  If these reports about the elephants perceiving the passing of their friend are true, they deal a powerful blow to the strictly materialistic views of consciousness and existence which are so virulently promoted by many defenders of "Science" (in denial of much evidence, it must be added).

The only real rebuttal that a strict materialist could offer for this moving story would be to deny it altogether, it would seem.  To do that, they would have to assert that in their time of mourning the family dreamed up this very improbable story -- an incredibly callous and cynical suggestion and one that would really be quite inhuman to suggest.  I do not know of anyone who is suggesting such a thing, but only point out that it is quite unlikely and would be really quite wrong to suggest it.  

It would also be ridiculous to suggest that the mysterious arrival after Mr. Anthony's death of the two elephant herds of Thula Thula after fifteen months in other parts of the park was mere coincidence, especially since they loitered in the area grieving, and especially in light of the many recorded instances of similar acts of grieving by other elephants stretching back for decades.

Here are two more articles (here and here) which describe the arrival of the elephants at the Anthony family compound.  

This moving episode suggests that the nature of consciousness is far different than we have been led to believe by the proponents of the absolute materialist worldview that has held sway in most of academia for a century.  It clearly has resonances with the work of Rupert Sheldrake, author of (among many other works) the book Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, and other unexplained powers of animals.  It also brings up the extremely important subject discussed by Chris Carter in his excellent essay "Does consciousness depend on the brain?" which was linked in this previous post.

Rest in peace Lawrence Anthony, and we send our sincere wishes for comfort to his grieving family, of all species.

Rupert Sheldrake and Morphic Resonance

Rupert Sheldrake is a trained and accomplished plant biologist and holds a doctorate in biochemistry.  He is most well-known, however, for his pursuit of a new explanation for evidence that  defied explanation by the conventional theories of evolution and materialism.  

The controversial new explanation that he offers burst onto the public stage in 1981 with the publication of his book entitled A New Science of Life: the Hypothesis of Causative Formation.  The senior editor of the journal Nature wrote an un-signed editorial about it, entitled "A book for burning?" and pronouncing its ideas "heresy."  Nature is an extremely prestigious and oft-cited forum, and the controversy that ensued effectively altered Dr. Sheldrake's career path for the rest of his life.  

The substance of that first book has since been republished and updated under a new title, Morphic Resonance: the Nature of Causative Formation.  The Greek word morph means "shape"or "form" -- we are familiar with it in many words, including "metamorphosis" ("change-form"), "anthropomorphic" ("man-form-like"), and even "morphine" (a name chosen to refer to the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus, whose name comes from the same root and means "shaper" -- he could take many forms). The term as Dr. Sheldrake uses it refers to the different forms and families of biological species, and his theory of "morphic resonance" proposes that the different forms arose from a process other than molecular changes at the genetic level (variation in form based on genetic molecular changes being the current orthodox and accepted view).  

Instead, he proposes that there are "fields" (energy fields or, more broadly, fields of some type of force) which he calls "morphogenetic fields" -- "form-generating" or "form-producing" fields -- which act to organize the biological material at all levels into their characteristic forms, and that these fields give rise to all the different families of the biological world.  In fact, going beyond this, he also proposes that morphogenetic fields act upon and organize inorganic matter.  However, in the field of biology, he points to evidence discovered by genetic researchers which suggests that the genes between different species differ much less radically than expected, suggesting the possibility that something else might be responsible for the divergence of widely different species with nearly-identical genes.  

He also points to research which has shown that physical traits engendered in adults of a type of water flea (genus Daphnia) are passed on to their offspring.  These fleas "develop large protective spines when predators are around; their offspring also have these spines, even when not exposed to predators" (Morphic Resonance, xxi).  Similarly, he points to research showing that the other members of a species of lab rats which previously learned to negotiate a maze appear to be able to negotiate that maze more readily than lab rats whose species did not learn that maze (4).  That is to say, lab rats who did not previously learn the maze but whose fellows from the same species did, appear to have statistically significantly better scores on a maze once some members of their species take the time to learn it!  The radical implications of such a proposal -- and the reason that it provokes such vitriolic reaction among defenders of orthodoxy -- become immediately clear.

The implications include the idea that these resonance fields can change over time, altering the morphogenetic forces that shape both organic and inorganic matter.  This radical suggestion upends the idea of "laws of physics" -- unchanging and unbreakable rules that existed from the beginning of the universe -- and replaces them with something that Dr. Sheldrake says are more akin to "habits" -- trends that can become ingrained and exert enormous influence, but which can be changed over time, and to which new "habits" can always be added!

His theory is also radical in that it suggests that forces external to the organism -- residing outside the structure of the cells and genes -- can mysteriously influence thought, learning, and morphology.  If rats in New York can somehow get the benefit of the learning achieved by rats in London, then the nature of learning and consciousness and the mind is very different from what we are generally led to believe.  This is the connection to Dr. Sheldrake's work with telepathy and other "psi" phenomena.  He believes that, just as the form-generating force may reside somewhere outside of the actual molecular structure and the genetic material, so too might consciousness and awareness and memory reside somehow outside of the matter of the brain (and points to research which appears to provide evidence to support such a theory).

This type of hypothesis would allow for the kinds of apparently telepathic connections between organisms which appear to defy the conventional theories -- including some of the more "mundane" (perhaps) manifestations such as "telephone telepathy" (when you are thinking about someone and they call -- an experience we all have quite frequently but usually chalk up to coincidence: could it be that in fact your consciousness received extrasensory notification from the caller before your phone even received their call?) and "pet telepathy" (dogs and cats who appear to know when their owner is coming home, even before they would expect to know based on one of the five physical senses).

Dr. Sheldrake's work appears to resonate with many subjects discussed elsewhere on this blog, such as the documented premonitions of disaster prior to the voyage of the Titanic, or the remarkable communication through dreams discussed in this previous post and related in this moving account by Daniel P. Reid.  There is also the extremely important theory proposed by Lucy Wyatt that astral travel or what we might term some form of shamanism was central to advanced ancient civilizations, including that of ancient Egypt.  The thread of shamanism clearly runs through ancient advanced civilizations, as we have discussed previously (in connection with the work of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill and of John Anthony West in Serpent in the Sky). The possibility that consciousness can transcend the physical brain, which Dr. Sheldrake examines, is clearly related to this thread as well.

I also find it extremely interesting that Dr. Sheldrake originally came to this theory in part through his observations of plant biology.  We have previously discussed at some length the work of another accomplished plant biologist, J.C. Willis, who -- like Dr. Sheldrake -- believed in some form of evolution to explain the diversity of species, but who found that the evidence does not support the dogma of neo-Darwinism.  Dr. Willis also came to the conclusion that there was some external and invisible principle at work in the universe which gives rise to all the different forms, but that it could not be the mechanism proposed by the neo-Darwinians.  He thought perhaps that this force might be chemical, or even possibly electrical, saying:

There might for example be (probably is) some physical or chemical law that at present we do not know, compelling genes or chromosomes to behave in a certain way. [Here there is a footnote, which reads: "My friend Dr C. Balfour Stewart suggests that it is probably electrical, as is probably the splitting of the chromosomes in reproduction."] page 46 of  The Course of Evolution (1940).

Dr. Sheldrake notes that Darwin himself appeared to accept the idea that acquired traits could be passed on to successive generations (so-called "Lamarckian inheritance," sometimes called "epigenetics" in its more modern form by researchers who admit that the evidence appears to point to some reason to suspect that something "over and above" strict genetic information may dictate inherited characteristics, the prefix epi- indicating "other than" or "over and above") (Morphic Resonance, xxi).  It is the position of neo-Darwinism, not original Darwinism, that rejects the inheritance of acquired characteristics. 

Finally, whether one accepts the theory that Dr. Sheldrake advances or not, his work also exposes another theme which runs through many posts on this blog and runs through the Mathisen Corollary book as well, and that is the withering criticism that is immediately leveled at anyone who dares to challenge the quasi-religious tenets of current scientific orthodoxy (note that his work was labeled as "heresy" when it was first published, as if the editors of Nature were protecting a sacred religion).  Other examples can be seen in previous posts, such as "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists" and "Read Dr. Daniel Botkin's article, 'Absolute certainty is not scientific.'"

The vehemence and viciousness of this certain reaction (and the damage that it can do to one's academic career) no doubt discourages a great many academics from examining areas that might otherwise be explored, and serves to choke off wide swathes of potentially fruitful fields of human inquiry.  This is very unfortunate -- even tragic.  It also makes the willingness of Dr. Sheldrake to publish his conclusions all the more courageous, and whether one agrees with his conclusions or not we should all be grateful for his perseverance.

Dr. Sheldrake's other books include:

• Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, and other unexplained powers of animals

• The Sense of Being Stared At, and other aspects of the extended mind

•  The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature

•  Seven Experiments that Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science

•  Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness

• The Rebirth of Nature: the Greening of Science and God 

and

• The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry

 

Titanic, premonitions, and the nature of consciousness

On this day one hundred years ago -- April 10, 1912 -- the RMS Titanic loaded the majority of her passengers and crew at Southampton, England, and departed on her maiden voyage.

Sailing from Southampton at 12 noon on Wednesday the 10th, the ship would then dock at Cherbourg, France (arriving four hours later that same Wednesday) where more passengers would board, and then left Cherbourg that evening for Cork Harbour in southern Ireland, arriving late in the morning of Thursday the 11th. There, some passengers who were only going as far as Queenstown (as the city was renamed in 1850 following a visit from Queen Victoria) departed the ship, about 130 other passengers and crew members boarded, and the ship departed on its ill-fated crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

As Titanic steamed out of Southampton on the 10th, an incident that at least one spectator found extremely ominous took place. As described in the outstanding 1998 book Unsinkable: The Full Story of RMS Titanic by Daniel Allen Butler:

The immense bulk of the liner displaced an incredible volume of water in the narrow channel, creating a powerful suction in her wake. As she approached the entrance to the channel, the Titanic drew abreast of the small American liner New York, which was moored side by side to the White Star's Oceanic. Both ships had been immobilized by the coal strike, and neither had steam up. As the Titanic passed, the suction of her wake drew the two smaller vessels away from the dock where they were tied up. The strain on the six lines mooring the New York to the Oceanic grew too great, and with a series of loud cracks they parted in rapid succession as the New York was pulled helplessly toward the Titanic. For a moment a nasty collision seemed inevitable as the stern of the New York swung to within three or four feet of the bigger liner's hull. Quick thinking on the part of Captain Gale of the tug Vulcan and prompt action on the Titanic's bridge by Captain Smith averted an accident. 41.

Mr. Butler recounts that one passenger, Renee Harris, the wife of an American theater producer, "suddenly found a stranger standing at her side, asking, 'Do you love life?'" When she answered in the affirmative, he told her, "That was a bad omen. Get off this ship at Cherbourg, if we get that far. That's what I'm going to do." According to Mrs. Harris, she laughed it off at the time, "but later she would recall that she never saw the man on board again" (Butler 42).

This was by no means the only such premonition of disaster recorded prior to the voyage of the doomed liner. While skeptics might dismiss this recollection of Mrs. Harris as something that only took on significance after the disaster, there are examples of foreboding letters that were posted to relatives prior to the ship's sailing which are more difficult to explain away.

For example, Major Archibald Butt, military aide to President William Howard Taft and also a personal friend of Theodore Roosevelt, wrote a last letter to his sister-in-law before the Titanic sailed, in which he said: "If the old ship goes down, you'll find my affairs in shipshape condition" (Butler 31).

There is also the letter sent by Chief Officer Wilde (the second-in-command of the ship after Captain E. J. Smith) to his sister which was posted at Queenstown, which said: "I still don't like this ship . . . I have a queer feeling about it" (Butler 52).

Even more remarkable is the story of a young fireman (one of the over three hundred crew members assigned to stoke or otherwise tend to the mighty engines of the ship) named John Coffey, who was seized by a sense of foreboding and hid aboard one of the tenders that pulled away from Titanic with the last sacks of mail in order to skip out on the voyage (reported in several sources including Butler 51, although some have argued that this story might be fabricated, saying his name was not listed on the ship's rosters, although it is a fact that many crew particularly those shoveling coal were not permanent White Star Lines employees but were hired by recruiters who went out looked for workers for the voyage only days beforehand, and it is also a fact that several passengers and crew for reasons of their own decided to list themselves under fictitious names).

Another remarkable story that appears to indicate accurate premonitions comes from a family traveling in Second Class, Benjamin and Esther Hart, along with their seven-year-old daughter Eva. Apparently, Mrs. Hart was besieged by a sense of impending disaster and was certain that it would strike at night, so she stayed up each night reading or knitting, and slept during the day (Butler 56).

Do these premonitions of impending catastrophe indicate that the human mind is perhaps in possession of senses beyond what can possibly described as strictly "natural" (in the sense of the natural or material world)? What physical forces in the strictly materialistic world of atoms and molecules can possibly explain the perception of an impending collision with an iceberg that still lay thousands of miles away, separated by the breadth of the vast Atlantic?

If we think about these reports from Titanic (and there are other documented instances of similar premonitions surrounding other disasters), and if we entertain at all the possibility that not all of them were simple "coincidence," then it leads to all kinds of questions about the nature of our consciousness. Is it possible that our consciousness is not simply a physical product of chemical and electrical activity in the cells of an organ we call the brain? If our consciousness is simply a byproduct of a jumble of electrical and chemical impulses emitted by a physical mass of nerves and brain cells, then how does one explain all of the premonitions described above surrounding the maiden voyage of Titanic?

This historical evidence would seem to be additional evidence to other evidence we have examined previously (see here and here, for instance) that consciousness is somehow greater than the physical matter that supposedly generates it (in the eyes of the strict materialist).

Perhaps, as some have speculated -- including American philosopher William James (1842 - 1910) and brother of Henry James (1843 - 1916) -- the brain transmits consciousness rather than generating it, in much the same way that a lens transmits or focuses light without actually acting as the source of the light, or the way an organ pipe transmits or focuses sound without actually generating or originating the sound. This fascinating subject is treated at greater length in a fascinating examination entitled "Does Consciousness Depend on the Brain?" by Chris Carter.

If what we might call the "lens suggestion" of William James is correct (or at least closer to the truth than the idea that consciousness is strictly a byproduct of the physical activity of the brain), then animals might "transmit" or "focus" similar extra-material perceptions, perhaps sometimes being more attuned, sometimes less attuned, to the same extra-material awareness that some humans can also perceive.

On the night that Titanic struck the iceberg (the collision took place at 11:40 pm on Sunday night, April 14, or within a minute or two after), Mr. Butler reports that passengers in Third Class were engaged in "another of the seemingly endless dances" when, "In the middle of the merriment, a large rat suddenly appeared out of nowhere, eliciting screams of terror, some real, some feigned, from the young women. A handful of the men dashed after the offending rodent, and the dance was under way again" (65).

The behavior of rats deserting a sinking ship is of course so legendary as to have passed into proverbial idiom, but how can one explain unease among rodents hours before a ship hits an iceberg? Again, this incident is perhaps only coincidental, taking on perceived significance only in hindsight of the disaster, and if it were the only one that was reported by the survivors of the tragedy that night it could and should be dismissed as such, but in the presence of so many other data points, it is at least prudent to consider the possibility that something other than coincidence might have been going on prior to that fateful collision.

Here is a link to another website examining premonitions of disaster prior to the Titanic, in this case mostly dealing with fictional accounts published years earlier that seemed to share numerous details with the actual voyage, in some cases remarkably many details.

Here is an even more interesting article, published in Atlantis Rising in 1999, dealing with the subject of premonitions, and detailing accounts of premonitions from other disasters as well as those surrounding the Titanic's sinking. That article also contains a helpful paragraph discussing the difference between simple fear or dread and a premonition, which says:

For most people, the difference between a fear and a premonition is that fears are vague and not unusual. Premonitions, on the other hand, seem to come spontaneously, and often with great force and clarity. In fact, for most people, the problem is not recognizing a premonition, but acting upon it.

This is an important distinction. As someone who has made hundreds of skydives and participated in dozens of military tactical airborne operations (often at night with heavy gear and sometimes in atrocious weather conditions), I can report that I have had several occasions where I experienced what the paragraph above would describe as "vague and not unusual" feelings of general fear and unease prior to some jumps, but nothing ever came of them. They were not at all specific, spontaneous, or full of "great clarity." They were just ordinary fear, not premonitions (if true premonitions even actually exist).

Perhaps some of the incidents surrounding the voyage of Titanic also fall into this category, but the number and urgency of some of the feelings of awareness of impending disaster in that incident and in others argues that we should not be too quick to dismiss the possibility that true premonitions may have been involved in some cases. Before asserting that all the examples above are only "fear" and not premonitions, note that I myself never wrote any letters of the sort mentioned above prior to any airborne operations that turned out to be uneventful, and note also that Chief Officer Wilde was a very experienced officer with many ocean crossings under his belt (and no indication that he wrote his sister with ominous letters prior to other crossings).

If true premonitions were involved in some cases, it also seems that the existence of premonitions raises other important questions about the nature of consciousness, and that the existence of premonitions is very difficult to explain with a strictly materialistic view of the universe.

For more musings on the significance of the tragic voyage of Titanic, be sure to also visit the recently-published essay, "Titanic and the Fall of Civilizations."

























Note: for my most recent thoughts on the Titanic tragedy, see "Titanic conspiracy, due diligence, natural law and mind control," 04/13/2014.  

A heartfelt portrait of John Blofeld from Daniel P. Reid

Here is a link to a deeply moving essay by Daniel P. Reid entitled "The Wheel of Life."

Rather than try to summarize, I would prefer to encourage you to read it for yourself.

By way of background, here are some links to a few of Daniel Reid's works:

The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way.

The Tao of Detox: The Secrets of Yang-sheng Dao.

The Art and Alchemy of Chinese Tea.

A Handbook of Chinese Healing Herbs.

The Shambhala Guide to Traditional Chinese Medicine.

For those unfamiliar with the work of John Blofeld (1913 - 1987), here are some links to a few of his works:

Taoism: The Road to Immortality.

Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin.

Taoist Mysteries and Magic.

The Chinese Art of Tea.

City of Lingering Splendour: A Frank Account of Old Peking's Exotic Pleasures.

In addition to being a fond remembrance of John Blofeld, the essay above also touches on the exemplary way that he dealt with matters of life and death. Related to this subject, of course, is perhaps most remarkable and striking part of Daniel Reid's evocative essay, which relates the account of John's visits to his daughter in a recurring dream, by which she was guided to the temple where he desired that his earthly remains should repose.

As Daniel Reid explains:

John’s last wish had been to have his ashes interred in a Kuan Yin temple in Thailand. Kuan Yin, the beloved Chinese “Goddess of Mercy,” had always been John’s favorite Buddhist deity, and he devoted an entire book to her, Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin.

Again, I will let you read the account exactly as Mr. Reid relates it, as it is much better that way.

It is worth noting that this series of events recounted by Daniel Reid resonates strongly with some of the subject matter discussed by Sheldon Norberg in the New Dimensions Radio interview which was discussed in this previous blog post (post contains links to the interview itself). In that interview, Mr. Norberg also gives examples from his personal experience in which persons were visited repeatedly in dreams in very much the same way (although not always benevolently).

I have admired Mr. Reid's writing since discovering one of his books while I was a cadet at West Point, in 1989 or so. It is of personal interest to me that material relating to this topic always connects back to West Point in some way (for me).

However, leaving that personal note aside, Daniel Reid has done us all a great service by sharing this memoir of his friendship with John Blofeld, whose character and personality shine through Mr. Reid's account. It is truly worthy of much reflection.

Don't miss the intriguing interview with Sheldon Norberg on New Dimensions Radio

Here's a link to a very thought-provoking interview with Sheldon Norberg, author of Healing Houses: My Work as a Psychic House Cleaner. The interview takes place on New Dimensions Radio, hosted by Justine Willis Toms. Mr. Norberg describes his work in the interview, along with some amazing examples, involving the "energy signatures" in houses which he is called on to examine and redirect -- in his words at one point towards the end of the interview, "meeting these energies and shifting them." Mr. Norberg's website can be found here.

It is extremely worthwhile to hear the perspectives of someone who is involved in such work, and to hear the types of words he uses to describe what he perceives in his practice. For instance, at one point fairly early in the interview (around the four-minute mark), he says:

When I talk about ‘energy signatures’ in my book, I’m saying that if you are trying to perceive the person’s energy or the energy of a certain event, you will feel that it has a certain frequency, and when we talk about, working in the psychic energy world, we talk about the frequency of different people’s energy, just as you or I are actually oscillating energetically at slightly different wavelengths, and when you feel, say, the difference between somebody loving you and somebody hating you – very, very obvious when you come in contact with a person who is emanating one of those two frequencies [. . .].

Right away, this seems to bring to mind some subjects we have explored in previous discussions on this blog, such as "Every man is an island" and "Why do we listen to beautiful music about heartbreak and misery?" In those posts, we examined some of the work done by R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz and John Anthony West which indicates that the ancient Egyptians were well aware of the vibrational aspects of human beings and of structures and spaces, and that they consciously incorporated this knowledge into everything they did and built. Mr. Norberg's work appears to reinforce these findings, especially in his discovery that human spaces continue to have strong energy resonances which are influenced by the activities and the energies of those who live there (or have lived there).

The statements made by Mr. Norberg above also appear to resonate with the discussion in the post entitled "Some implications of recent studies on the plasticity of the brain," in which we found that the Dalai Lama places a great deal of emphasis on the daily practice of directed compassionate mental energy and the development of "warmheartedness." We saw that some scientists believe that this kind of mental energy can actually change the structure of the brain, and that those who have practiced tens of thousands of hours of meditation are able to project "high frequency brain activity called gamma waves" which can actually be picked up on scientific instruments.

The implications of some of this seems to be that we should be careful and conscious about what kind of frequencies we are practicing and putting out, because they can have a real impact on our own brains, and also on our living spaces! How's that for an eye-opening thought?

Elsewhere in the interview, Mr. Norberg mentions some other interesting knowledge he has about the earth and its magnetic field, and our ability to perceive it and interact with it, saying:

Essentially I try to start with the grounding practice because that’s kind of the core of everything.

That is where I am tying to align myself consciously, magnetically, to the earth, because the earth is a magnetic structure, and it’s sending off a magnetic field at all times, and in different places – I mean, that’s one of your things about different spots on the earth – folds of the earth create very different magnetic fields, and your compass can go off by several degrees in different places, so the feel, I think, of those places may be distinctly different. And if you’re aware where there’s about three grams of iron in the human body at any given time in your bloodstream, that’s how it is binding the oxygen to the hemoglobin, and I think that we as living beings are magnetically conscious, although we are so busy with upper cortex activity that we forget.

This discussion resonates with some of the things that the builders of Stonehenge and Avebury Henge apparently knew, which we discussed in the previous post entitled "Magnetic Polarity at Avebury Henge." It also appears to give some credence to the recommendations given by Swami Buaji about the direction of one's body when sleeping, discussed in "Does the direction you lay your head down to sleep matter?" At the end of that segment, Mr. Norberg mentions a study which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America which suggests that cows and two different species of deer can sense terrestrial magnetic polarity and align their bodies with it.

Even further, the interview raises some other questions that intersect with subjects we have discussed previously as well. For example, he states in the interview (around the 22-minute mark) that he believes that about ten to twelve percent of the clients who come to him for help with their houses are actually dealing with what could be called a ghost (what he says he would describe as "the remnant energy or the projected energy of a being from wherever we go when we're not here anymore, to maintain a presence in its previous form with its previous desires, to either hold on to the life it had here, to communicate something that it was unable to while it was here [. . .]").

This discussion from someone whose life work involves shifting energy patterns in houses should not be dismissed out of hand. However, it would seem that such testimony raises serious problems for conventional Darwinists. Is it possible to argue that a being could evolve -- through a process of completely materialistic evolution -- which is capable of projecting energy after its physical death? If some little-known group of Darwinists are prepared to argue that this is a possibility, do they speculate that somehow "survival of the fittest" enables this? How exactly does natural selection help those members of the species that are able to have some sort of "life after death" to survive?

If natural selection works by enabling those with favorable mutations to survive and breed, how do those which have a propensity for life after death participate in this Darwinian mechanism more successfully than those which don't, since their only advantage seems to kick in only after the breeding is over (when we can no longer argue for any kind of the "evolutionary advantage" which Darwinists like to talk about)? And, can we really argue that there is some kind of cellular mutation in the DNA which produces a spirit that can live on after death? The very subjects which Mr. Norberg has some personal experience in should raise some real questions among anyone who has been led to believe in Darwinism, as we mentioned in this previous post as well.

It is perhaps possible to argue that creatures who are extremely highly evolved could have developed such powerful frequency vibrations that the effect of those vibrations continue on after their deaths, although that would seem to be a pretty difficult argument and one that I am not aware of any actual Darwinists making publicly. For starters, there would be no evolutionary advantage to such resonance (after death, at least, although a Darwinist might argue that it has some evolutionary advantage in life). When exactly, between vertebral fish like cephalaspis and modern humans, did such frequencies in the brain begin (when did they become strong enough to produce "signatures" that would go on after physical death of the organism?)

The bigger problem is the argument that creatures with such amazing features as gamma-wave activity which can be enhanced by meditation, or with iron in their hemoglobin which binds the oxygen to their red blood cells and can perhaps feel the earth's magnetic field as well, are actually the product of mutations and natural selection in the first place (did all the creatures who tried to bind oxygen with other elements just die out, until some mutations stumbled across iron as an oxygen-binding agent?) We have discussed some of the insoluble problems of the Darwinian hypothesis in other previous posts (see here and here).

Above is a photograph from around 1880 of a row of houses on the military post of West Point, Washington Road. These stately mansions (all of them three stories) are still there today, and are assigned to the full-bird colonels who are the heads of the various departments (and to the Dean, who is a brigadier general -- his house is on the far left of the row). For this reason, this row of houses is sometimes called "Colonels' Row" or "Professors' Row." I won't say that I have heard a full colonel of Infantry tell me and a group of others about phenomena in his home there, but if I had, it was a full colonel who had lived in that home for many years and whose descriptions were backed up by his wife.

All of this is information about which Shakespeare might say, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Note that to listen to the interview with Sheldon Norberg on New Dimensions Radio, it is free until November 16, 2011. After that, it is available for $1.99 US. To listen to it for free before November 16, you will need to have Real Audio on your device, which can be downloaded for free at the link on the New Dimensions interview page.

Scary ghost story (West Point)

If you're looking for a spine-tingling ghost story for Halloween this year, look no further than the current issue of West Point magazine, published by the West Point Association of Graduates.

In a story entitled "Ghosts of West Point Past," found on pages 20 through 23, it describes the well-known story of paranormal events in the "47th Division," which every cadet hears from his classmates or upperclassmen ("The Divisions" are an older section of barracks, officially called "Scott Barracks" after General Winfield Scott, located on the west side of North Area facing east, and so named because they are designed with a single entrance leading to a series of vertical floors connected by a staircase with landings and rooms on each landing, so that each vertically-connected section is effectively divided-off from the others to its left and right; each division is numbered, and there is an additional wing folded around the back and not facing North Area, with numbers above 50, known as the "Lost 50s" -- see map detail below, from the West Point area map available online here).

This particular article, however, contains the first-hand account from Cadet John Feeley, West Point Class of 1973, which I had never actually heard before.

I will have to tell the Association of Graduates to stop sending me their quarterly magazine if it continues to contain such frightening material.

The possibility of the existence of spirits, of course, must be vehemently denied by conventional Darwinism. There is no Darwinian explanation involving gene mutation or natural selection that would explain the process of evolving something called a spirit (or at least none that most academic biologists would admit). Spirit beings have no place in a completely materialistic or "naturalistic" Darwinian worldview (see the previous discussion entitled "Supernatural or Extraterrestrial" for related musings on this topic).

The story above provides one possible explanation for the occurrence described by the cadets in October 1972: a case of sleep paralysis accompanied by hypnogogic hallucinations. This explanation raises the epistemological question of how we know anything. In other words, if our minds experience something, does that mean that it is real? If our minds can register sensations as if we were perceiving them with our sensory organs (including our eyes or the nerves in our hands and fingers), how do we know there is anything actually originating those sensory signals?

Shakespeare probed epistemological questions like these (and several much deeper epistemological questions related to them, such as how we know who we are and how solid this idea of "our identity" really is) in most of his works, including perhaps most famously Hamlet, where such questions are also initiated by the disturbing experience of seeing a ghost.