General Chat

Esref Armagan, aged 51, is Turkish. He was born poor and blind so has never been able to see. He has become famous in his own country as a painter and artist. Currently he is in Boston USA undergoing tests to see if it is possible, with state of the art electronic and scanning equipment, to see how he manages to draw and paint landscapes, mountains, lakes, birds, fishes and animals all in colour with correct perspective, a feat that eludes many sighted people. Sighted people can recognise and admire his work. As an infant he never saw any of these things and his brain detects no light. How can he have knowledge of or relate to the rules of perspective? What is perspective? Try accurately drawing, from one side, a large floor tiled in alternate black and white squares – or a tree-lined avenue receding into the distance
When Esref paints, electroencephalograph machines indicate that his visual cortex lights up – which is a problem as it should do so only when processing information from the receptors, his eyes (which, in his case, he ain’t got). In fact, says one of the team investigating this phenomena “a naïve viewer of his scan might assume he could see” but in fact there is no incoming visual data whatsoever. Conventional wisdom (science) suggests that a person cannot have a “mind’s eye” (and, in fact, cannot see) unless he/she has had previous experience of what they are going to see. Put simply, a person who does not activate the senses (sight, hearing etc) in a normal environment, before the end of early childhood, will probably lose them entirely or retain only vestiges.
Dr Lauren Slater wrote "All competing interpretations of the human mind reflect the pluralistic reality one would expect when seeking to pin down the profundities of the most complex phenomenon in the universe".
It is, as she says, a most complex subject, hopeless to examine in this small space but I will throw in a few thoughts.
It is a misconception that "sight" is in the eyes. Taken as a whole, the visual system (of which the eyes are but a part) are set up by the brain/mind during early life, starting well before birth, to match the visual environment. A normal set of connections appears only if the environment is normal.
All mammals, humans included, are descended from a common source. We share many genes. It appears that we also share many capabilities although some, if not utilised in our formative years, atrophy and disappear.
Visual input via our eyes is also severely edited and condensed and only the more dramatic features are telegraphed electronically, in code, to the central office at the back of the brain. We pick up a great deal of information with our other senses and it is all merged seamlessly together by our central processing units.
Some people can see in colour whilst others can't. Some people can't see at all. Some can see light of a particulate nature which is maybe a diffraction pattern of some sort of energy. In quantum mechanics particles (e.g. electrons) can behave like waves in certain situations while what we would normally think of as waves (e.g. electromagnetic radiation, light) can behave like particles. Photo-electric effects (i.e. the absorption of light by electrons) can only be explained if the light has a visual nature.
Light we all understand. Our brains receive it in something like Morse code through the optic nerves and process it in the visual cortex at the back of the head . How do we explain light to a person born without sight? Anyone heard of subliminal vision or blind sight? It exists (page 9).
Our optic nerves (via the eyes; lens & retina) can pick up light waves of which we remain unaware at a conscious level. Advertisers know this well. Subliminal advertising on TV is illegal therefore it is acknowledged by the authorities. Some people can pick up other information and see things denied to others.
How do you tell a blind person about colour?

Thank you, Fiona.The trick is to read it several times, then it begins to make sense. Till it began to make sense to me, I thought it was all rubbish.
I dedicate this essay to you.

Quantum Mechanics may sound like the title of a book about cars but actually is a branch of science. About 100 years ago Newtonian ideas, which seemed to explain most physical phenomena very neatly, began to show cracks and "physics" began to be faced with fundamentals for which there were no adequate theoretical explanations.
Enter Einstein and the "Theory of Relativity". That seemed hopeful but that too eventually began to creak under the weight of apparent contradictions then, about 30 years ago the concept of Quantum Mechanics began to dominate.
Quantum mechanics came in about 1926 being the brainchild of students of Nils Bohr, and was formulated to account for the physical phenomena of sub-atomic particles and the different properties of particles and waves. Einstein certainly had difficulty in coming to terms with it, probably as it may have looked like undermining his life's work. The new theory had very many fierce critics and did not gain significant adherents for another 50 years.
Whereas "Relativity" was concerned mainly with the physics of massive and fast moving objects, QM describes and seeks to understand physics from the viewpoint of the infinitely small (atoms, electrons, particles etc.). Believe it or not, it is now scientifically acceptable that a particle may be in two places at the same time! Sceptics please raise your hands. On second thoughts – don’t bother, just go and have a coffee.
Is consciousness (id, mind, soul or inner being) a form of energy? Many believe it to be so - in fact this is borne out by it being associated with a chemical/electrical activity in the brain so it follows, that when the body dies, consciousness cannot be lost but, to obey the laws of physics, must be transmuted into another form …..Spirit?
In 1983 Prof. Jahn and others of the PEAR group published “Precognitive Remote Perception”, a technical report evaluating 227 formal precognitive remote perception trials. Results of this impressive body of data indicated that their efforts were highly significant. The PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) document concluded that “precognitive remote perception techniques can acquire significant amounts of compounded information about spatially and temporally remote target locations, by means currently inexplicable by known physical mechanisms”. You may have to read that sentence several times.
The paranormal has many aspects. As well as ghosts there are poltergeists, hypnotism, mind-reading, healing, sensing the presence others sub-consciously, telekinesis (moving solid objects by mind-power), premonition and probably a few that I have forgotten.
The difficulty of science is that experiments have to be repeated at will to gain credence and, with the exception of hypnotism (which not only is at last accepted but is now a useful tool of medicine and psychology), this is impossible. However, circumstantial evidence is massing and investigation, particularly into the field of out-of-the-body experiences.
A neat little analogy I once heard was that if one was stranded on a large, apparently uninhabited, island and one day found a fresh footprint that wasn't yours what would you conclude? My immediate reaction would be to assume, notwithstanding there was no hard evidence and no witnesses, regardless of the fact that I had never seen or may never see another person in that location, that I was not alone on the island. In the face of all acquired beliefs, sometimes circumstantial evidence is too strong to be disregarded.
The mind may also contact and influence other minds instantaneously, irrespective of distance (technically called “distant intentionality” but commonly known as “telepathy”). This ability may account for other phenomena such as hypnosis, spiritual healing, clairvoyance, premonitions and so on. It may also affect inanimate things (ref.Robert Jahn above). So is this mind an independent spirit which retains intelligence and memory after departing from a body? May it still have an interest in its old possession, its living kith and kin and perhaps seek to influence or comfort them? And could it return to a different, unborn body? That would be re-incarnation.
Nor is it beyond reasoning, based on published scientific papers, that a mind separated from a body under traumatic or unexpectedly violent circumstances may be unable to adapt to the change and be left in a void or “time warp” i.e. where time did not exist. Ghosts did someone say?

I do love your posts Len (even if I can only understand one word in three at the first reading!).

I am particularly drawn to the fact that we really are stardust - or nuclear waste - and billions of years old - amazing.

:)

Ghosts: archaic English for soul or spirit.
What are they made of? Energy or particles? There are at least a dozen known particles (members of the atomic family). Some have very odd characteristics. Neutrinos travel at nearly the speed of light, have no apparent mass and pass unhindered through solid objects including the earth. Their interaction with matter is extremely slight.
Mass is far from being a simple notion. As Einstein proved, mass depends on speed although there is very little change unless speed approaches that of light. Many experiments on atomic particles demonstrate this and the mass of a body is not always constant. It appears that photons and neutrinos have no mass when not in motion.
When a light beam encounters any transparent medium the normal behaviour is for some fraction of the energy in the beam to be absorbed. Light, radio and other waves are closely related forms of radiant energy in the electromagnetic field. Ghosts, if they exist and I believe that they do, would obviously be a form of energy of this type. Certain people (about 20% of humans according to more than one study) are able to detect electro-magnetic radiation from power cables. Therefore it seems reasonable to suppose there are others who can detect ghosts or, as I prefer to think of them, free-floating consciousnesses or disembodied minds.
Energy (and mass) cannot be destroyed but only converted into another form (basic law of physics). Therefore if consciousness is not a brain function, as is becoming increasingly obvious, but an independent energy it cannot die or be destroyed along with the body and brain with which it has been associated for a brief spell in time but must be changed to another form.
If some people (mediums) are able to detect such an energy, it must be by direct perception into their own consciousness (distant intentionality ?). If they detect it visually, the independant consciousness or mind must produce photons (light particles or waves) but how? Energy cannot be produced out of nothing (I will query this later). One answer seems obvious: people who see ghosts invariably observe a drop in temperature. Could it be that radiant heat is utilised from the area and transmuted into energy in the light wave-band?
Has anyone ever seen a ghost? Was it in colour or black and white? If black and white, that would explain why apparitions are seen mostly in peripheral vision - as brighter light and colour is detected by the cones in the centre of the retinas in our eyes whilst dimmer light and grayscale is dealt with by the rod cells on the edges.

Len, this is all wonderful - in the true meaning of that word!

We cannot have the slightest conception of what space out there in the cosmos is about. Many, therefore, shun it. “We cannot comprehend, therefore it cannot exist”. There is, though, a deeper mystery to the void first hinted at by Minowski, Albert Einstein’s tutor.
Space and time form a continuous mathematical entity, which encompasses dimensions at present unknown to humanity, which is gradually being revealed.
Of all the bewildering elementary particles in the physicist’s inventory, the most ghost-like is the neutrino.
Its existence was predicted in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli, on purely theoretical grounds but it was not until 1956 that the actual neutrinos, emanating from the Atomic Energy commission’s huge nuclear piles, were trapped in the laboratory by Reines and Cowan.
The reason why it took so long to detect them was that the neutrino has virtually no mass, no electric charge, no magnetic field and is not affected by gravity. It is not captured or repelled by the electric or magnetic fields of other particles whilst flying past them. Much like human thought.
A neutrino originates somewhere in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or perhaps in another galaxy and, travelling at the speed of light can go through the solid body of the earth as if it were empty space. It can only be stopped by a head-on collision with another elementary particle and the chance of that is infinitesimally small. Fortunately, there are enough around that collision do occur which enabled them to be detected. In the time it takes to read this sentence billions, coming from the sun and other stars, are streaming through your skull and brain, through your body, and the earth beneath.
.
John Updike the novelist wrote a poem to celebrate the discovery, called:
Cosmic Gall
Neutrinos they are very small
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The Earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dust maids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass…….

To the unprejudiced mind, neutrinos have a certain affinity with ghosts – which does not prevent them from existing. This is not just a whimsical metaphor. The absence of ‘gross’ physical properties in the neutrino’ and its quasi-ethereal character, encourages speculation about the possible existence of other particles which would provide the link between mind and matter. Remember, 96% of the cosmos is composed of ‘dark matter’ completely unknown to science. Thus the eminent astronomer V.A Firsoff suggested that “mind was a universal entity or interaction of the same order as electromagnetism and there must exist a modulus of transformation analogous to Einstein’s E=mc² whereby ‘mind stuff’ could be equated with other entities of the physical world”. He further suggested that there may exist elementary particles of mind-stuff (consciousness) with properties somewhat similar to the neutrinos. "Mind" equates with consciousness, soul, spirit and inner being.

The universe, as seen by a neutrino's eye, if it had one, would look very unfamiliar. The earth and other planets simply would not be there or might, at best, seem as thin patches of mist. The sun and other stars may be dimly visible as they emit some neutrinos.
A neutrino brain might suspect our existence from certain secondary effects but would find us very difficult to prove as we would elude the neutrino instruments at its disposal.
Or universe is no truer than that of the neutrinos - they exist but they exist in a different kind of space and probably, almost assuredly, other entities also exist but they are governed by different laws.
In our space, no material body or energy can exceed the speed of light because at this velocity its mass and so inertia become infinite.
The neutrino, though, is subject to neither gravitational nor electromagnetic fields so that it need not be bound by this speed limit and may have its own, different time.
From earlier analyses of mental or conscious attributes, it appears that they have no definite location in the so called physical (or, better, gravi-electromagnetic) space, in which they resemble a neutrino or even a fast electron. This suggests a special kind of consciousness-space governed by different laws - which is corroborated by the parapsychological experiments and findings made at Duke, Princeton, Freiberg, Edinburgh and other Universities and respected centres of learning.
It seems that consciousness/ mind/spirit/soul, call it what you will, is subject to laws of its own, defining a different type of space-time.

Dr. Michael Sabom is a cardiologist whose latest book, Light and Death, includes a detailed medical and scientific analysis of an amazing near-death experience of a woman named Pam Reynolds. She underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that threatened her life. The size and location of the aneurysm, however, precluded its safe removal using the standard neuro-surgical techniques.
She was referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as hypothermic cardiac arrest. It allowed Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success. This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death.
After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a NDE. Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations during her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. This case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.
When all of Pam's vital signs were stopped, the doctor turned on a surgical saw and began to cut through Pam's skull. While this was going on, Pam reported that she felt herself "pop" outside her body and hover above the operating table. Then she watched the doctors working on her lifeless body for awhile.
From her out-of-body position, she observed the doctor sawing into her skull with what looked to her like an electric toothbrush. Pam heard and reported later what the nurses in the operating room had said and exactly what was happening during the operation. At this time, every monitor attached to Pam's body registered "no life" whatsoever.
At some point, Pam's consciousness floated out of the operating room and traveled down a tunnel which had a light at the end of it where her deceased relatives and friends were waiting including her long-dead grandmother. Pam's NDE ended when her deceased uncle led her back to her body for her to re-entered it. Pam compared the feeling of re-entering her dead body to "plunging into a pool of ice."
__________________

The early research of the experimental unit of the Princeton group focussed on attempts to refine “remote viewing” techniques and to permit the transition of information in terms of binary (in twos or pairs) choices regardless of the details of the scene. They asked: can the recipient identify whether it is light or dark, wet or dry, cold or hot, inside or outside or basically man-made or natural. They reasoned that if questions could be found which could be answered routinely with reasonable accuracy, it would be possible to transmit telepathically quite a bit of information in this way.
Setting up the laboratory was not easy as Jahn and Dunne with Bradish an engineer, Nelson a psychologist and Dobyns, a theoretical physicist with John Bisaha of Chicago University (who with Dunne had been studying “distant intentionality” or “remote viewing” experiments – telepathy to us) met a great deal of initial skepticism and resistance from University authorities . Jahn, who had reached the top of his field in aerospace engineering, now became suspect for even daring to think about such topics as psychokinesis and remote perception, let alone setting up a lab to study these topics.
In his capacity as Dean of the School of Engineering Jahn was, however, able to remodel part of the School’s basement into a laboratory with help of private funding, furnish it and set up the sophisticated electronic equipment needed for experiments. Later he was successful in obtaining major grants from independent grant-aiding foundations.
In 1983 Prof. Jahn and others of the group published “Precognitive Remote Perception”, a technical report evaluating 227 formal precognitive remote perception trials. Results of this impressive body of data indicated that their efforts were highly significant. The PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) document concluded that “precognitive remote perception techniques can acquire significant amounts of compounded information about spatially and temporary remote target locations, by means currently inexplicable by known physical mechanisms”
Following on from experimental work carried out at Princeton University by Professor Robert Jahn and his team, and using volunteers, the scientists identified which brain activities were associated with actions such as moving limbs or opening and closing their hands. The aim of the work was to identify which electrocorticographic signals were given off by the firing neurons in the brain on making certain movements and feeding the data into a computer programme. It was realised that the volunteers could control an on-screen cursor by imagining the movements of their limbs or hands It is hoped from this to develop personalised artificial limbs and other aids controlled purely by brain power (distant intentionality) and that the study may also be used to help people with severe motor disability.

nudge, i wanna read this tomoz x

The late Prof. Robert Jahn was a Doctor of Science, Dean Emeritus at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. He was Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Aeronautics.
He gathered a team of experts to study reports from elsewhere in the scientific field that the human brain could affect the operation of certain types of electronic equipment and computers. He set up a laboratory with experts from various relevant sciences “to study the interaction of human operators with low-level information processing devices and systems by combining appropriate engineering facilities and techniques with a selection of protocols and insights drawn from modern cognitive science”.
Under rigorous conditions, certain aspects of these human/machine interactions are found to yield “anomalous effects currently inexplicable on the basis of established physical concepts and statistical theory”. In plain English that implies the power of the mind can reach outside the body and is not constrained by time or distance.
The program has produced immense databases generated under highly controlled laboratory conditions, indicating the existence of small but replicable and statistical correlations between operator intention and the output of a variety of contemporary engineering devices and systems Again, in plain English that means the power of the mind can interfere with computers and otherdevices.
To sum up the Jahn & Dunne report on their Remote Perception (also known as. Distant Intentionality or telepathy) work:
“… the ability of human participants to acquire information about spatially (of or relating to space) and temporally (of or relating to time) remote geographic targets, otherwise inaccessible by any known sensory means, has been thoroughly demonstrated over several hundred carefully conducted experiments. The protocol requires one participant, the “agent” to be stationed at a randomly selected target at a given time and there to observe and record impressions of the details and ambience (the surroundings or atmosphere of a place) of the scene. A second participant, the “percipient”, located far from the scene and with no prior information about it, tries to sense its composition and character and report these in a similar format to the agent’s description. Even casual comparison of the agent and percipient narratives as produced in this body of experiments, reveals striking correspondences in both their general and specific aspects, indicative of some anomalous channel of information acquisition, well beyond any chance expectation. Incisive analytical techniques have been developed and applied to these data to establish more precisely the quantity and quality of objective and subjective information acquired, and to guide the design of more effective experiments. Beyond confirming the validity of the phenomenon, these analyses demonstrate that this capacity of human consciousness is also largely independent of the time between the specification of the target and the perception effort”
Or, in other words, telepathy and telekinesis is, as far as this world class engineering laboratory is concerned, proved. Prof. Jahn set out as a sceptic, intent on disproving the notions regarding mind over matter, but was won over by the evidence.

Cardiac arrest patients are a subgroup of people who come closest to death. In such a situation an individual initially develops two out of three criteria (the absence of spontaneous breathing and heartbeat) of clinical death. Shortly afterwards (within seconds) these are followed by the third, which occurs due to the loss of activity of the areas of the brain responsible for sustaining life (brainstem) and thought processes (cerebral cortex).

Brain monitoring using EEG in animals and humans has also demonstrated that the brain ceases to function at that time. During a cardiac arrest, the blood pressure drops almost immediately to unrecordable levels and at the same time, due to a lack of blood flow, the brain stops functioning as seen by flat brain waves (isoelectric line) on the monitor within around 10 seconds.

This then remains the case throughout the time when the heart is given 'electric shock' therapy or when drugs such as adrenaline are given until the heartbeat is finally restored and the patient is resuscitated. Due to the lack of brain function in these circumstances, therefore, one would not expect there to be any lucid, well-structured thought processes, with reasoning and memory formation, which are characteristic of NDEs.

Nevertheless, and contrary to what we would expect scientifically, studies have shown that 'near death experiences' do occur in such situations. This therefore raises a question of how such lucid and well-structured thought processes, together with such clear and vivid memories, occur in individuals who have little or no brain function. In other words, it would appear that the mind is seen to continue in a clinical setting in which there is little or no brain function. In particular, there have been reports of people being able to 'see' details from the events that occurred during their cardiac arrest, such as their dentures being removed.

A study by a group examining 63 cardiac arrest survivors on the coronary care and emergency units of Southampton General Hospital, which was published in the medical journal 'Resuscitation' demonstrated that approximately 6-10% of people with cardiac arrest have NDEs and out of body experiences. There was no evidence to support the role of drugs, oxygen or carbon dioxide (as measured from the blood) in causing the experiences.

In another study just completed in Holland, 344 cardiac arrest survivors from 10 hospitals were interviewed over a 2-year period, and 41 or 12% reported a core NDE. Patients with NDEs were then followed up for a further 8 years following the event and reported less fear of death and a more spiritual outlook on life. This study by a cardiologist Dr Pim van Lommel, was published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
__________________

Most people can say what consciousness feels like. It’s being awake, aware; it’s knowing what is going on and the difference between you and me. It is thoughts and sounds, self-image and a sense of history. It’s about what it feels like to be you.
Consciousness is a really tough nut for science, though, as it cannot (as distinct from electrical brain activity) be weighed, measured or detected with instruments. That is why a definition and assessment of it has, until now, been left to philosophy and religion.
However scientists, mostly medical doctors, biologists and neurologists and some physicists, largely as a result of break-throughs in the fields of brain-imaging and electrical monitoring, are gaining an insight and adding their weight to the debate.
Researchers are steadily making progress but are still in the dark about what aspect of brain activity makes for consciousness. There is certainly no particular brain area that is active when we are conscious and inactive when we are unconscious.
From studies made in Holland and others parts of the world, conducted by eminent doctors, there is evidence of consciousness (in the form of memories being laid down) when subjects are clinically brain-dead, albeit temporarily. And there seems to be no threshold of neural activity above which we are conscious, or a type of neurochemistry that accompanies consciousness.
The greatest field of exploration remaining to science is that of the mind. Most scientists still claim the mind to be a brain function and purely physical but emerging scientific evidence shows it is quite clearly non-physical.

In the 1970s, Lawrence Weinskrantz documented a condition known as “blindsight”. It is a phenomenon where the blind somehow perceived or “saw” events going on around them, without the involvement of their normal senses. Other researchers have many times confirmed this.
There are perceptual faculties within the brain/mind apparently not connected to the visual cortex or other physical senses. This applies not only to humans. A rhesus monkey surgically deprived of its visual cortex, taught itself to feed. Over a period of years, it was observed picking up currants and even catching passing flies. Under test conditions humans, gifted with blindsight, were offered various things (e.g. a wine glass or book) and their hand assumed the correct shape to grasp the article.

Studies of identical twins indicate that they may often have what may be called a shared consciousness. They appear to read each other’s minds, exchange feelings and emotions and even communicate on a mental level. Even when separated from early childhood, they often appear to lead parallel lives, including illnesses, accidents, marriage dates etc. to a degree that is beyond chance.
Past studies of identical twins separated at birth have documented remarkable similarities between them, despite the fact that they were reared under radically different circumstances. Their physical appearances, habits, vocations, health histories, and other factors are often eerily the same. For example, two female identical twins, who had never seen each other, each wore eight rings! The upshot of such investigations is that most of a person's characteristics are genetic in origin; that is, nature dominates nurture.
But what about identical twins who are remarkably different? They can, for instance, differ appreciably in size, intellect, and behavior. In such cases, does nurture dominate nature? No! Identical twins may diverge even in the womb, where one may receive more oxygen and nutrients than the other. One also may be assailed by viruses, bacteria, or drugs, while the other escapes. Even more drastic is the possibility that one twin may pick up an extra chromosome soon after the original egg has split. Also, mutations may doom one twin to Down's syndrome or some other genetic affliction, while the other is unscathed. Identical twins may even be of different sex. Of course, such twins are genetically different, but they are still monozygotic (from the same egg). Blood tests will show them to be identical.
It used to be thought that the small differences that did exist between identical twins separated at birth were surely due to nurture, not nature. But, considering all the differences that can accrue, it seems that the role of nurture in shaping individuals is much smaller than thought, possibly negligible. (Horgan, John; "Double Trouble," Scientific American, 263

Dr V.P Lommel and his team at Rijnstate Hospital in Holland have researched “Near Death Experience” at hundreds of patients at hospitals across the country. These patients had been resuscitated after being clinically brain-dead and interviewed as soon as they were well enough to be gently questioned. Many reported being “out of the body” and observing from a “higher” place in the theatre the medical activities to revive them. This would have been at a time when there had been no electrical activity whatsoever in the brain and they were clinically dead.
The team reached conclusions that “pushed at the limit of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind/brain relationship”. Christopher French, of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Dept. of Goldsmith College. London, observed: “If researchers could prove that clinically dead patients with no electrical activity in their cortex can be aware of what went on round them and form memories, this would suggest that the brain does not generate consciousness”.

Dr Stephan Schmidt and researchers at Freiberg University, one of Germany’s oldest and most respected academic institutions, in June 2004 published a paper in The British Journal of Psychology which was widely reported in the National press. Scientists have found evidence that humans may indeed possess a sixth sense. Hundreds of experiments appear to show that people can tell when they are being watched, even from afar by a hidden observer.
They are surprised to find their experiments indicate that humans do have paranormal powers. “There’s a kind of energy field that, as yet, we cannot measure but which can, in various ways, interact between living organisms”.
The boffins call it “distant intentionality” (well, they would, wouldn’t they) but from time immemorial ordinary folk have called it telepathy.

Hi Helen
I remember you well and have looked out for you at subsequent meets. Where were you?

Georgina.
Are our thoughts produced by our brain or by our consciousness? I hope, eventually, to make out a case for these being two separate entities.
Consciousness operates in conjuction with the brain and physical body but there is accumulating evidence that it is not a brain function but exists independently. It may leave the body and may (or may not) return.
The electricity we produce works our brain and our bodies but is not manufactured by the brain. Our entire system produces an electromagnetic field which is detectable by instruments as an "aura" for maybe a couple of feet all round us.
len

Hi Len,

If our thoughts are produced by us, are these then not sent out into the universe via the electricty we produce in the brain.
I feel the 'soul' does not die with physical but is part of creation. Thoughts like matter cannot be destroyed, feel this could be the soul!! am I way off??
I do believe that something started all of this - known and unknown around us.

Georgina
I hope to get around to that point.

But, if according to the known laws of physics, matter and energy cannot be destroyed but only changed to another form, what do you think happens to consciouness (which is another name for mind, soul or spirit) ?
len

Hi Len, glad to see you contributing something intelligent for us all to think about! I met and chatted with you and Mary at Gaynor's do a few years back and am glad to hear you are both well. I agree with you that I don't recognise many contributors these days either!! But there are lots of nice people now just as there always were.

Wonder if GR will renew for me next month. then???

If one could catch a space rocket and travel from one side of the universe to the other, travelling at 186,000 miles per second, repeat: per second, the journey would take 156 thousand million years.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a mere speck of dust in this vastness, our solar system a mote in the galaxy. The entire human existence is a nothing; a mere blip in the passage of biological time which began on earth about 308 million years ago.
Even our next-door neighbour galaxy, Andromeda, is some two million light years away - meaning it would take two million years for a signal to get there, travelling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second. Mankind’s biggest and best rocket would be lucky to do 186,000 miles in 6 hours let alone 1 second.
And think of all the food, drink and changes of undies that would be needed on the voyage if emigrating to Andromeda

So the world is not as we perceive it then. It doesn’t really matter. We are all made of stardust (molecules on a carbon atom base) and to stardust we shall return.
But for those who care to look, there is a world of wonder and beauty, even in mathematics. Most mathematicians do not usually view their subject as a thing of beauty – elegant maybe. So what can be beautiful about maths? I expect some view famous equations, such as Einstein’s e=mc² as beautiful as it gives the minimal assumption but opens a whole world of thought. But as for visual beauty, fractals are pure maths (geometry but not as Euclid taught it) but a delight for the eye. The more you zoom in on a fractal, the more detail you get. And this keeps going on forever and ever. The void is full of fractals - Google “fractals”.
Space is endless patterns, perhaps an enormous fractal.
The ancient Mayans of South America who invented a calendar of remarkable accuracy and complexity, based on astronomical observations and advanced mathematics, were, by its means, able to project dates far into the future. It used three different dating systems in parallel with each other. It is of particular interest because it theoretically predicts the end of the world on 21st December 2012. Until that date passes there will be some folk wondering about the worth of their long-term investments whilst others will be wondering if they have chosen the best philosophy in life. They got quite a few things wrong so there’s hope for us.
The generic term for the energy that pervades life and the universe is Life Force. Some cosily think of it personified in the shape of a little old man, with a harp, sitting on a cloud.
Sceptics and some scientists do not believe in it at all, particularly the Geneticist Prof. Richard Dawkins who has just published a book disposing of God. Dawkins is one of those narrow minded souls. It take a particular sort of arrogance to dismiss the beliefs of others when, by their own admission 96% of the Cosmos is completely unknown and unimaginable to science. He may be offended by being referred to as a soul, but there you go. These people never seem to stray beyond the confines of their own particular discipline. He really should engage in conversation with a quantum physicist, engineer or even an astronaut who has returned from space
George Lucas the film director, in his Star Wars film was near the mark when he had his character Obi-Wan Kenobi describe life force as “The Force” or an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together. Every culture on earth has a term for the concept of life force. Christian, Jewish, Islamic.and many other cultural traditions dub it “the soul”.
Each of us has a bio-electric field which can be detected and measured. Moreover, we are constantly being bombarded and penetrated by particles from the sun or outer space. We could not survive without this constant stream of energy. Sufferers from S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder) know only too well how they are plunged into gloom and depression by receiving insufficient of the particles of energy called photons. To Joe Soap in the street, that is sunlight. It produces vitamin D in our bodies and in all plants and surface-dwelling animals by photosynthesis.
There are some creatures, deep underground or under the deepest oceans, who manage without. They source their requirements for life from chemicals.
Other particles of matter such as neutrinos pass clear through the earth without stopping.
Take away the sunlight and we all die – as did the dinosaurs (or most of them). There are a number of therapies that use light (energy waves) to promote healing and a sense of well-being. Light, which is an energy form (that mostly travels in waves), whether natural or man-made affects the amount of hormones secreted by our pineal, hypothalamus and pituitary glands in the brain. We are also greatly affected by gravity. The moon does more than create tides. It's monthly cycle has it's parallel in the monthly cycles of many animals including humans.
The closer the light is to sunlight, the better. It is recommended for convalescing patients and is beneficial in the treatment of various disorders including those as different as skin conditions, jet lag, sleep disorder and dyslexia.
In the same order of electro-mechanical rays are ultra-violet light and x-rays and many others of which more is to be said

Hello Len,

Fascinating reading, cannot say I understand all.

When you put that matter cannot be destroyed only metamorphasised, does this mean that we are on a journey as well as being recycled after death.