General Chat

Yes, Pauline, I think I saw that programme, too.
There will probably never be any real proof that these children are reincarnated - but when their 'memories' can be confirmed like some have, it does make you wonder.
I suppose the main thing is that we should all still be open to 'wonder' - and be able to accept that inexplicable things happen to us or to people we know - even though these happenings may be classed as "anecdotal" to others, without physical proof.
There will always be forward-thinking people who will try to find the proof.

More anecdotal material:

Author Dr S.Parnia
The answer about the significance of NDE is beginning to come from studies carried out with patients who have had a cardiac arrest.

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 our 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.

The occurrence of NDEs in cardiac arrest further highlights the fact that we currently know very little about the relationship between the mind and the brain. It also raises the possibility that some of the current theories regarding mind/consciousness, spirituality and the brain may need to be re-examined.
Dr Parnia is a graduate of Guys and St. Thomas' medical schools in London. He is currently a registrar in internal and respiratory medicine as well as a clinical research fellow working towards a PhD in the molecular biology of asthma. He was a member of the Southampton University Trust Hospitals resuscitation committee between 1998 and 1999. He is also chairman of Horizon Research Foundation. While working on the medical and coronary care units of Southampton General Hospitals and together with Dr Peter Fenwick he set up the first ever study of near death experiences in the UK. The results of this study have received widespread coverage in the national and international press and have recently been published in the medical journal "Resuscitation”

No doubt some will say that Dr Parnia is not really qualified.

In a hospital in Switzerland in 1944, the world-renowned psychiatrist Carl C Jung, had a heart attack and then a near-death experience. His vivid encounter with the light, plus the intensely meaningful insights led Jung to conclude that his experience came from something real and eternal. Jung's experience is unique in that he saw the earth from a vantage point of about a thousand miles above it. His incredibly accurate view of the earth from outer space was described about two decades before astronauts in space first described it. Subsequently, as he reflected on life after death, Jung recalled the meditating Hindu from his near-death experience and read it as a parable of the archetypal Higher Self, the God-image within. Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology, centered on the archetypes of the collective unconscious. The following is an excerpt from his autobiography entitled Memories, Dream, Reflections (I own a copy) describing his near-death experience.

It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse - the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back - as if in the upper left of a map - I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth.
Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view - approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.
After contemplating it for a while, I turned around. I had been standing with my back to the Indian Ocean, as it were, and my face to the north. Then it seemed to me that I made a turn to the south. Something new entered my field of vision. A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space.
I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block. An entrance led into a small antechamber. To the right of the entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a stone bench. He wore a white gown, and I knew that he expected me. Two steps led up to this antechamber, and inside, on the left, was the gate to the temple. Innumerable tiny niches, each with a saucer-like concavity filled with coconut oil and small burning wicks, surrounded the door with a wreath of bright flames. I had once actually seen this when I visited the Temple of the Holy Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon; the gate had been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps of this sort.

Carl Jung (cont.)
As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me - an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.
This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.
Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a "fait accompli", without any reference back to what had been. There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.

Something else engaged my attention: as I approached the temple I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated room and would meet there all those people to whom I belong in reality. There I would at last understand - this too was a certainty - what historical nexus I or my life fitted into. I would know what had been before me, why I had come into being, and where my life was flowing. My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered. Why had it taken this course? Why had I brought these particular assumptions with me? What had I made of them? What will follow? I felt sure that I would receive an answer to all the questions as soon as I entered the rock temple. There I would meet the people who knew the answer to my question about what had been before and what would come after.

While I was thinking over these matters, something happened that caught my attention. From below, from the direction of Europe, an image floated up. It was my doctor, or rather, his likeness - framed by a golden chain or a golden laurel wreath. I knew at once: 'Aha, this is my doctor, of course, the one who has been treating me. But now he is coming in his primal form. In life he was an avatar of the temporal embodiment of the primal form, which has existed from the beginning. Now he is appearing in that primal form.'
Presumably I too was in my primal form, though this was something I did not observe but simply took for granted. As he stood before me, a mute exchange of thought took place between us. The doctor had been delegated by the earth to deliver a message to me, to tell me that there was a protest against my going away. I had no right to leave the earth and must return. The moment I heard that, the vision ceased.

Rather a long anecdote, that one. And who is Carl Jung? you may ask.

Most of the world’s religions teach that we survive bodily death but usually their ideas are not clear or coherent enough (having been formulated in ancient and ignorant times) and the evidence of their truth is generally weak and lacking in reason. Moreover, over the eons, written accounts have been miss-translated, heavily edited for political reasons and generally distorted so that what comes down to us is very different from the original concepts. I am, therefore, interested only scientific evidence and first-hand experience from reliable witnesses although anecdotal evidence is, if well presented, very interesting.

The Spiritualist say that their views - which are not very different from Theosophists in respect of life immediately after death – are based on the evidence of actual communication through “mediums” who, they claim, talk to those who have “passed over” and are now in what they call the spirit world. The mediums then, they say, are able to pass on the evidence for their identity given to them by the survivors. Probably, a normal scientist would say that the voices heard and the visions seen by the mediums are hallucinations and of no value. They would go on to suggest that they could hardly be otherwise because human beings are only electro-chemical machines and when they are dead they are dead and that is the end of it.

However, because of the scientists’ blind, religious faith in materialism they tend to forget electro-magnetic radiation, gravitational and energy fields, the multitude of sub-atomic particles, other phenomena and the 96% of dark energy and matter that comprises most of the universe and is out there in the void - so far a closed-book to science. They do not take the trouble to investigate closely enough.

We are all psychic to some degree but have been brain-washed since soon after birth to be in denial of the fact because of our western conditioning When confronted by evidence of telepathy, premonition, awareness of being stared at by an unseen observer, a strong feeling of being in the close proximity of the spirit of someone who is dead etc etc, we brush it aside as coincidence of a mental aberration. Yet in the material world of science, there is no reason whatsoever why these phenomena should not exist. It is a fact that telepathy, the existence of consciousness away from a physical body, the likelihood of life after death is easier to prove than to prove these things do not exist. A sceptic is a person who has never had personal experience.

Anyone born into a cardboard box would accept their confines as the limits of the universe - until someone lifted the lid and let them peek out.

A full and proper understanding of the way the universe works may be tied to how our minds produce conscious thought and action. In his 1989 book The Emperor’s New Mind, University of Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose suggested that quantum gravitational processes must be uncomputable by all our current measures. Penrose did not leave it there, though. He then suggested the same uncomputable - but somehow quantum - processes might also lie behind human consciousness

Lucien Hardy, at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, lends support to this speculation in his latest paper (www.arxiv.or.abs/quant-ph0701019). The way quantum gravity handles information may indeed be like the thought processes in the brain, he says.
Hardy is reluctant to be drawn into making too much of the link, as there are far too many gaps in our knowledge of the mind and of quantum gravity to make any firm connection. Nevertheless, he says, “the fact that quantum gravity would process so differently from a classical or quantum machine makes the link more plausible and potentially fruitful. It’s consistent with the spirit of what Penrose is saying. If the brain were a quantum gravity computer- and that’s a very big if - then I think the consequences of that would be an interesting thing to think about”.

The physicist Freeman Dyson once said that mind and intelligence are “woven into the fabric of the universe”. He may have been more right than he ever imagined.

A baby is born and opens its eyes for the first time. What does it see? The answer is (it may seem obvious to some) nothing. Normally, its mother will hold it in her arms in such a way that the baby eyes are near her face and it will gradually begin to gain an impression and make out the general shape of her face. This process will go on for perhaps 40 minutes when it will imprint her in its mind and mother and child become bonded. It presumably has experiences going on in its mind but it does not understand any of these on a cognitive level. It has already begun to receive stimuli whilst in the womb and responds to discomfort and sounds. Its memory started to form at about 12 weeks after conception after which it begins to react to sensory experiences such as sound or discomfort.

The baby’s parents immediately start to condition it with verbal, aural and visual stimuli which baby absorbs and processes and lays down as memories. The parents then start to condition it by telling it the cause, in their culture’s opinion, of those experiences going on in its mind. They point to objects and give them names. They indicate that the pink thing waving about in front of them is part of itself, a hand or a toe. They show it other objects that are separate from it and gradually it is conditioned to the idea that it is surrounded by objects which are not part of it. And it learns that the reflected particles of electromagnetic radiation bouncing off these objects and being collected into its eyes and transmitted to its brain as electrical impulses are colours like red and green. Baby believes these light waves of varying length (colours) are an intrinsic property of the object being observed. Remove the light source and the colour disappears. Fortunately, our eyes are equipped to deal with extremely low light and have cells called rods that come into operation for detecting gray-scale (black and shades thereof). Colours are detected by cells called cones. Some animals cannot detect colour and live in a gray-scale world. Other animals detect more colours than do humans. Other animals "see" heat or electrical impulses.

Baby, of course, may itself be described as an electrochemical machine having a little computer at the top and 5 sensory devices for intercepting and translating pheromones, gas and particles in the air (smell), detecting and interpreting molecules of chemical compounds (taste), detecting fluctuations in air pressure (hearing), receiving and changing into electrical impulses an exceedingly small part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum (sight), detecting resistance to pressure, fluctuation in temperature and assessing texture (touch). That was until fairly recently when other things began to be discovered. There is no computer on earth (or even envisaged) that has the power and complexity of the human or animal brain. Two of the mightiest computers on earth linked together are, arguably, less complex than a hen’s brain. There are things going on in the brain, mine and yours, which are works of creation and not necessarily linked to what is going on “out there”. The physical body is itself one of the things “out there”, not the human being.

Some children experience things which the adults around them do not. They are considered by the already normally conditioned adults to have over-active imaginations. Those adults “know” that the things the children experience are not “true”.

Children up to about 16 years old can hear what older folk cannot yet this is acceptable as it can easily be proved. Some children have imaginary friends and others have out-of-the-body experiences and describe floating around the house at night. Sometimes the parents become angry and scold the children who then stop talking of any experience they may have had. Such parents have a heavy responsibility for the possible destruction of an extra power of perception in their child, or what might be regarded as an extra window into a dimension of the universe that they themselves no longer possess

Len, you once again show us what a well-read, perceptive, and entertaining author you are - and all this from an ex-accountant! (Mind you, you have revealed that you were forced into that trade...)

It is also interesting to read the counter arguments from Eldrick. It is interesting how science can marginalise, or even ridicule, something for which it has no explanation - the only things to escape that seem to be gravity, magnetism, and electricity, but that is because their existence is too obvious.

I have long preferred the teachings of Jung over Freud (who, I feel, was more of a fraud). One of Jung's theories was the existence of "racial memory" which would help to explain the predominance of "tribal" beliefs in the various cultures around the world, despite the recent mass-mingling of international travel - if memory is encapsulated in the cells that unite to form you, how much easier would it be to accept your parents' ideas? It happens all the time in nature, and we just call it "instinct" that the bird knows the route to Africa, or how to build its nest.

Oddly, as I have mentioned in a thread long-since passed into the aether, I believe that I have a memory from a few HOURS after conception, when I was no more than a cluster of undifferentiated cells (zygote - is that the term?). It is a radical claim, and no-one has questioned it; I would love to have it more thoroughly investigated by more scientific process. How could I have had the perception, let alone the means to store it?

Let us try to keep this thread going, and ask for more constructive comments (for or against).

Rob

Robert. thank you for your constructive comments.

Re memory; I was, for a period of 10 years, an accredited counsellor employed by a mental health counselling service funded by the S.Bucks Health Authority. I was under the supervision of the Consultant Psychiatrist at the local general hospital. At one time I had a client who claimed memories from when she was six months old.. Naturally, one did not dispute this with the client but I did raise it with my supervisor who told me that yes, this does happen: there are a few folk about who remember being born.

Apparently memories are being laid down from about 12 weeks after conception and, in maternity wards, newborns often re-act to sounds (e.g. pop music from the radio) they first heard whilst still in the womb. They certainly know mum's voice and the sound of her heartbeat.Laying the newborn babe on mum's chest where it can hear mum's heart-beat certainly helps recovery from the birth trauma. I believe little is known about how short-term memory becomes long-term. There is also cellular memory (how instincts are carried on) but I have not read up on that.
Len

It is a fact that modern humans potentially retain faculties that have been more fully exploited in other species. This is quite reasonable considering all life on earth arose and diverged from a common source.

In accordance with Darwinian Theory, any species will evolve faculties which enhance its survival chances. Homo sapiens are still evolving. Perhaps into different sub-species as once humans did from the other anthropoid apes. Had it not been for transport and communications during the last few thousand years, and general mingling between the races, homo sapiens would already have started dividing into separate sub-species.

Other species of animal – birds, bats, sharks, porpoises, snakes, and octopi etc. have all manner of hard-to-believe senses that enable them to thrive. They can perceive what we cannot in the electro-magnetic radiation spectrum including infra-red and ultra-violet light, maybe more. Snakes can “see” heat sources and “taste” smells. Cats do the last trick too. Cetaceans (porpoises etc) can see in ultra sound as do many other creatures including bats. They may also detect and navigate by magnetic lines of force. Ancient humans seemed to do that too and mapped out the lines on land and dubbed them “ley lines” but more of that later perhaps.

Sharks and their cousins can pick up electrical auras from other living creatures, even when the prey is buried under the sea floor. Dolphins and porpoises have a similar skill but by using sonar.
So it would not be surprising if humans too (or some of them) possessed these uncanny capabilities in some form or another. Who is to say if a person can or cannot actually perceive the electrical force field surrounding each us and call it an aura? It is known to be there and is detectable and measurable with instruments. Just take off a silk shirt or blouse in the dark and watch the sparks.

MRI scans on the brains of London taxi drivers learning “the knowledge” (i.e. building a mental map of London) have amply demonstrated that, if a faculty is regularly exercised, the actual part of the brain being used grows, producing new neural networks. That goes for any skill from card playing to making music, so why not psychic abilities. Practice makes perfect. Conversely, not using a faculty causes it to wither.

Research in Sweden, and verified in our research centres, reports that up to a quarter of the population can detect the proximity of power cables by unknown means, some to the extent of getting headaches and feeling ill. Their brains and nervous systems are picking up electro-magnetic radiation.
So, if “life-force” is an electro-magnetic emanation which operates in conjunction with the brain but can also leave the physical body, surely it follows that those so gifted should be able to perceive it with mind-sight ?

Dr Rupert Sheldrake, author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (Three Rivers Press, 1999), believes that animals have abilities that humans may have possessed at one time, but somehow lost. Through his extensive research, he has concluded that there are three major categories of unexplained perceptiveness by animals: Telepathy - a psychic connection that some pets may have with their owners through connections Sheldrake calls "morphic fields." It is this ability that enables pets to "know" when their owners are on their way home; The Sense of Direction - this ability accounts for the "incredible journeys" some animals make to be with their owners, including homing pigeons. Extensive studies on homing pigeons, which can be electronically tagged, show that they use sight, smell, memory, sensitivity to electromagnetic lines of force and also, apparently, telepathy.

It requires a bit of a leap of faith, does it not, to equate internal brain activity to 'psychic' ability.....?
I don't really see the connection.

And sparks created when taking off a silk (or nylon) shirt have nothing to do with the bodies 'aura'. It is quite simply static electricity. There is no need to try ot ascribe anything more complex to it. Occams razor surely?

Once upon a time the 'Kirlian Photography' method of high voltage electricity being used in conjunction with a photo sensitve plate was believed to show an 'aura'.

Science has now shown this is not the case - which is a good example of better science overcoming a 'paranormal' theory.

BOO, sorry couldnt resist. Hope you jumped !!!!!

Dr Rupert SHeldrake has also been roundly criticised for his methodology by many of his colleagues, who dismiss his work as pseudoscience.

His work on formative causation with newly hatched chicks was dismissed due to irregularities - his co-researcher Steven Rose stated the results of the experiment were unreliable.

This is not to say that his other work doesn't have merit - but to be accepted as meaningfull it must have the same checks and balances applied to it as any other scientific proposal. Why should paranormal research enjoy a lower standard than other research?

I would be very interested in the research that shows that homing pigeons use telepathy....if you could point me in the direction of it, I would be extremely obliged. I confess to never having heard of this, but it sounds rather an exciting discovery.

University of Oxford
We utilised precision Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking to examine the homing paths of pigeons (Columba livia) released 20 times consecutively 25 km from the loft. By the end of the training phase, birds had developed highly stereotyped yet individually distinct routes home, with detailed recapitulation evident at each stage of the journey. Following training, birds also participated in a series of releases from novel sites at perpendicular distances of up to 3 km from their established routes. Results showed that subjects were attracted back to their established routes and recapitulated them from the point of contact. Naïve conspecifics (yoked controls) released from the same off-route sites confirmed that the experienced birds' route choices were not influenced by constraints exerted by terrain features, but that increased experience with the general area conferred a homing advantage in the form of more efficient flight tracks, even from these novel sites. Patterns in the paths taken by experienced birds to rejoin their established routes are discussed with reference to navigational mechanisms employed by homing pigeons in their familiar area.
A pigeon may return to its loft in a day after being taken to an unfamiliar site 965km away. Various theories on how they navigate have been explored: memory, positioning by use of the sun, magnetic lines of force but these may be eliminated.
“Despite 60 years of research we really do not understand how they do it. We have no idea” (Prof. Tim Guilford)

Ho dear now i have a headache reading all that very interesting info. beyond my simple little head. I just know i have seen and felt and heard many a ghost or spirit over many yrs,

I have to disagree with the good professors statement. And it's not just me that disagrees - many others do as well, all of them a lot more qualified than me! We do have an idea how they do it, and telepathy isnt part of the equation according to all the experiments that have been done.

In a 2007 article in the German journal Naturwissenschaften scientists announced that they'd found tiny iron oxide crystals in the skin lining of the upper beak of homing pigeons, laid out in a three-dimensional pattern in a way that the birds might be able to sense the Earth's magnetic field independent of their motion and posture, and thus identify their geographical position.This discovery reinforced the famous brass bar/magnet experiments in the 1950's.

There is also evidence that light from the sun, moon and/or stars is used.

So the statement that 'these may be eliminated' needs to be a little more quantified, surely? I certainly don't eliminate them.

I wonder why there is such a need to ascribe supernatural powers to something when either it is not understood or the evidence that does exist isn't suitable to that particular supernatural theory.

Why science is used to bolster an argument on the one hand, then dismissed on the other to suggest something for which there is no evidence....?

Scientists have discovered the secret of pigeons' remarkable ability to navigate perfectly over journeys of several hundred miles. They do it by smell. Research found that pigeons create 'odour' maps of their neighbourhoods and use these to orient themselves. This replaces the idea that they exploited subtle variations in the Earth's magnetic field to navigate.
'This is important because it is the first time that magnetic sensing and smell have been tested side by side,' said Anna Gagliardo, of the University of Pisa, who led the research.
The discovery that birds have an olfactory positioning system is the latest surprising discovery about bird migration. Birds know exactly when to binge on berries or insects to fatten themselves for long flights, and some species recognise constellations, which helps them to fly at night. Birds also travel immense distances: the average Manx shearwater travels five million miles during its life.
Research into navigation has included an experiment in which robins were released with a patch over one eye - some on the right eye, some on the left. The left-eye-patched robins navigated well, but those with right-eye patches got hopelessly lost. 'It is a very strange finding,' said Graham Appleton, of the British Trust for Ornithology . 'It is clear the cues robins use to navigate are only detectable in one eye. Why that should be the case, I have no idea.'
In the Pisa experiments, Gagliardo, working with Martin Wild of the University of Auckland , followed up experiments done in 2004, which showed that pigeons could detect magnetic fields. She argued that this did not mean they actually did.
So in 24 young homing pigeons she cut the nerves that carried olfactory signals to their brains. In another 24 pigeons she cut the trigeminal nerve, which is linked to the part of the brain involved in detecting magnetic fields.
The 48 birds were released 30 miles from their loft. All but one of those deprived of their ability to detect magnetic fields were home within 24 hours, indicating that it was not an ability that helped them to navigate. But those who had been deprived of their sense of smell fluttered all over the skies of northern Italy. Only four made it home.
Gagliardo and her team conclude that pigeons read the landscape as a patchwork of odours.
Every spring, hundreds of millions of birds head north in order to exploit new resources. Gulls head to the Arctic to make use of the 24 hours of daylight prevailing there, while swallows and other birds leave Africa to exploit the British summertime.
The navigation involved in these long journeys is still a cause of considerable debate among scientists. Among the main theories are suggestions that some birds remember visual maps of the terrain they fly over; that they follow the lines of Earth's magnetic field; and that night-time flyers remember star maps of the sky. Of course one has to know where one is to use such navigational aids.
However, the discovery of pigeons' prowess at exploiting smells is considered important because their navigational abilities are some of the most acute in the natural world. Pigeons excel at getting home when released in unfamiliar locations. That they achieve such accuracy using smell is all the more surprising. For a substance to be smelled it must be volatile, that is it must enter into a gaseous state at ordinary temperature and be air-borne and carry on air currents to that it can reach the airways, dissolve in mucus and reach the olfactory cells of the receptor. Unfortunately, the wind never blows consistently in the required direction, particularly across continents and seas.

So where does this leave us?

Perhaps less nit-picking over the credentials of Professor Sheldrake or the prowess of pigeons may help get back to the main theme of this thread which really concerns the nature of consciousness.

It was you that mentioned that pigeons communicated telepathically. All I did was challenge it. Correctly as it happens.

Like I challenge the claim that sparks from clothing constitutes an aura.

It is you that is making these claims - dont mention them if you arent inviting comment :-)

Pardon me, but I mentioned a book book by Professor Sheldrake who mentioned telepathy. However, lets go on a bit

A quantum trick might be behind birds' ability to navigate using Earth's magnetic field lines. Some researchers think birds might be able to "see" the magnetic field via photosensitive proteins in their retinas. The theory is that when a photon strikes one of these proteins, it creates a pair of oppositely charged ions, which separate for a fleeting moment before recombining. Each of these ions contains electrons with a quantum property called spin. Initially, these spins point in opposite directions - but in a magnetic field, they tend to become aligned. When the ions recombine, this alignment triggers a specific biochemical reaction, which gives the bird information about the magnetic field.

The idea has a major flaw though. The ions seem to be pulled back together about 10 times faster than researchers think Earth's magnetic field could affect the electrons' spins. Now Iannis Kominis of the University of Crete in Heraklion, Greece, suggests that a known quantum effect might be able to ramp up the impact of the magnetic field in enough time. "Quantum physics comes to the rescue," he says. The "quantum Zeno" effect occurs when repeated measurements of a quantum system are made. While these measurements are taking place particles do not change their state, as if they know they're being watched.

Kominis's calculations show that the force pulling the two ions together might also induce the Zeno effect on the electrons. It would allow the magnetic field to align the spins while the ions are separated by momentarily overcoming the disturbing influences of noise in the biochemical environment, thereby amplifying the magnetic field's influence (www.arxiv.org/0804.2646).

“The Zeno effect might be able to ramp up the impact of the Earth's magnetic field on proteins in birds' eyes”. Kominis and his colleagues have already shown that the Zeno effect can increase the sensitivity of a quantum system to a magnetic field. They did this by filling a chamber with a dense gas, thereby building a highly sensitive atomic magnetometer - a device used to detect magnetic fields.

They then applied a magnetic field so weak that many magnetometers would be unable to detect it. But because the gas was so dense, the group showed that the atoms effectively measure each other when they collide and, overall, that keeps the spin of the particles locked in the same state. This made the device strong enough to detect the magnetic field.

Other researchers doubt whether such quantum processes are at play in birds' eyes, however. "I'm a fan of daring hypotheses, but I'm not sure what this theory explains," says biologist Sonke Johnsen of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
He also points out that the ion reaction theory has bigger problems than the lack of time for the magnetic field to have an effect. "It's not at all clear how to make a directional sensor out of molecules that are freely diffusing and rotating," he says. In other words, the bird might be able detect the field, but not what its orientation is.
Physicist Thorsten Ritz at the University of California, Irvine, says the idea may have merit, however. "It's really cute and worth exploring further," he says, "but I'd want to see experimental tests before I believe it."
All these theories, which fall by the wayside one after another, leaves Science somewhat in disarray. What is it that they are missing? Perhaps Professor Sheldrake, tersely dismissed by Baldrick, may actually have something when he thinks “distant intentionality” may play a part in the bird's homing instinct. He should have used that word rather than "telepathy", perhaps. It sounds more scientific Certainly, so far, he has been as right as anyone apart from Prof Guilford of Oxford who succinctly puts it: "We have no idea".

I have no claim to scientific expertise. Being merely a retired accountant and auditor who likes to read all the interesting (but conflicting) accounts of the experts and tries to draw logical conclusions there from, and to discuss these with anyone who is interested. Obviously I need to read up on electricity at rest to see how it is in contradistiction from other forms

The search at Haut de la Garenne on Jersey in the Channel Isles is being led by a sniffer dog called Eddie who specialises in detecting human remains. He was said to have picked up traces of Madeleine McCann in the back of her parent’s car 5 weeks after she disappeared.

Now Eddie has picked up the scent of a child’s skeleton through several inches of concrete and, presumably, some earth in a corridor on the ground floor of Haut de la Garenne notwithstanding it being overlaid by the scent of countless people who have traversed the corridor over the many, many years since the basement was sealed off

As everyone knows, smell is experienced when we breathe in. Sniffing increases the amount of particle-carrying air that reaches the smell receptors in the upper nasal passages. The particles that are detected are organic compounds, the chemicals of life built on carbon frameworks and we may detect 40,000 of them. Most inorganic compounds are odourless although we may pick up one or two of them such as ozone and half a dozen or so elements such as chlorine, iodine etc. Generally animals - and dogs in particular - are vastly superior in the olfactory senses than are humans.

For a substance to be smelled it must be volatile, that is it must enter into a gaseous state at ordinary temperature and be air-borne to that it can reach the airways, dissolve in mucus and reach the olfactory cells of the receptor. .

What gives me pause for thought is: how long does a skeleton continue to give off molecules and how can such molecules, which have to be wafted on air currents, manage to pass through a considerable thickness of compacted earth and inches of concrete.

Are we missing something? Do dogs know something that we don’t - or perhaps have an extra sense? Please let's not mention pigeons who some suggest can detect smalls over distances of some 600 miles..