General Chat

I will have to look up the correspondence but I think it was in 1983 that I wrote to Carl Sagan, then Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell University about a book he had written “The Dragons of Eden” about the evolution of human intelligence. I asked about his views, if he had any, on hypnosis also the phenomenon of gazing at the back of a person’s head and that person suddenly turning and making eye-contact. I remarked that I was able to do this at will and often, at work, contacted people to whom I wished to speak, sometimes over a considerable distance in. say, a crowded banking hall.

I raised with him the subject of "distant intentionality" as it is now called. Had a reply from his "First Personal Assistant" Pearl Druyen (who I later found out was Mrs Sagan) to the effect that she believed - but Carl was too busy saving the human race to look at the question just yet - but she would tackle him about it. when he had more time

She quoted an instance when she had been at the window on the 16th floor of an hotel in Seoul, observing the ground level with binoculars. She focused on a man sitting on a bench when the man suddenly looked up, Although she was behind a screen they had “eyeball to eyeball contact”

Had he beaten Dr Schmidt to it by a quarter of a century Sagan now might have been hailed as an Einstein.

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 published a book disposing of God. Dawkins is one of those narrow minded souls. 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. Professor H J Eysenck, who occupied the Chair in Psychology at London University and was Director of the Psychological Dept. at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospitals said "Scientists, especially when they leave the field in which they have specialised , are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their predudices all the more dangerous".

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 tradition dubs it “the soul”.

Each of us has a bio-electric field which can be detected and measured with instruments. The force-field or aura, extends beyond our physical bodies by about 18 inches - although, in water, a shark may detect it half a mile away. 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. Other particles of matter pass clear through us and 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. 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.

In my researches, I found a good friend in a Chartered Psychologist. I was an Accountant but we hit it off together as we were both investigative and inclined to scepticism. He is also a hypnotherapist and when he found that I was interested in past life, introduced me to a woman hypnotist in the Aylesbury area who specialised in regression. I made an appointment and was seen together with two other, independent researchers who I had never met before.
I thought, as so many do, that I could not be hypnotised. I was wrong though. I was 'put under' when my turn came whilst the other two people observed, made notes and operated a tape-recorder. Briefly, I was regressed to 1340 when my mind occupied the body of a monk, journeying on foot from a monastery near Kiev (where I had been since aged 8) to Milan University, making a living en route by distilling pain-killer from willow bark. My baggage train was a mule. I was astounded afterwards by my apparent knowledge of 14th century Russian and world politics. I had not studied the subject and had never realised that what we know as Russia was then about 15 independent republics. There was a war going on in Europe which made my journey rather difficult However, I'm aware that the conscious mind can forget a lot but the unconscious retains all at a very deep level and it is possible, though unlikely, that I had read all this at some time. There could be an alternative explanation for my experience.
The same thing may be said of the other two people, both “30-something” ladies who were also regressed at the same time as me. I say 'the same time' but actually, it was a three-day session with one of us undergoing hypnosis each day, the other two acting at witnesses and keeping independent notes.
Interestingly, one of the others was regressed to a South American people, the Olmecs about 800AD.

The first act of God recorded in Genesis is the creation of the universe. But since God is eternal, and the universe has been in existence for a mere 15 billion years, what was he/she/it doing in the infinity of time before the Big Bang? Perhaps God is the essence of consciousness, creating universes without end. Perhaps the Big Bang was not the beginning but only a pause.

The year 2008 marks the start of a new era in physics with the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - unless they again fall behind schedule - one of the most eagerly anticipated instruments in the history of the physical sciences. But the LCH is not the only upcoming discovery machine; another is the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope. (GLAST) which will precisely measure the arival time of gamma pulses. Working together, these two machines may be able to identify dark matter, which together with dark energy,and other unidentified phenomena that make up over 95% of the cosmos. "Dark" matter is not really dark. The adjective expresses science's inability to comprehend it.
My simplistic mind asks "If they do not comprehend 95% of a subject, how can they claim to have any real knowledge at all?"

It all implies the present laws of science and theology are inadequate to explain the creation and we must postulate the existence of an over-riding dimension which, for lack of a definition we might as well call God. “Soul” may be a translation of the Hebrew “nephesh” and its derivation is uncertain but probably means “and man became a living being” which in turn suggests that something entered into a creature to give it the human spark. A common view today of a soul is that it is some form of spiritual essence; a consciousness that enters into a person some time after conception and before birth and leaves at death (it is becoming very doubtful as to whether this is exclusively a human property). It is an immortal component that is neither born nor dies and therefore exists independently of the body. All this is derived from ancient Greek thought and, in that sense, soul is synonymous with psyche or consciousness.

From the scientific angle there is no concrete evidence for the existence of soul (nor is there any evidence to the contrary) although there is a wealth of circumstantial evidence in that the body has an undoubted energy field (or aura) which can be measured and even photographed and there are recent and ongoing studies concerning out-of-body experiences in near-death experiences.

Plato regarded the soul as being like the brain but without the physical properties; a rational, free-floating eternal intelligence. He regarded God in the same light but omnipotent. Many cosmologists now concede that the universe cannot be explained by mathematics but can only be the product of a vast intelligence

Professor Stephen Hawking (author of A Brief History of Time) Britain’s world-renowned physicist and theorist on multi-dimensional space is to make and star in a film setting out his theories on the origins and fate of the universe. The film, "Beyond the Horizon", will be a vehicle for some of his views and the views of other cosmologists with some of their most daunting concepts including that there may be up to 11 dimensions.

Most of us can grasp 4 dimensions: length, breadth, depth and time. Perhaps spirituality is another – which I can cope with – but am baffled by the thought of 6 others and look forward to his exposition. Maybe the never-ending patterns, the random accumulation of coincidences into an overwhelming pattern may be a dimension if what he means by a dimension is what I mean i.e. a measurable extent, an aspect or a feature. The real star of Hawking's film will be the computer-generated images that will try to simplify some of cosmology’s most complex ideas.

Scientists are generally agreed that the universe came into being with a Big Bang about 15 billion years ago. The term was coined by Prof Fed Hoyle when he was disputing the now generally accepted theory in cosmology that the universe evolved from one super dense agglomeration of matter that suffered a cataclysmic explosion. In keeping with the laws of physics, matter was created in a cosmic explosion of concentrated matter and energy which had coalesced into a form that was unstable and insupportable with the inevitable transmutation of energy into other forms.

I once heard it said (by my Godmother who was a lecturer on the Scriptures and could read Greek, Latin and Hebrew), regarding the scriptures, that “In the beginning was the word” was a mistranslation which should have been “In the beginning was the sound”; the Big Bang, perhaps? She, of course, died long before the term Big Bang was coined. One of the myriad forms of energy resulting was light, the fastest moving of all known particles. It travels in tiny packets of energy called quanta (singular- quantum ) of photons (particles of energy). Before the Big Bang, therefore, there could only have been darkness. “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep” (Genesis 1.2) Whichever way we choose to look at it, there is much in common, these days, between science and theology. But the question “where did it all come from” remains. The question is no more answered by science than it is by the Bible/Torah/Koran.

Len, I did not mean to pressure you in any way.
I have just found this so very interesting, and well-presented.
I fully understand if you now feel that it should be brought to an end.
I think everyone who has read the above has learnt something.
Thank you.
Jo

I am not very keen on disclosing my personal excursions into the paranormal as I am aware that what I say is anecdotal. The only way to be sure of anything, if one can ever be sure, is by personal experience and the weight of evidence.

I much prefer to keep to the known laws of physics and make out a case from that angle. As for "letting you have it all", Joanna, I would be happy to oblige but GR merely cuts off what I have laboriously typed, often in mid-sentence, should I exceed 5000 characters so I have to give a severely pruned version. So far, in this short posting, I have used up 657 characters. I am not going to check their figures.
Len

Len, glad to read more of your thoughts.
How interesting you are!
Please do not cut anything short, let us have it all.
The Pyramids I can vouch for; seen them twice. They do exist!
I have also had amazing messages through various spiritualists and mediums. And yes, no-one knew I was going and I talked to no-one before the readings. Nor do I give out anything helpful.
I have been to see Colin Fry twice now. I don't think I would go again.
I also raved about John Edwards until I came across an article which made me wonder just how much of the studio audience had been 'got at' and had given out information unwittingly.
There was even a suggestion of microphones being placed in the audience to pick up their conversations.
Who knows?
Anyway, please do give us more, Len.

Things that go bump in the night> Len there are other things that go bump in the night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

len have you ever watched crossing over with john edwards,hes amazing but not a show off.and always accurate.xxx

i love lens threads,i,ll be thinking about this for days lol.thanks lenxxx

Eldrick. I am somewhat long in the tooth, frail of body but reasonably sound of mind. When I had the time and energy to travel the country seeking out mediums, armed with notebook and tape-recorder, was about many years ago and few of them would be known today. Of course, there are well-known mediums today and many quite intelligent people vouch for them

I started off by visiting a medium on the spur of the moment, a French lady who I had never met before and who, until we met, did not know I existed. I saw an ad. for a "free" demonstration at the Spiritualists Association in Belgravia, London. Anyone could attend. - and I found that four-letter word very appealing.

Being a born sceptic, I am too cagey to give away clues. It was a public demonstration. I was picked out of a crowd of maybe a 100 people and had not sat anywhere near the medium, having gone just to observe. The medium gave me a long message from my grandfather which included that I had an oil-painting of him - which I promptly denied. There was much other personal information about my grandather which I could not accept as true. Not being overly shy, I was rather curt with the medium and suggested she was guessing. I later found out from an aunt, my Godmother, who I told about the medium, that I did have the oil-painting, a small one, buried in a box of old family photos that she had given me, which I had not yet opened. On checking..... it was there. I also found I was wrong - and the medium right - on a number of other counts. She also told me that I carried a memorial card re my father, which I did, in my wallet. This implies that either the medium or the deceased has access to my subconscious and/or memories. Taking into account that the medium told me things which I had not known, and which I only found out later from an independent source, logic leaves me believing in life after death, although what form it takes is uncertain. Certainly it is intelligence with a memory and reasoning powers. Of course I could not leave it there. That was the starting point.

I have never seen the pyramids but do not doubt that they exist, people tell me they do - too much evidence to be denied. Some would deny it, though. There are those who still believe in a flat earth, which was made and populated in the course of 7 days, precisely 4,600 years BC.

Since my sense of curiosity would not allow me to let it rest, I subsequently travelled quite long distances on many occasions, to observe mediums (The names Kathleen St George and Roy Morgan come to mind) and regressions under hypnosis. I am now fairly well convinced about it, having had the opportunity to meet and assess many mediums, hypnotists and subjects at various sessions. It cost me £75 to be regressed - maybe 20 years ago. Well worth it though - although one has to be sure of getting a real hypnotist, a person of integrity. In the case of Roy Morgan, I got rather angry with him for telling me things which I thought could not possibly be true. I went back to him later and apologised as checking proved me to be wrong.

Years ago, when I had more time and fewer commitments, I spent about 5 years traipsing around the country, armed with notebook and tape-recorder studying mediums. True ones are hard to find although they do exist. Many of them are charlatans and one could recognise their spiels, seeing how they scanned the sitters, obtaining information upon which they embroidered. I would not trust a TV programme, too easy to enhance with cutting, editing and special effects. I have met quite reasonable people, though, who have had dealings with contemporary mediums such as Colin Fry who have been won over.

As usual, I exceeded my allotted space and had to prune this considerably but may get in some of the deleted material later, if appropriate.
len

Interesting what you say about mediums.

I have never been able to find a convincing one but, like you, have looked hard.

I would be eternally grateful and very, very interested if it were possible to let me know who one (better still - all) of the 5% were that you couldn't fault.

Well, we are getting into something else entirely now.
Oh boy, have you widened this topic, Len!
Hypnosis: that is something of which I do have personal experience.
I was taught by a pupil of some famous chap, whose name I cannot for the life of me remember just now.
But - many years ago, I taught a friend self-hypnosis, which she has since used to keep her constant migraines at bay - very successfully!
I have used self-hynosis myself before dental appointments.
As for the psychic things that I have experienced in my life: well, there is no proof I can give you - except my word that weird, inexplicable things happened.
My Dad and my husband had/have to be convinced of things otherwordly - and they were/have been.
Looking forward very much to your next input, Len!

As Dr Alden, a clinical psychologist, of the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary remarked, concerning the use of hypnosis, "We may not know how it works, but it certainly seems to". She says hypnosis can be so effective in reducing pain that patients can even stop using conventional pain-killers.

Hypnosis was first recognised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks as a way of inducing dreams to solve problems. The phenomenon may also be induced by meditation or deliberately "going into trance" as do trance mediums. It may also be induced by music (especially "gospel music"), dance, flagellation (how the saints of old did it) or mind-altering drugs. Read up shamanism.

Hypnosis involves focusing (or disengaging) the attention to such a degree that one may switch off the usual senses and work purely in the subconscious mind and, at that stage it is possible to experience an interaction between minds.

I put this in just to widen the scope of this discussion.

Joanna. Yes, I suppose I have been thinking of this for years (along with wine, women and song etc etc and many other subjects). My favourite word used to be "rubbish" but long ago found that "maybe" was a better one.
I do insist on evidence though and therefore it was on the books that I looked at mediums of the "psychic" variety. After about 5 years of checking them out I found that perhaps 95% were deluded or downright spoofs. There was that 5% though that I could not fault and, believe me, I tried.

Len, I don't think you have lost anything to do with this plot!
I have learnt so much from reading through all the facts you have given us.
It sounds as though this is something you have been studying for years.
My Mum lived comfortably with her 'gift' - as did we.
Do you have psychic abilities too?

Jo

Joanna
I empathise with your mum. A lot of people think that I too have lost the plot (Don't they Ray?)
Len

Cont.
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.

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.
Our 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 universe, so far as is known, 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 para-psychological experiments and findings made at Duke, Princeton, Freiberg, Edinburgh and other Universities and respected centres of learning already referred to in my story. 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.
len

Electro-magnetic radiation is the general name given to energy with electrical and/or magnetic fields. These forces travel through space and often through solids as do waves on the sea or bullets through the air - but much faster, usually near the speed of light (part of the spectrum of radiations) which is 186,000 miles a second. Visible light itself is part, a very small part, of this range of energy and usually, when we think of "spectrum" it is the rainbow which comes to mind from the reds at the longer frequency end and getting through the colours to blues and violets at the shorter frequency level. Mostly it is in waves and the wavelength; the distance between the crests of the waves is called the "frequency". Just to make it a bit more confusing, there is another form of energy which, like the bullet, travels in discontinuous particles or photons or quanta (from which is derived "Quantum mechanics" a new branch of physics. Our receptors, eyes, have two means of detecting photons, differing light-sensitive cells in the retinas called rods and cones which detect coloured or grayscale light.. Remember - our eyes are extensions of the brain.

The slowest known waves-lengths or frequencies are sound waves which are, of course, pressure-wave motion with a frequency in the region of 20 to 20,000 hertz and requires a medium (gas,water,solids) through which to travel. It may, though, be translated into electrical impulses and back again. There is evidence that "life force", probably electro-magnetic phenomena, may induce physiological sensations of sound which although received direct into the mind may appear to have been received by the ears, eyes, nose or even touch due to the cortex of the brain which processes the information received.. One could speak with a ghost but for obvious reasons, a ghost would be unlikely to transmit sound waves. "Mind-hearing" is quite a commonly reported sensation, in others as well as schizophrenics, and if a ghost appears to speak, notwithstanding having no solid vocal chords to vibrate, the sensation of hearing may seem just as real.

VLF, “very low frequency" is in the lower part of the sound spectrum and very much below the capabilities our hearing to detect; although some animals use VLF, e.g. elephants who, it has recently been discovered, converse together over incredible distances using VLF. These wavelengths may be measured in metres. From there upwards the wavelengths get shorter and shorter, into the electromagnetic bands, micro-waves, radio frequencies (quite a wide band). Invisible to us, are infra red light, ultra violet, x-rays and to the shortest frequencies of all, the gamma rays. I have skipped a lot. Gamma rays are given out by the nuclei of radio-active atoms. They were sometimes called y-rays, "y" being a similar shape to the symbol for "gamma", the third letter of the Greek alphabet, hence the later name 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. 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.

Sorry, this essay is a bit too long for a single post therefore will be continued in my next.
len

Thankyou Len, for your theories, I am always fascinated by your posts,

Caz ( with ancestors from very near you}


xx