General Chat

Sylvia I will try him. With regard to mental disorders producing sparks of brilliance I have two books on my shelves which may interest you. They are downstairs and I am upstairs and can't recall the authors or correct titles right now but will give you both if you are interested. One I think is called Idiot/Savants (theres been a couple of progs on tv and a film with Dustin Hoffman called 'The Rainman' on the subject) and the other deals with Bipolar Disorder (yesterday's manic depression) and how it produces artists and people like Winston Churchill. PM me if you want details. len

Carol Thank you for the references. I will try and check them out. Thank you for you kind words. I always felt my language was awkward as I am so often told 'don't know what you are on about'. Bear in mind that I am just indulging in home-baked philosophy based on what I read. Always prepared to debate, though. When I pass on, I hope that they will have developed a mobile that I can smuggle across and that can withstand great heat and have very long-life batteries. I will call a few people. len

Dorothy. Glad you found me. Had to do something to compensate for not getting to the meet. Never was much good at twiddling my thumbs. len

12. 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. Some sooner than others. 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 is their highest praise.. 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 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, although they seemed to have no written language, invented a calendar of remarkable accuracy and complexity, based on astronomical observations and advanced mathematics,and were by its means able to project dates far into the future. It used three different dating systems in parallel with each other. No space here to describe. 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 other will be pondering if they have chosen the best philosophy in life. They got quite a few things wrong so there’s hope. 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 biologist Prof. Richard Dawkins who has just 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 school of thought. He really should engage in conversation with a quantum physicist or even an astronaut who has returned from space. Plato defined the soul as being like the brain but without the physical properties. 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. 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 electro-magnetic 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 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 spectrum are ultra-violet light, infra-red and x-rays and a few others. len

I really must be briefer. If I go on a bit, GR chops bits off my post. len

13. 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 lady 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 and made notes. There was also a tape recorder. Briefly, I was regressed to 1340 and was a monk, journeying on foot from a monastery in Novgorod (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 Russian and world politics. I had never 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. 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 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. She knew nothing whatsoever of this race and found the session meaningless and thought she must have dreamed up her experience - until I researched for her (and for my own need to know) the dress, culture, symbolism, religious ceremonies etc that she had described under hypnosis, and duly astounded her. There again, she may have read it up some time in her past and forgotten it but with the information retained deep in her subconscious. I once visited a medium. on the spur of the moment, who I had never met before and who, until we met, did not know I existed. I am always very careful not to give away clues, I have seen too many fake mediums probing sitters. It was a public demonstration at the Spiritualists Association in Belgravia and anyone could attend. I was picked out of a crowd 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, only to find out later (from an aunt who I told about the medium) that I did have one, a small one, buried in a box of old photos that she had given me, which I had left unopened. 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 memories. Taking into account that the medium told me things which I had not known, 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 an intelligence. I have never seen the pyramids but do not doubt that they exist - 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 7 days. I have traveled quite long distances, on many occasions, to observe regressions under hypnosis and I am fairly well convinced about it, having had the opportunity to meet and assess both hypnotist and subject 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 who is a person of integrity.. 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. Most of them are spoofs 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. Len

14. Definition: Paranormal - Beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. It appears that, in the cases of visual, auditory or olfactory fields, the sensations are located not in the eyes, ears or nose but centred in the brain. An analogy is when we see a bright light or figure and the illumination is removed, when we close our eyes the Image remains in our mind’s eye. In another thread (Ghosts in the Head - or bats in the Belfry) I have made reference to “blind sight” which is perception direct by the mind instead of the usual receptors (eyes, ears etc). Examples from scientific studies include blind persons who, when having something held out towards them (e.g. a wine glass), locate the object in space and form their hand in a suitable shape to receive the item. In the non-human world, a blind monkey was observed to pick up currants from the floor and catch a passing fly. The monkey’s senses of smell and hearing would not have been adequate. There are many examples but this necessarily has to be a very brief essay. Nicholas Humphrey, a theoretical psychologist who has held teaching posts at both Oxford and Cambridge deals with the subject in his book “A History of the Mind”. It is a fact that modern humans potentially retain faculties that have been more fully exploited in other species. 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. Other species – birds, sharks, porpoises, snakes, and octopi etc. have all manner of hard-to-believe senses that enable them to thrive. They can see what we can’t 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. 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. Sharks and their cousins can pick up electrical auras from other living creatures, even when buried under the sea floor 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 see 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. Let’s not go into Kirlian photography just yet. Tests done on London taxi drivers learning “the skill” 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, 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 ? Len

I was browsing earlier and found an interesting site. (remove brackets) http://iands(.)org/research/vanLommel/vanLommel(.)php I think you'd find this fascinating.........I did. Sue

It's what I have been banging on about here, Susan. I mentioned Dr V.P. Lommel and Near Death Experience (in my post number 10) and intend to return to him. There are many other sites worth a look-up including J.B. Rhine Foundation and P.E.A.R.(Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) Thanks len

Just now, re-reading part 6 of my spiel, I noticed that GR had deleted an unmentionable word that I had used, which made the sentence meaningless. The word was of three letters beginning with D and ending in T. The one in the middle was O. Why tod, spelled backwards, upsets them I can't imagine but they wont have it, So I substituted the word 'zero'. Can't read the whole thing through but if anyone else spots an oddity, please PM me. Len

15. 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. Premonitions - which may explain why some animals seem to know when earthquakes and other events are about to occur’. It was officially recorded that after the Indonesian tsunami, in which thousands of humans died, air-searches revealed thousands of bodies of people but none of animals. One interesting observation is that before a major earthquake or Tsunami, the animals start behaving differently. The amazing effect of this electric field variation in the atmosphere can be very well seen on animals, which start showing anomalous behaviour before and at the time of earthquakes because of their sensitive nature towards minor electric field exposure of the earth. Simply put, they understand the root cause of earthquakes that we humans are just realizing through scientific quest. This also confirms the relationship between earthquakes, volcanoes and change in earth’s electromagnetic force-fields. Dogs and other animals have demonstrated psychic ability, which is termed 'anpsi' (an Italian term roughly to be interpreted as “animal extra-sensory perception) which is part of the paranormal realm. The sixth sense of dogs has been demonstrated, tested and documented many times. They have sensed the imminent arrival of a loved, even when the loved one is about to leave the office and head towards home; when a loved one is about to die. They have sensed natural and other disasters before they happen (precognition). Dogs have sensed people's seizures, heart attacks, strokes and have detected cancer. They have anticipated and given their owner warning of an impending epileptic fit which no doctor or electronic equipment can do. They have found their loved ones when the humans have moved far from home to a place the dog had never been to. They have found their way back home from long distances after having been transported in a box, in a car over maybe hundreds of miles. They have reacted to the presence of a ghost. They have become ghosts. Dogs have located their owners when the latter have moved far away. There is a documented account of this when, in the First World War, a dog managed to ship himself across the channel and locate his owner, a soldier in the Flanders trenches. Len

Hi Len,Once again,very interesting reading.

Carol: I haven't thought of doing anything with the pages. Probably nothing. I am just crystalizing my own thoughts - and one thought leads to another. I do a bit more research then write it down which gives me a fresh lead, which is why it meanders somewhat and doesn't appear regularly. Sometimes a question sets off a new train of thought. Today I spent hours in the CERN (Large Hadron Collider) website, after reading an article about it in New Scientist. Its worth a visit if you enjoy brainstorming. len.

Roxanne. I find it interesting too. On 31st October there was a large report in the press about elephants joining the select band of mammals that can recognise themselves in a mirror and therefore have self-awareness. Did you see it? I once read of an account of some tribal humans who could not do this or recognise photos as being images of themselves. Thinkers as diverse as Freud, Engels and Carlyle once pointed to the use of tools as being a defining behaviour of humans ('Man the tool-maker') but now it seems that heaps of animals, including birds are at it. There again, research into and analysis of birdsong shows that their song has an intricate structure with grammar and syntax. What is the world coming to? len

16. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite’em. Little fleas have lesser fleas – and so ad infinitum. “Fractals are more than stunning visual effects” wrote mathematician Ian Steward, “They open new ways to model nature and allow us to quantify terms like irregular, rough and complicated”. The universe is full of fractals and may even be one. A fractal is more than a pretty pattern, it is a mathematical concept, a geometric form that possesses a detailed structure on a wide range of scales. There are, in nature, all manner of shapes that have a recognizable form: spheres, spirals, rectangles, ellipses, octagons and so on. The earth, moon and sun are spheres although not perfectly so. Galaxies and snail shells are spirals. These shapes in nature, though, are not perfect, as illustrated in text books, but have variations. The earth is neither a perfect sphere nor ellipse. It is fatter round the middle and has lumps, bumps and depressions all over. The moon is more rounded but its surface is very irregular as with every other known heavenly body. However, the facts that no two zebra have identical markings, or snowflakes identical patterns, do not prevent us from perceiving them as all alike. All stars look much the same too. No two snail shells from the same species are absolutely identical but they are in our books and our minds. Models are tailored to suit certain objectives and to help us understand our environment. So what are fractals? As well as illuminating the stunning beauty of the reality of nature from the infinitesimally small sub-divisions of an atom to the mind-bogglingly large galaxies, fractals enable scientists to see the geometry of an infinite number of natural things such as how light reflected from the sea differs from the light bouncing off a mirror. There are practical and commercial uses too which have helped in the technological advances in, for example, mobile phones and analyzing patterns in crowd-surges at football matches and other large public events – also in compressing computer files. Fractals, the computer images of mathematical constructs, have only been available to us since about 1975 when computers made it possible to open our minds to these new concepts. Of course, the maths behind fractals began to emerge with the findings of Newton some 300 years ago but, until the advent of computers there was no sheet of paper large enough for a representation. A mathematician, one Benoit Mandelbrot from Yale University, was the first to use a computer to produce graphical images and use the name fractal. I cannot reproduce a sample here but a site that shows several types is http://www*fractal-recursions*com (replace the asterisks with stops) The universe is full of fractals and may even be one. If so, are there other universes? And are they on the backs of an even larger flea? Len

17. 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. My favourite quotation is “coincidences happen too often for them to be coincidental” (Köestler). The real star of his film will be the computer-generated images that will try to simplify some of cosmology’s most complex ideas. The 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, in a lecture on 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? 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 (hence quantum mechanics) 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. 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 doing in the infinity of time before the Big Bang? Perhaps he is the essence of consciousness, creating universes without end. Perhaps the Big Bang was not the beginning but only a pause. It all implies the 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 (but it is becoming 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 although there is a wealth of circumstantial evidence in that the body had 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. A method of recording and photographing the aura of a living being (not only human) is named after the Russian Professor Semyon Kirlian who discovered the technique in 1939. Kirlian photography records the high-frequency energy patterns surrounding living creatures in the form of an aura, resulting in photos of differently coloured coronas of dazzling light and shadow that, it is hoped, one day may be used for diagnostic purposes.

Investigations are being made in Holland, Britain and Canada into “Near Death Experience”. Studies in Holland, particularly by Dr P. Van Lommel of Rijnstate Hospital, whose team have interviewed hundreds of patients (in 10 hospitals across the country), who were resuscitated after being clinically dead, 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 Unit of Goldsmith College in London stated “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”. Sorry to have been too long-winded for GR who docked my above post. len

Why have they done that? I for 1 enjoy your thread, it does no harm to anyone.

Brilliant thread Len. Love the pattern of a questioned answered makes for another question.

Carol. I quite accept that they have to ration space. If they didn't, I would get carried away and write too much and it may become an epistle rather than a post.. Its a good exercise to try and keep it brief . len