Merkabah

[Skarekrow]

[video=youtube;_e1XUnOSxAs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e1XUnOSxAs[/video]
this is the official infjs.com merkabah theme song

The way the video makes the bodies move is the way my body feels some times during meditation. :lol:

Very appropriate song. It reminds me of a late 70's sound.... totally funky...

I thought they were a new band playing on outdated musical equipment just to be “ironic”….but they actually are from the late seventies/early-eighties…lol.

 

[sprinkles]

[video=youtube;uEm-wjPkegE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEm-wjPkegE[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

Odd history...

Appetitus Infinitum



​

Every so often I come across a topic so bereft of logic and reason, so astoundingly zapped with surrealism and unfathomable strangeness, I feel I may as well be writing a piece of fiction.

And while any tall tale from the eighteenth century is certainly subject to hyperbole and the exaggerated and skull-warping lens of loosely-transcribed anecdotery, this tale appears to be rooted in fact.

Actual sources, like the London Medical & Physical Journal are cited.
This guy was real.

The veracity of the specific details may merit some scrutiny, but I’m going to pour these words all over the page like freshly-squeezed fact-juice, letting the weirdness dribble down the sides of my screen and collect in a Technicolor puddle between my toes because this is a story that I need to tell, dammit.

This is the tale of Tarrare: eating machine, freedom fighter, unbelievably crappy spy, and possible cannibal.
Had he lived in the modern era, he would have quickly graduated beyond circus freak into an internet sensation.

He might have even dated a Kardashian.
Or eaten one.

Either way, it’s a hell of a story.
Decide for yourself how much of this you choose to believe.

​

Tarrare – and we only know him by that one name – was born in rural France sometime around 1772.
He was a normal child, except for his voracious appetite.

The kid could eat and eat and never find that plateau of satisfaction.
In his teens he could reportedly devour a quarter of a bullock (that’s a steer, not a British testicle or the Oscar-winning Sandra) in a single day.

That was his entire weight.
I can’t imagine where he found the time, let alone the physical space.

His parents eventually had to jettison the kid from their home; they simply couldn’t afford to feed him.
Tarrare hooked up with a travelling band of thieves and prostitutes – probably a delightfully motley gaggle of roustabouts, with whom he begged and stole and generally grifted his way around the country.

He had a marketable skill though, and it was only a matter of time before a touring charlatan booked Tarrare as his opening act.
The guy would pull in the gawkers as he swallowed corks, rocks, and an entire basket of apples one at a time.

He would also chow down on live animals.
He was particularly fond of snakes.

​

The pretty plate presentation was not necessary.​

Tarrare was a slim young man, clocking in at around a hundred pounds when he was seventeen.
He’d look almost emaciated before he ate, his skin hanging so loosely he could wrap it around his abdomen.

But once he started in on the grub his belly would inflate like a pregnant balloon.
It was as though he existed only to serve as a conduit for food.

He sweated a lot, had loose-fitting, wrinkly skin around his abnormally wide mouth, and by all accounts he had a body odor that could cripple an otherwise healthy bison.

Once he’d eaten, the stench would become unbearably worse.
His cheeks would grow rosy and glowing, and he would become lethargic and wholly unmotivated.

It was a bizarre condition, one that modern medical science has not seen, at least not to this extent.
One expert believes Tarrare might have suffered from an extreme form of polyphagia, which is an excessive hunger, perhaps due to a damaged amygdala.

Hyperthyroidism is another possibility, but truly nothing can account for the extremeness of Tarrare’s condition.
And if he’d possessed even a modicum of control as a travelling freak show, that flitted away quickly once he joined the army.

​

The French Revolution was splashing its sticky blood into every crevice of French society in the early 1790’s, and Tarrare felt the need to join up with the French Revolutionary Army when the War of the First Coalition broke out in 1792.

This was when the other nations of Europe flipped their proverbial coins to decide whether to intervene and support Louis XVI, or whether to simply take advantage of an internally messed-up nemesis.

Tarrare was of very little help, as his primary concern in the war was that his military rations were far too inadequate to match his appetite.
He would trade favors with other troops in exchange for food, and when that wasn’t enough he’d scavenge in gutters and garbage containers for more.

Eventually he was overwhelmed by extreme exhaustion and admitted to the military hospital at Soultz-Haut-Rhin.
He was assigned quadruple rations, but that wasn’t enough.

In addition to what he could siphon from the garbage, he’d slip into the apothecary and gobble up the poultices – those medicated masses that are used to treat burns and inflamed skin.

Eventually Drs. Courville and Percy decided they wanted to test out the limits of Tarrare’s appetite.
They set up a meal for 15 laborers and let him loose.

He ate the entire thing.
Hospital staff was astounded when Tarrare would eat complete animals, including lizards, snakes and puppies.

On one occasion he bit into the abdomen of a live cat and ate every bit of the creature, apart from its bones.
He barfed up the fur and skin, because you know… decorum.

​

“This guy is so… not… cool.”​

The military decided that the best way to use Tarrare’s skill set would be as a military courier.
He could swallow a note, wander across enemy lines, then poop it out and deliver it as needed.

They tested him with a relatively insignificant document, sending him across Prussian lines disguised as a German peasant, headed for a French colonel who was imprisoned by Prussian forces.
The problem was, Tarrare didn’t speak German.

The plan was foiled right away, though Tarrare didn’t fold under whip-splashed questioning.
He was locked in a prison cell for a whopping 24 hours before he confessed the plan.

Once the Prussian commander found the note, he was furious to discover there was nothing of importance therein.
He ordered Tarrare to the gallows where a noose was slipped around his neck.

He changed his mind at the last minute, ordered Tarrare beaten to a pulp, then had him deposited near the French lines.
Tarrare returned to the hospital, where he pleaded with Dr. Percy to find a cure to his unquenchable hunger.

​

Percy tried laudanum, an opium tincture.
Nothing.

He tried wine vinegar and tobacco pills… nope.
Even huge quantities of soft-boiled eggs (also known as the almost-Cool-Hand-Luke treatment), but that was no good.

Tarrare snuck out of the hospital to the local butcher shop where he’d fight stray dogs for scraps and carrion.
He was caught drinking the blood of patients who were receiving bloodletting treatments, even nibbling on the bodies in the morgue.

Other doctors wanted Tarrare transferred to a lunatic asylum, despite the absence of any indicators of mental illness (except when it came to eating).

When a 14-month-old child disappeared, Tarrare was suspected.
That was when he was chased out the hospital doors.

Years later, Dr. Percy met up with Terrare in a Versailles hospital in 1798, where he was weakened by tuberculosis.
The patient believed he was simply reacting to a golden fork he had eaten a few days earlier.

A short while later, Terrare died due to continuous exudative diarrhea, quite possibly the most gruesome way a person can go.
The autopsy revealed a lot of pus, a massive ulcer-covered stomach, but no answers as to what caused this medical anomaly known as Tarrare.

Also, no golden fork.
A mystery within a mystery.

 

[Skarekrow]

Wizards: Did They Exist?

Myths and folklore from all over the world inform us of people with supernatural abilities who walked among us.
Whether their abilities are attributed to God, the Devil, nature, or some other source, the ancient world is full of records of people who could reportedly perform magic at will.

History has not been kind to the word “wizard”; when we hear it, we are inclined to think of fairy tales and fiction—and yet, when a religion recognizes people with the same powers, many of us are willing to call them saints and prophets of God.
We are willing to believe in saints but dismiss wizards out of hand.

Why should this be so?

We will explore several historical cases of people who seemed to have had magical powers and are listed in the “wizard” category.
This is a brief history as all the facts on any of them could constitute many books.

There are many more in history that have also risen to the rank of wizard (or a similar designation), but we have picked out a few examples to raise the question of whether these figures truly existed and if they truly had powers.

Cassandra (Greek Mythology)


A depiction of Cassandra, mythological prophetess from Troy, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, painted by Evelyn De Morgan, ca. 1898. (Wikimedia Commons)
​

In ancient Greek mythology, Cassandra was a princess of Troy with the ability to foretell the future.
When she refused the advances of Apollo, he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her warnings.

When she foretold of the army hidden in the Trojan Horse, no one believed her, and Troy fell.
Her life continued tragically, for she was sexually assaulted, forced to be the unwilling mistress of King Agamemnon, and finally assassinated by Agamemnon’s evil wife Clytemnestra.

Cassandra spent her life trying to avert the catastrophes she foresaw, but no one ever believed her prophesies.

The Witch of Endor (1079 BC—1007 BC)


A depiction of the story of Saul and the Witch of Endor, painted by Benjamin West, 1777. (Wikimedia Commons)

​

In the Old Testament, King Saul had a reputation for banishing witches from his kingdom, but he was not above using their powers for his own purposes.
When he wished to obtain the guidance of his deceased mentor, the prophet Samuel, Saul tricked the Witch of Endor into performing a séance.

The Witch of Endor was a medium, meaning that she could communicate with the dead, and she raised Samuel’s ghost, which predicted many unpleasant events in Saul’s future. Though the Witch of Endor was deceived into using her powers, could raise a prophet from the dead, and helped King Saul, there is no evidence she ever used her abilities for evil.

Simon Magus the Sorcerer (Contemporary of Christ)


Relief on the Miègeville’s gate of the basilica Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, France, as seen on Dec. 15, 2012. The relief shows Simon Magus surrounded by demons. (Pierre Selim/Wikimedia Commons)

​

According to the New Testament, during the time of Jesus, Simon was demonstrating great feats of magic and acquiring a large following: “To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, ‘This man is the great power of God’” (Acts 8:10, King James).

Simon was impressed by the act of baptism as a way to bring more people to the Holy Ghost, and he offered to pay the disciple Peter for the knowledge and power to perform it. Peter refused, saying that the gift of God could not be purchased with money.

Two testimonies not included in the Bible state that Simon’s death occurred when he was levitating and Peter and Paul prayed to break the spell, causing Simon to fall and sustain fatal injuries.

None of the other negative stories or myths about Simon date back with any authenticity to his own time period.
Although he seems to have had disagreements with the disciples of Christ, there is no evidence that he used his powers for evil.

Nevertheless, he is called a “sorcerer.”

Merlin (6th Century)


Left: An illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. (Michel Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff/Wikimedia Commons)
Right: Merlin, depicted in the Suite Vulgate manuscript, 1286. (Wikimedia Commons)

​

Merlin was perhaps the most famous of all wizards, but he is also the one whose existence is under the most debate—along with that of King Arthur of Camelot, whom he served. There is, however, compelling evidence in favor of Merlin’s historical reality.

There was a poem written on parchment around the time he allegedly lived about a wizard named Ambrosius who went by the name “The Eagle,” which translates to “Merlin.”
We know Ambrosius existed because the location of his former home is still known, near Llangollen in North Wales.

A corroborating Welsh document from 600 A.D. describes a clairvoyant named Myrddin, which is the Welsh form of Merlin.
There is as much evidence for Merlin’s existence as there is for some people in “factual” history books, but because he was a wizard, he is considered a legend.

Väinämöinen (9th century)


Robert Wilhelm Ekman’s depiction of Väinämöisen, 1866. (Wikimedia Commons)
​

In modern times, this Finnish hero has been credited with many adventures under different names.
However, the first verifiable written stories of him were recorded in the 16th century, and it is widely believed that he actually lived in the 9th century.

The Finnish oral accounts say that he traveled the country on noble adventures, using his power of song to perform almost limitless magic.
Väinämöinen has inspired the wizard archetype of modern fantasy fiction, and whenever a writer needs an old wizard to add magic and help to a story line, that character is often based on Väinämöinen.

Even J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous wizard Gandalf was directly derived from Väinämöinen.
The stories of Väinämöinen portray him as the hero of his stories, but nowadays the wizards he inspires are depicted in minor roles assisting other heroes.

Johann Reuchlin (1455 —1522)


Possibly the only authentic portrait of Johannes Reuchlin, a detail from the title engraving of Thomas Murner’s “History von den Fier Ketzren Prediger Ordens,” printed in Strassburg, Germany, 1521.
Left: Johannes Reuchlin, middle: Ulrich von Hutten, right: Martin Luther. (Wikimedia Commons)

​

Johann was a well-known German scholar, linguist, historian, lecturer, and author.
During his study of the Hebrew language, he used the spelling of names and other clues to decode what he believed were ways to communicate with angels, to give the word of God to man.

He later wrote two books on the subject.
He has been credited with having the ability to summon angels, but there is no evidence he ever claimed to have that power.

His intent was to help man better understand the will of God, but he is often dismissed an occultist.

Michel de Nostredame (Nostradamus) (1503 —1566)


A portrait of Nostradamus, ca. 1690. (Wikimedia Commons)
​

Nostradamus was the famous French seer whose quatrains are still popularly used to tell the future.
Some argue that his 950 predictions are vague enough that, with the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to interpret them to describe almost any event, but some interesting feats of prophesy he performed during his life were well-documented.

Nostradamus once kneeled before a humble monk named Peretti, saying that monk would be pope, and 32 years later, the monk became Pope Sixtus V.
Nostradamus not only wrote a cryptic prophesy about King Henry II of France dying from a splinter in his eye, but also explained to the king that the prophesy referred to a peculiar jousting accident that later occurred exactly as he predicted.

Because of the graphic nature of many of Nostradamus’s predictions, he is often depicted in images and movies as a dark and evil person, but he only saw the future, warned of it, and never caused any harm.

 

[Skarekrow]

Psi of Regret: Pitfalls of Prophecy from Paul Muad’Dib to Patanjali


​

It’s been over twenty years since I last read Dune, but inspired partly by the phenomenal documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, I recently re-read Frank Herbert’s masterpiece and a few of the sequels.

Although the latter are uneven, I need hardly say that Dune itself holds up magnificently.
It is still the one novel I would put in the hands of a teenager–even more than anything by Tolkien (even though Tolkien’s “literary worth” is probably greater)–because of the priceless seeds the book planted in me when I was the age of its main character, Paul. (For instance, “the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn.

It’s shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn …”–that’s a powerful message every adolescent needs to hear and I am ever thankful I paid attention; and the “litany against fear” was incalculably important to me.)

Although the Dune books are about many things, it is sometimes forgotten (amid praise for Herbert’s world-building and his anticipation of American-Mid-East relations in the 70s and beyond) that they are significantly about seeing the future; the sequels, particularly, are basically an extended thought experiment about the siddhi of precognition and the pitfalls of prophecy.

Thus I couldn’t help read them now in the light of my interest in psi research and the nexus of science fiction and the human potential movement being newly examined by writers and scholars like Jeffrey Kripal (whose Mutants and Mystics

and Authors of the Impossible

I can’t recommend highly enough).

​

According to Kripal, the notion that humans are on the threshold of the next phase in our evolution and that psychic abilities will be a big part of it is an idea that goes back to Frederic Myers in the late 19th century.

Myers likened our nascent psychic powers to the “imaginal characters” or structures present in a caterpillar that hint at its future transformation into an aerial being.

This imminent metamorphosis has remained a dominant meme pervading comic books, of course, most famously in the X-men, not to mention sci-fi visionaries from Alfred Bester to Herbert to Philip K. Dick.

But despite the democratizing impulse in modern writers on psi, like Russell Targ and Dean Radin, who emphasize that we all have latent psi abilities that we can develop if we choose, it is important to bear in mind some important social and maybe even evolutionary reasons why certain forms of psi–especially precognition–are not already more widespread than they are, why they may actually not be part of our species’ birthright, and why they may even not be such a great idea in the larger scheme of things. Herbert keyed in on some of these reasons in his novels; the ancient yogis like Patanjali keyed in on others.

Muddying the Waters

A rarely considered pitfall of prescience that Herbert used brilliantly as a plot device in Dune Messiah is that if more than one individual can see the future, it tends to negate both of their abilities.

In a conspiracy to assassinate Paul Muad’Dib, the plotters involve in their plans a Guild Steersman, whose spice-induced oracular vision effectively cloaks the whole affair from Paul’s mental futurescape.

​

The reason for this effect is simple when you think about it: If precognition is not seeing the future as such but seeing some vague and shifting topography of possibilities in a butterfly-effect universe (as Herbert sort of characterizes it), then the possibility and usefulness of foresight become radically limited once it becomes shared by others.

A glimpse of the landscape of future possibilities by one freely willed being capable of altering that future must inevitably muddy the temporal waters for other precogs/prophets.

When you start to multiply the number of people with oracular vision (and thus freedom to alter what they see through even minor actions), then the seen, malleable future breaks down rather quickly.

Even a few rival seers would tend to negate each others’ powers; if a whole species could exercise prescient abilities, the time stream would become a hopelessly opaque and deceptive mush.

In such a state of affairs, there would clearly be diminishing utility in being able to see the future at all. You would be better off blind to all but the present and past, so as not to be distracted by prophetic information that was probably wrong.

Restraining Bolts

There is a paranoid belief that someone or some force is keeping us down psychically, keeping us unaware of our true natures and working to thwart the development of our true ESP capabilities.

Remote-viewing inventor Ingo Swann confided to Jacques Vallee in 1979 that “There’s a non-human system that keeps the human race under observation to make sure it doesn’t develop psychically … You become aware of the barriers erected by this system as soon as you try to develop your psychic abilities.”

This seems to be a standard Gnostic suspicion, echoed in comic book mythologies: Extraterrestrials or Archons fear our psychic potential and have thus installed some kind of restraining bolt in our minds.

The sense of some ancient psychic lock being blown off or removed, opening floodgates of forbidden information, seems like a common sentiment among the psychically awakened–for instance Philip K Dick in his 2-3-74 experience, or the Scientology-steeped remote viewers at SRI (it’s all about “clearing blockages”).

But evolution itself (social if not biological) provides ample reason why such mutations or experiences may not herald some new evolutionary phase in human development and why the forces of psychic inhibition may be far more mundane (and even beneficial) than Swann suspected.

Because of the Dune Messiah logic I mentioned, there may be completely natural, homeostatic mechanisms working to limit our cognitive receptivity to future events or possibilities, causing such a sensitivity to atrophy and be selected against in the population. There would be social pressures not to be precognitive, and we might even evolve some kind of biological blinder mechanism to block it out, on the model of Bergson’s reducing valve.

​

I don’t have any insight into what the biological/genetic basis for precognition or its inhibition might be, but the social mechanisms inhibiting foresight and prophecy are plain enough.

Ostracism, persecution, and violence against people accused of witchcraft and sorcery are still endemic in many societies and surely go back to the dawn of history.

Witch-killings are still rampant in many parts of the world. A leader of a Papua New Guinea village I visited in the early 1990s had spent time in jail for disemboweling a suspected sorcerer with a machete; it still happens all the time in that country.

It doesn’t matter that in most such cases–as in Europe in the Middle Ages or in early America–“witchcraft” was a broad brush with which to tar all kinds of personal enemies and social outcasts, such as the old, the poor, and women. The point was, it was a serious deterrent to deviance of all kinds, including psychic deviance.

Societies provide strict, narrow social channels to a career in prophecy, such as the accepted shamanic paths that exist in traditional cultures, and it’s a dangerous career: You better be damn sure you are perceived as using your powers for healing, not harming.

The threat of ostracism and violence must act as a powerful check on “developing your ESP abilities” (i.e., having truck with the spirit world) if you live in a traditional community.

In our enlightened society, psi-inhibition takes less disturbing forms, namely rabid skepticism and materialism and ridicule of the paranormal.

But even if it is less violent than traditional social controls, such ridicule is still a very powerful deterrent. Writers encouraging people to develop their remote viewing abilities, like Targ, emphasize that simple “permission” to remote view is a crucial first step.

Even those intellectually persuaded of the possibility and eager to learn often have massive unconscious inhibitions that get in the way.
Thus, there is no need to invoke non-human, extraterrestrial, or Archonic interference to explain lack of widespread psi ability: Social expectations that psi not only does not exist but that it is actually ridiculous do a fine job of keeping people from peering into the future.

Prophet Motives

There’s an interesting kicker of course: The more “beyond the pale” psi and prophecy become, the more effective they would be for those able and brave enough to exercise these abilities.

Even if the barriers against psi were rooted in our genes, chance and mutation would dictate that enhanced precognitive ability would arise from time to time; although there could be no group, society, let alone species of prescients, there might be a rare individual, a mutant who saw the future and capitalized on it.

A prevailing present- and past-mindedness in the masses would create a relatively unmuddied futurescape navigable by a gifted individual able to capitalize on the herd’s future-blindness. Indeed, through this evolutionary logic, those who benefit the most from the social suppression of prophecy would be the prophets themselves.

​

There are good analogies to this in evolutionary biology, one of them being sociopathy. Because we are socially dependent animals and society is built on trust, humans have evolved to essentially trust each other.

It’s a very sound long-term evolutionary strategy, but it also makes us vulnerable to occasional manipulators who are able to cynically capitalize on that trust.

Such individuals only arise at relatively low levels in the population, because when there are too many untrustworthy people in a community, people stop trusting, and the community breaks down. But when they arise, they tend to rise to the top. (Research shows many CEOs and politicians are sociopaths, for example.)

Prophecy might work the same way, as a “frequency dependent, socially parasitic strategy” (to quote George Dvorsky in an article on sociopaths). Despite the “democratizing” impulse of contemporary psi teachers and enthusiasts, some of these talents may only work if they are rare and most people don’t practice them or don’t believe in them.

There are various ways in which the paranormal erects a barrier between the herd and an elect, and this is one of them–another variant of what I call the “anamorphic wedge” that seems to operate in other domains like UFOs.

I’ve argued previously that there’s a dark elitist undercurrent to sci-fi Gnosticism that can be seen plainly in its most famous manifestation, Scientology: L. Ron Hubbard was the Ayn Rand of psychic human potential, preaching pure selfishness with a sci-fi twist. From what it is possible to glean of its methods, I don’t doubt their efficacy.

It was in an out-of-body experience during early Scientology training that Pat Price’s formidable psychic abilities, dormant for a half century of life, awakened: “I was asked to sit down and look at some other guy for period of time and do nothing.

After about three minutes I found myself outside of my body, looking at him looking at me.
It was very interesting.” (John L. Wilhelm’s excellent 1976 book The Search for Superman is a great resource on Price, Swann, and the SRI work with Uri Geller.)

The superpower benefits that arise through Scientology training may not be accidentally related to the clear and obvious drawbacks of that lifestyle: Namely, intellectual isolation and social ostracism as a result of being, lets face it, kind of an asshole. Scientology training includes exercises (like the one Price mentioned) designed specifically to break down or cleanse the participant of social anxieties and emotions that we possess for a reason, thus turning the “operating Thetan” into an intense, intimidating, “aggressive” savant who may not thrive outside the company of other Scientologists.

Real X-men could potentially look a lot like them: out of touch and megalomaniacal, but with some authentic supernormal abilities as a kind of grim consolation prize.

Fear is the mind-killer…

Despite lifelong skepticism, I have become persuaded of the reality of psi in general and of precognition in particular.
Once you take even the slightest interest in the subject, fate provides ample confirmation in the form of uncanny premonitions and synchronicities.

Having followed J.W. Dunne’s protocol in An Experiment with Time, I have confirmed to my own satisfaction (which seems all anyone can ever hope for in parapsychology) that his thesis is correct: In any given week of faithfully recorded dreams, a consistent minority of dream elements encode future experiences, usually of the subsequent day but occasionally farther out, exactly the same way the majority of dream elements encode recent past experiences–and through exactly the same“art of memory” logic I have described elsewhere.

In dreams we are remembering the future as well as the past. Hypnagogic imagery and voices are also a rich source of precognitive material, and plain-old remote viewing of tomorrow’s New York Times can also produce interesting results.

​

Invariably in my case, these bits of future information are fragmentary and useless from the standpoint of planning or guidance. I’m no prophet–and I’m not sure I’d really want to be. Another “inhibitory” function I’ve discovered in my venturing imperfectly down the psi path is simple existential fear.

While omnisicence and expanded consciousness sound totally awesome to my inner 10-year-old, I’ve discovered that my outer 47-year-old is deeply fearful of learning too much about the future.

There are too many dark terrors that objectively lie in wait for us all–illness and death of self and loved ones are biggies–and the temptation to dwell unproductively on ominous signs (like a strange cough or unfamiliar pain) is great enough at times without the added burden of trying to decipher scary symbols and portents gained through psi channels. Among the siddhis described by Patanjali is the yogi’s ability to see his/her own death.

No thanks.

Because the energy of psychic phenomena is trauma (as Frederic Myers discerned in the 19th century), it makes sense that death and destruction would be dominant themes in our prophecies. And sure enough, the bulk of my precognitive dream material does concern something at least slightly negative, usually just uncomfortable or unpleasant social experiences but also news of crimes, disasters, or death.

This focus on the negative gives rise to an ironic and unwholesome logic: The eagerness for psi to work or to confirm your own powers causes one not only to focus on negatives but even at times to hope for them–for example, having a strange dream about a certain celebrity and then eagerly checking some news site to see if they died or have been involved in some scandal. Obviously, “eagerness to find out someone died” is not at all a congenial frame of mind to be in if you aspire to be a spiritual or positive person.

Thus I think there really is some way in which precognition is “toying with dark forces,” although it isn’t anything as grandiose as “opening up doorways to other worlds” or awakening evil orTricksterish energies (even if those are real too). It’s simply a matter of reinforcing unwholesome aspects of the ego–plain old negativity, which is bad karma (and unhealthy) no matter how you look at it.

I suspect all these factors may have played into ancient teachers’ disinterest in the siddhis and into modern teachers’ reluctance to discuss them. Patanjali warned not to get attached to superpowers in your meditative practice, and he’s not just talking about showing off (as Radin suggests in his book Supernormal).

Attachment itself is the root of suffering; attachment to psi may bring its own unique sufferings and doubts that are simply not wholesome to harbor, such as those I’ve mentioned.

So, while the 10-year-old me is incredibly glad that the paranormal and supernormal are gaining legitimacy through the work of Kripal, Targ, Radin, and others, I also would hope that we not lose sight of our basic humanity in our quest to become superhuman. Sometimes it’s also awesome to be (merely) normal.

​

 

[Skarekrow]

Jeff Kripal at TEDxHouston

[video=youtube;rX7WDqZuyvQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rX7WDqZuyvQ[/video]

There are complexities and wonderment in life we simply cannot explain.
When we look to science and religion, we can't always find the answers.

Have you ever experienced deja-vu, coincidences, or dreams that may have seemed real?
Have you ever wondered what exactly qualifies as human consciousness?

Reality vs. Abstract?
So have we.

Jeffrey will join us this November in a discussion to explore these and more paradoxical ways of thinking.​

 

[Skarekrow]

One Last Goodbye:
The Strange Case of Terminal Lucidity



Deathbed, 1886 (oil on canvas) by Jessen, Carl Ludwig (1833-1917)
​

I’m as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist.
That said, over the years I’ve had to “quarantine,” for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them.

Once, for instance, I was staying at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale when I had a vivid dream in which there was a knock at the door.
I opened it to find my mother’s good friend, Sally, trembling and distraught. “It’s Blaze,” she said to me, weeping inconsolably about her golden retriever. “I can’t find him. He’s not here.” It was such an odd dream that I even shared it with my father the next morning over breakfast. “Weird,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Later that day at my mom’s house, the phone rang.
It was Sally. “It’s Blaze,” she said immediately, sobbing into the phone. “We put him to sleep this morning. I keep expecting him to be in the house but he’s not here, Jesse.”

I can live with the uncertainty surrounding these very few incidents without getting all … unscientific. “Think of all the dreams you’ve had that haven’t come true,” I can tell myself. “So you get one that seems like a premonition.
Big deal.” In any event, none of these events have been particularly meaningful to me, just minor hiccups in a naturally ordered universe.

Except for one.
Possibly.

When my mother died in early 2000, we had a final farewell that some researchers might consider paranormal.
At the time, it did strike me as remarkable–and after all these years, I still can’t talk about it without getting emotional.

The night before she died at the age of 54 (after a long battle with ovarian cancer), I was sleeping in my mother’s bedroom alongside her.
The truth was that I’d already grieved her loss a few days earlier, from the moment she lapsed into what the Hospice nurses had assured us was an irretrievable coma.

So at this point, waiting for her body to expire as a physical machine wasn’t as difficult as the loss of “her” beforehand, which is when I’d completely broken down.

It had all happened so quickly and, I suppose being young and in denial about how imminent her death really was, I hadn’t actually gotten around to telling her how very grateful I was to have had her as my mom and how much I loved her.

But then, around 3am, I awoke to find her reaching her hand out to me, and she seemed very much aware.
She was too weak to talk but her eyes communicated all.

We spent about five minutes holding hands: me sobbing, kissing her cheeks, telling her everything I’d meant to say before but hadn’t.
Soon she closed her eyes again, this time for good.

She died the next day.

I didn’t quite see the experience as “supernatural” when it happened.
And I’m not sure I do today either.

But I also didn’t have a name for the experience then.
In fact, one didn’t even exist.

It does now: terminal lucidity.

Let’s have a more detailed look at the phenomenon in question.
The term was coined only five years ago by German biologist Michael Nahm.

His 2009 article in The Journal of Near-Death Studies was the first modern review article on the curious subject of cognitively impaired people becoming clearheaded as their death approaches.

According to him, cases of “terminal lucidity” had been recorded for millennia, from accounts by classical scholars such as Hippocrates, Cicero and Plutarch to 19[SUP]th[/SUP]-century medical luminaries like Benjamin Rush (who wrote the first American treatise on mental illness).

It’s just that, apparently, no one had thought to label or conceptualize these elusive incidents in any formal way before.

Here’s how Nahm defined terminal lucidity in that original article:

The (re-)emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death, including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated manner.

The author characterizes terminal lucidity as one of the more common, but lesser known, ELEs (or “end-of-life experiences”).
Others on his list include deathbed visions, apparitions, near-death/out-of-body experiences, telepathic impressions, and so on.

But terminal lucidity is a vague concept, needless to say.
First of all, what exactly should qualify as the time period “shortly before death”: minutes, hours, days …months?

In a follow-up article by Nahm appearing that same year in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, and coauthored with the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia, we get some clarification on this.

Of 49 case studies of terminal lucidity, the vast majority (84 percent) occurred within a week of death; 43 percent, in fact, transpired the final day of life.

They divide the phenomenon into two general classes, however.
In the first subtype, “the severity of mental derangement improve slowly in conjunction with the decline of bodily vitality.”

This occurs in some patients with chronic mental illness when their psychiatric symptoms become less pronounced, or disappear altogether, starting around a month before their deaths.

Thus, the lucid periods emerge gradually, like clouds parting.
The authors offer three Russian case studies from the 1970s as examples, all schizophrenic patients “without prior lucid intervals, living in seemingly stable psychotic mental states for many years.”

One man who’d been completely catatonic for nearly two decades allegedly “became almost normal” before he finally passed away.

In the second subtype of terminal lucidity, the authors tell us, “full mental clarity can appear quite abruptly and unexpectedly just hours or days before death.” In one study, 70 percent of caretakers in a British nursing home said they’d personally observed people with dementia becoming lucid shortly before their deaths. (That figure sounded far more impressive to me before I realized there were only 10 respondents.)

A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, for instance, hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them, recalling everyone’s name.

She was even aware of her own age and where she’d been living all this time. “Such incidents happen regularly,” write Nahm and Greyson.

In another example of this second, more abrupt subtype, earlier this year the authors detailed the extraordinary case of a young German woman named Anna (“Käthe”) Katharina Ehmer, who died in 1922.

Her case is especially valuable, according to them, because it was witnessed by two highly respected and influential local figures: Wilhem Wittneben, the chief physician at what was then one of the largest insane asylums in Germany (Hephata), and Friedrich Happich, the director of that same institution.

Over the years, both Wittneben and Happich relayed the experience many times in speeches and writings, and their independent descriptions of the incident cross-verified each other.

Käthe was among the most profoundly disabled of the patients at the asylum.
Happich paints a vivid picture of her mental status. “From birth on,” he writes, “she was seriously retarded. She had never learned to speak a single word. She stared for hours on a particular spot, then fidgeted for hours without a break. She gorged her food, fouled herself day and night, uttered an animal-like sound, and slept … never [taking] notice of her environment even for a second.”

As if that weren’t enough, Käthe suffered several severe meningitis infections over the years that had damaged her cortical brain tissue.

Yet, despite all this, as the woman lay dying (shortly after having her leg amputated from osseous tuberculosis–talk about bad luck), Wittneben, Happich, and other staff members at the facility gathered in astonishment at her bedside. “Käthe,” wrote Happich, “who had never spoken a single word, being entirely mentally disabled from birth on, sang dying songs to herself. Specifically, she sang over and over again, ‘Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!’”

For half an hour she sang.
Her face, up to then so stultified, was transfigured and spiritualized.

Then, she quietly passed away.”

The religious undertones make my eyebrows rise in spontaneous cynicism, but at face value, one has to admit that the story of Käthe Ehmer is something of a puzzle.

And in their extensive literature review on the subject–not an easy task, given that “terminal lucidity” couldn’t be used as a search term prior to that first 2009 article–Nahm and Greyson found a total of 81 references to similar cases, reported by 51 different authors.

Nineteenth century physicians and psychiatrists, they point out, wrote most of these accounts.
By the 20th century, they speculate, doctors simply stopped reporting these incidents altogether because they failed to jive with contemporary scientific materialism.

Yet, even if terminal lucidity is a genuine phenomenon, who’s to say there isn’t a logical scientific explanation, one involving some unknown brain physiology? Nahm and Greyson don’t discount this possibility entirely, but for cases involving obvious brain damage (such as strokes, tumors, advanced Alzheimer’s disease) that should render the patient all but vegetative, not functioning normally, it’s a genuine medical mystery.

According to the authors, terminal lucidity also isn’t all just in the perceiver’s head.
Rather, they write, “it seems to be more common than usually assumed, and reflects more than just a collection of anecdotes that on closer scrutiny emerge as wishful thinking.”

This then, to them, leaves open the possibility of something more spiritually significant, with the “transcendantal subject” (i.e., the soul) loosening itself from the physical substrate of the brain as death approaches and being able to enter “usually hidden realms.”

I remain a skeptic.
Still, I really don’t know how my mother managed those five minutes of perfect communion with me when, ostensibly, all of her cognitive functions were already lost.

Was it her immortal soul?
One last firestorm in her dying brain?

Honestly, I’m just glad it happened.

About the Author: Jesse Bering is Associate Professor of Science Communication at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is the author of The Belief Instinct (2011), Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? (2012) and Perv (2013). To learn more about Jesse's work, visit www.jessebering.com or add him on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/jesse.bering). Follow on Twitter @JesseBering.

 

[Skarekrow]

Pinning Down a Mystical Experience With Hard Science

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.–You can’t easily produce a near-death experience in a laboratory–or at least not without some serious ethical issues.
There are, nonetheless, some methods for studying this phenomenon.

During near-death experiences (NDEs), people report experiences such as having floated above the physical body, having seen something of the afterlife, and other mystical experiences.

NDE studies face challenges, not the least of which is trying to fit an often profoundly spiritual experience into the mold of modern scientific investigation.

Here’s a look at some of the major challenges described by scientists at the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) 2014 Conference in Newport Beach, Calif., on Aug. 29.


Rare, Spontaneous Event

It’s hard to find an NDE that can be independently verified.
Some researchers are focusing on veridical perception cases–when an NDEer has had an out-of-body experience in which he or she has seen something that can later be verified.

Robert Mays, who has studied NDEs for some 30 years, looked at the statistical challenges of the AWARE study, which sets up visual targets in hospitals around the world in the hopes that NDEers may see the targets if they leave their bodies.

The targets are set up out of ordinary sight and thus if an NDEer accurately describes one, it suggests the experience was genuine.
It takes thousands of cases, however, to hit a promising one.

Mays illustrated the narrow statistical chances: how many people survive cardiac arrest?
How many of those people have an NDE?

How many of those people have an out-of-body experience (not all NDEers see themselves separate from the physical body in the hospital room–some may only experience scenes in other settings, whether it’s a life-review or a heavenly scene, et cetera)?

How many of these people will specifically look at and remember the target?
A couple of cases in the AWARE study have occurred in which the NDEer did report leaving the physical body and seeing things, but the targets hadn’t been set up at those hospitals.

Mays estimated it takes some 7,500 cardiac arrest cases to get an NDE that fits the criteria.
He noted that this figure is just a rough estimate, it’s hard to quantify: “I could be wrong, but it’s a large number, in the thousands.”

Square Peg, Round Hole

Mitch Liester, a psychiatrist and medical doctor in Colorado, said that from a medical perspective, “one of the challenges is, NDEs don’t fit the model of traditional medical research. It’s hard to do double-blind placebo-controlled studies with NDEs. It’s kind of obvious if the person died or not.”

He has been interested in testing electromagnetic after-effects on the bodies of NDEers.
Some have reported that their bodies seem to emit some sort of charge after the experience, evidenced in their impact on electronic devices.

“Which frequency or range do you select and how do you measure it?” Liester asked. “These are difficult studies to define.”

A lot of focus has been given to legitimizing the field, Liester said, and that has led to a focus on the similarities between NDEs, particularly across cultures. “But what I also think it’s done is left some people out of the game, some people who’ve had different types of near-death experiences,” he said.

Fear in the Scientific Community

At least one promising NDE study has been thwarted by a fear among scientists to participate in such stigmatized research.
Jan Holden, a counseling professor at the University of North Texas, editor of the IANDS Journal of Near-Death Studies, and former IANDS president, told of an experiment she started about 20 years ago.

A benefactor had asked her and a team of researchers to find NDEers who had a sort of omniscience during their NDEs.
The idea was to ask these NDEers about a rare disease, hoping to get some information about it that could help treat it.

Holden found one such NDEer, and used hypnosis to help him remember any information on this disease he may have picked up during the NDE.

What he said was verified by the current knowledge of the disease.
He correctly stated that it was related to two chromosomes, that it was passed on by the mother, and named other characteristics accurately.

As a stained-glass artist, however, he was lacking the technical knowledge to understand all of what he saw.
Holden wanted to recruit biologists to help the NDEer interpret the visions.

“All the biologists were just terrified of being associated with this kind of ‘flakey’ process … that they would lose their National Science Foundation funding if word got out,” Holden said.
Even when she offered to do it on a Saturday, as a little personal project, they refused.

Funding, the Challenge of All Challenges

Solutions can often be found to challenges–if the resources are available. A constant shortage of funding hinders NDE studies.
The idea of crowdfunding the research was raised at the discussion.

Mays said that crowdfunding may be used to get a book on veridical perceptions translated.
The book, only available in Dutch, explores 78 veridical perception cases.

Crowdfunding is also being used to produce a film on NDEs.

Broader Scope

A study of NDEs relates to larger questions of the role of human consciousness in science, Liester noted:

“How do we study consciousness? I mean, it’s hard enough to define, let alone study. But maybe there are ways we can expore and study consciousness that lead to a better understanding of NDEs.”​

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]

I wonder if our mind is part of a mainframe like I said earlier, but shutting down the right parts of the brain in the right order boosts connection to this mainframe?

I'm wondering this because I came to the realization that I can emulate and keep track of an entire Rubik's cube type puzzle in my brain while I'm asleep, and to some extent while I'm deeply meditating, but I can't do it while I'm fully aware and paying attention to my environment.

It's weird because even when I have a real one in my hands it's some times hard to see ahead more than a few moves but when I'm sleeping I have perfect recall to the extent that my mind can fully virtualize a cube and I can solve it. It's not just me dreaming I solved it, I'm actually correctly doing it in my mind, creating the cube in my dream even though there's an unfathomable number of combinations to keep track of. I can still do it when I'm able to shut everything out and all I see in my dream is the cube floating in blank space - nothing else exists, not even my own body. But I can track it and solve it to such an accurate degree that if I manage to remember the moves, they actually work on a real cube when I wake up, so I know it's not my mind fudging things.

 

[Kgal]

@Skarekrow

I wonder if our mind is part of a mainframe like I said earlier, but shutting down the right parts of the brain in the right order boosts connection to this mainframe?

I'm wondering this because I came to the realization that I can emulate and keep track of an entire Rubik's cube type puzzle in my brain while I'm asleep, and to some extent while I'm deeply meditating, but I can't do it while I'm fully aware and paying attention to my environment.

It's weird because even when I have a real one in my hands it's some times hard to see ahead more than a few moves but when I'm sleeping I have perfect recall to the extent that my mind can fully virtualize a cube and I can solve it. It's not just me dreaming I solved it, I'm actually correctly doing it in my mind, creating the cube in my dream even though there's an unfathomable number of combinations to keep track of. I can still do it when I'm able to shut everything out and all I see in my dream is the cube floating in blank space - nothing else exists, not even my own body. But I can track it and solve it to such an accurate degree that if I manage to remember the moves, they actually work on a real cube when I wake up, so I know it's not my mind fudging things.

Sprinkles?

When we go to sleep our consciousness does not.

Our earth self consciousness leaves the body in autonomic mode (sleep) and merges with our higher conscious Self for learning, intel, meetings, and upgrades. So I can see why you'd be able to do it perfectly and effortlessly in your "dream time" because you are in effect both your earth self and your Higher Self - merged. You see - there are no fear belief systems ingrained into the minds fifth frequency Higher Self - and thoughts, ideas, solutions, and manifestations are much easier to do than down here in 3rd frequency. It's actually very hard to animate these bodies and do what our society demands of us to live in these times. We have to invest a great deal of energy to keep ourselves here - yes? So it's harder to think thoughts, be creative, come up with ideas and novel solutions to issues.

In addition - our minds have been manipulated by the brainwashing portrayed on media of all kinds - to keep us dull and complacent.

In your analogy - you do indeed connect with the mainframe when you put your self in "sleep mode". Some people call it the Akashic Records. Mainframe. Same concepts.

What you're doing in your dream with the rubik cube is quite mind boggling for me to comprehend ...but I can see it floating in my minds eye...and that's amazing.

 

[sprinkles]

Sprinkles?

When we go to sleep our consciousness does not.

Our earth self consciousness leaves the body in autonomic mode (sleep) and merges with our higher conscious Self for learning, intel, meetings, and upgrades. So I can see why you'd be able to do it perfectly and effortlessly in your "dream time" because you are in effect both your earth self and your Higher Self - merged. You see - there are no fear belief systems ingrained into the minds fifth frequency Higher Self - and thoughts, ideas, solutions, and manifestations are much easier to do than down here in 3rd frequency. It's actually very hard to animate these bodies and do what our society demands of us to live in these times. We have to invest a great deal of energy to keep ourselves here - yes? So it's harder to think thoughts, be creative, come up with ideas and novel solutions to issues.

In addition - our minds have been manipulated by the brainwashing portrayed on media of all kinds - to keep us dull and complacent.

In your analogy - you do indeed connect with the mainframe when you put your self in "sleep mode". Some people call it the Akashic Records. Mainframe. Same concepts.

What you're doing in your dream with the rubik cube is quite mind boggling for me to comprehend ...but I can see it floating in my minds eye...and that's amazing.

Yeah it's weird. It's kind of impressive that I can see it right because a typical Rubik's cube has 43 quintillion valid permutations, but it has about 500 quintillion impossible permutations - configurations which are impossible to reach by only turning the sides of the cube but instead can be only created by disassembling the cube. And similarly one of these impossible permutations cannot be solved by only turning the sides of the cube. The fact that I can somehow see valid cubes that only fit into the 43 quintillion possible combinations, and avoid all the 500 quintillion invalid combinations is pretty interesting I think.

 

[Skarekrow]

Interesting!

The History of the Rubik's Cube

The Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by Ernö Rubik, a Hungarian Sculptor and professor.
His original purpose for creating the cube was to help explain three-dimensional geometry but ended up creating the worlds number one selling toy [SUP][1][/SUP]. Rubik originally called the creation the "Magic cube" but the name was later changed to Rubik's Cube by Ideal Toy Corporation in 1980.

Today more than 300 million cubes have been sold world wide and International Rubik's speed championships are held every year. The world record is 5.66 seconds!

The Creator of the Cube

The man behind the puzzle is Ernö Rubik. Ernö was born July 13 1944 in Budapest Hungary. Ernö has spent all of his life in Hungary attending school, working as an architect, and teaching as a professor at the Budapest college of Applied Arts [SUP][2][/SUP].

He is best known for his Creation of the Rubik's Cube but is also known for being the President of the Hungarian Engineering Institute and for creating the International Rubik Foundation to support especially talented young engineers and industrial designers.

The Original Purpose for the Cube... Geometry

Ernö Rubik's original purpose in creating the cube was to create a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry. The structure of the movable cube helped students identify the center, edge and corner of a geometrical figure.

The students would also be able to disassemble the cube and reassemble it to understand the structure of a cube. His plans took quite a turn as he ended up creating the worlds most popular game and best selling toy!

The Rubik's Cube

The most common kind of Rubik's Cube is the simple (3x3x3) cube [SUP][3][/SUP]. Each of the cubes six faces are covered by nine stickers; normally white, blue, red, orange, green, and yellow. A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, which allows for mixing up the of the colors.

The point of the game is to take the scrambled colors and return them all to their matching face. Variations to the standard cube are the (2x2x2) pocket cube, the (4x4x4) master cube, the (5x5x5) professor cube, and the (6x6x6x) and (7x7x7). There is even a 3-D Rubik's cube [SUP][4][/SUP]!

Algorithms Behind the Puzzle

The Key to solving the Rubik's cube is by using an algorithm. Now if you are like me and haven't really done to great in math you may need a brush up on what exactly an algorithm really is. An algorithm is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations. So in my words an algorithm is rules for solving the Rubik's cube.

That's Right you don't just sit there and twist the cube in hope that some how they will match up, (like I did for weeks on end until i gave up) there is actually a way to solve the cube and the creators tell you exactly how to do it on an instruction booklet that comes with the cube! Now for most puzzles common to us the whole point of the puzzle is to try and solve it with out any help,so why would the distributors of the cube decide to include the key to solving the cube?

Well fist of all trial and error just isn't a good method when you have 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 [SUP][5][/SUP] different positions the cube could be in (which is why I gave up). normal people just don't have the attention span to solve a puzzle that complex with out a little guidance. The algorithm in a nutshell is explanation on how to solve the top face, the bottom face, and the finally the four side faces.

To solve each face you are to fallow commands with a direction arrow coupled with abbreviation such as R (right face), F (front face), U (up face) ect. One final thing to remember when solving the cube all moves are clockwise unless specified by an "i" after the chosen face such as Bi (back face inverted) which means turn the back face counter clockwise. well if you fallow the algorithm so kindly provided by Ernő Rubik you should be able to solve the best selling toy in the world. Here is a look at the algorithm you receive when you buy the cube.

Gods Number

Gods number or also known as Gods algorithm is a algorithm that uses the least amount of moves to solve the Rubik's cube puzzle. After 15 years of work a team of researchers solved every position of the Rubik's cube (43,252,003,274,489,856,000 positions) [SUP][6][/SUP] and found that no matter how the cube was scrambled it could be solved in 20 moves or less. The number of moves this algorithm would take in the worst case is called God's Number, which is 20!

How to Solve the Rubik's Cube

[video=youtube;HsQIoPyfQzM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HsQIoPyfQzM[/video]

[video=youtube;IW_BBp3FPMQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IW_BBp3FPMQ[/video]

You can also use MATH to solve the Rubik's Cube!!!
Wanna know how? Here's a link to another wiki page that explains how
http://math2033.uark.edu/wiki/index.php/Mathematical_Approach_to_solving_a_Rubik's_Cube

Fun Facts

In the mid 1980's it was estimated that one fifth of the worlds population had played with the Rubik's cube [SUP][7][/SUP]!
People who play with the Rubik's cube can be said to have Rubik's wrist and cubist thumb [SUP][8][/SUP]!
At one time the Rubik's Cube had its own TV series ABC in America [SUP][9][/SUP].
The biggest Cube in the world, on display in Knoxville, Tennessee, is 3 metres tall and weighs over 1102lbs [SUP][10][/SUP]!
If all the cubes sold were place on top of each other it would reach from the north pole to the south pole [SUP][11][/SUP]!

 

[Skarekrow]

@Skarekrow

I wonder if our mind is part of a mainframe like I said earlier, but shutting down the right parts of the brain in the right order boosts connection to this mainframe?

I'm wondering this because I came to the realization that I can emulate and keep track of an entire Rubik's cube type puzzle in my brain while I'm asleep, and to some extent while I'm deeply meditating, but I can't do it while I'm fully aware and paying attention to my environment.

It's weird because even when I have a real one in my hands it's some times hard to see ahead more than a few moves but when I'm sleeping I have perfect recall to the extent that my mind can fully virtualize a cube and I can solve it. It's not just me dreaming I solved it, I'm actually correctly doing it in my mind, creating the cube in my dream even though there's an unfathomable number of combinations to keep track of. I can still do it when I'm able to shut everything out and all I see in my dream is the cube floating in blank space - nothing else exists, not even my own body. But I can track it and solve it to such an accurate degree that if I manage to remember the moves, they actually work on a real cube when I wake up, so I know it's not my mind fudging things.

Certainly if you believe in our mind having duality between brain and soul then our consciousness is “projected” to or “received” by, and interpreted by, the brain...then you would in sense be outside of the influence and filters the brain applies to us.
You would be much freer in your operations.
The sleep and dreaming process has long been linked to problem solving going back thousands of years.
It is fascinating that you are able to visualize the patterns and keep track of it…though I can say that I am not surprised.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]

We can solve almost anything (except bandaged puzzles) with commutators. No algs needed. The Rubik's cube is simply iconic and cool.

[video=youtube;Vw6dSkYk7G4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw6dSkYk7G4[/video]

 

[ryiker]

[MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]

I wonder if our mind is part of a mainframe like I said earlier, but shutting down the right parts of the brain in the right order boosts connection to this mainframe?

I'm wondering this because I came to the realization that I can emulate and keep track of an entire Rubik's cube type puzzle in my brain while I'm asleep, and to some extent while I'm deeply meditating, but I can't do it while I'm fully aware and paying attention to my environment.

It's weird because even when I have a real one in my hands it's some times hard to see ahead more than a few moves but when I'm sleeping I have perfect recall to the extent that my mind can fully virtualize a cube and I can solve it. It's not just me dreaming I solved it, I'm actually correctly doing it in my mind, creating the cube in my dream even though there's an unfathomable number of combinations to keep track of. I can still do it when I'm able to shut everything out and all I see in my dream is the cube floating in blank space - nothing else exists, not even my own body. But I can track it and solve it to such an accurate degree that if I manage to remember the moves, they actually work on a real cube when I wake up, so I know it's not my mind fudging things.

I have come across something slightly similar. I am not a genius, prodigy or brilliant in any definition yet I have had a situation happen often enough that I take notice of it now.
I am not a mathematician nor into what I have always thought of as the drudgery sciences where complicated experimentation, details and incredibly delicate structures of architecture are required to be involved. I do have a complicated mind, but I am not a puzzle solver and I have an obnoxiously short curiosity. What I mean is nothing holds my interest for long, I get bored and walk away most of the time long before anything is concluded or solved.
However- I find myself in situations where I overhear a conversation, or walk into something I have no part of, or someone attempts to explain a topic that I have no business or reference for being part of no basic knowledge or leg work for example. The point is what is expressed or communicated is so acutely clear and simple that I make a comment or following their logic bring up a parallel topic and they are....disturbed is the only word I can use to state their reaction or perhaps shock. What occurs then always boggles me though because they question how I know or knew that and I cannot find ANY usable reference points to explain. It just is and that's obvious. I think it is a habitual scar I still carry from school that I automatically mentally try to 'show my work' and inevitability every time, the entire structure or topic collapses for me like a house of cards and as I stated previously I have already lost interest and leave the conversation, situation or topic as abruptly as I joined sensing that I am truly an idiot and yet not really caring.

 

[ryiker]

This is also why I have fallen in love with this thread I consume all of it and I am never bored, so thank you all for posting

 

[sprinkles]

I have come across something slightly similar. I am not a genius, prodigy or brilliant in any definition yet I have had a situation happen often enough that I take notice of it now.
I am not a mathematician nor into what I have always thought of as the drudgery sciences where complicated experimentation, details and incredibly delicate structures of architecture are required to be involved. I do have a complicated mind, but I am not a puzzle solver and I have an obnoxiously short curiosity. What I mean is nothing holds my interest for long, I get bored and walk away most of the time long before anything is concluded or solved.
However- I find myself in situations where I overhear a conversation, or walk into something I have no part of, or someone attempts to explain a topic that I have no business or reference for being part of no basic knowledge or leg work for example. The point is what is expressed or communicated is so acutely clear and simple that I make a comment or following their logic bring up a parallel topic and they are....disturbed is the only word I can use to state their reaction or perhaps shock. What occurs then always boggles me though because they question how I know or knew that and I cannot find ANY usable reference points to explain. It just is and that's obvious. I think it is a habitual scar I still carry from school that I automatically mentally try to 'show my work' and inevitability every time, the entire structure or topic collapses for me like a house of cards and as I stated previously I have already lost interest and leave the conversation, situation or topic as abruptly as I joined sensing that I am truly an idiot and yet not really caring.

Yeah that's happened to me too. A lot of times I don't know why I know something, I just do.

 

[Skarekrow]

Experiencing the In-Between ​

What you are about to read is a true story.
Best-selling author of Bending God, Eric Robison, describes his journey to the “In-Between”, a heightened state of consciousness that very few people know about or will ever experience.

The story takes place over the course of a single spring/summer night in Portland, Oregon; a night Eric describes as “strange,” “electric” and “surreal”… a night that changed his life forever.

Throughout the story, we’ll share a little-known scientific explanation for what happened to Eric — how a chemical in the brain, N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) makes the “In-Between” possible.

This provided long before the recent internet buzz that surrounds the topic had been circulating.

Unlike the great works that authors have contributed to humanity such as “The Celestine Prophecy”, “The Teachings of Don Juan” by Carlos Castenada or Dan Millman’s “The Peaceful Warrior”, one very significant difference to take note of is that everything shared here is 100% true, verifiable and the sources that have gone on record are alive and will go into great detail about their experiences including the time, date and place of this and other similar encounters.

At the end of the story you’ll be able to access additional information on how to train yourself to enter the “In-Between” and experience an alternate reality that you never knew existed. Enjoy the ride. — Jesse.

(The following account was transcribed from an unscripted audio recording.
Elements of the live recording have been preserved.)

Part 1 — Night Turns Electric

I’ve only been In-Between once and it was after I’d known Eric for four years. (Take note that there are two Eric’s, the one telling the story Eric Robison, and Eric Pepin.)
And I had a lot of crazy experiences before that, a lot of crazy experiences.

And this one was completely different.
It made everything else make so much sense.

I think we had just started Higher Balance maybe three months, or something like that, and we’d launched it to the public.
And we were still living in a small apartment and it was just Eric and I in the apartment at the time.

We had launched Higher Balance in May, so this was maybe late May, early June, something like that.
And we’d just come back from having coffee and it was late night.

I remember feeling really tired and all I wanted to do was go to bed.
And so we start to walk up to the apartment after parking.

It had that feeling like it was still early spring, but you could kind of smell it kind of moving towards summer.
And there were clouds in the sky like a storm was coming but not quite so.

Everything had that halfway there, but not quite, like kind of summer but still spring, and it could maybe almost storm, like it was just at that point but it wasn’t quite there.
So there was a certain something in the air, a certain feeling like electricity.

Everything was just halfway.
It was a very strange feeling and Eric pointed this out.

He said, “Wow.” He looked up at the sky and he said, “There’s some kind of space there.”
He said, “Do you feel that? Do you notice that in the air, like some kind of strange feeling?”

And I felt it and I was like, “Yeah.” And he said, “It almost never gets like this. We should take a walk.”
So, we walked around the apartment complex and we didn’t really say anything.

He just walked with me following him.
And I remember we walked around half the complex before he pointed out some lights and said, “Look at the lights. All the outdoor lights kind of remind you of lanterns.” He said “lanterns” or something like that.

They weren’t bright.
They were kind of dim, like they were foggy.

They were kind of orange-ish or a dim yellow.
They weren’t bright lights.

So, occasionally a breeze would come through and he would just say little things like, “Listen to the breeze.” The breeze would blow through the pine trees and he’d say, “Listen to the pine trees.”

I remember complaining, “Oh, I am so tired. We’d been working so hard on Higher Balance!” (chuckles)
So he’s like, “No. No, we should take a walk.” And he said, “You don’t understand. Sometimes Gaia’s consciousness moves around.” And he said, “Sometimes it’ll move around because weather patterns are like thoughts moving around Gaia.” He said, “Sometimes, you’ll hit a certain spot where everything gets quiet and you’ve got to take advantage of it.” …

“This is the spot.” He said, “You’ve got to look around. Look at the clouds, kind of feel the air…”
“Everything’s quieter than it normally is.” He was right.

Everything was really quiet.
It looked likely to storm there but it wasn’t at all.

It was like this weird, quiet moment, like the calm before the storm.
So I said, “Fine, we’ll take a walk.” I thought he just wanted exercise, like he wasn’t ready to go to bed.

So, in this apartment complex there were little streams that go through it and there were bridges that go across the streams.
So, we’d walk across this bridge and he said, “You know, don’t just walk around. Pay attention to the sounds of things.” He said, “When the wind blows the trees, pay attention to that.”

Someone’s wind chimes were blowing and he continued, “Pay attention to the wind chimes. It can be very surreal.” …
“The surreal-ness can put you in this state if you pay attention to it.”

So, I’d listen to the wind chimes and listen to the wind and listen to the babbling brook as we were going across these bridges.

Part 2 — Crazy Psychedelic Little Universes

So he was talking about the surreal-ness, like you just have to experience things.
Everything in that moment seemed very surreal.

Walking across the bridge, you could kind of hear the babbling brook and you didn’t really think about it.
You just experience it in that half-light, like the lights people had kind of gave everything a really strange glow.

Nothing was bright.
You couldn’t see everything clearly but everything seemed very quiet, like the whole place was just dead asleep.

And it was early, maybe 9:30 or 10:00 pm but there weren’t any people out.
We never saw any people or any cars.

It was like the whole place just was shut down.
It was like being at an amusement park after hours and there was nobody there.

Then, we start walking back towards the apartment and I’m paying attention to how surreal things feel, but nothing really hit me, like I don’t know what’s going on.
I’m just following him and he’s saying, “Pay attention to your body,” and “listen to the stream,” and “listen to the wind chimes,” and “listen to things going through the trees.”

Then, he starts talking about this state that he used to go into when he would walk around.
And he said, “It was the In-Between.” I’d heard him mention it a few times.

Other people learning from him had talked about it, too.
But I really had no concept of what it was except from some of the descriptions other people had given me.

It seemed like it was this real kind of crazy psychedelic inter-dimensional place.
So, I was just listening to what he was saying and he said, “Sometimes just walking around I can put myself in that place and I can carry people there.”

And he said, “I haven’t really done that in a while.” And he said that he’s got to get used to just dragging someone else along, so to speak.

And it didn’t matter.
It was this spatial loop.

And all you could feel was these flowers, and I just stood there in awe, “Holy cow, they are this universe. They’re not these small flowers. They’re just as big.”
And I remembered feeling this circular loop of me moving inside them and somehow coming out the other end of the universe and the universe moving inside me going into the flowers and it was just like size didn’t matter.

That’s the best way I can explain it.
It was like this really bizarre experience of what it was to know that they are really this little universe.

And then I realized, “Wow that was a really strange experience.”
And I looked at him and all of a sudden “Voom.”

You are just in this state and you are spinning through all these things that you just started understanding.
That’s when I realized something had happened, and all of sudden I started to feel just really, really, really good.

So, we start walking back towards the apartment and there’s this big, tall lamp post and underneath is this bush of wild flowers.
This was my first indication that something had happened because we looked at the wild flowers and he said, “Kind of reminds you of little universes, doesn’t it?” And I looked at these flowers and they had these really long, tall, thin stalks and at the very end of the stalks, there were all these bursts of yellow flowers but they’re not flowers. They’re wild flowers, just these little round things, but all really yellow.

And I looked at them and I remember he said, “Universe.”
I remembered going into them and seeing them.

All of a sudden, size didn’t matter.
There was no perspective of, “I’m big and they’re small and the universe behind me is even bigger and the molecules inside them are even smaller.”

It was like they were these enormous things and I was this other thing experiencing the space inside them.

Part 3 — Things Get Psychometric

So, we go walking up the stairs to the apartment and there is one light on the bookshelves in the living room.
And I remember all of a sudden looking around at stuff, and everything started to make sense, perfect sense.

Everything was just perfect, and I understood everything.
It’s like you didn’t even question because you just knew the answers.

I could start looking at things and just know things about them.
There was this light that came in through the window and it hit this spot on a wall and Eric said, “Look at that spot.”

I looked at the spot, and the spot wasn’t there because the light was shooting in through the window.
The spot was there because it was there and everything was going backwards.

The spot was there because it was there and then it was creating the light beam going out, and the light beam had to adjust to the fact that the spot was there.
And it makes perfect sense in that state.

But there was a spot on the wall and normally when you’re not in that state you think, “Okay, the spot’s there because the light beam’s coming in through the window and it’s hitting the spot on the wall and there’s this light spot on the wall.”

And in this state you think, “Oh no, it’s backwards. The spot needed to be there.
So, there had to be a light there because there had to be a beam there and that’s how it had to happen in order for that spot to be there.

But the spot was the first thing and everything else went backwards from that spot.
So then, Eric said, “You should go up and feel that spot.”

And I was like, “Okay.”
And I went up and I felt it on the wall, and it felt warm even though this light beam was 500 feet away across the apartment complex coming through the window.

I felt the wall beside this spot of light, and you could feel that it was cold.
When you felt right on the spot of the light, it was completely warm.

That’s where the spot was and you literally felt heat from that spot.
And I thought, “Wow, that’s unbelievable.”

So, I just sat there trying to absorb being in this space and he said, “Okay, I’m going to bed.”
So I just said, “Good night.”

Then, I just stood there for five minutes and I didn’t want to go to bed.
And I remember there were these beads hanging on the wall and all I had to do was just look at something and I could just start feeling things from it.

It was like psychometry, but perfect psychometry.
I didn’t have to touch anything.

I could just look at the beads and I could feel all the past owners and see images of them in my mind.
And I could just experience each of them getting the beads, owning them and what the beads meant to them, just from those beads being on the wall.

And you could just flip through everything like that, perfectly.
Everything was alive with its own memory, and it was like having a conversation with everything.

It was like you could go up to a person and say, “What was your life like?”
And they could explain to you their life and all the things that happened in their life. It was like this with these objects.

You could ask, “Where do you come from?” and “What is your memory?” and “What has your journey been like so far?”
And they would tell you, and it was just this perfect communication, that you didn’t have to touch them, like what is normally taught in psychometry.

You could just look at them and all of a sudden this conduit opened up and you could just experience everything that those things had experienced.
It was just perfect in your head.

You wouldn’t even have to think about it. I wasn’t even trying to do that.
It wasn’t even my intention. You would just look at it and all of a sudden this would be like, “Oh wow, oh okay, oh that’s…” and you would just see them and everything was just perfect and everything was alive.

Part 4 — Shadow Cat

I remember just standing there and looking at all these objects and just trying to absorb all of this, thinking, “This is perfect. I never want to go to sleep because if I go to sleep I’m going to lose this. I’m so tired but I have to stay up as long as I can.”

There was only one light on behind me on the bookshelf and Eric’s cat had come up from behind me but I didn’t know that.
And I saw this shadow on the floor with the two pointy ears.

I looked at the shadow and it felt as alive to me as the cat, and I didn’t even connect that the two were related.
It was almost like it wasn’t that the cat was behind me and the shadow was hitting it and it was creating the shadow.

It was that the shadow and the cat were in a symbiotic relationship and they were both these living things, just as separate but just as connected.
I looked at the shadow and it was his cat but this completely different thing but I knew they were shared somehow.

And I just sat there and experienced its shadow, almost as if it was just a different form of his cat, just as alive but different, and I was like, “Oh wow.”

And so I remember looking at his cat and experiencing him in a completely different way and just going around in a state of total wonder.
Everything was alive.

Everything had this life to it.
Nothing was inanimate.

It wasn’t just these objects made of molecules and atoms.
You could feel this different life behind them.

They were there, but everything was connected and you could feel the connection of everything perfectly.
And it was just this completely extraordinary state where everything made sense and you didn’t even have to question.

Before you could even form a question, you knew the answers and they were just there in your mind and you’re just like, “Okay!”
And it was just like being alive for the first time and completely different than any kind of state you could ever shift into, including during meditation.

It was just completely different.
Your mind wasn’t there and the babbler wasn’t there and you were there and everything else was there.

There was just this communication of flow.
Everything just made sense.

It was just perfect.
And everything had its memory and you were just connected to that.

Nothing felt disjointed.
Everything felt in perfect harmony and in perfect rhythm.

It was separate but it wasn’t.
You could feel the unity in everything so perfectly.

Then finally, I started to think in normal terms and I started to think, “Oh wait, this isn’t a thing by itself; this is supposed to be connected to something.”
It was like I had to think about that in logical terms and then I had to put it back in a space that I would understand it if I wasn’t in the In-Between.

And I thought, “Oh, there’s supposed to be a cat here.
This isn’t this life form by itself. There’s supposed to be something else.”

That’s when I turned around and I saw his cat and then I was like, “Yeah. Okay, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
He is making the shadow.

The shadow doesn’t just walk around by itself.” That is how I experienced it when I first saw it.
It didn’t even occur to me that there was supposed to be this cat connected to it.

I saw the shadow and it was just perfect and I was just experiencing this living shadow.


Reaching the alternate state of consciousness (the In-Between) described in Eric's story requires a technique that recognizes the mind-body connection.

1. The mind-body connection is both electrical and bio-chemical in nature.

1. By explaining a series of thought patterns and reflections, your brain will trigger bio-chemical responses.
2. Nearly every emotion you have or reaction to a life experience triggers a chemical response in the brain.In order to trigger the release of DMT in the brain, it is necessary to address any emotional / psychological barriers that may prevent you from being open to processing the types of thoughts required to initiate the experience.
   1. Carefully evaluate certain values you may have that have potential to be emotional / psychological barriers. Engaging in an open discussion with someone who has already been In-Between is best.
   2. Introduce a process of thinking / reflecting that triggers a number of chemical responses in the brain.
   3. When your brain achieves a certain combination of thoughts or chemical releases, DMT is released in your brain.
3. You'll know when your journey into the In-Between has begun. Your brain sends powerful sensory sensations to the body as DMT is released including visual, taste, and others.
   1. You will initially experience as taste on the back of your tongue often described as metallic. This physical sensation will reinforce your experience and trigger further DMT release.
   2. At this time you will feel a slight level of nausea as your body sensations are becoming altered from the DMT release.
   3. You will go through some uncomfortable visual experiences such as everything appearing to be made of plastic; this may cause a psychological un-comfort with your sense of reality.
   4. As you adjust and move on in the exercise your environment will become much more complex.
4. Each individual’s experience with DMT and the In-Between will differ. What you experience will have much to do with your sense of comfort. The more comfortable you are, the more DMT will be released in your system. Experiences will range from:
   1. Your environment glowing around, almost as if everything is illuminating.
   2. The ability to see molecular structures; walls and furniture breaking down before your eyes.
   3. A sense of knowing the answers to questions before the questions themselves even arise, almost as if to say you remember or recall things you never previously knew.
   4. Shadows may create doorways.
   5. Lights on walls might be hot to the touch.
   6. Thoughts telepathically transmitted to and from humans.
   7. Animals reacting unusually to you, demonstrating no fear.
   8. A deep spiritual communion and a sense of coming home.

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Skarekrow]

Incredible!!


[video=vimeo;90160649]http://vimeo.com/90160649[/video]