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Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
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Mind Control Researchers Create Fake Link Between Unrelated Memories
Advancements in genetics and neuroscience are undoubtedly leading toward direct methods of mind control, albeit only with good intentions … if government and establishment science can be believed.
However, an array of hi-tech methods have been announced which show clear potential for negative manipulation.
Bold claims have been made by scientists that they now can use “neural dust,” high-powered lasers, and light beamed from outside the skull to alter brain function and even turn off consciousness altogether.
But it is memory research that might be among the most troubling.
As I’ve previously suggested in other articles, our memories help us form our identity: who we are relative to where we have been.
Positive or negative lessons from the past can be integrated into our present decisions, thus enabling us to form sound strategies and behaviors that can aid us in our quest for personal evolution.
What if we never knew what memories were real or false?
What if our entire narrative was changed by having our life’s events restructured?
Or what if there were memories that were traumatic enough to be buried as a mechanism of sanity preservation, only to be brought back to us in a lab?
Research has commenced into many facets of how memory can be restructured, whether it is erasing memories, the implantation of false memories, or triggering memories of fear when none previously existed. (Source)
MIT researchers, for example previously claimed to have found the specific brain switch that links emotions to memory.
MIT went on to admit that these findings could lead not only to direct intervention via manipulation of brain cells through light, but a new class of drugs to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Once again, memory tinkering is making the news.
This time it comes from the University of Toyama, Japan, where researchers claim to have for the first time,“linked two distinct memories using completely artificial means.”
I have highlighted areas of the press release below which are consistent with similar research into supposed solutions for PTSD.
The same disturbing language is present that seems to indicate a desire to reverse engineer the process and create fear-based trauma.
So far, ethical boundaries seem fuzzy at best, and downright non-existent in various areas of brain study.
It is a time when more light needs to shine upon this research, who is funding it, and what is permissible.
Given the outrageous abuses already committed by government-directed science, and a global climate of centralized health control, we would do well to read between the lines of these announcements and prepare to become very critical of their pursuits.
The ability to learn associations between events is critical for survival, but it has not been clear how different pieces of information stored in memory may be linked together by populations of neurons.
In a study published April 2nd in Cell Reports, synchronous activation of distinct neuronal ensembles caused mice to artificially associate the memory of a foot shock with the unrelated memory of exploring a safe environment, triggering an increase in fear-related behavior when the mice were re-exposed to the non-threatening environment.
The findings suggest that co-activated cell ensembles become wired together to link two distinct memories that were previously stored independently in the brain.
“Memory is the basis of all higher brain functions, including consciousness, and it also plays an important role in psychiatric diseases such as post-traumatic stress disorder,” says senior study author Kaoru Inokuchi of the University of Toyama.
“By showing how the brain associates different types of information to generate a qualitatively new memory that leads to enduring changes in behavior, our findings could have important implications for the treatment of these debilitating conditions.”
Recent studies have shown that subpopulations of neurons activated during learning are reactivated during subsequent memory retrieval, and reactivation of a cell ensemble triggers the retrieval of the corresponding memory.
Moreover, artificial reactivation of a specific neuronal ensemble corresponding to a pre-stored memory can modify the acquisition of a new memory, thereby generating false or synthetic memories.
However, these studies employed a combination of sensory input and artificial stimulation of cell ensembles.
Until now, researchers had not linked two distinct memories using completely artificial means.
With that goal in mind, Inokuchi and Noriaki Ohkawa of the University of Toyama used a fear-learning paradigm in mice followed by a technique called optogenetics, which involves genetically modifying specific populations of neurons to express light-sensitive proteins that control neuronal excitability, and then delivering blue light through an optic fiber to activate those cells.
In the behavioral paradigm, one group of mice spent six minutes in a cylindrical enclosure while another group explored a cube-shaped enclosure, and 30 minutes later, both groups of mice were placed in the cube-shaped enclosure, where a foot shock was immediately delivered.
Two days later, mice that were re-exposed to the cube-shaped enclosure spent more time frozen in fear than mice that were placed back in the cylindrical enclosure.
The researchers then used optogenetics to reactivate the unrelated memories of the safe cylinder-shaped environment and the foot shock.
Stimulation of neuronal populations in memory-related brain regions called the hippocampus and amygdala, which were activated during the learning phase, caused mice to spend more time frozen in fear when they were later placed back in the cylindrical enclosure, as compared with stimulation of neurons in either the hippocampus or amygdala, or no stimulation at all.
The findings show that synchronous activation of distinct cell ensembles can generate artificial links between unrelated pieces of information stored in memory, resulting in long-lasting changes in behavior.
“By modifying this technique, we will next attempt to artificially dissociate memories that are physiologically connected, ”Inokuchi says.
“This may contribute to the development of new treatments for psychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, whose main symptoms arise from unnecessary associations between unrelated memories.”
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
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As always, check for interactions concerning the meds you are taking…even seemingly innocuous things can interact.
Herbal therapies are astoundingly popular among and their interest is growing as the dangers of pharmaceuticals become widely known and accepted.
In 2008 statistician Patricia M. Barnes of the National Center for Health Statistics and her colleagues reported that almost 20 percent of children and adults in the U.S. had used an herbal medicine during the past year.
That percentage according to some experts has doubled.
A team led by physician David M. Eisenberg of Harvard Medical School determined that use of herbs for physical and mental problems including anxiety had risen 380 percent in seven years.
The use of plants as treatments dates to at least 3000 b.c. although some theories propose humans have been using plants has medicine for as long as we’ve existed. Today this practice is part of a broader movement that has been fueled by the high ineffectiveness of prescription drugs, their side effects and the fact that these drugs do not work for everyone.
Natural remedies come with little to no risk and if you find the right one for your condition, you can use it for life.
That being said, always consult with a Naturopathic Doctor before initiating any herbal treatments for diagnosed conditions, especially if you are already taking medication.
1. Cannabis
Cannabis has very powerful neuroprotective properties with an incredible ability to regulate emotional behavior and may be the most reliable medicinal plant available as a therapeutic target for the treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders.
A study conducted with mice suggests that beta-caryophyllene may be useful in treating anxiety and depression.
The findings were published online in the journal Physiology & Behavior.
2. Valerian
Valerian root (valeriana officinalis) is derived from a plant native to Europe and Asia and has been used for thousands of years as a remedy for various ailments.
It is believed that valerian root has an impact on the availability of the neurotransmitter GABA in the brain.
GABA is a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system that is responsible for regulating and specifically for inhibiting the activity of the brain’s neurons.
Extra GABA in your system promotes relaxation and lowers stress levels.
For this reason, valerian root is known as a sedative.
Valerian is very effective at relieving stress itself and insomnia caused by stress.
3. Honey
The nutrients in honey produce a calming effect, especially when taken in significant amounts.
Honey can also be mixed with a suitable beverage for a good night’s sleep!
4. Lemon Balm
A large amount of published data has emerged on the benefits of lemon balm for alleviating anxiety and mood disorders in humans.
In the past five years alone, the powerful relaxing effects of lemon balm extracts have been documented by scientists around the world.
These studies confirm what herbal practitioners have long known–that lemon balm in combination with other herbal agents is effective in addressing conditions related to stress and anxiety.
In one study of healthy volunteers, those who took standardized lemon balm extracts (600 mg) were more calm and alert than those who took a placebo.
5. Passionflower
Natural sedative relieves occasional anxiety and mild panic attacks.
Passion Flower is a woody vine that bears small berry-like fruit called grandilla.
The brightly colored flowers and above-ground portions of the Passion Flower vine are used to derive medicinal compounds that relax the central nervous system and promote emotional balance.
In the United States, Passion Flower is classified as GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) by the Food and Drug Administration.
Substances that receive a GRAS classification have maintained a long, safe history of common use in foods or have been determined to be safe based on proven scientific research.
6. Winter Cherry
Relieves nervous tension, occasional anxiety and mental fatigue.
Winter Cherry, or Ashwagandha Root, is among the most prominent herbal preparations used in Ayurveda, a holistic system of medicine that originated in India.
The root of this small evergreen shrub is primarily recognized for its adaptogenic properties, meaning it naturally increases the body’s resistance to physical and emotional stress.
Practitioners of Ayurveda traditionally prescribe Winter Cherry to promote gentle relaxation and emotional balance.
Research has shown that Winter Cherry is a safe, natural sedative that produces the most noticeable benefits following daily use for two to six weeks.
7. Lavender
Lavender is a common herb used in aromatherapy for mental health and mood.
Lavender is a part of aromatherapy for headaches and depression.
Lavender is a part of several scented products like perfumes soaps, shampoos and sachets.
The plant is usually extracted into an oil and used in aromatherapy for mood, stress and anxiety.
Lavender should be used with the recommendation of a physician, because it can interact with other medications.
In one German study, a specially formulated lavender pill was shown to reduce anxiety symptoms in people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) as effectively as lorazepam (brand name: Ativan), an anti-anxiety medication in the same class as Valium.
8. Ashwagandha
Ashwagandha is an Ayurvedic herb from the roots of Withania somnifera, a plant in the nightshade family.
It has long been prized for hundreds of years for its ability to help the body deal with stress.
It has also been used to boost the immune system, improve memory, and to promote overall wellness.
9. L-theanine (or green tea)
Research shows that L-theanine helps curb a rising heart rate and blood pressure, and human studies have found that it reduces anxiety.
In one study, anxiety-prone subjects were calmer and more focused during a test if they took 200 milligrams of L-theanine beforehand.
Astonishingly, even extremely short-term use of theanine had remarkable effects on manifestations of anxiety.
10. Rhodiola Rosea (Arctic Root)
Relieves occasional anxiety and positively supports the body during periods of stress.
Arctic Root is a plant indigenous to Siberia, where it thrives in high altitudes and dry arctic climate.
The primary medicinal compounds of Arctic Root are derived from the root of the plant.
In Russia, Scandinavia and much of Europe, Arctic Root has been traditionally recognized for its adaptogenic properties.
An adaptogen is a physiological agent that naturally increases the body’s resistance to physical and emotional stress.
Rhodiola Rosea has been clinically shown to stimulate Serotonin, Norepinephrine and Dopamine activity, and may help to support healthy neurotransmitter balance.
11. St. Johns Wort
Natural reuptake inhibitor that supports a healthy neurotransmitter balance. St. John’s Wort is an aromatic perennial herb with an abundance of golden-yellow flowers. Tiny perforations filled with phytochemical-rich oils cover the aerial (above- ground) portions of St. John’s Wort and yield an extract that gives the plant its primary health benefits.
Current usage statistics indicate that millions of Americans supplement their daily diets with St. John’s Wort to promote positive mood balance.
The medicinal components of St. John’s Wort, which include Hypericin and Hyperforin, have been clinically shown to promote a healthy neurotransmitter balance, which can help to provide positive mood support following two to six weeks of continued use.
12. Chamomile
There is good evidence that chamomile possesses anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) properties and can be used to treat stress, anxiety and insomnia.
In one study at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, in Philadelphia, patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) who took chamomile supplements for eight weeks had a significant decrease in anxiety symptoms compared to patients taking placebo.
13. Skullcap
Skullcap is the anxiety remedy for people who experience anxiety along with restlessness, muscle tension, and jaw clenching.
If you tend to toss and turn in bed, or if you feel like you can only relax when you’re out walking (but sitting still makes you want to jump out of your skin), or if you feel like “climbing the walls” when you’re stuck inside during a bout of anxiety, skullcap can help you to unwind not only your anxiety, but also the accompanying muscular tension and restlessness.
Skullcap is effective in tea or tincture (a tincture is an herb extracted in alcohol) form, but if you can tolerate small amounts of alcohol I think 20-40 drops of the tincture (for a 150-pound person) is the most effective form.
14. Kava Kava
The known active ingredients in kava are phytochemicals called kavalactones.
Kava Kava is best-known as a ceremonial South Pacific beverage.
Six major kavalactones are used to identify the chemotype of variety as they represent greater than 90 percent of the total amount of kavalactones within the kava specimen.
These kavalactones give kava its stress fighting, muscle relaxing, anxiety reducing effects.
The are also very effective for depression and sleeplessness.
15. Licorice Root
Contains a natural hormone alternative to cortisone, which can help the body handle stressful situations, and can help to normalize blood sugar levels as well as your adrenal glands, providing you with the energy necessary to deal with the stressful situation at hand.
Some claim licorice stimulates cranial and cerebrospinal fluid, thereby calming the mind.
The 15 Most Effective Natural Remedies For Anxiety
Herbal therapies are astoundingly popular among and their interest is growing as the dangers of pharmaceuticals become widely known and accepted.
In 2008 statistician Patricia M. Barnes of the National Center for Health Statistics and her colleagues reported that almost 20 percent of children and adults in the U.S. had used an herbal medicine during the past year.
That percentage according to some experts has doubled.
A team led by physician David M. Eisenberg of Harvard Medical School determined that use of herbs for physical and mental problems including anxiety had risen 380 percent in seven years.
The use of plants as treatments dates to at least 3000 b.c. although some theories propose humans have been using plants has medicine for as long as we’ve existed. Today this practice is part of a broader movement that has been fueled by the high ineffectiveness of prescription drugs, their side effects and the fact that these drugs do not work for everyone.
Natural remedies come with little to no risk and if you find the right one for your condition, you can use it for life.
That being said, always consult with a Naturopathic Doctor before initiating any herbal treatments for diagnosed conditions, especially if you are already taking medication.
1. Cannabis
Cannabis has very powerful neuroprotective properties with an incredible ability to regulate emotional behavior and may be the most reliable medicinal plant available as a therapeutic target for the treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders.
A study conducted with mice suggests that beta-caryophyllene may be useful in treating anxiety and depression.
The findings were published online in the journal Physiology & Behavior.
2. Valerian
Valerian root (valeriana officinalis) is derived from a plant native to Europe and Asia and has been used for thousands of years as a remedy for various ailments.
It is believed that valerian root has an impact on the availability of the neurotransmitter GABA in the brain.
GABA is a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system that is responsible for regulating and specifically for inhibiting the activity of the brain’s neurons.
Extra GABA in your system promotes relaxation and lowers stress levels.
For this reason, valerian root is known as a sedative.
Valerian is very effective at relieving stress itself and insomnia caused by stress.
3. Honey
The nutrients in honey produce a calming effect, especially when taken in significant amounts.
Honey can also be mixed with a suitable beverage for a good night’s sleep!
4. Lemon Balm
A large amount of published data has emerged on the benefits of lemon balm for alleviating anxiety and mood disorders in humans.
In the past five years alone, the powerful relaxing effects of lemon balm extracts have been documented by scientists around the world.
These studies confirm what herbal practitioners have long known–that lemon balm in combination with other herbal agents is effective in addressing conditions related to stress and anxiety.
In one study of healthy volunteers, those who took standardized lemon balm extracts (600 mg) were more calm and alert than those who took a placebo.
5. Passionflower
Natural sedative relieves occasional anxiety and mild panic attacks.
Passion Flower is a woody vine that bears small berry-like fruit called grandilla.
The brightly colored flowers and above-ground portions of the Passion Flower vine are used to derive medicinal compounds that relax the central nervous system and promote emotional balance.
In the United States, Passion Flower is classified as GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) by the Food and Drug Administration.
Substances that receive a GRAS classification have maintained a long, safe history of common use in foods or have been determined to be safe based on proven scientific research.
6. Winter Cherry
Relieves nervous tension, occasional anxiety and mental fatigue.
Winter Cherry, or Ashwagandha Root, is among the most prominent herbal preparations used in Ayurveda, a holistic system of medicine that originated in India.
The root of this small evergreen shrub is primarily recognized for its adaptogenic properties, meaning it naturally increases the body’s resistance to physical and emotional stress.
Practitioners of Ayurveda traditionally prescribe Winter Cherry to promote gentle relaxation and emotional balance.
Research has shown that Winter Cherry is a safe, natural sedative that produces the most noticeable benefits following daily use for two to six weeks.
7. Lavender
Lavender is a common herb used in aromatherapy for mental health and mood.
Lavender is a part of aromatherapy for headaches and depression.
Lavender is a part of several scented products like perfumes soaps, shampoos and sachets.
The plant is usually extracted into an oil and used in aromatherapy for mood, stress and anxiety.
Lavender should be used with the recommendation of a physician, because it can interact with other medications.
In one German study, a specially formulated lavender pill was shown to reduce anxiety symptoms in people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) as effectively as lorazepam (brand name: Ativan), an anti-anxiety medication in the same class as Valium.
8. Ashwagandha
Ashwagandha is an Ayurvedic herb from the roots of Withania somnifera, a plant in the nightshade family.
It has long been prized for hundreds of years for its ability to help the body deal with stress.
It has also been used to boost the immune system, improve memory, and to promote overall wellness.
9. L-theanine (or green tea)
Research shows that L-theanine helps curb a rising heart rate and blood pressure, and human studies have found that it reduces anxiety.
In one study, anxiety-prone subjects were calmer and more focused during a test if they took 200 milligrams of L-theanine beforehand.
Astonishingly, even extremely short-term use of theanine had remarkable effects on manifestations of anxiety.
10. Rhodiola Rosea (Arctic Root)
Relieves occasional anxiety and positively supports the body during periods of stress.
Arctic Root is a plant indigenous to Siberia, where it thrives in high altitudes and dry arctic climate.
The primary medicinal compounds of Arctic Root are derived from the root of the plant.
In Russia, Scandinavia and much of Europe, Arctic Root has been traditionally recognized for its adaptogenic properties.
An adaptogen is a physiological agent that naturally increases the body’s resistance to physical and emotional stress.
Rhodiola Rosea has been clinically shown to stimulate Serotonin, Norepinephrine and Dopamine activity, and may help to support healthy neurotransmitter balance.
11. St. Johns Wort
Natural reuptake inhibitor that supports a healthy neurotransmitter balance. St. John’s Wort is an aromatic perennial herb with an abundance of golden-yellow flowers. Tiny perforations filled with phytochemical-rich oils cover the aerial (above- ground) portions of St. John’s Wort and yield an extract that gives the plant its primary health benefits.
Current usage statistics indicate that millions of Americans supplement their daily diets with St. John’s Wort to promote positive mood balance.
The medicinal components of St. John’s Wort, which include Hypericin and Hyperforin, have been clinically shown to promote a healthy neurotransmitter balance, which can help to provide positive mood support following two to six weeks of continued use.
12. Chamomile
There is good evidence that chamomile possesses anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) properties and can be used to treat stress, anxiety and insomnia.
In one study at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, in Philadelphia, patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) who took chamomile supplements for eight weeks had a significant decrease in anxiety symptoms compared to patients taking placebo.
13. Skullcap
Skullcap is the anxiety remedy for people who experience anxiety along with restlessness, muscle tension, and jaw clenching.
If you tend to toss and turn in bed, or if you feel like you can only relax when you’re out walking (but sitting still makes you want to jump out of your skin), or if you feel like “climbing the walls” when you’re stuck inside during a bout of anxiety, skullcap can help you to unwind not only your anxiety, but also the accompanying muscular tension and restlessness.
Skullcap is effective in tea or tincture (a tincture is an herb extracted in alcohol) form, but if you can tolerate small amounts of alcohol I think 20-40 drops of the tincture (for a 150-pound person) is the most effective form.
14. Kava Kava
The known active ingredients in kava are phytochemicals called kavalactones.
Kava Kava is best-known as a ceremonial South Pacific beverage.
Six major kavalactones are used to identify the chemotype of variety as they represent greater than 90 percent of the total amount of kavalactones within the kava specimen.
These kavalactones give kava its stress fighting, muscle relaxing, anxiety reducing effects.
The are also very effective for depression and sleeplessness.
15. Licorice Root
Contains a natural hormone alternative to cortisone, which can help the body handle stressful situations, and can help to normalize blood sugar levels as well as your adrenal glands, providing you with the energy necessary to deal with the stressful situation at hand.
Some claim licorice stimulates cranial and cerebrospinal fluid, thereby calming the mind.
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
Try something new….
A book excerpt.
Enjoy.
Preface
Life after Death?
“He’s a liar. He’s delusional.” That’s what many people will be saying about me when they read this book. Honestly, I can’t blame them. I’m even quite skeptical about all this myself. The mere notion of a life after death experience appears to be a massive stretch of my imagination. But it’s all true; at least I think it is.
If this profound, let alone confounding, experience of mine is true, then life is even more of a miracle than it already is. To me, life is now more precious than I ever suspected and, as I have now learned, must be experienced to its fullest every moment of the day.
Of course, there’s nothing new about the concept of life after death. The whole idea has been around as long as, well, civilized people have been around. It’s part of most peoples’ most intimate belief systems. But not mine. I fervently believed that when you died, that was it. Adios forever. That’s probably why I’m still having trouble fully accepting my awakening.
What I’d like to do now is take a moment and tell you a few more things about myself that may help you form an opinion. First of all, I don’t drink. Not a drop. I’m diabetic, and alcohol conflicts with my drugs. Speaking of drugs, I’m clean in that department too, unless you consider insulin, aspirin and Tylenol substances of abuse. Now I have to come clean about coffee. I’m seriously addicted. I’ll have to admit the same for tobacco. I smoke a pipe. It makes me look like a professor, but that’s not a valid excuse.
I don’t believe in UFOs and little green men. I don’t see or believe in ghosts. I think the horoscope industry is a scam. I’m not into conspiracy theories. I think that people who are against gun control should be shot. I’m not a member of any cult. And I’ve never been religious, even for the sake of tradition.
I’m, fortunately, a cancer survivor. I was diagnosed about six years ago and had to endure very major surgery and months of chemotherapy. It was horrible. Even when I was at my worst, I never gave a moment’s thought to the comforting notion that maybe, just maybe, there was something after this life. However, during my hundreds of hours of chemo torture I perfected the art of meditation. Thanks to this, I was able to experience the awakening you’re going to learn a lot more about.
The science of it all
Science is an integral part of understanding (and maybe even believing in) the survival of death. But the theories can be very difficult to understand. So, I’ve tried to put everything I’ve learned into the simplest possible terms, precisely as it was related to me. At one point during the writing of this book, I seriously considered leaving the science out, but it’s just too important and too fascinating. I also considered having a science-only chapter, but it wouldn’t have complemented my experience. So, I’m reporting the science in the same sequence as it was explained to me and in virtually the same words.
Religious connection?
Christ no, I don’t want anyone to think that this is a ‘religious’ book. Indeed, some may perceive it to be because of the overall implications. The book may actually reinforce the concept of faith with many who seek assurance. It may also make the most devout atheists think twice about their staunch convictions. All I can say is that it should be read with an open mind. A very open mind. If you get goose bumps, great. If you get pissed off, that’s your right.
Not so funny
The concepts presented in this book are of a very serious nature. In fact, few things in the world could be as serious. And during the time I experienced the events you’re about to read, I was very nervous. And when I’m nervous, I attempt to take the edge off it with humor. It calms my jangled nerves. So, you’re going to find a degree of humor throughout this book. Please don’t be put off or offended by it. Likewise, do your best to overlook any language you deem to be offensive. There’s nothing like a foul four letter word to express an emotion.
“Death—the last sleep? No, the final awakening.”
Walter Scott
“Memories are all we really own.”
Elias Lieberman
“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”
Marcus T. Cicero
“Memory is the scribe of the soul.”
Aristotle
“Memory is the mother of all wisdom.”
Aeschylus
“Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
Kahill Gibran
“Life is all memory except for the one present moment
that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.”
Tennessee Williams
“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly
and safely insane every night of our lives.”
Charles William Dement
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
Socrates
“Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling,
even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”
Luis Bunuel
“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Chapter 1
Pleasant Dreams
It had been a long, tiresome January day. And I was glad to curl up with a book before I went to sleep. I was about half way into a really gripping World War 2 story about Iwo Jima, and I just had to read one more chapter. That’s what I always tell myself, ‘just one more chapter.’
World War 2 history books have fascinated me for years. From the battle strategies to the weaponry to the human drama, it’s all beyond exciting to me. What’s more, if I’ve had a bad day, reading about all the terror and misery that millions of people endured makes me feel as though my problems are rather trivial.
When I finally put my Iwo book down and turned off the light, I began a ritual I practice that thoroughly relaxes me: meditation. It’s the best way I know to fall soundly asleep. Most importantly, it opened the door to the unbelievable world I’m going to tell you about.
I tried meditation many years ago, but was unable to concentrate or focus my mind. But when I was in chemotherapy, I perfected it and became sort of an expert. During chemo, I spent countless hours sitting in a comfortable chair while the poison slowly flowed through my veins. Sure, you can read, but even that becomes tedious, especially when you get dizzy and nauseous.
So, I learned to completely relax, and remove just about everything from my mind. It’s not easy. I didn’t chant a mantra, but simply focused my mind’s eye on an acorn and buried all my thoughts. Why an acorn instead of a leaf, a mountain, a bicycle or a raspberry pastry? An acorn was the first thing that popped into my mind. They’re pleasing to look at, and there’s really nothing about them that will lead your mind to other thoughts.
After my drooping eyelids told me to put the damn book down, my mind was racing with very vivid images of the tumultuous Iwo Jima battlefield, and it took the passive little acorn a few minutes to help me eliminate them. As usual, meditation sent me off to dreamland, but, this time, to a land that has profoundly changed my life. The next thing I remember was the annoying sound of my Casio alarm clock welcoming me to a new day, a hot shower and a short walk to breakfast.
By the time I strolled the seven blocks to my favorite breakfast spot, the Juan Valdez Café, I was literally craving my next wakeup call: a nice, hot cup of coffee. So I ordered a Café con leche and my usual almond croissant. After about three bites, a dream from the previous night popped into my consciousness. It was about Iwo Jima.
Well, not just about Iwo Jima.
I was there.
In the middle of a real shit storm of a battle.
At first thought, it all made sense. After all, I was entrenched in a rather intense book about the subject. So why not dream about it?
But what a dream this was.
So realistic.
Too realistic.
It’s very rare that I ever remember a dream. And when I do, it’s usually murky and surreal. Sometimes I’m trying to run, but my legs are as heavy as lead. Sometimes I have the ability to fly. On rare occasions I have a classic nightmare that scares the crap out of me, and I always wake up. But my Iwo dream didn’t wake me up, although it could be considered a nightmare.
This was like a real memory — something I actually experienced. All my senses were completely tuned in. There I was, trying to flatten myself into a large depression on the edge of a beach. The sand was very fine and darkly colored. Ugly. Everything was ugly.
My ears were pierced by a thundering wall of sounds: huge explosions, rifle and machine gun fire, bullets buzzing by like hornets, soldiers yelling, screaming, and crying, mechanical clinking and clanking; the only normal, pleasing noises were the sounds of a pounding surf. That seemed out of place in this hellish arena.
The smells were like nothing I’ve ever experienced. My nose was assaulted by the stench of sulfur, gun powder, burning flesh, blood, superheated metal and charred rubber. My mouth was completely dry, but I seemed to taste everything I smelled. I felt intense heat, perspiration and the sand.
But what I felt more intensely than anything else was fear. There were constant blinding flashes, followed by all sorts objects sailing through the air: stones, charred wood, twisted chunks of metal, rifles, helmets, pieces of blood soaked uniforms, all manner of body parts and geysers of sand. What I saw on the ground was pretty much the same.
In my immediate vicinity, sharing my crater, were two soldiers. The guy on the left of me kept peering over the edge of our shallow crater. Then he’d raise his gun over his head, a Thompson submachine gun, and fire blindly. What a sound that thing made. And the hot, ejecting shell casings kept raining down on me, stinging my face and hands. I didn’t see his face. Yet.
The soldier on my right was nearly in the fetal position.
But he appeared calm.
Almost like he was enjoying this nightmare.
He looked right at me and said with a smile, “The fellow next to you, Shorty, is going to get shot. You know, wacked, zapped, wasted, plugged, blown away.”
At that moment, I felt a searing pain on the side of my neck. Shorty, had dropped his Thompson, and the hot barrel brushed my neck. I quickly turned, only to closely view this poor guy on his back, eyes and mouth wide open and blood trickling from a hole in his temple. I saw his face and will never forget it.
Over all the explosions, I barely heard a voice from my right say, “See, I told you so. He never knew what hit’em.”
The guy was grinning. I vividly remembered being incensed at his total lack of empathy. It was as though he was completely detached from the tragedy.
Then he spoke again. “Shorty and I went to high school together. He wanted me to relive his death with him. He’s watched me get mine on Omaha Beach. A real bummer. I never even got to kill any krauts.”
I remembered being very confused by this banter. But I distinctly remembered everything he said — like it was really said.
Like it wasn’t a dream.
Pondering all this nonsense while I savored my almond croissant, I remembered the last thing I heard him say, with a broader grin than before.
“Hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am.”
That’s where the dream clicked off. Too bad. I actually wanted a couple of more seconds so I could have slammed this asshole in the mouth. But this was a dream. How could I, honestly, give a damn?
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get this stupid dream out of my head. Every moment of it kept coming back, and I couldn’t help from analyzing every aspect of it. As far as I could remember, I had never read this sequence of events in any of the many Iwo books I’ve had over the years. Of course, all the action and sensory information was a compilation of things I’ve read. Even the way Shorty had been killed.
The rest of my day was thoroughly uneventful. Not even the staccato sound of a machinegun or the scent of a burning tire oozed into my consciousness. Once again, I was very tired, but after fluffing up my pillow, I instinctively reached for my book. As soon as I saw the cover, I winced. ‘Could reading more of this now regurgitate my dream?’ I asked myself. No, I couldn’t let myself become a victim of my own dreams. With that solved, I got comfortable and jumped back into the book.
The next thing I remembered was waking up at around 3:00am with my reading light on and the book resting on my chest. I had dozed off in the middle of a good chapter. Didn’t even have a chance to meditate. Just shows you how zonked I was. I didn’t even remember falling back to sleep after I turned off the light.
When my Casio once again woke me in the rudest of manner, I felt totally refreshed. All I wanted, craved to be more precise, was my coffee and pastry. When I left my home, it was misty, drizzling and cold, but the walk to Juan Valdez was invigorating. Along the way, I tried to remember if I had had any more dreams. Nothing. My mind was clean. What a relief. That dream had obviously been a fluke.
I have to admit, I did think about my Iwo dream a few times during the day. How could I help it? It was now a part of me. A real, well sort of real, memory. Why deny it? That night I grabbed my book without hesitation, read until I could have sworn I saw sheep in my room, and went to sleep. But not before meditating.
As soon as my Casio gave me a swift kick in the balls in the morning, a new memory hit me.
Another dream.
Iwo again.
Just as vivid.
But weirder.
I was crouched in the same spot, dead Shorty on my left, asshole on my right. Hell everywhere to be seen, heard, felt, smelled and tasted. The difference was that I knew I was dreaming and saw that it was a continuation of my last one. While I was marveling at this anomaly and wondering how it could be possible, I felt a hard tap on my right shoulder.
When I turned, I wasn’t even surprised to see that jerk staring at me with his big brown eyes peeking out from a banged up helmet, gobs of grease and soot smeared all over his gaunt thin face. This time, though, he wasn’t smirking. With a note of seriousness, he barked, “If you want to experience combat the right way you’ve got to be in uniform.”
That’s when I realized that all I was wearing was my usual sleeping attire: a pair of underpants.
Underpants?
On Iwo?
It was embarrassing.
Embarrassing?
“Did you hear me, soldier?” he asked. “Answer me,” he demanded.
I didn’t know if I could talk coherently in a dream. Thought my mouth might move, but certainly nothing would come out. I also thought that trying to speak might wake me up. But I didn’t want to wake up because, believe it or not, this whole thing was intriguing me.
It was just too real.
Too exciting.
Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe someone had slipped some LSD into the insulin shot I took every night. Then I figured, fuck it, I’ll talk to this guy. Nothing to lose but my sanity.
“I don’t have a uniform. And this is just a stupid dream,” I yelled, trying to be heard over all the thundering noise.
Well, the words came out of my mouth. I wished I had said something more astute, more clever. Wow, I didn’t even wake up.
He slowly shook his head, while intently staring at me. Then he said more seriously than I could believe, “This is no dream. This is real. You’re damned lucky to be a part of it. I’m doing you a favor. Now get with the program.”
It took me what seemed like an eternity to fathom what he had just uttered. No, this wasn’t real. Seemed like it, but couldn’t be. Of course not. It was a dream. And, yes, I was lucky to be having such an absurd experience. They didn’t even say ‘get with the program’ back in the ‘40s. And he was doing me a favor?
KaBoooommm. An enormous explosion a few yards in front of me brought me back to my senses.
Without thinking, I screamed, “I don’t have a uniform you lunatic. I’m asleep. At home. In New York City. In my Fruit of the Loom briefs.”
His sand encrusted lips moved, “You’ve got a uniform if you want one. Just imagine you’re wearing one. Think hard about it. And don’t forget boots and a helmet.”
Without further pondering the absurdity of what I was experiencing, I followed his advice. Why not? I’ll go with it. You know, get with the program. What a joke.
All of a sudden -----POOOF. I was in a uniform.
He acknowledged my abrupt transformation with an approving nod and said, “How do you expect to kill Japs without a weapon? Roll over, and grab Shorty’s Thompson. He doesn’t need it any more. And take the pouch of ammo clips off his belt. You’ll need’em.”
Once again, I followed his orders while repressing a laugh. I couldn’t imagine what his response would have been if he caught me giggling. Not that I honestly gave a fucking damn. With the gun firmly in hand, I wiggled over the edge of the crater, aimed at what appeared to be a small cave opening and pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening.
And the gun was kicking, jumping and spewing expended shells all over the place. How could you hit anything with this heavy piece of junk, I thought to myself. But it was fun. Serious fun. Thrilling, in fact. I’ve got to admit that. Over the years, Thompsons have been glorified in hundreds of battle stories I’ve read. They’ve also been romanticized in numerous movies about gangsters in the 1930s. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to shoot one. Now I knew. Or did I? Must be my imagination on steroids. He was laughing. At me.
“If you could only see yourself,” he said. “That gun nearly hammered you senseless.”
“No shit,” I answered.
“You gotta get used to it. With practice, you’ll see that it’s a damn fine weapon. You’ve always known that, Johnny boy.” he said as he took a swig from his canteen.
“By the way, my name’s Lyle,” he said.
Still flabbergasted by all this, I decided to set aside my disbelief and just go with the conversation. I had nothing to lose. Presumably, I was getting a good night’s sleep, anyway. And the dream now seemed like harmless fun.
“How do you presume to know what I’ve always known? And how do you know my name,” I asked.
Of course he knows everything about me. He’s an offshoot of me in my own head, I thought to myself. Then I slapped a new clip into the Thompson.
I decided that to actually enjoy this dream while it lasted, I had to skip the conversation and pretend to be John Wayne. Got to have some fun. So I jumped up, held the gun at my hip and let loose with a long, ripping blast. Emptied the whole clip and slapped in a new one. I was getting the hang of it.
After the acrid smell of gunpowder faded in the breeze, I smelled something new. Lyle was smoking a cigarette. With a Camel hanging from his lip, he was shaking his head and laughing again, really enjoying the pathetic vision of me acting like a complete fool, in my own dream.
“Nice shootin’,” he said. “Do you really want me to answer your last question? The answer’s going to mess with your head.”
“Make it quick,” I said. “Before this dream is over I want to do some more shooting, and I’ve got to toss a few grenades. That’ll be a blast. No pun intended.”
“You’re beginning to slip out of this dream space, he said, so I’ll be fast, direct and honest. I’m not you. This is not a dream. You’re not crazy. Here’s a grenade. We’ll meet again the next time you meditate and fall asleep.”
I didn’t listen to a word of that nonsense. ‘Not me? Not a dream?’
But I gladly accepted the grenade, pulled the pin with my teeth, just like John Wayne, and tossed it at that cave opening.
Karrrrummmph,KaBooom, ring, ring, ring. Ring?
That’s my fucking Casio.
If I still had the Thompson, I’d blow the shit out of that infernal clock. Time to get up. Reality had returned.
I yanked myself out of bed and went through my usual routine. During breakfast, I thought long and hard about my dream. It no longer bothered me; I sort of got a kick out of it. It was certainly strange and disconcerting, but fun, none the less.
Dreaming, in general, was a mystery to me. People analyzed dreams to death, and I was certain there were a million theories. What’s a ‘normal’ dream? I had no idea. And still don’t. Yeah, it sure was strange to dream so damn vividly with such a sensory overload. Maybe this was going to be like a mini series, and I’d return to Iwo tonight. I actually hoped so.
Lyle, obviously my split personality, told me we’d meet again the next time I meditated. Maybe he said ‘medicated’ and I misunderstood him over all the racket. The meditation connection made a lot sense to me. Meditation puts you in a very focused state of mind. Add that to being nearly mesmerized by a book and I suppose it could conjure up the type of dreams I was having. It had never happened before, but there’s always a first time for everything. When I first started meditating, a couple of people told me that it could be a direct route to paranormal experiences. What a bunch of crap, I thought.
That night, I was way too tired to read. A long day, followed by a big dinner, will always do that to you. When I turned the light off and got into my meditation mode, I hesitated for a moment. I asked myself if I really wanted another Iwo episode so soon after the last one. Wait a second: no Iwo book, no Iwo dream. I’d have a sane evening after all.
Chapter 2
Up in the Air
When I woke up, I had no idea what time it was and couldn’t care less. I didn’t glance at my watch, which I always wear while sleeping, and avoided trying to focus on that stinking Casio that I had obviously beaten to the punch. All I knew was that it was pitch black, the city was unusually quiet, I was very secure and comfortable, and I had a lot to occupy my mind. After the brand new dream I had just woken up from, I wasn’t sure if I still had a mind. Maybe I was sane and Lyle wasn’t. But Lyle was me. Or was he?
I had fallen asleep with nothing on my mind except the view of my acorn. Hey, wait a minute: could this be a hallucinogenic acorn, something Timothy Leary hadn’t even known about?
All I can remember, and vividly so, was that my first sense was my freezing cold derriere plunked down on an exceptionally uncomfortable metal railing, a rather telling indication that this was definitely not an Iwo dream. Anything cold would have been welcomed on Iwo.
I was in some kind of a huge metal structure that was seriously vibrating. There were rivets all over the place, about to shake loose, I thought. Instead of explosions and screaming, there was an annoyingly loud droning sound. Couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. I also couldn’t figure out why the several guys I saw were dressed in large puffy leather coats, wearing equally puffy gloves and hats. Shit, where was I? The smell didn’t give me any indication either: it was a mixture of oil, gas and gunpowder. Maybe I was in the bowels of a submarine or something like that.
Shit, where the fuck was I?
Just as I wondered if my old crater mate, Lyle, was inhabiting this dumb dream, I saw him walking towards me, slightly off balance. At first I didn’t recognize him because he was all bundled up like the rest of the guys in this strange vehicle.
Laughing hard, he sat next to me on the uncomfortable steel girder, and looked me up and down, seeming to scrutinize every shivering inch of me. Putting his hands over his face, he laughed even harder, like a certifiable maniac.
After regaining his composure, Lyle asked, “Know where you are?”
“I don’t have a clue,” I said.
“Come on, use your imagination,” he said. “I thought this would fascinate you. It does whenever you read about it, and you always enjoy movies of this genre. It should be obvious.”
Then it smacked me in the face.
It was obvious, something I should have realized right away. It’s just that the transition from my Iwo dream was completely out of context.
This, I never expected.
It was even stranger than the Iwo dream, if that’s at all possible, because not one shred of it was on my mind. I hadn’t read any books about this in over a year, nor had I seen any movies.
I was flying who knows where on a bomber.
I always loved reading about battle exploits in the sky. It always amazed me how anyone survived, considering the percentage of planes that were literally blown to hell.
Just as Lyle was about to put in his two cents, having obviously read my mind, all hell broke loose. The airman closest to me let loose with a 50 caliber machine gun that I hadn’t noticed before. Turned out he was just testing his gun, not zapping some Jap or kraut. The noise made the Thompson sound like a child’s cap gun. Incredible. It was almost impossible to hear the tinkling of the spent shell casings bouncing around the steel floor.
Clapping his hands to get my attention, Lyle spoke in his distinctly midwestern accent. “Well?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Took me long enough to get it.” I said.
“Well?” he asked again.
“Well what?” I answered.
“Don’t you think you look like an absolute moron sitting on a B17 Flying Fortress wearing nothing but your ridiculous underpants?” he chuckled.
“Oh. Right. I know the routine,” I said trying not to laugh.
So I did the good old imagination thing, and, kazaam, I was properly dressed. ‘John,’ I said to myself, ‘Just shitcan the common sense and go with the flow.’ It was a logical thought in a situation that defied all logic.
I took it a step further and asked, “So, Lyle, what’s this all about?”
As seriously as he could, Lyle explained, “Its January 27, 1943, and we’re on our way to blow the shit out of a Jerry town called Wilhelmshaven. Right now we’re still over the English Channel, just about to fly over the French coastline. In a few minutes from now, all hell’s gonna break loose.”
“So I guess we’re going to see some vicious flak action and probably a swarm of ME109s. Right?” I asked.
“You bet your ass,” he answered. “But,” he continued, “when you experience this, I want you to seriously think about something extremely important.”
“Important? Extremely important?” I asked.”
The only thing important to me, I thought, is that I don’t wake up before I see one of our gunners turn an ME109 pilot into hamburger meat. Even better, I’d like to be the one doing the shooting.”
Lyle brushed his hat back an inch or two over his forehead, put a hand on each of his knees and leaned towards me. Shit, I thought, looks like I’m going to get some God damn lecture.
Of course, this ain’t really happening, I thought, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt. But it’s got to be quick. Can’t wake up yet. Got to get an enemy bandit with a 50. I was having a shit load of fun.
Knowing full well every thought in my mind (he is me, damn it), he calmly said, “I know you think this is all bull shit, and I can’t blame you. You’re also thinking you’ve got a few screws loose. Let me assure you: you’re perfectly normal, this is not a dream and I am neither an aspect of you nor a figment of your imagination. Think about what I just said, what you consider to be nonsense, and, maybe, just maybe, we’ll take the next step.”
Give me a break, I said to myself. It’s just a dream.
And what is this ‘take the next step’ baloney that Lyle uttered?
Enough thinking -- time to bring on the ME109s, duck some flak and turn some jerry buildings into dust. I’m going to wake up sooner or later, I feared.
After plenty of action, I was squinting at a 109 banking hard to my left, trailing oil smoke from its engine.
‘No more sauerkraut for you, Fritz,’ I said to myself.
Then a cloud seemed to light up with 7:30 AM written on it, and it sounded like it was buzzing.
My Casio brought me down from 20,000 feet to pillow level, as aggressively as ever.
I decided to stay snuggled up in bed for a while so I could reflect on every second of my dream. It was an awfully good one. Just as vivid and real as my visits to Iwo, more like a lifetime experience. In no way was I going to let myself forget any moment of it, as was the case with dreams of my past. They would all get blurry. Quickly.
But these weren’t really dreams, not as I had ever experienced, read about or possibly imagined. Of course, they were dreams. Had to be. To say the very, very least, I was confused, perplexed, confounded, concerned and worried. Yes, I was worried about my mental health. But I was also thankful that these weren’t terrifying nightmares. A nightmare at this level of reality would be devastating to my nerves.
Before I threw off my sheets and jumped into the real world, I thought hard about anything that could be causing these dreams. Was I taking any new medication? Was my Tylenol way beyond the expiration date? Was I sniffing glue? Was anyone slipping anything into my food? Was I washing my fruit? Did I have a brain tumor? Had I offended a voodoo practitioner? Was there any mold in my pillow?
I couldn’t seem to blame it on anything. There had to be an explanation, and I was on a quest to discover it. Screw all the analysis for a moment, I thought, these dreams were fun and terrifically thrilling. I wanted them to continue.
Tonight, I’d love to be back in that B17 dropping bombs. I never got a chance to do that. Maybe all this stuff that’s happening to me is 100% normal. Why worry about it? Then I remembered that I had recently been trying a new toothpaste. New toothpaste? Nah, couldn’t be that.
On my way to Juan Valdez, I continued to ponder my airborne dream and the prospect of returning to it soon. Hopefully, in fact, tonight. But this time, I hoped for a logical variation. This time, I wanted to be a fighter plane pilot. That’s something I’ve dreamt about since I was a kid, and the written accounts have always knocked my socks off.
The fighter of my choice would definitely have to be a P-51 Mustang. All I had to do, I assumed, was find a combat history book involving this plane, read some juicy passages before meditating, fall asleep, and, kazzzam, I’d be roaring towards an ME-109 or a Jap Zero, with my 50s and 20mm cannons spreading a path of instant death and destruction. Sounds pretty vicious, but, hey, it’s only a dream. Right?
Another reason I longed for one of these special dreams to take place in a fighter is simple: They’re single seaters. You know what that means: no room for Lyle. Just me. These dreams are screwy enough as it is. But having to talk to some strange variation of myself is just too weird.
It’s not that I don’t like this apparition, it’s just that he freaks me out. Especially all that nonsense he dispenses about these not being dreams. It just wastes valuable dreamtime. And I no longer need him to point out that wearing only underpants is no way to fight a war. If I want to be practically naked in a P-51, so be it, I thought.
Fortunately, the rest of my day was normal. During dinner, I wondered if my dreams could go far beyond World War 2 situations. Stimulation via reading and meditation might take me anywhere.
That evening, I stopped off at my parent’s house. My mother had been rummaging through a cabinet and discovered a box of old family photographs. So, I couldn’t resist the temptation to look at them all. Honestly, it hurts to see your whole family so young. You really long to bring back the past. To get rid of the wrinkles, trim the waistline, restore a drastically receding hairline, return to a simple, innocent time.
That night, all I could do was reminisce about my wonderful days growing up in Purchase, New York. It was beautiful. We only lived there for fourteen years, but it felt like an eternity. When you’re a kid, time goes by very slowly. Too bad you’re not wise enough to take full advantage of every second.
My mother had given me a bunch of the yellow tinted photos, every one of which I studied until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. After what seemed like a two second meditation, I zonked out.
Chapter 3
The Awakening
Whenever I wake up in the morning before my Casio has had the chance to insult my whole being, I just lie there with my eyes closed, hugging my pillow, feeling the comfort and security of soft sheets enveloping my body.
On some occasions, my top sheet and quilt are missing, the obvious victims of a restless night. That was my first realization when I woke up in what I assumed was the morning. Not only was I uncovered, with no pillow at all, but what I assumed to be my bottom sheet felt mushy and sort of prickly. There was also the sensation of a mild breeze, as though I had forgotten to turn off my fan. My fan? It was January, so that device was safely stored in my closet.
I still hadn’t opened my eyes. All this, I thought, was simply my fertile imagination at work. Even the smell of freshly cut grass, or the feeling of the sun on my skin, didn’t ring any bells. But when I was startled by a seriously tickling sensation on my face, and scratched a large bug off my cheek, I reluctantly opened my eyes.
‘Fuck,’ I exclaimed, ‘What the fuck?’
I hadn’t been snoozing on some bloody sand, or in a B-17, or even in my own damn bed.
I had woken up in a dream on a lawn.
A fucking lawn with fucking bugs.
I sat up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and thought to myself, what kind of shit is this? Grass? Bugs? It took about two seconds to focus my eyes and carefully examine the immediate vicinity. I knew exactly where I was: right smack dab in the middle of my old back yard in Purchase.
Then it hit me again:
Before my pre-sleep meditation, I had been literally dreaming about my old home. So this all made perfect sense. Perfect sense? Well, in the scheme of everything that had been happening the last few nights, it did.
Well, enjoy it while you’re here, I mused. There was nothing unnatural or dreamlike about anything I saw, felt, touched, or smelled. I knew I was in a dream, but seemed as awake as ever.
I was definitely in Purchase.
In my good old back yard.
Analyzing all this seemed a waste of valuable, fleeting time. I had done that on Iwo and in the stratosphere over Germany, without arriving at any comprehensible conclusions.
Get off it, John, I thought to myself. Going to wake up soon, and it’ll all be over. Now it was time to explore. Cover every inch before waking. As far as I could tell, it was midmorning, most likely July. The year? Who knows? Who cares? ‘54? ‘59? ‘62? It always looked the same from this perspective. After a bit more thought, I headed first to our garden.
My parents had always planted a rather large garden since as far back as I could remember. And here it was — with its kaleidoscope of lusciously colored flowers, and row after row of vegetables. As I had done many times before in my past life, I grabbed a few cherry tomatoes, marveled, once again, about this unreal, yet painfully real experience, and popped them in my mouth. Literally shivering with a combination of joy, nostalgia, and total disbelief, I felt the tomatoes bursting in my mouth, releasing a rich flavor that ignited a powerful flood of memories.
Too bad I took this for granted way back then, I thought. Wiping off some juice that was trickling down my chin, I felt that all my senses and emotions were in hyper drive. Shit, this was real. Shooing away a bee, I looked beyond the garden, past an enormous oak tree, and peered at the side entrance to the house.
I fully expected to see a very young version of my mother, sister, father or grandparents open the door. But that didn’t happen, although I was absolutely certain that I could will it to happen.
I also had to see my dog and cats. And could I ride my old bicycle? Drive my Mustang? Start my favorite model airplane engine? It would all be possible; I just knew it. ‘Please don’t wake up,’ I kept urging myself. Please don’t.
The sounds of buzzing bugs, chirping birds, a distant lawn mower, highway traffic, and my own chewing were interrupted by a squeaking sound. Not an unfamiliar squeaking sound, though. It was the noise the swings made as they went back and forth on our jungle gym.
Examining it in my right field of vision, I fully expected to see someone from my past. Instead, I saw something that seemed to violate this wonderful experience. It, of course, was Lyle. On my swings. Apparently enjoying himself, no less. This shouldn’t surprise me, I thought. He was, after all, some kind of projection of myself or maybe someone I knew. Couldn’t be. Must be. Confusing as shit.
“Enjoying yourself, John?” he inquired. “Quite a but different from the last few nights, wouldn’t you say?”
My honest response: “This place is personal. I’m trying to think you away, but it’s not working.”
“Maybe you should be thanking me,” he had the audacity to say. “I brought you here, knowing full well all the memories it would unleash.”
Then, throwing his legs back to gain more momentum on the swing, he laughed.
Why was I bothering to talk to him, or even acknowledge his presence, I wondered. I’m just breathing more life into this imaginary figure — this warped reflection of myself. See if you can intelligently get rid of it, I thought to myself. Absorb it back into yourself.
“You cant,” was his response. “I’m not you at all.”
After spending a few moments in what appeared to be careful thought, he continued, “I owe you an apology. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and I’m sorry I’ve confused you and gotten you so pissed off.”
How am I supposed to respond to this gibberish, I wondered. More to the point, this was the first time I had ever done anything like this. I’ve never before dreamt with such spectacular clarity, and I’ve never had an imaginary friend.
A new tactic: “Why are you doing this to yourself?” I pointedly asked him.
Then silence. No answer. He was deep in thought. Thrusting his legs all the way forward while throwing his head back, he seemed to fly on the swing. Just like I always did. For the first time I noticed how young he was, 20 at the most. And his clothing was duller than any I’ve ever seen. I never really gave a shit about clothing, but I certainly never wore anything remotely like that. God, it was all so strange.
“Remember when I said something about taking the next step?” he asked, intently staring at me.
“Yeah. Whatever.” I answered.
“This is important,” he said.
“I don’t have a clue why I’m doing this to myself,” I mumbled.
“Here I am in the middle of the best dream I’ve ever had, and it’s being interrupted by some imaginary vision of myself. It’s self-destructive. And now there’s a next step that’s, of all things, important? Please, just vanish before my mind turns to oatmeal.” I yelled.
Well, I figured that would do it. I was waiting for a flash of light or something, and then pooooof, no more Lyle. But no such luck. He just kept on swinging, seemingly lost in thought.
“One more thing I want to say,” uttered good old Lyle.
“For Christ’s sake make it quick,” I stammered. “I’m gonna wake up soon.”
“If I vamoose, you’ll be able to dream a little while longer, but never again with the same intensity. You’re here because of me and me alone. And regardless of what you think, I’m not you. Not at all.”
“Horseshit,” was my response.
“You’re narrow-minded,” was his response. “No imagination. No curiosity. Firmly cemented in your own limited way of thinking.”
“You win, asshole,” I said. “We’ll take the important next step, but something tells me I’ll have dog shit all over my shoes. My dream shoes, that is.”
“Excellent decision,” he cried. “Now, you’re in for……”
I never realized that Lyle had such a ring to his voice.
Ring?
Then it dawned on me (no pun intended): That’s not him. It’s my fucking Casio. I’m waking up. Leaving my cherished back yard. My dream’s over, and I’m left on a hook.
That day, every corner of my mind was consumed by this whole thing. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bury it in some dark corner. Still couldn’t figure out what Lyle represented in terms of my own subconscious thoughts. But I knew the answer lurked in some crevice.
There was no other explanation.
It occurred to me that it might not be a horrible idea to consult a few close friends or family members. I was itching to reveal this to anyone willing to listen. Maybe I’d get an answer. Or an inkling of one. People would listen kindly, probably break a little sympathetic smile and offer a few empty words of logic. They’d be thinking to themselves: John is seriously fucked up.
Yeah, this was my own personal problem. Or opportunity, depending how you looked at it. If I just went along with everything: you know, conversed with Lyle about who knows what, what would be the downside, I asked myself.
If I could keep my head screwed on, however, there would only be an upside: I could continue having these awesomely spectacular dreams while getting a good night’s sleep, and possibly even maintaining some semblance of my sanity.
Lyle, old boy, you win.
After a whole day with all this shit rattling around in my brain, I was overly ready for bed. And did I study my Purchase pictures before meditating? You bet your ass I did. Then I was back in the same spot, like I had never left my yard. Lyle had slowed down his swinging, looking far more serious than before.
I was ready.
For more info, visit http://www.johnsweiss.com
A book excerpt.
Enjoy.
Preface
Life after Death?
“He’s a liar. He’s delusional.” That’s what many people will be saying about me when they read this book. Honestly, I can’t blame them. I’m even quite skeptical about all this myself. The mere notion of a life after death experience appears to be a massive stretch of my imagination. But it’s all true; at least I think it is.
If this profound, let alone confounding, experience of mine is true, then life is even more of a miracle than it already is. To me, life is now more precious than I ever suspected and, as I have now learned, must be experienced to its fullest every moment of the day.
Of course, there’s nothing new about the concept of life after death. The whole idea has been around as long as, well, civilized people have been around. It’s part of most peoples’ most intimate belief systems. But not mine. I fervently believed that when you died, that was it. Adios forever. That’s probably why I’m still having trouble fully accepting my awakening.
What I’d like to do now is take a moment and tell you a few more things about myself that may help you form an opinion. First of all, I don’t drink. Not a drop. I’m diabetic, and alcohol conflicts with my drugs. Speaking of drugs, I’m clean in that department too, unless you consider insulin, aspirin and Tylenol substances of abuse. Now I have to come clean about coffee. I’m seriously addicted. I’ll have to admit the same for tobacco. I smoke a pipe. It makes me look like a professor, but that’s not a valid excuse.
I don’t believe in UFOs and little green men. I don’t see or believe in ghosts. I think the horoscope industry is a scam. I’m not into conspiracy theories. I think that people who are against gun control should be shot. I’m not a member of any cult. And I’ve never been religious, even for the sake of tradition.
I’m, fortunately, a cancer survivor. I was diagnosed about six years ago and had to endure very major surgery and months of chemotherapy. It was horrible. Even when I was at my worst, I never gave a moment’s thought to the comforting notion that maybe, just maybe, there was something after this life. However, during my hundreds of hours of chemo torture I perfected the art of meditation. Thanks to this, I was able to experience the awakening you’re going to learn a lot more about.
The science of it all
Science is an integral part of understanding (and maybe even believing in) the survival of death. But the theories can be very difficult to understand. So, I’ve tried to put everything I’ve learned into the simplest possible terms, precisely as it was related to me. At one point during the writing of this book, I seriously considered leaving the science out, but it’s just too important and too fascinating. I also considered having a science-only chapter, but it wouldn’t have complemented my experience. So, I’m reporting the science in the same sequence as it was explained to me and in virtually the same words.
Religious connection?
Christ no, I don’t want anyone to think that this is a ‘religious’ book. Indeed, some may perceive it to be because of the overall implications. The book may actually reinforce the concept of faith with many who seek assurance. It may also make the most devout atheists think twice about their staunch convictions. All I can say is that it should be read with an open mind. A very open mind. If you get goose bumps, great. If you get pissed off, that’s your right.
Not so funny
The concepts presented in this book are of a very serious nature. In fact, few things in the world could be as serious. And during the time I experienced the events you’re about to read, I was very nervous. And when I’m nervous, I attempt to take the edge off it with humor. It calms my jangled nerves. So, you’re going to find a degree of humor throughout this book. Please don’t be put off or offended by it. Likewise, do your best to overlook any language you deem to be offensive. There’s nothing like a foul four letter word to express an emotion.
“Death—the last sleep? No, the final awakening.”
Walter Scott
“Memories are all we really own.”
Elias Lieberman
“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”
Marcus T. Cicero
“Memory is the scribe of the soul.”
Aristotle
“Memory is the mother of all wisdom.”
Aeschylus
“Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
Kahill Gibran
“Life is all memory except for the one present moment
that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.”
Tennessee Williams
“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly
and safely insane every night of our lives.”
Charles William Dement
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
Socrates
“Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling,
even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”
Luis Bunuel
“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Chapter 1
Pleasant Dreams
It had been a long, tiresome January day. And I was glad to curl up with a book before I went to sleep. I was about half way into a really gripping World War 2 story about Iwo Jima, and I just had to read one more chapter. That’s what I always tell myself, ‘just one more chapter.’
World War 2 history books have fascinated me for years. From the battle strategies to the weaponry to the human drama, it’s all beyond exciting to me. What’s more, if I’ve had a bad day, reading about all the terror and misery that millions of people endured makes me feel as though my problems are rather trivial.
When I finally put my Iwo book down and turned off the light, I began a ritual I practice that thoroughly relaxes me: meditation. It’s the best way I know to fall soundly asleep. Most importantly, it opened the door to the unbelievable world I’m going to tell you about.
I tried meditation many years ago, but was unable to concentrate or focus my mind. But when I was in chemotherapy, I perfected it and became sort of an expert. During chemo, I spent countless hours sitting in a comfortable chair while the poison slowly flowed through my veins. Sure, you can read, but even that becomes tedious, especially when you get dizzy and nauseous.
So, I learned to completely relax, and remove just about everything from my mind. It’s not easy. I didn’t chant a mantra, but simply focused my mind’s eye on an acorn and buried all my thoughts. Why an acorn instead of a leaf, a mountain, a bicycle or a raspberry pastry? An acorn was the first thing that popped into my mind. They’re pleasing to look at, and there’s really nothing about them that will lead your mind to other thoughts.
After my drooping eyelids told me to put the damn book down, my mind was racing with very vivid images of the tumultuous Iwo Jima battlefield, and it took the passive little acorn a few minutes to help me eliminate them. As usual, meditation sent me off to dreamland, but, this time, to a land that has profoundly changed my life. The next thing I remember was the annoying sound of my Casio alarm clock welcoming me to a new day, a hot shower and a short walk to breakfast.
By the time I strolled the seven blocks to my favorite breakfast spot, the Juan Valdez Café, I was literally craving my next wakeup call: a nice, hot cup of coffee. So I ordered a Café con leche and my usual almond croissant. After about three bites, a dream from the previous night popped into my consciousness. It was about Iwo Jima.
Well, not just about Iwo Jima.
I was there.
In the middle of a real shit storm of a battle.
At first thought, it all made sense. After all, I was entrenched in a rather intense book about the subject. So why not dream about it?
But what a dream this was.
So realistic.
Too realistic.
It’s very rare that I ever remember a dream. And when I do, it’s usually murky and surreal. Sometimes I’m trying to run, but my legs are as heavy as lead. Sometimes I have the ability to fly. On rare occasions I have a classic nightmare that scares the crap out of me, and I always wake up. But my Iwo dream didn’t wake me up, although it could be considered a nightmare.
This was like a real memory — something I actually experienced. All my senses were completely tuned in. There I was, trying to flatten myself into a large depression on the edge of a beach. The sand was very fine and darkly colored. Ugly. Everything was ugly.
My ears were pierced by a thundering wall of sounds: huge explosions, rifle and machine gun fire, bullets buzzing by like hornets, soldiers yelling, screaming, and crying, mechanical clinking and clanking; the only normal, pleasing noises were the sounds of a pounding surf. That seemed out of place in this hellish arena.
The smells were like nothing I’ve ever experienced. My nose was assaulted by the stench of sulfur, gun powder, burning flesh, blood, superheated metal and charred rubber. My mouth was completely dry, but I seemed to taste everything I smelled. I felt intense heat, perspiration and the sand.
But what I felt more intensely than anything else was fear. There were constant blinding flashes, followed by all sorts objects sailing through the air: stones, charred wood, twisted chunks of metal, rifles, helmets, pieces of blood soaked uniforms, all manner of body parts and geysers of sand. What I saw on the ground was pretty much the same.
In my immediate vicinity, sharing my crater, were two soldiers. The guy on the left of me kept peering over the edge of our shallow crater. Then he’d raise his gun over his head, a Thompson submachine gun, and fire blindly. What a sound that thing made. And the hot, ejecting shell casings kept raining down on me, stinging my face and hands. I didn’t see his face. Yet.
The soldier on my right was nearly in the fetal position.
But he appeared calm.
Almost like he was enjoying this nightmare.
He looked right at me and said with a smile, “The fellow next to you, Shorty, is going to get shot. You know, wacked, zapped, wasted, plugged, blown away.”
At that moment, I felt a searing pain on the side of my neck. Shorty, had dropped his Thompson, and the hot barrel brushed my neck. I quickly turned, only to closely view this poor guy on his back, eyes and mouth wide open and blood trickling from a hole in his temple. I saw his face and will never forget it.
Over all the explosions, I barely heard a voice from my right say, “See, I told you so. He never knew what hit’em.”
The guy was grinning. I vividly remembered being incensed at his total lack of empathy. It was as though he was completely detached from the tragedy.
Then he spoke again. “Shorty and I went to high school together. He wanted me to relive his death with him. He’s watched me get mine on Omaha Beach. A real bummer. I never even got to kill any krauts.”
I remembered being very confused by this banter. But I distinctly remembered everything he said — like it was really said.
Like it wasn’t a dream.
Pondering all this nonsense while I savored my almond croissant, I remembered the last thing I heard him say, with a broader grin than before.
“Hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am.”
That’s where the dream clicked off. Too bad. I actually wanted a couple of more seconds so I could have slammed this asshole in the mouth. But this was a dream. How could I, honestly, give a damn?
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get this stupid dream out of my head. Every moment of it kept coming back, and I couldn’t help from analyzing every aspect of it. As far as I could remember, I had never read this sequence of events in any of the many Iwo books I’ve had over the years. Of course, all the action and sensory information was a compilation of things I’ve read. Even the way Shorty had been killed.
The rest of my day was thoroughly uneventful. Not even the staccato sound of a machinegun or the scent of a burning tire oozed into my consciousness. Once again, I was very tired, but after fluffing up my pillow, I instinctively reached for my book. As soon as I saw the cover, I winced. ‘Could reading more of this now regurgitate my dream?’ I asked myself. No, I couldn’t let myself become a victim of my own dreams. With that solved, I got comfortable and jumped back into the book.
The next thing I remembered was waking up at around 3:00am with my reading light on and the book resting on my chest. I had dozed off in the middle of a good chapter. Didn’t even have a chance to meditate. Just shows you how zonked I was. I didn’t even remember falling back to sleep after I turned off the light.
When my Casio once again woke me in the rudest of manner, I felt totally refreshed. All I wanted, craved to be more precise, was my coffee and pastry. When I left my home, it was misty, drizzling and cold, but the walk to Juan Valdez was invigorating. Along the way, I tried to remember if I had had any more dreams. Nothing. My mind was clean. What a relief. That dream had obviously been a fluke.
I have to admit, I did think about my Iwo dream a few times during the day. How could I help it? It was now a part of me. A real, well sort of real, memory. Why deny it? That night I grabbed my book without hesitation, read until I could have sworn I saw sheep in my room, and went to sleep. But not before meditating.
As soon as my Casio gave me a swift kick in the balls in the morning, a new memory hit me.
Another dream.
Iwo again.
Just as vivid.
But weirder.
I was crouched in the same spot, dead Shorty on my left, asshole on my right. Hell everywhere to be seen, heard, felt, smelled and tasted. The difference was that I knew I was dreaming and saw that it was a continuation of my last one. While I was marveling at this anomaly and wondering how it could be possible, I felt a hard tap on my right shoulder.
When I turned, I wasn’t even surprised to see that jerk staring at me with his big brown eyes peeking out from a banged up helmet, gobs of grease and soot smeared all over his gaunt thin face. This time, though, he wasn’t smirking. With a note of seriousness, he barked, “If you want to experience combat the right way you’ve got to be in uniform.”
That’s when I realized that all I was wearing was my usual sleeping attire: a pair of underpants.
Underpants?
On Iwo?
It was embarrassing.
Embarrassing?
“Did you hear me, soldier?” he asked. “Answer me,” he demanded.
I didn’t know if I could talk coherently in a dream. Thought my mouth might move, but certainly nothing would come out. I also thought that trying to speak might wake me up. But I didn’t want to wake up because, believe it or not, this whole thing was intriguing me.
It was just too real.
Too exciting.
Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe someone had slipped some LSD into the insulin shot I took every night. Then I figured, fuck it, I’ll talk to this guy. Nothing to lose but my sanity.
“I don’t have a uniform. And this is just a stupid dream,” I yelled, trying to be heard over all the thundering noise.
Well, the words came out of my mouth. I wished I had said something more astute, more clever. Wow, I didn’t even wake up.
He slowly shook his head, while intently staring at me. Then he said more seriously than I could believe, “This is no dream. This is real. You’re damned lucky to be a part of it. I’m doing you a favor. Now get with the program.”
It took me what seemed like an eternity to fathom what he had just uttered. No, this wasn’t real. Seemed like it, but couldn’t be. Of course not. It was a dream. And, yes, I was lucky to be having such an absurd experience. They didn’t even say ‘get with the program’ back in the ‘40s. And he was doing me a favor?
KaBoooommm. An enormous explosion a few yards in front of me brought me back to my senses.
Without thinking, I screamed, “I don’t have a uniform you lunatic. I’m asleep. At home. In New York City. In my Fruit of the Loom briefs.”
His sand encrusted lips moved, “You’ve got a uniform if you want one. Just imagine you’re wearing one. Think hard about it. And don’t forget boots and a helmet.”
Without further pondering the absurdity of what I was experiencing, I followed his advice. Why not? I’ll go with it. You know, get with the program. What a joke.
All of a sudden -----POOOF. I was in a uniform.
He acknowledged my abrupt transformation with an approving nod and said, “How do you expect to kill Japs without a weapon? Roll over, and grab Shorty’s Thompson. He doesn’t need it any more. And take the pouch of ammo clips off his belt. You’ll need’em.”
Once again, I followed his orders while repressing a laugh. I couldn’t imagine what his response would have been if he caught me giggling. Not that I honestly gave a fucking damn. With the gun firmly in hand, I wiggled over the edge of the crater, aimed at what appeared to be a small cave opening and pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening.
And the gun was kicking, jumping and spewing expended shells all over the place. How could you hit anything with this heavy piece of junk, I thought to myself. But it was fun. Serious fun. Thrilling, in fact. I’ve got to admit that. Over the years, Thompsons have been glorified in hundreds of battle stories I’ve read. They’ve also been romanticized in numerous movies about gangsters in the 1930s. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to shoot one. Now I knew. Or did I? Must be my imagination on steroids. He was laughing. At me.
“If you could only see yourself,” he said. “That gun nearly hammered you senseless.”
“No shit,” I answered.
“You gotta get used to it. With practice, you’ll see that it’s a damn fine weapon. You’ve always known that, Johnny boy.” he said as he took a swig from his canteen.
“By the way, my name’s Lyle,” he said.
Still flabbergasted by all this, I decided to set aside my disbelief and just go with the conversation. I had nothing to lose. Presumably, I was getting a good night’s sleep, anyway. And the dream now seemed like harmless fun.
“How do you presume to know what I’ve always known? And how do you know my name,” I asked.
Of course he knows everything about me. He’s an offshoot of me in my own head, I thought to myself. Then I slapped a new clip into the Thompson.
I decided that to actually enjoy this dream while it lasted, I had to skip the conversation and pretend to be John Wayne. Got to have some fun. So I jumped up, held the gun at my hip and let loose with a long, ripping blast. Emptied the whole clip and slapped in a new one. I was getting the hang of it.
After the acrid smell of gunpowder faded in the breeze, I smelled something new. Lyle was smoking a cigarette. With a Camel hanging from his lip, he was shaking his head and laughing again, really enjoying the pathetic vision of me acting like a complete fool, in my own dream.
“Nice shootin’,” he said. “Do you really want me to answer your last question? The answer’s going to mess with your head.”
“Make it quick,” I said. “Before this dream is over I want to do some more shooting, and I’ve got to toss a few grenades. That’ll be a blast. No pun intended.”
“You’re beginning to slip out of this dream space, he said, so I’ll be fast, direct and honest. I’m not you. This is not a dream. You’re not crazy. Here’s a grenade. We’ll meet again the next time you meditate and fall asleep.”
I didn’t listen to a word of that nonsense. ‘Not me? Not a dream?’
But I gladly accepted the grenade, pulled the pin with my teeth, just like John Wayne, and tossed it at that cave opening.
Karrrrummmph,KaBooom, ring, ring, ring. Ring?
That’s my fucking Casio.
If I still had the Thompson, I’d blow the shit out of that infernal clock. Time to get up. Reality had returned.
I yanked myself out of bed and went through my usual routine. During breakfast, I thought long and hard about my dream. It no longer bothered me; I sort of got a kick out of it. It was certainly strange and disconcerting, but fun, none the less.
Dreaming, in general, was a mystery to me. People analyzed dreams to death, and I was certain there were a million theories. What’s a ‘normal’ dream? I had no idea. And still don’t. Yeah, it sure was strange to dream so damn vividly with such a sensory overload. Maybe this was going to be like a mini series, and I’d return to Iwo tonight. I actually hoped so.
Lyle, obviously my split personality, told me we’d meet again the next time I meditated. Maybe he said ‘medicated’ and I misunderstood him over all the racket. The meditation connection made a lot sense to me. Meditation puts you in a very focused state of mind. Add that to being nearly mesmerized by a book and I suppose it could conjure up the type of dreams I was having. It had never happened before, but there’s always a first time for everything. When I first started meditating, a couple of people told me that it could be a direct route to paranormal experiences. What a bunch of crap, I thought.
That night, I was way too tired to read. A long day, followed by a big dinner, will always do that to you. When I turned the light off and got into my meditation mode, I hesitated for a moment. I asked myself if I really wanted another Iwo episode so soon after the last one. Wait a second: no Iwo book, no Iwo dream. I’d have a sane evening after all.
Chapter 2
Up in the Air
When I woke up, I had no idea what time it was and couldn’t care less. I didn’t glance at my watch, which I always wear while sleeping, and avoided trying to focus on that stinking Casio that I had obviously beaten to the punch. All I knew was that it was pitch black, the city was unusually quiet, I was very secure and comfortable, and I had a lot to occupy my mind. After the brand new dream I had just woken up from, I wasn’t sure if I still had a mind. Maybe I was sane and Lyle wasn’t. But Lyle was me. Or was he?
I had fallen asleep with nothing on my mind except the view of my acorn. Hey, wait a minute: could this be a hallucinogenic acorn, something Timothy Leary hadn’t even known about?
All I can remember, and vividly so, was that my first sense was my freezing cold derriere plunked down on an exceptionally uncomfortable metal railing, a rather telling indication that this was definitely not an Iwo dream. Anything cold would have been welcomed on Iwo.
I was in some kind of a huge metal structure that was seriously vibrating. There were rivets all over the place, about to shake loose, I thought. Instead of explosions and screaming, there was an annoyingly loud droning sound. Couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. I also couldn’t figure out why the several guys I saw were dressed in large puffy leather coats, wearing equally puffy gloves and hats. Shit, where was I? The smell didn’t give me any indication either: it was a mixture of oil, gas and gunpowder. Maybe I was in the bowels of a submarine or something like that.
Shit, where the fuck was I?
Just as I wondered if my old crater mate, Lyle, was inhabiting this dumb dream, I saw him walking towards me, slightly off balance. At first I didn’t recognize him because he was all bundled up like the rest of the guys in this strange vehicle.
Laughing hard, he sat next to me on the uncomfortable steel girder, and looked me up and down, seeming to scrutinize every shivering inch of me. Putting his hands over his face, he laughed even harder, like a certifiable maniac.
After regaining his composure, Lyle asked, “Know where you are?”
“I don’t have a clue,” I said.
“Come on, use your imagination,” he said. “I thought this would fascinate you. It does whenever you read about it, and you always enjoy movies of this genre. It should be obvious.”
Then it smacked me in the face.
It was obvious, something I should have realized right away. It’s just that the transition from my Iwo dream was completely out of context.
This, I never expected.
It was even stranger than the Iwo dream, if that’s at all possible, because not one shred of it was on my mind. I hadn’t read any books about this in over a year, nor had I seen any movies.
I was flying who knows where on a bomber.
I always loved reading about battle exploits in the sky. It always amazed me how anyone survived, considering the percentage of planes that were literally blown to hell.
Just as Lyle was about to put in his two cents, having obviously read my mind, all hell broke loose. The airman closest to me let loose with a 50 caliber machine gun that I hadn’t noticed before. Turned out he was just testing his gun, not zapping some Jap or kraut. The noise made the Thompson sound like a child’s cap gun. Incredible. It was almost impossible to hear the tinkling of the spent shell casings bouncing around the steel floor.
Clapping his hands to get my attention, Lyle spoke in his distinctly midwestern accent. “Well?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Took me long enough to get it.” I said.
“Well?” he asked again.
“Well what?” I answered.
“Don’t you think you look like an absolute moron sitting on a B17 Flying Fortress wearing nothing but your ridiculous underpants?” he chuckled.
“Oh. Right. I know the routine,” I said trying not to laugh.
So I did the good old imagination thing, and, kazaam, I was properly dressed. ‘John,’ I said to myself, ‘Just shitcan the common sense and go with the flow.’ It was a logical thought in a situation that defied all logic.
I took it a step further and asked, “So, Lyle, what’s this all about?”
As seriously as he could, Lyle explained, “Its January 27, 1943, and we’re on our way to blow the shit out of a Jerry town called Wilhelmshaven. Right now we’re still over the English Channel, just about to fly over the French coastline. In a few minutes from now, all hell’s gonna break loose.”
“So I guess we’re going to see some vicious flak action and probably a swarm of ME109s. Right?” I asked.
“You bet your ass,” he answered. “But,” he continued, “when you experience this, I want you to seriously think about something extremely important.”
“Important? Extremely important?” I asked.”
The only thing important to me, I thought, is that I don’t wake up before I see one of our gunners turn an ME109 pilot into hamburger meat. Even better, I’d like to be the one doing the shooting.”
Lyle brushed his hat back an inch or two over his forehead, put a hand on each of his knees and leaned towards me. Shit, I thought, looks like I’m going to get some God damn lecture.
Of course, this ain’t really happening, I thought, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt. But it’s got to be quick. Can’t wake up yet. Got to get an enemy bandit with a 50. I was having a shit load of fun.
Knowing full well every thought in my mind (he is me, damn it), he calmly said, “I know you think this is all bull shit, and I can’t blame you. You’re also thinking you’ve got a few screws loose. Let me assure you: you’re perfectly normal, this is not a dream and I am neither an aspect of you nor a figment of your imagination. Think about what I just said, what you consider to be nonsense, and, maybe, just maybe, we’ll take the next step.”
Give me a break, I said to myself. It’s just a dream.
And what is this ‘take the next step’ baloney that Lyle uttered?
Enough thinking -- time to bring on the ME109s, duck some flak and turn some jerry buildings into dust. I’m going to wake up sooner or later, I feared.
After plenty of action, I was squinting at a 109 banking hard to my left, trailing oil smoke from its engine.
‘No more sauerkraut for you, Fritz,’ I said to myself.
Then a cloud seemed to light up with 7:30 AM written on it, and it sounded like it was buzzing.
My Casio brought me down from 20,000 feet to pillow level, as aggressively as ever.
I decided to stay snuggled up in bed for a while so I could reflect on every second of my dream. It was an awfully good one. Just as vivid and real as my visits to Iwo, more like a lifetime experience. In no way was I going to let myself forget any moment of it, as was the case with dreams of my past. They would all get blurry. Quickly.
But these weren’t really dreams, not as I had ever experienced, read about or possibly imagined. Of course, they were dreams. Had to be. To say the very, very least, I was confused, perplexed, confounded, concerned and worried. Yes, I was worried about my mental health. But I was also thankful that these weren’t terrifying nightmares. A nightmare at this level of reality would be devastating to my nerves.
Before I threw off my sheets and jumped into the real world, I thought hard about anything that could be causing these dreams. Was I taking any new medication? Was my Tylenol way beyond the expiration date? Was I sniffing glue? Was anyone slipping anything into my food? Was I washing my fruit? Did I have a brain tumor? Had I offended a voodoo practitioner? Was there any mold in my pillow?
I couldn’t seem to blame it on anything. There had to be an explanation, and I was on a quest to discover it. Screw all the analysis for a moment, I thought, these dreams were fun and terrifically thrilling. I wanted them to continue.
Tonight, I’d love to be back in that B17 dropping bombs. I never got a chance to do that. Maybe all this stuff that’s happening to me is 100% normal. Why worry about it? Then I remembered that I had recently been trying a new toothpaste. New toothpaste? Nah, couldn’t be that.
On my way to Juan Valdez, I continued to ponder my airborne dream and the prospect of returning to it soon. Hopefully, in fact, tonight. But this time, I hoped for a logical variation. This time, I wanted to be a fighter plane pilot. That’s something I’ve dreamt about since I was a kid, and the written accounts have always knocked my socks off.
The fighter of my choice would definitely have to be a P-51 Mustang. All I had to do, I assumed, was find a combat history book involving this plane, read some juicy passages before meditating, fall asleep, and, kazzzam, I’d be roaring towards an ME-109 or a Jap Zero, with my 50s and 20mm cannons spreading a path of instant death and destruction. Sounds pretty vicious, but, hey, it’s only a dream. Right?
Another reason I longed for one of these special dreams to take place in a fighter is simple: They’re single seaters. You know what that means: no room for Lyle. Just me. These dreams are screwy enough as it is. But having to talk to some strange variation of myself is just too weird.
It’s not that I don’t like this apparition, it’s just that he freaks me out. Especially all that nonsense he dispenses about these not being dreams. It just wastes valuable dreamtime. And I no longer need him to point out that wearing only underpants is no way to fight a war. If I want to be practically naked in a P-51, so be it, I thought.
Fortunately, the rest of my day was normal. During dinner, I wondered if my dreams could go far beyond World War 2 situations. Stimulation via reading and meditation might take me anywhere.
That evening, I stopped off at my parent’s house. My mother had been rummaging through a cabinet and discovered a box of old family photographs. So, I couldn’t resist the temptation to look at them all. Honestly, it hurts to see your whole family so young. You really long to bring back the past. To get rid of the wrinkles, trim the waistline, restore a drastically receding hairline, return to a simple, innocent time.
That night, all I could do was reminisce about my wonderful days growing up in Purchase, New York. It was beautiful. We only lived there for fourteen years, but it felt like an eternity. When you’re a kid, time goes by very slowly. Too bad you’re not wise enough to take full advantage of every second.
My mother had given me a bunch of the yellow tinted photos, every one of which I studied until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. After what seemed like a two second meditation, I zonked out.
Chapter 3
The Awakening
Whenever I wake up in the morning before my Casio has had the chance to insult my whole being, I just lie there with my eyes closed, hugging my pillow, feeling the comfort and security of soft sheets enveloping my body.
On some occasions, my top sheet and quilt are missing, the obvious victims of a restless night. That was my first realization when I woke up in what I assumed was the morning. Not only was I uncovered, with no pillow at all, but what I assumed to be my bottom sheet felt mushy and sort of prickly. There was also the sensation of a mild breeze, as though I had forgotten to turn off my fan. My fan? It was January, so that device was safely stored in my closet.
I still hadn’t opened my eyes. All this, I thought, was simply my fertile imagination at work. Even the smell of freshly cut grass, or the feeling of the sun on my skin, didn’t ring any bells. But when I was startled by a seriously tickling sensation on my face, and scratched a large bug off my cheek, I reluctantly opened my eyes.
‘Fuck,’ I exclaimed, ‘What the fuck?’
I hadn’t been snoozing on some bloody sand, or in a B-17, or even in my own damn bed.
I had woken up in a dream on a lawn.
A fucking lawn with fucking bugs.
I sat up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and thought to myself, what kind of shit is this? Grass? Bugs? It took about two seconds to focus my eyes and carefully examine the immediate vicinity. I knew exactly where I was: right smack dab in the middle of my old back yard in Purchase.
Then it hit me again:
Before my pre-sleep meditation, I had been literally dreaming about my old home. So this all made perfect sense. Perfect sense? Well, in the scheme of everything that had been happening the last few nights, it did.
Well, enjoy it while you’re here, I mused. There was nothing unnatural or dreamlike about anything I saw, felt, touched, or smelled. I knew I was in a dream, but seemed as awake as ever.
I was definitely in Purchase.
In my good old back yard.
Analyzing all this seemed a waste of valuable, fleeting time. I had done that on Iwo and in the stratosphere over Germany, without arriving at any comprehensible conclusions.
Get off it, John, I thought to myself. Going to wake up soon, and it’ll all be over. Now it was time to explore. Cover every inch before waking. As far as I could tell, it was midmorning, most likely July. The year? Who knows? Who cares? ‘54? ‘59? ‘62? It always looked the same from this perspective. After a bit more thought, I headed first to our garden.
My parents had always planted a rather large garden since as far back as I could remember. And here it was — with its kaleidoscope of lusciously colored flowers, and row after row of vegetables. As I had done many times before in my past life, I grabbed a few cherry tomatoes, marveled, once again, about this unreal, yet painfully real experience, and popped them in my mouth. Literally shivering with a combination of joy, nostalgia, and total disbelief, I felt the tomatoes bursting in my mouth, releasing a rich flavor that ignited a powerful flood of memories.
Too bad I took this for granted way back then, I thought. Wiping off some juice that was trickling down my chin, I felt that all my senses and emotions were in hyper drive. Shit, this was real. Shooing away a bee, I looked beyond the garden, past an enormous oak tree, and peered at the side entrance to the house.
I fully expected to see a very young version of my mother, sister, father or grandparents open the door. But that didn’t happen, although I was absolutely certain that I could will it to happen.
I also had to see my dog and cats. And could I ride my old bicycle? Drive my Mustang? Start my favorite model airplane engine? It would all be possible; I just knew it. ‘Please don’t wake up,’ I kept urging myself. Please don’t.
The sounds of buzzing bugs, chirping birds, a distant lawn mower, highway traffic, and my own chewing were interrupted by a squeaking sound. Not an unfamiliar squeaking sound, though. It was the noise the swings made as they went back and forth on our jungle gym.
Examining it in my right field of vision, I fully expected to see someone from my past. Instead, I saw something that seemed to violate this wonderful experience. It, of course, was Lyle. On my swings. Apparently enjoying himself, no less. This shouldn’t surprise me, I thought. He was, after all, some kind of projection of myself or maybe someone I knew. Couldn’t be. Must be. Confusing as shit.
“Enjoying yourself, John?” he inquired. “Quite a but different from the last few nights, wouldn’t you say?”
My honest response: “This place is personal. I’m trying to think you away, but it’s not working.”
“Maybe you should be thanking me,” he had the audacity to say. “I brought you here, knowing full well all the memories it would unleash.”
Then, throwing his legs back to gain more momentum on the swing, he laughed.
Why was I bothering to talk to him, or even acknowledge his presence, I wondered. I’m just breathing more life into this imaginary figure — this warped reflection of myself. See if you can intelligently get rid of it, I thought to myself. Absorb it back into yourself.
“You cant,” was his response. “I’m not you at all.”
After spending a few moments in what appeared to be careful thought, he continued, “I owe you an apology. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and I’m sorry I’ve confused you and gotten you so pissed off.”
How am I supposed to respond to this gibberish, I wondered. More to the point, this was the first time I had ever done anything like this. I’ve never before dreamt with such spectacular clarity, and I’ve never had an imaginary friend.
A new tactic: “Why are you doing this to yourself?” I pointedly asked him.
Then silence. No answer. He was deep in thought. Thrusting his legs all the way forward while throwing his head back, he seemed to fly on the swing. Just like I always did. For the first time I noticed how young he was, 20 at the most. And his clothing was duller than any I’ve ever seen. I never really gave a shit about clothing, but I certainly never wore anything remotely like that. God, it was all so strange.
“Remember when I said something about taking the next step?” he asked, intently staring at me.
“Yeah. Whatever.” I answered.
“This is important,” he said.
“I don’t have a clue why I’m doing this to myself,” I mumbled.
“Here I am in the middle of the best dream I’ve ever had, and it’s being interrupted by some imaginary vision of myself. It’s self-destructive. And now there’s a next step that’s, of all things, important? Please, just vanish before my mind turns to oatmeal.” I yelled.
Well, I figured that would do it. I was waiting for a flash of light or something, and then pooooof, no more Lyle. But no such luck. He just kept on swinging, seemingly lost in thought.
“One more thing I want to say,” uttered good old Lyle.
“For Christ’s sake make it quick,” I stammered. “I’m gonna wake up soon.”
“If I vamoose, you’ll be able to dream a little while longer, but never again with the same intensity. You’re here because of me and me alone. And regardless of what you think, I’m not you. Not at all.”
“Horseshit,” was my response.
“You’re narrow-minded,” was his response. “No imagination. No curiosity. Firmly cemented in your own limited way of thinking.”
“You win, asshole,” I said. “We’ll take the important next step, but something tells me I’ll have dog shit all over my shoes. My dream shoes, that is.”
“Excellent decision,” he cried. “Now, you’re in for……”
I never realized that Lyle had such a ring to his voice.
Ring?
Then it dawned on me (no pun intended): That’s not him. It’s my fucking Casio. I’m waking up. Leaving my cherished back yard. My dream’s over, and I’m left on a hook.
That day, every corner of my mind was consumed by this whole thing. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bury it in some dark corner. Still couldn’t figure out what Lyle represented in terms of my own subconscious thoughts. But I knew the answer lurked in some crevice.
There was no other explanation.
It occurred to me that it might not be a horrible idea to consult a few close friends or family members. I was itching to reveal this to anyone willing to listen. Maybe I’d get an answer. Or an inkling of one. People would listen kindly, probably break a little sympathetic smile and offer a few empty words of logic. They’d be thinking to themselves: John is seriously fucked up.
Yeah, this was my own personal problem. Or opportunity, depending how you looked at it. If I just went along with everything: you know, conversed with Lyle about who knows what, what would be the downside, I asked myself.
If I could keep my head screwed on, however, there would only be an upside: I could continue having these awesomely spectacular dreams while getting a good night’s sleep, and possibly even maintaining some semblance of my sanity.
Lyle, old boy, you win.
After a whole day with all this shit rattling around in my brain, I was overly ready for bed. And did I study my Purchase pictures before meditating? You bet your ass I did. Then I was back in the same spot, like I had never left my yard. Lyle had slowed down his swinging, looking far more serious than before.
I was ready.
For more info, visit http://www.johnsweiss.com
Mind Control Researchers Create Fake Link Between Unrelated Memories
Advancements in genetics and neuroscience are undoubtedly leading toward direct methods of mind control, albeit only with good intentions … if government and establishment science can be believed.
However, an array of hi-tech methods have been announced which show clear potential for negative manipulation.
Bold claims have been made by scientists that they now can use “neural dust,” high-powered lasers, and light beamed from outside the skull to alter brain function and even turn off consciousness altogether.
But it is memory research that might be among the most troubling.
As I’ve previously suggested in other articles, our memories help us form our identity: who we are relative to where we have been.
Positive or negative lessons from the past can be integrated into our present decisions, thus enabling us to form sound strategies and behaviors that can aid us in our quest for personal evolution.
What if we never knew what memories were real or false?
What if our entire narrative was changed by having our life’s events restructured?
Or what if there were memories that were traumatic enough to be buried as a mechanism of sanity preservation, only to be brought back to us in a lab?
Research has commenced into many facets of how memory can be restructured, whether it is erasing memories, the implantation of false memories, or triggering memories of fear when none previously existed. (Source)
MIT researchers, for example previously claimed to have found the specific brain switch that links emotions to memory.
MIT went on to admit that these findings could lead not only to direct intervention via manipulation of brain cells through light, but a new class of drugs to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Once again, memory tinkering is making the news.
This time it comes from the University of Toyama, Japan, where researchers claim to have for the first time,“linked two distinct memories using completely artificial means.”
I have highlighted areas of the press release below which are consistent with similar research into supposed solutions for PTSD.
The same disturbing language is present that seems to indicate a desire to reverse engineer the process and create fear-based trauma.
So far, ethical boundaries seem fuzzy at best, and downright non-existent in various areas of brain study.
It is a time when more light needs to shine upon this research, who is funding it, and what is permissible.
Given the outrageous abuses already committed by government-directed science, and a global climate of centralized health control, we would do well to read between the lines of these announcements and prepare to become very critical of their pursuits.
The ability to learn associations between events is critical for survival, but it has not been clear how different pieces of information stored in memory may be linked together by populations of neurons.
In a study published April 2nd in Cell Reports, synchronous activation of distinct neuronal ensembles caused mice to artificially associate the memory of a foot shock with the unrelated memory of exploring a safe environment, triggering an increase in fear-related behavior when the mice were re-exposed to the non-threatening environment.
The findings suggest that co-activated cell ensembles become wired together to link two distinct memories that were previously stored independently in the brain.
“Memory is the basis of all higher brain functions, including consciousness, and it also plays an important role in psychiatric diseases such as post-traumatic stress disorder,” says senior study author Kaoru Inokuchi of the University of Toyama.
“By showing how the brain associates different types of information to generate a qualitatively new memory that leads to enduring changes in behavior, our findings could have important implications for the treatment of these debilitating conditions.”
Recent studies have shown that subpopulations of neurons activated during learning are reactivated during subsequent memory retrieval, and reactivation of a cell ensemble triggers the retrieval of the corresponding memory.
Moreover, artificial reactivation of a specific neuronal ensemble corresponding to a pre-stored memory can modify the acquisition of a new memory, thereby generating false or synthetic memories.
However, these studies employed a combination of sensory input and artificial stimulation of cell ensembles.
Until now, researchers had not linked two distinct memories using completely artificial means.
With that goal in mind, Inokuchi and Noriaki Ohkawa of the University of Toyama used a fear-learning paradigm in mice followed by a technique called optogenetics, which involves genetically modifying specific populations of neurons to express light-sensitive proteins that control neuronal excitability, and then delivering blue light through an optic fiber to activate those cells.
In the behavioral paradigm, one group of mice spent six minutes in a cylindrical enclosure while another group explored a cube-shaped enclosure, and 30 minutes later, both groups of mice were placed in the cube-shaped enclosure, where a foot shock was immediately delivered.
Two days later, mice that were re-exposed to the cube-shaped enclosure spent more time frozen in fear than mice that were placed back in the cylindrical enclosure.
The researchers then used optogenetics to reactivate the unrelated memories of the safe cylinder-shaped environment and the foot shock.
Stimulation of neuronal populations in memory-related brain regions called the hippocampus and amygdala, which were activated during the learning phase, caused mice to spend more time frozen in fear when they were later placed back in the cylindrical enclosure, as compared with stimulation of neurons in either the hippocampus or amygdala, or no stimulation at all.
The findings show that synchronous activation of distinct cell ensembles can generate artificial links between unrelated pieces of information stored in memory, resulting in long-lasting changes in behavior.
“By modifying this technique, we will next attempt to artificially dissociate memories that are physiologically connected, ”Inokuchi says.
“This may contribute to the development of new treatments for psychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, whose main symptoms arise from unnecessary associations between unrelated memories.”
To me, this is where the soul comes into play (the bolded)... ie, the cumulative operations of the brain. Some false memories will stick out more incongruously than others, or behaviors etc compared to the larger picture of the whole. So, there should be some way to find if there has been tampering. Of course, that isn't to say that they can't be messed with to make somebody flip out or make patsies. It would be nice to take a page from the people who already know about this stuff more extensively.
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I'm enjoying this. Thought you might like it as well. https://www.hayhouseworldsummit.com/lessons/the-shift/
We are floating away down here in Texas. I wish a big old sinkhole would open up underneath the capitol and flush all those lawmakers down the drain. Hahahahahaha....
That would teach them to make it a law that no one can interfere with fracking. Poor Denton TX. Last year they passed a law saying no one could frak within their city limits and the TX Leg said "Nope. You can't deny big oil business the right to screw you."....and they passed a law stating this.
I guess when people start losing their homes to giant sinkholes or earthquakes they will finally wake up and march to Austin with their shotguns. Lord knows we have a ton of them here. LOL.... Man oh man I'd pay big money for front row seats to watch that happen.
On another note: I noticed I have 31 notifications and there are 31 unread threads. 31:31....Numbers. Numbers everywhere! :love:
We are floating away down here in Texas. I wish a big old sinkhole would open up underneath the capitol and flush all those lawmakers down the drain. Hahahahahaha....
That would teach them to make it a law that no one can interfere with fracking. Poor Denton TX. Last year they passed a law saying no one could frak within their city limits and the TX Leg said "Nope. You can't deny big oil business the right to screw you."....and they passed a law stating this.
I guess when people start losing their homes to giant sinkholes or earthquakes they will finally wake up and march to Austin with their shotguns. Lord knows we have a ton of them here. LOL.... Man oh man I'd pay big money for front row seats to watch that happen.
On another note: I noticed I have 31 notifications and there are 31 unread threads. 31:31....Numbers. Numbers everywhere! :love:
Skarekrow
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The Consciousness of Plants
Plant consciousness is evidenced by the process of bio-communication in plant cells, which means that plants are sentient life forms that feel, know, and are conscious.
The scientific field of neurobiology has been effective in demonstrating plant consciousness.
Consciousness exists in everything, but manifests itself in different ways.
With the reality that all matter is energy vibrating at different frequencies, it is reasonable to say that all matter has consciousness in its unique way, since all matter comes from the same source and is comprised at its basics level of the same building blocks.
This universal principle can be seen in DNA consciousness as well, and is true for any state of energy — be it a solid, liquid, gas or plasma — manifest as plant, animal, human, crystalline or higher-dimensional life forms.
They are purely feeling beings, they do not even know what “thinking” is (except to the extent that they can get a taste of what “thinking” means when they connect with a human).
You have to get in touch with your own feelings in the moment in order to communicate with a plant.
You have to be there in the moment and be aware of what you are feeling right then when you are in contact with the plant.
Not the feelings about what is going on yesterday and tomorrow, but the feelings of Now, in the present moment.
It is one of the things that plants can teach you.
Not just entheogens, but any plant who shares your life with you.
Each species has a distinct personality that you can get to know just by being open to “feeling” it.
Scientific Evidence of Plant Consciousness
Although it is not commonly discussed for various socio-political reasons, there is an ample amount of scientific evidence that has proven that plants do indeed have some sort of consciousness.
An enormous amount of research was provided in the revolutionary book on this subject entitled The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.
There was a documentary film created parallel to the book’s findings, which is viewable at the end of this article.
Plant Nervous System
Each root apex harbors a unit of nervous system of plants.
The number of root apices in the plant body is high and all brain-units are interconnected via vascular strands (plant nerves) with their polarly-transported auxin (plant neurotransmitter), to form a serial (parallel) nervous system of plants.
The computational and informational capacity of this nervous system based on interconnected parallel units is predicted to be higher than that of the diffuse nervous system of lower animals, or the central nervous system of higher animals/humans.
Plant Pain
In the research of Jagadish Chandra Bose, in plant stimuli, he showed with the help of his newly invented crescograph that plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of animals.
He therefore found a parallelism between animal and plant tissues.
His experiments showed that plants grow faster in pleasant music and its growth retards in noise or harsh sound.
His major contribution in the field of biophysics was the demonstration of the electrical nature of the conduction of various stimuli (wounds, chemical agents) in plants, which were earlier thought to be of chemical in nature.
He claimed that plants can “feel pain, understand affection etc.,” from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell membrane potential of plants, under different circumstances.
According to him a plant treated with care and affection gives out a different vibration compared to a plant subjected to torture.”
Plant Painkillers
A team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., discovered by accident plants in the wild emitting methyl salicylate — a form of the painkiller known as aspirin.
They set up instruments in a walnut grove near Davis, Calif., to monitor plant emissions of certain volatile organic compounds (or VOCs).
VOCs emitted by plants can actually combine with industrial emissions and contribute to smog.
To their surprise, the NCAR scientists found that the emissions of VOCs their instruments recorded in the atmosphere included methyl salicylate.
They noticed that the methyl salicylate emissions increased dramatically when the plants, already stressed by a local drought, experienced unseasonably cool nighttime temperatures followed by large temperature increases during the day.
At this current point in time, scientists think that the methyl salicylate has two functions: stimulating a process similar to the immune response in animals that helps plants resist and recover from disease, and acting as a form of chemical communication to warn neighbors of threats.
“These findings show tangible proof that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem level,” said study team member Alex Guenther. “It appears that plants have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere.”
Plant Communication
Research findings that have been published in the journal Oecologia have noted that plants talk amongst themselves to spread information, much like humans and other animals.
A unique internal network apparently allows plants to warn each other against predators and potential enemies.
Plants have an early warning system, very much like in military defense, but more effective: each member of the plant network can receive the external signal of impending herbivore danger and transmit it to the other members of the network.
The attacked leaf is lost. However, the remaining leaves are protected against predators.In another study, whose research findings were published in the journal Ecology Letters, it was found that plants engage in self-recognition and can communicate danger to their “clones” or genetically identical cuttings planted nearby.
The findings were found while studying sagebrush.
Richard Karban and fellow scientist Kaori Shiojiri of the Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, Japan, found that sagebrush responded to cues of self and non-self without physical contact.
The sagebrush communicated and cooperated with other branches of themselves to avoid being eaten by grasshoppers, Karban said.
The scientists suspect that the plants warn their own kind of impending danger by emitting volatile cues.
This may involve secreting chemicals that deter herbivores or make the plant less profitable for herbivores to eat, he said. “Plants are capable of responding to complex cues that involve multiple stimuli,” Karban said. “Plants not only respond to reliable cues in their environments but also produce cues that communicate with other plants and with other organisms, such as pollinators, seed disperses, herbivores and enemies of those herbivores.”
Plant Hereditary Awareness
Some more amazing research has shown that plants actually know their own siblings and kin, with the help of chemicals released from the roots.
This way, if siblings of the plants are growing alongside them, the plants will grow their roots more downward and be taller, whereas if alien plants are living beside them, they will grow their roots outward and the alien plants will be shorter and grow less.
Plant Thinking and Memory
Recent research has uncovered that plants transmit information about light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to the nervous system of human beings.
In the experiment that found this, scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole plant to respond and the response, which took the form of light-induced chemical reactions in the leaves, continued in the dark.
This showed that the plant remembered the information encoded in light. Plants seem to be able to perform a sort of biological light computation, using information contained in the light to immunize themselves against diseases.
These “electro-chemical signals” are carried by cells that act as “nerves” of the plants.
The Secret Life of Plants
In the documentary entitled The Secret Life of Plants (see video below), which is based on the book with the same title, several scientific studies were shown and discussed that showed enough evidence to remove all doubt of an ancient truth; that plants have a consciousness.
Below are a few of the scientific experiments presented in the film that have a revolutionary impact on how we view plants.
When a plant was put into a Faraday tube, and a telescope pointed at Ursa Major, hooked up to an instrument that converted plant consciousness expressions into audible tones, it was demonstrated that the plant was communicating with something in that star system…most likely something in the plant kingdom.
This must have been happening since plants have existed…always constantly communicating with each other since all is one.
A Russian experiment was done with two cabbage plants…one hooked with electrodes to a machine that converted its energetic expressions into audible tones.
When the cabbage that was not hooked up to any instrument was being destroyed at random by a human scientist, the plant hooked up to the machines was heard screaming or crying, with a very high pitch tone.
Another Russian experiment put a cabbage on a plate that measured changes in energetic vibrations and when cut into small bits with a machete, it was expressing a similar type of screaming/crying sound that the previous plant made.
A plant was hooked up with electrodes on a leaf and a vial of small shrimp were set up in a mechanism over boiling water that would release at a completely random time into the boiling water.
When this moment happened, and the shrimp started dying, the plant was seen to go frantic, on a polygrah-like graph paper and needle setup.
Another study had a man watch film clips on a projector of events ranging from children playing to nuclear bombs destroying things.
The plant adjacent to the man was seen to mirror the needle movements on the graph paper of the man, exemplifying their emotions were changing and changing to the similar energetic vibrations.
A Chinese woman hooked up a cactus to an instrument that created an output of the plant essentially speaking, or at least making audible tones.
She would talk to the plant and attempt to teach it Chinese and it would reply with what seemed like answers to the woman’s requests.
Through a series of experiments, the authors portray the sentient quality of common plants.
The simple fact that a plant “knows” when you are thinking bad thoughts.
They respond to external stimuli much like any human would.
In fact, it seems as if their “awareness” is heightened to include those in the psychic categories.
In one experiment, they have a random selection of men.
One is chosen at random to go in and destroy one of three plants.
The other two plants (common rhododendron) are then hooked up to electro-encephalographs (EEG — brain wave monitors.) and they march the men in one by one.
The plants exhibit no alarm, but as soon as the one responsible for the plant death enters the room, the other two plants start registering wildly on the graphs. Basically, they knew who it was that killed their friend.
Or, too be more blunt, they read his mind.
Some researchers have used polygraph instruments connected to leaf surfaces to observe responses through electromagnetic activity to various stimuli such as: raucous, loud music compared with mellow, harmonious music.
The results are always the same: plants react favorably to mellow music while continuous raucous sounds can actually kill them.
Even more amazingly, perhaps, is that plants accurately react to good or bad thoughts directed at them or other biological life forms and even at great distances.
Global Support for Plant Rights
The notion of plants being conscious life forms become a legal affair.
In 2007, the government of Switzerland had issued a bill of rights for plants.
Swiss Government’s Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology concludes that plants have rights, and we have to treat them appropriately.
A majority of the panel concluded that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.”
Another country that has officially declared plants and ecosystems having rights is Ecuador.
The Ecuadorian population voted to change their constitution to proclaim that nature has “the right to the maintenance and regeneration of its vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”
Almost 70% of Ecuadorians voted in favor of protecting nature in this method.
Ecuador drafted the changes with the help of the U.S. based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
Along with it’s work in Ecuador the Fund “has assisted more than a dozen local municipalities with drafting and adopting local laws recognizing Rights of Nature.” The basis of these rights “change the status of ecosystems from being regarded as property under the law to being recognized as rights-bearing entities.”
It is not surprising for a country such as Ecuador to embrace this decision, since they are a country with a culture dating back to prehistory of shamanism and treating plants, especially entheogens, as if they had their own spirits.
Implications of Plant Consciousness
There is an energy that flows throughout everything on this planet and throughout the entire multiverse.
There is one invisible energy that ties us all together.
Humans, cats, dogs, trees, rocks, and any other manifestations of energy are all interconnected.
The principle of oneness is found in all ancient religions.
The new evidence implies that these ancient beliefs, which were answers that mystics found by going within and accessing higher knowledge, were true in the sense that all is one and all is connected.
The whole multiverse is, in this case, a sentient organism.
Never treat a plant like it is an inanimate object.
It is just as alive as you are, just in a different way.
It’s consciousness is basic but it does exhibit feelings of fear, empathy, happiness, etc.
Is it not best to respect everything and everyone the same way you respect yourself?
Why must it only involve human beings?
Why not broaden the criteria to everything with a consciousness?
It is the right thing to do that you can see in the deep of your soul.
If we treat all manifested Reality as if it was us, but in a different manifestation, then imagine how different life would be.
Insights From Plant Consciousness
The purity and unselfishness of plant existence can be pondered upon.
Plant life can be seen as a model for ideal human conduct; unlike animals and humans, most plants do not kill and do not live at the expense of other organisms.
They are in direct contact with all four elements (earth, wind, water, and fire i.e. sun) and their ability to transform cosmic energy is absolutely indispensable for life on this planet.
Plants are uncontaminated by questions about purpose, awareness of goals, or concerns about the future; rather they seem to represent pure being in the here and now, the ideal of many mystical and spiritual schools of thought.
Not exploiting and hurting other organisms, most plants serve themselves as a source of food and bring beauty and joy into the life of others.
[video=youtube;dFYgue5VfGk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dFYgue5VfGk[/video]
Skarekrow
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A Tear And A Smile
Kahlil Gibran
I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
To flow from my every part turn into laughter.
I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.
A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
Of life's secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.
A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.
I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live Weary and despairing.
I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
Depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.
With evening's coming the flower folds her petals
And sleeps, embracingher longing.
At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet
The sun's kiss.
The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.
The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and area cloud.
And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.
The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.
And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.
To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.
Kahlil Gibran
I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
To flow from my every part turn into laughter.
I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.
A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
Of life's secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.
A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.
I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live Weary and despairing.
I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
Depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.
With evening's coming the flower folds her petals
And sleeps, embracingher longing.
At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet
The sun's kiss.
The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.
The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and area cloud.
And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.
The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.
And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.
To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.
- MBTI
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 9 Mediator
Hmmmm...
Shapes such as the platonic solids or sacred geometry?
Do you think you could change the shape of something by exposing it to a certain sound? Like the cells in a human body?
sprinkles
Well-known member
- MBTI
- xxxx
They're different kinds of shapes but they have their own ideal forms that resemble platonic shapes, in that they're fundamental.
Sure most likely.
[video=youtube;YsZKvLnf7wU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsZKvLnf7wU[/video]
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
[video=youtube;G-OVrI9x8Zs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=G-OVrI9x8Zs[/video]
Chromatophores from a squid react to Cypress Hill…hahahaha…
In all seriousness though…
Here’s a good article pending peer-review (we’ll see if that ever happens).
http://www.academia.edu/1285421/Cells_and_sound_an_introduction_Review_to_be_submitted_2013_
Last edited:
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
Why The World Needs Healers
In an age of DIY, information overload, and a growing consciousness around our understanding of self as a multi-dimensional being, it’s easy to believe that you can figure damn near everything out yourself.
And since we have been deceived in great unjust ways I completely understand a need from many to rely on self and to reject leaders or organized and institutionalized structures.
When it comes to spirituality I now see that some have come to the conclusion that there is no true need for the concept of gurus or that the journey within is greater when done yourself.
I agree that a large and potent part of our Earth journey is one that only we, as an individual can take; that discovering your god-given power and connection is a blessing only you can truly uncover.
Though I believe that the ‘guru’ is within, in a sense, I also deeply believe that the guru is everywhere, that teachers and guides are a beautiful part of our journey but most importantly we are one and we need one another.
Because The Guru is Everywhere
Spirit is limitless and manifests in infinite ways.
Not only has God gifted us with our own ability to know the truth from within but that truth and wisdom is reflected back to us all the time everywhere that we go through people, places, books, tv shows, nature, and all things.
Sometimes I receive profound messages within my own dreams and meditations and others in hearing the words of my elders or peers and even in the lyrics of a sweet song.
Because spirit can take any shape or form to reach and teach us it is so important to remain open to wisdom in all the ways it greets us in life.
I especially say this to those who have been hurt by leaders, teachers, and churches or spiritual communities.
Anything and everything can be a vessel.
Not all use their vessel for good but we all have the potential to deliver divine information to one another.
Be mindful but remain open to the truth because it is all around you even in those that have come to teach us what not to do and who not to be.
Because there are comforts we’d rather not sacrifice.
As I mentioned we are all vessels and carry gifts and much potential.
We are all seers and healers of some sort or art form, yet we do not all want to fast at the level as some prophets do or leave the city to relearn how to be in tune with nature in the mountains like monks.
We do not all want to do what it takes to fully come into our abilities as psychics or shamans.
I love being a shamanic healer and would never go back to my life before this but I would not wish some of the trials I have transformed through on others.
It is not easy.
Ego deaths are not pretty nor fun.
I’ve given up long periods of time away from friends and family, sex, and many other life pleasures.
I believe this is true of all people in every domain.
I wasn’t willing to go to university longer than the average 4 years to be a doctor.
There are many paths I do not choose because there are sacrifices I’d rather not make and that is perfectly beautiful because we all have paths that we are meant to take and we all will have to make some sacrifice.
Spiritual Healing work is deep and at times risky and requires going into the darkness to retrieve souls and soul medicine.
There are intense places and dimensions that a healer must go spiritually and physically in order to heal themselves and others.
The healers that have taken honorable paths have given up things you can not even imagine to do what they do and be who they are in order to offer us divine wisdom and access to immense support on our healing journeys.
Because you can’t do it alone nor see everything.
Not even healers do all of their work alone.
If you look at most indigenous ceremonies and gatherings there are many healers that come together and many more helpers and members to orchestrate these powerful ceremonies.
Churches have many pastors and a whole hierarchy of leadership to support the community.
I even tend to want to be this superwoman figure.
I desire to learn all topics and be a master of many things but it’s overwhelming and I’ve come to live this life and do much more than just study.
No one does anything alone.
Work is hired out, our friends help us move into our apartments, our counselors guide us to apply for school or fix our relationships, and writers get their works edited and proofread.
All of my teachers have elders that they turn to and seek spiritual advice from.
In the african traditions there are always those above us that we gain insight from and who offer a checks and balances of power and ethics.
All the healers and psychics I know have their own healer and psychic.
We all need help, we all have blind spots, and can’t see everything.
Only the creator has that ability.
Oh how I wish I could see it all.
Most of my prophetic dreams and messages come through me about other people.
I once asked my teacher why can’t I see more into my own life.
I need my help!
She explained that it was because as a healer I am here to serve.
There are times when we are to be of service and times to receive.
You are not on your own island and you have called certain people or experiences into your life to help in your evolution.
We seem to fall into this idea that we are separate not only from God but from others.
Allow yourself to ask and receive what it is that you need.
Because we need spirit and a higher sense of self.
When you go to do with a healer, shaman, or spiritual medium of some sort you are not just working or receiving from this “person”.
You are also connecting with the spiritual guides and higher powers that work through them.
In my spiritual tradition of the Sangomas of South Africa, the healers are guided and led by ancient ancestral healing spirits.
When you make your payments in exchange for your service you are honoring and acknowledging a group of spirits that are blessing you through this work and offering you wisdom and healing.
It is because of spirit that healers are able to do what they do and it is because of spirit that we seek healers.
We need and crave to connect with a higher power and our higher selves.
Our well being and our success is related to how connected we are to our soul, our true self, our free loving creative whole selves.
We live in times where our connection is constantly threatened and weakened so making that reconnection and union to the body-mind-spirit is vital.
I know that people look at healers sometimes and think that they can do the same.
I have even at times looked at others and thought there must be a way to figure out what they do but this is naive and dangerous.
A healer can appear to be doing simple everyday things but invoking energies that bring in power to what they do.
Everything isn’t always as it seems.
I came across a beautiful piece of digital art (left) by a local artist that I feel depicts the most important part of this whole discussion about why we need healers; this image by Baba Underdog shows an aspect of what we don’t see.
A man pouring water over these young girls but tuning into a power beyond this realm.
These powers activate the medicine in the work that healers do.
You can’t copy that, you can’t do that yourself, and it can be dangerous to just take something you see and replicate it when you don’t understand the power, the history, nor have the level of protection needed that a trained healer has taken the time to gain.
Of course you can connect with your spiritual guides but you can’t connect with theirs and each guide or deity has their specialities and different forms of “medicine” that we can all benefit from.
It is a blessing to be around and gain from other healers and power houses.
We all have something unique to offer.
I often hear of people having extremely difficult spiritual experiences and awakenings made worse because they didn’t have the guidance or training to handle the trials, growing pains, and spiritual warfare that comes with this work.
This work is sacred.
This work is deeply freeing and though there is so much you can learn and do alone, there is just as much to receive and gain in working with a guide who loves you and wants you to evolve and find home within your own spirit.
My teacher always says, “I’m not here to train mini me’s. I want you to surpass the work that I’ve done.”
She supports me in discovering my truth for myself.
Honestly, the world needs healers for the same reason that the world needs you.
Because we are all individual answers and blessings to the world’s problems and positive evolution.
I imagine a time when we are all fully awake to our gifts whatever they may be and honor with gratitude all our guides, teachers, messengers, and helpers along the healing journey.
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
So it’s been a while since I have provided any narrative on my life…I don’t really care who reads this or not, it’s therapeutic and cathartic for me to purge.
I’m in Limbo.
That’s where I feel I am…feeling way better in terms of everything besides the pain…I can appreciate the lessons that pain teaches us in our lives….and maybe I’m supposed to be even more empathetic of a person than I am now, which is more than your average person I think being an INFJ?
Limbo because I’m still not totally healed (probably never TOTALLY healed) enough to feel productive and contributory.
So then…perhaps patience is the lesson? Or is the lesson to grit my teeth and hurt myself daily like I did in Surgery? Just to fight it until I’m on the floor.
Because in some weird way, I felt better than I do now because I was helping people…directly helping people.
I’ve found it very difficult this past week or so to meditate, to relax, to even just sit and read, to feel satiated and satisfied with anything.
I feel disconnected and nothing I try to do to reconnect to my life, this world, the earth, the source seems to work.
I know it’s a passing thing…still...
I’m in Limbo.
That’s where I feel I am…feeling way better in terms of everything besides the pain…I can appreciate the lessons that pain teaches us in our lives….and maybe I’m supposed to be even more empathetic of a person than I am now, which is more than your average person I think being an INFJ?
Limbo because I’m still not totally healed (probably never TOTALLY healed) enough to feel productive and contributory.
So then…perhaps patience is the lesson? Or is the lesson to grit my teeth and hurt myself daily like I did in Surgery? Just to fight it until I’m on the floor.
Because in some weird way, I felt better than I do now because I was helping people…directly helping people.
I’ve found it very difficult this past week or so to meditate, to relax, to even just sit and read, to feel satiated and satisfied with anything.
I feel disconnected and nothing I try to do to reconnect to my life, this world, the earth, the source seems to work.
I know it’s a passing thing…still...
j654dgj7
Please delete this account.
- MBTI
- XXXX
[video=youtube;araU0fZj6oQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yz6Mz-gzLU[/video]
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
Stages of Conscious Awakening
It is imperative that we awaken from mundane awareness into full spiritual remembrance of who we are.
The problem is that even when physically awake, we can still be mentally asleep, unaware of ourselves and entirely absorbed in whatever mechanical impulse or external stimulus captures our attention.
This state of confluence, or mental absorption, keeps us in an unproductive dream state.
The common understanding of what it means to be “awake” disguises the truth, which is that despite walking around with eyes open, people tend to nonetheless be hypnotized, dimly conscious, sleepwalking, daydreaming, or in a state of trance.
What all these states have in common is that the conscious core of the individual is absent or passive, blowing like a leaf in the winds of environmental stimuli.
In dreams we might make the strangest “logical” associations that amount to no logic at all, have little say in what happens to us, do things impulsively, and fail to question our reality or observe ourselves.
Compare this to how people tend to behave in everyday life, the anecdotes and gossip they speak, how they might communicate via recitations of lines from movies or TV shows, speak in trite memetic phrases without conscious thought or originality, engage in ludicrous programmed behavior, engross themselves in petty dramas, and switch between goofy or borrowed personalities.
For them, dreams do not end in the morning.
The world is an insane asylum but society is too asleep to notice the insanity.
Just as you may not question insane dreams while having them, some people never question their insane lives.
The implications of mass somnambulism is obvious: with billions of people asleep, those in power who are awake have the advantage. Sleeping people are easily controlled.
Their conscious core exists within a mental prison, harvested for time, labor, and energy.
They possess little or no freewill because they have abandoned the awareness necessary to harness it.
The mind and body can be asleep or awake independently of each other.
With mind and body awake, one is truly awake.
With mind and body asleep, one is dreaming.
With mind awake and body asleep, one is lucid-dreaming.
With mind asleep and body awake, one is sleepwalking.
Gradations exist between these four states, ranging from hypnotism and trance to daydreaming and dim consciousness.
Stage 1: Breaking Negative Confluence
The first step to awakening requires breaking out of this negative confluence by gaining a degree of lucidity, a measure of self-awareness. At any moment you can turn your attention inward and observe yourself, placing your attention firmly in the present moment.
You can notice your thoughts, analyze your feelings, pay attention to the sensations in your body, feel your breath, engage in self-examination, and survey your situation and surroundings from a higher perspective.
In doing so, you quickly become aware that all these perceptions ultimately originate from outside of you even if they are playing out inside your own mind.
That is because at the very core of your mind is a center of perception that defines the true you, while the peripheral territory of your mind is populated by thoughts that may or may not be your own.
This inner core is the silent observer, the consciousness watching through your eyes and thinking through your mind.
It is that which experiences, chooses, realizes, and lives.
The rest is just machinery.
Becoming lucid depends on being cognizant of your own awareness.
Some call this self-remembering since confluence is the state of self-forgetting.
Lucidity is as simple as turning within and remembering yourself in the present moment.
Remembering yourself stops confluence, and stopping confluence is the first step to snapping out of what suffocates your spiritual identity.
It is one thing to know that you are, but quite another to know who you are.
In time, the first leads to the second.
Being consciously present in the moment is easy to implement but difficult to maintain. Books have been written on just this task alone. The problem is both physical and metaphysical.
Initially, heightening one’s state of awareness requires both vital energy and an adequate supply of neurotransmitters.
These deplete after a short period of exertion and one slips back into lowered consciousness.
But like a muscle, mental focus grows with training because the physical and subtle bodies adapt to a greater demand for energy.
Maintaining lucidity becomes easier with practice, as with practice one gradually increases the length and depth of focus.
By practicing lucidity in a controlled setting, the same state of heightened awareness can more easily be reached and maintained under more natural circumstances.
Hence some forms of meditation assist the training of self-awareness.
One common method of exercising lucidity is mindfulness meditation, where you pay attention to your thoughts and sensations by being a calm and lucid third party observer.
Unlike transcendental meditation where chanting a mantra for hours leads to self-hypnosis and a lowering of consciousness, mindfulness meditation raises consciousness.
Another practice called Vipassana requires that you relax and then pay attention to every sensation in your body, starting with the top of your head and working your way down to your toes, then back to the top.
The primary benefit of this type of meditation is that we become conscious of signals that are otherwise ignored and forgotten.
This is useful because in this modern age not only do we normally forget ourselves, but we tend to forget our own bodies.
For instance, watching television or using the internet places our attention into virtual bodies that displace our own.
This causes a schism between mind and body in addition to the already prevalent disconnection between self and mind.
Dissociation of this type is antagonistic to higher awareness.
Observing physical sensations goes toward mending the schism, which in turn assists conscious integration between self and mind.
Interestingly, the practice of such lucidity literally changes brain structure over time and increases the activity of gamma brainwaves, which are 40Hz oscillations of the entire brain resonating via quantum coherence.
Additionally, Vipassana and related exercises such as Robert Bruce’s New Energy Ways or the Microcosmic Orbit Meditation of Taoist yoga all have the effect of stimulating nonphysical structures and circuits within the etheric body, which if nothing else can help remove blockages and stagnant energies.
If properly executed with sufficient regularity of practice, however, these can also awaken certain extrasensory abilities.
Dealing with Negative Emotions
Becoming mindful of your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations is also useful in transmuting internal negative emotional energy.
By observing negative emotions as they arise and objectively noticing the physiological sensations they evoke, one keeps from entering into a runaway feedback loop between thoughts and emotions that would otherwise explode into over-reactivity and generate a skewed sense of perception and judgment.
In other words, this practice can break your confluence with external provocations.
If the negative emotion is triggered by some button-pushing event, lucid awareness of the emotion itself (rather than where it points, or the person/event that triggered it) is a way of defusing the negative energy without suppressing it.
On the other hand, if negativity is more a constant pressure without any specific trigger, then self-awareness helps you stand upright against the pull of this emotional gravity.
In the midst of such storms, through lucidity you will find that you are the eye of that hurricane, an impersonal observer who stands above and beyond.
That is the pivot point that disarms and transmutes the energy.
So, lucidity is the key to keeping one’s composure.
Only when you have gotten the upper hand over an escalating emotion are you in a position to make an informed choice as to whether to go with it or reign it in; without awareness, that choice is never made and one simply reacts like an animal.
Suppressing emotions by allowing them to fester as you turn to look the other way will cause them to flare up in unexpected ways at unexpected times.
This is not healthy; emotions must be dealt with, not ignored.
By becoming aware of the raw emotional energy, you can instead harness it – when appropriate.
This includes anger in cases where the imminent action fueled by that anger is both wise and necessary, meaning if one is too weak to take care of needed business otherwise.
If a negative emotion and its associated action is not appropriate, then awareness of that energy and remembrance of yourself as the transcendent observer will defuse the energy and transmute it into a higher grade of spiritual fuel for your soul.
Thus whether you harness the energy toward needed action or toward transmutation into a higher form of positive energy, either way you are dealing with it instead of suppressing it.
Stage 2: Positive Confluence
In summary, observing yourself expands the bandwidth of your awareness, breaks negative forms of confluence, and has enhancing effects on your brain and soul.
Returning to your center allows you to choose in the moment what to think, feel, or do next.
Without self-awareness there is no choice, just a mechanical reaction to a given stimulus.
By default we behave like machines, but at any moment we can regain lucidity and disengage the autopilot.
It would therefore seem that self-remembering, mindfulness, or lucidity is all we need to develop spiritually, but unfortunately that is not sufficient.
Some esoteric schools of thought stop there and become preoccupied with deprogramming and self-remembering in an effort to pick the weeds of the mind and soul.
However, without planting the seeds, adding water and sunshine, what remains is an immaculate but ultimately barren field of dirt.
Notice that by itself, lucidity is merely a state of mindfulness that squelches mechanical reactivity and lets you think on what to do next, but it doesn’t necessarily offer a transcendental or transjective influence to direct you toward the ideal outcome.
The sword is liberated from the stone but no map or compass is provided for the quest.
And thus there is need for a second stage in conscious development that goes beyond mere self-remembering.
While the first stage aims to interrupt negative confluence, the second stage involves initiating positive confluence with the higher aspects of your being.
Speaking from your heart, following your intuition, tapping into your subconscious, virtually “channeling” your Higher Self – these are all examples of positive confluence.
Here, you willingly seek out these higher impulses and let them flow as your self-awareness takes a back seat.
Reflect upon times when words flowed from you that must have come from something higher.
What you said was wiser and more helpful than anything you could have come up with solely on your own.
And while they were flowing, you were unaware of yourself as though in a trance (not unconscious, just not self-aware).
This is a state of being in the flow, in the so-called “zone”.
This type of confluence is productive and happens from time to time even without being trained in self-observation.
However, self-observation helps you make these connections more consistently and intentionally by reducing interruptions by periods of negative confluence, mainly through your noticing them and nipping them in the bud.
The main function of the second stage is to strengthen your connection with the higher centers, the higher chakras, the uplinks to your Higher Self or Higher Mind.
By grooving a conduit to these higher aspects through regular use, their influences become more permanent.
This is important because at this second stage, becoming lucid while being in the flow will momentarily interrupt the flow.
For instance, speaking from your heart but then suddenly becoming aware of yourself temporarily breaks the connection.
Lucidity hampers all types of confluence, even the positive ones.
That is, unless the flow is sufficiently strong such that lucidity does not interrupt it.
To illustrate, consider how when we first drift off to sleep at night, if we catch ourselves falling asleep we immediately wake up again.
In this case, the initial sleep state is not strong enough to withstand the conscious mind suddenly withdrawing from confluence.
However, once one has entered deeper sleep and begun dreaming, it is possible to become lucid and continue dreaming.
Those who are unskilled in lucid dreaming have difficulty either maintaining their lucidity, whereupon they continue dreaming unaware, or maintaining their dream state, whereupon they break out of sleep upon realizing they are dreaming.
But with practice the state of lucid dreaming can be prolonged.
Stage 3: Positive Lucidity
What does this say about positive confluence?
It says that positive confluence is merely a means toward making the connection with one’s higher aspects sufficiently permanent (through repeated exposure and practice, which in turn changes the structure of the brain and soul to create a more hardwired connection) so that one can eventually have self-awareness and not break the connection.
This is the third stage: being simultaneously connected and lucid.
There are two categories of meditation, one lowers consciousness and the other raises it.
Both seek to unify the conscious mind with the subconscious and thereby achieve integration of the whole being.
But while the first category is regressive, the second is progressive.
Regressive meditation seeks to dissolve the ego into the subconscious so that, in theory, one becomes an unconscious extension of higher sources.
If one thereby enters into positive confluence, then that is good.
But with the subconscious merely being a doorway to anything and everything outside the lower self, without deliberately setting a genuine positive destination that doorway could just as easily lead toward becoming a puppet of subconscious complexes, power tripping gurus, or negative entities.
This means that regressive practices carry the risk of losing ego in favor of potentially malevolent influences.
Mindless chanting of a mantra, focusing on an external guru, practicing channeling with no filters in place, and slipping into altered states of consciousness for the sake of novelty are examples of things that carry this risk.
If you are not engaged in positive confluence with your spiritual core by being and feeling it, then there’s no telling what you’re entering into confluence with.
Some forms of meditation marketed to the West should be called mindlessness meditations because that is precisely what they accomplish: a lowering of awareness into a murky state of unconsciousness that only ends up creating habitual mindless trance states and susceptility to manipulation by delusional or malevolent forces; it works for stress relief the same way psychiatric drugs take the edge off, but it is inappropriate for spiritual development since at best it merely inebriates and tranquilizes and at worst leads to becoming a mindless puppet.
Technically speaking, positive confluence is regressive because it puts us back into the naive childlike state of divine innocence as before the Fall.
Self-awareness is lowered into mere awareness as one becomes an expression of a higher will.
But as long as this remains a means rather than ends, that is okay.
This state has its uses and is better than being in negative confluence, which is the sleepwalking state society seems to be in or the mindless puppet state that certain meditators and channelers enter into.
Despite being regressive, positive confluence is also better than being in a sterile state of lucidity not connected to anything positive, as happens with those who practice self-remembering for years without ever training their capacity for love, empathy, intuition, and other faculties of spirit.
They become very lucid but also very cold and hardened, signifying the onset of ossification or Ahrimanization of the soul.
So as a means, positive confluence
(Stage 2) is more useful as a stepping stone toward emerging into active divine consciousness
(Stage 3). The goal is operating with self-awareness intact so that rather than being an unconscious extension of a higher source, one evolves into that higher source.
In this third stage, one practices self-awareness without interrupting the flow of impressions flowing from the higher centers.
This amounts to a passive observation and gentle allowance of the influence your Higher Self exerts over your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.
Why is lucidity important again after it was set aside in the second stage?
Because staying lucid while letting positive influences work from within is simply an act of supervising the process so that you can step in as necessary to correct deviations or initiate a new line of inquiry and action.
The problem with Stage 2 is that positive confluence easily passes into negative because one is not always self-aware enough to catch the switchover.
Think of a dreamer who is heartful and wise in one dream, then quickly sinks into stress and anger when the dream changes to something negative.
There is no consistency.
That is why I said positive confluence is fragile, just as Adam and Eve were in a fragile state that was good while it lasted, but ignorance is bliss and that ignorance allowed them to be easily swayed by interceding negative forces.
It is difficult enough to gain lucidity without interrupting the flow, which is why lucidity must at first be passive in the beginning of the third stage, meaning “watch yourself but do not interfere with the expression of your heart.”
This, as distinguished from the “express your heart and higher wisdom by forgetting yourself” aspect of the second stage.
The latter is a means toward achieving the first, however, so anyone stuck in Stage 1 to the point of having become more lucid but simultaneously colder inside, should practice entering into positive confluence.
That means loosening up and absorbing yourself into positive, productive, creative, empathic, revelatory, and generally spiritual activities.
Once the lower self is free of negative confluence and the Higher Self has a clear and permanent communication link (achieved through brain and soul structure enhancements brought about through the aforementioned exercises) and both higher and lower are present at the same time, a mutual flow of communication is possible.
The lower self becomes an adept assimilating the wisdom and essence of the Higher Self, thereby rising to its level.
In this way, the lower finally merges with the higher and achieves total integration of being.
This is different from the higher sinking into the lower during positive confluence; it is different from annihiliation of ego and the return to a primitive pure state.
Rather, it is a forward progression, an entelechy of human consciousness.
Nonlinear Evolution
In practice, these stages of conscious awakening are not discretely sequential like grades in school.
Rather, we occupy one of the stages as a primary center of gravity yet can spontaneously spike into the higher levels or drop into the lower.
The higher stages are trickier to access and maintain, but that does not mean we are barred from accessing them, just that without practice we access them less frequently.
The glimpses we catch of the higher stages should motivate us to acquire them permanently as our new center of gravity.
This is much like regular dreamers being motivated by spontaneous lucid dreams to practice and have them more frequently until it becomes the normal mode of dreaming.
Higher awareness happens in flashes, like a fluorescent bulb flickering before fully igniting.
Shortcomings of Existing Systems
As for esoteric systems like Fourth Way claiming that the higher remains incomprehensible until the lower stages are mastered, remember that there is a difference between systems of conscious evolution and systems of conscious awakening.
We are not here to grow our souls from scratch, as there is no time left for that, but rather to awaken ourselves into full spiritual remembrance.
We don’t start off life as a blank slate, for the incarnating spirit is already quite seasoned from prior incarnations.
The higher centers of the soul may simply be latent or atrophied due to biological and social programming factors we receive from birth that cause neglect and forgetting; if so, then accessing them is not as impossible and incomprehensible as Fourth Way makes it out to be.
I think Fourth Way was speaking more for the general mass of dimly conscious people in this world (including spiritless humans) instead of those who are in the upper percentile, but in force fitting the latter into the first it does great harm.
So we have society in general advocating a kind of Stage 0 consisting of negative confluence (to the exclusion of anything higher), Fourth Way and similar paradigms advocating Stage 1 (to the exclusion of anything higher), and Christianity and Buddhism each emphasizing dissolution of the lower self per Stage 2 (to the exclusion of anything higher).
While these are each progressively better than the previous, they all stop short of the aforementioned entelechy of human consciousness, which is the fulfillment of our potential without restrictions and exceptions.
Few systems concern themselves with Stage 3.
For that, one would have to look toward the Hermetic, Gnostic, Rosicrucian, Toltec, Fifth Way, and Anthroposophical streams.
Conclusion
Interestingly, the stages of conscious awakening reflect the macrocosmic process of conscious evolution.
What follows is a diagram comparing the two:
A prince leaves his father’s kingdom and suffers a loss of memory then leads the life of a peasant until he grows weary of poverty.
In his yearning for a better life, he suddenly remembers he is a prince and returns to see his father.
From afar he watches his father carry out the duties of a king, then when certain of his own identity, the prince gathers enough courage to speak with his father.
In the years following this reunion, the king teaches his son all his wisdom until one day the prince himself becomes king.
The goal is to retrieve what was locked away within us, to re-establish contact with our higher centers, and ultimately remember who we are.
And it all begins with self-observation and listening to your heart.
- MBTI
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 9 Mediator
Clouds shining at night AND singing to the Earth too?????
Last week, Earth-orbiting satellites detected the first noctilucent clouds of the 2015 season.
Now people on Earth are seeing them, too. Photographers in Scotland recorded a fairly bright display of the electric-blue clouds on May 28th.
At the same time, radars have detected intense echoes coming from the "noctilucent zone" 80 km to 90 km above Earth's surface--possibly coming from the clouds themselves.
Check http://spaceweather.com for more information and observing tips to help readers see NLCs for themselves in the weeks ahead.
Noctilucent clouds captured from Soomaa National Park, Estonia, in 2009
The above photo is from Earth Sky http://earthsky.org/?p=80888
In twilight in northern summer, at high latitudes, you might see glowing clouds in a dark night sky. They are called noctilucent or “night-shining” clouds.
Last week, Earth-orbiting satellites detected the first noctilucent clouds of the 2015 season.
Now people on Earth are seeing them, too. Photographers in Scotland recorded a fairly bright display of the electric-blue clouds on May 28th.
At the same time, radars have detected intense echoes coming from the "noctilucent zone" 80 km to 90 km above Earth's surface--possibly coming from the clouds themselves.
Check http://spaceweather.com for more information and observing tips to help readers see NLCs for themselves in the weeks ahead.
Noctilucent clouds captured from Soomaa National Park, Estonia, in 2009
The above photo is from Earth Sky http://earthsky.org/?p=80888
In twilight in northern summer, at high latitudes, you might see glowing clouds in a dark night sky. They are called noctilucent or “night-shining” clouds.
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
Clouds shining at night AND singing to the Earth too?????
Last week, Earth-orbiting satellites detected the first noctilucent clouds of the 2015 season.
Now people on Earth are seeing them, too. Photographers in Scotland recorded a fairly bright display of the electric-blue clouds on May 28th.
At the same time, radars have detected intense echoes coming from the "noctilucent zone" 80 km to 90 km above Earth's surface--possibly coming from the clouds themselves.
Check http://spaceweather.com for more information and observing tips to help readers see NLCs for themselves in the weeks ahead.
Noctilucent clouds captured from Soomaa National Park, Estonia, in 2009
The above photo is from Earth Sky http://earthsky.org/?p=80888
In twilight in northern summer, at high latitudes, you might see glowing clouds in a dark night sky. They are called noctilucent or “night-shining” clouds.
How bizarre!
Thanks for sharing it!
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
This is a good read!!!
Throughout history, people have reported spiritual experiences that we now identify as out-of-body experiences or OBEs.
In recent times, modern researchers like Robert Monroe have pioneered the scientific study and practice of OBEs.
Increasingly, people are remembering spontaneous OBEs, especially from early childhood.
Also, OBEs are a typical feature of near-death experiences and have been described as beautiful, painless, and ecstatic.
This is the comprehensive manual for inducing out of body experiences and managing the experience.
Peterson not only explores the stages of his own development, but also concludes each chapter with a specific exercise that takes you to the next level.
From wiggling out of your body for the first time (the author did a back flip his first time) to traveling through other realms and dealing with your "encounters,", this is one of the most practical, step-by-step guides to OBEs available.
He clearly demonstrates how this consciousness-expanding experience is accessible to anyone willing to make the leap into the great beyond.
This is the ultimate manual on how to leave home alone....
Throughout history, people have reported spiritual experiences that we now identify as out-of-body experiences or OBEs.
In recent times, modern researchers like Robert Monroe have pioneered the scientific study and practice of OBEs.
Increasingly, people are remembering spontaneous OBEs, especially from early childhood.
Also, OBEs are a typical feature of near-death experiences and have been described as beautiful, painless, and ecstatic.
This is the comprehensive manual for inducing out of body experiences and managing the experience.
Peterson not only explores the stages of his own development, but also concludes each chapter with a specific exercise that takes you to the next level.
From wiggling out of your body for the first time (the author did a back flip his first time) to traveling through other realms and dealing with your "encounters,", this is one of the most practical, step-by-step guides to OBEs available.
He clearly demonstrates how this consciousness-expanding experience is accessible to anyone willing to make the leap into the great beyond.
This is the ultimate manual on how to leave home alone....
Here is the online PDF - http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/Robert_Peterson_-_Out_of_Body_Experiences.pdf
Enjoy!
Enjoy!