Merkabah

[muir]

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/605...piritual-phenomena-exist-in-other-dimensions/

Astronomer Says Spiritual Phenomena Exist in Other Dimensions

By Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times | April 7, 2014



Astronomer and mathematician Bernard Carr theorizes that many of the phenomena we experience but cannot explain within the physical laws of this dimension actually occur in other dimensions.

Bernard Carr (Wikimedia Commons)
Albert Einstein stated that there are at least four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time, or spacetime, since Einstein said space and time cannot be separated. In modern physics, theories about the existence of up to 11 dimensions and the possibility of more have gained traction.
Carr, a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London, says our consciousness interacts with another dimension. Furthermore, the multi-dimensional universe he envisions has a hierarchical structure. We are at the lowest-level dimension.
“The model resolves well-known philosophical problems concerning the relationship between matter and mind, elucidates the nature of time, and provides an ontological framework for the interpretation of phenomena such as apparitions, OBEs [out-of-body experiences], NDEs [near-death-experiences], and dreams,” he wrote in a conference abstract.
Carr reasons that our physical sensors only show us a 3-dimensional universe, though there are actually at least four dimensions. What exists in the higher dimensions are entities we cannot touch with our physical sensors. He said that such entities must still have a type of space to exist in.
“The only non-physical entities in the universe of which we have any experience are mental ones, and … the existence of paranormal phenomena suggests that mental entities have to exist in some sort of space,” Carr wrote.
The other-dimensional space we enter in dreams overlaps with the space where memory exists. Carr says telepathy signals a communal mental space and clairvoyance also contains a physical space. “Non-physical percepts have attributes of externality,” he wrote in his book “Matter, Mind, and Higher Dimensions.”
He builds on previous theories, including the Kaluza—Klein theory, which unifies the fundamental forces of gravitation and electromagnetism. The Kaluza—Klein theory also envisions a 5-dimensional space.

In “M-theory,” there are 11 dimensions. In superstring theory, there are 10. Carr understands this as a 4-dimensional “external” space–meaning these are the four dimensions in Einstein’s relativity theory–and a 6- or 7-dimensional “internal” space–meaning these dimensions relate to pychic and other “intangible” phenomena.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=1871]muir[/MENTION]
Dimensions could be innumerable. Any constant measurable extent could be considered a dimension.

For example, you don't only need to have x,y,z and time - you could also have x,y,z time and heat:

 

[Eventhorizon]

“The model resolves well-known philosophical problems concerning the relationship between matter and mind, elucidates the nature of time, and provides an ontological framework for the interpretation of phenomena such as apparitions, OBEs [out-of-body experiences], NDEs [near-death-experiences], and dreams,” he wrote in a conference abstract.
Carr reasons that our physical sensors only show us a 3-dimensional universe, though there are actually at least four dimensions. What exists in the higher dimensions are entities we cannot touch with our physical sensors. He said that such entities must still have a type of space to exist in.
.

How exactly does he suggest we go about proving this? My own theory suggests that the 11 dimension is made entirely of goats. Prove me wrong.

Dont get me wrong, I am not putting his idea down. Its just the idea that it cant ever be proven.

 

[sprinkles]

How exactly does he suggest we go about proving this? My own theory suggests that the 11 dimension is made entirely of goats. Prove me wrong.

Dont get me wrong, I am not putting his idea down. Its just the idea that it cant ever be proven.

Well the idea is that fundamental particles are actually strings that vibrate, and the manner in which each string vibrates fills up a number of vectors, or dimensions. Like a guitar string - the way it vibrates determines the note.

To prove it we'd only have to find that it happens. Just like we did with electricity, molecular physics, nuclear physics, etc.

To have something to prove you must first have a hypothesis about it. It starts with an informed conjecture of sorts. You need to have that because without it you don't actually know what you're proving - it'd be like saying "Prove x is true" You can't because you haven't defined x.

 

[muir]

How exactly does he suggest we go about proving this? My own theory suggests that the 11 dimension is made entirely of goats. Prove me wrong.

Dont get me wrong, I am not putting his idea down. Its just the idea that it cant ever be proven.

Well that's a bit beyond my ken but what he's talking about sounds a heck of a lot like qabalah

How do you prove that dreams exist? What scientific instrument have we got that is going to measure them? Yet you and i can both testify to having been in that realm...so do dreams exist?

Perhaps WE are the instruments

 

[Eventhorizon]

Well that's a bit beyond my ken but what he's talking about sounds a heck of a lot like qabalah

How do you prove that dreams exist? What scientific instrument have we got that is going to measure them? Yet you and i can both testify to having been in that realm...so do dreams exist?

Perhaps WE are the instruments

Good, how do we know dreams are dreams an not trips to other dimensions. Kind of my point when we talk about things that only happen in the mind.

 

[muir]

Good, how do we know dreams are dreams an not trips to other dimensions. Kind of my point when we talk about things that only happen in the mind.

But how big is the mind?

 

[sprinkles]

Well that's a bit beyond my ken but what he's talking about sounds a heck of a lot like qabalah

How do you prove that dreams exist? What scientific instrument have we got that is going to measure them? Yet you and i can both testify to having been in that realm...so do dreams exist?

Perhaps WE are the instruments

Well first the phenomena has to be well enough defined and understood that you know what to look for so that you have something observable to test, or at least reason about.

But really though, saying something can't be proven is just as much a hypothesis as anything. Can you prove that it is not provable? Well some times you can - but as above, the phenomena must be well enough defined and understood to be able to know how you would test for it, and then realize that you can't test for it.

If you can't do that then saying something can't be proven is just as much a conjecture as the hypothesis is.

 

[muir]

My own theory suggests that the 11 dimension is made entirely of goats. Prove me wrong.

Turns out you aren't wrong:

 

[sprinkles]

Good, how do we know dreams are dreams an not trips to other dimensions. Kind of my point when we talk about things that only happen in the mind.

How do we know this post didn't take a trip through another dimension? I mean it's really just some electromagnetic waves that got sent through a bunch of devices and beamed out through a magic light box which we call a 'screen' and your consciousness assembles it into something that your consciousness finds comprehensible as a whole.

 

[Skarekrow]

Sorry everyone...the internet here was dead for the past few days...just got it back...ugh!
I will get back into the swing of things when I have some free time...but it feels good to be re-connected...what a sucky feeling either way...lol

 

[Eventhorizon]

Sorry everyone...the internet here was dead for the past few days...just got it back...ugh!
I will get back into the swing of things when I have some free time...but it feels good to be re-connected...what a sucky feeling either way...lol

The internet was dead or it appeared dead to you from your perspective?

 

[Eventhorizon]

Forget a Ouija Board, What if You Can Conjure a Ghost With Your Mind?

We've all been there — you freak yourself out telling stories or watching a horror movie and all of a sudden you're seeing poltergeists everywhere. But what about people who have actually caused paranormal phenomena to happen, with just the power of their brains?

One of the most famous explorations of the link between the paranormal and the mind is The Philip experiment, which tested a group's ability to "create a ghost" from a fictional narrative. These experiments have informed much of modern parapsychology, even making it into cinema. In The Quiet Ones, a group of psychology students perform experiments inspired by The Philip Experiment on a young girl, Jane Harper, who harbors unspeakable secrets, resulting in a truly terrify outcome. I looked at The Philip Experiment and spoke with a psychiatrist about whether or not telekinesis and other paranormal phenomena can be explained using what we know about the human brain.

The Philip Experiment

In the early 1970s, a group of parapsychological researchers — known as The Owen Group — from the Toronto Society for Psychical Research decided to test the theory that paranormal visitations are merely a product of the human mind by seeing if they could use their collective fear and belief to create a spirit, named Philip, and force it to manifest.

The group began by envisioning a history for Philip — they even drew his portrait. They then spent an entire year discussing Philip, meditating on his image and willing him to appear to them. In 1973, during a traditional spiritualist séance in which members placed their hands on a table and spoke and sang to Philip, he began to communicate. He began by rapping on the table, answering questions related to the history that they had created for him, and also correctly answering questions outside of his own mythology, but still within the collective knowledge of the group.

Telekinetic happenings were reported, such as the lights dimming when the group would request Philip lower them. The Philip experiment worked so well that the Owen group took him to the small screen — filming a séance in front of a live audience of fifty people, during which the table reportedly levitated. Iris Owen and Margaret Sparrow, both members of The Owen Group, also wrote a book about the experiment, called Conjuring Up Philip.

Evidence of the Paranormal?

Some saw the Philip experiment as proof that people can, with enough will power, connect with a spiritual or paranormal world, while others saw the test as proof human consciousness creates such experiences. I spoke with psychiatrist Dr. Robert Stein, about what he thinks links the paranormal and the human mind.

"What I don't believe is that there are people hanging around in the ether waiting to talk to us," he began, but went on to say that it's not as simple as saying that these things are hoaxes, or that everyone who claims to have had a paranormal experience is a fraud. Citing the frequency of simultaneous scientific discovery, and the phenomena of mass hysteria, Stein suggests that group experiences of the supernatural are either the result group projection or products of the fact that human energy — specifically ideas — are more tangible than we think.

"There is no reason to think that ideas travel any differently than, say, radio waves," he said. The same way radio waves can cross great distances, perhaps brain waves can pass through the air, creating physical, telekinetic changes in the environment and shared understanding. "There are so many examples of people around the world coming to the same conclusion at exactly the same time, it's possible that the mind is more powerful than we think."

With this in mind, there are two possible explanations for the Philip Experiment's success: either the participants were so wrapped up in their fantasy that they interpreted everyday phenomena to support their desire for a paranormal encounter, or they were actually creating a change in their environment with their brain waves. There's also a third option: that the whole thing was a hoax.

 

[Skarekrow]

The internet was dead or it appeared dead to you from your perspective?

Well...I cannot speak for all internet users at the time...but upon my return, clearly the internet was working elsewhere in the world so my assumption must be that it was only dead to me.
(smart ass lol)

 

[Skarekrow]

Forget a Ouija Board, What if You Can Conjure a Ghost With Your Mind?

We've all been there — you freak yourself out telling stories or watching a horror movie and all of a sudden you're seeing poltergeists everywhere. But what about people who have actually caused paranormal phenomena to happen, with just the power of their brains?

One of the most famous explorations of the link between the paranormal and the mind is The Philip experiment, which tested a group's ability to "create a ghost" from a fictional narrative. These experiments have informed much of modern parapsychology, even making it into cinema. In The Quiet Ones, a group of psychology students perform experiments inspired by The Philip Experiment on a young girl, Jane Harper, who harbors unspeakable secrets, resulting in a truly terrify outcome. I looked at The Philip Experiment and spoke with a psychiatrist about whether or not telekinesis and other paranormal phenomena can be explained using what we know about the human brain.

The Philip Experiment

In the early 1970s, a group of parapsychological researchers — known as The Owen Group — from the Toronto Society for Psychical Research decided to test the theory that paranormal visitations are merely a product of the human mind by seeing if they could use their collective fear and belief to create a spirit, named Philip, and force it to manifest.

The group began by envisioning a history for Philip — they even drew his portrait. They then spent an entire year discussing Philip, meditating on his image and willing him to appear to them. In 1973, during a traditional spiritualist séance in which members placed their hands on a table and spoke and sang to Philip, he began to communicate. He began by rapping on the table, answering questions related to the history that they had created for him, and also correctly answering questions outside of his own mythology, but still within the collective knowledge of the group.

Telekinetic happenings were reported, such as the lights dimming when the group would request Philip lower them. The Philip experiment worked so well that the Owen group took him to the small screen — filming a séance in front of a live audience of fifty people, during which the table reportedly levitated. Iris Owen and Margaret Sparrow, both members of The Owen Group, also wrote a book about the experiment, called Conjuring Up Philip.

Evidence of the Paranormal?

Some saw the Philip experiment as proof that people can, with enough will power, connect with a spiritual or paranormal world, while others saw the test as proof human consciousness creates such experiences. I spoke with psychiatrist Dr. Robert Stein, about what he thinks links the paranormal and the human mind.

"What I don't believe is that there are people hanging around in the ether waiting to talk to us," he began, but went on to say that it's not as simple as saying that these things are hoaxes, or that everyone who claims to have had a paranormal experience is a fraud. Citing the frequency of simultaneous scientific discovery, and the phenomena of mass hysteria, Stein suggests that group experiences of the supernatural are either the result group projection or products of the fact that human energy — specifically ideas — are more tangible than we think.

"There is no reason to think that ideas travel any differently than, say, radio waves," he said. The same way radio waves can cross great distances, perhaps brain waves can pass through the air, creating physical, telekinetic changes in the environment and shared understanding. "There are so many examples of people around the world coming to the same conclusion at exactly the same time, it's possible that the mind is more powerful than we think."

With this in mind, there are two possible explanations for the Philip Experiment's success: either the participants were so wrapped up in their fantasy that they interpreted everyday phenomena to support their desire for a paranormal encounter, or they were actually creating a change in their environment with their brain waves. There's also a third option: that the whole thing was a hoax.

There could be many possibilities there....they actually made a pretty bad “horror” movie about that experiment being rekindled and amped up with modern machinery...can’t remember the title but it had the actor that played Malfoy in Harry Potter in it.
Anyhow...I wouldn’t be surprised if it were us and not ghosts...it has long been the rule of thought that Poltergeists form from psychokenetic energy and is not a malevolent spirit.
Or perhaps, as some previous articles have suggested...(I can link you to them if you want to you don’t have search my thread)...perhaps our emotions leave a “groove” in space/time on a quantum level...perhaps these quantum grooves get played back from time to time...or replay as an echo would bounce off a far canyon wall?
I do hope that science continues to explore it...because I really do think that there is an answer out there which could lead us to some pretty amazing discoveries about the nature of reality in general.

 

[Skarekrow]

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/605...piritual-phenomena-exist-in-other-dimensions/

Astronomer Says Spiritual Phenomena Exist in Other Dimensions

By Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times | April 7, 2014

View attachment 20308

Astronomer and mathematician Bernard Carr theorizes that many of the phenomena we experience but cannot explain within the physical laws of this dimension actually occur in other dimensions.

Bernard Carr (Wikimedia Commons)
Albert Einstein stated that there are at least four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time, or spacetime, since Einstein said space and time cannot be separated. In modern physics, theories about the existence of up to 11 dimensions and the possibility of more have gained traction.
Carr, a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London, says our consciousness interacts with another dimension. Furthermore, the multi-dimensional universe he envisions has a hierarchical structure. We are at the lowest-level dimension.
“The model resolves well-known philosophical problems concerning the relationship between matter and mind, elucidates the nature of time, and provides an ontological framework for the interpretation of phenomena such as apparitions, OBEs [out-of-body experiences], NDEs [near-death-experiences], and dreams,” he wrote in a conference abstract.
Carr reasons that our physical sensors only show us a 3-dimensional universe, though there are actually at least four dimensions. What exists in the higher dimensions are entities we cannot touch with our physical sensors. He said that such entities must still have a type of space to exist in.
“The only non-physical entities in the universe of which we have any experience are mental ones, and … the existence of paranormal phenomena suggests that mental entities have to exist in some sort of space,” Carr wrote.
The other-dimensional space we enter in dreams overlaps with the space where memory exists. Carr says telepathy signals a communal mental space and clairvoyance also contains a physical space. “Non-physical percepts have attributes of externality,” he wrote in his book “Matter, Mind, and Higher Dimensions.”
He builds on previous theories, including the Kaluza–Klein theory, which unifies the fundamental forces of gravitation and electromagnetism. The Kaluza–Klein theory also envisions a 5-dimensional space.

In “M-theory,” there are 11 dimensions. In superstring theory, there are 10. Carr understands this as a 4-dimensional “external” space—meaning these are the four dimensions in Einstein’s relativity theory—and a 6- or 7-dimensional “internal” space—meaning these dimensions relate to psychic and other “intangible” phenomena.

That is a great article btw!
I have always thought that paranormal activity could possibly be something like a thinning or crossing between dimensions.
I think in the future (if we don’t know already and it has been kept under wraps) we will discover how it all falls into place.

 

[Skarekrow]

Yeah there's also a flipside to not wanting to die.

Some people also turn into something like Washizu from the Akagi manga/anime. Gone as far as they can go looking for thrills and things to conquer and then they become an empty shell waiting to die because nothing can satisfy them - but yet they refuse to die because they think they will lose all they've conquered and swindled for.

The guy ends up playing against young men in Mahjong and forcing them to bet their own blood against his money and he kills about five college age kids doing this and gets discovered, uses most of his money to bribe the cops and get off. So the underground seeks out Akagi - the mahjong genius who is so good that many believe he is a devil - to bet his own life in mahjong against Washizu. What Washizu doesn't know is that Akagi is completely unafraid to die and gets a kick out of betting his life against a worthy opponent.

Guess who ends up ruined in the end.

I mean...I am not actively pursuing my demise...lol. I don’t wish to die today...if I did, then I would surely do it. But I have ties that hold me here...few ties really...a few loved ones I can count on one hand, but that is enough for me. I will never be kept here by anything monetary, or any “stuff”, or even holding a position of power, influence, or esteem....only my love for others keeps me here.

That's heavy about your dad. God, my dad is 75 and he still hikes like 5 mile hikes, he's so fit. Our lineage has incredible genetics and many grandparents lived well into their late 80s and even 90s.

Yeah, what really boils my potato is these conservative fucks that leave their irreversible vegetable daughters/sons on ventilators and machines that are literally keeping them alive. how fucking selfish can you get? There was a pretty funny south park episode about Terri Schiavo.

I remain firm in my position that I'm not scared of death, but of dying. Could be wrong, one of those things that you maybe can never prepare for. I will say that my heavy psychedelic drug use, may have helped prepare me. There were definitely some times where I felt absolutely ripped from this dimension, being unable to recall even my own name, on more than one occasion. And as John Lennon said after extensive LSD use, "I know what it's like to be dead." However, the real thing may or may be nothing like it. I still feel unscared of death, that may be hubris though. Again dying, especially slowly, or in regret, yeesh.

I wouldn't count on euthanasia being an option anytime soon. Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson both took matters into their own hands. And I think it was more physical deterioration and pain than mere depression, though that was a factor. God I sound morbid.

I’m glad your Father is so fit...I hope he is there for you for a long time to come and doesn’t lose his independence.
I do believe I saw that South Park...lol. Those guys kill me...lol. In several states they actually have assisted suicide...which isn’t really assisted at all....the Doctor just prescribes you drugs that sedate and then stop your breathing...I could do that with whiskey and a plastic bag really...lol.
I have thought about it, being in the medical field...I would just OD on Morphine and then shoot myself up with enough insulin to thoroughly crash my flood sugar (which will also cause you do feel drunk right before you die), there would be nothing anyone could do to counteract that...they could try to push all the dextrose and IV sugars they could get but it would never be enough...the only possible way to save someone in that position would be if they had you hooked up to a ventilator and were pacing your heart to boot...but hey would never get all that done in time. It wouldn’t just be painless, it would be very “comfortable” way to go.
You know they are actually doing studies with LSD and other psychedelics and terminal cancer patients...people who are extremely afraid of death are taking guided LSD trips and they have found that the people are far less afraid and in some cases no longer afraid at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/m...-help-patients-face-death.html?pagewanted=all

Exactly. Yet some still do. I'm guessing it's the fear of the unknown.

I know that I have had several past life's, so the way I see it, I still have a future.

I’m sure I have had several past lives too...I can only hope that this is my last trip on the merry-go-round. lol

 

[Skarekrow]

I think the above article I linked to is worth posting...enjoy!

How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death

Photo illustration by Clang​

Pam Sakuda was 55 when she found out she was dying. Shortly after having a tumor removed from her colon, she heard the doctor’s dreaded words: Stage 4; metastatic. Sakuda was given 6 to 14 months to live. Determined to slow her disease’s insidious course, she ran several miles every day, even during her grueling treatment regimens. By nature upbeat, articulate and dignified, Sakuda – who died in November 2006, outlasting everyone’s expectations by living for four years – was alarmed when anxiety and depression came to claim her after she passed the 14-month mark, her days darkening as she grew closer to her biological demise. Norbert Litzinger, Sakuda’s husband, explained it this way: “When you pass your own death sentence by, you start to wonder: When? When? It got to the point where we couldn’t make even the most mundane plans, because we didn’t know if Pam would still be alive at that time – a concert, dinner with friends; would she still be here for that?” When came to claim the couple’s life completely, their anxiety building as they waited for the final day.

As her fears intensified, Sakuda learned of a study being conducted by Charles Grob, a psychiatrist and researcher at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center who was administering psilocybin – an active component of magic mushrooms – to end-stage cancer patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death. Twenty-two months before she died, Sakuda became one of Grob’s 12 subjects. When the research was completed in 2008 – (and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry last year) – the results showed that administering psilocybin to terminally ill subjects could be done safely while reducing the subjects’ anxiety and depression about their impending deaths.
Grob’s interest in the power of psychedelics to mitigate mortality’s sting is not just the obsession of one lone researcher. Dr. John Halpern, head of the Laboratory for Integrative Psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Belmont Mass., a psychiatric training hospital for Harvard Medical School, used MDMA – also known as ecstasy – in an effort to ease end-of-life anxieties in two patients with Stage 4 cancer. And there are two ongoing studies using psilocybin with terminal patients, one at New York University’s medical school, led by Stephen Ross, and another at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where Roland Griffiths has administered psilocybin to 22 cancer patients and is aiming for a sample size of 44. “This research is in its very early stages,” Grob told me earlier this month, “but we’re getting consistently good results.”
Grob and his colleagues are part of a resurgence of scientific interest in the healing power of psychedelics. Michael Mithoefer, for instance, has shown that MDMA is an effective treatment for severe P.T.S.D. Halpern has examined case studies of people with cluster headaches who took LSD and reported their symptoms greatly diminished. And psychedelics have been recently examined as treatment for alcoholism and other addictions.
Despite the promise of these investigations, Grob and other end-of-life researchers are careful about the image they cultivate, distancing themselves as much as possible from the 1960s, when psychedelics were embraced by many and used in a host of controversial studies, most famously the psilocybin project run by Timothy Leary. Grob described the rampant drug use that characterized the ’60s as “out of control” and said of his and others’ current research, “We are trying to stay under the radar. We want to be anti-Leary.” Halpern agreed. “We are serious sober scientists,” he told me.

Sakuda’s terminal diagnosis,
combined with her otherwise perfect health, made her an ideal subject for Grob’s study. Beginning in January 2005, Grob and his research team gave Sakuda various psychological tests, including the Beck Depression Inventory and the Stai-Y anxiety scale to establish baseline measures of Sakuda’s psychological state and to rule out any severe psychiatric illness. “We wanted psychologically healthy people,” Grob says, “people whose depressions and anxieties are not the result of mental illness” but rather, he explained, a response to a devastating disease.

Sakuda would take part in two sessions, one with psilocybin, one with niacin, an active placebo that can cause some flushing in the face. The study was double blind, which meant that neither the researchers nor the subjects knew what was in the capsules being administered. On the day of her first session, Sakuda was led into a room that researchers had transformed with flowing fabrics and fresh flowers to help create a soothing environment in an otherwise cold hospital setting. Sakuda swallowed a capsule and lay back on the bed to wait. Grob had invited her – as researchers do with all their subjects – to bring objects from home that had special significance. “These objects often personalize the session room for the volunteer and often prompt the patient to think about loved ones or important life events,” Roland Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins, says.

“I think it’s kind of goofy,” Halpern says, “but the thinking is that with the aid of the psychedelic, you may come to see the object in a different light. It may help bring back memories; it promotes introspection, it can be a touchstone, it can be grounding.”
Sakuda brought a few pictures of loved ones, which, Grob recalled, she clutched in her hands as she lay back on the bed. By her side were Grob and one of his research assistants, both of whom stayed with the subjects for the six-to-seven-hour treatment session. Sakuda knew that there would be time set aside in the days and weeks following when she would meet with Grob and his team to process what would happen in that room. Black eyeshades were draped over Sakuda’s face, encouraging her to look inward. She was given headphones. Music was piped in: the sounds of rivers rushing, sweet staccatos, deep drumming. Each hour, Grob and his staff checked in with Sakuda, as they did with every subject, asking if all was O.K. and taking her blood pressure. At one point, Grob observed that Sakuda, with the eyeshades draped over her face, began to cry. Later on, Sakuda would reveal to Grob that the source of her tears was a keen empathetic understanding of what her spouse, Norbert, would feel when she died.

Grob’s setup – the eyeshades, the objects, the mystical music, the floral aromas and flowing fabrics – was drawn from the work of Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist born in Prague and a father of the study of psychedelic medicine for the dying. In the mid-’60s – before words like “acid” and “bong” and “Deadhead” transformed the American landscape, at a time when psychedelics were not illegal because most people didn’t know what they were and thus had no urge to ingest them – Grof began giving the drug to cancer patients at the Spring Grove State Hospital near Baltimore and documenting their effects.
Grof kept careful notes of his many psychedelic sessions, and in his various papers and books derived from those sessions, he described cancer patients clenched with fear who, under the influence of LSD or DPT, experienced relief from the terror of dying – and not just during their psychedelic sessions but for weeks and months afterward. Grof continued his investigations into psychedelics for the dying until the culture caught up with him – the recreational use of drugs and the reaction against them leading to harsh antidrug laws. (Richard Nixon famously called Timothy Leary “the most dangerous man in America.”) Financing for psychedelic studies dried up, and Grof turned his attention to developing alternative methods of accessing higher states of consciousness. It is only now, decades later, that Grob and a handful of his fellow scientists feel they can re-examine Grof’s methods and outcomes without risking their reputations.

Norbert Litzinger
remembers picking up his wife from the medical center after her first session and seeing that this deeply distressed woman was now “glowing from the inside out.” Before Pam Sakuda died, she described her psilocybin experience on video: “I felt this lump of emotions welling up . . . almost like an entity,” Sakuda said, as she spoke straight into the camera. “I started to cry. . . . Everything was concentrated and came welling up and then . . . it started to dissipate, and I started to look at it differently. . . . I began to realize that all of this negative fear and guilt was such a hindrance . . . to making the most of and enjoying the healthy time that I’m having.” Sakuda went on to explain that, under the influence of the psilocybin, she came to a very visceral understanding that there was a present, a now, and that it was hers to have.

Two weeks after Sakuda’s psilocybin session, Grob readministered the depression and anxiety assessments. Over all among his subjects, he found that their scores on the anxiety scale at one and three months after treatment “demonstrated a sustained reduction in anxiety,” the researchers wrote in The Archives of General Psychiatry. They also found that their subjects’ scores on the Beck Depression Inventory dropped significantly at the six-month follow-up. “The dose of psilocybin that we gave our subjects was relatively low in comparison to the doses in Stanislav Grof’s studies,” Grob told me. “Nevertheless, and even with this modest dose, it appears the drug can relieve the angst and fear of the dying.”

Lauri Reamer is
a 48-year-old survivor of adult-onset leukemia. Before the leukemia, she was an anesthesiologist and a committed agnostic who believed in “validity” and “reliability,” the scientific method her route to truth. Reamer recalls the morning when all that changed, when, utterly depleted, she bumped her leg on a railing and saw a bruise rush up, livid on her pale flesh; it was then she knew something was terribly wrong. After that came the diagnosis, the bone-marrow biopsies, the terrible trek toward a recovery that was tentative at best. “I believed I was going to die,” Reamer told me.

Reamer made it through the leukemia – or, rather, she went into remission – but the illness and the brutal bone-marrow treatments she underwent left a deep mental scar, a profound fear that the cancer would return made it difficult to experience any joy in life. Her illness was lurking around every corner, waiting to haul her away. “When I was near death, I wasn’t so afraid of it,” Reamer said, “but once I went into remission, well, I had an intense fear and anxiety around relapse and death.”
It was in the midst of this fear that, one day in May 2010, Reamer learned about Griffiths’s study at Johns Hopkins. For years, Griffiths had been studying the effects of psilocybin on healthy volunteers. He wanted to see if particular doses of the drug could induce mystical states similar to naturally occurring ones: think Joan of Arc or Paul on the road to Damascus. Griffiths says that he and his research team found an ideal range of dosage levels – 20 to 30 milligrams of psilocybin – that not only reliably stimulated “mystical insights” but also elicited “sustained positive changes in attitude, mood and behavior” in the study volunteers. Specifically, when Griffiths administered a psychological test called the Death Transcendance Scale at the 1- and 14-month follow-up, he saw subjects’ ratings rise on statements like “Death is never just an ending but part of a process” and “My death does not end my personal existence.”

“After transcendent experiences, people often have much less fear of death,” Griffiths says. Fourteen months after participating in a psilocybin study that was published in The Journal of Psychopharmacology last year, 94 percent of subjects said that it was one of the five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39 percent said that it was the most meaningful experience.
Wondering whether he could see the same shifts in attitude in terminally ill patients, he designed a study that gave subjects a high dose of psilocybin (higher than Grob had given) in one session and a dose that varied from subject to subject in a second session. Because the study is continuing, Griffiths did not want to discuss the precise amounts of the drug given, but said that “dose selection in the cancer study is informed by what we have learned in the prior studies.”

At the end of September 2010, Lauri Reamer took her first dose of psilocybin. “I mostly just cried through that session,” she says. Three weeks later, she went back to Johns Hopkins for her second dose. She remembers a lovely room with a large plush couch. Griffiths entered and wished her well. Reamer had pictures of her children and items that reminded her of her recently deceased father, and after swallowing the psilocybin capsule, Reamer sat with two study coordinators and looked at the memorabilia. She talked about what each item meant to her, waiting for the drug to take effect, assessing her own internal state. “And then it happened,” she told me. “I was at first sitting up on the couch and talking about my daughter’s baby blanket, which I’d brought with me, and then I went supine. They dimmed the lights. I got dark eyeshades. They put headphones on me, and music started pouring into my ears. Some dark opera. Some choral music. Some mystical music. There was a bowl of grapes; they were big juicy grapes,” Reamer says, and she remembers the sweetness, the freshness, the tiny seeds embedded in the gel.

Once the drug took effect, Reamer lay there and rode the music’s dips and peaks. Reamer said that her mind became like a series of rooms, and she could go in and out of these rooms with remarkable ease. In one room there was the grief her father experienced when Reamer got leukemia. In another, her mother’s grief, and in another, her children’s. In yet another room was her father’s perspective on raising her. “I was able to see things through his eyes and through my mother’s eyes and through my children’s eyes; I was able to see what it had been like for them when I was so sick.”
Reamer took the psilocybin at about 9 a.m., and its effects lasted until about 4 p.m. That night at home, she slept better than she had in a long time. The darkness finally stopped scaring her, and she was willing to go under, not because she knew she would come back up but because “under” was not as frightening. Why she was less afraid to die is hard for her to explain. “I now have the distinct sense that there’s so much more,” she says, “so many different states of being. I have the sense that death is not the end but just part of a process, a way of moving into a different sphere, a different way of being.”

After Reamer’s psilocybin experience, she separated from her husband. Eventually, she stopped practicing medicine. She started regularly meditating. She bought a house. “I read somewhere that, with my kind of leukemia, even if I stay in remission, the most I have left is 15 or 20 years. So that’s my sentence. But after I die, well, there could be a next phase. I believe that now.”

Researchers acknowledge that
it’s not clear how psilocybin reduces a person’s anxiety about mortality, not simply during the trip but for weeks and months following. “It’s a bit of a mystery,” Grob says. “I don’t really have altogether a definitive answer as to why the drug eases the fear of death, but we do know that from time immemorial individuals who have transformative spiritual experiences come to a very different view of themselves and the world around them and thus are able to handle their own deaths differently.”
“On psychedelics,” Halpern says, “you have an experience in which you feel there is something you are a part of, something else is out there that’s bigger than you, that there is a dazzling unity you belong to, that love is possible and all these realizations are imbued with deep meaning. I’m telling you that you’re not going to forget that six months from now. The experience gives you, just when you’re on the edge of death, hope for something more.”

If psilocybin can so reliably induce these life-altering experiences, why have the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have taken magic mushrooms recreationally not had this profound experience? Grob explains that in addition to the carefully controlled setting of these studies and the opportunity to process the experience with the researchers, the subjects are primed for transcendence before they even take the drug. “Unlike the recreational user, we process the experience ahead of time,” Grob says. “We make it very clear up front that the hoped-for outcome is therapeutic, that they’ll have less anxiety, less depression and a greater acceptance of death.” Subjects, in other words, intend to have a transformative experience. Grob says that psilocybin taken in this setting is “existential medicine.”

For all the eloquence of these explanations, however, something feels fuzzy about a phenomenon in which a cancer-ridden patient takes a pill and overcomes her fear of death not just for the moment but for weeks and months that follow. A recent British study, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year, may begin to help us understand what might be happening here. In this study, David J. Nutt, a psychiatrist at the Imperial College London, and his team used an M.R.I. to scan healthy volunteers dosed on psilocybin in order to “capture the transition from normal waking consciousness to the psychedelic state.” The researchers found that the states of “unrestrained consciousness” that accompany the ingestion of psilocybin are associated with a deactivation of regions of the brain that integrate our senses and our perception of self. In depressed people, Nutt explains, one of those regions, the anterior cingulate cortex, is overactive, and psilocybin may work to shut it down. Nutt is planning a study in which he will give psilocybin to individuals with treatment resistant depression and see whether the drug can ease some of depression’s most recalcitrant symptoms.

Perhaps end-stage cancer patients are able to capture enduring benefits of psilocybin precisely because they are processing their drug experiences again and again with research staff and in doing so are changing the way the brain encodes positive memories. The phenomenon might be similar to how other memories work; when we remember something sweet-smelling, the olfactory neurons in our brain start to stir; when we remember running, our motor cortex begins to buzz. If this is the case then merely recalling the trip could resurrect its neural correlates, allowing the person to re-experience the insight, the awareness, the hope.

Because Grob and
other psychedelic researchers are careful to separate their scientific work from the shadow of the 1960s, they have a complicated relationship with a psychedelic advocate named Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Study (MAPS), located in Santa Cruz, Calif. Doblin is not a psychiatrist – his advanced degree in public policy is from Harvard’s Kennedy School – and his mission is to legalize psychedelics so they can be prescribed for “a wide range of clinical indications.” Doblin says, in addition, “these substances should be available for things that are not diseases, like personal growth, spirituality, couples’ counseling.”

Despite their differing stances, MAPS and researchers meet at many points. Doblin, for instance, has F.D.A. approval to do a study on the psychological effects of MDMA when taken by healthy volunteers. His subjects will be therapists who are taking part in a MAPS program that teaches them how to guide their clients through psychedelic journeys. Doblin also worked closely with the Swiss researcher Dr. Peter Gasser in investigating the safety and efficacy of LSD-assisted psychotherapy for subjects with anxiety stemming from life-threatening illnesses.

“Rick Doblin has done a lot for the field, but he is more of a populist,” Grob says. “We need careful and controlled scientific studies showing the efficacy of these drugs so funding can continue.” Broader awareness of these sorts of end-of-life psychedelic studies could be good for everyone, the researchers say. “If insurance companies knew about our outcomes, they might get a lot more interested in what we’re doing here.” Griffiths continued: “When you make people less afraid to die, then they’re less likely to cling to life at a huge cost to society. After having such a transcendent experience, individuals with terminal illness often show a markedly reduced fear of dying and no longer feel the need to aggressively pursue every last medical intervention available. Instead they become more interested in the quality of their remaining life as well as the quality of their death.”

In a future still far off, Grob imagines retreat centers where the dying could have psilocybin administered to them by a staff trained for the task. Doblin asks: “Why confine this to just the dying? This powerful intervention could be used with young adults who could then reap the benefits of it much earlier.” The subjects who have undergone psilocybin treatment report an increased appreciation for the time they have left, a deeper awareness of their roles in the cycle of life and an increased motivation to invest their days with meaning. “Imagine allowing young adults, who have their whole lives in front of them, access to this kind of therapy,” Doblin says. “Imagine the kind of lives they could then create.”
If David Nutt, in Britain, is able to prove the efficacy of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, would the F.D.A. ever consider approving it for that use? And if that ever were to happen, what sort of slippery slope would we find ourselves on? If, say, end-stage cancer patients can have it, then why not all individuals over the age of, say, 75? If treatment-resistant depressives can have it, then why not their dysthymic counterparts, who suffer in a lower key but whose lives are clearly compromised by their chronic pain? And if dysthymic individuals can have it, then why not those suffering from agoraphobia, shut up day and night in cramped quarters, Xanax bottles littered everywhere?

Halpern is not particularly worried about this theoretical future, in large part because he doesn’t see much hope for psilocybin as a medicine. “There’s no money in it,” he says. “What drug company is going to invest millions in a substance widely available in our flora and fauna?” Grob has a more practical response, suggesting that, in our theoretical future, drugs like psilocybin should be reserved for only those who have no other alternatives. “There’s a lot of good treatment for depression,” he says. “And anxiety too. A drug like psilocybin, or maybe psilocybin itself, should be reserved for those who have no other treatment options.”

Besides, Grob told me, scientists are still at the very early stages of this research. “Twelve people,” he says of the of his study. “One study with 12 people is not very definitive.” And yet, talking to him, you can hear a hint of excitement, something rising. “We saw remarkable and sustained changes in cancer patients’ spiritual dispositions. People’s entire sense of who they are has been altered in a positive manner.” He is looking forward to the day, he told me, when Griffiths and Ross “crunch their numbers” from their current studies.
Grob says, “From what they say they’re seeing, it all sounds very positive.” Perhaps, then, we need not understand precisely how and why psilocybin works, accepting, as Halpern puts it, that “when you combine the chemical, the corporeal and the spiritual, you get a spark. You get magic.”

 

[Skarekrow]

Mind-Blowing Personal Experiment Shows How The Mind Affects The Body

In this article I will show you a small, simple experiment that anyone can do to see with his or her own eyes how the mind affects the body. We all know the most famous principle of quantum physics which states that the observer affects the observed. There are thousands of books and articles on how the mind generates almost all diseases in our body.
With this simple experiment you will see what happens in life or, in particular, how the quality of your thoughts is implemented in your body.

Thanks to Learning Mind for this awesome experiment!
Let’s begin…
Close your eyes… make some deep breaths and relax your body. If you have never performed any form of relaxation techniques before, then you can use your breath. Focus on your breathing and notice how your body expands during inhalation and how it contracts during exhalation. It is very likely that after about 10 cycles of breaths you will be relaxed enough.
If this has not happened sufficiently, you can relax your body “manually”. Focus your attention on the bottom of your feet and visualize that with each inhalation you get golden light, which goes to your feet, and with each exhalation the tension is removed from your feet. Do as many cycles as necessary until you feel completely relaxed, and then proceed to the upper part of the legs, then to the pelvis, the lower abdomen, chest, shoulders, arms, neck and head. Try not to fall asleep.
So when you relax, bring to your memory a situation or a person that provokes intense anger in you. Experience this powerful emotion.
Once you make sure that you are completely “immersed” in your anger, focus your attention at some point of your foot. Look at that specific point with anger! If you have never done this before, you will notice something “magical”! You will feel that the point at which you focused your attention is filled with tension, tightened and eventually will start to hurt if you continue long enough. Try it on other parts ofyour body and you will notice the same.
Once you have experimented and have established the reaction of your body, withdraw your attentionfrom anger and then perform the relaxation exercise again.
Now bring to mind a situation or a person that is associated with intense feelings of love or happiness. Making sure you are “inside” the feeling, focus your attention again at some point of your body. Look at it with strong love or an inner smile. Observe how wonderful your body reacts. You may feel a pleasant flow, heat, tingling, etc.
Do this with other parts of your body until you see its reaction. Finally, thank your body for this experience, take a few deep breaths and open your eyes.
So let’s close with the following thought: If your body reacts instantaneously to every feeling, even superficially as in the above experiment, what happens when you feel fear, anger or any other negative emotion for a long period of time?

 

[Skarekrow]

The reality of parallel worlds and time travel is proved?

In 2002 Nobel Prize winner, American physicist Raymond Davis made a sensational statement: the existence of a parallel world is proved. Neutrino, the smallest particle known to science, exists simultaneously in two worlds: in ours, the material one, and in a parallel one. Up until the 1930s, scientists used to deny the existence of supernatural forces.
It changed in 1930 with the discovery of neutrino particles. In the 1920s during the first experiments on the splitting of the nucleus it turned out that some part of energy disappears to nowhere. Then young Swiss physicist Wolfgang Pauli suggested a crazy hypothesis: there are particles with no mass, and they can freely depart from the laboratory, without being recorded by physical devices. These particles carry off the missing energy. Pauli was first laughed at, but soon it was found that he was right. The new found particle called “neutrino” had almost no mass and could travel at the speed of light, freely passing through any obstacle. That was a completely new view of space and time. By studying the properties of neutrinos, scientists got a chance to access such things as zero-transportation, an instantaneous movement of objects in space-time (despite Einstein’s theory).
Studies related to the properties of neutrinos are classified in many countries. It is understandable: the first one who will discover the laws of parallel worlds, will get into his hands of a powerful weapon and the key to unlimited power over people, nature and time. Indeed, studies of neutrinos have shown that time travel is a reality. The laws of fundamental physics say: if an object is moving with the speed of light, time stops for it. That is, if we put a clock in a capsule moving with the speed of light, the hands will stop. And if the capsule is dispersed faster than the speed of light, the hands will start moving in the opposite direction.
It was only a theory, but in May 2012 it was proved in practice, when scientists dispersed neutrinos faster than the speed of light and found that the particles overtook the time, i.e. they had reached the destination a few nanoseconds before they started the way! Another sensational discovery was made by researchers from the University of North Carolina and Rochester. It is known that neutrino is the basic matter which the universe is built of. Earth is permeated by fluxes of neutrinos: every second 10 billion of these particles pass through our body.
Scientists were able to establish that neutrinos can transfer information! With the help of neutrino it is possible to instantly send messages to any distance in any environment! In fact, the first message using neutrino beam has already been transferred. But the transfer took a long time: one word was passing for 2 hours, which is explained by the fact that the neutrino catcher handles only a single particle from 10 billion neutrinos. Scientists believe that over time the process will be greatly accelerated, and the neutrino communications will supersede all other forms of communication. Maybe that could also explain the phenomenon of clairvoyance? Cosmologists claim that half of the neutrino fluxes in the universe are moving through time in the opposite direction, i.e. they carry information from the future into the past. Perhaps, some people on Earth are capable of receiving this information because of some innate abilities. And we call these people psychics or clairvoyants.