Merkabah

[Kgal]

Comment on previous post: Wow....that's some extremely weird stuff. I have had some wonderful experiences with a few people's 4th frequency selves. [wink]

On another note:

Heard this today and thought about you.

[video=vimeo;74422757]http://vimeo.com/74422757[/video]
[MENTION=1814]invisible[/MENTION] [MENTION=6303]Jimmers[/MENTION]

 

[Eventhorizon]

Comment on previous post: Wow....that's some extremely weird stuff. I have had some wonderful experiences with a few people's 4th frequency selves. [wink]

On another note:

Heard this today and thought about you.

[video=vimeo;74422757]http://vimeo.com/74422757[/video]
[MENTION=1814]invisible[/MENTION] [MENTION=6303]Jimmers[/MENTION]

I have had that laughter before, but it is fleeting for me. It is good when it comes though.

 

[Skarekrow]

This is absolutely amazing!!!

This is What it Sounds Like When You Put Tree Rings on a Record Player

This is an excerpt from the record Years, created by Bartholomäus Traubeck, which features seven recordings from different Austrian trees including Oak, Maple, Walnut, and Beech. What you are hearing is an Ash tree’s year ring data. Every tree sounds vastly unique due to varying characteristics of the rings, such as strength, thickness and rate of growth.
Keep in mind that the tree rings are being translated into the language of music, rather than sounding musical in and of themselves. Traubeck’s one-of-a-kind record player uses a PlayStation Eye Camera and a stepper motor attached to its control arm. It relays the data to a computer with a program called Ableton Live. What you end up with is an incredible piano track, and in the case of the Ash, a very eerie one.
Hats off to Traubeck for coming up with the ingenious method to turn a simple slice of wood into a beautiful unique arraignment. It makes you wonder what types of music other parts of nature would play. (see video below)

[video=vimeo;30501143]http://vimeo.com/30501143[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

Just so you know....


In the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 6, debris from Halley's Comet will light up the sky in this year's Eta Aquarid meteor shower.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]

[video=youtube;0iVxK2QxAM0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iVxK2QxAM0[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHON ROSEN​

The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science

By Chris Mooney

“A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” So wrote the celebrated Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger, in a passage that might have been referring to climate change denial–the persistent rejection, on the part of so many Americans today, of what we know about global warming and its human causes. But it was too early for that–this was the 1950s–and Festinger was actually describing a famous case study in psychology.

Festinger and several of his colleagues had infiltrated the Seekers, a small Chicago-area cult whose members thought they were communicating with aliens–including one, “Sananda,” who they believed was the astral incarnation of Jesus Christ. The group was led by Dorothy Martin, a Dianetics devotee who transcribed the interstellar messages through automatic writing.

Through her, the aliens had given the precise date of an Earth-rending cataclysm: December 21, 1954. Some of Martin’s followers quit their jobs and sold their property, expecting to be rescued by a flying saucer when the continent split asunder and a new sea swallowed much of the United States. The disciples even went so far as to remove brassieres and rip zippers out of their trousers–the metal, they believed, would pose a danger on the spacecraft.

Festinger and his team were with the cult when the prophecy failed. First, the “boys upstairs” (as the aliens were sometimes called) did not show up and rescue the Seekers. Then December 21 arrived without incident. It was the moment Festinger had been waiting for: How would people so emotionally invested in a belief system react, now that it had been soundly refuted?

At first, the group struggled for an explanation. But then rationalization set in. A new message arrived, announcing that they’d all been spared at the last minute. Festinger summarized the extraterrestrials’ new pronouncement: “The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.” Their willingness to believe in the prophecy had saved Earth from the prophecy!

From that day forward, the Seekers, previously shy of the press and indifferent toward evangelizing, began to proselytize. “Their sense of urgency was enormous,” wrote Festinger. The devastation of all they had believed had made them even more certain of their beliefs.

IN THE ANNALS OF DENIAL, it doesn’t get much more extreme than the Seekers.
They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin’s space cult might lie at the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there’s plenty to go around. And since Festinger’s day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions.

This tendency toward so-called “motivated reasoning” helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, “death panels,” the birthplace andreligion of the president (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF):

Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”).
Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds–fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

​

Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation–a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins. What happens next, explains political scientistCharles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information–and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. “They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs,” says Taber, “and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they’re hearing.”

In other words, when we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers (PDF).
Our “reasoning” is a means to a predetermined end–winning our “case”–and is shot through with biases. They include “confirmation bias,” in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and “disconfirmation bias,” in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.

That’s a lot of jargon, but we all understand these mechanisms when it comes to interpersonal relationships. If I don’t want to believe that my spouse is being unfaithful, or that my child is a bully, I can go to great lengths to explain away behavior that seems obvious to everybody else–everybody who isn’t too emotionally invested to accept it, anyway. That’s not to suggest that we aren’t also motivated to perceive the world accurately–we are. Or that we never change our minds–we do. It’s just that we have other important goals besides accuracy–including identity affirmation and protecting one’s sense of self–and often those make us highly resistant to changing our beliefs when the facts say we should.

Scientific evidence is highly susceptible to misinterpretation. Giving ideologues scientific data that’s relevant to their beliefs is like unleashing them in the motivated-reasoning equivalent of a candy store.

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MODERN SCIENCE ORIGINATED from an attempt to weed out such subjective lapses–what that great 17th century theorist of the scientific method, Francis Bacon, dubbed the “idols of the mind.” Even if individual researchers are prone to falling in love with their own theories, the broader processes of peer review and institutionalized skepticism are designed to ensure that, eventually, the best ideas prevail.
Our individual responses to the conclusions that science reaches, however, are quite another matter.

Ironically, in part because researchers employ so much nuance and strive to disclose all remaining sources of uncertainty, scientific evidence is highly susceptible to selective reading and misinterpretation. Giving ideologues or partisans scientific data that’s relevant to their beliefs is like unleashing them in the motivated-reasoning equivalent of a candy store.

Sure enough, a large number of psychological studies have shown that people respond to scientific or technical evidence in ways that justify their preexisting beliefs. In a classic 1979 experiment (PDF),
pro- and anti-death penalty advocates were exposed to descriptions of two fake scientific studies: one supporting and one undermining the notion that capital punishment deters violent crime and, in particular, murder. They were also shown detailed methodological critiques of the fake studies–and in a scientific sense, neither study was stronger than the other.

Yet in each case, advocates more heavily criticized the study whose conclusions disagreed with their own, while describing the study that was more ideologically congenial as more “convincing.”
Since then, similar results have been found for how people respond to “evidence” about affirmative action, gun control, the accuracy of gay stereotypes, and much else. Even when study subjects are explicitly instructed to be unbiased and even-handed about the evidence, they often fail.

And it’s not just that people twist or selectively read scientific evidence to support their preexisting views. According to research by Yale Law School professor Dan Kahan and his colleagues, people’s deep-seated views about morality, and about the way society should be ordered, strongly predict whom they consider to be a legitimate scientific expert in the first place–and thus where they consider “scientific consensus” to lie on contested issues.

In Kahan’s research (PDF), individuals are classified, based on their cultural values, as either “individualists” or “communitarians,” and as either “hierarchical” or “egalitarian” in outlook. (Somewhat oversimplifying, you can think of hierarchical individualists as akin to conservative Republicans, and egalitarian communitarians as liberal Democrats.) In one study, subjects in the different groups were asked to help a close friend determine the risks associated with climate change, sequestering nuclear waste, or concealed carry laws: “The friend tells you that he or she is planning to read a book about the issue but would like to get your opinion on whether the author seems like a knowledgeable and trustworthy expert.”

A subject was then presented with the résumé of a fake expert “depicted as a member of the National Academy of Sciences who had earned a Ph.D. in a pertinent field from one elite university and who was now on the faculty of another.” The subject was then shown a book excerpt by that “expert,” in which the risk of the issue at hand was portrayed as high or low, well-founded or speculative. The results were stark: When the scientist’s position stated that global warming is real and human-caused, for instance, only 23 percent of hierarchical individualists agreed the person was a “trustworthy and knowledgeable expert.”

Yet 88 percent of egalitarian communitarians accepted the same scientist’s expertise. Similar divides were observed on whether nuclear waste can be safely stored underground and whether letting people carry guns deters crime. (The alliances did not always hold. In another study (PDF), hierarchs and communitarians were in favor of laws that would compel the mentally ill to accept treatment, whereas individualists and egalitarians were opposed.)

Head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts–they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.

​

In other words, people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views–and thus the relative risks inherent in each scenario. A hierarchal individualist finds it difficult to believe that the things he prizes (commerce, industry, a man’s freedom to possess a gun to defend his family) (PDF) could lead to outcomes deleterious to society.

Whereas egalitarian communitarians tend to think that the free market causes harm, that patriarchal families mess up kids, and that people can’t handle their guns. The study subjects weren’t “anti-science”–not in their own minds, anyway. It’s just that “science” was whatever they wanted it to be. “We’ve come to a misadventure, a bad situation where diverse citizens, who rely on diverse systems of cultural certification, are in conflict,” says Kahan.

And that undercuts the standard notion that the way to persuade people is via evidence and argument. In fact, head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts–they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.
Take, for instance, the question of whether Saddam Hussein possessed hidden weapons of mass destruction just before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

When political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler showed subjects fake newspaper articles (PDF) in which this was first suggested (in a 2004 quote from President Bush) and then refuted (with the findings of the Bush-commissioned Iraq Survey Group report, which found no evidence of active WMD programs in pre-invasion Iraq), they found that conservatives were more likely than before to believe the claim. (The researchers also tested how liberals responded when shown that Bush did not actually “ban” embryonic stem-cell research. Liberals weren’t particularly amenable to persuasion, either, but no backfire effect was observed.)

Another study gives some inkling of what may be going through people’s minds when they resist persuasion. Northwestern University sociologistMonica Prasad and her colleagues wanted to test whether they could dislodge the notion that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were secretly collaborating among those most likely to believe it–Republican partisans from highly GOP-friendly counties. So the researchers set up a study (PDF) in which they discussed the topic with some of these Republicans in person. They would cite the findings of the 9/11 Commission, as well as a statement in which George W. Bush himself denied his administration had “said the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda.”

One study showed that not even Bush’s own words could change the minds of Bush voters who believed there was an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

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As it turned out, not even Bush’s own words could change the minds of these Bush voters–just 1 of the 49 partisans who originally believed the Iraq-Al Qaeda claim changed his or her mind. Far more common was resisting the correction in a variety of ways, either by coming up with counterarguments or by simply being unmovable:
Interviewer: [T]he September 11 Commission found no link between Saddam and 9/11, and this is what President Bush said. Do you have any comments on either of those?
Respondent: Well, I bet they say that the Commission didn’t have any proof of it but I guess we still can have our opinions and feel that way even though they say that.

The same types of responses are already being documented on divisive topics facing the current administration. Take the “Ground Zero mosque.” Using information from the political myth-busting site FactCheck.org, a team at Ohio State presented subjects (PDF) with a detailed rebuttal to the claim that “Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam backing the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque, is a terrorist-sympathizer.” Yet among those who were aware of the rumor and believed it, fewer than a third changed their minds.

A key question–and one that’s difficult to answer–is how “irrational” all this is. On the one hand, it doesn’t make sense to discard an entire belief system, built up over a lifetime, because of some new snippet of information. “It is quite possible to say, ‘I reached this pro-capital-punishment decision based on real information that I arrived at over my life,’” explains Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick. Indeed, there’s a sense in which science denial could be considered keenly “rational.” In certain conservative communities, explains Yale’s Kahan, “People who say, ‘I think there’s something to climate change,’ that’s going to mark them out as a certain kind of person, and their life is going to go less well.”

This may help explain a curious pattern Nyhan and his colleagues found when they tried to test the fallacy (PDF) that President Obama is a Muslim. When a nonwhite researcher was administering their study, research subjects were amenable to changing their minds about the president’s religion and updating incorrect views. But when only white researchers were present, GOP survey subjects in particular were more likely to believe the Obama Muslim myth than before. The subjects were using “social desirabililty” to tailor their beliefs (or stated beliefs, anyway) to whoever was listening.

A predictor of whether you accept the science of global warming? Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.

​

Which leads us to the media. When people grow polarized over a body of evidence, or a resolvable matter of fact, the cause may be some form of biased reasoning, but they could also be receiving skewed information to begin with–or a complicated combination of both. In the Ground Zero mosque case, for instance, a follow-up study (PDF) showed that survey respondents who watched Fox News were more likely to believe the Rauf rumor and three related ones–and they believed them more strongly than non-Fox watchers.

Okay, so people gravitate toward information that confirms what they believe, and they select sources that deliver it. Same as it ever was, right? Maybe, but the problem is arguably growing more acute, given the way we now consume information–through the Facebook links of friends, or tweets that lack nuance or context, or “narrowcast” and often highly ideological media that have relatively small, like-minded audiences. Those basic human survival skills of ours, says Michigan’s Arthur Lupia, are “not well-adapted to our information age.”

IF YOU WANTED TO SHOW how and why fact is ditched in favor of motivated reasoning, you could find no better test case than climate change. After all, it’s an issue where you have highly technical information on one hand and very strong beliefs on the other. And sure enough, one key predictor of whether you accept the science of global warming is whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. The two groups have been growing more divided in their views about the topic, even as the science becomes more unequivocal.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that more education doesn’t budge Republican views. On the contrary: In a 2008 Pew survey, for instance, only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college educated Republicans. In other words, a higher education correlated with an increased likelihood of denying the science on the issue. Meanwhile, among Democrats and independents, more education correlated with greater acceptance of the science.

Other studies have shown a similar effect: Republicans who think they understand the global warming issue best are least concerned about it; and among Republicans and those with higher levels of distrust of science in general, learning more about the issue doesn’t increase one’s concern about it. What’s going on here? Well, according to Charles Taber and Milton Lodge of Stony Brook, one insidious aspect of motivated reasoning is that political sophisticates are prone to be more biased than those who know less about the issues. “People who have a dislike of some policy–for example, abortion–if they’re unsophisticated they can just reject it out of hand,” says Lodge. “But if they’re sophisticated, they can go one step further and start coming up with counterarguments.” These individuals are just as emotionally driven and biased as the rest of us, but they’re able to generate more and better reasons to explain why they’re right–and so their minds become harder to change.

That may be why the selectively quoted emails of Climategate were so quickly and easily seized upon by partisans as evidence of scandal. Cherry-picking is precisely the sort of behavior you would expect motivated reasoners to engage in to bolster their views–and whatever you may think about Climategate, the emails were a rich trove of new information upon which to impose one’s ideology.

Climategate had a substantial impact on public opinion, according toAnthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. It contributed to an overall drop in public concern about climate change and a significant loss of trust in scientists. But–as we should expect by now–these declines were concentrated among particular groups of Americans: Republicans, conservatives, and those with “individualistic” values. Liberals and those with “egalitarian” values didn’t lose much trust in climate science or scientists at all. “In some ways, Climategate was like a Rorschach test,” Leiserowitz says, “with different groups interpreting ambiguous facts in very different ways.”

Is there a case study of science denial that largely occupies the political left? Yes: the claim that childhood vaccines are causing an epidemic of autism.

​

So is there a case study of science denial that largely occupies the political left? Yes: the claim that childhood vaccines are causing an epidemic of autism. Its most famous proponents are an environmentalist (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and numerous Hollywood celebrities (most notably Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey). The Huffington Post gives a very large megaphone to denialists. And Seth Mnookin, author of the new book The Panic Virus, notes that if you want to find vaccine deniers, all you need to do is go hang out at Whole Foods.

Vaccine denial has all the hallmarks of a belief system that’s not amenable to refutation. Over the past decade, the assertion that childhood vaccines are driving autism rates has been undermined by multiple epidemiological studies–as well as the simple fact that autism rates continue to rise, even though the alleged offending agent in vaccines (a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal) has long since been removed.

Yet the true believers persist–critiquing each new study that challenges their views, and even rallying to the defense of vaccine-autism researcher Andrew Wakefield, after his 1998 Lancet paper–which originated the current vaccine scare–was retracted and he subsequently lost his license (PDF) to practice medicine. But then, why should we be surprised? Vaccine deniers created their own partisan media, such as the website Age of Autism, that instantly blast out critiques and counterarguments whenever any new development casts further doubt on anti-vaccine views.

It all raises the question: Do left and right differ in any meaningful way when it comes to biases in processing information, or are we all equally susceptible?
There are some clear differences. Science denial today is considerably more prominent on the political right–once you survey climate and related environmental issues, anti-evolutionism, attacks on reproductive health science by the Christian right, and stem-cell and biomedical matters. More tellingly, anti-vaccine positions are virtually nonexistent among Democratic officeholders today–whereas anti-climate-science views are becoming monolithic among Republican elected officials.

Some researchers have suggested that there are psychological differences between the left and the right that might impact responses to new information–that conservatives are more rigid and authoritarian, and liberals more tolerant of ambiguity. Psychologist John Jost of New York University has further argued that conservatives are “system justifiers”: They engage in motivated reasoning to defend the status quo.

We all have blinders in some situations. The question then becomes: What can be done to counteract human nature?

​

This is a contested area, however, because as soon as one tries to psychoanalyze inherent political differences, a battery of counterarguments emerges: What about dogmatic and militant communists? What about how the parties have differed through history? After all, the most canonical case of ideologically driven science denial is probably the rejection of genetics in the Soviet Union, where researchers disagreeing with the anti-Mendelian scientist (and Stalin stooge) Trofim Lysenko were executed, and genetics itself was denounced as a “bourgeois” science and officially banned.

The upshot: All we can currently bank on is the fact that we all have blinders in some situations. The question then becomes: What can be done to counteract human nature itself?

GIVEN THE POWER OF our prior beliefs to skew how we respond to new information, one thing is becoming clear: If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn’t trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.

This theory is gaining traction in part because of Kahan’s work at Yale. In one study, he and his colleagues packaged the basic science of climate change into fake newspaper articles bearing two very different headlines–”Scientific Panel Recommends Anti-Pollution Solution to Global Warming” and “Scientific Panel Recommends Nuclear Solution to Global Warming”–and then tested how citizens with different values responded. Sure enough, the latterframing made hierarchical individualists much more open to accepting the fact that humans are causing global warming. Kahan infers that the effect occurred because the science had been written into an alternative narrative that appealed to their pro-industry worldview.

You can follow the logic to its conclusion: Conservatives are more likely to embrace climate science if it comes to them via a business or religious leader, who can set the issue in the context of different values than those from which environmentalists or scientists often argue. Doing so is, effectively, to signal a détente in what Kahan has called a “culture war of fact.” In other words, paradoxically, you don’t lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values–so as to give the facts a fighting chance.

 

[Skarekrow]

This is pretty badass...

Video: This Is What the Music Would Look Like if We Could See It

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What would the music look like if we could see it? Now it is possible thanks to a new scientific “tool” that depicts sound waves in the water.

Each note seems to have its own unique fingerprint, a unique ‘signature’. The most impressive thing is that recent experiments showed that dolphins are able to recognize words based on these “signatures” by using them in some unknown way. The CymaScope device records vibrations produced by every single sound on the surface of distilled water. Due to the high surface tension of the water, the vibrations caused by the harmonics of a sound leave a perfectly visible “mark”.
Each sound seems to have a unique fingerprint, just like every snowflake has a unique shape. Recently CymaScope was used to visualize for the first time the notes of a piano, upon request of New Zealand artist Shannon Novak. It has also been used to record in pictures the vowel sounds of the human voice, as well as music tracks, like the Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the machine”. The creation of CymaScope began in 2002. Initially the scientists used a PVC film and then a film of latex, but water was eventually proved the ideal medium. The resulting images resembled a fabulous kaleidoscope, which showed that in addition to audio, the sound can also provide rich visual spectacle.
“If our eyes could see music we would not see waves, as many believe, but beautiful holographic bubbles with amazing shapes resembling a kaleidoscope. The CymaScope allows us to see this this hidden beauty” write the tool’s creators, John Stuart Reid and Erik Larson.

[video=youtube;WRyCS746j2Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WRyCS746j2Q[/video]

​

Apart from music the CymaScope has been used in a wide range of applications for scientific research. One of the most recent achievements was the contribution to a study suggesting that dolphins have their own language of communication.
The sonar of dolphins serves as a kind of supplementary eye, with the help of which they can “see” using ultrasound and transmit to each other a sound picture. Jack Kassewitz, a researcher based in Miami, decided to use CymaScope to decipher the sounds produced by dolphins. The researcher recorded the sounds produced by a dolphin when “seeing” objects, for example, a plastic cube, an inflatable duck or a flowerpot.
Then these sounds were turned into images and showed to the dolphin again without sound accompaniment. As the experiment showed, the intelligent mammal was able to recognize objects that corresponded to the images with 86 % accuracy. What is even more impressive, Mr. Kassewitz showed the same pictures to another dolphin, which had nothing to do with the experiment, and it recognized the objects with the same accuracy, which suggests that cetaceansuse sounds to communicate with each other, just like we use words. The ambitious plan of the researcher, titled SpeakDolphin, is to decipher this language and use the images to start even a basic conversation with them.
​

​

 

[Skarekrow]

Interesting...

Magic Mushrooms May Have Long-Lasting Positive Effects On Personality

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, can permanently shift people’s personality toward more openness. Just one strong dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms can alter a person’s personality for more than a year and perhaps permanently, a new study finds.

People given psilocybin, the compound in “magic mushrooms” that causes hallucinations and feelings of transcendence, demonstrated a more “open” personality after their experience, an effect that persisted for at least 14 months. Openness is a psychological term referring to an appreciation for new experiences. People who are more open tend to have broad imaginations and value emotion, art and curiosity.
This personality warp is unusual, said study researcher Katherine MacLean, because personality rarely changes much after the age of 25 or 30. (In fact, one recent study found that by first grade our personalities are set pretty much for life.)
“This is one of the first studies to show that you actually can change adult personality,” said MacLean, a postdoctoral researcher at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The root of the change seems to be not the drug itself, MacLean told LiveScience, but the mystical experiences that psilocybin often triggers. These profound, transcendent feelings feel no less real to people for being chemically induced, she said. [Read: How Do Hallucinogens Work?]
“Many years later, people are saying it was one of the most profound experiences of their life,” MacLean said. “If you think about it in that context, it’s not that surprising that it might be permanent.”

Tripping for science
Research on hallucinogens is usually associated with 1960s counterculture figures such as Ken Kesey and his LSD-fueled “Acid Test” parties. But within the last decade, a somber, step-by-step approach to studying the effect of hallucinogens has emerged, MacLean said. Experiments are tightly controlled – it’s not easy to get permission to give volunteers illegal drugs – but they are revealing that substances associated more with Grateful Dead concerts than the psychiatrist’s office may have medical uses after all.
In Massachusetts, the nonprofit research institute MAPS, or Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, is investigating the possibility of using the hallucinogen MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Both LSD and psilocybin are under investigation for their use in treating anxiety; MacLean’s postdoctoral adviser at Johns Hopkins, Ronald Griffiths, is leading a study to find out if psilocybin might ease anxiety and depression in cancer patients. Another of Griffiths’ studies focuses on using psilocybin to break nicotine addiction.
In the current study, MacLean and her colleagues looked at personality questionnaires from 51 people who had taken psilocybin as part of two separate Johns Hopkins studies. The volunteers were all new to hallucinogenic drugs.
Each person attended between two and five eight-hour drug sessions in which they would sit blindfolded on a couch listening to music – a way to encourage introspection. During one of the sessions, the volunteers received a moderate-to-high dose of psilocybin, but neither they nor the experimenters knew whether they would be swallowing a psilocybin pill or a placebo on any given day.
In one experiment, participants came into the laboratory twice. On one visit they were given the real deal and another time they got Ritalin, which mimics the side effects of psilocybin without the hallucinations.
In another experiment, over a course of five sessions, participants received either a placebo or one of varying doses of the drug. For the purposes of this study, the researchers focused on the high-dose session, which was the same dose given during the first experiment.
Before the drug sessions, the participants filled out the personality questionnaire that measured openness. They also filled out the same questionnaires a few weeks later and then again about 14 months after their high hallucinogenic dose.

Transcendence in a pill
The results, published today in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, revealed that while other aspects of personality stayed the same, openness increased after a psilocybin experience. The effect was especially persistent for those who reported a “mystical” experience with their dose. These mystical experiences were marked by a sense of profound connectedness, along with feelings of joy, reverence and peace, MacLean said. [Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind]
“It’s probably not just psilocybin that causes changes like this, but more these kinds of profound life-changing experiences, whatever flavor they take,” she said. “For a lot of people, psilocybin allows them to transcend their ways of thinking about the world.”
About 30 of the 51 volunteers had a mystical experience, MacLean said. The openness changes in these participants were larger than those changes typically seen over decades of life experience in adults.
But this is a strictly do-not-try-this-at-home experiment, MacLean cautioned. The participants in the study were under close supervision during their session with the drug. Psychological support and preparation helped keep bad trips to a minimum, but many participants still reported fear, anxiety and distress after taking psilocybin.

“I could see how in an unsupervised setting, if that sort of fear or anxiety set in, the classic bad trip, it could be pretty dangerous,” MacLean said, adding that the risk of unsupervised usage outweighs any potential reward. Psilocybin is classified as a Schedule I drug in the U.S., meaning the government considers it to have a high potential for abuse and no legitimate medical purpose. [Read: The 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

It’s not yet clear whether unsupervised usage would even result in the same changes in openness as seen in the study, MacLean said. The study group was small, and was already more religious and more open than the general population.

MacLean is now researching the effects of combining psilocybin with meditation. There could be therapeutic benefits to boosting openness, she said, including helping people break out of negative thought patterns. The studies might also illuminate the anecdotal connection between hallucinogens and art, she said: “On the most speculative side, this suggests that there might be an application of psilocybn for creativity or more intellectual outcomes that we really haven’t explored at all.”

 

[Skarekrow]

Telepathic Girl Baffles Researchers with Her Ability to Read Minds

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Being autistic, Nandana Unnikrishnan is not like other girls her age. Despite the troubles that come with such a developmental disorder, autism sometimes lends itself to unusual and amazing talents, but never one like this: Nandana is allegedly telepathic.

According to initial testing, it appears that the young Indian girl has the ability to read her mother’s thoughts and emotions with no physical contact, able to pass ESP tests with flying colors, even going so far as to type out entire poems that have been telepathically communicated to her. The results have stunned skeptical researchers like Dr. Phillip John of the Indian Psychiatric Society, who told the Khaleej Times that he believes Nandana’s case is genuine.

“We see several autistic children with savant skills like unusual Mathematical skills, extraordinary memory about calendar days and dates. In such cases, they have access to their memory. In some people with schizophrenia, there is a symptom called “thought broadcast” wherein they believe their thoughts are known to others. It is not transmission of memory. In Nandana’s case, she has access to her mother’s memory and there is a transmission of memory, that too without a medium. This is the first time I am seeing a case like this. Here, we are talking about memory as a function which is why it is very surprising. This is a very rare phenomenon of transmission of memory without a medium.”

Nandana’s parents first became aware of her bizarre talents when they began to notice “unusual coincidences” when it came to her almost premeditated responses to her mother’s thoughts and feelings.

“I used to feel strange when she would come to me and say the name of the food I was thinking of preparing for her”, Nandana’s mother Sandhya, told reporters. “The same way, if my husband and I had decided to take her somewhere, she would know about it without being told about it and would start reacting to it.”

Despite her amazing ability, the autistic girl still has trouble grasping certain concepts like words and objects, and has some issues writing and verbally communicating. To help overcome this challenge, Sandhya gave her daughter a keyboard, which she uses to type out responses. This has come with it’s own set of hurdles.
“Now, if I prompt her to type what I am thinking of, she can do that. Sometimes there could be spelling mistakes and she cannot understand the concept of punctuation marks and the space bar. If I say space in my mind when she types the words, she might start typing the word ‘space’ instead of leaving a space between the words,” Sandhya said.

The case has even attracted the attention of Dr. Darold A. Treffert, whose work in the field of gifted children has earned him the reputation of “godfather of savant research”, and even he believes that Nandana’s case is “very convincing”.

“I certainly want to emphasize that Nandana’s case is extraordinarily rare in an already rare condition, but with far-reaching ramifications,” he told the Khaleej Times.
In one test, Nandana and her mother were placed in separate rooms and Sandyha was given a six digit number to glance at. When Nandana was able to type the number with ease, the researchers decided to up the ante, and gave her mother a Grade 2 level poem to read. When prompted, the young girl was able to type the entire poem without issue.

As of now, Dr. Treffert remains amazed, but has urged the family to seek more controlled testing in order to verify claims of the girls extrasensory powers.
“I also want to compliment you on the testing you did to confirm the ability…When it is musical skill, or art, the pieces speak for themselves. But in this instance the ability needs to be demonstrated by more rigorous testing of the type you did.”

If it turns out that Nandana’s abilities are, in fact, genuine, the implications would change everything we know about how the mind works and the shockwaves would be far reaching in the scientific fields. For now though, what we’re left with is a little girl whose mother is simply interested in answers.
“We want to know how it is possible for her to have this ability and how best we can make use of this for her future benefits or for others.”

Step one: build school for gifted children.

Step two: begin forming the real life X-Men.​

 

[Skarekrow]

Fox in the Hen House! The Ghastly Possession of the Nuns of Loudun

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The trial of Urbain Grandier for witchcraft was either a witch hunt in truth, or in the sarcastic way that we use the term today. Either Grandier used black magic to infest the nuns of Loudun with a number of powerful demons, or he was a victim of religious persecution because his beliefs were a threat to the Catholic Church in 17[SUP]th[/SUP]-century France. Aldous Huxley wrote a well-researched account of the incident to draw attention to McCarthyism in his era, positing that Grandier was in fact innocent—a victim of Catholic authoritarianism, of righteousness turned into bloodlust, bigotry, and greed.

​

Whether scapegoat or sorcerer, he paid the ultimate price for his entanglement with this historic case of mass possession. Since the account of the possessions is far more captivating than a hoax, we’ll borrow from Des Niau’s account The Devils of Loudun, written in 1634, as our primary text. All quotes henceforth, unless noted, come from his work. Huxley’s conjectures will form a backdrop to Des Niau’s retelling. Now—ahem—on with the story!

Urbain Grandier was the curate of Loudun at the dawn of the 1600s. Early in his career, he was suspected of hosting certain Reformation sympathies, which held that a simple faith unadorned by elaborate sacraments and rituals was more akin to the religious life than the lavish ceremonies of the Roman Catholics. He had a following of Huguenauts (a Reformist order of Christians who were soon to face bloody persecution all across France) who endorsed his authority in the town, much to the chagrin of more traditional Catholics. This, and perhaps other such blasphemous acts as sleeping with women, earned him many enemies in his parish and abroad. Whether his Reformist beliefs (and tomcat tendencies) figured in his ultimate torture and execution we can weigh later. Suffice it to say now that he was not exactly the most popular priest on the pulpit.

Grandier’s bad rep soon took a toll on his professional life when he lost the bid to become Prior Moussaut (the nuns’ confessor) at the Loudun nunnery. Instead a man named Canon Mignon was selected, whose reputation was sterling by comparison. By Des Niau’s account, anything you could hate in a guy, Grandier was that and worse. On the other hand, Mignon was just the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, the real McCoy. Sterling, just sterling he was.

When it came to light some time later that the nuns of this convent had become possessed by demons, their pupils and patrons headed for the hills in fear, leaving Mignon to set about the long and difficult task of exorcism with some dedicated priests. While Mignon went through the rites with the Mother Superior (who seemed worst afflicted by the demons), he questioned the hideous devil as to who had summoned them. Grandier, it replied, and spoke of him as their master. This is where it gets interesting.

Apparently the nuns had been plagued by visions of Grandier night and day for several months. He appeared by magical means to wreak havoc on their quiet monastic life, enticing them to do all sorts of sinful acts, which the nuns rejected steadfastly (we may presume) until the possessions began—after which their behavior was anything but nunly.

The nuns showed all the classic signs of demonic possession. They spoke in languages unknown to them, and seemed to possess a bottomless well of arcane knowledge. They often revealed secret thoughts and uttered blasphemies so repulsive that no chronicler dared to record them. Various tests were administered to assure any
skeptics that the convent had indeed come under the influence of the Devil.

​

One priest ordered the demon possessing Sister Clara to fetch him five rose leaves from the garden—using only his mind. She returned with a handful of flowers and herbs, and presented them saying, “‘Is that what you wish, father? I am not a Devil, to guess your thoughts.’” He ordered her to obey for the glory of God. “She then returned to the garden, and after several repetitions of the order, presented through the railings a little rose branch, on which were six leaves. The Exorcist said to her: ‘Obedias punctualiter sub pœnâ maledictionis,’ obey to the letter under penalty of malediction; she then plucked off one leaf, and offered the branch saying: ‘I see you will only have five; the other was one too many.’”

The horrifying nature of their contortions is so astounding and well written that I will quote Des Niau at length.
The possessed nuns, “passed from a state of quiet into the most terrible convulsions, and without the slightest increase of pulsation. They struck their chests and backs with their heads, as if they had had their neck broken, and with inconceivable rapidity; they twisted their arms at the joints of the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist two or three times round; lying on their stomachs they joined their palms of their hands to the soles of their feet; their faces became so as the commissioners should incline. It further frightful one could not bear to look at them; their eyes remained open without winking; their tongues issued suddenly from their mouths, horribly swollen, black, hard, and covered with pimples, and yet while in this state they spoke distinctly; they threw themselves back till their heads touched their feet, and walked in this position with wonderful rapidity, and for a long time.

“They uttered: cries so horrible and so loud that nothing like it was ever heard before; they made use of expressions so indecent as to shame the most debauched of men, while their acts, both in exposing themselves and inviting lewd behavior from those present, would have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothel in the country; they uttered maledictions against the three Divine Persons of the Trinity, oaths and blasphemous expressions so execrable, so unheard of, that they could not have suggested themselves to the human mind.

“They used to watch without rest, and fast five or six days at a time, or be tortured twice a day as we have described during several hours, without their health
suffering; on the contrary, those that were somewhat delicate, appeared healthier than before their possession.

​

“The Devil sometimes made them fall suddenly asleep: they fell to the ground and became so heavy, that the strongest man had great trouble in even moving their heads. Françoise Filestreau having her mouth closed, one could hear within her body different voices speaking at the same time, quarrelling, and discussing who should make her speak.

“Lastly, one often saw Elizabeth Blanchard, in her convulsions, with her feet in the air and her head on the ground, leaning against a chair or a window sill without other support.
“The Mother Superior from the beginning was carried off her feet and remained suspended in the air at the height of 24 inches. A report of this was drawn up and sent to the Sorbonne, signed by a great number of witnesses, ecclesiastics and doctors, and the judgment thereon of the Bishop of Poitiers who was also a witness. The doctors of the Sorbonne were of the same opinion as the Bishop, and declared that infernal possession was proved.

“Both she and other nuns lying flat, without moving foot, hand, or body, were suddenly lifted to their feet like statues.
“In another exorcism the Mother Superior was suspended in the air, only touching the ground with her elbow.
“Others, when comatose, became supple like a thin piece of lead, so that their body could be bent in every direction, forward, backward, or sideways, till their head touched the ground; and they remained thus so long as their position was not altered by others.

“At other times they passed the left foot over their shoulder to the cheek. They passed also their feet over their head till the big toe touched the tip of the nose.
“Others again were able to stretch their legs so far to the right and left that they sat on the ground without any space being visible between their bodies and the floor, their bodies erect and their hands joined.

“One, the Mother Superior, stretched her legs to such an extraordinary extent, that from toe to toe the distance was 7 feet, though she was herself but 4 feet high.”
The nature of these possessions was so severe that Grandier’s trial was expedited in hopes that his death might break the spell and relieve the nuns. (This was to be far from the case, as we shall see.) On top of the testament of the demons, a Surgeon had discovered three Devil’s Marks upon Grandier—a common indicator in witch trials of this era. A needle inserted into one of these marks would produce neither blood nor pain in their bearer. They were said to be signs of a contract with Lucifer himself.

Another key piece of evidence against him was a very literal contract with the devil—which one of the nuns had miraculously produced during an exorcism. The archaic-looking script (supposedly written in Grandier’s own hand) read in full:

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“My Lord and Master, Lucifer, I recognise you as my God, and promise to serve you all my life. I renounce every other God, Jesus Christ, and all other Saints; the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, its Sacraments, with all prayers that may be said for me; and I promise to do all the evil I can. I renounce the holy oil and the water of baptism, together with all the merits of Jesus Christ and his Saints; and should I fail to serve and adore you, and do homage to you thrice daily, I abandon to you my life as your due.” Signed—Grandier, Beelzebub, and some other cryptic sigils of lesser hellions.

Grandier was tortured mercilessly in hopes of procuring a confession (or a conversion), but he would not repent or admit to his alleged sorcery. It was a great wonder to his torturers that he would neither cry nor invoke the names of the Holy Virgin, Jesus Christ, of God above in all his torment. He refused holy water even when utterly parched, and would not even cast a glance at the crucifix hanging before him. They thought this was a sure sign that his soul was in the boa-constrictor grip of Satan. Huxley thought that if you were being wrongly tortured by the Church, you might not want to invoke Christ, either.

“I am not astonished,” says one who was present, “at his impenitence, nor at his refusing to acknowledge himself guilty of magic, both under torture and at his execution, for it is known that magicians promise the devil never to confess this crime, and he in return hardens their heart, so that they go to their death stupid and altogether insensible to their misfortunes.” In other words, since Grandier was in league with the Devil, he didn’t know what was good for him.
Burning at the stake was good for him. Everyone said so.

On his final march to the place of his execution, he finally said the name of God. “Pray God for me,” he told several men in the crowd. But these men were Huguenauts, so it didn’t count as repentance.

​

Grandier’s final moments were as gruesome and strange as the events that lead up to it. Grandier was lashed to a post and the tinder at his feet was lit. “The executioner then advanced, as is always done, to strangle him; but the flames suddenly sprang up with such violence that the rope caught fire, and he fell alive among the burning faggots. Just before this a strange event happened. In the midst of this mass of people, notwithstanding the noise of so many voices and the efforts of the archers who shook their halberts in the air to frighten them, a flight of pigeons [note: a species of dove] flew round and round the stake.

Grandier’s partisans [the Huguenauts and Reformers], impudent to the end, said that these innocent birds came, in default of men, as witnesses of his innocence; others thought very differently, and said that it was a troop of demons who came, as sometimes happens on the death of great magicians, to assist at that of Grandier, whose scandalous impenitence certainly deserved to be honoured in this manner. His friends, however, called this hardness of heart constancy, and had his ashes collected as if they were relics.”

I wonder why a “troop of demons” would take the form of the Holy Spirit’s totem animal—the dove? And why would the Huguenauts be so stubborn in treating Grandier as a martyr when he had so obviously been in league with the Prince of Darkness? It turns out that not everyone was so convinced that Grandier was to blame for the possessions, after all. But I digress.

Some involved in the possessions—nun and priest alike—were tormented unto death by the demons, despite having done away with Grandier. The Mother Superior was at last relieved when, “After tremblings, contortions, and horrible howlings, Father Surin pressed him more and more with the Holy Sacrament in his hand, and ordered him [the demon] in Latin to write the name of Mary on the lady’s hand. Raising her left arm into the air, the fiend redoubled his cries and howls, and in a last convulsion issued from the lady, leaving on her hand the holy name Maria, in letters so perfectly formed that no human hand could imitate them. The lady felt herself free and full of joy; and a Te Deum was sung in honour of the event.” Other folks involved, however, were not so lucky.
​

​

“Father Lactance, the worthy monk who had assisted the possessed in their sufferings, was himself attacked… All of a sudden, whilst rolling along a perfectly level road, the carriage turned over with the wheels in the air without any one being in any way hurt. The next day… the carriage again turned over in the same way in the middle of the Rue du Faubourg de Fenet, which is perfectly smooth… This holy monk afterwards experienced the greatest vexations from the demons, who at times deprived him of sight, and at times of memory; they produced in him violent fits of nausea, dulled his intelligence, and worried him in numerous ways. At length, after being tried by so many evils, God called him to Him.

“Five years later, died of the same disease Father Tranquille… They cast him to the ground, they cursed and swore out of his mouth, they caused him to put out his tongue and hiss like a serpent, they filled his mind with darkness, seemed to crush out his heart, and overwhelmed him with a thousand other torments.
“The Civil Lieutenant, Louis Chauvet, was seized with such fear-that his mind gave way, and he never recovered. The Sieur Mannouri, the Surgeon who had sounded the marks which the devil had impressed on the magician priest, suffering from extraordinary troubles, was of course said by the friends of Grandier to be the victim of remorse. Here are the particulars of the death of this Surgeon—

“One night as he was returning about ten o’clock from visiting a sick man, walking with a friend, and accompanied by a man carrying a lantern, he cried all of a sudden, like a man awaking from a dream, ‘Ah! there is Grandier! what do you want?’ At the same time he was seized with trembling. The two men took him back to his home, while he continued to talk to Grandier whom he thought he had before his eyes. He was put to bed filled with the same illusion, and shaking in every limb. He only lived a few days, during which his state never changed. He died believing the magician was still before him, and making efforts to keep him at arm’s length.”

I think there is no question as to whether a real possession took place. The accounts are too vivid, otherworldly, and well documented to have been hoaxed all together. As Des Niau concluded, “Even those who do not blush to deny the truth of infernal possessions need only notice that the human race has always believed, and still believes, that there are intelligent creatures in existence other than man, and almost similar to those whom the Pagans have always represented as Gods of Evil, or subterranean genii, like the demons believed in by Christians.” But the real mystery is whether Grandier was to blame for their presence in Loudun.

Malachi Martin, the world-renowned authority on exorcism and possession, has written that in order for a demon to possess a victim, they must first consent with their own free will. Usually that means making a proverbial “deal with the devil.” If that’s true, we have two choices—either the nuns of Loudun were all Satanists in bed with Old Scratch himself, or some hoax was perpetrated against the Reformist minority and their local leader Urbain Grandier. But then what of the Surgeon’s frightful visions of a phantom Grandier? Did his restless spirit return to avenge his unjust fate? Or was it an echo of his powerful pact with darkness, a specter raised from the brimstone?
​

Huxley concluded his book like this: “Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.” The Catholic Church reaped countless innocent souls during their inquisitions, crusades, and cultural genocides—all in the name of the Holy Cross. It just goes to show that no matter how heavenly a symbol is—even if pure as lamb’s wool—it can turn to bloodlust and hellfire in the dark mirror of hatred and intolerance. Whether Grandier was innocent or guilty we may never know. Huxley’s work offers some good rebuttals to the evidence for it. But whether his reading of dusty records is more reliable than Des Niau’s close-at-hand account is hard to say.

All in all, this parable has more facets of evil than a cold diamond, and may guide us into a better understanding of the forces of good, for better or worse.​

 

[Skarekrow]

Dream Telepathy Research Reborn

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​

There’s new signs of life for the study of dream telepathy.
A compelling 2013 report published by Carlyle Smith, Lifetime Professor Emeritus at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, found statistically unlikely levels of targeted dream content in two related studies of college students.
These 2 new studies are a welcome addition to a field of inquiry that is often referred to the third rail of psychology. (That’s a choo-choo metaphor: touch it and you’ll die!)

The New Telepathic Dreaming Studies
Both of Smith’s experiments exposed students to a photo of an individual and asked them to try to dream about the problems of that person. So there are sender and receivers, as is traditional in dream telepathy studies. The identity of the senders were unknown, even to the experimenters themselves.
In Experiment 1, the focus was on health problems of the individual in the photo. The study compared 2 dreams that the students submitted before the “incubation” began with 2 dreams collected afterwards.

In Experiment 2, the focus was on life problems of the individual in the photograph. Like the first study, students submitted 2 dreams before they were informed about the aim of the study. Experiment 2 also used an additional control: about half of the students (56 people) looked at a photograph that was unbeknownst to them a computer simulated image—not a real person.

In both studies, the experimental post-incubation groups had many more “hits” than the controls, a hit being an image or concept in the dream that correlated to real problems of the individual in question.
More convincing for me, in experiment 2, the dream content of the control group (who looked at a fictional person’s image) did not change from before and after incubation, where as the experimental group had a large (statistically significant) change (see the graph below).

Carlyle Smith says this about the findings:

The data from these experiments suggests that normal undergraduates were able to have dreams with content that reflected the real-life problems and concerns of an unknown target individual. The content reported by each experimental individual varied somewhat and the focus varied from dreamer to dreamer, but overall, the scores on specified categories were quite significantly different for the target in experiment 2. Equally important was the lack of change in content for the Controls where the target was fictitious.
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Here’s where to read the study yourself. There’s great details about the dream themes and how they related to the sender’s real-life problems.

Building on the Legacy of Maimonides
In many respects, these studies owe much to the legacy of earlier studies conducted by Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman in the 1970s and 1980s at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. If you haven’t done so, pick up Dream Telepathy for an interesting read about their incredible years of experiments, comprising over 40 studies. Here's an image of Stan Krippner on the night shift at Maimonides Medical Center - you can see the polysomnograph printing out on the left, recording a dreamer’s brain waves.

Like the Maimonides studies, Smith carefully designed the experiments so the experimenters themselves did not have information about the “sender.” Smith’s studies also used the Hall Van de Castle system to quantity the reports, making statistical research on dream content possible.
One of Smith’s interesting innovations is the use of a “placebo” or control. However, unlike Maimonides, these student’s dreams were not lab verified by EEG, but rather relied on home reports.

Also, as far as I can tell, unlike some of the Maimonides studies, Smith’s studies did not use third-party or independent researchers to code the dream content. Because Smith’s method is so transparent, this could be easily done at a later point. (But, then again, that’s a big problem in this field of inquiry: getting other researchers to replicate the conditions of a study or even look at the data in the first place.)

The Future of Dream Telepathy is in Your Pocket
Neurologist Patrick McNamara brought these studies to my attention in in his recent blog poston Psychology Today. McNamara stands behind Smith’s integrity as a researcher, pointing out that he is one of the cognitive psychologists who first revealed sleep’s role in memory consolidation. In fact, in 2009, Smith won the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Canadian Sleep Society.

McNamara has this to say about the significance of Smith’s findings:

Whatever the mechanism, tests of the reality of dream telepathy should continue apace. Use of huge dream communities, like those atdreamboard.com and dreamscloud.com, should be enlisted. If hits continue to rise to above chance levels, as in Smith’s studies, imagine if one had 200,000 dreamers attempting to dream the details of a pictured individual’s problems? Thousands to millions of dreamers might be enlisted to dream about possible practical solutions to the target’s problems.

​

I agree: smart phones are perfect data collectors because we carry them everywhere, and most us sleep next to them too. Home reports on a mass scale are going to blow the roof off of many aspects of dream research, including dream telepathy and other kinds of extraordinary dreaming. Apps, including ones McNamara didn’t mention such as SHADOW and Dream:Oncould take a role in setting up dream research, collecting reports, and even analyzing the data to some degree.
Take it a step further: I am really looking forward to the dream app that also functions as a home sleep lab (like sweet sweet Zeo used to do), providing timestamps on the dream reports by actigraphy, EEG, EOG, or a combination of these methods.

Are you listening, Beddit?
By no means am I neutral about the potential of telepathic dreaming, as I’ve experienced some pretty anomalous encounters in my time. But is it really telepathy? Or is it clairvoyance? What about precognitive dreams too? Is the space-time continuum just messing with us?

As Doctor Who puts it:

[video=youtube;vY_Ry8J_jdw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vY_Ry8J_jdw[/video]​

Who really knows at this point? I just I know that the weirdness is built right in. I just try my best to honor these seemingly psychic dreams when they show up.
I can only assume that scientific research will continue to reveal how these things work, even though it may take a more radical scientific culture for more researchers to try. Smith’s work is poised to reignite the debate.

 

[sprinkles]

This is pretty badass...

Video: This Is What the Music Would Look Like if We Could See It

Interestingly, sound visualization doesn't have to be so ordered. The perception is abstractly constructed in the perceiver.

[video=youtube;fpViZkhpPHk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpViZkhpPHk[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

What an amazing experience this must have been!!

Astronauts' life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside​

On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.
The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

“When we look down at the Earth from space we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet – it looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile.”– Ron Garan (quote from the film)



‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.

“This view of the Earth from space – the whole Earth perspective – is, I think, the true symbol of this age. I believe … there’s going to be a greater and greater interest in communicating this idea because, after all, it’s key to our survival. We have to start acting as one species with one destiny. We are not going to survive if we don’t do that.”- Frank White (quote from the film)


‘Overview’ is a stand-alone short film, but also serves a prelude to Planetary Collective’s forthcoming feature documentary ‘Continuum’, due for release in 2013.
‘Continuum’ will explore this worldview even further, weaving together perspectives and ideas from some of the key theorists and thinkers in the fields of cosmology, environmentalism, sustainability, social theory and anthropology, telling the story of where we have come from, where we are now, and the possibilities for our future.

[video=vimeo;55073825]http://vimeo.com/55073825[/video]

Website is here: http://www.overviewthemovie.com/#!/watch/​

 

[Skarekrow]

I never really did...lol.

 

[Skarekrow]

Here’s Why You Should Convert Your Music To 432 Hz​

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” — Nikola Tesla



“What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” — Albert Einstein

​

Tesla said it. Einstein Agreed. Science proved it. It is a known fact that everything–including our own bodies–is made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies. That being said, can sound frequencies affect us? They sure can. Frequencies affect frequencies; much like mixing ingredients with other ingredients affects the overall flavor of a meal. The way frequencies affect the physical world has been demonstrated through various experiments such as the science of Cymatics and water memory.

The science of Cymatics illustrates that when sound frequencies move through a particular medium such as water, air or sand, it directly alters the vibration of matter. Below are pictures demonstrating how particles adjust to different frequencies. (Click here to watch a video demonstrating the patterns of sound frequencies)

Water memory also illustrates how our own intentions can even alter the material world. This has been demonstrated by Dr. Masaru Emoto, who has performed studies showing how simple intentions through sound, emotions and thoughts can dramatically shape the way water crystallizes. 




We all hold a certain vibrational frequency, not to mention our bodies are estimated to be about 70% water… so we can probably expect that musical frequencies can alter our own vibrational state. Some may call this ‘pseudoscience,’ however the science and patterns shown above don’t lie. Every expression through sound, emotion or thought holds a specific frequency which influences everything around it–much like a single drop of water can create a larger ripple effect in a large body of water.

MUSIC FREQUENCY

With this concept in mind, let us bring our attention to the frequency of the music we listen to. Most music worldwide has been tuned to A=440 Hz since the International Standards Organization (ISO) promoted it in 1953. However, studies regarding the vibratory nature of the universe indicate that this pitch is disharmonious with the natural resonance of nature and may generate negative effects on human behaviour and consciousness. Certain theories even suggest that the nazi regime has been in favor of adopting this pitch as standard after conducting scientific researches to determine which range of frequencies best induce fear and aggression. Whether or not the conspiracy is factual, interesting studies and observations have pointed towards the benefits of tuning music to A=432 Hz instead.

432 Hz is said to be mathematically consistent with the patterns of the universe. Studies reveal that 432hz tuning vibrates with the universe’s golden mean PHI and unifies the properties of light, time, space, matter, gravity and magnetism with biology, the DNA code and consciousness. When our atoms and DNA start to resonate in harmony with the spiraling pattern of nature, our sense of connection to nature is said to be magnified. The number 432 is also reflected in ratios of the Sun, Earth, and the moon as well as the precession of the equinoxes, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge, the Sri Yantra among many other sacred sites.

“From my own observations, some of the harmonic overtone partials of A=432hz 12T5 appear to line up to natural patterns and also the resonance of solitons. Solitons need a specific range to form into the realm of density and span from the micro to the macro cosmos. Solitons are not only found in water mechanics, but also in the ion-acoustic breath between electrons and protons.” — Brian T. Collins

Another interesting factor to consider is that the A=432 Hz tuning correlates with the color spectrum while the A=440 Hz is off.

“The Solar Spectrum & The Cosmic Keyboard:
All of the frequencies in the spectrum are related in octaves, from gamma rays to subharmonics. These colors and notes are also related to our Chakras and other important energy centers. If we are to understand that (…) Chakras are connected to the Seven Rays of the Solar Spectrum, then the notes and frequencies we use for the same should be the same. A432 Hz is the tuning of the Cosmic Keyboard or Cosmic Pitchfork, as opposed to the A440 Hz modern ‘standard.’ It places C# at 136.10 Hz ‘Om,’ which is the main note of the Sitar in classical Indian music and the pitch of the chants of the Tibetan monks, who tell us ‘It comes from nature.’” — Dameon Keller

Let’s explore the experiential difference between A=440 Hz and A=432 Hz. The noticeable difference music lovers and musicians have noticed with music tuned in A=432 Hz is that it is not only more beautiful and harmonious to the ears, but it also induces a more inward experience that is felt inside the body at the spine and heart. Music tuned in A=440 Hz was felt as a more outward and mental experience, and was felt at the side of the head which projected outwards. Audiophiles have also stated that A=432hz music seems to be non-local and can fill an entire room, whereas A=440hz can be perceived as directional or linear in sound propagation.

“The ancients tuned their instruments at an A of 432 Hz instead of 440 Hz — and for a good reason. There are plenty of music examples on the internet that you can listen to, in order to establish the difference for yourself. Attuning the instrument to 432 Hz results in a more relaxing sound, while 440 Hz slightly tenses up to body. This is because 440 Hz is out of tune with both macrocosmos and microcosmos. 432 Hz on the contrary is in tune. To give an example of how this is manifested microcosmically: our breath (0,3 Hz) and our puls (1,2 Hz) relate to the frequency of the lower octave of an A of 432 Hz (108 Hz) as 1:360 and 1:90.” — innergarden.org
“The overall sound difference was noticeable, the 432 version sounding warmer, clearer and instantly sounded more listenable but the 440 version felt tighter, with more aggressive energy.” — Anonymous guitarist

[video=youtube;1zw0uWCNsyw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1zw0uWCNsyw[/video]


The video below was created by someone with no preference or opinion on whether A=432 Hz or A=440 Hz is better. Therefore, the way both versions of the melody is played is unbiased. It is up to us to tune in and feel which one feels more harmonious to us!

[video=youtube;74JzBgm9Mz4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=74JzBgm9Mz4[/video]

Here’s another example:

David Helpling — Sticks and Stones in 440 hz: http://youtu.be/PewsS9Y9pVo

David Helpling — Sticks and Stones in 432 hz: http://youtu.be/w8KEVikJMck

I personally have enjoyed many bands, artists and styles of music even though they were tuning in A=440 hz, however by comparing a few songs in both A=432 hz and A=440 hz, I can feel and hear the difference. I wouldn’t say that my experience of 440hz music has turned me into an aggressive person, but I can understand how an entire population being exposed to music that is more mind directed as opposed to heart directed–not to mention all of the materialistic and ego-driven lyrics in most popular music–is a perfect combination to maintain a more discordant frequency and state of consciousness within humanity.

“Music based on C=128hz (C note in concert A=432hz) will support humanity on its way towards spiritual freedom. The inner ear of the human being is built on C=128 hz” — Rudolph Steiner

I cannot state with complete certainty that every idea suggested in this article is 100% accurate, nor am I an expert on the subject. For this reason, I suggest that we each do our own research on the matter with an open yet discerning mind if we are looking for scientific validation. However, we all possess intuition and the ability to observe without judgment–which can be just as valuable (if not more) as filling our heads with external data and even scientific concepts. It is therefore up to us to tone down the urge to jump to conclusions and instead EXPERIENCE the difference between A=440 Hz and A=432 Hz. To do so, we need to listen with our entire body and a neutral awareness as opposed to with our mental ideas, judgments and preconceptions.

Let me know which frequency resonates more with you!

If you are interested in changing your music’s pitch to A=432 hz, click HERE to learn how to do it.

SOURCES
1. Omega432: http://omega432.com/432-music/the-importance-of-432hz-music
2. Inner Garden: http://www.innergarden.org/en/article1.html
3. Daemon Keller: http://dameonkeller.wix.com/esotericartschicago#!sound-&-vibration-and-color-&-light
4. Veritas: http://www.medicalveritas.org/MedicalVeritas/Musical_Cult_Control.html
5. ZenGardner: http://www.zengardner.com/440hz-music-conspiracy-to-detune-us-from-natural-432hz-harmonics/
6. Why Don’t You Try This: http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/20...etune-good-vibrations-from-natural-432hz.html
7. Attuned Vibrations: http://attunedvibrations.com/432hz/
8. Humans Are Free: http://humansarefree.com/2011/05/432-hz-vs-440-hz-documentary.html

 

[Eventhorizon]

Im thinking of the possibility atoms have energy and form structure because of vibration present in the universe...

 

[Skarekrow]

Im thinking of the possibility atoms have energy and form structure because of vibration present in the universe...

Well, it just seems to make sense that different vibrations would influence our bodies...even at a quantum level.

“What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” – Albert Einstein

This quote implies that there really is NO separation between what we determine as "matter"...that when we think something is separate, when we think that WE are separate...it is all really the same bits of "matter" vibrating in the universe. The "matter" that makes up our brain communicates with itself...so why not two "individual" brains having the ability to communicate too? Why not? It only seems to make sense that the atoms vibrating through the air that are in contact with us could somehow send a message if we only knew how.

 

[Eventhorizon]

An explosion so massive the shock wave causes things to vibrate at the quantum level which in turn causes energy to "group". Kind of like a bell. Is it possible the explosion itself is what caused matter to form? Just thinking out loud. Dark energy could just be the lessening of vibration and where things "ungroup" as they lose enervy supplied by the vibration.

 

[Skarekrow]

An explosion so massive the shock wave causes things to vibrate at the quantum level which in turn causes energy to "group". Kind of like a bell. Is it possible the explosion itself is what caused matter to form? Just thinking out loud. Dark energy could just be the lessening of vibration and where things "ungroup" as they lose enervy supplied by the vibration.

If I'm not mistaken that is exactly what causes the elements to form during a supernova...and on a lesser scale it is what they are doing at the Large Haydron Collider.
They have even found a brand new element for the periodic table that way...at the GSI research facility in Gemany...it is the heaviest element we know of now...although it only lasts for a split second before decaying - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23849334
Interesting stuff!

 

[say what]

I'm very interested in how natural sounds interact with our senses to produce positive health benefits...I think the record/tree article and the Cymatics illustration of sound article to be a neat perspective. Imagine if they were combined? What do the sounds of nature look like? Mind you, I wonder how natural the sound from the tree is, given that it's synthetically created through a computer program.