Merkabah

[sprinkles]

Well, it doesn’t have to be contradictory…
Like the statement “Life is but a dream…”
We don’t know what the actual, true reality is…we don’t have the power to see from that perspective. Not to say that what we are experiencing isn’t real, because it certainly is to us, even if it is illusory, from our perspective it is “real” and so, even if it weren’t truly real…we have made it that way in our minds.

Well there's reality in the categorical sense and reality in the identification sense. We don't have to know what is reality to know what reality is. Knowing the nature of reality is irrelevant in the categorical sense. Reality is simply that which is real. 1. it's tautological and 2. you never have to know it.

Moreover Discordianism teaches that there's but one reality and ideas about reality are projected onto it.

The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper that is the level of distinction making.

With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about- reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids.

Ignore the nonsense about enlightened individuals and pay attention to the window analogy. Everyone sees the same thing differently. The mind receives reality and reaches its biased conclusions from an input. It does not project reality. If the mind projected reality it would also necessarily project the fact that it projects itself because that too would be reality.

i.e. if reality exists in your mind then the reality of reality existing in your mind exists in your mind.

 

[Skarekrow]

Well there's reality in the categorical sense and reality in the identification sense. We don't have to know what is reality to know what reality is. Knowing the nature of reality is irrelevant in the categorical sense. Reality is simply that which is real. 1. it's tautological and 2. you never have to know it.

Moreover Discordianism teaches that there's but one reality and ideas about reality are projected onto it.



Ignore the nonsense about enlightened individuals and pay attention to the window analogy. Everyone sees the same thing differently. The mind receives reality and reaches its biased conclusions from an input. It does not project reality. If the mind projected reality it would also necessarily project the fact that it projects itself because that too would be reality.

i.e. if reality exists in your mind then the reality of reality existing in your mind exists in your mind.

See..this is why I enjoy talking with you. Nicely said.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Hyper real... what an interesting terminology. As if hyper real is more than real.

A person who can only see compare to a perso that can see, taste, touch, smell. Both live in the same world but is the one who can experience the world on greater levels more real than the other?

Religions are popping up because with the advent of almost unlimited information almost everyones finger tips more and more people are finding there is no logical basis for the old ones. As fear can no longer corrall and limit peoples minds they slowly die. However a vacuum is created in many cases and must be filled. I like where [MENTION=2578]Kgal[/MENTION] is headed though I wont follow. She keeps an open mind and is on an awesome path. What I dont like though is terminology that most people will associate with far far fringe thinking and I think thats bs because it shouldnt be viewed as such. These folks talking about frequencies etc need to reign it in and use terminology that more peoe can get on board with and be interested in.

Ive lost my point again...

 

[Skarekrow]

Hyper real... what an interesting terminology. As if hyper real is more than real.

A person who can only see compare to a perso that can see, taste, touch, smell. Both live in the same world but is the one who can experience the world on greater levels more real than the other?

Religions are popping up because with the advent of almost unlimited information almost everyones finger tips more and more people are finding there is no logical basis for the old ones. As fear can no longer corrall and limit peoples minds they slowly die. However a vacuum is created in many cases and must be filled. I like where @Kgal is headed though I wont follow. She keeps an open mind and is on an awesome path. What I dont like though is terminology that most people will associate with far far fringe thinking and I think thats bs because it shouldnt be viewed as such. These folks talking about frequencies etc need to reign it in and use terminology that more peoe can get on board with and be interested in.

Ive lost my point again...

So you think that the new age type beliefs and religions(?) are not appealing because people cannot grasp or visualize what is being said?
So the message isn’t necessarily wrong, just the way it is presented? That would seem to be the case for many of today’s religions.

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Eventhorizon]

So you think that the new age type beliefs and religions(?) are not appealing because people cannot grasp or visualize what is being said?
So the message isn’t necessarily wrong, just the way it is presented? That would seem to be the case for many of today’s religions.

Simply yes.

 

[say what]

[video=youtube;FAcTIrA2Qhk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FAcTIrA2Qhk[/video]
[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION]
Some compelling reasons to meditate.

Thanks!! This is great!

I start another course in two weeks- I'm excited to have it force me to get back into it!

 

[Kgal]

Hyper real... what an interesting terminology. As if hyper real is more than real.

A person who can only see compare to a perso that can see, taste, touch, smell. Both live in the same world but is the one who can experience the world on greater levels more real than the other?

Religions are popping up because with the advent of almost unlimited information almost everyones finger tips more and more people are finding there is no logical basis for the old ones. As fear can no longer corrall and limit peoples minds they slowly die. However a vacuum is created in many cases and must be filled. I like where @Kgal is headed though I wont follow. She keeps an open mind and is on an awesome path. What I dont like though is terminology that most people will associate with far far fringe thinking and I think thats bs because it shouldnt be viewed as such. These folks talking about frequencies etc need to reign it in and use terminology that more peoe can get on board with and be interested in.

Ive lost my point again...

I'd love to have better words than frequencies and vibration. Help me come up with some.

Would math equations make more sense?

 

[Eventhorizon]

I'd love to have better words than frequencies and vibration. Help me come up with some.

Would math equations make more sense?

Frequency and vibration makes sense to me because I am deep into the science of things. The general population though cant relate and therefore will not. But frequency and vibration isnt the worst of it.
The great thing about the path you are on is that you are on it for you. Its not important to you if other people follow. From my perspective it is though because I think of it as being imperative important people understand they can think outside the box. There is more out there and theres no reason to confine themselves to any one thing. I can follow along skipping over words that are a bit out there because I know the overall point thats trying to be made. The general population cant do that. They likely think of people walking around with triangles on their heads...

Different words hmmm. Will take some time.

 

[Kgal]

Frequency and vibration makes sense to me because I am deep into the science of things. The general population though cant relate and therefore will not. But frequency and vibration isnt the worst of it.
The great thing about the path you are on is that you are on it for you. Its not important to you if other people follow. From my perspective it is though because I think of it as being impartiality important people understand they can think outside the box. There is more out there and theres no reason to confine themselves to any one thing. I can follow along skipping over words that are a bit out there because I know the overall point thats trying to be made. The general population cant do that. They likely think of people walking around with triangles on their heads...

Different words hmmm. Will take some time.

Heh heh heh heh... Yes...they sure do. :w:

You're right...the general population is not familiar with the verbiage. Right now we're being urged to talk about our experiences and how we think to try to normalize it with our friends and families. I've been doing that a lot lately and it's surprising to see people light up and want to talk about it.

 

[Skarekrow]

“The Paranormal is (Still) Normal”

Link to the study - http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/16/16.pdf


Here is the abstract:
Historically, there has been limited sociological interest in the paranormal and no systematic study of reported paranormal experiences.
There are also few medium-to-large-scale survey results with nationally representative populations focusing on paranormal experiences.

This paper provides details of an exploratory survey conducted in 2009 with a nationally representative survey of 4,096 adults aged 16 years and over across Great Britain.

Our findings show that 37% of British adults report at least one paranormal experience and that women, those who are middle-aged or individuals resident in the South West are more likely to report such experiences.
These results establish incidence levels of reported paranormal experiences in contemporary Britain.

We argue also that they merit a more sustained sociological consideration of the paranormal. In this respect we renew and update the robust justification and call for serious research positioning the paranormal as a social phenomenon, originally proposed well over thirty years ago by Greeley (1975).

The authors state in their conclusion:

“We began this paper with reference to the work of Andrew Greeley . . . more specifically his suggestion that the paranormal is ‘normal’. In light of the results presented here, we would certainly argue that this is the case for several reasons. Firstly, we revealed that a significant minority of the British population reports paranormal experience and that there are some sociological variables that appear to facilitate these experiences (region, age, gender). Secondly, however, there is no evidence of social marginality; that is people who report paranormal experiences are ‘normal’ (in that there is very limited socio-structural variation between those who do and those who do not report paranormal experience). However, we have not been able to get a sense of how is the paranormal perceived by British culture at large and whether there has been a normalising of the paranormal to the British public. It is likely that the paranormal is more acceptable to certain groups and individuals within contemporary society. Other research suggests for instance, that there are those for whom these experiences are more commonplace and ‘everyday’ . . . As for Greeley’s suggestion that individuals who report these kinds of experiences may be have greater mental wellbeing, this is not something our research addressed. Getting a sense of how ‘normal’ the paranormal is for individuals and exploring more qualitatively their subjective assessments of wellbeing is certainly one possible route.”

 

[Skarekrow]

This is EVP:
A Look Behind the
"The Ghost Orchid" CD
by Mark Poysden​

A link to the Ghost Orchid CD online can be heard on Spotify (sorry you have to sign in…youtube only had incomplete versions.) - https://play.spotify.com/album/75r4ERZM6oCefPmU2RFRi6

I first heard about EVP several years ago, but I never paid much attention to the subject until I listened to "The Ghost Orchid," an amazingly informative CD containing 79 "electronic voice" tracks, as well as a booklet of highly intelligent essays on the subject.

What is EVP? Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP, are weird and mysterious, apparently paranormal sonic events of unknown origin, which can sometimes be heard (and captured in recordings) on various types of electronic apparatus, and which are usually discounted by skeptics as being simple forms of radio interference. Some people believe the voices have a satanic or demonic origin, others postulate that they are extraterrestrial attempts at communication, or that they may, in fact, be "projections" from the researcher.

The voices take on diverse forms; they may appear to be speaking in tongues (polyglot), singing or making public service announcements. They interrupt standard radio broadcasts, and can apparently call on by name, and speak directly to researchers (and most likely attempt to communicate with people too busy to notice they are being addressed by the voice of weirdness). They may make themselves heard over telephones, during television broadcasts, and as anomalous interference on tape recordings. Some of them seem to enjoy engaging in dialogue, answering questions, or willingly supply secret, or highly specific personal information, no doubt as an indication of their greater insight.

Often, intercommunication between those waiting and hoping to speak finds its way onto the tape, just as background talk might during any normal recording, the difference here being that the discarnate technicians' ability to create a window of communication is seemingly random, or poorly fixed. In other words, that acoustic window only opens for a moment, and whoever happens to be making noise ends up on the recording, whether they are the designated speakers or the bystanders. Of course, as with all "sciences," both conventional and paranormal, there are those investigators (or "investigators"), who are so keen on finding evidence to support the validity of their chosen field that they will impose meaning on what might otherwise be a mere cloud, albeit oddly shaped.

Intense research and investigation, which seriously began in the fifties (when assumptions that they were enemy propaganda were nullified by the Allied victory), has revealed that EVP is quite possibly an actual, recurring system of interdimensional communication.

Interestingly enough, the EVP phenomenon was predicted by those reputed fathers of radio, Marconi and Thomas Edison who believed it was only a matter of time before such magnificent technology would enable us to communicate directly with the dead. Indeed, Edison even went so far as to suggest that the spirit world would perhaps be the first to initiate the communication by using radio to make contact with the living. He also worked on developing a "psychic telephone" that he hoped would create a means to converse with the discarnate, alas, without success.

The Early Years

It seems the honor of recording the first spirit voice on tape goes to the Reverend Drayton Thomas who, during his investigations of the abilities of the famous medium, Gladys Osborne Leonard, captured one of the audible, disembodied voices she had started producing on tape. He later identified one of them as the voice of his own father. This occurred sometime in the late 1940s.

The psychic Attila von Szalay, who frequently heard disembodied voices in the air around him, started researching the phenomenon with Raymond Bayless, a psychologist in the early 1950s. Their initial attempts with a 78 RPM Pack-Bell record-cutter and player were disappointing. Undeterred, they continued their efforts using a device that Bayless had devised and constructed. It consisted of a cabinet with an interior microphone resting inside a speaking trumpet. The microphone chord led out of the cabinet and was connected to a tape recorder and a loud speaker. Almost immediately, they began to hear whispers originating from inside the cabinet and duly recorded them. In 1956, they produced an article documenting their research for the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. Von Szalay carried on taping for many years using an open microphone connected to a reel-to-reel recorder and he achieved excellent results.

At the end of the fifties, Friederich Jurgenson, a retired Swedish opera singer, film producer and bird-watcher, was occupied with a project recording wild bird songs in the forests near to his home. On playback he discovered that strange garbled fragments of seemingly human speech had somehow made their way onto the tape, although he was absolutely sure that he had been completely alone when he made the recording. He even recognized one of the voices as his dead mother calling his name. Later, Jurgenson admitted that he had been trying to record EVP voices for a while, but without success and it was no accident whatsoever when he finally succeeded.

Listening closely to the voices, Jürgenson found that they spoke in different languages, often changing to another idiom in mid-sentence. Also, longer phrases often had an improper structure or grammar and, in some cases, the syllables were either stretched or compressed in a way that made it quite hard to comprehend the messages. The strangest aspect of all was the uncanny way the voices seemed to respond to his comments. Jürgenson began to hold conversations with the strange voices by recording questions and later searching the tape for answers. After four years of experimental recording, he announced his strange discovery to the world at an international press conference in 1963 and his book, Roesterna Fraen Rymden (Voices From the Universe) was published the following year in Stockholm. His conclusion was that the tape recorder was acting as a form of electronic communication link to the realm of the dead.

Following this initial burst of enthusiasm, EVP was forgotten, even by the parapsychological community who were, in the 1960s, far more interested in studying ESP and telekinesis, and who were no doubt quietly encouraged by the military community in their efforts.

Comprehensive cataloguing was started in the sixties by a small team of researchers assembled by one of Jurgenoson’s protégés, Dr. Konstantin Raudive, a Latvian-born psychologist and philosopher. He recorded thousands of disembodied voices, many of which communicated in a polyglot of languages. (Raudive himself spoke nearly a dozen, so interpreting the messages was not usually difficult for him.) A typical polyglot message might begin with a word in Latvian, then two in German, ending with one in French. Because it seemed so odd that spirits should choose to use polyglot, Raudive was often criticized and accused of misinterpreting his voices. However, his critics were unable to decipher exactly what these voices on his recordings were actually saying--if they were indeed just speaking in a single language--and they often neglected the fact that Jurgenson, too, had recorded similar polyglot messages.

Raudive’s messages also came under fire for their seemingly nonsensical content, which sometimes included comments on the color of the sweater he was wearing, tidying up his house in preparation for anticipated guests, or even on the virtues of living in Upsala in Sweden. A counter-argument to this criticism is that if the voices originate from the dead, it should be remembered that they were once normal (living) people; the only difference being that they have experienced the change-of-state known as "death," which need not necessarily make them any more wise or erudite! Raudive was not the only experimenter whose work documents that the dead have a sense of humor, get bored, like to tease, or even talk about the weather. Most EVP researchers apparently record a substantial amount of this sort of "verbal junk" on their tapes.

Raudive also came under fire for his use of a diode. He discovered that the voices gained in strength and number when background noises were prevalent. The diode, which is a broadband, crystal radio detector with a short antenna and a second wire directly connected into the microphone input of the recorder, provided white noise and greatly aided the voices in manifesting. Raudive's critics claimed what he was actually recording were snatches of ordinary radio transmissions. Perhaps the main defense against this charge is that Raudive's voices made a point of mentioning his name as often as possible.

Some of his recordings were made available on a 7" record together with a book titled Unhoerbares Wird Hoerbar (The Inaudible Becomes Audible), based on the 72,000 voices he recorded. This audio document included spirit messages from the likes of Spanish philosopher Ortega Y Gasset and Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The book was translated and published in an expanded edition as Breakthrough, an Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead. by Colin Smythe, Ltd. England in 1971. Indeed, Dr. Raudive was so absorbed by the phenomena that he started to communicate with investigators after his own death.

Thomas Edison made an unexpected reappearance in 1967, when he spoke through Sigrun Seuterman, a West German clairvoyant while he was in a trance. Edison discussed his attempts to develop equipment for recording voices from the beyond in 1928. Edison also made suggestions on how to modify TV sets and tune them to 740 megahertz to get paranormal effects.

There seventies saw a resurgence of interest in the EVP phenomenon and a number of books were published world-wide which documented various researchers’ discoveries: Talks With the Dead was written in 1971, by William Addams Welch, a Hollywood scriptwriter and playwright, and published in 1975; and Carry On Talking by Peter Bander, a British researcher, was published in the United States as Voices from the Tapes: Recordings from Other Worlds in 1973. Two Americans, Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless conducted extensive documentary research and published a book, Phone Calls From the Dead (1976). Wen Die Toten Reden (When The Dead Speak) was written by Father Leo Schmid, Oeschegen, Switzerland and published posthumously in 1976. He had been assigned a small parish almost ten years earlier to give him time to experiment with recording the mysterious voices.


The 1980s

In 1982, G. W. Meek made a trip around the world to distribute tape recordings of 16 excerpts of communications between William J. O'Neil and an American scientist who died 14 years earlier. He also distributed a 100-page technical report giving wiring diagrams, photos, technical data and guidelines for research by others. The bulk of this material had resulted from the extensive research he had conducted together with two other Americans, Paul Jones and Hans Heckman, at a laboratory they had started. Their intention had been to create a two-way voice communication system far more sophisticated that the equipment used up until then in EVP research.

Rapid advances in technology introduced not only new research techniques, but also new media for the voices to use to express themselves. Researchers in several countries reported pictures of the "dead" appearing sporadically on their televisions. There is apparently no control over the appearances of these images.

Klaus Schreiber, a West German, developed an optical-electronic feedback system together with Martin Wenzel, and began to receive images of dead people on television. Many images were accompanied by audio communication, and could be positively identified. Schreiber even claimed that he had even received video-audio contact from two deceased wives. His work was the subject of a documentary TV film and a book by Rainer Hobbe of Radio Luxembourg.

Perhaps the best known experimenters receiving visual-audio communication are Maggie and Jules Harsch-Fischbach of Luxembourg, who have been busy researching the EVP phenomenon for many years now. They developed and successfully operated two electronic systems in 1985, which were significantly more dependable than their predecessors, producing results that could be reliably duplicated. One of the techniques they developed allowed them to hear spirit voices speaking audibly over a radio frequency which in Europe is exclusively used for personal beeper signals. In 1987, they received their first TV picture sequences of good quality. About a year later, Jules and Maggie Harsh-Fischbach established sustained computer contact. Messages were left on unattended computer screens, and photographs of dead friends and co-workers were mysteriously uploaded onto their PCs.

The most incredible case of EVP on computer occurred in the tiny village of Doddleston, England, during the years 1984-1986. Ken and Debbie Webster began receiving messages from a man named Thomas Harden, who claimed he was writing to them from the year 1545, during the reign of Henry VIII. The language of his messages was pre-Shakespearean in construction and was studied by at least one linguistic expert who found the writings all-but-flawless, and who thought it inconceivable that they might have been faked, even by the most skilful Elizabethan linguist. In all, the Websters received more than 250 such messages, many accompanied by poltergeist phenomena. Intermixed with these bizarre communications from Thomas Harden in the 16th century was a confusing set of messages from a group calling themselves 2109. It was not possible to tell if the members of this group were humans from the future or extraterrestrial. After the mysterious writings at Doddleston ceased, the 2109 group began communicating with the Harsch-Fischbachs in Luxembourg and apparently still does. Webster wrote a book in 1989 titled The Vertical Plane, and included extensive photographic documentation.

Finally, experimenters began receiving images on their VCRs. These tapes show faces, crowds, scenery and animals. The people in the images look extremely ectoplasmic; similar to the types of images seen in spirit photography, although recent images appear much more "normal." Perhaps this is reflective of improving technologies on both sides of life.

A year earlier, Sarah Estep, resident in Severna Park, Maryland, USA published the results of fifteen years of EVP research in her book ‘Voices of Eternity’. Sarah also founded the American Association- Electronic Voice Phenomena, which is a loose collective of experimenters and others who are interested in survival research. The organization has well over two hundred members scattered around the world and it publishes a quarterly newsletter.

Sarah Estep has made it her goal to collect as much information as possible from her non-corporeal guest speakers about life in their world. She has also made contact with entities from "Space" worlds invisible to us, but not commonly thought of as spirit. The entities who communicate speak of flying ships, often repeat all or part of their words, sound robotic on occasion, and mention names of stellar bodies familiar to us, like Alpha Centauri or Venus, as well as those we do not know, such as a place called Palymachie. The denizens of the spirit world tell her that they are happy, that their world is our true home, and we should come back and see how lovely it is. There are plants, trees, and animals and they even mention they have homes of a sort and even cities. They are able to view future events, although they do not automatically know what will happen in the future. They appear to have to do some research of their own before discussing any future occurrence.

Estep is not alone in receiving "Space" voices. Other researchers do so as well. They frequently receive calls for help, prayers, and guidance from souls who are wandering, unaware they are dead, or greatly tormented at their separation from loved ones. It seems these spirits are drawn to the researcher, or brought to them by other entities whose job is rescuing the lost. These souls are allowed to speak, perhaps to warn us of the consequences of being unprepared for death, and then they are shepherded on, and hopefully given the help they need.


The Ghost Orchid

"The Ghost Orchid" CD, recently released on British record label Ash International [R.I.P.], was compiled, edited and produced by Justin Chatburn and Ash International's Mike Harding. They sourced a massive tape archive, property of an organisation called the Parapsychic Acoustic Research Cooperative (PARC), to bring the curious up to speed on this weird and vexing phenomenon. Sam Ayres and Justin Chatburn established PARC in Autumn1998. As a co-operative effort, PARC consists of many members who willingly contributed to the project or concept under development. The results were then archived, documented, and finally published.

I welcome the release of this definitive CD. Ringmaster Leif Elggren unravels the threads as we proceed through the tracks, which, by the way, includes the material from the 7" record released with Raudive's 1971 bookBreakthrough. The CD is most certainly a valuable addition to this field of research, and, dare I say it without appearing to be flippant, a source of some of the most beautiful textural sounds I have heard for a long time.

The hero of "The Ghost Orchid" is Raymond Cass, who devoted a great deal of his time to researching this phenomena. He first became interested in EVP when a male voice suddenly called his name over a primitive radio, which was switched off at the time. An investigation of his genealogy revealed that he had psychic ancestors, one of whom was persecuted for her paranormal abilities in 1773, and another who could levitate a table with three men sitting on top it. The publication of Konstantin Raudive’s book Breakthrough in 1971 was the impetus that propelled Cass to the forefront of British EVP research, and he was soon producing recordings of voices of such amazing clarity and amplitude that he attracted worldwide attention. His previous studies in acoustics and his practical experience as a hearing-aid technologist were probably invaluable tools in his research. Cass was one of the first to record examples of the disputed polyglot voices, which construct phrases and sentences from several different languages, examples and interpretations of which occur on this CD. However, in 1997 at the age of 76, his abilities seemed to falter, and it remains to be seen whether he will return successfully to the field.

Cass seems to favor the ET scenario, suggesting that fragmented communications might be being directed at selected individuals over a long period of time, possibly from extraterrestrial monitoring and relay stations positioned somewhere in our solar system. The fragmented nature of these messages keeps the recipients finely tuned and simultaneously ensures that they conduct their own continuous research in order to corroborate their observations and conclusions. He also suggests, however, that "the voices may be a mutant development of the subconscious mind, or a transient by-product of the electromagnetic pollution which now rings our planet."

Joe Banks, who is no stranger to peculiar audio phenomena--as he spends much of his time recording natural radio waves from stars and galaxies--contributed one of the several excellent expositions included in the CD booklet. He makes the very valid point that there is a natural human inclination to "project" meaning onto otherwise innocent phenomena, in an attempt to either simplify them even further, or to make them appear (more) mysterious than they may already (appear to) be. The human imagination will try to impose meaning on configurations of sounds, in this case, and of course each individual will usually use his or her own language as the basis for interpretation. If no sense can be made of what we perceive, then some form of auxiliary hypothesis will be invented and/or introduced to support the conclusion. The wilder the territory that unfolds before us, the stranger the language that we use to attempt to describe it becomes.

Even conventional science has been reduced to poetic terminology to articulate the infinitesimal and abstract worlds within worlds that it seems to continually unearth. One of the problems pointed out by Joe Banks with regard to this particular aspect of the phenomenon of EVP is that 'we are asked to accept that the entities have the intellect to acquire a grasp of many languages, while having lost the ability to speak grammatically or confine themselves to proper words'. Additionally, he observes that it is conventional when compiling EVP demonstration tapes to reinforce the process of projection by first having the narrator announce the meanings before playing the examples.

The human mind has to fill in the blanks, or else it would go completely bonkers and the mysterious voices which we might hear through our radios or telephones will start to resound inside our own craniums. To be frank, there are simply not enough lampposts around for us all to have one to talk to.

It remains to be said that the phenomenon has been considered serious enough to have not only been assessed by various paranormal groups, but also to have come under scrutiny by Defense Ministries on both sides of the Atlantic and no doubt by their counterparts in the (former) East bloc too.

Personally, I cannot make up my own mind about the phenomenon of EVP, but I know that this audio document will be a thing to treasure and listen to from time to time, just to tantalize and encourage my human desire for the all-too sweet, and eternally uncharted terra incognita which may just possibly be waiting beyond the gate.


How-To

Anyone with an interest in the study of survival of the human consciousness beyond physical death stands to learn and grow from investigating and/or conducting his or her own EVP research. There are many ways to approach the possible manifestations of post-mortem survival; perhaps the best attitude to take is to consider it a mix of both science and spirituality. Most researchers conduct recording sessions in their homes, on a regular basis. Frequency and consistency seem to aid in obtaining results.

What do you need to tape?

1: A tape recorder, obviously. Early recordings were made on reel- to-reel machines, then cassette decks. Anything with a built-in microphone or speakers has proven unreliable as they increase distortion and often pick up too much local motor noise, if recordings are made at high levels. The introduction of digital technology has greatly improved recording quality and is a still more preferable medium.

2: A microphone. Condenser mikes aren't up to scratch. You will end up hearing yourself talking and there will more than likely be a wall of hiss in the background. Good quality microphones can be bought at most hi-fi stores.

3: Decent headphones always come in handy. They can help to pinpoint sounds more specifically if used simultaneously with (loud) speaker playback

4: Good loudspeakers that can tolerate high volume levels, a stereo amplifier to drive them, and if possible, a graphic equalizer, so that you can filter out unnecessary frequencies.

5: A sound source. Try tuning to a frequency between stations on an AM/FM radio. You'll probably achieve better results on the AM waveband, as FM contains so much bleeding between the stations on an already overloaded dial. Seek out areas where white noise is the dominant sound. This same procedure can be applied to short-wave radio, where there are less frequencies. If utilizing the AM/FM or short wave bands doesn't appeal to you, try the air bands. These are frequencies air pilots and control towers use to communicate. The only earthly voices you are going hear will be clearly evident as air traffic communications, so if someone says, "This is your dead uncle," you can be sure it isn't a British Airways pilot. You might also try playing a record or making a tape of running water. Apparently both of these methods also work well.

7: A commitment to taping.

What should you expect?

Do not expect to hear anything the first time you tape, or perhaps the ten times after that. It seems to take about two weeks before most tapers get anything, or before their ear has been trained to distinguish a spirit voice, which might sound like a whisper, be low and tonal in pitch, be faster or slower than normal speech, or oddly accented. If you are successful, you will undoubtedly hear voices uttering strange, seemingly unintelligible words and phrases. You may hear calls for help from distressed souls. You may never receive messages from the people (in spirit) you love best, or if you do, you may hear from them only once or infrequently

Web Resources:

Metascience Foundation Inc.

Electronic Voice Phenomena EVP Alphaland

International Ghost Hunters Society—Electronic Voice Phenomena

Cyberpunk Archives--EVP

Rev. Jarvis' Electronic Voice Phenomena Page

The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena

Robin's EVP Examples & Transcommunication Page

All About EVP - Fortean Times 104

EVP Spirit Recording

More information and reviews of "The Ghost Orchid" CD can be found at the
Parapsychic Acoustic Research Cooperative.

 

[Skarekrow]

Precognition and Porn

New evidence for PSI?

Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images



It’s rare for academic parapsychological research to garner coverage in the mainstream press, but a paper by Professor Daryl J Bem of Cornell University has managed to cause something of a stir outside the usual circles. Perhaps that’s because its author, unlike his mostly cautious and often actively sceptical academic peers, claims to have produced results suggesting that humans are capable of such feats as precognition and premonition.

Prof. Bem of Cornell University, New York State, carried out a series of nine different experiments involving over 1,000 volunteer students, and has published the results in a paper entitled “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect”, which will appear in the peer-reviewed Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Bem, a self-described maverick, started out as a physicist but switched fields in the 1960s, becoming a social psychologist. He has held senior posts at Cornell, Stanford and Harvard, and has published widely on self-perception, personality theory and sexual orientation. He also has a long-standing interest in psi, and this paper is the culmination of eight years of research.

Bem defines psi as “anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms”, and chose to study “precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process”. His methodology was simple, testing for “anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual’s current responses” by “time reversing” well-established psychological effects “so that the individual’s responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur”.

One experiment involved the students being shown a long list of words and being asked to remember as many as possible. They were then asked to type a selection of words randomly selected by computer from the original list. In an apparently striking example of causality seemingly working in reverse, the students proved significantly better at recalling words they would later type.

In another experiment, devised to test precognition, Bem provided his volunteers with the following instructions: “This is an experiment that tests for ESP. It takes about 20 minutes and is run completely by computer. First you will answer a couple of brief questions. Then, on each trial of the experiment, pictures of two curtains will appear on the screen side by side. One of them has a picture behind it; the other has a blank wall behind it. Your task is to click on the curtain that you feel has the picture behind it. The curtain will then open, permitting you to see if you selected the correct curtain. There will be 36 trials in all. Several of the pictures contain explicit erotic images (e.g., couples engaged in nonviolent but explicit consensual sexual acts). If you object to seeing such images, you should not participate in this experiment.”

Which curtain covered an image was selected randomly by computer, which should have given subjects a 50 per cent chance of correctly locating the image. The results were interesting, to say the least, with subjects achieving an overall hit-rate of 53.1 per cent for the pornographic pictures; while this may not sound all that impressive, statistically speaking it is significantly above chance. Their hit-rate on the neutral, non-erotic pictures was 49.8 per cent. Similar above-chance results were found in eight of the nine experiments, and across all nine an average ‘affect size’ of 0.22 was obtained.

Bem’s hope is that his results will be taken seriously in academia. Certainly, his tests both build upon well-known experimental paradigms and take care to minimise the contact between experimenter and subject — even the data collection is an automated process. The paper passed the peer-review process, with Charles Judd, who oversaw it for the JPSP, commenting that the some of the journal’s “most trusted reviewers” were involved. Even psi-sceptic Joachim Kreuger of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, was uncharacteristically impressed. “My personal view is that this is ridiculous and can’t be true,” he wrote. “Going after the methodology and the experimental design is the first line of attack. But frankly, I didn’t see anything. Everything seemed to be in good order.” He also found Bem’s method of using time-reversed versions of established psychological phenomena “a stroke of genius”, providing psychologists with tests that could be easily evaluated, and perhaps more importantly, replicated elsewhere.

Such replicability was one of Bem’s main aims in constructing the experiments, and ‘replication packs’ are available online for others to use. We have no doubt that sceptical (para)psychologists everywhere will soon be running their own tests in the hope of demonstrating that Bem’s results — like those of most psi experiments, historically — prove non-replicable or methodologically flawed. Prof. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire known for debunking psi claims, blogged that he’d already found a serious potential problem in the way the data was collected.

Daryl J Bem: “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect”, available online as a pdf at: www.dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf; www.hplusmagazine.com, 4 Nov; New Scientist, 11 Nov; Wired, 15 Nov; D.Telegraph, 18 Nov 2010.

 

[Kanamori]

Precognition and Porn

New evidence for PSI?

Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images



It’s rare for academic parapsychological research to garner coverage in the mainstream press, but a paper by Professor Daryl J Bem of Cornell University has managed to cause something of a stir outside the usual circles. Perhaps that’s because its author, unlike his mostly cautious and often actively sceptical academic peers, claims to have produced results suggesting that humans are capable of such feats as precognition and premonition.

Prof. Bem of Cornell University, New York State, carried out a series of nine different experiments involving over 1,000 volunteer students, and has published the results in a paper entitled “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect”, which will appear in the peer-reviewed Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Bem, a self-described maverick, started out as a physicist but switched fields in the 1960s, becoming a social psychologist. He has held senior posts at Cornell, Stanford and Harvard, and has published widely on self-perception, personality theory and sexual orientation. He also has a long-standing interest in psi, and this paper is the culmination of eight years of research.

Bem defines psi as “anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms”, and chose to study “precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process”. His methodology was simple, testing for “anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual’s current responses” by “time reversing” well-established psychological effects “so that the individual’s responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur”.

One experiment involved the students being shown a long list of words and being asked to remember as many as possible. They were then asked to type a selection of words randomly selected by computer from the original list. In an apparently striking example of causality seemingly working in reverse, the students proved significantly better at recalling words they would later type.

In another experiment, devised to test precognition, Bem provided his volunteers with the following instructions: “This is an experiment that tests for ESP. It takes about 20 minutes and is run completely by computer. First you will answer a couple of brief questions. Then, on each trial of the experiment, pictures of two curtains will appear on the screen side by side. One of them has a picture behind it; the other has a blank wall behind it. Your task is to click on the curtain that you feel has the picture behind it. The curtain will then open, permitting you to see if you selected the correct curtain. There will be 36 trials in all. Several of the pictures contain explicit erotic images (e.g., couples engaged in nonviolent but explicit consensual sexual acts). If you object to seeing such images, you should not participate in this experiment.”

Which curtain covered an image was selected randomly by computer, which should have given subjects a 50 per cent chance of correctly locating the image. The results were interesting, to say the least, with subjects achieving an overall hit-rate of 53.1 per cent for the pornographic pictures; while this may not sound all that impressive, statistically speaking it is significantly above chance. Their hit-rate on the neutral, non-erotic pictures was 49.8 per cent. Similar above-chance results were found in eight of the nine experiments, and across all nine an average ‘affect size’ of 0.22 was obtained.

Bem’s hope is that his results will be taken seriously in academia. Certainly, his tests both build upon well-known experimental paradigms and take care to minimise the contact between experimenter and subject – even the data collection is an automated process. The paper passed the peer-review process, with Charles Judd, who oversaw it for the JPSP, commenting that the some of the journal’s “most trusted reviewers” were involved. Even psi-sceptic Joachim Kreuger of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, was uncharacteristically impressed. “My personal view is that this is ridiculous and can’t be true,” he wrote. “Going after the methodology and the experimental design is the first line of attack. But frankly, I didn’t see anything. Everything seemed to be in good order.” He also found Bem’s method of using time-reversed versions of established psychological phenomena “a stroke of genius”, providing psychologists with tests that could be easily evaluated, and perhaps more importantly, replicated elsewhere.

Such replicability was one of Bem’s main aims in constructing the experiments, and ‘replication packs’ are available online for others to use. We have no doubt that sceptical (para)psychologists everywhere will soon be running their own tests in the hope of demonstrating that Bem’s results – like those of most psi experiments, historically – prove non-replicable or methodologically flawed. Prof. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire known for debunking psi claims, blogged that he’d already found a serious potential problem in the way the data was collected.

Daryl J Bem: “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect”, available online as a pdf at: www.dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf; www.hplusmagazine.com, 4 Nov; New Scientist, 11 Nov; Wired, 15 Nov; D.Telegraph, 18 Nov 2010.

Well, hopefully this will lead to a better understanding of the nature of reality. People complain about it as pseudoscience, but the statistical analyses that Radin and others have done are as good as any stat analysis can be at its best, which means really dang good. The proof is right in front of the face but, apparently, people would rather feel right than to be wrong and then right.

 

[Skarekrow]

Well, hopefully this will lead to a better understanding of the nature of reality. People complain about it as pseudoscience, but the statistical analysis that Radin and others have done are as good as any stat analyses are going to be, which means really dang good. The proof is right in front of the face but, apparently, people would rather feel right than to be wrong and then right.

Yes…slowly but surely the general consensus that perpetuates the taboos that keep more scientists from exploring these things is being broken down with fairly solid proof like this.
There have been certain fields of study that have been “career killers” for years…and even then, funding is always more difficult to get.
People like Radin though keep fighting ahead…that is wonderful.

 

[muir]

Not sure if you've covered this story already...

http://newswire.net/newsroom/news/00084881-telepathy-experiment-sends-1st-mental-message.html

[h=1]'Telepathy' Experiment Sends First Mental Message[/h] By Boris Djuric September 5, 2014

According to AP, scientists have been able to send a simple mental message from one person to another person thousands of miles away, without any other form of contact between the two.

(Newswire.net -- September 5, 2014) -- For the first time, a message was sent between two people using telepathy technology. The two didn't have any other contact, and were located in India and France, two countries that are thousands of miles apart.
Research led by experts at Harvard University shows technology can be used to send Brain-to-brain communication.
"It is kind of technological realization of the dream of telepathy, but it is definitely not magical," Giulio Ruffini, a theoretical physicist and co-leader of the research team, told AFP by phone from Barcelona.
"We are using technology to interact electromagnetically with the brain." he said.
For the experiment, one person wearing a wireless, Internet-linked electroencephalogram (EEG) would think a simple greeting, like "hola," or "ciao."
A computer translated the words into digital binary code, presented by a series of 1s or 0s.
Then, this message was emailed from India to France, and delivered via robot to the receiver, who through non-invasive brain stimulation could see flashes of light in their peripheral vision.
The subjects receiving the message did not hear or see the words themselves, but were correctly able to report the flashes of light that corresponded to the message.
"We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person, and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great distances by leveraging existing communication pathways," said researcher Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
"One such pathway is, of course, the Internet, so our question became, 'Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of Internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?”
Ruffini added that extra care was taken to make sure no sensory information got in the way that could have influenced the interpretation of the message.
Researchers have been attempting to send a message from person to person this way for about a decade, and the proof of principle that was reported in the journal PLOS ONE is still rudimentary, he told AFP.
"We hope that in the longer term this could radically change the way we communicate with each other," said Ruffini.

P.S it's hard sometimes knowing without hindsight if something is a premonition or not eg I had a recent thought that Dick Van Dyke was going to die soon but it might have just been a random thought!

 

[Skarekrow]

Not sure if you've covered this story already...

http://newswire.net/newsroom/news/00084881-telepathy-experiment-sends-1st-mental-message.html

'Telepathy' Experiment Sends First Mental Message

By Boris Djuric September 5, 2014

According to AP, scientists have been able to send a simple mental message from one person to another person thousands of miles away, without any other form of contact between the two.

(Newswire.net -- September 5, 2014) -- For the first time, a message was sent between two people using telepathy technology. The two didn't have any other contact, and were located in India and France, two countries that are thousands of miles apart.
Research led by experts at Harvard University shows technology can be used to send Brain-to-brain communication.
"It is kind of technological realization of the dream of telepathy, but it is definitely not magical," Giulio Ruffini, a theoretical physicist and co-leader of the research team, told AFP by phone from Barcelona.
"We are using technology to interact electromagnetically with the brain." he said.
For the experiment, one person wearing a wireless, Internet-linked electroencephalogram (EEG) would think a simple greeting, like "hola," or "ciao."
A computer translated the words into digital binary code, presented by a series of 1s or 0s.
Then, this message was emailed from India to France, and delivered via robot to the receiver, who through non-invasive brain stimulation could see flashes of light in their peripheral vision.
The subjects receiving the message did not hear or see the words themselves, but were correctly able to report the flashes of light that corresponded to the message.
"We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person, and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great distances by leveraging existing communication pathways," said researcher Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
"One such pathway is, of course, the Internet, so our question became, 'Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of Internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?”
Ruffini added that extra care was taken to make sure no sensory information got in the way that could have influenced the interpretation of the message.
Researchers have been attempting to send a message from person to person this way for about a decade, and the proof of principle that was reported in the journal PLOS ONE is still rudimentary, he told AFP.
"We hope that in the longer term this could radically change the way we communicate with each other," said Ruffini.

P.S it's hard sometimes knowing without hindsight if something is a premonition or not eg I had a recent thought that Dick Van Dyke was going to die soon but it might have just been a random thought!

Isn’t that crazy?
Now if they can just shrink down the equipment used to a portable or implantable device we could no longer need to actually speak verbally with one another…also one would have to think of the implications of people not being able to guard their thoughts as well as they can now.
Would we see a renaissance of morality and the way people behave and interact with one another.
Sort of like the idea behind the book “City of Truth” by David Morrow which was a precursor for that movie with that British guy where no one can lie to one another.
Only in the book, every has had the area of the brain that allows them to lie surgically burned away. So the parent sent the kids of to summer camp at “Camp Ditch the Kids.” and there are warning signs on things like elevators that read “Warning: the people that maintain this elevator, hate their job, ride at your own risk.”
Anyhow, the premise of the book was the main character’s Son gets a rare disease and so he reads that once upon a time, people would do better medically because they were basically lied to in order to give them hope. So he tries everything he can do to lie…hilarity ensues…stuff happens…it’s a good book.
But I can see people being a little more frank like that with one another if thoughts could slip out here and there.
And then I am sure with certain people it would be just the opposite…they would be almost like one person…I can picture two people being so involved and wrapped up in each other’s minds that time and things like showering and holding a job could begin to slip.
Lot’s of possibilities…not all good…it could potentially allow people into your mind that you didn’t invite…can they rearrange things?

 

[muir]

Isn’t that crazy?
Now if they can just shrink down the equipment used to a portable or implantable device we could no longer need to actually speak verbally with one another…also one would have to think of the implications of people not being able to guard their thoughts as well as they can now.
Would we see a renaissance of morality and the way people behave and interact with one another.
Sort of like the idea behind the book “City of Truth” by David Morrow which was a precursor for that movie with that British guy where no one can lie to one another.
Only in the book, every has had the area of the brain that allows them to lie surgically burned away. So the parent sent the kids of to summer camp at “Camp Ditch the Kids.” and there are warning signs on things like elevators that read “Warning: the people that maintain this elevator, hate their job, ride at your own risk.”
Anyhow, the premise of the book was the main character’s Son gets a rare disease and so he reads that once upon a time, people would do better medically because they were basically lied to in order to give them hope. So he tries everything he can do to lie…hilarity ensues…stuff happens…it’s a good book.
But I can see people being a little more frank like that with one another if thoughts could slip out here and there.
And then I am sure with certain people it would be just the opposite…they would be almost like one person…I can picture two people being so involved and wrapped up in each other’s minds that time and things like showering and holding a job could begin to slip.
Lot’s of possibilities…not all good…it could potentially allow people into your mind that you didn’t invite…can they rearrange things?

lol

I like to think i'm pretty frank already but yeah the world is currently drowning under bullshit!

 

[Skarekrow]

[video=youtube;OVoV1CL6TUE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OVoV1CL6TUE[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

New Study Scientifically Proves Psychic Ability

Written by Steven Bancarz| We hear a lot of talk about the possibility of psychic powers, and we have all had experiences where we have a sense something is going to happen right before it actually does. It’s not uncommon to have a feeling someone is going to call right before they call us, or to know what someone is going to say before any words have been spoken. But is there any scientific credibility to these experiences? A recent peer reviewed study reveals that the answer is yes.

This interesting new study shows that our minds can sense future events 2-10 seconds before they take place. This study called “Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis” looked at 26 different studies done over the course of over 30 years which showed that the body and brain actually have a physiological reaction to the future events before you are even consciously aware of it. The neural activity of the brain is triggered in response to stimuli before they are even present in linear time. These “pre-stimulus responses” tell us that we actually have the ability to physically detect unpredictable events before they even manifest in our physical space-time.

They concluded that ” the results of this meta-analysis indicate a clear effect, but we are not at all clear about what explains it”. Of course, the current scientific paradigm isn’t willing to embrace the idea of consciousness being able to actually tap into the dimension of time and receive information. Because of this, they go on to conclude that “The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.” It’s a shame that almost 30 studies proving the brains ability to detect future events before they actually happen still isn’t enough to convince scientists to look outside of the current paradigm for explanations.
This phenomenon is sometimes called “presentiment,” as in “sensing the future,” and is sometimes explained in terms of a “consciousness field”. There are countless studies that have been done which suggest that the mind does not end at the boundaries of the skull, and can actually influence things in the external world such as quantum objects, the thoughts and behaviour of other people, and even the flow of electrical currents.
This “consciousness field” is where thoughts actually take place, and according to renowned physicists such as Dr. Amit Goswami and Dr. Michio Kaku, is the ground of being itself. Physical objects and phenomenon emerge out of this field of consciousness that lies at the foundation of existence. This is also known as the “superstring field”, which Dr. John Hagelin refers to as being the fountain-head of the laws of nature and all of the elementary particles. This “Unified Field” of consciousness means that not only do we share a collective consciousness with all sentient beings in the universe, we are also literally one with all events in space-time.

According to an entire school of physicists, of course it makes sense that our brains can detect future events because consciousness is not created in the brain. Consciousness is received by our brains and filtered through our nervous system in the same way satellite signals get received like a cable box. Our minds are not separate from the physical world. The results of these studies only make sense if we look at the physics of consciousness in terms of non-locality and unity at the fundamental levels of nature.

Here is more by Dr. John Hagelin on the physics on consciousness in light of Unified Field Theory:

[video=youtube;OrcWntw9juM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OrcWntw9juM[/video]