Posts Tagged ‘paranormal investigations’

I received a couple of comments from someone who is scared. She is an investigator who feels that she has lost something in the process of contacting the spirit world: she worries that it might be part of her soul. This is a valid concern, and I will try to address it.

There are times when we wonder if we are ‘oppressed’ by a spirit who seeks to harm us. I have wondered that in the past; in fact, there are a couple of entries here on soulbank where I worked through my terror at feeling that someone unholy and powerful was attempting to take over my mind and emotions. Do I think this is possible? Yes, I do. However, I don’t think that any spirit can accomplish this completely without our conscious consent. If we have not specifically invited evil in, then we will not become possessed.

I am thinking here of the rite of exorcism and the priests that work to rid people of demonic entities. There are a couple of points that exorcists make on a regular basis: very few people are truly possessed, and those that are have almost always given their consent to the evil spirit in one way or another. This is why I caution against using any instrument that turns you into a channel or conduit for the spirit world. It is difficult to control who will ‘use’ you to spread their message. I was watching a documentary on Malachi Martin the other night, exorcist and author of the very famous HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL, and I learned through multiple interviews with him and other exorcists that there are signs of possession that we can ‘read’ in ourselves or others, and almost no one needs to worry about this. The most important sign is someone ‘turning on a dime,’ changing from a normal, decent human being to something suddenly sinister and completely out of character. It’s as if the veil of normalcy and kindness dropped for a moment, and the evil displays itself through their eyes in a flash. I’m not talking about having a temper or suffering from a mood disorder; I’m talking about that person who seems completely normal one moment and quickly morphs into something cruel, inhuman, vile and terrifying. The moment doesn’t last long, but it can be perceived by others. This does not happen to 99% of the people who are concerned for their soul.

If you are worried about attachments, spirit influence, or demonic interference in your life, here is a list of what needs to happen:

1) STOP INVESTIGATING the paranormal until you are 100% certain that you are fully yourself. If you’re not sure, don’t do it.

2) Realize that spirits can influence us, but that we are more powerful. A spirit with ill intent can be rebuffed and removed from our lives, but we need help. Talk to your church, synagogue or mosque leader and tell that person everything. Find spiritual support from those who do that for a living. If you don’t have anyone, go find someone at your local church. DON’T DELAY. Make the appointment, and tell them exactly what you fear has happened without reservation.

3) Continue to pray and know that God is always there and always listening. We can’t always feel inspired and filled with divine love. That doesn’t mean that we are not loved and protected. We are. It is fear and depression that drive away divine love, not God.

4) Fear and depression are more responsible for feeling ‘oppressed’ and not ourselves than anything to do with demons or bad spirits. What I read in you is depression. That is often the root cause of the feelings you describe. Regular, old dead people who weren’t all that nice in life and are still nasty in death will jump on that low aura and take advantage of it to express themselves. For some souls, depression is a beacon, something they like to attach to. YOU ARE STILL MORE POWERFUL than they are, because you still have God. You can pray for them as you pray for yourself.

5) Seek therapy. Find a good support system with your friends. Make sure that you do NOT investigate until this works itself out. Go bowling. Sit in cafes and libraries. Join a Meetup group. Get out of the house. Sit in the sun. Take long walks. Pet your animals. If you have no animals, go adopt one. Remember that this life is for the living. You are the living. Leave the dead alone.

6) If you are worried about the state of your soul, if you are concerned that you are not feeling the presence of God as you would like to or need to, YOU ARE NOT POSSESSED OR OPPRESSED. You are a normal human being who is seeking greater connection to the Divine. You can and will find that connection again. You need to speak to a spiritual counselor and get involved in your local religious community. Take care of those who are in need. Find a way to improve the life of someone who needs you.

You are loved and you are never, ever alone. God does not abandon those who love, those who seek, those who never give up. Your feelings of ‘spiritual dryness’ are normal and will go away when you take the steps I have recommended. Be patient and don’t worry.

Give the spirit world a rest and work on enjoying the beautiful life that we have been given to enjoy, right here, right now.

With much love,

Kirsten A. Thorne, PHW/PhD

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Want to hear something scary? There is a growing consensus in the psychiatric community that some cases of mental illness are caused by malignant spirits taking over a mind. Richard Gallagher trained in psychiatry at Yale University and is a practicing psychoanalyst and . . . exorcist. Although the vast majority of those practicing mental health care refuse to believe in the reality of demons affecting one’s mind, Dr. Gallagher is ” . . . pleasantly surprised by the number of psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners nowadays who are open to entertaining such hypotheses. Many believe exactly what I do, though they may be reluctant to speak out.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/?utm_term=.b5895e67d890)

I’ve written before about possession and exorcism, and the insights I gleaned from my meeting with a Catholic priest who is also an exorcist. In that meeting, I received his blessing to assist in such work. I have yet to truly throw myself into this vital, spiritual work, a fact which may explain my current state of mind (I’m wasting my talents, truth be told, as are so many of us who study the ‘paranormal’). However, the topic of this post is slightly different. Many of us–scholars or not, mental health experts or not–agree based on the evidence that demonic possession is a reality for an unfortunate few. What I don’t see discussed as much in academic circles is the reality of possession by non-demonic entities.

Once you admit the possibility that an evil entity, a dark spirit, can and does take over a body, mind and soul, then you must admit that the same phenomena can occur with beings that are not demonic in nature. If it is possible for a demon to possess a living person, then it is possible for any person in spirit to do the exact, same thing via a similar mechanism. Exactly how this happens is unknown to me, but I hypothesize that you must be in a vulnerable state: altered by drugs or alcohol, severely depressed and/or anxious, inviting such contact via ouija boards, channeling, automatic writing or (it must be said) so-called ‘ghost hunting’. If you are a spiritually grounded person with a strong religious practice and belief, you are more protected from the invading spirit; however, those of us who dabble in spirit contact are most definitely at risk. The reality of this possibility is what is at the heart of our gradual decline in time spent investigating the paranormal, which seems to happen to all of us. It isn’t that we don’t believe it after years of spirit contact, it’s that we discover how powerful these connections are, and we realize how much that contact affects us emotionally and spiritually.

Spirits, souls, conscious beings, are in contact with us on a daily basis. Most mediums talk about the ‘veil’ that separates the living and the ‘dead’; this language is reflected in theories of the multiverse and other ‘theories of everything’ that postulate multiple dimensions. Dr. Robert Lanza’s ideas concerning death and multiple dimensions go a step further: not only does consciousness continue in other dimensions, ‘death’ as a concept is meaningless. It essentially doesn’t exist except as a description of a mundane, physical process which has no bearing on the conscious, individual human being. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-there-an-afterlife-the-science-of-biocentrism-can-prove-there-is-claims-professor-robert-lanza-8942558.htmlWhatever it is that separates multiple dimensions, whether it be vibrating strings or dark matter, the systems of separation are not perfect and break down. Or, more tantalizingly, WE can break them down through mental effort and meditative practice. Once the boundaries of a multiverse are breached, we can’t keep whoever is living there ‘out’ of our reality. Their energy flows through, finds us, penetrates our consciousness and plays out its need for communication or emotion.

In simple terms, our interaction with what we call ‘ghosts’ often results in spirits finding a receptive home to express themselves through us.  This explains many mysteries and questions of mine that up to now, seem to have no answer. Boundaries are broken down between dimensions, and our easy classification of ourselves as one being, one spirit, in isolation from all others, disintegrates. We are all interconnected and affect one another in ways both subtle and obvious. Therefore, to provide an example, a haunted house story is not a story of a person who discovers ghosts, but of ghosts who discover a person and the beginning of a relationship where all entities rely on each other’s energy and emotion. When you enter into an emotional relationship with the spirits around you, the ‘haunting’ isn’t about the ‘other,’ it’s about all parties involved. You may not realize that your persistent, depressed mood or your strange reactions to familiar situations have to do with someone else living in you, with someone else sharing your psychic space.

Is that possession? It’s probably more ‘influence’ or even relationship. If you have ever felt an inexplicably strong connection to a house or other place, it is likely that you are experiencing the effects of your intimate interaction with the spirits you’ve come to know quite well there, even if not consciously. Much of this phenomena is experienced in the subconscious mind, where our ego and super ego (to borrow from Freud for a moment) expend much energy repressing, denying and fleeing from the truth of our spiritual attachments and engagements. How much of what we feel, what we do, how we react to other people, how we live our lives, has to do with spiritual relationships of which we are hardly aware? That is a sobering question.

There are things I need to know, but the process of understanding frightens me. I would like to know the identity of the spirits who live with me or interact with me. I would like to separate myself just a little more from their influence. That requires an investigation into other dimensions of reality and that, in turn, requires a professional medium of great talent and respectability. That is more than likely the next step for me. It is not easy for me to trust other people, especially people who interpret in my stead what my reality might be. I have always despised that trait in others: the individual who pretends to know more than you about your own life. However, I do believe that trustworthy mediums exist and can shed light on the spiritual mystery that surrounds us all. Of course, those of us who regularly attend church in the Christian tradition understand that this spirit world is all around us at all times, effecting changes and transitions of which we are barely aware. The church, however, tries hard to manage, limit and interpret our spiritual experiences so that they do not fall outside the accepted boundaries of Scripture. I need more than that.

Think about the ways that your spirit interacts with others, both in the flesh and transcendent. If there are no boundaries to spirit, and we are all spirit, then to speak of ‘containers’ of flesh, vibrating strings, dark matter, conscious and subconscious, is all a waste of time. The categories ‘dead’ and ‘living’ are nonsensical when you’re are speaking of souls and not of matter. Just as the spirit of your nasty boss can harm you, so can the spirit of the guy who drowned himself in your bathtub years before you moved into your house. The charge, then, is to be more aware, more conscious, of who is affecting your heart, mind and soul, and where you need to draw the line on a psychic invasion. It would be wise to start with meditation and prayer. But I don’t plan to end there.

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD/PHWkirsten-in-2017

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Ghost children

Marsha and I heard the voice again. It sounded like a child singing a tuneless melody somewhere in the vast, dark hallways of the old hospital. We recorded it and played it back later, many, many times. That night, as we strained to hear the child’s voice, Marsha became very, very sad and asked, “why would God allow a child to be alone in a place like this?” I came up with some theory of consciousness, reassuring her it was just a fragment of a mind, lost in time and space, not a whole personality, not a person as we understand people to be. She didn’t respond. We continued to listen for the oddly terrifying sounds echoing in dark. Why was I so frightened, if this was a ‘child’ spirit, or even a fragment of one?

In other lost places we heard ‘her’. The same, sing-song voice, sometimes attempting to speak, sometimes singing that same, wandering tune. We had many recordings of that voice before we started to ask ourselves who this might be. This child seemed to be traveling with us from one site to another. She started showing up even in our homes. I have recordings of her in the living room of our old house. Had she followed me home? I have recordings of her at Marsha’s house, too. It was always the same pitch, the same tone, the same vocal pattern. I asked many questions of myself, but they were always the wrong questions. “Who is this poor, lost soul?” “What can I do to help her?” “How can I ‘send her to the light’?”

My life during this time period was falling apart at a dizzying pace. There was financial distress, physical illnesses, mental illness, job loss and painful ruptures in my closest relationships. I continued recording voices and communicating with the spirits until, gradually, I realized that I was probably not communicating with spirits only. The answer hit me fairly recently: God would most certainly not condemn a child to eternity in a dark vacuum of empty space in a mental hospital or a jail.

ghost children 5

This plaintive voice was produced by something with evil intent. I won’t debate the existence of evil or even that entity we call the ‘devil’, because I’ve done that before in previous posts. Evil has certain characteristics that are now quite clear to me. It disguises itself as the one thing you can’t resist, whatever it is that involves you emotionally; it then confuses you, causing you to doubt the existence of an all-loving God; after that, it chips away at your life relentlessly until you are at your breaking point. When you reach that soul-crushing moment, the decision is yours: you either humble yourself completely and give yourself–heart and soul–to who you understand God to be, OR, you continue to pursue those practices, beliefs and values that led you to self destruct.

There was no little girl, crying in the dark. The devil found an ingenious way to draw us all in, to make us doubt and question everything good and holy in the world. I went back to these accursed spaces and places without giving myself completely to God first. I made myself available to the confusion and manipulation of evil. I allowed evil to lead me further and further down the dark hallways of my soul until I was in communication with something that wanted to kill my spirit. Don’t talk to me about ‘coincidences’; during this time, evil tried to hurt my own child. That’s when I drew the line. No one and nothing hurts my child.

The result of my brush with ultimate darkness was illumination. I understood how evil operates in the world: it pretends always to be something else, something attractive, something you really, really want. It often seems logical, understandable and promising. It justifies its existence. It makes people rally around it. It loves the violence, hatred, misery and suffering that it produces. Most people don’t see it for what it really is; they think its presence is natural, necessary and inevitable. Evil appears to everyone, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or any other identifying characteristics. It worms its way into politics, culture, social media, news media, institutions; it’s everywhere.

You can recognize it by its effects on you and your loved ones. If you feel crazy, disoriented, confused, aggressive, even violent: it owns you . . . or it’s starting to. Be very, very careful before you give in to hatred and anger. It may feel righteous. It may feel really, really good on a basic, instinctual level; but trust me. It lies. It will find a way to destroy you, and you may not see how it works on you, changing you, hurting you, creating divisions and dissent.

ghost children 6

God does not condemn child spirits to the dank misery of the worst places on Earth. God does not play with your emotions or hurt your family and friends. God waits for us to fall on our knees and ask for love, for help, for light, for hope. We can spin forever in a web of insanity, or we can break free and admit that we don’t know what we think we know. Love someone today who you have not dared to love before, and you will see evil twist and scream in pain. Love like you have never loved before, and your spirit will forever be in the Light, blessed for all eternity.

In peace,

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD/PHW

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Maria marin

I was listening to “Maria Marin Live” (forgive the lack of accents; not sure how to add them here!) on AM 1020, as is my custom after my last class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She pulls no punches and forces her callers to be direct, honest and sincere. Woe betide you if you can’t make your point or you’re full of B.S.; she will call you on it. I’m not sure how many of my readers listen to talk radio in Spanish, but I recommend you listen to what she has to say if you understand Spanish.

The topic of one of her recent shows concerned life after death, or more specifically, what her callers believe happens after death. There were those who had the quick answer, “you go to Heaven to be with God,” but when pressed on the details, became utterly incapable of providing any realistic descriptions or scenarios. Others, of course, said that nothing happens; and the majority stumbled around attempting to answer the question without the Heaven or the nothingness explanation, only to find themselves impaled on their own uncertainty. Ms. Marin did not provide them an easy out; she pressed them relentlessly to answer the question in a specific and meaningful way. When they couldn’t do it, she moved on to the next person.

I found myself in something of a panic, imagining that I was one of her callers and I had been pressured into answering the question. Even though this topic is my area of research and interest, there is NO WAY to spit out a quick answer to the question, ‘what happens after you die’. I realize that those who have had a near death experience might be able to answer this with the typical imagery: the tunnel, the white light, meeting relatives who have passed on, the life review, the inability to cross a certain boundary between life and death, and the final (usually unwanted) return to the body. However, this describes a transitional state between life in the flesh and the life of consciousness, not what happens after actual, physical death.

No one can answer definitively, since no one has died 100% in the flesh and returned to talk about it except Jesus, and well, there are some issues there, as well. My experience tells me that while there is no quick answer to the question, there is–at least–a concept that we can hold onto when forced to answer questions about life after death. In terms of scientific research, nowhere is there better evidence for the continuation of life than in the work of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson from the University of Virginia. His work on the past lives of children from around the world is legendary; I’ve discussed it extensively in other blog posts. What his work points to is that ‘life’ after ‘death’ is about the transference of consciousness from one body to another.

The best evidence points to the indestructibility of the conscious mind, spirit or soul (I do not think that these terms are interchangeable, but the differences between them are the subject of another post). It doesn’t disappear, but finds another body through which it expresses a self. How this happens is pure speculation, but it must happen at some point in fetal development. I remember my sister telling me–and she is nothing if not a skeptic–that she felt the precise moment when a spirit ‘jumped into’ my nephew while in the womb. He was pure potential and suddenly became a personality. This personality was, in his case, external to him and perhaps had nothing to do with our family and genetics at all.

Consciousness finds a way to continue, whether it be through reincarnation or through some other mechanism, such as inhabiting another dimension or alternate universe as posited by some quantum theories. One of these alternate dimensions of reality might look and feel much like the Heaven that the faithful expect to experience. Many Eastern religions posit the twin existence of soul and spirit, each living out separate existences as the same personality: the “spirit” continues to reincarnate with limited or absent memories of the previous existence, and the “soul” inhabits a timeless dimension where the expected rewards and/or punishments are experienced as expected. Some quantum theories posit that there are infinite versions of us in infinite universes, so that when one of us dies in one world, we simply skip over to another and pick up our lives there, either in the ‘present’ moment or a past or future moment.

It doesn’t work to think of time as important to consciousness after death, since it is a biological concept useful to understand what we perceive as forward movement towards a goal, but it is not an independent entity necessary to understand reality (at least as far physics is concerned–time could just as easily move backwards as forwards, and we only need the ‘arrow of time’ for formulas concerning entropy, which some physicists think doesn’t exist as an independent measure of anything, anyway). You can see why, by now, there is no way to answer Maria Marin’s challenge in a one-minute phone call. When you are discussing issues concerning consciousness–that great mystery–it doesn’t make sense to explain exactly what will happen, since that requires us to know exactly how our minds will perceive reality when we are no longer dependent on a brain or a body to filter and limit our experiences.

Since Ms. Marin requires total honesty, I will say this: I am afraid that the best evidence points to a recycling of consciousness that does not involve karma, reward, Heaven or eternal rest. It seems that our personalities are transferred to another human being, and we drag our baggage along into another life–whether in the form of unconscious trauma or conscious memories. I do think there is room for spiritual evolution from life to life, but that is not the same concept as karma or reward. Our suffering in one life might purify us and lead us closer to God, but it certainly doesn’t mean our next lives will be easy, fun, interesting or rewarding. The most spiritually evolved person might appear to have the worst material circumstances.

For what it’s worth, that’s my answer to Ms. Marin, if I had called in. We come back, again and again, working towards a nobler, more refined relationship with God. What that looks like for each individual is unknown. So, I take my last breath, I might have a transitional period where I’m in the Light and meet up with those long gone, and then I probably black out or go to sleep and wake up screaming, inhaling that first breath again, remembering or not that I was here before, and here I go again.

Yours on the journey,

Kitty Soul bank Post

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

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The news was all over Facebook: Aaron from Ghost Adventures had been fired for revealing that the show required him to fake his audio clips! That turned out to be untrue; a “satirical” news site had published the piece to stir up controversy, and they succeeded. I fell for it, because the fake news was not satirical or ironic, simply libelous. Satire requires an exaggeration of the truth for amusing or ironic effect, not the wholesale invention of news designed to tarnish the reputation of an individual or a production.

This ‘fake news’ story was so successful precisely because it touched a nerve with the community of paranormal investigators. There is always the lingering suspicion that the best audio and video clips have been invented or created by a show’s producer. The requirements of the entertainment industry are in direct conflict with the requirements of a good, thorough investigation into a haunting or other paranormal activity.

Hollywood requires melodrama and will invent situations among ‘characters’ (investigators are always turned into characters) in order to provoke conflict, pain, upset and a theatrical expression of emotion. In reality, a team of individuals investigating a location must take themselves out of the equation and focus on the external environment. Any upset or misunderstandings between investigators will hurt the success of the investigation. When one is tuning in to activity around them, you forget yourself and enter into something of a meditative or semi-trance state. That does not make for good television.

Hours may go by where nothing appears to be happening. We are all straining to hear something or ‘catch’ something, but often the result of your efforts is a sore back and exhaustion. Later, we might find gems on our audio clips, but again–the voices are often subtle and odd, not explosive declarations of ‘paranormality’. My team has often sent off some of our best audio to producers who want a sample of our data, only to be told that they need something obvious and definitive: one person actually asked for a clip where the spirit identified itself by name and declared he or she was dead. If these consciousness fragments stated their names, family history, their ontological status and their purpose in contacting us, our jobs would be so much easier!

I was interviewed recently for a national radio show (not Paranormal Kool-Aid–that was a blast!). I didn’t tell anyone about it, because I knew from the beginning that my story would be rejected. I was right, of course. They asked for stories about personal transformation: nothing has transformed my life more than the experiences I have had while investigating the world of spirit. I had one particular story that involved becoming lost and trapped in an abandoned hospital, possessed by the spirits of those who were patients there, and redeemed by a woman in white who freed the three of us. This led to my epiphany that the world of spirit was real and not to be played or trifled with. I was a different person from that point on. I even had spectacular audio from that night that was nothing if not clear. So how could a story like that be rejected?

The answer was: We don’t want to be in the business of proving or disproving the existence of ghosts. Ghosts? I didn’t mention that word a single time to them! And yet: everything always came down to that gross over-simplification of our experiences as investigators. I tried to explain that the popular conception of ‘ghosts’ did not apply here. We were dealing with the anguished remains of suffering patients, who had taken over our conscious minds in order to teach us a divine truth: in order to understand injustice and pain, we must experience it directly sometimes; we must help each other, the living and the ‘dead’. We must transform each other for the good. But no; sadly, the question for the producers remained the same: can you prove the existence of ghosts? No? Well, forget it then.

I didn’t ask the producers to prove anything. The story was about personal transformation. They had fallen into the same trap that almost everyone in the entertainment industry falls into: prove it’s real, or at least fake it so well that most people will believe it. Or, perhaps, they didn’t want to start the ‘real or fake’ discussion with their listeners, and maybe they knew intuitively that nobody would listen to my story for its spiritual value; it would end up where all paranormal stories end up: everyone weighing in with their opinion regarding the veracity of someone’s evidence for ‘ghosts’. Whether this experience “transforms” you or not is entirely beside the point.

I was disappointed and sad, not because I wasn’t going to appear on a national show–that part filled me with a certain amount of dread, due to my fear of misinterpretation and backlash–but because once again, a rep from the ‘industry’ had completely misunderstand the importance of my story. My team and I go through this process on a regular basis. Who we are and why we do what we do is not as important as whether or not we can create the required drama, pain, anger and emotional firestorms that television (and radio) require. The ideal show is one where I turn on my best friends, throw wine in their face during some disagreement about an audio clip, present my friend Wheezer the ghost to the audience, and then throw up on him after a night of drinking margaritas at a haunted restaurant.

Even a respectable show doesn’t want to be part of the conversation about the reality of the soul or the world of spirit (with the exception of the shows our own paranormal community produces). A national radio program that wishes to be taken seriously has to turn its back on the entire question–arguably, the most important question for all humankind–in order to avoid the idiocy of Hollywood’s ‘ghost shows’. We tried to change that. The ladies of the PHW stuck to their guns and refused to fabricate emotions or data in the service of selling a show. My personal role models are still the boys of Ghost Adventures. I worked with them on an episode (“Linda Vista”), and I never saw anything remotely fabricated during those long hours of filming. Not only that, we collected some truly amazing evidence right there on camera. You don’t have to believe me. See the episode yourself and make up your minds.

As soon as I wrote that, it occurred to me that anyone reading Soulbank could accuse me of self promotion. That’s how deeply I’ve been affected by the poisonous environment of entertainment. By simply inviting people to make up their own minds, I’ve fallen into my own trap: ghosts are real! This is what I truly want to say: my life has been utterly changed by the data I have collected on investigations. I think that anyone with a sincere interest in life after life could do exactly what I have done and find themselves flabbergasted by what they discover. What I can’t change is the apathy and lack of interest that many people seem to feel about pretty much everything of importance in their lives. Television is responding to what they see people care about: confusion, discord, negative emotions, dysfunction and theatrics.

But maybe, just maybe, there is a sizable market out there of people who truly, honestly care about the Big Questions; could the ‘industry’ change the entertainment culture by taking us seriously? Of course it could; it’s just easier and more profitable to sell shows that roll in the mud instead of fly with the angels.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

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Robert Lanza, MD

 Author’s note: I’m writing this in bits and pieces, which seems appropriate to the topic. Since I wrote the body of the paper, I posted a query on Facebook regarding time and entropy, and received some great responses and leads. I’ve dutifully read and considered the responses and followed up the recommendation to read Sean Carroll’s website. I did, in fact, slog through great sections of From Eternity to Here, but I confess that I felt, at times, overwhelmed by the content. I must revisit the book and read it again more carefully. Also, I checked reviews for Biocentrism and was dismayed by the sheer nastiness of many people purporting to “critique” his work. More often than not, reviewers—scientists and non-scientists alike—were unbearably nasty and disrespectful to the author. A notable exception is Richard Conn Henry’s quick overview (http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/biocentrism.pdf) where he points out factual errors in Lanza’s physics, but ends up agreeing with his major tenets. Otherwise, there was much Lanza bashing out there, boiling down to the fact that anyone who seeks to merge any kind of spirituality into the study of the universe is a complete, babbling New Age idiot enamored of bad science and bewitched by ‘woo’. Sigh. My entire website would be bashed mercilessly for the same reason. I am not a scientist, but I do have a sharp, critical mind honed by decades of reading and study, helped along by a Yale Ph.D in literature and culture. That doesn’t matter at all for those with degrees in the sciences, which apparently gives many critics license to disembowel you with sarcasm and contempt. However, if you try to do something really big—like explain the universe and its workings as related to human consciousness—you’re bound to upset people. What interests me, of course, is how all of this relates to life after death, or to the survival of consciousness unfettered from the animal, so to speak. If you will kindly bear with me as I first discuss the general implications of Lanza’s work, I will address the issue of EVPs and evidence for the afterlife right afterwards. I promise.

I tried. I really did. I’ve slogged through so many ‘popular’ books on quantum mechanics and Theories of Everything that I’ve lost count. The latest one was Dr. Robert Lanza’s Biocentrism. I have not finished the book yet, but I’m close. I’ve made it through six of the basic tenets or precepts of his theory. I thought this biocentric view—in which living things create all reality according to their perceptions and perspective–was pretty amazing, but I was troubled by the need to obliterate objective reality in favor of one entirely dependent on us. He explained why it is when you kick a tree, it hurts—it’s not because the tree has any objective reality, it’s simply a complex reaction between wave-functions of the tree that have collapsed into ‘thing that causes pain’, or something like that. I confess, it’s a little murky to me. I lay awake last night wondering how Dr. Lanza would explain why it is that a tree could fall on us and kill us, even though we never looked at it, never ‘collapsed’ it into reality or filtered it through our sensory systems.

I then wondered why it is that we all agree to such a large extent on what constitutes outside reality (assuming, as I’m afraid I still do, that such a thing exists) and to what we are referring when we use language. I suppose Dr. Lanza would say that a community of human animals agrees on illusory external realities because we all process information in a similar way: we’re built from the same ‘stuff’, so to speak. Then, just because I thought it would be fun to fret over this until 4 AM, I questioned the entire time issue. Of course, time is relative, and I do understand that on a layperson’s level. If you’re shot out into space and travel at a certain speed, you will age more slowly than your counterparts on Earth. There is even a formula to determine this. What upsets me about time is its relation to aging, to ‘entropy’, I think, if one can equate the two. We assume that as we age, time is passing; somehow, time is responsible for wrinkles and bad knees. Dr. Lanza says that the very notion of time is illusory, created by humans to make sure we can get to the office on time and function in a capitalist society (those are my words regarding the office and capitalism). Simply because we measure something does not mean that it exists in any objective sense or in any sense at all. Clocks are solely for convenience; as the author claims, we could measure the same thing by melting ice cubes or sunsets or tides.

So why, then, do we age and die as all biological things are wont to do? Dr. Lanza maintains that where we see progressive change there is really only a series of present moments that we link together and pretend form some kind of coherent trajectory from past to present to future. I think we all accept that the past and future don’t really ‘exist’ in any meaningful sense; the past lives only through memory of it (and we all know how tricky and deceptive memory is; even if we could remember everything ‘perfectly,’ we still don’t know what it is that we are remembering—certainly nothing material, nothing we can point to) and the future hasn’t happened yet, so by definition it has no objective existence either. This eternal present has always terrified me, because it rips me out of context. I think our author would say that ‘context’ is just the human animal’s way of making sense of things that aren’t there. That’s the problem. The previous statement doesn’t mean anything, yet that’s what Dr. Lanza is saying. Back to the aging and dying issue: all of humans experience this trajectory, whether or not ‘time’ exists. It seems to me that if we all share this path, always, without exception, then something ‘like’ time is happening to us. We don’t have to call it time, but we have to call it something. Here’s a quick and concise definition of entropy:

“Entropy is a measure of order and disorder. If left alone, aging systems go spontaneously from youthful, low entropy and order to old, high entropy and disorder”. (http://www.worldscibooks.com/popsci/p597.html)

So if entropy is responsible for aging and ultimately what we call ‘death’, then what is entropy’s relationship to time? If time is a human-made illusion, then what is killing us? The key word in the quote above is ‘spontaneously’. That word, by definition, indicates that a process is occurring without resorting to the passage of time. How is it that aging can occur ‘spontaneously’? If it is not a process, and doesn’t the word ‘process’ indicate something occurring over time, then what the heck is it? I’m afraid that Dr. Lanza cannot say that time is purely illusory when biological systems age and die due to a process that we call entropy. His argument against this is interesting, yet in many ways illogical.

He states that what we see as having progressed to a state of entropy is simply another snapshot in the present moment, and what we observe is change from one present moment to another present moment; it’s only our interpretation that sees a progression or superimposes a pattern or value judgment. In other words, aging is an assumption we make when faced with changes in the human organism. Those changes result from an illusory past in the first place. If time doesn’t happen, then change doesn’t either; therefore, nothing we observe is a result of a change. We don’t, however, live in the eternal present. I would argue that we can’t. Does it make sense that we could possibly understand life as one present moment after another and then death? We can’t think that way, so if that’s the way “things really are,” then what’s the point if we can’t make that conceptual leap? The Theory of Everything makes no sense if we can’t live it or even fully grasp it.

I have to finish the entire book before I get to the implications of Dr. Lanza’s theory. If life creates consciousness and consciousness creates the universe and everything in it, we are certainly all-powerful. Maybe he is about to say that we are eternal, since nothing that is out of time can possibly cease to exist. OK, so I will take that to mean that my consciousness is boundless and not in any way bound by change (an illusion created by time). However, I know that I will age and die, as evidenced by everything around me succumbing to entropy. So I’m back to square one. My death means something to me, as it does to those who love me. Of course, if Dr. Lanza says that Kirsten will ALWAYS exist, the question is HOW will she always exist? All that which limits my consciousness—including my body, my perceptions, and my brain—is what I know as real. One might TELL me that what I know as real actually isn’t, but that doesn’t change anything for me. You can say that my iced-cream is an illusion that I brought into existence, but in any case, it tastes the same whether it is an external reality or a consciousness-created reality.

The following quote is from Sean Carroll’s web site:

“The first mystery of the arrow of time is that it’s nowhere to be found in the fundamental laws of physics. Those laws work perfectly well if we run processes backwards in time. (More rigorously, for every allowed process there exists a time-reversed process that is also allowed, obtained by switching parity and exchanging particles for antiparticles — the CPT Theorem.) Nevertheless, the macroscopic world we observe is full of irreversible processes. The puzzle is to reconcile microscopic reversibility with macroscopic irreversibility.”

Therein lays the issue, the knot: what happens on a microscopic level—including, of course, the quantum level—is apparently NOT occurring on the macroscopic level. Photons can behave in bizarre, contradictory and fantastic ways, but that doesn’t mean anything in our large, material world is doing anything remotely like it. Our ‘big’ world seems to function according to the classical laws of physics. There are two possibilities here: we have a fundamental contradiction which can only be resolved when someone—probably a physicist—finds the missing link (something like the debunked notion of the aether) that explains everything (the GUT: Grand Unifying Theory), OR the world on the macroscopic level DOES contain all of the contradictions of the quantum level upon which its existence rests, and we simply haven’t devised the correct experiments to illustrate this correlate. Again from Sean Carroll’s web site:

“Is there any way the arrow of time can be explained dynamically?

I can think of two ways. One is to impose a boundary condition that enforces one end of time to be low-entropy, whether by fiat or via some higher principle; this is the strategy of Roger Penrose’s Weyl Curvature Hypothesis, and arguably that of most flavors of quantum cosmology. The other is to show that reversibilty is violated spontaneously — even if the laws of physics are time-reversal invariant, the relevant solutions to those laws might not be. However, if there exists a maximal entropy (thermal equilibrium) state, and the universe is eternal, it’s hard to see why we aren’t in such an equilibrium state — and that would be static, not constantly evolving. This is why I personally believe that there is no such equilibrium state, and that the universe evolves because it can always evolve. The trick of course, is to implement such a strategy in a well-founded theoretical framework, one in which the particular way in which the universe evolves is by creating regions of post-Big-Bang space-time such as the one in which we find ourselves.”

 So, if the universe were static and eternal, time would be an illusion that we clearly create from a biocentric position. If, however, the universe is constantly evolving, we certainly do need time to account for that. Of course, Lanza would say that the universe is only evolving because we “evolve” it through our perceptions. I think he goes too far, actually. It’s an interesting idea that he presents, but it makes much more sense that the internal/external worlds are in relationship to each other, not that one precludes the other:

“To say that time is not well understood is one thing, but to assert that time is therefore an illusion seems unfounded to me. When forced to summarize his conclusion, he (page 111) backtracks from the bolder statements and writes only that: “Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.” I could add that time is real because mind and change are real.” http://darwiniana.com/2010/02/12/biocentrism-review/

I’m inclined to agree with the author of this quote. We perceive changes in the universe and the passage of time through our ‘animal sense perception,’ but that doesn’t mean that time and change are non-existent properties or phenomena. We need the notion of time for classical physics and we don’t, really (from what I am able to glean) for quantum physics, but again—time appears to be a hypothetical concept in every area of cosmology, necessary but not ‘proven’. Time may not exist, but entropy does, and I feel entropy as growing older and facing biological death. My experience of time leads me to believe that I (and all other living things) am in a constant state of evolution and flux. What might stand apart from that? Consciousness. It is entirely possible that what is in the constant evolutionary state is the material world, not the quantum world. If my consciousness arises from a quantum field, if awareness itself functions according to the rules of the sub-atomic realm, then consciousness is not bound by time and would, theoretically, continue on indefinitely.

Critics would accuse me of bringing ‘dualism’ back into the discussion as an excuse to save the notion of a soul. However, I’ve never understood why dualism is such a dirty word for scientists. If we can have a material and a quantum world that function according to different paradigms, then why is it not possible that the ‘human animal’ functions in two entirely different ways as well? Why could we not be both ‘material’ and ‘quantum’? Yes, I realize that no one has proven that consciousness emerges from a quantum field; however, it seems the best explanation that we have right now. Now we can engage in Part Two of this grand discussion, which involves the data that paranormal researchers bring back from their investigations. Yes, I realize that many scientists will stop reading right here and forever turn their backs on soulbank (if they would even look at it to begin with) and everything herein contained, but . . . we DO come back with tantalizing data that is not explained by normal means. I can say that with authority after years of painstakingly sorting through audio, video, ITC sessions and so on. I think that the hypothesis that consciousness occupies the quantum space might explain EVPs and all the other anomalies we bring home and puzzle over.

Kirsten A. Thorne, Ph.D

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Dear reader: I reproduce below, in its entirety, an article by Michael Talbot that summarizes recent thinking into the nature of reality itself. It is based on the work of theoretical physicists, psychologists and scientists working in various fields. Do you care about such things as ghosts, spirits, survival of consciousness and the possibilities for reincarnation? Does it matter that science is on the track of providing us a model of reality that accommodates such experiences and validates them as real? (or, as real as anything gets in the holographic model) If this topic fascinates you, then I IMPLORE you to read the article below. Soon, I will provide my own commentary and insights into what this could all mean for paranormal investigators. I anxiously await your feedback.

Kirsten A. Thorne, Ph.D.

In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect’s name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn’t matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein’s long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect’s findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect’s findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.

To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.

When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose.

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The “whole in every part” nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect’s discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration.

Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium’s front and the other directed at its side.

As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them.

When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect’s experiment.

According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

Such particles are not separate “parts”, but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these “eidolons”, the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.

The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky.

Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order.

At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.

What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be — every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from bluü whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of “All That Is.”

Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a “mere stage” beyond which lies “an infinity of further development”.

Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.

Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain.

In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat’s brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious “whole in every part” nature of memory storage.

Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.

Pribram’s theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage–simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.

Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word “zebra”, you do not have to clumsily sort back through ome gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like “striped”, “horselike”, and “animal native to Africa” all pop into your head instantly.

Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information–another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with evey other portion, it is perhaps nature’s supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more tractable in light of Pribram’s holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions.

An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram’s theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists.

Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability.

Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism.

Pribram’s belief that our brains mathematically construct “hard” reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support.

It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected.

Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent on what are now called “osmic frequencies”, and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions.

But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram’s holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm’s theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is “there” is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality?

Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.

We are really “receivers” floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram.

This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram’s views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature.

Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the holographic paradigm.

In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level.

It is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual ‘A’ to that of individual ‘B’ at a far distance point and helps to understand a number of unsolved puzzles in psychology. In particular, Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness.

Creation – Holographic Universe
In the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a psychotherapeutic tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the identity of a female of a species of prehistoric reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not only gave a richly detailed description of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species’s anatomy was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head.

What was startling to Grof was that although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation with a zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles colored areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal.

The woman’s experience was not unique. During the course of his research, Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings which helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States). Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details which turned out to be accurate.

Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling psychological phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap into some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary practices and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience, individuals gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of the future, of regressions into apparent past-life incarnations.

In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the common element in such experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual’s consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or limitations of space and time, Grof called such manifestations “transpersonal experiences”, and in the late ’60s he helped found a branch of psychology called “transpersonal psychology” devoted entirely to their study.

Although Grof’s newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has become a respected branch of psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able to offer a mechanism for explaining the bizarre psychological phenomena they were witnessing. But that has changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm.

As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists or has existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of space and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays into the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.

The holographic prardigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain — as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret as physical.

Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the healing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for our health than current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body.

Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work so well because in the holographic domain of thought images are ultimately as real as “reality”.

Even visions and experiences involving “non-ordinary” reality become explainable under the holographic paradigm. In his book “Gifts of Unknown Things,” biologist Lyall Watson discribes his encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance, was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air. Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to watch the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then “click” off again and on again several times in succession.

Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such events, experiences like this become more tenable if “hard” reality is only a holographic projection.

Perhaps we agree on what is “there” or “not there” because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected.

If this is true, it is the most profound implication of the holographic paradigm of all, for it means that experiences such as Watson’s are not commonplace only because we have not programmed our minds with the beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic universe there are no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality.

What we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with the power of the mind to the phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda during his encounters with the Yaqui brujo don Juan, for magic is our birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to compute the reality we want when we are in our dreams.

Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry.

Whether Bohm and Pribram’s holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or dies an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that it has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation for the instantaneous communications that seem to be passing back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London, Aspect’s findings “indicate that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality”.

Article from: http://www.rense.com/general69/holo.htm

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Ventricular Septal Defect device closure

143 days ago, 28703 views
A ventricular septal defect (VSD) is an opening or hole in the wall that separates the two lower chambers of the heart. This wall is called the ventricular septum. The hole causes oxygen-rich blood to leak from the left side of the heart to the right side. This causes extra work for the right side of the heart, since more blood than necessary is flowing through the right ventricle to the lungs.
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Therapeutic Supplements

Algae and Men
  Sources and Uses of Commercial Algae
    - Food
      - Cyanophyta
      - Rhodophyta
      - Heterokontophyta
      - Chlorophyta
    - Extracts
      - Agar
      - Alginate
      - Carrageenan
    - Animal Feed
    - Fertilizers
    - Cosmetics
    - Therapeutic Supplements
    - Toxin
Microalgae are a unique source of high-value compounds and systematic screening for therapeutic substances, particularly from cyanobacteria, has received great attention. Among cyanobacteria Spirulina sp. has undergone numerous and rigorous toxicological studies that have highlighted its potential therapeutic applications in the area of immunomodulation, anticancer, antiviral, and cholesterol reduction effects.

A number of extracts were found to be remarkably active in protecting human lymphoblastoid T-cells from the cytopathic effects of HIV infection. Active agents consisting of sulfolipids with different fatty acid esters were isolated from Lyngbya lagerheimii and Phormidium tenue. Additional cultured cyanobacterial extracts with inhibitory properties were also found in Phormidium cebennse, Oscillatoria raciborskii, Scytonema burmanicum, Calotrix elenkinii, and Anabena variabilis. A protein called cyanovirin, isolated from an aqueous cellular extract of Nostoc elipsosporum prevents the in vitro replication and citopathicity of primate retroviruses.

Cryptophycin 1, an active compound isolated from Nostoc strain GSV224, exerts antiproliferative and antimitotic activities by binding to the ends of the microtubules, thus blocking the cell cycle at the metaphase of mitosis. Cryptophycin 1 is the most potent suppressor of microtubule dynamics yet described. Research has been focused on its potent antitumor activity and a synthetic analogue, cryptophycin-52, is at present in Phase II clinical trials by Eli Lilly & Co, Inc. (Indianapolis, IN). Other studies using water soluble extracts of cyanobacteria have found a novel sulfated polysaccharide, calcium spirulan to be an antiviral agent. This compound appears to be selectively inhibiting the penetration of enveloped viruses into host cells, thereby preventing the replication. The effect was described for many different viruses like herpex simplex, measles, and even HIV-1.

Among eukaryotic microalgae, a glycoprotein prepared from Chlorella vulgaris culture supernatant exhibited protective activity against tumor metastasis and chemotherapy-induced immunosuppression in mice.

Extracts from several macroalgae may prove to be a source of effective antiviral agents; although the tests have been either in vitro (in test-tubes or similar) or on animals, with few advancing to trials involving people. A notable exception is Carraguard, a mixture of carrageenans similar to those extracted from Irish moss. Carraguard has been shown to be effective against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in vitro and against herpes simplex virus in animals. Testing has advanced to the stage where the international research organization, the Population Council, is supervising large-scale HIV trials of Carraguard, involving 6000 women over 4 yr. Extracts from the brown macroalgae, Undaria pinnatifida, have also shown antiviral activity; an Australian company is involved in several clinical trials, in Australia and the U.S., of such an extract against HIV and cancer. The Population Council’s trials against HIV involve the vaginal application of a gel containing carrageenan. Because antiviral substances in macroalgae are composed of very large molecules, it was thought they would not be absorbed by eating macroalgae. However, it has been found in one survey that the rate of HIV infection in macroalgae-eating communities can be markedly lower than it is elsewhere. This has led to some small-scale trials in which people infected with HIV ate powdered Undaria, with a resulting decrease of 25% in the viral load.

Fucoxanthin, a carotenoid commonly distributed in brown algae, such as U. pinnatifida, Scytosiphon lomentaria, Petalonia binghamiae, and Laminaria religiosa, is a potent drug candidate and can be utilized as an excellent supplement like astaxanthin, because it acts as an antioxidant and inhibits GOTO cells of neuroblastoma and colon cancer cells. Recently, the apoptosis activity against HL-60 (human leukema) and Caco-2 (cancer colon) cells has been reported for fucoxanthin.

Among the microalgal high-value compounds there are carotenoids such as β-carotene, astaxanthin, PUFA such as DHA and EPA, and polysaccharides such as b-glucan. Carotenoids by their quenching action on reactive oxygen species carry intrinsic anti-inflammatory properties, PUFA exhibit antioxidant activity and polysaccharides act as immunostimulators.

A major bottleneck in the explotation of microalgal biomass for the production of high-value compounds is low productivity of the culture, both in terms of biomass and product formation. A fundamental reason for this is slow cell growth rates owing to inefficient use of strong light. Furthermore, most microalgal products are secondary metabolites that are produced when growth is limited. A solution to this bottleneck could be to milk the secondary metabolites from the microalgae. This involves continuous removal of secondary metabolites from cells, thereby enabling the biomass to be reused for the continuous production of high-value compounds.

Recently, a new method was developed for milking β-carotene from Dunaliella salina in a twophase bioreactor. In this technique, cells are first grown under normal growth conditions and then stressed by excess light to produce larger amounts of β-carotene. At this stage, the second, biocompatible organic phase is added and the β-carotene is extracted selectively via continuous recirculation of a biocompatible organic solvent (lipophilic compound) through the aqueous phase containing the cells. Because the cells continue to produce β-carotene, the extracted product is continuously replaced by newly produced molecules. Therefore, the cells are continuously reused and do not need to be grown again. In contrast to existing commercial processes, this method does not require the harvesting, concentrating, and destroying of cells for extraction of the desired product. Furthermore, purification of the product is simple owing to the selectivity of the extraction process. The general application of this process would facilitate the commercialization of microalgal biotechnology and development of microalgal products.

The properties of the cell membrane play an important role in the contact between biocompatible lipophilic solvents and hydrophobic parts of the cell membrane might be prevented by presence of a cell wall or hydrophilic parts of the outer membrane. Physiological properties of the cells, such as their capacity for continuous endo- and exocytosis, might also play a role in the milking process. Other considerations are the location and way in which the product accumulates inside the cells and the function of that product inside the cells. A product like chlorophyll would be difficult to extract owing to its location in thylakoid membranes and because it is bound strongly to other cell components. The extraction of a product with a protective effect on the cells (e.g., β-carotene) will enhance its synthesis. The milking process can be applied also to other algae and other products besides D. salina, for example in Haematococcus pluvialis for the recovery astaxanthin, and marine microalgae for PUFA.

In addition to its use in aquaculture (e.g., to give salmon a pink color), astaxanthin has also been described as having nutraceutical importance related to free-radical scavenging, immunomodulation, and cancer prevention. H. pluvialis can produce and accumulate astaxanthin to concentrations of 1–8% of the dry weight. This concentration within the cell would make milking of H. pluvialis more successful compared with D. salina. However, cultivation of H. pluvialis is more complex than D. salina, and productivity is lower. Furthermore, extraction, purification, and concentration are a heavy burden on the production cost. As the final product cost is also sensitive to algal productivity and duration of the growth period, this process is not economically feasible at present.

PUFAs are gaining increasing importance as valuable pharmaceutical products and ingredients of food owing to their beneficial effect on human health. DHA (22 : 6 v3) and EPA, (20 : 5 v3), in particular, are important in the development and functioning of brain, retina, and reproductive tissues both in adults and infants. They can also be used in the treatment of various diseases and disorders, including cardiovascular problems, a variety of cancers, and inflammatory disease. At present, PUFAs are produced commercially from fish oil, but this is an insufficient source of these products and microalgae provide an optimal lipid source of PUFAs.

The heterotrophic marine dinoflagellate Crypthecodinium cohnii has a lipid content greater than 20% dry weight and is known for its ability to accumulate fatty acids that have a high fraction (30–50%) of DHA. Lipids are important components of algal cell membranes but also accumulate in globules in other parts of the cells. Microalgal growth and fatty acid formation is affected by medium composition and environmental conditions (e.g., carbon sources). Lipid production occurs under growth-limiting conditions; during linear growth, the cells are stressed owing to nutrient limitation and therefore produce more lipids. Also the concentration of DHA, hence the lipid quality, is negatively affected by increases in lipid concentration. The highest quality lipid it obtained when glucose is used as the carbon source, and when the cell concentration and lipid content of the cells are the lowest.

Milking can be used also for DHA production by C. cohnii. In this process, cells are first grown under the correct conditions for growth, after which they are stressed to produce higher concentrations of DHA. A biocompatible organic solvent is added during the DHA production stage to extract the product. This process enables the production of high-quality lipid, thereby reducing extraction and purification costs. Furthermore, higher amounts of DHA are produced by substitution of extracted lipids by newly synthesized lipid, increasing the productivity of the system.

Microalgae represent also one of the most promising EPA producers, as the purification of this PUFA from fish oil, which remains the main commercial source of EPA, involves many drawbacks. Many Eustigmatophyceae, such as Nannochloropsis sp. and Monodus subterraneus, and Bacillariophyceae species contain a considerable amount of EPA. An EPA production potential has been found in the genus Nitzschia (especially N. alba and N. laevis). It was reported that the oil content of N. alba was as high as 50% of cell dry weight and the EPA comprises 4–5% of the oil. N. laevis could utilize glucose or glutamate as single substrate for heterotrophic growth, and the cellular EPA content of the alga in heterotrophic conditions was also higher than that in photoautotrophic conditions suggesting that this diatom is a good heterotrophic EPA producer.

The bioprocess engineering aspect of heterotrophic EPA production by N. laevis has been extensively studied. Major achievements include:
  • Optimization of various medium components (including silicate, glucose, nitrogen sources, salts and trace elements) and environmental factors (including pH, temperature) for the alga culture
  • Investigation of detailed physiological behavior of the alga (cell growth, nutrient consumption, fatty acid compositions, etc.) by a continuous culture (the dilution rate and glucose concentration in the feed medium were optimized in terms of EPA productivity and glucose utilization efficiency)
  • Development of high cell density and high productivity techniques, which led to an EPA yield of 1112 mg l-1 and an EPA productivity of 174 mg l-1 day-1, both of which are the highest ever reported in microalgal cultures.

Microalgae produce many different types of polysaccharides, which may be a costituent of the cell wall as in unicellular red algae as Porphyridium sp. and Rhodella sp., or be present inside the cell, as in the Euglenophyceae. The polysaccharides of Rhodophyta are highly sulfated and consist mainly of xylose, glucose, and galactose. These compounds selectively inhibit reverse transcriptase (RT) enzyme of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its replication in vitro.

Rodents fed with a diet supplemented with biomass and polysaccharides derived from Porphyridium results in a decrease in blood cholesterol concentration (by 22% and 29%, respectively) and triglyceride levels, increased feces weight (by 130% and 196%, respectively) and bile acid excretion (5.1- and 3.2-fold or more). Moreover, algal biomass or polysaccharide increased the length of both the small intestine (by 17% and 30%, respectively) and the colon (by 8.5% and 32%, respectively).

Paramylon is the term used for the reserve polysaccharide of Euglena and euglenoids in general. Its granules appearing in various locations inside the cell; in many species they are scattered throughout the cytoplasm, but others can be massed together or few, but large, and located in a fairly constant position. Their shape and size differ markedly, and together with their distribution inside the cell, represent a taxonomic feature. Paramylon consists of b-1,3-glucan, a linear polysaccharide found in the cell walls of many bacteria, plants, and yeasts. It belongs to a group of naturally occurring polysaccharides such as lentinan, fungal glucans, sizofiran, and pachyman, which are considered bioactive compounds. Lentinan and sizofiran are known to inhibit the growth of various tumors, whereas fungal glucans are used clinically for their stimulatory effect on the immune system, in particular on the macrophages. The main interest in b-glucans stems from their ability to act as nonspecific immune system stimulants, by binding to a specific site on monocytes/ macrophages and granulocytes. They have been successfully used in aquaculture to strengthen the nonspecific defence of many important species of fishes and shrimps by injection, immersion, or in the feed. Sulfated derivatives of Euglena paramylon, in particular, have shown anti-HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) activity. Moreover, it has been suggested that this polysaccharide has a cholesterol-lowering effect when incorporated in the diet of either humans or animals, and moderates the postprandial blood glucose and insulin response in humans. Since Euglena gracilis can accumulate large quantities of paramylon when grown in the presence of an utilizable carbon source, it could represent an alternative source of this compound to Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast), which is currently exploited industrially for its extraction. Moreover, Euglena has been investigated as a potential protein source, and a promising dietary supplement due to its content of highly nutritious proteins and PUFAs, and to the simultaneous production of antioxidant compounds, such as β-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E.

Table 7.7 summarizes commercially exploited algae and the corresponding nutraceutical.

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Managed care To direct and manage personnel—e.g., to administer a programme.
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As I've become more and more involved with blogging about the 80s I've realized how many great films came out of that decade that really deserve top 10 consideration, and so I've decided to create an alternate top 10 movies of the 80s list. There aren't any films on the original list that I want to remove, I just want to add 10 more without exceeding the parameters of a top 10 list. Think of this list as existing in an alternate reality; like the one JJ Abrams created for his reboot of Star Trek, sort of.

So here we go: the alternate reality top 10 movies of the 80s are...

1) The Killing Fields - After the reporters were chased out the real nightmare began

2) Batman - Changed the course of superhero movies forever

3) Full Metal Jacket - Kubrick's best late film

4) The Terminator - James Cameron re-invents sci-fi as an action genre

5) Dune - David Lynch dreams about Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic

6) Prizzi's Honor - Jack Nicholson at his cheeky best

7) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - A beautifully crafted ode to the dreamer

8) This is Spinal Tap - The mother of all modern mockumentaries

9) Dangerous Liaisons - Love as the blood sport of the idle rich

10) Predator - An unexpected gem that takes you places you didn't expect


FDR3548 The Matrix Is Not An Argument - Call In Show - December 30th, 2016

Archive this series
Question 1: [1:48] – "Prior to my god daughter's baptism I was planning to formally leave the Catholic church, as I have become interested in Ayn Rand's objectivisim. I feel conflicted that I have accepted this position while I do not align with Catholic beliefs which leads me to wonder, how can one raise a child without relation to an entity, being raised a catholic myself, while upholding objectivist values?"
Question 2: [48:08] – “Is good addictive across human beings and doesn’t the assumption that it is underlie collectivist thinking?”
Question 3: [1:24:00] – “As a male in my prime my body is pushing to attain sex however that is a major problem for me. I was raised as a respectful and virtuous person so until now I was doing the old-fashioned thing, being nice, polite and thoughtful, not lowering my standards. This pretty much resulted in nothing but a few friendships. This was frustrating and with my body driving me I decided to try the other way: posting pictures of my abs, etc. and literally 1000% increase in traffic, conversation etc. My question is why do I have to degrade myself in this way to even start to appeal to the opposite sex? What is the reasoning behind that do you think? also I know all these people talking to me now are majority broken themselves because they are searching for the people I am trying to emulate and are highly likely not to be relationship material. Why is it so hard to find decent people and is the majority of people so shallow and primal?”
Question 4: [1:38:39] – “Why is it that God is impossible if the two main logical arguments proposed in your book can be shown to be inconsistent and if there is no logical inconsistencies with God, why would it not be wise to be an agnostic.”
Question 5: [1:57:01] – “What are your thought about making compromises in values, principles, and life? Life is not always black and white, and I think it is wise to know when to stand at the white or the gray. Is my way of thinking dangerous and slippery? Do you have additional tips so that I do not fall into any traps?”

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