Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Marie Curie and Pierre Curie Conducted Psychical Research and Believed in Paranormal Phenomena

I recently updated my web page on Eminent Researchers with entries for the Nobel Prize winners Marie Curie and Pierre Curie.

Marie Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics and Nobel Prize for Chemistry)

Marie Curie was the first woman awarded a Nobel prize and she was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes.

According to Wikipedia...

Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term coined by her[2]), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. It was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive isotopes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

Marie Curie participated in experiments with the medium Eusapia Palladino.

According to the "Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia"...

The Institut Général Psychologique of Paris carried on extensive experiments in 43 sittings from 1905 to 1907. Pierre and Marie Curie were among the investigators. ... The Curies regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and took detailed notes. According to historian Anna Hurwic, they thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity.[12]
http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino

Pierre Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics)

Pierre Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. According to Wikipedia:

Pierre Curie (15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906) was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity, and Nobel laureate. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Maria Sklodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie

According to the "Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia"...

On July 24, 1905, Pierre Curie reported to his friend Gouy: "We have had a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino at the [Society for Psychical Research]."

It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?[13]

http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Controlling Drowsiness: Calming or Stimulating the Mind During Meditation

During meditation, you can sometimes overcome hindrances such as a turbulent mind or a drowsy mind by controlling the rate of your breathing, your posture and by opening or closing your eyes.

Breathing slowly can be relaxing, and if the mind is turbulent, breathing slowly can help calm the mind. However it can also lead to drowsiness. In the case of drowsiness, breathing a little bit faster may help one become more wakeful.

This effect may be due to two factors. Changing the rate of breathing may change CO2 levels in the blood and the activity of breathing faster may be enough to make one more wakeful.

Meditating with the eyes closed is also more relaxing than meditating with the eyes open.

If you start off a meditation session with a turbulent mind, you can calm it by breathing slowly with closed eyes. Then, if you get too drowsy, you can open your eyes and also increase your rate of breathing a bit.

If you start off drowsy you can try breathing a little more rapidly and with your eyes open. That can help fend off drowsiness.

In cases of extreme drowsiness, standing up while meditating can help you to remain wakeful. If needed, you can stand with your hands on the back of a chair to help you keep your balance. However, in some cases it might simply be necessary to get some sleep before meditating.

In cases of extreme mental turbulence, you can try meditating while lying down or doing relaxation exercises.

These techniques should help you to maintain a state that is relaxed yet awake, and tranquil yet alert, which is the ideal state for meditation.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Treatment for Spirit Possession

Here is a case described in boingboing.net of an apparent possession where there was evidence that it was caused by a spirit. Treatment with drugs for hallucinations seems to have relieved the symptoms.

NCBI ROFL spotted this 1994 scientific paper extract describing an Indian man in the UK who blamed his crimes on ghostly possession. When exorcisms failed, he was treated for paranoid schizophrenia. That apparently helped.

...

Treatment commenced using trifluoperazine and clopenthixol. RESULTS. The patient underwent remission during neuroleptic treatment, despite previous evidence of genuine possession. CONCLUSIONS. Many cultures give rise to apparently genuine cases of ghost possession. Neuroleptics may relieve symptoms of exorcism-resistant possession.

...

So this might be an otherwise unremarkable psychiatric case if it were not for the fact that the prison chaplain, and several of the patient's cellmates, saw the spirit possess the patient as a ghostly mist. The chaplain was convinced this was a genuine case of possession, as had priests from several other faiths who had previously carried out exorcisms on the patient.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Chs4o8pt has Moved to a New Host

My web site, chs4o8pt, has moved to a new address: http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Hallucinations

Sometimes when people are able to communicate with spirits they wonder if they might be having hallucinations. Here are a couple of articles that discuss hallucinations and should help readers to understand them better.

Macular degeneration can cause hallucinations:

When seated at breakfast and looking out of his window into the garden, he had on several occasions seen a kind of illumination within which not just one but a number of figures appeared, walking in a column. They were, seemingly, all male, some wearing hats, others caps. They would silently advance towards the window then turn to the right near the garden shed, but one figure would often break away from the others at this point and come right up to the window as if peering in at Don, before it too moved out of sight to one side.

Hearing voices:

What H.V.N. does dispute is that the psychological anguish caused by hearing voices is indicative of an overarching mental illness. This argument, disseminated through a quarterly newsletter, numerous pamphlets and speeches and alternative mental-health journals, are as voluminous and diverse as its membership. But H.V.N.’s brief against psychiatry can be boiled down to two core positions. The first is that many more people hear voices, and hear many more kinds of voices, than is usually assumed. The second is that auditory hallucination — or “voice-hearing,” H.V.N.’s more neutral preference — should be thought of not as a pathological phenomenon in need of eradication but as a meaningful, interpretable experience, intimately linked to a hearer’s life story and, more commonly than not, to unresolved personal traumas. In 2005, Louise Pembroke, a prominent member of H.V.N., proposed a World Hearing Voices Day (held the next year) that would “challenge negative attitudes toward people who hear voices on the incorrect assumption that this is in itself a sign of illness, an assumption made about them that is not based on their own experiences, is stigmatizing, isolating and makes people ill.”

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Two Meditations

Counting the Breath

Sit comfortably, breathe naturally. Count exhalations. After you count ten of them, start again at one. When you get distracted by stray thoughts and lose count, it's okay, it is expected and an important part of the process, just resume counting starting with one.

Getting distracted by stray thoughts is part of letting them out. Going back to counting is part of letting go. In this way you calm the mind by letting out and letting go of thoughts and emotions.

When you notice thoughts arising, pay attention to how you feel in your body. Are there emotions that accompany the thoughts? Are there sensations in your body that accompany the emotions?

Consider this type of meditation not a way to develop concentration but as a technique that helps the mind to calm down. You should do it in a relaxing manner. If you find yourself doing it in a way that is tense, try to be more relaxed.

Walking Meditation

Walk at a normal walking pace. Count to three as you take three steps while inhaling and then continue counting to six as you take three more steps while exhaling. Then start over. You don't have to inhale for three steps and exhale for three steps, you can use what ever number of steps happens to feel right for you.

(It's not good idea to do walking meditation where there is a lot of automobile traffic if you will be crossing streets.)

More about meditation can be found at my web site.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Suffering

Everyone seems to have their own special cross to bear. It may seem unfair and unpleasant, but there is a very good reason for it.

We incarnate here in the physical world is to learn. We learn best by solving problems. We can't learn through solving problems without having problems.

Life is too easy in the spirit world. You don't need food or shelter there. There is no disease. It's hard to have problems in that situation. That is why we have to incarnate here in the physical world. We need a place to go where we can have problems and learn from them.

Life's problems are not always what they seem. When we have a problem, sometimes the solution is to fix the situation to make the problem go away. However some problems do not have this kind of solution. Sometimes the purpose of the problem is to teach us to be patient, to endure, or to gain understanding so we can have compassion for, or be able to assist others in a similar situation.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Karma

Michael Prescott recently posted an article about his religious beliefs on his blog. He says he favors Spiritualism and gives a brief description of his beliefs but without mentioning the Principles of Spiritualism. He also mentions a technique for communicating with spirit guides that sounds similar to one I describe on my web site.

In the comments, there is some discussion about how our actions in this life affect our conditions in the afterlife. If there are different levels in the afterlife, for example, higher levels for more advanced souls, then something must make a spirit fit for a certain level and unfit other levels. If we learn from our experiences on earth, then that learning may change us and those changes can cause us to become fit for a higher level.

It is hard for many of us to understand why we incarnate because we seem to lead ordinary lives. But when we return to the spirit world, we are able to understand why we incarnated and then we see how our lives changed us and how we affected other people. If we incarnated to learn a certain lesson and didn't learn it, we won't advance. If our actions had negative effects on other people, we may regret that and want to work to rectify those effects while in spirit or in a subsequent incarnation.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Meditation: Calming a Turbulent Mind

Meditation can be used for many different purposes and there are many different types of meditation to accomplish those purposes. However, if the mind is very turbulent, it can be difficult to meditate. In this situation, a person might want to calm their mind because they prefer feeling calm or they might want to calm their mind in order to do a particular type of meditation such as spirit communication or spiritual healing.

There are various ways to calm a very turbulent mind:

• One simple method is just to meditate for a longer period of time.

• If you have music running through your mind, make that the focus of meditation - use it like a mantra.

• Use different forms of meditation to help calm down. When the mind is turbulent use a type meditation that is more active. As you calm down, use successively more passive forms of meditation. In the Zen center I used to go to, in the morning practice, they would start with bowing practice, then do chanting practice, and then do sitting meditation.

• Just sit and let your mind rant. You will get bored of its repetitiveness after a while. This is a type of insight and well worth observing. When you notice you can meditate, start your timed meditation practice.

• Have a balanced meal of protein, complex carbohydrates, and fats. All of these nutrients are necessary for proper brain function: protein for neurotransmitters, fats for cell membranes, and carbohydrates for energy. This will help calm your mind. A multivitamin or a B complex stress vitamin formula might also be helpful. Try meditating 1 hour after eating.

• Try doing yoga or relaxation exercises before meditating.

• When the mind is way out of control, it can be due to fatigue. (Inhibitor neurons fatigue first. This is why factory workers during the worst of the industrial revolution would leave work after 16 hour days making the same repetitive arm and hand motions they made all day on the assembly line.) If you've been using the mind all day long and it may be running in circles because of fatigue, try having a balanced meal (above) and then getting some sleep before you meditate.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.