Life in B Flat(Science and Spirituality)

Friday, August 10, 2012

Using a Psi Wheel to Practice Spiritual Healing.

You can make a simple device that will respond to spiritual healing energy. You can use this device to practice and develop your ability to do spiritual healing.

The device is called a psi wheel. It is a small pinwheel that will turn when you place your hand near it but without touching it. You can make one easily yourself, or you can purchase one. Science cannot explain why a psi wheel turns when you place your hand near it, or when it is inside a jar or how a jar can be magnetized to turn a psi wheel without placing your hand near it.

Here is how to make a psi wheel:

You will need:

Aluminum foil (some people use paper but I find aluminum foil works much better than paper).
An eraser
A needle
A ruler
Scissors

Use the scissors to cut a square piece of aluminum foil two inches on a side.

Fold it in half horizontally.

Fold it in half vertically.

Turn it over.

Fold it diagonally to the right.

Fold it diagonally to the left.

Now there are 8 creases radiating from the center of the square.

Fold each crease to create a diamond with four vanes.

Then unfold it a little bit to get the final pin wheel.

Push the eye of the needle into the eraser so the needle stands vertically with the point up.

Place the pinwheel on the tip of the needle.

Now that you've completed your psi wheel, try it out.

Sit at a desk or table away from anything that might create drafts such as an open window, fan, or air vent. Stray air currents might cause the psi wheel to move and would mask the effects of your hand.
If you want to use your right hand, put the psi wheel on the table a few inches to your right. If you want to use your left hand, put it on the table a few inches to your left. A psi wheel will respond to your hand better if it is not directly in front of your torso and if neither your hand or arm is directly in front of your torso.
Place the palm of your hand near the wheel (see the video below). Try to sit with your neck, shoulder, and arm relaxed. You may find it comfortable, if your chair has armrests, to put the wheel and your hand near the edge of table and your elbow on the armrest of the chair.
Getting the psi wheel to turn does not require any special powers. It should work for most people without any effort on their part beyond putting their hand near it. At first, it is usually best if you don't think about it or look at it or try to do anything to make it turn. Worrying about whether it will turn may have a negative effect. Try meditating with your eyes closed or reading something and after a minute or so look at the wheel to see if it is turning. The wheel will usually turn counter clockwise if you use your right hand and clockwise if you use your left hand. Once you experience it turning for a little while you will probably be able to watch it without inhibiting it.

If the wheel doesn't start turning after a minute or so, check the following:

Technical Issues:

Gently bump the wheel with your finger to make sure it spins freely and is balanced on the needle. Make sure the bottom points of the wheel do not bump into the eraser.
Try moving the wheel a little bit on the tip of the needle. This can be particularly helpful if the wheel turns one way and then the other repeatedly without completing a full revolution, or if the wheel slows down at the same point in every rotation. That type of behavior means the wheel is not balanced correctly and you can try to improve the balance by moving the wheel slightly with respect to the tip of the needle.
Be sure the psi wheel is not directly in front of your torso but is a few inches off to the side and use the hand on the same side of your body.
Make sure the wheel is not bumping into or in contact with your hand.
If the table or desk you are using is cluttered and there are objects, particularly metal objects, computer equipment, or electronic gadgets, near your hand, move them several inches away from your hand.
Try cutting out another piece of aluminum foil, make another wheel, and try that one.

Energy Field Issues:

Try relaxing your hand, or straightening your fingers, or spreading your fingers for a second or two.
Try putting the psi wheel on the other side of your body and using your other hand.
Go out for a walk for twenty minutes to an hour and try the psi wheel when you get back. Or, try some other type of mild exercise. This is probably the most important suggestion on this list, it is best way for a beginner to quickly increase his energy field.
Do qi gong exercises to strengthen your energy field.
If you are sleepy, fatigued, hungry, or ill, the wheel might not spin. Try later when you are feeling stronger.

If you can't get a homemade psi wheel to work, purchasing one at the link above may be a good alternative. The commercial ones turn with much less friction and are much easier to use. Reading the instructions for the Egely Wheel may also help you get your homemade wheel working. This article by Dr. Parisetti, which describes his experience learning to use a psi wheel, may also be helpful.

To use the psi wheel to practice spiritual healing, first you have to learn spiritual healing. My web site explains how to do that. I also suggest you read my article on A Synthesis of Spiritual Healing and Qi Gong which describes a good technique for improving your ability to use healing energy.

To use the psi wheel to practice spiritual healing, sit at a desk or table and imagine the spiritual healing energy coming down into you through the top of your head. Understand that the energy flows though your arms and out your hands, maintain loving intentions if possible, but your concentration should be primarily on the energy coming into you from above.

You can repeat a prayer such as one of these:

Oh God, please move healing energy through me to where it's needed for the highest good.
May the light of God heal and bless the world.

As you do this, place your hand near the psi wheel. If you have two psi wheels, you can use one with each hand (but they will probably turn slower than one alone so you may want to get some practice first before you try this with two wheels). It is usually better to close your eyes since thinking about the wheels will distract you from the healing meditation. However you can peek once in a while to see if the wheels are turning.

You should find that if you concentrate on the healing meditation, the psi wheel will turn, but if your mind wanders or you stop the flow of energy through your hands, the wheel will slow down or stop. Practicing this way should help you improve your concentration and develop your ability as a spiritual healer.

If you try using two psi wheels, one near each hand, and find one turns much faster than the other, or one does not turn at all, try the following:

Try just one psi wheel, and use it with the slow or stopped hand. Once it begins to turn well, try going back to two wheels.
If you are sleepy, fatigued, hungry, or ill try later when you are feeling stronger.
The problem may be due to a misalignment in the vertebrae of the neck. The nerves that go from the brain to the hand pass through the vertebrae of the neck. A misalignment in the neck vertebrae can adversely affect those nerves and reduce the hand's ability to turn a psi wheel. If you sometimes have discomfort in your neck, that could be a symptom of misaligned vertebrae. Try doing some gentle stretches to loosen the neck muscles: Move your head by looking up and then down several times. Then then tilt your head to the left and to the right several times. Then look to the left and to the right several times. A chiropractor can make a diagnosis and suggest exercises to help maintain correct alignment of the neck vertebrae.

When you are done with a session, you can store your psi wheels in an upside down jar. Place your psi wheels on the upside down lid and place the wheels on the lid. Then screw the upside down jar over them. This will allow them to be transported easily and protect them from damage and it will protect people from being accidentally stuck by the needles. (Click on the image below for a larger version.):

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Psychobiological theories do not explain Near Death Experiences

Near-Death Experiences Between Science and Prejudice by Enrico Facco and Christian Agrillo:

Several studies have proposed psychobiological interpretations of near-death experiences (NDEs), claiming that NDEs are a mere byproduct of brain functions gone awry; however, relevant facts incompatible with the ruling physicalist and reductionist stance have been often neglected. The awkward transcendent look of NDEs has deep epistemological implications, which call for: (a) keeping a rigorously neutral position, neither accepting nor refusing anything a priori; and (b) distinguishing facts from speculations and fallacies. Most available psychobiological interpretations remain so far speculations to be demonstrated, while brain disorders and/or drug administration in critical patients yield a well-known delirium in intensive care and anesthesia, the phenomenology of which is different from NDEs. Facts can be only true or false, never paranormal. In this sense, they cannot be refused a priori even when they appear implausible with respect to our current knowledge: any other stance implies the risk of turning knowledge into dogma and the adopted paradigm into a sort of theology.

The full article provides supporting information.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Charles Darwin was not an atheist, he believed in a form of Intelligent Design

I've updated the Eminent Researchers page on my web site to include a section on Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin discovered the theory of evolution by natural selection. He was not an atheist, he was agnostic. He believed that one could not know if God existed or not. Darwin also believed that natural laws resulted from design which indicates that he believed in a form of Intelligent Design.

Wikiquote

Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist who achieved lasting fame by outlining the theory of evolution and proposing that evolution could be explained through natural and sexual selection. Prompted by awareness that Alfred Russel Wallace was developing similar theories he published his own sooner than he had originally intended. This theory is now considered an integral component of biological science.

darwinproject.ac.uk

In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.

Wikipedia

Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable.

Wikiquote

With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

UFO Secrecy and Spirituality

Scientists who have tried to calculate the likelihood of aliens evolving on other planets and coming to the earth have consistently concluded that aliens should be here. Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets have only increased the odds. Many people say they have seen alien vehicles and aliens themselves. This is not accepted by mainstream society most likely because the aliens and the government are trying to keep the presence of aliens secret. The fact that SETI has not detected alien radio communications is not necessarily surprising. Aliens would probably have technology far superior ours, why should we expect them to use the same communication methods we use?

It seems probable that intelligence agencies in the US (and maybe other governments) keep their knowledge of UFOs and aliens so secret and so well compartmentalized that even the highest elected and appointed officials do not have access to the information. This would protect and prevent the information from being be released by political means. There isn't just one reason the information might be protected so securely by the intelligence agencies there are many reasons:

Some aliens seem to be abducting people and there is nothing the government or military can do to stop it. If acknowledged by the government, this could cause panic, and make the government look incompetent. Simply admitting the existence of aliens might not be too disturbing, but saying that some aliens are abducting people and hybridizing with them (raping them), could be very disturbing to many people. Some of the things the abductees have said they were told by the aliens, (imminent wars, disasters, alien invasions that never seem to really happen) if given credence by governmental acknowledgment of an alien presence, could cause panic.
It is rumored that the US government (President Eisenhower) made an agreement with some of the aliens to receive advanced alien technology in exchange for permission to carry out abductions. Since there was no way to stop the abductions it seems to be more of a surrender than a pact. If true, this would be a huge embarrassment if it become public knowledge.
People who claim contact with aliens consistently report alien predictions of imminent natural disasters, wars, and alien invasions that never seem to occur. If the aliens could make these predictions in person to all of humanity, it could cause world wide panic and social disruptions.
Some aliens may look just like humans. This could lead to chaotic situations where some humans claim to be aliens and take advantage of the fear and gullibility of other people. Or, it could lead situations where some humans are accused of being aliens and are persecuted. It also creates the possibility that the highest levels of the government are infiltrated by aliens. It would be very embarrassing for the government to have to admit this as a possibility or a fact.
The technology the UFOs use for propulsion seems to be capable of speeds reaching thousands of miles an hour in the atmosphere without subjecting interior of the craft to extremely high acceleration forces. This technology might be theoretically obscure but it might not be difficult to construct with currently available materials. If this was acknowledged by the government, it could encourage all sorts of dangerous people (national governments and private individuals) to attempt to discover this means of propulsion. That could lead to the development of weapons like extremely fast missiles (long range or short range) that are impossible to defend against. The power source for the alien craft might also be adapted to produce a warhead for these missiles of unimaginable power.
The technology used to power the alien crafts, if made available to the public could disrupt our fossil fuel based economy. Obviously the current power structure doesn't want to change the status quo. But less obviously, if all the people currently employed in energy industries became unemployed, they would stop buying things and stop paying taxes until they found new jobs. The ripple effects could cause a deep recession or world wide economic depression. The new alien technology could ultimately have huge economic benefits and be good for society in the long run, but the transition from fossil fuels could be chaotic and traumatic for many people.
When secret military aircraft are accidentally observed by the public, the credibility of those observations can be damaged by misinformation ridiculing the observations as absurd reports of UFOs. Thus it would be harder to keep new and advanced military craft secret if UFOs were no longer a subject of ridicule.
The aliens don't use money. If a technologically superior civilization was known to not use money, people all over the world would question the current economic system on earth. If people demanded we organize the world economy on the same lines as the aliens organize theirs, it would threaten the power of the current elite which depends on monetary wealth for maintaining its power and luxurious lifestyle. The powerful will do what is necessary to maintain the current economic system.
The aliens may tell us the truth about the human soul or spirit and the truth about the history of human evolution and religion. This may contradict popular religions and scientific theories and could upset many people. Also, some people in the government might not believe this truth and consider the aliens to be demonic deceivers who should not be allowed to propagate heresy to the public.
The aliens may want to avoid disrupting the current cultures on earth. In the past, contact with European explorers led to the destruction of native cultures all over the world. Some aliens may want to avoid something similar and some aliens might be working to keep their presence secret. For reasons that might be ethical or simply selfish some aliens may want to preserve the current cultures on earth. The government may agree that there is a danger to earth culture and cooperate in keeping the alien presence secret.
If the presence of aliens is disclosed, no matter what the true alien agenda is (and there may be different groups of aliens with different agendas), some people will believe what the aliens say and some will not believe what they say. Some people will believe what the government says about the aliens, some people will not believe what the government says. Some people will benefit from the changes the aliens bring about, some people will find their own interests are harmed by those changes. No matter what the alien agenda is, it has the potential to cause intense social disruption. This could lead to fracturing of society into different factions and could lead to massive protests, boycotts, or other forms of resistance against governments, and could have significant effect on the world economy. Many people might feel a greater allegiance and loyalty to the aliens than to the human governments. Certain and factual knowledge of the alien presence is a grave danger to the status quo. Those in power benefit from the status quo and will resist change.
Those people responsible for suppressing information about aliens may have committed crimes or violations of the US constitution in order to keep that information secret. They will be reluctant to divulge what has been going on because they could face criminal charges.

There isn't enough public information to make a correct judgment about whether the government's response to the aliens is good or bad. For example, there are purportedly many cases of military jets trying to intercept UFOs and recent rumors of US beam weapons being used on the UFOs. Is the government trying to prevent abductions or trying to discourage friendly aliens from making their presence known? Also, there could be different factions within the government doing different things with or without coordination or knowledge of each other. Some government actions might be good and some might be bad. It is not really possible for us to judge what is going on due to a lack of information.

Understanding the alien agenda also requires a spiritual perspective. We can't make a correct assessment of the phenomena unless we also know the truth about the human soul and human history on earth. There may be coordination in the spirit planes of aliens and humans on the earth plane, but we don't understand this while we are on the earth plane so we react with fear that is not appropriate. This is a very complicated subject but as an example to explain what I mean, suppose some aliens are hybridizing with humans as some abductees and abduction researchers claim. Where will the souls of the hybrids come from? What if there will be human souls incarnating in the hybrids? How can we tell if the aliens are invading the earth or helping humanity to evolve?

Monday, July 23, 2012

How Physicists Might Discover the Spirit World

In an article on cnn.com, physicist and author Sean Carroll describes how the recently discovered Higgs boson might allow physicists to study dark matter. Dark matter is a form of matter that comprises five sixths of the total mass of the universe, however little is known about dark matter because it rarely interacts with ordinary matter. In his article, Carroll describes how scientists could use the Higgs boson to investigate dark matter.

Some people suspect that the spirit world is made of dark matter. In this case, physicists studying dark matter could soon discover the spirit realm. However, even if the spirit world is not made of dark matter, Carroll describes a process that would allow physics to eventually discover the spirit world. When physicists stumble upon an effect in their laboratories or particle accelerators that involves spiritual physics, further study will inevitably lead to discovery of the spirit world.

Through mediumship and other paranormal phenomena, we know that spirits do have some effect on the physical world. Wave function collapse may be one such effect. Quantum entanglement may be also be a phenomena that links the physical world to the spirit world. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before persistent investigations of mainstream physics will lead to the discovery of spiritual physics.

From the article:

It's possible, even likely, that millions of them [dark matter particles] pass through your body every second. It's like a city with two populations, each speaking a different language, and no translators or bilingual interpreters. The two groups of people go about their separate lives, never directly speaking with each other. Likewise, in our galaxy, dark matter and ordinary matter pass right through each other all the time.

The Higgs boson could be the bilingual particle we've been looking for. We don't know exactly what the dark matter is, but we certainly have our favorite theories. In many of those models, the Higgs is the one particle that readily interacts both with ordinary protons and neutrons and also with dark matter.

...

There are several experiments currently running with the goal of detecting dark matter.

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We're not just waiting around for dark matter to be detected, either. Now that we've found the Higgs, we can start studying its properties in detail.

...

But once we better understand the Higgs and the particles it decays into, we might be able to infer the presence of dark matter just by process of elimination, by pinpointing events in which more energy went into the collision than we detected coming out.

...

Friday, July 20, 2012

Eminent Researchers: Alan Turing and Wernher von Braun

I have updated the Eminent Researchers page on my web site to include Alan Turing and Wernher von Braun.

Alan Turing

From Wikipedia.

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine.[1][2] Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.[3]

In a paper where he describes his Turing Machine,
Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460,
Turing wrote:

I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should
like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.

Turing recognized that the lack of ESP would prevent a computer from passing the Turing Test.

Wernher von Braun

From Wikipedia:

Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German-born rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and, subsequently, the United States.

From Wikiquote:

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

...

For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all.

...

It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Doctors Testify to Patient's Spirit Return

Within hours of Burke being pronounced dead at the hospital, two members of the medical team who had treated him received a "visitation" from Burke in their own homes – before they knew that he had passed on. What's more, the men had never met.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Savants and ESP

Last month I posted on Acquired Savant Syndrome. Today I noticed an article Savants: What They Can Teach Us by Larry Dossey, MD that says Savants are often capable of ESP.

Savant is derived from a French word meaning “learned one.” Although they are often mentally or socially impaired, savants frequently possess astonishing creative and intuitive powers of obscure origin, in areas such as mathematics, art, or music.

...

“Savant syndrome” was popularized in the 1988 movie Rain Man. Kim Peek, the developmentally disabled man who was the inspiration for the film, knew more than 7,600 books by heart, as well as every area code, highway, zip code, and television station in the United States.

...

Many clinicians have reported savants capable of extrasensory perception, or ESP, also called psi.

...

The article describes one child who would know when his parents were going to pick him up from school, another who would know about conversations that occurred out of earshot and who had the ability to pick up thoughts, and another who would know when the telephone would ring and who would be calling.

In the same way that Acquired Savant Syndrome is explained by the filter model of the brain, so is ESP in people who are born as savants. The same abnormality in the brain that causes impariments like autism, may also damage the filtering ability of the brain that normally blocks certain facets of consciousness. When that filtering ability is damaged, the abilities that make them savants as well as the ability for ESP can manifest.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Restore Yourself with Tai Chi

I got this book from the library today and I highly recommend it:

Becoming One with Nature: Restore Yourself with Tai Chi
by Martin Lee, Ph.D., Emily Lee, TC Master, Melinda & Joyce Lee

It covers energy healing, self healing, and meditation. It includes an exercise to help you learn to feel the energy (chi), as well as a 64 sequence of forms (tai chi movements).

It's only 144 pages but contains photgraphs and written text of how to do the forms.

My only criticism is that the author tries to give a scientific explanations of why it works. Martin Lee is a physicist who worked on particle accelerators and he is trying to get technical, analytical, scientific, minded westerners to believe in it long enough to try it and prove it for themselves. I can understand his motivation but in my opinion the explanations are not compelling. He does give short case histories of people who have been helped by the techniques including himself and I find that much more convincing - except much of what he is writing about I already know and accept from my experieces with spiritual healing.

I was looking for a book that gave the qigong/tai chi/chi kung perspective on healing because I was interested in expanding my understanding beyond what I have learned in Spritiualist churches and this book satisfies that interest. What surprised me was how similar the two forms of healing are.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Reality is an Illuison

Someone once suggested a person could be an isolated brain in a vat controlled by a virtual reality generator and there would be no way the person could tell the difference between that and an objective reality.

I suppose this could be true, but I think it is more likely that the brain is the virtual reality generator.

Neuroscience has shown that the brain produces the sense of self, and the sense of time.

People who have had Near Death Experiences say that they experience love, timelessness, and oneness while retaining their individuality. They say that when out of the body, deformities, disease and its associated pain, no longer exist.

The sense of time and the sense of self, disease and pain we have while incarnated are not real. They are illusions produced by the brain. All the studies by neuroscientists attempting to show how the brain produces consciousness are really showing how the brain produces a sham reality.

Many of the great mystical traditions have said that reality is an illusion. Neuroscience provides the mechanism for that illusion.

Monday, June 11, 2012

What Near Death Experiencers Have to Say About Reincarnation

Many people who have Near Death Experiences learn about reincarnation during their experience. There are many examples of this described at www.near-death.com

Sandra Rogers:

I was given the choice of remaining with the light, provided I return later to the physical world and experience all that brought me to the point of shooting myself, or I could return now and pick up my life where it was

Karen Brannon:

All of my being wanted to stay there in bliss, but ever since I was six, I knew that reincarnation is the natural fact of life, and now, I had the knowingness that if I chose to stay, I would have to reincarnate to Earth again later.

Thomas Sawyer:

Reincarnation is not a linear thing. One of the problems in defining it is that there is no analogy to it. It is outside of time, yet we can't help but think of it in terms of the past and the future, and this incarnation. The whole story is so big and so involved.

Christian Andréason:

Heaven, I undeniably saw that I had lived an innumerable amount of lives. Yet, what I saw went way beyond our comprehension of what we think reincarnation is. So, I am not exactly speaking of being born again and again on this planet alone.

Arthur Yensen:

Between lives, with the great knowledge of our oversouls, we choose the next life we are going to live and how much karma we are going to meet and settle. For example, if you abused animals, or people, in one life your oversoul would probably cause you to reincarnate into a situation where you'd get abused to make you realize the misery you've caused others.

Amber Wells' research:

...

Her paper was published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies in the fall of 1993. In her study, 70 percent of the group of near-death experiencers demonstrated belief in reincarnation. In contrast, a Gallup Poll found that only 23 percent of the general population endorse this belief.

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"It is a matter of personal knowledge from what the being with whom I spoke during my near-death experience told me about my older son, that he had had 14 incarnations in female physical bodies previous to the life he has just had."

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"My whole life went before me of things I have done and haven't done, but not just of this one lifetime, but of all the lifetimes. I know for a fact there is reincarnation. This is an absolute. I was shown all those lives and how I had overcome some of the things I had done in other lives. There was still some things to be corrected."

...

"I had a lot of questions, and I wanted to know what they [the light beings she encountered in her near-death experience] were doing – why are you just kind of milling around here? And someone stepped forward ... it wasn't just one ... I got information from a number of them ... that they were all waiting for reincarnation."

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Some experiencers interviewed during Ms. Wells' study described the general process of reincarnation as one consciousness separating into individual souls to be embodied in matter. One experiencer took this idea even further, stating that reincarnation takes place more on a collective level rather than an individual level. In other words, this experiencer felt that a collective energy recycles itself through matter and that our sense of individuality is a product of our present incarnation only.

...

Some experiencers indicated that the cycle of reincarnation would probably come to an end for earthly embodiments, but that one would continue to incarnate into other realms or dimensions.

Betty Bethards:

As you are ready, and as you choose, you will be shown your past lives. If you do not believe in reincarnation it may take a long time before you are able to deal with this. Eventually, you must learn to understand yourself in a continuity of growth over many lifetimes. You must recognize all the strengths you have built and all the karmic ties you have created which must be dissolved.

David Oakford:

The being told me that each planet has a theme for learning and that any of them can be chosen by a soul when we are between physical lives.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Acquired Savant Syndrome

Acquired Savant Syndrome occurs when a exceptional talents arise after a brain injury. The “Acquired” Savant—“Accidental” Genius by Darold A. Treffert, MD explains:

A 10-year-old boy is knocked unconscious by a baseball. Following that traumatic blow, he suddenly can do calendar calculations. He can also remember the weather, along with other autobiographical details of his daily life, from that time forward. An elderly woman who had never painted before becomes a prodigious artist after a particular type of dementia process begins and progresses. Another elderly patient with dementia has a similar sudden epiphany of ability, but this time in music. A 56-year-old builder, who had no particular prior interest or skills in art, abruptly, for the first time in his life, becomes a poet, a painter and a sculptor following a stroke that he miraculously survived. An 8-year-old boy begins calendar calculating after a left hemispherectomy for intractable seizures. These are examples of what I call the “acquired” savant, or what might also be called “accidental genius.”

Materialists will say acquired savant syndrome occurs when part of the brain is injured because, either inhibitory function is lost or another part of the brain becomes more active to compensate for the damaged part. But why should compensating for lost functions result in new abilities that never existed before? That is not "compensation". It also seems unlikely that evolution and natural selection could account for the existence of these exceptional abilities that are only expressed as a result of brain injury. The materialist explanations are even less plausible when you consider the details of the cases.

For example:

Derek Amato:

A man who suffered concussion after diving into a shallow pool has made a seemingly improbable discovery: it made him a musical genius.

...

Amato, who can not read music, explained that he knew what to play as he could see black and white squares in his head that triggered his fingers to move.

Tony Cicoria

At a park in 1994, Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon, was hanging up a pay phone when lightning from a gathering storm struck the booth, shooting through the phone and into his head.

...

Shortly afterwards, he had a mysterious, insatiable need to listen to classical piano music. But he soon found that just listening to the music wasn’t cutting it. So, despite never showing any desire to play an instrument before, he bought sheet music and began teaching himself the piano. Learning was slow going though, because instead of playing the Chopin composition in front of him, he kept wanting to play the melodies that were echoing inside his head instead. When he realized these songs were of his own creation, he began furiously writing them down until he had dozens composed. In 2008, Cicoria released a CD of his music called, Notes From An Accidental Pianist and Composer. His best-known song from the album is fittingly titled, “The Lightning Sonata.”

This is how the brain compensates for an injury?

These new skills do not require the training an uninjured person would need to develop them. Some people may be able to learn to use uninjured brain tissue to compensate for functions lost due to brain injury. For example, after a stroke a person may be able to relearn how to move paralyzed muscles. However this requires a long period of physical therapy and usually does not return full function. Yet in Acquired Savant Syndrome, skills that the subject didn't have before the injury arise fully formed without effort or intention.

Natural selection occurs when a trait evolves in response to an environmental factor. How can the ability to do calendar calculations or playing the piano in response to seeing black and white squares in the mind's eye be explained by natural selection? What is the survival advantage in having these abilities in response to an injury? Pianos and calendars have not existed long enough for natural selection to play a role in humankind's ability to use them without making an effort to learn how.

Compensation, and or natural selection are not good explanations for these phenomena. A better explanation for acquired savant syndrome is that the brain does not produce consciousness but is a filter of non-physical consciousness:

The filter model is superior to the hypothesis that the brain produces consciousness because the filter model explains more evidence. You can damage a filter in two ways. You can clog it or you can punch a hole in it. When brain damage causes loss of function like amnesia, that is like a clog in the filter. When brain injury results in increased function, that is like a hole punched in the filter. Examples of increased function include Acquired Savant Syndrome and when people have increased psychic abilities after a brain injury.

Update: Also see my more recent post: Savants and ESP

Monday, June 4, 2012

Free E-book by Eric Weiss: The Long Trajectory: Reincarnation and Life After Death

http://ericweiss.com/the-long-trajectory

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Assessing Skeptical Claims

I often see questions on internet discussion forums asking if there is any known rebuttal to some skeptical claim. When assessing skeptical claims, it is important to understand that there have been many cases of misleading claims by skeptics.

Because there are so many misleading claims made by skeptics you should:

Demand the same level of proof for skeptical claims that you demand for proof of the paranormal. An accusation of fraud is not proof of fraud, just as a claim of a paranormal phenomenon is not proof of a paranormal phenomenon. Skeptics demand scientific statistically significant evidence and replication and they still don't believe any paranormal claims. But when it comes to accusations of fraud, despite many misleading claims made by skeptics, people tend to assume that any accusation of fraud is reliable without considering it may be incorrect due to ignorance, incompetence or duplicity of the skeptic.
Never make up your mind on a skeptical claim until you see how the other side rebuts the skeptics on that issue. Just like sometimes there is a simple natural explanation for a supposed paranormal phenomena that is overlooked because people are ignorant of science or magic tricks, sometimes a skeptical claim may be easily rebutted by someone who knows the details of the situation. The skeptic may be ignorant of the phenomenon he is criticizing, or there may be indisputable evidence the skeptical claim is false.
Be especially suspicious of any side to a dispute that relies heavily on ridicule, persecution, tenuous unproven alternative hypotheses, and misleading statements rather than a simply relying of facts and arguments. People who can't argue based on the facts and logical analysis will resort to other means to convince people of their beliefs.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Physicalism is Dead: Ex-Skeptic talks about why he left the Skeptical M...

Physicalism is Dead: Ex-Skeptic talks about why he left the Skeptical M...: Stephen Bond, former skeptic, had this to say: Of course, there is nothing inherently elitist about reason or the scientific method. Cri...

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Psychic Contributions to Physics

Extrasensory Perception of Subatomic Particles (PDF), (HTML)

Abstract - A century-old claim by two early leaders of the Theosophical Society to have used a form of ESP to observe subatomic particles is evaluated. Their observations are found to be consistent with facts of nuclear physics and with the quark model of particle physics provided that their assumption that they saw atoms is rejected. Their account of the force binding together the fundamental constituents of matter is shown to agree with the string model. Their description of these basic particles bears striking similarity to basic ideas of superstring theory. The implication of this remarkable correlation between ostensible paranormal observations of subatomic particles and facts of nuclear and particle physics is that quarks are neither fundamental nor hadronic states of superstrings, as many physicists currently assume, but, instead, are composed of three subquark states of a superstring.

Occultism and the atom: the curious story of isotopes

http://www.cwlworld.info/pw_article_sept03.pdf (PDF), (HTML)

For example, Besant and Leadbeater reported in 1908 in the journal The Theosophist their discovery of a variation of neon - five years before the English chemist Frederick Soddy gave the name of "isotopes" to atoms of an element differing in mass. Their colleague, C. Jinarajadasa, who made sketches and notes during their investigative sessions, wrote in 1943 to Professor F. W. Aston, inventor of the mass spectrograph, at Cambridge University, England, informing him that Besant and Leadbeater had discovered in 1907 the neon-22 isotope by psychic means five years before scientists found it. (How the two Theosophists identified isotopes will be explained later). The distinguished scientist replied that he was not interested in Theosophy!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Skeptiko Interview with Dr. Melvin Morse

In the skeptiko podcast interview with Dr. Melvin Morse, Morse tells of the case of a child drowning victim who had been underwater for 17 minutes and after being rescued had no heartbeat for an additional 45 minutes. Dr. Morse never saw any sign of life in the patient. At the time he thought she had died. It was only long afterward that he found out she survived.

Yet during that time, the patient experienced floating out of her body and remembered being intubated, hearing a phone conversation the doctor had, and hearing the nurses talking about a cat that died. When she regained consciousness she asked the nurses where her friends from heaven were. She also remembered that heaven was "fun".

The full interview is here.

So by chance or coincidence or fate or whatever, I happened to be in Pocatello, Idaho and there was a child there who had drowned in a community swimming pool. She was documented to be under water for at least 17 minutes. It just so happened that a pediatrician was in the locker room at the same community swimming pool and he attempted to revive her on the spot. His intervention probably saved her life but again, he documented that she had no spontaneous heartbeat for I would say at least 45 minutes, until she arrived at the emergency room. Then our team got there.

She was really dead. All this debate over how close do these patients come to death, etc., you know, Alex, I had the privilege of resuscitating my own patients and she was, for all intents and purposes, dead. In fact, I had told her parents that. I said that it was time for them to say goodbye to her. This was a very deeply religious Mormon family. They actually did. They crowded around the bedside and held hands and prayed for her and such as that. She was then transported to Salt Lake City. She lived. She not only lived but three days later she made a full recovery.

Alex Tsakiris: And what did she tell you…

Dr. Melvin Morse: Her first words, the first words she said when she came out of her coma, she turned to the nurse down at Primary Children’s in Salt Lake City. She says, “Where are my friends?” And then they’d say, “What do you mean, where are your friends?” She’d say, “Yeah, all the people that I met in Heaven. Where are they?” [Laughs]

The innocence of a child. So I saw her in follow-up, another one of these odd twists of fate. I happened to be in addition doing my residency and just happened to be working in the same community clinic in that area. My jaw just dropped to the floor when she and her mother walked in. I was like, “What?” I had not even heard that she had lived. I had assumed that she had died. She looked at me and she said to her mother, “There’s the man that put a tube down my nose.” [Laughs]

Alex Tsakiris: What are you thinking at that point when she says that?

Dr. Melvin Morse: You know, it’s one of those things—I laughed. I sort of giggled the way a teenager would giggle about sex. It was just embarrassing. I didn’t know what to think. Certainly, I’d trained at Johns Hopkins. I thought when you died you died. I said, “What do you mean, you saw me put a tube in your nose?”

She said, “Oh, yeah. I saw you take me into another room that looked like a doughnut.”

She said things like, “You called someone on the phone and you asked, ‘What am I supposed to do next?’”

She described the nurses talking about a cat who had died. One of the nurses had a cat that had died and it was just an incidental conversation. She said she was floating out of her body during this entire time. I just sort of laughed. And then she taps me on the wrist. You’ve got to hear this, Alex.

After I laughed she taps me on the wrist and she says, “You’ll see, Dr. Morse. Heaven is fun.” [Laughs] I was completely blown away by the entire experience. I immediately determined that I would figure out what was going on here. This was in complete defiance of everything I had been taught in terms of medicine.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Meditation Music

Here is some music that may help with the meditation I discussed yesterday:

Put a Little Love in Your Heart
Think of your fellow man
lend him a helping hand
put a little love in your heart.
Get Together
C'mon people now,
Smile on your brother
Ev'rybody get together
Try and love one another right now
Shower the People
Shower the people you love with love
Show them the way that you feel

If you click on the links above you will go to another site which has the lyrics of the song.

If you search the internet, you may be able to find mp3 downloads or youtube videos of this music.

Monday, May 28, 2012

How to Tap into Universal Love

Update: I have added this post to my web site and made a few updates to it. Please refer to Tapping into Universal Love on the meditation page on my web site for the most recent version of this information.

God is love.

People who experience being in the presence of God during near death experiences describe having an overwhelming feeling of being loved.

God is omnipresent.

You can tap into this source of universal love without having a near death experience.

To do it you use your spiritual capabilities - the capabilities that all spirits have and that as an incarnated spirit you have access to even though you are incarnated.

Spirits interact with their world through their mind. They think of a place they want to go to and they start moving there. They are telepathic, they think of someone and their thoughts go off to that person. Spirits use their mind the way an incarnated person uses tools. Spirits create by using their mind.

We use the same word "create" to describe how people use their imagination because it is the same thing.

To create a tap into universal love, use your imagination. Imagine a light beam of love coming down to you from above. Hold your hands in front of you with your palms facing upward to receive it. Relax any tension or tightness you may feel in your chest, open your heart, and let the love flow out into the world.

Try this meditation:

Step 1:

Imagine a light beam of love coming down upon you from above. Hold your hands in front of you with your palms facing upward to receive it.

Say to yourself, "Love is all around why don't you take it?" (If you know the tune, you may sing it to yourself).

Step 2:

Relax any tension or tightness you may feel in your chest, open your heart, and imagine love emanating from your heart and flowing out into the world, or to a situation you don't like (to desensitize yourself to the situation), or to someone who might be a problem for you (to develop forgiveness and tolerance).

Say to yourself, "Love is all around why don't you make it?" (If you know the tune, you may sing it to yourself).

Repeat these two steps for the duration of the meditation session.

If you feel like smiling while you do this, go ahead and smile. It is probably an indication that you are doing it right. Also, sometimes smiling a little bit can help you reenter this state.

Update:

I recommend some music to play during this meditation in this post.

Friday, May 25, 2012

The Experience of Oneness

I made a minor change to my web page on Varieties of Mystical Experiences in the section Kensho and Kundalini. I added a link to a web page by Christine Farrenkopf discussing scientific research on the changes in brain activity that occur when meditators experience a sense of oneness sometimes referred to as a nondual state. (UPDATE: I changed the link on my web site to go to this post.)

From Farrenkopf's web report:

The "peak" of meditation is clearly a subjective state, with each individual attaining it in different manners and having different time requirements. However, the sensation and meaning behind this moment is consistent among all who reach it. At the peak, the subjects indicate that they lose their sense of individual existence and feel inextricably bound with the universe. "There [are] no discrete objects or beings, no sense of space or the passage of time, no line between the self and the rest of the universe" (Newberg 119).

...

The subjects then meditated. When they reached the peak, they pulled on a string attached at one end to their finger and at the other to Dr. Newberg.2 This was the cue for Newberg to inject the radioactive tracer into the IV connected to the subject. Because the tracer almost instantly "locks" onto parts of the brain to indicate their activity levels, the SPECT gives a picture of the brain essentially at that peak moment (Newberg 3). The results revealed a marked decrease in the activity of the posterior, superior parietal lobe and a marked increase in the activity of the prefrontal cortex, predominantly on the right side of the brain (Newberg 6). Such changes in activity levels demonstrated that something was going on in the brain in terms of spiritual experience. The next step was to look at what these particular parts of the brain do. Studies of damage suffered to a region of the brain have enabled us to draw conclusions about its role by observing loss of function.

It has been concluded that the posterior, superior parietal lobe is involved in both the creation of a three-dimensional sense of self and an individual's ability to navigate through physical space (Journal 216). The region of the lobe in the left hemisphere of the brain allows for a person to conceive of the physical boundaries of his body (Newberg 28). It responds to proprioceptive stimuli, most importantly the movement of limbs. The region of the lobe in the right hemisphere creates the perception of the matrix through which we move.

From a subjective point of view, when in the nondual state, it seems like the self disappears and the experiencer becomes "one with everything". From an objective point of view, research on meditators shows that the experience is due to a decrease in activity of the posterior, superior parietal lobe in the brain. These results are consistent with other research which shows that region of the brain is responsible for the sense of self. At first glance, this may seem like a materialist explanation for the experience of oneness, but it is consistent with hypothesis that consciousness is non physical and the brain acts as a filter of consciousness. It indicates that the sense of self is not an objective fact. The sense of self is a subjective opinion, an illusion, produced by the brain.

It is also interesting that people who have near death experiences also report a sense of oneness which suggests the experience of oneness is a real experience of our true nature when we are not constrained by the physical brain. Whatever the explanation, the experience of oneness does show that the sense of self and separateness we consider to be our normal reality is merely a subjective opinion.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Mario Beauregard on Near Death Experiences

Mario Beauregard's recent article on Near Death Experiences, Near death, explained discusses some cases of NDEs and discusses why skeptical explanations for the phenomena are wrong. He concludes NDEs are strong evidence for the afterlife.

The scientific NDE studies performed over the past decades indicate that heightened mental functions can be experienced independently of the body at a time when brain activity is greatly impaired or seemingly absent (such as during cardiac arrest). Some of these studies demonstrate that blind people can have veridical perceptions during OBEs associated with an NDE. Other investigations show that NDEs often result in deep psychological and spiritual changes.

These findings strongly challenge the mainstream neuroscientific view that mind and consciousness result solely from brain activity. As we have seen, such a view fails to account for how NDErs can experience—while their hearts are stopped—vivid and complex thoughts and acquire veridical information about objects or events remote from their bodies.

NDE studies also suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness. Needless to say, this view is utterly incompatible with the belief of many materialists that the material world is the only reality.

His response to criticisms of the article are provided in a second article: Near-death, revisited

Corroborated veridical NDE perceptions during cardiac arrest (and several other phenomena discussed in “Brain Wars”) strongly suggest that so-called “scientific materialism” is not only limited, but wrong. In line with this, nearly a century ago, quantum mechanics (QM) dematerialized the classical universe by showing that it is not made of minuscule billiard balls, as drawings of atoms and molecules would lead us to believe. In other words, QM acknowledges that the physical world cannot be fully understood without making reference to mind and consciousness, that is, the physical world is no longer viewed as the primary or sole component of reality (this was well explained by Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of QM...)

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Dean Radin: Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments

In the recent past, I have posted about the ability of consciousness to influence the physical world at the level of quantum mechanics and in the brain. This shows that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon, nor is it an illusion, and that conscisouness cannot be produced by matter or physical processes. Many of the founders of quantum mechanics such as Erwin Schrödinger, and Max Planck believed this to be true.

Now Dean Radin has published a research paper describing more evidence of this. His latest experiments show how meditators concentrating on an experimental apparatus can cause a photon to change from a wave to a particle. He used a double slit apparatus and found that when meditators concentrated on the apparatus, the interference pattern caused by light waves decreased and the pattern more closely resembled that which would be caused by particles rather than waves.

Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments Dean Radin Leena Michel, Karla Galdamez, Paul Wendland, Robert Rickenbach, and Arnaud Delorme, PHYSICS ESSAYS 25, 2 (2012)

Abstract: A double-slit optical system was used to test the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction. The ratio of the interference pattern’s double-slit spectral power to its single-slit spectral power was predicted to decrease when attention was focused toward the double slit as compared to away from it.

...

factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation experience, electrocortical markers of focused attention, and psychological factors including openness and absorption, significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern. The results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem.
© 2012 Physics Essays Publication. [DOI: 10.4006/0836-1398-25.2.157]

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Randi's Unwinnable Prize: The Million Dollar Challenge

Last month I wrote a couple of posts in a discussion forum explaining why the Amazing Randi's million dollar challenge has not been won. This is important to understand because pseudoskeptics often claim that because no one has won the prize, all claims of paranormal powers must be false.

However, the truth is that that a number of paranormal phenomena have been shown to be genuine and the million dollar prize has not been won because it is simply not a good way to demonstrate paranormal powers. The million dollar challenge requires that the applicant has to beat 1 million to one odds. Setting such a high barrier for success makes sense if you are risking a one million dollar prize. However, 1 million to one odds are much higher than the scientific standard of proof so this challenge is not necessarily the best or fairest way to determine if paranormal abilities are genuine. Designing a test that is fair to both the applicant and the challenger requires sophisticated knowledge of statistics (How many trials would be needed for a psychic to have a 95% confidence level that they could beat million to one odds if their accuracy was 75%?) Most psychics don't have the understanding of statistics necessary to look out for their own interests and therefore most applicants will not be able to demand a protocol that gives them a fair chance of winning. This is the most likely reason no one has won the prize.

Furthermore, most applicants who know about Randi or understand the details of the challenge would be reluctant to spend the time, effort and expense of applying because they would not trust it to be a fair test or have confidence that they would be judged fairly or rewarded fairly if they succeeded.

Randi supposedly has said, "I always have an out. (Fate, October 1981)", and "I am a charlatan, a liar, a thief and a fake altogether." (This is reported to have been said on PM Magazine, on July 1st, 1982.) Applicants for the prize have legitimate reasons not to trust Randi. An interview in Will Stoor's book The Heretics quotes Randi in making several deceptive statements.
The prize is in bonds but Randi won't say when the bonds mature or who issued the bonds so no one knows what the prize really is. Why won't he say what the prize really is? Applicants are legitimately afraid the prize is some sort of worthless trick.
The applicant has to pay for their own travel expenses involved in attempting the prize. Why would they do that when they have good reasons not to trust Randi and they don't know what the prize really is?
Randi has a history of making mean spirited statements. He has been forced to retract statements in the past. However, applicants have to sign an agreement not to sue Randi even if he makes makes misleading, defamatory, slanderous, or libelous statements about the psychic.
The applicants for Randi's prize have to prove themselves to a very high statistical standard far beyond the level that is generally considered proof in science experiments. An experiment could be designed to satisfy this standard with fewer than ten trials. However, a psychic, depending on their rate of accuracy, might need hundreds of trials to have a fair chance of obtaining such an unlikely result¹. Most psychics won't realize this because they don't have the necessary expertise in science or statistics and this may be the primary reason no applicant has ever won the prize. One scientist who did apply for the prize never heard back from Randi.

Why would anyone be willing to spend their time and money to try to win the challenge when they don't trust Randi, or believe that the challenge is fair, or that the prize is real?

The challenge is not really serious. Most applicants who understand the details would be reluctant to spend the time, effort and expense of applying because they would not trust it to be a fair test or have confidence that they would be judged fairly or rewarded fairly if they succeeded. The most likely reason no one has won is because most applicants do not have the expertise in statistics needed to demand a protocol that will give them a fair chance of winning. The prize is a publicity stunt designed to give materialist pseudoskeptics a one liner: "Why has no one won the prize?!?!" The correct answer is: ... Because it is not a good way to measure paranormal powers and anyone who understands the situation would have very good reasons not to apply.

It is sadly ironic that so many of Randi's followers, who pride themselves on their critical thinking skills, are fooled into thinking this prize is a legitimate test of paranormal phenomena. There are many independent forms of empirical evidence for ESP and the afterlife. The entire movement of pseudoskeptics is based on misdirection. Randi's followers believe they are helping to protect people from fraud, but in fact they themselves are victims of many deceptions perpertrated by the leaders of the pseudoskeptic movement. I discuss this in greater detail on my web page on Skeptical Misdirection.

Notes

(1) In an experiment to measure psychic ability, there are three numbers that need to be considered:

The first number represents the confidence that the outcome is not due to chance. The million dollar challenge requires the psychic perform at a level that would occur by chance only once in a million times.
The second number is the rate of accuracy of the psychic's abilities. For example, a psychic might have an accuracy of 75% in some task where the probability of being correct by chance is only 50%.
The third number is the number of trials which are needed to give the psychic a high level of confidence that they would win the prize given their rate of accuracy.

In order to achieve the required confidence that the psychic's performance is not due to chance, the challenge could require two tests of ten or fewer trials. However, the psychic might not be able to pass such a test if they are not 100% accurate. But, if the psychic is given a sufficient number of trials, they may demonstrate a success rate that, while not 100% accurate, still cannot be explained by chance at the level of confidence demanded by the challenge.

In order for the psychic to have a 95% confidence level that they could beat million to one odds if their accuracy was 75%, they might need over 100 trials. Most psychics are not well enough versed in statistics to know how to measure their rate of accuracy or how to calculate the number of trials they need to have a good chance of winning the prize.

References

Skeptical Organisations and Magazines A Guide to the Skeptics at skepticalinvestigations.org

For many years this "prize" has been Randi's stock-in-trade as a media skeptic, but even some other skeptics are skeptical about its value as anything but a publicity stunt. For example, CSICOP founding member Dennis Rawlins pointed out that not only does Randi act as "policeman, judge and jury" but quoted him as saying "I always have an out"! (Fate, October 1981).
...
Contenders have to pay for their own travelling expenses if they want to go to Randi to be tested: Rule 6: "All expenses such as transportation, accommodation and/or other costs incurred by the applicant/claimant in pursuing the reward, are the sole responsibility of the applicant/claimant." Also, applicants waive their legal rights: Rule 7: "When entering into this challenge, the applicant surrenders any and all rights to legal action against Mr. Randi, against any person peripherally involved and against the James Randi Educational Foundation, as far as this may be done by established statutes. This applies to injury, accident, or any other damage of a physical or emotional nature and/or financial, or professional loss, or damage of any kind." Applicants also give Randi complete control over publicity

Flim-Flam Flummery: A Skeptical Look at James Randi at michaelprescott.net

Recently I picked up Flim-Flam again. Having changed my mind about many things over the past twenty years, I responded to it much differently this time. I was particularly struck by the book's hectoring, sarcastic tone. Randi pictures psychic researchers as medieval fools clad in "caps and bells" and likens the delivery of an announcement at a parapsychology conference to the birth of "Rosemary's Baby." After debunking all manner of alleged frauds, he opens the book's epilogue with the words, "The tumbrels now stand empty but ready for another trip to the square" – a reference to the French Revolution, in which carts ("tumbrels") of victims were driven daily to the guillotine. Randi evidently pictures himself as the executioner who lowers the blade. In passing, two points might be made about this metaphor: the French Revolution was a product of "scientific rationalism" run amok ... and most of its victims were innocent.

The Psychic Challenge by Montague Keen Source: www.victorzammit.com/ hosted at skepticalinvestigations.org

Now for the more serious bit: first, the $1million prize. Loyd Auerbach, a leading USA psychologist and President of the Psychic Entertainers Association (some 80% of the members of his Psychic Entertainers' Association believe in the paranormal, according to Dr. Adrian Parker, who was on the programme, but given no opportunity to reveal this) exposed some of the deficiencies in this challenge in an article in Fate magazine.
Under Article 3, the applicant allows all his test data to be used by the Foundation in any way Mr. Randi may choose. That means that Mr. Randi can pick and chose the data at will and decide what to do with it and what verdict to pronounce on it. Under Article 7, the applicant surrenders all rights to legal action against the Foundation, or Mr. Randi, no matter what emotional, professional or financial injury he may consider he has sustained. Thus even if Mr. Randi comes to a conclusion different from that reached by his judges and publicly denounces the test, the applicant would have no redress. The Foundation and Mr. Randi own all the data. Mr. Randi can claim that the judges were fooled. The implicit accusation of fraud would leave the challenger devoid of remedy.
These rules, be it noted, are in stark contrast to Mr. Randi's frequent public assertions that he wanted demonstrable proof of psychic powers. First, his rules are confined to a single, live applicant. No matter how potent the published evidence, how incontestable the facts or rigorous the precautions against fraud, the number, qualifications or expertise of the witnesses and investigators, the duration, thoroughness and frequency of their tests or (where statistical evaluation is possible) the astronomical odds against a chance explanation: all must be ignored. Mr. Randi thrusts every case into the bin labelled 'anecdotal' (which means not written down), and thereby believes he may safely avoid any invitation to account for them.
Likewise, the production of a spanner bent by a force considerably in excess of the capacity of the strongest man, created at the request and in the presence of a group of mechanics gathered round a racing car at a pit stop by Mr. Randi's long-time enemy, Uri Geller, would run foul of the small print, which requires a certificate of a successful preliminary demonstration before troubling Mr. Randi himself. A pity, because scientists at Imperial College have tested the spanner, which its current possessor, the researcher and author Guy Lyon Playfair, not unnaturally regards as a permanent paranormal object, and there is a standing challenge to skeptics to explain its appearance.

Randi's dishonest claims about dogs by Rupert Sheldrake - from www.sheldrake.org hosted at skepticalinvestigations.org

Randi also claimed to have debunked one of my experiments with the dog Jaytee, a part of which was shown on television. Jaytee went to the window to wait for his owner when she set off to come home, but did not do so before she set off. In Dog World, Randi stated: "Viewing the entire tape, we see that the dog responded to every car that drove by, and to every person who walked by." This is simply not true, and Randi now admits that he has never seen the tape.

Beware Pseudo-Skepticism - The Randi Challenge at skepticalinvestigations.org

Since the prize money is in the form of bonds, then it is possible that the bonds are worthless. For example, maybe a lot of the bonds are from corporations that are on the verge of going bankrupt? Or maybe the corporations don't have to pay off the bonds for another 40 years? In our example, Bob had to pay everything back in 24 months... this is called the "maturity" of the bond. Some bonds don't mature for a few years, others don't mature for a few decades. If Randi awards the prize of a bond that doesn't mature for 40 years, then legally I do have a million dollars... but I can't USE the million dollars until the bonds mature! As you can see, there are a lot of different scenarios where the bonds could be LEGALLY worth a million dollars, but in reality they could be worthless.
...
The next logical step is to find out what the bonds are really worth. To do that, I e-mailed Randi at the address he provided on his website. I politely pointed out where it said the prize was in bonds in the Challenge rules, and then I asked what corporations issued the bonds, what the interest rates were, and when the maturity dates are. These are the main factors at determining if the bonds are worthless or not. Randi replied with, "Apply, or go away." I explained to him that I wanted clarification on what he was offering. That this had nothing to do with my claim, but they were questions aimed at getting more information about the Challenge. Randi replied with, "Immediately convertible into money. That's all I'm going to get involved in. Apply, or disappear." Obviously that doesn't answer my question at all. Immediately convertible into how much money? Convertible through who?

The Myth of the Million Dollar Challenge at dailygrail.com

The procedures for the Challenge included several hurdles in favor of, and multiple "outs" for Randi and the JREF that any discerning individual capable of any kind of extraordinary human performance would think twice about (and here I'm not just referring to psychics and the like).
...
While the JREF says that "all tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant", this does not mean that the tests are fair scientific tests. The JREF need to protect a very large amount of money from possible "long-range shots", and as such they ask for extremely significant results before paying out - much higher than are generally accepted in scientific research (and if you don’t agree to terms, your application is rejected).
...
Furthermore, applicants must first pass a 'preliminary test', before they are allowed to progress to the actual 'formal' test which pays the million dollars. So an applicant must first show positive results in a preliminary test (yielding results against chance of at least 1000 to 1, apparently), then once through to the next stage they would then have to show positive results against much higher odds to claim the prize (by all reports, at odds of around 1 million to 1). Failure in either test means no cash prize, and a fail beside their name.
...
As a consequence, you might well say "no wonder no serious researcher has applied for the Challenge." Interestingly, this is not the case. Dr Dick Bierman, who has a PhD in physics, informed me that he did in fact approach James Randi about the Million Dollar Challenge in late 1998
...
At that point Randi mentioned that before proceeding he had to submit this preliminary proposal to his scientific board or committee. And basically that was the end of it. I have no idea where the process was obstructed but I must confess that I was glad that I could devote myself purely to science rather than having to deal with the skeptics and the associated media hypes.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Consciousness is not an Illusion or an Epiphenomenon

I have updated my web page on Skeptical Fallacies to include a section Consciousness is not an Illusion or an Epiphenomenon

Skeptics will sometimes say that consciousness is an illusion or that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain. An epiphenomenon is caused by some phenomenon but cannot affect the phenomenon that causes it.

Saying that consciousness is an illusion or an epiphenomenon does not really explain consciousness. See the section Consciousness cannot be Explained as an Emergent Property of the Brain for an explanation of why giving a scientific name to a phenomenon is not the same as explaining it.

The Wikipedia article on Epiphenomenon says,

An epiphenomenon can be an effect of primary phenomena, but cannot affect a primary phenomenon. In philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism is the view that mental phenomena are epiphenomena in that they can be caused by physical phenomena, but cannot cause physical phenomena.

The Wikipedia article of Ephphenomenalism says:

Epiphenomenalism is the theory in philosophy of mind that mental phenomena are caused by physical processes in the brain or that both are effects of a common cause, as opposed to mental phenomena driving the physical mechanics of the brain. The impression that thoughts, feelings or sensations cause physical effects, is therefore to be understood as illusory to some extent. For example, it is not the feeling of fear that produces an increase in heart beat, both are symptomatic of a common physiological origin, possibly in response to a legitimate external threat.[1]

If consciousness cannot affect the brain, then consciousness may be an illusion. However, there is significant evidence that consciousness can affect the brain.

One form of evidence that consciousness can influence the brain comes from the placebo effect. In certain situations, if a patient is given an inactive substance but is told that he is being given a drug, the patient will experience the effects that the drug is said to cause. One example of this occurs when a patient is given a sugar pill but told it is a pain killer. In this situation, patients report that pain is reduced and in fact studies have indicated that this effect is caused by the production of naturally occurring opioids in the brain.

The Wikipedia article on the Placebo Effect says,

The phenomenon of an inert substance's resulting in a patient's medical improvement is called the placebo effect. The phenomenon is related to the perception and expectation that the patient has; if the substance is viewed as helpful, it can heal, but, if it is viewed as harmful, it can cause negative effects, which is known as the nocebo effect. The basic mechanisms of placebo effects have been investigated since 1978, when it was found that the opioid antagonist naloxone could block placebo painkillers, suggesting that endogenous opioids are involved.[31]

What is significant about the placebo effect is that it requires the patient to believe they are being given a drug. With a real drug like a pain killer, the patient will experience the effects even if they don't know they are being treated with it. However, for the placebo effect to occur, the patient must be conscious of the fact that they are being treated. This shows that conscious awareness of a medical treatment can cause the brain to produce opioids. It shows that consciousness can affect the brain.

Another form of evidence that consciousness can affect the brain comes from the phenomenon of self-directed neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of neurons in the brain to change their organization or grow. This can occur when someone learns a skill or recovers from an injury. Self-directed neuroplasticity occurs when neurons in the brain change their organization or grow in response to self observation of mental states.

One situation where self-directed neuroplasticity occurs is meditation. During meditation, a person will observe, (ie. be conscious of) their inner state: their mental activity and the sensations in their body. This conscious attention has been found to cause changes in the brain.

The article Self-Directed Neuroplasticity: A 21st-Century View of Meditation by Rick Hanson, PhD discusses this:

One of the enduring changes in the brain of those who routinely meditate is that the brain becomes thicker. In other words, those who routinely meditate build synapses, synaptic networks, and layers of capillaries (the tiny blood vessels that bring metabolic supplies such as glucose or oxygen to busy regions), which an MRI shows is measurably thicker in two major regions of the brain. One is in the pre-frontal cortex, located right behind the forehead. It’s involved in the executive control of attention – of deliberately paying attention to something. This change makes sense because that’s what you're doing when you meditate or engage in a contemplative activity. The second brain area that gets bigger is a very important part called the insula. The insula tracks both the interior state of the body and the feelings of other people, which is fundamental to empathy. So, people who routinely tune into their own bodies – through some kind of mindfulness practice – make their insula thicker, which helps them become more self-aware and empathic. This is a good illustration of neuroplasticity, which is the idea that as the mind changes, the brain changes, or as Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb put it, neurons that fire together wire together.

The article Mind does really matter: evidence from neuroimaging studies of emotional self-regulation, psychotherapy, and placebo effect. (Beauregard M. Prog Neurobiol. 2007 Mar;81(4):218-36. Epub 2007 Feb 9) says,

The results of these investigations demonstrate that beliefs and expectations can markedly modulate neurophysiological and neurochemical activity in brain regions involved in perception, movement, pain, and various aspects of emotion processing. Collectively, the findings of the neuroimaging studies reviewed here strongly support the view that the subjective nature and the intentional content (what they are "about" from a first-person perspective) of mental processes (e.g., thoughts, feelings, beliefs, volition) significantly influence the various levels of brain functioning (e.g., molecular, cellular, neural circuit) and brain plasticity. Furthermore, these findings indicate that mentalistic variables have to be seriously taken into account to reach a correct understanding of the neural bases of behavior in humans.

The scientific evidence from the placebo effect and from self-directed neuroplasticity shows that consciousness cannot be an illusion or an epiphenomenon produced by the brain because consciousness can affect the brain.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Consciousness Cannot be Explained as an Emergent Property of the Brain

I have updated my web page on Skeptical Fallicies to include a section explaining why Consciousness Cannot be Explained as an Emergent Property of the Brain

Some skeptics, when asked to explain how consciousness is produced by the brain will say it is an emergent property. They may say the complexity of the brain somehow causes consciousness to emerge. This is not an actual explanation, it is just a scientific sounding way to say that they cannot explain it. It creates the impression of an explanation without offering any actual explanation.

An emergent property is a property that is not necessarily caused by the individual parts of a system but emerges when they are arranged in a certain fashion. For example, a wheel rolls. This is not necessarily a property of matter. Matter might be formed into a solid cube which does not roll. But when matter is arranged in a wheel, it will roll.

However, merely stating something is an emergent property is not an explanation. Saying consciousness is an emergent property of the brain does not explain consciousness. When you examine a wheel you can understand why it will roll. The laws of physics explain how the ability to roll is caused by a particular arrangement of matter. When you examine a brain you cannot tell how it produces the subjective experiences of consciousness. Physics cannot explain how the subjective experiences of consciousness, what it is like to feel happy, or what it is like to see blue, or what it is like to feel pain, will arise from a particular arrangements of neurons in the brain.

When skeptics say consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, that is not an explanation of consciousness. It is a rhetorical trick used because they cannot explain how consciousness is produced by the brain. They are only applying a scientific sounding name to fool people, including themselves, into thinking it is an explanation.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Another Cause of Skepticism

Recently, on an internet discussion forum I read, a skeptic revealed some personal information about himself. He had lost someone close to him at an unexpedly young age. That experience influenced his attitudes God, the afterlife, and psychic phenomena. The experience helped to make him a skeptic.

Sometimes skeptics can be extremely provoking, but it is wise to remember that they may be influenced by personal suffering that we know nothing about.

I've updated the list of reasons for skepticism on my web site.

When some people experience a personal loss, or experience extreme hardship, or feel concern about the extreme hardships of others, they may be unable to understand how God could allow such suffering to occur. As a result, they may feel angry at God or be unable to believe in God. This may cause them adopt materialism and express hostility toward anything that relates to God such as beilef in the afterlife or anything that contradicts materialism such as evidence for psychic phenomena.

There may be a lot of skeptics who claim superior rationality but in reality are motivated not by reason but by emotion.

This is a big mistake. Don't let loss, disappointment, suffering, or depression turn you away from God or the higher planes. The lower level entities are not your friends, they are not your allies, they cannot help you, they can only be against you. If you turn away from the higher planes, it will be you alone against the universe. What kind of existence will you have among the forces of ignorance, in this life and or in the afterlife, if you are not allied with the light? It might be hard to understand how the system of incarnation and suffering on the earth plane can be good, but there is no other practical alternative than to ally yourself with the light.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Old Nordic Mediums

I've previously blogged about photographs of ectoplasm produced by the physical medium Jack Webber
here and here.

Here are some interesting Photographs from physical seances demonstrating levitation.

An English translation is here.

More photos by the same photographer, Sven Türck, are here.

The seances were conducted by Nordic Mediums.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Why Darwinism is False

Last week I posted about why belief in the afterlife is not compatible with the belief that natural selection is solely responsible for the diversity of life (Darwinism).

Here is an article that discusses some of the other flaws Darwinism. It is a criticism of the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

Why Darwinism Is False by Jonathan Wells

Darwin called The Origin of Species “one long argument” for his theory, but Jerry Coyne has given us one long bluff. Why Evolution Is True tries to defend Darwinian evolution by rearranging the fossil record; by misrepresenting the development of vertebrate embryos; by ignoring evidence for the functionality of allegedly vestigial organs and non-coding DNA, then propping up Darwinism with theological arguments about “bad design;” by attributing some biogeographical patterns to convergence due to the supposedly “well-known” processes of natural selection and speciation; and then exaggerating the evidence for selection and speciation to make it seem as though they could accomplish what Darwinism requires of them.

The actual evidence shows that major features of the fossil record are an embarrassment to Darwinian evolution; that early development in vertebrate embryos is more consistent with separate origins than with common ancestry; that non-coding DNA is fully functional, contrary to neo-Darwinian predictions; and that natural selection can accomplish nothing more than artificial selection—which is to say, minor changes within existing species.

Faced with such evidence, any other scientific theory would probably have been abandoned long ago. Judged by the normal criteria of empirical science, Darwinism is false. Its persists in spite of the evidence, and the eagerness of Darwin and his followers to defend it with theological arguments about creation and design suggests that its persistence has nothing to do with science at all.50

The article gives detailed explanations in support of these statements.

I don't believe in Creationism. I don't believe Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. However, I do believe there are serious flaws in Darwinism and those should be taught in schools. I also believe scientists should be free to look for empirical and theoretical evidence of Intelligent Design without being persecuted or ostracized.

A major source of problems with Darwinism comes from the fact that it is based on belief in methodological naturalism, the philosophy that only natural phenomena should be studied by science. This is a wrong view. Science should be about uncovering the truth and should not have any built in philosophical bias. However, many mainstream scientists, because of their bias towards methodological naturalism, can't objectively assess the evidence for and against Darwinism. Every bit of evidence is interpreted to be consistent with Darwinism in exactly the same Creationists interpret every bit of evidence to agree with the Bible. This is one reason Darwinists are so hostile to their critics. Their philosophical beliefs are threatened by criticism of Darwinism.

This philosophical bias in favor of methodological naturalism is similar in the effects of reductionism on scientific thinking. It so strongly influences the thinking of scientists that they cannot conceive of possibilities outside of their preconceived ideas. This cripples their ability to understand consciousness and psychic phenomena.

Monday, May 14, 2012

I have updated my web site to include a section on philosophical arguments that the mind is not produced by the brain.

There are very good philosophical reasons to believe the mind is not produced by the brain and therefore the mind is non-physical. Peter Williams discusses several reasons for this in his article: Why Naturalists Should Mind about Physicalism, and Vice Versa, (Quodlibet Journal: Volume 4 Number 2-3, Summer 2002.)

Williams explains that if the mind and the brain were the same, then all the properties of the mind would be properties of the brain. He then demonstrates that the mind cannot be identical to the brain by giving several examples of properties of the mind that are not properties of the brain.

...

Gary R. Habermas and J.P.Moreland argue against physicalism from the ‘qualia’ of imagined sensory images. Qualia is the subjective feel or texture of conscious experience:

"Picture a pink elephant in your mind. Now close your eyes and look at the image. In your mind, you will see a pink property. . . There will be no pink elephant outside you, but there will be a pink image of one in your mind. However, there will be no pink entity in your brain; no neurophysiologist could open your brain and see a pink entity while you are having the sense image. The sensory event has a property – pink – that no brain event has. Therefore, they cannot be identical." [19]

To put this another way, the subjective feel of mental experiences such as the feeling of pain, the hearing of sound or the taste of chocolate seems very different from anything that is purely physical: "If the world were only made of matter, these subjective aspects of consciousness would not exist. But they do exist! So there must be more to the world than matter." [20]

Williams gives several more examples. These include intentionality, the ability to reason, free will, and moral responsibility. See the linked article for an explanation of why these phenomena demonstrate that the mind cannot be made of matter.

Williams concludes:

At the very least, the mind has several immaterial properties ... It follows that no merely physical explanation of the mind is possible.

More information, including links to further reading, can be found on my web site.

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