Tin Man
"a respectable amount of screaming"
I'm still a bitch some times and not as kind as I could be,
I don't there's a single person who couldn't say the same. I know there are days when I just think "N. stop acting like such a bitch."
I'm still a bitch some times and not as kind as I could be,
I don't there's a single person who couldn't say the same. I know there are days when I just think "N. stop acting like such a bitch."
Found a very cool online book for you all to check out!!
Loads of great info!
I have included the “Table of Contents” and all the links here.
Enjoy!
The Roots of Consciousness is a look at the history, folklore and science that shapes our understanding of psychic capacities. The original edition was published in 1975, while I was still a graduate student at U.C., Berkeley, working in an individual, interdisciplinary doctoral program in parapsychology. It is, in part, a personal book containing descriptions of significant events in my own life. It is also personal because in the field of consciousness exploration there are so many competing interpretations that any telling of the story -- even in strictly scientific terms -- contains many individual choices.
Wow! That looks amazing
That must have been such a rewarding book to research and write!
Thanks for posting!
[MENTION=1871]muir[/MENTION]Found a very cool online book for you all to check out!!
Loads of great info!
I have included the “Table of Contents” and all the links here.
Enjoy!
The Roots of Consciousness is a look at the history, folklore and science that shapes our understanding of psychic capacities. The original edition was published in 1975, while I was still a graduate student at U.C., Berkeley, working in an individual, interdisciplinary doctoral program in parapsychology. It is, in part, a personal book containing descriptions of significant events in my own life. It is also personal because in the field of consciousness exploration there are so many competing interpretations that any telling of the story -- even in strictly scientific terms -- contains many individual choices.
Wow! That looks amazing
That must have been such a rewarding book to research and write!
Thanks for posting!
If you liked that one…try this one!
http://issuu.com/scottjenson/stacks
Natural and Supernatural: The New Testament |
![]() |
The Christian Church had grown from shamanist roots; and as described by the gospel writers, Jesus is the most accomplished diviner-magician of them all. His destiny has been marked out for him in Joseph’s precognitive dream even before he was born; his birth is heralded by many signs and wonders, notably the star in the east which the Magi - themselves shamans - correctly interpret; and his baptism represents a recognition of his vocation, prompting him to undergo the traditional apprenticeship of self-denial - forty days and forty nights in the wilderness wrestling with the temptations of the flesh for fear that they would impede his spiritual development. After subduing sensual lusts, however, Jesus is subjected to another form of temptation. Spiritual rebirth, he finds, has endowed him with psychic powers. Having the ability to convert a stone into bread, or to translocate himself to the top of a mountain or the pinnacle of the temple, he is tempted to use them for self-satisfaction, or self-aggrandisement. At first he is hesitant about using them at all. ‘Mine hour is not yet come,’ he tells the importunate woman when drink runs out at the Cana wedding feast; but he allows himself to be persuaded to do the kindly thing, and turn the water into wine. Later he uses his powers with more abandon: calming the sea, walking on the water, feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, and performing countless cures. Only in the region where he has grown up, and where his family still live, is he unsuccessful. In the face of local scepticism, ‘he can do no mighty work’. Attracted by these powers, Jesus’s disciples had a further inducement to stay with him: the promise of a continued life after death. In Greek mythology some humans had been carried up after death to live on in the abode of the gods; but the Greek gods had been choosy. Jesus offered the prospect of a life after death to anybody, however humble, who followed him. And he clinched this pledge by his resurrection. While he lived supernatural manifestations had continued to testify to his, or his god’s, powers. He had shown precognitive knowledge of his impending arrest and execution, and of episodes connected with it, like Judas’s treachery and Peter’s spinelessness under questioning (‘before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice’); and at the moment of his death the veil of the temple was rent in twain, from top to bottom. But such signs would hardly have sufficed to convince the disciples had Jesus not afterwards appeared in their midst, and demonstrated that he had materialised by eating broiled fish and honey, and allowing Thomas to put his finger into the wound in his side left by the spear. At this point it has to be stated that for none of these psychic manifestations is there a shred of historical evidence. Not merely were the gospels written half a century or more after the events they recorded; they were written with a deliberate propagandist purpose, to confirm that Jesus really had been the Christ - the Messiah promised by the prophets. They consequently presented him as a miracle worker who had fufilled all the earlier expectations and forecasts. It is, of course, still possible to argue that even if the gospels cannot be accepted as an historical source, they could hardly have been written unless there had been a Jesus with some shamanist powers to create the beliefs; in which case, as the parapsychologist Louis Anspacher urged, he can and ought to be studied as a psychic personality, ‘the most powerful medium and perhaps the greatest psychic sensitive who has ever walked down the aisles of history’. Due weight has to be given, too, to the experience of the anthropologist M. J. Field, who realised from her field-work in Ghana how similar the New Testament record was to her own experience, suggesting that on a psychic level the disciples were part of ‘an age-old, worldwide pattern persistently exhibited’ - in other words, the New Testament record is not incongruous, anthropologically speaking. Nevertheless there is no way of knowing which, if any, of the supernatural manifestations recorded in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles occurred. The belief that they had occurred, though, remains of profound historical importance. The effects of Jesus’s resurrection was to confirm disciples in the expectation that they, too, would be resurrected, as he had promised, and thereafter dwell in heaven: lending moral support of a kind that no faith had enjoyed before. Humiliations, torture and even death could be viewed with relative equanimity, granted the prospect of eternal bliss thereafter. On earth, too, disciples were given a reassurance that they were the elect of the Lord. He had assured them that they would be able to heal the sick, cast out devils, speak with tongues, pick up serpents or drink poison without coming to any harm. And at Pentecost, suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it lay upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance. They were not drunk, Peter explained to the bewildered onlookers. They were fulfilling the words of the prophet that the spirit would pour forth; ‘your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’. St. Paul Epidemics of psychic hysteria of this kind had been reported before; in their Bacchic frenzies Dionysius’s followers had been given to prophecy. But Pentecost appeared to offer something more; an instantaneous transition from man to shaman. Self-discipline was still required; worldly goods were to be put away, and worldly ambitions, and the lusts of the flesh. But it was no longer necessary to undergo the traditional apprenticeship of self-denial and self-mortification. By materialising on earth, and allowing himself to be crucified, Jesus had redeemed men from the sins of his forefathers, enabling them to become possessed by God through the holy spirit, and to enjoy psychic powers, simply by embracing the faith. It was the lesson of Pentecost which gave the early Christians their sense of a common identity, and a common purpose; and in the Acts they can be seen flexing their new shamanist muscles. Natural and supernatural elements constantly overlap and interact. Ordered by an angel to go far out of his way into a desert to find and baptise an Ethiopian, Philip the Evangelist is miraculously carried back to the region of Caesarea so that he need waste no time before resuming his mission; and an angel liberates some of the disciples from prison so that they can preach in the temple, to the embarrassment of the prison officers, who find the cells still locked and guarded, but empty. And the most influential of the new-style shamans emerges: Saul. His conversion is attended by the traditional signs: a great radiance; a voice-‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’; a trance; and the appearance of the Lord in a vision to a disciple, Ananias, telling him to go to the street called Straight in order to welcome Saul (who himself would see what was to happen in a precognitive vision) into the Christian fold. Paul, as he was henceforth known, needed no apprenticeship: he soon found he had psychic powers, worsting a hostile magician in combat by depriving him for a time of his sight, and performing miracles - including, apparently, materialisations (‘from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs, or aprons, and the diseases departed from them’). When Paul and Timothy tried to depart from Bythinia, ‘the spirit suffered them not’; and he was later reluctantly compelled to obey the spirit’s insistence that he must stay on in Corinth, and risk the consequences of stirring up the wrath of the Jews there by testifying in their synagogue. The Acts, like the gospels, were a propaganda exercise, so that what is related in them of Paul’s early career cannot be relied upon. The Epistles, though, and particularly those to the Corinthians, describe his own experiences, and give his own views, revealing him to be a dedicated spiritist, relying on his daemon. He thought of it not as a spirit, but as the spirit - the holy spirit, revealing the word of God to him. When he went to Jerusalem in the middle of the first century A.D. to tell Jesus’s followers there that they were wrong to insist that converts must submit to the Jewish rite of circumcision, Paul did not argue with them: according to his account in the Epistle to the Galatians he simply told them that he knew they were wrong. ‘I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, nor was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’ For Paul, then, Christianity was shamanist, relying on inspiration rather than doctrine: ‘if you are led by the spirit you are not under the law’. But thanks to Jesus’s intervention, there was no longer any need to rely on shamans: any Christian could take advantage of the holy spirit’s gifts. To some, Paul explained, the spirit might bring wisdom, or faith; to some, the gift of healing: ‘to another, the working of miracles; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretations of tongues’. Some individuals might even begin to live a spiritual existence: Paul described one of his acquaintances as having so much spirituality that he had attained to the third heaven while still on earth; ‘whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell,’ Paul remarked, ‘God knoweth’. But all such manifestations were to be valued. When somebody received the gift of tongues, what emerged might sound unintelligible, but it could still be meaningful if it were interpreted. Above all, Paul added - anticipating the neo-Platonists - what mattered was the attitude in which the spirit was invoked, and utilised. Its gifts would serve no good purpose unless suffused with love for others; ‘though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have faith, so I could move mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing’. That being understood, Paul felt, it was right to welcome spirit possession; ‘wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues’. Paul’s advice revealed the existence of a problem. Suppose the voices were not endowed with charity? He and Timothy had already suffered as a consequence of the jealousy of rivals, as on the occasion in Thyatira when ‘a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination’ followed them around; her employers, who had been making a lot of money out of her, hauled Paul and Timothy before the magistrates, and they were flogged and imprisoned. Yet what she had been saying was not inherently diabolic; ‘these men are the servants of the most high God, and show unto us the way of salvation’. It was at this point that a growing conviction began to harden among Christians into a certainty; that there was an anti-Christ - Satan, or the devil - with a contingent of evil spirits capable of masquerading as the holy spirit, and performing the full repertory of miracles. In Greek mythology it had been the gods themselves who had given lying advice to humans, or materialised for their own lascivious purposes; and in the Old Testament, Satan had needed the Lord’s permission to play Job’s tempter. But the notion had grown that Satan and his spirits were acting in their own right. When Jesus reminded Peter, ‘Satan hath desired to have you’ he went on to say not that he had refused the request, but that he had managed to stop Satan by prayer. Jesus had dealt with Satan’s evil spirits by a kind of psychic shock treatment; and Paul followed his example by exorcising the evil spirit in the woman of Thyatira. It could be identified as an evil spirit because of the woman’s profession; as a paid clairvoyant, she was obviously not eligible to receive her information from the holy spirit. Satan, in other words, was crafty enough to make those he possessed utter the most impeccably Christian sentiments, if it suited his purpose. ‘Beloved, believe not every spirit,’ John the Evangelist warned in his first Epistle General: ‘But try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.’ As a simple test John suggested that the holy spirit could be distinguished from a false prophet by putting a simple doctrinal question: ‘Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God; and this is that spirit of anti-Christ.’ But Satan, being crafty, could surely answer such questions to the satisfaction of the listeners. ‘The sin against the holy spirit’ had initially been the sin of refusing to listen to its promptings; but how could any ordinary Christian be sure he was being prompted by the holy spirit, when it might be the devil in disguise? |
FORGOTTEN EXPERIMENTS Professor John Tyndall, the noted British physicist of last century whose forté was molecular physics, acoustics, and heat radiation, performed a little known experiment in the late 1800's. by John Mount Tyndall filled an experimental glass tube with the vapours of certain acids, iodides, and nitrites. The tube was then turned on its side in a level horizontal position, and so arranged that the axis of the tube and parallel concentrated beams of electric light or focussed sunlight were coincident. Adjustments were made to the focus until the vapors began to react. Gradually, and to Tyndall's astonishment these clouds of vapor began to coalesce, forming into colored three dimensional images of animals, plants, and other shapes including geometric patterns of spheres, cubes, and pyramids. At one stage during the experiment Tyndall was amazed to see the swirling clouds suddenly change into the shape of a "serpent's head," and as the serpent's mouth slowly opened a long tendril of cloud emerged forming into a perfect tongue. No sooner had this image faded than it was immediately replaced by another, this time of a perfectly formed fish complete with gills, feelers, scales, and eyes. Tyndall commenting on the "completeness" of this figure said: "The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no disc, coil, or speck existed on one side (of the figure) that did not exist on the other." This "twoness" as Tyndall put it could lend some credibility to the experiment. The fact that every "twin" detail of an image is faithfully reproduced, i.e., both eyes, both ears, etc., suggests that the image is being purposely generated and is not just a coincidental occurrence like watching the clouds in the sky form rough caricatures of known objects. Regarding the "focusing" of the beams, is it possible that once the knack of "tuning" the beams of light had been mastered certain images might then be pre-selected at will? Tyndall's detractors had a field day, they pointed out that the phenomena could easily be explained by the mechanical action of a beam of light which would normally stir up molecules of vapor into certain shapes like globes and spindles, a process, which they said was recently demonstrated by the physicist Sir William Crookes. Yet they omitted to mention the precisely shaped images of flowers, vases, seashells, fish, serpent's head, and a number of other forms that the experiment produced. Did Tyndall's own thoughts physically interfere with the experiment or do the vapors of certain chemicals have a propensity to form images? No one at this point in time seems to know. Tyndall, it must be realized, was a scientist of some repute, a fellow and Director of the Royal Institute, President of the British Association, and disciple and confidante of Michael Faraday. He was a modest and charitable man, according to his peers, whose research work, writings, and lectures were greatly appreciated by the scientific community. Not the sort of fellow that was wont to seeing things that weren't really there. Another experiment sounding very similar to Tyndall's was performed by Sir Thomas Browne, a 17th century physician and author. Browne called it amongst other things: "Palingenesis...the re-individuality of an incinerated plant..." Browne, after reducing a plant to ashes by calcination, separated the salts from its ashes and after "special fermentation" placed them in a glass vial. He then made the following observations: "...by the heate of embers, or the natural heate of one's body the very forme and idea (of the plant) will bee represented; whiche will suddenly vanish away, the heate being withdrawn from the bottom of the glasse." A witness described the experiment as it was being performed on a flower: "...having ... by calcination disengaged the salts from its ashes and deposited them in a glass phial; a chemical mixture (reaction) acted on it, till in the fermentation they assumed a bluish and spectral hue. This dust thus excited by heat, shoots upward into its primitive forms; by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is returning to its destined place, we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower arise; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its ashes. The heat passes away, the magical scene declines, till the whole matter again precipitates itself into the chaos at the bottom. This vegetable phoenix thus lies concealed in its cold ashes." Shades of Semyon Kirlian! Talk about photographing phantom leaves and limbs! Imagine the revolution these experiments could cause in modern science. These experiments, if proven true, could present the unique possibility of being able to view nature's storehouse of "bio-blueprints" or "life-ideas" before (and after) she clothes them in flesh. Take forensic medicine, for example; burnt evidence could be visually resurrected. And in archaeology, those old ashes and coals of burnt remains could show us how the people actually lived (and died). And would the skin or bone samples of Egyptian mummies and other ancient people properly treated allow us to gaze once more on the finely chiseled features of beautiful Nefretiti, or see again that Hellenic smile that once launched a thousand ships? Another interesting experiment similar in some respects to those mentioned above, was performed during the 1940's using the Wilson expansion cloud chamber. This chamber which is filled with a gas or vapor (usually water vapor) is normally used to track the path of atomic, and sub-atomic particles. Dr. R.A. Watters, director of the William Bernard Johnston Foundation for Psychological Research in Reno, Nevada, theorized that the human or animal soul exists in the "intra-atomic space between the atoms of human cells." He decided to test his theory using the cloud chamber. A large grasshopper was placed in the chamber and dispatched with ether. At the precise moment of death, expansion of the water vapor occurred which in turn triggered a camera and a photograph was taken of the condensation figure. In all, around 40 experiments were carried out using frogs and white mice. According to Watters, in all the tests where the creature permanently died, even after eight hours of observation, a "shadow phenomenon" appeared in the chamber coinciding with the shape of the creature. However, if the animal revived, no condensation figure would appear on the photograph. Did Watters photograph the soul of those creatures? Is the soul more easily captured on film as it is leaving its body (with some small amount of the material world still clinging to it) than some time afterwards? A brief tantalizing account of a French scientist's experiments clearly shows how easily momentous discoveries can be made, and then how just as easily, they can fade into obscurity. In 1856 Dr. Jobard of Paris declared to a startled press: "I hold a discovery which frightens me. There are two kinds of electricity; one, brute and blind is produced by the contact of metals and acids; the other is intelligent and clairvoyant. The brute (one) ...has followed Jacobii, Bonelli, and Moncal, while the intellectual one was following Bois-Robert, Thilorier, and Chevalier Duplanty. The electrical ball or globular electricity (ball lightning?) contains a thought which disobeys Newton (gravity?) and Mariotte (?) to follow its own freaks.... we have in the annals of the academy thousands of proofs of the intelligence of the electric bolt...but I remark that I am permitting myself to become indiscreet. A little more and I would have disclosed to you the key which is about to discover to us the universal spirit." What other potential world-shaking discoveries lie concealed and forgotten in dusty tomes sitting in equally dusty out-of-the-way bookshops and libraries? WORKS CONSULTED L'Ami Des Sciences, March 2 1856, Page 56 Sir Thomas Browne, Works Vol II, London 1883. S.W. Tromp, Psychical Physics, London 1949. H.P Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, California 1950. |
A fascinating article...
Everything We Have Been Taught About Our Origins Is A Lie
I’m not going to defend the article…I take it with a grain of salt…if what they have found is truly dated to when it was made..then we as humans (or another intelligent creature) existed much earlier than once thought…that’s all.There's always been the capacity to make things. Maybe there were humans before, or something like humans, but civilization was lost somewhere and had to start over.
I have to say though that alloys are not impressive. Bronze is an alloy and has been around since at least 3000 bc, so one doesn't need "modern methods" to make alloys. Same with brass.
Proto-porcelain was invented in China around 1600 bc, and became porcelain around 200 bc using a process that was unknown to everyone else. How this kind of porcelain was created remained a mystery outside China until around 1700 ad.
Also I have to say that if that picture of the Klerksdorp sphere is a real one, then those lines are nowhere near perfect nor evenly spaced.
I’m not going to defend the article…I take it with a grain of salt…if what they have found is truly dated to when it was made..then we as humans (or another intelligent creature) existed much earlier than once thought…that’s all.
All those cold very well be the scenario…I was actually thinking about the time travel thing…maybe they fell “out of time” somehow…who knows….it seems the more we discover about quantum physics, the wilder the possibilities become!Or the objects somehow moved to impossible locations. Or they went back in time. Or rode in on bits of another planet. Or something else.
All those cold very well be the scenario…I was actually thinking about the time travel thing…maybe they fell “out of time” somehow…who knows….it seems the more we discover about quantum physics, the wilder the possibilities become!
They are starting to think that they may actually be one and the same thing…here is an article talking about it.As far as quantum physics, I'm starting to have my doubts. A unified field theory seems neater, although 'teleportation' etc may still have been observed or done, just less like magic (at least, imho). Which would still be a fundamental change in the accepted conception of space-time and matter.