All these exciting stories and MORE in this week's issue of
CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!

~ And Now, On With The Show! ~

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- HISTORIES MYSTERIES DEPARTMENT -

The Surprising Truth Behind the Great Pyramids

- ANCIENT DEATH FROM ABOVE DEPARTMENT -

Diamonds Tell Tale of Comet That Killed Off the Cavemen

Research would also subject claims of “out of body” experiences to strict test.

In sci­ence, plen­ty of prob­lems are hard. But per­haps just one is so grue­somely try­ing that sci­en­tists them­selves have termed it, well, “the hard prob­lem.” How does con­scious­ness arise—the liv­ing, aware ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing?

Some the­o­ries hold that it comes from, or is even iden­ti­cal to, elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal pro­cesses known to un­fold in the brain. Oth­ers say it arises else­where: in some even sub­tler, yet-un­dis­cov­ered brain pro­cesses, or per­haps a mind-stuff quite dis­tinct from the brain—some call it a soul.

Ces­sa­tion of brain ac­tiv­i­ty is rec­og­nized when a device known as an elec­tro­en­ce­pha­lo­gram, set up to re­cord the brain's elec­tr­ical activity, de­tects no activity be­yond the in­her­ent in­ter­nal noise of the ma­chine it­self. The read­out from the de­vice then ap­pears as flat line.
Few on ei­ther side claim to have fi­nal an­swers. But they of­ten ar­gue pas­sion­ately over who’s at least in the right play­ing field.

Now a group of re­search­ers has be­gun a study that they say might set­tle the is­sue. “We can ac­tu­ally test this, and put and end to all these de­bates,” said Sam Par­nia, a crit­i­cal care doc­tor at Weill Cor­nell Med­i­cal Cen­ter in New York.

Par­nia has spent years stu­dying re­ports that some car­di­ac-ar­rest pa­tients keep hav­ing clear, dis­tinct thought pro­cesses af­ter they’re clin­ic­ally dead and de­tect­a­ble brain ac­ti­vity has ceased. Pa­tients com­monly re­count these men­tal ex­pe­ri­ences, which of­ten in­clude see­ing a light at the end of a tun­nel, af­ter be­ing re­vived.

Parnia and colleagues aim to put these re­ports to a test: spe­cif­ic sounds will be played to such pa­tients, and they’ll be asked to re­call the sounds af­ter re­viv­ing. If they do, it would con­firm the ac­counts of thoughts with­out brain ac­ti­vity—sup­port­ing the claims that “con­scious­ness is a sep­a­rate, yet un­disco­vered sci­en­tif­ic ent­ity” from the brain, Par­nia wrote in a pa­per in the the April 23 ad­vance on­line edi­tion of the re­search jour­nal Med­i­cal Hy­pothe­ses.

The study “looks like an in­ter­est­ing pro­pos­al,” wrote Da­vid Chal­mers, a phi­los­o­pher and di­rec­tor of the Cen­tre for Con­scious­ness at the Aus­tral­ian Na­tional Un­ivers­ity in Can­ber­ra, Aus­tral­ia, in an e­mail. If the claims are con­firmed, it would “pose an in­ter­est­ing chal­lenge for sci­en­tists to ex­plain,” re­marked Chal­mers, au­thor of sev­er­al books on con­scious­ness.

But it probably would­n’t set­tle the most bas­ic, long­stand­ing dis­pute: wheth­er mind and brain are dif­fer­ent things, Chal­mers added. For in­stance, even if pa­tients’ claims are ver­i­fied, they “could be due to as­pects of brain func­tion­ing dur­ing car­di­ac ar­rest that are not cap­tured by the mea­sure­ments” Par­nia is us­ing, Chal­mers wrote. These mea­sure­ments are tak­en by elec­tro­en­ce­pha­lo­gram, a tech­nique in which sen­si­tive elec­trodes at­tached to the head rec­ord elec­tri­cal brain ac­ti­vity.

Par­nia said the tri­als be­gan on a pi­lot ba­sis in Jan­u­ary at two U.K. hos­pi­tals with 10 pa­tients; he aims to ex­pand the study to oth­er coun­tries and re­cruit over 1,000 pa­tients.

Per­haps the most strin­gent test in the study is al­so the one that ad­dresses the most ex­tra­or­di­nary no­tion. Crit­ic­ally ill pa­tients some­times re­port “out-of-body” ex­pe­ri­ences in which they feel they have floated out of their own bod­ies and are watch­ing them­selves from above.

Mark well: Par­nia is not test­ing wheth­er pa­tients gen­u­inely feel their minds have floated away. He wants to test wheth­er the minds ac­tu­ally do float away—a con­tro­ver­sial idea to say the least. His team plans to place pic­tures stra­te­gic­ally around pa­tients’ rooms where they’re vis­i­ble only from near the ceil­ing. Pa­tients would la­ter be asked about the im­ages. “Thus, the claims of con­scious awareness and out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ences will be tested in­de­pen­dent­ly,” he wrote in the pa­per.

He ad­mit­ted some would find the idea out­land­ish. A study pub­lished in 2002 found that just elec­tric­ally stim­u­lat­ing spe­cif­ic brain ar­eas could trig­ger an out-of-body-like ex­pe­ri­ence—ev­i­dence to some that the sensa­t­ions are il­lu­so­ry.

Dan­iel Den­nett, di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Stud­ies at Tufts Un­ivers­ity in Med­ford, Mass., wrote in an e­mail that he’s nev­er seen ev­i­dence that the events are an­ything more than hal­lu­cina­t­ions. The ex­pe­ri­ments, “if con­ducted with scru­pu­lous care,” will surely con­firm this, added Den­nett, a phil­o­so­pher who is al­so au­thor of sev­er­al books on con­scious­ness.

Yet, said Par­nia—in de­fense of the op­po­site view—pa­tients have ac­cu­rately re­ported events in their hos­pi­tal rooms that oc­curred dur­ing out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ences, while they were clin­ic­ally dead. “If we get 200 peo­ple, and all claim to have an out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ence but none can iden­ti­fy the im­ages, that would very much sup­port the idea that this is a false mem­o­ry,” Par­nia said. “If on the oth­er hand, 200 peo­ple iden­ti­fy these im­ages… then we’d have to ac­cept that may­be hu­man con­scious­ness, as bi­zarre as it may sound, could be non-local to the brain.”

Source: World Science
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/070520_consciousness.htm

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This week we will look at the subject of UFOs through the eyes of Dana Redfield and also through my own experiences. This portion of her work will cover two articles: this one, which considers outer UFO phenomena, and the next one, which will consider hidden, or psychic, UFO phenomena.
   
In 1970, when I was 27, I went to work for a physicist and mechanical engineer, Donald Tully Elkins, who had been researching the field of the paranormal since the mid-1950s. He was also a pilot and often did charter work at Bowman Field, a private airport in Louisville, Ky.
   
Don was in the habit of taking his fees for such jobs as credit against his account there. When one of the several organizations collecting UFO information called him with a UFO encounter case in the Kentucky area, he would rent a small plane and do a field investigation to ascertain the facts. I went with him on some of these flights.
   
Perhaps the most interesting case we investigated was that of a truck driver who had lost time on his way home from his girlfriend's house. He left after the opening monologue of a late-night television show and arrived home after 2 a.m. It was a 20-minute drive. His memory of that drive home consisted of seeing a UFO in the sky ahead of his truck, his truck's engine dying and then finding himself still on the road, his car still stopped, but with the feeling that something had occurred which he could not remember.
   
When I met him, the experience was fresh and his eyes were still bright red from the radiation burns common to such "close encounters," as J. Allen Hynek called these direct experiences with UFOs. The young truck driver was eager to know what had occurred during those missing minutes, and Don hypnotized him and took him back to the point at which his engine died.
   
Under hypnosis, he recalled being on board the UFO. He underwent a kind of physical examination. The aliens were not humanoid or even creature-oid. They were shapes. One looked like a soft drink machine, a tall red box who was nervous. One was a large, white box who was calm. One was a smaller black box with a chip on its non-existent shoulder. These entities projected needles from their sides and removed various samples of DNA from him.
   
Do I believe UFOs are real? Do I believe UFOs are here? Yes, indeed. I know they are. My field research and the reading I did throughout the 1970s for Don offered conclusive proof to me that something is happening, something that leaves dents in the ground, measurable radiation at the scene and bloodshot eyes in the experiencers again and again.
   
Don asked the Ra group on Jan. 6, 1981, why the UFO visitors were here advertising their presence and why their appearances could never be proven. They replied:
   
"Consider, if you will, the path your life has taken. Consider the coincidences and odd circumstances by which one thing flowed to the next. Consider this well. Each entity will receive the opportunity that each needs. This information does not have uses in the life of each of those among your peoples who seek. Thus the advertisement is general and not designed to indicate the searching out of any particular material, but only to suggest the noumenal aspect of the illusion."
   
In other words, Ra suggested that UFO sightings, by entities such as they are, are designed to alert the experiencer to the mystery at the heart of their seemingly everyday world. They are wake-up calls.
   
Dana was a frequent experiencer of such visitations. She remained lighthearted about it as well as feeling burdened by them. The lighthearted side is shown well in her letter to me of April 2, 2000. "I hear these stories about people piloting spaceships myself. Maybe it's true, but it's way outta my league. I can barely navigate this dangblatted piece o' talkinwritin machine here. And it doesn't get off the ground." Trust Dana to find a way to reduce the incredible spate of experiences she had to manageable proportions!
   
On Page 173 of her book "Summoned," published by Hampton Roads in 1999, she got more serious about the subject. She wrote:
   
"Speaking from my heart, head and experience, I believe that the aliens are real, various and on the scene. I believe that some are of the angelic or demonic quality, and all coexist in our 'multiverse' (as venerable author Jacques Vallee names our multileveled reality). I believe that some are so highly advanced that they barely remember our issues with good and evil. Their purpose is to shepherd our evolution. Their devotion seems almost ruthless; their love pure and free of the sentimentality we mistake for passion."
   
My experience as a channel is of communications with this same advanced group, which offers a message of unconditional love and unity. This channeling was what first brought Dana and me together. When she read our Law of One material in 1983, she recognized in us kindred souls and a shared contact and wrote us at L/L Research. The contact deepened for over 20 years, enriching my life with Dana's special beauty and hilarious sense of humor.
   
Dana was well aware that there were other sides to the UFO phenomena. She wrote about the UFO conspiracies, the edges of a couple of which she bumped into. In one event, applying for a job near Area 51, she was interviewed by government personnel for five straight hours. She felt this interview was unrelated to any job but rather related to determining what she knew about UFOs.
   
She realized that some of the physical phenomena related to UFOs, like UFO abductees' having DNA taken from them and cattle mutilations in which blood and certain organs were taken, were clearly done by those who had no respect for the free will of those on Earth. And she felt that these two groups were basically two sides of the same coin: the protagonist "good guys" on the one hand, who cared deeply about us, and the antagonist "bad guys" on the other hand, who wished to use us. She felt there was, as it says in the Bible, a war going on in "heaven" of which these UFO entities were a part. On Page 173 of "Summoned," she wrote:
   
"I believe we are caught up in a battle of wills we call spiritual warfare. And what is the booty? Us. Our souls. Or the powers our souls can assert, once we awaken and call them with our wills.
   
"And though many are here to help, only we can act, because the ones who love us cannot engage directly in battle, for to do so would be a violation against the very thing we need to survive: our wills."
   
The sources channeled through L/L Research quite agree. Speaking on Feb. 22, 1976, a Confederation source called Hatonn said:
   
"Our purpose is to aid you in your intellectual growth, so that your intellect may be able to keep pace with the spiritual knowledge that you gain through meditation. It is our fervent belief that the intellectual information which we share with you is of great benefit along your path. Each person must choose the path that he would wish to follow. And each person, in choosing that path, must realize that the path he has chosen shall lead to the ultimate point of interception with all other paths, the point of oneness.
   
"Consider it, if you will, as a wheel, with an infinite number of spokes. Each spoke is an entirely different path, yet all are connected to the same center. All spokes protrude from the one center, as all paths have come from the Creator."
   
"Each person must choose his path," says the Confederation. "Their purpose is to shepherd our evolution," says Dana. These sources speak over and over of the virtue of information-packed silence, encouraging us to shut off the mass media and open up to the vast resources of our own deep minds and hearts.
   
UFOs are a subject vast and enigmatic. I did not speak here about Dana's implants, or her experiences nurturing "space babies," or any of a number of other outer experiences she had. As evidential as these phenomena are, the heart of contact is in the feelings, compulsions and leadings they bring up in us. And Dana noted that herself, on Page 29 of "Summoned":
   
"Aug. 22, 1986 is the day I awoke to find evidence of implants in both of my hands. Almost immediately following this event, I was compelled to study quantum physics, strange for someone of an artistic temperament. I was also drawn to study ancient history, genetics, mythology and related subjects."
   
Was her sudden attraction to these events caused by the implants? Dana came to believe so, as the roads traveled in these studies opened up into the intricate patterns of her later work on letters, symbols, numbers and sacred geometry. Dana felt that she had been summoned or chosen to be a messenger for the UFOs in this incarnation. Her one complaint was that she was not adequate to the task. On Page 25 of the same book, she wrote:
   
"What I know belongs to a knowing too large for any one heart to contain, as my head cannot process the consciousness of all the information given to me in a way that can be rendered intelligible to minds unprepared."
   
Yet, in her writing, she quite successfully offered compelling and evidential information which, when carefully read, renders the UFO mystery not only intelligible but of an elegant design, one in which humankind is being asked to wake up and choose.
   
Shall we choose unconditional love of the Creator, ourselves and all others as our path? Or shall we choose instead the path of service to self and learn the art of manipulation and control of others for our benefit? The point is to choose one of those two options, and then to refine upon that choice with persistence our whole life long.
   
I open my arms and embrace your spirit. May we choose the path of unconditional love and service to others this day. And may we do so with light and merry hearts, knowing, as Dana taught us, that the creation is as full of divine laughter as it is of sacred meaning.

Source: Religion and Spirituality
http://www.religionandspirituality.com/spirit_metaphysical/view.php?StoryID=
20070523-054013-7225r