11/30/2010

Soul Group Journal - November 30, 2010


Have Scientists Finally Discovered Evidence for Psychic Phenomena?!

Dr. Daryl Bem, a social psychologist at Cornell University, conducted a series of experiments that will soon be published in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Bem tested the idea that our brain has the ability to not only reflect on past experiences, but also anticipate future experiences. This ability for the brain to "see into the future" is often referred to as psi phenomena.

"The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual’s current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “timereversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual’s responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. All but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results." – from Bem's pre-publication abstract, Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect

Bem did find that certain people demonstrate stronger effects than others. In particular, people high in stimulus seeking - an aspect of extraversion where people respond more favorably to novel stimuli - showed effect sizes nearly twice the size of the average person. This suggests that some people are more sensitive to psi effects than others. - Psychology TodayReality Sandwich



Ben Okri, author

"Beware [be aware] of the stories you read or tell;
subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness,
they are altering your world."
— Ben Okri

"Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love." — Ben Okri

Ben Okri (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian poet and novelist. Having spent his early childhood in London, he and his family returned to Nigeria in 1968. He later came back to England, embarking on studies at the University of Essex. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Westminster (1997) and the University of Essex (2002), and was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 2001.

Since he published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows (1980), Okri has risen to an international acclaim, and he is often described as one of Africa's greatest writers. His best known work, The Famished Road, was awarded the 1991 Booker Prize. He has also won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and was given a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Okri has been described as a magic realist, although he has shrugged off that tag. His first-hand experiences of civil war in Nigeria are said to have inspired many of his works. He writes about both the mundane and the metaphysical, the individual and the collective, drawing the reader into a world with vivid descriptions.

Ben Okri discusses his approach to writing on YouTube

Books by Ben Okri



Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth, by Eric Herm

A run-in with Roundup herbicide was a transformative episode in farmer Eric Herm’s shift toward sustainable agriculture. A fourth-generation farmer, Herm tells the tale in the book Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth: A Path to Agriculture’s Higher Consciousness (Dream River Press)

Eric Herm grew up on a cotton farm near Ackerly, Texas. He left the farm to pursue other interests, traveling to various places across the world before returning to his roots. Upon arriving back on his family farm, he noticed many changes in not only the landscape but the methods of commercial agriculture that were causing more long-term problems. He began searching for answers to these problems, slowly discovering healthier organic methods which provided the inspiration for his book, Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth.



A large supercell thunderstorm cloud over Montana, July, 2010

Photo by Sean R. Heavey



11/04/2010

Image of a deep space traveler

Image of a deep space traveler. Comet Hartley II - November 4, 2010



NASA's Deep Impact (EPOXI) probe completed its flyby of comet Hartly 2 today, and it is now in the process of beaming back its collected data. This is the first photo available from the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL).

11/01/2010

Decisions and Tests - from Christ Mind Expressions: Book One

Published on Scribd.com - eBook in PDF format

Christ Mind Expressions
The Pierrakos Transmissions
Book One
339 pages
8.5 x 11"



excerpt from: Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 2
1996 Edition
March 25, 1957
Decisions and Tests
(copyrighted material)
Visit: www.pathwork.org



Greetings in the name of God. I bring you God’s blessings.

My dear friends, God’s love penetrates the entire creation. It is a living force, a beam that meets itself in an eternal round, as everything spiritual must move in circular completeness. All creatures are in search of this powerful beam of love, whether consciously or unconsciously. The longing to feel this love drives, pulls, spurs humans and spirits. They will have an understanding of the yearning according to their state of development, will draw conclusions, and follow through with their will and their thoughts. Or they will not interpret these feelings correctly and will allow this driving force to act through them and even lead them into mistakes. Not realizing the real nature of the feelings and the search, the person will look for false goals and false fulfillment. However, those who reach the stage of development where they already understand what these hitherto inexplicable feelings of longing really are have taken a great step. They will also know in what direction to go.

Thus there will be fewer errors and misunderstandings about one’s own soul forces, and their messages will be translated correctly.

The love for God, the longing for God, is the driving force in every human being. Even those who have not yet found God, or who believe that they do not believe in God, harbor these strong currents in their soul. Those who experience a complete turnabout in their spiritual development and recognize God in consciousness enter into a new life. This can happen within one and the same incarnation. Whoever steps through this door will already live in a much lighter world, yet there are many more gates to pass through.

Most people find life on this earth incomprehensible. They cannot recognize its meaning and purpose because they see only through their physical eyes. The contact with their spiritual eyes has not yet been established. Therefore everything seems meaningless -- their sorrows, their trials, their loneliness. But when you understand that this life is one of many learning periods, one link in a long chain, you will at first sense and later comprehend more and more fully the connections. Then your goal will no longer be immediate happiness through the fulfillment of every single wish in this existence. You will instead direct your vision toward the whole. Thus you can bear the deprivations of this life. And thus you can pass the tests and fulfill the conditions necessary to enter a higher state of existence, a permanent happiness that cannot be taken away by any outside force.

Now I would like to talk about the group of people who have passed through the first gates, who have already recognized these fundamental truths. Such people often do not progress as well as they could. After all, how fast each individual will proceed is up to his or her free will. One person may just drift along and have to reincarnate many, many times to overcome or fulfill one thing, experiencing it again and again. Others, who have recognized these basic truths, will act differently and direct their aim toward spiritual progress -- which does not mean withdrawing from earthly problems. On the contrary: for earthly and spiritual problems are very closely connected. An earthly problem is actually the expression of a specific spiritual problem. The difference is only in how the solution of a problem is sought, from what vantage point. Only if you solve the problem on the spiritual level can you find its true earthly solution.

We often see that people know this or that, but they still do not perceive the connecting links within themselves. They still look for God and for knowledge somewhere outside of themselves, for instance through increasing their outer knowledge -- which in itself is good, but not enough.
There must be a continuous balancing. The acquired knowledge must always be applied on a personal level, digested and evaluated within, so that harmony is established. To achieve true progress, you have to grow from both sides. New outer knowledge has to be acquired when the old has been integrated and assimilated within. Knowledge must never remain theoretical. It must be put into practice and take root in your personal life. Thus every person needs to widen his or her knowledge of the true nature of creation and of the spiritual laws. But the outer knowing is only one part, which must not be taken as the whole. Without the other part, the inner assimilation, there can be no harmony in your progress, no real fulfillment, and thus actually no progress.

You have to get acquainted with yourself, attend to yourself, examine yourself, and acquire the discipline to overcome the resistance which is so difficult at the beginning. You have to observe all your notions about yourself which flatter you and with which it is so easy to deceive yourself. Then you have to cast them off or revise them. This work is something special, something different for each one of you, yet most of it is similar, or can even be the same. When we talk about the spiritual progress of the human being we mean something very individual for each one of you. And you, my dear ones, should search yourselves and ask: “What hidden part of me still does not react according to the sole reality, the spiritual laws, even if only on a subtle, inner level? Where do I lack clarity about certain things in myself?”

Such self-examination should go on at all times. Then you will be able to slowly eliminate that which is not yet right within you, so that you become happier. You have to be clear about what obstacles are in you, and to gain clarity you need inner search and also true inner will and effort. For if you lack happiness in any area, you can be sure that the lack is directly connected with a specific inner block. Were your wishes simply granted without your first eliminating the inner obstacles, that could never make you really happy. You could not build lasting happiness; it would have to dissolve. Only when you have established inner harmony, a relationship to God in which His laws are accomplished within you, is your soul mature enough to encompass happiness.

People often wonder about communication with God’s world. “Yes,” they say, “I can quite believe that such communication is possible, but what can it mean to me? What do I need it for?” My answer is that such communication can give you one of the parts necessary for your further development, namely intake from the outside. Furthermore, it gives hints, help, and direction for searching, discovering, and applying the outer knowledge to the inner problems, which is the second necessary part of development. For this, you need constant encouragement, strength, and blessing, apart from very specific, concrete help. Yet even that can be given through spirit communication.

There have always been some exceptional, wise humans to whom others could be guided. In these cases too, just as with a medium, God’s world is directly active. The particular person is then an instrument of God’s world. In one case the influence is through inspiration, in the other it operates directly. But the help from the outside, in whatever way, is an important element without which you cannot grow. You can use the knowledge thus acquired as material, as the building blocks, with which you build your life in your own way.


- oOo -


Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky

Tom Fox on Scribd.com
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The 19 month dark star cycle

Telescope photo of Venus at dark transit of the sun


Photo of Venus at inferior conjunction  

This is a telescopic photo of the planet Venus taken on October 31st by Henry Mendt of Maracaibo, Venezuela, and found on Spaceweather.com.   

Right now, Venus is passing almost directly between Earth and the sun, an event astronomers call an "inferior conjunction." It happens every 19 months, more or less. The next such inferior conjunction between Earth and Venus will be in the first week of June, 2012, about nineteen months from now. 

Although Venus orbits the sun in 225 days, the earth is also moving in her orbit around the sun. Venus is always playing 'catch-up' with the earth, which is why it takes more than 19 months for Venus to "transit the sun" from an earth-based point of view. It is a *dark transit* because Venus is presenting its nighttime side to earth viewers. A presentation at a 2007 meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences, American Astronomical Society, diagrammed the correlations between this cycle of Venus, sunspot activity, and major disease outbreaks on Earth. You can find that information here 

When the daylight side of Venus faces toward earth, it is second only to  the moon in brightness. Depending upon the location of Venus to the sun  in its bright-side part of the cycle, Venus is known as either the  'evening star' or the 'morning star,' because it is brightest just after  sunset in the early evening, or just before dawn in the morning.  Now,  during its transit of the sun, Venus is a dark star. 
--
Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky 

10/31/2010

Natural events

Ice haloes over Finland - photo

This photo was taken on Saturday, October 30, 2010, over Kittilä, Finland, by photographer Sauli Kosk. I found it posted on SpaceWeather.com.

"Yesterday in Kittilä, Finland, photographer Sauli Koski witnessed a brief but unforgettable display when the rising sun shone through a morning cloud of wintery ice crystals. Fortunately he had his camera. "These were the best ice halos I have ever seen," says Koski. 'They were there for only about 10 minutes and then gone. What a delight!'

" 'It was a gem of a halo display,' agrees atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. 'Koski saw at least 13 different arcs. Some, including two types of Parry arc, are rare. Three more arcs, the helic, Parry supralateral arc, and Moilanen arc are exceedingly rare.' "

In religious iconography, represented in nearly every culture that produced religious art, a 'halo' is a ring of light that surrounds a person to represent their sacred or holy status. Our friend Rob Robb says that he 'sees' people as glowing colors. In his many books starting with The Teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda describes the sorcerer's view of people as like luminescent egg-shapes. Western iconography tended to depict halos as rings or disks around the head. Eastern art usually had the glowing light around the entire body, and sometimes represented by the image of flames.

The physics of solar atmospheric halos, as shown in Kosk's fine photograph above, involves sunlight shining through clouds of ice crystals suspended in air.  The fire of the sun filtered through ice prisms.

Fire and ice.

Fire and ice was a metaphor mentioned in the ACIM urtext,

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible."
The reference is to a poem by Robert Frost and I wrote about it here a few years ago.

-oOo-

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
on Scribd.com

10/21/2010

Childhood's End


Childhood's End (1953) is a science fiction novel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, dealing with the role of Mind in the cosmos and the plausible implications of that role for the evolution of the human race.

Childhood's End explores humanity's transformation and integration with an interstellar Overmind. It also touches upon such matters as cruelty to animals, man's inability to live in a utopian society, and the apocalyptic concept of The Last Man on Earth. The humans' arms race is brought to a halt by the sudden appearance of mysterious spaceships above all the Earth's great cities. After a week of silence and increasing tension, the aliens, who become known as the Overlords, announce by world-wide broadcast that they have benign intentions and desire to help humanity. As enforcers of peace, they bring salvation and life. They also bring the death of some dreams, as humanity is no longer completely independent and may not pursue certain scientific goals, such as space exploration. Some sixty years after the Overlords revealed themselves to humanity, human children begin displaying telepathic and telekinetic abilities and as a result, become estranged from their parents.

The Overloards then reveal the true purpose of why they came to Earth. They are in service to the Overmind, a cosmic mind amalgamated from ancient galactic civilizations, freed from the limitations of ordinary matter. The Overlords are not themselves capable of joining the Overmind, but the Overmind has charged them with the duty of fostering humanity's transition to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind. The Overloards expresses an envy of humanity; thier race is trapped as they are. They are not now capable of joining the Overmind, though he hopes they will eventually learn how to do so.

The Overloards announce that the children with psychic powers will be segregated from the rest of humanity on a continent of their own, and only these children will merge with the Overmind. No more children are born; the narration subtly hints that most of the parents commit suicide, while their children evolve towards merging with the Overmind. Some Overlords remain on Earth, studying the evolved children. It also is revealed here that the Overlords have met and conditioned other races for the Overmind, and that humanity is the fifth race whose apotheosis they have witnessed.

When the evolved children have grown strong enough to mentally alter the Moon's rotation and effect other planetary adjustments, it becomes too dangerous to remain and the Overlords prepare to leave. They offer Rodricks the opportunity of leaving with them, but he chooses to remain as witness to Earth's dissolution. Mankind's offspring have evolved to a higher existence, requiring neither a body nor a place, and thus ends mankind's childhood. Rodricks reports, via radio, a great burning column of energy/matter ascending from Earth bearing indescribable colours and patterns. As he watches the Earth's gravity begins to decrease, the atmosphere starts escaping to space and material objects seem to dissolve around him. He reports no fear but a sense of accomplishment and completion, and then a blinding flash of light as the Earth evaporates.

from Wikipedia

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. 
1 Corinthians 13:9-13

Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or a scissors, even though they may well harm themselves if you do not. The speed-up has placed you in the same position.
— A Course in Miracles - Original Edition

10/20/2010

Die Before You Die - Sufi Thought

Introduction to the Sufi Path

by Peter Lamborn Wilson
from hermetic.com

Of all the strands of thought, tradition, and belief that make up the Islamic universe, Sufism in its doctrinal aspect stands out as the most intact, the most purely Islamic: the central strand. Opponents of Sufism often charge it with having originated outside Islam, but a close study of the various schools of philosophy and theology, and a comparison with "primordial" Islam as revealed in the Koran and hadith (authentic sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), will vindicate the Sufis' claim of centrality, of strict adherence to the original purity of the Revelation.

In the context of the history of thought, in fact, Sufism - always insisting on a return to the sources of the Tradition - can be seen to have functioned at times as a positive and healthy reaction to the overly rational activity of the philosophers and theologians. For the Sufis, the road to spiritual knowledge to Certainty - could never be confined to the process of rational or purely intellectual activity, without sapiential knowledge (zawq, "taste") and the direct, immediate experience of the Heart. Truth, they believed, can be sought and found only with one's entire being; nor were they satisfied merely to know this Truth. They insisted on a total identification with it: a "passing away" of the knower in the Known, of subject in the Object of knowledge. Thus, when the fourth/tenth century Sufi Hallaj proclaimed "I am the Truth" (and was martyred for it by the exoteric authorities), he was not violating the "First Pillar" of Islam, the belief in Unity (tawhid), but simply stating the truth from the mouth of the Truth. So the Sufis believe.

This insistence of total involvement in "mystical" realisation, and on a participative understanding of religious doctrine, sharply distinguished Sufism from other Islamic schools of thought. In fact, considering themselves the true core of Islam, Sufis appeared as outsiders not only to the philosophers and theologians, but even to "ordinary" Muslims. Their peculiarity, their distinctness, manifested itself in every aspect of their lives: their daily activities, their worship, social relations, and even style or means of expression. Like mystics in all Traditions, they tended to remake language and form for their own purposes, and as in all Traditional civilisations, the potency and directness of their expression tended to flow out and permeate other areas not directly related to mysticism in the narrow sense: literature, the arts and crafts, etc.


Leaving This World Behind

Buddha founded his Path on the human fact of suffering. Islam gives the basic situation in which we find ourselves a slightly different interpretation: man in his ordinary state of consciousness is literally asleep ("and when he dies he wakes," as Mohammad said). He lives in a dream, whether of enjoyment or suffering - a phenomenal, illusory existence. Only his lower self is awake, his "carnal soul." Whether he feels so or not, he is miserable. But potentially the situation can be changed, for ultimately man is not identical with his lower self. (The Prince of Balkh, Ibrahim Adham, lost in the desert while hunting, chased a magic stag, which turned on him and asked, "Were you born for this?") Man's authentic existence is in the Divine; he has a higher Self, which is true; he can attain felicity, even before death ("Die before you die," said the Prophet). The call comes: to flight, migration, a journey beyond the limitations of world and self.

Awakening

Imprisoned in the cage of the world (the world in its negative, "worldly" sense, not in the positive sense of the world-as-icon or Divine Manifestation), man is exiled and forgetful of his true home. To keep his part of the Covenant, to be faithful to his promise, he must set out on the Path from sleep to awakening. It is only the blessed few for whom this Path lasts no longer than a single step, although in theory all that is needed is to "turn around" or "inside out" and be what one is. For most seekers the Path is long; one Sufi speaks of "a thousand and one" different stages. "Everything perishes save His Face"; the first step on the Path is to begin to contemplate the futility of the world of dust, the world in which one's lower self is doomed. The seeker must renounce it all, including his own self, and seek that which is Everlasting. He must travel from things to Nothing, from existence to Nonexistence.

How does one get lost on purpose? Our present state is one of forgetfulness toward the Divine - the true Self - and remembrance of worldly affairs and the lower self. The cure for this is a reversal: remembrance of the true Self, the Divine within, and forgetfulness toward everything else.

In Sufism the basic technique for this is invocation or "remembrance" (zekr) of the Divine Name, which is mysteriously identical with the Divine Being. Through this discipline the fragments of our directionless minds are regathered, our outward impulse turned inward and concentrated. This is the act of a lover who thinks of nothing but his beloved.