“ In
good King Charles's golden days, When Loyalty no harm meant; A
Furious High-Church man I was, And so I gain'd Preferment. Unto my
Flock I daily Preach'd, Kings are by God appointed, And Damn'd are
those who dare resist, Or touch the Lord's Anointed. And this is
law, I will maintain Unto my Dying Day, Sir. That whatsoever King
may reign, I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!”
Is
this a comic song? Or is it a bitter song about the politics of
Fear? I raise the question as I think wryly about what the journal
is trying to do. We quote endless knock-you-down-with-a-feather
accounts of experiences of the paranormal, accounts of persuasive
scientific research confirming the paranormal and the inadequacy of
the materialist philosophy, but do we persuade the Vicars of Bray?
Could
it be, I am wondering, that underlying insuperable differences of
belief, is FEAR? The vicar of Bray, was afraid of losing his job, of
starvation perhaps, at least of losing respect of those in power who
give him his job, who approve of his supposed right-thinking; he was
afraid of his congregations that they would reject him, he was
afraid of losing love and support from friends who are believing and
thinking the right things. Could it be that presenting the right
face on things, is something that most of us feel we have to do, at
any time, and in any age, just to protect ourselves from what is
very much to be feared? That of course is a purely rhetorical
question.
Consider
this quote, “In 1854 the Oxford University Bill eliminated the
university requirement that undergraduates subscribe to the
Thirty-Nine Articles” (of Religion, of the Church of England.)
Consider the recent case of a New Zealand doctor writing a
post-graduate thesis on telesomatic phenomena between twins. I
believe the care and rigour of his work is unimpeachable, and that
he clearly demonstrates the fact that there is indeed telepathy
between twins. But he quotes a professor as saying to him, “You
can kiss your career Goodbye”, writing such a thesis.
Why
would a professor wish to limit scientific research in this way? Are
we not all agreed that scientific method is a wonderful way to
establish matters of fact, a way out of superstition to facing up to
reality? We are indeed agreed about this, except for a new “39
articles” agreed to by most English speaking universities,
which gives freedom of research to those who agree to operating from
a materialist philosophy, and to those who believe that
consciousness is nothing but electrochemical processes in the brain.
Accept materialism and that consciousness is electrochemical
processes, and you will have status, friends, recognition and a
position in the university. Accept these two articles and you are
less likely to starve.
Society
of course is not monolithic. We do live in a pluralistic society.
There have indeed been influential movements outside the
universities studying mind and consciousness from non-materialistic
points of view. There are also very conservative forms of religion
who will cast you out for not being their kind of Vicar of Bray,
even more readily than Academia.
All
of us humans are subject to the fear of loss of love and respect,
loss of livelihood, fear of death. In terms of culture and belief,
we gravitate to those who offer us security, in this world, and in
the case of some, in the next. Conforming to the reigning academic
paradigm, or to the teachings of one's community of faith, gives us
security, love and respect, and saves us from fear.
I
see these as kinds of fear that all of us share. The challenge for
each of us, is to try and be fearless when we look for truth, and to
work out strategies for being honest with ourselves, without our
world crashing in on us from all sides.
To
explore these ideas further, here is a long and stimulating document
from the New York Times, The
Politics of God,by Mark Lilla who is
professor of the humanities at Columbia University. This essay is
adapted from his book “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics
and the Modern West,” which will be published in September,
2007.
It
helps us a lot if we get feedback from our readers. At the end of
each section we give you the opportunity to POST A COMMENT. If you
don't have a Google account, then write to
editor@thegroundoffaith.net
Tossing out the meteorites
[Quotation from Elizabeth Lloyd
Mayer: Extraordinary Knowing, Science Skepticism, and the
inexplicable powers of the human mind. March
2007. We highly recommend the whole book]
According
to philosopher of science Michael Polanyi, “It is the normal
practice of scientists to ignore evidence which appears incompatible
or irrelevant.. But there is, unfortunately, no rule by which to
avoid the risk of occasionally disregarding thereby true evidence
which conflicts, (or seems to conflict) with current teachings of
science. During the eighteenth century the French Academy of Science
stubbornly denied the evidence for the fall of meterorites, which
seemed massively obvious to everybody else.”
Such was
the awe in which Parisian scientists were held by their foreign
associates that curators of public museums in Germany, Denmark,
Switzerland, Italy and Austria, “anxious not be considered
backward compared with their famous colleagues in Paris... threw
away whatever they possessed of these precious meteorites.”
The museum curators were quick to defend their actions; any lurking
notion that meterorites might descend from the sky smacked
dangerously of popular superstition about heavenly intervention.
That was precisely the kind of superstition that progressive science
was working hard to defy. The scientists and museum curators
asserted that getting rid of the meteorites was actually in the
service of science. [p.103] Post
a comment
Articles
Initial Mystery in Science and Theology
Sjoerd
L. Bonting
“It seems clear to me that we face
initial mystery, both in science and theology, when confronting the
origin of the cosmos as well as that of life. This does not mean
that we should halt our scientific and theological endeavours, but
that we must not expect to obtain in this world a 'Theory of
Everything' or an explanation of the final mysteries of life.
Physicists are beginning to admit this, but biologists engaged in
the rapidly advancing fields of molecular biology and molecular
genetics are not yet ready to acknowledge this.”Read
the whole article
About this journal, we could ask Are we veering into the Occult?
Nate
Cull answers blog commenter “Cautious” in this way:
“Dear Nathanael, don’t
you think you are veering from the cultlane [the name of his
Blog] into the occultlane? Psalm 131!!! How about the callane:
Psalm 55:16 and James 1:5”
Nate
Says:
Dear Cautious: In short, no, I don’t. But thanks
for asking, because it’s a question that needs to be asked
and I understand where you’re coming from. There’s a
reason why I named my blog what I did, other than it being an
anagram.
‘The occult’ means
simply ‘things that are hidden’. The sense of
‘hiddenness’ is very real and very strong when it
comes to spiritual and paranormal phenomena, and there are two
types of of this hiddenness. One is good, one not so good. I’m
interested in the first kind.
Some things are hidden not
because anyone goes out of their way to hide them, but simply
because by their very nature they tend to be sneered at,
despised, and ignored, because they don’t fit into the
existing mental pattern of the world. In our current scientific
age, the paranormal tends to fall into this category, because
it’s not strictly reproducible under controlled laboratory
conditions. However, it’s also confusing because this deep
shunning by Western ‘official’ science of the
paranormal is *also* hidden, in many ways, due to Western pop
culture’s enthusiastic *embracing* of the same ’spooky’
stuff in the 20th century. We’re a sort of split
personality culture over this stuff. We deny a wider spiritual
world exists while in our every fantasy desperately wishing that
it’s there. This state of affairs can’t continue
forever. We need to sort out once and for all whether
spirituality is real, or not. If it’s real, let’s
quite pretending and start investigating.
So there is a large category of
things which some people may consider ‘hidden’ which
I think are actually open secrets - widely available, but often
ignored or difficult to parse the true meaning of because until
you’ve encountered some kind of spiritual reality, the
words the mystics and contemplatives use seem to be deliberately
obscure and contradictory. They’re not, but they’re
trying to write coherently about things that we don’t yet
have words for.
The Gospel is one of these, I
think. The field of Christian mysticism particularly interests me
because there has been so much written about it over two
millennia, from the Church Fathers on, and it’s all now
widely available on the Internet - and yet, so far, we in the
early 21st century West know very little about this heritage.
There are also resonances between the core elements of Jesus’
life and message and the teachings of many other religious and
spiritual groups. We need to be honest and open about how and
where these connect. We don’t need to be afraid of this. If
what Jesus taught was true, then truth is confirmed as truth
wherever it appears.
Other things, however, are hidden
because by their intrinsic nature they are violent, exploitative,
and debasing. Those who seek these kinds of secrets tend to hide
them because they want to achieve power for themselves and deny
that power to others, and because they themselves are not
fundamentally comfortable with the nature of what they’re
dealing with. That kind of power is dangerous and corrosive and
should be avoided.
One of the surprising things I
learned early in life, from my involvement in a Christian cult,
is that both these kinds of spiritual power, the light and the
darkness, can be present in the same group and sometimes
even in the same person.
Pentecostal churches particularly
suffer from this, but you see it in many organisations. It can
cause immense emotional distress to people who don’t
understand that genuine miracles and spiritual experiences and
deeply abusive, wounding, manipulative behaviour can coexist and
one does not invalidate the other. Eventually the true miracles
will go away if the abuse is not fixed. But in the meantime, the
situation can be complicated, and neither the Bible, the name of
Jesus nor rituals and hierarchy can shield people from the dark
side if they don’t have some basic personal spiritual
survival skills. I’m not saying the Bible can’t help
- but you can draw a number of contradictory lessons from it, and
ultimately you have to make a choice as to whether you believe in
a God of love or a God of punishment, and that choice does not
come from a text but from within one’s heart. And it can be
a deeply wrenching decision to make.
The other surprising discovery I
made was that many of the key Western ‘occult’
traditions seem to have originated from Judaism and contemplative
and mystical Christianity. Jakob Boehme and Emmanuel Swedenborg,
for instance, have been hugely influential in shaping the
so-called ‘occult’ but were deeply devoted
Christians. More recently, discovering A Course In Miracles was
life-changing for me, as I recognised a voice in it that I have
long associated with that of Jesus, and to me it resonates with
the teaching of the Gospels and suddenly makes Paul intelligible.
On the other side of the
equation, there are closer links than many Christians would find
comfortable: Alistair Crowley (of whom I’m not a fan) had
an Exclusive Brethren upbringing, while Tim LaHaye of Left Behind
has financial links to Reverend Moon. It’s a strange old
world, and the ordinary categories of ’safe religion vs
dangerous occultism’ don’t always apply.
To me, the key factor in deciding
whether a spiritual teaching is worth investigating is: does it
teach love? Does it teach forgiveness? Does it teach freedom?
Does it allow you to use your mind? Does it teach compassion for
the poor and for nature? If it hits those points, then to me it
seems like it’s approaching the right track, because there
is One God, and therefore Truth is not contradictory, no matter
where we might find it.
To follow the response chain
in Nate's original blog, click here
Since its humble beginnings as a single cell, life has evolved
into a spectacular array of shapes and sizes, from tiny fleas to
towering Tyrannosaurus rex, from slow-soaring vultures to
fast-swimming swordfish, and from modest ferns to alluring orchids.
But just how such diversity of form could arise out of evolution’s
mess of random genetic mutations — how a functional wing could
sprout where none had grown before, or how flowers could blossom in
what had been a flowerless world — has remained one of the
most fascinating and intractable questions in evolutionary biology.
********
Both science and theology encounter problems when trying to approach
the initial moment of the creation of the universe (or its "origin"
as the scientist might say). The same is true for the origin of
life. In this brief essay, which I dedicate to the memory of Arthur
Peacocke, pioneer of the science-theology dialogue who died on 21
October 2006, I shall consider "initial mystery" in the
two disciplines.
Science
on the cosmic origin
Current cosmological theory can provide a rather detailed account of
cosmic evolution from the present back to t=10-43 sec,
the so-called Planck time, but there it stops. Further extrapolation
leads to a 'singular point' at t = 0 with infinite density and
temperature and zero dimension. It was thought that incorporation of
gravity into quantum theory would lead to a 'Theory of Everything',
which will allow us to "know the mind of God" as phrased
by Stephen Hawking.1
[The body of the article]
Last year, Dr. Shubin and colleagues reported the discovery of a
fossil fish on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. They had found
Tiktaalik, as they named the fish, after searching for six years.
They persisted for so long because they were certain that they had
found the right age and kind of rock where a fossil of a fish trying
to make the transition to life on land was likely to be found. And
Tiktaalik appeared to be just such a fish, but it also had a few
surprises for the researchers.
“Tiktaalik is special,” Dr. Shubin said. “It has
a flat head with eyes on top. It has gills and lungs. It’s an
animal that’s exploring the interface between water and land.”
But Tiktaalik was a truly stunning discovery because this
water-loving fish bore wrists, an attribute thought to have been an
innovation confined strictly to animals that had already made the
transition to land.
“This was telling us that a piece of the toolkit, to make
arms, legs, hand and feet, could very well be present in fish
limbs,” Dr. Shubin said. In other words, the genetic tools or
toolkit genes for making limbs to walk on land might well have been
present long before fish made that critical leap. But as fascinating
as Tiktaalik was, it was also rock hard and provided no DNA that
might shed light on the presence or absence of any particular gene.
So Dr. Shubin did what more and more evo-devo researchers are
learning to do: take off one hat (paleontologist) and don another
(molecular biologist). Dr. Shubin oversees one of what he says is a
small but growing number of laboratories where old-fashioned
rock-pounding takes place alongside high-tech molecular DNA studies.
He and colleagues began a study of the living but ancient fish known
as the paddlefish. What they found, reported last month in the
journal Nature, was that these thoroughly fishy fish were turning on
control genes known as Hox genes, in a manner characteristic of the
four-limbed, land-loving beasts known as tetrapods.
Tetrapods include cows, people, birds, rodents and so on. In other
words, the potential for making fingers, hands and feet, crucial
innovations used in emerging from the water to a life of walking and
crawling on land, appears to have been present in fish, long before
they began flip-flopping their way out of the muck. “The
genetic tools to build fingers and toes were in place for a long
time,” Dr. Shubin wrote in an e-mail message. “Lacking
were the environmental conditions where these structures would be
useful.” He added, “Fingers arose when the right
environments arose.”
Regina
first interviewed Russell Targ almost 21 years ago just before he
was leaving for the Soviet Union to take part in an experiment with
Brezhnev's psychic healer, in what was to become a well known
documentation on the efficacy of remote viewing for military
purposes.
Russell Targ is a physicist and author who has devoted much of his
professional career to the research of the human capacity for
psychic ability. In 1972, he co-founded the Stanford Research
Institute's federally-funded program that investigated psychic
abilities in humans. The program provided invaluable information and
techniques to various government intelligence agencies, including
the DIA, the CIA, NASA, and Army Intelligence. In his ten years with
the program, Targ co-published his findings in some of the most
prestigious scientific journals. He is the co-author, with Jane
Katra, of five books about psychic abilities, two of which are:
Miracles of Mind: Exploring Non-local Consciousness & Spiritual
Healing, and The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without
Belief.
Russell
was also quite active in the development of the laser and its
various applications, having written over fifty articles on advanced
laser research. He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical
Engineers and has received two NASA awards for inventions and
contributions in laser and laser communications. Recently retiring
from his position as senior staff scientist at Lockheed Martin,
Russell now devotes his time to ESP research and offering workshops
on remote viewing and spiritual healing.
In an abstract from a research paper, Russell said, "Since
ancient times spiritual teachers have described paths and practices
that a person could follow to achieve health, happiness, and peace
of mind. A considerable body of recent research indicates that any
kind of spiritual practice is likely to improve ones prognosis for
recovering from a serious illness. Many of these approaches to
spirituality involve learning to quiet the mind, rather than
adhering to a prescribed religious belief. These meditative
practices are inherent aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, mystical
Christianity, Kabalistic Judaism, Sufism, and other mystic paths.
What is indicated in the subtext of these teachings is that as one
learns to quiet his or her mind, one is likely to encounter
psychic-like experiences or perceptions. For example, in The Sutras
of Patanjali, the Hindu master tells us that on the way to
transcendence we may experience many kinds of amazing visions, such
as the ability to see into the distance, or into the future; and to
diagnose illnesses, and also to cure them. However, we are
admonished not to become attached to these abilities - that they are
mere phenomena standing as stumbling blocks on the path to
enlightenment. In this paper, I will describe my recent experience
in teaching remote viewing at three workshops in Italy, in which we
emphasize expanded awareness of who we are, rather than an ability
to find car keys and parking spaces. Our spiritual approach, did not
interfere with all three of these groups demonstrating highly
significant remote viewing in a double-blind setting."
It
was clear to me in a realistic way that we could not possibly be
physical beings because we can move through space and time, and
describe what is in the future accurately. Ingo Swan was asked what
would happen at coordinate next Friday.. I see some kind of
pyrotechnic display.. they knew that the atomic test would fail, and
that there would only be burning uranium.
[Note:
After you have seen this film, you are given the opportunity to view
short videos on similar themes]
Louis
de Figueiredo, São
Paolo, Brazil, contributes his
article, “Jesus was not buried in Talpiot”,
taking issue with a much read
book, The Jesus Family Tomb. The Discovery, the Investigation and
the Evidence That Could Change History by Jacobovici and the
paleobiologist Charles Pellegrino.Read
his article< TalpiotFinal.pdf> Another useful article
Norman
Kjome, Minnesota, USA, writes:
“I might say that I am not responding to anything in
particular, but the journal often brings something to mind, that I
would like to share with you. This "blogspot" is a
convenient way to leave a note for you - and of course anyone else
who might be interested. Maybe I already sent you this link to an
interview
with David Ray Griffin.
"Redefining The Divine" is from 1990, but seems to be
still current. <http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC24/Griffin.htm>
I
happened across a book on my shelf recently, Where Two Worlds
Touch, by Gloria Karpinski. On the cover is written, "learn
to embrace change as part of your spiritual homework with this
pathfinding guide." I looked on Amazon and found used copies
for only a penny, so it seems people may not be quite ready for
this. But a reviewer wrote, "Gloria Karpinski's 'Where Two
Worlds Touch' is the type of book that can lay in a corner,
unnoticed, until the moment it is relevant, and then becomes
a-smack-in-the-head revelation." That how it was for me. All of
a sudden I found it on my shelf. In the book is a story about a
golden fountain of grace. Many people came to the fountain and got
just a thimbleful of water. Some went away with a cupful. But a
little boy came to the fountain, jumped in and played in the water.
That reminded me of the words in the Bible that we are to become as
little children. (Matthew 18.3)”
Nate
Cull, Christchurch NZ, writes,
“Not directly related to anomalous phenomena but linked to
philosophical discussions of computational theory of mind: this page
on Ward's Wiki. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AreWeCode
Especially
David Barbour's argument about the irrelevance of determinism vs
free will for a sufficiently complex (but clearly artificial) robot
and how both synthetic emotions and unpredictable behaviour could
emerge from purely deterministic goal-seeking. Mentioned
because this sort of discussion and thought experiment is very much
where I come from and why I both find the critique of the CTM in
Irreducible Mind fascinating (and why I find purely
philosophical refutations of strong AI like John Searle's rather
tedious and irrelevant). I tend toward pragmatism; can one or can
one not build an AI that exhibits human-like features such as
emotions? And what then will that machine make of psi and
spirituality? Because if we can, we will, and by 9am the next day it
will be linked to the Internet and have a blog. If we can't - well
that will be a very interesting negative result and the next
question will be 'why' and then 'how far can we push the old
paradigm before it breaks'.”
I
have my own rather fuzzy ideas about the limitations of mechanical
computation vs inspiration in the operation of intelligence, but
it's very interesting to see what happens as the world evolves a
sort of shared external mechanical brain via the Internet and
especially weblogs, wikis, social networking and knowledge
representation techniques like the Semantic Web. If there exist true
statements about nonphysical reality such as psi, can they be
mechanically represented in any form? We can obviously talk about
psi experiences in English and via HTML - why not in some RDF/XML
dialect? And then mechanically reason about them? At what point do
we get truly 'ineffable', non-representable phenomena?
More highlights from NETWORK REVIEW
of the Sc. and Medical Network
We
highly recommend this scholarly journal: details can be found at
http://www.scimednet.org/I
would like to have shared the whole of the Summer 2007 issue with
our readers. Take Lawrence LeShan's long article, Psychical
research and the myth of a unified field theory. I
will have to confine myself to relating just a few of his major
points:
About determinism: LeShan writes, “if I stand up in a lecture hall and
say, 'All people are determined and have no free will” I am
likely to be promoted to head of my department. If I say, 'I am
determined and have no free will, I am a robot who moves helplessly
according to how I have been conditioned (or the relation between my
id, ego and superego)' I will likely be sent to a psychiatrist.” [Acting as if you really believe "no free will", and they'll think you're sick!]
Le Shan continues, “A part of enlightenment view was contained in Descartes'
belief that a science was only real and could only make progress if
you could quantify the data. A non-quantitative science was fit
only for a hobby for rich men. He pointed out that there was no
point in studying history because you can not quantify the data and
so, if you studied Rome all your life, you still would not know
about it as much as “Cicero's servant girl.”
“Taking this to heart, a major school of psychology –
the behaviourists – realising that consciousness could
not be quantified came up with a solution so weird that it has been
remarked that 'behaviourism does not need a rebuttal, it needs a
cure.' Their solution was that they would pretend, in talking to
each other, and in acting as professional psychologists they would
pretend, in talking to each other, that consciousness did not exist. Running away from
its primary (or other) datum is a poor way to try to do science. It
is stranger than if astronomers presented that stars did not exist
because they did not fit their theories.”
“Psychical Research -Two Kinds of Data” ...After the
first half-century or so, psychical research found that it had two
separate kinds of data. First there were the large meaningful events
which had excited our interest in the field. These were deathbed
apparitions, major precognitions, poltergeist activity and so
forth.... These ended with the observer knowing that something
important and paranormal had happened, something that had real
meaning. Jan Ehrenwald has called these events “need-determined”.
Those events cannot be quantified. What can be quantified is
card-guessing, with hits and misses being quantified statistically.
“Ehrenwald called this type of psi 'flaw-determined'. It seems
to result from a small random failure in whatever system keeps us
from having more psi events.”
“The Fallacy of the Single Paradigm
There has been a great deal of talk in the last fifty years about
the idea that western society is about to undergo a major paradigm
shift. Behind this lies the belief that there is one paradigm (the
'correct' one) that underlies all of reality. The trouble with this
concept is that there is no such thing. We use different paradigms
for different segments of reality. We needed a new one for the
microcosm, we devised it. We needed a new one for the macrocosm, we
devised it. We have a perfectly adequate adequate paradigm for the
world revealed to us by our senses. We need a new one for the domain
of consciousness, we will devise one... Trying (as we often do,) to
interpret the data of one with the laws of another will get you
nowhere. Many years ago I was one of the people who started the idea
that you could understand psi by using the findings and concepts
from quantum mechanics. We were mistaken. If we have the courage we
have here the beginning of a real science of the psychic. But it
will take courage and the willingness to let ourselves be
surprised.”
Other excerpts from Network Review perhaps, in our next
issue.
Book Review
Multiple reviews of landmark book: IRREDUCIBLE MIND
1.
Special Announcement from Michael Murphy, Esalen Chairman, and
Gordon Wheeler, Esalen President
No activity in Esalen's history, we
believe, has more potential importance than the research that
produced the book described below. The book's authors, led by Ed and
Emily Kelly, professors in the Department of Psychiatric Medicine at
the University of Virginia, have been members of an Esalen
fellowship that has since 1998 explored empirical approaches to the
question of post-mortem survival (see Esalenctr.org for a
description of their meetings). The world's religious traditions
give us contradictory, and often fanciful answers to this perennial
question, but our fellowship has worked in the spirit of science to
find a solid, empirical basis from which to explore the reality of
life after death. Irreducible Mind is a report from the cutting edge
of this inquiry. Its authors have donated its royalties to Esalen's
Center for Theory and Research.
1.“Special Announcement” PAGE 1
2.Discussion by Kelly of forthcoming book PAGE 1
3.Table of Contents for Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology
for the 21st Century PAGE 2
4.Five shorter reviews PAGE 3
5.Important long review by Michael Prescott PAGES 4-9
Meaning-Full
Disease : How Personal Experience and Meanings Cause and Maintain
Physical Illness: Brian Broom
From “The Christchurch
Press” Wednesday 22 August 2007:
“Christchurch
writer Brian Broom has won the $10,000 Ashton Wylie Charitable
Trust Book Award. The judges described his book Meaning-Full
Disease, as “a timely and professional treatise on holistic
healing.”
From the publishers' notice:
Synopsis
This book is about the nature of
meaning, the relationship of meaning to the body, and the way
in which meaning expresses itself in our health or lack of it. In
another way it is about the conjunction of mind, body, and
spirit. In a more practical perspective, the message is that
meaning-full disease does make sense, that we do have a sound
basis for a holism that includes meaning, and that we had better
sort out our models of healthcare if we want to be the sorts of
clinicians and healers our patients and clients deserve.
Description
The book is grounded upon Brian
Broom’s extensive professional involvement with physical
diseases that are a powerful expression of the patients’
emotional themes and life-stories. They are meaning-full
diseases. They occur commonly, and are the most compelling
argument for an urgent acknowledgment of the role of meanings in
the healing process.
Following the pattern of his
first book, "Somatic Illness and the Patient’s Other
Story", Broom shows in case after case that listening and
responding to the “story” of patients suffering from
persistent physical diseases frequently leads to major reversal
of the disease processes. Read
the whole publishers' page
<http://www.karnacbooks.com/product.php?PID=25029
>
From Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer:
Extraordinary Knowing pages
1-3:
In
December of 1991, my daughter's harp was stolen; we got it back. But
it came back in a way that irrevocably changed my familiar world of
science and rational thinking. It changed the way I go about living
in that world. It changed the way I perceive the world and try to
make sense of it.... my eleven-year-old daughter, Meg, who'd fallen
in love with the harp at age six, had begun performing. She wasn't
playing a classical pedal harp but a smaller, extremely valuable
instrument, built and carved by a master harp maker. After a
Christmas concert her harp was stolen from the theater where she was
playing. For two months we went through every conceivable channel
trying to locate it: the police, instrument dealers across the
country, the American Harp Society newsletters – even a CBS TV
new story. Nothing worked.
Finally,
a wise and devoted friend told me, “If you really want that
harp back, you should be willing to try anything. Try calling a
dowser.” The only thing I knew about dowsers were that they
were that strange breed who locate underground water with forked
sticks. But according to my friend, the “really good”
dowsers can locate not just water but lost objects as well.
Finding
lost objects with forked sticks? Well, nothing was happening
on the police front, and my daughter, spoiled by several years of
playing an extraordinary instrument, had found the series of
commercial harps we'd rented simply unplayable. So, half embarrassed
but desperate, I decided to take my friend's dare. I asked her if
she could locate a really good dowser – the best, I said. She
promptly called the American Society of Dowsers and came back with
the phone number of the society's current president, Harold McCoy,
in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
I called
him that day. Harold picked up the phone – friendly, cheerful,
heavy Arkansas accent. I told him I'd heard he could dowse for lost
objects, and that I'd had a valuable harp stolen in Oakland,
California. Could he help locate it?
“Give
me a second,” he said. “I'll tell you if it's still in
Oakland.” He paused, then, “Well, it's still there. Send
me a street map of Oakland and I'll locate that harp for you.”
Skeptical – but what, after all did I have to lose? - I
promptly overnighted him a map. Two days later, he called back.
“Well. I got that harp located,” he said. “It's in
the second house on the right on D--- Street, just off L----
Avenue.”
I'd never
heard of either street. But I did like the sound of the man's voice
– whoever he was. And I don't like backing down on a dare.
Why not drive to the house that he'd identified? At least I'd get
the address. I looked on an Oakland map and found the neighbourhood.
It was miles from anywhere I'd ever been. I got into my car, drove
into Oakland, located the house, wrote down the number, called the
police and told them that I'd gotten a tip that the harp might be in
that house. Not good enough for a search warrant, they said. They
were going to close the case – there was no way this unique,
portable, and highly marketable item hadn't already been sold; it
was gone forever.
But I
found I couldn't quite let it go. Was it the dare? Was it my
admiration for the friend who instigated the whole thing? Was it my
devasted daughter? Or was it that I genuinely liked the sound of the
voice on the other end of the line?
I decided
to post flyers in a two-block area around the house, offering a
reward for the harp's return. It was a crazy idea, but why not? I
put up flyers in those two blocks, and only those two blocks. I was
embarrassed enough about what I was doing to tell just a couple of
close friends about it.
Three
days later, my phone rang. A man's voice told me he'd seen a flyer
outside his house describing a stolen harp. He said it was exactly
the harp his next-door neighbour had recently obtained and shown
him. He wouldn't give me his name or number, but offered to get the
harp returned to me. And two weeks later, after a series of
circuitous phone calls, he told me to meet a teenage boy at 10:00
p.m. , in the rear parking lot of an all-night Safeway. I arrived to
find a young man loitering in the lot. He looked at me, and said,
“The harp?” I nodded. Within minutes, the harp was in
the back of my station wagon and I drove off.
Twenty-five
minutes later, as I turned into my driveway, I had the thought, This
changes everything.
The
Ground of Faith
Sjoerd
L. Bonting
Nate
Cull answers blog commenter “Cautious” in this way:
Science
on the cosmic origin
1.
Special Announcement from Michael Murphy, Esalen Chairman, and
Gordon Wheeler, Esalen President
