Lessons from our Earthquake

About 200 dead, perhaps a 100 dead when our local TV station building collapsed, thousands losing their homes, our iconic Anglican and Catholic cathedrals will have to be rebuilt, but some of our most cherished public buildings will be no more. The editor's home is intact, as is the case with the majority of houses; but that does not diminish the loss, and the suffering and trauma of many thousands. Thoughts can go back to the tsunami of December 2004 that struck Aceh at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.: 166,320 people are said to have been killed 36,786 people missing and the tsunami forced some 174,000 people to evacuate. About 120,000 houses were devastated, 800 kilometers of road and 2,260 bridges were ruined in the disaster. The disaster did not cause an outbreak of atheism. Rather we hear that the survivors clung together and sought comfort and strength through prayer. And our lesser disaster has pushed many in the same direction. And this is how things must be. Precious and wondrous as this earthly life may be, for each one of us it passes. Disasters sometimes cause us to refocus and lead us to ask who we are in relation to God. Disasters often provoke questions about the Problem of Evil. If God is supposed to be good, and if “He” is supposed to be omnipotent, how come there are terrible diasasters such as the huge earthquake and tsunami that has been devastating Japan? The answers to such questions cannot be glib, but must be sought in answering that question, Who are we in relation to God?

What do you think about these words of Brian Longhurst? : “We — Christ — are the Word of God. The Spirit of Truth is the Voice for God, That re-minds us Who we Are. Christ, the Word, is whole because It is the Word of God. The Word and the Light are one and the same. We are the Light; Jesus tells us this. If we welcome the Light back into our being we welcome wholeness and will be healed because the Light will illuminate our mind, which we have veiled from the Light by our belief in separation from the Light, placing us in (spiritual) darkness. The Light is not the light of the Sun. The Light is Life, which is Love, which is God; and the Son is like the Father.”

Readers may prefer to express all this in different words; but is there not something of truth to be found here? Beyond the kaleidescope of experiences that pass, here in the physical, there is a pearl of great price that remains, our participation in the Eternal, in Spirit,... choose your terms.

Beyond the question about the reality of the afterlife, is our relationship to each other in a greater Whole.

Editor's Book Ostensibly, we hear from the spirit of Stephen the Martyr, who explores the great themes of Christianity, faith, love, sin, Atonement, resurrection, Holy Spirit, Communion of Saints, afterlife, healing, the Body of Christ, and more. 

Earthquakes and the Problem of Evil

Sjoerd L. Bonting

The recent earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand and in the Sendai region of Japan have raised in many people’s minds the problem of evil, in theological terms the theodicy. I argue here that the problem is the result of the commonly held Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. This doctrine was formulated by Theophilus of Antioch around 180 AD in his battle against Gnosticism, with its evil demiurge creating the world from evil pre-existing matter.² If God created from nothing, then he is also responsible for the evil in his creation. Read this article

Blake the Visionary: Michael Paternoster

Blake was born just over 250 years ago, in 1757. His background was lower middle class and Nonconformist, so he knew thoroughly the Bible, Milton and Bunyan. He never went to school, but read voraciously: he was familiar with Swedenborg and Teresa of Avila, and the Neoplatonists – he devoured anything that fed his imagination and helped to make sense of his visions. He was apprenticed to an engraver, James Basire, who amongst other things set him to study the medieval carvings in Westminster Abbey. Thereafter, he made a precarious living as an artist. Read the whole article

[**We are grateful to the Editor of The Christiam Parapsychologist , Robert Gilbert, for permission to reproduce this article. The Christian Parapsychologist is aBritish journal concerned with religious aspects of parapsychology. Published quarterly by the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies, it includes book reviews. Address: General Secretary, CFPSS, The Rural Workshop, South Road, North Somercotes, Nr Louth, Lincolnshire LN11 7PT. Website: http://www.cfpss.freeserve.co.uk/ ]

White Crow Michael Tymn: Jane Katra

After receiving her Master’s at the University of Oregon in 1987, Katra went on to earn her Ph.D. from the same institution in 1993 while mothering 3 children. She taught public health at the University of Oregon in Eugene for a number of years, taught therapeutic touch healing to over 700 nurses in the area, and learned how to apply her healing gift “by just trying and seeing what happened” in her off hours.

In 1993, parapsychologist and physicist Russell Targ asked her for spiritual healing for a metastasised cancer for which allopathic medicine had little to offer. When his tumors disappeared, she joined him in doing remote viewing and consciousness research, teaching workshops, and writing two books: Miracles of Mind: Exploring Non-local Consciousness and Spiritual Healing (1998) and Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without Belief (1999).

Read Michael Tymn's interview with Jane Katra

 Michael Prescott: The million-dollar challenge.

 For years superskeptic James Randi has touted his million-dollar challenge as his ultimate argument against the paranormal. If these phenomena are genuine, Randi and his many fans insist, why hasn't anyone won the million dollars yet? Read this blog entry. New link to original article that is being discussed. Note how they rule out many paranormal phenomena as being impossible, and how they assume that any contender for the million will be under psychiatric care: a strong warning not to be tested.

Interesting article from The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

An interesting article appears in the January 2011 issue of The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (volume 199, number 1; article available for purchase here). Written by Emily Williams Kelly, one of the principal authors of Irreducible Mind, and Dianne Arcangel, author of Afterlife Encounters, the article is entitled "an investigation of mediums who claim to give information about deceased persons." It was brought to my attention by Vitor Moura. Read Prescott's article

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

The Dentures Man Rides Again.

In the never-ending debate over "Dentures Man" - the Dutch patient whose 1979 NDE included a startling veridical observation - there's some new data available for English-speaking readers.

Rudolf Smit informs me that Gerald Woerlee recently offered to translate the original interview with the male nurse who handled the case. The translation is now available at this site. There are also translations of the nurse's response to Woerlee's skeptical explanation, and of a paper by Titus Rivas. All the material is in PDF form.

Happy reading, Dentures Man fans!

White Crow Michael Tymn: Journalist’s Book “Randi’s Prize” Exposes How ‘Skeptics’ Distort Evidence for Paranormal Activity.

As long as works of fiction about girls with dragon tattoos and such things appeal to the masses, it is unlikely that a meaningful book like Randi’s Prize will ever make it to the best-seller list, but in my mind, at least, this book by British journalist Robert McLuhan (right) should be…Read the review

53.1% of You Already Know What This Story's About. Or Do You? Need a Hint?

It's about Professor Daryl Bem and his cheerful case for ESP.

By Dan Kois Published Feb 27, 2011

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/bem-esp-2011-3/index2.html

The twelve most frequent modes of after-death contact

Based upon Bill and Judy Guggenheim's groundbreaking after-death communication research, the following list contains the twelve most frequent types of after-death communication people report having with their deceased loved ones. Combinations of these twelve types of contact are also reported. Read this article

WhiteCrow Michael Tymn: The voices that converted a skeptical lawyer

Sometime in 1892, Edward C. Randall, a prominent Buffalo, New York trial lawyer and businessman, was asked by a friend to accompany him on a visit to Emily S. French, a Rochester woman who, Randall was told, had strange powers and received messages from spirits. “This was an unexplored world to me,” Randall wrote. “I went, and found there two others, both men of national reputation. We sat in a dark room for two hours, and heard what purported to be voices, though they were only faint whispers.

Read this article

The R101 Airship Keith Parsons

As time goes by, there are a diminishing number of people who remember the British Empire as a functioning reality. When I was a child, May 24th was Empire Day but there was no celebration of it. I just remember two thirds of the World Atlas being marked in red to indicate the extent of British dominion.

Holding the Empire together needed the latest technology and one form of transport that interested the Government was the airship. So in 1925 it created the Imperial Airship Scheme. Under this two prototypes, the R100 and the R101, were developed. Private enterprise built the R100, while the Air Ministry was in charge of the R101. Read the rest of the article

whitecrow Why Dr. Parnia’s NDE Test Will Likely Fail: Michael Tymn

Many people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs) report having out-of-body experiences (OBEs) – floating near the ceiling, even traveling some distances while they are clinically “dead” or just unconscious. What this out-of-body phenomenon suggests is that we do have a spirit body, energy body, etheric body, astral body, double, phantasm, parasomatic body, subtle body, whatever name be given to it, that leaves our physical body at death and lives on in another realm of existence or in another dimension. Read the article

In this regard read also:

Robert G. Mays, B.Sc. Suzanne B. Mays On the Scope of Analysis for the AWARE Study

Sam Parnia (2008a) recently announced the AWARE study (AWAreness during Resuscitation) which will be conducted by the Human Consciousness Project, an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists to study the relationship between the mind and the brain during clinical death. The researchers will examine prospectively 1,500 survivors of cardia arrest across 25 participating hospitals in Europe and North America for 36 to 60 months, The study organizers expect as many as 300 of the cardiac arrest body experience (OBE) with perceptions of physical surroundings. Read the rest of this communication.

The Occult World of C.G. Jung

Read this article

Don't forget to visit these websites: Victor Zammit's site for instance, is updated every week with new material of great interest.

 Continue reading

Read also http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation08.html A long list of extraordinary coincidences between the lives of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy.

Electronic Voice and Instrumental Communication:

AA-EVPWhitePaper.pdf
http://evp-itc-australia.org/

http://austevp.com/

Read DISCOVER