"Science without religion is lame;
religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein

The motto of this journal has been "Exploring Science, Mysticism and Experience Together". But Einstein's statement says things better. I see them as true words, and better pointing up our intentions. Let them be our new motto.

I got the nudge to make this change by a book by Xavier Moutoux: The Present with Religion. I warmed to some of the things he had to say, namely that Truth is what is in front of us, what we experience, it does not consist of theories, and philosophical statements. I haven't had the opportunity to read the whole of the book, so I can't yet endorse the whole as being sound, but I do recommend it as a book to explore. (See an article below)
He points out that the truth is the present moment unfolding before us, and the truth of our experiences, whether physical or psychic. Good theology or science is grounded in hard data of experience, rather than in appeal to authority. The articles of Michael Tymn or the weekly newsletter of Victor Zammit, for instance, provide such hard data of experience. There are of course many valuable branches of theology, involving interpretation of the Bible, the teachings of a Church, politics, social awareness, and so on. But they dont come into the orbit of this particular publication.

New developments

The Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies CONFERENCE IN ARIZONA IN JULY
Come and join us at this very special conference July 10-13, 2014, Scottsdale, Arizona.

• Self-guided Afterlife Connections • Evidential medium readings • Automatic writing
• Life between lives induction• Instrumental TransCommunication• Soul Phone communication
• Hemi Sync and binaural beats•Threshold Room experiences• Monroe institute Lifelines connections• Self-hypnosis• Meditation• Pendulum reading• Planned dream visitations• Recognizing and understanding communication signs• Bilateral stimulation* Physical mediumship Read more...

Dr Penny Sartori: Near Death Experiences

Recently Dr Penny Sartori was interviewed by Kathryn Ryan on the National programme of Radio New Zealand. You can hear a recording of this interview here.
Read about her new book "The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences."

Here is a Daily Mail article on :
"Children's Near Death Experiences" Read it here

truth

Unifying Truth Project:
Mission Statement "People are trying to help by working on parts of our world’s problems, such as poverty, pollution, over-population, racism, trafficking, crime, war and disease. Despite all efforts, the problems persist, because the root problem is never addressed or resolved. Unifying Truth Project is focusing on the root cause of all the problems we face: division. Our primary mission is to find, define, and spread unifying truth about life. read
One of their projects is "The Truth Contest" . One of the entries for this contest is Xavier Moutoux's "The Present..with Religion. I strongly recommend having a look at this contribution, here. It is a whole book, and it articulates very well the way of seeing things, that this journal aims to foster. Here is a quote: "The truth about life and death can be explained without any reference to religion, and some people may prefer that, but more than half of the human race is involved in a religion. Thus, to be the ultimate explanation of the truth, it must include religion, all religions. This is the only way to unite us all. .."Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein............

gravity

Primordial gravitational wave discovery heralds 'whole new era' in physics

Scientists have heralded a "whole new era" in physics with the detection of "primordial gravitational waves" – the first tremors of the big bang.

The minuscule ripples in space-time are the last prediction of Albert Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity to be verified. Until now, there has only been circumstantial evidence of their existence. The discovery also provides a deep connection between general relativity and quantum mechanics, another central pillar of physics.

"This is a genuine breakthrough," says Andrew Pontzen, a cosmologist from University College London who was not involved in the work. "It represents a whole new era in cosmology and physics as well." Read the article

Dead Doesn’t Have to Mean Serious - Elene Gusch

A teenage boy who I’ll call N was killed in a car accident late in 2012. His family was devastated. There is nothing funny about any of that, but his mother and his aunt have been telling me about the amazing and amusing lengths to which N has gone in trying to communicate with those he left behind.....N was in JROTC in high school, and had always been interested in shooting. After his death, yellow BBs started showing up around his family’s environment.
Read on

All my writing in the past 45 years, my e-journal The Ground of Faith, all my blogs, they all have come about because I’m have been trying to make sense of the experiences I have been having in those years, personal experiences that tell me that there is something fishy about the common sense… Read more

Will psychic research do it? Talking to the so-called dead through a medium? Verifying that pre-cognitive dreams truly foretell the future? Establishing that telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis are real phenomena? Near death experiences? All these things are very important in establishing that… Read more

As I am an 85-year old Anglican clergyman, you would think I would have got myself sorted in regard to my spirituality. But, like everybody else I have a picture of reality presented to me by my eyes and ears, by society in general, by Anglican Christianity, and then by the really weird spiritual…Read more

Not to be explainers and conquerors, but conscious participants in the universe.

In my previous blog I discussed the limits to which we can be certain in science, and the trustworthiness of accounts of exceptional human experiences provided in White Crow Books. I suggested that those books may well convince that these experiences are real and that the realm of spirit must… Read more

Many friends and relatives who know of my interest in death and afterlife studies express concern that it is an unhealthy or taboo subject matter. “One life at a time for me” is a typical reaction, a subtle and supposedly “intelligent” way of saying that the person is not interested in discussing… Read more

Gladys Osborne Leonard (1882 – 1968) is considered one of the greatest trance mediums in the annals of psychical research. She was referred to as “England’s white crow” and the “British Mrs. Piper.” Some of the very best evidence for the survival of consciousness after death came through…
Read more

While Dr. Raymond Moody is credited with naming the near-death experience (NDE) and popularizing it in his 1975 book, Life After Life, there were numerous accounts of NDEs long before Moody began doing research on them. Several of the pre-Moody NDEs have been discussed in earlier…Read more

According to those who knew him, William Stainton Moses (below) was as morally righteous and honest a person as can be found. He was a priest of the Church of England and English Master at University College, London. “With the even tenor of this straightforward and reputable life was interwoven…

A terrific but unheralded book published last year, “Neuromania,” worried about our growing obsession with brain imaging. A second book, by Raymond Tallis, published this year, invoked the same term and made similar arguments. In the book “Out of our Heads,” the philosopher Alva Noë wrote, ”It is easy to overlook the fact that images… made by fMRI and PET are not actually pictures of the brain in action.” Instead, brain images are elaborate reconstructions that depend on complex mathematical assumptions that can, as one study earlier this year showed, sometimes yield slightly different results when analyzed on different types of computers. Read

Other relevant e-journals, blogs and publications

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

Visit the archives of Victor Zammit's weekly newsletter at http://www.victorzammit.com/archives/index.html for hours of fascinating reading. When you open this website you have the opportunity to request that these emails be sent to you every week, something that we strongly recommend.

Debunking Common Skeptical Arguments Against
Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena; Winston Wu

Scientific Committee to Evaluate Pseudo Skeptical Criticism of the Paranormal: SKEPCOP

Editors' notes: Public Parapsychology is one of an increasing number of web sites that we should be aware of.. and subscribe to. Try this url: http://publicparapsychology.blogspot.com

“This web site is a compilation of information on the afterlife and other related critical concepts, such as the purpose of life and reincarnation, as they relate to souls here on earth. We have not created this site to convince anyone of the validity of this information, we simply invite you to read through the data, explore the sources we have used and visit other sources to learn more. Using spirit sources from Afterlife101.com and respected authors like Michael Newton, Allan Kardec, Jane Roberts and others, the results of our first investigations reveal 94.8% agreement on a variety of very specific topics. We believe this web site contains the largest correlation of spirit communications about the afterlife, all from respected sources, available anywhere. We will continue to expand this data as information is made available to us and our research expands.”