Parapsychology

What turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animated being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences?

What is Parapsychology?

Parapsychology is the scientific and scholarly study of certain unusual events associated with human experience. These experiences have been called "psychic" for want of a better term.

A common misconception is that a parapsychologist is a psychic. Not so. Likewise, a child psychiatrist is not a child! Instead, a parapsychologist is a scientist or scholar who is seriously interested in the "paranormal." Unfortunately, many telephone books and on-line sites use "parapsychologist" as a synonym for psychic entertainer, mentalist, conjurer, astrologer, or psychic reader. This is an inappropriate use of the term "parapsychologist." The Parapsychological Association is an elected affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest scientific organization in the world. In contrast, organizations of psychic readers and mentalists are not members of the AAAS because they are entertainers, not scientists.

What does it mean to study psychic phenomena? A long-held, common-sense assumption is that the worlds of the subjective and objective are completely distinct, with no overlap. Subjective is "here, in the head," and objective is "there, out in the world." Parapsychology then is the study of phenomena suggesting that the assumption of a strict separation between subjective and objective may be wrong. Human experience suggests that some phenomena occasionally fall between the cracks, and are not purely subjective nor purely objective. From a scientific perspective, such phenomena are called "anomalous" because they are difficult to explain within current scientific models.

These anomalies fall into three general categories: ESP (terms are defined below), PK, and phenomena suggestive of survival after bodily death, including near-death experiences, apparitions, and reincarnation. Most parapsychologists today expect that further research will eventually explain these anomalies in scientific terms, although it is not clear whether they can be adequately understood without significant (indeed, probably revolutionary) expansions of the current state of scientific knowledge. Other researchers take the stance that existing scientific models of perception and memory are adequate to explain some or all parapsychological phenomena.

What is not parapsychology?

In spite of what the media often imply, parapsychology is not the study of anything considered weird or bizarre. Nor is parapsychology concerned with astrology, UFOs, searching for Bigfoot, paganism, vampires, alchemy, or witchcraft.

Many scientists have viewed parapsychology with great suspicion because the term has come to be associated with a huge variety of mysterious phenomena, fringe topics, and pseudoscience. Parapsychology is also often linked, again inappropriately, with a broad range of "psychic" entertainers, magicians, and so-called "paranormal investigators." In addition, some self-proclaimed "psychic practitioners" call themselves parapsychologists, but that is not what we do.

What do parapsychologists study?

Many feel that the strangest, and most interesting, aspect of parapsychological phenomena is that they do not appear to be limited by the known boundaries of space or time. In addition, they blur the sharp distinction usually made between mind and matter. In popular usage, the basic parapsychological phenomena are categorized as follows:

Who is interested in Parapsychology?

From the materialistic perspective, one of the foundations of the current scientific worldview, human consciousness is nothing but an emergent product of the functioning of Brain, Body, and Nervous System (BBNS). That is, no matter how different mind may seem from solid stuff like bodies, it is generated solely by the electrochemical functioning of the BBNS, and so it is absolutely dependent on it. When the BBNS dies, so does consciousness. From this perspective, claims of survival of bodily death, or ghosts, or apparitions, must be due to wishful thinking. Furthermore, the limits of material functioning automatically determine the ultimate limits of mental functioning, thus ESP and PK appear to be impossible, given our current understanding about how the world works.

And yet, psi phenomena have occurred in all cultures throughout history, they continue to occur, and some of the reported phenomena have been persuasively verified using scientific methods. Because psi seems to transcend the assumed limits of material functioning, and therefore the BBNS, some interpret psi as supporting the idea that there is something more to mind than just the BBNS, that there is some sort of "soul," or the like.

This "non-physical" aspect, an aspect that does not seem to be as tightly bounded by space or time as present scientific models require, might survive bodily death. If so, there may be important truths contained in some spiritual ideas and practices. Of course, parapsychology is a very long way from being able to say that "the data shows that X" (insert your favorite religious group here) are specifically right about religious doctrines A, B, and C but dead wrong about dogmas P, Q and R.

We must emphasize that there is a big difference between simply noting that the findings of parapsychology may have implications for spiritual concepts, versus the idea that parapsychologists are driven by some hidden spiritual agenda. Some critics of parapsychology seem to believe that all parapsychologists have hidden religious motives, and that they are really out to prove the existence of the soul. This is no more true than claiming that all chemists really harbor secret ambitions about alchemy, and thus their real agenda is to transmute mercury into gold. The reasons why serious investigators are drawn to any discipline are as diverse as their backgrounds.

Psychic Phenomena

Introduction

Science has reached out to the farthest ends of the universe and it is exploring the deepest oceans. Everything in between is being researched and human knowledge grows by leaps and bounds. Regrettably, the human psyche and its wondrous potential have been woefully neglected for a very long time. Only recently, Professor Fredric Schiffer of Harvard University published his findings about the binary functions of the mind and opened an exciting new frontier of human nature.

There is, of course, a valid reason that anything that has to do with the invisible aspects of the human mind is approached with caution. For every respectable parapsychologist there are many others whose actions discredit the intangible realm, behind matter.

To begin with, let's define the object of this consideration:
The word psychic describes anything in connection with the psyche. This word dates back to ancient times when a goddess by the name of Psyche was in charge of the invisible but essential part of human existence. Over time the word and its meaning evolved and presently the thesaurus offers the following synonyms:
Mind, soul, self, subconscious, spirit, subliminal self, inner self, ego and individuality.
These words have wide range of meanings and, therefore, it makes sense not to use them in the context of this article. Instead, a definition of the source of psychic phenomena will be presented thereby establishing a clear conceptual basis these phenomena can be referenced to.

The energy of matter and the energy behind matter, which religion calls the spiritual energy and science calls the energy of the quantum vacuum.
The energy of matter oscillates between the stages of energy and of matter. In a movie consecutive frames give the impression of continued action, which progresses with each frame. The succession of matter phases marks the change, which was achieved in the energy phase and expresses it in a material dimension of width, height and length. The progression of matter phases creates time, the fourth dimension of matter.

The energy behind matter is very different from the energy of matter. It always remains energy and, therefore, does not constitute space or time. In this realm of pure energy everything is interrelated. Most importantly, these energies can be programmed and they determine what happens in consecutive matter phases like software determines how a computer operates. For simplicity's reason let's call these the spiritual energies.

Any kind of change for matter happens in its energy phase. Were the oscillation of matter to stop in a matter phase everything would stop dead at this instance. For instance, when a body moves the displacement takes place in the energy phases and matter follows energy's lead in consecutive matter phases thus expressing the movement, which has taken place in the preceding energy phases.
For movement to take place a command has to be issued. The processes that determine what matter has to do take place in the spiritual energies, which give the appropriate command to the matter energies. These perform according to these commands and in the ensuing matter phases this performance is expressed by whatever kind of action the energies of matter took.

For instance, someone thinks that he wants to go to the refrigerator. First comes the thought in his spiritual energies. This thought issues a command to the energies of matter, which then progress towards the refrigerator. The movement of the energies of matter is expressed in consecutive matter phases as this someone walks to the refrigerator.

From the above it is clear that every moment of a person's life involves spiritual activity. Without the directions given to a person by the energies behind matter - the spiritual energies - nothing can happen in the realm of matter. Considering this it is logical to call these energies the spirit of a person. This means that from all the names given to these energies in the thesaurus "spirit" is the correct one.

The way Professor Schiffer explains the difference between the left - the conscious - and the right side - the unconscious - of the brain it is clear that these two halves are designed like a biological computer. The conscious corresponds to the processor and the working memory, the unconscious corresponds to a hard drive i.e. memory storage. Consequently, every person has two minds. Together these constitute a personality.

This opens a very interesting possibility. The conscious minds puts data into the unconscious mind with thoughts, words and actions. This data is stored and retrieved when a situation arises that it can be used. If such data is used to make the conscious mind do something specific on a specific occasion then this works like a computer program that makes a computer perform a certain task. Consequently, a person can program himself/herself with an easy trick: one just has to talk to oneself as a second person. To make a New Year resolution stick one should not say: next year I'll do this and I won't do that. We all know that does not work too well. Instead one should address oneself on a first name basis and say, for instance, "next year, Joe, you do this and don't do that". That programs one's own subconscious and a New Year resolution made this way has a good chance to succeed.

Since it has no memory the conscious mind is blank at the time of birth. All of its skills have to be learned and developed as a person grows up. The unconscious mind is the spirit of a person and it contains all the data put in during all previous lifetimes. It consists of spiritual energies or energies of the quantum vacuum as they are called, as well. Such energies are all interconnected and, therefore, a person who can use his/her right side of the brain to tune into this type of energies can extract information from or make use of these energies.

With its access to memories of previous lifetimes the unconscious mind also has access to a vast reservoir of previous experiences from which the conscious mind can draw if it pays attention to feelings and hunches etc. because the unconscious mind cannot talk, it just transmits images or feelings. Every time the conscious mind thinks or plans the unconscious mind checks on the information stored in its energies and issues responses in form of feelings and images. As this check is done by spiritual energies the information is provided instantly as in the spiritual realm time does not exist.

For instance, someone nearly drowned at some point of time in the present or a previous lifetime. Such person's subconscious will issue a warning not to get too close to any kind of water deep enough to be dangerous. This person will feel uncomfortable whenever he/she gets close to open water. A general term for this kind of warnings if it is too strong is psychosis and the job of psychotherapist is to uncover the hidden reasons for this situation. Once these are detected the psychotherapist can "talk the person out" of his/her anxieties i.e. reprogram the unconscious energies.

Everybody is a spiritual person for spirituality is the basis of life itself. Even though the words "spiritual" and "psychic" by our definition mean the same a psychic person is thought to be someone with special gifts or powers. Such person has abilities a normal "spiritual" person does not have. He/she can use his/her right side of the brain, to provide insights in or to establish connections with the spiritual realm and interpret the findings. Hence, we are not talking of spiritual but of psychic phenomena.

The term "psychic" is applied to a wide range of abilities and situations. To facilitate understanding categories of psychic phenomena are presented, which sum up the ones that are related. In each category the ones that are closely related are grouped together.

ESP = Extra Sensory Perception ( go there )

Altered States of Consciousness ( go there )

Powers of the Mind ( go there )

Psi Manifestations ( go there )

Death and Re-incarnation ( go there )

Between the various psychic phenomena differences though substantial can be subtle. To facilitate understanding I am going to add examples to the descriptions given for each one of the above mentioned phenomena. - It is my opinion that in every family someone at some point of time has experienced some kind of unusual psychic event, a psychic phenomenon. To prove my point, I am going to give examples that happened to members of my family and to close friends.

ESP = Extrasensory Perception

Telepathy is the communication between two or more partners without spoken words. It is the transmission of thoughts and can consist of words, images, feelings, etc. This is similar to a two-way radio. Communication can take place between living beings or between a living person and a spiritual entity.

My wife was born in Yugoslavia and spent the first years of her life during WW2 in the area, which now is the border between Croatia and Serbia, formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. My wife's family had received a huge territory as a grant by the Austrian Emperor for valuable services rendered to the Empire and had settled there.

During the later years of WW2 partisans challenged the German occupation. One especially dangerous aspect of this conflict were landmines. Because the situation was so dangerous my wife had a bodyguard of her own. One day strolling hand in hand with this soldier over fields considered being safe her bodyguard stepped on a landmine. The force of the explosion threw the little girl on a haystack. When she regained consciousness she still was holding this man's hand but this was all that was left of him.

The little girl was unharmed but her eardrums were pierced by the force of the explosion and it took many months until her hearing came back; it is impaired to this day. She couldn't hear and she wouldn't speak. During these silent months as in retrospect she calls them something dramatic happened. Her father had been a prisoner of war in WW1 and had been sent to Siberia. He escaped and walked on foot from Wladiwostok to India where he had contacts with suppliers for the family factories. It took three years for this epic journey. On his way he learned to speak Chinese and he learned about the culture and religions of the peoples he encountered. Her also learned about direct communication between minds, telepathy.

When the little girl had recovered from the shock she noticed that her father's thoughts materialized in her mind. With a little practice she learned to communicate with him without words. This proved to be invaluable later when the family had to leave the castle and fled to Austria. The family took refuge in a farmhouse in a remote location. There was no phone and the only contact with her father was by telepathy. Through these contacts my wife was able to tell her father where the family was and eventually he was able to join them.

Telepathic communication can also take place between a living person and the spirit of a person who lived before. - My father died shortly before I moved to Vienna to study. The change was dramatic and very hard for me. In my home village I had a special position as the son of the Maire and of one of the leading politician of our province. In Vienna I was a nobody and a poor one at that. My father had died shortly before the move and in postwar Austria there had been no occasion to make money. - The Nazis had taken everything as my father was considered an enemy of the party.

I soon developed severe depressions and became dangerously suicidal. Then, one night, my father appeared in my dreams. From then on he talked with me many times and this helped me a lot even though I did not understand what went on because I knew that my father had died. Over time as I got better the contacts became scarcer and ultimately stopped altogether, when I was all right.

When someone feels the physical pain or the mental and emotional situation of somebody else this is called tele-empathy. - When I visited a friend in Atlanta I had a bad heart attack. The test showed that my arteries were dangerously clogged and I had to undergo a quadruple bye-pass surgery. The second day after surgery my wife was allowed to talk to me on the phone. She was relieved that the surgery was successful but she had question. My wife and I are very close so she understood that she had these terrible pains in her chest. She wondered, though, why her legs below the knees were swollen and hurt badly. - As my arteries had been clogged very badly the surgeons had taken blood vessels from both my legs all the way from the knees to the ankles and transplanted them to my heart.
My legs were swollen and hurt very badly.

Feeling someone else's emotions or mental state is the most common form of a psychic phenomenon. Twins frequently are so closely connected that they feel each other's emotions whenever something out of the ordinary happens. The same situation can exist between a mother and her child or between lovers. But this also happens on a daily basis when people sense someone else's mood or emotions when they meet, talk on the phone or just think of someone.

This French word means "clear seeing". Clairvoyance is the ability of a person to "clearly see" present or future events or situations at will. The best clairvoyant alive probably is my friend Rosalinde Haller, the foremost psychic in the German speaking world. The range of her work is truly amazing. She has her own TV and radio shows and makes predictions on those shows, which put her reputation at risk many a times. - She always is right! Here are a few examples:

Several years ago snowfall in Western Austria was unusually heavy. During her TV show a caller from that area asked whether there was increased danger of avalanches and, if so, where. Rosalinde paused for a moment, then she said: "The valley of Paznaun is in grave danger. It should be evacuated immediately". The valley was not evacuated and four days later a major avalanche killed 34 people.

On another show she was asked what the result of next days world champion soccer match would be for Austria. She predicted the minute the goals would be scored, the circumstances and the outcome. She was right on.

During one of my visits to Austria Rosalinde called and invited me to go with her to Lake Woerthersee in Carinthia over the weekend. She picked me up in a brand new Porsche she said the company had put at her disposition so she would get a feeling for the product. She was to conduct a seminar for this company's top management and to advise them which marketing strategies would be the right ones for this brand new product.

There is no speed limit on Austria's autobahn and Rosalinde proved she is a fast lady. Cruising at 120 mph she noticed my apprehension. - On the island where I live the speed limit is 30 mph. - She said she knew nothing bad would happen to me so she dared to really take the car to its limits. Again she was right. We had no accident but my nerves took while to recover.

Precognition can happen to anyone. It does not require a special talent. Usually it pinpoints a dramatic event in someone's own life or in the life of a loved one. - Heidi was my wife's best friend. When she got married she moved to Germany where her husband had been offered a top management position. Heidi used to phone at least once a month to keep the contact alive. In one of those calls she was terrified. She had a vision of a crowd of people standing next to a streetcar. Next to the streetcar a woman was lying on the ground her left leg severed below the knee. Then she realized that she was that woman. - Several weeks later she called from a hospital. She had seen her own accident and she really had lost the lower part of her left leg.

A premonition is a feeling about something to happen in a specific way without any details given. For instance, at an intersection one has the feeling that a car is coming even though one does not see it because something is obstructing the view - and there really is a car. There are long term premonitions, as well, and here is an example.

When my mother was 56 she came down with a severe pneumonia. She survived but from then on her health was not good. She knew we were worried about her but she always said: "don't worry. I'll live to be seventy." She never said why living to seventy years of age should be her life's goal. Several weeks before her seventieth birthday she contracted pneumonia again and had to be hospitalized. We usually visited on Sundays and so we came three days after her birthday. The nurses told us that on her birthday she had looked so bad that a priest had been called to give her the last rites. Nonetheless, she survived.

Mother did not look good. She took about 3 minutes to come to herself. As I was sitting on her bed she squeezed my hand and with a happy smile she said: "I made it"! Next morning the call came from the hospital. The nurse was upset not so much that my mother had died that night; that did not come unexpected. Before going to bed she usually took her false teeth out. The evening before she died she did not do that and her roommate inquired why. Mother said: "tonight I am gong to meet my husband and he is not supposed to see me without teeth." Her roommate knew that my father had died many years before and she got really scared because she thought my mother had gone mad. Very much to my mother's relief the woman was moved out of the room because, as she said: "tonight I want to be alone". - Mother's long term premonition of living to seventy was as accurate as was her short-term premonition about dying that night.

When a person sees an event, a location or a situation getting images in his/her mind this is called remote viewing. - During WW2 my sister had to work in Germany. Surprisingly, one day she came home dressed in black, the color of mourning in Austria, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She claimed she had a vision of our brother Ernest killed in battle and she had come home to give support to mother. Next day the letter came with the terrible news.

My sister's husband served in the German military in Russia where casualty rate was very high. When the war was over she claimed he was imprisoned in Russia. She gave a precise description of the abandoned factory, where he was kept with thousands of other POWs. My sister said he had lost a lot of weight but he was all right. She was sure he would come home. - My sister's husband was one of the few who came out of this prison camp alive. He confirmed every detail of her description of his place of captivity.

During a lengthy period the US Government conducted experiments of Remote viewing. People were giving some information and then tried to psychically link to the object or person they were supposed to contact. I saw a TV movie about this activity and it seems that viewing inanimate objects remotely does not really bring very good results. Remote viewing of a hostage, for instance, brought better results but it seems that these could not help enough to justify the continuation of this remote viewers unit.

Psychometry is similar to remote viewing. It happens when a psychic touches an object and receives images or visions; in this case the psychic needs a "trigger". A good example is a popular TV show called "The Dead Zone". When the psychic touches a person or an object he has visions, which can show circumstances of a crime, all kind of future events or relationships a person has had and the like. In this TV show as in real life people with this gift work together with the police to do Psi detective work, which has brought amazing results in many criminal cases.

Psychics working with the police often are able to describe how a murder happened, the location of the victim's body or can provide descriptions of the perpetrator. It has to be noted, though, that in this case remote viewing and Psychometry are just part of a psychic's arsenal. Frequently, a psychic receives further information, which leads to solving a crime, by telepathic impulses that can range from "feelings" to clear verbal messages.

People sensitive to radiation emanating from the Earth are quite common. Some become dowsers. Holding a forked twig or a similarly shaped metal instrument with both hands the dowser slowly walks over the area he/she is checking. When Earth radiation is met the instruments either bends down or up. Usually, dowsers look for water but they also can look for metals. Remote dowsing can be done with the help of a pendulum.

When I was a young boy I lived in a little resort village in Austria. Our neighbor wanted to drill a well and he called in a dowser. This was a big event and the entire neighborhood was watching. My sister was very skeptical and she made no secret of it. When the dowser hit a promising spot he invited my sister to give it a try. When she approached that spot the twig bent up forcefully full turn and hit her hard on the chest. She was convinced this was a sign she shouldn't mess with such weird things and never gave dowsing a try again.

Each spectator gave it a try and several had similar reactions though to a lesser degree. I was one of them. When the dowser told me with dowsing I could locate radiation that had a bad influence on living organisms and could disturb someone's sleep I was hooked. I had been plagued by bad dreams as long as I could think back. Sometimes I had fights in my sleep and woke up with my knuckles bloody from hitting the walls instead of an adversary in an imagined fistfight. Checking my bed for bad radiation I found two veins crossing right where I rested my head. From then on I slept with my head on the other side of the bed and the nightmares never came back.

Dowsing can be done remotely with a pendulum. - Several years ago I met a Swiss national, Sigi, who lived on a catamaran. He had owned a factory for devices using radiation to measure and find things. Such devices come in handy when you look for gold. Sigi was retired and his hobby was treasure hunting. Back in Zurich he had a friend who used a pendulum to locate hidden treasures no matter where they were. Sigi provided maps of islands in the Caribbean where treasures might be hidden. His friend put the pendulum over the map and it showed the location of a treasure.

It really surprised me that with this method Sigi had indeed found 64 kilogram of gold. With the money from this find he bought himself a beautiful new catamaran and every conceivable tool to find even more gold. Regrettably, when he left to continue his quest for untold riches he would not take me with him.

Déjŕ vu is very common and I don't know anyone who didn't have at least one such experience. The words are French and mean "already seen". Usually someone comes to a place he/she has never been before and knows it.

As a young woman my wife spent some time in Paris. One day she was invited to a friend's place. When she entered the house she was shocked how familiar it looked to her, just as she had been there before. She felt she really knew the house, which had been the home of the same aristocratic family dating back to a time before the French Revolution. When her friend lead her into the living room all the members of his family were gathered in front of the painting of a young woman who looked exactly like my wife. She was an ancestor of this family who had lost her life on the guillotine.

Déjŕ vu also happens with people. We all have met someone who gave the impression that he/she was a long lost friend found again. Love at first sight - the French call it "le coup de foudre" and it means the lightning strike - is a phenomenon, which happens when people who were in love in a former lifetime meet again. - When I met my clairvoyant friend Rosalinde Haller for the first time she didn't even say hello. She just looked at me and said: "it's about time we met. I missed you."

I am very interested in archaeology. During my stay on the peninsula of Yucatan I visited Chichen Itza, formerly a center of Mayan culture. The pyramid of Kukulkan attracted me like magic and when I went through the narrow passages inside I wondered why stones still blocked one passage. When I asked the tour guide about it, he said nobody knew about another passage.

Later we came to a house and I went inside. It looked very familiar to me and, suddenly, I saw the room painted in bright colors. There were lights and I could see the painted scenes in every little detail. The vision went as fast as it had come. When I asked the tour guide about the house, he said this had been the house of Kukulkan.

Psychic archaeology probably is a mixture of dowsing and déjŕ vu. Everything emits radiation and spiritual - psychic - energies. Buried remnants of times long gone by still have energies attached and people who lived in those remote times sense them. Archaeologists usually have special fields of interest and these take them back to places where they lived before. Their "feelings" lead them to the right places and to discoveries probably no one else could make. The German archaeologist Schlieman is a very good example. He was fascinated with everything Greek; he even married a Greek woman. His quest for the city of Troy led him to the right place. His "feeling" for the place made him find treasures nobody thought existed.

Altered States of Consciousness

Near death experiences happen, when the spiritual entity leaves the matter body, which has been subjected to extreme stress by an accident, surgery or the like. There are several stages of separation from the body. If it happens during surgical procedures, as long as the body is alive the spiritual entity floats under the ceiling and watches what's going on. During this period the entity feels no pain and usually there is a peaceful feeling. If life is to continue in the matter body at some point of time the entity enters the matter body again. When consciousness returns pain is felt again.

In the next stage the entity is pulled through a tunnel toward a light - the expression "light at the end of the tunnel" refers to this situation. - Upon exiting the tunnel the entity meets other entities, usually relatives or friends who passed on earlier. These are very supportive and help the entity to understand what's going on. This is as far as a near death experience can go. Ultimately, the entity is told that his/her time to die has not come yet and then returns into the matter body.

The symptoms of a near death experience can also be activated by intentionally induced extreme stress, for instance, by very high g forces in a jet fighter or by this centrifuge type training device, which also produces very high g values. This does not mean that near death experiences are not genuine. It just means that there is a spiritual mechanism, which is activated as soon as a person approaches the threshold of death.

On rare occasions, persons who had a near death experience report having been to a terrible place where horrendous suffering was going on. One should think that people who went through this terrible ordeal believe that they had been in hell. Therefore, many probably won't talk about such an experience. Only few are ready to admit that they did not qualify for the good place.

Initially are the same as the first phase of a near death experience. The spiritual entity leaves and floats above the body. This does not require a stressful situation like surgery and can happen any time day or night from sleep or waking state. Some induce OBEs with drugs; others don't need anything to make it happen.

During reconstruction after hurricane George a 2x4 plank fell on my wife's head. She was unconscious for a little while and woke up with a terrible headache. An MRI showed no injuries of the brain. Nonetheless, in the weeks and months following the accident my wife a number of Out-of-Body Experiences. These could happen at any time of day or night without any apparent reason. Suddenly, she would find herself floating under the ceiling looking down on her body, which usually was comfortably stretched out in her favorite recliner. Initially, this came as a great shock to her because she thought she was dying.

As she got used to this experience she started floating through the entire house. She found herself always right under the ceiling and she was gliding through the walls as if they were not there. She kept this her secret until one day she came storming into the kitchen very angry. I had a chat with my daughter about her and we expressed our concerns about her behavior, which sometimes was quite irritable after the accident. She proved that we were right and this way we found out that she had been floating under the ceiling listening to everything we talked about. When she got real angry she found herself back in her body and went to the kitchen to give us a piece of her mind.

Finding out about her OBEs explained the behavior of our animals that evidently knew about it. I thought my wife was sleeping in her favorite chair and three cats and our three dogs were around her. It was always the same configuration. The two male dogs were lying to the left and right and the female was in front of the chair. One male cat was nibbling on her little finger, the female was kneading her solar plexus and the second male cat was pushing his head against her chin. Then I remembered that Cindy, the female cat who normally only walked very slowly as she was so fat, sometimes came running as fast as she could towards my wife's bedroom. Shortly afterwards the male cats and the dogs joined in. I realized that the animals sensed when my wife was out of body and called her back. My wife confirmed that the animals repeatedly had made her go back in her body when she had been floating overhead. - As time went by the headaches stopped and so did the OBEs.

Humans, animals, everybody dreams. There are several stages of sleep and in the rem stage -rapid eye movements - dreams interrupt the otherwise quiet rest. There are many kinds of dreams. Some people dream in color others only in black and white. There are beautiful dreams and then there are nightmares. Basically, dreams are the sign that the right half of the brain, which processes the unconscious, is sorting out data.

The unconscious cannot make a difference between reality and dream event and this is extremely important. Consequently, negative spiritual patterns the unconscious considers to be too threatening to have them lived out in real life can be lived out in dreams. Dreams is also the unconscious' way to warn the conscious of imminent dangers or foretell an important event. As it only can convey images and feelings a dream is the one way the unconscious can express itself.

There was a time in my life when I had a recurring dream of the car breaks failing. When I had the car checked out the front disk brake on the left side was broken. The mechanic told me that I was extremely lucky to have come in time. Driving on steep hills and winding roads at that time I could have had a very serious accident. - When I was a young man I had a recurring dream about a very pretty girl. I had no idea who she was until I met her. She was my special friend for several years.

There was a time in my life when I frequently had very intense dreams. I never was floating under the ceiling but I was flying sometimes at great speed. It was a wonderful feeling of freedom. I could be at a party with people I had never seen before. They saw me and would carry on a conversation. Then I thought how nice it would be to visit my niece in Vienna. The next moment I was there in her apartment but she did not see me and she did not hear what I said. In retrospect, I never felt a separation from my matter body like my wife did when she had her OBEs. Therefore, I believe my experiences were psychic dreams and not real OBEs.

My last psychic dream had me flying over a strange landscape. I had the vague feeling I knew the hills but the trees were completely stripped of leaves and the branches were all broken at the end. It was a weird experience, which upset me. When I flew down a hill and tried to fly up a hill on the other side of the valley I crashed. This was the last flying dream I had. - One week later hurricane Hugo devastated the island. It took several days to clear the debris. When we drove to the supermarket I found and recognized the landscape I had seen in my last psychic dream. The scenery on St. Peter Mountain road was exactly what I had seen a week earlier. I had not seen the future; I had been in it!

When somebody sees things that are not real or are not there it is said he/she is hallucinating. Mostly this happens when someone is ill and has high fever or is on drugs. Hallucinations can be friendly but they also can be unspeakable horror. For the hallucinating person reality is altered, as is the state of consciousness.

Hallucinations are intense psychic events originating from the subconscious mind, the spirit. Fears, phobias or events of past lifetimes stored in the spirit's subconscious memories replace the conscious mind with an "unreal" reality. Sedation is the most effective means of counteracting the sometimes terrifying hallucinations as the hallucinating person rarely is able to respond to advice. Hallucinations can be a serious threat to a person's physical or mental health and should be treated by a health professional trained to deal with such matters.

In summer of 1999 I had two brain surgeries. The first one had to be stopped because of excessive bleeding. In between procedures I was in intensive care. Four days after the second surgery I flew to Atlanta to stay with friends. In retrospect I must say I don't understand the physician who said it would be all right for me to fly this soon after surgery. Within a week I got horrible headaches and was rushed to a hospital. I was hallucinating. Most remarkably, I fluently spoke in a language nobody ever had heard. The diagnosis was meningitis and I had contracted it during my stay at the intensive care unit. It was a close call but I survived. - I still dimly remember that my hallucinations were about encounters with dinosaurs.

In hypnosis someone, the hypnotist, superimposes own commands on the hypnotized person's will. The hypnotist is in complete control and can make the hypnotized person perform anything he/she wants as long as the commands don't run against a barrier strong enough to oppose the hypnotists' commands. For instance, it is easy to make a hypnotized person dance. It is a totally different situation should the hypnotist demand that the hypnotized person commits murder. In this case the hypnotist's demand can be refused if the hypnotized person has strong enough convictions against violence and taking someone else's life.

Hypnosis has been used since ancient times. In fact, Hypnos was the god of sleep in ancient Greece. Therefore, one could say that a person's own will is put to sleep by hypnosis. Over time, hypnosis has been used for many different purposes. It is most effective when regression to past events is necessary to access memories the conscious mind is not aware of. Regression under hypnosis mostly reaches events of the present lifetime. But there are reports that regression under hypnosis was successful going back to previous lifetimes.

Hypnosis can be used to gain unfair advantages over the hypnotized person especially if post-hypnotic commands are implanted in the hypnotized person's mind before he/she is awoken from the hypnotic state. Therefore, hypnosis has a somewhat mixed track record and it is not generally appreciated as a means of treating patients medically. Also, it is easy for the hypnotist to influence the hypnotized person in order to obtain a specific result. Nonetheless, hypnosis has been found to be very useful for many purposes. It can be a valuable help if used conscientiously, for instance, when a witness in a police investigation can be made to remember details like a license plate number, which had slipped into his unconscious memory.

Powers of the Mind

Hawaiian folklore tells of a time when little men, the hunas, were flying through the air in crafts and transported huge stones that floated in the air below without any sign of physical connection. At first sight this sounds too fantastic to be true. It tells us, however, that someone was using levitation to transport heavy loads.

More than 50,000 megaliths, some weighing 50 to a hundred tons, are found all over the planet. The trilithon at Balbeek in Lebanon consists of three stone slabs weighing an estimated 1000 tons each. In Tihuanaco stone blocks of up to 400 tons can be found. The Egyptians erected obelisks weighing up to 400 tons. Contemporary heavy construction equipment could not handle such weight. The only logical explanation is that these extremely heavy stone blocks were moved by levitation.

The conventional way of lifting things is by applying physical force. Levitation uses a different approach. Motion takes place in the energy phase anyway so it makes a lot of sense to make something move its energy phase when the object is weightless. If the energy of matter is moved it takes energy to make this move. Spiritual energies determine what the energies of matter have to do. This means that applying spiritual energies can make the energies of matter issue a specific command and this command in turn makes matter move as told. The question is, how strong must such spiritual energies be, how are they applied and who can do that?

In ancient times gods were everywhere. Frequently they are shown with headgear that varied considerably from god to god. Experiments with psychotronic devices have shown that such devices enhance even the modest psychic abilities of humans. The spiritual powers of the gods were awesome and these devices enhanced their powerful minds to a degree that they were able to make super heavy stones weightless. They were able to levitate the megaliths and this explains why in the world before using huge stones was the preferred building method, which disappeared with the gods of ancient times.

To levitate something spiritual energy has to be applied to the energy of matter of the object to be levitated. This process is called tele-kinesis. Some call it psycho-kinesis. Both words are correct. The words have their routs in the Greek language. Kinesis stands for the application of energy; tele stands for distance and psycho stands for mind or spirit. Therefore, telekinesis means the application of energy from a distance and psychokinesis means the application of energy of the mind or spirit. Consequently, the correct word would be tele-psycho-kinesis, the application of mind power from a distance.

Teleportation is the transport of something through the quantum vacuum to a different location. As this happens in a realm where there is no space and no time this process is instant. Someone with sufficient spiritual prowess can teleport himself to a different location or can move an object this way. Teleportation can also be done with the help of a device capable of issuing the right commands to the energies of matter of the object to be moved. - Such experiments on a modest scale were successfully conducted at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

The most powerful psychic healer of all times was Jesus of Nazareth. It is reported that his touching the sick person was enough to heal them. His input of energy into the sick person's energy reprogrammed this person's spirit to a healthy status. Since in the realm of energies there is no time healing was instant.

The power of prayer can heal. The spiritual energies of the ones praying are directed towards the sick person and strengthen this person's energies. Critical for the success is the amount of energy needed to turn the illness around. If the energy created by prayer is strong enough healing will ensue. Therefore, it makes sense when a religious community unites its efforts thereby creating more energy to support the healing process.

Some people are said to have "a green thumb". The plants they care for are healthy and grow big. Rumor has it that talking to plants helps and my wife talks a lot to everybody and everything. - My wife can grow anything. When we moved to a friend's house on a cliff towering over the Caribbean Sea the garden was a bone-dry dusty wasteland. Our friend intended to put gravel on it so it would look better. My wife persuaded him not to do that because she wanted to see what she could do.
We were to stay just for a year but when we left the garden had lush green grass and beautiful tropical plants all over the place. The one palm tree that had been on the verge of extinction when we came had strong healthy leaves and had grown to nearly double its height. - Our friend could not believe his eyes. Three months after we had left more than half the plants had died, the grass showed large empty patches and the lone palm tree had lost more than half of its leaves. Our friend was very upset because he had cared for his garden exactly as my wife told him she had.

My wife really does talk to plants. It sounds improbable but I think she had developed a personal relationship with every one of them. When we left she told me she had the feeling that she was abandoning friends who were very sad that she had to go.

There are parts of this world where people know how to influence the weather. The Kahunas on the island chain of Hawaii are such people whose secret knowledge and the ability to influence weather have been acknowledged even by Westerners who not readily accept such a possibility. In ancient Sumeria the king and the high priestess performed spring rites every year to make sure the weather during the planting season would be good and the crops would be plentiful. Allegedly, they sealed the rites with sex.

Christians pray for good weather. In the Virgin Islands there is Hurricane Supplication day, one of many local government holidays and this is supposed to unite the spiritual strength of the island community to keep hurricanes away from the island during the upcoming storm season. That did not work well in 1995 and 1996 when the eyes of two devastating hurricanes went over the island within 9 months. Since then several hurricanes took course on the island but somehow avoided it after all. Did the horror of the first two storms intensify the islanders' prayers?

Psi manifestations

Prophets make predictions about future events. The best example how prophecy works is Edgar Caicy, the sleeping prophet, because he illustrates that prophesies, if genuine, do not originate in the prophet's own mind. Whether sleeping or awake prophets receive information, which they pass on as prophecies. The source of this information is an intelligent unseen entity, a spirit, transmitting to the prophet's spirit whatever it is interested to let the prophet and through him other people know.

The prophets of the Old Testament predicted the coming of a Messiah and related topics. Nostradamus predicted a wide variety of events. A contemporary prophet predicted the assassination of President Kennedy. Over time many prophecies were made and many of them did not come true. The problem really is that it is impossible to know whether a prophecy is genuine or just a tool someone uses to make his point. Therefore, prophecies only can be trusted if they come from a prophet with a proven track record like Nostradamus or when the event they predicted has happened.

Divination is reading signs by an "initiated" found in divers media, for instance, in tealeaves and the entrails of domestic life stock. Before the Roman army went into battle the auguri, descendants of the Etruscans who were knew how to read the liver and entrails of slaughtered animals, predicted the outcome of the imminent battle. It was tradition to always predict a Roman victory. There are no records what happened to the auguri when a battle was lost.

Contrary to prophecies Oracles provide answers to specific questions. The most famous was the Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, which was the shrine of the god Apollo. A priestess, the Pythia, inhaled vapors emanating from fissures in the earth. That got her into a trance like or semi hypnotic stage and then she answered questions. These answers often were so cryptic that special priests had to figure out what they meant. Nonetheless, throughout antiquity many important people sought the oracle's advice and sometimes this really backfired. There was this king who asked the oracle whether it was the right time to attack the neighboring kingdom. He was told that if he attacked he would destroy a mighty kingdom. The king attacked and lost. The kingdom he destroyed was his own.

Summing up one can state that prophecies, divinations and oracles are frequently unreliable. Nonetheless, they can provide valuable information if the source is proven to be genuine.

The pendulum can be any small object on a string, that someone holds with two fingers. A ring works fine but an expert I met who is doing most amazing things uses a special arrow shaped epoxy device. The pendulum is as good as the one who uses it.

My sister somehow found out about the pendulum and from then on she used it to get yes or no answers to all the questions concerning her and her children. It worked amazingly well. Sigi, a Swiss treasure hunter who showed up on the island several years ago had a "pendler" back home locate a gold treasure on the map of a Caribbean island. He found 64 kilos of gold, a value of roughly one million dollars.

Sigi was retired. He used to be the owner of the world's largest factory for radiation measuring instruments. He was in contact with the retired director of Germany's state institute for radiation measurements. Dipl.Ing. Dr. Prof. Chris joined Sigi on the island and he was the top expert using the pendulum for just about anything. The many-titled Chris cured my backache and he cured a lady living on a boat from her crippling arthritis. When he hit the corner of a glass table with his shin within several minutes he not only made the swelling disappear; he also closed the nasty gash.

Sigi and Chris conducted experiments on my porch to see whether there was any gold on the island. The reaction was very promising. Then we drove several miles away to triangulate the exact location. Again the pendulum showed a very strong reaction and it really found the exact location of all that gold: main street on St. Thomas with possibly the biggest concentration of jewelry stores in the world. - Next day the two old timers sailed into the sunrise towards fabulous riches pirates and Spanish deserters for sure had buried somewhere on neighboring islands. Chris and his pendulum were ready for action.

Reading cards is probably the most popular methods to find out "things". - Rosine was from Paris, France. She claimed she was the best left over cook in the world, which actually could have been true. She also was very good at reading the cards. As accurate as her readings were they only could give information about the present and a maximum of three days into the future.

During a stay in Vienna, Austria, I visited a New Age fair. There I met and consulted a card reader. I know a lot about psychic matters but this man surprised even me. He was able to give precise information about important events and situations in my past, which decided future situations and events to come. His predictions went far into the future not only for me but also for my wife. Shortly before meeting him I had consulted my friend, the clairvoyant Rosalinde Haller, who had given me valuable information. This man confirmed her predictions but he was able to provide details Rosalinde could not give me. The cards as one says "were speaking clearly". - Several years have passed since this encounter and as much as I remember his predictions they all have come true.

The cards are a means to establish contact with the spiritual energies, which store the memories of things past and the programs of things to come. With their diversity they enable the reader to explain their meaning in great detail. There are no limitations in the information available; only the talent and abilities of the reader determine how much can be read.

In automatic writing a spiritual entity guides the hand of a living person. It is easily recognized as such because the handwriting is different and the living person does not know the information conveyed. - When we moved to the US my wife had to go back to Vienna to wrap things up. It was a very stressful time and the telepathic contact she had had with her father since childhood could not be established.

One evening she was very distressed and thought how much she would need her father's advice. Suddenly, her right hand lifted slightly from the table and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. Then the hand started writing in her father's handwriting. My wife was too flabbergasted to even think anything so she let this happen. Her father wrote that she was too nervous to be able to communicate telepathically but from now on whenever she had a question she just would have to think it and he would reply in writing.
After my wife returned to the US she was able to communicate this way with other spiritual entities, as well. For a while she spent many hours a week writing but, eventually, she lost interest and it stopped. - Automatic writing can also be done using a typewriter or a computer.

It is estimated that more than 50,000 people use a Quija board every day in the US. This board has written on it the letters of the alphabet as well as the numbers up to nine. Two people who place their fingers lightly on it use a small device with a hole in the middle. With some luck a spiritual entity makes contact and using the energy of the participants spells out a message. It takes some practice to get results but eventually communication can be quite fluent.

The Quija board has a bad reputation because negative spiritual entities can easily contact anyone who is using the board. Like the living they can scare people and lie and mislead them. It is quite easy to avoid unpleasant incidents. Animals sense the presence of negative energies and get scared or aggressive. It should be a standard opening to ask whether a spirit is positive or negative because the spirit has to answer with the truth. If a negative spirit is present it is advisable to tell him/her to go away. This usually does the job because the energies of the living are much stronger than the spirit. Telling a spirit to get lost has an immediate effect because this is a spiritual command that places the spirits in a state of confusion and this they really fear.

We arrived in the US several days before Christmas. I felt I should get some more gifts for wife and daughter. The shelves were pretty much cleaned out but I chanced to see a box that had written Quija on it. We opened the presents at a friend's place and when she saw the box she told me that this was not child's play. When she said we better don't touch it my curiosity got the better of me. I asked my friend to teach me to use it and she graciously obliged.

When we came home we started right away using the board. My wife was not very interested and I had written down a lot of letters, which meant nothing to me, so we stopped after two hours. I thought this was time lost but when my wife looked at the letters she combined them into words. It was a message in Hungarian, which my wife speaks fluently. It addressed a problem we had and assured us that everything would be all right. The message was signed "Deak Ferenc" and my wife even knew that he had been the Prime Minister of Hungary after WW1. The spirit alleged that we had been friends in my former lifetime and that was the reason that he had had been able to come to talk to us.

Talking to spirits became our hobby and we had many interesting conversations until my wife lost interest in such contacts. By know she only has occasional contacts with her parents. Using the board can bring very interesting and entertaining hours but one should keep in mind that it is wise to use the above mentioned safeguards against negative spirits.

For several years "psychic shows" have been very popular on television. A psychic performs in front of an audience and establishes contact with a dead relative or friend of someone in the room. Usually a brief description is given of the circumstances accompanying the death of the person that now manifests itself as spirit. A simple message assures the awestruck audience that now everything is all right; the spirit sends his love and that's about it.

The psychic is not always right and some "fishing" can be needed to make the contact credible. Nonetheless, the audience loves these shows. Most importantly, people feel that the dead are not really dead and there is some kind of life after life. For the skeptic inside each person the performances usually have enough glitches to leave some doubt. People don't have to accept as irrefutable truth that there is a realm out there where spirits roam and who-knows-what might lurk to scare innocent minds.

As basic and simple as the contacts made during such a show are they fulfill a very important purpose: huge audiences are made aware that there is life after life. For Westerners this is an expansion of their belief system usually firmly engrained within the confinements of organized religion. These TV shows manage to spread the word in a way people are comfortable with and this is a great achievement.

There are psychics who establish contacts with dead relatives or friends in personal sessions. The quality of these readings depends entirely on the psychic's abilities and there are some that really are very good. They are able to communicate freely with relatives and friends who have passed over and they provide sometimes truly amazing details. Aside from the fact that these personal readings can bring better results over all they follow the same pattern as TV readings.
Communication with Animals
Communication with animals is presented in a new TV show on Animal Planet. A lady by the name of Sonya communicates with animals and spirits of animals. Sometimes when talking to animal spirits she also communicates with people spirits who mostly are relatives who passed over and who are with the animal spirits. - When talking with people spirits she is always right on the dot, which cannot be said by the other TV psychics. - She talks to every conceivable animal. Even though she talks mostly to cats and dogs she also talked on this show to alligators, birds, iguanas, lamas, horses and the list goes on and on and on.

The people whose pets communicated with Sonya comment on the contacts. It is truly amazing how accurate she is and how many details of the animals' lives' she uncovers. For instance, she tells what one animal said to another one. From this we can gather that animals communicate with each other telepathically. Moreover, people spirits and animal spirits being together tells us that in the afterlife contacts between people and animals seem to continue as they did during material life.

Animals understand want people think and talk about. Animals are worried about their humans' health and problems. A pet owner's partner in life, changes of partners, and changes of environment like a move strongly affect pets. - Out dog Sunny was getting very old. He had heartworms and arthritis really plagued him. At some point of time after he had another one of his heart worm attacks I suggested to my wife we should have put him to sleep so he would not suffer any more. I did not think anything of it but Sunny started to avoid me and he obviously was ill at ease in my company. When I saw Sonya's show I realized that Sunny was afraid I would have him put to sleep. So I told him that he was much better now and that he could stay with us as long as he lived. From then on Sunny slowly was getting to be the happy dog he was before. He died of natural causes lovingly taken care of by my wife in his last hours.

Trance sessions were very much in fashion during the earlier times of the last century.
A medium would fall in a trance and a spirit took over the mind of the medium. The spirit would talk with a different voice and was answering questions from the attendants to such sessions as done in today's psychic readings. There were some genuine trance mediums but, regrettably, many of the mediums were fakes who were ripping off believers.

The famous escape artist Houdini was very much interested to establish contact with the spirit of his mother. Being also a magician he knew the tricks many trance mediums used to fool their clients. He took it upon himself to expose their methods to the public. Before he died he agreed with his wife that she should conduct trance sessions to make contact with his spirit, which she tried for many years. It never worked.

Spirit physicians and healers have been around since antiquity. Aesculaps, the famous Greek physician, invoked the assistance of spirits to enhance the effectiveness of his treatments. In the first half of the twentieth century a spirit physician working through Edgar Cayce, the so-called sleeping prophet, helped many people with his prescriptions and recommendations. For more than 50 years the spirit of a German doctor has done surgeries on thousands of people in Brazil. - A man with no medical training or knowledge suddenly started helping people doing the most astounding surgeries. When this man became too old to continue this work the German doctor's spirit recruited another man and continued his work.

Alleged psychic healing is often used to trick and to cheat people. The spirit healers of the Philippines doing fake surgeries have been exposed as frauds and this has happened to many others. Regrettably, these frauds give the whole field of psychic healing a bad name. Therefore, considering that peoples' health and wellbeing are at stake the track record and reputation of a psychic working with a spirit doctor should be carefully checked before consulting this person.

When on a photograph a "ghost" image appears this is called psychic photography.
Usually, there is a white shadow over part of the image but there are photographs when actual faces or complete figures of people show quite clearly. Normally, this is someone the one taking the photograph knows like a friend or relative who died but this is not always the case. This white shadow is called ectoplasm, which is an expression for the "ether" body of a spirit.

A long time ago I visited the "castle", a beautiful huge villa, on Skyline Drive on St. Thomas. My wife took several photographs and on some of them two shadowy white figures could be seen. When I talked to the castle's present owner he told me that this happens quite frequently. The two shadows are thought to be the spirits of the former owner of the castle and his special friend. - There are people who regularly can produce such pictures but normally these "ghost" images appear randomly.

A birdwatcher in quiet rural countryside of Sweden spent some time recording the sounds of birds. Replaying the tapes he was surprised to hear voices of people, as well. He was even more surprised when he realized that these were the voices of spirits who told about the way they died and the conditions of spiritual existence they experienced. The spirits sounded distressed because they were experiencing quite unpleasant situations like they were freezing and there was no fire to warm them etc. The birdwatcher published his findings and since then many people recorded the sounds of spirit voices. It seems it can be done anywhere as long as the environment is absolutely quiet.

Haunting commonly happens in old building with a history of violence or related events. Where I grew up there was a formidable castle, Schloss Forchtenstein. The ghost of a woman dressed in white has been seen many times. As the story goes she had been the wife of the knight who owned the castle. While he was away for a lengthy period of time his wife's reign of terror caused much suffering and cost many lives. To punish her he put her into a room on top of the tower overlooking the neighboring village. The door was taken out and the gap was filled with bricks. All that was left was a small opening for food and water. The cruel woman lasted no more than two years overlooking the village where so many of her victims had lived. After her death she was finally free to leave her prison. She has been seen ever since all over the castle scaring inhabitants and visitors alike.

Haunting happens when the spirit of a person remains attached to the place of death cannot leave. Such spirits can be harmless or they can be mischievous just as people can be while alive. Exorcism is meant to drive out mean spirits but this rarely works, as exorcists are not really familiar with the circumstances of spirit life. A radical but very effective approach so such a problem would be to burn the haunted house down. To tear down a house and to build a new one on the same location might prove to be a futile effort. A sensible approach to be tried first is not an exorcism but having a psychic talk to the spirit and tell him/her the circumstances of his/her death and that he/she now has to leave to go to the spirit world.

Poltergeist manifestations can have two very different reasons:
Someone who lived and died in a house stays there after death. This is a confused spirit who has not realized that he/she is dead or has such a strong attachment to the place that he/she does not want to leave. Such spirits see people living in the house as intruders and try to scare them away. Exorcism rarely helps. Usually it makes the spirits angrier because they fell someone tries to chase them out of a place that belongs to them. A sensible approach is to talk calmly to the spirits and tell them that they died and if they want to have a happy life after life they need to move on to the spirit world. This does not make them angry and has a good chance of success.

The second kind of poltergeist manifestation usually occurs in connection with adolescents whose unconscious energies for whatever reason get out of control. Exorcism does not help. A relaxed even humorous attitude has a good chance to diffuse the situation whereas fear and anger will strengthen the uncontrolled energies and trigger unpleasant episodes more often and more violently. There are no pills that will help but a tea to soothe nerves and relax the teenager responsible for these incidences has a good chance to succeed. A cup of chamomile tea in the morning and at bedtime might do just fine.

Death and Reincarnation

With death the most spiritual phase in someone's life starts. Freed from the limitations of bodily existence the spirit is drawn to the plane of spiritual existence it qualifies for. Heaven and hell, eternal bliss or damnation are not supported by reports of the ones who came back from a near death experience. Instead a place of happiness and a place of suffering are described with details differing dramatically from the accounts of organized religions.

This is not the place to try to uncover the secrets of existence in life after life. Only this much be said: after a stay in a spiritual place of existence a reincarnation starts the cycle of evolution for another lifetime. Supported by a chemical metabolism, which creates the energies needed for life, the spirit now housing in a matter body goes its way from childhood to maturity. Then this period of evolution ends with death of body and another stay in a spiritual plane of existence begins. Thus, consecutive lifetimes in a matter body ensure an ever-advancing evolution, which can go towards positive or negative. Free will is God the Almighty's gift to life. It is up to the individual how this gift is used and what kind of consequences this choice ultimately will bring.

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Recently profiled in the New York Times Magazine. Dean Radin is perhaps the most respected parapsychology authority in the country. An articulate, engaging communicator, Radin wields impeccable credentials, a healthy skepticism and a meticulous scientific method to put "psi" phenomona like telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and mind-over-matter abilities to the hard test of science. His unprecedented manifesto makes a startingly persuasive case for the truth of psychic phenomena -- and places us on the cusp of what may well be the next great paradigm shift.

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Douglas Hofstadter is College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science, director of the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, and adjunct professor of philosophy, psychology, history and philosophy of science, and comparative literature at Indiana University. Daniel C. Dennett is Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Book Description
From some of the 20th century's greatest thinkers, essays on topics as diverse as artificial intelligence, evolution, science fiction, philosophy, reductionism, and consciousness With contributions from Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Dawkins, John Searle, and Robert Nozick, The Mind's I explores the meaning of self and consciousness through the perspectives of literature, artificial intelligence, psychology, and other disciplines. In selections that range from fiction to scientific speculations about thinking machines, artificial intelligence, and the nature of the brain, Hofstadter and Dennett present a variety of conflicting visions of the self and the soul as explored through the writings of some of the twentieth century's most renowned thinkers.

Editorial Review
Ever wondered who you are? Who you really are? This collection of writings and reflections by some of today's most notable thinkers is designed to enliven this most central, and most baffling, question in the philosophy of mind. In some ways, the questions posed and bantered about in this book are at the heart of all philosophical reasoning. They are the ultimate questions about the self. The Mind's I contains an astonishing variety of approaches to answering the question, "Who am I?" Between the covers of this book one encounters the literary erudition of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges alongside the analytic rigor of John Searle. There are sophisticated metaphorical pieces (such as "The Princess Ineffabelle" by Polish philosopher and writer Stanislaw Lem), intriguing dialogues (like Raymond Smullyan's "Is God a Taoist?"), and serious but engaging philosophical essays from a host of thinkers (see Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?").

Editors Hofstadter and Dennett--leading lights in the study of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of mind--follow each selection with a short reflection designed to elaborate on their main themes. The Mind's I admirably broadens their fields to a more general audience. The book's essays are grouped into six categories, each successively raising the philosophical stakes by introducing new levels of complexity. Ultimately, one confronts some of the thorniest questions in modern philosophy here, such as the nature of free will, our place in the metaphysical world, and the possibility of genuine artificial intelligence. The book closes with a playful and perplexing piece by Robert Nozick, an adequate summation to The Mind's I. He writes, "Perhaps God has not decided yet whether he has created, in this world, a fictional world or a real one.... Which decision do you hope for?" --Eric de Place

The Encyclopedic Psychic Dictionary
by June G. Bletzer

About the Author
June G. Bletzer. Ph.D., has been a student and teacher of metaphysics for over four decades. Seeking a reference tool to aid in her own research and finding none, she then wrote the DICTIONARY to fill that void. Dr. Bletzer is a noted teacher in the fields of parapsychology, dream analysis, hypnotherapy, holistic health, and psychic development. Hundreds of students have benefited from her courses at the Psychic Research Institute of Florida, which she founded in 1978. Dr. Bletzer has also been director for accredited course work in parapsychology at St. John's University, St. Petersburg.

Book Description
THE ENCYCLOPEDIC PSYCHIC DICTIONARY is a monumental technical work unequalled in the fields of parapsychology, occult sciences, and holistic philosophy. Compiled for researcher, student, or professional, it boasts over nine thousand entries arranged in a comprehensive, annotated, user-friendly manner, and is fully cross-referenced. The material in the DICTIONARY spans over four millennia of thought, from the ancient Teachers of Wisdom to the brain researchers of the present. By relating newly-coined terms to language of the past, the DICTIONARY removes the twin veils of mystification and sensationalism which for so long hav e impeded understanding of the psychic sciences. The reader may then apply this understanding to every aspect of human experience, from that of mundane daily guidance to the ultimate goal of spiritual evolution.

We can read your mind!
If you do not believe it try this:
Click on the "Astrological Mind Reader"
You will be amazed... and amused...

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Science Mysteries

Introduction

What is Parapsychology?

What is not parapsychology?

What do parapsychologists study?

Who is interested in Parapsychology?

Psychic Phenomena

Introduction

ESP = Extra Sensory Perception ( go there )

Altered States of Consciousness ( go there )

Powers of the Mind ( go there )

Psi Manifestations ( go there )

Death and Re-incarnation ( go there )

ESP = Extrasensory Perception

Altered States of Consciousness

Powers of the Mind

Psi manifestations

Death and Reincarnation

Parapsychology Resources on the Internet

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