Can we feel the future through psi?

A storm is hovering over the editors of the  Journal Personality & Social Psychology which is to publish a paper offering evidence for precognition – knowledge of unpredictable future events Feeling the Future, written by Daryl Bem, an emeritus professor of Cornell University, reports the results of nine experiments with more than 1,000 subjects, all but one of which appear to suggest paranormal powers. His findings are due to be published by the respected journal this year, and sceptics have been queueing up to rubbish them.

Among Bem's contentions is that participants given a memory test were more likely to remember words that they were later asked to practise, suggesting that the effects of this post-test rehearsal somehow reached back in time. He also found that subjects asked to select which of two curtains on a computer screen hid an erotic image were able to do so at a significantly greater rate than chance would predict. Intriguingly, the same experiment didn't produce any unusual results when the images behind the virtual curtain were less titillating.

The study is striking not so much for its data – anomalous results from smallish one-off experiments can hardly be described as earth-shattering – but for the fact that it comes from such a distinguished source (Bem is a highly acclaimed research psychologist), and because it has been accepted by such a prominent publication, following the usual peer review procedures. But perhaps even more interesting is the reaction it is producing among some critics – Ray Hyman, another emeritus psychology professor has described the publication as "Pure craziness …an embarassment of Future life ", while Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland called it. “a waste of time…it leads the public off into strange directions that will be unproductive”

The strength of such denunciations are curious. If Bem's experiments are indicative of ESP, then the implications are fascinating and wide-ranging, and at least worthy of continued investigation. Indeed, part of Bem's motivation, he says, was to construct easily replicable trial procedures so that interested parties could help build a reliable evidence base. If his trials are flawed, then they should be challenged robustly in the public domain.

Leaps in understanding require daring as well as rigour, and while extraordinary claims may require extraordinary evidence, there does seem to be sufficient data for ESP to at least merit an ongoing debate. Dean Radin's book  The Noetic Universe offers reams of serious studies purporting to show phenomena such as perception at a distance, mind-matter interaction and telepathy – including meta-analyses of apparently well-conducted trials – that appear to add up to something interesting. Radin also suggests that theories underpinning psychic phenomena are no weirder – and indeed potentially compatible with – those regularly put forward and accepted in mainstream physics, or in mind-body medicine.

To the interested observer, the wide divergence of views among psi experts can be as befuddling as the evidence itself. When the people who have devoted their careers either to proposing or debunking the existence of the paranormal can't agree on the fundamentals of their field, even when presented with the same data, then what chance does the lay observer have? The arguments tend to stand or fall on the finer points of study design or statistical interpretation. One of the main critiques of Bem's study is not that his results are suspect, but that he has analysed them insufficiently, although it's worth noting that one of the sceptic re-analyses concludes that his data offers a “Surprising degree of evidence” in favour of precognition.

But perhaps the most telling statistic in Bem's paper is that 34% of psychologists consider psychic phenomena to be impossible. Improbable, maybe. Unproven, perhaps. But impossible? That certainty seems to reflect a clinging to orthodoxy that is as much belief-based as the public's conviction that psychic powers are real and in our possession (apparently, 62% of us claim to know who’s calling before we pick up the phone).

Daryl Bem's experiments may or may not give us evidence that precognition exists – but if publication of his paper can show that interest in psychic phenomena isn't limited to crackpot true believers, and that studies of it are worthy of more than blind dismissal or uncritical acceptance, then it will have more than served a purpose.

The Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle (also known as Devil's Triangle and Devil's Sea) is a nearly half-million square-mile (1.2 million km2) area of ocean roughly defined by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the southernmost tip of Florida. This area is noted for a high incidence of unexplined losses of ships, small boats, and aircraft.

While there is a common belief that a number of ships and airplanes have disappeared under highly unusual circumstances in this region, the United States Coast Guard and others disagree with that assessment, citing statistics demonstrating that the number of incidents involving lost ships and aircraft is no larger than that of any other heavily traveled region Many of the alleged mysteries have proven not so mysterious or unusual upon close examination, with inaccuracies and misinformation about the cases often circulating and recirculating over the decades.

The triangle is an arbitrary shape, crudely marking out a corridor of the Atlantic, stretching northward from the West Indies, along the North American seaboard, as far as the Carolinas. In the Age of Sail, ships returning to Europe from parts south would sail north to the Carolinas, then turn east for Europe, taking advantage of the prevailing wind direction across the North Atlantic. Even with the development of steam and internal-combustion engines, a great deal more shipping traffic was (and still is) found nearer the US coastline than towards the empty centre of the Atlantic. The Triangle also loosely conforms with the course of the Gulf Stream as it leaves the West Indies, and has always been an area of volatile weather. The combination of distinctly heavy maritime traffic and tempestuous weather meant that a certain, also distinctly large, number of vessels would flounder in storms.

Given the historical limitations of communications technology, most of those ships that sank without survivors would disappear without a trace. The advent of wireless communications, radar, and satellite navigation meant that the unexplained disappearances largely ceased at some point in the 20th Century. The occasional vessel still sinks, but rarely without a trace. It should be noted that both the concept and the name of the Bermuda Triangle date only to the 1960s, and were the products of an American journalist.

Other areas often purported to possess unusual characteristics are the Devil's Sea, located near Japan, and the Marysburgh Vortex or the Great Lakes Triangle, located in eastern Lake Ontario. The Bermuda Triangle (a.k.a. the Devil's Triangle) is a triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded roughly at its points by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Legend has it that many people, ships and planes have mysteriously vanished in this area. How many have mysteriously disappeared depends on who is doing the locating and the counting. The size of the triangle varies from 500,000 square miles to three times that size, depending on the imagination of the author. (Some include the Azores, the Gulf of Mexico, and the West Indies in the "triangle.") Some trace the mystery back to the time of Columbus. Even so, estimates range from about 200 to no more than 1,000 incidents in the past 500 years. Howard Rosenberg claims that in 1973 the U.S. Coast Guard answered more than 8,000 distress calls in the area and that more than 50 ships and 20 planes have gone down in the Bermuda Triangle within the last century.

Many theories have been given to explain the extraordinary mystery of these missing ships and planes. Evil extraterrestrials, residue crystals from Atlantis, evil humans with anti-gravity devices or other weird technologies, and vile vortices from the fourth dimension are favorites among fantasy writers. Strange magnetic fields and oceanic flatulence (methane gas from the bottom of the ocean) are favorites among the technically-minded. Weather (thunderstorms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, high waves, currents, etc.) bad luck, pirates, explosive cargoes, incompetent navigators, and other natural and human causes are favorites among skeptical investigators.

There are some skeptics who argue that the facts do not support the legend, that there is no mystery to be solved, and nothing that needs explaining.The number of wrecks in this area is not extraordinary, given its size, location and the amount of traffic it receives. Many of the ships and planes that have been identified as having disappeared mysteriously in the Bermuda Triangle were not in the Bermuda Triangle at all. Investigations to date have not produced scientific evidence of any unusual phenomena involved in the disappearances. Thus, any explanation, including so-called scientific ones in terms of methane gas being released from the ocean floor, magnetic disturbances, etc., are not needed. The real mystery is how the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery at all.

The modern legend of the Bermuda Triangle began soon after five Navy planes [Flight 19] vanished on a training mission during a severe storm in 1945. The most logical theory as to why they vanished is that lead pilot Lt. Charles Taylor’s compass failed. The trainees' planes were not equipped with working navigational instruments. The group was disoriented and simply, though tragically, ran out of fuel. No mysterious forces were likely to have been involved other than the mysterious force of gravity on planes with no fuel. It is true that one of the rescue planes blew up shortly after take-off, but this was likely due to a faulty gas tank rather than to any mysterious forces.

 

Invisible force

At the South Pole, the harshest environment on Earth, astronomers try to unravel the mystery of dark matter, a force greater than gravity that will determine the fate of the cosmos.

For thousands of years our species has studied the night sky and wondered if anything else is out there. In 2009, we celebrated the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s answer: Yes. Galileo trained a new instrument, the telescope, on the heavens and saw what no other person had seen before: hundreds of extra stars, mountains on the Moon, satellites of Jupiter.

Since then, we have found more than 400 planets around other stars, 100 billion stars in our galaxy, over 100 billion galaxies beyond our own, even the faint radiation that is the echo of the Big Bang.

"Now scientists think that even this extravagant census of the universe might be as out-of-date as the five-planet cosmos that Galileo inherited from the ancients. Astronomers have compiled evidence that what we’ve always thought of as the actual universe – me, you, this magazine, planets, stars, galaxies, all the matter in space – represents a mere 4% of what’s actually out there.

The rest they call, for want of a better word, dark: 23% is something they call dark matter, and 73% is something even more mysterious, which they call dark energy.

“We have a complete inventory of the universe,” Sean Carroll, a California Institute of Technology cosmologist, has said, “and it makes no sense.”

Scientists have some ideas about what dark matter might be – exotic and still hypothetical particles – but they have hardly a clue about dark energy. In 2003, the U.S. National Research Council listed “What Is the Nature of Dark Energy?” as one of the most pressing scientific problems of the coming decades.

The head of the committee that wrote the report, University of Chicago cosmologist Michael S Turner, goes further and ranks dark energy as “the most profound mystery in all of science.”

The effort to solve it has mobilised a generation of astronomers in a rethinking of physics and cosmology to rival and perhaps surpass the revolution Galileo inaugurated on an autumn evening in Padua. They are coming to terms with a deep irony: it is sight itself that has blinded us to nearly the entire universe.



Human brain has been 'shrinking for the last 20,000 years'

For two million years it is believed our brains got increasingly larger but over the last 20,000 years it appears that the opposite has been happening - they've been shrinking instead. Some scientists believe our brains, like new computer chips could be shrinking in size because it is becoming more efficient while others subscribe to the idea that we are actually getting less intelligent. But which is the more likely 'Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimetres to 1,350 cubic centimetres, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball,' Kathleen McAuliffe writes in Discover magazine.

'The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.'

She was reporting on comments made by Dr John Hawks, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, who argues that the fact the size of the human brain is decreasing doesn't necessarily mean our intelligence is in decline as well.

Some paleontologists agree with this diagnosis, that our brains may have become smaller in size, but increasingly efficient.But others believe that man has indeed become steadily more stupid as he has evolved.
Several theories have been advanced to explain the mystery of the shrinking brain. One is that big heads were necessary to survive Upper Paleolithic life, which involved cold, outdoor activities.
A second theory is that skulls developed to cope with a chewy diet of rabbits, reindeer, foxes and horses.
As our food has become easier to eat, so our heads have stopped growing, according to supporters of this theory.
Other experts say that with high infant mortality, only the toughest survived - and the toughest tended to have big heads. Therefore a gradually decreasing infant mortality rate has led to a proportionate decrease in the size of our brains.
A recent study conducted by David Geary and Drew Bailey, cognitive scientists at the University of Missouri, explored how cranial size changed as humans adapted to an increasingly complex social environment between 1.9million and 10,000 years ago.
They found that when population density was low, such as during the majority of our evolution, the cranium increased in size. But when a certain area's population changed from sparse to dense, our cranium size decreased.They concluded that as increasingly complex societies emerged, the brain grew smaller because people didn't have to be as smart to stay alive.
But Dr Geary warns against stereotyping our ancestors as being more intelligent than us.
He said: 'Practically speaking, our ancestors were not our intellectual or creative equals because they lacked the same kind of cultural support.
'The rise of agriculture and modern cities based on economic specialisation has allowed the very brightest people to focus their efforts on the sciences, the arts and other fields.
'Their ancient counterparts didn't have that infrastructure to support them. It took all their efforts just to get through life.'

Dr Hawks, on the other hand, believes that the decrease in the size of our brains may actually show we are getting more intelligent.

The brain, he says, uses up to 20 per cent of all the fuel we consume. Therefore a bigger brain will require more energy and take longer to develop.

Dr Hawks notes that a boom in the human population between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago led to an unusual advantageous mutation to take place.

He believes this could have resulted in the brain becoming more streamlined, our neurochemistry shifting to boost the capacity of our brains.

But it seems the size of our brains could be on the increase again.

A recent study by anthropologist Richard Jantz of the University of Tennessee found that our brain size is on the increase again.

He measured and compared the craniums of Americans of African and European descent from late colonial times to the 20th century and found that our brain size is on the move again.

Dwapara Yuga

According to Puranic sources, Krishna's disappearance marks the end of Dvapara Yuga and the start of Kali Yuga, which is dated to February 17/18, 3228 BCE. Vaishnava teachers such as Ramanujacharya and GaudiyaVaishnavas held the view that the body of Krishna is completely spiritual and never decays as this appears to be the perspective of the Bhagavata Purana. Krishna never appears to grow old or age at all in the historical depictions of the Puranas despite passing of several decades, but there are grounds for a debate whether this indicates that he has no material body, since battles and other descriptions of the Mahabhārata epic show clear indications that he seems to be subject to the limitations of nature. While battles apparently seem to indicate limitations, Mahabharatha also shows in many places where Krishna is not subject to any limitations as through episodes Duryodhana trying to arrest Krishna where his body burst into fire showing all creation within him.Krishna is also explicitly told to be without deterioration elsewhere.

• 3800 BC (Descending Treta 2900) and before - High Vedic Age, the Rig-Veda 3100 BC (Descending Dwapara 0)   - Mahabharata War, Kurukshetra, Gita, Canonization of the Vedas by Vyasa
• 1900 BC (Descending Dwapara 1200)   - Drying up of the  Sarasvati river and end of the Vedic Age

Thus from a Yuga perspective we can see that the High Vedic Age was part of Descending Treta Yuga. It fell, right at the beginning of Descending Dawpara Yuga and collapsed mid-way through.

The book's authors argue that earlier Sanskrit scholars were unduly influenced by a) Colonial interests, for example Max Muller being in the pay of the British, b) "Aryan" racial theories and c) Fundamentalist Christian time-lines with comparatively recent dates for the origins of the world. To this day in Glen Rose, TX there are parallel museums, one for dinosaur tracks set in stone and another for creationism.

The ruins of one of the last cities associated with the Vedic Age are at Mohenjo-daro in modern Pakistan.

Built in 2600 BC (Descending Dwapara 500) and abandoned in 1500 BC (Descending Dwapara 1600), it was not rediscovered until 1922 AD (Ascending Dwapara 222).

Much as for Ancient Egypt, earlier strata at the site show higher civilization, descending as we move forward in time. Extreme radioactivity suggests that nuclear attack may have marked the end of the city. Much as for all facts prior to Ascending Dwapara Yuga, competing theories and dates mar definitive conclusions and can lead to unflattering comparisons with literature of the style popularized by Dennis-Weatley, the devil rides out (a bit). Such comparisons are perhaps a constrictive reflex, an unwillingness to accept higher civilization in the past by peoples today in underdeveloped nations and dismissing their cultural heritage as just so much '’Mumbo-Jumbo’.

When reading books of ancient history or archeology, it's helpful to have a quick Yuga-calculater to situate the dates and provide new insight. It can hardly be a mere coincidence that the Mahabharata War falls right at the boundary of Treta and Dwapara, or that Einstein discovered matter and energy are interchangeable right at the boundary of Dwapara and Kali, just at the same time that Sri Yukteswar corrected the Kali era misinterpretation of the ancient Yuga calculations found in the Vedas.

3300-3400BC First Sumerian and Egyptian writings are the oldest known, prior to that, i.e. looking back into fully developed Treta and Satya Yugas, we enter into pre-history 3100 B C pre-history-descendingTreta-Yuga closes, Descending  Dwapara-Yuga begins. 3100 Mahabharata-war. 700BC Classical Antiquity - Descending Dwapara Yuga closes, Descending Kali Yuga Begins
700BC The Greek poet Heseod described the last Golden Age of man, presided over by King Chronus of Atlantis. Vases found in South America and identical vases unearthed in Troy, by the archaeologist Schliemann, bore the inscription, "From the King Chronus of Atlantis."

The Shankaracharya Temple, also known as the Jyesteshwara temple or Pas-Pahar, It is dedicated to Lord Shiva. The sacred temple of Shankaracharya occupies the top of the hill known as Takht-I-Sulaiman in the south-east of Srinagar. The site dates back to 250BC. The Saint Shankaracharya stayed at this place when he visited Kashmir ten centuries ago to revive Sanatan Dharma.

The temple was originally built by Sandiman, who reigned in Kashmir from 2629 to 2564 BC. It was repaired by King Gopaditya (426 – 365 BC) and by King Lalitaditya (697–734). Its roof was also repaired by Zain-ul-Abidin after an earthquake; later, its dome was repaired by Sheikh Ghulam Mohiuddin, a Sikh Governor (1841–1846).

The Catholic Church tradition about the death of Mother Mary is called "The Dormition" [The Sleep]

She went into a deep sleep from which she never woke. The location of her death is not known, and has variously been given as Jerusalem, Ephesus (Turkey) and France. Little mention is ever made of the grave on the Old Silk Road. Yet the evidence is mounting that this was the birthplace of Abraham Sarah, that Tocharians and Pashtuns are an integral part of Biblical history, and Kashmir was the Camelot of many Biblical Patriarchs.

Joseph the Patriarch's grave  near Palestine was destroyed in the summer of 2000. The grave of Yuz Asaf is in imminent danger of being wiped out through "remodeling". Each week in some large way or small, the world loses another great piece of history. It doesn't always happen with a big bang o Sometimes the destruction consists  of a few  small stolen  relics  to sell on E-Bay every few months What if there was just one chance in a million? Or one chance in a billion  this could be her final resting place? Surely we owe it ourselves, and to her, to find out. How hard would that be? A few archaeolo get to the truth in a matter of days. The site has already been twice attacked and bombed.  The grave of Joseph, , is a few miles away. legends connected with the popular tourist resort side of the Queen’s mountain; the word Mary means ‘Queen’. In recent years the name evolved from Mary de Astan (Resting place of Mary) to Mary, and now the town is known as Murree. was  covered in candle wax, and prayer flags were everywhere among the alpine wild flowers, flowi mountain often glowed with  strange auras of  light at night. People traveled from far and wide to  bring their sick here for healing, or sit quietly beside the grave. The site has been maintained and honored as far back as anyone can remember. Its importance can be judged from the fact that the surrounding country is named after the supposed gravesite.

According to an old legend, the name 'Murree' is derived from 'Marium' or Mary. Among locals it is know as Mai Mari da Asthan ("

Resting Place

of Mother Mary"). Indeed, when the British first arrived here in 1850s to establish a new hill-station in India, Murree was still known as Mari. The spelling was later changed to the present one in 1875.

The exact origin of the shrine has become obscured by the waves of time. Since an ancient period, Hindus had worshipped it, and the Muslims paid their homage on Thursdays by lighting earthen lamps filled with oil.
views over forest-clad hills into deep valleys, studded with villages and cultivated fields, with the snow-covered peaks of Commanding, as one book puts it, "magnificent Kashmir in the background" and overlooking the plains of Punjab, it stood naturally eligible to be selected by the British for defensive purposes, and they built a watchtower at the site.
According to old records, "in 1898, Richardson, the Garrison Engineer, wished to demolish the tomb at the time of the construction of the defense tower. Shortly afterwards he died in an accident, and the locals connect the incident with his evil intentions towards the tomb.
The grave was thereafter promptly repaired.

A little further down the ridge, the British built a convent and named it the Convent of Jesus and Mary. Today, it is one of the best girls’ boarding schools in Pakistan
More recently, in 1968, two towering antennas were added adjacent to one another on 'Pindi Point,' the new name given to the location. One of them arises from the same place where Mary is believed to rest.
A crude-looking cement structure marks the spot nowadays where the alleged grave exists. The area is closed to the general public due to security concerns for the safety of the television boosters. Barbed wire surrounds the antennas to prevent anyone from getting near, and civil guards keep a vigil on the installations night and day.
Various superstitions surround the story of the tomb. Local residents have reported occasional sightings of unexplained lights in the vicinity of the grave at night. Others describe rare encounters with a ball of light condensing into a fuzzy apparition of a veiled female form. Most of the eyewitnesses questioned, believed that the images were genuine and connected to the woman buried on the hilltop who many also regard as a saint.

It has been learned that a low-key investigation by a team of archaeology experts from Islamabad was carried out a few years ago to validate the tomb claim. However, their findings were never made public.
Skeptics from the field argue that regardless of the outcome of the team’s findings, it cannot be accepted as the final verdict on the issue. One authority figure, who did not wish to be named, stated: "While serious research of this nature requires extensive excavation, the visit by those archaeologists in the past was merely a superficial survey."
Among Christians, there is a group that believes in a post-Resurrection life of Jesus Christ. They insist that Christ traveled to Kashmir with his mother and died there. They believe that Mother Mary was also laid to rest in the same region.