Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The True 'Spirit' of the Care Bears

Written by Dave Nalle
Published April 01, 2005

When you think of the Care Bears, do you think of them as nothing more than annoying characters in an overly preachy children's cartoon? Or do you find them vaguely unsettling, perhaps because your inner eye can sense some of the truth behind these chubby brightly colored 'friends' - the truth of Voodoo masquerading as children's entertainment.

One of the characteristics of the spread of Voodoo in the Western Hemisphere is the adaptability of the paradigms of Voodoo worship and magic to the host cultures and religions. This has been demonstrated in the accommodation of Voodoo to the native cultures of Brazil in the form of Macumba (Candomble and Umbanda), and in the adaptation of Catholic religious iconography to Voodoo in the practice of Santeria, where saints have been adapted to substitute for specific voodoo gods. These examples are well known and publicly recognized. The Catholic Church has even been quietly tolerant of both Voodoo and Santeria for many years.

What fewer are aware of is the introduction of Voodoo symbology and worship into the culture of the United States through the medium of children's cartoons. Voodoo has always been syncretic and adaptable, and through the work of a few Boccor/Animators and sympathetic Voodoo practitioner producers in Hollywood the Lwa have found new forms and gained unprecedented access to generations of young television viewers. While recent attention has been focused on the popularity of the Kabbalah and ritual Jewish magic in Hollywood, the Lwa and Voodoo were there first and have already permeated the culture to a depth which few suspect.

Voodoo's invasion of children's animation began in the 1950s with the tentative work of early media-voodoo pioneers such as Art Clokey whose character Gumby clearly derives from the Jamaican festival spirit Goombay or Big Bwoy, an amorphous and confused buffoonish character who heralds the start of festival season. The similarity of the exaggerated features of the two characters is hard to miss.

Another tentative effort to introduce some Voodoo elements into a children's cartoon can be found in the popular 1980s cartoon Rainbow Brite which features a horse - a traditional symbol of Legba - which has a rainbow tail - clearly symbolic of Damballah. In the enormously popular Smurfs you can also see Voodoo themes portrayed, especially in the character of Smurfette whose position as a unique and powerful female figure surrounded by male cohorts clearly echoes the role of Irzuli in Voodoo mythology.

Unquestionably the height and full-blown realization of Voodoo in children's animation was in the still enormously popular Care Bears. Never has the use of Voodoo symbology been more clear and apparent, far more so than in Candomble or Santeria. From the very name of the cartoon to the look and behavior of the characters, Voodoo permeates the Care Bears universe.

Start with the name first. Who can deny the similarity between the name Care Bears and Carefours, the district of Port au Prince which is the heart of the Voodoo world? Can the cloud city of Care-a-Lot be anything but an idealized 'holy city' of the Lwa - a divine reflection of Carefours? Then consider some of the terminology. The Care Bears constantly want to 'Share until you care', just as the Lwa want to share the bodies of their worshipers. The Care Bears are constantly trying to be children's 'friends', just as the Voodoo Lwa are often referred to by their followers as 'friendly spirits' or just 'friends'.

Voodoo is a religion uniquely rich in symbology, particular the famous Veve symbols which represent each of the Lwa or Voodoo gods. These Veve are your key to connecting the Lwa and the Care Bears. Just as each Lwa has a Veve, each Care Bear has an arcane symbol represented on his round little tummy, and as you may already suspect, those symbols are suspiciously similar to the Veve of the major Voodoo Lwa.

The first obvious connection of a major Lwa with a Care Bear is between the goddess Erzulie and Love-a-Lot Bear. Erzulie's symbol is a heart, which might lead one to associate her with Tenderheart Bear who is also represented by a heart, but Love-a-Lot is the true Care Bear form of Erzulie, because the color pink is strongly associated with Erzulie, and Love-a-Lot's twin hearts represent the dual nature of Erzulie as both a goddess of love and motherhood (Erzulie La Siren) and also a goddess of seduction and jealousy (Erzulie Dantor). Clearly in the Care Bear universe Love-a-Lot is the embodiment of Erzulie.

Another clear connection with a very important Lwa is the association of Friend Bear with Legba. Not only are their symbols similar - crossed roses in both cases, but Legba is frequently referred to as 'A Friend', because of a prohibition against speaking his actual name. Legba is one of the most commonly called upon Lwa as an intercessor, and Friend Bear occupies a similarly prominent role as a go-between among the other Care Bears.

Also quite obvious is the connection between Damballah, who is symbolized by a rainbow and Cheer Bear who also bears the rainbow symbol. Cheer Bear, more than many other Care Bears, is shown using magical or mystical powers, characteristic of Damballah.

The parallels go on. The falling star symbol of Wish Bear is clearly equivalent to of the lightning bolt of Shango, while the storm cloud of Grumpy Bear is obviously symbolic of both the storm associations and general negative attitude of Capitaine Ogu. In fact, the cloud has a rather similar shape to the ship in Ogu's most common Veve. A close viewing of the movie Return to Care-a-Lot also reveals a scene in which a distracted Grumpy Bear mutters under his breath what sounds distinctly like Ogu's trademark greeting "Gren mi Fret" or "My Balls are Cold". And of course who could deny the similarity of Birthday Bear's symbolic cupcake and the funeral altar Veve associated with Baron Samedi?

Symbolic parallels can also be found between the central character Funshine bear who watches over the welfare of all the Care Bears with the over-god or super-Lwa Orisha. There are also repeated motifs in the Care Bear television episodes and movies which are impossible to deny. For example, they travel by magical ship again and again, clearly a reference to the slave ships which brought the first Voodoo practitioners to the new world. Even more significant, many of the Care Bears, especially Grumpy Bear (Capitaine Ogu) and Birthday Bear (Baron Samedi), are seen trying on hats and other disguises, clearly a nod to the characteristic behavior of the Guede Lwa who guard the dead and are known for wearing hats and fancy dress.

We can only guess at the motivation of these Hollywood animators in going to such lengths to incorporate Voodoo symbology in the characters of the Care Bears. Is it the outcome of a religiously motivated conspiracy as some would fear, merely that they were bored or starved for inspiration and found it in an unlikely location, or some something far more sinister? We may never know. Most of the animators involved in the original design of the Care Bears characters have either died under mysterious circumstances or are missing. In the case of character animator Lester Meyers, his disappearance was accompanied by a cryptic note suggesting that the was going to go find out the "truth about where the CBs come from," and his final credit card bill showed a charge for a ticket to Haiti. Nothing was ever heard from him again.

Should you be concerned for children exposed to the Care Bears? They are probably no more dangerous than notorious Pagan propaganda icons like The Transformers, or well documented Wiccan idol Strawberry Shortcake. However, if your child begins to spontaneously speak French to her stuffed Care Bear toys or if he puts on a top hat and takes up a cane and starts to dance a jig, the services of a Houngan might be called for.

Dave

Dave Nalle has been a magazine editor, freelance writer, capitol hill staffer, game designer and taught college history for many years. He now designs fonts for a living and lives with his family and pets just outside Austin. You can find his writings on politics and culture at Republic of Dave and works on designs and fonts at The Scriptorium.

Source:Blogcritics

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Ghosts on film

I finally found it. Justin (exmk.net) sent this to me ages ago and neither one of us have been able to find it since. Until now, obviously.

Funny epitaph

In a cemetery in England:

Remember man, as you walk by,
As you are now, so once was I,
As I am now, so shall you be,
Remember this and follow me.

To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:

To follow you I'll not consent,
Until I know which way you went.

source: Rosebud's epitaphs

Friday, November 2, 2007

Carl. Jung Quotes

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.


The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

The word "belief" is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

C G Jung quotes on Brainyquote.com

Rob Brezny~ Pronoia Therapy

The primary meaning of the word healing is "to cure what's diseased or broken." Medical practitioners focus on sick people. Psychotherapists wrestle with their clients' traumas and neuroses. Philanthropists donate their money, and social workers contribute their time to helping the underprivileged. I am in awe of them all. The level of one's spiritual enlightenment, I believe, is more accurately measured by helping people in need than by meditation skills or mastery of religious doctrine.

But I also believe in a second kind of healing which is largely unrecognized: to supercharge what is already healthy; to lift up what's merely sufficient to a state of sublime blessing. I'm driven with ambition to promote this work, even as I aspire to do my share of fixing what's hurt.

What would the world look like if there were doctors who specialized in fostering robust health in their patients? What if the textbooks that psychotherapists used to evaluate their clients were crammed not just with descriptions of pathological states, but also with a catalogue of every variety of bliss, integrity, magnanimity, eros, and wisdom? Imagine how odd and wonderful it would be if universities began turning out professionals in a brand new field, the science of happiness.

I must confess that early in my career, I was proud of my well-crafted cynicism. Like most novelists, poets, journalists, filmmakers, and critics, I subscribed to the dogma that evil is interesting and good is boring. You can imagine my dismay, then, when my muses began to nudge me in the direction of sly optimism. "It will ruin my image!" I complained to them from the depth of my worried meditations. "I refuse to write shiny happy propaganda! I will not turn into a dopey Pollyanna bereft of all critical thinking skills!"

But they were immune to my protests. Slowly and inexorably, the muses reconfigured my coyote angel rebel clown persona to serve a new master: PRONOIA. The opposite of paranoia, pronoia is defined as the sneaking suspicion that the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings. (Terence McKenna had a slightly different angle on it: "I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make me happy.")

To their credit, my muses managed to pull off this alchemical abracadabra without annihilating my native skepticism. If anything, it has become more robust, anchored as it is now in the thrilling quest for good news.

But the transformation was neither rapid nor smooth. So strenuously did I resist and so deep were my imprints, that it has taken me until now to begin writing the ultimate self- help book on pronoiac living. It's titled, "EXTREME PRONOIA: 888 Steps to Becoming an Aggressively Sensitive, Wildly Disciplined, Lyrically Logical, Ironically Sincere, Insanely Poised, Lustfully Compassionate Master of Rowdy Bliss." Here is how it begins.

Beauty and truth fans, you don't have to struggle and slave for 15 years, as I did, to throw off your addiction to pop- nihilism. You can launch the first phase of the cold turkey cure right now. Simply carry out the following 13-step crash course in pronoiac reprogramming. Report on your adventures and results here.

PRONOIA THERAPY FOR BEGINNERS

1. During an intense half-hour rant, complain and whine about everything that pains you. Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle if possible, or simply deliver your blast straight into the mirror. Having emptied all your psychic toxins in one neat ritual spew, you'll be able to luxuriate in rosy moods and relaxed visions for a while.

2. Locate or create a symbol of your own pain. Mail it to us at the Angst Incineration Crew, P.O. Box 150628, San Rafael, CA 94915, USA. We will then conduct a sacred ritual of purification during which we will burn that symbol to ash. While this may not banish your suffering entirely, it will provide a substantial amelioration which you will be able to feel the benefits of within a month.

3. Eat a pinch of dirt while affirming that you are ready to kill off one of your outworn shticks -- some idea or formula that has worked for you in the past but has now become a parody of itself.

4. Using crayons, paints, scissors, glue, collage materials or any other materials, create a piece of large-denomination paper money, good for making a payment on your karmic debt.

5. Kick your own ass 22 times.

6. Brag about yourself nonstop for 10 minutes. Record it so you can listen back to it later.

7. Perform a senseless act of altruism, for instance by giving an anonymous gift or providing some beauty or healing to a person who cannot do you any favors in return.

8. Deliver a concentrated stream of praise about someone, either to that person herself or to anyone who will listen. Extra credit: Force yourself to think a kind and loving thought about someone you don't like or from whom you feel alienated.

9. Conjure up an imaginary friend and have an intimate conversation with him and her for at least 15 minutes.

10. Build an altar devoted to beauty, truth, and love in one of the ugliest places you know.

11. With a companion, watch a blank TV while making up a pronoiac story featuring plot twists that are rife with happiness, redemption, and good times -- yet not boring. You may either speak this tale aloud or write it down.

12. Compose and perform a ceremony in which you get married to yourself.

13. While making love, imagine that your physical pleasure is a carrier wave for a spiritual blessing which you beam in the direction of some person you know who needs a supercharged boost.

Free Will Astrology

Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings

On the Creation of Tulpas

However interested we may feel in the other strange accomplishments with which Tibetan adepts of the secret lore are credited, the creation of thought forms seems by far the most puzzling.
...
Phantoms, as Tibetans describe them, and those that I have myself seen do not resemble the apparitions, which are said to occur during spiritualist séances.

As I have said, some apparitions are created on purpose either by a lengthy process resembling that described in the former chapter on the visualization of Ydam or, in the case of proficient adepts, instantaneously or almost instantaneously. In other cases, apparently the author of the phenomenon generates it unconsciously, and is not even in the least aware of the apparition being seen by others.

However, the practice is considered as fraught with danger for every one who has not reached a high mental and spiritual degree of enlightenment and is not fully aware of the nature of the psychic forces at work in the process.

Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker¹s control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother¹s womb. Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between magicians and their creatures, the former being severely hurt or even killed by the latter.

Tibetan magicians also relate cases in which the tulpa is sent to fulfill a mission, but does not come back and pursues its peregrinations as a half-conscious, dangerously mischievous puppet. The same thing, it is said, may happen when the maker of the tulpa dies before having dissolved it. Yet as a rule the phantom either disappears suddenly at the death of the magician or gradually vanishes like a body that perishes for want of food. On the other hand, some tulpas are expressly intended to survive their creator and are specially formed for that purpose.
...
Must we credit these strange accounts of rebellious "materializations", phantoms which have become real beings, or must we reject them all as mere fantastic tales and wild products of imagination?

Perhaps the latter course is the wisest. I affirm nothing. I only relate what I have heard from people whom, in other circumstances, I had found trustworthy, but they may have deluded themselves in all sincerity.

Nevertheless, allowing for a great deal of exaggeration and sensational addition, I could hardly deny the possibility of visualizing and animating a tulpa. Besides having had few opportunities of seeing thought-forms, my habitual incredulity led me to make experiments for myself, and my efforts were attended with some success. In order to avoid being influenced by the forms of the lamaist deities, which I saw daily around me in paintings and images, I chose for my experiment a most insignificant character: a Monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type.

I shut myself in tsams and proceeded to perform the prescribed concentration of thought and other rites. After a few months the phantom Monk was formed. His form grew gradually fixed and lifelike looking. He became a kind of guest, living in my apartment. I then broke my seclusion and started for a tour, with my servants and tents.

The Monk included himself in the party. Though I lived in the open, riding on horseback for miles each day, the illusion persisted. I saw the fat tulpa; now and then it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travelers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me, and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder.

The features which I had imagined, when building my phantom, gradually underwent a change. The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control. Once, a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a living lama.

I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a "day-nightmare". Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.

There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created.

Alexandra David-Neel
Magic and Mystery in Tibet.
University Books Inc., 1965

Davis & Davis research labs

Friday, October 26, 2007

Fear quotes from Quotegarden.com

You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith. ~Mary Manin Morrissey

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~Marie Curie

Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop. ~Usman B. Asif

Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Panic at the thought of doing a thing is a challenge to do it. ~Henry S. Haskins

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. ~Henry Louis Mencken

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear. ~George S. Patton

Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. ~Brendan Francis

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them. ~Andre Gide

There is much in the world to make us afraid. There is much more in our faith to make us unafraid. ~Frederick W. Cropp

Fear is faith that it won't work out. ~Sister Mary Tricky

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance. ~Arnold Glasow

Fear is the father of courage and the mother of safety. ~Henry H. Tweedy

Fear is the highest fence. ~Dudley Nichols

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. ~Orison Swett Marden

Fear is the needle that pierces us that it may carry a thread to bind us to heaven. ~James Hastings

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. ~Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small. ~Ruth Gendler

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends. ~Shirley Maclaine

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. ~Bertrand Russell

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day. ~Brendan Francis

Fear is just your feelings asking for a hug. ~Danielle Sanchez-Witzel and Michael Pennie, My Name is Earl, "South of the Border Part Uno/Dos," original airdate 7 December 2006, spoken by the character Joy Turner

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~Bertrand Russell

Fear makes us feel our humanity. ~Benjamin Disraeli

A cheerful frame of mind, reinforced by relaxation... is the medicine that puts all ghosts of fear on the run. ~George Matthew Adams
There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls. ~Aeschylus

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. ~Samuel Butler

Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. ~German Proverb

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all thinking, damages his personality and makes him a landlord to a ghost. ~Lloyd Douglas

A cat bitten once by a snake dreads even rope. ~Arab Proverb

Fear prejudices courage. ~Abigail Charleson

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? ~Maurice Freehill

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real. ~Author Unknown

Fear is a slinking cat I find beneath the lilacs of my mind. ~Sophie Tunnell

I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side. ~Katharine Butler Hathaway

He who fears something gives it power over him. ~Moorish Proverb

Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death. ~Author Unknown

He who fears to suffer, suffers from fear. ~French Proverb

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice. ~Mark Twain

Fear can be headier than whiskey, once man has acquired a taste for it. ~Donald Dowes

Fear dances with courage. ~Ever Garrison

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1833

Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death. ~Betty Bender

To lead is difficult when you're a follower of fear. ~T.A. Sachs

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change.... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. ~Erica Jong

The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. ~Lady Bird Johnson

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

RSPK and consciousness - recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Dec, 2001 by William G. Roll, William T. Joines
ABSTRACT: Recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK), or poltergeist occurrences, investigated by William G. Roll and 2 recent physical theories with implications for RSPK are reviewed.

Zero-point energy: A major problem for the RSPK researcher has been to identify the source of energy causing the movement of household objects and furniture. This energy is usually focused on objects associated with individuals with whom the agent has a stressful or tense relationship. Hal Puthoff, a physicist (and parapsychologist), is exploring zero-point energy (ZPE), a hypothetical plenum of electromagnetic energy that fills space and interacts with gravitation and inertia. He proposes that the agent causes object movements by cohering the random fluctuations of the ZPE. The agent would not generate the energy for RSPK but manipulate the random fluctuations of the ZPE and thereby reduce the inertia and gravity that ordinarily keeps an object in place. If RSPK uses ZPE, this would be evidence that the vacuum has a consciousness component, according to Puthoff.

Joines has previously suggested that the RSPK process involves psi waves from the agent. Psi waves result in the focusing effects and in the attenuation of RSPK incidents with distance from the agent. The ZPE concept fills in the picture. If psi waves produce a coherent signal directed at a physical object, the process might be attenuated by the random ZPE fluctuations that surround agent and object. The ZPE at the same time would provide the energy for RSPK and result in the reduction of object movements with distance.

In the light of the ZPE theory, Joines analyzed the decline effects in the Miami, Olive Hill, and Tina Resch cases. The data points were fitted to an exponential decay curve and to an inverse distance curve, but the best fit was to a product of the 2 curves. An electromagnetic wave propagating outward from a source is represented by the product of inverse distance and exponential decay. The results are consistent with the theory that the ZPE may be the connection between psi waves and electromagnetic waves.

Observer participancy: In his 1998 work, Physics From Fisher Information: A Unification, Roy Frieden has derived most known physics, including statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and the Einstein field equations, from a new theory that makes the observer part of the measured phenomenon. According to Frieden, "The 'request' for data creates the law that, ultimately, gives rise to the data. The observer creates his or her local reality" (p. i). The theory is an outgrowth of the work by British statistician A. R. Fisher.

Frieden focuses on 2 types of information: information obtained by observing nature (designated by I) and information that nature is yet to reveal (designated by J). The purpose of scientific observation is to reduce the difference between I and J. Frieden's approach asserts that "the meaning of the acquired data to the observer" affects the observation; results are thereby "knowledge based" as well as physical. Bringing in acquired knowledge brings in the individuals imparting the knowledge to the observer. In addition to cognitive knowledge (expressed by physical equations), knowledge has an emotional aspect that infuses observation with energy. The emotional--energetic component of objects may show itself when emotionally charged objects are affected as in RSPK. RSPK, along with other psi phenomena, may reveal the J information that is concealed in the physical environment. Frieden sets out to provide a unified theory of physics that turns out to also be a theory of psi.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Parapsychology Press
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Anneliese Michel

Whether a case of genuine possession or mental illenss (etc.), this is a disturbing and sad story.