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Showing posts from September, 2005

Something strange

About half of the emails I receive express concerns about strange, exhilarating or disturbing physical and mental experiences. I have great sympathy for these people, but I'm not trained to help in such matters, so all I can do is offer an opinion on where to look for more information. In some cases the symptoms described seem to be related to kundalini, defined here as "t he primordial Shakti, or cosmic energy, that lies dormant in a coiled form in the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine. Through the descent of grace (shaktipat), this extremely subtle force, also described as the supreme goddess, is awakened and begins to purify the entire being. As Kundalini travels upward through the central channel, She pierces the various chakras, finally reaching the sahasrara at the crown of the head." For those of us who grew up in Western culture, this definition sounds like a fairy tale suitable mainly for psychiatric counseling. But with the rising interest in yogic prac

My job

My job involves exploring the frontiers of consciousness. What does that mean? To explain by example, I'll describe what I've been doing at work over the last month or so. I co-taught a two-week summer study program on parapsychology with Dr. Christine Simmonds from the Rhine Research Center , and I was the host for the annual convention of the Parapsychological Association (PA), an international scientific and scholarly organization interested in psychic phenomena (and an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1969). This year I'm serving as President of the PA. I've been developing a number of new experiments. One is a quantum optics experiment investigating possible mind-matter interaction with photons, a second explores a possible theoretical link between quantum entanglement and telepathy, a third is investigating evidence for precognition in the human brain, a fourth is exploring the psychophysiology of gut feelings in sensing

In the beginning ...

I don't really want to spend lots of time writing a blog, but I am even less inclined to spend many hours a day answering emails that ask the same questions. So this site will become a depository for me to record my responses to frequently asked questions, and as an outlet for an occasional random thought or rant.