Do dousing rods work

traditional,

Some years back I was working at a fuel contaminated site owned by a major defense manufacturer. I called on the plant facility staff for an underground utility locate. A short while later a truck pulled up to the fuel farm where we were working and a man wearing a broad brimmed hat with............substantial plumage is the best I can describe the feathers sticking out of the hat. He produced two bent rods and started walking the area in question, rods held parallel to each other and the ground.

Being a skeptic I approached the man to see just what kind of voodoo he was practicing. He smiled, said watch and then told me to dig at a certain point where the two wires crossed. I did and found a pvc water line.

While not truly a believer and not understanding the process I do have two bent 8 gage copper wires just in case.

Dowsing does indeed work, in the UK our water boards have teams of people who look for leaks, usually they use a listening pole and they can pin point a leak very accurately by listening to the sound in the pipe...

They also have dowsing rods and one showed me how they 'work' he couldn't explain why or how they worked but after a few minutes telling me how to hold them and relax my grip on them etc.... he pointed out a path to walk on my road outside... the wires crossed and kept crossing at the same point, I couldn't explain why but he said that is where the water mains pipe is...

It is also supposed to work for other utilities such as gas, cables etc... you have to have a picture in your mind of what you're looking for - So he said.

But I still remember the way the rods crossed at the same point every time with out me knowing where the pipe was!!!

They dug it up a week later so I did have proof that it was the correct place!

John.

I believe you are right. I'm sure there are devices that can detect utilities under several feet of earth, and perhaps even water, but they don't sell for $45!

I just spent 3200.00 on an interior property underground utility location. It's amazing what GPR does not locate. These defense guys get real antsy about any utilities you "find" while excavating on their property.

I found that when I tried it the first time it miraculously worked .I knew about where the underground utilities where ,I could see where it went up the pole ,and the devise turned.

But when I did it again I realized I was making it turn.I believe the fact we use 5% of or brains factors in .

If we "believe" we tap into that 95% reserve and subconsciously make a good guess.I would love for someone to offer a better explanation.

I cant comment on the use of such devices for locating water pipes, etc.; however, from the standpoint of location water resources (underground sources of natural water) be aware that virtually every square foot of earth has groundwater beneath the surface. [Even in arid locations such as the deserts of Arizona, etc., there is water. In that case, you may need to go to 1800+ft depths, but it's there]. The only trick is to determine how far one has to go to get it, and what technology is necessary. So as far as I can determine, a dousing rod only tells you something you already know.

I think the question should be how or way do they work....

There is plenty of evidence that they do work.

I have long suspected that water dowsers have some sense, perhaps smell, that they themselves don't consciously realize is working. Then the dowsing rods (or pendulum or whatever) act as indicators of the subconscious sense.

I'm for that D the C.

My mentor had no explanation. My experience is that it works on conduits, metal bearing or not, water filled or not.

I catch mortal he** from clients when the wires come out and it is not a perfect process but more often than not it works. I went as far as to fashion sleeves for the wires to fit in so that they might turn independently of contact with my hands.

All that having been said I never pass up the opportunity to have the location done independently. Those guys carry insurance no honest man can afford.

I tried it a couple of times looking for buried pipes at a couple of different steel mills.

It works, and here is what I think the mechanism is: Wherever something is buried, the soil is compacted differently, subsides, or is built up etc.. As a human holding the rods walks his gait and lean(precession?) are modified by the feedback from the soil, its relative position to his last position etc. This small change at the feet translates by the length of lever arm or inthis case lever legs and body, to influence the location of the rods, overcoming inertia and causing movement , thus a positive indication at the location of the differential compaction/ subsidence.

I found the pipe, because as my feet hit where the soil had subsided, it made the rods sway as my body moved in a greater amount (think oversteer) than if it would have had it remained on undistrubed ground.

The fact that there were many years since the burial was not a factor, the issue is differential compaction and grading.

Just as your hands can feel body work under paint on a car, or dare I say, implants beneath a womans ample curves, so too will your body through your feet placement and feedback note mechanically the disturbance to the soil from the prior buried utilities.

I have no comment on the other stories, calling them dousing doesn't make them so.

They are related, but not neccesarily of the same genus, let alone species.

milo

In my case Milo that couldn't be the case.... the water board guy directed me over a newly tarmaced road, so it was smooth and the pipe wasn't at the crown of the road it was off to one side, I didn't have a clue as to where it was but every time I crossed the point the rods crossed and then uncrossed as I walked on....

I can't explain it nor could the water board guy, except to say that he had been told if all else fails try it, and it worked!!!

Truly a great explanation of a man who is not comfortable with the unexplained. I too do not feel it is unexplainable. Rather unexplained. The one you offered would not suit my situation either. I feel it has something to do with magnetics.

Or gypsy voodoo.

CR3

Had to cut for a moment. Now to finish.

I think it has something to do with magnetic/electromagnetic disturbance caused by accumulation of fluid conductor (H2O) on earth and recvd by the poles of the detector.

or Gypsy voodoo

I have seen it work and seen it not work.

The sticks does not work with me but knowing a bit about the underlying geology in an area even I can "show" water because water would be almost everywhere.

I would say the test of a dousing doctor can only be proven if he could find water in an arid area. It is hard to find a film size crack with water leaking through at a depth of 30 to 90m.

My sisters son claims to be capable of detecting the position, size and direction of water pipes and electric cables (without any apparatus). I haven't seen him done water but I have seen him detect the whereabouts of an eclectic conduit in a wall.

When we were walking past some workers fixing a strip against the wall he stopped and told the worker he cannot drill the hole where he intended to. The worker did not believe him because the mark was intentionally drilled far away from the line where a vertical pipe above the switch would be. Needless to say he drilled into the conduit, sparks and the lights went out. How I don't know but he says it is because he has A negative blood. (I have O positive, would I fail a blood test?).

You're all certifiably nuts! Did the drilling contractor then go on to explain to you just how badly you community needed a monorail?

Dousing does not work. It's one of those anecdotal things. Every time dousing is conducted in a controlled scientific setting, it fails.

As for the wires in each hand, yes, I've done that too. But, with a little objectiveness, I realized that I was the one making the wires cross. The slightest turn in the wrist (and I'm talking really really slight) makes them swing closer together. This is the same muscle action that psychologists have known about for years, and is the cause for the motion of the planchette on a Ouija board.

As far as walking over a hose with running water... Could you get any more subjective?!

They may help one find things, but the real driving force is a hunch, which causes your posture and grip to change very slightly. If you have a good hunch, bingo, you've scored, but remove the hunch as in above mentioned scientific experiments and the magic disappears - Poof!!!

There are many homesteads throughout the world over the last few thousand years which would be without water were it not for 'dowsing'.

Wether it be showmanship, luck or an ability to read the geomophology doesn't really matter.

It's value is proportional to the value of water produced. My Father in Law knew a guy in Africa who went round with a drilling rig and drilled bore holes (he used dowsing) it was always on a no water no fee basis.

Finding water by whatever method is vastly more valuable than being able to acurately kick a soccer ball with a lot of top/side spin ...Mr Beckham please note!

In most of these homesteads, I'd bet that the more common way to find water was to just dig a deep hole. Aquifers have a tendency to be rather large if you can get to them.

One more point... When I saw that there was one updated discussion, I immediately knew it was going to be this thread. Does this make me psychic? (Well, in my case, yes.) In your case it would have been a darn good hunch based on the timbre of the earlier post.

Maybe we are just discussing semantics?

Self evidently there are people who can find water and some who have no idea...

If I was one of the later I would happily pay one of the former to find it!

Same as today there are some who can't change the wheel on their car and will happilly pay someone else to do it!

When I saw that there was one updated discussion, I immediately knew it was going to be this thread. Does this make me psychic?

Yeh..I kew you were going to say that!

Now Verm ...about my wasps...

I don't know why but every thing I said to make you laugh never worked. you're obviously in no laughing mood. But I don't want to be a pin chusion, nor do I deserve to be. So, I'll make you a deal, I won't try to make you laugh, and you back off.

Hey..sorry old chap!

I must have got the wrong vibe...but I certainly wasn't having a go!

I did do the grinning emoticon thing...hey we're both sad now.....

Transatlantic humour missmatch syndrome... maybe Kris 'll come and bump our heads together, and tell us to make up!

cher Del,

and cheer up too, please ?

I don't think you need me - you're purrfectly matched. You can play merrily together, I hope .

I am just a Tad interested in mechanical, technical, and scientific things, and a skeptic. I was raised by my grandparents and old world lore was a major factor in their lifes, and things I seen from Granny, a White Witch or in today's lingo, a herbalist and Pap's ability as a Dowsing Witch lead me to pursue my career path.

Funny thing these days, the brilliant research people keep doing studies and announcing Granny's cures fact.

I believe Dowsing, as it is spelled up here in PA Dutch Country and Herbal Remedies tend to be the opposite of Theory.

As most of us found out early in our careers, Theory works fine in the classroom, but often needs to get pitched in the field.

Thus said, I am proud to be certifiably nuts as it also taught me love and compassion, because most of these things were done from the heart and not money.

Ah, maybe that is a key to success, compassion not greed.

So to the Posters who are willing to accept the unexplained they have seen work, much success in future endeavors and Pssssst to the non-believers.

Most times we just put too much thought into something and miss a good thing.

"Theory works fine in the classroom, but often needs to get pitched in the field."

One of my favorite sayings:

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But in practice, there is."

"You're all certifiably nuts!"

This is the same terminology renowned physicists call Einstein during his era for the very same reason you are having.

I'm no Einstein, but I always believe that there are still some things left to be fathomed.

oh mr vermin ....i will beg to differ with you and will in fact be quite happy to take your money proving it, as i have from many "professional locators". in Illinois the organization is called J.U.L.I.E (joint utility locating in excavating) and since i "learned" from an old crabby farmer when i was a teenager and realized i could in fact actually "do" this i have taken several hundred dollars in wagers from them in IL and in other states by out locating them over the last 30 yrs.... i can and have located within 6" vertical, plastic, clay, and metal pipes for gas, water, sewer, power and phone lines in and out of conduit or raceway , in concrete and earth, and even found our camera when i was working for an underground televising service when we lost it in the middle of an open field almost 600 ft out televising a drain tile... i find that welding rods light ,about 1/8 maybe 7014 or so work just fine but in a pinch a metal coat hanger will work nicely

It's great to have someone among us who can prove dowsing works. I'm sure you are pretty excited to hear of the Randi prize. Please keep us informed as you prepare to claim it, and then in fact go on to claim it. We are prepared to cheer for you. This will certainly make the $hundreds in wagers you earned seem like small potatoes.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

I'm exhausted.

Some may have a go at it with compelling, short arguments, some for the lack of the latter, may try long tedious squirming apologetics, filled with overwhelming amounts of reference, probably thinking that wearing out the opponent, is as good as winning them.

Each, according to their track-record and past experience...

I herewith offer one zillion US dollars to anyone who can disprove the existence of the afterlife, to my personal complete satisfaction...

WTF...!

Has this become the very detailed spam-spot for this Victor Zammit fella?

I too am tired. whew. But when people first started suggesting the 'Randi' I knew I was arguing the close-minded. And they are a group who seem to have forgotten the beauty of science. A time when anything is possible. I try not to speak much to the close minded. They have always proven such a dull bunch. Predictably so.

If our government (U.S.) is spending large sums of money on paranormal shouldn't that indicate something?

Oh.

Well maybe that wasn't the best example. Never mind.

But when people first started suggesting the 'Randi' I knew I was arguing the close-minded.

I suppose we can characterize the scientific types here as close-minded, and the anti-scientific types as moronically gullible nitwits. But to what end? Ad hominem attacks never advance a cause. If you have a reference to a controlled experiment in which dowsing has been shown to work, then present that reference: it would certainly advance your argument. If all you can do is call others "a dull bunch" you will find you've 1. eroded your argument substantially, and 2. made yourself appear rather rude.

To each his own.

Mmmm. moronically something something.

Look Mr Fry. As you lead the charge against what you speak of as unnecessary by use of unnecessary language.

At the beginning of any debate there are at least 2 sides. Those sides pull whatever arguments they deem valuable in the promotion of cause at hand. Mr Randi's challenge has as much merit as my eye witness account. My eyewitness account does not satisfy empirical science therefore no merit. Mr. Randi's criteria is not held to empirical standards, thus no merit.

The problem lies, for me, with the notion that everything begins with the empirical.

there must be some leap of faith in which the test environment is modified to sustain results, as they might occur or be achievable in say space not earth. Or in water not air. Until some keystone of the cause at hand is established the empirical might not ever be established.

To suggest that all who think that phenom such as the one discussed here is utterly nonsense and no more than a charlatans bit of trickery, or a bunch of simple minded pea brains accepting the earth is flat, is to me, at this point, utterly nonsense.

I fully agree, encourage and support the testing of such to empirical satisfaction. However, we must accept some part of the unknown as valid in spite of evidence be readily quantified through math. Dear god man, we do this all the time in science. That is the beauty of it. we allow a flexible origin to be hard-lined as result. It is the mathematical equal to a potter spinning a vase. The image exists in the artists mind, and is evidenced in the final product which may or may not exactly match the initial image.

When science has no pulse it is a sad day. Mr Fry I encourage you to check yours.

In the meantime I found your language most offensive and unwarranted.

What is a four letter word for a device to lift a car or heavy load? what is a three letter word for a mule?

You seem to missed the point entirely, and appear to want to dig your whole deeper.

My suggestion was that simply calling people "close-minded" or "a dull bunch" does nothing to advance your argument. (That argument is not crystal clear to me, but it appears to be that dowsing works as advertised by the dowsers.) I gather that you think I was calling you (or perhaps someone else here) a moronically gullible nitwit. If you reread my post, you sill see I was not. What I said is that simply calling poeple names, such as "close-minded" or "a dull bunch" does no more to advance your argument then calling people "moronically gullible nitwits" would advance my argument.

That point seems pretty simple, and it is widely agreed that ad hominem arguments are counterproductive.

To draw attention to ad hominem arguments by couching them in grade school riddles makes them all the more counterproductive. If you want to call me a jackass, then simple do so. That would reek less of grade school antics, and would make your arguments (many of which I might tend to agree with) a bit easier to swallow.

But that's only my opinion, Best to conduct yourself in the way in which you are comfortable, I suppose.

What can be offensive about requesting a controlled experiment to confirm or reject a theory? (or several, for that matter - in science an experiment is only considered proof if that experiment can be duplicated by at least one other unrelated person or group)

Francis Bacon

"The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy (science); for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never been made), much may be hoped."

This is my point. Where IS the science. Where are those who can perform this agreeably strange feat and are willing to do so in the presence of a scientific community. And likewise, why is math satisfactory theoretical evidence for so many principles that are little more than weak kneed leaps of faith.

I am so very disappointed at seeing men who would rather wet their lips with their own disagreeable tongues than take the time to reevaluate the possibilities and offer up their knowledge in an effort to conclude with a reasonable solution or even a possible solution. I have challenged bullies all my life and know one when I hear one. I am now a writer. I am an artist. I am a spiritual man. I am an inventor and designer with as much right to expression as the mathematician. I have worked with great engineers, respectable scientists and held the title of scientist myself. I have seen things on this planet done by these men that I will always carry with me. I have also seen the miracle of the unexplained realized in the eyes and hearts of skeptics. My personal feelings are not excluded when taking on issues that are of interest to me (yes I know). However, as an adult who has been around the world enough to know that we aren't all going to agree and that some are inflexible I continue to seek out the same empirical evidence as any other scientist and to play by the same rules. I am so very willing to accept that I am wrong. I, in fact, approach each problem encountered in life as if I might be wrong (it's called humility). I cherish the philosophy of science to my core. It is the bit of dust on the lab floor these days, yet I am not above the janitor.

I feel that science, when allowed, is the purest art. A beautiful thing that we are able to conceive some idea of our origins. I apall those who feel science is the end all be all. I respect them to the point of the discipline it requires to learn and to teach. I despise them to the point they take that knowledge up like a club.

Walk outside. Look up. Try as much as possible to stop the thoughts. Imagine what the universe sounded like before the Bang. Think of something bigger than yourself. What ever you want it to be, breathe it in and respect life more than science.

If it is a hole I dig bury me in it. I have no fear. I respect the men and women of this forum greatly. All of them. The potential within is most incredible. We are not all alike but it does seem we are eager to learn, and share.

Respectfully,

Charles R Rummel III

As for childish riddles; I also have a sense of humor, as I thought the dull bunch comment indicated well. Apparently not.

Yes! That is the correct and respectable approach to all such questions.

I hope you read and comment on my latest (second and third, I believe) entries (167 and 168) to this forum.

Ed

this is more philosphy than science. Depending on an individual mind's temperment he will naturally drift away from science into religion with the following

"

Walk outside. Look up. Try as much as possible to stop the thoughts. Imagine what the universe sounded like before the Bang. Think of something bigger than yourself. What ever you want it to be, breathe it in and respect life more than science.

I"

Has everyone forgotten Houdini and his work in outing the occult. Also, what about his challenge? No one has come up with the secret.

Maybe when we die, we just don't care about this crap anymore.

Randi's offer has apparently always been illegitimate.

I read through as much of the Victor Zammit rant as I could, and read parts of several of his linked articles, but could find nothing in there that supports your contention that Randi's offer is illegitimate. Clearly Victor Zammit would like us to think that Randi and other skeptics and scientists are are somehow illegitimate, wrong-headed, or closed-minded... but I could find nothing that actually makes that case. To be honest, his writing came across an astonishingly wordy and convoluted rambling diatribe to me. Perhaps others found it informative in some way.

What did you see in all this that made you conclude that the JREF is illegitimate. Have they ever been exposed as such by any news organization, scientific association, or university?

"Perhaps others found it informative in some way."

Not I...

"...It is in no way the job of the scientific community in any way to disprove the claims of the so called paranormal but rather the job of the claimant to prove that what they are claiming is in deed real and true..."

At last, some sanity

Hello, all. I'm the one that posted the Victor Zammit stuff, not realizing the stir that would cause. In fact, I think that was my first post to this forum. I don't even have a 'position' on dowsing but wanted to mention that Randi may not be a trustworthy challenger in all areas. (Years ago, I bought a copy of his book Flim-Flam and still think much of it is excellent and that frauds should be exposed - always.)

But, I feel "exercised" (as the Exclusives Branch of the Plymouth Brethren my parents forced me to endure as a child, would say) to add some sanity to this discussion. I'm going to cite some history and reveal a lot here...

From an early age (5? 7?) I was a skeptic and was sure my parents were misguided fanatics; I wanted to prove their beliefs wrong. I carefully read and accumulated notes from reading parts of several bibles (especially Darby and King James) and concluded they certainly contained errors; [that culminated in a 35-page letter I wrote to my sister in the mid '90's, providing hundreds (?) of examples that the bible had easily-verified errors, contradictions, and almost-certain myths, all for the purpose of exploding her belief that the bible was the perfect word of God. (For a copy, email me with that request...eriess@cinci.rr.com.)] I read material on reincarnation, bought books on hypnosis, and began hypnotizing others when I was 14. Over many years of hypnotizing people for age-regression study, and after reading Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation by Ian Stevenson (a recently deceased professor at the U of VA - see http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/books/stevenson.htm) I decided that despite strong evidence it was not possible to prove that reincarnation is real since other paranormal phenomena couldn't be ruled-out as suppliers of details about others' lives. [The most interesting session was with a middle-class black man who was an extraordinarily good hypnosis subject who described his most-recent earlier-life as a member of a highly racially prejudiced white family living in the "territory" of Kentucky in the mid 1700's. (I just now looked-up the date of statehood for KY - June 1 1792.) He remembered nothing of the more-than-one-hour session and was surprised when his wife told him about his confessions. (The reason I chose to study reincarnation research is probably obvious - if reincarnation was a fact, then the 'one-time chance for salvation' concept couldn't be true.]

By the time I had finished a BSEE program (U of R, 1970) I had witnessed or heard second-hand about a few paranormal events that convinced me that humans were more than their physical bodies. Even the IEEE Journal (the Spectrum, I think - I've lost my copy) had a many-page article on verified paranormal phenomena, including an area I'd known to be sufficiently demonstrated: ESP. [As one example: a close friend of a fellow student I was dating, had a female friend who had a fiancé in Viet Nam; this soldier was shot and called her name at the time, confirmed later, that she awoke hearing his voice and "knowing" he'd been injured.] [As a second example: I visited a Spiritualist church in Rochester; since I'd lived on the opposite side of the city and knew no one and had spoken to no one at that church except the young woman I'd talked into accompanying me, I felt quite sure that if I were given a message of statistical significance, it could possibly be real. Sitting in a "circle" into which it cost something like fifty cents to enter, I was the fourth (?) person who would be "read" by one of three or four visiting mediums on this "medium Sunday". By the time this person moved to my position, I was ready to tell him that I believed him to be phony and that nothing I'd heard sounded more impressive than general comments that could apply to anyone. After about thirty seconds of what sounded like the same sort of generality, he stopped his customary peering into the upper extremities of the room and looked directly at me and asked, "Do you have a brother who died?" I replied that I did, having lost my brother in the crash of a small plane that was carrying him home for a vacation while on leave from Chanute Air Force Base. After asking that question, he continued to look directly at me, and said, exactly, (I think), "He's here with me now and he's telling me that you have a horrible relationship with your mother and he wants you to do something about it." Since that accusation was accurate, reflecting the way I blamed my mother for family misunderstandings that grew from religious fanaticism, I thought the message was not something he could have known, and not even from my conscious mind. (To answer an anticipated question, the resolution of my relationship with my long-suffering mother was several years later after I took a course called the est training that helped me to mature enough to realize the real worth and loving nature of my mother.)]

I sought evidence for our human reality wherever it seemed to lie. About 1971 I visited J. B. Rhine at Duke University at his FRNM (or Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man) and the Edgar Cayce foundation at Virginia Beach. Rhine's work mostly involved statistical verification of "psi" phenomena which helped to assure me of the reality of the paranormal, while Cayce's work seemed too obtuse to be completely believed. I still didn't know enough about the "reality" we seem to share; I just knew that something existed outside of our physical universe.

I saw a 1987 newspaper ad for a local meeting of the Cincinnati Chapter of IANDS, the International Association for Near Death Studies (www.iands.org), at a Swedenborgian church, scheduled this time to be a pot-luck supper. Shortly after I arrived, I heard about a new visitor who'd had an unusually profound experience. I sought-out this man and sat across from him for about two hours, recording our entire conversation on a microcassette recorder. His experience is one of the most publicized "negative" near death experiences. I was impressed by his very evident sincerity and besides being interesting, his experience suggested a great deal about the nature of human reality that was consistent with what I'd tended to think after my research. For me, his experience, along with accounts of other NDE's, opened-up a new source of evidence for our human reality. His name is Howard Storm and we've been good friends since that time. (Searching for his name will bring-up numerous references to his experience; a condensed version of his experience is available from me...)

I eventually became (for a few years) the local contact person for that NDE group. I recorded several of Howard's talks (and have given copies to many people); I've attended two IANDS international conferences, read books written by NDE researchers (several with whom I've become acquainted), written a long manuscript about implications and applications of information derived from NDE's, appeared on a few talk programs, and given a talk on paranormal stuff before a local Historical Society, all basically because the NDE information is respectably consistent and sometimes at least partly verified, as was the out-of-body portion of my wife's NDE (experienced decades before I met her), a written account of which follows this paragraph.

My NDE occurred after being accidentally shot, over thirty years ago, when in my early twenties. I told a visiting girlfriend to call the emergency number on the telephone and then slowly sank to the floor and lost consciousness. I suddenly regained what seemed to be full consciousness and saw life squad medics questioning my friend but getting little information because she seemed hysterical. I tried to interrupt them and explain what happened but no one was listening to me, which I thought was rude. I noticed that my husband was in another room with two policemen who were questioning him. He kept insisting he had been at work when I was shot.

It was then that I noticed my body lying on the floor. I realized that I was not in a body, but rather was something like a vaporous form, almost like a ball of light, and that when I watched my husband being questioned in another room I could see into the entire house from above everything. I noticed my body on the floor and it seemed like a lifeless thing at this point, and I felt no connection to it. I felt peaceful and totally without discomfort except for a feeling of sorrow, bordering on pity, for the people worrying about me since everything that was happening seemed unimportant. I also "knew" a vast range of things without knowing how I knew them. I knew that I could change my position by just willing it, and that I couldn't permanently leave the body until it was dead. I wanted it to die so that I could just leave, but knew that if the medics began to work on the body I was not going to leave.

The medics put my body on a stretcher to carry it to the ambulance. As they reached the back porch, I felt slammed back into my body, suddenly feeling more pain than I had ever experienced. The pain caused me to pass out the first of several times before finally receiving medical attention.

Up to that time, I had been a passive and very religious person. After my experience I felt no one could intimidate me because I saw everyone as the same. I knew that people are supposed to be accepting and non-judgmental of each other, and to let our love shine. Each person is supposed to be loving and kind. Until you have an NDE, you can't really understand that, because out of your body, you are pure love. When you go back, your human instincts tend to take over so it's difficult to maintain the experience of purity. It's easy to talk to a person who has had an NDE about what you believe but it's usually difficult to talk about that with someone who hasn't had such an experience.

I knew that my experience had been real because I later told my husband and my friend what I'd heard and seen during that time and they agreed that I couldn't have witnessed most of what I saw from the position of my body.

Again, much of that is consistent with other NDE accounts, no matter what the experiencer has believed beforehand. Facts like those, and the fact that about 2-3% of the world's population has had something akin to a near death experience, make my interest in NDE's greater than any other seeming-to-be source of information. In fact, what I think is likely true for all human beings (based on many accounts from people from various cultures), (1) NDE's are real and indicate that our consciousness can be (and perhaps always is?) separate from the hardware of our brains, (2) all humans are part of a system that includes (and may even germinate from?) a spiritual reality and as such have life purposes, (3) within this system, no inherent inferiority or superiority can be justifiably claimed by any race, class, or either sex, and (4) all humans are in a learning mode (and perhaps even in karmic situations, but that's far from certain) for the purpose of achieving ever-greater something-or-other (enlightenment? spirituality? closeness with God?) (I made a longer and much-better list at one time; this is just "off the top of my head".) Internalizing these principles naturally tends to remove the justifications for crime, aggression, prejudice, and privilege.

Consider any of the world's problems involving interactions between people and imagine the automatic changes that would result if perpetrators bought-into this reality. Criminals often think their own lives and the lives of their victims are unimportant. Many people feel there's no purpose to life and there's no reason to not take advantage of others. Whole cultures think that God is on their sides and feel justified in dominating or even eradicating others. If enlightened people know these things, and there's ample evidence that this knowledge is universally correct, why not spend time and money researching the evidence for these principles and attacking the real causes of conflicts and crimes with such transformative information? It's unfortunate that this information challenges the hearts of peoples' values and beliefs, and reversing brainwashing might require the passage of whole generations. I've realized that and tried to focus on methods of collecting the best and most irrefutable evidence and then finding a way to present it. It takes much more than a good research effort, with an appropriate article written in a prestigious magazine, to turn the heads of all the world's leaders. (One such article on a respectable research effort is in a 2001 issue of The Lancet titled "Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands" (Vol 358, December 15, 2001) available by reaching the web address http://www.zarqon.co.uk/Lancet.pdf. Reproduced here are two sections of one paragraph from that article:

With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven, concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed. How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?

... blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this experience. NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation.

Now to comments on people that seem to be convinced that all claims regarding paranormal events are false, be they lies, frauds, or the results of ignorance. I may be in error about James Randi, but my memories of past observations and news accounts of his activities make me suspect he's in this group. In 1990 my wife and I attended a publicized meeting of a local "skeptics" organization. We arrived just before the meeting began, so had no chance to meet and talk with other attendees.

The meeting began with a short talk by a large, dark-haired and spectacled man who was almost giddy about magazine and newspaper articles he was reading aloud. These articles spoke of events directed by people's faith and beliefs, such as the death of a child who was denied medical help by a Christian Scientist parent, the promise that city crime would be reduced by a critical mass of Transcendental Meditation mantra-chanters, or the pilgrimage of thousands to a site where Mary was to appear. The fifty-or-so persons in the audience were enthusiastic. (Of course, I was prone to similarly laughing at a number of them.)

After this arrogance and sarcasm, another man presented a lengthy talk on the ignorance of superstitious mankind. At the end of that talk, the audience seemed even more pleased.

His talk was followed by a comment and question period moderated by the same large man who had introduced the speaker. Members of the audience began to add short stories of their own. Their criticism of the spiritual and paranormal was total, leaving no possibility for the extraordinary. I was moving closer and closer to feeling compelled to speak.

There was no need to stand in that small room to be noticed by everyone. I have wished since then that I'd packed a cassette recorder. Near the end of the comment period, I raised my hand, as had others, for recognition. In a slow, even, and I might even say dignified manner, I told the group that with the great evidence that existed for several kinds of paranormal events, ranging from the statistical significance of psi phenomena studied by Dr. Rhine at Duke University to the strong evidence for the reality of near death experiences, I couldn't understand how they could ignore those publicized events and presume them false. I mentioned my personal knowledge of events, such as an instance of verified telepathy between a U.S. soldier in Vietnam and his fiancé in Rochester New York, and the ghostly appearance to a friend of her mother at the exact time of her death. For several minutes I was given silent and serious attention. That period was followed by one of the most memorable experiences of my life. In a cascade of response, several people in the audience, in succession, blurted out paranormal stories of their own to the great displeasure of the large man in the front who was now being interrupted by his audience. A woman to my right said that she'd seen a ghost and wanted to tell everyone about it. Another person admitted to also seeing a ghost. Others, all now directing their attention to my wife and me, were competing to tell us of their own experiences. Some began to ask for comments from me, and I would limit my responses to statements like, "That's interesting." After five or ten minutes of this new direction, the moderator succeeded in closing the meeting, and my wife and I prepared to leave. As we rose and walked the few steps to the room's rear door, at least a quarter of the audience followed us out of the room and down an L-shaped hallway toward the main elevators, asking questions and making supportive comments along the way. Feeling disinclined to stop and field questions in a narrow hallway, and very aware that I had disrupted a meeting of otherwise zealous agnostics, we headed the group down the packed elevator to the lobby and disengaged from them with a parting wish that they include such events in their future discussions.

Most apparent from this interaction was the excitement displayed by this audience over the prospect of learning more of the real truth about our existence. Seemingly equally apparent was their initial desire to comfort themselves by feeling that they "had it all figured out", possibly helping them to avoid feelings of uncertainty, fear, or perhaps even religion-engendered guilt.

A most-ambitious step in making use of this material could involve proactive , open-minded, non-prejudiced researchers that would think far out-of-the-box (and perhaps have an Out-Of-The-Box Experience) and attempt to reach the terrorists and violence-perpetrating people of the world. In recent discussions with a British web-casting station devoted to bringing-together Jews and Muslims, Radio Salaam Shalom, their cooperation has been given to poll their listeners and attempt to acquire the participation of the near death experiencers among them. Here's the text of our most recent correspondence and it amounts to "copy" they can use to explain this program to their listeners on a regular basis.

Reasons for Hope – Human Interconnectedness Revealed in the Near Death Experience

Radio Salaam Shalom is participating in a program to identify people that have had a near death experience, or NDE. An NDE is not to be confused with a "close call" like a near-collision on an icy street. Instead, an NDE involves conscious awareness and perception of one's environment perceived without use of one's normal senses of sight, hearing, touch, and smell. An NDE usually occurs when a person is experiencing physical or emotional trauma, or is very ill or even temporarily clinically dead, having no detectable brain activity or heartbeat.

NDE's are somewhat dependent upon the circumstances preceding them. In vehicle accidents, for example, experiencers suddenly became observers watching and hearing the events unfold from positions above the vehicles. During surgeries, as another example, experiencers suddenly regained consciousness and watched from the ceiling as the OR staff worked to keep them alive. Some experiencers even felt themselves float out of their bodies before assuming these viewing positions.

In many circumstances, experiencers had a heightened consciousness and expanded awareness of their environments, sometimes seeing colors not visible to us, and sometimes knowing the thoughts of people around them. Where possible, these perceptions were confirmed to have been real.

Frequently, these perceptions were precursors of even-more-extraordinary experiences during which people were immersed into a different reality where they communicated with one or more non-physical beings usually manifested as beings of light and sometimes recognized as deceased loved ones. They say this different reality is a spiritual realm in which they felt acceptance and unconditional love.

It's common for experiencers to receive a flood of knowledge about their own lives and their individual roles in the reality that encompasses the entire universe. They are frequently given a life review during which they learn how their interactions affected the lives of others. At some point, either they, or the beings of light, initiate the return to their bodies.

Following their NDE's, people often say the experiences were more real and more profound than anything previously experienced. They claim to have received an expanded understanding of life and their life's purpose causing them to adopt a golden rule philosophy and a certainty that all humans are interconnected and equal parts of a universal plan, irrespective of culture, religion, sex, or social status.

It's likely that many listeners to this station have had a near death experience because polls indicate that NDE's have been experienced by about 2 – 3% of the world's population. That means that at least one hundred million people have had an NDE, all of whom feel that terrorism and intercultural/inter-sectarian violence are inconsistent with mankind's purpose and destiny.

If near death experiences truly reveal this essence of human existence, they lend the strongest validation of our mission here at Radio Salaam Shalom, and provide a most hopeful possibility for humans achieving their full potential.

What we're hoping to achieve, and the reasons for this hope

Copernicus and Galileo confirmed earlier theories that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Still, acceptance of their heliocentric concept took more than one hundred years due to conflicting religious beliefs. Today, after thirty years of evidence that near death experiences are real and relevant to our lives, their acceptance is similarly limited, ironically not only by religious beliefs but by defenders of mainstream science that reject anything metaphysical. Even more ironic is the possibility that discoveries in modern physics will confirm at least one theorized "other-dimension" and find it to be that already experienced by millions of NDEers, many of whom confirmed that parts of their experiences, during their out-of-body excursions, were real.

Because the millions of NDEers are so adamant about human interconnectedness, equality, and the importance of human life, it is a hopeful suspicion that large numbers of them, speaking with one voice, can become a public outcry against terrorism and other violence.

With publicity generating increased awareness of NDE's, other experiencers would provide hearty endorsement, no longer fearing being labeled "crazy". Perpetually-increasing numbers of participating experiencers would be continually newsworthy. Eventually, this large number of experiencers and the duration of publicity could produce the most powerfully unifying force in human history. It could drastically shorten the time required for world leaders to understand that the practices of compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and good-faith negotiation offer the most promising options for peaceful coexistence.

How people can become involved in this project

Radio Salaam Shalom is asking listeners that have had an NDE to participate in this program. To do so, simply send a blank-page email to a web address that will be announced momentarily. You will be sent a questionnaire that you will be asked to complete and return. A research group will statistically evaluate the near-death-experience information and participants will be informed of the results by email.

The email address to make this contact is ndepeaceproposal@cinci.rr.com. That address again is ndepeaceproposal@cinci.rr.com. This address can be found on our website. Again, that address is ndepeaceproposal@cinci.rr.com.

Near death experiences are clearly transformative events and capitalizing on their prevalence may prove that this peace-promoting phenomenon is a genuine natural resource. We agree that it is time to continue the conversation, promote more NDE research, and publicize information about our shared reality to help erode the worldwide condition that stifles our civilization with historical prejudices and ignorance.

So, that's about enough rambling for one day. Please realize, though, that I've barely scratched the surface of just the germane material that is in my computer. I didn't really know 'where I was going' when I began this response to the responders to my Randi comments, and all of it (except for parts pasted-in from previous writings) was generated at this sitting. Maybe this will be useful and some fellow engineer-types will be clever- and motived-enough to offer great suggestions about how to begin to employ NDE information to the world's 'good' (or maybe provide great editing and far-surpass the readability of my own writing). I can't think of anything that could be more important. If we can't figure-out how to use this information to educate the planet, in the face of the evidence that exists to show it's "real", perhaps we're the dummies.

Now, I'd love to hear the comments that THIS generates...

Ed Riess, EE, CNIM

eriess@cinci.rr.com

I forgot to mention a most-interesting event that relates to gambling. My wife recently retired after seventeen years as a registered assistant at Merrill Lynch. ML has often thrown somewhat-lavish parties and one was at the local horse track. With others observing and listening to our conversation, I instructed her to look-over the racing form and see if any of the horses' names seemed to show-up brighter or as if lifted-off the page. She pointed to one without hesitation and I told her that horse was quite unlikely to be a winner because it was a "50:1 shot'. We bet $2 on the horse for that race and won just over $100. This was just one of numerous remarkable psychic (?) awarenesses that my (part Cherokee) wife has demonstrated in the last sixteen-plus years, and hers are less frequent than those of her mother who has even had prior visions of events that have happened. As one example of her many experiences, there's this: while driving to a pharmacy when she was instructed not to do so for medical reasons, she had the following unusual experience. That mother has always refused to wear her seat belt for expressed reasons of its being uncomfortable. After leaving the pharmacy, she distinctly heard a male voice (that sounded like a physical, air-moving vocalization) tell her to buckle (or use?) her seat belt. Upon that direct instruction, she complied and, minutes later, unaware of stopped cars in front of her (due to sun-blindness, I think), struck a line of stopped cars at about 35 MPH. As a result of her having the seat belt employed, she escaped with only bruises to her chest and face where, otherwise, she would have been far-more injured.

This was added just to provide more evidence of the "psi" events we live with, but which obviously are events that are difficult to produce and reproduce in a laboratory.

Ed Riess

Thank you for identifying yourself.

While your posts were almost as long as 'the Victor Zammit stuff', at least yours are coherent and do not sound like rants, as did the original post. I was able to read all of yours - I couldn't stand the rant, although like Blink, I did follow a couple of the links, which showed me nothing.

I myself had an NDE (though so long ago that I no longer remember anything significant about it) and believe I have experienced long-distance (over a thousand miles) ESP on at least a couple of occasions. The difference is that I wonder which natural phenomenon make this possible, rather than attributing it to something supernatural. (eg. our brains are partly electrical, and the varying electrical currents MUST transmit some form of signal (brain waves). Now how do I unconsciously receive and 'tune in' to the brain waves of someone a long distance away?)

Dick

Hey, Dick!

How about this... There's this thing in the natural world called Quantum Mechanics that tells us all sorts of interesting things about how particles can move instantaneously from one location to another, and that other particles may not really exist completely in one place or another, AND even that two or more particles can get entangled over vast distances!!! On and on!

Now, what is the only thing we know of that is made of matter, is based on and affected by all of these quantum effects, AND at the same time is aware of these quantum effects? How about YOUR BRAIN?! Is there any possibility that we can through thought cause a quantum effect to occur in a backward manner - thought to reality.

We do believe that the outcome of quantum experiments can be altered by our observing them. Is it possible that we are simply looking at the "tip of the iceberg?" Can we find the link that allows our quantum-based thoughts to feedback and affect our quantum reality? Beats me! What do you think?

Hi Vermin!

Ya got me there! I'm afraid I have some kind of mental block preventing me from understanding Quantum Mechanics - maybe this dog is just too old to learn that trick...

It IS an intriguing possibility. How far can these quantum jumps go?

Dick

Quantum Mechanics is only a fancy title for the most reliable (so far) description of the interaction between electrons protons and neutrons. Sure, photons and neutrinos are sometimes involved, but basically it's about how atoms are composed and react with each other.

You probably gave way to the fad of "Quantum Weird Magic" (Schroedinger's cat, Heisenberg's uncertainty, Pauli's exclusion. etc.), which is only there to ward off determinists and to attract the stiff-necks, those boring formalists, who think our reality is too mundane to ponder on it's clockworking.

Magic just means you don't understand the science and technology behind what you are seeing.

Right, or it may mean that some facets of reality are too ambiguous for deterministic definition: If an electron (for instance) is a dispersed cloud of potential energy, and it's wave-function is "hazy" or "smeared" at given areas, it may simply mean that's it is not a "rigid", defined entity, but a force-field of sort.

The same is of a particle by-passing an obstacle (The famous slit experiment) from both sides at-once. The particle / wave duality may be called magic, but it's really not. It simply demonstrates a "micro-dimension" type of behaviour, which is somewhat alien to our "macro-dimension" type of experience, of solid, defined objects, with a reasonably predictable behaviour.

Rigid, solid objects and their typical behaviour, are products of our "Macro-Scale" realm, not that of the of the very minute, atomic, "Micro-Scale", with it's own typical behaviour, where your actual measuring, is considered an active intervention, with the consequence to measure, as known from Heisenberg's work.

It's not like we can clearly divide the world to say that the micro is un-deterministic, the macro is deterministic, and the cosmological is again un-deterministic, because each of those scales have both, depending on the phenomenon you aim for, but generally speaking, it's somewhat possible to generalise this way. Barely, only just.

Hi Dick,

Thanks for your message. Since I'm an electrical engineer and have worked with RF much of that time (and before that time, as a ham operator) I began with the same logic that you're relating; namely that the operative mechanism must be physical and therefore it should be measurable and modifiable (i.e., absorbed by a Faraday cage or screen room, for example). But when you apply the same principles to an ESP communication process that you'd apply to an RF system, you are forced to deal with the unforgiving constants of S/N (signal to noise ratio), noise figure (quantifying the noise produced in the early stages of the receiver), path loss, bandwidth, transmit power, antenna gain and directionality, and signal correlation and discrimination (implying, in this case, that the transmitter's brain waves are processing the complexity of visual images and thoughts in the same manner as the receiver so that the communication can occur. Alas, (and I think I've never had the opportunity to use that word!) factoring-in all of those parameters, including your own statement that the ESP you think you experienced was over 1000 miles (which was certainly true for the young woman I wrote about who awoke hearing the voice of her injured fiancé), one is left with the only possible conclusion - the communication is not detectable under these conditions.

It is, admittedly, amazing that calculations for a usable RF link show the received power to be extremely small. For example, in a former application for a wireless security system (Pro-Com Systems, Inc.), a 5W transmitter would send a signal from, in many cases, the attic of a home in a residential area. This signal would be picked-up at a site twenty miles away with a receiving antenna on a 100-foot tower that fed a receiver at the base. All parameters considered, the receiver would be getting a signal that was about - I can't remember - somewhere between -112 and -122 dBm (where 0 dBm = 1 mW). Converting this (actual, calculated figure) to voltage and calculating the power into the 50-ohm input impedance, the received power turned-out to be one two-thousandth of a millionth of a microwatt. Presumably, neither the ESP receiver nor the ESP transmitter are at a high elevation (where the propagation is higher), neither is actually radiating any brainwave signals with appreciable power (since brain waves on the scalp are only microvolts and therefore "transmitting" into a free-space impedance with less than nanowatts), received signals would be drowned-out by the interference of nearby "transmitters" (other people), and the quantity of transmitted information (for carrying images and thoughts) would require (analog or digital) data packets that, at brainwave frequencies, would require many minutes to transmit. What's more, the sizes of our heads (i.e., antennas) would require frequencies of hundreds of megahertz (minimum) for any efficiency to be realized in the antenna-factor parameter involved, and such frequencies are above the MUF, or maximum usable frequency for "skip" of the signal past the horizon...so, there's no chance such communication could be a physical phenomenon. Of course, it also doesn't account for a near death experiencer "returning" to waking consciousness claiming to have been told by a deceased relative that they had a baby brother they hadn't known about, all of which was confirmed by the experiencer's parents; it also doesn't account for the deceased ancestor who imparted such information, never known by the experiencer, able to be identified in family photos as the person who had told them such details (but of course, this is all in the category of anecdote and unable to be confirmed).

In short, we have a whole category of non-"natural phenomenon" stuff that takes place in these circumstances, all of which is tempting to be categorized as the nature of another "dimension" or the domain of the spirit world. One has to realize that some of these NDE's seem to encompass months-equivalence even though they may happen in mere seconds, all adding the additional difficulty of accepting that time and space seem to not exist in this other "reality".

But, enough of that tonight. I should have 'hit the sack' a few hours ago, but I was so intent on answering your sincere reply that it seemed preferable to sleeping.

Best regards,

Ed Riess

Hmm. Wait! I'm picking up an ESP message...

Yes! Here it is:

"I must be a total frigging idiot for doing this! And God, these cloths make me look like a jerk!!! No wonder I'm not married!!!"

Vermin,

That's a very nice Tesla coil. Where did you find that pic?

Right here!

Are you stepping up to a climax of van der graaf accelerator, or is this just for some quiet home-fun?

You're weird, man...

I just thought the guy looked like such a dork, I had to save the pictures!!!

Apparently, he's never heard of Viagra.

"...never heard of Viagra..."

You mean like, 'ever-since' ?

No. I just looks like he's trying to compensate for his failing libido.

Maybe you're on to something here. Let's Start-Up the sucker...

I remember when I was a child, my mother told me that her grand-mother told her that long ago (that's nineteenth-century for us) people used to electrify each other in parties, for fun and nevelty-sensation...

She was born in Vienna, Austria, then, a cultural-hub...

Yes! The Leyden jar hop was all the craze!

It is rumored that Samuel Clemens (aka:Mark Twain) and Mr Tesla were good friends. Tesla had a device ol' Mark twain loved. A device that was to be stood on, juiced in Tesla fashion and then a euphoric episode would elapse.

Apparently one could only 'enjoy' this electrically induced euphoria a few short moments. After that it would cause a 'loosening of the bowels'.

As for the electric stimulus as a novelty pleasure... It still is!

Later, they (who?) turned it into the art-form we know today:

Psychiatric Electrical Shock Therapy.

I get goose-bumps just thinking about it. A known side-effect of this practice is a "slight" dementia, according to doctors

The device Tesla invited Twain to try, according to urban legend, was a platform which purportedly vibrated the test subject at the subject's natural mechanical resonant frequency. Various accounts describe Twain as stepping onto the device, which consisted of some kind of platform driven by a mechanism, with Twain bolting to the nearest restroom in short order.

One account describes the event, "Another odd and humorous event happened when Tesla asked Twain to test out another of his inventions. It was a platform that could be set for a wide range of frequencies. Clemens innocently stepped on the platform and it was made to vibrate. A few moments later, Twain cursed at Tesla and headed off toward the bathroom. Certain frequencies create certain physical reactions to the body. Tesla set his machine to cause an automatic-bathroom response!"

Subsequent tests by researchers have failed to replicate this response in volunteers, but the researchers, as far as I know, did not use the same kind apparatus purportedly used on Twain.

Still another story... There was this psychologist at a University. As a party trick, he would produce an extremely powerful and compact electromagnet. He would have volunteers come forward, sit in a chair and asked to start talking. The psychologist would then apply the magnet to the person's forehead. Immediately, the volunteer would forget what he was talking about and start to blank and drool. When the magnet was removed, the volunteer would return to normal - we hope!

Alternatively, you can get temporarily smarter with trans cranial magnetic stimulation. (As a bonus for reading this article, if you follow the links after it, you can find out how to reduce the number of brain tumors you'll receive from using your cell phone.)

I've been in the presence of women who have been said to have "magnetic" personalities. I wonder if that would explain my blanking and drooling?

I think I'll stick to ginkgo biloba!!!

The brain tumor thing really is true, but not actually for cell phones. In the 80's there was an epidemic of police officers getting brain tumors. Those were the days that they wore their radios on their shoulders. The number was significant enough to get the radios on their hips, and only the mic on their shoulders. Since then the rate of brain tumors among police has dropped to almost zero.

I guess I'd prefer testicular cancer to brain cancer.

Odd that the officers in this study used the radar guns in proximity to their testicles. I guess they look more like cowboys that way.

A. Not only radar, and not only testicle cancer, but also offspring mutation increase, where mature gametes get radiated, for arc-welders too. Welding and Lighting Arc (Also called Carbon Arc), produces gamma.

B. Isn't that 'Luke' whatchamacallit?

Gamma radiation? Really?

Yes. It produces a whole range of 'radiation' particles, mostly X photons, but also some gamma photons. It's a function of temperature at the plasma core, in arc, especially carbon arc, the core (it may be only a few micrometers thick), gets to the range of millions, as I was informed.

Google something like "arc welding gamma rays" and find some useful links to this by yourself

Your question mark, planted some hesitation in me, after I posted my self-assured reply, so I phoned my friend Aaron Bar David, who is a nuclear physics PhD, and he corrected me:

In atomic electron-excitement, the main difference between X and gamma photons radiated, is that of the electrons' kinetic energy, or (in other words) that of their acceleration velocity, before stopped by a target, to emit the 'radiation' particle, or, the high-energy photon.

In excited electrons, the higher their (negative) acceleration when stopped (passing by a proton), the higher the energy of the photon emitted, by the process.

In practical earth-like, technology terms, it's a question of the electron-volt rate of the particle.

In generation terms, it is a function of temperature achieved, hundred thou for x, several millions for gamma. In production terms of accelerators it means that for an arc to produce x you need a high-voltage high-current system, to vaporise the metal fast enough to allow for this to happen.

So, I guess I may have exaggerated describing the welding-arc as "bad-ass gamma-beam generator", and should say that in some favorable conditions, it may produce some residual gamma, at the core of the plasma flame.

My bad.

Thanks! That was cool!

We appreciate your correction.

Truth seekers are always welcome in my neighborhood.

cr3

OK, I'm a truth seeker, too. How do you explain the presents of yourself in these photos I have, taken in Vegas in 1952 with Frank Sinatra and John Gotti Jr.?! And why are you chasing Sammy Davis Jr. with a sharp stick?

Hey, weren't those guys all part of the "Rat Pack?" Get it, huh? Rat Pack? Hehe

I think you're suffering from Rodent Envy.

Actually, I get my rats in a six-pack.

We also raise prized hunting rats for vole season. Whoa, Squeaker!!! Easy boy!!!

I think this picture was taken at a Christian rock concert.

Well, actually I was born in Vegas.

Although for the year of your unseen photo I have an alibi.

Please disclose evidence so I might defend myself.

Christian rock concert? Never been. I watched a few episodes of 'Fraggle Rock' on HBO.

cr3

Uh, just one thing about your avatar, TexasCharley... Shouldn't they all be facing the other direction?

Praise The Lord Almighty, it's not.

I googled "Van Der Graaf", and out came the pic.

The Internet. Where miracles never cease.

A very interesting post. NDEs are quite broadly and variously defined, but my own experience in a motorcycle accident qualifies by several measures. As I flew through the air (for about a second) many thoughts went through my head. Far too many, it might seem, for the available time. After I landed, I went in and out of consciousness, but remember thinking that I faired quite well, especially considering that just a second or two earlier, as I felt bones crush, I really didn't know whether I'd survive or not. I spent a little time on the ground before realizing that I had no control over one arm, and felt around for it and found it all but completely severed. The pain lacked the sharpness I would have expected from such a wound -- it was more of a dull ache, as if half my body were clamped in a large vise.

As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I'd dream or hallucinate, none of which seemed out of the ordinary, given my circumstances. Just after the impact, I had what I would describe as a white out, but couldn't say that it was significantly different than a black out: I think there is a level of sensory input that simply overwhelms the system. I suppose at times I felt somewhat "out of body," and at times I was certainly not processing the pain signals (feeling somewhat anaesthetised). But that is a common reaction to trauma: your body goes into shock and starts shutting down unessential services. It's as if the brain says: "OK, enough with the pain... it clearly didn't work as a warning to avoid injury. Let's shut down those signals and get this guy to the hospital."

In the hospital, I did a fair amount of hallucinating/dreaming, and if I saw any images of white light, I would have assumed it was just another hallucination.

Certainly, any such experience can make a person reevaluate life goals, appreciate the impermanence of life, and develop a sense of humility from the perspective that we really have little control over our lives. But I'd already spent a great deal of time thinking about such issues, and was already "adamant about human interconnectedness, equality, and the importance of human life," long before this particular experience. This sort of thinking lead me to be a conscientious objector in the Vietnam war years. (However I felt that the draft was completely unfair to those without the resources for college, and decided that I would nevertheless go to Vietnam with my fellow countrymen, if my number came up). Certainly, the study of Buddhism and other religions and philosophies helped me appreciate the degree to which we are all in this together, as has the reading of more general literature. For me, at least, my desire to practice and continue to work on improving my practice of "compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and good-faith negotiation" has more to do with many years of study than with a particular transformative experience. And for me, ten hours spent in meditation is probably worth just as much as my motorcycle crash and weeks in the hospital.

But that is only my perspective, and I would not be surprised if many survivors of traumas and people with NDEs more dramatic than my own find the experience transformative. If you can harness that collective transformation to promote peaceful coexistence, you will be doing very very good work.

The important thing to remember is endorphins work in a way that is analogous to morphine and other similar narcotic pain modifiers and so also produce a similar altered state of mind.

Exactly.

Depression can be situational or chemical, (and the two can be quite intertwined) but, in the situational case, it is clear that the brain can "cure itself" with conscious thought, as it does through psychological therapy. It is also clear that the chemical causes of depression can be "cured," or at least mitigated, by ingesting chemicals. (Also clear, is that some anti-depressive drugs are no more effective than placebos, but that placebos themselves appear effective: When a doctor says "Here, take this for your depression," it doesn't matter whether he gives you a sugar pill or a "real" antidepressant -- they work equally well, according to some studies, but either works better than no treatment at all.) So where am I going with this? I guess here: it is unclear to what extent the brain is mediating the generation of endorphins vs simply responding to endorphins. Studies of meditators indicate that meditation creates endorphins.

Through 1. meditation, 2. externally administered drugs, and 3. internally created drugs (endorphins) I've found that I can achieve the same end. Through meditation, I can completely eliminate the perception of pain. Doing this in the long term, though, is very difficult for me -- it requires a constant meditative state, and maintaining that state is not easy -- especially if I actually want to accomplish anything useful!*. (I can completely eliminate the pain of a severe headache, but the instant I stop meditating, the pain returns.) (More practiced meditators, Buddhist monks for example, are much better at this.) Morphine is much easier. And the body's natural response to pain is automatic -- my state of shock immediately after the accident worked about as well as the morphine I was given at various times in the hospital.

I think anyone with vivid dreams will have "out of body" experiences routinely. I certainly do. So for me, at least, there was nothing in my NDE that I could not achieve through natural endorphin responses, administered drugs, meditation, lucid visualization, or even LSD, with which my experience is quite limited, (mainly because of the obvious dangers of having one's body acting out a dream, taking "real" steps into the "real" road in front of a "real" car, while believing that one is stepping into a mountain brook. A good nap and a good dream beats drugs any day.) I suspect we are all subject to "mini" near death experiences, things that shock us out of complacency. Heart attacks are obvious examples, where after having one, people routinely spend time reflecting on the things that are most important to them.

* A funny analogy might be meditation:transistor. As the trigger voltage rises from 1.0 to 1.2 to 1.3, to 1.4 volts, nothing happens. Similarly, as the distraction level rises from low levels to slightly higher levels, still there is no pain. Then the transistor gets to 1.7 volts, and suddenly turns on... or the distraction level becomes significant, and the meditation falls apart completely, and the pain returns unabated.

Another funny aside: My wife meditates while driving in the slow traffic on her way to work. It that scary, or what?

Ed again -

I've enjoyed reading the discussions about NDE's, brain stuff, and even electronics. (The electronics part must be referring to a field-effect transistor (FET) with a turn-on threshold of 1.7 volts since a silicon transistor will turn-on at about 0.7 V and a germanium transistor will turn-on at about 0.2 V; a short aside there...(and did you know that the derivation of the word "transistor" is the term "transfer-resistor" wherein the effective resistance between two terminals, albeit with current flow in only one direction, is controlled by the current flow into a third terminal w.r.t. one of the other two?)

Three things have come to mind while reading these interactions. First, it seems unfortunate that the term for an experience that I recently described thusly:

(An NDE is not to be confused with a "close call" like a near-collision on an icy street. Instead, an NDE involves conscious awareness and perception of one's environment perceived without use of one's normal senses of sight, hearing, touch, and smell. An NDE usually occurs when a person is experiencing physical or emotional trauma, or is very ill or even temporarily clinically dead, having no detectable brain activity or heartbeat.)

is labeled with a phrase that easily could imply a "close call", and equally unfortunately can include similar perceptions that are totally due to dreams and hallucinations. Remaining skeptical of many anecdotes I hear, I'm usually "practically-thrilled" to hear the 10% (?) or so that involve details that were witnessed and actually verified by third parties and not having the nature of an event that could be inferred through operating physical senses, such as hearing conversations in an OR. Such experiences should never be interpreted to include events that, as Blink said, simply "shock us out of complacency...[like might happen with] Heart attacks...where after having one, people routinely spend time reflecting on the things that are most important to them."

Second, in times past, I have practically pronounced that all people who have had an NDE have the mature understandings that Blink has relative to "human interconnectedness, equality, and the importance of human life"; I must admit that that is an exaggeration since many such experiences are devoid of the depth that the longer and more profound experiences have produced. It is when experiencers have shifted from being self-absorbed "bad-asses" (that wouldn't be greatly influenced by "ten hours spent in meditation" or a "motorcycle crash and weeks in the hospital") to individuals that quit jobs and return to school to become pastors (like Howard Storm) that the change can be attributed to their experience.

Third...? I should have made a note of each of these when they were striking me...

Here's an appeal: I'm still trying to discover analogies to NDE information that would make it seem obvious that humans, failing to research the verifiable aspects and implications of NDE's, are ignoring a means to advance civilization; like Galileo and his mind-broadening information about our physical reality, and Earth pictures taken from the moon that would demonstrate to (probably no-longer existing) flat-earthers that the Earth is round.

I think it would be very powerful if people like James Randi were targeted by respectable researchers with undeniable NDE research results, and that such would lead to Randi and a group of other respectable debunkers 'going public' to testify that at least those parts of those experiences were genuine. It only takes one white crow to prove that not all are black. It makes little impact if I make such claims, or even if a popular movie star makes such claims. Even the reputable scientists aren't able to persuade the doubters, but I suspect the leading skeptics could.

Ed

It is when experiencers have shifted from being self-absorbed "bad-asses" (that wouldn't be greatly influenced by "ten hours spent in meditation" or a "motorcycle crash and weeks in the hospital") to individuals that quit jobs and return to school to become pastors (like Howard Storm) that the change can be attributed to their experience.

Why?

I've known some really serious self-absorbed bad-asses (including one or two murderers) who have transformed their lives. The two that come to mind might be said to have had several NDEs (using your definition) each. But the transformative events in these cases appeared to be an accumulation of experience and maturity from a long series of small events, rather than from a single major event. How could one determine if the transformation was because of an NDE or because of many smaller experiences?

I don't ordinarily call my motorcycle accident and the events around it an NDE. But it seems to fit your definition, which seems too broad. I was certainly experiencing 1. physical and emotional trauma, 2. it was significantly more severe than a near-collision on an icy street, and 3. I certainly had a conscious awareness of my environment without using normal senses. But don't we have a conscious awareness of our environment when we dream? Whether that awareness is caused by neural transmission to the brain or created within the brain itself, the awareness is the same. Dreams can be indistinguishable from reality until we wake up.

I'm usually "practically-thrilled" to hear the 10% (?) or so that involve details that were witnessed and actually verified by third parties and not having the nature of an event that could be inferred through operating physical senses, such as hearing conversations in an OR.

Do you have an example? The classic NDE report seems impossible to witness by anyone other than the experiencer. Suppose I assert that I left my body, and was able to look down upon myself. In these 10% of cases, does an observer see this ephemeral body hanging in the sky?

In this description of Howard Storm's NDE, he seems to have had the sorts of dreams and hallucinations frequently accompanying high fevers. Nothing in the description provided here seems different than my own experience in the motorcycle accident, or to some extent than my own experience of DMV, which has been used to study NDEs. How would an external observer verify that he was not simply experiencing the expected hallucinations from a severe infection?

There is a drug called Ketamine Hydrochloride that is used in combination with other drugs as an anesthetic. However, in a not insignificant proportion of cases the use of it triggers what the recipient describes as an out of body or near death experience.

You can read more about the use and effects Ketamine Hydrochloride has by following these links.

• Ketalar: RXlist.com
• Ketamine: Drugs.com
• Ketalar: Australian Prescription Pharmaceutical Guide

The fact that the administration of a drug can induce in some people what they describe as an out of body or near death experience while not being near death, would tend to indicate that at least a portion of near death experiences are nothing more than the brains response to a chemical compound that acts in a similar way to Ketamine.

I am also not that sure about some of the things in eriess's last post.

• (An NDE is not to be confused with a "close call" like a near-collision on an icy street. Instead, an NDE involves conscious awareness and perception of one's environment perceived without use of one's normal senses of sight, hearing, touch, and smell. An NDE usually occurs when a person is experiencing physical or emotional trauma, or is very ill or even temporarily clinically dead, having no detectable brain activity or heartbeat.)

As far as I know, and I may be wrong, but, having no brain activity or in other words a completely flat EEG means the brain is completely dead and there is no chance of it recovering. Actually, from what I have read, in France they use it to check that a patient is indeed dead and that it is therefore acceptable to harvest organs for use in transplants.

Collapsed posts....

....Yes, it's mind blowing...........

I blame Del and magyk ! Does anybody have a pile of sticks and a match ?

< sorry Del, you know I is joking >

Excellent post.

This has been a great thread! One could argue that some of this diverges from the topic, but I think it all flows pretty well. The belief in dowsing is very much like religious belief: many (most) religious believers are convinced that their particular view is the truth, despite the fact that there are perhaps 30 different widely held and mutually exclusive contradictory views, and thousands of different "flavors" within those majors sectors. Neither religion nor dowsing can be "proven."

NDEs relate in the sense that many people find the NDE experience to be of a religious nature. In fact, Ketamine has been used as one of the numerous entheogenic drugs (aka mind-expanding, mystical, psychedelic, hallucinogenic) and has been used to induce the NDE both for studying the nature of that experience, in a clinical sense, and also in an effort to gain the perceived benefits of that experience from either a recreational or religious perspective.

It's interesting how similar those who view the NDE as a religious or mystical, life-altering experience sound to Timothy Leary.

The following is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Psilocybin_Project:

The Marsh Chapel Experiment, an example of the Project's activities, was run by a Harvard Divinity School graduate student under Leary's supervision. Boston area graduate divinity students were administered psilocybin as a part of a study designed to determine if the drug could facilitate the experience of profound religious states, and nine out of the ten divinity students reported such experiences. Leary's active participation in the experiment and its effects on Reverend Randall Laakko (who, at the time, was a student at the Divinity School) are depicted in a segment of a BBC video, which can be viewed here.

Some might argue that if psychedelics induce a profound religious state, that then the religious state must be much like a hallucination. It's interesting how many people suffering (?) from psychoses believe themselves to be a god or God, Jesus, or a persucuted analog for Jesus. Maybe they're right.

This might be worth watching. I hope they've done their homework.

Ed

eriess@cinci.rr.com

Moment of Death

Tuesday September 2 10P

From: IANDS [mailto:iandslistadmin@iands.org]
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 10:48 AM
To: eriess@cinci.rr.com
Subject: An NDE to be featured on National Geographic cable TV channel

NDEs in the News An IANDS Member Service

This just in from the IANDS local group in Los Angeles: On Tuesday, September 2nd, the National Geographic cable channel will feature a show titled "Moment of Death" as part of its Explorer series. We are told that the show will feature a near-death experiencer from California whose NDE included an out-of-body experience in which the observations made during the experience were later verified. Information on this show can be obtained at http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/3815/Overview. Please check your local TV listings for exact viewing times in your area. It is possible that this show will be rebroadcast in some areas later that week. IANDS has not seen this production and cannot vouch for its content or accuracy.

A service of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (www.iands.org).

IANDS depends on the financial support of its members and friends to carry out its mission. Go to www.iands.org/light_the_way to make a contribution to this effort.
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