Walpurgisnacht

Tonight (April 30th) is Walpurgisnacht [Vahl-PUR-ges-nachkt], a day celebrated across the world, but often deeply misunderstood or even completely unknown by most.

For those of us to whom such things are important, Walpurgisnacht (or Walpurgis Night) is one of the most significant days of the year. Named after Saint Walpurga (Wessex 710AD), it is most commonly known as a Pagan Spring Festival but its meanings run much deeper than that and are varied throughout many countries.

In world culture Walpurgisnacht has played a part within the works of such esteemed luminaries as Goethe, Virginia Woolf, Bram Stoker, HP Lovecraft, Thomas Mann, Robert Anton Wilson, Bulgakov, Dennis Wheatley, HR Giger, Thomas Pynchon any many, many more to even within the music of Black Sabbath, Procol Harum, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden *wink to Matt Cameron*, and interestingly JK Rowling; for the “Death Eaters” within the Harry Potter novels were originally to be called the Knights of Walpurgis (Walpurgis Nights…… get it?), but she changed the name for fear of giving poor Harry too much of an occultic edge, but of course such was not lost on those of us with eyes wide open to the greater realities!
At least Phillip Pullman used the term Daemon directly!

Walpurgisnacht dates back to the commemoration of the time when it was told that Odin died whilst trying to retrieve the “knowledge of the runes” and that this night is said to be a time of weakness between the realms of the living and the dead; the night when the doorways between the two are most ajar, as it is followed by May 1st or Beltane, the return of the light and the sun which is celebrated as May Day.

This day was Saint Walpurgis’ Holy Day and thus the night became Walpurgisnacht.

Curiously, Adolf Hitler, along with several members of his staff (including Joseph Goebbels) committed suicide on Walpurgisnacht 1945. And in the History Channel's documentary, “Hitler and the Occult”, author Dusty Sklar stated that "It's believed by some people that he chose April 30th deliberately because it coincided with Walpurgis Night, which is believed to be the most important date (along with Halloween) in Occultism. So, according to some commentators, he was giving himself up to the powers of darkness."

BLIMEY !

Therefore, for those of you seeking to establish an effective communication with your own Daemon, tonight could well be the best night to reach deep into your consciousness and become at one with the true realities in a much more positive way than old Adolf adopted.

Hey, anything is worth a try once, except Morris Dancing obviously!
*smile*

Blessed Be !

A Dark Philosopher
Karl L Le Marcs

Quotes

I heard this quote yesterday from the poet and playwright T.S.Eliot and it struck me how ITLADian it was. I would like to share it with you and ask if you would add your favourite ITLADian quotes for us all to enjoy. Thanks. Jo X

We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.'

On-Line book review

Whilst doing a general Google search I came across this review of ITLAD. I thought that you guys may find it interesting:

Anthony Peake has a winner on his hands with this fine look at life after death. The book has one of the finest notes and bibliography sections for this type of book you would hope to find! Peake has a candid, inquisitive style of writing which adds to the tone and clarity of this book in a vivid way which entertains and educates at the same time. Billed as the extraordinary science of what happens when we die, the reader will not be disappointed in what she or he discovers! Following the foreword by Professor Bruce Greyson and a prologue, there are fourteen concise chapters, which are concluded by an insightful epilogue. Each chapter is a gem to observe and consider in regard to what lies ahead after death. I thought the chapters "Clues from History," "The Guardian of Forever," and "The Friend in the Shadows" remarkable in scope and memorable reading. The whole book is worth your time. I highly recommend this book for its clarity, intent, and honest approach to life after death. You will definitely have much to think about when you read Peake's fine book!

Lee Prosser

Thanks Lee, I am so pleased you enjoyed the book and thanks for such a great review.

Check out Lee's site at http://www.ghostvillage.com/

Flatliners

The Burly of Hurly variety is back from the Dam of Amster and shockingly has a new post...about a film! Anthony it suddenly occured to me whilst re-watching this film last night that i don't think we have ever mentioned this one to each other while discussing films that have an ITLADian theme. Near death (or pretty much actual death) experiences are so central to your theory so i thought i'd get your opinion on this film, or if you havn't seen it, suggest very strongly that you do so.

The movie, if you havn't seen it, is about as group of medical students that try to control and create temporary death of a few minutes in order to experience exactly what is on the other side. What they experience is extremely haunting but very relevant to your theory as it has links with the life review (playback).

Super Bonus Question!!!!

You've argued that we can make subtle changes based on mutliple world possibilities and intervention from the Daemon but do you think these changes are provoked by morality? Maybe i'm being presumptious to assume you don't quite believe in the judgemental concept of heaven and hell (I hope not) but surely any changes we are encouraged to make are either for the sake of morality or our own self benefit / happiness?

The 'Sensation' Of Being Stared At

"Look into my eyes, my eyes, not around my eyes, look into my eyes"

I’m sure that most, if not all of you, will have experienced the feeling of being looked at, only to turn around and discover that you actually were being. Or indeed have been looking at someone who has then turned around and looked right at you.

My question is a simple one: How is this ‘sensation’ possible?

Many of the world’s literary giants have used this scenario within their fiction: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, JB Priestley, Aldous Huxley and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to name but a few - my dear friend Robert Rankin being another (albeit a more obscure one). I’m sure that HurlyBurly can reference many film examples on here too.

When I was lolling about in the pub on Wednesday, in between meetings, I was giving this whole question much consideration (see, even though I may frequent many an ale-house I am in fact still working!). It began when I was standing at the bar waiting for my pint of mead to be poured into yon silver tankard when I felt I was being stared at. Admittedly I often draw attention to myself owing to my monocle, exquisitely carved cane and silk top hat, but I turned around and there indeed was a young woman looking straight at me. Her eyes immediately averted once I had turned around, but once I had been served with my frothing tankard I ambled over to her table to talk to her.

As well as my question regarding just how this ‘sensation’ of being stared at works, I also wondered how, despite the eye contact lasting for seemingly just a fraction-of-a-fraction of a second, both the observer and the observed are equally fully aware of the interaction. For when I turned around and looked at her, she immediately averted her gaze but we BOTH knew that it had happened.

MY NEW THEORY: ."COLLAPSING THE CONSCIOUSNESS WAVE"

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I think the answer to both my questions lie within the Consciousness Field and the temporal delay between empirical observation and conscious awareness.

If we consider, for a moment, Niels Bohr's 'Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics' which states that all energy (including basic particles) exists as a wave-function, and only upon observation by a conscious being does this wave "collapse" and become a particle - Electrons, Light, Atoms etc all behave in this manner - then I suggest that Consciousness itself also behaves in this way. If Collective Consciousness (The Akashic Record, The Information Universe, Collective Daemonic Consciousness - there are so many descriptions of such) is indeed a wave-form then I suggest that we all, as conscious sentient beings, collapse that wave and create particles of Subjective Consciousness, which is, in effect, ourselves; our experiences and our empirical life. In essence, that we are all one Consciousness experiencing itself Subjectively.

As individual Subjective Consciousnesses we can then interact with each other (alternate subjective consciousnesses) forming Quantum Entanglements on the Objective Consciousness Field. These interactions can also include the perceptive field of consciousness which is where I think the answer to this ‘sensation’ of being stared at lies.

And interestingly, in my chat with the young woman in the pub I asked her how long she thought our eye contact had lasted, and she said she thought that it didn’t, as she had looked away as soon as I turned around, but she admitted that she did ‘know’ that I had seen her. Now to me, the eye contact between us WAS brief, but certainly longer than in her perceptive field, and I assert that this is further evidence for the temporal time delay between what we ‘see’ and what is presented to our consciousness.

I’d be interested to hear all of your experiences regarding ‘being stared at’ and your thoughts on my new theories behind the weirdness.

Here’s lookin’ at ya!
*groan*

[for further reading on the scientific study behind such phenomena as I mention in my post I would suggest you find online the work of Rupert Sheldrake (specifically his paper “The Sense Of Being Stared At”), and the research of Richard Wiseman into being stared at on CCTV and Television.]

A Dark Philosopher
Karl L Le Marcs

[ADDENDUM: I would like to add a massive personal THANK YOU, to everyone who has taken the time and effort to read, consider and comment on my theories - this post has become the perfect example of what we ITLADians can do by pulling together - well, this and Tony's Birthday Party last week obviously!! - But if you want to get the full experience of a marvellous development of comments then I'd suggest setting aside some quiet time, grabbing a beverage of your choice, and hitting that comments button below - wonderful, challenging, enlightening, funny and encouraging comments from everyone have helped developed my theory immeasurably (in fact one element of my theory only came to me while typing a response to a comment from Johar - thanks again JoJo) and thanks to every single one of the dear people who took the time to do so - and it ain't over yet, not the ways things are going!]

Just read ITLAD - first impressions

Hello - thought that I would make a first post. These will be impressions rather than deep reflections, but here goes.
I discovered ITLAD through an interview on Astraea Radio, and the ideas interested me and struck a few chords. Tony has brought together a number of theories regarding the nature of time that have been around a fair time (Dunne, Ouspensky etc) with more recent scientific work in physics and neuroscience, and the results open a number of doors.
I wonder if anyone has come across the work of Stan Gooch? I don't know a lot about Jayne's work, but I read some of Gooch's books some years ago. Briefly, he thought that the cerebrum and cerebellum provided a more fundamental split in consciousness than the two brain hemispheres, with a system of awareness focussed in the cerebellum operating beneath our 'normal' consciousness and having similar abilities to those assigned to the Daemon.
With regard to the two brain hemispheres, I was unsure exactly how this connects to the Daemon/Eidolon polarity. Is the Daemon connected with the right hemisphere or the dominant hemisphere? In my case, I suspect that it is the right brain that is dominant. I see the rotating dancer in the video posted on the Ferryman site as moving clockwise, and I remember someone once giving me a series of psychometric tests as part of a job application and concluding that I was 'slightly right-brain dominant'. I would guess that there are more left brain dominant people in our society, but I am only guessing.
The idea of multiple personalities rings true. ITLAD suggests that they are projections of the Daemon. But so is the Eidolon. In Jung's autobiography 'Memories, Dreams and Reflections', he describes an early dream in which he saw a meditating yogi who had his own face. He realised that the yogi was dreaming him, and that he would 'die' when the yogi awoke.
I remember a dream I had in 1979, when I was on holiday in Rhodes. I went to bed after drinking, and had a very vivid dream in which my personality was pictured as a project run by a company. There was a Board of Directors, having a meeting to discuss progress. They felt that things were going badly, and were arguing. There was one figure whom I called the Managing Director. Whilst the others were arguing, he left the meeting to run the project himself. Did my life change from this point? Not that I am aware of. I have had powerful dreams both before and since.
The idea of some of these inner personalities being parts of people who have lived rather appeals to me, and provides what to me is a possible explanation of some reported experiences of past life memories.
I hope to add more considered reflections in due course.

ITLAD Glossary

ITLAD –

Is There Life After Death

(the title of Tony’s first book)

Introduction: Any group of like minded people begin to form their own language; it’s a tradition, or an old statute. Or Something. The etymology of all language is a journey of varied vernacular and nominative nomenclature.

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And you should hear some of the language that HurlyBurly can come up with!!!

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*washes own ears out with soap and water*

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So, as Tony’s book and his blog expands around the world and into its own language I thought I’d produce a brief glossary of terms and acronyms that we use to help newcomers to these pages, or indeed those of us who have occasional memory slippages owing to over ale-inducements.

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The glossary, which has been compiled with the full agreement of Tony Peake (just to avoid any JK Rowling-esque Hissy-Fits) can be added to, as new terms slip into common usage, and if I have missed anything out (quite likely).

A-Z of some terms and acronyms used on the blog:

BIMAX – Bohmian IMAX

(not to be confused with the Bohemian IMAX!)

BOL – “Being of Light”
Bohmian IMAX – The three-dimensional, holographic representational playback of our panoramic life review within our subjective consciousness, indistinguishable to us from 'reality'
CTF – Cheating The Ferryman

(The Theory; and original title of Tony’s first book)
CTFesque - Pertaining to general CTF theory

Daemon – The part of self that has lived our life before, and guides us through our subjective Bohmian IMAX recurrence, with its eye on the future
Eidolon – The part of self that is experiencing the panoramic life review in real-time within its subjective Bohmian IMAX, with its eye on the present
EITLAD – Evolution of ITLAD
EIW - Enlightened ITLADian Way

IAIP - International Association of ITLADian Philosophers
ITLAD – Is There Life After Death (the title of Tony’s first book)

ITLADian (or any derivative) – One who adheres to the basic theory behind the book
ITLAD:TESOWHWWD – The full acronym of Tony’s first book

(only really pronounceable in Wales and certain regions of Poland!)

MMI - Many Minds Interpretation (subtle shift from MWI)
MWI – Many World Interpretation

(Hugh Everett III’s interpretation of Quantum Mechanics)
NDE - Near Death Experience
RDE – Real Death Experience
SCTF – Strong CTF theory

(that we all are doomed to live the same life again, as Nietzsche suggested)
Synchrondipity – The ITLADic amalgam of Serendipity and Synchronicity
TIWIGI – “This Is Where It Gets Interesting”

(A Peakeian catchphrase)
TLE – Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Virgin Life – The first ‘run-through’ of our lives in 'flesh and blood' (as a unitary being with no Daemon) which acts as a blueprint for future Daemonically guided returns within later subjective Bohmian IMAX recurrences

VLM - Virgin Life Memory
WCTF – Weak CTF theory

(that Daemon-induced warnings and interventions can change events)
YAS – “Yet Another Synchronicity”

(An ITLADists frequent muttering)

ADDITIONAL:

Some new terms used on the blog and within CTF theory

The Mandalay Effect - a subtle awareness that somebody, as yet un-met will feature in one's future life

CtCw (Collapsing The Consciousness Wave) - my new theory of consciousness which together with ITLAD and CTF makes up the BIGTOE

BIGTOE (Bohmian IMAX Grand Theory Of Everything) - The Peake-Le Marcs Unifying Field Theory of Consciousness

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Please add your comments and also suggestions for additions to the ITLAD Glossary.

A Dark Philosopher

Karl L Le Marcs

Virgin Life

What initiates a virgin life? How is that created? I see the term used on the blog but it seems logical that one's first life is so termed but there seems a bit of a puzzle here.
We know a new born is created by the physical union of male and female but they don't create life that seems to be the mystery add on bit. That new born then can have an old life reborn or a new life is that is what is meant by a virgin life?
Has anyone got any theories on why a virgin life suddenly becomes created.

food for thought!!!

I want to first explain that jeevan’s/self`s constitution stays same forever. Everyone wants to know jeevan (self) and wants to seek its fulfillment.
Jeevan is neither physiochemical, nor is it something ethereal.
Jeevan is an atom, a constitutionally-complete atom.
What is constitutional-completeness? A constitutionally-complete atom (or jeevan) neither expels-out nor does it admit-in any subatomic particles. Its constitution continues to be the same – forever. Whereas, the atoms participating in physiochemical natural-formations exhibit expelling and admitting of sub-atomic particles - which result into their numerous constitutions as different types of constituting-atoms.
Change can happen in the number of sub-atomic particles in a constituting-atom. It’s the only kind of change possible in existence – and there’s no other kind of change. Changes which a human-being can make happen - are also limited to changing the number of sub-atomic particles through expelling or imbibing activities in constituting-atoms.Constituting-atoms are of two kinds - hungry-atoms and emissive-atoms. The atoms which need (hunger for) imbibing more sub-atomic particles have been named here as “hungry-atoms”.
The atoms from which some sub-atomic particles are inclined for emission are called here as “emissive-atoms”. In this way, both kinds of atoms exhibit their activities towards becoming fulfilled or constitutionally-complete
.A constitutionally-complete atom is with fulfilled-constitution, so that it has no further need for admittance or expelling of subatomic particles. This constitutionally-complete atom itself is conscious-entity. It’s named as conscious-entity or jeevan – as it has required capabilities for completely realizing knowing-ability and sensual-ability. Even if man could somehow compose a body-formation (in laboratory) - in the absence of jeevan there would be no way of realizing sensual-ability in it, leave aside knowing-ability.
Humankind’s living in orderliness and its participancy in overall orderliness is an outcome of its realizing both knowing-ability and sensual-ability. All animals realize sensual-ability. There’s no way for a human-being to achieve fulfillment (or happiness) – without realizing knowing-ability.Desire for happiness is inalienable from human-being. In our attempts to fulfill this desire – we sometimes imagine of achieving happiness through comforts and hoarding, or through worshipping and renunciation. All attempts of everyone are for achieving fulfillment (or happiness) – but there’s no proof (or evidence) of anyone’s attempts becoming successful. humans are one when right, and are many when wrong. For whole humankind to be one – there was a need to identify the carrier of rightness which is common for all humans. I have recognized that commonality as Jeevan.

A LETTER....

I have been most interested in all the Posts of course!!! And now , apropos of the latest ones, I find myself remembering how, even from age 5 or so . how fascinating an idea I found was to address a Letter to your Older Self or even your Younger self, I know this is incorporated into books of Psychology but it is SOOO fascinating!!! i.e. What would you advise your younger self to do in a situation of uncertainty, or even What would you write to your Self in 10 or 20 years time??This seems to embody a lot of the Itlad Theory... so what would YOU advise your older or younger Self to do differently?
Jesamyn.

Goethe's "Time Slip"

Jesamyn's question to Ron after his posting A STRANGE EVENT has stimulated me to post the strange event experienced by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. Goethe described the event in his autobiography Poetry & Truth (part 3, book 11). He wrote:

'I was riding on the footpath towards Drusenheim, and there one of the strangest presentments occurred to me. I saw myself coming to meet myself on the same road on horseback, but in clothes such as I had never worn. They were light grey mixed with gold. As soon as I had aroused myself from the daydream the vision disappeared. Strange however, it is that eight years later I found myself on the identical spot, intending to visit Frederika once more, and in the same clothes which I had seen in my vision, and which I now wore, not from choice but by accident.'

Let us review this whole event in the light of the information we now have. Goethe sees himself as he will be in eight years time. In my opinion this incident implies that Bohm’s concept of enfoldment, Herman Weyl’s explanation of Minkowski’s spacetime and my theory of a three-dimensional life projection may be correct. As far as my theory is concerned this incident is a simple programming error. For a second Goethe slips out of his ‘review’ and perceives an event that to him is yet to happen but within the timeless zone of the life review has concurrent existence. As regards Bohm’s theory incidents like this are bound to occur as areas of enfolded reality touch upon each other.

Another explanation could be found within Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation. Goethe and his double inhabited parallel universes that just happened to overlap at that point. However for Goethe this explanation would have been totally unnecessary because within his philosophy this was not his first time living his life, he believed he had followed the same life course many times before. In 1813 he attended the funeral of the fellow writer and philosopher Christoph Martin Wieland. The death of this much-respected man stimulated a fellow mourner, Johannes Falk to ask Goethe where he thought Wieland’s soul could be found. After some reflection the great man embarked upon a lengthy and detailed reply. During the course of this Goethe made the following interesting statement:

I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and hope to return a thousand times. As such Goethe would not at all be surprised in meeting his own future self because, as he says, he has been through his life many times and as such has become more subconsciously aware of what is really happening to him.

A QUESTION!

Coming from a country where most of its inhabitants believe in after life, Ive always wondered about the concept of` soul`. The Christians believe in eternal life, Muslims believe in the day of judgement, in Hinduism there is the concept of reincarnation.
my question is ,whether anyone knows about the composition of the soul/self.?..we know about the composition of our body.....
the self is different from the body.....(we all know that)...so what happens to the soul when the body dies?where does it go?what is it composed of?

A STRANGE EVENT

Recently I e-mailed Anthony about an odd event that I had as a teenager. I published it as a letter in Fortean Times some years ago. I still have the mag somewhere in the depths of my room but here is the story. I grew up in the little Welsh border town known as Hay-on-Wye today famous for it's secondhand book trade and it's literature festival every May. One for Mr Peake in the future perhaps?
I am coming up to 61 now and at the time was about 16 or 17 at most. In those days it was not uncommon to see lads fishing off the bridge at Hay, underneath which the River Wye flowed some 40 feet below. The art of fishing off this bridge was to catch a very light but up river breeze that was just strong enough to carry your line up river with a big old artificial fly on the end of it and dap the fly up and down on the pool which was slightly more on the town's side rather than in the middle of the river .
So this particular day I arrived on the bridge on my bicycle one morning and I think it could have well been in May perhaps early June. Although it was sunny it was not particularly warm and a cool up river strongish breeze was the order of the day. So I had decided to use a worm as bait and a lot of lead weight, even then the long line was lifting in the breeze. Out of my left eye I saw a man approaching from the town, down Bridge Street and onto the wide modern concrete bridge (rebuilt 1958). As he approached I had the impression he was some sort of religious minister or vicar. Although I don't now recollect seeing a dog collar but presume he must have worn one. Anyway not being a church goer I was rather a little timid of this chap approaching who then stopped on my left hand side and asked me how long I had been there, had I caught anything etc. I said I hadn't been there long and caught nothing. Now I must point out I had never ever seen this man before or afterwards and haven't a clue who he was. There was no one on the bridge beside him and me, you can see in both directions quite a long way. He said try straight down there below the bridge, I said there were no fish under there as I have tried many times, besides the river runs too fast and can't see your line and I needed a lot of weight. Anyway as he was stood there I hauled up the line added extra weight and dropped the line straight down, I am sure at this point he had just moved away from me and instantly a huge fish a really big chub had taken the bait. I turned to say I have got one and he had vanished. There was no way he could have gone back the way he came or gone on the other way in a few seconds. As I say the view both ways was distant and open. No car had come along to pick him up. As always no witnesses either. The fish was so big the line was going to break anyway so I jerked the line and snapped it. Then horror of horrors struck me, had this man jumped off the opposite side of the bridge whilst destracting me? I rushed over looked down but nothing just the river, the river was quite shallow on the downside so had he vaulted over the railings he would have been easy to see.
I quickly packed up my kit, jumped on my bike and still in disbelief cycled around town looking for him, what had happened, where had he gone?
How did he know I would catch a fish where he had pointed, was he a ghost? He was solidly human I thought but can't be sure of his face at all. He was grey haired, a light brown mac, a trilby type hat. Was he a figment of my imagination, was he my Daemon. Was there some warp in time, in my reality. I went home told my parents and my friends later that day. What could they say, nothing, no particular comment. I later told my much older sister who still today at 75 remembers me telling her. Memory of the event still seems clear to me but still puzzles me and it is odd with age you tend to question the event however my sister still remembers me telling her and I am grateful for that.

Animals

I just wondered if anyone had considered whether animals have a Daemon on an animal scale, our human brain whilst maybe more advanced than say an intelligent dog the dog brain still has two hemispheres etc. Often animals seem to tap into a wider sensory perception than humans. Even birds can show some amazing feats of intelligence even though their brain is small. Many animals may see a different version of reality perhaps. There are accounts of animals appearing to read their owners minds. Animals have tracked down owners over thousands of miles of territory to places they have never been before. That is some Daemon at work to do this but is it the animals or the human owner's Daemon?.
I am a little unclear what I am trying to prove here if anything but only humans have been discussed and feel that whilst we are limited to human to human discussion on these topics and we cannot prove say Deja Vue in animals so easily it must presumably exist. Or is human existence something special and unique

The PHI Experiment

Those of you who have read my book will know that I make great play upon a phenomenon known as the PHI Effect.

In 1910 Czech psychologist Max Wertheimer noted that two lights flashed through small apertures in a darkened room at short intervals would appear to be one light in motion; this perception of movement in a stationary object he termed ‘the PHI phenomenon’ and this in turn became the basis of a whole school of psychology, Gestalt. Together with two assistants, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, he began to study the PHI phenomenon in earnest. Although they spent many years looking into the subject it was to become something of an oddity within human perception. That did not mean that the phenomenon did not continue to intrigue and beguile all that encountered it.

In 1977, the philosopher Nelson Goodman asked psychologists Paul Kolers and Michael von Grunau what would happen if, in the PHI phenomenon, the two illuminated spots were of different colours. This was so simple but revolutionary that the two psychologists immediately set up an experiment. They had a good idea of what to expect; either that two flashing spots would replace the single spot, or an illusory spot would change from one colour to another working its way through all the hues between. What actually happened was astounding. Two different coloured spots were illuminated for 150 milliseconds each (with a 50-millisecond interval); the first spot seemed to begin moving and then change colour abruptly in the middle of its illusory passage toward the second location. Goodman wondered:

How are we able to fill in the spot at the intervening place-times along a path running from the first and second flash before the second flash occurs?

For Daniel Dennett the mind somehow holds back the full perception of this experience until it is fully understood. The colour change is experienced by consciousness after the exercise has been completed. Dennett says:

Suppose the first spot is red and the second, displaced, spot is green. Unless there is ‘precognition’ in the brain (an extravagant hypothesis we will postpone indefinitely), the illusory content, red switching to-green-in-midcourse cannot be created until after some identification of the second, green spot occurs in the brain. But if the second spot is already ‘in conscious experience’ would it not be too late to interpose the illusory content between the conscious experience of the red spot and the conscious experience of the green spot? How does the brain accommodate this sleight of hand?

I suggest that this proof that the brain 'buffers', and therefore by implication, 'records' sensory information before it is presented to consciousness. In this way I believe that I show how it can be that at the point of death a full recording of ones life can be re-shown as the 'Panoramic Life Review' as it is termed by NDE researchers.

On-line is a fascinating example of how the PHI phenomenon actually works. Follow this link and check it out:

http://www.rpi.edu/~brings/PHI/phi3.html

Let me know what you think.

Frank Tipler and the "Omega Point"

I think my Daemon was especially active during a recent visit to the library, helping me to find all manner of reading materials with an ITLADian/CTFian slant. One of these is a book called The Spiritual Universe, by Fred Alan Wolf (one of the physicists who appears in the film What the Bleep Do We Know!?) In Chapter 5, Wolf outlines physicist Frank Tipler's "omega point" theory, which is proposed in the book The Physics of Immortality. I can't say I comprehend the theory perfectly, but it's all just so ITLADian, CTFian, Matrix-ian, etc., that I simply had to post an outline here -- and my apologies if this theory has already been discussed here on this blog at some other time.

To quote Wolf:

"Tipler, basing his ideas on Einstein's equations, proposed that the universe will proceed from the big bang, expand for a while, and then contract to the big crunch -- a finale he calls the omega point after Teilhard de Chardin, who originally came up with the idea of a final time. . . ."

"Of course the universe can expand and then collapse in different ways. In some of these ways objects can get out of touch with each other, meaning they become too far apart for any light-signaling to reach each other. This becomes a real problem near the end of time when the universe undergoes collapse; if it collapses to a series of separated volumes, communication to different regions around the collapse points will not be possible. If, on the other hand, the collapse continues to a single point, the omega, communication can continue to the very end.

"Tipler's model universe, which he hopes is like our universe, expands and contracts in such a way that failure to communicate will never occur. But as nice and neighborly as this may seem, Tipler's universe will still, unfortunately, come to a devastating end at the omega point. What actually happens is that the universe uniformly expands for a while, reaches a maximum radius, and then uniformly contracts to a big crunch with nary a wrinkle in the fabric of space (meaning no pockets of space form or get pinched off during contraction.) But -- and this is the big but -- if all goes well, we won't know that the universe is coming to a dead end, even though it is doing so, because we will be too engrossed, much too busy to ever notice.

"What will we all be doing? We will all be contained as computer programs in nanotechnologically designed micro-micro devices hardly a few pounds in weight. Our souls will be ghosts in machines, computer analogies of ourselves, and we won't even know it. That is, we won't even remember what we once were when these devices suddenly resurrect us as fleeting bits of data. How can this be? How could we ever be constructed as fleeting bits of data and not flesh and blood?

"Tipler answers that although we as flesh and blood creatures assuredly won't be there, our information will. His answer is based on the assumption that the universe is deterministic. In other words, even though the universe may be chaotic, nothing is ever lost. All of the information, every single bit of it, may be scattered from here to the end of the universe; nevertheless, it is still there. By the time the universe comes to an end -- the big crunch finale -- the universe will have grown small enough for intelligent machines to fetch and record all of this information . . . ."

"As the universe goes from birth to death, heaven and hell arise as naturally as apple pie at omega in a complex of highly speeded computerized nanotechnology that reproduces, at the final instant of time, a virtual reality of every thing that ever was. All we need is for life to be simulated by programs, a kind of virtual reality on the scale of microns and nanoseconds rather than on the human scale of meters and seconds. This means that these computer simulations will be processing information extremely quickly. In fact, as the universe approaches omega, when everything that once was far apart gets extremely close, things will be speeded up even more into a kind of complex, gigantic but ever-decreasing-in-size universal, computer-generated, virtual, orgiastic frenzy.

"This is Tipler's vision of heaven. It's in the last few billionths of a billionth of a billionth of a second heading toward omega that the fun really happens, and we all get resurrected in a virtual-reality simulation carrying out all of the lifetimes of humanity and perhaps even enjoying other previous life forms. We also will live through and repeat all of the hells and wars we have created. There is nothing, in principle, left out."

-- from "The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist's Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter, and Self," by Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.

[My question is, How do we know this omega point scenario hasn't already happened, and we aren't already re-experiencing a computer-generated simulation? Looked at from an ITLADian perspective, I'd have to say that it's highly likely that it HAS already happened!]

Must-see interactive optical illusion

Just found a killer optical illusion here. The best part is that it is interactive so you can play with the parameters and try to figure out what is going on and why.

Do We Exist In The Womb?

Following on from Karl's theory in the Sensation of being Stared At and Robin's post When Does it All Begin I would like to pose a question to the group; in what state does a baby exist in the womb?

When does our ability to perceive begin. If a baby in the womb cannot perceive of itself then does it exist as a baby or as a waveform until observed, for example via a scan?

Or is it a subjective being because it is essentially part of it's mother's body who is a subjective consciousness within her own phaneron and therefore brings her baby into being?

And if the baby is perceived in the mother's subjective consciousness how can it be perceived by other subjective consciousnesses if it cannot be observed?

What do you all think?

Don’t Forget To Take Your Memory Pill !

In haunting echoes of the film ‘Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind’, Scientists may have now developed a way to dampen, block or even delete unwanted memories from our brains.

In a study, revealed in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, psychiatrists at McGill University, in Montreal, and Harvard University, in Boston, used an amnesia drug (Propranolol) to ease the memories of trauma victims.

Researchers found they can use drugs to wipe away single, specific memories while leaving other memories intact. By injecting the drug at the right time, when a subject was recalling a particular thought, Neuroscientists discovered they could disrupt the way the memory is stored and even make it disappear.

Professor Karim Nader, of McGill University, said: "When you remember old memories they can become 'unstored' and then have to be 'restored’. As the memory is getting restored, we gave patients a drug that turns down the emotional part of the memory. It left the conscious part of the memory intact, so they could still remember all the details but without being overwhelmed by the memory."

This research was also recently discussed during an episode of the BBC’s “Horizon” series last month here in the UK entitled “How Does Your Memory Work?”

The program reported how Genevieve Smith-Courtois is taking medicine to “dampen” the memory of a sexual assault she suffered nine years ago. The pill she swallows looks like a beta blocker but has a side-effect of blocking not just adrenalin but also recall. After six weeks, when recollecting the assault under laboratory conditions, her symptoms had decreased by a third to below the post traumatic stress disorder threshold.

A question was put to Professor Alain Brunet, the clinical psychologist behind the research:
“What if a pill could be found to wipe out a bad memory altogether?”
Professor Brunet's reply strikes me as deeply ITLADic in content and philosophy:
“Our identities are based on our memories and there needs to be continuity in time between who we are and what experiences we have had. We are our memories.”

In the seminally ITLADic film The Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo a choice of two coloured pills, The red pill will answer the question "What is the Matrix?" and the blue pill will simply allow for life to carry on as before.
Morpheus (to Neo): "This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

Tony’s magnificent book, as he suggests in his lecture, is the literary equivalent of the red pill.
I don’t know what colour Propronalol is but I’m guessing, given what is suggested it does, that it should be absolutely clear !
(or somewhat cloudy)

*smile*

So, QUESTION: (amended to TWO questions after discussions in the comments section)

Question 1: Would you take a pill to suppress a memory ?????

Question 2: Would you take the "CTF" Pill ?????
...............(explained in comments section)

A Dark Philosopher
Karl L Le Marcs

Kerrang Radio: Episode three

Just finished the interview with Yvette Fielding on Kerrang Radio. I find it fascinating in that the main topic was time and that was the one thing I simply did not have enough of. I was rather sandwiched between Franz Ferdinand and Queen (now that is a historical image to conjour with) and as such never really had the time to develop any form of description of exactly what ITLAD is all about. Frustrating but one of those things. It is still great that Kerrang have now had me back three times. I still keep hoping for that phone in ... and we on this blog know that such a thing on that radio station (or indeed any other) would be an electrical, multinational event that would blow their socks off!!!

For any Kerrang listeners that are venturing onto this blog for the first time, you a very welcome. Take your time. Work your way through the postings and you will understand exactly why the theory - known as Cheating The Ferryman may become the next paradigm changer. But please, do not take my word for it. Others that involve themselves on this site speak far more eloquently than I.

Just roam around and enjoy yourself. If you then wish to contact me personally just drop me an email - cheattheferryman@aol.com

Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind

I am in a partuclarly depressive mood today for some reason, i re-watched this film and remembered how much i love it. There are a number of ITLAD-ian themes to enjoy if you havn't seen this masterpiece, make sure you do.



Blessed are the forgetful for they get the better even of their blunders - Frederich Nietzsche

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet give their best performances to date in this beautiful story of a couple and their history. Depending on your criteria for what makes a good movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind could easily be argued as the best film of the past twenty or thirty years. Charlie Kaufman has written a screenplay that connects with memories you didn't even realised you had. Jim Carrey (Joel) has shed his cartoon character style persona and can act as well if not better than any of his peers. Kate Winslet (Clementine) has the versatility of any Oscar winning actress and has shown this to be true time and time again. All of these talented individuals combine for one of the greatest films you are likely to ever have the pleasure of watching. We all have memories, we all have dreams, we all have weird moments that defy explanation. No film has ever displayed these indescribable moments of lucid dreaming and the beautiful world of the mind in such a poetic manner. The movie defies words yet you get the feeling this is exactly what Kaufman had in his head while he was writing it.

Joel discovers that his ex girlfriend Clementine has undergone a procedure to have all memories of him erased, in a spiteful reaction to this he seeks to have the same procedure but changes his mind during the procedure while he's asleep. Trapped inside his mind, he must hide her in non related memories in order to evade the complete deletion of her memory. Due to the nature of the story, it is, at times, extremely sad. Like all great romances though, the couple defeat the odds and without knowledge are brought back together by an unknown force, a force some would define as fate, others, true love. The story may be surreal but the relationship between these two opposites is far more accurate that that of many others portrayed in film. When Elijah Wood's character Patrick tries to replicate a memory for the purpose of winning Clementine's heart, she becomes unnerved feeling that something isn't right. This goes to the very nature of life, our memories are our memories, they cannot be replicated, they cannot be substituted and more importantly they cannot be replaced.

The scene in which the final memory of the couple is being erased is one of the most saddest and surreal i have seen in any film. Ever had a dream about a dream? Ever woke up from a dream and realised you were still dreaming? If this kind of thing fascinates you, you may find this film to be the best film you've ever seen. You could compare it with Mullholland drive except it has much more of a concrete storyline, the dream sequences however, are equally impressive. Co Starring Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo Elijah Wood and Tom Wilkinson, this movie does more than simply offer something different, it makes us appreciate the beauty of memories, dreams and that which we have experienced. The strength of this film is not in the message, instead it's the way the message is delivered. Movies are all about the art of story telling and Charlie Kaufman can indeed tell a bizarre story and make it seem so familiar. The story is non-linear, this can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but because it is done so well it adds to the story beautifully The soundtrack plays a huge role in helping to create the right atmosphere for particular scenes, this film more than others, benefits from music as it transcends the bridge between dreams and reality. Romance is simultaneously a sad , beautiful and painful thing. All of the bad memories in our life are necessary signposts on the way to our happier times and they cannot be skipped, life is a journey and a short cut can leave us more lost than we ever imagined.

No moaning Karl, i know you've seen this one...

Kicking down the doors of perception….

…is unnecessary when you are not in physical form…

and as some would say, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience…

New Yorkers say they are smarter than Hawaiians because they change the world by working long hours of slog and toil and achieve great things, whilst Hawaiians just sit about and have fun. Hawaiians believe themselves to be smarter for the same reason. *smile*

Tony asked me to post this because he is fascinated by the Hawaiian worldview and believes it holds important clues as to the nature of reality, which modern science has yet to catch up with.

He wanted you to know that as a lineage holder and teacher of Huna I will be offering a weekend of deep esoteric teachings in Chester, on 21-22nd June, : Discover the Power of Hawaiian Huna. (or you are welcome on 31st Aug-6th Sept for our retreat in Hawaii itself!)

Huna is by its own admission at least 30,000 years old, yet contains such ‘modern’ scientific concepts as the Big Bang, the Quantum Field, the observer affecting the observed, and a more advanced model of the human mind than modern psychology has yet come up with, although Jung got close.

Also, understanding the connection between our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical bodies, and how to manifest abundance, love, health or well, anything really is part of the Hawaiian ability to ‘walk in both worlds’.

In fact, as a shamanic practitioner, I am aware of and have experienced many many worlds, all of them as ‘real’ as that which you are experiencing right now.

So there is no need to kick down doors when neither the doors nor you exist.

Now I am a firm believer that the difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there always is! *smile*

Which means that talk is easy but walking your talk and experiencing all of these things for yourself is a lot more important. It is only by physically experiencing your higher self that your inner beliefs and conscious mind will accept

Even my mentor Uncle George Naope once said: ‘when I realised we had changed the flow of the volcano lava and saved the city, I almost peed my pants!’

It is one thing to hypothesise, it is another to act and live in the real world of energy-source-spirit or whatever name you want to give the oneness of existence.

As another teacher regularly says, ‘and I know that you may think….and to know is something else’

Even within this deeply fascinating blog, we are only skimming the surface of the pond, as we know not how deep the pond truly it.

We are taught in western culture to believe we are separate from everything else, and even from our own nature. This is immensely disempowering. Once you connect with universal energy, there is nothing you cannot know, have or become.

It is only by clearing out the pain of our life baggage of 'stuff', whether that stuff is caused by death, divorce, dis-ease, drugs, jobloss, depression or whatever, that we are able to fully raise our vibration to connect with our full power and potential. And because this is so important, and the Hawaiians love being chilled out so much they have made letting go of things so easy and quick. (You still have the memory, but no longer have the emotional pain that goes with it!) sounds bizarre, yet true.

If you would like more info about the workshop please email me on ctf@spiritofhawaii.co.uk please be aware that there are some things that I cannot answer in a public forum like this, although I will do my best to ‘hint’
*knowing wink as sashays to pub for birthday drinks*

Mass and Energy

As with many of us who ponder the nature of reality and consciouness (I suspect that this involves every active member of this blog) I found that last night I had a particulaly sleepless night (wracked with the pain of a frozen right shoulder ... I have never known pain like it, well not since my frozen left shoulder ten years ago. I recently had a steroid injection into the joint but this seems to have made it worse!).. I lay awake and to locate myself away from the agony I started to think about the mass and energy (as you do). Maybe it was the fact that my brain was very neurotransmitter-active but I came across a really weird thought.

Energy and mass are the same thing according to Einstein's famous E=MC2 equation. Einstein showed that by increasing the velocity of an object we increase its substance. The increase in mass that Einstein calculated is directly proportional to the increase in the energy of the mass due to its higher velocity. The atom bomb bears stark witness to the equivalence of mass and energy and in doing so also confirms the validity of Einstein's conception of space and time as relative to the observer.

So the mass of any object is, actually, pure energy. Now this is where My brain started to become very active. What exactly is energy? It is simply a measure of a substances positions at different times when we observe it. In other words, the act of observation again has a crucial role in another area of quantum physics other than the Copenhagen Interpretation.

Objects are, in a very real sense, their motion - a motion that takes place in space which itself, as Einstein so brilliantly proved, is itself - and by definition, nothingness.

I am sure that my pain-addled mind had convinced me that the Buddhist concept of Nirvana aws implied by Einstein. Am I right or have I missed something?

So 'reality' consists of objects consisting of nothing 'moving' in a vast nothingness!

When does it all begin?

During my 28 years as a nurse I've worked in a variety of clinical settings. Medical, surgical, emergency, office, etc. I have been at the bedside of a few dying patients & watched them draw their final breath. I won't attempt to describe each experience in detail but I've seen everything from traumatic death to long, drawn-out deterioration.

Since 1996 I've cared for childbearing women as an obstetrical nurse (the field of midwifery to some of you). Most of our patients enjoy happy outcomes but on occasion, tragedy strikes. Sometimes death occurs while still in the womb or shortly after arriving.

The question(s) I put forward is:
When does perception begin? When do we become observers?

It's an age-old ethical debate, nothing new about it! But in the light of CTF I am interested in what the group has to say.

(forgive me if this has been covered in an earlier post, I'm trying to get caught up but it's taking some time to read them all!)

More International Editions of ITLAD

My publisher has just informed me that they had a very succesful time at the London Book Fair. Agreements have now been made for Spanish (Kairos Editorial) and Czech (Dobrovsky Knihy) language editions of ITLAD - to join the Russian, Dutch and Polish editions. This is great news because with regard to the Spanish edition it opens up ITLAD not only to Spain but all of central and Latin America (excluding Belize, Brazil British Guyana and Dutch Guyana I assume). Clearly if things go well this will mean that my next book will probably go into international editions fairly quickly. I am also excited about the Czech deal because we are now becoming quite strong in Eastern Europe.

All very exciting ......

Daemonic Awareness and Schizophrenia (2)

I contacted Professor Nasrallah with regard to his theory. Not only did Henry respond but he was also kind enough to send me a pdf of the original 1985 paper. I have now read this and it contains a great deal of supportive material with regard to my contention that there is 'leakage' of daemonic perception across the corpus callosum into eidolonic consciousness. The greater this information transfer the more confused and lost the Eidolon becomes. Perceiving the world through the senses of the Daemon is to access the 'reality behind the reality' - the Bohmian IMAX - in all its holographic intensity.

I intend to place a more detailed posting on Henry's paper in due course. However for now Henry has agreed to me publishing on this blog his response to my email. I asked if the quote I had used in my previous posting was correct and did he still hold that position. He replied:

'The quote is accurate and was taken from a paper I wrote over 20 years ago to explain the Schneiderian delusions of schizophrenia in which afflicted individuals are convinced that someone is inserting thoughts into their heads or withdrawing thoughts or that their thoughts are broadcast to the whole world. They also have the delusion that their behavior, motility and will are controlled by “an outside force”.

I postulated that the verbally dominant left hemisphere [which is used for communications in right handed people ] in schizophrenia is actually describing the effects of the disinhibition of the right hemisphere resulting in DYSCONNECTION [not DISCONNECTION] with the left hemisphere. I postulate that a callosotomy would actually cure these symptoms because the two hemispheres would no longer communicate and the “intrusions” by the right hemisphere would no longer occur into the left hemispheric consciousness.'

Thanks Henry.

Free will.

Probably not the most scientific of points i'm about to make, but work provokes these little sputrs of pondering from me.

Do we really have free will? Arguments have been made either side of the argument in recent posts. I'm not too sure either way but i know that when i write a post like this, im unsure if it's coming from me, or somewhere else that i just have access to in my head. Why is it that certain people live the same routine throughout their life, while there are others, that through free will, make drastic changes to their lives and achieve great things?

I like to think of it as the rebellious dna within certain people. If a person makes a decision to change everything about themself, ignore an addiction or change a strongly imposed life style that has been the case for several years, are they making that decision based on free will, or are they merely predisposed to such a rebellious act? Are some people stronger mentally than others at making positive decisions or are they merely enjoying the advantage of being a particular type of person?

Second Life chat

OK guys, let's see how deep the rabbit hole really is... Let's meet up at Flanagan's Apple for a chat! Those of you logging in from the 'first life' pub bring a camera so you can capture this mirror within a mirror moment! I'll be in the 'second life' pub on Thursday starting at 9am my time. That's 3pm (-6 GMT) for those of you in the UK.

Drop me a line if you need help getting started. rdoliver@cox.net

Here's a link to the software:

http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php

-or-

If you love to push the limits of your graphics card, you'll enjoy the environmental controls of the release candidate version found here:

http://secondlife.com/community/downloads-optional.php

Second Life is voice enabled but the function is full of bugs so we plan to use Skype as an alternative.

Why meet in Second life? What's the point?

Second Life is a parallel reality, a metaverse accessible to our current state of consciousness. We need to explore the boundaries. Imagine the possibilities!

Hope to meet you there!

~Robin

"Izthera Paulse" in Second Life

Daemonic Awareness and Schizophrenia

In the course of some general reading on consciousness I came across some very itladian comments by Henry Nasrallah, Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati.Professor Nasrallah (image left) specialises in schizophrenia and psychotic disorders. He proposes that during normal communication between the right and left hemispheres that the normal component of interhemispheric integration is:

'inhibition of any awareness by the verbally expressive hemispheric consciousness (usually the left) that actually receeives and sends thoughts, intentions and feelings from and to another (the right) consciousness'.

He considers that in schizophrenia this function is disturbed with the result that the left hemispheric consciousness (Eidolon in our terminology) becomes aware of an influence from an 'external force', which, in fact, is the right (Daemonic) hemisphere. In this way, Nasrallah argues, the schizophrenic person becomes confused and open to delusions.

Is this not what I argue with regard to 'leakage' from the Daemonic to Eidolonic consciousness? I suggest that this 'communication' is similar to Blake's "Doors of Perception". When slightly open we have migraine, slightly more and we have TLE, wider again we see bi-polar and open wide we have schizophrenia.

Any thoughts or observations?

Announcement - Third KERRANG Interview

It seems that my second (recorded) interview was broadcast by Kerrang Radio last week. It seems that it proved very popular with lots of listener interest (that would also explain why 'hits' on my website went through the roof for three days last week). Indeed so pleased were they with my "great interview" (their words) they have asked me back to be interviewed on one of their prime-time shows this coming Friday evening (18th April 2008) at 2230 (UK time). The person who will be interviewing me is Yvette Fielding. Yvette used to be a presenter of the popular BBC TV children's programme Blue Peter and, in recent years has been the main presenter on a very popular TV programme called Most Haunted. I will be 'on air' for about twenty minutes. I am sure that the phone lines and email will be open so please feel free to phone in or email your comments or questions.

This can be listened to on DAB radio or on-line at can be listened too on digital (DAB) radio (105.2) and on-line at:

http://www.kerrangradio.co.uk/.

If you have friends who are interested in exactly what you mean when you talk to them about ITLAD and CTF this is the chance for them to appreciate exactly what we mean by these terms.

Types of death...

One thing that bothers me. Well, one of a rotating few that pop up from time to time anyway! The romanticised element of your theory is that it lends itself to explain near death experiences and therfor predicts what happens to people that die in certain ways.

So, people that die in other ways; die in their sleep, get shot in the back of the head, ect ect you get the picture. Are you saying that the process you have described still occurs for them? I mean, realistically if it applies to one death it wil apply to all but am i silly for thinking that some deaths make it seem a lot more unlikely?

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I am probably way behind everyone else in my reading list but I simple had to post about this book. My Mum got this book several months ago, read it and gave it to a charity shop. I happened to be on amazon a few weeks ago looking at books that would quench my ITLADian thirst and this book popped up. My Mum, bless her went straight our and bought the book back from the charity shop!
Any way I would love feedback from those of you that have read it and for those of you who haven't I think you would enjoy this work of fiction simply because of it's parallels to Tony's theories.
Henry is able to literally fall out of time and visit different parts of his timeline and also end up in other random places. It therefore suggests that all time is now as Henry meets himself on many occasions. It is made clear that any visits he makes to the past cannot be changed so whilst he may know in his own memory he fell and scraped his knee when he was six, he can go back to that moment but not alter it. His visits to doctors result in them diagnosing schizophrenia and/or a weird form of epilepsy! Eventually he meets a doctor who deals with gene therapy and so starts their work on discovering 'what' Henry is in terms of evolution and gene mutation. It is an amazingly interwoven book, taken at face value a nice fantasy love story but the deeper connotations are mind blowing.
It is quite funny in that from the age of 36 Henry travels back in time and meets 6 year old Clare and continues to visit her as she grows up. However when Clare is twenty and meets Henry(28) in the 'real' world she knows him intimately but he has no idea who she is because he hasn't met her in the past until he's 36. Takes a bit of working out but I loved this book and will read it again one day. It resonated with me profoundly and I am just pleased I read Tony's book first as my new knowledge has added so many layers to this book.

We make decisions before we know it

Posting made via the Doppelganger Facility - from Jaysi.

We Make Decision Before We Know It!

There is an interesting study coming out in Nature Neuroscience.

Basically, the study asked participants to make a decision as to whether to press a button with the right hand or the left hand. They then had to report when they felt that they had made the decision. The research, using computer programmes, examined what happened within the brain before the felt decision had been made, and it showed that it was possible to predict the decision that the participants would later make, meaning therefore that the decisions are being made by something other than the conscious mind!

Here are a couple of links to the news report:

http://www.idw-online.de/pages/de/news254676
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/04/14/free_will_not_as_much_as_you_think/

Interesting stuff indeed.

My thoughts on this:

If decisions are made before the conscious mind is aware of them, the obvious question arises 'Who or what is making the decisions?' Also, this study is being reported as suggesting that we do not really have free will, but that is because most people are unaware of, or reject the notion of the daemon, if indeed it is the daemon that is in some way running the show in our brains. But if it is, how come so many of us are so screwed up? :)

Perception lagging behind time

On awaking this morning I heard a news item on the radio (BBC Radio 5 Live) about a group of German scientists who had 'discovered' that awareness lags behind 'reality' be a few seconds. Readers of my book will know that this is a crucial part of the itladian jigsaw because it is evidence that perception is 'recorded' before being presented to consciousness. This recording is then stored and used again in the last second of life in the guise of my Bohmian IMAX. In the book I cite various experimental proofs of this from the 1980's (Cutaneous Rabbit, Kornhuber Experiment, PHI Phenomenon - and later the work of Dick Beirman and Dean Radin). However this is 'breaking news' and contemporary and as such we could ride on the back of this to get itlad noticed in the media. Unfortunately I was not fully awake and I missed the names of the researchers or any other details. Did any of you guys pick up on this? - and if so could you let me know the names, university, details etc?

Daemonic Contact

Ken's question (below) has caused an avalanche of comment, analysis and debate on this fascinating topic. May I thank Ken for raising such a question.

I had considered placing this post as a simple 'comment' but I decided that it was too important to be lost as a comment. It has a degree of relevance to Ken's question with regard to Daemonic communication with other eidolons.

About a year ago a young man emailed me from out of the blue. He had read ITLAD and, like many others, the ideas and theories of CTF fizzed around in his mind, particularly the daemonic aspects because they helped explain a very strange series of events. For a few weeks before his girlfriend's Daemon started manifesting itself - but to him, not her. It would wait until his girlfriend's attention was elsewhere, or she was asleep, and it would talk to him. This had become such a regular occurance that he felt motivated to write to me. Now it is crucially important to note that his girlfriend has TLE . He told me that the Daemon was, at that time (March 2007) time, talking to him every night. However, and this is of absolute importance, all these communications involved predictions - all of which subsequently came true! In his email he told me of predicted car crashes, about a lady collapsing at a funeral they attended, and even how many people would send her valentine gifts. Now for those of you who have seen my lectures you will know that like J W Dunne I focus in on the mundane, and intensely personal nature of daemonic precognitions. But he also told me that this Daemon READS HIS MIND! He added that this was constant, not a one-off. Even when the couple lose things the Daemon will tell them where they are!

But there was more, much more - all of which not only supports ITLAD but positively vindicates in detail all of my theory including precognitive events that changed the future, and an absolutely stunning Daemonic response with regard to my book and its contents!

I would love to share this with you on this blog - via a direct quote from the email (and have used all of this material in my last book - he has supplied me with some incredible detail) - but he specifically requested that I did not, and I honour that request. Indeed he is thinking of writing a book about his experiences with the Daemon. Unfortunately soon afterwards the Daemon said that he should stop contact with me for a while.

Now the great news is that the Daemon has not only given him permission to re-open contact, but also wishes for us to meet. It seems that it may wish to open up communication with me! This has now been agreed for a date in May. I suspect that this may be an even bigger event in my life than the meeting with the TLE lady in the hotel (cited in detail in my next book and discussed in my talks) and my recent meeting with TLEr, Dazza Vu. This initial meeting, as I understand it, will just be the two of us, but it is possible that his girlfriend may attend. I am hoping that he (they) will be willing to contribute to this blog. Believe me, if they do what they say will really blow your minds!

It is events like this that really make me realise that it is far more than a theory that we have here ... it is something of profound significance. What we need is a way to have it better known.

Does the Daemon ever make physical contact with the Eidelon?

Another question to elicit stimulating discussion from the group. Thank you in advance.

Psychotic episodes of the illusion of reality

I am coming out of a bout with bronchitis and have had some extremely interesting, nay, over the top experiences -- one I think was brought on by a fever and others which are almost definitely related to taking Prednisone. I am not quite sure what to make of these experiences. While I'm sure some of them were drug-related or drug-induced, I still feel that there is something "real" about them. Perhaps the fever and drugs simply opened a door through which the "truth" was able to finally penetrate into my consciousness? In any case, they have given me an experiential hook into ideas and theories with which I have previously only had cerebral contact. Where it all leads and whether I can continue to probe these ideas now that I've almost weaned myself from the Prednisone remains to be seen.

So, here goes ...

About a week before I started the Prednisone, I was having trouble falling asleep one night. I felt feverish but I did not take my temperature so I have no clue how high a fever I had. How much of what follows is dream, lucid dream, or for how much of it I was awake is unknown to me. Here is the "dream":


In order to fall asleep I had to arrange these energy packets in the correct order. The packets were all different shapes and colors and they pulsated with color. But I did not know what the correct order was. It had something to do with the anatomy of an animal and I thought it unfair that I should have to know this type of information. I could see my energy packets arranged but they stopped pulsating and went dark. I kept thinking that it really shouldn't matter what order they were in and that I shouldn't be punished for not knowing. All I wanted was to go to sleep but I couldn't and was very frustrated. I then began looking for what could not get to sleep. I probed the dark energy packets and the space around them searching for "me", the "I" that could not sleep. But I came up empty. The energy packets were there but nothing else. This probing was an intense scrutiny, very deliberate, very directed. It was as if I was turning everything around looking at from all angles to find "me" but nothing was found. I then turned this fact over and over in my mind trying to find out what it meant.


I've been doing some meditation off and on and sometimes fairly regularly for several years. I recently went to a hypnotherapist and she showed me a technique for putting myself in a trance which I've used recently in addition to the other meditation. The following are brief excerpts from three days of going into trance on my own -- which I've been doing a LOT more while on the Prednisone. There is a whole lot more to my experiences on these days (and others) but I'm not ready to share all of it.

I'm looking at what appears to be a normal, everyday scene. A man stands up on the right side of my field of view as if he wants to leave. Then it was as if a strip was torn out of a picture. The scene froze and a strip was torn from the middle and it went right through the man. Then another strip from behind that was torn. It was as if the scene which I considered to be real was made up of later upon later of images.

Another time I had the sensation that something akin to camouflage was responsible for creating reality. There were all these bubbles on a flat surface but if you moved your head slightly, a shape would appear to emerge. The sensation was that the shape was taken for reality but it wasn't really there.

Another time I felt like I was flying through layer upon layer of a paper mache sculpture and on each layer there was a picture that was taken for reality. Then I seemed to get to the last layer and it was all dark but around the edges I saw some green (I think) light and I felt that there were beings back there watching but I could not see them. They were not really human and seemed to be either in control of "the show" or the audience for "the show." "The show" being our everyday reality. I then started trying to figure out if ken is just an actor who doesn't know he's an actor? What would it mean for ken to be an actor and who is the audience?

Another time I felt an immense, wide-open, empty space. It was so empty immense that it was scary

Another time I was looking at a hole in the ground and it was a whorl pattern. I was then instantly transported to space where I was viewing a galaxy of the same shape. (This one really has me interested in fractals now as that was the feeling -- same shape, different scale.)

And that's all for now. Thanks for letting me share.

Does the Daemon have a gender?

If so, is it the same as or different than the Eidolon?

I recall some brief discussion of this in the comments to a post or two but I cannot quickly find them. So, can we discuss it here or will someone provide links to the relevant past discussions?

Thank you.

Birthday Stuff

I would like to thank everybody who has been involved in the massive surprise I had when opening the blogsite. I was ready for something because the enigmatic Dark Philosopher had left a cryptic text message on my mobile. Organising such a pulling together of all the International Association of Itladian Philosophers (IAIP) was a task of huge proportions. Thanks Karl, it really is appreciated.

Among my presents is Jean-Paul Sartre's Being And Nothingness - weighty tome of 656 pages but a book that I have planned to read for many years. This is a present from my mother-in-law, a true francophile (thank you Veronica).

Now this is where things get a little weird. For the last twenty three years I have had a ritual that I have followed on my birthday. Way back in 1985 I bought a book called The Book of Ages by Desmond Morris. This was not one of his most successful books but still a great idea. Each chapter deals with a year of life. For example for the age 25 it gives lots of info of what physiological, psychological and emtional changes usually take place at that age. It also discusses characters from history for whom huge events took place at that age. It then mentions a short list of selected famous people who died at that age.

On receiving Karl's text I delayed reading the chapter for age 54 to read what was on the blog. I noticed that Karl had specifically mentioned me being born on the day rock music started when Bill Haley recorded Rock Around The Clock. (indeed as an aside on my 20th birthday way back in 1974 the UK newspaper The Daily Mirror had a huge block headline which read "April 12 1954, The Day That Rocked The World". I was so taken by this that I placed it on the wall of my wall at university. Everybody I knew afterwards was convinced that it was a mock headline that I had had done).

After reading through your wonderful comments (and thanks again). I then settled down to breakfast and opened up the pages of the Morris book that dealt with the age 54. I was very depressed (pure Existentialist angst) when I read the following:

Fifty four is the year when 'old age' becomes visible in the distance. Previously out of sight, it now becomes a small speck on the horizon.

Great I thought. Sartre and old age! However what made my heart jump was on the next page (the only picture in the section) was one of Bill Haley, of Rock Around The Clock fame. Apparently he died at age 54. I pointed this out to my wife and she verbalised what I had initially thought. "Well, its not that strange because the article is about 1954". But we both realised that it was strange because the article was about the age 54, not the year 1954.

Yet further proof that we are continually creating our own phaneron from information in our minds - just as the Tom Cruise character David Aames does in the movie Vanilla Sky.

Covert Operation Codename: Peake-a-boo!!

Monday April 12th 19*cough*
(The day that rocked the world)

Bill Haley & His Comets record
"Rock Around the Clock"

Big Joe Turner releases

"Shake, Rattle and Roll"

And………………Anthony Peake is born !

Happy Birthday Tony !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.

Karl L Le Marcs as Operatic Baritone:

...................................“Happy Birthday To You”
Jesamyn as Kylie (in Moulin Rouge):

...................................“Happy Birthday To You” *pout*
Susan Marie as Marilyn Monroe:

..................................."Happy Birthday, Mr President” *pout*
HurlyBurly as Morrissey:

...................................“Happy Birthday To You……ooooo”

Ken, Ra from Ca, It’s Cool To Care and Aloha Gary (with Hawaiian attire) all join in with a chorus of all fellow ITLADians like Johar, Dreamer and Athamandia for a repeat performance and presentation of the oversized cake, which I have been reliably informed contains both Jesamyn and Susan Marie, crouched and ready to spring !
(Their words, not mine !)

ALL who post and comment or simply those who just enjoy reading what has become an intensely stimulating, thought-process forming and fascinatingly diverse blog are very very welcome to add their comments, even if you have never done so previously: simply click on the word comments below.

Many Happy Eternal-Returns, Tony

*smile*

From ALL of us, across many time-zones: which is why this has been so bleedin’ confusing to organise !!!

*blows one of them extendable twirly efforts that makes that trumpety noise*

A Dark Philosopher
Karl L Le Marcs