Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Awakening To The Truth: You’ve Felt It Your Entire Life
Written by Sophie McAdam at trueactivist.com
If you haven’t seen this short video by Collective Evolution (entitled You’ve felt it your entire life), it’s well worth watching (and sharing). With Morpheus‘s message to Neo making a powerful voice-over, the video uses a montage of clips from films like The Matrix, Into the Wild and cult classic They Live to illustrate a few (difficult) truths about the society we live in.
Contrasting some beautiful shots of nature with some ugly shots of our violence towards it, this video has a powerful message. Morpheus says it better than anyone could:
“You’ve felt it your entire life. There’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”
It doesn’t have to be this way, the film tells us. There is so much more to life than consumerism, mainstream culture and media lies, environmental devastation, working in jobs we hate until we die, eating junk food and spending more time on social media than we do speaking to our friends and family. This is a real-life matrix. But all of us have the power to take the red pill, offer it to others, and makechoices to change our lives- and the lives of those around us- for the better.
Wireless Energy Transmission On A Global Scale? Tesla Would Be Proud.
If only Nikola Tesla (inventor of AC or alternating current that is used world-wide, the fluorescent tube that we use to this day ) were alive to see this now; a group of Russian physicists are picking up from where he had left off, using his patents and ideas to finally create the masterpiece that had been long suppressed: wireless electricity transmission. Their work has been largely forgotten, and just like Tesla himself they have not reached their funding goals, but they still seem to be publishing updates regardless.
In 1891, Nikola Tesla gave a lecture for the members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York City, where he made a striking demonstration. In each hand he held a gas discharge tube, an early version of the modern fluorescent bulb. The tubes were not connected to any wires, but nonetheless they glowed brightly during his demonstration.
Wireless electricity transmission solves a number of problems: it allows people to receive electricity without large-scale infrastructure costs, transmission to remote locations becomes feasible, and terrain is no longer a restriction. This ONE invention could well grant billions of people access to life-empowering electricity… Assuming they succeed that is.
The basis for the project involves using the Earth as a wire, rather than a physical wire. Anybody who understands electric circuits realizes that most devices come with three wires: Live, Neutral and Earth. Normal transmission of electricity starts at a power plant, and is sent through the live wire. It returns via the neutral wire.
There a reason for having an Earth wire though: The Earth is described as the destination of lowest “potential difference”, a potential difference being analogous to gravity… but for electricity. The Earth is also in a sense, for the purpose of electrical transmission, fairly conductive.
Colossal bolts of electricity arced hundreds of feet from the tower’s top to lick the landscape. A curious blue corona soon enveloped the crackling equipment. Millions of volts charged the atmosphere for several moments, but the awesome display ended abruptly when the power suddenly failed…. Tesla confirmed that the Earth itself could be used as an electrical conductor
In the event of a short-circuit, electric current often builds up in the device …. until an object touches it and completes a circuit leading down to the Earth. That object is often an unwary person, who would soon get a shockingly informative lesson on physics.
The Earth wire is designed to take the charge straight into the Earth, in the place of the unfortunate victim. Hence its name. Anyway, long story short, Tesla hoped to use the reverse process to transmit electricity directly; no need for Live or Neutral wires, when the Earth is sufficient. The Earth itself would be “charged” up like a giant battery via a Tesla Tower, causing an opposite charge to be created in the ionosphere. This massive potential difference would allow transmission of electricity to anywhere where a receiver is equipped with an antenna and an Earth wire.
Imagine watching TV via the power of lightning.
There are other aspects of Tesla’s work that are not being addressed by the scientists at this point, one of which being electricity generation rather than mere transmission. By using the Earth as a dynamo, or by making use of the existing potential difference between the ionosphere and the Earth, Tesla had hoped to be able to generate electric charge which would then be dissipated around the world. The man was ambitious.
Tesla’s ambitions were thwarted by money; the first real Tesla tower, the Wardenclyffe Tower, was near completion and showed “encouraging signs”. The project would be abandoned when Tesla himself spent all his savings on the project.
“It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! […] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer’s keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”
Nikola Tesla
Check out their website: GET
From: http://anonhq.com/progress-wireless-energy-transmission-global-scale/
Darpa is Attempting to Turn Mars into Earth 2.0
By Kate Hudson
Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) said it is possible to modify a planet’s atmosphere to make life happen. They are working on a terraforming technology to create the conditions needed for human to habituate.
Martian environment would be introduced to a large amount of organisms to make the surface suitable for humans living.
Alicia Jackson, the deputy director of Darpa’s Biological Technologies Office in Virginia said “For the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not just to visit, but to stay.”
This “toolkit” will include hereditarily designing organic entities of different types, of which there are up to 30 billion on Earth. On Earth, most synthetic biology projects utilize only two right now - e. coli and yeast.
Jackson added “I want to use any organism that has properties I want - I want to quickly map it and quickly engineer it.”
A recently created software called DTA GView, named the 'Google Maps of genomes,' will help researchers associate data on organisms. In addition, the ultimate objective is to pick organisms with particular qualities to make something with certain features. For instance, it has been guessed that some could be bio-engineered to haul certain gasses out of the Martian environment - like carbon dioxide - and make nitrogen and oxygen. Both are bounteous in Earth's atmosphere - and would be required for any people planning to inhale on Mars without a spacesuit.
Nasa has toyed with the thought before; a year ago, they divulged the Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed idea, which would make biological communities fit for supporting life within biodomes on Mars. But, Darpa's innovation would innovative liveable situations outside in the open air on the Martian surface.
From: http://bizlifes.net/space/915-darpa-is-attempting-to-turn-mars-into-earth-2-0.html
Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) said it is possible to modify a planet’s atmosphere to make life happen. They are working on a terraforming technology to create the conditions needed for human to habituate.
Martian environment would be introduced to a large amount of organisms to make the surface suitable for humans living.
Alicia Jackson, the deputy director of Darpa’s Biological Technologies Office in Virginia said “For the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not just to visit, but to stay.”
This “toolkit” will include hereditarily designing organic entities of different types, of which there are up to 30 billion on Earth. On Earth, most synthetic biology projects utilize only two right now - e. coli and yeast.
Jackson added “I want to use any organism that has properties I want - I want to quickly map it and quickly engineer it.”
A recently created software called DTA GView, named the 'Google Maps of genomes,' will help researchers associate data on organisms. In addition, the ultimate objective is to pick organisms with particular qualities to make something with certain features. For instance, it has been guessed that some could be bio-engineered to haul certain gasses out of the Martian environment - like carbon dioxide - and make nitrogen and oxygen. Both are bounteous in Earth's atmosphere - and would be required for any people planning to inhale on Mars without a spacesuit.
Nasa has toyed with the thought before; a year ago, they divulged the Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed idea, which would make biological communities fit for supporting life within biodomes on Mars. But, Darpa's innovation would innovative liveable situations outside in the open air on the Martian surface.
From: http://bizlifes.net/space/915-darpa-is-attempting-to-turn-mars-into-earth-2-0.html
Declassified FBI Report Confirms Beings From Other Dimensions Visited Earth
By Ian Paxton
Almost 70 years ago, an FBI special agent wrote a report about the presence of beings from another dimension here on Earth.
The agent—a lieutenant colonel—labeled the report as “a memorandum of importance” and addressed it to “certain scientists of distinction to important aeronautical and military authorities, to a number of public officials and to a few publications.”
This particular report was kept secret until 2011, when the FBI declassified a series of documents and posted them on their FOIA library, The Vault. Although nearly seven decades have passed since it was written, the issues it dealt with are of even greater relevance today.
The anonymous FBI agent expressed his concern with regard to the flying saucer phenomenon; he acknowledged the fact that the UFOs were examples of technology far superior to that of our own and believed that any attempt to attack one would result in deadly retaliation.
In his opinion such an event would undoubtedly have lead to public panic and “international suspicion.”
Here’s a transcript of some of the most important details in the report:
It’s quite interesting to notice that the FBI would quote such esoteric matters in their official papers. Perhaps these metaphysical concepts are closer to reality than previously thought.
The information contained in this report seems to validate the Interdimensional Hypothesis, a theory that proposes an alternative explanation for the UFO phenomenon.
It was based on the ideas of ufologists such as Jacques Valée, who suggested that UFOs are indeed extraterrestrial in nature, but do not come from this reality.
Instead of mastering interstellar travel and visiting us from distant parts of our universe, the UFOs could be caused by the materialization of visitors from alternate realities or dimensions that coexist independently to our own.
This hypothesis is supported by the strange behavior UFOs exhibit, such as the ability to rapidly materialize/dematerialize.
In the words of UFO researcher John Weldon, “the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like extraterrestrial visitors.”
You can find the report on the official FBI Vault HERE.
Almost 70 years ago, an FBI special agent wrote a report about the presence of beings from another dimension here on Earth.
The agent—a lieutenant colonel—labeled the report as “a memorandum of importance” and addressed it to “certain scientists of distinction to important aeronautical and military authorities, to a number of public officials and to a few publications.”
This particular report was kept secret until 2011, when the FBI declassified a series of documents and posted them on their FOIA library, The Vault. Although nearly seven decades have passed since it was written, the issues it dealt with are of even greater relevance today.
The anonymous FBI agent expressed his concern with regard to the flying saucer phenomenon; he acknowledged the fact that the UFOs were examples of technology far superior to that of our own and believed that any attempt to attack one would result in deadly retaliation.
In his opinion such an event would undoubtedly have lead to public panic and “international suspicion.”
Here’s a transcript of some of the most important details in the report:
- Part of the disks carry crews, others are under remote control.
- Their mission is peaceful. The visitors contemplate settling on this plane.
- The visitors are human-like but much larger in size.
- They are not excarnate Earth people, but come from their own world.
- They do NOT come from a “planet” as we use the word, but from an etheric planet which interpenetrates with our own and is not perceptible to us.
- The bodies of the visitors, and the craft, automatically materialize on entering the vibratory rate of our dense matter.
- The disks posses a type of radiant energy or ray, which will easily disintegrate any attacking ship. They reenter the etheric at will, and so simply disappear from our vision, without a trace.
- The region from which they come is not the “astral plane”, but corresponds to the Lokas or Talas*. Students of esoteric matters will understand these terms.
- They probably can not be reached by radio, but probably can be by radar, if a signal system can be devised for that.
It’s quite interesting to notice that the FBI would quote such esoteric matters in their official papers. Perhaps these metaphysical concepts are closer to reality than previously thought.
The information contained in this report seems to validate the Interdimensional Hypothesis, a theory that proposes an alternative explanation for the UFO phenomenon.
It was based on the ideas of ufologists such as Jacques Valée, who suggested that UFOs are indeed extraterrestrial in nature, but do not come from this reality.
Instead of mastering interstellar travel and visiting us from distant parts of our universe, the UFOs could be caused by the materialization of visitors from alternate realities or dimensions that coexist independently to our own.
This hypothesis is supported by the strange behavior UFOs exhibit, such as the ability to rapidly materialize/dematerialize.
In the words of UFO researcher John Weldon, “the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like extraterrestrial visitors.”
You can find the report on the official FBI Vault HERE.
We Are Living In A Hologram Designed By Aliens, Says NASA Scientist
by MessageToEagle,
Who says there are no open-minded scientists at NASA?
A NASA scientist suggests you are living inside a hologram created by advanced alien species.
What if everything you have ever done or will do is simply the product of a highly-advanced computer code? Every relationship, every sentiment, every memory could have been generated by banks of supercomputers.
This was the intriguing theory first proposed by Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University and founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School, there are several scientists who subscribe to this theory.
MessageToEagle.com has previously reported on how Rich Terrile, director of the Centre for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggested our creator is a cosmic computer programmer.
This would imply that we are living in a holographic world and everything around us, including ourselves is not “real”. Rich Terrile, still stands by his opinion. “Right now the fastest NASA supercomputers are cranking away at about double the speed of the human brain,” the NASA scientist told Vice.
“If you make a simple calculation using Moore’s Law [which roughly claims computers double in power every two years], you’ll find that these supercomputers, inside of a decade, will have the ability to compute an entire human lifetime of 80 years – including every thought ever conceived during that lifetime – in the span of a month.
“In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they’re being observed.
“Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this.
“One explanation is that we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.
“What I find inspiring is that, even if we are in a simulation or many orders of magnitude down in levels of simulation, somewhere along the line something escaped the primordial ooze to become us and to result in simulations that made us – and that’s cool.”
The idea that our Universe is a fiction generated by computer code solves a number of inconsistencies and mysteries about the cosmos, like for example our quest for extraterrestrial life and the mystery of dark matter.
However, there also those who think the Matrix theory is flawed. “The theory seems to be based on the assumption that ‘superminds’ would do things in much the same way as we would do them,” Professor Peter Millican, who teaches philosophy and computer science at Oxford University says.
“If they think this world is a simulation, then why do they think the superminds – who are outside the simulation – would be constrained by the same sorts of thoughts and methods that we are?
“They assume that the ultimate structure of a real world can’t be grid like, and also that the superminds would have to implement a virtual world using grids.
“We can’t conclude that a grid structure is evidence of a pretend reality just because our ways of implementing a pretend reality involve a grid.”
However, Professor Millican does believe there is worth in investigating the idea.
“It is an interesting idea, and it’s healthy to have some crazy ideas,” he told The Telegraph.
“You don’t want to censor ideas according to whether they seem sensible or not because sometimes important new advances will seem crazy to start with.
“You never know when good ideas may come from thinking outside the box.
“This Matrix thought-experiment is actually a bit like some ideas of Descartes and Berkeley, hundreds of years ago. “Even if there turns out to be nothing in it, the fact that you have got into the habit of thinking crazy things could mean that at some point you are going to think of something that initially may seem rather way out, but turns out not to be crazy at all.”
Who says there are no open-minded scientists at NASA?
A NASA scientist suggests you are living inside a hologram created by advanced alien species.
What if everything you have ever done or will do is simply the product of a highly-advanced computer code? Every relationship, every sentiment, every memory could have been generated by banks of supercomputers.
This was the intriguing theory first proposed by Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University and founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School, there are several scientists who subscribe to this theory.
MessageToEagle.com has previously reported on how Rich Terrile, director of the Centre for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggested our creator is a cosmic computer programmer.
This would imply that we are living in a holographic world and everything around us, including ourselves is not “real”. Rich Terrile, still stands by his opinion. “Right now the fastest NASA supercomputers are cranking away at about double the speed of the human brain,” the NASA scientist told Vice.
“If you make a simple calculation using Moore’s Law [which roughly claims computers double in power every two years], you’ll find that these supercomputers, inside of a decade, will have the ability to compute an entire human lifetime of 80 years – including every thought ever conceived during that lifetime – in the span of a month.
“In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they’re being observed.
“Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this.
“One explanation is that we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.
“What I find inspiring is that, even if we are in a simulation or many orders of magnitude down in levels of simulation, somewhere along the line something escaped the primordial ooze to become us and to result in simulations that made us – and that’s cool.”
The idea that our Universe is a fiction generated by computer code solves a number of inconsistencies and mysteries about the cosmos, like for example our quest for extraterrestrial life and the mystery of dark matter.
However, there also those who think the Matrix theory is flawed. “The theory seems to be based on the assumption that ‘superminds’ would do things in much the same way as we would do them,” Professor Peter Millican, who teaches philosophy and computer science at Oxford University says.
“If they think this world is a simulation, then why do they think the superminds – who are outside the simulation – would be constrained by the same sorts of thoughts and methods that we are?
“They assume that the ultimate structure of a real world can’t be grid like, and also that the superminds would have to implement a virtual world using grids.
“We can’t conclude that a grid structure is evidence of a pretend reality just because our ways of implementing a pretend reality involve a grid.”
However, Professor Millican does believe there is worth in investigating the idea.
“It is an interesting idea, and it’s healthy to have some crazy ideas,” he told The Telegraph.
“You don’t want to censor ideas according to whether they seem sensible or not because sometimes important new advances will seem crazy to start with.
“You never know when good ideas may come from thinking outside the box.
“This Matrix thought-experiment is actually a bit like some ideas of Descartes and Berkeley, hundreds of years ago. “Even if there turns out to be nothing in it, the fact that you have got into the habit of thinking crazy things could mean that at some point you are going to think of something that initially may seem rather way out, but turns out not to be crazy at all.”
Monday, June 29, 2015
What Happens to People Who Meditate for the First Time
There have been numerous studies detailing what happens to the brain in long-term meditators, but what exactly happens to people who meditate for the first time?
Sara Lazar, a Harvard researcher, has gained quite some notoriety detailing how the brain actually grows grey matter when people meditate.
Other studies have shown that meditation improves IQ, and lessens depression. In addition to these benefits, meditation also:
- Reduces alcohol and substance consumption, reduces blood pressure (Chiesa, 2009),
- Decreases anxiety, depressive symptoms, and relapses (Coelho, Canter, & Ernst, 2007; Kim et al., 2009)
- Helps patients suffering from various types of chronic pain (Chiesa & Serretti, in press)
- Lowers the incidence of stress (Chiesa & Serretti, 2009)
- Aids cancer patients (Ledesma & Kumano, 2009)
Most people think they have to meditate for years before they start seeing any of these improvements, but a study conducted by Chiesa, Calati, and Serretti shows that after just eight short weeks of meditation, people start to experience improved cognitive functioning.
Still not fast enough for you?
Meditation for the First Time
Here’s what happens to the brain after someone completes just one meditation session who has never meditated before:
- People start to become less ‘me’ centered as the brain balances the Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which allows us to ruminate our worry, and the Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), which allows us to empathize with others and feel more connected to those who we usually view as dissimilar to ourselves.
- The fear-center is calmed via the amygdala and the two branches of the nervous system. You know that ‘uh-oh’ feeling you sometimes get? Meditation helps to make sure that you only feel low-level stress when you really need to, such as when you are about to put your hand on a hot stove, or you need to put the brakes on in traffic. Even then, meditation can help take the stress out of stress-full experiences.
- The very first time you try to meditate, the mind calms down. It doesn’t mean you will experience profound inner peace the first time your bum touches a meditation cushion, but it does mean that you are already setting up new neural pathways that allow positive change. Each time you ‘sit’ again, you enhance them.
- You’ll feel less depressed. Meditation is getting a lot of press lately because of this study by Mahav Goyal published at JAMA. 47 trials conducted with over 3,500 patients proved that meditation was as effective as anti-depressants. (The effect of meditation was moderate, at 0.3. If this sounds low, keep in mind that the effect size for antidepressants is also 0.3.) The difference is, of course, that meditation can’t kill you or cause other unwanted side effects, like psychotic episodes, panic attacks, hostility, etc.
Beginner Meditators
Though it takes a few more sessions, here is what happens when you meditate a little more frequently:
- You’ll feel less physical pain in just four meditation sessions. Brain activity decreases in the areas responsible for relaying sensory information surrounding a feeling of pain. Also, regions of the brain that modulate pain get busier, and volunteers who participated in a study reported that pain was less intense after meditation practice. These results were all reported at an annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.
- The ‘me-center’ slowly evaporates. As the connection between bodily sensations and the vmPFC withers, you will no longer assume that a bodily sensation or momentary feeling of fear means something is wrong with you or that you are the problem. You can just let it rise and pass, without hardly giving it a second thought.
- Empathy becomes stronger. The vmPFC part of the ‘me center’ subsides and the dmPFC grows more dominant, which means you can feel others’ pain or sadness, but with the same ability as you’ve learned to handle your own bodily sensations.
Masters of Meditation
Once you’re an old pro at meditation you can look forward to even more benefits, many of which science is still reaching to understand.
- Tibetan monks can sit for hours in meditation as easily as most of us can spend the same amount of time sleeping or surfing the net. These monks recently dried wet sheets with their bodies by utilizing a form of meditation called g Tum-mo. Monks were cloaked in wet, cold sheets (49 f / 9.4 c) and placed in a 40 f (4.5 c) room. In conditions such as these the average person would likely experience uncontrollable shivering and suffer hypothermia. However, through deep concentration, the monks were able to generate body heat, and within minutes the researchers noticed steam rising from those sheets. In about an hour the sheets were completely dry.
- Yogis in India who practice meditation are able to slow their hearts so completely that they are hardly detectable on EKG equipment. In 1935 a French cardiologist, Therese Brosse, took an electrocardiograph to India and studied yogis who said they could stop their heart. According to Brosse’s published report, readings produced by a single EKG lead and pulse recordings indicated that the heart potentials and pulse of one of her subjects decreased almost to zero, where they stayed for several seconds. (Brosse, 1946)
- A master meditator, Munishri Ajitchandrasagarji, is a Jain monk who credits his incredible memory to meditation practice. He can recite 500 items from memory, whether it is a phrase from one of six different languages, a math problem, or the name of a random object. He recently performed this feat in front of an audience of 6,000 to verify his amazing level of skill. It took six hours for the crowd to feed him the list of items, and he recited them back perfectly.
- Dutchman Wim Hof is able to control his immune system with meditation. He has been in the Guinness Book of World Records 20 times for accomplishments like climbing Mt. Everest and Kilimanjaro in nothing but a pair of shorts and shoes, with no water or food, when temperatures easily reach 50 degrees celcius. He uses a special breathing meditation.
So maybe the first time you learn to control your thoughts by focusing on your breath, or simply observing your thoughts like clouds passing in the sky won’t make you a master meditator capable of these staggering acts, but even with your first twenty minute ‘sit’ you are well on your way to other-worldly abilities.
By Christina Sarich, Collective Evolution
The magical tattoo artists of Cambodia
One of his students connects a tattoo gun to a battery pack. Teven Say dips the needle in black ink and tells me to lay down. I start sweating.
Magical tattoos, known as sak yant in Khmer - the language of Cambodia - are believed to render their wearers impervious to bullets, protect them from misfortune and endow them with sexual magnetism. While the tradition prevails throughout Southeast Asia, little is known about the art in Cambodia, partly because of a 1920 royal ordinance that forbade monks from tattooing and partly because the remaining practitioners were killed during the Khmer Rouge genocide and civil war. Today, traditional Cambodian sak yant is especially difficult to find because those who are still practising the art form are reluctant to publicise their activities.
"Cambodians are protective of tattoo designs," says American journalist Ryun Patterson, whose book, Vanishing Act: a Glimpse into Cambodia's World of Magic, was released this year, "because they think they're very powerful and can be misused if given to the wrong person."
Teven Say is among the handful of tattoo masters left. He and others I meet describe arduous treks through the war-scorched kingdom searching out the last remaining holders of this torn tradition. They collect tattoo designs into personal grimoires and learn the occult techniques needed to transfer power into the designs.
"I meditate every day," says Teven Say. "When I tattoo, I recite a secret mantra I learned from a hermit in the jungle."
Chan Tra, a sacred tattooist in Phnom Penh, follows eight holy precepts (three more than those ascribed to Buddhist laypeople) in order to keep himself a pure conduit for magical power. Inside his single-room shop, the walls are covered with designs: Brahmanic deities with swarming arms, geometric shapes (known as yantras) and swirling spells.
"My grandfather was a tattooist," he says, absent-mindedly pressing a finger to the tip of a traditional bamboo needle. "But he was killed by the Khmer Rouge, so I found those monks who still had copies of the designs and learned them. That was 20 years ago."
WHEN TEVEN SAY PUTS his needle to my back I feel a burning sensation. He could have used the traditional bamboo needle but apparently the power remains the same regardless of the instrument. So I chose the gun because it is quicker and more accurate.
He begins searing the sign for the divine mother, with its Swiss-roll swirl and three peaks, onto my left shoulder blade (the left side is the feminine side, associated with compassion). Audible above the tattoo gun's buzz is the oddly comforting mantra he is muttering. In the endless forgotten past, before Southeast Asia was so called, people of my age were feeling the same burn and hearing similar comforting chants.
The chants heard by initiates of the aboriginal tribes that populated south China and Southeast Asia from the first millennium BC were different but also served a sacred purpose. In animistic cultures, all things are imbued with spirit and therefore sacred. Their tattoos are mentioned by Sima Qian, China's grand historian of the Han dynasty, who wrote, in the first century BC, that they "cut their hair and tattooed their bodies".
Shamans dreamed designs and watched them bloom from the tips of bamboo needles - giving tribal members " sak" was their sacred duty. The word " sak", meaning to "prick" or "jab", survives to this day. Indeed, Bangkok-based writer Joe Cummings, whose book, Sacred Tattoos of Thailand, was released in 2011, explains that the word occurs in several languages spoken by the indigenous tribes of Southeast Asia, suggesting it comes from an older root language.
It's clear that sacred tattoos existed long before the first Indian trading ships arrived in Southeast Asia, in around 200BC, beginning a period called "Indianisation", when Buddhism, Brahmanism and animism bubbled in the seething mindscapes of the region for thousands of years. Eventually sak yant emerged.
Experts disagree about how this happened. Zhou Daguan, a Chinese diplomat who visited the ogival towers of Angkor in 1296, noted that the king was protected from arrow and sword wounds by takruts - tiny cylinders made from leaves of rolled metal inscribed with prayers and inserted beneath his skin (a similar practice persists in rural Cambodia: a shaman I met last year wrote mantras on thin metal leaves, rolled them up and threaded them on string, to make a protective charm). According to the late scholar of Cambodian Buddhism Ian Harris, there is a design that bears similarities to today's sak yant engraved on one of the foundation stones of Angkor's Bat Chum temple. It features 48 syllables arranged on a lotus blossom.
But there's no evidence that the Brahmanic Angkor civilisation - which flourished between the ninth and 15th centuries - was the place where indigenous tattoo practice married with the Indian sacred imagination to create sak yant, even if similar practices did exist. Although temples in Thailand depict tattooed people, nothing similar has been found in Cambodia.
"If Angkor subjects were inking up, there ought to be a written record somewhere," says Cummings.
Some researchers maintain that the early, Indian-influenced civilisations of Southeast Asia are the most likely origin of sak yant.
"It is likely that [tattooing] is an indigenous form that developed with Indian interaction," says Jonathan H.X. Lee, associate professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, in the United States.
Could it be that the holy chants of the tattoo master once echoed in the stone corridors of Angkor?
In another time and place, a holy tattooist chanted softly as he focused on the ink and blood-blatted back of Angelina Jolie. It was 2004 and the American actress was celebrating being offered Cambodian citizenship by getting a sak yant of a Bengal tiger. Jolie has two holy tattoos (the other is a Buddhist prayer rendered in Khmer script on her left shoulder). Through her patronage, the spirits of sak yant have emerged into the global consciousness. Now they are coveted by fashionistas, but Thai traditionalists raised concerns earlier this year about Westerners getting sak yant with little regard for their spiritual significance.
"Today it's about fashion," professor Sukanya Sujachaya, former director of the Centre of Folklore Research at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, told news agency Agence France-Presse. "But this type of tattoo cannot be sold just for its beauty. It also has to be for the belief."
In Cambodia, too, getting inked involves a serious spiritual commitment. Traditionally, it included a period of mentoring with the tattoo master, during which the initiate was trained how to live a good life. If the rules are respected, the tattoo remains powerful. Sak yant initiates are expected to abide by the five Buddhist precepts for laypeople: no killing, stealing, lying, intoxicating the mind and using sexual energy to harm. Other rules are added depending on the master and can include dietary prohibitions and a ban on kissing your wife below the waist (based on the Asian belief that the lower half of the body is unclean).
"When I got my tattoo [from a Cambodian monk in 2011], it was only after a long, stern lecture on how this was a very serious endeavour," Patterson says. "I had to commit to following the terms of the magical contract I was entering into."
TEVEN SAY LAID OUT the rules before he began. I needed to abide by the five precepts and also not eat dog or snake meat (mercifully, the rule about below-waist kissing was omitted). The tattoo gun's buzz starts again, the sound coming from my right shoulder. Teven Say scorches down the symbol for the divine father (the right side is associated with masculinity and wisdom). He and his students are not concerned about giving sak yant to foreigners.
"We want to tattoo foreigners so the tradition spreads around the world," says Arjar Tar, one of Teven Say's students, whose ripped torso is a sketchbook of traditional designs. "But if they don't follow the rules it's bad luck for them."
One person who believed in the power of sak yant was Lon Nol, the Cambodian politician and general who led a coup against Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. Towards the end of his five-year reign, his behaviour became increasingly Macbethian. As the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge bore down on his Phnom Penh stronghold, the capital's pagodas became factories where monks produced magical undershirts - spiritual body armour covered in magic symbols - to protect his army. Lon Nol also encouraged soldiers to get tattoos so the power of the Buddha could enter their flesh. By 1975, when Khmer Rouge bullets began to hit the capital, according to Harris, he was spending US$20,000 a month on astrological consultations.
Deposed by the victorious communists, Lon Nol fled into exile. The turmoil that followed meant the demand for protective tattoos remained, despite efforts by the Khmer Rouge to stamp out the practice. General Nhek Bun Chhay, who commanded the royalist forces during the civil war of the 1980s, still believes in the power of holy ink.
Inside his office, Nhek Bun Chhay - a stocky, wide-faced man - sits with a handful of staff. Now 57, his tattoos are faded like the photos on his wood-panelled walls.
In the early 80s, when he was a young soldier, he spent a year serving as a real-life sorcerer's apprentice. At the end of his training, his master blessed him with several tattoos. Along his jawline, mantras in Pali - the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism - were inked to give his voice the power of command; a sak yant on his arm was intended to give him the strength of seven elephants; and a net design on his chest and back protects him against all kinds of danger. His mentor, like most if not all of Cambodia's wizards, has since died. Nhek Bun Chhay laments the dying out of a power that he believes saved his life.
"During wartime, many people had magic tattoos," he says. "But now it has decreased; people do it for art but they have forgotten how to put power into the designs."
Over the border in Thailand, the tradition of sacred tattoos (also called sak yant) is as tough as the jungle vines. Lineages that stretch back hundreds of years continue to hold people's imaginations. But, in Cambodia, the lineages have been badly damaged.
"I couldn't find a single tattoo master with a real lineage [in Cambodia]," says Cummings. Now it is up to artists such as Teven Say and Chan Tra to nourish what is left in the hope sak yant can again grow into something relevant.
IN PHNOM PENH, Chan Tra is finishing a Phutson sak yant (" Phut" stands for Buddha and " son" means layering) design on my arm - my third after the two I received from Teven Say in Siem Reap. Afterwards, Chan Tra takes three fragrant incense sticks and circles the fresh tattoo, praying feverishly in Pali. A rattling fan swings from side to side, causing the designs stuck on the wall to flap slightly. He makes me promise to return on the next full moon, to make an offering to the spirits of sak yant.
Chan Tra finishes the blessing by blowing on the design, activating it.
"What you must understand is that these tattoos have real power," he says. "They really can protect you from accidents and danger, and bring you luck."
From: http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1825503/magical-tattoo-artists-cambodia
Report: NASA cuts live feed as UFOs fly past Earth
By Joe Kovacs
Mysterious footage said to depict three UFOs racing by Planet Earth is causing an out-of-this-world discussion on YouTube, as some people think it’s proof-positive of alien life.
The 4-minute long video titled “UFO Mysteries: UFOs, Angels Or Biological Creatures Seen Leaving The Earth?” was uploaded a week ago and has more than 214,000 views.
The video, reportedly shot from the International Space Station, shows three unidentified flying objects shooting upward out of Earth’s atmosphere.
The 4-minute long video titled “UFO Mysteries: UFOs, Angels Or Biological Creatures Seen Leaving The Earth?” was uploaded a week ago and has more than 214,000 views.
The video, reportedly shot from the International Space Station, shows three unidentified flying objects shooting upward out of Earth’s atmosphere.
Just when the lights appear to blast off the planet, the video feed is cut by NASA, with a message subsequently displayed on screen stating: “Please stand by. The High Definition Earth Viewing experiment is either switching cameras, or we are experiencing a s temporary loss of signal with the International Space Station.”
An artists’ impression of a UFO – and the location of the flashing lights before the transmission ends (courtesy: Sunday Express) |
Close to 200 people have commented on what they think the video is actually showing, including the usual, classic responses such as swamp gas or a weather balloon.
Commenter Michael Clottey is among the viewers saying it’s proof of alien life.
“BINGO! Caught them red-handed leaving Earth’s orbit,” he wrote. “That’s the kind of proof that is needed. Excellent footage, absolutely Fantastic. One for the books. Let the debunkers try and say it’s space trash. I don’t think there is anything they can say about this footage apart from just saying it is fake and just CGI [computer-generated images] hahaha. Wow amazing stuff. This must go viral.”
Kyle Quinn noted: “I just adore how they cut the feed off, they make it so obvious they know what’s going on too.”
Joe Berry, however, was far more skeptical, saying: “Wow objects coming from our OWN planet, must be extraterrestrial.”
Other comments include:
Britain’s Sunday Express noted, “Of course, its possible the YouTube video has been doctored, or the unexplained objects are simply a trick of the light.”
The paper says, “Critics claim the alleged UFO sightings on the live feed are simply down to NASA’s poor camera and this latest sighting is likely to be a distorted view of the moon.”
The International Business Times reports, “This is not the first time conspiracy theorists claim NASA has inadvertently captured extraterrestrial activity. Earlier in January this year, UFO hunter Toby Lundh spotted what he claimed was an UFO just outside the space station as he was monitoring the live feed on his laptop.
“Lundh added that there are ‘always some UFOs showing up’ and ‘NASA always cuts the feed when a UFO gets close to the station.’”
From: http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/report-nasa-cuts-live-feed-as-3-ufos-fly-past-earth/
Commenter Michael Clottey is among the viewers saying it’s proof of alien life.
“BINGO! Caught them red-handed leaving Earth’s orbit,” he wrote. “That’s the kind of proof that is needed. Excellent footage, absolutely Fantastic. One for the books. Let the debunkers try and say it’s space trash. I don’t think there is anything they can say about this footage apart from just saying it is fake and just CGI [computer-generated images] hahaha. Wow amazing stuff. This must go viral.”
Kyle Quinn noted: “I just adore how they cut the feed off, they make it so obvious they know what’s going on too.”
Joe Berry, however, was far more skeptical, saying: “Wow objects coming from our OWN planet, must be extraterrestrial.”
Other comments include:
- “Seen one of these above my house in the sky. At first it appeared as a yellow orb and solid, moving slowly. But when it took off looking through binoculars it had the exact same flutter effect and did not look as a solid anymore.”
- “Canadian geese caught in an unfortunate updraft. You hear about their frozen bodies falling to Earth about three days later.”
- “NASA, Never A Straight Answer!”
Britain’s Sunday Express noted, “Of course, its possible the YouTube video has been doctored, or the unexplained objects are simply a trick of the light.”
The paper says, “Critics claim the alleged UFO sightings on the live feed are simply down to NASA’s poor camera and this latest sighting is likely to be a distorted view of the moon.”
The International Business Times reports, “This is not the first time conspiracy theorists claim NASA has inadvertently captured extraterrestrial activity. Earlier in January this year, UFO hunter Toby Lundh spotted what he claimed was an UFO just outside the space station as he was monitoring the live feed on his laptop.
“Lundh added that there are ‘always some UFOs showing up’ and ‘NASA always cuts the feed when a UFO gets close to the station.’”
From: http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/report-nasa-cuts-live-feed-as-3-ufos-fly-past-earth/
Saturday, June 27, 2015
The Bond
by Boltzman Brains
The Egg
The heliosphere is the region of space inhabited by the Sun. The heliosphere is a magnetic bubble-like medium and is located as far as beyond the orbit of Pluto. Plasma “blown” out from the Sun, known as the solar wind, creates and maintains this bubble against the outside pressure of the interstellar medium, the hydrogen and helium gas that permeates Milky Way Galaxy. The solar wind flows outward from the Sun until encountering the termination shock, where motion slows abruptly.
The Voyager spacecraft have actively explored the outer reaches of the heliosphere, passing through the shock and entering the heliosheath, a transitional region which is in turn bounded by the outermost edge of the heliosphere, called the heliopause. The overall shape of the heliosphere is determined by the interstellar medium, through which it is traveling and the sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field
Earth’s magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from the Earth’s interior to where it meets the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. Its magnitude at the Earth’s surface ranges from 25 to 65 microteslas (0.25 to 0.65 gauss).
Roughly speaking it is the field of a magnetic dipole currently tilted at an angle of about 10 degrees with respect to Earth’s rotational axis, as if there were a bar magnet placed at that angle at the center of the Earth. Unlike a bar magnet, however, Earth’s magnetic field changes over time because it is generated by a geodynamo (in Earth’s case, the motion of molten iron alloys in its outer core).
Layer upon layer of protection lays over us protecting us from the forces of the universe that would obliterate us in an instant without their protection. Arising from this Is a system of binding that creates all life. Energy creates patterns which persist in fractal progression from scales large and small. Much of what we think of as a self is defined by ideas of what life is but we should realize that these definitions show more about our perspective than the reality of our existence.
What makes life?
I believe it to be a matter of homeostasis that is regulated in such a way as to create a self regulating pattern within a dynamic system. This is caused by a system of value which defines the self the same way axioms define a model. The basis of life is algorithmic action manifest as direct representation through contextual energy upon physical reality.
The key to understanding the algorithm is in the binding selection. The first particle to exhibit polarity and connect to another particle making the first chain creating a line of energy which will then fold causing secondary and tertiary field generation through n dimensional space begins Physics and Chemistry.
Proteins may be created from folding and the quantum chemical bonds resulting from the simple arrangement of the four positions of the letter V as positive poles exist and attraction possibilities from inside outside + and – meet and create chains of particles which in turn create chains capable of chemical action.
It is so simple for such things to exist but do they necessarily have to exist only as physical objects or could you find such simple machines created by algorithms inherent in the action of the existence of energy to any abstraction of infinite reality?
To put it in perspective could cultures, memes, personalities and other such energy patterns also exhibit quantum chemical reaction?
What is addiction?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html
This is a good article I found recently on addiction and ist causes. It seems likely that people become addicted because of the need to bond socially rather than as previously thought a physical need for a chemical. Bonding builds into a social organism and may work on many levels previously unrecognized.
Though this is interesting and indicative, I am looking for an explanation for a different phenomena.
How alive and conscious is the planet as a system?
I noticed something unusual one day, I was cloud watching while driving and each puffy little cloud was sailing about five hundred feet up and trailing what looked like rain. I drove farther and then saw a barn on fire, as the clouds went past they were vacuuming up the dust and smoke from the fire, visibly. I didn’t know that clouds would cross the earth vacuuming up the particles that would give them substance and growth. They must have been using electrical differences to cause this transference. The earth and sky are continually exchanging electrical forces and the systems involved are as complex and little understood as just about anything we see. The earth itself is an electrical dynamo consisting of a liquid iron, nickel core that creates a strong magnetic field. It is in constant pattern of binding with scales outward and inward.
Another thing I watched while cloud watching, when wondering about the contextual energy systems on different scales I like to look up. There are many systems of great complexity that have raised questions in my mind. As I drove home one day I noticed two shapes in the clouds that looked like a set of eyes. Glancing back I watched them slowly changing as they filled with an iris and then filled with bright light which seemed to give them life. It suddenly seemed as if something very large was looking down at me. I suddenly felt like an ant must feel and wondered how such a thing could be?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_creativity
Stephen L. Thayler P.H.D. on creation machines and how they are a different form of AI created from artificial neural networks of imagitrons and perceptrons which create a system of logic and actually learn by using simple rules that arise spontaneously from natural means. What this means is that you have something that creates patterns and an observer of some form and then throw in some random noise within the system and you can easily create an entity with a creative imagination. Scale and energy are not the only things that occur to affect the context of conscious being within the fractal of our existence.
And today this creation of life is spreading into the realm of technology. There are many questions to be answered and I think it is bonding that will hold many of the answers.
Displacing the Matrix and the Power of Spiritual Cymatics
By Zen Gardner;
I had an extremely inspiring conversation with a beautiful soul today about the awakening and how we can be the most effective in facilitating it. In the course of our exchange, while sharing ideas about how to go about creating practical applications, many analogies and perceptions came to mind.
As anyone who reads my articles knows, I am all over the shift into the awakening now being birthed and the empowerment available to anyone who is willing to tune into it.
It’s not evident to all, as the fixation on the crumbling matrix and growth of the parasitic police state on the dead and dying stump of the old paradigm in the forest of the world seems to captivate most people’s attention.
It blocks out people’s vision, as it’s designed to do. While we must also be aware of it, we cannot be fixated on it.
That crumbling matrix of world information is important, but must be transcended into levels of empowerment and personal and collective activism, much like concentrating on the new growth bursting with life on that same forest floor, way surpassing the influence of this relic of old control systems.
That old rotten stump is dead and dying. It’s branches have fallen, its leaves are long gone, and its roots are rotting in the rich, active earth below transforming this fungal infection back into the cycle of life.
We are seeing the final stages of a dying epoch, and our attention needs to be on the new growth bursting up through the dead limbs and leaves of the forest floor instead of the induced drama of the dying, old and decrepit, falsely imposed structure.
The Awake Grid and Spiritual Cymatics
As we spoke about the need for practical solutions supporting community and personal activism, I shared how many write me about feeling so alone in this fight and why I wrote Are We Alone? Or Strategically Placed and why it struck such a chord in people. Feeling isolated and alone is a fact of life in the so-called alternative community, but it’s a much greater phenomenon than that.
It has to do with our current alternative paradigm and how we’re approaching the shift.
When discussing alternatives and how empowering they are I had a picture of those same dispersed energetic nodes I refer to in my article, be they individuals, energetic portals, ley lines or otherwise, only now vibrating with an enhanced intentional frequency.
The vibratory effect at every level causes the immediately outlying points of awakened conscious human beings to resonate and thus create vibrational cymatic patterns which then vibrate and resonate with and even begin to converge with these localized nodes.
A magnificent image of people coming together when these strategic especially awakened human energy points are activated and vibrationally alive, if you can envision it.
It’s much like the deeper interpretations of the role of our star, the sun, and other planetary bodies, never mind massive galactic influences. My point is, as we tune into and facilitate these wonderful vibrations the effects are extremely practical, bringing together sympathetic souls and influences into powerful and extremely practical convergences. And it’s happening.
Bottom Line
We need to not just awaken individually but converge and activate in very practical ways to express this new awareness and understanding. As so many are intensely aware of the seriously decaying state of social governance, this should not be our focus.
Instead we need to concentrate our attention and intention on the blossoming innate knowledge of a better way to live and work together to explore the way of life we know in our hearts to be right.
Many are working to set such programs in place and we need to encourage and participate in these, or initiate our own, and thus help accentuate and realize this new birthing paradigm.
We are seeing movements arise around the planet affirming this very aspect. Groups, communities and alternative organizations are being born as we speak, well aware of our perilous external condition yet knowing a much better plan can easily be put in its place. This is true conscious revolution.
Look for it. Be part of it.
Let go of the old. Living in a reactionary state only affirms the oppressor and its matrix of deceit, fear and control. It’s time to move on and build. You’ll see it when you do. And it’s wonderful. Just respond from the heart.
More on this to come. A wonderful new day is dawning.
I had an extremely inspiring conversation with a beautiful soul today about the awakening and how we can be the most effective in facilitating it. In the course of our exchange, while sharing ideas about how to go about creating practical applications, many analogies and perceptions came to mind.
As anyone who reads my articles knows, I am all over the shift into the awakening now being birthed and the empowerment available to anyone who is willing to tune into it.
It’s not evident to all, as the fixation on the crumbling matrix and growth of the parasitic police state on the dead and dying stump of the old paradigm in the forest of the world seems to captivate most people’s attention.
It blocks out people’s vision, as it’s designed to do. While we must also be aware of it, we cannot be fixated on it.
That crumbling matrix of world information is important, but must be transcended into levels of empowerment and personal and collective activism, much like concentrating on the new growth bursting with life on that same forest floor, way surpassing the influence of this relic of old control systems.
That old rotten stump is dead and dying. It’s branches have fallen, its leaves are long gone, and its roots are rotting in the rich, active earth below transforming this fungal infection back into the cycle of life.
We are seeing the final stages of a dying epoch, and our attention needs to be on the new growth bursting up through the dead limbs and leaves of the forest floor instead of the induced drama of the dying, old and decrepit, falsely imposed structure.
The Awake Grid and Spiritual Cymatics
As we spoke about the need for practical solutions supporting community and personal activism, I shared how many write me about feeling so alone in this fight and why I wrote Are We Alone? Or Strategically Placed and why it struck such a chord in people. Feeling isolated and alone is a fact of life in the so-called alternative community, but it’s a much greater phenomenon than that.
It has to do with our current alternative paradigm and how we’re approaching the shift.
When discussing alternatives and how empowering they are I had a picture of those same dispersed energetic nodes I refer to in my article, be they individuals, energetic portals, ley lines or otherwise, only now vibrating with an enhanced intentional frequency.
The vibratory effect at every level causes the immediately outlying points of awakened conscious human beings to resonate and thus create vibrational cymatic patterns which then vibrate and resonate with and even begin to converge with these localized nodes.
A magnificent image of people coming together when these strategic especially awakened human energy points are activated and vibrationally alive, if you can envision it.
It’s much like the deeper interpretations of the role of our star, the sun, and other planetary bodies, never mind massive galactic influences. My point is, as we tune into and facilitate these wonderful vibrations the effects are extremely practical, bringing together sympathetic souls and influences into powerful and extremely practical convergences. And it’s happening.
Bottom Line
We need to not just awaken individually but converge and activate in very practical ways to express this new awareness and understanding. As so many are intensely aware of the seriously decaying state of social governance, this should not be our focus.
Instead we need to concentrate our attention and intention on the blossoming innate knowledge of a better way to live and work together to explore the way of life we know in our hearts to be right.
Many are working to set such programs in place and we need to encourage and participate in these, or initiate our own, and thus help accentuate and realize this new birthing paradigm.
We are seeing movements arise around the planet affirming this very aspect. Groups, communities and alternative organizations are being born as we speak, well aware of our perilous external condition yet knowing a much better plan can easily be put in its place. This is true conscious revolution.
Look for it. Be part of it.
Let go of the old. Living in a reactionary state only affirms the oppressor and its matrix of deceit, fear and control. It’s time to move on and build. You’ll see it when you do. And it’s wonderful. Just respond from the heart.
More on this to come. A wonderful new day is dawning.
Cymatics: Sound Has Form
Cymatics is the study of wave phenomena and vibration, a term coined by Swiss scientist Hans Jenny, the word Kymatik, ('cymatic' in English) derives from the Greek 'Kuma' meaning 'billow' or 'wave,' to describe the periodic effects that sound and vibration has on matter.
Everything in the Universe is oscillating and vibrating. Cymatics shows how vibrations interact to create the world we experience 'out there,' while bringing into focus the hidden principles that underlie all natural processes. Understanding these principles offers insights into the dynamics of life in the dense, physical world of matter, form and function, but also in the subjective ways in which we perceive ourselves.(1)
"When one's eye is open to the Cymatic phenomena, you can see it everywhere." - Hans Jenny
In fact Jenny is just one in a long line of venerated scientist / philosophers involved with Cymatics, stretching all the way back to the original Father of Science Galileo. Galileo was the first to notice the formation of regular patterns on an oscillating body while experimenting with plates & chisels in 1632.(2)
Galileo Galilei |
-Galileo
1680: a Royal society member, philosopher, architect and polymath Robert Hooke noticed nodal patterns forming as he ran a violin bow along the edge of a glass plate covered with a fine layer of flour. Hooke is better known for giving us his law of elasticity (Hooke's Law) than for popularizing Cymatics.
1787: the German musician and physicist Ernst Chladni repeated Hookes experiments and published his findings in the book "Discoveries in the Theory of Sound", making it one of the first treatises on the science of sound, with this and other works, he laid the foundation for that discipline within physics that came to be called acoustics. He is sometimes referred to as the "father of acoustics".
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni |
Chladni Plate |
Examples of square Chladni Figures (drawn by Mary D. Waller) |
This video is made by Suzanne Tribe, a student over at the School of Cymatics.
She built a homemade tonascope using PVC (like in these diy cymatics instructions), then invited a friend to sing Mozart’s “Una Donna a Quindici Anni” through the pipe. Watch this video to see how they achieved some beautiful and complex cymatics images using a very simple setup.
You can view Suzanne’s page at the School of Cymatics here. To get free instructions for building your own diy cymatics tonascope click here.(4)
Footnotes:
Friday, June 26, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court Makes History on Marriage Equality
By Amanda Fickett
After decades of struggle, marriage equality is now the law of the land. Millions of Americans have been waiting for our nation’s highest court to recognize marriage equality–and it just did in a 5-4 opinion, issued by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Ever since the tide turned sharply in 2013, when the Court found that the federal government had to recognize same-sex married couples under federal law, case after case pointed toward what seemed an inevitable national consensus–at least until the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a contrary decision, setting up a showdown at the Supreme Court.
The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was announced to the cheers of hundreds who gathered on the Court’s steps. Writing for the majority, Kennedy’s words resonated with the import of the decision: “It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality. Here the marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in essence unequal: same-sex couples are denied all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples and are barred from exercising a fundamental right. Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry.”
To recap, Obergefell v. Hodges comprises four consolidated cases from Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee which pose the same essential questions: (1) are state bans on same-sex marriage constitutional and (2) if such bans are constitutional, are states that ban same-sex marriage required to recognize such marriages performed in other states.
In his eloquent majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy answered the first question with a resounding “no.” The Court’s four left-leaning Justices agreed with him that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to perform same-sex marriages. According to the Court, “[t]he nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation.” The Court held that the right to marry is protected under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, stating that the right to marry is fundamental: as a result, marriage equality is now the law of the land in all fifty states.
Justice Kennedy is an unlikely champion for LGBT rights, having been appointed as a presumably “safe” conservative seat by President Ronald Reagan. For decades, Kennedy voted fairly consistently with his fellow conservatives, leading to an often fractured 5-4 majority on a number of key cases with far-reaching social and legal implications. But on the question of LGBT rights, Kennedy surprised nearly everyone with his first seminal opinion, Romer v. Evans, which struck down Colorado’s anti-gay Amendment 2 in 1996. Then nearly a decade later, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which ruled homosexual sodomy laws unconstitutional, flatly overturning the notorious case of Bowers v. Hardwick written just 17 years earlier.
But it was his opinion in United States v. Windsor, in which the Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), that set the stage for today’s historic ruling. Kennedy wrote in that case that DOMA imposed a “disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages.” In his dissent Scalia warned, “By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.” His dissent, ironically, was cited often by challengers to state laws restricting the right of marriage to just heterosexual couples.
While momentous, to many the Court’s decision comes as no great surprise. After all, as court watchers noted, the Court all but guaranteed a favorable outcome in February when, in an unprecedented move, the justices declined to stay a federal judge’s order that invalidated Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage. Moreover, traditionally conservative Ireland recently became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote, and just last Friday, the Supreme Court of Mexico, a country that is more than 80% Catholic, legalized same-sex unions. On the question of human rights, Justice Kennedy is known to look not only to recent trends in U.S. law, but to the state of the law in other nations. But surprise or no, the Court’s decision today will go down in history as a capstone of one of the most significant civil rights movements in a generation.
Today, Justice Kennedy closed his opinion, and an era, with a particularly poignant thought:
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one civilization’s oldest institution. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Advocates have long insisted that the fight for marriage equality was never just about the right to marry; it was about basic human dignity. The story at the heart of the named case, Obergefell v. Hodges exemplifies that well. The facts of that case are compelling: Jim Obergefell and John Arthur, a couple for over twenty years, had flown from their home in Ohio to Maryland to get married, due to Arthur’s rapidly failing health. Arthur had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and the swift progression of his disease heightened the couple’s sense of urgency to have their union recognized before Arthur passed away. The two were wed aboard a medical jet in Maryland in July of 2013; Arthur died a few months later. Despite the fact that Obergefell and Arthur had won the right to have Arthur’s death certificate reflect his true marital status, that decision was appealed by the State of Ohio—meaning that the death certificate could be rewritten to say that Arthur was single at the time of his death.
After today’s decision, couples like Obergefell and Arthur will never again have to face that kind of indignity at the hands of the state, nor will they have to endure the painful uncertainty of wondering whether their relationships will be recognized depending upon where they happen to live. Marriages in America will no longer be artificially bifurcated based on the sex of the participants. Love has always been love—but after today, marriage is also just marriage.
For a more indepth look at the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court case, read this article: From Heartbreak to History: How One Gay Spouse’s Dying Wish Might Change the Law for All Time
From: http://secondnexus.com/social/the-supreme-court-makes-history-marriage-equality/?ts_pid=5
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