Book fairies and other messages from spirit

I missed the Edgar Cayce thought for the day on Sunday, which is sent out by the Association for Research and Enlightenment each day, using a quotation from the thousands of readings which Edgar Cayce did during his life. It was: "While individual experiences are personal, or rather individual, these give that NECESSARY experience that will enlighten and enliven the abilities of others; for each soul needs only that awakening to be able to create in the physical all necessary for that soul's development through any period."

This speaks to something I have been wondering about. I have had a few experiences which psychologists might call anomalous or anomalistic, and actually I didn't share them for a very long time, because I worried about people thinking that I had lost my mind. Finding the Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies (QFAS) was a great relief, because even if I don't resonate with everyone's experience, I know that the people in the fellowship will listen with an open mind and heart to what I have to say. 

I do not expect anyone to accept my experiences as true or even relevant to them, but I have the feeling that sometimes information finds the right people at the right time. Many of my friends in QFAS have the same experience of book fairies that I have. Someone decides to get rid of the very book I want to read, or a book which contains the answer to a question I have been thinking about. Sometimes I have been sent the right person, or the right video, or the right email that tells me exactly what I need to know to take me on the next step of my path. Sometimes, I've had a book for ages but haven't got around to reading it and will open it just when the information in it tells me something I needed or wanted to know.

A lot of Quakers worry that talking about what they believe is somehow going to influence or divert someone from their own true path, but I think that part of being on a spiritual path is to recognise whether something "speaks to your condition" as old Quakers used to say - and still do. I believe that we have to learn to know whether something is right for us, and one of the things which drew me to Quakers in the first place was their acceptance that Quakers might be a stepping stone on someone's path but not necessarily their final destination. People's needs change, what they believe may change.

One aspect of being on a spiritual path is openness to the idea that we are all at different stages, and we may even get different things from the same book or the same information at different times. I must have read Natalie Sudman's book The Application of Impossible Things about nine or ten times by now, and although it is a slim volume, I always find something new, something different in it. The book hasn't changed, and so I am driven to the conclusion that I change, and pay attention to different things depending on the progress I have made since the last time I read it.

Speaking to a group of friends about mystical experiences, I started to feel guilty, maybe I should have been talking about this for years, and could have helped others along on their journey. But then, if spirit is working the way I think it is, maybe now is always the perfect time to begin.

Surviving Death on Netflix, and elsewhere

Image CC0 from Pixabay by Karin Henseler

 I become clerk for the Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies last September, and many of the things which the fellowship is interested in are encapsulated in a new series on Netflix: Surviving Death.

The series covers near-death experiences, mediumship, signs from the dead, end of life experiences, and reincarnation.  The series doesn't cover the subjects in depth, but gives enough detail to intrigue the casual viewer into wanting to know more. There is a trailer for Surviving Death on youtube here.

It astonishes me that everyone isn't as curious as I am about the way things work.  I don't know if our culture's taboo on death extends to not wanting to know about the afterlife, or if the huge number of horror stories and stories about ghosts and haunting have made people afraid to think about it, but there seems to be a division in society between those who are curious and those who do not wish to be bothered by anything resembling evidence that life extends after death.

For those like me, who have experienced a separation of consciousness and body, it is obvious that life after death is a reality. I am amazed that even people who are interested and open to the possibilities are not aware of the huge amount of material on youtube and elsewhere on the internet which offers more information.  So I thought that in addition to giving the Netflix series a plug for those who haven't seen it, I would post some links to other sources of information. This is a few links for near-death experiences, which is the subject of the first episode of the Netflix series.  I will post subsequent ones for the other subjects dealt with in the programme.

Near-death experiences

There are many many channels on youtube exploring these experiences. One of the best known is the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) channel, which is a non-profit organisation for experiencers and those interested in these experiences.  Many of the famous examples of near-death events have been interviewed or have spoken on the channel. You can find IANDS channel page on youtube here, and if you click on the VIDEOS heading across the page, you will be able to browse their many videos, Anita Moorjani and Eben Alexander among them.

I also like Hamish Miller's near-death experience, on Tim Walter's channel; you may also like to see Hamish talking about his life before and after that near-death experience.

I love these three interviews with Natalie Sudman on Bob Olson's Afterlife tv channel, talking about her book The Application of Impossible Things, written after she was blown up by a bomb in Iraq: here's the first, the "blink" environment; here's the second, the "rest and life review" environment; and here's the third: the "healing environment". Someone who talks about regretting coming back is Peter Pangore, interviewed here by Shaman Oaks.

If you want to look into research about near-death experiences, you can listen to Pim Van Lommel talking about his research

Astral projection or out-of-the-body experiences

I was asked recently what astral projection (AP) meant, and did my best to explain it.  For me, astral projection means allowing your mental or astral body - your consciousness - to leave the body behind.  It can happen spontaneously, it can happen deliberately, or it can be associated with a lucid dream. It is also known as an out-of-body experience (OOBE).

I have had a number of spontaneous OOBEs.  The first was when I was eight, and needed a tooth extracted because of an abcess.  My grandmother arranged for me to have the tooth extracted under gas, but I had had a strange fainting fit a few weeks before, and so, scarily, the dentist was accompanied by a number of dental nurses holding my wrists and ankles to ensure that if I did have any sort of reaction to the gas, I would not interfere with the extraction.

I remember going to a place with a merry-go-round, and very beautiful music, and then being rolled around in a dark warm treacly substance like very soft chewing gum.  I believe that rolling around was me coming back into the body.

On the other occasion I found myself suddenly in the air above the market house in my old town, aware that I was in a space where there were other people and other consciousnesses.  I had what is called a peak experience, feeling that I was part of everything and everything was a part of me, one with God, sending love to all things, including those things which we consider inanimate and lacking in consciousness.  I became aware that God's love extends to everything in the material world and not just the animate things inside it.

I have had a number of lucid dreams where the knowledge that I was dreaming was associated with a shot-out-of-a-cannon effect, and a strange feeling.  Michael Raduga believes that lucid dreaming and astral projection are part of the same thing, and doesn't distinguish between the two.

I have had two lucid dreams in which I was aware of leaving the body and deliberately exploring.  In the first, I found myself above the north sea, seeing the sea below me churning around.  In the second I explored, having left my body in bed in my house, but things were not as they are in the real world, when I went into and out of houses.  Eventually I found myself at the door of a house and knocked on it, and it seemed I was expected.  I was taken upstairs to sit around the bed of a dying person, and it occurred to me that if I were out of the body I should be able to feel the silver cord which people reported coming from the back of my head.

I felt around the back of my head, and there it was, but the thought of my body made me return immediately to it.

I've tried for years to leave my body deliberately, but hadn't succeeded until I watched the three parts of Michael Raduga's tutorial on Youtube, combined with an idea which I read on the astral projection subreddit.  In it someone said that when you are trying to astral project it is helpful to use your imagination to imagine that your head is where your feet are and your feet are where your head is and then to reverse it.  I think of it like loosening a piece of metal, it gradually becomes less solid and then breaks free.

I found myself able to sit up away from my body, although it was entirely different from my spontaneous OOBEs, in that everything felt heavy and my sight was smoky. I moved away from my body and through the bedroom door, which was an unusual experience, when I realised that I couldn't open the door myself.

I am inexperienced and don't know much about it from first-hand experience, but it is something which convinces me that it is possible for the consciousness or spirit to exist beyond the human body.  If you can separate while alive, why couldn't that spirit continue beyond bodily death?

I am also convinced that the personality and character can be influenced by the brain but isn't created by it.  I think I need more experimental data to understand this properly, but I am having difficulty in repeating the experience! I have joined Michael Raduga's Elijah Project to see if I can become more expert at AP. There are also a lot of videos on youtube to help - one which is mentioned over and over on the AP subreddit is 

Rupert Sheldrake's TED talk: ideas worth suppressing?

I find an email from Rupert Sheldrake in my inbox, telling me that his TED talk has been removed from the TED London website - although it is still available here - because two scientists have objected to the promotion of the ideas contained within it, it seems.

It always amazes me when scientists wish to eliminate something which doesn't fit within their paradigm of science when there are some simple questions which science cannot answer. If the universe is infinite, what does that mean in terms of what is beyond and beyond and beyond? If the universe is finite, then what is around it? And around that? and around that?

The rise of modern theoretical physics means that very few people in our reality will be able to test out the hypotheses that are put out by perfectly scientific people, or even to understand them. For most lay people the idea that a particle has a chance of being in four places at once is so outside our common experience as to be completely illogical.

Our concept of what science is, in terms of testing hypotheses with scientific method, complete breaks down when observation or non-observation may change the outcome of the experiment... and yet these two scientists, named in Sheldrake's email as Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers are *so* afraid of Sheldrake's ideas, that they have demanded that the video which challenges the dogma of science should be removed.

The fabric of the TED talk which has been removed, is a challenge to the idea of science as a religion, as a substitute for religion, in which a rigid view of what science is and can be is imposed by scientists who control the realm of the possible and probable and refuse to allow any enquiry outside those realms. It is manifestly demonstrated that this view is true, from the very action of its opponents.

TED should be ashamed of themselves. Not only are they priced way outside the realm of most ordinary people's pockets (and thus exclusive and elitist) but they respond to pressure by caving, instead of maintain free speech and the opportunity to listen to an alternative point of view. I thought better of them.

Carlos Diaz UFO contactee film

New film about the experience of Carlos Diaz, UFO contactee, using text to voice and illustrations. It's an interesting story.


The message about the oneness of all is one which is at the heart of most of our religions and spirituality, but one which humanity as a whole has not learned yet. The message which we should be listening to is... to love our neighbours as ourselves. If we did this, we would be unable to produce the sorts of damage that we have wrought on the planet. We are mostly living as though we are living on a planet of infinite resources, with infinite capacity to withstand our abuses. When we do not honour the life of the planet, we kill ourselves, and when we kill each other we prove that we haven't learned to love our neighbours.

It's a simple childlike message, but one which fails to penetrate the bubble we all wear, which is a preoccupation with getting as much as we can of whatever is available. We need to find a way forward which doesn't mean crushing other people in order to achieve our aims... and it's only when we understand the importance of that, that humanity will be ready to progress to the next stage.

Time travellers

BoingBoing carries a video from Jamie D. Grant, a magician, which purports to show a time traveller.  I don't usually like to put spoilers in my blog, and the video is only a couple of minutes long.  You can see it here....

OK... a guy who has a modern look appears in an old photograph. It's a bit like the video of the old lady apparently using a mobile phone... you see what you think you see only with the perspective of your time and place. I've embedded this version only because I think it is the original, but the guy does witter on a bit - the actual film starts around two minutes 39 seconds.



The Hakan Nordkvist case is more intriguing on first viewing. It's a hoax... how can it not be? Apparently a stupid retirement company thought a viral hoax might encourage young people to plan for their retirement. Once again, the "proof" isn't proof at all.



The most persuasive argument against time travel is simply that we do not have people from the 31st century arriving as tourists to screw up the future in some mind-bendingly confusing way. I'm assuming anyone capable of developing a time-travelling machine will be a geek who's watched enough Star Trek to know it never turns out well anyway.

Dying birds falling into the sea

Robin photograph from Wikimedia Commons CC attribution Pierre Selim

If I hadn't caught the end of the six o'clock news on BBC Radio 4 tonight, I would not have heard about the latest example of bird death to hit the UK.  There was a short report at the end of the news of birds plunging into the sea off the coast.  These are garden birds at the end of their migratory journey to our country, who are arriving exhausted, so exhausted that they cannot avoid drowning in the sea a short distance from the coast.

There's very little detail online.  It always amazes me that this sort of story attracts so little attention.  The Independent has a couple of paragraphs at the end of an article about the change in weather this week:

"The bad weather is also affecting wildlife. Thousands of migrating birds have been dying before reaching England this week because of an appalling combination of fog and winds around the coast, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

"Some fishermen have told the charity of the deaths of many exhausted and disorientated "garden" birds plunging into the sea around their vessels, a spokesman said."

The assumption seems to be that the colder weather and fog are to blame, but the scenes described on Radio 4, where they also talked to fishermen who saw birds dropping into the sea around them, seemed more apocalyptic than that sounds. I'm keeping an eye on the subject, but it is hard to summarize when virtually no detail is reported.

Reincarnation scrapbook

Itzhak Perlman and Schubert. 

Lucid Dreaming

I've been a lucid dreamer for some years. Lucid dreaming is when you are dreaming and know you are dreaming, and may be able to control what you do in the dream. On the first occasion I did it, I hadn't heard the phrase Lucid Dreaming, and wouldn't have known that's what it was.

I remember how it happened vividly. In my dream I was at my mother's house, which is slightly unusual in that it has a long room with a staircase behind a door. I was walking up the staircase when I became aware that this was a dream, and I realized that I was dreaming in colour, which answered one of the questions I'd always had about whether I dreamed in colour.

I put out my hand and ran it over the carpet, which answered another question... I could feel the pile of the carpet beneath my hand, and when I put out my hand to the wood it felt cool and smooth - indistinguishable from real life. I've since been told that you can't feel pain in a dream, which is why pinching yourself works.

I turned around and went downstairs, still aware that I was dreaming, and was surprised to find a shop in my mother's living room. I was still fascinated with touching things and feeling the cold of glass, fabrics, the grain of wood, and realizing that I could see bright colours, and feel things just like waking life.

The next time I remember lucid dreaming, I had had a lot of broken nights, and I was trying to sleep in my daughter's bed. I'm not sure how long I had been asleep before I started to dream, but I found myself in a tower with a book open on a lectern in front of me and sun streaming through an open shutter. I looked at the book and was instantly aware that I was dreaming. I thought I could make any letter appear on the book and initially I succeeded, but then the effort woke me up.

Not long afterwards I started to read about Lucid Dreaming, and discovered that keeping a dream diary could help you both to remember your dreams but also to trigger Lucid Dreaming. I did find this to be true. I kept a dream diary for about three weeks before I had a lucid dream. This time, when I realized that I was dreaming, I had an experience I can only describe as being launched from a cannon... I felt as though my body was catapulted forwards, and I believe I may have had an out-of--body experience. I remember floating above my body and feeling a soft thing beneath me, soft and warm.

Around this time I had a lot of false awakenings: dreams where I would wake up and go to the bathroom, realize I was dreaming, wake up and go to the bathroom, realize I was still dreaming, wake up and stand up in my room, realize I was dreaming.... Sometimes I would have five or six false awakenings before finally waking up.

It was a few months later that I restarted my dream diary and tried a technique that I saw on a website: fixing on an object and deciding that if I saw it I would ask myself the question, am I dreaming? I decided on the moon, but in actual fact in the dream I didn't see the moon, but I did see moonlight, and it triggered me to ask if I was dreaming. As I could see a ploughed field outside my living room window, an unnaturally neat and tidy and almost drawn or painted ploughed field, it didn't take me long to decide I was indeed dreaming. Again I had a very strong impression of being pushed forward fast. I don't remember the rest of the dream, I think I woke myself up trying too hard.

Not long after this, I decided to ask myself the question when I saw a pencil in my dream and a couple of days later I did indeed see a pencil. I had the rapid movement forward, and stood up from the sofa where I had seen the pencil in my hand. I took the decision to visit a friend in Rotterdam, and found myself floating over the channel, aware of the swell of the sea beneath me as I travelled rapidly across the sea.

I arrived at a Chinese restaurant I didn't know, and saw people around but didn't know if they were real or dreamers. I started to search for the building my friend lived in but got frightened and woke up.

I have only had the wonderful vibrant colours that some people experience, once or twice, and I have had frightening experiences too... once I felt that someone or something was trying to pull me out of my body, and I found the bed vibrating very strongly, and that scared me. On another occasion I saw horrible faces around me and that scared me too. Maybe I am just a coward, but I didn't want to experience more and woke myself up. The good thing about lucid dreaming is that it is fairly easy to wake yourself - the trick is to remain asleep but lucid if you are enjoying yourself.

I think the experience of lucidity is much easier to gain if you keep a dream diary. I tend to do this for a few weeks and then forget or lose my pencil! Writing down what you have dreamed about as soon as you wake up and before you move or get up is the best way to do that. I find that if I move I tend to forget most of the details of the dream and only retain a general impression.

Certainly the technique of linking dreaming to common objects seems to work for me. And if you think you may be dreaming, always ask yourself the question. If you are dreaming, that alone can be enough to trigger lucidity.

Transformer explosions

I was sent a link for transformer explosions in Fort Worth, Texas, which happened a few days ago. The video shows amazing coloured explosions which were attributed to lightning strikes on the power lines somewhere out of shot.

The comments on the video on YouTube draw attention to the orbs/spheres/things which can be seen in the sky at the beginning of the film. Some people questioned the authenticity of the film, but it seems to be borne out by eyewitnesses and news reports around Fort Worth and I see no reason for assuming it is fabricated.

In the comments on the video, some people drew attention to the fact that there had been transformer explosions around the US in the days around the Fort Worth explosions. SheilaAliens has gathered reports of four here.

There are also reports of transformer explosions in Germany, Brazil and Portugal. It made me wonder if this sort of thing is going on all the time and we simply don't notice it, or whether this is a new phenemenon... or maybe tied to the age of the transformers? Seems odd, anyway. I will add to this post as I find more videos of thesame phenomenon.

Help Domenic Johanssen

I'm taking the unusual step of posting the same blog to all my blogs, no matter what their subject.

Domenic Johanssen was a happy child of two loving parents. His parents were taking him to India from Sweden where they had been living, when officials boarded the plane and took Domenic away. People who are told the story cannot believe that Domenic was removed from his parents on such flimsy grounds: the Johanssens were planning to home educate (which was legal in Sweden at that time), they hadn't allowed him to have all the vaccinations, and he had two cavities in his baby teeth.

He has been in the care of the Swedish authorities since then, and repeated attempts to get him back have failed. The separation has adversely affected the health of his mother and father, and the photograps of the child now compared to the child then make it obvious that he is far less happy in the care of the authorities than he was at home.

Th Swedish system seems to be a heartless and inhumane system which ignore human bonding and puts the interests of the family last in any decision. I find it absolutely incomprehensible that a state in a civilised country could be allowed to behave like this.

I don't know what can be done. I have written to judges and officials over the past two years. In a place where home educating seems to be considered abuse, it is very very hard to know how to communicate with these people.

Everyone to whom I have told this story have been suspicious that there must have been another, hidden, reason for taking Domenic away from his parents, but that truly isn't the case. If you can think of a way to publicise, or to put pressure on the Swedish authorities, please, please let me know.

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Onward and upwards

I'm struggling with a few things at the moment, and finding it hard to carry on as usual with work and daily life when my head is in such a strange place.

I have been reading a lot, and thinking a lot.  I came across a website which claimed that in 2012 we will all be going to heaven, as God has decided that we need not live and die in the third dimension.  Well, there's a lot of 2012 craziness out there -you don't have to look very far to find people predicting the end of the world this year or next, or ascension or a change in the poles or a three and a half days darkness and Armageddon.

What struck me about the webpage I visited, and with many sites with a spiritual slant, is the idea that the world is intrinsically evil, and that everything in spirit is good.  If one accepts that this is part of God's Plan, and that being on earth is part of the cycle of life, I can't understand how it can be thought to be evil.  There is good and bad and everything in between on earth. 

Most especially for those who believe in reincarnation, the experience of being on earth is apparently a critical part of a soul's development.  It seems to me that value-judgements about people's behaviour become rather cloudy and difficult to judge in those circumstances.  If I am here to learn not to value material things above people, then isn't being robbed of them part of the lesson?  In which case maybe that burglar was doing God's work? 

It's the sort of stuff that starts to turn your head inside out.  It's not wonder I am not sleeping well.  I had a reiki attunement last weekend, but I have been feeling iller and more tired over the past week than for a long time.  Hopefully it is just the healing crisis that was mentioned in the training, and not, say, something serious...

An Indigo child who remembers everything

FBI files reveal "alien craft" incident is real

Newly-released FBI files reveal official government memoranda which mention the recovery of bodies and craft.  So far, only the Sun and the Daily Mail seem to have picked up on the story in the UK.  The Daily Mail link provides a link to the FBI vault.

I'm intrigued to find that it is possible, after all this time, that there may have been a cover-up which concealed the finding of disks and their occupants.  I wonder what else awaits in the FBI files.

Meanwhile, someone has compiled a video of all the most recent UFO and aerial pheomena from the mainstream news reports.

Conspiracies, Comets and CMEs

I have always been interested in mysteries, as long as I can remember.  Everything from unsolved crimes to apparently supernatural events, from historical mysteries, to the mysteries of life.  I've always had an open mind - and when I say open, I mean REALLY open.  Not the scientific sort of open mind, which discounts anything that doesn't seem rational before it starts an investigation.

It seems very strange to me, than in an era where quantum physics appears to tell us that something may be where it appears to be, but it may be in several other places too... when the Newtonian laws of physics do not appear to apply to the contents of an atom... and when there is so little known about the dark matter which comprises a large part of the universe, scientists can be so wedded to the idea that there is a version of reality about which they can be sure.  They claim to have an open mind, but it soon becomes obvious, once anyone challenges the status quo, that this isn't true.  In science, as in most other walks of life, there is a strong aversion to risk or to change, and people will vilify someone who breaks rank and tries to establish a new path.  The man who first suggested that BSE could be transmitted from cow to calf was utterly rubbished for a long time, and shut out as a pariah by other scientists, until what he said was demonstrated to be true.

Anyway... I find myself in a middle ground between mainstream scientists on the one side, who appear to me to have only partially open minds until you beat them around the head with incontrovertible evidence, and what I can only describe as the crazies on the other side... people who need no evidence to believe the most outrageous of things, particularly if they involve the government or an elite group of citizens, and a conspiracy.

What I have learned in half a century, is that an open mind may lead you astray, just as a closed one can.  Being open to the idea that UFOs may be visitors from other planets or other solar systems, incorporates a whole encyclopaedia of other stuff, according to the crazy contingent.  Stuff you don't have to bother about if you are determined not to accept the possibility that advanced life exists in other places in the universe.

On the other hand, sometimes, scientific method will not explain something.  Recently the best example I have seen is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).  This is a system of tapping on acupuncture points.  No-one who has observed the effects on war veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, some of whom have been ill for decades, could claim that it wasn't stunningly effective in treating the symptoms.  If you disbelieve me, watch this video.

The trouble is, I can see that it may be effective, but no one understands why.  For a scientist, it seems that this is the equivalent of it not working at all.  They want to understand the mechanism at work, in order to agree that it is effective.  And they cannot.  Nor can I, but I can look at the effects of it upon the people who have tried it, and take a decision about whether it is effective.

The crazy contingent see conspiracies everywhere.  People who are respected in their community will speak of a government conspiracy to conceal the existence of UFOs, and to keep us from using their technology for free power, in order to protect the oil market, as though that is a proven and accepted fact.  There has always been a certain turn of the century madness, where people have built up to the end of the world, and this effect seems to have been enhanced by the fact that our turn of the century was also the turn of the millennium. 

I follow a number of groups who have been predicting the end of the world and the return of Nbiru for about five years... and they're still waiting.  There is one group which is convinced that a government-funded project called HAARP (google it) is producing unwanted effects in the environment, including earthquakes.  There is another which predicts the end of the world in 2012 according to the Mayan calender and Hopi prophecy, and another group which says that the date is actually 2011. 

What they have in common is a distinct lack of trust in government, and a conviction that the powers-that-be are in possession of the facts, and are refusing to share those facts with the general public, for good motives (to avoid panic) or bad (control and power over the masses).

Now I do not discount the fact that I do not think that governments share all that they think and do, and that there are different levels of knowledge in government.  I think that to a small extent, that may be necessary.  I do not know if it is actually necessary, because I don't have experience of government, and I do not know that the alternative - being completely open about what is done and why - has ever been tried by any government of a large country.  But I have a suspicion that covert operations of one sort or another may be a necessary part of both national security and police investigation, and therefore that there is a need for a level of secrecy in government.

That doesn't mean that I think that the powerful governments are conspiring to keep me in the dark in general, however.  I have always assumed that most governments are too incompetent to conceal anything of substance from the masses. I don't have the sense that I am being fooled or kept in the dark.  Perhaps I am deluded about that, but I find that Americans in particular have a much stronger sense of there being a conspiracy, than people in the UK do.  I find it hard to believe, and I haven't seen any evidence that convinces me, that the US government are concealing big stuff.

However... from time to time things surface on the internet which do compel me to look again.  Firstly, this film, apparently official film from NASA, shows things which are not immediately explainable.  The people who draw attention to them say that Nasa spends a lot of time cleaning up images to remove anomalies, but if they do, why were these released as they were?  On the other hand, if these pictures are real, why hasn't NASA commented on what can be seen in them?

In the last week to two items have given me pause.  The first is that I began to read things about a newly-discovered comet, Comet Elenin.  This was apparently discovered by a Russian astronomer, in December 2010.  It seems strange that it should be discovered so late, but then looking for a comet, particularly one which is hurtling directly towards the centre of the solar system, is like looking for a needle in a haystack.  It has been estimated that this comet has a orbital period of around 10,000 years, which means that this is the first time in recorded history that is has come close to earth.

Of course, the appearance of this comet, now, has started a lot of speculation about the hopi prophecy that in the end times for the earth, we will see a blue and a red object in the sky.  This may be the blue.  Some people predict that the return of a planet Nbiru will be the red.  The interesting thing is, that some people have calculated that the earth, this comet and the sun were in alignment when the Chilean earthquake happened last year.  Someone asked a question on the Nasa website, asking if the alignment around March 11-15 would cause other catastrophes.  As you can see, the person answering the question was somewhat scathing about the chances of the comet affecting earth at all.  However, youtuber 9Nania predicted that there might be an earthquake or similar disaster, saying that she feared it would occur on March 11, two or three days before the Japan earthquake and tsunami occurred.

There are any number of posts on youtube about Comet Elenin, of varying degrees of craziness.  Just like looking at the effects of EFT, I feel that the fact that this alignment apparently occurred at the same time as two very large earthquakes, should give us pause, and lead to some degree of scientific examination.  I fear, however, that scientists are already so convinced that no connection can be possible, that they will refuse to look at it as a possibility, and most information about the Comet will be promulgated by the crazy element.  There are other alginments due in September and October, and of course, the possibility that there may be other earthquakes and disasters ahead is feeding the speculation on 2012 end of times, or 2011 if the splinter group who believes the date of doom is earlier, are right.

It is claimed in one of the videos about Elenin, that if you key in the location of the comet into google skies, the piece of sky containing the comet comes back blank.  I have not tested that for myself.  I can't think why it would be true if it is.  I don't believe it is a conspiracy to keep the truth from us... but I don't know what it is.

The second event to give me pause, is that someone sent me a link to a soho video of a huge coronal mass ejection, apparently recorded on April 3.  According to the buzz on the internet, this image has been pulled from the NASA soho site, they haven't commented on the CME on SpaceWeather.com and there is effectively a news blackout about the CME.  This is very strange.  I usually rely on SpaceWeather to get information about CMEs.  If the images are real, and they look like Soho images, then why should they be pulled from the NASA site, and why didn't SpaceWeather.com report on it?

The government recently set up a special committee to look at how we can protect our power grid from the sort of event that hit Canada in the late 1980s. There is a daily report from youtuber DrKStrong.

The conspiracy theorists predict disasters and mass panic if the government should publicise the event... but I find that hard to believe.  On the other hand...well I am keeping my open mind open, and looking for a good and reasonable explanation of this alleged blackout.

In the mean time, the advice from the sites which have been predicting the imminent arrival of Planet X for years, is to stock up on food, things you need for survival, and to put them all in a handy grab bag, like the Japanese.  I guess that can't hurt, even if the sort of events they are predicting seem on a cataclysmic scale.  Mind you, to collect all that 9Nania recommends, you're going to need a jolly big bag....

Strange bird, fish and animal deaths reported around the world

There have been a number of reports in the past few days, about bird and fish deaths.  First came word from Arkansas that 5000 red wing blackbirds had suddenly fallen to earth, dead.  Initial reports from the autopsies diagnosed "trauma" as the cause, with a possibility that fireworks at New Year or storms might have caused the deaths.

This was swiftly followed with reports from Louisiana and Kentucky of similar bird deaths in smaller numbers on subsequent days, and then others from Italy and Sweden.

Although these things have been reported sporadically by the media in the UK, I haven't seen much sign that anyone is gathering together or linking the strange occurrences, although there are a large number of bloggers blaming the internet for any connections being postulated.

Following this, 100,000 drum fish are reported dead in Arkansas, not far from the original bird fall.  The odd thing is that nearly all the fish involved are of one type... if this were poison or some environmental disease, you'd expect that different populations might be in the same area and also affected.  Now millions of fish are reported dead in Chesapeake Bay and in New Zealand.  So... I am going to gather links on this page for all those I can find, dating from end of December 2010 to date.

One theory being put forward for the bird deaths is the possibility that there are changes in the earth's magnetism which have affected birds' sense of which way is up.  Another possibility is that the deaths have occurred along geological fault lines and are associated with a possible earthquake or volcanic activity.

Just like the apocalyptic reporting of swine flu in the UK, it is hard to know what is normal and expected every year, and what is out of the ordinary... once you hear about one of these events, you are naturally alert to others, and the journalists must be the same.  It is possible these things are happening all the time and we are simply not aware of them because they aren't well reported.

Birds
Beebe, Arkansas: 5000 red-winged blackbirds, December 31/January 1, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana:  500 birds, January 3, 2011
Western Kentucky: 1000? birds, end December, 2010
Falkoping, Sweden: 100 Jackdaws, January 5, 2011
Italy: turtle doves, unknown number, January 5, 2011
Texas, US: blackbirds 100+, January 4, 2011

Fish
Ozark, Arkansas: 100,000 drum fish, December 30
Chesapeake Bay: 2,000,000 fih, January 2/3, 2011
Coramandel Beach, New Zealand: 1000s of snapper fish, January 4, 2011
Paranagua, Brazil, 100 tons of fish, January 3, 2011

Crustacea
Thanet, Kent: 40,000 crabs, End December/Beginning January 2011 (probably killed by the cold weather, third year there has been a big die off).

Interesting blogs on the Subject

Greg Laden's blog

Edited January 9, 2011 to add: This article suggests weapons testing may be responsible for the bird deaths.  I'm not sure I agree - seems unlikely that weapons have been tested simultaneously around the world.

Julian Assange/Raoul Wallenberg

For some reason when I was reading the account of the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the name Raoul Wallenberg kept intruding on my consciousness.  Apart from the link with Sweden occasioned by the court case, I couldn't think of a reason why I would associate Assange with Wallenberg, but when I looked at the pictures of the two people, I could see a distinct similarity.

I have been convinced of reincarnation as a possibility for some time, and websites like return of the revolutionaries are intriguing., particularly when someone who resembles an earlier person has memories of a previous life.

I don't claim any psychic powers to deduce whether reincarnation is a fact, but it worries me that Wallenberg was a person who fought for the freedom of people who were being oppressed by the Nazis, and was disappeared, possibly by the Russians, although they have always denied this.

Assange is fighting for freedom of information.  I hope he is well protected from being disappeared, especially in light of the extremely violent comments made by various American politicians calling for his assassination.

A strange thing...

I promised my mother I would make lunch today.  We'd decided not to have a traditional roast dinner, as I don't much like them and I'm not good at cooking them.  When I went down to the kitchen to cook, my mother was making the Christmas cake, and so I couldn't prepare lunch in the little galley kitchen.  I sat at the kitchen table in the adjoining breakfast room, to peel the potatoes and chop onions.

We were chatting away, when one of the plastic storage jars in the cupboard behind me shot out of the cupboard like a bullet from a gun and hit the floor 12 feet away, in the galley kitchen.  I was so stunned I just sat there for a moment. 

I have tried to find a logical and scientific explanation, but have so far failed.  The contents of the storage jar were not under pressure, it was about a tablespoon of plain flour.  In any case, the lid didn't come off, it was still sealed.

My mother does live on a busy road which gets a lot of traffic, including lorries and buses, but I don't see how this could have pushed the jar out of the cupboard.  If the rattling from the road had dislodged the jar, I feel sure it would have just fallen off, not shot across the room.  Other things in the cupboard, including some teetering stacks of tins and packets were not dislodged.

It's certainly a bit odd. 

Alien ship on the Moon?

This story has been attracting some attention, and it's quite intriguing. While the testimony seems completely unbelievable, there is no doubt that there is something odd showing up on images which come from Apollo 15.  The images can be independently verified, which is what makes it interesting.

It appears that high-resolution images show a large object on the surface of the moon which does not look natural or man-made. Whether, as the person quoted in the article has said, there were covert trips to the moon, and whether the videos provided are real or faked, I have no idea.

I find the idea of covert trips to the moon problematical. Surely the thousands of astronomers and radio hams around the world are unlikely to have missed an American/Soviet spacecraft flying to the moon and back?

For some reason that I do not understand, the US seems to have an obsession with conspiracy theories and secret government. Maybe they are right and we aren't being told important things, but I find it hard to believe the claims that people like David Wilcock make, that the government is in possession of technology that would make the use of fossil fuels obsolete etc.

Apparently sane people say insane things all the time... but conversely, apparently insane people - like David Icke for example - don't always get things wrong.

Some of the people on the comments for this site clim that some other images disprove the photographs, but it seems that those were not so detailed because of the resolution. It's intriguing certainly.

Day before Disclosure

This film, by Norwegian film maker Terje Toftenes, is now free to watch here. There isn't a lot that's new, but it is quite nicely done, and there are some interesting snaps etc.

I have always been fascinated by the possibility that we have been visited. I don't like the current skepticism which seems to regard even considering this possibility as being hopelessly deluded. I believe that - as in most things - there is a spectrum which ranges from people who are mistaken in what they have seen or believe, through people who have seen something which can't be explained, to people who really are deluded or who are using the interest in Ufology for their own gain.

Unfortunately, the progress in special effects and computer assisted design mean that it becomes ever more difficult to assess whether films are real and accurate depictions of what they purportedly show, or fakes. That there are fakes is undeniable... that there is a possibility that some of them are not fakes is what is interesting.

Just to add to the confusion, I do believe that this subject is not treated scientifically by government or the scientific community. If people dismiss reports, refuse to record them, or suppress them, it is impossible to make a scientific assessment of the evidence. It seems inexplicable to me that some of the more famous cases do not appear in the official record because, even if they turn out to be attributed to weather balloons, satellites, delusion, the fact that the have been reported should lead to a record being created, and often hasn't, even when people involved have reported things which - if true - would be matters of national or even global security.