Πέμπτη 5 Αυγούστου 2010
Ανθρωποσοφικη Ιατρικη
Ολες οι διαλεξεις του Ρούντολφ Στάινερ για την εφαρμογη της Ανθρωποσοφιας στην Ιατρικη μπορειτε να διαβασετε εδω
Δευτέρα 2 Αυγούστου 2010
Τι ειναι η Ραδιονικη
* R A D I O N I C S *
-----------------
Radionics Definition: Radionics is the utilization of an unusual energy
or energies in devices to produce natural
phenomenon or effects.
J.G. Gallimore
Radionics: System of alternative medicine developed by Dr. Albert Abrams,
who belived that diseased body tissue affected the nervous
system and gave forth, 'dull emanations'. Abrams believed
electronic phenomena were involved with this, and he invented
a variable resistance intrument called a 'black box' to
measure the ohm resistance of different diseases on an
electronic circuit. He found for example, that cancer
produced a 50 ohm resistance, while syphilis had a 55 ohm
resistance. Abrams later modified his technique so he could
take readings from a drop of blood. In 1924, a committee
established by the Royal Society of Medicine investigated
Abrams techniques and were favorably impressed. Today
Radionics and its cousin Radiesthesia (medical dowsing) are
recognized in Europe as legitimate medical procedures.
This is the beginning of Forum type articles that will be covering all
aspects of the 'Ether'. Which includes 'orgone energy', 'pyramid energy',
'tantric energy' 'kundalini energy' and all other forms of 'unusual'
energies that modern day science is still trying to understand.
It is simply an attempt to inform others that these energies exist and
that they can be made available for your own use as well becoming more
comprehensible to the layman. This is NOT a technically oriented forum,
so should someone attempt and try to use technical terms...it will just
make things that much harder on others who have no formal training in
Physics, chemistry, etc., this forum is for the LAYMAN! But any and all
persons 'of the scientific persuasion' are ENCOURAGED to join in, just
keep things 'simple'. Thank You!
Though I am starting this communication
I do not feel that I am required to allways
contribute to it...whereas all persons have knowledge, ideas and opinions,
I feel that this discussion be 'open' and may accept input from all
persons. I will expect others to send questions & answers also. I will
monitor the communications and answer the questions to the best of my
knowledge and to the limits of my resources. This is a discussion for
'unusual energies', so I will expect some unusual questions and answers!
B A S I C S O F R A D I O N I C S
------------------------------------
Radionics has as its basis the following: There is an energy pervading
the universe that has unusual properties and may be used for the
betterment of mankind. Under certain conditions, this energy has been
found to affect man or his enviroment and can be controlled under
conditions imposed by the characteristics of that energy.
As in all sciences, development of that science is made through
observation of properties or characteristics of that which is studied.
Experimentation follows observations in order to control or induce the
phenomenon itself in a controlled manner.
W H Y
There are two reasons 'why' this country (USA) has made 'laws' against
Radionics.
1. It works, but not in a way totally understood, not by the academic
community and not by the practitioners themselves.
2. It works and produces miracle cures in man, plants, animals, and
outdates existing sciences if it is understood. Therefore, the 'lobbies'
in Washington representing the commercial applications of existing
sciences force laws against Radionics to preserve existing sciences
and the large sums of money invested in them to create our present
technology and preserve the jobs of millions which might be lost if
indeed Radionics was used to achieve the same results.
R A D I O N I C S O U R C E S
After following the previous column of mine introducing you to 'Radionics'
I am sure many of you who completed the experiments in that column
have many questions about Radionics. I order to establish an
operating basis for discussion and experimentation, I feel it is
necessary to include a list of retailers that can furnish you with
the materials that will enable you to discover for yourself the
'miracles' of Radionics. So I have compiled a list of retailers for
you below.
This is a small list of merchants that carry materials and books on
Radionics. This list is by no means complete...there are undoubtedly other
places where you can recieve these materials. I am not affiliated with
any of these merchants, so I am not recieving any financial
'Kickbacks' from them... These are just sources that I have uncovered in
the past year or so that have proven to be 'reliable'.
I have tried to include all the essential information on each supplier.
T H E L I S T
HEALTH RESEARCH Box 70, Mokelumne Hill, California.95245
This is a fine source to find books that are no longer in print.
They sell BY MAIL ONLY, they DO NOT have a walk in store.
Their catalogs were once free but they now charge for them (refundable
upon purchase). Catalogue 1-A is for Health Books & Associated Subjects.
It's price is $2.00. Catalogue 2-A is for Occult, Metaphysical & Religous.
It also is $2.00. Each catalogue is approximately 100-200 pages.
It is well worth the $2.00. Many other fine features from the business
make it a worthwhile experince..Highly reccomended. Both catalogues
together costs $4.00....(refundable on purchase).
(Catalogue 1-A is the catalogue for books on Radionics etc.)
You may also just request a flyer on their Radionics books
(free of charge), just include a SASE* and tell them you would like more
information about radionics. *(Self Addressed Stamped Envelope)
SUPERSENSONIC ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES Box 66, Boulder Creek, CA. 95006
This is a source for Radionics devices that are simple to use, and
inexpensive. They are actively researching all areas of
'Psychotronics' devices including 'Radiesthesia', 'Radionics', 'Psionics',
along with other more 'traditional' methods of healing.
A high level of Professionalism is displayed by this group.
They also have very Fast and Friendly service.........
Order their 'Supersensonic Energy Technologies Catalog',
item number S2175, the cost is $1.00. Complete with diagrams and
pictures of their instruments. Highly recommended.
------------------
ACTIVE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Box 323, CD'A, ID. 83814
Active R & D has many of the more 'time honored' radionics devices for
sale, along with several 'new' devices that are superior to the
'older generation' models. They sell Plans for the devices as well as the
allready assembled 'black boxes'. Newsletters are also available to
stay 'up to date' on the latest discoveries and develpoments.
Their catalog is $1.00, complete with diagrams and descriptions of the
devices for sale. They also sell the AMAZING Thought Camera...its really
a mind blower! -- Literally! -------
LOR'D INDUSTRIES LTD. Box 14511, West Allis, WI. 53214-0511
This is a mail order book store for books on the 'unusual' as well as an
outlet for Radionics devices. They sell many of the 'traditional'
radionics devices as well as the ELF (Extra Low Freqency) Generators.
Service through this outlet was rather slow and tedious, but this supplier
explained to me that they assemble the devices themselves and sometimes
that have a 'back log' of orders on hand, so please be patient with this
supplier. Send $1.00 for their 'Alpha....and beyond' catalog. It has
most of their books as well as their devices listed inside it.
LIFE UNDERSTANDING FOUNDATION. Box 30305, Santa Barbra, CA. 93015
This is a outlet that deals exclusively with Pyramids and Pyramid
energies. If have have been curious about the aspects of pyramid
energies... this supplier has all that you need to perform experiments
with pyramids. This is a simple and easy way to get yourself
oriented in the use of pyramids. They also sell books on the
subject. As far as I know, the catalogue is free. But postage isn't....
so send a SASE to them, or send 50 cents to cover postage and handling.
!B Y E B Y E!
As more supplier/retailers of Radionic and Psychotronic devices
become know to me I will update this list from time to time. But for
now, these retailers have all that is needed to explore the 'new'(?)
science of Radionics. Hope this list is helpful for you.
*ARCHON*
*-------------->FIDONET 100 / NODE 523<----------------* 'He who knows the Law of Vibrations knows all.' Hermes Trismegistus Discussion #3 on Radionics/Psychotronics: I now will discuss the central theme of radionics as it is practised by myself and others. First, I will quote literary examples of radionic experimentation. (From 'The Rainbows of Life') "Leaves kept in an orgone box (Riechs Orgone Accumulator--a metal container consisting of layered steel, wool, and cotton) had fuller Kirlian Energy Patterns than control leaves kept in similiar boxes without the Accumulator Apparatus". (They used Kirlian Photography in their research). (Another quote from 'Rainbows of Life') "Healthy subjects exhibit a corona delineated in bluish-white with a deep hue band -- from 1/16" to more than 1/4" wide -- just beyond the boundary of the figertip. She found too that states of relaxation also lend themselves to blue-white corona. However, in states of arousal, tension, anxiety, or emotional excitement, a red blotch consistently appears super imposed on the fingertips and may dissolve the coronal boundary somewhat." (Kissing, Loving thoughts -- the auras blended together, fingertip boundaries dissolved.Hate -- the aura corona did not merge.) A S P E C T S O F R A D I O N I C R E S E A R C H (The following are excerpts from various publications, I am not their original author.) As early as 1935 we find H.S. Burr and F.S.C Northrop proposing the existence of a regulating field in a paper titled "The Electrodynamic Theory of Life". The proposals offered in this paper have been followed up during the past forty years by a number of scientists and have culminated in a work by Dr. Harold Saxton Burr that proves the existence of what Burr calls L-fields, "fields of life". "The pattern or organization of any biological system is established by a complex electro-dynamic field which is in part determined by its atomic physiochemical components and which in part determines the behavior and orientation of those components. This field is electrical in the physical sense and by its properties relates the entities of the biological system in a characteristic pattern and is itself, in part, a result of the existence of those entities. It determines and is determined by the components." Backster discovered that this energy field, which serves as a communication link between plants and other animate things, is not within the different known frequencies AM,FM, or any form of signal which we can shield by ordinary means...and distance doesnt seem to impose any limitation. I've tried shielding the plants with a Faraday screen cage (which prevents electrical penetration), even lead lined containers. It seems the signal may not fall within any known portion of our electrodynamic spectrum. T H E M E Here are some guesses that physicists think fit best into the present aggregate of experience: 1. All matter, even the living human body, is composed of molecules, and molecules are aggregates of atoms. 2. Atoms are aggregates of electrical particles called electrons, protons, neutrons,etc. 3. All these: molecules, atoms, and their constituent electrical particles are in continual motion. 4. The rate of this motion is influenced by temperature, mass, dimensions and the electromagnetic field in which the body is moving. 5. An electrical particle in motion is surrounded by a magnetic field, so it is not surprising that these particles show both electrical and magnetic properties. 6. Now if any material oscillates in a magnetic field, it sets up an electrical disturbance that alternates to and fro. This is called an alternating current. 7. Combining 5 and 6, we expect that all matter is continually generating alternating currents. 8. The intensity and frequency of these electrical disturbances is influenced by the conductivity of the body, the intensity of the magnetic field, and the speed with which the body moves in the magnetic field. 9. Combining 7 and 8, we should expect each body of matter to have a characteristic alternating current. 10. Household current is generated by a body oscillating through a magnetic field 60 times per second. 11. Radio waves are current alternating millions of times per second. 12. Light waves are currents alternating trillions of times per second. 13. All the various frequencies of alternating currents add up to the electromagnetic spectrum. 14. Due to their small intensity physicists have not been able to detect alternating currents from living bodies in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but these currents have been detected in the ultraviolet,visible,infrared, and electrical region. It is possible that as detectors become more sensitive and selective, we shall find that radio-frequency alternating currents are associated with living processes.HENCE THE STUDY OF RADIONICS! M A G I C A L D I A R Y (Research Notes) The importance of maintaining a 'Magical Diary' or 'Lab Results' have often been expounded upon in great detail. It is here that I wish to reaffirm the importance of making a detailed analysis of all the experiments that you undertake in radionics, along with the results that you may achieve. Knowing what you did, how you did it and where is very important. So when you want to duplicate the results....you can do so without having a nervous breakdown because 'I forgot what I did.....'. So PLEASE document your results and experiments very CAREFULLY!!! For example, I keep my records with the Time, Date, Location, AND my STATE OF MIND in all reports. Please do the same if you are serious about learning radionics. It will reward you with success, self confidence, and the respect of your associates! C O L O R The useage of color in radionics is not new, many people will accuse me of using Colortherapy, but I do not place a distinction between the two. All are a part of the whole, so lets not quibble over 'what system of thought I use'. I will be covering a lot of ground in this series, so I may not elaborate as much as you would like me to on certain subjects or topics. Thats the way things will have to be if I am to get anything done without elaborating on what each specific item or idealogy signifys. All I can say is if you want to know more on what a chakra is or some other such thing, get a good book on the subject and READ IT! So much for my lecture, lets get busy! Color as we all know is a section of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is the visible part of that spectrum that our eyes see. I dont want you to underestimate the importance of color, and thats why I am covering it first. All things in the universe that we percieve are COLORS! Nothing but COLOR! Without color, our eyes could not percieve it. Colors are nothing but vibrations that are vibrating at different frequencies. Color is a frequency just like your shirt is, like your food is, and like your vitamins. So we are dealing with VIBRATIONS here, not 'things'! We all use vibrations to treat ourselves whether we realize it or not. So when you eat that salad for lunch, you are ingesting vibrations that are used for your survival, not a 'thing'. I want to clear up that misconception that the universe is full of things, it is full of vibrations, and nothing else. Got that? Good! How do you use color as a form of 'medicine'? Thats what I am going to talk about now. There is a simple way to use color as a form of supplementing your diet, so you can recieve the beneficial affects of the good vibes very easily. One way is to get 7 bottles or glasses that are the same color as your chakras. The colors are, from bottom chakra to top, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet at the Crown Chakra. Then all you do is fill the bottles with ordinary tap water, and let sunlight 'charge' the water with the color of the bottle. Let the water charge for at least 1 day. Then when you feel that the water is 'ready' you drink it! You dont have to drink it hot, you can get some ice cubes and then let the water cool, then drink it. (I hate to drink warm water!) Another way to use color is to purchase some form of container, such as a plastic box, or cellophane, that is the 7 colors of your chakras. Then put the color box over the light bulb in the room you are in and just watch TV, read, listen to the radio, or whatever.... (Just make sure you dont melt the boxes by putting them too close to the light bulb!) Even color light bulbs can be purchased nowadays...to make it even easier. I will tell you how to choose the particular color that you need later on in this document. First things first! I allways say! W H Y C O L O R ? WHY should I use color you ask? Good question! I will give you the answer! Not only does the human being respond to color emotionally, such like the bull does in the bullfight, but we humans also respond to color on a more subconsious level also. Each Chakra, as hinted at above, operates on a specific level or 'frequency', and has a specific function in our perception of the world we know. The 'seven suns' and their physical counterpart is here detailed below: No. Gland Location Nerve Plexus Color ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Pineal Top of Head Dendrites in Brain Violet 6. Pituitary Mid Brow Medulla Oblongata Indigo 5. Thyroid Throat Pharyngeal Blue 4. Thymus Mid Chest Cardiac Green 3. Adrenals Navel Coeliac,Solar Yellow 2. Spleen Lower Abdomen Splenic Orange 1. Gonads Base of Spine Sacral Red As you will remember from my first article, The 'Ether' or 'dynamic space fluidum' or 'bioplasmic energy', whatever you want to call it, permeates the universe, and it plays a key role in the funtions of the human body as well as plants and animals. The yoga tradition sometimes describes the chakras as lotuses and assigns a certain number of petals to each one. This is simply a way of describing the rate of vibration or frequency at a particular center. The numbers of petals in each lotus can be likened to the lines of force that each center radiates. The colors the chakras emit, absorb and resonate with depend upon their speed of revolution, which varies with each of us.Colors are just energy vibrating at differing frequencies, some visible, some not. Therefore, looking at a color will tend to produce a corresponding vibration to that color in us. A modern test of human psychological and physiological reactions to color, The Luscher Color Test (The book is at Waldenbook Stores!), is proving very helpfull in pinpointing psychological causes of functional disturbances -- disease. This is also true of sound. Each chakra has an octave of sound connected with it and will be affected by it. Chanting resonates the chakras, rythmically harmonizing them with the cosmic sound current or AUM. This brings experience of altered states of consciousness...more on that at another time!! A U R A The aura, as we all know, surrounds the human body from birth to death, and is the part of the human body that is traditionally treated by radionics professionals. The 'Kirlian Aura' is found to extend only a few inches from the surface of living things. The 'Etheric' Aura however, is reported to be composed of layers of subtle, normally invisible colored light, and to extend for several feet. This aura encases us in a sort of energy bubble. Clairovoyants such as the late Edgar Cayce have long used disturbances in a persons aura to diagnose disease. They also reportedly see indications of which psychological drives and biological energies are deficient and which are in excess. The color of the persons aura depends upon which chakra is most active. If the person has a predominance of 'red' in their aura, then that person is a materialistic person. A person with a 'violet' or 'purple' color aura is operating more on the crown chakra, and is an imaginative person, they think 'etherial' thoughts, etc. We have all met people with very materialistic attitudes...and we say,'boy what a close minded person', or something like that. Actually, these people are not close minded, but they appear to be, because they are functioning on a different level than you are. The color of the chakras, and the role they play in determining our 'attitudes' or 'behaviour' are detailed here: Number Color Gland Consciousness Level ----------------------------------------------------- 7. Violet Pineal Imaginative Level 6. Indigo Pituitary Intuitive Level 5. Blue Thyroid Conceptual Level 4. Green Thymus Security Level 3. Yellow Adrenals Intellectual Level 2. Orange Spleen Social Level 1. Red Gonads Physical Level As you can see above, the chakras are each responsible for a segment of our behavior, psychologically and physiologically. The glands or nerve plexus of each chakra plays an important role in our health and our attitudes. A person who was very materialistic in their attitude would benefit from getting the violet frequencies to counteract the lower chakra, by activating the crown chakra. The same can be done for someone who has a lack of creative instincts. If a person is too intellectual, then the proper color to use to balance their attitude would be Red, Orange or Indigo. So you can see that treating the personality of a person through his aura is easy and practical. It does take time to make a transition from materialistic to spiritually minded person, but by using colors in this way, the person can effectively influence the operation of his chakras. Colors are frquencies, just like sound, and they have just as much effect upon you as sound does. DONT underestimate these powerfull frequencies. Use them, and you will discover the truth of these words. In the next section of this series I will discuss the use of a 'witness' for application in Radionics and Psychotronics, as well as how to use colors, gem stones, and herbs to psionically treat yourself, your friends, and even get rid of the pests that eat your tomatoes! For a MUCH more indepth look at chakras, the aura, and psychotronics, I suggest these two VERY VERY well written books on the subject. Supersensonics--The Science of Radiational Paraphysics $15.00 Nuclear Evolution--The Discovery of The Rainbow Body $12.95 Both of these books were written by Dr. Christopher Hills, and are the Best books on the subject of auras, chakras, dowsing, radionics, etc. that I have ever come accross. Both of these books can be ordered from: The University Of The Trees Press P.O. Box 644, Boulder Creek, CA. 95006. Dont forget to include money for postage and handling. And I would write them first to make sure that these prices are still in effect, because I purchased these books 5 years ago....So the prices may have risen some. Thats all for now... Take care of yourself, and have lots of fun! ARCHON Radionics Discussion #4 Topics: The Use of a Witness in Radionics/Psychotronics Use of Color, Herbs,and Gem Stones In Radionics Applications T H E L - F I E L D As professor Harold Saxton Burr* once stated, "So far as our present information goes, there is unequivocal evidence that wherever there is life, there are electrical properties." (*Professor @ Yale University) That is the topic I want to start off with right now, L-Fields. Measurement by modern electric instruments developed in the last few years has "revealed that man - and, in fact, all life forms - are ordered and controlled by electro-dynamic fields which can be measured and mapped with precision." And as Burr proposed as early as 1935, in his electrodynamic theory of life, -- that all living organisms have electric fields which govern their growth and decay. As as example, Burr points to the human body. Its molecules and cells are allways being torn apart and rebuilt with fresh material from the food we eat. But thanks to the controlling L-Fields, the new molecules and cells are rebuilt as before and arrange themselves as the old ones. The bodys L-Fields "serves as a matrix or mould which preserves the 'shape' or arrangement of any material poured into it." What we are interested in here is "How can we use the knowledge of the L-Field to improve the quality of our lives?" I am going to discuss that here by explaining how the L-Field can be influenced, and what that influence can 'cause' in us humans. I'm not going to go to great lengths to 'prove' that the L-Fields exist, if you want 'proof' then read a good book on the topic. What I am going to discuss is "Applications" and not "Descriptions". Burr proved that the L-Field can be influenced directly by external phenomena by measuring the voltage gradients of a number of trees over a period of 30 years. He found that the L-Fields of the Trees fluctuated with sunlight,darkness, sunspots, magnetic storms and moon cycles. From this we can extrapolate that human L-Fields are similarly affected. "Since the field of a living system is an ordered pattern which represents the universe. It can be argued therefore, that the universe is an electrical field and that everything that exists in it is a subsidary or component part of the total field." Thus it is "That we are fully justified in regarding the fields of life as the instruments of physical evolution, of which, on this planet at least, the human nervous system is the masterpiece." Radionics embraces some of the very same principles upon which Dr. Burr's theory is founded. The late George De La Warr, radionics pioneer, explained that "a basic idea in radionics is that each individual, organism, or material, radiates and absorbs energy via an energy field peculiar unto itself. The more complex the material, the more complex the waveform. Living things like humans, emit a very complex wave spectrum of which parts are associated with the various organs and systems of the body." Radionics uses electronic equipment that is used by the human 'operator' to detect the particular radiation under consideration. And in most of all the cases the radiation under consideration is the human waveform.Radionic energies are subtle energies that the operator of the device detects by using the nerves of their hands to detect these energies which have been 'tuned in' by the Radionic device. Establishing the necessary 'sensitivity' to detect these energies is a requirement to competently use any Radionics device. Establishing 'resonance' with the radiations of the individual, measuring their amplitude and then finding the remedy which best resonates with a particular malady. Thus the organ or system is returned to its healty rate of vibration. The great benefit of Radionics is that it goes BEYOND the EFFECT and finds the CAUSE of complaints....ei, psychological conditions (Psychosomatic ills).Radionics treats the aura of man as part of his physical body, since all the inner organs of man are affected by this L-field. It is assumed that you understand that all matter has a rate of vibration which is peculiar to itself. To have a rate of vibration is to have a rhythmical pattern of recurring periods wherein the energy of the vibration changes from one value to another. In such a situation, the frequency of a system is said to oscillate between certain maximum values. R E S O N A N C E Resonance is said to occur when the respective periods of free oscillation of two or more different systems coincide with each other. Two systems having the same natural frequency, when joined together in phase, resonance occurs with the result that the minimum and maximum values are reached simultaneously. As an example the fact that a vibrating tuning fork will set into sympathetic vibration, or resonance, another tuning fork of the same frequency. Resonance involves an exchange between systems, a kind of mutual 'sensing'. H A R M O N I C S Every vibration has what is known as a fundamental frequency, plus its accompanying harmonics. The 'Fundamental' (Sometimes referred to as the First Harmonic) is the FIRST and the LOWEST FREQUENCY and has the LONGEST WAVELENGTH. A HARMONIC is a Mirror Image of the Fundamental. Together with the fundamental frequency, there is an infinite series of harmonics, all vibrating at different Amplitudes, but all Reflections of the original Frequency. The frequncies of the Harmonics are all integral multiples of the fundamental frequency. The first Harmonic, following the fundamental, is double the fundamental, the next is treble the fundamental, and so on. It is generally known that that magnetic fields, and their harmonic vibrations, interact with each other in varying degrees of attraction and replusion, varying degrees of 'in-phaseness' or 'out-of-phaseness' with each other. The harmonic of a physical body is seen to be intermeshed with the body itself, but also extending beyond it... We concieve then, of each living organism as radiating out into space, a frequency indentifying other aspects of its physiological and psychological existence. As I mentioned previously, that if the oscillatory sequences of two or more systems coincide, producing a sympathetic vibratory unison, resonance is therby established. Given these conditions, it seems reasonable to expect that a human body, as an independently vibrating source, is capable of attaining a degree of resonance with other independently vibrating sources. Not only establishing resonance with other human bodies, but also with frequncies of sound, color, fragrance, etc. The human body has a magnetic force field around it, with a pattern of nodal points similar to that of a bar magnet. Each of these nodal points is in contact with the person to whom they belong. Therefore, to be in resonance with any one of these points is to be in resonance with the individual. Such people as Phil Allen, the author of "Energy, Matter and Form" suggest that these nodal points occur inside the body as the acupunture meridian systems. R A P P O R T In 1852 a Frenchman named M. Benoit used snails in his experiments, as he felt that a certain form of rapport was operative in the animal kingdom. First, he paired of 52 snails and allowed them to become well acquainted by living together in seperate pairs. Then on each pair, he wrote a letter of the alphabet, two A's, two B's, and so on. One set of alphabet labeled snails was sent to America, and the other retained in Paris. At a predetermined time, in Paris, an electric shock was applied to a snail, say snail E. Simultaneously snail E in America reacted in sympathy, exibiting a kind of erratic behavior. Several snails were shocked and it was possible to transmit a simple message by 'snail telegraph'! In 1965 George De La Warr conducted a experiment in his laboratory in Oxford, England. But the unique feature of his endeavor was to show that rapport exists between a physical object and a photograph of that object. A photo was taken of a snail and sent to the town of Evesham, 40 miles away. In Oxford the animal was placed in an apparatus wereby Histogram readings could be taken.(Histograms are basically Amplitude/Frequency graphs of energy transmission through body tissues.) In Evesham, which was linked to Oxford by telephone, the snails photograph was intermittently exposed to certain light energies which were successfull in producing responses registered by the Histogram in the Oxford Laboratory. Similair experiments were carried out with human subjects and their photographs; with several energy stimuli such as light, sound, color, ultrviolet, and infra-red radiations, and magnetism. In each instance Histigram readings indicated that a state of rapport existed between the subject and his photographic image. Other De La Warr research suggests that rapport holds, over great distances, between an individual and his blood or hair specimens, fingernails, and other bodily fluids. There is also much Magical Literature that will support these findings. Books by Aleister Crowley mention the 'Magical Link'. The book 'The Golden Bough' also has many references to natives utilizing the 'Magical Link' for their ceremonies in healing, crop growing, etc. ~ K A R M A ~ + A N D - K N O W L E D G E What I would like to do now is to begin talking on HOW to use the 'Magical Link' for our own BENEFICIAL purposes. I will NOT talk about putting a Hex on someone or some other devious purposes. This knowledge is presented to you for Enlightenment and not for Destruction. I know there are individuals who will try to Psychically Dominate someone etc with this data, but that is their CHOICE and they will have to live with the EFFECTS of their CHOICE to destroy. Heed this warning! Its the First One I have made about this subject, AND its the LAST ONE! Go ahead and say, "Listen to the Holiness and Light Bullshit..." or something to that effect. It is never the less a warning AND a wisdom. So if a your are the type of person who is a 'Men in Black' persuasion, or more to the point, a 'Satanist', you will probably go right ahead with your plans and ignore my warning...and 'kill that bastard' or whatever. Well.... with Knowledge comes Responsibility, that means you are now RESPONSIBLE for what you do with the information. And when you are held RESPONSIBLE...as the saying goes....then you can 'get the axe' so to speak....and most of the times 'the axe' falls 'much too quickly'. NUF' SAID!.....ONWARD!!!! -------------------->
It is now suggested that if you intend to pursue this study of Radionics
and its cousins, Radiesthesia,and Psychotronics, that you purchase a
device from one of the Suppliers that I listed in the previous
disscusion, in the File titled RADION02.DOC. You can buy them from prices
ranging from $35.00 to $300.00+. The only reason that I suggest you
purchase a device is simply because it makes your job about 100% easier,
faster, and more accurate. In my opinion, they are 'necessary' to
get any 'real' work done. Of course if you talk to a native Shaman of
Brazil, he would most likely tell you otherwise....until he used one of
the devices himself, and he realizes that it does make things easier!
I am going to use the Magnetron in the first few discussions, since
it is the least expensive to purchase, easiest to operate, requires no
electricity, and can be 'tuned' very quickly. Oh yes, by the way, the
Magnetron is available from 'Supersensonic Energy Technologies', and their
address is in the RADION02.DOC.
Color is what I have used for many 'basic' applications where not much
is known about the problem at hand. It is my 'old reliable' form of
treating illness. First I acquire a 'witness' of the person, such as a
fingernail, hair, or preferably a RECENT photograph.
Then I determine what the persons problem is, for example a cold.
Then I place the witness of the person on the Magnetron, (after I tune
the Magnetron) and in this case for a cold, treat the witness of the
person with Red and Green light, alternating the colors every two
hours, then every four hours, then every two hours, and so on.
In addition I also use Vitamin C with the light. So the person
then recieves the positive vibrations from the light, and secondly, from
the physical remedy itself. Vitamins can be administered to people
in this fashion also. Herbal remedies work well also. Say a person is
allways uptight, and they cant seem to ever relax. A witness of
Marijuana, for example would aid the person to feel the soothing effects
of the herb without having to physically consume it. A sleeping pill
for the insomniac on the Magnetron along with his witness, will
produce the same effect in him as if he physically consumed it, although
it takes a much longer time to feel the effects. Because you are
dealing with the suble energies of the persons L-Field.
O V E R L O A D S & E T H I C S
Too much of anything is bad for you, and radionic energies are no
different. I myself on occasion have recieved too much energy, and
the result was that I felt very 'stuffy', had hot flashes, and was
VERY irritable...So make sure someone doesnt Overdose on the
energies you are feeding them. I also made it my policy to ALLWAYS
ask the person, if I have their PERMISSION to help them.
I make NO exceptions to this rule. And I suggest you do the same.
That is, unless you dont mind infringing on them and collecting
their bad energies...since you took the RESPONSIBILITY to take care
of them without their permission. And as I said before, when you accept
Responsibilty for something, YOU are the one who gets in trouble
when something goes wrong with the thing you are responsible for.
And in this case, if you take Responsibility for the persons health
then you are also going to feel the effects of your decisions.
So the patient gets well and you get his 'old' illness.....
It really happens! SO ALLWAYS ask for their permission to help them.
It can be as simple as "Would you like me to try and make you well?"
Nothing fancy or formal. Just a simple 'Can I...' is sufficient.
Gem stones can be used as 'medicine' just like the Vitamin C, Herbs,
Pills, and Colors. Get a book on the Healing Properties of Gemstones,
and read it...then you will know if a particular gem stone frequency
will aid a persons diminishing concentration, etc...
A Herb book, detailing all the healing properties of the Herbs is all
you need to form a conclusion as to what Herb will get rid of a specific
condition. And so on and so forth....Its all VERY simple once you begin
to understand the principles of Radionics.
Radionics is a accepted form of medicine all over Europe and is gaining
popularity in the USA, even though no 'medical claims' can be made for it
here in the USA. Since the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) doesnt
understand how Radionics works they wont accept it, and since the FDA
will NOT allow a demonstration of the effectiveness of radionics
as 'proof' of its effectiveness, the majority of the American public
have remained ignorant of it. DONT allow the FDA's close mindedness,
and backward acceptance procedures prevent you from enjoying
the benefits of Radionics. You have nothing to lose, and much to gain.
Give it a try, read about it, and discover for yourself its validity.
ARCHON
Node 100/Net 523
Weirdbase BBS
St. Louis, MO.
The following is a excerpt from a lecture that was documented in a
book that I own. It was a lecture given by professional radionics
researchers. I do not know all the details of the device discussed,
and I am forwarding this information just for comparative purposes.
Just to show you how complicated this whole area can get!!!Enjoy!
R E S E A R C H W O R K O N T H E H U M A N
E L E C T R O M A G N E T I C F I E L D
By Dr. E.A. Maury and Marguerite Maury
(THE AURA IN OTHER WORDS!)
It is admitted today (particularly through the work of the American
Scientist Dr, H. G. Burr, and his collaborators of the University of Yale)
that every living thing is surrounded by an electric aura produced by its
own organism.
The aura consists of an electric, dynamic field, an it plays an important
part in determining the volume, the form and the biological behaviour of
every plant and animal. It is influenced by cosmic rays and by sun spots.
Life on the earth can thus be said to be electrically connected with the
entire dynamic system of the universe. In just a few words I shall recall
the experiments of Burr and his collaborators: by putting a salamander
into a salt solution connected to a registering apparatus by means of two
electrodes, and then revolving the receptacle containing the animal, the
existance of an electrical field flowing through the electrodes can be
established and registered. The same experiment has been made on human
beings by placing each index finger of a healthy person in a small bowl
containing a salt solution; in which case the galvanometer indicates a
value of 1.5 millivolts. If however one of the index fingers has an open
cut, the galvanometer will indicate a value of 12 millivolts. Thanks to
our new apparatus of electrical measures, we too have been able to
register the differences in voltage of healthy and sick organisms.
I shall dispense with a detailed description of our apparatus so as not
unduly to complicate our subject. I shall only recall that it contains
an amplifier having a sufficiently high gain to permit the obervation of
something intangible. The first thing then that the engineer who
constructed the apparatus did, was to perfect an amplifier to make it
provide a multiplication of approximately 10,000, the reception of the
amplifier being insured by an ultra-sensitive detector, constructed like
a microphone, capable of serving also as a cardiphone. The outgoing
terminal of the amplifier is connected to a cathode ray oscillograph
with a loud speaker recorder. This apparatus functions when connected to
the main electric supply after the tubes of the amplifier have warmed up
for a few seconds before a test is made.Technically, to perfect the
apparatus and to obtain clear-cut responses, anti-parasite filters
have been added. Later on we intend to undertake our experiments in a lead
screened room isolating us from the outside, for this should allow us to
record the electric field of a human being in all its purity,
establishing its exact numerical value.
The subject examined is made to stand on an insulating mat in front of the
apparatus. It is important that the subject should remain as silent and
motionless as possible to avoid vibrations caused by currents of air or
sound, which can interfere.The operator then takes into his right hand
the microphone connected to the amplifying apparatus, and he holds it with
its lower surface parallel to the subject examined, and with distances
from the subjects body varied. (We shall later appreciate the importance
that can be attributed to the respective values corresponding to the
distances between the emitting subjetc and the reciving microphone.)
When the current flowing through the amplifier is increased to a certain
critical maximum, a characteristic whistling noise is heard in the
loudspeaker and a certain sine wave image is produced as the oscillograph
records the screen picture. There the curves are rather close together
or the curves rather long. More-over there is a strict parallelism
between the intensity and the modulation of the sound signal and, on the
other hand, the rapidity and density of the wave picture on the oscillators
screen. At first we thought this might have been due to a Larsen Effect
or phenomenon related to the reflection of waves but succesive experiments
have proved that this phenomena plays only a very minor part in the
production of these wave forms. We have noticed, for instance, that the
visual and sound reactions recorded are not corresponding ones over all
parts of the body. For example, near the plexuses of the sympathetic
nervous system of certain subjects (cardiac plexus, solar plexus, lumbar
plexus) the sound modulations are very high and sharp (that is, of a
very high frequency), whilst the waves shown on the screen are very close
to each other, this meaning, most probably, that the individuals in
question possess a strong magnetism. The reactions can be noted at a
distance of 15 feet and more. We have also noticed that the strongest
reaction can be obtained near the regions of the body where the Hindu
chakras are situated. It seems, thenm, that these precise points are
indeed the pionts where vital energy is emitted.
I have described in as few words as possible our experimental technique
and operational methods employed to examine, as exteriorized
phenomena of physical apparatus, these fields of human radiations which
have been the object of so much controversy. Thanks to the same method
it has been possible for us besides to determine the presence of fields
of radiation which are exterior to an object. As an interesting
illustration of this, moving the microphone around a bust in terra cotta
we were able to observe the difference in the wave modulations near the
lower part of the face of the sculptured head and near the eyes. Is this
due to a phenomenon caused by the influence of form? It is possible.
Similiarly we have also been able to record the field of radiations
due to an oil painting representing a little fishing port. It should be
observed that there the modulations were entirley different according
to whether the microphone was placed near the part representing the sea,
or the part representing the earth and the low houses of the fishermen
of Brittany. Should this phenomenon be attributed to an influence due to
the chemical composition of the colours used? It is probably due to an
influence of color refraction, this much depending upon the objects
painted by the artist.
It seems to have been now well established that by means of this apparatus
incontestably corresponding visible and audible reactions are obtained
as soon as the microphone is placed more or less close to an animate
or inanimate body, the degree of reation seeming to be in accordance with
the form and intensity of the radiating field. These experiments have
convinced us of the physical reality of an external field produced by
living beings and dead objects. This is only a small step forwards, as
we all very well know; for we now have to determine the exact wavelenghts
of these radiations which should vary according to the degree of health
of the individual examined. We have allready observed that each person
has his own oscillograph waveform, and that certain diseases such a
cancer, for example, produce the same general change in the appearance
of the personal waveform.
Certainly it is as yet too soon to draw any definite conclusions from
these experiments. I think that this method of examination should be
continued in order to try to establish the nature of signs conforming
to or giving indications of certain serious diseases before their full
development, the information being derived from modifications of the
oscillographic curves testifying to specific modifications of the
human wavelenghts, these modifications being observable from a
variation in the field of external radiations.
D I S C U S S I O N
Mr. Eagerton Sykes asked if the use of the word microphone was a
mistake in Dr. Maurys paper.
Mr. Macbeth (who has seen the Maury appliance) explained that
microphone was the name given to the collector which was applied
to the affected area of a patient by being held a few inches off the
skin. This collector conveys the detected influences to the
thermionic valve amplifier which finally produces a corresponding
oscillogram or else a musical note on a connected loud speaker.
Mr. de la Warr explained that the sound was a heterodyne effect derived
from an oscillating diaphragm.
http://amasci.com/freenrg/rdionic1.txt
-----------------
Radionics Definition: Radionics is the utilization of an unusual energy
or energies in devices to produce natural
phenomenon or effects.
J.G. Gallimore
Radionics: System of alternative medicine developed by Dr. Albert Abrams,
who belived that diseased body tissue affected the nervous
system and gave forth, 'dull emanations'. Abrams believed
electronic phenomena were involved with this, and he invented
a variable resistance intrument called a 'black box' to
measure the ohm resistance of different diseases on an
electronic circuit. He found for example, that cancer
produced a 50 ohm resistance, while syphilis had a 55 ohm
resistance. Abrams later modified his technique so he could
take readings from a drop of blood. In 1924, a committee
established by the Royal Society of Medicine investigated
Abrams techniques and were favorably impressed. Today
Radionics and its cousin Radiesthesia (medical dowsing) are
recognized in Europe as legitimate medical procedures.
This is the beginning of Forum type articles that will be covering all
aspects of the 'Ether'. Which includes 'orgone energy', 'pyramid energy',
'tantric energy' 'kundalini energy' and all other forms of 'unusual'
energies that modern day science is still trying to understand.
It is simply an attempt to inform others that these energies exist and
that they can be made available for your own use as well becoming more
comprehensible to the layman. This is NOT a technically oriented forum,
so should someone attempt and try to use technical terms...it will just
make things that much harder on others who have no formal training in
Physics, chemistry, etc., this forum is for the LAYMAN! But any and all
persons 'of the scientific persuasion' are ENCOURAGED to join in, just
keep things 'simple'. Thank You!
Though I am starting this communication
I do not feel that I am required to allways
contribute to it...whereas all persons have knowledge, ideas and opinions,
I feel that this discussion be 'open' and may accept input from all
persons. I will expect others to send questions & answers also. I will
monitor the communications and answer the questions to the best of my
knowledge and to the limits of my resources. This is a discussion for
'unusual energies', so I will expect some unusual questions and answers!
B A S I C S O F R A D I O N I C S
------------------------------------
Radionics has as its basis the following: There is an energy pervading
the universe that has unusual properties and may be used for the
betterment of mankind. Under certain conditions, this energy has been
found to affect man or his enviroment and can be controlled under
conditions imposed by the characteristics of that energy.
As in all sciences, development of that science is made through
observation of properties or characteristics of that which is studied.
Experimentation follows observations in order to control or induce the
phenomenon itself in a controlled manner.
W H Y
There are two reasons 'why' this country (USA) has made 'laws' against
Radionics.
1. It works, but not in a way totally understood, not by the academic
community and not by the practitioners themselves.
2. It works and produces miracle cures in man, plants, animals, and
outdates existing sciences if it is understood. Therefore, the 'lobbies'
in Washington representing the commercial applications of existing
sciences force laws against Radionics to preserve existing sciences
and the large sums of money invested in them to create our present
technology and preserve the jobs of millions which might be lost if
indeed Radionics was used to achieve the same results.
R A D I O N I C S O U R C E S
After following the previous column of mine introducing you to 'Radionics'
I am sure many of you who completed the experiments in that column
have many questions about Radionics. I order to establish an
operating basis for discussion and experimentation, I feel it is
necessary to include a list of retailers that can furnish you with
the materials that will enable you to discover for yourself the
'miracles' of Radionics. So I have compiled a list of retailers for
you below.
This is a small list of merchants that carry materials and books on
Radionics. This list is by no means complete...there are undoubtedly other
places where you can recieve these materials. I am not affiliated with
any of these merchants, so I am not recieving any financial
'Kickbacks' from them... These are just sources that I have uncovered in
the past year or so that have proven to be 'reliable'.
I have tried to include all the essential information on each supplier.
T H E L I S T
HEALTH RESEARCH Box 70, Mokelumne Hill, California.95245
This is a fine source to find books that are no longer in print.
They sell BY MAIL ONLY, they DO NOT have a walk in store.
Their catalogs were once free but they now charge for them (refundable
upon purchase). Catalogue 1-A is for Health Books & Associated Subjects.
It's price is $2.00. Catalogue 2-A is for Occult, Metaphysical & Religous.
It also is $2.00. Each catalogue is approximately 100-200 pages.
It is well worth the $2.00. Many other fine features from the business
make it a worthwhile experince..Highly reccomended. Both catalogues
together costs $4.00....(refundable on purchase).
(Catalogue 1-A is the catalogue for books on Radionics etc.)
You may also just request a flyer on their Radionics books
(free of charge), just include a SASE* and tell them you would like more
information about radionics. *(Self Addressed Stamped Envelope)
SUPERSENSONIC ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES Box 66, Boulder Creek, CA. 95006
This is a source for Radionics devices that are simple to use, and
inexpensive. They are actively researching all areas of
'Psychotronics' devices including 'Radiesthesia', 'Radionics', 'Psionics',
along with other more 'traditional' methods of healing.
A high level of Professionalism is displayed by this group.
They also have very Fast and Friendly service.........
Order their 'Supersensonic Energy Technologies Catalog',
item number S2175, the cost is $1.00. Complete with diagrams and
pictures of their instruments. Highly recommended.
------------------
ACTIVE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Box 323, CD'A, ID. 83814
Active R & D has many of the more 'time honored' radionics devices for
sale, along with several 'new' devices that are superior to the
'older generation' models. They sell Plans for the devices as well as the
allready assembled 'black boxes'. Newsletters are also available to
stay 'up to date' on the latest discoveries and develpoments.
Their catalog is $1.00, complete with diagrams and descriptions of the
devices for sale. They also sell the AMAZING Thought Camera...its really
a mind blower! -- Literally! -------
LOR'D INDUSTRIES LTD. Box 14511, West Allis, WI. 53214-0511
This is a mail order book store for books on the 'unusual' as well as an
outlet for Radionics devices. They sell many of the 'traditional'
radionics devices as well as the ELF (Extra Low Freqency) Generators.
Service through this outlet was rather slow and tedious, but this supplier
explained to me that they assemble the devices themselves and sometimes
that have a 'back log' of orders on hand, so please be patient with this
supplier. Send $1.00 for their 'Alpha....and beyond' catalog. It has
most of their books as well as their devices listed inside it.
LIFE UNDERSTANDING FOUNDATION. Box 30305, Santa Barbra, CA. 93015
This is a outlet that deals exclusively with Pyramids and Pyramid
energies. If have have been curious about the aspects of pyramid
energies... this supplier has all that you need to perform experiments
with pyramids. This is a simple and easy way to get yourself
oriented in the use of pyramids. They also sell books on the
subject. As far as I know, the catalogue is free. But postage isn't....
so send a SASE to them, or send 50 cents to cover postage and handling.
!B Y E B Y E!
As more supplier/retailers of Radionic and Psychotronic devices
become know to me I will update this list from time to time. But for
now, these retailers have all that is needed to explore the 'new'(?)
science of Radionics. Hope this list is helpful for you.
*ARCHON*
*-------------->FIDONET 100 / NODE 523<----------------* 'He who knows the Law of Vibrations knows all.' Hermes Trismegistus Discussion #3 on Radionics/Psychotronics: I now will discuss the central theme of radionics as it is practised by myself and others. First, I will quote literary examples of radionic experimentation. (From 'The Rainbows of Life') "Leaves kept in an orgone box (Riechs Orgone Accumulator--a metal container consisting of layered steel, wool, and cotton) had fuller Kirlian Energy Patterns than control leaves kept in similiar boxes without the Accumulator Apparatus". (They used Kirlian Photography in their research). (Another quote from 'Rainbows of Life') "Healthy subjects exhibit a corona delineated in bluish-white with a deep hue band -- from 1/16" to more than 1/4" wide -- just beyond the boundary of the figertip. She found too that states of relaxation also lend themselves to blue-white corona. However, in states of arousal, tension, anxiety, or emotional excitement, a red blotch consistently appears super imposed on the fingertips and may dissolve the coronal boundary somewhat." (Kissing, Loving thoughts -- the auras blended together, fingertip boundaries dissolved.Hate -- the aura corona did not merge.) A S P E C T S O F R A D I O N I C R E S E A R C H (The following are excerpts from various publications, I am not their original author.) As early as 1935 we find H.S. Burr and F.S.C Northrop proposing the existence of a regulating field in a paper titled "The Electrodynamic Theory of Life". The proposals offered in this paper have been followed up during the past forty years by a number of scientists and have culminated in a work by Dr. Harold Saxton Burr that proves the existence of what Burr calls L-fields, "fields of life". "The pattern or organization of any biological system is established by a complex electro-dynamic field which is in part determined by its atomic physiochemical components and which in part determines the behavior and orientation of those components. This field is electrical in the physical sense and by its properties relates the entities of the biological system in a characteristic pattern and is itself, in part, a result of the existence of those entities. It determines and is determined by the components." Backster discovered that this energy field, which serves as a communication link between plants and other animate things, is not within the different known frequencies AM,FM, or any form of signal which we can shield by ordinary means...and distance doesnt seem to impose any limitation. I've tried shielding the plants with a Faraday screen cage (which prevents electrical penetration), even lead lined containers. It seems the signal may not fall within any known portion of our electrodynamic spectrum. T H E M E Here are some guesses that physicists think fit best into the present aggregate of experience: 1. All matter, even the living human body, is composed of molecules, and molecules are aggregates of atoms. 2. Atoms are aggregates of electrical particles called electrons, protons, neutrons,etc. 3. All these: molecules, atoms, and their constituent electrical particles are in continual motion. 4. The rate of this motion is influenced by temperature, mass, dimensions and the electromagnetic field in which the body is moving. 5. An electrical particle in motion is surrounded by a magnetic field, so it is not surprising that these particles show both electrical and magnetic properties. 6. Now if any material oscillates in a magnetic field, it sets up an electrical disturbance that alternates to and fro. This is called an alternating current. 7. Combining 5 and 6, we expect that all matter is continually generating alternating currents. 8. The intensity and frequency of these electrical disturbances is influenced by the conductivity of the body, the intensity of the magnetic field, and the speed with which the body moves in the magnetic field. 9. Combining 7 and 8, we should expect each body of matter to have a characteristic alternating current. 10. Household current is generated by a body oscillating through a magnetic field 60 times per second. 11. Radio waves are current alternating millions of times per second. 12. Light waves are currents alternating trillions of times per second. 13. All the various frequencies of alternating currents add up to the electromagnetic spectrum. 14. Due to their small intensity physicists have not been able to detect alternating currents from living bodies in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but these currents have been detected in the ultraviolet,visible,infrared, and electrical region. It is possible that as detectors become more sensitive and selective, we shall find that radio-frequency alternating currents are associated with living processes.HENCE THE STUDY OF RADIONICS! M A G I C A L D I A R Y (Research Notes) The importance of maintaining a 'Magical Diary' or 'Lab Results' have often been expounded upon in great detail. It is here that I wish to reaffirm the importance of making a detailed analysis of all the experiments that you undertake in radionics, along with the results that you may achieve. Knowing what you did, how you did it and where is very important. So when you want to duplicate the results....you can do so without having a nervous breakdown because 'I forgot what I did.....'. So PLEASE document your results and experiments very CAREFULLY!!! For example, I keep my records with the Time, Date, Location, AND my STATE OF MIND in all reports. Please do the same if you are serious about learning radionics. It will reward you with success, self confidence, and the respect of your associates! C O L O R The useage of color in radionics is not new, many people will accuse me of using Colortherapy, but I do not place a distinction between the two. All are a part of the whole, so lets not quibble over 'what system of thought I use'. I will be covering a lot of ground in this series, so I may not elaborate as much as you would like me to on certain subjects or topics. Thats the way things will have to be if I am to get anything done without elaborating on what each specific item or idealogy signifys. All I can say is if you want to know more on what a chakra is or some other such thing, get a good book on the subject and READ IT! So much for my lecture, lets get busy! Color as we all know is a section of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is the visible part of that spectrum that our eyes see. I dont want you to underestimate the importance of color, and thats why I am covering it first. All things in the universe that we percieve are COLORS! Nothing but COLOR! Without color, our eyes could not percieve it. Colors are nothing but vibrations that are vibrating at different frequencies. Color is a frequency just like your shirt is, like your food is, and like your vitamins. So we are dealing with VIBRATIONS here, not 'things'! We all use vibrations to treat ourselves whether we realize it or not. So when you eat that salad for lunch, you are ingesting vibrations that are used for your survival, not a 'thing'. I want to clear up that misconception that the universe is full of things, it is full of vibrations, and nothing else. Got that? Good! How do you use color as a form of 'medicine'? Thats what I am going to talk about now. There is a simple way to use color as a form of supplementing your diet, so you can recieve the beneficial affects of the good vibes very easily. One way is to get 7 bottles or glasses that are the same color as your chakras. The colors are, from bottom chakra to top, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet at the Crown Chakra. Then all you do is fill the bottles with ordinary tap water, and let sunlight 'charge' the water with the color of the bottle. Let the water charge for at least 1 day. Then when you feel that the water is 'ready' you drink it! You dont have to drink it hot, you can get some ice cubes and then let the water cool, then drink it. (I hate to drink warm water!) Another way to use color is to purchase some form of container, such as a plastic box, or cellophane, that is the 7 colors of your chakras. Then put the color box over the light bulb in the room you are in and just watch TV, read, listen to the radio, or whatever.... (Just make sure you dont melt the boxes by putting them too close to the light bulb!) Even color light bulbs can be purchased nowadays...to make it even easier. I will tell you how to choose the particular color that you need later on in this document. First things first! I allways say! W H Y C O L O R ? WHY should I use color you ask? Good question! I will give you the answer! Not only does the human being respond to color emotionally, such like the bull does in the bullfight, but we humans also respond to color on a more subconsious level also. Each Chakra, as hinted at above, operates on a specific level or 'frequency', and has a specific function in our perception of the world we know. The 'seven suns' and their physical counterpart is here detailed below: No. Gland Location Nerve Plexus Color ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Pineal Top of Head Dendrites in Brain Violet 6. Pituitary Mid Brow Medulla Oblongata Indigo 5. Thyroid Throat Pharyngeal Blue 4. Thymus Mid Chest Cardiac Green 3. Adrenals Navel Coeliac,Solar Yellow 2. Spleen Lower Abdomen Splenic Orange 1. Gonads Base of Spine Sacral Red As you will remember from my first article, The 'Ether' or 'dynamic space fluidum' or 'bioplasmic energy', whatever you want to call it, permeates the universe, and it plays a key role in the funtions of the human body as well as plants and animals. The yoga tradition sometimes describes the chakras as lotuses and assigns a certain number of petals to each one. This is simply a way of describing the rate of vibration or frequency at a particular center. The numbers of petals in each lotus can be likened to the lines of force that each center radiates. The colors the chakras emit, absorb and resonate with depend upon their speed of revolution, which varies with each of us.Colors are just energy vibrating at differing frequencies, some visible, some not. Therefore, looking at a color will tend to produce a corresponding vibration to that color in us. A modern test of human psychological and physiological reactions to color, The Luscher Color Test (The book is at Waldenbook Stores!), is proving very helpfull in pinpointing psychological causes of functional disturbances -- disease. This is also true of sound. Each chakra has an octave of sound connected with it and will be affected by it. Chanting resonates the chakras, rythmically harmonizing them with the cosmic sound current or AUM. This brings experience of altered states of consciousness...more on that at another time!! A U R A The aura, as we all know, surrounds the human body from birth to death, and is the part of the human body that is traditionally treated by radionics professionals. The 'Kirlian Aura' is found to extend only a few inches from the surface of living things. The 'Etheric' Aura however, is reported to be composed of layers of subtle, normally invisible colored light, and to extend for several feet. This aura encases us in a sort of energy bubble. Clairovoyants such as the late Edgar Cayce have long used disturbances in a persons aura to diagnose disease. They also reportedly see indications of which psychological drives and biological energies are deficient and which are in excess. The color of the persons aura depends upon which chakra is most active. If the person has a predominance of 'red' in their aura, then that person is a materialistic person. A person with a 'violet' or 'purple' color aura is operating more on the crown chakra, and is an imaginative person, they think 'etherial' thoughts, etc. We have all met people with very materialistic attitudes...and we say,'boy what a close minded person', or something like that. Actually, these people are not close minded, but they appear to be, because they are functioning on a different level than you are. The color of the chakras, and the role they play in determining our 'attitudes' or 'behaviour' are detailed here: Number Color Gland Consciousness Level ----------------------------------------------------- 7. Violet Pineal Imaginative Level 6. Indigo Pituitary Intuitive Level 5. Blue Thyroid Conceptual Level 4. Green Thymus Security Level 3. Yellow Adrenals Intellectual Level 2. Orange Spleen Social Level 1. Red Gonads Physical Level As you can see above, the chakras are each responsible for a segment of our behavior, psychologically and physiologically. The glands or nerve plexus of each chakra plays an important role in our health and our attitudes. A person who was very materialistic in their attitude would benefit from getting the violet frequencies to counteract the lower chakra, by activating the crown chakra. The same can be done for someone who has a lack of creative instincts. If a person is too intellectual, then the proper color to use to balance their attitude would be Red, Orange or Indigo. So you can see that treating the personality of a person through his aura is easy and practical. It does take time to make a transition from materialistic to spiritually minded person, but by using colors in this way, the person can effectively influence the operation of his chakras. Colors are frquencies, just like sound, and they have just as much effect upon you as sound does. DONT underestimate these powerfull frequencies. Use them, and you will discover the truth of these words. In the next section of this series I will discuss the use of a 'witness' for application in Radionics and Psychotronics, as well as how to use colors, gem stones, and herbs to psionically treat yourself, your friends, and even get rid of the pests that eat your tomatoes! For a MUCH more indepth look at chakras, the aura, and psychotronics, I suggest these two VERY VERY well written books on the subject. Supersensonics--The Science of Radiational Paraphysics $15.00 Nuclear Evolution--The Discovery of The Rainbow Body $12.95 Both of these books were written by Dr. Christopher Hills, and are the Best books on the subject of auras, chakras, dowsing, radionics, etc. that I have ever come accross. Both of these books can be ordered from: The University Of The Trees Press P.O. Box 644, Boulder Creek, CA. 95006. Dont forget to include money for postage and handling. And I would write them first to make sure that these prices are still in effect, because I purchased these books 5 years ago....So the prices may have risen some. Thats all for now... Take care of yourself, and have lots of fun! ARCHON Radionics Discussion #4 Topics: The Use of a Witness in Radionics/Psychotronics Use of Color, Herbs,and Gem Stones In Radionics Applications T H E L - F I E L D As professor Harold Saxton Burr* once stated, "So far as our present information goes, there is unequivocal evidence that wherever there is life, there are electrical properties." (*Professor @ Yale University) That is the topic I want to start off with right now, L-Fields. Measurement by modern electric instruments developed in the last few years has "revealed that man - and, in fact, all life forms - are ordered and controlled by electro-dynamic fields which can be measured and mapped with precision." And as Burr proposed as early as 1935, in his electrodynamic theory of life, -- that all living organisms have electric fields which govern their growth and decay. As as example, Burr points to the human body. Its molecules and cells are allways being torn apart and rebuilt with fresh material from the food we eat. But thanks to the controlling L-Fields, the new molecules and cells are rebuilt as before and arrange themselves as the old ones. The bodys L-Fields "serves as a matrix or mould which preserves the 'shape' or arrangement of any material poured into it." What we are interested in here is "How can we use the knowledge of the L-Field to improve the quality of our lives?" I am going to discuss that here by explaining how the L-Field can be influenced, and what that influence can 'cause' in us humans. I'm not going to go to great lengths to 'prove' that the L-Fields exist, if you want 'proof' then read a good book on the topic. What I am going to discuss is "Applications" and not "Descriptions". Burr proved that the L-Field can be influenced directly by external phenomena by measuring the voltage gradients of a number of trees over a period of 30 years. He found that the L-Fields of the Trees fluctuated with sunlight,darkness, sunspots, magnetic storms and moon cycles. From this we can extrapolate that human L-Fields are similarly affected. "Since the field of a living system is an ordered pattern which represents the universe. It can be argued therefore, that the universe is an electrical field and that everything that exists in it is a subsidary or component part of the total field." Thus it is "That we are fully justified in regarding the fields of life as the instruments of physical evolution, of which, on this planet at least, the human nervous system is the masterpiece." Radionics embraces some of the very same principles upon which Dr. Burr's theory is founded. The late George De La Warr, radionics pioneer, explained that "a basic idea in radionics is that each individual, organism, or material, radiates and absorbs energy via an energy field peculiar unto itself. The more complex the material, the more complex the waveform. Living things like humans, emit a very complex wave spectrum of which parts are associated with the various organs and systems of the body." Radionics uses electronic equipment that is used by the human 'operator' to detect the particular radiation under consideration. And in most of all the cases the radiation under consideration is the human waveform.Radionic energies are subtle energies that the operator of the device detects by using the nerves of their hands to detect these energies which have been 'tuned in' by the Radionic device. Establishing the necessary 'sensitivity' to detect these energies is a requirement to competently use any Radionics device. Establishing 'resonance' with the radiations of the individual, measuring their amplitude and then finding the remedy which best resonates with a particular malady. Thus the organ or system is returned to its healty rate of vibration. The great benefit of Radionics is that it goes BEYOND the EFFECT and finds the CAUSE of complaints....ei, psychological conditions (Psychosomatic ills).Radionics treats the aura of man as part of his physical body, since all the inner organs of man are affected by this L-field. It is assumed that you understand that all matter has a rate of vibration which is peculiar to itself. To have a rate of vibration is to have a rhythmical pattern of recurring periods wherein the energy of the vibration changes from one value to another. In such a situation, the frequency of a system is said to oscillate between certain maximum values. R E S O N A N C E Resonance is said to occur when the respective periods of free oscillation of two or more different systems coincide with each other. Two systems having the same natural frequency, when joined together in phase, resonance occurs with the result that the minimum and maximum values are reached simultaneously. As an example the fact that a vibrating tuning fork will set into sympathetic vibration, or resonance, another tuning fork of the same frequency. Resonance involves an exchange between systems, a kind of mutual 'sensing'. H A R M O N I C S Every vibration has what is known as a fundamental frequency, plus its accompanying harmonics. The 'Fundamental' (Sometimes referred to as the First Harmonic) is the FIRST and the LOWEST FREQUENCY and has the LONGEST WAVELENGTH. A HARMONIC is a Mirror Image of the Fundamental. Together with the fundamental frequency, there is an infinite series of harmonics, all vibrating at different Amplitudes, but all Reflections of the original Frequency. The frequncies of the Harmonics are all integral multiples of the fundamental frequency. The first Harmonic, following the fundamental, is double the fundamental, the next is treble the fundamental, and so on. It is generally known that that magnetic fields, and their harmonic vibrations, interact with each other in varying degrees of attraction and replusion, varying degrees of 'in-phaseness' or 'out-of-phaseness' with each other. The harmonic of a physical body is seen to be intermeshed with the body itself, but also extending beyond it... We concieve then, of each living organism as radiating out into space, a frequency indentifying other aspects of its physiological and psychological existence. As I mentioned previously, that if the oscillatory sequences of two or more systems coincide, producing a sympathetic vibratory unison, resonance is therby established. Given these conditions, it seems reasonable to expect that a human body, as an independently vibrating source, is capable of attaining a degree of resonance with other independently vibrating sources. Not only establishing resonance with other human bodies, but also with frequncies of sound, color, fragrance, etc. The human body has a magnetic force field around it, with a pattern of nodal points similar to that of a bar magnet. Each of these nodal points is in contact with the person to whom they belong. Therefore, to be in resonance with any one of these points is to be in resonance with the individual. Such people as Phil Allen, the author of "Energy, Matter and Form" suggest that these nodal points occur inside the body as the acupunture meridian systems. R A P P O R T In 1852 a Frenchman named M. Benoit used snails in his experiments, as he felt that a certain form of rapport was operative in the animal kingdom. First, he paired of 52 snails and allowed them to become well acquainted by living together in seperate pairs. Then on each pair, he wrote a letter of the alphabet, two A's, two B's, and so on. One set of alphabet labeled snails was sent to America, and the other retained in Paris. At a predetermined time, in Paris, an electric shock was applied to a snail, say snail E. Simultaneously snail E in America reacted in sympathy, exibiting a kind of erratic behavior. Several snails were shocked and it was possible to transmit a simple message by 'snail telegraph'! In 1965 George De La Warr conducted a experiment in his laboratory in Oxford, England. But the unique feature of his endeavor was to show that rapport exists between a physical object and a photograph of that object. A photo was taken of a snail and sent to the town of Evesham, 40 miles away. In Oxford the animal was placed in an apparatus wereby Histogram readings could be taken.(Histograms are basically Amplitude/Frequency graphs of energy transmission through body tissues.) In Evesham, which was linked to Oxford by telephone, the snails photograph was intermittently exposed to certain light energies which were successfull in producing responses registered by the Histogram in the Oxford Laboratory. Similair experiments were carried out with human subjects and their photographs; with several energy stimuli such as light, sound, color, ultrviolet, and infra-red radiations, and magnetism. In each instance Histigram readings indicated that a state of rapport existed between the subject and his photographic image. Other De La Warr research suggests that rapport holds, over great distances, between an individual and his blood or hair specimens, fingernails, and other bodily fluids. There is also much Magical Literature that will support these findings. Books by Aleister Crowley mention the 'Magical Link'. The book 'The Golden Bough' also has many references to natives utilizing the 'Magical Link' for their ceremonies in healing, crop growing, etc. ~ K A R M A ~ + A N D - K N O W L E D G E What I would like to do now is to begin talking on HOW to use the 'Magical Link' for our own BENEFICIAL purposes. I will NOT talk about putting a Hex on someone or some other devious purposes. This knowledge is presented to you for Enlightenment and not for Destruction. I know there are individuals who will try to Psychically Dominate someone etc with this data, but that is their CHOICE and they will have to live with the EFFECTS of their CHOICE to destroy. Heed this warning! Its the First One I have made about this subject, AND its the LAST ONE! Go ahead and say, "Listen to the Holiness and Light Bullshit..." or something to that effect. It is never the less a warning AND a wisdom. So if a your are the type of person who is a 'Men in Black' persuasion, or more to the point, a 'Satanist', you will probably go right ahead with your plans and ignore my warning...and 'kill that bastard' or whatever. Well.... with Knowledge comes Responsibility, that means you are now RESPONSIBLE for what you do with the information. And when you are held RESPONSIBLE...as the saying goes....then you can 'get the axe' so to speak....and most of the times 'the axe' falls 'much too quickly'. NUF' SAID!.....ONWARD!!!! -------------------->
It is now suggested that if you intend to pursue this study of Radionics
and its cousins, Radiesthesia,and Psychotronics, that you purchase a
device from one of the Suppliers that I listed in the previous
disscusion, in the File titled RADION02.DOC. You can buy them from prices
ranging from $35.00 to $300.00+. The only reason that I suggest you
purchase a device is simply because it makes your job about 100% easier,
faster, and more accurate. In my opinion, they are 'necessary' to
get any 'real' work done. Of course if you talk to a native Shaman of
Brazil, he would most likely tell you otherwise....until he used one of
the devices himself, and he realizes that it does make things easier!
I am going to use the Magnetron in the first few discussions, since
it is the least expensive to purchase, easiest to operate, requires no
electricity, and can be 'tuned' very quickly. Oh yes, by the way, the
Magnetron is available from 'Supersensonic Energy Technologies', and their
address is in the RADION02.DOC.
Color is what I have used for many 'basic' applications where not much
is known about the problem at hand. It is my 'old reliable' form of
treating illness. First I acquire a 'witness' of the person, such as a
fingernail, hair, or preferably a RECENT photograph.
Then I determine what the persons problem is, for example a cold.
Then I place the witness of the person on the Magnetron, (after I tune
the Magnetron) and in this case for a cold, treat the witness of the
person with Red and Green light, alternating the colors every two
hours, then every four hours, then every two hours, and so on.
In addition I also use Vitamin C with the light. So the person
then recieves the positive vibrations from the light, and secondly, from
the physical remedy itself. Vitamins can be administered to people
in this fashion also. Herbal remedies work well also. Say a person is
allways uptight, and they cant seem to ever relax. A witness of
Marijuana, for example would aid the person to feel the soothing effects
of the herb without having to physically consume it. A sleeping pill
for the insomniac on the Magnetron along with his witness, will
produce the same effect in him as if he physically consumed it, although
it takes a much longer time to feel the effects. Because you are
dealing with the suble energies of the persons L-Field.
O V E R L O A D S & E T H I C S
Too much of anything is bad for you, and radionic energies are no
different. I myself on occasion have recieved too much energy, and
the result was that I felt very 'stuffy', had hot flashes, and was
VERY irritable...So make sure someone doesnt Overdose on the
energies you are feeding them. I also made it my policy to ALLWAYS
ask the person, if I have their PERMISSION to help them.
I make NO exceptions to this rule. And I suggest you do the same.
That is, unless you dont mind infringing on them and collecting
their bad energies...since you took the RESPONSIBILITY to take care
of them without their permission. And as I said before, when you accept
Responsibilty for something, YOU are the one who gets in trouble
when something goes wrong with the thing you are responsible for.
And in this case, if you take Responsibility for the persons health
then you are also going to feel the effects of your decisions.
So the patient gets well and you get his 'old' illness.....
It really happens! SO ALLWAYS ask for their permission to help them.
It can be as simple as "Would you like me to try and make you well?"
Nothing fancy or formal. Just a simple 'Can I...' is sufficient.
Gem stones can be used as 'medicine' just like the Vitamin C, Herbs,
Pills, and Colors. Get a book on the Healing Properties of Gemstones,
and read it...then you will know if a particular gem stone frequency
will aid a persons diminishing concentration, etc...
A Herb book, detailing all the healing properties of the Herbs is all
you need to form a conclusion as to what Herb will get rid of a specific
condition. And so on and so forth....Its all VERY simple once you begin
to understand the principles of Radionics.
Radionics is a accepted form of medicine all over Europe and is gaining
popularity in the USA, even though no 'medical claims' can be made for it
here in the USA. Since the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) doesnt
understand how Radionics works they wont accept it, and since the FDA
will NOT allow a demonstration of the effectiveness of radionics
as 'proof' of its effectiveness, the majority of the American public
have remained ignorant of it. DONT allow the FDA's close mindedness,
and backward acceptance procedures prevent you from enjoying
the benefits of Radionics. You have nothing to lose, and much to gain.
Give it a try, read about it, and discover for yourself its validity.
ARCHON
Node 100/Net 523
Weirdbase BBS
St. Louis, MO.
The following is a excerpt from a lecture that was documented in a
book that I own. It was a lecture given by professional radionics
researchers. I do not know all the details of the device discussed,
and I am forwarding this information just for comparative purposes.
Just to show you how complicated this whole area can get!!!Enjoy!
R E S E A R C H W O R K O N T H E H U M A N
E L E C T R O M A G N E T I C F I E L D
By Dr. E.A. Maury and Marguerite Maury
(THE AURA IN OTHER WORDS!)
It is admitted today (particularly through the work of the American
Scientist Dr, H. G. Burr, and his collaborators of the University of Yale)
that every living thing is surrounded by an electric aura produced by its
own organism.
The aura consists of an electric, dynamic field, an it plays an important
part in determining the volume, the form and the biological behaviour of
every plant and animal. It is influenced by cosmic rays and by sun spots.
Life on the earth can thus be said to be electrically connected with the
entire dynamic system of the universe. In just a few words I shall recall
the experiments of Burr and his collaborators: by putting a salamander
into a salt solution connected to a registering apparatus by means of two
electrodes, and then revolving the receptacle containing the animal, the
existance of an electrical field flowing through the electrodes can be
established and registered. The same experiment has been made on human
beings by placing each index finger of a healthy person in a small bowl
containing a salt solution; in which case the galvanometer indicates a
value of 1.5 millivolts. If however one of the index fingers has an open
cut, the galvanometer will indicate a value of 12 millivolts. Thanks to
our new apparatus of electrical measures, we too have been able to
register the differences in voltage of healthy and sick organisms.
I shall dispense with a detailed description of our apparatus so as not
unduly to complicate our subject. I shall only recall that it contains
an amplifier having a sufficiently high gain to permit the obervation of
something intangible. The first thing then that the engineer who
constructed the apparatus did, was to perfect an amplifier to make it
provide a multiplication of approximately 10,000, the reception of the
amplifier being insured by an ultra-sensitive detector, constructed like
a microphone, capable of serving also as a cardiphone. The outgoing
terminal of the amplifier is connected to a cathode ray oscillograph
with a loud speaker recorder. This apparatus functions when connected to
the main electric supply after the tubes of the amplifier have warmed up
for a few seconds before a test is made.Technically, to perfect the
apparatus and to obtain clear-cut responses, anti-parasite filters
have been added. Later on we intend to undertake our experiments in a lead
screened room isolating us from the outside, for this should allow us to
record the electric field of a human being in all its purity,
establishing its exact numerical value.
The subject examined is made to stand on an insulating mat in front of the
apparatus. It is important that the subject should remain as silent and
motionless as possible to avoid vibrations caused by currents of air or
sound, which can interfere.The operator then takes into his right hand
the microphone connected to the amplifying apparatus, and he holds it with
its lower surface parallel to the subject examined, and with distances
from the subjects body varied. (We shall later appreciate the importance
that can be attributed to the respective values corresponding to the
distances between the emitting subjetc and the reciving microphone.)
When the current flowing through the amplifier is increased to a certain
critical maximum, a characteristic whistling noise is heard in the
loudspeaker and a certain sine wave image is produced as the oscillograph
records the screen picture. There the curves are rather close together
or the curves rather long. More-over there is a strict parallelism
between the intensity and the modulation of the sound signal and, on the
other hand, the rapidity and density of the wave picture on the oscillators
screen. At first we thought this might have been due to a Larsen Effect
or phenomenon related to the reflection of waves but succesive experiments
have proved that this phenomena plays only a very minor part in the
production of these wave forms. We have noticed, for instance, that the
visual and sound reactions recorded are not corresponding ones over all
parts of the body. For example, near the plexuses of the sympathetic
nervous system of certain subjects (cardiac plexus, solar plexus, lumbar
plexus) the sound modulations are very high and sharp (that is, of a
very high frequency), whilst the waves shown on the screen are very close
to each other, this meaning, most probably, that the individuals in
question possess a strong magnetism. The reactions can be noted at a
distance of 15 feet and more. We have also noticed that the strongest
reaction can be obtained near the regions of the body where the Hindu
chakras are situated. It seems, thenm, that these precise points are
indeed the pionts where vital energy is emitted.
I have described in as few words as possible our experimental technique
and operational methods employed to examine, as exteriorized
phenomena of physical apparatus, these fields of human radiations which
have been the object of so much controversy. Thanks to the same method
it has been possible for us besides to determine the presence of fields
of radiation which are exterior to an object. As an interesting
illustration of this, moving the microphone around a bust in terra cotta
we were able to observe the difference in the wave modulations near the
lower part of the face of the sculptured head and near the eyes. Is this
due to a phenomenon caused by the influence of form? It is possible.
Similiarly we have also been able to record the field of radiations
due to an oil painting representing a little fishing port. It should be
observed that there the modulations were entirley different according
to whether the microphone was placed near the part representing the sea,
or the part representing the earth and the low houses of the fishermen
of Brittany. Should this phenomenon be attributed to an influence due to
the chemical composition of the colours used? It is probably due to an
influence of color refraction, this much depending upon the objects
painted by the artist.
It seems to have been now well established that by means of this apparatus
incontestably corresponding visible and audible reactions are obtained
as soon as the microphone is placed more or less close to an animate
or inanimate body, the degree of reation seeming to be in accordance with
the form and intensity of the radiating field. These experiments have
convinced us of the physical reality of an external field produced by
living beings and dead objects. This is only a small step forwards, as
we all very well know; for we now have to determine the exact wavelenghts
of these radiations which should vary according to the degree of health
of the individual examined. We have allready observed that each person
has his own oscillograph waveform, and that certain diseases such a
cancer, for example, produce the same general change in the appearance
of the personal waveform.
Certainly it is as yet too soon to draw any definite conclusions from
these experiments. I think that this method of examination should be
continued in order to try to establish the nature of signs conforming
to or giving indications of certain serious diseases before their full
development, the information being derived from modifications of the
oscillographic curves testifying to specific modifications of the
human wavelenghts, these modifications being observable from a
variation in the field of external radiations.
D I S C U S S I O N
Mr. Eagerton Sykes asked if the use of the word microphone was a
mistake in Dr. Maurys paper.
Mr. Macbeth (who has seen the Maury appliance) explained that
microphone was the name given to the collector which was applied
to the affected area of a patient by being held a few inches off the
skin. This collector conveys the detected influences to the
thermionic valve amplifier which finally produces a corresponding
oscillogram or else a musical note on a connected loud speaker.
Mr. de la Warr explained that the sound was a heterodyne effect derived
from an oscillating diaphragm.
http://amasci.com/freenrg/rdionic1.txt
Πέμπτη 22 Ιουλίου 2010
Ελενη εξισορροπιση ενεργειων
ΑΣΤΡΙΚΟ-ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟ 31719
ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟ-ΑΣΤΡΙΚΟ 271011
ΦΥΣΙΚΟ-ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟ 103317
ΥΠΕΡΔΙΕΡΓΕΣΗ ΑΣΤΡΙΚΟΥ 49618
ΥΠΕΡΔΙΕΡΓΕΣΗ ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟΥ 79518
ΥΠΕΡΔΙΕΡΓΕΣΗ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟΥ 89718
ΚΑΘΑΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΑΣΤΡΙΚΟΥ 85193
ΚΑΘΑΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟΥ 41894
ΚΑΘΑΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟΥ 29293
31125 ΨΕΥΔΑΡΓΥΡΟΣ
ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟ-ΑΣΤΡΙΚΟ 271011
ΦΥΣΙΚΟ-ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟ 103317
ΥΠΕΡΔΙΕΡΓΕΣΗ ΑΣΤΡΙΚΟΥ 49618
ΥΠΕΡΔΙΕΡΓΕΣΗ ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟΥ 79518
ΥΠΕΡΔΙΕΡΓΕΣΗ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟΥ 89718
ΚΑΘΑΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΑΣΤΡΙΚΟΥ 85193
ΚΑΘΑΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΑΙΘΕΡΙΚΟΥ 41894
ΚΑΘΑΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟΥ 29293
31125 ΨΕΥΔΑΡΓΥΡΟΣ
Πέμπτη 18 Ιουνίου 2009
Ξεχάστε το: αυτά τα πράγματα είναι αδύνατα.
Όταν ο Λεονάρντο ντα Βίντσι σχεδίασε μια απίθανη εφεύρεση, οι λόγιοι του 15ου αιώνα, πιθανώς να τον αποπήραν:"Ξέχασέ το, Λεόν. Αν οι μηχανές μπορούσαν να πετάξουν, θα το γνωρίζαμε."
Καθ' όλη τη διάρκεια της ιστορίας, κάποιοι ειδικοί λένε στους καινοτόμους, ότι οι εφευρέσεις τους είναι αδύνατες. Μερικά παραδείγματα:
· Η Αγγλική Ακαδημία Επιστημών περιγέλασε τον Βενιαμίν Φραγκλίνο όταν ανέφερε την ανακάλυψη του αλεξικέραυνου και η Ακαδημία αρνήθηκε να δημοσιεύσει την αναφορά του.
· Το 1902, μια ομάδα Γερμανών μηχανικών γελοιοποίησε τον κόμη Ferdinand von Zeppelin, όταν ισχυρίστηκε ότι εφεύρε ένα πηδαλιούχο μπαλόνι. (Αργότερα, τα αερόπλοια του Zeppelin, πέταξαν για εμπορικούς σκοπούς πάνω απ' τον Ατλαντικό).
· Οι κυριότερες εφημερίδες αγνόησαν την ιστορική πτήση, το 1903, του αεροπλάνου των αδελφών Wright, επειδή το "Scientific American" υπέδειξε ότι η πτήση ήταν μια απάτη, και για πέντε χρόνια οι αξιωματούχοι της Ουάσινγκτον, δεν πίστευαν ότι μια μηχανή βαρύτερη απ' τον αέρα είχε πετάξει.
Ίσως στον 21ο αιώνα οι παρακάτω εφευρέσεις θα γίνουν επιστημονικά πρότυπα και ένας σπουδαστής ιστορίας ίσως αναρωτηθεί γιατί οι ειδήμονες του 20ου αιώνα τις αγνόησαν.
1. ΜΕΤΑΣΧΗΜΑΤΙΣΤΗΣ ΕΝΕΡΓΕΙΑΣ ΚΕΝΟΥ
Αυτό το είδος εφευρέσεων θα μπορούσε να εξαλείψει τις πετρελαϊκές κρίσεις και να βοηθήσει να λυθούν περιβαλλοντικά προβλήματα. Οι πιο συχνά ονομαζόμενες ηλεκτρικές γεννήτριες δωρεάν ενέργειας ή γεννήτριες δίχως καύσιμα, παράγουν περισσότερη ενέργεια απ' ότι καταναλώνουν από οποιαδήποτε προηγούμενα γνωστή πηγή. Χωρίς μπαταρίες, ούτε ντεπόζιτο καυσίμων, ούτε σύνδεση με πρίζα. Αντίθετα, αγγίζουν μια αόρατη πηγή ισχύος. Τέτοιες ανορθόδοξα καθαρές συσκευές παραγωγής ενέργειας υπάρχουν σήμερα και κατασκευάστηκαν ήδη απ' τον 19ο αιώνα.
Ξεχάστε τις μηχανικές συσκευές αέναης κίνησης του Rube Goldberg. Τελικά αναγκάζονταν να σταματούν. Αντίθετα, νέοι μετατροπείς ενέργειας στερεάς κατάστασης (δίχως κινούμενα μέρη), λέγεται ότι αντλούν από ένα ενεργειακό πεδίο που μας περιβάλλει στο χώρο. Αυτή η πηγή άφθονης ενέργειας, είναι γνωστή στους φυσικούς σαν κβαντικές ταλαντώσεις μηδενικού σημείου του κενού. Ο όρος "μηδενικού σημείου" αναφέρεται στο φαινόμενο κατά το οποίο, ακόμα και στη θερμοκρασία που παγώνει η θερμική κίνηση των μορίων, στους μηδέν βαθμούς Kelvin, υπάρχει ακόμα ελαφριά κίνηση, που αποδίδεται σε δια-διαστασιακές ταλαντώσεις ή στην κοσμική ενέργεια. Ο μαγνητισμός και οι στροβιλιστικές κινήσεις από σπιν σε σπιν, φαίνεται ότι ευθυγραμμίζουν αυτές τις τυχαίες ταλαντώσεις του κενού και τις ενεργοποιούν όπως και στο φαινόμενο Searl.
Οι εφευρέτες τους, δίνουν διάφορα ονόματα στους μετασχηματιστές ενέργειας απ' το κενό. Στη δεκαετία του 1930, ένας επιστήμονας στη Γιούτα, ο T. Henry Moray, εφεύρε μια συσκευή ενέργειας ακτινοβολίας, που τροφοδοτούνταν από τη θάλασσα ενέργειας στην οποία επιπλέει η Γη. Αυτή η θάλασσα που μας περιβάλλει, είπε ο Moray, είναι γεμάτη με ακτίνες, οι οποίες διαπερνούν συνεχώς τη Γη απ' όλες τις κατευθύνσεις, πιθανόν από αναρίθμητους γαλαξίες. Μετατρέποντας αυτήν την κοσμική ακτινοβολία βάθους, σε έναν περίεργα ψυχρό είδος ηλεκτρισμού, η συσκευή του άναψε λαμπτήρες πυράκτωσης, θέρμανε ένα σίδερο και κίνησε έναν κινητήρα.
Μια πνευματική κοινότητα στην Ελβετία κατείχε μια επιτραπέζια συσκευή δωρεάν ενέργειας που δούλευε σε θερμοκήπια για χρόνια, αλλά τα μέλη της φοβήθηκαν ότι, οι εκτός κοινότητας θα έστρεφαν την τεχνολογία σε πολεμικούς σκοπούς. Πριν η κοινότητα κλείσει τις πόρτες της στους αδιάκριτους, ευρωπαίοι μηχανικοί έγιναν μάρτυρες του μετασχηματιστή, ο οποίος παρήγαγε χιλιάδες Watt. Παρ' όλα αυτά, οι περισσότερες απ' τις άλλες συσκευές ανορθόδοξης ενέργειας βρίσκονται ακόμα στο στάδιο των αναξιόπιστων, άτεχνων πρωτότυπων. (Έτσι ήταν και το πρώτο αεροπλάνο των αδελφών Wright. Πέταξε μόλις 100 πόδια περίπου).
Ο εφευρέτης των συστημάτων παραγωγής και μετάδοσης εναλλασσόμενου ρεύματος, ο μεγαλοφυής Nikola Tesla (1857-1943), λέγεται ότι έθεσε σε κίνηση ένα αυτοκίνητο Pierce-Arrow με μια συσκευή δωρεάν ενέργειας στη δεκαετία του 1930. Αν και δύσκολο να τεκμηριωθεί τώρα, έχουμε το λόγο του, ότι αυτό είναι δυνατό. Είναι απλά θέμα χρόνου, το να επιτύχουν οι άνθρωποι να προσαρμόσουν τα μηχανήματά τους στους τροχούς της φύσης, είπε ο Tesla.
'Ίσως να είχε συμβεί πριν απ' την εποχή του Tesla. Μεταξύ των εφευρέσεων δωρεάν ενέργειας του John Worrell Keely (1827-1898) είναι ο * κινητήρας [Hydro Pneumo-Pulsating-Vacuo motor, Υδρο Πνευμο-Παλμο-Κενού], ο οποίος χρησιμοποιούσε την κοιλότητα (συντριβή) του νερού. Αν και ο Kelly έφτασε σε ένα προχωρημένο επίπεδο κατανόησης της επιστήμης των ταλαντώσεων, απέτυχε να αναπτύξει μηχανές που θα μπορούσαν να χειριστούν άλλοι άνθρωποι. Η πρόοδος συνεχίζεται από άλλες κατευθύνσεις.
Μια εταιρία στη Georgia πουλάει * [water cavitation devices, συσκευές κοιλότητας νερού], οι οποίες κυμαίνονται σε απόδοση από 110% έως 300%.
Πιο πάνω, στο Βανκούβερ του Καναδά, ο ερευνητής του Tesla, John Hutchison, λεει ότι έχει την αίσθηση της φυσικής ροής μιας λεπτής πρωτογενούς ενέργειας. Την άνοιξη του 1995 παρουσίασε την τελευταία του εφεύρεση στον συγγραφέα και σ' ένα μηχανικό. Ο μετασχηματιστής Hutchison περιλαμβάνει κρυστάλλινα υλικά και την αρχή του ηλεκτρικού συντονισμού. Περιστρέφει μερικά κουμπιά για να τον συντονίσει και η ροή ενέργειας ενισχύεται μέχρι που κινεί μια μηχανή διαμέτρου μίας ίντσας. Η περιστροφή ενός μικρού έλικα δεν φαίνεται πολύ εντυπωσιακή, έως ότου θυμηθείς ότι δεν υπάρχουν μπαταρίες και ότι η συσκευή λειτουργεί για μέρες κάθε φορά.
Ο Wingate Lambertson Ph.D. απ' την Φλόριντα, πρώην εκτελεστικός διευθυντής της επιστημονικής και τεχνολογικής επιτροπής του Κεντάκι, ανακάλυψε μια συσκευή, η οποία μετατρέπει τις ταλαντώσεις της ενέργειας του κενού σε ηλεκτρισμό που ανάβει μια σειρά από λάμπες. Αυτός ο αξιοπρεπής πρώην καθηγητής, έφτασε στο προσκήνιο της δωρεάν ενέργειας από μια παρακαμπτήριο. Στα μέσα της δεκαετίας του 1960 διάβασε το "Υπάρχει ένας Ποταμός" του Thomas Sugree, ο οποίος γράφει για τον αφανισμό της Ατλαντίδας εξαιτίας της κακής χρήσης ενός κρυσταλλικού συσσωρευτή ενέργειας. Ο "ψυχικός", φίλος του Lambertson, προσφέρθηκε αργότερα να συνεργαστεί για την αντιγραφή του πρώτου Ατλάντειου ενεργειακού μετασχηματιστή, αλλά τελικά ο Lambertson επέστρεψε στην γνώση του των κεραμικών και των μετάλλων για να κατασκευάσει έναν μετασχηματιστή. Ούτε η δική του, ούτε καμιά άλλη σημερινή μέθοδος μετατροπής της ενέργειας μηδενικού σημείου, δεν βασίζεται στην πρώτη Ατλάντεια μέθοδο του κρυστάλλου, επειδή οι ερευνητές βρήκαν καλύτερες μεθόδους. Επίσης, η ιδέα ενός κεντρικού σταθμού ενέργειας που να παρέχει ηλεκτρική ενέργεια σε ένα έθνος είναι ξεπερασμένη, λεει ο Dr. Lambertson. Οι μικροί μετασχηματιστές ενέργειας θα ακολουθήσουν το μονοπάτι του προσωπικού μετασχηματιστή.
2. ΨΥΧΡΗ ΣΥΝΤΗΞΗ
Στην Ιαπωνία, η ψυχρή σύντηξη ονομάζεται Ενέργεια Νέου Υδρογόνου και αυτό το έθνος που εξαρτάται απ' το πετρέλαιο, καλωσορίζει τα επιτυχημένα πειράματα. Αντίθετα, δύο πρωτοποριακά πειράματα καταδιώχθηκαν στη Βόρεια Αμερική.
Ένα επιτυχές πείραμα κοινοποιήθηκε στο Monte Carlo τον Απρίλιο, στην 5η Διεθνή Διάσκεψη για την Ψυχρή Σύντηξη. Η εταιρία Clean Energy Technologies της Φλόριντα, επέδειξε ένα στοιχείο ψυχρής σύντηξης με απόδοση ενέργειας μέχρι δέκα φορές πιο πολύ απ' την κατανάλωση. Και άλλες εταιρίες ποντάρουν επίσης σ' αυτή τη νέα πηγή ενέργειας θερμότητας, η οποία θα μπορούσε να κινήσει ηλεκτρικές γεννήτριες.
Τι προκαλεί πραγματικά την σύντηξη των ατομικών πυρήνων και απελευθερώνει ενέργεια, δίχως εξαιρετικά υψηλές θερμοκρασίες και πιέσεις; Ένας Ρουμάνος φυσικός που γράφει στο περιοδικό "Infinite Energy", ο Dr. Peter Gluck, αναρωτιέται αν θα μπορούσε να είναι εν μέρει ένα καταλυτικό πυρηνικό αποτέλεσμα και εν μέρει ένα καταλυτικό κβαντικό αποτέλεσμα, που παρέχουν τη σύλληψη της ενέργειας μηδενικού σημείου, την πανταχού παρούσα ενέργεια z-p.
3. ΣΥΣΤΗΜΑ ΔΙΑΧΩΡΙΣΜΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΝΕΡΟΥ ΑΠ' ΤΟ ΚΑΥΣΙΜΟ ΜΕ ΣΥΝΤΟΝΙΣΜΟ
Μια άλλη παραλλαγή του θέματος νερό - καύσιμο βασίζεται περισσότερο στις δονήσεις παρά στη χημεία. Με περισσότερο από 100% αποτελεσματικότητα, ένα τέτοιο σύστημα παράγει αέριο υδρογόνο και οξυγόνο από συνηθισμένο νερό, σε φυσιολογικές θερμοκρασίες και πίεση.
Ένα παράδειγμα είναι η ευρεσιτεχνεία U.S. 4,394,230, "Μέθοδος και Συσκευή Διαχωρισμού Μορίων Νερού", που εκδόθηκε για τον Dr. Andrija Puharich το 1983. Η μέθοδός του έκανε περίπλοκες ηλεκτρικές κυματομορφές να συνηχούν με μόρια νερού και να τα διασπούν, απελευθερώνοντας υδρογόνο και οξυγόνο. Χρησιμοποιώντας την αντίληψη του Tesla για τον ηλεκτρικό συντονισμό, ο Puharich μπόρεσε να διασπάσει το μόριο του νερού πολύ πιο αποτελεσματικά από την πρωτόγονη δύναμη της ηλεκτρόλυσης, που γνωρίζουν όλοι οι φοιτητές Φυσικής. (Ο συντονισμός είναι αυτός που διασπά ένα κρυστάλλινο ποτήρι, όταν ένας τραγουδιστής όπερας πετύχει ακριβώς τη νότα που δονεί όμοια με τη μοριακή δομή του κρυστάλλου).
Να αναφερθεί ότι ο Puharich, οδηγούσε το αμάξι του σπίτι, χρησιμοποιώντας νερό σαν καύσιμο, για αρκετές εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες χιλιόμετρα, σε ταξίδια στη Βόρεια Αμερική. Σ' ένα ψηλό ορεινό πέρασμα του Μεξικού, αναγκάστηκε να χρησιμοποιήσει χιόνι για καύσιμο. Η διάσπαση των μορίων του νερού όπως χρειάζεται να είναι σε ένα όχημα, είναι πιο επαναστατική απ' τα συστήματα που κινούνται με υδρογόνο, με τα οποία έχει ασχοληθεί κάθε μεγάλος κατασκευαστής αυτοκινήτων. Με το συζητούμενο σύστημα, δεν χρειάζεται να κουβαλάς ένα ντεπόζιτο γεμάτο με καύσιμο υδρογόνο, το οποίο θα μπορούσε να είναι μια υποψήφια βόμβα.
Ένας άλλος εφευρέτης που έφτιαξε άμεσα επιτυχώς καύσιμο από νερό, ήταν ο πρόσφατος Francisco Pacheco του New Jersey. Η Διπολική Αυτοηλεκτρική Γεννήτρια Υδρογόνου του Pacheco (ευρεσιτεχνεία U.S., 5,089,107), διαχώριζε το υδρογόνο απ' το θαλασσινό νερό, όπως απαιτούνταν.
Ένας πρωτοπόρος στη διάσπαση του νερού σε υδρογόνο και οξυγόνο, δίχως θέρμανση ή κοινό ηλεκτρισμό, ο John Worrell Keely, πραγματοποίησε άθλους, τους οποίους η επιστήμη του 20ου αιώνα είναι ανήμπορη να επαναλάβει. Δούλεψε με τον ήχο και άλλες δονήσεις για να θέσει σε κίνηση μηχανές. Για να απελευθερώσει ενέργεια από μόρια νερού, ο Kelly έχυσε ένα τέταρτο νερού σ' έναν κύλινδρο, στον οποίο δονούνταν διαπασών στην ακριβή συχνότητα ώστε να απελευθερωθεί η ενέργεια. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι διέσπασε τα μόρια του νερού και απελευθέρωσε υδρογόνο, ή μήπως απελευθέρωσε μια πιο πρωτογενή μορφή ενέργειας; Τα αρχεία που θα απαντούσαν τέτοιες ερωτήσεις έχουν χαθεί. Εντούτοις, ένα αιώνα αργότερα, ο Kelly δικαιώνεται. Ένας επιστήμονας ανακάλυψε πρόσφατα ότι, ο Kelly ήταν σωστός στην πρόβλεψη της ακριβούς συχνότητας η οποία θα διασπούσε ένα μόριο νερού. Ο Kelly αντιλαμβάνονταν τα άτομα, σαν περίπλοκα δονητικά φαινόμενα.
4. ΣΥΣΤΗΜΑΤΑ ΓΙΑ ΑΣΥΡΜΑΤΗ ΑΠΟΣΤΟΛΗ ΕΝΕΡΓΕΙΑΣ
"Κοίτα, Μάνα Γη, χωρίς γραμμές ισχύος."
Ο Tesla ίσως να ήθελε να αναφωνήσει ένα τέτοιο καύχημα, αλλά δεν έγινε έτσι. Ο κόσμος είναι δικτυωμένος με γραμμές μετάδοσης για το ηλεκτρικό δίκτυο. Η εφεύρεσή του για ασύρματη αποστολή ηλεκτρικής ισχύος δεν ήταν τόσο δημοφιλής στην Wall Street.
Πριν οι μεσίτες της ενέργειας ανακαλύψουν τι σκάρωνε, ο Tesla ανέπτυξε εργαστήριο με ένα πύργο στην κορυφή, κοντά στο σημερινό Colorado Springs. Γέμισε το βουνίσιο αέρα με θυελλώδεις τεχνητούς κεραυνούς και σφυροκόπησε τη γη με ηλεκτρικές ταλαντώσεις, καθώς δοκίμαζε ιδέες για τον ηλεκτρικό συντονισμό. Κατόπιν επέστρεψε στη Νέα Υόρκη για να φτιάξει το Wardenclyffe, έναν περίπλοκο ξύλινο πύργο στο Long Island, απ' τον οποίο σχεδίαζε να στείλει τόσο σήμα επικοινωνίας όσο και ισχύος, ασύρματα. Όταν ο τραπεζίτης J. Pierpont Morgan συνειδητοποίησε ότι ο Tesla μπορούσε να τα καταφέρει, διέκοψε τη χρηματοδότηση του εφευρέτη και μπλόκαρε άλλες οικονομικές συμφωνίες που προσπάθησε να κάνει ο Tesla. Ο πύργος Wardenclyffe γκρεμίστηκε και πουλήθηκε για παλιοσίδερα.
Τα τελευταία χρόνια, επιστήμονες όπως ο James Corum Ph.D., έμαθαν ότι ο Tesla δοκίμασε επιτυχημένα ένα ασύρματο σύστημα στο Κολοράντο. Για παράδειγμα, ο Tesla γνώριζε συγκεκριμένες συχνότητες που σχετίζονταν με τις συχνότητες της γήινης ιονόσφαιρας, γνώση που δεν θα μπορούσε να κατέχει τον 19ο αιώνα, εκτός κι αν είχε στείλει ηλεκτρικές ταλαντώσεις, ασύρματα.
5. ΣΥΣΚΕΥΗ ΑΝΤΙ-ΒΑΡΥΤΗΤΑΣ
Το 1923, οι απλοί ιπτάμενοι δίσκοι του Townsend T. Brown απέδειξαν μια σχέση μεταξύ του ηλεκτρισμού και της βαρύτητας. Δουλεύοντας σ' αυτή την κατεύθυνση για πάνω από 28 χρόνια, ο Brown κατοχύρωσε (ευρεσιτεχνείες U.S. 2,949,550, 3,018,394, και άλλες) την ηλεκτροστατική μέθοδο προώθησης. Ξεκινώντας με δίσκους διαμέτρου δύο ποδιών, που αιωρούνταν γύρω από ένα πάσσαλο με 17 πόδια το δευτερόλεπτο, αύξησε το μέγεθος κατά ένα τρίτο και οι δίσκοι πέταξαν τόσο γρήγορα ώστε τα αποτελέσματα έγιναν άκρως απόρρητα, έγραψε ένα διεθνές περιοδικό πτήσεων το 1956. Πριν το τέλος της ζωής του ο Brown κατείχε συσκευή, που μπορούσε να ανυψώσει τον εαυτό της όταν της εφαρμοζόταν ηλεκτρισμός. Πέθανε το 1985.
Συμπέρασμα: αν η ηλεκτροβαρυτική αναπτυχθεί, θα μπορούσαμε να είχαμε μια τεχνολογία ηλεκτρικών διαστημοπλοίων, η οποία δεν θα υπόκειται στις γνωστές ηλεκτρομαγνητικές αρχές. Το σκάφος θα ωθούνταν σε κάθε κατεύθυνση, δίχως να κινεί μηχανικά μέρη. Δίχως ταχύτητες, προπέλες ή τροχούς.
Εφαρμογές της σύνδεσης μεταξύ του ηλεκτρισμού ή του μαγνητισμού και της βαρύτητας αποδεικνύονται με άλλα πειράματα, συμπεριλαμβανομένων αυτών του David Hamel απ' το Οντάριο και του Floyd Sparky Sweet απ' την Καλιφόρνια. Σε ένα συμπόσιο του 1981 στο Τορόντο, ο Rudolf Zinsser απ' τη Γερμανία, παρουσίασε μια συσκευή (ευρεσιτεχνία U.S. 4,085,384), η οποία αυτοπροωθούνταν, σύμφωνα με αξιόπιστους μάρτυρες όπως ο μηχανικός George Hathaway. Ο Zinsser ισχυρίστηκε ότι οι ειδικά διαμορφωμένοι παλμοί του ηλεκτρομαγνητικών κυμάτων, μετέβαλλαν το τοπικό βαρυτικό πεδίο.
Ο Hathaway συνεργάστηκε στα μέσα της δεκαετίας του 1980 με τον John Hutchison σε πειράματα δράσης από απόσταση, στα οποία βαριά κομμάτια μέταλλου εκτοξεύτηκαν προς το ταβάνι, όταν τοποθετήθηκαν σε ένα περίπλοκο ηλεκτρομαγνητικό πεδίο και κάποια μεταλλικά δείγματα τεμαχίστηκαν ανώμαλα. Επισκέπτες ήρθαν στο εργαστήριο απ' το Los Alamos και το Καναδικό υπουργείο Άμυνας. (Ο στρατός είναι ένα βήμα μπροστά απ' τους ακαδημαϊκούς όσον αφορά την απόκοσμη επιστήμη.
6. ΜΙΑ ΜΕΘΟΔΟΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΜΕΤΑΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΩΣΗ ΤΩΝ ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΩΝ
Να αλλάξουμε τα ατομικά στοιχεία ή να κάνουμε τα στοιχεία να μοιάζουν μυστηριώδη; Ακούγεται σαν απίστευτη αλχημεία, αλλά πρόσφατα πειράματα το πέτυχαν, δίχως τους μοριακούς επιταχυντές της Μεγάλης Επιστήμης. Αυτοί οι επιστήμονες διδάχθηκαν από έναν μεταφυσικό, τον Walter Russell (1871-1963). Κατά τη διάρκεια έντονων πνευματιστικών εμπειριών, ο Russell είχε δει ότι, τα πάντα στο σύμπαν, απ' το άτομο ως το μακρινό διάστημα, σχηματίζονται από μια αόρατη γεωμετρία βάθους. Ο Russell όχι μόνο απεικόνισε τα οράματά του σε πίνακες, αλλά επίσης διδάχθηκε επιστήμες. Ήταν τόσο πολύ μπροστά, ώστε το 1926 προέβλεψε το τρίτιο, το δευτέριο, το νεπτόνιο, το πλουτώνιο και άλλα στοιχεία.
Πρόσφατα οι επαγγελματίες μηχανικοί Ron Kovac και Toby Grotz του Κολοράντο, με τη βοήθεια του Dr. Tim Binder, επανέλαβαν την εργασία του 1927 του Russell, η οποία είχε προς το παρόν ελεγχθεί απ' τα Εργαστήρια. Ο Russell βρήκε έναν πρωτότυπο τρόπο να αλλάξει την αναλογία του υδρογόνου προς το οξυγόνο στον ατμό του νερού, μέσα σε ένα σφραγισμένο σωλήνα χαλαζία, ή να μετατρέψει τον ατμό σε εντελώς διαφορετικά στοιχεία. Το συμπέρασμά τους συμφωνεί με τον Russell: η γεωμετρία της κίνησης στο κενό είναι σημαντική στην ατομική μεταστοιχείωση. Ο Kovac συνόψισε αυτή την ιδέα στη γεωμετρία της καμπύλωσης του χώρου.
Αυτοί οι σύγχρονοι μεταρρυθμιστές μιλούν για τους άθλους του Russell, όπως το να επιμηκύνει ή να πλατύνει τον πυρήνα του νερού σε άζωτο ή υδρογόνο ή αντίστροφα. Για να μετατρέψουν τους πυρήνες, αλλάζουν τη μορφή του μαγνητικού πεδίου. Αν και χρησιμοποίησαν ακριβό εξοπλισμό ανάλυσης, είναι βασικά μια εύκολη στην εφαρμογή, επιστήμη. Δεν απαιτείται κύκλοτρο ατομικών συγκρούσεων· απλά μια απαλή ώθηση χρησιμοποιώντας τις σωστές συχνότητες. Συγκεντρώστε και αποκεντρώστε την κίνηση του φωτός, φτιάξτε μια δίνη και ελέγξτε την.
Οι ερευνητές της ψυχρής σύντηξης, συναντούν επίσης τυχαία στοιχεία που ξεπετάγονται στα ηλεκτρισμένα τους παρασκευάσματα. Κανείς δεν προτείνει να φτιάξει χρυσό και να ανατρέψει τη νομισματική κίνηση ανά τον κόσμο, αλλά κάποια πειράματα στοχεύουν να βάλουν μια τάξη στα ραδιενεργά απόβλητα με τις πρωτότυπες διεργασίες τους.
7. ΣΥΣΣΩΡΕΥΤΗΣ ΟΡΓΟΝΗΣ
Όταν ο Wilhelm Reich, M.D., (1897-1957) μετακόμισε απ' την Ευρώπη στην Σκανδιναβία και στην Αμερική, άφησε πίσω του μια σειρά από εξαγριωμένους ειδικούς σε κάθε πεδίο που εξερεύνησε, στην ψυχιατρική, την πολιτική, τη σεξολογία, τη βιολογία, τη μικροσκοπία και την έρευνα για τον καρκίνο. Η δουλειά του οδήγησε σε μια ενοποιητική ανακάλυψη, μία δίχως μάζα, παλλόμενη ζωτική ενέργεια, την οποία ονόμασε οργόνη, επειδή την ανακάλυψε σε ζωντανούς οργανισμούς πριν ανακαλύψει ότι διαποτίζει επίσης την γήινη ατμόσφαιρα.
Ο ζωή του Reich τελείωσε στη φυλακή μετά από μια παρατεταμένη σύγκρουση με την Επιτροπή Τροφής και Φαρμάκων (FDA) των Η.Π.Α. Τα βιβλία και οι σημειώσεις του κάηκαν από ομοσπονδιακούς υπαλλήλους, επειδή η FDA είχε ξεσηκώσει ένα ζήτημα εναντίον της χρήσης για θεραπεία του συσσωρευτή οργόνης του. Ο συσσωρευτής είναι ένα κουτί φτιαγμένο από στρώματα οργανικών και ανόργανων υλικών· πειράματα με αυτόν παρουσιάζουν ανώμαλα αποτελέσματα. Μια ασυνήθιστη αύξηση της θερμοκρασίας μέσα στον συσσωρευτή, υποδεικνύει περιορισμούς στον δεύτερο νόμο της θερμοδυναμικής. Άσχετα αν η συγκεντρωμένη οργόνη μπορεί να δώσει λύση σε προβλήματα υγείας, ο συσσωρευτής προκαλεί ανοικτά την κατεστημένη επιστήμη.
8. Ο ΣΥΝΝΕΦΟ-ΘΡΑΥΣΤΗΣ
Το 1952 ο Wilhelm Reich εφεύρε μια μέθοδο δημιουργίας βροχής που δεν περιλαμβάνει το ράντισμα των σύννεφων με χημικά. Η συντριβή των σύννεφων, αλλιώς γνωστή σαν μηχανική αιθερικών καιρικών συνθηκών, επικαλείται αρχές που είναι δύσκολα αποδεκτές απ' τον συμβατικά εκπαιδευμένο νου. Η τεχνολογία είναι χαμηλών απαιτήσεων. Στρέψτε στον ουρανό μερικούς κούφιους μεταλλικούς σωλήνες και συνδέστε τα χαμηλότερα άκρα τους σε τρεχούμενο νερό. Αλλά αν δεν γνωρίζετε τόσο μετεωρολογία όσο και Οργοτρονική, παρακαλώ μην το δοκιμάσετε αυτό στο σπίτι, πάνω στον πλανήτη μας.
Μεταξύ των ιδιοτήτων αυτής της πρωτογενούς ενέργειας, της οργόνης, καθώς παρατήρησε ο Reich, είναι η απορρόφησή της στο νερό, ο ρόλος της στον έλεγχο του καιρού και η επικίνδυνη κατάστασή της όταν διεγερθεί από ραδιενέργεια. Ο πλανήτης δεν χρειάζεται άλλα πειράματα τρελών επιστημόνων, που να διαχειρίζονται τα συστήματα της φύσης, αλλά ίσως χρειάζεται μια πιο προχωρημένη κατανόηση, του τι προκαλούν στην ατμόσφαιρα οι εκπομπές εγκαταστάσεων πυρηνικής ενέργειας. (Οι συνεχιστές του Reich προειδοποιούν ότι η ζωτική ενέργεια του πλανήτη διαταράσσεται από την υπερβολική ραδιενέργεια).
9. ΤΟ ΜΙΚΡΟΣΚΟΠΙΟ ΚΑΙ Η ΓΕΝΝΗΤΡΙΑ ΣΥΧΝΟΤΗΤΩΝ ΤΟΥ RIFE
Στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 1920, ο Royal Raymond Rife απ' το Σαν Ντιέγκο, εφεύρε ένα υψηλής-μεγέθυνσης, υψηλής-ανάλυσης οπτικό μικροσκόπιο. Αυτό σήμαινε ότι μπορούσε να δει άψογα ζωντανά κύτταρα, σε αντίθεση προς τα νεκρά δείγματα που μπορούν να παρατηρηθούν κάτω από ένα ηλεκτρονικό μικροσκόπιο. Βασικά, ανέπτυξε μια γεννήτρια ηλεκτρομαγνητικών συχνοτήτων, την οποία μπορούσε να συντονίσει στη φυσική συχνότητα του υπό εξέταση μικροοργανισμού. Επιπλέον, έμαθε ότι συγκεκριμένη ηλεκτρομαγνητική συχνότητα θα μπορούσε να σκοτώσει συγκεκριμένους τύπους βακτηρίων.
Οι νέες ανακαλύψεις στη βιοφυσική, όχι μόνο ρίχνουν φως στη διαδικασία φωτισμού του μικροσκοπίου του Rife, αλλά εξηγούν και το πώς μπορούσε να προκαλεί επιλεκτικά την έκρηξη ιών. Η αντίληψή του για βακτήρια που αλλάζουν σχήμα, υποδεικνύει ότι η παραδοσιακή μικροβιακή θεωρία είναι ατελής. Παρά τις καταγραμμένες θεραπείες, η δίχως φάρμακα, ανώδυνη ηλεκτρική θεραπευτική αγωγή των ασθενειών, δεν καλωσορίστηκε από κάποιον ισχυρό ιατρικό σύνδεσμο.
10. ΣΥΣΚΕΥΗ ΗΛΕΚΤΡΟΝΙΚΗΣ ΤΗΛΕΠΑΘΕΙΑΣ
Όταν ο Patrick Flanagan ήταν έφηβος, στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1960, το περιοδικό "Life" τον κατέταξε σαν έναν απ' τους κορυφαίους επιστήμονες στον κόσμο. Ανάμεσα στις εφευρέσεις του ήταν το Νευρόφωνο, ένα ηλεκτρονικό όργανο που μπορεί να προγραμματίσει υποβολές σε κάποιο άτομο, απευθείας μέσω δερματικής επαφής. Κατασκεύασε το πρώτο Νευρόφωνο σε ηλικία 14 ετών, από σκουπίδια της κουζίνας. Τα ηλεκτρόδιά του ήταν γυαλιστικά σφουγγαράκια φτιαγμένα από λεπτό χάλκινο σύρμα και μονωμένο με πλαστικές σακούλες. Κατόπιν σύνδεσε τα ηλεκτρόδια σε έναν ειδικό μετασχηματιστή που ήταν συνδεδεμένος στον ενισχυτή hi-fi.
Κρατώντας τα σφουγγαράκια στους κροτάφους του, μπορούσε να ακούσει, μέσα στο κεφάλι του, μουσική απ' τον ενισχυτή. Μετέπειτα μοντέλα ρύθμιζαν αυτόματα το σήμα για να συντονιστεί με το ανθρώπινο δέρμα σαν μέρος ενός περίπλοκου κυκλώματος. Οι ειδικοί για τις ευρεσιτεχνίες είπαν ότι, ήταν αδύνατο ο ήχος να ακούγεται καθαρά δίχως να δονεί τα οστά ή να διέρχεται από κάποιο κρίσιμο νεύρο του αυτιού και αρνούνταν για 12 χρόνια να το κατοχυρώσουν. Το αρχείο ανοίχτηκε ξανά όταν ένας κουφός - εξαιτίας νευρικού προβλήματος - υπάλληλος στο γραφείο ευρεσιτεχνιών, άκουσε με ένα Νευρόφωνο.
Κάποια εποχή ο Flanagan ερεύνησε την γλώσσα ανθρώπων/δελφινιών, σε σύμβαση με το Ναυτικό των Η.Π.Α. Αυτό οδήγησε σε ένα τρισδιάστατο ολογραφικό ηχητικό σύστημα, το οποίο μπορούσε να θέσει ήχους οπουδήποτε στο χώρο. Κατόπιν τελειοποίησε ένα μοντέλο Νευροφώνου, που μπορούσε να χρησιμοποιηθεί για υποσυνείδητη εκμάθηση, η οποία θα κατευθύνονταν σε μακροπρόθεσμες τράπεζες της μνήμης. Αλλά αφού έστειλε μια πρωτότυπη εφαρμογή για ένα ψηφιακό Νευρόφωνο, η Defense Intelligence Agency, Υπηρεσία Αμυντικών Πληροφοριών το κατέταξε σε ένα επίπεδο μυστικότητας, και ήταν ανήμπορος να δουλέψει πάνω στη συσκευή ή να μιλήσει σε κανένα γι΄ αυτήν για πέντε χρόνια. Αυτό ήταν αποκαρδιωτικό, αφού η πρώτη ευρεσιτεχνία έκανε 12 χρόνια να γίνει δεκτή.
Έχοντας βοηθήσει κάποιους κουφούς ανθρώπους να ακούσουν, το επόμενο θαύμα του Flanagan θα μπορούσε να είναι να βοηθήσει τους τυφλούς να δουν. Το μόνο που έχουμε να κάνουμε είναι να ερεθίσουμε το δέρμα με τα σωστά σήματα.
Με την δημόσια αποδοχή εφευρέσεων όπως των μετασχηματιστών της ενέργειας του κενού και των υπέρ-εκπαιδευτικών συσκευών, ίσως οι σύγχρονοι μεταρρυθμιστές θα αποσύρουν την απόρριψη και τον περίγελο.
Παρόλα αυτά, σκεφτείτε ότι θα υπάρχουν πάντα ειδικοί για να πουν: Ξεχάστε το: αυτά τα πράγματα είναι αδύνατα.
της Jeane Manning
Τετάρτη 22 Οκτωβρίου 2008
Ξαναθυμήθηκαν τη θεωρία του Β. Ράιχ για τον οργασμό
Ξαναθυμήθηκαν τη θεωρία του Β. Ράιχ για τον οργασμό Ασοσ. Πρες ΡΕΪΝΤΖΛΙ. Μισό αιώνα μετά τον θάνατο του εμπνευστή της αμφιλεγόμενης θεωρίας της «οργονικής ενέργειας», Βίλχελμ Ράιχ, οι λιγοστοί υποστηρικτές του εκκεντρικού επιστήμονα καταβάλλουν την ύστατη προσπάθεια προκειμένου να δώσουν νέα ώθηση στο ξεχασμένο του έργο. Ο αυστριακής καταγωγής γιατρός και ψυχαναλυτής είχε ταράξει τα νερά της αμερικανικής επιστημονικής κοινότητας στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του ’50, υποστηρίζοντας ότι η «κοσμική ενέργεια» που παράγεται κατά τη διάρκεια του σεξουαλικού οργασμού έχει θεραπευτικές ιδιότητες. Αντικείμενο χλευασμού η μηχανή του Η μηχανή συγκέντρωσης «οργονικής ενέργειας» που κατασκεύασε ο Ράιχ έγινε αντικείμενο χλευασμού από την αμερικανική κοινή γνώμη πριν, τελικά, η επιτροπή Φαρμάκων και Τροφίμων αποφανθεί ότι πρόκειται για απάτη και διατάξει την κατάσχεσή της. Απαξιωμένος από το επιστημονικό κατεστημένο των ΗΠΑ, ο Ράιχ πέθανε σε ηλικία 60 ετών από ανακοπή καρδιάς σε φυλακή της Πενσιλβάνια, όπου εξέτιε ποινή διετούς κάθειρξης για περιφρόνηση δικαστηρίου, στις 3 Nοεμβρίου του 1957. «Προσωπικά, θεωρώ ότι θα περάσει πολύς καιρός πριν η επιστημονική κοινότητα κατανοήσει το έργο του», δηλώνει σήμερα η εγγονή του Ράιχ, Ρενάτα Μόιζ, με αφορμή την έκθεση του Εβραϊκού Μουσείου της Βιέννης με θέμα τη ζωή και το έργο του ψυχαναλυτή. Η Μόιζ επιμένει, μάλιστα, ότι η «μεταλλική κουβέρτα» ή αλλιώς «μηχανή συγκέντρωσης οργονικής ενέργειας» δεν είναι απάτη. «Την έχω χρησιμοποιήσει κι εγώ προκειμένου να θεραπεύσω εγκαύματα και μπορώ να σας διαβεβαιώσω ότι λειτουργεί», ισχυρίζεται. Ο Ράιχ υποστήριζε ότι ανακάλυψε τα «βιόνια» που ουσιαστικά αποτελούν την «οργονική ενέργεια» κατά τη διάρκεια πειραμάτων στη Νορβηγία. Διατεινόταν ότι η εν λόγω ενέργεια παράγεται κατά τη διάρκεια του οργασμού και ότι έχει θαυματουργές ιδιότητες. Σημειώνεται ότι ο Ράιχ εγκατέλειψε τη ναζιστική Γερμανία, όπου διέμενε μέχρι το 1933, λόγω της εβραϊκής καταγωγής του και των φιλοκομμουνιστικών του απόψεων. Αρχικά βρήκε καταφύγιο στη Νορβηγία, αλλά μετανάστευσε στις ΗΠΑ λίγο πριν από την έναρξη του Β΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου. Το έργο του Ράιχ δεν περιορίζεται, φυσικά, στην «οργονική ενέργεια» και στις προσπάθειες περισυλλογής της. Δεν είναι, άλλωστε, τυχαίο ότι η Ενωση Αμερικανών Ψυχαναλυτών τον χαρακτηρίζει έναν από τους «πιο λαμπρούς και δημιουργικούς ψυχαναλυτές» και υπενθυμίζει ότι ήταν ο πρώτος που έδωσε βάρος στην ανάλυση του χαρακτήρα έναντι των νευρωτικών συμπτωμάτων. Οι υποστηρικτές του υπογραμμίζουν την ανάγκη αναγνώρισης των μελετών του Ράιχ από την επιστημονική κοινότητα και συνιστούν στους νεότερους ψυχαναλυτές να μελετήσουν τη ζωή του. | |||
 | |||
Hμερομηνία : 07-11-2007 Copyright: http://www.kathimerini.gr | |||
BΙΛΧΕΛΜ ΡΑΪΧ - 50 ΧΡΟΝΙΑ ΜΕΤΑ
BΙΛΧΕΛΜ ΡΑΪΧ - 50 ΧΡΟΝΙΑ ΜΕΤΑ
Πενήντα χρόνια μετά τον θάνατό του ανοίγουν σήμερα οι πόρτες του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών που θα υποδεχτεί για πρώτη φορά τον «επαναστάτη» Βίλχελμ Ράιχ με πρωτοβουλία του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, του Κέντρου Μελετών και Ψυχοθεραπείας «Βίλχελμ Ράιχ» και της Πανελλήνιας Ενωσης Σωματικής Ψυχοθεραπείας (αίθουσα τελετών του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, Πανεπιστημίου 30, 10.00-15.00).
Σε μια ημερίδα που όχι τυχαία φέρει τίτλο «Πενήντα χρόνια από τον θάνατο του Ράιχ: Η ιστορία μιας απώθησης», μελετητές της σκέψης του, ανάμεσά τους ο ποιητής και συγγραφέας Νάνος Βαλαωρίτης, ο καθηγητής Ψυχολογίας και Επικοινωνίας του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών Κλήμης Ναυρίδης, ο καθηγητής Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης στο ΕΜΠ Αριστείδης Μπαλτάς, ο επίκουρος καθηγητής ΕΜΠ Κίμων Χατζημπίρος κ.ά., θα επιχειρήσουν να εξετάσουν με μια σύγχρονη ματιά το διαχρονικό, αλλά και συνάμα χαοτικό μερικές φορές έργο του.
Ο Ράιχ περιγράφεται από την Αμερικανική Ψυχαναλυτική Εταιρεία ως ένας από τους πλέον δημιουργικούς και λαμπερούς πρωτοπόρους της ψυχανάλυσης. Ομως, μεγάλο μέρος του έργου του είναι άγνωστο στο μεγάλο κοινό, στο σημείο που επώνυμοι στοχαστές της «Σχολής της Φρανκφούρτης» μπόρεσαν να καρπωθούν τη σκέψη του ειδικότερα σε ό,τι αφορά τη λιγότερο γνωστή μαρξιστική περίοδό του.
Η σκέψη του Βίλχελμ Ράιχ ακροβάτησε ανάμεσα στον φροϋδισμό και τον μαρξισμό, των οποίων επιχείρησε μια πετυχημένη όσο και θαρραλέα σύνθεση δημιουργώντας ένα νέο ψυχαναλυτικό ρεύμα. Γεννήθηκε έτσι ένας ιδιότυπος φροϊδο-μαρξισμός που αγκάλιασε ολοκληρωτικά ακόμη και ο Μαρκούζε.
Οι ιδέες του επηρέασαν την ψυχαναλυτική σκέψη, κοινωνικά και πολιτικά κινήματα των νέων, τον χώρο της ψυχοθεραπείας. Η σωματική ψυχοθεραπεία, ένα από τα πιο διαδεδομένα ψυχοθεραπευτικά ρεύματα σήμερα, βασίζεται στις ιδέες του Β. Ράιχ.
Ο Βίλχελμ Ράιχ γεννήθηκε το 1897 στην Dobrzcynika, τότε Αυστροουγγαρία σήμερα Ουκρανία, από εύπορη οικογένεια και πέθανε το 1957 στο Lewisburg της Πενσιλβάνιας.
Μαθητής και βοηθός του Φρόιντ αρχικά, πήρε αποστάσεις από την κλασική ψυχανάλυση και δημιούργησε μια δική του ψυχοθεραπευτική μέθοδο. Επηρεασμένος από τον μαρξισμό επεδίωξε να εντάξει τις ψυχαναλυτικές ιδέες σε μια προοπτική σοσιαλιστικής αλλαγής της κοινωνίας.
Γοητευμένος από την τότε Οκτωβριανή Επανάσταση, επισκέπτεται τη Μόσχα τον Σεπτέμβριο του 1929. Διακρίνει όμως ότι το νέο καθεστώς δημιουργεί αυταρχικές δομές και γυρίζει στη Βιέννη προβληματισμένος από αυτή την εμπειρία. Ασχολήθηκε ιδιαίτερα με την κοινωνική πρόληψη των ψυχικών διαταραχών στα παιδιά και τους νέους.
Εκανε κριτική στην αυταρχική οικογένεια που προετοιμάζει τα παιδιά για νευρωτικούς και υποταγμένους ενήλικες και καταπιέζει τη φυσική σεξουαλικότητα των εφήβων και των νέων, δημιουργώντας το έδαφος για την ψυχική διαταραχή.
Αντιμετώπισε τον άνθρωπο ως μια ψυχοσωματική ενότητα: τα ψυχικά φαινόμενα αντανακλώνται στο σώμα και τα σωματικά φαινόμενα εκφράζουν τον ψυχισμό.
Στη θεραπευτική του μέθοδο συνδύασε την ψυχανάλυση με τεχνικές που κινητοποιούν το σώμα του θεραπευόμενου. Οι ιδέες του επηρέασαν την ψυχαναλυτική σκέψη, κοινωνικά και πολιτικά κινήματα των νέων, τον χώρο της ψυχοθεραπείας. Η σωματική ψυχοθεραπεία, ένα από τα πιο διαδεδομένα ψυχοθεραπευτικά ρεύματα σήμερα, βασίζεται στις ιδέες του Β. Ράιχ.
Είναι γνωστός και για την ανάπτυξη της υπόθεσης μιας ενέργειας που χαρακτηρίζει τους ζωντανούς οργανισμούς, την οποία ονόμασε «οργόνη».
Τα πειράματά του γύρω από τη φύση αυτής της ενέργειας χαρακτήρισαν «επικίνδυνα» στις ΗΠΑ, όπου ζούσε από το 1939. Κυνηγημένος από την Υπηρεσία Τροφίμων και Φαρμάκων, πεθαίνει στη φυλακή, λίγο πριν από την ακρόασή του. Βιβλία του καίγονται και το εργαστήριό του καταστρέφεται.
Εργα του όπως «Η ανάλυση του χαρακτήρα», «Η δολοφονία του Χριστού», «Ο συσσωρευτής οργόνης» ξεσήκωσαν και ξεσηκώνουν ακόμη παγκοσμίως συζητήσεις.
«"Εχω δικαίωμα στην κρίση ανθρώπων ικανών να με κρίνουν και στο καλοπροαίρετο ανιδιοτελές λάθος".
Τα λόγια αυτά με τα οποία ο Ράιχ αντιμετώπισε τους δικαστές του που τελικά τον έστειλαν στη φυλακή θα έπρεπε να βρίσκονται γραμμένα στην είσοδο κάθε πνευματικού ιδρύματος στον κόσμο.
Δίνοντάς του τον λόγο στο Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, πιστεύω ότι αναγνωρίζουμε τη δύναμη, την τόλμη και την ανιδιοτέλειά του, την επιμονή του στη διεπιστημονική προσέγγιση και στη σύνδεση σκέψης, βιώματος και δράσης, ότι του δίνουμε, όπως ζητούσε, το δικαίωμα να κριθεί με πνευματικά κριτήρια, χωρίς υποχρεωτικά να προσυπογράφουμε όσα λέει...», τονίζει η καθηγήτρια Αισθητικής και Επικοινωνίας του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, Πέπη Ρηγοπούλου, που είναι και από τους κεντρικούς ομιλητές της σημερινής ημερίδας.
Ενας τολμηρός και παρεξηγημένος πρωτοπόρος
Της ΕΛΙΖΑΜΠΕΤΤΑΣ ΚΑΖΑΛΟΤΤΙ
Πενήντα χρόνια μετά τον θάνατό του η παγκόσμια επιστημονική κοινότητα ξαναδιαβάζει τον Βίλχελμ Ράιχ και κορυφώνονται σε όλο τον κόσμο οι εκδηλώσεις με επίκεντρο την αιρετική σκέψη του. Με αυξημένο ενδιαφέρον αναμένεται επίσης η δημοσίευση εργασιών του, που για πρώτη φορά θα είναι στη διάθεση των ερευνητών.
Σε μια ημερίδα που όχι τυχαία φέρει τίτλο «Πενήντα χρόνια από τον θάνατο του Ράιχ: Η ιστορία μιας απώθησης», μελετητές της σκέψης του, ανάμεσά τους ο ποιητής και συγγραφέας Νάνος Βαλαωρίτης, ο καθηγητής Ψυχολογίας και Επικοινωνίας του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών Κλήμης Ναυρίδης, ο καθηγητής Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης στο ΕΜΠ Αριστείδης Μπαλτάς, ο επίκουρος καθηγητής ΕΜΠ Κίμων Χατζημπίρος κ.ά., θα επιχειρήσουν να εξετάσουν με μια σύγχρονη ματιά το διαχρονικό, αλλά και συνάμα χαοτικό μερικές φορές έργο του.
Ο Ράιχ περιγράφεται από την Αμερικανική Ψυχαναλυτική Εταιρεία ως ένας από τους πλέον δημιουργικούς και λαμπερούς πρωτοπόρους της ψυχανάλυσης. Ομως, μεγάλο μέρος του έργου του είναι άγνωστο στο μεγάλο κοινό, στο σημείο που επώνυμοι στοχαστές της «Σχολής της Φρανκφούρτης» μπόρεσαν να καρπωθούν τη σκέψη του ειδικότερα σε ό,τι αφορά τη λιγότερο γνωστή μαρξιστική περίοδό του.
Η σκέψη του Βίλχελμ Ράιχ ακροβάτησε ανάμεσα στον φροϋδισμό και τον μαρξισμό, των οποίων επιχείρησε μια πετυχημένη όσο και θαρραλέα σύνθεση δημιουργώντας ένα νέο ψυχαναλυτικό ρεύμα. Γεννήθηκε έτσι ένας ιδιότυπος φροϊδο-μαρξισμός που αγκάλιασε ολοκληρωτικά ακόμη και ο Μαρκούζε.
Οι ιδέες του επηρέασαν την ψυχαναλυτική σκέψη, κοινωνικά και πολιτικά κινήματα των νέων, τον χώρο της ψυχοθεραπείας. Η σωματική ψυχοθεραπεία, ένα από τα πιο διαδεδομένα ψυχοθεραπευτικά ρεύματα σήμερα, βασίζεται στις ιδέες του Β. Ράιχ.
Ο Βίλχελμ Ράιχ γεννήθηκε το 1897 στην Dobrzcynika, τότε Αυστροουγγαρία σήμερα Ουκρανία, από εύπορη οικογένεια και πέθανε το 1957 στο Lewisburg της Πενσιλβάνιας.
Μαθητής και βοηθός του Φρόιντ αρχικά, πήρε αποστάσεις από την κλασική ψυχανάλυση και δημιούργησε μια δική του ψυχοθεραπευτική μέθοδο. Επηρεασμένος από τον μαρξισμό επεδίωξε να εντάξει τις ψυχαναλυτικές ιδέες σε μια προοπτική σοσιαλιστικής αλλαγής της κοινωνίας.
Γοητευμένος από την τότε Οκτωβριανή Επανάσταση, επισκέπτεται τη Μόσχα τον Σεπτέμβριο του 1929. Διακρίνει όμως ότι το νέο καθεστώς δημιουργεί αυταρχικές δομές και γυρίζει στη Βιέννη προβληματισμένος από αυτή την εμπειρία. Ασχολήθηκε ιδιαίτερα με την κοινωνική πρόληψη των ψυχικών διαταραχών στα παιδιά και τους νέους.
Εκανε κριτική στην αυταρχική οικογένεια που προετοιμάζει τα παιδιά για νευρωτικούς και υποταγμένους ενήλικες και καταπιέζει τη φυσική σεξουαλικότητα των εφήβων και των νέων, δημιουργώντας το έδαφος για την ψυχική διαταραχή.
Αντιμετώπισε τον άνθρωπο ως μια ψυχοσωματική ενότητα: τα ψυχικά φαινόμενα αντανακλώνται στο σώμα και τα σωματικά φαινόμενα εκφράζουν τον ψυχισμό.
Στη θεραπευτική του μέθοδο συνδύασε την ψυχανάλυση με τεχνικές που κινητοποιούν το σώμα του θεραπευόμενου. Οι ιδέες του επηρέασαν την ψυχαναλυτική σκέψη, κοινωνικά και πολιτικά κινήματα των νέων, τον χώρο της ψυχοθεραπείας. Η σωματική ψυχοθεραπεία, ένα από τα πιο διαδεδομένα ψυχοθεραπευτικά ρεύματα σήμερα, βασίζεται στις ιδέες του Β. Ράιχ.
Είναι γνωστός και για την ανάπτυξη της υπόθεσης μιας ενέργειας που χαρακτηρίζει τους ζωντανούς οργανισμούς, την οποία ονόμασε «οργόνη».
Τα πειράματά του γύρω από τη φύση αυτής της ενέργειας χαρακτήρισαν «επικίνδυνα» στις ΗΠΑ, όπου ζούσε από το 1939. Κυνηγημένος από την Υπηρεσία Τροφίμων και Φαρμάκων, πεθαίνει στη φυλακή, λίγο πριν από την ακρόασή του. Βιβλία του καίγονται και το εργαστήριό του καταστρέφεται.
Εργα του όπως «Η ανάλυση του χαρακτήρα», «Η δολοφονία του Χριστού», «Ο συσσωρευτής οργόνης» ξεσήκωσαν και ξεσηκώνουν ακόμη παγκοσμίως συζητήσεις.
«"Εχω δικαίωμα στην κρίση ανθρώπων ικανών να με κρίνουν και στο καλοπροαίρετο ανιδιοτελές λάθος".
Τα λόγια αυτά με τα οποία ο Ράιχ αντιμετώπισε τους δικαστές του που τελικά τον έστειλαν στη φυλακή θα έπρεπε να βρίσκονται γραμμένα στην είσοδο κάθε πνευματικού ιδρύματος στον κόσμο.
Δίνοντάς του τον λόγο στο Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, πιστεύω ότι αναγνωρίζουμε τη δύναμη, την τόλμη και την ανιδιοτέλειά του, την επιμονή του στη διεπιστημονική προσέγγιση και στη σύνδεση σκέψης, βιώματος και δράσης, ότι του δίνουμε, όπως ζητούσε, το δικαίωμα να κριθεί με πνευματικά κριτήρια, χωρίς υποχρεωτικά να προσυπογράφουμε όσα λέει...», τονίζει η καθηγήτρια Αισθητικής και Επικοινωνίας του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, Πέπη Ρηγοπούλου, που είναι και από τους κεντρικούς ομιλητές της σημερινής ημερίδας.
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΤΥΠΙΑ - 27/11/2007
Σάββατο 18 Οκτωβρίου 2008
ΝΕΥΡΟΤΕΧΝΟΛΟΓΙΑ-Το κράνος που μας κάνει εξυπνότερους
Το κράνος που μας κάνει εξυπνότερους
Αξιοποιεί την τεχνική της διακρανιακής μαγνητικής διέγερσης για να «αφυπνίσει» τον εγκέφαλο και να αυξήσει τις νοητικές μας επιδόσεις
Του ΣΠΥΡΟΥ ΜΑΝΟΥΣΕΛΗ
ΝΕΥΡΟΤΕΧΝΟΛΟΓΙΑ
Ολοι θα θέλαμε να γίνουμε πιο έξυπνοι και πιο δημιουργικοί, μέχρι σήμερα όμως πιστεύαμε ότι αυτό είναι εξαιρετικά δύσκολο να γίνει. Μια ομάδα Αυστραλών ερευνητών έρχεται να αναπτερώσει το ηθικό μας, μελετώντας την υλοποίηση μιας συσκευής η οποία θα βοηθά στην ανάδυση όλων των εν δυνάμει ικανοτήτων μας, καθιστώντας μας έτσι στην πράξη εξυπνότερους και ικανότερους.
Η συσκευή αυτή, που μοιάζει με σκούφο κομμωτικής, αξιοποιεί τη «διακρανιακή μαγνητική διέγερση» ή TMS, μια μη επεμβατική και μη φαρμακευτική τεχνική, η οποία έχει ήδη εφαρμοστεί με επιτυχία σε ασθενείς που υποφέρουν από κατάθλιψη ή σε άτομα που ταλαιπωρούνται από ημικρανίες. Εξοπλισμένη με ειδικό ηλεκτρικό πηνίο, εκπέμπει μικρής έντασης μαγνητικούς παλμούς, οι οποίοι φαίνεται πως είναι ικανοί να τροποποιούν τον τρόπο με τον οποίο λειτουργεί ο εγκέφαλος, με αποτέλεσμα να βελτιώνονται θεαματικά κάποιες νοητικές ικανότητες.
Τα πρώτα τεστ έχουν ήδη δώσει εντυπωσιακά αποτελέσματα: ορισμένοι από τους εθελοντές εκδήλωσαν αξιοσημείωτες καλλιτεχνικές ικανότητες, ενώ κάποιοι άλλοι κατάφεραν, έστω και προσωρινά, να ξεπεράσουν σοβαρές νοητικές παθήσεις όπως ο αυτισμός.
Οι Αυστραλοί επιστήμονες φιλοδοξούν μάλιστα, όπως αναφέρει η βρετανική εφημερίδα «Daily Mail», να προχωρήσουν στη διάθεση της συσκευής στην αγορά, μόλις βέβαια τελειοποιηθεί. Ετσι, όπως οι άνθρωποι με προβλήματα ακοής χρησιμοποιούν ακουστικά, έτσι και οι κάθε μορφής δημιουργοί (συγγραφείς, καλλιτέχνες, διαφημιστές) θα μπορούν, όποτε νιώθουν την ανάγκη, να προσφεύγουν σε αυτήν τη συσκευή τόνωσης της δημιουργικότητας.
Η ιδέα για την κατασκευή της συγκεκριμένης συσκευής προέκυψε από τις υπεράνθρωπες νοητικές ικανότητες που επιδεικνύουν οι «ιδιοφυείς μικρόνοες» (idiots savants), αυτή η ειδική κατηγορία ατόμων που ενώ παρουσιάζουν νοητική υστέρηση, εντούτοις έχουν ανεπτυγμένη σε υπερβολικό βαθμό, σε σχέση με έναν φυσιολογικό άνθρωπο, κάποια συγκεκριμένη ικανότητα, όπως η απομνημόνευση αριθμών και η εκτέλεση πολύπλοκων αριθμητικών πράξεων.
«Ψυχή» της ερευνητικής ομάδας είναι ο Αυστραλός πρωτοπόρος ερευνητής της νευρογνωσιακής επιστήμης Allan Snyder (βλ. φωτ.), καθηγητής στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Σίδνεϊ και διευθυντής του Center for the Mind. Ο Σνάιντερ υποστηρίζει με μεγάλο πάθος αλλά και με αρκετά πειστικά επιχειρήματα ότι η μαγνητική διέγερση των αριστερών κροταφικών λοβών μπορεί να προκαλέσει σε φυσιολογικά άτομα την ανάδυση ικανοτήτων ανάλογων με αυτές των «ιδιοφυών μικρόνοων». «Πιστεύω ότι στον κάθε έναν από μας υπάρχουν κρυμμένοι υποσυνείδητοι μηχανισμοί, οι οποίοι μπορούν να μας επιτρέψουν να εκδηλώσουμε εκπληκτικές καλλιτεχνικές, μνημονικές ή μαθηματικές ικανότητες», δηλώνει χωρίς περιστροφές. Δυστυχώς, η επήρεια της συσκευής διαρκεί λίγο: ύστερα από δύο ώρες οι ικανότητες που έχουν αναπτυχθεί εξαφανίζονται.*
Ολοι θα θέλαμε να γίνουμε πιο έξυπνοι και πιο δημιουργικοί, μέχρι σήμερα όμως πιστεύαμε ότι αυτό είναι εξαιρετικά δύσκολο να γίνει. Μια ομάδα Αυστραλών ερευνητών έρχεται να αναπτερώσει το ηθικό μας, μελετώντας την υλοποίηση μιας συσκευής η οποία θα βοηθά στην ανάδυση όλων των εν δυνάμει ικανοτήτων μας, καθιστώντας μας έτσι στην πράξη εξυπνότερους και ικανότερους.
Η συσκευή αυτή, που μοιάζει με σκούφο κομμωτικής, αξιοποιεί τη «διακρανιακή μαγνητική διέγερση» ή TMS, μια μη επεμβατική και μη φαρμακευτική τεχνική, η οποία έχει ήδη εφαρμοστεί με επιτυχία σε ασθενείς που υποφέρουν από κατάθλιψη ή σε άτομα που ταλαιπωρούνται από ημικρανίες. Εξοπλισμένη με ειδικό ηλεκτρικό πηνίο, εκπέμπει μικρής έντασης μαγνητικούς παλμούς, οι οποίοι φαίνεται πως είναι ικανοί να τροποποιούν τον τρόπο με τον οποίο λειτουργεί ο εγκέφαλος, με αποτέλεσμα να βελτιώνονται θεαματικά κάποιες νοητικές ικανότητες.
Τα πρώτα τεστ έχουν ήδη δώσει εντυπωσιακά αποτελέσματα: ορισμένοι από τους εθελοντές εκδήλωσαν αξιοσημείωτες καλλιτεχνικές ικανότητες, ενώ κάποιοι άλλοι κατάφεραν, έστω και προσωρινά, να ξεπεράσουν σοβαρές νοητικές παθήσεις όπως ο αυτισμός.
Οι Αυστραλοί επιστήμονες φιλοδοξούν μάλιστα, όπως αναφέρει η βρετανική εφημερίδα «Daily Mail», να προχωρήσουν στη διάθεση της συσκευής στην αγορά, μόλις βέβαια τελειοποιηθεί. Ετσι, όπως οι άνθρωποι με προβλήματα ακοής χρησιμοποιούν ακουστικά, έτσι και οι κάθε μορφής δημιουργοί (συγγραφείς, καλλιτέχνες, διαφημιστές) θα μπορούν, όποτε νιώθουν την ανάγκη, να προσφεύγουν σε αυτήν τη συσκευή τόνωσης της δημιουργικότητας.
Η ιδέα για την κατασκευή της συγκεκριμένης συσκευής προέκυψε από τις υπεράνθρωπες νοητικές ικανότητες που επιδεικνύουν οι «ιδιοφυείς μικρόνοες» (idiots savants), αυτή η ειδική κατηγορία ατόμων που ενώ παρουσιάζουν νοητική υστέρηση, εντούτοις έχουν ανεπτυγμένη σε υπερβολικό βαθμό, σε σχέση με έναν φυσιολογικό άνθρωπο, κάποια συγκεκριμένη ικανότητα, όπως η απομνημόνευση αριθμών και η εκτέλεση πολύπλοκων αριθμητικών πράξεων.
«Ψυχή» της ερευνητικής ομάδας είναι ο Αυστραλός πρωτοπόρος ερευνητής της νευρογνωσιακής επιστήμης Allan Snyder (βλ. φωτ.), καθηγητής στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Σίδνεϊ και διευθυντής του Center for the Mind. Ο Σνάιντερ υποστηρίζει με μεγάλο πάθος αλλά και με αρκετά πειστικά επιχειρήματα ότι η μαγνητική διέγερση των αριστερών κροταφικών λοβών μπορεί να προκαλέσει σε φυσιολογικά άτομα την ανάδυση ικανοτήτων ανάλογων με αυτές των «ιδιοφυών μικρόνοων». «Πιστεύω ότι στον κάθε έναν από μας υπάρχουν κρυμμένοι υποσυνείδητοι μηχανισμοί, οι οποίοι μπορούν να μας επιτρέψουν να εκδηλώσουμε εκπληκτικές καλλιτεχνικές, μνημονικές ή μαθηματικές ικανότητες», δηλώνει χωρίς περιστροφές. Δυστυχώς, η επήρεια της συσκευής διαρκεί λίγο: ύστερα από δύο ώρες οι ικανότητες που έχουν αναπτυχθεί εξαφανίζονται.*
2 - 18/10/2008
Τετάρτη 3 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008
Κυριακή 8 Ιουνίου 2008
Σάββατο 7 Ιουνίου 2008
Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
David J. Chalmers
Department of Philosophy
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
chalmers@ling.ucsc.edu
1 Introduction
Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given.
To make progress on the problem of consciousness, we have to confront it directly. In this paper, I first isolate the truly hard part of the problem, separating it from more tractable parts and giving an account of why it is so difficult to explain. I critique some recent work that uses reductive methods to address consciousness, and argue that such methods inevitably fail to come to grips with the hardest part of the problem. Once this failure is recognized, the door to further progress is opened. In the second half of the paper, I argue that if we move to a new kind of nonreductive explanation, a naturalistic account of consciousness can be given. I put forward my own candidate for such an account: a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance and a double-aspect view of information.
2 The easy problems and the hard problem
There is not just one problem of consciousness. "Consciousness" is an ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena needs to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems of consciousness into "hard" and "easy" problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods.
The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena:
- the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to
environmental stimuli; - the integration of information by a cognitive system;
- the reportability of mental states;
- the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
- the focus of attention;
- the deliberate control of behavior;
- the difference between wakefulness and sleep.
All of these phenomena are associated with the notion of consciousness. For example, one sometimes says that a mental state is conscious when it is verbally reportable, or when it is internally accessible. Sometimes a system is said to be conscious of some information when it has the ability to react on the basis of that information, or, more strongly, when it attends to that information, or when it can integrate that information and exploit it in the sophisticated control of behavior. We sometimes say that an action is conscious precisely when it is deliberate. Often, we say that an organism is conscious as another way of saying that it is awake.
There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. To explain access and reportability, for example, we need only specify the mechanism by which information about internal states is retrieved and made available for verbal report. To explain the integration of information, we need only exhibit mechanisms by which information is brought together and exploited by later processes. For an account of sleep and wakefulness, an appropriate neurophysiological account of the processes responsible for organisms' contrasting behavior in those states will suffice. In each case, an appropriate cognitive or neurophysiological model can clearly do the explanatory work.
If these phenomena were all there was to consciousness, then consciousness would not be much of a problem. Although we do not yet have anything close to a complete explanation of these phenomena, we have a clear idea of how we might go about explaining them. This is why I call these problems the easy problems. Of course, "easy" is a relative term. Getting the details right will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work. Still, there is every reason to believe that the methods of cognitive science and neuroscience will succeed.
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.
It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state. Sometimes terms such as "phenomenal consciousness" and "qualia" are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of "conscious experience" or simply "experience". Another useful way to avoid confusion (used by e.g. Newell 1990, Chalmers 1995) is to reserve the term "consciousness" for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term "awareness" for the more straightforward phenomena described earlier. If such a convention were widely adopted, communication would be much easier; as things stand, those who talk about "consciousness" are frequently talking past each other.
The ambiguity of the term "consciousness" is often exploited by both philosophers and scientists writing on the subject. It is common to see a paper on consciousness begin with an invocation of the mystery of consciousness, noting the strange intangibility and ineffability of subjectivity, and worrying that so far we have no theory of the phenomenon. Here, the topic is clearly the hard problem - the problem of experience. In the second half of the paper, the tone becomes more optimistic, and the author's own theory of consciousness is outlined. Upon examination, this theory turns out to be a theory of one of the more straightforward phenomena - of reportability, of introspective access, or whatever. At the close, the author declares that consciousness has turned out to be tractable after all, but the reader is left feeling like the victim of a bait-and-switch. The hard problem remains untouched.
3 Functional explanation
Why are the easy problems easy, and why is the hard problem hard? The easy problems are easy precisely because they concern the explanation of cognitive abilities and functions. To explain a cognitive function, we need only specify a mechanism that can perform the function. The methods of cognitive science are well-suited for this sort of explanation, and so are well-suited to the easy problems of consciousness. By contrast, the hard problem is hard precisely because it is not a problem about the performance of functions. The problem persists even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained. (Here "function" is not used in the narrow teleological sense of something that a system is designed to do, but in the broader sense of any causal role in the production of behavior that a system might perform.)
To explain reportability, for instance, is just to explain how a system could perform the function of producing reports on internal states. To explain internal access, we need to explain how a system could be appropriately affected by its internal states and use information about those states in directing later processes. To explain integration and control, we need to explain how a system's central processes can bring information contents together and use them in the facilitation of various behaviors. These are all problems about the explanation of functions.
How do we explain the performance of a function? By specifying a mechanism that performs the function. Here, neurophysiological and cognitive modeling are perfect for the task. If we want a detailed low-level explanation, we can specify the neural mechanism that is responsible for the function. If we want a more abstract explanation, we can specify a mechanism in computational terms. Either way, a full and satisfying explanation will result. Once we have specified the neural or computational mechanism that performs the function of verbal report, for example, the bulk of our work in explaining reportability is over.
In a way, the point is trivial. It is a conceptual fact about these phenomena that their explanation only involves the explanation of various functions, as the phenomena are functionally definable. All it means for reportability to be instantiated in a system is that the system has the capacity for verbal reports of internal information. All it means for a system to be awake is for it to be appropriately receptive to information from the environment and for it to be able to use this information in directing behavior in an appropriate way. To see that this sort of thing is a conceptual fact, note that someone who says "you have explained the performance of the verbal report function, but you have not explained reportability" is making a trivial conceptual mistake about reportability. All it could possibly take to explain reportability is an explanation of how the relevant function is performed; the same goes for the other phenomena in question.
Throughout the higher-level sciences, reductive explanation works in just this way. To explain the gene, for instance, we needed to specify the mechanism that stores and transmits hereditary information from one generation to the next. It turns out that DNA performs this function; once we explain how the function is performed, we have explained the gene. To explain life, we ultimately need to explain how a system can reproduce, adapt to its environment, metabolize, and so on. All of these are questions about the performance of functions, and so are well-suited to reductive explanation. The same holds for most problems in cognitive science. To explain learning, we need to explain the way in which a system's behavioral capacities are modified in light of environmental information, and the way in which new information can be brought to bear in adapting a system's actions to its environment. If we show how a neural or computational mechanism does the job, we have explained learning. We can say the same for other cognitive phenomena, such as perception, memory, and language. Sometimes the relevant functions need to be characterized quite subtly, but it is clear that insofar as cognitive science explains these phenomena at all, it does so by explaining the performance of functions.
When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.
There is no analogous further question in the explanation of genes, or of life, or of learning. If someone says "I can see that you have explained how DNA stores and transmits hereditary information from one generation to the next, but you have not explained how it is a gene", then they are making a conceptual mistake. All it means to be a gene is to be an entity that performs the relevant storage and transmission function. But if someone says "I can see that you have explained how information is discriminated, integrated, and reported, but you have not explained how it is experienced", they are not making a conceptual mistake. This is a nontrivial further question.
This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere.
This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role. But for any role it might play, there will be more to the explanation of experience than a simple explanation of the function. Perhaps it will even turn out that in the course of explaining a function, we will be led to the key insight that allows an explanation of experience. If this happens, though, the discovery will be an extra explanatory reward. There is no cognitive function such that we can say in advance that explanation of that function will automatically explain experience.
To explain experience, we need a new approach. The usual explanatory methods of cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice. These methods have been developed precisely to explain the performance of cognitive functions, and they do a good job of it. But as these methods stand, they are only equipped to explain the performance of functions. When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say.
4 Some case-studies
In the last few years, a number of works have addressed the problems of consciousness within the framework of cognitive science and neuroscience. This might suggest that the analysis above is faulty, but in fact a close examination of the relevant work only lends the analysis further support. When we investigate just which aspects of consciousness these studies are aimed at, and which aspects they end up explaining, we find that the ultimate target of explanation is always one of the easy problems. I will illustrate this with two representative examples.
The first is the "neurobiological theory of consciousness" outlined by Crick and Koch (1990; see also Crick 1994). This theory centers on certain 35-75 hertz neural oscillations in the cerebral cortex; Crick and Koch hypothesize that these oscillations are the basis of consciousness. This is partly because the oscillations seem to be correlated with awareness in a number of different modalities - within the visual and olfactory systems, for example - and also because they suggest a mechanism by which the binding of information contents might be achieved. Binding is the process whereby separately represented pieces of information about a single entity are brought together to be used by later processing, as when information about the color and shape of a perceived object is integrated from separate visual pathways. Following others (e.g., Eckhorn et al 1988), Crick and Koch hypothesize that binding may be achieved by the synchronized oscillations of neuronal groups representing the relevant contents. When two pieces of information are to be bound together, the relevant neural groups will oscillate with the same frequency and phase.
The details of how this binding might be achieved are still poorly understood, but suppose that they can be worked out. What might the resulting theory explain? Clearly it might explain the binding of information contents, and perhaps it might yield a more general account of the integration of information in the brain. Crick and Koch also suggest that these oscillations activate the mechanisms of working memory, so that there may be an account of this and perhaps other forms of memory in the distance. The theory might eventually lead to a general account of how perceived information is bound and stored in memory, for use by later processing.
Such a theory would be valuable, but it would tell us nothing about why the relevant contents are experienced. Crick and Koch suggest that these oscillations are the neural correlates of experience. This claim is arguable - does not binding also take place in the processing of unconscious information? - but even if it is accepted, the explanatory question remains: Why do the oscillations give rise to experience? The only basis for an explanatory connection is the role they play in binding and storage, but the question of why binding and storage should themselves be accompanied by experience is never addressed. If we do not know why binding and storage should give rise to experience, telling a story about the oscillations cannot help us. Conversely, if we knew why binding and storage gave rise to experience, the neurophysiological details would be just the icing on the cake. Crick and Koch's theory gains its purchase by assuming a connection between binding and experience, and so can do nothing to explain that link.
I do not think that Crick and Koch are ultimately claiming to address the hard problem, although some have interpreted them otherwise. A published interview with Koch gives a clear statement of the limitations on the theory's ambitions.
Well, let's first forget about the really difficult aspects, like subjective feelings, for they may not have a scientific solution. The subjective state of play, of pain, of pleasure, of seeing blue, of smelling a rose - there seems to be a huge jump between the materialistic level, of explaining molecules and neurons, and the subjective level. Let's focus on things that are easier to study - like visual awareness. You're now talking to me, but you're not looking at me, you're looking at the cappuccino, and so you are aware of it. You can say, `It's a cup and there's some liquid in it.' If I give it to you, you'll move your arm and you'll take it - you'll respond in a meaningful manner. That's what I call awareness." ("What is Consciousness", Discover, November 1992, p. 96.)
The second example is an approach at the level of cognitive psychology. This is Baars' global workspace theory of consciousness, presented in his book A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. According to this theory, the contents of consciousness are contained in a global workspace, a central processor used to mediate communication between a host of specialized nonconscious processors. When these specialized processors need to broadcast information to the rest of the system, they do so by sending this information to the workspace, which acts as a kind of communal blackboard for the rest of the system, accessible to all the other processors.
Baars uses this model to address many aspects of human cognition, and to explain a number of contrasts between conscious and unconscious cognitive functioning. Ultimately, however, it is a theory of cognitive accessibility, explaining how it is that certain information contents are widely accessible within a system, as well as a theory of informational integration and reportability. The theory shows promise as a theory of awareness, the functional correlate of conscious experience, but an explanation of experience itself is not on offer.
One might suppose that according to this theory, the contents of experience are precisely the contents of the workspace. But even if this is so, nothing internal to the theory explains why the information within the global workspace is experienced. The best the theory can do is to say that the information is experienced because it is globally accessible. But now the question arises in a different form: why should global accessibility give rise to conscious experience? As always, this bridging question is unanswered.
Almost all work taking a cognitive or neuroscientific approach to consciousness in recent years could be subjected to a similar critique. The "Neural Darwinism" model of Edelman (1989), for instance, addresses questions about perceptual awareness and the self-concept, but says nothing about why there should also be experience. The "multiple drafts" model of Dennett (1991) is largely directed at explaining the reportability of certain mental contents. The "intermediate level" theory of Jackendoff (1988) provides an account of some computational processes that underlie consciousness, but Jackendoff stresses that the question of how these "project" into conscious experience remains mysterious.
Researchers using these methods are often inexplicit about their attitudes to the problem of conscious experience, although sometimes they take a clear stand. Even among those who are clear about it, attitudes differ widely. In placing this sort of work with respect to the problem of experience, a number of different strategies are available. It would be useful if these strategic choices were more often made explicit.
The first strategy is simply to explain something else. Some researchers are explicit that the problem of experience is too difficult for now, and perhaps even outside the domain of science altogether. These researchers instead choose to address one of the more tractable problems such as reportability or the self-concept. Although I have called these problems the "easy" problems, they are among the most interesting unsolved problems in cognitive science, so this work is certainly worthwhile. The worst that can be said of this choice is that in the context of research on consciousness it is relatively unambitious, and the work can sometimes be misinterpreted.
The second choice is to take a harder line and deny the phenomenon. (Variations on this approach are taken by Allport 1988, Dennett 1991, and Wilkes 1988.) According to this line, once we have explained the functions such as accessibility, reportability, and the like, there is no further phenomenon called "experience" to explain. Some explicitly deny the phenomenon, holding for example that what is not externally verifiable cannot be real. Others achieve the same effect by allowing that experience exists, but only if we equate "experience" with something like the capacity to discriminate and report. These approaches lead to a simpler theory, but are ultimately unsatisfactory. Experience is the most central and manifest aspect of our mental lives, and indeed is perhaps the key explanandum in the science of the mind. Because of this status as an explanandum, experience cannot be discarded like the vital spirit when a new theory comes along. Rather, it is the central fact that any theory of consciousness must explain. A theory that denies the phenomenon "solves" the problem by ducking the question.
In a third option, some researchers claim to be explaining experience in the full sense. These researchers (unlike those above) wish to take experience very seriously; they lay out their functional model or theory, and claim that it explains the full subjective quality of experience (e.g. Flohr 1992, Humphrey 1992). The relevant step in the explanation is usually passed over quickly, however, and usually ends up looking something like magic. After some details about information processing are given, experience suddenly enters the picture, but it is left obscure how these processes should suddenly give rise to experience. Perhaps it is simply taken for granted that it does, but then we have an incomplete explanation and a version of the fifth strategy below.
A fourth, more promising approach appeals to these methods to explain the structure of experience. For example, it is arguable that an account of the discriminations made by the visual system can account for the structural relations between different color experiences, as well as for the geometric structure of the visual field (see e.g., Clark 1992 and Hardin 1992). In general, certain facts about structures found in processing will correspond to and arguably explain facts about the structure of experience. This strategy is plausible but limited. At best, it takes the existence of experience for granted and accounts for some facts about its structure, providing a sort of nonreductive explanation of the structural aspects of experience (I will say more on this later). This is useful for many purposes, but it tells us nothing about why there should be experience in the first place.
A fifth and reasonable strategy is to isolate the substrate of experience. After all, almost everyone allows that experience arises one way or another from brain processes, and it makes sense to identify the sort of process from which it arises. Crick and Koch put their work forward as isolating the neural correlate of consciousness, for example, and Edelman (1989) and Jackendoff (1988) make similar claims. Justification of these claims requires a careful theoretical analysis, especially as experience is not directly observable in experimental contexts, but when applied judiciously this strategy can shed indirect light on the problem of experience. Nevertheless, the strategy is clearly incomplete. For a satisfactory theory, we need to know more than which processes give rise to experience; we need an account of why and how. A full theory of consciousness must build an explanatory bridge.
5 The extra ingredient
We have seen that there are systematic reasons why the usual methods of cognitive science and neuroscience fail to account for conscious experience. These are simply the wrong sort of methods: nothing that they give to us can yield an explanation. To account for conscious experience, we need an extra ingredient in the explanation. This makes for a challenge to those who are serious about the hard problem of consciousness: What is your extra ingredient, and why should that account for conscious experience?
There is no shortage of extra ingredients to be had. Some propose an injection of chaos and nonlinear dynamics. Some think that the key lies in nonalgorithmic processing. Some appeal to future discoveries in neurophysiology. Some suppose that the key to the mystery will lie at the level of quantum mechanics. It is easy to see why all these suggestions are put forward. None of the old methods work, so the solution must lie with something new. Unfortunately, these suggestions all suffer from the same old problems.
Nonalgorithmic processing, for example, is put forward by Penrose (1989; 1994) because of the role it might play in the process of conscious mathematical insight. The arguments about mathematics are controversial, but even if they succeed and an account of nonalgorithmic processing in the human brain is given, it will still only be an account of the functions involved in mathematical reasoning and the like. For a nonalgorithmic process as much as an algorithmic process, the question is left unanswered: why should this process give rise to experience? In answering this question, there is no special role for nonalgorithmic processing.
The same goes for nonlinear and chaotic dynamics. These might provide a novel account of the dynamics of cognitive functioning, quite different from that given by standard methods in cognitive science. But from dynamics, one only gets more dynamics. The question about experience here is as mysterious as ever. The point is even clearer for new discoveries in neurophysiology. These new discoveries may help us make significant progress in understanding brain function, but for any neural process we isolate, the same question will always arise. It is difficult to imagine what a proponent of new neurophysiology expects to happen, over and above the explanation of further cognitive functions. It is not as if we will suddenly discover a phenomenal glow inside a neuron!
Perhaps the most popular "extra ingredient" of all is quantum mechanics (e.g. Hameroff 1994). The attractiveness of quantum theories of consciousness may stem from a Law of Minimization of Mystery: consciousness is mysterious and quantum mechanics is mysterious, so maybe the two mysteries have a common source. Nevertheless, quantum theories of consciousness suffer from the same difficulties as neural or computational theories. Quantum phenomena have some remarkable functional properties, such as nondeterminism and nonlocality. It is natural to speculate that these properties may play some role in the explanation of cognitive functions, such as random choice and the integration of information, and this hypothesis cannot be ruled out a priori. But when it comes to the explanation of experience, quantum processes are in the same boat as any other. The question of why these processes should give rise to experience is entirely unanswered.
(One special attraction of quantum theories is the fact that on some interpretations of quantum mechanics, consciousness plays an active role in "collapsing" the quantum wave function. Such interpretations are controversial, but in any case they offer no hope of explaining consciousness in terms of quantum processes. Rather, these theories assume the existence of consciousness, and use it in the explanation of quantum processes. At best, these theories tell us something about a physical role that consciousness may play. They tell us nothing about how it arises.)
At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the absence of experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process will tell us why experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be derived from physical theory.
Purely physical explanation is well-suited to the explanation of physical structures, explaining macroscopic structures in terms of detailed microstructural constituents; and it provides a satisfying explanation of the performance of functions, accounting for these functions in terms of the physical mechanisms that perform them. This is because a physical account can entail the facts about structures and functions: once the internal details of the physical account are given, the structural and functional properties fall out as an automatic consequence. But the structure and dynamics of physical processes yield only more structure and dynamics, so structures and functions are all we can expect these processes to explain. The facts about experience cannot be an automatic consequence of any physical account, as it is conceptually coherent that any given process could exist without experience. Experience may arise from the physical, but it is not entailed by the physical.
The moral of all this is that you can't explain conscious experience on the cheap. It is a remarkable fact that reductive methods - methods that explain a high-level phenomenon wholly in terms of more basic physical processes - work well in so many domains. In a sense, one can explain most biological and cognitive phenomena on the cheap, in that these phenomena are seen as automatic consequences of more fundamental processes. It would be wonderful if reductive methods could explain experience, too (I hoped for a long time that they might). Unfortunately, there are systematic reasons why these methods must fail. Reductive methods are successful in most domains because what needs explaining in those domains are structures and functions, and these are the kind of thing that a physical account can entail. When it comes to a problem over and above the explanation of structures and functions, these methods are impotent.
This might seem reminiscent of the vitalist claim that no physical account could explain life, but the cases are disanalogous. What drove vitalist skepticism was doubt about whether physical mechanisms could perform the many remarkable functions associated with life, such as complex adaptive behavior and reproduction. The conceptual claim that explanation of functions is what is needed was implicitly accepted, but lacking detailed knowledge of biochemical mechanisms, vitalists doubted whether any physical process could do the job and put forward the hypothesis of the vital spirit as an alternative explanation. Once it turned out that physical processes could perform the relevant functions, vitalist doubts melted away.
With experience, on the other hand, physical explanation of the functions is not in question. The key is instead the conceptual point that the explanation of functions does not suffice for the explanation of experience. This basic conceptual point is not something that further neuroscientific investigation will affect. In a similar way, experience is disanalogous to the élan vital. The vital spirit was put forward as an explanatory posit, in order to explain the relevant functions, and could therefore be discarded when those functions were explained without it. Experience is not an explanatory posit but an explanandum in its own right, and so is not a candidate for this sort of elimination.
It is tempting to note that all sorts of puzzling phenomena have eventually turned out to be explainable in physical terms. But each of these were problems about the observable behavior of physical objects, coming down to problems in the explanation of structures and functions. Because of this, these phenomena have always been the kind of thing that a physical account might explain, even if at some points there have been good reasons to suspect that no such explanation would be forthcoming. The tempting induction from these cases fails in the case of consciousness, which is not a problem about physical structures and functions. The problem of consciousness is puzzling in an entirely different way. An analysis of the problem shows us that conscious experience is just not the kind of thing that a wholly reductive account could succeed in explaining.
6 Nonreductive explanation
At this point some are tempted to give up, holding that we will never have a theory of conscious experience. McGinn (1989), for example, argues that the problem is too hard for our limited minds; we are "cognitively closed" with respect to the phenomenon. Others have argued that conscious experience lies outside the domain of scientific theory altogether.
I think this pessimism is premature. This is not the place to give up; it is the place where things get interesting. When simple methods of explanation are ruled out, we need to investigate the alternatives. Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice.
Although a remarkable number of phenomena have turned out to be explicable wholly in terms of entities simpler than themselves, this is not universal. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as fundamental. Fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything simpler. Instead, one takes them as basic, and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world. For example, in the nineteenth century it turned out that electromagnetic processes could not be explained in terms of the wholly mechanical processes that previous physical theories appealed to, so Maxwell and others introduced electromagnetic charge and electromagnetic forces as new fundamental components of a physical theory. To explain electromagnetism, the ontology of physics had to be expanded. New basic properties and basic laws were needed to give a satisfactory account of the phenomena.
Other features that physical theory takes as fundamental include mass and space-time. No attempt is made to explain these features in terms of anything simpler. But this does not rule out the possibility of a theory of mass or of space-time. There is an intricate theory of how these features interrelate, and of the basic laws they enter into. These basic principles are used to explain many familiar phenomena concerning mass, space, and time at a higher level.
I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. We might add some entirely new nonphysical feature, from which experience can be derived, but it is hard to see what such a feature would be like. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.
Where there is a fundamental property, there are fundamental laws. A nonreductive theory of experience will add new principles to the furniture of the basic laws of nature. These basic principles will ultimately carry the explanatory burden in a theory of consciousness. Just as we explain familiar high-level phenomena involving mass in terms of more basic principles involving mass and other entities, we might explain familiar phenomena involving experience in terms of more basic principles involving experience and other entities.
In particular, a nonreductive theory of experience will specify basic principles telling us how experience depends on physical features of the world. These psychophysical principles will not interfere with physical laws, as it seems that physical laws already form a closed system. Rather, they will be a supplement to a physical theory. A physical theory gives a theory of physical processes, and a psychophysical theory tells us how those processes give rise to experience. We know that experience depends on physical processes, but we also know that this dependence cannot be derived from physical laws alone. The new basic principles postulated by a nonreductive theory give us the extra ingredient that we need to build an explanatory bridge.
Of course, by taking experience as fundamental, there is a sense in which this approach does not tell us why there is experience in the first place. But this is the same for any fundamental theory. Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory. A theory of matter can still explain all sorts of facts about matter, by showing how they are consequences of the basic laws. The same goes for a theory of experience.
This position qualifies as a variety of dualism, as it postulates basic properties over and above the properties invoked by physics. But it is an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with the scientific view of the world. Nothing in this approach contradicts anything in physical theory; we simply need to add further bridging principles to explain how experience arises from physical processes. There is nothing particularly spiritual or mystical about this theory - its overall shape is like that of a physical theory, with a few fundamental entities connected by fundamental laws. It expands the ontology slightly, to be sure, but Maxwell did the same thing. Indeed, the overall structure of this position is entirely naturalistic, allowing that ultimately the universe comes down to a network of basic entities obeying simple laws, and allowing that there may ultimately be a theory of consciousness cast in terms of such laws. If the position is to have a name, a good choice might be naturalistic dualism.
If this view is right, then in some ways a theory of consciousness will have more in common with a theory in physics than a theory in biology. Biological theories involve no principles that are fundamental in this way, so biological theory has a certain complexity and messiness to it; but theories in physics, insofar as they deal with fundamental principles, aspire to simplicity and elegance. The fundamental laws of nature are part of the basic furniture of the world, and physical theories are telling us that this basic furniture is remarkably simple. If a theory of consciousness also involves fundamental principles, then we should expect the same. The principles of simplicity, elegance, and even beauty that drive physicists' search for a fundamental theory will also apply to a theory of consciousness.
(A technical note: Some philosophers argue that even though there is a conceptual gap between physical processes and experience, there need be no metaphysical gap, so that experience might in a certain sense still be physical (e.g. Levine 1983; Loar 1990; Byrne 1993; Papineau 1994; Sturgeon 1994). Usually this line of argument is supported by an appeal to the notion of a posteriori necessity (Kripke 1980). I think that this position rests on a misunderstanding of a posteriori necessity, however, or else requires an entirely new sort of necessity that we have no reason to believe in; see Chalmers 1995 (also Jackson 1994 and Lewis 1994) for details. In any case, this position still concedes an explanatory gap between physical processes and experience. For example, the principles connecting the physical and the experiential will not be derivable from the laws of physics, so such principles must be taken as explanatorily fundamental. So even on this sort of view, the explanatory structure of a theory of consciousness will be much as I have described.)
7 Toward a theory of consciousness
It is not too soon to begin work on a theory. We are already in a position to understand certain key facts about the relationship between physical processes and experience, and about the regularities that connect them. Once reductive explanation is set aside, we can lay those facts on the table so that they can play their proper role as the initial pieces in a nonreductive theory of consciousness, and as constraints on the basic laws that constitute an ultimate theory.
There is an obvious problem that plagues the development of a theory of consciousness, and that is the paucity of objective data. Conscious experience is not directly observable in an experimental context, so we cannot generate data about the relationship between physical processes and experience at will. Nevertheless, we all have access to a rich source of data in our own case. Many important regularities between experience and processing can be inferred from considerations about one's own experience. There are also good indirect sources of data from observable cases, as when one relies on the verbal report of a subject as an indication of experience. These methods have their limitations, but we have more than enough data to get a theory off the ground.
Philosophical analysis is also useful in getting value for money out of the data we have. This sort of analysis can yield a number of principles relating consciousness and cognition, thereby strongly constraining the shape of an ultimate theory. The method of thought-experimentation can also yield significant rewards, as we will see. Finally, the fact that we are searching for a fundamental theory means that we can appeal to such nonempirical constraints as simplicity, homogeneity, and the like in developing a theory. We must seek to systematize the information we have, to extend it as far as possible by careful analysis, and then make the inference to the simplest possible theory that explains the data while remaining a plausible candidate to be part of the fundamental furniture of the world.
Such theories will always retain an element of speculation that is not present in other scientific theories, because of the impossibility of conclusive intersubjective experimental tests. Still, we can certainly construct theories that are compatible with the data that we have, and evaluate them in comparison to each other. Even in the absence of intersubjective observation, there are numerous criteria available for the evaluation of such theories: simplicity, internal coherence, coherence with theories in other domains, the ability to reproduce the properties of experience that are familiar from our own case, and even an overall fit with the dictates of common sense. Perhaps there will be significant indeterminacies remaining even when all these constraints are applied, but we can at least develop plausible candidates. Only when candidate theories have been developed will we be able to evaluate them.
A nonreductive theory of consciousness will consist in a number of psychophysical principles, principles connecting the properties of physical processes to the properties of experience. We can think of these principles as encapsulating the way in which experience arises from the physical. Ultimately, these principles should tell us what sort of physical systems will have associated experiences, and for the systems that do, they should tell us what sort of physical properties are relevant to the emergence of experience, and just what sort of experience we should expect any given physical system to yield. This is a tall order, but there is no reason why we should not get started.
In what follows, I present my own candidates for the psychophysical principles that might go into a theory of consciousness. The first two of these are nonbasic principles - systematic connections between processing and experience at a relatively high level. These principles can play a significant role in developing and constraining a theory of consciousness, but they are not cast at a sufficiently fundamental level to qualify as truly basic laws. The final principle is my candidate for a basic principle that might form the cornerstone of a fundamental theory of consciousness. This final principle is particularly speculative, but it is the kind of speculation that is required if we are ever to have a satisfying theory of consciousness. I can present these principles only briefly here; I argue for them at much greater length in Chalmers (1995).
1. The principle of structural coherence. This is a principle of coherence between the structure of consciousness and the structure of awareness. Recall that "awareness" was used earlier to refer to the various functional phenomena that are associated with consciousness. I am now using it to refer to a somewhat more specific process in the cognitive underpinnings of experience. In particular, the contents of awareness are to be understood as those information contents that are accessible to central systems, and brought to bear in a widespread way in the control of behavior. Briefly put, we can think of awareness as direct availability for global control. To a first approximation, the contents of awareness are the contents that are directly accessible and potentially reportable, at least in a language-using system.
Awareness is a purely functional notion, but it is nevertheless intimately linked to conscious experience. In familiar cases, wherever we find consciousness, we find awareness. Wherever there is conscious experience, there is some corresponding information in the cognitive system that is available in the control of behavior, and available for verbal report. Conversely, it seems that whenever information is available for report and for global control, there is a corresponding conscious experience. Thus, there is a direct correspondence between consciousness and awareness.
The correspondence can be taken further. It is a central fact about experience that it has a complex structure. The visual field has a complex geometry, for instance. There are also relations of similarity and difference between experiences, and relations in such things as relative intensity. Every subject's experience can be at least partly characterized and decomposed in terms of these structural properties: similarity and difference relations, perceived location, relative intensity, geometric structure, and so on. It is also a central fact that to each of these structural features, there is a corresponding feature in the information-processing structure of awareness.
Take color sensations as an example. For every distinction between color experiences, there is a corresponding distinction in processing. The different phenomenal colors that we experience form a complex three-dimensional space, varying in hue, saturation, and intensity. The properties of this space can be recovered from information-processing considerations: examination of the visual systems shows that waveforms of light are discriminated and analyzed along three different axes, and it is this three-dimensional information that is relevant to later processing. The three-dimensional structure of phenomenal color space therefore corresponds directly to the three dimensional structure of visual awareness. This is precisely what we would expect. After all, every color distinction corresponds to some reportable information, and therefore to a distinction that is represented in the structure of processing.
In a more straightforward way, the geometric structure of the visual field is directly reflected in a structure that can be recovered from visual processing. Every geometric relation corresponds to something that can be reported and is therefore cognitively represented. If we were given only the story about information-processing in an agent's visual and cognitive system, we could not directly observe that agent's visual experiences, but we could nevertheless infer those experiences' structural properties.
In general, any information that is consciously experienced will also be cognitively represented. The fine-grained structure of the visual field will correspond to some fine-grained structure in visual processing. The same goes for experiences in other modalities, and even for nonsensory experiences. Internal mental images have geometric properties that are represented in processing. Even emotions have structural properties, such as relative intensity, that correspond directly to a structural property of processing; where there is greater intensity, we find a greater effect on later processes. In general, precisely because the structural properties of experience are accessible and reportable, those properties will be directly represented in the structure of awareness.
It is this isomorphism between the structures of consciousness and awareness that constitutes the principle of structural coherence. This principle reflects the central fact that even though cognitive processes do not conceptually entail facts about conscious experience, consciousness and cognition do not float free of one another but cohere in an intimate way.
This principle has its limits. It allows us to recover structural properties of experience from information-processing properties, but not all properties of experience are structural properties. There are properties of experience, such as the intrinsic nature of a sensation of red, that cannot be fully captured in a structural description. The very intelligibility of inverted spectrum scenarios, where experiences of red and green are inverted but all structural properties remain the same, show that structural properties constrain experience without exhausting it. Nevertheless, the very fact that we feel compelled to leave structural properties unaltered when we imagine experiences inverted between functionally identical systems shows how central the principle of structural coherence is to our conception of our mental lives. It is not a logically necessary principle, as after all we can imagine all the information processing occurring without any experience at all, but it is nevertheless a strong and familiar constraint on the psychophysical connection.
The principle of structural coherence allows for a very useful kind of indirect explanation of experience in terms of physical processes. For example, we can use facts about neural processing of visual information to indirectly explain the structure of color space. The facts about neural processing can entail and explain the structure of awareness; if we take the coherence principle for granted, the structure of experience will also be explained. Empirical investigation might even lead us to better understand the structure of awareness within a bat, shedding indirect light on Nagel's vexing question of what it is like to be a bat. This principle provides a natural interpretation of much existing work on the explanation of consciousness (e.g. Clark 1992 and Hardin 1992 on colors, and Akins 1993 on bats), although it is often appealed to inexplicitly. It is so familiar that it is taken for granted by almost everybody, and is a central plank in the cognitive explanation of consciousness.
The coherence between consciousness and awareness also allows a natural interpretation of work in neuroscience directed at isolating the substrate (or the neural correlate) of consciousness. Various specific hypotheses have been put forward. For example, Crick and Koch (1990) suggest that 40-Hz oscillations may be the neural correlate of consciousness, whereas Libet (1993) suggests that temporally-extended neural activity is central. If we accept the principle of coherence, the most direct physical correlate of consciousness is awareness: the process whereby information is made directly available for global control. The different specific hypotheses can be interpreted as empirical suggestions about how awareness might be achieved. For example, Crick and Koch suggest that 40-Hz oscillations are the gateway by which information is integrated into working memory and thereby made available to later processes. Similarly, it is natural to suppose that Libet's temporally extended activity is relevant precisely because only that sort of activity achieves global availability. The same applies to other suggested correlates such as the "global workspace" of Baars (1988), the "high-quality representations" of Farah (1994), and the "selector inputs to action systems" of Shallice (1972). All these can be seen as hypotheses about the mechanisms of awareness: the mechanisms that perform the function of making information directly available for global control.
Given the coherence between consciousness and awareness, it follows that a mechanism of awareness will itself be a correlate of conscious experience. The question of just which mechanisms in the brain govern global availability is an empirical one; perhaps there are many such mechanisms. But if we accept the coherence principle, we have reason to believe that the processes that explain awareness will at the same time be part of the basis of consciousness.
2. The principle of organizational invariance. This principle states that any two systems with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. If the causal patterns of neural organization were duplicated in silicon, for example, with a silicon chip for every neuron and the same patterns of interaction, then the same experiences would arise. According to this principle, what matters for the emergence of experience is not the specific physical makeup of a system, but the abstract pattern of causal interaction between its components. This principle is controversial, of course. Some (e.g. Searle 1980) have thought that consciousness is tied to a specific biology, so that a silicon isomorph of a human need not be conscious. I believe that the principle can be given significant support by the analysis of thought-experiments, however.
Very briefly: suppose (for the purposes of a reductio ad absurdum) that the principle is false, and that there could be two functionally isomorphic systems with different experiences. Perhaps only one of the systems is conscious, or perhaps both are conscious but they have different experiences. For the purposes of illustration, let us say that one system is made of neurons and the other of silicon, and that one experiences red where the other experiences blue. The two systems have the same organization, so we can imagine gradually transforming one into the other, perhaps replacing neurons one at a time by silicon chips with the same local function. We thus gain a spectrum of intermediate cases, each with the same organization, but with slightly different physical makeup and slightly different experiences. Along this spectrum, there must be two systems A and B between which we replace less than one tenth of the system, but whose experiences differ. These two systems are physically identical, except that a small neural circuit in A has been replaced by a silicon circuit in B.
The key step in the thought-experiment is to take the relevant neural circuit in A, and install alongside it a causally isomorphic silicon circuit, with a switch between the two. What happens when we flip the switch? By hypothesis, the system's conscious experiences will change; from red to blue, say, for the purposes of illustration. This follows from the fact that the system after the change is essentially a version of B, whereas before the change it is just A.
But given the assumptions, there is no way for the system to notice the changes! Its causal organization stays constant, so that all of its functional states and behavioral dispositions stay fixed. As far as the system is concerned, nothing unusual has happened. There is no room for the thought, "Hmm! Something strange just happened!". In general, the structure of any such thought must be reflected in processing, but the structure of processing remains constant here. If there were to be such a thought it must float entirely free of the system and would be utterly impotent to affect later processing. (If it affected later processing, the systems would be functionally distinct, contrary to hypothesis). We might even flip the switch a number of times, so that experiences of red and blue dance back and forth before the system's "inner eye". According to hypothesis, the system can never notice these "dancing qualia".
This I take to be a reductio of the original assumption. It is a central fact about experience, very familiar from our own case, that whenever experiences change significantly and we are paying attention, we can notice the change; if this were not to be the case, we would be led to the skeptical possibility that our experiences are dancing before our eyes all the time. This hypothesis has the same status as the possibility that the world was created five minutes ago: perhaps it is logically coherent, but it is not plausible. Given the extremely plausible assumption that changes in experience correspond to changes in processing, we are led to the conclusion that the original hypothesis is impossible, and that any two functionally isomorphic systems must have the same sort of experiences. To put it in technical terms, the philosophical hypotheses of "absent qualia" and "inverted qualia", while logically possible, are empirically and nomologically impossible.
(Some may worry that a silicon isomorph of a neural system might be impossible for technical reasons. That question is open. The invariance principle says only that if an isomorph is possible, then it will have the same sort of conscious experience.)
There is more to be said here, but this gives the basic flavor. Once again, this thought experiment draws on familiar facts about the coherence between consciousness and cognitive processing to yield a strong conclusion about the relation between physical structure and experience. If the argument goes through, we know that the only physical properties directly relevant to the emergence of experience are organizational properties. This acts as a further strong constraint on a theory of consciousness.
3. The double-aspect theory of information. The two preceding principles have been nonbasic principles. They involve high-level notions such as "awareness" and "organization", and therefore lie at the wrong level to constitute the fundamental laws in a theory of consciousness. Nevertheless, they act as strong constraints. What is further needed are basic principles that fit these constraints and that might ultimately explain them.
The basic principle that I suggest centrally involves the notion of information. I understand information in more or less the sense of Shannon (1948). Where there is information, there are information states embedded in an information space. An information space has a basic structure of difference relations between its elements, characterizing the ways in which different elements in a space are similar or different, possibly in complex ways. An information space is an abstract object, but following Shannon we can see information as physically embodied when there is a space of distinct physical states, the differences between which can be transmitted down some causal pathway. The states that are transmitted can be seen as themselves constituting an information space. To borrow a phrase from Bateson (1972), physical information is a difference that makes a difference.
The double-aspect principle stems from the observation that there is a direct isomorphism between certain physically embodied information spaces and certain phenomenal (or experiential) information spaces. From the same sort of observations that went into the principle of structural coherence, we can note that the differences between phenomenal states have a structure that corresponds directly to the differences embedded in physical processes; in particular, to those differences that make a difference down certain causal pathways implicated in global availability and control. That is, we can find the same abstract information space embedded in physical processing and in conscious experience.
This leads to a natural hypothesis: that information (or at least some information) has two basic aspects, a physical aspect and a phenomenal aspect. This has the status of a basic principle that might underlie and explain the emergence of experience from the physical. Experience arises by virtue of its status of one aspect of information, when the other aspect is found embodied in physical processing.
This principle is lent support by a number of considerations, which I can only outline briefly here. First, consideration of the sort of physical changes that correspond to changes in conscious experience suggests that such changes are always relevant by virtue of their role in constituting informational changes - differences within an abstract space of states that are divided up precisely according to their causal differences along certain causal pathways. Second, if the principle of organizational invariance is to hold, then we need to find some fundamental organizational property for experience to be linked to, and information is an organizational property par excellence. Third, this principle offers some hope of explaining the principle of structural coherence in terms of the structure present within information spaces. Fourth, analysis of the cognitive explanation of our judgments and claims about conscious experience - judgments that are functionally explainable but nevertheless deeply tied to experience itself - suggests that explanation centrally involves the information states embedded in cognitive processing. It follows that a theory based on information allows a deep coherence between the explanation of experience and the explanation of our judgments and claims about it.
Wheeler (1990) has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. According to this "it from bit" doctrine, the laws of physics can be cast in terms of information, postulating different states that give rise to different effects without actually saying what those states are. It is only their position in an information space that counts. If so, then information is a natural candidate to also play a role in a fundamental theory of consciousness. We are led to a conception of the world on which information is truly fundamental, and on which it has two basic aspects, corresponding to the physical and the phenomenal features of the world.
Of course, the double-aspect principle is extremely speculative and is also underdetermined, leaving a number of key questions unanswered. An obvious question is whether all information has a phenomenal aspect. One possibility is that we need a further constraint on the fundamental theory, indicating just what sort of information has a phenomenal aspect. The other possibility is that there is no such constraint. If not, then experience is much more widespread than we might have believed, as information is everywhere. This is counterintuitive at first, but on reflection I think the position gains a certain plausibility and elegance. Where there is simple information processing, there is simple experience, and where there is complex information processing, there is complex experience. A mouse has a simpler information-processing structure than a human, and has correspondingly simpler experience; perhaps a thermostat, a maximally simple information processing structure, might have maximally simple experience? Indeed, if experience is truly a fundamental property, it would be surprising for it to arise only every now and then; most fundamental properties are more evenly spread. In any case, this is very much an open question, but I believe that the position is not as implausible as it is often thought to be.
Once a fundamental link between information and experience is on the table, the door is opened to some grander metaphysical speculation concerning the nature of the world. For example, it is often noted that physics characterizes its basic entities only extrinsically, in terms of their relations to other entities, which are themselves characterized extrinsically, and so on. The intrinsic nature of physical entities is left aside. Some argue that no such intrinsic properties exist, but then one is left with a world that is pure causal flux (a pure flow of information) with no properties for the causation to relate. If one allows that intrinsic properties exist, a natural speculation given the above is that the intrinsic properties of the physical - the properties that causation ultimately relates - are themselves phenomenal properties. We might say that phenomenal properties are the internal aspect of information. This could answer a concern about the causal relevance of experience - a natural worry, given a picture on which the physical domain is causally closed, and on which experience is supplementary to the physical. The informational view allows us to understand how experience might have a subtle kind of causal relevance in virtue of its status as the intrinsic nature of the physical. This metaphysical speculation is probably best ignored for the purposes of developing a scientific theory, but in addressing some philosophical issues it is quite suggestive.
8 Conclusion
The theory I have presented is speculative, but it is a candidate theory. I suspect that the principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance will be planks in any satisfactory theory of consciousness; the status of the double-aspect theory of information is less certain. Indeed, right now it is more of an idea than a theory. To have any hope of eventual explanatory success, it will have to be specified more fully and fleshed out into a more powerful form. Still, reflection on just what is plausible and implausible about it, on where it works and where it fails, can only lead to a better theory.
Most existing theories of consciousness either deny the phenomenon, explain something else, or elevate the problem to an eternal mystery. I hope to have shown that it is possible to make progress on the problem even while taking it seriously. To make further progress, we will need further investigation, more refined theories, and more careful analysis. The hard problem is a hard problem, but there is no reason to believe that it will remain permanently unsolved.[*]
*[[[The arguments in this paper are presented in greater depth in my book The Conscious Mind. Thanks to Francis Crick, Peggy DesAutels, Matthew Elton, Liane Gabora, Christof Koch, Paul Rhodes, Gregg Rosenberg, and Sharon Wahl for their comments.]]]
References
Akins, K. 1993. What is it like to be boring and myopic? In (B. Dahlbom, ed.) Dennett and his Critics. Blackwell.
Allport, A. 1988. What concept of consciousness? In (A. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds.) Consciousness in Contemporary Science. Oxford University Press.
Baars, B.J. 1988. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge University Press.
Bateson, G. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chandler Publishing.
Byrne, A. 1993. The Emergent Mind. Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University.
Chalmers, D.J. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. 1992. Sensory Qualities. Clarendon.
Crick, F. and Koch, C. 1990. Toward a neurobiological theory of consciousness. Seminars in the Neurosciences 2:263-275.
Crick, F. 1994. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Scribners.
Dennett, D.C. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little-Brown.
Edelman, G. 1989. The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness. Basic Books.
Farah, M.J. 1994. Visual perception and visual awareness after brain damage: A tutorial overview. In (C. Umilta and M. Moscovitch, eds.) Consciousness and Unconscious Information Processing: Attention and Performance 15. MIT Press.
Flohr, H. 1992. Qualia and brain processes. In (A. Beckermann, H. Flohr, and J. Kim, eds.) Emergence or Reduction?: Prospects for Nonreductive Physicalism. De Gruyter.
Hameroff, S.R. 1994. Quantum coherence in microtubules: A neural basis for emergent consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies 1:91-118.
Hardin, C.L. 1992. Physiology, phenomenology, and Spinoza's true colors. In (A. Beckermann, H. Flohr, and J. Kim, eds.) Emergence or Reduction?: Prospects for Nonreductive Physicalism. De Gruyter.
Humphrey, N. 1992. A History of the Mind. Simon and Schuster.
Jackendoff, R. 1987. Consciousness and the Computational Mind. MIT Press.
Jackson, F. 1994. Finding the mind in the natural world. In (R. Casati, B. Smith, and S. White, eds.) Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences.
Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press.
Levine, J. 1983. Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64:354-61.
Lewis, D. 1994. Reduction of mind. In (S. Guttenplan, ed.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell.
Libet, B. 1993. The neural time factor in conscious and unconscious events. In (G.R. Block and J. Marsh, eds.) Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness (Ciba Foundation Symposium 174). John Wiley and Sons.
Loar, B. 1990. Phenomenal states. Philosophical Perspectives 4:81-108.
McGinn, C. 1989. Can we solve the mind-body problem? Mind 98:349-66.
Nagel, T. 1974. What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 4:435-50.
Newell, A. 1990. Unified Theories of Cognition. Harvard University Press.
Papineau, D. 1993. Physicalism, consciousness, and the antipathetic fallacy. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 71:169-83.
Penrose, R. 1989. The Emperor's New Mind. Oxford University Press.
Penrose, R. 1994. Shadows of the Mind. Oxford University Press.
Searle, J.R. 1980. Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3:417-57.
Shallice, T. 1972. Dual functions of consciousness. Psychological Review 79:383-93.
Shannon, C.E. 1948. A mathematical theory of communication. Bell Systems Technical Journal 27: 379-423.
Sturgeon, S. 1994. The epistemic basis of subjectivity. Journal of Philosophy 91:221-35.
Wheeler, J.A. 1990. Information, physics, quantum: The search for links. In (W. Zurek, ed.) Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Addison-Wesley.
Wilkes, K.V. 1988. - , Yishi, Duh, Um and consciousness. In (A. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds.) Consciousness in Contemporary Science. Oxford University Press.
Εγγραφή σε:
Αναρτήσεις (Atom)
