Out Of Body Experience

       Hereward Carrington, Ph.D. (born Hubert Lavington) (17 October 1880 – 26 December 1958) was a well-known British investigator of psychic phenomena and author. His subjects included several of the most high-profile cases of apparent psychic ability of his times, and he wrote over 100 books on subjects including the paranormal and psychical research, conjuring and stage magic, and alternative health issues.

"       By the mid 1920s Hereward Carrington had written many books about psychical research and had mentioned more than once the phenomenon of astral projection, but he mainly condensed the work of others and gave little information that would be of interest to someone who had a spontaneous OBE. In November 1927 he received a letter from a young American called Sylvan Muldoon, telling him what he thought of his book. Muldoon wrote, ''What puzzles me most is that you make the remark that M. Lancelin has told practically all that is known on the subject. Why, Mr Carrington, I have never read Lancelin's work, but if you have given the gist of it in your book, then I can write a book on the things that Lancelin does not know!'' Muldoon went on to sketch a wealth of details about the astral world, the silver cord, and the formation and movement of the phantom. Then Carrington's curiosity was attracted. He contacted Muldoon, and together they wrote two books. The first was The Projection of the Astral Body and was mainly an account of Muldoon's own experiences. The second The Phenomena of Astral Projection contained a collection of cases.

Muldoon's first conscious projection occurred when he was 12 years old. He awoke in the middle of the night to find himself conscious, but not knowing where he was, and apparently unable to move, a condition he later called astral catalepsy. Gradually the sensation of floating took over, and then a rapid up-and-down vibration and a tremendous pressure in the back of his head. Out of this nightmare of sensations the boy's hearing gradually began to return and then his sight, by which he could see that he was floating in the room above his bed. Some force took hold of him and pulled him from horizontal to vertical. He saw his double lying quietly asleep on the bed, and between the two of them stretched an elastic-like cable which joined the back of the head of his conscious self, to a spot between the eyes of the body in bed, six feet of so away. Swaying and pulling against the cord Muldoon tried to walk to another room to wake someone, but found that he passed right through the door, and through the bodies of other sleepers too, when he tried to shake or clutch them. Frightened, he roamed around the house for what seemed like fifteen minutes, and then slowly the pull of the cord increased and he found himself being pulled back to his body. Everything went in reverse. He tipped back to horizontal, again became cataleptic, felt the same vibrations and then, with a jerk, dropped back into the body. He was awake and alive again.

Muldoon experienced hundreds more projections but he was not fully conscious in all of them from beginning to end as he was in the first one. This one is especially interesting because it included so many of the features which were to form a part of his later writings. First, there is the astral catalepsy. At the beginning of a projection the catalepsy lasts until the phantom has assumed a vertical position, whereupon it becomes free to move again. The appearance and effect of the cord, or cable, varies greatly according to Muldoon. When the astral is close to the physical the cord is about the diameter of a silver dollar, although its surrounding aura makes it look larger. When it is thick like this it exerts a powerful 'magnetic pull' and one is then in what Muldoon calls ''cord activity range''. In his experiments in projection he found that this range varies from about 8 feet to 15 feet, and this depends on physical vitality. When the physical body is healthy the cord exerts the most effect and over the greatest range. Indeed, in many cases it makes projection impossible. When the body is weakened in some way the activity of the cord is correspondingly weaker and projection is easier and the cord activity range less. This is why illness or physical weakness, as well as fasting, are conducive to projection, leading up to that final projection - death. It is therefore significant that both Fox and Muldoon were often ill. When the astral body manages to pull away from the physical and out of cord activity range it becomes free to move at will, and the cord is then stretched to its thinnest, about the thickness of sewing thread.

       Once away from the physical the astral is supposed to have three moving speeds. At its slowest it simply walks, or moves as a physical body would. At the intermediate speed the projector feels still and everything passes backwards. Streaks of light thrown off by the astral body trail behind. Finally at supernormal speed the phantom can cover great distances without being aware of them, faster than the mind can imagine.  
       Covering such distances one might think that astral body could get lost, but Muldoon categorically denies this. While the cord is intact it can always pull the projector back.

       It is Muldoon's contention that projection, at least partial projection, is commoner than most of us think. 
       When we receive a shock or physical blow the astral may temporarily separate, and under anaesthesia it projects, although we usually do not recall the excursion. He even suggests that if the physical body is stopped suddenly, for example in a car, then the astral may continue for a moment, so leading to feeling of sickness. 
       All kind of odd feeling, fainting, breath-taking sensations, and jerks before falling asleep, are attributed to partial separation of the double. Most important, though, is projection during sleep. In natural sleep, claims Muldoon, the astral separates slightly to be replenished with ''cosmic energy''. 
       Most of us do not realize this and remain unconscious throughout; but in falling, flying, and other special dreams we can experience just part of the astral body's night-time travels.

       In his experiments Muldoon discovered many other features. Like Fox he found that emotional involvement in anything would terminate the projection. Sexual desire he found a negative factor, but some kinds of stress could help in inducing projection. When the body is immobilized in sleep, for example, if there is a strong desire for something the astral may try to leave to get it. Similarly the breaking of a long-established habit can lead to projection. Muldoon related this to hauntings in which, he claims, the phantom may continue with accustomed routines.

       Some of Muldoon's most interesting experiment are those in which he tries, in his astral body, to affect material objects. This is not easy. The reason, he explains, is that the astral body has a higher rate of vibration when it is far away from the physical, and the higher the rate of vibration, the less it can interact with objects of a low vibration rate. This is necessarily so, he claims, because if the astral body were not at this higher state of vibration it could never pass through material objects, and if it were always at the highest rate then other astral entities would not be able to pass through it on their travels, which clearly they can. This leads to the conclusion that the astral body gains higher vibrations as it moves further from the physical, and consequently it becomes less able to affect material objects.

       In addition Muldoon argues that the conscious will cannot move object in the astral, but only the subconscious, or crypto-conscious, mind. On one occasion when he was very ill he tried to call out to his mother but failed to wake her. Getting out of bed he crawled across the floor, but fainted, and only his astral body ascended the stairs. His consciousness then faded; but next he knew, he found his mother and small brother discussing excitedly how the mattress had lifted up and nearly thrown them out of bed. Although other explanations can be suggested, Muldoon attributes the effect to the crypto-conscious will. 
       On another occasion he produced raps which were heard by others when he was dreaming of producing them; but on many occasions he failed to touch or move physical objects when projected.

       One of the facts Muldoon stresses is the importance of thought in the astral. Thought holds up the astral body, for when it walks upon an upper floor, it is not the floor which holds it up (it could easily pass through that); it is habits of thought. In fact thought is everything in the astral world. Critics, he realized, would be worried by the clothes of the phantom. Why should the astral body wear earthly suits, pyjamas and dresses, as so many have reported? The answer, he explained, is that ''thought creates in the astral, and one appears to others as he is in mind. In fact, the whole astral world is governed by thought.''

       Many readers will find Muldoon's descriptions difficult to understand. He does not give simple descriptive accounts as Fox did. Instead every account is steeped in the theory which he so laboriously developed. Some of his findings, such as the power of thought in the astral world, and the methods of moving, are familiar from other accounts; but his detailed description of the cord and its activity range is quite idiosyncratic, as are his method and position of projecting.

       Muldoon constantly adjures reader to try for themselves, perhaps the only way to learn many things about astral projection. But I am sure that most people who try it will find that only some of Muldoon's elaborate details fit their own experience. Above all we are beginning to see just how variable the OBE can be. Perhaps the most important discovery so far is that ''thought creates in the astral''. As one person's thought differs from another's, so we may expect his OBE to differ. In the next chapter we shall learn that three habitual travellers have described experiences that are different again."

       From the article "Sylvan Muldoon" by Susan Blackmore

Phaistos Disc

       The disc of Phaistos is the most important example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete and was discovered in 1903 in a small room near the depositories of the "archive chamber", in the north - east apartments of the Phaistos palace, together with a tablet and pottery dated to the beginning of the Neo-palatial period (1700- 1600 B.C.).

       According to mythology, the city of Phaistos was the residence of king Radamanthis, brother of king Minos.
       Excavations by archaeologists have unearthed ruins of the Neolithic times (3.000 B.C.).
       During the Minoan times, Phaistos was a very important city-state. Its dominion, at its peak, stretched from Lithinon to Psychion and included the Paximadia islands. The city participated to the Trojan war and later became one of the most important cities-states of the Dorian period.
       Phaistos continued to flourish during Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic times. It was destroyed by the Gortynians during the 3rd century B.C. But Phaistos continued to exist during the Roman period.

       Both surfaces of this clay disc are covered with hieroglyphs arranged in a spiral zone, impressed on the clay when it was damp. The signs make up groups divided from each other by vertical lines, and each of these groups should represent a word.

       Forty five different types of signs have been distinguished, of which a few can be identified with the hieroglyphs in use in the Proto- palatial period. Some hieroglyphic sequences recur like refrains, suggesting a religious hymn, and Pernier regards the content of the text as ritual. Others have suggested that the text is a list of soldiers, and lately Davis has interpreted it as a document in the Hittic language in which a king discusses the erection of the Palace of Phaistos.

       In a century which has seen the cracking of other ancient languages, Ugaritic, and other orthographic systems, the Phaistos Disk has eluded decipherment. The disk is thought to date from around 1700 BC. It is a roundish disk of clay, with symbols stamped into it. The text consists of 61 words, 16 of which are accompanied by a mysterious "slash" mark.

Rediscovering what was already found

       For 400 years the Topkapi Palace had been the Ottoman Empire's sultan main residence. In 1929, the Turks decided to transform the palace into a museum, bringing to light artefacts hidden in the dark chambers and cellars. Then was discovered a map drawn in 1513 by the admiral and cartographer Piri Reis.
       The map showed the western side of Europe, the western side of Africa, South America and surprisingly the Antarctica. Reis had drawn with precision the way the borders of Africa and South America fitted together before they were separated in time and also Antarctica - a frozen land first seen (as we all thought) in 1820 by Mikhail Lazarev and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen.

       This map became more mysterious because Reis had drawn also a reference to Columbus, reminding of an ancient map that Columbus had used during his expeditions on sea. Columbus map became an "El Dorado" for treasure hunters, bu no one has yet found it.

Undeciphered language. Voynich manuscript

       The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious book thought to have been written in the 15th or 16th century and comprising about 240 vellum pages of handwritten text, the majority having illustrations. 
      The text of the manuscript has not yet been deciphered, and the author, script, and language remain unknown.

      Since its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been intensively studied by many cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame, but all of them failed to decrypt at least a part of the text. 
       The Voynich manuscript has become a famous subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory that the book is simply a well conceived hoax having a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols.

       The book is named after the Polish-American book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912. Currently the Voynich manuscript is stored in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University as item "MS 408". The first facsimile edition was published in 2005.

       The book originally had 272 pages in 17 quires of 16 pages each. About 240 vellum pages remain today, and gaps in the page numbering (which seems to be later than the text) indicate that several pages were already missing when Voynich acquired it. A quill pen was used for the text and figure outlines, and colored paint was applied (somewhat crudely) to the figures, possibly at a later date. There is strong evidence that at one point in time, the pages of the book were arranged in a different order.

       The text was clearly written from left to right, with a slightly ragged right margin. Longer sections are broken into paragraphs, sometimes with "bullets" in the left margin. There is no obvious punctuation. The ductus flows smoothly, suggesting that the scribe understood the words as he wrote. The manuscript therefore gives the impression that the symbols were not enciphered, otherwise the individual characters would have had to be calculated before being written. However, it is possible to write somewhat fluently in other codes.

       The text consists of over 170,000 discrete glyphs, usually separated from each other by narrow gaps. Most of the glyphs are written with one or two simple pen strokes.
       While there is some dispute as to whether certain glyphs are distinct or not, an alphabet with 20–30 glyphs would account for virtually all of the text; the exceptions are a few dozen rarer characters that occur only once or twice each.

       Wider gaps divide the text into about 35,000 "words" of varying length. These seem to follow phonetic or orthographic laws of some sort; e.g. certain characters must appear in each word (like the vowels in English), some characters never follow others, and some may be doubled but others may not.

       Statistical analysis of the text reveals patterns similar to those of natural languages. For instance, the word entropy (about 10 bits per word) is similar to that of English or Latin texts. Some words occur only in certain sections, or in only a few pages; others occur throughout the manuscript. There are very few repetitions among the thousand or so "labels" attached to the illustrations. In the herbal section, the first word on each page occurs only on that page and may be the name of the plant.

       The Voynich manuscript's "language" is quite unlike European languages in several aspects. There are practically no words comprising more than ten glyphs, yet there are also few one- or two-letter words. The distribution of letters within words is also rather peculiar: some characters only occur at the beginning of a word, some only at the end, and some always in the middle section. While Semitic alphabets have many letters that are written differently depending on whether they occur at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a word, letters of the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets are generally written the same way regardless of their position within a word (the exception being the Greek letter Sigma).

       The text seems to be more repetitive than typical European languages; there are instances where the same common word appears up to three times in a row. Words that differ only by one letter also repeat with unusual frequency.

       There are only a few words in the manuscript written in a seemingly Latin script. On the last page, there are four lines of writing that are written in (rather distorted) Latin letters, except for two words in the main script. The lettering resembles European alphabets of the 15th century, but the words do not seem to make sense in any language. Also, a series of diagrams in the "astronomical" section has the names of ten of the months (from March to December) written in Latin script, with spelling suggestive of the medieval languages of France or the Iberian Peninsula. However, it is not known whether these bits of Latin script were part of the original text or were added later.

       The illustrations of the manuscript shed little light on the precise nature of its text but imply that the book consists of six "sections", with different styles and subject matter. Except for the last section, which contains only text, almost every page contains at least one illustration. Following are the sections and their conventional names:

• Herbal. Each page displays one plant (sometimes two) and a few paragraphs of text—a format typical of European herbals of the time. Some parts of these drawings are larger and cleaner copies of sketches seen in the "pharmaceutical" section (below). None of the plants depicted are unambiguously identifiable.
• Astronomical. Contains circular diagrams, some of them with suns, moons, and stars, suggestive of astronomy or astrology. One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiacal constellations (two fish for Pisces, a bull for Taurus, a hunter with crossbow for Sagittarius, etc.). Each of these has 30 women figures arranged in two or more concentric bands. Most of the females are at least partly naked, and each holds what appears to be a labeled star or is shown with the star attached by what could be a tether or cord of some kind to either arm. The last two pages of this section (Aquarius and Capricornus, roughly January and February) were lost, while Aries and Taurus are split into four paired diagrams with 15 women and 15 stars each. Some of these diagrams are on fold-out pages.

• Biological. A dense continuous text interspersed with figures, mostly showing small naked women bathing in pools or tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes, some of them clearly shaped like body organs. Some of the women wear crowns.
• Cosmological. More circular diagrams, but of an obscure nature. This section also has foldouts; one of them spans six pages and contains a map or diagram, with nine "islands" connected by "causeways", castles, and what may be a volcano.
• Pharmaceutical. Many labeled drawings of isolated plant parts (roots, leaves, etc.); objects resembling apothecary jars drawn along the margins; and a few text paragraphs.
• Recipes. Many short paragraphs, each marked with a flower- or star-like "bullet".

       The first impression given by the surviving leaves of the manuscript is that it was meant to serve as a pharmacopoeia or to address topics in medieval or early modern medicine. The puzzling details of illustrations have generated many theories about the book's origins, the contents of its text, and the purpose for which it was intended.

       The first section of the book is almost certainly herbal, but attempts to identify the plants, either with actual specimens or with the stylized drawings of contemporary herbals, have largely failed. Only a couple of plants (including a wild pansy and the maidenhair fern) can be identified with some certainty. Those herbal pictures that match pharmacological sketches appear to be clean copies of these, except that missing parts were completed with improbable-looking details. In fact, many of the plant drawings in the herbal section seem to be composite: the roots of one species have been fastened to the leaves of another, with flowers from a third.

       Brumbaugh believed that one illustration depicted a New World sunflower, which would help date the manuscript and open up intriguing possibilities for its origin. However, the resemblance is slight, especially when compared to the original wild species; and, since the scale of the drawing is not known, the plant could be many other members of the same family, which includes the common daisy, chamomile, and many other species from all over the world.

       The basins and tubes in the "biological" section may seem to indicate a connection to alchemy, which would also be relevant if the book contained instructions on the preparation of medical compounds. However, alchemical books of the period share a common pictorial language, where processes and materials are represented by specific images (such as eagle, toad, man in tomb, couple in bed) or standard textual symbols (such as circle with cross); and none of these could be convincingly identified in the Voynich manuscript.

       Astrological considerations frequently played a prominent role in herb gathering, blood-letting and other medical procedures common during the likeliest dates of the manuscript (see, for instance, Nicholas Culpeper's books). However, apart from the obvious Zodiac symbols, and one diagram possibly showing the classical planets, no one has been able to interpret the illustrations within known astrological traditions (European or otherwise).

       A circular drawing in the "astronomical" section depicts an irregularly shaped object with four curved arms, which some have interpreted as a picture of a galaxy that could only be obtained with a telescope. Other drawings were interpreted as cells seen through a microscope. This would suggest an early modern, rather than a medieval, date for the manuscript's origin.

       Manuscript's History

       The history of the manuscript is full of gaps and full of mystery. Due to the fact that the manuscript's alphabet does not resemble any known script, and the text is still undeciphered, the only useful evidence as to the book's age and origin are the illustrations—especially the dress and hairstyles of the human figures and a couple of castles that are seen in the diagrams. They are all characteristically European, and based on that evidence, most experts assign the book to dates between 1450 and 1520. This estimate is supported by other secondary clues. In 2009 the material used to write the manuscript was carbon-dated to between 1404 and 1438.

       The earliest confirmed owner of the Voynich manuscript was Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist who lived in Prague in the early 17th century. Baresch apparently was just as puzzled as we are today about this manuscript. On learning that Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit scholar from the Collegio Romano, had published a Coptic (Ethiopic) dictionary and "deciphered" the Egyptian hieroglyphs, Baresch sent a sample copy of the script to Kircher in Rome (twice), asking for clues. His 1639 letter to Kircher, which was recently located by Rene Zandbergen, is the earliest mention of the manuscript that has been found so far.

       It is not known whether Kircher answered the request, but apparently, he was interested enough to try to acquire the book, which Baresch apparently refused to yield. Upon Baresch's death, the manuscript passed to his friend Jan Marek Marci (Johannes Marcus Marci), then rector of Charles University in Prague, who a few years later sent the book to Kircher, his longtime friend and correspondent. Marci's cover letter (1665 or 1666) is still attached to the manuscript.

       There are no records of the book for the next 200 years, but in all likelihood, it was kept, with the rest of Kircher's correspondence, in the library of the Collegio Romano (now the Pontifical Gregorian University). It probably remained there until the troops of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy captured the city in 1870 and annexed the Papal States. The new Italian government decided to confiscate many properties of the Church, including the library of the Collegio. According to investigations by Xavier Ceccaldi and others, just before this happened, many books of the University's library were hastily transferred to the personal libraries of its faculty, which were exempt from confiscation. Kircher's correspondence was among those books—and so apparently was the Voynich manuscript, as it still bears the ex libris of Petrus Beckx, head of the Jesuit order and the University's Rector at the time.

       Beckx's "private" library was moved to the Villa Mondragone, Frascati, a large country palace near Rome that had been bought by the Society of Jesus in 1866 and housed the headquarters of the Jesuits' Ghislieri College.

       Around 1912, the Collegio Romano was apparently short of money and decided to sell (very discreetly) some of its holdings. Wilfrid Voynich acquired 30 manuscripts, among them the manuscript that now bears his name. In 1930, after his death, the manuscript was inherited by his widow, Ethel Lilian Voynich (known as the author of the novel The Gadfly and daughter of famous mathematician George Boole). She died in 1960 and left the manuscript to her close friend, Miss Anne Nill. In 1961, Anne Nill sold the book to another antique book dealer, Hans P. Kraus. Unable to find a buyer, Kraus donated the manuscript to Yale University in 1969.

       Researchers at the University of Arizona performed C14 dating on the manuscript and showed that the parchment on which the manuscript was written was made between 1404 and 1438, according to Walter Koehler. In addition, the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago found evidence that the ink was added to the parchment around the same time as the creation of the parchment itself, suggesting that it is an authentic document.

First Human Colonists on Mars

        The first humans lived in caves. Now it seems very likely that the first humans on Mars will do the same. After being studied Martian geography allows us to look for the right kind of caves. "At least two regions, the Tharsis rise and the Elysium rise, contain volcanic features which may be suitable locations for caves," said Kaj Williams from NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. 
        The analysis showed that caves in these regions might contain a ready supply of water, in the form of ice. The caves formed in lava tubes are common in Mars and they can become home for the first human colonists. These caves were created when ancient lava flows solidified at the surface, while lava inside drained away. 
        The existence of ice in these caves has been suggested before, but Williams and colleagues have taken the idea one step further by using a computer model to find out exactly how ice might build up inside them. They also looked at how long it might last. 
        The team represented their cave as a box 10 metres square by 8 metres high, with a single small opening to the atmosphere in the roof. They found that during the Martian day, warm, buoyant air would not enter the cool cave, saving the ice from melting. At night, as the outside air cooled, it would sink into the cave and bring in water vapour that condensed as frost onto the already icy walls. 
        The model showed that the ice would be stable, lasting for up to 100,000 years. Ice formed on the walls of Martian caves would be stable, lasting for up to 100,000 years and could prove a source of water for habitation and fuel, and could also provide shelter from dangerous solar radiation. Astronauts would find the caves excellent homes, says co-author Brian Toon of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Perhaps we could call them 'cavenauts'."

Earlier Paleonthologists?

       In 1944 Waldemar Julsrud found a few strange figurines while horseback riding in the mexican region of Acambaro. The small statuettes represented dinosaurs like creatures and humans from all around the world. Julsrud couldn't explore the site but he asked a local farmer to search for other figurines in that site. Surprisingly, the farmer found 32000 de statuettes well preserved. The artefacts were dated with carbon isotopes and was demonstrated that it wasn't a hoax. The statuettes are between 6,500 and 1,500 years old.

       One question raises: Who made the statuettes knowing so well how a dinosaur looked like?

How well do we know our history?

       In 1974 a strange object was discovered on the riverside of Mures river, near the town of Aiud, Romania. The object similar to a hammer was brought to the Institute of Archaeology from Cluj-Napoca were it was thoroughly studied. Surprisingly, the object was made from alumimium, a metal first obtained in 1808 and produced in large scale after 1885. Aluminium is obtained from bauxite - aluminium oxide found in great quantities in Earth's crust. It has the advantage of resisting corosion. This is the reason the object found near Aiud was so well preserved, having approx. 10,000 years.

        One question remains: When was aluminium actually discovered?