HIZB NAWAWI - حزب النووي

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
حزب النووي
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِیْمِRata Kanan
بِسْمِ اللهِ اللهُ أَكْبَرُ , اللهُ أَكْبَرُ , اللهُ أَكْبَرُ ,
أَقُولُ عَلَى نَفْسِي وَعَلَى دِیْنِي وَعَلَى أَھْلِي وَعَلَى أَوْلاَدِيْ وَعَلَى مَالِي وَعَلَى أَصْ حَابِي وَعَلَ ى أَدْیَانِھِ م
وَعَلَى أَمْوَالِھِم أَلْفَ بِسْمِ اللهِ اللهُ أَكْبَرُ , اللهُ أَكْبَرُ ,
أَقُولُ عَلَى نَفْسِي وَعَلَى دِیْنِي وَعَلَى أَھْلِي وَعَلَى أَوْلاَدِيْ وَعَلَى مَالِي وَعَلَى أَصْ حَابِي وَعَلَ ى أَدْیَانِھِ م
وَعَلَى أَمْوَالِھِم أَلْفَ أَلْفِ بِسْمِ اللهِ اللهُ أَكْبَرُ , اللهُ أَكْبَرُ ,
أَقُولُ عَلَى نَفْسِي وَعَلَى دِیْنِي وَعَلَى أَھْلِي وَعَلَى أَوْلاَدِيْ وَعَلَى مَالِي وَعَلَى أَصْ حَابِي وَعَلَ ى أَدْیَانِھِ م
وَعَلَى أَمْوَالِھِم أَلْفَ أَلْفِ أَلْفِ لاَ حَوْلَ وَلاَ قُوَّةَ إِلاَّ بِاللهِ الْعَلِيِّ الْعَظِیْمِ .
بِسْمِ اللهِ وَبِاللهِ وَمِنَ اللهِ وَإِلَى اللهِ وَعَلَى اللهِ وَفِي اللهِ وَلاَ حَوْلَ وَلاَ قُوَّةَ إِلاَّ بِاللهِ الْعَلِيِّ الْعَظِیْمِ .
بِسْمِ اللهِ عَلَى دِینِي وَعَلَى نَفْسِي وَعَلَى أَوْلاَدِي
بِسْمِ اللهِ عَلَى مَالِي وَعَلَى أَھْلِي بِسْمِ اللهِ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ أَعْطَانِیھِ رَبِّي .
بِسْمِ اللهِ رَبِّ السَّمَوَاتِ السَّبْعِ وَرَبِّ الأَرْضِیْنَ السَّبْعِ وَرَبِّ الْعَرْشِ الْعَظِیْمِ . بِسْمِ اللهِ الَّذِي لاَ یَضُرُّ مَعَ
اسْمِھِ شَيْءٌ فِي الأَرْضِ وَلاَ فِي السَّمَاءِ وَھُوَ السَّمِیْعُ الْعَلِیْم ( 3 كالي)
بِسْمِ اللهِ خَیْرِ الأَسْمَاءِ فِي الأَرْضِ وَفِي السَّمَاءِ ,
بِسْمِ اللهِ أَفْتَتِحُ وَبِھِ أَخْتَتِمُ ,
اللهُ , اللهُ , اللهُ , اللهُ رَبِّي لاَ أُشْرِكُ بِھِ شَیْئًا ,
اللهُ , اللهُ , اللهُ , اللهُ رَبِّي لاَ إِلَھَ إِلاَّ اللهُ ,
اللهُ أَعَزُّ وَأَجَلُّ وَأَكْبَرُ مِمَّا أَخَافُ وَأَحْذَرُ ( 3 كالي)
(قُلْ ھُوَ اللَّھُ أَحَدٌ , اللَّھُ الصَّمَدُ , لَمْ یَلِدْ وَلَمْ یُولَدْ , وَلَمْ یَكُنْ لَھُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ 3) .) كالي)
وَمِثْلُ ذَلِكَ عَنْ یَمِیْنِ ي وَعَ نْ أَیْمَ انِھِمْ وَمِثْ لُ ذَلِ كَ عَ نْ شِ مَالِي وَعَ نْ شَ مَائِلِھِم , وَمِثْ لُ ذَلِ كَ مِ نْ خَلْفِ ي
وَمِن خَلْفِھِم وَمِثْلُ ذَلِكَ مِنْ فَوْقِِيْ وَمِنْ فَوْقِھِمْ وَمِثْلُ ذَلِكَ مِنْ تَحْتِي وَمِنْ تَحْتِھِم وَمِثْ لُ ذَلِ كَ مُحِی طٌ بِ ي
وَبِھِم , اللَّھُمَّ إِنِّي أَسْأَلُكَ لِي وَلَھُمْ مِنْ خَیْرِكَ بِخَیْرِكَ الَّذِي لاَ یَمْلِكُھُ غَیْرُكَ ,
اللَّھُمَّ اجْعَلْنِي وَإِیَّاھُمْ فِي عِبَادِكَ وَعِیَاذِكَ وَعِیَالِكَ وَجِوَارِكَ وَأَمَانَتِ كَ وَحِ رْزِكَ وَحِزْبِ كَ وَكَنَفِ كَ مِ نْ كُ لِّ

شَیْطَانٍ وَسُلْطَانٍ وَإِنْسٍ وَجَانٍ وَبَاغٍ وَحَاسِدٍ وَسَبُعٍ وَحَیَّةٍ وَعَقْرَبٍ وَمِنْ كُ لِّ دَابَ ةٍ أَنْ تَ آخِ ذٌ بِنَاصِ یَتِھَا
إِنَّ رَبِّي عَلَى صِرَاطٍ مُسْتَقِیمٍ ,
حَسْبِ يَ ال رَّبُّ مِ نَ الْمَرْبُ وْبِینَ , حَسْبِ يَ الْخَ الِقُ مِ نَ الْمَخْلُ وقِینَ , حَسْبِ يَ ال رَّازِقُ مِ نَ الْمَ رْزُوْقِیْنَ ,
حَسْبِيَ السَّاتِرُ مِنَ الْمَسْتُورِیْنَ , حَسْبِ يَ النَّاصِ رُ مِ نَ الْمَنْصُ ورِیْنَ , حَسْبِ يَ الْقَ اھِرُ مِ نَ الْمَقْھُ ورِینَ ,
حَسْبِيَ الَّذِي ھُوَ حَسْبِي , حَسْبِيَ مَنْ لَمْ یَزَلْ حَسْبِي , حَسْبِيَ اللهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِیْلُ , حَسْبِيَ اللهُ مِنْ جَمِی عِ
خَلْقِھِ ,( إِنَّ وَلِیِّيَ اللهُ الَّذِي نَزَّلَ الْكِتَابَ وَھُوَ یَتَوَلىَّ الصَّالِحِیْنَ )
(وَإِذَا قَ رَأْتَ الْقُ رْءَانَ جَعَلْنَ ا بَیْنَ كَ وَبَیْ نَ الَّ ذِینَ لَ ا یُؤْمِنُ ونَ بِالْ آخِرَةِ حِجَابً ا مَسْتُ ورًا , وَجَعَلْنَ ا عَلَ ى
قُلُوبِھِمْ أَكِنَّةً أَنْ یَفْقَھُوهُ وَفِي ءَاذَانِھِمْ وَقْ رًا وَإِذَا ذَكَ رْتَ رَبَّ كَ فِ ي الْقُ رْءَانِ وَحْ دَهُ وَلَّ وْا عَلَ ى أَدْبَارِھِ مْ
نُفُورًا) ,
(فَإِنْ تَوَلَّوْا فَقُلْ حَسْبِيَ اللَّھُ لَا إِلَھَ إِلَّا ھُوَ عَلَیْھِ تَوَكَّلْتُ وَھُوَ رَبُّ الْعَرْشِ الْعَظِیمِ)
وَلاَ حَ وْلَ وَلاَ قُ وَّةَ إِلاَّ بِ اللهِ الْعَلِ يِّ الْعَظِیْ مِ وَصَ لَّى اللهُ عَلَ ى سَ یِّدِنَا مُحَمَّ دٍ وَعَلَ ى آلِ ھِ وَصَ حْبِھِ وَسَ لَّم
(تیوف كانن ، كیري , دفن , بلاكغ 3 كالي)
خَبَأْتُ نَفْسِي فِي خَزَائِنِ بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِیْمِ , أَقْفَالُھَا ثِقَتِي بِ اللهِ , مَفَاتِیْحُھَ ا لاَ حَ وْلَ وَلاَ قُ وَّةَ إِلاَّ
بِاللهِ , أُدَافِعُ بِكَ اللَّھُمَّ عَنْ نَفْسِي مَا أُطِیْقُ وَمَ ا لاَ أُطِیْ قُ لاَ طَاقَ ةَ لِمَخْلُ وقٍ مَ عَ قُ دْرَةِ الْخَ الِقِ . حَسْبِ يَ
اللهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِیْلُ .
وَصَلَّى اللهُ عَلَى سَیِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِھِ وَصَحْبِھِ وَسَلَّم
سورة الإخلاص
سورة الأعراف الأیة 196
46- سورة الإسراء الأیة 45
سورة التوبة الأیة 129
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The Hidden Philosophy of Abundance

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
Metaphysics refers to the branch of philosophy that seeks to address all things Universal whether it is divine, cosmic, spiritual, or human. Ultimately, those who study metaphysics seek to address how we play a role in this continuum. It addresses those things perceived to be hidden.'

To that end, many institutions including seminaries, universities, schools of metaphysics, and the like have found it necessary not to make the teachings of all metaphysics available to the everyday individual. This exclusion technique is designed to keep the study of metaphysics 'mystical and hierarchical.' So, where does that leave you?

Limited' you are limited to the few books published by Success Philosophers, Cosmologists, and Success Coaches. These authors may write something as vague as your thoughts produce the things in your life. However, they do not explain the metaphysics involved. They do not explain how .energy follows thoughts. They do not explain how .thoughts steer our lives in specific directions. Unfortunately, the most hidden of all branches of Metaphysics is Metaphysical Success

Philosophy or what is referred to as the Philosophy of Abundance. Why is it the most hidden branch of Metaphysics--because, most of the world's governments and nations have become capitalistic societies. In order for capitalism to work, you must have two groups the haves and the have-nots.. You must have people who are in debt. You must have a large demand in order to have a large supply.

If everyone received Abundance Training, then there would not be the large gap between the haves and the have-nots. In fact, many of our issues involving poverty, homelessness, debt, broken homes, and broken families would be eliminated because people would have the tools to live in Divine Flow of wealth, success, financial freedom, love, devotion, and optimal health.

The governments of the world make their money from our poor health, debt, and struggle to 'just get by.' Liberation comes with knowledge.

Now, because of the great demand in the desire to live abundantly, some Success

Philosophers and Psychologists have capitalized on this demand. Instead of providing teachings and trainings in Abundance, they now offer books, tapes, lectures, and workshops on .Behavioral Economics. While this subject has helped a few people who are in debt and earn about $100,000 annually, it is not inclusive of everyone. Behavioral

Economics are for people who have a substantial income but can't seem to manage their money.

Abundance Training is much more empowering. It is about enriching the whole-self.

You are not affected by the conditions of the economy or limited because you don't already earn a 6 figure salary. Your ability to increase your wealth, live in abundance, and have financial freedom is based on your understanding of Universal, Cosmic, and Spiritual Laws that govern the 'flow 'of wealth, success, love, devotion, financial freedom, and optimal health. Abundance Training teaches you how to operate in divine flow of this energy.

Wealth, money, success, love, health it is all energy. Once you know how to operate in the flow of that energy, you have the ability turn the unmanifested into the manifested. You can access intelligence of substance as it works to bring our true desires to fruition.

About the author: Carmellita Brown is an Wellness and Success Coach. She is the instructor of the Online course 'Abundance Training 101: The Universal Law of Abundance" available at: http://universalclass.com/i/crn/14056.htm and the online Course 'Lose Weight While Becoming a Wellness Coach" available at http://universalclass.com/i/crn/9478.htm.
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The History of Hizib Bahri

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
Arab tradition, marked the beginning Hizib word refers to something that "throng" and "clique". That is the consequence there is the word "Hizbullah", meaning "a set" of the troops who fought in the name of God. But Hizbullah own words sometimes also used to call the angels.

Still fresh in our memories, when the Prophet and his friends battle against the idolaters in the moon, God deliberately bring 5,000 troops as reinforcement of sign white, they are the angels (Hizbullah)

Hizib own words sometimes also used to call "a gloomy berarak" or "remains cloudy." Such hizbun min al-ghumum (some or a group of gray)

Turns to the next word in hizib tradition thoriqot or developing in pesantren (islamic school)is to "mark" a reading-specific reading. For example hizib read Friday; are wirid-specific wirid read Friday.

For the next, meaning hizib is wirid itself. Or can also mean munajat, there hizib Ghazaly, Hizib Bukhori, Hizib Nawawi, Hizib Bahri, who each have their own history.

Sheikh Abu Al-Hasan asy asy Syadzily famous as a series of prayer has many fine and beautiful, as rich as treasury hizib-hizibnya. One of the famous hizib his first since up to now is hizib Bahri and hizib Nashor. Both hizib is diamalkan by many Muslims around the world, especially ulama-ulama large, despite some of them do not follow thoriqot asy Sheikh.

Bahri Hizib which means that on receipt hizib asy asy Sheikh Abu Al-Hasan Syadzili directly from the Prophet SAW associated with the sea in which there is no wind. History hizib Bahri received is as follows:

At that time, Sheikh Abu Al-Hasan asy asy Syadzili middle perjalan perform the Hajj to the holy land. That one must travel across the red sea. To cross the ocean sedianya that he will ride the boat belonging to someone who is Christian. He also will sail though with different goals asy Sheikh. However, the situation on the sea waku that there are not enough wind to run the ship. Such a situation occur until many days, so perjalannapun be delayed. Until the end of a day, met with Sheikh asy of Rasulullah SAW. In that meeting, Rasulullah SAW directly teach hizib Bahri in dictation '(dictation) to asy Sheikh.

After the new hizib Bahri he received from the SAW Rasulululah he read, and then he told the owner that the boat is leaving and running perahunya. Knowing the situation that is not possible, because the wind needed to run the boat is still not there, people do not want itupun the command asy Sheikh. However asy Sheikh told that the boat remains diberangkatkan. "Come on, leave and run perahumu! now it's time the wind came, "said Sheikh asy to the man. And the fact is correct, the wind slowly began to breathe, and finally perahupun can walk. Alkisah short stories and the Christian states itupun ago entered islam.

Said Sheikh Abdurrahman al Busthomi, "Hizbul Bahri is already held in the earth's surface. Bahri hizbul flag waver, and in mosques. The scholars have said that hizbul Bahri contain Ismullohil 'adhom and some of the very noble secret.

In the book Kasyf al-Zhunun `an al-Pole Asami wa al-Funun, Haji Khalifah a librarian famous origin Constantinople (Istanbul Turkey) write a different warranty given asy Sheikh Abu Al-Hasan Syadzili with Hizib Bahrinya this. Of them, according to Haji Khalifah, Sheikh asy Syadzili once said: If hizibku (Hizib Bahri, Red.) Read this in Baghdad, it was certainly not akan jatuh. Perhaps the asy Sheikh Syadzili with the fall of Baghdad there is a fall into the hands of the Tartars.

Bahri Hizib when read in a place, then it will termpat avoid catastrophe, says al-Sheikh Abu Al-Hasan, as written in Kasyf Haji Khalifah al-Zhunun.

Haji Khalifah also cite scholars-scholars comment on this Hizib Bahri. There, that people who read Hizib Bahar istiqamah, it does not burn off or be lost. When Hizib Bahri written on the wall or the gate house, it will be protected from the meaning of ugly people and so on.

Perhaps, people who practice with continuous Hizib Bahri, akan get protection from all the troops'. In fact, if there are evil people who intend menyatroni want her home, he will see the sea water that is very knowledgeable. Si penyatron akan make the withdrawal movement of the pool will get power from ocean swallow. When in the evening, he will continue to make token pool until morning the owner arrived home and menegurnya.

Many of the comments, both from Sheikh Syadzili ASH and other scholars about the magical Hizib Bahri written in Kasyf Haji Khalifah al-Zhunun volume 1 (on the entry word Hizb). In addition, Haji Khalifah also states that Hizib Bahri has disyarahi by many scholars, including Sheikh Abu Sulayman al-Syadzili, Sheikh Zarruq, Sulthan and Ibn al-Harawi.

As presented in manaqib asy Sheikh Syadzili, that towards the end of his life, asy Sheikh has been to make disciples that he was their child, meaning the students thoriqot syadziliyah, that practice hizib Bahri. However, to practice Hizib this should be through talqin or diploma from a teacher who has taught for the authority. Someone who does not have any authority not entitled to give hizib or taught to other people. This is a adabiyah or ethics dilingkungan world thoriqot.

In Thoriqot Syadziliyah Map Tulungagung, each practice aurod, wirid and hizib always begins with the intention and the word "Lillahi ta'ala," every student should not ask what fadhilah and benefits of wirid or hizib, because it can reduce or eliminate sincerity. Map for Syadziliyah Jamaah Tulungagung Hizib function itself is to re-Hizib himself, for merontokkan sex nafsunya, so that it can wushul to God. That is the goal berthoriqot people, because if not for the purpose of God (not Lillahi ta'ala) then it will be between the Hijab itself with God, not even close to the more remote from Allah SWT, naudzubillahi mindhalik.

Source:
1. The Quthub Court, Sheikh Abu Al-Hasan manaqib asy Syadzili, Publisher MAP, Tulungagung.
2. sidogiri.com
3. Hizib literature, publishers LKIS Read More..
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Introduction to the chakras

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
What chakras are and their psychological properties

Chakras are centers of energy, located on the midline of the body. There are seven of them, and they govern our psychological properties. The chakras located on the lower part of our body are our instinctual side, the highest ones our mental side.

Chakras on the midline of the bodyThe chakras can have various levels of activity. When they're "open," they're considered operative in a normal fashion.

Ideally, all chakras would contribute to our being. Our instincts would work together with our feelings and thinking. However, this is usually not the case. Some chakras are not open enough (being under-active), and to compensate, other chakras are over-active. The ideal state is where the chakras are balanced. To find out what the state of your chakras is, do the chakra test.

There exist lots of techniques to balance the chakras. Mostly techniques to open chakras are used. It makes no sense to try to make over-active chakras less active, as they are compensating for other chakras. To restore the compensation they'd be over-active again in no time. To stop them from compensating, the chakras they are compensating for must be opened. See the techniques to open chakras.


1 - Root chakra

The Root chakra is about being physically there and feeling at home in situations. If it is open, you feel grounded, stable and secure. You don't unnecessarily distrust people. You feel present in the here and now and connected to your physical body. You feel you have sufficient territory.

If you tend to be fearful or nervous, your Root chakra is probably under-active. You'd easily feel unwelcome.

If this chakra is over-active, you may be very materialistic and greedy. You're probably obsessed with being secure and resist change.


2 - Sacral chakra

The Sacral chakra is about feeling and sexuality. When it is open, your feelings flow freely, and are expressed without you being over-emotional. You are open to intimacy and you can be passionate and lively. You have no problems dealing with your sexuality.

If you tend to be stiff and unemotional or have a "poker face," the Sacral chakra is under-active. You're not very open to people.

If this chakra is over-active, you tend to be emotional all the time. You'll feel emotionally attached to people and you can be very sexual.


3 - Navel chakra

The Navel chakra is about asserting yourself in a group. When it is open, you feel in control and you have sufficient self esteem.

When the Navel chakra is under-active, you tend to be passive and indecisive. You're probably timid and don't get what you want.

If this chakra is over-active, you are domineering and probably even aggressive.


4 - Heart chakra

The Heart chakra is about love, kindness and affection. When it is open, you are compassionate and friendly, and you work at harmonious relationships.

When your Heart chakra is under-active, you are cold and distant.

If this chakra is over-active, you are suffocating people with your love and your love probably has quite selfish reasons.


5 - Throat chakra

The Throat chakra is about self-expression and talking. When it is open, you have no problems expressing yourself, and you might be doing so as an artist.

When this chakra is under-active, you tend not to speak much, and you probably are introverted and shy. Not speaking the truth may block this chakra.

If this chakra is over-active, you tend to speak too much, usually to domineer and keep people at a distance. You're a bad listener if this is the case.


6 - Third Eye chakra

The Third Eye chakra is about insight and visualization. When it is open, you have a good intuition. You may tend to fantasize.

If it is under-active, you're not very good at thinking for yourself, and you may tend to rely on authorities. You may be rigid in your thinking, relying on beliefs too much. You might even get confused easily.

If this chakra is over-active, you may live in a world of fantasy too much. In excessive cases halucinations are possible.


7 - Crown chakra

The Crown chakra is about wisdom and being one with the world. When this chakra is open, you are unprejudiced and quite aware of the world and yourself.

If it is under-active, you're not very aware of spirituality. You're probably quite rigid in your thinking.

If this chakra is over-active, you are probably intellectualizing things too much. You may be addicted to spirituality and are probably ignoring your bodily needs.
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The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for “The Hammer of Witches”, or “Hexenhammer” in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Its main purpose was to challenge all arguments against the existence of witchcraft and to instruct magistrates on how to identify, interrogate and convict witches.

Some modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his name, but the evidence to support this is weak. Both men were members of the Dominican Order and Inquisitors for the Catholic Church. They submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, seeking its endorsement.

While general consensus is that The Catholic Church banned the book in 1490 by placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (”List of Prohibited Books”), the first Index was, in fact, produced in 1559 under the direction of Pope Paul IV. Therefore such claims are dubious, at best. I believe people are confusing the fact that the Inquisition reportedly denounced Heinrich Kramer in 1490 as being a ban upon the Malleus Maleficarum. Thus far, I’ve yet to find the Malleus on any Index Librorum Prohibitorum (copies of which are available on the Internet - most notably the 1559 and 1948 editions).

The papal bull, which appeared at the beginning of the book, could rightly be said to be misleading, because it addresses Kramer’s and Sprenger’s authorities as Inquisitors in certain lands, not the creation of the Malleus Maleficarum. The Catholic Encyclopedia states “Innocent’s Bull enacted nothing new. Its direct purport was simply to ratify the powers already conferred upon Henry Institoris and James Sprenger, inquisitors, to deal with persons of every class and with every form of crime (for example, with witchcraft as well as heresy), and it called upon the Bishop of Strasburg to lend the inquisitors all possible support.” So Kramer treated the bull as if it was an endorsement of his book, but it was not. However, the inclusion of the bull certainly gave the impression that the Malleus Maleficarum had been granted approval by Pope Innocent VIII.

Some believe that the Letter of Approbation from The Faculty of Theology of the University of Cologne was a falsified document. General consensus is that Heinrich Kramer brought the Malleus Maleficarum before the University of Cologne requesting an endorsement, but was rebuffed. Tradition has it that Kramer forged the document that he included with his work, that he and James Sprenger parted ways on bad terms, and that Kramer was denounced by the Inquisition in 1490. One would expect, however, that had such a document been forged, Mr. Kramer would not have subsequently been able to conduct very popular lectures in Venice starting in 1495, much less be empowered to proceed against the Waldensians and Picards in 1500.

I believe it’s much more likely that the Letter of Approbation was genuine, but that the Malleus itself was never actually read by the gentlemen who endorsed it. I think it’s much more likely that Dr. Edward Peters was correct when, in his section of the work Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Volume Three - The Middle Ages [page 239], he stated; “The approval of the theological faculty of Cologne was arranged through a complicated series of academic negotiations – it, too, does not address the remarkable qualities of the work itself. It is doubtful whether Innocent VIII or the theological faculty of Cologne ever read the work.”

Also, according to Dr. Christopher Mackay, whose recent translation represents a reliable modern scholarly edition of the Malleus Maleficarum, “The argument was made in the nineteenth century by a scholar hostile to what the Malleus stood for that the approbation was a forgery by Institoris and that Sprenger had nothing to do with the composition. The evidence for this is in my view very tenuous (and the main argument is clearly invalid). Nonetheless, once the argument was put forward, it took on a life of its own, and people continue to advance arguments in favor of the idea that Sprenger’s involvement was a falsification perpetrated by Institoris, despite the fact that this argument was vitiated from the start.”

Whether or not the work was ever officially banned by the Catholic Church, the Malleus Maleficarum became the de-facto handbook for witch-hunters and Inquisitors throughout Late Medieval Europe. Between the years 1487 and 1520, it was published thirteen times, and between 1574 to 1669 it was again published sixteen times.

The Malleus Maleficarum perhaps owes most of its popularity to Johannes Gutenberg. It was the invention of the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century that allowed the work to spread so rapidly throughout Europe.

- Wicasta Lovelace
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Out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes Meraga Sukma),

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE), is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body (autoscopy). The term out-of-the-body experience was introduced in 1943 by G.N.M Tyrrell in his book Apparitions, and adopted by, for example, Celia Green and Robert Monroe as a bias-free alternative to belief-centric labels such as "astral projection" or "spirit walking".

Though the term usefully distances researchers from scientifically problematic concepts such as the soul, scientists still know little about the phenomenon. One in ten people has an out-of-body experience at some time in their lives. OBEs are often part of the near-death experience, and reportedly may also lead to astral projection. Those who have experienced OBEs sometimes claim to have observed details which were unknown to them beforehand.

In some cases the phenomenon appears to occur spontaneously; in others it is associated with a physical or mental trauma, use of psychedelic drugs, dissociative drugs, or a dream-like state. Many techniques aiming to induce the experience deliberately have been developed[7], for example visualization while in a relaxed, meditative state. Recent (2007) studies have shown that experiences somewhat similar to OBEs can be induced by direct brain stimulation. Some of those who experience OBEs claimed to have willed themselves out of their bodies, while others report having found themselves being pulled from their bodies (usually preceded by a feeling of paralysis). In other accounts, the feeling of being outside the body was suddenly realized after the fact, and the experiencers saw their own bodies almost by accident. OBEs often occur during the borderline stage between REM sleep and arousal when sleep paralysis may persist and dream imagery may mingle with sensory input.

Some neurologists have suspected that the event is triggered by a mismatch between visual and tactile signals. They used a virtual reality setup to recreate an OBE. The subject looked through goggles and saw his own body as it would appear to an outside observer standing behind him. The experimenter then touched the subject at the same time as a rod appeared to touch the virtual image. The experiment created an illusion of being behind and outside one's body. However, critics point out that it is uncertain how this relates to the OBE phenomenon.

OBEs are sometimes reported to be preceded by and initiated from a lucid dream state, though other types of immediate and spontaneous experience are also reported. In many cases, people who claimed to have had an OBE reported being asleep, on the verge of sleep, or already asleep shortly before the experience. A large percentage of these cases referred to situations where the sleep was not particularly deep (due to illness, noises in other rooms, emotional stress, exhaustion from overworking, frequent re-awakening, etc.). In most of these cases, the subjects then felt themselves awake; about half of them noted a feeling of sleep paralysis.

Astral projection is a paranormal interpretation of out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of one or more non-physical planes of existence and an associated body beyond the physical. Commonly such planes are called astral, etheric, or spiritual. Astral projection is often experienced as the spirit or astral body leaving the physical body to travel in the spirit world or astral plane.

Evidence for objective reality of projection on to the etheric plane (a near-copy of the physical plane) is sometimes suggested when people, such as patients during surgery, describe OBEs in which they see or hear events or objects outside their sensory range (for instance, Pam Reynolds reported experiencing an OBE during brain surgery and described a surgical instrument she had not seen previously, as well as conversation that occurred while she was under anethesia).
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Third eye - Mata Ke 3 - Indera ke 6

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
The third eye (also known as the inner eye) is a mystical and esoteric concept referring in part to the ajna (brow) chakra in certain Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. It is also spoken of as the gate that leads within to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness. In New Age spirituality, the third eye may alternately symbolize a state of enlightenment or the evocation of mental images having deeply-personal spiritual or psychological significance. The third eye is often associated with visions, clairvoyance, precognition, and out-of-body experiences, and people who have allegedly developed the capacity to use their third eyes are sometimes known as seers.

In Hinduism and Buddhism, the third eye is a symbol of enlightenment (see moksha and nirvana). In the Indian tradition, it is referred to as the jjanacaksu, the eye of knowledge, which is the seat of the 'teacher inside' or antar-guru. The third eye is the ajna chakra (sixth chakra) also known as brow chakra or brow centre. This is commonly denoted in Indian and East Asian iconography with a dot, eye or mark on the forehead of deities or enlightened beings, such as Shiva, the Buddha, or any number of yogis, sages and bodhisattvas. This symbol is called the "Third Eye" or "Eye of Wisdom", or, in Buddhism, the urna. In Hinduism, it is believed that the opening of Shiva's third eye causes the eventual destruction of the universe.

Many Hindus wear a tilak between the eyebrows to represent the third eye.

In the Upanishads, a human being is likened to a city with ten gates. Nine gates (eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth, urethra, anus) lead outside to the sensory world. The third eye is the tenth gate and leads to inner realms housing myriad spaces of consciousness.
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Binaural beats

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
Binaural beats or binaural tones are auditory processing artifacts, or apparent sounds, the perception of which arises in the brain independent of physical stimuli. This effect was discovered in 1839 by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove.

The brain produces a phenomenon resulting in low-frequency pulsations in the loudness of a perceived sound when two tones at slightly different frequencies are presented separately, one to each of a subject's ears, using stereo headphones. A beating tone will be perceived, as if the two tones mixed naturally, out of the brain. The frequency of the tones must be below about 1,000 to 1,500 hertz for the beating to be heard. The difference between the two frequencies must be small (below about 30 Hz) for the effect to occur; otherwise, the two tones will be heard separately and no beat will be perceived.

Binaural beats are of interest to neurophysiologists investigating the sense of hearing. Second (and more controversially), binaural beats reportedly influence the brain in more subtle ways through the entrainment of brainwaves and can be used to produce relaxation and other health benefits such as pain relief.

History

Heinrich Wilhelm Dove discovered binaural beats in 1839. While research about them continued after that, the subject remained somewhat of a scientific curiosity until 134 years later, with the publishing of Gerald Oster's article "Auditory Beats in the Brain" (Scientific American, 1973). Oster's article identified and assembled the scattered islands of relevant research since Dove, offering tremendous fresh insight (and new laboratory findings) to research on binaural beats.

In particular, Oster saw binaural beats as a powerful tool for cognitive and neurological research, addressing questions such as how animals locate sounds in their three-dimensional environment, and also the remarkable ability of animals to pick out and focus on specific sounds in a sea of noise (what is known as the "cocktail party effect").

Oster also considered binaural beats to be a potentially useful medical diagnostic tool, not merely for finding and assessing auditory impairments, but also for more general neurological conditions. (Binaural beats involve different neurological pathways than ordinary auditory processing.) For example, Oster found that a number of his subjects that could not perceive binaural beats suffered from Parkinson's disease. In one particular case, Oster was able to follow the subject through a week-long treatment of Parkinson's disease; at the outset the patient could not perceive binaural beats; but by the end of the week of treatment, the patient was able to hear them.

In corroborating an earlier study, Oster also reported gender differences in the perception of beats. Specifically, women seemed to experience two separate peaks in their ability to perceive binaural beats- peaks possibly correlating with specific points in the menstrual cycle (onset of menstruation and approx. 15 after). This data led Oster to wonder if binaural beats could be used as a tool for measuring relative levels of estrogen.

The effects of binaural beats on consciousness were first examined by physicists Thomas Campbell and Dennis Mennerich, who under the direction of Robert Monroe sought to reproduce a subjective impression of 4hz oscillation that they associated with out of body experience. On the strength of their findings, Monroe spawned the binaural self-development industry by forming The Monroe Institute, now a charitable binaural research and education organization.

Physiology

The sensation of binaural beats is believed to originate in the superior olivary nucleus, a part of the brain stem. They appear to be related to the brain's ability to locate the sources of sounds in three dimensions and to track moving sounds, which also involves inferior colliculus (IC) neurons. Regarding entrainment, the study of rhythmicity provides insights into the understanding of temporal information processing in the human brain. Auditory rhythms rapidly entrain motor responses into stable steady synchronization states below and above conscious perception thresholds. Activated regions include primary sensorimotor and cingulate areas, bilateral opercular premotor areas, bilateral SII, ventral prefrontal cortex, and, subcortically, anterior insula, putamen, and thalamus. Within the cerebellum, vermal regions and anterior hemispheres ipsilateral to the movement became significantly activated. Tracking temporal modulations additionally activated predominantly right prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and intraparietal regions as well as posterior cerebellar hemispheres. A study of aphasic subjects who had a severe stroke versus normal subjects showed that the aphasic subject could not hear the binaural beats whereas the normal subjects could.

Overview

Binaural beats may influence functions of the brain besides those related to hearing. This phenomenon is called frequency following response. The concept is that if one receives a stimulus with a frequency in the range of brain waves, the predominant brain wave frequency is said to be likely to move towards the frequency of the stimulus (a process called entrainment). In addition, binaural beats have been credibly documented to relate to both spatial perception & stereo auditory recognition, and, according to the frequency following response, activation of various sites in the brain.

The stimulus does not have to be aural; it can also be visual[14] or a combination of aural and visual.[15] (One such example would be Dreamachine.) However, using alpha frequencies with such stimuli can trigger photosensitive epilepsy.

Perceived human hearing is limited to the range of frequencies from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, though Infrasound - sound below 20Hz - still have scientifically observable effects on humans, however, it is not readily audible, especially at low volume levels. While the frequencies of human brain waves are below about 40 Hz. To account for this lack of perception, binaural beat frequencies are used. Beat frequencies of 40 Hz have been produced in the brain with binaural sound and measured experimentally.

When the perceived beat frequency corresponds to the delta, theta, alpha, beta, or gamma range of brainwave frequencies, the brainwaves entrain to or move towards the beat frequency. For example, if a 315 Hz sine wave is played into the right ear and a 325 Hz one into the left ear, the brain is entrained towards the beat frequency (10 Hz, in the alpha range. Since alpha range is associated with relaxation, this has a relaxing effect or if in the beta range, more alertness. An experiment with binaural sound stimulation using beat frequencies in the Beta range on some participants and Delta/Theta range in other participants, found better vigilance performance and mood in those on the awake alert state of Beta range stimulation.

Binaural beat stimulation has been used fairly extensively to induce a variety of states of consciousness, and there has been some work done in regards to the effects of these stimuli on relaxation, focus, attention, and states of consciousness.[ Studies have shown that with repeated training to distinguish close frequency sounds that a plastic reorganization of the brain occurs for the trained frequencies and is capable of asymmetric hemispheric balancing.
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EEG measures during anesthesia

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
Electroencephalogram (EEG) measures taken during anesthesia exhibit stereotypic changes as anesthetic depth increases. These changes include complex patterns of frequency slowing accompanied by amplitude increases which typically peak when loss of consciousness occurs (loss of responses to verbal commands; loss of righting reflex).

As anesthetic depth increases from light surgical levels to deep anesthesia, the EEG exhibits disrupted rhythmic waveforms, high amplitude burst suppression activity, and finally, very low amplitude isoelectric or 'flat line' activity.

Various signal analysis approaches have been used to quantify these pattern changes and can provide an indication of loss of recall, loss of consciousness and anesthetic depth. Monitors have been developed using various algorithms for signal analysis and are commercially available, but none have as yet proven 100% accurate. This is a difficult problem and an active area of medical research.
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History of Electroencephalography (EEG)

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
A timeline of the history of EEG is given by Swartz.[5] Richard Caton (1842–1926), a physician practicing in Liverpool, presented his findings about electrical phenomena of the exposed cerebral hemispheres of rabbits and monkeys in the British Medical Journal in 1875. In 1890, Beck published an investigation of spontaneous electrical activity of the brain of rabbits and dogs which included rhythmic oscillations altered by light.

In 1912, Russian physiologist, Vladimir Vladimirovich Pravdich-Neminsky published the first EEG and the evoked potential of the mammalian (dog).[6] In 1914, Cybulsky and Jelenska-Macieszyna photographed EEG-recordings of experimentally induced seizures.

German physiologist and psychiatrist Hans Berger (1873–1941) began his studies of the human EEG in 1920. He gave the device its name and is sometimes credited with inventing the EEG, though others had performed similar experiments. His work was later expanded by Edgar Douglas Adrian. In 1934, Fisher and Lowenback first demonstrated epileptiform spikes. In 1935 Gibbs, Davis and Lennox described interictal spike waves and the 3 cycles/s pattern of clinical absence seizures, which began the field of clinical electroencephalography. Subsequently, in 1936 Gibbs and Jasper reported the interictal spike as the focal signature of epilepsy. The same year, the first EEG laboratory opened at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Franklin Offner (1911–1999), professor of biophysics at Northwestern University developed a prototype of the EEG which incorporated a piezoelectric inkwriter called a Crystograph (the whole device was typically known as the Offner Dynograph).

In 1947, The American EEG Society was founded and the first International EEG congress was held. In 1953 Aserinsky and Kleitmean describe REM sleep.

In the 1950s, William Grey Walter developed an adjunct to EEG called EEG topography which allowed for the mapping of electrical activity across the surface of the brain. This enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the 1980s and seemed especially promising for psychiatry. It was never accepted by neurologists and remains primarily a research tool.
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Electroencephalography (EEG) Method

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
In conventional scalp EEG, the recording is obtained by placing electrodes on the scalp with a conductive gel or paste, usually after preparing the scalp area by light abrasion to reduce impedance due to dead skin cells. Many systems typically use electrodes, each of which is attached to an individual wire. Some systems use caps or nets into which electrodes are embedded; this is particularly common when high-density arrays of electrodes are needed.

Electrode locations and names are specified by the International 10–20 system for most clinical and research applications (except when high-density arrays are used). This system ensures that the naming of electrodes is consistent across laboratories. In most clinical applications, 19 recording electrodes (plus ground and system reference) are used. A smaller number of electrodes are typically used when recording EEG from neonates. Additional electrodes can be added to the standard set-up when a clinical or research application demands increased spatial resolution for a particular area of the brain. High-density arrays (typically via cap or net) can contain up to 256 electrodes more-or-less evenly spaced around the scalp.

Each electrode is connected to one input of a differential amplifier (one amplifier per pair of electrodes); a common system reference electrode is connected to the other input of each differential amplifier. These amplifiers amplify the voltage between the active electrode and the reference (typically 1,000–100,000 times, or 60–100 dB of voltage gain). In analog EEG, the signal is then filtered (next paragraph), and the EEG signal is output as the deflection of pens as paper passes underneath. Most EEG systems these days, however, are digital, and the amplified signal is digitized via an analog-to-digital converter, after being passed through an anti-aliasing filter. Analog-to-digital sampling typically occurs at 256-512 Hz in clinical scalp EEG; sampling rates of up to 20 kHz are used in some research applications.

During the recording, a series of activation procedures may be used. These procedures may induce normal or abnormal EEG activity that might not otherwise be seen. These procedures include hyperventilation, photic stimulation (with a strobe light), eye closure, mental activity, sleep and sleep deprivation. During (inpatient) epilepsy monitoring, a patient's typical seizure medications may be withdrawn.

The digital EEG signal is stored electronically and can be filtered for display. Typical settings for the high-pass filter and a low-pass filter are 0.5-1 Hz and 35–70 Hz, respectively. The high-pass filter typically filters out slow artifact, such as electrogalvanic signals and movement artifact, whereas the low-pass filter filters out high-frequency artifacts, such as electromyographic signals. An additional notch filter is typically used to remove artifact caused by electrical power lines (60 Hz in the United States and 50 Hz in many other countries).

As part of an evaluation for epilepsy surgery, it may be necessary to insert electrodes near the surface of the brain, under the surface of the dura mater. This is accomplished via burr hole or craniotomy. This is referred to variously as "electrocorticography (ECoG)", "intracranial EEG (I-EEG)" or "subdural EEG (SD-EEG)". Depth electrodes may also be placed into brain structures, such as the amygdala or hippocampus, structures which are common epileptic foci and may not be "seen" clearly by scalp EEG. The electrocorticographic signal is processed in the same manner as digital scalp EEG (above), with a couple of caveats. ECoG is typically recorded at higher sampling rates than scalp EEG because of the requirements of Nyquist theorem—the subdural signal is composed of a higher predominance of higher frequency components. Also, many of the artifacts which affect scalp EEG do not impact ECoG, and therefore display filtering is often not needed.

A typical adult human EEG signal is about 10µV to 100 µV in amplitude when measured from the scalp [2] and is about 10–20 mV when measured from subdural electrodes.

Since an EEG voltage signal represents a difference between the voltages at two electrodes, the display of the EEG for the reading encephalographer may be set up in one of several ways. The representation of the EEG channels is referred to as a montage.

Bipolar montage
Each channel (i.e., waveform) represents the difference between two adjacent electrodes. The entire montage consists of a series of these channels. For example, the channel "Fp1-F3" represents the difference in voltage between the Fp1 electrode and the F3 electrode. The next channel in the montage, "F3-C3," represents the voltage difference between F3 and C3, and so on through the entire array of electrodes.

Referential montage
Each channel represents the difference between a certain electrode and a designated reference electrode. There is no standard position at which this reference is always placed; it is, however, at a different position than the "recording" electrodes. Midline positions are often used because they do not amplify the signal in one hemisphere vs. the other. Another popular reference is "linked ears," which is a physical or mathematical average of electrodes attached to both earlobes or mastoids.

Average reference montage
The outputs of all of the amplifiers are summed and averaged, and this averaged signal is used as the common reference for each channel.

Laplacian montage
Each channel represents the difference between an electrode and a weighted average of the surrounding electrodes.

When analog (paper) EEGs are used, the technologist switches between montages during the recording in order to highlight or better characterize certain features of the EEG. With digital EEG, all signals are typically digitized and stored in a particular (usually referential) montage; since any montage can be constructed mathematically from any other, the EEG can be viewed by the electroencephalographer in any display montage that is desired.

The EEG is read by a neurologist, optimally one who has specific training in the interpretation of EEGs. This is done by visual inspection of the waveforms. The use of computer signal processing of the EEG—so-called quantitative EEG—is somewhat controversial when used for clinical purposes (although there are many research uses).

Limitations

EEG has several limitations. Most important is its poor spatial resolution. EEG is most sensitive to a particular set of post-synaptic potentials: those which are generated in superficial layers of the cortex, on the crests of gyri directly abutting the skull and radial to the skull. Dendrites which are deeper in the cortex, inside sulci, in midline or deep structures (such as the cingulate gyrus or hippocampus), or producing currents which are tangential to the skull, have far less contribution to the EEG signal.

The meninges, cerebrospinal fluid and skull "smear" the EEG signal, obscuring its intracranial source.

It is mathematically impossible to reconstruct a unique intracranial current source for a given EEG signal, as some currents produce potentials that cancel each other out. This is referred to as the inverse problem. However, much work has been done to produce remarkably good estimates of, at least, a localized electric dipole that represents the recorded currents.

EEG vs fMRI and PET

EEG has several strong sides as a tool of exploring brain activity; for example, its time resolution is very high (on the level of a single millisecond). Other methods of looking at brain activity, such as PET and fMRI have time resolution between seconds and minutes. EEG measures the brain's electrical activity directly, while other methods record changes in blood flow (e.g., SPECT, fMRI) or metabolic activity (e.g., PET), which are indirect markers of brain electrical activity. EEG can be used simultaneously with fMRI so that high-temporal-resolution data can be recorded at the same time as high-spatial-resolution data, however, since the data derived from each occurs over a different time course, the data sets do not necessarily represent the exact same brain activity. There are technical difficulties associated with combining these two modalities, including the need to remove the MRI gradient artifact present during MRI acquisition and the ballistocardiographic artifact (resulting from the pulsatile motion of blood and tissue) from the EEG. Furthermore, currents can be induced in moving EEG electrode wires due to the magnetic field of the MRI.

EEG can be recorded at the same time as MEG so that data from these complimentary high-time-resolution techniques can be combined.
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Electroencephalography (EEG)

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain. In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain's spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time, usually 20–40 minutes, as recorded from multiple electrodes placed on the scalp. In neurology, the main diagnostic application of EEG is in the case of epilepsy, as epileptic activity can create clear abnormalities on a standard EEG study. A secondary clinical use of EEG is in the diagnosis of coma and encephalopathies. EEG used to be a first-line method for the diagnosis of tumors, stroke and other focal brain disorders, but this use has decreased with the advent of anatomical imaging techniques such as MRI and CT.

Derivatives of the EEG technique include evoked potentials (EP), which involves averaging the EEG activity time-locked to the presentation of a stimulus of some sort (visual, somatosensory, or auditory). Event-related potentials refer to averaged EEG responses that are time-locked to more complex processing of stimuli; this technique is used in cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and psychophysiological research.

Source of EEG activity

The electrical activity of the brain can be described in spatial scales from the currents within a single dendritic spine to the relatively gross potentials that the EEG records from the scalp, much the same way that the economics can be studied from the level of a single individual's personal finances to the macro-economics of nations. Neurons, or nerve cells, are electrically active cells which are primarily responsible for carrying out the brain's functions. Neurons create action potentials, which are discrete electrical signals that travel down axons and cause the release of chemical neurotransmitters at the synapse, which is an area of near contact between two neurons. This neurotransmitter then fits into a receptor in the dendrite or body of the neuron that is on the other side of the synapse, the post-synaptic neuron. The neurotransmitter, when combined with the receptor, typically causes an electrical current within dendrite or body of the post-synaptic neuron. Thousands of post-synaptic currents from a single neuron's dendrites and body then sum up to cause the neuron to generate an action potential (or not). This neuron then synapses on other neurons, and so on.

It is generally accepted that the activity measured by EEG are electrical potentials created by the post-synaptic currents, rather than by action potentials. More specifically, the scalp electrical potentials that produce EEG are due to the extracellular ionic currents caused by dendritic electrical activity (whereas the fields producing magnetoencephalographic signals are associated with intracellular ionic currents).

Although post-synaptic potentials generate the EEG signal, it is not possible for a scalp EEG to assess the activity within a single dendrite or neuron. Rather, a surface EEG reading is the summation of the synchronous activity of thousands or millions of neurons that have similar spatial orientation, radial to the scalp. Currents that are tangential to the scalp are not picked up by the EEG. The EEG therefore benefits from the parallel, radial arrangement of apical dendrites in the cortex. Because voltage fields fall off with the fourth power of the radius, activity from deep sources is more difficult to detect than currents near the skull.[1]

Scalp EEG activity shows oscillations at a variety of frequencies. Several of these oscillations have characteristic frequency ranges, spatial distributions and are associated with different states of brain functioning (e.g., waking and the various sleep stages). These oscillations represent synchronized activity over a network of neurons. The neuronal networks underlying some of these oscillations are understood (e.g., the thalamocortical resonance underlying sleep spindles), while many others are not (e.g., the system that generates the posterior basic rhythm).

[edit] Clinical use

A routine clinical EEG recording typically lasts 20-40 minutes (plus preparation time) and usually involves recording from 25 scalp electrodes. Routine EEG is typically used in the following clinical circumstances:

* to distinguish epileptic seizures from other types of spells, such as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, syncope (fainting), sub-cortical movement disorders and migraine variants.
* to differentiate "organic" encephalopathy or delirium from primary psychiatric syndromes such as catatonia
* to serve as an adjunct test of brain death
* to prognosticate, in certain instances, in patients with coma

At times, a routine EEG is not sufficient, particularly when it is necessary to record a patient while he/she is having a seizure. In this case, the patient may be admitted to the hospital for days or even weeks, while EEG is constantly being recorded (along with time-synchronized video and audio recording). A recording of an actual seizure (i.e., an ictal recording, rather than an inter-ictal recording of a possibly epileptic patient at some period between seizures) can give significantly better information about whether or not a spell is an epileptic seizure and the focus in the brain from which the seizure activity eminates.

Epilepsy monitoring is typically done

* to distinguish epileptic seizures from other types of spells, such as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, syncope (fainting), sub-cortical movement disorders and migraine variants.
* to characterize seizures for the purposes of treatment
* to localize the region of brain from which a seizure originates for work-up of possible seizure surgery

Additionally, EEG may be used to monitor certain procedures:

* to monitor the depth of anesthesia
* as an indirect indicator of cerebral perfusion in carotid endarterectomy
* to monitor amobarbital effect during the Wada test

EEG can also be used in intensive care units for brain function monitoring:

* to monitor for non-convulsive seizures/non-convulsive status epilepticus
* to monitor the effect of sedative/anesthesia in patients in medically induced coma (for treatment of refractory seizures or increased intracranial pressure)
* to monitor for secondary brain damage in conditions such as subarachnoid hemorrhage (currently a research method)

If a patient with epilepsy is being considered for resective surgery, it is often necessary to localize the focus (source) of the epileptic brain activity with a resolution greater than what is provided by scalp EEG. This is because the cerebrospinal fluid, skull and scalp smear the electrical potentials recorded by scalp EEG. In these cases, neurosurgeons typically implant strips and grids of electrodes (or penetrating depth electodes) under the dura mater, through either a craniotomy or a burr hole. The recording of these signals is referred to as electrocorticography (ECoG}, subdural EEG (sdEEG) or intracranial EEG (icEEG)--all terms for the same thing. The signal recorded from ECoG is on a different scale of activity than the brain activity recorded from scalp EEG. Low voltage, high frequency components that cannot be seen easily (or at all) in scalp EEG can be seen clearly in ECoG. Further, smaller electrodes (which cover a smaller parcel of brain suface) allow even lower voltage, faster components of brain activity to be seen. Some clinical sites record from penetrating microelectrodes.
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Clairvoyance - Terawang Jagad

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
The term Clairvoyance (from 17th century French with clair meaning "clear" and voyance meaning " vision") is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception. A person said to have the ability of clairvoyance is referred to as a clairvoyant ("one who sees clearly").

Claims for the existence of paranormal psychic abilities such as clairvoyance are highly controversial. Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not universally accepted by the scientific community.

Usage

Within parapsychology, clairvoyance is used exclusively to refer to the transfer of information that is both contemporary to, and hidden from, the clairvoyant. It is very different from telepathy in that the information is said to be gained directly from an external physical source, rather than being transferred from the mind of one individual to another.

Outside of parapsychology, clairvoyance is often used to refer to other forms of anomalous cognition, most commonly the perception of events that have occurred in the past, or which will occur in the future (known as retrocognition and precognition respectively), or to refer to communications with the dead (see Mediumship).

Clairvoyance is related to remote viewing, although the term "remote viewing" itself is not as widely applicable to clairvoyance because it refers to a specific controlled process.

Status of clairvoyance

Within the field of parapsychology, there is a consensus that some instances of clairvoyance are verifiable. There is also a measured level of belief from amongst the general public, with the portion of the US population who believe in clairvoyance varying between 1/4 and 1/3 over the 15 year period from 1990 to 2005.
Year Belief
1990 26%
2000 32%
2005 26%

The concept of clairvoyance gained some support from the US and Russian governments both during and after the Cold War, and both governments made several attempts to harness it as an intelligence gathering tool.

According to skeptics, clairvoyance is the result of fraud, self-delusion,[4] Barnum effects, confirmatory biases, or failures to appreciate the base rate of chance occurrences. For example, in a scientific experiment of clairvoyance, a purported clairvoyant participant will inevitably make correct guesses some of the time (i.e., during some of the trials within the same experiment), simply because of chance. Furthermore, because of the nature of the statistical tests used by experimenters, a very small proportion of all experiments conducted will yield an overall statistically significant result (suggesting that clairvoyance took place at above-chance levels), again simply because of chance. A proper summary of the experimental evidence on clairvoyance should include a summary of all experiments that were conducted, taking into account their probabilities of turning out false positive and false negative results, and making sure that studies are not included in the review selectively. Some researchers on clairvoyance have tended to purposefully exclude negative findings from their reviews, thus biasing their own conclusions.

Clairvoyance and related phenomena throughout history

There have been anecdotal reports of clairvoyance and 'clear' abilities throughout history in most cultures. Often clairvoyance has been associated with religious or shamanic figures, offices and practices. For example, ancient Hindu religious texts list clairvoyance amongst other forms of 'clear' experiencing, as siddhis, or 'perfections', skills that are yielded through appropriate meditation and personal discipline. But a large number of anecdotal accounts of clairvoyance are of the spontaneous variety among the general populace. For example, many people report seeing a loved one who has recently died before they have learned by other means that their loved one is deceased. While anecdotal accounts do not provide scientific proof of clairvoyance, such common experiences continue to motivate research into such phenomena.

The earliest record of somnambulistic clairvoyance is credited to the Marquis de Puységur, a follower of Mesmer, who in 1784 was treating a local dull-witted peasant named Victor Race. During treatment, Race reportedly would go into trance and undergo a personality change, becoming fluent and articulate, and giving diagnosis and prescription for his own disease as well as those of others. When he came out of the trance state he would be unaware of anything he had said or done. This behavior is somewhat reminiscent of the reported behaviors of the 20th century medical clairvoyant and psychic Edgar Cayce. It is reported that although Puységur used the term 'clairvoyance', he did not think of these phenomena as "paranormal", since he accepted mesmerism as one of the natural sciences.

Clairvoyance was a reported ability of some mediums during the spiritualist period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was one of the phenomena studied by members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Psychics of many descriptions have claimed clairvoyant ability up to the present day.

While experimental research into clairvoyance began with SPR researchers, experimental studies became more systematic with the efforts of J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University, and such research efforts continue to the present day. Perhaps the best-known study of clairvoyance in recent times was the US government-funded remote viewing project at SRI/SAIC during the 1970s through the mid-1990s.

Some parapsychologists have proposed that our different functional labels (clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, etc.) all refer to one basic underlying mechanism, although there is not yet any satisfactory theory for what that mechanism may be.

Parapsychological research

Parapsychological research studies of remote viewing and clairvoyance have produced favorable results significantly above chance, and meta-analysis of these studies increases the significance. For instance, at the Stanford Research Institute, in 1972, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ initiated a series of human subject studies to determine whether participants (the viewers or percipients) could reliably identify and accurately describe salient features of remote locations or targets. In the early studies, a human sender was typically present at the remote location, as part of the experiment protocol. A three-step process was used, the first step being to randomly select the target conditions to be experienced by the senders. Secondly, in the viewing step, participants were asked to verbally express or sketch their impressions of the remote scene. Thirdly, in the judging step, these descriptions were matched by separate judges, as closely as possible, with the intended targets. The term remote viewing was coined to describe this overall process.

In order to explore the nature of remote viewing channel, the viewer in some experiments was secured in a double-walled copper-screened Faraday cage. Although this provided attenuation of radio signals over a broad range of frequencies, the researchers found that it did not alter the subject's remote viewing capability. They postulated that extremely low frequency (ELF) propagation might be involved, since Faraday cage screening is less effective in the ELF range. Such a hypothesis had previously been put forward by telepathy researchers in the Soviet Union.

The first paper by Puthoff and Targ on psychic research to appear in a mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journal was published in Nature in March 1974; in it, the team reported some degree of remote viewing success. One of the individuals involved in these initial studies at SRI was Uri Geller, a well-known celebrity psychic at the time. The research team reported witnessing some of Geller's trademark metal spoon-bending performances, but admitted that they were unable to conduct adequately controlled experiments to confirm any paranormal hypothesis about them.

Electroencephalography (EEG) techniques were also used by team to examine ESP phenomena. In these investigations, a sender, who was isolated in a visually opaque, electrically and acoustically shielded chamber, was stimulated at random by bursts of strobe-light flickers The experimenters reported that, for one receiver, differential alpha block on control and stimulus trials were observed, which showed that some information transfer had occurred. In contrast, this person's expressed statements of when the stimulus occurred were no different than that which would be expected by chance. The researches were unable to identify the physical parameters by which the EEG effect was mediated.
After the publication of these findings, various attempts to replicate the remote viewing findings were quickly carried out. Several of these follow-up studies, which involved viewing in group settings, reported some limited success. They included the use of face-to-face groups, and remotely-linked groups using computer conferencing.

The various debates in the mainstream scientific literature prompted the editors of 'Proceedings of the IEEE' to invite Robert Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering at Princeton University, to write a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective. His paper, published in February 1982, includes numerous references to remote viewing replication studies at the time.

Clairvoyance experiments involving Zener cards currently exist on the internet. One such online system, the Anima Project, gathers user results into a master database which is then analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques.
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Extrasensory perception - Ilmu Terawang

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
Extrasensory perception (ESP) (or extra-sensory perception) is the apparent ability to acquire information by paranormal means independent of any known physical senses or deduction from previous experience. The term was coined by Duke University researcher J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy, precognition, Retrocognition, Intuition and Psychokinesis. ESP is also sometimes casually referred to as a sixth sense, gut instinct or hunch . The term implies sources of information currently unexplained by science.

Parapsychology is the study of paranormal psychic phenomena, including ESP. Parapsychologists generally regard such tests as the ganzfeld experiment as providing compelling evidence for the existence of ESP. The scientific community does not accept this due to the disputed evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain ESP, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.

History of ESP

The notion of extrasensory perception existed in antiquity. In many ancient cultures, such powers were ascribed to people who purported to use them for second sight or communicate with deities, ancestors, spirits, and the like.

Extrasensory perception and hypnosis

There is a common belief that a hypnotized person would be able to demonstrate ESP. Carl Sargent, a psychology major at the University of Cambridge, heard about the early claims of a hypnosis – ESP link and designed an experiment to test whether they had merit. He recruited 40 fellow college students, none of whom identified themselves as having ESP, and then divided them into a group that would be hypnotized before being tested with a pack of 25 Zener cards, and a control group that would be tested with the same Zener cards. The control subjects averaged a score of 5 out of 25 right, exactly what chance would indicate. The subjects who were hypnotized did more than twice as well, averaging a score of 11.9 out of 25 right. Sargent's own interpretation of the experiment is that ESP is associated with a relaxed state of mind and a freer, more atavistic level of consciousness.[citation needed]

J.B. Rhine

In the 1930s, at Duke University in North Carolina, J. B. Rhine and his wife Louisa tried to develop psychical research into an experimental science. To avoid the connotations of hauntings and the seance room, they renamed it "parapsychology." While Louisa Rhine concentrated on collecting accounts of spontaneous cases, J. B. Rhine worked largely in the laboratory, carefully defining terms such as ESP and psi and designing experiments to test them. A simple set of cards was developed, originally called Zener cards (after their designer)—now called ESP cards. They bear the symbols circle, square, wavy lines, cross, and star; there are five cards of each in a pack of 25.

In a telepathy experiment the "sender" looks at a series of cards while the "receiver" guesses the symbols. To try to observe clairvoyance, the pack of cards is hidden from everyone while the receiver guesses. To try to observe precognition, the order of the cards is determined after the guesses are made.

In all such experiments the order of the cards must be random so that hits are not obtained through systematic biases or prior knowledge. At first the cards were shuffled by hand, then by machine. Later, random number tables were used and, nowadays, computers. An advantage of ESP cards is that statistics can easily be applied to determine whether the number of hits obtained is higher than would be expected by chance. Rhine used ordinary people as subjects and claimed that, on average, they did significantly better than chance expectation. Later he used dice to test for psychokinesis and also claimed results that were better than chance.

In 1940, Rhine, J.G. Pratt, and others at Duke authored a review of all card-guessing experiments conducted internationally since 1882. Titled Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years, it has become recognised as the first meta-analysis in science.[8] It included details of replications of Rhine's studies. Through these years, 50 studies were published, of which 33 were contributed by investigators other than Rhine and the Duke University group; 61% of these independent studies reported significant results suggestive of ESP. Among these were psychologists at Colorado University and Hunter College, New York, who completed the studies with the largest number of trials and the highest levels of significance. Replication failures encouraged Rhine to further research into the conditions necessary to experimentally produce the effect. He maintained, however, that it was not replicability, or even a fundamental theory of ESP that would evolve research, but only a greater interest in unconscious mental processes and a more complete understanding of human personality.
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Psychometry

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
Psychometry (Greek: ψυχή, psukhē, "spirit, soul"; + μέτρον, metron, "measure") is a form of extra-sensory perception in which a psychic is said to be able to obtain information about an individual through paranormal means by making physical contact with an object that belongs to them. In recent years, the term has been superseded in favor of "token-object reading" so as to avoid potential confusion with the psychological term, "psychometry".

The term psychometry was coined by Joseph Rodes Buchanan in 1842. Buchanan developed the theory that all things give off an emanation.

"The past is entombed in the present, the world is its own enduring monument; and that which is true of its physical is likewise true of its mental career. The discoveries of Psychometry will enable us to explore the history of man, as those of geology enable us to explore the history of the earth. There are mental fossils for psychologists as well as mineral fossils for the geologists; and I believe that hereafter the psychologist and the geologist will go hand in hand, the one portraying the earth, its animals and its vegetation, while the other portrays the human beings who have roamed over its surface in the shadows, and the darkness of primeval barbarism. Aye, the mental telescope is now discovered which may pierce the depths of the past and bring us in full view of the grand and tragic passages of ancient history."

The concept of psychometry is a popular theme for stage act and Séance; with participants being asked to provide a personal object to be "read" by a medium or psychic. It was used as the basis for Johnny Smith's visions in Stephen King's 1979 novel The Dead Zone and its subsequent 2002 television adaption.
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Aura (paranormal)

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
In parapsychology and many forms of spiritual practice, an aura is a field of subtle, luminous radiation supposedly surrounding a person or object like the halo or aureola of religious art. The depiction of such an aura in religious art usually connotes a person of particular power or holiness.

According to the literature of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and Archeosophy, each color of the aura has a precise meaning, indicating a precise emotional state. A complete description of the Aura and its colors was provided by Charles Leadbeater, a theosophist of the 19th century. The works of Leadbeater were later developed by Palamidessi and others.

Skeptics such as Robert Todd Carroll contend that auras may be seen for explainable reasons such as migraines or synesthesia. Some people see auras as the result of a migraine, epilepsy, a visual system disorder, or a brain disorder. Eye fatigue can also produce an aura, sometimes referred to as eye burn.

W.E. Butler has connected auras with clairvoyance and etheric, mental, and emotional emanations. He classifies aura into two main types: etheric and spiritual. Robert Bruce classifies auras into three types: etheric, main, and spiritual. Various books have been written that derive various personality traits based upon the specific colors of the different layers of the aura. Auras are thought to be related to the etheric subtle body and to serve as a visual measure of the state of the health of the physical body. Auras are not thought to be actual light but a translation of other unknown sensory readings that is added to our visual processing. According to Bruce they are not seen in complete darkness and cannot be seen unless some portion of the person or object emitting the aura can also be seen.
Testing

Recognition of auras has occasionally been scientifically tested. One test involved an aura reader standing on one side of a room with an opaque partition separating her from a number of slots which might contain either actual people or mannequins. The aura reader failed to identify the slots containing people, incorrectly stating that all contained people.

In another test, which was televised, another aura reader was placed before a partition where five people were standing. He claimed that he could see their auras from behind the partition. As each person moved out, the reader was asked to identify where that person was standing behind the slot. He identified only 2 out of 5 correctly.
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Radiesthesia

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
Radiesthesia is the paranormal or parapsychological ability to detect "radiation" within the human body. According to the theory, all human bodies give off unique or characteristic "radiations" as do all other physical bodies or objects. Such radiations are often termed an "aura".

A practitioner of radiestheisa believes in his or her ability to detect the interplay of these radiations. Thus radiesthesia is cited as the explanation of such phenomena as dowsing by rods and pendulums in order to locate buried substances, diagnose illnesses, and the like.

The term radiesthesia first entered English in the 1930s and was borrowed from the earlier French radiésthesie. The English word is a compound of the prefix radi(o)-, referring to radiation and the rare term aesthesia meaning "perception by the senses", or "the capacity for feeling or sensation", which comes from the ancient Greek aisthesis "a perceiving".

Dr. Solcol W. Tromp wrote about radiesthesia in his 1949 book Psychical Physics. This reference has a bibliography of over 700 titles relating to dowsing and radiesthesia.

Gerald Gardner, in his book Witchcraft Today, 1954, refers to his own anecdotal experiences with radiesthesia as evidence supporting the existence of "Witch Power".

The Pendulum is a monthly publication devoted to radiesthesia. There are other periodicals, publications, books, societies and numerous websites on the topic.

Scientific tests by establishment figures claim to disprove the effectiveness of radiesthesia.
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Telepathy

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
Telepathy (Greek τηλε, tele meaning "distant" and πάθεια, patheia meaning "to be affected by") describes the purported transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five classical senses (See Psi). The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, specifically to replace the earlier expression thought-transference. A person who is able to make use of telepathy is said to be able to read the minds of others. Telepathy, along with psychokinesis forms the main branches of parapsychological research, and many studies seeking to detect and understand telepathy have been done within the field.

Telepathy is a common theme in fiction and science fiction, with many superheroes and supervillains having telepathic abilities. Such abilities include sensing the thoughts of others. Some Transhumanists believe that technologically enabled telepathy, called "techlepathy", will exist in the future of humanity, and seek to develop practical machines for this.

Telepathy in popular culture

Literature

Telepathy is commonly used in fiction, with a number of superheroes and supervillains, as well as figures in many science fiction novels, etc., use telepathy. Notable fictional telepaths include the Jedi in Star Wars. The mechanics of telepathy in fiction vary widely. Some fictional telepaths are limited to receiving only thoughts that are deliberately sent by other telepaths, or even to receiving thoughts from a specific other person. For example, in Robert A. Heinlein's 1956 novel Time for the Stars, certain pairs of twins are able to send telepathic messages to each other. Some telepaths can read the thoughts only of those they touch, such as Vulcans in the Star Trek media franchise. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some telepathic characters continuously sense the thoughts of those around them and may control or dampen this ability only with difficulty, or not at all, such as in Scanners. In such cases,telepathy is often portrayed as a mixed blessing or as a curse.

Some writers view telepathy as the evolutionary destiny of humanity. In Tony Vigorito's novel, Just a Couple of Days, telepathy emerges across the entire human species as a result of the Pied Piper Virus, which inadvertently eliminated humanity's symbolic capacity. In this instance, telepathy is seen as a latent ability that emerges only when the distractions of language are bypassed.

Some fictional telepaths possess mind control abilities, which can include "pushing" thoughts, feelings, or hallucinatory visions into the mind of another person, causing pain, paralysis, or unconsciousness, altering or erasing memories, or completely taking over another person's mind and body (similar to spiritual possession). Examples of this type of telepath include the Carpathians from the novels in the Dark Series, the White Queen from Marvel Comics. Characters with this ability may or may not also have the ability to read thoughts. The Urdu novel "Devta" is based on the character of Farhad Ali Taimur, a telepath and involves in the fight of good and evil. Devta is the longest continuously-published novel in history.

Telepathing - same meaning as to telepath, only different verb tense.

Technological Telepathy is also present in science fiction, typically involving the usage of neural implants of some description. A good example is the Conjoiners in the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds. Conjoiners rely on their technological telepathy (referred to by them as "Transenlightenment") to the extent that they no longer actually speak. Certain Conjoiners are able to read, attack and control the minds of other Conjoiners and machines (though not standard humans) using digital attacks, often having similar effects to other telepaths in fiction.

See also a composite list of fictional characters with telepathy.

Technologically enabled telepathy
Converging Technologies, a 2002 report exploring the potential for synergy among nano-, bio-, informational and cognitive technologies (NBIC) for enhancing human performance.

Some people, occasionally referred to by themselves or others as "transhumanists", believe that technologically enabled telepathy, coined "techlepathy","synthetic telepathy",or "psychotronics", will be the inevitable future of humanity. Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, England is one of the leading proponents of this view and has based all of his recent cybernetics research around developing practical, safe technology for directly connecting human nervous systems together with computers and with each other. He believes techno-enabled telepathy will in the future become the primary form of human communication. He predicts that this will happen by means of the principle of natural selection, through which nearly everyone will have the need for such technology for economic and social reasons.
Further information: Brain-computer interface

Telepathy in parapsychology
Main articles: Scientific investigation of telepathy, Parapsychology, and Ganzfeld experiment

Within the field of parapsychology, telepathy is considered to be a form of extra-sensory perception (ESP) or anomalous cognition in which information is transferred through Psi. It is often categorized similarly to precognition and clairvoyance.[6] Various experiments have been used to test for telepathic abilities. Among the most well known are the use of Zener cards and the Ganzfeld experiment.
Zener cards

Zener cards are cards marked with five distinctive symbols. When using them, one individual is designated the "sender" and another the "receiver". The sender must select a random card and visualize the symbol on it, while the receiver must attempt to determine that symbol using Psi. Statistically, the receiver has a 20% chance of randomly guessing the correct symbol, so in order to demonstrate telepathy, they must repeatedly score a success rate that is significantly higher than 20%. If not conducted properly, this method can be vulnerable to sensory leakage and card counting.

When using the Ganzfeld experiment to test for telepathy, one individual is designated the receiver and is placed inside a controlled environment where they are deprived of sensory input, and another is designated the sender and is placed in a separate location. The receiver is then required to receive information from the sender. The exact nature of the information may vary between experiments.

Types of telepathy

Parapsychology describes several different forms of telepathy, including latent telepathy and precognitive telepathy.

Latent Telepathy, formerly known as "deferred telepathy", is described as being the transfer of information, through Psi, with an observable time-lag between transmission and receipt.

Precognitive Telepathy is described as being the transfer of information, through Psi, about the future state of an individual's mind

Emotive Telepathy, also known as remote influence or emotional transfer, is the process of transferring kinesthetic sensations through altered states.

Superconscious Telepathy, involves tapping into the superconscious to access the collective wisdom of the human species for knowledge.
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Astral projection

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under: ,
Astral projection (or astral travel) refers to episodes of out-of-body experiences perceived as unfolding in environments other than the physical world, by an astral counterpart of the physical body that separates from it and travels to one or more astral planes. Astral projection is experienced as being "out of the body". Unlike dreaming or near death experiences, astral projection may be practiced deliberately.

Descriptions of such experiences are found in common worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife, with the soul's journey or "ascent" being described in such terms as "an...out-of-body experience" wherein the spiritual traveller leaves the physical body and travels in his/her subtle body (or dreambody or astral body) into ‘other’ realms."

There is limited scientific evidence regarding the validity of astral projection, and more typically reports of such experiences are subjective and anecdotal. The belief that one has had an out-of-body experience, whether spoken of as "astral projection" or not, is common. Hundreds of personal accounts of astral projection were published in a number of books through the 1960s and 70s. Surveys have reported percentages ranging from 8% (as much as 50% in certain groups of respondents) who state they have had such an experience. Because of the subjective nature of the experience, however, there are a number of materialist explanations that do not rely on the existence of an "astral" body and plane.

Beliefs
Astral projection or travel denotes the astral body or double leaving the physical body to travel in the astral plane. According to classical, medieval, renaissance Neoplatonist, later Theosophist and Rosicrucian philosophy, the astral body is an intermediate body of light linking the rational soul to the physical body, and the astral plane is an intermediate world of light between Heaven and Earth composed of the spheres of the planets and stars. These astral spheres were held to be populated by gods, angels, demons and spirits.

The subtle bodies, and their associated planes of existence, form an essential part of the esoteric systems that deal with astral phenomena. In the neo-platonism of Plotinus, for example, the individual is a microcosm ("small world") of the universe (the macrocosm or "great world"). "The rational soul...is akin to the great Soul of the World" while "the material universe, like the body, is made as a faded image of the Intelligible". Each succeeding plane of manifestation is causal to the next, a world-view called emanationism; "from the One proceeds Intellect, from Intellect Soul, and from Soul - in its lower phase, or Nature - the material universe".Often these bodies and their corresponding planes of existence are depicted as a series of concentric circles or nested spheres, with a separate body traversing each realm.

Similar concepts of "soul" travel appear in various other religious traditions, for example ancient Egyptian teachings present the soul as having the ability to hover outside the physical body in the ka, or subtle body.[13] A common belief is that the subtle body is attached to the physical body by means of a psychic silver cord.

The idea of the astral figured prominently in the work of the ninteteenth-century French occultist Eliphas Levi, whence it was adopted by Theosophy and Golden Dawn magical society. The Theosophists also took note of similar ideas (Lin'ga S'ari-ra) found in ancient Hindu scriptures such as the YogaVashishta-Maharamayana of Valmiki.

However, the expression "astral projection" came to be used in two different ways. For the Golden Dawn[16] and some Theosophists[17] it retained the classical and mediaeval philosophers' meaning of journeying to other worlds, heavens, hells, the astrological spheres and other imaginal[18] landscapes, but outside these circles the term was increasingly applied to non-physical travel around the physical world rather than the astral[19]. Though this usage continues to be widespread, the "etheric travel" label coined by later Theosophists such as Leadbetter and Bailey[citation needed] is more appropriate to such scenarios.
The Subtle body and the cosmic man, Nepal 1600's

Astral projection

Commonly in the astral projection experience, the experiencer describes themselves as being in a domain which often has no parallel to any physical setting, although they say they can visit different times and/or physical settings. Environments may be populated or unpopulated, artificial, natural or completely abstract and from beatific to horrific. A common belief is that one may access a compendium of mystical knowledge called the Akashic records. In many of these accounts, the experiencer correlates the astral world with the world of dreams. They report seeing dreamers enact dream scenarios on the astral plane, unaware of the wider environment around them. Some also state that "falling" dreams are brought about by projection.

The astral environment is often theoretically divided into levels or planes. There are many different views concerning the overall structure of the astral planes in various traditions. These planes may include heavens and hells and other after-death spheres, transcendent environments or other less-easily characterized states.

Etheric projection

In contrast to astral projection, etheric projection is described as the ability to move about in the material world in an etheric body which is usually, though not always, invisible to people who are presently "in their bodies." Robert Monroe describes this type of projection as a projection to "Locale I" or the "Here-Now", and describes it as containing people and places that he feels actually exist in the material world.[24] Robert Bruce refers to a similar area as the "Real Time Zone" (RTZ) and describes it as the nonphysical, dimension-level closest to the physical.

According to Max Heindel, the etheric "double" serves as a medium between the astral and physical realms. In his system, the ether, also called prana, is the "vital force" that empowers the physical forms in order for that change to take place. From his descriptions it can be inferred that when one views the physical during an out-of-body experience, one is not technically "in" the astral realm at all.

The subtle vehicle remains connected to the physical body during the separation by a so-called “silver cord”, said to be that mentioned in Ecclesiastes 12:6.

Stephen LaBerge suggested in his 1985 book Lucid Dreaming that all such "out-of-body experiences" may represent partially lucid dreams or "misinterpreted dream experiences", in which the sleeper does not fully recognize the situation. "In the dark forest, one may experience a tree as a tiger, but it is still in fact only a tree." Applying identical reasoning to waking consciousness, real life could be a dream too (see Descartes' Evil daemon).

Representations in popular culture

One of the earliest mainstream portrayals of such experiences is a 1936 Mickey Mouse animation short, Thru the Mirror[28]. In it, Mickey's consciousness is shown as rousing while his body still sleeps, leaving the bed and then climbing through his mantelpiece mirror to a parallel Carrollian version of his room. With perfect timing, it later reintegrates with his sleeping body just as his alarm clock rings. Also, in the series Charmed, Prudence "Prue" Halliwell, played by actress Shannen Doherty, was a powerful good witch that possessed the power to astral project.
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Parapsychology

Author: Raga Sukma Posted under:
Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method.
Parapsychological experiments have included the use of random number generators to test for evidence of precognition and psychokinesis with both human and animal subjects, sensory-deprivation and Ganzfeld experiments to test for extrasensory perception, and research trials conducted under contract to the United States government to investigate whether remote viewing would provide useful intelligence information. The results of such experiments are regarded by some parapsychologists as having demonstrated the existence of some forms of psychic abilities.

In contrast, the consensus of the scientific community is that psychic abilities have not been demonstrated to exist. Critics argue that methodological flaws may explain any apparent experimental successes. The status of parapsychology as a science has also been disputed.[12] Many scientists regard the discipline as pseudoscience because parapsychologists continue investigation although no one has demonstrated conclusive evidence of psychic abilities in more than a century of research.

Laboratory and field research is conducted through private institutions and a relatively small number of universities worldwide. Privately-funded units at universities in the United Kingdom are among the most active today. In the US, interest in research peaked in the 1970s and university-based research is now slight, although private institutions still receive considerable funding. Much of the recent parapsychology research is published in journals dedicated to the field

Terminology

The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by psychologist Max Dessoir. It was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research, to indicate a significant shift toward laboratory methodologies in their work.[20] The term originates from the Greek: παρά para meaning "alongside", and psychology. Parapsychologists call the psychic phenomena that they search for psi, a term intended to be descriptive without implying a mechanism.

History of Parapsychology

Early psychical research
American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910) was an early psychical researcher.

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882. The formation of the SPR was the first systematic effort to organize scientists and scholars for a critical and sustained investigation of paranormal phenomena. The early membership of the SPR included philosophers, scholars, scientists, educators and politicians, such as Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, William Crookes, Rufus Osgood Mason and Charles Richet.
The SPR classified its subjects of study into several areas: telepathy, hypnotism, Reichenbach's phenomena, apparitions, haunts, and the physical aspects of Spiritualism such as table-tilting and the appearance of matter from unknown sources, otherwise known as materialization. One of the first collaborative efforts of the SPR was its Census of Hallucinations, which researched apparitional experiences and hallucinations in the sane. The census was the Society's first attempt at a statistical evaluation of paranormal phenomena, and the resulting publication in 1886, Phantasms of the Living is still widely referenced in parapsychological literature today. The SPR became the model for similar societies in other European countries and the United States during the late 19th century. Largely due to the support of psychologist William James, the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) opened its doors in New York City in 1885.

Today, the SPR and ASPR continue the investigation of psi phenomena. The SPR's purpose, stated in every issue of its Journal, is "to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis."

Rhine era

In 1911, Stanford University became the first academic institution in the United States to study extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK) in a laboratory setting. The effort was headed by psychologist John Edgar Coover. In 1930, Duke University became the second major U.S. academic institution to engage in the critical study of ESP and psychokinesis in the laboratory. Under the guidance of psychologist William McDougall, and with the help of others in the department—including psychologists Karl Zener, Joseph B. Rhine, and Louisa E. Rhine—laboratory ESP experiments using volunteer subjects from the undergraduate student body began. As opposed to the approaches of psychical research, which generally sought qualitative evidence for paranormal phenomena, the experiments at Duke University proffered a quantitative, statistical approach using cards and dice. As a consequence of the ESP experiments at Duke, standard laboratory procedures for the testing of ESP developed and came to be adopted by interested researchers throughout the world.

The publication of J.B. Rhine's book, New Frontiers of the Mind (1937) brought the laboratory's findings to the general public. In his book, Rhine popularized the word "parapsychology," which psychologist Max Dessoir had coined over 40 years earlier, to describe the research conducted at Duke. Rhine also founded an autonomous Parapsychology Laboratory within Duke and started the Journal of Parapsychology, which he co-edited with McDougall.

The parapsychology experiments at Duke evoked much criticism from academic psychologists who challenged the concepts and evidence of ESP. Rhine and his colleagues attempted to address these criticisms through new experiments, articles, and books, and summarized the state of the criticism along with their responses in the book Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years.

The administration of Duke grew less sympathetic to parapsychology, and after Rhine's retirement in 1965 parapsychological links with the university were broken. Rhine later established the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM) and the Institute for Parapsychology as a successor to the Duke laboratory. In 1995, the centenary of Rhine's birth, the FRNM was renamed the Rhine Research Center. Today, the Rhine Research Center is a parapsychology research unit, stating that it "aims to improve the human condition by creating a scientific understanding of those abilities and sensitivities that appear to transcend the ordinary limits of space and time.

Establishment of the Parapsychological Association

The Parapsychological Association (PA) was created in Durham, North Carolina, on June 19, 1957. Its formation was proposed by J. B. Rhine at a workshop on parapsychology which was held at the Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University. Rhine proposed that the group form itself into the nucleus of an international professional society in parapsychology. The aim of the organization, as stated in its Constitution, became "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the field, and to integrate the findings with those of other branches of science".

Under the direction of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the Parapsychological Association took a large step in advancing the field of parapsychology in 1969 when it became affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world. In 1979, physicist John A. Wheeler argued that parapsychology is pseudoscientific, and that the affiliation of the PA to the AAAS needed to be reconsidered. His challenge to parapsychology's AAAS affiliation was unsuccessful. Today, the PA consists of about three hundred full, associate, and affiliated members worldwide and maintains its affiliation with the AAAS. The annual AAAS convention provides a forum where parapsychologists can present their research to scientists from other fields and advance parapsychology in the context of the AAAS's lobbying on national science policy.

Decade of increased research (1970s)

The affiliation of the Parapsychological Association (PA) with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with a general openness to psychic and occult phenomena in the 1970s, led to a decade of increased parapsychological research. During this period, other notable organizations were also formed, including the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine (1970), the Institute of Parascience (1971), the Academy of Religion and Psychical Research, the Institute of Noetic Sciences (1973), the International Kirlian Research Association (1975), and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (1979). Parapsychological work was also conducted at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) during this time.

The scope of parapsychology expanded during these years. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson conducted much of his controversial research into reincarnation during the 1970s. Psychologist Thelma Moss devoted time to the study of Kirlian photography at UCLA's parapsychology laboratory. The influx of spiritual teachers from Asia, and their claims of abilities produced by meditation, led to research on altered states of consciousness. American Society for Psychical Research Director of Research, Karlis Osis, conducted experiments in out of body, and astral beaconing[clarification needed]. Physicist Russell Targ coined the term remote viewing for use in some of his work at SRI in 1974.

During this period, academics outside parapsychology also appeared to have a general optimism towards this research. In 1979, a survey of more than 1,100 college professors in the United States found that only 2% of psychologists expressed the belief that extrasensory perception was an impossibility. A far greater number, 34%, indicated that they believed ESP was either an established fact or a likely possibility. The percentage was even higher in other areas of study: 55% of natural scientists, 66% of social scientists (excluding psychologists), and 77% of academics in the arts, humanities, and education.

The surge in paranormal research continued throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. By the end of the 1980s, the Parapsychological Association reported members working in more than 30 countries. Additionally, research not affiliated with the PA was being carried out in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Parapsychology today

Since the 1970s, contemporary parapsychological research has waned considerably in the United States. Early research was considered inconclusive, and parapsychologists were faced with strong opposition from their academic colleagues. Some effects thought to be paranormal, for example, the effects of Kirlian photography, disappeared under more stringent controls, leaving those avenues of research at dead-ends. Many university laboratories in the United States have closed, citing a lack of acceptance by mainstream science as the reason, leaving the bulk of parapsychology confined to private institutions funded by private sources. After 28 years of research, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR) closed in 2007.

Two universities in the United States still have academic parapsychology laboratories: the Division of Perceptual Studies, a unit at the University of Virginia's Department of Psychiatric Medicine, studies the possibility of survival of consciousness after bodily death; the University of Arizona's Veritas Laboratory conducts laboratory investigations of mediums. Several private institutions, including the Institute of Noetic Sciences, conduct and promote parapsychological research. Britain leads parapsychological study in Europe, with privately funded laboratories at the universities of Edinburgh, Northampton, and Liverpool Hope, among others.
The Parapsychological Association states that the presently available, cumulative statistical database for experiments studying some parapsychological effects provides strong, scientifically credible evidence for these effects. This includes presentiment, ESP, and mind-matter interaction. The Association states that an increasing number of parapsychologists are moving beyond proof-oriented research, because they believe experimental success has already been established, and instead looking at more detailed factors to better understand the phenomena.

Parapsychological research has also been augmented by other sub-disciplines of psychology. These related fields include transpersonal psychology, which studies transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human mind, and anomalistic psychology, which examines paranormal beliefs and subjective anomalous experiences in traditional psychological terms
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