DOSSEY TWO

Part two of my rendition of Larry's talk to the SSE convention in June.....

Larry was making a review-paper-type case for the possibility of distant physical effects of not only Human Intention/ Consciousness but of "organized structures" as well. In doing so, he searched the literature [and his many contacts] for frontier studies supporting such phenomena. The above two slides illustrate two example studies at the cellular/ sub-organism level.

Both, as you see, involve neurons --- maybe that is significant in some profound way, but I believe that it is an artifact of the fact that certain "responses" are easier to test in neurons than some other moieties. Both of these studies were done with the cell samples isolated from normal spatial-propagated force influences by being in Faraday-cage environments. Despite this electromagnetic cloak, actions taken upon one group of cells were coordinated with measurable responses in the distant cells.

These two peer-review-published studies seem "good" methodologically, and, despite using different cell cultures, are acceptably close in design and intent to be called replications of the principle. If these findings, on further repetition, continue to hold, they demand a major re-thinking of our opinions on what is and was is not possible in terms of transfer of signals/ information between one entity and another.

But, of course, these results will be resisted by academe by any means possible --- and when debunking fails, the main tactic will be "ignorance".

What Larry talked about next was one of those spectacular claims which one immediately feels thrilled about but unlikely to be true, or at least documentable. The claim is, as you can read above: states of emotional well-being [or ill-being] have a social network component, and this component extends well beyond those persons that one actually physically interacts with during ones daily life. That is: there is something like "Happiness at a Distance".

Well... wild... pretty much unbelievable. My distant, never-seen-since-youth cousins in Phoenix and Chicago are having some influence on my state of well-being?? Out Proctor we go.

These sets of claims were published in responsible medical journals. How was THAT possible? The authors, Fowler and Christakis, used for their data base the famous Framingham [MA] multigenerational health study. This long-ranging study was set up to study risk factors in heart disease, but because it undertakes to collect so much "ancillary data" on the participants, it has been used for other work as well. Fowler and Christakis used it to study "Happiness". How'd they do THAT?

Each week, their research team conducted a four question interview with a few thousand people in the study. These four questions had been used in the sociological and psychological literature many times to try to assess how "happy" or depressed a person was, and taken together seemed very good indicators. The four questions are simple: "how many times this past week did you...

1). feel hopeful about the future?
2). feel happy?
3). enjoy life?
4). feel that you were as good as other people?"

Taken together [there is some hint in the abstract I read that some scaling was used to take quantity responses into account] these supposedly have a good track record of assessing happiness.

When the authors began enumerating their results and comparing the levels with persons "linked" in some way biologically/socially/communally, they found that states like "happiness" tended to cluster around what looked eerily like a form of socially organized gestalt. Other emotional states did too. And the way these gestalts were organized did not seem to require direct social contact.

You and I probably are reluctant to jump right on the bandwagon on this without hearing the methodological objections and responses, but Fowler and Christakis think that they're onto something stunning here, and willing to risk academic reputations on it.

This sort of gestalt effect does, of course, fit nicely with things like "distant healing"/ "power of prayer" [Larry Dossey], and Global Consciousness [Roger Nelson]. Because I think that I understand what both those guys are doing, and credit their work, I find myself drawn to Fowler's and Christakis' as well.

But if true, what possibly can be going on?

Larry said Never Fear, he'd found the answer from the great scientist-philosopher, Arthur Eddington.

I don't know why, but I am strangely comforted by that.

Here are three folks who humbly offer a trio of thoughts for us to meditate upon as we continue to take our lifewalk along the forest path. Meditate as you will.

Larry's going to try to coalesce what he's found about these arcane matters in a book scheduled to get to the public in this fall. I don't advertise authors unless their names would be someone like Jerry Clark, Roger Nelson, or Larry Dossey [I have a short list of others]. But Larry's on the list. Expand your consciousness and your soul with him if that appeals to you.

Till next time.... "Do unto others ... not for your benefit, but for all of us in this wonderful Creation."

DOSSEY Tells You the Final Thing You Need to Know: SSE 2013

This might be the last entry on the 2013 SSE convention; I'll listen [sooner or later] to the other talks and decide then. But Larry Dossey is one of my friends that I feel privileged to have met at SSE, and his scholarly interests and writings are, I believe, beyond mere entertaining diversions on our paths to discovery. What Larry has done and is pursuing is important.

Larry has spent a few decades of his life attempting to get academic medicine to pay attention to the alternatives to the classic "meat-&-juices" models of attacking illness and facilitating "health", or at least repairs. Meat-&-Juices works reasonably well much of the time, and Larry is not on a Crusade to halt that. Rather he is trying to get academia to at least consider a wider view of Wellness. It must be of great comfort to him to have seen the slow general acceptance of "mind-to-body wellness" [the idea expressed too simplistically as "we have within us much ability to heal ourselves"] penetrate the medical schools of the world. But other significant concepts, mainly involving distant, non-contact, or group healing, find themselves still far on the outside of the Ivy-covered walls.

This talk was a step in Larry's personal understanding of part of what may be going on, though in my opinion it will gain him no friends in academe. "Telesomatic Events". How one body/ object/ mind may PHYSICALLY affect another distant entity.

Larry has a scholar's mind, so he has searched for the published origin of this concept. He finds it early in Berthold Schwarz' writings, and then in SSE co-founder Ian Stevenson's. Stevenson was more convincing and inspirational... and knowing of both men, I'll chime in with an agreement that I'd pay more attention to Ian, too.

In Stevenson's book Telepathic Impressions, Ian deviated from him primary research interest [trying to find data supporting the concept of reincarnation --- which never quite convinced me, but which was honest and noteworthy] and concentrated on cases seeming to occur due to mind-to-mind influence. He chose 35 particularly strong cases. Beginning on page 108 of that book, Stevenson began mentioning the sorts of cases that particularly interested Larry --- incidents wherein a person has a physical impact or reaction at the same moment that another distant person had a similar experience. Ian himself had only a few such cases in his 35, but remarked that Louisa Rhine, who had been collecting spontaneous anecdotes [apparently containing "transfers" of thoughts or physical impacts or both], estimated from her collection that about 1.7% of all "telepathy" cases had a physical component. Because such physical effects are difficult [and sometimes unethical] to test for in the laboratory, parapsychological research went after the telepathy information-transfers with gusto, and let these other claims to sink into the dustier corners of our awareness.

A happy accident caused in Larry the drive to explore a certain aspect of these claims. He is an identical twin. Twins are said to experience such "impossible" incidents all the time; and our intuition would be that two people so closely made perhaps SHOULD be the prime candidates to do so.

Larry said that when he and his brother were growing up, they knew nothing of Ian Stevenson, telepathic impressions, or telesomatic events, they just called such occurrences "Twin Stuff". For many twins, impossible "exchanges" and "coincidences" are just part of life.

Larry reminded us that one does not have to be an identical twin to have such experiences, it's just that the odds are greater if you are. One key to this seems to be emotional closeness.

A spectacular case of a telesomatic event was recorded in Spain in 1976. Two four-year-old twins were  briefly apart while one parent took one on a visit to a relative several miles away, while the other stayed home [i.e. each child with one parent]. When at home, one twin accidentally burnt her hand and a large blister sprouted between the thumb and the index finger. At that moment [as near as one could figure it, and with no conventional knowledge of what had happened back home] the "distant twin" sprouted a similar blister in the same place, but from no known cause.

If such extraordinary experiences were easy to strongly document, it would not take many like this to make one decide that the reductionist model of reality was just wrong. And there, of course, lies the rub. As Larry stated: such experiences do not fit; such an idea cannot be tolerated; and the establishment of thought will have none of it.

Well, here's my old "buddy", Carl Sagan, acting as the establishment truth-sayer, and, as usual when he made these sorts of very large absolutist statements, losing his scientific mind and blowing noxious gas out of his non-intellectual orifice.

This always dismayed and puzzled me. When you were around Carl Sagan, it took you very little time to assess that, although he had a colossal ego, he was one of the sharpest knives in the drawer. Yet, when it came to these grand statements, he completely lost either his conscious objectivity or his intellectual honesty. Whether consciously or subconsciously, he turned into the anti-Truth monster that he was trying to slay. No one with a "straight" scientific face could say the sentence above and be proud of himself. ...... yet this he, and many others, have done.

The intellectually honest answer is quite different. These guys are at least holding onto their science cards.

So, OK .... I'm halfway through. Let's take a breath and come back for Larry's climax. Will we solve The Mystery of Consciousness once and for all??

......... I have a really nice Bridge I'd like to sell you cheap...........