Material Submitted On October 1

Oneness, the concept which Edgar Cayce emphasized as the most fundamental of realities to understand, has become the emergent new paradigm, resulting in many attempts to define and illustrate it in ways we can understand. Most challenging is to provide a concept of oneness that supplants the illusion of the separate self with annihilating the person’s sense of identity. Learning from indigenous people has proven useful.

The Lakota Souix, a native peoples of American, for example, have no concept or word for an individual self. Writing in the journal Quadrant, Richard Voss, in the Department of Social Work at West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania, who has collaborated with Lakota elders in conducting research in social work among those native people, has explored the Lakota spirit-relationsal-self concept wa’ce waki’ya, which translates literally as “I am embracing relatives all around us!”

To the Lakota, the Western concept of the separate, independent, autonomous, bounded, material self is very bizarre. Rather, each person is seen as a node of interaction of ancestral spirits and the numerous spirits of creation. Thus a person is a focus of experience in a dynamic network of spiritual relations, which include the spirits of animals and plants, and which is continually changing and influencing a person’s experience.

In this cosmology, health is not something that is a self-contained condition within a person, but rather a quality of the network of relationships relative to that person. Healing is a process that involves re-establishing harmony in all those relationships.

See “Wa’ce waki’ya! Consciousness and the Spirit-Relational Self in Lakota Souix Philosophy: Interconnections with Analytical Thought.” Quadrant, 2004, Summer, Vol 34, No. 2, pp. 49-72. Authors: Richard W. Voss, Albert White Hat, Sr., and Margaret Lunderman. Email for Richard Voss: rvoss@wcupa.edu

The intuitive reality of an inner mental self and an outer world arises because the brain cannot perceive itself and its activities of thinking and perception. Thus, the brain perceives its own actions as happening outside of itself. Thus argues Yale psychologist Paul Bloom in his book Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains what Makes us Human (Basic Books). The title refers to the philosophical paradigm called dualism—the separation of mind and body—which is usually attributed to the French philosopher René Descartes (“I think, therefore I am”).

In one of his experiments to demonstrate the development of the intuitive belief in an afterlife, he tells children a story about a mouse that gets eaten by an alligator. The children state that the mouse’s body is dead, that the brain doesn’t work, the mouse can’t hear, and it doesn’t have to go to the bathroom anymore. Yet the children believe that the mouse is still worried about the alligator, that it is hungry and wants to go home. As children grow older, they continue to suppose that it is something akin to a non-physical soul that does the thinking and worrying, with the brain given more the role of an accessory for greater computational power.

This theory is extended to explain out-of body and near-death experiences, as well as sightings of ghosts and angels.

Also see: “Mustangs, Monists and Meaning: The dualist belief that body and soul are separate entities is natural, intuitive, with us from infancy. It is also very probably wrong.” By Michael Shermer. Scientific American, September, 2004, pg. 24.

“During the past 30 days, for about how many days have you felt sad, blue, or depressed?” Three days is the average answer among Americans, according to a survey of 166,000 persons conducted by Rosemarie Kobau and her colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and reported in Health and Quality of Life Outcomes. Women reported one more sad day a month than men. Young adults aged 18-24 years reported the highest number of sad days. People who exercised reported less than 2 sad days a month. Those who smoked reported more than 5 sad days a month.

The researchers interpreted their results to suggest that when people are sad or depressed, they tend to engage in unhealthy behavior such as inactivity and cigarette smoking.

Health and Quality of Life Outcomes/Newswise

U.S. adults spent an average of three days a month feeling “sad, blue, or depressed” during 1995-2000, according to a study published today in Health and Quality of Life Outcomes.

“People who reported a higher number of sad, blue or depressed days also reported engaging in unhealthy behaviours such as cigarette smoking and physical inactivity,” write the authors of the study.

“Although most people who report depressive symptoms several days each month probably do not have a diagnosable mental disorder, those above a certain threshold of sad, blue or depressed days might be at increased risk for mental and physical illnesses,” they say.

Rosemarie Kobau and her colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta analysed 166,000 responses to the question “During the past 30 days, for about how many days have you felt sad, blue, or depressed?” that was asked in an annual telephone survey of the American adult population in 38 states.

Women reported more days with depressive symptoms than men (3.5 days compared to 2.4 days). Young adults aged 18-24 years reported the highest number of days with depressive symptoms. People who exercised had 1.3 fewer days with depressive symptoms compared to those who did not exercise, and those who never smoked cigarettes had 2.4 fewer days of depressive symptoms compared to those who smoked more than 1 pack of cigarettes a day.

More education or a higher household income tended to reduce depressive symptoms. College graduates and those with household incomes over US$50,000 experienced two sad, blue, or depressed days out of every thirty, compared with almost five days for those without a high school education and 6.1 days for those with household incomes of less than US$15,000

People who said they were unable to work experienced the highest number of “sad, blue or depressed days” (10.2 days).

The researchers concluded that, “findings from this study highlight the relationship between feeling sad, blue or depressed and engaging in behaviours risky to health.”

They stress that,” Interventions that focus on positive emotions associated with healthful behaviour and instill confidence in adopting health-promoting behaviour might be effective for individuals with depressive symptoms. Use of this measure along with other community health indicators can help to assess the burden of mental distress in populations and monitor changes in levels of mental distress over time.”

How do you create a false memory for someone? Collect some actual memories from a person, record the memories in a list, then insert one false memory in the collection. Wait a week and have the person read the list of memories. Ask the person about the false memory, and they’ll tend to recall it, as if it were true.

This technique works surprisingly well for early food memories, according to research conducted by Elizabeth Loftus at the University of California at Irvine and published in the journal Social Cognition. Applying the false memory implantation technique with college students, they inserted the false memory that as a child, eating boiled eggs caused them to become sick. One week later, forty per cent of the students, when questioned about some of the memories on the list, confirmed the false memory as true.

In another experiment, the reverse worked as well. Planted into the list of memories was the false memory that as a child the student loved asparagus. Later, when exposed to the choice of asparagus to eat, more students who had the false memory implanted than those who didn’t have this treatment, chose asparagus.

Would this technique hold up well enough to help people reshape their eating patterns? Stay tuned for future research.

By BENEDICT CAREY
The New York Times

If only that very first bite of asparagus had inspired delight, and the first taste of jelly doughnut caused a stomachache. If children's happiest food memories were baked and not fried, leafy green rather than beefy, think of the difference in what people might eat.

Now, think of what it might mean to change those memories - as an adult. Psychologists in California and Washington were studying false memories when they stumbled on a surprisingly easy target for manipulation: foods. In a study accepted for publication in the journal Social Cognition, the researchers describe how they fooled college students into thinking that as children they had become sick when eating certain foods.

The students answered questions about their early eating memories. A week later, they were presented with a bogus food history profile that embedded a single falsehood - that they had gotten sick when eating pickles or hard-boiled eggs - among real memories.

"This is called the false feedback technique, where you gather data from the subjects and use it to lend credibility to this false profile," said Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine who led the research.

But about 40 percent of the 336 participants confirmed in later interviews that they remembered getting sick or believed it to be true. Compared with a control group, the believers said on questionnaires that they would be much more likely to avoid eating pickles or hard-boiled eggs if offered them at a party. In another study, just completed, the researchers found that people who were told that they loved asparagus as children were much more drawn to that slender delicacy than those whose memories were left alone.

Proust's reflections on tea and cookies notwithstanding, the earliest experience of taste is as open to tampering as other memories, Dr. Loftus said. If these revisions became permanent, they might affect how and what people eat. "What we'd like to do now," Dr. Loftus said, "is take the students out for a real picnic and see what happens."

A 2500 tomb has been located between the Sphinx and the second-largest pyramid. Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities reported, according to an Associated Press release, that excavators removed tons of sand from a shaft more than thirty feet below the surface. Inside the tomb they found a wooden coffin and several statues of servants, placed there to help the deceased on the other side.

The Associated Press

Egypt’s antiquities chief on Thursday revealed a 2,500-year-old hidden tomb under the shadow of one of Giza’s three giant pyramids, containing 400 pinkie-finger-sized statues and six coffin-sized niches carved into granite rock.

Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said archaeologists had been working for three months to clear sand from a granite shaft found between the Sphinx and the pyramid of Khafre — also known by its Greek name of Chephren — Giza’s second-largest tomb of a pharaoh.

Under blaring sun Thursday, Hawass said Giza’s latest ancient discovery came to light after archaeologists detected what appeared to be a four-sided shaft. The antiquities chief verified it by climbing a pyramid to get a bird’s eye look.

Excavators later removed several tons of fine sand to descend 33 feet (10 meters) below ground level to where they found the niches.

Hawass said a wooden coffin and a pile of turquoise-colored figurines made of faience, a non-clay ceramic material used by ancient Egyptians, were also found.

“The statues, called ’shawabtis,’ depict servants. Their task was to answer questions for the deceased in the after life and to serve the dead people,” Hawass told The Associated Press.

Hawass said workers will continue clearing sand from the shaft for a further 33 feet, where he believes more antiquities, including a granite sarcophagus, could be unearthed.

The shaft was built in the 26th pharaonic dynasty (664-525 B.C.) during a period of cultural revival when “remarkable, huge tombs” were constructed, Hawass said.

To prevent heart disease, it may be more important to be active than it is to be thin, according to recent research with over nine hundred women. During this research, which was conducted by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the investigators followed these women for four years. During the start of the study, more than three-fourths of the women were overweight. Their average age was fifty eight. During the period of the study, more than half developed some symptoms of heart disease, such as a heart attack or stroke. Sixty eight women died.

When researchers computed the statistical relationships, they found that regardless of the weight of the women, it was their level of physical activity that predicted whether or not they developed heart disease.

Reuters

When it comes to heart disease, being fit may be more important than being thin, according to a study of more than 900 women published Tuesday.

“Our study shows that the lack of physical fitness is a stronger risk factor for developing heart disease than being overweight or obese,” said Timothy Wessel, a physician at the University of Florida who headed up the research.

The study involved 906 women whose health histories were tracked from 1996 to 2000. Seventy-six percent were overweight at the start of the study, when the mean age of the group was 58.

In addition to being measured for weight, the women were asked about their ability to do common physical activities at home, work and at leisure, such as climbing a flight of stairs, running a short distance or walking around the block without stopping.

During the study, 68 of the women died and 455 suffered a heart disease-related problem such as a heart attack or stroke.

When analyzed by categories of weight and activity, women who were at least moderately active were less likely to develop heart disease or related problems than women with low activity scores, no matter which weight category they were in, according to the study published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

“These results suggest that fitness may be more important than overweight or obesity for cardiovascular risk in women,” the study concluded.

Bairey Merz, a physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and another of the study’s authors, said that because physical fitness “has beneficial effects on many factors related to cardiovascular risk, including obesity, increased activity appears to be an ideal therapy for women with coronary heart disease.”

He said the American Heart Association endorses at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity for women on most or all days of the week.

A second study published in the same journal, however, found that being overweight is a bigger risk factor than inactivity when it comes to adult-onset diabetes among women.

“We observed a modest reduction in the risk of diabetes with increasing physical activity level compared with a large increase in the risk with increasing body mass index,” said the report from the Boston VA Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“Because physical activity is a significant individual predictor and has a beneficial effect on body mass index, it remains an important intervention for diabetes prevention. Our study suggests that to further reduce the risk of diabetes with physical activity, it should be performed in conjunction with achieving weight loss,” the study said.

With the passage of time, the true significance of Edgar Cayce becomes more apparent. Compared with earlier research, which focused more on the manner in which Cayce obtained his information, today, in the context of modern research, his overall perspective on life takes on greater significance. In his book The Essential Edgar Cayce (Tarcher/Penguin) Atlantic University faculty member Mark Thurston, Ph.D., outlines the twelve key themes in Cayce’s philosophy. They are:

The Edgar Cayce Virtual Library (http://k.webring.com/hub?ring=theedgarcaycevir) is a new web site devoted to the study of the Edgar Cayce material. It is a “web ring,” meaning that it consists of links to one hundred and seventeen other web sites devoted to Cayce, and is a resource that continually grows as other sites join.

According to the webring’s statement, “This virtual library was created at the suggestion of Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, Edgar Cayce's award-winning biographer. It consists of a collection of online articles, testimonials, essays, books, booklets, and interviews related to Edgar Cayce's remarkable life, work, and ministry. It is intended as a needed and valuable resource of Cayce-related material for the international community of physicians, therapists, patients, students, educators, researchers, and all others interested in Edgar Cayce.”

Monasteries are advertising for new recruits to their way of life. Colleges are typical targets for such recruiting efforts. Older persons, of course, may also apply.

According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the number of diocesan priests and nuns have declined by over fifteen per cent in recent years.

The Archdiocese of Chicago has taken a multimedia approach, using billboards, television and newspapers, and preparing to add advertising on buses and at subway stops. One advertisement said: "If you're looking for a sign from God, this is it. Consider the priesthood."

By GUSTAV NIEBUHR

(NYT) Guests pray with monks in Huntsvile, Utah, at one of several monasteries offering retreats in hopes of drawing new members. Related Articles • Issue in Depth: Religion </library/national/index-religion.html> • National Home </pages/national/index.html>

UNTSVILLE, Utah, Jan. 7 — Four hours before sunrise at the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, the temperature outdoors has sunk to near zero. The snow lies a foot deep, under a sky ablaze with stars.

But inside, the monastery is coming to life, as it does every day by 3:30 a.m. White-robed Trappist monks file into church.

Their chant, from the 51st Psalm, follows instructions laid down 1,500 years ago by St. Benedict. But there is something new here, too: a handful of other Roman Catholic men joining the monks in their prayers and work.

Those guests — college students, a man training to be a civil engineer, a bus driver and others — are here because Holy Trinity has engaged a publicity woman, herself a Catholic who calls the effort "a labor of love," to place notices in college newspapers, church newspapers and parish bulletins, advertising three-day "come and see" retreats in an effort to reach those who might feel a call to monastic life.

For the Trappists, whose formal name is the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance and whose prayer-centered lives stand apart from the workaday world, this is an unusual tack. But it fits a pattern emerging within Catholicism.

Over the last year, dioceses as well have begun reaching out through advertising to men and women who might feel led toward a life of religious service.

This is a response to a tough reality: the continuing decline in the ranks of priests, nuns and brothers. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the number of diocesan priests in the United States declined from 1965 to 2000 by 15 percent, to 30,607, and the number of nuns and brothers by more than half, to 79,814 and 5,662, respectively.

Last winter the Archdiocese of Newark put up six billboards near highways declaring, "Make a world of difference as a priest, brother or sister."

In the fall, the Diocese of Pittsburgh broadcast a 30-second television commercial about the priesthood during college football and Pittsburgh Steelers games. "Our research indicated that our age range was best targeted during sports programming," said the Rev. David J. Bonnar, vocations director for the Pittsburgh Diocese, who said it was hoping to reach men 18 to 45.

"It's a matter of sowing seeds," Father Bonnar said of the commercial, which was later borrowed for use by church leaders in Baltimore.

Gerald F. Kicanas, an auxiliary bishop in Chicago, said: "The church has always been involved in proclaiming the message. It's natural to make use of a form whose purpose is to communicate a message."

It may be too soon to know what results these diocesan efforts will yield, Catholic officials say.

"We have to be realistic about the impact of this," said Father Bonnar, the Pittsburgh vocations director. "This isn't going to draw immediate results." On the other hand, he added, "I think we have certainly given people a lot to think about."

The effort to reach prospective Trappists has been lower-key, though no less heartfelt.

"We would like to have more candidates, because we're an aging community," said the Rev. Charles Cummings, Holy Trinity's 60-year-old vocations director, who is editor of a scholarly journal on Cistercian monasticism. "At the same time, I don't feel we're panicking about the situation. We're in God's hands, and we feel confident in God's hands."

The men on the three-day retreat at Holy Trinity, some 15 miles southeast of Ogden, came from all over the West: San Diego, suburban Las Vegas, Tucson and throughout Utah.

On arrival, they found a notice directing them to the monastery's modest guest wing, where simple rooms were each furnished with a narrow bed, a small desk, a chest of drawers and a crucifix.

Robert Muller, 24, a former oil rig worker studying civil engineering, said he was allowing himself "to seek the silence" by coming to the monastery. Kerry Benson, 46, an employee at a military base, said, "What I really want to do is serve in a way God wants me to."

Peter Kubicki, 20, a community college student, said he had visited other monasteries and had long admired Thomas Merton, a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, whose 1948 autobiography, "The Seven Storey Mountain," remains influential. "I know I need a life of prayer," Mr. Kubicki said, "but I also feel I need contact with people, especially helping people out."

They and the other guests followed the monks' schedule, a rhythm of communal prayers, meals and labor intended to engage spirit and body.

A few rose for the prayer called vigils at 3:30 a.m., chanting psalms alongside the monks. But everyone was expected in church for lauds at 6 a.m. and for Mass immediately thereafter. Breakfast followed at plain wooden tables in the guests' eating area. The men washed their dishes, set the table for the next meal and returned to church for the next prayer, at 7:45 a.m.

Afternoons, they formed work parties, shoveling snow, pitchforking hay and hauling trash, each time working with one of the monks. Midmorning and early evening, they gathered in a library, listening as Father Cummings and other monks spoke about themselves, the monastic life and Trappist history.

Once, the monastery's superior, the Rev. Alan Hohl, gave the guests a lesson in Gregorian chant.

In seeking to make themselves better known, Holy Trinity and a few other monasteries have been aided by a Florida woman with marketing experience, Natalie Smith, who belongs to a group of lay people associated with the Abbey of the Holy Spirit, a monastery in Conyers, Ga.

"We are using a system of marketing that was very successful in business," she said in a telephone interview, adding of the monks, "I feel such a strong kindred spirit with them."

Since last March, Mrs. Smith has arranged with several monasteries for a total of 194 people to go on retreats. Not long ago the effort established a site on the Internet, www.monkretreats.com.

There are 17 Trappist religious houses in the United States, of which five are women's institutions. They may be best known for the fruitcakes, cheese and honey they produce, as well as for the memory of Merton. Less well known is that their practices have changed since Merton's day, after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Prayers are said in English, not Latin. And monks no longer maintain a round- the-clock silence.

But they still rise about three hours after midnight, for vigils, and retire by 8 p.m., after compline. In between, they have five other prayers, celebrate Mass and work. The Trappists are a global organization, with 4,300 monks and nuns on six continents.

"I would say it's like the early Disciples, in the Acts of the Apostles," said Brother David Baumbach, 53, who entered Holy Trinity in 1973 after seven years in the Air Force. He said he meant that men in the order share material goods, community life and spiritual purpose. "The basic thing I looked for was a life dedicated to Christ," he said.

That there is a monastery here, in the heart of Mormon culture, is a legacy of half a century ago. As Catholic soldiers returned from World War II, many turned to the priesthood, and some came knocking at Trappist doors. Novice monks overflowed available space.

The abbot at Gethsemani, in Kentucky, sent monks to found monasteries in Georgia and South Carolina. He also sent a group of about 35 men to Utah. On a former ranch in a mile- high valley, they built a quadrangle from Quonset huts and established a farm. By the 1950's, as many as 80 men lived at Holy Trinity.

But these days, the community numbers 22, many elderly. A few of the monastery's founders remain, among them the Rev. Malachy Flaherty, who served 12 years as its abbot.

Holy Trinity began holding occasional retreats in October. By Christmas, a dozen men had attended. Two expressed interest in returning for a month's stay but have not sent back their applications. "It sometimes takes time for grace to work," Father Cummings said.

In an early morning interview, with Holy Trinity enveloped in stillness, Father Hohl, its superior, said it seemed "sad that we have such a beautiful community" without enough younger men to whom to pass it on. A strongly built man with a gentle manner, he arrived in 1953, after serving in the Navy.

The community life, prayers and work make God a palpable reality to the monks, drawing them into a relationship of sustained intimacy with Jesus, Father Hohl said, adding, "You learn about these truths: the need for God, the grace it is to worship God, to serve him, to sing to him."

"It grows on you, year after year," Father Hohl said. "That's the beauty of monastic life."

Evidence of a coming pole shift has researchers speculating about the possible effects of such an event. It appears that a shift of the earth’s polarity began about one hundred and fifty years ago, according to William J. Broad writing for the New York Times, its strength has weakened about fifteen per cent and its decline has recently accelerated. So far the main effect has been to damage some satellites.

Scientists performing computer simulations of such a reversal believe that there will be severe repercussions but it will not be a doomsday scenario. There would be damage to power grids. It would send polar auroras flashing to the equator. Birds, fish and migratory animals that use the earth’s magnetic field for their navigation would go astray. Perhaps most crucial, it would widen atmospheric ozone holes, because as the field weakens to near zero just before the shift, that extreme weakness would allow solar winds containing extremely dangerous radioactive material to sweep the earth and also expose us to harmful ultraviolet radiation.

The European Space Agency recently sent up a set of new satellites, called Swarm, to monitor the collapsing field more precisely than has been possible so far. No one expects the shift to occur for the next hundreds of years.

Will Compasses Point South?

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times

The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth.

During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, then reappears with opposite polarity. Afterward, compass needles that normally point north would point south, and during the thousands of years of transition, much in the heavens and Earth would go askew.

A reversal could knock out power grids, hurt astronauts and satellites, widen atmospheric ozone holes, send polar auroras flashing to the equator and confuse birds, fish and migratory animals that rely on the steadiness of the magnetic field as a navigation aid. But experts said the repercussions would fall short of catastrophic, despite a few proclamations of doom and sketchy evidence of past links between field reversals and species extinctions.

Although a total flip may be hundreds or thousands of years away, the rapid decline in magnetic strength is already damaging satellites.

Last month, the European Space Agency approved the world's largest effort at tracking the field's shifts. A trio of new satellites, called Swarm, are to monitor the collapsing field with far greater precision than before and help scientists forecast its prospective state.

"We want to get some idea of how this would evolve in the near future, just like people trying to predict the weather," said Dr. Gauthier Hulot, a French geophysicist working on the satellite plan. "I'm personally quite convinced we should be able to work out the first predictions by the end of the mission."

The discipline is one of a number - like high-energy physics and aspects of space science - where Europeans have recently come from behind to seize the initiative, dismaying some American experts.

No matter what the new findings, the public has no reason to panic, scientists say. Even if a flip is imminent, it might take 2,000 years to mature. The last one took place 780,000 years ago, when Homo erectus was still learning how to make stone tools.

Some experts suggest a reversal is overdue. "The fact that it's dropping so rapidly gives you pause," said Dr. John A. Tarduno, a professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester. "It looks like things we see in computer models of a reversal."

In an interview, Dr. Tarduno put the odds of an impending flip at more likely than not, adding that some of his colleagues were placing informal bets on the possibility but realized they would probably be long gone by the time the picture clarified.

Deep inside the Earth, the magnetic field arises as the fluid core oozes with hot currents of molten iron and this mechanical energy gets converted into electromagnetism. It is known as the geodynamo. In a car's generator, the same principle turns mechanical energy into electricity.

No one knows precisely why the field periodically reverses, but scientists say the responsibility probably lies with changes in the turbulent flows of molten iron, which they envision as similar to the churning gases that make up the clouds of Jupiter.

In theory, a reversal could have major effects because over the ages many aspects of nature and society have come to rely on the field's steadiness.

When baby loggerhead turtles embark on an 8,000-mile trek around the Atlantic, they use invisible magnetic clues to check their bearings. So do salmon and whales, honeybees and homing pigeons, frogs and Zambian mole rats, scientists have found.

On a planetary scale, the magnetic field helps shield the Earth from solar winds and storms of deadly particles. Its so-called magnetosphere extends out 37,000 miles from Earth's sunlit side and much farther behind the planet, forming a cometlike tail.

Among other things, the field's collapse, scientists say, could let in bursts of radiation, causing a variety of disruptions.

Dr. Charles H. Jackman, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has worked with European colleagues on a computer model that mimics the repercussions. A weak field, they reported in December, could let solar storms pummel the atmosphere with enough radiation to destroy significant amounts of the ozone that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet light.

Ultraviolet radiation, the short, invisible rays from the sun, can harm some life forms, depress crop yields and raise cancer rates, causing skin cancer and cataracts in humans. Dr. Jackman said that the ozone damage from any one solar storm could heal naturally in two to three years but that the protective layer would stay vulnerable to new bursts of radiation as long as the Earth's magnetic field remained weak.

"It would be significant" in terms of planetary repercussions, he said in an interview, "but not catastrophic." High levels of ultraviolet radiation would spread down from polar regions as far south as Florida.

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“The church and the scientific community will inevitably interact; their options do not include isolation. Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish. We need each other to be what we must be, what we are called to be.”

Those are the words of Pope John II and they come from the website, www.counterbalance.org which contains bountiful reading material on the emerging dialogue between science and religion, among other topics.

Oahspe is but one of sacred texts archived at www.sacred-texts.com. About this particular book, the site notes: “Oahspe is a book written in 1880 by an American dentist named John Ballou Newbrough [1828-1891]. He claimed that it was the result of automatic writing, dictated to him by spirits in a trance. In this trance he wrote the entire book on a very early typewriter (possibly the first such book ever written on a machine!). The spirits were very profilic; Oahspe is about four-fifths the size of the King James Bible, and more than twice the size of the Book of Mormon.”

Other texts archived at www.sacred-texts.com authored via automatic writing or similar methods of channeling during the 19th century include the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, Clothed with the Sun and Dwellers on Two Planets, referred to in the Cayce readings. The site also has many full texts of sacred texts from traditional religions.

Knowing the future, even though we don’t know we know, can affect how we respond now. Or is the future affecting the present?

A person watches a computer monitor. Electrodes attached to the person’s hand measures infinitesimal changes in sweating, like a lie detector does. When the person indicates “ready” by pressing a button, the computer chooses randomly a picture to display for three seconds. Unknown to the person, the picture is either emotionally upsetting or rather neutral in content. In several experiments conducted by Dean Radin, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, persons show a precognitive emotional reaction detectable by the electrodes. They sweat slightly more just before the computer shows an upsetting picture than they do before seeing a neutral picture. Reporting in Shift: At the Frontiers of Consciousness, Radin describes similar experiments by others who have obtained similar results. In one study, disturbing sounds were the stimuli precognitively reacted to by the participants. In another study Radin described, published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, researchers monitored not only skin sweat, but also brainwaves and heart activity. All three dimensions showed precognitive ability to predict the person’s viewing the upsetting photo. In this experiment, the heart responded first, followed by the brain.

Causality in such experiments is in question. Radin describes an experiment by Daryl Bem, a psychologist at Cornell University. This experiment uses a known phenomenon, the “mere exposure” effect, which refers to the fact that a person will favor as “more attractive” a face they have seen many times, preferring it to otherwise equally attractive faces which the person is seeing for the first time. Bem used this effect to see if a person would “precognitively” prefer a face that would later be shown several times. In this experiment, the person sees two faces and chooses the one that is “more attractive.” After the choice is made, the computer randomly determines which of the two faces to show to that person for repeated exposures. The results indicated that people significantly favor the face that will later be repeatedly exposed. Is the future manipulation of the person’s preference retroactively affecting the person’s choice in the present, or is the person precognitively responding to the experimenter’s manipulation?

Repoted in Shift, September, November, 2004, pp. 38-39. For further information write to Dean Radin, IONS, 101 San Antonio Road, Petaluma, CA 94952-9524

It’s better to eat healthy foods, such as vegetables, rather than taking vitamin pills, according to research conducted at Pennsylvania State University. Many vitamins do contain anti-oxidants, the ingredients in vegetables and fruits that have been shown to protect the heart from disease and the body from cancer. However, a review of all studies done on the effect of vitamins show that such supplements have no effect on heart disease.

Paralyzed persons will appreciate the research conducted at Cyberkinetics, Inc., of Foxboro, Massachusetts, which has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials of its new computer chip. When this chip, dubbed “BrainGate” is implanted just under the skull, a computer can recognize the brain activity patterns the chip detects and respond accordingly. The effect is to allow the person to control a computer with thoughts.

Research advances to confirm Cayce’s prediction of being able to form a total diagnosis from a drop of blood. Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have developed a test to detect cancer from a small amount of drawn blood, bypassing the need for a biopsy or bone scan. Reporting in The New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers, using what they call the CellSearch System, find that the more cancer cells found in the blood, the more severe the cancer.

Story taken from an article in the Arizone Daily Star, August 20, 2004, written from wire reports.

Dr. Massimo Cristofanilli was the lead investigator at the Texas center where the research was conducted.