Psi Research submitted in 2004

Scientists now have the hard evidence they needed to support what everyone already believes: a good night’s sleep makes you more creative than a sleepless night. Many studies have shown that the brain continues to work on the day’s problems during sleep. But does the brain’s work during sleep provide any improvement in creativity with regard to how to deal with the problem? That question has remained unanswered until a recent study involving a mathematical puzzle.

In this study, participants attempted to perform a series of mathematical puzzles. With practice, participants improved their performance on these puzzles. Afterwards, some participants received eight hours of sleep, while others were kept up all night. That next day, the participants continued their work on the same type of puzzles. What they didn’t realize was that although practice helps solving these puzzles, there was a hidden pattern in the puzzles that would show how to solve all the puzzles easily. On the second day, more than twice as many of the sleep-fulfilled participants spontaneously discovered this hidden clue than did the sleep-deprived participants.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SLEEP_CREATIVITY?SITE=FLTAM&SECTI
ON=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Study: Sleep Essential for Creativity

By WILLIAM McCALL
Associated Press Writer

For the first time, scientists say they have proved what creative minds have
known all along: that our sleeping brains continue working on problems that
baffle us during the day, and that the right answer may come more easily
after eight hours of rest.

The German study is considered to be the first hard evidence supporting the
commonsense notion that creativity and problem-solving appear to be directly
linked to adequate sleep.

Some researchers said the study provides a valuable reminder for overtired
workers and students that sleep is often the best medicine.

"A single study never settles an issue once and for all, but I would say
this study does advance the field significantly," said Dr. Carl E. Hunt,
director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National
Institutes of Health. "It's going to have potentially important results for
children for school performance and for adults for work performance."

Sleep has long been thought to improve creativity. Rolling Stones guitarist
Keith Richards said the riff in "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" came to him
in his sleep, while the 19th-century chemist Dmitri Mendeleev literally
dreamed up the periodic table of elements.

Scientists at the University of Luebeck found that volunteers taking a
simple math test were three times more likely than sleep-deprived
participants to figure out a hidden rule for converting the numbers into the
right answer if they had eight hours of sleep. The findings appear in
Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Jan Born, who led the study, said the results support biochemical studies of
the brain that indicate memories are restructured before they are stored.
Creativity also appears to be enhanced in the process, he said.

"This restructuring might be occurring in such a way that the problem is
easier to solve," Born said.

Born said the exact process in the sleeping brain for sharpening these
abilities remains unclear. But it appears that memories start deep in an
area of the brain called the hippocampus, and are eventually pushed outward
to the neocortex to be consolidated.

The changes leading to creativity or problem-solving insight occur during
"slow wave" or deep sleep, which typically occurs in the first four hours of
the sleep cycle, he said.

The findings also may explain the memory problems associated with aging,
because older people typically have trouble getting enough sleep, especially
the kind of deep sleep needed to process memories, Born said.

History is rife with examples of artists and scientists who have awakened to
make their most notable contributions. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the
epic poem "Kubla Khan" after a long night of rest. Robert Louis Stevenson
credited a good night's sleep with helping him create scenes in "The Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." And Elias Howe came up with his idea for
the sewing machine after waking up.

Other researchers have long suspected that sleep helps to consolidate
memories and sharpen thoughts. But until now it had been difficult to design
an experiment to demonstrate it.

Born and his team "have applied a clever test that allows them to determine
exactly when insight occurs," Pierre Maquet and Perrine Ruby at the
University of Liege said in an accompanying commentary.

Some 70 million Americans are believed to be sleep-deprived, contributing to
accidents, health problems and lower test scores.

Maquet and Ruby said the study should be considered a warning to schools,
employers and government agencies that sleep makes a huge difference in
mental performance.

The results "give us good reason to fully respect our periods of sleep -
especially given the current trend to recklessly curtail them," they said.

Also see: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v427/n6972/abs/naturee02223_fs.html

Not only do people unconsciously repress painful memories, they can also intentionally forget undesired information, provided they are motivated to do so. What happens to memories that the person intentionally tries to forget? Some new brain research, published in the journal Science, suggests that by when a person avoids thinking of the material to be forgotten, the brain suppresses the activity that would normally be part of the remembering process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/science/09MEMO.html?ex=1075438800&en=493f1
6d6ca4de065&ei=5070

Brain May Be Able to Bury Unwanted Memories, Study Shows
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

Published: January 9, 2004

Unwanted memories can be driven from awareness, according to a team of
researchers who say they have identified a brain circuit that springs into
action when people deliberately try to forget something.

The findings, published today in the journal Science, strengthen the theory
that painful memories can be repressed by burying them in the subconscious,
the researchers say.

In the study, people who had memorized a pair of words were later shown one
of them and asked to either recall the second word or to consciously avoid
thinking about it.

Brain images showed that the hippocampus, an area of the brain that usually
lights up when people retrieve memories, was relatively quiet when subjects
tried to suppress the words they had learned. But at the same time, another
region associated with motor inhibition, called the dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex, showed increased activity.

The scientists also found that the more the subjects were told to resist
thinking about a word, the more likely they were to have trouble recalling
it later.

"This suggests a neurological basis for how people can actually shove
something out of mind," said Dr. Michael C. Anderson, a professor of
cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oregon and lead author of the
study. "There's no question that we're tapping into something that's
relevant to the experiences of people who survive trauma and find the
memories become less and less intrusive over time."

Dr. Anderson said the burst of activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area
that manages higher-order cognitive skills like planning, could represent an
overriding mechanism, in which the hippocampus is prevented from dredging up
unwanted memories.

Over time, continued suppression of those memories by the prefrontal cortex,
he said, can push them from awareness.

"We could predict how effectively people would forget these words just by
how much activation they showed in their prefrontal cortex," Dr. Anderson
said. "I think this explains why the tendency to be reminded of something
horrific, for example, eventually diminishes."

Dr. Larry Squire, a professor of psychiatry and neurosciences at the
University of California at San Diego, who did not participate in the study,
said it was difficult to say exactly what the brain images meant. Still,
concluding that the activity in the prefrontal cortex points to a brain
circuit that can block memories, particularly emotional ones, he said, might
be too narrow an interpretation.

"This is a much debated issue," Dr. Squire said. "It's possible the subjects
are simply directing their attention elsewhere and using a lot of energy and
brain resources to think of something different. I don't think it is
necessarily an indication of active repression."

But Dr. David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University
School of Medicine, said diverting thoughts away from something was the
first step to forgetting about it completely. And the study, he added,
supported the notion that people could suppress traumatic memories and still
regain them later.

"People have to manage vast amounts of information by keeping most of it out
of mind, which is true of emotional memories and all others," said Dr.
Spiegel, who was not involved with the study. "At any given moment you
couldn't remember most of what you know or you'd be overwhelmed. But the
memories are there, and you can still recover them down the line.
------------------------

The act of apologizing after hurting someone has distinct and important consequences, according to research summarized in the book The Power of Apology (John Wiley & Sons, publishers) by marriage and family therapist Beverly Engle. Hearing an apology from the perpetrator of a wrong lowers the blood pressure of the wronged person and often facilitates the experience of an emotional healing. By making an apology, the perpetrator can relinquish guilt feelings and begin a process of rehabilitation. An apology also helps the wronged person reach a state of forgiveness, so necessary to health and feelings of well-being. One study, for example, showed that when the perpetrator apologizes, it makes it possible for the victim to experience empathy for the perpetrator. The victim’s feelings of empathy for the perpetrator is crucial to the victim’s ability to forgive and move on.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArticle/PTO-20020802-000027.AS
P

I'm Sorry
By Beverly Engel -- Publication Date: August 2, 2002
Summary: Marriage and family therapist Beverly Engel explores how the act of
apology can change your life.

When I was 35 years old, I divorced my mother. I felt that under the
circumstances, it was the only thing I could do. I had long felt that she
had damaged me with emotional abuse while I was growing up, and during my
adulthood she continued to treat me in ways I didn't like. I became so
emotionally and physically stressed when I was with her that my health was
being affected. So I made the difficult yet necessary decision to stop
seeing her. The estrangement lasted three years. During that time, I wrote a
book titled Divorcing a Parent, in which I told about the experience of
divorcing my mother and encouraged others in similar situations to consider
doing the same. Then one day the phone rang. When I picked it up the person
on the other end of the line said, "I'm sorry." It was my mother. Waves of
relief washed over me. Resentment, fear and anger drained out. Much to my
surprise, those two simple words seemed to wipe away years of pain and
bitterness. They were the words I had been waiting to hear most of my life.

I knew that it had taken all the courage my extremely proud mother could
muster to say them, so I didn't have to belabor the point. The important
thing was that she was saying she was sorry-something she'd never done
before. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she truly regretted the
way she had treated me.

Of course, this was only the beginning of the story. Although I believed her
apology, I didn't yet know if her behavior toward me would be different.
This I tested over time. But by apologizing she had acknowledged that I had
a reason to be hurt and angry, and that was extremely empowering for me.

Apology changed my life. I believe it can change yours, as well. Almost like
magic, apology has the power to repair harm, mend relationships, soothe
wounds and heal broken hearts.

Apology is not just a social nicety. It is an important ritual, a way of
showing respect and empathy for the wronged person. It is also a way of
acknowledging an act that, if otherwise left unnoticed, might compromise the
relationship. Apology has the ability to disarm others of their anger and to
prevent further misunderstandings. While an apology cannot undo harmful past
actions, if done sincerely and effectively, it can undo the negative effects
of those actions.

Apology is crucial to our mental and even physical health. Recent research
shows that receiving an apology has a noticeable, positive physical effect
on the body. An apology actually affects the bodily functions of the person
receiving it-blood pressure decreases, heart rate slows and breathing
becomes steadier.

Emotional Benefits of Apology

¶ A person who has been harmed feels emotional healing when he is
acknowledged by the wrongdoer.

¶ When we receive an apology, we no longer perceive the wrongdoer as a
personal threat.

¶ Apology helps us to move past our anger and prevents us from being stuck
in the past.

¶ Apology opens the door to forgiveness by allowing us to have empathy for
the wrongdoer.

Apology Benefits the Receiver and the Giver

¶ The debilitating effects of the remorse and shame we may feel when we've
hurt another person can eat away at us until we become emotionally and
physically ill. By apologizing and taking responsibility for our actions we
help rid ourselves of esteem-robbing self-reproach and guilt.

¶ Apology has the power to humble even the most arrogant. When we develop
the courage to admit we are wrong and work past our resistance to
apologizing, we develop a deep sense of self-respect.

¶ Apologizing helps us remain emotionally connected to our friends and loved
ones. Knowing we have wronged someone may cause us to distance ourselves
from the person, but once we have apologized we feel freer to be vulnerable
and intimate.

¶ And there is another little-talked-about benefit: Since apologizing
usually causes us to feel humiliated, it can also act as a deterrent,
reminding us to not repeat the act.

The Connection Between Apology and Empathy

To forgive, most people need to gain some empathy and compassion for the
wrongdoer. This is where apology comes in. When someone apologizes, it is a
lot easier to view him or her in a compassionate way. Research shows that
when wrongdoers apologize, we find it easier to forgive them.

This is likely because when someone confesses to and apologizes for hurting
us, we are then able to develop a new image of that person. Instead of
seeing him through anger and bitterness, the person's humility and apology
cause us to see him as a fallible, vulnerable human being. We see the
wrongdoer as more human, more like ourselves and this moves us.

Michael E. McCullough, Ph.D., Steven J. Sandage, M.S., and Everett L.
Worthington Jr., Ph.D., examined whether the effect of apology on our
capacity to forgive is due to our increased empathy toward an apologetic
offender. They discovered that much of why people find it easy to forgive an
apologetic wrongdoer is that apology and confession increase empathy, which
heightens the ability to forgive.

McCullough, who is the director of research at the privately funded National
Institute for Healthcare Research in Rockville, Maryland, believes that
apology encourages forgiveness by eliciting sympathy. He and his colleagues
recently published research in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology that supports this hypothesis.

The first study, of 131 female and 108 male college students, looked at
whether people who forgave are more conciliatory toward, and less avoidant
of, their offender. Participants filled out questionnaires describing an
event in which someone had hurt them, how they were hurt, how wrong they
felt the offender was and the extent to which the offender apologized.

McCullough and his colleagues then measured the degree of empathy
participants felt toward the offending person, the degree to which they'd
forgiven the offender, the degree to which participants had tried to
reconcile with the offender and the degree to which participants avoided the
offender.

The data supported the hypothesis that an apology leads to empathy and
empathy mediates forgiveness.

Intention and Attitude

There are also two important underlying aspects of an apology-intention and
attitude. These are communicated nonverbally to the person to whom you are
apologizing. If your apology does not come sincerely, it will not feel
meaningful to the other person.

For the person you have wronged to feel this sincerity, the desire to
apologize must come from within. You should never attempt an apology because
someone else tells you it is the right thing to do, because the other person
is expecting it or because it will get you what you want. Apologies that are
used as manipulations or mere social gestures will come across as empty and
meaningless.

Apology, when sincere and intentional, is a powerful, perhaps even
life-altering, tool for both the giver and the receiver.

Apology has indeed changed my life. My mother lived only three more years.
But because she was able to offer an apology, and because I was able to
accept her apology, we were closer in those three years than we had ever
been. Our time together was extremely healing for both of us.

How to Give a Meaningful Apology

If you have difficulties apologizing, the following will teach you the most
effective way to go about it. A meaningful apology communicates the three
R's: regret, responsibility and remedy.
Regret
A statement of regret for having caused the hurt or damage

While your intention may not have been to cause harm, you recognize that
your action or inaction nevertheless did hurt this person. This regret needs
to be communicated. This includes an expression of empathy with an
acknowledgement of the injustice you caused.
Responsibility
An acceptance of responsibility for your actions

This means not blaming anyone else and not making excuses for what you did.
For an apology to be effective it must be clear that you are accepting total
responsibility for your action or inaction. Therefore, your apology needs to
include a statement of responsibility.
Remedy
A statement of willingness to remedy the situation

While you can't undo the past, you can repair the harm you caused.
Therefore, a meaningful apology needs to include a statement in which you
offer restitution, or a promise to take action so that you will not repeat
the behavior.

Unless all three of these elements are present, the other person will sense
that something is missing in your apology and he or she may feel
shortchanged.

Adapted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, from The Power
of Apology, by Beverly Engel.

The oneness of all life was Edgar Cayce’s favorite first principle. In his view, oneness applies not only to the unity of all creatures, but also to the unity of mind and body. He is not alone in this metaphysics, for his view has a long, long history, traceable to Hinduism.

Descartes, on the other hand, the seventeenth century French philosopher, receives the credit, usually, for initiating a contrary metaphysics, separating mind and body. This position is called dualism. It is the standard metaphysic of today’s science and it has been a major obstacle to those who would try to explain the psi qualities of the mind. How to link mind and matter within a unitary conceptual scheme seems to be about as challenging as finding/creating Einstein’s hoped for unified theory.

Enter philosopher Keith Chandler and his book, The Mind Paradigm (Author’s Choice Press) and his theory of reality he calls “mental realism.” His approach to oneness rests upon a bedrock of ultimate mystery, which has been called God, the One, the All. This mysterious reality can manifest in two ways: intelligent, purposeful, creative psychic energy and as the capacity for awareness. Here is two in one as we experience it ourselves: we think and act and are aware of doing so, yet we experience ourselves as one person—one person who manifests in two ways. Mental realism proposes that the universe is a thought process of the ultimate mystery, a process that is motivated by love and created for a purpose, although we may never know it. Free will exists, but the ego’s freedom is an illusion. All choice must be consistent with the will of the Mystery, for no one possesses any energy separate from the mystery.

Since ego seems to be co-created with separatist consciousness, attempts to create a model of oneness that unites mind and body may indeed undermine our assumptions about free will. Those who like to debate the details of metaphysics may find it fruitful to compare Cayce’s view on the axiom of freedom of choice with this philosopher’s deductions from his philosophy of mental realism. One possibility is to allow a distinction between what the Mystery might allow and what It might intend.

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=471135&host=3&dir=507

The Four Degrees: How Europe's Hottest Summer Shows Global Warming is
Transforming our World
By MICHAEL MCCARTHY
Environment Editor
The Independent (U.K.)
It was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made
itself unmistakably felt.
We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high
temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control,
great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But
just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in
western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany
and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very
long way.
Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to
northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average
temperature for the summer months was 3.78C above the long-term norm, said
the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in
Norwich, which is one of the world's leading institutions for the monitoring
and analysis of temperature records.
That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context - but
then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous
data, anywhere.
It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU's
director, is prepared to say openly - in a way few scientists have done
before - that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural
climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.
Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that
recent high temperatures are "consistent with predictions" of climate
change.
For the great block of the map - that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E -
the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781.
Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and
1990, departures from the temperature norm, or "anomalies", over the area as
a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability
of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a
dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature - the peaks on the graph
denoting very hot years - approaching, or even exceeding, 2C. But there has
been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
"This is quite remarkable," Professor Jones told The Independent. "It's very
unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical
distribution you wouldn't get this number. The return period [how often it
could be expected to recur] would be something like one in a thousand years.
"If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then
perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we've
seen than in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to
global warming, caused by human action."
The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have
long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself
mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been
much more hot. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were
warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe's lower-level
ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedented hot summer was bound to
come, and this year it did.
Over a large swath of the western part of the European continent, records
were broken in all three months, not just monthly averages, but for daily
extremes and the lengths of spells above thresholds. New national records
were set in at least four countries. Britain experienced its record high on
10 August when the mercury registered 38.5 C(101.3F) at Faversham in Kent -
the first time the British Isles had recorded a three-figure Fahrenheit
temperature.
Germany had a new record of 40.8C (105.4), Switzerland one of 41.5C (106.7F)
- Swiss data show the summer as the hottest since at least 1500 - and
Portugal a quite astonishing 47.3C (117.1F).
Although France did not see a new national record - that still stands at the
44C (111.2F) registered at Toulouse on 8 August 1923 - the country suffered
severely from La Canicule, the heat wave, which was headline news for most
of the late summer. In southern and eastern France, according to Professor
Jones, 29 sites recorded temperatures exceeding 40C (104F) during August,
with the record being 42.6C (108.7F) at Orange in the Rhône valley.
One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights,
especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never
dropped below 23C (73.4F) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city
recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not
drop below 25.5C (77.9F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at
Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.6C (80.6F) on 13
August, and similar record-breaking night-time temperatures were recorded in
Switzerland and Italy.
The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous
years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The numbers
gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about
2000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after
14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 5C. The elderly were
most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged
75-94.
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded,
but despite the high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself -
defined as the June, July and August period - still comes behind 1976 and
1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat.
At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the
global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002,
but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it
might move into second place, Professor Jones said. The 10 hottest years in
the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt
about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. "The temperatures
recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said. "It
was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that.
It was enormously exceptional."
posted at 1:30 AM

Probably not to show at your local theater is the independent film that wowed the Sundance Film Festival: Super Size Me: A Film of Epic Portions. Morgan Spurlock, the film’s auteur, served as director and principal character in this documentary about his experience eating only MacDonald’s, three times a day, for a month. Part of the premise of the film was that if the MacDonald’s server asked Spurlock if he wanted to “supersize it,” he would comply. At the end of the month, Spurlock, 33, was a health disaster, having gained 26 pounds and raised his cholesterol level from 165 to 230. After a few days on the diet he was vomiting up his burgers, complaining of headaches and depression. He lost all interest in sex. His girl friend thought he and his new paunch was disgusting. When the doctor’s monitoring him examined his liver at the end of the month, it was almost destroyed by the all the saturated fats it had to process. The liver was said to have turned to “pate.” MacDonald’s anyone?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?storyI
D=3545438&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=ge
neral

Film records effects of eating only McDonald's for a month

25.01.2004 12.00pm - By DAVID USBORNE

NEW YORK - Normally sane actors have been known to gain or lose huge amounts
of weight for their art. Think of Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary.
Directors, of course, never have to undergo such torture. Or so it used to
be, until Morgan Spurlock had a bright idea for a film project.

The first clue to his particular misery comes in the title of his
documentary, which has become the darling of this year's Sundance Film
Festival. It is called Super Size Me: A Film of Epic Portions and it is a
sometimes comic but serious look at America's addiction to fast food.

Spurlock, a tall New Yorker of usually cast-iron constitution, made himself
the guinea pig in this dogged investigation into the effects of fast food on
the body. He ate only at McDonald's for a month - three meals, every day -
and took a camera crew along to record it. If a server offered to super-size
his order, he was obliged to accept - and to ingest everything, gherkins and
all.

Neither Spurlock, 33, nor the three doctors who agreed to monitor his health
during the experiment were prepared for the degree of ruin it would wreak on
his body. Within days, he was vomiting up his burgers and battling with
headaches and depression. And his sex drive vanished.

When Spurlock had finished, his liver, overwhelmed by saturated fats, had
virtually turned to pate. "The liver test was the most shocking thing," said
Dr Daryl Isaacs, who joined the team to watch over him. "It became very,
very abnormal."

Spurlock put on nearly 12kg over the period and his cholesterol level leapt
from a respectable 165 to 230. He told the New York Post: "I got desperately
ill. My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I've never had in
my life ... It was amazing - and really frightening." And his girlfriend, a
vegan chef? "She was completely disgusted by me," he said.

Making the film over several months last year, Spurlock travelled through 20
states, interviewing everyone from fast-food junkies to the US Surgeon
General and a lobbyist for the industry. McDonald's, for whom the film can
only be a public relations catastrophe, ignored his repeated entreaties for
comment.

Spurlock had the idea for the film on Thanksgiving Day 2002, slumped on his
mother's couch after eating far too much. He saw a news item about two
teenage girls in New York suing McDonald's for making them obese. The
company responded by saying their food was nutritious and good for people.
Is that so, he wondered? To find out, he committed himself to his 30 days of
Big Mac bingeing.

The film does not yet have a distributor and, given the advertising clout of
McDonald's, that may prove problematic. But the critics at Sundance seem to
have been captivated. Certainly, the film is blessed by good timing. Obesity
has in recent months captured headlines as America's new health scourge. The
humour of the approach - and Spurlock's own suffering - obviously helps.

At the festival in Park City, Utah, he has had teams handing out "Unhappy
Meal" bags on the streets with a few "Fat Fun Facts". For instance, one in
four Americans visits a fast-food restaurant every day. And did you know
that McDonald's feeds more people around the world every day than the
population of Spain? The makers have self-rated the film "F" - for "fat
audiences".

McDonald's has finally been forced to comment. "Consumers can achieve
balance in their daily dining decisions by choosing from our array of
quality offerings and range of portion sizes to meet their taste and
nutrition goals," it said in a statement last week.

Spurlock claims that the goal was not to attack McDonald's as such. Among
the issues he highlights is the willingness of schools to feed students
nothing but burgers and pizza. "If there's one thing we could accomplish
with the film, it is that we make people think about what they put in their
mouth," he said. "So the next time you do go into a fast-food restaurant and
they say, 'Would you like to upsize that?' you think about it and say,
'Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll stick with the medium this time.'"

The field of medical intuition is in a bullish state as it blossoms worldwide. A recent study reported in the media involved a teenager in Russia who could literally “see” inside people’s bodies and help doctor’s diagnose illness. It is to be expected that practitioners would want to organize, form an association, develop principles, lay out guidelines for qualifications and lobby for recognition by the medical community.

Originating from Spokane, Washington, the International Association of Medical Intuitives is now inviting membership. For more information, write to Charles Lightwalker, IAMI Treasurer, PO Box 3286, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816

Stress lowers our immune system, that we know. Those who are chronically stressed by mental disease have a greater incidence of physical disease. For example, heart attacks, cancer, and osteoporosis are all more common in people who are clinically depressed.

What we are beginning to learn is the mechanisms that creates this connection between stress and disease. New evidence echoes ideas in the Edgar Cayce readings. A new study conducted at the AIDS Institute of the University of California, for example, shows that introverts have less resistance to the AIDS virus and do not respond as positively to treatment as do extraverts. The mechanism seems to be the level of activity of the sympathetic nervous system.

In this study, reported in the journal Biological Psychiatry,found that men who were introverted, reserved and kept to themselves had nearly eight times the level of infection compared with outgoing men. After treatment with antiretroviral drugs for as many as 18 months, the level of infection dropped eight times as much for the extraverts as did for the introverts.

The researchers explained the implications of this study in terms of the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Shy, introverted men are more likely to feel stressed by normal, daily social interaction. During a stress response, the neurotransmitter norepinephrine overflows from neural transmission pathways into the blood stream, activating a higher heart rate, among other effects. Those who by personality disposition are more expectant of stress, who stand ready to activate the fight-or-flight syndrome, live continually in a state of mild sympathetic nervous activation, at the expense of their health.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20076-2003Dec21?language=printer

Stress Found to Weaken Resistance to Illness

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 22, 2003; Page A12
Scientists are gaining new insights into the role of temperament in making
some people vulnerable to physical disease through studies exploring how
stress influences the immune system, weakening disease-fighting cells and
creating fertile environments for pathogens.

This month, a carefully done study showed that shy men have much less
resistance to the AIDS virus than extroverted men and benefit far less from
treatment with antiretroviral drugs. It is the first study to demonstrate
through laboratory tests a connection between being introverted and the
course of AIDS in individuals, researchers said.
Such studies are sketching in the details behind the growing awareness that
the workings of the body and mind cannot be neatly compartmentalized into
the departments and disciplines taught in medical school. As a result,
paying attention to the emotional state of patients with infectious and
chronic diseases is increasingly more than a matter of good bedside manner;
it is becoming an essential part of treatment.
Although the connection between emotion and disease has long been suspected
-- physicians as early as the 2nd century A.D. observed a link between
"melancholy" and physical illness -- researchers are finally pinpointing
networks of biological systems that connect temperament with the progression
of illness. Cascades of complex chemical signals flow through pathways from
the brain to the body and back, often triggering "fight or flight" responses
in the short term but decreasing resistance to illness in the long run. Some
signals speed up heart rate; others burn muscle and bone. Some changes make
cells more vulnerable to viruses.
The consequences can be dramatic. In the new study, HIV-infected men who
were introverted, reserved and kept to themselves had nearly eight times as
many viral particles in their blood compared with outgoing men. After
treatment with antiretroviral drugs for as many as 18 months, the viral load
among extroverted men fell 162 fold. Among shy men, the drop was only 20
fold, said lead author Steve Cole at the AIDS Institute of the University of
California at Los Angeles.
"There is a link between psychological profile and poorer response to HIV,
and maybe even a number of other viral diseases," agreed Anthony Fauci,
director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the
federal government's lead research center in the fight against AIDS.
Other research has shown similar connections between mental disorders such
as depression and AIDS, osteoporosis, even cancer. A study of 5,000 people
with depression showed they had twice the risk of developing cancer compared
with people without the mental disorder, said David Spiegel, a professor of
psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. And Philip Gold, chief
of the clinical neuroendocrinology branch at the National Institute of
Mental Health, found that pre-menopausal women who were depressed had a
higher rate of bone loss and a two- to three-fold higher risk of
osteoporosis compared with other women.
The UCLA study, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, has offered
important clues into the physiological pathways through which stress
influences the body, which could soon suggest targets for treatment to
combat its effects.
"People who have the shy, sensitive temperament seem to be more prone to
having sympathetic nervous system responses," Cole said in an interview,
referring to the part of the nervous system that causes accelerated heart
rate and other unconscious changes. "They are more stressed by lots of
things, including contact with unfamiliar people."
In shy people, the nervous systems may be more likely to produce a stress
reaction during social interactions -- so they maintain their internal
stress balance by limiting contact with other people.
Previous work had shown that AIDS progresses more rapidly in gay men who
were in the closet, compared with those who were "out." Initially, Cole
said, scientists speculated that the hiding and secrecy raised the stress
level and made them vulnerable. But increasingly, he said, scientists think
of being in the closet as a marker -- rather than a cause -- of poor
outcomes. Because shy people are more sensitive to humiliation, rejection
and the opinions of others, shyness could be the reason some gay men with
HIV stay in the closet as well as have worse outcomes with AIDS.
Fauci agreed the research was promising but cautioned that the connections
between the neurological and immune system are extremely complex, and no
single mechanism is likely to provide the entire answer.
Cole said a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine that is involved in
stress reactions could be the link between social inhibition and worse
prognosis in AIDS.
"It's squirted out of one neuron and is received by another neuron," Cole
said. "This happens with such intensity that norepinephrine spills into the
blood. That changes how your heart works. If we infect a cell with this, the
virus grows 10-fold faster."
The next step would be to examine whether blocking norepinephrine affects
the AIDS outcome, Cole said. Common heart medications called beta-blockers
can keep the body from responding to the neurotransmitter.
"The nervous system communicates with the immune system," agreed Steven
Douglas, chief immunologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who
has studied another neurotransmitter, Substance P, that appears to play a
similar role linking depression with HIV infection. "That's what is so
exciting."
Scientists are far from understanding all the links in the bewildering
number of chemicals that establish feedback loops between the body and the
brain, but teams of researchers at the intersection of neurology, immunology
and endocrinology are working to chart all the pathways and signals.
Gold noted that stress is a normal response to threatening situations that
has been learned through evolution -- stress forces the body to choose
short-term performance over long-term health.
"It is not good to be lackadaisical if you are a rat being chased by a cat,"
he said. "There is a lot of circuitry in the brain that is organized to
promote anxiety."
After the emergency is over, most people's internal chemical balance
downshifts into a more sedate state. But in some people, Gold said, things
don't scale down: "You are ready for stress, you are ready to bleed, you
increase your glucose. That is not a good state to stay in for months or
years. The bone breaks down; you get heart disease."
Gold said an important conclusion is that people with emotional disorders
should be regularly monitored for osteoporosis and heart disease. And
treating mental disorders, he said, could be a definite step toward slowing
-- even preventing -- physical disease.

A new web site devoted to a multi-disciplinary view of religion, spirituality and esoteric phenomena, http://www.meta-religion.com, collects and archives news reports from a search of many disciplines, from mathematics to world religions and the paranormal.

One recent addition, for example, was a collection a news reports describing various professional conferences devoted to exploring how to integrate God into scientific theory. Another piece was devoted archaeological discoveries in Peru that points to some Incan secrets.

http://www.meta-religion.com/World_Religions/Articles/scientist_seek_place_f
or_god.htm

Scientists Seek Place for God While Embracing Reason

By Cary McMullen
Ledger Religion Editor
cary.mcmullen@theledger.com
Published Sunday, January 4, 2004
BY WHOSE HAND?

"Ultimately the issue is whether we live in a world that makes sense not
just now, but totally and for ever. . . . Christian belief provides the
essential resource for answering this fundamental question."

-- Sir John Polkinghorne, Anglican priest and former particle physicist, in
"The God of Hope and the End of the World"

"(Religion) seems to me a kind of wishful thinking that human beings ought
to have outgrown long ago."

-- Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg

Order or chaos? Purpose or meaninglessness?

Was the physical universe -- all we see around us -shaped by the hand of
God? Or are we just the product of pure chance, double sixes in a cosmic
roll of the dice?

Preachers would proclaim yes to the first question. Empirical scientists
might scribble equations to demonstrate the accuracy of the second. Trying
to reconcile the two would seem a fool's errand.

But consider these efforts -- some of them controversial -- to broaden the
intersection between science and religion:

1.- At Florida Southern College in Lakeland, a recent forum sponsored by
Consilience, an organization that explores issues between religion and
science, examined ethical questions about the construction and use of
weapons of mass destruction. Assistant professor of religion Sara Harding
and associate professor of biology Nancy Morvillo formed Consilience after
teaching a course together. They are not trying to discredit science or
religion, they say.

"It's just as bad for science to say `We have no need of God' as for
theology to say `Science isn't right.' Most people are somewhere in the
middle," Morvillo said. "Did God design the world through evolution? Did he
make up the rules and disappear? Where is his hand?"

2.- In June, Professor Philip Clayton of Claremont (Calif.) School of
Theology completed an eight-year, $5 million project, Science and the
Spiritual Quest. Funded by the Templeton Foundation, which has become a
major force in the reconciliation of science and religion, the project
brought scientists together for private discussions about the role religion
plays in their work and personal lives.

"Scientists are rediscovering their own beliefs and spirituality.
Unbelievable things happened at these meetings. One famous neuroscientist
said, `I was brought up Jewish, but for the first time, I have a sense of
what it means to be a Jewish intellectual,' " Clayton said by phone from his
home.

3.- More than 200 people gathered in a hotel ballroom in Lake Mary in
October for a symposium sponsored by Science Speaks, an organization of
Orlando-area lay people, who are interested in one of the more controversial
approaches to science and religion, Intelligent Design. Like spiritual crime
scene investigators, followers of Intelligent Design look for scientific
evidence -- an equation here, a tell-tale chemical interaction there -- to
demonstrate that God left his fingerprints on the world.

"The Bible is not a science book. I agree that God can't be proved
scientifically," said Craig Spearman, president of Science Speaks. "However,
a number of us believe God has to be approached from a rational basis.
There's sufficient circumstantial evidence that would bring any reasonable
man to conclude we're not here by accident."

Harding, Morvillo, Clayton and Spearman are part of a growing movement to
bring together the material and the metaphysical, the seen and the unseen,
in new ways. As believers who embrace science and as believing scientists,
they are at a minimum trying to make a place for God in the warp and woof of
the universe without excluding the results of scientific inquiry.

For example, scientists have long known of certain mathematical constants,
such as the speed of light, upon which the laws of physics depend. Some
scientists now calculate that if any of these constants were different by
only a few percent, life as we know it would not be possible. This has been
dubbed the "anthropic principle," which holds that the structure of the
universe itself is friendly to life.

"Although the universe appears to have been lifeless for the first 11
billion years of its existence, there is a real sense in which it was
pregnant with the possibility of life from the very beginning," writes the
Rev. John Polkinghorne, who turned to the Anglican priesthood after spending
his early career on a team of scientists that discovered the quark.

Debates about the origins of the physical world and the life on it tend to
generate the most controversy -- and publicity -- in science and religion
debates. But in quiet ways, the search for common ground has moved beyond
haggles over cosmology and evolution into other fields. Some of them
include:

Neuroscience and the cognitive sciences, which have been looking for the
connection between the physical properties of the brain and mystery of human
consciousness. Theologians like Nancey Murphy, professor of Christian
philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., are excited
that discoveries in this field could lead to dialogue about the holistic
nature of people -that our hopes and faith are part of our physiology.

Genetics and bioethics, which include ethical issues of cloning and gene
therapy to treat disease.

Spirituality and health, which study how spiritual practices such as prayer
affect a patient's overall health and recovery from illness. A recent cover
story in Newsweek cited a National Institutes of Health report that found
people who regularly attend church live 25 percent longer than those who
don't. More than 70 of the nation's 125 medical schools now offer courses in
spirituality, up from three a decade ago.

"So much of what we learn from science ends up in medicine. That's where
John and Jane Doe come into contact with it . . . and that's where it comes
into the realm of ethics," said the Rev. Philip Hefner, recently retired
director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science at the Lutheran School
of Theology in Chicago.

The debate also affects what is taught in public school science classes,
with evolution as perhaps the most visible and volatile issue in science and
religion. Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection has been attacked by
religious conservatives as contrary to biblical teaching since the famous
Scopes' trial in 1925, in which a Tennessee schoolteacher was prosecuted for
teaching evolution. In recent years there have been attempts in several
states, including Ohio and Kansas, to change curricula or textbooks to cast
doubt on the adequacy of the theory of evolution.

On Nov. 7, the Texas State Board of Education settled an emotional debate by
deciding to approve biology text-books that treat evolution as accepted
scientific theory. Religious groups, including some aligned with the
Intelligent Design movement, were upset. They had argued the textbooks
should teach that the theory of evolution contains flaws (see related story,
this page).

That is also the view of Michael Behe (pronounced BEE-hee), professor of
biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and one of the stars of
Intelligent Design. Behe, the author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical
Challenge to Evolution," told the Science Speaks symposium that although
Darwin's theory explains some things, it does not explain everything that is
attributed to it.

"I just think it's bad science. It's extremely overblown in the claims made
for it," he said.

It was easier, in an age of belief, to reconcile the discoveries of science
with religious doctrines. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), a deeply religious
thinker, discovered many of the laws of gravity and motion, which he
ascribed to the work of an orderly creator God. In the ensuing 300 years,
science pursued an increasingly independent course, unconcerned of the
impact of its discoveries on believers.

It was left to theologians to figure out how to make religious sense of
these discoveries. One theory, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, held
that God created the world's natural laws as unchanging, leaving God little
to do but sit back and watch -- and excluding the possibility of miracles.

"It was thought that it was inappropriate for God to violate the laws of
nature," said Murphy, of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Science's superior attitude as the final arbiter of knowledge began to
unravel in the 1960s because scientists began to encounter limits to what
they could discover, Clayton said.

"Scientists couldn't see themselves as little knowledge gods. There's
nothing like encountering your own limits to wonder what might lie beyond,"
he said.

Not surprisingly, today there are a wide range of views about how, or
whether, science and religion can relate to each other.

Murphy said believers shouldn't accommodate their beliefs to science but
should be humble enough to acknowledge that new discoveries may affect their
understanding of the nature of the universe. They should consult the Bible
and "make corrections," she said.

"How and where God acts in the world is compatible with the scientific view
of the world as governed by the laws of nature," she said.

Harding, who is married to a United Methodist minister, also favors bringing
the two disciplines together.

"Science can inform your theology, your understanding of how things work,
your understanding of God. There's a sense of wonderment. You think of the
created universe, and if that's not an overwhelming sense of the divine, I
don't know what is," she said.

Morvillo, a member of Resurrection Catholic Church in Lakeland, said she
doesn't see conflict between science and religion, although she does see
them as separate.

"I think they're two different ways of viewing the world. They're asking
different questions and going about answering them in two different ways.
One is not more right than the other," she said.

And there are those on both sides who think science and religion have no
business mingling.

According to a 1999 Scientific American article, only 40 percent of a sample
of American scientists expressed belief in God; less than 10 percent of
members of the elite National Academy of Sciences held such a belief.

Accordingly, mutual mistrust often defines the relationship between
scientists and believers, a sentiment articulated in its extreme form by
Steven Weinberg, a professor at the University of Texas who shared the Nobel
prize for physics in 1979.

"I think one of the great things science has done for the world is to
gradually weaken the force of religious enthusiasm, and I'd hate to see that
compromised by any sort of reconciliation," he said recently by phone from
his office. He pointed to examples of religiously inspired violence and
said, "I think the world would be better off without all that, and I think
science can play a role in getting rid of it."

That seems unlikely to happen soon. Fifty years ago, there were few scholars
actively working to bridge the gap between science and religion, but
especially in the last decade there has been new interest. "Research News,"
a publication of the Templeton Foundation, lists 50 academic conferences
worldwide between Nov. 1 and Feb. 1 that touch on some aspect of religion
and science.

The renewed interest, and a number of those conferences, are due in large
measure to the deep pockets of the Templeton Foundation, which is now
directing about $25 million a year into research projects related to science
and religion (see related story, this page).

The course taught by Harding and Morvillo at FSC in the spring of 2001 was
developed by a $10,000 grant from the Templeton Foundation. An honors class
for freshmen, it was part of a program by the foundation to encourage 100
new college courses per year in science and religion. The two are now
developing a course for upper-level students to be offered this spring.

Yet Philip Hefner, the Lutheran scholar, is somewhat pessimistic about the
future of bringing the two disciplines together in more fundamental ways.

"We are so far from integrating scientific knowledge into religious
tradition. It's still a discussion among interested professionals. There's
not a church body in which recognized leaders are saying, `We've got to give
a lot of attention to this.' And in the seminaries, it's pitifully small,"
he said.

A question that science and religion may never agree on is the meaning of
the universe. Weinberg has stated that scientific progress exposes the
universe as essentially meaningless.

"With all due respect, that's just wrong," said Clayton, the Claremont
professor. "The question about the ultimate significance of the universe is
not decided by new facts. The question of significance is not reducible to
facts. Even if everything was known about the universe, you can still watch
a sunset and hold a baby and sense the presence of God."

http://www.meta-religion.com/Paranormale/Ancient_mysteries/are_cords_the_key
.htm

Are Cords The Key To Inca Secrets?

LIMA, Peru, Dec. 2, 2003

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/02/world/main586479.shtml

AP) To the casual observer, they appear to be little more than multicolored
tangles of arm-length strings. But a growing number of experts think
"quipus" may hold the secrets of the Inca Empire.

The Incas built the greatest pre-Columbian empire in South America, unifying
Andean cultures from what is modern day Colombia to Chile for about a
hundred years before they fell to Spanish conquistadors in the early 1500s.

They left extensive roads, irrigation systems and imposing stonework,
including the mountaintop citadel of Machu Picchu.

What they apparently did not leave behind was a written record of how it all
worked - a gap that has puzzled anthropologists who see written language as
a key requirement of great civilizations. That's where Inca quipus, or
knotted strings, come in.

Quipus have been tying up British textile engineer William Burns for half of
the nearly 50 years he has lived in Peru.

"Walking around museums with my daughters, I became fascinated with the
Incas," Burns said recently at his home in Lima. "There is something for
everyone, and I was drawn to the fibers."

In his book "Decoding the Quipus," published locally in Spanish this year,
Burns suggests the colors and configurations of the knots are a phonetic
shorthand for the Quechua language still used in the Andes.

Spread out on display, a quipu - also spelled khipu - looks something like a
hula skirt, with a horizontal main cord and dozens to hundreds of knotted,
multicolored pendant strings made of cotton and wool.

Spanish chroniclers wrote that Inca quipu makers "read" the strings to early
colonial overlords keen on cataloging their spoils.

But Spanish colonists destroyed most of the quipus, and researchers so far
have been unable to match a colonial-era transcription to any surviving
quipu.

Gary Urton, a Harvard anthropologist, estimates there are at least 600
quipus in museums, and he has studied about 450 of them in Peru, Chile, the
United States and Germany. He decided to take on quipus a decade ago after
studying the use of calendars, astrology and agricultural planning in Peru.

"Over the years, I continually came up against the problem of 'we can't read
the quipus,"' Urton said in a telephone interview from Cambridge, Mass.

Urton believes quipu makers, known as "quipucamayos," used a binary
mathematical approach similar to that used in modern computers to encode
numbers and narratives with the knots.

From a black cotton string tied in a simple half hitch to a reddish-brown
alpaca wool string wrapped in a complex knot, the options were many, but
they were also definite and simple.

In his new book, "Signs of the Inka Khipu," Urton suggests the possible
combinations yield 1,536 knotted characters representing words - or even
entire myths - that could be read by others.

Urton and Carrie Brezine, a database specialist, mathematician and weaver,
are compiling all available quipu data. Urton hopes the database, which he
expects to have ready by mid-2004, will help scholars identify patterns and
discover a lost language of the Incas.

"It is going to be the biggest single resource in our field," Frank Salomon,
a University of Wisconsin anthropologist, said during a recent research trip
to Peru.

Salomon, whose book "The Cord Keepers" is slated for release next year, has
found quipus preserved in Tupicocha, a village tucked high amid rocky Andean
peaks a day's drive southeast of Lima.

But even there, quipus remain a mystery. Leaders of clan-like communities
bring out their groups' quipus each January to pass them on to their
successors, but no one in Tupicocha can read the knotted antiques.

Salomon believes the knotted strings served as something like an annual
budget - first used to plan activities and then altered to log
accomplishments. He also suspects villagers could read the quipus until as
late as the 1920s, when their use was abandoned during a push by Peru's
central government to modernize the nation.

At about the same time, historian L. Leland Locke of the United States
proposed that quipus were little more than accounting tools -- cloth
abacuses using knots instead of beads. Scholars accepted the theory, and
academic interest died off for decades.

In the early 1970s, however, the husband-and-wife team of Robert Ascher, an
archeologist, and Marcia Ascher, a mathematician, began studying and
cataloging quipus.

Their work inspired Urton, whose latest book has rekindled broader academic
interest.

"Hopefully somebody will come and move my theory along - or change it or
transform it or knock it down and bring a new theory forward - but we are
just sort of stuck where we are right now," Urton said.

After therapists and priests, it is perhaps hairstylists who hear the most about their clients’ personal problems. Awakening to this reality, Redken 5^th Avenue, a producer of professional hair care products has developed a workshop for improving communication. Teaching listening skills to beauticians, surmised the firm’s representative Ann Mincey, may increase the quality of healing that is already going on in salons.

Who needs a therapist when you’ve got a good hair stylist? Probably next to therapists and confessional priests, hair salon staff hear more about their clients’ personal lives than any other single group. And good listening is good for business.

Salon professionals spend time every day not only improving their clients’ appearance, but also listening to clients. A great deal of healing goes on in these situations,’’ says Ann Mincey, vice-president of Global Communications for Redken 5th Avenue, a leader in professional hair— care products and services. Recognizing the critical role of listening skills in the beauty business led Red— ken to offer their staff workshops on improving communication—with other staff and management as well as with clients. We want our people to demonstrate a special kind of leadership,” says Mincey,” a leadership of listening, and not being afraid to reach out to each other.”

Of course, even with the best communications training, conflicts can still arise. So Redken introduced what they call the “twenty-four hour rule.” When disagreements happen, employees are asked to come up with an action plan toward a solution by the next day. “We like to get to the heart of a problem~ learn the lesson, and then move on,’ Mincey said. And the benefits of open and honest communication among staff and management spill over into their relationships with customers and distributors. Redken’s “spirit of caring”—expressed in the slogan “Earn a better living, and live a better life”—has resulted in double—dieit growth during the past few years.

Imagine having no head. With those simple instructions, Douglas Harding introduces a fascinating experiment in the consciousness of oneness. When you experience the world as if you are headless, it seems as if the tableau of the observed world becomes your head and you merge with it, an individual in oneness.

Harding’s book of instruction has been out of print for decades, but now is reprinted as On having no head: Zen and the rediscovery of the Obvious (Inner Directions).

Work is part of life and deserves recognition for its potential spiritual implications. To serve the need for information and inspiration regarding how to spiritualize the workplace, activists formed the International Association for Spirit at Work. For more information, visit their website at www.spiritatwork.com

What would Edgar Cayce think of remote viewing as a tool for self-actualization? The records of his psychic readings indicate a number of successful “remote viewing” instances, such as when he “saw” that the client was not at home yet for the reading. Most of his readings, however, went beyond “seeing” the facts surrounding the client, and contained spiritual wisdom personally tailored for that person. So how did Cayce get beyond remote viewing to spiritual wisdom?

At the recent conference on remote viewing, co-sponsored by the A.R.E. and the International Association for Remote Viewing, Henry Reed, of the Edgar Cayce Institute for Intuitive Studies, shared his answer to this question. His presentation on “value added remote viewing” suggested that while remote viewing requires only mental relaxation, spiritual wisdom requires raising one’s consciousness to attunement with an ideal. To illustrate the power of this approach, he demonstrated “face to face, value-added remote viewing” by having participants in the audience pair up to explore the meaningfulness of experiencing a heart connection with each other.