"The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences." - Wikipedia
No, this is not John Lennon. It sure does look like him however. This is Branwell Bronte's self-portrait. Branwell was a poet and a painter, and the brother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte. Branwell is said to have been the most talented of the bunch though Emily and Charlotte are more famous. Branwell is said to have had an affair with a Mrs. Robinson (remember the Simon and Garfunkel song? How about the movie The Graduate? Based on Branwell's affair? Hmmm. Maybe). Like many talented artists, Branwell became an alcoholic and a drug addict. He eventually died of tuberculosis in 1848.
Fast forward to now. In the book All You Need is Love, Jewelle St James points out similarities between John and Branwell:
"Branwell, like John, was an artist and a poet. Branwell drank and did drugs, actually he did more than doing drugs, he was an addict. Branwell, like John, lost his mother at an early age, and had sisters but no brothers. Oh, and Branwell had good friends in Liverpool. … Branwell and John both drew caricatures, depicting aspects of their lives. [And finally - ] Branwell’s self portraits are the image of John Lennon! The nose, the glasses, everything." - Jewelle St James.
What you need to know is that All You Need is Love by Jewelle St james is not about The Beatles. It is "The heart-wrenching spiritual journey of one woman discovering her past life
shared with John Baron, the seventeenth-century incarnation of John Lennon."
Apparently Jewelle St John had a session or two with Kevin Ryerson who confirmed that Lennon was Michael Byrne, John Baron and Branwell Bronte in past lives. Ryerson also went on to say that Cynthia Lennon was Mrs. Robinson in the past.
Kevin Ryerson is an intuitive and trance channel much like Jane Roberts and Edgar Cayce. Jewelle St James wrote a follow-up book titled The Lennon-Bronte Connection in which she talks about Lennon as Branwell and herself as Emily Bronte.
The interesting thing is that John and Branwell do look alot alike! Do some googling. You will see.
Visit our Table of Contents to view more interesting articles
An updated version of this article can be found here
Stumbling around the internet I came across the phrase "psychedelic sufi trance rock." What I found was an article about a singer/guitarist named Haale (Gofori).
"Haale grew up singing in Sufi with her Iranian family while listening to Patti Smith and Jimi Hendrix on the side. She fuses these two styles instinctually, combining meandering guitar riffs with transcendental Sufi lyrics and Persian rhythms, played on instruments such as the sitar and tonbak drum - Janera: Curating Conversations
Being that Patti Smith is my favorite artist, I like middle eastern music, and I have a thing for psychedelic music, I naturally went over to YouTube to see what I could find. The first few videos I did have a Patti Smith/middle eastern/ psychedelic flavor. No doubt about it. I was going to post one of those but after watching a few more I decided this one is my favorite:
This is called "Wild Poppies" by The Mast. The Mast is Haale (vocals/guitar) and Matt Kilmer (percussion).
Diet
Soft drinks. Don't bother. You won't lose weight, actually you
might gain some. When confronted with a choice of sweeteners, steer
clear of anything in a pink, blue or yellow packet. Choose the brown
or white packet. Raw sugar is the best choice. Artificial
sweeteners are excitotoxins. Excitotoxins kill brain cells.
“Ex-ci'-to-tox-in:
a substance added to foods and beverages that literally stimulates
neurons to death, causing brain damage of varying degrees. Can be
found in such ingredients as monosodium glutamate, aspartame
(NutraSweet®), cysteine, hydrolyzed protein, and aspartic acid.”
- Wikipedia.
The
best source of information on excitotoxins is the book Excitotoxins:
The Taste That Kills
by Russell Blaylock. Blaylock is a retired neurosurgeon who studied
and researched excitotoxins for many years before publishing this
book. He knew the food industry would do everything in their power
to keep his findings from public awareness and attempt to stifle his
work. Knowing this would be the case, he took care to make an
airtight case against excitotoxins which would be hard for anyone to
dispute.
Seventy-five
to ninty percent of the food products found in a typical food store have been enhanced to
some degree by the addition of excitotoxins.
These chemical agents are often listed as “spices” and “natural
flavors” on ingredient labels. Learn to read labels and avoid the
following ingredients:
Think
twice about these additional ingredients: malt extract, malt
flavoring, bouillon, broth, stock, flavoring, natural flavoring,
natural beef or chicken flavor, seasonings and spices. Most of these
terms are used to disguise the use of chemicals that are
excitotoxins.
Aspartame
alone is found in over 6,000 food products (read the label on that
container of non-fat yogurt). Although they have not banned its use,
the FDA released a list of 92 side effects associated with aspartame
consumption. These include: Abdominal Pain, anxiety attacks,
arthritis, asthma, bloating, edema (fluid retention), blood sugar
control problems (hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia), brain cancer,
breathing difficulties, burning eyes or throat, burning urination,
chest pains, chronic cough, chronic fatigue, confusion, death,
depression, diarrhea, dizziness, excessive thirst or hunger, fatigue,
flushing of face, hair Loss or thinning of hair, headaches/migraines,
hearing loss, heart palpitations, hives, hypertension (high blood
pressure), impotency and sexual problems, inability to concentrate,
infection susceptibility, insomnia, irritability, itching, joint
pains, laryngitis, marked personality changes, memory loss, menstrual
problems or changes, muscle spasms, nausea or vomiting, numbness or
tingling of extremities, panic attacks, phobias, poor memory, rapid
heart beat, rashes, seizures and convulsions, slurring of speech,
swallowing pain, tremors, tinnitus, vertigo, vision loss and weight
gain.
For
more information on aspartame click here. Better yet, get a copy of Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. It's a real eye opener.
I took an astronomy class in junior college in order to satisfy the science requirement. I have never been very interested in studying science as it seems so dry. Sitting in a classroom which doubled as a planetarium seemed more interesting than studying the Periodic Table of Elements (which by the way, ended up being an important part of the study of astronomy).
A major topic in astronomy class is The Big Bang Theory. This is a cosmological model which is said to explain the origin of the universe.
According to the Big Bang theory, a tremendous explosion occurred about 15 billion years ago causing the universe to expand. Prior to this explosion, all the matter and energy in the universe was contained in one point. After the explosion, matter and energy was thrust out into space in the form of particles rushing away from each other. We learned to visualize it as a loaf of raisin bread baking in an oven. It is a process that is still going on with the universe continuing to expand. We also learned that the universe may someday stop expanding and begin to collapse until it is once again one single point containing all matter and energy. And then, guess what, another Big bang may occur repeating what happened before.
This made me start thinking about Deja Vu. This is the feeling that what you are experiencing has already happened before. I started wondering if every time the Big Bang occurs everything happens exactly as before.
A couple of weeks ago I read The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky. Ivan is given a chance to relive his past as he has a desire to correct his mistakes. He meets with a magician who sends him back in time warning him that although he will be fully aware that he is reliving his life in order to change it, he will do everything exactly as he did it before.
As it turns out, the concept of eternal recurrence is a major theme in Ouspensky's teachings and writing. The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin was published in 1915 and explores the idea that even given the free-will to make changes in our lives, the same events will occur regardless of our free will.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche often wrote about the concept of eternal recurrence in his works. It is first mentioned in section 341 of The Gay Science
"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it . . ."
If the universe should ever collapse in upon inself ( The Big Crunch) and start over again with another Big Bang, I suppose there is a possibility that everything can reoccur as before, which would explain Deja Vu. But why would this happen and what purpose would it serve????
Upton Sinclair is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who wrote over one hundred books including the classic novel The Jungle. Sinclair had a deep interest in psychic phenomena and wrote a book called Mental Radio documenting a series of tests he conducted with his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough, in order to understand her self-claimed telepathic abilities. Sinclair devised a series of 300 tests that were said to prove the reality of mental telepathy and remote viewing while revealing untold powers of the mind.
Sinclair is said to have sat in one room drawing a picture and then placing it into a sealed envelop while Mary, who was in another room, would "tune in" and draw what she perceived. In other tests, Mary would write out a message sent from someone "far away." Her accuracy rate was said to be astonishing ruling out random chance as an explanation. The couple conducted these experiments for a period of three years. They conducted 290 trials consisting of 65 (23%) successes, 155 (53%) partial successes and 70 (24%) failures.
Sinclair used radio broadcasting as a metaphor to explain how telepathy works. One person's brain sent out a mental "vibration" that the other brain picked up. Sinclair concluded that telepathy is real, uneffected by distance and can be trained, verified and scientifically studied.
Mental Radio documents these experiments and includes Mary's instructions on how to learn the "art of conscious mind-reading." William McDougall, known as the "Dean of American Psychology" at the time, was inspired by the Sinclair's work. McDougall went on to establish a parapsychology department at Duke University. Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method.
Mental Radio was originally published in 1930 and republished in 2001 as a part of Hampton Roads series Classics in Conciousness, edited by Russell Targ. The 2001 edition has an addendum containing an analysis of the raw experiment documentation by Dr Walter Franklin Prince of the Boston Society for Psychic Research. Albert Einstein wrote the book's Preface:
I have read the book of Upton Sinclair with great interest and am convinced that the same deserves the most earnest consideration, not only of the laity, but also of the psychologists by profession. The results of the telepathic experiments carefully and plainly set forth in this book stand surely far beyond those which a nature investigator holds to be thinkable. On the other hand, it is out of the question in the case of so conscientious an observer and writer as Upton Sinclair that he is carrying on a conscious deception of the reading world; his good faith and dependability are not to be doubted. So if somehow the facts here set forth rest not upon telepathy, but upon some unconscious hypnotic influence from person to person, this also would be of high psychological interest. In no case should the psychologically interested circles pass over this book heedlessly.
Albert Einstein - Preface - Mental Radio
In order to achieve a receptive state of telepathy and be able to distinguish between true psychic impressions and normal thoughts, Mary suggests, on page 105 of Mental Radio, that you "Give yourself a suggestion to the effect that you will relax your mind and your body, making the body insensitive and the mind a blank , and reserving the power to break the concentration in a short time. By making the body insensitive, I mean simply to relax completely your mental hold of, or awareness of, all bodily sensation. After giving yourself this suggestion a few times, you proceed to relax both body and mind. Relax all mental interest in everything in the environment; inhibit all thoughts which try to wander into consciousness from the subconsciousness, or from wherever else thoughts come." She adds, "the way to relax is to let go. Let go of every tense muscle, every tense spot, in the body. This deep relaxation is important for if the body is tense it affects the thoughts in the mind. Likewise, if the mind is full of thoughts it will tense the body." More precise instructions are given on the following pages of the book.
