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Sunday, 23 October 2011

A funny thing happened on the way to the checkout

  

A fresh story from one of our European readers.
I believe it's still warm. ;)


This happened just about an hour ago, on October 23, 2011, at around 13:50 CET. I decided to write about it right away so I don't forget about it.
 

I was waiting in a queue for the checkout in my local supermarket. Being early Sunday afternoon there were not many people in the store.
 

But, there were three queues for checkout. I joined the queue that seemed to have the fewest people, obviously. There were a very short lady in a beige vest and an elderly man right ahead of me. 
I had time to observe them well because the checkout employee was taking her time. Then the man dropped a few coins, and the lady ahead of me and I helped him pick them up.
 

I noticed that the checkout employee wasn't only slow but it was an employee that is usually slightly unpleasant (I shop there every single day, I am familiar with the employees) so I decided to join the other queue, on my left, that seemed to be going faster. The checkout registers are very close to each other, no more than two meters apart.
 

As it usually happens to me, the woman that was right ahead of me in the new queue suddenly had an enormous amount of merchandise that I hadn't seen earlier. Drat!, I thought and I glanced at the earlier queue, to see if it would be a good idea to return there. I noticed that there were now two or three youngsters behind the lady and the elderly man, so I decided to stay put.
 

Each of the customers from the other (earlier) queue walked by toward the exit, as there is no other way to get out, so I saw each of one of them. I was vaguely surprised that there were so many walking by - maybe four or five - because I had thought there were only two more people ahead of the lady and the elderly man. So I turned around to see how the earlier queue was progressing, and noticed that the unpleasant employee, right behind my back (like I said, the space in that market is tight), had been replaced by another one, a lady who is usually very nice and fast enough.
 

I was surprised because I couldn't figure out how this could have happened. To enter the register space and replace her colleague, the employee would have had to enter the boot from my side. She would have had to brush past me and she would have had to ask permission from the people in my queue to do so, because otherwise it would be impossible to enter her boot.
 

But I forgot all about that when I noticed that the old gentleman and the lady that had been ahead of me were nowhere to be seen! The youngsters that were behind them were still there (I think, or maybe they were different youngsters).
 

This I can't understand. 
The lady and the old man were not together. They would have had to leave the queue independently of each other - but it was almost their turn - and they would have had to walk past me, either towards the exit or towards the third queue (that was further removed from the first two registers).
 

I wasn't distracted or anything; in fact I was trying to determine which queue was being processed faster, so I was watching attentively. And there weren't all that many people in the shop anyway. Each queue had no more than five or six customers waiting.
 

I don't understand what happened. When and how did the employee replace the first one? And where did those two customers go? 
All of this happened in a matter of five minutes or so.
 
Interesting. :)
Obviously I have no idea what happened, so I can't help you with that. 


If anything similar has happened to any of you reading this, do let us know.



If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.









Saturday, 24 September 2011

The Shock



Scientists appear to have broken the speed of light.




What's next? The speed of thought?
Even the speed of thought isn't faster than... something else.
If nobody else does, I know what I am talking about. :)





Wednesday, 17 August 2011

Wot strange wordes thou speke... AGAIN and AGAIN



Well, well...
While checking the status of links in old posts, as we do from time to time, I was suddenly confronted this morning with the following account from the BBC H2G2 website.

We don't normally post entire stories from other websites, but in this case we'll do an exception.
Before reading it, you may want to scroll all the way down and read the words we've marked in orange...



Watch your computer! It may be haunted!
Nearly all industry relies on computers of some sort to do their work. The computer is a revolution - if you want to get somewhere in life, get a computer! Everyone is using them now, - even Ghosts, it would seem.
In May 1988 Alice, a cleaner working in an architect's office, was about to start her shift when she noticed one of the staff computers had been left switched on. She didn't know much herself about computers, but knew it was on from the flickering screen. She stepped closer to the flickering screen but realised it wasn't part of her job and if she switched it off, she may get in trouble as unsaved information might be on there.
The next night she noticed that the same computer still with the same flickering screen was on again, but still ignored it. She made a mental note to ask a higher staff member, when she could, if there was any reason for its late night activity. When she asked Rob, an architect who worked there, he replied that it shouldn't be on. All computers and machinery are shut off after work. The only electricity being used should be the lights and vacuum cleaners!
So, Alice the cleaner remembered what Rob had told her as she went about her nightly cleaning work and, as she came up to room 1b, the office where the computer was, she walked in and reached for the plug. She went to switch it off by the mains but... there was no plug inserted! That was the only wall socket in the small office, so she followed the cords from the back. There was one leading to the keyboard, one leading to the printer and when she eventually found the thick black mains cord, she followed the cable to the mains plug. She startingly came across the machine's plug... not in the mains socket! Confused, she made another mental note to ask about this strange machine.
She made her way for the door and, looking back, she noticed a typed message on the screen, 'Hello'. Now she was even more confused, thinking she must be dreaming, but tripped by the mop bucket and felt it, so she assured herself she wasn't. The next day at closing time, she bumped into Rob, about to leave the building, when she remembered what had happened. She told him

'I Don't know much about computers myself, but I know they're not meant to work when they're switched off!'
Confused, Rob asked what she was referring to, so she explained what happened the last night with the computer in office 1b. He told her this shouldn't Happen; she was right, so he stayed back and watched the computer, and was startled to find that at precisely 9:18PM on May 11th 1988, the screen flicked itself on and displayed this message: 'Thou!'.
This made Rob sit up from his coffee and pay more attention to the computer. 'Thou!' it repeated. Suddenly, it changed its 'tune'...
'Thou hathe comited a grate cryme.'
Confused, Rob wondered what it meant.
'Thou art a godly man who hathe fanciful woman'
Rob smiled.
...'Who Dwelth in myne home'
it continued.
'twas a grate cryme to hathe stolen myne home'
So, just think next time you wonder why Does that monitor light stay on for just a few seconds long after I switch off my computer by the mains?...
True Story.


Deja vu?
If not, clearly, you have not read our last post...





Tuesday, 16 August 2011

Wot strange wordes thou speke...



Forget John Titor (oh, you already have? never mind, then) - meet Tomas AKA Lukas.

But first let us preface this by an open statement that we do not really believe this story. Of course it is not the only story published here that we have doubts about; it's just that in this case the odds of the story being genuine are even slimmer than in other highly dubious cases.

Still, it is a reported "time travel" case - or rather, a case of transchronological communication (is that a word? - well, now it is) - so there is no reason to exclude it from this florilegium of dimensional oddities.

It was November 1984, and schoolteacher Ken Webster, living in Meadow Cottage, in Dodleston, England, had brought home a computer that he had borrowed from the school where he worked.

A few days later, upon his return home - after having left the computer on - he was greeted by the following message appearing on the screen:

Wot strange wordes thou speke, 
although I muste confess that I hath also bene ill schooled...

(Believe it or not, this was not the usual computer lingo back in 1984.)
But there was more:

Thou art goodly man who hath fanciful woman 
who dwel in my home...
'twas a great cryme to hath bribed myne house.


Apparently the computer was channelling the mind or spirit of an earlier dweller of Webster's home - or rather, of the inhabitant of a house that had once stood on the site of Meadow Cottage.

The computer-literate spirit introduced himself as Tomas Harden, from 16th century Dodleston.

You can read all of his communications in this fascinating article about Instrumental Transcommunication, by Ernst Senkowski.

Word must have spread in the Yonderworld about Ken's hospitality, because on February 16th, 1985, another old-timer popped in through the overtaxed computer. His name was Lukas Wainman, he wrote, and he had a lot to say about Chester, among other places.



A photo of Lukas' computer-generated message across the ages.
Taken from here.


There are several online websites carrying this story. I know you won't be sorry if you visit this lengthy and highly interesting article by Dr. Adrian Klein and Dr. Robert Neil Boyd, about Suppressing Time Constraints. There is much in it that I don't agree with, but it certainly is extraordinarily interesting.

However, if you are interested in this story, then Ken Webster's own book about itThe Vertical Plane (1989), is a must.

I haven't read it - it appears to be extremely rare - but here are a few excerpts, via this website.

'What would you do if something very strange and bewildering happened to you; something uninvited yet benign; something which happened over and over again and which involved your friends, lover and colleagues? Would you want people to know ? Would you want help in understanding it ? Yes, yes! But my experience suggests you would be wasting your time.
I was living with `D' (my girlfriend) and, for a short period, Nicola (a college friend) in Meadow Cottage, a small terraced house in the village of Dodleston, near Chester. Beginning in the Autumn of 1984, a series of poltergeist events took place, focused on the kitchen area, including the stacking of objects, noises, marks on the walls and `thrown' objects. Although we did not know it at the time, poltergeist events are relatively frequently reported `anomalous' phenomena and are, frankly, rather tedious and disruptive over a period of time.
What made this different was the appearance of `direct' communications in hand written form and, unusually, other communications mediated through a primitive computer. Personal computers were only just appearing in 1984 and, as a school teacher, I had access to primitive BBC `B' computers at school. These machines had around 32k of memory, a word processor on an installed chip and the only means of saving files was to a 5.25" floppy disk on an external drive. No networking, no modem, definitely no Internet. [Judging by this mention of the internet, these words, apparently spoken or written by Ken Webster himself, most definitely aren't from his 1989 book.]
One evening, the computer was accidentally left on and, on our return, there was a `message', a poem of sorts. It was treated as a joke of course, but saved to disk anyway. The computer returned to school and we to our sporadic poltergeist events. A different machine, borrowed on another occasion resulted, unexpectedly, in another communication. This time the language had an archaic flavour, seemingly of 17th century Elizabethan English. It wasn't right, linguistically as my colleague Peter Trinder pointed out but the tone was threatening and we felt the joke was now in bad taste.
Setting out, deliberately, to try and catch the hoax meant borrowing yet another computer, checking the disk for preloaded material, checking the house was secure and leaving the computer in the kitchen as before. Another message appeared in the same quirky `mock Tudor' style. In a matter of fact way, over a coffee, a friend suggested, well, replying ... and the results were surprising.
The reply was met with a further response and the two-way communications began in earnest. At the same time Peter Trinder's language investigations into the language style pointed up a coherence and subtlety which was not easily dismissed. But they were not perfect and in one message soon to become notorious in following investigations Peter felt particularly uncomfortable both with the history and the language.
We increased our efforts to uncover any deception; but there was a positive side effect of the computer in the kitchen ... it seemed to calm the `poltergeist' activity. Over a period of around 16 months, other associated phenomena included altered states of consciousness for D and evidence of other communicators (besides the main communicator, one Tomas Harden). Some of these other communications were unreadable (their messages were child-like nonsense and often angry); others were coherent but seemed completely contemporary and designed to unsettle. Not all messages were on the computer; they appeared on paper that was lying around, the walls or the floor. Some messages seemed unfinished unsigned as if the writer had been disturbed.'

Admit it: it's a fun story.
And, I must say, judging by the excerpts, Ken's book must be highly entertaining, too. I mean this sincerely, with no double meaning anywhere. 
I am more than ready to believe that he did not perpetrate a hoax.
Someone else did.

But, in the name of intellectual honesty and spiritual freedom, I am also as happy as ever to admit that: 

a) anything is possible; 

and 

b) I know nothing.


ADDENDUM: see the next post.














Tuesday, 9 August 2011

That strange feeling...



An interesting comment by a kindly visitor to our blog, Kev (see the previous post), mentioning "eerie half forgotten memories of childhood like a person a place or a TV show, music. Things that were but also never were" (our emphasis) made us realise that such feelings have never been explicitly discussed here.

If you have such feelings yourself, there is a text that offers a tentative explanation of such feelings, fragments of dream-like memories, and fleeting shadows of a vision. As a matter of fact, the text has been the subject of an entry in this very blog, but it is likely that many have missed it.

It is a long text, and beautifully written, by Philip K. Dick. 
It is not science fiction (although it does mention it).
And it is not for readers afflicted with a short attention span.
But most of the people who are seriously interested in the topics discussed here probably are unlikely to suffer from it.

Here's the part that might be of interest to those harbouring the feelings described by Kev:

I submit to you that such alterations, the creation or selection of such so-called "alternate presents," is continually taking place. The very fact that we can conceptually deal with this notion -- that is, entertain it as an idea -- is a first step in discerning such processes themselves. But I doubt if we will ever be able in any real fashion to demonstrate, to scientifically prove, that such lateral change processes do occur. Probably all we would have to go on would be vestiges of memory, fleeting impressions, dreams, nebulous intuitions that somehow things had been different in some way -- and not long ago but now. We might reflexively reach for a light switch in the bathroom only to discover that it was -- always had been -- in another place entirely. We might reach for the air vent in our car where there was no air vent -- a reflex left over from a previous present, still active at a subcortical level. We might dream of people and places we had never seen as vividly as if we had seen them, actually known them. But we would not know what to make of this, assuming we took time to ponder it at all. One very pronounced impression would probably occur to us, to many of us, again and again, and always without explanation: the acute, absolute sensation that we had done once before what we were just about to do now, that we so to speak lived a particular moment or situation previously -- but in what sense could it be called "previously," since only the present, not the past, was evidently involved? We would have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present, perhaps in precisely the same way, hearing the same words, saying the same words. . . I submit that these impressions are valid and significant, and I will even say this: Such an impression is a clue that at some past time point a variable was changed -- reprogrammed, as it were -- and that, because of this, an alternate world branched off, became actualized instead of the prior one, and that in fact, in literal fact, we are once more living this particular segment of linear time. A breaching, a tinkering, a change had been made, but not in our present -- had been made in our past. Evidently such an alteration would have a peculiar effect on those persons involved; they would, so to speak, be moved back one square or several squares on the board game that constitutes our reality. Conceivably this could happen any number of times, affecting any number of people, as alternative variables were reprogrammed. We would have to go live out each reprogramming along the subsequent linear time axis, but to the Programmer, whom we call God -- to him the results of the reprogramming would be apparent at once. We are within time and he is not. Thus, too, this might account for the sensation people get of having lived past lives. They may well have, but not in the past; previous lives, rather, in the present. In perhaps an unending repeated and repeated present, like a great clock dial in which grand clock hands sweep out the same circumference forever, with all of us carried along unknowingly, yet dimly suspecting.

Do not miss the rest of it.
Science fiction sometimes can come closer to science than to fiction.










Thursday, 21 July 2011

What's with the Moon?



A dear and highly respected friend has let us know that a number of individuals around the world have noted they had seen something odd about the position of the Moon on or around July 19th of this year. There is a thread dedicated to this on a website that used to be quite popular in these woods, but not lately. What's more, the very fact that the thread was posted there was reason for severe scepticism and mild eye-rolling.

However, it turned out that our friend had experienced this "phenomenon" herself (and posted about it in a reply to the thread).
She said she had been "startled" by the position of the Moon compared to where it "should" have been, taking into account the normal trajectory of the Moon. It appeared to her that it rose earlier than it should have, and significantly more to the North and to the East than she would have expected.
She checked it against her faithful Stellarium, but did not notice anything particularly eye-catching. If there was an anomaly, it wasn't apparent at first sight.

That she, of all people, would claim something of the sort is unusual. It is so exceptionally unusual that we decided to record it here just in case anyone reading this may have experienced the same thing.
If you have, let us know.

Our friend said it well herself: whatever it was, it couldn't have been physical (or everybody alive would have noticed it... and not only by the position of the Moon!). Something must have affected the perception and/or perceptual memory.

N.B. There have been heavy clouds for the past few nights where this blog is currently being written, so no such observations could be made here. The only thing that could be interpreted as unusual is the fact that time - you know, the stuff that does not exist but we measure it in minutes and hours? - seems to have been surprisingly long-lasting for the past day or two. What felt like an hour turned out to have lasted no more than 15 - 20 minutes or so.


ADDENDUM (August 20, 2011):

We still don't know - and haven't really researched it it, not in depth - what could be the cause of the perceived anomaly of the Moon on the date described in the post. But it appears that something is amiss with the "secular eccentricity of Moon's orbit" (check the search results). A reader who, for some reason, wishes to remain anonymous, pointed us to a PDF article by an Italian researcher. (Beware: it is highly technical, as it to be expected.).

I must admit I am not into deciphering the technical lingo in fields that I am not particularly interested in. But somewhere a reader of this blog could be interested in it and able to understand what exactly it all means.

We were also pointed to a YouTube video bearing the illustrious name of Cornell University.
I wish said university's findings were explained in the video, but they are not. It's just images of the Moon, embellished with a few personal remarks by the video uploader, I assume.
The video, however, seems to allude to the findings of the same researcher who is the author of the article above, Lorenzo Iorio (not "Lorio"). But judging by the details provided in the article, he works for the Italian ministry of Education and Research - not for Cornell University.

Anyway, here you go.




If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.












Sunday, 10 July 2011

A portal to another world?


There seem to be quite a few of those lately.
But this one - the village of Bugarach, in the south of France (near Rennes-le-Chateau)- has the distinction of fast becoming one of the centres of the approaching culmination of the 2012 frenzy. In case you miss it, a film is being made about it.



However, it is the nearby mountain, the Pech de Bugarach (or Pech de Thauze, as it was previously called), that is supposed to be the centre of power - (another) magic mountain.




The Pech de Bugarach (or Pech de Thauze) as seen from the village of Bugarach.
(The village is just behind your "back". Turn around and you'll see it.)

 

At least one person, Daniel Bettex - a Swiss airport security officer - did enter "another world" at the Pech de Bugarach. Quite literally. He died there.
 

If you travel almost exactly 100 kilometres to the west, however, you will find another suspected "portal to another world": the castle of Miglos. Little seems to be known about this particular aspect of the picturesquely ruined chateau; the information comes from this website you have already visited (we hope).


But, if nothing else, the link above, leading directly to the castle, will provide you with glorious panoramic views from the castle itself. And time spent for beauty is always a good investment. :)


P.S. Most of the (at the time of this writing still relatively few) websites that carry the story about Bugarach mention the apparent similarity between the place names Bugarach and the Bogogorch alluded to by Nicholas Roerich, a famous Russian-born traveller and mystic (not to mention a fabulous painter), in his description of a particularly dangerous mountain range in the Altai.
 

This speculation appears to be quoted verbatim from Michel Lamy's book, Jules Verne, initié et initiateur (1984), p. 203. 


I do not have Roerich's book, so I don't know whether he ever explained the etymology of this place name. However, it strikes me that it sounds uncannily similar to the Russian words bog (бог, God, with the final o possibly acting as a possessive pronoun, i.e. belonging to) and gora (гора, mountain): God's mountain(s).
 

Please, note that I am by no means knowledgeable in Russian; nobody in this team is. But I thought I'd mention it all the same. If others can speculate, why shouldn't we?
Anyway, I doubt very much that the vague similarity between these two place names is anything more than that: a passing similarity.
But I could be wrong. Of course. It wouldn't even be the first time.



IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE: The 33 Cosmic Portals


If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.


























Wednesday, 22 June 2011

The Art of Jumping Timelines




The title is not ours, it is borrowed from this article by Tom Kenyon. The article explains, in detail, how to go about it, in the author's opinion. 

The "secret", in a nutshell, is this:

The task here is to be true to your vision while paying attention to what the current reality is showing you. It is not about pretending. It is about facing reality as it presents itself to you while simultaneously holding a higher vision. In other words, you deal with the reality of your life while simultaneously holding the vision of a different life. This is the art.

But do visit the page and read it in its entirety.
It probably has the type of information that you came here looking for.


P.S. No, she is not back. 
Perhaps some other time. :-)







Thursday, 16 June 2011

The Sicily Times



A few days ago, an odd phenomenon was reported from Sicily, specifically from Catania. An unusually multitudinous quantity of its inhabitants arrived on time for their appointments.


Naturally, such deviant behaviour caused some alarm, and upon investigation it was discovered that apparently many personal and household digital time-keeping devices - all too many to attribute it to a "coincidence" - had jumped around 15 to 20 minutes ahead. Other domestic appliances malfunctioned, too.


The anomaly was explained (in Italian) - sort of - by a biophysicist, Settimio Grimaldi, who speculated that the phenomenon may have had something to do with the electromagnetic emissions from the M.U.O.S., which may have interfered with time keeping devices. 


Others have tried to blame it on solar winds and/or electromagnetic activity associated with the Etna volcano. 
Still others, of course, have offered other, more or less colourful explanations, among which the imminent end of the world features prominently.


But of course. If Sicilians happen to be on time, the end of the world is nigh. Everyone knows that! 
Gotta love those patriots. :-)


To read a first-hand report on seriously misbehaving clocks, do not miss: Lost (in) time.



If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.





Thursday, 2 June 2011

How to switch to another time-line


Since we published our post about Inelia Benz's claims - and then the addendum regarding her past affiliation with Scientology - the tone of the emails coming in has changed. Now, most of the relevant comments either begin or end (and understandably so) with this all-important question:

 
"But how, how, HOW do you shift to another time-line?"


Frankly, I don't know how Inelia Benz does it. You may find out - or not (I really don't know) - on that website we linked to in that earlier post.
 
However, this blog is full of stories with subtle hints indicating how to do it - or attempt to do it.
You could start here.
You might also want to read a very relevant post on our sister blog.
 
You also should remember this: exertion, force (of "will") will get you nowhere. 
A totally relaxed, un-thinking state of mind following persistent, unwavering and fully felt visualisation - or rather, relaxed immersion, with all your senses, in the situation visualised - might get you somewhere. (And I don't mean the madhouse - not necessarily.)



Friday, 27 May 2011

Time does not exist?




Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. 
Now I know that I could have walked through walls.

Peter S. BeagleThe Last Unicorn (1963)



The phrase has become something of a mantra of the brave new world that many people feel we're heading to but nobody really knows where it is, what it is, when it is. You'll find it plastered all over different forums and blogs and websites dealing with the enigma of Time (or rather, with our unwillingness to accept the seemingly inevitable loss of everything and everyone we hold dear): Time does not exist (often accompanied by a jubilant exclamation mark or two).
 
It is understandable that the discussions ensuing such a statement rarely lead to a satisfying answer. Semantics gets in the way.  

You see, "time" most definitely does exist. If it didn't, you wouldn't be sitting in that chair of yours right now. Or anywhere, for that matter.
For what we call "time" is our perception of duration, of sequences in which any given event unfolds.

There is no "time" outside our perception; that much appears to be true.
But we are bound - perhaps not inevitably (which is the whole point of this blog) - to this mode of perception, and "time" is the name of this mode of perception - no more, no less.
 
What a bore this post is, right? :)
Still, if it can help you avoid unproductive pitfalls and wild goose chases in the future, the time I invested in it will be more than worth it. 

And if it can make you think - really, really think - about the true weight of words, the building blocks of the stage on which we perform our lives, both internally and externally, the building blocks of the prison that makes our physical existence possible, I will have earned some serious bonus points in eternity. :-)
 
Just in case you do want to read an interesting discussion about the (non)existence of Time, go here.

And, of course, do not miss this post: The End of Time?













Sunday, 22 May 2011

You have control over your timeline


That's what a woman called Inelia Benz (among others) is claiming.
 

It's the first time I've heard of her. She comes across as quite likeable, but I am reserving judgement on the veracity of her claims. (Not that the timeline part sounds particularly outlandish to me.)

She does talk about "them" and "enslavement", which is not necessarily how I see things (conspiracy talk usually repels me). Then again, there are many things in this blog that I do not necessarily advocate or even believe, but are presented here for your consideration (or just entertainment).

If you're interested - and she does speak in a lively manner, easy to listen to - go here. 


The part about timelines starts at 12:46 and ends at 14:00. 

P.S. The link works in some browsers and in others it doesn't. 
If it doesn't work for you, go to this address and find the link to the interview within the quote in the very first post. 
And by the way, you may find the thread in question contains many very valuable, intriguing and well thought posts, (relatively not at all) free of ignorant and aggressive adolescent bickering to be found on some other websites.
I know I found it very interesting.




EDIT (May 28, 2011): 

We have received a number of emails telling us that Ms. Benz is/was associated with Scientology. 

Personally - and I know I speak for all of us here - I don't mind anyone being associated with any movement, as long as the affiliation in question is not demonstrably and unambiguously harmful to the individual or to others. 

However, since this blog covers a subject that has direct bearing on the mind/consciousness, we feel we should alert our readers to Ms. Benz's past association with Scientology.

Here is what she had to say when asked about it (not by us):

My relationship with scientology is very different. I was in the Church in the UK for a year in 2003-4 as a staff member. I basically went in on a personal mission to learn as much as possible and then get out fast. It was pretty tough, and I emerged bruised (as many do). But I do not regret the experience. I agree with Bill [Ryan] that Hubbard was a brilliant man to begin with, and was compromised after the Church was fully established.

I've also practiced Buddhism for 14 years, I've practiced martial arts, meditation, and have conducted a lot of my own research into the best tools and methods that a person can use to raise their awareness and overall vibrational level.

No-one has a monopoly on truth, and it's all available to everyone who wants to look. Wise men and women have been teaching this for thousands of years.

Taken from here.



EDIT (June 4th, 2011)
Don't miss our latest post, How to go to another time-line.









Wednesday, 4 May 2011

In God's Good Time



Here's a teaser - an excerpt - from a very interesting  text (a lecture delivered in 1977) by Philip K. Dick, titled "If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others". 

It will tease you, certainly; or it will comfort you, annoy you, intrigue you. You decide.

The great medieval Arabic philosopher, Avicenna, wrote that God does not see time as we do; i.e. for him there is no past nor present nor future. Now, supposing Avicenna is correct, let us imagine a situation in which God, from whatever vantage point he exists at, decides to intervene into our space-time world; i.e. break through from his timeless realm into human history. But if there is only omnipresent reality from his viewpoint, then he can as easily break through into what for us is the past as he can break through into what for us is the present or future. It is exactly like a chess player gazing down at the chessboard; he can move any of his pieces that he wishes. Following Avicenna's reasoning, we can say that God, in desiring, for example, to bring about the Second Advent, need not limit the event to our present or future; he can breach our past -- in other words, change our past history; he can cause it to have happened already. And this would be true for any change he wished to make, large or small. For instance, suppose an event in our year A.D. 1970 does not meet with God's idea of how it all should go. He can obliterate it or tinker with it, improve it, whatever he wishes, even at a prior point in linear time. This is his advantage.
I submit to you that such alterations, the creation or selection of such so-called "alternate presents," is continually taking place. ...

Want to know more?

OK, just one tidbit more:


Often people claim to remember past lives; I claim to remember a different, very different, present life. I know of no one who has ever made that claim before, but I rather suspect that my experience is not unique; what perhaps is unique is the fact that I am willing to talk about it.


Want more still?
You know where to click. 





EDIT (May 18, 2011): 
The link now points to an archived copy. 
The original article appears to have been teleported to a parallel dimension.




Saturday, 16 April 2011

The Last of the Romans




The Romans conquered half the world in their time. Everybody knows (or should know) that. 
But the more I read the more it appears they weren't content with simply securing the glory (such as it was) of Rome for a thousand years, give or take a hundred. They're still there.

Still where?
In York, for example. And in a region of England called the Norfolk Broads, with particular attachment to Wroxham, the "Capital of the Broads".

I learned about the ongoing Roman occupation of the Broads from Colin Wilson's Mysteries which is an almost inexhaustible mine of juicy data. According to his meticulous endnotes, Wilson learned about it from (or at least refers to) the book Unsolved Mysteries: a Collection of Weird Problems (From the Past), published by Valentine Dyall, the actor, in 1954.

But there is extensive mention of Wroxham in a much more recent book, Mysteries and Secrets of Time (2007), by Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe. Most accounts about this mysterious site available on the internet seem to refer to this latter book. 

And it is a highly interesting book, enticing, intelligently written, endlessly fascinating.
However, it has, in our opinion, one major flaw. It has no reference notes. Which means that we can only relate what supposedly happened there by using borrowed words and interpretations. None of the literary sources mentioned in the book is available (or even mentioned, for that matter) online; and at least one personality discussed as a first-hand witness is strangely missing from The Peerage and other sources where one would expect him to be listed. (But the online availability of many archival resources still is very limited, of course.) And because there are no reference notes, we don't even know where those sources are available.

And what if the authors relied on Dyall's book, as Wilson did?
None of us has read Dyall's book (it's been out of print since the 1950s), but a quick check of said book's reliability reveals there is some cause for worry. Apparently at least one person (Francis Clive-Ross, a respected publisher on the "occult" and a critical thinker) deemed it to be  "so heavily fictionalised as to be historically virtually useless".

It's not that we do not believe the authors. Perish the thought. But I, for one, have read Borges - in fact, I am more than a little Borgesian myself - so you will excuse me if I do not jump on this succulent bone of a mystery as enthusiastically as I normally would. Show me the sources, then I'll jump.

So, does that mean there will be no story at all - just the rambling intro about books and Borges? That's it?

No. It is simply a caveat that the story that follows - or rather snippets of stories - will be told relying on other people's accounts of what allegedly happened to other people, with no readily available sources for you to study them yourself. 
If you're OK with that, read on.

Apparently there is an army of what appear to be Roman soldiers - from ancient Rome - to be seen around the lake of Wroxham Broad.

As far as we can deduce from the books above, the earliest preserved mention of a possible anomaly in those waters seems to be the report by a Benjamin Curtiss, published in The Archives of the Northfolk, in 1603.

Mr. Curtiss and two friends of his were getting wet "in the great Broad of Wroxham, near unto Hoveton St. John" (see map below).
They were swimming across the lake when "strangely enough we felt our feet touch the bottom". That would have been strange because the water was usually much deeper there - from 12 to 14 feet, according to Curtiss.

Next thing they knew, they found themselves surrounded by an arena - an amphitheatre - with seats and all. The water had disappeared from beneath their feet; and they were themselves dressed as Roman officers. "What is more astonishing still," writes Mr. Curtiss, they were not surprised at all; in fact, they felt quite accustomed to it all. (Yet I did not wonder...)

Assuming all of the above really happened as described, it certainly opens a fascinating problem. 
There seems never to have been a Roman amphitheatre at the location of Curtiss' swim - as far as we know. (But that could very well change in the future.)
If so, that would mean - as the Fanthorpes noted in their book - that Curtiss and his friends displaced themselves not only in time but in space, thereby violating the laws of the world as presented by the Minkowski equations (see We'll always have Paris... or whatever it was for this strange apparent phenomenon). 
If so, my guess would be they entered somebody's memory field.



According to Curtiss' description, the part where they saw the Roman arena emerge from the lake would have been the upper part of the lake as seen on the map above. They were swimming from the river bank, on your right side, towards Hoveton, on the upper left side of the map. (You can enlarge or navigate the map from within this post.)
And BTW... what IS that islet on the NW side of the lake, connected with the shore? If natural, it has an awfully strange shape; if it's not natural, why was it built in that shape?


Fast forward to April 16, 1709, when the report by the Rev. Thomas Josiah Penston of an odd picnic is said to have been published in The Gentleman's Gazette.

Rev. Penston and his friends were having a picnic by "a beautiful lake in Norfolk, about eleven miles from the ancient city of Norwich", when they were rudely interrupted by a procession of no less than 700 or 800 Roman horsemen, followed by several hundreds of men in chains. The noisy parade, complete with trumpeters and drummers, included ballistic machines, prancing stallions and lions. At the lakeside they vanished, says Penston.

But that was not the last of the Romans.

In 1829, Lord Percival Durand abruptly met a "curious old man" while he was on his yacht, Amaryllis, near the eastern entrance of the same lake. 
There follows a sentence in the Fanthorpes' book that I find exceedingly puzzling:

"The weird old fellow who appeared to Percival Durand's yachting party on July 21, 1829, claimed to be Flavius Mantus, the Custos rotulorum..."

Claimed to be? He spoke to them?
Apparently. Not only that but he warned them that they were trespassing!
The incident was completed by the apparition of the same old amphitheatre in all its glory.

Incidentally, there appears to be a strangely worded poem, The Legend of the Lake, "attributed to Calvert" and published in the early 18th century, we're told.

While through the trees of yonder lake,
There comes a cavalcade of horsemen near.
Gaze not upon these Romans, friends,
For fear their eyes may meet with thine.
Stand back, well back, and let them pass...

(The poem continues, but in a nutshell: they're dead.)


If you think the poem is weird, wait until you read this news item that was allegedly published in Day's Chronicles of East Anglia, in 1825:

The Royal Progress of Carausius ... has passed... through the village of Wroxham... on its way from Brancaster.

(I don't know about you, but the last part cracked me up. It still does. :))

Unfortunately, there is no mention of what has been omitted and substituted by the suspension points. Usually it is the irrelevant - or perhaps overly lengthy - parts that are excised in this fashion.
But what piece of information could be irrelevant to such a weirdly anachronistic report?
We simply cannot tell.

More on the unending Roman occupation of Britain in one of the next posts. Stay tuned.



If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.