VISITORS FROM HIDDEN REALMS

Discover the connection between UFO visitors and shamanic lore! Brent Raynes' stunning book—intro. by Brad Steiger.

Is This Your Brain on Electromagnetism?

“The Indians believed in animism and animism means that everything is alive and that it has a spirit,” Dr. Gregory Little, co-editor of our own Alternate Perceptions, and the author of People of the Web and Grand Illusions, once explained to me. “And what they meant was that everything was alive in the sense that it was a part of spirit and the spirit is a piece of God. For example, the Cheyenne Indians called God Maheo. They believed that Maheo created everything and that it was alive and has a piece of God in it.

“When they killed an animal and ate it, they had to pray over the animal,” Greg added. “They had to send it’s spirit back to God, and anything that they killed they had to put to good use. The Indians saw that everything was sacred, even things that we view as inanimate like a rock. They believed that even a rock had some form of intelligence, a spirit. Again to the Cheyenne Maheo’s power was called Exhastov, and Exhastov is manifested in various ways. The earth itself is a manifestation of Exhastov, according to their view, and Nsthoaman is rock and earth, and rock is a concentrated form of Exhastov, which is God’s power. Crystals are the purest form of God’s power. The Indians did use crystals to look through, and even to make predictions about the future. They also used them in healing ceremonies.”

Apache Indian artist Jon Thunder, who for awhile took up residence nearby in my own Wayne County (TN) stated, “There was a time when we were all energy. We were just energy.” Jon seemed to struggle somewhat as he tried to make me understand the Apache concept of spirit energy. Jon said that we originally “didn’t have boundaries.” He further added, “So that’s where the human shape came from. It captured that energy and it is our purpose in life now to experience and obtain as much knowledge while in bondage, and that is our explanation of why when you meet someone sometimes you feel like you’ve known them forever, and you know what they’re going to do next. You just know them. It’s because that energy is a connecting point. We’re just one big mass of energy. It’s been broken up into boundaries. So we have residue from other energies and we pick up on that.”

Reflecting on what this Apache friend had just shared with me, I told him, “There are actually scientists now who are exploring theories like this. One that is called the morphogenetic theory.” In fact, recently I received in the mail a copy of The Living Energy Universe (Hampton Roads, 1999), a book written by two Ph.D. scientists with the University of Arizona (Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek). This book is one such outstanding example of scientists exploring such “universal living memory” concepts. Their modern theories closely resemble the wisdom of many ancient people around the world. For example, they wrote, “Ancient Hawaiian kahuna (ka means ‘to keep’ and huna means ‘secret’) taught that everything and everyone is a representation of manna (eternal energy). The universal living memory process can be thought of as a Western theory for the most ancient Polynesian wisdom: everything is and will always be invisible evolving manna with information.” These scientists also take a close look at how crystals may be “especially good” at storing these “memories” of energetic information.

Back in June, Greg Little shared with a group of us gathered at his home outside of Memphis, including noted science writer and historian Andrew Collins of England, how easily it was to demonstrate and to document the incredible piezoelectric power of quartz crystals. With lights turned out, Greg vigorously rubbed two crystals together while I filmed this activity using a video camera switched to a very low light setting. All of us could see flashes of light where Greg was standing. Later we watched in fascination as Greg played this back in slow motion on his television screen. We could clearly see the balls of plasma energy temporarily erupting inside of the two crystal rocks.

Some scientists believe that natural geological processes within the earth create powerful manifestations of electromagnetic energy that are responsible for everything from so-called “earth lights,” luminous displays associated with seismic activity or stresses along fault lines, to inducing altered states of consciousness with “visions” and “spirits.” Dr. Michael Persinger, a Canadian neuropsychologist with Ontario’s Laurentian University, has done much to popularize this concept. Under laboratory conditions, duplicating what presumably happens around plasma and geomagnetic energy fields and such, Dr. Persinger has even subjected volunteers to electromagnetic fields that stimulate certain brain sites, causing altered states and visualizations and sensations that seem to at least partially mimic the effects and sensations of so-called “out of body” experiences as well as “spirit” and “alien” encounters.

A couple of yeas ago, I engaged in a fairly extensive phone interview with a Researching Behavioral Scientist named Todd Murphy, who also lives up in Ontario, Canada, and who works closely with Dr. Persinger. Todd has even developed “neural stimulation technology” based on Persinger’s pioneering work that you can even purchase for yourself, anywhere from $65.00 to $250.00. (If you’re interested, check out his website: http://www.innerworlds.50Megs.com/) In our conversation we discussed how some places seem to be hot spots for anomalous reports of UFOs and strange “beings.” I asked him about his visit (which I had read about) to Harbin Hot Springs, California, an area with much seismic activity and a lot of UFO reports too. He said: “Well, the fact that they are reported in that area regularly tends to collaborate Dr. Persinger’s interpretation of them, and his interpretation is that they are hallucinatory phenomena brought on by the perturbation of our brain’s electrical and magnetic activity through the geomagnetic field, which is expressed differently and more turbulently in such areas.”

A few years back, Greg Little worked at a Memphis mental health clinic that had a unique relaxation couch known as a Graham Potentializer. “You lay on it and it focuses a magnetic field around your body,” Greg explained. “It also gently rotates in a circular fashion to mimic the flow of tidal waves.” On one occasion, Greg was using it to relax and do a guided meditation, when he had an “out of body” type experience. “I kind of came to the edge of what I would call a hole into outer space,” he said. “I could see countless stars. It was very impressive.”

Another time Greg introduced Lou White Eagle, a Cheyenne Arrow Priest, to the couch. He left him alone in the room and went to his office to do some paperwork. “He suddenly appeared at my door and slowly walked in and sat down. He was in a sort of daze,” Greg said. “There were several windows in the room and he [White Eagle] said there were these ‘little blue people’ looking in at him through the windows. Then they came into the room through the walls and windows by just passing through them. Then the little people started poking around on his body. The experience shook him up.”

Many Native Americans had traditions about the “little people.” They often played mischievous tricks on them, but were not generally perceived as malicious or evil. In fact, they were perceived by many as helpful too. To the Cherokee they were the Nunnehi [noo-nuh-hee] and Yunqi Tsundi, to the Choctaw they were called Bohpuli [bo-poo-lee], and to the Chickasaw they were called Iyaganasha [ee-yah-gah-nah-shah]. Of course, around the globe they were known by other names in other cultures, like fairies, leprechauns, elves, sprites, and goblins, to name but a few of the more popular ones.

Stories of the “little people” are certainly very widespread. In fact, a few years ago I came across a story about a man who back in the mid-1930s was walking alone along Beech Creek Road here in Wayne County, Tennessee, when one night he encountered a bright light along the side of the road and saw several dwarfish “men.” Terrified he began to run and later found himself picking himself up off of the ground at the bottom of what is known as Smith Branch Hill. He had apparently fallen and was temporarily unconscious. I heard this story from four different people who had known him (he is now deceased). All agreed that he was reliable and had been genuinely shaken up by the experience. One of those I spoke with was his brother.

Nancy Shaw of the nearby Tennessee Fitness Spa believes that the local Natural Bridge was sacred to the Indians. Over the years, countless artifacts and a number of skeletal remains have reportedly been found in and around this immediate area. A few years ago, I took Greg and his wife Lora out to the Bridge. Greg agreed that it would have indeed been a sacred place to the early Native American inhabitants. Greg compared it to being inside of a Kiva structure of the ancient American Southwest. “The Kiva ceremonies were conducted underground,” he said. “Underground you’re inside the womb of Mother Earth.” Greg also added that from down inside this huge natural rock chasm you look up and marvel at the large circular opening to the sky. To the Indians this was a portal to the Upper World from the Under World. In addition, circles were powerful and sacred to the Indians. This would have been strong medicine in their cosmological worldview.

It’s certainly a place with some interesting history and folklore. Nancy recalled for me how a few years back, a local elderly man had visited the Spa and told her how as a young man Native Americans had approached the former owner of the property (a man named Edward Bayliss) and that they obtained permission to dig on top of the Natural Bridge for the purpose of recovering ritual treasures that had belonged to their people. The man actually saw them himself. He said that they drove an old Packard car, had long hair and wore fringed clothing, and had placed a cast iron kettle looking object, that they had dug up, into the trunk of their sedan. This incredible account seems also confirmed by an obscure reference made in the July 28, 1935 edition of the now defunct Nashville Banner Magazine, which stated, in an article on the historic Natural Bridge, that three years earlier five “Indians” from an “Oklahoma reservation” had visited the Bridge. “They came in a large automobile,” the article stated. “They camped one night, drew lines from one tree to another, dug out of the earth some of the tribe’s ritual treasures and went back to the reservation.”

One day as Greg and I were talking about Indian Mounds and what the meaning behind them may have been, Greg told me: “Today we know that mound complexes were very carefully laid out according to the risings of stars and the sun during the solstices and equinoxes. Some mound complexes, like the High Bank and Newark earthworks of Ohio were complex calendric devices, a lot like Stonehenge. They could accurately predict the 30 year cycle of the moon, and could accurately predict when various lunar eclipses would occur.”

“They used these mounds for rituals. Rituals got them in touch with the spirit world, supposedly attuned them with the spirit world, and the sacred circles in mounds were places where the spirits could physically appear to the people in the tribes, such as the shamans and the priests.”

This dovetailed exactly with what a medicine man of Susquehannock ancestry had communicated with me years ago. “The mounds are to stand upon and pray and talk with the spirits,” he told me. “Often they [spirits] manifest to us in physical form. Sometimes only a voice.”

My wife Joan and I have had the honor and privilege over the years of journeying with Greg and Lora on several occasions to a number of incredible ancient mound sites in Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, and Kentucky, but one of the most important and impressive ones was just a few miles south of Jackson, Tennessee. These are the Pinson Mounds.

On the subject of Pinson, Greg explained, “Dr. Bob Mayford, who was the head of it, said Pinson is one of the top five most important archeological sites in all of North America. He told me that back in 1983, and I would agree with that. It may be even more important, in fact. Pinson is one of the largest and oldest ceremonial centers in North America, and it’s got the oldest truncated pyramid, and that is Ozier’s Mound.

“Pinson was built somewhere around 100 B.C. It was a huge ceremonial center where groups came, at certain times each year, and the times were dictated by star appearances. It essentially functioned as an enormous medicine wheel. People came there, they brought their dead. They buried their dead there, and to be buried there was a very high honor to these people. Pinson is over a thousand acres. It’s a big site.”

When I questioned Greg about Persinger’s studies, he noted, “Persinger doesn’t believe that it’s a spiritual realm he’s tapping. Personally, I think it is a spiritual realm.”

Greg explained to me the mystery and suspected awesome power of these ancient sites. “A lot of mounds, and pyramids in South America and the pyramids of Egypt are, on the sides, generally at a 23 _ degree alignment, or a multiple of that, which would be 47. At certain times of the day there is an energy that seems to be funneled through them, and it’s taken up into the sky. The 23 _ degree sides supposedly funnel or channel some energy there. I have come to the conclusion that the solar winds, the earth’s magnetic field, the magnetosphere, and the way the solar winds interact with it and swirl it around, all relate to when rituals were most effective. I think the entire process is an interaction between a human brain and human brain chemistry with what I call the spirit world, which is the electromagnetic energy spectrum, which is also affected by the solar winds, earth’s gravitational field, magnetic fields, and so on.”

Yoga and the Bipolar Disorder

There’s ongoing debate and discussion in the medical community about how yoga may help to alleviate depression and bipolar disorders by reducing stress and anxiety. India’s National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience reportedly produced the most persuasive evidence of the benefits of hatha yoga, with particular emphasis on pranayama, which are deep abdominal breathing methods. According to the latest research as many as 73% may be successfully treated for depression. One case history cited concerned one Jenny Smith, who back in 1990 at the age of 41, landed in the hospital twice that year. Her bipolar condition was so severe she could barely walk or talk. One moment she would feel great and then the next she would be hallucinating spiders and bugs crawling on her. She was told that she could expect to be in and out of psychiatric hospitals for the rest of her life. Meanwhile, she had tried some eleven different medications and nothing seemed to help. Then after being released from the hospital, she decided to learn hatha yoga, which happens to incorporate various postures, meditation and pranayamas, or deep abdominal breathing. Soon she noticed that she was getting much better, and today she is a certified hatha yoga instructor. She even brought relief to her 11-year-old daughter who had been suffering panic attacks since age 7, by simply teaching her a simple breathing technique. (Source: Psychology Today.com)

Healing and Sound

The importance of various meditative relaxation techniques in conjunction with improved health and well-being is not something new, although it seldom seems to receive the serious attention and recognition that it deserves. For a long time, and actually going back centuries if you look at the meditative techniques of Buddhists, Hindus and shamans, for example, we can see that sound has played an important role in these practices. Jonathan Goldman, in his book Healing Sounds, describes many thought-provoking examples for us to contemplate. For example, back in 1985, while participating in the 4th International Symposium on Music in New York City, Goldman met Helga Rich, a vocal instructor and yoga teacher from Denmark who worked with patients suffering from aphasia, muscular disorder, Down’s Syndrome and other afflictions. She told Goldman that she taught her patients to sing vowel sounds and how to resonate those sounds to their foreheads. Slow and relaxed breathing were also the initial phase of this procedure. Over the years, Goldman has met many other researchers who are exploring similar cutting edge insights into sound and healing, and since the first publication of his book Healing Sounds, he feels vindicated that some of what he presented has since been confirmed. For example, in chapter 7 he described how the hormone melatonin could be released by toning harmonic sounds, and a reader, a scientist (Ranjie Singh, Ph.D) was intrigued by what he read and decided to test this notion out scientifically, and reportedly verified that it was true.

A few months back, in a phone conversation with Don Wright of New Mexico, maker of fully functional replicas of the Peruvian whistling vessels, he told me of how they had just had a set of twelve ordered by a physician who works with cancer and gout patients who has done research that has shown how listening to low frequencies can eliminate the pain of gout, and wants to explore the use of the whistling vessels in this same regard.

Daniel Levitin, a former rock producer who worked with such legends as Stevie Wonder, the Grateful Dead, and Chris Isaak, became disillusioned at one point with the industry and drifted off into a career in neuroscience. Today he is an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Nevertheless, music is still near and dear to his heart, and he is regarded as a leading expert in cognitive music perception, and wrote a book entitled This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. In a recent interview, Levitin stated that the myth of a music gene or center has been effectively debunked, and that Stevie Wonder and other music talents don’t start out with anything different. However, he does add that becoming an “expert” at something, anything really, does bring about a change in the brain and the creation of more efficient circuitry related to your focus. He even adds that music activates brain areas capable of “the same neurochemical cocktail as a lot of other pleasurable activities like orgasms or eating chocolate,” and adds that both serotonin and dopamine are involved.

I’ve read that some who have been classically trained in music have a significantly larger planum temporale on the brain’s left side. (FATE, May 1996, pg. 26-29) In fact, according to a German study of some musicians with perfect pitch, the planum temporale may be up to 40 percent larger on the left side of the brain than the right! Going back to Jonathan Goldman’s book, he described how one Fernando Nottebohm and his colleagues at Rockefeller University had found that songbirds, which he points out can sing two notes simultaneously, were found to have the amazing ability to grow new nerve cells and also increase the size of that part of the avian brain that’s involved with singing. Goldman adds that while researchers are excited and searching for the gene responsible for the regeneration process, he speculated that instead of being in a gene the solution is located in the very sounds that the songbirds produce.

Frogs and Toads, and the Mystery of Suspended Animation?

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines suspended animation as “a temporary cessation of the vital functions resembling death.” Although a common theme of many science fiction movies and stories about crew members on long interstellar voyages who are placed in suspended animation in order to survive and endure the obvious hardships imposed by such a situation, wouldn’t it be more than a little ironic if the common frog and toad ended up providing us some of our greatest clues and insights into the real-life mechanics of such a mysterious and complex physiological state?

Noted paranormal researcher-author Brad Steiger has shared in recent emails some data that is quite thought-provoking in this regard. A geneological researcher in Pennsylvania recently submitted this account to Brad. It’s from The Adams Sentinel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Dated May 10, 1864. Entitled “A Curiosity - A Live Frog Found in a Solid Stone.” It reads:

“Some workmen engaged in cutting stone for a new building at Johnstown were astonished, on Wednesday last, a finding a good-sized frog closely imbedded almost in the centre of a large stone broken by one of them. The Johnstown Tribuen says: On first appearance it was thought the frog was dead (as might be reasonably supposed), but presently he revived, and was about to hop off, probably in search of a breakfast, when he was taken in charge by a bystander, and placed in a box covered with glass, where he has been visited by many of the curious in such matters. The stone which he was found was originally broken from a mass of rock, of conglomerate sandstone and quartz formation, and had been used for over thirty years in a wall along the canal, whence it was taken for use in the new building at the mill.

“It presented no appearance of previous fracture, and the presence of the frog in that place where he was found can only be accounted for upon the hypothesis that he buried himself in the sand or mud on the approach of a long ago winter, there to await to coming of spring, as is the habit of the animal. But before his spring came, some convulsion of nature or action of the elements imprisoned him so firmly that he could not get out, and the mud or sand in which he had hid himself was subsequently converted to solid stone, by exposure to the sun and air through successive ages, and there he remained until released by a stroke of the mason’s hammer in this latter portion of the nineteenth century. This, however, as his frogship refuses to answer questions, is a matter for the determination of the learned and scientific. Certain it is, his abode in the place where found was very prolonged; but if only for a few years, his release, ‘alive and kicking,’ is a wonderful and astonishing fact in nature, almost beyond evidence. The probabilities are, that his frog sang before the flood, that he is a veritable antediluvian, and if he could relate his adventures, could tell us all about the times in which Noah lived. We may add that the frog is totally blind–the only infirmity which seems to afflict him, although when first discovered he was flattened out as thin as a pancake. He jumps around as supple as the best of frogs.”

Then too there was the case of “Ol’ Rip, The Entombed Horned Toad of The Eastland County Courthouse in Texas.” The story goes that a Mr. E. E. Wood placed a horned toad that he had picked up a little earlier in the day, and placed it with various other articles that citizens placed inside a time capsule at the cornerstone of the courthouse. Thirty-one years later the courthouse was needing to be demolished and so Mr. Woods reminded everyone of the horned toad that he had placed in the cornerstone. Quite a crowd gathered and when Rip was removed from the cornerstone he seemingly inflated himself as he breathed the air, and the crowd went wild! He lived for quite sometime afterwards. Even took a tour of the country and sat on President Calvin Coolidge’s desk. Robert Ripley featured ol’ Rip in his “Believe It Or Not” column.

These are just a couple such stories. All contain the same essential details. If we give these stories any credibility then certainly we’re not dealing with the familiar kind of deep sleep or hibernation processes and patterns that the science of biology is accustomed to looking at. Something else-- something very mysterious--would be going on instead.

Emails from John Day

For those of you who read my report on the Aveley abduction case (England) in the August issue (part 2) and the July issue (part 1), I opened my email on August 18th for an unexpected surprise. One of the main principles in that particular case, John Day, wrote a personal message to me. He wrote: “...I would just like to thank you for an honest and straight-forward report on our case. It is rare not to be accused of lying or called a loony. What happened to us was real. What it was I don’t know for sure, but it did change our lives. Sometimes for the worst, and still has an influence on us all. Anyway, thank you.”

Naturally I wrote back, requesting to know more. In an email dated August 19th, John wrote: “Hi Brent, Andrew [Collins] has been a good guardian of my family for many years. ...In answer to your questions, yes I do still have out of body experiences, but mostly at night. I can to a certain degree do it at will. Mostly it’s like watching a film but you have the sense of being somewhere but not quite, if that makes any sense.”

“Yes, I do still have psychic experiences, but they have become a normal part of life (i.e., bright yellow orange flashes in the room, etc.). I don’t really have any solid idea where they are or come from. That information has always been blocked. It has changed all our lives. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. We have had a lot of fear but not from the encounter. My ex- wife took up nursing and worked her way up the profession. She became a major in the reserve army. Went to Bosnia and Iraq. I gained a B.A. with honors in fine art and I now work as an artist. And many other good things, but there has been a lot of sinister and painful happenings, so now I and my family tend to stay out of the way. I hope this is useful to you. It is difficult to communicate this way as so much can’t be said.”