These same scientists also found even more connections between the pineal gland, its serotonin levels and various mental disorders.
An absolutely shocking discovery was the correlation between high serotonin levels in the Pineal Gland and certain mental disorders! . . . The average amount of serotonin found in the Pineal Glands of normal persons is about 3.14 to 3.52 micrograms per gram of tissue. One schizophrenic was found to have a Pineal Gland containing 10 micrograms of serotonin, around 3 times higher, while another patient, a sufferer from delirium tremens, had a Pineal Gland containing 22.82 micrograms of serotonin, around 10 times higher then the average amount!53
This same study also established a direct connection between serotonin levels in the pineal gland and tremors, such as tardive dyskinesia, Parkinson’s disease and even epileptic seizures. They found several studies showing “significant differences between the severity of dystonic movements [tremors] in patients with no Pineal Gland calcification and those with pathologically enlarged Pineal Gland calcification.”54
Many health professionals have discussed the problems with calcification in the body. In the worst-case scenario it can even create painful conditions like gout, in which your feet and toes have so much calcification that they form crystals that hurt when they break. The most important key to eliminating calcification is a healthy diet. If you drink lots of purified water, you help your liver and kidneys flush out all these toxins. Eating a diet of fresh, organic raw foods insures you won’t have pesticides and preservatives accumulating in your body and creating mineral deposits.
Dr. Weston Price found that many traditional, undisturbed cultures had much higher bone density from eating their native foods. Their teeth stayed beautifully straight, without any need for orthodontics, and they hardly ever got cavities—without even brushing. As soon as processed Western foods were introduced into their diets, such as refined sugar, white flour, nonorganic dairy and factory-farmed meats, their teeth became crooked and started to rot out of their heads. Thankfully, by going back to a pure, natural diet, rich in traditional foods—including organic animal products—we can actually reverse these problems and decalcify the pineal gland.
Dr. Price identified a compound he called Activator X, which is also now known as vitamin K2, in these traditional foods—which seemed to be the key ingredient. If you’re a vegetarian, you can get it from organic butter oil—harvested from cattle who feed only on fresh, organic, rapidly growing grass. Meat eaters can take fermented cod liver oil or ratfish liver oil, which is even better. Price also recommended combining land and sea—butter oil and fermented fish liver oil—for even stronger results. Activator X is also found in organic grass-fed eggs and meat products. In his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Price reveals controversial photographs of people who apparently reversed tooth decay and regrew enamel once they restored Activator X into their diets. Arterial plaque—the great killer in heart attacks and strokes—could also be cleaned out, and pineal function greatly improved by decreasing its calcification.55
As we look over the information in this chapter, there are compelling avenues for new research. I want to make it clear that I do not consider the Source Field to be some abstract, metaphysical idea. I agree with many Russian scientists who have concluded that the Source Field is directly measurable—as a spinning current within gravity. It appears that the more you screen out the influence of electromagnetic energy fields, the more sensitive you become to the information within the Source Field—perhaps through the pineal gland, as the ancient traditions suggest.
Considering all the information we have surveyed in these last three chapters, the obvious question we now must ask ourselves is this: What is consciousness? Where is the mind getting its orders from—in what may be a hidden, ongoing form of posthypnotic suggestion from some other aspect of ourselves? Are thoughts happening in the brain, where they then generate an energy wave that can move through the Source Field? Or, are we actually using the Source Field to think—and even share a collective mind with all others as well?
CHAPTER FOUR
Thinking with the Field—in the Great Cycles of Life
Ancient cultures all over the world were fascinated with pineal gland symbolism. Many different spiritual teachings—including secret mystery-school traditions—believed the pineal gland acts as a literal third eye in the brain. Recent scientific breakthroughs have determined that there are substantial, biological similarities between the retina and the pineal gland. Piezoelectric microcrystals may be transmitting photons that can be picked up by the retina-like tissue in the pineal gland—where they are then sent to the brain and descrambled into visual images. This may be responsible for what we call the “mind’s eye”—such as when we suddenly see a mental image of our friend right before he or she calls us.
Clearly, more research is necessary to fully understand how the pineal gland actually works, but we already have some intriguing clues. Either way, in chapters 1 and 2 we found compelling scientific proof that all of Nature is in constant telepathic communication—through a field that is clearly not electromagnetic. When we combine Dr. William Braud’s extensive research with Backster’s breakthroughs, everything we think we know about being living, conscious humans must change. No longer can we see ourselves as separate from our environment; we are fundamentally intertwined with those around us. Whatever we think, they think—and whatever we feel, they feel. Exactly how far can this mindsharing effect go? Does it only work from one person to another? Does this knowledge have any practical value, or is it just another piece of “weird science”?
At this point, we may need to consider a shift in perspective. Let’s start by asking ourselves this question: What, exactly, is Mind? Even when we discuss the pineal gland, we are still prone to think of the mind as something that exists within each person—where one mind then sends messages to another mind like a two-way radio. However, what if we’re actually all sharing the same mind, to some degree—and that mind is far more energetic in nature than we’ve been led to believe?
Let’s go back to Backster and really think about what he discovered. If the mind is an energetic field, then bacteria could be sharing the same mind as plants. Plants could share the same mind as eggs. Eggs could share the same mind as animals. And all living things may share the same mind with us. When Backster wanted to burn a leaf, the plant responded. When Backster started watering a plant, it tracked his movements. Backster once told me his plants always “screamed” when one man came into the lab—and this man turned out to mow lawns for a living. When two people meditate together and then go their separate ways, a jolting flash of light in one person’s eyes will create an identical brainwave shock in the other person—25 percent of the time. The Institute of HeartMath showed that when we live together, work together or have an affinity for each other, we begin synchronizing brainwaves, heartbeat patterns and other vital signs. Dr. William Braud found that a nervous person could be calmed down by “remote influencing.” A distracted person could have better concentration and an immediate improvement in mental focus—simply by having someone else do the thinking for them at a distance.
Thoughts Occurring Directly in the Source Field
A September 2010 article in Wired magazine featured a discussion between Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on what they called “the hive mind.” A surprising number of human innovations appear in different people’s minds simultaneously—as if we’re all using the same energy field to think with. As new ideas are introduced into that energy field, they suddenly become available to everyone.
Steven Johnson: . . . Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio—all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another. . . .
Kevin Kelly: It’s amazing that the myth of the lone genius has persisted for so long, since simultaneous invention has always been the norm, not the exception. Anthropologists have sho
wn that the same inventions tended to crop up in prehistory at roughly similar times, in roughly the same order, among cultures on different continents that couldn’t possibly have contacted one another. . . . Gregor Mendel’s ideas about genetics, for example: He formulated them in 1865, but they were ignored for 35 years because they were too advanced. Nobody could incorporate them. Then, when the collective mind was ready and his idea was only one hop away, three different scientists independently rediscovered his work within roughly a year of one another.1
An article in The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell reveals that this phenomenon is far more prevalent than most people think. As of 1922, fully 148 different major scientific discoveries had been documented as occurring nearly simultaneously.
This phenomenon of simultaneous discovery—what science historians call “multiples”—turns out to be extremely common. One of the first comprehensive lists of multiples was put together by William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas, in 1922, and they found a hundred and forty-eight major scientific discoveries that fit the multiple pattern. Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution. Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions. Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier. Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France. Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain, and by Joost Bürgi in Switzerland. “There were four independent discoveries of sunspots, all in 1611; namely, by Galileo in Italy, Scheiner in Germany, Fabricius in Holland and Harriott in England,” Ogburn and Thomas note, and they continue:
“The law of the conservation of energy, so significant in science and philosophy, was formulated four times independently in 1847, by Joule, Thomson, Colding and Helmholz. They had been anticipated by Robert Mayer in 1842. There seem to have been at least six different inventors of the thermometer and no less than nine claimants of the invention of the telescope. Typewriting machines were invented simultaneously in England and in America by several individuals in these countries. The steamboat is claimed as the “exclusive” discovery of Fulton, Jouffroy, Rumsey, Stevens and Symmington.” 2
Dr. Erwin Laszlo commented on how often this effect appears in history.
The great breakthroughs of classical Hebrew, Greek, Chinese and Indian culture occurred almost at the same time [750 to 399 B.C.] . . . among people who were not likely to have been in actual communication.3
In Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s classic The Presence of the Past, a variety of experiments support the idea that we are all accessing a common databank of information when we try to think about something—such as to solve a particular puzzle or problem—just like these inventors were doing. In one case, Sheldrake gave a difficult hidden-figure puzzle to random groups of people and timed how long it took them to solve it. Then the solution was revealed to two million viewers in a British television broadcast. Everyone watched as the hidden face of a Cossack emerged from the background—including his handlebar mustache. When Sheldrake then gave the puzzle to new groups in Europe, Africa and America who had not seen the original puzzle nor the British TV show with the answer, they nonetheless solved it much faster.4
Dr. Paul Pearsall’s fascinating work with organ transplants is another example of shared thoughts—though in this case there is a clear biological component involved. Dr. Pearsall has authored more than two hundred professional articles and eighteen best-selling books on this fascinating subject, and the entire article—with all the incredible specifics—is free to read on Pearsall’s Web site.5
According to this study of patients who have received transplanted organs, particularly hearts, it is not uncommon for memories, behaviors, preferences and habits associated with the donor to be transferred to the recipient. . . . A total sample of 74 transplant recipients (23 of which were heart transplants) . . . showed various degrees of changes that paralleled the personalities of their donors.6
Thoughts are apparently being stored within individual organs before they appear in the recipient’s mind. The Source Field has spoken once again.
The Co-Intelligence Institute gives a thorough summary of experiments Sheldrake has either run himself or compiled in his impressive works on this concept of the shared mind. All of these breakthroughs suggest we are using the Source Field to think—at least to some degree.
In one experiment, British biologist Rupert Sheldrake took three short, similar Japanese rhymes—one a meaningless jumble of disconnected Japanese words, the second a newly composed verse and the third a traditional rhyme known by millions of Japanese. Neither Sheldrake nor the English schoolchildren he got to memorize these verses knew which was which, nor did they know any Japanese. The most easily learned rhyme turned out to be the one well-known to Japanese.7
Experiment 1: In the 1920s Harvard University psychologist William McDougall did experiments for 15 years in which rats learned to escape from a tank. The first generation of rats averaged 200 mistakes before they learned the right way out; the last generation 20 mistakes. . . .
Experiment 2: In later efforts to duplicate McDougall’s experiments in Australia, similar rats made fewer mistakes right from the start. Later generations of rats did better even when they were not descendents of the earlier rats. . . .
Experiment 3: In the 1920s in Southampton, England, a bird called the blue tit discovered it could tear the tops of milk bottles on doorsteps and drink the cream. Soon this skill showed up in blue tits over a hundred miles away, which is odd in that they seldom fly further than 15 miles. . . . [The habit] spread faster and faster until by 1947 it was universal throughout Britain[,] . . . Holland, Sweden and Denmark. German occupation cut off milk deliveries in Holland for eight years—five years longer than the life of a blue tit. Then, in 1948 the milk started to be delivered. Within months blue tits all over Holland were drinking cream. . . .
Experiment 4: In the early sixties psychiatrists Dr. Milan Ryzl of Prague and Dr. Vladimir L. Raikov of Moscow hypnotized subjects into believing they were living incarnations of historical personages. Such subjects would develop talents associated with their alter egos. A subject told she was the artist Raphael took only a month to develop drawing skills up to the standard of a good graphic designer. . . .
[Experiment 5 is Sheldrake’s hidden-figure puzzle, already discussed.]
Experiment 6: Psychologist Dr. Arden Mahlberg of Madison, Wisconsin, created a variation of Morse code that should have been no harder to learn than the standard variety. Subjects learned the real code much faster than his invented one, not knowing which was which.
Experiment 7: Gary Schwartz, Yale professor of psychology, selected 24 common 3-letter words in Hebrew and 24 rare ones, all from the Old Testament, all in Hebrew script. For each word, he created a scrambled version (as, in English, one might do by scrambling “dog” to spell “odg”). . . . [Among participants with no knowledge of Hebrew,] not only was the confidence [in the accuracy of their guesses] significantly higher with the real words than with the false words (regardless of subjects, words, or experiments), but the common words got higher confidence scores than the rarer words. . . .8
Schwartz’s experiment was also covered in Combs, Holland and Robertson’s Synchronicity: Through the Eyes of Science, Myth and the Trickster in 2000. The phrase “morphic fields” is Sheldrake’s own term for thought forms that build up within the Source Field.
Schwartz found, as Sheldrake’s theory would predict, that students rated the real words with considerably greater confidence than the ones that had been scrambled (though they did not accurately guess their meaning). Moreover, he found that confidence ratings were about twice as high for the words that occur frequently in the Old Testament compared with those that occur only rarely. The idea here is that the real words had, in fact, been learned by countless persons throughout history, forming strong morphic fields; the most frequently occurring
words had, of course, been seen and read the greatest number of times. . . . Similar experiments have been carried out using Persian words and even Morse code.9
Richard Linklater’s 2001 film Waking Life features a scene in which two characters discuss this phenomenon—and one of them mentions a study where crossword puzzles become easier to solve once they have been published and worked on by large numbers of people.10 A graduate student named Monica England conducted this research for her thesis at the University of Nottingham, and summarized the results in the August 1991 Noetic Sciences Bulletin—but it was never published in a traditional academic journal. Sheldrake wrote about it in words that are no longer found on his Web site, but were originally published in a Journal of Memetics discussion forum post—on the memorable day of September 11, 2001.
The crossword puzzles she used were from the London Evening Standard, not The New York Times, and in the experiments she tested groups of subjects before and after the crossword puzzles were published in the Evening Standard on Feb 15th 1990. Each group of subjects also did a control crossword which had been published ten days earlier in the Evening Standard. . . . She found that . . . the subjects performed better after the crossword had been published in London, relative to scores before publication. This difference was significant at the 5 percent level, using the one-tailed t test. . . . The reason Monica England thought of doing this experiment in the first place is that there is a folklore among people who do crosswords, especially difficult ones like those in The Times or the Daily Telegraph, that these crosswords are easier to solve if they’re done the next day or in the evening rather than on the morning of the day they are published, suggesting a possible influence from others who have done them.11
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