"The recognition of our high cosmic mission . . ." -- Alvin Boyd Kuhn on evolution































In the past, this blog has tackled aspects of the creation vs evolution debate, and explored some of the major problems with the Darwinian mechanism of evolution which (in its various permutations) is by far the predominant evolutionary mechanism accepted by conventional academia, and which is taught as if it is proven fact by its defenders.

Among the previous posts which have ventured into this hotly contested and battled-scarred landscape are:
and
Some of those posts discuss the fact that there have been very serious proponents of evolution who have rejected the Darwinian mechanism as simply the wrong mechanism.  Among these were eminent botanist J. C. Willis who noted that the abundant evidence in botany poses irreconcilable problems for the Darwinian hypothesis, and who proposed a completely different mechanism of evolution which he called "Differentiation," and which proposed that some force caused very large new mutations or differentiations which diverged tremendously from previous forms, and which then went on to branch out into various sub-species and sub-genera, without the extinction of the parent that began the "family" (almost a complete inversion of the Darwinian mechanism).  

Others of those posts, such as those discussing the work and research of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, who also believes in evolution but by a mechanism different from the conventional Darwinian mechanism, have noted that evidence of "psi" phenomena and other "paranormal" activity pose some serious difficulties for the Darwinian model as well.  Posts which discuss this aspect of human existence, and the evidence for consciousness that can survive the death of the body (something Darwinian evolution would not predict and which most conventional defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy would vehemently deny) include:
and
All of this "review" is pertinent, because today we will very briefly examine another theory put forward by someone who believed in evolution, but again by a very different mechanism than that propounded by almost any of the modern Darwinists.  Moreover, it is a theory which seems to be able to incorporate the evidence for psychic, paranormal, and afterlife experiences discussed in the posts found in the second group of links, as well as having some points of harmony with the evidence discussed by J. C. Willis and his "Differentiation" theory, as well as some of the other evidence discussed in the posts from the first group of links.

In his 1940 text Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scriptures, Alvin Boyd Kuhn makes this assertion, speaking of the ancient religion of the Egyptians and of many other ancient cultures:
It was designed to prevent the utter loss of purpose and failure of effort in the cosmical task to which man, as a celestial intelligent spirit, had pledged himself under the Old Testament covenant and "the broad oaths fast sealed" of Greek theology.  In coming to earth to help turn the tide of evolution past one of its most critical passages, he bound himself to do the work and return without sinking into the mire of animal sensuality.  We must henceforth approach religion with the realization that it is the psychic instrumentality designed for the use of humanity in charting its way through the shoals of the particular [. . .] evolutionary crisis in which it was involved.  91.
In these few sentences is contained a radical and revolutionary proposition: that evolution in the physical species is guided along by the incarnation of "celestial intelligent spirit" -- that we are spirits inhabiting human bodies as part of the task of helping evolution.  

In other words, Kuhn is here articulating his theory that the ancient sacred texts all dealt with the incarnation of spirit in matter (something discussed in this previous post), and that in fact they taught the doctrine of multiple reincarnations (evidence for reincarnation is discussed extensively in Chris Carter's Science and the Afterlife Experience, among other books).  One very interesting aspect of Kuhn's discussion of the idea of incarnation and reincarnation is his view of its purpose: he asserts in the passage above that the purpose of incarnation is to move evolution forward.*

In the passage above, he hints at the difficulty of this task.  One of the dangers of the business of incarnating, is that the spirit would become entangled in the snares inherent in the physical world, "sinking into the mire of animal sensuality."  For this reason (among others), Kuhn argues that the ancient wisdom was designed to remind us of our origin "as a celestial intelligent spirit," so we would not forget where we came from and why we are here. 

However, because of what Kuhn saw as a horrendous loss of the true light of the ancient scriptures, he believed that this vitally important mission is in grave jeopardy.  He writes:
All the stupendous knowledge relating to the entire cosmic chapter was once available, given by the gods to the sages.  We have nearly lost it beyond all recovery because the ignorance of an early age closed the Academies and crushed every attempt to revive the teaching.  [. . .]  We must work again to the recognition of our high cosmic mission, and revivify the decadent forms of a once potent religious practique, based knowledge.  For spiritual cultism was once vitally related to our evolutionary security, which stands jeopardized by present religious desuetude.  91.
Every reader must of course decide for himself or herself where to come down on this important subject.  The question, however, is far from settled, despite what some would have you believe.  There are many strident voices which would attempt to drown out any further examination of the subject of creation vs evolution, and would use all kinds of ridicule, ostracism, marginalization, and other forms of pressure to cause people to simply accept that evolution is the only possible answer, and that within the camp of evolution only certain strictly-materialistic forms of Darwinism may ever be discussed.  

If Alvin Boyd Kuhn is even partially right, the dangers of this kind of close-minded thinking may be enormous, and the damage that it is doing may be most grievous.  

We should encourage those around us to be unafraid in diving into this field, and not simply abandon it to those who would try to silence all opposition (and who, by their rigid intolerance, may be doing "evolution" in the sense that Kuhn is talking about a tremendous disservice).  Most importantly, each of us individually should be unafraid to examine openly all the possibilities.

---

* And, for the record, I personally do not believe that by "moving evolution forward" Kuhn was talking about the "transhumanist" idea of physically modifying the human body (or even human mind-body) using implantable or bio-electronic biometric silicon-based microchips which appear to be well suited for surveillance, enslavement, and the massive restriction of higher consciousness whatever else they may be good for.  Kuhn talks extensively about the "fourfold soul," the "sevenfold soul," and other subjects which lead one to conclude that the advancement he was talking about was not based upon some form of biological enhancement.


The profound importance of tea



There are many very ancient Chinese legends purporting to describe the origin of tea, but many of them attribute the discovery of tea to the legendary Shen Nung, who was said to have lived around 2800 BC.  In Shen Nung's Canon of Herbs, thought to have been compiled from texts written during a period beginning in 206 BC, it is specifically said that Shen Nung tested hundreds of herbs on himself, encountering seventy-two poisons each day, and used tea as his antidote.

As Daniel P. Reid relates the story in Art and Alchemy of Chinese Tea:
It is said that in the course of his intensive field work, Shen Nung once ingested 72 poisonous plants in an single day, after which he collapsed on the ground, teetering on the brink of death from poison.  As he lay there in agony, a breeze blew a few leaves from a nearby tree onto the ground beside him.  Noticing their distinctive aroma and vibrant green color, curiosity and force of habit prompted him to put a few leaves in his mouth and chew them.  He liked the taste, soon felt better, and quickly recovered his strength, so he chewed some more leaves and found that they completely cleansed his system of all toxins.  This is what he wrote about tea in his pharmacopeia:
Tea's essential flavor is bitter.  After drinking tea, the mind thinks more clearly and quickly, the whole body becomes light and agile, and vision improves.  34.
In her book, Tea: Aromas and Flavors Around the World, Lydia Gautier notes that Shen Nung's Canon of Herbs also states: "if one consumes tea for long enough, the body gains in strength and the mind in keenness" (106).  She goes on to say:
When one reads ancient Chinese texts, the benefits attributed to tea are extremely varied.
  • It stimulates circulation of the blood in all parts of the body.
  • It stimulates clear thinking and a lively mind.
  • It speeds up the elimination of alcohol in the organs of the body.
  • It increases the body's power to resist many illnesses.
  • It accelerates the metabolism and oxygenation of the organs of the body.
  • It prevents tooth decay.
  • It has a purifying and fortifying effect on the skin, helping it to remain younger-looking.
  • It prevents or reduces anemia.
  • It purifies urine and aids diuresis.
  • It improves the eyes and makes them shine.
  • It combats the effects of heat in summer (tea is by nature cold, that is, yin).
  • It aids digestion.
  • It eases pain in the libs and joints.
  • It reduces harmful mucus secretions.
  • It eases thirst.
  • It drives away fatigue and depression, bringing a general sense of well-being.
  • Finally, it prolongs life.  106.


Modern studies do indeed show that tea has measurable health benefits.  Tea is rich in flavonoids which medical studies have linked to improvements in cardiovascular health as well as to other beneficial effects for maintaining mental and physical health.

Interestingly, the ancient Chinese sources cited above appear to link tea to the rhythm of the cosmos as well.  Readers of this blog will no doubt have noted that the number of potentially deadly herbs that the legendary Shen Nung ingested, seventy-two, is one of the most notable precessional numbers.  Seventy-two is the approximate number of years it takes for the subtle motion of precession to delay the position of the background of the heavens by a single degree (for a video that explains this phenomenon and some of its tremendous significance in ancient sacred scripture and tradition, see here).  The mention of this significant precessional number in the legend regarding the discovery of tea is almost certainly not accidental.

The evidence of an ancient association of the beneficial properties of tea to the celestial motion of precession becomes even more pronounced when we read, in one of the tea-related articles on Daniel Reid's website, that the Chinese calligraphic symbol for tea contains strokes which add up to the number 108, according to Frederick R. Dannaway in the article entitled "Tea as Soma, pt. 1" (towards the bottom of that webpage).

Of course, along with the number 72, the number 108 is also one of the most-commonly recurring precessional numbers in ancient mythology and sacred tradition.  In the Agnicayana fire ritual of Vedic and Hindu tradition (believed to be the oldest surviving ritual in the world), the traditional altar is supposed to be constructed of 10,800 bricks (a version of the number 108).  Many aspects of the Chinese martial arts incorporate the number 108 as well, including the legendary number of obstacles one had to overcome in the final test for a Shaolin monk, and the number of moves or techniques incorporated into the famous wooden man or wooden dummy.  

The fact that tea is associated by the very design of its Chinese calligraphic character with the number 108 is undoubtedly significant, and links this beverage with the subtle motion of the universe -- a phenomenon that was obviously considered to be of profound importance to ancient civilizations.  Researchers such as Graham Hancock and Jim Alison have also conclusively demonstrated that the ancient designers of the worldwide grid of megalithic monuments (some of them dating to extremely remote antiquity) incorporated the numbers 72 and 108 into the distances between these sites (measured in degrees of longitude).

It is a clear sign of the importance ascribed to tea that the ancients would take pains to incorporate these two numbers into the legend concerning the origin of tea, and into its written symbol.  As Daniel Reid explains in his book on the Art and Alchemy of Chinese Tea, tea was seen as having alchemical or transformative powers upon the men and women who drink it.  On page 87, he writes:
In Chinese, the term for "alchemy" is lien jin shu, literally "the art of forging gold."  But the "gold" they're talking about here is not the gold ore mined from the earth and forged by fire into ingots and coins.  They're talking about jin dan, the "golden elixir of life," an elusive energetic essence that resides dormant within particular plants and minerals, and which may be extracted and activated by various means and transferred into the human system, where it acts as a potent tonic to protect health, prolong life, and enhance mental performance.  This precious essence is the "green gold" in the alchemy of Chinese tea.
And, in the "Art of Chinese Tea" article near the top of the page from his website linked previously (here's the link again), he quotes Master Xhongxian Wu as saying that, "one may become enlightened by drinking tea," and notes that "here are many stories of Buddhist monks or Taoist hermits who suddenly "awakened to the Dao" (wu Dao) while savoring a cup of tea."

Given the health benefits, as well as the ancient connection to the profoundly important precessional numbers, and the serious assertion that "one may become enlightened by drinking tea," who would not want to begin each day or finish each meal with a cup of Chinese tea?  

While doing so, perhaps it would not be inappropriate to contemplate the turning of the earth through the lines still marked by the ancient megalithic monuments located along carefully-selected meridians, and the slow and subtle but inexorable motion of precession which delays the march of the constellations through the heavens, all of which are somehow linked to the cup of tea in your hands.


New Year's and the Egyptian Book of the Dead

























In Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scriptures (published in 1940, and available here for reading online in its entirety using the top link in the left-hand column which says "read online" or for download as a pdf using the link just below that one), Alvin Boyd Kuhn spends an entire chapter (entitled "Weighed in the Balance," beginning on page 480) discussing the concept of "judgment day" or the "judgment of the soul" found in ancient sacred texts and traditions.

On page 490, he specifically addresses a tradition that "the dead are summoned before the divine tribunal to be judged upon the day of doom, which occurs each New Years Day!"  But he cautions, as he does throughout the book, that these kinds of ancient traditions are misinterpreted if we try to understand them literally.  

What this ancient tradition really means, according to Kuhn, is that those of us in a current incarnation in the physical world (whom the ancient texts refer to as "the dead," in that the soul's descent into a physical body is a kind of "death" or "entombment in flesh," but which is only a temporary condition) are undergoing a kind of judgment day year in and year out (that is to say, "constantly" during this incarnation).  Further down on the same page, he explains: "If the Day of Doom came once each year on New Year's Day, it was set only as an annual commemoration of a fact which was perpetual, constant, persistent throughout life."

He then goes on to explain that the famous depictions of the "weighing of the heart" in the "Hall of Judgment" or the "Hall of Two Truths" in the scrolls that have collectively come to be known (somewhat incorrectly) as the Egyptian Book of the Dead do not actually refer to an event that takes place in some other realm in the afterlife: just like everything else in the Book of the Dead (in Kuhn's interpretation) it has to do with things that we need to know about here and now, in this incarnation (this life)!

He writes:
As argued in an earlier chapter, the Spiritual Guides of humanity gave the race a code of religious instruction that was meant to apply to the world in which it was given, not to a succeeding one.  The seers were not concerned with teaching mankind about the supervening consciousness of the discarnate life.  They taught humanity how to live in the world in which the teaching was imparted, well assured that philosophic behavior of life here would put them in favorable condition to meet the exigencies of the life of rest following the day on earth.  They were vastly concerned to instruct mortals in what it behooved them to learn here, as this was the only realm in which progress could be made, -- unless it be contended that one makes greater progress in sleep at night than in one's waking life by day.  481.
And again, on page 484 Kuhn avers that the sojourn of the soul on earth during each incarnation is in fact the Hall of Judgment: "The horizon line between the two cherubim is the place of the Great Balance.  The two Horus forms or lion gods are the two pillars of justice, and the judgment is the long series of decisions which the man himself renders as he journeys across." (Italics in original).

Even more graphically, Kuhn unpacks his thesis near the end of the chapter:
Man has entered the Gotterdammerung; he stands within the twilight.  He stands on the mounts both of crucifixion and transfiguration, with the shadow of the two beams of the cross or the scales falling athwart his body.  Every act, word and thought of his causes those arms of the scales to move up or down, according as he gives an impulse to spiritual or to sensuous expression.  In their motion they write the scroll of his book of life, alternately upon outward feature and inner character.  Every movement of the bars is a decree of judgment for him.  Taht-Aan, the scribe and recorder, is filling the pages of his book.  496.
This passage certainly makes the whole process sound dreadfully ominous, as if the Book of the Dead taught the impossible doctrine that every sin would have to be avoided in order to avoid having one's heart tossed to the dreadful demon, Ammit, to be devoured.  But Kuhn elsewhere explains that the process of passing through the scales in each incarnation was seen as the essential part of the progress towards overcoming incarnation:
To come forth guiltless from the scales may now be seen to convey the deep significance of the soul's emergence from earth life between the two horizons, washed clean and gloriously spiritualized.  If the judgment had been adverse, the soul would have been cast to the monster Am-mit, which only means, however, return to animal incarnation until final purification.  491.  
It is clear from explicit statements and analysis elsewhere in the book that by "animal incarnation" Alvin Boyd Kuhn here does not mean incarnation in the form of what we call "an animal," but rather he means that the soul would incarnate again as a man or a woman -- taking on a physical body again -- as part of the process.  

As he says all the way back on page 41, "As the Egyptian most majestically phrases it, the soul, projecting itself into one physical embodiment after the other, 'steppeth onward through eternity.'"  And again on page 251 he writes that the Egyptians believed that, "The soul is as the bee gathering sweet honey of immortality from the flowers of life experience on earth." 

And yet again on the same topic, Kuhn writes on page 273 that "In this light it may be seen that the whole of the negative and lugubrious posture of theology as to 'sin' and 'death' as its penalty, might be metamorphosed into an understanding of the natural and beneficent character of all such things in the drama." That is to say, in Kuhn's analysis, because "sin" describes lessons that can only be learned as an incarnation of the divine spark of a soul united to the animal body of the flesh (a pure spirit cannot sin, and neither can a non-human animal -- only a man or woman, who is a combination of the spirit and the animal together can do so), and because by "death" the ancients meant "incarnation of the spirit again," the whole process is transformed from being a fearful one into a positive or beneficent one.

In light of all the forgoing discussion, and the point made way at the top that all this was metaphorically said to have taken place among "the dead" (that is to say, those incarnated right now) on New Year's Day, it is interesting to speculate as to whether the famous "negative confessions" which are found accompanying the scene of the weighing of the heart in the Hall of Judgment (the Hall of Two Truths) in the scrolls of many ancient copies of the Book of the Dead might have some relationship to our ongoing tradition of the "New Year's Resolution."

The so-called "negative confessions" were often forty-two in number, and are associated with Spell 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  Professor Raymond O. Faulkner (1894 - 1982) said that the name "negative confession" was self-contradictory, and that a better name for it would be "the declaration of innocence."  Here is a portion of the forty-two declarations, as translated by Professor Faulkner (on pages 31 and 32 in this edition of his translation, published posthumously in 1990):
O Far-strider who came forth from Heliopolis, I have done no falsehood.
O Fire-embracer who came forth from Kheraha, I have not robbed.
O Nosey who came forth from Hermopolis, I have not been rapacious.
O swallower of shades who came forth from the cavern, I have not stolen.
O Dangerous One who came forth from Rosetjau, I have not killed men.
O Double Lion who came forth from the sky, I have done no crookedness.
O Flame which came forth backwards, I have not stolen the god's-offerings.
O Bone-breaker which came forth from Heracleopolis, I have not told lies.
Those of us who try to make New Year's resolutions each year might do worse than to select from among the "declarations of innocence" in Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead any that personally resonate.  Some of the confessions that are most compelling to me personally include:
O Disturber who came forth from Weryt, I have not been hot-tempered [see discussion in this previous New Year's post].
and
O Owner of horns who came forth from Asyut, I have not been voluble in speech.
Alvin Boyd Kuhn's insight that subject matter of the Book of the Dead applies to our sojourn in this life is indeed revolutionary, and worthy of careful consideration.
  

Blackfish and mind control



The powerful documentary Blackfish is discussed in this previous post.

That post noted that Blackfish is an important film on many levels.  One of those levels, of course, is the question of the treatment of the orcas shown in the movie, especially in light of the evidence that these amazing and intelligent creatures are highly social, highly emotional, and -- by almost any definition of the word -- sentient.

But -- as important as that question is -- another very profound aspect of the film is the question of how this kind of treatment could have gone on for so long and been not only tolerated but bathed in a kind of wholesome glow by the public at large.  After watching the film, one asks oneself how it is possible for almost all of us to have collectively failed to see through the glamorous spectacle to the foundation of captivity and exploitation that propped it all up?

While there has always been a vocal but relatively tiny minority trying to bring attention to the moral issues surrounding the keeping of orcas and other intelligent sea mammals in captivity, most of us (and I include myself in that group) did not really think too much on the issue until the movie Blackfish came out.  So, one really important question that this fact raises, it seems, is the question of how something that (in retrospect) is so wrong could have gone largely unnoticed and unremarked-upon by so many for so long.  How could we all have been so collectively "hypnotized" that we didn't really "snap out of it" until the movie Blackfish snapped us out?

This question is related to the question of "mind control," which this previous post asserted can be thought of as the opposite of "consciousness" -- the kind consciousness which John Anthony West described as that thing whose acquisition the ancients believed was the goal of our existence in this life, during an important 2008 interview.  What techniques of hypnosis so clouded our judgment that it basically hid the question of captive orca shows behind a smokescreen and kept us from paying serious attention to it, until the film Blackfish blew the smoke away?

The question has important ramifications for other areas of our lives, especially if we suspect that there are other areas where we are collectively hypnotized and where the shouting of a vocal but relatively tiny minority seems to be having no effect.  Remember that in the previous post on mind control, master pickpocket and "gentleman thief" Apollo Robbins told us that "Actually, it's often the things that are right in front of us that are the hardest things to see -- the things that you look at every day, that you're blinded to."

One of the most powerful aspects of the Blackfish movie is the courageous testimony of the former trainers who, as young men and women, were employed to perform in the orca shows and who now have reached the conclusion that what they were participating in was wrong.  Their testimony about the experience is not one-sided, either: they talk about the remarkable experience of bonding with the animals, the excitement of participating in amazing shows in front of crowds.

I can very much relate to their mixed emotions as they reminisce about the good aspects of their time in an industry they now see as including a very dark underside, because I myself spent a large portion of my young adult years in the US Army, and can testify to the very same kinds of memories of camaraderie and amazing experiences, even though I now have a completely different perspective regarding the bigger picture of what the young men and women in the military are being used for.

Very early in the film (near the 2-minute mark, in fact) there are several interview clips in which trainers reflect on the circumstances that attracted them to the idea of becoming a trainer in the first place.

More than one of them mentions the spectacle of seeing a show themselves, when they were young (perhaps as a child, or as a teen).  One of them specifically tells about seeing "the night show at Shamu Stadium" and describes it as being "very emotional, you know, popular music, and I was very driven to want to do that."

The footage of the shows themselves gives the viewer a chance to see some of the components that he is talking about, and they are the same as those that surround the public face of the military in many countries (certainly in the US): there is music, there is costume (with all the trainers typically dressed in distinctive wetsuits, which are all the same), there is the attractiveness of youth (young men and women in their 20s or early 30s, fit and active and fearless in the face of danger).

What is it about this kind of pageantry that turns us from critically-thinking, analyzing, conscious human beings into a roaring crowd?  There is certainly something going on with these components of pageantry that are used by the producers of orca shows, or by the military in its parades.  Maybe it is related in some way to the concept Apollo Robbins discussed in his talk on "misdirection" and pickpocketing -- getting the part of our minds that he calls "Frank" to turn around, to access our memory bank, during which time "Frank" cannot monitor the incoming signals in the same way that he normally does.

This is not to say that spectacle, pageantry, or being part of a cheering crowd is inherently wrong -- it's not.  But seeing the way it can be used to throw up a sort of "smokescreen" to our analytical reasoning, it might be a good thing to be aware of its power as a potential tool for "mind control." If you happen to be watching Blackfish with teenaged children, for example, you might point out the fact that more than one trainer mentions such shows as having a very powerful impact on their career choice, and you might discuss together other areas where these elements might be used to turn off the critical judgment that seems to have been so sadly lacking in the analysis of the orca captivity question for so long.

Another mind control tool mentioned by a trainer in a powerful piece of testimony (shown in the clip above) is the use of ridicule to quell dissent and to shut someone up who is raising questions about the morality of behavior that they perceive to be wrong.

In the clip, which begins around the 36-minute mark in the film itself, former trainer Carol Ray is describing the heartbreaking story of the decision made by the park management to permanently separate the young whale Kalina (the first orca successfully born in captivity, on September 26, 1984) from her mother Katina, and the grief that Katina exhibited after they took her child from her.

Speaking of the young whale Kalina, Ms Ray ruefully relates:
It was decided by the higher-ups that she would be moved to another park when she was four, four-and-a-half years old -- and that was news to us as trainers that were working with her.  To me it had never crossed my mind that they might be moving the baby from her mom.  The supervisor was basically kind of mocking me: "Oh, you're saying 'Poor Kalina'?" You know: "What's she gonna do without her Mommy?"  And, you know, that of course just shut me up.
How many of us can relate to Carol's experience of having someone else shame them into going along with something that we knew was wrong, or not continuing to speak out against it?  The mocking that she is describing can be very powerful.  Again, this is the kind of thing that -- if you're watching Blackfish with your children, for example -- you might point out to them afterwards, so that they can be forewarned and forearmed when they come up against that sort of pressure in their own lives (and they most certainly will).  Children of even a fairly early age will probably already be able to relate to this subject from personal experience.

Radio show host and teacher Mark Passio has a lot to say about the subject of mind control in all of its various forms, and he discusses the subject extensively on his radio programs and videos.  His podcast archive contains hundreds of his previous broadcasts, and he gets into this subject almost right away in some of the very first episodes in the series.  If you go to his website and go back to the very beginning of his podcast archive, you will find that he gets into this subject right away, and that at around podcast number 12 he launches into a formal investigation of fourteen of the most common techniques of mass mind control -- fourteen!

One very attractive aspect of Mark Passio's talks is his willingness to utter what he calls "three of the most powerful words in any language: I WAS WRONG." They are words that I myself have had to admit about a lot of beliefs I have held in the past. The courage of the former trainers interviewed in the Blackfish video who, by their participation in the documentary, are effectively saying the same thing is to be commended, and cannot be overstated.

The very first mind control technique that Mark Passio discusses in his list of the fourteen most common is the technique of obfuscation -- making a subject seem complicated when it is really very simple.  Again, the Blackfish documentary provides an outstanding opportunity to study this very concept.

It might seem that the question of whether keeping orcas in captivity and forcing them to perform for their meals of frozen fish is a complicated subject, one with many nuances and not something that can be turned into a black-and-white, cut-and-dry issue.  After all, as some people bring up in the film, seeing orca shows at marine parks can inspire millions with a love of the oceans and of the magnificent marine life that they see at the marine parks but might otherwise never see.  In response to the film the major participants in the marine park industry have put forward some of these arguments, which you can read for yourself here and here.  You can also read about some other responses they have sent out through publicity agencies, and you can read some counter-arguments or rebuttals to their arguments here, and here, and here.

A great example of cutting through the obfuscation to get to the very heart of the issue can be seen in an interview that comes in the Blackfish film just after the Carol Ray discussion of Katina and Kalina shown above.  In that interview, which is found around the 38-minute mark in the film, former trainer John Hargrove is discussing another incident in which a young orca was separated from its mother, and the heartrending cries that the mother made when her baby was taken from her.  The whales in question were Kasatka (the mother) and Takara (her daughter):
When they separated Kasatka and Takara, it was to take Takara to Florida.  Once Takara had already been stretchered out of the pool, put on the truck, driven to the airport, Kasatka continued to make vocals that had never been heard before.  They brought in the senior research scientists, to analyze the vocals.  They were long-range vocals.  She was trying something that no one had even heard before, looking for Takara.  That's heartbreaking.  How can anyone look at that and think that that is morally acceptable?  It's not.  It is not OK.
John Hargrove is right.  The issue is just as clear and as simple as that.  And, by extension, the whole issue of keeping sentient, intelligent orcas whose natural habitat is the entire ocean for years and years in small constricted tanks (Katina has been in captivity since October of 1978) for our amusement is not morally acceptable -- it is wrong.  To say that some good outcome, whether it is "greater awareness" or "scientific research" justifies such long-term captivity and mental torture of the whales is reprehensible. In fact, to claim that the best way to foster widespread love of the oceans and of ocean life is to do the things to the whales that are revealed in the film Blackfish, and to imprison them for life, is grotesque.

These questions about the orca question are pretty well settled by the documentary.  But the questions that it raises about us, about our ability to be asleep to things about which we should be outraged, those questions are not settled by the movie at all.  They are stirred up and left for us to ponder.

About what other things going on right in front of our very eyes, day in and day out, can we ask with former trainer John Hargrove, "How can anyone look at that and think that that is morally acceptable?"






How to tell if you're under mind control



How to tell if you are under mind control of some form:

1.  You display any of the symptoms exhibited above by Danny Kaye aka Hawkins aka The Great Giacomo ("King of Jesters, and Jester of Kings"), from the 1956 motion picture The Court Jester.

2.  You attended any level of schooling in a modern nation-state after the year 1926.

3.  You are terribly concerned about your own personal contribution to global warming but completely oblivious to evidence pointing to ongoing geoengineering (and if anyone brings the subject up to you, you become agitated at them and call them an outrageous "conspiracy theorist," rather than exhibiting any outrage at the people involved in spraying chemicals from aircraft over populated areas, crops, your own home, etc).

4.  You can muster no sense of outrage over increasing surveillance of your everyday activities, and when told that the state now spends millions placing sophisticated video and audio recording devices in public places such as transit buses, or that they tap into your iPad using WiFi and record your cache of recent geophysical location data, you nod absently and forget you ever heard about it.

5.  You readily and uncritically accept media accounts of major traumatic events which always seem to point to the need for increased state authority over the individual, without conducting any of your own "due diligence," and you repeat phrases such as "more surveillance" or "every command" in a sort of absent, monotone voice.  You become agitated at the mention of possible alternative explanations and refuse to entertain them in your mind -- in fact, you act as though someone has convinced you that such thoughts might burn you if you touch them.

6.  You cannot entertain possible alternative accounts of ancient history, whether they involve advanced ancient civilizations whose accomplishments upset the conventional narrative of a generally unbroken line of steady Progress from primitive times to our modern superiority, or whether they involve catastrophic explanations for geological features rather than the tectonic paradigm that has become the only acceptable geological model.  Serious mention of such alternative possibilities causes you agitation and powerful negative emotional response.

Of course, if you were actually under the spell of a Griselda (Gri-who-lda?) the way "Giacomo" is in the video clip above, you would probably dismiss any suggestion that you were actually under any kind of outside influence whatsoever (angrily deny it, in fact).  Forms of mind control are really the opposite of what we might call "consciousness," and consciousness -- according to symbolist, Pythagorean, and illuminator of magical ancient Egypt John Anthony West -- is the goal of human existence according to all the ancient cultures and ancient sacred scriptures (see discussions here and here for example).

Since, based on the above list (and the list could go on and on) we're all under mind control to some extent, moving from a state of "hypnosis" to greater levels of consciousness should be one of the areas to which we pay a lot of attention in this world.

The video clip below shows a recent "TED talk" given by entertainer and "gentleman thief" Apollo Robbins, in which he demonstrates and discusses the art of "misdirection," or as he puts it, "controlling someone's attention" in order to be able to almost perfectly "predict human behavior."  

He begins his talk by saying that such an ability would be "the perfect super-power -- actually kind of an evil way of approaching it."  He then goes on to say that "Actually, it's often the things that are right in front of us that are the hardest things to see -- the things that you look at every day, that you're blinded to."



Apollo Robbins then gives an entertaining demonstration of his "super-power," proving to the audience that it really is possible (as he puts it at about the 2:30 mark in the video) to so manipulate the attention as to enable others to "steer your perceptions" and "control your reality."  He explains that there are proven techniques to "exploit" (his word) the "gateway to the mind" and by doing so to cause another person to miss things that are taking place right before his or her very eyes.

At the end of his remarkable demonstration, Apollo Robbins talks straight to the audience and says,
Attention is a powerful thing.  Like I said, it shapes your reality.  So, I guess I'd like to pose that question to you: If you could control somebody's attention, what would you do with it?
And on that note, throwing it back to all his viewers (including all of us through the magic of the web), he ends his presentation.





The discovery of vast offshore fresh groundwater reserves (i.e., under the seafloor)





















Recently, in the journal Nature, scientists and researchers Vincent E. A. Post, Jacobus Groen, Henk Kooi, Mark Person, Shemin Ge, and W. Mike Edmunds published a study entitled "Offshore fresh groundwater reserves as a global phenomenon."  

The study can be read online here, which allows you to see the first page, and read the rest for a fee of $3.99, but you can also read some of the many articles discussing the importance of this new finding for free online, such as this one, and this one, and this one, and this one.

Reader Terry B., who has alerted me to important new discoveries many times in the past, notified me of this important new development soon after the study was published near the beginning of this month and noted that it seems to be yet another piece of evidence which supports the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown.  

Sure enough, Dr. Brown agrees that the new finding of large amounts of relatively fresh water (fresher than seawater) trapped underneath the seafloor along the offshore continental shelves around the world is a finding that is difficult to explain using conventional theories, but one that accords quite well with the hydroplate theory.  Dr. Brown has already mentioned this important new discovery, in the section on this page of his book (which is available in its entirety on the web, or for purchase in hardbound print edition here) entitled "Earth's Major Components," where he writes:
Low-salinity water is being discovered far below continental shelves worldwide.  Why would water, typically less salty than sea water, be found beneath the sea floor?
At the end of that question, he provides a footnote (footnote 6) to the article published earlier this month in Nature discussing the vast offshore reserves of fresh water being discovered below the surface of the continental shelves (at depths of up to 3000 meters beneath the seafloor).

While scientists had long known of the existence of some subsurface freshwater discharge from onshore reserves which penetrated out into the shelf offshore, it was previously assumed that such intrusions were fairly limited in scope, both around the world and in terms of how far out from the shore they could reach.  The authors of the new article conducted tests which indicate that the phenomenon of fresh water beneath the seafloor is extremely widespread, found on continental shelves around the globe, and that these trapped pockets of water can be found extremely far out from shore -- at least as far as 100 kilometers from shore, and possibly further!  

The amount of fresh water trapped beneath the surface on continental shelves may be 500,000 cubic kilometers, or 120,000 cubic miles of fresh water -- a hundred times more than all the water that mankind has extracted from aquifers beneath the surface onshore since 1900, according to lead researcher and author Dr. Vincent E. A. Post!  That much fresh water cannot be explained by simple groundwater discharge from onshore sources, the article explains, and so another mechanism must be proposed.  But what could account for so much fresh water trapped beneath the surface of the continental shelf, which itself is beneath the salty ocean?

The study's authors propose a possible mechanism: during ice ages, sea levels were much lower, and so areas now offshore were once on land.  These areas collected rainwater (called "meteoric" water), and then later when the ice ages came to an end (or, more precisely, an "interglacial" period in between ice ages), that meteoric groundwater was trapped below the surface as the sea levels rose -- and it is still there today.  For this reason, the recent article calls these newly-discovered freshwater reserves offshore "Vast Meteoric Groundwater Reserves" or VGMRs.

There may be some problems with this explanation, such as the question of how the ground that was porous enough to let the freshwater in during the glacial period, became such an excellent sealant that the freshwater was able to stay mostly fresh once the glacial period ended and the salty seawater filled back in over it.  Certainly that could have happened in some unique conditions, but how could it have happened over such a vast extent of the continental boundaries, and to distances of over 100 kilometers from the present shore?

We have already seen in previous discussions that the hydroplate theory does argue that the sea level was in fact much lower, in the centuries immediately following the catastrophic flood (the flood which left so much evidence around the planet that it is very difficult to deny that it took place).  During those centuries, the combination of warmer oceans and colder continents did in fact lead to much greater levels of precipitation, and to an Ice Age, and so some aspects of the proposed mechanism from the article in the journal Nature may have taken place.  But, such runoff would hardly explain the vast amounts of water being discovered today, and its ability to remain much less salty than the ocean above for so many years. 

The hydroplate of Dr. Brown, which has a habit of already being ready to provide excellent explanations for evidence that scientists discover years after Dr. Brown published his predictions, has a very good explanation for the fresh water that is now being detected.  In the caption to Figure 59, found on this page of his online book and reproduced above, Dr. Brown explains where all that fresh water might have come from (and, at the same time, why continental shelves are found on the edges of the continents worldwide -- something that tectonics does not really have a good way of explaining).  Referring to the diagram shown above (in terms of "left" and "right" as the viewer looks at the image), he writes:
The velocity and erosion power of escaping SCW [supercritical water] increased to the right and as it jetted upward.  This beveled the edges of each hydroplate, forming today's continental shelves and continental slopes.  Because the water's pressure decreased as it approached the right edge, the hydroplate sagged downward, constricting flow and increasing erosion even more.
During the flood, thick layers of sediments blanketed the granite crust.  Included in those sedimentary layers were aquifers -- deep, permeable, sedimentary layers filled with generally salt-free water.  Today, some of those aquifers lie below the continental shelf which constitutes part of the sea floor.
Also, before the flood, much of the SCW water in the subterranean chamber migrated into the spongelike openings (blue dots) in the chamber's roof and floor.  As temperatures in the SCW exceeded about 840 degrees F (450 degrees C) its dissolved salt precipitated (out-salted, as explained on page 122).  Therefore, it should not be surprising that low salinity water is found under the sea floor, but most geologists are surprised.
Certainly more study of the newly-discovered phenomenon of VGMRs is warranted before we can tell which explanation is a better fit for the majority of the evidence.  However, it would certainly seem that the discovery of these vast reserves of fresh water may well constitute yet another example of a geologic phenomenon which causes conventional theories some difficulty, but which accords well with the events proposed by the hydroplate theory.