Pomai Kinney, reminds us all the Hawaiian Kingdom is very much alive right now.His country never went away no matter what the history books say. That’s why you’d be hard pressed to find anyone more loyal to Hawai`i and its people than Pomai Kinney. A long-time activist and Hawai`i National patriot, Pomai movingly speaks of what his grandmother taught him about the coming changes, his own awakening, and years of resistance against the illegal US occupation. He reminds us all the Hawaiian Kingdom is very much alive right now.
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All last week and this, the eighth annual Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is being held at the United Nations in New York City, where the world’s indigenous peoples meet to share their challenges and discuss their future.A broad coalition of Hawaiian patriots are there, including Hawai`i National Leon Siu, who gives us a full report on the accomplishments as well as a special look at the forum in session. Be sure and catch it this coming Wednesday on Free Hawai`i TV.Speaking of patriots, we have a brand new Voices Of Truth show this week with Pomai Kinney, who lives as a Hawai`i National with every breath he takes.Few embody the Kingdom or live it as he does, so if you’re seeking a mega-dose of inspiration, don’t miss Pomai this week on Voices Of Truth – One-On-One With Hawai`i's Future.MONDAY, May 25th At 6:30 PM –Maui – Akaku, Channel 53“To Restore Our Kingdom – A Visit With Pomaikaiokalani Kinney”His country never went away no matter what the history books say. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone more loyal to Hawai`i and its people than Pomai Kinney. A long-time activist Pomai movingly speaks of what his grandmother taught him about the coming changes, his own awakening, and years of resistance against the illegal US occupation. He reminds us all the Hawaiian Kingdom is very much alive right now. Watch It Here.MONDAY, May 25th At 7:00 PM & FRIDAY, May 29th At 5:30 PM –Hawai`i Island – Na Leo, Channel 53THURSDAY, May 28th At 8:30 PM & FRIDAY, May 29th At 8:30 AM -Kaua`i – Ho`ike, Channel 52SATURDAY, May 30th At 8:00 PM –O`ahu, `Olelo, Channel 53“Ensuring Our Future – A Visit With Malia `Alohilani Rogers”Hawai`i’s values, language and future. Three important things to Malia, who helped bring the Kawaikini public charter school on Kaua`i into reality. A Hawaiian language educator for over 14 years, you’ll see why both Malia and her school are so amazing. As she says, she wants to create a place where “language, beliefs and practices of the indigenous people of Hawai'i have become instinctive.” Watch It Here.Voices Of Truth interviews those creating a better future for Hawai`i to discover what made them go from armchair observers to active participants. We hope you'll be inspired to do the same.If you support our issues on the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network, please email this to a friend to help us continue. A donation today helps further our work. Every single penny counts.Donating is easy on our Voices Of Truth website via PayPal where you can watch Voices Of Truth anytime.And for news and issues that affect you, watch Free Hawai`i TV, a part of the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network.Read more…
Aloha,To follow is the synopsis of Beyond Wailea, a feature film based on a true story from Maui that now is under consideration by a major Hollywood Producer. Your comments will help make this film a reality.This film is important not only to Hawai'i but also to the world. Your Queen's response to the US invasion of The Kingdom of Hawai'i is the epitome of true leadership, compassion, and humanity. The film suggests that she be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.A very prominent ha'ole actor will be reviewing the story later today. If anyone can assist getting this synopsis to other prominent people in the entertainment industry that would be greatly appreciated. I am not asking for a commitment, simply their interest. The Producer has told me interest from prominent actors in/from Hawai'i Nei will add to his enthusiasm for this project.Malama Kakou - We best care for ourselves by caring for one another.We are the people we have been waiting for!Malama popno,Aloha Ke Akua,j.Genre: Hawai'ian/Legal DramaLogline: A 19th Century Naval Chaplain, who resisted the US takeover of Hawai'i, is reincarnated as a contemporary attorney who is confronted with the same dark energies that originally overthrew the Kingdom of Hawai'i, as he fights against unscrupulous developers to preserve a Hawai'ian family's ownership of land .Beyond WaileaBased On A True Story From The Island Of Maui.By J. D'Alba814.270.1977jpulehu@hotmail.comKnowing of the plight of the Hawaiian culture and the impeding challenge her people are facing with the continued loss of their land that is vital to their existence, a elderly Hawaiian Kapuna summons her family's amakua, the shark, to compel the return of a nineteenth century American Naval Chaplain to aid her people. The naval Chaplain, who has been reincarnated as a contemporary attorney in the midst of a blossoming legal career, finds his life turned upside down when his fiancée finds him in a compromising interlude with his secretary. In his emotionally distraught state he seeks comfort in a French Canadian paramour only to find his plans thwarted by a winter blizzard that strikes Montreal. At the airport he learns that Montreal is inaccessible and the announcement of the final boarding call of a flight to Maui instills in him a sense of déjà vu that compels him to the island of Maui.Upon landing in Maui he checks into a posh hotel in Wailea, Maui's most upscale resort area when he expresses a desire to the hotel concierge for a memorable experience of the island. The concierge arranges a hang gliding expedition for him from the summit of Haleakala volcano and along the scenically spectacular north shore of Maui's coast. His awareness of this island's incredible beauty compels him to explore Maui's north shore. As he is photographing the coastline a rogue wave sweeps him into the ocean sending him into a panic to survive. During this struggle he experiences inexplicable thoughts of his past life as the Chaplain, as the Chaplain is bound and gagged on a naval freighter. During his near drowning he is approached by the shark who, unbeknownst to the attorney, thrusts him onto the safety of the reef only after the shark bequeaths upon his neck the revered Hawaiian malie lei. The attorney's struggle against near downing, his encounter with the shark, and his being thrust from the water is witnessed by a Hawaiian elder and his grandson who come to his aid and assist him back to health in the company of their ohana (family). The attorney finds himself living in their incredible valley and becomes enamored not only with these beautiful people, their culture, and their way of life, but also with the elder Hawaiian's niece, Moana, with whom he begins a wondrous love affair. Their affair only heightens his appreciation of the beautiful essence of the Hawaiian culture, their social graces, spiritualism, love, gratitude, knowledge, unique philosophical perspectives, and their essential, inextricable bond with the land.During breakfast one morning Moana reads that an Auntie, deceased decades earlier, is being sued in an action to quiet title to land of which neither Moana nor anyone else in the ohana has any knowledge. The attorney investigates the basis of this legal action, intercedes on behalf of the family, and learns of the tragic history of Hawaii and how the United States of America illegally acquired the once sovereign Kingdom of Hawai'i. He is lost however to explain the connection between the land that is the subject of the lawsuit and the family that has rescued him until he meets the matriarch of the family, Tutu Helen, who unequivocally informs him: "Smythe stole the land!" Knowing the veracity of Tutu Helen's statement he is left with the daunting task of proving this fact in a court of law only to learn firsthand of the unjust treatment of Hawaiians in the American system of justice, and the incredible lengths the powers that be will go to suppress anyone who attempts to help them rectify this injustice. This challenge presents the attorney with utter, hopeless frustration until he is mystically returned to nineteenth century Hawaii that is in the midst of being overthrown by a conspiracy initiated by the American government with the aid of the US naval and marine forces. There, as the naval Chaplain, he witnesses the planned efforts to acquire this paradise from its rightful owners only to find himself bound and gagged on a ship, being keelhauled for his refusal to aid in the unscrupulous conspiracy to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii, and steal the land.With the knowledge he gains from reliving his prior life experience he again is back in court only to find he is without concrete evidence to sustain what he knows to be true. Tutu Helen then directs him to the graves of her ancestors that are situated on property now 'owned' by the aging officer of Hawaii's largest corporate entity, a Hawaiian Sugar Company, and whose son, knowing of this outside Attorney's efforts to expose the century old fraud that enabled his father's corporation to rise to its status as Hawaii's premiere corporate entity, is determined to stop the attorney by any means.Despite the grave threat to their lives, the Attorney and his lover, Moana, sneak unto the lands of the corporation's leader where they discover the bodily remains of Moana's ancestors exposed on the eroding cliff along the ocean. Removing a tooth from the skull of one the ancestors, the attorney uses it to prove the family's ownership of the land. The Judge is dumbfounded by the Catch-22 he now finds himself in. His dilemma, either refuse to accept the inescapable conclusion that this land is indeed still rightfully owned by this Hawaiian family, and allow these lands to remain held by the sugar company and permit the developers to acquire the land which they seek to quiet title to, or deny the developers lawsuit and return all the land, some two thousand plus acres, to the heirs of the nineteenth century Hawaiians from which it was fraudulently acquired.In the end Tutu Helen appears near death as the attorney tells her of the Judges decision. The Judge refused to jeopardize his career by perpetuating a fraud that has existed for over a century and he not only denied the attempt by the developers to take the parcels of land they seek but also he returned the two thousand acres of land to this Hawaiian family. The attorney is overcome with distress, as Tutu Helen seems to gasp her last breath of life after learning of the decision. Surrounded by members of her ohana whose emotions over her loss are evident, Tutu Helen stuns them all as she opens her eyes and proclaims. "They said I was dead, but I still live."The final scene of the movie depicts the mansion once owned by the head of the Sugar Company being bulldozed to the ground and dozens of Hawaiians working to restore the land by planting trees, flowers, and gardens where the mansion once stood.As this scene concludes the movie fades along with the hauntingly beautiful voice of Hawaiian legendary musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole:Cry for the gods,Cry for the people.Cry for the land that was taken away.And then yet you'll find.Hawai'i.Ua mau Ke Ea Oka Aina Ika Pono O Hawai'i.(The life of the land of Hawaii is preserved in righteousness.)
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Mahalo to those who replied. I'm very humbly grateful for your kokua. If you have the research and still want to return it, please complete and return. Your identity will be concealed if you choose to participate.Again, mahalo for your kokua!namaka'ehaP.S. awaiting final word from committee. There was a total of 20 replies out of 25 request! Mahalo MW!
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Genre: Hawai'ian/Legal Drama/Adventure/Mystery/FantasyLogline: A 19th Century Naval Chaplain, who resisted the US takeover of Hawai'i, is reincarnated as a contemporary attorney who is confronted with the same dark energies that originally overthrew the Kingdom of Hawai'i, as he fights against unscrupulous developers to preserve a Hawai'ian family's ownership of land .Beyond WaileaBased On A True Story From The Island Of Maui.By J. D'Alba814.270.1977jpulehu@hotmail.comKnowing of the plight of the Hawaiian culture and the impeding challenge her people are facing with the continued loss of their land that is vital to their existence, a elderly Hawaiian Kupuna (Tutu Helen) summons her family's amakua, the shark, to compel the return of a nineteenth century American Naval Chaplain to aid her people. The naval Chaplain, who has been reincarnated as a contemporary attorney in the midst of a blossoming legal career, finds his life turned upside down when his fiancée finds him in a compromising interlude with his secretary. In his emotionally distraught state he seeks comfort in a French Canadian paramour only to find his plans thwarted by a winter blizzard that strikes Montreal. At the airport he learns that Montreal is inaccessible and the announcement of the final boarding call of a flight to Maui instills in him a sense of déjà vu that compels him to the island of Maui. Upon landing in Maui he checks into a posh hotel in Wailea, Maui's most upscale resort area when he expresses a desire to the hotel concierge for a memorable experience of the island.The concierge arranges a hang gliding expedition for him from the summit of Haleakala volcano and along the scenically spectacular north shore of Maui's coast. His awareness of this island's incredible beauty compels him to explore Maui's north shore. As he is photographing the coastline a rogue wave sweeps him into the ocean sending him into a panic to survive. During this struggle he experiences inexplicable thoughts of his past life as the Chaplain, as the Chaplain is bound and gagged on a naval freighter. During his near drowning he is approached by the shark who, unbeknownst to the attorney, thrusts him onto the safety of the reef only after the shark bequeaths upon his neck the revered Hawaiian malie lei.The attorney's struggle against near downing, his encounter with the shark, and his being thrust from the water is witnessed by a Hawaiian elder and his grandson who come to his aid and assist him back to health in the company of their ohana (family). The attorney finds himself living in their incredible valley and becomes enamored not only with these beautiful people, their culture, and their way of life, but also with the elder Hawaiian's niece, Moana, with whom he begins a wondrous love affair. Their affair only heightens his appreciation of the beautiful essence of the Hawaiian culture, their social graces, spiritualism, love, gratitude, knowledge, unique philosophical perspectives, and their essential, inextricable bond with the land.During breakfast one morning Moana reads that an Auntie, deceased decades earlier, is being sued in an action to quiet title to land of which neither Moana nor anyone else in the ohana has any knowledge. The attorney investigates the basis of this legal action, intercedes on behalf of the family, and learns of the tragic history of Hawaii and how the United States of America illegally acquired the once sovereign Kingdom of Hawai'i. He is lost however to explain the connection between the land that is the subject of the lawsuit and the family that has rescued him until he meets the matriarch of the family, Tutu Helen, who unequivocally informs him: "Smythe stole the land!" He learns of a previous action to Quiet Title to Tutu Helen's land and learns that in that case the opposition went so far as to publish a fake obituary of Tutu Helen's death! Knowing the veracity of Tutu Helen's statement he is left with the daunting task of proving this fact in a court of law only to learn firsthand of the unjust treatment of Hawaiians in the American system of justice, and the incredible lengths the powers that be will go to suppress anyone who attempts to help them rectify this injustice.This challenge presents the attorney with utter, hopeless frustration until he is mystically returned to nineteenth century Hawaii that is in the midst of being overthrown by a conspiracy initiated by the American government with the aid of the US naval and marine forces. There, as the naval Chaplain, he witnesses the planned efforts to acquire this paradise from its rightful owners only to find himself bound and gagged on a ship, being keelhauled for his refusal to aid in the unscrupulous conspiracy to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii, and steal the land. With the knowledge he gains from reliving his prior life experience he again is back in court only to find he is without concrete evidence to sustain what he knows to be true. Tutu Helen then directs him to the graves of her ancestors that are situated on property now 'owned' by the aging officer of Hawaii's largest corporate entity, a Hawaiian Sugar Company, and whose son, knowing of this outside Attorney's efforts to expose the century old fraud that enabled his father's corporation to rise to its status as Hawaii's premiere corporate entity, is determined to stop the attorney by any means. Despite the grave threat to their lives, the Attorney and his lover, Moana, sneak unto the lands of the corporation's leader where they discover the bodily remains of Moana's ancestors exposed on the eroding cliff along the ocean. Removing a tooth from the skull of one the ancestors, the attorney uses it to prove the family's ownership of the land.The Judge is dumbfounded by the Catch-22 he now finds himself in. His dilemma, either refuse to accept the inescapable conclusion that this land is indeed still rightfully owned by this Hawaiian family, and allow these lands to remain held by the sugar company and permit the developers to acquire the land which they seek to quiet title to, or deny the developers lawsuit and return all the land, some two thousand plus acres, to the heirs of the nineteenth century Hawaiians from which it was fraudulently acquired. In the end Tutu Helen appears near death as the attorney tells her of the Judges decision. The Judge refused to jeopardize his career by perpetuating a fraud that has existed for over a century and he not only denied the attempt by the developers to take the parcels of land they seek but also he returned the two thousand acres of land to this Hawaiian family. The attorney is overcome with distress, as Tutu Helen seems to gasp her last breath of life after learning of the decision. Surrounded by members of her ohana whose emotions over her loss are evident, Tutu Helen stuns them all as she opens her eyes and proclaims. "They said I was dead, but I still live."The final scene of the movie depicts the mansion once owned by the head of the Sugar Company being bulldozed to the ground and dozens of Hawaiians working to restore the land by planting trees, flowers, and gardens where the mansion once stood. As this scene concludes the movie fades along with the hauntingly beautiful voice of Hawaiian legendary musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole:Cry for the gods,Cry for the people.Cry for the land that was taken away.And then yet you'll find.Hawai'i.Ua mau Ke Ea Oka Aina Ika Pono O Hawai'i.(The life of the land of Hawaii is preserved in righteousness.)
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Pre-Marital/Pre-Commitment Mediation for ANY coupleNow through June 15thSave 50%What if you could make your union stronger, happier, and more fulfilling before it even starts?What if you could significantly decrease the chance ofdivorce and increase your opportunity for a long, happy life together?What if you had easy tools to enhance intimacy, reduceconflict, and set the stage for having the relationship of your dreams?The truth is you can do all of these things.And it’s easier than you think.Union meditation an outstanding program to help couples enhance their relationships, increase happiness, reduce marital conflict, and promote healthy and fulfilling marriages. And, we do these things with the highest level of convenience and customization for our clients.Studies have shown that couples who complete marriage preparation programs are 30% less likely to divorce, and report higher levels of commitment and satisfaction than those who don’t.I offer services for ALL unions.Poly's also relationships welcome.
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The Society for Sacred Sexuality wa founded July 4.2004 to bring sexual freedom to the world. True sexual freedom dawns in sexual enlightenment through the pratice of sacred sex. To enjoy this however,we must first free ourselves for constraints on sex in general. Only when we enjoy sex freely and openly without guilt, shame, repression or censure-whether self-imposeed or by society-are we free to the potential of union that sacred sex offers.We offer it to the world in the spirit of Freedom, It'a purpose is to free humanity of repressive values that stunt growth and progress in every area of life,including sexuality.
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For almost 10 years, I've been wanting to get an article about my great grandaunt translated and just recently someone did it for us. It's a long article and it's one of two articles, so she only did a translation for the 1st one, which I'm very grateful for. The story is about Emma Lahela Kaakaualiilani Hookano and her husband Lui Hookano who shot and killed her in 1924. The story is told by her mother Emma Fern about the events leading to her death. It takes place in Koolaupoko, but there's some place names I'm unfamilar with like Wailau. I know of Wailau valley on Molokai, but Oahu...never heard of it. There's Kaalaea which is the ahupuaa next to Waiahole, but it's not used today that I've ever heard. She also says "Mahuahale, the place Lui Hookano lived, not far from where we lived", have no clue where that is and it's no where to be had on the internet. I wonder if that's just what Lui called it?Hawaiian language article:http://homepage.mac.com/gencea/Nui/ps01/ps01_448.htm
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For more: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/brain/PART 1The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry And Mysticismby Barbara Bradley HagertyAll Things Considered, May 18, 2009 · For much of the 20th century, mainstream science shied away from studying spirituality.Sigmund Freud declared God to be a delusion, and others maintained that God, if there is such a thing, is beyond the tools of science to measure.But now, some researchers are using new technologies to try to understand spiritual experience. They're peering into our brains and studying our bodies to look for circumstantial evidence of a spiritual world. The search is in its infancy, and scientists doubt they will ever be able to prove — or disprove — the existence of God.I spent a year exploring the emerging science of spirituality for my book, Fingerprints of God. One of the questions raised by my reporting: Is an encounter with God merely a chemical reaction?Peyote HealingThe search for that answer led me to my first peyote ceremony, on a mountaintop on the Navajo reservation at Lukachukai, Ariz.While Fred Harvey, an 87-year-old roadman, or high priest, warmed up his voice, members of his family prepared the peyote, a cactus that induces visions when ingested. Using peyote to touch the spiritual world has been central to the Navajo religion for hundreds of years.Andy Harvey, a ceremony participant, said peyote serves as a mediator between the human world and the divine."Sometimes we ask the peyote to help us cleanse the illnesses away and cleanse our mental being, our spiritual being," he said. "And we believe that's what peyote does, too. That's why we call it a sacrament, a sacred herb."At 9 p.m., 32 of us crawled into the teepee; for the next 11 hours, the young men drummed, the roadman prayed, and everyone but me ingested a lot of peyote. Sometime around midnight, the subject of the ceremony — a Navajo woman named Mary Ann — spoke up."I want to confess to the fire," she said.She said she had suffered from shingles for the past two months, and she needed the peyote to heal her. She said she believed she had harmed a man some 20 years earlier, and his spirit had been plaguing her ever since."I need him to forgive me," she cried. "I know I'm in pain because he hasn't forgiven me."Two more hours had passed when Mary Ann suddenly cried, "The shingles are gone! The peyote has healed me!"After the ceremony, Mary Ann said she was, in her words, "too peyoted up" to talk. I called her on the phone two months later. She said while in the teepee, she saw the spirit of the man she had harmed and asked him for forgiveness."He came in front of me, and he just left me," she said. "And that's when my pain stopped. He forgave me."Perhaps. Or perhaps the trinity of prayer, drumming and drug relieved her stress — and her shingles.Lessons From The '60sScientists have long been intrigued by mystical experiences like Mary Ann's. A person prays and gets better. A car crash victim feels himself floating above his body. For years, scientists have wondered why these things occur — or even if they're real. So they're taking drugs like peyote out of the teepee and into the laboratory to find out more.The first major rigorous study of psychedelics and spirituality occurred on Good Friday in 1962. In the basement of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, researchers from Harvard gave 10 divinity students LSD to see if the sacred setting, combined with drugs, would spark a mystical experience. It did. Soon afterward, researchers at other prominent universities began administering psychedelic drugs to volunteers in controlled settings.By the end of the 1960s, the U.S. government had had enough of Timothy Leary's call to "turn on, tune in, drop out" and were concerned that a generation was conducting its own uncontrolled experiments with drugs and spirituality. In the early '70s, the experiments ended.Until now.A couple of months after the peyote ceremony, I follow Roland Griffiths into his mushroom mecca in the middle of Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore.The lighting is low, the carpeting plush. There's a cross on the wall, a statue of Buddha, a Shinto shrine. In the middle of the room is a sofa where volunteers can lie down after they've ingested a capsule of psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in mushrooms. Griffiths, a neuropharmacologist, is the lead investigator in the first major study of drugs and spirituality since the 1970s. Why, I ask, would he launch such controversial research?"I was just curious," Griffiths says simply.Finding The Mystical In A Mushroom TripActually, Griffiths says that when he took up meditation 15 years ago, he began thinking differently about the nature of reality. He wondered: What if he could study what happens to the brain when people enjoy spiritual experiences? Griffiths recruited 36 people. They were all middle-aged and stable, had an active spiritual practice — whether Christian, Jewish or other — and were willing to take the trip of their lives. Among them was 56-year-old Karin Sokel."They asked me to lay down with headphones and the most powerful music I've ever heard," Sokel recalls. "I was blindfolded, and I began to have my experience."Sokel was involved in five sessions, and she describes them as the most profound experiences of her life."I know that I had a merging with what I call oneness, I am," she says. "There was a time that I was being gently pulled into it, and I saw it as light. … It isn't even describable. It's not just light; it's love."Sokel's words echo those of mystics through the ages, who talked of a physical union with God, a peek into eternity or an out-of-body experience. Griffiths says 70 percent of the subjects had full-blown mystical experiences, which Griffiths calls "remarkable."Griffiths' research offers clues about the mechanics of spiritual mystery, says neuroscientist Solomon Snyder.Serotonin And The Mechanism Of Mysticism"If we assume that the psychedelic, drug-induced state is very much like the mystical state," Snyder says, "then if we find out the molecular mechanism of the action of the drug, then you could say that we have some insight into what's going on in the brains of mystics."Snyder, who is chairman of the neuroscience department at Johns Hopkins and was not involved in the study, says scientists suspect that a key player in mystical experience is the serotonin system. The neurotransmitter serotonin affects the parts of the brain that relate to emotions and perceptions. Chemically, peyote, LSD and other psychedelics look a lot like serotonin, and they activate the same receptor.Think of that serotonin receptor as a bouncer at a nightclub. The party's a bit tame, and when the bouncer spots the fun chemical — the active ingredient in psilocybin — he lets Mr. Fun into the club. Suddenly, the party picks up and the brain chemicals are burning up the floor.Let the spiritual experience begin.New Avenues To Study Spirituality In The BrainOf course, it's more complicated than that. There are other chemicals and receptors at play, and, of course, mystical experience happens without drugs — through prayer, meditation, chanting and fasting.But Griffiths says this study will open new vistas into the science of spirituality. Until now, he says, we couldn't systematically study mystical states."You can't just say, 'Well, come into the laboratory and pray for two hours, and then we're going to image your brain because we know you'll have a mystical experience then!' " he says. "We're talking about rates of experience that may occur once in a lifetime or once every year or two."But if you can chemically induce the equivalent of a spiritual experience, he says, you can slide a person into a brain scanner and observe which parts of the brain light up and what neural networks are used.LSD And Life After DeathGriffiths has now launched other studies that pick up work begun a half-century ago.In the 1950s and '60s, researchers studied the effect of LSD trips on patients with end-stage cancer. Many of those who enjoyed mystical experiences, researchers found, returned from their trips believing that life continues after death, and with reduced pain — or at least a different perspective on pain. Griffiths is now recruiting patients to test whether a synthetic spiritual experience might aid them in any way.Still, Griffiths says all the studies in the world can't answer his central question about spirituality: "Why does that occur? Why has the human organism been engineered, if you will, for this experience?"It's a question that haunts other scientists, as well. They want to know: Is there a sweet spot for spirituality in the brain?Part 2 of this series looks at the search for the God spot.Are Spiritual Encounters All In Your Head?by Barbara Bradley HagertyAll Things Considered, May 19, 2009 · According to polls, there's a 50-50 chance you have had at least one spiritual experience — an overpowering feeling that you've touched God, or another dimension of reality.So, have you ever wondered whether those encounters actually happened — or whether they were all in your head? Scientists say the answer might be both.If you're looking for evidence that religion is in your head, you need look no further than Jeff Schimmel. The 49-year-old Los Angeles writer was raised in a Conservative Jewish home. But he never bought into God — until after he was touched by a being outside of himself."Yeah," Schimmel says, "I was touched by a surgeon."About a decade ago, Schimmel had a benign tumor removed from his left temporal lobe. The surgery was a snap. But soon after that — unknown to him — he began to suffer mini-seizures. He'd hear conversations in his head. Sometimes the people around him would look slightly unreal, as if they were animated.Then came the visions. He remembers twice, lying in bed, he looked up at the ceiling and saw a swirl of blue and gold and green colors that gradually settled into a shape. He couldn't figure out what it was."And then, like a flash, it dawned on me: 'This is the Virgin Mary!' " he says. "And you know, it's funny. I laughed about it, because why would the Virgin Mary appear to me, a Jewish guy, lying in bed looking at the ceiling? She could do much better."Schimmel became fascinated with spirituality. He became more compassionate, less ambitious. And he wondered: Could his new outlook have to do with his brain? The next visit to his neurologist, he asked to see his most recent MRI."My left temporal lobe looked completely different from the way it did before the surgery," he says.Gradually, it had become smaller, a different shape, covered with scar tissue. Those changes had sparked electrical firings in his brain. Schimmel's doctor told him he had developed temporal lobe epilepsy — a disease that has fascinated doctors for centuries.Did Paul Hear Jesus, Or Was It Hallucination?Some 2,500 years ago, notes Orrin Devinsky, who directs the epilepsy center at New York University, Hippocrates wrote one of the very first texts we have on epilepsy — and he named it "On the Sacred Disease."The disease was considered sacred because the ancients thought that sufferers were possessed by demons, or blessed with divine messages and visions. Devinsky says neurologists suspect some of the religious giants were epileptics themselves. Did Paul hear Jesus on the road to Damascus, or was he experiencing an auditory hallucination? What about Joseph Smith and the two angels? Muhammad? Joan of Arc? And what about Moses and that burning bush?"Assuming for now a more rational scientific view, he was having a visual hallucination and he heard God's voice," Devinsky observes.It could have been God; it could have been a seizure. But one thing Devinsky does believe is "whatever happened back there in Sinai, Moses' experience was mediated by his temporal lobe."The temporal lobes run along the sides of the brain, and deep within them is something called the limbic system. This system handles not just sound, smell and some vision but also memory and emotion.When people have a seizure in the temporal lobe, it's as if the normal emotions have an exclamation point after them, because so many nerve cells are firing in rhythm. People may hear snatches of music — drawn from their memory bank — and in rare cases, interpret it as music from heavenly spheres. They may see a glimpse of light and think it's an angel."These patients give us clues as to what parts of the human brain are involved when all of us have a numinous experience," says Jeffrey Saver, a neurologist at UCLA.Saver says when people with no brain dysfunction have numinous, or spiritual, experiences, it's the same limbic system being activated — but with the volume turned down.The Quest For The 'Sensed Presence'This made me wonder: If God uses the temporal lobe, can neurologists make God come and go at will? Well, they can make ecstatic seizures go away with surgery or medication. But what about summoning God? Could a scientist manufacture a spiritual experience by manipulating my temporal lobes?That question led me to Michael Persinger's laboratory in Sudbury, Ontario. It's 6:30 on a Saturday evening, and Persinger, a neuroscientist at Laurentian University, has pasted eight electrodes on my scalp. He eases a modified motorcycle helmet with its own sensors onto my head. He calls it the "God helmet."The helmet is supposed to stimulate my right temporal lobe with weak magnetic fields, and create the illusion of God in my head. Well, not God exactly, but a sensed presence, a feeling that another being is in the room.When the helmet is in place, Persinger covers my eyes with goggles stuffed with napkins. I sink deeper into the threadbare, overstuffed chair, feeling like a teenager hanging out in someone's basement. He leaves me in the chamber and returns to the control room, where I've placed a recorder.For the next 30 minutes, I listen to magnetic fields shift over my skull. Occasionally, I report seeing images, or a dark forest. I've place a recorder in the control room, which is picking up both his comments and mine. At some point, I say, in an almost incomprehensibly muffled words, "There's kind of a roiling darkness, like a battle of darkness; it's off to my left."Persinger observes, excited: "You've just reported the actions on your left. And now you are beginning to experience — and my compliments to you — what is called 'The black,' or 'The dark of the dark.' "Of course, I couldn't hear him say that. He was talking into my recorder. At one point, Persinger predicts I am right on the verge of feeling the "Sensed Presence." But it never happens. There were several times when Persinger predicted I would see an image, or a face — and I did. To Persinger, this is evidence that God and all spiritual experience are a product of your brain."What is the last illusion that we must overcome as a species?" he asks theatrically. "That illusion is that God is an absolute that exists independent of the human brain — that somehow we are in his or her care."'I'm A More Decent Human Being Because Of It'Believers are certainly going to take issue with that. And so do many scientists. I put the question to New York University's Devinsky. Does the fact that we can track spiritual feelings in our temporal lobe mean that there's nothing spiritual going on?"No," he says simply.Think about a man and woman who are in love, Devinsky says. They look at each other, and in all likelihood, something fires in their temporal lobes."However, does that negate the presence of true love between them?" he asks. "Of course not. When you get to spirituality, as a scientist I think it really becomes extremely difficult to say anything other than, 'It's possible.' "As for Schimmel, the fellow with temporal lobe epilepsy, he finds it hard to believe that his new faith and love for his fellow man come merely from an electrical impulse that's gone awry."But I'll tell you what the real bottom line is for me," says Schimmel, who has taken up Buddhism to harness his spiritual life. "I don't care where it comes from. I'm just a happier person, and I'm a more decent human being because of it."Part 3 of this series look at spiritual virtuosos — Buddhist monks and other long-term practitioners of meditation who are coming under the gaze of brain researchers.Prayer May Reshape Your Brain ... And Your Realityby Barbara Bradley Hagerty“The more you focus on something — whether that's math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain.”Andrew Newberg, neuroscientistAll Things Considered, May 20, 2009 · Scientists are making the first attempts to understand spiritual experience — and what happens in the brains and bodies of people who believe they connect with the divine.The field is called "neurotheology," and although it is new, it's drawing prominent researchers in the U.S. and Canada. Scientists have found that the brains of people who spend untold hours in prayer and meditation are different.I met Scott McDermott five years ago, while covering a Pentecostal revival meeting in Toronto. It was pandemonium. People were speaking in tongues and barking like dogs. I thought, "What is a United Methodist minister, with a Ph.D. in New Testament theology, doing here?"Then McDermott told me about a vision he had had years earlier."I saw fire dancing on my eyelids," he recalled, staring into the middle distance. "I felt God say to me, 'You be the oil, and I'll be the flame.' Then [I] began to feel waves of the Spirit flow through my body."I never forgot McDermott. When I heard that scientists were studying the brains of people who spent countless hours in prayer and meditation, I thought, "I've got to see what's going on in Scott McDermott's head."Focusing Affects RealityA few years later, Andrew Newberg made that possible. Newberg is a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of several books, including How God Changes Your Brain. He has been scanning the brains of religious people like McDermott for more than a decade.On a spring day in Newberg's laboratory, the neuroscientist settles McDermott in a darkened examination room and asks the pastor to pray for someone else — that is, intercessory prayer. A few minutes later, at the moment Newberg believes McDermott has reached the peak of his prayer, the researcher injects the minister with a dye that shows the blood flow in his brain.Twenty minutes later, McDermott emerges beaming. He has enjoyed intense spiritual moments like this ever since he was in his 20s."The first thing that got me was I could hear God's voice," the pastor said. "And it so enamored me — I mean, it changed me dramatically. I couldn't wait to pray!"McDermott has prayed at least two hours a day for the past 25 years.I ask Newberg what kind of impact that would that have on the pastor's brain."The more you focus on something — whether that's math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain," Newberg says.'I Think We're Wired For The Supernatural'Now it's time for Newberg to take a peek at McDermott's neural connections, sliding him into a SPECT scanner, which will create an image of which parts of McDermott's brain lit up and which went dark while he prayed.A few minutes later, Newberg has preliminary results on his computer screen. He notes some areas of increased activity in the frontal lobes, which handle focused attention — precisely what Newberg would expect from a person praying intently. But he adds that this needs further analysis — and he'll need to find more volunteers to do this kind of interpersonal prayer before he can come to any conclusions.Afterward, I ask McDermott if any of this challenges his beliefs. Not at all, he says."I think we're wired for the supernatural," he says. "I think we're meant to sense a world beyond our five senses. Come on! Taste and see that God really is good."Newberg says he can't prove that McDermott or anyone else is communing with God, but he can look for circumstantial evidence."What we need to do is study those moments where people feel that they're getting beyond their brain, and understanding what's happening in the brain from a scientific perspective, what's happening in the brain from their spiritual perspective," he says.Then he'll compare the mystical feelings with the brain physiology.A Sense Of Oneness With The UniverseNewberg did that with Michael Baime. Baime is a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Tibetan Buddhist who has meditated at least an hour a day for the past 40 years. During a peak meditative experience, Baime says, he feels oneness with the universe, and time slips away."It's as if the present moment expands to fill all of eternity," he explains, "that there has never been anything but this eternal now."When Baime meditated in Newberg's brain scanner, his brain mirrored those feelings. As expected, his frontal lobes lit up on the screen: Meditation is sheer concentration, after all. But what fascinated Newberg was that Baime's parietal lobes went dark."This is an area that normally takes our sensory information, tries to create for us a sense of ourselves and orient that self in the world," he explains. "When people lose their sense of self, feel a sense of oneness, a blurring of the boundary between self and other, we have found decreases in activity in that area."Newberg found that result not only with Baime, but also with other monks he scanned. It was the same when he imaged the brains of Franciscan nuns praying and Sikhs chanting. They all felt the same oneness with the universe. When it comes to the brain, Newberg says, spiritual experience is spiritual experience."There is no Christian, there is no Jewish, there is no Muslim, it's just all one," Newberg says.A little theological dynamite there — but, remember, the research is just beginning.'You Can Sculpt Your Brain'So far, scientists have focused on people who pray or meditate for one, two or more hours a day. They think that studying spiritual virtuosos will offer clues to the brain workings of more typical believers. But now Newberg and others are turning their attention to people who want to enrich their spiritual lives, but don't have that kind of time.And there's hope for people with jobs and kids.Neuroscientist Richard Davidson says you can change your brain with experience and training."You can sculpt your brain just as you'd sculpt your muscles if you went to the gym," he says. "Our brains are continuously being sculpted, whether you like it or not, wittingly or unwittingly."It's called neuroplasticity. For years Davidson, who is at the University of Wisconsin, has scanned the brains of Buddhist monks who have logged years of meditation. When it comes to things like attention and compassion, their brains are as finely tuned as a late-model Porsche. Davidson wondered: Could ordinary people achieve the same kind of connection with the spiritual that the monks do — without so much effort?I wondered that, too. And when I heard his lab was launching a study lasting two weeks, I said, "Sign me up."It turned out I was too old for the study. But they let me see what it was about. For 30 minutes every morning, I settled into my chair to the soothing tones of a meditation CD. The voice of a University of Wisconsin graduate student urged me to shower compassion on a loved one, a stranger, myself.The trouble came when I was asked to visualize someone I had difficulty with in life. I became surly, as I reflected on the minor tragedies in my life and the people who caused them. When I saw Richard Davidson, I didn't mention how ill-tempered I had grown."Is there a capacity to change my brain if I continue with this?" I asked."Absolutely," he responded enthusiastically. "I would say the likelihood is that you are already changing your brain."I hope not. Others, however, were far more successful in cultivating a spiritual mind-set. Davidson couldn't tell me about the results of my study, which have yet to be published. But he could say there were detectable changes in the subjects' brains within two weeks. Another similar study, where employees at a high-tech firm meditated a few minutes a day over a few weeks, produced more dramatic results."Just two months' practice among rank amateurs led to a systematic change in both the brain as well as the immune system in more positive directions," he said.For example, they developed more antibodies to a flu virus than did their colleagues who did not meditate.Part 4 of this series explores whether thoughts or prayers can affect the body.Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?by Barbara Bradley HagertyFourth of a five-part seriesAll Things Considered, May 21, 2009 · Ninety percent of Americans say they pray — for their health, or their love life or their final exams. But does prayer do any good?For decades, scientists have tried to test the power of prayer and positive thinking, with mixed results. Now some scientists are fording new — and controversial — territory.Mind Over BodyWhen I first meet Sheri Kaplan, she is perched on a plastic chair at a Miami clinic, holding out her arm as a researcher draws several vials of blood."I'm quite excited about my blood work this time," she says. "I've got no stress and I'm proud of it."Kaplan is tanned and freckled, with wavy red hair and a cocky laugh. She is defiantly healthy for a person who has lived with HIV for the past 15 years."God didn't want me to die or even get sick," she asserts. "I've never had any opportunistic infections, because I had no time to be down."Kaplan's faith is unorthodox, but it's central to her life. She was raised Jewish, and although she claims no formal religion now, she prays and meditates every day. She believes God is keeping the virus at bay and that her faith is the reason she's alive today."Everything starts from a thought, and then the thought creates a reaction," she says. "And I have the power to control my mind, before it gets to a physical level or an emotional level."For the past decade, Kaplan has been coming every few months to see Gail Ironson, a professor at the University of Miami. Ironson, an AIDS researcher, runs down a battery of questions."During this time have you had any HIV- or AIDS-related symptoms?" Ironson asks."Nope," Kaplan says. "Nothing.""What percent of your well-being do you think is due to your own attitudes and behaviors versus medical care?" Ironson continues.Kaplan laughs: "110 percent."Kaplan has never taken medicine, yet the disease has not progressed to AIDS (and she is not part of the population that has a mutation in the CCR5 gene that prevents progression of HIV to AIDS). In the mid-1990s, when having HIV was akin to a death sentence, Ironson noticed that a number of patients like Kaplan never got sick. Ironson wanted to know why. And she found something surprising."If you ask people what's kept you going so long, what keeps you healthy, often people would say spirituality," she says. "It was something that just kept coming up in the interviews, and that's why I decided to look at it."Spirituality And HealthIronson began to zero in on a patient's relationship with God in an attempt to predict how fast the disease would progress.She focused on two key indicators. She measured viral load, which tells how much of the virus is present in a person's body, and immune cells called CD-4 cells, which help fight off the AIDS virus.Ironson says over time, those who turned to God after their diagnosis had a much lower viral load and maintained those powerful immune cells at a much higher rate than those who turned away from God."In fact, people who felt abandoned by God and who decreased in spirituality lost their CD4 cells 4.5 times faster than people who increased in spirituality," Ironson says. "That was actually our most powerful psychological predictor to date.""Just so I understand it," I confirm, "if someone weren't taking their meds and were depressed, they would still fare better if they increased in spirituality?""Yes," she says. "Now, I'm not in any way suggesting that people don't take their meds," she adds quickly, laughing. "This is really an important point. However, the effects of spirituality are over and above."Can My Prayers Affect Your Body?Ironson calls the finding extraordinary. She was one of the first researchers to connect a patient's approach to God to specific chemical changes in the body.Of course, mind-body medicine — the idea that my thoughts and emotions can affect my own health — has been standard teaching at many medical schools for years. But does that mean my thoughts can affect another person's body?"The answer is pretty unequivocally no," says Richard Sloan, professor of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.Sloan notes that studies in the 1980s and '90s seemed to show that praying for a patient in a hospital sped up his recovery. But he says those studies were flawed. More recent, more rigorous studies, he argues, showed prayer either had no effect, or the patients actually grew worse.Sloan says science understands how a person's thoughts can influence his own body — for example, through chemical changes in the brain that affect the immune system."There are no plausible mechanisms that account for how somebody's thoughts or prayers can influence the health of another person," Sloan says. "None. We know of nothing."A few renegade scientists aren't satisfied with that. For years, they say, no one knew how morphine or aspirin worked. They just knew it worked. These researchers say typical prayer studies, in which a stranger prays for a stranger from a script, miss the critical element: a personal connection. So they're asking a different sort of question. Can a husband's love for his wife affect her body?Or, as Marilyn Schlitz puts it: "Does our consciousness have the capacity to reach out and connect to someone else in a way that's health-promoting?"The Love StudyOn a bright spring day, Schlitz is leading Teena and J.D. Miller down a path to the laboratory at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, north of San Francisco. Schlitz is the president of the institute, which conducts research on consciousness and spirituality. The Millers have been married a decade and their affection is palpable — making them perfect for the so-called Love Study.Schlitz takes Teena into an isolated room, where no sound can come in or go out. Teena settles into a deep armchair as Schlitz attaches electrodes to her right hand."This is measuring blood flow in your thumb, and this is your skin conductance activity," the researcher explains. "So basically both of these are measures of your unconscious nervous system."Schlitz locks Teena into the electromagnetically shielded chamber, then ushers J.D. into another isolated room with a closed-circuit television. She explains that the screen will go on and off. And at random intervals, Teena's image will appear on the screen for 10 seconds."And so during the times when you see her," she instructs, "it's your opportunity to think about sending loving, compassionate intention."As the session begins, Dean Radin, a senior scientist here, watches as a computer shows changes in J.D.'s blood pressure and perspiration. When J.D. sees the image of his wife, the steady lines suddenly jump and become ragged. The question is: Will Teena's nervous system follow suit?"Notice how here … see, there's a change in the blood volume," says Radin, pointing to a screen charting Teena's measurements. "A sudden change like that is sometimes associated with an orienting response. If you suddenly hear somebody whispering in your ear, and there's nobody around, you have this sense of what? What was that? That's more or less what we're seeing in the physiology."An hour later, Radin displays Teena's graph, which shows a flat line during the times her husband was not staring at her image, but when her husband began to stare at her, she stopped relaxing and became "aroused" within about two seconds.After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.The 'Quantum Entanglement' Of LoveSo how do you explain this? No one really knows. But Radin and a few others think that a theory known as "quantum entanglement" may offer some clues.Here's how it works. Once two particles have interacted, if you separate them, even by miles, they behave as if they're still connected. So far, this has only been demonstrated on the subatomic level.But Radin wonders: Could people in close relationships — couples, siblings, parent and child — also be "entangled"? Not just emotionally, and psychologically — but also physically?"If it is true that entanglement actually persists, by means of which we don't understand," he says, "if they are physically entangled, you should be able to separate them, poke one, and see the other one flinch."This idea — that we may be connected at some molecular level — echoes the words of mystics down the ages. And it appeals to some scientists.But it infuriates others — like Columbia University's Sloan. The underlying idea is wrong, he says. Entanglement just doesn't work this way."Physicists are very clear that the relationship is purely correlational and not causal," Sloan says. "There is nothing causal about quantum entanglement. It's good to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out."Radin and others agree that that's what science says right now. But they say these findings eventually have to be explained somehow.Part 5 of this series will explore whether people have souls that survive a brain's death.Decoding The Mystery Of Near-Death Experiencesby Barbara Bradley HagertyAll Things Considered, May 22, 2009 · We've all heard the stories about near-death experiences: the tunnel, the white light, the encounter with long-dead relatives now looking very much alive.Scientists have cast a skeptical eye on these accounts. They say that these feelings and visions are simply the result of a brain shutting down.But now some researchers are giving a closer neurological look at near-death experiences and asking: Can your mind operate when your brain has stopped?'I Popped Up Out The Top Of My Head'I met Pam Reynolds in her tour bus. She's a big deal in the music world — her company, Southern Tracks, has recorded music by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Pearl Jam to REM. But you've probably never heard her favorite song. It's the one Reynolds wrote about the time she traveled to death's door and back. The experience has made her something of a rock star in the near-death world. Believers say she is proof positive that the mind can operate when the brain is stilled. Nonbelievers say she's nothing of the sort.Reynolds' journey began one hot August day in 1991."I was in Virginia Beach, Va., with my husband," she recalls. "We were promoting a new record. And I inexplicably forgot how to talk. I've got a big mouth. I never forget how to talk."An MRI revealed an aneurysm on her brain stem. It was already leaking, a ticking time bomb. Her doctor in Atlanta said her best hope was a young brain surgeon at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona named Robert Spetzler."The aneurysm was very large, which meant the risk of rupture was also very large," Spetzler says. "And it was in a location where the only way to really give her the very best odds of fixing it required what we call 'cardiac standstill.' "It was a daring operation: Chilling her body, draining the blood out of her head like oil from a car engine, snipping the aneurysm and then bringing her back from the edge of death."She is as deeply comatose as you can be and still be alive," Spetzler observes.When the operation began, the surgeons taped shut Reynolds' eyes and put molded speakers in her ears. The ear speakers, which made clicking sounds as loud as a jet plane taking off, allowed the surgeons to measure her brain stem activity and let them know when they could drain her blood."I was lying there on the gurney minding my own business, seriously unconscious, when I started to hear a noise," Reynolds recalls. "It was a natural D, and as the sound continued — I don't know how to explain this, other than to go ahead and say it — I popped up out the top of my head."A Tunnel And Bright LightShe says she found herself looking down at the operating table. She says she could see 20 people around the table and hear what sounded like a dentist's drill. She looked at the instrument in the surgeon's hand."It was an odd-looking thing," she says. "It looked like the handle on my electric toothbrush."Reynolds observed the Midas Rex bone saw the surgeons used to cut open her head, the drill bits, and the case, which looked like the one where her father kept his socket wrenches. Then she noticed a surgeon at her left groin."I heard a female voice say, 'Her arteries are too small.' And Dr. Spetzler — I think it was him — said, 'Use the other side,' " Reynolds says.Soon after, the surgeons began to lower her body temperature to 60 degrees. It was about that time that Reynolds believes she noticed a tunnel and bright light. She eventually flat-lined completely, and the surgeons drained the blood out of her head.During her near-death experience, she says she chatted with her dead grandmother and uncle, who escorted her back to the operating room. She says as they looked down on her body, she could hear the Eagles' song "Hotel California" playing in the operating room as the doctors restarted her heart. She says her body looked like a train wreck, and she said she didn't want to return."My uncle pushed me," she says, laughing. "And when I hit the body, the line in the song was, 'You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.' And I opened my eyes and I said, 'You know, that is really insensitive!' "A Vision That Matches The RecordAfterwards, Reynolds assumed she had been hallucinating. But a year later, she mentioned the details to her neurosurgeon. Spetzler says her account matched his memory."From a scientific perspective," he says, "I have absolutely no explanation about how it could have happened."Spetzler did not check out all the details, but Michael Sabom did. Sabom is a cardiologist in Atlanta who was researching near-death experiences."With Pam's permission, they sent me her records from the surgery," he says. "And long story short, what she said happened to her is actually what Spetzler did with her out in Arizona."According to the records, there were 20 doctors in the room. There was a conversation about the veins in her left leg. She was defibrillated. They were playing "Hotel California." How about that bone saw? Sabom got a photo from the manufacturer — and it does look like an electric toothbrush.How, Sabom wonders, could she know these things?"She could not have heard [it], because of what they did to her ears," he says. "In addition, both of her eyes were taped shut, so she couldn't open her eyes and see what was going on. So her physical sensory perception was off the table."An Alternative Explanation?That's preposterous, says anesthesiologist Gerald Woerlee."This report provides absolutely no evidence for survival of any sort of consciousness outside the body during near-death experiences or any other such experiences," he says.Woerlee, an Australian researcher and near-death experience debunker who has investigated Reynolds' case, says what happened to her is easy to explain. He says when they cut into her head, she was jolted into consciousness. At that point, they had not yet drained blood from her brain. He believes she could hear — despite the clicking earplugs."There are various explanations," Woerlee says. "One: that the earphones or plugs were not that tightly fitting. Two: It could have been that it was due to sound transmission through the operating table itself."So Reynolds could have heard conversations. As for seeing the Midas Rex bone saw, he says, she recognized a sound from her childhood."She made a picture in her mind of a machine or a device which was very similar to what she was familiar with — a dental drill," Woerlee says.Woerlee says Reynolds experienced anesthesia awareness, in which a person is conscious but can't move. He figures back in 1991, that happened in 1 out of every 2,000 operations.That doesn't convince cardiologist Sabom or neurosurgeon Spetzler. They believe the combination of anesthesia and the sluggish brain activity caused by hypothermia meant that Reynolds could not form or retain memories for a significant part of the operation. At the very least, Sabom says, Reynolds' story raises the possibility that consciousness can function even when the brain is offline."Is there some type of awareness that occurs from a nonfunctional, physical brain?" Sabom asks. "And if there is, does that mean that there's a soul or spirit?"Re-Creating Near-Death ExperiencesIn the end, Reynolds' story is just an anecdote. And in fact, that's the problem with all the studies of near-death experiences. After all, you can't do clinical trials where you kill Mrs. Smith and tag along as she passes through the tunnel to the light, just to verify her story.Except in Hollywood, of course. In the 1990 movie Flatliners (starring Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland), five medical students try to peer into the next world by stopping their hearts and returning to tell the tale.The movie inspired Mario Beauregard, a neuroscientist at the University of Montreal. What if he could do the next best thing? Since stopping people's hearts is a research no-no, he is asking people who have had near-death experiences to relive them while he looks to see what's happening in their head."And it seems that these people have a different sort of brain," Beauregard says in his soft French accent. "It's like there's a shift in their brain, and this shift will allow these people to stay in touch with the spiritual world more easily, on a daily basis."Beauregard recruited 15 people who had a near-death experience. One of those was Gilles Bedard. In 1973, Bedard's heart stopped, and in the moments before he was resuscitated, he was greeted by what he describes as 12 beings of light."And I felt it was like the breath of the universe. Because it was like …" he says as he blows out his breath, slowly, like a low wind, "very, very peaceful."Since then, Bedard has meditated every day, and he says he often reconnects with the light. The research question is, how will his brain respond when he does?A Permanent Change In Brain Activity?For the experiment, Bedard is shut into an isolation chamber at Beauregard's Montreal lab. Bedard's head sprouts 32 electrodes, which will record his brain wave activity. He's told to relax for a few moments. Then he'll be instructed to imagine his near-death experience.A few minutes later, Beauregard and his research assistant are peering at a computer screen recording Bedard's brain waves. They cluck happily at the slow, large-amplitude Delta waves undulating across the screen — typical of a person in deep meditation or deep sleep.Afterward, the researcher asks Bedard if he was able to connect with the light."Yeah, it was coming from within," he says. "It was loving, intelligent … very powerful."It would take Beauregard a year to complete his research on near-death experiences. A few weeks ago, I called to ask him what he had found."It's like the near-death experience triggered something at a neural level in the brain," he said. "And perhaps this change, in terms of brain activity, is sort of permanent."Beauregard says it's as if touching death jump-started the spiritual lives of these people. Their brains in the spiritual state look a lot like those of Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks who have spent tens of thousands of hours in prayer and meditation. Both groups showed extremely slow brain wave activity.The researchers also saw significant changes in brain regions associated with positive emotions, attention and personal boundaries, as subjects who had had near-death experiences lost their sense of their physical bodies and merged with God or the "light."Brain Chemistry Or A Trip To Heaven?Skeptic Woerlee says there's nothing remarkable — and certainly nothing spiritual — about these findings."The brain function of many of these people who have undergone a near-death experience is altered," Woerlee says. "That's correct. It is altered. Extreme oxygen starvation does change brain function — because it causes brain damage to the larger cells in the brain."It's brain chemistry, he says, not a trip to heaven.In other words, Woerlee and Beauregard looked at the same images and came to opposite conclusions.I found that dichotomy everywhere as I interviewed experts about the emerging science of spirituality. It's kind of like a Rorschach test: Some researchers look at the data and say spiritual experience is only an electrical storm in the temporal lobe, or a brain gasping for oxygen — all fully explainable by science. Others say our brains are reflecting an encounter with the divine.And almost invariably, where a scientist stands on that issue has little to do with the clinical findings of any study. It has almost everything to do with the scientist's personal beliefs.
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This article raises interesting questions about the state-by-state laws that determine neglect and abuse of a child. In Minnesota, a family seeking to use Native American medicines for their child's cancer treatment is being sought by authorities for arrest - could this happen here?Arrest ordered for mom of boy, 13, resisting chemoBy Amy Forliti, Associated Press WriterNEW ULM, Minn. — Authorities nationwide were on the lookout Wednesday for a mother and her 13-year-old cancer-stricken son who fled after refusing the chemotherapy that doctors say could save the boy's life.Colleen Hauser and her son, Daniel, who has Hodgkin's lymphoma, apparently left their southern Minnesota home sometime after a doctor's appointment and court-ordered X-ray on Monday showed his tumor had grown.Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg, who had ruled last week that Daniel's parents were medically neglecting him, issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for Colleen Hauser and ruled her in contempt of court. Rodenberg also ordered that Daniel be placed in foster care and immediately evaluated by a cancer specialist for treatment.The family belongs to a religious group that believes in "natural" healing methods. Daniel has testified he believed chemotherapy would kill him and told the judge that if anyone tried to force him to take it, "I'd fight it. I'd punch them and I'd kick them."The boy's father, Anthony Hauser, testified he didn't know where his wife and son were but had made no attempt to find them. He testified he last saw his son Monday morning, and he saw his wife only briefly that evening when she said she was leaving "for a time."Officials distributed the arrest warrant nationwide. Brown County Sheriff Rich Hoffman said Tuesday that investigators were following some leads locally, but declined to elaborate. A crime alert said the Hausers might be with Susan Daya, also known as Susan Hamwi, a California attorney who accompanied them to a medical appointment Monday, or with a man named Billy Joe Best.Best appeared at a news conference held by the family in early May to say he supported the Hausers. Best, who said he was from Boston, told The Journal of New Ulm then that he had also been diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma as a teenager but was cured by natural remedies.In an interview Wednesday at his family farm in Sleepy Eye, Anthony Hauser said he hadn't heard from his wife or Daniel since they left. He said he has some ideas where they might have gone, and he's shared them with authorities.He said he thinks his wife just got scared when they got the results of the X-ray on Monday, and thought Brown County authorities would use it to try to get custody of Daniel."It's just my opinion, but I think she figured that because of that X-ray she feared they were going to take him," he said.He said he doesn't oppose chemotherapy "if it's a necessary thing," but thinks doctors use it too much.He wonders why Brown County authorities got involved."I don't know why they started this situation in the first place," he said. "Why does someone believe they have the right over your child?"Daniel's Hodgkin's lymphoma, diagnosed in January, is considered highly curable with chemotherapy and radiation, but the boy quit chemo after a single treatment.The judge has said Daniel, who has a learning disability and cannot read, did not understand the risks and benefits of chemotherapy and didn't believe he was ill.The Hausers are Roman Catholic and also believe in the "do no harm" philosophy of the Nemenhah Band, a Missouri-based religious group that believes in natural healing methods advocated by some American Indians. Colleen Hauser testified earlier that she had been treating his cancer with herbal supplements, vitamins, ionized water and other natural alternatives.The founder of Nemenhah, Philip Cloudpiler Landis, said it was a bad idea for Colleen Hauser to flee with her son. "You don't solve anything by disregarding the order of the judge," Landis said.The family's doctor, James Joyce, testified by telephone that he examined Daniel on Monday, and that an X-ray showed his tumor had grown to the size it was when he was first diagnosed."He had basically gotten back all the trouble he had in January," the doctor said.Joyce testified that he offered to make appointments for Daniel with oncologists, but the Hausers declined, then left in a rush with Daya, the California lawyer. "Under Susan Daya's urging, they indicated they had other places to go," Joyce said.Daya did not immediately respond to a call Tuesday from The Associated Press.Minnesota statutes require parents to provide necessary medical care for a child, Rodenberg wrote. The statutes say alternative and complementary health care methods aren't enough.
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Fat Tissue Growth In Rodent Models Suppressed By Turmeric ExtractCurcumin, the major polyphenol found in turmeric, appears to reduce weight gain in mice and suppress the growth of fat tissue in mice and cell models. Researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University (USDA HNRCA) studied mice fed high fat diets supplemented with curcumin and cell cultures incubated with curcumin."Weight gain is the result of the growth and expansion of fat tissue, which cannot happen unless new blood vessels form, a process known as angiogenesis." said senior author Mohsen Meydani, DVM, PhD, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA. "Based on our data, curcumin appears to suppress angiogenic activity in the fat tissue of mice fed high fat diets."Meydani continued, "It is important to note, we don't know whether these results can be replicated in humans because, to our knowledge, no studies have been done."Turmeric is known for providing flavor to curry. One of its components is curcumin, a type of phytochemical known as a polyphenol. Research findings suggest that phytochemicals, which are the chemicals found in plants, appear to help prevent disease. As the bioactive component of turmeric, curcumin is readily absorbed for use by the body.Meydani and colleagues studied mice fed high fat diets for 12 weeks. The high fat diet of one group was supplemented with 500 mg of curcumin/ kg diet; the other group consumed no curcumin. Both groups ate the same amount of food, indicating curcumin did not affect appetite, but mice fed the curcumin supplemented diet did not gain as much weight as mice that were not fed curcumin."Curcumin appeared to be responsible for total lower body fat in the group that received supplementation," said Meydani, who is also a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. "In those mice, we observed a suppression of microvessel density in fat tissue, a sign of less blood vessel growth and thus less expansion of fat. We also found lower blood cholesterol levels and fat in the liver of those mice. In general, angiogenesis and an accumulation of lipids in fat cells contribute to fat tissue growth."Writing in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition, the authors note similar results in cell cultures. Additionally, curcumin appeared to interfere with expression of two genes, which contributed to angiogenesis progression in both cell and rodent models."Again, based on this data, we have no way of telling whether curcumin could prevent fat tissue growth in humans." Meydani said. "The mechanism or mechanisms by which curcumin appears to affect fat tissue must be investigated in a randomized, clinical trial involving humans."This study was funded by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture. Asma Ejaz, a graduate student who worked on this project received a scholarship grant from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan.Ejaz A, Wu, D, Kwan P, and Meydani M. Journal of Nutrition. May 2009; 139 (5): 1042-1048. "Curcumin Inhibits Adipogenesis in 3T3-L1 Adipocytes and Angiogenesis and Obesity in C57/BL Mice. 919-925."Source:Andrea GrossmanTufts University, Health Sciences
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FREEHAWAII.INFO PRESENTSFREE HAWAI`I TVTHEFREE HAWAI`I BROADCASTING NETWORK"BEING HELD HOSTAGE"Here We Go Again - Hawai`i's Economy Trashed & It's Citizens Suffering All Because Of One Thing.What Is It & How Can We Make Our Islands Into An Economic Leader In The Pacific?Is It Even Possible? Watch & Find Out.Read more…
There's this guy named Eric on youtube who continues to reply to what I have to say. It started off basically with him replying to someone else who commented with Free Hawaii. What turned out was nothing but him trying to twist the truth (a la Kenneth Conklin), or worse, if anyone was really paying attention, just was flat out incorrect with the facts.Some of the things he said, usually in response to me giving him the facts were:1. (In my response to the Newlands Resolution has no jurisdiction outside of the US plus it started in the House of which is defined in the US Constitution what Congress can do) The Newlands Resolution was started in the House after being given consent by the recognized Republic of Hawai'i to take Hawai'i as a territory. I'm not saying it was correct since the people of Hawaii (All people) were not allowed to vote on whether they wanted to become a part of the U.S.Is he serious? A vote on this was irrelevant. There were protests, and the treaty was pulled, it never passed. Instead, they went with a resolution which has no jurisdiction outside of the USA's boundries, regardless if it requires a simple majority vote.2. (When I mentioned Article II, Sec. 2 & how only the Pres. can make treaties.) As for the President being the ONLY one to have the power to make treaties, it doesn't say he is the only authority. "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties".This was even worse than the last. I told him didn't he learn that in school about the US Constitution? It says in plain, clear English that the Pres has the power, not congress. It does say with the advice and consent of the senate, not the senate has the power with the advice/consent of the pres.3. (After I said how the US broke Hawaii's neutrality by specifying the landing of warships to refuel) Hawaii was a neutral (Republic) state in 1898, but had the right to allow U.S. warships to stop off for refueling to the P.I., if this had indeed happened, since President Cleveland, who was against the overthrow, had ordered all U.S. military personnel out of Hawai'i when the P.G. ignored Cleveland's orders to restore the Queen to power.Obviously he has no idea what neutral means, but to state something like this can be misleading. Neutrality doesn't mean it's up to Hawaii to allow US warships to stop for refueling.4. The P.G. and the Republic came into existence because of the cowardly acts of the annexationists. Regardless of how "low blow" it was to had overthrown the Queen's government, it is a fact she did relinquish the thrown & the P.G. was recognized by the international community, later the Republic was also recognized, therefore the Republic was legitimate. Coup d'etat´s happen every year in the world and that is what the overthrow was, a coup d'etat, initiated and carried out by Hawai'i citizens.His thinking is that the Republic is legit b/c the Queen was overthrown, a coup d'etat was carried out by Hawn. citizens.5. (Reponding to my comment as to exactly how many Hawaiian citizens were part of the Committe of Safety, which was in response to him saying #4 above.) Yes, it is true, only 3 were born in Hawai'i, and Lorrin Thurston, the main instigator of the overthrow was a Hawaiian citizen. So 9 were Haw'n citizens while others were foreigners, sounds like a coup d'etat to me.I'm not sure if he's trying to validate whatever he says by even being more specific, as in stating Thurston as the main instigator. Then he incorrectly takes the number I mentioned (6 Hawn citizens but only 3 of them were born there, the other 3 became citizens) and inflates it to 9.Here's an example of twisting of facts:6. What, to you, constitutes foreign? Non-Hawaiian ethnicity? If this is the case, take note there were many Hawaiian citizens in the kingdom who were not of Hawaiian ethnicity, notably my ancestor, Manuel Nuñez, who was the inventor of the ukulele.He replied to me mentioning foreigners and then starts to take my words and twist it. Although he is questioning what do I mean by a foreigner, and tries to point out how I am turning it into an ethnicity/racial issue, which wasn't the issue to begin with, rather we were replying to a video about Hawaii's history and the overthrow.7. After the overthrow all the embassies & consulates in Honolulu had formally recognized the P.G. as the legitimate govnmt of HIHe replied to me after I re-iterated how the R.O.H. was not legit and I said that just because the world or part of it had been lied to by the US that the they are the govt doesn't make it so.8. I didn't say coup de'tat´s happening elsewhere in the world is justification for what had happened in Hawai'i, just saying government's get overthrown frequently & the later governments were recognized as the legitimate government of that country.Actually, he did say that coup d'etat happens all the time around the world. Here it's like he's trying to retract what he said and say something else along the same lines. I haven't told him yet that the PG was neither de facto nor de jure.
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Mahalo To Artist John Pugh
GET THE FACTS HEREHawaiiFakeState.com
