Jinns – plasma aliens from a parallel Earth - Featured News & Articles - Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums

Jinns – plasma aliens from a parallel Earth - Featured News & Articles - Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums

Jay alfred: The purpose of this article is to gain a historical perspective into how certain categories of plasma life forms were viewed by Muslims through their sacred literature. Genie is an English translation of the Arabic term "jinn". The English word comes from the French "génie", which meant a spirit of any kind, which in turn came from the Latin "genius", which meant a sort of personal guardian spirit assigned to each person at birth. The word "jinxed" may very well be related to "jinn". Islam teaches that there are 3 main intelligent life forms: angels, jinns and humans. Angels are made of light. The fifty-fifth chapter "Ar-Rahman" of the Qur'an states that jinns are made of "smokeless fire" and humans are made of clay (like that used in pottery). In modern terms, we may say that humans are carbon-based or water-based, jinns plasma-based (this will become apparent after reading the text below) and angels are photonic life forms. Jinns are believed to have been created before humans and appear to have undergone some form of evolution. In Islam the existence of jinns is taken very seriously and is fully accepted, even legally and even to this day, in Islamic jurisprudence.

UFOs and Aerial Jinns
The famous Islamic cosmographer and Persian physician who lived in the thirteenth century, Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud Abu Yahya al-Qazwini, states that jinns "are aerial animals, with transparent bodies which can assume various forms." This is recognized as one category of jinns which permeate the atmosphere and is reminiscent of Trevor Constable's plasma-based "sky creatures".

Gordon Creighton and Chris Line, as far back as 1989, have argued that UFOs are in reality jinns in different issues of the "Flying Saucer Review". The idea that Earth's atmosphere could be the habitat of living aerial creatures which manifested as UFOs is not a new one. Charles Fort seemed to believe that too and Kenneth Arnold, who kick-started modern Ufology in 1947, also believed UFOs were living creatures. His belief that UFOs were space animals with the ability to change their density has bothered other Ufologists. Nevertheless, aerial jinns comprise only one category. Jinns are also believed to pervade the solid body of the Earth and its surface.

Plasma Jinns
Muslims believe that jinns have the power to fly and size-shift by fitting into any space. It is interesting to note that the popular depictions of a "genie" often show a large giant whose body tapers into a vortex and who, despite his size, is able to squeeze into Aladdin's lamp or a small bottle. This piece of fiction actually illustrates quite nicely the ability of jinns to size-shift. The depiction of a flame in a lamp is also reminiscent of plasma. Neon signs and fluorescent lamps have plasmas in them. Any type of fire with a very high temperature can generate a plasma.

Jinns are also believed to be able to shape-shift and therefore can appear to humans as snakes, scorpions, cattle, donkeys, birds, and other animals. They exist at a different "vibratory rate" or "energy level" and therefore are not normally visible or detectable by us. In other words, they can be said to be living in a parallel world which interpenetrates our own.

The Dictionary of Islam by Thomas Patrick Hughes states: "They become invisible at please (by a rapid extension or rarefaction of the particles which compose them), or suddenly disappear in the earth or air, or through a solid wall." Particles in plasma, through magnetic and electric forces, can increase their inter-particle distance to decrease the density of the plasma. The inter-particle distance in collisionless plasma is so large that objects of collisionless plasma can easily pass through each other.

All of these characteristics are consistent with plasma life forms as described by this author. Some writers have already argued that jinns are in fact plasma life forms, for example, Dr Ibrahim B Syed, a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville, School of Medicine.
We should note that the concept of plasma is a relatively modern one. The term "plasma" was coined by Irving Langmuir around 1929 and modern plasma physics only began in the twentieth century. A thousand years ago the concept of plasma did not exist. But the term "smokeless fire" captures rather nicely the image of a plasma. If we had fluorescent lamps and neon signs (which are composed of plasma) a thousand years ago, they would probably be described as "smokeless fire" or "fire without smoke".

Jinns cannot see human beings clearly but only as blurred images. However, just like humans, the perceptual ranges of some jinns may be wider giving them intermittent access to the human world (just as some humans have intermittent access to the jinn world). It will not be surprising if these jinns are considered "psychic" in their own world - being the few who are able to communicate with a strange species called "humans". The majority of jinns would probably consider humans as ghosts living in a parallel Earth.

Jinns in Societies
Like human beings, jinns are entrusted with responsibilities (careers, family life, etc.). We are told that many jinns accepted the mission and message of the Holy Prophet when they heard the Holy Qur'an read by the Prophet while performing "Fajr salaah" in Ukaz. It is therefore believed that jinns, just like humans, congregate into different religions and come together in different groups, sects and cults such as Muslims, Christians, Jews and even presumably atheists. They would have their own mosques, churches and temples - as reported by some persons who have had near-death experiences. In other words, jinns operate in societies, communities and within political systems and are startlingly similar to humans. Their plasma-based civilization has probably a longer history than ours.

"Good" and "Evil" Jinns
It is believed that every person is assigned a personal jinn called a "qareen". We are told that the Prophet Muhammad's qareen converted into a "good" Muslim jinn on listening to a recitation of the Qur'an because, among other things, it was "beautiful". This shows that jinns can be persuaded by arguments to change their behavior and that they are intelligent life forms with a sense of morality and even aesthetics.

Muslims believe that jinns will be rewarded for their righteousness and be punished for their wickedness just like humans. Jinns, like humans, will be judged on judgment day and be sent to heaven or hell according to the moral quality of the life they completed. They are therefore obviously thinking beings with free choice. Hence, they would also have a conscience.

In certain texts, jinns have been portrayed as "demons" or "evil" in contrast with humans. As explained in plasma metaphysics, the density of the bioplasma body is correlated to the strength of the being's self-concept - the denser the bioplasma body the more "egoistical" the being. When density increases the frequency decreases. We live in a lower energy universe than the jinns. Egoistical and malevolent jinns, with denser lower frequency bioplasma bodies, are therefore more likely to fall into and infiltrate our space more often. This sample of jinns that humans would most often encounter is both biased and tiny compared to the total population of jinns. We should therefore not judge all jinns by the few that we most often meet.
Furthermore, with all the wars, genocides, atrocities, murders, tortures, forced extinctions of other life-forms, irreparable damage to Earth's environment and simply despicable behavior of humans in recorded history it is quite difficult to defend a thesis which argues that humans are in some way more virtuous than jinns.

Some may argue that jinns influenced humans to do evil. But do not humans have free choice? The responsibility for evil acts must therefore lie squarely on the shoulders of humans that commit those acts. Jinns may have therefore become convenient scapegoats for humans. The logical conclusion based on all the most reliable facts is that just as there are good and evil humans there are good and evil jinns. This is in fact the general belief of Islam. (Here "good" and "evil" are used as subjective terms relative to some identifiable moral frame of reference.)

Can there be Plasma Life?
One critic is of the view that jinns, which are composed of "smokeless fire" cannot be life forms since the twenty-first chapter of the Qur'an says "We made from water every living thing." The argument is that since jinns are not composed of water they cannot be living things.
Logically before anyone can come to this conclusion she or he will have to define what life is. They have not done so. Perhaps they already know that there is still no consensus on the definition of life in the scientific community, though many leading scientists have tried to do so and have failed in one aspect or another. The definition of what life is, clearly, is far from settled. Just ask any biologist!

Secondly, in terms of sentence logic, it can be argued that "we made from water every living thing" does not go as far as "we made every living thing from water". The latter means the set of all living things is a subset of things made from water. The former simply means that everything that was made from water, within the context of the twenty-first chapter, was living. In other words, it means that the set of living things (not all) is a subset of things made of water. This more restricted interpretation is clearly more consistent with the rest of the Qur'an.

Anyone who states that jinns are not life forms must also explain how entities which live in societies, have free choice, are persuaded by verses from the Qur'an to change their behavior, have a sense of morality and an appreciation for aesthetics, move and communicate and ultimately to be subjected to judgement based on their actions and thoughts are not life forms or living things. Will it make sense to say that God will "judge" a non-life form on whether it had acted morally or not? How can a non-life form have free choice? How can a non-life form have a sense of morality?

Scientists are currently seriously considering other forms of life including silicon and gaseous life forms; and other substrates besides water, for example, liquid methane and ammonia. "Whether water is necessary for life is, I think, very dubious," says Christopher McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch at Washington State University in Pullman believes that the reliance on water by life forms on Earth is purely coincidental. "Life on Earth learned to work with water because it's the only liquid that is really abundant. I don't think there's anything magic about it," he says.

There are serious scientific reasons that have been put forward to argue that oceans of sulphuric acid might well do the job on a warmer planet; and oceans of methanol, ammonia, or even methane might suffice on a cooler planet. Some scientists have pointed out that not all of water's properties are unique. Hydrogen fluoride, sulphuric acid, ammonia and hydrogen peroxide share water's ability to carry around hydrogen ions which catalyse chemical reactions that are crucial for cells to digest nutrients - making life possible.

This author has already argued in the article "Dark Panspermia" (2008) that liquid water is essential for biochemical life as an agent for transport and protein folding. Its high heat capacity, ability to remain a liquid over a wide temperature range and properties as a solvent ensures a stable and useful substrate for biochemical activities. However, its importance is relative to biochemical life - not electromagnetic plasma-based life.
Bioplasma life forms are electromagnetic life forms which use magnetic fields to form structures and electric fields as agents of transport. Water is not necessary. Complex plasma (which is what bioplasma bodies are composed of, according to plasma metaphysics) can exist in a liquid-crystal state - similar to biological cells in the human body. Particles in a liquid-crystal phase are free to move about in much the same way as in a liquid, but as they do so they remain oriented in a certain direction. This feature may make it superior to water in its ability to support life in a higher energy location or universe.

Clay or Water?
Furthermore, as quoted above, in the fifty-fifth chapter of the Qur'an, it is stated that humans were made from clay. I think if you went into a restaurant and ordered a glass of water and you got a glass of clay - you will be able to tell the difference. So are humans made from water or clay? According to one category of scientific theories that deals with the origin of life, fine-grained crystals of clay might have very well been the first life forms on Earth.
According to these theories, self-replicating layered clay crystals evolved the ability to manufacture complex biomolecules, such as RNA, over millions of year which eventually became the dominant form of life on the planet. This gave rise to all types of life forms that we know today (not only human beings). A team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have shown that materials in clay were key to some of the initial processes in forming life. But Science also tells us that that the most common molecule in the human body is water. So is there a contradiction? The answer is "No" because we are describing the composition of life forms at two different points of time in their evolutionary history. The concept of evolution has to be taken into account in studying not only humans but also the jinns.

The eleventh chapter of the Qur'an states, "I will fill Hell with jinns and men all together". In this connection, there is also another criticism in the literature that if jinns were made from fire then they could not possibly suffer in hell fire since they are composed of the same substance. Notwithstanding that this implies a contradiction in the Qur'an, it is as absurd as saying that humans will not feel pain if pelted by clay pellets.
Again the concept of evolution is applicable. Even if humans evolved from the distant past from clay life, today we are of different composition. Similarly, jinns have also evolved from the elementary substrate "smokeless fire" to sophisticated plasma-based life forms. This includes (based on the author's study) a protective plasma membrane, which if destroyed, could subject a plasma life form to harmful radiation and unpleasantness. There are also as many types of plasma as there are types of hells. It is possible to imagine hot overcrowded hells as well as cold isolated hells.

(Note that in plasma metaphysics theory, the concept of hell is somewhat more complex. While there are natural regions in Earth's parallel plasmasphere that can be considered pleasant and unpleasant relative to a particular life form, there are also culturally conditioned landscapes which are superimposed over these regions.

Plasma, particularly "super plasma", is highly responsive to thoughts. Hence, the collective psychological forces emanating from a particular belief system in any particular community can generate a shared reality that can seem as real as the underlying natural region to the inhabitants of that belief system. The degree of reality experienced by the inhabitants existing in the shared reality is proportionate to the number of persons in the community and the duration of the beliefs.)

Homo-Jinns
Jinns are believed to be more numerous than humans on Earth. The author of Lawaami al-Anwaar al-Bahiya mentions a hadith as follows: "The jinn have children in the same way that the sons of Adam have children, but theirs are more in number." Hughes' Dictionary of Islam states that the jinn "propagate their species, sometimes in conjunction with human beings; in which latter case, the offspring partakes of the nature of both parents." This suggests the existence of jinn-human hybrids. A jinn-human hybrid can effectively live in two different "universes" and prevent the extermination of personal identity through the death of any one body.

For example, it is conceivable that the jinn component could separate itself from the human carbon and water-based body on the death of the latter and then propagate itself and its identity (which has now been enriched by the human experiences) through another human in a type of reincarnation. The jinn component could also separate itself when the human component is sleeping to visit other entities at its own energy level. In a sense, therefore, the genie leaves the bottle every time the hybrid sleeps and permanently on death.

Just like humans, individual jinns also die and are therefore not immortal. However, the personal identity of a human-jinn hybrid can conceivably be sustained for a long time by transferring the information relating to the personal identity or the "autobiographical memory" of the hybrid back and forth between the human and jinn components whose life spans are slightly out-of-phase. This is analogous to transferring a computer file from the hard drive in your computer to an external hard drive and vice-versa. But there is a missing piece - the receiving human being must have a way to generate a new bioplasma body for the older jinn to transfer the autobiographical memory of the deceased human-jinn hybrid. The new human-jinn hybrid can then pass on the memories to the next hybrid, and the cycles of existence repeat.

The human's carbon-based body has a brain that is composed of billions of neurons and even larger number of neural networks that can encode vast amounts of information. On the other hand, in the jinn's bioplasma body, we can imagine sophisticated holographic memory systems using plasma liquid crystal. A digital holographic system has been built by scientists at Stanford University and sophisticated real-time liquid crystal holographic memory systems have been created by Penn State engineers. (The holographic memory systems of plasma life forms are discussed in more detail in Jay Alfred's book Our Invisible Bodies, 2006.)

A pertinent question to ask is "How far back did this hybridization occur?" The further back in time it occurred the more extensive the hybridization.

What are the implications of this on the human species?
Jinns make up only one category of life forms composed of "smokeless fire" according to Islam. The other categories include the Janns, Shaitans, Ifrits and Marids. It is believed that the Jinn evolved from the more primitive Jann. The process of (Darwinian) evolution therefore presumably also occurs among the Jinn.

Conclusion - Darwinian Evolution in Parallel Universes
If we strip away the folklore and superstitions that have mired the study of the jinns through more than a millennium we will see that there is probably a kernel of truth that can be extracted from the literature to establish jinns as one category of plasma life forms. The history and evolution of jinns and humans have become intertwined - a symbiosis which is likely to continue into the future. To understand the origins and evolution of human beings, we will therefore have to study jinns and other plasma-based life forms within a scientific framework, using the latest scientific research to extend the initial understanding gleaned from religious sources. We may inevitably find that the Darwinian tree of life, identified in our universe only recently, both originates and extends into parallel universes.

Copyright Jay Alfred 2008
Jay Alfred has been researching on plasma life forms and their corresponding habitats since 2001. He is the author of 3 books which include Our Invisible Bodies  http://www.amazon.com/Our-Invisible-Bodies...e/dp/1412063264 , Brains and Realities and Between the Moon and Earth which are available on Amazon online bookstores. This research includes the study of bioplasma bodies which co-evolved with water-based carbon bodies on this planet.

Is Fukushima Radiation Causing the Epidemic of Dead and Starving Sea Lions In California? | Zero Hedge

Is Fukushima Radiation Causing the Epidemic of Dead and Starving Sea Lions In California? | Zero Hedge

Given that the FDA has refused to test seafood for radiation, we’re not that confident that the government is looking that hard to see if Fukushima fallout is the cause.

Madness in the fast lane - Luciferian super soldier mind control? No drugs found... Hypnotic superhumans? Sirhan Sirhan style?

Astounding incident on the M6 motorway in England. Two woman exhibit telepathic connection and super human abilities, some would say demonic. A shocking case which some believe was a scheduled event which even the police became part of. Some think that the woman were not of this Earth and others that this was a very rare mental illness experienced by one and lived out by both..  You will be shocked as the whole series of events are caught on film (and ‘that’s another story).

A BBC documentary "Madness in the Fast Lane" was aired on 10th August 2010 about an incident which happened in May 2008. The whole story is quite bizarre - and deeply troubling.

I have included more photos information, notes and 2 news reports below, but have summarised the main events described/shown/reconstructed in the documentary:

2 woman are   noticed on traffic CCTV walking down the centre of the M6 motorway (between crash barriers) Police go to get them One woman crosses the oncoming traffic and is HIT by a car but seems unhurt - she gets up. Police talk to them on the hard shoulder to find out what has happened. BOTH women JUMP into the oncoming traffic One woman is hit by a big truck and run over - she ends up in hospital Other woman (Sabina) is hit by a CAR (see below for a still from the documentary - showing the damage to the car she caused) Officers try to check and treat injuries while they are on the ground Woman hit (TWICE) by a car GETS UP and PUNCHES the officer and tries to run INTO the OTHER CARRIAGEWAY 6 people grab the woman and she is restrained and taken to hospital. She is RELEASED (seemingly unharmed) the next day and charged at the police station (this is filmed). Police find out the 2 girls are Swedish IDENTICAL TWINS (with 1 passport between them) Police suspect drug abuse, but blood tests reveal no unusual substances. Sabina (girl hit twice by a car) seems calm - and unconcerned about her sister who is still critically ill). After a short psychiatric assessment, Sabina is RELEASED and then meets up with Glenn Hollinshead in Fenton (near Stoke) The next day she stabs and kills Hollinshead She runs away with a hammer, hitting her head, is restrained by someone, but jumps off a bridge into another road. She breaks both ankles, fractures her skull but SURVIVES She is arrested and charged with manslaughter and she is currently serving a 5 year sentence (due for Parole release in 2011) Meanwhile, her sister has recovered and gone back to America.

View keele in a larger map - Zoom out to see where the CCTV camera was that picked them up View Larger Map

 It seems they were on their way from Liverpool to London - from Ireland and the driver of their coach got suspicious and refused to let them back on the coach. What were they going to do in London?
(This sort of reminds me of part of the film "V for Vendetta" - which features a superhuman indestructible person (who turns against his creators and tries to show people they're being lied to etc).
 The photo of Sabina Eriksson is rather striking. We hear stories about "super soldiers" and what not - were they going to do something significant in London? We may never know. But this really looks like an extreme form of mind control and some kind of "triggering" seems to have been involved. i.e. almost as soon as they see the police, they seem to have a sudden "death wish".How did these women survive? It's quite bizarre.

Was this some kind of disclosure? Some kind of "set up" with the BBC? Are there, as Miles Johnston suggests below, subliminal elements in the documentary itself?
Perhaps we should alert the authorities to investigate this woman further when she comes to be released....
More details below - as ever, make of it what you will...

Notes from Miles Johnston

I received these notes from Miles, and he also referred me to interviews he had posted on YouTube.

 http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=301&Itemid=83

 In 2008, BBC cameras filmed two Swedish sisters throwing themselves into traffic on the M6. When it was shown on BBC One, nearly 7 million viewers were glued to their screens, and millions more watched it later on YouTube.

The twins met in Ireland before traveling to England. After their odd behavior caused them to be left at an M6 service station, they ran on to the motorway numerous times and were struck by oncoming vehicles, causing Ursula to be incapacitated. Sabina refused medical aid and attacked a police officer, at which point she was arrested.
The footage was shocking. One previewer wrote On no account miss this documentary. It opens with what is perhaps the most extraordinary footage I’ve seen on TV.
But this amazing footage was only part of an even more incredible story, one which could not be told at the time for legal reasons.
Two years later, this documentary reveals the full story of the hours just before the cameras captured that motorway footage, and the even more chilling story of what happened over next 72 hours, which left one of the sisters fleeing the scene of a crime, after she had stabbed a man through the chest.

 This extraordinary case involving twins from Sweden, raises so many
questions and few answers that experts can agree on.Police witnessed what appeared to be two woman with either complete unawareness of their
surroundings or a deliberate suicide attempt, not once, twice but three times. From the moment the
first police units arrived things did not seem normal: After reports of two woman running into the fast
lanes of one of the countries busiest motorways they found them simply stood there - but then things
became even more bizarre.

In police presence each again ran in to traffic and were knocked unconscious, sustaining serious
injuries but they were shocked by one of the twins extraordinary recovery in front of their very eyes.

She showed an amazing ability to withstand pain and injuries and change from a state of
unconsciousness to running and fighting police and calling out to those nearby 'Call the police' being
unaware these uniformed officers were the police.

Were the twins acting out a dual tandem mind process and actions?.

They appeared not to have awareness or familiarity with their surroundings or environment. They did
not seem to see the vehicles that should have killed them both nor the police in full uniform. One
shouted to the other as one fought to get away from the 'police': "They are tryng to take our organs". They also exhibited extraordinary strength. It took six police officers to subdue one of the twins after
she rose from unconsciousness and attacked the police and again ran into traffic in the opposite
carriageway. Look at the sequence below and the videos.

New project, page 18: Everyone needs an imaginary friend

Skinwalkers - What Are They?

By Colm Kelleher and George Knapp
8-9-7

 

With skinwalkers becoming the subjects of popular books and recently, movies, it is fair to ask about their origins. In August 1996, a team of scientists arrived on a remote ranch in NE Utah to investigate a bizarre litany of phenomena; including unidentified flying objects, animal mutilations, paranormal and poltergeist occurrences that appeared to erupt almost on a nightly basis. The list went on and on. The first piece of information the team learned from local people was that the ranch lay "on the path of the skinwalker". Was the skinwalker responsible for the weird happenings on this ranch? What followed was a multi-year odyssey into the dark unknown as the science team tried to pursue, measure and photograph the elusive "skinwalker". The complete account of the unprecedented research project is published in the book "Hunt for the Skinwalker".   In the religion and cultural lore of Southwestern tribes, there are witches known as skinwalkers who can alter their shapes at will to assume the characteristics of certain animals. Most of the world's cultures have their own shapeshifter legends. The best known is the werewolf, popularized by dozens of Hollywood movies. European legends as far back as the 1500's tell stories about werewolves. (The modern psychiatric term for humans who believe they are wolves is lycanthropy.) The people of India have a were- tiger legend. Africans have stories of were-leopards and were- jackals. Egyptians tell of were-hyenas.   In the American Southwest, the Navajo, Hopi, Utes, and other tribes each have their own version of the skinwalker story, but basically they boil down to the same thing--a malevolent witch capable of transforming itself into a wolf, coyote, bear, bird, or any other animal. The witch might wear the hide or skin of the animal identity it wants to assume, and when the transformation is complete, the human witch inherits the speed, strength, or cunning of the animal whose shape it has taken.   "The Navajo skinwalkers use mind control to make their victims do things to hurt themselves and even end their lives," writes Doug Hickman, a New Mexico educator. "The skinwalker is a very powerful witch. They can run faster than a car and can jump mesa cliffs without any effort at all."   For the Navajo and other tribes of the southwest, the tales of skinwalkers are not mere legend. Just ask Michael Stuhff. A Nevada attorney, Stuhff is likely one of the few lawyers in the history of American jurisprudence to file legal papers against a Navajo witch. He has often represented Native Americans in his practice. He understands Indian law and has earned the trust of his Native American clients, in large part because he knows and respects tribal religious beliefs.   As a young attorney in the mid-70s, Stuhff worked in a legal aid program based near Genado Arizona. Many, if not most, of his clients were Navajo. His legal confrontation with a witch occurred in a dispute over child custody and financial support. His client, a Navajo woman who lived on the reservation with her son, was asking for full custody rights and back child support payments from her estranged husband, an Apache man. At one point during the legal wrangling, the husband got permission to take the son out for an evening, but didn't return the boy until the next day. The son later told his mother what had transpired that night.   According to the son, he spent the night with his father and a "medicine man." They built a fire atop a cliff and, for many hours, the medicine man performed ceremonies, songs, and incantations around the fire. As dawn broke, the three traveled into a wooded area near a cemetery, where they dug a hole. Into the hole, the medicine man deposited two dolls made of wood. One of the dolls was made of dark wood, the other of light wood. It was as if the two dolls were meant to represent the mother and her lawyer. Although Stuhff wasn't sure how seriously to take the news, he recognized that it certainly didn't sound good, so he sought out the advice of a Navajo professor at a nearby community college.   "He told me that the ceremony I had described was very powerful and very serious and that it meant that I was supposed to end up buried in that cemetery," Stuhff says. "He also said that a witch can perform this type of ceremony only four times in his life, because if he tries it more than that, the curse would come back on the witch himself. He also told me that if the intended victim found out about it, then the curse would come back onto the person who had requested it."   Stuhff thought about a way to let the husband know that he had found out about the ceremony, so he filed court papers that requested an injunction against the husband and the unknown medicine man, whom he described in the court documents as "John Doe, A Witch." The motion described in great detail the alleged ceremony. The opposing attorney appeared extremely upset by the motion, as did the husband and the presiding judge. The opposing lawyer argued to the court that the medicine man had performed "a blessing way ceremony," not a curse. But Stuhff knew that the judge, who was a Navajo, could distinguish between a blessing ceremony, which takes place in Navajo hogans (homes), and what was obviously a darker ceremony involving lookalike dolls that took place in the woods near a cemetery. The judge nodded in agreement when Stuhff responded. Before the judge could rule, Stuhff requested a recess so that the significance of his legal motion could sink in. The next day, the husband capitulated by agreeing to grant total custody to the mother and to pay all back child support.   "I took it very seriously because he took it seriously," Stuhff says. "I learned early on that sometimes witches will do things themselves to assist the supernatural, and I knew what that might mean."   Whether or not Stuhff literally believes that witches have supernatural powers, he acknowledges that this belief is strongly held in the Navajo nation. Certain communities on the reservation had reputations as witchcraft strongholds, he says. It is also unknown whether the witch he faced was a skinwalker or not. "Not all witches are skinwalkers," he says, "but all skinwalkers are witches. And skinwalkers are at the top. They are a witch's witch, so to speak."   According to University of Nevada-Las Vegas anthropologist Dan Benyshek, who specializes in the study of Native Americans of the Southwest, "Skinwalkers are purely evil in intent. I'm no expert on it, but the general view is that skinwalkers do all sorts of terrible things---they make people sick, they commit murders. They are graverobbers and necrophiliacs. They are greedy and evil people who must kill a sibling or other relative to be initiated as a skinwalker. They supposedly can turn into were-animals and can travel in supernatural ways."   Benyshek and other scientists do not necessarily endorse the legitimacy of the legends, but they recognize the importance of studying stories about skinwalkers because the power of the belief among Native Americans manifests itself in ways that are very real. "Oh, absolutely," says Benyshek explains. "Anthropologists have conducted scientific investigations into the beliefs in Native American witchcraft because of the effects of such beliefs on human health."   Anthropologist David Zimmerman of the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department explains: "Skinwalkers are folks that possess knowledge of medicine, medicine both practical (heal the sick) and spiritual (maintain harmony), and they are both wrapped together in ways that are nearly impossible to untangle."   As Zimmerman suggests, the flip side of the skinwalker coin is the power of tribal medicine men. Among the Navajo, for instance, medicine men train over a period of many years to become full- fledged practitioners in the mystical rituals of the Dine' (Navajo) people. The U.S. Public Health Service now works side by side with Navajo medicine men because the results of this collaboration have been proven, time and again, in clinical studies. The medicine men have shown themselves to be effective in treating a range of ailments.   "There has been a lot of serious research into medicine men and traditional healers," says Benyshek. "As healers, they are regarded as being very effective in some areas." But there is a dark side to the learning of the medicine men. Witches follow some of the same training and obtain similar knowledge as their more benevolent colleagues, but they supplement both with their pursuit of the dark arts, or black magic. By Navajo law, a known witch has forfeited its status as a human and can be killed at will. The assumption is that a witch, by definition, is evil.   "Witchcraft was always an accepted, if not widely acknowledged part of Navajo culture," wrote journalist A. Lynn Allison. "And the killing of witches was historically as much accepted among the Navajo as among the Europeans." Allison has studied what she calls the "Navajo Witch Purge of 1878" and has written a book on the subject. In that year, more than 40 Navajo witches were killed or "purged" by tribe members because the Navajo had endured a horrendous forced march at the hands of the U.S. Army in which hundreds were starved, murdered, or left to die. At the end of the march, the Navajo were confined to a bleak reservation that left them destitute and starving. The gross injustice of their situation led them to conclude that witches might be responsible, so they purged their ranks of suspected witches as a means of restoring harmony and balance. Tribe members reportedly found a collection of witch artifacts wrapped in a copy of the Treaty of 1868 and "buried in the belly of a dead person." It was all the proof they needed to unleash their deadly purge.   "Unexplained sickness or death of tribal members or their livestock could arouse suspicion of witchcraft," wrote Allison in her book. "So could an unexplained reversal of fortune, good or bad."   In the Navajo world, where witchcraft is important, where daily behavior is patterned to avoid it, prevent it, and cure it, there are as many words for its various forms as there are words for various kinds of snow among the Eskimos. If the woman thought he was adan'ti, she thought he had the power of sorcery-to convert himself into animal form, to fly, to perhaps become invisible. Very specific ideas. Where had she gotten them?   The Navajo people do not openly talk about skinwalkers, certainly not to outsiders. Author Tony Hillerman, who has lived for many years among the Navajo, used the skinwalker legend as the backdrop for one of his immensely popular detective novels, one that pitted his intrepid Navajo lawmen Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn against the dark powers of witchcraft. The following excerpt is from Skinwalkers:   "You think that if I confess that I witched your baby, then the baby will get well and pretty soon I will die," Chee said. "Is that right? Or, if you kill me, then the witching will go away." "You should confess," the woman said. "You should say you did it. Otherwise, I will kill you."   Hillerman has been harshly criticized by some Navajo for bringing unwanted attention to the subject of skinwalkers. "No one who has ever lived in the Navajo country would ever make light of this sinister situation," wrote one critic after Hillerman's book was produced as a movie that aired on PBS in 2003.   Anthropologist Zimmerman explains why so little information is available on skinwalkers: "Part of the reason you won't find a lot of information about skinwalkers in the literature is because it is a sensitive topic among the Dine. This is often referred to as proprietary information, meaning it belongs to the Dine' people and is not to be shared with the non-Dine'."   We know from personal experience that is it extremely difficult to get Native Americans to discuss skinwalkers, even in the most general terms. Practitioners of adishgash, or witchcraft, are considered to be a very real presence in the Navajo world. Few Navajo want to cross paths with naagloshii (or yee naaldooshi), otherwise known as a skinwalker. The cautious Navajo will not speak openly about skinwalkers, especially with strangers, because to do so might invite the attention of an evil witch. After all, a stranger who asks questions about skinwalkers just might be one himself, looking for his next victim.   "They curse people and cause great suffering and death," one Navajo writer explained. "At night, their eyes glow red like hot coals. It is said that if you see the face of a Naagloshii, they have to kill you. If you see one and know who it is, they will die. If you see them and you don't know them, they have to kill you to keep you from finding out who they are. They use a mixture that some call corpse powder, which they blow into your face. Your tongue turns black and you go into convulsions and you eventually die. They are known to use evil spirits in their ceremonies. The Dine' have learned ways to protect themselves against this evil and one has to always be on guard."   One story told on the Navajo reservation in Arizona concerns a woman who delivered newspapers in the early morning hours. She claims that, during her rounds, she heard a scratching on the passenger door of her vehicle. Her baby was in the car seat next to her. The door flung open and she saw the horrifying form of a creature she described as half-man, half-beast, with glowing red eyes and a gnarly arm that was reaching for her child. She fought it off, managed to pull the door closed, then pounded the gas pedal and sped off. To her horror, she says, the creature ran along with the car and continued to try to open the door. It stayed with her until she screeched up to an all-night convenience store. She ran inside, screaming and hysterical, but when the store employee dashed outside, the being had vanished. Outsiders may view the story skeptically, and any number of alternative explanations might be suggested, but it is taken seriously on the Navajo reservation.   Although skinwalkers are generally believed to prey only on Native Americans, there are recent reports from Anglos claiming they had encountered skinwalkers while driving on or near tribal lands. One New Mexico Highway Patrol officer told us that while patrolling a stretch of highway south of Gallup, New Mexico, he had had two separate encounters with a ghastly creature that seemingly attached itself to the door of his vehicle. During the first encounter, the veteran law enforcement officer said the unearthly being appeared to be wearing a ghostly mask as it kept pace with his patrol car. To his horror, he realized that the ghoulish specter wasn't attached to his door after all. Instead, he said, it was running alongside his vehicle as he cruised down the highway at a high rate of speed.   The officer said he had a nearly identical experience in the same area a few days later. He was shaken to his core by these encounters, but didn't realize that he would soon get some confirmation that what he had seen was real. While having coffee with a fellow highway patrolman not long after the second incident, the cop cautiously described his twin experiences. To his amazement, the second officer admitted having his own encounter with a white-masked ghoul, a being that appeared out of nowhere and then somehow kept pace with his cruiser as he sped across the desert. The first officer told us that he still patrols the same stretch of highway and that he is petrified every time he enters the area.   Once Caucasian family still speaks in hushed tones about its encounter with a skinwalker, even though it happened in 1983. While driving at night along Route 163 through the massive Navajo Reservation, the four members of the family felt that someone was following them. As their truck slowed down to round a sharp bend, the atmosphere changed, and time itself seemed to slow down. Then something leaped out of a roadside ditch at the vehicle.   "It was black and hairy and was eye level with the cab," one of the witnesses recalled. "Whatever this thing was, it wore a man's clothes. It had on a white and blue checked shirt and long pants. Its arms were raised over its head, almost touching the top of the cab. It looked like a hairy man or a hairy animal in man's clothing, but it didn't look like an ape or anything like that. Its eyes were yellow and its mouth was open."   The father described as a fearless man who had served two tours in Vietnam, turned completely white, the blood drained from his face. The hair on his neck and arms stood straight up, like a cat under duress, and noticeable goose bumps erupted from his skin. Although time seemed frozen during this bizarre interlude, the truck continued on its way, and the family was soon miles down the highway.   A few days later, at their home in Flagstaff, the family awoke to the sounds of loud drumming. As they peered out their windows, they saw the dark forms of three "men" outside their fence. The shadowy beings tried to climb the fence to enter the yard but seemed inexplicably unable to cross onto the property. Frustrated by their failed entry, the men began to chant in the darkness as the terrified family huddled inside the house.   The story leaves several questions unanswered. If the beings were skinwalkers, and if skinwalkers can assume animal form or even fly, it isn't clear why they couldn't scale a fence. It is also not known whether the family called the police about the attempted intrusion by strangers.   The daughter, Frances, says she contacted friend, a Navajo woman who is knowledgeable about witchcraft. The woman visited the home, inspected the grounds, and offered her opinion that the intruders had been skinwalkers who were drawn by the family's "power" and that they had intended to take that power by whatever means necessary. She surmised that the intrusion failed because something was protecting the family, while admitting that it was all highly unusual since skinwalkers rarely bother non-Indians. The Navajo woman performed a blessing ceremony at the home. Whether the ceremony had any legitimacy or not, the family felt better for it and has had no similar experiences in the ensuing years.   This disturbing account is not offered as definitive proof of anything, particularly since we have not personally interviewed the witnesses. It is presented only as an illustration of the intense fear and unsettling descriptions that permeate skinwalker lore, and which are accepted at face value by the Native Americans for whom the skinwalker topic is not just a spooky children's story.   So, exactly how and when did the skinwalker legend intersect with the Gorman ranch in northeastern Utah? Retired teacher and UFO researcher Junior Hicks says his friends in the Ute tribe believe the skinwalker presence in the Uinta Basin extends back at least 15 generations. The Utes, described by historians as a fierce and warlike people, were sometimes aligned with the Navajo against common enemies during the 1800's. But the alliance didn't last. When the Utes first acquired horses from the Spanish, they enthusiastically embraced the Spanish example by engaging in the slave trade. They reportedly abducted Navajos and other Indians and sold them in New Mexico slave markets. Later, during the American Civil War, some Ute bands took orders from Kit Carson in a military campaign against the Navajo. According to Hicks, the Utes believe the Navajo put a curse on their tribe in retribution for many perceived transgressions. And ever since that time, Hicks was told, the skinwalker has plagued the Ute people.   The ranch property has been declared as off-limits to tribal members because it lies in the path of the skinwalker. Even today, Utes refuse to set foot on what they see as accursed land. But the tribe doesn't necessarily believe that the skinwalker lives on the ranch. Hicks says the Utes told him that the skinwalker lives in a place called Dark Canyon, which is not far from the ranch. In the early 1980's, Hicks sought permission from tribal elders to explore the canyon. He's been told there are centuries-old petroglyphs in Dark Canyon, some of which depict the skinwalker. But the tribal council denied his request to explore the canyon. One member later confided to Hicks that the tribe denied the request because it did not want to disturb the skinwalker for fear that it might "create problems." The tribe's advice to Hicks: "Leave it alone."   Dan Banyshek suggests that some parts of this account don't add up. He thinks it unlikely that the Navajo would enlist the assistance of a skinwalker to carry out their revenge on the Utes, no matter how much the tribe might want some payback on their enemy. "The skinwalkers are regarded as selfish, greedy, and untrustworthy," Banyshek says. "If the Navajo knew someone to be a skinwalker, they would probably kill him, not ask for his help with the Utes. Besides, even if he was asked, the skinwalker would be unlikely to help the Navajo get revenge, since his motives are entirely evil and self-serving. From the Navajo perspective, this story doesn't make sense."   But from the Ute perspective, it could ring true. "The Utes could very likely have concluded that the curse is real," explains Banyshek. "Different tribes or bands would often tell stories about the evil motives of other tribes they were in conflict with, about how another tribe was in league with witches, or how other tribes were cannibals. The Utes might tell themselves this story as a way to explain their own misfortunes."   Hicks told us that the Indians say they see them a lot. "When they go out camping," he says, "they sprinkle bark around their campsites and light it as protection against these things. But it's not just Indians. Whites see them, too." Like his Ute neighbors, Hicks sometimes uses the terms skinwalker and Sasquatch interchangeably. He says he's seen photographs of the telltale huge footprints often associated with Bigfoot, taken in the vicinity of the Gorman ranch. But whether it was a run-of-the-mill Sasquatch or a far more sinister skinwalker isn't always clear, even to those who accept he existence of both.   "There was an incident 16 years ago where a skinwalker was on a porch in Fort Duchesne," Hicks remembers. "They called the tribal police and tracked it east toward the river. They took some shots at it and thought they hit it because they found blood on the ground, but they never found a body."   We also conducted an interview with a Ute man who worked as a security officer for the tribe. He provided us with details about his own encounter with a Bigfoot or skinwalker. Brandon Ware (not his real name) received his police training at an academy associated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He says he was working the 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. shift, guarding a tribal building near a part of the reservation known as Little Chicago. Between midnight and 1:00 in the morning, Ware walked up to check on the building and noticed that the guard dogs inside were calm but intently staring through a window at something outside. They weren't barking, he said, just looking.   "I could see this big ol' round thing, you know, in the patio over there," Ware recalls, " and the hair started raising on my neck and I kinda got worried a little bit trying to figure out what things were. I stood there and watched it for a few minutes, then it came over the top and headed down the road. But I could smell it. Even after it was gone, you could smell it."   Ware says that when the creature realized it was being observed, it briefly looked over at Ware, then vaulted over a short wall that surrounded the patio area outside the building. He says it took off running toward the Little Chicago neighborhood, crashing into garbage cans as it moved past the homes, and generating a cacophony of loud barking by every dog in the immediate area. Ware says he then went into the building and telephoned another on-duty officer who was nearby. By the time Ware left the building, the other officer had pulled up in his patrol car.   Ware told the other officer to turn off his engine so they could listen to the hubbub that was still unfolding among the nearby homes. "We listened a little bit and we could hear it. Then we jumped in and took off. We headed down the hill to see if we could catch up to it."   The two officers didn't see the creature again that night, but had no trouble tracing its path through the cluster of homes because they were able to follow a noticeable trail of scattered garbage cans. "It must have gone straight on through, " Ware recalls. "We could see where cans---people usually tie up their cans---they were all off. I told the other officer, 'hey man, maybe it picked up them cans and was throwing them at those dogs'."   Ware provided us with further details about what he had seen. His initial impression was of something dark and round. But he says that when the creature stood erect to vault over the patio wall, it appeared to be "huge." Ware was carrying a large flashlight at the time of the encounter. He says he was using the flashlight just minutes before the encounter while checking the doors of the building, but when he tried to use it to illuminate the creature, the light wouldn't turn on. When the creature took off running down the hill, the flashlight clicked back on.   "He moved quick," he told us. "Whatever it was, it moved---I called him a 'he'---it could have been a she. It could have been whatever, but he moved quick going down through there. But it was kind of cool. It was neat. I never knew it....it was something I've never seen before. I've heard about them. I heard the old people talking about some of these things."   Just a few nights later, Ware got a chance for a second look. He and another officer, "Bob", were patrolling a back road that emerges at a spot known as Shorty's Hill. They emerged from the road to a pasture area that is punctuated by a large rock. "I don't know if it was the same guy or not," Ware says. "It was a big ol' black hairy thing hanging there, and when it turned around, it had big ol' eyes on him about yea big. We'd just passed it and I told Bob 'there he is,' and then he come to a screeching halt and we backed up. By the time we got out, it was gone."   Ware described the creature's eyes as being "coal red" and unusually large. He isn't sure whether the headlights of the patrol car might have affected his perception of the beast's eye color, but tends to doubt it. He has no doubt about the presence of the beast itself. "We got out there to go look and we had shotguns and pistols and everything. We were going to blow him away," Ware admits.   When pressed for his opinion of what he had seen, whether it might have been a Sasquatch or even a skinwalker, Ware's response seemed to draw a distinction between the two, but the distinction became blurry as the conversation progressed and Ware explained his understanding of tribal lore.   "Sasquatch, he's an old man, an old man that lives on a mountain," he explained. "He just comes in and looks at people and then he goes back out again. He just lives there all his life, never takes care of himself, and just smells real bad. Almost like, almost like that guy, like he is dirty, dirty human being smell is what it smelled like...a real deep, bad odor....It smelled like dirty bad underarms...The closer I got, the worse the smell got." Could the creature he saw have been a skinwalker?   "Nope," said Ware. "A skinwalker's smaller. A skinwalker is the size of humans, six foot and under. They don't come in most of the time to where the animals are at. They come in where people are at. They can come right here and you'd never know he was standing here looking at you in the middle of the night...they can take the shape of anything they want to take the shape of. Like I said, they're medicine."   Ware said that skinwalker sightings among the Utes are not uncommon. He told us of an encounter with two shapeshifters near the Gorman ranch. The figures he described are so unusual, so far outside our own concept of reality as to be almost comical, like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. One local who saw them in the road in Fort Duchesne described them as humans with dog heads smoking cigarettes. But Ware was perfectly serious in his description. He certainly did not bare his soul for comic effect and we have no interest in making light of his story. For him, and for many others, skinwalkers are as real as the morning sun or the evening moon. They are a part of everyday life, and they most certainly are integral to the story of the Gorman ranch.   Could the Utes have used the skinwalker curse as an all- encompassing explanation for their assorted tribal misfortunes, as Banyshek asks? Or are they relying on the legend as an umbrella explanation for the wide range of paranormal events that have been reported in the vicinity of their lands for generations--in particular, in the vicinity of the ranch?   If a skinwalker really is a shapeshifter, capable of mind control and other trickery, might it also have the ability to conjure up nightmarish visions of Bigfoot or UFOs? Could it steal and mutilate cattle, incinerate dogs, generate images of monsters , unknown creatures, or extinct species, and could it also frighten hapless residents with poltergeist-like activity?   At the very least, the skinwalker legend might be a convenient way for the Utes to grasp a vast menu of otherwise inexplicable events, the same sort of events that might stymie and confuse a team of modern scientists.   One thing is sure, by summer 2007 it is obvious that the legend of skinwalkers is entering popular culture in ways not seen before.   Colm Kelleher and George Knapp Authors: Hunt for the Skinwalker http://www.huntfortheskinwalker.com

DMT: The Hobbes Drug

Dr. Rick Strassman's "DMT: The Spirit Molecule," by Charles Carreon at American Buddha Online Library

DR. RICK STRASSMAN'S "DMT: THE SPIRIT MOLECULE"

by Charles Carreon I just finished reading "DMT: The Spirit Molecule," by Rick Strassman, M.D. who practices psychiatry in Taos, New Mexico and is a Clinical Associate Professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Dr. Strassman managed to finagle permits to administer DMT, "an extremely short-acting and powerful psychedelic," at the UNM School of Medicine. Beginning in 1990, and continuing for five years, he administered 400 doses of DMT to 60 human volunteers. Dr. Strassman has great intellectual credentials, including degrees from Stanford and Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. He interned in general psychiatry at U.C. Davis Medical Center where he received the Sandoz Award for outstanding graduate resident in 1981. He has also been a Zen Buddhist for over 20 years and is deeply interested in the liberating spiritual potential of psychedelic drugs. Dr. Strassman's avowed purpose for his DMT work was to find ways to do good things for people with psychedelic drugs, but he was compelled to follow strict bio-medical protocols that ultimately hamstrung his research efforts and made him question whether there was any point in continuing. He left the project after his wife contracted cancer, and the promised additional support for his psychedelic research from other medical professionals failed to materialize. Dr. Strassman makes it clear that a great way to screw up a promising scientific career is to become interested in psychedelic research. He recounts a telling conversation with an anonymous "Dr. K," at the San Diego V.A. Hospital. Dr. Strassman was on his fellowship, and was having a "rambling and wide-ranging" conversation with Dr. K., when he ventured one of his pet theories: "Do you think," I offered, "that the pineal [gland] might produce psychedelic compounds? It seems to have the right ingredients. Maybe it somehow mediates spontaneous psychedelic types of states -- psychosis for example." Dr. K. stopped in his tracks and turned on his heels. His brow furrowed and he peered at me intently through his glasses. A palpable menace glinted from his eyes. "Ooops," I thought. "Let me tell you this, Rick," he said slowly and firmly. "The pineal has nothing to do with psychedelic drugs." Dr. Strassman learned his lesson, and did not speak the words "pineal and psychedelic in the same breath to anyone" for the remainder of the year. Of course, we expect scientists to be uptight, because they have grants to protect, wives to support, kids to feed, and politicians to please. However, Strassman never expected to discover that his fellow Zen Buddhists were even more uptight than Dr. K., who just didn't want anyone screwing up his reputation in the pineal gland business. Strassman's experiments utilized intravenous injections of DMT at dosage levels calculated at .05 mg./kg. of body weight for a low dose, and .4 mg./kg. for a high dose. The onset of psychedelic effect after injection is immediate with doses of .2 mg./kg. and above. What Strassman discovered in his experiments upended his hypothetical applecart. He expected people to have mystical and near-death type experiences. He did not expect for many of his experimental subjects to declare with certainty that they had met other beings during their experience, whom they described as "clowns" or "elves," who took an intensive interest and delight in the experimental subject's appearance in their dimension. These beings reside behind the brilliantly colored curtains of psychedelic light that immediately invade the visual sense field within seconds after administration of the drug. Ultimately, Dr. Strassman seemed to give up on his efforts to interpret these beings as projections of psychological features, as one subject after another refused to accept that characterization, insisting that the beings were real, the place where they met the beings was real, and they did not reflect mere inner experiences in a Freudian or Jungian sense. Dr. Strassman was also surprised when one person after another recounted experiences strangely reminiscent of alien abduction stories when receiving a high dose of DMT. Admittedly, Dr. Strassman was administering the DMT in a large hospital, where medical hardware was everywhere present, and bio-medical protocols required that he take blood draws, blood pressure readings, and even EEGs and MRIs of people tripping their brains out. Nevertheless, lots of people recorded experiences that involved detailed visualizations of large numbers of intelligent beings, often reptilian or automaton-like, tending huge machines in vast illuminated complexes, and performing examinations of the experimental subject. They often bonded with one of the strange beings and were regarded indifferently by the rest. This reminded me of my friend Ernesto's DMT experience that he recently recounted. Depositing the DMT powder on a bed of dried pscyhotria viridis, which has a small amount of naturally occurring DMT in it, and putting another layer of psychotria viridis on top of the dust (to prevent it from bursting into flame) he applied a butane lighter flame and consumed the entire bowl in one breath. The effects were as fast as promised, and as he exhaled the white smoke, complex colored patterns appeared in the smoke-swirls. His entire psychosomatic system began to vibrate, from the inside out and from the outside in, and the only thing he could hear was a mantra, a single word repeated endlessly. This mantra seemed to protect him from disorganizing energy, keeping him collected around his center. He felt a bit of anxiety that the experience might get out of control, but it did not. With eyes open or closed, he saw colored patterns of an extremely complex geometric structure that gradually began to resemble reptilian structures such as scales and bones. After around five minutes, Ernesto got up from his seat and laid down under a blanket. There, for around the next 1-1/2 hours, he continued to experience a reptilian presence. This reptilian presence was somewhat disturbing to Ernesto, because of the conditioning we have against reptiles, but the reptile presence spoke to him gently, encouraging him to appreciate the reptilian history in his body, and its great strength and resilience. The reptilian spirit told him that it was a source of his strength, that he needed in order to succeed as a living being. Ernesto accepted this understanding, and gradually dealt with the tension between conditioned repulsion and wholesome self-acceptance. He saw images of primitive spears, the extensions of reptilian talons and claws. In days following, Ernesto's strength and resolve in the course of ordinary life seemed strengthened and smoothly directed. A few nights later, he advised, he had brief DMT-like colored visions in his dreams. He stated that the experience had not been anywhere near as frightening as common stories had caused him to expect, and if given the opportunity, he would try another DMT voyage. According to his grant proposal, Dr. Strassman was not supposed to be giving therapy, but leading people through the inner world always requires the intuitive skills of a healer. He never knew when one of his experimental subjects would experience a terrifying upheaval. One poor fellow, a happy raver-type with charming looks and a light-hearted attitude, who had consumed lots of MDMA (ecstasy) in recreational settings, suffered a nightmare ordeal on a high-dose trip. The drug kicked in, his feet convulsed in a kicking motion, and he remained rigid for ten minutes. Then he opened his eyes, sat up, and declared that he had just been raped anally by two crocodiles who sat on his chest and immobilized him so completely that he was unable to sit up or reach out for a comforting hand. As he put it, when the experience began he thought it was a dream but "then realized it was really happening." Of course, with the time distortion effect added in, this was a monolithic exercise in agony. Interestingly, this subject considered the experience fundamentally beneficial, in that it increased his appreciation for ordinary life. He cut down on his ecstasy-taking in trivial social interactions, moved in with his girlfriend, and assumed a quiet lifestyle. Whether covered with contrived nonchalance, or with a veneer of spiritual sophistication, the soft underbelly of the human psyche is quickly exposed by this substance. A woman who prepared for her session by flipping through the New Yorker had an extremely miserable trip on a very low dose and accepted no further injections. A modern-day shaman named Carlos kept trying to explain away his high anxiety before each administration of the drug, which induced violent shaking notwithstanding his profession that his first dose was nothing much. Eventually he had a full death experience that he considered fully valid spiritually, but wished he had been with friends out in the mountains when it took place. But some of the most enthusiastic were unable to continue. In certain cases, DMT high-doses induce huge spikes in blood pressure, in one case so severe Dr. Strassman was ready to call the cardiac team, and diagnosed the slight headache that the subject felt after the trip as the result of extreme vaso-dilation in the large blood vessels that enter the base of the skull. But the experimenter was pleased with the experience, and notwithstanding his disability, wished to take further trips. Though he was not permitted by Strassman, the subject remained grateful and considered it a very important experience that confirmed the rightness of his spiritual direction. Under the guise of trying to determine whether DMT administration develops a tolerance in the user, Dr. Strassman developed a protocol of four high-dose injections approximately one hour apart. These doses were .3 mg./kg., not the highest dose but plenty psychedelic. Dr. Strassman said that everyone who was given the opportunity persevered through all four doses, a moderately exhausting experience. First, the answer to the tolerance question -- DMT does not build up a tolerance, and each successive dose was just as powerful as the first. What changed was the character of the experience, which seems to profit from familiarity. The first high dose trip is the shocker, when people don't know what they are going to see and aren't sure they like seeing it. The second and third trips grow increasingly familiar. And by the fourth trip, many people felt cleaned out, healed and freed of persistent anxiety. One young woman in her early twenties who professed a lesbian orientation and was highly attractive to people of both sexes, had a persistent pain in her belly. She had been raped repeatedly by her step-father at sixteen. During her four sessions, she met the beings on the other side, whom she called the elves, and discharged the pain in her midsection, which she connected with the rapes. She valued the experience very highly and felt that she would now enjoy her life a great deal more. In addition to the powerful psychedelic effects, which caused people to blurt out things like, "Here we go!" and "They were on me quick," DMT releases large amounts of vasopressin, prolactin, growth hormone, and corticotropin, all of which may have psychological effects. During the drug effect, pupil diameter doubled within two minutes, and body temperature would rise. Dr. Strassman's theory that the pineal gland may produce DMT seems unsupported by the information in the book, but it is an intriguing theory, an explanation for why this organ, centrally located in the brain, contains so many of the precursor substances that create DMT. Reasons for joining the experiment were the expected -- people wanted new experiences, wanted to understand the nature of their own existence and God, and wanted to deepen their understanding of life. Interestingly, many of them found a bit of what they were looking for, or at least thought they had. Dr. Strassman himself became increasingly uncertain as he looked for concrete changes in behavior, beyond expostulations of enthusiasm. From my point of view, Dr. Strassman may have been looking too hard in the wrong places. When it comes to judging how we are doing, it's hard to say that anyone knows better than we ourselves. After years of doing the work, Dr. Strassman indeed was getting tired. One can imagine the stress of responding to the heightened mental states and emotional reactions of sensitive people questing for self knowledge. Then his wife got cancer and they moved to Canada to be closer to her relatives. Dr. Strassman started commuting to Albuquerque from Canada every couple of months, jamming in as many psychedelic sessions as possible. The fatigue took a further toll. As I mentioned, Dr. Strassman is a long-time practicing Zen Buddhist, and like many Buddhists, had talked with other Buddhists about how LSD had led them into the search for enlightenment. He had a number of friends, long-time students in an unnamed Zen Buddhist organization that we could possibly identify by connecting the dots: the group is based in the midwest, the teacher died recently, the head of the organization is now a woman, and the organization chooses its leaders by election. It is a large group. Also, they are a bunch of assholes. How do we know they are assholes? Because they dumped shit all over poor Dr. Strassman when he needed it the least. He had shared his thoughts about his work, and his hopes and aspirations to connect the spiritual path with psychedelic methods, disclosing deep thoughts to a person he thought was his spiritual counselor. Within the DMT sessions themselves, he incorporated attitudes of modeling equanimity and projecting compassion, Buddhist attitudes that helped subjects to benefit from the experience. Additionally, he selected for the experiment numbers of persons who had experience with psychedelic drugs and meditation, believing that they were best adapted to deal with the jarring effects of the experience. For all this respect and the place of honor that Dr. Strassman accorded Buddhism in his life and work, he was rewarded with the most arrogant, presumptuous declaration of insult that I have heard delivered from a Buddhist source in recent years. His former Buddhist pals derided his work with DMT as "not right livelihood," and denounced his plan to administer psychedelics to the terminally ill as an "appallingly dangerous" effort to "play God." With the full confidence of having reached enlightenment themselves, they decreed: "An attempt to induce enlightenment experiences by chemical means can never, will never, succeed. What it will do is badly confuse people and result in serious consequences for you." This pronouncement certainly confused Dr. Strassman, who until then had been receiving encouragement from his old stoner pals who had put on Buddhist robes. He realized that there was a succession struggle going on within the Zen group, because the old abbot was dying, and "senior monks were lobbying for elected posts," each vying for the position of "most zealous defender of the teaching." Then Dr. Strassman really stuck his foot in it. He published an article in Tricycle, Fall 1996, calling for "a discussion of integrating psychedelics into Buddhist practice." As Dr. Strassman put it, the "article sealed my fate ... my lifelong affiliation with the order would implicate it as contributing to these new ideas." In order to distance the Zen group from Dr. Strassman's vile heresy, his erstwhile friend, a nun who had been elected new chief poobah, "sent copies of the Tricycle article to members of my new meditation group as well as to other groups and the monastery [including] scribbled comments" Dr. Strassman had made during their private conversations. She also "wrote to the local congregation telling them not to enter my house because there might be psychedelic drugs kept in it." (This reminds me of James Thurber's mother-in-law's fear that electricity might leak out of the sockets and electrocute you. It also reminds me of Timothy Leary's statement that LSD is a substance well-known to cause insanity in those who have not taken it.) This betrayal by his old spiritual comrades was apparently the last nail in the DMT experiment's coffin. Says Dr. Strassman, "Although I could see beyond the hypocrisy that motivated much of the monastery's repudiation of my work, it took its toll." Shortly thereafter, he wrote closing summaries on all of his projects, packed up his drugs and mailed them to a secure facility near Washington, D.C., where "the supplies of DMT, psilocybin, and LSD remain ... to this day." Probably right next to the Ark of the Covenant, left there by Indiana Jones.

99%, 1%... It's all so confusing (except to the DIA)

Hell's Angels -- A Strange and Terrible Saga of The Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, by Hunter S. Thompson at American Buddha Online Library

We're the one percenters, man -- the one percent that don't fit and don't care. So don't talk to me about your doctor bills and your traffic warrants -- I mean you get your woman and your bike and your banjo and I mean you're on your way. We've punched our way out of a hundred rumbles, stayed alive with our boots and our fists. We're royalty among motorcycle outlaws, baby.

-- A Hell's Angel speaking for the permanent record

You're Not Going To Believe Who Mario Monti Just Named As Italy's New Finance Minister | COLLAPSENET

You're Not Going To Believe Who Mario Monti Just Named As Italy's New Finance Minister | COLLAPSENET

You're Not Going To Believe Who Mario Monti Just Named As Italy's New Finance Minister

Witness one and all, the banks "repossessing" entire governments as financial dictators. The rule of the technocrats will probably be the last action of infinite growth. All it can possible accomplish is the expedited and more-efficient sucking of wealth, hope and life from the world before the lights go out. -- MCR

ASK LO PAN

Crack makes you skinny!

"Who the hell is Lo Pan?", you may ask. Lo Pan is a child's laughter, a swift kick in the crotch, a prize at the bottom of a cereal box. He is all of the great things we hold dear in this world.

Simply yet unequivocally, Lo Pan is a catalyst in our world, here to purge the filth that natural selection is no longer able to cleanse. And for that Lo Pan, we thank you.