Mind Power News
Issue No. 140 / Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Edited by Andreas Ohrt / www.MindPowerNews.com

In this issue:

IS THE HUMAN BRAIN WIRED TO BELIEVE IN SUPERNATURAL? A majority of us believe in ghosts, magic and fortune tellers - not just because we want to but because we have to. Our brains are programmed to find supernatural explanations for the mysteries of our world...

IS GOD IN YOUR BRAIN? Is God in your brain? Or, to put it in different terms, is an intense religious experience merely a neurological phenomenon? Could one artificially induce a spiritual event by stimulating specific areas of the brain?

THEORIES OF TELEPATHY AND AFTERLIFE CAUSE UPROAR AT SCIENCE FORUM: Scientists claiming to have evidence of life after death and the powers of telepathy triggered a furious row at Britain’s premier science festival yesterday.

TESTS SUGGEST TELEPHONE TELEPATHY IS REAL: The commonest kind of apparent telepathy in the modern world takes place in connection with telephone calls. About 80 per cent of the population claim to have had experiences in which they think of someone for no apparent reason, then that person calls; or they know who is calling when the phone rings, before picking it up. Many people have had similar experiences with e-mails.

IS YOUR PHONE PSYCHIC AN OUT-OF-WORK ACTOR? Many so called "psychic hotlines" are simply people such as out of work actors trained in the art of giving fake "live psychic readings" using a process known as "cold reading".

Free Report: Psychic Hotlines Exposed

If you've ever called one of those psychic hotlines or have thought of doing so then you must read this free report which exposes the scams of most telephone psychics. For a limited time Adrian Cooper is offering this excellent 38-page report as a free gift to all members of the Mind Power News community. Download the free report here.

Is the Human Brain Wired to Believe in Supernatural?

By Dick Ahlstrom
Source: The Irish Times

A majority of us believe in ghosts, magic and fortune tellers - not just because we want to but because we have to. Our brains are programmed to find supernatural explanations for the mysteries of our world, a professor told a major science conference in Britain yesterday.

Prof Bruce Hood argues that our brains are designed to organise sensory information and establish cause and effect. Even babies of 12 months are able to do this, implying it is innate rather than learned.

"It is just something our brains try to do," said Prof Hood, who holds the University of Bristol's chair of developmental psychology. "The mechanisms are probably hard-wired."

This same wiring system, however, leaves us liable to accept less than scientific explanations for the unexplainable, whether it is magic, the notion of a sixth sense or a belief in luck, he added.

Prof Hood described his theories and research yesterday at the British Association's annual Festival of Science, which opened at the weekend in Norwich, England.

Even in this modern scientific age, most people cling to the notion of magic and the supernatural, he said. He cited a Gallup poll from the US that showed only 7 per cent of those sampled did not believe in any form of supernatural phenomenon such as telepathy, deja vu, reincarnation or ghosts.

"How can science make sense of such mass delusion?" he asked. His answer lies in the brain itself.

Many supernatural beliefs originate from the same mental and physiological process that also lead to rational explanations through what is called "intuitive reasoning", he said.

Developmental biologists have seen this process at work in infants less than a year old. Humans at all ages attempt to create structure and pattern to explain what they see and experience in the world and also what they cannot see.

As the adult matures, "rational" answers arising from unexplained events are as likely to incorporate a supernatural dimension.

"No amount of education is going to counter what a person believes is intuitively correct."

Repeated misapprehensions feed our belief in the supernatural, Prof Hood said. For example, studies have shown that 90 per cent of people believe they can detect when someone is staring at them. Many also report thinking about a person just before they receive a telephone call from them, putting this down to a sixth sense.

This cannot be proven in tests, but people still believe it. "The belief is still so common that most people are unaware that it is controversial." There may be evolutionary benefits from holding these beliefs, he said.

The use of lucky charms or the pre-match ritual of a sportsman give a person a perception of control in situations where in fact we have none.

"Most important, a belief in the supernatural can give people a deep sense of connection with the past and with each other."


Is God In Your Brain?

Source: NeuroScienceMarketing.com

Is God in your brain? Or, to put it in different terms, is an intense religious experience merely a neurological phenomenon? Could one artificially induce a spiritual event by stimulating specific areas of the brain?

While we aren’t at the point where we can flip a switch to get godly, intriguing new research has identified some of the neurological characteristics of a religious experience. A group of nuns were studied using an fMRI machine as they relived their most religious experience in order to identify the areas of the brain which experienced more activity.

Nature reports in 'Nuns Go Under the Brain Scanner' that a team led by Mario Beauregard and V. Paquette at the University of Montreal recruited 15 Carmelite nuns to undergo the scan process. Rather than being asked to pray, which the nuns reported didn’t always lead to an intense spiritual experience, they were asked to fully relive the most mystical moment in their lives.

Perhaps thankfully for religiously-oriented people, no single brain area stood out as the center of spiritual activity. Earlier research suggested that the temporal cortex might be the “God spot” in the brain and the origin of religious feelings.

"The researchers found a collection of brain areas that were more active during the recollected mystical experience than the emotional one, they report in Neuroscience Letters. The caudate nucleus, for example, which is associated with positive feelings such as happiness and bliss, appeared more active during the mystical memories. The team also saw particular activity in regions thought to integrate physical feelings from the rest of the body, which perhaps explains the perception that the nuns had become one with God and their surroundings. They also found an increase in certain types of electrical activity associated with deep sleep and meditation.

...The new study also found activation in the temporal cortex, one of many regions that were involved. Beauregard says that this is what might be expected of a complicated emotional and cognitive experience."

There’s some interest in being able to artificially create a spiritual experience in individuals, as some health benefits seem to accrue. The article doesn’t mention it, but such an experience might be desirable on its own merits, even by non-religious people. The ethical considerations here could be interesting if research leads to a means to stimulate a spiritual, or pseudo-spiritual experience. Due to the complexity of the experience, though, it looks like the “God button” will be at least as elusive as the mythical “buy button.”

Theories of Telepathy and Afterlife Cause Uproar at Top Science Forum

By Mark Henderson
Source: Times Online

Scientists claiming to have evidence of life after death and the powers of telepathy triggered a furious row at Britain’s premier science festival yesterday.

Organisers of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (the BA) were accused of lending credibility to maverick theories on the paranormal by allowing the highly controversial research to be aired unchallenged.

Leading members of the science establishment criticised the BA’s decision to showcase papers purporting to demonstrate telepathy and the survival of human consciousness after someone dies. They said that such ideas, which are widely rejected by experts, had no place in the festival without challenge from sceptics.

The disputed session featured research from Rupert Sheldrake, an independent biologist who is funded by Trinity College, Cambridge, that claims to have found evidence that some people know telepathically who is calling them before they answer the telephone.

Other presentations came from Peter Fenwick, a doctor who thinks deathbed visions suggest that consciousness survives when people die, and from Deborah Delanoy of the University of Hertfordshire, whose work suggests that people can affect the bodies of others by thinking about them.

Critics including Lord Winston and Sir Walter Bodmer, both former presidents of the BA, expressed particular alarm that the three speakers were allowed to hold a promotional press conference. Some said telepathy has already been found wanting in experiments, and had no place at a scientific meeting.

“Work in this field is a complete waste of time,” said Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. “Although it is politically incorrect to dismiss ideas out of hand, in this case there is absolutely no reason to suppose that telepathy is anything more than a charlatan’s fantasy.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE
http://www.mindpowernews.com/ScienceVsTelepathy.htm


Tests suggest Telephone Telepathy is real

By Rupert Sheldrake
Source: Times Online

Have you ever thought about someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang on the telephone? Have you felt you were being watched, and turned round to find someone staring at you?

Recent surveys show that a majority of the population in Britain have had these experiences. If they are more than coincidences or illusions, they suggest that minds are more extensive than brains.

There is a growing body of evidence that telepathy and the sense of being stared at are real, with an active discussion of these topics in scientific journals — for example, last year a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies was devoted to the ability to detect stares, for which the scientific name is scopaesthesia, from the Greek words for viewing and feeling. This ability may have a long evolutionary history. Animals that were able to detect the looks of hidden predators may well have survived better than animals without this ability.

Telepathy may also have deep biological roots, acting as a means of communication at a distance between members of animal groups. It is still expressed in domesticated animals, many of which seem to be able to detect the feelings and intentions of their owners beyond the range of the usual senses.

For example, many dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home, and go to wait at a door. In some cases they do this when the person is still miles away, long before the animal could have heard familiar footsteps or car sounds.

In a series of videotaped tests, I found that dogs still went and waited at the door when the owners returned at times randomly selected by the experimenter, when no one at home knew when they were coming, and when they travelled in unfamiliar vehicles such as taxis.

Many mothers still seem to feel when their children need them, even if they are miles away. Children whose absent mothers responded to their distress telepathically and returned to them would be more likely to survive than children with unresponsive mothers; so telepathic traits may have been favoured by natural selection.

The commonest kind of apparent telepathy in the modern world takes place in connection with telephone calls. About 80 per cent of the population claim to have had experiences in which they think of someone for no apparent reason, then that person calls; or they know who is calling when the phone rings, before picking it up. Many people have had similar experiences with e-mails.

Is this just coincidence? An illusion of telepathy could be created if people remembered when someone called or e-mailed soon after they thought about that person, but forgot all the times that they thought about someone who did not contact them. An illusion of telepathy could also arise if someone had an unconscious expectation that someone they knew would call or e-mail, based on an implicit knowledge of that person’s behaviour. Until recently, there were no scientific investigations of telephone telepathy to test these possibilities.

Over the past few years, with the help of my research associate, Pam Smart, I have investigated telephone telepathy experimentally in hundreds of controlled trials. Volunteers were asked to give us the names and telephone numbers of four people they knew well. During the test session, the subject was videotaped continuously sitting by a landline telephone. We selected one of the callers at random by the throw of a die. We then asked that person to call the subject. When the telephone rang, the participant guessed who was calling before lifting the receiver. The guess was either right or wrong.

By chance, participants would have been right about one time in four. In fact, 45 per cent of the guesses were correct. This research has been replicated at the University of Amsterdam, again with positive results.

Tests in which some of the callers were near the Antipodes, in Australia and New Zealand, showed that the effect did not seem to fall off with distance. Emotional closeness, rather than physical proximity, seemed to be the most important factor.

However, some scientists are so strongly committed to a belief that the mind is confined to the head that they dismiss all such evidence as illusory. For example in yesterday’s Times, Professor Peter Atkins, a chemist, described telepathy as a “charlatan’s fantasy”. But no one understands very much about the nature of our minds. The very existence of consciousness is unexplained. The conventional idea that mental activity is nothing but brain activity is only an assumption, not a proven fact.

Instead, I suggest that our minds may extend far beyond our brains, stretching out through fields that link us to our environment and to each other. Fields are more extensive than material objects: magnetic fields extend around magnets, and electromagnetic fields around mobile phones. Likewise, mental fields are rooted in brains but extend beyond them. The directions depend on our attention and intention.

Mental fields could help to explain telepathy, the sense of being stared at and other widespread but unexplained abilities. Of course this hypothesis is controversial. But science progresses not through dogma and polemic, but by exploring new possibilities and by paying attention to the evidence.

Rupert Sheldrake is the author The Sense of Being Stared At, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, and Seven Experiments That Could Change the World.

Is Your Phone Psychic an Out-of-Work Actor?

By Adrian Cooper
Excerpt from Psychic Hotlines Exposed

Many so called "psychic hotlines" are simply people such as out of work actors trained in the art of giving fake "live psychic readings" using a process known as "cold reading".

Here is the official dictionary definition, that anyone can read for themselves of "Cold Reading":

The Dictionary Definition of "Cold Reading"

"Cold reading is a technique used by salespeople, interrogators, hypnotists, psychics, graphologists, palmists, astrologers, con-men etc. to convince another person that they know more about them than they actually do. Generally, the cold reader will make a series of vague statements, will observe the subject's reactions, and then will refine the original statements according to those reactions. The technique is sometimes applied in order to falsely convince an audience that the reader possesses psychic abilities"

And here is why "Psychic readings" have become so popular:

  • Predictions almost always use vague terms and do not lend themselves to falsification. Therefore, the prediction is never wrong, but a person's interpretation of it can always be wrong.
  • Confirmation bias predisposes people to look for cases where predictions can be interpreted as accurate more than they look to find inaccurate ones.
  • Consumers of fortune-telling services may also fail to realise that statements made about them might reflect reality, but would equally apply to most other people (for instance, the statement "you fought with your parents sometimes as a teenager" applies to a large majority of people). This is the Forer effect.
  • Fortune-tellers usually exhibit skills at reading people and telling them what they wish to hear (the technique of "cold reading").
  • A person who performs a divination for himself or herself may be using his or her reactions to the arbitrary stimuli (such as tarot cards) as a way of mentally organizing his or her own thoughts.
  • Predictions can be a source of amusement and diversion.
  • Predictions can reduce anxiety about the uncertain future.
  • When making a decision based on incomplete information, the fortune teller or oracle can reduce the anxiety associated with guessing.
  • It can be an external source of authority to invoke in support of a decision to be made, or in defense of a decision that was made.
  • The predictions themselves can cause the subject to alter his or her behaviour in a way that makes the predictions become true, see self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • Fortune-telling in the context of an individual's belief system has a good chance of being believed

The Bad News: Phone Psychics are Phony Psychics

So lucrative is the billion dollar "psychic industry" that these actors can make more money giving "cold readings" over the telephone, than they ever could working as an actor.

And it is not only actors.

The majority of people on psychic hotlines are probably using cold reading in some form.

To give a cold reading these people need absolutely no psychic ability, clairvoyant ability or any other psychic power whatsoever.

It really is just a clever scam to deliberately mislead people for dollars per minute, knowing that they can never really be held accountable because what they are saying cannot be easily disproven.

Innocent people are lured into calling these "psychic hotlines" by the offer a "free minutes". Psychic hotline readers are trained to make maximum use of those free minutes to "hook" the customer with promises or intriguing statements to con them into paying for the dollars per minute "service".

The operators of psychic hotline services often put considerable pressure on their employees to perform and get repeat calls, otherwise they are placed down the order of commercial importance where they receive fewer calls and receive less money.

But again, that is not to say that there are no genuine psychics at all waiting on the end of a premium rate telephone number for your call because there may well be; but even if there are, how do you know for sure which of those thousands of live psychics are really genuine?

Try phoning a psychic hotline and asking the "psychic" for 10 years of verifiable references and see what sort of answer you get! They might not react in the way you might expect!

You certainly cannot rely on those electronic testimonials, rating systems, a number of stars who have been given by people who have very often themselves been the subject of an expert cold reading or just generally told what they want to hear and feel the better for it; the "feel good factor".

And again; how can even a genuine psychic be expected to give an impromptu psychic reading or establish contact with a "deceased" person without adequate preparations?

And the fact of the matter is, genuine, talented, respected people with psychic ability, who have dedicated time to developing psychic powers such as clairvoyant or psychic medium abilities generally do not usually lurk around on the end of premium rate telephone live psychic hotlines.

Most genuine psychics and psychic mediums already have all the "clients" they could possibly wish for by recommendation alone, and they never, ever charge by the minute.

Some genuine psychics in fact do not charge anything at all, being only too pleased to use their psychic ability to help others, but those that do usually charge a reasonable price for a "sitting". Most genuine psychics however charge an amount the client can afford, if anything, for a sitting of typically 30 minutes to one hour in duration.

So what are you to do?

The Good News: Your own Psychic Abilities really do exist.

We all have powerful, natural, latent psychic powers ready to be developed for our own use

Yes! Every single human being, without exception, and indeed many animals such as cats, who are very psychic, have been endowed with "God-given" psychic, clairvoyant, telepathic and many other profound, natural but often latent inner abilities to use whenever the need arises.

There is a very big difference between developing your own natural, latent psychic abilities for your own purposes, just as the Universe intended, to purporting to offer services for others.

Everyone who understands these important matters knows that developing and using psychic powers for our own purposes is one of the best things that we can do for our lives on Earth, and that the fortune telling laws only exist to prevent indiscriminate people from distorting these facts for profit.

Everyone is encouraged to help themselves in this way, and it is totally lawful to do so, because when receiving inner-guidance by psychic means, not only is such guidance totally accurate and appropriate, it is not being used to influence the Minds of other people unlike "fortune telling".

Even better, not only is developing and using your own psychic powers totally lawful and accurate, it is also free. No more anxiously watching those dollar minutes tick by while listening to a "cold reading", the only load from which will be relieved is from your bank account.

Using your own natural psychic abilities for your own purposes by for example communicating with your Higher-Self, a personal "spirit guide" or clairvoyantly viewing, is very different from speaking with someone on the phone who might be thousands of miles away and doesn't know anything about you.

So all you need to do is to develop your own, natural psychic ability, the same psychic abilities that humans have always possessed and have access to.

Adrian Cooper is the creator of Developing Psychic Powers. This article is an excerpt from a free 38-page report which you can download here: Psychic Hotlines Exposed

Developing Psychic Powers

At Last---The Complete, Unique, Proven Course Of Books, Including Absolutely Everything Needed To Develop Your Own, Natural, Psychic Powers Quickly, Easily and Safely

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