NEWS, VIEWS AND REVIEWS

If you have any news about interstellar travel, psionics or utopia, Email me. News could be anything. A new book, a new discovery, a new web site. And it doesn't have to be all that new, just new to me. Views (yours or mine) may be posted here, if I choose. If you want to be sure of expressing your own views, start your own web page. I would also be willing to review books or web sites or Ezines, again at my own discretion.

June 15, 1999

Today, I have found an online book with very similar ideas to mine about applying scientific method to mystical experiences. The title of this book is Science without Bounds; A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Mysticism. It is to be found at www.adamford.com/swb/html/plus.html

May 11, 1999

From May 11-15, 1999 a historic gathering on peace and international justice will take place in the city of The Hague, The Netherlands -- bringing together world leaders, civil society organizations, and thousands of concerned citizens from around the world. Called the "Hague Appeal for Peace" civil society conference, this will be one of the last major world conferences held in this century, and perhaps one of the most important. Over the week there will be literally hundreds of exciting programs held around the four conference strands of: (1) strengthening international law, (2) preventing and transforming violent conflict, (3) disarmament, and (4) the root causes of war / building a culture of peace.

Sunday, April 25, 1999, 2:07 AM CST

Someone posted an entry in one of my guestbooks saying that all my ideas about Mind and Soul had been anticipated by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. So I read Scientology; Principles of Thought., It is true that Scientology holds to the separate existence of Soul, Mind, and Body, but that is true of most religions and systems of metaphysics. Scientology has a peculiar habit of inventing weird new names for old ideas, thus making them seem original. For instance, the Soul is called "Thetan," for no reason that I can see. I do not reject Scientology. Under the terminology of the "Auditor processing the preclear," we have some familiar ideas from standard psychotherapy under new names. So Scientology is harmless; being "processed" by an auditor might be beneficial. But Scientology has nothing to do with the ideas of Mind and Soul which are original to me. I stand on the shoulders of Giants, and I hope I give them full credit. What I add to psionics is a testable theory of the Mind as a natural object. What I add to metaphysics is a way of making a scientific test of it. Also, I provide an alphabet of the language of symbolism, and I extend the mandala technique to all media. None of this is in Scientology.

19 April 1999

Two or more boys massacre 15 and injure 20 at Columbine School in Littleton, Colorado. They also set out 50 bombs, some of them big enough to blow up the building. Fortunately, these were defused by bomb squads. If you want to know what to do about such violence, then see Utopia. Take "Utopian Analysis" to "Criminal Detection" to "guns," and page down to the section on Guns and Violence. It requires censoring violent entertainment, taking away the guns, using the paddle in school, and early warning and detection programs, to identify potentially violent students, and then alternative school for the potential troublemakers.

9 April 1999 10:43 AM CST

Michael Martin Nieto of Los Alamos National Laboratory is part of Project Athena, to test Feynman's speculation that anti-matter has anti-gravity. We should know early in the next Century. Discover Magazine, May 1999, P. 32. I am glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks this is an excellent idea, typical of Feynman, which would make a big difference in our cosmologies if true.

24 Mar 1999 12:30 AM CST

At http://www.simedia.org/new/chunveil.html you will find an article by Connie Hargrave, interviewing a scientist named Russ George, who says he can show cold fusion in a reproducible manner. He says this kind of fusion does increase the amount of helium present, but does not produce neutrons or penetrating radiation. It just produces heat. He was actually allowed to present a paper to a scientific society on the matter. Of course, the real question is, can anyone else get the same result? If not, it is really an example of a Psi power, what I call the "placebo effect."

12 Mar 1999 1:00 AM CST

My utopia page has been nicely reviewed in Utopus Discovered, the newsletter of the Society for Utopian Studies. I thank them. I participate in the automatic news-list of the Society. They publish a journal, have conferences, present papers. They have a student membership for $20 a year. If you would like to write a brief account of how you got interested in Utopias or Utopianism, write to Toby Widdicombe, at afrtw@uaa.alaska.edu and if you would like to get on the news-list, I could probably accomplish that. They prefer Ph.Ds or grad students.

My mindsoul page has been made the site of the month on the Skyhero forum, found at www.skyhero.com

5 Mar 1999 10:24 PM CST

The Path by William J. Cozzolino, available for $16.95 from Raissa Publishing, POB 295, Dept. H, Port Angeles, WA 98362. Or visit Skyhero. This is an important contribution to transpersonal psychology, even though the basic premise is not new. It is what Aldous Huxley called the perennial philosophy. It is the Idea of ONE, the belief that we are part of divinity, which is the only reality. What we ordinarily think of as reality is just the dream of a consensus group of Skyheroes. Bill describes focused breathing exercises to awaken the dreamer.

My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God Himself. ---St. Catherine of Genoa

In those respects in which the soul is unlike God, it is unlike itself. --St. Bernard

I went from God to God, until they cried from me in me, "O thou I!" --Bayazid of Bistun

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge. --- Eckhart

These are a few quotes from past mystics which I have cribbed from Bill's book. There are longer ones from Shankara which explain this difficult concept in more detail. Indeed, this is one of the great virtues of Bill's book. He provides interesting metaphors, built around our experience of movies, to better explain the Idea of One to modern Western audiences. I hope to provide a more extensive review in time. I recommend this book.

27 Feb 1999 5:00 AM CST

I had for some time dismissed the Society for Utopian Studies as just another academic con job, not really devoted to the furtherance of Utopian Studies but rather devoted to the study of the study of Utopias, safely irrelevant, a place to help academics get tenure. However, their newsletter turns out to be much livlier than their journals, since real Utopians like myself and Doctress Neutopia get to put in our two cents worth. If you want to join send a "QUERY UTOPIA-L" command to lISTSERV@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU.

21 Feb 1999 6:15 PM CST

My good friends David King and Dr. Goutam Mukherjee are fellow Utopians, and I have learned much from both. I want to give them credit here. David King espouses something called "Aptious Thinking," while Dr. Mukherjee bases his utopian ideas on a spiritual principle called "Swadhyay." Swadhyay has been put into practice in thousands of villages in India.

17 Feb 1999 7-9 PM CST

NBC broadcasts "Confirmation; Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us?" Videotape available for $29.95. Call 1-800-NBC-2634. NBC hedged its bets by putting the question mark at the end. Both skeptics and UFOologists were represented, as was Whitley Strieber, noted novelist and abductee(?). I saw no new hard evidence. But there were some interesting micrographs of alien implants left in abductees, as well as chemical analyses. I would like to have seen neutron activation analysis, but this was apparently not performed.

2 Feb 1999

The SPR has recently published a new book, Adventures in Time; Encounters with the Past, by Andrew MacKenzie, VP of the SPR. It is published by the Athlone Press in association with the SPR. It is available directly from the Society for Psychical Research, 49, Marloes Road, Kensington, London W8 6LA. Price for the book and shipping is US $23. If you want the price in pounds, or if you plan to be in London and would like to attend an SPR lecture, a schedule is at their web site. I hope to review this book at a later date.