5 More Ouija Board Tips

If you haven’t checked out my first set of Ouija tips, check it out now. 

1. Pen and paper. You always want to make sure you have a pen and paper handy when using the board. The pointer’s going to be moving a lot, so it’s best to designate someone to record the words being spelled out. It’s also a good idea to write down the question being asked. Keep it organized. 

2. Don’t use the board by yourself. There’s no point of using the board if you’re by yourself. The pointer won’t have enough energy to move around ―you need at least two people on the board at a time (3 or 4 would be better). There’s never a good reason to use the board alone. 

3. Make circles. If you’re not getting much activity, it might be a good idea to move the pointer around a few times in the shape of a circle. I learned this tip in the instruction booklet that came with my friend’s board. The reasoning behind it is that the circular motion will build up energy, and therefore make it easier for the spirit to communicate. 

4. Be light on your fingertips. This is a mistake I see a lot: someone in the group is pressing down with their fingertips. You never want to press; you just want to touch. When your fingertips are on the pointer, you’re directing your energy to it. The spirit will use this energy to move the pointer. If you have a skeptic in the group (e.g. “You’re moving it. I know you’re moving it”), show them how lightly you’re touching the pointer. In fact, if someone accuses me of moving it, I flip my fingertips over and only touch the pointer with my fingernails ―that’ll make them understand. 

5. Always close the board out. This is very important. Whenever you use the board, you have to close it out. By closing it out, you’re basically closing the “door” that you opened when you started. First, you want to make sure everyone’s aware that you’re going to close the board. Next, have everyone move the pointer to a neutral location on the board. Finally, you can all say, “Amen, Amen, Amen.” This is how my board’s instruction manual recommended to do it. Whatever it is that you say to close it out, just make sure you all say it in unison. 

Interview II: Maureen Caudill, Author of “Suddenly Psychic”

This is Maureen’s second set of interview questions. If you haven’t read the first set, you can check it out here. Please note that this interview was conducted on September 21, 2010.

Maureen Caudill was a University Scholar and received her bachelor’s degree in physics (with a mathematics minor) with highest honors (summa cum laude) from University of Connecticut, following that with a master’s degree from Cornell University. She spent more than twenty years as a computer scientist, with fifteen of those as a researcher in artificial intelligence and neural networks. She was a program manager and researcher for a major government contractor on advanced projects such as DARPA* ( High Performance Knowledge Base program) and ARDA* ( Advanced Question Answering for Intelligence program) that strove to develop computer systems that can demonstrate human expertise in complex question understanding and intricate knowledge of detailed real-world scenarios.

Since beginning the experiences described in her book “Suddenly Psychic,” she has become accredited by The Monroe Institute as a nonresidential Outreach trainer, and now offers several different weekend workshops on learning to access altered states of consciousness and incorporating skills accessed in those states in your daily life. This includes training people in the esoteric skill of spoon-bending something that she’d have sworn was a physical impossibility, but that now virtually all students succeed at learning.

1. Out of all the experiments you wrote about it, which experiment stands out from the rest (that is, in terms of having the most significant amount of evidence)?

Probably the most amazing results to me were Dr. Gary Schwartz’s Afterlife Experiments.  I really liked a lot about how those experiments were conducted.  First, he was open to the possibility that talented mediums can connect with the dead, but he insisted on seeing actual evidence to support that supposition.  Second, he designed a protocol that was both scientifically rigorous, but also one that adapted to each medium’s preferred mode of operation.  Third, he was highly conservative when scoring the mediums’ sessions in assigning “hits” and “misses” preferring “miss” unless there was unambiguous evidence for a “hit.”  Finally, he did an extensive series of experiments, in each case making the conditions of the experiment more and more rigorous and guarding against more and more possible attempts to hoax the system from any party.

And in spite of all those checks and balances, he had mediums who tested as being 85% to 90% accurate.  When compared to a group of “controls” (basically  random college students) who typically got scores in the 20–30% range, the difference in performance was astonishing.

I think this type of experiment demonstrates both that no one, even a superstar, will be right all the time.  Dr. Schwartz has pointed out, for example, that baseball player Ted Williams, arguably the greatest hitter in baseball history, was only successful at getting a hit 40% of the time!  So any expectation that you will ever get 100% accuracy or 100% success rate when you have human beings performing a difficult task will always be unmet.  That is an impossibly high standard to demand in any test involving humans performing a task.

Bottom line, Dr. Schwartz presented incredibly compelling, rigorous evidence of the survival of personality after death.  Anyone viewing this evidence with an open mind has to be impressed with the quality of his data and the care with which he crafted his experiments.

2. In the book, you described an experience you had while participating in a Ganzfeld experiment. You pointed out some “basic problems” with the design of the experiment (i.e. the researchers weren’t too concerned with the conditions, which ultimately made it difficult for psychic phenomena to take place). Do you think these “basic problems” are prevalent in different experiments of this type?

I think that experimenters often try to force human beings into a box.  There are very few who acknowledge and accept in the design of the experimental protocols that people aren’t all the same, and that people sometimes need different circumstances to achieve similar results.  The problem, from a scientific perspective, is that experiments need to have rigid protocols so that they can (presumably) be replicated.  So, for example, I was required to have the ping-pong balls over my eyes when I did the Ganzfeld experiment described in the book.  Only problem is, my normal technique when doing a remote viewing session is to have my eyes open so I can make notes and sketch what I’m perceiving.  I had to persuade the experimenter to let me have a clipboard (I’d brought one with me!) propped on the arm of the recliner, and I had to do my notes and my sketching blind.  It really was a violation of their methodology, and it felt awkward and uncomfortable for me not to be able to see what I was writing or sketching.

The experiment protocol had a friend of mine (also very psychic) in another room watching a video clip.  He was supposed to start “sending” the images from the video to me when (over his headphones) the experimenter told him to do so.  I was supposed to be in that Ganzfeld state, with the ping-pong balls, etc. etc., and “receiving” his transmission.  After the session, I (and he) were shown 4 clips, and I was asked to choose which one was the clip he’d originally watched.

The theory in the experimenter’s mind was based on telepathy and that there had to be a “sender” and a “receiver”—the model was that telepathy was sort of like spooky radio without the technology.  The fallacies in this basic protocol are numerous and reflect a total misunderstanding of psychic skills.  For example, before the experiment, I was very careful to point out that I could discover the video clip contents any number of ways other than by my receiving what my friend transmitted telepathically.

I suggested a number of alternative ways I could discover the correct answer to the experimenter before the experiment and asked if she cared how I got the information.  She was adamant that this was not an experiment to prove telepathy, and that it didn’t matter at all what method I used.  My impression very strongly was that she didn’t believe any of the alternative methods I suggested could possibly work.  Among others, I pointed out that I might:

• Remote view and watch the clip myself as my friend was watching it—as if I were looking over his shoulder.
• Telekinetically fiddle with the computer’s random selection process to select the clip myself (It was not selected until just before the experiment began; it’s my understanding that the computer selected a random clip to show just before the experiment started.  At the same time, I believe it selected 3 other video clips as “possible targets” so I had 4 clips to choose from after the Ganzfeld part of the session was over).
• Remote view the clip prior to the experiment so I would know what was on the clip before it began. (Since the clip itself wasn’t chosen until just prior to it being shown, that was totally dismissed as a realistic possibility by the experimenter.)
• Read the experimenter’s mind and get the information from her since she also knew what the correct clip was.

The huge elephant in the room in terms of this particular protocol was that time was totally ignored.  This protocol, like most in science, insists that time is a straight, linear, and rigid.  It’s impossible to look into the future.  It’s impossible for the future to affect the past.  Both those assumptions are incorrect in my personal experience.  Key issues with the whole time thing in this particular protocol are:

• If you’ve been trained in remote viewing, you know that unless the viewer is self-judging the session, you never show the viewer anything except the true target—even if the session is completely wrong.  And if you’re having someone transmit to the viewer, you don’t have the transmitter to ever see anything except the correct target. My partner in this experiment should never have been allowed to see anything except the correct target.  Because he was allowed to see all four “possible” clips at the same time as I was judging them, it’s entirely possible that his continued “telepathy” would distract and muddy the situation.  He watched the possible targets while I did, and he heard all my comments back to the experimenter during the judging session, as well as the comments I made during the session itself.  (I couldn’t hear anything he said.)  Since he actually viewed all four clips…which one was the one I was supposed to identify as the target that “he viewed”?   He actually viewed ALL of them…just not all of them during the “transmission” time of the experiment.
• More fundamentally wrong, however, is that you can remote view the past and future as easily as you can the present.  By not acknowledging that, the protocol was fundamentally flawed.

As it happened, the night before the experiment, I did a remote viewing session on the video clip that would be shown to my friend the next day.  In the car on the way to the lab, I read aloud to him my notes of the previous night’s session.

He knew…and I had proof in the car through my notes from the session the night before…that I had totally nailed the video clip.  It was a dead-on hit.   He told me when we were driving away at the end of the day that he almost fell out of his chair laughing when he saw the actual clip because it was a perfect match to what I’d described to him on the way there.

So, to my own satisfaction, I demonstrated that remote viewing is easily possible violating the narrow constraints of linear time.

I should also say that I’m very ambivalent about the reality of telepathy—that is of perceiving someone else’s thoughts.  I’ve only rarely had glimmerings of that skill, and I’m not sure how or even if it exists.  On the other hand, I am totally convinced that “telempathy” exists—in other words, knowing the emotional state of someone far away from you.  I’ve had numerous instances where I tune into other people’s emotions, generally unexpectedly.  There was a time when I had a friend to whom I used to say, “you stub your toe, and I say, ‘ouch,’” because I was so tuned into their state of being.  (Made him excruciatingly uncomfortable, by the way.  And I don’t blame him for that; it made me uncomfortable too!)  And another friend, going through a severe personal crisis, used to wake me up in the middle of the night (from about 35 miles away!) from his mental screaming from the emotional agony he was going through.  I had to work very hard to turn that ability down and learn to control that “telempathy” thing because for a while it really did affect my ability to function.

3. You shared a wonderful story about your cat, Sammy. Do you continue to make contact with him? Do you think he’s currently in a realm with other animals, or is he in some kind of universal realm on the other side?

Sammy was/is a very special kitty.  I do believe that often our pets are really here as our spiritual guides, angels, and protectors.  If nothing else, they teach us about unconditional love.  Sometimes they also provide physical protection, but often they serve to gently nudge us along a spiritual path.  That was definitely the case with Sammy.

I realized, even before he died, that he was an extremely “old soul.”  (And I have met many other animals who are equally “old souls.”)  His spiritual calling is to help shepherd others, mostly animals, but sometimes people like me, into lifting themselves spiritually.  He chooses to take an animal form because that makes it easier for his “clients” (I almost want to use the word “flock”) to relate to him. He’s non-threatening and sweet and cuddly as a cat, much more so than if he took human or some other form.

Yes, I do keep in touch with him, and he is a spiritual leader.  He has not reincarnated and I don’t think he has plans to do so anytime soon. Instead, he helps animals transition from life to afterlife, and helps guide them spiritually.  Whenever I go visit him, he’s always surrounded by animals, mostly pets, but some wild animals too.  I’ve seen various deer, bears, chipmunks, lizards, all kinds of animals learning from him.

At Vision Intuitives, we work a lot with animal communications. And we volunteer with various animal rescue agencies to help them with animals that have been traumatized.  It’s not too uncommon to work with animals coming to the end of their physical lives.  When I have a client animal who is likely to pass over, I always try to introduce the animal to Sammy, and tell the animal that Sammy will stay with him/her and guide and assist him so that his transition won’t be so scary.  And of course, in the book I talk about doing the “soul retrieval” on one of the Mars landers; I passed that little guy’s soul into Sammy’s more-than-capable hands, er, paws.

I do have one amusing story about Sammy that happened after the book came out.  I had a friend who had a miniature black poodle named Sunny who was clearly getting ready to pass over.  Sunny had a disposition just like his name, and was bright and charming and a total chick-magnet.  (Just ask him!)  When it was clear that the end was coming soon, I decided to introduce Sunny to Sammy as a guide and helper.  I sat with Sunny on my lap, connected to him and explained that I wanted to introduce him to someone who would stay with him and help him until he had passed.  All went pretty well—until I invited Sammy to make an appearance.  Sunny’s reaction was astonishing:  “That’s a cat!  You expect me to listen to and be guided by a cat?   I chase cats.   Find me another guide or helper or I’ll just do it myself.  Hmmph.”

Ahem.  I guess we all have our prejudices.

4. In the book, you talked about your guide, Click. Do you still communicate with Click? Have you gained anymore insight about Click? Have you gained anymore insight from Click?

I think that our guides are frequently, if not always, pieces of our higher selves that we have to integrate.  About 2 years after I first met Click, I found myself in a deep session and literally felt him integrate with me, making me more whole.  So I don’t exactly communicate with Click any longer.  Instead, Click is now part of me.

Of course, shortly after Click was gone, I was introduced to another whole set of guides, the key one of which I call “B.T.” because the first time I met him, he looked like a “blobby thingy” to me.  (His response to that:  “That’s Mr. Blobby Thingy to you!”)  B.T. has the most outrageous sense of humor I’ve ever encountered.  Seriously.  I never know what to expect from him.  He shows up unexpectedly, and in the oddest costumes—everything from a 1950s-era little boy’s cowboy suit, complete with cap pistol, cowboy chaps, and oversized hat, to a giant chicken suit, kind of like Big Bird but as a chicken instead of, well, whatever Big Bird is.  Once he was even dressed like a giant Hershey’s chocolate kiss.  I guess he was feeling “smoochy” that day.

I still wish I knew why the chicken suit, though.

B.T. and Click are part of the reason why my dear friend Charles, whose passing I discuss in the final chapter of Suddenly Psychic, once asked me if it bothered me that my guides all seem to come from the stand-up comic section of the Guides R Us store.

5. You mentioned that “…spirit guides can sometimes have a somewhat strange sense of humor.” This is something I frequently hear about. Can you elaborate on this?

Well, B.T. is the classic example of a truly strange sense of humor.  I was doing one meditation, a very, very deep one, serious, profound.  I was deep into the Focus levels, well out into the Focus-40s, as I recall.  It was one of those spiritually uplifting, profound moments that come too rarely for my taste.  Then…I turned around…and there was B.T. in the chicken suit, squawking and preening and generally being funnier than all get out.

I totally fell apart laughing.  It blew me right out of the profound meditation I’d been doing, and right back to C-1 consciousness.

So, why did he do that??  What message was there in that?

Guides seem to have their own agendas that don’t necessarily agree with what we want to do.  On that occasion, I wanted to do a spiritually deep and profound meditation.  B.T. wanted something quite different.  Guess who won?  (Not me.)

Our guides can’t make us do anything, as I understand it.  They nudge.  They prod.  They advise.  They encourage.  They use any tactic they can think of to get us to improve ourselves spiritually.  And if that means sending us into gales of laughter, well…that’s what they do.

6. Following the Yellow Brick Road is one of my favorite chapters. In it, you discussed the concept of a multidimensional universe. Do you think all of the nonphysical dimensions (i.e. dimensions beyond four-dimensional space-time) are spiritual in nature? How do you think they’re segmented? Are they arranged in a sort of spiritual hierarchy?

Yes, I do think that the super-dimensions (that is, the dimensions outside our 3 spatial and 1 time dimension) become more and more spiritual.  Perhaps, if we learn to operate as 11-dimensional beings instead of 4-dimensional ones, we will be in that state of total Oneness with All.  Maybe that’s what God is.

I also believe these extra dimensions are totally orthogonal to our 4-dimensional perceptions, which is why in our physics, they appear so small as to be negligible—subatomic-particle sized.  As I talk about in the book, we’re firmly fixed in “Flatland” of 4-dimensional space-time.  The trick is to lift ourselves outside that.  I don’t know if or when it will be possible to do that physically, but apparently we can do it spiritually.

In terms of hierarchy…you know that’s interesting.  There are clearly hierarchies here in 4-D-land (our “Flatland”).  Ken Wilber, the philosopher, has constructed a highly elaborate totally hierarchical construct of spiritual and social and physical and technical growth.  And I know a bunch of really smart people who have all bought into that description of reality.  Only problem is, it seems to me that it’s firmly rooted in 4-D-land.

While it’s true that the Focus levels from C-1 (waking consciousness) to F-49 are clearly hierarchical, when I go out beyond F-49, into the territory beyond the hierarchy of focus states that are more commonly explored, my sense is that the focus levels are no longer hierarchical at all.  Instead they are all aspects of One.  I’m not sure that there’s any real meaning to “higher” and “lower” past F-49.  It feels more like F-27.  When you go to F-27, you realize it’s a huge level.  There are tons of “centers” there:  a Park, where the newly arrived meet and greet their previously departed loved ones; a learning center where spiritual growth and training takes place; a planning center where your next incarnation is planned for the life lessons you’ll deal with, etc.; a storage area for most people’s Akashic records; a healing center where the emotional and spiritual traumas of physical reality are healed; an operations or control center; a whole similar set of centers for non-terrestrial beings; an equally similar set of centers for animals; individual “special places” for rest, contemplation, and recuperation…just tons of places.  Is that a hierarchy of locations?  Not really.  They’re all there at the same level.  You just go to the section that you most need or want at that moment.  They’re all part of what makes up the one level of F-27.

My experience beyond F-49 in F-253, where I was allowed to perceive myself as being One with the Mind of God, convinced me that all hierarchies (like time) are cultural myths.  Yes, they’re important here in physical human life, mostly because (just like time) we all believe that they’re important.  But as you become more and more spiritual, you recognize that when you are One with God, there is no such thing as a hierarchy.  How can there be?  To have a hierarchy, you must have at least Two…one to be above and one to be below.  But if you have Two, you cannot be in the state of Oneness with God.

So to me, the whole purpose of life, both physical and spiritual, is to stop seeing the Truth as a hierarchy or a development path from better to worse, or lower to higher.  The purpose has to be to see yourself as merely One with everything.  If you can see things that way, there can be no hierarchy at all.

Obviously, human culture is a long, long way from attaining that state as a whole. I do believe that there are individuals who manage to achieve it, at least in certain moments, if not consistently.  Those are the people we need to emulate and learn from.

7. In the chapter Beyond the Pale, you talked about the Akashic Field Theory. Do you think the Akashic Field is the same thing as the Zero-Point Field in quantum physics?

Not quite.  Laszlo’s Akashic Field Theory doesn’t seem to be the same as Zero Point energy field.  And if you look at Amit Gotswami’s (Professor Emeritus of Physics from Oregon) concept of an underlying spiritual scalar field, it’s really similar to Laszlo’s field, but there are differences.  I think all three are perhaps different aspects or different attempts to describe the same thing, but none are yet 100% successful.  Yet all three of those approaches seem to me to be among the most accurate depictions of fundamental reality.

8. Do you plan on writing another book of this nature in the future?

Tentatively yes.  Nothing is set in stone at the moment, but I hope to have news I can share within a few weeks.

If you want to keep up with what I’m doing, the best way is with my blog: theparanoidwriter.wordpress.com or with either of my websites: VisionIntuitives.com or www.MaureenCaudill.com

You can buy “Suddenly Psychic” here. 

7 Important Ouija Board Tips

There are all different names for spirit boards: ouija board, psychic circle, psychic board, talking spirit board, etc. I frequently use the term “ouija” because it’s the most recognizable. So when I say “ouija”, I’m really referring to any kind of spirit board.

When participating in a ouija session, there’s generally three different kinds of outcomes: good, bad, or boring. The ‘good’ is a positive experience, the ‘bad’ is a negative experience, and the ‘boring’ is the lack of an experience (i.e. nothing happens). The following tips will help ensure that you’ll have a good experience.

1. Get comfortable. Keep in mind that you’re going to be in the same position for an extended period of time. If you’re not big on sitting on the floor, then set up the board on a table. Personally, I don’t like using the board on the floor. Some floor sessions felt more like a game of Twister than a ouija session. Also, if you’re sitting at a table, make sure that every member of the group can reach every part of the board.

2. Take it seriously. If you really want to make contact with the Other side, you have to take it seriously. If there’s just one person in the group who’s acting foolish, it could certainly have a negative effect on the outcome of the session. So it’s your responsibility to ensure that all of the participants are treating it as a form of divination, and not treating it like a game (even though it’s often marketed as a game).

3. Ask for protection. Anytime you’re doing anything that’s metaphysical, you always want to make sure you’re protected. There’s no right way to ask for protection. For some it’s a prayer, for others it’s an affirmation, and for others it’s a simple visualization. The quickest and simplest way to protect yourself is to visualize that you’re surrounded by a bright white light. You can think of it as a metaphysical forcefield. It’s also good to make a statement along the lines of, “We are here to communicate with positive spirits only. If you have any negative intentions, we won’t communicate with you.”

4. Use a bowl of water. I know, this one sounds weird, but I’ve been told by many ‘insiders’ that it works great. All you have to do is fill up a bowl (size isn’t too important) with water, and place it as close to the board as possible. The theory behind this tip is that the water serves as a conductor of energy. The spirits you’re trying to contact are essentially pure energy. Therefore, the water is believed to amplify the communication taking place on the board. Here’s a good analogy to better understand the tip: a session with no bowl of water is like a cellphone, and a session with a bowl of water is like a landline phone –the landline just works better.

5. Ask simple questions. You never want to ask a question that requires a complex answer. If you’ve ever used a spirit board before, you probably know that it can be difficult to keep track of all the letters the indicator stopped on. It’s also hard on the spirit because they only have so much energy to work with. Just make sure to always keep the length of the answer in mind. If you think the question requires a long answer, then phrase the question differently.

6. Only one group member can ask the questions. Before starting the session, make sure that the group has chosen someone who will be asking all of the questions. When only one person asks the questions, it’s easier for the spirit to ‘tune in’. Also, make sure to give the spirit an ample amount of time to answer the question.

7. Always go with your gut. The truth is, you never really know who (or perhaps what) you’re communicating with. Spirits, like people, take on all different forms –some are good, and some are not so good. If you (or someone in your group) have a bad feeling during the session, trust your intuition and close it out (read the instructions that came with the board in order to close the board properly). Moreover, if you think you have a negative spirit ‘on the line’, do not provoke the spirit. Treat every spirit with respect.

The Trouble with Extremes

They say that nothing in life is guaranteed, except for death and taxes, but there’s one thing that comes pretty close and that’s the trouble with extremes. In almost every facet of existence, things can be –and usually are– scaled. On a scale –that is, a linear scale– you have the beginning point, a middle (center) point, and an end point. The ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ points are the extremes. For example, if the beginning point represents “white”, and the end point represents “black”, then the middle point would be “gray” –white is one extreme, black is another, but the common ground between the two is gray.

In our world, extremes are everywhere: cold/hot, heavy/skinny, all/nothing, smart/stupid, rich/poor, etc. Virtually anything can be scaled to a set of two extremes. In politics, there’s liberals (left wing) and conservatives (right wing). The overwhelming majority of politicians are either one or the other; therefore, there are very few politicians who are moderate. However, the trouble with the political scale are the ultra-liberals and ultra-conservatives. The “ultras” are the politicians who are extremely one-sided when it comes to their political philosophy. Typically, if someone’s extremely one-sided on an issue, they’re most likely operating with a closed mind. Most people would argue that a closed mind is irrational, because their unlikely to accept new possibilities.

If we step away from the social spectrum of life and look at the biological spectrum, we’ll see that the human body has a negative response to extremes. We all know that if your body temperature gets too low, you’ll die from hypothermia. And if your body temperature gets too high, you’ll die from hyperthermia. If you have no fat in your diet, your body will eventually become malnourished and death could ensue. Conversely, if you have too much fat in your diet, your body will suffer and you’ll likely develop a disease from the imbalance. Everyone knows that you’ll die if you go without water, but did you know that if you have too much water you can die, too? That just goes to show how anything –even something as benign as water– can be deadly to the body if it’s in the extreme.

Believing in Extremes

In the world of religion and spirituality, there’s no shortage of extremes. In this world, one extreme is atheism and the other is fundamentalism (or extremism). So one side believes nothing, and the other believes –well– everything (in a sense).

The problem with these two extremes is that both sides usually believe in nothing or everything “just because”. Of course, they don’t actually say, “just because”, but that’s how us folks in the middle translate their arguments. At a certain point in their lives, individuals from these extremes make a philosophical commitment to their particular belief (yeah, I consider atheism to be a belief). Once this commitment is made, all the other channels are severed, and the world turns into black and white.

The atheists believe that there aren’t any supernatural forces in the world, nor have there ever been. Atheists essentially put all of their stock in the material world. I’m not talking about Madonna’s material world, I’m talking about the physical world –the world ruled by science. In the world of science, if something cannot be observed, measured, or experimented on, it doesn’t exist.

There are fundamentalists in almost every religious/spiritual belief system. However, I’ll pick on the Christian fundamentalists here. Christian fundamentalists put all their stock in the Christian bible. The fundamentalist’s world is ruled by the bible. If it’s not in the bible, it didn’t happen (or it won’t happen). So, information that conflicts with the bible is discarded, because to them, the bible is the absolute truth.

Atheists and Christian fundamentalists are polar opposites. This is why neither side will ever “win” a debate. They view the world from two completely different perspectives. As I said, they view the world in terms of black and white. Therefore, in their minds, one of them is absolutely right, and one of them is absolutely wrong. There is no common ground.

Conclusion

If something doesn’t fit into the atheist’s or fundamentalist’s worldview, then it’s usually automatically discarded –this is the trouble with their extremes. The trouble isn’t necessarily the fact that one group believes nothing and the other believes everything, it’s the way they treat new information. Therefore, the religion/spirituality scale isn’t linear in a sense. It does start with believing in nothing, and it ends with believing in everything. However, in terms of viewing the world, it goes from closed minded (i.e. atheists) to closed minded (i.e. fundamentalists) with varying degrees of open mindedness in the middle. Therefore, it’s more like a bell curve than a linear scale.

There are many atheists who won’t even consider the possibility of a metaphysical reality. Open-minded scientists can conduct metaphysical-esque experiments, and get results that deserve attention, but some atheists won’t even consider the possibility. To them, it’s just not even an option.

The fundamentalists do the same thing. They can be shown scientific study after scientific study, but they’ll continue to discard the theory of evolution and the age of the universe. If it’s not in the bible, it didn’t happen.

The point here is that both sides have an irrational view of the world. If something’s not a possibility “just because” it’s not observable, measurable, or testable, then absolute faith is put into the idea that science can explain everything, which is irrational. If something’s not a possibility “just because” it’s not in the bible, then absolute faith is put into the idea that the information in the bible is literal (and completely factual), which is irrational.

If I had to choose which side is more irrational, of course, I’d have to choose the fundamentalists. I’ll take science over a literal interpretation of the bible. I’m not going after atheists because they don’t believe, I’m going after some of them because they refuse to seriously consider the possibility that science may not be able to explain everything.

Our opinions must be formed on a case-by-case basis. In reality, we don’t live in a black and white world. We live in a world that has millions of different shades of gray. While it may be easier to categorize things as either black or white, it’s certainly not practical. If there’s one thing we should learn from the world around us, it’s that there’s usually trouble with extremes.

Most Americans Believe in the Paranormal

Believe it or not, it turns out that most Americans have at least one paranormal belief –and no, that doesn’t include supernatural religious beliefs (e.g. God). This information comes from a 2005 Gallup poll, where 1,002 Americans from across the country were polled on their paranormal beliefs. Yes I know, the poll isn’t exactly fresh off the presses, but it’s the most recent paranormal-related poll from Gallup and it deserves a mention here.

The Data

The following numbers are based on the percentage of people polled who believe in the particular form of paranormal phenomena:

41% Extra-sensory perception (ESP)

37% That houses can be haunted

9% Channeling/allowing a ‘spirit-being’ to temporarily assume control of body

32% Ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations

31% Telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses

26% Clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future

25% Astrology, or that the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives

21% That someone (i.e. psychic medium) can communicate mentally with someone who has died

21% Witches

20% Reincarnation, that is, the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death

After conducting a “special analysis” of the data, the Gallup folks came up with the following approximation: “…73% of Americans believe in at least one of the 10 items listed above, while 27% believe in none of them.”

Conclusions

When I first read the Gallup study, part of me thought, “Of course 73% of Americans believe in the paranormal”, and the other part of me thought, “73% of Americans believe in the paranormal?!?”

One reason for my surprise was the media’s treatment of paranormal news stories (which I wrote about in length here). Have you ever watched a news segment where they presented a paranormal news story? If you have, you know that at least one of the anchors present the story with a smile on their face, giggles, and/or a corny joke. In other words, they don’t take the subject too seriously.

Another reason I was surprised is due to the way most people react when I tell them what my blog’s all about. Their reactions are similar to the behavior of the news anchor, but just little bit more cordial, depending on our rapport.

Why can’t more people come out of the paranormal closet? I know at least a half-dozen people who will go on-and-on about their metaphysical beliefs and experiences in a private discussion; however, when there are other people added to the equation, they’ll become reserved.

The Gallup Organization is one of most well-respected statistical research services out there, so the study should not be taken lightly. However, it’s important to note that just because 73% of Americans believe in the paranormal, doesn’t mean that the 73% are right, but it certainly does mean that the majority of Americans believe that there’s another side to reality. Or, in other words, if you don’t believe in any form of paranormal phenomena, you’re in the minority.

Interview: Maureen Caudill, Author of “Suddenly Psychic”

Maureen Caudill was a University Scholar and received her bachelor’s degree in physics (with a mathematics minor) with highest honors (summa cum laude) from University of Connecticut, following that with a master’s degree from Cornell University. She spent more than twenty years as a computer scientist, with fifteen of those as a researcher in artificial intelligence and neural networks. She was a program manager and researcher for a major government contractor on advanced projects such as DARPA* ( High Performance Knowledge Base program) and ARDA* ( Advanced Question Answering for Intelligence program) that strove to develop computer systems that can demonstrate human expertise in complex question understanding and intricate knowledge of detailed real-world scenarios.

Since beginning the experiences described in her book “Suddenly Psychic,” she has become accredited by The Monroe Institute as a nonresidential Outreach trainer, and now offers several different weekend workshops on learning to access altered states of consciousness and incorporating skills accessed in those states in your daily life. This includes training people in the esoteric skill of spoon-bending something that she’d have sworn was a physical impossibility, but that now virtually all students succeed at learning.

Since becoming “suddenly psychic”, what psychic experience stands out from the rest –what experience was the most extraordinary?

My first response to this question was, how could I possibly choose? But then I realized one particular meditation does stand out for me. It was when a friend and I went past Focus-49 for about the second or third time. I got to Focus-253 (although past F-49, the focus levels don’t seem to me to be at all hierarchical as they are from C-1 to F-49). That was my experience of being in, with, and part of the Mind of God. It was the experience of total love, lack of separation, and complete Oneness. It’s impossible to describe in words what is utterly immutable and indescribable. You really had to be there!

I am not, and never was a Catholic, yet St. Teresa of Ávila, one of the great mystics of the Catholic Church, speaks to me in a way other mystics do not. I’ve sometimes wondered whether my experience of F-253 was similar to what she experienced when she was invited into her seventh, innermost castle. (Reference is to her classic description of her experiences as a mystic, INTERIOR CASTLES.) The first time I read INTERIOR CASTLES I was shocked. As I read her description of the various castles and so on, I realized that I’d been there too. And yes, many of her descriptions were dead-on accurate for the kinds of experiences I’ve had. They’re not exactly the same, of course. She was known to go into mystic ecstasies without warning, and was well known (and often observed) to levitate during many of these trances. As head of her convent, she found this embarrassing, and she often reminded her sister nuns to pull her down if she started floating! The one time I felt myself start to levitate, I freaked out and collapsed back into regular consciousness. To this day I don’t know if I actually lifted off my chair, or was about to lift off my chair, or simply imagined the whole thing. For some reason—maybe that physics major background that says levitation is clearly “impossible”—I have never wanted to try that particular meditation again, lest I actually succeed and destroy the last remnants of my belief in physical reality. Heck, I’m still having enough trouble getting past the whole time thing, without wiping out gravity too! Sir Isaac Newton would be appalled!

Do you believe in the existence of evil? If so, have you ever experienced it (i.e. an evil energy/entity) firsthand?

You know, I never used to believe that evil existed. One of the reasons for that is that I approached the energetic world via The Monroe Institute (TMI). At TMI you are never really told about evil—there’s simply no discussion of it on the part of trainers, and so on. I guess they don’t want to scare people away by warning them of dangers. Instead, you’re given a technique that you use to access altered states of awareness. And they teach you to go through this process every time you access altered states, till it simply becomes a habit. So that’s how I learned to access altered states of awareness and that’s what I did. And I really didn’t have any problems. That said, as I explored the literature and trained in other methods too, I realized that at least two or three of the half-dozen or so steps of the TMI method involve protecting yourself from negative influences. Coincidence? No, I don’t believe so. I’m very sure this protection was deliberately designed in by Bob Monroe and the others who established the procedures. Furthermore, by training people to automatically protect themselves against evil forces, I believe TMI does a huge service to the world. This is, I think, one of their truly unsung services to those exploring psychic realms. Of course, they can’t guarantee that everyone (or even anyone!) will follow their guidelines, but they give absolutely everyone who attends one of their programs a set of very effective and easy tools to protect themselves against attack, all without ever mentioning the word “evil.” I think that’s tremendous.

And, yes, I have been attacked by negative entities, and I’ve observed and encountered them when good friends have been attacked. In one case a very powerful wizard I know subjected me to a vicious energetic attack that came out of nowhere. (I use the term “wizard” to mean someone who uses their psychic skills in large part to gain or exert power over others, instead of primarily to improve their own spiritual self. Such people seem to me to be heavily ego-based instead of focused on spiritual development.) I had tremendous psychic and physical damage done to me in that attack, damage that took me nearly six months to recover from. I don’t know that I could have protected myself from that attack, given the specific circumstances and timing of it. But ever since then I try to be extremely careful about setting protection around me—those TMI techniques really do work!

The real question about evil is why it exists. I don’t know if my own conclusions will assist anyone else in coming to terms with it, but here’s my answer to that question. It derives from the fact that I take a very long term perspective on life. Because I believe that our thousands of physical lives are only brief but important moments in our overall spiritual development, I don’t put nearly so much value on any given physical lifetime as most people do. We nearly all have thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of lives. In some of them we die tragically young. In others we live to ripe old ages. Some are painful and sorrowful throughout. Some are filled with joy. Some are healthy. Some have horrific or crippling diseases. So the tragedies of any one given lifetime—the joys, the sorrows, the agonies—are all just transient blips in our personal spiritual development.

We clearly seem to be placed on Earth to learn specific lessons. It is my conclusion that those lessons are all about love. But we cannot simply love people who are nice to us. We have to learn to love people who hate us, who abuse us, and who cheat or steal from us. That is the challenge of physical reality: to love everything and everyone, no matter what.

For example, one of the messages I was given from my guides a number of years ago was that I had to expect to be attacked violently and that I must forgive my attacker while the attack was going on and return love and forgiveness in the face of violence. I was so not happy with that particular message! I whined about it to my guides for weeks and weeks! Nevertheless, I spent 2 or 3 years practicing returning love—loving the person who cut me off on the freeway, and the person who cut in line at the grocery, and the person who insulted me, and the person who…You get the point. We all encounter this kind of mini-evil every day. And I practiced and practiced until I was able to return love for pretty much anything. Just as I finally thought I was ready to return love for anything, that was when I underwent that attack of evil. Despite all my preparations, the psychic attack was so unexpected, so violent, and so hurtful, coming from someone I considered a dear friend, that I was shocked. But what I am most proud of is that I did return love back. I wasn’t particularly good at it, especially given that I was attacked before I could put any barriers up, so I was dramatically weakened psychically. And of course, my love and forgiveness were both unacknowledged and intensely rejected, but I did it—I was able to offer forgiveness and love in return for violence.

So here’s the thing. Could I—would I—have done all that training in returning love without the evil event? I don’t think so. I think evil events are handed to us as training platforms so we can learn how to cope with them in a loving, forgiving way. I think only when every single person in the world learns how to return love for evil will evil simply cease to exist. Of course, at that point, it may no longer be necessary for any of us to have a physical-reality existence at all!

The bottom line is that returning evil, hatred, vengeance, or anything of that sort in response to an evil event or an evil person is always, ALWAYS the wrong thing to do. The perfect example of the correct response is the Amish community who, in response to a gunman who deliberately went to their school to shoot and kill a number of their children, chose to forgive and love the gunman. Every one of the members of that community who actually chose love instead of vengeance is someone I admire deeply. They are the exemplars that all of us should follow.

None of this means you should not protect yourself and others from evil as best you can. Just because you can return love for evil doesn’t mean you have to set yourself up to be preyed upon. Prudence in physical reality is sensible and reasonable, and remember that I am very careful with my protection strategies these days! It does mean, however, that you do have to give up vengeance and the eye-for-an-eye “payback” concept. Jesus said it best when he spoke about turning the other cheek, but virtually all other prophets have said similar things. Vengeance is not ours to take. Vengeance eats our souls.

How often do you meditate? How long do your meditations typically last?

It varies quite a lot these days. I try to do a little bit every single day. In terms of how long they last, it depends on the day and how much I think I need (and have time for!). A typical meditation might be anything from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. I’ve been known to meditate for several hours, with occasional brief breaks. When I’m doing a joint session with a friend, those usually run a minimum of 40 minutes or so, and sometimes go well over an hour. They’re fun usually!

What is your current role at The Monroe Institute?

I’m not now, nor was I ever, a paid member of the institute staff. I did get accredited as an Outreach trainer, and I give Hemi-Sync-based workshops. But I’m not an employee of the Institute. Thus, my opinions are solely mine, and do not reflect TMI’s policies necessarily.

Do you believe in a higher power (e.g. God, the Source, etc.)? If so, what is your impression of the higher power?

This is the key question, isn’t it? When I started on this path, I can honestly say I was a flat-out atheist. I strongly believed that death meant simply ceasing to be. No heaven, no purgatory, no hell. You just…stopped. With the training I had in college from a hard-nosed experimental physicist who indoctrinated me in the “if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist” school of thought, how could I possibly be anything else?

Yet…when you personally begin to communicate with the dead, and get meaningful messages from them when you personally review many of your own lives, experiencing them not like a movie, detached and observant, but by living them…and when you personally experience being part of the Oneness of God…well, then any doubts about survival after death, multiple lives, and the reality of God go right out the window.

Doing a complete U-turn in my belief structure was horrifically difficult, and (as I mentioned with the time and the levitation thing) something I still struggle with. But I have absolutely no doubts that God is real. And God is us. We are all God. And that is the goal: to learn to perceive God in everything and everyone around us, from the people we see, to the animals which share our world, to the rocks and stones that make up our world, to the hydrogen atoms between galaxies. There is nothing else except God. All this apparent individuality and separation one from another is our own delusion, just as we delude ourselves that time exists. When we use or abuse anyone or anything else, we use and abuse ourselves. Talk about an incentive to “go green”!

It’s not an easy thing to get your head around, is it?

If you were given the opportunity to lecture a group of skeptics, what would be your core message to them?

The thing is, it’s pointless to talk to skeptics at all. In my experience with them, they simply refuse to hear anything they don’t want to know. I never believe that my experiences will ever convince anyone else of anything. My advice, for anyone who actually does have an open mind willing to admit the world might not be exactly as mechanistic as you think, is to go out and have your own experiences. Don’t believe what I say. Believe what you do.

The problem with psychic and spiritual experiences is that they really don’t translate into the laboratory at all well. They tend to be anecdotal and not always replicable. Because the results are often talent-based, they tend to be personal to the individual in the experiment rather than generic. The attitude and energy of the experimenter absolutely impacts the results obtained in experiments, meaning that skeptics will very often get negative results, while those with more open minds can get highly positive results using the exact same subjects and experimental protocols—that’s well documented, in fact. Psychic experiences also tend to be shrouded in metaphor instead of facts. All those things make it very hard to establish a methodology to measure such experiences. Without measurement you don’t have science, you have only opinions. So in a very real sense, psychic and spiritual experiences at this stage seem to me to be outside the realm of science (at least of the “hard” sciences like physics and such). If we ever get devices that can, for example, measure the human aura or the subtle energy fields, that might change in a very big way. But for now, it’s not a hard science at all, at least as far as I can tell.

Heck, we can’t even define what “consciousness” means. Or “life.” Or “death.” How on earth could we say anything even remotely meaningful scientifically about altered states of consciousness? Or spiritual reality? These are things that we know when we experience them, but coming up with a hard, scientific definition for them is almost impossible at our current level of development.

Bottom line is, talking to skeptics is just like talking to a black hole. You’re always talking opinions, and their opinions will never match yours, and they tend to be both stubborn and rude. So what’s the point?

Do you think the scientific community is moving closer to, or farther away from, accepting a metaphysical (i.e. paranormal, supernatural) reality?

I think it strongly depends on what part of the scientific community you’re talking about. If you’re talking cosmologists, and quantum physicists (the two ends of the size spectrum in physics: cosmologists study the entire Universe, and quantum physicists study the extremely small), I think there’s a whole lot of overlap between the physical and the metaphysical. Pretty much all the other “hard” sciences—chemistry, biology, geneticists, etc.—seem to me to be as hard-line as ever. Anthropologists, and some psychologists and medical professionals are beginning to understand the key role of subtle energies and spiritual reality.

There does also seem to be a rising interest in biology to better get a grip on consciousness, but everyone seems to be focused on keeping the study of consciousness firmly tied to our physical brain. Personally, I am firmly convinced that is a false assumption. Still, it’s a step in the right direction that people are at least considering the problem and holding conferences and seminars and such trying to figure out what it is.

What suggestions do you have for readers interested in psychic development?

Find a teacher. It’s a whole lot easier to learn how to access psychic skills if you have a mentor or teacher who helps you and answers questions. Not every teacher is a good fit for any given student, so you may have to look around a while to find the teacher who is right for you. If you’re persistent, you’ll find someone who is right to help you along the next stage of your journey.

Be open to whatever happens. I’ve known people who wanted to learn how to communicate with their dead relative solely to learn what drawer they put the will in. Ridiculous! Don’t have specific expectations.

Don’t undertake this frivolously. This is powerful, spiritual stuff. It’s not about impressing everyone at a party because you can make a spoon bend, or always finding a free parking space right in front of the building you need to go to. It’s about learning how to access your spiritual self, learning how to connect with your guides and angels. It’s learning how to become a better, more highly spiritual person and using your talents to help others. Almost any other use of these skills and talents is frivolous at best, and self-destructive at worst.

Don’t insist that you must be really good a specific talent. There are dozens of psychic skills, and most people can do any of them to one degree or another. But no one is equally good at all of them! Figure out what you’re best at and develop those. Maybe you’re never going to be a great remote viewer—you may not have the talent for that. Maybe you’ll never get conscious control over going out of body. Get over it and become a great healer instead. Or learn psychometry.

Be prepared to put in lots of time, energy, and hard work to develop your skills. This is just like learning to play the piano. If you don’t practice, work hard, and learn about your talent, you’ll always be stuck playing two-fingered “Chopsticks” no matter what natural talent you may have. If you want to be on stage at Carnegie Hall, you have to work, work, work and practice, practice, practice. If you want to be a terrific psychic, you have to do the same thing.

What kind of projects are you currently undertaking?

I have started a company with a couple of immensely talented energy workers, Catherine Moses and Deborah Aaron, called Vision Intuitives. We’re focusing initially on helping with animal and pet communications and healing work, but we plan to offer across-the-board psychic services—energy work, past life access, psychic readings, mediumship, and so on—as well as pet communications. We all happen to be animal lovers, so that’s why we’re starting there. Because we do most services remotely or over the phone, we work with clients anywhere in the U.S. or Canada.

We also are doing workshops to teach pet owners and animal lovers how to communicate with their animals. The first one will be October 23 & 24, 2010 in Winston-Salem, NC. Details of the workshops and our other services are on our website, www.VisionIntuitives.com.

Of course, my “feline manager”* Tinkerbell insists that talking with pets, particularly cats, is the most important conversation you can possibly have. (It’s possible that she has a slightly biased perspective on that.)

*Dogs have owners. Cats have staff. I’m staff. Tinkerbell is management.

For more information on Maureen, and her endeavors, please use the following links:

Websites: www.maureencaudill.com, www.visionintuitives.com

Book: Suddenly Psychic

“Talk to the Animals” newsletter (Vision Intuitives): VI Flyer Aug-Sep 2010.pdf

Are Pets Psychic?

It’s a fairly common belief that pets are more perceptive to their environment than us human are. I’m sure you’ve heard at least a few stories about pets, or animals in general, who appear to possess some form of extra-sensory perception. Interestingly, from my experience, people are more likely to believe in psychic pets than they are to believe in psychic humans. But what’s the deal with that? If we’re the most advanced species on the planet, why is that pets are able to pickup on things that we –well, most of us– can’t? I’ll render some of my thoughts on that, but first let’s look at some examples of extra-sensory perception in pets (and animals).

Extra-Sensory Perception in Pets

• My friend’s German Shepherd is one of the most perceptive pets I know. Whenever a family member is on their way home, somehow or someway, he knows. No matter where in the house he is, he’ll always run to the door about 5 minutes before the family member pulls in the driveway. After the family picked up on this pattern, they decided to do a little experiment. As soon as the dog made his way to the door, the family member who was home would call the family member who was on their way home to determine their location. It turned out that as soon as they pulled in the community (i.e. their development), the dog would head for the door. Interestingly, it takes 5 literal minutes to drive from the community’s entrance to the house. Therefore, it’s physically impossible for the dog to hear the car making its way home, especially since the dog is partially deaf!
• A very common example is a pet’s sensitivity to ghostly activity. While this example isn’t very approachable from an objective standpoint, it’s certainly ubiquitous. We’ve all heard stories of dogs ferociously barking at “nothing”; however, the thing that really gives this behavior meaning is when some form of paranormal activity happens before, during, or after the barking. I experienced this firsthand with my Golden Retriever, Rocky (photo above). Whenever there was paranormal activity taking place and Rocky was around, he’d bark either before or during the occurrence. What makes this especially compelling, is the fact that Rocky rarely barks –he usually doesn’t even bark at other dogs. So if you add up the unusual barking that’s in sync with the unusual activity, you get a very strong validation (if you’re personally experiencing it, that is).
• Another very common example is the instinctual behavior in animals. I can accept some physical explanations for instinctual behavior, but others could certainly be classified as “psychic phenomena”. In 2004, when the footage of the Indonesian tsunami was televised, some of you may remember something peculiar that happened before the waves started rolling in. What happened was an assemblage of animals swiftly headed for higher ground —before there were any signs of danger. From the human perspective, everything was normal, but for the animals, something catastrophic was about to happen. The animals were undoubtedly picking up on something that the humans couldn’t. This phenomena is similar to the way my cat, Edna, behaves before a powerful storm rumbles in –that is, before you could even see a hint of lightening, or hear the faintest crack of thunder, or feel the first drips of rain. Edna will make her way into the house at least 5 minutes before the first physical sign of a storm.

Trying to Make Sense of a Pet’s Psychic Abilities

Based on my personal experiences, I do believe that pets (and animals in general) are more perceptive to their environment than humans are. Some of their extraordinary senses do have physical explanations. For example, a dog’s sense of smell is a lot more powerful than a human’s sense of smell. This is why police officers frequently use dogs to assist them with detecting and locating people (e.g. missing persons) and things (e.g. drugs, bombs). There are, however, other forms of perception that can’t be attributed to their physical senses (above). But why is extra-sensory perception so prevalent in pets?

No one really knows for sure, but there is one explanation that makes perfect sense (pun intended) to me: the relatively simple lifestyle of a pet. Our pets may live in the same house as us, but they certainly don’t live the same life. Our lives are extremely complex compared to the lives of our pets. We have many different roles, and they have one. We have many responsibilities, and they have none (or maybe just a couple, depending on the pet). Our minds are usually stuck in the past or projected in the future, while their minds are fixed in the present. It really just comes down to the fact that our minds are cluttered, and their minds are clear.

The simplicity and clarity of our pet’s mind is what gives them the intuitive (e.g. psychic) advantage. The best way for humans to increase their intuition is meditation. What are the some of the greatest effects of meditation? Thinking in ‘the now’, and the clearing of the mind –two major intuitive factors that pets naturally possess. And guess what other group is commonly thought of as being very perceptive to their environment… children. This same ‘clear and simple’ logic can be attributed to children, but that’s another post entirely.

Do you have any psychic pet stories? Why do you think pets and other animals are so intuitive?

How to Record an EVP

Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) is one of the most compelling forms of evidence used to support paranormal phenomena. Paranormal investigators everywhere use EVP in an effort to validate claims of ghostly activity. You’d think that capturing voices from another dimension would require a lot of technical training and expensive equipment, but that’s not the case. After reading this article, you’ll have the knowledge required for basic EVP capture. And as far the equipment goes, it’s probably already lying around your house, or even already in your pocket (i.e. cellphone).

Before attempting to capture an EVP, make sure that you’re prepared for the possible aftereffects. Unless you’re prepared to deal with the realities of living in a haunted house, don’t attempt to capture an EVP in your home. As some of you already know, I learned this the hard way. Always be cautious and respectful when attempting to initiate contact with a disembodied spirit –you never know what kind of spirit you’re opening the proverbial door for.

According to many experts, EVPs can be recorded virtually anywhere: outside, inside, at the beach, in the office, in a parking lot –wherever. Although, that doesn’t mean you will record an EVP anywhere; the experts are simply saying that anyplace is possible. So, in other words, you don’t have to be in a ‘haunted’ location in order to record an EVP.

Things You’ll Need (for basic EVP capture):

• Recording device. Virtually any recording device will do. Some people swear by tape-based recorders, and some swear by digital recorders. I use my phone (i.e. digital recorder) to record EVPs and it works great. So, like I said, you don’t need and fancy equipment –just use anything that has a microphone.
• Headphones. While headphones aren’t necessary, they’ll make things a lot easier for you. While you’re listening to the playback of your EVP session, headphones are great when trying to listen for an EVP. EVPs are often faint, so a pair of headphones will help you pickup on things you may not have picked up with speakers.
• Pen and paper. When you’re recording, it’s good to have a pen and paper handy to document any unanticipated background noise. So if you’re recording and the doorbell rings, write down the sound and the time (elapsed time on recording device) the sound was made. This helps out a lot during the analysis.
• Time. The time consuming part isn’t the recording, it’s the playback and analysis. It could take 3 minutes or more of analysis for every 1 minute or recording time. You don’t want to rush the analysis because you could easily miss a compelling EVP.

The Steps:

1. Prepare the environment. Make sure you turn off any other noisemaking objects (e.g. TVs, radio, ringer on cellphone, etc.), or remove them from the room/vicinity (e.g. dogs, cats, etc.). Also, make sure to tell others in the room to be silent during the recording session. No one should be speaking whatsoever –that includes whispering.
2. Prepare your recording device. I recommend that you keep the device on some kind of surface; holding the device might cause interference.
3. Set the intent. Right before hitting ‘record’, make sure you state the something akin to the following: “If there’s anyone here with me right now, I’d like to communicate with you through this [the recorder] device. I will only communicate with positive spirits.” This does two things: it lets any disembodied spirits know that they can communicate through the device, and it helps protect you from any negative spirits.
4. Start recording. There’s two fundamental ways of conducting the recording session: you can run a silent session (i.e. letting the recorder run without asking questions), or you can run an inquiring session. I prefer the inquiring session, because the results can be a lot more validating than a silent session. If you’re asking specific questions (e.g. “What is your name?”) and receive a relevant response (e.g. “Casper”), the EVP will be very convincing.
5. Ask simple questions. When asking questions, it’s imperative that you ask questions that only require a simple response. Most EVPs are only a few words long at best –I’ve only recorded EVPs with one-word responses. So don’t ask complicated questions. The questions I usually ask are: “What is your name?”; “What year were you born?”; “What year did you die?”; “How old were you when you died?”; “Where were you born?”.
6. Space out the questions. It’s very important to wait at least 30 seconds in between questions –you have to give the entity time to answer. Our perception of time is a lot different than theirs; for example, 1 minute to us can be be like 5 seconds to them.
7. Analyze the recording carefully. Once you’ve finished asking your questions, that’s it –you’re done. Now all you have to do is listen carefully to see if you were able to pickup any anomalies. The analysis (listening to the recording) is just as important as the recording. If you’re not listening carefully, you can miss an interesting anomaly.

Remember, EVPs are usually faint and subtle. You should listen to the recording at least 3 times. It would also be ideal to have someone else give the recording a listen to. Someone else might be able to hear something that you couldn’t.

Similarly, If you think you captured an EVP, let someone else listen to it. It’s extremely important that you don’t tell them what it is that you think you heard. Have the person listen to it, and then ask them what they heard. If you ask, “Listen to this. You hear the word ‘broccoli’, right?”, you just corrupted your verification; the person won’t be listening with an impartial ear.

You now have the [basic] knowledge necessary to capture your own EVPs. Just don’t forget to really think about whether or not you’re ready and comfortable with the possible repercussions, especially if you’re recording at home.

The Amityville Horror House: Then and Now

The Amityville Horror house is one of the most notorious houses in America. The house’s wicked history began in 1974 when Ronald Defeo Jr. murdered 6 family members in the middle of an autumn night. After being convicted of 6 counts of second degree murder, Ronald Defeo Jr., the only remaining member of the Defeo family, was sent upstate to prison. The uninhabited house was put up for sale in 1975, and was sold to the Lutz family that very same year.

The Lutz family moved into the house just a couple days before christmas of 1975. According to the Lutzes, they began experiencing paranormal activity within just hours of their arrival. The activity’s frequency and magnitude only continued to escalate. After only 28 days, the Lutzes nightmarish experience had reached a climax, and the family was forced to flee the house.

After retreating from Amityville, the Lutzes shared their story with author, Jay Anson. Anson then wrote The Amityville Horror, a nonfiction book that conveyed the horrific experiences described by the Lutz family. The book quickly became a bestseller, and the Amityville Horror story became a pop-culture phenomenon. There have since been 9 Amityville Horror films, and dozens of books written on the subject.

The Amityville Horror House: Today

To this day, experts are still debating the legitimacy of what actually happened during those 28 days. However, this hasn’t suppressed the public’s interest in the Amityville story. Here on Long Island –the island where the Village of Amityville is located– there’s recently been a fair amount of media attention on the current status of the legendary house.

The Amityville house is currently on the real estate market. In many ways, the house is quite different than it was in the mid-1970s. The house has been remodeled several times; it no longer has those two quarter-circle windows, which looked like a pair of eyes, on the top floor. As you can see in the pictures (below), the house is currently quite lavish. The only thing about the house that has stood the test of time is the body of land it rests on.

The Amityville house’s address has also been changed through the years. The address (the house number) was changed in an effort to deter curious sightseers. The address was originally 112 Ocean Ave., but is now 108 Ocean Ave.

Recent Ownership History

• In 1977, James Cromarty purchased the house. The house had gone into foreclosure after the Lutzes took off.
• In 1987, Peter and Jeanne O’Neill purchased the house from Cromarty.
• In 1997, Brian Wilson, the current owner, purchased the house from the O’Neill’s for $310,000.
• In May of 2010, the house was put up for sale by Wilson. The house is currently listed at $1,150,000.

Recent Photos of the House:

Amityville Horror House (Exterior)

Amityville Horror House (Interior)

Amityville Horror House (Backyard)

Photo I took of the street sign next to the house.

The dock down the road from the house (Amityville River)

Here on Long Island, it’s common knowledge that the Amityville house is no longer haunted. However, that knowledge hasn’t stopped the thousands of sightseers who pass by the house every year. Almost every time I pass by the house, I’m immediately trailed by Amityville Police (as I was when I took some of the above photos) –they’re not too fond of visitors. There’s not too much they can do on halloween, though; Ocean Ave. becomes Times Square for the evening.

The irony, however, is that most Long Islanders don’t know where the house is located on Ocean avenue. There’s a house that looks like the house from the movies (i.e. it has the iconic eye-like windows), but it’s not actually the house. That goes to show just how much the house’s appearance has changed throughout the years.

Source: Newsday

An Argument Against Intelligent Design

Yes, you’ve read the article’s title correctly. So now you’re probably wondering why a metaphysical writer is against the concept of life being created by an intelligent designer. The truth is, I’m not against the concept –I firmly believe in a Supreme Being– I’m against the community of individuals trying to push intelligent design as science, and thus into science classrooms across the country.

Intelligent design (ID) is the assumption that life on earth is simply too complex to have been created by undirected mechanisms; therefore, the origin of life is best explained as being created by an intelligent designer. Supporters of ID aren’t satisfied with the theory of evolution.

As you may already know from some of my previous articles, I come from a scientific background. In my world, science and metaphysics (i.e. paranormal, supernatural phenomena) are able to peacefully coexist –I don’t put all my eggs in one basket. There’s not a doubt in my mind that organisms on earth have evolved, and are evolving. The evidence is too significant in quality and quantity for me to dismiss it. I accept the theory of evolution, but I also believe in a metaphysical basis for life and the universe as a whole. If you think my previous statement was contradictory, you’re likely one of the many victims of misconceptions pertaining to evolution.

Intelligent Design is Not Science

It doesn’t matter how you try to spin it, ID is not science. Science is the study of the physical world. Science is purely objective; phenomena being tested must be observable, measurable, and empirical. The reason ID is not science is because there’s no way of testing, observing, nor measuring it in an empirical fashion. ID is fundamentally a philosophical argument, and in my opinion, an interesting one. However, ID cannot be added to science textbooks because it’s only an assumption. Supporters of ID are assuming that life is too complex to have evolved from simpler forms –they’re not proving it.

In science, assumptions need to be backed up by empirical evidence. Once there’s empirical evidence, and a cause-and-effect relationship is established, it then needs to be reproduced by other, independent scientists. If other scientists are able to reproduce the relationship, then –typically– the rest of the scientific community will accept the relationship, and then it goes into science textbooks. This has not happened with ID.

Evolution is Real

The theory of evolution is just as real as the theory of gravity. Essentially, evolution is descent with modification; every new generation is slightly modified from the preceding generation. A real-world example of descent with modification is the annual flu shot. The reason there’s a new one every year is because the flu virus is constantly evolving.

When the flu virus hijacks our cells, it essentially tricks the cells into making more of the virus. Eventually, however, one of the newborn viruses will be slightly different than the original virus. That slight difference usually means the modified newborn virus will be resistant to the current flu vaccine. So, while all the original viruses are dying off, the new strain of viruses are replicating, replicating, replicating, until eventually they’re all over the place. Then, the next year, a new vaccine will be issued for the new strain. But guess what, the same thing will happen again, and so the cycle continues. The flu vaccine example is a form of microevolution. Microevolution can literally be witnessed in realtime under a microscope.

There’s been a large amount of evidence compiled that demonstrates how one form of life evolves into another form of life with relatively significant differences in traits. This body of evidence is known as the fossil record. The fossil record shows scientists the transitional stages a particular organism evolved through. For example, there are transitional fossils to support the notion that dinosaurs evolved from birds. The logic behind transitional fossils is, “If ‘A’ descended from ‘E’, then there must be proof of the transition, which means ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ must be found to make the connection (B, C, and D being the transitional fossils).”

Intelligent Design is the New Creationism

In most cases, ID is used as a guise to push Creationist –religious– beliefs into science classrooms. The ID assumption doesn’t make any claims as to who the intelligent designer actually is. The designer, according to ID, could be any form of superior intelligence –it doesn’t specifically cite a godly intelligence. Therefore, according to supporters of ID, the designer could just as likely be aliens (i.e. aliens who planted the seed of life on earth).

By evading to specify a designer, supporters of ID have created a semi-loophole in the legal principle of the separation of church and state. Before ID, the only other “alternative” to the theory of evolution was Creationism (i.e. the Book of Genesis). Teaching Creationism in public schools is unconstitutional, because it conflicts with the 1st Amendment (separation of church and state). So, when the “theory” of ID emerged, many Creationists viewed it as a suitable facade to push Creationism into the public school system. With the word “God” plucked from the language, they were more likely to bypass the 1st Amendment. Fortunately, most American public schools exclusively teach the theory of evolution. However, there’s a small percentage of public schools that teach both evolution and ID.

Evolution Does Not Contradict Metaphysical Beliefs

“If you believe in a Supreme Being (e.g. God) you can’t accept the theory of evolution.” The previous statement is false, and yet it’s believed by so many to be true. Contrary to what you may have been told, the theory of evolution does not explain how life originally emerged on earth. The theory of evolution simply explains how life has evolved on earth; why life on earth is so diverse. Abiogenesis, the study of how life first emerged from inanimate matter, continues to be a scientific mystery. Many people who deny evolution aren’t aware of this fact.

We have to get rid of the notion that in order for religion/spirituality to win, science has to lose. Our logical reasoning shouldn’t have to work this way. Science, for the most part, is only concerned with the physical world. In college, one of my biology professors was asked, “Why don’t we ever discuss intelligent design?”, by one of the students. The professor replied, “We can only study what we can observe and measure, objectively. If at this moment, God appeared in this lecture hall, I assure you, every scientist in the world would be elbowing their way in here to observe and measure God.”

Science can explain certain aspects of certain phenomena, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only explanation. While there may be an explanation to how something seems to behave on the surface (i.e. in physical reality), there very well could other forces at work beneath the surface (i.e. in metaphysical reality). Even though evolution doesn’t –and can’t– explain how life first emerged on earth, it still explains how our species (i.e. mankind) emerged on earth –we share a common ancestor with modern African apes. Does this scientific certainty make certain that we aren’t of divine creation? Absolutely not. Who is to say that a Supreme Being doesn’t use evolution as a form of creation? On the surface, it’s the theory of evolution, but beneath the surface, it could likely be the means by which Divine creation is taking place.

Our conception of the metaphysical world must be resilient to our ever-increasing understanding of the physical world. The belief in a Supreme Being is based largely on our intuition –knowing something without sensing it in an ordinary way (e.g. seeing, hearing, touching, etc.). Conversely, the acceptance of scientific theories and principles is based largely on our intellect –knowing something by assessing it in a rational, objective manner. Because we all possess both of these faculties (i.e. intuition and intellect), we should use both of them to understand the world as a whole. If there’s any constant shared by this world and the next, it’s likely balance. Whether it be osmosis in the physical world or karma in the metaphysical world, balance consistently appears to be the omnipresent rule. With a keen understanding of this rule, evolution and a metaphysical basis for life, will be able to peacefully coexist in your mind.

If you want more information on this topic, check out this article. The article, “Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?”, was written by Kenneth R. Miller. Miller, a evolutionary biologist from Brown University, is one of the most notable critics of the intelligent design movement. What makes Miller stand out from other critics is the fact that he believes in God (he’s Catholic) and is an evolutionary biologist!