Uri Geller in Greece

Final Stage: Lightning and the Savant

Metal bending celebrity Uri Geller first became conscious of his strange ability when he was approximately five years old. He was playing in a neighbor’s yard in Tel Aviv when “a light from the sky” hit him and knocked him to the ground. Soon after that, he was having a bowl of soup — when his spoon bent and broke.

Years later, an Israeli man named Yaakov Avrahami recalled in the past going to a Tel Aviv bus station and seeing a ball of light: “At that certain moment I noticed a little boy with a white shirt come out from the building to the left.” Avrahami said he saw the ball of light trail the youngster.

The exact cause and composition of ball lightning has yet to be determined. There may be several different varieties. But it usually appears as a grapefruit-sized sphere of light moving slowly through the air, which may end by fizzling out or exploding.

Prominent witnesses have observed ball lightning in previous times. In Acts 2:3, “tongues of fire” seemed to float around on the day of Pentecost. Czar Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, reported seeing a ball of light float into the window of a small church while in the company of his grandfather: “The ball (it was of lightning) whirled around the floor, then passed the chandelier and flew out through the door into the park.”

The Dutch News agency recently reported that on July 19, 2009, at least 100 homes in a district of the town of Soesterberg were hit by ball lightning. The lightning, a rare atmospheric phenomenon, wrecked hundreds of televisions, computers, telephones and central heating systems, the report said. In some households, flames came out of electronic equipment. In others, electric sockets sprang off the wall. “I saw the lightning shoot through the street,” one eyewitness told reporters. “The fireball hit a large fir tree and then went into a house,” he said.

* * *

Before Uri Geller finished his ten-week Greek reality show TV series “O diadohos tou Uri Geller” (The Successor of Uri Geller) introduced on October 24, 2009, I had the opportunity to attend his 8th program. I was in the ANT1 TV Athens studio audience on December 12.

In the studio cafeteria I bumped into Uri’s wife, Hanna, encircled by a group of young people with soft drinks and sweets. The senior editor of Focus magazine Christos Tsanakas chatted about statistics and dark matter with iconographer Giannis Tsolakos and his son Dionysus close by. Escorted by production assistant Laura Neri, I briefly greeted Uri Geller in his dressing room. But the situation there was far too rushed and jumping with folks for Uri to manage any of my mind testing.

Antenna TV host Christos Ferendinos and his creative director Kostas Grigorakis carefully reviewed last-minute details before the live broadcast. Countess Vanessa Kosta Pomponi with her husband Paolo and a few friends were also in the audience, keenly waiting for the show to get underway. Guest stars that gathered on the stage included model and presenter Vicky Kaya, and other national television celebrities.

The ANT1 TV studio was well designed and up to date. I walked around a multiplex of rooms specifically constructed for recording live to video. I unconsciously sensed that Zakris would finally win the Greek mentalist talent show. But I was also concerned that some observers were cautious about Uri Geller, accusing him of misleading the public with claims of supernatural powers.

* * *

What happens to you when you get struck by lightning? In “Act of God,” the Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal portrayed real-life stories to examine the jarring subject. In his book “Struck by Lightning,” mathematician Jeffrey Rosenthal endeavored to find out how often a result will happen just by chance. Some traditional beliefs suggest that people who miraculously survive lightning strikes can develop extraordinary talents.

Convincing proof emerged in the United States in 1994, when 42-year-old orthopedic surgeon Tony Cicoria was struck by lightning and quickly developed a passion to play the grand piano. He is depicted in the book “Musicophilia” by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, whose acclaimed “Awakenings” was made into a film with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. Tony Cicoria wasn’t musically gifted before the lightning strike. But ever since, his aspiration to play the piano has been fervent. Now, he plays to sold-out audiences and lately premiered his “Lightning Sonata,” a tour de force motivated by Cicoria’s weird incident. In the 1996 film “Phenomenon,” John Travolta was struck by lightning and realized extraordinary powers.

Savant Syndrome is a rare, but amazing condition in which persons exhibit almost unimaginable mental powers –– including musical, mathematical, artistic, verbal, and calendrical “savantism.” The website of the Wisconsin Medical Society lists 29 savant profiles. As described by leading researcher Darold Treffert, the Acquired Savant has extraordinary intellectual abilities as a result of traumatic brain injury or autism and developmental disability. But the Sudden Savant is an otherwise normal person who suddenly and unexpectedly acquires savant-like talent.

The autistic genius Kim Peek was the basis for the 1988 academy-award-winning film “Rain Man,” with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. It brought international attention to the Savant syndrome. Nowadays, Daniel Tammet is a well-known numerical savant who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. Stephen Wiltshire has the ability to draw exact replicas of what his eyes have seen after a quick glance, down to the exact number of windows in tall skyscrapers. Albert Einstein was a math savant who had slight autism symptoms. Benjamin Franklin, the explorer of electricity, was also a gifted savant –– evidently struck by lightning.

Medical research is presently looking into lightning’s possible effects on the human brain’s electrical circuitry. In the BBC documentary “Lightning: Nature Strikes Back,” a lightning strike victim received magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Even though there was no apparent physical damage, the electrical impulses revealed that his brain functions were re-wired by the lightning. In another analysis of human cognition, Allan Snyder discovered that people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) could for a few minutes suddenly exhibit savant intelligence –– exceptional surges of brilliant mental ability –– as a short-term effect of magnetic brain stimulation.

Associate professor Koichi Takaki at Iwate University in Japan recently tested DNA’s reaction to high-voltage lightning –– with 50,000 to 100,000 volts for a 10-millionth of a second. During the artificial lightning process, Takaki found that “secreted protein and enzymes initially decreased but then multiplied dramatically.” He said lots of lightning yields a good harvest of everyday farm crops such as shiitake mushrooms. (“Lightning prods shiitake to multiply,” Japan Times, January 1, 2010)

Scientists at Florida’s Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that “lifeless” proteins, devoid of all genetic material, can evolve just like higher forms of life. Charles Weissmann, who led the study, said: “In viruses, mutation is linked to changes in nucleic acid sequence that leads to resistance. Now, this adaptability has moved one level down –– to prions and protein folding –– and it’s clear that you do not need nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) for the process of evolution.” (“Lifeless prion proteins are capable of evolution,” BBC, January 1, 2010)

If protein and enzyme secretions can significantly multiply via lightning processes, and “protein folding” is able to evolve as higher life forms do, an electromotive force might also critically alter the optical discharges or “biophoton emissions” of DNA molecules. Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute led by Ian Spielman have recently created “synthetic magnetic fields” using visible light. With the metal bending ability of Uri Geller, biophoton emissions evidently convey a charge on neutral atoms and create a synthetic magnetic field to which they respond –– even though no field is present.

* * *

On a warm, windy day, stand and shuffle your shoes briskly on an acrylic carpet –– then touch a metal object. You’ll hear, feel and may even see a spark. For reasons still unclear, certain individuals can store not only sparks, but also large amounts of electricity in their bodies, discharging it with consequences ranging from humorous to extremely dangerous. (“Supercharged People,” By Mark Hall, hubpages.com)

In 1988, British newspapers featured Pauline Shaw, 46, who claimed that her body was so full of electricity that her touch could damage household appliances. She was reported to have destroyed 25 irons, 18 toasters, 15 kettles, 6 tumble dryers, 10 washing machines, 12 television sets, 12 radios, 3 VCRs, and at least 250 light bulbs. She said that she once damaged her bank’s computer by leaning on the terminal. Doctors who examined Pauline theorized that hypersensitivity or stress might have somehow been responsible for her condition. She had destroyed every appliance in her house –– but her strong point was light bulbs. When she walked beneath one, it exploded.

In 1980, Cheshire woman Jacqueline Priestman, at the age of 22, suddenly noticed she was changing the channels on her TV set without touching it. Sparks would leap from electrical sockets when she moved toward them. When Jacqueline touched something made of metal, she’d get an electric shock. By 1984, Jacqueline had wrecked more than 24 vacuum cleaners and local service men refused to visit her home.

Sally Wallbank of Lancashire is another supercharged being listed in the UK, where there are about 40 people similarly able. She had blown the motors in 6 washing machines and 5 vacuum cleaners, wiped her mortgage record from her bank’s computer, and caused a cash register to charge two thousand dollars for a lettuce. Sally immobilized every car she had traveled in due to electrical system failures.

Related reports are so frequent that Street Light Interference (SLI) Syndrome is now routinely alleged to be a person’s interference with electrical items. People that cope with this condition are known as “SLIders,” a phrase coined by Hilary Evans, a British archivist and writer. According to Holly Beth Anderle: “Computers may malfunction, batteries go dead, sound systems blow, and cell phone batteries refuse to hold a charge or the phones themselves go haywire. Most SLIders have no idea what is happening to them or what is causing the problem.”

Could the Street Light Interference syndrome be a kind of mental savantism related to biological electromagnetic fields?  During his research, Hilary Evans quoted a leading Hungarian physicist who is an authority on ball lightning:

“In my opinion during such incidents some special, presently not known type of magnetic field is created around the body, which has an effect upon the structure of the materials. Consequently their fundamental properties are changed temporarily: like their tensile stress, electric conductivity, magnetic momentum, optical properties, etc. The same effects are detected in the case of ‘metal bending,’ or similar features are observed sometimes around ball lightnings.”

As for the case of ‘metal bending,’ professor George Egeyly, a Budapest physicist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Central Research Institute for Physics, in recent times put pen to paper saying: “I put the spoon that Uri bent into my pocket and kept checking it every 3-4 minutes. It gradually bent to about 90 degrees in 15 minutes while in my own possession with no one around me. The spoon was later examined by electron beam scattering.”

* * *

I met with Uri Geller in Athens once more before the New Year. He came with his manager Shipi Shtrang to the Image Design Centre wax museum, run by Dimitris Hasekidis and Stella Ioannidou. But just as Uri embarked on bending a spoon, I suddenly experienced the SLIders condition. After only five photos my digital camera screen said: “Replace Batteries.” Yet the batteries were by all accounts freshly charged. The mix-up led to some finger pointing.

Uri’s critics fail to recognize that the real meaning of the “Geller Effect” is that metal bends without him touching it. In November, I had seen a spoon’s handle slowly bend by itself for almost a minute as it lay on a floor.  A former officer of the US National Security Agency also once said: “As he talked, the spoon continued to bend and fell on the floor.” Dr. Wernher von Braun of NASA renown likewise reported: “Geller has bent my ring in the palm of my hand without ever touching it.” Astronaut Edgar Mitchell said that Uri is not a magician, and those who claim he plays with slight of hand or other trickery are in fact ignorant of the Geller Effect.

My mind suddenly raced back to the 1970s. I had a daydream about windmills, the isle of Mycone, and Mr. Landon Kite, Staff Assistant to the President of America. He once considered “remote viewing” and a Near East corsair’s well –– sealed with seven metal seals.

For the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo-Fanques is there, what a scene
(“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” The Beatles, 1967)

Why is Bohr’s model of atomic hydrogen (water-maker) inscribed on a very old well seal? Don’t ask. If you think this is a hoax, you’re out of time. It describes the Rydberg formula for the spectral emission lines of the deuterium atom.

Remind us to show you how the well seal is a tryblion, as said by the Bruce Codex. What’s a tryblion? An ancient spoonful. Who broke the metal seal? If you think this is a hoax, you’re out of time.

We’re searching for a small rod in the center, the meson or quark-antiquark pair. It looks like the “f”-shaped sound-hole of a violin. Like an atomic lightning bolt, that nuclear boson filament is the strongest force in nature. The missing “God particle” vibrates to create quantum mass, and the ground of all material being. We call it a mathematical string.

Who broke the well seal? Now you see it. Now you don’t. Like a thief in the night, a spectral Prometheus stole the fire of heaven. Have you seen a comely stranger, a Man in Black? Who is worthy to open the seals? The one of Israel, whose mind melts steel.

Our search went on for over 20 years, until a cold war finally ended. And now the sixth seal is no longer in its place. It was a limited offer. Discontinued. Withdrawn. The mysterious metal tryblion on an antiquated well system for many generations is gone. Missing from the waterfront castle gate.

As the Tzolkin and Haab calendar completes another cycle, Alexander and Darius once again must meet. But Darius opens hostilities on too many fronts. They will be holes in his sinking ship. Nations await the quantum entanglement of two singularities, one known, and the other hidden.

In Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider prepares to breed the fêted God particle –– the technological singularity of longevity and eternal life. But Darius has his own nuclear reactors hidden in the far-flung mountains of Persia and Babylon. They are copycats of the Large Hadron Collider, with other components called Atlas, Alice and CMS. The Western bigots and deniers who sit with Darius aren’t his guests. They’re his bosses. How else could he get a hadron collider? Designed by IG Farben fugitives. He wants to create a man-made black hole, with a screen dump of the Higgs particle.

Darius’ scheme is an imitator experiment based on the 1945 German “Uranium Engine” by Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics. It was not a bomb. His time machine of biblical hell. Uranium deuteride can be used as a nano-trigger, injected into a human target assembly. Darius seeks guinea pigs to sit in the pathway of binary fission, the warp of space-time, fully awake:

And there came up out of the bottomless pit a wheel having a sword flashing with fire, and in the sword were pipes. And I (he) asked him saying; What is this sword? And he said: …into this pipe are sent they that through their gluttony devise all manner of sin; into the second pipe are sent the backbiters which backbite their neighbor secretly; into the third pipe are sent the hypocrites and the rest whom I overthrow by my contrivance. (Fragments of the “Questions of Bartholomew” dated to the 5th Century)

Regrettably, the sixth seal is no longer in its place. Now you see it. Now you don’t. Yet beneath an olden fountain lingers a channel of quantum entanglement, like a book of life. Just what did you think the sacred tryblion was, a trophy you could steal and put on your bookshelf? The tryblion has its lawful owner. Have you not known? The seventh seal is your mind, which only he can open.

Well, baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time
I said, baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time
You are all left out
Out of there without a doubt
‘Cause baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time
(“Out of Time,” The Rolling Stones, 1966)

What happens to you when ball lightning strikes you?  Ball lightning is up till now an unfamiliar phenomenon. A standard hypothesis currently suggests that ball lightning consists of vaporized silicon burning through oxidation. Another theory is that some ball lightning is the transfer of microscopic primordial black holes through the atmosphere, as proposed by Mario Rabinowitz in “Astrophysics and Space Science.”

“I must emphasize that there is a slight possibility that some of my energies do have extraterrestrial connection.” (Uri Geller)

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http://reporter.blackraiser.com/

(JANUARY 2010)  PETER FOT K KAPNISTOS, ICARIAN SEA, GR, 83300.

Uri Geller in Greece – Part 1: Sting and the Scorpion Tail

By Peter Fotis Kapnistos (2009)

The award-winning musician Sting once said that he could bend a spoon with the power of his thoughts, according to Uri Geller’s website. I had spoken with Sting during a press conference years ago and asked him what he thought of the “Macedonia issue.” He told me that the English are not taught very much about Alexander the Great. So I wrote a brief outline of my lost tribe folklore discoveries and asked Uri to forward it to Sting.

At around 700 BC, Babylon invaded Israel and supposedly carried off the so-called “lost tribes,” including the tribe of Mahaneh-DAN, together with the Ark of the Covenant. Not much later, a Pelasgian refugee tribe appeared in the Balkans, calling itself Mahe-DAN (Mahke-don, or Macedonian).

The gold larnax or royal box (left photo) found in a Macedonian tomb in 1977 fits the description of the lost Ark of the Covenant, with a star-crown on its lid (Star of Jacob). Few ancient artifacts bear such a close resemblance to the lost ark. Other legends say that the biblical ark was brought to Ethiopia, and that a priest carries a replica of the ark (right photo) during religious holidays. Notice the similarities of the star-crown in both photos.

* * *

Uri Geller’s latest TV show, The Successor (The Next Uri Geller) originated from Israel and swept throughout the world. The ANT1 premiere of the Greek version (Ο διάδοχος του Uri Geller) hosted by Christos Feredinos was the prime-time winner in its launch on October 24.

After watching the first show, in which Uri asked his viewers to put spoons and old clocks near their TV sets, I went through a strange happening on October 25. A few days earlier I had written to Uri about Sting’s psi-ability. Sting’s birth name is Gordon Sumner. On Sunday evening I had the notion that I could hear Sting say: “I’ll give you an hour!” An hour to do what? I thought to myself and quickly forgot about it. Meanwhile, on the previous night, my sister had taken out a broken alarm clock and placed it near a TV set.

About an hour later there was a sudden power failure on my entire street and all the lights went out. As my sister tried to light a candle, she was startled to hear the ringing of an alarm from another room. She thought about Uri’s show, and said, “I can’t believe this.”

By now, pandemonium had broken out in my apartment building. People came out of their flats in their pajamas with flashlights. The shrill ringing sound was coming from a burglar alarm on the sixth floor and the woman who lived there didn’t know how to turn it off. The hectic incident lasted about an hour before the lights came on again. An hour to do what? To complicate matters, that same evening at my place of work (on another street of Athens) the outside telephone lines suddenly sparked a short circuit and our cabling needed to be replaced by the phone company.

* * *

On November 22, Uri Geller and master painter Andreas Charalambides exhibited their joint lithograph book “Symbols” with 11 lithographs at the Argo Gallery in central Athens. I went to the gallery and spent about five hours there, talking with Uri Geller and his guests. On that occasion I also observed Uri bend three spoons.

Most of Uri Geller’s critics claim that he bends spoons by one of the following trick methods:

1. The spoon is pre-bent or fractured beforehand and is ready to break when Uri touches it.
2. Uri secretly applies a chemical powder or substance that softens the metal and makes it bend.
3. Uri uses a secret electro-magnetic device that charges the metal and makes it bend.

Yet none of the above explanations correspond to the details of what I closely observed.

As Uri chatted with an elderly gentleman from a humanitarian group, someone brought a spoon from the café next door. Uri held the spoon’s bowl with his left hand and lightly rubbed the handle with two fingers of his right hand. The handle then started to slowly bend upward. Uri said if the spoon is placed on a metal surface, it bends faster. He then balanced the spoon on the metal armrest of a lounge chair. But because the spoon was still bending, it fell to the floor. The spoon continued to bend by itself as it lay on the floor. The curious part is that the spoon’s handle bent up, not down, as one might expect if gravity were pulling on the weight of a pre-softened metal rod.

For a moment it reminded me of a scorpion lifting its tail. In a dreamlike way, the spoon seemed to have a life of its own. It wiggled around on the floor! Uri then picked up the spoon and handed it to the elderly man. It continued to slowly bend in the gentleman’s hand until it reached a ninety-degree angle. I then touched the spoon at the crease where it had bent. I realized that I would not be able to straighten it back into shape unless I used both hands with the spoon handle leveraged on my knee. The spoon ridge was hard and firm, not soft or malleable. It was not warm. And there was no feel of powder or emulsion on it.

I watched Uri do the same thing with two other spoons that were given to him by other guests of the gallery. Uri Geller’s critics should recall that he has been bending spoons since the age of five, and that there are witnesses to that reality. If a new-fangled substance or tiny electro-magnetic gadget that could rapidly twist metal existed in the early 1950s, it would have been sold to major industry, not as the plaything of a child. My own observation is that the Geller Effect is very real, although still unexplainable.

http://reporter.blackraiser.com/

(NOVEMBER 2009)  PETER FOT K KAPNISTOS, ICARIAN SEA, GR, 83300.

The Men Who Stare at Zygotes

By Peter Fotis Kapnistos

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) is a book by Jon Ronson about the U.S. Army’s investigation of psychic theories and the possible military uses of the paranormal. Its title alludes to efforts to kill goats by staring at them. In a Nov 7, 2009 online Twitter post, the well-known mentalist Uri Geller referred to actor George Clooney, saying, “His latest film is about my work.” In a Nov 12 Twitter post, Geller added:

“George Clooney is Uri Geller in the movie The Men Who Stare At Goats? I believe I ignited the story when I told Jon Ronson about some of my adventures with a certain intelligence agency.”

Jon Ronson’s book examines the links between paranormal military programs and psychological techniques used today. The book follows the development of secret psychic activities over the past decades and explores how they are used today in U.S. security and military operations.  Project Stargate, the CIA-run program that used remote viewing for psychic spying, came to an end in 1995, and thousands of pages of formerly classified material were released. Journalist Gary S. Bekkum has researched those secret government documents, as well as UFO information and psychic explorations.

According to Bekkum, The Men Who Stare at Goats (the 2009 comedy film) is more or less consistent, with polished performances from a first-rate cast headed by George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey. The America government has been involved in using the paranormal since the beginning of the Cold War. Bekkum now has 89,900 pages of documents about the psychic effort provided by the CIA:

In the 1970s, the American Intelligence Community, including but not limited to CIA, DIA, NSA, Army intelligence, the USAF, the Navy, and others, engaged in secret research to determine the usefulness of psychic phenomena. This is true, and this larger effort is mostly ignored by the film, which tells the story from the point of view of the characters, some who were inspired by real persons and events.

In the 1980s, Army intelligence did train operational military psychic spies, who were tasked against real targets of interest, including several high profile cases, such as the hostage crisis in Iran. Tasking for the units was handed down from highest levels of the U.S. government, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to declassified government files.

Jon Ronson’s book focused on one group of psychic spies in the U.S. Army. But if famed paranormalist Uri Geller is somehow related to Ronson’s observations, perhaps we ought to also look into Geller’s military background. Uri Geller was a paratrooper in the Israeli army. He fought in the Six Day War of 1967 and was wounded in action.

Geller’s biographers disclosed a rather intense incident when Uri supposedly tried to “duck and dive” on military service: “His working out of a cunning plan of deception in the paratroopers was not only foolhardy at the time – for what he did, he could have been flung in a military prison for months and suffered a stain on his record for the rest of his life.”

What actually happened to Uri Geller in the Israeli army? According to Uri, a miraculous switchover incident took place, with a machine gun. (‘Ben Gunn,’ says you, ‘has reasons of his own.’) But there was no one he could tell. “His first thought was that God had intervened, and as he has never had any other explanation for it, that tends to remain his belief.”

Although Geller took a bullet through his left hand in the Six Day War, he still headed a crack unit to knock out a pillbox. After being shot at twice, he fired his gun and killed a Jordanian soldier. Shortly later, slices of metal flying off a stricken tank, or possibly bullets, hit Geller again. “He felt a blast, sensed something entering his right arm and the left side of his forehead, and, as he blacked out, assumed with resignation that he was dead.”

Is there anything in the army records to suggest that Uri Geller might be able to stop someone’s heart by staring at him or her? Uri has been filmed staring at fertilized cells (zygotes) and plant seeds in order to make them germinate and sprout. But do certain psychic techniques involve martial arts and self-defense? Why does Geller relate to the men who stare at goats? Should we take a more careful look at Gary Bekkum’s files?

Uri Geller once said he had a dream he would die during a paratrooper jump: “He appreciated that dreaming of dying on a jump was a fairly normal thing for a paratrooper to do.” Did something weird happen to Uri Geller when he jumped as a paratrooper in the Six Day War? Did he in some way set off from this life? Was Uri’s miraculous switchover incident a reference to an out-of-body experience (OBE), or a significant UFO intrusion?

In the Second World War, UFO sightings were called “foo fighters.” Nowadays, if the blip of an unidentified paratrooper shows up on a radar screen, it’s sometimes called a “Mary Poppins” (the one-liner joke is that someone jumped down from the sky).

When the 11th blip abruptly arrived on Israeli radar in June of 1967, it was far more life threatening than a pathetic joke of duck and dive. Ten Israeli soldiers had volunteered for a critical mission to defend Israel’s right to exist. The radar screens showed eleven. Who was the 11th paratrooper of the Six Day War?

For what he did, he could have been put in prison. His mind raced beyond the limits of past and future. His body was a weightless force, faster than a speeding projectile. His right hand was outstretched. A shock wave roared and thundered in the sky behind him. The eleventh paratrooper was descending to the Mount of Olives.

There would be no picnic tables set with refreshments or well-dressed pastors waiting with Bibles at the moment. Jerusalem was a battle zone with heavy fighting –– a desert theater of fortifications and tanks. Pieces of someone’s dismembered leg marked the burning ground. “Where’s your parachute?” asked another soldier. “Over there,” the eleventh replied and pointed to a near graveyard. His shirt was saturated with color, dipped in his own blood.

He projected phases of his life as several dimensions, from a playful child to an elderly peacekeeper. Those aspects he embedded into terrestrial reality –– past and future –– when his feet touched the ground, and his body descended to the Mount of Olives. Who was the 11th paratrooper?

* * *

Cause tonight for the first time

Just about half-past ten

For the first time in history

It’s gonna start raining men.

It’s Raining Men! Hallelujah! – It’s Raining Men! Amen!

(The Weather Girls, 1982)

* * *

The eleventh paratrooper was at last identified and a background check was conducted. The niece of Sigmund Freud became a refugee when book burning and violent outbursts of anti-Semitism began in Vienna. Sigmund Freud and his family received visits from the Gestapo. Many would perish in the Holocaust.

The niece of Sigmund Freud was put at great risk with numerous forced abortion incidents –– enough to bring about female infertility. It would have been a medical wonder for her to be his biological mother.

The “SS Exodus” was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants from France in 1947 with the goal of taking its passengers to Israel. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivors who had no immigration certificates. Homeless orphans had no legal birth certificates or given names.

* * *

Uri Geller said that his paratrooper switchover was under the protection of some outside force, which was unfathomable. His first thought was that God had intervened. The American psychic Ingo Swann worked with Uri in the 1970s.  Russel Targ and Harold Puthoff conducted experiments with them at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). They believed that Uri Geller, retired police commissioner Pat Price, and artist Ingo Swann had genuine psychic abilities. The CIA and the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), directed by Andrija Puharich, allegedly worked with Geller, Price, and Swann to develop psychic powers for the military.

In November 2009, NASA scientists made the thrilling discovery that the moon has lots of water and could probably support life. NASA’s October 9 mission involving the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite provided the stunning confirmation of water in the forms of ice and vapor. “Having definitive evidence that there is substantial water is a significant step forward in making the moon an interesting place to go,” said John Logsdon, a space policy researcher for George Washington University.

In 1998, Ingo Swann wrote of water on the moon and said the moon also supports life. Swann claimed that men in black had taken him into the wing of a covert black ops survey into lunar anomalies to learn what aliens were doing there. Swann said he had made government connections with human looking moon visitors that were living on earth.

“VALIS” is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. (The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.) Dick’s theory was that we have been contacted by a transcendental mind he called VALIS:

In 1973 world-famous psychic showman Uri Geller had also been receiving messages and regular UFO sightings from something calling itself SPECTRA, which claimed to be a super computer in orbit around the earth. Not normally reticent about his bizarre beliefs, Geller has been suspiciously quiet about his experiences of SPECTRA – which may or may not relate to the publicly recorded interest the CIA paid to this particular aspect of his unusual career. However, the maverick, but world-renowned physicist, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, was prepared to commit almost certain professional suicide by publicly declaring that he too had been contacted by, in his own words, “a VALIS-like being.” Despite knowing he was going to face ridicule and scientific crucifixion, Sarfatti went on record to recount how, in 1952 at the age of 13, he had received a telephone call from an inhuman, metallic voice. The voice declared himself a sentient computer on a spacecraft from the future and instructed him to pursue a career in science.

After Sarfatti went public about his phone call from VALIS as a teenager, it emerged that he was not the only scientist to have had a similar experience. In recent years, researchers have discovered that at least a dozen other senior players in the international scientific community received a mysterious call claiming to be from a computer or other being from the future encouraging them to study science.

(David Southwell and Sean Twist, “Conspiracy Files: Real-life Stories of Paranoia, Secrecy, and Intrigue” 2004)

Tim Boucher freshly considered Philip K. Dick’s premise and said that Geller is also responsible for stories regarding John Lennon’s UFO contacts. Today, the prospects for life on the moon are better than ever before. “Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one,” said Greg Delory, a researcher for the University of California.

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin recently said in an interview that there’s a “monolith” on a moon. Benjamin Creme, a writer of esotericism for Share International magazine, claims that the modern “Messiah” already entered the earth’s atmosphere –– decades ago –– and is now living in England. The modern messiah-figure is making his policies known to the world as the current global systems give way.

As the “megachurch” movement spreads worldwide and “televangelists” make use of home entertainment media to provide teaching and support to believers, a new inquiry has been put forward: “If Jesus had a TV show, what would he broadcast?” The men who stare at quotes think he should probably instruct Bible and Sunday school studies. The men who stare at notes think he should explore lost archeology, ancient biology or stellar explosions in space. But the men who stare at votes think he should perform more miracles –– in harmony with our current laws. Today it is unlawful for a layman to heal without a medical license (very soon, it might also be forbidden for one to offer security related help).

“Another world,” the stranger said to the small crowd of men. “Why do you stand there, looking up at the sky? He will return in the same way that you saw him go.”

According to Benjamin Crème (and maybe Dan Brown), the modern messiah-figure’s intention is to marry and live the dream of Eden. His legendary wedding feast is supposed to last for a thousand years, to mark the “technological singularity” or scientific era of eternal life.

Some critics may perhaps argue that men who stare at goats use the evil side of the mind. But a more angelic inspiration for Jon Ronson’s weird tale can be found in Acts 5:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.”

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

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http://reporter.blackraiser.com/

(NOVEMBER 2009)  PETER FOT K KAPNISTOS, ICARIAN SEA, GR, 83300.

Strange Things I Don´t Talk About

By Peter Fotis Kapnistos

In my lifetime I have experienced a few incidents that might be described as Fortean because they remain outside the recognized theories of science. Altogether, there were really only four or five such anomalous occurrences in my whole life and they took place years apart. But even so, I remember them in detail because they remain unexplained. I suspect that many ordinary people also experience extraordinary things but don´t talk about them for fear of being laughed at.

I personally don´t have a problem with making people chuckle. The way I see it, it´s a lot better than making people weep. So if you have a psychological need to giggle at something you can´t explain, go right ahead. It´s an excellent fear-repression mechanism. But listen closely to what I have to say.

Paul Dale Roberts, a paranormal investigator and writer recently interviewed me. He put forward a range of questions on the subjects of UFOs and Men in Black (MIBs) that I encountered several years ago. I also touched upon research in remote viewing conducted by the US Navy from 1972 until 1995. L.R. Bremseth, then a Navy commander, described it as a broad-based “transcendent and asymmetrical” research program. But there were some other matters that Paul Dale Roberts didn´t ask me about because they have no obvious link to UFOs. There are a few strange things I don´t talk about.

A most baffling incident happened to me one warm summer evening when I was walking alone. It was somewhere around three or four o´clock in the morning. The streets were empty and the neighborhood was silent as I nonchalantly made my way home after a get-together with a few friends. When I arrived at the intersection lights of two small streets near my house, I carefully looked in each direction to make sure no cars were coming. The junction was undisturbed and the narrow streets were abandoned. Nobody was outside except me. But I suddenly noticed something dim and small rapidly moving toward me from about half a block away. I was standing in the middle of the intersection and thought it could have been a dark cat or perhaps even a large rat running after me. The small dark thing was moving fast and when it approached me I quickly jumped in the air to prevent it from biting my foot. It abruptly stopped next to me. I cautiously crouched down to see what it was and was absolutely amazed by what I saw. It was a big cluster of muddy grapes. Where it came from, I do not know. How it scuttled along the street, I have no idea. There are some things I don´t talk about.

I realize there´s much symbolism to the grapevine. But I´m the type of person who looks for scientific explanations for bizarre experiences. This one really had me stumped. The only rationalization I am able to provide is a long shot. In 2008, researchers discovered single-celled organisms about the size of a grape on the seafloor near the Bahamas. These large single cells (called Gromia sphaerica) can actually scurry along the seafloor. Cosmologist Paul Davies recently speculated that a space-faring civilization could build miniature probes to explore the galaxy, perhaps no bigger than your palm. Such so-called “von Neumann probes” may act as roaming life forms the size of grapes from an extraterrestrial civilization. I told you it was a long shot. But if you can come up with a better explanation that doesn’t involve phantasms, please let me know.

About two years later, I visited Israel during the summer months because I wanted to see the old town of Jerusalem. Entering the ancient walled city was like taking a journey into the past. Unfortunately, there was much political tension in those days and soldiers with machine guns patrolled the streets at night. But that didn´t stop me from slipping past the guards and climbing up to the Mount of Olives where I found a comfortable spot to sit and gaze down upon Jerusalem and meditate every night. After doing that for a few consecutive evenings, one night I saw a small ball of light suddenly materialize in front of me as I sat in the grass. It seemed slightly larger than a ping-pong ball but looked smaller than a tennis ball. It was a bright sphere of continuous white light, not flashing, and seemed to float about four or five feet off the ground. It drifted slowly in front of me, from my right to my left, and traveled approximately thirty or forty feet before it abruptly evaporated.

Unlike the grape cluster, there is scientific recognition of this fact. It´s called ball lightning. According to Dr. Keith Heidorn, a similar phenomenon called St. Elmo’s fire can also appear on leaves, grass, and even at the tips of cattle horns. Prof. Colin Price, head of the Geophysics and Planetary Sciences Department at Tel Aviv University, said thunderstorms are the catalyst for a newly discovered natural phenomenon he calls sprites, described as flashes high in the atmosphere.

The exact cause and nature of ball lightning has yet to be determined; there may be several different types, confusing matters further. But generally it manifests as a grapefruit-sized sphere of light moving slowly through the air which may end by fizzling out or exploding. (David Hambling, “Scientist Looks to Weaponize Ball Lightning,” WIRED, February 20, 2009)

Even though scientists don´t know what causes ball lightning, at least they have a name for it. It seems that it may be a sporadic phenomenon in Israel. Uri Geller, the world´s most investigated paranormalist, said that at the age of four he had an encounter with a mysterious ball of light while in a garden near his house in Israel. He said that he chased after it and was actually hit in the head by the “sphere of light.” This might sound like a childhood flight of the imagination, but many years later an elderly Israeli man named Yaakov Avrahami recalled that while he was once walking to a bus station he witnessed a ball of light. “At that certain moment I noticed a little boy with a white shirt come out from the building to the left. This light ball stopped like it sensed him. Suddenly it moved backwards towards the little boy.”

Journalist Anthony Bragalia says that UFOs are both amorphous and solid. They appear as “lightforms” as often as they appear to be constructed of metal. Bragalia claims that in the coming months newly discovered information will be released revealing that the US government conducted some very interesting studies which, when published, will provide stunning insights.

Some of the aerial “plasma light” phenomena appears to be self-organized and self-directed, even exhibiting some type of intelligence. They can hover, move instantly, morph shape, blink out then reappear elsewhere… or fade into nothingness. Explanations have been proffered that the lights are unknown natural earth or atmospheric events or processes. Maybe they somehow relate to piezoelectricity, ions, earth lights — or unique combinations of these things. Or even still, some feel they may be some sort of unknown aerial life forms. (Anthony Bragalia, “UFOs and the States of Matter,” The UFO Reality, February 12, 2009)

The coincidental timing of my ball lightning experience is what symbolically matters to me. I can now say that “I saw the light” while meditating on the Mount of Olives over Jerusalem. But Uri Geller apparently caught it right between the eyes. Since the nature of ball lightning still remains unknown to scientists, we can´t rule out the possibility of a von Neumann probe in this case either. Observing a celestial probe might be amazing, but having one transferred into your forehead would truly be remarkable.

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is a 2004 non-fiction book by Jon Ronson, and a movie based on the book, starring George Clooney, about the US Army’s exploration of the potential military applications of the paranormal. The title refers to attempts to kill goats by staring at them. According to David Hambling of WIRED magazine, Dr. Paul Koloc briefly obtained funding in 2002 from the Missile Defense Agency to create stable “magnetoplasmoids” or ball lightning a foot in diameter which would last between one and five seconds and accelerate to two hundred kilometers a second. This would make an idea anti-missile weapon, generating an intense electromagnetic pulse on impact. The USAF´s Phillips Laboratory supposedly examined a very similar concept in 1993.

Shortly before my father´s death, the hands of a small clock in my kitchen started moving counter-clockwise. We assumed that it was because the clock needed new batteries. When my father was placed in an intensive care unit after enduring a heart attack and a broken hip, I remained at home to watch over my ailing mother. As I prayed for my father´s health, I suddenly felt a mild breeze of air move from the left side of my body to the right. I sensed at that moment that my father had passed away. I looked at the clock in the living room. It was eight-twenty in the evening and I said so to my sister. When we later got our doctor´s hospital report, the exact hour of my father´s death was 8:20 PM. A few days later, our next-door neighbor happened to be visiting us. Because she was near the telephone, she answered it when it rang. It was a man´s voice. He asked about a family member. When my neighbor asked who the caller was, he replied that he was my father — and promptly hung up. Unless that was a heartless prank, it resembled various reports of so-called “dead ringers,” or phone calls from the dead. In many instances the cell or landline numbers had even been disconnected. But they still appeared on caller ID.

Every time the living picks up the phone all they hear on the other end is static. There have been instances of those who receive the calls recording them only to find voices in the recording that were not perceptible to the human ear at the time. (Pastor Swope, “Dead Ringers,” The Paranormal Pastor, November 30, 2008)

The Death and Resurrection of Mars

A popular website has built a minor-league reputation regularly nit-picking about “UFOs and the Death of God.” Citing Nietzsche´s schizophrenia and welcoming an existentiality that it presumes to be real, its most recent report claims “some in the UFO community replace God with UFOs for psychological reasons.”

That argument vaguely reminds us of the “Death of Mars” attitude. Scientists have long reflected on the possibility of life on Mars. In the 17th century, after telescopic observation by some observers of apparent Martian canals, it was natural to suppose that some form of life may inhabit Mars. But in 1894, U.S. astronomer William Campbell wrongly showed that water and oxygen were not present in the Martian atmosphere. By the early 1900s, the canal theory was no longer supported. In 1965, NASA scientists unhappily described a parched Mars without rivers, oceans or any signs of life. Mars was officially dead. But today all that has changed. The discovery of abundant sources of water on Mars, together with vast stores of methane gas have most researchers believing once again that Mars is alive and well.

Advocates of the “God is Dead” hypothesis may also be in for a big surprise. According to Paul Davies, there could be microbes that do not have the standard biochemistry of Earth-dwelling organisms. Davies and other leading researchers now think that an amazing realm of “life as we don´t know it” may exist around us. Scientists would never have identified such “weird life” because the techniques they use for studying microbes are based on the familiar biological processes that drive the living things we understand.

Some microbes may also have a means of carrying genetic information and replicating themselves that is not based on DNA, or that has extra DNA “letters.” These microbes could exist in extreme environments such as deep underground or in hot springs, or they could even live inside other organisms, including ourselves. “They might be right in front of our noses, or even in our noses,” Professor Davies said. (Mark Henderson, “Aliens ‘may be living among us’ undetected by science,” Times Online, February 15, 2009)

As one observer noted, the Bible clearly talks about life that is not based in DNA, realms of created beings that are not physical. Over eighty percent of the US population believes in God because that inkling appears to be hard-wired in our genes. The remaining twenty percent don´t believe because they have a psychological need (or guilt) not to. They argue that God is “too good to be true.” It is ironic that the English name God actually stems from the words “the good.” If you remove the possibility of an ultimate good, then you´re left with an ultimate banality. Are you good at what you do? Are you good at your job? Are you good in bed? Twenty percent of the US population has abandoned all trust in “the good” and by extension even attempts to identify the entire universe as an object of banality and mayhem. But they can only speak for themselves.

The “God is Dead” campaigners say God cannot possibly exist because he abandoned his people many times over the millennia, and more unspeakably during the Holocaust. Sir David Attenborough, a prominent agnostic and distinguished BBC television naturalist, recently said he rejects the Bible because a loving God would not allow an innocent child in Africa to have its eye destroyed by a parasitic worm. However, he failed to mention that there is still hope for that child if modern science turns away from warfare and concentrates on the healing arts. Perhaps what Sir David really means is: why would God allow an innocent Jesus to be crucified? The answer to that, we are told, is to teach us the importance of courage. Modern man has become a cowardly creature that destroys innocent life in underprivileged nations with push-button ease, while he gradually becomes a vile object of morbid obesity and banality. God´s death was to teach us the worth of valor — and that death cannot hold Him.

It is argued that many “deranged people in the UFO community” have taken to hallucinating about being taken to Him. But can you think of a medical specialist on appendicitis who has never actually seen a human appendix? Or how about a certified critic of hip hop music that´s never heard a single African American or Latino American song? They would probably be regarded as con artists, not authorities. Why then, are there so many official “UFO investigators” that have never seen a UFO — and really don´t want to because they fear it will make them appear to be unreasonable? Where is the expert common sense in that?

Imagine being a civilian in the Iraqi war (or any war for that matter). One day you look out your front door and see a large armored vehicle parked directly outside your house and perhaps a few soldiers patrolling your street with cameras and searchlights. Would you really suppose that the soldiers don´t notice you and that they don´t know who you are? You´d have to be pretty naïve to think that. It would be far more realistic to assume that they know exactly who you are — and they will probably keep tabs on you from time to time. This is how I interpret UFO experiencers: They are known and made use of by intelligent extraterrestrials to circulate and publicize particular facts of the UFO enterprise.

What is happening now appears to be a bizarre form of psychological warfare. We are being literally bombarded with countless sightings and photographs of unidentified aerial objects to drive home the intimidating point that something beyond the scope of human science is watching over our planet. There are simply too many reliable reports flowing in to be dismissed as hallucinations or frauds. Why then, doesn´t the government just admit that UFOs are real? Perhaps because the largest part of taxpayer money goes to an overwhelming defense budget. The last message the Defense Department wants to convey is the likely fact that it cannot defend us from potential UFO upheavals (as if we didn´t know by now). That would be an outright acknowledgment that billions of our dollars are being wasted. So instead, it plays the flightless ostrich game of hiding its head in the sand. Sixty years ago, the Japanese government chose to ignore warnings that America was developing a secret weapon. Japan´s ostrich game suffered a legendary defeat and the state religion of Emperor worship was banned. I don´t have a problem with making people laugh. But there are some things I don´t talk about. 

(FEBRUARY 2009) PETER FOT K KAPNISTOS, ICARIAN SEA, GR, 83300.