Freakin' with nature - embryo research

The Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, currently on it way to becoming English law, could pose a serious threat to the concept of sanctity of life. Among other things it allows babies to be created that have the right characteristics to serve as donors in order to aid sick siblings. It may also permit the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos. All in the name of "research".

Of course anyone who has seen a loved one endure pain and suffering would welcome any efforts to cure disease or alleviate its effects. But is there some limit that should apply to such research?

Scientists naturally wish to push the frontiers of knowledge ever further. But scientists do not always consider the moral implications of their work, eg it was scientists that created nuclear weapons.

From a Spiritual perspective it could be argued that anything we do is part of God's will, else we wouldn't be able to do it. We possess free will, and if we have developed sufficient knowledge and skill to pursue a particular pathway then who can say such pathway is "wrong"?

But in possessing free will we also possess the capacity for error. And some errors are less reversible and more catastrophic than others.

Alongside our free will we are also blessed with a sense of morality, the ability to consider the potential benefits and costs, opportunities and risks, of a proposed action.

We must engage this moral capacity carefully lest we embark upon a slippery slope towards a Hitleresque future where only the physically and mentally perfect have the right to live. And who would decide what was perfect. Would they be the blue-eyed Aryan blonds, or would they have some other characteristic?

Stephen Hawking and Helen Keller would have been denied the right to life to name but two. And anyone who has cared for the disabled will know how much they can still enjoy life and give pleasure to those around them. What right has one living being to deny the existence of another?

A further nightmarish scenario is where a "lower" form of being is bred to carry out the drudgery of manual labor leaving the "superior" master race to enjoy a life of luxury.

Too many countries already de-value life with their overly liberal attitude to abortion in which countless viable babies are legally and routinely slaughtered.

The bottom line must be the absolute recognition of the rights of the potential life forms being proposed for experiment.

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Can We Really Travel in Time?

Time is simple enough to understand, isn’t it. It moves forward at constant rate. What’s gone is gone and can’t be changed. What’s to come hasn’t happened and can’t be known for certain until it does. And that’s it... Or is it...

On July 28th 2007 the Daily Mail carried a fascinating piece entitled “The real life Doctor Who who believes he can build a time machine”.

It tells the story of Ronald Mallett, an American physicist, who believes he really can use the laws of physics to turn back time.

Mallett is driven by memories of his father, who passed away prematurely as a result of his unhealthy lifestyle. He hopes to someday be able to travel back to his childhood to be able to warn his father to drink less, smoke les and exercise more in order to prolong his life.

Inspired by the science fiction of HG Wells and the work of Einstein, Mallett has already lived a remarkable life. Overcoming a deep sense of grief at his father’s passing, and the racism of the deep south, he became one of a small band of black men to earn a doctorate in physics in the USA and remains the country’s only black physics professor.

Remarkably the laws of physics do not appear to prevent time travel, and physicist Frank Tipler proposed a mechanism involving a superdense spinning cylinder in 1974. Unfortunately, current technology is unable to build such a cylinder.

Mallett’s approach is more practical and involves a circulating beam of light. He believes a prototype can be constructed for less than the price of an English house! The only limitation of Mallett’s machine is that it would only be able to transport one back to the point at which the machine was started.

Of course Mallett’s work raises all kinds of philosophical and Spiritual questions.

What if we were to go back and change the past in such a way that the present we are experiencing could no longer exist. In the extreme case we could kill our own parents before we were born... Or are we really into the sci-fi world of parallel universes?

And if time travel were really possible how come no one from the future has been to visit us?

Spiritual teachers frequently tell us that time is not as we perceive it and that in the world of Spirit time has no meaning. Could the possibility of time travel give an insight into the 4th dimension’s true nature?

Find out more about Mallett’s work in Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality by Ronald L. Mallett and Bruce Henderson.

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Are Orbs of Light Manifestations of Spirit?

Yesterday the English Daily Mail continued to enhance its reputation as one of the more open-minded newspapers by publishing "Is this the proof that spirits DO exist?" an article on the mysterious orbs of light that have been appearing inexplicably on increasing numbers of photographs.

The phenomena has been investigated by NASA scientist Klaus Heinemann, PhD after he noticed the phenomena on a number of his wife's pictures. At first Heinemann applied his considerable scientific knowledge in an attempt to find a physical explanation. However after failing to do so he began to consider non-material causes.

Heinemann presented his theories at the ORBS: What Is Going On? Prophets Conference, Sedona, AZ, May 2007, stating "The implications of a realization that we are 'surrounded by a cloud of witnesses' are enormous – and, I might add, incredibly hopeful at large."

Spiritual mediums have long held that rather than being in a distinct place/time the Spirit world is actually all around us, only vibrating at a higher rate than physical matter. Communication takes place when a medium is able to raise their vibrations and Spirit lowers theirs. Natural “sensitives” are those with naturally higher vibrations.

Might it be that Spirit have found a way to lower their vibrations to the extent they are able to affect modern gadgetry, or that they particularly feel the need to remind us of their presence in these troubled times for the world?

Heinemann has co-authored a book on orbs with Miceal Ledwith (a former theology professor who was President of National University of Ireland Maynooth College at the  for ten years). The Orb Project will be published in November 2007.

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Roswell 60 years on - the mystery deepens

This month sees the 60th anniversary of the most famous unresolved UFO mystery of them all, ie Roswell. It is said that a UFO crashed near the city of Roswell, New Mexico, USA, and that debris of the craft as well as bodies of aliens were recovered by the US military. The US government has repeatedly denied this version of events, claiming instead that what crashed was a research balloon.

A recent interesting twist comes from a sworn affidavit from Walter G Haut, public information officer at Roswell base during the Roswell incident, to be released only after his death. Haut passed away in 2005 and the affidavit, now public, reveals a military cover-up and that he witnessed first hand both the alien craft and the bodies of its crew.

The universe is certainly a big place, and though intelligent life may be sparse it is highly arrogant to consider it limited to earth. It is also highly arrogant to assume that no life more intelligent than ourselves exists elsewhere. Given the likelihood it does. isn't there a possibility that it happens to be aware of us and has an interest in our development?

Alternatively, isn't it strange how reports of UFOs increased dramatically during the military expansionism of the cold war and development of faster, more efficient flying machines on earth?

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Science and Precognition

English newspaper the Daily Mail published a fascinating article on May 5th 2007. In "Is this REALLY proof that man can see into the future?" Dr Danny Penman outlines current scientific research that suggests this realy is the case.

Professor Dick Bierman of Amsterdam University is quoted as saying: "We're satisfied that people can sense the future before it happens". Cambridge Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson is quoted as saying: "So far, the evidence seems compelling. What seems to be happening is that information is coming fom the future."

Penman cites evidence from the 9/11 disasters that all four of the crashed planes were unusually empty. Scientists Ed Cox and Jessica Utts have found that trains that crash carry "far fewer" people than they normally would. It's suggested that rather than seeing vivid imagery o teh impending disaster those saved experienced a more general feeling of unease.

Dean Radin has carried out research that showed people exhibiting physical reactions to extreme images a few seconds before the images were shown, as though they somehow knew the nature of the image about to be displayed.

Not only does this show science is finally catching up with what mediums and sensitives have known for ages, but it also raises fascinating and paradoxical questions over whether the future already exists. If so thatwoudl mean that we do not really have free will. But of coure we all know (as far as we can know) that we do have free will.

The explanation may lie in what I was once told by a clairvoyant. Although mediums can predict the future, such predictions are not cast in stone but relate to a snapshot of things as they stand now. The intervention of human free will can change what otherwise would have been.

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