Vampires and Vampirism


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Physics and Psychics


Book Description

Noakes' revelatory analysis of Victorian scientists' fascination with psychic phenomena connects science, the occult and religion in intriguing new ways.




Entangled Minds


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Is everything connected? Can we sense what's happening to loved ones thousands of miles away? Why are we sometimes certain of a caller's identity the instant the phone rings? Do intuitive hunches contain information about future events? Is it possible to perceive without the use of the ordinary senses? Many people believe that "psychic phenomena" are rare talents or divine gifts. Others don't believe they exist at all. But the latest scientific research shows that these phenomena are both real and widespread, and are an unavoidable consequence of the interconnected, entangled physical reality we live in. Albert Einstein called entanglement "spooky action at a distance"—the way two objects remain connected through time and space, without communicating in any conventional way, long after their initial interaction has taken place. Could a similar entanglement of minds explain our apparent psychic abilities? Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, believes it might. In this illuminating book, Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab tests. Radin surveys the origins of this research and explores, among many topics, the collective premonitions of 9/11. He reveals the physical reality behind our uncanny telepathic experiences and intuitive hunches, and he debunks the skeptical myths surrounding them. Entangled Minds sets the stage for a rational, scientific understanding of psychic experience.







Psychology and the Occult


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A fifteen-year-old girl who claimed regular communications with the spirits of her dead friends and relatives was the subject of the very first published work by the now legendary psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. Collected here, alongside many of his later writings on such subjects as life after death, telepathy and ghosts, it was to mark just the start of a professional and personal interest—even obsession—that was to last throughout Jung’s lifetime. Written by one of the greatest and most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century, Psychology and the Occult represents a fascinating trawl through both the dark, unknown world of the occult and the equally murky depths of the human psyche. Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Founded the analytical school of psychology and developed a radical new theory of the unconscious that has made him one of the most familiar names in twentieth-century thought.




Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose


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How our once-helpful instincts got hijacked by our garish modern world. Have you ever wondered why some men choose pornography over actual women? Why so many people watch Friends instead of going out with their own buddies? Why a person would “feed” a plastic Pocket Pet while shirking real duties? Why both sides of every war see the other as the aggressor against whom their “Department of Defense” must respond? Harvard evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett explains how human instincts—for food, sex, or territorial protection—developed for life on the savannah ten thousand years ago, not for today’s world of densely populated cities, technological innovations, and pollution. Evolution, quite simply, has been unable to keep pace with the rapid changes of modern life. We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects—from candy to pornography to atomic bombs—that gratify outmoded but persistent drives with dangerous results. In the 1930s Dutch Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen found that birds that lay small, pale-blue eggs speckled with gray preferred to sit on giant, bright-blue, plaster dummies with black polka dots. He coined the term “supernormal stimuli” to describe these imitations that appeal to primitive instincts and, oddly, exert a stronger attraction than real things. Obviously these hard-wired preferences pose a danger to a species’ survival. Barrett’s singular insight is to apply this phenomenon for the first time to the alarming disconnect between human instinct and our created environment. Her book adroitly demonstrates how supernormal stimuli are a driving force in many of today’s most pressing problems, including obesity, our addiction to television and video games, and the past century’s extraordinarily violent wars. Man-made imitations, it turns out, have wreaked havoc on how we nurture our children, what food we put into our bodies, how we make love and war, and even how we understand ourselves. Barrett does more than pull the fire alarm to show how these unfettered instincts fuel dangerous excesses. There is a hopeful message here as well. Once we recognize how supernormal stimuli operate, we can craft new approaches to modern predicaments. Humans have one stupendous advantage over Tinbergen’s birds: a giant brain. The message of this book is that this gives us the unique ability to exercise self-control, override instincts that lead us astray, and save ourselves from civilization’s gaudy traps.




The Origins of Psychic Phenomena


Book Description

Examines unexplained phenomena in psychiatric and psychological terms rather than occult terms • Explores how the unconscious mind manifests paranormal phenomena • Shows how the cerebellum--the seat of the unconscious--is the source of these energies, subpersonalities, and manifestations • Identifies our neglected “Neanderthal” subconscious as responsible for the rising incidence of paranormal happenings Alien abduction, poltergeist attacks, incubi, succubi, split and multiple personalities, possessions, precognition, spontaneous combustion--the list of phenomena not just unexplained but ignored by mainstream science seems endless. Yet the key to the origin of all these manifestations lies deep within our own brains. In The Origins of Psychic Phenomena, Stan Gooch explores the functioning of the dream-producing part of the brain--the cerebellum--and how the unconscious mind is able to externalize itself. The cerebellum is the physical seat of the unconscious and was once equal to or even superior to the cerebrum as essential to our functioning. In modern times it has been shunted into the subliminal, yet the cerebellum continues to process our worldly experiences and reveals its concerns in misunderstood, often frightening, manifestations. Gooch explains that Neanderthal Man possessed a much larger cerebellum than Cro-Magnon Man and posits that the modern repression of the cerebellum’s role in our consciousness has given rise to these supernatural phenomena.