WHO’S MINDING THE MIND?
By Benedict Carey
New York Times
July 31, 2007

Original Link

In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.

The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee -- and asked for a hand with the cup.

That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” -- all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.

Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.

More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it chooses.

The give and take between these unconscious choices and our rational, conscious aims can help explain some of the more mystifying realities of behavior, like how we can be generous one moment and petty the next, or act rudely at a dinner party when convinced we are emanating charm.

“When it comes to our behavior from moment to moment, the big question is, ‘What to do next?’ ” said John A. Bargh, a professor of psychology at Yale and a co-author, with Lawrence Williams, of the coffee study, which was presented at a recent psychology conference. “Well, we’re finding that we have these unconscious behavioral guidance systems that are continually furnishing suggestions through the day about what to do next, and the brain is considering and often acting on those, all before conscious awareness.”

Dr. Bargh added: “Sometimes those goals are in line with our conscious intentions and purposes, and sometimes they’re not.”

Priming the Unconscious

The idea of subliminal influence has a mixed reputation among scientists because of a history of advertising hype and apparent fraud. In 1957, an ad man named James Vicary claimed to have increased sales of Coca-Cola and popcorn at a movie theater in Fort Lee, N.J., by secretly flashing the words “Eat popcorn” and “Drink Coke” during the film, too quickly to be consciously noticed. But advertisers and regulators doubted his story from the beginning, and in a 1962 interview, Mr. Vicary acknowledged that he had trumped up the findings to gain attention for his business.

Later studies of products promising subliminal improvement, for things like memory and self-esteem, found no effect.

Some scientists also caution against overstating the implications of the latest research on priming unconscious goals. The new research “doesn’t prove that consciousness never does anything,” wrote Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, in an e-mail message. “It’s rather like showing you can hot-wire a car to start the ignition without keys. That’s important and potentially useful information, but it doesn’t prove that keys don’t exist or that keys are useless.”

Yet he and most in the field now agree that the evidence for psychological hot-wiring has become overwhelming. In one 2004 experiment, psychologists led by Aaron Kay, then at Stanford University and now at the University of Waterloo, had students take part in a one-on-one investment game with another, unseen player.

Half the students played while sitting at a large table, at the other end of which was a briefcase and a black leather portfolio. These students were far stingier with their money than the others, who played in an identical room, but with a backpack on the table instead.

The mere presence of the briefcase, noticed but not consciously registered, generated business-related associations and expectations, the authors argue, leading the brain to run the most appropriate goal program: compete. The students had no sense of whether they had acted selfishly or generously.

In another experiment, published in 2005, Dutch psychologists had undergraduates sit in a cubicle and fill out a questionnaire. Hidden in the room was a bucket of water with a splash of citrus-scented cleaning fluid, giving off a faint odor. After completing the questionnaire, the young men and women had a snack, a crumbly biscuit provided by laboratory staff members.

The researchers covertly filmed the snack time and found that these students cleared away crumbs three times more often than a comparison group, who had taken the same questionnaire in a room with no cleaning scent. “That is a very big effect, and they really had no idea they were doing it,” said Henk Aarts, a psychologist at Utrecht University and the senior author of the study.

The Same Brain Circuits

The real-world evidence for these unconscious effects is clear to anyone who has ever run out to the car to avoid the rain and ended up driving too fast, or rushed off to pick up dry cleaning and returned with wine and cigarettes -- but no pressed slacks.

The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious one. In a study that appeared in the journal Science in May, a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the more of the loot they could keep.

As expected, the players squeezed harder when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of a penny did -- regardless of whether they consciously perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the participants responded.

“This area is located in what used to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Chris Frith, a professor in neuropsychology at University College London who wrote the book “Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World.”

The results suggest a “bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all, Dr. Frith said.

Scientists have spent years trying to pinpoint the exact neural regions that support conscious awareness, so far in vain. But there’s little doubt it involves the prefrontal cortex, the thin outer layer of brain tissue behind the forehead, and experiments like this one show that it can be one of the last neural areas to know when a decision is made.

This bottom-up order makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. The subcortical areas of the brain evolved first and would have had to help individuals fight, flee and scavenge well before conscious, distinctly human layers were added later in evolutionary history. In this sense, Dr. Bargh argues, unconscious goals can be seen as open-ended, adaptive agents acting on behalf of the broad, genetically encoded aims -- automatic survival systems.

In several studies, researchers have also shown that, once covertly activated, an unconscious goal persists with the same determination that is evident in our conscious pursuits. Study participants primed to be cooperative are assiduous in their teamwork, for instance, helping others and sharing resources in games that last 20 minutes or longer. Ditto for those set up to be aggressive.

This may help explain how someone can show up at a party in good spirits and then for some unknown reason -- the host’s loafers? the family portrait on the wall? some political comment? -- turn a little sour, without realizing the change until later, when a friend remarks on it. “I was rude? Really? When?”

Mark Schaller, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, has done research showing that when self-protective instincts are primed -- simply by turning down the lights in a room, for instance -- white people who are normally tolerant become unconsciously more likely to detect hostility in the faces of black men with neutral expressions.

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones,” Dr. Schaller said, “because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

Until it is satisfied, that is, when the program is subsequently suppressed, research suggests. In one 2006 study, for instance, researchers had Northwestern University undergraduates recall an unethical deed from their past, like betraying a friend, or a virtuous one, like returning lost property. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, an antiseptic wipe or a pencil; and those who had recalled bad behavior were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. They had been primed to psychologically “cleanse” their consciences.

Once their hands were wiped, the students became less likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a graduate school project. Their hands were clean: the unconscious goal had been satisfied and now was being suppressed, the findings suggest.

What You Don’t Know

Using subtle cues for self-improvement is something like trying to tickle yourself, Dr. Bargh said: priming doesn’t work if you’re aware of it. Manipulating others, while possible, is dicey. “We know that as soon as people feel they’re being manipulated, they do the opposite; it backfires,” he said.

And researchers do not yet know how or when, exactly, unconscious drives may suddenly become conscious; or under which circumstances people are able to override hidden urges by force of will. Millions have quit smoking, for instance, and uncounted numbers have resisted darker urges to misbehave that they don’t even fully understand.

Yet the new research on priming makes it clear that we are not alone in our own consciousness. We have company, an invisible partner who has strong reactions about the world that don’t always agree with our own, but whose instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive.

............

NHNE Psychological Research

NHNE Brain/Mind Research

IF YOU'RE CONSCIOUS, HOW CAN YOU DIE?
AN INTERVIEW WITH A MODERN-DAY TAOIST WIZARD PETER RAGNAR
By Andrew Cohen
What Is Enlightenment?
September–November 2005

http://www.wie.org/j30/ragnar.asp
 
I've often wondered how it would look if someone like Jack LaLanne or Anthony Robbins -- whom I've always admired for their indomitable spirit, incredible self-discipline, and joie de vivre -- became enlightened. When I discovered Peter Ragnar, I think I found out.

The amazing Peter Ragnar is a modern-day shaman, Taoist wizard, natural life scientist, and self-master par excellence. He lives in the Tennessee mountains with his wife, and he claims to be a “senior citizen” but refuses to give away his age because he “doesn't believe in it.” He does strenuous two-hour strength-training workouts seven days a week and performs record-breaking feats. He's been a martial arts practitioner for over fifty years, and he has developed his own version of Taoist energy practice called “Magnetic Qi Gong,” which he claims is the key to immortality. He has healing powers and is renowned for his clairvoyant and telepathic abilities. He lives on a strict diet of raw foods and juices and has spent a lifetime studying the relationship between the body and the mind at all levels. And his most remarkable attainment is his profound awakening to the energetic dimension, or “bio-electric-magnetic” field, of life. While this dimension of reality and experience is one that many have heard of, it's a world that Peter actually lives in.

All this being said, Peter's most compelling and inspiring message is his steadfast and passionate call to self-mastery based upon the relentless cultivation of intention. This foundational element of his teaching is clearly a contemporary expression of the great American New Thought tradition, championed in the early twentieth century by Napoleon Hill, author of the all-time bestseller Think and Grow Rich,and later by Norman Vincent Peale, known for his widely acclaimed, inspirational classic The Power of Positive Thinking. Hill wrote in 1937, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.” At the beginning of the new millennium, Peter Ragnar is proving that it's still true!

................

ANDREW COHEN: Peter, why is it that you declare that there is no explainable reason why a person should die, other than his or her belief in death?

PETER RAGNAR: Because I feel that we have ultimate control to the degree that we're conscious. If we are conscious enough, we can make anything happen in our body. We can preserve this body or we can kill this body.

It's very simple to see how people kill their bodies with their thoughts -- it's a product of their unconsciousness of causes and effects. If we're conscious of our thoughts -- I mean luminously conscious of our thoughts -- those thoughts then impregnate the cellular structure of our body in a way that is very, very difficult to explain. When you have an abundance of life force inside you, it pours out of your eyes. It comes out of the palms of your hands as heat, as healing heat. It radiates as if you swallowed the sun, and you are different. Now, with that type of dynamic and powerful energy inside of you, how can you die?

COHEN: Interesting question!

RAGNAR: It's a working hypothesis, of course. But the more life we have running through our body's energy system, the more alive we are. Life is not death, life is the opposite of death. So embracing life is the situation. How many people embrace life with every thought and every action and every decision they make? Only a very, very rare few.

You see, we've been conditioned to believe in death. Right from the very first breath we take, we feel like life is a march between the womb and the tomb.

COHEN: (laughs) Well, it does seem that everything in the universe that is born and takes on physical form goes through a maturation process and ultimately degenerates and falls away.

RAGNAR: That's true. But let's look at it from the standpoint of a caterpillar in the process of becoming a butterfly. Andrew, do butterflies come out of deformed cocoons, or do they come out of cocoons that are fully perfected?

COHEN: Cocoons that are fully perfected.

RAGNAR: Exactly. So I feel that we should endeavor with every ounce of strength that we have to create a perfect life, to become fully perfected as human beings, and then see if we fly. Now, we may not. I may be wrong. But the quest is to be a perfect human.

That may sound rather egotistic. People might say, “Oh no, just give up, don't do anything. You're efforting too much.” But it's not effort -- it's our evolution. Our evolution is to get better and better and better at every single thing that we do. For example, I'm well past my athletic prime, according to the experts, and yet I keep breaking my own personal records. I don't believe in age; I'm ageless. But I will say that I'm a senior citizen, a pre-baby boomer. And I continue to break records I couldn't have done when I was in my twenties and thirties. Why? Because I don't believe in limitations. And because I don't believe in them, I'm free. I'm free to do anything I want to do. If I want to break world records, I can break world records, if that's what's important.

COHEN: What you seem to be saying is, “Let's make the effort to transcend all of our self-limiting thoughts, all of our convictions of emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical limitation. Let's first try to discover, at least as far as we can humanly imagine, what a perfectly full and absolutely positive embrace of the human experience is. And then let's see what the result is going to be on every level, including the physical.” Is that what you mean?

RAGNAR: Absolutely. You put it as good as it can be put.

COHEN: So therefore, you don't actually mean that if you strive to live a perfect life, you will live forever. But that if you strive to live a perfect life, you don't exactly know how long you're going to live, but let's find out. That kind of thing?

RAGNAR: Exactly, let's find out. It's a working hypothesis. Let's find out if this life is a definite one of eighty to ninety years, or seventy to eighty years, however gerontologists might want to estimate it -- or whether it's an indefinite life that you can go on living as long as you stay in that space. If you can live the “perfect life,” how long would that life span be?

COHEN: What would it mean, then, to live a perfect life?

RAGNAR: Well, first, it would be free of all limiting beliefs, because we are not limited creatures unless we believe we're limited. And how do we drop all limitations? By becoming more conscious. By adding more conscious energy and life force to our physical organism until we literally see it glowing; we see it glowing in the dark.

COHEN: Peter, what is the life force? Where does it come from?

RAGNAR: I wish I knew that. The Chinese Taoists call it chi, and a lot of people refer to it. But these are just words. It's an oscillation that is absolutely physically measurable. To the degree that your body oscillates with its vibration, it can be measured. But what it is . . . they're still arguing about what electricity is! We know how to create it, but we don't know what it is.

Every time you have an electrical field, you also have a magnetic field, so you can't really talk about electricity without bringing magnetism into it. But what's beyond that? They've discovered that maybe the smallest quantum of energy is actually what is defined as chi. It's an oscillation of something that gives off a bio-electric-magnetic field. The stronger that bio-electric-magnetic field is, the more vitality the individual has, the more life force. And of course, you'll see it in the electricity in the eyes; you'll hear it in the voice; you'll see it in the way the body flows without hesitation; you'll see it in the posture. I don't know what it is; all I know is that I am that.

COHEN: You make a distinction, I think, between prenatal and postnatal chi. Could you explain what the difference is?

RAGNAR: Basically, we come into this life with a battery that has a certain amount of juice in it. I call this prenatal chi. If you don't do a thing and you just continue to run with your lights on and the radio blaring, eventually the battery will wear out, depending upon how much demand you put on it. And that's generally seventy to eighty years. So we've got a battery that is meant to last at least that long. However, if you plug the battery in at night and you charge it, there's no end in sight -- that's postnatal chi. I have a concept that says: If you go to bed with more energy than you woke up with, then all night long, you've got the battery charger on. And that's the secret to life. It's that simple.

COHEN: How do you go to bed with more energy than you woke up with? Is it because you're building it during the day?

RAGNAR: Right. This is why I do what I call Magnetic Qi Gong. I've discovered a way to go to bed with my body buzzing. And the buzz is basically the battery charger. We tested this just last week with a chiropractic acupuncture clinic. They brought their electro-meridian imaging equipment up here, and after I did some chi gong, they tested me. The unit can't even measure past where the life force in my kidneys reached; they said they'd never seen anything like that before. The Chinese say that the life force is in the kidneys, and there are some reasons for that, but nevertheless, they couldn't believe the readings. The readings were off the chart.

And it's not just the kidneys -- it's all the organs. If you do certain practices, you can enhance the voltage in all the organs and meridians of the body. Basically, we're buzzing power plants. We're nuclear power plants.

COHEN: And you believe that human life expectancy should be between 160 and 200 years?

RAGNAR: If you look at the rate of maturation of any animal -- in other words, the ratio of the length of time it takes an animal to mature to the length of its life span -- for most animals it's ten to twenty times. A horse, for example, will mature in two years and live for twenty-five to thirty years. Same thing with chimpanzees, dogs, cats -- with all animals, it's at least ten to twenty times. The only exception to this rule is the human species. Even if you take ten times human maturity, which is a low figure, that gives you 180 years. If it's twenty times, then double that.

You've got to get sick in order to die. Nobody dies healthy. I've heard people say, “They just died of old age.” And I say, “No, they had so many diseases, they didn't know which one killed them!” To get sick, you have to get into some type of negativity that damages one or more particular organs.

I'm probably out there by myself on this one, but I feel that we do have ultimate control of our body, because our body is a thought. It's filled with frozen memories -- memories that are formed by our experiences that we have already reached conclusions about, and we've emotionalized those conclusions and frozen them into our flesh. Therefore, only when we thaw it out and release, and stop holding on for dear life, can we have dear life.

COHEN: What you're saying is that a lot of the ideas and beliefs that we have about who we are, about the nature of life, and about how long it's possible to live are subconscious and unquestioned. So in this sense, I understand what you mean about them being frozen in our body. And unless they are released, since we are not aware of them, they are likely to determine our destiny.

RAGNAR: Precisely.

COHEN: Okay. That's clear. But when you said that our body is a thought, did you mean that literally?

RAGNAR: Yes, I meant that literally. Actually, I should have said that many, many trillions of thoughts form our body. And it's really the health of our overall life view or worldview that determines our physical health.

COHEN: You seem to have awakened to a perspective where you see the nondifference between the physical, the psychological, the emotional, the spiritual, and the energetic -- where you're able to see all these as literally one process. And of course, most of us are in the habit of relating to our experience in a way that is very conceptual and completely divorced from the integrity of the process itself. The way we see our experience is often only a small fraction of the totality of what's really happening. And I suppose that unless one actually gets to the point where one directly experiences this insight into the ultimate nondifference between spirit and matter, there will still be some kind of fundamental separation between what one is doing and how one is thinking about the process, some fundamental duality in terms of oneself.

RAGNAR: You're describing it so well, Andrew, because there is no separation.

COHEN: Some people would say that this insight into the fact that there is a much deeper relationship between the mind and the body than we had previously thought is true up to a point, but that there are certain processes that really won't be affected by what we think, certain processes that are, in fact, unconscious. And you're basically defying that. You're saying that it's possible to become so conscious of these physical processes that we would be able to have absolute control over the whole system.

RAGNAR: Absolutely. There are so many people, for example, who have had spontaneous remissions of cancer. The medical researchers scratch their heads and say they don't know why it goes away. But the reason it goes away is that the intention to live is so powerful, so strong, that it overrides any other negative programming that might be in the body.

A classic example that is cited in psychology texts is the Krebiozen story. A cancer patient, Mr. Wright, got this worthless placebo -- at least that's what the AMA eventually said about the drug Krebiozen. He went to a doctor and said, “Look, I'm dying.” He had tumors so big they had to milk them. And the doctor said, “What's it going to hurt to give the guy Krebiozen? He's going to be dead in a weekend anyway. It's an inoperable cancer, the worst of the worst.” After he got the worthless drug, the journals stated, “His tumors melted like snowballs on a hot stove.” He totally recovered from his cancer in ten days' time. No one could explain it. Unfortunately, the story has a bad ending because later, when Mr. Wright read the AMA report revealing that Krebiozen was worthless, he said, “Oh, it was worthless,” and his cancer came back, and he died.

Here you have a classic example of the power of intention. His intent was to stay alive, and when he saw that he had an opportunity, the body said, “Yes sir, what do you want us to do?” All the immune soldiers lined up and saluted him and said, “Whatever you want; you're the commander.” And we are the commander.

COHEN: What do you think happened to the cancer? If it went into total remission, theoretically, it wouldn't be there anymore, so it wouldn't be able to come back. Are you saying that the cancer that was originally present was also a thought?

RAGNAR: Yes, I believe that. Look at how many people die after receiving a diagnosis saying they've got six weeks to live. And sure enough, in six weeks they're dead. Yet what if it was a misdiagnosis, as it has been in some cases?

COHEN: Yes. But one could live next to a chemical plant and get poisoned, or live next to Chernobyl and get cancer from radiation, and that wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with any negative thinking, right?

RAGNAR: It's a hard question to answer because people get very sensitive when you say anything about personal responsibility. But I think that if I had been living in the Ukraine, there would have been something inside me that said, “Get out of here, boy; get out of here.” You know, whenever a severe storm comes, if you look around here, the animals are gone. They disappear; they know. All you have to do is listen to nature, and it tells you everything and anything you need to know about life. The animals know without knowing all the time. Not some of the time, not part of the time, but all of the time. And we do too.

COHEN: But there were thousands of people who would have had no warning. I mean, that has to be part of the equation, doesn't it?

RAGNAR: When do we have no warning? I've said this so many times, and I know it bugs people. It irritates them when I say, “Look, you never have an accident without being warned at least three times in advance. It's just that you fail to hear or see or perceive the very warning that's before you.” Nothing happens to us without us first being told about it. It's like the tsunami. Where did the animals go? They already knew.

COHEN: Yes, that was amazing.

RAGNAR: Well, we have the same faculty.

COHEN: But let's say you're driving through a town where the water has been completely polluted, and you don't know it. And you happen to go to a diner and drink a cup of tea or something, and then eventually, you get cancer as a result.

RAGNAR: You'd know it. You'd know it ahead of time.

COHEN: But how would you know?

RAGNAR: Are you familiar with behavioral kinesiology, or muscle testing?

COHEN: Yes.

RAGNAR: Okay. How is it that certain things weaken us and certain things strengthen us? Our body tells us. Our body sends us a signal, and that signal either weakens or strengthens us. The other day, someone was asking me about some testing equipment for kinesiology. And I said, “I don't need the testing equipment. I've already got it; it's inside me.” I can look at something or think of something, and I know the feedback loop. I know whether it comes back “this is good” or “this is bad.” It's the same feedback loop that all animals have.

COHEN: So, in other words, you're saying that when you become more and more conscious, you become more sensitive to what you should do and what you shouldn't do, a direction to go in or a direction not to go in, a place to eat or a place you shouldn't eat, that kind of thing? That your intuition will evolve in leaps and bounds, and you will experience a level of sensitivity and intuitive knowing that most people would ordinarily be unaware of, or wouldn't even be able to imagine?

RAGNAR: Precisely. Now, I know people will say, “You're making me feel guilty now. You're making me feel uncomfortable because I don't have that.” And I say, “But you can. It's something that develops in time. It's all called consciousness.” Some of us have been at it longer, that's all. Some of us have grown up faster. It's just a part of our evolution. We grow more conscious if we work at it, and if you make a commitment to work at it, then you have the ultimate protection. You're always in the right place at the right time for the right reason -- you are never not. Nothing can happen to you that you do not designate if you are that conscious.

Now, let's say my belief is wrong. Okay, we'll find out. But the neat thing is that your confidence is bolstered once you realize that the process works. It works in little ways, and if one is conscious enough to see it working in little ways, then you will see it working in dramatic ways. I choose to believe that everything works because you are more conscious. If you're conscious, everything works in your favor. And if you're unconscious, everything works against you.

COHEN: Is that because if you're more conscious, you're at one with the life process? So then the process itself opens up within you and before you and around you?

RAGNAR: I'll give you an example. The other day, a wild coyote came out of the forest, came right up to me. I was outside, and I opened the door and said, “Do you want to come in?” It said, “Sure.” And it came in. I said, “Let me fix you a meal.” So my wife and I fixed him a meal. I handed him a cookie, and he said, “Thank you, I really appreciate that.” I said, “Well, I appreciate your visit. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Coyote.” And so now Mr. Coyote comes back and forth. But this is the relationship we have with all the animals because I see that as an extension of my own energy. This is life force, just the flow of life force. It's like I have a kite, and he's on the other end, and the wind is blowing, so he runs through the forest. And then when I wind up the kite, here he comes again.

We have deer, a whole bunch of deer, and when we walk out there, they come up and nose me. We give them apples. I know the wildlife people in the park would go crazy if they heard me telling this story. But I say, “Hey, they love me, because I love them, and they have nothing stopping them from feeling that.” We have a wild boar -- I mean, you ought to see this thing. He's got a mane like a big black lion and burning red eyes -- especially at night -- and these big tusks. It would scare the hell out of anybody if they saw him. We call him by name; I call him Rasputin. He comes running up and dances around in a circle on the deck. He loves us. And this thing is totally wild. If a stranger came here, they'd never see this happen. They wouldn't see a bear, they wouldn't see a deer, and they certainly wouldn't see the coyotes. The birds leave, too, when the vibrations are wrong or off.

Now, what does that tell you about life? All life is one, and if you're in harmony with it, you can walk out into the middle of a forest, walk up to a strange deer, and touch it. The first time a mama bear came, I was out in the woods. I laid down in front of her, and she came over and sniffed me. And I showed her that I was totally surrendered, that I wasn't going to hurt her. I have not one ounce of fear or negativity about these animals. You know, she was pregnant, and she brought her three cubs. She brought them right to our bedroom door, and we babysat the cubs while she went off and had some free time. This is on a regular basis. I've got photographs of this. The cubs would come in the bedroom, and we'd watch them until she came back half an hour later. And then off they'd go with their mama, because there's no disconnect. There is no separation. It's all one beautiful picture. However, when people with other energies come -- people with fears and apprehensions -- they don't see a thing. The world changes. It's a different world. And between the two worlds, I choose this one.

COHEN: Was there a particular moment in your life when you went through a transition where these things started to happen, when they hadn't before?

RAGNAR: Yes. I was a spiritual maniac. I would meditate, and I'd sit cross-legged into the deep hours of the night until my knees and back hurt like hell. Finally one day, I gave it all up. I said, “This is nuts; this is totally nuts. I'm not doing this anymore.” So I just went on doing what I usually do, and it sort of became a habit to sit before the fire. And one day, back in 1977 in May -- I remember it, full moon night, sitting in front of the fire -- something happened. I was never so frightened in all my life. Everything I knew about myself seemed to be evaporating and dying, spontaneously. I felt like I had turned into a pillar of stone, and the last vestige of what I knew as myself was leaking out. Once the fear evaporated and the experience ended, I was different.

I don't know how you explain that, but I can remember going out to my outhouse the following morning and sitting there with the moonlight coming in through the trees. I had the door open, and here a fox comes running up to me, and sits right before me while I'm sitting in the outhouse. Right by my knees, looking me in the eyes, and talking to me without words. Later that day, I went out to my garden. I took a little lunch with me so I didn't have to go back to the cabin, and when I sat by a big tree to eat, a crow jumped down, sat on my knee, and said, “Can I have some of your food?” And I said, “Sure.”

From that point on, everything was different. It's the same world, you know. I get up, I wash, I use the bathroom, I brush my teeth, I do what everybody else does, I guess, at least to some degree. But it's different, because my amnesia went away. I don't know if I'm enlightened. I have no idea what the word means. All I know is that I'm now different, and I like this different feeling. Nothing has ever been the same.

COHEN: How long had you been a seeker up until that point?

RAGNAR: My entire life. From the time I was a child, in one form or another, there was something nagging me, an uncomfortable nagging that never went away.

COHEN: Peter, in the way that you think about it today, is there any difference between the quest for enlightenment and the quest for physical immortality? Because most revered sages and masters have passed away.

RAGNAR: I know I go out on a limb when I answer questions like this, but I have to say, master of what? Master of your thoughts? If you're a master of your thoughts, you're master of your body, master of your money, master of your life circumstances. If you have personal mastery, then it's visible, measurable, and you can demonstrate it.

Right now, at my age, I am master of my body. I'm master of my mind, my financial world, my emotional world, my personal environment. I don't know, maybe it won't always be that way. But I doubt it. Why would I give up now? People say, “You're getting arrogant, you're getting pompous, and life is going to show you.” You know, “Pride comes before the fall.” And I say, “Well, pride is something you've got to earn.” You earn the right to be proud of your accomplishment, and at the same time, once you realize how hard you had to work, you're immensely humbled.

COHEN: Right. But in relationship to this question, for example, in India, maybe even in the last century, there were people such as Ramakrishna or Ramana Maharshi who were undoubtedly highly enlightened beings, yet who died painful deaths. They died of cancer.

RAGNAR: Well, I guess there was one thing they didn't have mastery over, isn't there?

COHEN: The reason I'm asking is because those individuals were universally considered to be profoundly enlightened beings. The Buddha, too, seemed to have passed away from food poisoning. And it seems that the power of their awakening had everything to do with victory over the mind. Yet they all died painful deaths.

RAGNAR: I don't discount their reputations, and I would never say anything negative about them. But I immediately have doubts about the levels of mastery. I don't understand how you can have mastery over your thoughts and not have mastery over your body, because the body, at least from my perspective, is your thoughts. Unless you simply choose to commit suicide. And then I have to wonder, why do you want to do that? Don't you like the people around you? I mean, have these disciples absolutely eaten you up? I don't know. But at least I'll go on this particular track until I'm proven wrong. And when I'm proven wrong, I'll apologize to them! I'll say to all those dead gurus, “I apologize to you. You were right; you can't get to keep this body.”

I'm lonely. I'm out here by myself, Andrew. But I can say for sure that the little things give you confidence. If you can do the little things, you know that by the inch it's a cinch and by the yard it's hard. So you do the little things, and you keep building, and every little unit of consciousness that expands, every little breakthrough that you have, is living a life of victory. And pretty soon, the final victories, whatever they may be, are there on the horizon and you're crashing through them. I've often said, “Okay, so you've climbed the mountain. Now we're standing on the peak. What do you do next? You step off into space.”

.............

WIE Peter Ragnar Bio & Resources

Roaring Lion Publishing

YOU'RE NOT DEMENTED, JUST DEHYDRATED
By Peter Ragnar
What Is Enlightenment?
June–August 2006
 
Original Link

There were no interstates at the time. Back in the 1940s, Route 66 was the best way to California. My folks had just bought a new tan English Ford, with a crank handle that you stuck into the front of the engine and turned to start the vehicle. I don’t know why they wanted to drive it from New York to the hot deserts of the American Southwest.

When a lone gas station owner urged Dad not to drive across the desert without strapping four canvas water bags onto the bumper, he listened. The old man told Dad, “You know, it gets up to 140 degrees in the shade at noon. Now, if you break down, you’re gonna get real thirsty. Soon, nausea comes on and you’re feeling real sick. When you’ve lost ten percent of your body’s water, you feel sort of giddy. Then your tongue swells up like it don’t belong in your mouth. Now, you can’t close your eyelids as the corners of your eyes dry up. Your skin turns blue. Then come the hallucinations. You see, you go crazy before you die.”

Dad bought the water bags, and I suddenly became aware of how quickly life can dry up and blow away.

You don’t need to be stranded in a desert to feel the effects of dehydration. Almost all the people you see and meet on a daily basis are dehydrated. How many folks complain of a lack of energy? It’s the number one complaint in America. Insufficient energy is the first sign that the blood, tissues, and organs are not getting enough water, and your liver and brain are the least tolerant of a lack of water.

This has led some medical researchers to conclude that Alzheimer’s disease is simply the result of long-term dehydration of the brain. The same loss of brain function that causes a lost and thirsty person to eat sand believing it to be water causes your wife, husband, mother, or father not to recognize you any longer. They are not demented, only thirsty.

When you were born (depending on the drugs in your mother’s body), you were ninety percent water. As you become an adult, the hydration level begins to drop; it can drop to as low as sixty-five percent in men and fifty-two percent in women. However, if hydration levels drop just five percent more, death occurs.

Both water intake and thirst sensation decline with age, and so does mental function. When your pituitary gland begins to dry up, vasopressin, a hormone it secretes, is likewise handicapped. Vaso refers to the blood vessels, and pressin refers to constriction or pressing. Vasopressin regulates the flow of water to the cells and intracellular spaces in your body. When this hormone reaches a cell membrane, it presses water through a filtration receptor so that only water reaches and hydrates the cell. This is crucial because vital organs begin to fail without proper hydration.

Consider this: when you take a coffee break, that ingested caffeine limits the secretion of vasopressin and keeps it from circulating. Thus, even though you are getting plenty of water with the coffee, your cells are dehydrating. Alcohol has the same effect, which is why drinkers are incredibly thirsty in the morning after a bout of heavy drinking.

Bear in mind that the five quarts of blood coursing through your body are ninety percent water, and the rest of your body holds between fifty and eighty quarts of water. Your brain and nerve tissues are eighty percent water or more.

Every time you move any body part, even a finger or toe, water is required. That’s why dehydrated people have so many aches and pains. It’s also why people look so old; their dehydrated organs steal the water from their skin in order to function. Remember, under ordinary circumstances, you expel up to a gallon of water every twenty-four hours. What do you think happens when you don’t replenish that supply? Your body experiences a drought condition!

A mere two percent drop in hydration will make your short-term memory so fuzzy that you’ll be unable to remember your friends’ names, have trouble doing basic math, and forget where you put your keys. Since seventy-five percent of Americans are chronically dehydrated, it’s no wonder people are losing their minds.

Yet, the solution is so simple: cool, clean water. Drink eight to ten eight-ounce glasses a day of pure distilled water, and you’ll be amazed at how many ailments disappear. Don’t worry; you’re not demented -- just dehydrated!

.............

Followup: Distilled Water May Not Be Good For Everyday Drinking

.............

WIE Peter Ragnar Bio & Resources

Roaring Lion Publishing

-----------

PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLE:

ANDREW COHEN INTERVIEWS PETER RAGNAR (From 2005) (8/3/2007)

I just finished watching this documentary. It is one of the best 9/11 documentaries I have seen (and I have seen many). It tells the story of the activist families that tried to get to the bottom of 9/11 -- and the flagrant, heartbreaking, some would say "criminal" stonewalling and obfuscation they ran into. If it were not already clear to all of us, this documentary sounds one more alarm that there is something very wrong with the current American Administration, Congress, major media news organizations, and the American people at large, who have failed, so far, to demand truth and accountability. A more complete introduction, including relevant links, is posted below.



Out of the grieving thousands left behind on September 11th, a small group of activist families emerged to demand answers. In 9/11 Press For Truth, six of them (including three of the famous "Jersey Girls") tell for the first time the powerful story of how they took on the powers in Washington -- and won! -- compelling an investigation, only to subsequently watch the 9/11 Commission fail in answering most of their questions.

The families eventually found an ally in Paul Thompson. Dissatisfied with the incomplete picture of September 11th presented in most news reports, Thompson became a citizen journalist of sorts. He stitched together thousands of rare overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences into a definitive Complete 9/11 Timeline (published by Harper Collins as The Terror Timeline). Press For Truth is adapted in part from his acclaimed work, which revealed to the families a very different picture of the road that led to the attacks and the resulting War on Terror, one that still today raises important and pressing questions.