Vision-Inducing Delphi Fumes Probed

Part of the mystique surrounding the Oracle of Delphi concerns the possibility that the oracle herself ~ usually referred to as the Pythia ~ inhaled fumes as she described her visions. Recent research shows that the fumes may have existed, and that they likely contained ethylene, creating an effect similar to the experience sought by modern-day “huffers.”

Archeological Odyssey recently published a detailed account of the research, reprinted in Bible History Daily. Here’s an excerpt:

The ancient sources describe two distinct types of prophetic trance experienced by the Pythia. First, and more normally, she would lapse into benign semi-consciousness, during which she remained seated on the tripod, responding to questions—though in a strangely altered voice. According to Plutarch, once the Pythia recovered from this trance, she was in a composed and relaxed state, like a runner after a race. A second kind of trance involved a frenzied delirium characterized by wild movements of the limbs, harsh groaning and inarticulate cries. When the Pythia experienced this delirium, Plutarch reports, she died after only a few days—and a new Pythia took her place. 

According to toxicologist Henry Spiller, both of these symptoms are associated with the inhalation of hydrocarbon gases. Spiller studies the effects of such inhalants on young people, known as “huffers,” who breathe in fumes from gas, glue, paint thinner and other substances because of their intoxicating properties. Perhaps the Pythia too was high on one of these hydrocarbon gases. 

It may even be possible to identify the kind of gas. Plutarch—who, we recall, was a priest of Apollo at the Delphic sanctuary—noted that the intoxicating pneuma had a sweet smell, like expensive perfume. Of the hydrocarbon gases, only ethylene has a sweet smell—so ethylene was probably a component in the gaseous emission inhaled by the Pythia.

Most researchers agree that the Pythia was chosen for her clairvoyant abilities as a trance medium, and that the fumes likely played an auxiliary role in her pronouncements.

Painting of the oracle is by the Hon. John Collier, from 1891.

 Click here for the article.

Your View of Time Creates Your World

This 10-minute video can teach you more about why younger people's mind-set is so different than older people's than any other instructional presentation I've ever seen. Period.

The whole Past/Present/Future schematic explains much more than I'd ever imagined ~ affecting geographical locations, generational age, and educational potential. The discussion about video games and their impact on educational systems is just one astounding example.

This is one video I'll watch over and over to make sure I understand its finer points, which are very powerful and meaningful. My sincere thanks to psychologist Philip Zimbardo for sharing his thoughts and findings!

'The Way of St. James' Attraction Grows

Scene along The Way.

 A 1,200-year old European pilgrimage ~ amounting to 750 miles from Paris across France to the Spanish coastal city of Santiago de Compostela ~ is experiencing a revival. In 1982 there were 120 pilgrims who trekked the Way of St. James, last year 200,000, mostly from Europe.

What was once a strictly religious affair has become a cultural and social phenomenon that attracts the nonreligious as well. The journey was captured in The Way, a 2010 film made by Martin Sheen and son Emilio Estevez.

According to NPR:

American writer David Downie began his recent pilgrimage as many did in medieval times, at the Tour St. Jacques in downtown Paris.  

"This was where thousands and thousands of pilgrims would meet and start off to walk all the way down to Spain to Santiago de Compostela," Downie says. "This was like 'Pilgrimage Central' in Paris." 

The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela started in the 9th century when the martyred St. James' bones are said to have arrived in a boat to the rocky Galician coast.

Click here for the article.

Our Brain and Its Forgotten Gift

I encourage you to spend 12 minutes viewing this little video by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist as he discusses the bicameral brain. He presents a good update on the roles and effects of the brain's two hemispheres, clarifying some misconceptions left over from the 1960s.

He ends the video with one of my favorite Einstein quotes: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift."

Sun's Three Years in Three Minutes

In this unusual video, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captures an image of the sun every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths, two images per day, for the past three years.

According to NASA:

"There are several noteworthy events that appear briefly in this video. They include the two partial eclipses of the sun by the moon, two roll maneuvers [by the observatory, as it changes position], the largest flare of this solar cycle, comet Lovejoy, and the transit of Venus. The specific time for each event is listed below, but a sharp-eyed observer may see some while the video is playing.” 

They appear at:

00:30:24 Partial eclipse by the moon

00:31:16 Roll maneuver

01:11:02 August 9, 2011 X6.9 Flare, the largest of this solar cycle

01:28:07 Comet Lovejoy, December 15, 2011

01:42:29 Roll Maneuver

01:51:07 Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012

02:28:13 Partial eclipse by the moon"

The music is violinist Martin Lass playing “Our Lady’s Errand of Love.”

Depersonalization Getting More Common

Depersonalization disorder may not be as rare as we think, affecting perhaps one percent of the population, according to recent research. It’s normally associated with an “unreal, spaced-out feeling you might get while severely jet-lagged or hung-over,” according to New Scientist magazine.

The sense of self has much to do with our awareness of our physicality and how we interact with the outside world. The brain integrates all the information coming in from the external world and from internal sensations and forms a default setting of "this is me here and now", says Nick Medford, who studies depersonalization at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK. "If that setting changes somehow, then you feel 'not right', in a way that might be very hard to put into words."

There are probably several ways that change can occur, but Medford's work is looking at the emotional detachment characteristic of depersonalization. In people who have the disorder, areas of the brain that are key to emotion are much less active than normal, he says.

Click here for thearticle.

"A Seamless, Intimate Totality"

"There is no separate, inside self and no separate outside object, other or world. Rather, there is one seamless, intimate totality, always changing when viewed from the perspective of objects, never changing when viewed from the perspective of the totality." ~ Rupert Spira

From the Science & Nonduality website.

Light Speed May Not Be Constant

Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second, as was definitively stated in 1983 and has believed to have been a constant since that time. But that may not be the case.

Now, according to the Christian Science Monitor: 

A pair of studies suggest that this universal constant might not be so constant after all. In the first study, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud and his team found that the speed of light in a vacuum varies ever so slightly. 

This happens because what we think of as nothing isn't really nothing. Even if you were to create a perfect vacuum, at the quantum level it would still be populated with pairs of tiny "virtual" particles that flash in and out of existence and whose energy values fluctuate. As a consequence of these fluctuations, the speed of a photon passing through a vacuum varies, about 50 quintillionths of a second per square meter. 

That may not sound like much, but it's enough to point the way toward a new underlying physics.

Click here for the article.

Playing with Perception

About 10 years ago, psychologists in Pennsylvania discovered an amazing illusion. They found that they could convince people that a rubber hand was their own by putting it on a table in front of them while stroking it in the same way as their real hand. 

The now-famous "rubber hand illusion" was not only a mind-blowing party trick, it was also hugely important in understanding how sight, touch and "proprioception" - the sense of body position - combine to create a convincing feeling of body ownership, one of the foundations of self-consciousness. 

In recent years that understanding has been explored further using increasingly freaky illusions. "The rubber hand illusion really inspired people," says Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. 

He is one of many researchers who have taken the illusion and run with it, creating a whole new set of "bodily illusions" that mess with our sense of self in strange and disturbing ways. "We're doing all kinds of crazy stuff," he says.

From NewScientist.com. Click here for the full article. 

Higgs Boson Discovery Has Consequences

Now confirming the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, physicists are wrestling with implications of actually finding it ~ the last undiscovered piece of the puzzle predicted by the so-called Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics.

LiveScience is listing what it sees as the six largest consequences of the discovery, listed here in abbreviated form:

1. The origin of mass

"The Higgs mechanism is the thing that allows us to understand how the particles acquire mass," said Joao Guimaraes da Costa, a physicist at Harvard. "If there was no such mechanism, then everything would be massless."

2. The Standard Model

The reigning theory of particle physics describes the universe's very small constituents. Every particle predicted by the Standard Model had been discovered ~ except one: the Higgs boson. "It's the missing piece in the Standard Model," Jonas Strandberg, a researcher at CERN said last year of the particle announcement. "So it would definitely be a confirmation that the theories we have now are right."

3. The electroweak force

The confirmation of the Higgs also helps to explain how two of the fundamental forces of the universe ~ the electromagnetic force that governs interactions between charged particles, and the weak force that's responsible for radioactive decay ~ can be unified.

4. Supersymmetry

This idea posits that every known particle has a "superpartner" particle with slightly different characteristics. Supersymmetry is attractive because it could help unify some of the other forces of nature, and even offers a candidate for the particle that makes up dark matter.

5. Validation of LHC

The newly announced finding offers major validation for the Large Hadron Collider and for the scientists who've worked on the search for many years.

6. Is the universe doomed?

The Higgs boson discovery opens the door to new calculations that weren't previously possible, scientists say, including one that suggests the universe is in for a cataclysm billions of years from now. "It may be the universe we live in is inherently unstable, and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out," added Lykken, a collaborator on the CMS experiment.

Click here for the article.