42 · Robert Schoch Looks for the Fire ... step forward. Our new and improved ... journalists shun—from antigravity to zero-point energy

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42 Psychokinesis Robert Schoch

Looks for the FireBehind the Smoke

45 Our Contractwith America’sFounders Caroline Myss OnWhy We ShouldReconsider OurObligations

46 Orffryreus’WheelsPerpetual Motionin the 16thCentury?

48 Astrology50 Video & DVD57 Puzzle

28 From Saint toSun GodThe Many Faces ofJohn the Baptist

32 The Plight ofthe Yezidi

34 The Templarsand the ShroudAre There Links?

38 Ancient HighTech and theArk of theCovenantDid Its PowerDescend from aLost Civilization?

40 Circle of Light

6 Letters

10 Early Rays

17 Report fromthe FrontNick Cook Talks

18 The ForbiddenArchaeologistArchaeology andthe “Planet of theApes”

23 DNA & theSpoken Word

24 The Lost Wordand theMasonic QuestMark Stavish OpensAncient Secrets

#67

January / February 2008

ANCIENTMYSTERIES

FUTURE SCIENCEUNEXPLAINEDANOMALIES

PUBLISHER & EDITORJ. Douglas Kenyon

CONTRIBUTORSFranz Bludorf

Michael CremoGrazyna FosarJulie GillentineFrank Joseph

Peter KingCynthia LoganJeane ManningSusan Martinez

Marsha OaksMark Amaru Pinkham

Robert M. SchochSteven SoraMark Stavish

Carly SvamvourJohn White

COVER ARTRyan Hammer

GRAPHICSRyan Hammer

Randy HaraganDenis Ouellette

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ould the long search for a way to extractusable energy from permanent magnets

be over? A recent U.S. patent (5,710,531) forwhat is called the “Static Energy Converter”indicates the answer may be, yes. Re-searchers at the State University of New Yorkat Buffalo have now produced analysis re-sults suggesting that the technology, indeed,taps a new source of energy.

Billed as capable of making a “significantimpact in reducing the U.S. addiction to oilas well as mitigating the destruction of theenvironment,” the Static Field Converter isthe invention of New York computer consul-tant Andrew Abolafia. Not only does it con-vert the energy of a static magnetic field intoelectricity, when deployed on a large scale, itproduces hydrogen as a by-product.

Attempts in the past to tap the energy of

C

he Vatican is now publiclyconceding that the Knights

Templar were treated quite badlyand were not heretics after all.Pope Clement V, it seems, fi-nally absolved the order of allheresies, but the original parch-ment declaring his decision wassomehow misfiled in the 17thcentury and has been lost eversince. Discovered in the Vaticanlibrary in 2001 by professor Bar-bara Frale, the document is nowbeing published in limited edi-tion at a mere $8300 per copy.

Long reviled by mainstreamhistorians, the Templars have,nevertheless, occupied a specialplace in the hearts of all thosewho believe that there is an un-derground stream runningthrough history, which, thoughdenied by the orthodox, explainsmany of the mysteries whichconfront us today. Even the cath-olic church has conceded thatthe Templars once stood astridethe civilization as the inventorsof international banking and thepossessors of the largest navy inthe world. Nevertheless, thechurch has long insisted that theknights were up to no good anddeserved their final ignominy.

October 13, 2007 was the700th anniversary of thecrushing of the order by KingPhillip IV (“the Fair”) of Francewith the full complicity of popeClement. However, despite theburning at the stake of itsleaders and the intense persecu-tion of most of its known mem-

T bers, the order seems to havesurvived by going undergroundfrom which, many believe, it ulti-mately emerged as freemasonryand in various other esotericforms. The Templars, it is be-lieved, were far ahead of theirtimes in many ways not limitedto banking and internationalcommerce. It is also thoughtthat they knew many secretswhich went to the heart of Chris-tianity, and that they were theguardians of the Holy Grail andof a very great treasure, as yetunfound. Their story is at theheart of the novel and the movieThe DaVinci Code. (For more ontheir secret saga, read the arti-cles by Frank Joseph and JohnWhite elsewhere in these pages.)

The document discovered byProfessor Frale reveals that thepope decided that the so-calledentrance ritual of the Templarswas not blasphemous, as wasclaimed by King Phillip. Never-theless, in order to stave off aschism in the church, the popedecided to dissolve the order, afact for which he later askedpardon from the knights.

Now a British order of Tem-plars which claims to be directlydescended from the originalTemplars is demanding thatPope Benedict XVI apologize forthe church’s actions seven cen-turies ago—actions which led, atthe very least, to the violent andexcruciatingly painful deaths ofmany very noble, and now exon-erated, warrior priests.

KNIGHTS TEMPLAREXONERATED





EARLY RAYSEARLY RAYSEARLY RAYSEARLY RAYSEARLY RAYS

permanent magnets has met with little suc-cess. Currently the Irish technology com-pany Steorn is in the process of testing amagnet-based system for which it has gainedworldwide publicity after publishing, in early2007, a full-page ad in Britain’sEconomist magazineclaiming to have a free-energy technology. The re-sulting scientific jury—set up by the company todetermine the merits ofits project—is literallystill out.

To view the StaticEnergy Converterpatent go to Abolafia’sweb site at http://www.inventorone.com.

TECHNOLOGY CAN HARNESSPERMANENT MAGNETS NOW

AndrewAbolafia


ew evidence that large dinosaurs onceroamed near the south pole is pre-

senting some challenges to official paleon-tology. How could animals once associatedwith temperate-to-tropical climes find theirway into regions thought to be so very cold?The answer, at least according to scientists atthe Society of Vertebrate Paleontology,meeting recently in Texas, was they were fat,very fat.

According to Thomas Rich, curator ofvertebrate paleontology at Australia’s Mu-seum of Victoria in an interview withLondon’s Daily Mail, three different giantfossil footprints have been recently found insouthern Australia, an area which oncejoined the antarctic continent at a timewhen, it is believed, only the so-called supercontinent of Godwana existed. The massiveanimals are estimated to have been about 12feet tall. Still a mystery though, so far, as weknow, is just where the enormous quantitiesof food needed to sustain such large fat crea-tures could have come from, in temperaturesbelieved to be as low as -22° F in the winterand no higher than 68° F in the summer.Nevertheless, the consensus seems to be thatthe big dinosaurs lived in the area for at least10 million years.

Another, perhaps more plausible, explana-tion for the existence of polar dinosaurs,though, has received scant, if any, attentionfrom the experts. According to some, in-cluding the late scholar Charles Hapgood,the polar regions have not always been polar.By this reckoning, the surface of the earthhas shifted dramatically, in relation its poles,on several occasions throughout the remotepast, causing areas, once cold, to becometemperate, and vice versa. Hapgood believedthat most recently—about 11,000 yearsago—such a movement accounted for thesudden destruction of Siberia’s mammoths,many of whom have been found frozen withtheir last meal still undigested in their stom-achs. Hapgood also thought that the exis-tence of ancient maps accurately depictingthe coast of Antarctica beneath the ice wasevidence of the existence of a seafaringpeople familiar with the area before the lastpole shift, after which the ice formed.

For those who find Hapgood’s ideas fan-ciful, we have a fat polar dinosaur theorythey might buy.

N

The ENIGMAof the POLARDINOSAURS





ith the installation in October, ofour new on-line shopping basket,

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REPORT FROM THE FRONTTracking the News of the Coming Energy Revolution

ick Cook’s search for answers to outside-the-box questions propelled him

through topics other aerospace industryjournalists shun—from antigravity to zero-point energy. His comfort with such con-cepts didn’t develop overnight, however; ittook a decade of questioning before he wasready to write the page-turner book Hunt forZero Point.

That book chronicles his ten-year investi-gation into efforts to crack the Holy Grail ofpropulsion: anti-gravity technology. A sequelwhich he is about ready to write will focusmuch more on breakthrough energytechnology.

Recently in Vancouver, Canada, beforehis meeting with Carmen Miller(www.mullerpower.com), daughter of the de-ceased pioneering inventor Bill Muller, I in-terviewed Nick Cook. He talked about theemerging push toward sustainable technolo-gies, a higher level of awareness and othersigns of much hope for humankind—if wemake it past the turbulence of power strug-gles in this transition time between an oldand a new paradigm.

Cook’s decades of research give him in-sights into the bigger picture for human-kind. He has a degree in Arabic and IslamicStudies from Exeter University, is a regularcontributor to the Financial Times and TheWall Street Journal, and writes extensivelyfor other international media.

He is routinely invited to speak aroundthe world on topics ranging from the futureof aerospace and defense technology toglobal energy and science. The audiences in-clude major aerospace corporations, govern-ment think-tanks, schools and universities.And he’s a four-time winner of the prestig-ious Royal Aeronautical Society AerospaceJournalist-of-the-Year award in the defense,business, propulsion and technology catego-ries. The television credits of this prolific au-thor (Cook has even written novels) includea two-hour documentary for The Discovery/Learning Channel, “Billion Dollar Secret,”which detailed for the first time the secretinner workings of the classified weapons es-tablishment.

More than twenty years ago, doors in thatsector began to open for Cook when hejoined the staff of the world’s leading mili-tary affairs journal, Jane’s Defense Weekly(JDW). From 1987 to 2001 he was their Aero-space Editor, and is now the magazine’s Aer-ospace Consultant. In 2005, Nick createdJDW’s Technology Audit Series—profiles

BYJEANE

MANNING

benchmarking achievements of the world’saerospace and defense giants.

In addition to his status as an insider inthe military-industrial scene, it seems to mehe has the quick intelligence, profession-alism and calm good humor which wouldmake it easier for nervous officials to relaxand tell him what they know.

Recently his love of the Right-Stuff-typestories from aerospace history focused into acollaborative business venture(www.highfrontiers.com); he and a few col-leagues write about the aerospace industrywith special appreciation for the excitementof the 1940s and 1950s when sound barrierswere first broken and the industry was rap-idly progressing. At the same time, HighFrontiers will bring forward some of theemerging knowledge such as new energy sci-ence—making these two worlds cross over.

In the years since Century RandomHouse brought out his ground-breakingHunt for Zero Point (2001), his colleagues’reactions to that book have pleasantly sur-prised him. It’s a signpost of how far manyindividuals in his circle have progressed; theheretical ideas in the book didn’t cause himto be cast out as he surely would have been adecade earlier. To the contrary, individualsinside the aerospace industry—people whomhe doesn’t even know—contact him and saythey had read the book out of curiosity butthen found it meshed with knowledge theyalready had or intuitively knew. Even in sec-tors which he knew were working on secretprojects, individuals told him they’re in-trigued by the book.

Energy InventionsHis near-future book projects include a

data-oriented report for which he is re-

Aerospace Insider Embraces New Energy Science

N

Continued on Page 58

NickCook

searching zero-point energy developments.“What the data nerd in me wants is to goback and strip out the (hunt for...) narrativeand just do the data. I thought the best wayto do that was to just write a report, so thisyear I’ve been just going around talking topeople about the technologies and looking atsome of the more promising ones.”

Since his investigations now include thedown-to-earth energy-related technologies, Iasked for Cook’s view of the way permanentmagnets interact with the field calledvacuum energy, zero point energy and othernames. Whatever the field is, he replied, mag-netism and electromagnetism do seem to bemysterious portals into accessing the energyfrom this field. But exactly how that is doneisn’t understood yet.

Many inventors trying to access the little-known field seem to be working intuitivelyand experimentally, Cook commented, butnot by using any particular theory that ena-bles them to build the devices. Sharing ofhow-to information on the Internet is onlypart of the reason people are building thesedevices; people seem inspired to do it. On acollective consciousness level it’s interestingto speculate from what other source peopledriven to build these devices are getting theinformation, he added.

“It’s a bit like that moment in Close En-counters where Richard Dreyfuss startssculpting the Devil’s Tower out of mashedpotatoes.”

Nick Cook’s OdysseyThe audio file of my interview with Cook

will be on the NewEnergyMovement.orgWebsite, so for whatever audience hasn’t yethad the pleasure of encountering Hunt forZero Point, I asked him to recap his story:

His “hunt” began in the era when aero-space journalists did a lot of speculatingabout the secret program that in 1988 turnedout to be the Stealth fighter program. ThenU.S. President Ronald Reagan hiked classifiedspending higher than ever, to a reputed $40billion a year at that time—a lot of spendingpower. Seeing what had been made possiblewith Stealth opened Cook’s mind to whatmight be possible in other areas of blacktechnology (technology so secret that its veryexistence couldn’t be revealed, let alone whatit actually might entail).

He wondered if anything was “out there”that could replace the jet engine, then real-ized it would have to be something that couldenable us to alter gravity. When he kickedthat certain mental door ajar, he tumbledheadlong into some very heretical thinking—antigravity technology as a real possibility.



• U.S. Scientist Says NASAKept Secrets about Citieson the Moon

The former manager of theData and Photo Control De-partment at NASA’s Lunar Re-ceiving Laboratory during themanned Apollo Lunar Pro-gram, Ken Johnston, says thatU.S. astronauts found ancientruins of artificial origin and apreviously unknown tech-nology to control gravitationwhen they landed on theMoon.http://english.pravda.ru/science/

mysteries/99895-1/

• NASA to Look for Paperson UFO Incident

NASA has agreed to search itsarchives once again for docu-ments on a 1965 UFO incidentin Pennsylvania, a step thespace agency fought in federalcourt.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071026/ap_on_sc/ufo_nasa

• Power from the FinalFrontier

Giant collectors in space thatbeam solar energy back toEarth could soon be a reality.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/01/

guardianweeklytechnologysection.research

LATE-BREAKING STORIESwe’re following on the Internet


Notes from

Michael A. Cremowww.mcremo.com

COMMENT

Archaeology & Archaeologists in “Planet of the Apes” n September 2007, Ipresented a paper atthe annual meetingof the European As-

sociation of Archaeolo-gists. This year, it washeld in Zadar, a beautifulold town on the Adriaticcoast of Croatia. I gavethe paper in a section on“invented civilizations”and what they can tell usabout the practice of ar-chaeology. I chose tospeak on the inventedcivilization depicted inPlanet of the Apes.

In the 1968 film ver-sion of Planet of theApes, an American astro-naut named Taylor,played by CharltonHeston, crash lands withhis crew in a lake on an unknown planet. They escape from their sinking spaceship, taking araft to the shores of a desolate mountainous desert, seeing no sign of life. After crossing thedesert, they come to a green, semi-forested area, where they observe humans foraging forfood in lush agricultural fields. The astronauts join the speechless humans, who appear to beon the level of animals, feeding on fruits and vegetables. Suddenly, the humans begin to flee,pursued by bands of gorillas, clad in dark military dress, riding on horses and armed with ri-fles. Some of the humans, including Taylor, are captured and taken to an ape city. In his cap-tivity, Taylor learns that the ape population has three classes—the gorillas, who serve as sol-diers and laborers; the orangutans, who serve as administrators; and the chimpanzees, whoserve as research scientists and intellectuals. Speechless humans, of a low level of culture, aretreated as animals. Mostly they live in the wild, but some are kept as research animals.

In his captivity on the planet of the apes, Taylor is studied by Dr. Zira, a chimpanzee scien-tist who does research in animal psychology. Taylor is one of her lab animals. During his cap-ture, Taylor’s throat was wounded, and he lost his ability to speak. So at first he appeared toZira like an ordinary speechless human animal. By writing messages on pieces of paper,Taylor convinces Zira that he is able to use language. This contradicts one of the main doc-trines of ape science, namely that humans are incapable of language. Zira tells her chim-panzee colleague and fiance Dr. Cornelius, an archaeologist, about Taylor’s remarkable abili-ties. Cornelius himself has made some remarkable discoveries related to the history ofhumans and apes. In a cave in the Forbidden Zone, the desert wasteland where Taylor’s space-ship crashed, Cornelius had found archaeological evidence for an advanced human culturepreceding that of the apes. So Zira and Cornelius have two categories of evidence that chal-lenge the orthodox views of ape science on humans. They have evidence that humans canspeak and that humans with a culture superior to that of the apes had once existed on theirplanet.


I

Dr. Zira marvels at an intelligent human in Planet of the Apes


http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/99895-1/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071026/ap_on_sc/ufo_nasa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/01/guardianweeklytechnologysection.research


ANCIENT SCIENCE


ccording to tradition, the Shroud ofTurin is the burial cloth of Jesus. Itresides in the Cathedral at Turin,Italy (and can be viewed online at its

official web site: http://sindone.torino. chie-sacattolica.it/en/welcome. htm). The prove-nance of the Shroud has now been estab-lished well enough to say with somecertainty that it did indeed cover Jesus in thetomb.

Prior to its placement in the cathedral,the Knights Templars had possession of theshroud and kept it folded in a wooden con-tainer with a viewing window, so that theface of the Man in the Shroud was visible asan object of worship for them. (They were,after all, the Poor Knights of Christ and theTemple of Solomon.) The viewing windowwas framed with wooden latticework. This isbased on the research of Frank Tribbe, whosebook The Holy Grail Mystery Solved (GaldePress, 2003) builds on the work of NoelCurrer-Briggs’ The Holy Grail and the

A

ment of resurrection. So the true Holy Grail,by this reckoning, is the Shroud of Turin.

The shroud itself is now, arguably, themost important religious relic in the worldbecause it has been subjected to such rig-orous scientific testing and its authenticity,we are told, has been established. Although acarbon-14 test in the late 1980s apparentlyshowed that the shroud was no older thanthe 13th century—and therefore was ahoax—it has now been shown that those testresults were badly flawed due to several fac-tors. First, the piece of shroud used fortesting was taken from what is now recog-nized as a 14th century “patch” or repair ofthe shroud, woven “invisibly”—i.e., not im-mediately visible to the naked eye. Second isthe presence of biological material—mold ormicroorganisms—growing on the fibers ofthe piece of fabric tested. These materialsskewed the C-14 data toward a more moderndate.

New chemical tests move the age of theshroud back in time to the first century A.D. Furthermore, the weaving of the linenShroud is now recognized as consistent withthe weaving of first century Palestine but not14th century Europe. Moreover, new re-search has identified pollen grains on theshroud which could only have come from thevicinity of Jerusalem during the months ofMarch and April—Passover time—whensuch vegetation is in bloom. For these andother research-based reasons, the shroud isnow clearly established as an authentic first-century relic from the Near East, precisely aslegend holds.

The Man in the ShroudAs for the image of the Man in the

Shroud, research likewise indicates it is nohoax. The blood stains are real (type AB) andcontain human male DNA. Tribbe notes inhis just-published book Portrait of Jesus?that the closest science can come to ex-plaining how the image of the Man in theShroud got there is by comparing the situa-tion to a controlled burst of high-intensityradiation similar to the Hiroshima bomb ex-plosion which “printed” images of inciner-ated people on building walls. Shroud re-searcher Ray Rogers, a physical chemist fromLos Alamos laboratory, said, “I am forced toconclude that the image was formed by aburst of radiant energy—light if you like.” Inother words, the image is recorded on thecloth as if by a photoflash of brilliant light ra-diating from the body of the Man in theShroud. Another researcher, Prof. Alan Adlerof Western Connecticut State College, con-cluded that the shroud image could havebeen created only by a form of energy whichscience cannot name.

The image of the Man in the Shroud wasvenerated by the Templars because it visiblydemonstrated the central fact of Jesus’teaching: the conquest of death. The face-

• BY JOHN WHITE

Shroud of Christ. Tribbe’s more recent bookPortrait of Jesus? (Paragon House, 2006) isan account of the shroud in history and sci-ence, and was published posthumously ayear after he died at age 91.

According to Tribbe the term “HolyGrail” originated with the Templars and thatthe Old French word greille, which referredto the lattice frame or grillwork on theshroud’s container, was transliterated overtime into the English “grail.” (The trans-formed word’s meaning was corrupted, how-ever, because “grail” etymologically meanscup or bowl, and the various grail-story au-thors wrongly told the public that the HolyGrail is the cup of the Last Supper or a bowlwhich caught Jesus’ blood while he was onthe cross.) The wooden frame itself was notholy, of course. Naming it “the holy greille”was simply a shorthand way of referring tothe tangible evidence of holiness which itdisplayed—the cloth imprinted with theimage of the risen Christ formed at the mo-


Were Two of theGreatest Enigmasof the Middle AgesIntertwined?





Illustration by Randy Haragan


THE OTHER SIDE

issuing from living things:leaves, trees, birds, humans.The age of technology, itseemed, had been destined toferret out the hitherto hiddenforces of nature, often acciden-tally, serendipitously.

“What we see with our phys-

ical eyes comprises less than 10percent of the known universe.”

– Prof. William Tiller

No sooner had the camera (daguerreo-type) been invented in the 1840s than spirit“extras” began appearing spontaneously onthe plates, sometimes little more than ablotch of light or misty outline of some-thing. (Today, spirit-extras are still seen toappear “in the middle of the photo [as] abright light.”)

By the turn of the century, radio waves,X-rays, radiation, etc., came into view as “sci-entific” evidence of earlier constructs such as


vival in 1905 which “resembleda brilliant star.”

In the 1950s the scienceworld had been jolted by photo-graphic images of the humanaura taken by Russia’s SemyonKirlian. His high-voltagemethod of photographinghuman subjects produced—quite by accident—luminousflares or “fountains” streakingout from the surface of the body. A shot inthe arm for the budding field of parapsy-chology, Kirlian photography had its instantdetractors. True to form, the skeptic squadimpeached the brilliant images, supplantingthe paranormal explanation with boring, “ra-tional” ones: the so-called aura was nothingmore than ionized gas that surrounds livingthings, or the result of “natural” (read: mea-surable) variables such as grounding condi-tions, amperage fluctuations, air pollution ormoisture. Sweat!

But the camera has its own eye which noamount of “variables” could alter in the cap-ture of the persistent luminous breath

ielding a camera with infraredfilm, the postmodern ghost-hunter records a bubble oflight—an orb.

Going through a near-death experience(NDE), the person sees an effulgent light atthe end of a dark tunnel.

Even UFOs are lightships—great spin-ning vortices clothed in the photosphere ofits power—woven out of the substance of thefiner ethers. Light—neither wave nor par-ticle, yet both—is our entrée, even here inthe sublunary world, to the mystery of life.

Both life and death know Light. BettyEadie, an NDE author, once related havingseen “heavenly beings spinning material outof some bright substance;” whereupon Dr.P.M.H. Atwater replied she believed that“substance to be ‘spun light’.” Spun—orspinning—that bright substance seems ethe-real to us simply because of its higher fre-quency. Sometimes only the camera can seeit. Sometimes only the clairvoyant can see it.Sometimes everyone sees it, like the cele-brated psychic light produced at a Welsh re-

For Those Who Seethe Light, There IsPlenty of Evidencefor Worlds Beyond

• BY SUSAN MARTINEZ, Ph.D.

WSemyon Kirlian

Art, after the manner ofKirlian photography


ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE

uring the “cold war” both theU.S. and the Soviet Union wor-

ried that the other side had devel-oped the ability to use psychicpowers for military purposes. Re-searchers Lynne Schroeder andShiela Ostrander in their ground-breaking book, Psychic DiscoveriesBehind the Iron Curtain, detailedmany experiments carried out inthe U.S.S.R. and eastern Europe, in-cluding psychokinesis (PK). Otherswho documented the psychic devel-opments behind the iron curtain in-cluded authors Henry Gris and Wil-liam Dick. Many believe that suchdisclosures were a major impetusbehind the U.S. military establish-ment’s development of its own capa-bility and that its widely discussedremote viewing program, whichcame to be known as project Scan-nate, was the result. Whether themilitary remote viewers could actu-ally influence remote physical ob-jects which they viewed at a dis-tance is not often discussed, butDavid Morehouse, a veteran of pro-ject Scannate has hinted that it waspossible. Others have suggested thateven assassination can be accom-plished by such mind-only means.

Thanks to the publicity in theWest several soviet psychics who,apparently, were able to influencephysical objects with mind poweralone became internationally fa-mous. Among them were Alla Vin-gradova, whose husband Victor Ada-menko is shown here holding asmall electric light bulb which,when placed next to an object whichhad been influenced by his wife,would spontaneously light. Vingra-dova is shown moving a metal cigartube by passing her hand over it.Also pictured is the so-called Rus-sian PK superstar Nina Kulagina in1977 moving a matchbook by PK.Unlike so-called spoon bender fromIsrael, Uri Geller, Kulagina com-plained that her PK efforts for thephotography caused her to becomephysically exhausted.

D

Did the ColdWar HeatUp the PKResearchFront?

• BY DR. ROBERT M. SCHOCH, Ph.D.n the 1970s, what is perhaps best described as aspoon-bending craze swept across America, andmany other regions of the world as well. In largepart this was engendered by the Israeli entertainer

and “psychic” Uri Geller. Geller was said to be able tobend spoons, keys, and other metal objects by simplystroking them gently with his finger. Among other addi-tional amazing feats, he reputedly could make brokenwristwatches and clocks start ticking again, he could“see” inside sealed containers, and he could sometimesread minds. Geller’s “mind over matter” abilities werewhat really excited the crowds. A bent spoon or key, ap-parently done without applying any substantial force(just a light stroking of the metal so that it wouldweaken or “melt” to the point that in some cases itwould break), appeared to be “objective” evidence of thatwhich was impossible by any normal standards. A bentspoon or key was proof, for many people, of genuine par-anormal abilities.

The concept of matter being influenced by mind orconsciousness alone is certainly not new. It encompassesa variety of phenomena, from metal bending to levitationagainst the laws of gravity and unexplained movementsof objects. Sounds heard without any physical source, ta-bles tilting, unexplained temperature changes, breezes,and materializations and dematerializations of objects,are other reputed manifestations of consciousness di-rectly affecting the physical realm. For thousands ofyears saints have reputedly floated (levitated) free fromthe normal bonds of gravity while in a state of ecstasy.Victorian era séances, organized around powerful me-diums, were attended by all sorts of marvels involvingthe movement of objects, materializations of objects oreven “spirits” taking fully human forms, and sounds pro-duced by unknown means. Such manifestations wereformerly referred to as telekinesis (loosely translated as“distant movement;” that is, movement from a distancewithout any known physical means). The preferred tech-nical term currently for such phenomena is psychokin-esis (“mind or soul movement,” that is, movement bythe mind), often abbreviated as PK for short.

So, is there anything to PK? Can it possibly be gen-uine? Many a hardcore, mainstream scientist would em-phatically answer with a resounding NO. PK breaks thevery laws of physics and thus is, a priori, impossible—orso the argument goes. But does it really, or must we ex-amine the data for PK and then decide whether or notthe “laws” of physics, at least as currently understood,must be modified? Indeed, such outstanding minds asthe Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson andthe late quantum physicist Evan Harris Walker have sug-gested just this. According to some interpretations,quantum mechanics and related fields may even predictthat in certain instances PK should occur.

But just because PK might occur, hypothetically, ac-cording to one formulation of what is admittedly a newand complex theory of how the world works at a funda-mental level, this does not guarantee that we will everobserve PK at a macroscopic level, whether it be a levi-tating table or a bending spoon. Furthermore, the typicalPK practitioner as known to the public generally doeslittle to engender confidence in the validity of the re-puted PK phenomena, except perhaps among those whoare already “believers” or simply overly credulous. UriGeller, for instance, is primarily an entertainer and hasbeen both suspected, and reputedly caught in the act, ofcheating while performing his “paranormal” and “psy-chic” tricks. The stage conjuror (magician) James Randi

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Psychokinesisconvinced that there is anything to them. Ican enjoy a good stage conjuror as a diver-sion, but I don’t put any stock in such “para-normal” feats. Indeed, based on my studiesof what I will refer to unabashedly as gen-uine paranormal phenomena, I believe it ishighly unlikely (if not virtually impossible)that large-scale psychokinetic phenomena(whether bending a spoon or moving an ob-ject) could be consistently elicited “on com-mand” in front of an audience. To put itbluntly, in my opinion the garden-variety spoon bending is non-sense.

So, there is nothingto psychokinesis?Not so fast . . . Inever said

that. Although I was extremely skeptical atfirst, after spending years studying the topic,based on literature reviews, theoretical anal-yses, and first-hand experiences, I do believethat at least some PK is real.

A convenient way to classify certain typesof psychokinesis is as either micro-PK or

has demonstrated that he can duplicateGeller-style spoon- and key-bending usingnormal means such as sleight of hand (seeRandi’s books, The Truth About Uri Gellerand Flim-Flam! ). Countering the Randi alle-gations, Geller supporters have pointed outthat his “powers” have been tested and cor-roborated, at least to some extent, under con-trolled laboratory conditions, but the Randicamp counter argues that such “controlledconditions” were not adequately controlledand Geller had the opportunity to cheat andbamboozle the poor, naïve scientists.

Here I do not wish to focus on Geller;however, he is representative of the typicalpsychokinetic “star” who appears to exhibitextraordinary powers under certain (gener-ally somewhat lax, informal, and uncon-trolled) situations, but has also been caughtcheating or unable to perform at other times.This pattern has been exhibited among “me-diums” for over a century and a half, andprobably much longer. Does Geller, or aGeller-type, have any true paranormal abili-ties? It can often be difficult to say. Just be-cause a “psychic” cheats at times, does notmean that all the reputed paranormal phe-nomena associated with that individual arefraudulent, although cheating in one in-stance certainly does not en-courage one’s belief in the ve-racity of other supposedparanormal occurrences. In-deed, for a century and a half se-rious investigators of the para-normal have found that those veryindividuals who appear at times tomanifest authentic paranormal phe-nomena are also prone to cheat and de-ceive when the genuine paranormal phe-nomena fail. One must be careful not tothrow the baby out with the bathwater, butone must also realize that in some cases thebaby (paranormal phenomena) may be totallyabsent and very dirty bathwater (egregiouscheating) is all there is.

So, to address the question of spoon-bending and the like directly: Do I personallythink there is anything to it, as far as the par-anormal is concerned? My answer must ulti-mately be nuanced, but when it comes tostage performances (whether before an audi-ence of thousands, or for entertainment inthe privacy of one’s own living room) of re-puted psychokinetic powers, I remain to be


Psychokinesis


A Scientist Searchesfor the Reality BehindPK’s Representations


Was a Perpetual Motion MachineInvented in the Eighteenth Century?

ould an eighteenth-century inventorJohann Ernst Elias Bessler be theonly man to have perfected the longsought perpetual motion machine?

Such a device has been the goal of scientistsand inventors for many centuries. Many haveclaimed to have found the secret but to thisday, the claim has never been realized. Or sowe have been told.

Perpetual motion has been described as‘the action of an appliance that, once set inmotion, would continue in motion forever,with no additional energy required to main-tain it.’ Scientists insist that such a contrap-tion is impossible on the grounds that it vio-lates the principles of the first and secondlaws of thermodynamics. The first law ofthermodynamics is essentially a statement ofthe conservation of energy. The second lawhas several statements the most assertive ofwhich is that heat flows spontaneously fromhotter to colder places. The discovery of amethod of achieving perpetual motion wouldmean a direct contradiction of those laws andit would bring to the human race a virtuallyfree and limitless source of power. In such acontext it is easy to see why claims such asthose by the upstart Irish company Steorn(made in a recent full-page ad in the Britishmagazine The Economist) of possessing sucha capability have provoked such a storm ofincredulity and derision.

Johann Bessler was also known by the as-sumed name of Orffyre, an encryption of‘Bessler’ and also by the name of Orffyreus, aLatinized version. He was born in Zittau inSaxony in 1680 but little is known about hisearlier years other than that he studied the-ology, medicine and painting before be-coming interested in mechanics. He first ap-peared in 1712 in the town of Gera just eastof Dresden where he exhibited what he calleda ‘self-moving wheel.’ Measured three feet indiameter and four inches thick, it could bestarted with a slight push and could quicklypick up speed. It could lift a seven poundweight. From this start, Bessler built a biggerwheel, 6.5 feet in diameter and four inchesthick. Once set in motion, it was capable oflifting much larger weights. The people ofGera were not impressed, they did not under-stand the value of what he was demon-strating, also they did not like his boastfulmanner, and he was described as having atalent for making enemies.

Disappointed at the reception he receivedin Gera, he moved to nearby Drashwitz a yearlater. There he began the construction of alarger wheel. Over nine feet in diameter andsix inches thick, this one could turn at fiftyrevolutions per minutes and lift a weight offorty pounds.

Bessler was better received here than hehad been in Gera and his wheel was put onpublic display. Over several months manylearned men came to examine the wheel. All

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concluded that there could be no trickeryinvolved.

It was at this time that Bessler moved tothe small independent state of Hesse-Casselwhere his work came to the attention ofPrince Karl, the reigning Landgrave (a titlewhich gave a count jurisdiction over a terri-tory in medieval Germany.) The prince was aman very interested in the development ofscientific ideas and he appointed Bessler asTown Councillor and offered him rooms inthe ducal castle at Weissenstein where hecould continue his work.

In the castle, Bessler constructed hislargest wheel to date, 12 feet in diameter and14 inches thick. Prince Karl was very im-pressed and proposed a test. On November12, 1717 the wheel was locked into a room inthe castle with all the doors and windowssealed. Prince Karl and several learned localdignitaries were present. The wheel was setin motion at 26 revolutions per minute.

Two weeks later, the seals were brokenand the room was opened. The wheel wasstill revolving. The room was sealed onceagain and was kept that way until January 4,1718—a period of ten months. When the

room was opened, the wheel was still re-volving at 26 revolutions per minute.

The result of this impressive experimentattracted widespread attention and largenumbers of engineers and scientists de-manded to know how the wheel operated andhow they could participate in its develop-ment. Aware of the immense potential ofsuch a device Prince Karl—at the instigationof the suspicious Bessler—provided a guardwhereupon Bessler himself hired a guard towatch the guard! The Royal Society heard ofthe experiment and approached Bessler whorefused to give them any information but of-fered to sell it for twenty thousand pounds.This was an exorbitant sum of money inthose days.

Prince Karl often remarked that Bessler’swheel was so simple he was surprised that noone had discovered it before. He described itas ‘a simple arrangement of weights andlevers.’ Bessler’s explanation for his creationwas that he had conceived a system wherebythe weights on one side of the wheel werefarther from the axle than the weights on theother side of the wheel. The secret, he said,lay in the ingenious manner in which the

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Elias Bessler







Illustration by Randy Haragan


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42 · Robert Schoch Looks for the Fire ... step forward. Our new and improved ... journalists shun—from antigravity to zero-point energy