Over at his Cosmic Spoon blog, Daryl 'Daz' Smith has posted a story about his involvement in a remote viewing (RV) investigation (with 'The Aurora Group') of the Nina Reiser murder case. The details of the RV investigation were catalogued in a well put together report, which you can download as a PDF file:

The main thrust of this report is to follow the history of the disappearance of this young woman named Nina Reiser, including the efforts to find her, both conventional and with remote viewing, the trial that resulted, and the surprising aftermath.

We will present the story as it developed. You will see the deployment of remote viewing by a professional team and get a good sense of how a remote viewing project unfolds. Both verbal and graphic data from remote viewing sessions will be included. We will present the large amount of relevant data that a team can produce while not consciously knowing what the objective (or target) is. We will also show some of the challenges such a project faces and difficulties that arise as the remote viewing data is received by the project manager. We will include the considerable amount we got right, and an important facet that we got wrong.

This report shows the blind remote viewing work of a small dedicated team of remote viewers and an outside dowser as they try to piece together this complex missing person case, that has now transformed into a murder and recovery case. The remote viewers work together using differing methods and styles and are located all over the world.

For anyone interested in remote viewing, it's well worth taking a look at - it's done very professionally, and gives a good feel for the different methods used, the results (both ambiguous, and suggestive) and the difficulties in employing remote viewing as an effective tool in cases such as this, due to the lack of specific information.

Parapsychology researcher Dr Dean Radin has written an excellent article for Reality Sandwich, titled "What Gorilla?: Why Some Can't See Psychic Phenomena". Radin's essay is, ostensibly, a reply to coverage by Skeptical Inquirer of a conference that he helped organise which discussed the psi topic - you can read the two SI articles here: one by Ray Hyman, the other by Amir Raz. But it also stands alone as a good, simple introduction to psi research and the 'battle' with organised skepticism for scientific acceptance. And the battle continues, with Evan Bernstein of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast posting a reply to Radin's article just yesterday.

Marcel Cairo's AfterlifeFM podcast this week also features an extended chat with Dr Radin. Recorded earlier in the year, it covers plenty of ground over its 45 (or so) minutes - and as usual with Marcel, ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime (and I mean that in the best possible way!). Heck, TDG gets namechecked in there, so let's just call it one of the best podcasts of the year...

Lastly, Dr Radin has posted a video news story about the Global Consciousness Project on his blog, with some critical comment about the news report (both in the story, and in the comments below). If you're not Radined out after all of that, you're truly a psi junkie.

Reality Sandwich has a couple of fascinating interviews posted regarding shamanism and entheogens. Yesterday I posted an embedded video of RS's Jonathan Phillips interviewing Jeremy Narby, author of The Cosmic Serpent (Amazon US and UK). Narby discusses his work investigating ayahuasca, how it personally affected his worldview, and some of the insights and discoveries he has made in researching the Amazonian entheogenic brew.

Also new from Reality Sandwich is Martin Ball's interview with DMT researcher Rick Strassman (published in text format), regarding his new (co-authored) book Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (Amazon US and UK). Rick discusses DMT entities, new ideas for scientific research with entheogens, 'quantum consciousness' and much more.

Remember that Rick Strassman is currently discussing the book on Graham Hancock's Author of the Month messageboard (until the end of July). Also, previously on TDG: my interview with Dr Rick Strassman, and also a review of DMT: The Spirit Molecule (Amazon US and UK).

And we thought they were such prudes: UFO Mystic's Greg Bishop points out a great find, a 1961 television show which investigated psi effects while under the influence of psilocybin ('magic') mushrooms:

From January of 1959 to July of 1961, John Newland directed and hosted a unique television program entitled 'One Step Beyond'. Newland and his creative crew combed the literature and produced 96 episodes of excellent programming based on real stories of psychic and paranormal phenomena. When the Twilight Zone series was about to go into production, Rod Serling actually met with Newland and assured him that his new program was not going to step on his toes or rip off One Step Beyond.

Newland dramatized actual (or reported actual) events, such as premonitions and other psychic episodes surrounding the Titanic disaster, or Abraham Lincoln’s presentiment of his own assassination. The most interesting show of the entire series has to be “The Sacred Mushroom,” which aired on January 4, 1961. Accompanied by three research scientists, and leaving the cloistered atmosphere of Hollywood sound stages, Newland traveled to a small village in the mountains of central Mexico to investigate the mysterious mushrooms.

If that wasn't enough, the show also investigated the effects of magic mushrooms on psychic abilities, with enigmatic/shadowy psi scientist Andrija Puharich tagging along. (Puharich had authored a book on the topic even at this early stage - 1959 - titled The Sacred Mushroom: Key to the Door of Eternity. See Filip Coppens' article The Stargate Conundrum for a good rundown of the strange goings-on).

The entire show is available to be watched on YouTube, in three parts: One, Two and Three.

Last week's news about a new study by Johns Hopkins University researchers, showing that psilocybin ('Magic') mushrooms offer positive spiritual/mental effects for more than a year, has certainly made things difficult for the mainstream media. So often an excuse to throw out negative or scare-mongering clichés, this particular study offered no such opportunity to news outlets. Check out this story, just to see a CNN anchor say people will be lining up to sign up for a shroom trip:

You'll still roll your eyes at comments suggesting this is a "surprising" result, and the regular hippie/spaced out 'humour', but still a good step away from the 'demonising' of these substances, and moving more towards understanding and education.

You can download and read the actual study here: "Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later" (PDF). Here's the abstract:

Psilocybin has been used for centuries for religious purposes; however, little is known scientifically about its long-term effects. We previously reported the effects of a double-blind study evaluating the psychological effects of a high psilocybin dose. This report presents the 14-month follow-up and examines the relationship of the follow-up results to data obtained at screening and on drug session days. Participants were 36 hallucinogen-naïve adults reporting regular participation in religious/spiritual activities. Oral psilocybin (30 mg/70 kg) was administered on one of two or three sessions, with methylphenidate (40 mg/70 kg) administered on the other session(s). During sessions, volunteers were encouraged to close their eyes and direct their attention inward. At the 14-month follow-up, 58% and 67%, respectively, of volunteers rated the psilocybin-occasioned experience as being among the five most personally meaningful and among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives; 64% indicated that the experience increased well-being or life satisfaction; 58% met criteria for having had a ‘complete’ mystical experience. Correlation and regression analyses indicated a central role of the mystical experience assessed on the session day in the high ratings of personal meaning and spiritual significance at follow-up. Of the measures of personality, affect, quality of life and spirituality assessed across the study, only a scale measuring mystical experience showed a difference from screening. When administered under supportive conditions, psilocybin occasioned experiences similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences that, at 14-month follow-up, were considered by volunteers to be among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives.

I'm not sure whether the results say more about the positive effects of psilocybin mushrooms, or the spiritual vacuum we live in these days...perhaps a combination of both.

On a related note, as I've mentioned previously, the next Daily Grail publication is a reprint of Paul Devereux's amazing book detailing the history of entheogen use throughout world cultures, The Long Trip. Definitely one to look out for, I've really enjoyed putting this one together.

Graham Hancock's 'Author of the Month' feature on his website has been a great way of providing for online dialogue between authors and readers on various topics (even if Graham sometimes slums it with authors like....er, me). This month should be a cracker though, with not just one, but four authors taking part: Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz, Luis Eduardo Luna and Ede Frecska - authors of the recently released book Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (Amazon US and UK).

Most TDG readers would be familiar with Rick Strassman, as we've spoken to him previously about his exciting research into the entheogenic substance DMT. However, his co-authors on this new book are also experts in the research of psychedelic substances, so the discussions on GHHQ's Author of the Month messageboard should be absolutely fascinating. I'm hoping to spend some time there myself, discussing some of these intriguing (and controversial) topics - including some aspects of my own research into border experiences - so hope to see a few of you over there.

Last year I noted some research by 'Daz' Smith into the extent of the UK Ministry of Defence's interest in remote viewing, a story which had broken earlier in the year:

I have been using the UK FOIA to try to release some of this information. A recent reply to one of these requests is enclosed and details branches of Defence Intelligence have a 1000 page document on remote viewing and PSI activities.

Daz has now posted an update on his 'Cosmic Spoon' blog regarding his FOAI request, with a PDF of the documents sent to him by the MOD freely available for download (only 33 pages though, from circa 1999). Oddly enough, it seem to have nothing to do with remote viewing. Though it's still good fun to read through (if a little confusing with the redacted information etc), with mentions of everything from dangers of cell phone radiation/electromagnetic hazards, through to homeopathy and morphogenetic fields. There seems to be a particular emphasis on Russian research into the latter topic - I caught mention of Novosibirsk in there, and theories about morphogenetic fields obviously have their origin in the work of Alexander Gurwitsch. There's also plenty of mentions about foreign research, and the need to translate.

Perhaps the most fun memo to read was the one I've listed below, on the topic of 'superimposed low-frequency patterns' in broadcasts. It's enough for a conspiracy theorist to run with for a year, though the memo itself proves nothing - it could be just some guy's personal paranoid theory (although that 'guy' seems to have been an advisor to the MoD). For US readers, Neighbours is an Australian television 'soap' series, which enjoyed great success in the UK:

The soap Neighbours has for years had a feel-good frequency (7.8 Hz) superimposed on the sound channel. An electrically sensitive patient spotted it and told me...it may be a feature of ---- 'dubbing' equipment or it may be that the company is a part of Richard (sic) Murdoch's empire and he has the technology 'in house'". That was as far as I could get in the ---- Commercial Library with tracing the company tentacles.

And you thought Kylie Minogue was so sweet and innocent...

Bookslut.com has a fascinating interview with Jeff Warren, author of The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness (Amazon US and UK). Warren's book is a personal exploration of the various modes of consciousness that we encounter, from day-to-day changes through to the more earth-shaking changes experienced in psychedelic trips and the like.

One of the more interesting parts of the interview (though there's certainly nothing 'less interesting' about the rest of it) is when Warren starts discussing the altered state of dreaming, and in particular, the self-awareness that occurs in lucid dreams:

[W]hen you’re self-consciously aware inside the dream you can then squeeze up real close to the walls with your little magnifying glass and look for suture marks. You can conduct experiments. You come to realize that there is a set of laws operating in the dream world that is every bit as real as the laws of physics in the waking world. What are these laws? And why aren’t there as many scientists down here with their slide rules and theories as there are out there? We spend our lives in two worlds and yet we only pay attention to one of them -- the other is seen as an embarrassing curiosity, a forum for banality-rehearsal and botched sex.

People protest: “but it’s not real, stop living in fantasy.” All experience is real. On the personal side, dreams reveal all kinds of junk about the self. On the scientific side, our dreams represent an unparalleled opportunity to examine the dynamics of consciousness. I mean think about it: without sensory input to dilute everything, you get consciousness in a pure culture. And it so happens that this pure culture -- The Dream -- runs like an underground creek beneath the waking world, muddying the ground in all kinds of interesting ways.

And that’s just the conventional science. Who knows what else we may discover digging around in the dream world. For those interested in the wooly world of mind-matter speculation, the epistemological rabbit hole goes very deep indeed.

This is going to sound hyperbolic but I really believe we’re at are at the dawn of a new age of scientific exploration. The external world is mapped; now the explorers are turning inward. The galleons have left port. They’re approaching a huge mysterious continent. They won’t be the first to arrive. There are paths already cut in the forest, where shamans and monks and others have set up outposts and launched their own expeditions into the interior.

Warren also has what are, in my opinion, some valid insights and worthy warnings about the use of psychedelics to explore modes of consciousness:

I’m interested in drug-induced alternations of consciousness, but my feeling is they’re the really obvious shit. Too many “investigators of consciousness” overlook the fine-grained shifting texture of day-to-day consciousness. It’s the difference between the big budget Hollywood blockbuster and the art house Henry James adaptation. Drug-induced alterations of consciousness have great CGI -- which is fine, I mean who doesn’t appreciate form constant explosions and DMT Machine Elves? -- the problem is, character development sucks, or rather, the characters -- and by characters I mean the objects of consciousness -- tend to be cartoons. They’re exaggerated, that’s what psychedelics do -- “non-specific amplifiers” Stanislav Grof calls them. They expand the whole topography of the mind. It’s possible more than this is going on but that’s another story.

This expansion can be valuable for understanding consciousness since it boosts the resolution of previously discreet mental dynamics. But cartoons, of course, are caricatures. If you watch only Jerry Bruckheimer movies you risk losing your ability to appreciate -- and even notice -- the subtleties and complexities of real life and consciousness, which, to circle back to my original metaphor, is more like a Henry James adaptation.

That’s a long way of saying to understand conscious experience, I think it helps to start from the more subtle naturally-occurring variations, and then work your way out.

Something else I’ve noticed about the hard-core psychonaut set: if you get too deep into the mind you can become convinced of anything. Certain psychedelics -- ayahuasca, ibogaine, DMT, LSD -- they’re like cannons, they can fire you so far that you can’t find your way back out again. People can become permanently disoriented, one basket filled with brilliant insights, one with grotesque delusions. It’s serious: the mind is both a reality-perceiving and an illusion-generating machine. So people confuse their metaphysics with their epistemology, to paraphrase the philosopher Jerry Fodor.

I could have quoted the entire thing, it's that interesting. Head on over to Bookslut.com and check out the interview in its entirety.

Wired have a rather scary story about military interest/concern about future moves to modify the brains of soldiers, either pharmaceutically or technologically:

In a recent report, unearthed by Secrecy News, the JASONs are recommending that the American military push ahead with its own performance-enhancement research -- and monitor foreign studies -- to make sure that the U.S.' enemies don't suddenly become smarter, faster, or better able to endure the harsh realities of war than American troops.

The JASONs are particularly concerned about (and excited by) new drugs that promote "brain plasticity" -- rewiring the mind, essentially, by helping to "permanently establishing new neural pathways, and thus new cognitive capabilities." The military has already tested these neuro-modulators as a way to keep troops alert after sleepless nights...

...The scientific group also wants the military to keep close watch on the hardware and software which connects the human brain to machines. American researchers have used these brain-computer interfaces to develop new prosthetics -- and to train monkeys to control robotic limbs. Northrop Grumman just won a Pentagon contract to develop binoculars that will tap the subconscious mind. The JASONs believe "the primary threat potential for adversarial use of a Brain-Computer interface "may arise in a feedback mode, in which a the interface provides a soldier with a simple signal or a pain/pleasure pulse in response to externally provided situational information."

We're so evolved, our primary concern with enhancement technology is still figuring out the best way to use it to kill other humans. Yay for us.

A new scientific study has found that the smell of burning incense alters our brain chemistry, helping to alleviate anxiety and depression:

Biologists from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have discovered that burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain...

Reporting their findings in The FASEB Journal, the researchers said that the active compound - incensole acetate - significantly affected areas in the brain known to be involved in emotions as well as in nerve circuits that are affected by currently prescribed anxiety and depression drugs.

"In spite of information stemming from ancient texts, constituents of Boswellia had not been investigated for psychoactivity," said researcher Raphael Mechoulam. "We found that incensole acetate, a Boswellia resin constituent, when tested in mice lowers anxiety and causes antidepressive-like behavior. Apparently, most present day worshipers assume that incense burning has only a symbolic meaning."

Chalk another one up for the 'wisdom of the ancients'. I've actually wondered in the past whether there was some connection between incense and even more powerful altered states, with the ancient Egyptian word for incense, snTr, being a possible composite of the words 'sn' ("kiss", or if ideogrammatic "arrow") and 'nTr' ("gods") - literally, "kiss of the gods". I'm far from an expert on Egyptian hieroglyphics or etymology though, so beware the truthiness of my amateur speculations!

For those interested in the ancients' use of psychoactives, you'll really enjoy a book coming up in a month or two from Daily Grail Publishing. More soon.