DJ Shred

Depeche Mode "Partying the Angel" Friday December 16!-please note the party date has been changed to Dec 16 instead thx

2011-11-10T09:36:00.000-08:00

We hope to edit the flyer soon and have a new flyer up - due to 310 Lounge's owner suddenly changing the date due to another party, we now have to postpone our party for Dec 16 - the following friday, which will be great - 100% Depeche Mode all nite long!

Depeche Mode "Party for the Masses" Friday October 21!

2011-10-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

The last party was absolutely the funnest.....this one is going to be just as good or even better!!!!!

All Depeche Mode video dance party Friday August 19 NYC!

2011-08-12T01:12:00.001-07:00

After a long hiatus with the Depeche Mode Fan Club NY, the parties are back again...! Thanks to Matan Gortler!

Friday August 19 at 310 Lounge, 310 Bowery between Bleeker and E. 1st, NYC take 6 train to bleeker
$5 entry...DJ Shred spins DM all nite, night starts off with video presentation of rare DM videos

Above is the website for the Depeche Mode Fan Club New York. Every month or every 2 months, we have been having successful, fun parties since July of 2008, sometimes over 300 people attending at a time. The vibe is great and the crowd bonds, many friendships have formed at these parties. Its also a mix of ages, 20s to 40s, so if you are older don't feel afraid to come by! More later. DJ Shred

"Disorder" shows discontinued for now

2011-01-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

Sorry, I just do not have the time anymore to do the "Disorder" radio show! If this changes in the future, I will let everyone know about it .....thanks! - DJ Shred

play list for Dec 2009 "Disorder" with DJ Shred

2009-12-17T17:38:00.001-08:00

to listen, tune in to:
www.xwaveradio.com

please view:

www.mdmarchive.co.uk

(Manchester special):
Inside the Line - Warsaw
I started something I couldnt finish - the smiths
Can't see - The Drones
Face up - New order
Get on our own - buzzcocks
nostalgia - buzzcocks
sleep will come - durutti column
sweet lips - monaco
a forest (schwarzwald remix) - mark reeder
Downpour - foreign press
and last but not least, sounds from one of the Manchester United football songs ;-)

.........stay tuned for April 3, 2010, when DJ Shred has a Manchester-themed evening (title to come) at Glasslands, booked with Dave Haslam of Hacienda fame, Frank Sidebottom and The Sons & Heirs, a Smiths tribute band

also coming in April of 2010 - a surprise Factory Records band coming over from Europe (name will be mentioned later!) to gig along with DJ Shred :-)

Disorder play list for xwaveradio.com - Oct 14, 2009

2009-10-13T16:00:00.001-07:00

DJ Shred “Disorder” October 14, 2009
www.xwaveradio.com
1. Ouija Board – Morrissey
2. Every Day is Halloween – Ministry
3. Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus
4. The Ghost in You – Psychedelic Furs
5. Dead Souls – Joy Division
6. Twist – Tones on Tail
7. Haunted When the Minutes Drag – Love & Rockets
8. Ghost – Depeche Mode
9. Scary Monsters – David Bowie
10. Dead on Arrival – Throbbing Gristle

Depeche Mode Halloween blast at Don Hill's, Fri Oct 30

2009-10-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=173516581799

RSVP on Facebook on the

Depeche Mode Fan Club New York page

or go to:

www.depechemode-ny.com

"Disorder" play list august 26 2009

2009-08-18T17:39:00.001-07:00

DJ Shred “Disorder” August 26, 2009
www.xwaveradio.com
1. Breakdance – Giorgio Moroder
2. TV Party – Black Flag
3. Rats – Subhumans
4. Black Devil Timing – Black Devil
5. True Love – N.O.I.A.
6. Cybernetic Love – Casco
7. Dance Boy Dance – Alexander Robotnik
8. Fear (afx edit) – Easy Going
9. Feels Good – Electra
10. Black Devil

Disorder play list for xwaveradio.com - August 19, 2009

2009-08-13T12:09:00.001-07:00

DJ Shred “Disorder” August 19, 2009
www.xwaveradio.com
1. Bloody Revolutions – Crass
2. Birth School Work Death – The Godfathers
3. Wordy Rappinghood – Tom Tom Club
4. Play for Today – The Cure
5. Jezebel – Depeche Mode live June 2009
6. Living on Video – Trans X
7. Don’t Stop Hip Hop Beep Bop – Man Parrish
8. Trans Europe Express – Kraftwerk
9. Send Me An Angel – Real Life
10. Another Day – Strawberry Switchblade
11. Fun to be Had – Nitzer Ebb

Japan travel log, March 26-April 4, 2009

2009-04-06T23:59:00.001-07:00

this is the most exotic trip I've ever taken so far. March 27, Friday. We woke up early and had breakfast with Kirk, Britt's brother, where I had a choice of several green teas, tried Tapioca (nice waitress gave us things for free) and a warmed green tea muffin. Everywhere we go the Japanese people are so sweet and friendly and help us with directions, or take our pictures, etc. Kirk dropped us off by the train station by taxi so that we could take a train to the biggest temple in Tokyo, Asakusa, but we did not leave the area by the train station for 3 hours because we were so awed by what we saw...and did not stop taking pictures....rush hour by the busy Shibuya station, hordes of people running up stairs and out of the metro, the sun is shining,
we walked around and explored, went into Pachinko game place (pinball games that business men play in this noisy weird place with 5 floors - one old man was winning and a ton of silver balls came out of the machine while a song played), went for coffee where they make you a cup by your very own tiny little pot on the spot on a stove as you watch, walked up a hill and to another place where you order your food by
a machine, take a ticket, and give it to the guy, and I used a squatting hole (Japanese) toilet for the first time, not so bad, you squat over the thing in the floor. Everything seems so compact and small and bright, pastel colors everywhere,

there are hardly any garbage cans or trash cans in Japan, you have to carry your own trash mostly and find a place to throw it out. however the recycling is everywhere and divided into: "burnable garbage" "petbottles" "incombustible waste" and "cans and bottles".

it is a huge trend in Japan, or staple, for women to wear black tights, short puffy skirts and lots of over the knee socks. they even wear high heels at tourist places or in ridiculous locations - very feminine women.

the people in japan never stare at you and they mind their own business and don't listen to your conversations as much.

we were in awe for hours and just observed stupid stuff until we validated our train passes for the week and got on the train then subway, all full of quiet, reserved, polite Japanese people (NOTHING like new york) and we both agree that tokyo is not nearly as noisy or toxicating as NYC, it is much more peaceful and happier and less noisy.

The trains in Tokyo have English voices over the loudspeaker announcing the stops as well as Japanese. The computerized signs announce the train stops in English and in Japanese so we could easily read where we were.

The maps were in both Kanji and in our letters, two kinds of maps. At each train stop, toy sounding music would play, and when the music stopped, the doors were about to be shut. This society is so civilized, seemingly peaceful and almost perfect. Japan as far as I saw was spotless and there was never an ounce of dirt or litter to be seen anywhere. If you forget something, the person will run after you with it. Everything is proper and highly organized, much like Germany. In fact Japan reminded me alot of Germany, the people a bit nationalistic, elitist, yet polite and clean and annally organized and sterile. The Japanese wore masks over their faces when they had a cold, allergies or just want to prevent sickness. It seemed a bit silly to us so on our last day, we took ironic pictures of ourselves wearing these hospital masks.

then we finally got to Asakusa, the big lanterns that let you enter the path near the temple, leading to it and we made a wish for fortune by these sticks you shake in a jar, you pick one out and it gives you a number, then we burned incense over the big incense burner stove thing on the passageway to the temple, and then drank water out of this cup you throw over yourself in a spoon for blessings or something (?) (Not that anything was written in English anywhere for tourists to understand) - then we looked up in awe to see a huge tower/temple and the intense old Asakura built in the 7th century. After that we had free green tea they passed out there and walked around their gardens, little shrines of statues of things that were dressed up in clothes, beautiful gardens around it, better to explain with pictures. Then we went to a kiddie park right next to it and went on the "Bee" swing ride for a view above which was surreal. the kiddie park was weird and Britt got a vibe that people thought we did not belong there (without kids, it was obvious LOL).

Then we had coffee tea and food in this old 1800s tiny little place called "Sunny" that was short and small full of clocks, and full of atmosphere. I ordered a seaweed tree tea, did not taste good but it was interesting. With all the seaweed I ate on this trip and green tea around, it was no wonder what color I shat in the toilet every day. Although it was tres cool, I had to leave after awhile because of the smoke. Smoking laws have not hit Japan at all and everywhere you went - restaurant, cafe or bar - people smoked. I really only could not stand it while I was eating because this is something I have not had to deal with since 1988 so my body is not used to it anymore. Eating around smoke was difficult for me. I'm all for people smoking if they want to, I think it's great, but I'm allergic to tobacco and react and get sick.

Then we took the train to Nippori, another section of Tokyo called Yanaka, and walked through a beautiful Japanese cemetary with cherry blossoms, a black cat followed us, and we wound up going to many temples, on a quiet surreal walk, bells bonging in the distance. We met an American girl named Chessa who was there by herself. The cat found us again at the end of the path after we left the cemetary, but did not seem to want to be petted. It's eyes glowed a yellow intense glow of wisdom. The cemetary had the most unusual gravestones with flowers. I realized it was almost 5pm and suddenly a loudspeaker blurted some announcement which kind of freaked me out because nobody was around.

In the area there were some old fashioned tea houses. We came back from cool sushi last night with Kirk and his friend after they got back from work, and I tried lots of different kinds of seaweed. We tried Shochu --this intense version of Sake, which is good but I did not get drunk after one, in fact I prefer being sober on this trip, it is nicer to take things in.

Our apartment is very nice and clean and in a very posh part of Tokyo, called Roppongi Hills. We tried to sneak in to the Grand Hyatt's pool but did not get away with it. At the front desk the concierge offered free drinks and chips so I took 2 asahi beers. Everything here is bizarre and hard to explain.

Foods I ate that day:

samurai faces on red bean cakes

supermarket samples - ginger, nuts, and the unknown in Shibuya...

Seaweed and rice cakes in the morning at breakfast shop.

seaweed tree tea (at the old clocks coffee shop), the sugary gel caps that are supposed to be sugar, shochu, an entire piece of big garlic dipped in sauce and brown salty stuff,

saying "origatu!" and Konichiwa
and learning Kohi, for coffee

Enki, Kirk, Britt and I had drinks at a posh hotel lounge Friday night. When I went to the toilet, I did not know to press stop for the butt cleaning spray, and water sprayed everywhere - onto my hair, the door, my bag, and I went running out. Walking back to our place past the Mori Tower, there is a huge spider sculpture and waterfalls on the wall and surrealist art work displays outside for the upcoming weekend art fair.

Saturday, March 28

We wound up at Shibuya again, where the world's biggest crosswalk is. When you cross the intersection, either diagonally or across, you feel like you are floating among the hundreds of people passing you by and its a bit trippy. There is nothing like this in NYC, not even Times Square. The people in Japan are so civilized you never have a problem bumping into them. They actually look where they are going, unlike in America.

Shibuya has sections of "Love Hotels" and girlie peep shows and girlie booths where women are not allowed to enter, but we did anyway, taking pictures, and not understanding anything the workers at these places said. Japan is definitely a man's country, no doubt about it. Britt learned that the husbands basically don't hang out with their wives very often here.

While my friend shopped for a dictaphone for a writing tool, I people watched.

We got sidetracked at the Harajuku stop and got out when we saw out of the train window thousands of people on this crowded uphill street full of colorful, elaborate stores. As we walked down Harajuku street, we noticed that this was mainly the young girls' section of town - everything was colorful fashions, outlandishly dressed girls, and costume shops, punk shops , the creperie, all sorts of buildings with strange architecture and form including a mental hospital full of ivy - we stopped at a neon place called "Pink" not knowing what it was and went down the stairs - it was just a bunch of various photo booths where you pose and take your picture in a booth that you choose, and pay the machine (no humans work there). We got ours done and then continued to walk and find the Design Festa Gallery, a very avant garde gallery full of tiny little rooms of art work, all painted various colors on the outside of the building. The back garden also had art work outdoors and a path led to a restaurant in the back where you cooked your own food on a grill, which acted as the table. We ordered our ingredients from the waitress, fried, cut and cooked and ate delicious (but of course not filling amount) of food.

For dinner it was 5 of us in the Manju area, a bunch of alleys and a main street full of manju style restaurants - where you sit down and cook your own food Japanese style. No westerners were around (during most of the trip, we saw very few). The main street was lit by lanterns everywhere and again, we ate food we cooked on our own grill in front of us, shared it and split it up 5 ways - Japanese style.

Sunday, March 29
We got the train from Tokyo to Hakone and from there, took another little red touristy type train, which climbed the mountain but seemed to keep going backwards and forwards although it actually wasn't, and it was too bad it was so crowded that we couldn't see a thing outside of any given window, and that I was dehydrated, and nauseous. Finally we got out a long time later to get some tiny trolley up the final flight of the mountain, on quite a climb, only to get out to a ropeway cable car. This allowed us a view of volcano action beneath us, in smoke, and Mt. Fuji's icey top on the other side. Then we got out to another ropeway and then another, down to where we took a bus to the onsen (hot springs) which was outdoors by the lake and mountainside. I realized that any of the boats passing by were free to catch a glimpse of me and all the other naked women bathing in the onsen and walking by, although in Japan most hot springs are separated by sex (this was hardly ever the case when I lived in Germany). I decided that the German bath houses beat the hell out of what I'd just seen in Japan. however this one was still very interesting: by the bath area encased in glass there are several shower stalls where you sit on a stool and shower and scrub yourself before entering the baths, which is Japanese onsen etiquette. If you can, put your hair up and/or put a towel over your hair. There was a hot tub inside and a steamy hot spring huge bath outdoors, not deep (1 foot?) where we both felt that many of the Japanese women were checking us out because we were "alien looking" (white westerners in the countryside/middle of nowhere). A couple of little kids stared at me but I figured since I was the only human they've probably ever seen who has massive boobs and is not flat chested, that it was normal for them to stare - especially with my bright red East Village punk hairdo. Inside there was a steam room and when you came out you could quickly dip in the cold pool and feel "prickles".
We realized we missed the last bus back and wound up taking a taxi to another bus in the dark, only to catch the "Romance Train" back to Tokyo, which was not very romantic.
Back in Tokyo, we all ate at the famous Japanese restaurant featured in the movie "Kill Bill" where the waiters and staff shout at each other constantly, for show effect. I felt a bit like I was in Disneyland.

Monday, March 30
Woke up and went to Rikugien Gardens in Tokyo, a traditional Japanese style garden, with some beautiful cherry blossoms in full bloom - the Japanese surrounded each tree with cameras. Many other flora and fauna - very different from a western garden. For 500 Yen we joined the tea ceremony in the garden, which was on a stage, where we sat on the red carpet with a few others. You take your shoes off of course before you sit on the carpet - it was just warm enough that day to handle it. They give you a bowl of green foamy tea that is very rich, and a red bean sweet on the side, then you meditate or people watch.
For lunch we were the only girls who made it to Electric Town in the center of the city, and went to a Maid Cafe called "Mia Cafe" where the men stared at us and wondered why we were there. Upstairs you could get "Relaxation" - whatever that was. I ordered a Guiness, and the playfully subservient waitress hilariously and fearfully poured my beer with each drop, stopping and pausing, until the beer finally foamed over. She did the same while pouring Britt's milk into her coffee, and then we watched the men (nerds) play card games with the maid/waitress. After that we explored Electric Town, which was amusing, because this section of Tokyo is literally full of thousands of male nerds. You will never see so many nerds altogether in one place in your life, just like in Harajuku, you would never see so many teen to 20s outlandishly dressed girls in your life in one place. While still in the nerd section, of course there are plenty of sex shops and sex toys to be bought everywhere - candy nipples, sex comic book stores, and one sex shop where they sell a mechanical bucking bronco complete with a rubber penis to sit on, not to mention dildos of all kinds of colors that were literally about 6 inches wide (for who - pregnant women??!!) On the streets there were girls dressed up as maids, I don't know why, but they would not let us take their picture - I guess they were servicing the nerd men. There was the huge Sega building and an overwhelming amount of video/techie/electronica stores with neon lights and glass escalators and video signs. Inside one video game building I went to one "retro room" where I bought a vacuum-packed can of bread and we sat on a chair made entirely of plastic video game cartridges.

After Kirk was off of work, we joined him at Super-Deluxe, Roppongi - performance art - where I ordered an Okinawan sho-chu and then a "Tokyo" brand beer. Sho-chu is a higher form of Sake, you can get it here in the US sometimes. This performance space reminded us of the Williamsburg, Brooklyn scene from back home. There was almost no difference. Two Japanese girls played toy instruments and strange keyboards while a video screen projected some cardboard-cut out play about animals and rabbits. A baby in the audience was mesmerized. People actually spoke conversational English here, which was a big switch. I met a DJ named Aen and bought a few of his experimentalist CDs.

Tuesday, March 31
In the morning we caught the Shinkansen, the high speed bullet train to Kyoto, which goes 270kph, and takes about 2 hours to get there. You could feel the pressure on you from the velocity while sitting on the train. We both felt nauseous when we got off the train and my ears were popping. I needed more than one coffee but there are always vending machines in Japan with hot (yes hot) coffees and teas that come in bottles. Why can't America have these?

The first place visited was the big temple, Fushimi Inari. But before that we were starving so we ate at a traditional Japanese restaurant around the corner, where you take your shoes off and sit at a low table. I had to point to the picture on the menu of what looked vegetarian, and I knew I was in for eating the same thing yet another day: tofu, rice, seaweed and miso. Although it was good food, it was the only vegetarian food in Japan I liked (I don't like too many rubbery vegetable type things) so I wound up very sick of this diet at the end of the week, but at least I lost a few pounds. Not to mention, the portions of food are miniscule in Japan, but somehow, I got used to eating this way.

When we got to Fushimi Inari, the large temple and orange overhead gates with Kanji, I copied what I saw Japanese people do - ring the bell that was in front of the shrine, clap twice, say a prayer, clap twice again, then ring the bell again. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but it looked alright. We walked through the long passageway of gates which was surreal. More shrines appeared, more steps, more woods, more shrines - each one different while we walked. You could light a candle and say a prayer or burn incense in one of the incense burners and say a prayer or draw a face on a wooden fox, or tie a piece of paper up. At another shrine there were peices of colorful fabric where you could write or draw something, and post it up among the wall of prayers. While Britt did this, I sat for awhile and watched the sun glow behind the bamboo forest, among short palm tree shrubbery and tall cedars surrounding us. Then suddenly, all the tourists totally disappeared as we started to walk on the path of the bamboo forest, and we were alone in total silence. The thousands of tall, green bamboos on either side were mystifying, and then we entered at the end an area of hundreds of old statues, Buddhas, foxes, candlelit, lots of smaller orange signs and a strong scent of the burning incense, unlike any other incense I've ever smelled back home. Suddenly both of our camera batteries went dead. The vibration and energy was suddenly very strong, and I got personal psychic messages (I had been getting these since we entered the temple - all personal and about myself), and a strong sense of ancient past. I believe this temple and the area dates back to the year 711. (correct me if I'm wrong, I can't find my literature on hand now). We kept wandering through the tiny stairwells in the backwoods in silence, the only other human we saw was a maintenance man lighting the candles - in broad daylight. A waterway overflowed next to a sign that said "Shoes off" and we went barefoot and drank from the flow. Then on to a path in the bamboo and woods, further out passing abandoned farmhouses, to finally a tended garden with colorful flowers, a moss garden, an old lady minding her own business in the garden, and a shrine ahead in the woods with another bell. Further up in the path of the dark woods were more stairs, statues, lit candles and incense burning. We walked back further and kept going until we reached Kyoto houses, a strange sort of modern style, very unusual in its vibe - as we tried to find out where we were we reached yet another temple up a long series of staircases among cherry blossoms, nobody was around but a few toddlers playing alone who stared at us going by. At the end of the temple were more shrines, candles, incense, bells, woods - my feet hurt and I ran out of bottled water. We walked down to an area of tall Alice in Wonderland hedges, trees, and an argyle pattern on the ground, and made it down the steps to town, where we walked until we found a human - in a small van going by, and asked him where the train station was. He pointed, we walked, we got lost again, and went into a...shop? greenhouse? person's house? whatever? where an old lady pointed us in the direction of the "JR" or "metro" - which we finally did find, although when we got to Kyoto Station, which was our stop, we got lost for over a half an hour in just the train station itself. Never do I remember being in a train station so large. Getting on to the main street, we could not find our street where the hotel was. It's not like there are street signs or you can read the map, nor is anything in English. When we finally found our Japanese-style Inn, we decided to look for landmarks. Inside the Satomo Ryokan, we took our shoes off in the lobby to change into slippers and headed into our room, which was where we took our slippers off, went onto the tatami mat, and poured a pot of green tea, which was there on the table, complete with pillows to sit on on the mat. Futons and pillows were there for us on the mat, and we watched Japanese TV for awhile and laughed our asses off at it. I opened a closet door to realize that kimono robes were there for us, and we put them on. There was a hot bath (not a jacuzzi, but a hot tub) upstairs - one area for women, one for men. We fell asleep after dinner and woke up to an early breakfast in the breakfast room of the Ryokan (Japanese term for Inn), where each table, including ours, had green tea ready, seaweed, different vegetables, and tofu peices over a boiling firey pot. I slurped my miso soup and wore the kimono provided for us in the hotel room, but only one other person actually wore the kimono in the breakfast room. Then we took a bus to the Imperial Palace and Gardens, where we saw several cherry blossoms, some of them young baby trees altogether - reds, pinks, whites, magentas. We took the #93 bus to Arashiyama, the other side of town, located in a valley surrounded by mountains of cherry blossoms. It started pouring and we decided to go to the nearby "Foot Bath" at the trolley and train station, dipping our feet in natural hot springs with other strangers, while the rain subsided. Two really young Japanese guys tried to pick us up with their broken English. If only they knew how old we really were. We bought umbrellas and walked to Horinji Temple, which had a beautiful uphill pathway. There was a ceremony going on inside, and some girls were dressed up as geishas. The others inside wore black gowns. We walked to the zen garden of Tenryuji Temple. As soon as we entered the gate, the sun came out, it was slightly sun showering, and a gong started banging inside the temple, and the deep scent of incense started burning and smelling - around the corner was a fish pond, huge fish with their mouths gaping to the top of the water, rain pouring on them, clouds quickly going by the mountain tops around us, cherry blossoms in the path uphill in front of us in the garden, and tiny Japanese style-shaped trees (sorry I don't use good terminology in this blog but nothing was in English, no brochures or guides, so we never knew what anything was, nor the names of anything). We walked through the busy zen garden and then came out to the trolley station - the Randen train, to get to Gion - the geisha district of town. Interesting back alleys and streets full of traditional, old, Japanese-style houses with bamboo blinds - and a river with cherry blossoms everywhere - and a posing Maiko (Geisha in training) for about 100 people with their cameras. Again, we were practically the only westerners. After finding grilled cheese in a coffee shop, a man gave us directions to the Kaburenjo Theater, where the Miyako Odori is performed - that is, Maikos, Geisha girls in training, do the traditional dances that they've learned, and sing, and get to show off what they've practiced all year. This happens only from April 1-30 of each year, and this was April 1 - we got the last seat in the last row of the theatre, at the last minute, of the very last show of the day, by accident. In the theatre we took our shoes off to sit on the tatami mat on steps, and watched the Maikos dance with fans and stomp their feet, performing a one hour piece about the change of the 4 seasons, and ends of course, with Spring. It was crazy shit. It was an amazing thing to experience. Musicians playing traditional Japanese instruments (sorry for my lack of terminology again, but there were so many things to learn and take on in this trip with no literature available and no English speakers available) were on either sides of the stage, often reciting the actual dialogue for the performers. Outside the theatre in the district of Gion, lanterns lit up all the streets and alleyways among the traditional houses, and we watched one Geisha swiftly run away from all the tourists, emptying out the theatre. There was one beautiful shrine in the dark we stopped at on the way to the train, where a woman smiled at us and said "eyes" and pointed to the huge Buddha statue's closing eyes. I don't know what she meant, but I tried to look into its eyes.

On the way "home" to Tokyo, we fell asleep stretched across the Shinkansen seats which was embarrassing because the conductors had to wake us up when we got to Tokyo station. (It's not like we were sleeping much on this trip).

Thursday, April 2
Went to Shinjuku Gyoen gardens, a beautiful place to see cherry blossoms, and sit under them in the sun, which we did.
Waited on line an hour for 2nd class Kabuki-za tickets at the major theatre in the center of the city, the first act was only 800 yen, the second about 900 yen - we saw two acts and I decided not to get the language translation headphones because I enjoyed hearing the archaic language onstage. The two Kabuki plays I saw were "Keyamura" and "Sonezaki Shinju" - again we found ourselves in the last row on the top of the balcony which was still a decent view.

5 of us went to hang out that night in the Golden Gai area of Shinjuku - the center of Tokyo - first on the rooftop of a bar called Albatross, where you had a view of all the blinking lights and videos surrounding you in central Tokyo - quite surreal and breathtaking - as the waiter came up 3 flights of stairs to serve you your drinks - I ordered "Santori" - Japanese whiskey. There we met a couple of other fellow Yanks who were friends with our Canadian friend, and some other people hanging out, including two very cute young Japanese businessmen who spoke to us in broken English. We toasted "Kombai!" and then posed for pictures with the whiskey glasses "For a good time, Santori" - by this time I learned something new about Japanese culture: it is quite normal and acceptable to A) get drunk, B) men flirt with men by the balls or butt or what have you, and grab each other. Ok, moving on.

on to the Golden Gai area we walked through tiny lantern lit alleyways in the dark that kept winding, tons of great smelling restaurants with their smoke filling the air, past the red light district, to the drinking den area - a post war area full of over 200 tiny drinking dens that fit 10-15 each, and having their own character - we couldn't fit into the Spanish Flamenco den, but we did wind up at the French drinking den up a few flights of stairs called La Jetee, where famous directors go, including Q. Tarantino - very worth the atmosphere and time - we spent a few hours there, and I tried several whiskeys at the bar, forgetting the names of each. We all squeezed in literally shoulder to shoulder in this place and met fellow travellers from France, SOuth Africa and Japan.

Friday, April 3
In the morning I visited my own Buddhist group, SGI in Tokyo. We had a great chant for 45 minutes there and were warmly welcomed. Little did I know at the time that there are several culture centers in Tokyo for SGI, but we did get to a bookstore after chanting. The room where we chanted (visitors center) was small with many people standing up on the sides, and not that many chairs put out for people to sit on. A bit strange. However, we felt much more intense energy, and positive energy here, than where we chant in New York. A big difference - perhaps it is the lack of "negativity" that seems to lurk around NYC, because it is such a hard place to live. Even though in Japan I did not sense this type of negativity/irritability that I do on the streets at home, I did find Japan in general to be a cold place - not as friendly, partly because of the language barrier. There is something very open and friendly about New York - strangers talk with each other much more often.

Britt was tired and went back to the apartment to sleep, and I was on my own, of course on adrenaline vacation rush - I really had not slept much the entire week, and couldn't - I was way too mentally overstimulated and excited, as I usually am when I travel to an exotic place. I took the train to Shibuya on my own to try to map my way to the "DJ district" to see what was up there. It's funny but as I asked people directions, people were even more pleasant and friendlier when I was on my own, rather than with my friend, looking like "tourists" - I guess. I made my way first to HMV, even though it is a chain store, it was a place where you could listen to the latest Japanese chart and non chart music on headphones. I was pretty shocked to find several CDs that I would never be able to find at home on the shelf - Manchester and Belgian post punk, Crepuscule Records collections, and all that good post punk stuff I normally have to order over the internet and pay in Euros for. Then I went to "Disk Union" which is where they sell DJ equipment and you can listen to vinyl records on their turntable before you buy them. I wound up with a couple of Japanese techno cuts as well as some rare old skool vinyl I'd pay alot of money for back home - for very cheap. On the walls were a bunch of autographs from famous DJs who had frequented the store. I was then starving and craved some type of western food, like pizza, and found spaghetti for an extortionate price, which left me still hungry afterwards (such are the portions in Japan). Mind you on this trip I'd often go all day without having a meal and just snacked and worked up an appetite because of all the eye stimulus during the day.

Back at the apartment I met Kirk and Britt and we got dressed and headed off for dinner - at an amazing and beautiful Korean restaurant where they seat you in your own large booth by yourself and you take off your shoes when you walk into the restaurant. When using the bathroom in the restaurant you slip into the slippers provided for you there. We ordered an unusual vegetarian dinner that came with about 1,500 tiny little veggie dishes - mainly gooey plasticy things we really did not care for - the waiter at one point cooked one dish for us on our table, as part of the table had a grill on it. Feet hurt and the wind was blowing hard in a rather wintery way, so we took a taxi to the Park Hyatt Hotel - 52nd Floor view - the famous "Lost in Translation" bar, where the musicians play live and you can see the Tokyo skyline from all of the windows. The amazing thing was that it never ended - the skyline just kept continuing, and all you saw outside were thousands of buildings, many of them on one side all lit up with blinking red lights on each building. I'm not sure what the blinking red lights were for but it was a strange sight to see - such uniformity - red lights on each building. I noticed that the parks are not lit up at night and appear as just dark circles at night.

Saturday, April 4

In the morning we took out cash at Citibank, which was just a 5 minute walk away from our apartment, then headed for coffee and breakfast at "Koots" - the Japanese coffee house chain. I waited for the orange bus "Airport Limousine" bus at the Grand Hyatt across the street to take me to the airport, and Kirk, Sumi and Britt waited with me. The bus ride back to the airport was about 2 hours long but we passed many temples in Tokyo and parks full of cherry blossoms with people picnicking on plastic mats everywhere. At the airport I was starving and decided a final meal would be those yummy, delicious fried tofu rice things that I was so sick of by now and tired of.....because there was nothing else but McDonald's around. On the flight I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Bonnie and Clyde" and sat next to an elderly Japanese-American man who perpetually farted in a bad and nasty way for too long of a time until I decided to change seats. I curled up in a ball and fell asleep on one seat in the plane (thank God I'm an ex-gymnast) until the stewardesses kept waking me up with more disgusting, plasticy food that did not look very appetizing. I was dehydrated and nauseous even though I kept drinking water, and by the time we were landing over Newark Airport, I had the puke bag open and ready for myself - for the first time in my life. Normally I love flying and enjoy looking out the window and never have a problem, but this time I felt myself flushing all over to the point of extreme sickness - only to get out to a very long line at passport/customs/baggage, where it took forever just to claim my bags....and then the Air Train to Penn Station. Once out of the plane I felt a little better but still felt weak and nauseous, as I had not slept in literally over a day, and was overtired from all the lack of sleep on the trip - only to be greeted to freezing cold weather and wind and grey skies outside of Penn Station at the taxi station. The reason I did not get on the subway was because my bags were so heavy with records and souvenirs at this point. I waited and waited for a taxi - over a half an hour literally - nauseous and cold and dehydrated - only to realize that the taxi's card swipe did not work once he pulled up at my apartment - so that I had to pay him what I had - $9 (the cost was $10.50). Luckily the driver was very cool about it. My thoughts were that I had already missed the organization of Japan, and the cleanliness of it, and the civilized culture. There were no uniformed men wearing white gloves guiding me to a taxi that automatically pulled up for me in seconds with a door automatically opening, but at least I was home.

Last few messages from crazy people on going.com in my inbox - especially copied and pasted for your viewing...

2009-02-19T11:23:00.002-08:00

HELP! Notice - the only NORMAL person is "John" ! LOL - Lisa
___________________________________________________________________________________

ronald
Feb 19 at 12:19 PM thx
thx babe i want to come see you play if thats ok with you right me back with yes or no i love music
Report ..

coolio
Feb 7 at 1:27 PM hello pretty
uhm u so nice in lookin with beautiful pic but to me ur age does not speak to me but ur attention that all i need frn u ur attention ..well i hope to speak with u soon....

imran
Feb 4 at 8:25 PM hello nice one
harming,I hope my simple hello will put a simple smile on
your face.I like your smiling face.I'm doing great and
you?Well,I am Imran abdullahi and am 24 years old .I read your profile here
and it sounds very interesting and very impressive.I will be
grateful if you do spare me a bit of your time for us to
know each other better. I do believe that knowing each other
better will help us to understand the principle of life and
how to go about it.My Gut instinct also tells me that you
are a Good person.I do understand the distance thing; I just
truly believe that there are no boundaries as you seek your
life companion.I also like to make friends wherever I go,
but, like most folks, I hope that I can someday find the
love of my life. Until then, I'm open to meeting new> friends, including Cyber friends, as well as dating.Thanks
for having time to read my mail and hope to hear from you
soon.
Imran

tommy
Feb 3 at 12:45 AM Hello my dear
Hello,

Glad that I'm just browsing now in the Internet and found your profile at( www.going.com) and i was much feelings over it,I'm Tommy by name,please i will like us to hold a good relationship with a real love,I'm happy to look at your profile today ,you sound so gentle to me that was the reason why i fall very much interested in you, i will like you to contact me personal with my private box( jons_tommas@yahoo.com) for more introduction also i will sent my pictures to you so we can know more about each other,i will be happy to see your mail my dear,age or colour even distance can't deny any genuine love,so please lets give our self a trial,thanks till i hear from you,
miss Lorita.

PLEASE CONTACT ME WITH MY EMAIL ADDRESS HERE

George
Feb 2 at 9:13 PM Hello Pretty!!!!
Hello
How are you doing?Im George,actually im a new member on here,so i was just checking around then i saw your your profile,then gazed at your photograph and found it captivating.
Nice profile you have gotten,i like your profile and i'll like to know you more and better.

If you don't mind,here is my personal yh screen name,,,,george_,,,,,,coz i'm not always on the site but catch me on my id mostly.My brain is sick,just on here to chill.you can meet me on my id for a nice chat,,just really wish to know you more,,,,,,

john
Feb 1 at 11:59 AM thanx!
how are u beautiful! thanx for making me ur friend!! john

___________________________________

As I collect more and more fun messages I get such as these, (hey maybe I'll even post the myspace ones, they could become a work of art after a few months, in itself), I will add them here!

Lisa

northern UK March/April 2008 travel log part 1

2009-01-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Christina and I took a train from Chester, a border town (England/Wales border) to the town of Conwy in North Wales, on the coast. As the train slowed, a large castle was right there near the tracks. We walked right into and up the town's medieval wall, all stone, and could see the castle from there, the sheep grazing in the distance, and the medieval village with stone houses and quaint gardens below. As we walked on the stone wall which was kind of scary and slippery, it rained and we decided to go to a tearoom for lunch. It was Easter so not much was open but tourists were around. The tearoom that was open was dated from 1575, and we had a good lunch there. Then back through the village's streets and on to the castle - it was a ruin and we walked around it, sun glowing on the green grass in shadows around it and the water and bridge right next to it. We then went into the "smallest house in great britain" where a lady in traditional welsh costume who was only 5 feet tall stood welcoming us, a pound to get in. the house had a tiny room with a fireplace and one ladder for the bedroom where you could fit your head in. The house was 16th century and right by the dock where all the boats were on the water overlooking the hills beyond. From a highpoint in the distance you could see snowy capped mountains, which is Snowdonia National Park, highest peak in UK. At the Liverpool Arms pub we got hot mulled wine inside (yes it has been winter cold weather since we got to the UK) and I fed Jasper the dog some salt and vinegar crisps. An Irish man in a celtic shop talked to us for an hour about history. It was a good thing I decided to not wear my "The Black Death" T-shirt that day, as I almost did, because the Irish storekeeper told us about dead bodies buried in the stone walls right next to where we were standing - who died from the plague. The day before that - Im going backwards - we were at Ruthin Castle, in the countryside in Wales. A taxi brought us there because there is no public transport there. The first thing we did was put our bags down in the room, and inside, it looked like a typical best western hotel, kind of modern, except the bar and lounge which was more older and antiquey and had tapestries hanging. Altho we thought the room was boring, we ventured outside to realize yes we are staying at a 13th century castle! all stone walls surrounded it, and plenty of very dark scary passage ways to go down. the only reason i didnt go is becasue i saw broken glass down there and didnt want to get hurt, but i wasnt afraid of the rumoured ghosts. the passageways were dark and if you banged your head which was easy to do, nobody'd come and find you. peacocks were everywhere and tall clocks were abound and yellow daffodils everywhere and sheep grazing in mountains and hills among us. I got good video footage. We ventured to a celtic stone circle but no writing remained on the stones. We walked toward the sheep and the moat surrounding the castle and then into town which had lots of medieval streets, paths, half timbered tudor buildings and even a nat west bank in the centre of town which was an execution site years ago. back at the hotel we had dinner which was of course awful as every meal has been in the Uk. I cant wait to go to france tomorrow for decent food that doesnt make me sick!!!!!!! You don't know how sick I am of Tescos! LOL At night I was not able to go into the passageway where the Gray Lady ghost is seen, I had a couple of beers in me but chickened out! Then at night there was a 50th birthday party in the dining room and a wealth guy named Ben who is an oxford university graduate I met invited me and we wound up at the party. We suspected he was "seeing" his cousin (elwww). A lady running the party who was drunk screamed at Christina for crashing the party and embarrassed us and told us both to leave - but Ben told her we were indeed invited and that he invited us and then she shut up. The next morning we realized it snowed in the distance and the mountains around us had snow on them. The taxi driver brought us to the top of the national park which was on the way back, and we got a great outlook from above, hikers around us, snow on one side, green on the other side. the weather in the UK goes in patches. it can rain in one area and one mile away be sunny. then change in 1 minute. It is interesting and fun. The day before that we were in manchester. It snowed our last morning in manchester but disappeared quickly in morning. My DJ night was very successful! I had alot of people coming up to me in the club saying how great I did and how much they liked my set, I did two sets, a few hours long, and smoke and blinking lights filled the 250 capacity packed club with raving people shouting and pointing at me going crazy on the dance floor just like a dream. Dave Haslam, the promoter who ran the night (an ex-Hacienda DJ), set me up and promoted this so he had posters of my face all over the place including a big one that was inside that I saved. People wore some new york t shirts and it was well promoted all about me! I was the celebrity that night and played classic manchester hits, inspiral carpets to buzzcocks to smiths, etc. yes even 1990s stuff! I was kind of embarrassed about my face in the posters, etc LOL. Dave Haslam let us stay at his house two nights in a row, how generous of him. Before the club, me and christina went to the factory records website's birthday party at a big table of people at pizza express. I was introduced to the ex drummer of Durutti column and Dermo of NOrthside, a local celebrity (yes very VERY hot in person) and also the guy who produced electronic's getting away with it song (cant remember names). Earlier that day we were with my friend Chris who I know from the Joy Division and depeche mode websites - he drove us around the countryside and national parks and let us stay at his house in Leek, Staffordshire, on the way to manchester. we went thru very quaint villages and stopped by chatsworth which is a large manor house on a mountain. Sheep grazing everywhere on the way, stone walls, beautiful green hills and cute pubs and farms. And on the way back, we just so happened to pass Steve Morris of New Order's house, complete with army tank and farm, only a few miles from macclesfield. We took the train from Macclesfield to Stockport where my agent picked us up and drove us to Haslam's house. The day before that I saw Hampton Court outside of London, wow, it was an amazing castle with mushroom like alice in wonderland trees outside and a maze. The parquet floors, tapestries, the kitchen with fireplace, etc. The night before that christina and I did a london pub crawl and met this character John, a man in his 50s. we went to four old classic pubs including the Red Lion and the John Snow. John (not John Snow) told us alot of tales and then walked us back to the tube. I did a day pub crawl by myself one day in London and went to the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, 16th cent. dark place where samuel johnson and charles dickens went. the bartender was from wisconsin. I saw kensington palace, tower of london, big ben and parliament, sloane square. People I know and people christina know have been very good to us and have fed us, put us up in their houses, drove us around, etc! I guess they felt sorry for us because the American dollar is so low.

Is There An AfterLife? (paper I wrote for school last year)

2009-01-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

s there an after-life?
There is life after physical death according to proof from research
studies and from credible, valid sources. Most skeptics ignorantly
state time and again that *there is no proof.*

Proof that we are more than the physical form and have an existence
outside of our physical form while still alive is in the astral plane,
otherwise known as the out-of-body experience.
(insert my own photographs scanned and insert my own typed up
experiences)

body-experiences (OBEs) are those curious, and usually brief
experiences in which a person's consciousness seems to depart from his
or her body, enabling observation of the world from a point of view
other than that of the physical body and by means other than those of
the physical senses. Thus, an out-of-the-body experience can initially
be defined as 'an experience in which a person seems to perceive the
world from a location outside his physical body' [Bla82]. In some cases
experients claim that they 'saw' and 'heard' things (objects which were
really there, events and conversations which really took place) which
could not have seen or heard from the actual positions of their bodies.

OBEs are surprisingly common; different surveys have yielded somewhat
different results, but some estimates indicate that somewhere between
one person in ten and one person in twenty is likely to have had such an
experience at least once. Furthermore it seems that OBEs can occur to
anyone in almost any circumstances. Researchers have approached the
question of the timing of OBEs by asking people who claim to have had
OBEs to describe when they happened. In one of these, over 85 percent of
those surveyed said they had had OBEs while they were resting, sleeping
or dreaming [Bla84]. Other surveys also show that the majority of OBEs
occur when people are in bed, ill, or resting, with a smaller percentage
coming while the person is drugged or medicated [Gre68a, Poy75]. But
they can occur during almost any kind of activity. Green cites a couple
of cases in which motor-cyclists, riding at speed, suddenly found
themselves floating above their machines looking down on their own
bodies still driving along. Accidents did not ensue. Pilots of
high-flying airplanes (perhaps affected by absence of vibration, and
uniformity of sensory stimulation) have similarly found themselves
apparently outside their aircraft struggling to get in. One might well
struggle frantically under such circumstances.
More curious still are reciprocal cases of OBE and apparition: the OBE
subject, aware that he is operating in some kind of duplicate body,
travels to a distant location where he sees a person and is aware of
being seen by that person; this person confirms that he saw an
apparition of the OBEer at the time that the OBEer claimed to be in his
presence. Thus the two experiences corroborate each other.
Not all OBEs occur spontaneously. Using various techniques, some people
have apparently cultivated the faculty of inducing them more or less as
desired, and a number have written detailed accounts of their
experiences. These accounts do not always in all respects square with
accounts given by persons who have undergone spontaneous OBEs. For
instance the great majority of those who experience OBEs voluntarily
state that they find themselves still embodied, but in a body whose
shape, external characteristics, and spatial location are easily altered
at will, and an appreciable number refer to an elastic 'silver cord'
joining their new body to their old one. A much smaller percentage of
those who undergo spontaneous OBEs mention being embodied, and some
specifically state that they found themselves disembodied. The 'silver
cord' is quite rarely mentioned. It is hard to avoid suspecting that
many features of self- induced OBEs are determined by the subject's
reading and his antecedent expectations.
Common aspects of
the experience include being in an 'out-of-body' body
much like the physical one, feeling a sense of energy, feeling
vibrations, and hearing strange loud noises [GT84]. Sometimes a
sensation of bodily paralysis precedes the OBE [Sal82, Irw88, MC29,
Fox62]. OBEs, especially spontaneous ones, are often very vivid, and
resemble everyday waking experiences rather than dreams, and they may
make a considerable impression on those who undergo them. Such persons
may find it hard to believe that they did not in fact leave their
bodies, and they may draw the conclusion that we possess a separable
soul, perhaps linked to a second body, which will survive in a state of
full consciousness, perhaps even of enhanced consciousness, after death.
Death would be, as it were, an OBE in which one did not succeed in
getting back into one's body.
Such conclusions present themselves even more forcefully to the minds
of those who have undergone a 'near-death experience' (NDE). It is not
uncommon for persons who have been to the brink of death and returned --
following, say, a heart stoppage or serious injuries from an accident --
to report an experience (commonly of a great vividness and
impressiveness) as of leaving their bodies, and traveling (often in a
duplicate body) to the border of a new and wonderful realm. Reports
suggest that the conscious self's awareness outside the body is not only
unimpaired but enhanced: events which occurred during the period of
unconsciousness are described in accurate detail and confirmed by those
present. The subject sometimes 'hears' the doctor pronouncing him dead
when he feels intensely alive and free from physical pain, and finds
himself returning unwillingly to the constrictions of the physical body.
If OBEs show the capacity of the conscious self to have experiences and
perceptions outside the physical body, near-death experiences seem to
suggest that this capacity still obtains when the physical body is
totally unconscious.
The idea that we all have a double seems to spring naturally out of
that of the OBE. If you seem to be leaving your physical body and
observing things from outside it then it seems natural to assume that,
at least temporarily, you had a double. It also seems obvious that this
double could see, hear, think and move. This interpretation is not
necessarily valid. As Palmer has so carefully pointed out [Pal78a] the
experience of being out of the body is not equivalent to the fact of
being out.
According to the English psychologist Susan Blackmore the definition of
the OBE as an experience may not be a perfect definition but one of its
major advantages is that it does not imply any particular interpretation
of the OBE. The consequences of this definition are important. First,
since the OBE is an experience, then if someone says he has had an OBE
we have to believe him. Conceivably in the future we might find ways of
measuring, or establishing external criteria for, the OBE, but at the
moment we can only take a person's word for it. Another related
consequence is that the OBE is not some kind of psychic phenomenon. As
Palmer has explained, 'the OBE is neither potentially nor actually a
psychic phenomenon.' This view is a natural consequence of any
experiential definition. A private experience can take any form you
like. This experience may turn out to be one associated with ESP and
paranormal events, but it may not.
top

Is it possible for this body, Edgar Cayce, in this state to communicate
with anyone who has passed into the spirit world? A: The spirit of all
that have passed from the physical plane remain about the plane until
their development carries them onward or are returned [reincarnated] for
their development here. When they are in the plane of communication or
remain within this sphere, any may be communicated with. There are
thousands about us here at present.*

Edgar Cayce (pronounced "Kay-see") was a man who, over the span of his
lifetime (1877-1945), had more near-death experiences than anyone ever
docume
nted. Cayce learned that when he was hypnotized, he could leave
his body and journey into the afterlife realms. Cayce made over 14,000
otherworldly journeys in his life and the information he gained from
these journeys has astounded people all over the world. In 1910, the New
York Times carried two pages of headlines and pictures in which he was
declared the "World's Most Mysterious Man" A national magazine ran an
article titled, "Miracle Man of Virginia Beach", and Cayce was swamped
with an avalanche of 25,000 requests for medical help. President Woodrow
Wilson sought the services of Edgar Cayce for healing and guidance while
he was President and conceiving the idea of the League of Nations. In
1954, the University of Chicago accepted a Ph.D. thesis based on a study
of his life and work. Cayce is also considered to be the father of
holistic medicine by JAMA, the prestigious medical journal. Cayce was a
wonder to the medical community because of his ability to diagnose and
specify a treatment for gravely ill people often hundreds of miles away
through his out-of-body journeys. Cayce was able to gain a tremendous
amount of information through his frequent NDEs. Much of this
information solved some of the greatest mysteries of humanity. The
following web pages contain Cayce's answers to some of these mysteries.

The First Region
In the First Region of the Spirit Land we are surrounded by archetypes
of material things. From this realm matter is transformed from the
mental to the material. There is life and activity everywhere in this,
the lowest region of the Spirit Land. Here in the First Region all
activity is heard as music and all of the music blends together in
magnificent harmonies. The physical forms created here appear more as a
presence than as fixed. Gradually the presence is seen as a distortion
and finally as dark outlines against the colors which emanate from the
harmonies.
Steiner commented that what is considered to be just thoughts in lower
realms become reality in this First Region. Here we move among the
thoughts and we experience their essence. The thoughts have form, and as
we pass through them we experience the full potential of each one. We
now have the opportunity to see how reality arises in the earth and how
our thoughts work upon the fabric of reality. Although we live in
community, we no longer have a sense of personality. We have a much
greater sense of membership than we do of self. We feel a growing unity
with our community, our society, and the entire region. We feel an
inseparable union with the archetypes, all that they transform into
reality, and one with the primordial spirit.
Those in the earth who eventually feel one with nature and one with the
material region draw this awareness from the First Region of the Spirit
Land. It is in this First Region we have the opportunity to see and
experience our thoughts as ultimate reality.
In the earth we experience thought on a continuum of time and space.
This means that our experience takes place gradually and in measured
amounts. In this First Region of the Spirit Land we experience primal
creative thought in its fullest sense from origin through
manifestation.
In the earth what sets clairvoyants apart from others is the ability to
perceive and understand potentials which arise from thought. From this
First Region and onward we experience and are fully aware of just such
potential.
As in the regions of the Soul Land, there are those in the Spirit Land
who are permanent residents in each realm we pass through. As we work in
each region we are as unaware of their presence as they are of ours.
Those souls that we commune with in each region are part of our eternal
family with whom we have always been connected. Many souls that we
encounter are those we have lived with in most of our earthly
incarnations, while others have moved with us through successive realms,
and many are members of our soul family with whom we have never lost
touch throughout creation.
The Second Region
In the S
econd Region of the Spirit Land we find the archetypes of life.
Steiner noted that these archetypes transform thought matter into living
things in the earth. Here in this region we see the relationship of life
in the human family and all other living creatures. We develop an
appreciation and respect for the oneness of all life and how any one
life affects all other life. Unity takes on a whole new meaning for us
in the Second Region where we experience not only the commonness of all
life but the interdependence of all forms of it. We mix with the life
forms as they flow, and we gain our understanding in part from personal
experience. Our communities are now becoming wider, and we are more
likely to live with members of our larger soul family than only those
with whom we shared earthly experiences. The capacity to know ourselves
as one with all living things arises from this Second Region.
It should be born in mind that as we move from region to region we do
not go anywhere in a time and space sense of the words. All of life
interpenetrates, as all realms do. Our movement takes place in
consciousness rather than in a time and space perspective.
We have noted that as we grow in awareness we embody more and more of a
single region and eventually all of the region. This does not crowd out
anyone or anything else and ultimately all of creation occupies the same
space but not the same consciousness of proximity. If this is difficult
to understand let us look at two individuals in the same automobile. One
is driving and the other is not. The longer one drives the car, the more
opportunity one has to use all of one's driving skills, the more
familiar one becomes with how the automobile reacts to one's skills, the
more intimate a part of the machine one will feel. Likewise, the longer
one remains a passenger in the automobile, the more comfortable one
gets, the more one enjoys the experience, the more a part of the purpose
of the auto one feels he or she has become. Further, each occupant is
approximately in the same area but because of the focus each views
differently all that is within and all that each passes through. By
virtue of each individual focus each rider of the automobile can be said
to occupy the same point but differ in proximity to the reality of the
journey. In reality our awareness can occupy the same time and space as
some one else but each individual awareness would exist in its
unfettered purity.
The Third Region
As we enter the Third Region we experience the archetypes who are
transforming mental substance into soul qualities as used in the earth.
Passions, instincts, desires, wishes, sensations, and feelings within
the incarnate soul all arise in the Third Region of the Spirit Land.
These soul qualities not only arise from this region but their
expression in the earth can be seen here in their true essence. One may
be startled by light storms here which give off discordant sounds and
disrupt the harmony of the archetype's creation. This is the counterpart
of sorrow, vengeance, and jealousy, when soul qualities are lifted up in
the expressions to the Third Region.
Here in the Third Region we learn how to use the pulls on our souls. We
learn to direct our instincts and desires of every kind in a totally
unselfish manner. Those who have used their aspirations as benefactors
in the earth have drawn this knowledge from the Third Region of the
Spirit Land. Ultimately anything of a selfish nature will be lost in the
Third Region, transformed by the archetypes and sent into the earth to
be used for good.
The Fourth Region
When we leave the Third Region and have rid ourselves of our last
traces of any self-centeredness, we are now prepared for what Steiner
described as the Fourth Region of the Spirit Land. Here we no longer
participate directly in the affairs of materiality but in the care and
maintenance of the archetypes in other realms. At the same time spirit
from higher realms is drawn into the Fourth Region and transformed into
usable substance for
archetypes to work on in other lower regions. In
the transformed spirit sent from the Fourth Region the very creative
forces of the archetypes may be found, and even within those forces
exists the pattern for creativity.
In the material world each creation is imbued with the pattern for its
perfect manifestation. The pattern may be found as a fiber in the life
which emanates from higher realms. It is not fed once into each living
thing or even renewed periodically.
As spirit, life is permanently flowing new into all living things; so
too is the pattern for its perfect manifestation. As creatures in the
earth we draw upon this spirit and use it to meet the daily challenges
of material manifestation, as well as to build creatively in the many
realms intimately connected with materiality. It must be borne in mind
here that the earth is not an inferior realm. It is in fact where all
realms representatively come together. There is nothing in any of the
realms we experience that cannot be compared to its representation in
materiality, and that includes life in the Fourth Region of the Spirit
Land and beyond.
Here in the Fourth Region we find an opportunity, previously unequaled,
to selflessly devote our lives to the care and maintenance of all living
things that do not owe their existence to us. Those gifts for genius in
arts, science, and government are drawn from the Fourth Region; one who
manifests any of these talents well in the earth has previously worked
in this region. If we did not pass through the Fourth Region between
incarnations, we would have no interest in things common to all of
humanity.
The Fifth Region
The Fifth Region of the Spirit Land is bound up mostly in intentions
and purposes. Having discarded all earthly imperfections, we exercise
judgment differently than we formerly had imagined possible. Now we
truly fill the spirit region with our lives, loves, and hopes. In the
Fifth Region prophecy is an integral, inseparable part of life; we are
free to view as many of our future incarnations as we wish. If one does
not experience this region between material incarnations, the person
will be found to be lacking direction in the next earth life.
The Sixth and Seventh Regions
The Sixth and Seventh Regions of the Spirit Land are also intimately
involved in creation by drawing spirit from higher realms and
transforming it so it can be used by the archetypes for an infinite
variety of manifestations in the lower realms. In the Seventh Region of
the Spirit Land we reach the very center of the three realities of
Spirit Land, Soul Land, and Materiality. Here we live in the presence of
the seeds of life which Steiner and Swedenborg called "life kernels" (or
"soul-seeds"). We now recognize ourselves as our own life kernel. From
the Seventh Region we have a complete view of life unfolding in each
successive realm; the Spirit Land, Soul Land, and Materiality.
Returning to Materiality
As we discussed, there is a certain order in which we move through
realms and that order is dictated by sympathetic resonance as well as
proximity. Sympathetic resonance is the overriding factor in our journey
through reality, and proximity is the shading influence. The timing for
our return is first and foremost a personal choice, while the influence
which makes this a longer or shorter, a more difficult or easier journey
is proximity. All throughout our spiritual journey between earthly
incarnations we live and grow in communities with those we consider to
be our soul family, with whom we have shared experiences. There is no
level of reality where we do not have members of this soul family of
ours, and we commune with them wherever in creation we go. We even plan
together for our next incarnation and this, of course, greatly
influences our return. We do not plan our return with certain members of
our soul family simply because we like them or they like us. Such plans
are conceived because of karmic considerations and because such a
relationship is vital to what we hope will be
accomplished in our next
earthly life.
We do not sit down at a certain point in creation, take a view of what
is in earth, assisted or otherwise, with the options, and make an
instant decision regarding our next incarnation. We do not make informed
decisions in the earth that way nor do we do so outside of the earth. We
take into consideration relationships with those who have preceded us
into materiality as well as those who will follow us. It would be
foolish to think that decisions of such magnitude for each of us would
be so poorly planned. Such a choice is made little by little as one
grows in reality, and the final step is a small one indeed. Gradual
planning to be part of a family unit, a community, and a nation takes
place over what we would conceive of as time from an earthly
perspective. The Edgar Cayce discourses make a very strong case by
insisting that we choose our families, our parents, and even make
agreements, where possible, to choose our spouses and children. This is
not to infer that changes in plans will not occur, but we should be
aware of the vast amount of planning that is done before our earthly
incarnation.
When we are making most of our plans and agreements for our next
incarnation, we do not have physical details before us. Instead we have
before us relationships to others, to situations, and to those forces
which have prepared us.
In our decision-making process about our next material incarnation we
deal largely with two factors. First we work with motivation, then with
potential, and all the rest is the great adventure we call life. Let us
not think that we incarnate for the adventure alone. For life and its
living can be just as exciting for all who incarnate, whatever their
goals may be. For life to be truly constructive we must deal with the
motivation and potentials which are best for us at the time; thus we not
only experience the adventure our God has prepared for us, but we do so
for our greatest good. As we move through the realms around the earth,
motivation is laid bare before us. Soon it is the most obvious condition
and the framer of all experience. We learn to identify motivation very
easily and accept it as the creative essence of the soul. Respect for
this primal motivational cause becomes inescapable early on in our
journey between earth lives, and we learn that motivation is the first
condition in reality. In the realm ruled by cause and effect, motivation
is the fulcrum through whose action all things come into being.
So here we have it; we made plans bit by bit, as we traveled through
reality, regarding our next material incarnation, and we were drawn to
the proper timing just as we were drawn by correspondence to the realms
in which we resonate. When the proximity is correct, when conditions are
best, we then make a final decision and in so doing we gain
immeasurably. Half the gain in life is "showing up"; consequently,
according to Edgar Cayce, half the gain in an earthly incarnation is in
deciding to do it. Throughout the whole of the experience the angels of
grace are there to give us all that we have need for at any time. They
are likewise ever present to help us in our decisions regarding our next
material incarnation.
There are those of us who have so squandered our opportunities that we
do not have the fullness of freedom as do others. In such situations our
route through spiritual realms is not full enough for us to enjoy the
lessons which would be learned by a slower, more wholesome period of
recovery. As a result, some of us cannot clearly see motivation and
potential while others may not even care. There are those of the angelic
ministry who guide such myopic souls toward their next incarnation, but
it is always the decision of the individual to incarnate or not.

Near death experiences - over 72,000 visitors to website. How many of
us ignorantly voice our opinion on our views of the afterlife without
ever having read any of this or any other material on our own? Most
people watch Oprah or some
other TV show and then form their opinion
based on those shows and their own experiences.
Skeptics do their research - where/how? Do they ask individuals on
their own?
The American Association - Electronic Voice Phenomena
By Tom and Lisa Butler
Many of you have heard of the American Association - Electronic Voice
Phenomena (AA-EVP). It is an Association founded by Sarah Estep in 1982
in the USA as her way of helping people learn about and experiment with
EVP. Sarah asked us to assume leadership of the AA-EVP in May of 2000,
almost exactly eighteen years after the Association was founded.
The AA-EVP publishes a quarterly newsletter designed to keep members up
to date on what other members are learning about and receiving through
EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) and ITC (Instrumental
TransCommunication). The newsletter provides news about EVP/ITC
activities from around the world. The Association now has a web site at
http://aaevp.com to help the public learn about EVP/ITC and an email
distribution service, in which members can exchange emails as a group.
The web site has sample EVP voices that can be listened to as well as
Transimages and Spirit Photographs that researchers have gotten.
The Association reports on people who hear from and capture images of
those on the other side through all kinds of electronic devices. Long
gone are the days that messages and pictures were received only on
simple tape records or cameras. Today reports are received from people
who get EVP by recording directly onto their computers. Messages are
received on answering machines, digital note takers and all manner of
recording devices. People also still report the phenomena of receiving
a phone call from someone who has died.
Many people are still capturing spirit photographs with their cameras,
but now more and more people are using their video cameras to receive
what is called *transimages.* The digital camera was bound to not
be far behind and we have now seen transimages captured in this way.
Erland Babcock of the USA has made the change from experimenting with
video ITC to working with a digital camera. The interesting thing about
his digital camera work is that, unlike the use of a feedback circuit in
video ITC, Erland depends on background colors, textures and intensities
to provide the needed optical energy.
One thing that is for certain is that those in other dimensions want to
communicate with us and are using all manner of technology to do this.
As we make technological advances, they are quick to use them to
communicate with us.
Many people use EVP/ITC to reach and communicate with loved ones that
have passed into the next plane of existence and there are many
interesting and wonderful stories that are shared. One member received
an EVP message from her dead husband, but she did not believe it. He
told her to take her camera, turn on the TV and take a picture. She did
and could make out that it was indeed her husband. Another member
consistently hears from two sisters who have gone to the other side.
They tell of how wonderful it is to be free of their physical bodies
that were old and filled with disease. They speak of being in a
beautiful place. Still others have reported receiving messages from
those whom they did not know on earth but who tell them that they were
related in a past life. Researchers have even described both messages
and transimages that come from those who claim to be what we would call
extraterrestrial.
One of the interesting speculations AA-EVP members have discussed
recently is that some EVP messages may actually be coming from the
thoughts of living people. Members have reported recording messages
that seem to come from a person that is still on earth. We recently ran
a sleep experiment in which we tried to reach Sarah Estep while she was
sleeping and she did the same with us. Messages were recorded that
indicated that we were both receiving messages from the other
experimenter while they slept.
Several experimenters rece
ive loud EVP messages without using any
background noise. However, most EVP experimenters provide background
noise while recording. Simple noise generators, such as a fan in the
room or a radio turned off station, are commonly used. Special noise
generators are also used, such as the germanium device that is often
referred to as the Scole Device. It is thought that the entities
modulate this energy into intelligible phrases. Adding noise seems to
increase the volume at which the EVP*s are received. Sometimes, even
the words spoken by the experimenter are changed to form EVP messages.
Central to EVP research findings is energy-both physical and etheric.
For instance, in a séance, the energy brought to the room by the
participant*s sense of community and great expectations can be
compared to the energy of the sound noise just discussed. The entities
seem to use all kinds of energy to communicate. This may be
communication through a medium as a spirit greeting or through devices
as are used in EVP experiments. This idea also suggests that direct
voice in a séance may be facilitated with the addition of sound energy
in the room. It would be interesting to see if this is true.
There is some evidence that the experimenter is part of the recording
circuit. That is to say that the experimenter*s mediumship or psychic
ability may have an influence on the quantity and quality of EVP
messages and transimages. There is disagreement about this as some
successful experimenters do not believe that they have mediumistic
abilities. Also, members with a science background would like this
concept to be better researched before such statements are made.
Experimenters have reported that they have better contact for a while
when they try a new recording technique. It appears that the
experimenter*s enthusiasm is shared by the entities. However, once
the newness of the approach wears off, the quality of contact often
returns to *average.* From this, researchers are beginning to
conclude that it is important for them to experiment when they are
*fresh* and interested, rather than when they feel they have to
record to maintain a schedule.
AA-EVP members have varied interests. There are many that are active
in recording EVP and ITC. Others belong to the Association because they
are interested in keeping up with EVP/ITC and want to support the effort
to improve the understanding of this phenomenon. There are also members
who are actively involved in EVP/ITC research.
Alexander MacRae of Scotland has focused on the acoustical properties
of EVP with a device that has given him good results. Alec is well aware
of the need for good science in EVP and continues to devote much of his
time to research, education and documentation.
Mark Macy of the USA is a long-time contributor to EVP and ITC. His
authoritative work is published around the world. Mark is currently
experimenting with a Luminator (Bioluminator developed by Patrick
Richards-- www.biolumanetics.net). As Mark has told us, *For ITC, I
like the fact that the Luminator seems to melt away some of the subtle
barriers between our physical world and the spiritual worlds that are
superimposed over our reality.* Photographs taken of people setting
in the Luminator field seems to show the presence of nonphysical
entities.
Tina Laurent is an active researcher in the UK. She has been involved
in this research for 20 years and personally knew many of the people who
originally made the phenomena of EVP known to the public. She regularly
lectures on the subject and many of you have probably read her article
on EVP that was published in The Spiritual Scientist.
Anabela Cardoso is receiving excellent communication from those on the
other side who say that they are part of the group, Timestream. She
publishes the excellent ITC Journal
(http://www.terra.es/personal2/986313268/ that documents her
contacts and includes articles from renowned researchers and specialist
in ITC.
Jacques and Monique Blanc-Garin provide an excelle
nt French journal
called Le Messager (http://www.infinitude.asso.fr/). They were recently
given an award for the work, conferences that they do in the ITC field.
Finally, Dale Palmer of the USA, along with his family, has formed the
Noetics Institute. Through the Noetics Institute, and working with
Brazilian ITC researchers, Dale has funded the establishment of a web
site designed to permit the public to log on and conduct EVP/ITC
experiments. This is no small undertaking. It has been necessary to
purchase considerable computer capacity and to develop new software.
The site is currently in the early stages of testing, but it should be
on line soon. Keep an eye on the AA-EVP web site for the announcement
and the new web address.
The list of active EVP/ITC researchers is long. As the veterans retire
from research, new people are becoming interested enough to step forward
and continue the work. The AA-EVP has been working with groups around
the world in an effort to find ways to further research in EVP/ITC. We
see our leadership with the AA-EVP as an extraordinary opportunity to
bring together these discoveries and make them accessible to whomsoever
may be interested. In this way, we hope to promote further research.
We consider the work done at Scole very important to this effort. As we
see it, all forms of transreality communication hold the potential to
improve Humankind*s understanding of the nature of our reality and the
knowledge that death is simply a continuation of our present life.

Dr Ian Stevenson
Highly respected scientist who has scientifically documented over 3000
cases of reincarnation.

Scientific Research into Past Lives
In 1961 Dr Ian Stevenson (head of the Department of Psychiatry at the
University of Virginia School of Medicine) visited India in order to
document & hopefully verify one specific case of reincarnation.
After one month in India Dr Stevenson had over twenty five verifiable
cases of reincarnation.
Today, Dr Ian Stevenson has over 3000 documented cases.
It is importants to note that Dr Stevenson is actually one of the most
respected scientists in the United States. He has done specialised
research into xenoglossy (speaking languages completely unknown during
waking consciousness) and his book *Xenoglossy* is one of the
leading scientific studies in this area.
In this book he documents a study he made of a 37-year-old American
woman. Under hypnosis, this woman experienced a complete change of voice
and personality into that of a male. She spoke fluently in the Swedish
language which was a language she did not speak or understand when in
the normal state of consciousness.
Dr Stevenson's involvement with this fascinating case lasted over eight
years. The study involved linguists and other scientists who thoroughly
investigated every alternative explanation.
The subject and her physician husband were thoroughly investigated and
fraud was ruled out. They were under continuous close scrutiny, and did
not want publicity and agreed to the publication of the study providing
their names were changed in order to protect their privacy. The husband
and wife were both considered by their local community to be: honest,
decent and their behaviour exemplary. There was certainly no motive for
personal profit. Rather, they were greatly inconvenience over many years
in order to fully complete the study.
Dr Ian Stevenson has published a number of books on the subject of
reincarnation and these books are based on rigorous research are highly
academic in nature. These books include: Children Who Remember Previous
Live and Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect

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2. Respected scientists who investigated
*I am absolutely convinced of the fact t
hat those who once lived on
earth can and do communicate with us. It is hardly possible to convey to
the inexperienced an adequate idea of the strength and cumulative force
of the evidence.*
Sir William Barrett F.R.S.
*I tell you we do persist. Communication is possible. I have proved
that the people who communicate are who and what they say they are. The
conclusion is that survival is scientifically proved by scientific
investigation.*
Sir Oliver Lodge F.R.S.
*It is quite true that a connection has been set up between this
world and the next.*
Sir William Crookes F.R.S.
*I have been talking with my (dead) father, my brother, my uncles...
Whatever supernormal powers we may be pleased to attribute to (the
medium) Mrs. Piper's secondary personalities, it would be difficult to
make me believe that these secondary personalities could have thus
completely reconstituted the mental personality of my dead
relatives...*
Professor Hyslop Professor of Logic at Columbia University.

The brilliant scientists mentioned above were among the very first to
scientifically investigate the afterlife. Initially they were all
open-minded skeptics and it was only after thorough investigation that
they accepted the afterlife. There were other world renowned classical
scientists and thinkers around the world such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Sir Oliver Lodge, Arthur Findlay, Camille Flammarion, Dr Baraduc,
Professor Richet, Alfred Russel Wallace, Professor Robert Hare,
Professor Albert Einstein, Marconi, F.W. Myers, Professor William James
and Dr Carrington who, after investigation, accepted the afterlife.
From the late nineteenth century until today there have been groups of
prominent, well-respected scientists-many of them the best-known names
in science-who have worked to prove that immortality is a natural
physical phenomenon and its study is a branch of physics.
Many of these scientists were highly practical people whose major
discoveries in other areas fundamentally changed the way people work and
live. Many considered themselves to be Rationalists and Humanists and
have had to face intense opposition from both traditional Christian
clergy and from materialist scientists who joined together to try to
suppress their findings.
Emmanuel Swedenborg
One of the pioneers in this tradition was Emmanuel Swedenborg who was
born in Sweden in 1688. One of the leading scientists of his day, he
wrote 150 works in seventeen sciences. At the University of Uppsala he
studied Greek, Latin, several European and oriental languages, geology,
metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics, economics. He was an intensely
practical man who invented the glider, the submarine and an ear trumpet
for the deaf. He was held in high esteem by all, was a member of
parliament and held important government posts in mining. He always
showed he had enormously high intelligence and maintained a keen
practical mind until his death.
Swedenborg was also a very highly gifted clairvoyant who spent more
than twenty years investigating other dimensions. He claimed that he
regularly spoke with people after they had died.

On one well-documented occasion the Queen of Sweden sarcastically
suggested that if he ever met her dead brother to give him her regards.
A week later Swedenborg whispered a message in the Queen's ear. Shaken,
the Queen told those around her *Only God and my brother can know what
he just told me* (Inglis 1977:131).
Swedenborg wrote:
After the spirit has been separated from the body (which happens when a
person dies), he is still alive, a person, the way he was before.
To assure me of this, I have been allowed to talk with practically
everyone I have ever known during this physical life-with some for
hours, with some for weeks or months, with some for years-all for the
overriding purpose that I might be assured of this fact, (that life
continues after death) and might bear witness to it (Swedenborg Heaven
and Hell: 437).
Swedenborg wrote volumes about what today would be called his out of
body experiences,
including very detailed descriptions of the afterlife.
Interestingly he put forward a view of the universe which is remarkably
similar to twentieth century quantum physics. At a time when Newton was
arguing that matter was composed of impenetrable atoms given motion by
outside forces, Swedenborg taught that matter was made up of a series of
particles in ascending order of size, each of which was composed of a
closed vortex of energy which spiraled at infinite speeds to give the
appearance of solidity.
In his 490 page History of the Paranormal Brian Inglis (1977) makes
reference to Emmanuel Kant, the great rationalist philosopher, who
investigated Swedenborg. Although Kant was an open-minded skeptic he
felt that the evidence for the afterlife provided by Swedenborg was, as
a whole, overwhelming.
He quotes Kant as saying: **while I doubt any of them, still I have
certain faith in the whole of them taken together* ( Inglis
1977:132).
The greatest scientist of his time
In England one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research
(SPR) was Sir William Crookes, a fellow of the Royal Society-a very
prestigious association of the most learned scientists elected by their
peers-and later its president. He discovered six chemical elements
including Thallium. Many people considered him to be the greatest
scientist of his time.
Crookes worked extensively investigating levitation and physical
mediumship phenomena which was associated with the medium D.D. Home.
Conclusive photographs were taken as part of his experiments and the
total absence of fraud and trickery were verified by a number of other
leading scientists of the day.

In his group were scientists Lord Balfour, Sir William Barrett, Sir
Oliver Lodge (pictured left) and Lord Rayleigh, J. J. Thompson?the
discoverer of the electron?and Alfred Russell Wallace who propounded the
theory of evolution at the same time as and independently of Charles
Darwin. Wallace painstakingly investigated Spiritualism over a number of
years, eventually stating that its phenomena were proved quite as well
as the facts of any other science.
For over a hundred years some of the most brilliant minds in the United
States and the United Kingdom worked quietly to accumulate evidence of
survival of the human spirit.
In the first century of the existence of the Society for Psychical
Research founded in 1882 there were nineteen professors and other famous
scientists renowned for their work in psychology, physics, astronomy,
biology among the fifty-one Presidents.
The American Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1885 by a
group of top intellectuals including William James, renowned Harvard
psychologist and Professor of Philosophy (pictured) and James H. Hyslop,
formerly Professor of Logic and Ethics at Columbia University. It too
attracted men of top intellectual caliber who, after years of
investigations, became convinced of survival after death.
Pioneer inventors
Thomas Alva Edison (pictured left), the American inventor of the
phonograph and the first electric light bulb, was fascinated with the
possibility of an afterlife and experimented with mechanical means of
contacting the 'dead' (Scientific American, 30/10/1920).
John Logie Baird, television pioneer and inventor of the infra-red
camera, stated that he had contacted the 'deceased' Thomas A. Edison
through a medium. He said:
I have witnessed some very startling phenomena under circumstances
which make trickery out of the question (Logie Baird 1988: 68-69).
European Scientists
In Europe from the early 1900s through the 1920s other scientists
including Baron von Schrenck-Notzing, Professor Charles Richet,
Professor Eugene Osty and and Professor Gustav Geley were studying
mediums and photographing appearances of people who claimed to be dead
under controlled laboratory conditions. Their written reports supported
by the testimony of many skeptical scientists who acted as witnesses,
showed that they had investigated and ruled out all possible sources of
trickery and f
raud.
One hundred well known scientists, all profoundly skeptical, and some
openly hostile, declared themselves, without exception, completely
convinced after having worked under the direction of Dr.
Schrenck-Notzing with his medium Willy Schneider (Geley 1927).
Internationally known and powerfully influential psychiatrist Dr Carl
Jung admitted that metapsychic phenomena could be better explained by
the spirit hypothesis than by any other (Jung, Collected Letters 1:
431).
George Meek
Another brilliant scientist and inventor who, after investigating,
became totally convinced of the existence of the afterlife was American
George Meek. When he was 60 years old George (pictured left) retired
from his career as an inventor, designer and manufacturer of devices for
air conditioning and for the treatment of waste water. He held scores of
industrial patents which enabled him to live comfortably and devote the
next twenty five years of his life to self-funded full-time research
into life after death.
Meek says that he was a *natural skeptic* and felt that what he
been told about the afterlife just didn*t *make sense*. So he
began his own extensive library and literature research program and
traveled all over the world to locate and establish research projects
with the top medical doctors, psychiatrists, physicists, biochemists,
psychics, healers, parapsychologists, hypnotherapists, ministers,
priests and rabbis.
He established the Metascience Foundation in Franklin, North Carolina,
which sponsored the famous Spiricom research. This demonstrated extended
(more than twenty hours) of two-way instrumental contact between people
alive and people living in the afterlife (see Chap. 5)
His last book, After We Die What Then (1987), outlines the conclusions
of his years of full-time research-that we do all survive and that in
the last twenty-five years mankind has learned more about what happens
when we die than was learned in all earlier periods of recorded history
(Meek 1987:4).
Medical doctors
Some of the leaders in the scientific research of life after death are
extremely intelligent and astute medical doctors who began their
investigation as skeptics
Dr Glen Hamilton (pictured left) was a highly respected physician and
member of the Canadian Parliament. In his laboratory under strictly
controlled conditions he had a battery of fourteen electronically
controlled flash cameras which photographed apparitions simultaneously
from all angles. Observers present at his experiments included four
other medical doctors, two lawyers, and both an electrical and a civil
engineer. Each of the witnesses stated strongly and unequivocally that:
*time after time, I saw dead persons materialize* (Hamilton 1942).

Dr Kübler-Ross, who has had global impact on the way that dying people
are treated, became totally convinced of life after death through her
close association with thousands of dying patients. She writes:
Up until then I had absolutely no belief in an afterlife, but the data
convinced me that these were not coincidences or hallucinations
(Kübler-Ross 1997: 188).

She became so convinced that she wrote four books specifically dealing
with the afterlife: On Life After Death (1991), The Facts on Life After
Death (1992), Death is of Vital Importance: On Life, Death and Life
After Death (1995), The Wheel of Life (1997).
Dr Melvin Morse (a pediatrician and a recognized world leading
authority on dying children) was, as he put it, 'an arrogant
critical-care physician' with 'an emotional bias against anything
spiritual' before his scientifically based studies of dying children and
his extensive study of the literature led him to the inescapable
conclusion that *there is a divine something which serves as a glue
for the universe*. He writes:
When I review the medical literature, I think it points directly to
evidence that some aspect of human consciousness survives death. Other
researchers agree with me. Physician Michael Schroter-Kunhardt, for
instance, conducted a comprehensive
review of the scientific literature
and concluded that the paranormal capacities of the dying person suggest
the existence of a time-and-space transcending immortal soul. Other
researchers have reached the same conclusion. Be it through case studies
of their own or research they have reviewed, there is in the scientific
community a growing belief in the human spirit (Morse 1994:190).
Professor Archie Roy
Scottish professor, Archie Roy, is a Professor Emeritus of Astronomy in
the University of Glasgow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,
The Royal Astronomical Society and the British Interplanetary Society.
He has published 20 books, six of them novels, some 70 scientific papers
and scores of articles and directed Advanced Scientific Institutes for
NATO.
For the best part of thirty years he has also been passionately
interested in psychical research and helped to found PRISM (Psychical
Research Involving Selected Mediums) which encourages, guides and funds
research work with mediums. He has worked with Tricia Robertson,
vice-president of the Scottish SPR, on research work which validated
mediumship. Together they have published three papers on mediumship with
the Society for Psychical Research.
In addition to such experimental work Prof. Roy has, over the past
thirty years, investigated innumerable spontaneous cases of allegedly
haunted places and haunted people. His 300 page book Archives of the
Mind presents over twenty of the best authenticated cases from over a
century of research and rejects the possibility of fraud and
coincidence.

Professor Gary Schwartz
In 1993 Professor Gary Schwartz, then Professor of Psychology, Medicine
Neurology Psychiatry and Surgery at the University of Arizona, USA, and
Director of its Human Energy Systems Laboratory, began his own personal
search for evidence of the afterlife. With impeccable academic
credentials and more than 400 scientific papers to his credit, he was
initially highly skeptical and kept his investigations secret.
However in 1995 Professor Schwartz met renowned medium, Suzie Smith.
She had been vitally interested in ESP, parapsychology and psychic
research since the 1950's and had written more than 30 popular books
about her investigations. In 1971 she had set up the Survival Research
Foundation to collect scientific evidence for the survival of
consciousness beyond physical death.
Professor Schwartz became so impressed with the evidence that he
decided to apply for formal consent from the University of Arizona to
conduct research into the survival of consciousness, as a topic of
importance to humanity.

Since that time Professor Schwartz has conducted a number of double
blind research studies with some of the top mediums in the United
States.
He writes:
These mediums have been tested under experimental conditions that rule
out the use of fraud and cold reading techniques commonly used by
psychic entertainers and mental magicians. (Schwartz 2002, and website
http://veritas.arizona.edu/ )
Dr Joseph B. and Dr Louisa Rhine
While evidence of the existence of psi (a neutral term for all extra
sensory perception and psychokinetic phenomena like telepathy,
clairvoyance and precognition) is not strictly evidence for the
afterlife, in practice the two are intertwined since many of those who
experience clairvoyance and precognition also claim communication from
the afterlife.
The two are linked together in popular culture and *psychics* is a
term used to describe both those with *a sixth sense* as well as
those who experience direct communication with the deceased who prefer
to be called mediums. Materialist science has not been both able to
account for either psi or the afterlife.
Extensive experiments into psi have been carried out at the Rhine
Research Centre, started by Dr J.B. Rhine and his wife Dr Louisa Rhine
who coined the term *parapsychology*.

Maine, labor day weekend, 2008 (travel blogs, first post, post-dated Sept. 2, 2008)

2008-12-10T19:47:00.001-08:00

Day 1
4 hours and 10 minutes drive, doing 80-85 mph from NYC to Maine . We cut right through Connecticut , Massachusetts and New Hampshire in my 15-year old Nissan.
Air so fresh, there is absolutely no need for caffeine
A swim at York harbor passing the old gaol
Among seaweeds and lighthouse in the distance and islands, among the clams
White sand, and a hike on the cliff overlooking the water out into the Atlantic
Where a pathway guided us among multi-colored flowers, strange gardens
In the fronts of houses and stones in the heat of the August sun.
A drive along route 1 to Ogunquit, past the village, a walk to the end where
The Atlantic lie, waves crashing and tourists yapping
An early dinner of crappy food at a restaurant on the water where we ate outdoors
And watched the lighthouse, the gulls on the rocks, and another trail went up the coast
Very scenic past mansions a century old or more
And on to Freeport , where we pitched my tent up – a very friendly lady ran the campsite along with her dog. In Freeport at night, there was really nothing to do but bum around the L L Bean outlet, go to the 17th century tavern or shop at the British Goods store.
At the campsite mosquitos were fearce, as it turns out up north, this is the case, yet no midges (there was a warning about midges on the brochure handout the campsite gave us). All summer long it seemed as if the mosquitos have died – due to the greenhouse effect? Earth changing? Who knows, but we have not missed them. But once far enough north, mosquitos abide. We drank blueberry beer, brewed in Maine .

There were people from Quebec and some from New Brunswick at our campsite but most of them from Massachussetts.

Day 2
Woke up at 7:17am to fresh air again – so fresh we needed no coffee, our lungs were in shock. Drove to the wildflower preserve, where there were no wild flowers, but plenty of large mushrooms and a swamp and moss.
Drove to the quaint town of Bath where we had a country brunch in an old diner and where we window shopped. Drove on to Orrs Island , way into Bailey Island . We hiked passed weird colored houses with strange gardens to the "Giant Steps" which were rocks with waves from the Atlantic crashing where you could sit on them, as cliffs, and look at the boats and crystal clear, clean ocean. Alot of weird large birds - didn't know what they were. We went to this beach on the peninsula where no matter how far out in the water you went, you would only stand in water up to your neck, if not waist – there was a long strip of sandy land from the shore all the way up to this island which was a hill full of rocks with some grass and everyone was walking there, so we went at an angle past this very strong, pulling current of water up to our knees that made lots of bumps of sand and got onto the sandy strip and hiked the coral-like rocks to the top where there was a gravestone – someone drowned in 1966. I must add that, every time we swam somewhere in Maine , it was ABSOLUTELY FREEZING.
Had lunch at this shack place with a screendoor. We drove on to Hermit Island , a very surreal place indeed. Cannot describe the scenery while I drove that day. Kind of like the west coast of Ireland in a way.

A debate followed as to where we were going to eat for dinner, and how much (little) money we wanted to spend. We wound up (accidentally) at Fat Boy Drive-In Diner, a 1955 old diner where people park their car, put their headlights on for waitress service, and the waitresses come out and serve you with a tray that hooks on your window while you eat in the car. Complete with retro 70s music that reminded me of my childhood or listening to "WABC" as a toddler back in the day. The only thing was that the waitresses were not on rollerskates and there was nobody good-looking enough in the cars next to us to flirt with. Our waitress had a tiny Canadian flag pin on her shirt, which I just noticed before the song "American Woman" came on.
Day 3
Drove to the Boothbay peninsula, past Wiscasset, to wind up at some picturesque waterside harbor village with a trolley going around and the "little house" – about 10 feet tall, on a part of the peninsula……"Enchantments" wiccan store, brunch on the screenporch overlooking water, horrid Boston yuppies who spoiled the energy….escaped to another Island by mistake after getting lost, going over a little bridge, where we hiked this Preserve – all evergreen forest, dark, surrounded by water, complete with an 1800's graveyard at the end. Back in town we stopped for dinner – I had apple beer, I don't eat fish (I'm a vegetarian) so my friend waited on an hour long line for Red's Lobster, the famous lobster place while I had my veggie dinner and then went to "Somewhere in Time" antiques store with a buzz still in me – all alone with no salesperson, a bunch of frightening Victorian puppets and dolls all smiling at me, while listening to blaring reggae music in the store.
Back to a new campsite, way in the forest overlooking a swamp, milky way and lots of stars at night and the big dipper, crickets, a campfire, vodka, an old wooden outhouse for a toilet, but no midges or mosquitos around.

Again more Canadians, more than I saw New Yorkers, as far as license plates were concerned. I felt like quite the foreigner.
Day 4
Walked around Wolfe's Neck Farm, gardens with flowers and vegetables among the path, animals, packed up the tent in the car, drove on to Kennebunk where again it was filled with Boston yuppies, past the famous "Wedding Cake" house and numerous other castle-like buildings, then on to a final swim for the day at York beach, very cold water but refreshing. – Village of York has an old fashioned candy store, ice cream parlor, Inns.

Reached NYC at 7:30pm, after enduring an infamous subway ride which included very overweight people squeezing their massive asses next to me (what is wrong with this country?!) and last but not least, a guy behind me stepping on the backs of my flip flops in the crowd going up the stairs. Home sweet home.

being towed with my car from houston street in manhattan

2008-11-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend....my car decided to stop running, right in the middle of 6th avenue and west houston street wednesday as I was on my way to the auto repair shop and trying to make it there. So I'm at least in the right lane and left alone, with everyone beeping loudly behind me.

I get out of the car and wave people to move ahead of me, but still nobody comes out and helps, and people keep on beeping. Slowly but surely as I'm on my cell phone and standing there outside of my car, the cars figure out to move ahead and not beep anymore.

When i figure that people in Manhattan are not realizing that I'm actually stuck and that I'm not hanging out in the right lane of a major road for no other apparent reason....I decide to push my car by myself, which I did. Suddenly this nice guy comes up to me and helps me out and tells me to steer while he pushes so that I don't wind up hitting the parked cars, which I was about to do. I realize now, I'm not against the curb, but still kind of in the road, because the guy who helped me had to park somewhere, and now that he was gone, I could not push it by myself again. So I asked some passersby if they could help me, but everyone I asked said no, or did not speak English, or did not appear to be too full of testosterone (I was stuck in the west village) and so there I was sitting in my car trying to stay warm while hoping that nobody behind me would crash into me and kill me.

So I call AAA and am told it will be an hour and a half for the tow truck to come, which leaves me waiting there in the cold while having to pee really badly, because otherwise I know that if I leave my car alone while going to the bathroom, it might very well be towed away to the NYC tow pound and I'll have to bail out $200 again, just like I did this past summer when I parked it in the wrong spot.

This happened to me after Memorial Day weekend, and again back in July. Mind you, it is very unpleasant experience to have to pick up your car at the tow pound in New York City. I started to get flashbacks: in May, I had to take a car service to the Brooklyn Navy Yard which is in this god forsaken area where no public transportation runs. I waited on line for 1-2 hours, using their port o pots, and then showed them my license, insurance card and registration, and then paid over $300 to pick up my car, which was there for 3-4 days while I was away in Massachusetts, all because I accidentally parked in a crosswalk. On top of that I had to pay the parking tickets which were $110 each but when I went to court with the 3 tickets, the judge let me go for two of them and told me that sometimes when the cops switch shifts they just give the cars another ticket even though there already is one(two). When I got my car out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they had written a number on my window with stuff that I could not get off not even when I washed the car. I had to pay some guys a little cash just for them to scrape off the number from my car window. Then in July this happened again, and this time while waiting on that excruciating line at the tow pound, where everyone in the room is in a bad mood and you cant help but pick up on that energy, some guy took pictures. They told him to stop taking pictures but he kept taking them, of the people who work at the windows (who are naturally nasty) and the people also waiting on line. There were of course, as always at the tow pound, several arguments where the city employees yell and have shouting fights with people there who are there to pick up their cars who are already miserable. This you cannot avoid, as you cannot listen to music (you would miss being called on, as you don't take a number, they just call your name) and you can't read a book (you would miss your name being called). Anyway this is the reason why I would not leave my car alone for even one minute while I waited for the tow truck.

Finally the tow truck comes and there is another woman inside of it, whose car is on the back (she is being towed too - to East New York). Meanwhile the auto repair shop gave us wrong directions and we are going around in circles near the east river. So we get to my garage and I owe $29 for the tow truck and they take cash only and they don't have any change, and the woman who waited an hour and a half patiently for us to get to this point gave me the change.

So I'm spending my Thanksgiving weekend in my home hibernating away from crowds and annoyances, cooking and cleaning for myself.

Nov 22 private sweat lodge in central Connecticut with native americans

2008-11-24T07:14:00.000-08:00

this is my first time here so this is a "test" blog. If it does not allow me enough space to type what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling, I'm going to delete this profile, because I write ALOT. Enough people have said or requested I start writing about my daily experiences and travels in some sort of book, so I'm going to start (well, I did this already last year, but my journal which took me 4 months to do was stolen at Lehman College....) so here goes, I'll simply start with last weekend and take it from there, perhaps postdating my experiences. Anyways, so early Saturday morning I pick up my friend Britt in my 15-year old Nissan Sentra in Harlem, discovering just how many Dunkin' Donuts there are now on 125th Street. I already can't handle the subway because I hate crowds so the trip up from downtown was enough for me. Ask me why I still live in NYC all these years when I can't stand crowds and noise, and I'll tell you - that is why I keep a car in Manhattan - so I can get away at least ONCE A WEEK to calm my nerves. The drive (the way I drive anyway) takes an hour and a half to reach central Connecticut off of Route 8, and on the way (on the Merritt Parkway) everyone slams their breaks because of an accident, and I can smell my burning tires after jamming on the breaks, swerving. We are on our way to a sweat lodge, home made teepee and all, at someone's home, by personal invitation, and are required to bring gifts to the teacher as well as some food for the potluck dinner. So we finally make it to the exit and wind up stopping at a "fleamarket" which is some antique shop full of overpriced Salvation Army type things in this 200 year old building where it is freezing inside and the guy who runs it is stuffing his 1800s-wood burning stove with more wood, while we smell the wonderful smell, ask for directions to the nearest grocery store or farm (for fresh cider). So we eat breakfast at a diner because we arent going to eat all day, and then get to the house, a nice one with a pond, ducks, and a cute spaztic dog named Kirby. In the back yard people are putting the blankets and pieces of fire wood on top of the tarp of the teepee and the fire has been burning the hot coals since 9:30am - for almost 3 hours straight. It is sunny, there are birds chirping, evergreens, and a quietude that beats the hell out of NYC noise pollution. A dirt path is made from the fire to the teepee, and we help out, in the freezing cold (yes the temperature is 8-10 degrees colder than NYC). We go inside this garage where a table is set up and there are 9 of us, the rest from Connecticut, we are the only long distance people. The teacher who is native american by ancestry answers all our questions about spirituality, beliefs, sage, cedar, and the meaning of what we are putting together at the time which is pinches of tobacco into little colored pieces of material tied together on a string to represent our wishes and prayers. Mine was for finding real love and the other - career direction, so I chose the colors I felt represented that and didn't listen to what the colors were really supposed to represent. Then we all got "cleared" which was by a woman who used an Eagle wing and a burning bowl of sage (lots of smoke) while we stood up and faced each direction. Before anyone or anything goes into the teepee (which is the sweat lodge) it must be blessed so that it is all sacred, no bad vibes in there. So then we change into summer clothes - shorts, skirts, and run outside in the COLD quickly to the fire while we each head in to the teepee one by one, sitting on blankets in a circle. The guy who is designated to put the coals into the middle of the sweat lodge, where there is a dug out circle/hole, has to be outside the entire time, and as he puts the heated up rocks into the circle to make us sweat one by one, which are bright red, we all say "thank you grandfather" while the other guy in the teepee brings them in with two antlers. First the leader spread sage on the rocks and I started to sneeze (what am I not allergic to?) and later on it was cedar, which smelled really Christmasy and wonderful. Inside we sweat more and more and more until hours later it was almost unbearable. It was an extremely windy day, outside in the 20s and we heard the wind howl more than once, teepee shaking, but totally dark inside, and anyone who had glasses had to leave them outside (namely me) so we totally could not see. The teepee was made of tree sticks tied together and was still sturdy. The leader did several native american chants in that language and sometimes we had to follow or sing along and copy her. In the circle we each took turns saying out loud or to ourselves our prayers for what we hoped for, our wishes, and what we were thankful for too. After each person said their prayer they had to say AHO to let us know when they were done. We hung our tobacco colored strings behind us on the branches. I was stupid enough to wear my good boutique summer dress inside which I hope is not ruined because I sweat so much (it is at the dry cleaners now). The leader would sing several chants and songs and the others, who knew the native american songs, would bang the drum or either play a long wooden flute instrument. Some of us had rattles, I chose to use the turtle rattle because turtles are coming up in my life alot these days - everything I run into that I like seems to be turtles, which in Chinese belief means long lasting life. We were not allowed to go out of the teepee and so hours later we had to hold in our PEE. This is why I did not want to drink much water beforehand, yet I was totally dehydrating and only had a little water inside, as we passed around a wooden bucket full of spring water with a wooden ladle to drink from, of course in the right direction in the circle. Everything and anything you do inside of a native american teepee must be in that dire ction which is clockwise, whether talking or walking around it, or passing something. This is their tradition. Three different intervals they passed more hot rocks in and by the time it was the last round I was ready to pass out. There were so many hot coals in the circle and my body was vibrating. Britt claimed she saw several spirits that day inside and one of them was her enemy - either living or dead. I only saw a couple of spirits sitting beside me at the corner of my eye (you are supposed to call on your ancestors to help you, a native american tradition also) but when I turned (several times) I saw nothing with my eyes. I did this same sweat lodge once, 3 years ago and it was a bit more magical then, as I did see the leader's aura or glow light by her head, and sensed more vibrations. I began to see purple swirls which is what I always see at night whenever I sense a spirit near, even if its in my bedroom. Once in the garage we had a candlelight dinner but I was told to go back outside and take my tobacco string (which I left in the teepee) and walk the path to the fire, think of my prayer/wish, and throw it into the fire and watch it burn, before I go back inside. After dinner we had to clean up and take the tarp down as well as put all the firewood back into the pile and fold all the blankets up, which took awhile in the FREEZING COLD OF CENTRAL CONNECTICUT OH MY GOD. My toes were frozen underneath my socks and boots and my face was numb. The stars were beautiful in the sky and the fire smelled so good and it was so quiet. I drove back on the highway and began to get a dehydration migraine even though I tried to drink lots of water afterwards. I was talking to Britt in the car when my hand accidentally hit my glasses (yes DJ Shred wears glasses when she does not have her contacts in) and was left to try to find my glasses somewhere on the floor of the car or on the side for 5 whole minutes while Britt reached over and grabbed the steering wheel (mind you this is on a left lane of highway 84, going originally 70 mph)....and all I could see were the lines ahead of me and car lights with my 450/425 near sighted vision and astigmatism.....I was driving totally blind, bringing myself down to 40mph with hazard lights on when I finally found my glasses by my feet. Glad that we were alive, I was reminded of a recurring nightmare I always have about driving or taking over when someone dies or faints and getting into an accident (why I have this dream all the time, i don't know, but here I was living it!). I made it back to Manhattan and almost puked in the car from my migraine as I do not carry Advil with me or Tylenol! My teeth were chattering, I was shaking, so once I got in the hot bath at home, I was ok and my fingers which were all wrinkled from dehydration finally looked normal again and puffy. The sweat lodge did me good because my skin looks so clear and vibrant. It was difficult to detox the week before - I tried to go the week sans alcohol but that did not happen, I drank a few times, realizing my body craves it, which I guess you can't help when you live in downtown NYC and work in music!