View allAll Photos Tagged CONSCIOUSNESS
Grasping Intrinsic Consciousness.
Tremendo pensamentos empoeirado ventos de viragem ondulação hesitando horas assistidos,
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καταπιεί κίτρινοι φλογερό ημέρες καύση πάθη υψηλής άλλοτε ευπρέπεια μύγας,
Farblos traurig Morgen Blues fahl nähernden Augen unnachahmliche Ruhe,
ويشير الدقيق صامت حكايات أسطورية الشاعر حريصة أعداء الفاسد الهواء البارد القصب,
courtisanes en décomposition art troncs fragiles sous soir flottante fading corps teintes,
tople izginja Valovi tepta krivulje zamrznjena maščevanje šumenje pritožbe krivic nadlog,
squisita tonalità vorticose cobalto menti desolate vermiglio cuori saltano alberi montagne verdi,
嫉妬淡い空退屈な詩の星ビジョンをキラリと光るダーク崩れ遺跡.
Steve.D.Hammond.
Huntley Meadows, Alexandria, Virginia
Hasselblad 500 C/M, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2.8 C T*, Fuji Velvia 50, Nik Silver Efex Pro
"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue." ~ Henry James, The Art of Fiction
She doesn’t merely look — she pierces.
Her gaze is not that of a subject caught in light, but a threshold, a summons, a mirror held up to consciousness itself. The face, carved with almost mineral precision, seems to emerge from cosmic chaos, as though the universe condensed into this expression — both gentle and unyielding.
Around her head glows a crown of stars — not celestial, but internal. These are not distant lights, but points of awakening, sparks of dissident knowledge. They don’t decorate — they testify. They mark the awakening of someone who has passed through the shadows of doubt, silence, and inner fire — and returned with the calm sovereignty of one who cannot be dimmed.
The nebulous, storm-like background contrasts with the sharp clarity of the face. It acts as a mental backdrop — what we see is the calm after the storm. This is not a portrait. This is an icon — not religious, but existential.
A raw, ancestral force — an assertion of presence as a cosmic power. This is not a being looked at. This is a being that looks — and within that gaze, one senses a quiet revolution.
trying out the new video feature
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How did a burly, middle-aged soldier become an enduring, homo-erotic icon? Was he playing Ignatius Loyola? Francis of Assisi? Paul of Tarsus? Not quite. The only saint who really cuts it as a cover-boy is St Sebastian, that curly-haired Roman youth shot with arrows on the orders of the emperor Diocletian. Sebastian's appeal to gay men seems obvious. He was young, male, apparently unmarried and martyred by the establishment. Unlike, say, St Augustine of Hippo, he also looks good in a loincloth and tied to a tree. And never was Sebastian more winsome than in the seven versions of him sculpted inside the choir of Saint-Maurice Church in Orschwiller..
What's going on? Well, Sebastian is living proof of the fact that if saints didn't exist, we would have to invent them. Thanks to the arrows, he's the one martyr in art everyone can spot. (Iconography is so unfair. Who now recognises St Stephen's stones or St Lawrence's griddle?) A twinky torso also helps. Yet, according to his hagiographer, Ambrose of Milan, Sebastian was a red-blooded captain in the Praetorian Guard, a centurion of middling years: he is the patron saint of soldiers and athletes, not hairdressers. Far from riling Diocletian by proselytising for same-sex love, he was killed for converting Romans to Christianity. And we all know where that led.
But there is worse. Not only was St Sebastian middle-aged and butch, he wasn't killed with arrows. Punctured, yes, but not killed. The perforated martyr was rescued from the stake and nursed back to health by St Irene of Rome – a woman, boys – before unwisely haranguing Diocletian for his paganism as he passed by on a litter. Unmoved by his tenacity, the emperor had Sebastian clubbed to death; his body was then dumped in Rome's sewers. Had history been less kind, he might have ended up as patron saint of poo.
How this would have affected his career as a gay coverboy we will never know. I can only recall one representation in art of St Sebastian thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, and that – by Reni's contemporary and fellow Bolognese, Lodovico Carracci – is safely tucked away in The Getty Center in Los Angeles. By contrast, there are more pictures of the arrow-filled Sebastian than there are of any other martyr I can think of, painted by everyone from Aleotti to Zick by way of Rubens, Botticelli, Titian and John Singer Sargent. The National Gallery alone has a dozen, including ones by Crivelli, Gerrit Honthorst and Luca Signorelli. And they're all of the same Sebastian, the one who ends up, eventually, on the cover of reFRESH: a paragon of male beauty, his toned body, prettily stuck with arrows, exposed to our gaze; the martyr described by Oscar Wilde – who, in French exile, took the alias "Sebastian Melmoth" – as "a lovely brown boy with crisp, clustering hair and red lips".
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/arr...
Arrows of desire: How did St Sebastian become an enduring, homo-erotic icon? It’s a way? But other wise you could have a nice understanding about arrows:
The five arrows are the five pillars to design the light inside your body and the pathways to immortal soul. Passed times, actually, future are realistic two other are united in the astral and are properties of auspicious answering from ancestors and reborn of consciousness.
The Promise Revealed .The arrow association with timeline is long and varied and much must wait for a more in depth recounting, but for now let us say he opened many doors for me and was a light on the inner and outer path towards knowledge and truth, love and the secrets of the universe.
My entire life has been filled with a calling and a longing. These longings and search for love and truth have been a blessing and a curse.I have always wanted to know who am I? Where did we come from?What is our purpose here? Why is there so much suffering and discord and anxiety on our planet? Why is the world so distorted and fractured,and so caught up in wars pollution ignorance superstition and fear?
Even as a small child I could see the answers to many of the worlds problems that were simple and easy fixes – if mankind would but realize the folly of his ways! It seems every question that was answered opened up 10 more. It seems I was never satisfied.
In my youth, I could really not understand why this planet was such a bloody mess. Once when I was pondering such questions as an 8-year-old, I asked my mother, Mom what is out there in outer space? Where does it go? When does it end? She replied: It never ends.
I nervously laughed, as if to deny the responsibility of accepting an infinite ever-expanding consciousness, and replied: It has to end somewhere. She laughed and saidWhere then? At a wall?
What is on other side?”
This really got me thinking, and I shook my head as I walked down the stairs to my own room, which was in the basement.
I got into bed and laid back. I fell into a melancholy reverie of infinite space. Into this otherwise dark room,I watched with interest as a small star maneuvered into the center of myone window. This Light, which I obviously now know to be my space family, had noticed my interest in deeper truths and proceeded to talk to me!
I had a short or long, I cannot remember to be honest, informational exchange on some deep and not so deep subjects. When I finally got to the question?
Well what is going to happen to planet earth? It surely cannot go on like this or we will most definitely destroy ourselves with they way things are going now, I was given an unexpected answer.
I was shown how eventually everything would come to a head and then at some point every one, or maybe not everyone, would be lifted off the planet and find themselves in giant space ships. Then they would be taken to other beautiful new and pristine planets to try and make a fresh start. For some reason, I felt I might be left behind.
Now how accurate my remembrances are, or exactly what this means, is open for debate. I only know that later in life while coming to grips with the fact that we are not alone in the universe and that I was being contacted by intelligent life from beyond our solar system, I remembered this telepathic exchange, and as far as I can recollect, this was my first contact.
My life was pretty normal for the most part and my deep hunger for truth and search for expanded awareness led me to Carlos Castanedas teachings and writings from Don Juan. These series of books were for me the key to growth and realizing myself as an infinite being of light.
I was enthralled and could not get enough of these books. I was more interested in the actual knowledge and the seemingly magical understandings of how we perceive and what really makes our reality as opposed to the Power plants that Don Juan gave to Carlos to help him to stop the world and to perceive a separate reality. The concepts Don Juan was expounding on were the basis of quantum Physics.
I was instinctively drawn to these understandings and somehow knew we make our own reality by our beliefs and where we place our attention. I was practicing the various secrets of gaining personal power and had some profound beyond belief type of happenings. Growing up in Laguna Beach where Timothy Leary lived, it wasnt long before I was having my own experiences with Power Plants, mushrooms and eventually LSD.
LAGUNA BEACH 100 Yards FROM MY CHILDHOOD OCEAN FRONT HOME
WHAT MY OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES FELT LIKE TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH SEMJASES SHIP
The details of these awakenings will be shared later, but for now suffice to say that I Saw my death, my will and realized myself as a Luminous being.
I realized that we are in essence, a luminous, nameless cluster of feelings that is held together by the binding force of life. I flew on the wings of my perception and learned how to shrink my tonal and even was visited by The Moth of Knowledge.
For some, these descriptions are metaphors, but for me these are real and accurate descriptions of the steps to becoming a man of knowledge and the path with heart. Seeing my auric egg was part and parcel of my spiritual awakening and my expanded perceptions of reality helped me to understand who we are and how we interact with the immensity of the infinite reality.
It was around this time at age 16 or so I was very interested in Psychic phenomenon and the developing of Siddhis or the powers of the mind. I developed a sort of obsession with pyramids in high school and was talking to a girl at school who upon hearing of my interest, proclaimed, I know the PYRAMID MAN.
 Pyramid Power in action!
13 - fred healing machine
Fred’s Front page of The National Examiner Article
He is holding his scale model of the X-1 healing machine and the design of a time machine / spaceship utilizing the interstellar conversion process
The pyramid man, really? I had to meet him and my first meeting was days later when I knocked on the door of Fred Bell. He was literally carrying in his very first run of 50 gold pyramids, which we would later share with the entire world.
I spent many hours and days and years of my life in close association with Fred Bell, who was my friend, teacher and benefactor and spiritual guide. We developed many healing technologies utilizing pyramids, crystals and lasers. The history of our association is long and varied and much must wait for a more in depth recounting, but for now let me say he opened many doors for me and was a light on the inner and outer path towards knowledge and truth, love and the secrets of the universe.
Our esoteric experiences and metaphysical alchemical journeys culminated in not only out-of-body experiences, which reached not only into the heart of the galaxy, but even unto the heart of creation itself.
These ineffable experiences transcend all logic and defy the intellect and spill out onto the floor of belief where only visionary mystics, impeccable warriors, saints and angels dare to tread. I must most likely be a visionary or a mystic because god knows I am no angel or saint. My flirtations with impeccability, if I dare to describe them as such, have been limited to very brief short bursts of accumulated personal power, which have enabled brief flights on the wings of my perception. I have touched infinity and knelt before the infinite light and worshiped the glory of God.
I am but a small speck of nothingness in the vastness of forever and God has made me whole and showed me the glory and the beauty of creation. I know from whence I came and I long to return to this divine source. I am ever on the path home gathering light and life immersed in the folly of men, ever seeking the truth far above and within my own self. This love and experience is so all powerful and consuming that my entire life is devoted to serving this ever living presence of love, life and light.
This eternal presence of perfection and ever expanding love, this primal relationship, this way of the eternal is right here before us and within us every step of the way. It is our souls right to follow the path of love home. On and on we must go with our inner and outer, our most innate self and awareness and consciousness as it is striving incessantly to realize this truth – this I AM .
Though many are blind to this reality for many reasons, the infinite light, the infinite love of creation waits within and without you hiding in plain sight throughout all of creation. There is no force, no power, no amount of hate, no tidal wave of fear, and no mountain of ignorance that can ever hold back this infinite being within you from realizing your self.
This is one aspect of the The Promise that I can Reveal as I try to share with you, to encourage you to make your way home. I can make a promise to you now. I know, I swear to you that one day, if you have not already realized it, that you too will share in this communion of love and the return of the spirit of truth in the very heart of your soul and you will one day share this through your life well lived, to every being throughout creation itself. We will stop all of the hate and all of the killing will stop. We will end the suffering and ignorance on this beautiful blue jewel floating in the immensity of God’s infinite light. We do have the power within us to bring Peace to this world.
The second part of The Promise is coming true before my eyes and is my lifelong calling. Today my hours of study, my intense searching for truth, my deep reflections and endless meditations are now allowing me to be of service to our beautiful planet. I have prepared and after many hard fought battles with my lower personality vehicle and accumulated scars, I now try to fly on scarred wings. Under Fred Bell’s watchful eye, after many years of leaving my body and going through various initiations of light body awareness, I was rewarded with several live contacts with my space family.
The first live contact was the culmination of a magical time with a member of the earths Resistance Movement. This was a military Special Forces brother who refused to work for the dark side and was rewarded with help from our space family. His name was Jim and I owe him a great debt of gratitude. He was sent to act as my teacher at Gabriel Greens house. The Ascended Master Hilarion, who is the Cohan of the 5th Ray of Concrete Science and Knowledge, sent Jim, who I consider my brother and teacher of light, to me.
He was instructed to teach me many things. In the course of my association, I was gifted with my first real open visit from Semjase. I was with Jim, Gabriel Green and Michael El Legion. I had a very emotional telepathic contact, which ended in me never having to see another space ship to know that they are real and there are very physical beings who ride in space ships made of matter and living light.
My second encounter with Semjase that I am allowed to remember is when I was with Fred in the living room of his house atop the Vortex in Laguna Beach. I was lying on the floor and the next moment I was standing inside a space ship. Many wonderful things and many amazing revelations were shared with me. And in the morning, I was returned to adifferent location in his living room with Fred by my side. You are the master now, he exclaimed. I could only watch in frustration as right before my eyes most of my experiences were erased from my mind. I had all the memories before me and I watched helpless to stop the eraser that slowly step-by-step removed almost all of my experience. I managed to keep one major memory and this is what I have held onto for all of my life. All that remains of the most amazing day of my entire life is my remembrance of The Promise.
THE MINI ALL SPARK IN ACTION
I made a promise to Semjase before I left the ship on the teleportation beam and I am fulfilling part of that promise by sharing with you here on this site my most intimate and personal struggles and victories of the light in my life and as I have witnessed them on the surface of the planet and in my personal life.
I promised to her that one day I would create a show, a party of love to honor the Galactic Federation of Light. This event would share the wonderful healing technologies of light color and sound that were part of my own individual awakening process. I promised to her that I would do my best to help people overcome the darkness on this planet by unifying them into a purpose and a mission to heal themselves and the planet herself. I would teach others that by invoking love and light into their beings they could realize that by entering into the silence they too can realize the living presence of God within themselves.
This picture below is of one of our Major Portal Vortexes we created in Fred’s living room! We utilized the laser light crystal sound color technology in conjunction with Pyramids. We amplified and accelerated these fields with the violet flame-tesla coils to achieve our own artificial time warp zones! These vortexes were actually accelerated Scalar field ;Event horizons that we used in the alchemical transfiguration of ourselves in activations designed to heal the timelines ourselves and the planet herself through interaction with the grid lines or vortex portals, which were accessed through the mineral kingdom and the vortexes of our own Christ Consciousness or I AM Presence.
Some of The Main Components of A Promise Pyramid System
I also promised that I would gather people in a large group or groups in a concerted effort to send this light into the heart of the mother herself. I was shown how this could change the world. I do not know if this is in an instant or if this is even a possibility. I do know that I have faith that this is true. I have prayed with all my heart and being and have thought of nothing else and never wanted anything more than to serve the light by fulfilling this promise and for me this is what I must do. I bare my soul to you, the world, and reveal this Promise.
The Promise being fulfilled at the funerary Temple in Egypt
From the source of all that is good, beautiful and true, I pray that I am successful and that my effort will bear fruit and hasten the day of the return of love and light to the world of men and upon our world. I know whether I am successful or not, that love is already here inside my heart and yours, and one day very soon this love will spread like a fire and envelope the entire world and be evident in the very nature of our reality, and we will once again be home. Living in harmony with nature and each other is not so hard to do.It is for this dream, this promise I am here to serve.
May the kingdom come quickly
Rob Potter
Recicle
Breath
Respect!
Seen on my walk today :)
This is one of the shot I wanted to do in a long time. Glad you like it :)
What will you experience, after your human vessel passes away (die). The human vessel is destroyed by a happening or by aging and the body can’t fulfill the tasks at hand to sustain life and the body and brain passes away. The Soul, your consciousness of your awareness will pass over. Suppose a person has a car accident and the body and brain died. On that moment the Soul will stop projecting consciousness more or less in your body. And the Soul will observe your physical body and what is happening to your physical expression of energy. As awareness you will float next to your body or look at it from above. On this moment of passing over, you cannot reason and you do not remember who you are. This makes dying or passing over as we call it, a very tranquil process. You just observe everything that is happening to your physical body. Because also how you died, is an experience and as Souls we want to gather all information we can and we do. Our observer is not in our brain and not in our body, the observer is always our direct conscious part of our Soul as awareness. On the moment of passing over, you just observe. Than suddenly you will be pulled to another location, a location of a funeral, cremation or even a ceremony, by the thoughts of the loved ones who are still on earth. Again you will observe everything that is happening on the funeral, cremation or ceremony, you can hear thoughts, see people who are saying goodbyes to you of your previous life. Again to gather all information about this life, we observe automatically, what happens to us. How long it will take for a passed over Soul to use the conscious awareness of the Soul again, is different for all Souls. With one it goes quicker than another Soul. Depending, when you are ready for it or not. Normally we observer in a human life, direct with our conscious part of our Soul without our senses, this happens on a high energetic frequency. That is the reason why we can observe in life, as well as after we passed over. Our human life happens in the apparently material dimension, everything looks real, still it is an expression of energy we are dreaming. Because of the cause and consequence in repetitive cycles we experience life as a constant, that means we see life as a reality, however it is still an important dream. That gives us the opportunity to experience a seemingly material life. When we pass over we will come into the In-between dimension (This is the dimension between earth and Heaven. Heaven is the immaterial pure positive dimension. The Soul is always present in this in-between dimension and can’t be part of the apparently material dimension. That is why the Soul projects consciousness into the human vessel. To become a part in this dream and a play its part. Our senses are like a filter over our awareness, and works on a low energetic frequency, this means, that we can’t use this in the In-between dimension. Because our senses just like the apparently material dimension happens all on a lower energetic frequency. To make things simple for our Soul and we can see, hear, taste, smell and feel and that creates the so called reality.When the Soul focus of attention is in the in-between dimension as we passed over, we first only observe as told above. After this we start to reason and to remember with our conscious part of our Soul on a high energetic frequency, this takes a while. That is the reason that after you passed over there is no panic. Again real passing over is very tranquil. You feel an incredible love surrounding you, this is happening. Because you feel the connection you have with Oneness (=God), all energetic awarenesses have an individuality AND on the same time they are all connected to each other. So in the in-between dimension, you feel this incredible love around you and you feel very comfortable. This is also depending on how large your ego perspective has grown in life. You start to learn how to remember your previous life (last life), with your conscious part of your Soul. You start to reason again, and slowly you become the same perspective and personality, you were as you lived your human life. You are literally the same person as you were in life, only you don’t have a physical body anymore, but an esoteric body. A body of energetic light, because everything is created from energy. You will notice that when you think about a loved one on earth, you will be there too. And you can observe this loved one doing his or her things on earth. Or when a loved one speaks to you in thoughts, you will hear them and be there to communicate. Only the loved ones on earth, rarely understand, sense or hear you. When someone on earth a loved one thinks of you, you think of this person and visa versa. That is how we as Souls are connected. You can even split your consciousness again, and talk with more people on the same time. As Soul we can do so much more. When you think about a place you visited in the past when you were alive, you can visit it again, to see it again and float around in the streets, beach or what ever you like to visit again. When a loved one is thinking about you with thoughts, you can hear the thoughts too. Because we don’t have the flat simple senses, we had on earth. After a while you will feel an urge to move on and to go back home, to Heaven. Because the love is drawing you home. This happens also depending on how large your ego perspective has developed. Can you let go of the loved ones, can you let go of your possessions on earth, can you let go of the ego perspective you have taught yourself and was taught by others Also the loved ones on earth have to let you as passed over Soul go too. When they hold tide to your being, your Soul will stay longer connected to earth because of the loved ones. Many people experience the passed over loved one, talking to them, to let them go. Which is really necessary. Some people have a big trouble of letting go the passed over loved one, and pull them constantly back to earth. This can take a while, because the loved one has to accept that you have passed over and moves on in her or his life. Better is for a loved one to accept right away that you passed over, and focus again on positivity in their lives.
When you let go of the loved ones on earth, the possessions and earth, you are ready to move on on your journey to Heaven. When your loved ones let you go, you will go into a next phase of passing over. This phase is called the path to enlightenment. When people really get enlightened in life and die, they will immediately merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension. To be enlightened means that you bring your conscious part of your Soul, what is your awareness and equals all your thoughts, memories and formulation of thoughts unto a pure positive angelic level. We humans are ALL reincarnated angels. Believe it or don’t, still it is true. That is the reason why we have to bring our thoughts back on the angelic level of formulating all the time pure positive thoughts. Thoughts are energy patterns moving in space. When you formulate positive thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a high frequency. When you formulate negative thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a low frequency. In a human life most people create more negative thoughts than positive thoughts, this will cause a split Soul. Between your awareness and your Higher Self. Your awareness is vibrating energetic on a much lower frequency than your Higher Self. The Higher Self is your angelic pure positive awareness. The voice of the Higher Self can be heard by your intuition and conscience. That is how you can know, why we are angelic beings from origin. Before you were born, your Soul split into a conscious and a subconscious part. The conscious part is your awareness, your formulation of thoughts, memories and everything we learn into our memory. Not in our brain, because the brain is an expression of energy, to give form to our thoughts. At birth, the awareness is cleared from memory of previous lives, and in total cleared from your Souls life. So you can start living this experience fresh and clean. In some cases young children can remember past lives, because they have still a good connection with the Higher Self. Some can tell you some interesting details of real past lives. That is another story for another time. Which you can find in previous answers about past lives.
What is balance in yourself, balance in yourself, is to bring the thoughts of your awareness on the same level as the Higher Self awareness is thinking. A difference in thoughts, will cause negative emotions and bad feelings. As a signal to tell you, that you are not on the positive path in life. Transform your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. What equals the same thoughts as your Higher Self and you will create positive emotions and you feel good, balanced and positive again. You are then on the right positive path in life. It is a guidance to help the Soul to find its way in a human life. We only lost touch with this guidance system of the Higher Self. This balance in thoughts of your awareness and the higher Self is also called enlightenment. To create One Soul again. When your awareness formulates positive thoughts the same as your Higher Self does, than your awareness vibrates energetically on the same high frequency. Just like Jesus has told us too. When you are born you are One (One Soul), when you grow up you become TWO (Soul and Ego), when you die, what will you do, when you are TWO? We explain this later. We need long explanations, because it is necessary to understand what happens when you passed over. You see that we have never been told the truth, that is why we have such a lack of information about this event. The enlightened persons after death, will pass over and merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven. They are home. This is the quickest way to go back home to Heaven. The normal persons in life who has formulated positive thoughts in life which is called thoughts and actions upon by the perspective of the Soul. And they have on the same time formulated negative thoughts in life, what is called thoughts and actions by the egoistic and greedy ego perspective. The ego perspective is always the creator of negative thoughts. Most people have this split Soul and can’t merge with the Higher Self and can’t enter Heaven. Negative thoughts creates negative emotions and feels bad or sad. Positive thoughts creates positive emotions and feels great. How you feel is always a result of the thoughts you have been formulating consciously or subconsciously. A positive thought is good for you AND on the same time it is good for all people on the world AND good for Nature. This is the only way to create balance in yourself, balance between all people and balance with Nature. The people who have a split Soul, they will go into a next phase after they passed over, in the In- between dimension and let go of their loved ones and earth. They will have to become enlightened as an angel, other wise you can’t enter Heaven. Believe me, this is the best place to be. These people, most of you, will experience that our fears, worries, and other negative emotions which are based on negative thoughts and indirect actions in life will repeat again in new dreams. Again to give you a choice. To choose a positive thought or a negative thought. When you choose a negative thought. The dream will repeat itself, perhaps slightly in a different way. You will see all the wrong doings and consequences in your life. Until you choose the positive thoughts and reach enlightenment. That means that you choose pure positive thoughts that equals your higher Self. When you do, you cause your Soul to become ONE< that means that your awareness and Higher Self vibrates on the same energetic high frequency. The Higher Self is than able to merge with your awareness and now you will go into Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension that vibrates on a high frequency. Than you are able to remember all previous lives including the total life of your Soul. Enlightenment is the key to enter Heaven. As I explained also in the Gospel to Heaven, the real path to Heaven in my first pinned answer in my profile on Quora.
Children are helped by spirit guides to go through this process. No one is alone. All humans have at least two spiritual guides. Only most of you don’t know this, because you are all busy to enjoy yourself, to get what you want. Instead of evolving as a human being into enlightenment. Spiritual development means therefor the development of negative thoughts into positive thoughts in your perspective. That is how you can evolve in life. Than you have people who embrace the occult, satanism and made very egoistic decisions in life, by killing, deceiving, destroying, etc. These people have a very large ego perspective, and they will need many centuries to restore their Soul as One. They will often choose again and again negative thoughts. They will experience a kind of Hell, because they created this experience, by their expectation. Everything that you desire, wish to experience, consciously AND subconsciously will immediately manifest in the in-between dimension. So thoughts have consequences. In this last group of passed over Souls you have also Souls of a human life or other lives from other planets, that chooses to stay negative, egoistic and destructive. They desire to keep their influence in life on certain people, who connects with them through blood rituals, sacrificing and others. We call these the Fallen angels. The angels who desire not to return to Heaven. They don’t want to do the effort to become enlightened. They are the creators of negativity in life, which are performed by humans in our society to make our civilization more and more negative, evil and bad. These are the people who desire power, possessions and oppression, by force and negative actions. They want to pull other Souls into the same fallen angel situations, as they are or will be. In the end every one will come back to Heaven. That is our natural state of being of everyone. That is why it is said: God forgives everyone. When you choose to go to Heaven, do the effort of becoming enlightened and embrace pure positive thoughts, you will return to Heaven. This is all the real judgment of our lives. No one will escape their thoughts and actions on earth. Like Jesus said; the first in life (people with a large ego perspective) will be the last in Heaven. Which is true and confirms these statements again and again. God forgives everyone, but do you forgive yourself? Than you have what is called repentance, repentance means to become enlightened. To do the effort to develop your thoughts into pure positive thoughts. That is repentance. Something so easy, so misunderstood by many. False prophets? There are many. It is your decision to find out, who is right and who is wrong. How more enlightened you will be, how more awakened you will become, how more you will see the truths in life. Religious scriptures, books, movies and even main stream media all are rewritten for power and control. Many untruths are told and spread, to keep you trapped into a repetitive cycle, without transforming your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Why is this no where mentioned? Because the people with power don’t want to share knowledge and wisdom. Negative people are easy to enslave and positive happy souls are not. Last point. A hell does not exist as the opposite of Heaven. This is very logical. A human being, a Soul and even a fallen angel as Soul all are constructed from a harmonious energetic intelligence and being. This can only happen in a harmonious and balanced positive dimension. It is only the thoughts with free will, that makes the difference, the thoughts we choose to embrace. Positive or negative thoughts. Still the body and construction of the Souls or a human vessel is all angelic perfection. The same is with humans, we are part of our own angel being projected as consciousness in a human vessel. All humans are equal, only the thoughts they choose with free will are different. Do you see what I mean? We choose positive thoughts or negative thoughts. This decision, decides who we will become in our awareness, a good or a bad person or somewhere in between. Still humans are part of the developed intelligence angelic pure positive dimension, other wise we cannot even exist. Therefore hell does not exist. The opposite of Heaven is real CHAOS and no intelligence or being can exist here. Some of us will experience a hell as they have embraced evil thoughts in life, they will manifest this, in the in between dimension like a dream. You will reap, what you sow.
Most people forgot that at every situation in life you have a choice, to formulate positive or negative thoughts. A human life was created for our Souls. This means that a human life is in fact the school for the Soul. To experience a material life with fun and enjoyment, to learn from the experiences, to create new experiences and to evolve in the end. We lost our guidance and control of our thoughts. When you don’t master your thoughts, you don’t master your feelings. Most of us want to embrace, hide, avoid and even justify negativity in life, instead of transforming negativity into positivity. This is the biggest problem in life, what has created our unbalanced world.
Read my words and study them, which I have described in my answers and you see that everything interlinks and is connected on this way. Still it is your choice if you want to do something with it or not.
Doors always separate spaces. And not only physical ones, but also conscious spaces, ... to which usually doors offer us a brief introduction.
Las puertas siempre separan espacios. Pero no sólo los físicos, sino también estados de consciencia, ... a los que normalmente estas puertas nos ofrecen una pequeña introducción.
'Ho il mignolo della mano destra storto, fumo tabacco,odio il vento e aspetto Qualcuno che mi accarezzi la schiena.'
I always wonder... If, say... frogs don't have a soul (admittedly, who knows? :) ... at which point in evolution was the first "hu-man" blessed with one? Or is it all fairy tales for grown ups? Still we know there's a difference, but do we mistake a moderately higher level of consciousness with the ability to talk to God?
Frankly... I have no answers, obviously. I'd like to have some and I guess many of us might be happy with just a few, as well. Can't we have some? Depends on what "answers" mean to us, I'm afraid. I can't rely on faith alone, but it goes both ways and I don't reject any scenario.
ps - Real proud and happy about this :) Vatican chief astronomer just said belief in God and aliens is OK, even the contrary would not be real good :) Got a Jesuitical education... I must say this image is about that. About the questioning, hey, not the education... About tIme to reconcile beliefs and science. Or is it only the escape strategy from the loosing contender? Hhmmm... I'd like not to think so but I've been raised to put questions :)
c’mon... :-)
pps - OK Jay so I dedicate this image to Jose Gabriel Funes and to
YOU because you triggered the same thoughts in your own ways :) And you're both Zpanish zpeaking people. Don't call him Joze, though, if my old Vatican connections are still right... Don't... To some who might wonder... Don't we need to smile? Hehe, a pity Aristotle didn't sign with Disney, then...
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"Our life is the creation of our Mind"
www.redbubble.com/people/icalink/shop
Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed To Flesh: Diaries 1963 - 1981
model: Anna @ Ambition Models
(Unknown, no exact time on the events of losing consciousness)
Darkness. That's all that he could see. Pitch black darkness. All around was nothing but darkness and loneliness. He couldn't even move in his state. Even if he tried, what was he to do? Wonder the wasteland of darkness for nothing? No. The best thing to do was to just stay and lay where he was like a motionless corpse.
Feeling like it had been forever, he started hearing voices all around him. Some were voices he knew, others that were either familiar, never heard before or either strange.
Woman's Voice 1- 'Kydan...'
Man's Voice 1- 'For the Republic!'
Man's Voice 2- 'You have to tell her someday.'
Man's Voice 3- 'You are weak...pathetic. Just like your Father.'
Woman's Voice 1- 'You can't fight this on your own!'
They were very strange. The voices he kept hearing were odd and confusing. He had never heard these words from any of the voices before, at least, from what he had ever remembered.
A few were even more strange. Something that felt very odd. It felt... actually nice, and comforting. It was as if he had felt this feeling and heard this voice from a while ago.
Woman's Voice 1- 'I will always stay by you.'
Young Girl's Voice- *Giggles*
Man's Voice 4- 'No matter what happens, you will always be a brother to us.'
Woman's Voice 1- 'Kydan!'
Young Girl's Voice- 'Papa?'
Finally finding the strength to stand, he got up and stood on his legs on whatever he stood on in the darkness. He scanned the darkness around, not really knowing what he was looking for. The only thing he could possibly think of was where the voices were coming from.
That's when something really caught his attention.
What seemed like a short distance from where he was, there stood a young little girl, perhaps eight years old from the looks of it, looking away from him with her back turned against him, facing nothing but the darkness. For some strange reason, he felt like he had seen that little girl before. Perhaps he had dreamed of her in his sleep, or possibly met her. But he was very unsure.
He starts to approach her slowly, making sure not to frighten her at all and make her run away from him. As he kept walking up, she stood still with her back still facing him, not moving whatsoever. All he could hear were the sound of the little girl's childish giggles.
Just as he reaches her, perhaps only a few steps away, he heard the little girl's voice again. This time, it was loud but filled with happiness. But it was so loud that it made him cover his ears and shut his eyes closed tight. The last thing he heard was the little girl's repeated words.
Young Girl's Voice- 'Papa...Papa...PAAAPPPAAA!!!'
_________________________
(Jabiim, two days after losing consciousness)
Kydan- *Gasp* "GAH!"
After hearing the little girl's voice shout at him, he had finally waken up from his lost consciousness. He figured that he must have been out for quite sometime, considering the weather change now. Earlier, it was normal showers, but now it was just a heavy downpour, telling him that it had been sometime already, possibly a couple days worth.
He concluded that the Separatist forces must've thought he had died in battle, leaving his corpse to waste in the muddy wastelands around him. But as he thought of the previous event that had happened, he suddenly remembered something important.
Kydan- "...Calena?"
Remembering what had happened, he frantically looks around him, scanning through the field of debris and dead corpses that surrounded him. After minutes looking around, his eyes widen a bit as he sees Calena, laying on the muddy terrain face first in the mud, not even moving a muscle.
Quickly within an instant, he runs towards her to see if she was still alive. He didn't need another friend of his to be gone as well. Not like Obi-Wan, not like his squad...not like Rilicia.
Getting on the ground, he pulls her out of the mud and tries to wipe off the mud off her face. Somewhat cleaning her face off, he though that she actually looked peaceful and cute, considering all the arguements they go through everytime they were both aroudn each other. He checked her pulse and hoped that she was still alive.
To his relief, he felt a small pulse coming from her. She was alive, that was a fact. But now the next part was tricky; where do they go now?
At that moment, he heard an explosion coming from where the enemy had ambushed them a few days ago. Frantically looking around, he chose to head back towards where Outpost Nine was, considering if it was still under their control or it had been completely annihilated.
Picking her up and leaning her on his back, he runs as fast as he could towards the old Republic outpost for shelter, but only if it wasn't destroyed. He was hoping that Breona and Patterns survived the attack earlier, along with the 117th.
Like he said, from the past to this day, he wasn't ready for anymore goodbyes. This war was already too much for him to bareas it was.
_________________________
(Jabiim, two hours after regaining conscious, Outpost Nine)
The rain still poured down on the planet of Jabiim. It seemed like it gotten worse, considering all the walking it took to get to the outpost. He trenched through the muddy path, his boots fully covered in mud, barely visible each time he took a step. What made him more concern, however, was Calena who was unconscious still on his back. She hadn't made a single movement so far. All he ever got out of her was the simple breathing and the very soft groaning. At least he knew that she was still alive for the most part.
What seemed like forever, he looked up from the muddy terrain that laid before and moved his towards the outpost. However, the sight of what he saw wasn't at all pleasent. Not at the least.
In front of him, with eyes of horror and concern, was the destroyed, junk piled Outpost Nine, barely used about a few days ago. All around were dead clones, covered in mud, ashes and blaster marks along with destroyed battle droids and supers lying almost everywhere he could see. There wasn't a single vehicle in the facinity, so that must've meant that Breona, Patterns and the rest of the 117th troops retreated to the nearest outpost with the vehicles.
He thought that possibly going to the next outpost would possible do them good. But the next outpost was about another day's worth of travelling. And right now, he wasn't in the condition to move much now. He needed to find shelter as fast as possible and tend to their wounds, mostly Calena's.
Looking around to see if any Separatist forces were still in the area by chance, he enters the outpost and sets Calena down on a damaged bed as he scurries around the place for any supplies he could find. Food, medicine, clothing, communication, anything that would be useful to them at this moment.
With pure luck on his side (if he ever had believed in such "luck"), he was able to find some fresh food still inside a container box, along with a damage radio and some medicine. Even though the radio was damaged, he knew that it wouldn't be too hard to fix, considering that he spends his days fixing broken things on his travels and reliefs.
Packing what he needed in a backpack, he throws it over his shoulder until he realized something that he completely forgot. How was he gonna take the bag with them if he couldn't carry Calena? He couldn't carry them both on his back, with all the mud flooding down to his knees.
Pondering for a moment, he took a deep breath and sighed. There was one option he had to take if they were to both survive.
Taking the backpack off, he slides it underneath the broken table for safe keeping and picks up Calena once again as he makes his way back through where they came from.
His idea was; to first find shelter, which was something that he could do at the moment. Luckily, on the way over to the outpost, just two miles from their position, there was an abandoned cave that poked out a bit from the mountain on the right hand corner of the muddy terrain path. From there, he could leave Calena there for a bit while he came back for the supplies, perhaps even some additional stuff if he was fast enough.
_________________________
After an hour and a half of walking, with the weather also getting worse, he finally reached the cave that poked out a bit from the mountain. However, it wasn't what he really expected. It looked rather dark and a feeling of tension rising by the entrance. Almost considering another option, he heard sounds coming from behind. It must be the Separatist forces from earlier.
Knowing that he and Calena were at all in no condition to fight nor able to defend themselves, he relunctantly entered the cave. Getting deeper inside, enough that the enemy wouldn't spot them, he sets Calena down with her body leaned against the wall as he takes covers behind a stubbed rock formation, big enough for him to hide.
Right on cue, just looking over the rock, he could see the droids marching pass them, no doubt heading towards the next outpost or battle that was going on right now. After fifteen minutes past, the droid forces had finally left the area, giving Kydan a heavy sigh of relief. Walking back into the cavem he sees Calena starting to groan and stir a bit, possibly waking up.
Walking towards Calena, he bends down to her and places his hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently trying to wake her up.
Kydan- "Calena? Calena! Come on, wake up!"
Replying back with a groan, she slowly opens her eyes. The first thing she saw was Kydan bent down to her with a hand on her shoulder. Flickering her eyes a bit to rejust her focus, she saw his expression towards her more clearly. What suprised her a bit was that he had a concerned look on his face, telling her that he was, in his life, really worried about her.
More suprising, however, was that he was in front of her, somewhat close to her face while holding her shoulder. With that in mind, the image of him in front of her like this made her blush beat red.
Calena- "K-Kydan?! W-Why are you that close in front of me like that, with your hand on me?!"
Taking a moment to enter in what she had meant, he blushed red and pulled his hand away, turning his head away from her towards the opposite direction.
Kydan- "S-Sorry! I-I was just making sure you were fine was all!"
That part took her off guard. Was he actually that concerned about her? Why would that be? Shaking it off, she tried to change the subject to a serious one.
Calena- "What happened to us? And how did we get here?"
Standing up, he walks over to the rock formation and leans against it.
Kydan- "Well...we got hit by a sudden explosion, knocking the daylight out of us. Do you remember that?"
Calena- "Yeah... painfully."
Kydan- "Well after we went unconcious, I woke up and found you on the ground not moving a muscle. That scared me a bit, so I panicked a bit when I rushed towards you. In relief, you were still breathing. But, it seems that we've been knocked out for about... two days tops."
Calena- "Two days?!"
Kydan- "The explosion must have done quite a number on us, considering how long it took us to wake up. From there, I took us to Outpost Nine, which was all but destroyed. And before you jump to any conclusions, Breona nor Patterns were amongst the dead corpses, so they must have survived with the remaining 117th troops."
Sighing in relief, she smirked a bit. At least the 117th and her officer weren't all dead yet. That helped calm her down some.
Kydan- "But the base wasn't entirely useless. I'm heading back over there to get the supplies I hidden underneath the debris in order that the Separatist don't find our whereabouts."
Calena- "Wait...how come you didn't just bring it back with you? It would have saved you a trip?"
Kydan- "My options were limited. It was either bring you here and leave the supplies for a while...or take the supplies with me and leave you unconscious, lying on a half broken bed, and just come back for ya' later."
Her eyes widen a bit for a moment.
Calena- "Well it's a good thing you didn't. Otherwise, I would have beaten you for leaving me behind."
Kydan- "You really think I'm that kind of a guy?"
Twisting her mouth, she gave him a stern look.
Calena- "That depends on what you mean. If it meant that I was dieing and you having a better chance of living, would you have taken the supplies first?"
Kydan jaw opened up a bit. Did she really just asked him that?
Kydan- "Why in the heck would I do that?! Saving lives are more important than any supplies or any other idiotic excuses or whatever in the galaxy!
She smirks at him with a playful look.
Calena- "Good. Now, let's go grab those suppl--OUCH!"
Before she could finish, as she tried to stand up, her lower half suddenly gave out, causing her to collapse back to the ground. Worried, he reaches to her for support.
Kydan- You alright?!
Calena- *Groans* "Not really...my lower half feels like hell..."
Taking a deep breath, he stands up and pulls out his CC-29 "Magna" Pistol.
Kydan- "Well, you ain't going anywhere in your condition. You stay here and keep watch while I go and bring back some supplies."
Calena- "No your not! Not without me!"
Kydan- "Under yor condition Calena, your in no shape to move at all. And since your the most injured from the both of us...well, I outrank you. So, you will stay here and wait. I'll bring them back and get us the supplies we need."
She didn't like the idea at all. She would rather argue about and just say "screw you, I'm going" excuse. But, relunctantly, he was right. She was in no shape to move or walk for that matter, let alone fight. She would pretty much make it worse for Kydan and herself.
She sighs and pouts on purpose, crossing her arms in the process.
Calena- "Fine. Just...hurry up, will ya'?"
He smirks back with his own playfulness.
Kydan- "No promises, princess."
That comment made her growl a bit. She hated that word.
Calena- "You are so lucky that I can't move, or I would beat you for that."
Chuckling, he places his pistol next to Calena and prepare to walk out.
Kydan- "I believe the appropriate Jedi lesson would be; "there's no such thing as luck"?"
Smirking still, he walks out of the cave and heads towards to Outpost 17, leaving Calena and the fire that he had built while they talked. For some reason, she hated it. All of it. No able to move, not able to fight, not able to talk back to him was all stupid and annoying. She felt useless.
What bugged her the most was that Kydan was actually being nice to her. He has never been nice to her since before Battle of Dantooine, where a certain event took place that she swore she would make him pay for it. And yet, for some strange reason, she actually blushed at him? When did she ever blushed at him? Never! So why now? Why all of a sudden after he told her he was and is still taking care of her?
She was in a lost of confusion and fustration as she sat alone in the cave waiting for him to come back with the supplies, starting to fall back asleep from the days of events that had happened.
_________________________
So let's break this down; no back-up, little on supplies on food and weapons, much exhaustion and Calena has a broken leg. Yeah...not looking good for them both. Wonder how they'll get out of this one? Hmm...who knows...
Well anyways, once again my friends, thank you all for your wonderful and countless support for the series, and please, continue to give us feedback on how the story is going and what we could do to approve on even. We really couldn't have gotten this far without you guys. Perhaps one day in the future, we can do something a little bit more for you guys? But anways, thank you all and , as always, have a fan-tucking-tastic day/night! See ya' in the next one.
- Director K.W.
Youtube: Dream Factory
Photograph by Yusuf Alioglu
Here we see Joni feeling and looking very confident in her bikini, almost regal. All of the self-consciousness and nervousness that she experienced when she first entered the beach has disappeared. She is feeling and enjoying that inner tranquility and calm that a TG woman feels when she is dressed en femme. Indeed the only thing calmer than Joni in this photo is the Atlantic Ocean. Granted, the ocean is at a low tide, but one rarely sees the ocean looking so flat. The waves are minimal.
I like this photo for a lot of reasons including the lighting provided by the late afternoon sun and the patchy clouds in the background sky. The lighting and the clouds somehow combine to enhance the photo well beyond Joni's hands on hips pose. It just works! . . . But it wasn't by design.
One thing that went through my mind when Joni was entering the beach and then stripping down to her bikini earlier in the afternoon was how did genetic women feel on the beach or at a pool when they were wearing a bikini? Do they feel as self-conscious as Joni did? Especially if the woman is older and no longer has the girlish figure of their youth? (Like Joni!) I mean most women's sense of modesty would preclude them from being seen in public wearing nothing but a bra and panty, and I am sure they would feel very self-conscious and embarrassed if they were seen by strangers or friends/neighbors wearing just a bra and panty. Yet, how much different is wearing a two piece bathing suit, or a bikini for that matter, from wearing a bra and panty??? The coverage is just about the same. What is it about a two piece bathing suit that allows a woman to wear it in public on a beach or at a pool, when she would likely never go to the same places wearing only a bra and panty???
Musicians have the ability to share their state of consciousness – or name it vibration – with those who listen. The more the listener is able to open his soul for this powerful energy of sound and rhythm the more he will get in resonance. And when the resonance is strong enough it happens… musician and listener melt into one (and the same trance). They share “god” a Sufi told me. And I agree, one can say so. Dervish dance in a sacred room means they dance for the beloved but finally they dance in love.
When musicians love their music, and when they are able (like shamans) to play themselves in an ecstatic mood (love), and when their energy is strong enough, to bring a listener in resonance, they are extraordinary musicians. In fact they are magicians. They open the gate to the other dimension.
For a few years I did trance dance regularly. Finally I gave lessons and enjoyed it very much!!!
The magic rhythm is the rhythm of my heart.
This picture is dedicated to the music group Fabula and all my shaman friends.
Music worth to listen to:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgvqn1p2hpc&featu re=PlayList&...
HKD
Musiker haben die Fähigkeit, ihre Schwingung – die man auch als einen spezifischen Zustand ihres Bewusstseins bezeichnen könnte – auf die Zuhörer zu übertragen. Je mehr ein Zuhörer in der Lage ist, seine Seele für die machtvolle Energie des Klanges und die besondere Schwingung zu öffnen, umso intensiver geht er in Resonanz. Und wenn die Resonanz richtig stark wird, dann kann es geschehen… Musiker und Zuhörer (oder Mittänzer) verschmelzen zu einem, sie teilen den gleichen Raum, sind in der Einheit. Sie sind in Gott, wie mir ein Sufi erklärte. Und ich stimmte ihm zu. Derwische tanzen in einem heiligen Raum das heißt, sie tanzen für den Geliebten doch schließlich tanzen sie in der Liebe, sie sind eins geworden mit dem Göttlichen.
Wenn Musiker ihre Musik lieben, und wenn sie in der Lage sind (was Schamanen können) sich selbst in einen ekstatischen Zustand zu spielen (Liebe ist ekstatisch), und wenn ihre Energie stark genug ist, den Zuhörer mitzureißen, dann sind sie außergewöhnliche Musiker. Sie öffnen das Tor zu einer neuen Dimension.
Für ein paar Jahre habe ich Trance Dance regelmäßig praktiziert. Schließlich habe ich meine Erfahrungen weitergegeben und es hat riesigen Spaß gemacht!
Der magische Rhythmus ist der Rhythmus meines Herzens.
Dieses Bild gehört noch zu der Serie, die ich der Musik Gruppe Fabula widme.
Hört sie euch an! Die Jungs sind gut!!
HKD
"To find the visionary realm, we use the intuitive inner eye: the eye of contemplation, the eye of the soul."
it is important to remember that billions of people live in this world and that there exists thousands of other cultures, most of which are vastly different than yours. that does not mean they are lesser than you, nor does it mean they are better than you. explore. learn.
Alice in Wonderland contains many animals, more than I have mentioned. Those I have mentioned, however, make clear the fact that Alice honors the animals by endowing them with consciousness equal to that of humans. Her interaction with animals and nature are manifestations of what Lévy-Bruhl calls participation mystique, a quality Alice shares with aboriginal peoples and one which adults with their ego-consciousness have lost. “The third exclusion,” Hannah writes, “is perhaps the worst from the psychological point of view, because it has prevented man from recognizing his own shadow. It consists in the exclusion of the inferior man.” It is Eros, “relationship,” that “the Church condemned as sinful” (ibid. 151). The sadistic cruelty shown, for example, in the poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” in which the title characters befriend, then eat, the Oysters, reveals the shadow archetype which Western civilization needs to accommodate. The Freudian interpretations of Alice, in so far as they are valid, compensate for the Church’s denial of sexuality and the relatedness (the “Eros”) it needs. I agree with Bloomingdale that it is Alice’s “capacity for compassion that distinguishes Alice the Queen. . . . Love is the golden crown that makes Alice the true Queen of Hearts” (390). The last exclusion or “repression” Hannah cites is of “creative fantasy . . . [which] if . . . given full freedom . . . will probably lead the individual to find a divine spark in himself.” Although the Church, Hannah notes, has “apparently little influence nowadays,” it certainly had more influence in the last century (and Church here means Christianity in general, not Christ himself or any one denomination). Its negative influence today can be observed in the efforts by some to write discrimination against the marriage rights of gays and lesbians into the Constitution. Writing for children, Carroll was able to abandon his own prudery and give free reign to what was actually a new genre he and Edward Lear were creating simultaneously. Hannah reports that Jung, referring to his own Symbols of Transformation, described two kinds of thinking: “intellectual or directed thinking and fantastic thinking” (100). These are exactly the kinds of thinking that went into the writing of Alice in Wonderland. The happy balance of the two make it a classic which continues to appeal to collective needs in Western culture. Hannah further notes the fact that Jung liked to quote Schopenhauer, who said: “A sense of humor is the only divine quality of man” (40), and in that sense Alice in Wonderland is truly divine.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.Like most works of entertainment- there is a message to be found beneath the surface. Themes of occult initiation, altered states, Nihilism, and even MKULTRA child abuse can be found if you look hard enough at Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Of all Victorian children’s stories that are enjoyed equally by children and adults, none is more popular than Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872).1 More than any other piece of literature written for children during the Victorian period, Alice in Wonderland (as the tales together are generally called) has spawned a seemingly never-ending academic industry; and, although Carroll also wrote other children’s books (The Hunting of the Snark (1876) and the Sylvie and Bruno books (1889 and 1893) are the most notable), the interest in the Alice books far outweighs the interest in the other books. Alice in Wonderland has been analyzed from virtually all critical points of view.2 The Freudian approach has been applied many times, starting at least as early as 1933 with a piece by A. M. E. Goldschmidt (see Phillips, Aspects of Alice 279-82). Carroll himself receives the Freudian treatment in Phyllis Greenacre’s Swift and Carroll: A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives (1955). The Jungian approach, too, has been tried on Alice in an article called “Alice as Anima : The Image of Woman in Carroll’s Classic,” published in Aspects of Alice . Although much that Judith Bloomingdale says is on the mark, she is not convincing in making Alice the anima. Alice may be, for Carroll, an incipient image of the anima, but she is far more, as Bloomingdale herself demonstrates and as I hope my own analysis will show.3 One Freudian critic goes so far as to declare: “It is impossible to gain conscious understanding of the life of Lewis Carroll or of the meaning of his written fantasy unless a psychoanalytic approach is used” (Skinner 293). Although much nonsense has been written using the psychoanalytic approach, the approach itself is valid. At the same time, it leaves many psychological issues unexplored. In “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,” Jung writes: “If anything of importance is devalued in our conscious life, and perishes--so runs the law--there arises a compensation in the unconscious” (86). Jungian criticism attempts to account for the collective appeal of a classic like Alice in Wonderland. It asks, For what that is lacking in the contemporary collective psyche does the work compensate? An account for such appeal or compensation cannot be entirely provided by an examination of the author’s life, however provocative and interesting that life is--and Carroll’s life is certainly an interesting case study. First generation Jungians like Marie-Louise von Franz (in Puer Aeternus ) and Barbara Hannah (in Striving Towards Wholeness ) do examine in tandem the lives and works of literary artists, but Jung himself warned against the “reduction of art to personal factors.” Such a reduction “deflects our attention from the psychology of the work of art and focuses it on the psychology of the artist . . . the work of art exists in its own right and cannot be got rid of by changing it into a personal complex” (“Psychology and Literature” 93). In other words, the work of art is independent of and greater than its creator. It may tell us much about the artist, but ultimately, if it is to endure, its appeal must be collective--“visionary,” to use Jung’s term (ibid. 89). Having said this, I must add that a brief examination of Carroll’s life can provide clues as to how he was uniquely suited to produce his classic. Like Edward Lear, Carroll in some respects fits the profile of the puer aeternus as outlined by von Franz in Puer Aeternus. He seems to have had a mother complex; further, as one Carroll scholar states, he had a “reluctance to commit himself, to become in any way tied down” (Gattégno 215), and this is another puer trait. As a puer aeternus, Carroll had “a certain kind of spirituality which comes from a relatively close contact with the collective unconscious” (von Franz 4); Carroll was ordained a deacon, albeit he never became a priest.
Stephen Prickett points out some surface similarities between Lear and Carroll: Both were shy and sensitive bachelors; both were afraid of dogs both were of an ‘analytic state of mind’--Carroll indexed his entire correspondence, which, by his death had 98,000 cross-references. Both were marginal kinds of men, if in very different senses. (130) Like many of the authors whose work I have examined, both Lear and Carroll are social outsiders. Although both shared some of the same friends (among them some of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Tennysons), no one has found any record of either man referring to the other, though both pioneered the nonsense genre.4 Both were visual artists. Carroll’s photography and drawing were avocations, whereas Lear’s paintings provided his livelihood and he illustrated his own books, as Carroll did not. Unlike Lear and the typical puer, Carroll hardly ever traveled abroad (he made one trip to the Continent in his lifetime). And he was different from the typical puer as described by von Franz in that he was neither a homosexual, so far as we know, nor a Don Juan. Lear was a homosexual. Carroll, on the other hand, was a heterosexual pedophile who “collected” little girls like so many dolls and who lost his stammer in their presence. A famous photographer, Carroll abruptly gave up photography in 1880 after having practiced the art for some twenty-four years. He gave no explanation, but one reason may have been gossip about and resistance to his photographing pre-pubescent girls in the nude. After 1880 he continued drawing them in the nude (Clark 208). His nephew and first biographer, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, records that Carroll “always took about with him a stock of puzzles when he travelled, to amuse any little [female] companions [he detested little boys] whom chance might send him” (407). To pretend that Carroll’s predilections were not in part sexual is extremely naïve (see Gattégno 82 and Greenacre 245-46). Carroll’s sexual orientation provided a powerful motive for his creative work. His remaining child-like as an adult also gave him entrée into the psyche of the child. Moreover, he had, like Lear, a nature somewhat akin to the Native American berdache. In his inventions of puzzles, riddles, and games, in his visual art, in his appeal to children, and indeed in his name-giving function (both for himself and for such characters as Jabberwocky and the Bandersnatch), Carroll fulfilled the role of the berdache. The adult Carroll disapproved of “transvestite parts [in the theater], though only when it involved a man’s being dressed as a woman” (Gattégno 226), but at about the age of seventeen or eighteen he drew a curious picture as the frontispiece to a family magazine called The Rectory. The Rectory Umbrella shows a bearded man with an almost Cheshire-cat grin lying down on one elbow. He is dressed, as Greenacre points out, as “a little girl, the skirt suggesting the appearance of a closed umbrella” (131). He’s holding an umbrella on which are the words “Tales, Poetry, Fun, Riddles, Jokes.” Overhead, six little sexless imps are trying to rain down chunks of “Woe, Spite, Ennui, Gloom, Crossness, and Alloverishness.” Rushing through the air and to the safety under the umbrella are seven female fairies bringing “Liveliness, Knowledge, Good Humour, Taste, Cheerfulness, Content, and Mirth” (Greenacre 130-31). The cross-dressed man’s resemblance to the berdache in this drawing is striking, all the more so because it is no doubt unconscious.
Chapter One – Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice, a girl of seven years, is feeling bored and drowsy while sitting on the riverbank with her elder sister. She then notices a talking, clothed White Rabbit with a pocket watch run past. She follows it down a rabbit hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She finds a small key to a door too small for her to fit through, but through it she sees an attractive garden. She then discovers a bottle on a table labelled "DRINK ME," the contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key which she has left on the table. She eats a cake with "EAT ME" written on it in currants as the chapter closes. "Down the Rabbit-Hole", in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps "going out altogether, like a candle"; this pondering reflects the concept of a limitThe White Rabbit is one of the most iconic characters and is affiliated with Alice in Wonderland, in each depiction. Hopping speedily away, he is first introduced to Alice before she falls down the hole into Wonderland. Carrying his clock, pointing hastily with worry in his eyes, the white rabbit draws Alice in because he believes she is the one to defeat the Red Queen.
A lot of people suffer with anxiety, so this “diagnosis” could be considered easy to detect. GAD can cause twitching, restlessness, insomnia, and agitation to name just few of the many symptoms, all of which the white rabbit exude. Nervous that he has brought the wrong Alice to Wonderland and that the Red Queen will prevail, the white rabbit is especially anxious.
Chapter Two – The Pool of Tears: Chapter Two opens with Alice growing to such a tremendous size her head hits the ceiling. Alice is unhappy and, as she cries, her tears flood the hallway. After shrinking down again due to a fan she had picked up, Alice swims through her own tears and meets a Mouse, who is swimming as well. She tries to make small talk with him in elementary French (thinking he may be a French mouse) but her opening gambit "Où est ma chatte?" ("Where is my cat?") offends the mouse and he tries to escape her "The Pool of Tears", Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results: "Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" This explores the representation of numbers using different bases and positional numeral systems: 4 × 5 = 12 in base 18 notation, 4 × 6 = 13 in base 21 notation, and 4 × 7 could be 14 in base 24 notation. Continuing this sequence, going up three bases each time, the result will continue to be less than 20 in the corresponding base notation. (After 4 × 12 = 19 in Base 39, the product would be 4 × 13 = 1A in Base 42, then 1B, 1C, 1D, and so on.)
Chapter Three – The Caucus Race and a Long Tale: The sea of tears becomes crowded with other animals and birds that have been swept away by the rising waters. Alice and the other animals convene on the bank and the question among them is how to get dry again. The Mouse gives them a very
dry lecture on William the Conqueror. A Dodo decides that the best thing to dry them off would be a Caucus-Race, which consists of everyone running in a circle with no clear winner. Alice eventually frightens all the animals away, unwittingly, by talking about her (moderately ferocious) cat.
Chapter Four – The Rabbit Sends a Little Bill: The White Rabbit appears again in search of the Duchess's gloves and fan. Mistaking her for his maidservant, Mary Ann, he orders Alice to go into the house and retrieve them, but once she gets inside she starts growing. The horrified Rabbit orders his gardener, Bill the Lizard, to climb on the roof and go down the chimney. Outside, Alice hears the voices of animals that have gathered to gawk at her giant arm. The crowd hurls pebbles at her, which turn into little cakes. Alice eats them, and they reduce her again in size.
Chapter Five – Advice from a Caterpillar: Alice comes upon a mushroom and sitting on it is a blue Caterpillar smoking a hookah. The Caterpillar questions Alice and she admits to her current identity crisis, compounded by her inability to remember a poem. Before crawling away, the caterpillar tells Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other side will make her shorter. She breaks off two pieces from the mushroom. One side makes her shrink smaller than ever, while another causes her neck to grow high into the trees, where a pigeon mistakes her for a serpent. With some effort, Alice brings herself back to her normal height. She stumbles upon a small estate and uses the mushroom to reach a more appropriate height.
Chapter Six – Pig and Pepper: A Fish-Footman has an invitation for the Duchess of the house, which he delivers to a Frog-Footman. Alice observes this transaction and, after a perplexing conversation with the frog, lets herself into the house. The Duchess's Cook is throwing dishes and making a soup that has too much pepper, which causes Alice, the Duchess, and her baby (but not the cook or grinning Cheshire Cat) to sneeze violently. Alice is given the baby by the Duchess and to her surprise, the baby turns into a pig. The Cheshire Cat appears in a tree, directing her to the March Hare's house. He disappears but his grin remains behind to float on its own in the air prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat.
Chapter Seven – A Mad Tea-Party: Alice becomes a guest at a "mad" tea party along with the March Hare, the Hatter, and a very tired Dormouse who falls asleep frequently, only to be violently woken up moments later by the March Hare and the Hatter. The characters give Alice many riddles and stories, including the famous 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?'. The Hatter reveals that they have tea all day because Time has punished him by eternally standing still at 6 pm (tea time). Alice becomes insulted and tired of being bombarded with riddles and she leaves claiming that it was the stupidest tea party that she had ever been to. "A Mad Tea-Party", the March Hare, the Hatter, and the Dormouse give several examples in which the semantic value of a sentence A is not the same value of the converse of A (for example, "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"); in logic and mathematics, this is discussing an inverse relationship.
Also in chapter 7, Alice ponders what it means when the changing of seats around the circular table places them back at the beginning. This is an observation of addition on the ring of integers modulo N.
The Cheshire cat fades until it disappears entirely, leaving only its wide grin, suspended in the air, leading Alice to marvel and note that she has seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. Deep abstraction of concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, abstract algebra, and the beginnings of mathematical logic, was taking over mathematics at the time Dodgson was writing. Dodgson's delineation of the relationship between cat and grin can be taken to represent the very concept of mathematics and number itself. For example, instead of considering two or three apples, one may easily consider the concept of 'apple', upon which the concepts of 'two' and 'three' may seem to depend. A far more sophisticated jump is to consider the concepts of 'two' and 'three' by themselves, just like a grin, originally seemingly dependent on the cat, separated conceptually from its physical object.
Chapter Eight – The Queen's Croquet Ground: Alice leaves the tea party and enters the garden where she comes upon three living playing cards painting the white roses on a rose tree red because The Queen of Hearts hates white roses. A procession of more cards, kings and queens and even the White Rabbit enters the garden. Alice then meets the King and Queen. The Queen, a figure difficult to please, introduces her trademark phrase "Off with his head!" which she utters at the slightest dissatisfaction with a subject. Alice is invited (or some might say ordered) to play a game of croquet with the Queen and the rest of her subjects but the game quickly descends into chaos. Live flamingos are used as mallets and hedgehogs as balls and Alice once again meets the Cheshire Cat. The Queen of Hearts then orders the Cat to be beheaded, only to have her executioner complain that this is impossible since the head is all that can be seen of him. Because the cat belongs to the Duchess, the Queen is prompted to release the Duchess from prison to resolve the matter.
Chapter Nine – The Mock Turtle's Story: The Duchess is brought to the croquet ground at Alice's request. She ruminates on finding morals in everything around her. The Queen of Hearts dismisses her on the threat of execution and she introduces Alice to the Gryphon, who takes her to the Mock Turtle. The Mock Turtle is very sad, even though he has no sorrow. He tries to tell his story about how he used to be a real turtle in school, which the Gryphon interrupts so they can play a game.
Chapter Ten – Lobster Quadrille: The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon dance to the Lobster Quadrille, while Alice recites (rather incorrectly) "'Tis the Voice of the Lobster". The Mock Turtle sings them "Beautiful Soup" during which the Gryphon drags Alice away for an impending trial.
Chapter Eleven – Who Stole the Tarts?: Alice attends a trial whereby the Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts. The jury is composed of various animals, including Bill the Lizard, the White Rabbit is the court's trumpeter, and the judge is the King of Hearts. During the proceedings, Alice finds that she is steadily growing larger. The dormouse scolds Alice and tells her she has no right to grow at such a rapid pace and take up all the air. Alice scoffs and calls the dormouse's accusation ridiculous because everyone grows and she cannot help it. Meanwhile, witnesses at the trial include the Hatter, who displeases and frustrates the King through his indirect answers to the questioning, and the Duchess's cook.
Chapter Twelve – Alice's Evidence: Alice is then called up as a witness. She accidentally knocks over the jury box with the animals inside them and the King orders the animals be placed back into their seats before the trial continues. The King and Queen order Alice to be gone, citing Rule 42 ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court"), but Alice disputes their judgement and refuses to leave. She argues with the King and Queen of Hearts over the ridiculous proceedings, eventually refusing to hold her tongue. The Queen shouts her familiar "Off with her head!" but Alice is unafraid, calling them out as just a pack of cards; just as they start to swarm over her. Alice's sister wakes her up from a dream, brushing what turns out to be some leaves and not a shower of playing cards from Alice's face. Alice leaves her sister on the bank to imagine all the curious happenings for herself.
It is You who returns to me today and swims anxiously around my awareness again. Opalescent beams and the feeling of wet pour over my starving perception and I hear a faint whisper telling me that I have run too far into the dry and suffocating thoughts of a bleak and mundane world. Laughter, like perfect bubbles of fresh insight, dances in the space between us. Excitedly, You urge me to play once more in the world of limitless songs and inspired stories.
Oh yes, sweet redeemer, You drench and revitalize my understanding with radiant blue.
Blue like the unlimited and expanding sky. Blue like the awe-inspiring and swirling waves of an imagination that cannot and will not ever end. Blue like the true blue power of a dream that crystallizes out of the purest desire to love and magnify for its own sake. Blue like the Great Blue Heron that stands staunch and ready peering toward the horizons of its kingdom. Blue like the skin of the all attractive Krishna energy that calls the Universe to rise and dance in ecstasy. Blue like those eyes that drowned my entire existence with one first glance. Oh yes. Let Us redefine the "Blue" of Eternal Opulence and remember ourselves flashing across an overflowing night sky which by its very nature abases any weak and deflating thought into complete oblivion.
Oh the immortal words of the Master Poet Kabir resonate in the core of my Being tonight:
"I laugh when I hear that the the fish in the water is thirsty."
“Evolution built minds twice over. The octopus is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” — Peter Godfrey-Smith, philosopher
These two octopus books came out some months apart from each other, and I have been meaning to read them back-to-back. They cover similar material — even their subtitles highlight the lessons learned about consciousness. I wonder if the publishers knew of the coincidence.
Some fascinating book details about the octopus:
• Three hearts, pumping blue-green blood because their oxygen carrying metal is copper (versus iron in the heme of our blood). They can spend 30 minutes out of the water, to scoot between tidepools.
• Alien intelligence: from a distant branch in the tree of life, the octopus/cuttlefish are the only invertebrates to have developed a complex, clever brain:
-Our common evolutionary ancestor is a tubule so ancient, neither brains nor eyes yet existed. They evolved independently, on land and by sea.
-From the Cambrian explosion of sensing, body plans, and predation, minds evolved in response to other minds. It was an information revolution. It’s where experience begins.
-The octopus brain rings around its throat. 500M neurons, similar to dog (vs.human: 86B, fly: 100K).
-The octopus has over 50 different functional brain lobes (versus 4 in human)
-And furthermore, 60% of its neurons are out in the arms, with a high degree of autonomy. A severed arm can carry on as if nothing has changed for several hours.
-It is a distributed mesh of ganglia (knots of nerves) in a ladder-like nervous system. Recurrent neural loops serve as a local short-term memory latch.
-“The octopus is suffused with nervousness; the body is not a separate thing that is controlled by the brain or nervous system.” Unconstrained by bone or shell, “the body itself is protean, all possibility. The octopus lives outside the usual body/brain divide.” (PGS)
-Structurally, our eyes ended up strikingly similar to the octopus (camera-like with a focusing lens, through a transparent cornea and iris aperture to a retina backing the optic nerves). But octopus eyes have a wide-angle panoramic view, and they move independently like a chameleon.
-Their horizontal slit pupil stays horizontal as the body moves, like a steady cam. This is made possible by special balance receptors called statocysts (a sac with internal sensory hairs and loose mineralized balls that roll around with movement and gravity).
-They can see polarized light, but not color (making their color-matching camouflage skills all the more intriguing; they also see with their skin).
-Their playful interactions with humans exhibit mischief and craft, a sign of mental surplus
-Humans internalized language as a tool for complex thought (we can hear what we say and use language to arrange and manipulate ideas). Octopuses are on a different path.
• Their entire skin is a layered screen, with about a megapixel directly controlled by the brain.
-Skin color, pattern and fleshy texture can change in 0.7 seconds.
-Three layers of skin cells control elastic sacks of pigments, internal iridescent reflections, even polarization (which the octopus can see), over a white underbody. They are regulated by acetylcholine, one of the earliest neurotransmitters in evolution.
-The octopus can create a voluntary light show on its skin, e.g., a dark cloud passing over the local landscape, or a dramatic display to confuse a predator while fleeing.
-Over thirty ritualized displays for mating and other signaling.
-Some octopuses have regions of constant kaleidoscopic restlessness, like animated eye shadow.
• 1,600 suckers. 35 lbs. of lift capacity per 2.5” sucker. 10,000 tasting chemoreceptors per sucker. Each is controlled individually.
• Octopus muscles have radial + longitudinal fibers (agile like our tongues, not our biceps).
-Opposing waves of activation can create temporary elbows at the region of constructive overlap, or pass food sucker-to-sucker like a conveyor belt.
-The octopus’ arm muscles can pull 100x its own weight.
• It can squeeze through a hole about the size of its eyeball.
• Their ink squirts contain oxytocin (perhaps to soothe prey) and dopamine, the “reward hormone” (perhaps to trick predators that they had caught the octopus in the billowy cloud).
I found the philosophical approach of Other MInds more interesting than the "naturalist in an aquarium" approach of Soul of an Octopus. Perhaps it's the geek in me, but I wanted a good summary of the new research and new details about these crazy nervous systems. I find that fascinating and relevant to the future incorporeal AI's that we will build.
Typhon was flying through the spirit of consciousness, when I designed thus engine in 1987 for Alice v W.......
There is also a shining white comet with silver "hair,"
shining in such a way that it can scarcely be looked at,
and of human appearance,
showing in itself the form of a god.
―Joannes Lydus, in De Ostentis
I suppose that the comets may be the agents
which have already effected great changes in all the planets,
and that they may be destined to effect many others―
till, in defined periods, the planets, by means of these agents,
may be all reduced to a state of fusion or gas ....
―Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis, Volume II
Typhon (/ˈtaɪfɒn, -fən/; Greek: Τυφῶν, Tuphōn [typʰɔ̂ːn]), also Typhoeus (/taɪˈfiːəs/; Τυφωεύς, Tuphōeus), Typhaon (Τυφάων, Tuphaōn) or Typhos (Τυφώς, Tuphōs), was a monstrous snaky giant and the most deadly creature in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters. Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna, or the island of Ischia. In later accounts Typhon was often confused with the Giants.According to Hesiod's Theogony (c. 8th – 7th century BC), Typhon was the son of Gaia (Earth) and Tartarus: "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite".The mythographer Apollodorus (1st or 2nd century AD) adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants.Numerous other sources mention Typhon as being the offspring of Gaia, or simply "earth-born", with no mention of Tartarus.However, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (6th century BC), Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus, and the Titans, to give her a son stronger than Zeus, then slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to the serpent Python to raise, and Typhon grew up to become a great bane to mortals.
Depiction by Wenceslas Hollar
Several sources locate Typhon's birth and dwelling place in Cilicia, and in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus (modern Kızkalesi, Turkey). The poet Pindar (c. 470 BC) calls Typhon "Cilician,"and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in "the famous Cilician cave",[8] an apparent allusion to the Corycian cave in Turkey.[9] In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Typhon is called the "dweller of the Cilician caves",and both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus (4th or 5th century AD) have Typhon born in Cilicia.
The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, preserving a possibly Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus. Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Zeus' father Cronus (whom Zeus had overthrown) and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to bury them, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia "under Arimon", but when Typhon is born, Hera, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him.
According to Hesiod, Typhon was "terrible, outrageous and lawless",immensely powerful, and on his shoulders were one hundred snake heads, that emitted fire and every kind of noise:
Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed.
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo describes Typhon as "fell" and "cruel", and neither like gods nor men.Three of Pindar's poems have Typhon as hundred-headed (as in Hesiod), while apparently a fourth gives him only fifty heads, but a hundred heads for Typhon became standard. A Chalcidian hydria (c. 540–530 BC), depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails below.Aeschylus calls Typhon "fire-breathing".For Nicander (2nd century BC), Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, and strange appearance, with many heads, hands, and wings, and with huge snake coils coming from his thighs.
Apollodorus describes Typhon as a huge winged monster, whose head "brushed the stars", human in form above the waist, with snake coils below, and fire flashing from his eyes:
In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes.
The most elaborate description of Typhon is found in Nonnus's Dionysiaca. Nonnus makes numerous references to Typhon's serpentine nature,giving him a "tangled army of snakes",snaky feet,and hair.According to Nonnus, Typhon was a "poison-spitting viper",whose "every hair belched viper-poison", and Typhon "spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head",and "the water-snakes of the monster's viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!".
Following Hesiod and others, Nonnus gives Typhon many heads (though untotaled), but in addition to snake heads,Nonnus also gives Typhon many other animal heads, including leopards, lions, bulls, boars, bears, cattle, wolves, and dogs, which combine to make 'the cries of all wild beasts together',and a "babel of screaming sounds". Nonnus also gives Typhon "legions of arms innumerable", and where Nicander had only said that Typhon had "many" hands, and Ovid had given Typhon a hundred hands, Nonnus gives Typhon two hundred.
According to Hesiod's Theogony, Typhon "was joined in love" to Echidna, a monstrous half-woman and half-snake, who bore Typhon "fierce offspring".First, according to Hesiod, there was Orthrus,the two-headed dog who guarded the Cattle of Geryon, second Cerberus,the multiheaded dog who guarded the gates of Hades, and third the Lernaean Hydra,the many-headed serpent who, when one of its heads was cut off, grew two more. The Theogony next mentions an ambiguous "she", which might refer to Echidna, as the mother of the Chimera (a fire-breathing beast that was part lion, part goat, and had a snake-headed tail) with Typhon then being the father.
While mentioning Cerberus and "other monsters" as being the offspring of Echidna and Typhon, the mythographer Acusilaus (6th century BC) adds the Caucasian Eagle that ate the liver of Prometheus, the mythographer Pherecydes of Leros (5th century BC), also names Prometheus' eagle,and adds Ladon (though Pherecydes does not use this name), and the dragon that guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides (according to Hesiod, the offspring of Ceto and Phorcys).The lyric poet Lasus of Hermione (6th century BC) adds the Sphinx.
Later authors mostly retain these offspring of Typhon by Echidna, while adding others. Apollodorus, in addition to naming as their offspring Orthrus, the Chimera (citing Hesiod as his source) the Caucasian Eagle, Ladon, and the Sphinx, also adds the Nemean lion (no mother is given), and the Crommyonian Sow, killed by the hero Theseus (unmentioned by Hesiod).
Hyginus (1st century BC),in his list of offspring of Typhon (all by Echidna), retains from the above: Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Hydra and Ladon, and adds "Gorgon" (by which Hyginus means the mother of Medusa, whereas Hesiod's three Gorgons, of which Medusa was one, were the daughters of Ceto and Phorcys), the Colchian Dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece and Scylla.The Harpies, in Hesiod the daughters of Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra,[48] in one source, are said to be the daughters of Typhon.
The sea serpents which attacked the Trojan priest Laocoön, during the Trojan War, were perhaps supposed to be the progeny of Typhon and Echidna.
According to Hesiod, the defeated Typhon is the source of destructive storm winds.
Typhon challenged Zeus for rule of the cosmos.The earliest mention of Typhon, and his only occurrence in Homer, is a passing reference in the Iliad to Zeus striking the ground around where Typhon lies defeated.Hesiod's Theogony gives us the first account of their battle. According to Hesiod, without the quick action of Zeus, Typhon would have "come to reign over mortals and immortals".In the Theogony Zeus and Typhon meet in cataclysmic conflict:
[Zeus] thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, through the thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos, because of the unending clamor and the fearful strife.
Zeus with his thunderbolt easily overcomes Typhon,who is thrown down to earth in a fiery crash:
So when Zeus had raised up his might and seized his arms, thunder and lightning and lurid thunderbolt, he leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads of the monster about him. But when Zeus had conquered him and lashed him with strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down, a maimed wreck, so that the huge earth groaned. And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount, when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire.
Defeated, Typhon is cast into Tartarus by an angry Zeus.
Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) seemingly knew a different version of the story, in which Typhon enters Zeus' palace while Zeus is asleep, but Zeus awakes and kills Typhon with a thunderbolt.Pindar apparently knew of a tradition which had the gods, in order to escape from Typhon, transform themselves into animals, and flee to Egypt.Pindar calls Typhon the "enemy of the gods",and says that he was defeated by Zeus' thunderbolt.In one poem Pindar has Typhon being held prisoner by Zeus under Etna,and in another says that Typhon "lies in dread Tartarus", stretched out underground between Mount Etna and Cumae.In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, a "hissing" Typhon, his eyes flashing, "withstood all the gods", but "the unsleeping bolt of Zeus" struck him, and "he was burnt to ashes and his strength blasted from him by the lightning bolt."
According to Pherecydes of Leros, during his battle with Zeus, Typhon first flees to the Caucasus, which begins to burn, then to the volcanic island of Pithecussae (modern Ischia), off the coast of Cumae, where he is buried under the island.Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC), like Pherecydes, presents a multi-stage battle, with Typhon being struck by Zeus' thunderbolt on mount Caucasus, before fleeing to the mountains and plain of Nysa, and ending up (as already mentioned by the fifth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus) buried under Lake Serbonis in Egypt.
Like Pindar, Nicander has all the gods but Zeus and Athena, transform into animal forms and flee to Egypt: Apollo became a hawk, Hermes an ibis, Ares a fish, Artemis a cat, Dionysus a goat, Heracles a fawn, Hephaestus an ox, and Leto a mouse.
The geographer Strabo (c. 20 AD) gives several locations which were associated with the battle. According to Strabo, Typhon was said to have cut the serpentine channel of the Orontes River, which flowed beneath the Syrian Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra), while fleeing from Zeus,and some placed the battle at Catacecaumene ("Burnt Land"),a volcanic plain, on the upper Gediz River, between the ancient kingdoms of Lydia, Mysia and Phrygia, near Mount Tmolus (modern Bozdağ) and Sardis the ancient capital of Lydia.
In the versions of the battle given by Hesiod, Aeschylus and Pindar, Zeus' defeat of Typhon is straightforward, however a more involved version of the battle is given by Apollodorus.No early source gives any reason for the conflict, but Apollodorus' account seemingly implies that Typhon had been produced by Gaia to avenge the destruction, by Zeus and the other gods, of the Giants, a previous generation of offspring of Gaia. According to Apollodorus, Typhon, "hurling kindled rocks", attacked the gods, "with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth." Seeing this, the gods transformed into animals and fled to Egypt (as in Pindar and Nicander). However "Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle"Wounded, Typhon fled to the Syrian Mount Kasios, where Zeus "grappled" with him. But Typhon, twining his snaky coils around Zeus, was able to wrest away the sickle and cut the sinews from Zeus' hands and feet. Typhon carried the disabled Zeus across the sea to the Corycian cave in Cilicia where he set the she-serpent Delphyne to guard over Zeus and his severed sinews, which Typhon had hidden in a bearskin. But Hermes and Aegipan (possibly another name for Pan)stole the sinews and gave them back to Zeus. His strength restored, Zeus chased Typhon to mount Nysa, where the Moirai tricked Typhon into eating "ephemeral fruits" which weakened him. Typhon then fled to Thrace, where he threw mountains at Zeus, which were turned back on him by Zeus' thunderbolts, and the mountain where Typhon stood, being drenched with Typhon's blood, became known as Mount Haemus (Bloody Mountain). Typhon then fled to Sicily, where Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon burying him, and so finally defeated him.
Oppian (2nd century AD) says that Pan helped Zeus in the battle by tricking Typhon to come out from his lair, and into the open, by the "promise of a banquet of fish", thus enabling Zeus to defeat Typhon with his thunderbolts.
The longest and most involved version of the battle appears in Nonnus's Dionysiaca (late 4th or early 5th century AD).Zeus hides his thunderbolts in a cave, so that he might seduce the maiden Plouto, and so produce Tantalus. But smoke rising from the thunderbolts, enables Typhon, under the guidance of Gaia, to locate Zeus's weapons, steal them, and hide them in another cave.Immediately Typhon extends "his clambering hands into the upper air" and begins a long and concerted attack upon the heavens.Then "leaving the air" he turns his attack upon the seas.Finally Typhon attempts to wield Zeus' thunderbolts, but they "felt the hands of a novice, and all their manly blaze was unmanned."
Now Zeus' sinews had somehow – Nonnus does not say how or when — fallen to the ground during their battle, and Typhon had taken them also.But Zeus devises a plan with Cadmus and Pan to beguile Typhon.Cadmus, desguised as a shepherd, enchants Typhon by playing the panpipes, and Typhon entrusting the thuderbolts to Gaia, sets out to find the source of the music he hears.Finding Cadmus, he challenges him to a contest, offering Cadmus any goddess as wife, excepting Hera whom Typhon has reserved for himself.Cadmus then tells Typhon that, if he liked the "little tune" of his pipes, then he would love the music of his lyre – if only it could be strung with Zeus' sinews.So Typhon retrieves the sinews and gives them to Cadmus, who hides them in another cave, and again begins to play his bewitching pipes, so that "Typhoeus yielded his whole soul to Cadmos for the melody to charm".
With Typhon distracted, Zeus takes back his thunderbolts. Cadmus stops playing, and Typhon, released from his spell, rushes back to his cave to discover the thunderbolts gone. Incensed Typhon unleashes devastation upon the world: animals are devoured, (Typhon's many animal heads each eat animals of its own kind), rivers turned to dust, seas made dry land, and the land "laid waste".
The day ends with Typhon yet unchallenged, and while the other gods "moved about the cloudless Nile", Zeus waits through the night for the coming dawn.Victory "reproaches" Zeus, urging him to "stand up as champion of your own children!"Dawn comes and Typhon roars out a challenge to Zeus. And a cataclysmic battle for "the sceptre and throne of Zeus" is joined. Typhon piles up mountains as battlements and with his "legions of arms innumerable", showers volley after volley of trees and rocks at Zeus, but all are destroyed, or blown aside, or dodged, or thrown back at Typhon. Typhon throws torrents of water at Zeus' thunderbolts to quench them, but Zeus is able to cut off some of Typhon's hands with "frozen volleys of air as by a knife", and hurling thunderbolts is able to burn more of typhon's "endless hands", and cut off some of his "countless heads". Typhon is attacked by the four winds, and "frozen volleys of jagged hailstones."Gaia tries to aid her burnt and frozen son.Finally Typhon falls, and Zeus shouts out a long stream of mocking taunts, telling Typhon that he is to be buried under Sicily's hills, with a cenotaph over him which will read "This is the barrow of Typhoeus, son of Earth, who once lashed the sky with stones, and the fire of heaven burnt him up".
Most accounts have the defeated Typhon buried under either Mount Etna in Sicily, or the volcanic island of Ischia, the largest of the Phlegraean Islands off the coast of Naples, with Typhon being the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Though Hesiod has Typhon simply cast into Tartarus by Zeus, some have read a reference to Mount Etna in Hesiod's description of Typhon's fall: And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire.
The first certain references to Typhon buried under Etna, as well as being the cause of its eruptions, occur in Pindar:Son of Cronus, you who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon, and:among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of the gods, Typhon with his hundred heads. Once the famous Cilician cave nurtured him, but now the sea-girt cliffs above Cumae, and Sicily too, lie heavy on his shaggy chest. And the pillar of the sky holds him down, snow-covered Aetna, year-round nurse of bitter frost, from whose inmost caves belch forth the purest streams of unapproachable fire. In the daytime her rivers roll out a fiery flood of smoke, while in the darkness of night the crimson flame hurls rocks down to the deep plain of the sea with a crashing roar. That monster shoots up the most terrible jets of fire; it is a marvellous wonder to see, and a marvel even to hear about when men are present. Such a creature is bound beneath the dark and leafy heights of Aetna and beneath the plain, and his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it. Thus Pindar has Typhon in Tartarus, and buried under not just Etna, but under a vast volcanic region stretching from Sicily to Cumae (in the vicinity of modern Naples), a region which presumably also included Mount Vesuvius, as well as Ischia.
Many subsequent accounts mention either Etna[98] or Ischia. In Prometheus Bound, Typhon is imprisoned underneath Etna, while above him Hephaestus "hammers the molten ore", and in his rage, the "charred" Typhon causes "rivers of fire" to pour forth. Ovid has Typhon buried under all of Sicily, with his left and right hands under Pelorus and Pachynus, his feet under Lilybaeus, and his head under Etna; where he "vomits flames from his ferocious mouth". And Valerius Flaccus has Typhon's head under Etna, and all of Sicily shaken when Typhon "struggles". Lycophron has both Typhon and Giants buried under the island of Ischia. Virgil, Silius Italicus and Claudian, all calling the island "Inarime", have Typhon buried there. Strabo, calling Ischia "Pithecussae", reports the "myth" that Typhon lay buried there, and that when he "turns his body the flames and the waters, and sometimes even small islands containing boiling water, spout forth." In addition to Typhon, other mythological beings were also said to be buried under Mount Etna and the cause of its vocanic activity. Most notably the Giant Enceladus was said to be entombed under Etna, the volcano's eruptions being the breath of Enceladus, and its tremors caused by the Giant rolling over from side to side beneath the mountain. Also said to be buried under Etna were the Hundred-hander Briareus,and Asteropus who was perhaps one of the Cyclopes.
Typhon's final resting place was apparently also said to be in Boeotia.The Hesiodic Shield of Heracles names a mountain near Thebes Typhaonium, perhaps reflecting an early tradition which also had Typhon buried under a Boeotian mountain.And some apparently claimed that Typhon was buried beneath a mountain in Boeotia, from which came exhaltations of fire.
Homer describes a place he calls the "couch [or bed] of Typhoeus", which he locates in the land of the Arimoi (εἰν Ἀρίμοις), where Zeus lashes the land about Typhoeus with his thunderbolts.[107] Presumably this is the same land where, according to Hesiod, Typhon's mate Echidna keeps guard "in Arima" (εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν). But neither Homer nor Hesiod say anything more about where these Arimoi or this Arima might be. The question of whether an historical place was meant, and its possible location, has been, since ancient times, the subject of speculation and debate. Strabo discusses the question in some detail. Several locales, Cilicia, Syria, Lydia, and the island of Ischia, all places associated with Typhon, are given by Strabo as possible locations for Homer's "Arimoi".
Pindar has his Cilician Typhon slain by Zeus "among the Arimoi",[111] and the historian Callisthenes (4th century BC), located the Arimoi and the Arima mountains in Cilicia, near the Calycadnus river, the Corycian cave and the Sarpedon promomtory.[112] The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, mentioned above, says Typhon was born in Cilicia "under Arimon",and Nonnus mentions Typhon's "bloodstained cave of Arima" in Cilicia. Just across the Gulf of Issus from Corycus, in ancient Syria, was Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra) and the Orontes River, sites associated with Typhon's battle with Zeus,and according to Strabo, the historian Posidonius (c. 2nd century BC) identified the Arimoi with the Aramaeans of Syria.
Alternatively, according to Strabo, some placed the Arimoi at Catacecaumene, while Xanthus of Lydia (5th century BC) added that "a certain Arimus" ruled there. Strabo also tells us that for "some" Homer's "couch of Typhon" was located "in a wooded place, in the fertile land of Hyde", with Hyde being another name for Sardis (or its acropolis), and that Demetrius of Scepsis (2nd century BC) thought that the Arimoi were most plausibly located "in the Catacecaumene country in Mysia".[119] The 3rd-century BC poet Lycophron placed the lair of Typhons' mate Echidna in this region.
Another place, mentioned by Strabo, as being associated with Arima, is the island of Ischia, where according to Pherecydes of Leros, Typhon had fled, and in the area where Pindar and others had said Typhon was buried. The connection to Arima, comes from the island's Greek name Pithecussae, which derives from the Greek word for monkey, and according to Strabo, residents of the island said that "arimoi" was also the Etruscan word for monkeys.
Typhon's name has a number of variants. The earliest forms of Typhoeus and Typhaon, occur prior to the 5th century BC. Homer uses Typhoeus,Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo use both Typhoeus and Typhaon. The later forms Typhos and Typhon occur from the 5th century BC onwards, with Typhon becoming the standard form by the end of that century.
Though several possible derivations of the name Typhon have been suggested, the derivation remains uncertain.Consistent with Hesiod's making storm winds Typhon's offspring, some have supposed that Typhon was originally a wind-god, and ancient sources associated him with the Greek words tuphon, tuphos meaning "whirlwind".Other theories include derivation from a Greek root meaning "smoke" (consistent with Typhon's identification with volcanoes), from an Indo-European root meaning "abyss" (making Typhon a "Serpent of the Deep"), and from Sapõn the Phoenician name for the Ugaritic god Baal's holy mountain Jebel Aqra (the classical Mount Kasios) associated with the epithet Baʿal Zaphon.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell makes parallels to the slaying of Leviathan by YHWH, about which YHWH boasts to Job. Ogden calls the Typhon myth "the only Graeco-Roman drakōn-slaying myth that can seriously be argued to exhibit the influence of Near Eastern antecedents", connecting it in particular with Baʿal Zaphon's slaying of Yammu and Lotan, as well as with the Hittite myth of Illuyankas. From its first reappearance, this latter myth has been seen as a prototype of the battle of Zeus and Typhon. Walter Burkert and Calvert Watkins each note the close agreements.
Comparisons can also be drawn with the Mesopotamian monster Tiamat and her slaying by Babylonian chief god Marduk.The similarities between the Greek myth and its earlier Mesopotamian counterpart do not seem to be merely accidental. A number of west Semitic (Ras Shamra) and Hittite sources appear to corroborate the theory of a genetic relationship between the two myths.
Typhon's story seems related to that of another monstrous offspring of Gaia: Python, the serpent killed by Apollo at Delphi, suggesting a possible common origin. Besides the similarity of names, their shared parentage, and the fact that both were snaky monsters killed in single combat with an Olympian god, there are other connections between the stories surrounding Typhon, and those surrounding Python. Although the Delphic monster killed by Apollo is usually said to be the male serpent Python, in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the earliest account of this story, the god kills a nameless she-serpent (drakaina), subsequently called Delphyne, who had been Typhon's foster-mother. Delphyne and Echidna, besides both being intimately connected to Typhon—one as mother, the other as mate—share other similarities.Both were half-maid and half-snake,a plague to men,and associated with the Corycian cave in Cilicia.
Python was also perhaps connected with a different Corycian Cave than the one in Cilicia, this one on the slopes of Parnassus above Delphi, and just as the Corcian cave in Cilicia was thought to be Typhon and Echidna's lair, and associated with Typhon's battle with Zeus, there is evidence to suggest that the Corycian cave above Delphi was supposed to be Python's (or Delphyne's) lair, and associated with his (or her) battle with Apollo.
Typhon bears a close resemblance to an older generation of descendants of Gaia, the Giants.They, like their younger brother Typhon after them, challenged Zeus for supremacy of the cosmos,were (in later representations) shown as snake-footed,and end up buried under volcanos.
While distinct in early accounts, in later accounts Typhon was often confused or conflated with the Giants.The Roman mythographer Hyginus (64 BC – 17 AD) includes Typhon in his list of Giants,while the Roman poet Horace (65 – 8 BC), mentions Typhon, along with the Giants Mimas, Porphyrion, and Enceladus, as together battling Athena, during the Gigantomachy.The Astronomica, attributed to the 1st-century AD Roman poet and astrologer Marcus Manilius,and the late 4th-century early 5th-century Greek poet Nonnus, also consider Typhon to be one of the Giants.
From apparently as early as Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550 BC – c. 476 BC), Typhon was identified with Set, the Egyptian god of destruction.This syncretization with Egyptian mythology can also be seen in the story, apparently known as early as Pindar, of Typhon chasing the gods to Egypt, and the gods transforming themselves into animals.Such a story arose perhaps as a way for the Greeks to explain Egypt's animal-shaped gods.Herodotus also identified Typhon with Set, making him the second to last divine king of Egypt. Herodotus says that Typhon was deposed by Osiris' son Horus, whom Herodutus equates with Apollo (with Osiris being equated with Dionysus),and after his defeat by Horus, Typhon was "supposed to have been hidden" in the "Serbonian marsh" (identified with modern Lake Bardawil) in Egypt.
“The detectors don’t induce the phenomenon of wave function collapse; conscious observation does. Consciousness is like this giant roving spotlight, collapsing reality wherever it shines—and what isn’t observed remains probability. And it’s not just photons or electrons. It is everything. All matter…A testable, repeatable fault in reality.”
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Island of Consciousness
Island of Now
HKD
Ich habe eine schwarz-weiße und eine farbige Fassung dieses wichtigen Motivs "der Mitte" angefertigt. Die farbige, weiche bringt eher "weibliche" Gefühle zum Mitschwingen, während die sw-Fassung eher das Männliche und Intellektuelle anspricht. Also auch hier die Gegensätze Logos Eros oder intellekt und Gefühl. Beide Seiten können in Bildkompositionen ausgedrückt werden.
HKD
Falls Psychologie interessiert:
Die Insel des Bewusstseins.
Die Insel des Jetzt.
Zwischen Zukunft und Vergangenheit liegt die Insel des Jetzt
HKD
Anmerkung:
This is digital art work, not reality.
Das Bild ist ein digital hergestelltes Werk.
Jede Ähnlichkeit mit realen Gegebenheiten wäre rein zufällig.
HKD
If you like to see my latest video:
Path of Wisdom
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.
They feel the tension wave of those unstable situations even though they're not directly impacted.
As stress waves are generated, our emotions pick up this incoherent energy. Even after the wave passes through, the emotional aftereffects keep reverberating. If you've ever lived through an earthquake and its aftershocks, you may have felt static energy reverberating in your body for days. Strong waves of emotional stress can affect the whole world in a similar way. When events take place that cause massive fear and anxiety, we all experience the stress at some level. At the level of consciousness, we're all in this together.
Persistent vegetative state
SpecialtyNeurology
A persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness. After four weeks in a vegetative state (VS), the patient is classified as in a persistent vegetative state. This diagnosis is classified as a permanent vegetative state some months (three in the US and six in the UK) after a non-traumatic brain injury or one year after a traumatic injury. Today, doctors and neuroscientists prefer to call the state of consciousness a syndrome,[1] primarily because of ethical questions about whether a patient can be called "vegetative" or not.[2]
Contents
1Definition
1.1Medical definition
1.2Lack of legal clarity
1.3Vegetative state
1.4Persistent vegetative state
2Signs and symptoms
2.1Recovery
3Causes
4Diagnosis
4.1Diagnostic experiments
4.2Misdiagnoses
5Treatment
5.1Zolpidem
6Epidemiology
7History
8Society and culture
8.1Ethics and policy
8.2Notable cases
9See also
10References
11External links
Definition[edit]
There are several definitions that vary by technical versus layman's usage. There are different legal implications in different countries.
Medical definition[edit]
A wakeful unconscious state that lasts longer than a few weeks is referred to as a persistent (or 'continuing') vegetative state.[3]
Lack of legal clarity[edit]
Unlike brain death, permanent vegetative state (PVS) is recognized by statute law as death in very few legal systems. In the US, courts have required petitions before termination of life support that demonstrate that any recovery of cognitive functions above a vegetative state is assessed as impossible by authoritative medical opinion.[4] In England and Wales the legal precedent for withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration in cases of patients in a PVS was set in 1993 in the case of Tony Bland, who sustained catastrophic anoxic brain injury in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.[3] An application to the Court of Protection is no longer required before nutrition and hydration can be withdrawn or withheld from PVS (or 'minimally conscious' – MCS) patients.[5]
This legal grey area has led to vocal advocates that those in PVS should be allowed to die. Others are equally determined that, if recovery is at all possible, care should continue. The existence of a small number of diagnosed PVS cases that have eventually resulted in improvement makes defining recovery as "impossible" particularly difficult in a legal sense.[6] This legal and ethical issue raises questions about autonomy, quality of life, appropriate use of resources, the wishes of family members, and professional responsibilities.
Vegetative state[edit]
The vegetative state is a chronic or long-term condition. This condition differs from a coma: a coma is a state that lacks both awareness and wakefulness. Patients in a vegetative state may have awoken from a coma, but still have not regained awareness. In the vegetative state patients can open their eyelids occasionally and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but completely lack cognitive function. The vegetative state is also called a "coma vigil". The chances of regaining awareness diminish considerably as the time spent in the vegetative state increases.[7]
Persistent vegetative state[edit]
Persistent vegetative state is the standard usage (except in the UK) for a medical diagnosis, made after numerous neurological and other tests, that due to extensive and irreversible brain damage a patient is highly unlikely ever to achieve higher functions above a vegetative state. This diagnosis does not mean that a doctor has diagnosed improvement as impossible, but does open the possibility, in the US, for a judicial request to end life support.[6] Informal guidelines hold that this diagnosis can be made after four weeks in a vegetative state. US caselaw has shown that successful petitions for termination have been made after a diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state, although in some cases, such as that of Terri Schiavo, such rulings have generated widespread controversy.
In the UK, the term is discouraged in favor of two more precisely defined terms that have been strongly recommended by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). These guidelines recommend using a continuous vegetative state for patients in a vegetative state for more than four weeks. A medical determination of a permanent vegetative state can be made if, after exhaustive testing and a customary 12 months of observation,[8] a medical diagnosis is made that it is impossible by any informed medical expectations that the mental condition will ever improve.[9] Hence, a "continuous vegetative state" in the UK may remain the diagnosis in cases that would be called "persistent" in the US or elsewhere.
While the actual testing criteria for a diagnosis of "permanent" in the UK are quite similar to the criteria for a diagnosis of "persistent" in the US, the semantic difference imparts in the UK a legal presumption that is commonly used in court applications for ending life support.[8] The UK diagnosis is generally only made after 12 months of observing a static vegetative state. A diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state in the US usually still requires a petitioner to prove in court that recovery is impossible by informed medical opinion, while in the UK the "permanent" diagnosis already gives the petitioner this presumption and may make the legal process less time-consuming.[6]
In common usage, the "permanent" and "persistent" definitions are sometimes conflated and used interchangeably. However, the acronym "PVS" is intended[by whom?] to define a "persistent vegetative state", without necessarily the connotations of permanence,[citation needed] and is used as such throughout this article. Bryan Jennett, who originally coined the term "persistent vegetative state", has now recommended using the UK division between continuous and permanent in his book The Vegetative State, arguing that "the 'persistent' component of this term ... may seem to suggest irreversibility".[10]
The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council has suggested "post coma unresponsiveness" as an alternative term for "vegetative state" in general.[11]
Signs and symptoms[edit]
Most PVS patients are unresponsive to external stimuli and their conditions are associated with different levels of consciousness. Some level of consciousness means a person can still respond, in varying degrees, to stimulation. A person in a coma, however, cannot. In addition, PVS patients often open their eyes in response to feeding, which has to be done by others; they are capable of swallowing, whereas patients in a coma subsist with their eyes closed (Emmett, 1989).
Cerebral cortical function (e.g. communication, thinking, purposeful movement, etc) is lost while brainstem functions (e.g. breathing, maintaining circulation and hemodynamic stability, etc) are preserved. Non-cognitive upper brainstem functions such as eye-opening, occasional vocalizations (e.g. crying, laughing), maintaining normal sleep patterns, and spontaneous non-purposeful movements often remain intact.
PVS patients' eyes might be in a relatively fixed position, or track moving objects, or move in a disconjugate (i.e., completely unsynchronized) manner. They may experience sleep-wake cycles, or be in a state of chronic wakefulness. They may exhibit some behaviors that can be construed as arising from partial consciousness, such as grinding their teeth, swallowing, smiling, shedding tears, grunting, moaning, or screaming without any apparent external stimulus.
Individuals in PVS are seldom on any life-sustaining equipment other than a feeding tube because the brainstem, the center of vegetative functions (such as heart rate and rhythm, respiration, and gastrointestinal activity) is relatively intact (Emmett, 1989).
Recovery[edit]
Many people emerge spontaneously from a vegetative state within a few weeks.[10] The chances of recovery depend on the extent of injury to the brain and the patient's age – younger patients having a better chance of recovery than older patients. A 1994 report found that of those who were in a vegetative state a month after a trauma, 54% had regained consciousness by a year after the trauma, whereas 28% had died and 18% were still in the vegetative state. But for non-traumatic injuries such as strokes, only 14% had recovered consciousness at one year, 47% had died, and 39% were still vegetative. Patients who were vegetative six months after the initial event were much less likely to have recovered consciousness a year after the event than in the case of those who were simply reported vegetative at one month.[12] A New Scientist article from 2000 gives a pair of graphs[13] showing changes of patient status during the first 12 months after head injury and after incidents depriving the brain of oxygen.[14] After a year, the chances that a PVS patient will regain consciousness are very low[15] and most patients who do recover consciousness experience significant disability. The longer a patient is in a PVS, the more severe the resulting disabilities are likely to be. Rehabilitation can contribute to recovery, but many patients never progress to the point of being able to take care of themselves.
There are two dimensions of recovery from a persistent vegetative state: recovery of consciousness and recovery of function. Recovery of consciousness can be verified by reliable evidence of awareness of self and the environment, consistent voluntary behavioral responses to visual and auditory stimuli, and interaction with others. Recovery of function is characterized by communication, the ability to learn and to perform adaptive tasks, mobility, self-care, and participation in recreational or vocational activities. Recovery of consciousness may occur without functional recovery, but functional recovery cannot occur without recovery of consciousness (Ashwal, 1994).
Causes[edit]
There are three main causes of PVS (persistent vegetative state):
Acute traumatic brain injury
Non-traumatic: neurodegenerative disorder or metabolic disorder of the brain
Severe congenital abnormality of the central nervous system
Medical books (such as Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins. (2007). In A Page: Pediatric Signs and Symptoms) describe several potential causes of PVS, which are as follows:
Bacterial, viral, or fungal infection, including meningitis
Increased intracranial pressure, such as a tumor or abscess
Vascular pressure which causes intracranial hemorrhaging or stroke
Hypoxic ischemic injury (hypotension, cardiac arrest, arrhythmia, near-drowning)
Toxins such as uremia, ethanol, atropine, opiates, lead, colloidal silver[16]
Trauma: Concussion, contusion
Seizure, both nonconvulsive status epilepticus and postconvulsive state (postictal state)
Electrolyte imbalance, which involves hyponatremia, hypernatremia, hypomagnesemia, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, hypercalcemia, and hypocalcemia
Postinfectious: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM)
Endocrine disorders such as adrenal insufficiency and thyroid disorders
Degenerative and metabolic diseases including urea cycle disorders, Reye syndrome, and mitochondrial disease
Systemic infection and sepsis
Hepatic encephalopathy
In addition, these authors claim that doctors sometimes use the mnemonic device AEIOU-TIPS to recall portions of the differential diagnosis: Alcohol ingestion and acidosis, Epilepsy and encephalopathy, Infection, Opiates, Uremia, Trauma, Insulin overdose or inflammatory disorders, Poisoning and psychogenic causes, and Shock.
Diagnosis[edit]
Despite converging agreement about the definition of persistent vegetative state, recent reports have raised concerns about the accuracy of diagnosis in some patients, and the extent to which, in a selection of cases, residual cognitive functions may remain undetected and patients are diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. Objective assessment of residual cognitive function can be extremely difficult as motor responses may be minimal, inconsistent, and difficult to document in many patients, or may be undetectable in others because no cognitive output is possible (Owen et al., 2002). In recent years, a number of studies have demonstrated an important role for functional neuroimaging in the identification of residual cognitive function in persistent vegetative state; this technology is providing new insights into cerebral activity in patients with severe brain damage. Such studies, when successful, may be particularly useful where there is concern about the accuracy of the diagnosis and the possibility that residual cognitive function has remained undetected.
Diagnostic experiments[edit]
Researchers have begun to use functional neuroimaging studies to study implicit cognitive processing in patients with a clinical diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Activations in response to sensory stimuli with positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and electrophysiological methods can provide information on the presence, degree, and location of any residual brain function. However, use of these techniques in people with severe brain damage is methodologically, clinically, and theoretically complex and needs careful quantitative analysis and interpretation.
For example, PET studies have shown the identification of residual cognitive function in persistent vegetative state. That is, an external stimulation, such as a painful stimulus, still activates "primary" sensory cortices in these patients but these areas are functionally disconnected from "higher order" associative areas needed for awareness. These results show that parts of the cortex are indeed still functioning in "vegetative" patients (Matsuda et al., 2003).
In addition, other PET studies have revealed preserved and consistent responses in predicted regions of auditory cortex in response to intelligible speech stimuli. Moreover, a preliminary fMRI examination revealed partially intact responses to semantically ambiguous stimuli, which are known to tap higher aspects of speech comprehension (Boly, 2004).
Furthermore, several studies have used PET to assess the central processing of noxious somatosensory stimuli in patients in PVS. Noxious somatosensory stimulation activated midbrain, contralateral thalamus, and primary somatosensory cortex in each and every PVS patient, even in the absence of detectable cortical evoked potentials. In conclusion, somatosensory stimulation of PVS patients, at intensities that elicited pain in controls, resulted in increased neuronal activity in primary somatosensory cortex, even if resting brain metabolism was severely impaired. However, this activation of primary cortex seems to be isolated and dissociated from higher-order associative cortices (Laureys et al., 2002).
Also, there is evidence of partially functional cerebral regions in catastrophically injured brains. To study five patients in PVS with different behavioral features, researchers employed PET, MRI and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to sensory stimulation. In three of the five patients, co-registered PET/MRI correlate areas of relatively preserved brain metabolism with isolated fragments of behavior. Two patients had suffered anoxic injuries and demonstrated marked decreases in overall cerebral metabolism to 30–40% of normal. Two other patients with non-anoxic, multifocal brain injuries demonstrated several isolated brain regions with higher metabolic rates, that ranged up to 50–80% of normal. Nevertheless, their global metabolic rates remained <50% of normal. MEG recordings from three PVS patients provide clear evidence for the absence, abnormality or reduction of evoked responses. Despite major abnormalities, however, these data also provide evidence for localized residual activity at the cortical level. Each patient partially preserved restricted sensory representations, as evidenced by slow evoked magnetic fields and gamma band activity. In two patients, these activations correlate with isolated behavioral patterns and metabolic activity. Remaining active regions identified in the three PVS patients with behavioral fragments appear to consist of segregated corticothalamic networks that retain connectivity and partial functional integrity. A single patient who suffered severe injury to the tegmental mesencephalon and paramedian thalamus showed widely preserved cortical metabolism, and a global average metabolic rate of 65% of normal. The relatively high preservation of cortical metabolism in this patient defines the first functional correlate of clinical–pathological reports associating permanent unconsciousness with structural damage to these regions. The specific patterns of preserved metabolic activity identified in these patients reflect novel evidence of the modular nature of individual functional networks that underlie conscious brain function. The variations in cerebral metabolism in chronic PVS patients indicate that some cerebral regions can retain partial function in catastrophically injured brains (Schiff et al., 2002).
Misdiagnoses[edit]
Statistical PVS misdiagnosis is common. An example study with 40 patients in the United Kingdom reported 43% of their patients classified as PVS were believed so and another 33% had recovered whilst the study was underway.[17] Some PVS cases may actually be a misdiagnosis of patients being in an undiagnosed minimally conscious state.[18] Since the exact diagnostic criteria of the minimally conscious state were only formulated in 2002, there may be chronic patients diagnosed as PVS before the secondary notion of the minimally conscious state became known.
Whether or not there is any conscious awareness with a patient's vegetative state is a prominent issue. Three completely different aspects of this should be distinguished. First, some patients can be conscious simply because they are misdiagnosed (see above). In fact, they are not in vegetative states. Second, sometimes a patient was correctly diagnosed but is then examined during the early stages of recovery. Third, perhaps some day the notion itself of vegetative states will change so to include elements of conscious awareness. Inability to disentangle these three example cases causes confusion. An example of such confusion is the response to a recent experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging which revealed that a woman diagnosed with PVS was able to activate predictable portions of her brain in response to the tester's requests that she imagine herself playing tennis or moving from room to room in her house. The brain activity in response to these instructions was indistinguishable from those of healthy patients.[19][20][21]
In 2010, Martin Monti and fellow researchers, working at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, reported in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine[22] that some patients in persistent vegetative states responded to verbal instructions by displaying different patterns of brain activity on fMRI scans. Five out of a total of 54 diagnosed patients were apparently able to respond when instructed to think about one of two different physical activities. One of these five was also able to "answer" yes or no questions, again by imagining one of these two activities.[23] It is unclear, however, whether the fact that portions of the patients' brains light up on fMRI could help these patients assume their own medical decision making.[23]
In November 2011, a publication in The Lancet presented bedside EEG apparatus and indicated that its signal could be used to detect awareness in three of 16 patients diagnosed in the vegetative state.[24]
Treatment[edit]
Currently no treatment for vegetative state exists that would satisfy the efficacy criteria of evidence-based medicine. Several methods have been proposed which can roughly be subdivided into four categories: pharmacological methods, surgery, physical therapy, and various stimulation techniques. Pharmacological therapy mainly uses activating substances such as tricyclic antidepressants or methylphenidate. Mixed results have been reported using dopaminergic drugs such as amantadine and bromocriptine and stimulants such as dextroamphetamine.[25] Surgical methods such as deep brain stimulation are used less frequently due to the invasiveness of the procedures. Stimulation techniques include sensory stimulation, sensory regulation, music and musicokinetic therapy, social-tactile interaction, and cortical stimulation.[26]
Zolpidem[edit]
There is limited evidence that the hypnotic drug zolpidem has an effect.[27] The results of the few scientific studies that have been published so far on the effectiveness of zolpidem have been contradictory.[28][29]
Epidemiology[edit]
In the United States, it is estimated that there may be between 15,000 and 40,000 patients who are in a persistent vegetative state, but due to poor nursing home records exact figures are hard to determine.[30]
History[edit]
The syndrome was first described in 1940 by Ernst Kretschmer who called it apallic syndrome.[31] The term persistent vegetative state was coined in 1972 by Scottish spinal surgeon Bryan Jennett and American neurologist Fred Plum to describe a syndrome that seemed to have been made possible by medicine's increased capacities to keep patients' bodies alive.[10][32]
Society and culture[edit]
Ethics and policy[edit]
An ongoing debate exists as to how much care, if any, patients in a persistent vegetative state should receive in health systems plagued by limited resources. In a case before the New Jersey Superior Court, Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital, a community hospital sought a ruling that dialysis and CPR for such a patient constitutes futile care. An American bioethicist, Jacob M. Appel, argued that any money spent treating PVS patients would be better spent on other patients with a higher likelihood of recovery.[33] The patient died naturally prior to a decision in the case, resulting in the court finding the issue moot.
In 2010, British and Belgian researchers reported in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that some patients in persistent vegetative states actually had enough consciousness to "answer" yes or no questions on fMRI scans.[34] However, it is unclear whether the fact that portions of the patients' brains light up on fMRI will help these patient assume their own medical decision making.[34] Professor Geraint Rees, Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, responded to the study by observing that, "As a clinician, it would be important to satisfy oneself that the individual that you are communicating with is competent to make those decisions. At the moment it is premature to conclude that the individual able to answer 5 out of 6 yes/no questions is fully conscious like you or I."[34] In contrast, Jacob M. Appel of the Mount Sinai Hospital told the Telegraph that this development could be a welcome step toward clarifying the wishes of such patients. Appel stated: "I see no reason why, if we are truly convinced such patients are communicating, society should not honour their wishes. In fact, as a physician, I think a compelling case can be made that doctors have an ethical obligation to assist such patients by removing treatment. I suspect that, if such individuals are indeed trapped in their bodies, they may be living in great torment and will request to have their care terminated or even active euthanasia."[34]
Notable cases[edit]
Tony Bland – first patient in English legal history to be allowed to die
Paul Brophy – first American to die after court-authorization
Sunny von Bülow – lived almost 28 years in a persistent vegetative state until her death
Gustavo Cerati – Argentine singer-songwriter, composer and producer who died after four years in a coma
Prichard Colón – Puerto Rican former professional boxer and gold medal winner who spent years in a vegetative state after a bout
Nancy Cruzan – American woman involved in a landmark United States Supreme Court case
Gary Dockery – American police officer who entered, emerged and later reentered a persistent vegetative state
Eluana Englaro – Italian woman from Lecco whose life was ended after a legal case after spending 17 years in a vegetative state
Elaine Esposito – American child who was a previous record holder for having spent 37 years in a coma
Lia Lee – Hmong child who spent 26 years in a vegetative state and was the subject of a 1997 book by Anne Fadiman
Haleigh Poutre
Karen Ann Quinlan
Terri Schiavo
Aruna Shanbaug – Indian woman in persistent vegetative state for 42 years until her death. Due to her case, the Supreme Court of India allowed passive euthanasia in the country.
Ariel Sharon
Chayito Valdez
Vice Vukov
Helga Wanglie
Otto Warmbier
See also[edit]
Anencephaly
Brain death
Botulism
Catatonia
Karolina Olsson
Locked-in syndrome
Process Oriented Coma Work, for an approach to working with residual consciousness in patients in comatose and persistent vegetative states
References[edit]
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^ Jennett, B (2002). "Editorial: The vegetative state. The definition, diagnosis, prognosis and pathology of this state are discussed, together with the legal implications". British Medical Journal. 73 (4): 355–357. doi:10.1136/jnnp.73.4.355. PMC 1738081. PMID 12235296. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
^ "New Scientist". 2014-02-02. Archived from the original on 2017-07-11. Retrieved 2019-01-07.
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^ Schapira, Anthony (December 18, 2006). Neurology and Clinical Neuroscience. Mosby. p. 126. ISBN 978-0323033541.
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^ K Andrews; L Murphy; R Munday; C Littlewood (1996-07-06). "Misdiagnosis of the vegetative state: retrospective study in a rehabilitation unit". British Medical Journal. 313 (7048): 13–16. doi:10.1136/bmj.313.7048.13. PMC 2351462. PMID 8664760.
^ Giacino JT, et al. (2002). "Unknown title". Neurology. 58 (3): 349–353. doi:10.1212/wnl.58.3.349. PMID 11839831.
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^ Willful Modulation of Brain Activity in Disorders of Consciousness at nejm.org
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^ Cruse Damian; et al. (2011). "Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state: a cohort study". The Lancet. 378 (9809): 2088–2094. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.368.3928. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61224-5. PMID 22078855.
^ Dolce, Giuliano; Sazbon, Leon (2002). The post-traumatic vegetative state. ISBN 9781588901163.
^ Georgiopoulos M, et al. (2010). "Vegetative state and minimally conscious state: a review of the therapeutic interventions". Stereotact Funct Neurosurg. 88 (4): 199–207. doi:10.1159/000314354. PMID 20460949.
^ Georgiopoulos, M; Katsakiori, P; Kefalopoulou, Z; Ellul, J; Chroni, E; Constantoyannis, C (2010). "Vegetative state and minimally conscious state: a review of the therapeutic interventions". Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. 88 (4): 199–207. doi:10.1159/000314354. PMID 20460949.
^ Snyman, N; Egan, JR; London, K; Howman-Giles, R; Gill, D; Gillis, J; Scheinberg, A (2010). "Zolpidem for persistent vegetative state—a placebo-controlled trial in pediatrics". Neuropediatrics. 41 (5): 223–227. doi:10.1055/s-0030-1269893. PMID 21210338.
^ Whyte, J; Myers, R (2009). "Incidence of clinically significant responses to zolpidem among patients with disorders of consciousness: a preliminary placebo controlled trial". Am J Phys Med Rehabil. 88 (5): 410–418. doi:10.1097/PHM.0b013e3181a0e3a0. PMID 19620954.
^ Hirsch, Joy (2005-05-02). "Raising consciousness". The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 115 (5): 1102. doi:10.1172/JCI25320. PMC 1087197. PMID 15864333.
^ Ernst Kretschmer (1940). "Das apallische Syndrom". Neurol. Psychiat. 169: 576–579. doi:10.1007/BF02871384.
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^ Appel on Betancourt v. Trinitas
^ Jump up to: a b c d Richard Alleyne and Martin Beckford, Patients in 'vegetative' state can think and communicate, Telegraph (United Kingdom), Feb 4, 2010
This article contains text from the NINDS public domain pages on TBI. [1] and [2].
External links[edit]
Sarà, M.; Sacco, S.; Cipolla, F.; Onorati, P.; Scoppetta, C; Albertini, G; Carolei, A (2007). "An unexpected recovery from permanent vegetative state". Brain Injury. 21 (1): 101–103. doi:10.1080/02699050601151761. PMID 17364525.
Canavero S, et al. (2009). "Recovery of consciousness following bifocal extradural cortical stimulation in a permanently vegetative patient". Journal of Neurology. 256 (5): 834–6. doi:10.1007/s00415-009-5019-4. PMID 19252808.
Canavero S (editor) (2009). Textbook of therapeutic cortical stimulation. New York: Nova Science. ISBN 9781606925379.
Canavero S, Massa-Micon B, Cauda F, Montanaro E (May 2009). "Bifocal extradural cortical stimulation-induced recovery of consciousness in the permanent post-traumatic vegetative state". J Neurol. 256 (5): 834–6. doi:10.1007/s00415-009-5019-4. PMID 19252808.
Connolly, Kate. "Car crash victim trapped in a coma for 23 years was conscious", The Guardian, November 23, 2009.
Machado, Calixto, et al. "A Cuban Perspective on Management of Persistent Vegetative State". MEDICC Review 2012;14(1):44–48.
What is real what is truth where are the lies. I must open my mind to a bigger consciousness. I must seek truth. what is the illusion of knowledge of life. I would like to wake from the sleep and see truth. that joy can be open to the full. life is stranger then any fiction!
Mike
Father and son collaboration
Our photographic art is a kinetic motion study, from the results of interacting with my son A.J and his toys.
He was born severely handicapped much like a quadriplegic. On December 17,1998. Our family’s goal has always been to help A.J. use his mind, even though he has minimal use of his body.
A.J. likes to watch lights and movement. One of the few things he can do for himself is to operate a switch that sets in motion lights and various shiny, colorful streamers and toys that swirl above his bed.
One day I took a picture of A.J. with his toys flying out from the big mobile near his bed like swings on a carnival ride. I liked the way the swirling objects and colors looked in the photo.
I wanted to study the motion more and photograph the whirling objects in an artful way, I wanted my son A.J. to be a part of it. After all, he’s the one who inspires me. When A.J. and I work together on our motion artwork, A.J. starts his streamers and objects twirling, I take the photographs.
Activating a tiny switch might not seem like much to some, but it’s all A.J. can do. He controls the direction the mobile will spin, as well as when it starts and stops. The shutter speeds are long, and sometimes, I move the camera and other times I hold it still.
I begin our creation with a Nikon digital camera. Then I use my computer with Photoshop to alter the images into what I feel might be an artistic way. Working with Photoshop, I find the best parts from several images and combine them into the final composite photograph. I consider the finished work to be fine art. The computer is just the vehicle that helps my expressions grow.
I take the photographs and A.J. adds the magic. It’s something this father and son do together. After I’ve taken a few shots, I show him the photos in the back of the camera. When the images are completed, I show him from a laptop. He just looks. He can’t tell me whether or not he likes the images, but he’s always ready to work with me again.
It offers me my only glance into A.J.’s secret world. We’ve built a large collection of images and I hope the motion and color move you as much as they do me.
A.J. inspires me to work harder to understand my life in the areas of art, photography, people, spirituality, and so much more. He truly sets my mind in motion and helps me find the beauty in everyday things.
AJ Patnode - A Journey of Hope (documentary):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR7m8QFcmRM
This shows how I do the Camera work:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmjVVGraUVw
AJ'S blog:
Abstract set:
www.flickr.com/photos/patnode-rainbowman/sets/72157602269...