Bad bodies, wok and woe

For insights about commodification and cultures see HIV In China: Understanding the Social Aspects of the Epidemic (UNSW Press, 2010) edited by Jing Jun & Heather Worth, Body Shopping: Converting Body Parts to Profit (Oneworld, 2009) by Donna Dickenson and Sex, Power & Consent: Youth Culture and the Unwritten Rules (Cambridge University Press, 2010) by Anastasia Powell.

Dickenson discusses issues such as stem cell research, biopatenting, the genetic comments and 'face shopping' (the latter being something explored in my recent paper 'The Face of Anxiety in the Age of Biometrics'). Powell considers notion of consent and exploitation, including Australian law regarding sexting.

Jun & Worth include Su Chunyun's 'Red Oil: Blood and the role of a machine in the HIV Outbreak in Central China' (101-116) highlighting the inadequately regulated plasma trade, and Zhang Yuping's 'Fears of Identity Exposure Among Gay Men Living With HIV' (119-137).

Psychic octopus

IP Kat, the excellent UK intellectual property blog, reports on 'The marketing of octopus Paul', ie the supposedly psychic German octopus "who became a global sensation when he correctly predicted the outcome of all Germany games in the recent football World Cup as well as the result of the World Cup final". Alas, said critter has failed to send me details of the winning Lotto numbers so that I can retire to a life of writing satirical comments about octopi, drinking tea, sleeping in linen sheets in a four-poster bed and reading the collected works of Jeremy Bentham to a family of heeler dogs.

The Kat offers "a short selection" of Octopus Paul stories -

RTL recently reported that a Russian company was interested in hiring Paul as a "bookie", whereas German magazine Der Spiegel informed us that an American composer Parry Gibb composed a love song for Paul ("Paul the octopus, we love you") which can be experienced on YouTube. The Telegraph then reported that Kazakh bookmakers were "furious at Paul" and blamed him for "their paltry World Cup profits", whereas Chinese website Xinhuanet reported that the Chinese comic suspense film "Kill Paul Octopus" will open in Chinese cinemas in August. Paul, also made an enemy: The Telegraph today reported last week that Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed that Paul symbolizes the "decadence and decay" of the Western world. In the latest news today, we learn from the Austrian Der Kurier that Paul will now also record an album of Elvis songs ("Paul The Octopus Sings Elvis"). I still have hope that the latter was meant to be a satirical article but I fear that this is a genuine news item.

Time, I think, for the Octopus chat show ... and the Octopus Election Poll (Will Julia Win? When will they unmuzzle Barnaby Joyce? Octupus Paul Sees All, Reports All ... and presumably eats whatever German Octopi have for dinner after a spot of dissecting tomorrow's movement on the DAX.) What about Wanda The Wombat, provider of tips about the Melbourne Cup, the ASX and the availability of ACTION buses?

A corporate law contact has meanwhile pointed me to Martin Gardner's 'Doug Henning and the Giggling Guru' in 19(3) Skeptical Inquirer (1995).

Gardner comments that Transcendental Meditation instructors

promise to teach you, after you fork over thousands of dollars for advanced courses, a variety of awesome supernormal powers known as sidhis. They include the ability to become invisible, to see hidden things, to walk through walls, and to fly through the air like Peter Pan and Wendy. Doug’s conjuring was fake magic. TM teaches real magic.

Vedic flying has been the most publicized of the sidhis. Photographs distributed by TM officials show devotees in a lotus position and seemingly floating in midair. The photos are misleading. No TMer has yet demonstrated levitation to an outsider. The best they can show is the ability to flex one’s legs while in a lotus position on a springy mattress and hop upward a short distance. The phony photos were snapped when the supposed floater was at the top of a bounce. One cynic said he never believed the woman in a picture was actually levitating, that instead she was being held up by an invisible TMer!

The flying sidhi has four stages. First, a twitching of limbs. Second, the hop. Third, hovering. Fourth, actual flying. Only the first and second stages have been shown to skeptics, although devout TMers firmly believe that there are Vedic flyers in India and that Maharishi can take off whenever he likes even though no one has ever seen or videotaped him in flight.

“When you reach your full potential,” Henning told a reporter, “and you think ‘I want to levitate,’ you can levitate.” And in a lecture: “You can disappear at a high state of consciousness because your body just stops reflecting light.”

Oh dear.

Gardner continues that -

Amazingly, TMers are greatly entranced by lotus hopping. Last October a demonstration was held at the University of Toronto. Three Vedic “flyers” giggled while they bounced on their bums for five minutes, looking (said one observer) like legless frogs. I was told by Charles Reynolds, who for many years designed Doug's stage illusions, that during one of Henning’s TV rehearsals he periodically halted all activity so those present could meditate and send him powerful vibes while he tried vainly to float. He actually believed he might be able to demonstrate levitation on his forthcoming show!

Several disenchanted TMers have sued the organization for failing to teach them powers that were promised. In 1987, for instance, Robert Kropinski, a former TM instructor, asked for $9 million because he was never able to fly. He also charged that TM had caused him “headaches, anxiety, impulses toward violence, hallucinations, confusion, loss of memory, screaming fits, lack of focus, paranoia, and social withdrawal.” A Philadelphia jury awarded him $138,000.

And the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, friend of quantum gurus Deepak Chopra and Ervin Laszlo?

Since he started TM, the giggling guru has raked in an estimated $3 billion from his millions of gullible followers. He now controls a vast empire that includes a conglomeration of Heaven on Earth Hotels around the world, a consulting corporation, numerous trading companies, medical clinics, and other firms here and there.

Maharishi Ayur-Veda Products International (MAPI) sells a raft of herbs, teas, oils, incense, and natural food substances said to cure diseases and reverse aging. Admirers of the best-selling books on “quantum healing” by Boston’s Deepak Chopra may be surprised to know that he is a TM booster with close ties to MAPI, president ofa Maharishi Vedic University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and owner of an Ayur-Vedic clinic in Boston. In 1989 His Holiness awarded Chopra the title of “Lord of Immortality of Heaven and Earth.”

Maharishi Research universities are all over the globe. There is one in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, others in Fairfield, Iowa (the movement’s U.S. headquarters), in Buckinghamshire, England, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and in Vlodrop, Netherlands. Vlodrop is the movement’s world headquarters, where Maharishi now lives. The colleges seem to spring up and die like mushrooms.

What about the research, which includes - quelle surprise - another One Big Theory Of Everything?

The word “research” in the names of these universities refers to investigations of what is called Vedic science. It is said to combine the subjective approach of the East with the objective approach of Western science and to usher in what the Maharishi calls the “full sunshine of the dawning of the age of Enlightenment.” According to His Holiness, the universe is permeated by a “field of consciousness” underlying the laws of quantum mechanics. The Maharishi, who once studied physics, is keen on the latest results in particle theory.

Expensive double-spread ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Time, Newsweek, and who knows where else, periodically promote the Maharishi’s unified field theory. Physicist John S. Hagelin is the movement’s top quantum-mechanics maven. He has predicted that Maharishi’s influence on history “will be far greater than that of Einstein or Gandhi.”

That's a nice echo of the 'bigger than Ben Hur' accolades by the Akashic Field folk in World Futures.

Hagelin and other scientists at TM universities have written hundreds of technical papers, most of them published by TM university presses, although a few have sneaked into mainstream science and medical journals unaware of the authors’ TM affiliation.

In his paper "Is Consciousness the Unified Field?" Hagelin (who has a Harvard doctorate in physics) conjectures that the sidhis operate by upsetting “the balance of statistical averaging in quantum-mechanical laws:

Indeed, the phenomenon of levitation, with its implied control over the local curvature of space-time geometry, would appear to require the ability to function coherently at the scale of quantum gravity, which is the assumed scale of super-unification and the proposed domain of pure consciousness. In this way some of the sidhis, if demonstrated under laboratory conditions, would provide striking evidence for the proposed identity between pure consciousness and the unified field.

TMers have no doubts about the "Maharishi effect". This refers to incredible changes produced by mass meditations. The movement claims that their efforts helped bring down the Berlin wall, resolve the Gulf War, cause stock-market rises, collapse the Soviet Union, decrease traffic accidents, and cut the crime rate in Washington, D.C., and other cities. Such wonders are supported, of course, by highly dubious statistics.

Animal Law

A strong commendation of Deborah Cao's new Animal Law in Australia and New Zealand (Pyrmont: Thomson Reuters 2010) and Landmark Cases in the Law of Tort (Oxford: Hart 2010) edited by Charles Mitchell & Paul Mitchell.

The Cao is lucid and perceptive legal writing - lucidity being an attribute that I esteem - that covers -

- Animals: Morality, Science and Justice
- Historical Development of Animal Law
- Legal Status of Animals
- Overview of Animal Law in Australia and New Zealand
- Animal welfare Legislation
- Regulation of the Treatment of Companion Animals
- Regulation of the Treatment of Farm Animals
- Regulation of Wild Animal welfare
- Regulation of Animal Testing

The work has a current and comprehensive 23 page bibliography.

Michael Kirby's foreword comments that -

The reader will therefore imagine that I faced the task of reading this new book with added anxiety, lest it cause me to banish fish from my diet and to embrace the habits of a vegan. In the end, that has not happened. the book is wise and temperate. It recognises that many human beings are on a journey of appreciation about this matter. But it teaches that all of us have to address cruelty to animals, and especially to mammals, whose genome and sensory systems are so similar to those of human beings

He goes on to state that -

The book adopts a moderate, factual and analytical style. This is essential because its readership is likely to be the growing body of university students, most of them in law faculties, who are increasingly electing to undertake courses in animal welfare law at colleges throughout Australasia ... What, not so long ago, was regarded as an exotic topic of limited interest is now a fast-growing curriculum subject with a real legal dimension.

It is a dimension that may inform our thinking about the rights - and responsibilities - of humans and of corporations.

The Torts Landmarks, drawn from a 2009 Kings College London symposium, features 13 chapters - usually of around 25 pages - discussing key UK torts cases such as George v Skivington, Daniel v Metropolitan District Railway Company and Hedley Byrne v Heller.

Excellent reading, even if you're not a devotee of torts law ... or as one of my sarkier students put it, a voluptuary of torts (an image that makes me think of purple silken hangings, sherbert, incense, to-die-for carpets and a very large bare-chested man with a turban and a scimitar - Dyson Heydon meets Salammbô and The Arabian Nights).

Revolutions

Three perspectives on revolutions ...

From the New York Times - 'Building a New History by Exhuming Bolívar'

The clock had just struck midnight. Most of the country was asleep. But that did not stop President Hugo Chávez from announcing in the early hours of July 16 that the latest phase of his Bolivarian Revolution had been stirred into motion.

Marching to the national anthem, a team of soldiers, forensic specialists and presidential aides gathered around the sarcophagus of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century aristocrat who freed much of South America from Spain. A state television crew filmed the group, clad in white lab coats, hair nets and ventilation masks, attempt what seemed like an anemic half-goose step.

Then they unscrewed the burial casket, lifted off its lid and removed a Venezuelan flag covering the remains. A camera suspended from above captured images of a skeleton. Insomniacs here with dropped jaws watched live coverage of the Bolívar exhumation on state television, with narration provided by Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami.

For those unfortunate enough to have dozed off, there was always Twitter.

“What impressive moments we’ve lived tonight!” Mr. Chávez told followers in a series of Twitter messages sent during the exhumation that were redistributed by the state news agency a few hours later. “Rise up, Simón, as it’s not time to die! Immediately I remembered that Bolívar lives!”

Even Venezuelans used to Mr. Chávez’s political theater were surprised by the exhumation, which pushed aside issues like a scandal over imported food found rotting in ports, anger over an economy mired in recession and evidence offered by Colombia that Colombian guerrillas are encamped on Venezuelan soil.

Some of Mr. Chávez’s top aides have begun using the exhumation as a method for attacking his opponents. Last month, the culture minister, Francisco Sesto, chastised Baltazar Porras, a Venezuelan archbishop, for “verbal desecration” for contending that Bolívar was, in fact, dead.

From the Guardian - 'Music fails to chime with Islamic values, says Iran's supreme leader - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claims the promotion and teaching of the artform is not compatible with country's sacred regime'

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today that music is "not compatible" with the values of the Islamic republic, and should not be practised or taught in the country.

In some of the most extreme comments by a senior regime figure since the 1979 revolution, Khamenei said: "Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic."

Khamenei's comments came in response to a request for a ruling by a 21-year-old follower of his, who was thinking of starting music lessons, but wanted to know if they were acceptable according to Islam, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. "It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music," he said.

From Big Questions Online - 'Deepak Chopra's God 2.0 - The "quantum flapdoodle" of the New Age author is a failed effort to update medieval theology.'

Chopra believes that the weirdness of the quantum world (such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) can be linked to certain mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness). This supposition is based on the work of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light in scientific circles. ...

Chopra's use and abuse of quantum physics is what the Caltech quantum physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann calls "quantum flapdoodle", which consists of stringing together a series of terms and phrases from quantum physics and asserting that they explain something in our daily experience. But the world of subatomic particles has no correspondence with the world of Newtonian mechanics. They are two different physical systems at two different scales, and they are described by two different types of mathematics.

Michael Shermer's review of the "flapdoodle" unfortunately does not refer to ongoing debate within the social sciences and humanities regarding Alan Sokal's 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' in (1996)  46/47 Social Text 217-252, a debate that highlights disagreements - some of which are evident in statements of opinion elsewhere in this blog - regarding language, doctrine and disciplinarity. Another perspective is provided by Olav Hammer's Claiming knowledge: strategies of epistemology from theosophy to the new age (Brill, 2001) or Robert Lilienfeld's classic The Rise of System Theory: An Ideological Analysis (Wiley, 1978).

Cow Dung Toothpaste and counterfeit chic

Today's NY Times features coverage of the forthcoming Contraband (London: Steidl & Partners) by Taryn Simon, which apart from pictures of dead guinea pigs and hawks includes a shot of cow dung toothpaste (the latter a suitable present for 'appropriationists' doing the Employment & Discrimination Law unit at UC).

Simon recorded a 'ceaseless flow' -

one the public rarely sees: contraband detained and seized from international flights. ...

After setting up makeshift studios at inspection sites in Terminal 4, Ms. Simon photographed 1,075 items that were taken from passengers and express mail. They ranged from banal bags of nuts to a falcon corpse from Indonesia in a package that declared it to be "home décor".

"This is a look at an attempt to control what is considered threatening to economies, to personal safety and to a nation", Ms. Simon said.

She has meticulously cataloged every item alphabetically for a 500-page book, Contraband, that Steidl will publish this fall. The New York Times Magazine is featuring an excerpt of 40 images.

Viewed collectively, her simple, uniform images offer a fascinating portrait of the world through objects from "alcohol" to "zolpidem" (Ambien).

Some items turn up again and again: sexual stimulants, counterfeit luxury goods and drugs. "I think it's a depressing reflection of what everyone is chasing — all these forms of escape that create quite a flat representation of human desire in all corners of the world", Ms. Simon said.

Fake Louis Vuitton handbags, steroids from Pakistan and counterfeit boxes of Viagra from China (labeled "USA American Visagra") are just a few of the images that serve as a time capsule of contemporary desire. Not everything is so predictable, however. Among the more surprising objects were two dead guinea pigs. They were taken from a passenger flying in from Ecuador, where the animal is considered a delicacy.

"You have people arriving from different cultures with the normal parts of their everyday life, and then these suddenly take on a wild identity under U.S. Customs", Ms. Simon said.

Counterfeits reappear in 'Jailhouse Frocks: Locating the Public Interest in Policing Counterfeit Luxury Fashion Goods' by David Wall &Jo Large in 50(6) British Journal of Criminology (2010) -

Counterfeiting raises some interesting intellectual questions for criminologists, policy makers and brand owners, not least that it differs from the types of offending that traditionally form the crime diet of the criminal justice system. Whilst it is growing in prevalence due to the enormous returns on investment, it is unlikely that the public purse will fund major anti-counterfeiting initiatives in a climate of public sector cut-backs, emphasising the need to allocate resources effectively. This article seeks to locate the public interest in policing counterfeit luxury fashion goods by separating it out from the broader debate over safety-critical counterfeits such as aircraft parts. It then maps out, what is in effect, the criminology of desire for counterfeit goods, before outlining the market incentives for counterfeiting and related criminal activity.

the Benny Mussolini Club

People sometimes see what they want to see or just what they are told.

Brigitte Hamann's Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth (London: Granta 2005) for example describes the aged Mrs Wagner enthusing about that nice Mr Hitler - so kind to dogs and children, such perfect manners, such an artist and so very ill-served by ungrateful underlings.

That connoisseur of cream cakes, dumplings and the industrialised murder of several million kids, their parents and grandparents (let's not mention the war, said Mrs W) was a member of the Benny Mussolini Club - people nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The club does include people of great humanity and merit but mere nomination - a very easy process - is no guarantee of worthiness and thus should not be taken at face value. As Gilbert & Sullivan noted, things are not always what they seem: skim milk sometimes masquerades as cream and resounding titles may identify entities that are virtuous but ultimately underwhelming. Titles are sometimes easily spawned.

The preceding post about Ervin Laszlo's endorsement of Akashic Field Therapy (an endorsement that seems consistent with independent statements by Laszlo and might thus be considered to be authentic) has provoked thought about how audiences construe authority and about the reception of NGOs that are concerned with intangibles.

Laszlo is described as founder of the Club of Budapest. The Club's Australian presence is - for a sceptic - somewhat perplexing, with for example an announcement in 2008 (there's nothing since then, so perhaps the members have done a spot of astral travelling in the past two years) that -

we would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of you for having joined the Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day on May 18.

On this day, hundreds of thousands of people resonated in high consciousness and sent powerful bright thoughts to humanity and to our beautiful Planet Earth from five continents, from Australia and Uzbekistan to the United States, from Italy and Uganda to Costa Rica. Participants from 45 countries registered with us and we imagine there were more countries involved.

People "resonated in high consciousness"? And "sent powerful bright thoughts" - as distinct from the dull grouchy thoughts that you are reading, thoughts transmitted via HTTP and optical fibre rather than the Blavatsky aether - "to humanity and to our beautiful Planet Earth"? No doubt our beautiful Planet Earth is suitably appreciative and resonated back.

The site notes that Laszlo is -

head of the General Evolution Research Group, which he founded.

He is an advisor to the UNESCO Director General, ambassador of the International Delphic Council, member of both the International Academy of Science, World Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Philosophy. He is the former president of the International Society for Systems Sciences.

Another bio states that he is -

the author or co-author of forty-seven books translated into as many as twenty languages, and the editor of another thirty volumes including a four-volume encyclopedia. He is Founder and President of The Club of Budapest, Founder and Director of the General Evolution Research Group, Chancellor-Nominee of the GlobalShift University, Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, Senator of the International Medici Academy, and Editor of the international periodical World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution. Laszlo has a PhD from the Sorbonne and is the recipient of four honorary PhD's, from the United States, Canada, Finland, and Hungary. He was awarded the Peace Prize of Japan, the Goi Award in Tokyo, 2002, and the International Mandir of Peace Prize in Assisi, 2005.

For a grinch such as myself, inclined to look on the dark side, it is terribly funny - redolent of 1920s fads for mysticism, homeopathy, nut cutlets, international committees, little journals with long titles and larger ambitions, secret handshakes and gatherings of the true believers around gurus such as Keyserling, Gurdjieff or Steiner. (Steiner was of course a fan of the Akashic Field, reflected in works such as The submerged continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, their history and civilization: being chapters from the Akashic records. Lemuria and Atlantis!) You can have fun researching bodies such as the International Delphic Council, the International Medici Academy, the GlobalShift University and the World Academy. Along the way - take a cut lunch and a torch, as some of the entities are obscure - you'll be entertained by serendipitous discoveries.

Recipients of the Goi Award include Deepak Chopra. (Alas, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has levitated, if that's the word, to the great beyond, and thus wasn't available for nomination or continued association with TM University.) What appears to be the Mandir site includes treats such as promo for LifeWave patches -

based on the principles of new biotechnologies for improving health of people around the world to make them feel good and live well. LifeWave patches stickers are based on the principles of acupuncture which dates back to 5000 years ago but without using needles due to the development of nano and biotechnology, by stimulating the nerve centers with microcrystals of silicon compounds in contact with the human body creating flows energy to the meridians and clear.

Hmmm, one cannot, it seems, have too many high thoughts and too much resonance. Microcrystals are so much more stylish than the quackery that saw Katherine Mansfield's tuberculosis being treated by immersing the author in a large pile of cow manure.

Some of the dot points are merely worthy. The Club of Budapest (complete with a World Wisdom Council and associated with the World Commission on Global Consciousness and the World Spirit Forum) is elsewhere described as -

an informal association of ethical, globally as well as locally active opinion leaders in various fields of art, science, religion, and culture, dedicated to our common future. Its members include the Dalai Lama, Vaclav Havel, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Peter Ustinov, Peter Gabriel, and young and creative people in many parts of the world. They place their names and energy into the service of what they consider the crucial mission of our time: catalyzing the emergence of adapted vision and values in society by evolving our individual and collective consciousness.

"Evolving our individual and collective consciousness" by resonating as one with the universe and thereby furthering a New Age version of Intelligent Design?

quantum mysticism?

One of my more skeptical friends, knowing of my interest in 'neo-naturalist' claims that 'quantum holism' offers a uniquely scientific and authoritative answer to questions of jurisprudence, has pointed me to an endorsement by Ervin Laszlo, the World Futures editor, quantum mysticism guru and Akashic Field exponent ... modestly described as The Theory of Everything or unkindly dismissed as a repackaging of Theosophy.

Laszlo is claimed by CJ Martes, an Akashic Field Therapist [sic], as endorsing Akashic Field Therapy -

AFT Endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize Nominated Physicist ...

Akashic Field TherapyTM is an integral method of healing that allows an individual to reveal important information that is creating subconscious barriers or blocks to happiness & well-being. As we continue to discover the profound role of the Akashic Field in our everyday lives, we open humanity to embrace a new interpersonal frontier. This has far reaching implications for each of us as member's of the global community. I am pleased that Akashic Field TherapyTM is an avenue for personal/spiritual self-discovery based on my 2004 Theory of Everything, which offers all people the opportunity to make a harmonious, greater connection to the world around them.

Gurdjief, come on down. Let's ignore inconvenient details such as the fact that nomination for a Nobel is easy and isn't the same as being awarded the prize. (It's the Peace Prize, btw, not one for science ... with Laszlo joining nominees such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.)

dialing up your Akashic Record

Martes explains that -

Mystics and sages have long maintained that an interconnecting cosmic field exists at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic Record. The most notable mystic and psychic who routinely assessed the Akashic records in the form of readings for individuals, was Edgar Cayce. Edgar Cayce lived from 1877 to 1945 and during his lifetime performed thousands of such readings for people all over the world.

Cayce was very well respected for all of his intuitive insights. He greatly influenced the lives of his clients. He also influenced the holistic health field with some of the natural remedies he brought from the Akashic Records. It is easy to study his work because he carefully documented each person's reading and follow-up for many years past a client's initial session with him. Because of this, he gained perhaps the most concrete evidence and information about the way the Akashic Records work for each of us.

Cayce believed that the Akashic Records contained a history of every soul since the dawn of creation. These records connect us to each other he often said. They contain the stimulus for every symbol, archetype or mythic story that has ever heavily touched the patterns of human behavior.

When asked where the records reside, Cayce would say they exist within "the skein of space and time" and told many people interested in his work that the "records are everywhere". He further believed that the records are inscribed on some kind of "etheric energy" similar in nature to the energy of thought. This could be correlated to the "aether" of scientific interest.

The records are impressed or encoded into energy they are continually rewritten based on our choices, thoughts and emotion. He believed that revealing the past for a person in his readings was useful to bring about conscious awareness of the soul's growth. He never stopped emphasizing that the records are written by each of us by our own free will and choices made in the present. He reinforced also that our choices in the present moment allow the future possibilities to unfold in our lives from our Akashic Records. ....

Cayce explained that the Akashic records not only store everything in the past of an individual but they also contain all the future possibilities and potentials for our lives. He believed that we basically call into potential an array of possible futures as we interact in our daily lives and learn subconsciously from the data that has already been accumulated.

The theory Cayce had that all the future potentials for us already exist in the Akashic Records simply waiting for our free will to call them into action, is strikingly similar to a view that would emerge many decades later in the newest area of science called Quantum Mechanics and then with Ervin Laszlos Theory of Everything.

It also further supports that our thoughts do indeed create our reality and that it is our perceptions that drive what is real for each of us.

Quantum scientists recently discovered a new area of time and space called the Quantum vacuum. There are newly discovered properties of time and space happening all the time but it seems clear now that this vacuum is a super dense cosmic frictionless medium that carries light and all the universal forces of nature. A well known scientist and philosopher named Ervin Laszlo, in his recently published book, Science and the Akashic Field shows that it may not only be a super dense sea of frictionless energy but also a sea of information conveying the historical experience of matter.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Martes offers to read your Akashic Record and treat your problems using Akashic Field Therapy.

How, you ask? The answer, it seems, is simple -

How are sessions done, especially if I'm not seen in person?
The wonderful thing about these sessions is you not have to be in person or on the phone to have one. Reading information from the Akashic Field is done using very minimal information: full name and birthdate. All information, results and interpretations are recorded onto your own audio cassette which is sent to you via US Priority Mail or Global Priority Mail if not in the Continental United States.

Ah, so past, present and future can be discerned by the adept using only your name and birth date. That claim had my friend rolling on the floor. I merely wondered whether the same therapy would allow me to confer with Cleopatra.

But wait, as they say, it gets better. Martes goes on -

Is this like getting an Akashic Record Reading or Psychic Reading?
Yes and No. It is similar to a reading in that spiritual intuition is used to provide an accurate interpretation of the information found, however it is not limited to just a few past lives or a reading of information. The way it differs is the depth of real information about limiting beliefs, traumas and other negative patterns that directly influence your life now and your potential future possibilities.

How are the patterns identified?
Through CJ's research into various methods of psychology, quantum healing and other holistic methodologies has developed a set of 17 charts that encompass the majority of patterns that could be present for a person. These charts are used to provide very real and beneficial insight into sub-conscious states that cause you to block positive potentials in your life. Dowsing is used to locate the specific patterns on the indicated charts for you.

Is it possible to do a session for a child?
Children also carry various blocking patterns into a life experience just as adults do. Even with a younger child who is not consciously aware of the session material have shown tremendous benefit from this work. A child session consists of 3 major life programs and is less cost than an adult session. The cost for a child's session is $125.00. A child is considered from birth to 16 years of age.

What information do I need to give CJ for this session?
CJ needs your full name, birth date and a photograph to conduct your session. Photographs are not necessary, that is the personal preference of CJ to see who she's working with.

eye of newt, entrails of cat

From my perspective that seems much like tea-leaf reading, palm-reading, consultation of chicken entrails or use of a crystal ball ... presumably of comfort to the therapist and patient but somewhat lacking in scientific credibility.

It would be hilarious if delightful claims about telepathy, 'remote healing', changing the weather through "community consciousness", premonitions, communication with the dead - or is it the undead - and other weirdness were not being recurrently made in publications such as World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, in my opinion eroding the claimed authority of Laszlo, of his fans and of that no doubt very prestigious journal. Madame Blavatsky, L Ron Hubbard, Rudolph Steiner and Edgar Cayce just do not work for me, irrespective of whether an author has used (or misused) words such as quantum, holism, mesodomain or singularity.

Some people will agree with Deepak Chopra - exponent of quantum mysticism, advocate of 'cosmic ordering' (ie wish hard enough and the good things will happen ... presumably people in Darfur and Auschwitz omitted to wish hard enough), author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and claims such as "contrary to our traditional notions of aging, we can learn to direct the way our bodies metabolize time". Metabolize time? Direct the way time is metabolized? That's a weirdness that's consistent with Laszlo's enthusiasm for "communication with entities that are no longer living in the familiar form in this world but are alive nonetheless".

Chopra stated that -

Ervin Laszlo provides the most brilliant, comprehensive, and intellectually satisfying integral theory of everything that I have ever read. ... His work transcends the vision of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, the quantum pioneers, and many other scientific giants of history.

Well, at least he didn't say that Laszlo was bigger than Jesus Christ.

Chopra has moved on from the days when he was promoting levitation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the exponent of the simple life whose collection of bling featured over 100 Rolls Royce cars. In my opinion we would be well advised to be wary of such expansive claims or discoveries by World Futures contributor Stanislav Grof that the A-Field (rather than the LSD supplied to some of his cancer patients) accounts definitively for their recollection - while in "holotropic states" - of past lives as aristocrats, gorillas, insects or plants.

Combs, Arcari & Krippner's 2006 article in World Futures on 'All of The Myriad Worlds: Life in the Akashic Plenum' calls on the A-Field as an explanation for parapsychology. The authors are arguably correct in arguing that "interest in esoteric traditions such as Gnosticism, Sufism, Vedanta, Shaivism, Kabbala, Hermeticism, Theosophy, Neoplatonism, Wicca, neo-shamanism, and Tibetan Vajrayana" involves "a widespread search for answers beyond the rational confines of scientistic reductionism and the standard Judeo-Christian worldview", creating an "alternative reality tradition".

That creation is however not new and, with all respect to its adherents, is not "hard science". It is evident in the writings of fin de siecle spiritualists and other enthusiasts who, although often sincere, have been recurrently debunked by hard science, the same science that has addressed nonsense such as witches on broomsticks, saints who cross the sea on a millstone or levitate, neighbours who curdle milk or cause impotence with magic spells, and demonic possession. Just as importantly, for me 'alternative reality', however comforting to its adherents, does not replace rationality and "scientific reductionism" as bases for understanding the world. Readers might want to consider the cautions provided here before embracing hocus pocus - or mere hypothesis - as 'scientific proof'.

'Alternative realities' - such as reincarnation (as a potplant, cat, film star or otherwise) or using prayer to make it rain - in my opinion lack a certain credibility. They militate against action that might improve the lives of people in the ordinary world, not the alternative one inhabited by Cthulu, Xenu, Baron Samedi, the Little Green Men from Mars, the Prince of Darkness or other phantoms. Some of us will thus not be calling the Akashic Field Therapy hotline or using our credit cards (of the psychic or dollar variety) to pay the therapist.