Do you believe in an afterlife???

I hope people who vote “other” would leave a comment explanatory of “other”. Thanks.

 

Interesting Visitors

Shortly before the New York Marathon, I was visited by two very friendly and interesting Maasai warriors from Kenya who were getting acclimated to our town before they participated as runners. I’d visited Kenya and Tanzania about twenty years ago and met a few Maasai people on that trip, so I knew a tiny bit about their rich culture. I am impressed by their care for the environment and their cattle. This visit had nothing to do with my long ago trip, but I am glad to see that these proud people are preserving their culture.

 

Still not many sunspots!

credit: spaceweather.com

This is a follow-up on a previous post

“Spiritual Musings on the Current Solar Minimum“

about the longest solar minimum in modern history.  It seems that the solar minimum is still in full swing with 217 sunspotless days thus far (as of 10/07/09) in 2009 after 266  sunspotless days in 2008. Now scientists are beginning to wonder if the sun is changing dramatically because it’s brightness has dropped perceptibly. The sun’s magnetism is lessening and its current sheet is flattening. The solar wind has lessened as well, which allows more cosmic rays to enter our solar system. Are these things part of a natural cycle? This is not clear since instruments to measure such things as solar wind are relatively new. But the drop in solar radiance (brightness) can cause less warmth in the upper atmosphere, thereby slowing global warming and suggesting a possible Universal intervention in human affairs as I posited in my previous post. More cosmic rays however are not so benign. They can make space travel more dangerous for terrestrial life forms (i.e. humans, monkeys and dogs) sent into space and can also disable unmanned space vehicles.

Nearly as amazing as the complex activities of our star is the lack of awareness and interest on the part of the general public. The behavior of our sun and the space weather it generates almost surely impact our lives on a dramatic level. Yet these stories receive little press in the major media. My advice is to visit www.spaceweather.com regularly to get a perspective of what is going on.

On that site today, I found out that there will be an impact of  the Moon by NASA’s nuclear armed LCROSS spacecraft and its Centaur booster rocket Friday morning, Oct. 9th, at approximately 7:30 a.m. EDT. The mission purportedly is to investigate subsurface water on our satellite.  Coincidentally, I have been reading Ingo Swann’s book Penetration about his very unusual adventures remote viewing the Moon. He posits many startling things including activities on the Moon by extraterrestrial beings. If he is correct and they are still present, they will not be pleased with Friday morning’s impact, since composition of the Moon has been found to be less dense than that of the Earth and the impact might cause a reverberation on the sphere. What if the Moon’s orbit is changed? Danger!  Will Robinson, Danger! Well, meteors have been hitting the moon for millennia so maybe not.

 

Are Our Supplements Safe from Chinese Tainted Products?

There has been much rumbling from various sources that the FDA intends to ban certain nutritional supplements from being sold in the US because they are being misused (overdosed) by those that take them or because they have unsafe properties. Largely I believe that the individual should determine for themselves if they wish to take the supplement and the individual should be responsible for following the dosage guidelines which by law should be posted clearly on the bottle. The government cannot always protect people from themselves.

There are of course certain exceptions to this where the FDA should be more active in testing and banning substances. For instance one exception should be when a product is tainted.

Most people by now are aware of the very many scandals in China surrounding the intentional tainting with melamine and lead of food and nutritional supplements. Both of melamine and lead are deadly when ingested by humans.  But many are not aware that most of the vitamin C sold in this country comes from China. The vitamin C and other imported substances are not sufficiently monitored and tested for purity before being repackaged and sold to unsuspecting Americans.

In my opinion, this is a huge accident waiting to happen. I know of several people poisoned by tainted tryptophan from Japan and one person suffering from lead poisoning due to a tainted Ayurvedic product from India. Their lives have been very compromised by their poisoning.

There have been instances of poisoning within the US and from other trade partners, but the instances of tainted products emerging from China is taking epic proportions.

Tainted Chinese Drywall

Tainted Chinese Tapioca

Tainted Chinese Milk

Tainted Chinese Apples, Mushrooms & more

Tainted Chinese Pet Food

Tainted Chinese Imports Common

A list of the articles on this subject could fill many pages. We, as US citizens, should petition our government to crack down further on these imports and have the FDA do more testing for poisons especially in supplements. I wonder also why the US cannot manufacture more of its own components for vitamins and nutritional products. I hope that readers of this blog will call the manufacturers of the supplements that they use to ask if the components come from China. I further hope that readers will email their Congressional  representatives in the House and Senate and demand to be protected from these poisons in their foods and supplements and other products.

 

Are U.F.O.s real?

 

Where in the world…..?

I haven’t done any fun posts of late, so here’s a contest. Where was this photo taken?  Please list country and town/city. I’m not sure of the prize. Any suggestions? I will publish the comments until a correct answer is given and then I publish the answer.

Update: The winner is Bid! The photo is of Dragør in Danemark (Denmark). What would she like for a prize? Let me know Bid. The flowers are “hollyhocks” in English (stockrosor in Swedish[?]), but as Karen said they are huge here because they are closer to the Arctic Circle. Second place goes to Baker, because (s)he named a town in Denmark, though it wasn’t the correct town. Third place goes to Sandy, Ellen and Marc who all guessed Denmark but gave no town. To everyone else who participated I send out a virtual hearty handclasp! This was so much fun (for me at least) that I may just do it again.

 

Spiritual Musings on the Current Solar Minimum

 

credit:NASA skylab

 

 

There have been very few sunspots on the sun for the last two years. So far it has been cool for late Spring in the greater New York City area. These two facts may be related.

Sunspots are magnetic storms that well up from the solar depths to the surface of the sun. It is believed that jet streams within the sun are responsible for sunspots appearing on the surface. Coronal mass ejections and the related solar flares are associated with sunspots. Historically sunspots wax and wane in eleven year cycles, though this is variable. The low point when there are few sunspots is known as the solar minimum and the high point of a cycle is called the solar maximum. We are now in a deep solar minimum. The year 2008 had the fewest sunspots since 1913.

During a solar maximum, the next of which was predicted for 2012, there is much solar magnetic activity in the form of sunspots and often solar flares and coronal mass ejections. There is disagreement among scientists as to whether this coming solar maximum will actually happen in 2012, because we are currently in a deep solar minimum and whether or not it will be a mild solar maximum. When the solar maximums are severe they can disrupt life on earth, particularly within our electrical grid. A high solar maximum replete with coronal mass ejections can cause power outages due to melting of the transformers within the electrical power grid. If you think of everything in our culture that we use that is dependent on electricity, you can imagine how severe such an event could be. Unlike a typical power outage, which can usually be fixed within a few days, melted transformers could take a long time to replace, especially if the problem were widespread. To get an idea of what might happen we need to study the great geomagnetic storm of May 1921 and the Carrington Event of August-September 1859. As dire as those events were, a similar event today would cause greater devastation due to the obvious fact that we use so much more electricity today compared to then. In 1859 there was virtually no dependence on electricity at all. The upside of solar flares are beautiful bright auroras observed close to the poles.

Getting back to solar minimums: There were few sunspots observed during a time in the second part of the 17th Century called the Maunder Minimum. This time was also known as the Little Ice Age. It is believed by most solar scientists that when there are few sunspots and few solar flares less energy reaches the Earth from the Sun and therefore lower general temperatures result. Does this mean that global warming is not true? No! Solar weather is a different force put upon the Earth’s climate than manmade global warming. It is unlikely that the current solar minimum will last long enough to vastly affect the results of manmade global warming. Obviously if the Sun’s output dramatically changed that could end life on Earth. However such changes usually occur in geologic time across millenia, in other words, very, very slowly. 

Is it possible that some being or entity is giving us a second chance to remedy global warming? I wonder if either a Supreme Being, or the emotional energy of this biosphere called Earth (Gaia and the other living entities on Earth including humanity) or the influence of an advanced alien culture interested in the preservation of a habitable planet is exercising influence on our star the Sun, giving us, the foolish and myopic human race a second chance to fix the global warming problem we created?

 

Critical Mass, the new Whitley Streiber novel

Whitley Streiber has written an exciting new novel that I just finished reading. Mr. Streiber is famous for his personal alien and UFO contact and abduction memoirs and his current event driven work like The Coming Global Superstorm which was the basis of the movie The Day After Tomorrow. Once I started Critical Mass, I couldn’t stop reading, it really held my interest.

The current event topic of the novel is loose nuclear material, a subject which seems rather neglected in the media considering the lethal importance it could have on our lives. I am not a nuclear weapons expert, but the general thesis of the book seemed quite plausible. I did not mind that in the lead character, Jim Deutsch, is embodied a superman. He could not be stopped, he was never deterred from his task. In a real life situation the work he accomplished would likely have been completed by a task force, but turning him into a sort of super hero was a literary device that allowed the reader to become invested in the outcome for the protagonist.

The Arab-American brother and sister who were the most prominent auxiliary characters were well drawn. I was particularly impressed with the character of the brother, whose public persona was miles from his private inner reactionary self. Though an exaggeration in the novel, it is not uncommon in life.

The ending was OK but slightly anticlimactic, which is not surprising given the incredible amount of exciting and terrifying action in the story.

Although I can recommend Critical Mass as entertaining reading (which it definitely is), the underlying message of the danger of unaccounted for fissionable materials cannot be overstated.

 

 

 

 

In Memoriam: Hans Holzer – January 26, 1920 – April 26, 2009

 

Hans Holzer

 

 

When I was a kid between the ages of ten and fourteen there is nothing that I would have rather done than read a book by Hans Holzer. This man wrote scores of books on the paranormal particularly true ghost stories. I gobbled them all up as fast as they were put on the shelves. I wanted to be a Viennese parapsychologist too.

Imagine my surprise some years later when I was introduced to Hans Holzer by a Wiccan friend at the Limelight, a circa 1990 club in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. We became friendly and my friend and I visited Hans several times at his roomy Upper West Side apartment. Hans was a strict vegetarian which made it difficult to go out for a meal. He liked to cook his own food. He was always very kind to me. Once he wrote a letter in my defense to the alumni association of a prominent Catholic university. The association felt it was against doctrine to have me visit there as a psychic. Hans said that the psychic sense was a proven skill and a subject for parapsychological inquiry not medieval witch-hunting (or something of that order) and I got my booking back.

In 2002 he published an updated version of the Psychic Yellow Pages and included an article about me. So events had come full circle for me since reading his books as a kid.

Hans Holzer, you are truly missed.

New York Times obituary

 

The Case of the UFO Balloons by Guest Blogger Kristen Ann Winslet

 

Kristen Ann Winslet

Flying Saucers & Aliens are a part of modern day Americana with film, books and music all getting involved in the subject. Throughout history mankind has been fascinated with looking up at the stars and wondering if we are truly alone. This question is what got Kristen Ann Winslet, a mild mannered financial & business analyst from rural northern New Jersey involved in a search for the truth. As early as the late 70’s with the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Kristen became fascinated with the thought that we are not alone in the universe.

 

 

 Today, Kristen uses her analytical skills to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects and/or lights seen in the sky through a volunteer organization called the Mutual UFO Network, (MUFON). The organization was founded in 1969 by Walt Andrus and John Schuessler. MUFON has grown into the premier UFO investigative organization in the United States today. To become a member of MUFON and to become a Field Investigator, please refer to the web site for more information. There are roughly 3,000 members in the organization today and the organization is getting ready to celebrate it’s 40^th Anniversary this summer at it’s annual symposium which will be held in Denver, Colorado.

 

 The investigative process begins when a witness reports seeing an Unidentified Flying Object, (UFO) on MUFON’s web site. The MUFON Case Management System, (CMS) was developed to gather statistical and other important information about reported cases for analysis purposes. The focus of MUFON is based on the scientific study of the UFO Phenomenon through the collection of this statistical information pertaining to these reports. It is hoped that by methodically collecting all of this data, that the organization can pull out real business language results to help bring us closer to understanding the UFO Phenomenon.

 

 Kristen joined the organization a few years ago after learning of the organization through the television series ‘The X Files’. Through the series, she became very intrigued in the investigative techniques used in the series  She thought that with her skills as an analyst, and her long time interest in the great question, ‘Are We Alone’ that it might make sense for her to at least join the organization to learn more about what MUFON was all about.

 

 After an experience she had in the summer of 2007, she decided to become a Field Investigator, Kristen says; ‘I still struggle today to try to understand what it was that my brother and I witnessed in the sky over Annandale, NJ. It was a dark brown saucer shaped object traversing across the sky with a raised dome in the center and it traveled without any sound in broad daylight ! The object was about 35 feet in diameter. As a pilot, it was something that I just could not explain scientifically based on my understanding of current aerodynamics and laws of physics. I was compelled to become a Field Investigator for MUFON”.

 

 Kristen ordered the Filed Investigator’s Manual in order to pass the test to become a MUFON Field Investigator. She took the test in late 2007. She included her resume with the exam’s answer form in order to allow Chuck Reever who is MUFON’s Chief Investigator, to review her profile. She felt that she wanted to go beyond what a typical Field Investigator did because of her passion for the subject. A few days later Chuck called Kristen and said that she passed the test and he wanted to know if she was interested in becoming a member of MUFON’s Star Team. Because of her skill sets from her resume, Chuck told her that he was interested in having her join a new team specifically organized to investigate high profile cases.

 

 The Star Team (Strike Team for Area Research) as it was named is tapped to be a rapid deployment strike team in a case where the Press is involved or there is possible evidence at the site where there may have been a  UFO landing. Shortly after the team was developed, James Carrion who is the International Director of MUFON contacted Kristen and asked if she would design an emblem to represent the STAR Team. She had designed emblems before for a few shuttle astronaut crews years ago as well as for other non-profit organizations like the National Space Society. After a few minor changes made by the other members of the team, the emblem was approved. With just over a year of investigative experience, Kristen has completed fifty cases with a number of these cases being associated with a STAR Team deployment.

 The Case of the UFO Balloons. Kristen received a call by Richard Lang who is the STAR Team Director  on the afternoon of January 6, 2009 while she was on the road preparing for a job interview. Richard said that a case was developing in the northern New Jersey area near Morristown as a result of an incident the evening before. Richard asked if she could quickly deploy to investigate the case as there were a number of CMS case reports filed. Without hesitation, Kristen acknowledged and accepted the case. That night, the case hit the 6 O’clock news on CBS in New York City; “Strange Red Lights Over Morris County, N.J.” She prepared to get organized for her field investigation work that would commence in the morning.

 

 The Investigation in the Field: The next morning, Kristen set out to investigate the case. She first read each of the cases filed and printed out a copy to have with her so that she had all the necessary information with her while she was in the field. She traveled to Cedar Knolls, Morristown, Madison and then the Morristown Municipal Airport near Florham Park, N.J. She took pictures of her travels as she entered each municipality identifying the locations where she performed her investigation. While in Madison, although she was not able to gain access to an area where debris had supposedly landed, she drove around the perimeter of that secured location looking up in trees for anything suspicious. Kristen had analyzed the video from the news the night before and suspected that the objects were incendiary devices attached to balloons. The news clip reminded her of the strange lights over Phoenix from a few years back.

 

 While driving in the area, she took a photograph of something in a tree that looked suspicious and then completed the rest of her field work before driving home. Once home, she looked at the photos and began to write her report. The suspicious object in a tree was included in her report. In the mean time, Marc Dantonio who performs photo analysis for MUFON had identified the objects in the video as being Chinese Lanterns. While preparing the case, Kristen remembered investigating a case in September that was very similar to this case so she pulled out the case file from her cabinet of  ‘X – Files’  and included that case report in her analysis. She then decided that she should begin to prepare a Case Study Report on these two cases in the form of a PowerPoint presentation in the event that other incidents occurred.

 

 Weeks later, more cases did occur and Kristen continued her analysis of each of these cases pulling out similarities and documenting the evidence. As time progressed Kristen began to prepare a suspect list behind these events. In early March she completed her Case Study Report after seeing the Wikipedia Web Page called ‘Morristown UFO’. It was here on this web page that all the evidence came together. Kristen noticed the damning evidence in two places on that web site. First, she noticed that the only video linked on that page was provided by Joe Rudy. The second and last piece of evidence was a remark that Joe Rudy and Chris Russo were traveling on Hanover Avenue and had taken Video and Still images of the incident. That was the clincher . . . they were prepared to document the event with Video AND still photo’s !!!

 

 Case Disposition “Hoax – Event”: On March 15, 2009, Kristen completed her report and mailed a paper copy to her New Jersey State Director, Retired USAF Maj. George Filer III. She also mailed a copy of the report to Matt Wilson, a Field Investigator from southern New Jersey who had assisted her on the February 7^th cases pertaining to these events. Kristen was in the process of training Matt who is one of MUFON’s newest Field Investigators.

 

 On April 1^st, 2009 an article in Newsweek identified Joe Rudy & Chris Russo as being the two individuals who pulled off the UFO Balloon Hoax. What Newsweek did not know was that MUFON, who was never contacted by anyone had not only immediately identified the case as a hoax, but later through analysis, had identified these two men as having been the individuals who pulled off the hoax.

 

 Comments may be left on the blog.

Kristen is also available for commentary about the case and/or follow-up via e-mail: kristenwinslet@aol.com

 

 

 

Earth Day 2009

“Our Mother, whose body is the Earth, Sacred is thy being. Thy gardens grow. Thy will be done in our cities, as it is in nature. Thanks be this day for food, and air, and water. Forgive us our sins against Earth, as we are learning to forgive one another. And surrender us not unto extinction, but deliver us from our folly. For thine is the beauty, and the power, and all life, from birth to death, from beginning to end. Amen. So be it. Forever. Blessed be.”

~Henry Horton

 

I Meet A Great American Hero!

On Saturday, April 11, 2009, the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Science (FIONS) celebrated their 20th anniversary with a full day’s worth of interesting events. The day began with a delicious brunch at the home of two gracious members on the Upper West Side. Although the food was superb the highlight of the brunch was a discussion with Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the sixth human to walk on the Moon and the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and crop circle expert Colin Andrews. In that discussion I was able to bring up the subject of disinformation in the UFO community and who might be responsible for that disinformation and to what end the disinformation is being disseminated.

 

Dr. Edgar Mitchell and Me

 

 

After the brunch there was a general meeting at SUBUD downtown at 2:00 p.m. followed at 2:30 by a fascinating lecture about crop circles by Colin Andrews. This was the first lecture given by Mr. Andrews in several years and it was very interesting. He spoke of some of his anomalous experiences with sound inside and in the area of the circles. 

Dr Mitchell gave a lecture about the future and the changes that have taken place on the planet in the past century. His grandparents emigrated to the West in a horse drawn wagon. His parents were alive when the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane and he walked on the Moon! He emphasized that the population tripled from 2 billion around 1900 to over 6 billion in 2000. The equation is now out of balance. We should continue to explore Space. He says it has been conclusively proven to him that we have been visited by extraterrestrials and that the Roswell crash was the real deal. There were students present from the High School of Aviation in Queens and they were encouraged to ask questions.

As an experiencer, I was very moved by his talk. When I was a little girl I wanted to become an astronaut very much. Astronauts were the greatest heroes of my childhood. My father felt psychically that the Space Program would produce many fatalities, especially amongst women, and threatened to shoot me in the legs if I attempted to board a rocket bound for space. Needless to say I boarded no rockets, but I never lost my interest in the Cosmos.

 

Colin Andrews and Dr. Ed Mitchell

 

Earth Hour, the Power Grid and Self-sufficiency

I support Earth Hour taking place on Saturday March 28, 2009 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. This is a world wide (84 countries) action by the World Wildlife Federation to have people turn off their lights and non-essential appliances. I’ll be turning it all off except for my refrigerator and I call on everyone to do the same. Last year 36 million in the USA took part. Hopefully this year there will be even more participation.  The organizers of Earth Hour state that the purpose of it is “to make a global statement of concern about climate change and to demonstrate commitment to finding solutions.”

This brings to mind an article I very recently read on New Scientist about how a large sunspot array on the Sun could cause a major catastrophe on Earth. It seems that on an equinox when the sunspot cycle has reached its peak, the sun could shoot out a blast of highly charged energy particles called plasma in a coronal mass ejection and if the solar wind makes a direct hit on Earth it could take out communications and electrical power on our planet by delivering a major overdose of direct current to large electrical transformers. This could easily cause a domino effect destroying various aspects of our infrastructure. Oddly this event could happen in the much feared year of 2012, due to a possible peak of sunspot activity at that time. Currently the sun is virtually devoid of spots which is in itself slightly unusual.

All this reminds me that it would be preferable to “get off the grid” and become energy independent. Solar and wind energy seem very attractive at this time. I also wonder about zero point energy and how technologically far away  that might be.

 

Earthquakes and UFOs in Morris County NJ

During February there were approximately four earthquakes in New Jersey, three of which were centered in Morris County. This is not an area known for earthquakes although I have heard that there is a fault under Lake Hopatcong. The first earthquake was felt on February 3, 2009 and was a 3.0 on the Richter scale. People said it was like a truck had been dropped from a high elevation and others said it felt more like an explosion than an earthquake. It should be noted that 3 of the 4 earthquakes were centered a short distance from the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal and some local residents wonder if there was not an underground mishap. My own experience with earthquakes is limited to two I experienced in Manhattan. They both felt like a subway had been rerouted directly under my building, however one was centered in the Upper East River and the other in nearby Connecticut. If there is a fault running under Lake Hopatcong one wonders about the advisability of underground weapons storage a mile or two away!

There have also been numerous reports of UFOs having been seen in January and February. Some skeptics have concluded that the reports represent Chinese lanterns but the observers dispute this. Here are some reports:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/aroundnj/ufo010609.html

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20090130/UPDATES01/90130019

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20090218/UPDATES01/90218034

There are some precedents for the confluence of UFOs and earthquakes. Some researchers believe that powerful electromagnetic fields before earthquakes can disrupt activity in the temporal lobes, causing people to see lights in the sky.

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/ufo.html

Here is a report from Peru about UFOs and lights being seen before a during a larger earthquake:

http://www.ufoarea.com/aas_lightsintheskyduringearthquakeinperu_sr.html

So this is basically a known phenomena that can be researched on the web and in the literature. In Morris County the red lights in the sky were mostly seen in late January, directly before the earthquakes in early February.

April 10, 2009 Note: Apparently two hooligans have confessed to faking the UFOs by launching flares with balloons. They created an aviation hazard and proved NOTHING. Because it is possible to fake something does not mean that all UFO phenomena are faked.

Oddly, the only place I’ve seen a UFO has been in Morris County. The first time was when I was about twelve years old at Cozy Lake. This was the real deal and was witnessed by 15 to 20 other individuals including police officers. (I plan to go into this at great length at another time.) The second time was about 12 years later while passing a reservoir on Route 23 and I am the least positive about this sighting as I was driving by myself to a job.  The third and most recent time was on Route 46 this past September around Pine Brook (Morris Co.)/Fairfield (Essex Co.).  I am a sky watcher and was looking up toward the North north east and I saw a silver glint in the clear blue sky. I assumed it was an airplane but as I continued to watch it, I could discern no wings, no tail and no windows. It looked like an aluminum or steel barrel with struts around it.  Then it winked out of sight. Later I saw several accounts of cylinders being seen as nearby as Staten Island on George Filer’s Filer’s Files.

The other issue here is that I’ve noticed a general increase in public interest in UFOs during the last 18 months. More people I’m speaking to seem to be buzzing about them and this past week on the Paracast I heard Richard Dolan opine that some information might be shortly forthcoming from government informants.

 

Lifeline Adventures

Joe McMoneagle and Fahrusha. Photo by Haines Ely.

Last month I had the privilege of attending the Monroe Institute’s Lifeline Seminar. It was a very illuminating and gratifying experience. Lifeline is described by the Institute as: “a multi-faceted six-day graduate program that provides access to states of consciousness beyond those experienced in the Gateway Voyage and Guidelines programs.  Its primary  emphasis is one of service – service to those here in physical matter reality and service to those There who have made the transitions from the physical and who may benefit from assistance.”

There is some disagreement among participants as to whether they are truly accessing the consciousnesses of the physically dead or some aspect of themselves or whether or not it is all one and the same thing anyway. The program was facilitated by Karen Malik and Bob Holbrook, who were both excellent.

I spent a lot of the week running energy through my body, specifically up my spine, and that was a very joyful and exhilarating experience. I received so much energy I was dancing in the field behind the Nancy Penn Center! During the week, I had a really interesting mental telepathy event with another participant who was my roommate. She is an archaeologist who was wounded in Iraq by an IED. We were listening to the same audio presentation on headphones in the same room. Each room has two units called CHECs which are used as beds for sleeping at night and by day are used for listening to hemi-sync audio presentations. Hemi-sync audio provides the basis for much of what is done at the Monroe  Institute. The CHECs are heavily curtained providing darkness and a modicum of solitude for meditations.

In the meditation we were led to a “focus level”, an altered state of consciousness, wherein it is common to encounter the spirits of the recently departed. I found myself looking down from above at a very large hall with a rounded cylindrical roof. Below me were several hundred white marble looking biers and on those biers were bodies covered in white covers or drapes. The bodies were clothed in white with a wide (approx 4″) gold stripe running from the left shoulder to the right hip. I sensed someone with me. It seemed to be a woman…it seemed to be my roommate. I ascertained that she had the situation covered and I left for a very odd scene at a doughnut shop. This part of my vision was slightly humorous as the recently dead man to whom I spoke did not seem to realize he was dead and was still working at the doughnut shop. He was excited to offer me any kind of doughnut I could imagine, any flavor I could come up with. It was very magical to him.

When the meditation audio was finished I emerged from my CHEC and spoke to my roommate. Turns out she volunteered her experience in the barrelled ceilinged hall and it was identical to mine down to the gold stripe (!) but in her vision after I left the deceased bodies sat up.

Two other wonderful experiences during the week were two group discussions, one with remote viewer Joe McMoneagle, who spoke of photos of the far side of the moon which appear to reveal the ruins of structures that were built by someone and are available from Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL) in California if you know what to ask for. I was lucky to also be at Joe’s table during lunch. Every time I meet him he has many fascinating experiences and ideas to discuss. The other talk was with

Fahrusha and Robert Van de Castle

Robert Van de Castle, a dream expert who was a pioneer in dream research dating back to the famous Maimonides Dream Lab. He regaled us with some of his anomalous dream experiences. About a year ago, Dr. Van de Castle was kind enough to answer an emailed question I sent him and it was a real thrill to get to meet him.

All in all it was a wonder-filled week with new friends and old at TMI!

 

People I Know Write Books!

I feel so happy and privileged to know people who write books. In the past few years I’ve lost two author friends, Captain Arthur Haggerty and Serena Wilson. My world lost some of its luster when they passed on. Both of them changed my life for the better. Cap was really my best friend for many years. He wrote primarily about dog training and he helped me to get my late dog, Junior Pie, into show business. One of his books, Dog Tricks, was co-written by Carol Lea Benjamin, who has written a series of dog inspired mysteries that I love to read, and who I am privileged to have met several times in conjunction with Captain Haggerty! Serena Wilson was my first official teacher of Middle Eastern Dance and a dear friend as well. She wrote The Serena Technique of Bellydancing with her husband Alan Wilson, also a friend.

—————————————————————————————-

When I first met Lauren Raine I felt I must have known her in a previous life. So familiar her story and so compatible her personality, she is surely a spiritual sister. She has published a work of great brilliance, Masks of the Goddess. This limited edition art book comprises and chronicles her work of many years. She is featured in several other of my blog pieces on this site.

This past year my friends Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg have written a handsome volume about flavor pairings, The Flavor Bible, that I adore because I seldom cook by recipe. This book tells which food’s flavor goes well with which other food and which spice, allowing me to invent my own recipes with fervor and greater success.  This book is one of many wonderful food books that this illustrious globetrotting couple have written together.

Frank DeMarco is primarily a writer on metaphysical subjects and a founder of Hampton Roads Books and most recently Hologram Books. His 2008 offering, Babe In The Woods, is both metaphysical and very practical. For anyone who has ever thought about taking a seminar at the Monroe Institute, DeMarco has provided a detailed guide couched in a delightful story that is a thinly veiled account of his own first experience at this awesome place. I personally can’t wait to get back there. Frank DeMarco is one of the wonderfully wise and witty characters one might meet if they venture to the Institute and its surrounding community.

I’m Allergic is Missy Harris’s first childrens’ book and hopefully not the last. It is a charming book for both those kids with allergies and their young friends who don’t understand what the concept means. I believe that the book provides a great service in telling children who don’t suffer with allergies what happens in the experience of those that do.

All the other books mentioned here have been published in 2008. I feel compelled to mention another book, The Lure of The Edge by Brenda Denzler, published in 2001 but which I only found out about in November of 2008. Finding it was a very serendipidous synchonicity. I was browsing a library catalog for intelligently written books about UFOs when I saw Brenda’s very familiar name. Could it be the very same person with whom I’d been corresponding on an internet listseve about other subjects? Indeed it was.  It is written very thoughtfully on an extremely charged subject and it deals with, among other things,  the onus that falls on many professionals who entertain the reality of UFOs and the unwillingness of much of the scientific community to look further into the UFO mystery.

 

In a world of devolution emerges a hope for human evolution…

I spent millions of years in the world
of inorganic things
as a star, as a rock…
Then I died and became a plant–
Forgetting my former existence
because of its otherness
Then I died and became an animal–
Forgetting my life as a plant
except for inclinations in the season
of spring and sweet herbs–
like the inclination of babes
toward their mother’s breast
Then I died and became a human
My intelligence ripened, awakening
from greed and self-seeking
to become wise and knowing
I behold a hundred thousand
intelligences most marvelous
and remember my former states
and inclinations
And when I die again
I will soar past the angels
to places I cannot imagine
Now, what have I ever lost by dying?

Jelalu’ddin Rumi (1207 – 1273), What Have I Ever Lost By Dying?

I have always been somewhat attracted to the concepts involved with Sufism. One of those concepts says that humans are still evolving and I find that idea very attractive, but I have been hard pressed to find any examples of this in a world where I see the lowest common denominator constantly being the “people’s choice”. Some elements of the media are egregious proponents of the philosophy of dumbing down the public, and it has been suggested by some that fluoridation of the water supply also has the same hebetudinous effect. Particularly irksome is the idea that being intelligent is somehow undesirable, and that you can be a leader of people from a point of arrogant ignorance; as in I don’t give a rat’s ass that I can’t find Afghanistan on a map I can still bomb the %#*& out of it. I am mildly encouraged that our newly elected President has a reading level that far surpasses My Pet Goat.

That being said, intelligence is not the only measure of human evolution. I would consider two other measures, that of compassion provided by a knowing sense of interconnectedness of all beings and that of new or enhanced capacities provided by the heretofore poorly recognized psi or sixth sense. These two measures are not unrelated as they can both lead toward the same interconnectedness. Likewise, I see two traits emerging in greater numbers in human palms symbolizing human evolution. The first is the Universal Heart Line, a heartline which is long and straight from the outside of the palm under the pinky to midway or further through the mound of Jupiter under the index finger and which shows the capacity to care for others beyond one’s family or social group and whose owners are often involved in charitable endeavours. The second sign is a headline that is disconnected from the lifeline, which indicates the ability for objective thinking and when the disconnect is particularly spacious, the ability for out-of-body experiences (while still alive).

The following article gives new hope for the evolution of human intelligence:

SMARTER MEN HAVE MORE SPERM
By Melinda Wenner
Live Science
January 9, 2009

http://www.livescience.com/health/090109-smarter-men.html

Women tend to like smart men because they’re usually more successful and
better providers. But here’s another reason: Their sperm is better, a new
study says.

Researchers at King’s College London, the University of Delaware and the
University of New Mexico recently compared results from five intelligence
tests given to 425 Vietnam War vets in 1985 as part of the U.S. Centers For
Disease Control and Prevention’s Vietnam Experience Study. These vets, aged
31 to 44, also provided sperm samples, so the researchers analyzed the sperm
per milliliter of semen, plus how many of the sperm swam normally, and other
measures of sperm health.

The smarter the men were, the more sperm they produced and the better their
wee ones swam — and it didn’t matter how old the men were or whether they
smoked, drank or were obese.

But why might these two seemingly unrelated traits be linked? Why would
calculus aces or business consultants make better sperm?

Turns out that intelligent people are generally healthier than their
less-clever peers — studies have shown that brainiacs are, for instance,
less likely to suffer from heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Scientists have
suggested that smart people may score less stressful jobs in safer places
and that they may make better lifestyle choices, for instance by exercising
more and eating better. In other words, maybe bright people actually listen
to the Surgeon General.

But these newest findings, to be published in an upcoming issue of the
journal Intelligence, found that negative habits had little effect on sperm
quality, so they don’t support that theory.

The researchers instead speculate that intelligence might be passed down as
part of a larger package of good attributes. One gene can influence multiple
traits, so the genes involved in smarts may somehow improve sperm quality –
and perhaps other characteristics as well.

This could help explain, then, why intelligence can be so sexy: It could
simply be an indicator that a person has a lot of good genes and traits,
says study co-author Geoffrey Miller, a psychologist at the University of
New Mexico.

 

My Little Big Prediction

I ran across this article today thanks to Cindy P. I am not new to this information, but seeing it again set out so plainly reminded me that I know that it is a very serious issue which hasn’t gotten enough coverage. The issue is Melamine Poisoning and it could easily become one of the very big news stories of 2009. Melamine from China has already killed many thousands of our pets and many thousands of babies in Asia. Unscrupulous persons add it to the food supply, particularly milk products and protein powder. It can and will kill you. It is silent and deadly and I know of no cure. I predict it will become a major killer of humans across the globe unless the food supply is protected.

http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20081104.htm

From the November 2008 Idaho Observer:

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Melamine: Another toxic industrial byproduct planted in the food chain

Over the last few years, the list of food and drug recalls, ecoli and other food borne illness outbreaks and food/beverage-induced mass poisonings have become more frequent. Government-approved pharma drugs and chemicals of known toxicity are leeching into the environment and are intentionally added into products being sold to consumers. The most recent corporate food adulteration scandal involves melamine contamination in baby formula. While tragic for the babies themselves and the adults who loved them, the larger lesson of this poisoning is that corporate convenience and profit trump public health and safety when it comes to government regulatory oversight.

By The Idaho Observer

Near the end of September 2008, news was broadcast worldwide that 53,000 infants in China had become ill and several died as a result of melamine-contaminated milk.

This wasn’t the first time that Chinese melamine has contaminated products with deadly results. In March, 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began receiving thousands of reports of American cats and dogs dying from kidney failure after eating contaminated pet food. Although only 14 cases were confirmed as “melamine poisoning from pet food,” there is no centralized reporting system so the numbers of dogs and cats that died of melamine poisoning was likely much higher.

The pattern being revealed here is the increasingly pervasive presence of melamine contamination in commonly-consumed food products both here in the U.S. and abroad.

What is melamine?

There are several ways to produce melamine, some of which have been patented by Rockefeller’s Standard Oil subsidiary American Cyanamid beginning in 1956. Melamine, which is 66 percent nitrogen by mass, is added to a variety of plastics, resins, coatings and even concrete products to reduce porosity and increase strength. Melamine is also a flame retardant.

the Dutch company DSM, the world’s largest melamine producer, published an “industry update” in April, 2007. The update noted that, between 2002 and 2007, while the global melamine price remained stable, a steep increase in the price of urea (feedstock for melamine) has reduced the profitability of melamine manufacturing.

While melamine is manufactured as an end product, it is also a byproduct of synthesis gas production. “Syngas” production in China has been increasing to meet with the nation’s growing energy needs by converting low-grade coal into liquid fuel through a process that involves the conversion of urea through “pyrolysis” (heat and pressure in the absence of oxygen). Melamine is a byproduct of urea pyrolysis.

Since early 2006, mainland China, with melamine production growing by about 10 percent a year, has been experiencing a “serious surplus” of melamine and has recently become the world’s leading melamine exporter.

The emerging picture is that melamine, as a byproduct of syngas production, like sodium fluoride as a byproduct of aluminum and phosphate fertilizer manufacture (and depleted uranium as a byproduct of nuclear energy production), is expensive to dispose of properly so it is being diluted in commonly-consumed products and sold to people.

Melamine in milk and milk products

Melamine, a white powder that is not approved as a food additive, has very little taste or odor and is illegally being added to milk and milk products. Tests also show that melamine contains zero protein but has a unique chemistry that falsely accentuates the protein values of milk and milk products.

The basic nutrient in milk is the protein “casseinate.” Melamine has nearly the same protein structure as casseinate but contains too many nitrogen ions and cannot be absorbed nor excreted by the kidneys and kidney failure eventually results. This can be especially dangerous if one’s diet is high in nitrates such as those found in processed meats like ham, lunchmeat and hot dogs.

Adding melamine to milk powder not only reduces the actual milk content but is much cheaper than milk so it lowers production costs. Melamine can be easily mixed with powdered milk and, since it doesn’t have a unique smell or taste, it cannot be detected by consumers.

Melamine in food

The nitrogen-rich molecule is sometimes illegally added to food products in order to increase its apparent protein content. It has also been employed as a non-protein nitrogen, appearing in soy meal, corn gluten meal and cottonseed meal used in cattle feed. Melamine is known to cause renal and urinary problems in humans and animals when it reacts with cyanuric acid inside the body.

Background

In 2007, an estimated 50,000 cats and dogs in the U.S. died suddenly due to kidney failure. Investigators traced the cause to pet food that contained melamine-contaminated wheat gluten from China.

Beginning in 2008, hospitals in China reported an abnormal increase in infant cases of kidney stones. By August, 2008, China’s Sanlu Milk Powder tested positive for melamine content.

In September, 2008, New Zealand’s government asked China’s regulators to test milk products. By September 21, 2008, the vast majority of milk-based food products manufactured in China and stored in Taiwan warehouses tested positive for melamine content.

New Zealand, Australia and most E.U. nations responded by ordering a recall of melamine-contaminated products from China and issued public warnings.

In the U.S., however, because of the threat of credit market collapse, our shaky stock market, bank failures and Chinese ownership of $trillions in bonds and real U.S. assets, the Bush Administration’s FDA and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Mike Leavitt failed to order recalls or issue a public warning (Curiously, they continue to promote avian flu vaccines which are also manufactured in China by Rockefeller’s Sanofi-Pasteur). Meanwhile, many common food products contain melamine that are sold in stores throughout America.

What happens when melamine is ingested?

Melamine ends up inside the kidneys eventually forming stones which block the tubes that excrete urine. Since the person cannot urinate the pain is intense. The kidneys then swell and eventually begin to bleed. Although surgery can remove the stones, ingestion of melamine will often cause irreversible kidney damage. This can lead to loss of kidney function resulting in death from uremia or, if caught in time, long kidney dialysis—the expensive blood filtering process that takes about four hours every three days—for the rest of one’s life or until damaged kidneys can be replaced.

Why is kidney damage more serious in babies? Kidneys are very small and most modern babies, unfortunately, drink a lot of infant formula. It is estimated that 13,000 infants in China are currently hospitalized but since the media is tightly controlled in China, the actual number may be much higher.

What foods should be avoided?

Foods that contain dairy products from China should be avoided. Most milk chocolate sold is contaminated with melamine. Brand names such as Kraft, Nestle, Dreyer’s, Nabisco, Vitasoy, Mars and countless others use ingredients from China that could be contaminated with melamine.We suggest that you avoid food products from China and products containing Chinese ingredients until further public notice.

If you own a snack bar, restaurant or coffee shop, stop selling dairy-containing products from China. If you have infants at home, change to mother’s milk or find other substitutes such as raw goat’s milk. It is vitally important that you share this information with family and friends so they will understand the risk of melamine-contaminated milk poisoning.

The whole world (the Bush administration notwithstanding) is now deeply concerned with food products made in China or manufactured from ingredients made in China. It is difficult to determine where products are made based upon labels or barcodes. It may be prudent to simply avoid mass-produced and nationally-distributed milk and milk products unless you are certain that they are not imported from China or made from ingredients imported from China.

But where does it end?

If we are to boycott food from China and Taiwan because we suspect it may contain melamine, should we not also boycott food from the U.S. known to contain dangerous FDA-approved additives and drugs, genetically-modified plant and animal products? Should we not boycott U.S. food that has been irradiated to extend shelf life?

We are quickly coming full circle in the food-production cycle. We began as hunter-gatherers who either acquired food or starved. With urbanization came the division of labor and farmers produced food in trade for goods and services produced and supplied by others. Mechanization, coupled with corporatization, replaced farmers and food began being processed and packaged more and more for maximum profit and minimal personal liability to the point we are at today: The food supply sustains corporate profit not human life.

Our two choices are emerging: Eat poisoned food from corporate (fiction) sources and die slowly, or eat wholesome food from local (Creation) sources and live.

~Dr. A. True Ott, Ingri Cassel and Don Harkins contributed to this article

 

Bad News for Cats

Am I food?

This comes to me from Superior Bill. Though I am horrified I am not surprised. Considering the burgeoning human overpopulation, things like this are likely to become more rather than less common unfortunately. The slaughter and eating of cats is a very inauspicious activity to engage in.

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/ap/20081218/tap-as-china-cat-protest-1st-ld-writethr-bb10fb8.html

China protest decries custom of eating cats

By GILLIAN WONG,Associated Press Writer AP – Friday, December 19

BEIJING – A southern Chinese province must stop the “shameful” and “cruel slaughter” of cats for food, a group of more than 40 animal lovers in Beijing said Thursday as they unfurled banners in a tearful protest.

Thousands of cats across the country have been caught in the past week by traders and transported to Guangdong province to be killed for food, said the protesters gathered at the Guangdong government’s office in Beijing.

“We are very angry because the cats are being skinned and then cooked alive. We must make them correct this uncivilized behavior,” said Wang Hongyao, who represented the group in submitting a letter to the Guangdong office.

The protesters urged the provincial government to crack down on cat traders and restaurants that serve cat meat, although no law says it is illegal to eat cats. It has long been common for cats and dogs to be eaten in some parts of China and in some other Asian countries.

The demonstrators held up banners saying “Cooking cats alive! Shame on Guangdong!” and “Resolutely oppose cruel slaughter” as they met with a representative of the Guangdong office.

Calls to the Guangdong provincial office in Beijing rang unanswered, while the government news office in the province refused to comment.

The protest was apparently in response to Chinese media reports in recent days that carried pictures of furry felines peering out through bamboo crates and metal cages, apparently en route to Guangzhou, Guangdong’s capital. Other pictures show cats being skinned in restaurant kitchens.

About 5,000 cats were sent from Nanjing to Guangzhou, while cats from Shanghai, Hangzhou and other places were also being rounded up, the Chengdu Business Daily reported last week. The paper said people in Guangdong eat 10,000 cats a day.

No reason was given for the increased media coverage, or if there has been an increase in cat meat consumption.

Many of the protesters in Beijing were retirees who said they have been caring for strays cats. The protesters said they believed that some street cats in Beijing, “especially the fat ones,” have disappeared and were likely nabbed by cat meat dealers.

“These cats, they are like our children,” said Cui Qingzhen, a 56-year-old woman who said she has been feeding street cats for six years. “We can’t let these people do this to them.”

The demonstrators also noted that a virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, is suspected to have been spread to humans by civet cats, mongoose-like animals considered a delicacy in southern China.

SARS was first reported in Guangdong in November 2002 and killed 774 people worldwide before subsiding in July 2003. In 2004, Guangdong banned the raising, selling, killing and eating of civet cats.

“Haven’t they learned from SARS that some animals just shouldn’t be eaten by humans?” Cui said. “Ask the Guangdong people: What else must they eat?”

Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to the report.

 

Cave Dwelling

I have always been fascinated with the idea of living underground or living in a cave. I really think it might be the wave of the future. When I visited France, I went into some marvelous wine caves. Nearby some people live in caves and they are often called troglodytes.

http://www.newfreebooters.com/?p=11

In Scotland at the incredibly interesting community of Findhorn some of the dwellings are covered with dirt and have grass growing on top, while others are built into a hill. I’d love to visit Findhorn again and stay in such a place.

In Tunisia there is a place called Matmata that I wanted to visit where the denizens escape the North African heat by burrowing into the ground and creating underground homes. There is even an underground hotel Hotel Sidi Driss, where a scene from Star Wars was filmed. Unfortunately I did not have enough time in Tunisia to get there.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community/1980-11-01/Underground-Homes.aspx

The most fascinating of all underground complexes to me is in Cappadocia Turkey. There are at least forty underground villages some of which can be visited and toured.

Right here in the USA it is possible to purchase defunct underground missile silos to use as offices or dwellings. Peter Davenport who manages the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has done just that. He has purchased a decommissioned USAF ICBM missile base in Washington State to house the center. I met him and heard him speak at the Atlantic City UFO Conference last February (2008). He is doing a terrific job and I wish him well in this very important work and with this innovative underground site.

Finally here is a most informative article brought to my attention by Dara H. about 20 MILLION people who live in caves in China.

Energy efficient home, easy to maintain — and no mortgage

By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/57952.html

MIAOGOU VILLAGE, China — Like millions of other Chinese, Li Zhanjun lives in a dwelling that is fireproof, noise proof, warm in winter, cool in summer and the epitome of an eco-friendly design. Moreover, it’s cheap.

Li lives in a cave.

About 20 million Chinese still reside in caves and dirt-covered dwellings on the Loess Plateau that straddles the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River in China’s northwest.

Some of the caves have been passed down for generations, with hard-packed earthen walls, electrical wiring, piped-in plumbing and other modern conveniences, including cable television.

Longtime cave dwellers are often passionate about their way of life, saying they are shielded from the elements in a practical and efficient fashion, dwelling along hillsides and leaving valuable arable land in valleys for growing crops.

Researchers say economic necessity isn’t the only reason so many Chinese continue to reside in caves.

“People from abroad think people who live in caves are very poor. But our research shows that is not always the case,” said Wang Jun, a researcher on caves at the Xian University of Architecture and Technology.

Many simply have grown accustomed to a lifestyle that dates back more than a millennium. Caves also have a revolutionary luster. Mao Zedong, the revolutionary founder of modern China, lived in caves that still honeycomb this region after the Long March, plotting the drive to take over the country that succeeded in 1949.

Caves are easily excavated from the silty soil here, requiring only picks and other digging implements. The earth is so hard-packed that caves don’t need additional support to prevent collapse. Most have a stone facade, with large lattice windows framing a door and allowing light to pour in during the day.

Generally, the caves are shaped like loaves of bread, 10-to-13 feet wide and anywhere from 20-to-25 feet deep, with arched ceilings. Several caves dug next to each other can have connecting doors, providing for a larger overall dwelling, with flues allowing for ventilation from indoor cooking fires.

The caves provide a cool respite from intense summer heat, and a snug retreat for inhabitants as winter temperatures drop.

Wang Aifang recalled how one day last winter, temperatures fell to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. When she stoked up an indoor cooking furnace, the cave quickly warmed up.

“Look how the warm air circulates from the stove, under the bed and out the flue,” she said, feeding a fire in an earthen hearth with branches from dried sesame plants.

Her dirt cave had walls so hard-packed they appeared to be made of concrete. They were covered with white lime, except at lower levels, which she had covered in newsprint.

“The houses in the city have to use heat. We don’t,” Wang said.

Wang, the architect, who’s not related, said researchers had done tests on the caves finding that even when outside temperatures fell to 3 degrees, indoor temperatures in the caves stood at about 54 degrees.

Just a few decades ago, as many as 40 million Chinese lived in caves. Back then, many caves had small doors and windows, making them dark and dank. The numbers of cave dwellers has dropped as living standards improved in China, even as cave designs have gotten more comfortable, with bigger doors and windows and better ventilation systems.

Wang is trying to convince authorities to promote cave living, designing greenhouse fronts that allow them to trap solar heat more efficiently in winter. He said caves are far more energy efficient than freestanding buildings.

“If you cook just a little food over a fire, it heats up the whole cave. A house isn’t so efficient,” he said.

One American who spent five months with Chairman Mao in the caves around Yanan, his revolutionary headquarters here in Shaanxi Province, recalled the caves as “a great way to live.”

“My cave was very easy to heat — just a little square stone charcoal brazier . . . with a few sticks of charcoal glowing would warm the place during the day. When you went to sleep, on your little cot, you’d bank the fire by raking the ashes over the embers and then puff them back to glowing in the morning,” said Sidney Rittenberg, who spent some three decades in China before returning to the U.S.

“Life in the cave was quite clean,” Rittenberg added in an e-mail. “After boring a new cave out of the hillside, they would leave it unoccupied for the first year to let it dry out, so that by the time someone moved in it was both clean and dry.”

Cave living holds less appeal to young Chinese.

“They think it’s rustic,” said Li, who along with his wife Wang raised two sons in their cave, which was dug out by his grandfather. “They (the caves) are so comfortable, but the young people think it’s primitive.”

In addition to caves, many Chinese in this region live in hillside housing with earthen berms for walls and earth on the rooftop. Many are built with local stones from a quarry, with an arch facade. Standing outside his earthen home, Sheng Xiaolong noted the stonework on the facade, comprising large slabs.

“Actually, we pay more for this than for a regular building,” Sheng said. “People are not allowed to use explosives anymore to get their own stone slabs. . . . Stones are heavy and require a lot of labor.”

Cave designs have changed over the years. As rural incomes rise, cave dwellers bring more furniture home. They’ve built walls that go straight up to about six feet, allowing for wardrobes to be placed flush against walls. Ventilation systems have improved, and Wang said some 80 percent have indoor plumbing.

They remain largely impervious to natural disaster.

“They are safe in earthquakes. Only landslides can damage them,” Wang said. “They can’t burn down.”

One of the biggest advantages remains economic, he added.

“You can live there forever. You don’t pay anybody,” Wang said.