The Ramey Memo

Since we're on the subject of aliens, here is more evidence that a flying saucer crashed at Roswell in 1947. It is a photograph of General Roger Ramey holding a paper with some text on it, standing behind a deflated balloon and some foil and balsa wood. The paper in his hand has come to be known as the "Ramey memo." Using computer analysis it is possible to read at least some of the text of the memo, including key words and phrases such as "disk," "weather balloon," and "victims of the wreck." With this analysis it is unambiguous that a cover up was in place not even a week after the crash and that there were casualties involved, meaning the explanation that seven foot tall crash dummies that would not exist for another three years could not explain the eye witness accounts of bodies at the crash site.

Dean Radin: Changes in Consciousness

Dean Radin talks about how meditation (usually) makes you a better person and trying to study the siddhis (supernormal powers attained through meditation) scientifically.

Anthony Flew on Why He Became a Deist

Anthony Flew, the world's greatest athiest, was one of the last true philosophical athiests (as opposed to the "new" atheists who belong to the religion of fundamaterialism). He was not wed to any particular ideas, but was willing to follow the evidence and argumentation wherever it led.



Journalist and well known advocate for Christianity Lee Strobel interviews Anthony here regarding his conversion from atheism to deism. What prompted the change? The very thing the new atheists oppost most vehemently: intelligent design. The design in nature and more importantly the design in life is undeniable to anyone with intellectual honesty. To put it simply: life could in no way arise through natural processes, it had to be created by a very powerful intelligent agent (the odds of all the proteins necessary for a cell to spontaneously arise through stochastic processes on the early Earth is something like 1 in 10^4000, or completely impossible even if the universe was around for trillions of years).



The video is 18 minutes long and more than worth your time.

Petrus Romanus

Pope Benedict XVI, age 85, has announced that his health is too poor to faithfully fulfill his duties as Pope, and he will step down on 28 February, being the first Pope to step down in 598 years. He is a very courageous man and I applaude his decision.



Pope Benedict is also a theologin, and well aware (as is everyone in the Vatican) of the prophecy of Saint Malachy. The prophecy, which was hidden in Vatican archives for nearly five centuries, reveals a highly accurate list of 112 future Popes, following Innocent II, until the end of days (starring Richard Harris). Pope Benedict XVI, who took his name from Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order, the symbol of which is an olive branch, was the  111th Pope on the list.



There is one Pope left. The final part of the prophecy (according to wiki translation) reads: "In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations:

and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed,

and the terrible judge will judge his people.

The End.



If the prophecy is correct, and it has been scary accurate so far, the next Pope, who is expected to be selected before Easter, will preside over the Church during the end of days. Just when the end of days will begin no one can say, but there are supposed to be seven years of tribulations ultimately culminating in the creation of the new Heaven and new Earth; the final defeat of sin and death, and the glorious reign of the Lord forever.



Now, the official position of the Catholic Church and fundamaterialist archskep-dicks is that the prophecy is a 17th century forgery, which is probably the only thing both groups agree on. Supposedly, since the prophecy is "too accurate" it must have been fabricated to take into account the past Popes, and that, supposedly, all the predictions after the document was released to the public have to be fudged to fit. Unfortunately for both that's not true, as anyone can see that the later predictions have indeed been eerily accurate. Here are just a few:



* Benedict XV (1914-1922) was prophecised as "religion destroyed." He reigned during the rapid rise of Communism, which saw hundreds of millions of people forced into atheism, attempts by the Soviet Union to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, and the First World War that led to widespread disillusionment with religion among the peoples of Europe.



* Pius XI (1922-1939) was prophecised as "intrepid faith." He stared down fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to establish the Vatican as an independent state, freeing it from decades of oppression by the Italian government.



* Pius XII (1939-1958) was the "angelic shepherd" who first sheltered the Roman Jews during the Holocaust, and later made pleas to the Hungarian government to protect the Jewish population of their country as well.



* John XXIII (1958-1963) "Shepherd and sailor." He was Patriarch of Venice, the spiritual leader of probably the world's most famous maritime city.



* Paul VI (1963-1978) "Flower of flowers." His coat of arms contains three fleur de lis.



* John Paul I (1978) "From the midst of the moon." His reign began during a half moon, and lasted one month.



* John Paul II (1978-2005) "From the labour of the sun." He was born during a solar eclipse and later entombed during another solar eclipse.



The past seven Popes have been predicted with stunning accuracy. If the document were a forgery how could a forger have gotten such a remarkable string of hits three hundred years after the document was supposedly written for political purposes? Even if you don't believe the prophecy to be genuine (I do), this is still a highly significant time historically. We are living during the last days of a prediction made 900 or 300 years ago, depending upon which side you take, which may or may not have had a significant influence on the past several centuries of Church history. Either way, we are living in interesting times.



Always love.

No Peace for the Wicked

Often,
in your ignorance, you feel small, you feel miserable, you
feel that the wicked, greedy and cruel people are all
happier than you and unjustifiably so. You are hurt and
feel that it is unjust that you, who are so truthful, so
loving, so virtuous, should suffer. Just ponder over this.
Are they as happy as you imagine and is your condition, as
bad as you portray it to be? Investigate for a minute, and
you will know the truth yourself. External appearances are
often like painted pots of poison. The hearts of people not
adhering to Right Conduct know no peace – they are
probably as miserable as you, if not more. Believe that
Righteousness will never play false; it will ensure greater
joy than can be gained through all other means.

-
Divine Discourse, Feb 19, 1964.

Moonshot

Here is a wonderful, brilliant, video explaining why it was not technically possible for NASA, or anyone, to fake the moon landing in 1969.

Spiritual but not Religious Psychosis?

There is a story in the Daily Telegraph about a study conducted at University College London that proports to claim that people who are traditionally religious, agnostics, and atheists are perfectly sane, but people who claim to be spiritual but not religious are nuts.



According to the study "[spiritual people] were 77 per cent more likely than the others to be
dependent on drugs, 72 per cent more likely to suffer from a phobia, and 50
per cent more likely to have a generalised anxiety disorder." The researchers concluded "'there is increasing evidence that
people who profess spiritual beliefs in the absence of a religious framework
are more vulnerable to mental disorder.

"The nature of this association needs greater examination in qualitative and
in prospective quantitative research.'" 

Why am I not surprised?



A person named Meg969 commented on the article "No panic folks, take it easy. :DTranslating into common English it means that 'spiritual' people know more, hear more, see more and feel more than others and so it is obvious they will feel agitated (after all they are people as well) more often than the 'rest'. Besides, spiritual people may indeed experience aspects of life to a bigger extent than others but at the same time they may find more strenght to control or abandon their addictives. Nothing new was found really. London team just trying to put it all into a negative context for spiritual people and the society in overall? I have a funny feeling this article aims to simply conclude that spiritual people are basically mentally unstable."



I tend to agree, and so does Ken Wilber.





The more perspectives you can take on the larger the field of your awareness and the less attached to this little identity you have constructed in this life. At the same time you are more tacitly aware of suffering in the world and feel more deeply. If you have not made the monumental leap to second tier you are stuck in the existential halfway house and life pretty much sucks for you.





At the same time, we can look at these findings in another way. People with higher intelligence and psychological trauma may look to spirituality as a means of finding relief from their problems because neither traditional religion or atheism have the tools necessary to meet their needs. In other words, spiritual people are not necessarily more likely to develop psychological problems, people with psychological problems are more likely to develop spirituality.



Now here's what's really gonna' bake your noodle. What is the point of this story? I could have told you all this without having to do some expensive study that "requires much more research dollars". I'm not sure, but somewhere among the 400 previous posts on The Urban Mystic, I probably did talk about this before.



My old teacher always admonished us to look at who was saying what and to understand their biases to understand what they were saying better. Understanding the Telegraph's political leanings makes the spin they put on this story very clear. What is the only thing that organised religion fears more than atheism? People who are not atheists who do not need organised religion. A center right publication like the Telegraph is sticking with the Church of England, and if people can find God without the Church then they are a bigger threat than Dawkins and his laughable rehashes of Fifth Century arguments against God's existence that are packaged in a cheap tuxedo of scientistic materialism. The Church can use the atheists as a foil to strenghten its grip on its members, but as soon as a rival appears on the God scene they start to lose it. The simple Church-atheist dichotomy breaks apart just like the left-right dichotomy was shattered in my brilliant video Integral Politics. It's all just a dog and pony show to distract you from the truth and maintain a ridged grip on power.