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Reality Checking


Brain Magnetites, EMF, and Mediums




By Brent Raynes



Dr. Berthold Schwarz (L) and Dr. Leonard Ravitz (R) together


Recently (11/21) I was listening to an internet radio show (www.liveparanormal.com), entitled Mystical Entanglement, with host David Rountree, director and chief science advisor to the Scientific Paranormal Investigative Research Information and Technology (www.spinvestigations.org). His co-host and fiancé is medium Tracy Ray. I was really intrigued by his mention of his own scientific, technology-based study of Tracy and other mediums and asked him to repeat for our readers here what he had found. He wrote: “Specifically, what was observed was an emerging EMF rising above the background noise. This EMF was rather unique in that it was a low frequency carrier wave with information riding on it. It was present only while the medium was receiving information, and when it collapsed the medium would take a break. We have found this condition in three other mediums tested so far, and have not encountered a medium that was tested that has not had this condition occur. Of course, we need to look at many more. But it is not present in any testing we have done with ordinary people.”

I also asked David to also share what he had noted (also mentioned on his show) regarding brain magnetites and the pineal gland. He added: “Serum magnetite is a fluid form of magnetite which is secreted by the pineal gland. While we all have levels of it in our brain, mediums have a higher concentration of it. I believe it is related to the gift. Traditionally, the pineal gland has been associated with the vision of the Third Eye. There may be some substance to the claims.”

In addition, David has expanded on the quantum “wormhole theory” to “explain paranormal activity.” While he explained that it would take too much time and space to go over in his email to me, he did state his overview on the subject: “Essentially wormholes form the conduits that allow the interaction of paranormal phenomena to enter into our reality from ‘beyond the veil.’ The veil in this case is an adjacent universe made up of pure energy, instead of energy and mass.” He recommended that anyone wishing more information should visit his website (www.spinvestigations.org) and look in the research and experiment sections.

I have been quite fascinated with the notion of magnetites in the human brain and the role that they might play in the psychic and UFO contactee syndromes, since my colleague and friend Dr. Greg Little mentioned them in his book Grand Illusions (1994), for which I wrote both the foreword and afterword. “Scientifically, those who have more magnetite in their brain as a result of their genes (and more of specific neurotransmitters and receptors) are more easily influenced by this electromagnetic realm,” he wrote. Greg perceived how since ancient times various “rituals and rites” have been performed that can alter our brain chemistry in such a way as to establish “a harmony of frequencies” between us and “the particular energy form” being sought. He added, “The rituals that serve this purpose are most effective in areas of high geomagnetic energy (vortices and window areas) especially when performed at night (so that little magnetic interference from the sun occurs).”

In my afterword to Greg’s book, which I’d like to repeat again here, I wrote: “The 1992 discovery of magnetite in human brain cells was an intriguing clincher to Little’s theory of magnetic influence upon the brain of the UFO and paranormal experiencer. I recall how back in 1979 I read with fascination an article by Robert K.G. Temple in Second Look magazine (Nov-Dec 1979, Vol. II, No. 1) entitled, ‘Olmec Magnetism and the Brain.’ Temple reported that huge Olmec statues in Mexico had reportedly been found with magnetic poles at either their navels or right temples. Tiny beads of magnetite were recovered at these sites! “

“Temple found the magnetic pole at the stone heads’ right temple quite interesting as there had been, at that time, recent scientific confirmation that there existed a magnetic field around the human head whose lines of force exit the left hemisphere and return back into the right hemisphere. This is interesting also in that in Dr. Melvin Morse’s new book, Transformed By The Light, which deals with near-death experiences, he identifies the right temporal lobe as the “circuit board” through which the experience of near-death is perceived. He describes the transformative effects the NDE reportedly has upon its experiencers, adds that doctors have altered behavior of psychotics and drug/alcohol abusers using electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes, and, in synchronicity with Little’s emphasis on the EM spectrum theory, Morse talks about the “light” seen by near-death experiencers as being a real energy from the electromagnetic spectrum, and quotes an NDEer who saw light in all his own cells and in the universe, concluding that God was light.”

At this point, it seems I must once again mention a phenomenon that Dr. Morse called a “light shout.” He wrote that as a cell dies, a strong surge of electromagnetic energy is released. It reportedly can be more than a thousand times greater than found in the normal resting state of the organism, and Morse added that on rare occasions bystanders actually see it too (proving it’s not a mere hallucination). I actually spoke with a man who was present when well-known contactee Howard Menger’s 12-year-old son (who was dying from a brain tumor) was suffering a spell characterized by severe breathing difficulty and muscular spasm, and both he and another man present saw a strange light appear over the headboard of his bed. The bed was situated in a corner of the bedroom, and at first the light appeared as a “very pale blue,” and then “went across through the air around those two sides of the room, but didn’t throw any light on the wall,” adding how it “created a brilliance, but didn’t reflect on the wall.”

“It started as a minor light blue light, became brighter blue, and then turned white,” he stated. “Throughout all of this time, even with the white light, it didn’t show any brilliance on the wall. It then diminished in a blue and went out again, and by that time he had relaxed.” A week later the young boy had died. Loren Capsopoulos of Alabama shared with me a dramatic account of a potential “light shout” event in connection with the passing of her 14-year-old daughter Catherine on May 28th 2004. “She had myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) up until May 25th when it turned into acute myeloid leukemia. We were scheduled for bone marrow transplant the next week. Her condition was the first that St. Jude has seen in children because it was complicated by what is called Monosomy 7, part of the 7th chromosome was missing.” Her illness had first been diagnosed only a short time before, on March 1st, 2004. “At the moment of her death, with ten doctors around her bed, we witnessed a ‘luminous’ glow which surrounded her,” this mother recalled. “There was an enormous feeling of total love and everyone in that room felt it. Afterward, I requested time with her and layed down on the bed and cuddled for about four hours. I remember I would periodically get this ‘shock’ (that would) go through me, like it was coming from her body.” Mark Kelso, a respiratory therapist in Fayetteville, Tenn., recalled for me once how he and others were treating a patient who died on them, and at the moment of death the room got brighter for a brief time. Mark assumed that it was the overhead ceiling lights that had brightened at the point of death – but was it? The role of electromagnetic energy fields in connection with various types of reported and observed UFO and paranormal phenomena is an area of inquiry that needs to be further addressed. It certainly is a potentially significant and worthwhile avenue wherein science-based procedures could test the legitimacy of relevant theories and observations that we might want to more decisively explore. The end result could be that we would then be able to arrive at more complete and meaningful conclusions, or at least better and more informed types of conjecture, speculation, and present more advanced theoretical models of reality-based mechanisms to explain these enigmatic manifestations.

David Rountree’s statement of EMF patterns that he has noted in connection with four different mediums sounds like a recent revelation that takes us in that direction, and for that reason I am intrigued and thirst for more information. I still lack independent confirmation of mediums having higher concentrations of magnetite, though I certainly suspect that that may prove to be the case indeed. Brain magnetites are generally described as tiny crystals, though I have read of magnetites suspended in liquid connected with the human ear. A researcher named Ben Lonetree reports that he has been studying the “vortex” energies out in the area of Sedona, Arizona for a decade with Fluxgate magnetometers and large induction coils. “I have recorded many intense magnetic in and outflows of energy in Sedona and it is my belief this energy is sensed by the magnetite in our inner ear fluid,” Lonetree reports. “Unlike the process of hearing which relies on mechanical vibration (the ear drum), to produce electrical impulses to the brain, the magnetite, as a receptor produces the impulses that through additional processes work on temporal lobes of the brain.” Obviously there’s much more that we need to know on all of this.

I shared with fellow paranormal investigator Bret Oldham the comments I just quoted from David Rountree, and just as I had found David’s observations of mediums and EMF as potentially relevant to EVP/spirit box investigations, Bret noted: “It sounds very much like the spirits using the radio frequencies and their energy or something within the actual frequency is manipulated and used as a carrier wave in order for them to communicate with us.” I was reading a book recently (Fireballs, Skyquakes and Hums by Antony Milne) which described how a Cambridge biologist named Brian J. Ford had suggested that neurons were like tiny computers. “He said that neurons cultivated in a laboratory emitted electrical signals of around 40 Hz,” Milne wrote. “He added that they could address each other using ‘discrete signals.’ The brain hence becomes a ‘vast community of microscopic computers.’”

The late Dr. Robert Beck, a physicist, reportedly found that all healers exhibit the same brainwave patterns of 7.8 to 8 Hz during their healing work. Beck found that whether these healers were Christian faith healers, Hawaiian Kahunas, Wiccans, or psychics, they all tested the same. Interestingly, this frequency range of 7.8-8 Hz corresponds to what is called the earth’s Schumann waves, and it seems that Beck speculated that the healers were using energy from the magnetic field of the earth itself to perform their healings—an effect called field coupling.

Through the years there have certainly been quite a number of studies that show how various electromagnetic fields, even radio frequencies, may well affect our bodies and brains, and since we are bioelectrical creatures this should not be altogether surprising. However, perhaps the full story may yet be far stranger than has been told in trying to piece together this massive jigsaw puzzle. Recently (08/29/12) I was doing a spirit box to try and communicate with the late contactee George Van Tassel, as I had recently been in touch with his nephew Chad Meek, and suddenly I got a clear male voice saying “This is Al Bender,” which was the name of another “contactee” of sorts who also back around 1953 had claimed alien contact. I seemed to get a number of odd, intelligent and interactive responses. (That’s not unusual in my own personal experience)

In Bender’s case, as I researched his story further and refreshed my memory on the details, I found how he had claimed that in his encounters with sinister, apparitional type “Men In Black” beings, that the MIB had instructed him to switch on his radio if he wished to establish contact with them. “As they gave me information one of them went to my radio, turned it on, and switched the dial,” Bender wrote. “I asked him mentally why he was doing it, and he replied only that it was a method of getting back to their base.” Coincidentally or not, Chad and I had been discussing earlier about the MIB mystery, and Bender’s case is one of the first well-known MIB stories in ufology.

I admit, I may be trying to connect too many dots and grasping at straws, but I’m simply trying to follow the data and where it may lead me. In my research, I have found that many early contactees (including George Hunt Williamson) were experiencing mysterious radio contacts (EVPs?) going all the way back to 1952! John Keel nicknamed these people “radio contactees.” “Rather than attempt to correlate all of this, or experiment themselves with the radio techniques which were apparently proving effective, the ‘serious UFO investigators’ thundered and ranted and worked to discredit the growing legions of contactees,” Keel noted. “The ufologists wanted to believe in extraterrestrial visitants but they did not want to believe in any of the surprising ‘evidence’ that was materializing.”

If you’ve studied the data on electromagnetic influences on humans to any extent, then you’re probably familiar with the early, pioneering works of the late Harold Saxton Burr, Ph.D., a Yale Medical School Professor of Anatomy, and his colleague Dr. Leonard J. Ravitz, Jr., a neuro-psychiatrist. In an interview I did with Dr. Ravitz back in 1999, he described how Dr. Burr had taken continuous electrical readings from trees that he had wired up to electrodes in New Haven and Lyme, Connecticut, for some 30 years. He described how numerous “electromagnetic cycles” were found, with readings that correlated with phases of the new and full moon where “the voltages would undergo profound changes in all the trees.” They even found “cycles (that) corresponded to the sunspot cycles.” While at Yale, Ravitz had studied hypnosis under the well-known hypnotist Milton Erickson. “It seemed to me that hypnosis was far more than a psychologic event in terms of things Erickson could do with it,” Ravitz told me. “Sure enough, on April 24, 1948, we got the first electromagnetic field correlates of hypnosis.”

“Dr. Ravitz presented a possible neural basis for hypnosis,” wrote noted author Vincent Gaddis (Mysterious Fire and Lights, 1967). “He pointed out that during this state there are profound electrical alterations in the old centers of the brain. In contrast, the functions are intact and largely concerned with discrimination, reason, judgement, and volitional control.”

Dr. Ravitz further explained to me, “Then 1949 to 1950, I spent the year working out these techniques on a continuous recorder in Burr’s laboratories, and when we measured friends of mine, in the undergraduate and graduate schools of Yale, lo and behold, we discovered that they had virtually the same cycles as the trees! We had weekly, particularly lunar cycles, seasonal, semi-annual, and annual cycles, although we couldn’t hook these people up to electrodes for thirty years to get the same things.” Dr. Ravitz also shared how Dr. Burr and another colleague had done experiments where they had detected “signs of cancer in the female genital, urinary tract before any clinical signs or pathologic changes were evident.”

It was my friend and noted psychiatrist Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz, who introduced me to Dr. Ravitz for our interview. In a statement of this work, Dr. Schwarz described how “specially devised…micro and millivoltmeters and electrodes” were used. “The work was clinically controlled and confirmed many times over,” Dr. Schwarz wrote. “Since it was first published by Burr and (Dr. Filmer Stuart Cuckow) Northrop in 1935, it has not been successfully challenged. Medical research was performed at Yale, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, the Roanoke and Downey Veterans Administration Hospitals, Eastern State Hospital, and in private practice.” (1)

“We live and move in a pulsating sea of energies in which our organisms serve as receivers, transformers, and projectors,” author Gaddis wrote. “The electrodynamic theory of life suggests a universal electric field affecting living matter, while, in turn, all life exerts its own influence upon the field while still responding to it. Each individual is thus related to all life, to the earth’s magnetic field, and through it to the changes in the electrical fields of the moon and sun. We are a part of the universal whole, influenced by the ceaseless ebb and flow of the universe.”

One researcher who studied both this “sea of energies” and the paranormal noted, “Ravitz observed that the EM field of a particular female patient suffered a minor perturbation just prior to the onset of her menses and also at the release of an egg from an ovary. He expanded his study to include other women and men and found that this was absolutely the rule—events in the body were heralded by events in the personal EM field. He concluded that every egg that drops does so upon command of a signal, as does the arrival of every menses period and especially the first period, which scientists used to call menarche. Reading this immediately reminded me of the Enfield Poltergeist case, where the activity in question began in the year-long run-up to the focus’ onset of puberty. The day of the girl’s first period was overwhelmingly the most active in the entire case, and even the nature of the events changed, becoming more troublesome and dangerous.” (2)

Interestingly, Dr. Ravitz had had some classic UFO experiences that he described to me. One he shared was back in 1956, when he was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike headed for a Chicago convention of the American Psychiatric Association. “It was raining cats and dogs,” he recalled. He was startled to observe a rotating “brilliant silvery white” object approach his car from the west, fly directly overhead, and then head off toward the south. It was about 10 p.m., and he next turned off at an interchange to stop at a motel. However, the front door was locked and the office was unlit. Then he noticed behind the motel, an estimated 500 feet away, “one of these rotating, silvery objects” hovering just above the grass, which “was on fire.” He decided to drive up to. “All of a sudden the car wouldn’t drive, stopped, and I heard a ‘pep pep’, something like that, and the thing faded away like the grin on Alice’s cat’s face,” Dr. Ravitz said. “I didn’t feel like going to a motel at that time, so I proceeded to go on.”

As he continued down the turnpike, Ravitz glanced off to the left and saw “a red and white silvery disk-like thing rotating over some mountains.” He continued, “When one would go up, the other would go down. So by now I certainly wasn’t looking for a motel, and all of a sudden I heard a ‘pep pep’ and one of these things came across in front of the car and the lights went out on the car, and it went over to the north. And then, a few minutes later, I heard a ‘pep pep’ and the thing came in front of my car and the lights went off again momentarily.”

Curiously, when Dr. Ravitz got to Chicago, his parents described to him how as they were headed to the same meeting along the Ohio turnpike they saw strange rotating red lights, their car temporarily wouldn’t operate properly, at one point “seemed to be floating in the air a short distance,” and for a time the headlights and taillights were going off and on without explanation, even as the car was shortly afterwards up on a lift being examined by mechanics.

Dr. Ravitz recalled a time he was driving over to Hatteras at Ocracoke, North Carolina, when he “saw what looked like a bluish white saucer in the center with several saucers around rotating.” He said he actually got a picture of this. “Another time I was going to visit friends in Gramercy Park in New York City and I couldn’t get anybody to answer the door,” he recalled. “I checked into the hotel catty-corner to 34 Gramercy Park, went up to the roof, had my camera, and lo and behold, as I was taking pictures, I saw one of those rotating objects whisk by. The camera jiggled so that the lights in the windows had an up and down jiggle.”

Though in our interview, Dr. Ravitz wanted to make it clear that the UFO subject was a separate and distinct subject from his studies into the electromagnetic life fields, I can’t help but wonder if this brilliant pioneering scientist may have underestimated what influences and forces may have been going on in his own life and around him that he may not have been fully and consciously aware of. We know that these situations can certainly prove to be quite complex and all too often very misunderstood. “With every new wave of sightings, the social impact becomes greater,” Jacques Vallee wrote in his book Dimensions. “More people become fascinated with space, with new frontiers in consciousness.” Brad Steiger speculated in his UFO Odyssey, “The UFOnauts are playing a teaching game with humankind in which our concept of reality is being gradually changed. In the teasing fashion of a Zen or a Sufi joke, we are being provoked into a higher consciousness.” Many times researchers ignore significant overlaps, like UFOs and the paranormal. Ravitz certainly had a good number of interesting UFO sightings. He was most certainly a “repeater.” Dr. Schwarz suggested I also ask Ravitz during our interview about a paranormal experience he once had while visiting Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. “Well that’s not paranormal, but it’s a very interesting thing,” Ravitz replied, and then he proceeded to tell me about how this friend of his, while they were visiting the Notre Dame together, went into a “spontaneous trance state” and began speaking French and soon was translating Indo-European languages. “He had never been conversant with French in his life!” Ravitz exclaimed. “Somehow or other in this trance state he was able to bypass the barriers of not understanding Indo-European languages and come out ahead, apparently.”

A much better understanding of the electromagnetic universe around us may unlock far more profound secrets and insights than we at present can even begin to imagine. Connecting the many dots and making sense of it all represents a truly massive, challenging scientific undertaking, one that will hopefully greatly benefit us all. Had Dr. Ravitz been more open to contemplating possible connections in his anomalous experiences as other pioneers have done, for example, Wilhelm Reich and Carl Jung, then his scientific interpretations and contributions could have taken quite a different and an even yet more expansive form. A lesson we all must learn, and then be continually reminded of, is to, from time to time, quiet the intellectual chatter of our brains and strive to allow the evidence alone to lead us to the truth. The majority of “researchers” are actually more deeply affected and guided by their belief systems then they are even consciously aware of.

A skeptic and believer share the same subjective traits that can prevent them from being objective and more clearly seeing the truth as an outsider, who isn’t vested in a belief or disbelief one way or the other, is often more able to do. Objectivity truly is the golden rule that all seekers of any truth should seek.

Footnotes:

1. The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research, Vol.26, No.3, July 2003.
2. Site: www.theparanormalist.com/3099/the-xyz-files-part-four/

References:

1. Electrodynamic Man: Electromagnetic Field Measurements in Biology, Medicine, Hypnosis and Psychiatry, by Dr. Leonard J. Ravitz. Rutledge Books, Inc. 2002. ISBN: 1-58244-210-X. constellation.”


Thursday, March 28, 2024