Hovering high overhead, the UFO and its otherworldly occupants scan the Earths communications -- silently awaiting word that they have finally intercepted the secret information that has eluded them all week. Yes that's right! They are waiting for this weeks exciting issue of the newsletter of conspiracies, secrets, the paranormal and MORE - Conspiracy Journal is here once again to inflame your senses and question your beliefs.

No one knows for sure what happens to us after death. But Dr. Jim Tucker is trying to find out.

Tucker is medical director of the Child and Family Psychiatric Clinic at the University of Virginia. He also works at the university's Division of Perceptual Studies, which scientifically investigates paranormal phenomena such as near-death experiences, ghosts and reincarnation.

His book "Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives" (St. Martin's Press, 2005) tries to verify statements from children who claim to have had past-life experiences. The work continues the research of Dr. Ian Stevenson, who began studying children's apparent past-life recollections 45 years ago at the University of Virginia.

It's controversial terrain for a scientist, but Tucker takes his work quite seriously. The book has been heralded as "a first-rate piece of research" by Harvard biologist Michael Levin, and Booklist described it as "powerful grounds for credulous speculation." I spoke with him recently by phone from his office in Charlottesville, Va.
How did you get interested in this subject?

I got interested after I was remarried. I was trained at UVA in child psychiatry and wasn't feeling particularly fulfilled by that work. My wife was open to a lot of alternative things like psychic phenomena and New Age ideas, and that got me curious about them, too.

I think when I started looking at things, I became open to the possibility that we're more than just our physical bodies, that there is more to the world than just the physical universe. That's basically why I'm doing the work. Because I'm open to it, I want to see what I can learn about it.

What are some of the signs that might indicate to you that a child has had memories of a prior life?

The most obvious sign is when the child starts talking about it. The child will say, "I used to be big, and I'd do such and such thing," or sometimes they'll say, "In my last life I ..."

They actually use that language?

Occasionally, yes. Sometimes they will say something like, "Oh, the last time I had a wife," or whatever. There is one case here in Charlottesville -- the only thing the child ever said to the mom about it was -- one day they were driving down the road, and the little boy says, "In my last life I drove a big truck." Of course, that was completely unverifiable. But you know, you get statements like that, and then in the cases that are useful to investigate, you get a lot of specific details.

Many of them, three-quarters of them, will talk about the way that they died. And usually what they say will focus on things that happened near the end of the previous life -- not exclusively, but they will usually talk about people they knew at the end. So if they are describing a life as an adult, they will be much more likely to talk about a spouse or children than about parents and that sort of thing.

And you investigate whether the people these children claim to have been actually existed?

Yeah. We look at whether there are any behaviors or birthmarks that link to the "deceased" person, and if we identify a previous person whose life seems to match that description, we get the details of that life as carefully as possible to see just how well things match up.

I'm sure you encounter plenty of skeptics. How do you respond to the criticism that these memories of past lives are simply fantasies?

If it's a case where the statements aren't verified, then it may well be just fantasy -- like the boy who said, "I used to drive a big truck." If you have got one where the children have made numerous statements about another life that is quite some distance away, including proper names and everything else, and it all checks out, then unless you are going to say, "It's all one heck of a coincidence," you can't really just blame all of that on fantasy.

But how do you know that the ideas the children have about past lives weren't suggested to them by someone else? Maybe they just heard stories that they are retelling?

Those are questions that you have to look into when you're doing this research. If you have got a child who is talking about someone who died, say, in the same village, then you really have to be concerned that they learned about it through normal means. But if you've got someone talking about an ordinary person who died 150 miles away, well, that becomes much less likely that they heard about the person from someone else.

How do you find subjects to investigate?

In the American cases, the parents find us. Often they do so on the Internet. People start searching and come across Ian Stevenson and the work that's going on here at UVA, and so they e-mail us. In other countries, we have people looking for subjects, so often they will hear about a case and then alert us.

What's one of the more striking cases that you've come across?

One that stands out is a little girl in India named Kum Kum Verma -- Dr. Stevenson investigated her case. She started talking [about a past life] when she was 3 years old, which is usually the age when people begin to speak about past-life memories.

She described living in a city of a couple hundred thousand people that was 25 miles away from where she lived -- and not just the city, but the section of the city where she said she had lived, and she gave a lot of details. One of her aunts took notes on her statements before anyone tried to investigate. They include things like her son's name, the fact that he worked with a hammer, the grandson's name, the town where his father in that previous life lived, the fact that there was a pond at her house, that she kept an iron safe at her house, that she had a sword hanging near the cot where she slept and even that she had a pet snake that she fed milk to. So we are talking about ridiculously specific details.

And you were able to verify these details?

Yes. It turned out that there was someone who lived in the section of the city that she had described, somebody whose life matched all of those details. And this was a case where the families had no contact before the case was investigated, because the father was a well-to-do landowner and he apparently was not happy that the little girl was remembering the life of the blacksmith's wife.

Have you ever worked with adults who claimed past-life memories?

Once in a blue moon. Occasionally, there will be adults who contact us and say, "When I was a child, I remembered this." And usually the memories will leave by the time the child is 6 or 7, but occasionally they will persist, so we will get people who say, "Oh, I've had this memory since childhood."

Why do you think some people have these kinds of memories, and not others?

That's a very good question, and we've tried to look at it. One of our colleagues did psychological testing of some kids with these memories in Sri Lanka and Lebanon, and then we've done a small study of psychological testing with the kids here. And they seem to be normal, first of all. They tend to be quite bright. But they don't particularly seem to be suggestible or to dissociate a lot or whatever, so it doesn't seem to be a question of pathology on the child's part that causes them to have memories.

What I would like to do -- what I'm hoping to do in the future -- is also do tests of the parents, to see if there are particular parents who are more likely to have these children. But one key feature that I mention is that 70 percent of these children will report dying violently or suddenly. So that certainly seems to be a key factor.

Have you encountered cases where people seemed to reincarnate after having died peacefully of old age in their beds?

You certainly get some of those -- nothing's absolute.

After spending so much time studying this, do you now personally believe in reincarnation?

People often are unhappy with my inconclusive answer to that question.

What I say in the book is that after reviewing many of the strongest cases we have, the best explanation for them is that memories and emotions at times seem to be able to carry from one life to the next. So I think the evidence is there to support [reincarnation]. Now, if you are asking, Is it part of my personal belief system? Not particularly. I'm not a Buddhist or Hindu or anything like that. I'm open to the possibility, obviously, or I wouldn't be spending time on this research. But I'm not a zealot as far as pushing some sort of religious doctrine.

Is there anything in your own religious background that might have led you to be open to the idea of reincarnation?

Well, I grew up Southern Baptist. Reincarnation is obviously not part of that tradition, but being open to spirituality was certainly something that I grew up with.

Do you have any memories of past lives?

No, I'm afraid not. And no one in my family has ever had anything like that either.

Your book references quantum physics. How do quantum theories relate to reincarnation, do you think?

I think they relate in the sense that the physical universe is not what it seems to be, from what we can tell from quantum mechanics. And at least on a quantum level, it seems to be dependent on our observation of it. Quantum physicists talk about electrons, or events being potential, rather than actual physical entities. So that there are various potentials, basically until somebody looks, and then it sort of forces the universe to make a determination about which potential is going to be actualized.

So one take-home message from that is that consciousness is not just a by-product of a physical brain but is actually a separate entity in the universe that has a big impact on things in the universe. And there are people looking at the idea of how, in a quantum way, consciousness can affect the physical brain. If you are open to that possibility, if you are truly going to consider the fact that consciousness is that separate entity in the universe, then you have to consider the possibility that consciousness is not dependent on just being a by-product of a functioning brain. It's going to continue after the brain dies.

Is it challenging to work in an area of research that some view as more science fiction than science?

If I were looking to have some highly achievement-oriented academic success, yeah, it would be; this would not be the course that anyone would take. But you never know who is going to be open to [this material]. I've been surprised to find that some of my colleagues are just as open to it as I am.

I tend to be a fairly skeptical person. Even though I am spending a lot of time with these cases, I don't go to a case assuming that it's a case of reincarnation. It's sort of my natural default to see whether it can be explained through normal means. But to be fair and open-minded, if you look at some of the strongest cases, I think you need to be open to the possibility that there may be more going on in life than we know about.

Source: SF Gate
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/06/12/findrelig.DTL

- THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE DEPARTMENT -

Canary Islands: Remembering A Vanished Race

What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported effects -- a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the normal sense of touch.

It's been described as a buzzing sensation, a tingling, an oscillation, movement, pure stimulation and, in the case of body-modification expert Shannon Larrett's encounter with a too-powerful antitheft gateway at a retail store, "Like sticking your hand in an ultrasonic cleaner."

Body-mod artists Jesse Jarrell and Steve Haworth's original idea was to implant a magnet to carry metal gadgets. It turns out that doesn't work: If you try to carry something magnetic on your implant regularly, the pinched skin between the magnets dies and your body rejects the implant. But they came up with a new application when a mutual friend suffered an accident that left a shard of iron in his finger. He worked with audio equipment, and found that he could tell which speakers were magnetized from the sensation that passed through his finger at close range.

That gave Jarrell and Haworth a new direction: Could they obtain that effect deliberately, extending the sense of touch into a sense of magnetism?

Todd Huffman, a graduate student at Arizona State University with a background in neuroscience, joined the project and brainstormed with Jarrell and Haworth about how, and where, to best implant a powerful magnet. He helped come up with the most effective design for an implant, and eventually became the first recipient. "The fingertip was chosen because of the high nerve density, and because the hands are constantly interacting with the environment, increasing the chances of sensing electromagnetism in the world," Huffman says.

"We chose the ring finger primarily because of its size and relatively low importance in gripping action, so there was plenty of room for the implant and a lower chance of physically damaging the implant," Huffman explains. Jarrell puts it more bluntly, writing about the procedure in a BMEZine article from March: "'If you had to lose or seriously damage one of your fingers, which would it be?' This was our answer." But nobody's finger fell off, and Huffman's results were better than they'd imagined.

According to Huffman, the magnet works by moving very slightly, or with a noticeable oscillation, in response to EM fields. This stimulates the somatosensory receptors in the fingertip, the same nerves that are responsible for perceiving pressure, temperature and pain. Huffman and other recipients found they could locate electric stovetops and motors, and pick out live electrical cables. Appliance cords in the United States give off a 60-Hz field, a sensation with which Huffman has become intimately familiar. "It is a light, rapid buzz," he says.

I took a trip to Phoenix to have Haworth implant a magnet in me last September. Because body-mod artists are not medical practitioners, ice was the only anesthetic available. My finger was soaked in ice water until it began to hurt. After that, Haworth acted quickly to get as much of the implant done as possible while my hand was still numb from the cold.

The initial cut did hurt, but not unbearably. He sliced open my finger with a standard scalpel, inserted a tool to make a gap for the magnet, and tried to insert the magnet in one nonstop motion. The insertion didn't work, and he widened the cut and tried again. This time it worked, and he closed the cut with a single suture. The suture was the most painful step -- an indicator that the cold "anesthetic" had worn off. The process took less than 10 minutes. My finger was slightly swollen and sported a blue, knotted plastic thread.

When we were done we sat in Haworth's living room. He brought out a magnet and handed it to me. I brought it near my finger and felt the magnet move for the first time up against the raw inside of my finger. I startled visibly, and Haworth grinned. "Welcome to your new sense," he said.

At first there was no discerning between the throbbing of the injury and the sense of magnetic fields. Consequently, some early encounters with industrial refrigerators remain mysterious -- was the display case at Citizen Cake really giving off that much EM, or was I just having blood rush to my healing finger? Other sensations were unmistakable from the start. I would circle my finger with a strong magnet and feel the one in my finger spin. In time, bits of my laptop became familiar as tingles and buzzes. Every so often I would pass near something and get an unexpected vibration. Live phone pairs on the sides of houses sometimes startled me.

I become slightly phobic of magnetic resonance imaging machines. The superpowerful electromagnets used in medical imaging can make metal fly across a room and stick, often for the hours it takes to power down the magnets. A person with an embedded magnet runs the risk of having their implant ripped out of their body.

People with magnetic implants can't erase hard drives or credit cards. They don't set off airport metal detectors or get stuck to refrigerators. The magnets are small, and once encased in skin, all they do is react next to nerves, conveying the presence of sufficiently strong electromagnetic fields. "The magnetic implant is not the most sophisticated or rich sensation, it was just the easiest to implement with our available technology," says Huffman.

Implant work isn't ready for prime time. While Huffman loves his implant, he discourages others from getting it. "Most people don't understand the risks, and implant work isn't appropriate for most people." Those risks include infection and breach of the magnet's silicone sheath. The procedure itself is painful, and the results vary from person to person for unknown and unstudied reasons. Huffman doesn't see it as a candidate for study.

"The science of sensation is something very much studied by neuroscientists and psychologists, but no one has done what we did," Huffman says. "The regulation would be onerous, even if someone wanted to."

Zack Lynch, managing director of neurotechnology consulting firm NeuroInsights, is skeptical of the practice altogether. "I'm not sure if it's efficacious, intelligent or therapeutic.... I'd worry about long-term problems, including corrosion."

Several months after having the procedure, some people begin to have problems. Some magnets begin to turn dark under the skin, suggesting the bio-neutral silicone sheath is failing. Exposure to the body starts breaking down the magnets.

Two months after my own magnet was inserted, and long after the cut itself had healed, I experienced one of these problems firsthand. My shielding breached and the implant area became infected. The infection resolved, but the region turned black and my sixth sense evaporated.

My family doctor tried to remove the magnet and failed. Instead, the implant shattered into pieces, and I could no longer pick up other magnets with my finger. After months of ESP, all I had left was a sore digit with a dark spot.

I figured that was the end, but it wasn't. Four months after I lost all effect, the spot darkened and the magnetism returned. The magnet -- being a magnet -- had reassembled itself in my finger. While it's nowhere near as sensitive as it once was, I can once again pick up other magnets.

Haworth plans to try a new generation of magnets with a 70-durometer liquid silicone rubber coating, up from the previous 30 to 40 durometers. That's going from the hardness of a pencil eraser to the hardness of a car tire. No one knows if that will do the trick, but in the body-modification community, there's only one way to find out.

Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71087-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1