Information, Consciousness and the Mind
Merriam-Webster defines information as: knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction. We are also told that when information is stored and readily available, it becomes ‘knowledge’, but I believe that it is not as simple as that.
Nowadays we get most of our information from televisions, smart phones, computers, etc. but they are only tools that we have developed to transform a narrow band of sound and light vibrations into a medium that our brain can process and understand.
Information is everywhere, every second of the day we are bombarded by it. We can see it, hear it, feel it and smell it, all in wavelengths and frequencies within human perception levels.
Whilst we can only recognise a narrow band of frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum, there is a wide range that we are not aware of that bombard our bodies, some beneficial and others detrimental.
Information been around since the beginning of time, or even before, and played a part in the formation of the universe and the creation of life itself? That is on the premise that time began at what is called The Big Bang.
Therefore, we must ask: What is information? Is it a fundamental entity, a primordial wave cum-energy-cum-force?
On top of all of the above, dowsers claim to be aware of another type of energy which appears to be beyond the electromagnetic spectrum and is believed could also have an impact on our wellbeing, some good, some bad.
Information on its own is of little use to anybody. To be of use, we need to receive it, process it and take appropriate action if necessary. To do this we need to have a form of consciousness, in our case, our mind and brain where we believe consciousness to exist.
There is quite a difference between the mind and brain. Our brain is within our sculls and can be measured, whilst the mind is unmeasurable and not necessarily confined to the brain.
We know that all things within the animal kingdom have brains and certain levels of perception, but they are considered by many to be inferior to humans. However, recent studies have shown that some animals, birds and fish can exhibit high levels of intelligence.
For example: Dogs have been known to travel long distances to get back to where they used to live.
House martins will return from their African wintering grounds to the same nesting sites each year. They will even go back to their old nests if they have survived the winter.
When young salmon reach a certain size, they leave the rivers they were spawned in and go into the oceans and stay there for several years.
Then they migrate back to the rivers where they came from to spawn in the same streams where they were hatched. Scientists believe that they are guided by currents, stars, and the Earth’s magnetic force.
What about things outside the animal kingdom?
Cleve Backster began his career as an Interrogation Specialist with the C.I.A. and became Chairman of the Research and Instrument Committee of the Academy for Scientific Interrogation.
He is the former director of the Backster School of Lie Detection in San Diego, California and was a polygraph instructor before his experiments on plants began in the 1960’s.
For some unknown reason Backster attached polygraph electrodes to a cane plant and the plant showed readings which resembled that of humans.
In other experiments he observed that a polygraph instrument attached to a plant leaf registered a change in electrical resistance when the plant was harmed or even threatened with harm.
He conducted the same experiments when he was in another room from the plant with similar results. This was repeated when he was on holiday and was miles away from the plant with the same response. This convinced him that plants demonstrated telepathic awareness.
He further experimented on bacteria, and many other things. From these results he claimed that what he termed as "Primary Perception" could be measured in all living things, animal and vegetable. Primary perception meaning an awareness beyond the five senses.
Again, as I said before, to demonstrate perception of any kind requires a form of consciousness to exist.
Backster’s work on plants was condemned by his peers and he lost his job with the government as a result of his publications on this subject.
However, in more recent years others have carried out experiments with trees which demonstrated that they communicate with others when close by.
Ecologist Suzanne Simard discovered that trees communicate their needs and send each other nutrients via a network of latticed fungi buried in the soil. — She summed it up by saying in her own words, they “talk” to each other.
Two other studies published in 1983 demonstrated that willow trees, poplars and sugar maples can warn each other about insect attacks:
Intact, undamaged trees near ones that are infested with hungry bugs begin pumping out bug-repelling chemicals to ward off attack.
One of the scientists who is exploring how the messages might spread is Ted Farmer of the University of Lausanne. He has discovered an entirely unrecognized way that plants transmit information, it is with electrical pulses and a system of voltage-based signalling that is similar to that of an animal’s nervous system.
As the result of the work done by these people, communication between plants is no longer a taboo subject amongst biologists and scientists.
Then what about the mineral world? Does some form of perception exist there as well? There is now some scientific evidence that rocks and trees communicate with each other.
Researchers who were funded through the National Science Foundation when studying the giant trees growing in the Sierra Nevada concluded that they and the bedrock on which they grow 'communicate' with each other.
For anything more than this I must go back to dowsing and mainly my own experiences.
I was in my late teens when I realised that I had the ability to dowse but was in my mid-forties before I took it seriously. I was self-taught, I had no tutor or mentor to refer to and practiced dowsing for several years before I even talked to any other dowser.
I moved away from looking for water and on to trying to making sense of the lines of so-called energy that I found around objects such as stones and trees etc.
Whilst for convenience we call these lines “energy lines” to date there is no evidence that they contain energy of any kind within the electromagnetic spectrum. I and many others have had experts in detecting electromagnetic radiation try to do so without success.
I spent some time looking at ancient sites and considered that there was no special magic about the stones that were placed there, it was the special nature of the site that mattered. Rather than walk miles across the countryside I decided to try and replicate things in miniature. To simulate ancient stones, I used small quarry stones 9 to 12 inches in height.
Firstly, I worked with one stone and recorded changes in the lines that emanated from it over time. Then I looked at what happened when two or more stones were placed close to each other but in different arrangements, linear, triangular and circular. In all cases changes did take place.
It appeared that one stone was aware of the position and movement of the other. This awareness was greatest when the stones were placed in certain geometrical arrangements and in particular the “Golden Mean” which is 1 to 1.618.
Observations of the movement of the lines when stones were not moved, made me realise that it was not the passage of time that mattered. They seemed to change with the phases of the moon.
Time is measured according to the movement of the earth, moon and sun, so the changes that took place in the small stones had nothing to do with time as such, but rather their apparent awareness of the changing relationship between themselves, the sun and moon.
For this to happen, information was received, processed, and action taken, the result being the changes to the lines around the stone. To do so there needs to be a form of consciousness, not only in the stones but also in the earth, the sun and moon, and possibly go on to take in all the universe, in other words, a Universal Consciousness!
If consciousness exists in everything from us upward to the whole of the universe it is reasonable to believe that it would also extend downward to atoms and molecules.
I believe that what happens at macro level also happens at micro level. It is the arrangement of atoms and molecules in the stones, or whatever, that provides us with the variety of dowsable lines that we find around them.
Later I carried out experiments to see if stones interact with human consciousness similar to the Beckster Effect in plants.
I placed a small stone on a flat area of ground, dowsed for the aura, or circular line found around it, which is usually several inches away from the stone. Then I expressed thoughts, which I directed at the small piece of rock, either in a loving way or in a hateful way.
The stone seemed to react, with the aura expanding in the first instance and retracting in the other.
I repeated this experiment by playing various kinds of music and checked for any movement in the aura. It responded differently to each type. The one to which the stone responded most favourably was classical music.
I know that the use of dowsing to record the movement of the aura instead of a scientific instrument may cause some people to doubt the results. Later, I will relate some things that to me validates the accuracy of dowsing.
Another question we can ask is why do energy lines not just come from the earth as a whole but emanates from many individual parts such as stones, hills, mountains, trees, etc.?
I found that anything that rises a certain angle above the plain of the surface of the earth will have an energy field unique to itself and become an entity in its own right. This happens if the angle of incline is above 3.5 degrees, so even small mounds as well as hills can become a hub for radiating lines.
Earlier on in my dowsing career I saw a programme on TV about a man in England who claimed that he could dowse for, and find, what he called Ley Lines coming from a standing stone not far from where he lived.
This was the first time that I had heard the term “Ley Line”. As he described them, they appeared fairly similar to the lines that I was getting from small stones, sticks and trees etc. for which I used the description, “Energy Line”.
I became aware that there was an organisation called “The Ley Hunter” which I joined for a while and found that Ley Lines were entirely different from what I was getting. They are straight visual paths, first described by Alfred Watkins, that joined ancient sites.
They had nothing to do with Earth Energy, subtle or other ways but many people at that time used this misnomer to describe energy lines. Although joining their organisation was not of much help; on the back cover of their magazine was advertised several books on things more akin to what I was finding.
I went to the Belfast Central Library and surprisingly found that they had a section on ‘Physic Phenomenon’ which contained books on dowsing, Ley Lines, Energy lines, and even Ouija boards etc... I took out several of the books that looked interesting and was pleased to find that I had arrived at the same place as some of them had, albeit by a different pathway. Perhaps the closest to me regarding findings was Guy Underwood, although we interpreted the meaning of the lines entirely differently.
It was whilst doing this I came across organisations called “The British Society of Dowsers” and “The Society of American Dowsers”. I joined both and was pleased to have had articles published in their journals and remained a member for many years. It was during this time that I assisted in forming the Earth Energies Group within the BSD and was its chairman for 10 years.
The biggest step forward in my ability to dowse happened when I was using the Y rod to distance dowse, I realized that my eye had picked out the target a second or two before the rod dipped.
From then on, I seldom used a rod and found that I was able to do things that I could not do before. As well as using my eyes I also use my arms, hands and fingers.
When we walk over the face of the earth using a dowsing rod, we only dowse in a two-dimensional world. It was as I mastered dowsing with my eyes that a completely new dimension came to light. I found that the lines display themselves in a three-dimensional form. Grids are not grids, but interlocking cubes, spirals become cones or vortices.
I will try and describe how I went about these two forms of deviceless dowsing. But first, I want to look at how I believe dowsing works.
I am sure that most of you are aware that there is nothing in the device, or tool, that you use that makes dowsing happen. Any movement that takes place in the device is due to an involuntary flexing in the muscles of the arm and hand that makes the device do what it does.
The rod or pendulum or any other device is just an indicator, like the hands on a watch, by which you can tell the time. The hands play no part in the mechanism that make the watch work correctly.
The involuntary movement of the muscle is caused by signals sent by the brain through the nervous system responding to the dowsing question that we planted in our mind.
This causes the muscle to contract in such a way to make the rod move in one of a few pre-programmed ways. This gives a movement that we can translate as “Yes” or “No” or to the left or right, or whatever.
What I have done is to re-programme my subconscious to cause the required muscles to move in the way that I want. The reprogramming is simply done by changing my
expectations and believing that my hands or eyes will move in whatever way I want to provide me with the information that I require.
When I am walking over the ground looking for a target I do so expecting that when my hands approach the target they will be forced apart until when I am directly above the target my arms will be at right-angles to my body.
If I want to follow a line of energy across a field, I locate where the line is with the forefinger of my right hand. I face the direction that the line goes in and start walking. The point of my finger feels locked to the line and if I stray slightly in any direction, I am pulled back towards it.
It is much the same when using my eyes. I instruct my subconscious that I want my eyes to be the dowsing tool; and that the muscles which controls the movement of my eyes will direct them onto the target. I then ask the dowsing question and allow my eyes to do the rest.
It means that I can stand some distance away from the area that I want to dowse and get my answer. I can easily follow lines that are radiating from, say, mountains and hills, as well as ancient sites or any other thing, and see how they travel and interconnect with other.
When in an aeroplane, and if I got a window seat and flying over where there are mountain ranges, I could look down on the ground and follow the network of energy lines coming from them and how they interact with other.
I could see that the source of the lines were hubs within the mountains and hills. What I saw years before when experimenting with small stones is replicated at a much larger scale over the face of the earth.
The only other form of dowsing that I have done is Visualisation Dowsing. I was introduced to it by Terry Ross, one of the greatest dowsers ever to exist, sadly now departed. Many years ago, I was at a dowsing conference where he was the main speaker.
It was during a break in the programme I sat down on a seat in the grounds and he came along and sat down beside me. He told me about dowsing for water in South America when he was at his home in Florida.
This is one example he gave of dowsing in this way.
He had been sent a map of the ranch beforehand and he talked by mobile phone to the farm manager. Terry instructed him to go to the field where water was needed and stand with his back to the entrance. Then, he asked him to walk, say for example, 75 steps forward and stop. He further instructed the man to turn 90 degrees to his right or left as Terry felt was required, then walk a certain number more paces and stop again.
After a few more moves he told him to hammer in a peg in front of his feet. This would mark the spot to drill and that he would find water at a certain depth and that it would be of the correct quantity and quality. Drilling afterwards proved him to be correct.
At one of my workshops I came up with a way to do something similar but on a smaller scale. I considered distance was of no consequence, if it could be done over 1,000 miles then it could be done over 100 yards.
At the rear of the hall where we were working was an area of grass, 5 or 6 acres in size. Until then we had only used it to dowse for energy lines, so we knew nothing about underground water. I got some volunteers to take part in an ad hoc experiment. I stood with my face towards the hall looking away from the grass area and closed my eyes into the bargain. I asked my first volunteer to stand about a yard away from me with their back opposite my back.
I visualised underground water beneath the grass area. By counting in my head, I arrived at a certain number and asked the person helping me to walk that number of paces in a straight line and stop.
After more consideration I asked them to turn 90 degrees to their left or right as I felt it to be correct and walk a few more steps as directed; and so on until I was satisfied they were over water and told them to stop, stand still and make no noise.
I kept my eyes closed and turned around 180 degrees. Using my arms and hands I walked down the field with my mind fixed on the line of underground water that I believed my helper was standing on, or near to. When I found it, I turned in the direction that I believed the person was standing and using my finger to follow the underground water I walked carefully forward.
I did this with four different people and in three cases I walked into the person standing on the line that I was following. The fourth person was only a slight distance away from it.
I repeated this experiment many times after that with almost 100% success and several of my students were able to do so also.
I am convinced that the information we access when dowsing comes from our inner consciousness which is connected to what Carl Jung termed the ‘Collective Consciousness’ – he described it “as the sum of all conscious states that have ever existed and leads on to the hypothesis that consciousness exists universally “– he said, “it is not the prerogative of humanity”.
He went on to say --- The current view is that consciousness is a function of the mind; the mind being directed and controlled by the brain – and considered to be substantially under the control of the individual. The conscious state of every person is an individual experience. End of quote.
However, we must be aware that most of what we understand and know within our conscious state is determined by what others have told us and how they have described their experiences. Our minds are conditioned by what we are told by our parents and peers; what we are taught at school; our religious beliefs, all of which not only teaches what we should
know, but also creates barriers beyond which we will not allow our conscious and subconscious mind to pass.
That is why the universal information field is it not more readily accessible to all. A good illustration of this is contained in an article that I wrote some time ago, called ‘The Red Socks Syndrome’.
Some years ago, a certain person stated that when he wore red socks he could no longer dowse. He believed that the colour red stopped the radiations coming out of the earth, which in turn stopped the dowsing rod to move in his hands. Some other dowsers, when told about his experience, also found the same thing happening to them. From this they concluded that it was true.
On another occasion, I read something similar which claimed that when standing on a rubber mat this person could not get a dowsing response; without the rubber mat - he did. He said that the same happened when he wore rubber-soled or wellington boots. Again, several others tried this experiment and got the same result.
I was sufficiently intrigued to try the experiment for myself. It was a dry day, but I put on a pair of wellington boots and went into a nearby field where I knew there was an abundance of veins of underground water. I walked across the field and, lo and behold, I couldn’t get any dowsing responses at all.
I removed one boot and when I walked across the same ground, I got responses as normal. I put the boot back on again and the dowsing response stopped. I was convinced that the writer was correct in what he had stated.
A few days later, after I had worked in the garden, I decided to go dowsing. I gathered up the rods and successfully went about my task. It was only when I had finished that I realised I was wearing wellington boots - the same ones I had worn previously.
From this embarrassing episode I learned one of the most important things I have ever learned, which is: that red socks, rubber boots, nor any other thing will have any effect on our dowsing, it is the barriers that we have erected in our mind and within our belief system that stops us from getting a reaction!
These we have accumulated down through the years and they determine our inability to extend our consciousness beyond our own self-limiting parameters. These parameters are the Red Socks within our mind, and as I said before these have arrived there through association with the Red Socks of everyone else with whom we have ever met. Our upbringing, our schooling, and our religious outlook all make their mark.
Well, how can we avoid them when we go to dowse? Funny enough some of the things that I have told you is unnecessary when dowsing is the very thing that may help.
The belief that it is necessary to have the correct dowsing tool or the ritualistic procedures prior to a dowsing session that some dowsers carry out is a way to bypass the barriers within our subconscious and pass the responsibility on to something or someone else other than ourselves. The belief that we have nothing to do with it will allow us to approach the dowsing task with the calm mind that is necessary to get consistently correct results.
It is good for dowsers, from time to time, to carry out exercises to demonstrate to themselves that their dowsing is correct. It is important to be able to convince yourself before you try to convince others.
Water dowsers have no problem with this as drilling the borehole soon gives the answer.
Earth energy dowsers have a more difficult problem.
When we come to convincing others, especially scientists, that dowsers have anything serious to contribute, is that nearly every time dowsers are put to test by scientists the dowser fails miserably.
There is a very good reason for this. The test is invariably set by those who want the dowser to fail. The dowser is quite often taken out of their comfort zone and therefore doomed to failure. It is like asking a doctor qualified as a G.P. to perform a heart transplant.
I want to describe two incidences that I experienced that convinced me that what we call earth energies are real and not a figment of our imagination and that dowsing is a legitimate tool and can give correct answers.
The first was when I was looking at the ruins of an ancient burial chamber situated on the top of a hill less than a mile from my house. I had dowsed for all the energy lines and energy fields that was around the remains of the chamber. I then wondered what changes would take place if bones were placed in any of the three chambers to simulate burials. The top of the cairn had been removed so it was easy to get at the chambers.
On my next visit I took with me several chicken leg-bones. Previous experiments I had done at home with bones demonstrated that when placed near to small stones they caused significant changes to their energy fields.
I placed a leg bone on the top of the ground within one of the chambers and when it was rotated to an east/west orientation a beam of energy came out of the entrance of the cairn like the beam of a torch, which widened out as it went away from the chamber, terminating not far from my house.
As I went back home, I located the end of the beam and placed a mark there. I checked it daily for the first week and it remained in more or less in the same location. I did not check it again for several days and then I could not find it. I went back up to the burial chamber and the bone had disappeared.
I went back with more bones and this time I placed a bone in each of the three chambers. Then the energy field formed a circle around the cairn going out from the chamber about the same distance as before.
To thwart whatever had taken the bone previously, I placed small stones on top of the bones. I again marked the edge of the energy field. I regularly checked that it was there and after some months it eventually disappeared.
When I went back up the hill, I saw that the stones had been rolled over and the bones nowhere to be seen. If the energy lines were a figment of my imagination, then I would not have remarked when they disappeared due to the removal of the bones. This was enough to convince me that the lines were real.
The second thing that convinced me that earth energies exist, and that dowsing is a valid tool by which to identify them, goes back to a presentation I was invited to do in front of a large number of physicists from all over the world, at Cambridge university.
They were not there primarily to hear me. They were there all week discussing serious things at the forefront of science and on the Saturday, they went on to discuss fringe subjects, dowsing being one of them.
Just before my presentation there was a person who was giving a talk about what he called Qui energy, which was regarded as being the Vital Force within everything. He showed us three parcels each of which contained and audio tape, two were empty and one, he claimed, had Qui energy recorded on it. He said that after he had completed the recording, he parcelled them up and marked them 1, 2, 3.
He then gave them to a friend without telling him which was which and asked him to parcel them up further and mark them A, B, C, so no one knew which parcel contained the Qui energy until they were opened, in other words, it was a blind test.
Knowing that I was a dowser he laid the parcels on the floor and asked me to dowse for the one with the recording.
This is exactly the trap I said earlier that dowsers should not allow themselves to be in. To avoid the trap, what I did was not to ask the question that he put to me, which was; which parcel contains the tape with the recording?
Instead, I kept to what I knew and examined the energy fields of all three parcels, and I saw that two were similar to each other and the third was entirely different. I selected it as the one that we were looking for. On opening the parcels, I was found to be correct.
Doing it that way I worked within my comfort zone and was under no great pressure.
The title of my talk was ‘The Effect of Naturally Occurring Radiations on the Neurological and Biological System’ using dowsing to locate the radiating lines.
It was based on years of information that I had gathered examining the nature of Earth Energies and underground water combined with a simple form of kinesiology.
I asked a volunteer to stand over a vertically rising energy line coming from underground water, which dowsed as being detrimental. I got them to hold out their arm level with their shoulder and I put downward pressure on their hand. Their arm was easily pushed down.
By dowsing for another location and placing a small stone on it the rising vertical line was reversed and went down into the earth and the arm strength went back to normal.
The purpose of my presentation was to show that certain natural radiations coming from the earth can, and do, interfere with the information received and transmitted by the brain and cause the biological system to malfunction, hence the reduced resistance of the arm muscle, hence the term detrimental energy.
In my demonstration I used small stones, but as I said before similar larger lines come from mountains, hills, etc within the landscape. It is here that the placement of large stones at unique locations, like what was done in ancient times, would remove detrimental energy lines rising from the earth which may be harmful to all life forms.
Because the landscape varies greatly from one location to another and therefore are unique to each other, the neurological systems of all living beings in each of these areas would be affected in different ways. Over time it may be possible that this could make sufficient changes within the DNA in order to create new species.
At the end of my presentation I believe that most of them were convinced that dowsing and the subtle energies I was finding were real. One of them told me that I had given him enough to think about for several years.
To go back to the questions asked at the beginning of my talk, that is:
The importance of Information, and -- is some information a fundamental entity, a primordial wave cum-energy-cum-force?
I believe that information exists at two levels, that which is accessible to our conscious mind and at another level that is only accessible to our subconscious mind and that is where dowsing takes place.
Information that comes in the form of sound and the spoken word are wave forms in the audio range and is within the electro-magnetic spectrum. As electromagnetic energy is believed to have come into existence early in the creation process of the universe, I feel that we must look further back to answer where the lines come from that we find by dowsing.
They are different in that they cannot be detected by the five senses or instruments used to record waves within the electro-magnetic spectrum.
For the last 100 years or so the most supported theory of how the universe began is the Big Bang Theory. It proposed that it began as a single point of energy which expanded rapidly, and as the hot gasses cooled atoms were formed which came together to form galaxies.
It was not long before observations by Hubble and others caused several problems to arise which are not fully resolved today. The universe is expanding, and this expansion is increasing in speed when it should be slowing down. For this to happen scientist realise that forces must exist that are much greater than the total mass of the universe. To resolve this, it has been proposed that a large amount of so-called dark matter and dark energy exists.
Theoretically dark energy makes up approximately 68% of the universe. It is believed to be distributed evenly throughout the universe, not only in space but also in time – in other words, it does not expand as the universe expands. It cannot be detected by present day instruments and therefore is not within the electromagnetic spectrum. It is only believed to be there through calculation and necessity.
Alexander Kashlinsky, astronomer and cosmologist working at Goddard-Space- Flight-Centre has studied what has been termed as Dark Flow. Dark Flow has been described as a gravitational pull from outside the observable universe.
This came about because it had been noted that the expansion of the universe was not even as thought. Some parts were expanding more rapidly which would require a mass external to the universe.
Kashlinsky stated: “Whether it is another universe, or a different fabric of space- time we don’t know. Of those two options, the former makes the most sense.” “Nothing in the observable universe has enough mass to pull something like this off on a large-scale”. He concluded: “There is a structure beyond the horizon of our universe, and it is exerting a force on our universe and creating this flow.”
Another problem that has been around for some time, and remains to be solved in a satisfactory manner, is the horizon problem. It is; that no matter what distant corners of the Universe you look at, the Cosmic Background Radiation is the same.
But there is no reason to expect this since opposite sides of the Universe are not causally connected, any information that is transmitted from one side would not reach the other side in the lifetime of the Universe if limited to travel at the speed of light.
The way that it has been dealt with was to invent what is called Inflation Theory. It proposes that in a fraction of a millisecond the embryonic universe experienced a rapid period of expansion which overcame the problem of the distribution of information and allow for the Cosmic Background Radiation to be the same.
This theory defies all the laws of physics especially that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
A better solution would be that primordial information is carried within the energy which radiates from the external mass referred to by Kashlinsky and evenly distributed in the space before the universe was formed.
Information contained in such forces would come in the form of vibrational waves causing patterns to occur in the clouds of subatomic particles in the embryotic universe and go on to form galaxies etc.
This would be somewhat similar to the patterns found in sand by Ernst Chaladni when a metal plate sprinkled with sand was stroked by the bow of a violin and formed patterns according to the different notes played.
I want to finish by going back to a question that I asked at the beginning:
Has information been around since the beginning of time, and even before, and played a part in the formation of the universe and the creation of life itself?