Syllabus for Exceptional People: What’s the Norm?
Fall 2, 2016 extending into Spring 1, 2017
Facilitator, Robert C. Krieckhaus
bob@bobnotes.org 928-
This is a listing of the video clips I intend to show in the order I intend to show them. The running times are given following the title and, usually, some explanatory material. Sometimes a lot. File locations are for me in case I need them. I give websites with these videos where I can. Please notice that you can access those websites yourself if you call up this page on the internet. You just click on the links (which will have a distinctive color) and your browser should take you there. The URL for this page is this:
http://olli.bobnotes.org/page24.html
But you only have to type in “olli.bobnotes.org/page24.html”. It may be easier, however, to just type in “bobnotes.org” and click on the OLLI icon that you will see and then navigate from the page that comes up to the Syllabus page. That’s how I do it.
Returning to the plan — I also intend to go with the classroom flow, perhaps omitting some of these items and perhaps introducing others as class attention and interest indicate. Participants, please feel free to email me suggestions at any time, and include links where possible. (bob@bobnotes.org)
I hope we will not just watch these video clips one after another, but pause and reflect together on what they bring to mind for us. I’ve arranged them in pretty obvious groupings in what I think of as a progression. It’s a progression from easier to harder to believe. For most of us. The exceptional people eventually become extraordinary people.
From my experience with this class two earlier times, I know that we will be unable to finish all the items in this list in only six weeks of Mondays together. So I’ve arranged for a continuation of the course, I hope to the same time and place in the next term. That will be Spring 1, beginning January 30, 2017. I regret that I missed the deadline for the OLLI catalog for this term, Fall 2; thus this information was not in the course description and some of you may be distressed at this prospect. With good reason.
For me it’s the lesser of two evils, a situation in which we all find ourselves from time to time. So I’m going to stick with my plan. If any of you are enough troubled by this, I can make special arrangements for showings over the long break between Fall 2 and Spring 1.
So here’s the plan at present writing.
1-
6.31
C:\Users\Bob Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\01-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDqTBlKU4CE
Also, but 8 months later, with André Rieu in a grand setting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDqa4esWbb4
She’s 12 now. Here’s her Facebook page: link. She’s still singing, of course. But in this link, from May of 2016, she and her brother show off their turtles for Turtle Day, in English.
1.01, 1.02, 1.03-
8 minutes altogether
M:\OLLI course files\01.2-
M:\OLLI course files\01.3-
C:\Users\Bob Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\01.1=Emerson 4-
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/poetry-
2-
25.32
G:\OLLI course files\02-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTkBgHNsWM (part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1th1fVIc8Vo (part 2)
3-
13.14
G:\OLLI course files\03-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR_HyIyTSZg
4-
20.11
G:\OLLI course files\04-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU
Dr Jill’s website: http://drjilltaylor.com/index.html
Her book-
A transcript of this talk can be found here.
05.1-
14.21
G:\OLLI course files\05.1-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak2jxmhCH1M
In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini by Adam Ockleford, Derek’s teacher.
5.2-
7
"C:\Users\BoB Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\05.2-
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/musical-
05.3-
17.47
G:\OLLI course files\05.3-
05.4-
14.05
G:\OLLI course files\05.4-
https://youtu.be/ceEAe7s6zrM (part 1 of the 7=part ITTV interview; parts 2-
6-
12.17
G:\OLLI course files\06-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgV5rcZtETg
A news story on Derek:
7-
47.15
G:\OLLI course files\07-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n_nlhV_aXk
8-
5.33
G:\OLLI course files\08-
There is a public dispute over this dog that I give extensive treatment to in links provided in item 8 of the Supplemental Materials page.
9-
8.29
G:\OLLI course files\09-
Additional materials on this Sheldrake page.
10-
We see Anna walk among difficult, even dangerous baboons who accept her as one of the family even though she is unknown to them. They stroke her hair and kiss her eyes. She visits a special zoo and correctly states information about a parrot and a monkey that she could only know via collusion with the film makers or the zoo staff. Or perhaps by telepathy with the animals themselves. But that isn’t it. It’s the lovely spirit of this woman as she connects with the animals in natural settings beautifully captured by the film makers. OK, the mind reading is important, too. There is a scene with John Young on tracking that intersperses scenes of native Africans and Americans talking about tracking. And then there is the black leopard at the end who would like to know what happened to the two cubs who were confined with him in the zoo where he was caged before this, and wants his name changed.
Anna says, “I’ve studied the ancient skills and I’m so passionate about awakening a sense of communicating with animals in us modern humans. I’m dedicating my life to this because I believe that humanity is suffering from a great separation sickness.” The film manifests the health that arises in nature especially around Anna’s open, loving presence, but also that of John the tracker and Jurg the caretaker. Keep hankie handy.
52
G:\OLLI course files\10.0 -
Link to the full documentary on YouTube.
http://www.animalspirit.org/content/animal-
10.1-
9.43
C:\Users\BoB Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\10.1 -
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/finaltransition/149943706 (rental for her entire speech)
10.2-
5.49
E:\Portable\OLLI course files\10.2-
11-
2.16
G:\OLLI course files\11-
12-
Lest we conclude there is something spooky going on here, the New York Times wants us to know there is a perfectly materialist explanation:
Scientists have long known that the brain digests what comes through the eyes using two sets of circuits. Cells in the retina project not only to the visual cortex — the destroyed regions in this man — but also to subcortical areas, which in T. N. were intact. These include the superior colliculus, which is crucial in eye movements and may have other sensory functions; and, probably, circuits running through the amygdala, which registers emotion. (NYT Article below linked.)
0.38
G:\OLLI course files\12-
http://www.cell.com/current-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html
13.0-
8.43
G:\OLLI course files\13.0-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtLkzg8bFgA
Another case of Yogamaatha reading, this time a computer screen and various hand-
Report from a different source (New Zealand) and a different girl. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-
13.5-
The film was produced by an Austrian, PA Straubinger, who documents his study of people going foodless (not always without water though) in Switzerland, Australia, Austria, Germany and, most dramatically, in India. In Germany he finds and interviews a medical doctor who is still practicing inedia and has permitted two different hospitals to study his practice under experimental conditions, always on the condition that the results of their studies be published. Oddly, both hospitals refused to live up to their promise after he successfully demonstrated his radical fasting practice. After being challenged, one of them eventually relented and published a paper.
The Indian practitioner is subject to another hospital scrutiny, which he also passes with flying colors. In his case, having been advised by a goddess as a child to undertake inedia, he claims to have been doing without food or liquids for about 70 years. Relatives confirm his story and he is widely honored by local people for his devotion to the goddess.)
1h30m
C:\Users\BoB Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\13.5-
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lightdocumentary
14-
After this comes Hal Puthoff, a notable physicist presently at UT Austin. He narrates his early 1970’s experience at the Stanford Research Institute where, after some initial successes in remote viewing with the psychic and artist Ingo Swann, the CIA suddenly appeared at his doorstep and initiated with SRI their (SRI’s) well-
This selection from SUIDWDNW ends with another well-
15.26
G:\OLLI course files\14-
http://www.somethingunknown.com/
15-
9.40 (using only 3 minutes of this)
G:\OLLI course files\15-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VJoc8nE6ik&index=44&list=PL79993B490044180A
16-
This particular selection was produced by one of the two main viewers used by the Farsight Institute, Daz Smith. It serves to explain this kind of remote viewing (and advertise the Institute) and to highlight a particular portion of the commercial Farsight project (The JFK Assassination) that was omitted in final production. In this portion of that original work, Daz finds himself following the consciousness of JFK from his state of happiness in the limousine directly into the afterlife. This was a first for Daz.
This production strives to be persuasive by being (to me) rather boringly inclusive of all the viewing that Daz speaks and draws on a whiteboard live before a video camera set up in his home in England. However, by doing this, he does give us a very good feeling for how remote viewing works in practice. And, of course, we get the whole context of his reading and do not feel that cherry-
Of special interest is the very organized and specific manner in which Daz works. You will see that he is following a procedure that requires him to use abstractions to describe events (terms like “energy/motion, explosive here” instead of “gunshot to the head”) and it takes him painfully long to conclude “death event” instead of just saying something like, “Golly! This is the JFK assassination!” He explains at the opening of this video why he does this, and why they teach their remote viewers to do it. This is, to paraphrase, to keep their mind in its special open mode rather than let it fall into our usual mode of ego-
39.50
C:\Users\BoB Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\16-
http://farsight.org/FarsightPress/JFK_Afterlife_Farsight_Project_main_page.html
17-
29.26
G:\OLLI course files\17-
http://www.somethingunknown.com/
18-
19.30
G:\OLLI course files\18-
19.01-
18.11
G:\OLLI course files\19-
19.1-
6.22
C:\Users\BoB Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\19.1-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdScjvc14xE
(The above link is to the entire 55 minute talk Dr. Bellg gave at the Monroe Institute in February of 2014. I have extracted the “Until I Met Warren” from it.)
Dr. Bellg is an ICU/critical care physician from Wisconsin who began asking her patients after operations and other traumas, when she was finished with the usual interview procedures, if they had anything else interesting to report. She has an excellent blog here and has just published a collection of her patients’ tales of near death as Near Death in the ICU.
19.2-
12.21
C:\Users\BoB Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\19.2-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
Dr. Moody speaks at a Buddhist retreat center about the shared death experience and his early encounters as a medical student and resident with other medical health workers and their experiences at the side of the dying. This was in the 70’s when best practice was to shield close family members and friends from the actual moments of their loved ones’ death.
I use this short video as a transition to the following material, which confronts us pretty much directly with the afterlife itself. It gives me an opportunity to let Lee Ridgway of our class share an extraordinary photograph made by a friend of hers at the moment of her husband's passing.
20.0-
14.26
G:\OLLI course files\20.0-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk7biSOzr1k
20.1-
Psychologist Peter Ramster says he was able to hypnotically regress Gwen Mcdonald to more than eleven previous lives. One memory, of a life in Somerset England around 1770, was particularly vivid. Dr. Ramster asked Gwen to accompany his film crew to England where she was taken blindfolded to the area she claimed to remember.
G:\OLLI course files\20.1-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOx8meQQ2Eg
21-
A documentary from UFOTV on a five-
The manifestations include
• verification-
• levitation of small objects (but sometimes larger)
• appearances of many light-
• bouncing these orbs off tables and then passing them through tables, entering and leaving the bodies of some sitters and sometimes effecting healing
• causing a glass bowl to become transparent to the hands of one of the group and then returning the bowl to its normal impermeable state
• speaking for months and even years as consistent personalities with a consistent voice and verbal mannerisms via the mediums in trance
• doing the same as voices in the room not via the mediums directly
• appearing as hands and sometimes whole arms that touch, pinch and poke the sitters in the cellar or in public settings
• appearing (rarely) as whole bodies
• carrying on sustained and sensible conversations with those present, including with scientists about their specialized knowledge
• calling for specific experiments to be conducted, experiments that they (the spirit team, the ghosts) vary from session to session in order to gain better control over their results
(The experiments include several with still cameras, video cameras, and film unopened in its original packaging. New film in the package is developed immediately after a session in special instant developing machines donated by Polaroid Land. It shows extensive markings that include poems in German and English unknown to anyone in the room at the time, phrases in Greek, Sanskrit, Chinese and other languages, photographs of famous people and unknown people, strange shapes and colors without any representational significance, electrical diagrams for improving certain experiments, initials and signatures that match originals in libraries, and variants on a particular William Wordsworth poem that can only be verified as such by visits to original manuscripts in a library at Yale University.)
• causing an angel to appear of the usual Christian variety, complete with wings and flowing robes
• manifesting a small UFO whizzing about in the cellar
• dropping over a hundred different apports out of the dark onto the table or floor. (These include fifty-
The Scole group (meaning the four regular humans mentioned earlier) invite the Society for Psychical Research to investigate their happenings, and the SPR sends over several scientists to study them. The SPR works with the spirit team for two years and concludes that the manifestations are real and not man-
This short documentary cannot begin to do justice to the complexities of a five-
If you want to get a better grasp of what is going on in this film, it will help to read The Scole Experiment by Grant and Jane Solomon. In their book they quote fairly extensively from the tape-
I don’t see how it is humanly possible for this five-
It looks like we are confronted with (at least) two sets of humans, one here on Earth and the other in some other place or dimension after their normal time on Earth expired. The spirit team is relentlessly attempting to persuade the normal humans on Earth that their spirit realm is real and that we normal humans are headed there when we die. It is not easy for them to do what they are doing. In the Solomon book you can read that their chief reason for undertaking this work is their desire to help us down here live happier and more lovingly responsible lives. They think we would shape up if we knew the shape of things to come.
Unmentioned in the film is why the spirit team stopped working with the Scole group. It can be found in Chapter Eleven of the Solomon book. Briefly:
Then, late in the evening of Monday 23 November 1998, some five years after the Scole Experiment began, Robin phoned us [the authors, Grant and Jane Solomon]:
I have some troubling news. The team has told us we have to shut down operations with immediate effect. A personality from the future is interfering with the interdimensional doorway every time we open it. He is experimenting with a crystalline time-
Solomon, Grant; Solomon, Jane. The Scole Experiment: Scientific Evidence for Life After Death (Kindle Locations 3489-
1.29
G:\OLLI course files\21-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qSEi_sfaSU
22-
C:\Users\BoB Krieckhaus\Portable here hp\OLLI course files\22 -
23-
Davids, as a film maker himself, has plenty of video equipment in his home to start using when he notices strange intrusions into his personal life – like the appearance of a printed page on his bed when he comes back from taking a shower in his home. That’s with no one there but him, and the house locked. Furthermore, the particular page printed out for him has a name highlighted in such a way as to suggest the typical punning humor of Ackerman. Thus begins a fascinating series of ADCs (after death communications) that Davids and others receive from his friend Ackerman, three or four of which he manages to catch live on camera. As they happen, that is.)
1h46m
Physical DVD
I don’t find this one on line as a video, but here is an audio interview with Alex Tsakiris “on how Forrest Ackerman continues to communicate after death”: link.
Paul Davids (with scientist Gary Schwartz) has published a detailed book on the topic as well, An Atheist in Heaven.
Time permitting, I may bring in any number of similar materials. We’ll see. We also want to allow time for sharing personal experiences.
This is a panel. Close it by clicking somewhere not on it. May take two clicks.
May include graphics and hyperlinks.
Last edited 2/25/2017 5:39:53 AM.
You may need to refresh your browser to ensure you have the latest version. (Control+F5 on PC’s.)
OLLI - Exceptional People |
Syllabus |
Supplemental Materials |
Something Unknown synopsis |
Calling Earth Synopsis |
The Afterlife Investigations synopsis |
An Anecdote by Gary Schwartz |
Empirical Evidence for Spirit |
Class 1 handout |
Class 2 handout |
Class 3 handout |
Class 4 handout |
Class 5 handout |
Syllabus |
Supplemental Materials |
Something Unknown synopsis |
Calling Earth Synopsis |
The Afterlife Investigations synopsis |
An Anecdote by Gary Schwartz |
Empirical Evidence for Spirit |
Class 1 handout |
Class 2 handout |
Class 3 handout |
Class 4 handout |
Class 5 handout |