That the ‘Mad Monk’ greatly destabilised the Russian imperial government is a matter of historical fact. He used his influence to put his followers in positions of power and authority, demanded extortionate bribes in return for persuading the Czarina Alexandra, the Empress, to favour certain courtiers, business people or plans of action, and charged great sums for dispensing his ‘healing’ amongst the lesser nobility. He was already a national scandal by 1911, and by 1915 had become the Czarina’s chief advisor.

He also had a voracious sexual appetite, and would fequently demand sexual intercourse as part of the payment for his services – often insisting that he sleep with the teenage children of a supplicant, if such were available. He also had no end of groupies available, partly because of his power, and partly because of his 13-inch erection. In both cases, either sex was acceptable. His exploits outraged the general public, but the royal family were totally under his spell, and reports from the time suggest that his healing and his precognition were both entirely genuine. Letters from Alexandra to Rasputin also hint that he was having an affair with her too.

Finally, a cabal of Russian nobles decided his influence was corrupting the state, and he had to die. Led by Prince Feliks Yusupov, the cabal lured the healer to a private party hosted by Yusopov, where he was murdered, on December 30, 1916. It was too late to save the reputation of the royal family though, and shortly afterwards the revolution swept away the old order.

Grigori Yefimovich aka Rasputin

THE STRANGE PART

The tale of Rasputin’s death certainly lends credence to his healing powers. Arriving at the party, the holy man was given a banquet laced with enough cyanide to kill a dozen normal men by one of the conspirators, a medical doctor called Lazovert. When he failed to show any ill effects from this feast and became suspicious that Yusupov was not eating, the Prince panicked, and shot Rasputin at close range, as did a back-up member of the conspiracy, Grand Duke Pavlovich, the Czar’s nephew. Enraged but still seemingly mobile, Rasputin chased Yusupov out of the house and into the coutyard, where a gang of conspirators beat him to a bloody pulp with big iron chains. Dr. Lazovert examined the monk, and declared him still alive, so they wrapped him in the chains and dumped him in a hole cut into the ice of the River Neva.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

Spiritual Avatar

Perhaps the most common theory is that Rasputin genuinely did possess the healing and precognitive powers that history has granted to him, including the ability to mesmerise women. He used these powers to gain his position of authority, and it was his sexual prowess that led to his being murdered. The powers were derived from the fact that Rasputin was in fact a spiritual avatar or genuine saint.

St Germain

Rasputin was in fact the immortal known to medieval Europe as the Count de St. Germain, smoothing the way for the Russian revolution so that history could follow its proper course. When he found himself stuck in the water and unable to tunnel out, Rasputin/St Germain decided that the best course of action was to feign death and lie low. He was dug out of the Neva by the conspirators, and hastily buried. From a shallow grave, he found it relatively easy to tunnel out. His enemies were certain he was dead, so he was free to make an unpursued escape. Rumour suggests that St Germain may now be in Los Angeles, having spent the 1980s in Eastern Europe bringing Communism to an end.

THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

Alien Invader

Rasputin’s unnatural vitality was not a result of psychic ability at all. The healer was actually an alien, a rogue member of a small exploration team who decided to indulge himself in a few years of orgiastic amusement. Because his physiology was different to ours, the assassination was almost ineffective. In the end, it was lack of exposure direct sunlight that killed him, not the temperature or lack of oxygen.

MOST CONVINCING EVIDENCE

Rasputin’s frozen corpse was finally retrieved several miles down-river from where it had been dumped. He had shaken loose of his chains somewhere up-stream, and had been trying to claw his way out of the ice from the inside when he had finally succumbed – after having been totally submerged in freezing water for at least six hours.

MOST MYSTERIOUS FACT

Perhaps the oddest feat of Rasputin’s survival is his capacity to consume such a huge dose of cyanide, medically administered. Equally as strange though is an artifact that surfaced in Paris in the 1960s – Rasputin’s mummified penis. One observer described it as ‘like a blackened banana, about a foot long’. There is no record of any of the conspirators castrating their victim, however.

SCEPTICALLY SPEAKING

It is just about possible that the poison was old and ineffective, that gunshots failed to hit any vital organs, that the beating was mostly surface damage, and even that the cold of the river Neva slowed tissue damage from oxygen starvation so much that Rasputin was able to revive for long enough to lock his fingers in the ice. Also, if he was so precognitive, why did he not foretell the danger of taking Yusupov up on his invitation?

The tempting idea behind Uberman was that it would allow you to reduce your sleep to just 3 hours a day, freeing up five or six hours of waking time. There are stories of all sorts of geniuses and major leaders who slept just three or four hours a day, from Leonardo da Vinci to Nicola Tesla and Winston Churchill.

Unfortunately, it seems pretty clear that the concept of polyphasic sleep is substantially mythological. People need different amounts of sleep, and a certain percentage of the population is perfect happy on just  three or four hours. Others may need ten or eleven. The article at the link above is a detailed and interesting analysis of polyphasic sleep by an open-minded life-long sleep scientist. It seems redundant to just repeat everything he says, so if you want the full details, have a look there.

The short version though is that spreading sleep around doesn’t change your requirements. If anything, it is likely to leave you needing a bit more sleep, because of the time it takes between falling asleep and actually starting to get benefits from it. The most natural sleep schedule appears to be the siesta — having a longer sleep during the night, and a shorter one in the middle of the day to bring the total up to the eight hours or so that we require.

Secondly, if you don’t know who they are, Brian Blessed is a formidable English Shakespearean actor and adventurer, and Terry Wogan is a charming Irish comedian and TV/radio host.

Brian Blessed (L) ... and ... Terry Wogan (R)

Blessed dominates the early betting. In the lead-up to the fight, he has several high-profile supporters, which help assure him massive popular backing, eventually surging to 3-2 on. Wogan, by contrast, barely manages to scrape up to 5-1. It doesn’t seem to dent Wogan’s morale any, though.

As proceedings start, the two men square off. Blessed is grinning from ear to ear like a bull gorilla on crack, letting out regular bellows as he psychs himself up into a slaying mood. Wogan, by contrast, looks even smaller and more frail than usual. He’s got a little glint in his eye though, and you can see people wondering if the charming Irishman has something up his sleeve.

The bell goes, and Blessed leaps forward with a mighty “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”. He’s swinging even before he lands, a wild haymaker that forces Wogan to back up immediately. Blessed uses his momentum to pull himself forward at a swift stumble, relying on mass to overpower his enemy. Wogan totters back, and then grunts as Blessed’s head smacks into his chest. Wogan twists slightly as the headbutt lands, deflecting the worst of the impact, but he’s unbalanced as Blessed’s shoulder smashes him. The two men stagger apart, Wogan grim, Blessed wild and fierce.

Wogan dances back a couple of steps as Blessed makes a beeline for him. At the very last instant, he sways aside, groaning with the effort, and slides his leg forward. Blessed trips over it and falls. Wogan grins, but Blessed is already moving, pulling his legs underneath himself to get back standing. He looks angry, his hands balling into fists.

As Blessed lurches back to his feet, Wogan backs up, looking slightly nervous. His hands half-raise, placatory. Blessed growls, a long, low sound. He shifts his weight, and then springs forward, crazy beard flying. Wogan reaches out to meet his charge, and then, just as they close, he pushes himself away from the bigger man, falling backwards. Blessed grins ferociously, but Wogan is slipping beneath him.

Suddenly Blessed screams, a horrible, tortured noise. Wogan has bit straight into his bollocks, so hard they’re almost squashed flat. Blessed rears, flailing and shrieking, but Wogan is reaching round. There’s an odd gleam, and then suddenlly blood gouts. Blessed screeches, and tries to reach behind himself, but sheets of blood are gushing from his ripped-out asshole. Wogan rolls clear, a horrible grin on his face, the previously-concealed knife plainly visible now. Blessed sags, weakening quickly, and Wogan steps up to him, lays a gore-soaked hand on his shoulder, smiles pleasantly and stabs his shiv through the luvvy’s neck.

With one last, horrid gurgle, Brian Blessed collapses. The Irish Assassin twinkles to the crowd, bows, and walks off to claim his prize.

Over the course of two years, from 2006 to 2008, Duran obtained 68 different loans from almost 40 banks. None of the loans required collateral; the tools he used included a basic limited company with its own accounts, an impressive-looking contract of employment, and payment slips. The total that he borrowed over the course of the two years amounted to just a whisker under half a million Euros (about $750,000 US). The fees and charges involved in borrowing that sum — including building up his credit rating initially — took about a quarter of the cash.

Duran gave the great bulk of the money away to various charities and organisations dedicated to social activism and fighting debt. The rest was used to produce booklets detailing what he had done, and pointing out various options to participating in the global banking system. When news of his activities broke, some banks responded angrily. The director-general of the Caixa Sabadell savings bank, Jordi Mestre, declared that it was “not permissible for someone to laugh at the system like this.” Other banks chose disdain; Bankinter said “It [31,000 euros] won’t mean anything to us.”

Enric Duran

Duran was arrested for fraud in April ‘09, and faces up to six years in prison. In his leaflet, he points out that many of his loans were obtained without any fraud, and that it was the scale — and publicity — of his actions which opened him up to imprisonment. He argues that the economic system itself, in which money is added to the system not through central bank printing but through debt creation, is inherently unfair.

How you feel about that is up to you of course, but Duran’s Robin Hood antics have made him a folk hero in Catalonia, and amongst economic reform activists world-wide.

This is the full transcript.

Dunedin by DownUnderPhotos

Ghostwoods: Hi Lyn. Good to talk to you again. This time, you’re going to guide me through a Remote Viewing session, is that right?

Lyn: Right. Let me run over to the closet. I have a stack of targets for teaching class today. I’ll just grab one of those.

GW: OK, great. I haven’t done any preparation but I guess it’s not really necessary for this sort of thing.

Lyn: Let me see. I have one here.

GW: Ok, great, what do I need to do?

Lyn: Ok, first of all you need to write down your information — name, location, starting time, and so on. You can do that later for this. You do need to write down the starting time now though.

GW: OK, right.

Lyn: I can give you some coordinates. Have you worked with ideograms?

GW: I have done some ideogram things so I know what you mean by that, yeah.

Lyn: Ok, sometimes we tell a viewer what their work is. We don’t tell them anything about the targets, but just what the intentions of the brief were. Do you want that, or do you want to go into it cold?

GW: No, I might as well go in cold, I’m game.

Lyn: OK, sounds good, that’s the best way, that’s nice. OK, let’s see, let me give you some numbers to write down. Are you ready? OK. 060221000011.

GW: 060221000011.

Lyn: Right, OK. Part of the reason of those numbers is to get your pen moving so you don’t have to start with it cold to get the ideogram, so let me give those to you again and as soon as you write the last one, just go ahead and make the ideogram, your pen will be moving already.

GW: Ah, OK.

Lyn: OK. 060221000011.

GW: OK.

Lyn: OK, um, look at the ideogram, feel your way along it, see if there’s a change in the feel of it anywhere. If there is, register that point with a little tick mark.

GW: Whoa, yeah! There is!

Lyn: Are there any more? Is there Only one tick mark / only one change, or is there more?

GW: Uh, there’s a second change right towards the end as well. I can’t define what the changes are, but if you… well, something feels a bit different.

Lyn: That’s it. That’s all you’re looking for. So we have an ideogram that has compacted into it three different gestalts. Now take each one in turn, over to the right, look at each one, and trace the shape of only the first one.

GW: Right. Do I tell you what the shape is?

Lyn: Yeah.

GW: Okay. Umm.

Lyn: It only has the three dimensions — like it goes across, it goes up, it goes down…

GW: Oh, Ok. It starts off slanting upwards, then goes straight down.

Lyn: OK good. Touch that part of the ideogram, see how the pen feels under the paper. Is it hard, soft, rough, smooth, slicky, sticky…

GW: It feels soft.

Lyn: OK good. So you have one that goes up-down, soft.

GW: OK.

Lyn: So now you make a WAG – A Wild-Ass Guess!

GW: OK! Well, if I was going to guess wildly, I’d say this was something like mud or quicksand or some surface that feels fluid, but not necessarily quite as fluid as normal water.

Lyn: OK let’s just call it land then, mud becomes just the generic thing for land. Or do you want to make it water?

GW: Ah… Um. No, I’m going to stick with land.

Lyn: OK, go to the next one and do the same.

GW: Ok that feels a lot firmer. Can I say hard?

Lyn: Yeah, uh-huh, but would that… you start out with 7 basic gestalts: Land, Water, Motion (activity, movement), Space, Biological, Man-made and Natural. Would it be any one of those?

GW: Uh, well…

Lyn: One of the reasons I ask is because all of these images are selected for having one or more of those as the content. This feels hard?

GW: I don’t get a feel of artificial, so I guess I’m going to have to go with land again?

Lyn: OK, sure.

GW:… But harder land, like stone versus mud.

Lyn: So, basically you have harder land and softer, muddy land. So go with the third, see what you get there.

GW: The third gives me an immediate impression of sharpness, spikiness. I think maybe its metal or something, so I’m going to go with man-made for that.

Lyn: OK, sounds good. So we have two types of land and some man-made. The monitor at this point always says “there may be other gestalts. Do you want to take the coordinates again?” It’s totally up to you. It doesn’t mean there are more gestalts, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just the only patter that the monitor can use at this point.

GW: Uh, no, I’ll stick with this one ideogram, thanks.

Lyn: OK, then let’s, say, describe the man-made. What you do now is try to focus on the man-made and try to get sensory descriptors such as colours, sounds, textures, tastes, smells, and senses like that. Now I need to tell you, in this early part your mind is still winking about the site so you might get descriptors of something that’s not man-made at all but we’ll sort that out later. Right now you’re just going to get descriptors from the entire site, don’t worry about whether it applies to the man-made. Any colours, any sounds, smells, tastes, textures, the ambience?

GW: I’m, um, getting, um… bright.

Lyn: Good. You’d write that down.

GW: Yep. Um. I think it’s kinda like a sheer or flat surface. I’m going to go back to the comment about sharp, that’s still there.

Lyn: Sure. Good descriptor, write it down.

GW: Um, the only colour impression I’m getting is metallic, but I’m not sure whether it’s my mind getting in the way.

Lyn: Don’t worry about that. Your mind will take care of itself. Don’t analyse things.

GW: Can I use a word like row? I get a sensation of a repeating set of shapes, if you see, like a row of things?

Lyn: OK. When you wrote down metallic, did you write down metallic colour?

GW: Yeah. Maybe a sound, a bit like a high-pitched whine, a mosquito noise, not loud but quite faint, cool temperature. That’s all I’m getting from that really.

Lyn: OK. In parentheses — anything I say to you should go in parentheses, to show I wasn’t giving information, and to separate what I give from what you perceive — so let me, say, describe the metallic colour, to pick one at random here.

GW: Something… bronzey sort of colour, yeah, bronzey I guess.

Lyn: OK. Mentally tap on the colour. How does it sound?

GW: Dull! Which is quite a surprise… I was…

Lyn: Put your hand on. Temperature?

GW: That’s… the cool I was picking up, it’s cool to the touch.

Lyn: Feel to either side of it, of the metallic. Do you get any textures, temperatures, sounds, smells?

GW: I’m getting a rough feel, like brick. It’s warmer as well.

Lyn: Warm, you say?

GW: Warmer than the metallic.

Lyn: Mentally stop and listen for sounds, do you hear anything?

GW: Uh, I don’t have much confidence in the perception, but the first noise that hit sounded like a car rushing past quickly.

Lyn: OK.

GW: But I’m not sure, it didn’t feel in quite the same part of my mind, so I’m not sure if its imagination or not.

Lyn: Oh, don’t analyse. Every time you analyze a perception, it tells your subconscious, “I don’t trust you”. And so, whatever you get, put it down on paper. We have a way of doing the summary, once you get really in touch with the site, then you use these adjectives and you go back and then you can evaluate each one of these… because then you’ll have stronger contact with the site. So while you’re doing the session it doesn’t matter what you put down, because if its garbage, it’ll get thrown out later.

GW: OK, cool, thank you.

Lyn: So, mentally…

GW: I’m getting quite a lot of sensation of wind generally.

Lyn: Ok, good, good, write it down. You may be subliminally picking up the window I’m sitting beside, it’s blowing thru here like crazy. Do you get any perceptions of colours, sounds, tastes, textures? No matter how slight.

GW: OK, I’m getting cloth.

Lyn: Is that a cloth texture?

GW: Yeah.

Lyn: Ok, write down cloth texture. We keep nouns out of remote viewing, because as soon as you say a noun you lock yourself into an idea. You said cloth texture, a while ago you said brick, you wouldn’t write down brick, you’d write down brick texture. Look down, do you get a colour?

GW: Dark. Darker, dark.

Lyn: Ok, darker colour looking down?

GW: Yeah. Uh. Something of a yielding, crunchy…

Lyn: OK, You’re talking about the dark now?

GW: Uhh… Yeah.

Lyn: OK, in parentheses, put down that it applies to whatever it is that’s dark, that lets us know you’re talking about the dark.

GW: OK, I see. The obvious mental conjecture there is that I want to say gravel, but I know I probably shouldn’t.

Lyn: OK. Put Gravelly, and then put I know I shouldn’t say gravel. You want to record everything that goes through your mind.

GW: OK.

Lyn: Then mentally reach with your hand and touch that darker part, move your hand across it or through it. see how it feels.

GW: Uh, it feels unpleasant actually. Sticky and cold.

Lyn: OK, good. Put your nose to it and smell, how does it smell?

GW: Uh, it’s a smell that reminds me of resin — pine or something, not quite like that. I could say resiny, but I can’t put my finger on it. Almost but not quite chemical. I don’t think it is chemical.

Lyn: OK. Listen for sounds, tastes, textures. Any shapes or sizes you might have perceived.

GW: Tall. Tall is an immediate response.

Lyn: Ok good.

GW: With that tall is an impression of straightness, and a fair amount of thinness. So it’s not like a mountain, which would be sprawly, but more like a ram-rod sort of tall.

Lyn: OK, good. Make sure you get all that down, and keep describing it all.

GW: Uh. Piercing. Hmm. Resonant is a word I’m getting from somewhere.

Lyn: Alright, good, make sure you write it down.

GW: And, uh, cool temperature again.

Lyn: OK, good. Move to the cold temperature and describe it. You see, in RV we can only cue you with things you’ve given to us, sort of messing around on your own words, so describe that which is cold temperature.

GW: Is that in with the tallness still?

Lyn: Oh, it is?

GW: Well, with the darker stuff underfoot I got a feeling of coldness, and then with this tall straight thing, I get a coolness with that too. So do you have a preference to which you want?

Lyn: Uh, whichever one you think you need to, and make sure you make a note of which. If you’re with the tall thing now you may want to stay with that.

GW: Yeah, I’m pulled to the tall thing. Uh. It feels smooth. Part of me wants to say flat, part wants to say round. So, I don’t know, some hybrid shape going on there. Or something. Um. There feels quite a lot of it. I guess I mean that… I’m not sure what I mean.

Lyn: It’s hard, isn’t it!

GW: Yeah, it _is_ hard! Um, right. It’s like maybe there’s more than one?

Lyn: OK, that’s a perception.

GW: Um. It’s quite heavy, in mass terms. Quite massive. I feel I should be able to shake it around but I can’t really.

Lyn: Make sure you write that down. This massive, can you describe more of it? It’s colour, texture? Slap it, see what sound it makes. Kick it, see if it reacts. Put your nose to it, see if it smells.

GW: It feels… pretty solid. Like if I slapped it, I’d hurt my hand.

Lyn: Good, write that down.

GW: I’m not getting any sense of smell. But I’ve noticed in the past that smell is a perception I don’t often get.

Lyn: That’s my case too. I have to remember there’s a difference between me not getting a smell and the perception that there is no smell.

GW: Yeah, it’s a subtle distinction. All I can say at this time is I’m not getting a smell.

Lyn: Ok, good.

GW: Um, let’s see if I can hit something more specific. Uh… _That’s_ interesting. I feel it _could_ move, as if it is something that has the potential to shift position.

Lyn: Good, write that down.

GW: Just not to my hand, y’know? I couldn’t push it. Just for example like a truck — I couldn’t push a truck, but a truck could move. I’m getting an impression of black and red. Uh. Together I think, close together. Maybe like some kind of badge or sign or something.

Lyn: A badge or sign? OK. Those are nouns. Go ahead and write them down, but remember they’re nouns, so don’t put too much faith in them.

GW: I’m getting, it’s almost like I’m being pulled a short distance. I’m getting a more natural feel underfoot, which implies that before, underfoot was more artificial.

Lyn: Oh, no. No, Don’t make implications. You’ll get your logical mind in there and it’ll just muck around and mess you up all over the place. SO if you’re now getting natural underfoot, that’s what you put down.

GW: OK. I’ll go with a green colour, rather than a brown or a sandy.

Lyn: OK, at this point let me ask you a question, do you have an idea in your mind of what the target is? Even vaguely?

GW: Vaguely, yeah.

Lyn: You need to just write that down over to the side and get rid of it, ‘cos that’s your logical mind trying to make sense of all this. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong or right, just that it’s logical.

GW: What I’m pulling down here to get rid of is radio telescope array.

Lyn: Oh. Heh. Very good.

GW: That’s a fair old logical construct there.

Lyn: I’ll cheat a little bit here and tell you that’s not what it is. Dump that imagination and get it out of your mind.

GW: The broader scale impressions I’m getting are… involve repeated artificial elements in a more natural setting. But I don’t know how to really characterise that as a…

Lyn: You just did!

GW: Oh, I guess so. OK. So we’ve ditched that stuff, off to one side.

Lyn: Well we’ve ditched the radio telescope. The descriptors, I can’t give you feedback about those, but you dump the nouns, you keep the descriptors.

GW: Right. So at this point do I continue probing for impressions?

Lyn: Yeah, at this point we continue getting impressions until there comes a moment when it seems one of those impressions is in front of you or beside you or overhead or whatever and at that moment you say to yourself, you know, it was overhead or beside me or something, and then you write down how it made you feel, and when that happens you’re in what’s called phase three — and in phase three you try to start sketching.

GW: Ok, because that sensation of natural underfoot did come with an impression that I had shifted position.

Lyn: Oh, OK. You shifted in relation to it?

GW: In relation to the target in general, yeah. It felt like I came forward and across, to use directional terms.

Lyn: Very good. That would be what’s called an AI. And you had an emotional reaction to the movement. Can you describe that reaction?

GW: Mild relief.

Lyn: Uh good, very good. Your emotional reaction you have is your reaction and it is NOT a descriptor of the site, and in order to get rid of that emotional you have to declare it as a noun. At this point, it would be a good thing if you could start sketching any of these shapes you get, or anything — sketch the underfoot or the tall thing and see what you get.

GW: OK. I’m a horrible artist, but I’m aware that’s not really the point to it. Um. <sketches> As I’m starting to sketch, I’m starting to get conscious impressions, the sort of stuff I should probably be trying to put aside as static.

Lyn: How do you mean?

GW: Well, like, sketching the tall, I’m getting something which my mind is saying looks like a fence, a bit tall chain-link fence.

Lyn: Yeah, you put the nouns to the side, but what are the descriptors you’re getting? How would you describe a chain link fence? This particular chain link fence?

GW: Tall, massive, flexible I suppose, cold, metallic colour, dark underfoot as well. That’s the stuff I’m sketching there. Um. An emotional impression of oppressiveness. Trying to see if I can sketch… more freely, more generally.

Lyn: Uh, the tall, you said it looks like a fence, move to the top of that, see what you get.

GW: Um, partly I’m getting… I think my mind wants me to be picking up sharpness. I’m picking up sharpness. But I’m also at the same time getting the impression also of a ball on top, but the two are fairly contradictory so I’m not happy about that.

Lyn: Oh don’t worry about that, it doesn’t have to make sense to your logical mind!

GW: OK. Well, those are the impressions I’m getting.

Lyn: OK. Whatever is up there, can you touch it, try to get its texture, colour, shapes and sizes?

GW: Texture is prickly.

Lyn: OK

GW: Almost… compound.

Lyn: Ok, good.

GW: Artificial.

Lyn: Ok, good. OK, um, do you want to find more, or… Do you want to do a summary, or continue probing?

GW: Well…

Lyn: I know at this point if you’re like every remote viewer in the world, you’re thinking you haven’t got anything.

GW: Sort of. I don’t know entirely where I’m going with this. It would be tempting to push the session as long and far as possible, just for the experience if nothing else, however at the same time, for what we need for the magazine and for your time… I don’t want to be, y’know, a hog or a freeloader or whatever.

Lyn: Oh, no problem, in fact if you want to go longer if we run out of time, we can go longer. It’s always up to the viewer to say “I think I have enough” or whatever. You’ve been describing the target so you’re doing well.

GW: Wow, thank you. I think for the moment I’d be interested to go through the summary process and see how things wrap up.

Lyn: OK, good. What you want to do at this point is to say the target has elements of land and then what was it another type of land, and then what was the third one, man-made? So once you have that, that’s the first paragraph of your summary. So then we take the first land, and we’re going to write a paragraph about it, and we say “The first land is:” and we go back through the session. Now, at this point you are going to have to evaluate each thing you said as to whether it describes the first land or whether it describes something else. You know, you’re winking around the site. If it describes the first bit of land, then you have to decide whether or not you still feel its true. If it describes the first bit of land and its true, then you write it into your summary. This is where all the garbage falls out. So what can you tell me about the first type of land that is there, in terms of texture, shape, size.

GW: I think the land I was picking up first… that’s this natural, green, natural background setting. I haven’t gotten very many adjectives from it as I can tell.

Lyn: Well, you got soft, you at one point you said muddy, and I think you said almost liquid but you couldn’t tell, and the temperature?

GW: Neutral to coolish.

Lyn: OK, and did it have a smell?

GW: Not that I’m perceiving. Fresh, my mind wants to tell.

Lyn: Fresh. And any colour?

GW: The green was the only colour I picked up.

Lyn: Ok, start a new paragraph and say the second type of land was…

GW: OK The second land was dark. The texture was rough and particulate to a certain extent — smooth from a distance but rough close up, if you see.

Lyn: Make sure you write that in. And is it hard or soft?

GW: It’s quite hard.

Lyn: Quite hard, OK.

GW: And, um, it was the cold, sticky and unpleasant.

Lyn: OK, good.

GW: I have that resin smell with that as well.

Lyn: Oh, OK, good. Did you have anything else for that?

GW: No.

Lyn: Ok, then you start a new paragraph, and say the man-made was…

GW: OK, the man-made is definitely hard, massive and tall. I’m going to stick with flexible, cold and metallic as well.

Lyn: OK, good.

GW: And the sensation of wind moving.

Lyn: OK. How would you describe the wind, texture or sound?

GW: It sounds thin, if wind can sound thin. It feels quite cold. I don’t think it would be nice to be out in.

Lyn: Good, make sure you write all this in. And you had heard a whine?

GW: Yes, I’d got a whine, and a dull thud from thumping it.

Lyn: OK good, and there were repeated…

GW: Repeated artificial elements, yeah. And then, this prickly artificial compound sharp ball sensation for the top of the elements.

Lyn: Ok good.

GW: And this sense of movability.

Lyn: Good, ok.

GW: I had a cloth texture, but I can’t place that.

Lyn: OK, we have an ‘other’ paragraph for stuff you can’t place.

GW: Ok. That would include the cloth texture, the sound of a passing car, the black & red composite patch…

Lyn: Ok. Oh, ok, I see what that is.

GW:…and a general sensation of brightness, which I hadn’t tied to anything. OK, that’s everything one way or another.

Lyn: OK, do you want to know what you were viewing?

GW: Hell yeah, absolutely.

Lyn: It’s the world fair from 1931, the man who invented air conditioning. It’s a display stand, and there are 10 girls in very very short skirts holding snow shovels and ice picks and, uh, the snow shovels are all vertical ‘cos these girls are lined up in two rows and right in the middle, between the two rows, is Louis Carrier, who invented aircon and there is a sign over to the side which says “Air Conditioning”, and um the picture itself is in black and white and the article heading is in red and black, so what you were seeing as the fence is this long row of snow shovels and ice picks — not like you’d use in a refrigerator but like you’d use… — and uh, the sharp is definitely there and the top is round and made of a wooden handle that spills onto a metal bone-like thing that goes down the shaft. I think you did pretty well. The entire scene is just cold.

Remote Viwing target image

GW: That’s interesting. Nothing like any concrete image or visualisation I had in my mind at all!

Lyn: This is one of the things people learn they don’t like about remove viewing — all these nouns they come up with, and you come up with pictures, you know, of telescope dishes and everything… But there is a an archway over this thing that is slanted and it is the thing he’s walking out of, and it forms an arch over these women that were standing there. You come up with these nouns and you think you have a picture of the target, but your subconscious mind says “Go ahead, have your imagination, but I’m going to give you the descriptors of the real target.” You get in your mind one thing and then you describe something else, the real target! In classes, they look at the picture and say “Oh, that’s not what I was scanning”, and you go back and have a look at the target and the descriptors and it’s 90% accurate.

GW: Looking back over the descriptors, I can see where it’s coming from. I would certainly associate whine with air conditioning units, yeah! Fascinating.

Lyn: Well, while the session wasn’t what we Texan’s call a “real barn burner”, it was VERY impressive for a viewer of your level of training and experience.
You got the dark flooring underneath the ice.
You got the ice itself, saying in the beginning that it was wet and almost liquid.
You described the snow shovels and ice picks very well (I would have focused on the legs, myself!)
You very accurately described the sounds of the air conditioners and the “fresh” smell of the shaved ice.
There were several other minor things about the target which you accurately “nailed”, as well.
All in all, a very impressive session, and it helps me get my point across. I don’t want to show people that I can do it… I want to show them that they can do it.

GW: Well, that’s very generous feedback. Thank you very much.

Lyn: Thank you! It’s been a good session, you did very well.

Incredibly, STARGATE is a complete success.

The project team perfect and deploy a rigorously scientific technique named Remote Viewing that allows trained ‘viewers’ to literally perceive distant places as if they are there. The project runs for years, providing information that would otherwise be impossible to obtain, until Congressional uneasiness at the idea of psychic spies sees funding withdrawn, and the project is closed.

You might be forgiven for thinking that I was describing a new Hollywood thriller, but the STARGATE Project is documented fact, rather than fiction. It all began when a Russian defector passed document to the US detailing his scientific research with the USSR’s own Remote Viewing unit, and a man named Skip Atwater realized the potential of a technique for accessing intelligence remotely. It quickly became obvious that America would have to explore the possibilities itself. Some years later, a young Texan Sergeant named Lyn Buchanan got into a fierce argument in his base’s computer lab…

The story of the STARGATE project is well-documented – most of the original core team have now written about their experiences and subsequent work. Buchanan’s own book, “The Seventh Sense”, is published by Simon & Schuster (his novel, “Gravity Can Be Your Friend,” is available from lulu.com).

After leaving the military, Buchanan kept up his interest in training new Remote Viewers. As well as training interested members of the public – coordinated through his website, crviewer.com – he also works directly with large corporations and with police departments, on a strict basis of total confidentiality. For companies, that generally involves setting up and training an entire Remote Viewing department, putting reporting and checking procedures in place, teaching people how to manage both the talent and the data, and so on. Applications include technical & medical diagnostics, scouting (for just about anything), R&D, archaeology, finance – anywhere you can ask questions like ‘where’, ‘which’ or ‘whom’.

Setting up and training a corporate department is a lot of work, parallel to hiring consultants to set up a major in-house telephone call centre. Even so, Buchanan says, more and more corporations are finding that this sort of operation really pays for itself. Interestingly, police work is often a far smaller-scale affair. His viewers help by providing extra information or targeting locations rather than trying to ‘solve’ cases.

Lyn Buchanan (image (c) Lyn Buchanan)

In February 2006, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to interview Buchanan in person. He is a softly-spoken Southern Gentleman with a quiet, self-effacing charm and the understated rock-solid confidence that must come with being one of the world’s top Remote Viewers. What he says would sound like wild boasting from most people, but he just sounded mildly embarrassed:

Ghostwoods: Hi Lyn. Thanks for agreeing to talk to me. It’s a pleasure and privilege to get to talk to you.

Lyn: Well thank you.

GW: Let’s start with the basics. How would you personally define remote viewing? How would you describe it?

Lyn: The term Remote Viewing, for most people, is just the new-age term for psychic perception. True remote viewing, which is what we were taught in the military, is a science that was developed in the laboratory using non-psychics — that was actually the goal, because the military didn’t want to deal with psychics, and all they wanted to do was to grab a soldier off the battlefield, teach him to do this, and then send him back to the unit so that he can tell his commander what’s over the hill. And it worked. And so it’s actually a science that allows a non-psychic to use their subconscious mind in a way that a psychic normally does.

GW: Right. Is that by… is that a passive thing, where you’re tapping into an information pool of some sort, or is it a more active thing, like casting your senses out?

Lyn: It’s both, sort of a dance, you know, in the sense that it’s a thing you have control over. That’s why they call it Controlled Remote Viewing. What we’ve found is that if you take a psychic that has natural talent and teach them the controls, they become phenomenally super-psychic, because they already have the ability. Most psychics don’t have any control over it, so we have special classes just for psychics, we don’t teach them remote viewing, we teach them the controls, and they go on to produce some phenomenal work, just amazing work.

GW: Wow. How interesting. Fascinating stuff.

Lyn: Yeah, it is. I’ve always found it amazing. I’m not surprised by things I see any more, but if I ever stop being fascinated, I’ll go back to programming computers! I remain fascinated by the whole field.

GW: Yes, I’ve been interested in the whole field of the paranormal for a long time. I’ve tried a bit of co-ordinate remote viewing with certain limited success. I think I need to put in a lot more practice though!

Lyn: Yeah, it’s a lot of practice, and, y’know the field itself… the controlled remote viewing has its limits.

GW: Yes, I understand that it is more effective if you have a partner to help you.

Lyn: A lot of people run into the limits, and think its their own limitations when really it’s the limitations of the procedure itself.

GW: That’s interesting. So the different procedures have different scope for producing results?

Lyn: They have different strengths and weaknesses, yeah.

GW: That’s interesting. I haven’t had much chance to get exposed to material that’s not on the web. I hope the day will come.

Lyn: I don’t know if you’ve visited my website or not, it’s at http://www.crviewer.com.

GW: Yeah, I’ve had a look at CRViewer. A lot of interesting stuff there. I’m very interested in the assigned witness program, particularly.

Lyn: Thank you!

GW: So… I saw from a brief bio about you on a different website that you were originally flagged up for the Stargate project because of some telekinetic abilities. Can you tell me a bit about that?

Lyn: Well I’ve had that ever since I was a child. You’ve heard of the poltergeist children, well, I was one of those, and uh, the ones who get the notoriety of course are the ones who are emotionally disturbed.

GW: Yeah.

Lyn: That’s only one part of the whole telekinetic children though. The ones who are not emotionally disturbed, who just run across this talent, they start playing with it and get control, and so I started to roll with it. Well, that talent came out at one point in the military, and uh, sort of resulted in the destruction of a room full of computers. To my surprise one of the officers that was there had been trained to spot these things and report them and so the general was over a few months later and he was prepared, and he dragged me into his office and scowled into my face and said “did you destroy my computers with your mind?” And I thought “I can lie about this, or tell the truth and my great-grandchildren will still be paying for those computers.” Well, I said “Yes sir, I did,” and the scowl just vanished and turned into a big grin, and forgive the language, he said “Far fucking out! Have I ever got a job for you!”

GW: Fantastic!

Lyn: He called me back to Washington DC, and they wanted me to be the beginning of a unit that would destroy enemy computers, and later would learn how to control the information within the computers. Back in the 60s though, Congress had been caught doing mind-control experiments, and so when the General said he wanted funding to start this unit, Congress turned round and said “No, no way.” They’d been caught once doing this mind control… They said no active mental work. We had to make sure what we were doing was passive mental work, which was the remote viewing, where remote viewers sit down and passively receive information. I was already in Washington DC, so they just stuck me into the remote viewing unit, which was Stargate.

GW: I see. Fascinating.

Lyn: Actually, I think we could have made a really good unit, but I have always wondered, if it had happened, how it would have been used.

GW: Yeah. I notice from what you say on your site about remote influencing… The whole thing about what goes around comes around — I guess that kind of work can get quite self-destructive if you’re not careful.

Lyn: Well. Not only self-destructive but, used incorrectly… it can be harmful.

GW: Yeah. I guess we should be grateful that it hasn’t come to pass, at least as far as we know.

Lyn: Yeah.

GW: So what do you think in the end the military hoped for from Stargate? Do you think they hoped it would become more offensive, or did they just want great Intel, or…?

Lyn: They achieved what they hoped for — intelligence information that nobody ever would have found, that intelligence agencies could never produce. A spy-in-the-sky satellite can see a secret facility, but it can’t see what is inside. We could. They could track cars around a city, but they couldn’t tell which one had the political hostage inside. And so forth. We were always used as the last resort, to produce information they couldn’t get any other way.

Sometimes, the information I was receiving was literally unbelievable.  It seemed that Saddam Hussein had acquired a black-market American missile and had it aimed at the Holy Mosque at Mecca. His plan was to feign illness during the main Ramadan ceremony, and use the  American missile to wipe out all the other Muslim leaders. As the last Muslim leader, he would be able to take over and unite the Muslim world in a holy war, first against the evil Americans, and eventually the whole non-Muslim world.

My results were passed up the chain of command, and all along the way, each person refused to believe that any Muslim would do such a thing – myself included – but they kept passing it on, just in case. Well, the missile was found, and sure enough, it had been bought on the black market, and was aimed in the direction of Mecca. If it hadn’t been for that session, we would be in a humongous world war right now. At one time or another, almost every remote viewer in the unit turned in some information which, to one extent or another, changed history. Believe it or not, it became almost second nature to go to work every day, do a few miracles, and go home in the evening to a good night’s sleep.

GW: It’s my understanding that the American interest in the field — at least military — has dropped to a halt now.

Lyn: It’s my understanding too… You know, when you retire they stop telling you secrets. But I have watched or been in intelligence most of my career, and I can look for indicators that would suggest remote viewers at work. The indicators were there in Gulf War 2 that we didn’t have a remote viewing unit — and that Saddam Hussein did.

GW: Right!

Lyn: I was very surprised at those indicators. It is my suspicion — but I have no proof — it is my suspicion that after the first attack on Iraq, after that he got a remote viewing unit. The man was crazy, but he wasn’t stupid.

GW: Yeah… I guess. I mean, I was going to ask if you thought there were other countries using this sort of technology, but I guess it can’t be that tricky in terms of resources for a country to set up.

Lyn: Well actually, if you read between the lines in open source literature — and of course we had access to literature that wasn’t available to the public — most other countries have units of their own. Great Britain has a large one. Libya has one. The Israelis have a very large psychic spy network, and so forth, but I was very surprised to find one of the largest is Bulgaria.

GW: That’s interesting. I spent some time in the Czech Republic and I knew there was a large team in Prague at one point…

Lyn: Yes… Uh, yeah.

GW:… But I didn’t know there was anything in Bulgaria.

Lyn: Yeah, one wonders, what _is_ Bulgaria doing with all this psychic spy technology?

GW: Yeah, it’s interesting. Now, I noticed that you said on one of the pages that you feel it was almost as if the pace at which Remote Viewing could be learned has accelerated. I think you mentioned Sheldrake’s Morphic Field Theory. You must train a lot of people. Can you see if is this a trend of general spiritual development, or something coming, or is it purely in the remote viewing area, or… how do you see this?

Lyn: I think that you cannot learn this contact — learn to contact your subconscious mind on a real basis — without there being some spiritual impact. However most of the students I have are learning for specific applications, such as police work, or archeology, medical diagnostics, and so on. Everything we do is on a hard, firm, realistic basis. No looking at UFOs or anything like that.

GW: Yeah, I noticed that is a feature of your site, that you’re very interested in keeping it real.

Lyn: Very real, yeah. The thing is that it doesn’t earn its way in life, then what good is it? Another thing is that as we teach people, if we keep it on the basis of things where we can go and get feedback, then the people learn. If we give them, y’know, the Galactic Council Headquarters on some distant planet as a co-ordinate and then they do a session, then they don’t learn anything because they are not able to see what they got right, what they got wrong.

GW: Yeah, understood. I think it is almost certainly a very important attitude to have. I don’t want to denigrate anyone else, but I have a lot of respect for that position. If you can’t verify information on some level, then I think you have to assume it’s incorrect really.

Lyn: Yeah, well, it may be correct, but there’s no way to prove it.

GW: Yeah, exactly.

Lyn: And, you know, when it comes to getting out of the course and then going back to your real daily life, if you haven’t taught people to use it in real life, then actually I think you’ve cheated them out of their money.

GW: Yeah, I understand. Do you think it will ever get to the point where these talents are strong enough — in the mass unconscious if you like — that people start developing these talents spontaneously?

Lyn: I don’t think it will. Um, I have looked into the future of remote viewing and what I keep finding is that we will improve it and improve it  and improve it and then one day the politicians will realize that they don’t have any secrets, the mafia will realise that it doesn’t have any secrets, and all of a sudden it will start getting all kinds of bad press, it will start getting horror stories, and all these people will ensure it’ll fall out of popularity, and then of course the government & military will be very quick to go round pick the cream of the crop to take them away to use them and once again what goes around will come around with psychics running units which are very secret and also much more advanced than what they have now.

GW: Right. Now that’s… quite a scary prospect for anyone involved in the field.

Lyn: That it is. Its kinda scary prospect for me.

GW: Yeah. For me as well, to be honest. And even just in terms of the lessons you can see in history, I can see a lot of self-evident truth in that analysis, unfortunately.

Lyn: The point is that history repeats itself.

GW: Absolutely. Moving to a more positive note, I couldn’t find any real details about the work you’re doing with the assigned witness program. I mean, I saw the content of what you do, I just wondered if you could give me any figures, how much you’re able to help, what number of cases you’ve been able to help with, that sort of thing.

Lyn: That was the right question, by the way, the cases we’ve been able to help with. If you asked me how many cases have you solved, I’d say none. Because we provide information, and the police solve the case. And we’re there to help, not to come round and save the day, take over their jobs, and all that. Once police departments realise that, they use us. So many times, psychics have come round and helped police departments, and then they call the newspaper and the magazines, and say “I did this, I solved this case for the police,” and behave horribly, say anything about it. And so the assigned witness program works FOR the police departments. We promise them anonymity, we promise them we will not use their name or _anything_ until they give us written permission, and we keep that promise. We do a lot of missing children cases. Lately we’re doing a lot more missing evidence cases — helping look for evidence that just can’t be found any other way. Lately we’re doing more of that than missing children cases.

GW: That’s interesting. I’d love to think that means there’s less cases of missing children. I don’t know if it does or not?

Lyn: I’m afraid it doesn’t, no.

GW: Do you have any figures, off-hand, on the number of cases you might help in a year? I mean, you talking tens, hundreds, thousands?

Lyn: I don’t have my detailed figures here, but I think you could say around… a good year would be around fifty cases right now. One a week.

GW: OK. That’s still a pretty major contribution, however you cut it.

Lyn: Well, it doesn’t scratch the surface.

GW: I imagine that whole battalions of remote viewers still wouldn’t manage to scratch the surface, with the kind of crime figures we’re seeing in the world.

Lyn: That’s right. One of the problems is that if we’re going to use a long term remote viewer, they don’t know how to speak police language, or what the policeman looks for in the world. The most success we’ve found is where police departments send some of their detectives to us and we teach them to do the remote viewing.

GW: Right. And then you might not necessarily get figures back as to how much difference that has made because…

Lyn: We get some verbal feedback from the detectives using this. Generally they’ll use it on every case.

GW: Of course, of course, once you’ve gained faith in your abilities in this skill, you’d have to be insane not to.

Lyn: Along the same lines, we’ve started teaching large corporations to develop entire remote viewing units within a corporation, and so… There again, I don’t know exactly what uses or how much use it goes to, because y’know… but we teach management, analysts, remote viewers, the monitors, reporting… and large corporations are finding out that this technique really pays for itself.

GW: That makes sense. Moving a bit more spiritually for a moment, I noticed on some of the web stuff you’ve talked about reincarnation, even reincarnation to past time zones. Can you tell us anything about that?

Lyn: Well, in the training in the military, I was told to access people as they went through the process of death, and to go through the process of death with them. I think I had 64 targets along that way. What I found on those targets was that some seemed to reincarnate, some seemed to go to hell, some seemed to go to heaven, and others, they just stopped existing. I never found any ghosts, which was surprising, but one of the things I found is that the group that seemed to reincarnate, well, they appeared to reincarnate into future times, or into present times, or into past times. For some, it was like the next lesson they had to learn on their spiritual journey was in the times of King Arthur or something, others would be jumped forward to future times.

GW: So do you think that might imply we have so many people here on earth because this is a good training time at the moment?

Lyn: Well, could be! I don’t know if I would make that association, but I certainly wouldn’t say no to it. I think spiritually this is one of the most harsh training times, yeah. Lots to learn.

GW: Yeah. With you on that one. Now, I know that looking at the future is a very difficult and uncertain thing… but do you have any sense of how things are likely to shape up in the next few years?

Lyn: Oh, yes. I think in spite of all efforts and everything, the next ten to twenty years is going to see just a phenomenally large war — it will of course will not be a war that ends all wars because they’ll just keep on coming — but it’s going to destroy a horrendous number of people, I mean, just huge numbers of people.

GW: Looking at the way that the world is going at the moment, that seems all too plausible. That’s a very subjective perception, it could just be pessimism…

Lyn: Yeah, or reading the newspaper!

GW: Your most recent book is “Gravity can be your Friend”, right?

Lyn: Yeah, ah, you’ve heard of it, I think it’s on Amazon now, but on lulu.com, you can buy it printed or download it to your computer for only half the price. It’s a scientific fiction book, although everything in it is scientifically possible right now. It’s not one of those far-distant future earth things. It’s a story about police work in space, and all the special training that they have to go through, and it weaves around the story of a police cadet whose father is a notorious criminal, and it becomes her job to catch her father, and all the old motivations they have to go through with the different remedies and the different processes… probably more science than fiction.

GW: That sounds great, and I look forward to grabbing it. So what do you do when you’re not writing?

Lyn: I teach classes of course, and I do charity work for police departments, and then we do work for hire, which we do for our students. We train them to professional and then we turn round and then, when someone in business or something comes in who wants something done, we pay our students for doing it. When we teach our students, we don’t just say “Good, you’ve done the course and now you’re a remote viewer.” There is a place for their work, and the way we do that is we give them a target which has definitely got… like a police case or something which is already solved, and everything is already known, and then we have them do a session, and we go through their viewing one perception at a time, and evaluate every perception as to being correct or incorrect. Then we database all of this, so any of the students, when they become professional, they have sessions in the database and we know exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are, we know exactly how dependable they are, all different types of information. This is definitely a science, were doing applications research whose role is training.

GW: Yeah, I understand, and backing up good students with potential work in the future as well.

Lyn: Yeah.

GW: Yeah, that’s a great benefit of taking the training, I’d think.

Lyn: Yeah, every student has their own strengths and weaknesses, and so if we get a customer who wants something to do with the shape of some micro-component or something, we can look at the database, see who is best at shapes, and use them.

GW: Right, I understand.

Lyn: If Police want the colour of the getaway car, we don’t just task it to anyone, we look in the database and find out who has the highest accuracy with colours. By doing it that way we can take an average of people, use them with their best talents, and get the best results for the customer.

GW: Yeah, that’s really smart actually. Plus you have all the backup information to show results, where you’re coming from.

Lyn: Yeah, we can turn around and say to a customer this person here has a proven track record & dependability rating of, say, 87%. We can say you can depend on them to be right to 80% dependable, or 90% dependable, or whatever.

GW: Yeah, certainly I can see that being a very valuable service, both for the viewers and for the clients.

Lyn: That’s right.

GW: Alright Lyn, I’ve taken up enough of your time so I think I should let you get back to work. Thanks very much for talking to me.

Lyn: Great, thank you.

Note: To read the transcript of Lyn guiding me through an attempt at Remote Viewing, click here.

I gradually discovered that in his mind, being an introvert meant that I was like the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Introvert equalled quiet, brooding, twisted, obsessive loner, the sort of cabin-dwelling troll who owns fourteen different assault rifles and a very, very big stack of tinned beans. I assured him it was nothing like that, but he was still shaken.

Introverts Are People Too by Headlessness

In the modern psychological* sense, about 30% of the population are generally considered to be introverted, and 70% extroverted. At the simplest level, introverts are people who find it draining to socialise, and recharge with time alone or with closest companions. Extroverts are the opposite, recharged and revitalised by company, and drained by quiet time. People fall somewhere on a scale between total extroversion and total introversion** — even the wildest social butterfly needs a moment to rest now and again, and the most reclusive hermits still need a modicum of social contact.

There are other tendencies which generally accompany this broad division. Introverts often have good imaginations and rich inner worlds, and a good understanding of themselves and other people. Introverts are more likely than extroverts to be intelligent, depressed and creative; to have low self esteem and sedate clothes; and to be less assertive, happy, obese and criminal. They tend to have close friendships rather than acquaintances; strongly extroverted people may have a horde of acquaintances, but few close friends.

When it comes to interaction, introverts like to have a chance to think and observe before acting, and to be cautious with what they’re saying unless they’re with a group that they know and trust. Large social gatherings can quite easily overwhelm most introverts due to the high levels of stimulation involved.

Ducatti Monster by Mark J. Sebastian

Introversion and shyness do not go hand in hand, however. A shy person avoids social situations because of fear, and most sufferers long to be social butterflies. Introverts can be extremely outgoing for bursts of time, and often have no social anxiety, but they find the experience draining, and less rewarding than extroverts do. Introverts value social time highly, they just prefer to get deeper and more personal with a small group than to have light conversations with a range of people.

Introverts have a fairly tough time of it in Western society. Our societal structures are all highly extroverted. Aggressively assertive people are by far the most likely to succeed at work. The media is full of outgoing, bubbly types who avoid self-awareness like the plague. Top politicians are charismatic, arrogant charmers. The ideal of leisure time that we are shown is to go out on the town to busy venues full of glittering people and meet up with lots of chattering friends. To many introverts, that sounds like a good description of hell after a long week at work.

It doesn’t help that most extroverts find it hard to understand the idea of introversion. Extroverts are focussed outwards, on the world, and tend not to indulge in a whole lot of soul-searching. It is natural to them to seek company, so the idea of anyone finding that hard to manage is utterly alien. It’s a bit like having a friend who needs to spend an hour a day with their head underwater, keeping their gills wet. As any introvert growing up in an extrovert family will attest, extroverts generally falsely assume that introverts are grumpy, aloof, shy, cold, disinterested, or being superior. Usually, nothing could be further from the truth.

Most introverts are warm, kind, interesting people with a lot to offer, often including a unique view of the world. Give them the space they need, and you’ll find it greatly rewarding.

Contemplative by DCvision2006

If you’re an extrovert, here are ten simple things to remember to help you get on well with the introvert in your life.

1. “No thanks” doesn’t mean your introvert thinks you — or your offer — are boring.

2. If an introvert wants to be alone, it’s a not a sign that anything is wrong. Just the opposite; for introverts, being alone is a pleasure.

3. Most introverts will be horrified by a large surprise party.

4. If an introvert has been having a good time out but suddenly goes quiet, they’ve probably just run out of steam.

5. Most introverts will want to leave the party long before you do.

6. If you want to bring an introvert out of their shell, talk about thoughts and feelings, or about a hobby they’re into, and remember to leave plenty of space for them to talk. They won’t make a hole in the conversation to talk into, so if you just keep going, they’ll let you.

7. You know how you feel about a night in the pub? That’s how introverts feel about a night reading a book, playing computer games or watching DVDs.

8. If a chore involves communicating with strangers — taking something back to a store, say — then it’ll get done faster and better if you do it instead.

9. Take it as read that most introverts aren’t going to want to sing in the karaoke / be the first on the dance-floor / go start chatting to random strangers / meet a whole bunch of your acquaintances / &c. They’ll be grateful if you don’t try to pressure them into things.

10. Do still make the offer to do group things, even if you expect your introvert to turn it down. Sometimes they will be in the mood, but low assertiveness means that they’re unlikely to ask if they can come along.

* Well, pop psychology anyway.

** People who fall in the middle are sometimes referred to as Ambiverts, if you feel the need for some useless jargon.

Find out with this quick and utterly unscientific test.

1. Which of the following countries is somewhere you might consider visiting for an adventurous holiday?
a. Spain
b. Peru
c. Algeria

2. What happens when you get angry?
a. Nothing much, I keep it hidden as well as possible.
b. I give myself time to calm down, and then try to face the issue reasonably.
c. I make sure everyone knows it; I’m prepared to yell at anyone who angers me.

3. Are you comfortable asking assistants for help in shops?
a. If they approach me. I don’t want to bother them if they’re busy.
b. Sure, if I need help I’ll ask for it.
c. I demand immediate attention as soon as I walk in. Hunting for what I need is boring.

4. If you are attracted to someone, what do you do?
a. Hope they notice the fact I’m interested.
b. Get talking to them, and if it seems like a good idea, suggest a date.
c. Whisk them into bed, of course. I’m irresistible.

5. How do you deal with confrontation?
a. I hate confrontation, and avoid it whenever possible. If it happens anyway, I’ll do whatever it takes to end it swiftly.
b. Try to make sure I understand the other person’s point of view, and they understand mine. Then I’ll look for common ground.
c. I bite back. Harder.

6. How often do you eat out?
a. I don’t really like going out to dinner. Just for special occasions.
b. Fairly regularly, finances permitting.
c. Every night. Home cooking is a waste of time.

7. Do you like the idea of extreme sports?
a. Absolutely not. Why would I put myself in that sort of danger?
b. Some of them look like fun, and I might have a go if the opportunity arose.
c. The more extreme the better – I just love thrills.

8. How safe do you feel?
a. Not very, the world is a really scary place at the moment.
b. Reasonably safe. I know bad things can happen, but they’re not very likely.
c. I’m totally safe, nothing can touch me or mine.

9. A friend brings someone you don’t know to a meeting. What is your reaction?
a. It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t feel easy around people I don’t know.
b. Great! My friend is cool, so the chances are their other friend is cool too.
c. I’m annoyed – the meeting was supposed to be about us.

10. Would you go out on your own to a pub, restaurant, cinema etc.?
a. No, I only go out if there’s someone else with me.
b. Sure, if there’s no-one available and I want to go out, I’ll go out. No big deal.
c. If I go out, there are always people desperate to join me.

11. Are you attractive?
a. Being honest, no, I’m just not attractive unfortunately.
b. I guess I’m reasonably attractive. Different people have different tastes, anyway.
c. I’m totally gorgeous, actually.

12. Do you know what you like?
a. I tend to be more focussed on other people’s desires, so I’ve rather lost track of my own preferences.
b. Yes, I know who I am, and I accept that.
c. I deserve and demand nothing less than 5* luxury.

13. Do you enjoy large parties?
a. They’re not really my sort of thing. I prefer small gatherings of close friends.
b. Yes, they’re a good chance to meet new people and mingle.
c. Great! The bigger the party, the bigger my audience.

14. Are you lucky?
a. I’d say I’m usually unlucky.
b. I’m a fairly lucky person, yes.
c. Luck is for losers. I make my own luck.

15. How do you feel about your direction in life?
a. I don’t really have one, I’m just living day to day.
b. It’s important I have an idea of where I’m going, even if it changes over time.
c. I’m going straight to the top and staying there.

16. What do you do if someone tries to chat you up?
a. No-one ever tries to chat me up, and I probably wouldn’t realise if they did.
b. It’s always flattering. If it seems like a good idea, I’ll respond.
c. I make my boredom obvious. The question should ask what I’d do if someone didn’t try to chat me up.

17. Which of these is closest to your ideal holiday?
a. A week of peace and quiet in the countryside.
b. A fortnight abroad – preferably somewhere with nice weather and some interesting local culture.
c. An extended stay in a luxury resort with lots of servants at my beck and call.

18. How do you feel when a friend unexpectedly asks for your help with something?
a. I’m glad to be able to do something useful, so I drop whatever I’m doing to help.
b. I’ll help if I can of course, depending on what I’ve got on and how urgent it is.
c. A real friend wouldn’t make demands of me like that.

19. Do you go out walking around the area you live in?
a. No, I just don’t feel safe.
b. Sure, sometimes it is nice to explore and get to know the area better.
c. That’s what cars are for.

20. Would you like to receive a surprise party?
a. Definitely not. I like time to prepare myself for that sort of thing.
b. Why not? It could be fun.
c. I’d know. No-one would ever be able to slip something like that past me.

Scoring:

A: 0
B: 1
C: 2

Results

5 or less: This really isn’t a good score – but then you know that already. Your confidence is rock-bottom, and if you are honest with yourself, you know it is spoiling your life. Lack of confidence can come from a whole lot of different issues, but it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you accept low confidence, the lower it gets. I strongly recommend you try facing your fears, and doing confident things you really don’t want to do. You’ll find that each time you do it, your fear recedes, even though it won’t much feel like it at the time. Keep on challenging yourself, and in a few months you’ll hardly recognise your life – in a good way. I guarantee it.

6 – 12: Your low confidence is a recurrent theme in your life, and it affects most of the things you do and aspire to. That’s a shame, honestly. It can be easy to always let others have their own way, even fool yourself that you’re being a nice person because of it. But the more you ignore your own needs, the more fragile and damaged you become. Make an effort to put yourself forward more. The rewards will be great.

13 – 28: Most people scoring in this range will have a healthy, well-adjusted relationship to themselves and their lives. Getting a majority of ‘B’ answers indicates that you have the self-assurance to take care of your own needs as well as the deal amicably with the bumps and curves of life. Be careful if your answers were mostly split between A and C however – that would indicate some major inconsistencies in your personality, enough that you may be drastically overcompensating in one area for serious confidence problems in another.

29 – 35: You’re not just confident, you’re positively cocky. While that may seem great to you – and probably helps you to get your own way most of the time – you may not realise that it can be quite isolating. Most people don’t like being ridden over, and find over-confidence off-putting. You probably have trouble making genuine friendships. Mellowing out a bit could help a lot.

36 – 40: Wow, you really are full of yourself. Few people find such arrogance easy to put up with, and even fewer find it attractive. You don’t care of course, you’re sure you don’t need those fools anyway. But this sort of attitude is almost always compensating for some terrible pain or insecurity deep inside, and honestly, being so dehumanised makes life is pretty miserable. What drives you to be so arrogant? Find that, and you’ll find the key to inner peace and contentment.

Meeping has a worryingly non-descript sound to it. You know what teenagers are like nowadays* — a meep could be anything from some hideous sexual perversion to cutesy slang for covering every inch of someone’s car with gaffer tape. Do you sneak out for a good, hard, meep? Ease into a meeping? Get the gang round for a wild meep-up, maybe?

Well, fortunately, no.

For largely random reasons, ‘meep’ has become a standard filler word for situations where you want to make a noise but not really say anything. It used to be a squeak which indicated surprise or cutesy annoyance, particularly amongst geekier types. (“Here, look at my dragon.” “MEEP!”) It’s mutated a bit since then, though. It’s now a fairly meaningless exclamation, and I suspect that its mainstream popularity is mainly down to the fact that it annoys teachers, parents and other petty tyranny figures. Some groups have an agreed meaning for the word, but in general, it’s just a more spangly version of that other great teen catch-all sound, ‘unh’.

Meep Goes for a Swim #2 by Random Pinkness

But don’t relax just yet. Although various people have made claims for the origin of meep — most commonly blaming Beaker from the Muppets — the disturbing truth is that it seems to have been cosmic horror author H. P. Lovecraft who first used the word. He used it to describe the loathsome noise made by ghouls**, cadaverous subterranean monstrosities whose main pastime was eating the flesh of human corpses.

“Then, just as he was about to creep back from that detestable flame, he saw a stirring among the vague dark forms and heard a peculiar and unmistakable sound. It was the frightened meeping of a ghoul, and in a moment it had swelled to a veritable chorus of anguish.”
– H P Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, 1927.

I find this particularly worrying in light of the Cthulhu Cult’s sudden appearance in the mainstream media after all these years.

Be alert.

Meep by Strange Aeons

* Young, idealistic, comparatively full of energy, that sort of thing.

** They also glibber. Just so you know.

The Comte de Saint Germain, c 1784.

Despite being one of the most influential characters in modern history, the Count de St. Germain is also one of the most enigmatic. Karl, Prince of Hesse described him as one of the “greatest philosophers who ever lived – the friend of humanity, whose heart was concerned only with the happiness of others.” Despite a horde of such accolades from nobility right across Europe, nothing whatsoever is known of St. Germain’s early life – not even when or where it started.

The Count de St. Germain is remembered as a man of medium height, approximately 45 years old, with a slim figure, graceful bearing, a radiant smile and astonishingly lovely eyes. He was amazingly skilled in just about every area that it was possible to be skilled in. He spoke French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Danish, Swedish, Arabic and Chinese fluently, without any trace of an accent. He played most musical instruments – Frederick the Great commended his skill with the Harpsichord – but his favourite was the violin. Paganini himself is known to have declared St. Germain his equal with the instrument. Two works that the Count composed are in the British Museum, whilst others were given to Tchaikovsky and Prince Ferdinand, amongst others.

St. Germain had more talents that the musical, though. His paintings were said to be reminiscent of Raphael and quite extraordinary in quality, particularly for his ability to perfectly render the shine of a gemstone on canvas; he was sought after as an art critic and as a verifier of paintings. His memory was so great that he could glance at a paper and then repeat it word for word days later, and he could write poetry with one hand whilst simultaneously drafting political missives with the other. His chief peculiarity was never eating or drinking with others, instead subsisting on a form of oat gruel he prepared himself, and drinking little other than a tea he personally brewed from dried herbs.

But his feats were greater than mere skill and quickness of mind can allow for. St. Germain was regularly said to be able to answer questions before they were spoken, and to know the content of letters before opening them. Casanova recorded that he visited St. Germain in his laboratory and handed the Count a silver coin which was returned, moments later – now made of solid gold. St. Germain also claimed to know how to melt small diamonds into larger single stones, and astonished the French Ambassador to Holland by smashing a huge diamond to pieces with a hammer – the twin of a stone he had just sold to a dealer for a princely sum. On another occasion, he amazed King Louis XV by melting a flaw out of one of his larger diamonds, increasing the value of the stone by a huge amount.

St. Germain claimed to have lived in ancient Chaldea, and to possess secrets of the Egyptian masters. He commonly spoke about times long past as if he himself had been there to witness them, right down to exacting details. One evening, while telling a story to some guests about an event that had happened many hundreds of years earlier, he nodded over to his butler and asked the man if he had left out anything important. The butler chided him gently: “Monsieur le Comte forgets that I have been with him only five hundred years. I could not, therefore, have been present at that occurrence. It must have been my predecessor.”

If the Count’s origin, birth, nationality and age remain matters of mystery, his presence in Europe through the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is a matter of record. He first surfaced in Venice in 1710, where he met many people, including Rameau and the Countess de Georgy. The Countess met him again fifty years later, at a party thrown by Madame Pompadour, and asked him if his father had been in Venice in that year. The Count demurred. “No, Madame, but I myself was living in Venice at the end of the last century and the beginning of this. I had the honour of paying you court in 1710, and you were kind enough to admire a little music of my composition.” The Countess, shocked, declared that had indeed been the case, which meant that St. Germain had to be at least a century old. St. Germain just smiled.

All through the Eighteenth century, St. Germain left little ripples of amazement across the nobility of Europe. Every time, the descriptions of his appearance, talents and age remained the same. In 1723, the Countess de Genlis saw a portrait of St. Germain’s mother, but did not recognise the style of her clothes, and could not get the secretive count to comment. From 1737 to 1742, records show that he lived with the Shah of Persia and spent his time in alchemical research. When he returned, he spent a year in Versailles with Louis XV, and then got involved in the Jacobite Revolution in England. Once that was settled, he headed to spend time with Frederick the Great in Potsdam. He met Voltaire while he was there, and greatly impressed the man; Voltaire wrote to Frederick that in his opinion, “the Count de St. Germain is a man who was never born, who will never die, and who knows everything.”

The Comte de Saint Germain c. 1745

1755 saw St. Germain accompanying General Clive to India. A couple of years later, he was back in France, where Louis XV gave him a suite and laboratory in his royal chateau Chambord, in Touraine. In 1760, Louis sent St. Germain to Holland and England on a very delicate diplomatic mission, and it is thanks to his efforts that the historical Family Compact was signed between England and France, which led directly to the Treaty of Paris, and the end of the colonial wars. In 1761, St. Germain was in St. Petersburg in Russia, helping to put Catherine the Great upon the throne. He left the country as a full Imperial General of the Russian armies, and shortly afterwards was placed in Tunis with the Russian fleet, still in uniform, using the title of Graf Saltikoff. Other honours and titles he claimed or was awarded during his adventures included being named Marquis de Montferrat, Comte Bellamarre, Chevalier Schoening, Chevalier Weldon, Graf Tzarogy, and Prinz Ragoczy.

After Louis XV died in 1774, St. Germain spent several years in Austria and Germany, apparently introducing Theosophical notions into the occult and mystic organisations of the day – including the Rosicrucian Society in Vienna, the Knights Templar, the Fratres Lucis, and the Knights and Brothers of Asia. He was a delegate to the Freemason’s Wilhelmsbad Conference in 1782.

The Count de St. Germain officially died on February 27 1784, during chemical experiments in Eckernförde, near Schleswig in Denmark. There was no body, but his good friend, Karl, Prince of Hesse, attested to his death, and his death certificate can be found in the Eckernförde Church Register.

If he did die in Schleswig, it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down much. St. Germain is recorded as attending the great Masonic Paris Convention of 1785. He is then said to have had a very important interview with the Empress of Russia in 1786. After that, he went back to France in a last-ditch – unsuccessful – effort to help stave off the revolution.

The Comte de St. Germain, far right, with Helena Blavatsky

The Countess d’Adhémar was one of French queen Marie-Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting, and she kept extensive diaries of the period. St. Germain features several times. In 1788, St. Germain came to visit the Countess d’Adhémar, warned her that a conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy was underfoot, and asked her to take him to see the Queen. The countess reported the visit, and discovered that the Queen had received warnings herself. A meeting was arranged, and St. Germain asked the Queen to set up a meeting with the King – and to encourage him not to mention it to his minister, Maurepas. But the King ignored the warning, and called Maurepas for advice. The minister immediately went to see the Countess d’Adhémar. St. Germain appeared in the middle of the conversation, and informed Maurepas that his petty jealousy was about to destroy the French monarchy, because he didn’t have enough time to devote to saving it.

In 1789, having seemingly had to give up, St. Germain wrote to Queen Marie-Antoinette on July 14th, warning her that her friend the Duchesse de Polignac – who was visiting her – and all of that line and their friends were doomed to death. On October 5, Countess d’Adhémar got a letter saying that the sun had set on the French monarchy, and it was too late; his hands were tied “by one stronger than myself”. He prophesied the death of Marie Antoinette, the ruin of the royal family, and the rise of Napoleon. He himself would be going to Sweden to investigate King Gustavius III and to try to head off “a great crime.” He added that the Countess d’Adhémar would have sight of him five more times, but not to look forward to the sixth.

In 1790, St. Germain admitted his immediate plans to an Austrian friend, Franz Graeffer.

“Tomorrow night I am off. I am much needed in Constantinople, then in England, there to prepare two new inventions which you will have in the next century — trains and steamboats. Toward the end of this century I shall disappear out of Europe,  and betake myself to the region of the Himalayas. I will rest; I must rest.”

The Countess d’Adhémar recorded five further occasions on which she saw the Count – fleeting visitations in 1799, 1802, 1804, 1813 and 1820. It is presumed that he also appeared to her on the day of her death, in 1822. A mysterious Englishman named Major Fraser appeared in Parisian society at the same time, with many of the same characteristics of the Count de St. Germain, and of a similar age and breadth of skill. A Frenchman who had know St. Germain, Albert Vandam, wrote in his memoirs about the striking similarity between Fraser and St. Germain. Was this the same Major Fraser who, in 1820, published an account of his journeys in the Himalayas, in which he said he had reached Gangotri, the source of the most sacred branch of the Ganges River, and bathed in the spring of the Jumna River? No-one knows, because Major Fraser vanished as suddenly as St. Germain himself had done.

There are further rumours that he also appeared to Lord Lytton in 1860 – and there is a famous photograph from ten years after that, 1885, that purports to show the Count de St. Germain standing next to Madame Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical movement. As late as 1897, the French singer Emma Calve dedicated an autographed portrait of herself to St. Germain. Some rumours have attempted to suggest that he played the role of Russian healer and mystic Rasputin, before slipping off to America. Most recently, he is said to have set up in Paris, under yet another assumed name and nationality, still engaged in utterly mysterious purposes.