Buddha’s Caves (The Daily Star)

Sand is implacable in far western China. It blows and shifts and eats away at everything, erasing boundaries, scouring graves, leaving farmers in despair.

It’s one of many threats to the major tourist draw of Dunhuang, an oasis city, on the lip of the Gobi desert: the hundreds of rock-cut Buddhist grottoes that pepper a cliff face outside town. Known as Mogaoku — “peerless caves” –and filled with paradisiacal frescos and hand-moulded clay sculptures of saviour-gods and saints, they are, in size and historical breadth, like nothing else in the Chinese Buddhist world.

And Mogaoku is in trouble. Thrown open to visitors in recent decades, the site has been swamped by tourists in the past few years. The caves now suffer from high levels of carbon dioxide and humidity, which are severely undermining conservation efforts. The short-term solution has been to limit the number of caves that can be visited and to admit people only on timed tours, but the deterioration continues…

Click here for the rest.

For more information and photos of the caves, click here.

On Saturday 21st June 2008, over 800 people participated in the world record for spoon bending. At the Flamingo Hotel, Las Vegas, visitors to James Randi’s ‘The Amaz!ng Meeting’ performed the classic trick in unison as part of Richard Wiseman’s talk, which included a short presentation from master magician Teller. The event, conceived by Richard Wiseman and Tracy King, was filmed for YouTube, along with a video of Dr Mark Miodownik (Materials Library, King’s College London) explaining the science behind the spoons.

SPOON SCIENCE is a resource for sharing amusing, exciting or unusual science videos, particularly those which utilize everyday objects.

Visit SPOON SCIENCE and don’t forget to watch the amazing spoon bending videos, here…

By CLARISSA WARD
Siberia, RUSSIA (ABC News)

“Two white robed men were standing there among them and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring the sky? Jesus has gone away to heaven. And some day, just as He went, He will return!’” — New Testament, Acts 1:10-11

Deep in the heart of Siberia’s birch forests lies one of the largest and most remote religious communes of the planet. More than 5,000 people have left their families and their homes to move here and join the Church of the Last Testament, which has more than 10,000 followers worldwide. The church centers on one man. He is known simply as Vissarion, meaning “he who gives new life,” or simply as the teacher, and he claims that he is Jesus Christ.

I had heard about a self-proclaimed messiah in Siberia and I decided to try to find him myself. Getting to Vissarion’s commune is not easy. From Moscow, the Russian capital, it is more than 2,000 miles and four time zones away. One begins by flying to Abakan, a bleak city near the Mongolian border, dotted with crumbling tsarist buildings and Soviet-style blocks. Driving through, I decided to ask residents whether they had heard of Vissarion and what they thought of him. Most people knew who he was, but they didn’t seem to like him much…

For the rest of the article and to watch an interview with Vissarion, click here

A Daily Om from these folks may be just the thing to make you feel at home today.

Why not spend some time at the World Dream Bank today?

(Galina Popova: Red Fish)

My deposit for the Dream Bank: “When I was a teenager I had a vivid recurring dream of feathery-finned brightly colored fish emerging from the palms of my hands and then swimming all around me as I stood very still in a deep red room, watching them do their swim-dance. I wanted to paint this dream, but my painting skills were not so great - so I inscribed the image in my memory and it’s as clear to me now as the mornings I awoke with this dream freshly implanted in my mind.”

In the Hindu story of the vast cycle of the universe’s life, death and rebirth, the Vedic timeline describes the ebb and flow of the ages as the “days and the nights of Brahma”…

From: Cremo, Michael A. (1999) “Puranic Time and the Archeological Record.” Chapter 3 in Time and Archaeology: Vol. 37, One World Archaeology Series, edited by Tim Murray, Routledge, London)

“The time concept of modern archeology, and modern anthropology in general, resembles the general cosmological-historical time concept of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture. Differing from the cyclical cosmological-historical time concepts of the early Greeks in Europe, and the Indians and others in Asia, the Judeo-Christian cosmological-historical time concept is linear and progressive.

“Hindu historical literatures, particularly the Puranas and Itihasas, place human existence in the context of repeating time cycles called yugas and kalpas, lasting hundreds of millions of years. During this entire time, according to the Puranic accounts, humans coexisted with creatures in some ways resembling the earlier toolmaking hominids of modern evolutionary accounts.”

“Each yuga cycle is composed of 4 yugas. The first, the Satya-yuga, lasts 4800 years of the demigods. The second, the Treta-yuga, lasts 3600 years of the demigods. The third, the Dvapara-yuga, lasts 2400 years of the demigods. And the fourth, Kali-yuga, lasts 1200 years of the demigods . Since the demigod year is equivalent to 360 earth years, the lengths of the yugas in earth years are, acording to standard Vaishnava commentaries, 432,000 years for the Kali-yuga, 864,000 years for the Dvapara-yuga, 1,296,000 years for the Treta-yuga, and 1,728,000 years for the Satya-yuga.”

“This gives a total of 4,320,000 years for the entire yuga cycle. One thousand of such cycles, lasting 4,320,000 years, comprises one day of Brahma, the demigod who governs this universe. A day of Brahma is also called a kalpa. Each of Brahma’s nights lasts a similar period of time. Life is only manifest on earth during the day of Brahma. With the onset of Brahma’s night, the entire universe is devastated and plunged into darkness. When another day of Brahma begins, life again becomes manifest.

“Each day of Brahma is divided into 14 manvantara periods, each one lasting 71 yuga cycles. Preceding the first and following each manvantara period is a juncture (sandhya) the length of a Satya-yuga (1,728,000 years). Typically, each manvantara period ends with a partial devastation. According to Puranic accounts, we are now in the twenty-eighth yuga cycle of the seventh manvantara period of the present day of Brahma.”

…and from a nice little blog I found:

“So as per the vedas, the current age of the universe is 155,521,972,944,456 Years which is about 155,522 billion years !!! Modern day science has been able to predict age of our universe to be only about 15-20 billion years! Moreover Since we are in the first day of 51st year of Brahma, almost equal amout of time has to pass before this universe ends!!”

For more on the Vedas and the Vedic concept of time click here and here.

Hello Friends,

We would like publish your personal reincarnation and past life stories on the blog. Do you have stories, musings, remembrances, true tales, and reflections you would like to share?

We will be honored if you choose to share your experiences with us. Please type a “reincarnation diary” entry into the comments section of any post and we will share your experience with our readers.

Also, please feel free to type suggestions for further Reincarnationist content.

We thank you for your stories and suggestions!

All the Best,
M.J. Rose
and Emily Kischell (editor)

Check out this incredible find. It puts into question the resurrection of Christ as well as His very existence. Whoa.

Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection
By ETHAN BRONNER (The New York Times)

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase…

For the rest of this news click here.

Do you feel that your belief system is the only correct one? Do you think that reincarnation is the only answer? Is it possible that more than one answer could be the TRUTH? …And if so, how would this work?

Please feel free to discuss you views on this subject in the Comments. Your fellow Reincarnationists would love to know your thoughts on this.

Study: Most Americans say many religions can lead to eternal life
By JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News

Most Americans say they are absolutely sure about standards of right and wrong – and are just as sure that no one religion holds an exclusive franchise on the truth.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans say they believe in God (or a “universal spirit”). But substantial majorities from all major religious categories also say they believe their religion is not the only path to eternal life, and that there’s not just one correct version of their faith…

For the rest click here.

Psychic Medium Researcher, Dr. Julie Beischel Recounts Challenges of Investigating the Afterlife in a University Setting

Windbridge Institute co-founder and after life researcher, Dr. Julie Beischel worked with psychic mediums at the University of Arizona for six years before heading out on her own. She shares her experiences and discusses her current research in this interview.

(live-PR.com) - Del Mar, CA, June 16, 2008 — Join Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Julie Beischel on psychic mediums and their claims to connect with those who have passed away. During the 45-minute interview Beischel discusses the challenges of carrying out such controversial research within a university setting:

“… If there’s a question, that is science’s job. There’s no line regarding what you can and cannot ask but, if you’re at a university, then there is because there’s public pressure… they are just a giant nonprofit basically. They have to worry about funding, and people saying things like, ‘this is such a waste of taxpayer money.’ But, no university dollar ever went to support our research. It was totally privately funded.”

Beischel also discusses the upcoming demonstration of psychic medium communication being carried out by Skeptiko and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

A complete transcript of the interview is available here.