Past News Stories

On Friday 13, October, author Philip Coppens alerted me to the Newsletter page on the Website of James Randi, who has taken it on himself to criticise my thoughts about the subject of Synchronicity expressed in an email I sent in response to a post by Peter B. Lloyd.

See here:  and scroll down - suffice to say I found it all quite amusing.

  Apparently James Randi had received this email correspondence by way of physicist Jack Sarfatti who was on the C.c. list of my email - as was Mark Pilkington and author Philip Coppens. All five of us were in correspondence because we had attended a meeting at Uri Geller's house in Reading a few days previous.  See here under the Article and News section on Uri's Home page.  Goto title: Graham Norton, Eve Best.

The email I sent in response to Peter B. Lloyd's post, was as trivial as the recent synchronicity I experienced, and I only used this as an example to express my ideas on how these 'trivial synchronicities' are generated by the mind of the experiencer. However, James Randi has used my casual words in this email written to a small group of people, to ridicule my own work and "beliefs" - so he believes - even though I have no 'beliefs' as such . . . well not beliefs that will limit me from considering other alternatives for things that are not easily explained. Of course Randi will tell us that everything has already been explained and that he has all the answers.

In this all-too human world of liars, cheats, con-artists, spin doctors, charlatans; people who pretend to be fair and objective but are always acting on their own self-interests and other people's twisted agendas - and I'm also talking about those who profess a healthy skepticism - I try to suspend belief in most things but remain open-minded because I have had my own experiences and feel I am quite well-equipped to analyse and judge the reality of these, my own experiences for myself, as well as the nature of reality and human consciousness.

Often described as the "arch enemy of Uri Geller", stage magician and member of CSICOP James Randi, has been trying to debunk the claimed 'psychic powers' of Uri Geller and other "psychics" for some 3 decades now. The paranormal does not exist in Randi's personal reality because he simply doesn't believe it exists . . . and in this there is a clue to what reality is really all about . . .

  Anyway, Randi's mission is to prove once-and-for-all that Uri is nothing more than a stage magician and therefore a charlatan. So, knowing this, perhaps our meeting with Uri that day had generated some interest as to why we were all there. See here:  Philip Coppen's Road News page and scroll down to the news article, 'Bend it Like Geller'.

  Our meeting that day, between myself, Philip Coppens, Jack Sarfatti, Mark Pilkington, Peter B. Lloyd and Uri Geller was first initiated and organised by Philip Coppens. Philip did most of the research for the book by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, The Stargate Conspiracy (1999) and has now followed this up with the article, The Stargate Conundrum. See here: 

  This article reveals why we were there that day and had taken the opportunity to meet up with Uri and also Jack Sarfatti, who was over here in London from San Francisco, having already visited Paris and afterwards was travelling onto Rome.

Randi's comments are what I would come to expect.

  If the pseudo-skeptical Randi thinks he knows what you are all about by quickly looking at what you write and from it assumes you are on "the other side of the fence", then it really doesn't matter what you write, he will have to find fault with it and ridicule it.

  I am both amused and also honoured that the "great James Randi" has taken the time to pick on me and ridicule what I wrote in a short email, which was no big deal at the time. In any case, it seems he could only find fault with my interpretion of the "coincidence" ('synchronicity') I gave as an example, which was only mentioned because it occured a few days before the meeting at Uri Geller's house and was still fresh in my mind. There are thousands of more-meaningful coincidences (synchroniciites) which I could have used to show that there is a phenomenon here, as many intelligent people (those with high IQs) have experienced and noted, but we were discussing trivial synchronicities, and so I stand by what I say: that a trivial synchronicity is really generated by our sudden and intense interest in a word or name, and then our disinterest when we realise that it is meaningless in regard to our thought processes at the time, and so we will just as quickly dismiss it from our mind. This fusion of opposites, INTEREST and DISINTEREST, in equal measure and both at the same time will cause that word or name to crop up again in

our external reality and in a very short space of time, showing that both MIND (internal) and MATTER (external) are connectedand were as one in that moment in time and within our consciousness, and it is this fusion of both - i.e., interest and disinterest which actually generated the synchronicity in the first place. In essence this brief 'fusion' occuring in the consciousness of the individual, is evidence of what Jack Sarfatti calls 'signal non-locality' . No one else has arrived at an explanation as to how synchroncities are generated - especially not James Randi, who believes that they don't even exist as a phenomenon. In any case, this explanation tells us something about our own consciousness and our own unconscious creativity, and here I can use this explanation to make something clear here and which I feel is important to consider, especially when those of us who are into consciousness research, will occasionally fall victim to these same tiresome polar debates, arguments or conflicts which James Randi and others will initiate and then indulge in to debunk or smear someone's work.

  Alright so let's get to the point . . .

The reason why we have this never-ending debate on whether the paranormal exists or not, is because 1) more than half of us in society have helped to create an external reality for ourselves that doesn't include the paranormal, - i.e. Left Brain dominant, (physical and material preference or bias.) And 2) the other half of us have helped to create in essence, an internal reality for ourselves based mostly on our creative and often over-active imagination mostly driven by our wish for something more than the everyday mundane world we mostly experience. Therefore this is a reality that DOES include the paranormal, where we will actually experience paranormal or mystical phenomena - i.e. Right Brain, (psychical, philosophical and spiritual preferences.) This does not mean that this world is less real, as the experiences one has are always real. However, the thing is this: the half of us that prefers the physical and material has now conditioned itself to the task of taking full control of this world and therefore it will also try to condition, dominate, and rule the other half as if it knows better. The paranormal which is uncertain, unpredictable and cannot as yet be determined or defined properly, cannot exist in this predictable and 'certain' world - hence the agenda to ignore it, suppress that side of ourselves that experiences it, and which gives rise to it and therefore 'stamp it out' altogether.

  Now if it's true that we each create our own reality and help to create the collective reality that each of us are focused in and engaged in, and that whatever we can imagine must be realised somewhere, then a reality that includes the paranormal must be nearer the Truth than one that doesn't include it. Indeed paranormal phenomena is evidence of our own creative potential to be able to sometimes "warp" or "distort" - alter or change the default parameters of consensus reality however slightly or dramatically. There is evidence that we can 'actualise' our thought creations and will experience and bring to us what we have visualised and believe in.

In truth nothing can really be discarded or rejected: If it can be imagined then it has some reality, and if it has some reality to it then it has to be included by connecting it in someway to the picture we already have.

  Sometimes this may be difficult to do and if our minds are configured to either one side or the other regarding our divided "energies" or perceptions, then what we will have to include will at first be seen to contradict the picture we already have. If we can in someway get above our dual perception we can then resolve the paradox regarding the contradictory nature of the new data and will be able to see how it fits perfectly. But a person that relies on either one configuration or the other regarding the dual perception of things as either 'positive' or 'negative', scientific or religious/mystical, male or female, left or right, etc - and who only identifies with their superficial meanings, will never be able to connect things together nor see their correlations or correspondences, and so he or she will always be ready to fight for one side against the other.

  It is known that by manipulating and exploiting our likes and dislikes, our biases, our fears or our particular neuroses, divides us within and leads only to chaos and conflict, and of course this result justifies our need for a 'controlling body.' The never-ending debate on whether the paranormal or mystical phenomena exists or not is just one of the many conflicts of opinion and belief that has been created from this manipulation and it stretches out over many many years. The reason for this particular divide or conflict of opinions is that some of us can sense that there is 'real power' to be gained from our knowledge of paranormal and mystical phenomena, and so there has always been a hidden agenda to either suppress or play-down its existence and to keep any evidence of its existence a secret and out of the public domain. While the "powers-that-be" use people to ridicule it and rubbish it, at the same time, they are trying to find out ways in which to tap into it, refine it, perfect it and utilise it - mostly for the negative misuse of its power. While this is going on still many of us are waiting for an official confirmation by Trevor McDonald on "News at Ten" as if we need official 'permission' before we accept and believe in the existence of the paranormal or mystical - our spiritual side - something most of us knew existed anyway. This 'official confirmation' or verification regarding the existence of anything in our consensus reality is like the voice of 'God' to many of us, and this shows how much we have been conditioned to look-up to an authoritative and controlling body made up of a powerful 'hand-full' of people whose entry into this world was equally the same as ours.

  Confirmation of paranormal phenomena and the mystical, spiritual nature of man, will never come from these people or the people who are used by them to suppress all evidence of the paranormal. Nevertheless a paradigm shift is inevitable as there are going to be more and more people like myself who are going to have an experience of something that is difficult to explain in words, even though it has been the driving force behind our evolution. This "something" will change them, transform them, and will grant them the ability to see and perceive things from the 'third' or 'middle way'- a 'third state of mind' through which one is able to reconcile these differences (opposites). One could refer to this state of mind as 'neutral' for want of a better term - in which the opposites are united and where all duality is cancelled out - a non-dual state. This state of mind is difficult to sustain, but once the person is aware of it and realises it, he or she is able to access this state more easily as time goes on, and after a while can actually become a living embodiment of it. It grants insight, wisdom; it grants flashes of genius and a high level of creativity.

  This 'middle path' or 'neutral point' as I like to call it, and which can also be identified in many different processes from the physical phenomena witnessed in quantum physics, through to consciousness and psychology - is the premise on which the whole of my work is based, and is always the state of mind I will try to adopt consciously and will often fall into quite naturally now without thinking about it and/or realising it - as in 'lateral thinking'. That's how I am able to make the discoveries I have made, and produce what I consider to be a more balanced perception of things as they really are. That's no idle boast - its the truth as I see it.

  What I call the 'neutral point' is "the fence" that no-one is allowed to sit on by those who adopt the same old "Us and Them" mentality, and is the "excluded middle" of Aristotelian logic. In essence, Jack Sarfatti's 'Signal Non Locality' - that he says can explain all paranormal phenomena which many of us have experienced to varying degrees - is found within that fine point of balance where all duality is cancelled out. However for many of us who 'subsribe' to either one side or the other, this neutral point is a blind spot for us, and although he is an intelligent person, it also appears to be a blind spot for James Randi.