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Zeitgeist
A DVD exposing Christianity, the Banking System and 9/11

Lucid Dreaming & Psychosis

from Science Daily --
Similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis suggest that dream therapy may be useful in psychiatric treatment. This is strengthened by the potential evolutionary relationship between dreams and psychosis. Lucid dreaming – when you are aware you are dreaming – is a state between sleeping and being awake. It creates distinct patterns of electrical activity in the brain that have similarities to the patterns made by psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia. Confirming links between lucid dreaming and psychotic conditions offers potential for new therapeutic routes based on how healthy dreaming differs from the unstable states associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders.

New data affirms the connection by showing that while dreaming lucidly the brain is in a dissociated state, according to Ursula Voss from the University of Frankfurt in Germany. Dissociation involves losing conscious control over mental processes, such as logical thinking. In some psychiatric conditions this state is also known to occur while people are awake. Researchers also looked at the idea that paranoid delusions and other hallucinatory phenomena occur when the dissociative dreaming state involving replay of threatening situations is carried through into wakefulness. It may also have a role in the learning process, according to Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and dream researcher from Harvard.

Madonna Becomes Spiritual News Correspondent
from Associated Press--
After a long career as a singer, dancer, new-age seeker and megacelebrity, Madonna added a new item to her resume Friday- - Israeli newspaper correspondent. An article in Friday's edition of Israel's biggest daily, Yediot Ahronot, bears the Material Girl's byline. It describes her spiritual awakening upon discovering Jewish mysticism, called Kabbalah, after which, she writes, "all the puzzle pieces started falling into place."

Madonna also has ties to Israel and Judaism through her involvement with the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Center, whose new-age version of Judaism's ancient mystic tradition has become popular among members of Hollywood's A-list. The pop icon has taken the Hebrew name Esther and came to Israel on private pilgrimages in 2004 and 2007 along with other Kabbalah devotees.
Madonna, who was raised Roman Catholic, describes hearing about Kabbalah for the first time at a dinner party in Los Angeles while pregnant with her daughter Lourdes, now 12. Madonna had recently completed a star turn in the movie "Evita," she says, but "still felt like something was missing in my life." In LA she met a teacher of the Kabbalah after years of practicing yoga and reading about Buddhism, Taoism and early Christianity. "I heard what he had to say and I knew at this moment my life would never be the same," she writes in the article, which the paper published both in Hebrew and in the original - and apparently unedited - English. "Life no longer seemed like a series of Random events," she writes. "I also began to see that being Rich and Famous wasn't going to bring me lasting fulfillment and that it was not the end of the journey."

Burger King Upsets Hindus
from wordpress.com --
Hindus have asked Burger King Corporation to publicly apologize and immediately withdraw a poster seen in Spain, which shows Hindu goddess Lakshmi promoting a meat sandwich, which they termed repugnant.

Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in USA Todsay yesterday, said that it was highly disturbing to see goddess Lakshmi, who is highly revered in Hinduism, modeling for a meat sandwich as shown. Lakshmi was meant to be worshiped in temples or home shrines and not for pushing meat sandwiches in the streets for mercantile greed of a global corporation. The poster is titled “LA MERIENDA ES SAGRADA”, which roughly translates as “Snack is sacred” and shows a meat-cheese sandwich with few other products for 1.75 Euros. What was so ‘sacred’ about a meat sandwich, Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, asked.

Launched in 1954, Burger King Corporation is the second largest fast food hamburger chain in the world with over 11, 200 restaurants in 69 countries and revenue of over $2.2 billion. Over 11 million customers visit Burger King daily.

Comet Crashes Into Jupiter
from BBC --
An object, probably a comet that nobody saw coming, plowed into the giant planet’s colorful cloud tops on Sunday, splashing up debris and leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific Ocean. This was the second time in 15 years that this had happened. The whole world was watching when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fell apart and its pieces crashed into Jupiter in 1994, leaving earth-size marks. That’s Jupiter doing its cosmic job, astronomers like to say. Better it than us. Part of what makes the Earth such a nice place to live, the story goes, is that Jupiter’s overbearing gravity acts as a gravitational shield deflecting incoming space junk, mainly comets, away from the inner solar system where it could do for us what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

 

Whale Rescues Diver

from The London Sun --
A beluga whale saved a drowning diver by hoisting her to the surface, carrying her leg in its mouth.

Terrified Yang Yun thought she was going to die when her legs were paralyzed by crippling cramps in arctic temperatures. She had been taking part in a free diving contest

Competitors had to sink to the bottom of an aquarium's 20ft arctic pool and stay there without any breathing equipment. for as long as possible amid the beluga whales at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China.

But when Yun, 26, tried to head to the surface she struggled to move her legs.

Yun said: "I began to choke and sank even lower and I thought that was it for me-  I was dead. Until I felt this incredible force under me driving me to the surface."

Beluga whale Mila had spotted her difficulties and Mila, using her sensitive dolphin-like nose, guided Yun safely to the surface.

An organizer said: "Mila noticed the problem before we did. "We suddenly saw the girl being pushed to the top of the pool with her leg in Mila's mouth. "She's a sensitive animal who works closely with humans and I think this girl owes her, her life."

Special thanks to Ronnie Watkins from Leicester, NC for submitting this news item about the whale Mila.

 

If you read or hear of some interesting news for us, let us know. Call 828-254-6620, or go to our website, viratolive.com and contact us.