Carl Sagan - Cosmos & Remembrance

Author: Mick Rooney Posted under: , , , , ,

In the early 1980’s I spent many late evening’s watching the BBC’s Sky At Night, presented by British astronomer, Patrick Moore, and Cosmos, presented by US scientist and broadcaster, Carl Sagan. Moore was practical, but gregarious, Sagan was sincere and introspective and made you believe and dream of what could be. It came as no surprise when I discovered that Sagan played a prominent role in the US scientific program, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). It did come as a surprise when I discovered that Contact, the film starring Jody Foster, was based his novel of the same name.

Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1934. His father, Sam Sagan, was a Russian immigrant garment worker and his mother was Rachel Molly Gruber. Sagan graduated from the University of Chicago with diplomas in physics, astronomy, and astrophysics. He went on to work at the famous Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and lectured at Harvard University. He worked as an adviser to NASA. There, as part of his work with astronauts and space exploration, Sagan put together the first physical message that was sent into space. He became a critic of the US Space Shuttle and Space Station missions at the expense of further robotic missions.

At heart, Sagan was a true scientific sceptic when he applied his work and learning to unexplained phenomena, particularly UFO’s and the growing number of abduction experiences. Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of Cosmos) and he claimed a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon. I find it hard to argue Sagan’s opinion whatever anyone’s path of belief takes.

Sagan understood the inherent relationship that our world has with religion over science. He challenged the conventional view of God in our world.

Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.

Carl Sagan was a humanist, devoutly against nuclear weapons, and in the last ten years of his life became particularly active politically in his opinions and views on many global issues. He fought a long battle with myelodysplasia, which included three bone marrow transplants. Carl Sagan died of pneumonia, aged 62, in 1996. On that day, a wonderful bright light went out in the Cosmos.


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Things That Happen (2)

Author: Mick Rooney Posted under: , ,

From the age of seven, I began to have spells of what I would describe as moments of physical remoteness. My instinct tells me that somehow my experience of the old woman appearing in my house unlocked and opened a doorway. When the doorway opened, I was at once introduced to a different and altered form of consciousness. It started as a thin thread of connection to a world of spiritual existence. I believe my early experiences of these moments of physical remoteness are not exclusive to me and many other people experience something of a kind at some point in their lives. Certainly the mind of a child is more open but not exclusive to an altered experience or embracing the unknown. When you are a child, much is unknown. How a person relates to these experiences and positively uses them is an entirely different matter. The world of spiritual existence is as much inside me as it is outside of me in the physical world. As much as I took the first tentative steps to connect with this spiritual existence—I knew it did not normally belong in the physical realm. It was only many, many years later in life that I realised I had also taken the first steps towards my own soul.

The first spells of physical remoteness were extremely brief and were often over before I was fully aware the episodes had happened. Sometimes it could be as brief as a few seconds or half a minute. Over the next few years, right up till the age of about fifteen, the duration of physical remoteness grew longer. I usually sensed it start with my eyes. The best way of describing it is when someone stares ahead at a fixed point of interest, and for some unknown reason, they continue to stare beyond a period of time that is necessary or natural. But unlike someone simply staring blankly at something random when their mind drifts off on a deep train of thought—the moments of physical remoteness were incredibly intense and all my senses seemed heightened. Sounds, even distant ones, were clear and distinct. I started to learn that I could filter one sound out against another, no matter how distant it was. Likewise, visually, colours and shapes took on an extraordinary vivid definition and sharpness. More oddly, I noticed without turning my head, I could see definable objects at the extreme edges of my peripheral vision. I saw these objects as if they were straight in front of me. In spite of my heightened senses, paradoxically, the whole experience generated an intense feeling of disconnection from the world around me and even my own body. Outwardly, I appeared to be functioning normally when these moments of physical remoteness occurred. I might appear fixed or concentrated, but still able to carry out a task; getting dressed, walking to school, cycling a bicycle, and more often I started to realised they tended to occur when I was doing something automated or requiring little deliberate thought.

Between the ages of twelve to fifteen, the spells of physical remoteness became far more regular, sometimes two to three times a day, and they could last anything from a couple of minutes to fifteen minutes. I didn’t have to walk across a room to see if a magazine or book was on a shelf or behind the sofa. I knew it was there because I could see it from where I was. The novelty value of this experience long wore off by twelve years of age and I began to become depressed and troubled because I didn’t feel in control of it any more. I became more aware of an internal struggle as my conscious mind wrestled to take back control of what appeared to be subconscious and out of my control and choice. I stopped hanging around with my friends and remained close with just one. I feared the spells would continue to get even longer and I might one day never snap out of one. I feared walking under a bus on the way home from school or loosing time on school study. In June 1982, things came to an abrupt head.

My parents and I were spending two weeks holidaying in New York and Florida. The evening before we travelled to the USA, I was over at my friend’s house. He sensed I was anxious about the flight and he gave me a single white table he said he found in the house that would help ease my nerves. To this day, I have no idea what the table was, whether it was a prescribed drug or entirely illegal. The following morning, before we travelled to the airport, I stupidly swallowed the table with some milk. What followed were the most terrifying two days I have ever experienced.

At the airport check-in desk I was already feeling weak, but not sick. The weaker I became, the more aware I was becoming of a spell of physical remoteness. I had over some months come up with various ways of staving off a spell. I would engage in deliberate conversations with anyone or recite poems to myself that I had learned at school. I discovered the best method to avoid a sudden and prolonged spell was to look at numbers on signs, numbers on the clock, numbers on the chalkboard at school, numbers on car registration plates, and try, by a series of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, to make answer be my favourite number – seven. It worked for a while with the flight numbers on the overhead monitors for a while until we boarded the flight to New York.

I finally succumbed to it shortly after take-off, and so began five and a half horrifying hours on that plane. My parents presumed I was just nervous and particularly quite. I just couldn’t force my eyes to close and break the initial stare. Once in, I thought I would never ever come out of it. It was the first time the physical remoteness resulted in an entire out-of-the-body experience. I could see myself sitting in the seat of the aircraft as if I were looking at myself in a mirror. I moved uncontrollably around the plane as if I were caught in the violent current of a wild river. I remember seeing myself taking the passenger flight program leaflet out of the seat pocket in front of me. I must have held that program in my hands for more than two hours, in the same position, on the same page, just staring blankly ahead. Wherever I was, my feelings of my panic and upset seemed to show no outward signs of distress on the face of my body. I just sat there in my seat – almost appearing not to care that the most important part of me – my soul and my spirit – were somewhere else on that plane and I had no way of getting back. Years later, my mother has no recollection of me speaking much on the flight or at any time sleeping. I had long fallen out at fourteen years of age with mainstream Catholicism, but I prayed to God that day to help me try and get back to my own body. I felt helpless, vulnerable and exposed to anything happening to my spirit and soul. I felt I couldn’t protect them and they were exposed to elements and influences they should not be open to.

I have no recollection of how I got back to my body before we landed. I was terrified I would get lost and be left behind. I can only say that something guided me back. Some power beyond me. Whether my body simply became so weak and I managed to close my eyes, I will never know fully. But somehow I got back and I knew I was utterly shattered. The intense heat of that New York summer day pushed the temperature into the high nineties even at five in the late afternoon. I remember my Dad arguing with cab drivers as he insisted he wanted one with air conditioning. He thought he got one, but the driver’s idea of air conditioning was rolling down the windows. I think I went unconscious three or four times in the cab as my parents tried everything from slapping me on the face, dowsing me with water, and sticking small bottles of aftershave under my nose to rouse me. The traffic across New York City was particularly bad that day and the driver just wanted to get the crazy sick kid out of his cab for good. We stopped outside a hospital for about ten minutes with my parents debating whether they should take me in. I couldn’t even stand up under my own weight and sat on the sidewalk. My mind and my body were numb and lifeless. They put me back in the cab and gave me a whole lemon to bite on. I gnawed at it for a while until my stomach heaved and I shoved the lemon back into my mother’s hand.

I remember little more of the next thirty-six hours of our stay at the Milton Plaza Hotel in New York. I slept through those hours, but most of them were still filled with the most appalling nightmares I have ever had. I think I experienced every fear a child could have in those thirty-six hours of nightmares. When I awoke finally and properly, I was glad to be whole again. Though the spells of physical remoteness did continue for about another year, they dramatically declined in frequency and intensity. I had no real idea what I had experienced, or its greater meaning back then, but I learned there is meaning, purpose and reason in all our lives. I was simply growing older and moving on to another stage of experience and awakening on my journey towards my own soul.


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Things That Happen (1)

Author: Mick Rooney Posted under: , , , , ,
My life was as ordinary as any ordinary life could be up to the age of about seven. I had an experience I neither had the understanding nor concept of that would unknowingly change the entire direction, motivation and course of my life. It was late summer, 1975, and I was home alone on an overcast afternoon.


In 1975, the world was a very different place. Kids played for hours outside on the street. It was a playing field of innocence and adventure and the only thoughts of returning home was when you got hungry or you were looking for a few pence to go to the shop. My older sister was a thoroughly social child and she spent every waking hour on the streets with her gang of friends. I was a more introspective kid, and while I had my circle of friends, I was going through one of my I need to be on my own phases. They could last a couple of days, less often, entire weeks. I think I may have been in week two of one of those phases. My mother had headed out to the shop for a little while. It must have been about three o’clock in the afternoon. The TV was off and I was sitting on the couch in our living room. Back then, TV was black and white and we lived in a world of about five stations, BBC1, BBC2, UTV, HTV, and RTE. I had obviously checked to see if Michael Bentine’s Potty Time was on UTV. It might have been out of season because of the summer holidays, but clearly I was happy to sit there with the TV off and probably muse on my next Lego project with a thousand pieces scattered across the floor of the front parlour room. Each one, a building block in the life I was going to live.





I heard footsteps on the stairs in the hall. It wasn’t my sister. She had no front door key. My Dad was at work. I hadn’t heard the front door open, so I didn’t think it was my mother returning back from the shops. The footsteps were slow and deliberate and seemed to be descending the stairs. I wasn’t scared, just anxious and puzzled. Finally, a hand pressed down on the handle of the door into the living room where I sat. An elderly woman made her way into the living room, made sure to close the door behind her, as if she knew the house rules and it shouldn’t be left ajar, and walked slowly toward the door into the kitchen. She was dressed in a heavy, dark, long dress. She looked around the room, and although I looked at her, she never once seemed to acknowledge me there in the room with her, nor did she say a single word. It is always difficult for kids to judge an adult’s age – they always think adults are much older than they actually are. I’m not sure what age I thought her then, certainly old, but I’d say she was in her early seventies, maybe a little more. I know this woman wasn’t a city-dweller, not only did she not belong in my childhood home, but she did not belong in a city, or for that matter, the contemporary 1970’s. This was more like a rural Irish woman, with a reddened and hardened face exposed to the elements of country life. She was stern and not a woman I would have like to cross swords with in whatever life she lived. This was the first time I experienced the inner coldness that seizes your body when you are in the presence of something which is not meant to be there and has no physical sustainability in the world you are living in.

She opened the door into the kitchen, but this time, she chose to leave it ajar. I remember thinking that there was no way on this earth I was going to follow her into the kitchen. I sat rigid for a minute or two, and then tried to see if I could lean over from where I was sitting on the living room couch and catch sight of her through the double glass panes of the door. She remained out of view and I must have sat on the couch for about five to ten minutes before the cold feeling inside me passed. I got up, went to the kitchen door, and peered in. She was gone, but when I took a few steps into the kitchen, I could feel the temperature was unusually cold, as if something of the old woman still lingered.

My mother found me where she left me when she returned. The TV was still off, and as she rushed in her normal deliberate way through to the kitchen, she stopped and looked at me.

“Are you ok, Michael?”

“Yes. But someone called to see you while you were out.”

“One of the neighbours?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t know them.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll call back.”

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I revealed the full details of the experience to my mother. By then, much had happened, and I could no longer confine this curious experience at age seven to being a simple childhood illusion of imagination and isolation. There were more than just physical doors which had opened of their own accord on that late, overcast, summer day in 1975.

Within weeks of the experience, I had my first moment of physical remoteness.
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Buzzy Friends Gettin' Jiggy

Author: Mick Rooney Posted under:

The Kansas Entomological Society released a study paper in their January journal of this year about some very curious activity of worker bees in Thailand. There are three species of bees, (Lisotrigona cacciae, L. furva and Pariotrigona klossi) who have all taken to the activity of imbibing on human tears. Is it me or odd that the species, klossi, also rearranged spells KISS LO! There is something sweet about bees, kisses and tears, or am I being Freudian in some kind of weird way. I mean bees having it on with humans and somehow trying to relate to us on some emotional level.

It seems our buzzy friends haven taken to landing on the bottom eyelid of unsuspecting park sleepers, sun snoozers and tourists to get their daily dose of protein, or at least that is why the experts think the bees have taken to this curious exploit. Unknown to us, the eyes secrete tears from our eye ducts and our buzzy friends are on to this free nutritious meal.

Our buzzy friends have actually made quite a lot of the high brow news in the past two years with talk of bees playing a very fundamental role in the environmental balance of life in general on planet earth. The gist being, if our buzzy friends start showing signs of changes in habitat or behavior - be afraid - be very afraid. Our buzzy friends are in fact one of the critical building and social blocks in the planet's ecological system.

So if you are in Thailand or anywhere else for that matter, and one of our buzzy friends appears on your bottom eye lid as you are engaging in a deep, tired and emotional moment with your partner in the park, (or if you are a man and it's just that there's something in your eye!), then, fear not, take these careful steps.

1. Tell the bee, you like Al Gore, but you're just not sure about the whole 'Inconvenient Truth' thing.

2. You've never sat through a whole Discovery TV documentary on bees or wasps because 'she' wanted to watch X-Factor or Desperate Housewives on another channel.

3. Encourage the buzzy friend to step away from your eye lid, return to the lovely yellow and pink flowers that God created for them, or else you'll start charging him rent if he takes up residence and keeps sucking on the sweet stuff.


My appreciation to BoingBoing for this news article.
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The Bilderberg Group - Truth or Modern Conspiracy Theory Myth?

Author: Mick Rooney Posted under:
"I don't quite know why I'm on a flight to Athens, except that it seems like the right thing to do. I'm flying out on a last minute whim to hang around outside a conference which may, or may not, be happening and to which I've not been invited. None of you has…
…Unless, of course, the rumours are true. Unless, as a handful of people are saying, this weekend is Bilderberg. The yearly alignment of the distant stars that shape our destiny. A long weekend at a luxury hotel, where the world's elite get to shake hands, clink glasses, fine-tune their global agenda and squabble over who gets the best sun loungers. I'm guessing that Henry Kissinger brings his own, has it helicoptered in and guarded 24/7 by a CIA special ops team."


This is an extract from Charlie Skelton’s daily reports filed for The Guardian newspaper in May of this year. He is speaking about the infamous and clandestine global group Bilderberg and their annual meeting of the world’s illuminati this year in Greece. In fact the Bilderberg name comes from the hotel used by the group for their first meeting in 1954 - Hotel de Bilderberg, Oosterbeek, the Netherlands.

The group was founded by several people, including Denis Healey and Józef Retinger, who were concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe. The initial aims of the group were to further the understanding, growth and cultures of the United States of America and Europe. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from eleven countries in Western Europe attended the first conference along with eleven American invitees.

The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Jozef Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first US conference was held in St. Simons, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.

A 2008 press release from the American Friends of Bilderberg stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

The secrecy which the Bilderberg Group conduct the meetings and lack of reporters in attendance has spawned critics and conspiracy theories alike. According to the investigative journalist Chip Berlet, the origins of Bilderberger conspiracy theories can be traced to activist Phyllis Schlafly. In his 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by Political Research Associates, he writes:

"The views on intractable godless communism expressed by Schwarz were central themes in three other bestselling books which were used to mobilize support for the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. The best known was Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice, Not an Echo which suggested a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose policies would pave the way for global communist conquest."



Police detained guardian reporter, Charlie Skelton on three occasions while attempting to photograph attending guests at the meeting in Greece this year.

"I arrived last night, under cover of darkness. I told the cab driver to stop 50 metres from the hotel. He asked why. I couldn't tell him that it was so I could case the entrance for FBI lenses. I simply muttered that I couldn't explain. His eyes lit up. "Aha! I see! I know!" What did he know? And who is that following us? A man in a BMW. Definite spook."


According to the American Friends of Bilderberg, the 2008 agenda dealt ‘mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.’

The initial aims of the group during the 1950’s may seem perfectly laudable in a time when the ghost of the second world war still stood at the shoulders of mankind and the battles of Korea and Vietnam were still to be fought. But now it reads like something off the pages of a Dan Brown novel. The real argument about conspiracy theories of ‘New World Orders’ and a clandestine ‘Masonic-styled’ global group of the world’s leading illuminati influencing world decision making begs the question – which came first? The conspiracy or the truth?

What is most unsettling is there is a global group of politicians, businessmen, religious leaders intelligencia influencing world decisions and policy making in many countries who are not elected representatives of those countries are instead driving their own hidden agenda.

You can read Charlie Skelton’s Bilderberg Files ar the link below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/charlie-skeltons-bilderberg-files

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Tara Hill And Its Lights In The Sky

Author: Mick Rooney Posted under:

I think I visited the Hill of Tara when I was in my early teens. It meant nothing significant to me, no more than New Grange or Glendalough, and other significant sites in Ireland that our school took us to visit.



The Hill of Tara in Irish is ‘Teamhair na Rí’, meaning, ‘Hill of the Kings’. It is located near the River Boyne and is an archaeological complex running between the towns of Navan and Dunshaughlin in County Meath, Ireland. It contains a number of ancient monuments, and according to tradition was the seat of the High King of Ireland. Tara’s true identity is that of a site of sacredness rather than true central Irish power.

The focus of Tara hill is a small hilltop enclosure, measuring 318 metres (1,043 ft) north-south by 264 metres (866 ft) east-west and enclosed by an internal ditch and external bank, known as ‘Ráith na Ríogh’, meaning, (the Fort of the Kings, also known as the Royal Enclosure). The most prominent earthworks within are the two linked enclosures, a bivallate ring fort and a bivallete ring barrow known as ‘Teach Chormaic’, Cormac’s House, and the ‘Forradh’ or Royal Seat. In the middle of the ‘Forradh’ is a standing stone, which is believed to be the the ‘Stone of Destiny’ at which all High Kings were crowned. According to legend, the stone would scream if a series of challenges were met by the would-be king. At his touch the stone would let out a screech that could be heard all over Ireland. To the north of the ring-forts is a small tomb known as ‘Dumha na nGiall’, meaning ‘Mound of the Hostages’, constructed around 3,400 (cal.) BC.

In May of this year Tara took on a new significance for me. My partner lives in West Meath, only a few miles from Tara, and her back garden overlooks the Hills of Tara, County Meath, and further north, all the way across to County Monaghan. For the past two months we have, on many occasion, sat out on a warm evening and ‘watched the lights’ to the north. The show is both free and quite spectacular.

We have had friends over. Some of the locals have grown used to these lights and see them no more than as a nightly distraction to their routine of getting their children, their children’s children to bed, checking on grazing animals, or simply putting their feet up to watch X-Factor or the nightly news and weather, or whatever else is on. They may pass a window, look out, see them, and see nothing out of the ordinary, but for me, a man from the city, these lights are nothing deserving of just a casual glance.

They dance, move oddly, but without actual reason or purpose about the sky, left to right, up and down, sometimes we see four, maybe five, like parents, they have less bright lights around them, ‘feeders’ we call them, learning or mimicking the father or mother light until they too, glow brilliantly in the dark sky like the approaching of the headlight of an on-coming car. We don’t live anywhere near an airport or large town, never mind a city, yet, most unclouded nights, they are there.

We checked out the ‘balloon’ and ‘strobe light’ theory, but West Meath just isn’t that ‘rockin’ kind of place. They have talked about these lights on national radio, Today FM, with reports of them from Monaghan to Limerick, but to no avail. We’re happy with them, baffled, but entertained, their ours, for now, at least.
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David Icke - Voice in The Wilderness?

Author: Mick Rooney Posted under:
I remember following the footballing career of David Icke as goalkeeper for Coventry City before he moved into sports TV presentation with the BBC. He departed the BBC to investigate and develop his own spiritual journey to the echoes of considerable ridicule. We all had a chuckle at David throwing himself to the media lions, appearing in shiny tracksuits and espousing about great world conspiracies and reptiles in suits. Yet, ten or more years on and the diminutive Icke seems less the eccentric crackpot we first viewed him as.

In an age when people are steadily turning to alternative methods of living and see personal spirituality and growth as much a part of their lives as working out in the gym or reading a good book, today, David Icke is less the 'doomsayer' and more the voice come in from the wilderness.

Filmed in 2008, David Icke speaks candidly to Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot. You will find Icke, at worst, intriguing and perhaps having a the bones of a foreboding on the 'New World Order' and at best, a voice few may once have listened to, but now offers insight and revelation.

David Icke Biography.

David Vaughan Icke (pronounced /ˈaɪk/; born 29 April 1952) is a British writer and public speaker who has devoted himself since 1990 to researching "who and what is really controlling the world." A former professional football player, reporter, television sports presenter, and spokesman for the Green Party, he is the author of 20 books explaining his views.

Icke argues that he has developed a moral and political worldview that combines spiritualism with a passionate denunciation of what he sees as totalitarian trends in the modern world, a position that has been described as "New Age conspiracism."

At the heart of Icke's theories is the view that the world is ruled by a secret group called the "Global Elite" or "Illuminati," which he has linked to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic hoax. In 1999, he published The Biggest Secret, in which he wrote that the Illuminati are a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.

According to Political Research Associates, Icke's speaking engagements can draw a substantial audience in Canada. During an October 1999 speaking tour there, he received a standing ovation from students after a four-hour speech at the University of Toronto, while his books were removed from the shelves of Indigo Books after protests from the Canadian Jewish Congress. Icke and the Canadian tour become the focus of a British Channel 4 documentary by Jon Ronson, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews.



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