Best Places To Travel For Spiritual Enlightenment …

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Best Places To Travel For Spiritual Enlightenment Our planet is full of life and color. It is beautiful and filled with different energies. Therefore, there are certain places that have special energy fields. These places with strong energy fields are important for those who seek spiritual enlightenment. In these places every spiritual practice is more intensified. So, lets see which are the Best Places To Travel For Spiritual Enlightenment.

Rila (Bulgaria) it is a very well known energy center of the planet. This mountain range is surrounded by a strong energy field. This strong energy can be sensed by those who are more sensible or more awaken spiritually. The strong energy of Rila is the cause why one of the most awaken spiritual master of the last century, Beinsa Duno, started to transmit his teaching here. If you have the opportunity, spend a few days or even weeks in this place. Many people experienced enlightenment, revealing dreams and psychic abilities.

Uluru (Australia) it is the energy center of Australia. Many legends exist about the plateau. Different tribes used Uluru as source of energy for centuries. Their stories about the plateau are even visible on cave paintings from the area. This beautiful plateau is also called Tiukurpa, which means Dreamtime. This place has very strong energy.

Peak Kailash (Tibet) it is another energy center of the planet, and even the world. This place is sacred not only in Buddhism, but also in Hinduism. Both religions believe that the tip of the mountain is the home of the gods. This place is very powerful. It fills you with calmness and peace. It is a great place to meditate and connect with the cosmos.

Stonehenge (UK) it is the most famous on this list of Best Places To Travel For Spiritual Enlightenment. Nobody really knows it purpose. But many ancient civilizations used the megalithic monument for rituals and ceremonies. They felt the high energy field in the area. Therefore, this place is amazing. Visit the Stonehenge if you can. It will take you to another energy level. And it will show you how advanced spiritually our ancestors were.

Sanctuary Belintash it is and ancient sanctuary in Bulgaria. And it is an important point in Europe-s energy field. The other two points being the Cross Forest and the Karadjov stone. This beautiful place is surrounded by natural cosmic energy. Thousands of people visit this place annually. And they describe their miraculous paranormal experiences. It is a great place to travel to if you need and energy boost. And if you want to reach a higher frequency.

If you seek spiritual enlightenment, this list of The 5 Best Places To Travel For Spiritual Enlightenment should help you. Find out more information about these places. And choose the one that you can afford and the one that is more appealing to you.

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Best Places To Travel For Spiritual Enlightenment ...

5 Stages Of The Path From Awakening To Enlightenment …

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There are truths, despite what our president would want us to believe. Subjective and objective domains for truth are largely distinct, and discerning the difference informs a spirituality that honors more than just our convenient worldviews.

The key is learning how to appropriately identify subjective versus objective truths. When we mix up these domains, we end up not living in alignment with the truth, which is not only anti-spiritual but leads to the demise of the Earth as well.

For myself, spirituality means aligning with what is true, or most likely true. This means looking at what is true through the lens of my unique experience and self-reflection (subjectively) and what is true in the world (objectively).

Living in accord with whats truemeans I have to confront lots of things that are tough to stomach andthat Id prefer werent true. Ipractice resiliency by enduringthis discovery process.Ittakes courage, humility, sensitivity, insight, intellectual rigor, emotional intelligence, and flexibilityin essence, all of me.

Why does it require all of me to be honest?

Because we humans have evolved to stick to our beliefs, even though many of them are false. We, in fact, experience a dopamine rush (a feel-good neurotransmitter in our brains) when we affirm our beliefs, even if they are wrong. So, confronting false beliefs about myself and the world means I have to endure some degree of feeling badly, some emotional turmoil, cognitive dissonance, and reorientation of my world. When I challenge many of my false beliefs, I encounter nothing short of transformation on all levels. Sounds like a bona fide spiritual path to me.

This being human is a guesthouse,Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comesas an unexpected visitor.

Rumi

When we dont align with whats true about ourselves, interpersonally, and in the world, we develop false beliefs. And we like to assert these false beliefs. Using evidence and acknowledging reality can help us let go of our false beliefs. We receive this information subjectively through self-reflection and what others share with us (which we also need to sort through for false projections). We receive true information about objective reality by direct observation and through evidence.

Ascertaining inconvenient truths means we have to let go of our self-administered dopamine addiction (by lying to ourselves and others when wrong) and experience feeling badly temporarily. We have to accept new visitors tothe guesthouse of our psyche if we want to be more honest. If we cant do this, we cut ourselves short of our potential.

We cant be as loving and kind when were deluded about whats true, subjectively and objectively. If I cant accept that I am more self-serving than I think I am, I will continue to unconsciously put myself first at the expense of others. If I cant acknowledge that smoking cigarettes, synthetic chemicals in perfumes, or sprayingRoundUp is harmful, I am more likely to condone their use,which causes harm.

To change belief structures includes a collapse of our sense of self, trust, safety, belonging, and ourperceivedsurvival. This is also why many cling so dearly to their beliefs; even warcan seem like a better option than to adjust ourselves to reality. Reality seems pretty powerful this way! If we adopt reality as our guru, we have a powerful teacher on our side to wake us up. So, a willingness to embody our humanness can be a path to greater compassion and peace. Embodied spirituality means being fully humanaccepting and working skillfully with all our thoughts, emotions,physical issues, and relationships.

When we dont embody our spirituality, we dont take as good care of the Earth, which is the extension of our own bodies. In the age of environmentalcollapse,an earthy and embodied relationship to life that apprehends what is true helps us heal whats ill. Like missing a medical diagnosis, how can we treat what what we cant bear to admit and accurately diagnose?Honesty is therefore the first stepto healing and embodying our lives.

We, in fact, need nothing more than everyday honest living for spirituality to put us on a path of massive transformation.The more we can let go of spiritual loftiness and encounter our ordinary humanness, the more resilient and honest we become. Ironically, it is precisely this difficult growth that has given rise to many spiritual and religious paths thatabandon the ordinary, grounded world of embodied living, as complex as it is. These spiritual pathsthrive on what is highly likely untrue. They try to escape the pain of everyday living by denying whats painful,which is called spiritual bypassing.With skillfulness, wisdom, and support we can navigate whats honestly human while not bypassing.

Learning to welcome and tolerate all manner of emotions and inconvenient truths to our guesthouseallows us to align with reality, especially welcoming what makes us feel badly. Its important to align both with the good and the ugly because when we ignore the uglyand painful, it goes unhealed and untended. Our precious biosphere suffering under the weight of our pollution is a prime example. What we dont want to look at, we cant address.Turning our heads and hearts away fromit creates more pain and ugliness.

The New Age dictum, What you put your attention on grows, fails to acknowledge the importance of embracing whats ugly and painful. A wiser, more embodied version might go: The negative things you put your attention on allow you to see reality and address it before it takes over beyond the point of repair. Look at the plastic pollution issue or climate change as examples.Acknowledging both sides of the coin is more important than choosingonly the bright side of life in order to remain happy, which is short-lived when were in denial of the dark side.Wanting to remain happy at the expense of not seeing reality (except when we need a recharge break from honestly facing it) is fear in disguise that ultimately comes back to bite us.It also bites us in the moment because this denial cuts us off from our deeper heartsour compassion and empathywhich are stirred bypainful realities.

Wecant know everything, of course. Nor can we be right all the time. But we can be aligned enough with everyday reality (what matters at the end of the day)to make a difference and eliminate unnecessary suffering. We just have to be willing to beselfless enough to stop avoiding necessary pain to the degree we do.

Scientific consensus is the primary arbiter of whatsobjectivelytrue in the world; what wesubjectivelyexperience is not as good a measure of whats objectively true. I like apples is a subjective truth. No one can disprove this; its a personal truth. It is not the purview of science to disprove a subjective experience. Yet, if I claim that everyone likes apples just because I experience their yumminess, this is imposing a personal truth onto external reality. And, its not truewe know not everyone likes apples, and nothing is wrong with them for not liking them. Itisthe purview of science to demonstrate that not everyone likes apples,and simple common sense will do in a pinch.

Of course, there is bad science, like thejunk (dishonest) science produced by many corporationssuch as Big Pharma and Bayer-Monsanto with regard to GMOs.So, when I say science, I mean good, peer-reviewed (and not conflict-of-interest and corporate-funded), consensus science. And yes, many scientific truthsare always in flux, but many scientific discoveries do not change because they have stood the test of many challenges. Think about the law of gravity and the laws of thermodynamics. Many who want to protect their sense of self and ego deem all science to be manipulative, dishonest, and just another belief system. This is just not true. If it were, the device on which you are reading this article would not function because its constructed as a result of the collaboration of many scientific laws that have not been debunked and instead stood the test of time.

Consider another example: If I experience a vision during a medicine journey or receive a message in a dream one night that has personal meaning to me, I might conclude its true for everyone, or true in the world. Lets say a blue dragon with white polka-dots tells me that aliens are communicating to humanity by way of trees. Well, before I know if this is true or not, Id have to investigate its veracity. I dont deem it true simply because I had a subjective experience that conveyed it was. This way, I can tentatively receive this bit of intuitive knowledgeandseek to determine if its true. Intuition tips me off to what is possible, not necessarily what is true.

Confounding subjective and objective truth is one of the biggest faux pas we make, especially in spiritual circles.

Science shows us whats most likely true beyond our own intuition, beliefs, and biases. Even with sciences errors and itsdishonest publishing politics, good scientific consensus is still the best tool we have for determining whats true about the natural world, not our subjective experiences. We have to be skillful and aware not to automatically deem our subjective experiences as objective truths. This helps us align with reality, keep an appropriately open mind, andhelps everyone get along better because were not feuding over whats objectively true.

Wheneveryone feels entitled to their opinionwhats true for meweend up with lots of personal beliefs and memes that arent true. Personal truth or whats true for me is a subjective truth. Your like of apples doesnt mean anything about the external world, such asmyopinion of apples. If I dont trust politicians or my landlord, this doesnt mean they are untrustworthy. I need objective evidence to prove or verify my distrust. Or I can just own this hunch and honestly call itso, while knowing it might not be true. Thisdiscernment betweensubjective and objective truth helps prevent assumptions and dogmas. This also sounds pretty spiritual to me.

If someonesheds distressing light on a politicianI like or my best friend, Im likely to become defensive because my sense of self and orientation in the world, as well as my emotional security, are invested in these beliefs. If my belief structures are challenged, all of what that belief system keeps in placebecomes shaky. And this is just too scary for most of us, so much so thatwe defend against it or attack and assault others because of it.We often make the mistake of imposing whats true for me onto whats true for everyone or whats true in the world.

Whats true for me beliefs cant automatically be extended to external reality unless we have evidence beyond our own subjective perception to deem them so. If I believe the world is flat andthis is whats true for me, that doesnt fly. This is to make asubjective truth objectively factual. This is what leads to conflict and living in fantasy. Just look at religious and manyNew Age beliefsas examples. They are not different from our personal beliefs about the nature of reality that are also false and cause us to act in egoic, violent ways.

Good science to determine the mostly likely and factual objective knowledge offers us the opportunity to dismantle our egos and illusions. Science and critical thinking show us that many of our whats true for me opinions about the world are wrong. Notice I am not talking about personal feelings and preferences, but rather our statements of fact about the world.

Objective truths implicitly challenge us to change, to transform ourselves. It takesspiritual-emotional courageto accept these facts, which builds resiliency the more we practice aligning with what is both subjectively and objectively true. The sun appears to go down over the horizon; the Earth appears flat. Via science, we know these subjective observations are not true. Using my intuition to make such conclusions is a wrong use ofthis faculty. If my intuition tells me there is more to the story, then I can investigate it for other evidence. This, in fact, is how many scientific discoveries occur. Intuition and science are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are allies as long as we dontassumewhats subjectively true to be objectively true, and vice versa.

Many people dismiss science precisely because its conclusions fly in the face of what theyd prefer to believe. This results in intellectual dishonesty and spiritual delusion. Our emotional bents and grudgesespecially those resulting from our hurt and wounds that have generated anger, fear, pain and thus, biasprevent us from being intellectually honest, unless we recognize the dynamic by which we deceive ourselves and we set about to be more honest. This requires enduring the discomfort of being humbled and sacrificing a temporary dopamine rush for the truth.

To be able to accept truth therefore requires that we deal with our emotional baggage and triggers, because this is the primary driver for our intellectual dishonesty and spiritual laziness. Many of us would fall apart if we discovered that parts of our worldview are untrue. That could result in a spiritual emergency, akin to a healing crisis, which ultimately improves us and makes us more effective in the world.

This is why spiritual warriorshipaligning myself with what is most likely objectively and subjectively truerequires I be emotionally and intellectually rigorous and courageous. It means that I listen to scientific consensus and not discard it because Id like to believe something else. It means that I listen to the opinions of others and gain perspective on myself (while also honestly and humbly sorting out projections and displacements of other peoples biases). It means that I genuinely and honestly consider interpersonal facts about which I might have an incorrect opinion. And it means that I notice the whispers inside me that tell me when I am being dishonest or hiding from the truth, with white lies tolerated now and again.

Many spiritual paths involve giving over ones will and beliefs to a guru. Yet, that guru can be corrupt and deluded and conflate subjective and objective truths. For example, feeling one with all in meditation doesnt mean that we are all one in a black or white waywithout appropriate boundaries, individual needs, and different tolerances and sensibilities. In this sense, aligning ourselves with what is most likely true, subjectively and objectively, is a robust spiritual pathbecause, much like a guru, it forces us to align with truth and withstand the breakdown of some part of our existing paradigm. This is death and rebirth work, for sure. Again, this sounds pretty spiritual to me.

Detachment from reality by remaining stuck in ones self-centered and deluded beliefs doesnt help the planet or help us show up for one another. Consider our governments failure to acknowledge the widespread harm of key pesticides, or the neurotoxic chemicals in perfumes and scented products, despite the scientific evidence and the fact that many of these products arebanned in the EU and other, more sensible places than America. This creates crimes of global proportionbecause of the actions (and inactions) and resulting injury that a denial of the facts causes.Or consider a smaller-scale example. If someone doesnt appreciate you, despite evidence to the contrary they choosenot to see, they will treat you poorly and create unnecessary suffering for you and themselves.

To live an embodied spiritualitywhere we are in alignment with reality and whats as true as we can glean means we have to give up many of our fantasies and wishful thinking. It means we have to tend intimately to our emotional lives and the hidden aches and wounds thathide us from the truth. We find these hidden places when we descend into and become more conscious of our bodies (this is a key aspect of the body part of embodied spirituality). We have to practice critical thinking to align with external reality, whats known as intellectual honesty. Emotional and intellectual honesty are the pillars that producespiritual honesty.

When wepractice emotional healing, good thinking, and care for the greater good, we inhabit our bodies more fully. Belonging to ourselvesthis way connects us to the body of the Earth,so we can treat it with the same integrity with which wetreat ourselves . This way, spirituality begins with our (extra)ordinary humanness and self-healingandextends to the ordinary, extraordinary world around us in the same vein of integrity.

Its easy to live in a fantasy world, believing whats convenient, what feeds our biases, puffs up our superiority, denies what makes us uncomfortable, and propels our hate. These convenient, false beliefs also protect our core wounds and our need to belong in the world at any cost. The problem is that believing in whats untrue damages the world because it guides our actions and inaction.

Science and everyday evidence are beautiful because theybypass our bias and opinion; they dont care what we believe or what injures our ego. Theyre impartial. Sounds like the work of a good guru to me.When we gethumility, courage, honesty, good thinking, and passion all working in harmony and assuming their appropriate roles for truth-discerning, we get integration, which begets integrity. These psycho-spiritual capacities are the cornerstone of an embodied spirituality, which is simply to be an exquisitely integrated and aware human being who genuinely cares about oneself and the world . . . enough to be willing to suffer disillusionment to align with and serve it.

When we align our subjective and objective truths, we live in more harmony, not only with ourselves but with every other precious, living thing. What better pathcould we take thanto strive for an embodied, earthy lifein theage ofenvironmental collapse? For, the collapse of the natural world may indeed be due to our collective, personal collapse ofintegritytheabandonment ofour own embodiment.

****

Jack Adam Weber, L.Ac., M.A., is a Chinese medicine physician, having graduated valedictorian of his class in 2000. He has authored hundreds ofarticles, thousands ofpoems, and severalbooks. Weber is an activist for embodied spirituality and writes extensively on the subjects of holistic medicine, emotional depth work, and mind-body integration, all the while challenging his readers to think and act outside the box.His latest creation is theNourish Practice, a deeply restorative, embodied meditation practice as well as an educational guide forhealing the wounds of childhood. His work can be found atjackadamweber.com, onFacebook, or onTwitter, where he can also be contacted for medical consultations and life-coaching.

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5 Stages Of The Path From Awakening To Enlightenment ...

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Signs of Awakening to Spiritual Enlightenment

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Spiritual enlightenment is unique for each person, and varies with the spiritual path, but here are some classic signs of how early to mid spiritual enlightenment unfolds with Divine Openings:

Divine Openings brings Practical EnlightenmentSpiritual Bliss ~ Practical Life Solutions

As well as bringing spiritual bliss and oneness with The Presence, Divine Openings brings practical spiritual enlightenment that works in daily life. Some paths bring bliss, but living on this earth is still hard. Lola Jones created Divine Openings to be practical. While mystical phenomena do happen at times, we don't chase it or glorify it.

Divine Openings helps you function at high levels in this world, have fulfilling work and thrilling relationships, and enjoy this Earth Life. You are able to stay unattached to details, people, things, and events, but passionate about life and people, not detached from them. You don't float off into la la land or wish to be in another dimension.

Divine Openings is deliberately designed to produce this practical spiritual enlightenment. If your heart desires it, Divine Openings helps you let it in. Your life works.

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Signs of Awakening to Spiritual Enlightenment

Movie Watcher’s Guide to Enlightenment Spiritual movies Guide

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The Movie Watchers Guide to Enlightenment website lists movies for Enlightenment that can be helpful in Awakening to Truth. Metaphysical and forgiveness themes are the focus of these Spiritual movies.

True forgiveness entails completely laying aside the ego, which is the belief in linear time and space.

These spiritual movies can be used as a way of expanding consciousness and ultimately experiencing the depth and meaning of the Inner Self. These enlightening movies can be a means of getting in touch with and releasing limiting beliefs and resolving inner conflict.

Movies with a spiritual message need not be used as a means of escapism, distraction, or fantasy fulfillment, all of which are ego reinforcement. Movies are like modern-day parables; movies with a spiritual message offer a backdrop for experiencing deeper awareness and purpose, and help provide a detached, fearless Perspective from which it is apparent that all things work together for good.

For those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see, enlightened movie-watching can offer many insights into the very heart of the Soul. We watch movies with a desire to let them be used by the Spirit to release the concepts of past and future. We watch them with an earnest desire for deeper understanding and meaning. Our intention has been to not repress the emotions we experience as we watch, but to release all unconscious beliefs and interpretations that prevent the constant experience of peace and joy. In releasing everything that does not serve inner peace and joy, we are transformed.

In this guide, we are grateful to share Enlightenment movies to which we have been intuitively drawn on our inward journey. We are happy to share the insights that have been revealed from the Spirit within. There is a method to watch movies in an enlightened way that leads to observing the events and scenes and scripts of the worldwith forgiving eyes. Forgiveness is synonymous with peace of mind and non-judgment.

Featured Video:Practical Applicationwith David Hoffmeister

The Movie Watchers Guide to Enlightenment (MWGE) is an onlinesearchable database of over 400 metaphysical reviewsof the bestspiritual movies for Awakening, including popular Hollywood movies such as Edge of Tomorrow, Lucy, Her, TheMatrix Trilogy, and Transcendence.

By watching your emotions during a movie and releasing what is arising, you can save time in this Awakening process. You dont have to play everything out in a linear manner in what seems to be a three-dimensional world. By using these top spiritual movies in this way, time can actually collapse into the quantum field or what we call quantum awareness. ~David Hoffmeister, your MWGE.org Guide

Wake up with the movies! Join us on MWGE.org and also visit our online ACIM Living Miracles TV.

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Movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment Spiritual movies Guide

Zen Definition of Spiritual Enlightenment – anmolmehta.com

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Summary: In this series, we will look to deepen our understanding of spiritual enlightenment, by studying the views from various different teachings and philosophies. In the first article of this series, we will explore the explanation of enlightenment given by the great modern day Zen Buddhist teacher, Charlotte Joko Beck.

Spiritual enlightenment is the greatest mystery and the greatest Truth available to man. Many explanations, descriptions, views etc., exist for enlightenment and each of these gives us some insight and understanding into what this great phenomenon is. In this series, I would like to provide these various definitions on enlightenment from various great teachings in order to help you understand better what it is for yourself.

We will start off this series with the Zen Buddhist definition of enlightenment and who better to quote, than one of my favorite Zen teachers Charlotte Joko Beck. Here is what this great Zen master had to say about what enlightenment is.

Enlightenment is the core of all religion. But we have quite often a strange picture of what it is. We equate the enlightened state with a state in which we have become quite perfect, quite nice and quiet, calm and accepting. And thats not it.

Im going to ask a series of questions about certain unpleasant states. I am not saying we should not have strong feelings or preferences about them. Nevertheless from these examples we can begin to get a clue; and when we have a clue we can see more clearly what were doing in practice. Here are the questions. (I have selected only a few that she asked).

Now I cant answer OK to any of of those. And if youre honest, I dont think that any of you can either. But to answer OK is the enlightened state, if we understand what it means for something to be OK. (She goes on to say).

What is the enlightened state? When there is no longer any separation between myself and the circumstances of my life, whatever they may be, that is it.

Understanding and remembering well the above zen definition for what enlightenment is, will immediately change the way you look at your life. Yes, immediately. What is being explained is that you stop running away from the moment, no matter what it contains, and start instead, embracing it, observing it, being OK with it. The more you are able to do that, the more enlightened you are.

This does not mean you will necessarily enjoy the moment, it may be full of hardship, but that is fine. You will see hardship as an opportunity to evaluate, test and make progress in your spiritual growth. Zazen, or Zen Meditation is one of the best techniques for developing this understanding and capability.

In Zen meditation, as you sit still for long periods of time, you learn to be OK and stay with the difficulties that inevitably arise, and that then translates into you being able to be OK with the difficulties that inevitably arise is your life. The person who is evolved in this way, will have few complaints and selfish interests, and thus, will be far more capable of giving, enjoying and loving.

So, the Zen teachings are very clear as to what enlightenment is. It is the state of residing in such great understanding and depth, that no matter what life throws your way, you are at peace with it, you are able to say, Thats OK, no problem.

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Zen Definition of Spiritual Enlightenment - anmolmehta.com

What is New Age Enlightenment? | John Ankerberg Show

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By: Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon; 2012 In the New Age Movement, enlightenment is one of those words that everyone respects. It suggests something very good. For anyone to say that it is something negative would seem harsh, for such a polite-sounding word should speak of something noble and sublime.What is New Age Enlightenment?Introduction and Influence

Enlightenment is realization of the truth of Being. Our native condition, our true self is Being, traditionally called God, the Supreme Being.[1]

The value of mystical and transformative states is not in producing some new experience, but in getting rid of the experience.[2]

In the New Age Movement, enlightenment is one of those words that everyone respects. It suggests something very good. For anyone to say that it is something negative would seem harsh, for such a polite-sounding word should speak of something noble and sublime.

But just what is enlightenment, this concept that allegedly describes a higher order of existence, a grander state of being, which for many New Agers represents the emerging prototype of a new species of humanity? This is the fundamental question, a question which in some ways answers other important questions about New Age metaphysics, occultism, and Eastern mystical religion in general. It is also an important question because the final goal of almost all serious New Age practice, as well as of many within occultism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, Sikhism, and other forms of mysticism is enlightenment, however it is conceptualized. And whatever occurs along these spiritual paths is designed to nourish the process of enlightenment; whatever is endured or achieved is inescapably linked in some fashion to that final goal. And if we can determine the nature of the goal, we can also learn something about the nature of the path.

Because it is in harmony with Hindu, Buddhist, and most mystical metaphysics, New Age enlightenment teaches the internal recognition by the individual that he or she is one essence with God or ultimate reality, with all that this implies. All mysticism is not the same, of course, nor are all categories of religious enlightenment, but sufficient commonalities exist to warrant extrapolation for the focus of our study here. For example, the development of monistic consciousness, the acceptance of spiritism and other forms of occultism, and a pragmatic amoralism typify the general process of mystical enlightenment. Our own research on many occult traditions and on some 25 Eastern mystical sects bears this out. Not all are equally potent or radical, but all set up shop in the same spiritual house, so to speak. Different rooms may be occupied, but the fundamental environment is consistent.

What enlightenment means in the New Age Movement can be gauged through editor John Whites text What Is Enlightenment?: Exploring the Goal of the Spiritual Path. White is an authority on consciousness exploration and related areas, having authored or edited numerous books, such as What Is Meditation?, Frontiers of Consciousness, The Highest State of Consciousness, Psychic Exploration, Other Worlds, Other Universes, and Kundalini, Evolution and Enlightenment. White holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Yale University, is on the boards of several academic and New Age organizations, and is an editorial contributor to a variety of national publications.

He writes, So widespread is the urge to know about enlightenment that, for the first time in history, people and organizations claiming to understand it have developed into a thriving field of commerce. The enlightenment industry is big business. Today, enlightenment is for everyone.[3] But the kind of enlightenment White discusses is not new; it is the age-old enlightenment of Eastern religion and occultism: that people are, in their true nature, one essence with God. As noted in the introductory quote: Enlightenment is the realization of the truth of Being. Our native condition, our true self is Being, traditionally called God.[4]

According to this view, the fundamental problem is that most people do not know that they are God. The common way of viewing things (that we are limited egos, personal selves) must thus be transcended until people recognize that they are enlightened as to their true nature. White emphasizes, But the critical point to be understood is this: the value of mystical and transformative states is not in producing some new experience but in getting rid of the experiencer. Getting rid, that is, of the egocentric consciousness which experiences life from a contracted, self-centered point of view rather than the free, unfettered perspective of a sage who knows he or she is infinity operating through a finite form.[5]

The false perception of ones limitations and isolation must be replaced with a new, direct experience of pantheism: The limitation is in youyour consciousnessand when that limitation is transcended, you perceive existence differently and therefore relate to it in a new way. Your sense of identity changes. You experience the cosmos as unified and intimately one with your own essential being, rather than experiencing yourself as a separate, isolated physical form apart from all the rest of existence.[6]

But through what means is individual perception so radically altered that the person now views his true nature, and the nature of the universe, as deity? This change in perception occurs by means of various occult practices found in both Eastern and Western spirituality. These practices lead the seeker of enlightenment into contact with the spirit worldwhat the Bible identifies as the realm of deceiving spirits or demons. As we will see, these practices permit the interfacing of the human and the demonic such that individual consciousness becomes manipulated toward delusions of personal god-hood. For example, as we have shown in our discussion on Eastern Gurus (The Problem of Personhood) elsewhere on this site, the goal of enlightenment is not only to alter ones perspective but to destroy ones basic identity so that it may be replaced with a new, alien consciousness.

Before we move into our analysis, it might be helpful to consider the individuals in Whites anthology who write about enlightenment. Many of these names will be familiar to readers of our other eBooks on New Age topics. Their backgrounds and interests here reveal the typical Eastern or occult orientation of New Age enlightenment:

Sri Aurobindo was the Hindu occultist who attempted a synthesis of Eastern and Western thinking. He said that the central spiritual experience was the descent of the Supermindan experience that parallels spirit influence or possession. He is perhaps best known for his two-volume text, The Life Divine.

Meher Baba was an Eastern guru who underwent periods of insanity and possession on his personal route to enlightenment, as indicated in the biography by Purdom, The God-Man.

Richard Maurice Bucke MD authored the occult classic Cosmic Consciousness. It was written in 1901, and has significantly influenced consciousness research and the field of transpersonal psychology. It was Buckes own brief mystical encounter that impelled him to write on mystical consciousness.

Allan Y. Cohen has his doctorate in clinical psychology from Harvard and has worked with radical LSD explorer Timothy Leary. He has had teaching and clinical positions at Harvard, the University of California, and the John F. Kennedy University. He co-founded and directed the Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation for 20 years, (a nonprofit institution specializing in substance abuse prevention). He is currently the Vice-Chair, Board of Directors at the Foundation for Autism Support and Training; the Director, Center for Advanced Planning, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation and a Licensed Clinical Psychologist at the Moki Wellness Center. He is also a committed disciple of Sufi guru Meher Baba and has written widely in the field of mysticism.

Da Free John, aka Adi Da Samraj, was another controversial guru who was previously a disciple of radical Hindu gurus Swami Muktananda, Rudrananda, and Nityananda. Free Johns anarchistic spirituality centers upon such themes as God-possession, which is indistinguishable from classical demonization (for examples, see our eBook, A Christian Worldview of Meditation).

Lex Hixon was a devotee of meditation, which he practiced under the guidance of Swami Nikhilananda and Swami Prabhavananda of the Ramakrishna Order. He also practiced under Zen, Tibetan Buddhist, and Islamic meditation masters.

Aldous Huxley was the popular mystic who, in some ways, was one of the principal fathers of the consciousness research movement. His widely read books include The Doors of Perception, The Perennial Philosophy, Heaven and Hell, and Brave New World.

Gopi Krishna was a well-known yogi who sought to advance the cause of kundalini enlightenment around the world as an experience with divine energy (see our eBook, A Christian Worldview of Yoga). He is author of the spiritual autobiography Kundalini, the Evolutionary Energy in Man, in which he recounts his experiences with insanity and spirit possession as typical results of his kundalini experience. He has also written The Secret of Yoga, Higher Consciousness, and The Dawn of a New Science.[7]

Jiddhu Krishnamurti was the internationally known teacher whom Annie Besant of the Theosophical Society attempted to introduce to the world as the new Christ and World Teacher. Repudiating this role, he pursued his own path of occultism and wrote The Awakening of Intelligence, The First and Last Freedom, and Freedom from the Known. Mary Lutyens two-volume biography, Krishnamurti, indicates that Krishnamurti also became demonized on the path of enlightenment.

Dane Rudhyar was a prominent humanistic and transpersonal astrologer and occult psychologist who has been awarded several honorary degrees for his work. Among his best-known works are The Planetarization of Consciousness, Rhythm of Wholeness, The Astrology of Transformation, and the 1936 classic The Astrology of Personality.

Satprem was the disciple of Sri Aurobindo and author of a 13-volume set on the personal conversations he had with Aurobindos spiritual partner, The Mother.

Houston Smith was a professor of religion and philosophy at Syracuse University for 15 years. He is author of the well-known text, The Worlds Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man), which has sold over two million copies. He has produced documentary films on Sufism, Hinduism, and Tibetan Buddhism that have won international film festival awards. He has also written Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition, and Beyond the Post-Modern Mind.

Evelyn Underhill was a well-known authority on mysticism and author of such books as The Mystic Way, Practical Mysticism, Man and the Supernatural, The House of the Soul, Essentials of Mysticism and Other Essays, and her classic text Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Mans Spiritual Consciousness.

Roger Walsh trained in medicine, psychiatry, and neuroscience, and he is a practitioner of Buddhist vipassana meditation. He has attempted to integrate modern forms of transpersonal psychology into therapy. He is the author of Essential Spirituality, coauthor of Beyond Ego: Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology, and of the authoritative text Meditation: Ancient and Contemporary Perspectives.[8]

Alan Watts was the famous mystic and Western popularizer of Zen Buddhism and a promoter of psychedelic drug use. Among his books on mysticism are Psychotherapy East and West, The Supreme Identity, Behold the Spirit, The Way of Zen, Beyond Theology, and The Book.

Ken Wilber is regarded as among the foremost theorists in transpersonal psychology and has been a practitioner of Zen Buddhism for over 20 years, studying under several Zen masters. Although he completed his course requirements for the PhD in biochemistry, his interest in mystical states caused him to leave the academic world and devote his time to personal exploration in consciousness research. He is author of The Spectrum of Consciousness, No Boundary, The Atman Project, Up From Eden, and System, Self and StructureAn Outline of Transpersonal Psychology. He was also editor-in-chief of Revision: A Journal of Consciousness and Change.

The above describes the typical spiritual orientation of leaders of the search for spiritual enlightenment. Obviously, this modern search is nothing new; it is fundamentally a throwback to ancient pagan practices, usually reconstituted for contemporary Western consumption. Nevertheless, the essence and consequence of paganism remains. Indeed, modern enlightenment is an extended experimentation with occult states of consciousness. Thus, the severe consequences found in this modern search for supposedly higher states of being are not unexpected.[9]

The John Ankerberg Show

Founder and president of The John Ankerberg Show, the most-watched Christian worldview show in America.

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What is New Age Enlightenment? | John Ankerberg Show

Most Unique Spiritual Trips for Enlightenment – Pacsafe

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As human existence has entered the Age of Enlightenment, travelers head around the world in search of a spiritual awakening. If seeking to find your inner-light and spread your wings, awaken your souls purpose through these spiritual trips for finding enlightenment.

Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage Walk, SpainThis famous pilgrimage attracts backpackers to walk 500 miles starting with a spiritual journey and ending in ones heart. A popular route, Camino Frances, starts at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port and ending in Galicia. The path holds over a thousand years of pilgrimage and over millions of footsteps and is known to be the longest Christian Pilgrimage.

Uptuyu Aboriginal Adventures, AustraliaThis indigenous tour offers travelers to head to Australia for an authentic Aboriginal experience. Tours take place in Broome and the surrounding regions to learn, discover and be hands-on ancient traditions. Book one of the epic journeys such as the, Seize the Moment tour to rest at the Kimberly wilderness setting, set amidst mineral springs the best of the outback landscape. With other explorations, visitors explore ancient rock galleries; learn about bush medicine and survival in the outback.

Studying Yoga, IndiaEnhance your karma and discover your lifes purpose through exposing your inner-world in India. Studying yoga, whether as a course or a holiday retreat, is available throughout the country. Rishikesh is known for its abundance with yoga ashrams, retreats and festivals. If searching for the traditional experience, head to small-town India to find longstanding ashrams. Goa is westernized and holds many retreats led by American, European, or Australian yogis.

The Powerful Vortexes, Sedona, ArizonaAs life ventures into the Age of Aquarius, New Age believers head to Sedona to visit one of four energy vortexes, which were first discovered in the 1950s. Vortexes are pulls of energy that provide either, or both, masculine and feminine energies. Bed Rock (masculine), Airport Mesa (masculine), Cathedral Rock (feminine), and Boynton Canyon (both) are the places where if one meditates, supposedly one can physically heal and spiritually awaken.

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Meditation with Monks, BhutanTour operators offer self-made spiritual journeys to visit and explore various Buddhist temples around Bhutan. The popular Tigers Nest Monastery is perched on a cliff 800 meters above Paro Valley. Known as one of Bhutans most religious sites, legend has it that Guru Rinpoche flew to this location on the back of a tigress from Khenpajong where this place was to consecrate the Tiger demon.

Trekking in TibetTibet is known as one of the most religious, and spiritual, destinations in the world. Grounding ones feet in nature changes people naturally while enduring a highly physical challenge. Tour operators offer seven to 21 day trekking trips around Tibet and Nepal, with opportunities to visit sacred temples, sites, mountains and lakes. Visitors who are lucky enough may find the Dalai Lama conducting a presentation.

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Elizabeth Kovar

Elizabeth is a fitness professional, workshop presenter and freelance writer. She is an active traveler who treks the globe looking for interesting stories to write and places to photograph. Her most significant travel achievements include living and volunteering in Australia twice and studied yoga in India.

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Most Unique Spiritual Trips for Enlightenment - Pacsafe

Why Spiritual Growth Does Not Lead to Enlightenment

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Enlightenment is in many ways more of a Western concept than a traditional Asian one. The Sanskrit wordbodhameans, depending on the context:being awake,knowing, understanding, wisdom, intelligence, perception,awakening, awareness, blossoming, opening,or expanding. Its an everyday word, not an abstract noun, and it doesnt imply some final state of perfection.

When used in spiritual contexts, it connotes being awake to and aware of ones real nature,of the true nature of reality, or both. The English word enlightenment implies (to most people) some kind of super-wisdom and/or a higher state of consciousness that elevates the one who has attained it above the mass of humanity. The Sanskrit word is sweeter, simpler, and more humble: it connotes waking up to the reality of what you really are (and always have been), and becoming generally more aware and open.Abidingin this awake, alive, open awareness is the goal of the spiritual life as conceived in the Yoga traditions.

In our culture, however, the pursuit of enlightenment (which really means abiding in direct awareness of reality) has become confused and mixed up with the self-help / self-improvement project. People talk about wanting to grow and become a better person, and often imagine that the terminal point of this growth process is something like enlightenment.This demonstrates a real lack of understanding of the nature of the spiritual path (as conceived in the Asian traditions, anyway). Not only is abiding-awakenessnotthe endpoint of the growth process, it doesnt even lie in that direction.

What??!Look, if you stop and think this through, youll see its obvious: according to all the Yoga traditions,your true nature is always already perfect,the core of your being is pure radiant divinity, and you are always already one with the infinite divine Consciousness which gives rise to and supports the entire universe. TAT-TVAM-ASI: you are That; here and now.

Therefore, realization of this truth does not depend on any degree of personal growth. Rather, it is a paradigm shift in which you stop identifying with the phenomenawithinAwareness(e.g., thoughts, emotions, body-image, etc.) and wake up to the fact that you are Awarenessitselfthe only constant in the ever-changing world of your experience.

And yes, it is possible to becomesoawake that you never fall back asleep again. You dont become a categorically different kind of person, you just finally see the truth so clearly and completely that you cantunseeit, and thus you dwell in a different paradigm from before.

Now, despite fanciful stories about sudden enlightenment, this doesnt happen overnight. Just as it can take you a while to wake up from physical sleep before youre fully awake and clear, in the same way, once youve touched into the truth of your Being, you have to keep touching in and deepening your awareness of Awareness for months or years before it becomes your default state. In that process, there is a kind of growth that is necessary:reaching a level of maturity where you know what you really want and your daily-life actions reflect your hearts deepest longing. In other words, you have to grow up enough to get out of your own way and make room for the awakening process to unfold. But this kind of growth is a necessary ancillary to awakening, not its cause.

So you have to ask yourself: are you subconsciously holding the belief that abiding in awakeness to your real nature has to wait until youve completed your therapy, or until your lifes not a mess, or until you can retire to a forest retreat, or until youve attainedsamdhi?Are you spending a lot of time and energy on a self-improvement project that yields only incremental gains, without first accessing the source of unconditional love within? If so, youre suffering. And youre not alone.

This is what looks really weird from where Im sitting: a lot of people doing self-improvement type spirituality are working really hard to acquire the traits that are natural byproducts of abiding in awakeness (bodha-stha). This is going at it back-to-front.Firstwake up to what you really are,thenintegrate that realization into all the aspects of your life. Waking up is actually the easy part compared to integration, but way harder than both is trying to integrate a realization you havent really had yet. Which is what most people in this game are trying to do. I know, youve had powerful experiences in which you tasted your divine essence; but this is really not the same as properlywaking up out ofthe belief that your thoughts, memories, and story have anything to do with who you really are.

Its this simple:you cannot heal the broken self as long as you believe that you are it.Or you can, but its ridiculously difficult. By contrast, if you wake up to and become centered in your real nature, then you can lovingly address any misalignments in the body-mind that need addressing. If youre willing to do the work of integration, every layer of your being becomes permeated with the powerful energy of awakeness. You start to thenembodythat awakeness, which is beneficial to all beings. If you dont do the work of integration, even if youre centered in your divine core, youre not really benefitting anyone else.

This is important. Some people wake up to their real nature and thendismissthe body-mind and its problems rather than work with them. This is called transcendentalism by my teachers (and spiritual bypassing by others), because such people seek to simply transcend the body-mind. By contrast, on the Tantrik path, we seek to allow the energy of pure Awareness (chit-shakti) to permeate all the levels of embodiment and aspects of daily life. This is called integration. But again, in order to do that, you have to be able to access the energy of Awareness at will, which takes practice.

So integration is therealspiritual growth, but it hasnothingto do with trying to recondition oneself to conform more closely to an ideal found in books on spirituality or in the mouth of a teacher (which is what most people call spiritual growth). Rather, it means doing whatever is necessary to open up the body-mind system in such a way as to allow the energy of awakeness to flow unimpeded and permeate every aspect of your life (when actualized, this is calledmah-vypti,the Great Pervasion, in Tantrik Yoga).

Dwelling in the midst of the sea of nectar, with my heart-mind immersed solely in the worship of You [as the substance of every experience], may I attend to all the common occupations of man, savoring the ineffable in every thing.Utpala Deva

This process of integration-and-embodiment involves a lot of looking. When you hold up a thought or self-image and look at it in the Light of Awareness (again, assuming you have access to that Light), you can clearly see to what degree it is misaligned with your deepest nature and discard it (by definition, theyre all misaligned tosomedegree; but the less misaligned thoughts can be useful for a particular purpose). For most people, this doesnt happen automatically; they need to actually do the work of looking & discarding; or, in the case ofsaskrasor unresolved experiences, looking &digesting; this is a crucial distinction. This explains why some people can be enlightened but unintegrated; and if they become teachers, they usually cause harm. Theres a difference between having access to the Light of Awareness (praksha) and doing the work of seeing what does and doesnt reflect that light in its fullness (this is calledvimarsha,or self-reflection).

Someone who has done a lot ofvimarshaand has therefore shed their self-images and digested a lot of their unresolved experiences dwells in a state of freedom calledmoksha.Such a person is calledjvan-mukta, liberated while still in the body. This is significantly less common than awakening or even abiding-awakening. It is the ultimate goal of the spiritual life, but its not an attainment since nothing has been attained; rather, something has been lost. Its a state of being truly unburdened and free. But even this is not a terminal state, since theres always moresaskras that can be digested and more integration that can be done. Still, there is a tipping point beyond which you could never go back to the state of bondage and delusion. Passing this tipping point is what caused the Buddha to say simply and humbly,ktya ktam: that which needed to be done is now done.

What would it look like for you to drop all self-improvement projects based in a sense of unworthiness and spend your practice time learning how to access and abide in your already-perfect innermost Self? This is not as easy as it sounds, since it means going beyond enjoying afeel-good ideaof your own divinity and accessing the real deal, which humbles and softens you more than it exalts and affirms you (you here meaning the body-mind-personality complex).

What if you stopped trying to be a better person and simply learned how to fully embody the being you already are?

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Why Spiritual Growth Does Not Lead to Enlightenment

World War 3 | WW3 | WWIII | Endtime Ministries with Irvin Baxter

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By Irvin Baxter

The question is not, Is there going to be a World War III? It is in your Bible. There is not a one tenth of one percent chance that it is not going to happen. Another world war is coming, and it will be the biggest world war ever. According to the Bible, one out of three people on the earth will die in this war of all wars! The prophecy is found in Revelation chapter nine, verse 15: And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.

The third part of men would be over two billion people! Other translations read one-third of the human race, one-third of all the people on earth, one-third of humanity. They all say the same thing. A war is just ahead that will wipe out over two billion human beings!

Prior to the 20th Century, there had never been a war with one million fatalities. Then came World War I in 1914, with 8.2 million dead. They called it The Great War. With the founding of the League of Nations, we had hoped that this type of carnage would never happen again. Twenty years later, 52 million people died in World War II. As if something had come unhinged in the human soul, we cried out, How can we ever stop this? With the founding of the United Nations we had hoped that the solution to world peace was at hand. I have the dreadful assignment of telling you, it is not fixed. There is another war coming. There will neither be 8 million dead nor 52 million dead. This war that is coming will kill 2.2 billion, forty times World War II. It will be the worst war ever.

I cant tell you exactly when this is going to happen, but the Bible tells us where World War III will originate. The Sixth Trumpet prophecy is found in Revelation 9:14-15:

Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.

These angels were bound in the Euphrates River, which flows through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and empties into the Persian Gulf. War has been raging up and down the Euphrates River since 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. When they are loosed, these evil angels will carry out their assignment to kill one-third of mankind.

Out of the chaos and destruction, a strong leader will rise to promise peace and security. The Antichrist will step onto the world scene at just the right moment. He will provide firm direction but he will also demand absolute obedience.

There are four prophetic developments occurring right now that demonstrate how close we are to the Euphrates River War, otherwise known as World War III.

In Genesis 15:18, God entered into a covenant with Abraham, affirming that the Promised Land would be given to his descendants. The Antichrist, according to Daniel 9: 27 will confirm this covenant with many for seven years. A peace agreement which confirms the covenant will establish Israels right to exist in the Holy Land and will mark the beginning of the final seven years to Armageddon. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry has set the goal of April 29, 2014 to reach just such a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. A viable two-state solution is the only way this conflict can end, he said, and there is not much time to achieve it, and there is no other alternative.

Halfway through the final seven years, the Antichrist will order the stopping of animal sacrifices on the Temple Mount, which will have been resumed by then. He will then stand in the temple claiming to be God.

II Thessalonians 2:3-4 and Revelation 11:1-2 describe a temple standing on the Temple Mount three and one-half years before Armageddon. Israel has been subsidizing nonprofit organizations that advocate the building of the Third Temple atop Jerusalems holiest site. The Temple Institute is dedicated to the vision of the Temples rebuilding, and has already recreated several items to be used when services are resumed on the Temple Mount.

Revelation 13:16-17 describes the control system which will be implemented during the reign of the Antichrist. During the Great Tribulation, every person on earth will be coerced into pledging allegiance to the Antichrist. Those who do so will be given a unique identification mark or number permitting them to participate in the world economy. Those who refuse will be denied the privilege of buying and selling.

The REAL ID Act mandates that Americans produce federally approved identification upon demand. Although it has repeatedly postponed implementation penalties, the Department of Homeland Security has announced a gradual rollout for enforcing the law, beginning in April, 2014. The Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, implements a national ID system disguised within a data hub, and a unique patient identifier to verify eligibility. Concurrently making its way through Congress, as part of an immigration reform bill, is E-Verify, a mandated universal biometric ID required for federal approval for employment.

Middle East unrest continues to boil in Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Syria is on the brink of expanding to a full-scale war that could involve the major world powers. Analysts believe Syria may soon become a flashpoint that would divide the region along a battle lines drawn between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Iran is one of Americas and Israels foremost enemies and the Islamic Republic has become one of the most serious threats to stability in the Middle East. As Iran is rapidly achieving nuclear capability, the region will become far more dangerous as the number of countries engaged in nuclear activities grows. The Deputy Commander of Irans Revolutionary Guard has threatened that Tehran is able to destroy every spot in Israel. Germany views Iran as a potential threat not just to Israel, but also to European countries.

WWIII Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist details how this war is going to come out of the Euphrates River area, resulting in the killing of one-third of the human race. It is going to happen and it will affect us, our families, our nation, our world, everything. And it looks like it is coming sooner, rather than later.

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World War 3 | WW3 | WWIII | Endtime Ministries with Irvin Baxter

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NEW WORLD ORDER ….WW3?!!!!!!!? | Yahoo Answers

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FEMA camps and NDAA are the real thing. (just like an Orwellian Utopia) You'll be gettin' the eff out of dodge to avoid some kind of urban uprising because of a disaster or emergency and about 30 or 40 miles out of town traffic will stop. Military stormtroopers will walk through stopped traffic and warn people to stay in their cars. When you get to the roadblock ahead you will be told to get out of your car (leave your keys and belongings in the car and DO NOT bring any weapons.) Then you will wait in a holding area for a bus and go to one of their internment facilities for in-processing. Hopefully you will not get to play any of their games (waterboarding, solitary confinement, etc) But don't worry, 6 fully staffed waterboards means you won't have a long line to wait in. At least w/ SOPA King B Hussein Obama will not need to sit on his high throne and wait w/ his internet kill switch. It will be done automatically.

NDAA (just signed into law by Barack Hussein Obama) will be used to authorize the whole thing, Did you read the book or see the movie "1984"? That's what it is. It allows any federal agency to declare an emergency and use the military forces to impose martial law. What they are doing in the mid east (door to door searches without warrants or any due process whatsoever) is only a rehearsal of what they have in store for us here.

Do the police need a warrant to search me or my property? Under aspects of the US Constitution, all persons are protected from unwarranted searches and any other form of arbitrary harassment. Unfortunately modern courts have misinterpreted the intentions of the founding fathers who authored the US Constitution and Bill of Rights to give the police the power at their discretion to use "probable cause." Police should not be allowed to lawfully act on suspicions or whims, and any action against any person should be deemed unconstitutional. This also includes any electronic surveillance such as wiretaps, directional mics, etc. Of course under aspects of the "Patriot Act" they will claim that it is to protect us from terrorists. They also claim that states need to implement a REAL ID program so that sheeple can be digitally mapped for easy identification to once again... protect us from terrorists. Meanwhile, the southern border is wide open to basically let in whoever wants to come for whatever reason.

The fact is this; the enforcement of drug and firearm prohibition has allowed the government to turn this country into a pig powered police state and everyday it is becoming more and more like the USSR. You might like all of this "protection" but personally I prefer to protect myself. If you are the kind of person that wants to give up your liberty for security then please go somewhere else like China or N Korea.

Both MSM parties (republicans and democrats) are heavily reliant on emotion. (the voters are a jury that has proven to be incapable of making logical decisions.)

I look up bills on govtrack.us. I can also see the bill sponsors and voting record of senate and congress.

Source(s): HR 504 (died in session but it will return) HR 1540 (NDAA 2012) signed into law 12-31-2011 by King B. Hussein Obama

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NEW WORLD ORDER ....WW3?!!!!!!!? | Yahoo Answers

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Island – Wikipedia

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Any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water.[2] Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands is called an archipelago, such as the Philippines.

An island may be described as such, despite the presence of an artificial land bridge; examples are Singapore and its causeway, and the various Dutch delta islands, such as IJsselmonde. Some places may even retain "island" in their names for historical reasons after being connected to a larger landmass by a land bridge or landfill, such as Coney Island and Coronado Island, though these are, strictly speaking, tied islands. Conversely, when a piece of land is separated from the mainland by a man-made canal, for example the Peloponnese by the Corinth Canal or Marble Hill in northern Manhattan during the time between the building of the United States Ship Canal and the filling-in of the Harlem River which surrounded the area, it is generally not considered an island.

There are two main types of islands in the sea: continental and oceanic. There are also artificial islands.

The word island derives from Middle English iland, from Old English igland (from ig or ieg, similarly meaning 'island' when used independently, and -land carrying its contemporary meaning; cf. Dutch eiland ("island"), German Eiland ("small island")). However, the spelling of the word was modified in the 15th century because of a false etymology caused by an incorrect association with the etymologically unrelated Old French loanword isle, which itself comes from the Latin word insula.[3][4] Old English ieg is actually a cognate of Swedish and German Aue, and related to Latin aqua (water).[5]

Greenland is the world's largest island, with an area of over 2.1 million km2, while Australia, the world's smallest continent, has an area of 7.6 million km2, but there is no standard of size that distinguishes islands from continents,[6] or from islets.[7]

There is a difference between islands and continents in terms of geology.[8][9]Continents are the largest landmass of a particular continental plate; this holds true for Australia, which sits on its own continental lithosphere and tectonic plate (the Australian plate).By contrast, islands are either extensions of the oceanic crust (e.g. volcanic islands), or belong to a continental plate containing a larger landmass; the latter is the case of Greenland, which sits on the North American plate.

Continental islands are bodies of land that lie on the continental shelf of a continent.[10] Examples are Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Sakhalin, Taiwan and Hainan off Asia; New Guinea, Tasmania, and Kangaroo Island off Australia; Great Britain, Ireland, and Sicily off Europe; Greenland, Newfoundland, Long Island, and Sable Island off North America; and Barbados, the Falkland Islands, and Trinidad off South America.

A special type of continental island is the microcontinental island, which is created when a continent is rifted. Examples are Madagascar and Socotra off Africa, New Caledonia, New Zealand, and some of the Seychelles.

Another subtype is an island or bar formed by deposition of tiny rocks where water current loses some of its carrying capacity. This includes:

Islets are very small islands.

Oceanic islands are islands that do not sit on continental shelves. The vast majority are volcanic in origin, such as Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.[11] The few oceanic islands that are not volcanic are tectonic in origin and arise where plate movements have lifted up the ocean floor above the surface. Examples are Saint Peter and Paul Rocks in the Atlantic Ocean and Macquarie Island in the Pacific.

One type of volcanic oceanic island is found in a volcanic island arc. These islands arise from volcanoes where the subduction of one plate under another is occurring. Examples are the Aleutian Islands, the Mariana Islands, and most of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. The only examples in the Atlantic Ocean are some of the Lesser Antilles and the South Sandwich Islands.

Another type of volcanic oceanic island occurs where an oceanic rift reaches the surface. There are two examples: Iceland, which is the world's second largest volcanic island, and Jan Mayen. Both are in the Atlantic.

A third type of volcanic oceanic island is formed over volcanic hotspots. A hotspot is more or less stationary relative to the moving tectonic plate above it, so a chain of islands results as the plate drifts. Over long periods of time, this type of island is eventually "drowned" by isostatic adjustment and eroded, becoming a seamount. Plate movement across a hot-spot produces a line of islands oriented in the direction of the plate movement. An example is the Hawaiian Islands, from Hawaii to Kure, which continue beneath the sea surface in a more northerly direction as the Emperor Seamounts. Another chain with similar orientation is the Tuamotu Archipelago; its older, northerly trend is the Line Islands. The southernmost chain is the Austral Islands, with its northerly trending part the atolls in the nation of Tuvalu. Tristan da Cunha is an example of a hotspot volcano in the Atlantic Ocean. Another hotspot in the Atlantic is the island of Surtsey, which was formed in 1963.

An atoll is an island formed from a coral reef that has grown on an eroded and submerged volcanic island. The reef rises to the surface of the water and forms a new island. Atolls are typically ring-shaped with a central lagoon. Examples are the Line Islands in the Pacific and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

Approximately 45,000 tropical islands with an area of at least 5 hectares (12 acres) exist.[12] Examples formed from coral reefs include Maldives, Tonga, Samoa, Nauru, and Polynesia.[12] Granite islands include Seychelles and Tioman and volcanic islands such as Saint Helena.

The socio-economic diversity of tropical islands ranges from the Stone Age societies in the interior of Madagascar, Borneo, and Papua New Guinea to the high-tech lifestyles of the city-islands of Singapore and Hong Kong.[13]

International tourism is a significant factor in the economy of many tropical islands including Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Runion, Hawaii, and the Maldives.

Almost all of the Earth's islands are natural and have been formed by tectonic forces or volcanic eruptions. However, artificial (man-made) islands also exist, such as the island in Osaka Bay off the Japanese island of Honshu, on which Kansai International Airport is located. Artificial islands can be built using natural materials (e.g., earth, rock, or sand) or artificial ones (e.g., concrete slabs or recycled waste).[14][15] Sometimes natural islands are artificially enlarged, such as Vasilyevsky Island in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, which had its western shore extended westward by some 0.5km in the construction of the Passenger Port of St. Petersburg.[16]

Artificial islands are sometimes built on pre-existing "low-tide elevation," a naturally formed area of land which is surrounded by and above water at low tide but submerged at high tide. Legally these are not islands and have no territorial sea of their own.[17]

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Island - Wikipedia

liberal | Definition of liberal in English by Oxford …

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adjective

1Willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas.

liberal views towards divorce

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Synonyms

unbiased, unprejudiced, prejudice-free, accepting, non-partisan, neutral, non-aligned, non-judgemental, non-discriminatory, anti-discrimination, objective, disinterested, dispassionate, detached

liberal citizenship laws

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tolerant, unprejudiced, unbigoted, broad-minded, open-minded, enlightened, forbearing

a liberal democratic state

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Synonyms

progressive, advanced, modern, forward-looking, forward-thinking, progressivist, go-ahead, enlightened, reformist, radical

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2attributive (of education) concerned with broadening a person's general knowledge and experience, rather than with technical or professional training.

the provision of liberal adult education

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3(especially of an interpretation of a law) broadly construed or understood; not strictly literal.

they could have given the 1968 Act a more liberal interpretation

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Synonyms

flexible, broad, loose, rough, non-restrictive, free, general, non-literal, non-specific, not literal, not strict, not close

4Given, used, or occurring in generous amounts.

liberal amounts of wine had been consumed

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Synonyms

abundant, copious, ample, plentiful, generous, lavish, luxuriant, profuse, considerable, prolific, rich

Sam was too liberal with the wine

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Synonyms

generous, magnanimous, open-handed, unsparing, unstinting, ungrudging, lavish, free, munificent, bountiful, beneficent, benevolent, big-hearted, kind-hearted, kind, philanthropic, charitable, altruistic, unselfish

1A person of liberal views.

a concern among liberals about the relation of the citizen to the state

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Middle English: via Old French from Latin liberalis, from liber free (man). The original sense was suitable for a free man, hence suitable for a gentleman (one not tied to a trade), surviving in liberal arts. Another early sense generous (compare with liberal (sense 4 of the adjective)) gave rise to an obsolete meaning free from restraint, leading to liberal (sense 1 of the adjective) (late 18th century).

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liberal | Definition of liberal in English by Oxford ...

Redheads Gallery – Bullz-Eye.com

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Galleries Home / Opposite Sex Channel / Bullz-Eye Home

Theres nothing like a fiery redhead to heat things up. True redheads are hard to find, but weve been able to find some great, sexy redheads to grace the pages of Bullz-Eye. Please contact us if you know of a hot redhead model that we should add to the site.

Dont forget to check out our galleries of blondes and brunettes as well!

For daily updates of photos of our many beautiful Bullz-Eye models from our archives, you can follow our Girl Next Door Instagram account for some of our best photos!

You can also follow our @bullzeyedotcom Instagram account for men's lifestyle updates and photos. Follow us on Twitter @bullzeyedotcom for more men's lifestyle updates and @hot_babes for more models, and you can follow us on Facebook and YouTube as well.

Anya All Pro ModelsCheck out the amazing gallery of photos of this sexy redhead model on All Pro Models. Also, check out the redhead tag on All Pro Models Blog.

Faye Valentine All Pro ModelsCheck out this beautiful redhead model on All Pro Models.

Redheads have more sex!Looks like redheads are having more fun than blondes and brunettes.

Please contact us if you're interested in being photographed for Bullz-Eye.com or if you have any suggestions for models that we might want to feature. All models must be at least 18 years old at the time the photographs are taken.

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Redhead | Types of Ducks & Geese

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Breeding

Redheads breed in the northern prairies of the United States and Canada and the intermountain marshes of the west. They prefer non-forested environments with water areas sufficiently deep to provide permanent and fairly dense emergent vegetation for nesting. Of the diving ducks, redheads are the most common breeders in the United States. Female redheads lay an average of 7-10 eggs and are notorious for parasitizing canvasback nests.

Latin: Aythya americana

Average length: M 20", F 19"

Average weight: M 2.4 lbs., F 2.1 lbs.

Male redheads have a reddish head and upper neck with a black lower neck, foreback and breast. The remaining back is a dark grayish color. The hind back and tail are brownish-black. A broad band of light gray extends across the dusky gray wing and out onto the primaries, which helps distinguish it from scaup. The legs and feet are gray, and the bill is light blue-gray with a whitish band behind a relatively wide black tip. Female redheads have a reddish-brown head, neck and breast, with a buff white chin and throat and an indistinct eye ring and stripe behind the eye. The flanks are warm brown, contrasting little with the breast, but with buffer fringes. The upper parts are darker and duller brown, with the upper-wing-coverts browner than on the male; otherwise the wing is similar to that of the male. The bill is duller than the male's, but similar in pattern.

Redheads dive to feed on seeds, rhizomes, tubers of pondweeds, wild celery, water lilies, grasses and wild rice. They also feed on mollusks, aquatic insects, and small fish.

Redhead populations have remained relatively steady since 1955, hovering in the 400,000 to 800,000 range. As of the 2009 survey, there were more than 1 million redheads, a plateau that was reached in 2007 (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2009).

A significant migration corridor extends from southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Idaho to the Gulf Coast. In addition, some redheads migrate eastward from the northern prairies to the Great Lakes, and then onward to the Chesapeake Bay and Florida. It is estimated that 80 percent of the North American redhead population winters in the Laguna Madre of Texas and Mexico. Smaller numbers of redheads winter in Apalachee Bay, Fla., along the Chandeleur Islands, Yucatan Peninsula and the Atlantic coast from Rhode Island to Florida.

Enjoy a spectacular photo essay featuring the Redhead.

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Redhead | Types of Ducks & Geese

Nanotech

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Best Nootropics 2019 (Updated from 2018) Nootropics Expert

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Ask a group of neurohackers which are the best nootropics and youll get a symphony of opinions. But when you drill down to what people are taking every day you start to see a pattern.

Experienced biohackers working on cognitive enhancement find its easier to focus their brain hacking goals into a few well-defined categories. Then look for the best nootropic to address each one.

One thing we learn quickly in the biohacking community is that there is no one-pill solution to cognitive optimization. We soon find that it takes a stack of several supplements to get to where we want to go.

And our list looks something like this

Best Nootropics for

Recommended nootropics

Cognition, Decision-Making, Focus, Flow, & Thinking

Acetyl-L-Carnitine, Aniracetam, CDP-Choline, Lions Mane, NALT, Noopept, B-Complex

Learning & Memory

Aniracetam, Bacopa Monnieri, CDP-Choline, DHA, L-Theanine, Noopept, Phosphatidylserine, Pine Bark Extract

Anxiety & Depression

Aniracetam, CDP-Choline, Bacopa Monnieri, Rhodiola Rosea, Sulbutiamine, B-Complex, Lithium Orotate

Energy & Motivation

Acetyl-L-Carnitine, Alpha Lipoic Acid, CDP-Choline, Rhodiola, CoQ10, PQQ

Brain Repair & Maintenance

Acetyl-L-Carnitine, Aniracetam, CDP-Choline, DHA, Phosphatidylserine, Noopept, Vinpocetine, Rhodiola Rosea, Pine Bark Extract, Lithium Orotate

I have my favorite nootropics after 12-years of trial and error. And chances are that what works for me may work well for you too. The nootropics Im talking about here are part of the stack I use every day.

Youll notice in the categories above that some nootropics work in multiple areas of cognitive enhancement. The obvious benefit is fewer nootropics in a well-rounded stack.

And once you dive into the neuroscience behind each nootropic, youll find synergy on how many of these compounds work together. This extends to smaller doses of each for a bigger benefit.

Brain optimization comes with a lot of experimenting to find what works best. Trying different compounds, keeping a log of what works and how well, and a considerable investment.

Naturally, Im on the lookout for how to save money without cutting corners. So once Ive narrowed my stack choices, the search begins for a quality pre-made nootropic stack that will save me buying individual packs, tubs of powder or capsules.

Fortunately, I found the best pre-made nootropic stack in late 2015 which covered the bulk of the nootropics Id selected for my stack. Its called Mind Lab Pro.

Ill talk more about Mind Lab Pro in a few minutes and how it ties into my brain hacking goals.

The company that makes MLP just recently introduced a new line of supplements called Performance Lab. Offering even more options for brain optimization. More on that later as well.

Before I get into detail on how my stack works, here are what many neurohackers consider the best nootropics available today.

For a more detailed dive into how to build the best nootropic stack, check my other posts:

Beginners Guide to Nootropic Stacks

How to Create the Best Nootropic Stack

Here well do a quick review on building a great nootropic stack.

The more we learn about some of nootropics that have been used for thousands of years for cognitive enhancement. The more we realize these natural compounds are often as good as or better than modern prescription medications.

As you gain experience, youll also come to realize that some pre-made nootropic stacks simply dont make sense. Amounts are well below therapeutic doses to expect any reasonable kind of benefit.

And understand that no one is a master of the science and art of nootropics. Dont believe anything I have to say. Find out for yourself if something is true. And change course when you need to if you want to achieve your neurohacking goals.

Next, well take a closer look at each of the nootropics I recommend and use every day.

Each of the nootropics covered below contain links through to a complete and thorough report. When you click through to each individual nootropic supplement review youll find more detail on what it is, why we use it as a nootropic, how it feels, mechanism of action in the brain, side effects, forms available and recommended doses.

Youll also notice in the table above and each nootropic listed below some are marked with an asterisk (*). This means it is part of the Mind Lab Pro formula of two capsules per day.

Each of these nootropics are generally regarded as safe and non-toxic at recommended doses. Your mileage may vary. How you respond to each of these compounds depends on a host of variables including:

So please click through to each nootropic and read the side effects, prescription drug interactions and any other notes or warnings. But in general, these are among the safest cognitive enhancers we know of.

Read more about Nootropics Safety and Side Effects

ALCAR helps transport of fatty acids into mitochondria where theyre needed for energy metabolism.[i] Fueling your cells power plants can boost physical and mental energy.

ALCAR is a necessary ingredient for acetylcholine formation.[ii] Which boosts memory, mental alertness, and fluid thought.

The antioxidant properties of Acetyl-L-Carnitine provide neuroprotective qualities, boosts Brain-Derived Nerve Growth Factor (BDNF) and promotes cerebral blood circulation.

Aniracetam is one of the best nootropics available today. Its well-known among experienced nootropics users for reducing anxiety, depression, fear and improving sociability.[iii] But it does so much more.

Aniracetam enhances your brains ability to repair damaged cell membranes. It desensitizes glutamate (AMPA) receptors in your brain.[iv] Which boosts neural signaling by increasing the effectiveness of glutamate. Resulting in better focus and concentration.

Aniracetam also improves memory and recall by releasing 200 300% more acetylcholine in the brain.[v] Which increases focus, and clarity of thought.

Bacopa Monnieri is one of the best nootropics for studying. Researchers at Banaras Hindu University in India showed Bacopa as effective for anxiety as the benzodiazepine drug lorazepam. Unlike benzodiazepines, Bacopa did not cause memory loss. But in fact, it boosted cognition.[vi]

Another study done in Portland Oregon demonstrated that 300 mg of Bacopa per day for 12 weeks:

A valuable addition to any great nootropic stack, CDP-Choline is a multitasker which improves cognition and brain function, improves focus and motivation, and reduces fatigue.

CDP-Choline aids in the synthesis of acetylcholine, and the release of dopamine.[viii] Both neurotransmitters involved in learning and memory.

CDP-Choline also helps in the repair of brain cell membranes. The cytidine in CDP-Choline converts to uridine in your body. And works as a bridge between choline and neuron membrane synthesis. Uridine is needed to synthesize phosphatidylcholine (PC) which is needed to repair damaged neuron membranes.[ix]

Choline is so vital to cognition and nerve function that without it, we couldnt move, think, sleep or remember anything. And one the best ways to provide your brain and body with the choline it needs is supplementing with CDP-Choline.

DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) is an omega-3 fatty acid. DHA is crucial for the healthy structure and function of your brain. Your brain is made up of 60% fat. And much of that fat is DHA.

DHA can turn on brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF). Improving neuroplasticity leading to better learning and memory. And DHA acts as an anti-inflammatory by reducing the enzyme COX-2.

If you suffer from chronic depression, within a few weeks of adding DHA to your nootropic stack, you should feel the depression lift. Your cognition will be better. Youll think clearer and quicker. Your memory and ability to learn will improve. And youll likely have more energy and motivation.

But it is very likely you wont think to attribute these improvements to adding DHA to your stack. Something else will get the credit.

Lions Mane Mushroom is an ancient Chinese remedy for improving cognitive performance, and overall health.

In our modern world, Lions Mane makes it into some of the best nootropic stacks. Why?

Because Lions Mane stimulates enzyme production that releases Nerve Growth Factor (NGF).[x] It stimulates the repair and creation of neurons (neurogenesis). Boosting neurotransmitters and signaling that effects memory, learning, recall, and mood. And Lions Mane helps eliminate brain fog. Restoring memory and mental alertness. And lowers anxiety and depression symptoms.[xi]

Lions Mane is a great compliment to any nootropic stack including Aniracetam, CDP-Choline and DHA (Omega-3s) for an immediate cognitive boost.

Lithium is an alkali mineral considered essential for human reproductive health, and general health and wellness. Microdosing lithium using Lithium Orotate has become one of the best additions Ive made to my nootropic stack in years.

Lithium calms you by decreasing sensitivity of post-synaptic norepinephrine receptors.[xii] Preventing the release of this neurotransmitter for fast stabilization of mood and reducing aggression.

Lithium upregulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), nerve growth factor (NGF), neurotrophin-3 (NT3) and their receptors. And lithium stimulates the proliferation of stem cells in the brain. All boosting neurogenesis and assisting in repair from all types of brain injury.[xiii]

Lithium increases brain gray matter, increases DNA replication for neurogenesis, prevents apoptosis, increases N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA), inhibits beta-amyloid secretion and protects against damage once its formed, chelates aluminum, and protects against glutamate toxicity.

Lithium provides a calming effect in healthy people as well as those dealing with depression, bipolar disorder and mania.

Adequate levels of lithium have been shown to reduce suicide risk in multiple studies worldwide.

Some say Lithium Orotate works better than any prescription that theyve ever tried to treat severe depression.

Lithium Orotate could be one of the most effective and least expensive additions to your nootropic stack this year. Highly recommended.

N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine produces the catecholamine-triad of neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine. As your dopamine levels increase, youre better able to concentrate, organize your thoughts, and stay productive.

NALT can be an effective treatment for ADHD symptoms. NALT works in synergy with pharmaceutical drugs like Ritalin and Adderall by boosting extracellular levels of dopamine. Helping these drugs be more effective. And mitigating side effects like crashes when the stimulant wears off.

N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine also improves memory and cognition under acute stress.[xiv] It helps improve decision making, flow state and creativity, cognitive flexibility, and working memory.

NALT is a great addition to any nootropic stack, especially if youre dealing with ADHD or ADD.

For more tips on how to deal with ADHD and ADD symptoms, see my post:Best Nootropics for ADHD/ADD

Noopept is a peptide-derived nootropic related to the racetam-family of nootropics. Much more potent than piracetam (up to 1,000X), its mechanism of action in your brain is similar to other racetams.

Noopept seems to stimulate dopamine, nicotinic, and serotonin receptors. It boosts cognition, memory, retention, logical thinking, improves reflexes, and improves mood.

Noopept has also been shown to increase Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) and Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). Both critically important for memory formation and brain repair.[xv]

And we have clinical evidence that Noopept boosts Alpha and Beta brain wave activity.[xvi] You become calmer and more creative. Its easier to go into flow. And you are more prone to making innovative and resourceful decisions.

For more tips on supporting flow, see my post:

How to Hack Your Flow State with Nootropics

Phosphatidylserine is one of the best nootropics because:

Phosphatidylserine (PS) is arguably one of the most effective and important nootropics we have available today. It has a reputation for improving alertness, attention, cognition, memory, recall and mood.[xvii]

Pine Bark Extract is one of the best nootropics around but relatively unknown to the nootropic community. Its a naturally derived standardized extract of French maritime pine bark.

Pine Bark Extract helps prevent decreases in dopamine, norepinephrine, and the glutathione (GSH) and GSH-disulphide reductase (GSSG-R) ratio. Neurotransmitter problems which contribute to hyperactivity in ADHD.[xviii]

Pine Bark Extract helps boost blood flow to and within your brain.[xix] By increasing nitric oxide (NO) which helps dilate blood vessels. And helping repair and maintain the health of the lining of blood vessels. Crucial to overall brain health, maintaining signaling pathways and leading to improved learning and memory.

And Pine Bark Extract prevents accumulation of oxidatively damaged proteins. And may reduce the risk of diseases like Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and Huntingtons.

In Russia, Rhodiola Rosea is widely used as a remedy for fatigue, poor concentration, and decreased memory. Its also believed to make workers more productive.

As one of the best nootropics around, this adaptogen helps reduce stress and fatigue, increase energy, alertness and stamina, while boosting mental performance under periods of chronic stress.

Research shows Rhodiola Rosea can increase attention to detail-oriented tasks by improving concentration over a prolonged period. Making it one of the best nootropics for studying.

Rhodiola Rosea boosts mood by influencing serotonin and norepinephrine levels in your brain, and the feel-good opioids like beta-endorphins. It also helps in neurogenesis by repairing and growing new neurons. As well as activating the synthesis and re-synthesis of ATP, your body and brain cells main energy source.

One more reason to add Rhodiola Rosea to your nootropic stack it helps reduce the inflammatory C-reactive protein. And salidroside, one of many components of this incredible herb, protects neurons from oxidative stress-induced cell death.

Sulbutiamine is one of the best nootropics in my stack. Its a synthetic derivative of Vitamin B1 (thiamine). Two Vitamin B1 molecules joined together helps thiamine more easily cross the blood-brain barrier.

Sulbutiamine is directly involved in the citric acid cycle that provides adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy for your mitochondria. It has been shown to improve glutamatergic, cholinergic, and dopaminergic neurological transmissions. It may also increase the density of D1 dopamine receptors.[xx]

Sulbutiamine also contributes to the production of the enzyme PDH which is essential in making the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

I love this nootropic because it boosts cognition, memory, decision-making, improves athletic performance, reduces chronic fatigue[xxi] and erectile dysfunction,[xxii] and is one of the best antidepressants Ive ever used.[xxiii]

L-Theanine is an amino acid which naturally occurs in green and oolong tea. Many consider it the best nootropic when combined with caffeine for the synergistic effect of lowering blood pressure, rejuvenate and relax, boost thinking ability, improve focus and change your mood.

This amazing amino acid:

Most neurohackers report a calming effect within 30 45 minutes of taking L-Theanine. Cognition gets a boost, and energy levels rise without the jitteriness caused by stimulants like caffeine.

Some report L-Theanine has stopped their anxiety and panic attacks. (Just dont combine it with anti-anxiety meds like Xanax).

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Best Nootropics 2019 (Updated from 2018) Nootropics Expert

Ayn Rand | Biography, Books, & Facts | Britannica.com

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Ayn Rand, original name Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, (born February 2, 1905, St. Petersburg, Russiadied March 6, 1982, New York, New York, U.S.), Russian-born American writer whose commercially successful novels promoting individualism and laissez-faire capitalism were influential among conservatives and libertarians and popular among generations of young people in the United States from the mid-20th century.

Her father, Zinovy Rosenbaum, was a prosperous pharmacist. After being tutored at home, Alissa Rosenbaum, the eldest of three children, was enrolled in a progressive school, where she excelled academically but was socially isolated. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, her fathers shop was confiscated by communist authorities, an event she deeply resented. As a student at Leningrad State University, she studied history and became acquainted with the works of Plato and Aristotle. After graduating in 1924, she enrolled in the State Institute for Cinematography, hoping to become a screenwriter.

The arrival of a letter from cousins in Chicago gave her an opportunity to leave the country on the pretext of gaining expertise that she could apply in the Soviet film industry. Upon her arrival in the United States in 1926, she changed her name to Ayn Rand. (The first name, which rhymes with pine, was inspired by the name of a Finnish writer, whom she never identified, and the surname she described as an abbreviation of Rosenbaum.) After six months in Chicago she moved to Hollywood, where a fortuitous encounter with the producer Cecil B. DeMille led to work as a movie extra and eventually to a job as a screenwriter. In 1929 she married the actor Frank OConnor. Soon hired as a filing clerk in the wardrobe department of RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., she rose to head of the department within a year, meanwhile writing stories, plays, and film scenarios in her spare time. She became an American citizen in 1931.

Rands first successful play, Night of January 16th (1933; originally titled Penthouse Legend), was a paean to individualism in the form of a courtroom drama. In 1934 she and OConnor moved to New York City so that she could oversee the plays production on Broadway. That year she also wrote Ideal, about a self-centred film star on the run from the law, first as a novel and then as a play. However, she shelved both versions. The play was not produced until 1989, and the novel was not published until 2015. Her first published novel, We the Living (1936), was a romantic tragedy in which Soviet totalitarianism epitomized the inherent evils of collectivism, which she understood as the subordination of individual interests to those of the state. A subsequent novella, Anthem (1938), portrayed a future collectivist dystopia in which the concept of the self and even the word I have been lost.

Rand spent more than seven years working on her first major work, The Fountainhead (1943), the story of a handsome architectural genius whose individualism and integrity are evinced in his principled dedication to his own happiness. The hero, Howard Roark, blows up a public housing project he had designed after it is altered against his wishes by government bureaucrats. On trial for his crime, he delivers a lengthy speech in his own defense in which he argues for individualism over collectivism and egoism over altruism (the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self). The jury votes unanimously to acquit him. Despite generally bad reviews, the book attracted readers through word of mouth and eventually became a best seller. Rand sold it to Warner Brothers studio and wrote the screenplay for the film, which was released in 1949.

Having returned to Los Angeles with OConnor to work on the script for The Fountainhead, Rand signed a contract to work six months a year as a screenwriter for the independent producer Hal Wallis. In 1945 she began sketches for her next novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957; film part 1, 2011, part 2, 2012, part 3, 2014), which is generally considered her masterpiece. The book depicts a future United States on the verge of economic collapse after years of collectivist misrule, under which productive and creative citizens (primarily industrialists, scientists, and artists) have been exploited to benefit an undeserving population of moochers and incompetents. The hero, John Galt, a handsome and supremely self-interested physicist and inventor, leads a band of elite producers and creators in a strike designed to deprive the economy of their leadership and thereby force the government to respect their economic freedom. From their redoubt in Colorado, Galts Gulch, they watch as the national economy and the collectivist social system are destroyed. As the elite emerge from the Gulch in the novels final scene, Galt raises his hand over the desolate earth andtrace[s] in space the sign of the dollar.

Atlas Shrugged was notable for making explicit the philosophical assumptions that underlay The Fountainhead, which Rand described as only an overture to the later work. In an appendix to Atlas Shrugged, Rand described her systematic philosophy, which she called objectivism, as in essencethe concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Although the book was attacked by critics from across the political spectrum for its perceived immorality and misanthropy and its overt hostility to religion (Rand was an atheist), it was an instant best seller. It was especially well received by business leaders, many of whom were impressed by its moral justification of capitalism and delighted to think of their occupations as noble and virtuous. Like The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged also appealed widely to young people through its extreme romanticism, its accessible and comprehensive philosophy, its rejection of traditional authority and convention, and its implicit invitation to the reader to join the ranks of the elite by modeling himself on the storys hero.

In 1950 Rand agreed to meet a young admirer, Nathan Blumenthal, on the basis of his several articulate fan letters. The two established an immediate rapport, and Blumenthal and his girlfriend, Barbara Weidman, became Rands friends as well as her intellectual followers. In 1951 the couple moved to New York, and Rand and OConnor soon followed. There the Brandens, as Nathan and Barbara called themselves after their marriage in 1953, introduced Rand to their friends and relatives, some of whom later attended regular meetings at Rands apartment for discussion and to read newly written chapters of Atlas Shrugged. The group, which called itself the Class of 43 (a reference to the publication date of The Fountainhead) or (ironically) the Collective, included Alan Greenspan, an economics consultant who would later head the presidents Council of Economic Advisers (197477) and serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve (19872006). Among members of the Collective Nathan Branden was unquestionably Rands favourite. She openly acknowledged him as her intellectual heir and formally designated him as such in the afterword of Atlas Shrugged, which she co-dedicated to him and to OConnor.

In the late 1950s, with Rands permission, Branden established a business designed to teach the basic principles of objectivism to sympathetic readers of Rands novels. The Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), as it was later called, offered courses in objectivism in New York and distributed tape-recorded lectures by Branden to objectivist centers in various other cities. Despite its outward appearance as an educational institution, NBI did not permit its students to think critically about objectivism or to develop objectivist ideas in novel ways. Through the success of NBI, Branden would eventually become the public guardian of objectivist orthodoxy against innovation or unauthorized borrowing by objectivist sympathizers, especially among the growing student right. In 1962 Branden and Rand launched the monthly Objectivist Newsletter (renamed The Objectivist in 1966). Meanwhile, Rands fame grew apace with the brisk sales of her novels. She was invited to speak at numerous colleges and universities and was interviewed on television talk shows and on the news program 60 Minutes. Growing into her role as a public intellectual, she published her first work of nonfiction, For the New Intellectual, largely a collection of philosophical passages from her fiction, in 1961. The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) were drawn mostly from lectures and newsletter articles.

In 1968 Rand learned that Branden, with whom she had been having an intermittent affair (with their spouses knowledge) since 1954, was involved in a romantic relationship with a younger woman. Accusing him of betraying objectivist principles, she stripped him of his partnership in The Objectivist and demanded that he surrender control of NBI, which was soon dissolved. The closing of the institute freed various self-described objectivists to publicly develop their own interpretations of Rands philosophyall of which, however, she rejected as perversions or plagiarism of her ideas. She was especially incensed at the use of objectivist vocabulary by young libertarians, whom she accused of disregarding morality and flirting with anarchism. Meanwhile, Brandens status as Rands favourite disciple was assumed by Leonard Peikoff, an original member of the Collective whom she would eventually designate as her intellectual and legal heir.

In 1971 Rand ceased publication of The Objectivist and replaced it with the fortnightly Ayn Rand Letter, which appeared with increasing irregularity until 1976. In 1974 she underwent surgery for lung cancer. Although she recovered, she never again had the energy to pursue large-scale writing projects. In 1979 she published Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, a collection of philosophical articles originally written in 1967. She was working on an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged for a television miniserieseventually unrealizedwhen she died.

Rand was continually frustrated by her failure to gain acceptance among academic philosophers, most of whom dismissed (or were simply unaware of) her work. This neglect, which she attributed to collectivist bias and incompetence, was partly due to the fictional form in which the best-known statements of her philosophy appeared, which necessarily rendered them imprecise by professional standards. Other factors were her idiosyncratic interpretation of the history of Western philosophy, her tendency to rely, even in her nonfiction works, on broad ad hominem attacks, and her general unwillingness to tolerate disagreement with her views among those with whom she associated.

In 1986 Barbara Branden published a memoir, The Passion of Ayn Rand, that disclosed Rands affair with Nathan and revealed unflattering details of her relations with members of the Collective and others. Despite the resulting damage to her reputation, her novels continued to enjoy large sales, and she retained a loyal following among conservatives and libertarians, including some high-ranking members of the Ronald Reagan administration (the most notable being Greenspan). In the 1990s and 2000s her works undoubtedly contributed to the increased popularity of libertarianism in the United States, and from 2009 she was an iconic figure in the antigovernment Tea Party movement. It is for these specifically political influences, rather than for her contributions to literature or philosophy, that she is likely to be remembered by future generations.

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Ayn Rand | Biography, Books, & Facts | Britannica.com

Inspirational Ayn Rand quotes On Life and Capitalism

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Looking for inspirational Ayn Rand quotes? Enjoy!

1.) A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. Ayn Rand

2.) Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. Ayn Rand

3.) Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. Ayn Rand

4.) Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). Ayn Rand

5.) The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there arent enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Ayn Rand

6.) The question isnt who is going to let me; its who is going to stop me. Ayn Rand

7.) Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. its yours. Ayn Rand

8.) To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. Thats what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul would you understand why thats much harder?If its worth doing, its worth overdoing. Ayn Rand

9.) Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moments torture. Ayn Rand

10.) I hope you will understand my hesitation in writing to one whom I admire as the greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want to dedicate my whole life. Ayn Rand

11.) Free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. Ayn Rand

12.) What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem. Ayn Rand

13.) Guilt is a rope that wears thin. Ayn Rand

14.) Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness. Ayn Rand

15.) Thanksgiving is a typically American holidayThe lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Ayn Rand

16.) The upper classes are a nations past; the middle class is its future. Ayn Rand

17.) I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. Ayn Rand

18.) I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. Ayn Rand

19.) Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing. Ayn Rand

20.) The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. Ayn Rand

21.) You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Ayn Rand

22.) Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness. Ayn Rand

23.) The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it. Ayn Rand

24.) I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. Ayn Rand

25.) Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Ayn Rand

26.) When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit. When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit. Ayn Rand

27.) The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction [that] you give it. Ayn Rand

28.) The most depraved type of human being . . . (is) the man without a purpose. Ayn Rand

29.) Theres nothing of any importance except how well you do your work. Ayn Rand

30.) Man is an end in himself. Romantic lovethe profound, exalted, lifelong passion that unites his mind and body in the sexual actis the living testimony to that principle. Ayn Rand

31.) To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of lovebecause he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. Ayn Rand

32.) To say I love you one must know first how to say the I. Ayn Rand

33.) Dont help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Dont work for my happiness, my brothers show me yours show me that it is possible show me your achievement and the knowledge will give me the courage for mine. Ayn Rand

34.) Love is the expression of ones values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another. Ayn Rand

35.) There is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desiresif they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from the view of the practical. There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of anotherif men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned can not be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isnt. Ayn Rand

36.) The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. Ayn Rand

37.) The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. Ayn Rand

38.) Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life Ayn Rand

39.) You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. Ayn Rand

40.) Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven, but not those who lack the courage of their own greatness. Ayn Rand

41.) You were not born to be a second-hander. Ayn Rand

42.) I would step in the way of a bullet if it were aimed at my husband. It is not self-sacrifice to die protecting that which you value: If the value is great enough, you do not care to exist without it. Ayn Rand

43.) I dont make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. Im an utter egotist. Ayn Rand

44.) No ones happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy Ayn Rand

45.) Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. Ayn Rand

46.) The ladder of success is the best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity Ayn Rand

47.) A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving. Ayn Rand

48.) Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to mens stupidity, but your talent to their reason. Ayn Rand

49.) Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing. Ayn Rand

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Inspirational Ayn Rand quotes On Life and Capitalism

Unit 731 – Wikipedia

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Unit 731 (Japanese: 731, Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai) was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (19371945) of World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Imperial Japan. Unit 731 was based at the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China).

It was officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (, Kantgun Beki Kysuibu Honbu). Originally set up under the Kempeitai military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit 731 was taken over and commanded until the end of the war by General Shir Ishii, a combat medic officer in the Kwantung Army. The facility itself was built between 1934 and 1939 and officially adopted the name "Unit 731" in 1941.

At least 3,000 men, women, and children[1][2]from which at least 600 every year were provided by the Kempeitai[3] were subjected as "logs" to experimentation conducted by Unit 731 at the camp based in Pingfang alone, which does not include victims from other medical experimentation sites, such as Unit 100.[4]

Unit 731 participants of Japan attest that most of the victims they experimented on were Chinese while a lesser percentage were Soviet, Mongolian, Korean, and other Allied POWs. The unit received generous support from the Japanese government up to the end of the war in 1945.

Instead of being tried for war crimes after the war, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation.[5] Other researchers that the Soviet forces managed to arrest first were tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949. The Americans did not try the researchers so that the information and experience gained in bio-weapons could be co-opted into the U.S. biological warfare program, much as they had done with German researchers in Operation Paperclip.[6] On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii, can probably be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence".[5] Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as communist propaganda.[7]

In 1932, Surgeon General Shir Ishii ( Ishii Shir), chief medical officer of the Japanese Army and protg of Army Minister Sadao Araki was placed in a command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory (AEPRL). Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tg Unit", for various chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. Ishii had proposed the creation of a Japanese biological and chemical research unit in 1930, after a two-year study trip abroad, on the grounds that Western powers were developing their own programs. One of Ishii's main supporters inside the army was Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who later became Japan's Health Minister from 1941 to 1945. Koizumi had joined a secret poison gas research committee in 1915, during World War I, when he and other Imperial Japanese Army officers became impressed by the successful German use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres, where the Allies suffered 5,000 deaths and 15,000 wounded as a result of the chemical attack.[8][9]

Unit Tg was implemented in the Zhongma Fortress, a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a village 100km (62mi) south of Harbin on the South Manchuria Railway. A jailbreak in autumn 1934 and later explosion (believed to be an attack) in 1935 led Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. He received the authorization to move to Pingfang, approximately 24km (15mi) south of Harbin, to set up a new and much larger facility.[10]

In 1936, Emperor Hirohito authorized by decree the expansion of this unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department.[11] It was divided at the same time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit" with a base in Hsinking. From August 1940, the units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army ()"[12] or "Unit 731" (731) for short. In addition to the establishment of Unit 731, the decree also called for the establishment of an additional biological warfare development unit called the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 100) and a chemical warfare development unit called the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department. (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 516) After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, sister chemical and biological warfare units were founded in major Chinese cities, and were referred to as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Units. Detachments included Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou and later, Unit 9420 in Singapore. The compilation of all these units comprised Ishiis network, and at its height in 1939, was composed of more than 10,000 personnel.[13]

Medical doctors and professors from Japan were attracted to join Unit 731 by the rare opportunity to conduct human experimentation and strong financial support from the Army.[14]

A special project code-named Maruta used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes referred to euphemistically as "logs" (, maruta), used in such contexts as "How many logs fell?". This term originated as a joke on the part of the staff because the official cover story for the facility given to the local authorities was that it was a lumber mill. However, in an account by a man who worked as a junior uniformed civilian employee of the Imperial Japanese Army in Unit 731, the project was internally called "Holzklotz", which is a German word for log.[15] In a further parallel, the corpses of "sacrificed" subjects were disposed of by incineration.[16] Researchers in Unit 731 also published some of their results in peer-reviewed journals, writing as though the research had been conducted on non-human primates called "Manchurian monkeys" or "long-tailed monkeys".[17]

The test subjects were selected to give a wide cross-section of the population and included common criminals, captured bandits and anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners and also people rounded up by the Kempeitai military police for alleged "suspicious activities". They included infants, the elderly, and pregnant women. The members of the unit, approximately three hundred researchers, included doctors and bacteriologists; most were Japanese, although some were Chinese and Korean collaborators.[18] Many had been desensitized to performing unpleasant experiments from experience in animal research.[19]

Thousands of men, women, children, and infants interned at prisoner of war camps were subjected to vivisection, often without anesthesia and usually ending with the death of the victim.[20][21] Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Researchers performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was thought that the death of the subject would affect the results.[22]

Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body. Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines. Parts of organs, such as the brain, lungs, and liver, were removed from some prisoners.[21] Imperial Japanese Army surgeon Ken Yuasa suggests that the practice of vivisection on human subjects (mostly Chinese communists or common criminals) was widespread even outside Unit 731,[23] estimating that at least 1,000 Japanese personnel were involved in the practice in mainland China.[24]

Prisoners were injected with diseases, disguised as vaccinations,[25] to study their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhoea, then studied. Prisoners were also repeatedly subject to rape by guards.[26]

Plague fleas, infected clothing and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed at least 400,000 Chinese civilians.[27] Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.[28]

Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644 and Unit 100 among others) were involved in research, development and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infected fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, including coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed tens of thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.[29][30][31]

It is possible that Unit 731's methods and objectives were also followed in Indonesia, in a case of a failed experiment designed to validate a synthesized tetanus toxoid vaccine.[32]

Physiologist Yoshimura Hisato conducted experiments by taking captives outside, dipping various appendages into water, and allowing the limb to freeze. Once frozen, which testimony from a Japanese officer said "was determined after the 'frozen arms, when struck with a short stick, emitted a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck'",[33] ice was chipped away and the area doused in water. The effects of different water temperatures were tested by bludgeoning the victim to determine if any areas were still frozen.

Doctors orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and non-infected prisoners to transmit the disease, as the testimony of a prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of syphilis between patients shows:

"Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot."[34]

After victims were infected, they were vivisected at different stages of infection, so that internal and external organs could be observed as the disease progressed. Testimony from multiple guards blames the female victims as being hosts of the diseases, even as they were forcibly infected. Genitals of female prisoners that were infected with syphilis were called "jam filled buns" by guards.[35]

Some children grew up inside the walls of Unit 731, infected with syphilis. A Youth Corps member deployed to train at Unit 731 recalled viewing a batch of subjects that would undergo syphilis testing: "one was a Chinese woman holding an infant, one was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the last was a White Russian woman with a boy of about six or seven."[35] The children of these women were tested in ways similar to their parents, with specific emphasis on determining how longer infection periods affected the effectiveness of treatments.

Female prisoners were forced to become pregnant for use in experiments. The hypothetical possibility of vertical transmission (from mother to child) of diseases, particularly syphilis, was the stated reason for the torture. Fetal survival and damage to mother's reproductive organs were objects of interest. Though "a large number of babies were born in captivity", there have been no accounts of any survivors of Unit 731, children included. It is suspected that the children of female prisoners were killed after birth or aborted.[35]

While male prisoners were often used in single studies, so that the results of the experimentation on them would not be clouded by other variables, women were sometimes used in bacteriological or physiological experiments, sex experiments, and as the victims of sex crimes. The testimony of a unit member that served as guard graphically demonstrated this reality:

"One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work."[35]

Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions. Flamethrowers were tested on humans. Humans were also tied to stakes and used as targets to test pathogen-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, and explosive bombs.[36][37]

In other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; placed into high-pressure chambers until death; experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood; exposed to lethal doses of x-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with sea water; and burned or buried alive.[38]

Some tests had no medical purpose at all with instead intent to administer excruciating pain, such as injecting horse urine into prisoners' kidneys.[27]

Japanese researchers performed tests on prisoners with bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism, and other diseases.[39] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread bubonic plague.[40] Some of these bombs were designed with porcelain shells, an idea proposed by Ishii in 1938.

These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks, infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells, and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrier fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and other deadly pathogens. During biological bomb experiments, researchers dressed in protective suits would examine the dying victims. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by airplane into areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces. In addition, poisoned food and candies were given to unsuspecting victims, and the results examined.[citation needed]

In 2002, Changde, China, site of the plague flea bombing, held an "International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare" which estimated that the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments was around 580,000.[30] The American historian Sheldon H. Harris claims that 200,000 died.[31] In addition to Chinese casualties, 1,700 Japanese in Chekiang were killed by their own biological weapons while attempting to unleash the biological agent, indicating serious issues with distribution.[1]

During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against San Diego, California. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.[41][42][43][44]

According to A.S. Wells, the majority of victims were mostly Chinese (including accused "bandits" and "Communists"), Korean, and Soviet, although they may also have included European, American, Indian, and Australian prisoners of war.[45]

Unit 731 participants of Japan attest that most of the victims they experimented on were Chinese[23] while a small percentage were Soviet, Mongolian, Korean, and other Allied POWs.[46] Almost 70% of the victims who died in the Pingfang camp were Chinese, including both civilian and military.[47] Close to 30% of the victims were Soviet.[48] Some others were Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders, at the time colonies of the Empire of Japan, and a small number of Allied prisoners of war.[49]

Robert Peaty (19031989), a British Major in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, was the senior ranking allied officer. During this time, he kept a secret diary. A copy of his entire diary exists in the NARA archives.[50] An extract of the diary is available at the UK National Archives at Kew.[51] He was interviewed by the Imperial War Museum in 1981, and the audio recording tape reels are in the IWM's archives.[52]

In April 2018, the National Archives of Japan for the first time disclosed a nearly complete list of 3607 people who worked for Unit 731 to Dr. Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science, who says that he intends to publish the list online.[53]

Unit 731 was divided into eight divisions:

The Unit 731 complex covered six square kilometres (2.3 square miles) and consisted of more than 150 buildings. The design of the facilities made them hard to destroy by bombing. The complex contained various factories. It had around 4,500 containers to be used to raise fleas, six cauldrons to produce various chemicals, and around 1,800 containers to produce biological agents. Approximately 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of bubonic plague bacteria could be produced in a few days.

Some of Unit 731's satellite facilities are in use by various Chinese industrial concerns. A portion has been preserved and is open to visitors as a War Crimes Museum.

A medical school and research facility belonging to Unit 731 operated in the Shinjuku District of Tokyo during World War II. In 2006, Toyo Ishiia nurse who worked at the school during the warrevealed that she had helped bury bodies and pieces of bodies on the school's grounds shortly after Japan's surrender in 1945. In response, in February 2011 the Ministry of Health began to excavate the site.[55]

China requested DNA samples from any human remains discovered at the site. The Japanese governmentwhich has never officially acknowledged the atrocities committed by Unit 731rejected the request.[56]

The related Unit 8604 was operated by the Japanese Southern China Area Army and stationed at Guangzhou (Canton). This installation conducted human experimentation in food and water deprivation as well as water-borne typhus. According to postwar testimony, this facility served as the main rat breeding farm for the medical units to provide them with bubonic plague vectors for experiments.[57]

Unit 731 was part of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department which dealt with contagious disease and water supply generally.

Operations and experiments continued until the end of the war. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May 1944, but his attempts were repeatedly snubbed.

With the coming of the Red Army in August 1945, the unit had to abandon their work in haste. The members and their families fled to Japan.

Ishii ordered every member of the group "to take the secret to the grave", threatening to find them if they failed, and prohibiting any of them from going into public work back in Japan. Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in the event that the remaining personnel were captured.

Skeleton crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew up the compound in the final days of the war to destroy evidence of their activities, but most were so well constructed that they survived somewhat intact.

Among the individuals in Japan after its 1945 surrender was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, who arrived in Yokohama via the American ship Sturgess in September 1945. Sanders was a highly regarded microbiologist and a member of America's military center for biological weapons. Sanders' duty was to investigate Japanese biological warfare activity. At the time of his arrival in Japan he had no knowledge of what Unit 731 was.[35] Until Sanders finally threatened the Japanese with bringing the Soviets into the picture, little information about biological warfare was being shared with the Americans. The Japanese wanted to avoid prosecution under the Soviet legal system, so the next morning after he made his threat, Sanders received a manuscript describing Japan's involvement in biological warfare.[58] Sanders took this information to General Douglas MacArthur, who was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers responsible for rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupations. MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants:[59] he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation.[5] American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail.[60] The U.S. believed that the research data was valuable, and did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons.[61]

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August 1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. The Japanese defense counsel argued that the claim was vague and uncorroborated and it was dismissed by the tribunal president, Sir William Webb, for lack of evidence. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit 731's activities. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been accidental.

Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo Trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted twelve top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731 and its affiliated biological-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing, and Unit 100 in Changchun, in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. Included among those prosecuted for war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otoz Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria.

The trial of those captured Japanese perpetrators was held in Khabarovsk in December 1949. A lengthy partial transcript of the trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by a Moscow foreign languages press, including an English language edition.[62] The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial was Lev Smirnov, who had been one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials. The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from two to 25 years in a Siberian labor camp. The U.S. refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist propaganda.[63] The sentences doled out to the Japanese perpetrators were unusually lenient for Soviet standards, and all but one of the defendants returned to Japan by the 1950s (with the remaining prisoner committing suicide inside his cell). In addition to the accusations of propaganda, the US also asserted that the trials were to only serve as a distraction from the Soviet treatment of several hundred thousand Japanese prisoners of war; meanwhile, the USSR asserted that the US had given the Japanese diplomatic leniency in exchange for information regarding their human experimentation. The accusations of both the US and the USSR were true, and it is believed that they had also given information to the Soviets regarding their biological experimentation for judicial leniency.[64] This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit 731 in Manchuria.[65]

As above, under the American occupation the members of Unit 731 and other experimental units were allowed to go free. One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to do experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956 while working for Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and mental health patients with typhus.[66]

Shiro Ishii, as the chief of the unit, was granted war crime immunity from the US occupation authorities, because of his provision of human experimentation research materials to the US. From 1948 to 1958, less than 5% of the documents were transferred onto microfilm and stored in the National Archives of the United States, before being shipped back to Japan.[67]

Japanese discussions of Unit 731's activity began in the 1950s, after the end of the American occupation of Japan. In 1952, human experiments carried out in Nagoya City Pediatric Hospital, which resulted in one death, were publicly tied to former members of Unit 731.[68] Later in that decade, journalists suspected that the murders attributed by the government to Sadamichi Hirasawa were actually carried out by members of Unit 731. In 1958, Japanese author Shsaku End published the book The Sea and Poison about human experimentation, which is thought to have been based on a real incident.

The author Seiichi Morimura published The Devil's Gluttony () in 1981, followed by The Devil's Gluttony: A Sequel in 1983. These books purported to reveal the "true" operations of Unit 731, but actually confused them with that of Unit 100, and falsely used unrelated photos attributing them to Unit 731, which raised questions about their accuracy.[69][70]

Also in 1981 appeared the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China, by Ken Yuasa. Since then many more in-depth testimonies have appeared in Japanese. The 2001 documentary Japanese Devils was composed largely of interviews with 14 members of Unit 731 who had been taken as prisoners by China and later released.[71]

Since the end of the Allied occupation, the Japanese government has repeatedly apologized for its pre-war behavior in general, but specific apologies and indemnities are determined on the basis of bilateral determination that crimes occurred, which requires a high standard of evidence. Unit 731 presents a special problem, since unlike Nazi human experimentation which the U.S. publicly condemned, the activities of Unit 731 are known to the general public only from the testimonies of willing former unit members, and testimony cannot be employed to determine indemnity in this way.

Japanese history textbooks usually contain references to Unit 731, but do not go into detail about allegations, in accordance with this principle.[72][73] Sabur Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description, based on officers' testimony. The Ministry for Education attempted to remove this passage from his textbook before it was taught in public schools, on the basis that the testimony was insufficient. The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in 1997 that the testimony was indeed sufficient and that requiring it to be removed was an illegal violation of freedom of speech.[74]

In 1997, the international lawyer Knen Tsuchiya filed a class action suit against the Japanese government, demanding reparations for the actions of Unit 731, using evidence filed by Professor Makoto Ueda of Rikkyo University. All Japanese court levels found that the suit was baseless. No findings of fact were made about the existence of human experimentation, but the decision of the court was that reparations are determined by international treaties and not by national court cases.[citation needed]

In August 2002, the Tokyo district court ruled for the first time that Japan had engaged in biological warfare. Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that the Unit 731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases including plague and typhoid in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo and Changde. However, he rejected the victims' claims for compensation on the grounds that they had already been settled by international peace treaties.[75]

In October 2003, a member of the House of Representatives of Japan filed an inquiry. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded that the Japanese government did not then possess any records related to Unit 731, but the government recognized the gravity of the matter and would publicize any records that were located in the future.[76] In April 2018, the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607 members of Unit 731, in response to a request by Professor Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science.[77][78]

After WWII, the Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors that are banned from entering the U.S. While they have added over 60,000 names to the watchlist, they have only been able to identify under 100 Japanese participants. In a 1998 correspondence letter between the DOJ and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Eli Rosenbaum, director of OSI, stated that this was due to two factors. (1) While most documents captured by the U.S. in Europe were microfilmed before being returned to their respective governments, the Department of Defense decided to not microfilm its vast collection of documents before returning them back to the Japanese government. (2) The Japanese government has also failed to grant the OSI meaningful access to these and related records after the war, while European countries, on the other hand, have been largely cooperative.[79] The cumulative effect of which is that information pertaining to identifying these individuals is, in effect, impossible to recover.

There have been several films about the atrocities of Unit 731.

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Unit 731 - Wikipedia