The Astral Plane

The astral plane, also called the astral realm or the astral world, is a plane of existence postulated by classical, medieval, oriental, esoteric, and new age philosophies and mystery religions.[1] It is the world of the celestial spheres, crossed by the soul in its astral body on the way to being born and after death, and is generally believed to be populated by angels, spirits or other immaterial beings.[2] In the late 19th and early 20th century the term was popularised by Theosophy and neo-Rosicrucianism.

Another view holds that the astral plane or world, rather than being some kind of boundary area crossed by the soul, is the entirety of spirit existence or spirit worlds to which those who die on Earth go, and where they live out their non-physical lives. It is understood that all consciousness resides in the astral plane.[3] Some writers conflate this realm with heaven or paradise or union with God itself, and others do not. Paramahansa Yogananda wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), “The astral universe … is hundreds of times larger than the material universe … [with] many astral planets, teeming with astral beings.”

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My sense is the term astral plane has fallen a bit out of favor. In some cases it is replaced by ethereal plane. In Buddhism, it is traditionally referred to as ultimate reality or vaguely as nirvana, or what comes after nirvana. More recently among scientists and philosophers, we are seeing the concept of a conscious universe or a thinking universe, a universe in which consciousness is a primary force, feature or dimension. However we refer to it, we need a term that evokes dimensions or planes of awareness beyond earthly or mundane awareness or ‘relative reality’, as it is put in Buddhism.

The concept of an astral plane dates back to Plato if not before. The Buddha was referring to something like that without using any term when he spoke about nirvana. The Buddha was a Scythian who argued against the strong Scythian belief in an absolute distinction between right and wrong and a single, great God (Ahura Mazda) who created the world and could be known only through doing good.

It’s a good development that scientists and philosophers today are increasingly seeing what the Buddha and many others have seen throughout the ages. I believe deep meditative states and a moral life afford us frequent opportunities to commune with or glimpse dimensions or realms beyond our normal default cultural behavioral realms.

Buddhism is a profoundly ethical teaching but it also rejects absolutes. We humans are characterized by emptiness, impermanence, and the suffering wrought by clinging to any concept, belief or idea, and yet are capable of freeing ourselves from ‘relative reality’ through ethical practice and experiential samadhi states.

The Buddha remained silent on matters related to anything like the astral plane because he knew that focusing on ethereal aims (especially in his day?) tends to reify them, which then leads to ossification, doctrine, worship without reason. I wonder if in our day, the Buddha would reason differently as many reasonable thinkers now accept that consciousness may be inexplicable by rank materialism or particle physics or biology based on those; and thus may/must be a primary aspect of all that we know of.

My current understanding of Buddhism and ancient history has been recently influenced by Christopher Beckwith’s The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China, which I highly recommend to Buddhists and everyone else. ABN

Latvia’s defense minister wants to conscript women by 2028

Latvia should make conscription mandatory for women, the Baltic country’s defense minister said Tuesday.

“Moving toward comprehensive national defense, I support the mandatory conscription of women into the national defense service. 2028 could be the optimal time to start it,” Andris Sprūds posted on X, reiterating his comments in an interview with local media earlier Tuesday.

Latvia, which shares a border with Russia, reintroduced conscription only last year, after abolishing it in 2006. The country, which has a population of less than 2 million, selects conscripts at random and aims to have 4,000 soldiers by 2028.

The Baltic nation was one of the last countries near Russia to bring back conscription, as Sweden and Lithuania decided to do so shortly after Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

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The Baltics should have declared neutrality after achieving independence and worked to be a bridge between Europe and Russia. Foreign policies based on hatred and fear from their Soviet pasts have been a mistake for all three Baltic mini-states. Money from the EU has been cool but teach a man a skill and he will be happier his whole life than accepting handouts. As a bridge, the Baltics would have benefitted economically but more importantly, they would have benefitted intellectually and spiritually. The bold move of putting their Soviet years behind them and creating the future they wanted to live in would have stimulated them to abandon the habit of being someone else’s bitch. Latvia wants to raise a military of 4,000, surely yet another one of the hidden costs of those ‘free’ EU handouts. It’s not too late to change course. I hope at least one of the Baltics or even Finland will break with the war-mongers and train 4,000 diplomats, economists, and statesmen instead of soldiers. Ukraine has lost 500,000 of its military, dead, for zero benefit except to the oligarchs who now own all of their destroyed nation. ABN

Telegram founder Pavel Durov transferred from police custody to court after arrest in France

Paris CNN — Telegram founder Pavel Durov was released from police custody in France on Wednesday and transferred to court for questioning ahead of a possible indictment, prosecutors told CNN, days after his dramatic arrest at a Paris airport.

The Russian-born billionaire exited the anti-fraud office outside Paris in what appeared to be a police vehicle on Wednesday afternoon, according to a CNN producer there.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said he would now face “initial questioning and possible indictment” at a court in the French capital.

Durov, 39, was detained at Paris’s Bourget Airport on Saturday on a warrant related to Telegram’s lack of moderation. He was being investigated on charges relating to a host of crimes, including allegations that his platform was complicit in aiding fraudsters, drug traffickers and people spreading child pornography.

“You cannot make it safe against criminals and open for governments,” Durov told CNN in 2016. “It’s either secure or not secure.”

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The issue comes down to the highlighted quote from Durov above. At first glance, it may seem reasonable for government, even an ideally good government, to control how criminals communicate electronically. Upon more thought, one wonders why should even an ideally good government presuppose this right of search, seizure, judgement and censorship against electronic communication? Isn’t it enough for even an ideally good government to pursue criminals as they have always been charged to do? That is, without summary search, seizure, judgement and censorship? Compounding factors are no one in their right mind trusts any real-world government with those over-the-top powers, and yet we all know they do it anyway, despite the law. So, should they alone have privacy in their communications, which they abuse against all of us, or should all of us have privacy in our communications which only some of us will abuse? ABN

‘The End of Days’ — Abrahamic fanaticism in Israel and USA

….believing-without-thinking is well inside the Netanyahu regime by virtue of Bibi’s dependence on extremist Zionists such as Ben–Givr, Smotrich, and Strook for his political survival. There are implications to think about here. And we should then take care to connect some dots: Christian Zionists in America are less influential on the Israel question than these shockingly deluded extremists, but not by much, and America’s Christian Zionists are just as extreme in their version of “the end of days.”

We cannot look upon Israel’s Zionists with any kind of detachment or critique from some conjured place of elevated superiority. Americans have long told themselves similarly grand, delusional stories to justify their history of injustices and cruelties: Bush II’s Gog and Magog bit is merely an over-the-top telling, a variant on the theme. U.S. policy, certainly since the 11 September disasters, has been based ever less on rational calculation—to say nothing of concern for the global commonweal—than on what I think of as desperately held beliefs in the face of twenty-first century realities.

It is the same with the Israelis as the killing proceeds daily in Gaza and, increasingly, in the West Bank. Israeli policy—and this is true of American policy, too, at bottom—is conceived and executed by people who do not act rationally. They answer to their gods, whether this means Yahweh or divine Providence—“the Great Œconomist,” as some of the eighteen-century historians used to put it.

There are grave implications here. Chief among them, there is no talking to these people, for they live and act behind the thick, protective wall of messianic belief. They may pretend to listen to others, but they do not hear. Nothing others may say can change them. This is a highly consequential circumstance, given the power people who act irrationally hold.

Between the U.S. and Israel, our world is defined by those who view it in radically simplistic binaries. To them there is no place for complexity in our increasingly complex global environment. One could argue this is a good definition of incompetence. This is our dreadful predicament—dreadful because the way forward, beyond these people, cannot be but long and arduous. And here we come to a final conclusion of sorts.

Only failure holds any promise of forcing either Israel or the U.S. to change course. I unshyly applaud all the very costly foreign policy failures of both for this reason, although I must quickly add that failure very often disappoints because the policy cliques in Washington and Tel Aviv seem committed to going from one failure to the next without changing anything.

If anything, Zionist Israel appears yet more dedicated than the U.S. to its course of righteous murder and destruction in the name of its apocalyptic destiny. This seems to me the grimmest reality of our time. If the assault Israel prosecutes in Gaza and the West Bank—and now possibly in Lebanon and Iran—is an end-days battle against Gog and Magog, how can the righteous desist, or make peace, or negotiate an enduring settlement? How can it end short of the Israelis’ destruction?

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This essay is worth reading and its points are well-taken but, to my eye, it is merely a slice of the big picture. Yes, the Abrahamic fanaticism of US and Israeli policy is real on its own but it is also a tool used by cabal globalists who stand above both populations and direct them both openly and subtly. Other tools used by cabal are Ukraine War, DEI, open borders, election fraud, attempted assassination of Trump, arrest of Durov, etc. Cabal is fueled by the ‘religious’ fanaticism of KOBK as much or more than that of Abraham. ABN

United Arab Emirates calls on France to provide ‘all consular services for Durov’

Telegram in a statement defended its operations, saying it abides by European Union laws and its content moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving”.

Durov, the company added, had “nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe”.

French media reports that Durov was detained on an arrest warrant alleging his messaging platform had been used for money laundering, drug trafficking and other offences.

A French investigative judge extended Durov’s detention order on Sunday night, French media reported, but he had not been charged and few details were available on the investigation.

A statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office said Durov’s police custody order was extended on Monday evening for up to 48 hours.

Under French law, Durov can remain in custody for questioning for up to four days. After that, judges must decide to either charge or release him.

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Paris court lists charges against Telegram founder Pavel Durov

The publicity circus accompanying the arrest explains why the court decided to share a press release listing the charges against Durov. According to this document, the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a preliminary investigation against Durov on July 8 related to efforts to combat cybercrime.

The Centre for the Fight against Cybercrime (C3N) and the Anti-Fraud National Office (ONAF) have been involved in the investigation. In all, 12 charges have been filed against “a person unnamed” — a classic French judicial term to imply whoever is in charge of Telegram right now.

The charges can be broken down into four categories:

  • Firstly, Telegram’s founder has been charged with being complicit in storing and distributing CSAM content, facilitating drug trafficking and facilitating organized fraud and other illegal transactions.
  • Second, the court claims that Telegram refuses to cooperate with law enforcement when they file a formal request for information or documents.
  • Third, Durov faces several charges related to Telegram’s cryptographic features as they haven’t been formally declared or certified by French authorities. These seem to be minor offenses according to professor of law Florence G’sell.
  • Fourth, Durov is accused of taking part in a “criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment”, as well as money laundering.

The charges are both broad and technical at the same time. It’s also hard to know exactly their basis without access to the full investigation.

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While France is holding Durov, the people left at Telegram will probably cave to threats that they will be similarly charged if they don’t allow police access to Telegram’s systems and, possibly, testify against Durov. ABN

FLASHBACK: Was Mearsheimer right or was he falling for an even deeper lie?

Sounds reasonable from his angle, but Mearsheimer either pretends he doesn’t know or really doesn’t know that destroying Ukraine was always the plan. Destroying Russia along with or after destroying Ukraine is also the plan. Destroying Europe is also the plan. The people doing this are not irrational. They are aiming for global domination. You have to think like them to understand what they are doing and why. All policies they control are designed to weaken and destroy the entire West so that they can control all of it. It’s a perfectly reasonable strategy and it has worked extremely well for them. Included in this strategy has been multigenerational clandestine infiltration of all Western institutions accompanied by disabling promising young Westerners (especially boys and young men) so there can be no one left to fight back. Notice how virtually all Ukrainian men of military age have been slaughtered, many of them forced to the front, many of them underage teenagers. Zelensky is not Ukrainian but rather a member of the cabal that has destroyed Ukraine. They are happy to kill as many Ukrainians as they can, already 700,000 and counting. Europe and Russia are next. I like Mearsheimer, but like so many other alternate voices to mainstream cabal, he assumes they think like him, or pretends they do. Maybe he believes pure reason (based on his classical assumptions about right and wrong) will convince an incorrigible adversary to change its ways. Mearsheimer is a ‘realist’ who analyzes ‘great powers’ based on their perceived needs. Why has he not realized that the ‘great power’ controlling the West is hidden, secreted behind veils of misdirection? They are behaving exactly as his political philosophy dictates, but based on different assumptions and different goals. ABN

Active ingredient in cannabis protects aging brain cells

Salk researchers find cannabinol preserves mitochondrial function and prevents oxidative damage to cells

LA JOLLA—Decades of research on medical cannabis has focused on the compounds THC and CBD in clinical applications. But less is known about the therapeutic properties of cannabinol (CBN). Now, a new study by Salk scientists shows how CBN can protect nerve cells from oxidative damage, a major pathway to cell death. The findings, published online January 6, 2022, in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine, suggest CBN has the potential for treating age-related neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s.

“We’ve found that cannabinol protects neurons from oxidative stress and cell death, two of the major contributors to Alzheimer’s,” says senior author Pamela Maher, a research professor and head of Salk’s Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory. “This discovery could one day lead to the development of new therapeutics for treating this disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, like Parkinson’s disease.”

Healthy mitochondria (green); mitochondria showing the effects of oxidative stress (blue); and oxidative stress with CBN (red). Insets show higher magnification of the structure of the mitochondria

Healthy mitochondria (green); mitochondria showing the effects of oxidative stress (blue); and oxidative stress with CBN (red). Insets show higher magnification of the structure of the mitochondria.
Click here for a high-resolution image.
Credit: Salk Institute

Derived from the cannabis plant, CBN is molecularly similar to THC, but is not psychoactive. It’s also less heavily regulated by the FDA. Previous research by Maher’s lab found that CBN had neuroprotective properties, but it wasn’t clear how it worked. Now, this new study explains the mechanism through which CBN protects brain cells from damage and death.

Maher’s team looked at the process of oxytosis, also called ferroptosis, which is thought to occur in the aging brain. Growing evidence suggests that oxytosis may be a cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Oxytosis can be triggered by the gradual loss of an antioxidant called glutathione, causing neural cell damage and death via lipid oxidation. In the study, the scientists treated nerve cells with CBN, and then introduced an agent to stimulate oxidative damage.

They further found that the CBN worked by protecting mitochondria, the cell’s powerhouses, within the neurons. In damaged cells, oxidation caused the mitochondria to curl up like donuts—a change that’s also been seen in aging cells taken from the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Treating cells with CBN prevented the mitochondria from curling up and kept them functioning well.

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