MysTech Newsletter, Easter Issue 2023

Earth’s Atmosphere

Temple tells us of some other, related findings:  “…In addition to the discovery that plasma manufactures its own dust, in 2017 Hamish Gordon and his collaborators revealed that the [earth’s] atmosphere also manufactures its own ‘new particles’ spontaneously from gas within the air itself.  The new particles are nano-sized and they form in clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere from condensable vapours.”

All public climate change discussions at the moment are deeply flawed because they rely upon inaccurate models.

Gordon and his co-authors on the 2017 “report in the Journal of Geophysical Research state: ‘New Particle formation has been estimated to produce around half of cloud-forming particles in the present-day atmosphere.’ They define new particle formation as ‘the process by which gas molecules collide and stick together to form atmospheric aerosol particles [particles floating in the air].  Aerosols act as seeds for cloud droplets …’

Since that time, numerous articles have appeared supporting these findings about the ‘nucleation process’ in cloud formation, including one that “… was published in Nature in October of 2019, when Christina J. Williamson and her collaborators reported crucial new findings about the subject.  This team of researchers has discovered that new particle formation in the atmosphere ‘persists at all longitudes as a global-scale band in the tropical upper troposphere, covering about 40 per cent of the earth’s surface.’  They say that global climate models ‘underestimate both the magnitude of tropical tropospheric NPF [new particle formation] and the subsequent growth of new particles to CCN [cloud condensation nuclei] sizes.’  Accordingly, all public climate change discussions at the moment are deeply flawed because they rely upon inaccurate models.” [Note that Temple includes citations for these and many other references, in an extensive End Notes section.]

Something Out of Nothing

“The formation of these tiny particles out of ‘nothing’ in our atmosphere is very similar to the formation of tiny particles out of ‘nothing’ in plasma, as both are a result of clustering processes within the two separate media of plasma and air…. The similarities of ‘appearing to get something out of nothing’ in both plasma and in air suggests that a universal process is being manifested in the two different cases.

And considering that, it is perhaps not surprising there is also another way of getting ‘something out of nothing’, which has been known since the 1990s, and it operates at an even more fundamental level.  I am referring to the creation of a type of subatomic particle known as a baryon. [i.e., protons, neutrons, and atomic nuclei]

Experiments have verified that the creation of baryon particles can occur when whirling vortices are created in a fluid medium such as Helium 3 (3He), a form of helium with the quality of ‘superfluidity’.  This phenomenon is an important part of some of the weird quantum effects associated with plasmas, … it arises where liquids can flow without resistance.” 

Vortexes

At this point, is anyone, besides the author of this review, thinking about the creation of vortexes in flow forms?  In the creation of biodynamic preps?  In homeopathic medicine?  Once again, it sounds like Steiner was on to something considerably before the science of matter was able to perceive it.

“Isolated islands of positivity in a sea of increasing entropy and hopelessness, could … become increasingly complex and self-organizing systems”

“…Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (1917-2003), [was] the Nobel Laureate for Chemistry in 1977.’

Prigogine entirely revolutionized the science of thermodynamics, which is essentially the study of the actions of heat and all that follows from them.  Until Prigogine, it was widely believed that the Universe was steadily running down, that things slow down and fall apart, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics says they will.

What Prigogine discovered and proved was that energy brought into a chemical system, instead of always contributing by a process known as the increase of entropy (the progressive increase of disorder), could be dissipated away into other directions and purposes that were productive and could form open, interactive structures such as life forms, known technically as ‘dissipative structures’.  These structures, being like isolated islands of positivity in a sea of increasing entropy and hopelessness, could instead become increasingly complex and self-organizing systems.”

“The philosophical death knell for the mechanical Universe”

“Prigogine built upon these discoveries his concepts of self-organization, which are now at the heart of what we are finding in dusty complex plasmas.  So what Prigogine did was no less than explain the central role of life in the Universe.  Although this was by no means heard by everyone, it was the philosophical death knell for the mechanical Universe.”

Those working in this field (astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists) “recognize that ’Physical matter’ is very rare in the Universe.  At least 99 per cent, and some say more than 99.99 per cent, of the Universe is composed of plasma.  We therefore live in a plasma universe, not a physical matter universe.  But what does this mean?”

To an Anthroposophist, this could be a picture of the physical body penetrated and enveloped in the etheric and astral realms.

To Temple, it means:  “In light of what we now know about the predominance of plasma in the Universe, we really need to turn our physics on its head.  Instead of trying to model the Universe on the basis of the very rare and specialized form of dense matter found on our planet, we need to treat dense ‘physical matter’ as an exceptional form of the true ‘universal matter’, plasma.  There is no use in our trying to establish universal laws on the basis of a tiny sample of far less than one percent of what exists.  We need to establish physical laws on the basis of plasma and specify what we call ‘physical matter’ as a very special and limited case, which has no justification for being used as a basis for describing the majority constituents of the Universe.”

New Ideas Not Welcome

Here, Temple provides a perfect example of resistance to change, in the story of Kristian Birkeland, a Norwegian scientist in the early 1900’s, who was the first to claim that the Auroras Borealis and Australis “must be caused by streams of charged particles pouring in from the Sun towards the Earth’s poles.  These particles then glow and cause all the beautiful lights.”

This theory, Temple tells us, “caused the utmost outrage, and astronomers all over the world called Birkeland a madman.  Did he not realize that space was empty?  Charged particles could not pass through empty space!”  So they labeled him a crank and dismissed him.  It was not until the 1960’s with the advent of space exploration that his theory was proven true.

It wasn’t too long after Birkeland died in obscurity, that a Swiss astronomer in California, Fritz Zwicky at the Palomar observatory, “produced evidence to show that space is not empty.”  Soon followed by French astronomer d’Azambuja’s discovery of the solar wind.  Both discoveries were rejected soundly, further publication efforts were refused.  It was eventually proved that there had been illegal censorship of Zwicky’s findings.  This is a thumbnail version that leaves out the details that Temple provides to really bring this period of time into focus. 

The book includes a long quote from a manuscript in which Fred Hoyle (scientist and sci-fi author) wrote that he and his colleague, Ray Lyttleton, in the 1940’s:

“suggested that the gas between the stars was likely in places to be clumped into much denser clouds than astronomers were then prepared to admit.  We also suggested that the gas in dense clouds would be molecular rather than atomic, with molecular hydrogen the dominant component.  These perfectly correct predictions never did us much good, however, because they were thought outlandish in their own time and three decades later, when observation had shown them to be correct, nobody remembered what had been said as long ago as 1940.  So it goes, I’m afraid.

The thought that molecules, even quite complex molecules, might be present in great quantities within clouds of interstellar gas never died away in my mind, [Hoyle continued] although astronomical opinion through the 1950s was so firmly set against the idea that to argue for it in the scientific literature became impossible.  Throughout my career I have argued fiercely against the refereeing system practiced by nearly all the so-called serious journals.  My opinions are admittedly coloured by an intense dislike of being told by referees what I may publish, or not publish.  But this is not the whole story.  The superficially plausible reasons for maintaining the system are false.  The real reason for the existence of the refereeing system is that it provides the majority with a strictly applied censorship over ideas which it does not wish to hear…

Because in the 1950s the seemingly respectable vehicles of publication were closed to the concept of molecules in space, I turned to the disreputable vehicle of science fiction.”

So in the end, many who tried to get the mainstream to allow in a new idea – that space is not empty – were not allowed to express their thoughts.  It was “Birkeland’s fellow Scandanavian, Hannes Alfven” who was given the honor.  He showed that the Universe has [a] vast network of plasma filaments carrying electric currents, he also showed that the Universe is full of electromagnetic fields….we now know that at a subatomic and quantum level, space is a jungle of plasma, a highly charged, creative ecosystem – with matter in the form of particles being one of the things it creates.”

Data and Information Really ARE the New Sources of Power

Once Alfven’s theories were allowed out and publicly recognized, then Birkeland’s ideas (upon which Alfven had based his work) became acceptable, and a whole new way of seeing space began to take hold.  However, Temple describes a strangle-hold that exists on much of this information:  “…the situation has become even worse today, for now it is not only observatory committees that prevent things from being published, but also the organized and combined forces of military, security and corporate power.  Most scientists working in astrophysics in America today have signed confidentiality agreements with military agencies, and a large proportion of their work is kept secret under various security classifications….If the scientists try to release their findings, they can go to jail.”  Temple gives an example of this secrecy in a story about a CIA-funded research paper which he wanted to see.  It has been “declassified” but is only available by making an appointment and going in person to a CIA archive in Maryland, where the requester will be allowed to view the report but not allowed to copy it or take notes.  Data and information are the new sources of power in the world, and this is a tiny example of how that power is wielded.

Electricity and Magnetism

Temple, in Chapter 8, states quite plainly that “the current standard understanding of electricity and magnetism is still insufficiently developed for us to ‘get our heads around it all’.  As one example of our failure to comprehend the great mysteries that surround us, I come to what we call magnetic lines of force, or magnetic field lines.  These are constantly spoken of by scientists around the world, as if they really existed.  But they do not exist.”  To anchor this statement, he quotes “Cullerne and Machacek’s physics textbook, The Language of Physics:  A Foundation for University Study: ‘…field lines are a fictitious pictorial representation of a field.’”  

But such fictions – such models – allow scientists to talk about things that are observed and/or hypothesized.  Those working out of a background in Steiner’s work, will understand the essential nature of imagination in this picture.  Before there can be either inspiration or intuition, there almost always needs to be an image – an imagination – that can serve as the core around which concepts may coalesce.  Following the image, is sound – the sounds of language allow exchanges and collaborations.  Just as ‘image’ is the center of imagination, sound can be considered to be at the core of inspiration.  Under the right circumstances, an individual may find an intuition arises (or might we think of it almost like the dust that falls out of plasma?).  Science advances by way of this process.  And notwithstanding the resistance, anomalies in the world of physics continue to attract thinkers into new areas of investigation.

Superconductivity

“Superconductivity is an extraordinary phenomenon, first observed in 1911, by which a current can pass through certain materials and experience zero resistance. Classical physics cannot explain how this works and the quantum mechanical explanation is still not complete.”  But it has been well over a century since superconductivity was first observed on Earth and later in space where it is observed and known as “Birkeland Currents.” These streams of activity “are far more efficient at conducting current than any dense matter conductor could ever possibly be, and they have very little current loss despite the fact that they can extend not only across our solar system but across our entire galaxy and even beyond.  Indeed, galaxies themselves seem to be linked by Birkeland Currents.

There are photographs of Birkeland Currents in space….The ‘loops’ that are seen extending upwards and outwards from the Sun’s surface and from the solar corona (which is far above the surface) are also Birkeland Currents.  They are sometimes called ‘magnetic field lines’ by astrophysicists, which is incorrect; they are actually the flowing traces of the charged currents themselves, and there are many photos of these currents taken from the International Space Station, which show a kind of eerie glowing green river running along beside the space station, and encircling the Earth….”  There are “literally space rivers of positive current streaming into our planet, and into all other planets in our solar system as well” connecting the Sun with all the planets, and other stars, and even all the galaxies.  But “Birkeland currents can also be microscopic.  Our bodies are full of them.” Temple helps us to imagine how the Universe operates fractally – with similar patterns appearing above and below – macroscopically and microscopically.

The Cold Sun

Chapter 9 in the book is titled:  The Cold Sun.  Long-time Anthroposophists are likely to be less surprised by this chapter than many other readers.  In it, Temple writes: “We have all been told for our entire lives that the Sun is a raging furnace blasting out heat and light, which keeps us alive here on Earth.  The Sun is supposedly so hot that nothing one can imagine could survive for even a fraction of an instant without being melted and consumed and annihilated within its inferno.  The Sun is inconceivably hot, inconceivably violent, inconceivably turbulent.  It is like a great bully in the sky, roaring with rage and spewing out fire and rays.

But this is not true.  And nobody could be more shocked than I was when I discovered this.”

Although the Corona of the Sun is in the millions of degrees Centigrade, the ‘surface’ of the Sun, the technical name for which is the photosphere, is only about 5500 degrees Centigrade – that’s only about four times as hot as the inside of a cement kiln, here on Earth.  And if one could move below that surface, for example, by descending through a sun spot, which is a kind of dark tube, the temperature might be even cooler.  “So clearly our conventional ideas about the Sun cannot possibly be correct.”  The Sun, Temple concedes, “cannot possibly have an explosion going on inside”.

“In 1977, Arthur J. Hundhausen, who was later to go on to become probably America’s leading solar wind expert, published a summary paper entitled ‘Plasma Flow from the Sun’.  By that time, there had already been fourteen years of satellite data, so that he was able to make reliable statements about the solar wind.  He said that the evidence indicated that the solar wind had been blowing continuously for four billion years.  That is a lot of wind, a long time span, and a very powerful Sun, with no end in sight!”

The Day the Solar Wind Stood Still

“In May of 1999, a very strange thing happened.  For two days, the solar wind stopped completely.  That certainly poses some problems for conventional ideas about the Sun.  Did somebody turn off the central bomb?  How can you turn off a thermonuclear explosion and then start it up again two days later?” . . . .  There are many bizarre solar anomalies that are ignored and glossed over at the moment.  For instance, every 2 minutes and 40 seconds, the Sun shrinks in size and re-expands, or in other words rises and falls, by six miles.  That’s a long way to fall and a fast rise!  There is no ‘orthodox’ explanation for this strange fact.  Is the Sun breathing?  If there were continual pressure from a thermonuclear explosion at the core of the Sun, how could that pressure ‘breathe’ every two minutes and 40 seconds?  Are we to imagine a fusion process that has lungs?”

There is another theory – not the thermonuclear core theory – which describes “huge streams of electrons [that] pour into the polar regions of the Sun continuously from immensely long galactic Birkeland currents.  This continual inflow of negatively charged electrons provides the pressure to expel the oppositely charged positive ions into space, which form the solar wind.  This system of solar activity…provides a way for the Sun to operate for billions of years without the need for any central explosion at all.”

“Although some atoms are known to be created by the Sun, they are created under the intense temperatures of the corona, far above the main body.” ….

Where are the neutrinos?

“Another major problem for the ‘thermonuclear folks’ who refuse to give up their hydrogen bomb in the centre of the Sun is what is known as ‘the neutrino question’.  It is admitted by everyone that there should be a very large number of the tiny nuclear particles known as neutrinos pouring out of the Sun as a result of any thermonuclear explosion.  But the requisite number of neutrinos has never been detected.  This embarrassing lack of neutrinos is often a source of public anguish to many in the ‘astrophysical community”.

Invisible Earth – Van Allen Belts

In chapter 10 Temple asserts that science now recognizes “There is an Earth that is invisible to the human eye, and it surrounds the visible planet Earth.”  Using the vocabulary of material science, Temple continues, “This other Earth is composed of plasma, and it is far larger than the ‘solid core’ on which we live.  Which then, is the real Earth?  Or is the real Earth both together?  The Invisible Earth was only discovered in 1958 thanks to satellite data by James Van Allen” of Van Allen Belt fame. [The story of James Van Allen and his role in U.S. propaganda during the 1960’s space race, is quite fascinating.] 

After the initial discovery of the two electromagnetic “belts” by Van Allen, scientific understanding continued to evolve:  “the second and outer Van Allen Belt is now known to consist largely of electrons, whereas the inner and smaller one consists of a mixture of protons and electrons.  It was only in 2014 that it was discovered that the inner edge of the outer Van Allen Belt is very sharp and highly defined, and resembles a protective barrier.  Scientists are still trying to understand that discovery.

This finding is, however, precisely what one would expect, because plasma regions whether large or small are routinely surrounded by closely fitting plasma sheaths, which are rather thin and their edges do tend to be very sharp and highly defined, as we now know is the outer Van Allen Belt.  In other words, what continues to be discovered about the Van Allen Belts provides increasing evidence that they are standard plasma belts of the classic type.  Our planet is thus the solid core of a vast plasma entity that surrounds it.  We need to accept that the Van Allen Belts and the atmosphere are the Earth just as much as the solid core.”

This is a concept that may resonate with many Anthroposophists, due to Steiner being clear on so many occasions that all (biologic) living entities have etheric bodies, and some have astral bodies (which can be perceived by clairvoyants) around a dense physical body.  But we also know, that although the physical, etheric, and astral bodies may be considered separately, the entity can only “be itself” if all the parts are in place and working together.  For the human being, of course, there must also be the “eternal kernel” of the “I”, the spiritual Self.

Plasmoids

Van Allen worked at the military research center in Livermore, California, where further related research was undertaken by Winston Harper Bostick, who is credited with the discovery of the existence of plasmoids.  These are “a type of plasma…often spherical or blob shaped, or sometimes shaped like a doughnut – and it also has strange properties.”  For example, in the 1950s, Bostick showed that plasmas could pass right through metal plates without being affected.   From the perspective of his military employers, “What could this possibly mean for potential future weapons? For the vulnerabilities of the walls of tanks?  For the sides of aircraft?  For the White House itself, which did not even have copper walls?”  It is doubtful that they, unlike Temple, compared this behavior to that of descriptions of angels and such from religious and esoteric sources.  Many readers of this review will want to find out what Temple has to say about these things.

Leaving Livermore and the concerns of warriors behind him, Bostick moved across the country to a basic research lab and continued plasma research work that, along with the work of Hannes Alfven, looked at plasmoids coming from the Sun, and the possibility that they are intelligent or conscious entities carrying information to our Earth. “The publication in late 1957 by Bostick of his article entitled ‘Plasmoids’ in Scientific American, the widely read magazine that acted as a bridge between scientists and the general population, brought these matters to the attention of the wider public for the first time.  One might say that this was both the beginning and the end of public awareness of plasmoids, as the subject then vanished, and no meaningful or sustained public discourse about plasmoids ever really occurred afterwards.  There was a flurry of brief press articles in newspapers all over America reporting that a scientist named Winston Bostick had discovered strange things called plasmoids, but after Bostick ceased to be news, this stopped.” 

Like Plasmoids – Neon Light Tubes Are Filled With Plasma

Temple suggests that we consider the fact that a “neon light tube can be held in the hand and feels cool to the touch even when the electrons in the centre of the tube are twice as hot as the Sun’s surface.  This information is a crucial fact, which we will need to keep in mind when we consider plasmoid entities.  Anyone who thinks plasmoid entities cannot contain within a very small space huge variations in temperature, pressure, charge, and complexity, need only remember the lowly neon light tube.  That is proof enough that the sort of complexity in plasma that we will be discussing as we go along is not only possible but probable.”

This is followed by a discussion of the Kordylewski Clouds, which are composed of trillions and trillions of “constituents”.  Each cloud is over 4 times the size of the Earth and the components are so diffuse that by our standards – the standards of material entities – they might “seem almost not to exist at all.  After all, at our human scale, we think of atoms constituting our bodies as being very near to each other.  Of course, the idea that our bodies are solid is an illusion:  Sir Arthur Eddington asserted a century ago that all atoms consist of 99 per cent empty space; nowadays we might modify that to say 99 per cent an amorphous mist of tiny, tiny particles called quarks and gluons.

The point is that if you shrank to the size of a ‘space grain’, you would find that you could easily traverse an entire human body and see nothing substantial because everything of which it was constituted was too far apart to appear to consist of anything.  In other words, we would all essentially be undetectable.  So everything is a matter of scale.  If you were the size of a Kordylewski Cloud, you would very readily see them.  You have to be big enough to ‘see’ them properly, or to have technology that can reveal them, as ours has done, but with difficulty.”

Kamaloca

Anthroposophist who have read Steiner’s work where he talks about life after death – after leaving the physical body behind – will remember that he says in many places that when we are in Kamaloca, we will “recognize” each other if we have worked on ourselves as spiritual beings, including having a religion.  Otherwise, if we believe that there is nothing more than the physical, we could be right next to a being and not recognize that being for who/what it is.  Materialistic beliefs are very isolating.  If a material concept is all we are looking for, and it is “undetectable” due to scale, or due to expectations and lack of concepts/vocabulary, we will not recognize a being that may be right next to us.  Something to consider.

Brain – Plasma – Self-awareness

“It is often said anecdotally that the human brain contains more neurons than there are observable stars in the night sky.  But the human brain fits inside a small skull.  A stable dusty complex plasma ball of immense size, which has possibly endured for aeons and experienced continual growth and expansion over countless millennia, is in principle capable of developing something resembling a much more complex nervous system than a human brain with its average lifetime of around a hundred years.  A complex dusty Kordylewski Cloud that has existed for many millions of years might even have become self-aware, with all that this implies.” 

Akashic Record?

Temple paints a picture using a scientific vocabulary.  Granted, these topics are cutting edge and must often create new words or tweak meanings, but what Temple brings has a certain resonance with Steiner’s spiritual science, and especially the way he talks about the “Akashic Record”.  Is it possible that what is recorded in that “record” of all earthly thoughts and events is located within the Kordylewski Clouds?  Perhaps that is not the right question, but how do these things relate to each other?

Microbial Clouds and Bioplasma

In 2015, Dr. James F. Meadow reported on his findings that people are surrounded by “bacterial clouds” or ‘microbial clouds’ that “have not yet been measured, but…appear to extend for several feet beyond the body in all directions….we are really clouds of bacteria with a hard core called a physical body.  As for the body itself, the cells within it and supposedly ‘constituting’ it are outnumbered by the micro-biological entities (bacteria, fungi, and viruses) living on it and in it by ten to one.

What this means is that only 10 per cent of the cellular components of ourselves are really what we think of as us, and 90 per cent is a cloud of microscopic parasites that follows us around.”  And, “…According to Meadow and his team, humans emit 10 million particles per hour….”

“Microbial clouds and dusty plasma are analogous in many ways as both are made of invisible and microscopic particles.  And later in this chapter and the next I will be examining the work done on what we call our ‘bioplasma bodies’, which are invisible and which surround us, just as the microbial clouds do.  The concept of bioplasma bodies suggests that we are jointly constructed of physical bodies and bioplasma bodies, which operate in synch.

The further suggestion is that when we ‘die’, because our physical body has worn out or been damaged beyond repair, our bioplasma body may detach from our physical body and abandon it to ‘death’.  We might be said to continue to exist as bioplasmic beings made of non-atomic matter – of plasma.  On this way of looking at it, the ‘soul’ is thus material, but in a different and more rarefied sense than was the physical body.  This leads to the concept of bioplasma beings existing without ‘physical bodies’, and I suggest that this is what is often referred to as ‘the Other World’.

Traditionally it has been called ‘the spiritual world’, upon the assumption that it must be wholly immaterial.  It was assumed that body and spirit were entirely separate.  One being ‘material’ and one being entirely non-material.  I touched on this earlier, and it is what I regard as the prime fallacy of our Western civilization.”

Temple appears to confuse the soul with the spirit, which, incidentally, was one of Rudolf Steiner’s prime concerns for Western civilization.  And it is here that the Anthroposophist will realize that what Temple is revealing, is indeed permeated with Ahrimanic, materialistic thinking.  We must be careful not to fall into the trap.  Keeping in mind that Steiner always made clear that Ahrimanic forces and beings are absolutely essential to earthly existence, we just need to be open to what science brings to human knowledge without allowing it to obscure our understanding of the spirit that is behind all “things.”

Neither the Heart nor Body Is a Machine

Temple advises us that “The relevance of electricity and magnetism to the human body was revealed very dramatically in 1963, …[with]…the first scientific detection of a naturally occurring ‘biomagnetic field’ in the human body, and they proved the existence of a magnetic field associated with the action of the human heart.  The electrical and magnetic aspects of the human heart are now universally accepted, but it was very painful and difficult for scientific and medical experts to accept this discovery at the time, because it went against the ‘body as a machine’ theory, by which everything was supposed to be chemical and mechanical.”

Bioplasma

“Biophotons themselves are only part of a much larger picture, which took shape largely as a result of studying the biophotons.  It was the brilliant Russian scientist Viktor Mikhailovich Inyushin, who pushed the boundary much further in his writings about ‘bioplasma’.  This term ‘bioplasma’ was coined in 1944 by the Russian scientist V.S. Grischenko (aka Grishenko).  By 1967, Grischenko and Inyushin were working together on bioplasma, and they announced then that they envisaged a plasmatic state within living organisms which, in contrast to inorganic plasma, would be a cold plasma possessing a high degree of order.

This was an interesting idea, for the cold plasmas in space, such as the Kordylewski Clouds for instance, are more likely to be intensively ordered and to show ‘emergence’ and self-organization, and indeed inorganic life.  One would not normally think that the human body could contain a cold plasma, which seems counter-intuitive, considering how warm the body is.”

Anthroposophists may want to explore or revisit what Steiner has to say about the coldness of the nerves and neurological system.  For example, in one lecture he tells us:  “The relationship between nerve substance and blood substance in our organism is the same as that in our soul between abstract, cold thinking and the enthusiasm we can feel when things do not remain merely cold thoughts for us, but warm us through the spirit. This warming through the spirit does not come naturally; we have to train ourselves to attain it. GA 169 

Cold Plasma Chiefly in the Brain

“…Grischenko and Inyushin worked out that [the body containing cold plasma] is possible.  And what is more extraordinary, … they believed that this cold plasma would chiefly be found in the brain.  So, to make it clear, bioplasma is the name they gave to that plasma which, they were convinced, joined with the physical body and helped it to operate, or even coordinated and guided its growth and development.”

This reviewer cannot help wondering if there is any relationship here to what Steiner calls ‘the double,’ which enters shortly before birth and leaves the body just before death?

Inorganic Life

In his final chapter, Temple says that he is “suggesting that the predominant forms of life in the Universe are inorganic.” And speculates that “The organic life forms of our planet are a footnote, not the main text, of the message of the Universe.”  Anthroposophists may find it difficult to embrace the idea of humanity as a footnote, but the idea of inorganic life might correlate with Steiner’s description of spiritual beings associated with every “thing” perceivable and conceivable, in the material world. How difficult would it be to consider the “spiritual beings” of Steiner’s cosmology as inorganic life forms?  They don’t have physical bodies, and are not perceptible to the five ordinary senses, but they are active in our earthly realm.  If not “inorganic life form,” what other words might we use?

To anyone who has made it this far, I can only say that although I have packed a lot into this review, there is so much more in the book.  Robert Temple has assuredly provided a tremendous service to the world in his ability to tell an important story well, and with documented references and detailed information that will help guide an interested reader who wants to know more about the ideas touched upon here, and others such as:

• Structured Water, Ice Crystals and Plasma
• Quantum Tunneling
• Research Mysteriously Gone Quiet – Is It Transhumanism?
• Our Bodies Emit Light – Biophotons are not bioluminescence, nor chemiluminescence
• The ‘Death Flash’ and the ‘Life Flash’
• Quantum Field and Information
• Morphic Resonance