Metamaterials, which could improve smartphones and change how we use other technology, allow scientists to control light waves in new ways.

Imagine operating a computer by moving your hands in the air as Tony Stark does in “Iron Man.” Or using a smartphone to magnify an object as does the device that Harrison Ford’s character uses in “Blade Runner.” Or a next-generation video meeting where augmented reality glasses make it possible to view 3-D avatars. Or a generation of autonomous vehicles capable of driving safely in city traffic.

These advances and a host of others on the horizon could happen because of metamaterials, making it possible to control beams of light with the same ease that computer chips control electricity.

The term metamaterials refers to a broad class of manufactured materials composed of structures that are finer than the wavelength of visible light, radio waves and other types of electromagnetic radiation. Together, they are now giving engineers extraordinary control in designing new types of ultracheap sensors that range from a telescope lens to an infrared thermometer.

Read the entire article by John Markoff posted April 27, 2021 at nytimes.com.

link submitted by Robert Petrovich

Spiritual Hunger and Thirst

“Could we receive God Himself into our comprehension. He would give Himself to us without intermediary; but this is impossible to us because we are too narrow and too little to comprehend God. And therefore He pours His gifts into us according to the measure of our comprehension and the worthiness of our practices. For the fruitful unity of God ever abides above the unity of our powers and ever demands of us likeness in love and in virtues. And that is why we are touched again and again, that we may each time be renewed and become more like Him in the virtues. And, through these renewed touches, the spirit falls into hunger and thirst, and would taste through and through, and pass through the whole abyss in a storm of love, that thereby it may be satisfied. Hence there comes an eternal, hungry craving., and an eternal desire and striving after God, each according to its nobleness and the measure in which it has been touched by God; yet God remains eternally incomprehensible by way of our active desires, and therefore there abides in us, together with all saints, an eternal hunger, and an eternal desirous introversion. And in the meeting with God, the radiance and the heat are so great and so limitless that all spirits must fail in their activity, and must melt and vanish away in sensible love in the unity of their spirit. And here they must passively endure as sheer creatures the working of God. And here our spirit and Divine grace and all our virtues are one sensible love without activity, for our spirit has spent itself and has itself become love. And here the spirit is simple and susceptible of all gifts and is capable of every virtue.” ~John of Ruysbroeck

The Hunger

The spirit falls into hunger and thirst, but it is not a hunger for food or a thirst for water. It is a spiritual hunger, a hunger to be linked again to heaven and all the Light Beings who dwell there, including God. It is a hunger to be something more than a mortal being of matter struggling for decades to simply exist on this fallen world, only to die in the end. Many feel this hunger, but have no idea what it is. They try to satisfy it with material things because it is all that they know or believe in. If they believe in God at all, they believe in the god of matter, not the true God of Spirit. So they seek to satisfy that spiritual hunger with a “food” that can never satisfy it. If they are scientists, they try to discover more and more new things about the realm of matter. If they are preachers, they try to have the biggest church building and biggest congregation without realizing that the size of the building or the congregation has nothing to do with the number of souls actually awakened and saved. If they are businessmen, they try to be among the most successful businessmen ( or women) in the world, not realizing that true success is not measured by the size of your bank account or stock portfolio. What is really sad is that so many people have now fallen into the traps and illusions of matter that they think these greedy people are the pinnacle of success, when they are actually complete failures because they keep trying to satisfy a spiritual hunger with material success.

Satisfying the Spiritual Hunger

There is only one way to satisfy that spiritual hunger. We must first awaken our dormant spiritual faculties. Only when the spirit and soul are truly awakened can we understand what that spiritual hunger is all about. Once the spirit and soul have been awakened, they must be developed. You don’t stop developing a child the day after it is born. The same should be true of the spirit and soul. We must continue to develop in us the attributes that encourage spiritual growth: Love, kindness, and humility. And we must “feed” that spiritual hunger regularly. As already noted, material food won’t do. It has to be spiritual “food “. The spiritual food is the Light that comes from God and into the Spiritual Sun, then from that Sun into us. So if you want to grow and satisfy the spiritual hunger, you must turn to the Spiritual Sun. Some have become confused about this and are doing sun-gazing by looking at the physical sun. Not only can that harm the eyes, but it will also make you more material, not spiritual. You must learn how to look beyond the physical sun to the Spiritual Sun to satisfy the spiritual hunger.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on March 12, 2021

24 NOVEMBER 2020|PHYSICS

Watch the film online at bbc.com (4:09).

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

Perfect Human

“One day in Judea Jesus went to his students. He found them all sitting together as they all were practicing group piety. When he came near, they were giving a prayer of thanks over the bread. He laughed. The students said, ‘Master, why do you laugh at us for giving thanks? Are we in error?’ He answered, saying to them, ‘I don’t laugh at you. You are acting not of your own will but so that through these things your God will know your offerings of praise.’ They said, ‘Master, you are the son of our own God.’ And Jesus told them, ‘How do you know me? Amen I say to you, no generation of the people who walk among you will know who I am.’ When the students had listened to all of this, they broke into anger and fury. They began to execrate him in their hearts. When Jesus noticed their deep ignorance and interior weakness, he asked them, ‘Why has your agitation made you furious? The God who operates inside you spurs the anger in your souls. Let anyone of you endowed with strength among the beings on earth produce the perfect human, and stand near so I can gaze on him face to face.’ They all replied to him, ‘We have that strength.’ Here their beings of spirit didn’t dare to stand before him, except for Judas Iscariot. He was able to stand before the figure but couldn’t look him in the eye and turned his face down and away. Judas said, ‘I know who you are and where you come from. You are from the deathless realm of the aeon of Barbelo, the holy source of all, and my mouth is unworthy to utter the ineffable name of him who sent you.’” ~Gospel of Judas

Prayer over the Bread

Why would Jesus laugh when he found his disciples giving a prayer of thanks over the bread, what we today call “saying grace”? Isn’t it proper for the students to pray to God for thanks for what he has given them? Of course it is. But if you have just committed a crime, you wouldn’t thank God. If you were about to violate one of God’s laws, you would not pray to Him about it. Yet that is what you do when you eat bread, or meat, or even fruit. We were made to be beings of Light and God wanted us to live on His Divine Light and only His Divine Light. To kill and eat other living things, animals or plants is a violation of God’s law, therefore, it is not appropriate to say a prayer of thanks when you do. Instead, you should say a prayer for forgiveness, something like; “God forgive us for eating other beings in violation of your Law.”

Acting Not of Your Own Will

When the disciples question Jesus’s laughing at them, he replies that he isn’t laughing at them because they are not acting according to their own will. They are saying prayers taught to them by priests long ago, without realizing that they have no real meaning if you don’t understand them and really mean what you are saying, and not just asking for God to like you because you are praising Him without really knowing why. Jesus knew that the real God, the God of spirit that He came to teach them about, was not the God of matter. When you that god for material things, you are thanking the false god of matter, the Demiurge.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on March 8, 2021

“In mysticism, that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence while the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram—impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.

“’Oh, taste and see!’ they cry, in accents of astounding certainty and joy. ‘Ours is an experimental science. We come to you not as thinkers, but as doers. Leave your deep and absurd trust in the senses, with their language of dot and dash, which may possibly report fact but can never communicate personality. If philosophy has taught you anything, she has surely taught you the length of her tether, and the impossibility of attaining to the doubtless admirable grazing land which lies beyond it. One after another, idealists have arisen who, straining frantically at the rope, have announced to the world their approaching liberty; only to be flung back at last into the little circle of sensation. But here we are, a small family, it is true, yet one that refuses to die out, assuring you that we have slipped the knot and are free of those grazing grounds.’” ~Evelyn Underhill

Love of Truth

A love of truth is a primary reason why mystics practice their craft. But it is more than just a love of truth, it is a strong desire to know the truth. They don’t want to know opinions or partial truths, they want to know the whole truth without question. They want to know spiritual truth as that is the only absolute truth there is. Truth in the physical world is always partial and limited, subject to debate and opinions. On top of that, physical truth can actually change with time. Only spiritual truth is absolute and unchangeable, that is why mystics who have a love of truth seek spiritual truth.

Beginning of Philosophy

A love of truth and a desire for knowledge is the root of philosophy. Philosophers from thousands of years ago like Plato and Pythagoras were spiritual students and their philosophy was based on the absolute truth of spiritual knowledge. Modern philosophers seem to be more interested in debating the conflicting opinions of human minds. A different kind of philosophy from the ancients. Yet both seek truth. The difference is that the ancients with awakened souls would find it, while the modern philosophers continue to debate opinions.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on March 17, 2021

SCIEPRO / Getty Images / composite

An effort to dim the Sun to stop global warming has been scrapped by the Swedish Space Agency, who announced that the program, funded by Bill Gates, has ‘divided the scientific community’ and will therefore not be carried out.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) released a statement saying that the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), which also had secured Harvard funding, will not go ahead as planned in June.

The Gates funded idea would have seen the release of calcium carbonate, essentially chalk dust, into the atmosphere from a high-altitude balloon to observe the effect it has on sunlight reaching the planet surface.

The ultimate goal of the study was to reduce the temperature on the planet in an effort to stave off global warming. However, not surprisingly, the notion of blocking out the Sun proved somewhat unpopular, with environmental groups warning of potential “catastrophic consequences.”

The experiment essentially attempts to mimic volcanic eruptions by continuously spewing the sky with sun-dimming particles. The whole idea comes off as a weird vampirish effort to starve the planet of sunlight – the driver of all life – with little scientific logic behind it at all.

Bill Gates, who is flogging a book about climate change, has poured millions into geoengineering, funnelling at least $4.6 million to the lead researcher on SCoPEx.

Gates has repeatedly lauded the notion of dimming the Sun, notably during a Ted Talk in 2010. While the project was given a red light by Sweden, it doesn’t mean it is going away.  One observer said that it is only “a setback,” and suggested the project could move to the US.

Source: Summit.news/2021/04/02/

link submitted by Paul Young

“In Dante, the transcendent and impersonal aspect of illumination is seen in its most exalted form. It seems at first sight almost impossible to find room within the same system for this expansive vision of the Undifferentiated Light and such intimate apprehensions of Deity as Lady Julian’s conversations with her ‘Courteous and dearworthy Lord.’ or St. Catherine’s companionship with With Love Divine. Yet all these ae really reports of the same psychological state: describe the attainment by selves of different types, of the same stage in the soul’s progressive apprehension of reality.

“In a wonderful passage, unique in the literature of mysticism, Angela of Foligno has reported the held vision in which she perceived this truth: the twofold revelation of an Absolute at once humble and omnipotent, personal and transcendent—the unimaginable synthesis of ‘unspeakable power’ and ‘deep humility’.

“’The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the plenitude of God, wherein I did comprehend the whole world, both her and beyond the sea, and the abyss and ocean and all things. … I now comprehended how small a thing is the whole world, … and that the power of God exceeds and fills all. He then said unto me: “I have shown thee something of my power, …behold now my humility.” Then was I given insight int the deep humility of God.’” ~Evelyn Underhill

Transcendent and Impersonal Illumination

In spiritual writing, Illumination most often means a spiritual awakening and spiritual awareness. Illumination can also be light of any kind. In this case, it means both. We are talking about a Spiritual Light that brings a spiritual awakening and illumination. This Spiritual Light comes from God and reaches us through the Spiritual Sun, which acts as a gateway between the physical world and the spiritual. It is impersonal because it doesn’t choose to shine on some individual and not others. It doesn’t even shine o some species and not others. It shines on all humans and all other beings. That makes it impersonal. It is transcendent because it transforms us over time from the lower levels of consciousness to higher, more spiritual levels.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on March 26, 2021

First sunspot image by the NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope’s Wave Front Correction context viewer at 530 nanometers — in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. Credit: NSO/AURA/NSF.

December 9, 2020

A recent press release from Rice University states: “Orbiting instrument hints at how stored magnetic energy heats solar atmosphere.”

The solar corona exceeds 2 million Kelvin. Many explanations for why this is so are offered by consensus heliophysicists, but they admit that they are not certain. Why they are not certain has to do with the foundation upon which they build theories. As written many times in these pages, the simplest theory that best fits observations is that high velocity positive ions are colliding with relatively static ions and neutral atoms in that location. The photosphere, the chromosphere and the lower corona region of the Sun’s atmosphere are dominated by an electrical double layer.

The “surface” of the Sun is the photosphere, followed by the chromosphere, and then the corona. The chromosphere is about 2000 kilometers above the photosphere and is a very thin layer compared to the Sun’s diameter of 1.4 million kilometers. Plasma density in the chromosphere is low, more than a million times less dense than Earth’s atmosphere. Temperatures vary from 6000 Celsius near the photosphere to less than 4000 Celsius in its middle regions.

One of the Sun’s great mysteries is why its temperature rises to 20,000 Celsius at the top of the chromosphere. However, the greatest mystery of all is why the corona is two million Celsius! Why does the hottest region of the Sun begin at an altitude of 4000 kilometers and then extend over a million kilometers from its surface?

Read the entire article by Stephen Smith posted online December 9, 2020 at thunderbolts.info.

link submitted by Robert Petrovich

Read the entire article online at bbc.com.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr

“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself;
everything that you want, you already are.” – Rumi

“The enlightened man knows himself without self-regard;
Treasures himself but does not seek honour from others;
He rejects the latter and acts on the former.” -Tao Te Ching

As is often the case when I start writing on a theme, I find a flood of relevant information coming in every day via newsletters, newsfeeds and social media. While everything on the subject of Self is written with the best of intentions, barriers invariably crop up because of the unavoidable difficulty of expressing non-physical concepts in words.

Nowhere is it more common for teachings to fall victim to semantics than in attempting to describe “Self.” Some will tell you that you have many selves; others, that you have one self but it is divided; then there is the idea is that there is really only one Self. Add to that, all the adjectives regularly prefixed to Self, such as inner-, over-, higher-, true-, spiritual-, shadow-, and one gets lost in the wordplay.

Here is one way of looking at the Self. Consider it to be a field surrounding your physical body. I prefer to see it as a sphere, like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, or the planet’s geomagnetic field. This energetic field is composed of the Vital Life Force and Consciousness, and all of it is “You.”

Read the full article on Paul’s blog at his web site southernsunlightcom.wordpress.com.