Spiritual Dynamite: Secrets from the Spindrift Files

By Bill Sweet

Spiritual Dynamite addresses: “What are Christians and religious people going to do when God’s creation is replaced with algorithms?” Be stunned.
When parents have done virtually everything right for their kids, many parents wonder why their children won’t carry forward the family religion or religious values to their children. Technology and social media have rewired human brains to dismiss the importance of religion.
• Spiritual Dynamite provides examples of trailblazing prayer and intention experiments.
• There are futuristic scenarios where artificial intelligence could be a tremendous godsend for mankind. You could also conceptually presume Divine Intelligence is the antipode of artificial intelligence.
• Our subconscious has its own cancel culture. People often talk themselves out of enjoying their memories of supernatural and intuitive moments. These moments are often followed by an internal canceling from memory of supernatural moments.
• The Quality of thoughts is upheld to be a prelude to a better society.
• You will find dynamite information in this book you won’t find anyplace else.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369402474

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 by Bill Sweet.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book is a work of non-fiction.

This book was published in the United States of America.

The paper used is acid-free library-edition stock.

Any pictures depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are representations, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/20/2024

Xlibris

844-714-8691

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Broadmindedness

Chapter 2 Overview Of Spindrift

Chapter 3 Examples Of Experiments

Chapter 4 The Unfinished Experiments

Chapter 5 Associations Coupled By The Mind

Chapter 6 New Levels Bring New Devils

Chapter 7 Curiosity Unfolds Reasons For Research

Chapter 8 Quantum Prayer Activity

Chapter 9 Your Quality Relationship

Chapter 10 How Quantity Relates To Quality

Chapter 11 Omnipresent Negative Prayers

Chapter 12 Glimpses Of Spindrift

Chapter 13 Two Esoterica Topics

Chapter 14 Pulses Of Prayers

Chapter 15 Don’t Walk Off Your Island

Chapter 16 Out-Of-The-Box Thinking

Chapter 17 \\\Prayer Based Questions///

Epilogue

Appendix

Index

Prayer is the best way to find God.

Trespassing is the fastest.

"Arguably our most engaging miracle

of human existence is our awareness of

existence." — Spindrift Research

FOREWORD

I tell my piano the things I want to tell you.

— Johannes Brahms, composer

What you would think if someone is excommunicated for scientifically testing prayer? Is he a divisionary or a visionary? How would you respond to people who disliked the research and tried to sabotage it? How would you feel if one of the results of the research was people who prayed negative thoughts learned to turn their prayer lives around and pray positive and good thoughts? Can we understand reasons why people are pro-prayer, but they are anti-analyzing prayer? Stay-tuned for that story in Spiritual Dynamite.

Who am I? My interests cover music as a band leader and an audiophile, talent agent, model trains, ham radio operation, humor, religion, church activities, and consciousness research often referred to as parapsychology.

A fair number of spiritual and psychic experiences informed me that I had an abiding interest in these unusual phenomena.

As a youngster, sometimes colors would emerge in music and sometimes when reading books. This phenomenon is known as synesthesia. This colorization faded away but occasionally pops-up when something stunning happens. 9/11 occasioned some odd colors.

With this varied range of interests, I sometimes despaired ever meeting people who have similar interests. Luckily, the Chicago area is replete with opportunities for discussion groups, clubs, and conferences involving numerous areas of interest. In particular my interest in the supernatural, spiritual, and consciousness related topics found a home in local Chicago venues.

During a social gathering in 1977, I was told about research into prayer by Bruce and John Klingbeil who founded Spindrift Research. I phoned them and I was thrilled to hear the team resided three towns over from mine. I was in Mount Prospect, Illinois. They were in Schaumburg, Illinois.

When I met Bruce and John Klingbeil, it didn’t take long to realize they were deep and inventive thinkers. I learned they had an aptitude for science and mathematics. Bruce and John were father and son.

I entered their townhome which included their Spindrift laboratory. Walking into Bruce and John’s prayer laboratory was a surprise. The Spindrift laboratory filled the kitchen and extended to the dining room. In time virtually all the Klingbeils’ living space became part of their spiritual and scientific endeavors. What was Spindrift? Spindrift was applied spirituality in a science laboratory.

The father and son worked as Christian Science practitioners. Practitioners are pray-ers and healers in the Christian Science tradition. Bruce and John earned their entire living praying-for and counseling people.

After years of experiences with prayer and counseling, they believed given the proper understanding of their hypotheses and the designs of the experiments, prayer could be tested by science.

The father and son must qualify as originals. They felt their research explored how prayer worked within human consciousness and how prayer interacted with the physical world. Like astronauts who explore space, the Klingbeils were psychonauts who explored consciousness.

Bruce and John believed prayer has a subtle signature it occasionally leaves behind if anyone notices. They asked a scientific question: Do any imprints of prayer left behind do anything quantifiable? A scientific mind might reply, Probably prayer doesn’t do anything that can be quantified. And if prayer does anything countable, it’s exclusively versions of the placebo effect.

Placebo effect healings are from strong beliefs that leave impressions on the body and mind. Some placebo healings are remarkable or inexplicable healings.

Neuroscientists might add that Families who pray together stay together amounts to Neurons that fire together wire together.

Yet through inventive designs of experiments, the father and son found a way to quantify additional effects produced by focused prayer.

Biologist and author, Bruce Lipton, wrote: To fully affect change in your life, it is necessary to identify if your subconscious programs are interfering with your conscious desires to heal.

What were the subjects prayed-for in the Spindrift experiments? The Klingbeils chose items from the plant kingdom as their main subjects to pray-for in their experiments. Around the interior of their home were seed trays, potted plants, and vials of yeast cells. In the backyard, they had a garden running along the backwall of the residence.

Comparisons were made between botanical organisms which were prayed-for and botanical organisms which were not prayed-for. All the organisms tested had the same needs.

Also tested were well-known consciousness experiments. A couple of experiments involved a twist on how thought affected the order of random numbers produced by an electronic circuit which randomly switched itself. Thought slightly switched the circuit. Instead of the input to a random number experiment being from a person’s strong intention alone, prayer was applied. For instance, ordering-effects occasioned by prayer brought random number test data around to a point where order emerged from what previously was the presence of randomness. The Klingbeils’ random number tests illustrated prayer had an ordering-effect on randomness. The previous randomness was no longer random. A pattern of order was displayed.

Bruce and John showed Quality intentions propel effects from love, connectiveness, and compassion to produce healing-patterns of order to make an appearance. Prayer helps bring out the innate purpose and proper patterns of order behind organisms.

In the process of studying Quality thought and positive patterns of order on organisms, the Klingbeils found they had to study patterns of disorder and distortion which negative thoughts and prayers produced on organisms.

The dark side of thought was unavoidable. Some people project negative thoughts onto organisms in place of positive thoughts. Sometimes dark effects were not intentionally produced. Other times it was intentional. Some human beings are drenched in negativity which gets expressed through their thoughts.

Most of us know people who are difficult to be around. They are sometimes called energy vampires. Being made aware of giving off dark thoughts, some people learned to turn their thought-life around and pray positive and healing-thoughts. One good outcome of the tests was, some people learned how to pray better prayer patterns. They improved and upgraded their inner thoughts.

Even Jesus dealt with negative prayers. Two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, asked to call down fire on the Samaritans because they wouldn’t allow the group to stay overnight night at an Inn. Jesus put a stop to the spiritual attack. Ironically, John is known as the love disciple. (Luke 9:54 – 55)

One of the reasons for doing the prayer experiments came from the father and son observing the American culture. Bruce and John made a sociological analysis from their experiences with people who experienced flashes of the supernatural. Their analysis was correct. American culture was losing its faith in unexplainable phenomena even if people experienced phenomena. In our sophisticated and scientific culture, people were beginning to think prayer and paranormal phenomena are related to the vast human imagination. Actual instances of phenomena can’t be pinned down enough to establish they are real phenomena. Supernatural experiences are reduced to psychological phenomena not true phenomena.

An exception is, society generally has faith in UFO phenomena.

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Bruce lamented: We are going through a period of time of unbelief where people don’t believe in anything religious or beyond a physical explanation anymore. Unbelief projects, My doubt is stronger than your confident belief.

I asked Bruce, Could you help me explain to people what Spindrift is doing by monitoring thought and prayer through subtle healing?

He said, What we are attempting to do with our experiments is to see within a specific context how prayer works. When we take a measurement, we witness the healing pattern without interfering with the healing process.

I asked, How do we see invisible spiritual power?

Bruce said, By the impact it has on the physical world.

After absorbing the central hypotheses of Spindrift, I was soon part of the Spindrift research team. To be a participant or witness of tests of one’s personal thoughts was a strange feeling because no one else was designing and doing tests the Spindrift way. A few graduate students sought to become a lab manager for Spindrift as they were impressed with the unique work Bruce and John were doing with the various drivers of intention.

John explains what is the different approach Spindrift took:

Bill

Is it ironic that all the research going on into mental things has not incorporated the religious thought?

John

Well, the parapsychologists, who were most of the people studying this type of thing, seem to have come out of two disciplines. Most of them seem to be out of the psychological disciplines and not the hard sciences. There are a few hard scientists out there, but most of them were humanities majors of one kind or another. This is fine, but to protect themselves, and because there was no other methodology available, they turned to the scientific disciplines for their methodology. That is absolutely essential and very good….

One of the biggest things they picked up from the sciences is that there was no place for religion. So, they brought the methodology over which was good, but they also brought over the prejudice against religion and a bias that said, We are looking for a physical type of force even if it’s mental in origin.

The kind of forces we are measuring aren’t easily found through that paradigm. The kind of forces that we are measuring are ordering-forces. You take an unordered system, you introduce the religious, the holy thought, the qualitative thought, and you watch that system become more ordered, more healthy. It is a return to the norms.

Unless you specifically go out to measure for that kind of thing, you’re not going to find it. If you spend all your time trying to move a paper clip around the board or bend light waves or bend a spoon or whatever you are trying to do, you’re not going to find that ordering-force. You are going to find that there is a lack of a force to be measured in most cases. (From a 1989 audio taped interview, transcript pages 11 – 12.)

I hope you find this book, Spiritual Dynamite, a reservoir of original thought, spiritual insights, and ways to test for the quality abilities of people.

Bruce and John believed there are thousands of people walking the streets of the Earth who have subtle psychic and spiritual healing abilities they don’t know they have. Through discovering their unexpected abilities, people might benefit the Earth with their good motives and quality intentions that prompt their prayers, choices, and actions. When people become aware of a new God given talent for the first time, they often find a place to express it.

It’s a good goal to try to find people in the population who could become healers for our world.

Bill Sweet, blog writer for www.SpindriftResearch.org

Author of A Journey into Prayer: Pioneers of Prayer in the Laboratory: Agents of Science or Satan?

………………………………………………………………………

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

"Get your facts first, then you can distort

them as you please." — Mark Twain

I didn’t let anyone know I was writing my first book except for people involved with the book. For my second book, I let everyone know I was writing a book.

Because of views expressed in blogs I wrote for Spindrift, and some friends getting emotionally upset over the controversial Spindrift experiments, I acknowledge my friends begrudgingly staying with me while I finished the book.

Now, too, I acknowledge my friends who were in favor of publishing the book.

This book will appeal to multi-denominations. For example, born again folks who had complications in rebirth. Nihilists who believe in Neil Young, Neil Armstrong, and Neil Diamon. My friends who thank God they are atheists. And scientists who live the equations of life.

I had a plethora of information to draw from to produce a book. Seventeen boxes, computer files, and a file cabinet comprised The Spindrift Files.

I have to acknowledge my mother, Alice Sweet, a force of nature, who was the world’s oldest woman ham radio operator, N9KYY. Also appreciated has been the support from my sister, Dr. Cody Sweet, N9LVE, Ph.D. in social psychology, author of Body Language Alive. Also, my brother, Charles Wheeler Sweet, a semi-tennis pro and Ruby Life Bridge Master.

I am fortunate to have met my editor, Jagi Lamplighter, whose knowledge covers history, religion, science, quantum theories, and the supernatural. Jagi and her husband are professional writers. Check out their books.

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Chapter One discusses society’s tolerance to a point of exploring spiritual and paranormal ideas.

CHAPTER ONE

Broadmindedness

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort. — Herm Albright, artist

Society’s Tolerance of Bizarre Beliefs

Everyone has a friend or relative like Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life, someone a little eccentric who you have to explain at parties and reunions with a smile and a shrug. Maybe it is Uncle Philbert who believes he was abducted by aliens. Maybe it is Aunt Alphina who insists on handing out religious tracts to guests. They cause people to cringe, but they are harmless — as long as they do not start taking these pursuits too seriously.

When a person starts pursuing these topics too earnestly, everything changes. Fear comes over people when he approaches. The hairs stand up on the back of their neck. They start thinking of reasons to slip away. Too much craziness is not good for society, they say; it will lead to mental health issues and the breakdown of society.

Psychology has a term for this kind of mental behavior, that of avoiding subjects which are beyond the pale — and people who expound them. Psychology calls these behaviors defense mechanisms.

You tell a friend of your experiences, and add, I know it sounds crazy. Your friend says, You think? And a degree of rejection of you surfaces.

When people who are perceived as normal and people of high social status participate in the contemporary reality belief system about fringe psychic, UFO, religious experiences, and spiritual healings, society does not reject their outlying beliefs beyond a margin of tolerance. Beyond that margin of tolerance, defense mechanisms kick-in, and assure that the outlying ideas are not taken too seriously. These defense mechanisms are society’s way of defending itself. They are born from the fear that too many far-flung paranormal beliefs weaken society, bringing an increase in mental health issues and ignorance.

The anticipated fear is, people with an extreme emphasis on their paranormal, religious, and conspiracy beliefs may hasten the destabilization of society due to a lack of social restraints on their borderline beliefs.

A lack of social restraints is similar to the fear of destabilization from leftist beliefs, which include the fear and emotions stirred up in the social media and legacy media meddling in news stories to support a narrative. Alongside media meddling in the news is the AI created fake news called synthesized media.

Defense systems at work in our minds.

Before society gains a healthy tolerance of psychic experiences, there remains a problem with the psychic experiences themselves. The problem raises its head soon after we experience something unusual that makes us wonder about our psychic and spiritual experiences. When we try to remember the initial clear pictures of our psychic and spiritual experiences, a blurring of what we just witnessed occurs.

To some degree, an internal X Files, Men in Black, and Adjustment Bureau effect happens in the mind. There is a selected wiping-out of our memory. People are not able to accurately remember the extraordinary events they witnessed.

A psychic event happened to us, and even we can’t get it right! Why the false memory of what happened? It’s our defenses. Defense Mechanisms try to block out or edit and tame our fringe experiences.

Co-founders of Spindrift, Bruce and John Klingbeil, did extensive research of our covert defense mechanisms at work in human beings. Studying the defensive forces in our minds is a novel way to begin to explain the slippery nature of recalling psychic and supernatural events.

Mingling the Real with Surreal.

Here is how Spindrift explains how the defense mechanisms trick us: Let’s say we have a spiritual healing or a psychic experience. A proactive projection of the experience we had flashes by and is noticed by our conscious mind. Immediately, an antagonistic defense mechanism moves in and blurs the conscious mind’s recollection of the event.

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From our subconscious disbelieving mind, we hear, Hey, don’t be paranormal when you should be normal.

We can counter, we aren’t just natural. We are susceptible to the supernatural. Infrequent, extraordinary experiences, could be considered normal experiences.

Immediately Record Experiences

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PTSD

The medical condition, PTSD, is a failure of the defense mechanisms to block out and deflect an extreme experience such as fighting in a war.

When it comes to paranormal events, there isn’t much PTSD. Extreme and moderate supernatural events are effectively blocked or misdirected by our subconscious minds.

However, a few people avert the distraction mechanism in their minds enough to become haunted by their partially remembered supernatural experiences. Their psychic memories tend to turn their lives up-side-down. UFO experiencers are a pronounced example of lives ramshackled.

Some social scientists call forgetting extreme experiences the wisdom of society to keep fringe experiences marginalized. The outcome is, people will feel sane, happy, and not scared. For example, the drugs fentanyl, OxyContin, and Opioids have not registered with the general public even though these scary drugs have hurt people of high, middle, and low social status. These drugs have arrived at the tipping-point of society and are flowing over-the-top into the lives of the general public. The public is being forced to hear about the drugs. At the same time, the public wants to deny the evidence. Like some other unpleasant realities, the public would feel happier not knowing about the drug crisis.

An observer of society noted, people would rather hear about the fears and confusions of the coronavirus than face the discomfiture of society’s drug problems, the southern border crisis, China, Russia, Hamas, or the Taliban.

The Disorient Express

Supernatural believers find they are often riding The Disorient Express.

The strategy of defense mechanisms is to have you Forget what you saw.

To forget or disorient something, you have to know something in the first place.

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If researchers are ever capable of knowing-more-than-normal phenomena, the Klingbeils proposed it should be a priority of scientists and psychologists to gain knowledge of how our defense mechanisms manipulate us from recalling our initial picture of a psychic or spiritual experience.

The furtive manipulation by our minds smears the clarity of our fringe experiences. For example, some families experienced spiritual healings. When the children grow-up, they forget or deny the healings happened. Children don’t often remember these incidents even as A flash in the pan memories.

When a skeptic has a psychic experience, he says, That was a heck of a hallucination! The skeptic might be right and wrong. His initial experience may have been a real experience. Then the details soon get changed, and what he recalls of his experience becomes a hallucination. Thus, defense mechanisms often support a skeptic’s doubts when the topic is religion or the paranormal.

Inquiring minds want to know

People with curiosity often discover that they have to first contend with the confusion and disruption foisted on them by their own defense mechanisms before they can pursue knowledge about fringe topics. Our defense mechanisms behave as if they hate human beings having extreme supernatural curiosity. Defenses attempt to keep a lid on our perceived strange and aberrant beliefs and experiences. With the ubiquitous Internet and iPhone, defense mechanisms have met their match. They are having a difficult time squelching paranormal experiences, social unrest, and the trust in conspiracy theories.

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Why is there intolerance of borderline beliefs?

Why bother people who have a strong interest in the supernatural? It’s primarily because the paranormal is alleged to be from a pre-scientific world. Too much woo-woo is destabilizing to society.

Aren’t there enough activities going on in the world to destabilize society? For example, what is a mother and a father anymore, and what is a person’s gender anymore? The Church of England is pushed to study dropping the name Father for God and have gender neutral names. These issues have created unprecedented confusion in society. You would think the opioid and fentanyl crisis, riots, looting, the pandemic, cyberwarfare, paying cyber-ransoms, sending our military to war, and illegal border crossings are more confusing for society than people being convinced of a few psychic beliefs. The flick, Leave the World Behind, is prophetic of cyber-hacking-artillery beamed at the United States to cause friends and neighbors to lose faith in each other.

Shifting Mental Landscapes

In the Twentieth Century, psychics were almost always considered science fiction to someday become scientific fact. In the last four decades to 2024, psychics moved to fantasy. An interesting sociology and literary shift of belief.

Since Spindrift was testing prayer, Spindrift didn’t want to assume too much. Therefore, Spindrift used a neutral scientific term. The acceptable term is psi. Psi refers to a manifestation of a psychic action or effect.

In the Twenty-First Century, nearly everyone thinks of psychics as New Age or fantastical. In much of the Twentieth Century, it was assumed that psychics, sometimes, were a scientific phenomenon. Thus, Spindrift’s use of the word psi.

Volunteers who Prayed

Who prayed for the experiments in the Spindrift laboratory?

Prayers were provided by the Spindrift staff and by volunteers. Volunteers came from different religious backgrounds.

The subjects (the patients) prayed-for in the lab experiments were:

22472.jpg Lower plant organisms with needs.

22472.jpg Some parapsychology experiments.

22472.jpg Monitoring the effects of thought and prayer on random number generators called RNGs.

22472.jpg Defense Mechanism experiments.

22472.jpg Occasional field experiments of prayer accomplished for farm animals with needs and farm fields of planted crops with needs.

The farm animals were dogs, horses, cows, and a goat. The crops were cranberries, corn, soybeans, the soil in the fields, and the activities of earthworms churning soil.

Praying for RNGs sounds vague. What is involved with them? When in the presence of thought and prayer, the random numbers produced by RNGs, showed evidence of displaying order instead of randomness.

After the Tests

After volunteers prayed, what were the findings?

Some volunteers who prayed for tests did not register measurable effects. Their results matched the control group.

Other volunteers, probably out of fatigue or a lack of being spontaneous, would get a result on a test run. Then on the next test run they would not get a result. Spontaneity is sketchy to harness and repeat in most areas of life and creativity.

When a volunteer’s prayers did register a line of measurable effects, the Spindrift researchers could deduce the agendas of the volunteer’s prayers. How? By tracking what the effects of prayer did to the organisms. For example:

• Did the effects achieve a goal, but the effects were not in the best interest of the organism? If yes, the result was deduced as a goal-directed result.

• Did the effects achieve what was in the best interest of the organism? If yes, the result was deduced as a non-goal-directed result.

The data from test-runs was collected and sorted as comparisons of those two patterns of prayers. Enough subtle effects that are accumulated from test-runs should begin to highlight a point: There are phenomena outside the normal range of physical phenomena.

Coin and Sword

Religion and science are two sides of a coin. They don’t turn to face each other.

The application of science to religious issues can cause consternation.

Religion is a two-edged sword. Religion can help restrain borderline beliefs about supernatural events, addictions, and bad moral behaviors in society.

At the same time, religion might curtail necessary inquiries into borderline beliefs. For example, what is wrong about investigating psychic intuitions people have? If seen as referring to extra-normal experiences people have, the word paranormal shouldn’t bother Christians and skeptics as much.

Skeptics disbelieve in psychic events because they believe physical phenomena are the only phenomena.

Christians reject psychic events because they believe you are dancing with the Devil. Paranormal interests tend to bother religious people. Religious folks often think a person having an interest in psychic phenomena is tantamount to being demon possessed. They don’t want to investigate psychic intuition.

There is irony about why many religious people are suspicious of paranormal experiences. What is the irony? Many religious people have their own versions of supernatural paranormal experiences. It’s okay to believe them. As uncomfortable it is to contemplate a religious correlation, supernatural and paranormal are Cheek by jowl. A psychologist friend calls Spindrift paraspirituality.

Fans and Charisma

Teenagers and some fans use the word rizz to describe people with alluring charisma.

High-status and charisma affect fans in strange ways. Fans may overlook or tolerate the odd beliefs and bad behaviors of athletes, actors, and musical celebrities because fans see their champions as high-status persons. Celebrities may wear tinfoil hats, but so what? Someone with charisma has a perceived high-status which allows him or her to get away with odd and bad behaviors with some admirers. Folks of lesser status could not get away with doing these behaviors. Rock stars get away with bad behaviors. Their mixture of good and bad behaviors work-well for them in a quirky way, but not always.

A person who is not perceived to have a high social status may be scorned or punished for the same bad behaviors a high-status person will get away with, suffering little or no punishment.

An example is Michael Jackson. Jackson was an unquestioned genius entertainer with high-status. His perverted actions were overlooked by parents until his pedophilia came out publicly. Many of Jackson’s fans continue to believe pedophilia is a total lie. A person of lower status would have been thrown to the wolves at the first evidence of aberrant behavior.

Another example is Woody Allen. Despite evidence of pedophilia, Allen continues to be praised for his creativity and power exerted in the movie business though some actors won’t work with him.

About the perception of high-status and charisma, the depressing movie, Big Fan, is psychologically effective in illustrating a fan’s obsession with sports figures to his and his family’s detriment.

High status encourages different treatment.

A sociological tidbit is the following: If someone has a high social status in his surrounding society, his telling of a psychic experience or a spiritual healing isn’t minimized as much. Social status gives a degree of credibility and freedom to tell an extraordinary story or spiritual testimony. A person of high regard, wealthy, or charismatic personality can get away with it and be spared paying a social price for his beliefs in woo-woo paranormal beliefs and spiritual healings. Someone of less status will pay a social price and may even be marginalized. As Indian Chief Sitting Bull said, These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not!

Non-Consideration Cynics

Naysayers of extra-normal phenomena rarely consider the knowledge gained from some extraordinary psychic and spiritual experiences which could bring new types of freedom and knowledge to society.

The Holy Scriptures are full of supernatural events. Christians and some Jews believe in outlandish miracles modern society characterizes as borderline beliefs. Modern society believes some of these supernatural religious beliefs of Christians and Jews need psychiatric attention. A Supreme Court Justice is taunted with the claim that she belongs to a cult because she practices Speaking in tongues. (Acts 2:4 & 10:46)

Society should tolerate these beliefs and obey the First Amendment which protects speech and the beliefs of religion. Yet the expression of moderate to strong opinions that aren’t PC or gender correct can get you fired from your job (cancel culture) or kicked off social media. Truth is in trouble.

A scholar dared publicly to say it.

We can point to a high-status person who told his psychic experience without losing his reputation. Canon J.B. Phillips, who gave us the Phillips New Testament in Modern English Translation, went out on a limb by repeating his fringe experience. Canon J.B. Phillips reported:

Let me say at once that I am incredulous by nature, and as unsuperstitious as they come…. But from time to time in life strange things occur which convince me that there are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy). (Shakespeare’s Hamlet) I have had first-hand incontrovertible experience of extra-sensory perception, and a little of precognition. But the experience I want to mention here is relevant to the matter of the resurrection.

Many of us who believe in what is technically known as the Communion of Saints, must have experienced the sense of nearness, for a fairly short time, of those whom we love soon after they have died. This has certainly happened to me several times. But the late C.S. Lewis, whom I did not know very well, and had only seen in the flesh once, but with whom I had corresponded a fair amount, gave me an unusual experience. A few days after his death, while I was watching television, he appeared sitting in a chair within a few feet of me, and spoke a few words which were particularly relevant to the difficult circumstances through which I was passing. He was ruddier in complexion than ever, grinning all over his face and, as the old-fashioned saying has it, positively glowing with health. The interesting thing to me was that I had not been thinking about him at all. I was neither alarmed nor surprised…. He was just there — large as life and twice as natural!

A week later, this time when I was in bed reading before going to sleep, he appeared again, even more rosily radiant than before, and repeated the same message, which was very important to me at the time. I was a little puzzled by this, and I mentioned it to a certain saintly Bishop who was then living in retirement here in Dorset. His reply was, My dear J…., this sort of thing is happening all the time. (The Ring of Truth by J.B. Phillips)

Phillip’s wife saw her husband talking to someone in a chair. She said, I didn’t actually see him but I heard all of my husband’s side of the conversation (with C.S. Lewis).

Here are a couple more oddities: C.S. Lewis passed away on the same day President John F. Kennedy passed away from an assassin. Had J.B. Phillips been watching his television set the day after he saw C.S. Lewis in a chair, Phillips would have seen the very first episode of Dr. Who.

There were a few critics who tried to kick Canon Phillips off his scholarly pedestal for telling such an outrageous story. But J.B. Phillips was held in high regard. He had intellectual integrity. His credibility was shaken slightly but remained stable. Or as James Bond says, Shaken, not stirred.

Canon Phillips’ willingness to publicly share his weird experience serves as a metaphor for Spiritual Dynamite. The Spindrift founders learned the following: You better be a person with an ironclad reputation before sharing your weird stories. If not, you better be prepared for your reputation to be squashed.

I see ya but I no longer want to be ya.

One of the organizations that was tolerated in the past because many of its members were perceived to have high social status, smarts, and wealth was Christian Science. Because Christian Scientists were very successful and held high-status in society – for instance, at one time, Christian Scientists made up a surprisingly-large percentage of successful Hollywood actors as well as holding numerous important political positions – unconventional and eccentric testimonies about spiritual healings were tolerated by society. Since the Twenty-First Century, the social makeup of Christian Scientists has changed toward the middleclass which amounted to having less prestige and tolerance.

In the year 1900, Christian Science was the fastest growing church in the United States. In 1900, the talk about Christian Science was analogous to how quantum physics is talked about in 2024. The Church Founder, Mary Baker Eddy, was the first woman, self-made millionaire, in the United States. The Chamber of Commerce labeled Reading Rooms as the first American business franchise. Many newspapers carried full-page lectures on its theology. In 1908, the church published a daily national newspaper for the public.

Jewish people, some prominent in Hollywood and business, were drawn to Christian Science. They became powerhouses in the church. In recent decades, Christian Science has suffered from missing its Jewish devotees. When Christian Science became mostly middleclass, it lost credibility, prestige, and cover for its mistakes. Like the NFL football kickers, we hear about the mistakes. As long as Christian Scientists were perceived as upper-crust, influential, and had financial power and political positions, they received respect. Christian Scientists were tolerated when they publicly shared their oddball spiritual healing testimonies.

The present situation is Christian Scientists are not as respected and tolerated as they used to be. As a result, Christian Scientists are hesitant to share their supernatural testimonies with society. They have experienced, When you are up, you’re up. When you are down, you’re down.

Anger over referencing Quantum Physics.

Some mainline scientists are angry that scientists who study consciousness fetch concepts from quantum physics to support their woo-woo theories.

Why is there anger by scientists? The anger is probably over a turf war, as it is an embarrassment for some mainline scientists to be associated with so-called unqualified fringe consciousness, paranormal, and spiritual scientists. Generally speaking, woo-woo theories waste the time of serious scientists. Some scientists have little tolerance of outlier anomalies unless science gives its seal of approval that the phenomena exist and should be taken seriously.

At a quantum physics conference, one quantum physicist personally told the President of Spindrift Research that he was embarrassed the Christian Science religion taught some of the points being discovered in quantum physics. The physicist said scientific discoveries about consciousness and mind/matter interactions can’t come through religion. The discoveries have to come through the scientific and academic institutions. No scientist would listen to a Christian Scientist, but he would listen to a scientist who pays his dues through the ranks of an accepted education and has earned scientific credentials.

A few mainline scientists have told Spindrift they appreciate what Spindrift has done in exploring consciousness. They said Spindrift was brave to study a taboo subject; sacred prayer. But these scientists insisted they could not say anything to others because of credibility issues with keeping their jobs and reputations.

There are some scientists who have a curiosity about some supernatural questions and the deeper inquiries of religion, but they keep their curiosity