by Art Kunkin

(Note: If you want to receive a free monthly email newsletter updating the schedule of events in Joshua Tree reported on here, please call the Joshua Tree Retreat Center at 760-365-8371, or by visiting the website www.jtrcc.org. You can also signup for this email newsletter, edited each month by yours truly, at the Retreat Center Book Store at 59700 29 Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, California).

The Tibetan Breath Work, now scheduled in convenient classes at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center and on-line as well, is a remarkable and easy way to increase your health, your peace of mind and your longevity.

This teaching was first brought to Tibet 1200 years ago by Guru Padmasambhava, a professor at the University of Nalanda in India. Foreseeing the destruction of Nalanda by foreign invaders, this teacher selected a few of his advanced students and went to the other side of the Himalayas where he preserved his Dzogchen teaching within the isolated country known as “Forbidden Tibet.”

The Tibetan Breath Work was later introduced to British journalist and publisher Edwin Dingle in Shanghai, China by a worker in his printing plant known as the Sage of Shanghai. One day this man asked Dingle to come to a nearby temple to witness an important ceremony. In a corner of the temple courtyard was the Sage, going through breathing exercises such as the young man had never before seen. As Mr. Dingle later said, “It was the first time I had ever seen a man really breathe.”

Edwin Dingle completed his studies of the Breath Work in 1911 when he visited Tibet at the bidding of the Sage. Dingle then came to the United States where he started the Institute of Mentalphysics in 1927, now headquartered since the 1940s at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. Mr. Dingle was later honored with Fellowships by the Royal Geographical Society and the American Geographical Society for his maps of China and research into the Chinese economy.

Breath, without which there is no life, is used in the Mentalphysics techniques to bring the body into balance, revitalizing every cell, and increasing well-being with life-force energy. The set of 8 Yogic Breaths and their affirmations energizes and exercises key organs and glands. The abundant supply of oxygen to the brain brings clarity of thinking as well as refining and sharpening the memory.

Prana, the mysterious “food of the soul” described in Eastern teachings as a major component in the air we breathe and as the principle from which all life is derived, is then utilized and stored within the body for healing and youthing. After being learned, the 8 Yogic breaths are used on a daily basis.

Other events at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center include a Sunday morning Tai Chi exercise class, a Wednesday night Desert Gathering and a Thursday evening life drawing class. Also, there is a monthly roundtable presentation of mythological legends, drum circles, meditation classes plus a number of workshop retreats lasting a week or more sponsored by various spiritual groups such as Spirit Rock, Four Winds and Nine Gates. Local organizations such as the Morongo Basin Arts Council, Theatre 29 and the Firefighters also use the facilities of the Retreat Center on occasion.

Among the retreats in Joshua Tree are those of an authorized American Buddhist teacher of Dzogchen named Lama Surya Das as well as some Tibetan teachers of Dzogchen from the pre-Buddhist tradition known as Bon-Po. I also teach a class at the Retreat Center based on Western and Tibetan Dzogchen alchemy including material from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead plus some unusual modern scientific insights into the Breath Work of Mentalphysics.

To conclude this information about events at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, I plan in next week’s column to write in depth about the upcoming seminar of the Monroe Institute starting May 30 at the Retreat Center. Robert Monroe, the successful businessman-author of “Journeys Out Of The Body” founded the Monroe Institute to teach brain and dream techniques for consciously experiencing our non-physical “bodies.” As far as I know, this will be the first event of the Monroe Institute in the Western United States. Registration information is available at 760-365-8371. I am hoping to attend this five-day Retreat along with other locals.

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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free Press. A free download of a magazine cover story interview with Art about his research into
stopping aging is available at www.immortality-is-possible.com. (“The Last Alchemist: Has The King Of The Hippies Discovered The Secret Of Everlasting Life?”) Art’s book, “Life Extension: The Secret Of Immortality Finally Revealed” is available at a reduced sale price of $9 at his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. These weekly Living Longer articles are archived at www.artkunkin.com Please email Art at artkunkin@gmail.com with your questions or comments.

by Art Kunkin

I am writing this weekly column for two main reasons. 1) Because I believe that within the next 20 years medical science will probably let us live for 200 years or more. 2) Because I believe I already have discovered a method to live that long and want to let others know about my discovery.

Therefore, I am asking everyone I know: What would you do with another 100 or more years of healthy, productive life if you had that available? What dream would you fulfill? Having now heard this possibility, would you be willing to look into this further, particularly if it didn’t cost you any money or much time to do so?

My own reason for wanting to live longer is that I have many unanswered questions I would like answered before checking out. This thought came up in part because I have been reading about some hidden conspiracies in the American space program.

For example, one of the books I recently read is “Dark Mission” by Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara. Hoagland is a former consultant to the U.S. government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the journalist who advised CBS about space exploration. In this book, Hoagland seems to prove that NASA has been deliberately infiltrated from its start in 1958 by three secret organizations dedicated to concealing the truth about the extra-terrestrial origin of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) because they share strange ideas about the gods of the ancient Egyptian religion.

According to Hoagland, these three groups consist of a) Freemasons; b) former Nazi scientists; and c) a third group Hoagland calls the Magicians, people who had a prior relation with the occultist Aleister Crowley and his secret Golden Dawn society.

Hoagland reports that almost all of the trained American astronauts and a surprising majority of the highest NASA officials are Freemasons who astonishingly timed their explorations of Mars and the Moon in accordance with various Freemasonic rituals and geometries. While this detailed connection to Freemasonry was unknown to me prior to Hoagland’s observations, it is generally well known that former Nazi scientists like Werner Von Braun were given refuge in the United States and employed by NASA because of their knowledge of German rocketry. What is not so well known is the related fact that billions in Nazi money were secretly sent to corporations in North and South America in maintenance of the fascist program to control the world when it became obvious that Hitler was losing World War Two. What is also not well known is that the Nazi espousal of ideas about ancient civilization are quite similar in part to Masonic ideology. Finally, one of the original and top American space planners was Jack Parsons, known to historians of American occultism as a partner of Aleister Crowley in replicating ancient Egyptian rituals also similar to those of Masonry.

According to Hoagland, these three groups are united in the belief that the public has to be protected from and prepared for a coming contact with extra-terrestrial aliens who previously influenced civilization on our earth and are in the process of returning with their ancient knowledge.

Another book I recently read, Lynn Pickett’s “Stargate Conspiracy,” presents this same conspiracy theory by assembling other information about how the government conceals UFO observations.

A more positive approach to other secret societies (such as the Theosophical Society, the Anthroposophical Society and the Rosicrucian Fellowship) is taken in a related book I have had in my library for many years, Dion Fortune’s “Esoteric Orders and Their Work.” This book examines the inner work of secret orders and fraternities as the teaching of an ancient wisdom transmitted to selected candidates through rituals and oaths, a science desirably having a positive effect on human history. For example, it is well known that many if not most of the founders of the United States were Freemasons, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Paul Revere.

In conclusion, I want to say that at least part of my desire for a life as long as possible is related to my desire to know the outcome of the real conspiracies. I want to know who is pulling the strings of history. I want to do what I can to stop the bad guys and help the good guys!

Also, my research into the seemingly good aspects of secret societies has absolutely convinced me of the existence of advanced mental and spiritual powers that can be used to eliminate the negativities of individuals and of society. Therefore, I want to have as long a life as possible to master those powers and use them for good. That is why I am encouraging the formation of local chapters of the Association for Living Longer (ALL) where the monthly meetings will include learning how to develop and practice these positive mental and spiritual powers. ALL instead of AARP! ALL instead of Secret Societies!

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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free

Press, 1964 to 2010, and is now founding the Association for Living Longer (ALL). Art’s book,

“The Real Fountain Of Youth: The Science Behind The Myth” (Yes, I am broadening the title!)

is available through his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his

research into stopping aging can be obtained at www.immortality-is-possible.com. These Living

Longer articles are archived at his blog www.artkunkin.com. To learn more about ALL or to ask

any question, please email Art at artkunkin@gmail.com.

Self-Analysis:
Discovering The Hidden Power Inside Us

by Art Kunkin

I ended last week’s column by observing that highly productive and “self-actualized people are motivated by what I call a sense of history, by a sense of knowing that other people have achieved great things and they, likewise, have the ability to accomplish great, creative, never-before-seen original works. Somehow, maybe by a sense of past lives welling up into their consciousness or, if you don’t believe in the possibility of past lives, perhaps by some genetic configuration of the DNA in their chromosomes, there is this inner sense of building on and competing with the achievements of past individuals.

“In short, perhaps what we need to do to become more creative, motivated, productive and happy creators rather than passive consumers of entertainment is to have a greater and more conscious awareness of our heroes and heroines. Decide whom you admire most! Read about them! Admire them! Feel them inside of us! Compete with them! Then set new goals! Then write the goals on three by five cards and post them on our refrigerators! Then start and complete a new ACTION!

“In other words, your role models determine your life!”

This week I am continuing those thoughts by suggesting that it is useful to occasionally sit quietly in a safe place and experiment with re-discovering that secret source of power within you. The procedure I advocate is to ask yourself some questions about your own past. Then experience your answers with passion and involvement as if your memories were events happening right now. Then experiment by focusing on one question for an extended period of time of self-analysis.

1: Have you ever been interested in a particular historical period? Have you ever read a historical novel and had an emotional feeling toward one or more of the people depicted?

2: Have you ever had a special interest in a particular geographic area? Where would you like to travel? Do certain ethnic cultures or foods have a special appeal to you? Did learning a second language come easily for you?

3: Do certain paintings, sculptures, art works, music or artifacts fascinate you?

4: Do you wear a distinctive kind of clothing? Do you buy clothing or jewelry with cultural or historical motifs?

5: What job-related skills come easily to you? If you were to go back to school, what classes would you like to take? What activities are you so passionate about that you would spend a lot of money to do them?
6: As a child, did you have an imaginary playmate? What was their name?

7: What are the recurring patterns in your life? What kind of people do you select for relationships? What kind of recurring jobs have you had? What are your recurring patterns in regards to finances, emotional outlook, self-esteem, repeated types of challenges in your life, etc? Have certain accomplishments come easily to you? Have you instinctively known information?

8: Does a particular smell, sound, sight, taste, touch or emotion prompt an emotional reaction or produce a particular recollection? So you have any birthmarks? Where? Do you have a fear or phobia for which there is no apparent cause? A fear of drowning? A fear of flying? A fear of spiders?

9: Have you ever had recurring dreams or daydreams? Are any of the distant past? Have you ever taken on a different identity in your dreams? Have you ever had any dreams in which the images were particularly clear and easily remembered when you woke?

13: Has a certain place or circumstance felt strangely familiar? Have you ever had a deja vue experience where it seems you are repeating an experience you have already had? What stimulated this deja vue experience?

14: Have you ever experienced “love at first sight?” With whom? Have you ever felt a stong liking or disliking for someone although there was no conscious reason to feel this way?

15: Do you feel like “mothering” or “fathering” a romantic partner?

16: Do you feel attracted toward one race, group of people, a cause?

17: Are you drawn to a particular relative, alive or deceased? Do you exhibit any of the same physical or personality characteristics.

18: Have you ever joked about doing something or being someone else in another life?

I hope you have had fun exploring these questions and used them to implement the instructions in the second paragraph of this column. I have prepared a longer list of such questions for a class I once taught and will be glad to email them to you if you contact me.

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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free
Press, 1964 to 2010. Art’s book, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through
his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into
stopping aging published in the English magazine, Fortean Times, can be obtained at
www.immortality-is-possible.com. These Living Longer articles are archived at his blog artkunkin.com.
To learn more about his new organization, The Association For Living Longer (ALL) or to ask any question, his email address is artkunkin@gmail.com.

Why Do We Do What We Do?
& How Can We Do What We Do Better?

by Art Kunkin

Since I am planning to live for a minimum of several hundred years because of the new knowledge about longevity now developing, I am concerned with living the most productive, happy and useful life possible. (Of course, even if I were only planning to live for ten more years, those would still be my concerns). So how do I (and you) get to do that? How do we stay motivated to function at the highest level of efficiency? How do we avoid drifting from day to day, as many people do, allowing ourselves to be senselessly entertained by television and consumer sports? How do we and why should we avoid living aimlessly like bored and retired or semi-retired people simply waiting to die?

According to most of the pop psychology books, the answer to this question is simple. All we have to do is change our goals to more meaningful goals. All we have to do is write our goals down and post them on three by five cards on our refrigerator so we don’t forget them. Then according to this too-obvious advice, we should take one action after another toward our goals, even if we take only small actions at first. All we have to do is keep moving in the direction we want to go. It all sounds so easy but what motivates us to find and formulate those new goals to begin with? What gets us out of the stuck and conditioned rut we may find ourselves in?

Well, I am half way through this column now and all I have succeeded in doing is perhaps posing the problem. To get to an answer in the four hundred words remaining, let’s quickly look at psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of motivational needs.

According to Maslow, we are first motivated by such biological and physiological needs as air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc. Then, once those first needs are fulfilled, we are motivated by safety needs such as protection, security, order, law, etc. Thirdly we become motivated by belongingness and love needs such as family, relationships, our work group, our religious needs. And once those are fulfilled, Maslow says we aim for esteem needs such as achievement, status, reputation, etc.

Finally, according to this hierarchy of needs, a few creative people get motivated by something Maslow calls Self-Actualization. There is a feeling of needing to discover and achieve one’s full personal potential. There are occasional “peak experiences” of “oneness” and “spiritual drive.”
Unfortunately, as Maslow sought to redefine the objective of psychology away from its previously limited goals of healing psychological illness to creating self-actualized people, he found very few really creative people. Many children seem to be free spirits. However, as children get older and face the problems involved in the first four levels of motivation, they often became conditioned and “other-driven” instead of creative and self-actualized. As a matter of fact, Maslow came to the rather dismal conclusion that the most self-actualized, secure and most psychologically healthy people were only one percent of those over 50 years of age.

Now there can be much discussion and objection to Maslow’s analysis and even conclusions. Among them, a criticism I have is that Maslow doesn’t seem to precisely say how to educate or create his idealized unconditioned, self-actualized, self-motivated, thoroughly creative and non-bored people. So, in the hundred words remaining to me, let me try to sum up my answer to “How Can We Do What We Do Better?”

I think Maslow’s self-actualized people are motivated by what I call a sense of history, by a sense of knowing that other people have achieved great things and they, likewise, have the ability to accomplish great, creative, never-before-seen original works. Somehow, maybe by a sense of past lives welling up into their consciousness or, if you don’t believe in the possibility of past lives, perhaps by some genetic configuration of the DNA in their chromosomes, there is this inner sense of building on and competing with the achievements of past individuals.

In short, perhaps what we need to do to become more creative, motivated, productive and happy creators rather than passive consumers of entertainment is to have a greater and more conscious awareness of our heroes and heroines. Decide whom you admire most! Read about them! Admire them! Feel them inside of us! Compete with them! Then set new goals! Then write the goals on three by five cards and post them on our refrigerators! Then start and complete a new ACTION!

In other words, your role models determine your life!

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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free
Press, 1964 to 2010. Art’s book, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through
his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into
stopping aging published in the English magazine, Fortean Times, can be obtained at
www.immortality-is-possible.com. These articles are archived at his blog artkunkin.com.
To learn more about his new organization, The Association For Living Longer (ALL),
please contact him at artkunkin@gmail.com.

How To Get Rich – A Book Review

by Art Kunkin

It might seem off-topic in this column about living longer to review the book by English multi-millionaire Felix Dennis titled “How To Get Rich.” However, I have come to realize that planning for longevity necessarily involves planning for one’s economic security in the desired additional years of life. In short, if one can live an energetic and healthy life for 200 or more years, as I believe is now becoming possible, why should one be poor? How will one survive when 150? Why not use your additional years of life to become comfortably rich and be able to afford anything you need and want? And this book definitely contains some of the best practical advice for creating a fortune that you will ever encounter. From raising the start-up capital necessary to begin a business and overcoming the fear of failure to avoiding the five most common errors of an entrepreneur, this is the book to read.

Felix Dennis is considered the 56th wealthiest man in the world with a personal fortune estimated at over 750 million dollars. He has homes in London, Stratford-upon Avon, New York City, Connecticut and the Caribbean island of Mustique. I must admit that I have a particular fascination with Dennis because I believe I met him in the late 1960’s. I was in England at that time purchasing a huge printing press for my own Los Angeles Free Press and, while in London, I visited alternative publications such as “Oz” magazine where Dennis worked.

22 years old in 1969, Dennis was far from rich. He was making a modest living selling copies of the alternative magazine on the street. Eventually Dennis became a co-editor of “Oz” along with a friend of mine in London, Richard Neville. In 1971 he, Neville and another editor, Jim Anderson, were briefly imprisoned by the British government after the longest conspiracy trial in British history about an issue of Oz where high school students were given complete editorial control and published a sexually explicit drawing of Rupert The Bear. (See Wikipedia on the internet for an account of this “School Kids Edition” trial). Dennis used his Oz editing experience and books about the famous martial artist, Bruce Lee, to eventually become the sole owner of a publishing empire consisting of more than 50 profitable mainstream publications such as Maxim, This Week and many computer magazines. In 2007, he reportedly sold the U.S. editions of Maxim, Stuff and the music magazine, Blender, for $250 million.

“How To Get Rich,” a bestseller in the United Kingdom, is different from any other book on the subject because Dennis isn’t selling snake oil, investment tips or motivational nonsense. He is rich enough that he doesn’t need to promote a DVD or sell a twelve-step seminar. When giving his excellent, practical and often humorous business advice, it is obvious that Dennis speaks from his heart with great compassion for other human beings. While he obviously has a strong ego that served him well in many negotiations, the several places in his book where he speaks sadly about how he would give up his entire fortune if he had his youthful health and energy again is not in the voice of a hustler but that of a sincere poet. I believe that he wrote this book not for money or for fame, both of which he already has in abundance, but because he genuinely wants to increase the chances of a determined person to become rich.

If you’re serious about making money, this book can be your witty and authoritative road map. And even if you’re not, it’s still a very good read.

Dennis reveals, for example, why a regular paycheck is as addictive as crack cocaine; why great ideas are vastly overrated; and why “ownership isn’t the important thing, it’s the only thing” (with certain exceptions). He also observes, “If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it; it’s cheaper in the long run.”).

As one reviewer on Amazon.com stated about this book, “A true masterpiece. Absolutely brilliant, fun to read, beautifully written and full of ‘hard-knocks’ wisdom. Five Stars.” And this week Amazon in the U.S. has reduced the price of “How To Get Rich” from $25.95 to $6.54.

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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free Press, 1964 to 2010. Art’sbook, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into stopping aging published in the English magazine, Fortean Times, can be obtained at www.immortality-is-possible.com . If you are interested in attending a Wednesday, Feb. 17 evening class taught by Art in Joshua Tree including a discussion of “How To Be Rich,” the Felix Dennis book reviewed above, in the context of a brain-rewiring technique to develop will-power, plus a discussion about Art’s new organization, The Association for Living Longer (ALL), please contact him at artkunkin@gmail.com or by phoning 760-369-8921.

Rejuvenate Yourself With 20 Minute Naps

by Art Kunkin

Last night when surfing the internet I came across a free electronic book titled “Staying Healthy.”

This eBook had many interesting chapters including one on the benefits of taking naps during the day. Since the publisher, Qualitybooks.com, permits reproduction of its free eBooks as long as the publisher is given credit (no author was named), I am taking the opportunity to present here the contents of this one chapter on napping.
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Thomas Edison hardly slept at all except in 20-minute naps. Mark Twain was noted for his insomnia but was always dozing off at public functions. So what is the relationship or the secret between 40-winks of nap-time and a person’s creativity?

Scientists have proven in recent years that the human body requires only as much sleep as the brain will allow. In other words, so long as the brain is functioning at full capacity, there’s no great requirement for sleep. The real fact is that the brain needs a rest every now and then, and apparently, the brain can then refresh itself and go on “like with a full tank of gas” with just a short, 20 minute nap.

To take advantage of the mental rejuvenation benefits inherent in a 20 minute nap, all you need is an uninterrupted 20 minutes. If you’re working in an office, take your phone off the hook or disconnect it from the wall plug.

Hang a sign on your door that you’re not to be disturbed for 20 minutes. A couch to lie down on would be fine. However, if you don’t have a couch handy, simply stretch out on the floor.

When you lie down to take a nap, you should loosen your shoes and clothing. Basically, it’s best if you lie on your back with your head on a pillow. Cross your arms across your chest.

You shouldn’t concentrate on or worry about falling asleep. Whether you sleep or not, you’ll be resting. That alone will give your body new energy. If your brain needs a rest as well, you will soon actually fall asleep.
It’s all right to think about specific business or personal problems while you’re still in the resting stage. However, you must not allow yourself to get up and deal with them if answers come to you before your 20 minute nap period is up. As much as you can, you should try to direct your thoughts to non-work ideas while you’re resting. In other words, you might think about the things you intend to do when you get home from work.
You might mentally practice some sport. Besides relaxing you, these reveries will provide the extra dividend of actually helping you to improve your own skills. Mental preparation accounts for a great deal of one’s skill in sports. Therefore, visualizations that you accomplish while relaxing can pay off in double dividends.

Learn to ignore whatever noises there are around. Just tell yourself that these are harmless and do not relate to you. Consider them as a peaceful part of your environment, not as irritants.

To be certain that you wake up at the end of 20 minutes, set an alarm or tell someone to wake you at the end of your rest period. Once you’ve practiced settling down and resting for 20 minutes at a time, you’ll be able to wake yourself just before the alarm goes off or your friend rouses you. However, sleeping for 30 minutes or an hour may leave you feeling groggy rather than refreshed. Be advised that there is nothing wrong with taking several 20-minute naps at different intervals throughout an especially long or tiring workday. The important thing to remember is that you will gain new energy and new creativity by napping when you feel low on energy or when you’re running out of ideas.

As you awaken from your nap, you should lie still for a minute or two. Then stretch and breathe deeply. Take your time in getting up. Adjust your clothing and take a drink of water to get your system going again.
Then return to work, starting with simple chores such as opening letters or organizing the work you have to do. Within just a few minutes, you should feel full of energy and able to handle any problem that comes up.
With practice, you’ll be able to refresh and rejuvenate your entire mental system with a short 20 minute nap. Give this a try and see if you aren’t amazed at the results!
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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free
Press, 1964 to 2010. Art’s book, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into stopping aging published in the English magazine, Fortean Times, can be obtained at www.immortality-is possible.com . If you are interested in attending a Wednesday, Feb. 17 evening class taught by Art in Joshua Tree on “How To Be, Do And Have Anything You Want”, please contact him at artkunkin@gmail.com or by phoning 760-369-8921.

Is Distilled Water Dangerous To Your Body?

by Art Kunkin

In previous Living Longer columns I stated that the inorganic minerals found in the earth, and therefore in ordinary city tap water, are dangerous to health because they cannot be absorbed by the human body (i.e. are not biologically available). These inorganic minerals in tap water actually clog up the arteries and do much to prevent a long and healthy life, an important health fact that most people do not seem to know.

I also wrote in those columns that the best biologically-available water for the human body was that found in vegetables and fruit juices. This is because plants, when absorbing inorganic minerals from the earth, change the electronic nature of those minerals (i.e. ionize them) and thus transform them into organic minerals that were biologically available.

However, since the body needs water in amounts not available from vegetables and juices, I advised that people should also drink as much distilled water as needed while avoiding city tap water as much as possible.

However, several readers have objected to my recommendation of distilled water. They claim that distilled water itself leaches necessary minerals from the body. Although I felt that I had already answered this objection by making available a long statement from the well-known medical doctor Andrew Weil, (see my web site below where Living Longer columns are archived), I am reproducing here as an additional answer most of Chapter 14 from the authoritative health book, “Alkalize Or Die” by Dr. Theodore A. Baroody. Unfortunately, for reasons of space, I have had to edit Dr. Baroody’s observations.

I also want to report that I have learned it is useful to add four or five grains of uncooked rice into a gallon jug of the distilled water I recommend for drinking. This simple method restores to the distilled water the organic minerals needed by the human body. Following are Dr. Baroody’s observations with minor editing. (And I want to thank Elaine Wallace for being of great assistance with this column).

Water – Healing Elixir or Deadly Poison
From “Alkalize or Die”, Chapter 14, by Dr. Theodore A. Baroody

“In my opinion, distilled water is the only safe water at this time of our earth’s toxic exploitation. Yet, I encounter more resistance to the idea of drinking it than to almost any other recommendation for enhancing health.” (Emphasis added).

“These are the myths commonly believed:
1. Distilled water leaches valuable minerals out of your body
2. It leaches minerals out of your brain and softens it
3. It deprives you of important minerals that you need from spring water.
“However, I can not find even one reputable source who speaks of distilled water leaching valuable minerals from the body.

“How do you think any researcher would be able to differentiate if chemicals were being leached out of your little toe or your brain? And since every individual has a different level of tissue acid wastes in the system, how can there be consistency on what is excreted?

“Only distilled water produces a completely negative ion reaction in the system. And negative ions are alkaline-forming. All other forms of water contain varying amounts of positive (acid-forming) ions.

“Tissue acid wastes that lead to an unwholesome death are positively charged. Distilled water, being negatively charged, draws to it the positively charged waste products and flushes them into the elimination channels…

“All other types of water must be compared to this. Is the water you drink closer or further from the ideal of being distilled? Ordinary spring water is excellent if you compare it to a major city’s water that has been flushed and recycled at least four times before you drink it. However, it is still below the norm of what is ideal, because of the acid reaction that spring water produces.
“For years toxic wastes have been buried in the earth. Our ground water is heavily contaminated. There is evidence of detergents, farm chemicals and even radiation in our spring sources. Factories in all states are dumping toxic wastes that exceed E.P.A. standards and, from my viewpoint, E.P.A. standards are extremely lenient.

“It is not advisable to drink city tap water. It is nauseating to see what can be precipitated out of an apparently clear glass of tap water. The chlorine in it breaks down to form chloroform. The fluoride is an agricultural waste product. The aluminum used to make water sparkle has been linked by reputable researches to many illnesses including Alzheimer’s disease. And acid water leaches copper and other substances from the pipes as it runs through them.” (Emphasis added).

“Fortunately, there are still some spring waters that contain wonderful mineral properties… These are usually well-known and well-tested sources. I drink them myself. However, I do not drink water that I am not very sure of.”
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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free Press, 1964 to 2010. Art’sbook, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into stopping aging published in the English magazine, Fortean Times, can be obtained at www.immortality-is-possible.com . These Living Longer columns, including the statement by Dr. Weil mentioned above in the column “Water: The Shocking Truth That Can Save Your Life,” Sept. 4, 2009, are all archived at his blog www.artkunkin.com. Contact Art directly by emailing artkunkin@gmail.com).

Would You Attend A Two Hour Meeting Each Month If That Would Stop Your Aging & Prevent Your Death?

by Art Kunkin

In this new year of 2010 I intend to create the foundations for an organization that will help its members live a healthy, prosperous and meaningful life for a very long time, for an astonishing 200 years or more. In this column I will explain not only why there is a need and possibility for such a new organization but the steps by which I plan to accomplish this and how I hope to involve people like you.

Within the next twenty or thirty years it is conceivable that medical science will be able to prevent or cure all of the diseases that cause aging and death. In that same period of time, our society with its advanced technology might conceivably advance to the point that all human needs can be met without the need for individuals or nations to resort to violence and war. This is a wonderful future that human beings living today can create if they (we!) have the desire and will to do so.

The largest organization in the United States today is AARP, the American Association For Retired Persons. AARP has 38 million members. It is an organization devoted to helping people die in a comfortable fashion by selling them life insurance. AARP comforts the dying by advocating early retirement, pleasant vacation trips. sedatives and other pills. With its ties to organized medicine and the insurance industry, AARP is not an advocate of alternative medicine. Investigations by the U.S. Congress and other governmental agencies have revealed that AARP is often more concerned with maintaining its profitable relations with its insurance industry partners than in promoting the health interests of its members. AARP, in short, does not present a satisfactory vision of the possible future. AARP is death-oriented, insurance-system-oriented, a negative corporative force in our society pretending to be a positive non-profit. That is why I propose that the visionaries of our community create ALL, the Association for Longer Living, a membership organization with a positive approach to life.

I propose that ALL holds small and sociable monthly meetings, possibly in the homes of its members to minimize expense. During these meetings, ALL members will receive education in the latest scientific advances by which a person can end disease, aging and death. To accomplish this educational goal, I propose that ALL develops a cadre of researchers and writers to produce newsletters, articles and other publications containing the information to be discussed at these monthly meetings. I propose to immediately begin publishing the first of such ALL newsletters to demonstrate what is possible.

I propose that ALL educates its members about computers and the internet and internet marketing so that its members, whether they are young, middle-aged or chronologically advanced in years, can prosper and develop new careers with the new technology available. In short, I propose that the ALL structure be flexible enough to provide its members with a continuing educational program in any desired subjects. This is not a program for death but a program for life.

ALL can start small and on a local level. In the beginning ALL can start with a single chapter in Joshua Tree or Yucca Valley or Palm Springs, anywhere a few people agree to meet for two hours, once a month. We can take advantage of the Meetup structure already existing on the internet to extend ALL into more communities. From a small base and with clear goals, ALL can organically expand and develop its informational programs. ALL can organize youth branches, senior citizen branches, etc. It would be advisable to keep local chapters small enough to permit maximum involvement by all members. As the network of ALL chapters becomes larger and financially capable of undertaking new projects, we can develop health assistance programs to replace the need for life insurance. A strong ALL can help its members become financially independent.

I plan to work full time to build ALL starting now. I am prepared to use all the energy and experience I have accumulated in the last 81 years as a journalist, newspaper publisher, organizer and entrepreneur to bring others into ALL and create the broad leadership that a vast project like ALL requires. I propose to start immediately by publishing a monthly ALL newsletter that will be available no later than February 2010. Given the information I have already developed in my own thirty years of laboratory research, I plan to live for hundreds of years myself and want to help you achieve life extension also.

You can receive the ALL newsletter and be a pioneer in this project by contacting me. Don’t delay! Do it today! Volunteer to help start an ALL chapter consisting of your own friends and loved ones. Wake up and participate in creating a positive future through ALL!
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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free Press, 1964 to 2010. Art’s book, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into stopping aging published in the English magazine, Fortean Times, can be obtained at www.immortality-is-possible.com. These Living Longer articles are all archived at his blog www.artkunkin.com. Contact Art directly by emailing artkunkin@gmail.com).

Could You Become A Psychic Healer In 4 Days?

by Art Kunkin

It is an amazing but largely unreported fact that since the 1960s hundreds of thousands of Americans have attended workshops of 4 days or less that often concluded in a truly unusual psychic experience, a surprisingly accurate medical intuitive diagnosis of a total stranger many miles away. This experience was a central feature of workshops sponsored by such large organizations as Silva Mind Control (over 6 million claimed graduates internationally since 1966), est (700,000 claimed students since 1971, Wikipedia), and Mind Dynamics, the predecessor to est. Other organizations teaching such material include The Napoleon Hill Foundation, LifeSpring, LifeStream, Context Trainings, Life Dynamics, Actualizations, Insight and Leadership Dynamics.

I will be presenting and teaching the basic techniques used by all such groups for developing one’s intuition at a Tuesday evening, January 19th class. This class will be held at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center in Joshua Tree, California as part of a series I am teaching on basic tools for self-development.

Being an alternative journalist, I have been invited to attend many of the seminars that concluded in this experiment of intuitively contacting an unknown person a great distance away and determining their physical condition. While there were differences between each workshop, they generally followed the pattern that the viewer was given the name of a distant person, their sex and city location but was not told anything else about that person. These three bits of information were said to be enough to make an intuitive contact with the individual “frequency” of that person. Then after a short period of great relaxation and meditation, the viewer would bring the name of the person into their consciousness and, in a mysterious flash of intuition, be able to precisely articulate any physical illness of that person.

Since the monitor of the session had written down the name of the physical problem (but not shown that writing to the viewer), it was possible to get immediate feedback about the validity or non-validity of the viewer’s intuition.

In my experience, the most successful such seminar involved an extraordinarily deep relaxation process utilizing the seven colors of a rainbow plus (and this is a very important, less-emphasized tool!) a clearly visualized “meeting place” where contact could be made with an imagined image of the subject, a psychic workshop. This procedure is what I will teach in my class on Tuesday, January 19th. As I will explain, the workshop visualization can be used not only to develop one’s intuition but to contact the mentors that Napoleon Hill speaks about as necessary for great success in his book titled “Think and Grow Rich.” I use the Rainbow relaxation tool every night to rapidly put aside all thoughts and be able to fall asleep within a few minutes.

Although this will be a one-evening event and not the four-day total-immersion involvement of the seminars I have mentioned, I predict that most if not all of the participants in Joshua Tree will have a memorable experience, one that can result in a significant improvement of one’s future physical and emotional life.

Therefore, I would like to invite those readers who can physically attend this class to do so, 7 to 9pm in the Meditation Building at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, 59700 Twenty Nine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, California. I would also like to suggest that those who can not be in Joshua Tree that evening contact me (preferably by email) so that I can send them the written hand-outs I have prepared on the psychic workshop and the Rainbow relaxation. Finally, I would like to suggest that you put yourself on the mailing list of the Joshua Tree Retreat Center (by phoning 760-365-8217 or emailing rebecca.jtrc@yahoo.com) so that you will receive the Retreat monthly newsletter and be notified of future classes conducted by myself and other speakers.

While the seminars I have previously mentioned were very pricey, usually in the hundreds of dollars, I do not charge for my classes at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. Therefore, if you are a person of low income, please do come without any sense of financial stress. However, since the Retreat Center requires operating funds and I personally incur costs in preparing my class, I do ask that those who can do so make a donation of $5 or more for attendance per class.

If time permits, I also plan to devote a few minutes of this Tuesday class to discuss a New Year’s resolution I have made for 2010 to set up local chapters of a new membership organization devoted to the study and implementation of life extension techniques (ALL, the Association for Living Longer). If this goal resonates with you, please do contact me whether or not you can come January 19th and whether or not you live in the Joshua Tree area.

Those who would like to prepare themselves for this class or would like further information can obtain one or more of the following books: “The Silva Mind Control Method,” Napoleon Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich,” and particularly the last book that Hill himself wrote, “Grow Rich With Peace Of Mind.” Another very easily read and useful book on these subjects is “Second Sight,” by Los Angeles Medical Doctor, psychiatrist, and clairvoyant, Judith Orloff. There is also much material on the internet.
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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free
Press, 1964 to 2009. Art’s book, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through
his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into
stopping aging published in the English magazine, Fortean Times, can be obtained at
www.immortality-is-possible.com . These Living Longer articles are all archived at his blog
www.artkunkin.com. Contact Art directly by emailing artkunkin@gmail.com).

A Partial History Of Some Very Bad Predictions
From The 1800’s To December 31, 2009 – (Part One)

by Art Kunkin

For this last issue of 2009, I originally planned to write a column about my personal resolutions for 2010. However, I finally decided it would be useful to precede that column with this humorous list of some failed predictions of the past compiled from the Internet. Here is the first part of this list.
§ 1925. End of the World according to Jehovah’s Witnesses
§ 1982. End of the world according to Pat Robertson.
§ “Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.” — Popular Mechanics, March 1949.
§ “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the development of the personal computer in 1977.
§ “Radio has no future.” — Lord Kelvin, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897.
§ “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” — Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter’s call for investment in the radio in 1921.
§ “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961. (The first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).
§ “Space travel is bunk.” — Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).
§ “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.
§ “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
§ “It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.
§ “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” — Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.
§ “Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.” — Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939.
§ “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932..
§ “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” — H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927.
§ “The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” -– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916.
§ “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.” — The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.
§ “That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.” — Scientific American, Jan. 2 edition, 1909.
§ “The ordinary “horseless carriage” is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.” — Literary Digest, 1899.
§ “It’s a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?” — Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell’s telephone, 1876.
§ “The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.” — IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.
§ “X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.
§ “What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.” — Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat, 1800s.
§ “The phonograph has no commercial value at all.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1880s.
§ “Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.
§ “Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” — Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.
§ “If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.” — W.C. Heuper, National Cancer Institute, 1954.
(To Be Continued In A Future Issue)
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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free
Press, 1964 to 2009. Art’s book, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through
his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into
stopping aging, published in the English magazine Fortean Times, can be obtained at
www.immortality-is-possible.com . These Living Longer articles are all archived at his blog
www.artkunkin.com. Contact Art directly by emailing artkunkin@gmail.com).