Courtenbede

The Books of Mary Bowmaker

Is ‘ORB’ Photography Significant?

With the advent of the digital camera, orb photography has sprung up and blossomed into something of a ‘people phenomenon’, with almost everyone who has an interest in the ‘game’, whether professional or amateur, able to supply a picture with an orb on it.

It is exciting to relate that, after years studying the subject, many more scientists are taking the study of orb phenomena seriously, and a fair number are putting their ‘weight’ behind it e.g. ‘It is great to know that we are receiving cosmic energetic communication’: this from C Norman Shealy, MD, PhD.

Physicist William A Tiller, PhD adds his perspective to the unfolding adventure stating that he has ‘come to the conclusion that the appearance of “orbs” in and around the planet earth at this time is not accidental’.

(Could this be in some way connected with the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Enlightenment?)

Tiller continues: ‘My intuitive view is that it is a part of a heightening awareness brought about partially by the elevation in human thinking and partially by the increase in energies directed toward this planet by mostly benign life-forms existing in both traditional and untraditional (unseen) dimensions.’

He continues by saying that the orb phenomenon should be looked at as a positive experience for humanity, as just ‘the first of a variety of communication manifestations to appear in the unfolding adventure of our future’.

Those words, found in the book The Orb Project, by Michael

Ledwith, DD, LLD and Klaus Heinemann, PhD, a book packed with scientific – yet understandable to non-scientific minds – data, and scores of thrilling photographs and anecdotal evidence of ‘orbs’.

Klaus Heinemann understands from his huge collection of evidence, that orbs delight to appear in happy family gatherings and that they try to communicate by the ‘location’ in which they appear in the photograph. He gives the example – this is in an interview with Hazel Courteney of the Times Newspapers Ltd – of a woman in the UK whose eighteen-year-old son died in 2007. Later, at her daughter’s wedding, a bright orb appeared, by the bride’s back. As with thousands of people who have seen orbs in their pictures after losing a loved one, Klaus Heinemann tells us, ‘she believes this was her son letting her know that he was there for his sister’s special day’, and he also tells us his ‘working theory’ is that orbs are emanations from spirit beings...

‘There has always been a huge body of anecdotal evidence that the spirit world exists, that consciousness survives physical death, and now, thanks to digital technology, we believe we are seeing it’.

‘The Orb Project’ claims to explore the ‘spiritual realm’ that can be seen in the stunning digital photographs published, and there is no doubt, in view of countless other world-wide scientific experiments taking place, that this is a phenomena now up for further, serious, scientific study (and debate).

We need to be cautious here, however; careful not to accept all orb photographs as emanating from the spirit side of life, to be sure we are not deluding ourselves. There can be other explanations for ‘orbs’, such as: reflections from dust particles or other minute debris in the atmosphere; milky-coloured ones can be reflections from water vapour particles; it could be flare, caused by grease (from finger marks) on the lens, made visible by the flash – if used, reflecting back from the window. In other words, according to other ‘experts’ in photography, there could be a number of ‘conventional explanations’ for the appearance of orbs.

As with any contact, or presumed contact, with the other side of life, we must be cautious and ‘canny’ in our findings – but always ‘open-minded’. We need to weigh up the evidence carefully, even to our own ‘mood’, state of mind, at the time the photograph ‘was taken’.

Four of the photographs in this book featuring orbs, are from woods in Northumberland, taken from dusk to almost dark, towards the end of winter 2010.

The wonderful gift of ‘memory’ is still, apparently – this from a well-established neurologist – something that science cannot fathom, and recently, it was reported that a group of scientists marvelled at the way a blind man managed to manoeuvre his way around obstacles. It is common knowledge that police, all over the world, call in psychics from time to time to help in particularly difficult cases. (Years ago, the police in London regularly used the services of a medium with excellent results.) All this proves the point that the ‘something else’ factor is as prevalent in our ‘ultra’ modern world today, as ever it was; this in spite of the most recent and almost unbelievable advances made in both science and technology.

The something else factor; there is always a ‘something else’ that comes into the equation. To a scientist, it could be an accident of one sort or another in the laboratory leading him on to yet another clue in a discovery, another hint of a solution to a test; perhaps a sudden remembering of a previous problem, and the answer it had thrown up. Thomas Edison used to keep a pencil and paper on his bed-stand and he would write down ideas that came to him while he was sleeping. Physicist Niels Bohr visualized atomic structure when dreaming about the sun and planets. Nobel Prize winner Otto Loewi discovered mediation of nerve pulses in a dream.

‘We leap,’ in the words of psychologist Donald Norman, ‘to correct answers before there are sufficient data, we intuit, we grasp, we jump to conclusions despite the lack of convincing evidence. That we are right more often than wrong, is a miracle.’15

Could it be that when we are right more often than wrong, it is because we are ‘tuned in’ to wavelengths of truth and harmony, our spirit able to access the infinite wisdom of the universal energy, the life force, God?

With an artist, a writer, a musician, the ‘something else’ factor could be inspiration; Mozart, in a letter to a friend, described his creative gift as one coming from ‘outside himself’. Samuel Taylor Coleridge awoke with what he called ‘a distant recollection’ of the whole of ‘Kubla Khan’, which he wrote down without conscious effort, pausing only when interrupted by a visitor. By the time he returned to his room, the end of the poem was lost forever; gone, the flow broken, the work incomplete.

§

Life goes on, changes come and go; additions and subtractions, paths re-routed, bridges burned, bridges crossed; nothing stays the same. Additions and subtractions; bringing with them a certain amount of happiness, a certain amount of pain, but this is life, this ever-changing pattern, this is life’s journey; nothing stays the same.

During a period of change, there are usually ‘bumps’ along the way. Moving into a new sphere of life often takes, along with the rewards – ‘is it a little love that grows and blossoms into something deeper every day’, the casualties – ‘maybe a little hurt that, left untended, changes things and turns some friend away’. Addition and subtraction, the pattern changes every day and in the present climate of our world, the time, as you might say, is ‘ripe’ for change. Ripe for change to a more spiritual society, where we care for each other, where we care about each other and, as has already been said in an earlier chapter, where we move on from a greedy ‘me’ phase.

Magazine articles, political commentaries, radio talks, appear to press on with questions and commentaries about our moral status, and yet another headline in a newspaper – this one in The Sunday Times – referring to the state of certain financial affairs, reports, ‘Finance minister attacks bankers’ greed and finds God’.16 Attacking the ‘troubling absence of clear moral purpose’ in banking, Lord Myners, the minister appointed to clean up the City, told The Sunday Times that he was worried he may have ‘neglected’ the moral purpose of life, continuing to state that: ‘This is very evident in the financial community – that money has become everything. People have lost their sense of purpose. The absence of clear moral purpose is something that is very troubling,’ he said.

In this worrying, and for many, catastrophic time in which we live, there is still, and always will be, hope. Faced with troubles on so many fronts, climate change, financial irregularities, a war-torn world with terrorists trying to get the upper hand, the other side of life is ever on guard, patiently watching and waiting, knowing the chance to step in will come, and we can see it happening now, as I write these words. This, our ‘now’ time, is rapidly becoming a time of great hope for moral and civil renewal. A time for politics of the common good, a time for remembering what it means to be a citizen, a time to reflect on moral and spiritual questions, and our time to fulfil the old prophesy, that this would be the age of a spiritual revolution.

How is your own, personal journey progressing? Have you experienced perhaps a dream, a coincidence (even a small one), maybe a relevant conversation you could note down at the back of the book? Has something happened to make you stop and think, ‘Well…’?

As we begin to realise, if we haven’t already done so, that there is more to life than the daily round, the common task, work, possessions, diversions, sheer busyness; that somebody out there does care about us, that somebody out there does listen to us, and that we are not just destined to travel down a long highway toward nothingness…

…Let’s walk a good walk!