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+____________________________________________________________________________
+|  File Name      : TREPANN1.ASC     |  Online Date     :  **12/21/95**          |
+|  Contributed by : Bill Beaty       |  Dir Category    :  BIOLOGY           |
+|  From           : [[http://www.keelynet.com|KeelyNet]] BBS     |  DataLine        :  [Dead Phone#]    |
+|           KeelyNet * [Old Address]         |
+|        A FREE Alternative Sciences BBS sponsored by [[http://www.vanguardsciences.biz|Vanguard Sciences]]      |
+|              InterNet email keelynet@ix.netcom.com (Jerry Decker)          |
+|      Files also available at Bill Beaty's http://www.eskimo.com/~billb     |
+Date: Wed, 30 Aug 95 15:43:58 EST
+From: Terry Colvin <ncr.disa.mil!colvint@Nexus.integral.org>
+Reply to: GENERALLYWEIRD Distribution List <generallyweird@Nexus.integral.org>
+Subject: Trepanning
+Author: FringeWare Daily <email@fringeware.com> at smtp
+Date: 29/8/1995 9:07 PM
+====== THE PEOPLE WITH HOLES IN THEIR HEADS  ======
+Amanda Fielding lives in a charming flat looking over London's river with her
+companion, Joey Mellen, and their infant son, Rock.  She is a successful
+painter, and she and Joey have an art gallery in a fashionable street of the
+King's Road.  Another of her talents is for politics.
+At the last two General Elections she stood for Parliament in Chelsea, more
+than doubling her vote on the second occasion from 49 to 139.  It does not
+sound like much, but the cause for which she stands is unfamiliar and lacks
+obvious appeal.
+Fielding and her voters demand that trepanning operations be made freely
+available on the National Health.  Trepanation means cutting a hole in your
+skull.  The founder of the trepanation movement is a Dutch savant, Dr. Bart
+Hughes.
+In 1962 he made a discovery which his followers proclaim as the most
+significant in modern times.  One's state and degree of consciousness, he
+realized, are related to the volume of blood in the brain.  According to his
+theory of evolution, the adoption of an upright stance brought certain
+benefits to the human race, but it caused the flow of blood through the head
+to be limited by gravity, thus reducing the range of human consciousness.
+Certain parts of the brain ceased or reduced their functions while others,
+particularly those parts relating to speech and reasoning, became emphasized
+in compensation.  One can redress the balance by a number of methods, such as
+standing on one's head, jumping from a hot bath into a cold one, or the use of
+drugs; but the wider consciousness thus obtained is only temporary.
+Bart Hughes shared the common goal of mystics and poets in all ages: he wanted
+to achieve permanently the higher level of vision, which he associated with an
+increased volume of blood in the capillaries of the brain.  The higher state
+of mind he sought was that of childhood.
+Babies are born with skulls unsealed, and it is not until one is an adult that
+the bony carapace is formed which completely encloses the membranes
+surrounding the brain and inhibits their pulsations in response to heartbeats.
+In consequence, the adult loses touch with the dreams, imagination and intense
+perceptions of the child.  His mental balance becomes upset by egoism and
+neuroses.
+To cure these problems, first in himself and then for the whole world, Dr.
+Hughes returned his cranium to something like the condition of infancy by
+cutting out a small disc of bone with an electric drill. Experiencing
+immediate beneficial effects from this operation, he began preaching to anyone
+who would listen to the doctrine of trepanation.
+By liberating his brain from its total imprisonment in his skull, he claimed
+to have restored its pulsations, increased the volume of blood in it and
+acquired a more complete, satisfying state of consciousness than grown-up
+people normally enjoy.  The medical and legal authorities reacted to Hughes's
+discovery with  horror and rewarded him with a spell in a Dutch lunatic
+asylum.
+Joseph Mellen met Bart Hughes in 1965 in Ibiza and quickly became his leading,
+or rather one and only, disciple.  Years later he wrote a book called "Bore
+Hole", the contents of which are summarized in its opening sentence:
+   'This is the story of how I came to drill a hole in my skull to get
+    permanently high.'  . . . (a few paragraphs detail Joseph Mellen's early
+    experiments with LSD, and how he finds out about Bart Hughes.)
+The time came when Joey felt he had preached enough and that he now had to
+act.  He did not agree with Holingshead that the third eye was merely a figure
+of speech, believing in its physical attainment through self-trepanation.
+Support for this can be found in archaeology.  Skulls of ancient people all
+over the world give evidence that their owners were skillfully trepanned
+during their lifetimes, and many of these appear to have been of noble or
+priestly castes.
+The medical practice of trepanation was continued up to the present century in
+treatment of madness, the hole in the skull being seen as a way of relieving
+pressure on the brain or letting out the devils that possessed it.
+By his scientific explanation of the reasons for the operation, Bart Hughes
+had removed it from the area of superstition, and Joey Mellen proposed to be
+the second person to perform it on himself in the interest of enlightenment.
+Bart had become a close friend of Amanda Fielding, and they went off to
+Amsterdam together while Joey took care of Amanda's flat.  This was the
+opportunity he had been waiting for to bore a hole in his head.
+The most gripping passages in "Bore Hole" describe his various attempts to
+complete the operation.  They are also extremely gruesome, and those who lack
+medical curiosity would do well to read no further.  Yet to those who might
+contemplate trepanation for and by themselves, Joey's experiences are a
+salutary warning.  It should be emphasized that neither he, Bart nor Amanda
+has ever recommended people to follow their example by performing their own
+operations.
+For years they have been looking for doctors who would understand their
+theories and would agree to trepan volunteer patients as a form of therapy.
+Strangely enough, not one member of the medical profession has been converted.
+In a surgical store Joey found a trepan instrument, a kind of auger or cork-
+screw designed to be worked by hand.  It was much cheaper and, Joey felt, more
+sensitive than an electric drill.  Its main feature was a metal spike,
+surrounded by a ring of saw-teeth.
+The spike was meant to be driven into the skull, holding the trepan steady
+until the revolving saw made a groove, after which it could be retracted.  If
+all went well, the saw-band should remove a disc of bone and expose the brain.
+Joey's first attempt at self-trepanation was a fiasco.  He had no previous
+medical experience, and the needles he had bought for administering a local
+anesthetic to the crown of his head proved to be too thin and crumpled up or
+broke.  Next day he obtained some stouter needles, took a tab of LSD to steady
+his nerves and set to in earnest.
+First he made an incision to the bone, and then applied the trepan to his
+bared skull. But the first part of the operation, driving the spike into the
+bone, was impossible to accomplish.
+Joey described it as like trying to uncork a bottle from the inside. He
+realized he needed help and telephoned Bart in Amsterdam, who promised he
+would come over and assist at the next operation.  This plan was frustrated by
+the Home Office, which listed Dr. Hughes as an undesirable visitor to Britain
+and barred his entry.
+Amanda agreed to take his place.  Soon after her return to London she helped
+Joey reopen the wound in his head and, by pressing the trepan with all her
+might against his skull, managed to get the spike to take hold and the saw-
+teeth to bite.  Joey then took over at cranking the saw. Once again he
+had swallowed some LSD.
+After a long period of sawing, just as he was about to break through, he
+suddenly fainted. Amanda called an ambulance and he was taken to hospital,
+where horrified doctors told him that he was lucky to be alive and that if he
+had drilled a fraction of an inch further he would have killed himself.
+The psychiatrists took a particular interest in his case, and a group of them
+arranged to examine him.  Before this could be done, he had to appear in court
+on a charge of possessing a small amount of cannabis.  The magistrate demanded
+another psychiatrist's report and demanded him for a week in prison.
+There followed a period of embarrassment as the rumor went round London that
+Joey Mellen had trepanned himself, whereas in fact he had failed to do so. As
+soon as possible, therefore, he prepared for a third attempt.
+Proceeding as before, but now with the benefit of experience, he soon found
+the groove from the previous operation and began to saw through the sliver of
+bone separating him from enlightenment or, as the doctors had predicted,
+instant death.
+What followed is best quoted from "Bore Hole".
+   'After some time there was an ominous sounding schlurp and the sound of
+    bubbling.  I drew the trepan out and the gurgling continued.  It sounded
+    like air bubbles running under the skull as they were pressed out.  I
+    looked at the trepan and there was a bit of bone in it.  At last!  On
+    closer inspection I saw that the disc of bone was much deeper on one side
+    than on the other.
+    Obviously the trepan had not been straight and had gone through at one
+    point only, then the piece of bone had snapped off and come out.  I was
+    reluctant to start drilling again for fear of damaging the brain membranes
+    with the deeper part while I was cutting through the rest or of breaking
+    off a splinter.
+    If only I had an electric drill it would have been so much simpler. Amanda
+    was sure I was through.  There seemed no other explanation for the
+    schlurping noises I decided to call it a day.  At the time I thought that
+    any hole would do, no matter what size.  I bandaged up my head and cleared
+    away the mess.'
+There was still doubt in his mind as to whether he had really broken through
+and, if so, whether the hole was big enough to restore pulsation to his brain.
+The operation had left him with a feeling of wellbeing, but he realized that
+it could simply be from relief at having ended it.  To put the matter beyond
+doubt, he decided to bore another hole at a new spot just above the hairline,
+this time using an electric drill.  In the spring of 1970, Amanda was in
+America and Joey did the operation alone.
+He applied the drill to his forehead, but after half an hour's work the
+electric cable burnt out.  Once again he was frustrated.  An engineer in the
+flat below him was able to repair the instrument and next day he set out to
+finish the job. 'This time I was not in any doubt. The drill head went at
+least an inch deep through the hole.  A great gush of blood followed my
+withdrawal of the drill. In the mirror I could see the blood in the hole
+rising and falling with the pulsation of the brain.'
+The result was all he had hoped for.  During the next four hours he felt his
+spirits rising higher until he reached a state of freedom and serenity which
+he claims, has been with him ever since.  For some time now he had been
+sharing a flat with Amanda, and when she came back from America she
+immediately noticed the change in him.
+This encouraged her to join him on the mental plane by doing her own
+trepanation. The operation was carefully recorded.  She had obtained a cine-
+camera, and Joey stood by, filming, as she attacked her head with an electric
+drill.  The film shows her carefully at work, dressed in a blood-spattered
+white robe.  She shaves her head, makes an incision in her head with a scalpel
+and calmly starts drilling.  Blood spurts as she penetrates the skull.  She
+lays aside the drill and with a triumphant smile advances towards Joey and the
+camera.
+Ever since, Joey and Amanda have lived and worked together in harmony.  From
+the business of buying old prints to color and resell, they have progressed to
+ownership of the Pigeonhole Gallery and seem reasonably prosperous.  They have
+also started a family.
+There is nothing apparently abnormal about them, and many of their old friends
+agree in finding them even more pleasant and contented since their operations.
+There is plenty of leisure in their lives, mingled with the kind of activities
+they most enjoy.  These of course include talking and writing about
+trepanation.
+They have lectured widely in Europe and America to groups of doctors and other
+interested people, showing the film of Amanda's s elf-operation, entitled
+"Heartbeat in the Brain".
+It is generally received with awe, the sight of blood often causing people to
+faint.  At one showing in London a film critic described the audience
+'dropping off their seats one by one like ripe plums'.  Yet it was not
+designed to be gruesome. The soundtrack is of soothing music, and the surgical
+scenes alternate with some delightful motion studies of Amanda's pet pigeon,
+Birdie, as a symbol of peace and wisdom.
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+Vanguard Notes
+Several years ago we had come across this information on intentional
+trepanning to awaken a more spiritual quality and it got misplaced.  It is
+pleasing to find it again because it was of great interest at the time and
+led to quite a bit of speculation relating to expanding 'psychic' abilities by
+creating a hole in the Pineal region.
+The idea was based on increasing oxidation in certain parts of the brain which
+would 'awaken' atrophied abilities.  Certain hallucinogenic drugs have this
+ability and children often have 'imaginary playmates' or claim visual and/or
+audible communication with recently deceased loved ones.
+It is intriguing that babies have a soft spot in the top of their head for
+many months before the skull actually closes.  The skull has a 'seam' on each
+side which allows it to partially expand for the first few years of life.  As
+the person ages, this expansion ability diminishes, resulting in less blood
+flow in certain regions of the brain.  This reduced blood flow reduces the
+amount of available oxygen to cause desensitizing and atrophy of the affected
+brain tissues.
+These imaginary friends which children claim to play with are quite possibly
+real entities existing on a higher frequency that is visible to an excited,
+oxygen-enriched pineal gland.  Since the skull does not completely harden for
+the first several years of a childs' life, it is possible the additional blood
+flow provides this pineal stimulation.
+As the child is subjected to the teasing of adults about his imaginary friend,
+he learns not to discuss it publicly for fear or ridicule or embarassment.
+So, the combination of ridicule by adults and the childs' peers, working in
+conjunction with the hardening of the skull, causes this unique extra visual
+sense to atrophy and become relegated to an imaginary episode in life.
+It is therefore quite plausible that intentional trepanning in the pineal
+region would allow the brain tissue in that area to breathe, following the
+pulsations of blood from the heart.  This would 'awaken' the pineal region to
+new sensations which would have to be assimilated or 'mapped' into conscious
+perception in a rational, understandable way.
+The paper I had on this trepannation procedure said once the hole was created,
+the blood pressure would cause the exposed brain surface to pulse in and out
+of the hole, kind of like an expanding and contracting lung.  The writer who
+calls himself Lob-Sang Rampa said his third eye (pineal gland) was opened with
+a sliver of wood which was made larger over time.
+The effects of this trepanning are not exactly clear, but it appears to
+mollify violent or temperamental outbursts, making the person sociable and
+pleasant to be around.  Wouldn't this be a great treatment for violent
+criminals who are repetitive in such behavior?  Very much like castration, I
+imagine.
+Despiccable as mind control and behavior modification techniques are, I think
+when people intentionally hurt other people in a violent way and on a regular
+basis, they automatically make themselves candidates for such correction
+techniques.........................................................>>> Jerry
+----