The following are tips and examples for using Boolean logic to search the Pearls of Wisdom Online and quickly find the Pearls and information you seek.

To search the Pearls of Wisdom Online, enter a search request in the space provided and click the Search button. A simple search request might consist of words or a phrase. Use quotation marks around phrases. A list of matching documents is returned. To view a document in the list, click on the link. After you have opened a document, you should see your search words highlighted in yellow.

Click the “Advanced” button to show a few more ways to more tightly focus your search, such as by publication date or the event date.

Search Pearls Online

Master/Author

The Master/Author dropdown menu contains a list of all the ascended masters that are authors of Pearls as well as authors of Pearls that come from lectures and sermons.

Volume and Number

If you know the volume and number of the Pearl you want to find you can select them in the volume and number dropdown menus.

You can list all the Pearls for a specific year by choosing just the year and not a number.

You can combine these parts in a search.

Example: To search for all the 1981 Pearls by El Morya where he uses the word “mirth,”

• Enter mirth in the search request,
• Choose Volume 24 – 1981 and
• Select El Morya as the author.

Proximity

How close a word or phrase is to another word or phrase often determines how relevant the document is.

Use “w/n” to mean “within n words”. Example: to find all Pearls that have the word “karma” within 10 words of “balance” type: karma w/10 balance

A proximity search can also often help when the exact phrase is not known. For example, if you knew El Morya said something about mirth being needed on earth you could search for: mirth w/10 earth

Search Types

1. An any words search is any sequence of text, like a sentence or a question. In an any words search, use quotation marks around phrases, put + in front of any word or phrase that is required, and – in front of a word or phrase to exclude it.

Example: dispensation multiply "violet flame" would search for a sentence with the individual words dispensation and multiply and the two words together of "violet flame"

Example: "saint germain" -Europe +"United States" would search for a sentence with the two phrases saint germain and United States, but screen out sentences with those phrases and the word Europe

2. An all words search is like an any words search, except that all of the terms have to be found in a document.

3. A boolean search request consists of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them. Examples:

elemental and gnome	Both words must be present
elemental or gnome	Either word can be present
elemental w/20 gnome	elemental must occur within 20 words of gnome
elemental not w/20 gnome	elemental must not occur within 20 words of gnome
elemental and not gnome	Only elemental must be present
author contains angel	The field author must contain angel

If you use more than one connector, use parentheses to precisely indicate the logic of the search. For example, demons and discarnates or entities could mean (demons and discarnates) or entities, or it could mean demons and (discarnates or entities).

Search with Special Characters

Search terms may include the following special characters:

?	Matches any single character. Example: appl? matches apply or apple
*	Matches any number of characters. Example: appl* matches application t*ibetan matches tibetan or thibetan
~	Stemming. Example: apply~ matches apply, applies, applied.
%	Fuzzy search. Example: ba%nana matches banana, bananna.
#	Phonic search. Example: #smith matches smith, smythe.
&	Synonym search. Example: fast& matches quick.
~~	Numeric range. Example: 12~~24 matches 18.
:	Variable term weighting. Example: requirement:4 w/5 ascension:1

Words and Phrases

Use quotation marks to indicate a phrase. You can use a phrase anywhere in a search request. Example: visualization w/15 “third eye”

Noise words. The Search program skips over any noise words such as and, the, a, an, if, of. Example: "statue of liberty" would retrieve any document containing the word statue, any intervening word, and the word liberty.

Punctuation inside of a search word is treated as a space. Thus, can't would be treated as a phrase consisting of two words: can and t. 1843(c)(8)(ii) would become 1843 c 8 ii (four words).

Wildcards (* and ?)

A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A question mark in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example:

appl* would match apple, application, etc.
*cipl* would match principle, participle, etc.
appl? would match apply and apple but not apples.
ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc.

Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word slows down a search due to the number of word possibilities.

Synonym Searching

Synonym searching finds synonyms of a word in a search request. Add the & character any words you want to include synonyms for in the search.

Example, a search for fast would also find quick, if you search with fast& w/5 search.

The effect of a synonym search depends on the type of synonym expansion requested on the search form. The Search program can expand synonyms using only user-defined synonym sets, using synonyms from the Search program's built-in thesaurus, or using synonyms and related words (such as antonyms, related categories, etc.) from the Search program's built-in thesaurus.

Fuzzy Searches

Add fuzziness selectively using the % character. The number of % characters you add determines the number of differences the Search program will ignore when searching for a word. The position of the % characters determines how many letters at the start of the word have to match exactly. Examples:

• ba%nana – the returned similar word must begin with ba and have at most one difference between it and banana.
• b%%anana – the returned similar word must begin with b and have at most two differences between it and banana.

Phonic Searching

Phonic searching looks for a word that sounds like the word you are searching for and begins with the same letter. Example: a phonic search for Smith will also find Smithe and Smythe.

To ask the Search program to search for a word phonically, put a # in front of the word in your search request. Examples: #smith, #johnson

You can also check the Phonic searching box in the search form to enable phonic searching for all words in your search request. Phonic searching is somewhat slower than other types of searching and tends to make searches over-inclusive, so it is usually better to use the # symbol to do phonic searches selectively.

Stemming

Stemming extends a search to cover grammatical variations on a word. For example, a search for fish would also find fishing. A search for applied would also find applying, applies, and apply. There are two ways to add stemming to your searches:

1. Check the Stemming box in the search form to enable stemming for all of the words in your search request. Stemming does not slow searches noticeably and is almost always helpful in making sure you find what you want.
2. If you want to add stemming selectively, add a ~ at the end of words that you want stemmed in a search. Example: apply~
3. Note that stemming is checked by default. Uncheck it if you DON'T want stemming. For example, if you are searching for Watcher and don't want watching or watches or watch.

Variable Term Weighting

When the Search program sorts search results after a search, by default all words in a request count equally in counting hits. However, you can change this by specifying the relative weights for each term in your search request. Example: reincarnation:5 and karma:1

This request would retrieve the same documents as reincarnation and karma but, the Search program would weight reincarnation five times as heavily as karma when sorting the results.

In a natural language search, the Search program automatically weights terms based on an analysis of their distribution in your documents. If you provide specific term weights in a natural language search, these weights will override the weights the Search program would otherwise assign.

AND Connector

Use the AND connector in a search request to connect two expressions, both of which must be found in any document retrieved.

Example: "saint germain" and "violet flame" would retrieve any document that contained both phrases.

(violet or purple) and (portia w/5 germain) would retrieve any document that (1) contained either violet OR purple, AND (2) contained portia within 5 words of germain.

OR Connector

Use the OR connector in a search request to connect two expressions, at least one of which must be found in any document retrieved. For example, "violet flame" or "violet fire" would retrieve any document that contained "violet flame", "violet fire", or both.

W/N Connector

Use the W/N connector in a search request to specify that one word or phrase must occur within N words of the other. For example, soul w/10 spirit would retrieve any document that contained soul within 10 words of spirit. Examples:

(flame or fire) w/5 violet
(violet w/5 flame) w/10 karma
(violet and singing) w/5 flame

Some types of complex expressions using the W/N connector will produce ambiguous results and should not be used.

Examples of ambiguous search requests:
(will and divine) w/10 (presence and spirit)
(divine w/5 will) w/10 (fate and karma)

In general, at least one of the two expressions connected by W/N must be a single word or phrase or a group of words and phrases connected by OR. Example:

(violet and singing) w/10 (flame or fire)
(violet and fire) w/10 archangel zadkiel

The Search program uses two built in search words to mark the beginning and end of a file: xfirstword and xlastword. These terms are useful if you want to limit a search to the beginning or end of a file.

Example: peace w/10 xlastword would search for peace within 10 words of the end of a document.

NOT and NOT W/N

Use NOT in front of any search expression to reverse its meaning. This allows you to exclude documents from a search.

Example: divine will and not karma

NOT standing alone will most likely start a potentially large and time-consuming search request.

Example: not aura would retrieve all documents that did not contain aura.

If NOT is not the first connector in a request, you need to use either AND or OR with NOT:

karma or not reincarnation

The NOT W/ (“not within”) operator allows you to search for a word or phrase not in association with another word or phrase.

Example: karma not w/20 reincarnation

Unlike the W/ operator, NOT W/ is not symmetrical. That is, karma not w/20 reincarnation is not the same as reincarnation not w/20 karma.

In the karma not w/20 reincarnation request, the Search program looks for karma and excludes cases where karma is too close to reincarnation. In the reincarnation not w/20 karma request, the Search program looks for reincarnation and excludes cases where reincarnation is too close to karma.

Numeric Range Searching

A numeric range search looks for any numbers that fall within a range of positive numbers. To add a numeric range component to a search request, enter the upper and lower bounds of the search separated by ~~.

Example: apostles w/5 10~~15

This request would find any document containing apostles within 5 words of a number between the lower bound of 10 and the upper bound of 15.

For purposes of numeric range searching:
• decimal points and commas are treated as spaces
• minus signs are ignored.

For example: -123,456.78 would be interpreted as: 123 456 78 (three numbers).

Using alphabet customization, the interpretation of punctuation characters can be changed. In order to get the search to ignore any commas or periods, you delete the commas and periods from the number. Example: 123,456.78 would be entered 12345678.