THE
GARDEN OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER
THE JOURNEY TO SPIRITUAL FULFILLMENT
Longfield Beatty 1939
Where is the root
of the Golden Flower?
In the garden of the
Two Trees.
And where does the
flower bloom?
In the Purple Hall
of the City of Jade.
Where is this garden?
In the seed water,
the moat of the City.
When
does the flower bloom?
At
the end of the far journey.
What journey?
From water to fire,
earth to gold, serpent to eagle;
from father to mother,
mother to son, son to father.
And the cost
of the journey?
The blood of father,
mother, and son.
Blood, then, is a
password?
No, only the Sphinx
can teach the password.
Page 207/208
THE CULT OF THE SUN
ADORATION OF RA
by the Scribe and Royal Commander
NEKHT
"He saith, Homage to thee who art brilliant'and
mighty! When thou hast dawned in the horizon of the sky there is praise
of thee in the mouth of all people. Thou art become beautiful and young
as a Disc in the hand of thy Mother. Dawn thou in every place, thy heart
being enlarged forever!
"The divinities of the Two Lands come to thee bowing down, they
give praise at thy shining forth. Thou dawnest in the horizon of the
sky, thou brightenest the Two Lands with Malachite.
"Thou art the Divine Youth, the Heir of Eternity, who begat himself
and brought himself forth, King of this land, ruler of the Tuat, Chief
of the Districts of the Other World who came forth from the Water, who
emerged from Nun, who reared himself and made splendid his children!
"Living God, Lord of Love! All folk live when thou shinest, dawning
as King of the Gods. O Lord of the Sky, Lord of the Earth, King of Truth,
Lord of Eternity, Ruler of Everlasting, Sovereign of all the Gods, Living
God who made Eternity, who created the sky and established himself therein!
"The Nine are in jubilation at thy shining forth, the earth is
in joy at beholding thy beams, the people come forth rejoicing to behold
thy beauty every day."
And the next quotation is "relayed"
from Budge (op. cit., p. 52:1), having come from Papyrus No. 10188 (Brit.
Mus.). There have been some omissions in order to reinforce as much
as possible the particular aspect of it which is our immediate concern
To this end also notes have been added to certain passages of particular
importance.
THE LAMENT OF THE SISTERS
(Isis and Nepthys over the dead
Osiris)
"Beautiful
Youth, come to thy exalted house we see thee not.
"Hail, Beautiful
Boy, come to thy house, draw nigh after thy separation
from us.
"Hail, Beautiful
Youth, Pilot of Time, who groweth except at this hour.i
"Holy image of
his Father, mysterious essence proceeding from
Tem.
"The Lord!
How much more wonderful is he than his Father,ii the
first-born son of the womb of his Mother.
"Come back to us
in thy actual form; we will embrace thee.
Depart not from us,
thou Beautiful Face, dearly beloved one, the Image of Tem, Master of
Love.iii
"Come thou
in peace, our Lord, we would see thee.
"Great Mighty
One among the Gods, the road which
thou travellest cannot be described.iv
"The Babe, the
Child at morn and at eve,vexcept
when thou encirclest the heavens and the earth with thy bodily form.
vi
"Come, thou Babe,
growing young when setting,v our Lord,
we would see thee.
"Come in peace,
Great Babe of His Father, thou art established
in thy house.
"Whilst thou travellest
thou art hymned by us,vii
and life springeth up for us out of thy nothingness.
O our Lord, come
in peace, let us see thee.
"Hail, Beautiful
Boy, come to thy exalted house; let thy back be to thy house. The Gods
are upon their thrones.
Hail ! Come in peace, King.
"Babe ! How lovely it is to see
thee! Come, come to us, O Great One, glorify our love.
"O ye gods who are in Heaven.
O ye gods who are in Earth.
O ye gods who are in the Tuat.
O ye gods who are in the Abyss.
O ye gods who are in the service of the Deep.viii
We follow the Lord, the Lord of Love!"
The Sisters.
"Isis and Nepthys clearly represent the great duality, positive
and negative, male and female, life and death, who are made one
by the sovereign force of love"
THE TRUE AND INVISIBLE ROSICRUCIAN
ORDER
Paul Foster Case 1981
Page 108
"The Zohar
says that all is contained in the mystery of Vav,
and thereby all is revealed. The same Qabalistic authority connects
Vav with the Son
of David, and this was interpreted by erudite Europe
in the seventeenth century, as a reference to the Christos.
Attached to the nail was a stone. This is the same stone we have mentioned
before. It is the Stone rejected by the builders. It is the Stone of
the Philosophers. It is ABN, Ehben, signifying the
union of the Son with
the Father.
We have already said that Henry Khunrath published in 1609 a book called
Amphitheatrum Chemicum, in which appears an illustration showing the
word ABN, Ehben, enclosed in a triangle. This radiant triangle,
with the letters ABN at its corners, is borne by a dragon, and the dragon
is on top of a mountain. The mountain is in the middle or center of
an enclosure, surrounded by a wall having seven sides, whose corners
bear the words, reading from left to right or clockwise around the wall:
Dissolution, Purification, Azoth Pondus, Solution, Multiplication, Fermentation,
Projection. Thus, the inner wall summarizes the alchemical
operations. Its gate has the motto Non omnibus, meaning "Not
for all," as if to intimate that entrance into the central mystery
is not for everyone.
Surrounding this inner wall is another in the form of a seven-
pointed star, composed of fourteen equal lines. The gate to this outer
wall is flanked by two triangular pyramids, or obelisks. Over one is
the sun, and this obelisk is named Faith. Over the other is the moon,
and this pillar is named Taciturnity, or Silence. Between the pillars,
in the gate, is a figure bearing the caduceus of Hermes
or Mercury, standing behind a table
on .- which is written "Good Works."
Below is the motto: "The ignorant deride.
what the wise extol and admire."
Thus, in Khunrath's diagram we have the same association between a seven-sided
figure and a stone that occurs in the Fama. The mystic mountain, with
the dragon at its summit, is also a Rosicrucian symbol,
as one may see in Thomas Vaughan's Lumen de Lumine, where Section 2
is entitled "A Letter from the Brothers of R.C.,
"Concerning the Invisible, Magical
Mountain and the Treasure therein Contained."
THE JOURNAL OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
"5 The author
of Magic Mountains (McOwen, 1996)
refers to times when the hill .and glens were quiet and peaceful and
the hill person could find solitude. Then, senses were heightened and
psychic phenomena and "mind-links with the past could be more easily
absorbed if the person were reasonably receptive".
2061 ODYSSEY THREE
Arthur C. Clarke 1987
"THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN"
WHY SMASH ATOMS ?
A. K. Solomon 1940
Page
77
"ONCE THE FAIRY TALE HERO HAS
PENETRATED THE RING OF FIRE ROUND THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN HE IS FREE TO WOO
THE HEROINE IN HER CASTLE ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP."
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Thomas Mann 1875-1955
Page 708
"It was an especially well cured
brand, with the best leaf wrapper, named"
"Light of Asia"
LIGHT OF ASIA
Sir Edwin Arnold
1909
"THE
LIGHT OF ASIA"
OR
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION
(MAHABHINISHKRAMANA)
BEING
THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF GAUTAMA
PRINCE OF INDIA AND FOUNDER OF BUDDHISM"
Page 99
page numbers 99/100 missing
"Book the Fourth"
6 |
BUDDHA |
40 |
22 |
4 |
6 |
SANGHA |
50 |
23 |
5 |
6 |
DHARMA |
45 |
27 |
9 |
18 |
Add to Reduce |
135 |
72 |
18 |
1+8 |
Reduce to Deduce |
1+3+5 |
7+2 |
1+8 |
9 |
Essence of number |
9 |
9 |
9 |
7 SAMSARA 72
72 SAMSARA 7
7 SAMSARA 18
18 SAMSARA 7
7 SAMSARA 9
9 SAMSARA 7
6 |
BUDDHA |
- |
- |
- |
- |
B+U+D |
27 |
9 |
9 |
- |
D |
4 |
4 |
4 |
- |
H+A |
9 |
9 |
9 |
6 |
BUDDHA |
40 |
22 |
22 |
- |
- |
4+0 |
2+2 |
2+2 |
6 |
BUDDHA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
- |
B |
U |
D |
D |
H |
A |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
8 |
- |
- |
- |
8 |
|
8 |
EIGHT |
8 |
6 |
B |
U |
D |
D |
H |
A |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
21 |
4 |
4 |
8 |
1 |
+ |
= |
40 |
4+0 |
4 |
FOUR |
4 |
- |
- |
2+1 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
8 |
1 |
+ |
= |
22 |
2+2 |
4 |
FOUR |
4 |
6 |
B |
U |
D |
D |
H |
A |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
1 |
ONE |
1 |
- |
2 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
- |
2 |
TWO |
2 |
- |
- |
3 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
3 |
- |
3 |
THREE |
3 |
- |
- |
- |
4 |
4 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
4 |
4x2 |
8 |
EIGHT |
8 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
8 |
- |
- |
- |
8 |
- |
8 |
EIGHT |
8 |
6 |
B |
U |
D |
D |
H |
A |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
6 |
BUDDHA |
- |
- |
- |
- |
B |
2 |
2 |
2 |
- |
U |
21 |
3 |
3 |
- |
D |
4 |
4 |
4 |
- |
D |
4 |
4 |
4 |
- |
H+A |
9 |
9 |
9 |
6 |
BUDDHA |
40 |
22 |
22 |
- |
- |
4+0 |
2+2 |
2+2 |
6 |
BUDDHA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
6 |
BUDDHA |
- |
- |
- |
- |
B+U+D+D |
31 |
13 |
4 |
- |
H+A |
9 |
9 |
9 |
6 |
BUDDHA |
- |
- |
13 |
8 |
THIRTEEN |
99 |
- |
- |
10 |
NAMES OF GOD |
99 |
- |
- |
THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE
DEAD
OR
The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according
to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup.s English Rendering
Compiled and edited by
W.Y Evans-Wentz 1960
SRI KRISHNA'S REMEMBERING
"MANY LIVES, ARJUNA, YOU
AND I HAVE LIVED, I REMEMBER THEM ALL, BUT THOU DOST NOT"
Bhagavad-Gita, iv, 5.
Page 222 (Addenda)
IV. THE GURU AND SHISHYA (OR CHELA)
AND INITIATIONS
"Very frequently the Bardo Thodol
directs the dying or the deceased to concentrate mentally upon, or to
visualize, his tutelary deity
or else his spiritual guru, and, at other times, to recollect
the teachings conveyed to him by his human guru, more especially
at the time of the mystic initiation. Yogis and Tantrics ordinarily
comment upon such ritualistic directions by saying that there exist
three lines of gurus to whom reverence and worship are to be
paid. The first and highest is purely superhuman, called in Sanskrit
divyaugha, meaning . heavenly (or "divine ") line';
the second is of the most highly developed human beings, possessed of
supernormal / Page 223 / or siddhic powers,
and hence called siddhaugha; the third is of ordinary religious
teachers and hence called manavaugha, 'human line'.1
5 |
DEITY |
- |
- |
- |
- |
D+E |
9 |
9 |
9 |
- |
I |
9 |
9 |
9 |
- |
T+Y |
45 |
9 |
9 |
5 |
DEITY |
63 |
27 |
27 |
- |
- |
6+3 |
2+7 |
2+7 |
5 |
DEITY |
9 |
9 |
9 |
Women as
well as men, if qualified, may be gurus. The shihsya
is, as a rule, put on probation for one year before receiving the first
initiation. If at the end of that time he proves to be an unworthy receptacle
for the higher teachings, he is rejected. Otherwise, he is taken in
hand by the guru and carefully prepared for psychical development.
A shishya when on probation is merely commanded to perform such
and such exercises as are deemed suitable to his or her particular needs.
Then, when the probation ends, the shishya is told by the guru
the why of the exercises, and the final results which are certain to
come from the exercises when successfully carried out. Ordinarily, once
a guru is chosen, the shishya has no right to disobey
the guru, or to take another guru until it is proven that
the first guru can guide the shisya no further. If the shishya
develops rapidly, be-cause of good karma, and arrives at a stage of
development equal to that of the guru, the guru, if unable
to guide the shishya further, will probably himself direct
the shishya to a more advanced guru.
For initiating a shishya, the guru must first prepare
himself, usually during a course of special ritual exercises occupying
several days, whereby the guru, by 'invoking
the gift-waves of the divine
line of gurus, sets up direct communication with the spiritual
plane on which the divine gurus exist. If the human guru be possessed
of siddhic powers, this communion is believed to be as real as
wireless or telepathic communica-tion between two human beings on the
earth-plane.
The actual initiation, which follows, consists of giving to
the shishya the secret mantra, or Word of Power, whereby at-one-ment
is brought about between the shishya, as the new member of the
secret brotherhood, and the Supreme Guru / Page 224
/ who stands to all gurus and shishyas under
him as the Divine Father. The vital-force, or
vital-airs (prana-vayu), serve as a psycho-physical link uniting
the human with the divine; and the vital-force, having been centred
in the Seventh Psychic-Centre, or Thousand-petalled Lotus, by exercise
of the awakened Serpent-Power, through that Centre, as through a wireless
receiving station, are received the spiritual gift-waves of the Supreme
Guru. Thus is the divine grace received into the human organism
and made to glow, as electricity is made to glow when conducted to the
vacuum of an electric bulb; and the true initiation is thereby conferred
and the shishya Illuminated.
7 |
SHISHYA |
- |
- |
- |
- |
SH |
27 |
9 |
9 |
- |
I |
9 |
9 |
9 |
- |
SH |
27 |
9 |
9 |
- |
YA |
26 |
8 |
8 |
7 |
SHISHYA |
89 |
35 |
8 |
In the occult language of the
Indian and Tibetan Mysteries, the Supreme Guru
sits enthroned in the peri carp of the Thousand-petalled
Lotus. Thither, by the power of the Serpent
Power of the awakened Goddess Kundalini, the shishya, guided
by the human guru, is led, and bows down at the feet of the Divine
Father, and receives the blessing and the bene-diction. The
Veil of Maya has been lifted, and the Clear Light shines into
the heart of the shishya unobstructedly. As one Lamp is lit by
the Flame of another Lamp, so the Divine Power is communicated from
the Divine Father, the Supreme Guru,
to the newly-born one, the human shishya.
The secret mantra conferred at the
initiation, like the Egyptian Word of Power, is the Password necessary
for a conscious passing from the embodied state
into the disembodied state. If the initiate
is sufficiently developed spiritually before the time comes for the
giving up of the gross physical body at death, and can at the moment
of quitting the earth-plane remember the mystic mantra,
or Word of Power, the change will take place without loss of consciousness;
nor will the shishya of full development suffer any break in
the con-tinuity of consciousness from incarnation to incarnation."
MAGIC AND MYSTERY IN TIBET
Alexandra David - Neel 1965
Page197
Mystic Theories and Spiritual Training
"As for the method which mystics call
the 'Short Path', the 'Direct Path,'2
it is considered as most hazardous.
It is - according to the masters who teach it - as if instead
of following the road which goes round a mountain ascending gradually
towards its summit, one attempted to reach it in straight line, climbing
perpendicular rocks and crossing chasms on a rope. Only first-rate equilibrists,
exceptional athletes, completely free from giddiness, can hope to succeed
in such a task. Even the fittest may fear sudden exhaustion or dizziness.
And there inevitably follows a dread-ful fall in which the too presumptuous
alpinist breaks his bones.
By this illustration Tibetan mystics mean a spiritual fall leading to
the lowest and worst degree of aberration and perversity to the condition
of a demon.
I have heard a learned lama maintain that the bold theories regarding
complete intellectual freedom and the enfranchisement from all rules
whatever, which are expounded by the most advanced adepts of the 'Short
Path', are the faint echo of teachings that existed from time
immemorial in Central and nonhern Asia
.
4 |
LAMA |
- |
- |
- |
- |
L |
12 |
3 |
3 |
- |
A |
1 |
1 |
1 |
- |
M |
13 |
4 |
4 |
- |
A |
1 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
LAMA |
27 |
9 |
9 |
The lama was convinced
that these doctrines agree completely with the
Buddhas highest teaching as it was made evident
in various passages of his discourses. However, said the lama,
the Buddha was
well aware that the majority do better to abide by rules devised
to avert the baleful effects of their ignorance and guide them along
paths where no disasters are to be feared. For that very reason, the
all-Wise Master has established rules for the laity and monks of average
intelligence.
The same lama entertained serious doubts as to the Aryan origin of the
Buddha. He rather believed
that his ancestors belonged to the yellow race and was convinced that
his expected successor, the future Buddha Maitreya,
would appear in northern Asia.
Where did he get these ideas? 1 have not been able to find out. Dis-cussion
is hardly possible with Oriental mystics. When once they have answered:
'I have seen this in my meditations,' little hope is left to the inquirer
of obtaining further explanations."
2. "Technically, in mystic parlance, tsi gchig, lus gchig sang
rgyais, 'to attain buddha-hood
in one life, one body'. That is to say, in the very life in which one
has begun ones spiritual training. Tibetans say also lam
chung ('the short road')."
Page 210
There exists an immense literature in India
devoted to the explana-tion of the mystic word aum.
The latter has exoteric, esoteric and mystic meanings. It may signify
the three persons of the Hindu Trinity:
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. It may signify the Brahman,
the 'One without a second' of the adwaita philosophy. It stands as a
symbol of the Inex-pressible Absolute, the last word to be uttered in
mysticism, after which there follows only silence. It is, according
to Shri SankarAcharya,9 'the
support of the meditation', or, as declared in the Mundakopanishad's
text itself, 'It is the bow by the means of which the
individual self attains the universal self.'10
Again, aum is the creative sound whose vibrations build
the worlds. When the mystic is capable of hearing all in one the countless
voices, cries, songs, and noises of all beings and things that exist
and move, it is the unique sound aum which reaches him. That same aum
vibrates also in the utmost depth of his inner self. He who can pronounce
it with the right tone is able to work wonders and he who knows how
to utter it silently attains supreme emancipation.
Tibetans who have received the word Aum from India,
together with the mantras with which it is associated,
do not appear to have been acquainted with its many meanings among their
southern neighbours, nor do they know the very prominent place it occupies
in their religions and philosophies.
Aum is repeated by Lamaists along with other Sanskrit
formulas, without having a special impoTance by itself, while other
mystic sylla-bles, such as hum! and especially phat!, are supposed to
possess great power and are much used in magic and mystic rites.
So much for the first word of the formula.
Mani padme are Sanskrit terms that mean jewel
in the lotus'. Here we come, it seems, to an immediately
intelligible meaning, yet the current interpretation does not take any
account of that plain meaning.
9 In his commentary on Mundakopanishad.
10. 'The pranava (that is the name
of the sacred syllable aum) is the bow, the atman
(the individual self) is the arrow and the Brahman (universal self:
the Absolute) is said to be the mark,'
Page 211
Common folk believe that the recitations
of Aum mani padme hum!
will assure them a happy rebirth in Nub Dewa chen, the Western
Paradise of the Great Bliss.
The more 'learned' have been told that the six syllables of the formula
are connected with the six classes of sentient beings and are related
to one of the mystic colours as follows:
Aum is white and connected with gods (lha).
Ma is blue and connected with non-gods (lhamayin).11
Ni is yellow and connected with men (mi).
Pad is green and connected with animals (tudo).
Me is red and connected with non-men (Yidagl2
or other mi-ma- yin13).
Hum is black and connected with dwellers in purgatories.
There are several opinions regarding the effect of the recitation of
these six syllables. Popular tradition declares that those who frequently
repeat the formula will be reborn in the Western Paradise of the Great
Bliss. Others who deem themselves more enlightened declare that the
recita-tion of Aum mani padme hum!
may liberate one from a rebirth in any of the six realms.
Aum mani padme hum!
is used as a support for a special meditation which may, approximately,
be described as follows:
One identifies the six kinds of beings with the six
syllables which are pictures in their respective colours, as mentioned
above. They form a kind of chain without end that circulates through
the body, carried on by the breath entering through one nostril and
going out through the other.
Page 212
As the concentration of mind becomes more
perfect, one sees men-tally the length of the chain increasing. Now
when they go out with the expiration, the mystic syllables are carried
far away, before being absorbed again with the next inspiration. Yet,
the chain is not broken, it rather elongates like a rubber strap and
always remains in touch with the man who meditates.
Gradually, also, the shape of the Tibetan letters vanishes and those
who 'obtain the fruit' of the practice perceive the six syllables
as six realms in which arise, move, enjoy, suffer, and pass
away the innumer-able beings, belonging to the six species.
And now it remains for the meditator to realize that the six
realms (the whole phenomenal world) are subjective: a mere creation
of the mind which images them and into which they sink.
Advanced mystics reach, by the way of this practice, a trance in which
the latters of the formula, as well as the beings and their activity,
all merge into That which for lack of a better term, Mahayanist
Buddhists have called 'Emptiness.'
Then, having realized the 'Void,' they become emancipated from the illusion
of the world and, as a consequence, liberated from rebirths which are
but the fruit of that creative delusion.
Another of the many interpretations of Aum
mani padme hum! ignores the division in six syllables
and takes the formula according to its mean- ing: 'a jewel in the lotus.'
These words are considered as symbolic.
The simplest interpretation is: In the lotus (which is the world) exists
the precious jewel of Buddha's
teaching.
Another explanation takes the lotus as the mind. In the depth of it,
by introspective meditation, one is able to find the jewel of knowledge.
truth, reality, liberation, nirvana, these various terms being different
denominations of one same thing.
Now we come to a meaning related to cenain doctrines of the Mahayanist
Buddhists.
According to them nirvana, the supreme salvation, is not separated from
samsara, the phenomenal world, but the mystic finds the first in the
heart of the second, just as the 'jewel'
may be found in the 'lotus.'
Nirvana, the 'jewel' exists when enlightenment exists.
Samsara, the 'lotus,'
exists when delusion exists, which veils nirvana, just as the many petals
of the 'lotus' conceal the 1ewel' nestling among them.
Page 213
Hum! at the end of the formula,
is a mystic expression of wrath used in coercing fierce deities and
subduing demons. How has it become affixed to the 'jewel in the lotus'
and the Indian Aum? - This again is explained in various ways.
Hum! is a kind of mystic war cry; uttering it, is challenging
an enemy. Who is the enemy? Each one imagines him in his own way: either
as powerful fiends, or as the trinity of bad propensities that bind
us to the round of rebirth, namely lust, hatred and stupidity. More
subtle thinkers see him as the 'I.'
Hum! is also said to mean
the mind devoid of objective content, etc., etc.
Another syllable is added to conclude the repetition of
Aum mani padme hum! one hundred and eight times
on the beads of a rosary. It is the syllable hri! Some understand it
as signifying an inner reality hidden under the appearances, the basic
essence of things.
Beside aum mani padme hum hri!
other formulas are also repeated as Aum
vajra sattva! That is to say, 'Aum most excellent (diamond)
being.' It is understood that the excellent One meant is the Buddha.
The followers of the Red hat sects often repeat: Aum vajra
guru padma siddhi hum! as praise of their founder Padmasambhava.
These words mean 'Aum,
most excellent powerful guru Padma, miracle
worker, hum!'
Amongst longer formulas one of the most popular is that called
kyabdo.14 It is Tibetan without admixture of Sanskrit and its significance
is plain, yet far from crude. The text runs as follows:
'I take refuge in all
holy refuges. Ye fathers and mothers [ances-tors] who are wandering
in the round of rebirths under the shapes of the six kinds of sentient
beings. In order to attain Buddhahood, the state devoid of fear and
sorrow, let your thoughts be directed towards enlightenment.' "
AUM MANI PADME HUM
ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT
TIMES
3 |
AUM |
35 |
8 |
8 |
4 |
MANI |
37 |
19 |
1 |
5 |
PADME |
39 |
21 |
3 |
3 |
HUM |
42 |
15 |
6 |
15 |
Add to Reduce |
153 |
63 |
9 |
1+5 |
Reduce to Deduce |
1+5+3 |
6+3 |
- |
6 |
Essence of Number |
9 |
9 |
9 |
153 x 12 = 1836
5 |
DALAI |
27 |
18 |
9 |
4 |
LAMA |
27 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
- |
54 |
27 |
18 |
- |
- |
5+4 |
2+7 |
1+8 |
9 |
DALIA
LAMA |
9 |
9 |
9 |
THE STARGATE CONSPIRACY
Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince
1
999
Page328
Apocalypse now
"The new belief system wears
a coat of many colours"
A COAT OF MANY COLOURS
Herbert Read 1945
Page 57
"The aim of the superrealists as Max
Ernst has recently declared, is not merely to gain access to the unconscious
and to paint its contents in a descriptive or realistic way: nor is
it even to take various elements from the unconscious and with them
construct a separate world of fancy; it is then their aim to break down
the barriers both physical and psychical, between the conscious and
the unconscious, between the inner and the outer world, and to create
a superreality in which real and unreal, meditation and non, conscious
and unconscious, meet and mingle and dominate the whole of life. In
Bosch's case, a quite similar intention was inspired by medieval theology,
and a very literal belief in the reality of the Life Beyond. To a man
of his intense powers of visualization, the present life and life to
come, Paradise and Hell and the World, were equally real and interpenetrating;
they combined, that to say, to form a superreality that was the only
reality with which an artist could be concerned".
4 |
REAL |
36 |
18 |
9 |
7 |
REALITY |
90 |
36 |
9 |
4 |
LOVE |
54 |
18 |
9 |
6 |
DIVINE |
63 |
36 |
9 |
THE
99
NAMES OF GOD
"THEN SINGS MY SOUL MY
SAVIOUR GOD TO THEE HOW GREAT THOU ART HOW GREAT THOU ART"
JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS
Thomas Mann
1875 1955
Page 314
THE DREAMER
"THE COAT OF MANY COLOURS"
LIGHT AND LIFE
Lars Olof Bjorn 1976
Opposite Page 122
"PHARAOH AKHENATEN, SOVEREIGN
OF EGYPT 1370-1352B.C, WITH QUEEN NEFERTITI
AND
CHILDREN BELOW THE BENEVOLENT
SUN"
1370 MINOS 1352 = 18 1+ 8 = 9
THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
May 9th 2004
Page53
TELEVISION
Channel 5
MERCURY RISING
9-0pm
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Thomas Mann 1875-1955
Page 225
"WHIMS OF MERCURIUS"
THREE CALVARY CROSSES
+ + +
THREE CROSSES
X X X
6 + 6 + 6
18
1 + 8
9
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL
RESEARCH
THE CONCEPT OF A PSYCHOSPHERE:
A HEURISTIC SUGGESTION
Ralph Noyes
Volume 62 Number 851 April
1998
Page 353
"In "Survival and the Idea of
'Another World' " (Price, 1953) H. H. Price, sometime professor
of philosophy at Oxford and President of the SPR from 1939 to 1941,
gave us a coherent and ingenious account of what we would mean if we
postulated 'another world' in which disembodied humans might exist.
His main concern was to assist the discussion of the Survival Hypothesis.
He went out of his way to stress that his paper would not deal with
the evidence and arguments pro and contra Survival, on which he recognised
that opinions were (as they still are) deeply divided. His sole purpose
was to consider whether-contrary to some strongly opposing views-the
idea of conscious existence in some other sphere than our familiar three-dimensional
might make sense. As he put it (I paraphrase) there wouldn't be much
point in examining the supposed evidence for the continuation of consciousness
in some other sphere than the material one if the very concept made
logical nonsense.
For many of us Price succeeded brilliantly in his limited objective.
Acknow-ledging that he was drawing on the insights of earlier work-for
example, Whateley Carington's Telepathy (Carington, 1945), Ducasse's
Nature, Mind and Death (Ducasse, 1951), the metaphysics of Schopenhauer
and the speculations of some Hindu and Buddhist schools-Price devises
a coherent and internally consistent Other World in which human consciousness
can be conceived as functioning, even if disembodied. He is at pains
to emphasise that there need be nothing 'imaginary' or 'unreal' about
his Other World: it would differ from our familiar three-dimensional
in several respects (which he discusses), but it would be quite as real
in the sense of providing a substratum for ongoing and vivid human experience.
It would be, he said, "a world of mental images", adding
that "there is nothing imaginary about a mental image. It is
an actual entity, as real as anything can be." And he engages
in an entertaining discussion of the misuse which is often made of the
word "imaginary". His Other World would be, he says, not an
imaginary world, but an "imagy" one.
Where on earth (or, rather, out of it) would Price's Other World exist?
He remarked that there didn't seem to be much room for it now that astronomers
and geologists had occupied the regions formerly allocated to Heaven
and Hell. Price's solution was remarkably simple. "Mental images,"
he said, "are in a space of their own. They... have spatial
properties". Taking visual images as a prime example, he noted
that although these images have no spatial relationship to objects in
the physical world, they do have "extension and shape, and they
have spatial relations to one another".
It is perhaps surprising that Price's Other World has not become common
coin in the discussion of psychical research. The concept offers a coherently
conceived 'realm', or at least a 'universe of discourse', in which we
could conveniently lodge our more counter-intuitive phenomena, safe
from - insulated against - the somewhat demoralising activities of the
neo- / Page 354 / Darwinists, the neuroscientists and others whose increasingly
brilliant under-standing of how the physical world works offers material
benefits to human- kind but increasingly deprives us of room for the
well-established paranormal, let alone any foothold for 'values' and
'meaning'. Price has certainly left his footprint, and he finds himself
in other good company. His ideas are cognate, for example, with those
set out in Professor John Poynton's "Making Sense of Psi:
Whiteman's Multilevel Ontology" (Poynton, 1994). Professor John
Smythies, also, acknowledged his indebtedness to Price a while ago (Smythies,
1988) and has done so again more recently in an extended discussion
of the locus of human consciousness (Smythies, 1994). Professor Ian
Stevenson, too, in his latest monumental volumes on cases suggestive
of reincarnation (Stevenson, 1997), refers to Price's ideas (inter
alia) as possibly offering "a plausible realm where discarnate
personalities exist between terrestrial lives". But on the whole
Price has had less influence than he should. One objective of this Note
is to encourage researchers to go back to that illuminating Proceedings
of 1953 and to consider what more might be quarried from it.
A primary difficulty in putting Price's ideas to work-empirically, testably-lies
in those nagging questions which he elegantly brushed aside rather than
answered: the where and the how of his Other World.
It is all very well to provide a philosophically coherent account of
a 'space' of mental images and to demonstrate with good-humoured irony
that words like 'real' and 'unreal' lack sensible meaning when applied
to it. It is quite another matter to argue convincingly that such a
'space' actually exists ('actually', with its empirical connotations,
being perhaps a more useful term than 'really', which has metaphysical
overtones and tends to lead us into a morass of logic-chopping and tediously
linguistic argumentation). Is Price's Other World actually there
('somewhere')? Is there anything 'in' it? Or is it merely an ingenious
verbal toy? Price would say (indeed, he did say) that his sole concern
was to make sense of a concept, not to demonstrate that it had instances.
But we might find it profitable to press his ideas further, to put flesh
and blood on them, so to say; or if not flesh arid blood, at least a
local habitation and a name.
Price's Other World, though explicitly designed to see whether sense
could be made of the idea of human Survival, seems to me to be also
(if not indeed first and foremost) a potential repository of much else
which interests us in psychical research. Where better to lodge such
things as the sporadic non-conventional communications between minds
(telepathy), the experiences of those who have undergone the NDE and
the OBE, and the inexhaustibly rich realm of hypnagogic, hypnopompic
and deeper-sleep dreaming? All of these essentally private phenomena-'private'
in the sense that they occur in 'inner' experience and only enter the
public realm if those who have them report them-might conveniently be
lodged, if only for heuristic purposes, in Price's 'mental' and 'imagy'
Other World. This would at least encourage us to look for similarities
and relationships among these 'inner' phenomena and to consider whether,
regarding them as a genus with several species, they indicate what Price
felt might be "the causal laws of an image world", differing
in crucial respects, as he says, "from the laws of physics".
There is, however, a whole range of other phenomena from psychical research
which might be called 'public'-'public' in the sense that they
impinge / Page 355 / on observers and are more than merely 'inner'-which
cannot be given a place in Price's Other World as he defined it. Telepathy
and dreams have a home there, but PK, poltergeists and the physical
phenomena of the seance room (to mention only three species of this
second genus) clearly have not. While these phenomena obviously differ
in their characteristics from those to be expected "from the laws
of physics", we can hardly regard them, either, as obeying "the
causal laws of an image world", the laws of Price's Other World.
In all these public phenomena a crucial feature is that at least some
of the events are taking place in our familiar three-dimensional space-hence
their public nature, their availability to 'a public' (or anyway
to a public which is prepared to observe them). These things
may often resemble dreams and other 'inner' events, for example
in the absurdity and caprice (frequently amounting to the grotesque)
of which they are capable; but dreams they certainly are not.
What account should we attempt to give of these 'public' events?
Are they to be regarded as entirely distinct from the 'private' events
for which Price seems to be offering a home? Are we to strike a dividing
line across the field of the paranormal, leaving (for example) precognitive
dreams and ostensible communication between minds to be lodged in Price's
Other World while seeking an entirely different locus and explanation
for (for example) the all- too-physical depredations of a poltergeist
and the transient but all-too-material materializations of human figures
at a physical seance? It would be extravagant of us ('unparsimonious'
is the term used in more orthodox enquiries) to make any such radical
division at the outset. Research may eventually force us to do so on
good empirical grounds. But we owe it to intellectual rigour, or anyway
to aesthetic tidiness, to have at least a preliminary go at seeking
a unified approach. Brute facts will tell us soon enough if we're wrong.
Although Price did not postulate any interaction between his 'imagy'
world and the world of physical events (he didn't have to, given his
limited objectives) we must attempt to do this if we're to bring the
full range of paranormal events, including physical occurrences in the
public world, within Price's schema. We have to assume that whatever
goes on in Price's Other World in the way of images which relate to
each other in obedience to "the causal laws of an image world",
something or other (closely related, it seems, to these same images)
can sometimes determine, or at least substantially influence, the course
of events in our daily three-dimensional in occasional supravention
of our increasingly well-understood 'normal' laws of physical causation.
We would have to ascribe to 'mere' images a kind of causative power
which sometimes goes beyond their power to affect merely other images
in Price's 'imagy world'.
This is a radical suggestion, but it is by no means a novel one. It
has perennially haunted the human imagination in two principal forms:
first of all, in every system of magic; secondly, in philosophical Idealism.
Magic makes the crudely literal assumption that thought (mental images),
reinforced or focused by ritual procedures, is capable of acting directly
on the material world in a non-conventional manner. (But magic is
notoriously unreliable, the usual let-out being that some other magician
has been casting counter-spells, or that the moon was in the wrong quarter,
or that the sacrificed black cockerel was not wholly black. . . ) Idealism
in its several forms makes virtually the opposite Page 356 / assumption
to the magician's, namely that everything, including the material
world, consists of nothing but mental images, with the corollary
that we ought, in principle, to be able to alter 'reality' merely by
taking thought. Idealist philosophers have usually side-stepped the
embarrassing lurch into magic which 'taking thought' might imply by
the device of making ad hoc additions to their metaphysical systems,
e.g. that the world, though entirely a world of thought, is a thought
in the mind of God, or that its obstinate stability, its brute persistence
in observing the regularities of scientific 'laws' (and barking our
shins if we get in the way), is due to a consensus of expectations (a
consensus of mental images) on the part of human observers. Why there
should be such a consensus and why it should take the particular form
it does is never explained (and God, of course, need not be given an
explanation).
Among Price's invaluable merits is that he avoids both magic and Idealism.
If we are to toy, with some enlargement of his hypothetical 'imagy world'
in a manner which would allow it, at least in principle, to impinge
occasionally on the public world of objects, we owe it to him to be
equally abstemious from the magical and the Idealist. The only way in
which we can achieve this balancing act is by reifying Price's
'Other World'. We must imagine it as being entirely real (as real as
the world of everyday experience); and we must give it a precise location
and distinct properties. We must-quoting a useful line from Act 5, Scene
1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream-give "to airy nothing a local
habitation and a name".
As for the habitation, I think we need not blush to postulate a
space or sphere or realm which adjoins our familiar three-dimensional
but lies at such an angle to it that our physical organs of perception
(evolved wholly to assist survival in the three-dimensional) cannot
perceive it. Many competent physicists now permit themselves as many
as 7 or 8 dimensions (additional to the familiar three) simply to accommodate
the weird behaviour of mere matter (e.g. Kaku, 1994); and good cosmologists
are now telling us that nine-tenths of the mass of the universe cannot
be perceived (can only be inferred) and is best called, provisionally,
'Dark Matter'. In this new Wonderland of orthodox scientific speculation
there must surely be room for the very modest 'other space' which our
own field of enquiry seems to require. As for a name, I diffidently
suggest 'Psychosphere', a neologism formed by analogy with that currently
fruitful term 'biosphere', though without any implication that there
is more than a linguistic resemblance. I employed this term as a purely
fictional device in a short novel published in 1985 about the perennial
puzzle of the UFO phenomenon (Noyes, 1985); but it may be worth considering
whether the concept can be put to coherent use outside a fictional context.
To serve the purposes for which I suggest we should invent it (purposes
of a heuristic or 'thought-experiment' nature) the Psychosphere must
have some minimum properties. It must be a space in which Price's mental
images have real existence. Since mental images are, by definition,
objects of minds, the Psychosphere must also have all the properties
of minds as determined by orthodox psychology and by systematic introspection.
As we wish the Psycho-sphere to have causative action in three-dimensional
space, there must be a linkage between the two. These are, I suggest,
the three essential properties of the Psychosphere, and they follow,
merely by logic, from the thought-experiment / Page 357 / which the
concept is designed to assist. Once we have invented the Psycho- sphere,
however, vistas of speculation become apparent and possibilities of
experimentation may suggest themselves.
To speculate. . . A Psychosphere of the kind proposed will have to be
the repository of all mental objects emanating from all minds, including
animal as well as human minds, including also (if they exist) the minds
of creatures which have evolved elsewhere in the universe. Different
levels of mind will doubtless make different quantities and qualities
of input to the Psychosphere: the contribution made by the dim awarenesses
of low-level invertebrates will certainly be less than the contribution
made by any member of Homo sapiens, but there will be no good reason
for excluding them. The Psychosphere must therefore be an inconceivably
vast and complex cauldron of ideas, memories, volitions, desires and
all the other furniture of conscious experience and unconscious mental
functioning. To be anything other than a chaos it must therefore have
properties of internal organization, for example a tendency for mental
images to form clusters on some such principle as the Association of
Ideas. We can imagine that all minds, in addition to making their inputs,
also have a limited degree of access to the Psychosphere,
the extent of this access depending on the complexity, sophistication
and existing contents of each mind, and depending perhaps also on the
possession of particular gifts (e.g. those of mediumship) and / or altered
states, e.g. trance and dream. (F. W. H. Myers will have made a
very large input; Mrs Piper clearly possessed a very large access.)
To allow for interaction with the physical world we must assume that
the Psychosphere has some of the properties of a field of force,
analagous with the gravitational and electromagnetic fields of classical
physics but possessing perhaps, in addition, morphogenetic
capacities resembling those envisaged by Rupert Sheldrake in his
theory of morphic resonance. We might regard it as a source
of forms (in something like Plato's sense), as a repository
of archetypes ( a la Jung), and as an originator of novelties
as well as a replicator of existing ideas. To quote again from A
Midsummer Night's Dream, we might think of the Psychosphere as the location
of that "imagination" which "bodies forth /
The shape of things unknown. . ." From the swirling though
semi-structured cauldron of the Psychosphere, receiving its inputs
from a myriad of minds but possessing causative properties of its own,
might there not well emerge into the physical sphere, even if only transiently,
many other non-conventional phenomena than those which preoccupy psychical
research? Might not the Psychosphere be considered, not only as
the mediator of such things as telepathy, distant viewing, laboratory
PK and the poltergeist, but also as the puppet-master of the Great Legion
of Fortean peculiarities-lake monsters, the multitudinous creatures
of folklore, some crop circles (if any are other than man-made), Flying
Saucers, the entities which briefly emerge from the latter, the fleetingly
observed anthropomorphic 'manimals' of the kind represented by Big Foot
and the yeti, and many such other denizens of recorded human
experience?
In ascribing capacities of this kind to the Psychosphere, we would be
avoiding the absurdities of magic: it would not be the volition of individuals
which operated (magically) on the physical world-to heal a friend, to
kill an enemy, to englamour a desired sexual object-it would be the
Psychosphere / Page 358 / which lent itself to these objectives, operating
by means of its capacity to influence the physical sphere and acting
along the lines of the volitions of the more psychically talented minds
which form part of its contents. We would also be avoiding the peculiarities
of Idealist metaphysics: there would be nothing 'unreal' or 'imaginary'
about either the Psychosphere or the world of everyday experience; both
would have unimpaired ontological status, albeit differing in their
respective properties and 'habitations'.
All this may be thought fanciful: the Psychosphere is perhaps merely
an idea with which to play. But I believe something of the sort, even
if we abandoned it after further study, would help to focus our thinking
when we consider the phenomena of psychical research, not to mention
the many puzzles about morphogensis in the physical sphere, which (pace
the Neo-Darwinists) have not been satistactorily resolved by conventional
means. And the idea already has a modicum of theoretical support and
perhaps some predictive value.
As for theory, the papers by John Poynton and John Smythies mentioned
above offer some ingenious models for an 'adjoining realm' which interacts
with our familiar physical world. I hope they would not think it inconsistent
with their views to envisage the Psychosphere as sometimes acting, not
only via the many points of intersection with the physical represented
by conscious minds, but occasionally (spontaneously) 'in its own right'.
More recently, Professor Archie E. Roy, in his The Archives of the Mind
(Roy, 1996), has tackled the question whether human thoughts and intentions
may possibly persist (perhaps pre-exist, perhaps post-exist) as a kind
of 'software' or 'program' when not directly manifesting in the 'hardware'
of the body, the analogies of 'software', 'program' and 'hardware' being
drawn, of course, from our current understanding of the operation of
computers. Any such 'software' or 'program' needs to have its being
in some substratum. The Psychosphere might serve. All these conjectures
need further refinement and clarification, but none of them seems inconsistent
with, or more extravagant than, the speculations now current among mainstream
physicists and cosmologists.
As for predictive value, if we give the Psychosphere properties of the
kind suggested, we might predict the following, all of which bear some
resemblance to familiar aspects of our field.
A. If a sufficient number of people strongly believe in, or hope for,
a pheno-menon, viz. make an emotionally vigorous input to the Psychosphere,
the Psychosphere will oblige by producing it. For a while, table-turning,
ectoplasm and Flying Saucers will be frequently, if only transiently,
encountered.
B. When a sufficient number of people come to oppose these outrages
to common sense, especially if (like CSICOP) they exhibit strong emotion
in doing so, the Psychosphere may be tipped into withdrawing them. Table-
turning and ectoplasm seem to have suffered this fate; Flying Saucers
(or rather the populations pro and contra these engaging objects) are
still fighting it out.
C. Accordingly, there will be fashions-almost artistic movements-in
the ebb and flow of paranormal occurrences, as Dr John Beloff has often
noted (e.g. Beloff, 1993, pp. 233-234) / Page 359 / April 1998] The
Concept of a Psychosphere
D. The Psychosphere will itself-without prompting and sheerly from
its own internal dynamics-produce new phenomena from time to time: thought-
ography, metal;.bending, EVP. .. If these capture the public imagination,
i.e. if sufficient people make an emotionally vigorous input to the
Psycho-sphere, the phenomena will persist for a while (anyway until
CSICOP gets there and/or the public becomes bored and therefore ceases
to 'fuel' the Psychosphere in support of these new toys).
E. Some of the spontaneous activities of the Psychosphere will
take the more durable form of new species of plants and animals in the
Biosphere-but only if the brute circumstances of the available DNA and
the state of the Darwinian selective pressures permit it. Otherwise,
the novel ideas will have no more than transient or ambiguous existence.
(Circumstances have clearly not yet been propitious for the durable
coming-to-be of the Yeti, the Big Foot, other 'manimals', the Loch Ness
Monster or the Surrey Puma. The Unicorn has failed altogether.)
A lengthier text would be needed to explore these fragmentary suggestions
further. They are offered in their present form merely in the hope that
they may prompt discussion.
2 Bramerton Street Chelsea
London SW35JX
REFERENCES
Beloff, J. (1993) Parapsychology: A Concise History. London:
Athlone Press.
Carington, W. W. (1945) Telepathy. London: Methuen.
Ducasse, C. J. (1951) Nature, Mind and Death. Illinois:
Open Court Publishing
Kaku, M. (1994) Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through the
10th Dimension. Oxford: OUP.
Noyes, R. (1985) A Secret Property. London: Quartet Books.
. Poynton, J. C. (1994) JSPR 59, 401-412
Price, H. H. (1953) ProcSPR 50 (182), 1-25
Roy,A. E. (1996) The Archives of the Mind (esp. pp 330-364).
Essex: SNU Publications. Smythies, J. R. (1988) JSPR 55, 150-156
Smythies, J. R. (1994) The Walls of Plato's Cave. Aldershot:
Avebury.
Stevenson, I. (1997) Reincarnation and Biology (esp. pp.2083-2088)
Connecticut: Praeger Publishers.
MIN DOTH DREAM
WHAT DOTH MIN MEAN
3 |
MIN |
36 |
18 |
9 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
4 |
MIND |
40 |
22 |
4 |
6 |
MATTER |
77 |
23 |
5 |
10 |
- |
117 |
45 |
9 |
1+0 |
- |
1+1+7 |
4+5 |
- |
1 |
MIND MATTER |
9 |
9 |
9 |
M
THE THIRTEENTH LETTER OF THE
ENGLISH ALPHABET
4 |
MIND |
- |
- |
- |
- |
M |
13 |
4 |
4 |
- |
I |
9 |
9 |
9 |
- |
N+D |
18 |
9 |
9 |
6 |
MATTER |
- |
- |
- |
- |
M |
13 |
4 |
4 |
- |
A |
1 |
1 |
1 |
- |
TTE |
45 |
9 |
9 |
- |
R |
18 |
9 |
9 |
10 |
MIND MATTER |
117 |
45 |
45 |
1+0 |
- |
1+1+7 |
4+5 |
4+5 |
1 |
MIND MATTER |
9 |
9 |
9 |
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR
PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
UNSNARLING THE WORLD-KNOT:
CONSCIOUSNESS, FREEDOM, AND THE MIND- BODY PROBLEM
David Ray Griffin. University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1997. xv + 266 pp.
Volume 62 Number 851 April 1998
Page 368
"The mind-body problem,
which Schopenhauer called the 'world-knot', has overshadowed Western
philosophy since Descartes and has continued to vex and engross both
philosophers and scientists, perhaps particularly in the present time,
when we have witnessed spectacular developments in genetics and neuroscience.
The hope of many thinkers, including Professor Griffin, is that by unravelling
the connection between mind and matter at this nodal
point, we might be able to gain an unprecedented and decisive understanding
of what is arguably the central mystery of the universe.
Dualist and materialist theories have ended in dismal failure, according
to Griffin. For materialists, the insuperable difficulty has been to
suggest any coherent way in which consciousness can possibly be derived
from the insentient neurones of the brain. On top of the many other
absurdities which it engenders, epiphenomenalism has no hope of evading
this manifest contradiction at its very heart. Eliminativists like the
Churchlands can only rest in their wish or faith that belief in the
actual existence of consciousness will some day just evaporate, with
all the remaining superstitions of 'folk psychology'. However, more
patient and sensitive physicalists reluctantly concede that this massive
stumbling-block will not simply go away, and Griffin painstakingly reviews
the attempts of philosophers like Nagel, Searle, McGinn, Galen Strawson,
and Jaegwon Kim to come to terms with it. Their inevitable failure,
he concludes, follows from their ultimate inability to explain, not
only / Page 369 / how consciousness could emerge from the brain, how
subjectivity could arise from something blankly objective, but also
what can be meant by the relation-ship between consciousness and brain
activity, how our experience and behaviour can result as an obvious
(if partial) unity from the activities of the thousands of millions
of neurones constituting the brain, and how materialism can be reconciled
with our hard-core commonsense beliefs about our ability to acquire
knowledge of abstractions and norms, and indeed of the external physical
world itself given the view that all knowledge must come to us mediated
by our sense-organs feeding our brains.
Dualist theories are apparently in no better case. Dualism seems to
violate the principle of the conservation of energy, and undoubtedly
violates the principle of continuity, since it would require us to postulate
some kind of 'leap' to account for the evolution of sentient beings
from insensate matter.
Where are we supposed to draw the line between experiencing and non-experiencing
things? And if there are two ontologically disparate components in every
living animal-one immaterial, nonspatial, and devoid of physical energy,
and the other blindly material, mute, unintelligent, and without desires,
thoughts, or purposes-how can our minds exert causal influence over
our bodies or vice versa, as interactionist dualists are bound to maintain?
By far the greater part of Griffin's book is an attempt to resolve all
of these issues by expounding and defending a third option which combines
the intellectual strengths of both dualism and materialism while avoiding
what he considers their fatal flaws. This he does by adopting the metaphysical
standpoint of panexperientialism, drawing heavily on the analyses and
insights of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Every
truly - individual thing which exists, from molecules and cells up to
elephants and human beings, is both a material object and a mental subject,
with both a 'material pole' and a 'mental pole'. Thus there is no need
to postulate a magical leap or supernatural intervention to bridge a
gap between sentient beings and insentient matter, because matter is
not wholly insentient. (This refutes the influential fallacy of
Descartes, whose notion of a brute insentient matter has been uncritically
accepted by his materialist opponents.) For the panexperientialist,
human and other animal minds have an ontological homogeneity with
the cells which compose their bodies, nervous systems, and brains, for
in both cases there is a mental dimension and a physical dimension.
Panexperientialism (or panpsychism) has often been dismissed with
derisive incredulity. Do rocks have feelings, can lakes form intentions?
Professor Griffin sets out to dispel the kinds of incomprehension by
which this meta- physical theory has been typically beset. He draws
a distinction. between true or compound individuals like cells, plants,
and animals, all of which have the rudiments of mentality, and mere
aggregations like rocks or bodies of water, which have no individual
mentality whatsoever, beyond such primordial mentality as resides in
their component particles. But can we really attribute even a grain
of incipient, embryonic, primordial mentality to, say, bacteria or viruses?
Griffin will argue that the random behaviour of the subatomic particles,
or rather streams of energy, of which such minute things are composed,
gives us grounds for ascribing a form of spontaneity to them; that this
is a primitive kind of self-determining choice; and that this is the
origin / Page 370 / and nucleus of the quality of freedom, inseparable
from mentality, with which all higher organisms, ascending to man, are
to some extent endowed, however slight in particular instances.
In the October 1997 issue of this Journal Professor J. C. Poynton
reviewed a recent book by Griffin (1997) in which the author gives special
attention to the data of psychical research. However, in the present
work the notions of ESP and PK play a very much smaller part. Griffin
readily accepts that telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis have
gained enough empirical confirmation over the last hundred years to
warrant their inclusion in the world-outlook of every reasonable person,
and he condemns the closed and defensive attitudes still shown by the
scientific community in general towards such phenomena essentially because
they conflict with the physicalist paradigm of reality to which so many
scientists have declared a priori allegiance. But his comments on ESP
and PK are chiefly of interest because of his attempts to relate them
to his own panaexperientialist paradigm.
According to this, it is fallacious to ground our concepts of perception
primarily on our faculties of vision and touch. There are rudimentary
individuals, such as unicellular organisms, which have experiences although
totally lacking in organs of sense. And, Griffin claims, much of the
knowledge acquired by man and the higher animals comes via forms of
perception which are equally nonsensory. However, he is able to make
this claim only because he extends the term 'perception' to cover kinds
of cognition which are seldom thought of as perceptual in character:
for example memory, which he describes as the present perception by
a mind of its own past experiences; our knowledge of mathematical and
logical relations, which he oddly classifies as 'experiences' of abstract
entities; moral and aesthetic experience; and religious experience.
He attributes our awareness of bodily pain and pleasure to the 'experiences'
of the cells situated where we find these sensations occurring, and
to the capacity of these cells to communicate their experiences to our
minds. He is even willing to speak of the mind as 'perceiving' (albeit
unconsciously) the processes going on in our brain cells when these
are eventually activated by the relay of external stimuli impinging
on our peripheral sense-organs.
Because of the epistemological difficulties involved in standard
theories of perception, according to most of which we only gain knowledge
of the physical world indirectly, by means of the sense-data which it
produces for our immediate apprehension, Griffin seems to favour a kind
of direct realism; this cannot be just apprehension of images or of
our own brain cells but must be awareness of events which typically
occur outside our bodies, and therefore is intrinsically perception
at a distance, and hence nonsensory. There are echoes here of Moncrieff's
neglected masterpiece, The Clairvoyant Theory of Perception (1951).
Equally, to understand how we are able to move our own bodies we have
to conceive of a nonmotor action by the mind which originates the motions
of those body cells which terminate in overt bodily movements. This
is the basis for that special kind of nonmotor action on other bodies,
at a distance from our own, which we call psychokinesis.
There is much else of interest and worthy of debate in this book, for
instance Griffin's replacement of the idea of a substantive mind or
self by his version of a successive pattern of 'occasions of experience'
which have a unity formed by / Page371/ their inherent recollection
of past occasions of experience in the life-history of the individual.
But the book is densely written, much of it in the somewhat irksome
terminology of process philosophy, it is, I think, too long, for the
reader will find the same themes tending to recur several times; and
there is a needless abundance of references to the work of other contemporary
philosophers, which may soon strike us as inevitably rather dated. Its
special interest for students of psychical research is strictly limited,
although its comparatively few remarks on paranormal cognition and agency
are indeed highly suggestive. Philosophers will find the overarching
panexperientialist metaphysic idiosyncratic and provocative, but at
present that is surely a very good thing."
292 Cottingham Road R. W. K. PATERSON Hull HU6 8QA
REFERENCES
Griffm, D. R. 1997) Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality:
A Postmodern
Exploration. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Moncrief!, M. M. (1951) The Clairvoyant Theory of Perception. London:
Faber & Faber.
THE STARGATE CONSPIRACY
Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince
Page206
"According to writers Peter Tompkins
and Christopher Bird, Daniels - who studied the effects of electro-
magnetic waves on human beings - became convinced, in the 1970s, of
the existence of some kind of intelligent force in the universe that
operated through electromagnetic frequencies and that 'human beings
can mentally interact with it,.47"
7 |
ELECTRO |
78 |
33 |
6 |
8 |
MAGNETIC |
72 |
36 |
9 |
5 |
FIELD |
36 |
27 |
9 |
6 |
FIELDS |
55 |
28 |
1 |
4 |
WAVE |
51 |
15 |
6 |
5 |
WAVES |
70 |
16 |
7 |
CLOSER TO THE LIGHT
Melvin L. Morse and Paul Perry
1990
Page 78
SPIRIT IN MEDICINE
CONJURED DEATHS
AND ANCIENT RULERS
"Deep in an underground chamber
a solemn group of men is seeking guidance from death. They are dressed
in white robes and chanting softly around a casket that is sealed with
wax. One of their members is steadfastly counting to himself, carefully
marking the time. After about eight minutes, the casket is opened, and
the man who nearly suffocated inside is revived by the rush of fresh
air. He tells the men around him what he saw. As he passed out from
lack of oxygen, he saw a light that became brighter and larger as he
sped toward it through a tunnel. From that light came a radiant person
in white who delivered a message of eternal life.
The priest who is attending this ceremony is pleased with the results.
"No man escapes death," he says. "And every living soul
is destined to resurrection. You go into the tomb alive that you will
learn of the light."
The man who "died" but is now reborn is happy. He is now a
member of one of the strangest societies in history, a group of civic
leaders who induced nearly fatal suffocation to create a near-death
experience.
Sound like a cult from some place in northern California? ex-hippies
looking for a new high, perhaps? Not at all. This was the cult of Osiris,
a small society of men who were the priests and pharaohs of ancient
Egypt, one of the greatest civilizations in human history. This account
of how they / Page 79 /
inspired near death is an actual description of
their rites from Egyptologists who have translated their hieroglyphics.
One of the most important Egyptian rituals involved the reenactment
by their god-king of the myth of Osiris,
the god who brought agriculture and civilization
to the ancient Egyp-tians. He was the first king of Egypt who civilized
his subjects and then traveled abroad to instruct others in the fine
art of civilization. His enemies plotted against him. Upon his re-turn
to Egypt, he was captured and sealed in a chest. His
eventual resurrection was seen as proof of life eternal.
Each new king was supposed to be a direct reincarnation of Osiris.
An important part of the ceremony was to reenact his entombment. These
rituals took place in the depths of the Great
Pyramid and were a prerequisite for becoming a god-king.
It is my guess that many slaves perished while the Egyptians experimented,
to find exactly how long a person could be sealed in an airtight container
and survive.
Nonetheless, these near-death experiences were more im-portant to the
Egyptians than the lives of a few slaves. After all, this was the age
of the bicameral mind, a period in which men believed that their thoughts
came to them from the gods and were not internally generated. For the
Egyptians, thoughts and dreams were gods speaking to them.
Prior to the evolution of individual consciousness, people were what
Princeton psychiatrist Julian Jaynes calls "bi-cameral." By
this, he means that they did not understand that their own thoughts
and actions were generated from within themselves, but rather that they
thought external gods created these thoughts and actions. For example,
a fully conscious human thinks: I am hungry and I will make myself a
sandwich. The bicameral man thought: The gods have created a pain in
my belly and cause me to find food to satisfy them. The Iliad is an
excellent example of bicameral thinking: It is one god who makes Achilles
promise not to go into / Page 80 / battle, another who urges him to
go, and another screams through his throat (at his enemies). In fact,
the gods take the place of consciousness. The beginnings of action are
not in conscious plans, reasons, and motives; they are-to the bi-cameral
man-the actions and speeches of gods.
This bicameral thinking has long vanished from human beings, ever since
the evolution of language and writing. Once men could write down their
thoughts, and read what other people have written, they came to understand
that each human being has an individual consciousness, and that gods
do not direct our every action.
However; ancient Egypt was a prime example of a bi-cameral society.
Jaynes states that Egyptian civilization was controlled and directed
by the bicameral voice of their first god-king" Osiris.
It was essential to their civilization that each new king consider himself
to be the vehicle of the halluci-nated voice of the dead king whose
admonitions still con-trolled society. What better way to generate this
absolute continuity of the god-king than to have each new king undergo
a near-death experience. Just as children that I in-terviewed often
perceived the light that they saw as the light of Jesus,
these king-initiates would perceive that same light - as the spirit
of Osiris.
A near-death experience by a bicameral man would have extraordinary
significance, more so even than it has to mod-ern man. For one thing,
it would be absolute proof of eternal life. Since they felt that the
gods inspired their every thought, a near-death experience would be
like having a god open the doors of perception to a mortal.
An NDE gave Egyptian rulers a sense of all-knowing. Before they were
sealed into the casket, they only acted like kings. Afterward, they
felt as if they had deeper knowledge of the world around them.
I also believe that an NDE as part of a king's job description / Page
81 / may account for the unusual peace and prosperity that Egypt enjoyed
for the nearly two thousand years that the pharaohs reigned. As happens
with those who experience NDEs today, these kings were transformed by
the humbling and exalting experience of near death. They developed a
reverence for the love that people share with one another. They became
kind and caring and interested in the universe and the world around
them.
These were people who supported extensive research in astronomy. With
their "primitive" tools, they were able to obtain a vast knowledge
of the stars, even finding dark stars that we have been able to confirm
only with powerful telescopes.
The ancient Egyptians were advanced in medicine and the use of foods
and antibiotics to prevent epidemics among pyr-amid workers. They knew
of special diets of red onions, bread, and garlic that stimulated the
immune system, a diet that was only recently endorsed by the National
Science Foun-dation. They even had a fair amount of knowledge about
surgery.
Archaeologists have deciphered the exact experience of these mystery
rituals, and virtually all agree that its purpose was to generate an
understanding of eternal life. Their un-derstanding of the death process
has been handed down through the ages in a document known as The
Egyptian Book of the Dead. This book is simply a detailed
description of a near-death experience. It starts with a judgment scene
and goes on to reveal many gods and various voices, continues on a long
boat trip through a dark tunnel, and ends with union with a bright light.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
is quite similar to The Tibetan Book of
the Dead, a manual for dying
that was passed by word of mouth in Tibetan culture until about fifteen
hundred years ago, when it was recorded by Europeans.
Page 82
The Tibetan Book
of the Dead gives the
dying person con-trol over his own death and rebirth; The Tibetans,
who be-lieved in reincarnation, felt that the dying person could influence
his own destiny. The Tibetans called. this book Bardo
Thodol, or "Liberation
by Hearing on the After-Death Plane." It was meant
to be read after death to help the de-ceased find the right path.
Part of what the priest is supposed to
read goes like this: "Thy own intellect,
which is now voidness. . . thine own consciousness, not formed into
anything, in reality void. . .will first experience the Radiance of
the Fundamental Clear Light of Pure Reality.
"The union of your own consciousness and the Clear Light is
the state of Perfect Enlightment. This is the Great Body of Clear Light.
. the source of life and light."
How similar the Tibetan beliefs to the Egyptians and other ancient people
too, from Europe to Africa.
The Aztec Song of the Dead
represents a work that served to enlighten the Aztecs
about the world beyond. This was a society, that practiced ritual and
slow death as part of their basic religion.
Their Song of the Dead tells the story of Quetzalcoatl,
their god and legendary king who discovered the arts, science, and agriculture
and who represented the forces of civilization, good and light. He is
described by his people as "igniting
the creations of man's hands and the imagination of his heart."
"Their Song of the Dead reads like
a poetic version of a near-death experience. It practically scores off
the top of the scale of the Near-Death Experience Validity Scale developed
by researcher Kenneth Ring. The Song reads like this:
"Then the time came for Quetzalcoatl
to die, when he felt the darkness twist in him like a river."
He then had a life review, in which he remembers all of his good
works and is able to settle his affairs. He then "saw / Page 83
/ my face/(like looking into a) cracked mirror." He hears flutes
and the voices of friends and then passes through a shining city and
over hills of many colors.. He comes to the edge of a great sea, where
he again sees his own face, during which time "the beauty of his
face returned to him."
There is a bonfire on the beach in which he throws himself,and . . .
It ended with his heart transformed
into a star.
It ended with the morning star with dawn and evening. '
It ended with his journey to Death's kingdom with seven days
of darkness.
With his body changed to light.
A star that burns forever in that sky.
All of these cultures believed they
left their bodies and embarked on a spiritual voyage, a journey
that had the same traits as that of Katie, who nearly drowned in that
swimming pool in Idaho."