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Aquarius will be the new age, the new life. First there will be disastrous events, gigantic upheavals, turmoil and change of all kinds….
– Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov (1900-1986)

The transition to a new zodiacal age is altering the political map of the world. For the last two thousand years much of human history has been determined by events in Europe and the near Middle East. From Greece and Rome, the great power centres of two millennia ago, with their inheritance from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, a distinct civilisational impulse spread westward into Europe, eventually reaching North America. Decisions made in the grand capitals of Europe and, for much of the last century in New York and Washington, have impacted the lives of millions of people in every part of the planet.

The advent of the Age of Aquarius coincides with the emergence of new world power centres. Just as old Egypt, Babylon and Sumeria were eclipsed by Greece and Rome, so too the ‘old world’ of Western Europe and North America will be overtaken by new geopolitical alliances and fresh centres of global influence. And this will be accompanied by a dramatic change in consciousness, as the worn-out Western values and Eurocentric rationalist thought prevailing for the last few centuries surrender to the new Aquarian thinking.

The current turmoil and conflict unleashed on the planet by the United States and Britain is only the beginning of the climax of a struggle between cosmic influences of which most people are completely unaware. Today, America and Britain embody atrophied and degraded Piscean energies. The Anglo-Americans, as the standard bearers of bankrupt Western materialism, are trying to reorganise the world, imposing their imbalanced, egoistic approach to life on all societies. Yet their latest brutal and insane actions, witnessed in the tragic invasion of Iraq, are part of a frantic effort to prolong their collapsing system. Despite all their apparent power and wealth, Anglo-American universalism is in a state of rapid decline leading to death.

A new era, a new consciousness and a new people are on the horizon, as the planet goes through a turbulent transitional period paving the way to the Aquarian Age.

Aquarian Consciousness

Whether the earth is shaken by natural catastrophes, or nuclear warfare, or both, earth and the life upon it does survive. More than that, however: A New Age emerges and the devastating changes that have preceded it are understood to have been necessary purgations effecting the transformation of humanity into a new mode of being. By analogy, just as the individual near death experiencer may have to endure the pain and suffering associated with the trauma of almost dying before positive personal transformation can take place, so the world may need to undergo a “planetary near-death experience” before it can awaken to higher, more spiritual, collective consciousness with universal love at its core.
– Kenneth Ring, Transpersonal Psychologist

Two thousand years ago, at the time of transition from the Age of Aries to that of Pisces, there were secret schools, most notably the Essenes, trained and taught to align themselves with the spiritual impulses of the incoming age. These small communities worked quietly, in retreats; but with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls we now know they were actually the ‘seedbed’ from which came the original Christian revelation.

These separated mystic communities provided the necessary environment for the message of Jesus the Christ. With their unique synthesis of Zoroastrian, Pythagorean, Egyptian and Israelite spirituality, the Essenes acted as a bridge between the ‘old age’ religions and the unfolding new revelation. Above all, they represent the budding of a new consciousness which would impact history for two millennia. The declining Roman Empire’s embrace of Christianity led to the triumph of the new religion in Europe. With the arrival of the Age of Pisces, Christianity became synonymous with ‘Western civilisation’.

Writing a century ago, the gifted Englishman Edward Carpenter speculated about Man’s evolutionary future and the development of a new humanity imbued with a new consciousness. “We do not know,” he observed, “what possible evolutions are to come, or what new forms of permanent place or value, are being already slowly differentiated from the surrounding mass of humanity.” Carpenter noted that “at the present time certain new types of humankind may be emerging, which will have an important part to play in the societies of the future – even though for the moment their appearance is attended by a good deal of confusion and misapprehension.”

Throughout the writings of the 20th century’s most influential spiritual teachers from Charles W. Leadbeater and Rudolf Steiner, to Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh and Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, we find numerous references to the immanent emergence of a new human type. With one voice they link this new humanity to the dawn of the Aquarian era, which they warn will be ushered in by a major purging of mankind. In the words of Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov: “The Age of Aquarius is fast approaching, and it is going to overturn and shatter all the old forms and values that human beings thought of as permanent.”

According to all the great mystic teachers and seers, the Age of Aquarius is heralded by a time of immense conflict and turmoil never before witnessed in recorded history.

Writing in his book Love and Sexuality, Aivanhov notes:

Human beings need to suffer before they begin to wish for harmony and peace and the splendour of the new life. If they are not ground down by all kinds of sufferings, they will never understand or make up their minds to work for the Kingdom of God.

John White, a respected New Age author, observes in Science and Spirit that if modern civilisation is destroyed, “some people will survive, according to the predictions and prophecies. The great loss of life will open up niches in the environment where new life forms can emerge. Those most deeply attuned to cosmic processes will become the seedbed from which, it is said, a new race, a higher humanity will evolve in accelerated fashion.”

The survivors of this ‘great tribulation’ ushering in the Aquarian Age will be those men and women who have not been ensnared by the ‘strong delusions’ of the dying old order.

A remnant, who like the ancient Essenes before them, renounce the ephemeral fleeting attractions of the old era, will also live on to protect the law of the truth and lead the survivors in the new era.

Most professing Christians are looking for the return of Christ who they expect to establish a new age. But how many Christians are willing to prepare themselves, after the manner of the Essenes and the Gnostic secret schools, for this new era? Christians are fighting each other over dogmas and doctrines. They are like the Pharisees of Christ’s day, searching the Scriptures in vain, unable and unwilling to see the plain truth in front of their eyes! Christians spend their time serving the very System of Money and Power which crucified Jesus the Christ and persecuted his early followers. The True God is not to be found in any of today’s Christian Churches. Christianity, a religion of the Piscean Age, has chosen to stay with the old order and will invariably perish with it.

A new community is now being prepared in response to the first impulses of Aquarius. They are the ‘seedbed’ of the new era, a Noah’s Ark of Safety and Light in a time of turmoil, confusion and chaos.

New Eurasia

The Truth of Life descends from the world of Eternal Light to illuminate the minds, regenerate the hearts, raise and renew the souls of all the sons of Truth destined to constitute the nucleus of the new humanity of which the Slavs will be the cradle.
– Peter Deunov, Bulgarian Mystic, 1898

The inspired Gnostic Master Teacher Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno), who lived in Bulgaria from 1864-1944, prophesied the birth of “a new type of man” on Earth to coincide with the astrological Age of Aquarius. According to Deunov, the final stage of the previous Piscean Age, transmitted by the Anglo-Saxons, was passing. In the new aeon the Slavic people are predestined to play a leading role. Speaking to his early Gnostic students, Deunov announced: “You are the chosen children of truth who were preordained to form the seed of the new humanity of which Slavdom as a family, descendants of Judah, will become the hearth.”

The 20th century, in Deunov’s prophetic scheme, was a preparatory period distinguished by the waxing and waning of Anglo-American civilisation. From this perspective the collapse of the British Empire and the rise of the USA at the end of the Second World War marked a key turning point in history. Anglo-American culture having reached its peak is now in its death-throes, and the first light of the new culture is dawning in keeping with the incoming Aquarian influences.

Russia constitutes the largest Slavic nation, and the last hundred years may rightly be said to have been the time of Russia’s ‘Golgotha’ or ‘crucifixion’. A hundred years of incredible human suffering and enormous national sacrifice claimed millions of Russian lives. Within the first five decades of the 20th century the Apocalyptic Horseman of Famine and War ravaged the vast Russian land. Archaic landmarks swept aside and old values overturned only to be replaced by radical new ways which themselves were soon found wanting. Spectacular material triumphs accomplished at the cost of personal liberty and paid for by human sacrifice. Was such collective suffering a preparation for the new era?

Could it be Russia, a land that has endured so much in the 20th century, will finally find its prophetic destiny in this third millennium? Revolutions, civil war, famine, two world wars, political repression…. were these all part of a cleansing process signaling the beginning of a new era in which Russia discovers her true mission?

Alice A. Bailey, who is credited by many as the founder of the contemporary New Age movement, saw a unique role for Russia in ushering in the new era. Writing at a time when Russia was firmly behind the communist iron curtain, she predicted:

Behind the closed borders of that mysterious and magnificent country [Russia], a great and spiritual conflict is proceeding, and the rare mystical spirit and the truly religious orientation of the people is the eternal guarantee that a true and living religion and culture will finally emerge.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who established the Anthroposophical society, believed the Slavic “folk soul” would play a major role in the future development of a new humanity. He saw the Slavs as a bridge between the Orient (East) and the Occident (West). According to Steiner, the religious thought of the Orient belongs to the past; the Occident’s philosophical-scientific thought to the present; the Slavic soul will bridge the two and create a pathway to a spiritual future. More than any other national soul, claimed Steiner, the Russian group soul strives to realise the world of the spirit. In Russia the synthesis of the highest features of both Eastern and Western cultures would one day be achieved.

“Its geographic location places Russia between two extreme, monolithic cultures – between the materialist countries of the West and the passive, world-denying countries of the East. It is appropriate that Russia creatively unite these extremes,” wrote Nikolai Belotsvetov, one of Steiner’s leading Russian followers.

“Our country is a peculiar country, placed between the hammer of Europe and the anvil of Asia, destined to reconcile them in one way or another,” wrote the world famous chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. “It is my deep conviction that Russia is called to allay the age-old hostility between Europe and Asia, to reconcile and unite those two different worlds, and find a proper balance between the progressive but proud and inconsequent individualism of Europe and the sense of social and political cohesion of Asia…”

For the last two thousand years of the Piscean Age, civilisation has traveled the course of the Sun from East to West, reaching its apogee in the modern USA. With the end of the Piscean era, history and civilisation is reorienting. We are seeing a return to origins with the emergence of a new power centre at the cross-roads of the East and West, in Eurasia, the great heartland of Russia.

The history of Russia is not the history of a country, but of a world. It is, in fact, the history of a vast organic whole which had for its cradle the immense open spaces of Eurasia. In the words of one author:

The Eurasian world, as such consists of vast plains which extend, broken here and there by low mountain ranges, between the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific, the Black Sea, the Caucasian Range, the Iranian plateau, the heights of the Pamir and the Hindu Kush, and join up, through the tortuous valleys and foothills of the Tian Shan and the Altai ranges, with the plains of Eastern Turkestan and Mongolia.1

According to the Ancient Wisdom teachings, in remote prehistory a spiritual disaster accompanied by a catastrophic shift in the Earth’s axis caused a great migration to Eurasia from the primal northern region of Hyperborea. Theosophical writers believe that millions of years ago Eurasia was the homeland of the people who:

…later descended into the Indian peninsula those peoples who call themselves ‘Aryans,’ the ‘High Caste,’ who later were divided into Four Castes: Brahmanas, Kshattriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras. From the southeastern parts came later the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians; and the peoples of Europe, Greeks, Romans, especially.2

Viewed in the light of the Ancient Wisdom teachings, the appearance of Eurasia on the global stage is not only an affirmation of arcane origins but also of the Shambhala influence in our day. Eurasia, the Russian heartland, has long been called “Northern Shambhala” by Buddhist teachers. Having studied Tibetan Buddhism, Nikolai Roerich developed a deep interest in Shambhala and led a scientific expedition through Eurasia to look for traces of the hidden kingdom.3 He later remarked, “The East has said that when the Banner of Shambhala would encircle the world, verily the New Dawn would follow.”

At this crucial period in world history we see the first signs of a Eurasia-oriented geopolitical alliance between Germany, Russia, India and China, as a counter balance to the Anglo-American order. Russia, together with the former Soviet states of Central Asia, constitutes the Eurasian ‘kernel’. In the West this Eurasian alliance reaches to Germany, while in the far East it includes China and north Korea. Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan make up the southern flank of Eurasia. The geopolitical struggles and wars of the first years of the 21st century are the outcome of not only political and economic factors, but of resistance to incoming cosmic energies. All around us we’re confronted with clear proof of the passing of one age and the dawn of a new era in human history.

Britain and the United States represent the final phase of a Western civilisation which succeeded a decaying Rome at the start of the Piscean Age. And like ancient Rome before its collapse, the Anglo-American rulers are desperately seeking to expand what the writer Philip K. Dick termed the ‘Black Iron Prison’. However, the West at its zenith can only be the ‘evening land’, the place where the Sun sets to rise again in the East. To the ancient Egyptians the western lands were, after all, the kingdom of the dead.

The End & The New Beginning

For as the lightning cometh out of the East, and shineth even unto the West; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.
– Jesus, Matthew 24:27

The time in which we now live is charged with cosmic significance as nations and peoples unconsciously struggle to align themselves either with the old aeon influences or the incoming forces of the new Aquarian Age. The prophecies and predictions of so many gifted seers leave us in no doubt – we are right now in a turbulent, even chaotic, transitional period. Nations who cling to the dying old order will fall, to be finally swept away in the coming cataclysm, eclipsed by new global powers, of which Eurasia is preeminent.

Out of this world catastrophe will come a new era attuned to Aquarius. Now is the time of decision, preparation and separation. People who separate from the old order and prepare themselves by harmonising with the rhythm of Aquarius will form the ‘seedbed’ from which develops a new culture and a new consciousness. Those who today place their trust in rampant materialism and the exploitation of the planet, all the while glorying in their wealth, power and might, will be debased.

One hundred years ago the venerable European monarchies looked safe and secure, impervious to change. The British Empire, on which it was said the ‘sun never sets’, straddled the globe triumphant. Less than a century later the British Empire is no more and the traditional European monarchs a vague memory. A similar fate awaits today’s triumphalist powers. The victims of history will soon be the victors as the Earth is bathed in the Great Light of the Aquarian Age.

Footnotes:

1. Before and After Stalin by Cyril Ielita-Wilczkovski
2. Theosophical Forum, June 1937
3. “Mystery of Shambhala” by Jason Jeffrey, New Dawn No. 72, May-June 2002

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MEHMET SABEHEDDIN is a long time contributor to New Dawn. His past articles examined Nazi Occultism, Middle Eastern mysteries and ancient Babylon. He is currently conducting research into the arcane wisdom of Eurasia.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 78 (May-June 2003).

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.

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The Muggle world is filled with symbols. From Coke cans to McDonald’s arches, IBM computers to Apple Macintoshs, from flags to emblems and medals, to the endless variety of product packaging, modern culture is brimming with images. Open the Yellow Pages of your phone book – with the emblematic pair of walking fingers – and you will find a myriad of professional logo designers and artists, many of whom have trained at colleges whose crests may date back a century or more.

Walk or Don’t Walk based on a traffic light flashing a message designed to prevent you from being run over by a car – whose distinctive hood ornament differentiates it from its competitors, and which is fuelled by different brands of gasoline whose identity may be apprehended from afar while travelling at high speed. Look at the dashboard and you can ascertain operational norms, be warned of engine trouble, and learn by iconic means about the vehicle and its amenities.

We live in a world filled with visual identifiers intended to convey meaningful information at a glance without the need for words.Heraldry, the distinctive symbols of noble warrior families, traces back to the Middle Ages, when grand tournaments were held with jousts between heavily-armoured knights wearing visors. Since individuals were unrecognisable in such gear, unique coats-of-arms were designed to identify the combatants to fans and foe alike. Taverns and inns, village blacksmiths, printers and publishers, all manner of craftsmen and merchants were as recognisable in villages and cities a thousand years ago, as they are in today’s hyper-illuminated metropolitan areas and quieter rural main streets.However, there is another level of symbolism that goes beyond the merely commercial, socially informative, or technologically useful.

And that is the universe of sacred symbols, whose resonance in the archetypal levels of the human psyche can cause spiritual change and expand consciousness beyond the confines of mundane reality. Symbols that serve as gateways to realms of knowledge, power, and understanding that inform and control life on earth, and, presumably, the after-death state of non-physical life as well. Symbols that can open the mind to communication with spiritual beings who welcome the opportunity to interact with human consciousness. Symbols that confirm to the aspiring student the nature of the truths he or she seeks.

Symbols are the alphabet of the Law of Correspondence. This universal principle acknowledges the inter-connection of all things with all other things, the existence of multiple relationships within Nature’s kaleidoscopic richness.

In The Mystery Traditions, I quoted the following statement by Titus Burckhardt from his book Alchemy, “True symbolism depends on the fact that things which may differ from one another in time, space, material nature, and many other limitative characteristics, can possess and exhibit the same essential quality.”

This article will briefly examine two symbols of great importance to human life. I hope the reader may gain an insight into the richness of the subject and an appreciation for the multiplicity of ideas involved in the study of symbolism. I also hope it may suggest a means by which other symbols may be explored.

The Circle

Let us then begin with the Circle, a symbol of unity, wholeness, and completeness – a figure that seems to contain all within itself. Yet, conversely, it defines and delineates space. Thus it is simultaneously an image of distinction, separation, and difference – setting boundaries between that which is within and that which is without. It is a barrier against intrusion, offering a cocoon of protection within which growth may occur in safety – the egg wherein the babe may take form and mature, the magical circle in which spiritual progress may be made.

The circle is traditionally a symbol of the Sun. To understand the derivation of this association, one need only look up at the sky. With a point in the centre, the circle is the glyph of the Sun in the alphabet of astrology. Its astrological zoomorph is the male lion, king of beasts, powerful, ravenous, swift, courageous, triumphant, regal. He is filled with a self-confidence that allows for the enjoyment of leisure, a kind of benign self-indulgence or laziness that springs from an understanding of his role in the aptly-named pride, or family of lions, over which he rules.

The Sun is a symbol of resurrection. Each day it rises from the depths of night to gradually illumine the world. Through the course of the day it waxes in power and pulses with life-giving heat. Its radiance sustains the growth of crops and the activities of all species on earth. As the day draws to a close and the light of the sun diminishes, it sends forth rays of magnificent colour that herald its decline and descent, its apparent death as it is about to be swallowed by the dragon of night. And yet on the morrow it comes forth again, bursting the chains of its imprisonment, rising to herald the new dawn. It is the embodiment of continuity and hope, of the possibility of life beyond death, and of triumph in adversity.

The Sun is a symbol of the self and of self-consciousness. It represents the unique individuality of each being. As he stands out among the luminaries of heaven, so is each of us the centre of our own universe. While it may not be quite politic to express it in words, each of us feels that he or she is the centre around which the world, as we know it, revolves. The Book of the Law expresses this image beautifully in the passage, “In the sphere I am everywhere the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.” While there are many who like to imagine themselves as amorphous ripples in a universal continuum, Nature herself rebels against this fantasy. The Sun is her proof.

In the world’s mythology, the Sun is the archetypal essence of numerous deities who span all cultures while sharing the same identity.

Ra in the Egyptian pantheon is hawk-headed. The hawk is far-seeing, inhabits the very heights of the celestial environment, is swift as a beam of light, able to penetrate all darkness and depths to snatch forth his nourishment from the myriad of creatures over whom he reigns. Ra is the creator god, both the spark that enlivens the world and the sustaining energy that keeps it alive. Ra was the first and most powerful of the gods; like the Sun, his role is that of prominence, leadership, and dominion.

The Sun subsumes the resurrection gods, the saviours who act as mythic intercessors between Deity and humanity. The Sun is the eye of God monitoring its creation – prominently, unavoidably, consistently omnipresent in our world that we may learn the lesson of our own essence. The Sun is the link, the representative, the prince, vice-regent, and son of God – visible representative of the Invisible Father of all. As such, he is Jesus, Adonis, Bacchus, Krishna, Apollo, even the Buddha. His death is suffered as an inspiration to us of a life beyond, offering the promise of victory over the chthonic states of non-existence.

The Tree of Life

In the diagram of the Tree of Life (page 16) – the traditional esoteric geometric representation of the mystic totality of existence – the Sun is the number six, the Sephira, or sphere, of Tiphareth, Beauty. Tiphareth stands in the balance, midway between the topmost sphere of Kether, the Crown – the Point, the first manifestation of the Infinite – and the bottom sphere of Malkuth, the Kingdom – the world of three-dimensional physical reality in which we live. Tiphareth occupies the central of the three pillars of the Tree of Life, the Middle Pillar, surrounded on either side by the Pillars of Mercy and Severity.

As the Sun is Tiphareth, the number six, its geometrical figure is the hexagram. The hexagram further exemplifies the nature of the Sun as intercessor or balance point between above and below, heaven and earth, God and man. The hexagram is formed by the union of the ascending male triangle of Fire, and the descending female triangle of Water. The number six, or hexad, was called “the Perfection of Parts” by Pythagoras. This reminds us that Tiphareth (Beauty) is the sphere of Harmony. And harmony is produced by the joining together of distinct, and, in some cases, discordant elements, to produce a unified and aesthetically pleasing whole. Pythagoras observed that the number six is the first mixture of odd and even, being the multiplication of two by three. The Pythagoreans designated odd numbers as male, and even numbers as female. Thus, we are reminded once again that the number six and the hexagram represent the union of male and female, the harmony upon which all creation relies.

The Sun’s metal is gold, the luminous and most beautiful of all, whose value has been an unchanging indicator of wealth and a medium of exchange for millennia. A visit to any fine Egyptian collection, in either a museum or the pages of a book, will show the prominence of gold as the chosen metal of pharaonic iconography and architecture. Similarly, gold was the metal chosen for most of the ritual implements in the Temple of Solomon. It was also used to cover the sacred Ark of the Covenant. Medieval and Renaissance Europe used gold liberally in churches, shrines, and palaces, as did the Aztec, Mayan, Indian, and Chinese royalty and priesthood. Gold is the ultimate symbol of the perfection reached by the alchemist – who removes in countless stages the myriad of impurities that make up lead, and allows for its transformation and refinement into the king of metals.

In the body, the Sun is the heart, symbolically the single most important organ. The heart is the central pumping station of the blood, the essence of life. All survival and health depend on its regular and consistent motion. Long regarded as the seat of courage, the heart was torn from the chest of enemies and eaten by ancient warriors, that they might increase their own strength by ingesting the essence of worthy opponents. Colloquially we speak of a person “with heart” to describe the motivation and self-discipline necessary to pursue a course of success in life. The heart denotes sincerity, the appreciation of the essence of the self in action. It is also the symbolic seat of love, the motivating force that sustains the world through generation.

Among the parts of the Soul in the Qabalah, the Sun is one of six of the ten Sephiroth that compose the intellect, known as the Ruach. Here again, the Sun acts as an intercessor between the higher levels of the soul (the Self, Life Force, and Intuition) and its lowest aspect (the Animal Soul of Nature). The Intellect weighs and analyses, decides on the appropriate response to stimulation from above and below. It acts as the mediator between “heaven” and “earth.”

On the level of spiritual experience, the Sun is a symbol of the magical virtue of Devotion to the Great Work, the path by which an aspirant may reach the heights of spiritual potential. The stage of initiation represented by Tiphareth, the sphere of the Sun, is known as the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. This may loosely be understood as the point at which the upward motion of the soul is met with a profound response from the higher reaches of Divinity. A direct interaction occurs in the consciousness of the aspirant that allows for an understanding of one’s continuing mission, the reality of one’s faith in the quest, and the nature of the tasks and obligations under which one is to continue. Such an interaction is a perfect expression of the symbol set we began exploring with the Circle.

The Moon

In order to balance this Solar meditation, let us now turn to the Moon. She is represented by various glyphs in the astrological alphabet because of the several stages of her passage during the twenty-eight days of the lunar cycle from New to Full Moon. However the Crescent is the Moon’s standard astrological symbol.

The Moon is the unconscious self. It represents the hidden parts of the psyche from which spring moods, emotions, dreams, and intuition. The depths of the soul are the very realm of images. The unconscious mind is the wellspring of magic and witchcraft – in which the hidden forces of nature are brought into operation by direct appeal from the hidden forces of the self. (On a practical level, to access such deeper levels of consciousness, the rational intellect must be enlisted to help strategise a means to bypass itself.) The Moon is the symbol of universality, the collective unconscious, the pleroma, wherein the individual self is united with the universal life stream.

The Moon traditionally represents the Goddess, the complement of the solar male deity. In Egypt, she is Isis, the Enchantress. Isis is a complex deity who is identified as the mate of both Ra and Osiris, Lord of the Underworld. She is variously known as the daughter and mistress of Ra, and wife and sister of Osiris. (Osiris may be considered the nocturnal aspect of Ra – the Sun god beneath the horizon, Lord of the realm of death. Symbols, as the reader may have noticed, tend to run together. Their fluidity and tendency toward transmutation are among their lessons.)

The Moon is further identified with goddesses such as Persephone, whose tenure in the Underworld is balanced by her time on earth. Diana, the beautiful virgin goddess of the hunt, is another lunar archetype, as is Mary, Athene, Vesta, Kuan Yin, Astarte, Inanna, and Kali. The symbols of the Moon and Venus run in close parallel (as do those of the Sun and Mars), so one can easily include Hathor, Venus, and Aphrodite, as well as darker feminine archetypes such as Lilith, Ereshkigal, Hecate, and Ashtoreth.

Like the phases of the Moon, the Female archetype is intimately associated with time and the rhythms of life – from the tidal patterns of the ocean to the menstrual cycle. The natural threefold aspect of the feminine archetype is traditionally associated with menstruation: the virginal youth, wife and mother, and crone. Many calendars are lunar-based, among them the Jewish and Muslim calendars in use today.

The Moon is a symbol of fecundity in her identification with the Woman, the ark of life sailing through the seas of time. Moon cycles also regulate planting and harvesting, and thus she is identified with nourishment and sustenance.

On a physical level, the Moon reflects the light of the Sun at night. It is described as a “dead” planet, that is, one without a measurable active core. While these facts are aspects of the feminine archetype, particularly that of the Hag or Crone phase and the dark side of the witch power, there is a great deal more to consider. The Moon is the nocturnal complement of the Sun. How she illuminates the night may be of less immediate importance than the fact that she does. Walking through the countryside by the light of the Moon, it matters little whether the light that guides us is reflected or intrinsic.

On the Tree of Life, the Moon is Yesod, the Foundation, the ninth Sephira. Yesod is also located on the Middle Pillar, directly below Tiphareth, and directly above the physical world of Malkuth, the tenth Sephira. Yesod completes the geometric symmetry of the preceding Sephiroth, while Malkuth hangs like a pendant from the Tree.

Yesod is the world of images and ideas (angels) just prior to their incarnation in the matter and form of Malkuth. The Moon is of the Formative World, Yetzirah, the realm of causes behind the veil of physical life, the astral plane whose vibratory undulations inform the world of substance.

Yesod is the number nine, the number of months of pregnancy. Reducible to three, nine is the first square of an odd number. (Three is “the first and proper joining together of unities,” that is, it is the extension from Point, to Line, to Plane, self-contained in and of itself.) Nine was called “Ocean” or “Horizon” by the Pythagoreans because it is the height of numbers: to go further to ten is only a return to one. Nine is the natural limit of number.

The Moon’s metal is silver, the other traditional coin of the realm, defender of value, medium of exchange, and symbol of the beauty of the mineral world – shining and luminous, of pure composition.

In the body, the Moon is the genitals, the organs of generation, and the sensual, instinctive, insistent fire of those passions on which lives and kingdoms are both built and destroyed. An unruly world of excess which may be channelled through initiation to become the engine of manifestation and great power.

On the level of spiritual experience, the Moon is associated with the magical virtue of Independence. How interesting that after discussing her universality and identity with the unconscious mind – as well as the characterisation of the Moon as “the reflection” of the Sun – she would be identified with Independence. Perhaps the lesson here is that as Yesod is the Foundation, the Work can only take place within the individual. We must learn to separate the many strands of inherited and environmental tendencies in order to uncover our true and unique natures.

While we have explored several aspects of these two important symbols, we have only touched the surface. It would be possible to write volumes on the archetypal symbolism of the Sun and Moon. By looking at the teachings implicit in the Circle and Crescent, we have entered a world, nay a universe, of magic, astrology, mythology, religion, morality, psychology, astronomy, biology, physics, and history. Most importantly, we have glimpsed a path by which men and women may achieve the ultimate goals of our lives – spiritual attainment, universal consciousness, oneness with God, and the accomplishment of the Great Work.

Pedestrians may still safely cross the street in obedience to lights flashing with signs of upraised hands or stick figures in motion. Let us conduct our own ascent to the cosmic reaches of Eternity through the sacred symbols of Initiation.

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JAMES WASSERMAN is a lifelong student of esotericism. His writings include The Mystery Traditions: Secret Symbols and Sacred Art; Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary; An Illustrated History of the Knights Templar; Secret Societies: Illuminati, Freemasons, and the French Revolution; and The Secrets of Masonic Washington: Signs, Symbols, and Ceremonies at the Origin of America’s Capital. His Chronicle Books edition of The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day features the full-color Papyrus of Ani with integrated English translation. The Templars and the Assassins: The Militia of Heaven has thus far been published in six languages. His controversial The Slaves Shall Serve: Meditations on Liberty defines political freedom as a spiritual value. James and his wife Nancy launched The Weiser Concise Guides, a series of books on basic occultism. You can find him online at www.studio31.com or www.jameswassermanbooks.com. He lives in New York City with his wife Nancy.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 116 (Sept-Oct 2009).

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The intuitions reported by mystics, poets, artists, ordinary people, even scientists, often go beyond the range of sensory perception. In the reductionist culture inspired by classical science, they are dismissed as mere delusion – classical empiricism claims that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the eye. However, the classical tenet is not universally upheld. It is exceptional in the annals of history, and even in the context of contemporary cultures.In history intuitions were embedded in the conceptual framework through which a given culture interpreted the nature of reality. In indigenous societies shamans and medicine-men (and women) tuned themselves to spontaneous apprehension through rigorous initiation and training; they derived their mystical vision from them. In mythically oriented societies the world was seen as a cosmic realm of spirits, and in classical cultures it was believed to be governed by a panoply of unseen gods. The Abrahamic monotheistic religions recognised the intuitions of their prophets as conveying fundamental truths about God and the nature of His creation. Eastern cultures have always held that reality extends far beyond the domain of the senses.

On the other hand Western culture takes as real only that which is manifest – literally “to hand.” Because what people see is constrained by what they believe they can see, everything that is not conveyed to consciousness by eye and ear is dismissed from the modern view of the world. But are the intuitions that occasionally surface in consciousness mere delusion? Or can there be intuitions that are as real and fundamental as sensory perception? This question calls for a deeper look at the possibility that spontaneous insights and apprehensions may have a physical basis. There are findings at the cutting-edge of scientific research that affirm this possibility.

The Brain as a “macroscopic quantum system”

The crucial finding is the discovery that the brain is not merely a classical biochemical system; in some respects it is a “macroscopic quantum system.” Certain cerebral functions involve processes previously thought to be limited to the domain of the quantum. The pertinent functions concern the reception and transmission of information at the cellular and subcellular level: intercellular communication involves quantum-effects and processes. Neurons and neuronal and subneuronal networks form synchronised oscillators that receive and send information through quantum resonance. This information propagates quasi-instantly throughout the organism and does not require classical channels of signal transmission. The various forms and characteristics of information transmitted through quantum resonance are not fully understood, but their physical basis is clear. It is nonlocality, the process Einstein first said is “spooky” and then Erwin Schrödinger termed “entanglement.” Entanglement means that the states and functions of the entangled entities are correlated beyond the ordinary bounds of space and time. As a result the entities are intrinsically and fundamentally coherent. Such coherence obtains in the domain of the quantum: in pristine states quanta are coherent and mutually entangled. Only interaction in some form (measurement, and possibly certain acts of observation) renders them decoherent. Macroscale objects were said to be in a permanently decoherent state, yet certain objects also exhibit forms of quantum coherence. There is experimental evidence that the state of entire atoms can be entangled, and in recent years quantum-coherence has been discovered at the scale of living organisms. The divide between the microworld of the quantum and the world of macroscale objects has been breached. The heat of living organisms – even of warm-bodied species – does not necessarily destroy the coherence that is the precondition of entanglement. While classical quantum theory maintained that at ordinary temperatures Brownian movement made quanta, so-called “qubits,” decoherent and thus incapable of entanglement, recent research (inter alia by Kitaev, Pitkanen, and Frecska and Luna) indicates that the problem of “heat-decoherence” is not insuperable.1

There appear to be networks of quanta where the particles are “woven” or “braided” in a way that is sufficiently robust to maintain coherence at body temperatures. Whereas at such temperatures classically organised qubits become decoherent, networks of woven or braided qubits conserve coherence. As Parsons put it, “braiding is robust: just as a passing gust of wind may ruffle your shoelaces but won’t untie them, data stored on a quantum braid can survive all kinds of disturbance.”2 Quantum coherence in the brain and throughout the organism is not just theoretical speculation; it is entirely fundamental for coordinating the processes that make life possible. The staggering number of physical and chemical reactions taking place in the living organism is not likely to be coordinated by limited and relatively slow biochemical signal-transmission alone. Only the “entanglement” of the organism’s cellular and subcellular components can ensure a sufficiently rapid flow of multidimensional information to maintain the organism in its physically improbable state far from thermal and chemical equilibrium.

Cytoskeletal Structures

Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff suggest that cytoskeletal structures in the brain are responsible for the reception, computation, and transmission of multidimensional quantum-resonance-based information. Throughout the organism cytoskeletal proteins are organised into a network of microtubules, and the elements of these networks are connected to each other structurally by protein-links and functionally by gap junctions. However, the network of microtubules may be too coarse-grained to produce quantum-effects in the brain. The “infoplasm,” the basic substrate of living matter, may be the microtrabecular lattice, a web of microfilaments 7 to 9 nanometer in diameter. The periodic lattice of microtubules forms a network within the network of neurons, and the microtrabecular lattice is a network embedded in the network of microtubules. According to Ede Frecska, it is this lattice that is likely to be the structure responsible for quantum-effects in the brain. It appears physically possible that the quantum-scale components of the cytoskeletal lattice convey information from the world to the brain. The question is, what information? How does information originate in the world at large?

The Akashic Field

Until recently, asserting that information is objectively present in nature and not only in the human realm was considered metaphysical. This is no longer the case. It is now recognised that information is present in all things; as John Wheeler remarked, in some respects it the most fundamental feature of the universe. Experiments designed to test the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen hypothesis indicate that already quanta behave in an informed manner: they appear to make choices of their own, and respond to choices by other quanta. Either they have a form of consciousness (a thesis entertained by some physicists), or they are embedded in a complex informational environment. The latter is the minimally speculative assumption. It suggests that even in the absence of matter space is neither empty nor passive. As this writer among others has suggested, cosmic space is not a vacuum, but a plenum. In recognition of the prophetic insight of ancient Sanskrit and Hindu cosmology – where Akasha is the most fundamental of the five elements, the one from which the others arise – this writer calls the field that fills cosmic space the “Akashic Field.”3

The idea that space is active and filled with physically significant events is not unique to Sanskrit and Hindu cosmology; it has noteworthy antecedents also in the history of science. In the nineteenth century, mathematician William Clifford suggested that small portions of space are analogous to little hills on a surface that is flat on average; the geometry of the landscape does not hold for them. The property of space to be curved or distorted, he said, is continually being passed on from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave. In the physical world there is nothing else but this wavelike variation.4

In a 1930 paper, “The concept of space,” Albert Einstein noted, “We have now come to the conclusion that space is the primary thing and matter only secondary; we may say that space, in revenge for its former inferior position, is now eating up matter.”5 A few years later Erwin Schrödinger restated the same thought: “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.”6 In physical cosmology cosmic space is seen as a ceaselessly fluctuating sea of emerging and vanishing virtual particles. In grand-unified and super-grand unified theories all the universal fields and forces of nature are traced to origins in the quantum vacuum, a fundamental hyperspace often viewed as a unified field. This fundamental field carries also zero-point energies – energies that remain present when at the absolute zero of temperature conventional forms of energy vanish. The concept of a complex unified field, effectively the Akashic Field, offers a basis for identifying the origins of the information that quantum processes transfer to the brain. It is known that as a consequence of their motion atoms, molecules and all material entities (i.e. structures composed of massive particles) produce electromagnetic waves that radiate into surrounding space. Space, however, is not empty and passive, and it is more than Maxwell’s extended electromagnetic field. It is the locus of the Akashic Field. The waves emitted by moving objects excite and modulate this field, creating wavefronts that propagate in the field and, upon meeting, interfere with each other. The interference patterns that result carry information at their nodes on the objects that created the waves. Because the Akashic Field is a seamless medium that extends throughout space, the information carried by the interference patterns produced by moving objects extends throughout space. This information corresponds to the physical properties of the objects.7

The process is similar to that which occurs in holography. The holograms created by interfering beams of light conserve information on the surface of the things and events that modulated the light beams. But the interference patterns responsible for quantum coherence are created by waves in the Akashic Field, and not by photons in the electromagnetic field. Thus they are not ordinary, but quantum holograms. Walter Schempp has shown that quantum holograms are coherent, mutually entangled, and carry nonlocal information on the things and events that produced the constituent waves. He has also shown that the brain’s object imagery is phase conjugate. Lending support to Karl Pribram’s “holonomic brain theory,” Schempp affirmed that “the conditions which make quantum holography possible are ideally suited to the hypothesis that the brain works… by quantum holography.”8

The answer to the question regarding the origin and nature of the information transferred by quantum-resonance to the brain can now be essayed. When the phase and frequency of a cerebral lattice corresponds to the phase and frequency of a quantum hologram, brain and hologram enter into phase-conjugate resonance. This allows the information conserved at the nodes of Akashic Field quantum holograms to be transferred to the cerebral receptors. Thus some of the intuitions that reach consciousness are not merely delusion: they are transmitted by phase-conjugate resonance from the Akashic Field to the cytoskeletal structures of the brain. Just which intuitions have this physical origin cannot be ascertained at this time merely by examining the pertinent cerebral processes. We need to resort to circumstantial evidence, examining the correspondence of the content of the intuitions with things and events known to exist in the real world through ordinary sensory perception. But we can affirm in good conscience that it is entirely plausible some intuitions have a bona fide physical basis. And that, in itself, goes a long way toward legitimating belief in the veridical nature of at least some of our intuitions.

A Concluding Note

Although widely reported and often meaningful, intuition is seldom the subject of sustained scientific research. The classical empirical tenet of mainstream science discourages attempts to investigate the phenomenon: it is physically implausible if not categorically impossible. Yet sustained research on intuition would be potentially fruitful and extremely important. In the positive case it would show that the human brain and nervous systems can access information in a spontaneous mode. While some varieties of experience viewed as intuition could well be delusion, there could also be spontaneous apprehension for which we can find an acceptable scientific explanation. This would lend support to the frequently voiced belief that human beings – and by implication all living things – are connected with each other and with nature in ways that are more subtle than those that stimulate the senses. This in turn would reinforce and legitimate empathy and solidarity among people and a closer sense of rapport with nature – vitally important attributes in our critical times when we face problems we can only resolve in cooperation with each other and harmony with our environment. This article is based on the author’s latest book The Akashic Experience: Science and the Cosmic Memory Field (Inner Traditions, Rochester, USA).

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Living in the world under your skin is a bustling metropolis of 50 trillion cells, each of which is biologically and functionally equivalent to a miniature human. Current popular opinion holds that the fate and behaviour of our internal cellular citizens are preprogrammed in their genes. Since Watson and Crick’s discovery of the genetic code, the public has been programmed with perception that DNA acquired from our parents at the moment of conception determines our traits and characters. This conventional view of genetics further has us believe that our inherited gene programs are apparently fixed, the equivalent of a computer’s “read-only” program.

The notion that our fate is indelibly inscribed in our genes was directly derived from the now dated scientific concept known as genetic determinism. It is still a conventional belief that genes “control” the many wonderful attributes passed down through a family’s lineage, as well as dysfunctional familial traits such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and depression, among scores of others. As “victims” of heredity, genetic forces outside of our control, we naturally perceive of ourselves as being powerless in regard to the unfolding of our lives. Unfortunately, the assumption of being powerless is the road to personal irresponsibility. “Since I can’t do anything about it anyway… why should I care?”

Shattering Illusions

Just as the Human Genome Project got off the ground in the late 1980’s, scientists began to acquire a paradigm-shattering new view of how life works. Their revolutionary research has become the foundation for a new branch of science known as epigenetic control. The world of epigenetics has shaken the foundations of biology and medicine for it reveals that we are not “victims” of our genes, but are in fact “masters” of our genes.

The conventional version of heredity still being taught in schools emphasises genetic control, which literally reads as “control by genes.” However, newly revealed epigenetic control mechanisms provide a profoundly different view of how life is managed. The Greek-derived prefix epi- means “over or above.” Consequently, the literal translation of epigenetic control reads as “control above the genes.” Genes do NOT control life – life is controlled by something above the genes. Knowledge is power and this knowledge of how life works provides the most important element in our quest for self-empowerment. Epigenetics leads us from our perception of victim to our proper role as a participatory creator.

The new science of epigenetics recognises that environmental signals are the primary regulators of gene activity. As described in the Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, cells read and respond to the conditions of their environment using membrane protein perception switches. Activated switches send signals into the cytoplasm to control behaviour and regulate the activity of the genes, the hereditary blueprints used to make the body. Proteins are the cell’s molecular building blocks and their characters provide for our physical and behavioural traits.

Amazingly, epigenetic information can modify or edit the readout of a gene blueprint to create over 30,000 different variations of proteins from the same gene. This editing process can provide for normal functional protein products as well as dysfunctional proteins from the same gene. One can be born with healthy genes and through epigenetic processes express mutant behaviours such as cancer. Similarly, one can be born with defective mutant genes and through epigenetic mechanisms create normal healthy proteins and functions.

The conventional belief that the genome represents “read-only” programs is now proven to be false. Epigenetic mechanisms modify the readout of genetic code, therefore genes actually represent “read-write” programs wherein life experiences actively redefine an individual’s genetic expression. As organisms experience the environment, their perception mechanisms fine-tune genetic expression so as to enhance their opportunities for survival. The environment’s influence over the genome is dramatically revealed in studies on identical twins. When first born, these siblings express almost the same gene activity from their identical genomes. However, as they begin to experience life, their personal individualised experiences and perceptions lead to the activation of profoundly different sets of genes.

The “new” biology is based upon the fact that perception controls behaviour AND gene activity! This revised version of science emphasises the reality that we actively control our genetic expression moment by moment throughout our lives. Rather than seeing ourselves as victims of our genes, we must come to own the responsibility that our perceptions are dynamically shaping our biology and behaviour. The expression of a healthy or dis-eased biology is directly influenced by the accuracy of an individual’s interpretation or perception of their environment. Misperceptions rewrite genetic expression just as effectively as accurate perceptions, yet with far graver, perhaps even life threatening consequences.

From the Microcosm of the Cell to the Macrocosm of the Mind

For the first three and a half billion years of life on this planet, the biosphere consisted of a massive population of individual single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, yeast, algae, and protozoa like the familiar amoeba and paramecium. About 700 million years ago, individual cells started to assemble into multicellular colonies. The collective awareness afforded in a community of cells was far greater than an individual cell’s awareness. Since awareness is a primary factor in organismal survival, the communal experience offered its citizens a far greater opportunity to stay alive and reproduce.

The first cellular communities, like the earliest human communities, were basic hunter-gatherer clans wherein each member of the society offered the same services to support the survival of the community. However, as the population densities of both cellular and human communities reached greater numbers, it was no longer efficient or effective for all individuals to do the same job. In both types of communities, evolution led to individuals taking on specialised functions. For example, in human communities some members focused upon hunting, others upon domestic chores and some upon child rearing. In cellular communities specialisation meant that some cells began to differentiate as digestive cells, others as heart cells, and still others as muscle cells.

Most of the trillions of cells forming bodies such as ours have no direct perception of the external environment. Liver cells “see” what’s going on in the liver, but don’t directly know what’s going on in the world outside of the skin. The function of the brain and nervous system is to interpret environmental stimuli and send out signals to the cells that integrate and regulate the life-sustaining functions of the body’s organ systems.

The successful nature of multicellular communities allowed evolving brains to dedicate vast numbers of cells for use in the cataloguing, memorising and integrating complex perceptions. The ability to remember and select among the millions of experienced perceptions in life provides the brain with a powerful creative database from which it can create complex behavioural repertoires. When put into play, these behavioural programs endow the organism with the characteristic trait of consciousness. In this presentation, the term consciousness is used in its most fundamental context… the state of being awake and aware of what is going on around you.

Many scientists prefer to think of consciousness in terms of a digital quality, an organism either has it or not. However, an assessment of the evolution of biological properties suggests consciousness, like any other quality, evolved over time. Consequently, the character of consciousness would likely express itself as a gradient of awareness from its simpler roots in primitive organisms to the unique character of self-consciousness manifest in humans and other higher vertebrates.

The expression of self-consciousness is specifically associated with a small evolutionary adaptation in the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the neurological platform that enables us to realise our personal identity and experience the quality of “thinking.” Monkeys and lower organisms do not express self-consciousness. When looking into a mirror, monkeys will never recognise that they are looking at them selves; they will always perceive the image to be that of another monkey. In contrast, neurologically more advanced chimps looking in the mirror perceive the mirror’s reflection as an image of themselves.

An important difference between the brain’s consciousness and the prefrontal cortex’s self-consciousness is that consciousness enables an organism to assess and respond to the immediate conditions of its environment that are relevant at that moment. In contrast, self-consciousness enables the individual to factor in the consequences of their actions in regard to not only how they impact the present moment but also as to how they will influence the individual’s future.

Self-consciousness is an evolutionary adjunct to consciousness in that it provided another behaviour-creating platform that included the role of a “self” in the decision-making process. While conventional consciousness enables organisms to be participatory members in the dynamics of life’s “play,” the quality of self-consciousness offers an opportunity to simultaneously be an observer in the “audience.” From the perspective of our being able to observe the role of “self” in the unfolding of the “play,” self-consciousness provides the individual with the option for self-reflection, reviewing and editing their character’s performance. The conscious and self-conscious functions of the brain may be collectively referred to as the mind.

In conventional parlance, the brain’s conscious mechanism associated with automated stimulus-response behaviours is referred to as the subconscious or unconscious mind, for the reason that its functions require neither observation nor attention from the self-conscious mind. Subconscious mind functions evolved long before the prefrontal cortex, consequently it historically was able to successfully operate a body and its behaviour without any contribution from, or involvement with, the more evolved self-conscious mind.

The subconscious mind is an astonishingly powerful information processor that can record perceptual experiences (programs) and forever play them back at the push of a button. Interestingly, many people only become aware of their subconscious mind’s automated programmed behaviours when they realise they’re engaged in an undesirable behaviour as a result of someone “pushing their buttons.”

The power of the subconscious mind lies in its ability to process massive amounts of data acquired from direct and indirect learning experiences at extraordinarily high rates of speed. It has been estimated that the disproportionately larger brain mass providing the subconscious mind’s function has the ability to interpret and respond to over 40 million nerve impulses per second. In contrast, it is estimated that the diminutive self-conscious mind’s prefrontal cortex can only process about 40 nerve impulses per second. As an information processor, the subconscious mind is one million times more powerful than the self-conscious mind.

As a tradeoff in acquiring its computational bravado, the subconscious mind expresses a marginal creative ability, one that may be best compared to that of a precocious five year old. In contrast to the freewill offered by the conscious mind, the subconscious mind primarily expresses prerecorded stimulus-response “habits.” Once a behaviour pattern is learned, such as walking, getting dressed or driving a car, those programs are processed as habits in the subconscious mind… meaning you can carry out these complex functions without paying any attention to them.

In contrast to the massive information processing by the subconscious mind, the smaller prefrontal cortex responsible for self-consciousness is limited to juggling only a small number of tasks at the same time. Though its ability for multitasking is physically constrained, the self-conscious mind can focus upon and control any function in the human body. It was once thought that some body’s functions were beyond the control of the self-conscious mind, such involuntary functions included the regulation of heartbeat, blood pressure and body temperature, behaviours controlled by the unconscious autonomic nervous system. However, it is now recognised that yogis and other practitioners that train their conscious minds can absolutely control functions formerly defined as involuntary behaviours.

The subconscious and self-conscious components of the mind work in tandem. The subconscious mind controls every behaviour that is not attended to by the self-conscious mind. For most people, their self-conscious minds are rarely focused upon the current moment since their mental processing continuously flits from one thought to another. The self-conscious mind is so preoccupied with thoughts about the future, the past or resolving some imaginary problem, that most of our lives are actually controlled by programs in the subconscious mind.

Cognitive neuroscientists conclude that the self-conscious mind contributes only about 5% of our cognitive activity. Consequently, 95% of our decisions, actions, emotions and behaviours are derived from the unobserved processing of the subconscious mind.

Simple Insights… Profound Consequences!

Through the management of “programmed” perceptions, the mind controls our biology, behaviour and gene activity. The seat of thinking, freewill, personal identity, and our wants, desires and intentions is a small 40 “bit” self-conscious processor that controls our lives only 5% of the day or less. The million times more powerful subconscious mind controls 95% or more of our lives using “habits” derived from instincts and the perceptions acquired in our life experiences.

This data reveals that our lives are not controlled by our personal intentions and desires as we may inherently believe. Do the math! Our fate is actually under the control of the preprogrammed experiences managed by the subconscious mind. The most powerful and influential programs in the subconscious mind were downloaded into consciousness in the profoundly important formative period between gestation and six years of age. Now here’s the catch – these life-shaping subconscious programs are direct downloads derived from observing our primary teachers… our parents, siblings and local community. Unfortunately, as psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors are keenly aware, many of the perceptions acquired about ourselves in the formative period are expressed as limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs.

Unbeknownst to most parents is the fact that their words and actions are being continuously recorded by their children’s minds. Consequently, when they inform their child that he or she does not deserve things, or that they are not good enough, or smart enough, or that they are sickly, these pronouncements are directly downloaded into their child’s subconscious. Since the role of the mind is to make coherence between its programs and real life, the brain generates appropriate behavioural responses to life’s stimuli to assure the “truth” of the programmed perceptions.

Let’s apply this understanding to the behaviour in one’s life. Consider that you were a 5-year-old child throwing a tantrum in Walmart over your desire to have a particular toy. In silencing your outburst, your father yelled, “YOU don’t deserve things!” You are now an adult and in your self-conscious mind you are considering the idea that you have the qualities and power to assume a position of leadership at your job. While in the process of entertaining this positive thought in the self-conscious mind, all of your behaviours are now being automatically managed by the programs in your more powerful subconscious mind. Since your fundamental behavioural programs are those derived in your formative years, your father’s admonition that “you do not deserve things” may become the subconscious mind’s automated directive. So while you are entertaining wonderful thoughts of a positive future and not paying attention, your subconscious mind is automatically engaging self-sabotaging behaviour to assure that your reality matches your program of not-deserving.

Now here’s the catch – Behaviour is automatically controlled by subconscious mind’s programs when the self-conscious mind is not focused on the present moment. When the reflective self-conscious mind is preoccupied in thought and not paying attention, it does not observe the automatic behaviours derived from subconscious mind. Since 95% or more of our behaviour is derived from the subconscious mind… then most of our own behaviour is invisible to us!

For example, consider you intimately know someone and you also know his or her parent. From your perspective you see that your friend’s behaviour closely resembles their parent. Then one day you casually remark to your friend something like, “You know Mary, you’re just like your mom.” Back away! In disbelief and perhaps shock, Mary will likely respond with, “How can you say that!” The cosmic joke is that everyone else can see that Mary’s behaviour resembles her mom’s except Mary. Why? Simply because when Mary is engaging the subconscious behavioural programs she downloaded in her youth from observing her mom, it’s because her self-conscious mind is not paying attention. At those moments, her automatic subconscious programs operate without observation.

Another familiar example of how “invisible” behaviour operates: You are driving your car while having an intense conversation with a friend in the passenger’s seat. You become so involved in the discussion that only later, when your gaze returns to the road, do you realise that you haven’t paid attention to the driving for the last ten minutes. Since the self-conscious mind was preoccupied with the conversation, the car was being driven by the subconscious mind’s “autopilot” mode. However, if you were asked to describe your driving behaviour during that ten-minute hiatus, you would be forced to say, “I don’t know… I wasn’t paying attention.” Aha! That’s the point – when the conscious mind is busy, we do not observe our own programmed subconscious behaviours.

Consequently, when life does not work out as planned, we rarely recognise that we were very likely contributing to our own disappointments. Since we are generally unaware of the influence of our own subconscious behaviours, we naturally perceive of our selves as victims of forces outside of us when things don’t work out as desired. Unfortunately, assuming the role of victim means that we assume we are powerless in manifesting our intentions. Nothing is further from the truth! The primary determinant in shaping the fate of our lives is the database of perceptions and beliefs programmed in our minds.

Where Did That Behaviour Come From?

There are three sources of perceptions that control our biology and behaviour. The most primitive perceptions are those we acquire with our genome. Built into our genes are programs that provide fundamental reflex behaviours referred to as instincts. Pulling your hand out of an open flame is a genetically derived behaviour that does not have to be learned. More complex instincts include the ability of newborn babies to swim like a dolphin or the activation of innate healing mechanisms to repair a damaged system or eliminate a cancerous growth. Genetically inherited instincts are perceptions acquired from nature.

The second source of life-controlling perceptions represents memories derived from life experiences downloaded into the subconscious mind. These profoundly powerful learned perceptions represent the contribution from nurture. Among the earliest perceptions of life to be downloaded are the emotions and sensations experienced by the mother as she responds to her world. Along with nutrition, the emotional chemistry, hormones, and stress factors controlling the mother’s responses to life experiences cross the placental barrier and influence fetal physiology and development. When the mother is happy, so is the fetus. When the mother is in fear, so is the fetus. When the mother “rejects” her fetus as a potential threat to family survival, the fetal nervous system is preprogrammed with the emotion of being rejected. Sue Gearhardt’s very valuable book Why Love Matters reveals that the fetal nervous system records memories of womb experiences. By the time the baby is born, emotional information downloaded from the life experiences in womb have already shaped half of that individual’s personality.

However, the most influential perceptual programming of the subconscious mind occurs in the time period spanning from the birth process through the first six years of life. During this time the child’s brain is recording all sensory experiences as well as learning complex motor programs for speech, and for learning first how to crawl and then how to stand and ultimately run and jump. Simultaneously, the subconscious mind acquires perceptions in regard to parents, who are they and what they do. Then by observing behavioural patterns of people in their immediate environment (usually parents, siblings and relatives), a child learns perceptions of acceptable and unacceptable social behaviours that become the subconscious programs that establish the “rules” of life.

Nature facilitates the enculturation process by developmentally enhancing the subconscious mind’s ability to download massive amounts of information. EEG readings from adult brains reveal that neural electrical activity is correlated with different states of awareness. Adult EEG readings show that the human brain operates on at least five different frequency levels, each associated with a different brain state:

EEG vibrations continuously shift from state to state over the whole range of frequencies during normal brain processing in adults. However, brain frequencies in developing children display a radically different behaviour. EEG vibration rates and their corresponding states evolve in incremental stages over time. The predominant brain activity during the child’s first two years of life is delta, the lowest EEG frequency range. In the adult brain, delta is associated with sleeping or unconsciousness.

Between two and six years of age, the child’s brain activity state ramps up and it operates primarily in the range of theta. In the adult, theta activity is associated with states of reverie or imagination. While in the theta state, children spend much of their time mixing the imaginary world with the real world. Calm consciousness associated with emerging alpha activity only becomes a predominant brain state after six years of age. By twelve years, the brain expresses all frequency ranges although its primary activity is in beta’s state of focused consciousness. Children leave elementary education behind at this age and enter into the more intense academic programs of junior high.

A profoundly important fact in the above timeline that may have missed your attention is that children do not express the alpha EEG frequencies of conscious processing as a predominant brain state until after they are six years old. The predominant delta and theta activity of children under six signifies that their brains are operating at levels below consciousness. Delta and theta brain frequencies define a brain state known as a hypnogogic trance, the same neural state that hypnotherapists use to download new behaviours directly into the subconscious mind of their clients.

The first six years of a child’s life is spent in a hypnotic trance. Its perceptions of the world are directly downloaded into the subconscious during this time, without the discrimination of the, as yet, dormant self-conscious mind. Consequently, our fundamental perceptions about life and our role in it are learned before we express the capacity to choose or reject those beliefs. We were simply “programmed.” The Jesuits were aware of this programmable state and proudly boasted, “Give us a child until it is six or seven years old and it will belong to the Church for the rest of its life.” They knew that once the dogma of the Church was implanted into the child’s subconscious mind, that information would inevitably influence 95% of that individual’s behaviour for the rest of their life.

The inhibition of conscious processing (alpha EEG activity) and the simultaneous engagement of a hypnogogic trance during the formative stages of a child’s life are a logical necessity. The thinking processes associated with the self-conscious mind’s processing cannot operate from a blank slate. Self-conscious behaviour requires a working database of learned perceptions. Consequently, before self-consciousness is expressed, the brain’s primary task is to acquire a working awareness of the world by directly downloading experiences and observations into the subconscious mind.

HOWEVER, there is a very, very serious downside to acquiring awareness by this method. The consequence is so profound that it not only impacts the life of the individual, it can also alter an entire civilisation. The issue concerns the fact that we download our perceptions and beliefs about life long before we acquire the ability for critical thinking. Our primary perceptions are literally written in stone as unequivocal truths in the subconscious mind, where they habitually operate for life, unless there is an active effort to reprogram them. When as young children we download limiting or sabotaging beliefs about ourselves, these perceptions become our truths and our subconscious processing will invisibly generate behaviours that are coherent with those truths.

As an important point for personal reference, it should be noted that acquired perceptions in the subconscious mind could even override genetically endowed instincts. For example, every human can instinctually swim like a dolphin the moment they emerge from the birth canal. This might prompt you to ask, “Why is it that we have to work so hard at teaching our children how to swim?” The answer lies in the fact that every time the infant encounters open water, such as a pool, a river, a bathtub, the parents freak out in concern for the safety of their child. However, in the baby’s mind, the parent’s behaviour causes the child to equate water as something to be feared. The acquired perception of water as dangerous and life threatening, overrides the instinctual ability to swim and makes the formerly proficient child susceptible to drowning.

The following is further reference to the fact that our unconsciously acquired cultural beliefs control biology and behaviour. Through our developmental experiences we acquire the perception that we are frail, vulnerable organisms subject to the ravages of contagious germs and disease. The belief of being frail actually leads to frailty since the mind’s limiting perceptions inhibit the body’s innate ability to heal itself. This influence of the mind on healing processes is the focus of psychoneuroimmunology, the field that describes the mechanism by which our thoughts change brain chemistry, which in turn regulates the function of the immune system. While negative beliefs can precipitate illness (nocebo effect), the resulting dis-ease state can be alleviated through the healing effects of positive thoughts (placebo effect).

Finally, the third source of perceptions that shape our lives is derived from the self-conscious mind. Unlike the reflexive programming of subconscious mind, the self-conscious mind is a creative platform that provides for the mixing and morphing a variety of perceptions with the infusion of imagination, a process that generates an unlimited number of beliefs and behavioural variations. The quality of the self-conscious mind endows organisms with one of the most powerful forces in the Universe, the opportunity to express freewill.

Taking Personal Responsibility

The conclusions of the “new” biology provide a radical departure from our conventional beliefs of how life works. In contrast to the notion that we are biochemical automatons driven by genes, the new insights reveal that it is the mind that controls genes, which in turn shape our biology and behaviour. The self-conscious mind, associated with our individual identity and the manifestation of thoughts, is guided by our own personal desires and intentions.

While we generally perceive that our self-conscious mind is “controlling” the show, neuroscience has established the fact that 95% of our behaviour is under the control of the more powerful subconscious mind. As most of our personal and cultural problems arise from the fact that behaviours derived from the subconscious mind are essentially invisible to us, we rarely observe our automated behaviour.

Compounding the problem is the fact that fundamental programs in the subconscious mind are derived from others, people who generally do not share your personal goals and aspirations. While our conscious minds are trying to move us toward our dreams, unbeknownst to us our subconscious programs are simultaneously shooting ourselves in the foot and impeding our progress.

The subconscious mind is simply a “record-playback” mechanism that downloads experiences into “behavioural tapes.” While the self-conscious mind is associated with creativity, the subconscious mind’s function is to engage previously recorded programs. Unlike self-consciousness that is overseen by an entity (you), the subconscious mind is more closely related to a machine, meaning there is no thinking, conscious entity controlling the subconscious programs.

We have all been shackled with emotional chains wrought by dysfunctional behaviours programmed by the stories of the past. However, the next time you are talking to “yourself” with the hope of changing sabotaging subconscious programs, it is important to realise the following information. Using reason to communicate with your subconscious in an effort to change its behaviour would essentially have the same influence as trying to change a program on a cassette tape by talking to the tape player. In neither case is there an entity in the mechanism that will respond to your dialogue.

Subconscious programs are not fixed, unchangeable behaviours. We have the ability to rewrite our limiting beliefs and in the process take control of our lives. However, to change subconscious programs requires the activation of a process other than just engaging in a running dialogue with the subconscious mind. There are a large variety of effective processes to reprogram limiting beliefs, which include clinical hypnotherapy, Buddhist mindfulness and a number of newly developed and very powerful modalities collectively referred to as energy psychology.

For a list of resources, visit: www.brucelipton.com.

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BRUCE H. LIPTON, Ph.D. is an internationally recognised cellular biologist who taught cell biology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and later performed pioneering studies at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. His breakthrough research on the cell membrane in 1977 made him a pioneer in the new science of epigenetics. He is author of The Biology of Belief and a sought after keynote speaker and workshop presenter. He also created a full-length audio course The Wisdom of Your Cells: How Your Beliefs Control Your Biology.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 106 (Jan-Feb 2008).

Read this article with its illustrations by downloading
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© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

By RICHARD SMOLEY

—

The latest in the blockbusters of alternative spirituality is The Secret, now both a film and a book. Both have been huge successes. The film version has sold 1.5 million copies in DVD format, while at this writing in early June 2007, the book version of The Secret has been on The New York Times’s best-seller list in the US for “advice nonfiction” for twenty weeks, and currently sits on the top.

No wonder. In breathless, gee-whiz language, The Secret’s Web site promises the key to human existence: “The Secret has existed throughout the history of humankind. It has been discovered, coveted, suppressed, hidden, lost and recovered. It has been hunted down, stolen, and bought for vast sums of money. Now for the first time in history, The Secret is being revealed to the world over two breathtaking hours.”

Well, then, what is the Secret? Was it the source of the success of great men throughout history, including Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, Napoleon, and Einstein, as its promoters claim?

The Secret as a film is the brainchild of Australian documentary producer Rhonda Byrne, who began reading self-help literature while going through a rough patch in her life in 2004. Through such books as The Secret of Getting Rich, The Master Key System, and The Secret of the Ages, Byrne was exposed to an idea that has long fascinated seekers and self-promoters alike: your health, wealth, and success in love, work, and life depend not on what you do but what you think. “That principle can be summed up in three simple words: thoughts become things,” proclaims Mike Dooley, one of the ‘teachers’ featured in The Secret.

That, in essence, is the Secret. Whether it was “hunted down, stolen,” or “bought for vast sums of money” and whether Plato, Aristotle, and other great men had any knowledge of it remains highly open to question, but there’s nothing particularly astonishing about the Secret itself. As the film’s promoters concede, the idea has been a part of occult philosophy for centuries, although it entered the mainstream only about 150 years ago.

The seminal figure in promoting the Secret was a now little-known American healer named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–66). Quimby, like many men of his time, was a jack of all trades. He started as a clockmaker but eventually became a healer. Eventually he realised that it didn’t matter what remedy he prescribed; it was the faith of the patient that made the difference. By simply convincing the individual that he or she was already well, Quimby became a tremendous success. His office filled with patients, many of whom went away feeling completely healed. He often treated people for free when they could not pay.

Around 1859, Quimby began to write down his ideas. Believing he had discovered the secret by which Christ had performed his miracles, he wanted to make his discoveries known to all. “My philosophy,” he said, “will make man free and independent of all creeds and laws of man, and subject him to his own agreement, he being free from the laws of sin, sickness, and death.” The cardinal tenet of this philosophy was this: “Every phenomenon in the natural world has its birth in the spiritual world…. Instead of your happiness being in the world, the world’s happiness is in you. Here is your true position, and this is the struggle you will have to go through. Shall the world lead you, or shall you lead the world? This is the point that is to be settled in your mind.”

Quimby, like his most famous pupil, Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science (a term coined by Quimby), focused mostly on health and healing. “Disease,” wrote Quimby, “is false reasoning. True scientific wisdom is health and happiness. False reasoning is sickness and death.” But as these ideas – which came to pervade nineteenth century American religion under the rubric of New Thought – grew more widespread, practitioners began to use ‘the Secret’ for prosperity and success. One of the most famous promoters of this idea was Napoleon Hill, who, in his 1937 book Think and Grow Rich, contended, “TRULY, THOUGHTS ARE THINGS – and powerful things that when they are mixed with definiteness and purpose, persistence, and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches and other material objects.”

The idea proved irresistible to the success-crazed American public, and Hill’s book became a perennial best-seller. In the 1960s it attracted a reader named Jerry Hicks, who would claim that the ideas in Hill’s book helped him succeed in business. Hicks would become responsible for the latest flowering of this perennial of American spirituality.

In 1980, Hicks married. His wife, Esther, was at first indifferent to his interests in spirituality, but soon both of them became fascinated with the Seth books by Jane Roberts, which described Roberts’ activity as a channel for an entity named Seth. (‘Channelling’ is a term used to describe a situation in which the speaker believes he or she is serving as a mouthpiece for a invisible, spiritual being.) Later the Hickses began to meditate on their own, and in 1986 Esther began to channel a collective entity (that is, a number of related spiritual beings) called Abraham.

“I have no real way of understanding how it is that Esther is able to allow Abraham to speak through her,” Jerry writes in the Hickses’ latest book The Law of Attraction. “From my point of view, Esther closes her eyes and breathes a few very deep, soft breaths. Her head gently nods for a few moments, and then her eyes open and Abraham addresses me directly.” The voice that speaks is slightly different from Esther’s own; a New York Times reporter characterises it as “rounder, quicker and more computerlike than Ms. Hicks’s natural voice,” and from the one Abraham session I attended, I would say it has a quality that I can only describe, somewhat imperfectly, as metallic.

The Hickses first began publicising the Abraham material in 1988 with a series of recorded cassettes, and in the years since, the output has blossomed to include books, radio and television interviews, calendars, and even decks of cards. The Hickses regularly offer week-long ‘Well-Being Adventure Cruises’ and ‘Art of Allowing’ workshops, in which participants can ask their own questions of Abraham. At US$195 for a single day, the workshops aren’t cheap, particularly since they can include hundreds of people, making it fairly unlikely that you’ll be able to chat with Abraham yourself.

At any rate, the Abraham material forms the core of The Secret’s teachings. Early versions of the film featured Esther and Abraham, although after disputes with Rhonda Byrne over revenues and distribution, the Hickses asked to be removed from the film entirely. “I’ve got to give Rhonda credit,” Esther has said. “I’ve never seen anybody do that like she’s doing it. And never mind honesty, and never mind doing what you said you were going to do, and never mind anything. Just stay in alignment.”

Do what? Stay in alignment with what? Here lies the Secret. In The Law of Attraction, Jerry Hicks spells out the three “Eternal Universal Laws” that lie at the centre of the teaching.

The first is the Law of Attraction. It says that “That which is like unto itself, is drawn [sic]” – or, less clumsily, like attracts like.

The second is the Science of Deliberate Creation: “That which I give thought to and that which I believe or expect – is.” In short, you get what you are thinking about, whether you want it or not.

The third is the Art of Allowing: “I am that which I am, and I am willing to allow all others to be that which they are.”

From this it’s easy to see how Abraham’s teachings resemble those of New Thought. What you create in your mind manifests in physical reality. If you have positive thoughts, you’ll have positive results in your life. The same is true if you hold negative thoughts.

But, you may reply, how many people go around wanting bad things to happen to them? What about all the people who are constantly saying, “I don’t want this to happen,” but have it happen anyway?

According to Abraham, the Law of Attraction is working in any case. To focus on something that you don’t want is still to think about it – and thus to bring it into your life. The book version of The Secret explains:

The law of attraction doesn’t compute ‘don’t’ or ‘not’ or ‘no,’ or any other words of negation. As you speak words of negation this is what the law of attraction is receiving:

“I don’t want to spill something on this outfit.”

“I want to spill something on this outfit and I want to spill more things.”

“I don’t want a bad haircut.”

“I want bad haircuts.”

This, in essence, is the Secret. As we’ve seen, it’s surfaced in many books and articles over the years, and it has become a central component of what one might call the American Religion. Does it really work?

Yes and no. The ideas in The Secret do work, but the information it presents is incomplete in some serious ways, and incomplete information is wrong information.

In the first place, it’s true that, as esoteric doctrine has always held, thought is creative. The world of thoughts and images – what the Kabbalists call Yetzirah and which Theosophy calls the astral realm – exists prior to the physical world and underlies it. What comes into being in physical form manifests first in the realm of images. This explains not only the ideas behind The Secret but the possibility of such things as precognition: under certain (highly limited) circumstances, you may be able to tap into the astral realm and see the future. (For more on this, see my article “Prophecy: Does It Work?” in New Dawn, Jan-Feb 2007.) Much of occult magic also involves forming a particular thought-form, infusing it with vital energy so that it makes its way into actuality, sometimes in odd and even quasi-miraculous ways.

But there are some major caveats. Both The Secret and Abraham tell us to focus very specifically and precisely on what we want. Joe Vitale, one of the ‘teachers’ featured in The Secret, says, “Your job is to declare what you would like to have from the catalogue of the Universe. If cash is one of them, say how much you would like to have. ‘I would like to have twenty-five thousand dollars, unexpected income, within the next thirty days’.” Abraham also recommends having a ‘Magical Creation Box’ in which you put pictures of anything you want to manifest in your life – “furniture, clothing, landscaping, buildings, travel destinations, vehicles…. if it feels appealing to you in any way, clip it, and drop it into your Creation Box. And say, as you drop it in, ‘whatever is contained in this box – IS!’”

The problem with these procedures is not that they don’t work, but that they do. The subconscious – the part of the mind that is involved in shaping the image and giving it energy – is slavishly literal-minded. As we’ve seen, it doesn’t understand negative commands terribly well, so if you ask it not to do something, it may end up doing that very thing. But the problem doesn’t stop there. You could have your wish fulfilled in a way that you don’t want. A friend of mine once used Secret-like techniques to get $10,000 to help her boyfriend start a business. Her car was robbed on the day she was moving, with all her belongings in it. The insurance settlement amounted to $10,000. As the proverb says, “Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.”

Sophisticated practitioners avoid this problem by making sure to leave the request more open-ended, and also to specify that no harm come to anyone through the wish. Florence Scovel Shinn, an American New Thought teacher of the early twentieth century, taught her students to say, for example, “Perfect work with perfect pay comes to me now under grace in a perfect way.” Adding the rider “under grace in a perfect way” should – at least theoretically – prevent any harm from resulting from one’s wish.

Another equally serious omission in The Secret lies in its exclusive emphasis on thought. To read The Secret, and much of New Thought literature, you might conclude that it is thought alone that makes the difference. This is not really true. A small detail here has been overlooked because it (quite accurately) makes the process look like far more work than the best-sellers would have us believe. To sit around and visualise enormous cheques arriving in the mail is not much trouble; in fact, it’s a great deal like daydreaming. Sometimes the cheques do come. But sometimes they don’t. In what are, I would say, by far the most common cases, what really works is thought combined with action – a process that requires will, concentration, and effort. If you’re looking for the perfect job, the visualisation and affirmation techniques of various New Thought teachings may be helpful, but in all likelihood they will be far more so if you combine them with your own best efforts in finding the job – even if, in the end, the job seems to manifest in a completely unexpected way. This is not as breezily simple as The Secret and its kin like to make out, but it is so.

A crucial issue is lying under the surface here. What you wish for comes true: that is the Secret. But it’s what you wish for with all your being – and much of your being is concerned with action, with doing. If you are thinking with your mind that you want the perfect job while your body is sitting on the couch all day watching cartoons, you may not get anywhere. What’s still worse is that you will tend to induce an inner dissociation that lies behind much of today’s mental illness: one part of your mind is doing one thing while another part is doing quite the opposite. This, in fact, is one of the dangers of simplistic applications of The Secret.

Another difficulty with The Secret has to do with its ethical component. From The Secret’s point of view, you create your own reality. Which means that other people create theirs as well. Which means that you are not responsible for them. Which means that you are not your brother’s keeper. The Secret does, of course, talk about love (“There is no greater power in the Universe than the power of love. The feeling of love is the highest frequency you can emit”) and the Law of Allowing does teach a tolerance that can be helpful in enabling certain types of people to be less compulsive and controlling. But the emphasis in The Secret and in the Abraham teachings is on feeling love: “The greater the love you feel and emit, the greater the power you are harnessing.” And yet ‘feeling’ and ‘emitting’ love are not necessarily the same as doing loving things. The Secret does not leave much room for compassion. If everyone is creating their own reality, ultimately, it would seem, that is their business, and all one can do is cultivate one’s own garden.

We can see this problem echoed in Esther Hicks’ comment about Rhonda Byrne’s behaviour: “Never mind honesty, and never mind doing what you said you were going to do, and never mind anything. Just stay in alignment.” Fortunately or unfortunately, “staying in alignment” is more than feeling good or thinking nice thoughts. The universe has a profoundly moral dimension, and you can’t “stay in alignment” with it by acting dishonestly or deceitfully. While I personally have no idea of the rights and wrongs in the Hickses’ differences with Byrne, I can see how they might directly result from Abraham’s ideas. The Hickses may have gotten a taste of their own medicine.

This leads to another inaccuracy in The Secret. It is not only our thoughts that create reality, it’s also what Hindus and Buddhists call samskaras – a word that can be roughly translated as ‘karmic dispositions’ or ‘seeds of karma’. Put extremely simply, these are imprints left by one’s past actions on the mind at its deepest and most inaccessible level. These samskaras are a key component in creating our current reality. They can be eradicated by a persistent process of cleansing and release (one aspect of which is The Secret’s own “letting go of the past”), but they also require what the Twelve-Step programs call “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of oneself and “making direct amends” to those we have harmed. If you ignore these facts, your mightiest efforts at visualisation might go for nothing. No one is perfect, but if you’re to “be in alignment” with the universe, you are going to have to hold yourself to moral standards that are at least as high as those of ordinary decency and kindness.

The ultimate problem with The Secret and the Abraham teachings may, however, be what they focus on. It’s almost entirely a matter of attracting abundance, of finding love, success, money, nice things. In fact, if you believe Abraham, that is what we’re here to do. The universe is an enormous vending machine that operates using the coinage of our thoughts.

What’s striking about this advice is how directly it contradicts practically all of the great spiritual teachings. These teachings, as I’ve suggested, have no quarrel with the fundamental concepts of The Secret: mind does create its own reality. But they differ very much with The Secret about what we’re supposed to create. Most of the great spiritual traditions insist that the ‘abundance’ The Secret urges us to generate is nothing more than a distraction from discovering the truth of our own nature. You can call this enlightenment, liberation, gnosis, or whatever you like, but the goal is the same. Material wealth is nothing more than an impediment to this goal.

While it would be possible to find examples of this truth in practically all the world’s spiritual traditions, I can cite only a very small number in this space. The Hindu master Ram Chandra has said, “Sit in loneliness for some time, and think of God with at least as much power as you have bestowed to your own difficulties. What then? It is as easy to realise your own God as it is to realise the worldly things in crude form.” There’s also the advice of A Course in Miracles, another extraordinarily popular channeled text, supposedly dictated by Jesus Christ to a New York psychologist named Helen Schucman in the 1960s. The Course has this to say about material wealth:

The world you see holds nothing that you need to offer you; nothing that you can use in any way, nor anything at all that serves to give you joy. Believe this thought, and you are saved from years of misery, from countless disappointments, and from hopes that turn to bitter ashes of despair. No one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave the world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways.

Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this. For everything must serve the purpose you have given it, until you see a different purpose there. The only purpose worthy of your mind this world contains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope where there is none. Be you deceived no more. The world you see holds nothing that you want.

Passages like this one explain why, in my view, a single page of the Course is worth The Secret and all the utterances of Abraham put together.

What, then, are we to want? The Course explains this in a lesson entitled “I want the peace of God,” adding:

To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything. If you could but mean them for just an instant, there would be no further sorrow possible for you in any form; in any place or time. Heaven would be completely given back to full awareness, memory of God entirely restored, the resurrection of all creation fully recognised.

The Course, like much channeled material (including Abraham’s pronouncements), makes the process sound easier than it often is in practice; perhaps channeled entities don’t understand how difficult life can feel to those of us on earth. Nonetheless, a goal of manifesting inner peace strikes me as far superior to manifesting lovers and cheques and SUVs.

On the other hand, it requires a certain amount of illumination even to see through the deception of appearances. Up to a point, we are going to desire the solid satisfactions of life because they are all we can trust in. A time will come, however, when disillusion sets in, when the desirable things of the world start to seem not so desirable after all, and one realises that there is something more to life. This recognition will come to each of us according to his or her own readiness. Until then, I suspect, many will use the ideas of The Secret and similar teachings as elementary lessons in the truth that the world is more than we can see with our physical eyes, and also as a mild but helpful form of cognitive therapy. After all, it’s better to focus the mind on good things than on bad.

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RICHARD SMOLEY has over thirty years of experience studying and practicing the Western esoteric traditions. His latest book is The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe. His other works include Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (with Jay Kinney); Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition; The Essential Nostradamus; Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism; and Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity. He is editor of Quest Books and executive editor of Quest magazine, both published by the Theosophical Society in America. His website is www.innerchristianity.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 103 (July-August 2007).

Read this article with its illustrations by downloading
your copy of New Dawn 103 (PDF version) for only US$5

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.

—

Enlightened people are like spiritual dynamos: they have a very strong presence which touches the people they come into contact with, transmitting something of their enlightenment to them. Even people who aren’t at all “spiritual” usually feel a sense of well-being in their presence, and so feel attracted to them without knowing why. And for people who have made some spiritual progress already, the effect can be extremely powerful.

Contact with an enlightened person may enable them to make the final “jump” to permanent enlightenment themselves. This is one of the reasons why many spiritual traditions place so much emphasis on the role of a guru. The guru is so important not just because of the advice and guidance he can give you, but because he can transmit his spiritual power to you, giving you a taste of enlightenment and speeding up your spiritual development. (In Sanskrit, this is called satsang, literally “good company.”)

Paul Brunton and Ramana Maharishi

The early 20th century author and spiritual teacher Paul Brunton became aware of this when he visited the ashram of the great sage Ramana Maharishi, while travelling around India in search of spiritual wisdom (as described in his book A Search in Secret India). Brunton knew that Ramana was a truly enlightened man the first time he met him, someone who had completely transcended his ego and become one with ultimate reality. He felt the spiritual effect of his satsang straight away. He sensed that “a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me, that a great peace is penetrating the inner reaches of my being.” While sitting near him, he realised that his mind was becoming more still, and suddenly all of the intellectual questions he’d had about spiritual matters no longer seemed important. The only question in his head now was, “Does this man, the Maharishee, emanate the perfume of spiritual peace as the flower emanates fragrance from its petals?”1

At the end of his first visit to the Ashram, Brunton was sitting quietly while the sage was meditating. He felt a sense of awe building up inside him, as a powerful force started to fill the room, emanating from Ramana. Ramana opened his eyes and gazed at him and he felt that he was aware of his every thought and feeling. He felt that a telepathic current was passing between them, that Ramana was transmitting his deep serenity to him, and began to feel a sense of euphoria and lightness. He felt that his own being became one with Ramana’s, and that he had transcended all problems and all desires.

After this, Brunton resumed his travels around India, meeting magicians and miracle workers and self-proclaimed gurus who are less enlightened than they claimed to be, and eventually returned to the Maharashi’s ashram. Again he experienced an “ineffable tranquillity” when sitting close to him, and again he experienced revelations which he was sure were “nothing else than a spreading ripple of telepathic radiation from this mysterious and imperturbable man.”2 And finally, after a period of wrestling with his own thoughts and his intellect, he had an experience of genuine enlightenment which changed him forever:

I find myself outside the rim of world consciousness. The planet which has so far harboured me disappears. I am in the midst of an ocean of blazing light. The latter, I feel rather than think, is the primeval stuff out of which worlds are created, the first state of matter. It stretches away into untellable infinite space, incredibly alive.3

Andrew Cohen and H.W.L. Poonja

The American spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen had a similar experience when he first met the Indian teacher who became his guru, H.W.L. Poonja – who was, coincidentally (or perhaps not!), a direct disciple of Ramana. Cohen had had profound spiritual experiences before, but had spent many years feeling frustrated and disillusioned, yearning for spiritual liberation but being disappointed by a series of other teachers. Cohen asked Poonja whether it was important to make an effort in spiritual practice, and he replied, “You don’t have to make any effort to be free.” And at that moment Cohen experienced enlightenment:

His words penetrated very deeply, I turned and looked out into the courtyard outside his room and inside myself all I saw was a river – in that instant I realised that I had always been Free. I saw clearly that I never could have been other than Free and that any idea or concept of bondage had always been and could only ever be completely illusory.4

After this, Cohen spent three weeks with Poonja and found the liberation he’d been yearning for. After a week or so, he “surrendered” to his guru, let go of his own identity and everything which made up his life. He felt himself become one with Poonja, and began to experience “waves of bliss and love that at times were so strong that I felt my body wouldn’t be able to contain it.” And from that point on, although his initial euphoria faded a little, he had a constant sense of “being always in the present with much contentment and calm. I feel no desire for other than what IS.”5

And now that he had attained moksha (freedom) himself, Cohen realised that other people were affected by his presence in the same way that he had been by Poonja’s. Friends who spent time with him found that they experienced a powerful sense of bliss and freedom too. He became a spiritual teacher, giving talks and holding retreats, and found that people were naturally drawn to him, and that around him they would “easily and often instantly… have profound realisations, insights into their true nature and powerful feelings of love, joy and bliss.”6

My wife and I went to one of Andrew’s talks several years ago in Manchester, England, and for days afterwards Pam – my wife – felt like a different person. There was a feeling of freedom inside her, a sense that – in her words – “nothing mattered, that I didn’t have any problems. I didn’t want anything because I was happy as I was. My life was quite stressful at that point but suddenly none of the stress could affect me.” And she’s sure that this wasn’t so much because of what Andrew actually said but the effect of simply being there, in his presence.

Russell Williams

I was a little jealous because I didn’t have any of those feelings – at that time I was taking a more intellectual approach to spiritual matters, and was so busy trying to understand what Andrew was saying conceptually that I must have been shut off from the feeling dimension.

A couple of years before then, I’d started to visit a spiritual teacher called Russell Williams, and also took a largely conceptual approach to his teachings. Russell – who I still go to see now – is 85 years old, and has been the president of the Manchester Buddhist Society for over 50 years, even though he’s not specifically a Buddhist. He doesn’t chant or meditate or read Buddhist scriptures, and doesn’t adhere to or promote any particular set of teachings. He’s a humble self-realised man, who talks about the most profound spiritual truths and the most intense spiritual states as if they’re the most simple and natural things.

In my first years of going along to Russell’s twice weekly meetings, I used to wonder why most people didn’t seem to be paying attention to him. He was saying some of the most profound things I’d ever heard and people didn’t seem to be listening – they were just staring into space, or sitting with their eyes closed. They rarely asked questions, seeming content to let Russell be silent, when as far as I was concerned he was full of wisdom which I wanted to absorb.

But about three years ago I began to realise why this was. Perhaps I’d changed, become less interested in the conceptual side of spirituality, or perhaps I’d finally completed a long process of getting attuned to the atmosphere at the meetings, but when I went there I started to experience very strange, pleasurable states of consciousness. Even when I’d been taking a conceptual approach, I’d often experienced feelings of peacefulness and well-being, which sometimes lasted for a couple of days afterwards. But this was something stronger.

The first time it happened, I was staring at Russell while he was speaking to me, and began to feel very relaxed and calm, as if the flow of my life-energies was becoming smoother and lighter. And then, all of a sudden, everything became unfamiliar – the light became brighter, the colours began to merge and the distinctions between people and objects began to fade away. My main feeling, however, was of a powerful sense of strangeness – the scene was completely alien, as if I was suddenly on a different planet. Even though it was accompanied with a sense of exhilaration, I was a little scared and pulled away from it.

Over the following months I had the same experience several times again, and I learned to relax and trust it. I let the sense of strangeness overcome me, as the light in the room became brighter and all objects began to shimmer and merge into one another. The light seemed to be flowing out and immersing everything in its brightness. The room was filled with this beautiful shimmering haze of golden light, and I was filled with a deep serenity, a glow of intense well-being filling my whole body. I could feel it flowing through my legs and my feet, as if I’d taken a sedative of some kind. And even when I didn’t have this particular experience at the meetings, I usually had a very powerful feeling of calmness and serenity inside. I was often aware that my breathing had slowed down dramatically, and when I left I found myself doing everything very slowly, with a natural mindfulness. My mind was still and quiet, and outside everything looked beautiful and alive.

After a few months I was talking to one of the members of the group, and said to him, “I’ve been having really very strange experiences here over the past few months.” I tried to describe them, and he laughed and said, “So now you know why we’ve all been coming here for so long! Now you’re really a member of the society.”

I still have these experiences now, and I’m certain that they’re the result of satsang, of being in the presence of an enlightened person. The experience of the scene becoming unfamiliar and the light becoming brighter usually only happens when Russell is talking directly to me. In these moments I can almost feel spiritual power radiating from him and flowing into me, feel my own life-energy being affected by his.

The Sources of Satsang

The big question is: why do enlightened people have this strange ability to generate spiritual experiences in others, this power to “transmit” their enlightenment to the people around them?

Spiritual experiences induced by satsang strongly suggest that the esoteric concept of an “aura” has a basis in fact. They suggest that our being or life-energy isn’t just confined to our own mind or body – it radiates out from us, creating an atmosphere (or aura) which can affect the people we come into contact with. The auras of most people don’t appear to be particularly strong, or at least don’t have particularly strong negative or positive qualities, so that we don’t usually feel anything palpable from them. But we’ve all met certain people who we instinctively recoil from. We might not even exchange any words with them but they still fill us with a sense of unease or even fear or dread. These are people who have a strong “bad aura” around them, perhaps because their life-energy is heavily poisoned with negative emotions and egotism. But with enlightened people, of course, the exact opposite happens. Their life-energy is so intensified and stilled, and has such powerful positive qualities, that they “transmit” waves of calm and bliss to everyone around them.

But spiritual experiences are more than just feelings – they are also experiences of vision, insight and revelation. And one of the most important aspects of satsang experiences, I believe, is that they show that spiritual illumination is also communicable. Feelings of bliss can certainly spread from person to person – and so can the vision of the oneness of the universe, the awareness that the essential reality of the universe is a limitless ocean of Spirit, and the experience of transcending the ego and being reborn as a deeper and higher Self. These experiences are completely transferable – under the right circumstances, they can be passed from an enlightened person to others without any loss of intensity.

There are two basic types of spiritual experiences (in the sense I’m using the term). The first are ecstatic experiences caused by a disruption of the homeostasis of the human organism. These can occur as a result of fasting, sleep deprivation, drugs, breathing exercises, pain, dancing, and so on. All of these activities can put us “out of homeostasis” – by changing our body temperature, blood pressure or metabolic rate, causing dehydration and exhaustion or chemical changes – and when this happens there’s a chance that we’ll experience a higher state of consciousness. (Although this certainly doesn’t always happen, of course. Most of the time the only effect that depriving yourself of sleep and food often has is to make you feel miserably tired and hungry.)

The second type of spiritual experiences are more serene and calm states which occur when there is an intensification and stillness of life-energy (or vitality) inside us. This can happen in any situation when we’re very relaxed, when there’s peacefulness around us, and when the mental chatter inside our heads fades away. In meditation, we make a conscious effort to intensify and still our life-energy by being inactive, by withdrawing our attention from the world around us, and by focusing on a mantra (or a candle flame or on our breathing or any other object) to slow down and quieten our mental chatter. As a result, meditation is probably the most effective way of generating spiritual experiences.

However, they can also happen more spontaneously – in natural surroundings, for example, when there’s peacefulness around you and the beauty of nature has a similar effect to a mantra in meditation, focusing your attention and quietening your mental chatter. They often occur when people are listening to music or contemplating works of art. Certain sports are also very conducive to spiritual experiences, such as long-distance running or swimming. This is also probably part of the reason why spiritual experiences can occur during or after sex. The sheer pleasure of sex can have the effect of shifting our attention away from our ego-minds, which may fall silent as a result.

Spiritual experiences caused by satsang clearly belong to this second type. Contact with an enlightened person has the effect of intensifying and stilling our life-energy. He or she gives us an extra input of energy – the “current” or “telepathic radiation” which Paul Brunton was aware of. At the same time, the sheer power of an enlightened person’s presence stuns the ego-mind into silence and brings our chattering thoughts to a halt. As a result, we attain the same state of inner stillness and intensified life-energy which we reach after periods of intense and very focused meditation.

However, satsang isn’t just a phenomenon which can affect us as individuals; it also has an important bearing upon the concept of collective spiritual awakening. It’s now almost a cliché to state the human race as a whole may be on the threshold of an evolutionary jump, a collective shift to a higher level of consciousness which will give rise to a new era of true spirituality and harmony. Some people find this idea far-fetched – perhaps understandably so when you look at the state of the world today – but satsang experiences show us a process by which this transformation could occur. They show us that enlightenment is highly contagious.

After all, it’s surely not just wholly enlightened individuals who affect the people around them. Anybody who has become spiritually developed to a degree will have some power to affect the people around them. And so it’s possible that a kind of positive cycle might take place – as more people become spiritually developed, they will “transmit” their insight and well-being to the people around them, who will in turn transmit their spirituality to the people around them, and so on. It may be that once a certain critical threshold has been reached – once a certain number of people have become enlightened, or once the collective spiritual power of the human race has built up to a certain degree – a great wave of spiritual illumination will spread through the world like a forest fire; a process of “spiritual transmission” building up power and intensity, and eventually leading to an Omega point of permanent change.

This may still sound like wishful thinking – but then again, the experience of satsang itself is miraculous, showing that our apparent individuality is an illusion, and that we are parts of an indivisible ocean of consciousness.

Footnotes:

1. Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret India, London: Rider, 1934/1972, p. 141.

2. Ibid., p.280.

3. Ibid., p. 305.

4. Andrew Cohen, Autobiography of an Awakening, Corte Madera, CA: Moksha Press, p. 30.

5. Ibid., pp.34-5.

6. Ibid., p.35.

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STEVE TAYLOR is an author and lecturer who lives in Manchester, England. He is the author of Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, described by Dr. Stanley Krippner as “a major landmark in our understanding of how human beings experience time.” Steve is also the author of The Fall: The Evidence for a Golden Age and the Dawning of a New Era, described as “astonishing work” by Colin Wilson. Steve can be contacted at essytaylor@yahoo.com. His website is www.stevenmtaylor.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 101 (Mar-Apr 2007).

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