CHAPTER IV

Cosmogenic: Mental (Knowledge) Abilities

The final conclusion is that we know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
- Walter Grierson

We have made an arbitrary distinction between physical powers and mental abilities, the former relating to the body, and the latter to the mind. But this duality is not seen in the siddhis, which commence with levitation at 3.8 and extend through infused knowledge at 4.8. What we are seeing in this taxonomic progression is the transcendence of the cosmic spirit first in the body and then in the mind, which process involves a cleansing and renewing of various functions to accommodate to a new order of reality. After the bodily siddhis in the last section, we continue with a transformation in the senses, and then a transmutation in knowledge itself, until eventually knowledge is translated into state, and the knower becomes one with the known.

In this taxonomy we shall follow the order which Radha (1978) described. She avers that these cosmogenic extensions of sensory knowledge come from the successive openings of the various chakra centers in the order given, with knowledge accompanying the opening of the sixth chakra. Presumably the completion of the circuit in the opening of the seventh chakra would correspond to the continuous contact and union in our 4.9. One may also note that 4.1 to 4.7 involve the cleansing of the doors of perception, spoken of by Blake in connection with the Adamic ecstasy (Jhana 0), (of Gowan 1975:361); 4.8 corresponds to the infused knowledge (Jhanas 1-4), (of Gowan 1975:366ff); and 4.9 corresponds to the continuous contact and union (Jhanas 5-8), (of Gowan 1975:376-79).

The reader will notice a certain "thinness" in this section as compared with the earlier one. It is important to realize that this is not because of the lesser importance of the topics, but because of less knowledge about them; most of them are simply

(page 214)

too far beyond us for close examination; hence less is understood and writtten about them. There is also another aspect. The categorical language of discourse is less and less able to describe the non-categorical aspects of these levels adequately - in short, the language channel is too narrow for the message.

At this point, the thoughtful reader will ask a difficult question, which we will do our best to forestall: "Why (and in what manner) are the cosmogenic knowledge abilities 4.1 - 4.5, which deal with extraordinary aspects of the five senses, different from the ontogenic extensions of sensory modalities in 2.11 - 2.15. " Having shown in Section 0, (the phylogenic abilities of other species), that some animals possess extraordinary natural abilities, which are not considered supernatural despite the fact that little or nothing is known of their operation, we conclude from empirical observation that somewhat similar ontogenic abilities of exotic aspect exist among some members of humanity. These are cases, where the individuals 1) do not claim that there is any cosmic intervention in their natural powers, nor 2) do their lives indicate any anomalies of behavior which accompany psychotic, shamanistic, or saintly lifestyles. Neither of these conditions obtain in the cosmogenic realm. It is true that rather odd individuals possess these extensions of sensory modalities, but this may be an effect rather than a cause of their differences. In addition, the cosmogenic aspects are described in the religious literature of the world, particularly in the Hindu sources as being a part of cosmic developmental process, and are hence in place in theory as well as being observed in fact. It is true that some of the ontogenic extensions in 2.11-2.15 may be due (if one is willing to accept reincarnation or occult philosophy) to powers a prior incarnation developed, which are seen as un-understood epiphenomena in this one; they may also be due to the effects of guardian spirits. But in the final analysis, this question is an open one: we do not know what the difference (if it exists) signifies.

4.01) Psychometry

Psychometry is a mental ability which depends upon touch. When an object is touched impressions about its past are received. Long (1954:132-3) quotes the account of the psychometrist Ossowiecki:

I begin by stopping all reasoning, and I throw all my inner
(page 215)
power into perception of spiritual sensation. I affirm that this condition is brought about by my unshakable faith in the spiritual unity of all humanity. I then find myself in a new and special state in which I see and hear outside time and space . . . Whether I am reading a sealed letter, or finding a lost object, or psychometrizing, the sensations are nearly the same. I seem to lose some energy; my temperature becomes febrile, and the heartbeats unequal. I am confirmed in this supposition because, as soon as I cease from reasoning, something like electricity flows through my extremities for a few seconds. This lasts a moment only, and then lucidity takes possession of me, pictures arise, usually from the past. I see the man who wrote the letter and I know what he wrote. I see the object at the moment of its loss, with details of the event; or again I perceive or feel the history of the thing I am holding in my hands. The vision is misty and needs great tension. Considerable effort is required to perceive some details and conditions of the scenes presented.


We also quote from Long (1954:134) in an effort to explain the phenomenon:
 

In an effort to explain how psychometry is accomplished, several theories have been advanced. Dr. Pagenstecher offered the following:

'The associated object which practically witnessed certain events of the past, acting in the way of a tuning fork, automatically starts in our brain the specific vibrations corresponding to the said events; furthermore, the vibrations of our brain once being set in tune with certain parts of the Cosmic Brain already stricken by the same events, call forth sympathetic vibrations between the human brain and the Cosmic Brain, giving birth to thought pictures which reproduce the events in question.'

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle offered the explanation that all events and circumstances impressed themselves on some form of invisible and permanent, unchangeable ether. This imprinted ether, he supposed, was read by psychic vision by the psychometrist when attention was centered on a part of the ether connected with the object held in the hands.

Theosophists, building on ideas found in India, propound (see the works of Blavatsky) the theory that there is a WorldSoul or Akasa, upon whose memory is impressed all that happens. Psychometry, under this theory, becomes more

(page 216)
definitely mechanical. One uses the object held in the hands to make a psychic connection with the part of the memory of the World-Soul having to do with the object's past. By a form of psychic telepathy, or - better yet - mind reading, the psychometrist 'reads the Akashic Records.'
From work elsewhere (1974:25-6) we quote: "Prince (1963:132) tells the historical account of the poet, Robert Browning who, when in Florence, met for the first time Count Giunasi, reputed to have such powers. The count asked the poet if he had any memento he would like to hear the history of. Browning produced some gold wrist studs which he had never worn in Florence before. The count held them awhile and then said, impressed, 'There is something here which cries out 'Murder. " The studs were in fact the property of Browning's great uncle who wore them when he was murdered.

"Of course, telepathy between Browning and the count would explain this experience, but Krippner (p. 87) cites Hilprecht on a case where the information was not known to anyone living. A similar example of the secret drawer is attributed to Swedenborg. The occultists call this sort of collective memory the 'Akashic records,' which can, of course, be accounted for by the concept of the 'collective preconscious."'

The famous novelist, Maeterlinck (1975:47), devoted a chapter in his book on the paranormal to psychometry and gave many examples of it.

One of the really social uses of psychometry is in archaeology. An excellent example of such work in which a sensitive gives pictures of life in Pompeii by touching artifacts from that city is found in the Denton article "Life and Death in Pompeii" (Garrison 1973:21-62).*

4.02) Knowledge of Arrangement and Motion of Stars

Patanjali's yoga sutras No. 27 and 28 state as follows (Aranya 1977:340-1): "By practising samyama on the lunar entrance of the body the disposition of the stellar system is known," and "By practising samyama on the fixed pole star, the movement of the stars is to be known." This is the only siddhi where power which may have seemed miraculous to Easterners now seems academic to Westerners.

(page 217)

The author admits that the pole star sutras seemed quaint and almost out of place amid the other powers, seemingly much more arcane and mysterious to a Westerner. This view, however, may be merely Western ignorance. On asking a highly placed practitioner of the TM siddhis program about the pole star sutras, and why attention was paid to them, the answer was that they were necessary to enable the adept to pilot his way through the universe of stars and return to the solar system and the earth! This remarkable remark suggests the OBE consciousness of the shaman in his magical flight, and the nature of consciousness in transcending the time and space of the physical body. But TM siddhis adepts are not the only ones who have glimpsed this wondrous horizon. Consider the following extraordinary statement of
Charles Lindbergh (Muses and Young, 1972:312):
 
 

Will we then find [that] life to be only a stage, though an essential one, in a cosmic evolution of which our evolving awareness is beginning to become aware? Will we discover that only without spaceships can we reach the galaxies; that only without cyclotrons can we know the interior of atoms? To venture beyond the fantastic accomplishments of this physically fantastic age, sensory perception must combine with the extrasensory, and I suspect that the two will prove to be different faces of each other. I believe it is through sensing and thinking about such concepts that great adventures of the future will be found.


4.1) Vision of Cosmic Beings

Patanjali sutra No. 26 (Aranya 1977:334) states that "by practising samyama on the point in the body known as the solar entrance, the knowledge of the cosmic regions is effected." It appears from the following text the regions involved are in the "astral" plane or realm of potentiality. Similarly sutra No. 32 (Aranya 1977:343) states that "by samyama on the coronal light, siddhis can be seen." The coronal light is a small hole in the skull through which the adepts emanates effulgent light. Siddhis are devas or astral beings.

From a Western point of view this siddhi appears to be the ability to visualize the astral realm, whereas heretofore the protagonist has merely been sensitive to it. As radio preceded television, sensitivity always seems to precede vision. It appears that consciousness has established itself enough in the realm of all possibil-

(page 218)

ities (the etheric) so that vision there becomes possible - Don Juan called this "seeing," and berated Castaneda for not being able to accomplish it. The words of the sutra make it abundantly clear that the realm of essence has not been reached, so that what is seen here are the devas, not "the clear light of the void." It is possible that this ability is out of place in the taxonomy and might be placed after 4.7 (Adamic ecstasy).

4.2) Calm
 

Sutra No. 31 (Aranya 1977:343) states that by samyama on the bronchial tube, calmness in breathing is obtained; this in turn leads to calmness in the body, which leads to calmness of mind.

From a Western point of view this siddhi refers to the purification of the body-mind; and, hence, the elimination of "static" so that the receptive device can become more refined. It is the analogue of the hi-fi "dolby" in shutting off extraneous noise, a necessary function to prepare for the siddhis which follow.

This siddhi establishes the importance to be attached to calm, an absolutely necessary state for the reception of right hemisphere imagery consequent upon psychic resonance. The amplitude of the incoming transpersonal signal is very minute, and any large noise error will completely hide them. Because calm is not spectacular we take it for granted, not realizing that it is, in effect, a grace. The Bible tells us to listen "for a still, small voice." Any method which will reduce outside noise and calm the interior discourse of the left hemisphere will tend to accomplish this. Medieval mystics referred to this as "the prayer of quiet."

4.3) Vision Through Opaque Objects: Miraculous Sight

Patanjali Yoga sutra No. 24 (Aranya 1977:332) states: "By applying the effulgent light of the higher sense-perception, knowledge of subtle objects or things obstructed from view or placed at a great distance, can be acquired." The commentary states that "this is the highest attainment, before which clairvoyance pales into insignificance." This ability, therefore, is different from the power of "traveling clairvoyance" which appears to be performed in an out-of-body experience. It is a knowledge ability, the apotheosis of externalization of sensory organs, spoken of in Section 3Y. It may well be that Swedenborg exhibited this ability in the

(Page 219)

incident involving the secret of the dead brother of the Queen of Sweden (Dingwall 1962b:45-6) since it involved a hidden note, but Swedenborg's own explanation was that he was enabled to converse with the dead.

Cryptesthesia, "hidden perception," is the explanation given by Barrett and Besterman (1968:275) for the success of dowsers, with the divining rod only a prop which allows the right hemisphere a motor activity in place of the proscribed verbal. They describe (ibid:264) a dowser's letter, quoting:
 

In the year 1862, 1 had a remarkable experience when out water-finding with the rod..... I found that after "setting" myself to use the rod, i.e., getting into an abstracted mental condition, lost to all around, when, or just before the rod turned, I could - as it were clairvoyantly - see the underground springs


The authors then describe the same ability in other dowsers, and including some who could "see" capital letters hidden in sealed envelopes.

Dermoptica (eyeless sight) is well researched in the Soviet Union, and in their book, Ostrander and Schroeder (1970:158ff) devote a whole chapter to it. The Russians believe that skin has much finer sensing powers than we realize and feel they can train people to discriminate colors by touch.

Moss (1974:95ff) discusses "skin vision," and especially details the case of several Soviet subjects, plus that of Mary Wimberly, all of whom could read with their fingers.

Watson (1973:267ff) in a section on "eyeless sight" describes a blind girl in Italy who winced when a bright light was held to her ear, and a blind Scottish schoolboy who could discriminate between colored lights. A medical board examined a blind Virginia girl who could distinguish colors and read large print (cf Edwards, F. "People Who Saw Without Eyes" in Strange People, London: Pan Books, 1970).

Watson then cites the Life (12 June 1964) article by A. Rosenfield about the Russian Rosa Kuleshova who can see with her fingers, under the most rigid controlled testing.

(page 220)

Those trained in physics know that Nicol prisms polarize light passing through them. If polarizing substances are used in pairs the light gradually diminishes to darkness as the angle between the two lenses is rotated from zero to ninety degrees. Bearing this in mind, let us attend to a remarkably suggestive experiment1 with the medium Slade performed by Professor Zollner (Zollner 1881:65-6).
 

I desired him, while sitting in his chair, to fix his eye on the front prism, and then to look with the apparatus at the clear sky (the experiment took place at my house at 11.45 in the morning of the 14th December, 1877), while I slowly turned the front Nicol. I now asked Slade, when the two prisms were about crossed, if he observed the gradual darkening of the field of view. To my great surprise, he said he did not. I supposed him to be deceived by the side light, and therefore disposed the two prisms from the front at right angles, so that neither I nor my friends could see through at all. Slade still asserted that he did not perceive the least change in the clearness of the sky; and as proof he read an English writing, placed before the two crossed Nicols, covering his left eye, as we saw, with his left hand. I was not, however, contented with his proof of the fact. Next morning, when we were again assembled at my house, I had two very large Nicol's prisms (for the production of a greater field of view) fixed to turn closely one over the other, and a large circular screen, which completely covered the sight of the observer, so placed in connection with the prisms, that external objects could only be perceived through the two Nicol's prisms. I then took an English book, Tyndall's Faraday as a Discoverer, and in Slade's absence marked by interlineations the following words on page 81 : - 'The burst of power which had filled the four preceding years with an amount of experimental work unparalled in the history of Science." When I again made Slade look through the two crossed Nicols at the sky, and he declared, as on the day before, that he did not remark the least change in the clearness of the sky when the prisms were turned, I requested him to sit on a chair, and to read to me the underlined words from the book, held at a distance of about two feet from his sight. To the great astonishment of us all, he immediately read the above words with perfect accuracy.
Astral organs of vision can apparently see through opaque objects.

Underhill (1964:155) tells us that one of the many powers

(page 221)

of St. Catherine of Siena was the ability to be aware of the thoughts and deeds of her disciples, and the biographer provides striking testimony of the fact in the confession of an erring student.

Underhill (1964:76) quotes St. Hildegarde on her visions:
 

'From my infancy until now, in the 70th year of my age,' she says, 'my soul has always beheld this Light; and in it my soul soars to the summit of the firmament and into a different air ... The brightness which I see is not limited by space and is more brilliant than the radiance round the sun... I cannot measure its height, length, breadth. Its name, which has been given me, is 'Shade of the Living Light' . . . . Within that brightness I sometimes see another light, for which the name Lux Vivens has been given me. When and how I see this, I cannot tell; but sometimes when I see it all sadness and pain is lifted from me, and I seem a simple girl again, and an old woman no more!'


We have referred earlier to "the exteriorization of the sense organs" as indicating the transcendence of the particular function of a given sense organ (e.g., the eye) by other means (e.g., dermaoptica). But there can, it appear, also be "an interiorization of the sense organs" in which through some "inner sight" or clairvoyance, the adept senses or perceives the distant object, or reads a moral condition off the patient's aura. In either case the localization of a particular sense in a particular organ is being transcended.

it is probable that extensions of vision amounting to miraculous sight or clairvoyance are due to the nascent ability to visualize in the next vivency above this one, - namely in the etheric. If we recall the statement: "Faith is the substance of things sought for, the evidence of things not seen." We get close to the concept of "thoughts being things" in this realm, and the corresponding psychic ability to perceive them before they are formed into matter. An allied power is the ability to read matters pertaining to human beings off their aura, which aids in diagnosis and healing of both physical and moral faults.

4.4) Miraculous Touch

In this section we shall consider the paranormal effects of an adept touching a patient. Jesus touched Peter, and Peter was

(page 222)

again able to walk on water (Matt. 14:31); a firewalking adept touched Rev. Bingham (Long, 1948:31), and he was enabled to walk across burning coals; St. Joseph of Cupertino touched a man, and he was able to fly (Dingwall, 1962a:18). Even Scrooge was borne aloft by the ghost of Christmas Past - ("Touch but the hem of my garment, and you shall be upheld in more than this.") Evidently something magical may happen when one is touched by the right person.

Touch is also involved in psychometry, or the ability by touching an object to read its past history. There are also other paranormal effects of some kinds of touching, but we shall narrow our report to the most important aspect of touching, namely healing, and we shall further constrain it to two aspects of healing: 1) the laying on of hands, and 2) psychic surgery.

4.41) Healing Through the Laying on of Hands
 

We shall attempt to distinguish three types of healing. The type to be discussed here, seems to involve some sort of current or magnetic effect, emanating from the hands (and capable of being recorded by Kirlian photography), which can effect healing or amelioration on the body of a patient. This kind of healing is mentioned in the Bible, is a prominent part of early Christian faith,2 and is a procedure in some religious sects today.2

Another type of healing to be discussed under 4.6 is more cerebral and seems to involve some kind of visualization or restructuring in the mind of the healer, who sees the person whole and healthy. This kind of healing requires more authority in the healer and is amenable to absent treatment.

Susy Smith (1977:40) quotes Hammond, quoting LeShan (1966:99) on the two types in order opposite to ours:
 

Putting it all together, what seemed to be happening was this: the healer, with his caritas and the concept of physics on which he is operating, welcomes the patient home to the universe. The patient recognizes this at a deep personal or subconscious level and at that moment his body's self-repair mechanism is stimulated to function closer to its potential. LeShan feels this is the major type of healing and is the kind done by many individual healers, Christian Scientists, and prayer circles.
(page 223)
Type 2, on the other hand, represents an effort on the part of the healer to heal, and he does not go into an altered state of consciousness, according to LeShan. 'He perceives a current of energy flowing through his hands and being passed through the area of the wound. The juice is turned on, so to speak, and sometimes healing results.'


We believe that most writers confuse our second (orthocognitive) and our third ("union-compassion") type of healing, as LeShan has done in the first paragraph. We shall say more about the rare third type in section 4.73.

Mann (1973:116) tells us that Reich's orgone energy can be communicated by touch. He devotes a chapter to the laying on of hands as an orgone phenomenon (ibid:83ff), much like transferring an electric charge from a strong battery to a weak one. He notes (p. 87) the views of Galvani, (p. 89) Mesmer, and (p. 95ff) Reichenbach on the healing and curative properties of this energy. He quotes Colson (ibid: 106):
 

The rays seem to be given off most strongly by those parts of the organism which are replaced most rapidly, such as the palm of the hands and the soles of the feet... The tips of the fingers are very strong emitters of this energy. The sex organs in both sexes and the breasts of women emit these rays quite strongly.
When pranic energy outflows through the hands, the laying-on-of-hands type of healing results. Kirlian photography makes possible the photographing of this energy (Moss 1974), as it leaves the tips of the healer's fingers. Moss (ibid:62ff) also discusses the higher type of healing (our 4.6) and suggests differences between the two kinds.

Reich's biographer, Mann (1973:176), also distinguishes between the two orders of healing:

 
Characteristically, laying on of hands of 'magnetic' or psychic healers depletes their energies to a greater or lesser extent. Dr. Weatherhead quotes a Dr. Petetin, of Lyons, and Deleuze, a French naturalist, for this view of healing. Deleuze, in his Critical History of Animal Magnetism (1813), wrote: 'It is an emanation from ourselves guided by our will . . . He who magnetizes for curative purposes is aiding with his own life the failing life of the sufferer" (Weatherhead, p. 114). In the process
(page 224)
such healers may even take on some or all of the symptoms of the patient. To avoid this, most of the books on magnetic or pranic healing advise the healer to shake or flick the hands and wrists at the termination of a healing, thereby hopefully 'shaking off' the unhealthy emanations from the patient that could cling to hands and arms. Some even advise washing the hands (Yogi Ramacharada, p. 70). This 'contamination' of the healer reminds one of how healthy people in Eeman's healing circuits would initially take on the fevers or other symptoms of their sick neighbor in the circuit.

The true saintly healer apparently disposes of a different and superior energy. He can heal at a distance as well as with physical contact, and sometimes virtually instantaneously; no serious illness (e.g., cancer) is beyond treatment; the healer is not susceptible to catching anything of the patient's sickness and he can go on for hours without tiring. In fact, he usually ends up a healing session feeling more energetic and spiritually resilient than when he began. (A conventional test of divine healing is whether it invigorates the healer.) Such saintly healers were fairly common in the first three centuries of Christianity and included a number of medieval saints like Saint Philip Neri.


Note that this citation contains some aspects of a third type of healing ("Union-compassion" healing) to be discussed in section 4.73).

Dean (1975:239-293) has five chapters on non-medical healing, including one by the Greens on voluntary control of body states, and one by Dr. Carl Simonton on the role of the mind in the therapy of cancer. It also contains LeShan's "General Theory of Psychic Healing" including the distinction between Type I (orthocognitive) and Type II (laying-on-of-hands) healing.

Instances of healing by the laying on of hands are not confined to the New Testament; they are legion today, both inside and outside of organized religion. There seems to be some kind of a natural force, which can be tapped by some people and transferred, sometimes with great power to others. (For a scholarly discussion on the natural healing power of nature see Newberger 1933.) Luke 8:43-8 suggests that Jesus felt a force leave him when touched by an ailing woman. Here is an example picked at random from a chapter on "healing hands" by Susy Smith (1975: 36):

(page 225)

I sat in a chair in Geoff's living room and he placed a hand on my stomach and another on my back. My wife Barbara and my parents were also in the room, praying.

As soon as Geoff touched me I felt a sensation. The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand on end and tingle. I felt as if some great energy were traveling through me.

Then I closed my eyes. Suddenly I felt as if I was not in my body anymore. I could feel myself floating above the room and looking down onto the others and my own body. It was like watching a film.

Suddenly the pain started to go away. I was given the healing for about 45 minutes and by the end the pain had gone and I felt better.

The next day doctors at nearly Manchester Hospital examined him and took new X-rays. They said with amazement that he was 100 percent well, his X-rays completely clear.
 

Here is another example from Smith (ibid:30-31):
 
Some other laboratory experimentation of an entirely different nature began some ten years ago with the claims of Oskar Estebany who stated that he had special healing powers in his hands. Dr. Bernard Grad, assistant professor of psychiatry at McGill University... decided to conduct an investigation.

His first experiment, carried out in 1960 in collaboration with Dr. Remi Cadoret of the Winnipeg Medical School, involved controlled testing of the rate of healing of laboratory mice that had been given superficial wounds. Faster healing occurred to the mice treated by Estebany than control mice with equal disease or disability who were untreated or were treated by other persons claiming no healing ability.

Sister M. Justa Smith of Rosary Hill College, Buffalo, New York, a recognized authority in the field of enzyme research, has conducted tests with Mr. Estebany and the enzyme trypsin and found similar results. These experiments demonstrated that the activity level of the enzyme was increased by an average of ten percent when held by Estebany in a reagent bottle for some 75 minutes. (The same effect, ten percent augmentation, can be achieved by subjecting the enzymes to a magnetic field - 13,000 gauss strength, for two hours. It would thus seem that there is some way to actually measure this PK force.)

(page 226)

A recent and scholarly compendium on healing is that edited by Meek (1977). In it, a number of the foremost healers have articles; particularly noteworthy being those by Puharich, Tiller, Motoyama, Watson, Stelter, Price, and others. The book devotes considerable space to psychic surgery in Brazil and in the Phillipines, and is perhaps the best recent source summing up these remarkable phenomena. The book is also notable for some serious study of various paradigms to explore psychic healing. It alone besides this book, discriminates three such types of healing (entitling them type a, b, and c). For all these reasons, this book is a must in any consideration of the subject.

Meek (1977:139ff) cites the work of Burr, Tiller, Worrall, and others with regard to the relationship of the molecular structure of water and healing.2 We are told by occultists that prana can easily be stored in water. The human body, is of course, nearly 90% water, and prana which can also be stored in the human body, seems to have some affinity for the oxygen molecule. Mrs. Worrall was able to "treat water" and make it more productive when used on plants. Analysis showed that this tended to magnetize the water, and further chemical analysis showed that this was due to cutting down the hydrogen bonding from 100% to around 90%. To anthropomorphize what is actually a chemical situation, we may say that two hydrogen atoms are legally bonded, (married), to an oxygen atom. But "hydrogen bonding" refers to a phenomenon where the hydrogen atoms conduct transitory flirtations with nearby oxygen atoms, atoms which are legally bonded to other hydrogen atoms. This extracurricular activity is apparently 100% prevalent in ordinary water, and in some way it appears to impair the efficacy of prana. When magnetic influences or a healer's hands cut down to some extent the prevalence of this bonding, the water appears more capable of releasing its stored prana. So it seems that in a rather literal way water can be purified and, (if you will), sanctified.

One of the reasons why touch is such a powerful psychic sensor is that it seems to be more "en rapport" with the collective preconscious than the brain. Barbara Brown in "New Mind, New Body" (Psychology Today, August 1974) reports:

Long before conscious recognition by the brain, the body and its subconscious substructures recognizes and makes judgments about what goes on in the environment. The subconscious is
(page 227)
more in touch with reality than consciousness, and has the facility to express its recognition of reality via the skin . . . (She then reports two experiments where the skin was more in contact with reality than the brain), concluding ...

The enormously important findings received little research attention, though they offered a way to look at the universe of the subconscious. When the skin responds to such mild signals then the possibility arises that through the skin the whole world of the subconscious could be explored.


The Patanjali siddhi, most appropriate to this power is No. 29, (Aranya, 1977:341-2), which refers to knowledge of the bodily system, which is obtained by practicing samyama on the plexus of the navel.

4.42) Psychic Surgery

We now consider what is perhaps the most unbelievable, (and certainly one of the most egregious), psychic effects in our catalogue. The reader should be prepared for testimony that psychic surgeons open the body with dirty knives or their bare hands, with no antiseptics nor anesthesia; that they remove foreign objects painlessly; that the wound closes easily and heals almost at once without scar, and finally, that the witness is unsure whether in fact the hands of the surgeon were inside the body of the patient!

The reader who wishes further reading on the subject should consult Krippner and Villoldo (1976) which is the most recent authoritative book, containing a large bibliography. We shall refer to their researches later, but before doing so it seems necessary to prepare the reader somewhat by giving him some rationale.

To do so, we need to go back and ask: "What is a percept?" The American College Dictionary defines it as "the mental result of perceiving." But such a result - (as when we read untied for united) may be an illusion. To get around this possibility, (and others much more serious) we will call this kind of percept a concept-percept. Concept-percepts are of high consensual validity generally, giving rise to the old saw: "Seeing is believing." But there are occasional rare instances in which either the concept-percepts of two witnesses differ, or either differs from another kind of percept which we shall call a " recorded-percept." A

(page 228)

recorded percept occurs when a physical recording exists, - such as a photo, hologram, tape or record.

Let us consider the case when the concept-percepts of witnesses to event A are different from the recorded-percepts of event A. What can have caused the difference? Which is correct? (We assume, of course, that the recorded percepts have not been tampered with.) One would immediately think that such a difference might be a good definition of an altered state of consciousness in the human observer, since it would be superficially evident that they would change and not the mechanical contrivance which would register the unusual result. The surprising fact, however, is that there are instances where it is the mechanical contrivance which registers something unusual, while the human observer sees nothing strange. The theoretical consequences of this state of affairs are important enough for some careful scrutiny.

Let us start with a common instance of this anomaly, your perception of some part of your body, and an x-ray of the same. The recorded percept is different from the concept-percept because wave lengths which excite the x-ray plate are invisible to the human eye.

Let us now consider Krippner and Villoldo (1976:184), a picture of a flame behind a healer's hands which are transparent in the picture, tho not so according to witnesses. The previous explanation suggests that some ultraviolet waves were generated by the flame, and these passed through the hands, making them appear transparent. An ordinary camera will pick up such waves.

Let us now consider another picture example, (Murchison 1927:84-5). This picture showing an invisible beaker on a balance was taken during a seance by infrared light in complete visual darkness. The observers passed their hands over the balance but detected nothing, yet the beaker shows clearly in the photograph.

Using these two cases only, we may say that in both:
 

1) An object which appears visible when observed under longer wave lengths appears invisible when viewed under shorter wave lengths.

2) In each case it is the mechanical contrivance which reports the unusual effect, (doubtless because it is

(page 229)
capable of going above and below the visible octave).

3) The healer generates higher frequency waves, the ghost controls lower frequency waves.

4) The visibility (presence) of an object may depend on the wave length used to "perceive" it. In other words some objects may be "real" only at certain wave lengths.


One of the many curious aspects of "psychic surgery" is that close and meticulous onlookers are unsure whether the surgeon's hands penetrated the body of the patient. Here is an example from Smith (1977:51):
 

Rev. Plume touches his fingers to the area to be treated and they seem to disappear right into the operating space. I have heard this described by a friend, Walter Uphoff of the University of Colorado, who witnessed it as "so impossible that it was difficult to believe;" but he thought there must be something to it - especially when the patient seemed relieved of his complaint when it was over. He concluded it should be objectively investigated. He said: "I saw things I could not understand or integrate into any conceptual framework - so I can at this point neither reject nor accept."
Here are similar instances from Krippner and Villoldo 1976:
 
(p. 75) Pachita stood at the head of the bed and seemed to insert her fingers into the girl's forehead ...

(p. 82) As Pachita began to massage the woman's abdomen, I observed what I had noticed many times before - Pachita's hands seemed to disappear into the healee's body.

(p. 83) As I moved my hand forward it seemed as if Pachita placed it in the abdominal cavity, and instructed me to push the intestines upward and out of the way.

(p. 85) 1 seemed to place the bladder-like object in the lower part of the body opening .


More of the same could be adduced from other psychic surgeon's operations. This is mighty strange business, when the observer, a trained psychologist, assisting in an operation, cannot tell whether or not the body is being physically opened.

(page 230)

If we assume honest reporting, then we are rewarded with a very fruitful psychological experiment in the paranormal, the importance of which is hard to overestimate. For it is always from such apparent violations of "natural" law that new and deeper laws are revealed. We have forced nature into a kind of striptease, which discloses more of her secrets.

We suggest two possible explanations:

1) The body is being opened by paranormal means, but the belief system of the onlooker will not allow him to admit it.

2) The healer is actually operating on the etheric body, which he is able to open. Since reality is with the etheric body, of which the physical body is only a hologram, (virtual image), there is psychic pressure for the material to mirror the astral. But this "saving of the appearances" which is virtually fully accurate under most circumstances, here admits of a large enough discrepancy so that the eye is unable to tell, - in other words under these unusual circumstances the "indeterminancy" becomes macroscopic enough to observe.


Krippner (1975:229), witnessing psychic surgery with the healer, Blance, became himself a part of the operation:
 

He brought my finger to a point about six inches from the skin just underneath the shoulder blade. Suddenly, he made an abrupt motion with my forefinger, then released it.

I had not taken my eyes off the woman's skin as this procedure was transpiring. I maintained my attention because I knew that Blance was reputedly able to cut skin at a distance as part of a 'purification' ritual. And I noticed a slit on the woman's skin the exact area beneath my finger position. Within a few seconds, a thin ribbon of blood filled this slit. It appeared to me as if the cut were superficial, barely scratching the first layer of skin.


In summary, (ibid:233) he theorizes as follows:
 

Possibly paranormal, however, were the scratches made by Blance on human skin. I conjectured that this may have been the result of focusing bodily field, "psychic energies," or a
(page 231)
combination of the two, in the way that a magnifying glass focuses sunlight to produce a burned hole on paper.

I further suggested that the 'bioplasmic body' may interact with the person's acupuncture points and meridians, found by the Soviet researchers to be areas of high electrical conductivity. This would explain why Taylo's patients winced in pain when the ring made from diamond chips was brought near to their acupuncture points. Apparently, either their bodily fields or 'psychic energies' - or both - were out of balance. The healing ritual was needed to restore the energetic balance.


For explanation Krippner (1975:173) quotes the views of the Brazilian healer Kardec:
 

Kardec believed that the 'spirit' is enveloped in a semimaterial body of its own, which he named the perispirit. The perispirit is composed of a magnetic fluid (or 'aura') which contains a certain amount of electricity. Therefore, healing can be accomplished by psychic healers who send magnetic rays from their fingertips into the 'auras' of ill persons. A healer can also magnetize water which can be utilized for healing purposes. These techniques involve physical 'passes' similar to those originated by Mesmer.


Meek (1977:60ff) devotes a chapter to the Phillipine healers, including Josefina Sison, Felisa Macans, the team healing of the Bugarins and Tony Agpaoa. This was an eyewitness account, wherein he accepts the fact that they are able to materialize and dematerialize tissue, and create incisions in the skin by making passes over without touching it. Stelter (ibid:70ff) tells of the paranormal pulling of teeth by Phillipine healers done in his presence by mere touch and without pain. He describes (ibid:74-5) paranormal incisions in the skin which he witnessed. We quote:
 

I checked to see if the psychokinetic incisions have ionizing rays in strong measure. I used films which are used in Germany to protect people working with radioactive materials. The films, sealed in plastic film holders were placed on the patient's skin before Blance made his incision from a distance. After his fingers moved through the air, the film was untouched at the top, but the skin was cut and the film was scratched on its under side.
(page 232)

Later in Germany Blance suffered a breakdown, before which the cuts became uncontrollable, and began to appear on his hands. Stelter (ibid:76) also discusses materialization and dematerialization phenomena in connection with opening and closing of operational incisions, and the question of where the healer's hands are. Seutemann, (ibid:89ff), herself a psychic healer, after a discussion of the facts of psychic surgery says (p. 92):

It is my conviction that most of the work done by the healer is at the level of the etheric body. Only after this body is restored to normal balance can the healing result in the organs of the physical body.
Meek (ibid:126ff) ends this remarkable exposition of psychic surgery with a summation of the data and implications.

The eminent Japanese researcher, Motoyama has contributed a chapter in Meek (1977:147ff) on his investigations of psychic healing, and his several inventions therewith connected. He has witnessed Phillipine surgery, and checked out that tumors and other tissue apparently taken from the patient's body did actually come from them (p. 147). He has proved (p. 149) that the healing power can be transmitted through lead shielding, hence is not physical, but "higher dimensional energy (p. 150)." Regarding psychic incisions, he notes that they are two to three times as wide as those made by a knife, and look like those made by a laser. He also hypothesizes that prana is stored in the chakras, and in healers can be ejected at will from the finger tips or the toes.

Meek (1977:41ff) in a discussion of the Brazilian psychic healer, Arigo, quotes Puharich (ibid.) who gives ten characteristics of a complete healer:

1) ability to diagnosis in presence or absence of patient,
2) to heal by laying on of hands,
3) to heal himself,
4) to use molecular medicine (pharmaceuticals),
5) to produce anesthesia by non-chemical means,
6) to perform instant surgery,
7) to violate supposed laws of antisepsis,
8) to perform action at a distance,
9) to possess a "guide" or spirit helper, and
10) to regenerate tissue.
Watson (1974:209-24) devotes a chapter to psychic surgery.

(page 233)

Some quotes:
 

(p. 220) 1 spent several days working with J. Sison ... and saw her perform over two hundred operations, about 85% of which involved materialization phenomena.

(p.220) I have seen Juan Blance of Pasig make real incisions in the bodies of his patients, but without a knife and from a distance.

(p.223) The most obvious and dramatic aspect of the Luzon healing process is the manifestation of living tissue.

(p. 213) (referring to Arigo, the Brazilian healer) He performed thousands of elaborate operations with table knives and scissors in totally unsterile conditions... Summing up their study of Arigo, Puharich said: 'He does it. I can't tell you how.'


This chapter, containing accounts of several investigations of psychic surgery, is a very convincing document.



Once again we have had the courage to take some very incredible testimony while holding an open mind about its significance. And once again the evidence, if it can be believed, has pointed us in the direction of the illusory nature of physical reality, which appears to be a virtual image of a more ultimate reality. We have thus stripped some more of the veils of "maya" from nature and have been rewarded by a more fundamental view.

4.5) Acute Hearing and Clairaudience

When Blake's "doors of perception" are being cleansed, the ordinary senses become more acute; and new senses, some of them psychic, become further developed. It is difficult to ascertain wherein the "natural" leaves off and the supersensory begins. Consider the case of hearing. Hearing is one of the TM Siddhi Program targets (Orme-Johnson and Farrow 1977:703):
 

Similar results arise from Clements and Milstein's study of auditory thresholds (paper 104). Even before the practice of the specific TM-Sidhi procedure being tested, subjects showed auditory thresholds eleven decibels more sensitive than the
(page 234)
population mean, again necessitating adjustment of the audiometer to handle the increased sensitivity. After the practice of the siddhi procedure for 'supernormal hearing,' thresholds decreased by a further three decibels in this pilot study. Of special interest are the subjective reports on the test. Many subjects reported the faintest levels of sound to be exquisitely clear and beautiful and said that they were able to appreciate the abstract form of the sound as it developed to the level of manifest perception. This is of great interest, since it offers a means to corroborate the suggestion of Domash that pure consciousness is a quantum mechanical state, potentially sensitive to quantum mechanical events in the perceptual and neural apparatus.


Clements and Milstein (Orme-Johnson and Farrow 1978:721) note the reason for the gain is that "there is a reduction of noise within the neural pathways of the inner ear to the brain, and within the auditory cortex itself." They believe that this coherent function is related to "a macroscopic coherence quantum phenomenon" as noted by Domash (Orme-Johnson and Farrow 1978: 652-70).

The descriptor used by psychology for the phenomenon of hearing sounds not made by natural sources is "auditory hallucination." Jaynes (1976:84ff) devotes a chapter to this subject. He notes that even today, auditory hallucinations are common among normal subjects (as indeed the author can testify from personal experience). Jaynes points out that in the past, such a voice was considered to be a god within - the "still, small voice" of the Old Testament.

Jaynes (1976:108) describes Penfield's experiment of electrical stimulation of the area of the right temporal lobe corresponding to the Wernicke (speech) area in the left hemisphere.
 

Case 8, a 26-year-old housewife, stimulated in approximately the same area, said there seemed to be a voice a way, way off. 'It sounded like a voice saying words, but was so faint I couldn't get it.'


Meditators, approaching satori, report an almost exactly similar phenomenon, namely the "hearing of men talking quietly at a great distance." If man's brain may be compared to a radio receiver, the location of the tuner is evidently in this area.

(page 235)

An interesting effect associated with clairaudience is that reported by some meditators of hearing celestial music.

The Patanjali siddhi No. 41, "a Divine sense of Hearing" (Aranya 1977:352ff), is most appropriate here. It is obtained, says Patanjali, by samyama on the relationship between akasa and the power of hearing.

4.6) Empery

In Genesis (1:28) we are told that God gave man dominion over the earth and all it contained. This siddhi involves dominion over self and others, as in healing, over animals and weather, as well as other aspects of the natural environment, including the working of miracles. It makes every man a Prospero. The enormous power of such empery requires equally responsible behavior in not misusing it. Empery in its various forms is generally associated with full accomplishment of shamanism or sainthood, and it is not surprising that the major figures in religious history (e.g., Jesus) show it so prominently. We subcategorize as follows: .61 self, .62 others (higher healing), .63 animals, .64 miscellaneous miracles.

Essentially such empery results from a firm perception of the subtle reality beyond the gross hologram of sensuous reality, with the concomitant awareness that this subtle realm is the actual theater of action and the physical merely the realm of effects. Thus one transcends the prison of the three illusions - time, space, and personality (Gowan 1975:10) and in their place finds a "nonsensuous unity in all things."

Randall (1975:171) quotes LeShan on clairvoyant as opposed to sensory reality:
 

A person experiencing the world in terms of the Clairvoyant Reality sees individual identity as mainly illusory; objects and events are observed as merely parts of a larger pattern. Since the knower and the known are one, there is no barrier to the transfer of information between them, so that psi phenomena are normal in this world-view.


This leads to what LeShan calls Type I healing (our 4.6 variety).

(page 236)

4.61) Empery over Self

The first dominion that man must gain is dominion over himself. The reason for this is obvious. To gain power over others before the purification of the self, and what saints have called "self-noughting" is most dangerous, since it involves the possible use of universal power for selfish ends. This is the definition of magic, and it has been proscribed by every great religious leader in history.

The struggle to replace the little selfish ego with the presence of God, or, as the Bible has it, "to put off the Old Adam with the New" is a difficult, lifelong effort, which, as many have found, is aided by submission to a guru or personal Saviour. Others find it easier to take the triple vow of poverty, chastity and obedience. These are all ways of self-mortification or purification. The more completely this process is accomplished the more clearly will come the subsequent vision of ultimate reality. The more impurities are admixed with the situation, the more the vision will be (as the Bardo Thodol tells one) a vision of the various orders of devas rather than the clear light of the Void.

4.62) Empery over Others (Higher Healing); Orthocognition

In Section 4.4 we spoke of a form of energy healing through "laying on of hands." In this section we discuss a higher form of healing which involves a completely different principle. This form does not need any physical contact, and can be carried on from a distance ("absent treatment"). Our name of this form of therapy is orthocognition or "correct thinking," since it involves an inner perception of the ideal situation, of which the physical manifestation is only a distorted reflection. This matter has been treated in detail elsewhere (Gowan 1975:320ff) which we quote: "Orthocognition involves the realization and visualization that numinous relationships exist. In other words, orthocognition is like having a correct map of the territory you are traversing in your mind; both would be helpful in not getting lost.

"The mere knowledge that something exists, and the correct visualization of one's relationship to it does much to remove superstitions and fear, and to put one on the right track in thinking.

"Orthocognition is no more than this - a first step in the syntaxic realm. Orthocognition has two aspects: 1) knowledge

(page 237)

that the numinous element exists, and b) visualization of our relationship to it, and the consequences thereof. Knowledge that the numinous element exists may be expressed in the following hypothesis. It appears to us as:
 

1) An all-powerful, impersonal, immaterial force without characteristics or form and without will;

2) Existing outside of time and space, but available to us as a suggestible medium in a hierarchy of altered states of consciousness;

3) Having responsibility for the welfare and survival of all life generally, and specifically for the development and self-concept of man;

4) Receptive to cognitive will, as is a computer terminal when the proper order is encoded, and executing that will in a machine-like impersonal, uncognized, and sometimes unexpected manner, quickly, accurately, impartially, inexorably, appropriately, elegantly, and completely.
 

"This is essentially the doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy which Happold (11970:20) summarizes as follows:
 
1 ) The phenomenological world is only a partial reality.
2) Man's nature is such that he can intuit the noumenon.
3) He can therefore develop and eventually identify with Divinity.
4) This process is the chief end of man's life.


"Let us imagine that a man has been knocked unconscious and then thrown into a dark dungeon so that when he comes to he is in utter blackness. His successive levels of awareness will provide an analogy to our own developing orthocognition of ultimate reality.

"At level zero the man is not conscious.

"At level one he is barely conscious and does not know where he is

"At level two he is conscious of being somewhere in an enclosed space, but because of his concussion he does not have memory of whence he came.

"At level three he has explored his enclosed space and con-

(page 238)

cluded - that he is a prisoner within it; moreover he begins to remember that he was once outside.

"Finally at level four, he recognizes the fact of his present condition, namely that he is a prisoner in a dungeon whose doors and dimensions he knows. He now remembers fully what freedom is like outside, and is beginning to formulate plans to escape.



"Orthocognition follows closely upon recognition of the illusory aspects of time, space, and personality. If the reader will refer to the section on the Three Illusions (4.13) he will see that orthocognition follows as a matter of course from this premise.

"Knowledge is power, and orthocognitive knowledge of the relationship between the conscious mind and the numinous element leads at once to power. This power must (like all tools) be used carefully and wisely. Basically the power involves the orthocognitive recognition of our relationship to the numinous element, and our visualization of this relationship as 'accomplish' (we use the untensed verb form to impress in the reader's mind that this action 'take' place outside of time). Since the action 'lie' outside of time in the 'durative topocosm' (an infinity of potential events), our visualization of it as having occurred, occurring, and being about to occur provides the nourishment to make the seed idea germinate and manifest in the physical world of space/time. (Notice how similar is the action of the Hopi Indian in the rain dance, when he performs a similar enactive representation to make manifest a hoped-for-future event which is within his heart.)

"The application of our relationship to the numinous element, and the consequences thereof, may be visualized in strengthening self-concept in seven vital areas:

1) my body and physical health
2) my wealth and possessions
3) my loved ones
4) my work and avocation
5) my interests, associations, and social relationships
6) my creations, my gifts to the society
7) my state, nation, culture, and world, especially regarding peace and prosperity.


"Each of these areas represents an expansion of self-concept away from egocentricity in the direction of freedom and altruism.

(page 239)

Together they cover the totality of self-concept which in turn (since it represents the ego's view of itself) is directly enriched and nourished by the numinous element. Hence, as a consequence of our relationship to this impersonal element, we should endeavor each day to visualize whatever aspect of self-concept we want to actualize as already existing now in an ideal state and needing only our desire and will to become manifest. In other words, this part of orthocognition aids us to bring about the necessary environmental conditions for growth.

"Let us be honest enough to admit that orthocognition is a low form of syntaxic conceptualization, for it is tinged with personal and selfish will. This constitutes a danger, especially that we shall be responsible for willing some event which indirectly causes trouble to ourselves or our neighbor. (No responsible person would ever be guilty of directly willing such an event.) We should endeavor to purify our minds from selfish purpose, before such an attempt and ever try to ascend the self-concept scale in visualizing as many concrete conditions at the high end as at the low end. Such scruples also suggest that orthocognition is best practiced along with meditation, which may be much more effective in removing the selfish ego. It is important to realize, however, that orthocognition is distinct from meditation, and that it has a legitimate function of promoting positive reinforcement for our continuing this growth. The laborer in the vineyard has a right to his pay, and we have a right as we progress to be protected and made comfortable in our daily lives (though we must not allow comfort to degenerate into sloth).

"While the creative aspects of the mind (which indicate it is part of the noumenon) embrace all nature, the relative ease with which the power to affect the environment may be exercised, is expressed in a hierarchy of self concept going outward from the body image through the phenomenal and environmental selves to successively embrace 'my body, my possessions, my relations with my loved ones, my work, my interests, my relations, my creations, and my world.' The easiest of these to affect and to change is, of course, 'my self-concept,' then come events, things, and finally other persons, society, and the universe.

"It is important that we understand the uses and limitations of orthocognition. As one of the initial forms of syntaxic representation of the numinous element, it represents a way station to

(page 240)

aid in our developmental progress, not a form to be cherished forever. Specifically, it has the disadvantage of looking at the universe in terms of the welfare of the personal ego or self-concept and of the modification of that environment for the benefit of the personal ego. Since the concept of the personal ego is itself an illusion, one may well ask what if any benefits are gained by compounding an illusory process. The interim benefits are that the self-concept develops through orthocognition from a lesser 'my' to a greater 'my' (as in going along the hierarchy from 'my body' to 'my world'). This gradual movement from egocentricity to freedom is truly developmental and encourages ego-diffusion; it also has the advantage of helping the ego to feel secure during such an operation; the reduction of anxiety is a helpful step in such a progression. The danger is the usual one in developmental progress, namely that any one stage may prove so tempting that one willingly remains there instead of pushing on. If there be two roads to reality, one through the desert of self-denial and mortification and the other in a milk-and-honey land of delight, the austere path offers less temptation to daily than the comfortable one. The stages of self-concept interest in orthocognition are stages to be gradually surmounted, for every 'my' that ties the ego to ownership or association delays development. The wise man, therefore, will realize orthocognition for what it is, an interim device, particularly suitable for us westerners for the gradual transcendence of self-concept by applying it more and more to the environmental self, and less and less to the personal self.

"The power of orthocognition is akin to the power of the dreamer in the lucid dream. Both help us become aware that we are dreaming and that the dream world we inhabit in the daytime is not more real than the dream world we inhabit asleep. Since both are dreams, we may expect that mental causes may change the percepts we 'see' awake just as they change the dream percepts. It is this awareness that the perceptual world is not 'loose and separate,' but a product of collective consciousness and, hence, changeable by mental means that is the freeing orthocognitive construct.

"We have discussed orthocognition as if it were always a deliberate and conscious attempt at control of the environment through visualization in the syntaxic mode, but we must note for completeness that there are many instances of such visualizations in other modes in which, without realizing that he is doing so, the

(page 241)

individual sets in motion the same kind of archetype or mental picture which eventuates in a manifest material state or event.

"For the human mind is not merely endowed (as part of the noumenon) with the power to cognize nature, it is also endowed with the power to design nature. The end objective of consciousness is not mere experience but reification. Whether we realize it or not, our thoughts affect the plastic numinous element which tends (unless prevented by other thoughts) to transform these thoughts into events. This is the secret of the self-fulfilling prophecy, for what a man can predict or visualize is (to use Koko's words), 'As good as done already.' As Pearce (11973:11) states: 'Thinking is a shaping force in reality.'

"Life is like being stunned then put into a strait jacket then dropped from a great height with a parachute. The problem is one first has to come to, then get out of the strait jacket, then activate the parachute. When consciousness is imprisoned in space, time, and personality, it is put into this position. Orthocognition is the first dawning of consciousness that it is in this fix (i.e., like the lucid dreamer that he is having a dream). Then the problem is to get out of the situation and not be beguiled by all of its allurements. Like Apollo, we are set in a great chariot for a swing through the heavens. But will consciousness reap the regard of this journey through space and time, or will there be only the usual Pussycat's report?
 

Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I've been to London to visit the Queen.
Pussycat, pussycat what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair.


"When consciousness is encased in creaturehood, it is very difficult not to be about the business of the creature. So after all the effort of going to London we may content ourselves with frightening a little mouse, rather than seeing the Queen.



"Blofeld (1970:84) calls orthocognition "visualization" and says of it:
 
It produces quick results by utilizing forces familiar to man only at the deeper levels of consciousness ... wherewith mind creates and animates the whole universe; ordinarily they are
(page 242)
not ours to command, until the false ego is negated or unless we employ yogic means to transcend its bounds....
"Since orthocognition involves a realization that the ego rather than being the central aspect of life is something to be transcended, it requires a radical switch in thinking. This from 'I-thinking' to 'not I-thinking' is made more difficult by the construction of our grammar. But since we can also rise by that which appears to cause our fall, we can deal with this problem grammatically. We can express the triple integral of the ego mathematically by SSS1 (where S= the integral sign). We can hence use the shortened symbol S1 to mean the transpersonal noumenon; so that when we say 'I visualize,' we are more accurate to say (or write) 'S'I visualize,' since only 'S' I is capable of bringing the visualization to manifestation. (See Table X, page 252 in Trance, Art, Creativity)

"it is sometimes loosely stated that an action taken in the body (orthocognition or a physical ritual, see Section 3.5 last 5 paragraphs) activates a cosmic source, but this is an inaccurate rendition of the event. What happens is that the S I situation takes place outside of time (and hence eternally and recurrently in time), and the calling forth of the function outside of time hence projects the manifestation into time in the here and now and in the future. This process which transforms thought into action can be performed syntaxically through orthocognition by the S I procedure which works in the durative topocosm. It can also be accomplished parataxically through the ritual repetition of a formula which sets up a vibration or cycle. Both processes are like turning on a tap to release a flow of water. They do not produce the water which flows; they merely release it or bring it from posse into esse.

"To program one's dreams and to program one's (dreaming awake) normal life are very similar functions. One involves creativity and the other healing; both are orthocognitive. For in both it is SI which brings design to an otherwise chaotic state.

"The stages of consciousness in man go from essential animal consciousness (mere reaction to stimuli) to self-consciousness (normal formal operations and some insight) to orthocognition (with its understanding that SI is imprisoned in time, space, and personality). Finally there comes cosmic consciousness which is at first transient in the psychedelic stage and continual in the unitive."

(page 243)

The reader is invited to recheck the Sullivan-Van-Rhijn theory (Gowan 1975:2) which states that experience which cannot either be cognized or felt by the conscious mind, must appear, either in the body or the environment, usually in the form of illness or accident. Zukav (1979:56) quotes Jung to the same effect: "When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate."

Roberts (1974:121) through "Seth" points out: "(Thoughts) have electromagnetic reality. They affect your physical being, and they are automatically translated by your nervous system into the stuff of your flesh and your experience."

Roberts (1974:320) has "Seth" echo these actualizations from the realm of all possibilities:
 

The 'you' that you presently conceive yourself to be represents the emergence into physical experience of but one probable state of your being, who then directs life, and 'frames' and defines all sense data... In your terms, probable events are brought into actuality by utilizing the body's nerve structure through certain intensities of will or conscious belief... These beliefs obviously have another reality besides the one with which you are familiar. They attract and bring into being certain events instead of others. Therefore, they determine the entry of experience of events from an endless variety of probable ones.


In actuality there may be a third kind of healing, which will be considered under Section 4.73, although the third kind is usually confused with the second, as neither involves a laying-on-of-hands. We will call this kind of healing "union-compassion" healing. While further remarks about it are reserved for the later section, we will indicate the rationale which brought it to our attention here.

In Trance, Art and Creativity (1975:19ff), we noted three modes of operation: 1) prototaxic or somatic, 2) parataxic or emotional, and 3) syntaxic or cognitive. It appears that there is a kind of healing for each mode, viz: 1) laying on of hands, 2) union compassion, and 3) orthocognitive. (Ed. Note: This is a late insight, made only after the bulk of this section was completed.)

(page 244)

Like this book, Meek (1977:214) distinguishes three types of healing. Type A is magnetic healing "involving a flow of vital energy to the patient." Meek quotes Davis to the fact that prana from the healer's left hand acts like the north pole of a magnet (p. 216). Type B, or "bioplasmic healing" (p. 219) has to do with energy exchanges between the healer's etheric body and the patient's. This would supposedly be pranic energy. Type B does not occur alone. Type C (or Mind and Spirit Healing, p. 221) is similar to our "orthocognitive" healing and may be accomplished in absentia. We are inclined to feel that Meek's type A and B both concern pranic energy and should be combined. We accept type C as orthocognition, but would add our third type of gemeinschaftgefuhl healing, so while both Meek and the author recognize three types, we differ in their characteristics.

In order properly to understand healing, let us look at the problem of knowledge from another point of view. It has been said that the central problem of the cosmos is, "To what vivency is consciousness awake?" We may paraphrase this wisdom by asking, "What level of consciousness is aware of a particular situation?" Let us suppose that the higher levels of consciousness (the parataxic and the syntaxic) are not aware, and that only the somatic (or body) level is aware. Then the only feedback of which consciousness may be aware is the pain and illness of the body which is really the carrier of vital information, could the higher levels but decode it. As knowing progresses from skin (prototaxic) to full cognition (syntaxic) various awakenings in the about-to-be perceived event precede full cognition, like little serendipities, which the individual, far from understanding as due to his own awakening realization of order) attributes to accidents in the environment (and which Jung called synchronicity). Actually, these are the heralds of the cognitive dawning of a condition of order which has already taken place in some higher realm. The task of the orthocognitive healer is really to hasten this enlightenment of consciousness.

4.63) Empery over Animals

One of the more charming aspects of empery, since it recalls man's pristine position in the Garden of Eden, is his control over animals. This control is united with love, tenderness, and perfect innocence toward the lower forms of life, which we see in the "reverence for life" views of Schweitzer. But, of course, the most

(page 245)

perfect example of gemeinschaftgefuhl extended not just to all humanity but to all creatures is that of St. Francis. Bishop (1974: 184-5) speaking of St. Francis says:
 

Especially he loved living creatures, and of them especially birds. Best of the birds, to him, were the cowled larks, earthcolored like monks, and humble, but such sweet singers! The larks returned his love. On the night before his death a great multitude came and wheeled above his roof, singing their farewell. One may remember his warm reception by the birds of La Verna. On another occasion a swarm of birds - wood pigeons, crows, rooks - assembled on a tree to hear his sermon, and at the end bowed their heads reverently down; and again a brawling band of swallows fell silent at his command. He tamed many birds for pets, or rather companions - his familiar hawk at La Verna, a loving moorhen, a family of robins, one of whom suffered death as penalty for gluttony, a pheasant who followed him like a dog. The birds in Giotto's fresco are identified as goldfinches, quail, sparrows, and pigeons. Francis proposed even that the state should undertake to throw grain for the birds on the roads every Christmas, as a present. There was a pet crow who went begging for the brothers, and who, at Francis's passing, came to die on his grave.
Sakuhar (1952:29) tells us of the empery of Shri Baba, a Twentieth-Century Indian avatar:
 
Baba was in the habit of borrowing oil from the shopkeepers of the village for his little lamps which he kept burning the whole night, both in the masjid and the temple. Once these merchants who were wont to supply him with oil gratis took it into their heads to refuse this little service to the Master. Quite unperturbed, the Saint filled his lamp containers with water and lighted the wicks - and lo, they started burning, and kept burning all throughout the silent watches of the night as if in defiance of the ungracious behavior of the shopkeepers who later repented and became his disciples,

Instances abound too of Baba's control over the elements. Christlike he could command the winds and the rain and the lightning to obey his behests. One evening there was a terrible and destructive storm at Shirdi and the little village was flooded with incessant rain. The many local deities were sought to be appeased but in vain. At last people flocked to the masjid and prayed to Baba to quell the storm. The great yogi came

(page 246)
out to the edge of the masjid and ordered the storm to cease. At once the winds and the rain and the lightning obeyed his sweet will and became still.
Patanjali sutra No. 17 (Aranya 1977:317) is the nearest to this power, for it declares that by practicing samyama on sound, the yogin can gain knowledge of the sounds produced by all beings.

A full discussion of instances of empery over animals would make a delightful book, but we do not have the time here to pursue the subject in detail. Underhill (1964:94) speaks of Conrad of Offida as "inheriting the Franciscan power over animals." Mesmer (Buranelli 1975:203) had the power: "His gift of drawing animals remained, the gift he had first noticed in his childhood." Shamans traditionally cultivate empery, and Long (1954:356-62) has a short chapter on empery over nature on the part of the Hawaiian kahunas, especially over sharks and weather.

Rama (1978:87, 151, 157) describes mantras which give empery over (and hence protection from) bees, snakes, and tigers. Montagu (1950:19) describes empery over nature as one of the nineteen signs of sainthood. A chapter on empery over animals is contributed by E. Salverte in the collection by Garrison (1973: 239-52). Among other matters we learn that the art was known to Pythagoras.

4.64) Miscellaneous Miracles

We include under this category of empery, dominion over the natural elements (weather), over food and its multiplication, and transubstantiation (or the changing of one substance into another, such as water into wine). Those familiar with the New Testament will recall that Jesus is supposed to have wrought all these miracles. Because of the rarity of data in this area and the consequent difficulty of belief for most persons, we shall sketch the area but lightly, contenting ourselves with making only two points:
 

1) Other adepts besides Christ, born in East and West are said to have accomplished one or more of these miracles;

2) The hologram model, which makes sensuous reality a world of appearances, allows for a paradigm explaining such high-level miracles as orthocognition of correct thought-forms in place of the physical evidence.


(page 247)

Primitive man with his medicine men and shamans has always felt that he could influence the environment magically. Whether in rain-making, the protection of the totem animal, fertility rites, hunting rituals or other miraculous effects, the stories of such interventions are legion and found in every culture.

4-7)Adamic Ecstasy

Aranya (1977:315) translates Patanjali's sutra No. 16 as stating that knowledge of the past and future can be obtained by samyama on the "changes of characteristics, of temporal changes, and of states. . ." Evidently every event in time produces a trace outside of time, and this trace can be recovered or precognized. The "cleansing of the doors of perception" or refining of the senses to be cognizant of higher levels, allows them in some manner to "see through" the hologram and perceive the original object and the reference beam, that is, to become conscious of ultimate reality (or more accurately of a more ultimate reality).

We quote from earlier work (1975:361ff) on such ecstasies:

"4.71 Adamic or Time Ecstasies ("Access" or Jhana 0)

"The next level of ecstasy is one to which Blake's great words 'the doors of perception are cleansed' apply. All things are seen in the pristine goodness which Adam found before he fell from grace (hence the name). This is the Hindu 'access' state in which the primary object does not fully occupy the mind, but comes and goes transiently. God is heard although not seen. The self is restored to primitive grace. Siddhis are most likely in this stage, particularly those of bodily lightness as though floating on air. There may also be light flashes, or waves before the eyes; also noise like running water or the muffled sound of men talking at a distance. Because of this level there is initial loosening of the time aspect of the triple illusion, there often appears to be renewal or restoration of that which has been lost in the past, hence a reestablishment of pristine glory; this can also become a siddhi in which the individual sees the activities of a former time as in a vision. Another common experience is being enveloped in fire or seeing it close by.

Leuba (1925:209) describes an Adamic Ecstasy (Participant is climbing a mountain):

(page 248)

When all at once I experienced a sense of being raised above myself; I felt the presence of God.... I could barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. I then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with tears. I thanked God....
"Knox (1950:153) quotes George Fox in another Adamic Ecstasy:
 
Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I know nothing but pureness, innocency, and righteousness being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I was come up into the state of Adam which he was in before he fell.
"Bucke (1923:v) tells about his own 'illumination:'
 
All at once without warning of any kind I found myself wrapped in a flame colored cloud.... Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation ... of immense joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe.
"Bucke was surprised to find that such unusual experiences were more common than he had expected, and his book Cosmic Consciousness which catalogs a number of similar ecstasies (first printed in 1901 ) has gone through many reprintings.

"Among the many historical figures cited in the book, one of the most telling is that of Blaise Pascal, famous French scientist and mathematician who had an experience which literally changed his life. He wrote about it as follows (Bucke: 1929:274):
 

In the year of Grace, 1654, Monday, 23 November, day of St. Clement, Pope and Martyr. From about half past ten in the evening until about half-past twelve midnight, FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not the philosophers nor of the Wise. Assurance, joy, assurance, feeling, joy, peace...


"An even more famous example occurred to Moses on Mt. Sinai as related in Exodus 3:2-5:

(page 249)

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called him out of the midst of the bush, and said: Moses, Moses. And he said, here am 1. And He said, draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place wherein thou standest is holy ground.
"And perhaps the most famous experience of all is given in Acts 9:3-6:
 
And as he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined about him a light from heaven; and he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?


"Adamic ecstasies show loss of worldliness, desire, sin, sorrow. It is significant that Adamic ecstasies also sometime involve the loss of sense of time. Laski (1962:112) quotes Jefferies who had a similar experience of the Roman legions when standing beside a Roman ruin. Laski quotes Toynbee on similar historical visions on site, and notes the abundance of ruins as triggers for such experiences. She quotes Wordsworth (p. 115) who at Stonehenge had a vision of ancient druids at their rites. One might well call these locus experiences. Since they tune in to the numinous aspects of a site in its durative nature, they are the syntaxic correlates of the prototaxic hauntings and apparitions.

"Auden (1956:27-8) muses on archetypes and sacred sites as triggers: 'Some sacred beings seem sacred to all imaginations at all times,' and 'many of us have sacred landscapes which probably all have much in common.'

"D. H. Lawrence in The Rainbow (1949:204-5) echoes a similar timelessness: 'Away from time, always outside of time... Here in the church, 'before' and 'after' were folded together, all was contained in oneness,' as does T. S. Eliot in 'Four Quartets.'

"Happold (1970:x368-70) quotes Thomas Traherne on the latter's Adamic ecstasy. Since such an ecstasy recovers 'le temps perdu' it constitutes a vision of the durative topocosm:

(page 250)

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehension of the world than I.... All appeared new and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful.... All things were spotless, and pure, and glorious .... I saw all in the peace of Eden.... All time was eternity ....

The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.... The men, 0 what venerable and reverend creatures ... and the young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty.... Boys and girls were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; but all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the light of day, and something infinite behind everything appeared....


"The difference between 'hearing the Lord' and 'seeing the Lord' which distinguishes Adamic ecstasies from Knowledge ecstasies, is illustrated in Exodus 33:9, 11, 18-23.
 

And it came to pass as Moses entered the tabernacle the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face.... And he said 'I beseech thee, show me thy glory.' And (the Lord) said 'Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live.... And it shall come to pass that while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft in the rock, and will cover thee with my hand, while I pass by. And I will take away my hand and thou shall see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen.
From which it is evident that Moses had an Adamic vision.


"Many saints are reputed to have had time ecstasies in which they had a vision of holy events. St. Bridget, while adoring a creche, had a vision of Jesus' birth. St. Francis received the Stigmata in a similar instance. St. Teresa, and many others have had such theophanies.

"Let us see what the mystics say about jhana 0, or the 'access' state. St. Teresa (Leuba, 1912:164) calls this 'The Sleep of the Powers' or the Orison of Union (in her Interior Castle where it is the fifth dwelling). As the last state before complete rapture, the soul is more and more absorbed in the complete contemplation of

(page 251)

God, which is found more and more enjoyable. The intellectual and sensory powers seem asleep. Teresa calls this state 'a celestial madness.' Similar strong affective aspects are mentioned by St. Francois de Sales (Leuba, 1912:168) who calls it Amorous Abstraction and mentions the 'presence of the Bridegroom;' 'the soul hears his voice.' Mental activity is reduced to nil. Father Poulain (1912) Leuba (1925:178) calls this state Full Union. He says: 'The soul is fully occupied with the divine object; it is not diverted by any other thought; in short it has no distractions.'

"The Hindus also agree that this level involves ecstasy which they call 'samadhi.' The lowest level is samadhi 'with support' (sampajnata) in which samadhi is achieved (Eliade 1969:93) 'with the help of an object or a thought.' The yogi penetrates the essence of the object and assimilates it, but he is still differentiated from it. This samadhi level makes possible knowledge and puts an end to suffering. While there is not perfect correspondence between the yogic graces and the Christian, either here or in the next samadhi level, there is an outside-of-time aspect which corresponds to our Adamic Ecstasy. For example, in 'gripping' an object the yogi assimilates its past and future as well as its present."

4.72) Friendliness and Gemeinschaftgefuhl

The English word does not fully express the universal compassion inherent in the German word. Aranya (1977:330) translates Patanjali's sutra No. 23, as recommending friendliness, compassion and goodwill to all. Through this samyama the yogi "destroys all feelings of envy and hatred ... and gets completely free from harshness and malice." But even this does not give us the full range of the function.
Maslow (1954:217) explains gemeinschaftgefuhl thus:
 

This word, invented by Alfred Adler, is the only one available that describes well the flavor of the feelings for mankind expressed by self-actualizing subjects. They have for human beings in general a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection... Because of this they have a genuine desire to help the human race. It is as if they were all members of a single family.


This compassionate feeling for all humanity, transcending the bonds of family, kinship, friends, or one's cultural contempor-

(page 252)

aries is seen in enlightened persons as Jesus, Gandhi, Schweitzer and Eleanor Roosevelt. One is reminded of what Einstein said: "Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures. . ."

This brotherhood feeling to all humans comes from a deeper feeling that the universe is beneficent, for "The fatherhood of God produces the brotherhood of man." In consonance with this idea Orme-Johnson and Farrow (1977:708) state:
 

The effect of the technique on friendliness ranges from a feeling of harmony within oneself and/or a greater degree of inner correlation or mind-body coordination; to the above feeling not only encompassing one's self but projecting outward to include objects or people in the vicinity; to an all encompassing friendliness radiating out into the universe, a sense of being an intense beacon light of friendliness filling all creation.


4.73) Union-Compassion Healing

This highest form of healing is only possible to those adepts who have access to gemeinschaftgefuhl (or world-compassion) through the grace of Adamic ecstasy. As we have indicated in Section 4.62, it is the parataxic cognate of the syntaxic orthocognitive healing, and the prototaxic laying-on-of-hands healing. (For the meaning of prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic consult Gowan 1975:19.)

Union-compassion healing is instantaneous: a number of Jesus' healings were of this type. The Master, with great love and compassion for the welfare of his brother-man or sister-woman, sees them as unified in the love of God, and out of this love-union-compassion comes the immediate change. This high level of healing is not possible for most mortals; and consequently, it is rare, but it is both theoretically required by the triplicity of the prototaxic, parataxic, syntaxic modes, and is evident in the work of the greatest avatars.

When a condition of health has been established (or better visualized) on the realm of all possibilities (the etheric), it may take some little time for it to manifest on the physical. This is why healing of the two lower kinds often takes time.

(page 253)

In the highest form of healing which is instantaneous, we may wonder if the adept has not reached back into time and corrected a past condition, so that the results are expressed by an instantaneous change in the present state.

4.8) Infused Knowledge

There appear to be four levels of knowledge ecstasies each with a deeper infusion of cosmic wisdom (jhanas 1, 2, 3, 4). Some kind of transcendent knowledge is communicated so suddenly and completely that the mystic "knows everything." St. Thomas Aquinas, after a long career as scholar and philosopher, had such a visionary experience in chapel one Sunday. Declaring that his previous knowledge was as nothing compared with what had been revealed to him, he stopped in the middle of a book and never wrote another word. Jacob Boehme is quoted by Bucke (1901 :182): "The gate was opened to me that in one-quarter of an hour, I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a university. .. For I saw and knew the being of all things, the byss and the abyss. In many there is a vision of the Deity, and a great affective overload; even in intellectuals (according to
Ramakrishna, Younghusband 1930:27): "It is impossible to express in language the ecstasy of divine communication. . . ." The knowledge communicated is both general and ineffable. While it comprises "allness," its details are seldom discussed. Our guess is that at this level the mystic begins to experience the phenomenon of knowledge turning into state. As has been stated elsewhere (1975:379): "This integration or return to primordial unity is the finality of knowledge which in the end transmutes into being." In other words through knowledge more and more complete, the knower becomes the known.

The question of "infused powers" is a delicate one because it appears that such infusion may occur as a result of removing certain human elements of the conscious mind. It is as if in James' phrase the human consciousness is a bottleneck through which reality is filtered. Disturb this constraint, and exotic powers appear, as in the telepathic predilections of schizophrenics, the seeing of auras by Reichenbach's neurotics, the psychic powers following electric shock or other brain trauma.

Is it fair to call these manifestations which appear in subtraction, as higher powers which should appear in addition?

(page 254)

Further, since these powers appear to be those of the prototaxic numinous with very little human component, is it fair to call them exotic powers of humanity? Where is the line separating the exhibition of numinous power shown in trance states from a more obviously human ability? Surely, no one would regard the best of Wordsworth or Tennyson as non-human numinous powers, although it is perfectly obvious that "Intimations of Immortality" is inspired verse.

We hazard the belief that the crucial component is "control," and that the cut line comes between possession trance and shamanistic behavior. If one is in control of the experience, so that one can will it to occur, with what suitable props may be necessary, one may be said to have infused power. It is a bit like whether an infielder has control of the ball in making a put-out in baseball.

The infusion of cosmic knowledge is a siddhi. Orme-Johnson and others (1978:708) describe the reactions of advanced TM meditators to this experience as follows:
 

Experiences of 'omniscience' do not seem to show such a clear developmental sequence. There was general agreement that the early stage could be described as a feeling of expansion of the mind and the expansion of the influence of the body. Four alternatives were given for the next stage:

a) a sense of universality and the ability to do anything;

b) a sense of perfection and of being all-pervasive, of being all that there is in nature;

c) a feeling of being stationed in the borderline between the manifest and the unmanifest levels of creation, a state of ultimate evenness;

d) an experience of the mind as infinite, radiating upward in a cone-shaped pattern.


Since we have elsewhere (1975:366ff) argued that the successive knowledge-contact jhanas are part of the process of stripping away the personality, it is rather difficult to state what is going on in a language which is referenced to the personal pronouns. The various degrees of knowledge-contact are accompanied in many saints by visions, and even in some cases contact with the numinous element. As creation is differentiation, yogic escalation is integration in which things are returned to their original, primordial order.

(page 255)

It is probable that there are numerous specific powers represented under this heading, and that only our lowly position far away from them prevents our being able to separate them more specifically. We know that there are four jhanas involved (jhanas 1-4, see Gowan 1975:366-75). Patanjali's sutras numbers 33, 34, 44, 45, 49, and 52-4 (Aranya 1977:344ff) also discriminate. Remembering that mere words become less and less meaningful at these levels, let us continue for a little while.

Sutra 33 (Aranya 1977:344) states that "Taraka knowledge is the state of knowledge before attainment of discriminative enlightenment." Like the dawn before the sun, when this level is attained, the yogin comes to know everything. Sutra 34 states that "by practicing samyama on the heart, knowledge of the mind is acquired." This evidently allows knowledge to get past the fluctuations of the gunas and surmount the conception of ego.

Sutras 44 and 45 (Aranya 1977:358ff) have to do with samyamas on the bhutas or basic elements. With the conquest of these, the essence or real nature of objects becomes known and these properties can be changed at will. Consequently, a higher type of omniscience and other powers emerge.

Sutra 49 (Aranya 1977:368ff) states that to the yogin "established in the discernment between buddhi and Purusa come supremacy over all beings and omniscience." All forms of the gunas appear before the mind of the yogin, hence, he has knowledge of past, present, and future states. Sutras 52-4 discuss discriminative knowledge whereby the yogin can discriminate between the essence of two apparently identical objects. But it is also obvious that the verbal channel is inadequate to carry the full message.

4.9) Continuous Contact and Union: (jhanas 5-8)

These four levels of being are beyond descriptive knowledge as we know it, out of time and space, and also beyond personality. Consequently, while we have tried to describe them elsewhere (Gowan 1975:374-8), it is very difficult to say much about them except in poetry, music or parable. The easiest understood analogy is spiritual marriage, reflecting the continuous contact and union between the individual and general mind.

From The Interior Castle II: chapter 2:333-35), St. Teresa

(page 256)

says of Spiritual Marriage (speaking of herself in the third person):
 

Let us now come to treat of the Divine and Spiritual Marriage, although this great favor cannot be fulfilled perfectly in us during our lifetime, for if we were to withdraw ourselves from God this great blessing would be lost. When granting this favor for the first time, His Majesty is pleased to reveal Himself to the soul through an imaginary vision of His most sacred Humanity, so that it may clearly understand what is taking place and not be ignorant of the fact that it is receiving so sovereign a gift. To other people the experience will come in a different way. To the person of whom we have been speaking the Lord revealed Himself one day, when she had just received Communion, in great splendour and beauty and majesty, as He did after His resurrection, and told her that it was time she took upon her His affairs as if thy were her own and that He would take her affairs upon Himself; and He added other words which are easier to understand than to repeat.

This, you will think, was nothing new, since on other occasions the Lord had revealed Himself to that soul in this way. But it was so different that it left her quite confused and dismayed: for one reason, because this vision came with great force; for another, because of the words which He spoke to her; and also because, in the interior of her soul, where He revealed Himself to her, she had never seen any visions but this. For you must understand that there is the greatest difference between all the other visions we have mentioned and those belonging to this Mansion, and there is the same difference between the Spiritual Betrothal and the Spiritual Marriage as there is between two betrothed persons and two who are united so that they cannot be separated any more.


"More austerely the Bhagavad Gita says of the mystical state, samadhi:3
 

The self-controlled practitioner, while enjoying the various sense objects through the senses which are disciplined and free from likes and dislikes, attains placidity of mind. With the attainment of such placidity of mind, all his sorrows come to an end, and the intellect of such a person of tranquil mind soon withdraws itself from all sides, and becomes firmly established in the supreme reality.


"Harding (1973:159) is definite about the advantages of the syntaxic mode of juncture between the conscious ego and the numinous element:

(page 257)

But if a man who has had an ecstatic experience succeeds in holding to his conscious standpoint and its values, and also retains the new influx that has come to him from the very depths of the psyche, he will be obliged to endure the conflict that two such widely different components will necessarily create, and will be compelled to seek for a means of reconciling them. This attitude is the only safeguard against falling under the spell of the nonpersonal daemonic powers of the unconscious; it is the modern way of following John's advice to 'prove the spirits.' If the effort is successful, and inner marriage will be consummated, the split between the personal and the nonpersonal part of the psyche will be healed, and the individual will become a whole, a complete being.


"But perhaps the best metaphor is that of coming home. St. Augustine says: 'Thou has made us for thyself and we are not happy until we dwell in thee.' As Ruysbroeck says: 'God is the home of the soul.' One might quote Stevenson's epitaph as it so pertinently applies to the psyche:
 

Here he lies where he longed to be:
Home is the sailor, home from the sea;
And the hunter home from the hill.


"In Underhill's words (1960:367), 'The Transcendent is perceived by contact not vision.'

... Oh, wonder of wonders,' says Eckhart, 'when I think of the union the soul has with God.' And Suso says: 'In this rapture the soul disappears, yet not entirely. It acquires certain qualities of divinity, but does not naturally become divine.' Plotinus puts it: 'The soul neither sees nor distinguishes by seeing.' 'it ceases to be itself .... it belongs to God.' 'The perceiver is one with the thing perceived.' 'Ecstasy is a desire of contact .... and a striving after union.'

"Underhill (1960:416) lists the three marks of the state as: 1) absorption in the interests of the Infinite, 2) freedom and serenity flowing from consciousness of its authority, 3) a center of energy in the world and lives of others.

"Meister Eckhart tells us:

(page 258)

"'The knower and the known are one ... God and I we are one.... The eye with which I see God is the same as that with which He sees me.'
"Cognitive knowledge (like carnal knowledge) has in its finality become union.

"This is the fifth state of consciousness of the yogis, a state in which the altered state of consciousness is permanent. It is also a stage where all aspects of self have been transcended. It is consequently very difficult to say anything about it, as words are not adequate. Paradoxical statements abound as in most limit situations. (Christians who may be offended when such a mystic says, 'I am become God' may be comforted by recollecting that what the mystic is really trying to describe is an ineffable situation in which the semantic aspect becomes distorted.) What is apparent is that development has reached some higher level where there is even less of space, time, and 'I-ness' and even more of the Absolute.

"Laski (1962:63) quotes Poulain on the unitive state as 1) a union that is almost permanent, persisting even mid exterior occupations, 2) transformation of the higher abilities (hence transforming union), 3) intellectual vision.

"We need not detain ourselves with vain quibbles about whether the mystic is absorbed into Deity or whether he retains his conscious individuality. Words are simply not relevant or adequate, for paradoxical opposites become both possible simultaneously at such exalted levels. What has happened is that the 'not-me' of the early numinosium has become the me, and in place of dissociation, incongruity, and discontinuity between the numinous element and the individual psyche, there has come association, congruity, and continuity.

"Jung states in the Secret of theGolden Flower: 'Every statement about the transcendental ought to be avoided because it is a laughable presumption on the part of the human mind, unconscious of its limitations.'

"While we are unable to describe in detail what is going on at these exalted levels, that does not mean that little is taking place. The real business of these high states is to make increasingly

(page 259)

permanent and real the intimations of escape from the prison of time, space, and personality begun in the lower jhanas. For example, the Adamic Ecstasy (Jhana 0) with its time distortion starts the process of escape from time, but this feeling is experienced only in an ephemeral manner as if in trance: it is the first wiggle of the nascent butterfly in attempting to escape from the cocoon. Such transcendence becomes increasingly apparent at each higher level. Similarly the escape from the physical world of space is started at jhana 1, yet it is obvious from the descriptions of jhana 5, 6, and 7, that different aspects of this transcendence are being accomplished. Words may be inadequate to express the process of these high graces, and we may know little about what is going on, but we can intuit that the continued specifics of this transcendence are much involved.

"It is important to attempt to restate for our Western minds, which are not used to the concept, that for the Hindu yogi, extreme concentration on an object becomes 'grasping the object' first in knowledge of the essence of the object, and then in a 'passage from knowledge to state,' essentially becoming the object. Since the object is usually Isvara (the Lord), the result of this progression is deliverance. As Eliade (1969:96) explains:

The object is no longer known through associations.... it is grasped directly, in its existential nakedness....

Let us note that.... Samprajnata Samadhi is shown to be a state achieved through a certain knowledge'. . . This passage from knowledge to state must be kept constantly in mind... (it) leads to a fusion of all modalities of being...


This absolute knowledge reveals that 'knowledge and being are no longer discrete from each other.' So the yogi who penetrates to Asamprajnata Samadhi (samadhi without support of objects) becomes one with the Deity. As Eliade (1969:114) remarks: 'The human consciousness is eliminated... its constituent functions having been reabsorbed into the primordial substance.

"If creation may be compared to the mathematical process of differentiation, then yogic escalation may be compared to the process of integration, for it returns to an undifferentiated state or function.

"Thus we are enabled to see the grand theme of the great

(page 260)

process of creation and salvation emerge namely, that in the juncture between the individual and the general mind, duality is abolished, and through knowledge more and more complete, the one becomes the other. Notice that in section 4.2 (Tantric Sex), if the word know is used in the carnal sense, the knower and the known are fused in union. This integration or return to primordial unity is the finality of knowledge which in the end transmutes into being. Thus the dichotomy of symbol and referent, verba and res, thought and action, Shiva and Shakti is resolved by their transcendence of duality in union. 'I am become God;' says Meister Eckhart, testifying truthfully to a mystic state which was as far beyond comprehension of the churchmen who excommunicated him as the fact that complete knowledge can become complete being is above us. The omega point is reached when 'the All shall know the All' for then All shall become All without differentiation. At every level, prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic, the upward escalation of humanity is a prefiguring of this 'divine, far-off event.'

"But if we in the West have difficulty in grasping such a concept of absolute thought becoming absolute state, we should remember that the very same idea was proclaimed by none other than Socrates in the Symposium when he concluded:
 

This is the life which men should lead above all others in the contemplation of Beauty absolute .... Dwelling in that realm alone, he will bring forth not images of beauty, but Beauty itself, and so would become immortal and be the friend of God.


FOOTNOTES:
*See Jones, D. E. Visions of Time: Experiments in Psychic Archeology Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Pub. House, 1979.

1 For a possible ingenious naturalistic explanation of this phenomenon in terms of diagonal polarization and lattice logic, see Zukav (1979:283ff).
375-89).

2 The force has been discussed in 3.5 as "prana." Psychic Observer (Box 8606 Washington, D.C. 20011 ), for Fall, 1978 has 49 different names for this life or vital force, including prana (the ancient vedic name), mana, elan-vital, od, orgone, eckankar, chi, dynamis, numen, and el. This list of 49 synonyms is reproduced in the Fall 1979 edition of Research Reporter, Box 57127, L.A. 90075.

3 Further to healing effects of radiation, see Florvik in Regush (1977:298-300).

4 The remainder of this chapter is quoted from the author's earlier work (1975: