tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68899109387992715652024-03-28T23:29:41.631-04:00Consciousness UnboundMichael Grosso -
Nobody knows the origins or the outer limits of consciousness.Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.comBlogger272125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-45353181061140141432024-02-23T12:10:00.000-05:002024-02-23T12:10:24.999-05:00A Strange Light Experience<p class="MsoNormal"> From time to time I’ve<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>had experiences certifiably paranormal: telepathic, ghostly,
precognitive, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>psychokinetic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on the day after Christmas in 2020,
actually after midnight on the next<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>day, I experienced something unlike anything I ever experienced before. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The context. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was in high spirits, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>working on a
large painting and, at that moment, writing a blog-post for the following day.
It was about one-thirty in the morning, my body felt tired, but my mind was
clear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m concentrating on the
point I’m about to formulate and type out on my computer, when I notice a
slight tremor on my left eyebrow, exactly at the point where the bone of the skull
makes a right angle. I also notice there’s a change in the light around me and a
sensation of sudden warmth. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Suddenly, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>light
began to emanate from my left eyebrow—that single point on my skull where I
felt a tremor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could see and
feel the pulsations of light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>During this steady flow, I became conscious of the reality of the light
because I couldn’t read my computer screen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The light from my brow was too bright and it was distracting
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I decided
something odd but real was happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It might be wise, I thought, to make friends with it,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>so I surrendered to the stream of light
that was pulsating from my left eyebrow. There was a quality to the light that
was exquisitely peaceful; so I laved myself in it, and stopped thinking.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then I stand up abruptly, and still the streaming continues.
I observe how this stream, pouring from the left side of my head, was moving to
the right in physical space. What I’m seeing makes no sense. I was wide awake
and working; something that seemed to emanate from my own head stopped me from
doing my work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look around at my studio and all I can
see are evenly paced waves of light. I get anxious because I’m suddenly not
sure where I am or what’s happening or if this will ever stop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the pulsations did diminish, so I get
into bed and concentrate on the benign side of the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I retreat under the covers; I can <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>still see light waves around me; but they
weaken and I fall asleep. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Morning: refreshed, my left eyebrow back to normal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For several days some <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>worry about a repeat performance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bit unnerving, but a fantastic
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think a camera would
have caught the light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thoughts?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How to classify? Understand? </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a literature on the subject of strange and
remarkable light experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Light is both a physical phenomenon and also it would seem a mental phenomenon,
and both have similar functions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Without light the world would be shrouded in darkness, and invisible to
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the same applies to the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>inner light of our mental world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we awaken from dreamless sleep,
our consciousness lights up the world around and in us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">It turns out that my eyebrow illumination experience is just
a kid brother in a huge family of folks who’ve had strange and deeply significant
light encounters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first
example that comes to mind is the often-reported near-death experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a paradox that when people in some
striking way merely come close to death they often have extraordinary light
experiences, in which they feel illuminated and bathed with the purest love imaginable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Also people on the threshold of their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actual</i> death report seeing an all-embracing light of love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then there are the mystics and shamans
and others disposed to ek-static states of consciousness; here too we find plenty
of accounts of strange light experiences. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be of
value if you have something to share with readers, if you have had a light
experience.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As is well known, the fact that we are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conscious</i> at all is a mystery to science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some scientists believe that eventually there will be a
physical explanation of consciousness. Others, including myself, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>assume that consciousness is irreducibly
itself, a fundamental factor in nature.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The extraordinary nature of consciousness is normally obscured
by all the distractions that occupy our normal consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ordinary concerns and problems of
everyday life dominate our attention and narrow our consciousness.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But there is one important fact that we should
remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whenever our normal
consciousness is disrupted; it could be by almost anything—fatigue, illness, a
shocking event—it often happens that our minds are torn open and we are exposed
to new powers, new dimensions of experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Transformation and enlightenment are always much closer than
we might normally assume. It’s a simple fact easily forgotten: far from remote,
our greatest ally is within us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The question we have to ask: what must I do to mobilize what I already
possess within myself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For more on
this inner potential we all possess, see my book: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of Disbelief</i>. </p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-41652670706037335292024-02-14T10:24:00.000-05:002024-02-14T10:24:23.406-05:00What Our Minds Can Do To Our Bodies<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It’s not every day that the New
York Times reports on the mysteries of mind and body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was, however, a report in the Times (Sept 9, 2023) by
Ruth Graham of an apparent case of bodily incorruption in America. It happened
to Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster from the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus, a small
order located in the hills north of Kansas city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Four years after her death it was decided to move her body
to a more conspicuous place inside the church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon opening her coffin and expecting to find dust and
bones, they found Wilhelmina (a Black woman) with her body and face
intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was immediately
construed as a possible miracle of incorruption, and since then she has drawn
thousands of visitors from all parts to witness the extraordinary
phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Bodily incorruption is a
well-documented phenomenon, in which the dead bodies of people who were intensely
serious about their religious practice don’t decompose in the normal way, but
for decades and more remain intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They may emit a sweet fragrance instead of the stench of decomposition;
or exude blood or oils. And these anomalies persist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879) whose dead
body has remained intact for over a hundred years, without any artificial
embalming techniques.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something
about her intense spiritual life had this highly symbolic effect on her corpse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say, a mystery as to how
this is possible. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Fortunately, this strange power
(whatever it is) that acts on dead bodies is also known to act on and heal living
bodies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Medical psychology
provides our first example with the abundance of data on the placebo effect,
which is a mental effect, based on belief. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that in many cases,
those who believe and expect improvement from doing or ingesting something,
show significant improvement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
leads to another possibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe
the drugs that work do so in part because the user believes in them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is evidence that mental
states and intentions sometimes serve as healing agents. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There are cases where the mental
effects are dramatic, and shocking to common sense, as well to science. Stories
from Bible-related beliefs and practices, from indigenous and shamanic
societies, and from modern hospital settings, all, if true, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>attest to the healing power of our mental
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We could call it psychic or spiritual power or the energy of
the soul. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are cases where
the healing power certainly seems super-natural, meaning beyond what we’re
accustomed to find in nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
that means is that there are things about nature that we have yet to
understand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Some cases illustrate extraordinary
powers over physical reality The story of Pierre de Rudder is thoroughly
documented and thoroughly extraordinary. The most striking point: the healing
was total and instantaneous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
eight years de Rudder endured a broken leg that festered and was pain-wracked.
His benefactors provided the best possible medical care, but without even
slight success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After eight years,
on April 7<sup>th</sup>, 1875 he with his wife’s assistance hobbled with cane to
a train station that took him to the Lourdes sanctuary in Oostacker, near Ghent.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
Many witnessed him that morning before embarking on his voyage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The broken bones were such that he
could turn his dangling lower leg so that his foot hung <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>backwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon arrival at the grotto he stood before a statue of the
Madonna. De Rudder prayed that he be made well, so he could work and care for
his wife and children. Quite suddenly, standing before the statue, he found himself
instantaneously and totally healed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He dropped his cane and was able to walk and move exactly as he did
eight years ago before the tree fell on him and crushed his left leg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was suddenly exactly as he was
before the tree had fallen on him, which had sent him into eight years of moral
and physical anguish.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When he returned home sound and
well the town and all who knew him were amazed and word of the event quickly spread
all over the country and other parts of Europe. In spite of all the witnesses
and doctors who knew de Rudder’s condition for eight years, the anti-clericals
tried desperately to prove nothing miraculous occurred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When de Rudder died years later his
bones were unearthed and a strip of newly materialized white bone was visible
that formed on the day he was healed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The doctors were amazed by his sudden complete healing, a process that
if it occurred naturally would have taken <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>months at the very least.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Extraordinary healing phenomena
from <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>placebo effects to
instantaneous healings of the de Rudder type are one example of macro-PK
phenomena. The message here is that human beings possess extraordinary self-healing
powers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These powers, in my view,
seem to be part of human evolutionary potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Consuming
Visions</i> by Suzanne K. Kaufman, which is about the Lourdes Shrine, you will
learn how incredibly fanatical was the response to reports of de Rudder’s
instantaneous healing. The established materialist medical community and their
anti clerical comrades were gobsmacked by what was being called a proven
miracle. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It seemed like a mortal threat to
the skittish tribe of know-it-alls. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue was degraded into an attack on the clerics who had
an incredibly potent case of something beyond any natural explanation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my view, extraordinary phenomena are
worthy of close scientific investigation for one very good reason; they <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>represent capacities we need to liberate
and harness for the enrichment of human life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This remarkable self-healing
capacity, however, is not the only part of our latent evolutionary potential. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll mention three more examples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve written two books about levitation (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man Who Could Fly</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings of Ecstasy</i>, available via Amazon).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gravity is one of the basic physical
constituents of the universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
is compelling evidence for the reality of levitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is related to altered states of consciousness, a state in
which one’s ego is completely transcended. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Think about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose we could learn to move through
space, free from the constraints of gravity?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The evidence proves it possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If some people can do it, then all people might learn to or
naturally evolve the capacity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Should this happen, the world-threatening problem of energy would be
drastically reduced, and with wholesome effects on the environment. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For this reason alone, scientists
should be trying to understand how to develop that capacity, given its enormous
practical utility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there’s a
lot more to this possible project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The potential for a new human in the history of entertainment needs to
be underscored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely, should our anti-gravity
potential begin to unfold, learning how to enjoy and even cultivate the sportive
side of levitation would open a new field for entrepreneurs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is reason
to believe this line of thought already has a history, as described in Glenn
Mullin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Flying Mystics of Tibetan
Buddhism</i>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We’re thinking about the more
extraordinary properties of our consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lurking
in the invisible planet of our mental life are seeds of a more developed humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why assume our present human type is
the apex of what is possible in nature?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Given that humans are prone to unremitting mutual slaughter and that we
have too often treated our mother nature with enormous brutality and
self-defeating stupidity, we can only hope that a higher version of our <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>species is at least possible.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Now to my fourth example: another
way we might evolve beyond our present species persona, so to speak. But this
is not about what our minds can do to our bodies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is about how our minds relate to other minds and bodies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what we need is a particular form of
consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all, almost all,
possess some germ of this particular form of consciousness, some more than
others, true, but on the whole, this is a relatively rare and somewhat weakly
evolved, aspect of consciousness. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It shows up in a dramatic way
during the near-death experience, during the life-review, in which people
report entering into the subjectivity of those they <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>interacted with in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this state, your consciousness is bifocal; you relive a
moment of your past from your point of view but at the same time from the point
of view of the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s more
than guesswork and good will; your newly expanded consciousness enables you to
be conscious of others from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i>
point of view. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine how thongs
might radically change when our normal consciousness naturally can overflow
into the inner world of the people and natural world around us. We can practice
even now with our consciousness overflowing into aspects of the world around
us. Try <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>going for a walk now on
the streets of your everyday life, and you can even now try to imagine how it
will look and feel with a more evolved bifocal consciousness.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What I’ve learned about extraordinary
human potential I discuss in my book: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Smile
of the Universe: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Miracles in an
Age of Disbelief</i>. (Available at Amazon or Anomalist Books</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-71353495310675428612024-01-24T14:51:00.004-05:002024-01-24T14:51:57.912-05:00The Highest Mental State<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Is there a preferred state of
mind, an optimal form of consciousness, a way to open <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the creative flow of our lives?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can be a wild beast, that mind of
ours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are there states of mind
that can lift us out of our routine everyday selves? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A particular state of mind we should think about?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I think there is, and it’s a state
we’re all acquainted with, at least to some degree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The common word for it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ecstasy</i>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We can all in one way or another
relate to this word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The usage ranges
from “Mom, I’m ecstatic about that gorgeous red blouse you bought me,” to the
mystical ecstasy of Hildegard Von Bingen, expressed by her transcendent music.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ecstasy is the most interesting
state of mind to explore because it seems to be the most creative—even to the
point of enabling us to defy the familiar habits of nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">To be clear about the root
meaning of the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ecstasy</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ek-stasis </i>is the Greek, and means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">standing or being outside </i>yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Definitely, an altered state of
consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In ecstasy, we are
lifted outside our normal personality. I once dreamt I was flying in a perfect blue
sky on my silver flute—truly ecstatic!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And you? We all, if lucky, can boast of the rare taste of the truly
ecstastic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love and sex are
obvious wellsprings of possible ecstasy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But we’ll not get into that here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It turns out that there are many
ways,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>accidental as well as deliberate,
to induce ecstasy. A lady friend was driving me across town once when the car
hit an embankment, lost traction and began slowly to spin around into the next
lane with oncoming traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw
immediately that I might shortly be dead but then strangely lapsed into a state
of blissful admiration of everything around me; I was outside myself and feeling
calm and serene. By sheer luck we made it unscathed to the other side of the
road, escaping a crash. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One of the more famous accidental
routes to ecstasy is the well-investigated near-death experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When this happens, you are
definitely outside your normal human self.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Typically, you may encounter deceased loved ones, see your
whole life flash before you, encounter a being of light and love, hear
unearthly music, feel what <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>you
never felt before, and emerge from it all, an evolved human being, often with
paranormal powers you<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>never had
before. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We prefer not to have such
terrifying accidents to experience ecstasy and its wonders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can, however, turn to more gradual, deliberate
methods of exploring the ecstatic zone. For example, like shamans, mediums,
poets, prophets, and mystics, we might fast, meditate, ingest psychoactive
substances, sublimate our sexual energies, and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All directed to trigger the state of mind we’re
discussing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In fact, there is a specific drug,
MDMA called Ecstasy or Molly. My experiments with MDMA, conducted with my wife,
taught me first hand about the ecstatic dimension and what it could reveal. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It would be useful to have a practice,
an art form, a life-style that primes us for ecstasy. It could be
anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any practice that tends
to free us from our mechanical mental habits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yogis of India have
the word, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sadhana</i>—the practice used
to tune into the powers of our latent higher self. “What have you done to
surpass yourself?” was the question that Nietzsche put into the mouth of
Zarathustra. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A great outlet for the ecstatic
quest, for finding a healing sadhana, are the arts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The arts are about transcending our habitual mindsets,
rearranging our perception of reality in ways that enlarge our humanity. The arts
operate in service to the free spirit of imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As such they can take us out of ourselves, each art form in
its own way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can be any form
you resonate with. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The ecstatic dimension of
consciousness can lead to powerful experiences. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A vast range of reports reveal all manner of strange
phenomena.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One thinks of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>near-death experiences, how <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>lives are<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>transformed. There are cases of instantaneous healings
resulting from ecstatic prayer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Found
in all spiritual traditions, folks are blown out of their normal personalities—mediums,
shamans, saints, yogis. In the well-documented miracles of Hindu and Catholic
saints, ecstasy is always central, the key to extraordinary events. There are
more interesting ways of being in the world than we normally suppose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ecstasy is a doorway into the largely unknown <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>land of the supernormal. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">To explore all this further, the facts
behind the new paradigm of consciousness, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>see my book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Smile of
the Universe: Miracles in an Age of Disbelief. </i>(Anomalist Books or Amazon.)
Sharing extraordinary information is the way to transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-16141633751456020352024-01-17T10:47:00.013-05:002024-01-18T09:27:45.656-05:00UFOS and Psychic Phenomena<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ufology and parapsychology are two disciplines not on
friendly terms with each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But that’s a mistake. The two fields of research naturally converge into
one, more interesting discipline than either operating on their own. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Full disclosure, I write about
this because I’m trying to understand my own experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am periodically befuddled by
experiences that seem incredible and impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So let me begin with a report of my own experience: a UAP,
an unidentified aerial phenomenon. My experience was more than a sighting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was contact intending religious signaling
of some sort.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was 11:30 P.M. April 23, 1971.
Relaxing together on the couch, Jane and I were listening to an intense piece
of music by John Coltrane, “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Impulsively,
I got up and walked to the window, and looked up into a blue night sky, still
grooving with the music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly,
out of nowhere I saw a cluster of lights emerge from the sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They began to dance back and forth,
performing impossible aerial maneuvers, echoing the rhythms of Coltrane—a few
hundred feet above our top floor apartment in Greenwich Village, New York, on
Bedford Street, NY. I then saw in the sky an apparition of a man, human,
smiling and gesturing happily, as if he too was part of our dance. His appearance
was not visible like the moving lights, but mental, which only I saw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I called Jane to the window who was
immediately awed by the dancing lights. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Suddenly, the dance ended and the
lights stopped whirling about. Instead, they <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>turned right and sailed in a straight line uptown a short
distance where they perched atop the dome of Our Lady of Pompeii, a Catholic
Church for immigrants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There, it
beamed several pulsations, as Jane and I watched from the sixth floor of our apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lights then sailed straight back to
where they first appeared before us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They resumed their dance for a bit, confirming the impression that this
was a communication, not just an anomalous flash in the sky. Suddenly, the
lights turned right again, but this time in a fraction of a second they shot
zigzag uptown, vanishing as they passed over the Empire State Building.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Amazed by what we saw, Jane and I
stepped out of the apartment and went one flight up to the roof where we met
Louie, a neighbor, who said, his eyes popping with astonishment, “Did you see that?”
Louie also saw and thought the lights had a pyramid shape. So, there was a
third witness to what we saw. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Asking around in later days,
there were no other reports in the neighborhood of strange lights in the
sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A layer of coincidences I
should mention: It was Jane’s birthday and Shakespeare’s, and I was five days
from defending my Ph.D dissertation at Columbia University.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The first comment I want to make.
The intelligence guiding the lights certainly <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>knew the music we were listening to. As often reported, UAPs
communicate by telepathy or, in this case, clairvoyance. . The intention seems
to have been to connect Coltrane’s music with a Church for emigrants. What that
might mean I lay aside as unknown. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It had to be more than an ad for Coltrane’s music. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My guess it was so I could tell this
story. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As the physical behavior of UAPs
clearly transcend present human technology, so do their mental capacities seem
to transcend ours. What about the blatant gap between <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>our abilities, the psychic and the physical?
One might suggest that the spectrum of paranormal capacities revealed by modern
research represent human evolutionary potential. Ufology might plausibly be
construed as the evolutionary complement of parapsychology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the so-called Grays, associated
with cases of alleged abduction, it’s worth noting that they apparently have
faded slits in place of mouths, a relic perhaps of the talking and eating
phases of their evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A second phenomenon helps us
appreciate the link between the two areas of research—levitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abductees often report being levitated
to the craft where they are subjected to medical operations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, the energetics of levitation
may well be involved in alien forms of transportation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apports are kin to levitation insofar
as physical objects are observed to translocate instantly and appear to move
through solid matter. This turns up in accounts of poltergeist phenomena that
seem related to child psychology and ghost phenomenology—another point of
convergence of ufology and parapsychology. I once heard David Grusch say, almost
as an afterthought, that alien technology is mind-driven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If mystics like Joseph of Copertino for
35 years managed to defy gravity before innumerable witnesses, it is not hard
to imagine a more advanced scientific culture having evolved vastly developed
modes of transportation by tapping into the power Joseph had over gravity. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Grusch is a notable whistleblower
with regard to the now infamous U.S. decades-long cover-up of all it knows about
UFOs.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[1]</span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If unknown agencies have evolved
somewhere in the universe an advanced <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mental</i>
technology, it would mean their operations might be independent of the
constraints of time and space as we know them. The forbidding spatial distances
between Earth and other viable planets around the universe might then cease to
be an issue. We may be dealing with intelligent beings that travel from one
perceptual scene to another though a ‘tunnel’ outside the normal constraints of
time and space. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sticking to what I know from the
details describing saint Joseph’s flights, based on about one hundred and fifty
sworn eye-witness reports, one fact is clear about his mental state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ecstasy was invariably his mental state
while levitating. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the
case, for instance, while saying mass; he would lift off and hover in the air
inches above the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other flights
were more spectacular when he flew over people’s heads or aloft to a branch of
a tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Surely the scientific challenge
is to understand why and how a state of mind can serve to release a person from
the physical grip of gravity. The only space where that can happen is in dream
space. A solution to the enigma of levitation may open the door to a new and
more sustainable mode of transportation on earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Psychic technology may conceivably become part of the answer
to reducing the consumption of fossil fuels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the current climate crisis is based on fossil
fuels whose energy use is heating up the planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The challenge is to switch to new eco-friendly forms of
energy like wind<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and solar. But
what about mental energy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Parapsychology,
psychical research, clearly hold clues to new forms of mental energy. New forms
of psychic energy may then represent an evolutionary step toward solving the
climate crisis. A new form of eco-friendly energy production would be part of
the response to the climate crisis. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But there’s another more
fundamental problem that has to be addressed—the malignant greed,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the paranoid streak, and the violent
propensities of the human animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again,
the convergence under discussion contains the germ of a solution to this
problem—the higher mystical forms of consciousness marked by empathy and
emotions centered around the unifying force of love. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter are features of near-death encounters, of certain
psychedelic episodes, and of yogic and shamanic experiences. All kinds of data suggest
that it may be possible to learn how to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>activate our extraordinary potentials, and train ourselves to
use them for creative purposes—aesthetic, moral, revolutionary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The question I’m asking—how can
we actualize these higher forms of consciousness without having to undergo a
near-death experience? One feature of this extraordinary experience may hold
the secret to dealing with the darker side of human nature—the so-called
life-review so often reported. People review their whole life and report seeing
how their actions affected the people they interacted with. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They feel, sense and know what’s going
on inside others as clearly as they feel, sense, and know what’s going on
inside themselves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One’s ego
expands in a way that includes the consciousness of the other as well as one’s
own.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So the question is, can we learn
to evoke the life review process and experience a more comprehensive sense of
human identity? If science and a new psychology could devise ways to induce
periodic life-reviews in human beings as part of the education and liberation of
their wider humanity, it might <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>be
a turning-point in the history of our species. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">To function in a modern
democratic society, you have to be able to read, and as a minimal intellectual achievement
you must understand and honor the concept of factual truth, basic to all the
higher notions of truth, such as aesthetic, social, scientific, and mystical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is another reading skill without
which democratic and social life rely on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to be able to read each other, that is, encounter
each other with patience and receptivity, with awareness and sensitivity. The
interesting news is that a capacity for remarkable intuition and empathy may
very well be part of our untapped deep self. We know this in particular from
modern studies of the near-death experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The importance of the life-review
has been underscored especially by one of the American founders of near-death
research, Kenneth Ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover,
as far as I know, Dr. Ring has written the only book that aims to unite
parapsychology and ufology, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Omega
Project: Near-Death Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This book, and others I could cite,
point toward a new paradigm of scientific research that promises a more hopeful
outlook for our human future. But there are also signs of danger.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Countries that have had
encounters with UFOs are interested in acquiring their technology. This is
borne out by a reading of Coulthart cited above. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any nation that did so most likely would be able to subjugate
the entire world population before long. While such efforts are doubtless under
way, I see no evidence of any major progress, i.e., aircraft that can make 90
degree turns at a thousand miles an hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But this sort of scientific success would only exacerbate an already
explosively violent human condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Science needs to focus on research that promises to jump-start the
evolution of human consciousness, at least to the point of palliating <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>climate chaos and murderous human
aggression. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Parapsychology and ufology, two outlaw
intellectual disciplines, are avoided if not outright denied by most
mainstreams of officialdom. Nevertheless, these two research domains have been covering
stories about as big as stories can be. In the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>first story, beings not of this world are constantly
interacting with us in all sorts of ways—beings obviously superior to us in ‘technology,’
if that’s the right word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second
story—a careful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">para</i>-psychological look
into human experience reveals a body of evidence that points to a possible breakthrough
in the evolution of the human species.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just in time, some might say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For without some kind of drastic breakthrough in our collective
spiritual life, the world process our species has set into motion since the
Industrial Revolution is going to bring down world civilization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[1]</span></span></a> For a
thorough back up of Grusch’s good faith, see investigative journalist, Ross Coulthart,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Plain Sight: An Investigation into
UFOs and Impossible Science</i>(2021)</p>
</div>
</div>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-54050329935999982102024-01-07T11:06:00.000-05:002024-01-07T11:06:43.655-05:00Lying Our Way Toward Global Catastrophe<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Despite their great achievements,
science and technology have brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation and
launched what may be an irreversible climate catastrophe. As I write, arms
sales are sky-rocketing all over the planet. Meanwhile, the corporate energy magnates
show few signs of shifting toward sustainable forms of energy production. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They lie and temporize, anything to
cling to their enormous profits. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The climate crisis is denied and the
weapons salesmen insist on the need for self-defense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can a society with a warped sense of truth long
survive?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can we manage when the basic
concept of factual truth is spat on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are, after all, hacking our way through an age of fake
news. The fakery is pervasive. AI, ChatGPT and related programs enormously
raise the specter of new forms of deception. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">From all sides the idea of truth
is facing a crisis. By far the most spectacular assault on truth is the
phenomenon of the Trumpian base and Republican affiliates. Truth here lies in
bloody pieces thrown into our faces, thanks to the pathological liar, rapist,
and polymorphous criminal. Donald Trump. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">No surprise about the lying that
revolves around the American gods of money and power. But what about science? Science,
by definition, is dedicated to knowledge and truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We expect more from scientists when it comes to matters of
truth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Follow the facts wherever
they lead us, is the ideal of authentic scientists. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But scientists are human beings, subject
to forces that can deform even their sense of truth. Scientists take bribes
from corporate entities in exchange for endorsing—lying about—products on sale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The money motive for lying here is
plain enough. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Scientists are sometimes
compelled to lie by the government for security reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, since 1947 the U.S.
Government and scientific personnel actively concealed the truth about UFOs and
UAPs from the American people. So, when a psychiatrist like John Mack reported
his research on alien abductions he was attacked by his Harvard compatriots. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Since 2017 the Government has
opened the question for discussion, and admitted the reality of an alien
technology that regularly enters our airspace—a “technology” that clearly
transcends anything known to current science. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the presence of this super-technology operating with
impunity in our midst is a topic of great significance—but oddly has <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>retired to the files of YouTube and is
rarely discussed in mainline venues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There’s something else. A
scientist may deny or trivialize a matter of fact because it has implications
he doesn’t like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the more
egregious sin against science. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>example that comes to mind is the
Big Bang Theory of the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the theory widely accepted by
scientists today, especially in light of the most recent research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The theory at first was dismissed with
contempt by many scientists. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why? The Big Bang seemed to imply something obnoxious to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>physicists firmly committed to materialism
and atheism. In 1927, Georges Lemaître published a paper that confirmed the
expansion of the universe of galaxies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There were observations suggesting that startling fact. The idea of an
expanding universe was not consistent with what Einstein, Eddington and others
believed to be an eternal, static, steady-state universe. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Lemaître inferred that an expanding
universe must have originated at a previous time from a super dense singularity
of some physical reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
universe exploded out of this physical singularity creating time and space, a
universe that is still expanding<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and at an accelerating rate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Big Bang cosmology has clearly ousted the steady-state cosmology, in
spite of the physicists that first rejected the theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>atheists were appalled. In a broad way, the Big Bang seems consistent
with Biblical creationism. But so what? The truth is that nobody has a clue to
what really caused the Big Bang, if indeed there was a Big Bang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The universe seems to be an effect with
an unknown cause, but a reality with a finite history. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sorry Einstein. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The atheist physicists had a hard
time processing this cosmological surprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, Lemaitre, in addition to being a brilliant
mathematician and physicist, was a Catholic priest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, as Lemaitre rightly understood and clearly stated, the
Big Bang model of cosmic creation favors no religion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonetheless, the antagonism toward the theory was (and still
is) weighty, precisely because it can be construed as having religious
significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is another example of
science denying or ignoring highly significant empirical data.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a way that exactly parallels the
hostile reception of the Big Bang theory, most<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>scientists (not necessarily physicists) have been and still
are instinctively on guard and reluctant (at least publicly) to engage with the
wide world of paranormal phenomena. Paranormal phenomena like levitation,
precognition, instantaneous healing, the materialization of physical objects,
indications of postmortem survival, and so on, are construed as supportive of mentalistic
worldviews where miracles, life after death, and supernatural beings may in
fact be real. All this is rightly construed as a mortal threat to reductive scientific
materialism.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Respect for factual truth needs
to be restored to the common consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without
it we’re easily misled and manipulated. Materialist science would deny<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>truths that may hold the secret of our
evolutionary advance as a species. The unidentified beings the government lied
about point to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i> potential
evolution. For a more exact picture of what that may look like, look at the
data called supernormal or miraculous—our extended mental, physical and
spiritual powers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a fact-based
model of what is possible, we can contemplate an outline of our futuristic
identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-54099836250215124782023-10-31T11:00:00.001-04:002023-10-31T11:00:09.525-04:00Ghost Encounter<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To add to the fun of Halloween , let me tell you a true
ghost story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some years ago I met
a woman who told me about a ghost that was bothering her family where she lived
in a small town of New Jersey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
woman was a nurse and a brilliant student of anthropology. She had two younger
daughters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She explained that this
ghost liked to appear in the bathroom where she and her daughters showered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, this ghost was a double creep—a
creepy ghost and creepy gaper at the girls while they showered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All in all, about nine people ,
including her husband and friends had some kind contact with the creepy
phantom.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So I asked her if she would mind allowing me to spend a night
in her house, to see if the ghost would pay me a visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She agreed and when I arrived rather
late one evening she set me up downstairs on a couch facing a fireplace where
this dirty-minded apparition liked to show up. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I installed myself on the couch with my notebook and
pencil, and the rest of the family all went upstairs and left me alone on my
ghost watch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was well after midnight and I was wide awake and reading
a book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did not expect anything
to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly—it was well
after one in the morning—I heard the sound of a gong ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Startled, I looked around and noticed a
gong and a stick hanging on the wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I got up and used the stick to strike the gong—it produced the exact
sound I just heard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I’ll be!
I thought, the dirty old ghost is here—where else could that sound have come
from?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I went back to my couch, gleeful at my success over what I
heard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I leaned back and wrote up
the time and what I heard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I then
looked up and peered into the fireplace about ten feet away from me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something moved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I noticed a human form, sort of
transparent rippling in the corner, which then charged right toward me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It immediately wrapped itself around
me, and I was paralyzed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted
to cry out—“He’s here!” but couldn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was too astonished to feel fear when after a long two seconds it
vanished and let me go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I then
wrote it up and recounted my experience in the morning to my friend over
breakfast.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was not my only encounter with ghosts, but it was by
far the most interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Happy Halloween, folks! I can assure you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ghosts are real. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-63350710481249733752023-10-03T10:24:00.002-04:002023-10-03T10:24:33.177-04:00Sliding Toward Endtimes<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is an ancient myth about the death and rebirth of the
world that repeats itself throughout history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote about this age-old human obsession in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Millennium Myth</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the research for this book, I kept
coming across examples of prophets of various creeds predicting doom and end of
the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was tedious, a
continuous stream of false endtime predictions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All failed.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Until the climate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scientists</i>
of the 21<sup>st</sup> century began to predict a coming world climate
disaster. You don’t have to look far for signs of having entered the spring of end times—for example, the fact that the summer of 2023 was the hottest
in human history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The process that
is fueling the world-wide climate chaos is out of control. Things are going to
get worse, “worse” enough to prompt Noam Chomsky to talk of “world civilization”
crashing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Since the industrial revolution, human activities are
responsible for the planet heating up—burning fossil fuels, consumerism, etc..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This evolving disaster is not the
result of angry deities trying to teach us a lesson. It is science now that
assumes the prophetic mantle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fires,
floods, droughts, swamping of coastal cities, permafrost melting, bio habitats destroyed,
migrations of peoples everywhere, growing food shortage, etc. are here already and
will get worse.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Climate chaos
is a clarion call to humanity to learn how to live in harmony with each other
and with the Earth that mothers our existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Humanity has
never been in a situation of peril where, paradoxically, the enemy is ourselves:
the destructive way we treat the environment and each other, human against
human. In 2023, for example, the U.S. <span class="hgkelc"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Department of Defense (DOD) parceled out $2.04 trillion
dollars to the army, air force, space force, navy and marines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that colossal wealth and power
spent to defend ourselves and kill anyone who seriously threatens us. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="hgkelc"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is little reason to believe at least right now that
enough committed humanity is coming together to cope with the forces that
threaten to bring down world civilization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first the title of my book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Final Choice: Death or Transcendence</i>, seemed a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>little over the top.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The notion of finality made me
uncomfortable. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I rejected the idea
of finality. We’re never completely cornered or locked down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A way out is always possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the other hand, sometimes there are fateful moments of
decision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re forced to make a
move.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Large consequences may
follow that are irreversible. I believe we are in the midst of such a historic
moment. By “we” I mean the collective drift of human behavior. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The endtime process is <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>entrenched in global habits, beliefs <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and practices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stopping, even slowing, this process demands radical changes
in the way humans live on Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is a message that the Secretary General of the United Nations,
Antonio Gutteres, has repeated, if there is any hope of palliating the pains
and losses of future generations.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s not hard to figure out the path of possible progress,
which has two components. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have
to revise the way we relate to the natural world around us and we have to
revise the way we relate to each other in human society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In both areas, we need to move
from discord and exploitation to new forms of creative harmony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The fact is that we are sliding toward a rendezvous with
terminal history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fully ripe
awareness of what is undoubtedly looming could be useful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>might serve as a stimulus to transformation in whatever form
it may assume. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We might entertain
the possibility of a kind of collective near-death experience that will awaken us
to a greater consciousness—the will to fashion a new Earth where all forms of
life may flourish in harmony. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-61383006025221286882023-09-25T10:31:00.007-04:002023-09-25T10:31:57.318-04:00Is Reading a Form of Magic?<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">magic </i>may suggest much that is negative, like conjuring and
con-artistry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there are positive
senses of the word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would mention
a brilliant book by the scientist Dean Radin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Real Magic</i>, a report on what parapsychology tells us about the
‘magic’ of our own mental life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>essence, it consists of
our minds having the potential to sense beyond the limits of the senses and to
know and do things beyond the constraints of time and space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this strong sense, we are all
potential magicians.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What I want to suggest is an
unnoticed sense in which we are magicians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this turns out to be something ordinary that most of us
do a little or sometimes quite a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am talking about the psychic ability to read. It does seem <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that with the Internet, smart phones,
the omnipresence of podcasting, etc., reading in the soulful sense as a form of
communication is dying out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course, people read for information, for the news, to play all sorts
of games, and, needless to say, to buy and sell things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a certain magic in all that,
I’m sure. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But a recent Gallup shows that
since 1990 Americans are reading fewer and fewer books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No doubt this in part is due to the
more passive forms of mental activity based on lapping up what appears on the screens
of our smart phones and computers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Reading a book requires the
participation of an active mind, all the powers of our consciousness—books on history,
drama, poetry, novels, short stories, philosophy, spirituality, all the arts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I call this soulful reading—reading
that stretches the intellect, calls for our empathy, excites and refines our
imagination, is attuned to wonder and adventure, and challenges our critical
skills.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Soulful reading is really a kind
of out-of-body experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
learn, feel, embrace something new is to get beyond oneself , expand awareness and
enrich one’s identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you
discover a new idea or emotion through something you’ve read, it’s a kind of telepathy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your mind provides the feeling and
brings the content of what you’re reading to life. Reading inert words on a
page is nothing without feeling, intelligence and imagination. Reading with soul
is a creative act; without soul, words are signals without meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Nazis and other Fascist
movements burnt books, aiming to extinguish the option to free thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Efforts to crush the freedom to read
are turning up today in the United States, centered on books deemed
inappropriate by Christian nationalists <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and other fanatics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This seems to complement the already documented decline of reading,
tracked by Gallup.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Knowing how to read with soul is
not only the key to engaging deeply with our human history and the treasures of
world culture, it’s essential to being an intelligent<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>citizen, capable of grasping the written laws, rights, and
ideals of our nation. Book reading skills are essential to understanding and
supporting the principles of the U. S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Constitution. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As we plough on toward an
increasingly problematic future, there are two ways that promise to color the
outcome, two different objects to lay on the table beside our beds before we
retire: a gun or a book.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-89305613676077087042023-09-13T11:16:00.002-04:002023-09-13T11:16:56.022-04:00The Healing Power of Mind<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s easy to underestimate the power of our minds—beliefs,
attitudes, emotions—and their impact on our health and physical well
being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An example that science
fully acknowledges is the power of the placebo. For example, it is well known
that drugs used to alleviate depression are just slightly more effective than
placebos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, the mere
belief in the healing power of something can produce health benefits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, in fact, there is a whole
literature of healing phenomena associated with religious beliefs at shrines,
with relics, in the context of prayer, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes we find cases where the effects prompt us to
believe in healing miracles. One of the weirdest but well documented mind-body
phenomena involves effects on dead bodies, specifically, on the bodies of
people who in life were known for their spiritual gifts and intensity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m referring to the phenomenon of
incorruption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are cases of
spiritually evolved persons whose dead bodies do not follow the natural pattern
of decomposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example,
there is the case of Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879) whose dead body has
remained intact for over a hundred years, without any artificial embalming
techniques.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m raising this question because of a recent report of Ruth
Graham in the New York Times (Sept 9, 2023) of an apparent case of such bodily
incorruption in America. It happened to Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster from the
Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus, a small order located in the hills north of
Kansas city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Four years after her
death it was decided to move her body to a more conspicuous place inside the
church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon opening her coffin
and expecting to find dust and bones, they found Wilhelmina (who was Black)
with her body and face intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This was immediately construed as a possible miracle of incorruption,
and since then she has drawn thousands of visitors from all parts to witness
the extraordinary phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Only in an odd sense can we describe this as a case that
proves the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">healing</i> power of
mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What it does seem to
illustrate is the power of the mind to symbolically point to the power of the
mind suspending the normal effects of bodily death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are, moreover, also numerous accounts of healings of
living bodies that challenge science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But that’s another side of the story of the potential creative power of
our minds. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a full account of
the extraordinary creative powers of the human mind, you might try reading<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age
of Disbelief. </i>Available from Anomalist Books or Amazon. (Author, myself.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-46039757952246544662023-08-29T10:42:00.000-04:002023-08-29T10:42:30.967-04:00A Simple Way to Get Inspired<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Cambridge philosopher of mind, H.H. Price, devised an
experiment meant to elicit a creative response from the subconscious mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea was simple enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before going to sleep, you formulate
your request and pose the question to your subconscious mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, you ask for an answer, the
insight, whatever, to come to your mind in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The talk with your subconscious mind might
conceivably stimulate dreams that would be part of the answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, hopefully, your first thoughts upon
awakening will contain a response to your request. Price reports that the
majority of efforts with this experiment were useful to him. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The experiment seems to make sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there is a portion of our mental life alive and well below
the threshold of our ordinary awareness, why not become an activist, why not
get curious about what lies hidden in our deep mind. It is a mind whose depth
and breadth is quite unknown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why
not try to interact with it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Religion is performing this experiment all the time with
prayer and all manner of rite and ritual. There are all sorts of practices
designed to breach the barriers and make <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>contact with our creative selves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The practices are not as easy or simple as Professor Price’s
experiment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fasting, solitude,
sacred dance, the erotic, hyperventilation, psychedelics. Or, less daunting, I would
say, is using the arts to open the sluices to the magical source within. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A curious image emerges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We travel on
the road of life in the amazing but difficult world around us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same we travel on the same road
but also with an amazing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>world
within us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re in both worlds,
seemingly more invested and attached to the world outside us, but <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>haunted and mystified by the world
inside us. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And yet the creative source within us poses no more of a challenge
than learning how to ask a question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My experience has been, If you keep asking, answers sooner or later
come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knock on the door hard enough
and the door will eventually open.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thoughts or questions on the process I’m talking about?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-50163826663654418922023-08-24T10:47:00.000-04:002023-08-24T10:47:13.731-04:00Art As School For Empathy<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What the world needs today is a super-dose
of empathy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the fact that
there are from twenty-three to thirty wars raging all over the planet and that
almost everywhere conflict and polarization reign on many fundamental issues. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We need to step outside ourselves
and enter into the perspective of others—even other animals and forms of
nature. What might it feel like to be an owl or a bear?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But how do we do it? We can use
imagination and our own experience to get a feel for the other person. But, if
you’re trapped in your ego, this will be impossible. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The ability to enter into the
soul of the other is contrary to our self-centered instincts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our consciousness is centered around
the black hole of our egos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, no
matter how ego-bound we are, there are ways to step beyond ourselves. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There are two common inroads to
that larger world—play and art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Children and their play instincts reveal a natural tendency to “make
believe” and enter new and other worlds. I love observing children trailing
after their parents as they walk down the street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The children are running and leaping this way and that,
reacting and trying to engage with every novel scene, a dog walking by, the
pattern of bricks on the ground, a squirrel or bird that shoots by, not to
mention people who look and smile at them. Kids at play are marvels of empathy
and imagination, without knowing what the words mean.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But they grow up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They (we) are shaped and constrained by
the reality-principle. Still, all adults retain a streak of playfulness and
empathic curiosity, which can come to life through the arts, either as passive
consumers or active creators. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In both cases, the raw power we have
to work with is imagination. There are images that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">glamorize</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fascinate</i>
us. The italics signal I’m using these words in the old magical sense of witchcraft
and shamanism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These two words suggest
a type of possession, an altered state where one temporarily loses autonomy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The gate opens and for a moment
anything can enter, angel or demon. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The arts are a place where it’s
okay to revolt against the tyranny of the reality-principle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The arts open spaces where we can
explore the impossible, the fantastic, the surreal, the ideal—the prodigiously ugly
and the divinely beautiful. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For that we need a great deal of
inner spaciousness and receptivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The arts share in common the freedom to expand our experience, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>our ideas of what is possible, our hope
of doing what’s never been done before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It doesn’t have to be world-shaking; all it needs is to be person-making.
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Back to the need for empathic
potential. The arts in a wide sense offer a way to re-imagine the world and alter
the quality of our mental life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But we should know what we’re up
against. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How much of the nation’s
treasure is given to the study of higher forms of empathic consciousness?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Answer—next to zero! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But when it comes to having the
best technology for slaughtering other human beings, Congress approved 840
billion dollars for the Annual (2023) Defense Budget, a number to send the ‘defense’
industries into prolonged ecstasies. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Fortunately, we can practice our
arts and work on our consciousness in our own space, by working with the
material at hand and in the context of where life is happening. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And where death and destruction
are happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ‘news’ that I listen
to nowadays, NPR, BBC, etc., is changing so now it sounds more and more like a
mortuary cavalcade, stories everywhere of groups of people, small and large,
losing their homes, belongings, lives, resulting from our overheating planet, wars
everywhere and daily mass shootings in America. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The game of life on Earth has
turned into something highly dangerous and volatile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hard part to digest is that the rules of the game have
changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The danger and destructive
chaos are part of an evolving process that’s accelerating faster than
scientists originally predicted. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It’s hard to imagine how we can
prepare for what is coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
centuries so-called prophets of various stripes have been predicting cosmic
disaster for an imperfect humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But today the climate scientists, using the methods of science, are
predicting the apocalypse. This time we better pay close attention. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we should also be aware that science
and technology made global warming possible, causing all the climate mayhem. And
now, we hope, the same science and technology will save the world with new
ideas about green energy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it
won’t happen without a revolution of consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And every one of us has a role to play.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-87417942083584295922023-08-09T10:00:00.001-04:002023-08-23T09:27:18.337-04:00Secret of Never Getting Tired <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A jazz musician and friend of
mine once joined me during a lesson I took from my teacher of sound yoga, Swami
Nadabrahmananda. It was summertime in an ashram in Upstate New York. We had finished with my lesson
and decided to step outside for some fresh air and a little stroll. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Outside, Nada, (as students addressed the 81
year old Swami) turned to my <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>friend,
and said, “How are you?” John replied, “Tired.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had been on the road, doing various gigs, and was always
feeling a bit deprived of sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Nada looked at John with a warm
smile, and said, “Tired?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
tired?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He erupted into a mild
burst of laughter, and remarked, “I never tired.” What John didn’t know was
that there were certain very unusual things about the Swami’s physiology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two things I’ll mention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada slept on average two hours a
night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, he never
dreamed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He once spent three
nights in a sleep lab in Ottowa, Canada, and the scientists there determined
there were no signs of dream sleep.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Why would somebody not
dream?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After getting to know Nada,
I had an idea why he never dreamed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The reason, I would suggest, was that, as he told me many times, he saw
the world as a dream—not in a metaphoric sense but somehow literally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, his waking
consciousness was so out of this world it affected his mental life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ordinary physiological needs may be
suspended, as when saints and yogis go on shockingly long fasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada seemed immune to the normal
effects of fatigue.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I once asked the celestial musician, “So what is the secret
of never getting tired?” His reply was intriguing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By not thinking!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He elaborated, adding that he never busied himself with making plans.
And he never bothered to ruminate on things done and finished. His economy of
consciousness was not consumerist. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In one of his favorite sayings, “God is the driver.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might put it like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada lived beyond the constraints of
his ego in harmony with his creative subconscious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m reminded of an idea from parapsychology, the notion of “release
of effort” as a way to access latent powers of the mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Memory is the most obvious
example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You try very hard to
remember something you know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
stop trying, walk away, and a while later the memory returns, unbidden. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to Nada, it’s the ego and its constant efforts to
certify itself that fatigues our self, which is linked to and draws upon a
bottomless sea of spiritual energy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The problem is that the ego doesn’t know how to float or sail, but is
more like a deadweight that sooner or later sinks us. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For the full story of this remarkable man, you can get my
book from Amazon,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yoga of Sound: The Life and Teachings of the Celestial
Songman, Swami Nada Brahmananda.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-58371423007155438222023-08-01T09:56:00.000-04:002023-08-01T09:56:16.546-04:00Benefits of Being Baffled<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From time to time I have experiences I don’t
understand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wow, wasn’t that
cool!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some incident that downright
seems anomalous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Events that seem
to violate the habits of nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s easy enough to kick back and just revel in the wonder of something
unexplained. But anomalies might be steps on the way to new ways of being in
the world. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here’s an incident that took place not long ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing at all of great note but enough
to get me thinking. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I woke up one morning, and immediately
pulled all the sheets and pillow cases from my bed and took them down into the
basement to the washing machine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was already anomalous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have never and would never<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>begin my day by washing laundry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was not my conscious decision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recall the sensation of practically being directed to the
basement.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I went downstairs I was surprised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The floor was all wet and I saw the
sink was overflowing with water. I plunged my hand deep down and could feel
that the mouth of the drain was clogged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I cleaned out the muck and the sink emptied out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I caught it just in time, and avoided a nasty
flood in my basement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, nothing earth-shaking but uncannily suggestive.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was forced to infer that somehow a part of me was in touch
with the danger below and managed to get me out of bed so I could do something
about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some deep aspect of
myself must be aware of the world around me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I assume this as a working hypothesis, it opens to a
world of possibilities—of possible experiments. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There must be a way to engage with that hidden part of
myself that can be more helpful, more actively involved in my creative life
process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever we’re doing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in our moment to moment lives, more
could always be made of the experience, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if
</i>our full creative potential were active. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The various religions seem preoccupied with methods of
engaging with this elusive greater mind that haunts and plays with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People in the arts often have ways of
tuning into their source of inspiration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My point is simple. There must be ways to explore these latent inner
resources. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As our lives get more complicated and challenged. i, e.,
encroaching climate chaos—we’ll need to make full use of our basic human
skills. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it important never
to underestimate what may lie latent within us. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nothing seems more creatively promising than a near-death
experience<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(NDE).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much research on this phenomenon proves
it can release an array of extended mental capacities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They range from mystical to
psychokinetic effects, and generally transform one’s personality. Very
interesting, but most of us prefer not to have to nearly die to trigger an adventure
of transcendence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are less dramatic ways to explore the mysteries of
higher consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being near
death is potent because of what it does to our normal consciousness. It
wrenches us completely from our normal sensory consciousness and from our
normal<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sense of self. The hypnotic
fixation on the external world is shattered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A latent sphere of possible consciousness opens up.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Have a look at some less violent ways to access our normally
unconscious creative<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>potentials.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A dream is a kind of near-death; a
mental retreat from the external world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The creative potential of dreams is well documented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can learn to dialogue with our dream
life. (It takes practice.) We can deploy psychoactive substances to engage with
the hidden dimension of our mental life. These tactics parallel what happens in
the near-death state; they disrupt the normal habits of mental perception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in so doing they open us up to new forms
of experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are purely physical things we can do to alter our
relation to the creative unconscious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consider fasting, which is a kind of near-death gesture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A withdrawal from our devouring self; a
suspension of our compulsion to consume; a flirtation with the idea of angels
that feed on love. And then there is breath, in Greek, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">psyche</i>, the word for soul. Or what the Indian calls <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pranayama, </i>controlling spirit, from the
Latin for wind. To control the breath is a way to control the mind. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In yoga we stop, control, and manipulate
our breath, a way of playing with death, and therefore of expanding
consciousness.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So it’s alright being baffled once in a while, if it sparks
a bit of self-exploration. My point is that many pathways are open to people
curious about exploring their larger selves. There is room in us all to evolve
in different ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not a bad idea
to ponder in light of the difficulties we are facing today, turning our
beautiful <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>planet into hell on
Earth. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-81960801298702478282023-07-18T10:40:00.000-04:002023-07-18T10:40:52.979-04:00Consciousness the Key to Survival<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Call it whatever you like, but I
believe there is a spark of divinity, a seed of a great evolutionary future
latent in the core of human beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The stories of the great seekers of ultimate reality are often wildly
original. At the same time, there<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>are striking commonalities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I found this to be the case in my study of two extraordinary persons, for example, the strange flying mystic, Joseph of Copertino,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was aware of the mainstream recoil
from talk of things like levitation—especially, if they are associated with
organized religion and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>antiquated
theology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But after reading an
essay on Joseph and his marvels, I decided to go back to the original
eyewitness accounts of his life and astonishing phenomena.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If all the things about the saint were
true, it would be a fantastic challenge to science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would also provide crucial data that supports Henri
Bergson’s vision of creative evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In other words, we are not the final product of human evolution.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But then another turn enabled me
to actually meet the last living master of Taan or vibration yoga, also known
as nada yoga. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case, I was
able to sit down and interact with a person I like to call a human
singularity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the two men came
from different traditions and eras, saint Joseph from 17<sup>th</sup> century Catholicism
and swami Nada from 20<sup>th</sup> century Hinduism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was curious whether amid the cultural disparities there
were commonalities.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I should state what my
overarching concern is. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As people everywhere on earth are<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>learning, since the Industrial Revolution,
human technological activities among the rich and powerful countries are
warming up the planet, causing catastrophic climate changes everywhere and
faster than the science has predicted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is a matter of hard <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fact
to say that humans have set in motion a process that, as we speak, is<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> doomward bound</i> for much of life on
earth. Call this point number one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The second point: How do we stop,
slow up, get a handle on this self-destroying process we have created and save
ourselves and our planet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first thing I would say is crucial
and should be obvious:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have to
understand what is happening, how we have set this process in motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also have to understand that to deal
with it everybody has a role to play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We go backward if we don’t get these absolutely basic points.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unprecedented disaster is encroaching
upon us and we all need to face this truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we all need to play our part in the effort to minimize
the disaster and discover new and less destructive ways of inhabiting our
planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far all I have said is
common sense and should be obvious to anyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’re standing on train tracks and see and hear a
locomotive roaring toward you, you have to get out of the way. But the full nature
of this challenge calls for more than common sense. It calls for a radical
critique of the assumptions that led to our suicidal planetary lifestyle. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Looking further into this frightening
future, something beyond common sense is going to be needed when food, water,
and infrastructure give way. This already describes the circumstances of
millions of people today, the result of a way of life <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that has poisoned and overheated the
planet with rampant technology.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">United Nations leader, Antonio Gutteres,
throws down the real gauntlet. The only way to cope with this fast advancing global
peril is by changing the way we live on Earth. We need to realize that human
and all life depends on the health of the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Earth
is not a shopping mall, not a resource we can endlessly exploit for the sake of
capitalism and consumerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We have to learn to use technology
to enhance not exploit nature, treasure and cultivate its wonders, not turn them
into commodities. It’s been said, and seems obvious, we can change our life
only if we change of consciousness—our beliefs, aims, and values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hear it from many quarters: what the world needs is a
change of heart, a deepening of consciousness, a new perspective on how to live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, how we live is mediated
through our consciousness at any given moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes a difference, if our consciousness is colored by hatred,
contempt, paranoid suspicion, ignorant fanaticism OR by curiosity, gratitude,
love, imagination, empathy. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There are people among us who seem
to inhabit a form of consciousness that is higher, richer, more challenging than
what is normal and customary. I mentioned the saint and the yogi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The one thing these two had in common
was to focus upon on their inner life and the life, progress, and expansion <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of their consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How they did this I describe in detail in
The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man Who Could Fly</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yoga of Sound</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That potential for evolution lies in us all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of us will have to work on ourselves
in whatever way it works, as the crisis of climate Armageddon intensifies.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-51023107050593141192023-06-20T11:29:00.005-04:002023-06-20T11:29:50.617-04:00Marijuana: Your Mental Magnifying Glass<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">America seems to have slipped
into what could turn into a renaissance of consciousness. The shadow of
illegality seems to be lifting from certain agents of possible self-transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Psychedelics are in the midst of new forms of flourishing, in
therapeutic settings but also in so-called “recreational” settings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The latter term has some funny
connotations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a harmless
sense of recreation as fun—and who doesn’t love new ways of having fun?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But notice the word “recreate”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Psychedelics are sometimes used to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">recreate</i> ourselves—in other words,
refashion our perceptions of reality. That’s a pretty big thing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Psychedelics, like near-death
experiences, can tune us into whole new dimensions of reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I want in this post to say a few
things about our Lady of Marijuana, the Queen of Cannabis, or what I like to
call my faithful friend—Weed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, what I want to say about Weed is addressed to folks that for
one reason or another have never touched<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>the stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not
interested in the cause of the resistance or indifference toward this plant,
which government retards have maligned and lied about for decades. I would point
out the parallel mendacity for about the same time period with regard to UFOs
or UAPs. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">However, since 2017 both the weed
and the alien phenomenon are being treated with growing respect and
candor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have bought in my local
supermarket books and pamphlets on the health benefits of marijuana!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile there are unfortunates still
in jail for life because they used or sold the weed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the doors are opening to the mysteries of mental space
and to the mysteries of outer space. Good news for anyone with an appetite for
mental adventure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I want to make two points about the
green plant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first—all that marijuana
does is illuminate and intensify what’s already there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stan Grof spoke of psychedelics as “non-specific
amplifiers of consciousness. The weed is no more than a mental magnifying glass.
Old potheads will recall getting the “munchies” when they first inhaled a joint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Food tasted better, music blew you way,
your lover’s body became a new country to explore. And so on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simple intensification of the senses can
alter your world-view in a benign way. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But the magnifying glass can work
in other, more subtle ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can
magnify access to the subconscious mind and thus draw on its resources and creative
potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In everyday life our attention is
absorbed in the business of making it through the day in one piece, hopefully
with ego and body intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
weed, respectfully deployed, can open and enlarge the flow of perception and of
imagination. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This leads to my second thought. I
call weed the interesting drug—the drug that can make just about anything <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interesting</i>. One toke of the green lady
and all sorts of things can take hold of my curious attention. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anything I observe, touch, think about
is suddenly aglow with meaning and with mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I pick up a book of poetry and the first poem I read
surprises me with freshness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
step outside and quickly get lost in clusters of birdsong around me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I click on the radio and some disaster on
the other side of the planet touches my heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I lie back<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and muse
on the weirdness of my existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wherever I direct my consciousness—an ant wandering on my keyboard—I see
the glorious will to live--a tiny symbol of the great mystery of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Surely such a magnifying glass is
a useful tool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can help us to
see and sense the world around and within us more clearly. It does so with a
greater than normal degree of vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say, the utility of a
psychic magnifying glass depends on the eyes that are looking through it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I’m tempted to end this budding
train of thought with an account of my first encounter with the Lady of
Marijuana. But I would rather listen to your thoughts about how we might
establish a more intimate relationship with the plant world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We could count it as a step toward
coping with the menace of climate chaos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-72089479486368191132023-06-12T09:17:00.000-04:002023-06-12T09:17:06.632-04:00Interview on Life After Death<p class="MsoNormal"> <span lang="IT"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Interview </span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></b><span lang="IT"> </span><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">On Life After Death </span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> 1-Good
evening, Professor Michael Grosso.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You taught philosophy at the University. What made you interested in the
afterlife and its manifestations?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To begin
with, before I knew what a “crisis apparition” was, my mother told me a story.
She saw an apparition of her brother at the moment he died in a hospital
several miles away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a young
adult I once saw an apparition of my dead grandmother along with a woman I
never saw before whom I later identified in a photograph as my grandmother’s sister,
a woman long deceased I had never met or known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, along with my my growing interest in the mind-body
problem, prompted me to investigate the various forms of alleged afterlife
evidence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2-After
your research experience of many years, what is consciousness and what role
does it play for you?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consciousness
is what I call the most obvious scientific mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even reductive materialists like Stephen Pinker admit they
are clueless when it comes to explaining the origin of consciousness, without
which there is no awareness of the being of anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consciousness appears to us as the fundamental, irreducible,
many-layered fact of being. To me consciousness is the premise of my current
existence and a beacon pointing to unknown regions and dimensions of possible
exploration.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3-You
wrote a book "Experiencing the Next World Now". Many experiences such
as those of the NDE show how beyond the veil of perception of the senses and
social and religious superstructures one can experience an altered state of
consciousness that can show us the life of consciousness beyond matter. What do
you imagine the life of consciousness in the non-physical dimension will be
like?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I think
the closest analogy to our possible afterlife mode of being is the dream. The
world of our dreams is purely mental and infinitely plastic in its
phenomenology, ranging from hellish nightmares to heavenly epiphanies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dream is often a vehicle of
paranormal cognition and creative breakthrough, the intermediate zone between
our embodied and our possible disembodied postmortem existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world of the arts seems to me our
best source of clues to the nature of an afterlife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4-The
experiences of NDE and OBE or the ASC seem in many cases to produce a change of
personality in those who live these experiences and a compassionate openness
towards others. Without mentioning the many studies on the symptomatology of
these experiences, I ask you what is your opinion on the matter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is a
complex question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Compassionate
openness towards others,” that is the question, the central issue, indeed, the
global challenge. At last count, about 23 or 24 wars are raging on earth now,
and governments everywhere are spending their wealth on beefing up more
diabolical weaponry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My impression
is that radically powerful ASCs (like OBEs, NDEs, and psychedelics) can sometimes
decisively alter the personality toward openness and compassion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most dramatic is the life review of
the NDE, in which the subject relives the injuries imposed on others, but from
the point of view of the injured party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In short, if we somehow for a moment attain to a godlike perspective on
the world, we would see and feel far more than we usually do. To reach that
point of view you have to break out of your personal perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But most of us suffer from a certain
sclerosis of the imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
combat this, in my opinion, is a renaissance of the humanities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5-Your
blog Consciousness Unbound is very interesting and deals with many topics
concerning consciousness, spirituality and peak experiences. You are also
interested in psychic research. Recent scientific studies (Korotkov, 2013)
demonstrate that human consciousness possesses measurable magnetic energy. How
do you think this magnetism relates or not to life in matter and life
experiences in the after-death dimension?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bravo! I
want to read that paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see
this finding as supporting a general claim about the reality of psychokinesis
(PK), which is very general. The bare claim: mental states--volitions,
emotions, fantasies, frustrations, etc.—can have direct influence on physical
states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This should be obvious to
any introspective person. An angry thought will raise my blood pressure. Fear
will make my hands cold and my gut writhe. Etc. But there is also evidence that
mental states can influence external physical states, experimental and
spontaneous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are distinct
categories of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>PK phenomena, and
not the least is a vast literature on paranormal healing, and growing; there is
the world of the poltergeist, all sorts of unaccountable physical hijinx; the
experimental data on materialization; the world of apports and hauntings,where
all sorts of physical events are reported.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not only is the idea of PK induced magnetism plausible, but
in fact the PK phenomena take us beyond the laws of physics today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The roles of hyperspace and quantum
mechanics have been discussed in efforts to make sense of the physical
phenomena, all of which must have bearing on our thoughts of post-biological
survival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">6-The
ecstatic path in mysticism as an experience of contact with the divine. Is this
path predestined in some men or is it for everyone?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In moods
of evolutionary optimism, I like to imagine a time when human common sense will
have absorbed something of a mystical tincture, so there might be a
developmental trend toward a higher mode of consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another optimistic fantasy I entertain
would be something like reinventing the ancient Greek Eleusinian Mystery practices,
in which people would undergo a ritual transformation, a long fast crowned by
drinking a psychedelic brew that induced a vision of Persephone, goddess of the
underworld.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was a psychic and
a social form of human transformation we might reconstruct for today’s world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not about a Greek goddess but suited to
each person’s spiritual symbols and metaphors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">7-Materialistic
science does not share the existence of the soul in metaphysical terms since it
believes that, despite several studies, it is not measurable. How can post-materialism
tell us about the soul and its functions?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Measure
has to do with mathematized physical space, not applicable to the way the
concept of soul is used.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soul is
less a thing than a process of mental life. The post-materialist is already
engaged with soul life through his feelings, memories, dreams, desires,
reasonings, passions, the whole of one’s mental life, conscious and subliminal.
Soul, as Keats wrote in a famous letter, is what we are forever making in the
face of a daunting but equally wondrous stream of complex experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The soul-deprived and soul-hungry need
but turn the mysterious beam of their consciousness on themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">8-A
science of states of consciousness. There are many studies now analyzing alleged
ASC experiences. But there is still no science and perhaps there is no need. It
seems more useful to understand the mechanisms of the activation of these
states and their usefulness for human evolution. What is your point of view?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
couldn’t agree more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to
understand that there are mechanisms, practices we can pursue that promise to
open us to altered modes of perception <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and
</i>altered modes of action. The science, or knowledge, that we need is
personal and indeed existential. An ironical twist here: objective science is
telling us we have ten years before climate catastrophe overtakes us and
destroys world civilization. All we have to fight back is the soul and its
elusive science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">9-What
does soulmaking mean to you today?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For me,
soulmaking means two great things conducive to saving the world from human
greed, malice and suicidal stupidity. Two items, mutually supportive: empathy
for all sentient beings, including those we righteously loathe and despise <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> radically rethinking and transforming
our relationship to the natural world, shifting from the murderously
exploitative to a life-affirming partnersnhip.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">10-You
have written a book "Frontiers of the Soul". Chapters on the
parapsychology of religion. God, the myth, the spiritual experience. The new
forms of contemporary spirituality seem to slowly detach from religion and be
"spiritual but not religious". Do you think this was an element that
already belonged to the mystics of the past and is only now being revealed?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yes, I
do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The part of religion many
people crave is the part that touches and frees their soul and spirit, expands
their sense of life, extends it perhaps into a fuller mode of afterlife
existence. The part of religion that is detestable is the cruelty and
fanaticism, and the unholy lust for power that drives the dialectic of
damnable<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>religionism. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">11
-Beyond physicalism and the irreducible mind. The challenge to reductive and
monist scientific materialism is not really a challenge since it is expressed
as the result of a limited paradigm for minds that do not have access to the
transpersonal dimension. The question is: In your opinion is scientific
materialism to be limited or the type of men who propose it to be unsuitable
for a broader science that includes the non-material dimension?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Scientific
materialism is not a crime but it leaves out the inner dimension of the human
adventure and has become the servant of two trends that singly and combined are
driving the entire planet toward climate/nuclear Armageddon: consumerism and militarism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The details for the latter proposition
are before us in the news every hour of every day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">12- We
were delighted with Julian Jaynes's theories on the collapse of the bicameral
mind and the birth of consciousness to find a theory that defines the mind that
speaks to the divine. Can you tell us about your opinion on the relationship of
mind and soul and their relationship to human consciousness?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thanks for
this concluding question that has baffled and inspired the humblest and the
greatest of minds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was
about 18 years old I walked into the Vedanta Society somewere on New York’s
East Side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first thing I saw
on the wall was a quote from the Rig Veda: “Truth is one; people call it
variously.” That confirmed my own intuition, and it’s what I believe
today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the Upanishads I
further refined the intuition of a single source of divine power and
illumination, the root of all the insights, visions, and inspirations that gave
rise to the great historical religions; the magical and shamanic traditions;
the isolated flowerings of genius in all walks of life—a process that never
stops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
situation today is unique, however. It now appears as the result of encroaching
climate catastrophe that we can speak of a global near-death experience. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll end with a question: will these
mega challenges serve in the long run to awaken the latent consciousness we
associate with near-death transformation?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-5024482432628148482023-06-06T09:26:00.000-04:002023-06-06T09:26:03.129-04:00Music in the Age of Conflicts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qS1lI35IWugrNqenDcNIovOGdDJ8WSkwYW76osDHJP0H2fllqBUfoBjJLCucmF57eVzUyD_SVGPzxfiZSuK7OAMBMSdjvrJUag_s5WpFI04c88Jiq-arfb0LuTw_0gCdv7wEPbQz_RQRDPmwwv3HobMcMww_5n6wVPXAc66UfgffxfUCJRC5-yI0yA/s1717/yoga-of-sound-1711.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1717" data-original-width="1150" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qS1lI35IWugrNqenDcNIovOGdDJ8WSkwYW76osDHJP0H2fllqBUfoBjJLCucmF57eVzUyD_SVGPzxfiZSuK7OAMBMSdjvrJUag_s5WpFI04c88Jiq-arfb0LuTw_0gCdv7wEPbQz_RQRDPmwwv3HobMcMww_5n6wVPXAc66UfgffxfUCJRC5-yI0yA/s320/yoga-of-sound-1711.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">According to a Hindu teaching, we’re
at the tail end of the Kali Yuga, the Age of Conflicts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately, we can see for ourselves
the discords and conflicts that pervade life on earth today. Conflict is rife
in impoverished as well as advanced countries <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>like the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This so-called <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reign of Kali is evident in at least three ways. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The first is within
ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our inner conflicts are
real enough and can dominate our lives. Perhaps one clear indicator of being in
conflict with oneself is suicide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The data is complicated, but suicide is
a leading cause of death among children and teenagers in America, a country ruled
by the cult of the gun and the worship of money. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The happiest nations have the higher rates of suicide, but
it’s the people at the bottom that mostly kill themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say, suicide is the most
extreme symptom of inner conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most of us experience our inner conflicts in less extreme ways that we
call neurosis and psychosis.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The second place is on the field
of murderous battle—between groups of people, sometimes between nations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accounts vary but about forty wars are
at present underway on our polluted planet, the most perilous the one the
Russians are waging against Ukraine, a war in danger of mushrooming into atomic
conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Conflicts are rooted in
ideological differences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
United States, the conflict is between the two governing parties, marked by
further divisions in the factions themselves, that spill over into forms of
mutual annihilation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kali’s hand
is at work in family life, in news media and platforms, and in the
entertainment industries.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There’s a third category of
conflict that only recently has become horribly evident. This is the conflict between
humans and the natural environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The assault on nature has been catastrophic—the result of flooding the
atmosphere with greenhouse gases. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Habitat destruction and species extinction are off the
charts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Droughts, floods,
tornadoes, water shortage, killer heat waves, pollution of rivers and seas, new
pandemics pending, food shortage, and so on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The third category is worsening by the hour.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So, we’re in conflict with
ourselves, with other human beings, and full scale with all aspects of the
natural world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could music
make a difference?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The connecting
link between music and conflict is harmony and rhythm. Music, in a deep
metaphoric sense, is any way we can harmonize with our experience, with
ourselves, with the people and world around us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this sense, music is the art of living in harmony, in
rhythmic accord, with all the categories of possible experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Understanding music in this way,
life itself becomes the instrument we use to make our ‘music.’ This more
comprehensive<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>idea of music
requires that we practice and learn to improvise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every situation of life presents an opportunity to make
‘music’ in the creative way we attempt to conduct ourselves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This expanded idea of music reminds us
of the Muses, the Greek goddesses that dwell on Mount Helicon who inspire all
forms of creativity—artistic, moral, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and scientific.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is a sense of music I want
to entertain that takes us back to Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher, born in
Samos around 560 BC, a mathematician who discovered the theorem after his name.
He also was the first to discover the mathematics of vibration, the scales and
intervals of music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pythagoras
spoke of the so-called “music of the spheres,” based probably on an unusual experience
of transcendent music he is said to have had. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is a well known phenomenon
I describe in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yoga of Sound</i>,
sometimes reported in near-death experiences, a kind of multi-voice chorus of
ecstatic music. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scott Rogo wrote
two books on the subject, full of first-person accounts of this amazing experience,
which occurs in various circumstances. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Pythagoras devised a model of
science that went out of fashion with the rise of mechanistic science and modern
technology. He believed in reincarnation, and founded a vegetarian community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Music and science were stepping stones
toward a life of peace and friendship, and the good life was based on harmonic values
and practices. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This Pythagorean is the exact
opposite of the prevailing paradigm of science today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Science today is the absolute, cringing, no-cost-barred
servant of two things that are destroying our planet: militarism and
consumerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>U.S. 2023 military budget, with an upgrade
of our world-destroying nuclear arsenal, is $886 billion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pythagoras would have us use that $886
billion and all military personnel to clean up the environment; educate, feed,
heal the needy and the forgotten: indeed, aim to create a paradise for all life
forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the possibility of this
depends on getting rid of the prevailing materialist mindset. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As far then as music and the Age
of Kali, two points are worth recalling. First, no matter what the future may
bring, music, in the wide sense suggested above, can serve as and ally in the
art of living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the power of
the alliance depends on how much of us we invest in our chosen life-affirming
practice. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The sayings and stories in my
book about Nada Brahmananda make good company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His message was, no matter who you are or where you
are, you can always be learning to tune into the infinite vibe that is deep
within us all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just keep
tapping with your foot, your mind on the one point of light. </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-74805941637587192662023-05-25T10:56:00.000-04:002023-05-25T10:56:20.015-04:00Science and Super Humanity<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I believe a science of
superhumanity is possible; my belief is based on a mass of empirical data. We
need to think carefully about this possibility. So far, despite their great achievements,
science and technology have brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation and
climate catastrophe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But science also
holds out a promise of human transformation and planetary revival The human
situation is up for grabs, we’re at a crossroads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is a problem with the concept of truth..</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Can<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a society with a twisted sense of truth long survive?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can we manage when <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>basic factual truth is in jeopardy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are, after all, hacking our way
through an age of fake news. The fakery is pervasive. Capitalism, politics, spying,
advertising, business, the infinite varieties of scamming and conning. This
grand falsification process is mediated by our communication technologies. And ‘communication’
is changing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is now possible to
construct auditory, visual, and behavioral replicas of real people that come to
life in digital space. AI ChatGPT and related programs enormously raise the
specter of new forms of deception. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">From all sides it seems the idea
of truth is facing a crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To fend
off the agents of falsification that plague us, beware the shysters constantly
trying to con us. The general rule is, the bigger the capitalist entity, the
more ruthless the likely deception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We should suspect the claims of certain politicians and their
acolytes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By far the most
spectacular <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is the phenomenon of
the Trumpian base and cynical Republican affiliates. Truth here lies in bloody
pieces thrown into our faces, thanks to the pathological liar and rapist,
Donald Trump. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We’re not surprised by all the
lying and chicanery that revolve around politics and the American gods of money
and power. But what about science? Science, by definition, is an institution
dedicated to knowledge and truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
expect more from scientists when it comes to matters of truth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Follow the facts wherever they lead us is
the ideal of authentic scientists. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But scientists are human beings
and subject to forces that can deform their sense of truth. Some scientists are
known to take bribes from corporate entities in exchange for endorsing—lying
about—the endorsed product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The money
motive for lying here is plain enough. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Scientists are sometimes paid or
compelled to lie by the government for security reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, since 1947 the U.S.
Government and scientific personnel actively concealed the truth about UFOs and
UAPs from the American people for various ill-conceived reasons. So, when a
psychiatrist like John Mack reported his research on alien abduction he was attacked
by his Harvard compatriots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since
2017 the Government has opened the question for discussion, and admitted the
reality of an alien technology that regularly enters our airspace—a “technology”
that clearly transcends anything known to current science. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the presence of this super-technology
operating with impunity in our midst is a topic of great significance—but oddly
has <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>retired to the files of
YouTube and is rarely discussed in mainline venues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There’s something else. A
scientist may deny or trivialize a matter of fact because it has implications
he doesn’t like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the more
egregious sin against science. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
example that comes to mind is the Big Bang Theory of the birth of the universe
13.7 billion years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
the theory widely accepted by scientists today, especially in light of the most
recent research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The theory at
first was dismissed with contempt, for example, by Einstein, by Eddington, and
by many of the leading lights in the field of cosmology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why the contempt?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Big Bang seemed to imply something obnoxious
to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>physicists firmly committed to materialism
and atheism.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In
1927, Georges Lemaître published a paper that predicted the expansion of the
universe of galaxies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were
observations beginning to suggest that startling fact. The idea of an expanding
universe was not consistent with what Einstein, Eddington and others believed
to be an eternal, static, steady-state universe. </span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Lemaître inferred that an expanding
universe must have originated at a previous time from a super dense singularity
of some physical reality. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The universe
exploded out of this physical singularity creating time and space, a universe
that is still expanding <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and at an
accelerating rate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big Bang cosmology
has clearly ousted the steady-state cosmology, in spite of the physicists that first
rejected the theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>atheists were appalled. In a broad way,
the Big Bang seems consistent with Biblical creationism. But so what? The truth
is that nobody has a clue to what really caused the Big Bang, if there was a
Big Bang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The universe seems to be
an effect with an unknown cause, but a reality with a finite history. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sorry, Einstein. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The atheist physicists had a hard
time processing this cosmological surprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, Lemaitre, in addition to being a brilliant
mathematician and physicist, was a Catholic priest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, as Lemaitre rightly understood and clearly stated, the
Big Bang model of cosmic creation favors no religion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonetheless, the antagonism toward the theory was (and still
is) weighty, precisely because it can be construed as having religious
significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the resistance is
not science; it’s ideology and fascist metaphysics.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is another example of
science in denial (or in retreat) from a mass of highly significant empirical
data.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a way that exactly
parallels the hostile reception of the Big Bang theory, most <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>scientists (not necessarily physicists)
have been and still are instinctively on guard and reluctant (at least
publicly) to engage with the wide world of paranormal phenomena. Paranormal
phenomena like levitation, precognition, instantaneous healing, the
materialization of physical objects, indications of postmortem survival, and so
on, are construed as supportive of mentalistic worldviews where miracles, life
after death, and supernatural beings are treated as real. All this is rightly construed
as a mortal threat to reductive scientific materialism.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Respect for factual truth needs
to be instilled in the common consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without
it we’re easily misled and manipulated. Materialist science would deny <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>truths that may hold the secret of our
evolutionary advance as a species. The unidentified beings the government lied
about point to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i> potential
evolution. For a more exact picture of what that may look like, see the data we
call supernormal or miraculous—our extended mental, physical and spiritual
powers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a fact-based model of
what is possible, we can contemplate an outline of our futuristic identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My next post will sketch a more
detailed picture of a fact-based futuristic version of our bedevilled species. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-45669561262897697162023-05-16T09:45:00.004-04:002023-05-23T20:54:18.109-04:00The Mystery of Light and Consciousness<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Sometimes the most obvious thing is full of mystery.
What could be more obvious than having a conscious experience?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet just being conscious is a major scientific
mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scientists and
philosophers are uniformly baffled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover, consciousness is the root of all human experience—without it,
practically speaking, we cease to exist. Consciousness is totally obvious but
totally unexplained. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Here’s another example of an obvious mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a phenomenon that science has a
long history of trying to understand—light, which, incidentally, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>leads to the weirdness of quantum
mechanics. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The physical mystery of light nicely complements the
mental mystery of consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just as light makes things visible, consciousness makes things experienced—seen,
felt, heard, touched, smelled, dreamed, etc.. By the way, the energy associated
with light that makes life possible is part of this mystery matrix. Science, for
all its mighty achievements, needs to acknowledge a bevy of fascinating mysteries.
Look more deeply into, not away from them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Poets, mythologists, and scientists have been trying
to explain light since ancient times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>insight into the light
side of the mystery matrix, read Arthur Zajonc’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Catching the Light: the Entwined History of Light and Mind</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From Newton to Einstein and other great
names in science, we witness a phenomenon that pushes us to the edge of quantum
physics and beyond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The very
physics of light, as Zajonc explains, implies the existence of mind.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Light seems the most mindlike of physical
realities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as our
conscious minds can engage with a limitless range of possible thoughts, so does
physical light illuminate an endless variety of possible visual objects. Experiences
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of light best described as
transcendent have been collected and analyzed in Annekatrin Puhle’s
comprehensive review of the varieties of transformative light experience, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Light Changes</i> (2013). These experiences occur
in near-death situations, mystical and visionary episodes, alien (UAP)
encounters and often just spontaneously, as when Jacob Boehme was thrown into a
mystical trance by sunlight reflected in a metal utensil. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Transcendent light encounters are
perennial phenomena that appear in various cultural contexts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They usually signal a breakthrough to
another dimension of being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Consciousness, physical light, and, we must add,
life—all are unexplained by mainstream physicalist science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Facts of everyday experience we take
for granted are amazingly interesting and strange. Of course, it’s easy to lapse
into mechanically interacting with the world around us, with just enough
alertness and sensitivity to get by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The mystery and wonder of life, light, and our consciousness easily escape
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>notice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A grey film of ordinariness settles on our everyday minds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Something unusual has to happen before the strange
events transpire. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could be anything that shakes up the
grey film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A moment of
inspiration, a creative coincidence, falling in love, ingesting a psychoactive
substance, and so forth. Or the spur could be negative, like sudden loss,
illness of mind or body, near death, literally and symbolically. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The yogis and saints get proactive and rearrange
their lives in ways designed to trigger encounters with the transcendent. We can
all learn new ways to break through to the other side. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-3421215762974211322023-05-09T10:57:00.003-04:002023-05-09T10:57:53.874-04:00A Science of Extraordinary Experience?<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We are in various ways living
through deeply weird times. Much of the weirdness is horrific like people being
shot to death if they mistakenly knock on the wrong <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>neighbor’s door. We hear enough of that morally sickening weirdness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here I want to call attention to a kind
of weirdness that touches the soul and stimulates the intellect. For this we
have a new publcation—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deep Weird: The
Varieties of High Strangeness Experience</i>, edited and introduced by Jack Hunter.
I will focus on the latter’s introduction <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with a few remarks, and leave the rest of the book, so rich
and various, to be enjoyed by readers. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The premise of this book is that the
world is replete with facts, phenomena, experiences that mainstream science
cannot explain, and even actively shuns and misrepresents. It invites the
open-minded reader and scholars of the humanities to confront and consider a complex
body of highly strange experiences. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Hunter calls attention to a
crucial fact about deeply weird phenomena. They are wildly diverse and yet
subtly interconnected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no
normative way to have a mystical or near-death experience, no antecedent
constraints on how psychokinesis, prayer, or inspiration must occur. As William
James studied the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">variety</i> of
religious experiences, so does Jack Hunter emphasize the variety of highly
weird and strange experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The example that came to mind was
the predicted “miracle” of the 1917 Fatima child visionaries having features
consistent with UAP phenomenology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We find a pattern of close UFO encounters where levitation and
telepathic communication are regularly reported. There is the conjunction of
two phenomenologies, ufological and religious miraculous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The experiential overlap of these two
realms of paranormality is highly strange. I’ve read accounts of recognized
ghosts of deceased people stepping out of a flying saucer, and that was highly
strange. The chapters in this book may cause a little weirdness vertigo, so
brace yourself. How to understand the connections between disparate phenomena
drives us to speculate on the possible source of unity of the weird manifestations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The weird in sense of fateful dialectic
forces us to dig deeper into the source of the strangeness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A promise is lurking there, an
intuition that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a more evolved form
of the humanities—of humanity—may be an emergent possibility. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The function of deep weirdness, as
Hunter uses the term, is to remind us of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the unrecognized inner potentials of our mental and physical
existence. Deep weirdness is more than metaphysical entertainment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would count as a step toward
mobilizing the necessary critical response to the climate and human crisis
currently wreaking havoc on the planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A new science of extraordinary human experience is a crucial step toward
a new science of human transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we learn more about the
conditions conducive to activating the strange and wondrous modes of being latent
within us, it should be possible to aim experimentally toward specific
developments, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Hunter’s general account of this
new science is mind-opening, the result of probing the implications of high
strangeness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First off, we are
embedded in a vast psychomental ecosystem of interacting and overflowing
realities. “Ontological flooding,” to quote the author’s phrase, “is
essentially a position that emphasizes complexity and the interaction of
multiple contributing factors in any given situation or phenomenon. From this
perspective, no single explanatory framework or ontological scheme is able to
give a fully satisfying account of what is taking place.” A blow against all
forms of fundamentalism and fanaticism </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Above all, to explore the wonders
of high strangeness, we need to think beyond the reductive assumptions of
mainstream Western science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everything about this challenge aspires to a true democracy of higher
consciousness. The remaining seventeen essays explore deep weird phenomena,
research, and modeling. If you’re in the mood to inform, challenge, and animate
your imagination, read this book and these chapters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It provides a unique kind of intellectual “fun,” but also a
powerful reminder of Frederic Nietzsche’s dictum that ‘man’ is something to be
overcome. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-5964446709533363702023-05-03T10:06:00.000-04:002023-05-03T10:06:22.307-04:00What's Wrong With "Will Power"?<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I’ve sometimes noticed that the
idea of “will power” is dismissed, as if it were some kind pseudo panacea—an
old idea from pre-scientific times. In a serious discussion of the medical
dangers of obesity, one speaker mocked the idea of will power as being useless.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obese people may be genetically
disposed to being overweight; they need to be treated bio-genetically, she
argued. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Supposing there is a genetic
factor in obesity, it hardly follows that minding one’s diet would be of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>no value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just remembering when to take one’s medicine requires the
exercise of voluntary intelligence—an act of will. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A modest supply of ‘will power’ seems a minimal requirement
for daily life. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What about the term “will power?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to suggest there is some
exotic power associated with willing. But there isn’t and willing something, as
William James said, is equivalent to holding one’s attention on something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you were able to read the foregoing
paragraph and grasp its meaning, you’ve a demonstration of the “power” of free
will. Free will is no more than the capacity to focus, direct and redirect your
attention on something, on anything.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">If we observe the stream of our
own mental life, we quickly discover how fragile is the hold we have on our
attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The closer we look the
more evident the difficulties of being at one with ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Disruptions abound from countless sources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The intrusions come from two dimensions
of reality: the external world and our no less obtrusive internal world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What to do? The philosophy and
mythology of the ancient Greeks had an answer: they exalted the virtue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">encrateia</i>--self-mastery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a world of dangers coming at you
from all sides of reality, one has to keep one’s cool and the right stance of
self-possession. I like a story in Homer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Odysseus and his boat and men <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>approach the zone of the Sirens and
their enchanting music. So exquisite the sound it distracts sailors and sends
them to their doom. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Odysseus
wants to enjoy the ecstatic sounds of the Sirens, but instructs his men to
block up their ears so they can hear nothing and tie him to the mast of the
ship so he can hear but not make some foolish move.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this way, even in the midst of grave danger we can form our
lives as free spirits and single-minded agents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If all the
sailors were unable to hear the magic music, they at least made it possible for
Odysseus to share his experience with fellow voyagers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One could say that this despised “will
power,” this intentional consciousness, pushed to the hilt, is what <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>drives the heroes, yogis, saints, shamans,
and so forth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Jeanne d’Arc
heard her voices, she raised an army and ended the Hundred Year’s War. Joseph
of Copertino held the image of heaven in his consciousness so relentlessly that
gravity failed and he rose into the air heavenward. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Martha Beraud, alias
Eva C., an artist-medium would focus with <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>intensity on images in her head until they became physically visible
in space, long enough for the scientists to photograph them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada Brahmananda tested his “will power”
when he spent one hundred and eight days and nights in a small underground
room, essentially without food or drink, in order to master the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>paranormal skills of Nada Yoga. All
these <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>illustrate some of the lesser
known effects of so called “will power.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another term describing these effects is psychokinesis, also
known as ‘mind over matter.’ </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Beginning with the small,
somewhat despised notion of “will power,” we’re led to a fundamental property
of consciousness that is by nature intentional, directed, and creative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The key to the trove of human potential
may well lie in the Greek virtue of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">encrateia</i>, the energy
of self-mastery—the last thing you hear about in our dominant culture of economic
materialism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An unfortunate
omission.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Self-mastery isn’t just about the
self; it’s as much about the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you’re in control of yourself, you’re not likely to let others
control you. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-60850017188480760862023-05-01T10:30:00.001-04:002023-05-01T10:30:52.794-04:00My Teacher From Another World<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> Our lives are shaped by the good
or bad teachers we’ve had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not
only our school teachers but by anybody that taught us something big and of
lasting importance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to say
something about my music teacher, Nada Brahmananda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My experience of this man <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was like no other.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One day in the course of a
lesson, he mounted an attack on paper as being useless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only knowledge worth having is what
you know “by heart.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He showed me
a book listing 460 ragas, melodic lyrics evoking the gods and their moods, meanings,
and vibes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They contained a large
part of Vedic and Upanishadic philosophy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada told me he had them all memorized, the themes, stories,
rhythms. He had access to two and a half thousand years of experience inside
himself. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He told me that he never read a
book in his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sings his
truth and drums his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>vision of
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His arguments are vibrations
that melt the ego and open the gates of perception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Music for him was the way to transcend the Kali Yuga—the age
of conflicts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Music is a boat to a
higher form of consciousness, a way to enter a world of ecstatic transcendence.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I asked Nada about the god
Krishna portrayed with a flute in his hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada told me stories of Krishna and his flute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the god arrives and blows on his
flute, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>everybody stops working and
ordinary life comes to a stop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
explained to me how each note on Krishna’s flute (six of them) represents one
of the human passions, like desire, anger, love, greed, being too critical, and
so forth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The point is to
sublimate all those inferior passions into the highest forms of consciousness
through music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Practice of your
art form becomes practice for your freedom and enlightenment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">No less important, the sacred
music enchants wild animals, and violence is magically transformed into peace. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sound useful? Instead of ferocity,
amity? We need to remind ourselves if the daily news fails to inform us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It really is a mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why is the most evolved species of life
on earth—human beings?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why are
they the most <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>violent and
murderous creatures on the planet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Age of Kali indeed!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Music is made of rhythm and
harmony, a source of transforming power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Music is a wand of hope in the Age of Kali. The main teaching I got from
Nada: Music, art, harmony are metaphors of how to live, how to be with yourself,
and how to unite <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with the whole of
living nature. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The great challenge for every
person is to discover the ‘music’ and ‘harmony’ in their daily living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>experience has its own <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rhythm and harmony. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Learn to riff on the harmonics of whatever you experience,
especially the small things and unexpected encounters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harmony is the meme we need, an antidote
to the ceaseless stream of horrors we daily hear about or must endure. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Knock on the wrong door or accidentally
step on somebody’s toe and you may get blown away by an AR-15. Everyday life in
America has become precarious. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
need to invoke the spirit of the Muses to calm the gun-crazy paranoiacs who
prefer the blast of guns to the music of the spheres.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-87269756848530435972023-04-13T10:35:00.000-04:002023-04-13T10:35:01.577-04:00Near-death as Clue to Super Creativity<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I believe that the near-death
experience (NDE) holds the secret of extraordinary creativity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may turn out to be the
starting-point of a new science of super mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The (NDE) itself
provides a vivid example of high order creativity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the moment, let’s assume near-death experiences are just
hallucinations that say nothing about life after death. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assume they’re no more than a type
of dream or fantasy. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But consider how creative they
are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What, I might ask, could be
more creative than producing an environment and beings that appear and feel
totally real and meaningful, and can profoundly transform the experiencer?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What could be more creative than an
illusion of all-encompassing love that leaves a person with empathy and deep soulful
humanity?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What more creative illusion
than to give rise to the conviction of life after death, where conviction never
existed before? </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">All the features of the
near-death phenomenon, the out of body effects, encounters with deceased
relatives, the profound review of one’s life, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>otherworld landscapes of breathless beauty, the choruses of
transcendent music, the ineffable embrace with a being of light and love—what mind-blowing
creativity!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all of this spewed
out of oxygen-deprived, in effect, dead brains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that surely qualifies as creativity of a super high
order. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I have a question. How do we <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>make sense of this paradoxical death-born
creativity?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A living person
is a compound of biological matter and immaterial mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Under normal circumstances our mental
life is used to manage the affairs of our daily life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our consciousness is engrossed with daily necessities, the
twists and turns of life, external disturbances <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> inner preoccupations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The current and bulk of our consciousness is invested in the inner and
outer traffic of our lived worlds.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Now what happens in a near-death case
of cardiac arrest?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The heart that
pumps oxygen to the brain gives out and the brain is oxygen-deprived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mainline view is that consciousness
should go out like an unplugged lamp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, the lamp not only stays on, it becomes exponentially more
brilliant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looks, in fact, as
if the brain does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> create but rather
transmit and direct consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When consciousness fails to transmit to brain functions it spatially
separates from the body, and the moment that happens, it is free to scan and
interact with a purely mind-dependent environment—as, for example, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>described in reports of NDEs. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I can now state more clearly what
may seem a paradox.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The more our
mundane, habitual modes of consciousness are disrupted, diverted, indeed driven
to the cliff’s edge, the greater the likelihood that consciousness be shunted
into alternate realities. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Most of us prefer to stay away
from the cliff’s edge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there
are people born to probe the outer limits of reality. I mean the shamans,
yogis, saints, mystics, artists, scientists, explorers, etc. Oh yes, I forgot
to mention philosophers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The working hypothesis is clear: the
closer we come to ‘death’, psychologically <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i>
literally, the more our attention is deflected from its habitual patterns of
perception, and the greater the likelihood of shifting into altered modes of
consciousness and experience. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are cases that nicely illustrate this hypothesis:
different ways to induce a kind of near-death experience, and in so doing, attain
extraordinary forms of creativity. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In the case of the 17<sup>th</sup>
century mystic, healer and levitator extraordinaire, Joseph of Copertino, I
made an interesting discovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Physician
Bruce Greyson’s <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>empirical <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>model of the near-death experience
covers mystical, paranormal, psychological, and creative elements. I found that
Greyson’s model of NDE experience matched the features of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mystic Joseph’s life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short—and please note—what a
spontaneous near-death experience may reveal to an ordinary person <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">suddenly</i>, a mystic like Joseph, or a yogi
or shaman, may have to labor and train for many years before, if ever, their
moment of enlightenment comes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
not, of course, equating the NDEr with a seasoned yogi or evolved mystic.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I am suggesting that the NDE may become
part of an experiment, in which individuals are initiated, using psychedelics <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">et alia</i>, similar perhaps to the
Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The near-death phenomenon, apart from its potent impact on experiencers,
may be something we can reverse engineer as a way to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>gain access to forms of consciousness and creativity normally
in abeyance. It will be possible for an everyday person to induce by experiment
experiences psychically similar if not equivalent to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>transformative ND phenomena.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A sane, safe, and scientific
design of this experiment could conceivably ignite large-scale changes of
consciousness, conducive to the well-being of all forms of life on Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular, the life-review often
reported of NDEs could alter the common mentality, if we at a certain time in
our lives could be induced to have a sweeping review of all our thoughts and
actions <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> simultaneously be aware
of how we have affected all those around us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this extraordinary state, we inhabit the minds and
feelings of those we interact with, and sometimes loathe and bash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are outside personal perspective, and
for a timeless spell seem to inhabit the mind of God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The books of near-death pioneer
researcher, Ken Ring, vividly brought to life for me the transformative miracle
of the ND life-review; which seems like the gift of a God’s-eye view of
ourselves.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I’ll end this brief statement
about a big idea with another example—this time an Indian rite of initiation,
designed to elicit and master <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">siddhis</i>
or supernormal powers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
written about an esoteric master of musical sound vibrations, also a monk and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sannyasi</i> (renunciant), who gave me an
account of his public rite, experiment, I would say; called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anestehan</i>, the way to power. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He described to me a retreat he
underwent for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one hundred and eight days</i>,
in a small underground room and no food—a few drops of milk every day. The
purpose to master the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">taan</i> or subtle
vibrations and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nadakhumbaka,</i> the
combination of breath-control and tabla performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada Brahmananda <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>trained himself to make complex tabla rhythms for thirty-five
minutes on one breath while fixated visually on an icon of Shiva.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He did this, he told me, with his
“death-body”—death because he stopped breathing for thirty-five minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Swami was tested for this feat in an
airtight chamber by a government-sponsored medical team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I got to know him I learned that
every morning at 3 AM he would perform this “death-body” rite of music and
breath retention. He told me that during that Anestehan he decided he would do
it or die. He lived to be 97.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Joseph of Copertino and Nada Brahmananda
were heroic experimenters in detaching their consciousness from the world,
which is a subtle form of dying; and both were extremists in the way they controlled
their bodies, freeing up their consciousness while defying the apparent laws of
physical reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an
experiment bound to be original because always filtered through our particular
personality with all its quirkiness and nuances. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might well serve as the empirical introduction to a new
science of spiritual evolution,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The NDE subverts obvious
opposites: making of the worst our possible entrance into the best; turning the
grim face of the end into the smile of a new beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nature is either teasing us for
perverse reasons or she is handing us a phenomenon to conjure with and confront
with daring.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-23701327084823325672023-04-10T12:26:00.004-04:002023-04-10T12:26:42.129-04:00Finding the Inner Practice We Need<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The other night I watched a film
about the melting permafrost, 90 million square miles of frozen ground under
the northern surface of the Earth. All this is thawing, thanks to our
human-caused heating up of the planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The bad news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Methane is
released when the permafrost melts, many times more virulent toward the climate
than the more familiar culprits. The melting is destroying animal habitats and
human homes in the arctic are collapsing into sink holes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In general, ecosystems everywhere are being
upended. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">All the predictions of climate
scientists appear to be occurring must faster than they had calculated. The
only way to slow up the cataclysmic onslaught is for the rich countries to
radically change their way of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nothing short of a social miracle is needed for that to happen. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It’s a hard thing to saye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Planetary disaster is inevitable, short
of a large-scale change of human habits and consciousness in the near future. One
way or the other—engineered by God’s angels or by some nice extraterrestrials
or by our collective subconscious—something has to give.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So it’s either a karmic wipe out
for the human tribe or a last minute<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>change of heart, a coming together in a rapture of creativity. Think of
it as an avalanche about to engulf you—only in slow motion. Easy to forget
about what’s coming. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if you
don’t stop an avalanche, it will certainly stop you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One nasty symptom of the
Zeitgeist are the epidemics of young people committing suicide, driven by depression
and anxiety. The Internet is a showcase for the pretty and the clever, but
seems to create identity crises in more suggestible souls. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A more independent source of
inward satisfaction is something we need to cultivate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pity the person that has to be measurably
“liked” before she or he can be an authentic self. Might as well sign the
death-warrant before one is born. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Some years ago I met in New York
City a wandering minstrel from Rishikesh in the Himalayas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was a musician and sannyasi, i.e., a
monk who believed that music was the best way to enliven and enlighten the
human soul, especially during what he called the Kali Yuga, the Age of Conflicts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strangely, I dreamt of this man before
I met him. In the dream, he offered to teach me music—but, oddly, without any
instruments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only later when I
became his student I found out what he meant. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Indian name for retreat to
practice is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sadhana</i>, a practice where
you can explore and evolve your inner resources. It could be any art form. Any
hobby or practice where you can watch yourself develop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cooking, making clothing, a sport,
caring for animals, reading history, stamp-collecting, all forms of meditation,
etc., etc. Sadhana is a way of gaining useful access to our subconscious
treasure-trove. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Indian I met was Swami Nada Brahmananda
who made music his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sadhana</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I took lessons with him on the
tabla and vocal, though my real interest lay in getting to know this amazing
man, who was famous in India and had been studied by American and Canadian
scientists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had abilities that
were unique if not seemingly impossible, at least according to our reductive
materialists.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was a wide concept of music that
Swami Nada embraced. He saw the melodies, songs, and rhythms of music
everywhere: in the colors of the world, the fragrances, the delicate touches,
the nuanced tastes, the landscapes, the emanations of other human beings—the
vibes, we might say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada, whose
name means something like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">breath united
with the fire of intellect</i>, was one of the few masters of the yoga of sound
vibrations. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As far as I can see, we live in
two worlds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our bodies live and
breathe in the external world, subject to caresses and hammer-blows of
objective existence; but we also live in our subjective world of feelings,
memories, thoughts, dreams, fantasies, and so forth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both worlds are vast, complicated, with great portions
unknown to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada struck me as
being a rare sort that seems to inhabit most of his existence in the subjective
dimension. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sadhana is a way of probing the
uncanny powers latent in that dimension. I’ve written a book about my
experience with this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ghandarva</i>
(celestial musician)—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yoga of Sound: The
Life and Teachings of the Celestial Songman, Swami Nada Brahmananda</i>. I will
have more to say about all this. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
is much to think about as the thunder of oncoming catastrophe gets louder.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6889910938799271565.post-70896768156060867722023-03-22T10:34:00.003-04:002023-03-22T10:34:38.974-04:00Why I Prefer Not To Be Reincarnated<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> I have sometimes met people who
embrace the idea of reincarnation with <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>enthusiasm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover, it’s fair to note that the research of psychiatrists like Ian
Stevenson and Jim Tucker, and others, do make a case for the reality of
reincarnation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may not be
altogether compelling evidence, but, as Stevenson said, it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">suggestive</i>, often strongly so.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Equally suggestive, and often strongly
so, is the evidence from the near-death experience and deathbed visions; from
mediumship, apparitions of the deceased, ghosts and hauntings, and in some
types of poltergeist case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
these forms of evidence, the surviving consciousness carries on in some kind of
afterworld and is continuous <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with
one’s earthly personality. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The continuity of consciousness,
which certifies who and what we are, is shattered by being reincarnated. My
inner self is inserted into a new body and my memories will be buried under the
new memory deposits of a new little person in a new body. Suppose I am the
reincarnation of somebody who died and whose soul became the basis of my
soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately, I’m totally
clueless about this. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As far as I can make out, the soul and
consciousness of my predecessor is extinct. So I’m not sure what’s to be
enthusiastic about. What is the difference between there being no life after
death and being reincarnated?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
other words, smothered out of existence by another person. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I can, however, see why
reincarnation might appeal to some people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christians are taught to believe that after death bad people
go to hell and suffer ineffable torture forever. Such cruel doctrines might
turn a few people off. It’s easier to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>embrace the idea that a very bad person (I can think of a
few) could reincarnate in a rat or a wild dog. Even the worst of us would at
least have a chance to try <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to work
our way back up the ladder of evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I see the attraction of believing
we have plenty of time to carry on the adventure of our evolution. We need time
to become enlightened beings. It might take eons for some us to finally achieve
enlightenment. But better late than never. The tone of this scenario is a whole
lot gentler than having one life shot at heaven or hell. But there’s a problem.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is no evidence whatsoever
that our species, or even some segments of the human population, are in any way
uniformly evolving toward enlightenment. There have been high moments and great
principles declared and sometimes lived in human history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But who really lives by the Golden
Rule? Or by any of the high ideals <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>proclaimed by our spiritual geniuses? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look around the world today. There is every reason to believe
the same proportions of good, great, average, and outstandingly vile human
beings are exactly the same today as they were in any epoch of human
history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You would think that if
the dead keep coming back, presumably learning something along the way, by now
we might see some signs of collective advance. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">On the contrary, what we see is a
humanity that created a climate crisis that promises to bring world
civilization down, while destroying a million species of living creatures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While all of this is beginning to
happen, the great powers are beefing up their world-destroying nuclear
armaments, real wars are raging everywhere, while poverty, homelessness, and
starvation are spreading all over the planet. I prefer not to be reincarnated
on a planet being destroyed by the morally insane “leaders” of the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Think of it this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A man or a woman struggles to learn
some skills in the art of living, some wisdom humbly garnered through a life of
pains and challenges, some knowledge of the heart ripe for giving in a heartless
world—and then dies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose such
a person is reincarnated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that
wealth of soul is forgotten, swallowed up in oblivion in some loveable baby who
causes great joy when it is finally coaxed into saying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">da</i> or, if he’s a genius, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">daddy,</i>
or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mama</i>, or possibly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pooh pooh</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Michael Grossohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06044309674467126746noreply@blogger.com6