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  • Extended Minds: The Mental Fields Within & Beyond Our Brains

    Extended Minds: The Mental Fields Within & Beyond Our Brains

    From New Dawn 140 (Sept-Oct 2013)

    We have been brought up to believe that our minds are inside our heads, that mental activity is nothing but brain activity. Instead, I suggest that our minds extend far beyond our brains; they stretch out through fields that link us to our environment and to each other.

    Mental fields are rooted in brains, just as magnetic fields around magnets are rooted in the magnets themselves, or just as the fields of transmission around mobile phones are rooted in the phones and their internal electrical activities. As magnetic fields extend around magnets, and electromagnetic fields around mobile phones, so mental fields extend around brains.

    Mental fields help to explain telepathy, the sense of being stared at and other widespread but unexplained abilities. Above all, mental fields underlie normal perception. They are an essential part of vision.

    Images Outside Our Heads

    Look around you now. Are the images of what you see inside your brain? Or are they outside you – just where they seem to be? According to the conventional theory, there is a one-way process: light moves in, but nothing is projected out.

    The inward movement of light is familiar enough. As you look at this page, reflected light moves from the page through the electromagnetic field into your eyes. The lenses of your eyes focus the light to form upside-down images on your retinas. This light falling on your retinal rod and cone cells causes electrical changes within them, which trigger off patterned changes in the nerves of the retina. Nerve impulses move up your optic nerves and into the brain, where they give rise to complex patterns of electrical and chemical activity. So far, so good. All these processes can be, and have been, studied in great detail by neurophysiologists and other experts on vision and brain activity.

    But then something very mysterious happens. You consciously experience what you are seeing, the page in front of you. You also become conscious of the printed words and their meanings. From the point of view of the standard theory, there is no reason why you should be conscious at all. Brain mechanisms ought to go on just as well without consciousness.

    The standard theory of vision applies to all species of animals with image-forming eyes. It does not explain why there should be conscious vision in any animal species, or in people. There is just unconscious, computer-like data-processing by the nervous system.

    Then comes a further problem. When you see this page, you do not experience your image of it as being inside your brain, where it is supposed to be. Instead, you experience its image as being located about two feet in front of you. The image is outside your body.

    For all its physiological sophistication, the standard theory has no explanation for your most immediate and direct experience. All your experience is supposed to be inside your brain, not where it seems to be.

    The basic idea I am proposing is so simple that it is hard to grasp. Your image of this page is just where it seems to be, in front of your eyes, not behind your eyes. It is not inside your brain, but outside your brain.

    Thus vision involves both an inward movement of light, and an outward projection of images. Through mental fields our minds reach out to touch what we are looking at. If we look at a mountain ten miles away, our minds stretch out ten miles. If we gaze at distant stars our minds reach out into the heavens, over literally astronomical distances.

    The Sense of Being Stared At

    Sometimes when I look at someone from behind, he or she turns and looks straight at me. And sometimes I suddenly turn around and find someone staring at me. Surveys show that more than 90% of people have had experiences such as these. The sense of being stared at should not occur if attention is all inside the head. But if it stretches out and links us to what we are looking at, then our looking could affect what we look at. Is just an illusion, or does the sense of being stared at really exist?

    This question can be explored through simple, inexpensive experiments. People work in pairs. One person, the subject, sits with his or her back to the other, wearing a blind-fold. The other person, the looker, sits behind the subject, and in a random series of trials either looks at the subject’s neck, or looks away and think of something else. The beginning of each trial is signalled by a mechanical clicker or bleeper. Each trial lasts about ten seconds and the subject guesses out loud “looking” or “not looking.” Detailed instructions are given on my website, www.sheldrake.org.

    More than 100,000 trials have now been carried out, and the results are overwhelmingly positive and hugely significant statistically, with odds against chance of quadrillions to one. The sense of being stared at even works when people are looked at through closed-circuit TV. Animals are also sensitive to being looked at by people, and people by animals. This sensitivity to looks seems widespread in the animal kingdom and may well have evolved in the context of predator-prey relationships: an animal that sensed when an unseen predator was staring would stand a better chance of surviving than an animal without this sense.

    Telepathy

    Educated people have been brought up to believe that telepathy does not exist. Like other so-called psychic phenomena, it is dismissed as an illusion.

    Most people who espouse these opinions, which I used to myself, do not do so on the basis of a close examination of the evidence. They do so because there is a taboo against taking telepathy seriously. This taboo is related to the prevailing paradigm or model of reality within institutional science, namely the mind-inside-the-brain theory, according to which telepathy and other psychic phenomena, which seem to imply mysterious kinds of ‘action at a distance’, cannot possibly exist.

    This taboo dates back at least as far as the Enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century. But this is not the place to examine its history (which I discuss in The Sense of Being Stared At). Rather I want to summarise some recent experiments, which suggest that telepathy not only exists, but that it is a normal part of animal communication.

    Psychic Pets

    I first became interested in the subject of telepathy some 25 years ago, and started looking at evidence for telepathy in the animals we know best, namely pets. I soon came across numerous stories from owners of dogs, cats, parrots, horses and other animals that suggested these animals seemed able to read their minds and intentions.

    Through public appeals I have built up a large database of such stories, currently containing more than 4,700 case histories. These stories fall into several categories. For example, many cat owners say that their animal seem to sense when they are planning to take them to the vet, even before they have taken out the carrying basket or given any apparent clue as to their intention. Some people say their dogs know when they are going to be taken for a walk, even when they are in a different room, out of sight or hearing, and when the person is merely thinking about taking them for a walk. Of course, no one finds this behaviour surprising if it happens at a routine time, or if the dogs see the person getting ready to go out, or hear the word “walk.” They think it is telepathic because it seems to happen in the absence of such clues.

    One of the commonest and most testable claims about dogs and cats is that they know when their owners are coming home, in some cases anticipating their arrival by ten minutes or more. In random household surveys in Britain and America, my colleagues and I have found that approximately 50% of dog owners and 30% of cat owners believe that their animals anticipate the arrival of a member of the household. Through hundreds of videotaped experiments, my colleagues and I have shown that dogs react to their owners’ intentions to come home even if they are many miles away, even when they return at randomly-chosen times, and even when they travel in unfamiliar vehicles such as taxis. Telepathy seems the only hypothesis that can account for the facts. (For more details, see my book Dogs that Know When their Owners Are Coming Home, And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals.)

    Telephone Telepathy

    In the course of my research on unexplained powers of animals, I heard of dozens of dogs and cats that seemed to anticipate telephone calls from their owners. For example, when the telephone rings in the household of a noted professor at the University of California at Berkeley, his wife knows when her husband is on the other end of the line because Whiskins, their silver tabby cat, rushes to the telephone and paws at the receiver. “Many times he succeeds in taking it off the hook and makes appreciative miaws that are clearly audible to my husband at the other end,” she says. “If someone else telephones, Whiskins takes no notice.” The cat responds even when he telephones home from field trips in Africa or South America.

    This lead me to reflect that I myself had had this kind of experience, in that I had thought of people for no apparent reason who shortly there afterwards called. I asked my family and friends if they had ever had this experience, and I soon found the majority were very familiar with it. Some said they knew when their mother or boyfriend or other significant person was calling because the phone sounded different!

    Through extensive surveys, my colleagues and I have found that most people have had seemingly telepathic experiences with telephone calls. Indeed this is the commonest kind of apparent telepathy in the modern world.

    Is this all a matter of coincidence, and selective memory, whereby people only remember when someone they were thinking about rang, and forget all the times they were wrong? Most sceptics assume that this is the case, but until recently there had never been any scientific research on the subject at all.

    I have developed a simple experiment to test for telephone telepathy. Participants receive a call from one of four different callers at a prearranged time, and they themselves choose the callers, usually close friends or family members. For each test, the caller is picked at random by the experimenter by throwing a dice, or by using a computerised random-number generator. The participant has to say who the caller is before the caller says anything. If people were just guessing, they would be right about one time in four, or 25% of the time.

    We conducted more than 800 such trials, and the average success rate is 42%, very significantly above the chance level of 25%, with astronomical odds against chance.

    We also carried out a series of trials in which two of the four callers were familiar, while the other two were strangers, whose names the participants knew, but whom they had not met. With familiar callers, the success rate was 56%, highly significant statistically. With strangers it was at the chance level, in agreement with the observation that telepathy typically takes place between people who share emotional or social bonds.

    In addition, we have found that these effects do not fall off with distance. Some of our participants were from Australia or New Zealand, and they could identify who was calling just as well as with people down under as with people only a few miles away.

    Telepathic emails and text messages are the latest version of this phenomenon, and an extensive series of experiments with emails has given very similar results to the telephone experiments. Positive and highly significant statistically. (The details of all this research on telepathy in people and in pets are published in a series of papers in peer-reviewed journals, and the full texts are available on my web site).

    An automated version of the telephone telepathy test that works on mobile telephones is now up and running and can be accessed from the Online Experiments Portal on my web site, www.sheldrake.org.

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    Extended Minds

    Laboratory studies by parapsychologists have already provided significant statistical evidence for telepathy (well reviewed by Dean Radin in his book The Conscious Universe, Harper 1997). But most laboratory research has given rather weak effects, probably because most participants and “senders” were strangers to each other, and telepathy normally depends on social bonds.

    The results of telephone telepathy experiments give much stronger and more repeatable effects because they involve people who know each other well. I have also found that there are striking telepathic links between nursing mothers and their babies. Likewise, the telepathic reactions of pets to their owners depend on strong social bonds.

    I suggest that these bonds are aspects of the fields that link together members of social groups (which I call morphic fields) and which act as channels for the transfer of information between separated members of the group. Telepathy literally means “distant feeling,” and typically involves the communication of needs, intentions and distress. Sometimes the telepathic reactions are experienced as feelings, sometimes as visions or the hearing of voices, and sometimes in dreams. Many people and pets have reacted when people they are bonded to have had an accident, or are dying, even if this is happening many miles away.

    There is an analogy for this process in quantum physics: if two particles have been part of the same quantum system and are separated in space, they retain a mysterious connectedness. When Einstein first realised this implication of quantum theory, he thought quantum theory must be wrong because it implied what he called “spooky action at a distance.” Experiments have shown that quantum theory is right and Einstein wrong. A change in one separated part of a system can affect another instantaneously. This phenomenon is known as quantum non-locality or non-separability.

    Telepathy, like the sense of being stared at, is only paranormal if we define as “normal” the theory that the mind is confined to the brain. But if our minds reach out beyond our brains, just as they seem to, and connect with other minds, just as they seem to, then phenomena like telepathy and the sense of being stared at seem normal. They are not spooky and weird, on the margins of abnormal human psychology, but are part of our biological nature.

    Of course, I am not saying that the brain is irrelevant to our understanding of the mind. It is very relevant, and recent advances in brain research have much to tell us. Our minds are centred in our bodies, and in our brains in particular. However, they are not confined to our brains, but extend beyond them. This extension occurs through the fields of the mind, or mental fields, which exist both within and beyond our brains.

    The idea of the extended mind makes better sense of our experience than the mind-in-the-brain theory. Above all, it liberates us. We are no longer imprisoned within the narrow compass of our skulls, our minds separated and isolated from each other. We are no longer alienated from our bodies, from our environment and from other people. We are interconnected.

    The new edition of Dr. Sheldrake’s classic book The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Unexplained Powers of Human Minds, is available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

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  • The Fairytale of Materialism: How ‘Fundamentalists’ Hijacked Science

    The Fairytale of Materialism: How ‘Fundamentalists’ Hijacked Science

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 5 (Oct 2013)

    The theme of this special issue of New Dawn Magazine is important in more ways than meet the eye at first. The notion of forbidden ideas in science is intriguing for obvious reasons. After all, it is undeniable that the intellectual establishment has historically blacklisted some of the most important breakthroughs in science over the centuries. To mention only one example, for decades Isaac Newton’s then-revolutionary idea that an invisible force called gravity acted at a distance between bodies was considered magical woo-woo, unworthy of being taken seriously.1 What other revolutionary – and perhaps valid – ideas might have been recently proposed but continue to be snubbed today in scientific circles? Few questions are more interesting and relevant.

    Yet, the notion of forbidden science raises a less obvious but equally intriguing question: on what basis is something considered heretical in science? What are the underlying assumptions of the self-appointed police of scientific thought? After all, science is supposedly based on the neutral and objective comparison between theory and nature. Nature is the final arbiter of scientific debate and it can be queried directly through experiment. So, if that is the way to settle the questions, why do we so often witness the scientific community engaged in highly subjective and emotionally-charged debates regarding what theory is – or isn’t – reasonable or acceptable? Sir John Maddox, former editor of Nature, once called for nothing less than the burning of a book describing a new theory of biological inheritance, much in the tone of medieval inquisitors.2 Why all this fundamentalist hysteria?

    In this article, I will argue that, at the root of all this, is the fact that the intellectual establishment completely misinterprets and misrepresents what science is about. The fundamentalist hysteria we see in the culture today is the inevitable result of the consistent and outrageous abuse science has suffered, often at the hands of those who were supposed to be its guardians. These abusers – among which I count some of the biggest names in science today – have hijacked science for the benefit of their own philosophical and psychological needs, biases, prejudices, and interests. And you, dear reader, are on the receiving end of this charade. Allow me to elaborate.

    Science Isn’t Metaphysics

    The scientific method allows us to study and model the observable patterns and regularities of nature. For instance, the observation that objects consistently fall when dropped – a regularity observed anywhere on the surface of the planet – allows us to infer the law of gravity. The observation that crystals form according to symmetrical shapes allows us to infer specific patterns of crystallization for different materials. Modelling the observable patterns and regularities of nature is all that science is about, because it is all that it can be about. Nothing else can be falsified by direct comparison with nature, therefore nothing else can be considered scientific. By observing the consistency of these patterns and regularities, scientists can create mathematical models to capture them, run such models as computer simulations, and then predict how similar phenomena will unfold in the future. Such an ability to predict the phenomena of nature lies at the heart of the technological prowess of our civilisation and represents the main social value-add of science.

    But our ability to model the patterns and regularities of reality tells us little about the underlying nature of things. Scientific modelling is useful for informing us how one thing or phenomenon relates to another thing or phenomenon – this being precisely what mathematical equations do – but it cannot tell us what these things or phenomena fundamentally are in and by themselves. The reason is simple: science can only explain one thing in terms of another thing; it can only characterise a certain phenomenon in terms of its relative differences with respect to another phenomenon.3 For instance, it only makes sense to characterise a positive electric charge relative to a negative electric charge; positive charges are defined in terms of their differences of behaviour when compared to the behaviour of negative charges, and the other way around. Another example: science can explain a body in terms of tissues; tissues in terms of cells; cells in terms of molecules; molecules in terms of atoms; and atoms in terms of subatomic particles. But then it can only explain one subatomic particle in terms of another, by highlighting their relative differences. Science cannot explain the fundamental nature of what a subatomic particle is in itself, since all scientific explanations need a frame of reference to provide contrasts.4

    Capturing the observable patterns and regularities of the elements of reality, relative to each other, is an empirical and scientific question. But pondering about the fundamental nature of these elements is not; it is a metaphysical question. The problem is that, in recent decades, scientists who have little or no understanding of philosophy have begun to believe that science can be a metaphysics.5 This dangerous combination of ignorance and hubris has done our culture an enormous disservice. Childishly emboldened by the technological success achieved by our civilisation, many scientists have begun to believe that the scientific method suffices to provide us with a complete account of the nature of existence. In doing so, they have failed to see that they are simply assuming a certain metaphysics – namely, materialism – without giving it due thought. They have failed to see that the ability to predict how things behave with respect to one another says little about what things fundamentally are.

    The notion that technological prowess is proof of some deep scientific understanding of the underlying nature of reality is simply equivocated. Let us put this in context with an analogy: one needs to know nothing about computer architecture or software in order to play a computer game well and even win; just watch a five-year-old kid. Playing a computer game only requires an ability to understand and predict how the elements of the game behave relative to one another: if your character shoots that spot, it scores points; if your character touches that wall, it dies; etc. It requires no understanding whatsoever of the underlying machine and code upon which the game runs. You can be a champion player without having a clue about Central Processing Units (CPU), Random-Access Memories (RAM), Universal Serial Buses (USB), or any of the esoteric computer engineering that makes the game possible. All this engineering transcends the “reality” accessible empirically from within the game. Yet, the scientific method limits itself to what is empirically and ordinarily observed from within the “game” of reality. Scientific modelling requires little or no understanding of the underlying nature of reality in exactly the same way that a gamer needs little or no understanding of the computer’s underlying architecture in order to win the game. It only requires an understanding of how the elements of the “game,” accessed empirically from within the “game” itself, unfold relative to one another.

    On the other hand, to infer things about what underlies the “game” – in other words, to construct a metaphysics about the fundamental nature of reality – demands more than the empirical methods of science. Indeed, it demands a kind of disciplined introspection that critically assesses not only the elements observed, but also the observer, the process of observation, and the interplay between the three in a holistic manner; an introspection that, as such, seeks to see through the “game.”

    True science is metaphysically neutral and agnostic. Mistaking it for a particular metaphysical position is a profound disservice to science, because it makes it vulnerable to straw-man attacks. For instance, the materialist metaphysics is often peddled today as synonymous with science; a tragic disfigurement of the latter. Yet, as I will argue shortly, materialism is extraordinarily vulnerable to attack, which is construed by a growing number of people as evidence that science itself is failing. But this isn’t true. An attack on materialism as a metaphysical interpretation of science is not an attack on true science.

    To illustrate how true science, as we know it today, can be coherently interpreted according to a metaphysics entirely different from materialism, let us have a fresh look at the so-called “mind-body problem.”

    A Non-Materialist Take on the Mind-Body Problem

    There are undeniable correspondences between conscious experience and brain states. If you have ever been drunk, you know that the addition of alcohol to ordinary brain chemistry can severely affect how one feels subjectively. Anaesthesia and psychiatric drugs also alter consciousness by interfering with brain function. Functional MRI scans regularly reveal high-level correlations between the activation of certain areas in the brain and certain types of subjective experience. So the link between brain states and subjective experience is a scientifically observed pattern/regularity of reality. As such, it is an undeniable scientific fact, independent of metaphysics.

    The question, of course, is how to interpret the underlying nature of this link, which is not a question of science, but of philosophy. Many scientists simply assume that the materialist metaphysics explains the link by stating that the brain generates the mind. As such, the brain – and reality at large – supposedly exists fundamentally outside mind. When the brain is destroyed, mind can no longer exist. Indeed, such metaphysics does seem to explain the high-level correlations between brain states and subjective experience. But it does so at the enormous cost of, first, postulating an unprovable universe fundamentally outside subjective experience; and, second, requiring a magical step by means of which unconscious matter somehow lights up with awareness under particular circumstances – the so-called “hard problem of consciousness.”6 Since subjective experience is the only carrier of reality that anyone can ever know, and since nobody today has the faintest clue about how to solve the “hard problem of consciousness,” materialism suffers from a severe lack of parsimony, explanatory power, and provability.

    Nonetheless, many scientists still adopt materialism as the explanation for the mind-body problem. The reason is that they do not see any other reasonable metaphysical interpretation that fits the scientifically observed patterns and regularities linking brain and mind. As such, they end up making the classical error of conflating metaphysics with science itself. But there is at least another, much more parsimonious metaphysical interpretation that fits the data and has more explanatory power. I will discuss it below in order to illustrate my point that the patterns and regularities of nature can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and that true science is neutral and agnostic about which metaphysical interpretation is true.

    Here we go: think of a stream. Water can flow along the stream through its entire length; that is, water is not localised in the stream, but traverses it unhindered. Now imagine a small whirlpool in the stream: it has a visible and identifiable existence; one can locate a whirlpool and roughly delineate its boundaries; one can point at it and say “Here is a whirlpool!” There seems to be no question about how clear and concrete the whirlpool is as an identifiable object. Moreover, the whirlpool limits the flow: the water trapped in it can no longer traverse the entire stream freely but, instead, become locked in place, swirling around a specific and well-defined location. The whirlpool thus partially localises the flow of water in the stream. Yet, there is nothing to the whirlpool but water itself. The whirlpool is just a specific pattern of water movement that reflects a partial localisation of that water within the stream.

    Now here is my metaphysical interpretation of the mind-body problem: reality at large is the flow of the “stream” of mind. There is nothing to reality but subjective experience itself. The body-brain system is simply the image of a process of self-localisation of mind, just like the whirlpool is the image of a process of self-localisation of water. There is nothing to the brain but mind, yet it is a concrete and identifiable image of the partial localisation of mind, just like a whirlpool is a concrete and identifiable image of the partial localisation of water. You can point at the brain and say “Here is a brain!”

    As such, to say that the brain generates the mind is as absurd as to say that a whirlpool generates water! To say that the brain is the cause of consciousness is as absurd as to say that lightning is the cause of atmospheric electric discharge. After all, lightning is merely how atmospheric electric discharge looks, not the cause of it. Do you see what I mean? The brain is an image of the process of consciousness localisation, as viewed from a second-person perspective, in exactly the same way that flames are an image of the process of combustion, as viewed from the outside. In the same way that the patterns and colours of flames correlate well with the inner-workings of the process of combustion, measured brain activity correlates well with the first-person view of consciousness – that is, direct subjective experience.

    Notice that this eliminates the “hard problem of consciousness” entirely: the correlations between brain states and mind states are explained by understanding the former to be merely an image of the latter, as perceived from a second-person perspective. There is no attempt to reduce mind to objective brain activity outside mind, so there is no “hard problem” at all. The brain and its activity, as images in mind, are of exactly the same nature as any other subjective experience. There is no need to magically derive experience from something outside experience because there is no need to postulate anything outside experience to begin with. The brain is an experience, an image in mind of a certain process of mind.

    The whirlpool represents a partial localisation of the flow of experiences in the stream of mind. This localisation demarcates a centralised, local perspective: the very centre of the whirlpool, the vantage point from which each one of us witnesses our personal subset of the contents of mind-at-large. This is, after all, how we ordinarily experience reality: from a particular vantage point in the middle of the vortex of experiences swirling around us. Ordinarily, we are only aware of the flow of experiences captured in our respective whirlpools, not of the broader stream outside. This is a direct result of the localisation process that pins us to a particular space-time position.

    Clearly, we do not need to postulate an entire universe outside the only carrier of reality we can ever know – mind itself, the medium of all subjective experience – to make sense of the patterns and regularities of nature. We do not need to face the insoluble “hard problem of consciousness.” Instead, we just need to correct an old philosophical mistake made in the name of science: the spectacular mistake of taking the image of a process to be the cause of the process. For the same reason that lighting is simply the way atmospheric electric discharge looks – and not the cause of it – the body-brain system is simply the way consciousness localisation looks, and not the cause of it.

    The entire metaphysical interpretation I elaborated upon above is fully in accordance with the natural patterns and regularities observed and modelled by science today. None of what I said above contradicts any part of true science; perhaps only the assertions of those who hijack and misuse science. If you would like to know more about my metaphysical position, as briefly described above with the whirlpool metaphor, I refer you to my book Why Materialism Is Baloney.

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    Conclusions

    The fundamentalist hysteria witnessed today stems from the fact that different factions involved in the so-called “culture war” attempt to make of science something it cannot be: a metaphysical position. In the process, they hijack and deface science, contributing to the general disorientation in our society regarding the nature of truth and the purpose of life. It is time we corrected this. It is time we understood that physics, while valuable and extremely important, just models the elements of the “game”: where to “shoot,” which “wall” to avoid, etc. The underlying nature of reality – the inner workings of the “computer running the game” – is an issue of metaphysics. It requires different methods to be properly assessed and understood. For as long as scientists like Stephen Hawking are allowed to make preposterous pseudo-philosophical pronouncements7 and not be either ignored or thoroughly ridiculed by the mainstream media – in exactly the same way that, say, a famous artist would be ridiculed or ignored for making pseudo-scientific statements – our culture will fail to understand its predicament. Part and parcel of this overdue correction in our culture is the need to see materialism not as synonymous with science, but simply as a particular metaphysical interpretation of science; one that happens to be highly inflationary and to lack sufficient explanatory power.

    Bernardo Kastrup’s book Why Materialism Is Baloney deconstructs materialism and offers a new coherent framework to help us make sense of the Universe. For full details, please visit his website www.bernardokastrup.com or go to www.amazon.com and look up “Bernardo Kastrup.”

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    Footnotes

    1. Kuhn, T. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 105.

    2. Maddox, J. (1981). A book for burning? Nature, 293(5830), 245–246.

    3. Russell, B. (2007). The Analysis of Matter. Nottingham: Spokesman Books.

    4. Even in the case of String Theory, according to which subatomic particles can be explained in terms of vibrating strings, it is still the relative differences between the modes of vibration of these strings that explain reality. The fundamental nature of the strings themselves is left unaddressed. See: Davies, P. and Brown, J. eds. (1992). Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    5. See, for instance: Hughes, A. L. (2012). The Folly of Scientism. The New Atlantis, 37, 32-50.

    6. Chalmers, D. (2003). Consciousness and its Place in Nature. In: Stich, S. and Warfield, F. eds. Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 102-142.

    7. Hawking has made statements like this: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing” (Hawking, S. and Mlodinow, L. (2010). The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life. London: Bantam Books, 227). This is incoherent, since the law of gravity is not nothing. There has been plenty of critical deconstruction of Hawking’s claims, as in: Davies, P. (2010). Stephen Hawking’s big bang gaps. The Guardian, 4 September 2010, London.

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  • Twin Telepathy: Is there a ‘Special Connection’?

    Twin Telepathy: Is there a ‘Special Connection’?

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 2 (May 2013)

    Is there a special bond between twins? Can they read each other’s minds? Are they telepathic? If you have been hearing questions like these being asked regularly but have never found an answer, look no further. The short answer is – yes, and no. Let me explain.

    As Orwell famously observed in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” So it is with twins – some them are indeed more identical than others. In fact, the term ‘identical’ is misleading. The medical word is ‘monozygotic’ (MZ) for twins originating from a single zygote or fertilised egg which then splits into two (or more), those originating from separate zygotes being termed dizygotic (DZ) or fraternal (non-identical). Yet although MZ twins are commonly referred to as identical, there can be wide differences among them. Probably the most important one has to do with just when that original egg divides. Usually this takes place a day or two after fertilisation, but division can take place up to twelve days later, or in the rare case of conjoined (‘Siamese’) twins, not at all.

    Although the study of twin telepathy must be one of the most under-researched subjects in the whole of science, it now seems likely that the later the division, the closer the bond. Researchers at the University of Indiana have studied thousands of twins and have noticed that the later they divided, the closer they become after birth. So it seems likely that this is the group most likely to experience telepathy.

    There are twins who have never had any experience of it, as described by ‘Alex’ on the multiples.about.com web site: “As an identical twin who knows many other twins I can tell you for a fact that twins don’t have telepathy. Any that say they do are either pulling your leg or attention seeking. I’d appreciate it as a twin and a human being if you stopped spreading lies.” As many other messages on this interesting site show, not all twins would agree with that and might well accuse him of spreading lies.

    True, I have met twins who are not particularly close, and are not at all telepathy-prone. One told me that he sends his brother a Christmas card, but that’s about the only communication they ever have. Another admits that she is not even on speaking terms with her sister and has no contact with her, telepathic or otherwise. Yet I have also met the father of twenty-something-year-old daughters who, he assured me, had never been apart for more than two hours throughout their lives. And an item in a London newspaper not so long ago described the lives of a pair of twins in their forties who still sleep in the same bed. Clearly we have a very broad spectrum here.

    Interviewed in 2002, one of the Californian supermodel Barbi twins commented: “We have that twin thing going on. Wherever we are in the world, we kind of know what the other one’s doing.”

    “That’s right,” her sister chimed in. “It’s instinctive. It’s a twin thing.”1

    I have not yet been able to interview the Barbis, alas, but I have met and interviewed dozens of twins of all ages, also mothers of twins as young as three days, and the evidence that there is indeed a twin thing is voluminous, although I seem to have been the first to produce a volume devoted to it, first published in 2002 and now reissued in a much enlarged and updated third edition.2 How this came about is quite a story in itself.

    When Telepathy was Taboo

    It began in 1975 when Ross McWhirter, editor of The Guinness Book of Records, political activist and one of the highest-profile twins in Britain, was shot dead on his doorstep by IRA terrorists. When I heard the news on the radio I immediately thought that if twins really were telepathic, Ross’s brother Norris should have reacted in some way to this tragic event. I knew that telepathy seemed to work best when the message was some kind of bad news – pain, depression, sickness, death – and what could be worse for a twin than the murder of his brother?

    A few years later I met a man who worked for Norris and knew him well enough to ask if he had reacted. The answer was no – he hadn’t. So that seemed to be that. However, I kept noticing items in the press about what looked very much like twin telepathy in action, and luckily I kept them in what soon became quite a thick file. This prompted me to give a short talk at the 1998 conference of the Society for Psychical Research in which I appealed to members to do some research into this long neglected subject. Later, one member – and only one – said he would be glad to do some experiments with twins if he could raise the funds. That was Adrian Parker, now professor of psychology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. More about him later.

    The previous year I had been hired as consultant for a TV series hosted by hypnotist Paul McKenna and asked to come up with suggestions for material to be included in it. My first suggestion was for a live demonstration of twin telepathy in the studio. I had no idea how this could be done, but luckily Paul liked the idea and just said “Yes, we’ll do it.” Thanks to his producer Mike Johnstone, an Oxford science graduate who wanted things done properly, we did it and were able to show what I believe is the first live demonstration of telepathy of any kind as it happened, and with a polygraph chart to prove it.3

    At about the same time, I happened to meet Norris McWhirter’s son Alasdair, and was very intrigued to hear that he had been with his father at the moment Ross was killed, and yes, Norris had indeed reacted, and quite dramatically, but had wiped the incident from his mind and genuinely could no longer remember it. I immediately wrote down his account and asked him to approve it, which he kindly did, and I duly published it with his consent. It was then that I decided that this subject needed thorough investigation. Nobody seemed to have done it before.

    I began in the draughty basement of the Royal Society of Medicine beneath their library, where they have a whole shelf of books about twins, at least a hundred of them. I spent the best part of a day looking at all of them and finding that almost none of them even mentioned telepathy, while those that did either dismissed it out of hand or pointed out, quite reasonably, that while anecdotal reports of seemingly telepathic experiences were quite common, there had never been any proper research into the subject, so it was too early to draw any conclusions. None of the authors concerned seemed interested in actually doing any research themselves. It soon became clear to me that telepathy was taboo, something you just don’t talk about in scientific circles. Sadly, it still is.

    To give just one recent example, in 2000 the Nobel prizewinner (physics, 1973) Brian Josephson attracted a storm of protest from his fellow scientists when he declared that there might be a connection between quantum theory and telepathy. Then in 2010 he was invited to speak at a workshop in Italy on ‘Foundations of Physics’. At least he thought he was, until he got a message from organiser Anthony Valentini informing him that: “It has come to my attention that one of your principal research interests is the paranormal. In my view it would not be appropriate for someone with such research interests to attend a scientific conference.”

    What can one say?

    Experiments and Studies Involving Twins

    In 1979, a major twin research programme got under way at the University of Minnesota, aimed at studying twins who had been separated at birth and reunited later – sometimes much later. This made it possible to assess the differences between genetics and upbringing, or ‘nature and nurture’ as it is often known. What the researchers found was that there were often remarkable similarities between the twins’ personalities, likes and dislikes, skills, hobbies, etc. – indications of what is known as concordance. They never found any evidence of telepathy, however.

    There were two reasons for this. One is that they never asked for it. I have interviewed a British twin who spent a couple of weeks at the university being questioned by a battery of psychologists and studied from head to toenail. The only thing they never asked her about, she told me, was telepathy. One member of the original Minnesota team, Dr. Nancy Segal, has repeatedly and publicly proclaimed that there just isn’t any convincing scientific evidence for it, which may have been true in 1979 but as we shall see is no longer true today.

    The other reason is that her opinion was of course based on her study of separated twins, whom I would not expect to have much experience of it, if any, because telepathy seems closely related to strength of bond, as between mothers and babies or dogs and their owners. You can hardly develop a bond with your twin if you are separated at birth, and sometimes do not even know that you have one.

    The Minnesota programme received wide publicity, and somehow Dr. Segal’s repeated denials of the existence of telepathy have given the general public the impression that it doesn’t exist. I had a taste of this taboo response myself when I went along to King’s College, London, to visit their twin research unit, one of the largest in the world with about 10,000 twins on their register. I wondered if I could get access to their mailing list and send out a questionnaire?

    “What about?,” the lady at the desk wanted to know. I muttered something about “biological correlates of empathy,” knowing what to expect if I mentioned the taboo T word.

    “What’s that, then?” she asked. I explained that it was what some people call telepathy, to which she immediately replied that the unit was not interested in “spooky stuff.”

    Luckily, she was wrong. A couple of years later, in 2004, the unit polled all its twins in its annual newsletter and asked them if they had ever felt “the ability to know what was happening to your twin?”

    The results were surprising. Nine thousand twins were polled, and the unit received 5,513 replies. Of these, a minority of 45 percent said no, but 15 percent said yes, and a further 39 percent thought it was at least a possibility. This was probably the largest survey of its kind ever, and it was encouraging, although clearly a more detailed questionnaire was needed. I only heard about it five years later, and in 2009 suddenly everything seemed to happen all at once.

    It began with a story in the Manchester Evening News on 23 March which described how a fifteen-year old twin was having a bath when her sister, downstairs listening to music, suddenly had the feeling that, as she put it, “it was like a voice telling me that your sister needs you.” She did indeed, because she was having an epileptic attack and was in the process of drowning. According to the paramedic who arrived just in time to save her, if her sister had not rushed upstairs to her aid, she would have died.

    The story was picked up a couple of days later by The Times, which included a quote from Dr. Lynn Cherkas from the King’s College unit, who had been responsible for the survey mentioned above. She proved to be quite open to the idea of ‘spooky stuff’ and had already come across instances of apparent telepathy. I managed to get her in touch with Adrian Parker, who was promptly granted visiting scientist status and given access to the unit’s material. He was also invited to its annual garden party, where he was able to do some informal testing and undertake a more detailed questionnaire with many of the 200 or so twins who attended. Suddenly, twin telepathy research had become academically acceptable. Yet sympathetic as they were, the King’s people didn’t have any spare funds. Parker was welcome to use their premises and their twins, but he would have find his own financing.

    More good luck just when it was needed – Parker was able to find it from a Danish TV company and arrange a controlled experiment at the University of Copenhagen, again using a polygraph to record the reactions, if any, of a twin in another room who was subjected to various surprises such as an electric shock, a pile of plates being dropped behind their chairs, or best of all, being asked to plunge an arm into a bucket of ice-cold water. The polygrapher, who had no idea what was going on in the other room was then asked to mark his chart at the times when there was what looked like an unusual fluctuation. A second polygrapher, who was not present at the time and had no idea what the experiment was all about, was asked to do the same. Both picked the right spots twice as often as they could have been expected to do by chance or guesswork.

    The experiment was repeated, this time in London at the King’s unit, funded by the ABC News Nightline programme, and results were similar. Parker and his Danish colleague Christian Jensen duly wrote up their two experiments and submitted them to the journal Explore, which published them in 2012 and 2013. They were the first of their kind ever to appear in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.4

    Twin Telepathy: The Evidence Mounts

    This was more than 230 years after the publication of the first reference that I have been able to find to twin telepathy, when John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote in his Journal for 2 April 1781 about a woman who had a twin sister “between whom and her there is so strange a sympathy that if either of them is ill, or particularly affected at any time, the other is so likewise.” Yet although there were occasional references to this strange sympathy over the following century, most notably in Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Corsican Brothers (1844) and by scientist Francis Galton, who made a rather half-hearted attempt to study twins in the 1870s, it was not until the publication in 1886 of Phantasms of the Living, a massive tome by three founder members of the Society for Psychical Research, Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers and Frank Podmore, that any case histories were written up in detail and checked for accuracy.

    Even so, it was to be several more decades before any psychologist found the subject of twin telepathy worthy of attention, with the exception of Chicago zoologist (and twin) Horatio H. Newman, who included a chapter on it, believed to be based on his own experience, in his Twins and Super-Twins (1942). From that day to this I have only been to track down sixteen papers on twin telepathy from peer-reviewed journals, nearly half of which were by Adrian Parker and his colleagues. Of the rest, only three were of any lasting value.

    The first (1961) by three psychologists based in Toronto was useful although for various personal reasons they never actually got down to doing any experiments. They did however do some original research, questioning a total of 35 twins on their experience of telepathy and finding that twelve had had some.5 This figure of around 30-35 percent has shown up in all surveys of this kind to date, including those done recently at King’s College by Parker.

    The second (1963), by a pair of ophthalmologists from Philadelphia was very short, but attracted some attention since it appeared in Science, one of the world’s leading scientific journals. They claimed that when alpha brain rhythm was artificially induced in one twin, the brainwave chart (EEG) of the other one showed the same rhythm at exactly the same time.6 Despite their plea for further research in this area, the only people who seemed to hear it were a team from Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, NY who reported successful results in 1967 using a plethysmograph to measure blood volume, and were able to conclude that “in a physically isolated subject, we have observed physiological reactions at the precise moment at which another [twin] was stimulated.”7

    Both of these teams published print-outs of their chart recordings that, as one of them put it, “show how obvious the reactions are,” yet once again research ground to a halt, and more than forty years later we find the serial psi-debunker Professor Richard Wiseman declaring glibly that “twin telepathy is due to the highly similar ways in which they think and behave, and not to extra-sensory perception.”8He was confusing, perhaps deliberately, telepathy with concordance.

    An example of this was given me by a mother who noted that her twins’ baby teeth both fell out at the same time, which she thought was amazing proof of telepathy. I assured her it wasn’t. They were both eating the same food at the time, and since they were genetically identical, it was quite natural and predictable that this would happen.

    Get the issue this article appears in

    A very different incident that was not predictable was described to me by another twin-mother in which one of her girls was bouncing around on a trampoline when another child landed on top of her and bashed her in the eye, raising a large dark bruise. At the same time her sister, who was not on the trampoline, suddenly developed a bruise in exactly the same place. It was slightly smaller and lighter, but it was unmistakably there. The mother had the presence of mind to take photos of the two together right after the incident, which she kindly sent me. They were later shown on ABC’s Nightline programme, on which the second twin clearly stated that she hadn’t felt anything at the time of her sister’s accident. I could give many more examples of incidents like this for which concordance is no explanation. This is the kind of evidence that critics such as Nancy Segal and Richard Wiseman simply ignore.

    It is also a particularly well witnessed and recorded example of what makes twin telepathy different from ordinary telepathy, which is sometimes referred to as ‘mental’ telepathy, since it only involves impressions, images or perhaps words in the ear. Twins go further – they receive physical sensations such as pain, which can even leave visible marks on the body, as in the case mentioned above.

    It can get even more mysterious, as when one twin has the pain but it is the other one who has the medical problem or has had the accident. A mother has told me how one of her boys complained of a severe pain in his kidney, yet after an x-ray doctors could see no sign of anything wrong with it. Fortunately she took his brother along although he had not mentioned having any pain, and it was found that he did have quite a serious kidney problem that needed immediate treatment. It was, she told me, not the first time something like this had happened.

    Clearly, we have a lot to learn from twins. I have collected quite enough evidence, much of it at first hand, to show that communication at a distance can take place and can be seen to take place under controlled laboratory conditions. Yet, as I said earlier, this remains one of the most under-researched subjects in all of science. The reason I usually hear is that telepathy is obviously impossible since there is no known mechanism that could explain it.

    There was a time when the idea of the earth orbiting the sun was out of the question, as were claims that meteorites fell from the sky or continents drifted apart. Such attitudes are still with us – it is barely twenty years since the heroic Australian doctor Barry Marshall disproved the dogma that stomach ulcers were caused by ‘stress’ and showed, after infecting himself with Helicobacter pylori germs, that this is what caused most of them, and that they could be cured with a week or so of antibiotics. No Nobel prize has ever been better deserved.

    “The concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying the earth is flat,” Marshall recalled later. So, to some, is the idea of thoughts, let alone actual physical symptoms, travelling across space. And with attitudes such as were shown in Brian Josephson’s notorious ‘disinvitation’ still prevalent in the world of scientific research funding, it may take some time to prove that they do, and to force us to rethink what we know of biology, psychology and physics. Whoever manages to do that, as now seems quite possible, will also deserve a Nobel prize.

    Are you a twin that has a telepathic connection to your twin sister or brother? Then author Guy L. Playfair would like to hear from you. He can be contacted via email at guylyonplayfair@o2.co.uk.

    Guy L. Playfair’s classic book Twin Telepathy was first published in 2002. It was enlarged and updated into a 3rd edition in 2012, and can be purchased in paperback or ebook via www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 2.[/alert]

    [alert type=”success” dismiss=”no”]If you appreciate this article, please consider subscribing to help maintain this website.[/alert]

    Footnotes

    1. Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 9 June 2002, 25

    2. G.L. Playfair, Twin Telepathy, 3rd ed. White Crow Books, 2012

    3. The Paranormal World of Paul McKenna, Carlton TV, 24 June 1997

    4. Explore 8 (6) 2012, 339-47; 9 (1) 2013, 26-31

    5. International Journal of Parapsychology 3 (4) 1961, 55-73

    6. Science, 15 October 1965, 367

    7. International Journal of Parapsychology 9 (1) 1967, 53-6

    8. R. Wiseman, Paranormality, Macmillan, 2011, 84

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

  • Developing Your Unseen Powers: A Practical Guide

    Developing Your Unseen Powers: A Practical Guide

    Repeated ignorant or stubborn denial of the existence of certain powers does not keep them from existing – except for us! 
    – Harold M. Sherman, psychic

    Everyone has some level of innate intuitive capability, as has been demonstrated repeatedly over several decades of experiments by the parapsychological community through tens of thousands of trials utilising thousands of regular people with no known or presupposed psychic gifts. (That is to say nothing, of course, of those many successful experiments carried out with people having well established reputations for performing “paranormal” feats.)

    While some people are born with obvious psychic talents, most of us have to invest time and effort over the long-term in order to develop them from their latent state. In this article we will look at some guidelines and relevant principles for unblocking and developing your innate intuitive abilities.

    Open Your Mind & Eliminate Closed Ones

    Have you ever noticed how closed-minded sceptics (CMS) rarely if ever have any experiences with the siddhis (psychic faculties) or “the paranormal” in general? Soviet research into psychokinesis involving Nina Kulagina demonstrated qualitatively that a sceptic’s mere presence has an effect on a psychic’s ability to function properly. Hence, with a CMS (or several) in the room or otherwise involved in the experiment, a psychic is more likely to “fail,” thus “proving” the CMS right (at least in his own narrow reality tunnel). It is merely a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus, regarding your own psi abilities what you believe is true, to a large extent – and unfortunately the presence of non-believers nearby or within the experimental setup can be detrimental.

    Dr. Valerie Hunt’s research in Infinite Mind showed a correlation between electromagnetic auric frequencies and the “level” of consciousness occupied by the individual. Healers, mediums and mystics show higher frequencies in their electromagnetic fields than others not of those categories, illustrating that those possessed of “higher” consciousness are, in some sense, literally “on a higher frequency.” Those fixated on or believing solely in “material reality” exhibited lower dominant frequencies and were bereft of the higher.

    In fact, gamma frequencies in the brain of 40-100 Hertz – the highest of the better known bands of brainwave frequencies (the higher band being Lambda, reaching up to about 200 Hz1) – have been linked to the ability to manifest intention in the world. Gamma states represent the brain in hyperdrive, working at its most intensity. “This oscillation is conducive to creating links across many parts of the brain,”2 facilitating an integrated whole-brain state. Paradoxically, the extreme high and low ends of the brainwave spectrum have the same states of consciousness associated with them, and different oscillations can be present at once in different parts of the same brain.3

    To illustrate, Russian psychokinetic (PK) psi star Nina Kulagina (1926–1990) – who, under controlled experimental conditions, could (among other things) separate an egg yoke from the white from a distance of 6 feet while it floated in a saline solution using only her intention – exhibited low frequency theta brainwaves of 4 Hz – normally associated with a deeply relaxed trance – whilst simultaneously showing extreme physiological agitation/arousal, including a pulse rate of 240 bpm. These strenuous efforts left her absolutely exhausted, and temporarily blind on that particular occasion.4

    Perhaps all of the above explains why Kulagina’s PK abilities “worked better in an atmosphere of friendly mutual trust and belief” – PK, as we know, generally requires intense states of physiological arousal and higher frequency brainwave activity, all of which drains large reserves of bioenergy. PK is a higher brain function. Kulagina experienced less stress when working alone and it was said that her PK ability was mood-dependent (both her own mood and that of the observers) and expended more energy in a hostile or sceptical atmosphere5 (where the local consciousness fields would have been less coherent). Hostile sceptics have something of an innate psi- or consciousness-damping effect; they literally operate at a lower frequency, their mind fields interfering with those of the test subject (and even the target). The fact that separate minds interact via measurable electromagnetic fields (and some not-so-measurable fields) has been proven by Hunt and others, and I detail much of this research in The Grand Illusion (TGI).

    Negativity causes chaos and/or entropy in the personal and local ambient energy fields, whereas positivity, gratitude, or love – heart-based emotions – cause coherence, beauty and order – just look at the instances of saints and yogis whose dead bodies have remained impervious to decay for weeks, months, and even years!6 This is worth considering before any psi endeavour where you intend to act as a receiver of information. Firstly, open-mindedness is a bare minimum requirement (confidence and trust in the process is even better). Additionally, being in a state of peaceful heart-based coherence is likely to enhance receptive abilities. In combination with deliberate intention, this has been shown to also be enough to wind and unwind DNA samples at will in laboratory conditions, with powerful implications for self-healing possibilities (see TGI).

    In 1942 psychologist and parapsychologist Gertrude Schmeidler initiated her infamous “sheep-goat” experiments, designed to test whether belief and open-mindedness would enhance psi function in contrast to scepticism. Two groups, “sheep” who believed in or were simply open to psi, and “goats” who did not believe it could happen for them under test conditions (but were not hostile to the possibility of it happening to or for other people), were put through identical standard controlled Extrasensory Perception (ESP) tests. The outcome indicated that believers in the possibility of ESP scored better than those who did not: the disbelievers scored lower, ergo belief is a legitimate variable mediating psi functions.7 “A meta-analysis by [psychologist Tony Lawrence], covering 73 experiments by 37 different researchers, clearly confirms that subjects who believe in psi obtain, on the average, higher results than those who do not believe in it.”8

    American psychic and author Harold Sherman (1898–1987) had noted in the early 1940s that while it is possible to receive thought impressions from a sceptic, it is extremely difficult for someone of that mindset to act as receiver.9 Sherman, who was ahead of his time, explained that telling yourself with certitude there is no such thing as psi is tantamount to instructing your subconscious mind to shut down the psi faculties so they do not operate for you.10 In a dream-like reality such as ours, it pays to be open-minded – especially if you want to be more intuitive.

    Meaning, Emotion, Need, Novelty & Other Factors in Psi

    Need, novelty, and emotion have long been known to play a part in psi phenomena. Carl Jung (1875–1961) – the originator of the theory of psychological archetypes – noted with interest that the English medium Eileen Garrett fared poorly in parapsychologist J.B. Rhine’s card-guessing experiments because she was unable to conjure any feelings for Rhine’s “soulless” test-cards.11 Much experimentation has also shown that psi effects have a tendency to start out higher in the initial stages of testing and then drop off as the participants lose interest and boredom sets in (the “decline effect”).

    Charles Tart actually went so far as stating that card-guessing experiments are, ironically, “a technique for extinguishing [psi] in the laboratory,” that is, they bore the subjects into a decline effect.12 Rhetorically, Sherman asked how he could possibly be expected to get excited over five abstract symbols that had nothing to do with his emotional system or that of the sender (they lacked meaning/personal significance or relevance).13

    Biologist and author Lyall Watson notes in Supernature that the most effective telepathic messages generally are bound up in trauma and crisis – and we see plenty of evidence to that effect in The Grand Illusion Vol. 1. He continues to explain that it makes sense biologically, since states of well-being and pleasure produce no sense of urgency – such information can be leisurely conveyed by the “normal” channels. However, for alarm signals to be of real use, they have to travel the fastest way possible.14 That “way” is superluminally/nonlocally. Much as Cleve Backster’s plants could detect the death of bacteria and brine shrimp nearby, our human telepathic connections must – even if only subliminally – serve a biological imperative, helping us survive and propagate as a species by sensing and avoiding danger.

    The limbic system, which includes the amygdala and hippocampus, is considered today to be the emotional centre in the brain, as well as the seat of our survival instinct. We might therefore suppose that life-threatening events, usually being highly emotionally charged, might ignite the temporal lobe and related structures in the brain into downloading nonlocal psi information from the vacuum/aether. Dr. Melvin Morse believes humans have a sixth sensory ability located “within” the right temporal lobe, hippocampus, and related limbic structures. According to him, this region “interprets information obtained through communication with an interactive universe,” and allows for telepathic communication with other people through their right temporal lobes. “It involves perception of other realities.” He states that we perceive the operation of the right temporal lobe as “intuition.”15

    In 1889 a committee of psychical researchers began a five-year project of compiling what they named a Report on the Census of Hallucinations – the first major research effort of the English Society for Psychical Research, featuring 410 data collectors. The committee included Henry and Eleanor Sidgwick, Alice Johnson, arch-sceptic Frank Podmore, and the esteemed Frederick Myers. Out of the 17,000 responses, 2,273 people reported having had “hallucinations” (psi experiences). Tellingly, most occurred in a crisis, usually a death crisis, signifying the importance of emotion, need, and above all, meaning in paranormal events.16 These were some of the earliest scientific results illustrating nonlocal correlations between well-acquainted (meaningfully connected) people.

    Aside from raw emotion, biological threats to loved ones (or oneself), and so on, another factor conducive to psi is simply novelty. Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff in their scientific remote viewing research in the 1970s found that the more difficult and challenging a remote viewing (RV) task they devised for test subjects, the more likely the results were to be good. They, too, observed a need-serving theme in their RV research at Stanford (see Chapter 12 of TGI). As a result of consistently challenging and interesting tests and protocols (with the added benefits of feedback and encouragement), they found that their subjects actually improved their psi performance over time, in contrast to Rhine’s and others’ results with card-guessing and other repetitious and dull forms of testing, where decline effects were often observed.

    In Sherman’s view, the absence of a strong or even an ordinary emotional factor is the greatest handicap in any psychic endeavour. Since his pioneering long-distance telepathy experiment with Sir Hubert Wilkins decades ago (detailed in New Dawn 136 and Chapter 11 of TGI), much data has accumulated indicating there is a great deal of truth in this. The stronger the emotional charge, the greater the likelihood that psi data will penetrate from the “subconscious” to the conscious mind.

    It is well known by occultists that emotionally charged events are more likely to impress themselves, inadvertently or otherwise, on the mind of another than are events with little emotional content. In occult terms, this interaction beyond the standard space-time realm is occurring via the astral plane/octave – the home of emotion. The more strongly the plasma-like astral body/field (or mind-field) can be made to vibrate in response to emotional content, the more likely the relevant data penetrates through from the subconscious to the conscious level of awareness. When sleep is involved, the conditions seem to be even more conducive to accidental telepathic contact, as it is an altered state of consciousness (theta and delta brainwave states) that opens us up to the frequencies of the astral or even mental planes while simultaneously eliminating most data/noise from the physical senses.

    Undoubtedly, much “paranormal phenomena” (including poltergeist phenomena, PK, and telepathy) can be linked to strong emotional content. There are indications that what we experience as presentiment or precognition may be, in some sense, the strong emotional content of a probable “future” event (which is actually occurring in a parallel universe in present time, along with all our “past” and “future” lives) then filtering “back” through time into our subconscious or even conscious awareness. (See Chapter 12 of TGI.)

    Hypnosis

    Hypnosis can aid our ability to peer into these “future” events and timelines. The young actress Irene Muza was in a hypnotic trance when she was asked if she could see what awaited her in her future. She wrote that her career would be short and her death would be “terrible,” though she dared not specify how she would die. The experimenters erased what Muza had written before bringing her out of the trance so she would not see it. She therefore had no conscious knowledge of what she had written. Some months later, however, in 1909, her prediction of a short career and terrible death was unexpectedly fulfilled when her hairdresser allowed some drops of an antiseptic lotion made of mineral essences to fall on a lighted stove, instantly enveloping Muza in flames. Her hair and clothing set alight, she was severely burned and tragically died in hospital a few hours later.17

    Hypnosis has been successfully employed for psychokinetic purposes as well. Take American Ted Serios, the “thoughtographer” born in 1918 who could create colour pictures on unexposed film simply through sheer will and intention while he stared into the lens of a Polaroid camera. His talent grew out of a DIY hypnosis experiment with a friend (a fellow bellhop at the Chicago Conrad Hilton Hotel) who instructed Serios under hypnosis that he could take photos of the contents of his mind. And thereafter, so he could – somewhat erratically, mind you. (Serios was tested extensively under controlled conditions.)

    Interestingly, Serios had to work himself virtually into a state of rage to be effective during these experiments. Notably, Israeli “paranormalist” Uri Geller has been able to achieve similar feats, taking photos of himself on high-speed black and white film through a solid black lens cap. Dr. Chris Humphrey explains this is due to quantum tunnelling: if the quantum de Broglie probability wave exists on both sides of a barrier, then its particle (photons in this case) can sometimes be on one side, and sometimes on the other, without ever passing through the barrier.18

    PK: Set Your Intent, Let Go & “Let God”

    During his first stay at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI – now Stanford Research Institute International), Ingo Swann worked on experiments with physicist Hal Puthoff, who was making forays into researching psi ability. This example demonstrates that we can and do interact with matter via our minds, whether we intend to consciously or not (and even under pressure and in the presence of sceptics in this case).

    On the evening of the 6th of June 1972, Swann was asked to try to influence a magnetometer located in the basement, which he was duly escorted down to, with one catch: the magnetometer – inside a quark detector, in actual fact – was buried under five feet of concrete underneath his feet, and thus invisible to him. What was visible to the extremely chagrined Swann (who was not forewarned by Puthoff of the nature of the experiment) was a chart recorder with its pen slowly tracing out a graceful wavy line. It was “monitoring the magnetic stability of the magnetometer and had been doing so for some weeks without any change in the rhythmic fluctuations,” Swann recalls. “The whole of this contraption was encased in an aluminium container and insulating copper canister. As well, it was in a supercooled, hence superconducting shield.” The Josephson junction inside the detector would detect any variation of magnetic flux in the supercooled equipment and the effect would show up as a change in the steady sine wave recording on the chart which they could all see.

    Swann started “probing” mentally to see if he could identify the expensive underground device, and when he sensed some “metallic differences” he tried to affect them, stating so as he went along. With all eyes glued on the sine wave, Swann attempted several times to perturb the well-shielded system, but to no avail. Insisting that he could see something, Swann proposed that sketching it out might assist the process. When no paper could be found to draw on, Puthoff suggested he draw directly onto the chart paper. “So I sketched a this, and then a that: ‘Is this the Josephson junction?’ I asked. ‘If so, I think I can see it quite well’.”

    With that comment, the ink pen gave a tiny jerk, and then stopped momentarily. Then it lifted up above its previous pattern, and “somewhat above this it wobbled along for no less than about TEN SECONDS – long enough for two wavy line intervals to have occurred.”19

    The point here is that when the distortion in the sine wave took place Swann was not trying to affect the equipment – he was simply trying to sketch what he could see with his mind’s eye. In those moments where his volitional mind was distracted and his goal momentarily suspended, the desired outcome occurred effortlessly. In laboratory tests with PK in ordinary people (Swann is known to be a gifted psychic, though more in the realm of remote viewing than PK), effects often fail to appear until the subject has their attention diverted.20 This is something that astral traveller Sylvan Muldoon wrote of some 80 years ago, explaining that charging the mind with desire or intent creates “stress” for which the mind seeks an outlet or release via a part of the subconscious he called the cryptoconscious Will: “Then [it] gets a chance to work on the ‘stress,’ and that which you had given up trying to attain ‘materialises’!”21

    Tips for Development

    • Open your mind to the possibility that psi can work for you
    • Believe in yourself
    • Operate in a peaceful state of heart-based coherence for receptive psi (such as receiving a telepathic signal)
    • Remove yourself from distractions and hostile or sceptical parties whose chaotic energy fields may negatively influence your own
    • Meditate for psi development (the more the better). If you can participate in a group of people with a mutual interest in their perceptual development, then all the better. I used to attend a trance mediumship group – not necessarily because I wanted to “channel,” but it did accelerate my clairvoyant development. The coherent group energy will heighten and refine your own through a “quantum additive” effect, accelerating your development. When I stopped attending the group my nascent clairvoyant faculties unfortunately regressed back to square one.
    • For PK, a less passive, more aroused state of heightened emotion may be desirable. If you want to bend spoons or change the weather it might help to get fired up!
    • Eliminate psi-negative beliefs at the conscious level by being well informed on the reality of the psi faculties (reading my book TGI 1 will definitely achieve that goal).
    • Eliminate subconscious negative (psi-blocking) beliefs through techniques such as Psyche-K and perhaps also EFT.
    • Try letting go and “getting out of the way.” Sometimes your intention has a way of manifesting when you direct your attention on to something else, or, as some have put it, when you “let go and let God.” Try setting your intention, letting the thought go, and trusting that the deed will be done.
    • A slightly different tactic: be grateful in advance that your attempt has already been successful. “All great masters know in advance that the deed has been done.” The aether/vacuum doesn’t “do” linear time. It only “knows” the present moment. Thus, what is true for you in the present is what will continually present itself to you until that truth changes.
    • If you want to design experiments or tests for receptive/perceptual psi, find ways to make it novel, interesting, and meaningful to you personally. Avoid boredom at all costs!
    • Practise some form of pranayama (yogic breathing) on a daily basis for maximal development of your health and psychic faculties.

    You can read more about this subject matter in Brendan Murphy’s book The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis Of Science And Spirituality – Book 1, available for purchase at www.brendandmurphy.net.
    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 2.[/alert]

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    Footnotes

    1. Extraordinary States, www.bethcoleman.net/gamma.html.

    2. D. Church, The Genie in Your Genes, Energy Psychology Press, 2009, 99.

    3. Extraordinary States.

    4. L. Watson, Supernature, Coronet Books, Hodder Paperbacks Ltd, 1974, 139-40.

    5. J.D. LaMoth & L.F. Maire III (Defence Intelligence Agency), Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research, 1975.

    6. See B.D. Murphy, The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science & Spirituality Vol. 1, Balboa Press, 2013.

    7. I. Swann, Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh9.html

    8. Who is Mario Varvoglis?, www.parapsych.org/members/m_varvoglis.html.

    9. H. Wilkins & Harold Sherman, Thoughts Through Space, Hampton Roads, 2004, xx.

    10. Thoughts Through Space, xxi.

    11. C.G. Jung, Synchronicity, First Princeton/Bollingen Paperback Edition, 1973, 18.

    12. Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff, Mind-Reach, Hampton Roads, 2005, 11.

    13. Thoughts Through Space, 129.

    14. Supernature, 260.

    15. P.M.H. Atwater, The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences, Hampton Roads, 2007, 340.

    16. M. Grosso, Experiencing the Next World Now, Paraview Pocket Books, 2004, 27-8.

    17. C. Wilson, The Occult, Watkins Publishing, 2004, 127-8.

    18. C. Humphrey, UFOs, Psi and Spiritual Evolution, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2004.

    19. I. Swann, The Varian Hall of Physics, www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh37.html.

    20. Supernature, op. cit., 151-2.

    21. S. Muldoon & Hereward Carrington, The Projection of the Astral Body, Rider Books, 1992.

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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  • Quest for the People of the Secret

    Quest for the People of the Secret

    From New Dawn 74 (Sept-Oct 2002)

    A persistent legend originating in the East tells of hidden locations on the Earth where there exists certain groups of individuals with both exceptional powers and highly perfected character and consciousness. From these secret locations, they influence the whole of humanity and are known variously as the Hierarchy of Adepts, the Great White Lodge, the Secret Chiefs, the Great White Brotherhood, the Masters, or The People of the Secret.

    In the biblical legend of the Three Wise Men from the East, we find one of the earliest spiritual archetypes and one of the best known written references to this Eastern legend. Researchers have openly argued the Eastern influence in Biblical writings for the best part of the twentieth century, but the appearance of the mysterious three wise men in the Gospel of Matthew is perhaps the first and most obvious example of Eastern legend in early scripture. Described as “men who studied the stars”, these travellers, “came from the east to Jerusalem” to meet the infant messiah.

    …Herod called the visitors from the east to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.1

    Herod consulted his own high priests and teachers of his kingdom on this matter to no avail, and afforded the three wise men great respect and reverence in requesting a private meeting with them. Little else is said of the men before they returned to their homeland following a warning by an angel that it was dangerous to cooperate with Herod. The concept of three mysterious teachers is an older element of Eastern culture certainly in circulation prior to and throughout the time of Jesus.

    In the 19th century, the French diplomat Louis Jacolliot wrote a number of remarkable works on the ancient legends of India during his posting in the East. During this time, he uncovered the Legend of the Nine Unknowns. According to this legend, a secret society of these Nine Unknowns was created by the Indian Emperor Asoka in 273 BC, in an attempt to encapsulate all human knowledge of the time, and ensure that it was governed by those incapable of misuse. Apparently the martial art of Judo is the result of a “leak” from the physiological teachings of the Unknowns.

    Researchers traced the transmission of this legend through Talbot Mundy, the English novelist who travelled extensively through India. It is thought that portions of this legend filtered through to the West during the Crusades from various secret and semisecret Islamic traditions. Perhaps this legend had an influence on the foundation story of the Knights Templar, an order begun by nine knights who have since been revered as holders of the knowledge of the ancients.

    The Hidden Directorate

    The term “Hidden Directorate” was coined by British author Ernest Scott in his classic work The People of the Secret, in which he makes a strong argument for the reality of an assembly or hierarchy of adepts. Initially, the book reads like a history of occult and esoteric tradition, eventually becoming more complex by presenting very clearly, and at times quite influentially, an alternative “theoretical history” of the world’s spiritual heritage.

    In tracing the tradition of esoteric thought throughout time, it is possible to find a pattern of movement in certain groups and individuals. This movement seems to be working in a particular direction concerned with freeing the consciousness of humanity. Scott’s work operates from certain premises.

    Firstly, History is not the equilibrant of chance and hazard. The plan for human history was written long ago, and is monitored constantly. Part of this process is ensuring that certain gains are attained to ensure the balance and evolution of man and life as a whole, the direction of which is “the Will of God.” The responsibility for this process on Earth lies with an intelligence called the Hidden Directorate. Below this level, members of ordinary humanity are in touch with the Directorate, and may at times share its consciousness.

    This group of advanced human individuals is what has been referred to as the Hidden Executive. It is the reality behind all legends of ‘masters’ and ‘initiates’ from earliest historical times to the present.2

    Scott claims the existence of several centres employed by the Executive, one of which is, or was, in Afghanistan, and corresponds to the legend of the Markaz or “Powerhouse.” Those under a chain of command from the Afghanistan centre have been known as “Sufis,” and from this base and others around the world, the Executive works to implement the overall plan of the Directorate.

    The aim of this process is to instigate the patterns and intellectual movements that will orient people to higher evolutionary states. Scott asserts that this unified theory of history is impossible if our search is limited to the “visible shadows and not the invisible substance”.

    The concept of a Hidden Directorate guiding the affairs of mankind can itself be traced as a subtle thread throughout the world’s spiritual and esoteric heritage. The early civilisations of Greece acquaint us with Mount Olympus, home to the pantheon of hidden Gods who constantly meddle in the lives of unfortunate mortals. Homer’s epic work, The Illiad, depicts how the war between the Greeks and the Trojans was decided by a war in Heaven, and the death of the epic hero, Achilles, was also determined by the same divine judges. Prior to these oral legends, another was recorded in stone and considered one of the oldest pieces of literature in history. Entitled The Epic of Gilgamesh, it relates the story of a true epic king, Gilgamesh, and clearly outlines the effect of an unseen divine community upon the daily life of the king and his people.

    Many researchers have wrongly likened the Hidden Directorate to subversive societies like the Illuminati. Rather than being an exterior, politically-oriented centre for control, the Directorate is more concerned with the inner dimension of human development, which may or may not be discernible to the general mind.

    By reintroducing the theory of “ancient wisdom guarded by hidden custodians or Masters”, Scott argues for a benevolent group that maintains a key influence over people of the world’s cultures, implanting key ideas and initiating experiences, “in a sacred, secular, or whatever context is required for the time, place and people.”3 They exist for the good of humanity and exist to override the sinister forces keeping man from achieving his true spiritual potential and right.

    It is important to understand that the Directorate seeks not to control, but to direct or influence humanity. Due to the higher natures apparent in man, he cannot be blindly lead, only prompted into action by creating certain opportunities at certain times, and implanting particular ideas. The power of man’s free will cannot be overrun.

    The French poet and esotericist Maurice Magre writes in the epilogue of his book The Return of the Magi:

    There have been men whose names are unknown because they cared little for fame, and truth radiated from them without knowing it. There have been revealers who were unaware of the revelation that was in them; modest sages who mingled their wisdom with their daily life… We have all of us met, at least once in our lives, one of these unheralded initiators, and received from them a priceless gift, by a kindly word, a certain look of sadness, a sincere expression in the eyes.4

    Sufism

    Sufism is a term originally used by Western orientalists to describe the mystical path of Islam, otherwise called tasawwuf by Muslims. In reality, this tradition existed long before Islam and forms a foundation for much of the world’s collective religion and ancient thought. The Directorate itself is part of many Sufi legends including those throughout Tibet involving the mythical inner kingdom of the planet known as Shambhala. Scott argues that the Sufi influence is a common thread connecting the entire history of Europe, and that its beginnings can be traced from Spain and from the Middle East.

    By the early eighth century, Cordoba, Spain, saw several schools of Sufi Initiates forming under the cover of Islam. Working in a fashion similar to the Western mystics during the later Inquisition, these individuals walked a fine line to heresy, occasionally crossing that line into the view of officialdom.

    As a result there were numerous Sufi martyrs, including Mansur el Hallaj (858–922) who claimed the importance of Jesus as a member of the chain of Initiates. He openly taught Sufi concepts, and was eventually dismembered alive by the Muslim Inquisition. As he died, he prayed for the souls of his murderers.

    Despite their persecution by the growing Muslim establishment, the Sufis continued an unbroken line of their wisdom and methods in a careful transmission between different secret brotherhoods or orders. Known as Tariqas, these groups acted as caretakers of the continuous line of knowledge.

    During this time a particular work arrived in Spain from Basra, and is known as the Basra Encyclopaedia. Held by the Sufi initiates, it is a coded written book of all world knowledge. It arrived in the first half of the 11th century either through the Sufi known as El Majriti, or his pupil, El Karmani. The encyclopaedia was chiefly concerned with the inner development of man, and the forms of knowledge that could develop in Europe. The actions of the underground Sufi movement in Spain preceding the 12th century was the first strategic effort from the Directorate to inject influence into Europe.

    Objectives of the Directorate

    It would seem that the movement of the Directorate involved five clear objectives. The first was quite obviously the injection of an intellectual component into the heart of Europe. This end was achieved through increasing philosophical and intellectual speculation through the advancement and appearance of Eastern mathematics. Another instrument was the introduction of the Kabbala into the Western consciousness around the year 1000.

    The developmental secret hinted at by the alchemists was incorporated into many forms from painting to architecture, and the true nature of the Gothic cathedrals as blueprints for human alchemy became realised in certain quarters. These elements continued to be reproduced as part of an esoteric tradition through various esoteric schools. Aspects of secret cathedral design remained a busy focus of research, particularly the complex structures left throughout key points of Europe.

    It is beyond doubt that some very significant material was introduced under the eyes of the official Church authority and that unwittingly they even approved much of this material, completely unaware of the hidden nature contained. An example was the commission of El Greco to paint “Burial of Count Orgaz” for the Catholic Church. Appearing to be another devotional work, it contains a few notable differences separating it from the usual.

    Its composition can, however, be dissected to show reincarnation concepts, something like the equivalence of consciousness and sexual energy and the plurality of ‘I’s’ in a human personality. These are not concepts which an ordinary clerical sponsor would have approved had he known of them.5

    The second objective was the establishment of certain modalities that could support the dissemination of knowledge on the basis of initiation. The instruments of modality were various, but survived in what would be now called Illuminism and Freemasonry, which combined as one of the most influential forces on world politics.

    It is claimed that Illuminism was injected into Europe from the school of Ibn Masarra (883–931) in Cordoba, a centre of underground Sufi teaching, while Freemasonry derives from the Knights Templar, a particularly powerful order that enabled Sufism to travel from the East to Europe through interaction with pilgrims and mystics in the Holy Land. They were initiated in rituals originally from the school of Hiram Abif, the builder of Solomon’s Temple, where they acquired their namesake. The order was later condemned and their leader burned alive in 1314 as a heretic. The Templars were the prototype for nearly every esoteric society to come afterwards.

    The publication of the mysterious Rosicrucian document Fama Fraternitatis in 1614 saw the open suggestion of the existence of certain “unknown superiors” or “Brothers of the Rosy Cross” who live and work in secret and yet direct much of the spiritual destiny of the world. Becoming part of the core belief system of many Western esotericists, this concept and the associated transmissions from these “hidden masters” melded with diverse strands of existing legend, and by the nineteenth century the foundations for a major unfolding of the adeptic myth were laid. The philosophy as a movement was accelerated through the efforts of Theosophy, without which the entire myth would probably have remained forever in obscurity.

    Much later in modern times, organisations like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn did a great amount to further the Directorate’s goals throughout the West. In an age where magic attracted many of the keenest minds of the day, the Golden Dawn was a virtual melting-pot of personalities. The self-styled leader, MacGregor Mathers, claimed to be in direct contact with the Secret Masters, and used this influence over the majority of his followers including the poet W.B. Yeats and a young Aleister Crowley. In many ways, this order was a catalyst for the introduction of thousands into the area of Eastern magic and philosophy.

    The third objective of the Directorate was the introduction of a subtler shade to the concept of love, which recovered the dying mystery tradition of female or goddess reverence. This concept of love was introduced through the Troubadour movement of the Middle Ages. While restoring the feminine element lost in Pauline Christianity, it also recovered the traditions of pagan and, in particular, Egyptian thought, creating the Cult of Virgin Mary. This cult continues to be suppressed to all extents by the Catholic Church. The appearance of statues of the Black Madonna is another permutation, which implicitly suggests the Mary/Isis, and hence the Horus/Jesus concept of shared heritage and myth. In many ways, these statues are indicators of various awakened communities and the Sufi realisation that all true religions are one.

    The fourth objective was to establish a “psychokinetic technique whereby certain individuals, working perhaps in pairs, could increase their level of conscious energy.” This was enabled through the appearance of the technique of alchemy which, under the guise of base metal transmutation, outlined the course for the transmutation of the soul and increasing the level of conscious energy.

    The Transmittants

    The last objective of the Directorate for the Middle Ages was the act of securing an immediate development through specific individuals who have the ability to influence their society and its future for the good of humanity. These men chosen by the Directorate were capable of making a deep impression on their age, and they contributed material that had a quality of persistence in various guises through many centuries.

    The earliest alchemists were probably “knowers”. They had learned techniques which gave them access to an enhanced level of awareness. From this level they knew the inner content of religion. They discovered that all true religions are one.6

    These men were concerned with achieving particular evolutionary gains in the 12th and 13th centuries, regardless of whether they operated under the cover of Islam or Christianity. To declare that Christianity and Islam contained an inner truth overlaid by dogma and politics would have been considered heresy, and as Scott argues, these men “knew they had to build a bridge, but it so happened that bridge-building was illegal. The bridge builders had to pretend they were engaged in some other activity – like digging holes in the road. Not unnaturally, the holes were incomprehensible to their contemporaries and have remained largely so ever since.”7

    One of these individuals may have been Albertus Magnus, the Count of Bollstadt (1206–1280) and one of the earliest European alchemists. He refused to believe that knowledge ended with Aristotle, and was one of those challenging and ambivalent intellects that sought to break out of any conceivable cage that may limit its movement. His independent thought and liberated writing did much to raise his name across Europe, drawing numerous young, hungry scholars to his personal teaching. One such scholar was Thomas Aquinas.

    Legend has it that Magnus over the course of thirty years constructed a “talking head” and a complete artificial man. Idries Shah claims that “making a head” is a Sufi code phrase for a particular method of inner development, keeping with the stories of Magnus’ apparently obsessive attention to occultism, and his otherworldly powers of the mind. He is said to have commanded “instantaneous hypnotism”, an example of which is the story of his dinner party to whom he invited a minor royal family of Europe. It was mid-winter and he held the party in open air. When his guests entered the yard, the snow disappeared, the grass grew green and fruit appeared on the trees. As soon as the glorious dinner was finished, the perfect scene vanished, and the party found itself shivering and covered in snow. Clearly an extremely adept alchemist, his strange abilities and coded writings eventually earned him a wide regard. Throughout his time, Magnus was spoken of as holding a great amount of hidden knowledge in his grasp that seemed a great burden to him. It has been suggested that this knowledge may have been passed onto his pupil, Thomas Aquinas, later Saint Thomas Aquinas.

    Aquinas left university in Naples, much to the annoyance of his family, to join the same order of Dominican monks that his teacher Magnus was a part. For the next three years, he studied under Magnus and emerged “a philosopher and alchemist.” In 1256 he travelled to Paris, where he attained the seat of Master of Paris University.

    He began his post with the aim of assembling all world knowledge into a single encyclopaedia, quite similar to the Sufi Basra Encyclopaedia. He considered that both Reason and Faith were concerned with the same object. The former starts with sense-data and attains to a knowledge of the existence, goodness and will of God. The latter rests on revelation. Each requires the taking into account of the knowledge arrived at by the other. The Church took a quick and decisive stand against this notion, feeling “Rationalism” had gone too far in the European mindset and education system.

    Aquinas’ writings were condemned by the Church, particularly by the Bishop of Paris and two successive Archbishops of Canterbury. The basic concepts of Aquinas, namely that the human soul is “a single substantial form of the human body” was viewed as an attack on doctrine. The sorest point, however, was that the writings implicitly suggested a system, inspired by and derived from the new translations of Aristotle into the European languages, a self-sufficient view of man and the universe, not reliant on the teachings of the Church. This was probably the single most important reason for the suppression of Thomas Aquinas that followed, but not before he managed to inject the Sufi impulse into European thought and education.

    Both Magnus and Aquinas were engaged, it seems, in a perilous exercise of hunting with hounds and running with hares.

    They probably knew, because of their contact with a genuine esoteric source, that “known” truth and theological dogma need not, by any means, coincide. They were probably engaged in trying to reintroduce the original developmental force of Christianity, while gently diluting the organisational accretions which had all but smothered it.8

    If men like Magnus and Aquinas were in touch with an aspect of the Directorate, they would be capable of generating the effect required on their contemporaries and environment. Historically, it would seem that the effort failed. Yet behind the scenes much must have been achieved. “There is evidence that at the deepest levels of Sufi secrecy there is a mutual communication with the mystics of the Christian West,” says Idries Shah.

    Contemporary with Aquinas was Roger Bacon (1214–292). Renown for his eccentricity and genius, he wore Arab dress at Oxford and was considered to “make women of devils and juggle cats into costermongers”. He is also remembered as one of the greatest intellects of the period.

    After becoming a Franciscan monk in 1247, his views on almost everything brought him into conflict with the established cleric. He had in mind the formation of a vast encyclopaedia of all world knowledge, and in a secret letter to the Pope suggested that the Church should centralise this enterprise. This pattern suggests that one of the strongest elements of Sufi evolution is the realisation of this “World Encyclopaedia”, begun in Basra. This is argued as the platform from which the Directorate is planning the next stage of action for future centuries. Apparently in this instance, the Pope misunderstood the letter and thinking that the encyclopaedia already existed, expressed his interest in seeing it. Bacon then decided to write it himself.

    He worked diligently without the knowledge of his superiors, and in an amazingly short period of time he produced three monumental pieces, the Opus Major, Opus Minor and Opus Tertium. Each outlined a scheme for research and experimentation in languages, mathematics, optics, alchemy and astronomy. The Pope, Clement IV, died in 1268 before reading the works, taking with him Bacon’s dream of introducing the esoteric and natural sciences to the universities of Europe.

    Bacon professed to believe that the totality of human knowledge and possibilities was contained in the Bible; but unlike his contemporaries he did not believe that the Bible was an open book. To understand it, a certain kind of inner study was necessary and this involved a knowledge of alchemy, astrology and magic.9

    Bacon was quite clearly engaged in secretly building a bridge between the outward and exoteric side of Christianity and its true esoteric nature that was disappearing under the weight of dogma. He was clearly on dangerous ground, eventually paying for his views with a 14 year prison sentence in his own monastery.

    He openly cited the teachings of the Sufi master Suhrawardi, in particular his work “Wisdom of Illumination.” Suhrawardi claimed that his philosophy was that of the inner teaching of all the ancients – Greek, Persian and Egyptian.

    It was the science of Light and through it man could attain to a state about which he could not normally even dream. Bacon repeated this claim and declared that the same secret had been held by Noah, Abraham, the Chaldean and Egyptian masters, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Socrates and the Sufis.10

    Many researchers recognise that Bacon was in touch with some genuine esoteric source, and like Nostradamus and Odhar centuries later, Bacon was subject to strange visions and prophecies in which he described in the plainest possible detail the motor car, the aeroplane, submarine and the cantilever bridge, and numerous other inventions which are only making sense to us now. His visions and inventions are still secretly discussed throughout the modern world.

    The Search for the Source

    The legend of the Directorate is one of those few lasting for countless centuries, in a surprisingly unchanged form. While it has moved throughout cultures, great and obvious care has been taken to assure careful and clear transmission. Offering great implications for the world, it actually offers many more for the individual. In its Sufi leaning and origin, it presents perhaps the closest form of a unified world religion, and a definite course for the realisation of humanity’s potential. It may be that matters will never be more explicit than they are now, and that a successful search for a Source, as Scott says, is – and always has been – the minimum price of admission.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 74.[/alert]

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    Recommended Reading: People of the Secret by Ernest Scott, Meetings With Remarkable Men by G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky, The Templars and the Assassins by James Wasserman, The Sufis by Idries Shah.

    Footnotes

    1. Gospel of Matthew, GN Bible (New York: Collins, 1976)
    2. Ernest Scott, The People of the Secret (London: Octagon Press, 1983).
    3. Richard Holmes Jr, Critique Magazine
    4. Maurice Magre, The Return of the Magi, trans. Reginald Merton (London: Sphere Books, 1975), pp. 223-24.
    5. Scott, p.119
    6. Scott, p.123
    7. Scott, p.123
    8. Scott, p.118
    9. Scott, p. 121
    10. Scott, p. 121

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