The Maya of Science 4

The Maya of Science 4

One of the great disappointments of esoteric practice is that discovering reality is your own creation does not give you the power to change it permanently. However much physics you read, however many mystical writings you study, the world remains stubbornly solid. In theory, you should be able to build your next home by thinking it into existence. In practice, you still have to lay the bricks like anybody else. 

What creates such an enduring semblance of solidity? The answer seems to be consensus. The world is what a majority of its inhabitants agree it to be. The consensus view is taught from earliest childhood - babies are literally trained to see their environment in a particular way. This 'consensus' view is reinforced throughout the remainder of your life. The mechanics of maintaining the illusion quickly become unconscious. Before you know it, you are trapped in a dream that will last until the day you die. 

All the same, the insight that the world is a dream state can be useful. It indicates that, at its most fundamental, the universe doesn't obey the rules of rational physics - as the physicists have now discovered.

It obeys the laws of psychology. 


Magical use of Thought Forms
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, J.H. Brennan

The Maya of Science 3

The Maya of Science 3

The problem as quantum mechanics discovered , is that particles aren't actually particles. A particle is a tiny lump of something, like a miniature cannonball. But subatomic particles don't always behave like little cannonballs. They sometimes behave like waves. And it seems that subatomic particles aren't either waves or cannonballs - they're both at the same time. 

As techniques improved and physicists started finding smaller and smaller particles, the hunt went on for the ultimate particle. This ultimate particle would, of course, be the building block of all other particles, just as the atom was the building block of matter.

 They didn't find it. There was no ultimate particle. If you went down deep enough into an atom, there was nothing at all!

This is so bizarre most people still find it hard to believe, but according to the very best investigations of the very best theory physicists have ever developed, the world of matter is made out of absolutely nothing (No-thing).

That's not another way of saying it's made out of energy (which it is), because energy is made out of absolutely nothing, too. In their most fundamental form, energy (the wave) and matter (the particle) arise out of a void. Another word for energy might be consciousness (an awareness of being). 

It's bad enough to be told that if you look deeply enough into the world there's nothing there. It's even worse to learn that its apparent stability is purely statistical. Assuming you exist right now, there's a very good chance you will continue to exist in a second from now. But it's only a chance. There are small, but very real, odds that you will stop existing altogether, and this applies to your house, your town, your country, your world...even the entire universe. At any given moment, it's odds on that the universe will exist, but it is not a certainty. 

While scientists were still reeling from those discoveries, quantum mechanics produced another surprise from up its sleeve. This was the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, based on the discovery that you could measure the speed of a particle or you could measure its position, but you couldn't measure both. The reason turned out to be as bizarre as anything Lewis Carroll ever wrote. It was the act of observation that screwed things up. Just looking at the particle influenced its behavior. Therefore a mental interaction can, at bedrock level, change the nature of reality. The conclusion is inescapable. Science has demonstrated what Buddhism has always taught: we inhabit a world of illusion or as they called it...maya. 

Specifically, we inhabit a thought form. 

to be continued...

Magical use of Thought Forms
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, J.H. Brennan


 

The Maya of Science 2

The Maya of Science 2

In the early 1930s, an experiment in quantum physics showed - yet again! – that the world was not what it seemed. There were two ways of interpreting the results of this experiment (which revolved around the paths taken by subatomic particles). The first one suggested that the parallel realities predicted by relativity theory were not far away beyond a Black Hole in some distant galaxy, but right beside us as we speak. In fact, according to this explanation, we weave in and out of parallel universes all the time, depending on which of a whole series of possibilities we realize.

The second explanation was a lot more far-fetched. It postulated that an act of observation could cause the universe to split in two, allowing for the emergence of two conflicting possibilities. The split universe would reform onto a single unit once a ``decision`` was made about which of the possibilities became actual.

The second, more far-fetched theory is accepted by a majority of physicists today, a measure of how far the findings of quantum mechanics differ from common sense. But if experiments like this have shown that reality works very differently to the way we perceive it, they still do not dismiss reality as illusional. That had to wait for new ways of examining the subatomic world. 

Since the days of the ancient Greeks, philosophers and later scientists believed matter to consist of atoms - tiny building blocks particles that were as small a lump of reality as it was possible to get. Consequently, by definition, you couldn't split an atom. 

But it turned out this wasn't so. Although atoms certainly were the building blocks of matter, they could be - and eventually were - split. What scientists thought they found inside was even smaller bits of matter. these were labelled subatomic particles: little bits of stuff that were smaller than an atom. Figuring out subatomic particles was a tricky business. many of them were invisible not just to the naked eye, not just to optical microscopes, but invisible by definition. 

Normally you see something because light bounces off it. But it turned out that light is not rays, as the early pioneers believed. We now know light itself is composed of subatomic particles (called photons). And light is just too grainy for some of the things scientists are interested in looking at. A light particle, instead of bouncing off, will knock any particle smaller than itself out of the way.  

Technicians eventually developed something called an electron microscope, which didn't use light at all, but recorded the result of bouncing electrons - which are smaller than photons - off the thing the thing they wanted to look at. This worked very well very well, but only to a point. Physicists insisted on finding sub-atomic particles that were even smaller than electrons. 

to be continued...

 
Magical use of Thought Forms
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, J.H. Brennan

The Maya of Science

The Maya of Science

When Albert Einstein published his ‘General Theory of Relativity’ in 1916, it revolutionized the way physics looked at the world and it began a massive change in the way science understands reality.

The two aspects of relativity theory that triggered the change were Einstein's insights into the nature of time and his prediction of the existence of Black Holes. Time, like the external world, was something everybody experienced but its nature was something of a mystery. Einstein discovered it didn't exist in its own right as something distinct and separate. Instead, his mathematics told him that time was just an aspect of what we'd always thought of as space. So born was the term, 'spacetime continuum', which indicated that space and time could no longer be considered different things but were actually parts of a greater unit. This meant that one part of our experience - time - was not only indirect but it was wrong outright.  

Since the days of Isaac Newton, gravity had been associated with matter. Wherever you had a lump of matter anywhere in the universe, you had gravity as well. The bigger the lump, the greater the gravity. What Einstein's investigations showed was that when you had a really big lump of matter - more than three times bigger than our sun - the gravity associated with it would be so strong that the matter would begin to collapse in on itself. Einstein's calculations showed that if the original lump of matter was big enough, the lump didn't end up smaller and more compact but instead disappeared altogether. In its place you had a sort of gravity well, an area of space where gravity was so powerful it sucked everything in from its immediate surroundings...even light. This cosmic vacuum cleaner was quickly dubbed a Black Hole.

Einstein's calculations indicated that if you could pass through a Black Hole, you would enter a completely new spacetime continuum...a parallel universe. Although the discovery totally annihilated our commonsense view of reality, back in 1916 it was little more than a mathematical construct that had little to do with the price of beans. So people in time slowly slid back into the old habit of thinking of reality as the objective world, the one that they could see, touch and feel with their senses.

to be continued...

 
Magical use of Thought Forms
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, J.H. Brennan

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry


By Walt Whitman

1
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

3
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.

4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same—others who look back on me because I look’d forward to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receiv’d identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.

6
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,

Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

7
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?

8
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter?

What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?

We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?

9
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!

Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one’s head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung out divinest aromas,
Thrive, cities—bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

A Short Course in Meta-Physics

A Short Course in Meta-Physics

everything in my world is a manifestation of the mental activity which goes on within me

Neville Goddard

Modern science (Quantum Physics) reveals matter to be empty space with a few tiny particles in it. The particles are energy phenomena. There is no “stuff” in the universe; it is all made out of energy. As quantum physics explores the nature of energy, some fascinating qualities come to light. For example, in observing a “particle” it is impossible to determine both its momentum and its location at the same time, because the very act of observing a characteristic of that particle causes it to leap out of the probable state and become actual. All other characteristics of that particle are still merely probabilities at that moment. To put it another way, energy has certain tendencies. The moment we look for one of those tendencies, it manifests itself, while all other tendencies remain latent. One might say that energy knows when it is being watched, and it behaves to fulfill our expectations. Energy responds to us. It is conscious. Maybe a better way of putting it is to say that energy is consciousness.

According to modern physics, although our world appears real and solid, it is actually an insubstantial realm whose features shift according to the psyche of the person who is observing it.

My favourite metaphysical writer is Neville Goddard who wrote for years that this physical world we seem to live in is actually just a shadow world which is only created by the inner assumptions of the person observing it. In other words we create are own reality just as Seth stated years ago.

What does all of this have to do with the stock market? Everything, if you think the market is rigged or that it is very difficult to learn and you can never make money in it. You are basically cursing yourself into a belief that will be created in the outside world you observe. Pay attention to what you tell yourself in your own mind. Observe your own thinking, for how you think is what you will create for yourself.


Plant Spirit Medicine
Eliot Cowan

The Self in the Modern World

The Self in the Modern World

Chances are that when you were very young, you lived in the fullness of spirit most of the time...If you are an adult, chances are that nowadays these experiences are rare enough to be memorable. What happened to you? Somehow your heart was broken, or you became insecure, or your self-esteem was shattered, or you were smitten by fear or anger. These terrible events, whatever they were, wounded your spirit.

Eliot Cowan

We are hybrid beings, made up of body, mind, and soul. The body and mind are limited to this lifetime while the soul is eternal. The soul has an agenda and is using the body and mind as a way to interface with the physical world to set its agenda.

When we are born, we are pure soul in the body of new born baby. Over the next 21 years we are programmed to be able to function in the world and in our society. We download programs from our family, school, religious groups, peers and endless media sources; all that programming stands between the soul we really are and the world we live in. By the time we are adults, we are convinced that we are our programming.

From birth to age three and a half we begin to make the transition from a purely spirit-being to a physical spirit/human hybrid. We learn what is real according to this plane of existence. We learn what to believe in, especially from our parents. We develop beliefs surrounding who we are and what is expected of us. We learn how we should treat others and how we deserve to be treated. These beliefs lay the foundation for everything else that follows and for the rest of our lives.

From ages three and a half to seven, we learn all about our emotions. Emotions are things that compel us to act. Love and courage as well as things like avarice, avoidance, desire, anger, jealousy, over-indulgence, pride/entitlement are things that are developed within us during this period. We also write many of the emotional programs that are designed to defend the beliefs we established between birth to age three and a half. This is the period where we hold much of the pain and hurt from the circumstances of our youth, along with our joy and wonder.

From ages seven to fourteen, we learn about feelings. Feelings are different from emotions in that feelings are sensations of the mind, while emotions move us to actions. Feelings are intuited observations. Emotions are enormous behavioural programs that dictate what we do. Feelings are smaller programs that dictate what we sense and feel in certain situations.

During this phase, we feel “vibes”, along with things like friendliness, warmth, fondness and apprehension. We learn the programs for what we like and don’t like. What we feel is creepy or what we feel is enjoyable. What we learn in this period supports the emotional programming we went through in the previous period (ages three and a half to seven). It defends and reflects the beliefs we hold to be true.

The final stage of development occurs from ages fourteen to twenty-one. This period is designed to deal with logic. Practicality, priority, sequencing and reason – all get loaded in during this period. It is the topmost level of consciousness and enables us to interface with the world. It is our day to day mind that gets us up in the morning, moves us through our day, and gets us back home at night.

All of these programs get loaded into us along with the earlier ones we wrote about ourselves based on our beliefs, emotions, and feelings. They are all the rules of our life until they are recognized and changed. After 21 years of loading all of these programs into our thinking, we come to believe that the programming is who we are. But who we really are is a soul having an organic human experience.

The key to uncovering the soul’s agenda, its purpose in life, is to get underneath all of the programming and indoctrination that we have been inundated with since birth. We have become both a victim of our own conditioning and the machine of the culture we live in. The programming becomes the mask we wear in the world and we come to believe we are the mask.


Seeing in the Dark
Colleen Deatsman and Paul Bowersox

A Parable from Portia Nelson

A Parable from Portia Nelson 

Chapter One of my Life...
I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.
I am lost...I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two of my Life...
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

Chapter Three of my Life...
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter Four of my Life...
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five of my Life...
I walk down another street.