The Psychic Life

ELECTRIC and magnetic affinities are generated, occult teachers say, whenever there is physical touch, the sound of a voice, or even a meaningful look.

Every action we take carries information about us and the life around us, a kind of psychic body language. We also call them ‘vibes’ – and they can be ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

The invisible transfer of information between persons, animals, trees, bacteria and brain neurons, is still largely a mystery. Even birds and bees do it. The general term today is “psi,” coined from parapsychology, and usually refers to telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception currently unexplained.

Mme. Blavatsky with her Adept Teachers authorized Three  Objects for the Theosophical Society, which included study of  this mysterious phenomena.

The First Object of the Society was “to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity,” and the Second “the study of Aryan and other Scriptures, of the World’s religion and sciences etc.,” and these are preserved by almost all Theosophical groups.

The original Third Object was also stated clearly by H. P. Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy, Section 3, published in 1889, and reads:

“To investigate the hidden mysteries of Nature under every aspect possible, and the psychic and spiritual powers latent in man especially.”

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Despite the Founder’s unambiguous wording, some Theosophical revisionists have chosen to unilaterally remove both the words “‘psychic” and “spiritual” from the last Object. Others followed suit, and today a timid, unauthorized and watered-down version is all the public sees.  How could this happen with a subject that pervades every major textbook the Teachers wrote, and hundreds of their original articles?

Telephone Telepathy

Professor Rupert Sheldrake’s fun “Telephone Telepathy” experiment demonstrates the differences between people acting as senders or receivers, illustrating W. Q. Judge’s description: “So the mind’s finger or wire flies until it gets the thought or seed-thought from the other and makes it its own.”

East-West Blend

The world will probably never be rid of snake oil scammers, psychic charlatans and money grubbing quack gurus. But due in large measure to the rise of Eastern metaphysics and occult philosophy, psychic and spiritual subjects are not only regaining popularity, but steadily improving their tarnished reputation.

Many notable artists, writers, philosophers, healers, and frontier scientific researchers are up to the challenge, and giving the subjects the rigorous attention they deserve, furthering one of the most important objectives of Theosophy.

“The universe is permeated with meaning and saturated with consciousness,” Dean Radin the senior scientist of the Institute of Noetic Science comments in the short video essay below, and feels a lot like the Third Object in modern dress. A fearless explorer, Radin asserts “We need to verify in Western terms what the mystics have been talking about for thousands of years.”

A Conscious Universe

The era of Western Occultism began with the life and work of H. P. Blavatsky, W. Q. Judge wrote. But this doesn’t mean it is opposed to Eastern Occultism. Rather, he said:

“It is to be the Western side of the one great whole of which the true Eastern is the other half.”

The Soul of Things

For many students of the occult, the facts of psi phenomena are confirmed by the rigorous experimental work of Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), followed by psychologist Cornell University’s Daryl J. Bem, and University of Edinburgh psychologist Kathy Dalton.

Both Professors Dalton and Bem have replicated studies such as the Ganzfeld experiment (Wikipedia: “a technique used in the field of parapsychology to test individuals for extrasensory perception (ESP).”)

Therefore, an impressive body of work validating psi phenomena now exists – i.e., for the unprejudiced minded.

Radin first published his findings were in his 1997 book The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, well ahead of Professor Bem. But Bem would seem to have better mainstream connections than Radin, getting his findings widely in the mainstream — also proving that insider politics can occasionally win over hardened scientific prejudices.

I’m a Skeptic

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology®, © 2010 by the prestigious American Psychological Association, recently published a paper by Professor Daryl J. Bem, the culmination of eight years’ work (download .pdf here) titled:

“Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect.”

The new study, a  rigorous parapsychological scientific investigation of psychic and clairvoyant powers, strongly suggests the fact, for many of us humans, that such powers are actually a commonplace function of our consciousness.

A Minority Report precog

Research by Bem, a respected psychologist, reveals that seeing into the future may be something many humans do naturally and without prompting.

The results were also published in the major social science journal, New Scientist – (Article: “Is this evidence that we can see the future?”) – and created a tsunami in the mainstream scientific world — a closeted realm that has always rejected the assertions of ‘psi,’ telepathy, ESP and clairvoyance as ‘junk science.’

Myth of Junk DNA

Recall the recent heated debate over “junk DNA?” More than 98 percent of all DNA, was called “Junk DNA” by molecular biologists, because they were unable to ascribe any function to it. They ‘assumed’ that it was just “molecular garbage.”

Increasing evidence is now indicating that this DNA is not “junk” at all. “Especially, it has been found to have various regulatory roles,” says Jaan Suurkula M.D. “This means that this so-called ‘non-coding DNA’ influences the behavior of the genes, the ‘coding DNA,’ in important ways.”

Eyes Have It

The eyes especially, called the windows of the soul, function both intramissively (receive energy)– and extramissively, (project energy.)

Plato, for example, said that vision occurs when light comes out of the eye and hits objects outside. Thus, eyes are light producers.

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According to Western science “no energy at all is allowed to come out of your eye,” says Dr. Ross, a psychiatrist, in a paper examining human energy fields.

Western science is “absolutely locked down on this,” he says — “no energy of any kind is allowed to come out of your eye.”

This dual function of the eyes, proved by the experiments of Dr. Colin A. Ross MD,  is a primary explanation for Rupert Sheldrake’s findings on”the sense of being stared at.

Dr. Ross explains in
this video clip:

The Pattern Body

These energetic transmissions are felt through the medium of what the ancients called the “aether,” and modern Theosophy refers to as the “astral light” —

… and what many frontier scientists today are calling “the field” or “the matrix.”

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After 40 years everyone is easily recognizable as themselves, says Ions senior scientist Dean Radin, because their basic body structure hasn’t changed — “even though after a short period of time, you don’t have a single original atom left in your body, because they’ve all exchanged!”  

Modern vs Ancient Thought

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls the astral messenger medium “morphic resonance” or the “morphogenetic field.”

Yet, Lewis Wolpert, a developmental biologist at University College London, once argued against telepathy in a debate with Sheldrake, declaring that telepathy is merely “pathological science!”

“The whole issue of the quarrel between the profane and the esoteric sciences,” Mme. Blavatsky accurately observed in The Secret Doctrine (2:149):

“…depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an astral body within the physical.”

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A Book for Burning

Sheldrake’s conclusions are routinely scoffed at by the Popes of Material Science, who denounce them as ‘heresy’ — as they imagine, also, are Galileo’s discoveries. In the next clip Sir John Maddox, editor of the respected standard model (and pricey) scientific journal “Nature,” makes a laughable and asinine ‘official’ pronouncement on Sheldrake’s work:

Thoughts Are Things

All biological activity produces measurable, transmissible vibrations like heart rate EKG’s or brainwave EEG’s. A Theosophical Mahatma writes:

“Remember thoughts are things — have tenacity, coherence, and life — that they are real entities.”

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Consciousness and bioenergies are not inert forces, but rather carrier waves which transmit our thoughts and feelings beyond the boundaries of our bodies.

The effects felt by others can be healing and beneficiary, damaging and maleficent, or any condition — in-between — depending on the message content, and intent (aware or unaware) of the sender.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake realized that it is by means of these information carrying waves, through the resonant field, that Dogs Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.

Dogs Know

Rupert Sheldrake explains his experiments which scientifically document the fact that dogs have a natural telepathic sense, and really do know when their owners are coming home.

The Morphic Field

The morphic field is also directly related to the subject of another of Sheldrake’s books: “The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Unexplained Powers of the Human Mind.”

Whenever we think, a “thread, or a finger, or a long darting current flies out from the brain to seek for knowledge,” confirms W. Q. Judge in his article Mental Discipline. Describing the phenomenon Judge says, “This is telepathically, so to say, accomplished.”

“It goes in all directions and touches all other minds it can reach so as to receive the information if possible.”

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This is natural and universal and occurs whether we “are aware of it or not,” Judge says. “General truth belongs to all,” he writes, “and when the unseen messenger from one mind arrives and touches the real mind of another…

“…that other gives up to it what it may have of truth about general subjects.”

“So the mind’s finger or wire flies until it gets the thought or seed-thought from the other and makes it its own.”

An important “memory verse” in the Theosophical children’s book, The Eternal Verities, captures the idea very simply:

“Thoughts are
the seeds of Karma”

Being Stared At

A former British biochemist and plant physiologist, Sheldrake now researches and writes on parapsychology and other controversial subjects. His books and papers expound his theory of morphic resonance.

In 2003, Sheldrake published The Sense of Being Stared At on the psychic staring effect, including an experiment where blindfolded subjects guessed whether persons were staring at them or at another target.

He reported that, in tens of thousands of trials, the scores were consistently above chance (60%) when the subject was being stared at.

Gaia Presence

“The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution with its endless adaptations is a proof of this.”

H. P. Blavatsky – (Secret Doctrine 1:277)

“The different variations of plants,” Blavatsky writes in the Secret Doctrine Commentaries, “are the broken rays of one Ray. As the ray passes through the seven planes, it is broken on every plane into thousands and millions of rays down to the world of forms, every ray breaking into an intelligence on its own plane.”

“So that we see every plant has an intelligence, or its own purpose of life, so to speak, and its own freewill, to a degree.”

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“A plant can be receptive or non-receptive,” Blavatsky writes, “though every plant without an exception feels and has a consciousness of its own.”

“Every plant — from the gigantic tree down to the minutest fern or blade of grass — has an Elemental entity of which it is the outward clothing on this plane.”

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“Hence, the Kabalists and the mediaeval Rosicrucians,” she says, “are always found talking of Elementals. According to them, everything possessed an Elemental sprite.”

Life Speaks

Bacteria, plants and animals all use living communication fields. Whales have their own complex language. Mammal behavioralist Toni Frohoff, in the NY Times Magazine, “Watching Whales Watching Us” she wrote. “I’d put my career on the line and challenge anybody to say that these whales are not…

“actively soliciting and engaging in a form of communication with humans.”

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All living things seem to speak through their own specie-specific wave lengths, which are clearly integral segments of Earth’s greater Astral Biofield, or what we affectionately refer to as “Mother Nature.”

Dog Whisperer

Named “Baby Girl,” a rescue dog with many untreated fears, phobias and insecurities, must use her own sense of balance to overcome fear in the swimming pool. There is clear evidence in this episode of a powerful inter-species communication between trainer and trainee.

As Below so Above

The Field interpenetrates and fills all space, within us, and all around us. Blavatsky writes:

“There is not one finger’s breath of void Space in the whole Boundless Universe…”

It is the causal mechanism driving the “Global Consciousness Project,” which documents how widely held thoughts and emotions of humans around the Earth, if strong enough, are picked up by Random Number Generators (RNGs):

Global Consciousness

Sheldrake argues that all morphic fields may ultimately be derived from one primal foundational field of the universe, and

… considers the possibility that this universal field could be connected with previous universes — the whole a purely Theosophical teaching.

Whatever the Field might be, it is the carrier of what’s come to be known in some healing modalities as “source energy,” the Biofield of human, animal, plant and mineral bodies.

Many healers today are calling this field a thought field. Theosophy, in a broader idea, shows that this field extends out to include other beings, the whole of Nature, and in fact the universe itself.

The Hindu’s call it
The Akashic Field.

We would argue, using Buddha’s idea that thoughts are the seeds of karma, that we are continually sowing those seeds energy field. Just as the farmer cultivates his fields, so ought we cultivate our invisible, yet potent field of thought.

The Universe is Conscious

In this interview Rupert Sheldrake argues that we become aware of our place in the cosmos and our spiritual journey with the whole universe, and that there is a goal. The universe, he maintains Theosophically, “is already conscious” although the further development of nature depends on Man.

The Ever-Becoming

by H. P. Blavatsky
(Secret Doctrine 1:268)

“Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Septennial nature: The Spiritual or divine, the psychic or semi-divine — the intellectual, the passional, the instinctual, or cognitional — the semi-corporeal and the purely material or physical natures.

“All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and centripetal way, one in their ultimate essence, seven in their aspects.”

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“The lowest, of course, is the one depending upon and subservient to our five physical senses—which are in truth seven…on the authority of the oldest Upanishads.

“Individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm.”

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“The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless lives.”

A World Transformed

Founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences

Traveling back to Earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell had an experience for which nothing in his life had prepared him. As he approached the planet we know as home, he was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved. He knew that the beautiful blue world to which he was returning is part of a living system, harmonious and whole—and that we all participate, as he expressed it later, “in a universe of consciousness.”

Outbreathings

“Through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passes from the formless and the intangible…

“…through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again…”

“…reascending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal — that each atom, we say, may reach through individual merits and efforts that plane where it re-becomes the one unconditioned All.”