Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities

BACK in the day, faraway and long, long ago, when occult science was the mainstream science, the scientific method ruled. It meant checking, testing and verifying every new finding.

But modern science today looks more like a dogmatic religion than honest science, a science which should go wherever the evidence leads, no matter what. Concerned about tenure, she usually doesn’t.

And comparing the two sciences, the occult and modern materialistic, we also must acknowledge that the instruments used in their research are very different.

The teachings of The Secret Doctrine H. P. Blavatsky calls “the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages.” Such teachings are sui generis, yet they were gathered in keeping with strict scientific methodology. 

Illustrating this, she notes in SD Volume 1:272, that accumulating such data “occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain.” Adding: “The flashing gaze of those seers penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there.”

Beyond the Mundane

But, “modern science believes not in the soul of things,” Blavatsky wrote, thus modern researchers will not add the subject of the soul to their research because they do not even accept the possibility there is one.

Ancient occult scientists on the other hand, determined to know. And their elaborate system is “no fancy of one or several isolated individuals,” says Blavatsky: “It is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity.”

All Connected

“Occultism knows of the existence and presence in Nature of the One eternal element. Science is slowly but as surely approaching our domains of the Occult.” – The Secret Doctrine (1:549).

 True Science

“For long ages ‘Wise Men’ had passed their lives checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost possible degree.”

Initiated Seer

“No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions — so obtained as to stand as independent evidence — of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences.”

Supernormal Science

“For more than 20 years, Dean Radin has been researching supernatural phenomena that other scientists scoff at, things like clairvoyance, telepathy, levitation,” writes Amy Leibrock (Beyond the Mundane: From Mystics to Meditation.)

“I was ready to scoff too,” she says, “but in his new book, Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities, Radin analyzes a growing body of published, peer-reviewed scientific studies proving the existence of psychic abilities. It’s a mind-bending read that marries science with the supernatural.”

Dr. Radin asks:

“Was Buddha Just a Nice Guy?”

Dr. Radin, the Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, (IONS), spoke on the subject of his new book at the 15th Annual International Theosophy Conference in New York City. Focusing on Patanjali’s mysterious Yoga Sutras — 2,000 year-old meditation practices believed to release our extraordinary powers — “Dr. Radin offers powerful evidence confirming that sometimes fact is much stranger, spookier, and more wonderful than the wildest fiction.”

Click HERE or below for all archived video links from the ITC Conference in NYC:

International Theosophy Conference NYC, August 8 – 11, 2013 – Archives

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The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (click photo above)

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“Dean Radin, is the bestselling author of The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds, presents persuasive new experimental evidence for the existence of such phenomena. He takes us on a thrilling scientific journey and challenges outdated assumptions that these abilities are mere superstition.

Removing Blinders

“What we will consider here is whether our sophisticated scientific understanding of reality has developed blinders when it comes to reports of the supernormal,” Dr. Radin writes: “Could it be that when the blinders are removed, there actually is something interesting going on? Are all reports of mystical or psychic experiences, of communion with realities that transcend the mundane, necessarily mistaken?”

Thus furthering the Third Object of the Theosophical Movement as established by the original Founders:

“The Investigation of the Unexplained Laws of Nature and the Psychical Powers Latent in Man.”

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The mission of International Theosophy Conferences, Inc. supports the Three Objects as expressed in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky, and the fostering of intercommunication among all Theosophical traditions.

What are the objects of the Theosophical Society? The co-founder of the T.S., H. P. Blavatsky, answered the question in The Key to Theosophy: “They are three, and have been so from the beginning,”

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The Three Objects

“(1.) To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, colour, or creed.

“(2.) To promote the study of Aryan and other Scriptures, of the World’s religion and sciences, and to vindicate the importance of old Asiatic literature, namely, of the Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian philosophies.

“(3.) To investigate the hidden mysteries of Nature under every aspect possible, and the psychic and spiritual powers latent in man especially. These are, broadly stated, the three chief objects of the Theosophical Society.”

A Synthesis

“The impassable gulf between mind and matter discovered by modern science is a logical result of the present methods of so-called scientific investigation.The modern scientist is confessedly and boastfully agnostic. The occultist is reverently and progressively gnostic.

“Modern science recognizes matter as ‘living’ and ‘dead,’ ‘organic’ and ‘inorganic,’ and ‘Life’ as merely a phenomenon of matter. Occult science recognizes, “foremost of all, the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic substances or bodies.”

“Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical ‘atoms’ are simply organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma has an end, and their inertia becomes activity.” (Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 626 fn.)

“A complete science of metaphysics and a complete philosophy of science are not yet even conceived of as possible; hence the ancient wisdom by its very vastness has escaped recognition in modern times. That the authors of ancient wisdom have spoken from at least two whole planes of conscious experience beyond that of our every-day “sense-perception” is to us inconceivable, and yet such is the fact…”

 – William Quan Judge,
(The Synthesis of Occult Science)

  Keeping the Link Unbroken

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