Seeing the Past, Present and Future Now

Psychic and Spiritual Visions

FUTURE time, according to Theosophy, is included in both past and present time. With this assertion The Secret Doctrine anticipated modern quantum theories and even what might come — modern Theosophy is still way ‘ahead of the curve.’

An article in New Scientist this month is titled “Why now doesn’t exist, and other strange facts about time” takes us closer to Mme. Blavatsky’s assertions.

Quoting the American Theoretical Physicist John Wheeler’s statement ‘Time is what prevents everything happening at once,’ “… is as fair a summary of what time does as any other – especially given that our hunt for the most basic ingredients of reality (see “Essence of reality: Hunting the universe’s most basic ingredient”) has left us a trifle muddled about its status.”

“One culprit was Einstein, whose theory of general relativity merged time with space. But even before him, out understanding of the laws of physics worked the same regardless of whether you travel forwards or backwards in time. That just doesn’t tally with our experience. So what is time really?”

Albert Einstein

“Einstein’s relativity tells us that time results from gravity warping the fabric of reality – resulting in a picture that is weirdly at odds with our experience.”

With her usual stunning clarity H. P. Blavatsky asserted (The Secret Doctrine 1:37) that “Time is only an illusion,” and even endowing atoms with consciousness. Yet she insisted that Time as we know it is only “produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration —

and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced.”  

H. P. Blavatsky

“The real person or thing,” she maintained, “does not consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but is composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions from its appearance in the material form to its disappearance from the earth.

“It is these ‘sum-totals’ that exist from eternity in the ‘future’, and pass by degrees through matter, to exist for eternity in the ‘past’.” 

Seeing the Past, Present and Future

One of Mme. Blavatsky’s occult teachers, one of the two adept co-authors of The Secret Doctrine declared: “I feel even irritated at having to use these three clumsy words — past, present and future!  Miserable concepts of the objective phases of the Subjective Whole, they are about as ill adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving.”

(Letter 8, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett)

Time Traveler

Electric and magnetic affinities are generated, occult teachers say, whenever there is physical touch, the sound of a voice, or even seeing or looking. 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 clearly 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. It is important to point out that

Sister and Brother

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

Most importantly, The First Object of the Theosophical Society was “to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity.” This first fundamental idea was further explored in The Key to Theosophy as including universal “Sisterhood:”

“… it is only by all men becoming brothers and all women sisters, and by all practising in their daily lives true brotherhood and true sisterhood, that the real human solidarity, which lies at the root of the elevation of the race, can ever be attained.

“It is this action and interaction, this true brotherhood and sisterhood, in which each shall live for all and all for each, which is one of the fundamental Theosophical principles that every Theosophist should be bound, not only to teach, but to carry out in his or her individual life.”

The Second Object is stated as “the study of Aryan and other Scriptures, of the World’s religion and sciences etc.” These two have been preserved intact by almost all Theosophical groups.

“Buffy” Sarah Michelle Gellar

The original Third Object was clearly stated 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.”

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

 I’m a Skeptic

“A mistaken supposition not only prevents intelligent and sincere investigators from seeing what would otherwise be obvious, it has bred indifference to possibilities that could have inspired the sciences for decades.” – Wallace Thornhill, physicist/author.

East-West Blend

The world will probably never be rid of snake oil, psychic charlatans, or money grubbing quack gurus. But due in large measure to the rise of true Eastern metaphysics and occult Theosophy, psychic and spiritual subjects are not only regaining popularity, but scrubbing their reputations.

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

Frontiers of Noetic Science

“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 and articulate researcher, Dr. 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,” her colleague 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 Dr. Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), he is recently 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).”)

The Ganzfeld Experiment

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

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

Telephone Telepathy

Professor Rupert Sheldrake’s enjoyable and powerful “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.”

Seeing Futurity

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 ‘Precog’ in the movie “Minority Report”

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.’

H. P. Blavatsky’s long ago estimate that “modern science believes not in the soul of things” seems to remain true today.