The Occult: finally… (and not at all scary…)
No one can get anything unless he earns it. This is an eternal law
Swami Vivekananda
The good news after braving The Dreaded Occult is that our future seems to lie in our own hands, not in those of some mad god, or some abiotic but super-intelligent and malignant chemical.
So why has ‘The Occult’ come to be hidden? I think, thus: until about 350 years ago, the power of The Church was absolute in matters cosmological. You might literally be burned alive for disobeying a papal diktat.
The ‘occult’ doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation were not only counter to Church dogma, but were a total bombshell. If allowed expression, K+R’s democratic philosophy of personal responsibility would ruin the intercessionary power of The Church. It had to be suppressed. Hence the murderous crusade against the Christian Cathars in the thirteenth century, and the constant sniping at such Esoteric movements as the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, and alchemists.
§ Contrary to popular belief, many alchemists were not concerned with turning lead into gold, but with turning Man’s Lower elements (metaphorical ‘lead’) into the Higher (metaphorical ‘gold’): the Yogic doctrine in yet another form. The ‘lead into gold’ notion was partly a blind to keep The Church at bay. It wasn’t the best idea ever.
But there were other, more altruistic, reasons for The Church’s actions.
Before the Age of Reason (roughly C17-18) Europe was awash with superstition and fear of ‘the supernatural’. The Church preyed upon that fear, to bolster its own position, but it also knew that humanity in its current state was highly likely to misuse certain powers, should they become public knowledge. This forbidden knowledge was that Mind is a creative force; the creative force in the universe. Mind-power misused could be a powerful force for evil, so The Church came down hard on anything ‘occult’, including perhaps above all, on ‘magic’**.
§ A couple of examples of how violent the world was, a mere couple of centuries ago: In C16 Paris, a popular public entertainment was burning cats alive. Aristocrats and monarchs joined in the hilarity. And the British House of Commons, re-built just a few years before Darwin’s Origins was published, was still designed so that the space between the two ‘front benches’ was greater than the length of two swords. Cruelty, short temper, and malice (all aspects of selfishness and The Lower) were everywhere in the pre-modern world. We may find it hard to believe, but history tells us that current society is rather less cruel and selfish than even our recent ancestors’ world. Bearbaiting? Cock-fights? Dog-fights? Slavery? Torture? Increasingly outlawed, if not yet outgrown. Bull-fights linger on in southern Europe as the last gasp of the bloodbaths of the Roman Colosseum. Believe it or not, we have progressed, particularly when you consider that in C14 there were no fewer than three kings called Peter the Cruel fighting each other in Spain and Portugal.
As an example: hypnosis can cause mischief. We know that from experiments and television shows. Might it be used for worse? And what if there are further powers of the Mind, of which we, living in our Materialist bubble of denial, know nothing? The Church was sure that there were such powers, and believed that they were being used by witches to curse and spread harm and fear. A lot of ‘witchcraft’ is just psychological bullying. Even now, if someone points a steady finger at us and quietly says ‘I’ll get you’, we are taken aback, and some might even become ill through fear. The near-global fear of ‘the evil eye’ recognises this. And children have been known to hang themselves after protracted verbal bullying.
§ My father witnessed such a death in Nigeria in the 1940’s. A perfectly healthy man became convinced he was going to die because a witch doctor had said so, and die he did. Nothing the army could do could save him.
Many people in Africa (and elsewhere) live in terror of witchcraft. As recently as 2009 a goat was arrested in Nigeria, accused of stealing a car. The assumption was that the thief had used black magic to turn himself into a goat to avoid detection. Then there are fascinating tales told by early travellers in Africa (and elsewhere) of people who had remarkable connections with wild animals, being able to temporarily take over an animal body. The European tradition is of the werewolf/vampire.
I guess if ‘possession’ of one human by another is possible, as some claim, (and as reported more than once in the Bible) then it might well apply to an animal as well.
Ridiculous to Materialism, but not necessarily so to Idealism.**
But is ‘suggestion’ all there is to it? Perhaps not. The Occult claims that ‘other forces’ may indeed be (sometimes quite literally) drummed up and used by anyone who puts in the effort.
§ In the modern Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomblé, Umbanda, etc, various ‘sprit aspects of God’, called orixas, are summoned by their own specific drum pattern.
Many of these forces are neutral in principle, and may be used according to the free will of the individual. Hence white magic, used for the benefit of others, and black magic, used for selfish ends only: also called theurgy and thaumaturgy (posh names indicating that educated people also took these powers seriously).
A malicious person might evoke an astral ne’er-do-well to add his power to his own. But there’s more to it, as the doctrine also claims that there are living beings of a quite different order from humanity (many different orders in fact, which reminded me of the list of ‘other beings’ I’d made after reading the Bible, Koran etc. (Chapter 12). These too may be evoked, invoked, pleaded to or compelled, via rituals, prayers or concentrated effort.
§ Pretty weird, but not inconsistent and not irrational, according to the implications of Idealism. We have no way of proving this claim wrong, but we do have the means for seeing if it is correct. Perhaps one day a dogma-free science will put its powerful collective mind to it. Some individual scientists have already made a start here.**
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There are two obvious modern examples of how it seems that people can contact ‘the other world’ in a way that The Church would have mightily disapproved of, purely on the grounds of spiritual hygiene.
The first, of which I have personal experience, is the Ouija board. You set out the letters of the alphabet in a circle and place an upended tumbler in the middle. Two or more people rest a finger on the glass and someone asks a question out loud. Ridiculous. ‘Is there anybody there?’ Yes, ridiculous, especially if the glass slowly moves across the table to spell out ‘No’, as once happened to us.
At first I was very sceptical, but as I watched my friends I became sure that nobody was actually pushing the glass. I joined in, and asked each friend to remove his finger if I suspected he might be guiding it, albeit ‘unconsciously’, whatever that might mean here. The glass always continued to move, ‘north’, say, with only ‘east’ and ‘west’ fingers (one of them mine) resting vertically on it. Eventually I became convinced that ‘something’ was happening, and began taking notes.
§ I have no idea why you need a glass. Presumably it’s a focus for a sort of temporary collective mind, but that’s not much of an explanation.
We apparently contacted several entities. Most were of a low quality, but one was certainly not. He introduced himself out of the blue, and returned several times with forcefully delivered messages. It was impossible to keep up with the words spelled out. We took down the letters one at a time. Later, we split them into words. Some answers were several sentences long, coherent, lucid, and self-consistent. I still have most of them.
§ The glass spelled out the letters far faster than we could spell them out ourselves when deliberately guiding the glass, as we confirmed later.
While the lower entities had nothing of interest to say apart from general low-key trivia or unpleasantness, the higher force was determined to convert us to Jesus. He thundered in true Old Testament style. I could not deny that I was being addressed by a powerful personality holding a coherent philosophy (which was much more ‘esoteric’ than ‘exoteric’). And I’m certain none of the material was being fraudulently produced. Thirty years later, in Yoga I came across a philosophy that would ‘allow’ the Ouija process to have happened. If it is possible to invite or compel astral (or other) types to join you in ‘a work’, as The Church was sure was possible, one can see why The Church was strongly against it. Another effect I have witnessed is that the messages received via Ouija ‘low life’ can prey on someone’s mind. One of my friends was badly affected in this way.
The other common ‘other-world’ experience is spiritualism. In pre-Victorian days it was called necromancy, or ‘raising the dead’, and had a bad reputation. It was also likely to get you burned or at least jailed. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, spirit contact became something of a rage, with spirits being evoked to lift and tip tables round the room at parties. Parallel with this grew the religion of Spiritualism whose two main threads are of clairvoyant or clairaudient contact with discarnate people, and healing. These processes involve trances, and occasionally other effects.
§ A couple of definitions of terms I have seen confused:
Spiritualism: is a monotheistic religion believing that ‘the dead’ can be contacted, usually via a medium, to discover information about the afterlife.
Spiritism: is similar to the above, but definitely believes in reincarnation.
Spirituality: is the condition of taking an active interest in one’s inner life, or ‘reality’, through study, meditation, prayer or contemplation, with an emphasis on ethical behaviour and learning.
Spiritualism has suffered a terrible press on two counts. From the start it attracted fraudsters who spied that there was easy money to be made from grieving widows, especially after a war, and secondly from Materialist ‘investigators’ who were simply bigots determined to ‘expose’ as fraud everything which ‘could’ not happen according to their blinkered dogma.
§ ‘The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.’ Bertrand Russell.
If you witness a Spiritualist medium at work, and keep an open mind, you might be surprised. They vary in their psychic abilities, as in every other human capacity, but a good one will do no ‘fishing’ and will come out with bits of ‘unlikely’ information, purporting to come from a dead relative. The communications are usually of a confirmatory nature: simple personal details (perhaps correctly naming the family cat ‘Rodney’ or stating that Julie has bought a new purple and red hat) designed to reassure the client that their loved one is still somehow alive and with them. This modest, very personal, level of communication has always attracted derision from ‘sophisticated’ commentators and humourists on the grounds that it is banal.
§ …unless they make the effort to seriously test it, which they rarely do, being too sophisticated for such things. People who do take the trouble to actually investigate, more than frequently change their minds: for example, the psychiatrist Brian Weiss. See bibliography.**
But sometimes mediums access less personal material.
§ I recommend John G Fuller’s book The Airmen Who Would Not Die, which concerns the fate of airship travel after the disastrous crash of the R101 in 1930.
Reputable mediums do not claim to be able to bring through information that they themselves are not capable of understanding. This is one reason why not all mediums can relate identical messages; thus a peasant medium could not handle the technical material that Fuller’s book deals with. I found myself thinking of ‘vibes’ and ‘tuning’ again when I first read of this limitation.
Mediums usually work via a ‘control’, an entity of high moral standards who acts as a sort of bouncer, keeping at bay all the lower-astral thugs and yobbos who want to elbow their way through to cause mischief.
Occultists of the highest type discourage experimental mediumship, as it can lead to unpleasant experiences, including obsession and possession. I could not take possession seriously at first, but as I thought it through, I saw that it was consistent with the whole Yogic/Esoteric understanding of things. If we all have a certain range of vibes, varying from person to person, we are likely to ‘chime’ or ‘resonate’ with another person of similar vibe. If we have lowly bestial vibes that we are trying to shake off (or literally ‘rise above’ by our own efforts),
§ Here was a link with the Desert Religions’ constant urging to choose to do the right thing, that had so impressed me. ‘Raise the rate of your own vibes’ would be a more technical (ie, Esoteric) expression of the same process.
or simply wish to keep concealed from others, it would seem to be reasonable that a discarnate entity who resonates heavily with our secret vibe, might want to become more closely associated with this aspect of our nature, whether we want it or not. Hence, they say, ‘obsession’: a condition in which an alcoholic, for example, finds himself being constantly tempted into drinking ever more by an astral ‘ex’-drunk who enjoys the lowly physical vibes of drunkenness.
If it all gets out of hand, a person might find himself actually invaded by another entity. This is possession. The ‘veil’, as occultists call it, which separates This world from the Other can be weakened by drugs and by certain ‘practices’ (ill-advised occult experiments). Once weakened, the veil can allow access to astral entities and conditions that are best left in the lower reaches of the Other world where they belong. The Church recognises ‘possession’ as a reality and every diocese has a couple of trained exorcists on hand. I’ve seen films of an exorcist in action. He wrestles with the human/entity with great effort, sometimes involving the traditional bell, book and candle, and a number of forceful adjurations and even a little bellowing. It’s a high energy business. Eventually the entity seems to be forced out.
§ A survey of 2005 showed that 42% of Americans believe demonic possession is real. But is ‘demonic’ the word we want here? See below.
I’ve also seen film of a medium doing the same job, in the same way as clearing a house of a ghost. She tuned herself in and said much the same thing as the ghost-clearer: ‘Look.. you’ve no right to be here, bothering this person. You should have gone elsewhere. Look around you.. go to the light….’ and suddenly the possessee slumped unconscious. No ritual, bell, book etc. All very low key and reasonable, and the possessee seemed to be ‘cured’ when she came round.
§ For further information, compiled by two people well-versed in the business, try http://www.bookorphanage.com/ghosts.html and http://www.spiritrescue.co.uk/
More than one psychiatrist has tried treating schizophrenics as if the voices in their head belonged to real entities. They claim a similar rate of cure as orthodox psychiatry. Dr M Scott Peck’s book Glimpses of the Devil assumes these entities are ‘demons’, whereas Dr Carl Wickland makes what seems to me to be the more rational assumption that the entities are not evil ‘demons’, but simply ordinary (but discarnate) people of a low astral type, ‘stuck in the vestibule’, and looking for a means of living a pseudo-physical life again, as suggested by the Yogic/Esoteric understanding of these things.
§ Dr Wickland also published research on people who had become insane after dabbling with the Ouija board and other ‘occult’ devices. I personally do not in any way recommend dabbling in this stuff. It can be very dangerous whether the powers involved be objective or subjective. By all means read, think, mull, and learn what you can from the theory and philosophy… but don’t get involved.
§ If ‘the veil’ is damaged by some drugs, might it be restored by others?
In 2009 it came to light that a number of sufferers from Parkinson’s disease were reacting badly to their medication: running up debt, becoming violent, ‘slipping into a fantasy world of erotica and pornography’, and becoming generally angry. These disorders are of a ‘low’ or deviant kind. I wonder why nobody reported being better at learning French, or taking up recreational calculus?
The notion of obsession or possession by discarnate personalities: ie, by maliciously inclined people who have died, is old news to Jews, who have a tradition of such things, and even have a name, ‘dybbuk’, for such an entity.
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Healers operate via similar means, except that they claim to be channels for Higher Forces, or actual individuals. Arigo, the Brazilian healer, was clear that a discarnate German Doctor Fritz (and others) was the active healer, who just used Arigo’s body as a means (friendly ‘possession’).
§ See Arigo: Healer of the Rusty Knife, again by John G Fuller.
According to the esoteric understanding, as thoughts are real things (vibrating mental matter) they may be focussed and built up in power until they are quite literally a force. Then, they may be dispatched to a destination, for ill or good (curse or cure) as a ‘thoughtform’. A negative thoughtform will be automatically rejected by the target if the target’s vibe is too high, and it then rebounds upon the sender. Karma in action.
§ Ancient symbols and myths might be seen in terms of enduring ‘thoughtforms’. I was also reminded once again of Plato’s mental ‘forms’ which he claimed preceded any physical forms, and of Carl Jung’s ‘archetypes’. And might Claude Lévi-Strauss recognise the long-dwelt-upon thoughtform as a basis for universal myth? Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields come to mind again, too.
Another extension of this general theme is the curious world of initiation. The Egyptian and Greek Mysteries required an initiation and an oath of secrecy. Now I understood why secrecy or ‘occlusion’ was necessary. Any Man of Wisdom would not want to make public a handbook on how to curse your neighbour, or himself, for that matter; although being of High Mind himself, no curse would stick to him. And, being a Man of Wisdom and of Compassion, he would not want the curser to receive the returning malice of his own foolish curse.
The initiation tradition is found throughout the world, among ‘primitive’ Amazonian societies, Native Americans, Pre-Colombian civilisations, Native Australians, and throughout Africa and Asia. Shamans take drugs, or chant or dance or drum themselves into an appropriate vibe (‘to cross the veil’, an occultist would say) to make contact with whoever or whatever they think is out there, and bring back messages and information.
§ It is a truism in the Esoteric world that any mental entity that you dwell on for long enough eventually takes on an actual reality (as ‘thoughtforms’ of varying power). The implications are vast. Remember that the mental, astral, and physical worlds are actually just focus points on a sliding scale of realities, some of which are visible or tangible to us while others are not? And that we each make our own heaven and hell by our own decisions and choices? You may wish to ponder on this at your leisure. Big Stuff.
In the ‘civilised’ West we are initiated into Christianity with baptism and confirmation. To be admitted further, as a priest, you must have hands laid upon you by a bishop. Freemasonry is famous for its initiations.
§ Masonic symbols are worth some thoughtful consideration, starting with the previously-mentioned Star of David… (Picture thanks to ?)
..and the Eye atop a pyramid on the American $1 bill. All that radiating Light again! Of course, viewed from the side, a pyramid is an upward-pointing triangle. (Picture thanks to Wikipedia.)
In the 1980’s the Cambridge biologist, Dr Rupert Sheldrake, proposed a theory that any Yogi/Esotericist would find harmonious. He suggested the idea of ‘morphic resonance’, being a sort of feedback mechanism between an original formative field and the final physical shape of a plant.
§ Yes… it’s Plato’s ‘forms’ again. And ‘resonance’ again. And getting very close to ‘thoughtforms’. Incidentally, a concept similar to Plato’s ‘forms’ is included in the philosophy of the Navaho people in the USA. I wonder in how many others?
He saw this as adding to Darwin’s process of Natural Selection in helping to explain why new species arise.
§ Might this also help to explain such outrageous behaviour as a dedicated vegetarian eating her own placenta, if we extend the field idea to behaviours as well as body shapes? It does sound similar to the Yogic/Esoteric Understanding of the ‘thoughtform’.
Might the whole ‘morphic resonance’ process be reasonably seen as a form of Intuition?
What makes Sheldrake’s suggestion notable is that it is made by a scientist, but is not thoroughly Materialist. Thus you may guess what reception it got from Big Science. The editor of Nature, the prestigious science magazine, said of Sheldrake’s book, A New Science of Life, ‘This infuriating tract… is the best candidate for burning there has been for many years.’ He added that ‘Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reason. It is heresy.’ The parallel between Big Materialist Science and the Big Religion it has replaced could not be more clear: arrogance and abuse of power, purely in the defence of a dogma rather than of truth and rational enquiry.
§ ‘Heresy’ derives from the Greek word for ‘to choose’. The Guardians of Dogma really don’t like you choosing to think for yourself, do they? But this fascistic attitude is so common, there’s even a fancy Greek word for it: ‘Allodoxaphobia: the fear of opinions’.
There is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that these other ‘forms’ or ‘fields’ or ‘bodies’ that Plato and Sheldrake propose do exist. The obvious examples from the text above are the mental, astral, and etheric ‘auras’. Other researchers claim to have evidence of such entities, eg Saxton Burr, Reichenberg, Mesmer, Kilner and Reich. Their scientifically-derived findings have been systematically poo-poohed and belittled for hundreds of years by… guess who? That’s why you may never have heard of them.
One example to ponder on here…. a butterfly changes from egg to caterpillar to pupa to imago… the finished flying beauty. The four totally different physical forms have the same DNA. What force or power (or something) is it that persuades the chemical DNA to produce four totally different sets of proteins, and all at the appropriate time? And where do the four different designs reside? Sheldrake et al have much better suggestions than Materialist Dogma does.
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To recap: according to the Yogic understanding, we have three separate bodies apart from the Physical one that we all know and abuse so carelessly. These are the Etheric, Emotional, and Mental bodies. It is through these bodies that Power (prana, qi, ki, etc) enlivens the physical body. In a word, Life Mind and Consciousness are piped into our brute physical bodies via our other three bodies. When LMC is present, we call each other ‘alive’. When LMC withdraws from This World, and returns to the Other, we call each other ‘dead’. But it’s just the coarse animal body that’s died. The rest of us, the inner essences, are as alive as ever (‘more so’ according to many reports), and will continue to develop in power and happiness by our own efforts.
§ Happiness? Surely religion is all about shame and fear? Not so, according to the Yogic/Esoteric doctrine. Have you and I been misled by Big Religion, perhaps?
An unexpected claim is that all four of these bodies are actually physical. It’s just that the three higher ones are of a more attenuated vibrational nature. If this claim is true, then the Materialists have something solid to bite on here. Current astronomy considers that some 90% of the universe is composed of ‘dark matter’. I wonder if these higher yet apparently still physical worlds might be relevant here?
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I now felt I was definitely on the right track for nailing ghosts, and had en route discovered some unexpected links between occult theory and science, and also with religion. And dogma featured rather too prominently in both religion and science.
But I was still looking for a knockout White Crow to metaphorically wave in front of Big Science, although I was feeling less and less confident that Big Scientists would be capable of even seeing the Crow, let alone considering its implications. ‘Wrong vibe’, I guess.
Mind and Brain
Much learning does not teach understanding
Heraclitus, Fifth century BCE
Much learning means little wisdom
Lao Tze, ~Sixth century BCE
2,500 years later..
How is it we have so much information, but know so little?
Noam Chomsky
How does Mind relate to Brain? The ‘mind-body problem’ has always been the Big One. Every philosopher has wrestled with it. Religion says God did it all, so don’t bother your pretty little head about it. Science (here meaning Materialist science) claims that brain creates mind, but with no evidence to support this notion nor any logical theory to make the claim from.
Do you think the ideas in this doc should be more widely discussed? If so, please help to get the ball rolling!