Truth vs Falsehood (62 page)

All the above were highly developed practices in ancient Mesopotamia, and ancient peoples consulted oracles, seers, shaman, and a variety of practitioners of magic and otherworldly secret, mystical rites and rituals, plus a great variety of psychics, channelers, trance mediums, and medicine men and women with special connections to a variety of spirits.

Various rituals were also intertwined with hypnotically induced states via repetitious chanting and body movements or ritual dances, plus altered physiological states induced by repetitious breathing exercises, body contortions, postures, and a variety of sexual practices (e.g., “Tantric” sex). In addition to a variety of “feel good” practices, there were strange diets, esoteric herbs, psychedelics, and magic mushrooms. Later came designer drugs, Ecstasy, LSD, Psilocybin, psychomimatic alkaloids, and even animal tranquilizers, plus a variety of amphetamines and psychostimulants, as well as psychopharmacological agents.

In addition to the above artificially-induced states of consciousness, there were scientifically designed attempts in the same direction via biofeedback and alpha-wave training devices designed to induce altered brain-wave patterns. Meditators of a variety of practices (TM, Zen monks, etc.) have been studied by researchers at Duke University of the EEG frequencies in various parts of the brain to investigate parapsychology, psychic healers, distant viewing, alterations of water surface tension, and psychokinesis. The Monroe Institute researched and taught the techniques of out-of-body astral projection and altered states of consciousness induced by manipulation of sound waves. To these investigations was added the “brain mirror” device, which lit up according to the most active portion of the brain in altered states.

Interest in altered states has also been a consequence of their spontaneous occurrence throughout history. Psychiatry has studied and described dissociative and fugue states, compartmentalization of multiple-personality disorders, as well as delusional, hallucinatory, and hypnogogic conditions, along with hypnotic phenomena, including the effects of suggestion, mind control, and brainwashing techniques. In addition, psychology and psychoanalysis have investigated dreams and the various regions of the unconscious, including the influence of the Jungian archetypes.

While science has addressed many of the above issues and phenomena, it still lacks awareness of not only differing levels of calibratable consciousness but also of the possibility of other dimensions of existence, such as other spiritual or various astral realms.

Altered states of consciousness, such as oneiriform, dream, or fugue states occur spontaneously, and some families even exhibit a genetic pattern (e.g., mother-daughter psychics). The human mind is primarily experiential and the experience is then presumed to be ‘real’, which is familiar in the dream state.

Trance/fugue states can occur in normal persons and may last for prolonged periods of minutes, hours, or even days, such as in conditions of amnesia. In an auto-trance of even short duration, there can be the subjective experience of far greater time periods—in a few minutes, visions of other dimensions may include hours or even days of seeming events. Visionary states are also common to some personalities and are frequently associated with temporal lobe seizure disorders. However, they can occur in people with normal brain physiology as well.

As can be readily surmised, the ‘reality’ of all the foregoing conditions and states has not as yet been unraveled. They are often a challenge to even the most experienced clinician/researcher. For many years, the author was a consultant simultaneously to ministerial and meditation groups, the Episcopal and Catholic dioceses, a Zen monastery, and the residential communities of various religious orders, as well as spiritually-based recovery groups and institutions. Sometimes the differential diagnosis was difficult, e.g., “Samadhi” or catatonia, etc.

Alien abduction is another very unique phenomenon. The calibrated level of the experience (not the person) is always at about 70, the same as experiential apocalyptic visions (e.g., John, the author of Revelation). These experiences of astral fields of consciousness have been similar throughout the ages and recur repeatedly with the same negative scenarios. The experiences are very real to the subjects who are thereby convincing in their retelling of the revealing visions. Often a cult emerges and takes off to remote survival encampments. The visions characteristically are fear provoking and the entranced followers tend to form a group identity. The downside over periods of time can be very considerable as the myth propagates through fear, suggestion, and the virus of memes (e.g., the “End Times” as imminent, etc.)

The problems and true nature of these various combinations and states have been obscure and thereby produce a bewildering array of explanations and postulations as well as attempted scientific explanations. At the present time, the clinical approach of consciousness calibration research opens a new means of elucidation of the true nature of these phenomena. The calibrations at least clarify the levels of truth and consciousness involved. Research is complicated by the fact that delusions, illusions, dreams, visions, amnesias, and trance and fugue states are subjectively astrally experienced, yet ‘objectively’ unreal, and therefore not confirmable as an actual reality. Prophecies come and go as epiphenomena of the potentiality of consciousness itself, which is the common substrate that affords an absolute constant from which greater clarification will emerge.

If we apply consciousness research to the phenomenon of the channeling of ‘teachers’ from the “other side,” the first area of inquiry is the genuineness of the operatives themselves. Indications are that fifteen percent of clairvoyants, ten percent of psychics, twenty percent of channelers, and twenty-five percent of trance mediums are legitimate and genuine. Of the channeled ‘masters’ or entities on the ‘other side’, fifty percent calibrate
below
200, and only five percent above level 450. Therefore, the rule of
caveat emptor
applies. The downside, as it is in the ordinary world, is the risk of following a teacher whose motivation is control. This can be suspected when followers are given personal-life direction instead of being led to look within themselves for answers by following inner spiritual work.

Some ‘teachers’ from the other side have messianic delusions of grandeur that are contradicted by their calibrated level of consciousness. In clinical psychiatry, these are observed as “exalted states” in which the patient has a sudden revelation that they are literally Jesus Christ. At one time, back in the 1950s, before anti-psychotic drugs became available, there would be two or three “Jesus Christ” patients in the hospital at the same time. To the patient, the experiences were experientially ‘real’. (We also had queens and Napoleons.)

A genuine transformational spiritual experience is confirmed by its very positive and often very profound influence on a person’s life, which is confirmed by those who have had near-death experiences of spiritual truth. Such calibratable benefit is also seen after genuine conversion experiences, frequently in the context of “hitting bottom.” Such persons are indeed ‘reborn’ in a genuine sense as confirmed by sometimes dramatic increases in their levels of consciousness. This has been witnessed in attendees at spiritual lectures where jumps of up to even 150 points have occurred. (The average is about ten points for the audience.)

Differentiation of genuine spiritual states from abnormal mental conditions has been described previously (Hawkins,
I: Reality and Subjectivity
, p. 104). They are as follows:

Cultism

Cults ensnare the unwary by their specialness and false promises. Members have an ‘insider’ status and a special ‘lingo’. The group leader is charismatic, seductive, and courts the initiate, who is flattered by the attention. The leader is very ‘special’ and treated with adulation, which is quickly turned into control of members, including especially their money and sex lives, as well as lifestyles, diets, clothing, etc. Members must take allegiance and break off relationships with family or even spouses and often associations or groups.

The group often forms a geographic, restrictive enclave and develops a group paranoia as well as a characteristic ‘cult glaze’ (cal. 120) as though in a hypnotic state (the effect of isolation and brainwashing). Once detected, that glaze is easily recognized (the “programmed cult look,” as one observer described it). There is a flatness and automaton style to rationalizations where content is like a ‘party line’ that is parroted from having been programmed. Cults especially target celebrities and exploit them as showpieces.

The influence of cult leaders is so strong that large groups of people will willingly kill not only others but also themselves (e.g., Heaven’s Gate, Jim Jones, Islamic terrorists, suicide bombers, Aum Shinrikyo subway gassers, Bolsheviks, Nazi party, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, White Supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, liberationists, etc.).

Another characteristic of cultism is proselytizing and insistence on following the party line of a pseudo-religious group belief system by which individuality is scorned or even threatened. Leaders are very power-oriented, and control plus paranoid egoism are dominant themes.

Sometimes a spiritual leader will calibrate as integrous early in their career but then will fall victim to the seduction of prestige, money, sex, or the adulation of followers. Then the original spiritual group degenerates into a cult, or a spiritual technique becomes actually trademarked and then commercialized and marketed by hired publicists. In that case, the technique calibrates above 200 but the organization itself falls below 200 and becomes primarily a marketing organization that trades on the original concept or exclusive technique. The technique is thus only taught for a price and ‘trainees’ are forbidden to reveal the secret teachings (which are usually merely a few simple phrases or sentences with a general application to “improve health,” “attract abundance,” “increase love life,” “be more popular,” “fulfill your potential for success,” “attract a mate,” etc.). Some of the promoted techniques can be found in any fortune cookie, e.g. “One smile can change your life forever” (cal. 350), or “Success goes to one who is kind” (cal. 360).

The true value of such workshops is not the magic of a central concept or technique but the disciplined practice of actually applying it with regularity in daily life instead of merely quickly dismissing it as “I already know that.” The value of training workshops then lies in learning of the value of steady application and actually putting a valuable tool into practice and steady focus, e.g., the ‘faithfulness’ of
A Course in Miracles
workbook.

Another expression of cultism is the cultification of splinter groups from traditional religions, e.g., the far-right ‘fundamentalism’ most prominent and visible in Islam, Christianity, and ethnic variations of worldwide religions.

Spiritual Practices