5 Ecstasy II

5 Ecstasy II

Many years ago I knew a composer who made use of the so-called "serial" compositional technique to generate his music. One day somebody asked him why he had to make his music so mathematically complicated, and he replied, "It gives my mind something to do while I'm composing." It was a good answer: obviously the creative process is not all about numbers and relationships; but neither can there be any doubt that observing the progress of numbers, as they parade across the page, may eventually focus the Mind to a point where the Heart suddenly opens its gates and becomes cognizant of the secrets being whispered into its ear by the gentle lips of Higher Mind. Indeed, just so do all Spiritual Truths manifest in the material plane through some kind of language, be it mathematical, musical, emotional, or spoken. The subject of today's comments is the relationship between ecstasy and mundane consciousness, and furthermore, the relationship between Spiritual Truth and Religion.

Last week we explored the relationships between Epiphany, Intuition, Ecstasy and Death. Today I would like to comment on material dealing specifically with the subject of ecstasy. I present this material by way of laying out a framework of mainstream, conventional wisdom, from which I will occasionally, (and eventually), depart.

Before we begin, however, we need to make a semantic adjustment: in my previous sermon, I  used the term “ecstasy” in a fairly general way, to represent a more intense level of “epiphany”; I was more or less equating ecstasy with any super-normal experience, specifically movement of the ego up or down on a continuum of lower to higher resolutions. For the next four weeks, we will be looking at material that treats the term ecstasy in a more specific sense--the sense of “religious ecstasy” or, “religious rapture”. Today we will examine two articles: How to Wire Your Brain for Religious Ecstasy by John Horgan, and an article from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.

We have previously mentioned that the ecstatic and out-of-body experiences, associated with near-death, may be triggered by many different things such as prayer, religious rituals, meditation, breathing exercises, physical exercise, sex, music, dancing, sweating, fasting, thirsting, and psychotropic drugs. The agnostic will tend to use the idea that there are many paths to ecstasy, including electrode stimulation of specific areas of the brain, to invalidate the spiritual component of the experience, indicating that, because an ecstatic experience may be triggered by physical things, the experience must be essentially physical--that the brain is the seat and source of consciousness, and when the brain dies, all these transcendental effects die with it.

However, we have maintained that, the physical component does not invalidate the spiritual component; we have asserted that the physicality of spiritual experience is simply one more way in which spirit glorifies the body and transforms it into a spiritual entity. We have insisted that there is a super-physical dimension to man, and that this super-physical dimension of being is interwoven into its mundane counterpart. Indeed, the various doorways the literal consciousness uses, to gain entrance to the supernatural dimensions of itself, are of interest: not because they tend to originate in the physical, but, rather, because of the various ways they lead us to higher dimensions, whose existence transcends and glorifies their physical manifestations.

The following article is a review of several attempts by scientists to inspire an ecstatic experience in test subjects in a laboratory. Consistently, it is apparent that science does not aggressively seek a spiritual explanation for the spiritual events it witnesses.

Spirit Tech
How to wire your brain for religious ecstasy.
By John Horgan

"Eight years ago, I flew to Laurentian University in Midwestern Canada to test a gadget that some journalists called the "God machine." The device consisted of computer-controlled solenoids that fit over the skull and stimulate the brain with electromagnetic pulses. Its inventor, neuroscientist Michael Persinger, claimed that it could induce mystical experiences, including, as Wired magazine put it, visions of "Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Mohammed, the Sky Spirit."

I sat in a ratty armchair in a soundproof chamber and pulled the God machine onto my head as, outside the chamber, a graduate student tapped a computer keyboard. As he bombarded my brain with electromagnetic bursts patterned after brain waves of epileptics in the throes of religious visions, I waited for God or even a minor deity or demon to appear—in vain. Persinger told me later that the device doesn't work on skeptics, implying that it "works" merely by exploiting subjects' suggestibility.

Persinger is one of the more colorful characters in the fast-growing, flakey field of neurotheology, which studies what is arguably the most complex manifestation—spirituality—of the most complex phenomenon—the human brain—known to science. Given that brain researchers have no idea how I conceived and typed this sentence, I doubt they will ever account for religious experiences in all their vast diversity and subtlety. Nor will they solve the riddle of whether God actually exists or is a figment of our evolved imaginations, like unicorns or superstrings. Neurotheology may nonetheless have a profound social impact, by yielding more potent, reliable methods of inducing spiritual experiences.

Surveys suggest that only about one in three people has ever had a mystical experience, defined by one poll as the sensation of "a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself." Humans have long sought such experiences through meditation, yoga, prayer, guru-worship, fasting, and flagellation, but these methods are unreliable, notes James Austin, author of Zen and the Brain, one of the best books on neurotheology. Austin hopes that neurotheology will eventually yield much more potent, precise methods of inducing transcendent experiences, from fleeting feelings of connectedness all the way up to "the full moon of enlightenment." Persinger's God machine may not have done much for me, but here's a brief status report on four mystical technologies with potential:

Mystical Brain Chips
In the 1950s, Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, while preparing epileptic patients for surgery, stimulated their exposed brains with electrodes. Some patients heard voices or music and saw apparitions when their temporal lobes were stimulated. Upon learning about Penfield's experiments, Aldous Huxley wrote:

"Is there, one wonders, some area in the brain from which the probing electrode could elicit Blake's Cherubim?"

One still wonders. A Swiss team recently induced out-of-body experiences in an epileptic patient about to undergo surgery by stimulating her right angular gyrus, which underpins spatial awareness. Other groups have shown that implanted electrodes can trigger euphoria, and in fact they are now being tested as treatments for severe depression (as well as paralysis, tremors, and epilepsy). In principle, implants would provide the most precise, powerful means of inducing religious ecstasy. Indeed, self-described "Wireheads" look forward to the day when these devices will vanquish mental suffering and deliver ecstasy on demand. But for now, this technology—which requires inserting wires into the brain through holes drilled in the skull—remains too risky for all but the most desperate patients.

Magic Wands
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, is noninvasive and hence safer and easier to test than implants. Researchers have reported success in treating depression and other disorders with this method, which often employs electromagnetic "wands" as well as headsets. Persinger insists that TMS, properly used, can also induce intense mystical experiences.

A group at Uppsala University has tried and failed to replicate Persinger's results in a controlled, double-blind experiment. Todd Murphy, a neuroscientist who has worked with Persinger, is nonetheless marketing a version of the God machine called the "Shakti" (a Hindu term for divinity), which according to Murphy's Web site "uses magnetic fields to create altered states."

Tweaking the God Gene
The work of Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Cancer Institute, raises the prospect of genetically engineered mystics. Hamer claims to have found a gene associated with "self-transcendence" or "spirituality" in a group of 1,000 subjects who filled out surveys that probed their beliefs in God, ESP, and so on. Hamer calls this gene "the spiritual allele" or, even more dramatically, the "God gene"—which is also the title of the popular book in which he describes his research. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, has called Hamer's claim "wildly overstated."

The God Experiments
Three years ago, the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins became a guinea pig in an experiment. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger claimed he had induced religious experiences in subjects by stimulating specific regions of their brains with electromagnetic pulses. Dawkins, renowned for his biological theories as well as for his criticism of religion, volunteered to test Persinger's electromagnetic device—the "God machine," as some journalists dubbed it. "I've always been curious to know what it would be like to have a mystical experience," Dawkins said shortly before the experiment. Afterward, he admitted on BBC that he was "very disappointed" that he did not experience "communion with the universe" or some other spiritual sensation.

Many researchers, like Persinger, view the brain as the key to understanding religion. Others focus on psychological, genetic, and biochemical origins. The science of religion has historical precedents, with Sigmund Freud and William James addressing the topic early in the last century. Now modern researchers are applying brain scans, genetic probes, and other potent instruments as they attempt to locate the physiological causes of religious experience, characterize its effects, perhaps replicate it, and perhaps even begin to explain its abiding influence.

The endeavor is controversial, stretching science to its limits. Religion is arguably the most complex manifestation of the most complex phenomenon known to science, the human mind. Religion's dimensions range from the intensely personal to the cultural and political. Additionally, researchers come to study religious experiences with very different motives and assumptions. Some of them hope that their studies will inform and enrich faith. Others see religion as an embarrassing relic of our past, and they want to explain it away.

"Even when the neural basis of religion has been identified, it remains a plausible interpretation of any conceivable neuropsychological facts that there is a genuine experience of God,"

notes Fraser Watts, a psychologist and theologian at the University of Cambridge and an Anglican vicar.

The theories described below illustrate the diversity of scientific approaches to understanding religion. All these theories are tentative at best, and some will almost certainly turn out to be wrong. The field suffers from vague terminology, disagreement about what exactly "religion" is, and which of its aspects are most important. Does religion consist primarily of behaviors, such as attending church or following certain moral precepts? Or does it consist of beliefs—in God or in an afterlife? Is religion best studied as a set of experiences, such as the inchoate feelings of connection to the rest of nature that can occur during prayer or meditation? Comparing studies is often an exercise in comparing apples and oranges. Nonetheless, the science merits close attention.

Inventing God
Stewart Guthrie, an anthropologist at Fordham University in New York, is in the explain-it-away camp of researchers. Noting the plethora of gods that populate the world's religions, many with minds and emotions similar to our own, Guthrie argues that the belief in supernatural beings is a result of an illusion that arises from our tendency to project human qualities onto the world. Religion "may be best understood as systematic anthropomorphism," he writes in his book, Faces in the Clouds.

Anthropomorphism is an adaptive trait that enhanced our ancestors' chances of survival, he adds. If a Neanderthal mistook a tree creaking outside his cave for a human assailant, he suffered no adverse consequences beyond a moment's panic. If the Neanderthal made the opposite error—mistaking an assailant for a tree—the consequences might have been dire. In other words, better safe than sorry."

[Sidebar: I have read this "better safe than sorry" argument many times, and it sounds stupider to me every time I read it. What sense does it make for man to evolve with a useless ingrained defense mechanism, if what he is defending himself from is something that doesn't exist? I mean, if the cycle of life and death were so simple to understand, why would man take the time to invent a vastly complicated structure of mythical events with a plethora of ethical implications?

Back to Horgan:]

"Over millennia, as natural selection bolstered our unconscious anthropomorphic tendencies, they reached beyond specific objects and events to encompass all of nature, goes Guthrie's theory, until we persuaded ourselves that "the entire world of our experience is merely a show staged by some master dramatist."

Humans are not alone in this trait. In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin noted that many "higher mammals" share the human propensity "to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences." As an example, he recalled watching his dog growl at a parasol lifted off the ground by a gust of wind."

[Sidebar: I would like to comment on this pejorative sense of the word "anthropomorphic". The scientific sense of "anthropomorphic" is:

"God, made up out of the Human imagination to enhance the chances of survival."

Scientists think that God is a fictional character residing in the collective unconscious, invented by Man to explain things he could not otherwise explain; the Bible says God made Man in His image, while science maintains that Man made God in his image. Science does not admit the possibility of a global spiritual truth-umbrella, that applies to all humanity, on the grounds that all religious icons, symbols, and mythologies are geographically specific, and reflect the culture of the people among whom it is observed. There seems not to be ONE heaven, because all the diverse peoples of the world see a different heaven.

I say, "So what? How could it be otherwise?" I believe it is not too bold to make this assertion: the task of religion is to reveal spiritual realities to the mind in language. The only way any truth can make it to the mind is through some kind of language; and, just as any culture's spoken language will tend to be geographically specific, so must its language of religion, also, be culturally specific. The language doesn't alter the physics of the ecstatic experience. The fact that spiritual visions are clothed in the garb of the subject's culture does not invalidate the character of the spiritual experience at its essence, at its soul level. The problem with all the religions is that their practitioners too often confuse the language of the religion for the spiritual reality itself; consequently, they make all kinds of mistaken assumptions that lead to misunderstanding, divisiveness, and war.

The great thing about Christianity is that we have direct access to Jesus--we call Him by name. The Church of Jesus Christ is a vast spiritual Kingdom, structured by higher mental intelligence, that we can enjoy in relatively effortless communion. Granted, the angelic outreach of Jesus is a great comfort, AND a great convenience for us--but I do not think that other human beings who are poor in spirit are denied access to Jesus, in essence, just because they do not know His name. I believe prayers sent to God are mediated by Jesus in any language.

Hence, God is an anthropomorphic invention only to the extent to which the language of His inventors is a lie. We know that the literal mind cannot apprehend God--that only by yielding to the enveloping wave of the Cloud of Unknowing, over the mind's restless photon-like activities, can we perceive the love of God in our hearts. Nevertheless, we persist in attempting to create philosophical, psychological, and artistic models of Heavenly Truth, metaphors of Heavenly Truth. Do these expressions fail because they must be compromised by limited mundane consciousness, or do they succeed because, through them, inarticulate, spiritual truth is made manifest? Is the union of mind and spirit, in the ecstatic experience, a physical event or a super-natural event? I think we must conclude that it is both.

Let me make one more comment on the notion of anthroposophy: as you know, Rudolf Steiner is a great hero of mine, and rightly so in that he more than any other philosopher of modern times has done more to indicate links between the spiritual and the physical. This definition of Anthroposophy appears in Wikipedia:

"Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development. More specifically, it aims to develop faculties of perceptive imagination, inspiration and intuition through cultivating a form of thinking independent of sensory experience, and to present the results thus derived in a manner subject to rational verification. In its investigations of the spiritual world, anthroposophy aims to attain the precision and clarity attained by the natural sciences in their investigations of the physical world."

So, you can see from this basic definition, that Steiner and I are both after the same thing: techniques for manifesting spirit in the flesh. Steiner is hundred times smarter and more psychically talented than I am, so my modest accomplishments in spirit consciousness seem paltry compared to his; yet, this does not discourage me from making claims, by my own rights, on my own truth. Nevertheless, I am certainly indebted to him in ways too numerous to count.

Back to Horgan:]

"Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, has focused on the tendency of people from different religious traditions to report similar mystical experiences, which typically involve sensations of self-transcendence and "oneness." These commonalities indicate that the visions stem from the same neural processes, Newberg hypothesizes.”
 

[Sidebar: Well, duh.

What amazes me is that these scientists can stand before miracle after miracle, taking place right before their eyes, and they just can't see it! The ecstatic saint is not juggling chemicals in her brain, she is touching a dimension that is undefined by space, time, or language

The second article we will consider is an excerpt taken from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia; it offers some useful points of departure, but you will notice that I am in disagreement with the basic tone and direction of many of the author’s arguments:

Ecstasy

"Supernatural ecstasy may be defined as a state which, while it lasts, includes two elements:
•        the one, interior and invisible, when the mind rivets its attention on a religious subject;
•        the other, corporeal and visible, when the activity of the senses is suspended, so that not only are external sensations incapable of influencing the soul, but considerable difficulty is experienced in awakening such sensation, and this whether the ecstatic himself desires to do so, or others attempt to quicken the organs into action."

[Sidebar: So, we can see at the outset that this author is making the same Cartesian dichotomy between mind and body--there is an "interior and invisible" aspect of the experience, and a "corporeal and visible" aspect of the experience. Later, below, we will get thicker into this dichotomy and into the levels of consciousness which define it.

Back to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia:]

"That quite a large number of the saints have been granted ecstasies is attested by hagiology; and nowadays even free-thinkers are slow to deny historical facts that rest on so solid a basis. They no longer endeavour, as did their predecessors of the eighteenth century, to explain them away as grounded on fraud; several, indeed, abandoning the pathological theory, current in the nineteenth century, have advocated the psychological explanation, though they exaggerate its force.

False views on the question of ecstasy
The first three errors here mentioned are psychological in nature; they fail to estimate at its proper value the content of ecstasy; the other false theories spoken of identify this state with certain morbid physical or psychological conditions.

(1)          Certain infidel philosophers maintain that during an ecstasy there is a lessening of intellectual power, that at a certain stage there is an utter loss of the ego, an annihilation of the faculties. This is the theory of Murisier and of Leuba. The arguments for this view are based upon an exaggerated interpretation of certain phrases used by the mystics. Their accounts, however (those, for instance, of Blessed Angela of Foligno), give the lie to such an explanation. The mystics state clearly that they experience, not only the fullness, but the superabundance of intelligence, an increase of activity of the highest faculties. Now, in a science that is based on observation, as is mysticism, we are not justified in brushing aside the numerous and consistent testimonies of those who have tested the facts, and putting in their place the creations of the imagination."

[Sidebar: The assumption of this objection that ecstasy does NOT result in loss of ego is founded on a shallow interpretation of the word “ego”. This author thinks that the concepts of “loss of ego resolution” and “the fullness, and superabundance of intelligence” are diametrically opposed and incompatible. The theories, that we have recently been upholding, indicate the opposite—that fullness of spiritual knowledge is only achieved through the loss of the confining literal-minded restrictions of ego definition. We have suggested that entry into the Cloud of Unknowing requires the release of the mind from the shackles of literal definition into a realm where the mind and soul are free to commingle in inarticulate atmospheres of infinite significance. As C.S. Lewis has reminded us many times, when we give up ourselves, we become more ourselves.

Therefore, this writer in the Catholic Encyclopedia is guilty of the same lapse of logic of which so many Fundamentalist Protestants are guilty, i.e., grinding an axe over something an “INFIDEL” said, rather than seeking the commonality that makes us all one.

Back to the Catholic Encyclopedia:]

"(2) The theory of unconsciousness distorts the facts so unscrupulously that some writers have preferred a theory less crude, i.e., the emotional explanation. The ecstatic, it is admitted, is not buried in a heavy sleep; rather, he experiences violent emotions, in consequence of which he loses the use of the senses; and as there is nothing new to occupy his attention, it follows that his mind is taken up by some trifling thought, so trifling, indeed, that these writers deem it unworthy of their notice. This theory clashes less with historical data than does the first, since it does not wholly eliminate the activity of the ecstatic; but it denies half the facts emphatically urged by the mystical writers.

(3) It has been said that ecstasy is perhaps a phenomenon wholly natural, such as might well be occasioned by a strong concentration of the mind on a religious subject. But if we are not to rest satisfied with arbitrary conjectures, we must show that similar facts have been observed in spheres of thought other than purely religious. The ancients attributed natural ecstasies to three or four sages, such as Archimedes and Socrates, but as the present writer has proved elsewhere, these stories are founded either on inconclusive arguments or upon false interpretation of the facts."

[Sidebar: We can see that this guy has a double-edged axe to grind: the statement “similar facts have been observed in spheres of thought other than purely religious” again places a self-limiting definition on the word “religion”! We at Basin Bible Church have been in universal agreement about this one idea—the idea that if God is be found in all things, “religion” is also to be found in all things. I recall a conversation I had with A.F. some time ago when he asked me something about religious music, and I said, “To me, all music is religious.”

This Catholic author seems determined to “exclude” people, outside his religious persuasion, withholding from them them any kind of credit for having a legitimate religious experience; he also invalidates the inspirations of people like Archimedes and Socrates--presumably because their ecstasies were unsanctioned by the Pope. It just goes to show that it is not only low-brow fundamentalists who can be stupid about serious matters.

In the next section, the author disparages the ecstatic experiences of lesser known subjects in deference to the acknowledged Catholic saints. He distinguishes their experiences from those of the saints in the following paragraphs:]

“From a threefold point of view, then, there is a contrast between their [basically anybody else] case and that of the saints who have been granted ecstasies.
•        The latter possess strong intellects, conceiving projects lofty and difficult in the execution; in proof of this assertion we might appeal to the history of the founders of religious orders.
•        Their will-power is second to none in energy; so strong, indeed, as to enable them to break through all opposition, especially that which arises from their own nature.
•        Lastly, the saints keep before them a moral ideal of a lofty character, the need of self-forgetfulness if they would give themselves to the glory of God and the temporal and spiritual welfare of their fellow-men.”

[Sidebar: It is hard not to nit-pick about the fact that just a few paragraphs earlier he states:

“The mystics state clearly that they experience, not only the fullness, but the superabundance of intelligence, an increase of activity of the highest faculties.”

And yet he speaks here of “the need of self-forgetfulness”. Which is it? Not only does his language here affirm the kind of reduction in ego-resolution that we have been espousing, but he points to the MORAL SUPERIORITY of such reductions. I know I’m quarreling over straws here, but the way in which this author seems to be claiming moral and spiritual superiority and exclusivity to a clan of Catholic saints over every other saint in history is a piss-off. It reminds me of the time, way back in high school, when I did a book report on Brave New World; in my oral presentation I criticized the author on some minor stylistic points, and the teacher said in the most elevated and superiority whine of voice, “Whooo are yoooou to criticize Alllldousssss Huxley?????” “I’m me!” I replied. She was unimpressed. Who ever heard of a writer that wasn't famous? As we have mentioned many times before, people are often convinced by the reputation of the person imparting the truth, rather than the truth itself. It is hard to deny undue authority to people you admire, or think you are supposed to admire. We all remember that passage from the Paul Simon song, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls." I wonder if I could convince this Catholic writer that I understand ecstasy.?

Going on:]

"The hysterical subject of hypnotism, on the contrary combines in himself none of these noble qualities."

[Sidebar: Once again, the underlying attitude here is that an ecstatic experience initiated by some externally replicable trigger is somehow invalid—that a religious ecstasy has to originate in the spiritual realm, preferably in the Catholic Heaven. Let me reiterate a key point in my argument:
We have maintained that, rather being an invalidation of the spiritual component, the physicality of spiritual experience is simply one more way in which spirit glorifies the body and transforms it (or is it translates it?) into a spiritual entity.

Back to the encyclopedia:]

“(6) An attempt has been made to rank ecstasy with somnambulism, with which have also been classed, but with greater reason, the trances of spirit mediums. The case which most approaches, on the surface, the ecstasy of the saints is that of Helen Smith, of Geneva, whom Professor Flournoy studied carefully during the closing years of the nineteenth century. During the crises of spontaneous somnambulism she described her visions in word or in writing. At one time she saw the inhabitants of the planet Mars, at another she dwelt among the Arabs or the Hindus of the fourteenth century. In 1904 she had crises lasting a quarter of an hour, during which she painted in oil pictures of Christ and the Madonna, though she was quite unconscious of what she was doing. The ecstasies of the saints were, it was thought, of exactly the same nature. There are, however, some striking differences:
•        From the moral viewpoint the visions of the saints produce a remarkable change in their manner of life, and lead them to the exercise of the most difficult virtues. Helen experiences nothing of the kind. She is a good woman, that is all.
•        Unlike the saints, she remembers nothing of what she has seen.
•        While the vision lasts, the faculties at play are not the same. In the case of the saints, the activity of the imagination is arrested during the culminating periods, and the intellect undergoes a marvelous expansion. In the case of Helen, the imagination alone was at work, and its objects were of the most commonplace character. Not a single elevated thought; simply descriptions of houses, animals, or plants--nothing but a mere copy of what we see on earth. Such descriptions serve only as stories to amuse children."

[Sidebar: I think I have to agree with the author here, at least in principle: I find it hard to recognize the ecstatic character of an experience that is not conscious; on the other hand, trance mediums operate from a plane of awareness, so different from most of us, that this whole argument seems just a bit like mixing apples and oranges. It must be admitted that mediums like Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts are operating from a spiritual perspective that is so far removed from any kind of PERSONAL mind state that the argument of ecstasy pro or con seems moot. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that mediums are better than most of us at shifting consciousness levels. Our Catholic friend might also be reminded that the visions of Helen Smith sound not unlike the visions of Hildegard de Bingen, one of the great Catholic saints.]

Thus endeth the commentary on the two articles Spirit Tech:
How to wire your brain for religious ecstasy, by John Horgan, and the article on Ecstasy from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.
If there was any reason to quote such a lengthy articles with which I have so many disagreements, it was to illustrate the point that the LANGUAGE in which ecstatic experiences are reported may easily become RELIGION-DRIVEN, rather than SPIRIT-DRIVEN. In the latter article, the author has presupposed the exclusive validity of his material because it comes from the Catholic Authority, and the former make the authority of science into a religion of its own--something to believe in because it is sanctioned by the university.

As mentioned in the introduction to today's presentation:

"Obviously the creative process is not all about numbers and relationships; but neither can there be any doubt that observing the progress of numbers, as they parade across the page, may eventually focus the Mind to a point where the Heart suddenly opens its gates and becomes cognizant of the secrets being whispered into its ear by the gentle lips of Higher Mind. Indeed, just so do all Spiritual Truths manifest in the material plane through some kind of language, be it mathematical, musical, emotional, or spoken."

These two articles give us much needed and interesting background on the subject, but the language they use is too much religion-driven and not enough truth-driven. Once again, the language of our RELIGION is only as good as its ability to translate us to the spiritual realm. Without language, and without Jesus to transform our inadequate expressions into meanings worthy of the ear of the Father, we would have a much more difficult time enjoying our multi-dimensional beings, in this earthly realm.

Let's face it! Religion is made up! We made it up! But we made it from cultural artifacts and tokens scattered all over the diverse and distant plains of Earth. And yet as we raise these graven images to the sky, they mingle with the infinite, they are energized by the outstretched finger of God, and are blessed by grace, as they touch the divinity of Heaven's gates.

Let us pray:
Jesus guide our tongues to sing new songs to You. And let them be sung to variations on the same old tune that gave birth to the world. Give us the humility to witness, and the courage to sing along. Amen.

4 Ecstasy I

4 Ecstasy I

In the past, I have spoken of "Epiphany": epiphany as a mode of experience, a moment of recognition that projects the mundane literal consciousness upward into super-personal atmospheres. I have also spoken of  the “intuitive response”, the psychic "re-centering" of conceptual elements, rearranging themselves in a magical way to make problem-solving possible. We have previously suggested that the process of "psychic 're-centering'" is very similar to, if not identical to, epiphany. We have noted that all epiphanic and intuitive, re-centering realizations come "in a flash". We have also noted that the Intuitive re-centering of concepts, directed toward an end condition, brings into play pre-conscious mind states, again, similar to (or identical to) the pre-conscious mind states associated with the collective unconscious, including the ancient racial memories of elves and fairies (including Santa Claus).

Today's presentation on "Ecstasy" will attempt to create a link between the epiphanic experience, and the ecstatic experience; I will try to show how ecstasy is an extension of the epiphanic experience, with some extra bells and whistles added in. Furthermore, it will suggest that these ideas lead to the following conclusion: that the intuitive epiphany may be the path to ecstasy.

So how can we tell what ecstasy is? If it is, indeed, a state of transcendent, super-literal, spirit consciousness, it is pointless to try to "define" it in words; however, there are attendant characteristics of the experience which are the same every time, and which may, therefore, be used to describe the "effects" of ecstasy in approximate, or generalized, language.

Now, to begin with, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that the epiphanic mode of experience proclaims the positive validity and importance of -- SURPRISE! The ability to accept surprising developments (and cherish them as gifts from God) is a powerful way to keep positive in a world in which most people dwell many hours a day on the negative. I had a friend in L.A. who used to say, of unpleasant surprises, "A flat tire on the freeway is  an invitation to experience life." All this guy's clouds were silver-lined, and all the beatings he received from the rod of the shepherd were accepted with thanksgiving.

Another friend of mine affirmed the element of surprise in the Aesthetic response: which he likened to walking in the woods and suddenly seeing a deer, just inches from your hand; you may never see that deer again, but the memory of that surprise will leave an indelible impression on your mind and leave you open to being pleasantly surprised again. It just goes to show how the unexpected may contain the unopened flower of eternity. It also goes to show how the unknown entity, that we so terribly fear, may turn out to be our best friend. The underlying conclusion here is that Epiphany, Re-centering, Intuition, and the Aesthetic Response are all experiences of upward consciousness shifts, and are, thereby, intimately linked to ecstatic mind states.

Once again, being prepared for the experience can only soften the blow SOMEWHAT--an epiphany, ready or not, will always come as a surprise, because shifting consciousness levels always results in an awakening—a homecoming to a home you’ve never seen before. Epiphanies put us in contact with higher vibrational rungs on Jacob's ladder. Hence, it is very reasonable to associate an epiphany with a traumatic opening of the spiritual eyes, an enriching of the holistic experience of life, the most extreme instance of which is "Ecstasy".


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Ecstasy may refer to:
•        Ecstasy (emotion), a trance or trance-like state in which a person transcends normal consciousness
•        Religious ecstasy, a state of consciousness characterized by expanded spiritual awareness, visions or absolute euphoria"

From the World English Dictionary:

"Ecstasy:
Origin: 
1350–1400; Middle English extasie < Middle French < Medieval Latin extasis < Greek ékstasis displacement, trance, equivalent to ek- ec- + stásis stasis
[C14: from Old French extasie, via Medieval Latin from Greek ekstasis displacement, trance, from existanai to displace, from ex- out + histanai to cause to stand]"

[Sidebar: It is interesting how the original word communicates a sense of "displacement". As you will remember, we have repeatedly suggested the idea that spiritual experience involves moving from one consciousness level to another; therefore, this movement, through different states of awareness, is very appropriately described by the term "displacement". In ecstasy, we feel a sense of movement from one density of ego-resolution to another, from one perspective to another, and even from one time frame to another.

The term "trance", a transcendence of “normal” consciousness, also finds its way into many definitions of ecstasy. Several people have noted that I appear to go into trance when I conduct. It is certainly true that, during performances, I enter a super-personal state that allows me to see into the orchestra's collective mind, and it is certainly true that all my cognitive senses are working at an accelerated rate--the type acceleration characteristic of "re-centering". Thus, “trance” may be defined as a “displacement” of psychic attention from one level of consciousness to another, presumably a higher, or more inclusive state of awareness. Indeed, it turns out that the idea of a more “inclusive” state of awareness is the same thing as an “expanded” state of consciousness--a state of consciousness in which we can simply TAKE IN MORE STUFF. By removing (or displacing) our inner vision to a vantage point higher up the ladder, we can see farther and farther into distant cosmic terrains.]


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Religious ecstasy:
Religious ecstasy is only one type of an altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness, frequently accompanied by visions and emotional (and sometimes physical) euphoria. Although the experience is usually brief in time, there are records of such experiences lasting several days or even more, and of recurring experiences of ecstasy during one's lifetime. Subjective perception of time, space and/or self may strongly change or disappear during ecstasy, sometimes called enlightenment.

Context
The adjective "religious" means that the experience occurs in connection with religious activities or is interpreted in context of a religion. Marghanita Laski writes in her study "Ecstasy in Religious and Secular Experiences," first published in 1961:
"Epithets are very often applied to mystical experiences including ecstasies without, apparently, any clear idea about the distinctions that are being made. Thus we find experiences given such names as nature, religious, aesthetic, neo-platonic, sexual etc. experiences, where in some cases the name seems to derive from trigger, sometimes from the overbelief, sometimes from the known standing and beliefs of the mystic, and sometimes, though rarely, from the nature of the experience.

Ecstasies enjoyed by accepted religious mystics are usually called religious experiences no matter what the nature of the ecstasy or the trigger inducing it."

Exclusive and inclusive views
Religious people may hold the view that true religious ecstasy occurs only in their religious context (e.g. as a gift from the supernatural being whom they follow) and it cannot be induced by natural means (human activities). Trance-like states which are often interpreted as religious ecstasy can be deliberately induced with techniques or ecstatic practices; including, prayer, religious rituals, meditation, breathing exercises, physical exercise, sex, music, dancing, sweating, fasting, thirsting, and psychotropic drugs. An ecstatic experience may take place in occasion of contact with something or somebody perceived as extremely beautiful or holy. It may also happen without any known reason. The particular technique that an individual uses to induce ecstasy is usually one that is associated with that individual's particular religious and cultural traditions. As a result, an ecstatic experience is usually interpreted within the particular individual religious context and cultural traditions. These interpretations often include statements about contact with supernatural or spiritual beings, about receiving new information as a revelation, also religion-related explanations of subsequent change of values, attitudes and behavior (e.g. in case of religious conversion). . . .

Yoga provides techniques to attain an ecstasy state called samādhi. According to practitioners, there are various stages of ecstasy, the highest being Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Bhakti Yoga especially, places emphasis on ecstasy as being one of the fruits of its practice.

Sufism (the mystical branch of Islam) has theoretical and metaphorical texts regarding ecstasy as a state of connection with Allah. Sufis practice rituals (dhikr, sema) using body movement and music to achieve the state. Zila Khan also practices this through Music Therapy and her performances.

[Sidebar: The presence of all these nuanced differences in mind state, and all the different triggers that can shift the devotee's mind state from one level to another, makes me wonder how much time we actually spend OUT of ecstasy: if we, like the photon, constantly wink into and out of existence, then we must be in a constant state of ecstasy, we just don't know it!

Back to Wikipedia:]

"In the monotheistic tradition, ecstasy is usually associated with communion and oneness with God. However, such experiences can also be personal mystical experiences with no significance to anyone but the person experiencing them. . . .

In hagiography (writings about Christian saints) many instances are recorded in which saints are granted ecstasies. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia religious ecstasy (called "supernatural ecstasy") includes two elements: one, interior and invisible, in which the mind rivets its attention on a religious subject, and another, corporeal and visible, in which the activity of the senses is suspended, reducing the effect of external sensations upon the subject and rendering him or her resistant to awakening. The witnesses of a Marian apparition often describe experiencing these elements of ecstasy."

Now, those of you who have been following my sermons for the past few weeks will have doubtless already guessed that I am raising "Ecstasy" to the very peak of discernible consciousness levels, and am equating it, the ultimate ecstatic moment, with death.

Might it be that all these depressed, suicidal eccentrics, longing for death, are NOT WRONG--that we ALL should be pining after death, as a man dying in the desert might thirst for water, as a scarecrow might yearn for LIFE?! If the moment of death is a moment of birth into a new life, how may we resist pining after it? On a more modest level we may speak of the ineffable longing of sehnsucht, the joy of not having, which is only justified by the future translation of the devotee's consciousness into a higher realm. The joy of sehnsucht borders on the ecstatic, but keeps us grounded with at least one foot in the material plane, whereas death paints the big picture, and in death, by projecting ourselves into our own deaths, we touch the essence of who we are.

My personal life is fraught with pains and frustrations of the past pursuing me around every corner of my current progress, and it is difficult to hold on to a positive attitude; indeed, many people would attribute my current obsession with death as a negative activity. This has turned out not to be so, since thoughts of my death have propelled me into a future in which I exist beyond my physical limitations, and above my petty mundane trials. I thank God for the rod of the Shepherd that punishes each wrong turn with unequivocal directives, and comfortable healing moments of stasis.

Let us pray: Jesus, thank You for our lives and the crosses each of us must bear through this chaotic earthly landscape or paradox and disappointment; the commissions we accepted before the world began are dear to our hearts because we know we have been enlisted by you to perform a certain thing to the Glory of the Father. Still, we stand outside the gates of Heaven and wait patiently, pining after the face that will eventually open the door and let us in. Amen.

3 Longing for Death

3 Longing for Death

The subject of today's presentation is: the role of death-consciousness in the life of the devotee committed to the spiritual path. Notice that I have coined a term which I  believe to be somewhat original: "death-consciousness". This may not be a new idea, (indeed, it is the title of a recent rock album); but, as was suggested last week, we need to remember to think of death-consciousness as a designation for one specific consciousness state on a graduated continuum of consciousness states: to think of dreams, sleep, and death all as discrete points on a consciousness continuum.

Today, what I hope to do is indicate a link between death-consciousness and the spiritual/psychological state of sehnsucht, the  feeling of unrequiteable longing that will never be satisfied. I have suggested that this intense feeling of longing, this feeling  of desiring something unattainable, is experienced by the subject as a byproduct of the process of  projecting his consciousness up into the level of consciousness we are currently calling "death-consciousness", the level of consciousness just touching the afterlife. Indeed, the one constantly comfortable thought I get from sehnsucht is this: true joy must be prophetic--the longing, the missing, the imperfection, is pleasurable because it sees the future discarnate spiritual state of man, and transports that future state of mind back to the present; the having and the not-having become integrated in a cross-temporal event. Thus, sweet longing is represented by the night awaiting the moment when it will break into eternal day. And the reason this unfulfilled longing is so sweet, is that it actually IS fulfillable--it is fulfilled in death. We can, as it were telegraph our conscious focus forward into a future state of enlightenment, and bring vestiges of that state back with us to mundane consciousness.

Another question is: if this place of death can feel so warm, so right, so familiar, does this mean that have we been there before? on the other side of death? I might be talking about reincarnation here, but I might just as easily be talking about Man's descent from the Godhead into flesh. We have spoken many times of becoming one with God--God Who is and always was, the Great I AM. Have we not, coming from the Mind of God, already experienced Heaven in its essence, and therefore recognize the traits of the Heaven in which we were born, and from which we were expelled to Earth and its tempering trials? Is this not the true delight of Earthly experience?: that we can be here, caught in the webwork of time, and yet be free to fly with the angels, merely by shifting our attention?

On the subject of Sehsucht, Wikipedia was contributed the following:

"It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far-off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far-off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call "home". In this sense it is a type of nostalgia, in the original sense of that word. At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be, and the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for. The experience is one of such significance that ordinary reality may pale in comparison, as in Walt Whitman's closing lines to "Song of the Universal":


"Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream
And all the world a dream."

[Sidebar: At the end of Lewis' The Last Battle, we see an exodus of souls marching up the hill toward the real England--the England that existed before the material England. This return the "the real England" is just such a return to the nostalgic source of all real homes. The cry is "further up and further in" because the inner is bigger than the outer. One wonders which is the more powerful feeling, the going home or the arriving at home. Do we ever get all the way home, or does the joy of arriving mount and mount into an infinite ecstasy? I also wonder, again, how we could be missing home, being nostalgic for home, if we have never been there before?

C.S. Lewis describes sehnsucht as:

"That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves."

In The Weight of Glory Lewis says...

"In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you -- the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat.

If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.

These things -- the beauty, the memory of our own past -- are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

Again, Lewis, writing in The Problem of Pain:

"All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand."

Now, this particular association of sehnsucht with death is to be found in a line of (particularly German) writers, beginning with Novalis, through Goethe, to Thomas Mann, to C.S. Lewis. In Novalis we read:

"With bold spirit and lofty enthusiasm
The man beautified the horrible mask,
A gentle youth extinguishes the light and rests—
The end will be gentle like a sigh of the harp.
Memory melts in the cool flood of shadows,
So sang the song to doleful abjection.
But eternal night remained undeciphered,
The grave symbol of a remote power.

Notice the reference to music--we will come back to that.

More on Novalis from Wikipedia:]

"In the book Heinrich von Ofterdingen the blue flower symbolises the joining of human with nature and the spirit so the understanding of nature and coincident of the self is growing. In the Romantic the meaning of human was a continuation from Humanism and the Age of Enlightenment, but the focus was on subjective emotions not on abstract theory. Understanding and thinking rise in the comprehension of Romantic from own individual love.

"Feeling is based on the self,
thinking is based on the self,
and the development of the self creates the individual person.
Also very important is contemplation: 
the thinking,
the contemplation,
and the personal inward cognition
make feeling possible--they raise the bar such that sensitivity to higher intelligence, higher consciousness and higher reality become possible, and more and more possible, in the subjective reality of the devotee. The process of cognition merges again with personal, individual love. The self and nature are always linked in this theory."

I found a Schubert song entitled Sehnsucht by the German poet Johann Mayrhofer:

"The songs of the lark, up near the clouds,
Ring out as winter flees.
The earth covers its limbs in velvet
And blossoms form red fruit.

Only you, storm-tossed soul,
Only you do not blossom. You are turned in on yourself,
And in the golden brightness of spring
You are sucked dry by deep longing.

What you crave will never spring from
This soil, a stranger to ideals,
Which, despite your most beautiful dreams,
Sets its raw strength up against you.

You exhaust yourself battling against its toughness,
Fired up with the burning desire
To set off with the cranes
And to migrate to a kinder country."

You will notice that so many of these descriptions of the emotional sehnsucht journey terminate in an arrival to "a kinder country", a long-lost home.

I also found a poem by Goethe, The Holy Longing:

"Tell it to no one, except the wise men,
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death.

In the love night which created
 you
where you create, a yearning
wakes:
you see, intoxicated,

far away a silent candle burning.

Darkness now no longer snares you,

shadows lose their ancient force,
as a new desire tears you
up to higher intercourse.
Now no distance checks your flight,

charmed you come and you draw night

till, with longing for the light,

you are burnt,
O butterfly.

And until you have possessed
dying and rebirth,

You are only a troubled guest
On the dark earth."

The mention of the "butterly" in this poem once again references the transformation of caterpillar into butterly, the transition from one consciousness state to another one. Death is depicted as one more level of transformation, with the added condition that, in death, the mundane life be completely burned and purged away to make room for the new improved spiritual and verbally silent butterfly. The freedom of death is the sweetness we crave, the ultimate satisfaction.



Now, let us change course for a bit and review the idea that "death anxiety" directly correlates to language: it is understood that language has created the basis for this type of death anxiety through communicative and behavioral changes." Remember the sermons that discussed the opinions of Julian Jaynes, and his idea that consciousness is a consequence of language.

One implication of this idea is that, if the language component of consciousness were taken away, there would be nothing left; that is to say the no-thing left would make room for the delicately resonant perceptions of soul, the inarticulate, eternal soul, which does not deal with "things". When the monkey voice is silenced, the background consciousness, which we can, normally, but dimly perceive with our puny powers of spirit discernment, comes forward and we know who we really are. In death self-knowledge must be at its peak because, in death, the monkey's voice is hushed at last.

Another implication of the language component of death-consciousness is specifically about music; the question is: if consciousness is a function of language, must not music, a language decidedly more complex that verbal communication, therefore raise consciousness to a higher level, merely by virtue of its much higher abstract content? Is not music just like sleep? a place where the mobile mind consciousness elevates itself to the level of the "preconscious", or the "archetypal", or the "collective" stage? And do we not know that, beyond all these levels, of super-mundane awareness, is a state of consciousness which is even larger in scope than the collective--a level of consciousness which is more inclusive, and more primary.

Now, so what--to all of this? Well, for one thing,  in a system of graduated consciousness levels, the PERMANENCY of dream consciousness,  may not be be doubted, since the dream world is outside time; nor may the MATERIALITY of the aesthetic response be doubted as it manifests in angel-writing on our astral bodies, evoking physical responses which are even measurable in the laboratory.

I have identified the feeling of sehnsucht in our aesthetic responses to music and other art. That "Aha" moment in a poem of a piece of music, this place of rarefied personal density, is the seat of the ineffable longing of sehnsucht. As mentioned above, the higher-level linguistic complexities of art may be said to project consciousness into a higher level, thereby bringing the devotee more immediately into the presence of death--death and the joy that awaits him when the mundane barriers imposed between his lower and higher selves have been eliminated. The feeling of barriers being broken down, in infinite repetition, is the joy of sehnsucht--the twinge of longing followed by a wave of peace, as the subject projects himself into his own future state of death-consciousness. The longing returns when self-consciousness returns, but the self may lose itself once again in the cloud of unknowing, again and again, in ecstatic repetition.

I have often spoken of music as a transmitter of higher-level spiritual reality into a lower-level material reality; I am thereby familiar with the experience of shifts in consciousness levels, and the subtle imprint these shifts makes on the literal consciousness. Once again, especially through music, the IDENTITY of higher consciousness levels has long been intimately known to me, but, until now, the connection between music and death has not been obvious. The sehnsucht aspect of music is the most fragile and tender of aesthetic responses,(it is my favorite experience), but, so far, I have never been willing to go the distance, and hear the call of death in every strain of Bach. Now I do.

We know that the music of Bach is replete with text upon text (many written by himself) pining after death; typical titles are Come Sweet Death, Before Thy Throne I Now Appear, etc. Here is a typical text, an aria from Cantata #180:


"Jesus, true bread of life,


help me so that not in vain


or perhaps to my loss


I may be invited to your table.


Grant that I may, through this food for my soul,


measure out rightly your love,


so that I also, as here on earth,


become a guest in heaven."


Notice the word "guest" appears at the end of this poem, as it does at the ending of the Goethe poem:

"You are only a troubled guest
On the dark earth."

To be sure, the poems use the term "guest" in different ways, one referring to being a guest on earth, and the other to being a guest in Heaven; but the associations with the word "guest" always include a feeling of either visiting, or being treated as an honored presence. Both of these implications may be linked to the sehnsucht/death-experience.

Bach seems always to have had his eye on the prize; and his music is so suffused with the ineffable longing of sehnsucht that it is tempting to imagine him as a morbid, dissatisfied individual, always pining for the stars, always rejecting Earthly pleasures as invalid and empty. Not so. This is the lesson I am learning from these meditations on death: that the more we imagine death, the more real becomes the heavenly landscape of "after death", and the more joyful becomes our time on Earth. The Earth is constantly bathed in heavenly light, we only must learn to see it.

I confess that  for most of my life I have had a negative attitude: true, I have been dedicated to my life's work, and have submitted to the Will of the Father when it has come to where, when, and what I am supposed to do with this gift of life; however, as to the LENGTH of my life, I have very often indulged in suicidal behaviors (smoking, the chief among these) purposely designed to SHORTEN my life. I have been willing to do my work, but have been unwilling to imagine myself as an old man sucking out the final dregs of a life that has often been personally unsatisfying. A few years ago, I began to get subtle intimations about how dumb this was, and I quit smoking for the specific purpose of taking an element of suicidal activity out of my life habits. I have recently become committed to losing weight for the same reason (we'll see how firm that resolve turns out to be).

The hypocrisy is that, on the one hand I have disparaged life on earth as unrewarding, and yet I have always clung to addictive behaviors which connote a fierce attachment to mundane existence. The irony is not only that I have finally realized this, but that it has taken me SO LONG to realize this.

The main point here is that we ought to be able to identify different levels of consciousness, and learn to exercise our mobile consciousness centers so that they learn to reach into terrains of subtler and subtler material. The idea of the materiality of verbal thought is a minor component in this very interesting article I stumbled upon; it is one more of those many, many articles disproving the existence of death through proofs in quantum physics:

"LANZA'S THEORY OF BIOCENTRISM AND THE AFTERLIFE

Most scientists would probably say that the concept of an afterlife is either nonsense, or at the very least unprovable.

Yet one expert claims he has evidence to confirm an existence beyond the grave - and it lies in quantum physics.

Professor Robert Lanza claims the theory of biocentrism teaches that death as we know it is an illusion created by our consciousness.

'We think life is just the activity of carbon and an admixture of molecules – we live a while and then rot into the ground,' said the scientist on his website.'

Lanza, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, continued that as humans we believe in death because 'we've been taught we die', or more specifically, our consciousness associates life with bodies and we know that bodies die.

His theory of biocentrism, however, explains that death may not be as terminal as we think it is.

Biocentrism is classed as the theory of everything and comes from the Greek for 'life centre'.

It is the belief that life and biology are central to reality and that life creates the universe, not the other way round.

This suggests a person's consciousness determines the shape and size of objects in the universe.

Lanza uses the example of the way we perceive the world around us. A person sees a blue sky, and is told that the colour they are seeing is blue, but the cells in a person's brain could be changed to make the sky look green or red.

Our consciousness makes sense of the world, and can be altered to change this interpretation.

By looking at the universe from a biocentric's point of view, this also means space and time don't behave in the hard and fast ways our consciousness tell us it does.
In summary, space and time are 'simply tools of our mind.'"

[Sidebar: I must interject here that the term "mind" MUST, in this case, refer to the verbal, literal, or thinking mind. As Claudius says in Hamlet:

"My words fly up, my thought remain here below.
Words without thought never to heaven go."

The mind uses verbal structures to negotiate the worldly twists  and turns of mundane existence, but the price we pay is that the extra weight of verbal materiality grounds us to lower levels of conscious identification.

Back to Lanza:]

"Once this theory about space and time being mental constructs is accepted, it means death and the idea of immortality exist in a world without spatial or linear boundaries.
Theoretical physicists believe that there is infinite number of universes with different variations of people, and situations taking place, simultaneously.

Lanza added that everything which can possibly happen is occurring at some point across these multiverses and this means death can't exist in 'any real sense' either. 

Lanza, instead, said that when we die our life becomes a 'perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse.'

'Bottom line: What you see could not be present without your consciousness,' explained Lanza. 'Our consciousness makes sense of the world.'"

[Sidebar: Once again we must remind ourselves that consciousness making "sense of the world" has got to mean "rational sense", and yet we know that higher mind is super-rational.

Back to Lanza:

"He continued: 'Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix.'

Lanza cited the famous double-slit experiment to backup his claims. 
In the experiment, when scientists watch a particle pass through two slits in a barrier, the particle behaves like a bullet and goes through one slit or the other.

Yet if a person doesn't watch the particle, it acts like a wave, This means it can go through both slits at the same time.

This demonstrates that matter and energy can display characteristics of both waves and particles, and that behaviour of the particle changes based on a person's perception and consciousness."

This article does not contribute anything particularly original to the implications of the new physics, which have long been known to new age philosophers; however, it does emphasize a crucial point: consciousness is a slippery slope, and doesn't like to be pinned down. And yet, with death anxiety, we stupidly empower a primal fear to dominate our spiritual focus and draw us away from the experience of the diffused ego-resolution, and its joys, which typically characterize the death-consciousness state.

As you know, I have worked to develop a sense experience of the higher vibratory self, with which I may identify; and I have seen, in death, the most beautiful things; I have dwelt in that same celestial home up to which any pilgrim spirit ascends every time it witnesses the spiritual truth, the living, moving, intelligence-bearing truth of music. Recall again the idea of the birth of consciousness in language, and of the fact that human beings are more aware of their own mortality, than are animals, because we can talk about it and think about it, and animals can't. Thus, death-consciousness is simply the awareness, shared by most human beings, that physical life is limited to a span, and must end. And the heart-fluttering longing of sehnsucht tempts us with hopes of Heaven.

Remember the scripture, 2 Corinthians 5:2:

    "Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our    
    heavenly dwelling,"

and Proverbs 13:12:

    "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."

Thus, this scripture reprises the main point of this presentation: if we can take the experience of longing for a future heavenly dwelling, and, through impulse of desire, project ourselves into that future, we will have found the surest pathway to joy. The tree of life extends its roots through all space and time, and it branches flower in eternity.

Let us pray: Jesus, we long for your face to lead us further in and further up. We treasure the glimpses of Heaven we may steal for a moment here and there. We thank you for the hope these glimpses give, and for the sacrifice You made on the cross in order to ease our way Home. Amen.

2 Sleep Perchance to Dream

2 Sleep Perchance to Dream

For the last two months or so, I have been considering death and the afterlife. I have been having a spiritual crisis (as I have every few years) over an irrational fear of death, and have been struggling with my faith to find comfort. Recently I began to consider the relationship of sleep and dreams to the consciousness state of death; this sermon is the outcome of those considerations

One wonders why I should fear a death of non-existence, when I am surrounded by so much evidence to that contradicts the very idea. In truth, I participate daily in spiritual prayer activities which clearly, unequivocally affirm the existence of non-physical presences --I KNOW there is non-physical intelligence in the universe; and yet, I just don't have enough personal confirmations of this reality that specifically include ME, (or who I THINK I am) to give me absolute confidence in the proposition of an ETERNAL ME. Let's put it another way, my mind is made up but my body is still egocentrically opposed to non-existence.

So, my mind is completely made up, and all the arguments in favor of life after death are firmly in place; and yet I still have doubts, moments of panic when I face the unimaginable prospect of non-existence. In the face of oblivion, doubt rages within me and I pace the floor in a frenzy.

It is some comfort to know that even C.S. Lewis occasionally had periods of doubt; and furthermore, to Kierkegaard, doubt was actually part and parcel of the faith package.

"The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or how a person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to completely justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway.

A leap of faith according to Kierkegaard involves circularity insofar as a leap is made by faith. In his book The Concept of Anxiety, he describes the core part of the leap of faith, the leap. He does this using the famous story of Adam and Eve, particularly Adam's qualitative leap into sin. Adam's leap signifies a change from one quality to another, mainly the quality of possessing no sin to the quality of possessing sin. Kierkegaard maintains that the transition from one quality to another can take place only by a "leap". When the transition happens, one moves directly from one state to the other, never possessing both qualities."

From this preceding sentence I believe for the term "leap" we may substitute: "shift along a continuum of graduated levels". This is, indeed, the subject line for  this sermon: dreams, sleep, and death are all points on a continuum of consciousness states. Now, I'm giving you the punchline here, before the setup, but I sort of want to tell the story, in a roundabout way, of how I came to this conclusion; the conclusion is this:

I have extolled from this pulpit, for years, the importance of fluidity between levels of consciousness, but, in my stupidity, it never occurred to me to think of death as just one more level of consciousness within an infinite array of possible levels of consciousness. I have now accepted this premise.

Furthermore, I have often spoken of music as a transmitter of higher-level spiritual reality into a lower-level material reality; I am thereby familiar with the experience of shifts in consciousness levels, and the subtle imprint these shifts makes on the literal consciousness. Once again, especially through music, the IDENTITY of higher consciousness levels has long been intimately known to me, but, until now, the connection between music and death has not been obvious. The sehnsucht aspect of music is the most fragile and tender of aesthetic responses,(it is my favorite experience), but, so far, I have never been willing to go the distance, and hear the call of death in every strain of Bach. Now I do.

I have worked to develop a sense experience of the higher vibratory self, with which I may identify, but, until now, I have never had the confidence in it (or the faith) necessary to fully give up my identification with the chattering monkey mind in favor of this higher vibratory identity. Now I am.

Accepting this deeper understanding of the scope of the mobile consciousness, has deeply affected my priorities. It now seems to me that: a person's ability, to move through different levels of consciousness, might very well prove to be a reliable index of his spiritual advancement. Certainly an adept at this control of vibratory rate would have little fear of death.

But let's start over: allow me to backtrack a bit, and detail the question that initiated, and eventually led me through, this particular spiritual crisis:
  
I was thinking about sleep, when I began having these death-anxiety attacks. I was thinking about how every night I cease to exist, and then come back to life in the morning. If my consciousness ceases to exist in sleep, in a faint, in a coma, why should I fear death? I'm very familiar with non-existence in that context. However, the thought of never waking up is very upsetting. On the other hand, what about this UNCONSCIOUS everybody is talking about? How can it BE, if it is unconscious? Is this another one of those psychic realities that depends on anecdotal evidence to confirm its existence? I mean OTHER people can experience YOUR unconscious, but can YOU?

The whole question of sleep led me to consider different levels of consciousness as elements in a macrocosmic view of death. I asked, among others, this question: "Where does sleep fit into a comprehensive spiritual discipline?"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Sleeping is associated with a state of muscle relaxation and limited perception of environmental stimuli.
In animals, sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, and inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and it is more easily reversible than being in hibernation or a coma.

Physiology
In mammals and birds, sleep is divided into two broad types: rapid eye movement (REM sleep) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM or non-REM sleep). Each type has a distinct set of associated physiological and neurological features. REM sleep is associated with the capability of dreaming. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) divides NREM into three stages: N1, N2, and N3, the last of which is also called delta sleep or slow-wave sleep.

    •    NREM stage 1: This is a stage between sleep and wakefulness. The muscles are active, and the eyes roll slowly, opening and closing moderately.
    •    NREM stage 2: theta activity In this stage, it gradually becomes harder to awaken the sleeper; the alpha waves of the previous stage are interrupted by abrupt activity called sleep spindles and K-complexes.
    •    NREM stage 3: Formerly divided into stages 3 and 4, this stage is called slow-wave sleep (SWS). SWS is initiated in the preoptic area and consists of delta activity, high amplitude waves at less than 3.5 Hz. The sleeper is less responsive to the environment; many environmental stimuli no longer produce any reactions.
    •    Slow-wave sleep (SWS), often referred to as deep sleep, consists of stage 3 and 4 of non-rapid eye movement sleep, now combined as stage 3.
    •    Slow-wave sleep is considered important to consolidate new memories.
    •    Sleep deprivation studies with humans suggest that the primary function of slow-wave sleep may be to allow the brain to recover from its daily activities. As it turns out, glucose metabolism in the brain increases as a result of tasks that demand mental activity. Other functions slow-wave sleep can affect include the secretion of growth hormone. It is always greatest during this stage. It is also thought to be responsible for a decrease in sympathetic and increase in parasympathetic neural activity."

[Sidebar: One of the primary articles of my spiritual catechism is that the brain is merely a muscle, it is not the SEAT of consciousness. My experience of my higher, inarticulate, self has affirmed this principle. And yet all the research on consciousness focusses on brain function more than anything else: what if the brain really IS the SEAT of CONSCIOUSNESS? To put it another way: what if a person's spiritual vibration is incapable of manifestation WITHOUT the brain as a SEAT, a CONDUIT, a TRANSMITTER? What if, without manifestation, there is no existence? You see why I'm worried?

Back to Wikipedia:]

"•    REM: The sleeper now enters rapid eye movement (REM) where most muscles are paralyzed. REM sleep is turned on by acetylcholine secretion and is inhibited by neurons that secrete serotonin. This level is also referred to as paradoxical sleep because the sleeper, although exhibiting EEG waves similar to a waking state, is harder to arouse than at any other sleep stage. Vital signs indicate arousal and oxygen consumption by the brain is higher than when the sleeper is awake. An adult reaches REM approximately every 90 minutes, with the latter half of sleep being more dominated by this stage. REM sleep occurs as a person returns to stage 1 from a deep sleep. The function of REM sleep is uncertain but a lack of it will impair the ability to learn complex tasks."

[Sidebar: I find this fact about dreaming very provocative:

"Vital signs indicate arousal and oxygen consumption by the brain is higher than when the sleeper is awake."

Could this POSSIBLY be some kind of indicator of spirit consciousness? Do we mean by "raised consciousness" "increased oxygen consumption by the brain"? Below we will encounter another definition of "raised consciousness" that will thicken the plot even further.

Back to Wikipedia:]

"Below is a hypnogram showing sleep cycles from midnight to 6.30 am, with deep sleep early on. There is more REM (marked red) before waking.

An adult reaches REM approximately every 90 minutes, with the latter half of sleep being more dominated by this stage. REM sleep occurs as a person returns to stage 1 from a deep sleep.The function of REM sleep is uncertain but a lack of it will impair the ability to learn complex tasks.

One approach to understanding the role of sleep is to study the deprivation of it. During this period, the EEG pattern returns to high frequency waves which look similar to the waves produced while the person is awake

30 seconds of deep (stage N3) sleep.

A screenshot of a PSG of a person in REM sleep. Eye movements highlighted by red box."

So we can see that psychic experiences such as dreaming and psychic experiences such as REM sleep are linked, if not indistinguishable from each other. Our flights, into the technicolor world of dreams, result in experiential reports remarkably like the reports of soul travel in the astral plane, and encounters with living, archetypal symbols in art. Thus, wonder of wonders, the charts above indicate that the reception of material from the collective unconscious (the archetypal dream image) is actually MEASURABLE by the equipment in a neurology lab! Does this make it physical--or is spiritual energy susceptible to objective measure? Or is the incarnation of spiritual energy, into the physical, as much a physical event as it is a spiritual event? Is it both equally at once, or is it both, in different proportions?

Speaking of brain unconsciousness, what about near-death experiences? In brain death, those laboratory instruments would measure NOTHING, and yet NDE subjects still see visions, hear sounds, and witness, from above, their own doctors trying to coax their consciousness back into their bodies.

Back to Wikipedia:

"Near-death experiences have been described in medical journals as hallucinatory, and such prescient information supposedly gained from NDEs as merely coincidental and dubious. Ketamine, a dissociative hallucinogen, has been shown to replicate compounds of near-death experiences. Lucid dreaming too induces experiences quite similar to those of NDEs. The imagery in NDEs varies within cultures. Rick Strassman advanced the hypothesis that a massive release of the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from the pineal gland prior to death or near-death was the cause of the near-death experience phenomenon."

The above is a doubt-raising/faith-damaging paragraph; it could mean that all para-normal experiences are mere hallucinations projected into consciousness by the pineal gland. This is not an outrageous suggestion, based on the similarities between reports of OBE experiences, and reports of other types of drug-induced experiences. As mentioned above, the "raising of consciousness" might turn out to be nothing more than elevated oxygen consumption in the brain; after all, all the big psychedelic drug users claim that drugs "raises consciousness", and we know that the main activity of psychedelic drugs, more than anything else, is playing with the sugar supply to the brain. If this turns out to be true, then all the great yogis and soul-travelers of history will be reduced to insane DMT trippers.

Even the validity of the NDE subjects witnessing their our team of doctors is called into question by this DMT idea, because one of the typical features of the  psychedelic experience is an experience of consciousness leaving the body for parts unknown. Perhaps a chemical is capable of STRETCHING the cord of consciousness out of the body's immediate confines, but when the body truly dies, and all the SUBTLE traces of energy have drained out, dead is just dead, and oblivion is our eternal home, not Heaven.

However, here enter the idea of consciousness levels: one of the main reasons that people take drugs is that drugs allow the subject to effortlessly change consciousness levels. The danger with drugs, of course, is that they are unpredictable; they can sometimes drive the consciousness upward into higher vibrational states (an uncontrolled state, but a higher state to be sure), but they are just as liable to drag the subject down into lower vibrational states, which is not exactly the same thing as being in touch with the oversoul. Nevertheless, the idea that the pineal gland can trigger a reaction similar to LSD is not a comfortable one.

Still, one of the big questions the scientists still can't answer is how brain-dead subjects can see their doctors and their surroundings when there are no vital signs registering at all? It raises the question of whether out-of-body drug experiences are just hallucinations or are they more? I mean, are they just random false pictures, projected onto the screen of verbal consciousness, or are actually trans-dimensional experiences? And note the similarity of the drugged state to the child-like Saturday-morning cartoons mind state, in which colors are exaggerated, and basic human principles are argued in basic terms: white hat, black hat. Surely it is not too much to imagine that ALL children, up to a certain age, dwell in a primitive heaven. Their descent into the world of paradoxical verbal images is their Fall from the Garden. They spend the rest of their lives trying to get back.


My particular lapse of faith has a brand name: it is DEATH ANXIETY.

Back to Wikipedia:

"Death anxiety is the morbid, abnormal or persistent fear of one's own death or the process of his/her dying. One definition of death anxiety is a "feeling of dread, apprehension or solicitude (anxiety) when one thinks of the process of dying, or ceasing to ‘be’".
    Types
Robert Langs distinguishes three types of death anxiety. the third one is:
Existential death anxiety
Existential death anxiety is the basic knowledge and awareness that natural life must end. It is said that existential death anxiety directly correlates to language; that is, language has created the basis for this type of death anxiety through communicative and behavioral changes."

[Sidebar: remember the sermons that discussed the opinions of Julian Jaynes, and his idea that consciousness is a consequence of language.

Does this mean that: when we make music, speaking in a language more decidedly complex that verbal communication, we enter a higher level of consciousness? Indeed, music is just like sleep; it is a place where the mobile mind consciousness elevates itself to the level of the "preconscious", or the "archetypal", or "collective" stage; and we know that beyond all these is a state of consciousness which is even larger in scope than the collective--a level of consciousness which is more inclusive, and more primary. How, then, can the reality or the PERMANENCY of dream consciousness be doubted?

To thicken the plot, listen to this quote of Wittgenstein, the leading linguistic psychologist of the 20th century:

"Wittgenstein, in a notably non-theological interpretation of eternal life, writes in the Tractatus that, "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."

The point is that even a master linguistic psychologist like Wittgenstein must eventually resort to faith as a substitute for verbal consciousness.]

Having suggested several scenarios for activity along the consciousness continuum, let us now examine the concept of the trinity for clues as to how we may deepen our identification with the Father.

This simple sentence from Wikipedia inspired a personally significant insight:

"Hinduism propounds that every living being, be it a human or animal, has a body and a soul (consciousness) and the bridge between the two is the mind (a mixture of both)."

We have spoken many times of Jesus as the mediator between God and man, but I don't think I ever before equated the MIND with the MEDIATOR. This does a lot to allay my death anxiety, because:

    I know my mind is just a chattering monkey, that hardly ever has anything to say; and
    I know there is a consciousness BEHIND the mind that is the true self.

I have affirmed, many times, that an increased sensitivity to spiritual activity will reveal the consciousness BEHIND the literal consciousness--and yet I don't think I ever quite went the distance so far as to discredit my conscious mind's claim on my true identity; I may have SAID it, but I don't think I really FELT it. This is what I'm saying: all these things are clear to my mind, but my heart is still unruly and untrained. Even with all this talk of the Cloud of Unknowing, I don't think I fully realized the extent of the conscious mind's power to restrict my highest sensitivities by enslaving them in verbal terms. Let's put it another way: I have not been HYPOCRITICAL in my message of the power of faith to dispel doubt, but I have NOT been STEADFAST; to be sure, in the absence of steadfast faith, Satan has been able to infect me with death anxiety. What a jerk! Him to do it, and me to fall for it!

So, a summary of the main source of my death anxiety amounts to this:

    if it is possible to LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS during sleep,
    why should it not be possible to lose consciousness        
    FOREVER?

Very frightening. But what if that subtle consciousness, BEHIND verbal consciousness, is the true consciousness? What if it depends on my mind merely to give it voice, but is just as content with silence? At this point in my life, the idea of "just shutting up for awhile and silently BEING" is an idea that is not at all upsetting to me; in fact it sounds kind of good.

And here is my point: having full knowledge of the existence of my higher self, I have, anyhow, forgotten to place the proper emphasis on THAT dimension of myself; in so doing, I have identified too much with my verbally conscious self, and have hence, bought into an image of myself that is both false and incomplete, or perhaps I should say, "false in its incompleteness". This imbalance in attention has inspired a troublesome bout of death-anxiety, but, true to the predictions of Kierkegaard, this doubt has also inspired a deeper faith, and forged this higher-level conclusion into existence. I am relieved. I am absolutely convinced in my mind and my body that my death will not be the end of me, and this knowledge encourages me to focus even more on the dimension of myself that WILL NOT DIE.

Below is an account of an Indian cheater of death:

"Ramalinga Adigal's disappearance on January 30, 1874
An Indian saint known as Vallalar claimed to have achieved immortality before disappearing forever from a locked room in 1874.

Perhaps one of the most notable factors of this sage is the claim that he supposedly attained a divinization of the physical body. He attained a total of 3 transformations. His first transformation was the transformation of his normal human body into the Perfect Body, between the supposed attributes of this body are total invulnerability to everything thus rendering him effectively immortal and impervious to any kind of damage as well as having the attributes of being omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient this body is apparently made of Divine Light.

Beyond this state there was a subsequent transformation by which the Perfect Body transformed further into the Grace Body possessing the following attributes: This body have automatically a young appearance like that of a kid, can be seen but can't be touched, and has complete and absolute dominion over all the Siddhis.

Even beyond the State of the Grace Body supposedly there was a third and final transformation in which the Grace Body was transformed into the Bliss Body. This body is the body of the Supreme Godhead and is automatically omnipresent but can't be perceived by anyone."

[Sidebar: I've read lots of New Age material laden with terms like Astral body, Etheric body, Fine body, all different flavors of body; this quotation here talks about the division of consciousness into those various levels expressed in interestingly different language. I'll read it again:

"Even beyond the State of the Grace Body supposedly there was a third and final transformation in which the Grace Body was transformed into the Bliss Body. This body is the body of the Supreme Godhead and is automatically omnipresent but can't be perceived by anyone."

Going on:

"By achieving this Ramalinga demonstrated that the ultimate states of spirituality can in fact be attained in this world with the physical body and death is not a necessity to experience the ultimate spiritual experience.

Ramalinga raised the flag of Brotherhood on his one room residence Siddhi Valakam in Mettukuppam on October 22. He gave his last and most famous lecture, entreating his audience to undertake a spiritual quest and look into the "nature of the powers that lie beyond us and move us," and asking them to meditate on the lighted lamp from his room, which he placed outside.

Adigal on January 30, 1874, entered the room and locked himself and told his followers not to open it. He said that even if they did open it they would find nothing (United with Nature & ruling the actions of 'all of the alls' - as told in his poem called 'Gnana Sariyai'). His seclusion spurred many rumors, and the Government finally forced the doors open in May. The room was empty, with no clues."

On the the subject of death and the resurrection of the body, John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way:

"'God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves.' That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death (the Intermediate state) is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom." This kingdom will consist of Heaven and Earth "joined together in a new creation", he said."

This is from the Seventh Day Adventists:

"Seventh-day Adventists believe that only God has immortality, and when a person dies, death is a state of unconscious sleep until the resurrection. They base this belief on biblical texts such as Ecclesiastes 9:5 which states

"the dead know nothing",

and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 which contains a description of the dead being raised from the grave at the second coming.
"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (cf. Gen 2:7)

Above I have asked, "Where does sleep fit into a comprehensive spiritual discipline?" Another New Age Site says this:

"During normal sleep, every human being wanders in the internal worlds with their consciousness asleep. During normal sleep, the Soul, enveloped by its Astral Body, abandons the physical body. This is how the Ethereal Body is able to repair the dense physical body.

We awaken from our natural sleep when the Soul enters into the physical body. In the internal worlds, the Souls are occupied repeating their same daily chores; there, they buy and sell as in the physical world.

During normal sleep, the Souls of the living and the Souls of the dead coexist together. In the internal worlds, we see everything as in the physical world, i.e. the same sun, the same clouds, the same houses of the city: everything looks the same.
Now, our Gnostic disciples will understand why the souls of the dead do not accept that they are physically dead. Likewise, our disciples will comprehend why the Souls of the living buy and sell, work, etc., during their normal sleep.

By consciously projecting ourselves in the Astral Body, we can know about the mysteries of life and death, since every human being is unconsciously projected in the Astral Body during normal sleep. Therefore, if we awaken the consciousness during normal sleep, then we can know about the great mysteries of life and death."

We have all read things like this, and some of us have been repelled by the "mumbo-jumbo" factor in it; and yet, it cannot be denied that the above paragraph is yet another testament to the idea of LEVELS of consciousness, and yet another suggestion that human consciousness may cross many boundaries. Furthermore, another detail in the paragraph above mentions WORK; the idea is that work of some spiritual nature is continually being done in sleep, in dreams, and even in death. A significant point is that the work of the soul is continuous, it is already in process when we enter the body, and the efforts of the soul to improve itself continue after death. This is one of the things that makes the thought of non-existence so frightening (that you would not be able to finish your work), but also one of the things that makes the thought of eternal existence so inviting-- the work goes on because, this way, we will always be assured of having something to do.

Only one thing remains to be said, concerning the role of spiritual mediation and its progress from articulate verbalization, to the grammarless Cloud of Unknowing: the primal source of this language of mediation is the Incarnation of the Christ. Jesus is the living example, the living paradigm of the mind. Through Jesus, the consciousness of the Father and the consciousness of the body are linked in sacred and eternal union. Through Jesus we realize the limitations of the literal mind, so miniscule in scope, and through Jesus we can learn to turn it off, and still have a sense of self.  To me, a sense of self is all I need to rest assured that I will remain conscious after death.

And remember, Jesus is the personification of this Consciousness thing. When we become one with Jesus, we become one with the dimension of ourselves which is, not of the highest vibratory level, but of a quality which is necessary to make us human. Jesus and the body are aligned in the spiritual hierarchy; they clearly go together as the primary definition of our humanity, and, by implication, of a much higher state of consciousness; a level that is inaccessible to our normal state of verbal consciousness.


I have become convinced that I already have direct knowledge of the soul that will live on after my physical death, and I have been able to put it into language that my literal mind can understand. So it may readily be seen that doubt can be turned into faith by using the linguistic abilities of the mind to link itself with the voiceless eternal mind. The language is difficult, but it is sweet on the tongue.

Let us pray: Jesus thank you for the power to overcome mental obstacles with divinely inspired truths conveyed to us in sleep, in dreams, and in death. Amen