Spiritual Science

Consciousness, Perception and the Brain


If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?  At first you might think, “of course it still makes a sound!” until further defining what “sound” actually means: the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium(dictionary.com).  When a tree falls there are certainly pressure waves vibrating through the air, but since “sound” is a quality of consciousness, if no ears are around to “hear” those waves, then the tree literally does not make a sound.  



“To the surprise of many, the world ‘out there’ has turned out to be quite unlike our experience of it. Consider our experience of the color green. In the physical world there is light of a certain frequency, but the light itself is not green. Nor are the electrical impulses that are transmitted from the eye to the brain. No color exists there. The green we see is a quality appearing in the mind in response to this frequency of light. It exists only as a subjective experience in the mind. The same is true of sound. I hear the music of a violin, but the sound I hear is a quality appearing in the mind. There is no sound as such in the external world, just vibrating air molecules. The smell of a rose does not exist without an experiencing mind, just molecules of a certain shape.” -Peter Russell, “The Primacy of Consciousness”


What we call “colors” or “sounds” or “smells” are all qualities created in consciousness which have no independent existence without a sentient observer.  Colors are just electromagnetic energy of a specific frequency, sounds are just vibrations of specific patterns, and smells are just various combinations of air molecules - all of which require the key element of consciousness to mystically transform these energetic emanations into our intricate and amazing everyday sensations.  

“All our perceptions, sensations, dreams, thoughts and feelings are forms appearing in consciousness. It doesn't always seem that way. When I see a tree it seems as if I am seeing the tree directly. But science tells us something completely different is happening. Light entering the eye triggers chemical reactions in the retina; these produce electro-chemical impulses which travel along nerve fibers to the brain. The brain analyses the data it receives, and then creates its own picture of what is out there. I then have the experience of seeing a tree. But what I am actually experiencing is not the tree itself, only the image that appears in the mind. This is true of everything I experience. Everything we know, perceive, and imagine, every color, sound, sensation, every thought and every feeling, is a form appearing in the mind. It is all an in-forming of consciousness.”  -Peter Russell, “The Primacy of Consciousness”


Electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 380 and 760 nanometers (frequency of 790–400 terahertz) is detected by the human eye and perceived as visible light; everything beyond that is invisible to us.  All the colors of the rainbow and absolutely everything we see comes from just a narrow frequency on an infinite electromagnetic spectrum.  Our highest perceivable frequency, at 790 terahertz, is the color violet.  However with the use of tools/technology we know that above violet are ultra violet light, X-rays, and gamma rays.  Our lowest perceivable frequency, at 400 terahertz, is the color red.  However, with the use of tools/technology we know that below red are infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.  The spectrum is infinite, yet we base our entire experience on the minute sliver perceivable to us and assume that is “reality.”

“Our eyes detect none of these other frequencies, and our image of reality represents but a tiny fraction of what is there.  The same holds true of the other senses. What we hear, smell and taste is but a limited sample of the physical reality. Furthermore, there are aspects of the physical world, such as magnetic fields and electric charge that have very little, if any, impact on our experience.”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”


“In the space that you are occupying now are all the radio and television frequencies broadcasting to your area. You can't see them and they are not aware of each other because you and they are on different frequencies, or wavelengths. Only when the frequencies are really close do they experience 'interference'. It is the same with our reality. Our 'physical world' is just one of countless wavelengths, frequencies or dimensions, and to experience and interact with this realm we need an outer shell that is vibrating within this frequency range. Our consciousness is vibrating too fast to interact efficiently with this frequency … The body is the means through which our Infinite Awareness can directly experience this range of frequencies that I will call, to keep it simple, the five-sense realm, world or dimension. This is why the five senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste are so limited. They are confined to perceiving only this range of frequencies - this dimension.”  –David Icke, “The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy” (13-14)

So in the universe there exists an infinite array of electromagnetic radiation, but only the tiniest glimpse of that array is available for sensory experience.  Our physical bodies act like electromagnetic transistors for our awareness by switching on/off, amplifying or muting the multitude of signals around us and funneling what we focus on.  All visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory sensations are brought to our consciousness through this frequency decoding process, just like tuning a radio, and in the grand scheme of things, we are barely receiving a signal. 


“There is no 'solid' world 'outside' of you. All those people, streets, cars and buildings only exist, in that 'solid' 3D state, in your mind. Everywhere else, they are frequency fields, thought fields, energy matrices, call them what you will. Television and the Internet are perfect illustrations of what I am talking about here. When we think of television we think of pictures and programs, but the only place television exists in that form is on the TV screen. Everywhere else television consists of frequency broadcasts and electrical circuitry. When we think of the Internet we think of websites, pictures and graphics, but the only place the Internet exists in that form is on your computer screen. Everywhere else it consists of mathematical codes and electrical circuitry … To summarize: the 'physical' world is a tiny frequency range or dimension within Infinite Awareness - the 'ocean'. The body-computer tunes us into this strictly limited sense of perception, this television channel, and acts as our vehicle to interact with this 'world'. We have been manipulated into believing that 'we' are the computer and its mental, emotional and physical software programs. This dimension, like all the others, is a mass of frequency fields that the body-computer decodes into apparently 3D scenes, but in that form they only exist in the brain or, more accurately, the energy matrix we call the brain. There is no 'physical' world unless it is observed into form - decoded into form.” –David Icke, “The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy” (35-7)


The “outside” world around us has a convincing appearance of being “out there” somewhere, when in actuality the 3D world is no more “out there” than a dream.  In dreams we perceive sights, sounds, and sensations, we have all our emotional and rational faculties, we encounter people, places and situations all seeming to be happening in a world “out there” around us.  Not until we awaken do we realize that all those sights, sounds, sensations, people, places, and situations were simply creations of our minds, appearing around us, but coming from within us.

“Since the Greeks, philosophers have been thinking about ‘the ghost in the machine’, ‘the small man within the small man’ etc.  Where is ‘I’, the person who uses his brain?  Who is it that realizes the act of knowing?  As Saint Francis of Assisi said: ‘What we search for is the one that sees.’”  -Ken Wilber, “Holographic Paradigm” (37)


 “Today, after thirty years of investigation into the nature of consciousness, I have come to appreciate how big a problem consciousness is for the contemporary science. Science has had remarkable success in explaining the structure and functioning of the material world, but when it comes to the inner world of the mind – to our thoughts, feelings, sensations, intuitions, and dreams – science has very little to say. And when it comes to consciousness itself, science falls curiously silent. There is nothing in physics, chemistry, biology, or any other science that can account for our having an interior world.”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”

How and why do we have an inner life at all?  Professor of Philosophy at University of Arizona, Dr. David Chalmers has coined this issue, “the hard problem” of consciousness.    How could any complex material process in the brain create our rich immaterial internal worlds of thought, emotion, sensation, and perception?  Why is there a subjective aspect to reality at all?


“Nothing in Western science predicts that any living creature should be conscious. It is easier to explain how hydrogen evolved into other elements, how they combined to form molecules, and then simple living cells, and how these evolved into complex beings such as ourselves than it is to explain why we should ever have a single inner experience.”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”

Let’s put the “hard problem” of consciousness through the process of elimination.  We now know from multiple experiments in quantum physics that quanta, the building blocks of matter, the fundamental units of “stuff” in the universe, do not become a set “something” with definite properties, location, and materiality without the key element of consciousness to collapse the wave function; In other words, no consciousness, no matter.  So if consciousness is supposedly an emergent property of a Newtonian/Darwinian mechanistic universe, what used to collapse the wave function in the days before the “evolution of consciousness?”

“[Since] a key component in the quantum measurement process includes an observer and his or her knowledge, this means the mind is inextricably wound into quantum reality … Based on the classical assumptions of local realism and mechanism, the brain – like any other physical object – is a clockwork object.  Since clockworks are not conscious, then what we call ‘I’ can only be an emergent property of a complicated piece of machinery.  And thus our sense of conscious awareness, or the feeling one has when smelling a rose, are illusions – though illusions to whom is not quite clear.  From a classical physics point of view, the ‘you’ that is currently reading this sentence is an illusion.  This seems to be a rather important limitation, as most people reading these sentences probably believe that they (their conscious minds) do exist.”  -Dean Radin, “Entangled Minds” (256-7)


We often falsely assume that we areour physical bodies because our consciousness seems trapped inside.  We feel pain and pleasure, all emotions, perceptions and sensations through the body and so we identify with it, but is the body who/what we really are?  If your leg gets cut off, is the leg still you?  Or was the leg just a tool, a vehicle you used to experience the physical realm? 

“We are energy beings residing in bodies so that we can experience this physical dimension.  The relationship between our energy being and our physical body is kind of like a person driving a car, except imagine that the person driving believes the car is their true being.  It might strike you as funny to imagine a person who believes that they are the car, but that is the way most of us think of ourselves.  We do not separate our physical bodies from the pure energy being that controls the body.  When people drive cars, they do not become car-beings.  We are the energy beings within our bodies.”  -Eric Pepin, “Handbook of the Navigator” (111-112)

Anyone who has experienced an OBE, NDE, or taken DMT will tell you emphatically that we arenot our physical bodies.  Indigenous peoples and shamanic cultures regularly practiced meditation, “dreamtime,” trance-inducing chants, dances, fasts and ingested psychedelic entheogens all of which put them directly in touch with non-physical aspects of their consciousness.  Even the staunchest materialists are compelled beyond their will every night to relax their bodies to sleep while their consciousness travels to various dream worlds/dimensions beyond the physical.  The signs are all around us but the point is easy to miss: the physical world is simply a recurring dream that we awaken from when our bodies die.

“So the first revelation on the road to freedom: your body is not 'you' - it is a fantastic biological computer that 'you' are using to experience this reality.  It is a vehicle, a means, not a 'you' or an 'I'.  The spacesuit is the means by which an astronaut can experience other 'worlds'.  So is your 'body'.  We are not our bodies; we are Infinite Consciousness, the All That Is, a seamless energy field within which all 'worlds' and no 'worlds' exist.  The only difference between everything is the level of awareness that we are All That Is.  The deeper this awareness, the more you will access that level of 'knowing' and perception; the more you think you are an 'individual' and apart from everything else, the more you will disconnect from the Infinite One that you really are.”  –David Icke, “The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy” David Icke Books (2)

Still unconvinced that you are not your body?  Did you know that every 5 to 7 years, every single cell in your body dies and is replaced?  Your entire body, every cell in your brain, every cell in your eye, absolutely everything that composes your physical body has died and been replaced multiple times.  Meanwhile, your unique essence, your feeling of “I am-ness,” your consciousness, has remained exactly the same as when you were a child. 


“This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences.  We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.  As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples.’  Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.  This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals.  Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated ‘egos’ inside bags of skin [but] the cat has already been let out of the bag.  The inside information is that yourself as ‘just little me’ who ‘came into this world’ and lives temporarily in a bag of skin is a hoax and a fake.  The fact is that because no one thing or feature of this universe is separable from the whole, the only real You, or Self, is the whole.  The rest of this book will attempt to make this so clear that you will not only understand the words but feel the fact.”  -Alan Watts, “The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” (53)

The Universal Consciousness

In the Eskimo/Inuit language of cold, wintry Alaska there are dozens of words for “snow” - Dozens of words with intricacies and connotations well-known and understood by them, but typically unnoticed and misunderstood by others. Similarly, in the Sanskrit language of ancient, spiritual India there are approximately a dozen different words for “consciousness” – a dozen clearly delineated words with subtle nuances which in English we can only loosely, clumsily call “consciousness.”

“For every psychological term in English there are four in Greek and forty in Sanskrit.” -A. K. Coomaraswamy

So what exactly is consciousness? When western doctors say someone is conscious or unconscious they really just mean “awake” or “asleep.” The patient is called unconscious under anesthetics and conscious when awakened. However this particular meaning is clearly a misnomer because even when supposedly “unconscious” during sleep, coma, or under anesthetics we still dream and are “conscious” of that experience, so our consciousness hasn’t disappeared as implied, it has merely altered/shifted to another state.



“In medicine, the presumption that consciousness is nothing more than a function of the brain is reflected in such statements as, ‘The patient regained consciousness’ – this routine, narrow depiction has assumed that consciousness is a mundane physical phenomenon, a self-evident priority for experience about which nothing more needs to be said.” -David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., “Power Vs. Force”(249)

Other common (mis)uses of the word consciousness are “awareness” as in “being conscious of something,” and “spirituality” as in “attaining higher consciousness,” but again these are not the denotations understood by modern scientists or ancient mystics. As best expressed by Theoretical Physicist/Experimental Psychologist Peter Russell, the true, simple meaning of consciousness is “the capacity for experience.” Consciousness is the ability to have an inner experience. It is our internal world of thoughts, emotions, sensations, perceptions, and choices, the “I,” the little me in our minds, the sense of self inside us that has never changed since childhood – that is consciousness.


“The identification and experience of self could be limited to a description of one’s physical body.  Then, of course, we might well ask, how does one know that one has a physical body?  Through observation, we note that the presence of the physical body is registered by the senses. The question then follows, what is it that’s aware of the senses?  How do we experience what the senses are reporting?  Something greater, something more encompassing than the physical body, has to exist in order to experience that which is lesser – and that something is the mind … The question then arises: How does one know what’s being experienced by the mind?  By observation and introspection, one can witness that thoughts have no capacity to experience themselves, but that something both beyond and more basic than thought experiences the sequence of thoughts, and that that something’s sense of identity is unaltered by the content of thoughts.”  -David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., “Power Vs. Force”(252)

That something is consciousness, the capacity for experience, the inner witness of our outer lives.  As written by philosopher Malcolm Hollick, “Events are experienced by an experiencer, thoughts are thought by a thinker, pain is felt by a feeler, imaginings are created by an imaginer, and choices are made by a chooser.”


“What is it that observes and is aware of all of the subjective and objective phenomena of life?  It’s consciousness itself that resonates as both awareness and experiencing, and both are purely subjective. Consciousness isn’t determined by content; thoughts flowing through consciousness are like fish swimming in the ocean.  The ocean’s existence is independent of the fish; the content of the sea doesn’t define the nature of the water itself.”  -David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., “Power Vs. Force”(252-3)

Given the definition, “the capacity for inner experience,” we can easily observe that consciousness is not a phenomenon limited only to human beings.  In fact, as we trace the trait of consciousness back through the animal kingdom, it becomes increasingly difficult to say there exists any animal which doesn’t have its own inner experience of the outer world. In his excellent book “From Science to God,” Peter Russell examines this issue in detail starting with the example of a dog:


“A dog may not be aware of all the things of which we are aware. It does not think or reason as humans do, and it probably does not have the same degree of self-awareness, but this does not mean that a dog does not have its own inner world of experience. When I am with a dog, I assume that it has its own mental picture of the world, full of sounds, colors, smells and sensations. It appears to recognize people and places, much as we might. A dog may at times show fear, and at other times excitement. Asleep, it can appear to dream, feet and toes twitching as if on the scent of some fantasy rabbit. And when a dog yelps or whines we assume it is feeling pain –indeed, if we didn’t believe that dogs felt pain, we wouldn’t bother giving them anesthetics before an operation.”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”


My dog, Buddy, always recognizes me and shows excitement when I come through the door.  He also recognizes the veterinarian’s office and shows fear when we pull into the parking lot. If I ignore Buddy and give more attention to his sister, Harley, then Buddy will exhibit signs of feeling slighted and jealous, he will sulk by himself in the corner of the room, his tail no longer wagging when I go to pet him.  If I raise my voice at him, he will cower, lower his head, and scamper off.  From facial recognition to dreams to complex emotions, dogs exhibit a multitude of expressions associated with consciousness.  To assume they exhibit all these external characteristics of consciousness without having their own internal experience is quite implausible.  And as Peter Russell points out, if we actually believed that dogs didn’t “feel” pain, we wouldn’t give them anesthetics before an operation.  

“If dogs possess consciousness then so do cats, horses, deer, dolphins, whales, and other mammals. They may not be self-conscious as we are, but they are not devoid of inner experience. The same is true of birds; some parrots, for example, seem as aware as dogs. And if birds are sentient beings, then so, I assume, are other vertebrates – alligators, snakes, frogs, salmon, and sharks. However different their experiences may be, they all share the faculty of consciousness.  The same argument applies to creatures further down the evolutionary tree. The nervous systems of insects are not nearly as complex as ours, and insects probably do not have as rich an experience of the world as we do, but I see no reason to doubt that they have some kind of inner experience.  Where do we draw the line?”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”


Carefully considering where to draw the line between conscious and non-conscious entities, the closer one examines the issue, the more difficult it becomes to argue that any animal is insentient.  Regardless of whether they have a brain or nervous system, no matter how small or simple, all animals seem to have their own inner experience and exhibit common characteristics of consciousness.  

So what about the plant kingdom?  While most would agree that animals are conscious, most would probably agree that plants are not.  Is this where we can draw the line?  Apparently not - Thanks to the work of Cleve Backster, Dr. Ken Hashimoto and others, it is clear that even plants are remarkably conscious.  


In 1966, polygraph-expert Cleve Backster conducted a series of experiments which conclusively demonstrated that plants are capable of intelligent thought processes.  First he took a Dracaena plant (dragon tree) in his office and connected lie detection equipment to its leaves.  Next he watered the plant and found that its polygraph output was similar to the undulation of human happiness. In order to test his developing theory and elicit a stronger reaction, Backster thought to threaten the plant by burning one of its leaves. With this thought in mind, even before retrieving a match, he noticed a strong positive curve appear on the polygraph paper.  He then left the room to find some matches, and as soon as he arrived back, another high peak appeared on the paper.  As he lit a match, the plant’s fear reaction spiked and remained high as he proceeded to burn one of its leaves.  In further trials Backster found that if he showed less inclination to burn the plant, its reaction was weaker, and if he merely pretended to burn it, there was no reaction.  So not only was the plant appearing to show genuine happiness and fear, but it seemed to be discerning true intentions from false ones.


“[In] 1966 Cleve Backster, a pioneer of lie-detection methods, decided to threaten a dragon plant in his office.  A few minutes before, and having on a whim connected the plant to the electrodes of one of his lie detectors, he had noticed that when he watered its roots, the plant gave what in a human being would be interpreted as an emotional reaction.  To arouse the strongest reaction he could, Backster first placed a leaf of the plant in hot coffee, with no apparent response.  He then decided on a worse threat:  to burn the leaf.  But as soon as he thought about the flame, there was an instant response from the plant – without Backster moving but just thinking about the threat, the plant had reacted!  When he left the room and returned with some matches, there was a second surge of anticipation from the plant.  And as he reluctantly burned the leaf, there was a subdued but still noticeable reaction from the dragon plant.  Over the next 40 years, Backster ran a large series of experiments, building up a huge archive of data showing that all organisms are in continual communication in a vast matrix of dynamic and nonlocal awareness.”  -Ervin Laszlo and Jude Currivan, “Cosmos” (91)


In further trials Backster tried burning the leaves of other nearby plants not connected to the polygraph, and the original dragon plant, still connected, registered the same wild response to its friend’s pain as when its own leaves were burned.  In another experiment Backster placed two plants in an empty room, blindfolded 6 students, and had them draw straws.  The receiver of the short straw was then secretly instructed to uproot and destroy one of the two plants.  Since they were all blindfolded, only the short straw student and the remaining plant knew the identity of the murderer.  Two hours later Backster connected the remaining plant to the polygraph machine and instructed each student to walk past it.  The murder-witness plant registered absolutely no reaction as the 5 innocent students walked by, but then went crazy almost off the charts as the murderer came close.  Somehow it correctly identified and emotionally reacted to the guilty student.


Backster’s experiments suggest that plants are not only conscious, intelligent, and emotional, but also telepathic!  Plants will indeed register a typical human “fear” reaction on the polygraph precisely when someone directs a malevolent thought towards them.  These experiments have been replicated many times with the same results.  Somehow plants are able to intuit and react to certain human thought patterns.

“The ‘Backster effect’ had also been seen between plants and animals.  When brine shrimp in one location died suddenly, this fact seemed to instantly register with plants in another location, as recorded on a standard psychogalvanic response (PGR) instrument.  Backster had carried out this type of experiment over several hundred miles and among paramecium, mold cultures and blood samples, and in each instance, some mysterious communication occurred between living things and plants.  As in Star Wars, each death was registered as a disturbance in The Field.”  -Lynne McTaggart, “The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe,” (145)


Other experiments have been performed testing the effect of prayer, positive and negative directed intention and emotion on plants.  Dr. Bernard Grad of McGill University had a team of psychic healers habitually direct positive or negative feelings onto a variety of plants.  The positively-infused plants survived and thrived, while negatively-infused plants withered and many of them died.  Reverend Franklin Loehr, a Northampton pastor, performed similar studies with his parishioners testing the power of prayer to affect plants and seeds.  In one experiment he planted 46 corn kernels evenly spaced in a round pan with 23 on each side.  He then gave daily “positive-growth” prayer to half the kernels and “anti-growth” prayer to the other half.  Eight days later, the positive side had 16 sturdy, budding, seedlings growing and the negative side had only 1 barely left alive.  In another test, one of his parishioners, Erwin Prust, subjected 6 Ivy plants to daily “anti-growth” prayer while watering them and within 5 weeks, 5 of them were dead.


In the incredible documentary, “The Secret Life of Plants” Fuji electronics managing director and chief of research Dr. Ken Hashimoto created special instruments which translate the electrical output of plants into modulated sounds effectively giving them a voice.  His wife has since been teaching the Japanese alphabet to her favorite plants.  In the documentary Mrs. Hashimoto recites Japanese letters/phonemes/words and the plants repeat them back to her! Reminiscent of a small child trying to sound-out new words, the plants are unable to properly imitate the language at first, but then actually struggle and practice, slowly improving until they are able to perfectly imitate the human sounds via their electrical output.  She says she looks forward to the day when she can have a conversation with her plants.


So if plants can learn languages, show emotional output, react to emotional / intellectual stimulus, communicate with other plants, and read the minds / intentions of humans, it is quite rational to assume that the plant kingdom, just like the animal kingdom, is conscious.

“This demonstrates extremely well that plant life, like all life and indeed everything in the Universe are an inseparable aspect of the same infinite Mind, Consciousness, and intelligence of The Source, The First Cause, of God.  Human beings, still totally steeped in the material world and personal ego assume that just because a plant does not appear to have a physical brain, or a mouth, or any other animal characteristics that they are ‘unintelligent’ or simply ‘inanimate.’ Nothing in fact can be further from the truth.  The human brain is not the real Mind any more than physical parts of a plant or a mineral are real Mind.” -Adrian Cooper, “Our Ultimate Reality” (217)


So how far down the evolutionary line does consciousness exist?  The work of Dr. Masaru Emoto suggests that even water is in some sense conscious.  His research began by exposing H₂O to nonphysical stimulus and photographing the resulting water crystals with a dark field microscope. 

“Japanese researcher, Masaru Emoto, of the I.H.M.-Institute in Tokyo, has revealed how water is fundamentally affected by words, thoughts and emotions - all of which are waveforms. He and his team exposed water to various music and different words and expressions, and then froze it to produce water crystals. When these were examined under a microscope the response of the water was amazing. Look at the way it reacted to the words and thoughts (vibrations) of 'Love and appreciation', and, 'You make me sick - I will kill you'. Imagine the effect on the body of our words and deeds when it is some 70 per cent water. This is how thoughts and words affect us energetically. I should stress that it is not the words that have the effect, but the intent behind them. If you said 'I will kill you' in a light-hearted fashion, as a bit of fun, it would not have the same effect as it would if you meant it, or said it with malevolence"  –David Icke, “The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy” (47)


Thus even water has the ability to distinguish between real human emotions and fake platitudes.  When infused with positive intent the H₂O molecules align themselves into beautiful, symmetric, sacred geometrical forms, and when infused with negative intent they align themselves into chaotic, non-symmetrical blobs.  Obviously the level and type of consciousness operating in water molecules is far different from human consciousness, but the fact that something in the molecules is identifying and reacting to human emotional/intellectual content suggests that even water is indeed in some sense conscious.


“We usually assume that some kind of brain or nervous system is necessary before consciousness can come into being. From the perspective of the materialist metaparadigm, this is a reasonable assumption. If consciousness arises from processes in the material world, then those processes need to occur somewhere, and the obvious candidate is the nervous system.  But then we come up against the inherent problem of the materialist metaparadigm. Whether we are considering a human brain with its tens of billions of cells, or a nematode worm with a hundred or so neurons, the problem is the same: How can any purely material process ever give rise to consciousness?”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”


Can we truly draw a definitive line between conscious and non-conscious entities in the universe?  At what level of simplicity do we assume matter to be insentient?  Even single-cell organisms react to external stimulus, reproduce, communicate, respirate, hunt and consume food – is this all an unconscious, insentient “program” of Newton’s mechanical universe or are even single cells imbued with a slight degree of consciousness, a miniscule internal experience of their own?  When sperm and egg unite, each human begins their life as a single-cell organism which then rapidly divides and multiplies into the conscious community of 50 trillion cells we generally know as human.  In classical science, consciousness is a mysterious emergent property of this process; in spiritual science, consciousness is the known primary property and the physical world is the emergent mystery. 


“The capacity for inner experience could not evolve or emerge out of entirely insentient, non-experiencing matter. Experience can only come from that which already has experience. Therefore the faculty of consciousness must be present all the way down the evolutionary tree…There is nowhere we can draw a line between conscious and non-conscious entities; there is a trace of sentience, however slight, in viruses, molecules, atoms, and even elementary particles. Some argue this implies that rocks perceive the world around them, perhaps have thoughts and feelings, and enjoy an inner mental life similar to human beings. This is clearly an absurd suggestion, and not one that was ever intended. If a bacterium’s experience is a billionth of the richness and intensity of human being’s, the degree of experience in the minerals of a rock might be a billion times dimmer still. They would possess none of the qualities of human consciousness – just the faintest possible glimmer of sentience.”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”


The ancient Sufi teaching states that “God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in the man.” What if we replaced the word “God” with “The One Infinite Consciousness?”  If God is defined as - an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent intelligence – then God must exist inside all things, yet outside of all space, time, and matter.  What has quantum physics (and honest introspection) shown exists inside all things, yet outside space, time, and matter?  Consciousness.

“Without consciousness, there would be nothing to experience form.  It could also be said that form itself, as a product of perception with no independent existence, is thus transitory and limited, whereas consciousness is all-encompassing and unlimited.  How could that which is transitory (with a clear beginning and ending), create that which is formless (all encompassing and omnipotent)?”  -David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., “Power Vs. Force”(250-1)


How can non-experiencing, unintelligent, insentient matter randomly coalesce into a form that magically creates conscious intelligent life?  What mechanical process could possibly bring consciousness, intelligence, and life into being?  How could any material process create something as immaterial as consciousness?  Why would the material universe even exist without a consciousness to perceive it?  Quantum physics and Eastern Mysticism are both quite clear that matter does notexist without a consciousness to perceive it.  Albert Einstein himself said, “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’ – a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.”

“Whatever our beliefs – irrespective of how far we expand our perception and regardless of how profound the ability of science may be to understand processes of emergence – sooner or later we arrive at the requirement for an originating creative act.  We arrive ultimately at the concept of a cosmic mind.  Although science has so far chosen to ignore this inescapable logic, the deeper we delve into the fundamental mysteries of Nature – as did Einstein – we see order, harmony, and cosmic mind manifest in our universe.  What is revealed doesn’t require us to choose between intelligent design and evolution, but to recognize a co-creative design for evolution.  What we see, literally hidden in full view, is Einstein’s concept of a cosmic mind at work.”  -Ervin Laszlo and Jude Currivan, “Cosmos” (22)

Unless you actually think “God” is a bearded white man living in the clouds, perhaps replacing that word, as Einstein did, with something like “Cosmic Mind,” “Universal Being,” or “Infinite Consciousness” will help bridge the mental gap most Westerners seem to have between science and spirituality. 

“After I shook the dust of organized religion from my sandals, I learned that the link between big ‘ol God and little ‘ol me was no more and no less than consciousness.  And each of us, at and as the very center of us, have this same feeling of I Am, for the not-so-obvious reason that each one of us is really God pretending to be each one of us.  There is only one I Am, there is only one God, one Brahma, one Tao, one beingness … we both see the same world, because we both are the same world.  But we have so cleverly and convincingly hidden ourselves from ourselves that we really believe that we are separate entities.”  -Roger Stephens, “A Dangerous Book” (56)

“The coming scientific revolution heralds the end of dualism in every sense.  Far from destroying God, science for the first time is proving His existence – by demonstrating that a higher, collective consciousness is out there.”  -Lynne McTaggart, “The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe,” (226)


As shown previously, the plenum of physical forms in the universe is fundamentally an energetic Oneness with consciousness playing the role of creator and experiencer.  This means the multitude of transitory material forms and bodies about us, don’t exist without us, and come from within us.

“A growing body of research suggests that we’re more than cosmic latecomers simply passing through a universe that was completed long ago.  Experimental evidence is leading to a conclusion that we’re actually creating the universe as we go and adding to what already exists!  In other words, we appear to be the very energy that’s forming the cosmos, as well as the beings who experience what we’re creating. That’s because we are consciousness, and consciousness appears to be the same ‘stuff’ from which the universe is made.”  -Gregg Braden, “The Divine Matrix” (39)

“The universe holds its breath as we choose, instant by instant, which pathway to follow; for the universe, the very essence of life itself, is highly conscious.  Every act, thought, and choice adds to a permanent mosaic; our decisions ripple through the universe of consciousness to affect the lives of all.  Lest this idea be considered either merely mystical or fanciful, let’s remember that fundamental tenet of the new theoretical physics: Everything in the universe is connected with everything else.”  -David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., “Power Vs. Force” (148)

God, Brahma, Tao, Void, Oneness, Infinite Consciousness



Until now, the prevailing Newtonian mechanistic worldview has dominated Western culture, science and metaphysics for hundreds of years.  The idea that we live in an unintelligently designed universe - the idea that out of nowhere, nothing, for no reason spontaneously became everything, has been accepted as scientific gospel.  This atheistic, nihilistic, purely materialistic paradigm presented by believers of Big Bang evolution, however, cannot explain the multitude of non-physical, non-local findings in quantum mechanics.  They cannot explain how consciousness, intelligence and life supposedly evolved from unconscious, unintelligent, dead matter.  They cannot explain why apple seeds grow apple trees and pear seeds grow pear trees, or how arm cells know to be arms and leg cells know to be legs.  They cannot explain the holographic universe or morphogenic fields, the placebo effect, psychoneuroimmunology, acupuncture, the aura, chi/prana or remote healing; telepathy, psychokinesis, clairvoyance, precognitionand the entirety of psi science; they cannot explain out-of body or near-death experiences, ghosts, entheogens, the soul, the spirit world orreincarnation. 



“Although the true nature of the Universe has been known and taught throughout the ages by many and varied sources throughout the world, all of which are highly consistent and in broad agreement, it is also now being substantiated by the work of modern quantum physics, and increasingly by other branches of the sciences as well.  All areas of the sciences will surely soon have to accept the fact that true Universal reality is not and never can be based entirely in the familiar three-dimensional world of physical matter as has been assumed since the days of Isaac Newton, but is rather an infinite, multi-dimensional reality, a Universe of living Consciousness of which everyone and everything without exception is an integral and equal aspect.  The true nature of the Universe will certainly challenge the perceptions of most people, if for no other reason that throughout the ages there has been a prevalent misperception of a ‘God’ who is completely separate from everyone and everything else in existence, and who ‘rules’ over ‘his’ three dimensional world of matter from high places.”  -Adrian Cooper, “Our Ultimate Reality” 

The emerging wisdom of spiritual science has rendered the atheist materialist paradigm extinct.  Consciousness, life, the beautiful diversity, complexity and interconnectedness of nature and the universe are not the result of some random coincidental physical phenomenon. Remember, the odds against our universe containing the precise physical forces and attributes necessary to sustain life is one octillion to one.  In other words, there is only a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance that the universe was unintelligently designed.  So if there is an intelligent designer, a creative force beyond all space, time and matter, what are the properties of this entity?  Theologists and metaphysicians throughout history have agreed that this intelligent creative force must by definition be all-knowing (omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent), and all-present (omnipresent).  Furthermore, by definition if “God,” an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being exists, then we all must be a part of it!  In my Asbestos Head book I wrote:


“Either God is causal, singular and separate - an outside entity somehow responsible for His own existence, the creation of the universe, and the creation of other beings to recognize Him, or existence is non-causal, plural, parts and whole of all that is with nothing outside Us because We’re all infinite self-reflexive pieces of God interacting, changing, acting out eternity.”

Many people are happy to accept the notion that God is some external entity like a bearded white man in the clouds who created us and watches over the universe like a cosmic fishbowl. Others are happy to accept that there is no God and the universe, consciousness, life, matter, space and time are all the result of a random spontaneous big bang accident.  Personally, neither of these ideas have ever resonated with me, and both are relatively modern.  If instead we consult the most ancient culture and the oldest texts in recorded history, the Indian Vedas, a very different story presents itself:


“Here's a parable, an analogy, which comes from India, from the Upanishads, and is thousands of years old. It presents a parabolic answer to the root question of all religion and philosophy (Who am I and what is this?), and does so in a way which everyone can relate to. In the beginning of the world (and though it probably had no ultimate ‘beginning’ as we think of them, you have to start somewhere), there was only Brahma. Being all there was, and therefore totally known to himself, Brahma soon realized that this totality of awareness would eventually become extremely boring . . . after all, when you know everything there is to know, then there's no surprise, nothing to keep you interested. It's like reading the same book for the seventy-eight millionth time. Anyway, since he was omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (all-everywhere), Brahma decided to create a diversion for himself, a way of introducing the elements of surprise, intrigue and drama into his experience. He thought, ‘What would it be like to forget who I really am?’ So, he invented the game of cosmic hide-and-seek. According to the rules of this game, Brahma would pretend to break pieces of himself off from the whole so that to all appearances they would seem separate. That's the ‘hide’ part. Then, as the apparently separate consciousness at the center of each of those apparently separate pieces, and through their apparently separate and unique perspectives, he would ‘seek’ to rediscover who he really was, which was, of course, everything. Imagine seeing yourself from an infinite number of different perspectives, each one initially ignorant of its relationship to all the rest. Imagine going to sleep and dreaming a different lifetime each night, each lasting for more or less years, each complete with the full range and variety of emotional life and death details. Imagine having the same dream but playing a different role in it each night, seeing it through different eyes each time. Well, guess who those apparently separate pieces are? Since there is only one I Am in the universe, one consciousness, it's all a game of hide-and-seek, and each one of us is in the same state: I'm IT AND You're IT!”  -Roger Stephens, "A Dangerous Book" (22-23)


Brahma, God, Tao, Universal Mind, the One, the Void, the Field, Infinite Consciousness, or whatever you want to call it, by definition is everything, exists everywhere, and is completely known to itself. Try to picture, if that was your reality, what would you do with your existence? What can you do with your existence as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresence with nothing unknown or outside yourself?  There really is only one possibility. You play make-believe.  Hide and seek.  

Since you are the One objective infinite consciousness, to hide from yourself you must first divide your sense of self into several subjective finite packets of consciousness.  At and as the root of each of these subjective packets of consciousness will be the feeling of “I am” and “I am not” – the feeling of existing as an individual entity separated from the totality. With that, the hiding part is complete.

The next step is creating a sensory rich, holographic, and ultimately illusory material world and physical bodies where these subjective awarenesses can interact, play and experience.  To best accommodate this, since God is a singularity, the material world must be a world of duality, a world of polar opposites, where each soul, each individuated facet of God may experience the heights, depths, and breadth of possibility, so there must exist both good and evil, male and female, positive and negative, pleasure and pain, birth and death, inhale and exhale, black and white, dark and light, day and night, sun and moon, yin and yang, intelligence and ignorance and so on and so forth.  


The one golden rule and driving force of God’s universal hide and seek game is called karma, or cause and effect, what goes around comes around, do unto others as you would have done unto yourself, because fundamentally there is no “you” or “others,” there is only God, the one true Self. Your physical body, your name, your entire human identity and the feeling of being an individual entity separated from the totality is a secondary and ultimately illusory experience of the One true being.  Your feeling of being Tom, Dick or Harry is a purposely induced state of amnesia so that the creator may experience His creation.  Each subjective packet of consciousness, each soul, ultimately is and wishes to reunite with the One, Tao, God, Brahma.  But life as Brahma, to be honest, gets boring and sometimes Brahma would rather play hide and seek.  God wants to experience through you what it is like to be you, a fractal fragment of Himself. Thus begins lifetimes of cyclical hiding and seeking, karmic creation and destruction, moving away from and back towards God, your true Self.   


“In the Eastern view, then, the division of nature into separate objects is not fundamental and any such objects have a fluid and ever-changing character. The Eastern world view is therefore intrinsically dynamic and contains time and change as essential features. The cosmos is seen as one inseparable reality - for ever in motion, alive, organic; spiritual and material at the same time.  Since motion and change are essential properties of things, the forces causing the motion are not outside the objects, as in the classical Greek view, but are an intrinsic property of matter. Correspondingly, the Eastern image of the Divine is not that of a ruler who directs the world from above, but of a principle that controls everything from within: He who, dwelling in all things, Yet is other than all things, Whom all things do not know, Whose body all things are, Who controls all things from within - He is your Soul, the Inner Controller, The Immortal.”  -Fritjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics” (24-5)


“Think of the difference between a droplet of water and the ocean; the droplet symbolizes the sense of division, of being an individual 'me', unconnected to anything else.  This is like identifying with being 'Bill Bloggs' or 'Ethel Jones'. But, put that droplet back in the ocean, and where does the ocean end and the droplet begin? There is no beginning and no end, no Alpha and Omega, because all is One. At that level there is no 'we' - only an Infinite 'I'. Part of that ocean may be calm and peaceful and another may be angry and rough, but it is still the same ocean, the same Oneness. We are always the ocean, always Infinite Awareness, and we cannot literally become disconnected from that. However, when we forget who we are, we can be confused into a sense of division, of being the droplet, and we perceive reality through the tiny lens that this creates in our minds … We are the ocean, Infinite Awareness, but we believe we are just a little powerless, insignificant droplet. We identify with division and 'parts', not unity.” –David Icke, “The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy” (3)

Another way to understand this concept is through dreams.  In dreams you create entire worlds, environments, situations, and even other people.  You interact and converse, create conflict and resolutions, get emotional and involved, but suddenly when you wake up from the dream you realize that all those environments, situations, and other people were really all you! They only seemed like separate individuals because of the level of consciousness you were operating on at the time. It is the same in this world, where you think you are a separate person, but in fact when you die, a piece of God wakes up to realize He was only dreaming.


“To many, the statement ‘I am God’ rings of blasphemy. God, according to conventional religion, is the supreme deity, the almighty eternal omniscient creator. How can any lowly human being claim that he or she is God?Yet when mystics say ‘I am God,’ or words to that effect, they are not talking of an individual person. Their inner explorations have revealed the true nature of the self, and it is this that they identify with God. They are claiming that the essence of self, the sense of ‘I am’ without any personal attributes, is God. The contemporary scholar and mystic Thomas Merton put it very clearly: If I penetrate to the depths of my own existence and my own present reality, the indefinable am that is myself in its deepest roots, then through this deep center I pass into the infinite I am which is the very Name of the Almighty. ‘I am’ is one of the Hebrew names of God, Yahweh. Derived from the Hebrew YHWH, the unspeakable name of God, it is often translated as ‘I AM THAT I AM.’  Similar claims appear in Eastern traditions. The great Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi said: ‘I am’ is the name of God… God is none other than the Self. In the twelfth century, Ibn-Al-Arabi, one of the most revered Sufi mystics, wrote: If thou knowest thine own self, thou knowest God. Shankara, the eighth-century Indian saint, whose insights revitalized Hindu teachings, said of his own enlightenment: I am Brahman… I dwell within all beings as the soul, the pure consciousness, the ground of all phenomena... In the days of my ignorance, I used to think of these as being separate from myself. Now I know that I am All.”  -Peter Russell, “From Science to God”


Since people always misinterpret the phrase “I am God,” I prefer to explain it as “I am, is God.”  The self-awareness and continuity of being expressed by the words “I am,” our inner witness and intuition, is our direct channel to God.  It is undeniable that if God is omnipresent, then He must exist in you, He must be you, and everyone and everything else in existence as well.  We are all playing an equal part as lost ripples in God’s infinite ocean of consciousness.

“There is a Hindu myth that human consciousness began as a ripple that decided to leave the ocean of ‘consciousness as such, timeless, spaceless, infinite and eternal.’ Awakening to itself, it forgot that it was a part of this infinite ocean, and felt isolated and separated. Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden may also be a version of this myth, an ancient memory of how human consciousness, somewhere in its unfathomable past, left its home in the implicate and forgot that it was a part of the cosmic wholeness of all things. In this view the earth is a kind of playground in which one is free to experience all the pleasures of the flesh provided one realizes that one is a holographic projection of a higher-order.” -Michael Talbot, “The Holographic Universe” (300) 


In the Judaic Kabbalistic belief this concept is present as the entirety of creation is seen as “an illusory projection of the transcendental aspects of God.”  In Christianity it is said the Father and Son are one, thy Father art in heaven (the non-physical) but the Son lives in the flesh (the physical). The Father is Brahman, the ultimate objective implicate reality, and the Son is Atman, a fractal fragment of the One sent to experience and enjoy the Father’s creation.  The Mother Mary is nature, or Mahamaya, the sustainer of the material world.  She is the illusion maker, the agent of change, keeping all things from atoms to galaxies in constant motion and flux between polarities.  It is her dynamic endless dance of forms which keeps us from realizing that there is ultimately no such thing as separateness.  The Upanishads state that “one should know that nature is an illusion (maya), and that Brahman is the illusion maker.  This whole world is pervaded with beings that are parts of him.”


“The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God -‘sacrifice’ in the original sense of ‘making sacred’- whereby God becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called Ma, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play.  As long as we confuse the myriadforms of the divine with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya.  Maya, therefore, does not mean that the world is an illusion, as is often wrongly stated. The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds.  Maya is the illusion of taking these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with the territory.  In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya,conjured up by the great magician of the divine play.”  -Fritjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics” [87-8]

In the Vedanta our individual souls, our separate subjective packets of “I am” consciousness are called “atman” and the One unified objective infinite wellspring of consciousness from which everyone’s atman arises is “Brahman.”  Atman is our divided, dualistic self and Brahman is our whole true Self, but fundamentally it is taught that Atman is Brahman and Brahman is Atman.  Your true Self beyond this earthly identity is not divided and dualistic, your true Self is not separate and subjective, your true Self is not Jack, Jill, Joe, Jen, Jim, John, James or Jason, your true Self is the same as my true Self as everyone’s true Self is God.  

“This ultimate reality is called ‘Brahman’ and is exactly the same as ‘The One’, ‘The All’, Spirit, ‘everything that is’, and in the West might be regarded as the true definition of ‘God’.  Brahman, Universal Consciousness, considered to be the ultimate reality, is infinite, exists beyond the five physical senses and is incomprehensible.  Most ancient wisdoms of the world teach that human beings are ‘God’ in the microcosm, immortal Spirits ‘made’ in the ‘true image of God’. Hinduism teaches the same principle in the form of ‘Atman’ which is equivalent to the human Soul.  The Hindu culture teaches Atman and Brahman, the individual reality and the ultimate reality are one.” -Adrian Cooper, “Our Ultimate Reality” (26-7)


“The Hindus call the implicate level of reality Brahman. Brahman is formless but is the birthplace of all forms in visible reality, which appear out of it and then enfold back into it in endless flux. Like Bohm, who says that the implicate order can just as easily be called spirit, the Hindus sometimes personify this level of reality and say that it is composed of pure consciousness. Thus, consciousness is not only a subtler form of matter, but it is more fundamental than matter; and in the Hindu cosmogony it is matter that has emerged from consciousness, and not the other way around.” -Michael Talbot, “The Holographic Universe” (288)


Finally, quantum physicists like David Bohm and consciousness researchers like Peter Russell have now proven what the world’s most ancient spiritual teachings have long espoused for thousands of years -the faculty of consciousness is primary to the creation of the material world. A conscious observer must first exist to collapse the wave function allowing particles to manifest into the explicate reality.  This means that before the creation of the material world there must have existed a self-aware conscious observer (God) and every physical manifestation is actually the result of His conscious creation.

“The basic elements of the world view which has been developed in all these traditions are the same. These elements also seem to be the fundamental features of the world view emerging from modern physics.  The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view - one could almost say the essence of it - is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality.  The Eastern traditions constantly refer to this ultimate, indivisible reality which manifests itself in all things, and of which all things are parts. It is called Brahman in Hinduism, Dharmakaya in Buddhism, Tao in Taoism. Because it transcends all concepts and categories, Buddhists also call it Tathata, or Suchness: What is meant by the soul as suchness, is the oneness of the totality of all things, the great all-including whole.  In ordinary life, we are not aware of this unity of all things, but divide the world into separate objects and events. This division is, of course, useful and necessary to cope with our everyday environment, but it is not a fundamental feature of reality. It is an abstraction devised by our discriminating and categorizing intellect. To believe that our abstract concepts of separate ‘things’ and ‘events’ are realities of nature is an illusion. Hindus and Buddhists tell us that this illusion is based on avidya, or ignorance, produced by a mind under the spell of maya. The principal aim of the Eastern mystical traditions is therefore to readjust the mind by centering and quietening it through meditation. The Sanskrit term for meditation Samadhi - means literally ‘mental equilibrium’. It refers to the balanced and tranquil state of mind in which the basic unity of the universe is experienced: Entering into the samadhi of purity, one obtains all-penetrating insight that enables one to become conscious of the absolute oneness of the universe.”  -Fritjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics” (130-1)

DMT - Psychedelic Death and Rebirth


American medical doctor and psychiatrist, Rick Strassman, has been working diligently to improve our understanding of entheogens, specifically dimethyltryptamine or DMT.  In 1990 Dr. Strassman broke a 20 year prohibition on psychedelic experiments in America when he began his work giving intravenous doses of the world’s strongest psychedelic to patients and volunteers.  Like Dr. Grof’s LSD subjects, Dr. Strassman’s DMT subjects found the experience to be overwhelmingly positive with a myriad of long-term benefits. 



“Volunteers reported a stronger sense of self, less fear of death, and greater appreciation of life. Some found they were better able to relax, and they pushed themselves a little less. Several volunteers drank less alcohol or noted they were more sensitive to psychedelic drugs. Others believed with greater certainty that there are different levels of reality.”  -Dr. Rick Strassman, “DMT – The Spirit Molecule” (274)

DMT is such a powerful psychedelic that it completely melts away the veil of this reality and transports consciousness into an entirely other dimension occupied by everything from advice-giving telepathic rainbows to body-snatching demonic gremlins.  Whether your eyes stay open or closed, these so-called “hallucinations” completely immerse and ensconce themselves into your consciousness taking you out of your body and often out of this world.  The effects then wear off after about 10 minutes when smoked, 30 minutes when injected, and after 3-4 hours when made into Ayahuasca tea.


Dr. Strassman’s patients said in the long-term their DMT experiences made them more open-minded and laid-back, caused their thoughts and feelings to be better integrated and overlap more, lessened their fear of death, and gave them “a more real sense of connectedness to everything and everyone.” One of his patients named Elena said, “most of my experiences fade with time. Not so with DMT.  Outside me, not much is different.  Inside, I rest in the comfort of knowing my soul is eternal and my consciousness endless.” Another patient, Cleo, related how during her DMT trip, a cascading rainbow of colors telepathically communicated with her, telling her that she had been looking for God outside, but instead to go in, that God was in every cell of her body: “The colors kept telling me things, but they were telling me things so I not only heard what I was seeing, but also felt it in my cells.  I say ‘felt,’ but it was like no other ‘felt,’ more like a knowing that was happening in my cells. That God is in everything and that we are all connected, and that God dances in every cell of life, and that every cell of life dances in God.  I am changed. I will never be the same. To simply say this almost seems to lessen the experience. I don't think that anyone hearing or reading this can truly grasp what I felt, can really understand it deeply and completely.  The euphoria goes on into eternity. And I am part of that eternity.”


Due to all the miraculous, revelatory, and other-worldly experiences shared by his DMT subjects, Dr. Strassman dubbed dimethyltryptamine “the spirit molecule.”  The parallels between classic mystical or “spiritual” experiences and what people experienced with the “spirit molecule” were too similar to ignore: During both DMT trips and mystical experiences time, space, and matter all become secondary to consciousness.  The separation between self/non-self disappears and personal identity fades into identification with all of existence.  Past, present and future all meld together into one timeless moment of eternity.  Space is no longer here or there but everywhere as one.  There is only here now and travel happens at the speed of thought.

“In altered states of consciousness this new perception of the world becomes dominant and compelling.  It completely overrides the everyday illusion of Newtonian reality, where we seem to be ‘skin-encapsulated egos’ existing in a world of separate beings and objects. In extreme forms of transpersonal perception we can experience ourselves as the whole biosphere of our planet or the entire material universe.”  -Stanislav Grof, “The Holotropic Mind” (88)


Further to their revelatory and spiritual experiences, many of Dr. Strassman’s patients also reported experiencing a typical NDE while under DMT.  They felt themselves lift out of their bodies, saw and entered tunnels of light, heard celestial music and encountered angels or light beings, felt absolute peace and painlessness and were reluctant to come back into their bodies.  For example, one of his patients, Willow, described her experience saying, “First I saw a tunnel or channel of light off to the right … There was a sound like music, like a score, but unfamiliar to me, supporting the emotional tone of the events and drawing me in … There were large beings in the tunnel, on the right side, next to me … It was so much more real than life … I felt strongly, ‘This is dying and this is okay’ ... I had a sense of dying, letting go and separating, after the beings in the tunnel helped me along. … It's like a cosmic joke. If we all knew what was waiting for us, we'd all kill ourselves. That's why we stay in this form for so long, to figure that out.  Everyone should try a high dose of DMT once … That place is so full and so complete … when I came back into my body it was so heavy and so confining.”


“Her consciousness separated from her body, she moved rapidly through a tunnel, or tunnels, toward a warm, loving, all-knowing white light. Beings helped her on the way, and some even threatened to drag her down. Beautiful music accompanied her on the early stages of the journey. Time and space lost all meaning. She was tempted not to return, but realized she needed to share the incredible information she received with this world … Her comment about everyone committing suicide if they knew how great the ‘afterlife’ is points out another similarity between Willow's experiences and those of ‘naturally occurring’ NDEs: That is, those who have had an NDE do not rush off to suicide. Rather, they reside in the knowledge that there is ‘life after death,’ and that transition loses its sting. Thus, they are able to live life more fully, because the fear of death that drives so many to distraction is now so much less.”  -Dr. Rick Strassman, “DMT – The Spirit Molecule” (226)


As mentioned earlier many entheogens have long been known to induce the death-rebirth experience and none are stronger than DMT.  Several of Dr. Strassman’s patients reported experiencing phenomena similar to what is outlined in the The Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead, ancient texts regarding the process of death and the various states of consciousness the soul passes through on its afterlife journey.  Elena shared that, “more than once the DMT sessions gave me the gift of truly subjectively knowing the phenomenon described in ‘Introductions to the Dead’ in The Tibetan Book of the Dead.”  Another of Dr. Strassman’s patients, Eli, said, “I relaxed and the environment began to change noticeably.  I knew I was going through the first bardo of death, that I had been here many times before and it was okay … I had broken out of time and space … I no longer fear death.  It’s like you’re there one minute and then you’re somewhere else, and that’s just how it is … These experiments are helping me in my reading of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.  I know what it’s like to be totally free.”  Another patient, Joseph, noted, “I think the high dose is like death trauma.  It knocks you out of your body … This would be a good drug for people in a hospice program or the terminally ill to have some acquaintance with.”



One of the most incredible facts about DMT is that it is endogenous to humans and produced by our pineal glands. The pineal gland, the only unpaired organ in the brain is located at the geometric center of the head between the eyebrows.  This mystical point, focused on during meditation, symbolized by the Hindu “bindi,” is what Descartes famously called “the seat of the soul.”  It is also known as the “third-eye” because it can sense light and in certain birds, amphibians, and reptiles it even has a lens, cornea and retina.  So why is this death-rebirth-inducing strongest psychedelic in the world produced inside our pineal glands?  What exactly is its function?


“DMT is closely related to serotonin, the neurotransmitter that psychedelics affect so widely. The pharmacology of DMT is similar to that of other well-known psychedelics. It affects receptor sites for serotonin in much the same way that LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline do. These serotonin receptors are widespread throughout the body and can be found in blood vessels, muscle, glands, and skin.  However, the brain is where DMT exerts its most interesting effects.  There, sites rich in these DMT-sensitive serotonin receptors are involved in mood, perception, and thought. Although the brain denies access to most drugs and chemicals, it takes a particular and remarkable fancy to DMT. It is not stretching the truth to suggest that the brain ‘hungers’ for it.”  -Dr. Rick Strassman, “DMT – The Spirit Molecule” (52)

In human embryos the pineal gland becomes visible and releases its first burst of DMT 49 days after conception.  This is also the exact moment when an embryo becomes a fetus and the gender of the baby is determined.  At birth there is another burst of DMT, then regularly every night for the rest of our lives during REM sleep our pineal glands excrete DMT and “trip” us out into various dream states.  Finally the last and largest DMT burst of our lives happens at the moment of physical death. 


“The human pineal gland becomes visible in the developing fetus at seven weeks, or forty-nine days, after conception. Of great interest to me was finding out that this is nearly exactly the moment in which one can clearly see the first indication of male or female gender. Before this time, the sex of the fetus is indeterminate, or unknown. Thus, the pineal gland and the most important differentiation of humanity, male and female gender, appear at the same time … When our individual life force enters our fetal body, the moment in which we become truly human, it passes through the pineal and triggers the first primordial flood of DMT.  Later, at birth, the pineal releases more DMT. In some of us, pineal DMT mediates the pivotal experiences of deep meditation, psychosis, and near-death experiences.  As we die, the life-force leaves the body through the pineal gland, releasing another flood of this psychedelic spirit molecule.”  -Dr. Rick Strassman, “DMT – The Spirit Molecule” (61-9)


Traditional Chinese funerals are 49 days long.  The Tibetan Book of the Dead states that it takes 49 days for a recently deceased soul to travel from one physical body into the next.  It also contains 49 days worth of specific passages for friends and family to read aloud to assist the deceased in their transition.  49 days after Easter is Pentecost, the day when “tongues of fire” came into the temple and rested upon the heads of the elders.  Symbolically this could mean their crown chakras were illuminated, pineal glands functioning, and the spirit came down unto them, just as literally 49 days after conception, the fetal pineal gland begins functioning and the gender is determined.  Are these 49s all just a coincidence or is this mystical number the time it takes for deceased souls to reincarnate? The Catholic Church celebrates the “Immaculate Conception” on December 8^th, exactly 9 months before Mary’s birthday, and celebrates the Incarnation of Christ on March 25^th, exactly 9 months before Christmas.  Is this why the death and conception of Jesus can happen simultaneously?  Because we are all re-conceived (reincarnated) at the moment of our deaths and 49 days later our soul enters the embryo through a burst of pineal DMT?  


“I already knew that the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead teaches that it takes forty-nine days for the soul of the recently dead to ‘reincarnate.’  That is, seven weeks from the time of death of one person elapses until the life-force's ‘rebirth’ into its next body. I remember very clearly, several years later, feeling the chill along my spine when, reading my textbook of human fetal development, I discovered this same forty-nine day interval marking two landmark events in human embryo formation. It takes forty-nine days from conception for the first signs of the human pineal to appear. Forty-nine days is also when the fetus differentiates into male or female gender. Thus the soul's rebirth, the pineal, and the sexual organs all require forty-nine days before they manifest … [Then] as we die, if near-death experiences are any indication, there is a profound shift in consciousness away from identification with the body.  Pineal DMT makes available those particular non-embodied contents of consciousness. All the factors previously described combine for one final burst of DMT production: catecholamine release; decreased breakdown and increased formation of DMT; reduced anti-DMT; and decomposing pineal tissue. Therefore, it may be that the pineal is the most active organ in the body at the time of death. Might we say that the life-force therefore exits the body through the pineal?”  -Dr. Rick Strassman, “DMT – The Spirit Molecule” (81-2)


It seems very likely that our souls enter and exit physical bodies via the pineal gland (third-eye). Robert Monroe, Robert Bruce and other out-of-body experts have reported the third-eye as the main contact point where consciousness enters or exits the physical body during OBEs.  Severalnear-death experiencers talk about the “silver cord,” a long, bright, elastic cable of light which extends from the third-eye of their physical body attached to their disembodied consciousness wherever it goes. Rene Descartes noticed he could only think one thought at a time and guessed it must be the pineal gland, the only singular, unpaired organ in the brain responsible for these singular, unpaired thoughts.  He even went so far as to call it “the seat of the soul” which certainly concurs with Dr. Strassman’s findings.  Both intravenous DMT injections and endogenous pineal DMT conclusively cause out-of-body near-death experiences and play a key role in the birth-death process.

“While the release of neuroprotective compounds near death certainly is a useful response, the psychedelic side effects are not as obviously beneficial. We must therefore wonder, are these spiritual properties a coincidence, or do they have a purpose?  I suggest that near-death chemicals released by the brain are psychedelic for this reason: They must be. It is similar to asking why there is silicon in computer chips. Silicon works. It does the job. Near-death brain products are psychedelic because those are the properties consciousness requires at that time.  Psychedelic compounds released near death mediate consciousness exiting the body. This is their function and this is what they do. DMT is a spirit molecule, just as silicon is a chip molecule. Rather than just causing the mind to feel as if it were leaving the body, DMT release is the means by which the mind senses the departure of the life-force from it, the content of consciousness as it leaves the body.”  -Dr. Rick Strassman, “DMT – The Spirit Molecule” (326)

“Activation and opening of the transpersonal area in the unconscious of dying individuals can have far-reaching consequences for their concepts of death, their attitudes toward the situation they are facing, and their abilities to accept physical mortality … Those who see themselves as an insignificant and impermanent speck of dust in an immense universe become open to the possibility that the dimensions of their own beings are commensurate with the macrocosm and microcosm. Consciousness here appears as a primary characteristic of existence, preceding matter and supraordinated to it, rather than being a product of physiological processes in the brain. It seems to be quite plausible that consciousness and awareness are essentially independent of the gross matter of the body and brain, and will continue beyond the point of physical demise. This alternative is experienced in a way that is at least as complex, vivid, and self-evident as the perception of reality in usual states of consciousness. The transcendental impact of these experiences is usually stronger in those individuals who, prior to entering the transpersonal realms, went through the experience of ego death and rebirth. The memory that consciousness emerged intact from this seemingly final annihilation constitutes a powerful emotional and cognitive model for understanding the process of actual death.”  -Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax, “Human Encounter with Death” (56-7)

Psychedelic Entheogens and Altered States of Consciousness


For millennia going back through the Greek, Egyptian and Vedic civilizations, the Aboriginals, the Mayan, the American Indians and various tribal societies, back to the most ancient cave and rock art worldwide we see proof that our ancestors had an intimate and extensive knowledge of both altered states of consciousness and the indigenous entheogenic plants which help induce them. Ayahuasca, Ibogaine, Peyote, Magic Mushrooms and many other so-called “psychedelics” have long-standing histories, traditions and entire religions based around these sacraments. Nowadays due to intrusive and oppressive governments and their unlawful legal systems, the possession and use of most such entheogens has been outlawed. And along with these plants, the altered states of consciousness achieved by their ingestion have also become outlawed.  


In ancient societies and tribal cultures around the world their entheogenic sacraments have been referred to with names such as the “plant of souls,” “the vine of death,” or “the seeds of re-birth.” They have often been symbolized by the phoenix rising from its own ashes or the coiled serpent eating its own tail. This is because a strong dose of certain entheogens essentially puts you through the entire death and rebirth experience. Your soul slowly separates from your physical body, detaches from this physical reality and gets a glimpse at the higher frequencies of the alterlife realm.



“In the Central African countries of Gabon, Cameroon and Zaire certain age-old ancestor cults still flourish in the twenty-first century. Their members share a common belief, based they say on direct experience, in the existence of a supernatural realm where the spirits of the dead may be contacted. Like some hypothetical dimension of quantum physics, this otherworld interpenetrates our own and yet cannot ordinarily be seen or verified by empirical tests. It is therefore a matter of great interest, with highly suggestive implications, that tribal shamans claim to have mastered a means, through the consumption of a poisonous shrub known locally as eboka or iboga, by which humans may reach the otherworld and return alive.”  -Graham Hancock, “Supernatural” (5)


“That these inner regions have been well traveled by shamanic peoples is evidenced by an experience anthropologist Michael Harner had among the Conibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon. In 1960 the American Museum of Natural History sent Harner on a year-long expedition to study the Conibo, and while there he asked the Amazonian natives to tell him about their religious beliefs. They told him that if he really wished to learn, he had to take a shamanic sacred drink made from a hallucinogenic plant known as ayahuasca, the ‘soul vine.’  He agreed and after drinking the bitter concoction had an out-of-body experience in which he traveled to a level of reality populated by what appeared to be the gods and devils of the Conibo’s mythology. He saw demons with grinning crocodilian heads. He watched as an ‘energy-essence’ rose up out of his chest and floated toward a dragon-headed ship manned by Egyptian-style figures with blue-jay heads; and he felt what he thought was the slow, advancing numbness of his own death … Is it possible that what we have been viewing as quaint folklore and charming but naïve mythology are actually sophisticated accounts of the cartography of the subtler levels of reality? Kalweit for one believes the answer is an emphatic yes. ‘In light of the revolutionary findings of recent research into the nature of dying and death, we can no longer look upon tribal religions and their ideas about the World of the Dead as limited conceptions,’ he says. ‘[Rather] the shaman should be considered as a most up-to-date and knowledgeable psychologist.”  -Michael Talbot, “The Holographic Universe” [267-8]


Whether through entheogens, dreams, meditation, chanting, fasting, rhythmic dancing or drumming, sensory overload or deprivation, the pre-requisite for accessing the nether-realms of the implicate order, the key to so-called “paranormal” or “supernatural” abilities, always lies in altered states of consciousness. By using various methods to shift awareness from the typical five-sense physical realm, our minds are able to access these higher frequencies and facets of consciousness well-known to our shamanic ancestors.



“Various techniques are used by a culture to expand the consciousness of an initiate by reducing or eliminating the psychological defenses that separate the world of the supernatural from the world of everyday reality. Such techniques include sleep deprivation, fasting, body mutilation, sonic and photic driving, social isolation, hyperactivity, group pressure, suggestion, and, in some cases, psychedelic substances.”  -Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax, “Human Encounter with Death” (192)



Czech medical doctor and psychiatrist, VISION 97 award winner, and founder of transpersonal psychology, Stanislav Grof has been working for the better part of five decades to improve the world’s understanding of psychedelics. In his research Dr. Grof distinguishes between two pillar states of consciousness he refers to as hylotropic and holotropic.  The normal, everyday experience of consensus reality is hylotropic whereas interpersonal states reflecting the wholeness and totality of existence are holotropic. In Vedic terms, Dr. Grof relates hylotropic consciousness to “namarupa” (name and form), the separate, individual, and ultimately illusory ego self, while holotropic consciousness relates to Atman-Brahman, the soul essence and divine true nature of the self.


“All the cultures in human history except the Western industrial civilization have held holotropic states of consciousness in great esteem. They induced them whenever they wanted to connect to their deities, other dimensions of reality, and with the forces of nature. They also used them for diagnosing and healing, cultivation of extrasensory perception, and artistic inspiration. They spent much time and energy to develop safe and effective ways of inducing them … In one of my early books I suggested that the potential significance of LSD and other psychedelics for psychiatry and psychology was comparable to the value the microscope has for biology or the telescope has for astronomy. My later experience with psychedelics only confirmed this initial impression. These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the cathexis (energetic charge) associated with the deep unconscious contents of the psyche and make them available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviours to a depth that cannot be matched by any other method and tool available in modern mainstream psychiatry and psychology. In addition, it offers unique opportunities for healing of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.”  -Stanislav Grof

Classical physics and the old science taught us that human beings were mere survival machines powered by chemicals and genes. They taught us that the brain was the originator of consciousness, and that our internal worlds of thought, emotion, sensation, and morality were mere by-products of material evolution. They taught us that we humans were separate, isolated entities in a desolate, mechanical, clockwork universe. They taught us that time and space were finite and that nothing traveled faster than light.

Quantum physics and the new science, however, teach us that human beings are spiritual entities having this physical experience. They teach us that consciousness is the primary mind-stuff of the universe, and that time, space, and matter exist only within and by virtue of consciousness. They teach us that we humans are indivisible from our environment and each other, that our bodies, the stars and space are composed of One undifferentiated expanse of vibrating energy.

In short, the old material science brought us a disempowering message of division and haphazard coincidence; the new spiritual science brings us the empowering message of absolute unity and divine cosmic mind.

"The Immaterial Physical World" was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

How can non-experiencing, unintelligent, insentient matter randomly coalesce into a form that magically creates conscious intelligent life? What mechanical process could possibly bring consciousness, intelligence, and life into being? How could any material process create something as immaterial as consciousness? Why would the material universe even exist without a consciousness to perceive it?

"Consciousness is King" was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

Have you read Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny by Ira Progoff?

Ira was an understudy of Jung, and he cleaned up and pushed Jung's theory of synchronicity forward. Here is an excerpt:

The Self is the archetype of all the archetypes that the psyche contains, for it comprehends within itself the quintessential purpose behind both the impersonal archetypes and the archetypal process by which the ego and consciousness emerge. The Self may be understood as the essence and aim and the living process by which the psyche lives out its inner nature. As such the Self can never be contained by the ego or by any of the specific archetypes. Rather, it contains them in a way that is not limited by space or time. The way the Self contains the various contents of the psyche is in a kind of "atmosphere," a state that is more than psychological, an "aura" that sets up the feeling of the situation in a manner that is neither psychological, nor spatial, nor temporal. It involves something that can best be spoken of as a nonphysical continuum by means of which the correspondences within the cosmos, the microcosm and the macrocosm, come together to form patterns, at once transcendent and immanent, and constellating situations that draw physical as well as psychological phenomena into their field.

The college story that Eric shared at the 57 min mark of "Consciousness is King" sounds very familiar.

Does anyone have any information to better understand this "window into the future" mystic experience?

EthericData2 wrote:

The college story that Eric shared at the 57 min mark of "Consciousness is King" sounds very familiar.

Does anyone have any information to better understand this "window into the future" mystic experience?

With all the respect, admiration and joy I have for Eric and his contributions to mankind, there is no verification of Eric's "window into the future" mystic experiences.

To believe Eric's story is called Faith.

Schpankme tells us:
Belief without proof = Faith
Faith = Make believe

Peace

Realearth wrote:

EthericData2 wrote:

The college story that Eric shared at the 57 min mark of "Consciousness is King" sounds very familiar.

Does anyone have any information to better understand this "window into the future" mystic experience?

With all the respect, admiration and joy I have for Eric and his contributions to mankind, there is no verification of Eric's "window into the future" mystic experiences.

To believe Eric's story is called Faith.

Schpankme tells us:
Belief without proof = Faith
Faith = Make believe

Peace

If a person can compare their account of this type of mystical experience with other accounts; whose versions were unbeknownst to them prior to the sharing of the account, and there are similarities and patterns, then it is safe to use a qualitative method for determining the validity of the claims.

EthericData2 wrote:

Realearth wrote:

EthericData2 wrote:

The college story that Eric shared at the 57 min mark of "Consciousness is King" sounds very familiar.

Does anyone have any information to better understand this "window into the future" mystic experience?

With all the respect, admiration and joy I have for Eric and his contributions to mankind, there is no verification of Eric's "window into the future" mystic experiences.

To believe Eric's story is called Faith.

Schpankme tells us:
Belief without proof = Faith
Faith = Make believe

Peace

If a person can compare their account of this type of mystical experience with other accounts; whose versions were unbeknownst to them prior to the sharing of the account, and there are similarities and patterns, then it is safe to use a qualitative method for determining the validity of the claims.

That's what Christians say about Jesus.
That's what many say about flying saucers.
That's what kids say about Santa Claus.

Faith = Fiction

I found this video quite interesting as there isn't many around of that actually study death itself and in particular the experience of people that have had close encounters but also the surrounding people. Death is not discussed very much in western society and it seems that a lot of the experiences are coherent. What many suspect is that consciousness is at some level interconnected and that we all share some kind of greater consciousness with archetypes and so on that we all have.

Some of Erics videos contain some references to David Icke which in my opinion swayed a bit too much to the spiritual side. And i see this in general people tend to go all the way and say the soul and reincarnation and spirits and the whole "eastern" vision is basically true and now we "western" catch up on that and it seems to unify with quantum mathematics. I think its not like that at all and way to simple of a summary. What truly goes on at the spiritual level we simply don't know and i understand something might be experiencing itself subjectively through the mind without memory of that something and for that reason not remembering as to wanting to experience something genuine and profound and that that might be what this life is. All i can say is that a lot of this life is truly about letting go and being "present". And what i suspect is that the current paradigm and way of asking questions will not lead to any proof or breakthroughs or new answers as it is also the way of asking questions is in a way always expecting something separate "new" to be the answer where as we look at the past and breakthroughs that we had it was often something that was already here functioning that is rediscovered.

In holograms, all parts are reflected in the whole and the whole is reflected in all parts, so if you chop a piece of holographic film into tiny bits then shine a laser onto any of them, no matter how small, you will still get a complete image. The “physical” world around us behaves much like a hologram. Just like a piece of holographic film, all quanta exist as interfering wave patterns. In and of themselves, these interference waves have no “solidity” – no definite properties or location – just like the squiggles/circles on holographic film. The image is distributed throughout the entire film, just as quanta are distributed throughout the entire universe. Then when a laser beam (the light of consciousness) is directed at those interference waves, seemingly solid particles (three dimensional images) appear before our eyes.

One of the first physicists to consider this “cosmic hologram” metaphor was David Bohm who defined the universe as an “undivided wholeness in flowing motion” which he termed the “holomovement.” He dubbed the implicate order an undivided holistic realm that is beyond concepts like spacetime, matter, or energy. In the implicate order everything is fully enfolded or entangled with everything else. By contrast, the explicate order world of ordinary observations and common sense emerge, or unfold, out of the implicate order. Bohm used a hologram as a metaphor to illustrate how information about a whole system can be enfolded into an implicit structure, any part of which reflects the whole.

For Bohm, atoms are not the “building blocks of matter” but rather just a term given to one aspect of the holomovement. The various forms we name, words and categories we create, are all ultimately arbitrary because at the implicate level of reality, everything is one. No two atoms, two rocks, two trees, or two people are any more separate from one another than whirlpools are separate from the river. The universe is a holographic oneness in perpetual motion, both created and navigated by consciousness. Matter is not separated by space and time; rather, matter, space, and time are always already ever-present and one.

To illustrate this, think of a DVD. At the explicate level of the DVD, you see a movie with people, places and events happening in space and time. For the actors on your television screen, they experienced everything happening in “real” time in the “real” world during filming. But for you the viewer, holding the DVD in your hand, you can see the implicate level of the movie where all the people, places, and events on it are mere projections of a single totality. You can rewind, fast-forward, slow-mo, or freeze-frame the entire realistic three-dimensional explicate world of the DVD because you are operating from the implicate world of remote control. The One, God, infinite consciousness, cosmic mind, or whatever you want to call it, operates at the objective, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent level of the implicate DVD, and meanwhile us humans, animals, plants, insects, and every other subjective entity in the physical universe are method actors in the explicate movie.

"The Holographic Nature of Reality" was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

Interesting.

Our past, present, and future experiences are energy fields that can be condensed into a holographic impression, and our integrated sense consciousnesses can pick up the signal and decode the message.

Another short-coming of traditional Western science is its inability to explain the existence of forms in nature. No matter how we magnify or manipulate the material world, no mechanical model explains the emergence of the variety of unique and semi-unique forms in nature. Every type of rock, plant, animal, organism, bacteria, all aggregate themselves into distinct and definite types with traits/characteristics semi-unique to their form and completely unique to them individually. For example each oak tree has many semi-unique features that characterize it clearly as an oak and not a pine, like the shape of its leaves, being non-coniferous, etc. These features are semi-unique as all oak trees share them, however on another level, no two oak trees are exactly alike either. Exact size, shape, dimensions, growth patterns, ring patterns etc. are completely unique to each tree. So what is the mechanism in nature which constantly creates these unique and semi-unique forms? Newton’s model, nor the 300+ subsequent years of material science since have been able to explain this. British biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphogenetic resonance, however, seems to be our best current theory.

Morphogenetic Resonance was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

During the 1990s three independent scientific studies brought to light the importance of DNA and emotions in creating quantum reality. The first major study performed by Vladimir Poponin and Peter Gariaev at the Russian Academy of Science was deemed the “Phantom DNA Experiment” and yielded some fascinating results. First they created a vacuum in a specially designed test tube, and then measured the location of light photons inside to see if they were clumped at the bottom, clung to the sides, or dispersed all throughout. As expected, the photons were scattered randomly throughout the tube. When a strand of DNA was placed in the tube, however, the particles acted as if drawn by an invisible force and spontaneously arranged themselves around the DNA strand! Even stranger, when the DNA was removed from the tube, the particles stayed in exactly the same shape. This is notable because nothing in conventional physics allows for such an effect, yet now we have observable documented proof that DNA, the substance that composes us, can have a direct and powerful effect on the quantum world around us.

How Emotions Affect Health was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

There is an entire legitimate and well-researched branch of medicine called psycho-neuro-immunology which studies the effect of thoughts and emotions on human biochemistry. Biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton actually left his tenured University position to pursue his research in this fascinating field...

Psychoneuroimmunology and The Placebo Effect was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

Our brains are made up of tiny nerve cells called “neurons” which branch out and connect to each other forming a neural network. At each connection point, thoughts and emotions are incubated and holographically stored by associative memory. This means that all ideas, thoughts, feelings, and memories are interconnected and have possible relationships with one another. For instance the concept of motherhood is stored in all our neural networks, but each person’s concept is built from their own unique amalgamation of ideas, emotions and past experiences. Some people may have motherhood connected to unconditional love and forgiveness, so when they think about motherhood, they experience memories/feelings of happiness and acceptance. Other people may have motherhood connected to disappointment and ridicule, so when they think about motherhood, they experience memories/feelings of rejection and depression. We all build our own neural networks based on our own subjective experiences, how we perceive and what we believe...

The Biology of Belief was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

The movie “Star Wars” is famous for its idea of “the Force” which is described as “an energy field created by all living things that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” Though the Force is treated as fiction by Hollywood and most Westerners, in fact the concept has a rich history around the world. In traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine it is called “Chi.” Japanese mystics and martial artists call it “Ki.” Indian yogis and sadhus call it “Prana.” The Ancient Greeks called it “Pneuma.” Jewish Kabbalists call it “Nefish.” Christians call it the “Holy Ghost.” Muslims call it “Baraka.” And the Polynesians call it “Mana.” Chi has been studied and written about for over ten thousand years in diverse places such as China, Japan, India, Tibet, Nepal, Hawaii, and South America. It is the foundation of numerous health and fitness practices around the world including Chi Kung, Falun Gong, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Acupressure and Acupuncture, Reflexology, Orgone Therapy, Pranayama, Yoga, Feng Shui, and Martial Arts.

The Universal Life Force Energy was taken from my book, "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

Psi Science is the rigorous on-going scientific pursuit of experimenting and testing the validity and reliability of so-called psychic or paranormal phenomena. Common psi abilities include such things as mind-to-mind connections (telepathy), mind-over-matter interactions, (psychokinesis), perceiving distant places, people, objects, or events (clairvoyance), perceiving the future (precognition), prophetic dreams, déjà vu, spiritual healing, the power of prayer and intention, intuition, gut feelings, and the sense of being stared at.

The term “telepathy” was coined in 1882 by Frederic Myers, founder of the Society for Psychical Research, during his investigation into what was formerly known as “thought transference.” Reports and documented cases of thought transference abound in almost every culture dating back for millennia, but during the 20th century, the scientific method was applied and repeatable experiments were performed which proved, with combined odds against chance of trillions to one, that telepathy is indeed a genuine phenomenon.

Psi Science: Telepathy was taken from the chapter in my book "Spiritual Science" available on Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

One of the most well-researched and fascinating branches of psi science is active-psi or Psychokinesis (PK). Also known as Telekinesis and mind over matter, PK is the ability to mentally influence a physical system or object. The most common method to test for active-psi is to isolate a volunteer from a target such as an inanimate object or a random system like a coin toss, dice roll or radioactive decay, then see if the person can mentally influence the target in a repeatable manner.

Some particularly gifted people have even been able to elicit measurable and repeatable PK effects under laboratory conditions. Russian psychic Nina Kulagina stunned Western scientists in 1968 by moving a multitude of stationary objects using her mind including matches, bread, bowls, cigar tubes, and salt shakers. She was also able stop or alter the course of objects already in motion, make mental impressions on film, and speed up or stop a frog’s heart! Ingo Swann, a New York psychic can change the temperature of objects near him and affect the magnetic field of a magnetometer. In 2001 University of Arizona psychology professor Gary Schwartz conducted a large-scale spoon-bending experiment with his students resulting in over 60 bent forks and spoons!

The following presentation Psi Science: Psychokinesis was taken from a chapter in my book "Spiritual Science" available from Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

Even if they don’t believe in mind over matter, most people behave as though their thoughts do affect the world. Surveys have shown that the vast majority of the world’s population prays and many throughout history have witnessed and testified to the power of prayer. The majority of such prayers essentially ask for God, the Universe, or Nature to “roll the dice favorably” in our direction, thus things like prayer and distance healing are also testable PK techniques.

“Randolph Byrd in 1988 attempted to determine in a randomized, double-blind trial whether remote prayer would have any effect on patients in a coronary care unit. Over 10 months, nearly 400 patients were divided into two groups, and only half (unbeknownst to them) were prayed for by a Christian prayer group outside the hospital. All patients had been evaluated, and there was no statistical difference in their condition before treatment. However, after treatment, those who’d been prayed for had significantly less severe symptoms and fewer instances of pneumonia and also required less assistance on a ventilator and fewer antibiotics than patients who hadn’t been prayed for.” -Lynne McTaggart, “The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe,” (186-7)

“The effectiveness of therapeutic touch has also been demonstrated in several studies. For example, Dr. Janet Quinn, an associate professor and assistant director of nursing research at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, decided to see if therapeutic touch could lower the anxiety levels of heart patients. To accomplish this she devised a double-blind study in which one group of nurses trained in the technique would pass their hands over a group of heart patients’ bodies. A second group with no training would pass their hands over the bodies of another group of heart patients, but without actually performing the technique. Quinn found that the anxiety levels in the authentically treated patients dropped 17 percent after only five minutes of therapy, but there was no change in anxiety levels among the patients who received the ‘fake’ treatment. Quinn’s study was the lead story in the Science Times section of the March 26, 1985, issue of the New York Times.” -Michael Talbot, “The Holographic Universe” (173)

The following presentation Psi Science: Positivity, Prayer and Remote Healing was taken from a chapter in my book "Spiritual Science" available from Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

Clairvoyance, or as the intelligence agencies have renamed it, Remote Viewing, is the psychic ability to internally “see” and obtain information on a given target object, person, location or event across both space and time. Mystics, shamans, yogis, meditators, out-of-body experiencers, near-death experiencers, psychedelic users, people under hypnosis, and naturally gifted psychics have all reported the ability of clairvoyance for centuries. More recently however, experiments performed by the CIA, US Army, SRI and PEAR laboratories suggest that given proper training, everyone is capable of cultivating this skill of inner vision.

The following presentation Psi Science: Clairvoyance and Remote Viewing was taken from a chapter in my book "Spiritual Science" available from Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay

Receiving direct knowledge or perception of the future, Precognition, is another common psi ability with a long-standing history. Precognition is usually achieved through prophetic dreams, during deep meditation, or spontaneously received as images in the mind’s eye. The existence of this paranormal ability, however, once again goes against the Newtonian grain and strikes close to the heart of people’s conceptions of time and free will. Because if precognition is real, then the future must in some sense be pre-written and determined.

The following presentation Precognition, Dreams and DejaVu was taken from a chapter in my book "Spiritual Science" available from Lulu and Amazon:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ericdubay
https://www.amazon.com/author/ericdubay