Alchemy of the Paranormal

If we can see through all the mistaken identities, frauds, money-making schemes, rampant egotism, and just plain wishful thinking, there is a surprising core of unexpected truth that cannot be denied in a significant number of paranormal encounters. In fact, these experiences seem to initiate a process waiting to unfold in every one of us. Common, everyday people are forging contact with an independent intelligence that is causing real changes in the human spirit. The amazing truth buried in the paranormal is that a fundamental transformation of life on this planet is taking place right under our noses. Whether these experiences are interpreted as alien abductions, angelic encounters, meetings with earth spirits or departed ones, or just some weird energy is secondary to the fact that something real is going on here, over which we have very little control. In that respect, there is not much difference between one glowing apparition and another, whether it be a pulsating UFO, a shining angel, a shimmering ghost, a vision of the Virgin Mary, or for that matter, an alien standing in a shaft of light at the foot of your bed. There have been cases of bug-eyed aliens transforming into dark hooded figures in front of multiple witnesses; eagles changing into flying saucers; balls of light in the sky that can reflect on radar one moment and disappear in the next. These are archetypal images that have suddenly become real. Transpersonal forces are manifesting in our lives in very intrusive and very real ways.

"Exceptional Human Experiences" is a term coined by researcher Rhea White for a broad category of experiences that includes encounters with angels, ghosts, nature spirits, UFOs, sacred sites, unknown energies, as well as mystical states, extrasensory perceptions, unusual dream states, near-death and out-of-body experiences. Now that seems like a lot of very different and very unusual phenomena. Yet, what we’re finding is that all these diverse experiences have certain underlying similarities, and that means we’re getting closer to finding answers for questions like what is the nature of the paranormal experience? Is it taking place in real space or just in our minds? What kind of people have these experiences? How can we train ourselves to experience the paranormal? What does the experience mean to us as a species? You might say that all genuine paranormal phenomena are variations on just one theme: the existence of another side to our experience, well beyond our petty egos, an archetypal background of hypercognitive forces, which we have been trained to ignore, both individually, as we’re growing up, and as a species, as we develop more controlling social systems. And the more we ignore it, the more the powers of the Other Side press into our consciousness. The EHE viewpoint is like the Unified Field Theory of parapsychology because it ties together all types of paranormal phenomena. And we’re learning some truly amazing things that have repercussions in such diverse disciplines as anthropology, sociology, religion, psychiatry, and even quantum physics. We are starting to view all these EHEs as part of a single meta-phenomenon that is slowly revealing another side to our existence, something unexpected. Everyone of us is involved in this because the process takes place within the changing belief systems of individuals. While we may not know the mechanism involved, if we look at all types of Exceptional Human Experience, the meaning of the paranormal becomes clearer. Taken as a whole, the paranormal experience seems to suggest that human beings are being inaugurated into a frame of reference beyond the physical reality we take for granted. Space and time may only be components of something that we can’t yet grasp intellectually.

The first characteristic common to most types of paranormal encounters is the manifestation of light. In fact, light itself becomes the fabric of these experiences. Phenomena of Light include glowing apparitions, luminous visions, fiery floating globes with brilliant hues, pulsating UFOs, tunnels of light, and blinding white light. Some psychics can even direct this light and produce mental images on photographic film, and photos of strange light patterns are found everywhere in these experiences. Much of this paranormal light seems to be in the invisible spectrum, and pictures of both UFOs and ghosts have been produced using sensitive films. That light is the basis of these phenomena should not surprise us. Science itself has determined that light is both real and unreal, particle and wave at the same time. Light determines the relationship between energy and matter; without the intermediary of light, energy and matter are the same thing (E=mc2). What is more, it is the speed of light which sets the dimensions of our universe, and even the most hardened physicists are starting to think of light as a kind of consciousness. That’s the thing about light. It is the basis of both the mental world (as imagination) as well as the real world. Of course, that’s what Etheric Light has represented to shamans and mystics throughout the ages. Whether the light reported in paranormal experiences is manifesting in mental or physical reality or some combination of both varies between cases. But light might just be that higher level of organization toward which we seem to be moving as a species. After all, an out-of-body experience is just being out of this body and into a body of light. Some researchers have even found a correlation between the intensity of the light experienced in a paranormal encounter and the extent of the psychological and physiological changes in the observer. We’re talking about such things as curing of neuroses, lowering of blood pressure, breaking of addictions, even loss of weight. Other researchers have discovered that the highest concentrations of LSD during that kind of trip are in the pineal gland, that pine-cone shaped vestige of the third eye deep in the center of our brain. It could be that the light in which we dream, our visualizations, the light of our hidden third eye - the mind’s eye of the True Imagination - is the same type of light that determines our physical reality and appears at the edge of reality in the paranormal experience. So, go towards the light is not something you just tell dead people. It is where we are headed as humans.

Another characteristic we find if we look at all classes of paranormal phenomena is that these are ego-destroying experiences. That’s because some type of higher mind or independent intelligence is confronted in these cases, something outside our desires and goals, something which might have its own larger game plan. For most people, the paranormal experience is a life-changing encounter with a completely unexpected level of superconsciousness. There is a Dissolution of Boundaries - not just between people and events, time and space, mind and matter - but within the personality of the individual. Our belief systems crumble and all those neat little mental compartments we create suddenly collapse. Mental boundaries merge. This merging, this Dissolution of Boundaries, affects our mental constructs, our belief systems, which filter and constrict our view of reality. In order to fully confront the paranormal, we have to abandon belief systems and allow anything to happen. Sometimes the light from Other Side is enough to blow away our egocentric preconceptions. LSD, psilocybin, and other psychotropic drugs open new states of consciousness because they chemically dismantle these frames of reference we have so carefully built up. Alchemists called this process of destruction of ego "Calcination." Hypnosis also works by temporarily altering our belief systems. Another way, is to try to trick the mind into accepting new possibilities. In all these instances, we are shown in some unequivocal way that there is something besides ourselves at work in the world. In this state of consciousness, we become aware of the true thoughts and feelings of others without speaking, thoughts themselves become actions, and the five senses become heightened and intermixed in strange ways. People report things like smelling colors, seeing music, feeling odors, touching light.

The existence of an "outside" or "higher" intelligence is the third characteristic of paranormal encounters. Some type of independent or higher mind or higher intelligence is sensed in these cases, something outside of our desires and goals, something that seems to have its own game plan that may well lie outside our understanding. For most experiencers, the paranormal experience is a life-changing encounter with a level of superconsciousness (that brilliant light again), that at least sometimes, has physical reality. In all likelihood, we’re experiencing something in the same continuum of reality as us, but it’s reflecting that reality in a different way. Our own minds constantly filter our experiences, constantly interpret what is happening to us. When we encounter something that is so totally alien, so totally outside our beliefs in what is possible, we default to the mythological stratum deep within us, what Jung called the Collective Unconscious. There, at the archetypal (or quantum) level of mind, the experience takes on meaning for us in the form of a ghost from our past, a UFO from our future, or some other beastie from our unconscious. Within seconds, our minds transform something from outside our level of reality into something that makes sense to us at the deepest layers of our psyche. At such moments, we default to our deepest metaprograms, as John Lilly called them. I think that how we interpret the experience depends a lot on the state of our own souls - where we stand in our personal evolution. In other words, we get the paranormal experience we deserve, and that experience enlarges, enhances, accelerates what is already there. Some experiencers confront a terrifying void, the tabula rasa of their own being, while others end up in some hellish scenario, fighting off threatening embodiments of their own guilt or anger. Some, like William Shatner, come away from the experience convinced that time and space do not exist and not wanting to return to earth at all. Once our consciousness reaches a new level, as we’re slowly tricked into realizing what we should have known all along, we just might find a new way of being. At the same time, there can be no doubt that our own minds and emotions play a role in these manifestations. Both ghosts and UFOs have appeared to credible groups of people who sought to consciously create them. It truly seems as if our minds or imaginations can connect with a wavelike force that can affect both matter and causality.

The ways in which mind affects matter and causality are generally known as psychokinetic (PK) effects. There are a number of experiments in which psychokinetic mediums affect quantum probabilities, and the results confirm several theories, most strikingly the central role of the observer, in other words consciousness, in creating reality. In quantum physics, it takes the conscious observation of a mind for an event to take place. Without mind there just is no reality at the subatomic level, and it is probably here where paranormal events first begin to manifest. Physicist Helmut Schmidt has been at the forefront of this type of research. He has demonstrated the reality of paranormal forces by documenting subjects changing the rate of radioactive decay of certain elements. Now, that's a significant feat. If radioactive decay wasn't such a very precise and unalterable phenomenon we wouldn't have a problem with nuclear waste. Schmidt also set up a number of other experiments in which PK affects quantum probabilities. In these experiments with micro-PK, as it's called, it has been shown that there is very little difference between precognition and psychokinetically affecting outcomes. In fact, the most amazing tests suggest that paranormal events take place outside of time. Using a quantum random number generator, the most random event maker we know of, Schmidt recorded stereo cassettes of a series of binary clicks delivered to either the right or left ear. Because it was nearly perfectly random, the overall result was 50% in one ear and 50% in the other. He made copies of those cassettes, automatically without anyone hearing them, and locked away the originals in a vault. Then he asked volunteers to take the copies home and listen to them, trying to get more clicks to sound in one ear than the other. The experiments were a confounding success. People were able to produce very high deviations from chance. At first Schmidt thought the subjects were altering only the copies, either psychokinetically or by cheating, but when he compared copies to the originals in the vault, he found that they were the same. In other words, it seemed that PK could work backward in time. A subject's conscious efforts today affected the operation of the quantum random number generator yesterday. These results have been duplicated scores of times using computer disks, programmable memory chips, and other recording mediums. They show that in any truly random process, psychokinesis can be a major factor. The results also confirm several quantum mechanical theories, most strikingly the central role of the observer, in other words consciousness, in creating reality. Recording of quantum events by machines is not enough to make such events real. It takes the conscious observation of a mind for an event to take place. or in the words of physicists: for a state-vector collapse to take place in the quantum field. Without mind there just is no reality at this level.

The guardian at the border between everyday reality and the Other Side was called Hermes by the Greeks. He was a notorious trickster god, whose handiwork shows up in many paranormal encounters. Why should trickery be part of the paranormal? Because doubt and suspicion hinder the production of psychic phenomena, and sometimes we have to be tricked into accepting them. Parapsychologists recognize two other factors working against these events. One is "Witness Inhibition," the reaction of fear, shock and denial when one actually sees a paranormal event. Deep inside few of us really want to confront a ghost, UFO, levitating objects, or some kind of other spooky poltergeist effect. The other hindrance to spontaneous paranormal activity is called "Ownership Resistance." That's the fear that we might ourselves in some way actually be responsible for the phenomena. We just can't take that pressure. Our egos collapse entirely or balloon up to intolerable levels, as we start thinking we are the Chosen Ones. On the other hand, expectation, the firm belief that something's about to happen, facilitates the production of paranormal events. That's why seances work, because everyone gathers in expectation and are able to avoid any responsibility by directing their requests to the table or some discarnate entity. That’s why the rumor of UFOs can cause a whole flap of genuine sightings. In fact, if we have this sense of expectation and have set up things so we lack direct responsibility, it's not even necessary to have an outside presence at work.

The Russians actually incorporated trickery into their efforts to train psychokinetic mediums in the 1980s, after the discovery of Nina Kulagina. The common housewife could move all kinds of objects by concentrating on them - from match boxes and cigar tubes to laser beams. But it was a tremendous physical exertion. Her heart rate climbed to 240 beats per minute and her blood sugar rose dangerously high. Eventually, she was forced by ill health to stop her demonstrations. In any case, the Russians got to study her for twenty years. They filmed her, poked her, probed her, x-rayed her, and exposed her to powerful electromagnetic fields, and were totally convinced she was genuine. Before long, the Russians were envisioning a whole army of Kulaginas. One program that produced many successes was under the direction of physicist Victor Adamenko. He began by teaching volunteers to move Styrofoam cups and packing peanuts on top of a Plexiglas table using common electrostatic effects. They'd rub their hands on wool sweaters then as they brought their hands near the Styrofoam objects, the objects would dance across the table. This went on regularly over many, many sessions. Then, one day, Adamenko would ground the subjects so that there would be no chance of electrostatic discharge. But some of the volunteers still moved the objects and advanced to even heavier targets.

Physical phenomena have also been deliberately created in more traditional seances. In fact, in 1974, a group of eight people at the New Horizons Research Center in Toronto were able to manifest a completely made-up entity during a series of seances. Their initial attempts to produce effects by meditating had failed, but they found success by directing their efforts toward an imaginary spirit they named Philip. That relieved any of the individuals of direct responsibility. The fictitious "spirit" began by communicating through table rapping, and within months the table itself was levitating as well as objects placed on it. Clinical psychologist Kenneth Batcheldor had gotten similar results with a group in Britain. Other groups found that having a "designated cheater," someone to get the ball rolling by making knocking sounds or hitting the table leg, sped up the process. Using stress gauges and other instrumentation, scientists were able to differentiate fake movements and document genuine paranormal activity. But in all these cases, within a few sessions of a dramatic event such as levitation, the phenomena lessened as the participants started suffering from anxiety over what was going on. For this reason, modern research into psychokinesis concentrates on smaller phenomena that can be tightly controlled and monitored without this Witness Inhibition or Ownership Resistance being factors.

Our own psychokinetic medium, the controversial spoonbender Uri Geller, sometimes resorted to tricks to get people to suspend their beliefs so his powers would work. But I’ve seen him bend forks without touching them, and once, I was in his apartment and witnessed the dematerialization of a figurine from a completely enclosed glass cabinet. Today, Geller lives in Britain and is rich from using his psychic powers to locate resources for oil and mining companies. But when he was in his twenties, he was not above cheating if his powers failed him. I’ve seen this in other cases too. Tina Resch, the Columbus, Ohio, teenager who was the center of poltergeist activity in 1984, was once caught tugging on a lamp cord, but she produced an amazing array of genuine PK effects in front of dozens of reporters and under tightly controlled conditions at the Psychical Research Institute.

Australian aborigines, the Hopis of the Third Mesa, and other indigenous peoples laugh at our televisions, computers, cellular phones, and other devices we think so necessary. They insist that they communicate telepathically with each other, communicate with animals, appear in different places at once, locate water and food, know what the future holds -- all through the power of their minds. They say we have not developed these powers because we focus outwardly and are not connected to the One Unspeakable Thing that connects all things. To find the treasure of the world, we must focus inwardly to change our consciousness to match that of the ground of our being. We are attempting transmutation of consciousness whenever we perform any mind-altering ritual (prayer, fasting, drugs, extended exercise, meditation). Basically, this type of meditation is active and not passive. We try to create what has been called a Hermes Field, a hermetically sealed inner space where things are kept out that need to be kept out and holding in what wants to be held in. It is desire coupled with your true belief, the reclaiming of your power from others who have inflicted their own belief systems on you. Like Einstein said: "It is the theory that determines what we observe." You have to break through the comfortable and well defined conscious dreamstate we have created for ourselves. The paranormal meditative state can be achieved unconsciously by the process of worldly crucifixion. Eventually, we come to realize that our ideas of chance and even cause and effect are illusions. In many ways, meditation represents a vibrational tuning process. Paranormal subjects are energizing archetypal forces within themselves that align their energy vibration (consciously or unconsciously) with that of a particular archetypal force. That's why it only takes the rumor of UFOs for people to see them, because it sets up the unconscious expectation or right frequency of mind. Some people can tune themselves into the specific "frequencies" of certain archetypes by revealing this archetypal "Thing Itself" of every object or situation . The force essentially alters its energy pattern to that of the person calling it and it subsequently emerges into physical reality. We can either learn to control this or become victims of the unseen archetypal powers.

In summary, there are many paths to the Light of Consciousness. Some chew on magic mushrooms to enter the wavelike state of mind, the psychedelic experience, but maybe just sitting around like Buddha until we have mastered the light, works too. Some psychologists have called it a third state of consciousness, the hypnagogic state, somewhere between waking and sleeping, although modern psychologists realize it is much more than that, much more meaningful than that. They have witnessed the tremendous insight of active imagination and dreams. Shamans seek out this powerful light in vision quests, mediums call it spirit guides, some people even merge with this light out of their bodies, and sometimes this light just takes on a mind of its own. The the Medieval alchemists referred to this fluid, living light as Mercury, which like Hermes, could be a trickster type intelligence or a messenger between two worlds, a liquid light that could take on any form and mirror any image, just like elemental mercury does. But whatever it is called, it is our connection to a higher mind and an unrecognized kind of creative power. Most of the time that connection is just beyond our reach, just outside our control. Those alchemists spent their lives trying to harness that power in order to perfect their souls and transform matter itself. Tibetan monks use it to create real beings out of their own imaginations they call "tulpas", and the gods of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians were like real people to them. American Indians used their connection to the Other Side to assimilate animal powers and draw upon the strength of the earth, and we, modern man, use it most often to manifest a super-advanced alien technology - complete with all types of little green men.

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