2. NEUROSCIENCE AND THE MIND

Each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness that will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbols that we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various "other worlds," with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. (Aldous Huxley)

Professor Michael Persinger, Chair of Neurosciences, Laurentian University, along with his graduate students has for several decades been experimenting on the effects of computer structured sine waves which, after being recorded on computer sound cards, activate magnetic solenoids strategically placed over the human brain. In this fashion Persinger’s group were able to introduce designed frequencies that resulted in clients experiencing prescriptive images, mood changes, and sensory effects including the feeling of Divine presence. The goal, over time, is to be able to program additional computer analogues which will bring about not only desired effects in emotions and psychological states, but also magnetic frequency analogues enabling induction of desired changes in clients’ physical health. The premise is that for every pharmaceutical compound, there is a prescriptive magnetic frequency analogue which when introduced into the brain as a signal line will instruct the brain to produce the necessary endogenous chemical without resorting to synthetic drugs and their frequent side-effects.

Aside, Dr. Persinger’s group has also determined that there is a time correlation between shifts in geo-tectonic plates involving for instance earthquakes (which would also involve field changes in geo-magnetic levels), and the incidence of anxiety, hallucinations, anomalous sightings etc. in the general population. What affects the magnetic fields of our planet affects its creatures.

Along these lines, for the past decade in France, Dr Jacques Benveniste, Directeur de Recherches at INSERM Digital Biology Laboratory has determined that the specific effects of biologically active molecules such as histamine, adrenalin, nicotine and caffeine, and the immunological signatures of viruses and bacteria, can be digitized and recorded onto computer sound-cards. A keystroke later, and these signals can be winging their way across the globe, courtesy of the Internet. Biological systems far from their activating molecules can then be triggered simply by playing back the synthetic recordings. Benveniste’s findings also indicate the electromagnetic frequency nature of trans-molecular signaling, heretofore unknown. This specific signal line is ‘memorized’ over a water carrier wave to enable in vivo transmission of the molecular specific information within our bodies. Life depends on signals exchanged among molecules. For example, when you get angry, adrenalin tells its specific receptor, and it alone (as a faithful molecule, it talks to no other) to make your heart beat faster, to contract superficial blood vessels, etc.

In explaining his findings, Benveniste advised that all molecules are made from atoms which are constantly vibrating and emitting infrared radiation in a highly complex manner. These infrared vibrations have been detected for years by scientists, and are a vital part of their armory of methods for identifying molecules. This, Benveniste claims, is how millions of biological molecules manage to communicate at the speed of light with their own corresponding molecule and no other. It also explains why minute changes in the structure of a molecule can profoundly alter its biological effect. It is not that these tiny structural changes make it a bad fit with its biological receptor (the classical lock-and-key concept). The structural modifications ‘detune’ the frequency of the molecule to that of its receptor. What is more, and just like radio sets and receivers, the molecules do not have to be close together for communication to take place.

What does the foregoing have to do with the “Windows of Perception”? What is the “key” here? Until Drs. Persinger and Benveniste had access to appropriate instrumentation – in their case, computer technology and sound cards on which to record specifically engineered magnetic frequencies – a proper understanding of what processes actually affected physical molecules could not be attained. And, by analogy, it follows that what affects the molecules of our bodies, including our brains, is going to have a significant effect on our thinking – i.e. upon our consciousness. For millennia, mystics and seers have tried to use their minds to look into and beyond their minds. The instrumentation for this purpose has been virtually non-existent – the only technology being the findings of one seer’s insights, say through meditation, paving the way for and guiding a later seeker. Now, though, with advances by scientists such as Persinger and Beneveniste one can see within one’s own meditation exercises how certain thoughts and realizations can have such an immediate effect throughout one’s own mind and body. Without having such means to see/understand what is happening, it is otherwise difficult to advance. Intentional participation in the creation of neuro-chemicals arising from one’s thoughts cascade throughout one’s body and give rise to desirable attitude adjustments concurrently.

Jeremy Narby, the celebrated Amazonian ethno-biologist, in his book “The Cosmic Serpent”, (see "Book Reviews" in ‘remedy’), points to his realization that there is an intelligence - a capacity to make choices - operating inside every cell of our body, down to the level of individual proteins and enzymes. This intelligence interacts and communicates through chemically coded interfaces, ensuring health of the organism and, in the case of primitive societies, allowing individuals access to insight and non-local information.

During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good – death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. (Hermann Hesse)

Now, gentle reader, please bear with me as I relate - from our travel notes - three realizations experienced over a period of a week when traveling in Mexico’s central plateau which may be seen as reflecting aspects of the foregoing. In San Miguel Allende, during a very quiet pre-dawn meditation (hypnopompic), I saw again the ‘formula’ process, wherein one can reach a state so still and quiet that through viewing one’s own natural (chemical) aspect, one becomes like Blake’s “heaven in a grain of sand/ eternity in an hour” – i.e. connected with all things. In this stillness one selects the target of choice and automatically merges / becomes at-one with it. In a world which is All Thought, to direct one’s thought whilst in still natural repose, connects one to the target – the formula itself is not a number to be sought, but rather it is simply intentionally engaging the deep stillness through which all mind-spirit is one.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

(William Blake)

A couple mornings later, at Tequisquipan, I was unable to attain the former unity state, but by being a ‘parallel detached observer’ (allowing ‘whatever’ to present itself for viewing yet subtly directing mind to the area of interest) I realized that the formula process of travel/union/viewing is very similar to the process of prayer whereby Christian Scientists/ Religious Scientists and similar modalities effect their healing influence onto others, at distance. The same stilling ‘formula’ to transmit intentional scalars (informational data) of healing – to see the affliction as ‘error’ and to re-signal the perfect holistic pattern so that the afflicted recipient can re-member his holistic state.

[Hence the concern of these practitioners with the client’s permission, as to proceed otherwise would pollute the connective conduit between healer and client –the healer’s unsolicited intrusion could otherwise skew the holistic scalar pattern to one of his own preference, rather than signaling holistic love.] [Thus the old caution “one can become able to see anything, but do not attempt to influence anything unless requested.” One may know that the client harbours an error, but the client may need to live/grow through that error alone, without any biased push by another, no matter how well-intentioned].

I could see though that it is possible to subtly communicate to/influence another in a seed format, wherein one can implant and quicken the truth seed in another, and in time the other realizes the truth and yet feels proprietorship of it - including any conscience aspects through not acting on that personally realized insight. Allegories and parables have traditionally served this same goal in conventional dialogue.

At Tlaxcala, an old dream was revisited one morning, and later discussed with Marnie. In this dream, which had periodically been presented to me over many decades, the creation gods revealed the secret of eternal life – that it’s neither resurrection nor reincarnation – these are but mortal constructs – rather the secret is reproduction – reproduction of consciousness itself through its sentient carriers. The gods’ agency in this marvel is imbedded plant and animal DNA, which provides continuing body-hosts for life, in the eternal here and now. Ever renewing hosts for the Tao, as it were. The injuries and memories of the old hosts are of no essential concern to either life or the new offspring; in the new corpus, consciousness takes on/embodies its own ongoing reality. And while each successive generation’s memories seem so important to their current hosts, they are of little concern to the eternally reproducing spirit – the tired old tree drops its seeds and in the fullness of time fades to sleep, glad to be relieved of its injuries, while the fresh new tree emerges into a waiting world from its parent’s DNA.

While to us humans it seems like such a waste to lose one’s life learning/ memories, these are on one level an unimportant slide show to the spirit, even a diversion from spirit’s main goal – eternal existence. Yet on another level the sense of vital reality experienced by the host is critical to life herself – life’s game proceeds with a sense of meaningful, vital reality (all life is precious to all of its creatures) – and this is life’s spiritual real-time ground of being that can only be realized through her embodied creatures.

I am an experiment on the part of nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose, perhaps for nothing, and my only task is to allow this game on the part of the primeval depths to take its course, to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. (Hermann Hesse)

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