The Wrong Reality. PartV Interpretation. 33 Religions Against Reason - continued
The point needs to be made, once more, that supraconsciousness and the automated religious outlook are related in that both are interpretations of the same things, but only the former true interpretation represents human salvation by fulfilment, certainly not the latter. There is a similarity between the mystics putting 'spirit' above reason and my putting intellation above conscious thinking and truth above all, for both condemn the competitive materialist inhumanity of our society. But there is a great difference between them that can be shown in the following way. Supraconsciousness is the optimum expression of our highest faculty and the gateway to truth. The 'spirit', on the other hand, is a substitute for the true human state that the inferior reasoning of consciousness has arrived at to accord with good feeling. Mysticism, the occult, is thinking limited by instinctive 'knowing' and feeling. Consequently it is associated with the paranormal. Such as extra-sensory perception (ESP) is integral with instinct but cannot be understood by it. So whilst such phenomena are amenable to true reason, they appear miraculous to instinct-dominated reason.
My reason for wanting to explain the paranormal is that its mysteries have been taken as miraculous evidence of the existence of powers greater and wiser than we, or of a higher, cosmic or universal consciousness that we should aspire to in a non-intellectual way, by meditation, when we shall become privy to these mysteries by enlightenment from that cosmic consciousness. It is important to understand that, on the contrary, paranormal and supernatural events have rational explanations, and to remember that our true course is the fulfilment of intellect by which these events are revealed as insignificant, as irrelevant to the higher intellectual state of being, as relevant only to the instinctive state, through its emotions.
Mankind is drawn towards experience associated with instinct, rather than towards being his intellect, because our ancestors belonged to that state for millions of years and we can recall or sense the weight of this experience with comparative ease. The intellectual state is relatively very new and calls on much greater effort. Yet man senses the power of intellect and is led, by imagination rather than reason, to believe that it is a largely untapped source of power that the self can use to its personal advantage. Formal competitive learning is the most common example. Lateral thinking, self hypnosis, memory-building, confidence-boosting, happy-making exercises are all methods of reinforcing the instinctive/conscious self for automated success by increasing its domination of intellect - the opposite of true development. Personal conviction can help performance by removing the doubts of intellect - for example, it can enable an individual to jump higher or run faster than ever before. But the way ahead is to heed the doubts of intellect so as to resolve them, not to remove them.
Those who imagine our sensed potential supraconsciousness to be an external cosmic wisdom from which enlightenment will come to those who dwell on it, tend also to believe in the paranormal and supernatural as its manifestations. Those of us who do not imagine, and therefore do not perceive, such cosmic consciousness shall find straightforward explanations of these phenomena, if we seek them.
Telepathy is a means of communication, and clairvoyance a dimension of awareness, both of which I believe to have been part of our instinctive life experience before we achieved intellect, some 30,000 to 100,000 years ago, and which have since become redundant in civilised human society but remain in partial use in primitive societies like those of the Baka people and bushmen of Africa (who know when their hunters have killed, though miles away), and are, of course, commonly used in nature. Telepathy is to do with the utmost mental concentration enabling signals to be sent and received by a weak and otherwise imperceptible means. Levitation and the like is paranormality of a different kind that I believe to have occurred in the following manner. When we achieved intellect and sensed its important capabilities but merely used it in the service of instinct, we imagined it to have given us magical powers. We have tried to manifest our imagined magical potential, and if we have succeeded it can only have been in two ways :
A good deal has been heard recently about 'out of the body' experiences such as when the subject floats up to the ceiling, looks down on its body undergoing surgery on an operating table and 'sees' in detail what is being done. These experiences, retold by the subjects, are taken to prove that the 'spirit' leaves the body at death but in these cases hovers above it and returns as it recovers. The subjects talk of bright light, peaceful and tranquil feelings, and a sense of rising above ordinary affairs. This is taken to indicate that they approached the entrance to an after-life or heaven. These experiences are often taken seriously - as portentous, just as dreams were once regarded - but without good grounds.
An 'out-of-the-body' experience is related to some degree of belief in some kind of divinity, from a fully acknowledged faith to an almost unadmitted persuasion. What the subject then 'sees' is pictures previously associated in the memory and now reconstructed in the imagination. That the experience is put down to extra-sensory perception is related, I think, to the fact that the utter truth about all things exists, anywhere and everywhere, regardless of the constraints of reality. But we have to be content with realising that we are made aware by the known senses alone, and in one place only - the head.
Individuals who are not afflicted with any false faith, or innately subject to any mysterious persuasion, do not have 'out of body' experiences. They are subject to illusions, and dreams, but recognise them for what they are and do not invest them with false significance.
The fact is that we can truly experience only with, and within, our minds. It is impossible that we should be suspended near the ceiling, but an everyday thing that our imagination, within our heads, should picture us so. Normally we would pay no special attention to such imaginings. But the believer in god or reincarnation, under particularly disturbing circumstances, can interpret them as divinely significant.
The circumstances, combined with false bias, explain it all. To go through a surgical operation is disturbing. There is bright light in an operating theatre. Drugs impart a peaceful and tranquil feeling. The sense of ascending might be due to the temporary release from pain, fear and worry. And the fact that some subjects can describe details of the operation, which they could not have actually 'seen' because only the eyes can actually 'see' directly, can be explained by their being near to consciousness, hearing the surgeons discussing or describing the operation (or telepathically receiving their view of it) and constructing a picture of it within their minds.
A quite common feature of human experience, that is nevertheless regarded as supernatural because it has no obvious natural cause, is synchronicity - described by Jung as an acausal principle at work in the universe. Acausal events are ones with no apparent physical connection.
In his book The Awakening Earth, Peter Russell suggests that coincidences are examples of synchronicity - manifestations at the level of the individual of a higher organising principle at the collective level, or the as yet rudimentary social super-organism. I suggest a simple explanation that has nothing to do with a higher organising principle. That coincidences happen to people who meditate or pray, knowingly or not, is no coincidence. They have removed themselves from their conscious self-control in relation to all the impulsions and taboos and expectations of actual reality, and given themselves to the private desires of their personal reality which nevertheless uses their knowledge of actual reality. The individual is in a kind of trance, more aware of his or her personal reality than his or her automatic ego reacting to the Machine. In the case of the man who met his friend in the wrong place by failing to arrive at the intended place, he had some forgotten knowledge of a likelihood that his friend might well be at this wrong place - forgotten, that is, by his automatic self but remembered by his personally real self. His getting off the train at the wrong place was no accident, for it was the right place according to his private mental guide. It would be seen as wrong only by the real world, which would also call this a coincidence. His private will was influencing his actions.
The supposed higher organising principle of nature and the universe, which meditation and synchronicity are thought to indicate, is in fact the ever more complex evolution of instinctive life under the influence to express energy, which has a very different further objective under the supreme influence of truth. Synchronicity appears remarkable to us because our actual reality, the present norm, is badly out of step with our intellectual potential and our true reality. Were we supraconscious and living in a humantrue world, there would be a high degree of synchronisation but no 'coincidences'. The constitution of such a society would accord with our true individual and collective desire so that what we all desired would continually come to pass. This would be our own organising principles at work, both established and carried out by our own intellect. When such a society is in being I think we can expect acausal events, however - events with no physical cause but caused by the influential intention of truth, in our world, in Gaia, and in the universe - because realisation of truth is a universal desire and our true supraconscious will shall be the cause of such events, just as the will to live caused Earth's biosphere to maintain the right conditions for intelligent life through Gaia.
A growth in the number of coincidences, in our existing automatic reality, would be as embarrassing as the present increase in the number of people unconsciously pursuing personal desires is damaging. A 'growing experience of synchronicity' in society as it exists, as a result of meditation or prayer, would mean an increase in the influence of instinctive conscious will, and an increase in chaos.
In case the concept of a humantrue society should be thought to represent that social super-organism, let me remind you that such a society would become progressively more simple, and that the ultimate end of which I think it is a means - true equilibrium - is really the opposite of super-organism.
Concerning the 'supernatural', it should be noted that all occurrences in nature serve some instinctive purpose - they are natural to all except ourselves. Instantaneous communication between individuals in a large flock of birds in flight serves instinct. We regard such things as supernatural because the course of human affairs is variously affected but no longer governed by the instinctive code; such subtle causes and effects are humanly superficial excepting those of Gaia whose benefits we share with all life. What presently governs and affects us most strongly is the automatic application of intellect to the instinctive drives within the conscious sphere. Our innate feeling for humantruth, though we have not yet grasped its substance, is a demonstration of another force at work, that which seeks to help us to help ourselves and at the same time serve its ultimate purpose - the influence of truth.
So humans do not need what we call supernatural or paranormal aids. We have replaced them with the aid of our faculty for knowing and reasoning. ESP - by which I mean perception extra to normal human senses - does exist, without doubt, and is used by nature, but we have substituted speech, printing, telephone, radio, film and television. The discovery of ESP does not reveal a new dimension of relevance to us but an ancient dimension of instinct which we have outgrown and should now put aside, recognising it for what it is. Perhaps ESP does appear miraculous to our intellect, though commonplace to instinct, but it is as well to realise that intellect itself is miraculous by comparison with instinct. We can experience ESP, especially when we are in a mental condition akin to the animal with our higher faculties of mind at a low ebb. Because of our higher faculties it is probable that we could learn to use natural means of communication other than those now normal to us, and to interpret them more fully.
Consider what is known as 'remote viewing', cases of which are said to have occurred and are recorded. If we take these cases as true but are unwilling to concede that a mental picture, which is not imagined but describes an actual scene some way off, can be seen other than by the normal occular mechanism, we must examine ways in which a remote eye can actually 'see' a scene which is 'out of sight'.
We know that the 'seeing' process involves myriads of cells each with the task of picking up a certain minute feature of the picture. A group of these cells concentrates on each small area, each cell pre-programmed to pick out its own particular tiny feature and contribute it to a major feature such as a vertical line, a horizontal line, a colour or shade. As cells in their allotted areas recognise their programmed feature they transmit a signal. It is the pattern of such signals appearing in certain areas that reproduces the picture in the brain.
Evolutionary experience has given us very long memories so that almost nothing on Earth should be completely unrecognisable. Nevertheless the recognition of some unfamiliar or obscure objects requires concentrated attention and viewing from different angles. It is now known that the brain has 'sleeper' synapses and filaments which can be activated and programmed to fill in our recognition gaps and familiarise us with the unfamiliar. In the case of familiar objects the brain is not normally required to make a detailed analysis, and quite early in the process the recognition of large and complex scenes might be triggered by one connection only. In this way the brain can achieve instant recognition of a house from its salient features - that it has a door, windows, roof and chimneys - but without 'seeing' how many windows or any more precise detail. Similarly a harbour might be instantly and simply recognised from its salient features of sea, walls, boats, houses, and the single strong connection conveying this picture may also convey, in language but without speech, the word that simply describes it - 'harbour'.
It can be assumed that there is a limited number of generally familiar key scenes and that the code which triggers the interconnection of each is more or less the same in every mind. An individual who is trying, telepathically, to visualise a particular scene through the eyes of another person some miles away who is viewing that scene, will be alert, above all, to all these possible codes. The other person, concentrating on all the features of the scene, will, above all, be reinforcing that single simple triggering code connection that describes it in general. That connection might be further reinforced by the presence of other persons in the vicinity who are either similarly viewing the scene or strongly conscious of it as the background to their lives. Whether the picture is then conveyed, and with what added detail, depends upon the strength of telepathic communication between the two.
Such are the explanations that take away from apparently paranormal phenomena their air of deep, mysterious and inexplicable meaning. Some elements of paranormal belief are sound but all can be similarly explained. Supposed phenomena such as spoon-bending and influencing the fall of dice surely have logical physical explanations. Events that are claimed to happen and things that are supposed to indicate the existence of unknown powers and other worlds for which no conclusively reasoned evidence, and therefore no inescapable justification, can be found (such as communications from the dead, spiritual existence and reincarnation) must be put down as figments of the emotional imagination.
So it is necessary that we stop attaching significance to meditation, the supernatural and the paranormal, but before dismissing them here we should consider a strong reason why we have continually turned to make-believe rather than face the truth. It is a matter of life and death. We cannot face the fact that when our bodies die our consciousness, which can range far and wide beyond the body, must die also. Because we do not understand the truth, we substitute for it beliefs and faiths that explain life and death in ways which enable us to accept both but keep us in ignorance of truth.
Spring is birth, summer life, autumn decline and winter brings death. Most of us are privileged to witness this cycle for many seasons until we ourselves die, knowing that the process continues without us. Death is a human tragedy. Every day in Britain, not only do we mourn about one hundred persons who die before their time by accident, abuse or disease, but two thousand who die naturally. Senseless premature death and unnecessary suffering are rightly unacceptable. But every generation is destined to die - we must all suffer eventual, inevitable extinction. Many of us refuse to concede this and turn to belief in some form of 'life after death'. Let us look at one form which is presently gaining support - reincarnation.
Consciousness, supraconsciousness, and the understanding of truth requires a mind, and the mind requires a complex arrangement of neurones and nerve-paths. Such things did not, could not exist in the superhot concentration of pure energy at the time of the Big Bang. Truth existed, but not consciousness of it. We humans became capable of understanding truth between one hundred thousand and thirty thousand years ago. Before that there could have been no reincarnation, for it is a supposed process of self-perfection by way of growing understanding being passed from one to another of a series of bodily regenerations. This presupposes a spirit, of which there is no evidence, nor is there indication that newborn humans are any more than intellectual clean sheets whose understanding comes later. So there is nothing to reincarnate - nothing to show that our characters are other than the construction of mind developed in our lifetime. The idea of reincarnation suggests imaginative indulgence of the desire for immortality, originally invented as a spur to good behaviour, and can also be used as a fanciful explanation of the wide differences in human character, from saint to sadist. (To continue click here)
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