Quest Magazine

Printed in the Winter 2015 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Abbasova, Parvin."Altered States of Consciousness" Quest 103.1 (Winter 2015): pg. 24-26.

The first time I learned about altered states of consciousness (ASCs) from official medicine was in my last year of medical school. We had just started our cycle of lectures on psychiatry and psychotherapy. Professor X seemed to be boring, and as the lecture didn't promise much, I was about to start reading my favorite book on yoga. But surprisingly, he opened with a story about a patient who had come to his practice after being treated by an Altai shaman with long-distance hypnosis, a method that enables a practitioner to hypnotize a patient without being physically present. Needless to say, he captured the attention of the audience. He went on to discuss street hypnosis (often used by gypsies), trance and trancelike states, meditation, and even clairvoyance. This was the first time anyone in our university had spoken about such unusual and controversial subjects. By that time I had already studied yoga long enough to know about the five states of mind described by the sage Vyasa in his commentary on the Yoga Sutras, as well as the states of consciousness described as svapna, jagrat, sushupti, and turiya, which correspond to the states of waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, and pure consciousness respectively. But the thought of actually researching and scientifically explaining this ancient knowledge was a turning point for me, and it led me to choose psychiatry as my specialty.

Today, as in ancient times, people are fascinated by the possibility of altering the "normal" state of consciousness. Modern science and philosophy agree, acknowledging that ASCs are a special type of mental phenomenon. They have also come to realize that it is not possible to draw a solid line between normal or base states and ASCs: not only is there no agreed-upon definition of "normal" in these circumstances, but there are an innumerable variety of ways in which psychic processes work in individuals.

Nevertheless, scientists have come up with classifications of altered states, and many of these have proved helpful for our understanding of this difficult subject.

First, ASCs vary in depth, form, and content. They can include a wide spectrum of psychic phenomena from rapid sleep to deep hypnosis and from hallucinations to psychosis.

Second, the causes of ASCs can be physiological (deep breathing, childbirth), psychological (stress), pathological (delirium, schizophrenia), and even intellectual (as we see from the use of the koan in Zen Buddhism). ASCs can also be caused by chemical substances such as LSD and marijuana.

Third, the alteration between normal and altered states can be spontaneous (road hypnosis), induced by lack of external stimuli (isolation) or by sensory overload hypnotherapy), or self-induced (meditation, self-hypnosis).

ASCs are a basic human need. And, yes, you have experienced them to a certain degree. Have you ever caught yourself zoning out in a bus, not remembering the stations that you have passed or the people that sat next to you? This is considered to be an instance of spontaneous trance. Some researchers have called it an introverted state of consciousness, as opposed to the extraverted basic state. In the introverted state the attention is turned inward, and the psyche processes information that has been generated within itself rather than coming in from the outside world. As described by psychologist Charles Tart, "this condition of my mind feels radically different from some other condition, rather than just an extension of it" (emphasis Tart's).

Other scientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists have tried to shed some light on this gray area of our lives. Among the most famous is Dr. Stanislav Grof, who studied expanded states of consciousness first using LSD and later using holotropic breathwork, which, according to Grof's Web site, "combines accelerated breathing with evocative music in a special set and setting" to engender ASCs. Grof has divided these states into four distinct categories:

Sensory and somatic: consisting of experiences including hallucinations or visualizing images or geometrical patterns. Subjects undergo a variety of sensations, such as numbness of the hands, tingling, and cold or heat. They may spontaneously assume certain postures or even dance. Some report feeling energy blocked or flowing in the body.

Biographical and individual unconscious: As in traditional psychotherapy, this is the level of repressed memories, unresolved problems, and traumas. The interaction with the unconscious is more on a level of awareness and experience than of intellectualization or remembering.

Perinatal: Reliving the birth process and the trauma associated with it.

Transpersonal: This includes, but is not limited to, remembering past lives, identification with other forms of life such as animals (totems), uniting with Universal Mind, and out-of-body experiences.

One of the most important and revolutionary studies in this area was conducted by Dr. A. Kasamatsu and Dr. T. Hirai in 1990. On one occasion they monitored a group of Buddhist monks on a seventy-two-hour pilgrimage to a mountain. The monks were not allowed to speak, drink, or eat. They were exposed to cold weather. After forty-eight hours, the monks started seeing visions of ancestors and feeling their presence.

The purpose of the study was to investigate how sensory deprivation affects the brain. The scientists found that deprivation increases amounts of serotonin"”a hormone that is responsible for sleep, arousal level, and emotion. The highest amounts were in the frontal cortex and hypothalamus, producing visions.

On another occasion the scientists investigated the psychophysiological effects of meditation among Zen Buddhists using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical activity in different areas of the brain. EEGs were recorded continuously before, during, and after Zen meditation. The following results were obtained:

Alpha waves were observed within fifty seconds after the monks began meditation. This occurred whether or not their eyes were open. Alpha waves are generated in the brain when we are relaxed, usually with closed eyes, but are awake and not tired. This state is used widely in biofeedback training, as there is evidence that it helps to overcome phobias and anxiety and calms hyperactive children. During the Zen meditation, these alpha waves followed a specific pattern. After they appeared, their amplitude increased, then decreased, followed by the rhythmical theta train (a period of activity of theta waves).

Theta rhythm is not fully understood by science, but there are two types. The first one, the hippocampal, can be observed in most animals and humans, whereas the other, the cortical type, is specific to humans only. The cortical theta rhythm is often recorded in young children. In adults it is a sign of meditation, drowsiness, or sleep (but not deep sleep). It can also indicate a transition from sleep as well as a quiet wakeful state. Zen masters generated theta rhythms faster than their disciples.

In this process, the left hemisphere of the brain was the first one to become active; then the right one came to dominate; finally, at the deepest state of meditation, the activity of both hemispheres decreased. At this state the subject gains access to problems and ideas rooted in the unconscious, as well as transpersonal problems, and is able to work on them.

After meditation, the general activity of the cortex was higher, while the activity of the limbic system decreased. This means that the individual has heightened awareness and perception, along with a lowered emotional response to both external and internal stimuli. This is called "skilled response."

These studies have proved what Buddhists and yogis have known for thousands of years: ASCs achieved through meditation, pranayama (controlled breathing), or asanas (yogic body postures) change the way the mind functions (on both physiological and biochemical levels) and are ultimately the way to remove suffering (that is, emotional response to pain or trauma).

Let us now look at the subtle changes that occur during ASCs. Certain techniques are aimed toward specific issues, whereas others produce generalized effects. I will take yoga as an example, although similar effects are produced during meditation, chanting, and even tribal dance. In my clairvoyant investigations over the years, I have noticed energetic changes in the  auras of yoga students during the asana practice and pranayama, but most importantly during savasana (the "corpse pose," taken as a final form of relaxation). The practice of asana activates the chakras and nadis (energy channels). At this point, anything that blocks the flow of energy can be removed, restoring the natural order. Pranayama and bandhas (energy locks) raise energy up the sushumna, or central spinal channel. Nadi shodhan pranayama (alternate nostril breathing) synchronizes the operation of the two hemispheres, decreasing the activity of the emotions. Finally, savasana induces a state of trance in which the rhythm of vibration and the pulsations of aura become harmonious. Mental images  are not generated (although they can be picked up from higher planes). All these things give the yogi a sense of deep relaxation of body and mind.

Lately there have been debates about the effects of psychedelic drugs, marijuana in particular, on consciousness. Proponents of the drug are trying to prove that it produces a relaxation that is necessary to relieve everyday stress. Pseudo-yogis and certain religious sects claim that the use of this substance is essential for uniting with the Divine. From my own psychiatric and clairvoyant experience, however, I would say that the truth is obvious: laziness and weakness lie at the root of such speculations. This claim can be confirmed by reading the clairvoyant observations by Dora Kunz, past president of the Theosophical Society, of people  using alcohol and drugs.

People who are not able to develop spiritual discipline and practice are always looking for an easier way. I would include workshops for breathwork, hypnosis, and trance dance in the same category. Because facilitators of these programs use ancient yogic techniques out of context in response to Western culture's demands for fast results in a short time, they cause addiction to the modality or substance and create a dependence on the therapist or instructor. Especially if the spiritual vision of the therapist is clouded or insufficiently developed, there is more risk than benefit from producing ASCs in these ways.

ASCs are very helpful in personal evolution. But they were never meant to be an escape from the problems of everyday reality, as they have become today. Buddhism, yoga, and other ancient spiritual schools     have never considered it acceptable to run away from the hardship of the world. Nor was kundalini raised in weekend workshops. Independent, centered, devoted practice has always been central to spiritual growth. Agreeing with Annie Besant, I would suggest thinking about this question: "If you can't face the challenges of the outer world, how can you expect to face the dangers on the path of inner evolution?"

PYARVIN ABBASOVA, M.D., was born and raised in Siberia. She is a psychiatrist and yoga teacher, and has been a member of the Theosophical Society since 2009. She has been a longtime volunteer at Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center, where she is currently a resident. 

Printed in the Winter 2015 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard."BEYOND THE BRAIN - An Interview with Eben Alexander" Quest 103.1 (Winter 2015): pg. 10-15.

By Richard Smoley

Today the intellectual world is facing an insurrection. It has nothing to do with politics or economics. It is about worldviews. Contemporary intellectual thought is hidebound by a materialistic view of the universe that automatically shuts out anything of the "spiritual," or, God forbid, "mystical." More and more evidence is coming to light that refutes this narrow view of reality. And more and more intellectuals are standing up against it.

Eben Alexander is one of the most famous examples. An American neurosurgeon, in 2008, he fell into a coma during a case of severe meningitis and at a time when, from the conventional point of view, he should have had no consciousness whatsoever—he had a profound and inspiring vision of worlds beyond this one.

Alexander describes this journey in the best-selling Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. The book sent a shock through the country, and gained Alexander's book a place on the cover of Newsweek as well as the usual attempts at debunking. Since then he has traveled and given lectures to many audiences. His latest book, The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife, coauthored with my good friend and Quest contributor Ptolemy Tompkins, was published in November 2014.

In July 2014, at the invitation of the Theosophical Society, Alexander spoke to an audience of some 450 people in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and later addressed the TS's Summer National Convention. He also did the following interview. Karen Newell was also present. She is his associate in Sacred Acoustics, a company that creates audio meditations
combining various kinds of sound to stimulate higher states of consciousness.

Richard Smoley: Perhaps you could start by telling us a little bit about your journey.

Eben Alexander: I've spent more than twenty years in academic neurosurgery and thought I had some idea of how brain-mind consciousness worked. I fully logged into the reductive materialistic mindset of neuroscience of the twentieth century, which that says there is something about the neurons of the brain and their firing that gives you consciousness. Even though nobody had a clue of how that worked, I thought we just needed to study it more and figure it out.

That's why my illness, which came on in November 2008, was so revolutionary to my thinking. I had to go back and question everything I ever thought I knew about reality. I had a very severe case of bacterial meningitis. Only in looking back, months and months later, did I start to realize what a perfect model for human death meningitis is, especially the severe form that I had: it basically dissolves the neocortex.

Modern neuroscience says that that neocortex—the whole outer surface of the brain—is the part that gives rise to all the details of conscious experience. As this disease wipes out your neocortex, what is the next step? It would have been very clear to me as a neuroscientist that the next step is nothingness. Any doctor who knows anything about gram-negative bacterial meningitis and the details of my illness would realize that people don't go in that state and come back with hallucinations, dreams, or exotic stories—they come back with nothing. In fact the reality is they usually don't come back at all. Just the opposite happened, and that part was a mind-bender.

The extraordinary odyssey that I went through, and that I describe in my book Proof of Heaven, should not have happened at all, according to all the modern notions saying that the brain creates consciousness. And yet I was left with this absolutely astonishing ultra-real experience and an odyssey that seemed to go on for months or years, although it fit within seven earth days.

To me that was the central mystery. How is it that when you destroy the neocortex, you actually take the blinders off and allow consciousness of a far richer and more real and comprehensive knowing to come into existence? That was what drove me to come to some explanation.

Smoley: How do you now view that relation between brain and mind?

Alexander: Before the coma, as a neuroscientist who felt that the brain creates consciousness, I paid no attention to near-death experiences, because I would have said that they're a flickering of a dying brain.

But they're far more than that. In fact, they are not created by a dying brain at all, they're linked to a much more substantial, conscious, eternal spiritual being. Near-death experiencers have been telling us for decades about a reality that is much more real than this one. So has the afterlife literature going back thousands of years.

I give talks around the world about all this. And I'll have people who come up to me who know nothing about any of this literature but who share with me their own stunning personal stories of near-death experiences, after-death communications, past-life memories in children, and reincarnation stories. There's just no way to pretend that it's some mass hysteria, that it's all some trick of the brain. This is something far more profound.

So I've come to realize that consciousness, soul, or spirit is the thing that truly exists at the core of all that is. Before my coma I would have been tempted to try and tell you that, as conventional scientific teaching says, the brain, the chemistry, the biology creates an illusion of reality, an illusion of free will. In fact that is absolutely backwards. What truly exists is consciousness, soul, or spirit.

Even modern physics is in a headlong rush to tell us that there is no material to the material world. It's vibrating strings of energy and higher-dimensional space-time. And it is consciousness that is essential to emerging reality. The only thing we know exists is our own consciousness. But we're so immersed in this consciousness that it's very difficult to separate ourselves from it.

Any possible model, or any kind of scientific explanation of the nature of reality, must begin with  a far more robust explanation of what consciousness is, because it is not created by the brain. The brain is a reducing valve or filter. That idea was gaining in popularity in the late nineteenth century with very brilliant thinkers—William James, Carl Jung, Frederic Myers—and yet it lost its attraction during the heyday of the twentieth century, when science got sucked into purely materialistic explanations.

Smoley: So what is consciousness?

Alexander: Consciousness, I would say, at its core level, is the observer, the awareness. We're so consumed with this worship of the ego, the self, the linguistic brain, and rational thought that we lose sight of the fact that our own consciousness is actually something far deeper and more mysterious. It is that awareness part of us, the part that knows of its own existence and of the existence of a universe.

The little voice in my head, that linguistic human brain, which is so tightly tied to rational thought and also to ego and self, can make a request, state an intention, offer up some gratitude, but there is far greater wisdom as one gets deeper and deeper into consciousness. This is something that meditators, Tibetan monks, those who have been deeply into consciousness study over millennia have been trying to tell us. And yet only now is science beginning to recognize that deep within consciousness itself, we can find the evidence that we can be linked to something far, far greater than we are told by that minuscule view that the brain creates consciousness. In fact, when you realize it works the other way around, we can come in touch through deep meditation with consciousness. We come to realize consciousness is not local.

Before my coma I was a conventional neuroscientist who believed that we can only know things through our physical senses. Since then I've come to realize that things like telepathy, precognition, neardeath experiences, after-death communications, pastlife memories in children, the tremendous scientific literature on reincarnation are proving to us that consciousness is not local.

It's important to understand nonlocal consciousness. In the scientific community, I steer people to that wonderful book from the University of Virginia, Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the Twenty-First Century, by Edward Kelly. It's 800 pages of hard-core scientific data and analysis showing very clearly that the brain does not create consciousness. As I said earlier, it's more of a reducing valve or a filter. This helps us to understand that mystery of quantum mechanics, which was proving, a hundred years ago, that consciousness is fundamental in the existence of any part of reality emergent in this universe . Consciousness is filtered in through the brain; it is not created by the brain.

Smoley: You say that the materialistic model of the brain and mind is being increasingly challenged within science itself. Do you see much evidence of this, particularly in psychology and neurology?

Alexander: A number of respected scientists around the world, some of whom have their training in psychiatry, some in psychology, are realizing that the "hard problem" of consciousness is the most vexing conundrum known to all of human thought. This is saying that, in spite of the increasing devotion of study to the brain, no neuroscientist on earth can offer the first sentence about how the physical brain might create consciousness.

A lot of the neuroscientists who study this problem realize that the more we know about the physical brain, the more we realize it's not the creator of consciousness. It's very clearly related to consciousness, but again it's more of a reducing valve or filter.

Often colleagues will challenge me and say, "Wait a minute! You're saying this whole mystery of being deep in your coma as your brain was being destroyed by bacterial meningitis actually was the blinders coming off—when your awareness was getting more crisp and real." They say that makes no sense.

I would reply by pointing out two commonly observed clinical phenomena. Neurologists and neuroscientists are aware of some of these examples. One is "terminal lucidity," which I point out in my book Proof of Heaven. Often when they get closer to death, elderly and demented patients can have these oases of very clear thinking, memory, interaction, great clarity of thought that completely defies any kind of explanation.

The other commonly observed phenomena have to do with what is called the idiot savant or acquired savant syndrome, where some kind of brain damage, like a stroke or head trauma, uncovers some oasis of superhuman mental functioning. These savant syndromes are very, very common. I had many of them when I was active in neurosurgery. I would see where people would have some kind of brain damage, and it actually uncovered this incredible superhuman ability—of memory, calculation, ability to graphically represent things, musical creativity—that emerged out of nowhere.

Wilder Penfield, probably one of the most renowned neuroscientists of the twentieth century, probably still holds the record for electrical stimulation of the brain in awake patients—tens of thousands of episodes in his work on epilepsy. He worked in Montreal, and he wrote a book in 1975 called Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain. In the book, he gets clearly into his conclusions that never once, in all those tens of thousands of stimulations, did he uncover an event that seemed to be a free-will event of conscious experience. The patients always felt like they were puppets on a string, no matter what the memory, experience, whatever they went through—they always knew it was something "triggered." Never once was there anything that resembled a free-will type event.

To Penfield it was very clear. To me, the evidence for this is completely consistent with my journey as described in Proof of Heaven and my conclusions and understandings about consciousness. If you're trying to find free will and consciousness, or soul, or spirit, they're just not created in the brain at all. In fact, the brain is basically shackles. That's essentially what near-death experiences have been trying to tell us for millennia. Mystics who have had similar spiritually transformative experiences have been trying to put it out there that in fact, when we're freed up from shackles of the physical brain and released from that illusion of here and now, we actually come into a much higher knowing. 

Smoley: My understanding of most near-death experiences is that they are overwhelmingly positive. But there are some negative experiences, where people encounter hells or devils or demons. How does this fit it with your picture? 

Alexander: When you look at a large number of NDEs, say somewhere around 95"“98 percent of them seem to be very positive, very loving. This can be quite independent of the circumstances around the demise of a given patient. They often are shown beautiful scenes of unconditional love, love of an infinitely powerful spiritual being, often messages conveyed by  the souls and spirits of departed loved ones that are very positive and loving.

As for the experiences that are negative: those  who have read the book Proof of Heaven realize that I started out in a very dark, foreboding, underground realm, which I call the earthworm's eye view. If I had come back from my near-death experience having only been to the earthworm's eye view, I probably would have had what people describe as a hellish near-death experience.

Talking with other near-death experiencers and reviewing thousands of near-death cases, I believe that in many ways the hellish ones are incomplete. They are not going in with the power and the oomph to blast through to those higher realms. To me it was very clear that unconditional love has tremendous power—to heal at all levels, to heal the individual soul, to heal soul groups, to heal all of humanity, to heal all of life on earth, to heal all of consciousness existent in this material universe.

There can be dark forces, but by knowing that connection to the divine, the infinite power and love of that divine, we are able to bring that light and love into any realm we exist in. That includes this material realm; that includes the lower spiritual realms, including that earthworm's eye view.

In my journey, as I describe in Proof of Heaven, I would cycle through and ascend through higher and higher levels through a gateway realm with a beautiful idyllic valley, butterfly wings, and angelic choirs, with lots of spiritual beauty, but with earthlike features. I would then ascend to higher and higher realms all the way to the core: infinite inky blackness, but filled to overflowing with the divine, that power of unconditional love in its healing capacity and also the brilliant light of that orb, brighter than a million stars. I knew that completely outside of our duality. 

But then I would tumble back into that earthworm's eye view. And very quickly in that journey I came to realize the importance of sound, music, vibration, which is part of the work I do now with Sacred Acoustics, with Karen Newell: using sound to enhance these abilities of our souls to transcend. That's why the work of Sacred Acoustics has so much to do with meditation and getting into deep meditative states.

All of that is coming to realize that love has infinite power to heal. And I came to see in my journey that this is not a battle between good and evil, where they are  equal and counterbalanced and maybe good and love will win out or maybe evil and darkness. Evil and darkness are the absence of that love and that light. By remembering our divine connection to that oneness and to the infinite healing power of that creative source, we can bring that light and that love into any aspect of the material realm and the lower spiritual realms.

Smoley: Could you say more about your work with Sacred Acoustics? What do you recommend for people who want to have a sense of that unconditional love while being connected with this earthly realm?

Alexander: You don't have to die, or almost die, to get this. As a conscious being, you have all the tools you need to go within consciousness to come to see much deeper truth. I recommend meditation, Centering Prayer—sometimes it comes to us as a gift of desperation through the hardships of life, because in fact those hardships and difficulties, even illness or injury, are often a beautiful gift. That is often how we get a revelation about our deep connectedness with each other and with the divine.

About two years after my coma, I was introduced to the Monroe Institute and the work of Robert Monroe, who wrote three wonderful books on his journeys. He was a pretty straight-laced guy who ended up having spontaneous out-of-body experiences. Over four decades he came to realize that you can use sound—specifically slight differences in the frequency of sound presented to the two ears—to do some very interesting things with consciousness. I was attracted to it two years or so after my coma, when people approached me who knew a bit about hemispheric synchronization, brain entrainment, what Monroe called hemi-sync. And they suggested to me that maybe I could revisit some of the realms that I had experienced in coma, when my neocortex was being ravaged by the meningitis. But I could do it in a reversible fashion by using two differential frequencies to the two ears.

There's a particular circuit in the brain that is a very accurate timing circuit. That circuit is right next door to a circuit in the brain stem that modern neuroscience would tell you (with our very primitive notions about consciousness) seems be an ignition system for all of consciousness. My idea was that with this synchronization of electrical activity to the hemispheres using differential sound inputs to the two ears, I might synchronize the electrical activity. This would take away the information processing aspect of the neocortex and allow my consciousness to be set free, just as it was when meningitis was destroying my neocortex.

This is the work that I now do in conjunction with Sacred Acoustics; those that are interested should visit sacredacoustics.com. It has to do with a sophisticated use of patterning of these sound inputs to the two ears to enable consciousness to be set free.

Smoley: Which spiritual figures have you found most inspiring?

Alexander: I grew up in a Methodist church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. My father was very influential in my life, and he had a very strong religious belief in his own right. He had grown up in eastern Tennessee during the Depression. He had been a combat surgeon in the Pacific during the Second World War, and then he went on to head up a neurosurgery training program. So he was very scientific, but also deeply religious and truly spiritual. And I had grown up trying to follow, as best I could, in his footsteps.

Of course, being a child of the '60s and '70s, I realized that science is the pathway to truth. And as much as I wanted to believe what I was taught in my Methodist church, through those years of working in academic neurosurgery, I found it more and more difficult to explain the survival of consciousness after the death of the brain and the body. As I said earlier, I bought into the modern twentieth-century neuroscientific view that the brain creates consciousness. And that, of course, means that it's birth, death, and nothing more, and none of us has free will, and consciousness is an illusion.

My coma journey showed me that every bit of that is false. As I started to study more and more about NDEs and was led into the afterlife literature and into the writings of mystics and prophets going back thousands of years, what struck me was their similarity: they all converge on a much deeper truth. It turns out that the linguistic brain is in many ways our enemy in trying to come to a much deeper understanding. We can actually communicate in deeper ways, too, that have to do with a much purer form of consciousness. This is why I'm such a tremendous fan of meditation and encourage people to develop a daily practice of meditation.

The more I started giving talks about my experience, the more I started hearing back from Kabbalists, from Christian mystics, Sufis, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists who had a very deep spiritual awareness through some experience. They were all talking about the same thing.

Smoley: Is there anything you'd like to add?

Alexander: A central message in Proof of Heaven is that consciousness at the core of all existence. I think the most important aspect of that lesson, which is brought back by so many near-death experiencers and other spiritual journeyers, is that we are all eternal spiritual beings, and in fact our very consciousness is a direct link to the infinitely loving creative source at the core of all being. As so many who have had these experiences will tell you, that unconditional love is infinitely healing. It's important for all of us to realize that we're eternal, spiritual beings, that we come back in multiple reincarnations in our ascendance toward that oneness, and that we're all in this together.  Consciousness binds us all, not just as humans, not just as all life on earth—all of conscious life throughout the universe.

My journey showed me that the human brain and mind will never have a theory of everything. We can never possibly understand the grand workings of this universe in its greatest sense, the workings of that great creator. Never! But the journey is absolutely wonderful beyond description, and that is what we are all a part of, and we are all doing it as eternal spiritual beings bound together as one.

Any frictions between schools of religious thought, frictions between science, philosophy, and religion and spirituality, are false boundaries that have to do with the linguistic brain trying to define and to limit. Whereas we really have to take a top-down approach. We can all do that by exploring our consciousness through prayer and meditation.

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Boyd, Tim."Viewpoint: Seeing versus Seeing" Quest 103.1 (Winter 2015): pg. 2-9.

By Tim Boyd

When I was twenty years old I unexpectedly found myself in contact with a number of psychically sensitive people. I had not sought them out. Before making their acquaintance I had not known anything about them or what they did. I was in college at the time and had never given much thought to the whole subject of psychic perception.

A year earlier, while on spring break from school, I had traveled from New York to Chicago. While there I was introduced to an intriguing man. My cousin, whom I was visiting, regarded him as quite wise and had brought me to meet him. If you had asked me at the time, I would have said that I did not want to take time away from my vacation to meet this man. In my nineteen-year-old mind I had better things to do than listen to someone talk about “spirituality”—a subject that was not uppermost in my conscious thought.

I went to see him, not once, but twice. Over the course of those two visits a chain of events was set in motion that profoundly altered my thinking and my direction in life.

It turned out that this man was deeply  involved in working with young people. His name was Bill Lawrence, but the young people around him called him the â€œOld Man.” He was a member of the Theosophical Society and also a highly developed clairvoyant. Although my first meeting with him did not make a deep impression on me, the second was quite different. At that meeting I sat in rapt attention for several hours listening to him talk about the truths of the Ageless Wisdom. He talked in a way that made these ideas that seemed so new, but also strangely familiar to me; instead of high-sounding abstractions, they were powerful tools I could apply in my own life. Over the course of that evening he seasoned his talk with several quite specific details of my personal life which I thought only I could have known. That visit made a very deep impression on  me. I left his house early in the morning and returned home to New York.

Back in New York I found myself thinking about the things he had said. I took time alone on long walks in the park trying to remember and understand what he had shared. It was on one of those walks that I had an experience that irrevocably shifted my way of seeing the world. Literally in an instant everything changed. At the time I did not have the background of study to describe what had happened. I still don’t, but from my immersion in Theosophy and the Ageless Wisdom teachings it is clear that the best way to describe what happened is to say that it was a mystical experience—a sudden movement from a conventional way of seeing the world to a greatly expanded view that revealed
levels of meaning and purpose, powers and energies, patterns and gradations of consciousness that, though always present, were previously invisible to me. This experience and the profound effect it had on my sense of priorities were the reasons why one year later I found myself back in Chicago and suddenly surrounded by all of these psychics.

One by-product of my experience was the realization that even though it had been profound and life-altering, with a little distance from its initial impact it seemed to raise many unanswered questions. What was the nature of this expanded consciousness that had suddenly opened to me? What was the mechanism that made it possible? Was this condition of seeing repeatable? How? I needed answers, and the only place I knew that I could find them was in Chicago with the Old Man. Responding to my pressing need to know more, I did what seemed the logical thing. I took a term off from school; wrote to the Old Man; and on his invitation traveled to Chicago for a series of “classes” that
he said he would be giving for some of his students. 

When I arrived I found that there were a number of young people around my age “studying” with him. Most of them had a strong fascination with psychic phenomena. As time went on I discovered that some were themselves quite sensitive to the psychic world, but unclear about how to integrate these sensitivities into a spiritual life. Astral projection, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and “readings” were new terms that I quickly became familiar with in conversations with my new fellow students.

Because of my background, I arrived at the Old Man’s house with certain preconceptions about the terms “study” and “classes.” At the university these words had clear meanings that implied a formal structure of learning with which I was familiar. In my case, the Old Man initially prescribed a course of reading across a range of Theosophical literature. I greedily devoured the books. He could not give them to me fast enough. He began by giving me one book at a time, then discussing it with me after I had read it. When he found that I was finishing one or two a day, he just pushed a stack of books across to me. In my mind this was study. I soon noticed that none of the other “students” were engaged in such intense reading. While I was in my room reading I would hear them downstairs laughing and talking with the Old Man. I began to feel that his
approach to study might be different from my ideas.

The day arrived for the first of the classes I had been anticipating. It was not like anything I had expected. The Old Man had invited a number of interested friends to come over. He had also invited four or five psychics that he knew. Even though the Old Man never gave readings, or promoted an awareness of his abilities, he was known and highly respected within the circle of sensitives. Then there were six or eight of us—his students. His only advice to us was to watch and listen.

The evening began with normal socializing. Everyone there was new to me, so the Old Man took time to introduce me as his most recent student. In conversation he would have the psychics share their personal stories with me. The dynamic between him and them was fascinating. They all seemed to recognize that he functioned on a different level, a higher level, and they clearly held him in high regard. Later in the evening everyone gathered in the living room. It was time for some of the psychics to take center stage. Two of them took turns working with the group. Each seemed to operate in a different way. One man apparently was being told “messages” to pass on to specific people in the group by people who had passed on who, he said, were on “the other side.” This man was a well-known spiritualist minister. As each message was received, he would say, “Thank you, kindly spirit.” His messages were detailed, and different people would recognize the information as specific to them and to people they knew. A number of times he said the name of the person who was communicating with him, or described their appearance and details of their previous life.

Another woman was a psychometrist. She would ask for a person who wanted a reading to give her some object that they frequently had on their person—a ring, a key, or a watch: some object that she said “carried their vibration.” She would hold the object in her hand, then start telling the person what she saw. At one point a woman who had given her a ring turned quite pale when the reader described an incident in some detail, but refused to say more in front of others because, as she said, “You know what I am talking about, don’t you?” The woman quickly took back her ring.

On another occasion the Old Man had a class that  focused on healers. The setup was the same—friends who were interested in or in need of healing were invited, a few healers, and us. Not all, but most of the healers also seemed to be quite psychically sensitive. They not only applied their nonphysical healing methods, but they also diagnosed the various illnesses without doing any sort of physical examination. One of the healers was exceptional. Her name was Evelyn. She was a simple woman, uneducated, and deeply religious. During the course of the evening she worked on a number of people. Her method was that she would stand in front of the person, then start talking about how she saw their malady. Then she would command the illness, or the “spirit” causing the illness, to release its hold “in the name of Jesus.”

Even though this was forty years ago, I have a vivid memory of two of the people she worked on that night. One was my older brother. He had spent a part of the summer visiting with me in Chicago. He was in that phase of life where he had graduated from college, but was deeply uncertain about what to do next. Until she addressed my brother, all of the people Evelyn had worked on had some physical symptoms. When she came to him she immediately said, “This one needs a mind healing.” Although I could not see it at the time, a few months later he would experience a profound mental crisis.

The second memorable incident occurred with a woman who did not attend the meeting. She was a nurse who did not know about this type of healing. While Evelyn was doing her work, unexpectedly the Old Man got up and walked outside. Later he said that he had gone outside to meet someone—although at that moment he did not know who. While standing on the front porch he saw a neighbor, Mrs. Jones, coming home from work. They greeted each other. Then he walked over to her and asked, “Are you well?” She  responded, “I am so sick. Tomorrow I am going into the hospital for surgery.” He asked her if she would allow Evelyn to see her. Mrs. Jones came into the house and stepped in front of Evelyn. Immediately Evelyn said, â€œI see that you have a hole in your stomach, and it’s bleeding.” Next she put her hand on Mrs. Jones’s belly and started to command the hole to close. She worked on her for several minutes. When she was through, she said that the hole had closed.

For years after that night, on numerous occasions I would hear Mrs. Jones recount the story—how she went into the hospital the next day; how she insisted on being tested again before the operation; how the surgeon came to her perplexed that there was no sign of the bleeding ulcer that had been the reason for the surgery; and how it never returned.

As fascinating as the meetings were, the aftermath was more so. When everyone had gone, late into the night the Old Man would talk to us about what had happened. He would expand on what the psychics had seen, on what had happened with the healings. He would describe in greater detail what the psychics were looking at. He spoke in terms of planes and subplanes of consciousness. He talked about the psychics and their level of seeing, about the things they left out, or couldn’t see, or unintentionally altered because they could not help it. Everything they saw was necessarily colored by the filter of their own personalities and development.

Most of the readers and psychics felt that they had been given their “gift” by God. Many even believed that it was God “Himself” who was showing them the things they saw. Many of them were ministers with their own small churches, but when you looked closely at the way they conducted their daily lives, it was clear that their psychic sensitivity had little effect on their morality, stability, or clarity. Some few were exceptional in their religious fervor and devotional temperament. Others were manipulative, petty, and self-centered. As Annie Besant said, “While it is not true that the great psychic is necessarily a spiritual person, it is true that the great spiritual person is inevitably a psychic.”

As captivating and exciting as these demonstrations were, I came away with the clear realization that psychic does not equal spiritual; that psychic powers or awareness of other planes are no more or less connected to the Divine, or to the deeper powers of compassion, kindness, happiness, wisdom, and stillness, than the normal five senses that everybody uses.

The Old Man felt it was important for us to see these things up close. He organized the classes so that we could be exposed in a safe way. Particularly for those students with varying degrees of psychic sensitivity, it was important to see and experience in the most immediate way possible some of the scope and limitations of the astral world—what it is and what it isn’t. The main advice he gave was to aim higher: absorption in psychic matters was just like being absorbed in diet, or body building, or any other personal concern. It would certainly yield results, but would do little to enhance the more potent qualities of spirit. He liked to say that all of the psychic abilities would necessarily blossom in a stable way, as a result of a genuine and extended focus on the spiritual life—a focus that is substantially different and more demanding than the development
of a more limited way of seeing. The distinction Annie Besant made was that “the spiritual life goes inwards: all psychic powers go outwards.”

There are two tendencies that need to be recognized and avoided: glamorizing and fearing psychic experience. Because conscious perception of the astral world seems unusual or abnormal, inexperienced people easily elevate the experience, or the person seeing it, to unwarranted heights. The equal but opposite approach is to belittle or even demonize the person or experience based on valid but only partially understood teachings.

In The Voice of the Silence, speaking of the tendency to idealize astral experience, H.P. Blavatsky wrote, â€œHaving learnt thine own Agnyana [ignorance], flee from the Hall of Learning [the astral realm]. This Hall is dangerous in its perfidious beauty, is needed but for thy probation. Beware . . . lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light.”

Whether we are speaking of the astral, the physical, or the world of mind, the world is not the problem. Our relationship with the world is the problem. Until we realize that it is possible to touch without grasping or pushing away, to taste without devouring, we will continually find ourselves caught in the “deceptive light” of whatever realm in which we invest our attention.

It is possible for us to see without any of the senses, to feel beyond reaching or touch, to know without reference to “my” mind. Spirituality is the realization of Oneness, and it exalts every sense that turns in its direction. Let us try to remember, and choose accordingly.

All of the Annie Besant quotes have been taken from her London Lectures of 1907.

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard."From the Editor's Desk" Quest 103.1 (Winter 2015): pg. 2.

Few spiritual issues are as vexed as psychedelics.Theosophy, like most esoteric schools, has generally condemned them. Pablo Sender and Pyarvin Abbasova ably state this position in this issue.

Another, more nuanced view is offered by Jay Kinney, who was (as he says) a member of the TS at the high point of his psychedelic investigations in the early '70s. (I can't imagine that he was alone.) With his usual wry wit, he says essentially the same thing as the great scholar of religions Huston Smith. In an influential article on this subject, entitled "Do Drugs Have Religious Import?", Smith concluded, "Drugs appear able to induce religious experiences; it is less evident that they can produce religious lives."

I cannot say that I completely agree.

I was born in 1956, which meant I came of age at the tail end of the great countercultural impulse. So I had some exposure to psychedelics. They were plentiful at college. I could take them or leave them when offered, but usually I took them. The experiences were sometimes colorful and pleasant, sometimes grim, but all in all they produced no great effects on me. I did not use these drugs for a long time afterward.

Then, in 1987, at the advice of my psychiatrist (I was living in San Francisco, after all), I was introduced to psychedelics in quite another way—as a serious means of insight and spiritual exploration. I was by no means the only person who did this; there were and no doubt are still many, although of course they have to keep their practice completely private. Nor was I looking for a quick way out of a meditation practice, since I had already been meditating for many years.

Thus began four years of regular psychedelic use (every three or four months), under the guidance of a knowledgeable medical eye. Unlike the rubbish that floated around at college, these materials (chiefly LSD and Ecstasy) were of the highest quality. The set and setting were safe, protected, and comforting. There was someone stone-cold sober at hand to get you a glass of water or send away people who might come knocking at the door. Soothing, ambient New Age music was playing on the stereo. Lying down with eyeshades on, you explored whatever inner realms you were destined to confront.

Certainly the experience was mixed. Most of the trips were benign and even beatific, but others were dark. In any event I was not doing these materials to avoid my life—I was doing them in order to see my life more clearly and face it more effectively. Some of the  decisions I made as a result of these insights were, in retrospect, bad; others were good. Viewing the whole thing as fairly as I can, I’m inclined to say that the mistakes I made were ones that I would have made anyway, while the good decisions were things that I might otherwise have missed. 

The biggest mistake I made while using these materials was failing to stop when I should have—because after about three-and-a-half years I was being prodded by some inner guidance during the trips to give them up. I did not heed this warning. I continued to do them for another year before I stopped for good in September 1991. Practically all of the unpleasant experiences I had took place in that last year.

Since then I have had no interest in using these materials. Would I do it all over again? All things considered, I probably would do it—or most of it—again. Did I punch holes in my aura with these reprehensible violations of occult law? I couldn’t begin to tell you. But then we are all walking around with a wound or two.

I say all this not to preach in favor of psychedelics, or for that matter against them. I am nobody’s psychiatrist and nobody’s guru. But I am convinced that any sober and judicious evaluation of psychedelics must also consider this kind of use.

Another, more personal point: There are stages, particularly in later life, when you have to look back at where you have been and take stock of it. Usually you judge it in the light of whatever worldview you then hold. If you are a Catholic and Catholicism says something is wrong, you accept this (usually unconsciously) as if it were your own opinion based on your own experience. The same holds true if you are a Buddhist, or a Theosophist.

It is quite another thing to match these teachings up against your own experience, because even with the best and finest teachings, experience and doctrine never jibe completely. There is always some discrepancy.

This discrepancy, this difference between what it’s supposed to be like and what it’s really like, is awkward to deal with. At the same time it is also precious, because it constitutes what you know of yourself and not because some book says so. In fact only this can be called knowledge in the true sense. As the Greek tragedian Aeschylus wrote: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

Richard Smoley