Merkabah
- Thread starter Skarekrow
- Start date
Perhaps something about 'getting the horn' or some such tomfoolery!
Now you see where the python zannyness comes from!
10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases
As written by Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.
It is a jungle out there, and it is no less true about spiritual life than any other aspect of life. Do we really think that just because someone has been meditating for five years, or doing 10 years of yoga practice, that they will be any less neurotic than the next person? At best, perhaps they will be a little bit more aware of it. A little bit.
It is for this reason that I spent the last 15 years of my life researching and writing books on cultivating discernment on the spiritual path in all the gritty areas—power, sex, enlightenment, gurus, scandals, psychology, neurosis – as well as earnest, but just plain confused and unconscious, motivations on the path. My partner (author and teacher Marc Gafni) and I are developing a new series of books, courses and practices to bring further clarification to these issues.
Several years ago, I spent a summer living and working in South Africa. Upon my arrival I was instantly confronted by the visceral reality that I was in the country with the highest murder rate in the world, where rape was common and more than half the population was HIV-positive – men and women, gays and straights alike.
As I have come to know hundreds of spiritual teachers and thousands of spiritual practitioners through my work and travels, I have been struck by the way in which our spiritual views, perspectives and experiences become similarly “infected” by “conceptual contaminants” – comprising a confused and immature relationship to complex spiritual principles can seem as invisible and insidious as a sexually transmitted disease.
The following 10 categorizations are not intended to be definitive but are offered as a tool for becoming aware of some of the most common spiritually transmitted diseases.
1. Fast-Food Spirituality:
Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be had in a quick fix.
2. Faux Spirituality:
Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard.
3. Confused Motivations:
Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering and spiritual ambition, the wish to be special, to be better than, to be “the one.”
4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences:
In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers.
5. The Spiritualized Ego:
This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is “bullet-proof.” When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality.
6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers:
There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and – bam! – you’re enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery.
7. Spiritual Pride:
Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of “spiritual superiority” is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that “I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual.”
8. Group Mind:
Also described as groupthink, cultic mentality or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional co-dependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with “group mind” reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group.
9. The Chosen-People Complex:
The chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that “Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group.” There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher or community for themselves, and having found The One.
10. The Deadly Virus: “I Have Arrived”:
This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that “I have arrived” at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases.
“The essence of love is perception,” according to the teachings of Marc Gafni, “Therefore the essence of self love is self perception. You can only fall in love with someone you can see clearly—including yourself. To love is to have eyes to see. It is only when you see yourself clearly that you can begin to love yourself.”
It is in the spirit of Marc’s teaching that I believe that a critical part of learning discernment on the spiritual path is discovering the pervasive illnesses of ego and self-deception that are in all of us. That is when we need a sense of humor and the support of real spiritual friends. As we face our obstacles to spiritual growth, there are times when it is easy to fall into a sense of despair and self-diminishment and lose our confidence on the path.
We must keep the faith, in ourselves and in others, in order to really make a difference in this world.
Understanding the Fibonacci Sequence and Golden Ratio
The Fibonacci sequence is possibly the most simple recurrence relation occurring in nature. It is 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89, 144… each number equals the sum of the two numbers before it, and the difference of the two numbers succeeding it. It is an infinite sequence which goes on forever as it develops.
The Golden Ratio/Divine Ratio or Golden Mean -
The quotient of any Fibonacci number and it’s predecessor approaches Phi, represented as ϕ (1.618), the Golden ratio. The Golden Ratio is best understood geometrically by the golden rectangle. A rectangle unevenly divided resulting into one square and one rectangle, the square’s sides would have the ratio of 1:1, and the new rectangle would be exactly proportionate to the original rectangle — 1:1.618.
This iteration can continue both ways, infinitely. If you plot a quarter circle inside each of the squares as they reiterate, the golden spiral is formed. The golden spiral is possibly the most simple mathematic pattern that occurs in nature like shells of snails, sea shells, horns, flowers, plants. Numbers are only what we use to organize quantitative information.
The ratio itself represents the transcendence of numbers, understanding our world is not numbers, but what numbers represent. Through the spiral, the ratio illustrates how the numbers, all quantities, are quality. Eventually, all quality can be represented through quantity. Properties qualitative and quantitative are just labels of information, our gathered indisputable fact.
Our universe and the numbers not only go on infinitely linear, but even it’s short segments have infinite points.
[video=youtube;kkGeOWYOFoA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kkGeOWYOFoA[/video]
The golden ratio is not the only mathematical pattern that reaches infinity, there are many other patterns as well that reach infinity. Knowing this, ask yourself, how could infinity occur twice? If something were to happen infinitely, how could it happen twice? The answer is simple, infinity represents what is eternal, what is truly whole. For example, if infinity were to be used as a variable in mathematics like all other numbers, it would be denoted as 1∞, 2∞, 3∞, 4∞, etc.
The oneness of everything factual is what you know, what you perceive, what you are aware of, is all the universe looking at itself. This is the universe, even you are the universe, us and everything we know is all the same thing.
Since the numbers are everywhere, everything is a part of a pattern. Reflections of reflections, wheels within wheels. Life itself is a Fractal.
(Another video on the Egyptian ‘Temple of Man’ is a symbolic representation of the Fibonacci series of balanced organic expansion and an expression of the underlying principles of life in the universe)
[video=youtube;z6S2dgJzz40]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z6S2dgJzz40[/video]
Tin Man
"a respectable amount of screaming"
I came across one of those "Acts that will restore you're faith in humanity" lists and so many of them were about very unbalanced individuals. The kind of person who believes sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice will save the world. The reactions to these acts was a bit depressing. People praised them, though they were acts of kindness without any thought or reflection gone into them. I even found a few of them sad as the person involved was obviously unstable and in need of help.
People want instant gratification so a list about acts of kindness gives them immediate hope for mankind's future. It also comes with an easy philosophy to absorb, one which feels meaningful while spreading ignorance.
People who are totally selfless like Mother Teresa IMO are missing out on a some of the most joyous parts of life. That isn’t to say that they are not wonderful people who should be praised and cherished…because she certainly DID help a lot of people and absolutely helped to make the world a better place with her kindness…but there should be some give and take to properly balance things out I feel.
There is joy in receiving as well as in giving…like the yin and yang…there should be balance.
I sort of feel bad for such people…there is almost a sort of “mental illness” I feel such people have.
That isn’t to say that we couldn’t use a little more of the compassion that such people show in the world today, because there is certainly a need for it.
We are a culture of instant gratification of one’s self mostly now…including our own happiness…we feel that we have a right to be happy…and to a certain extent we DO have a right to be content…but that contentment, the kind that truly lasts…cannot be obtained by material things…or by studying…or even by selfless act alone…it is something that we all have to find within ourselves. Yes, we should do good acts…and yes, what goes around comes around…but I feel that many people now become cynical when “what goes around” doesn’t come around…in fact, given enough times around without a return, people stop giving of themselves.
And that is truly sad. We should give without expectation of return…we should give without even needing to feel the gratification that giving to another brings to us.
Of course, this is far more difficult than my simple explanation written here…but it can at the very least be a goal on a daily basis.
If everyone tried to do that, then I think there would be a dramatic shift in society, in what we think is human nature.
We can be selfish creatures…we are mostly self-serving…but we are also capable of incredible compassion without the need for reciprocation or recognition.
Most of us are just trying to make it day to day…knowing that we probably will never figure it out…we are really only given small bits of what we would call “wisdom”. There are those who feel that the world owes them everything…that it is theirs to rape and pillage…but as a worldwide society of humans we need to try and focus on lifting each other up instead of using each other as stepping stones.
People who are totally selfless are a rarity…IMO that is because it is not our true nature as humans either…it is okay for us to look out for ourselves as well as others…we certainly are more capable of creating good acts when we are content within ourselves.
Yeah, people are just... I don't know. Sacrifice doesn't save the world, the world doesn't need saving. It needs people to stop screwing it up.
It's like a bonsai tree. It grows itself. You can train it and direct it by knowing the nature of the tree and how it works but the tree is still doing the work, you're just guiding it. People don't tend to want to let the bonsai grow though, instead of training it they try to carve the tree itself, or make it out of plastic or metal or something. That's not how it works.
An interesting article…not sure about the stuff about grey aliens but an interesting read nonetheless...
How Sexual Relationships Can Assist in Evolution
by Michelle Walling, CHLC
Have you recently had a strong desire to find or maintain a loving sexual relationship? Human sexual energy is a very powerful creativeenergy that is sought after by many beings in the Universe. Humanity has the perfect sexual organ system needed to produce a massive amount of energy that be directed out into the universe under the right circumstances. In the wrong context, sexual energy can be used to produce powerful negative and destructive energies. Making sure that you are in a sexual relationship for all the right reasons is an important part of responsible creation.
Sex as a tool for consciousness expansion
As humanity begins to wake up to who and what they are, they begin to become aware of the need to cleanse their bodies of negativity in order to raise their consciousness. Awareness of energy and the realization of the power of the human body’s ability to cleanse energies through the emotional body is becoming more prevalent on the planet today. The human sexual organs can be used to clear the body of negative energies in concert with the emotional body.
Spiritual sexual energy can be used to fulfill the hole that is created when we were separated from our twin flame. Until we are able to reunite with that part of us that seems to be missing, the loving experience of sexual energy can bring us the closest to the feeling of being whole again. Creating sexual energy between two humans is not only a temporary “fix” until we eventually are able to join our other twin flame in union once again. It is also a way to experiment with the energies that will be able to create the light body needed to return home to our twin flame in an ecstatic reunion.
After a round of sex, the emotional body is triggered which is the body’s natural way of bringing up energies that need to be cleared.
Therefore, sexual energy is a key tool in balancing the emotional body, which is important in keeping the body clear of lower vibrational energy. Mastery of the emotional body through sexual energy allows for a more healthy and happy body. Sex is also valuable in the aspect of loving yourself, which is an important part of raising your vibration. Hidden beliefs about love and your body can be transmuted through the loving act of sex with the right partner.
Finding the right partner
As you evolve on the path of ascension, finding the right partner is usually one of the things you innately begin to manifest. Deep down you desire someone on your same vibration level that can mirror your blocks back to you. You also desire to fulfill all of contracts with your soul mates by mirroring blocks back to them so all can move forward. Sometimes you have to have several partners to see the many lifetimes of energies that needed to be cleared.
Although we are always evolving, if you have done your clearing homework the reward is a sexual partner that will allow sexuality to move to another level of creativity. If you were a prominent student over lifetimes, you may have resolved all of your karmic and emotional energy in past lives and came into this lifetime to spend the whole time with one soul mate. Most people, however, have had several relationships in this lifetime that were set up in order to resolve past life energies and are now searching for a perfect mate who can spark the creative fires within them.
Manifestation of the perfect sexual partner begins with heartfelt intention and prayer. This is the way you create the vibrations that will attract the appropriate vibration to you by the Universal Law of Vibrational Attainment. Until you are aware of your thoughts, beliefs, and mannerisms in a relationship, you will continue to attract the same kind of partner over and over. This is meant to finally get your attention to what you do not want by correcting the thoughts which attracted that kind of relationship in the first place.
Loving yourself is the biggest part of attracting the right sexual partner. If you do not love yourself, you will not attract someone who truly loves you for who you are. Clearing the negative societal programmingabout loving yourself is an important step. When you love yourself, you exude energy that is attractive to another person of the same vibrational level. Therefore, you will only attract someone that loves themselves as much as you love yourself. This magic creates the recipe for a healthy relationship that can grow into the creative manifestation of sexual energy that can help you expand in many ways.
When you do connect with the partner that you manifested, all may not seem peaches and cream while the relationship is established. Trust has to be imminently present as two people get to know each other. A relationship built on love, trust, honesty, integrity, and moral values is the key to the proper use of the sexual dynamo machine called the human body.
The last remnants of past life energies will be cleared as you both test the waters with how far your comfort zone is with each other. Once this period of adjustment is over, the two partners will begin to emit a frequencytogether that reflects the combined energies of a balanced yin/yang vibration. Trust lets your guard down in order to take on your partner’s energy field and vice versa.
By merging energy fields, life becomes more tolerable and enjoyable and laughter triggers the emotion of the day.
As experimentation with sex leads to more and more orgasms, the building energy between the two begins to morph into higher and higher realms. The playground of emotion between two people vibrating in love at the same frequency allows each person to break through blocks in the chakras as kundalini energy snakes up the spine and out through the crown chakra.
Although sexual energy can be magnified by two people in a relationship, sexual energies can also be directed through masturbation and loving yourself until a relationship comes together. Although some people believe in “holding the seed” within for spiritual reasons, masturbation with orgasm is a personal choice and should not be judged as a “bad” thing as long as the intentions in alignment with love, healing, and self expansion.
The various types of orgasms
Introductory sex between two people usually brings about a localized sexual organ orgasm where the sex organ sensations cause the sexual chakra to buzz with energy and to spin freely. The cells in our bodies are mostly made up of water. Triggering an energy vibration form our root and sexual chakras sends out waves on energy throughout the cells in the body.
This orgasmic experience revitalizes and reorganizes the cells of the body with these waves of energy. The intensity of the orgasm, the awareness of directing the energy, and the energy blocks within the body determine how far the energy will travel through the cells.
As the two people to blend their energies and begin to explore their love for each other deeply, orgasms may begin to trigger a heart chakra orgasm or a healing orgasm may trigger a sacral chakra orgasm. A “far out” orgasm in the crown chakra alone may be triggered, or one may see “stars” or galaxies with their eyes closed in a third eye orgasm. The throat chakra can be cleared with vocalizing pleasure. These kinds of orgasms are localized orgasms meant to open certain chakras in preparation for a full bodied orgasm.
Once you explore these different types of orgasms you can move into a comfortable state of arousal of trust with your partner where the mind gets switched to the “off” position and your conscious hold on reality begins to disintegrate. This allows your cells to trigger the parts of your DNA that are more in alignment with who you really are as a creator of energy. As you let go of thoughts about how your body looks or how long you can maintain, you begin to become more in alignment with each other.
This creates the comfortable space which allows for longer and more intense full bodied orgasms as you begin to let go of blocks that may have kept you from this way of being in love.
Intentional direction of energy from the root chakra into the sexual chakra and then merging with the sacral chakra is a powerful way to build up energy for a longer orgasm.
The full chakra orgasm can catapult your kundalini from the base chakra all the way up through the crown chakra.
This can open up doors to multidimensional realities. Your psychic sense can be opened wide up and you can begin to recall past lives and living on other worlds. This is just a taste of the possibility of travel with human consciousness once we embody light and higher consciousness.
Furthermore, by opening the door to multidimensional energies, you can bring that energy back down into your body and settle in the heart. By grounding yourself you are opening up the desired flow of the torus where energies are coming in from the earth through the root up to the heart to meet the multidimensional energies coming in through the crown into the heart. This continuous flow of energy is the desired use of the human body and is what will trigger themerkaba light vehicle when the vibration of the planet reaches zero point magnetism.
Sexual orgasmic energy may be seen as bursts of light across the planet that help all of humanity as well as the planet as we all raise our vibrations. The conscious and responsible use of creative and expansive sexual energy is the way sexual relationship can help humanity evolve into higher aspects of multidimensional awareness.
Maintaining your sexual relationship
Most of the problems you see as issues in your relationship are seated within you and your thoughts. All issues are simply triggers of what you need to look at within yourself. Relationships are such good mirrors that identifying what you can do to change yourself will usually change the situation within your relationship.
This is where being the observer, not taking things personally, and learning how to master your emotions become imperative.
Sometimes relationships are a revolving door until you learn that you are completely responsible for what happens in the relationship by mastering your actions and reactions. When you do this for yourself, you also help to do this for your partner. If your partner discontinues the effort to be your mirror and decides not to do the same kind of inner work, then it is best to move on to bigger and better experiences.
When you do find a partner that is willing to continue to grow at the same pace as you, sometimes fear will creep in as you begin to wonder if you are “good enough” to keep them or if they love you enough. Again, these fears will need to be dismissed as they are only your ego’s way of trying to help you realize just how important you are in the humanity experience.Transmuting this fear is just another step up the evolutionary ladder.
A good rule of thumb in maintaining a relationship is to first realize that if there is a problem it is yours and you must analyze the problem to see what kind of message it is bringing you. Once you have done your work on resolving that problem, if the energy still exists then you can analyze whether it is still stuck within your partner, and help them to resolve the issue. Sometimes the pull of the existing dark energy forces on the planet are so strong that it is impossible to help someone else help themselves. We can only be ultimately responsible for ourselves because of the Law of Free Will, so we must respect everyone else’s journey and level of evolvement without judgment.
The dark side of sex
There are species of Reptilian or Draconian beings on the planet who use sexual energy in a negative and destructive way. These beings have cut themselves off from the infinite energy source that they were created from. They feed off of other people’s energies in order to survive. One of the ways they siphon energies is through domination and control of sexual energy.
Pornography is an example of a tool the reptilians use to prepare a person for invasion or overlay of their body onto another persons body. This can only occur with the consent of the person by watching sex that is acted out in recreation from a self serving, lustful energy standpoint. The energy created by masturbating to porn or by having sex aroused by porn can be siphoned off by lower astral beings who need other people’s lower vibrational energy on order to survive.
Sex trafficking and slavery is a hot commodity amongst these beings. They will pay for the use of a human body in order to siphon energy. Sex with children and sacrifices are a high level of energy extraction for these heartless beings.
A sexually active person who may not be aware of the power of their own sexual energy may attract many partners who wish to suck their energy right out of them. Unaware victims may also be attacked when these beings integrate with their husband, wife, or long time partner who may be unaware of how to defend against such infiltration. These beings will do anything to survive including overlaying and influencing the ones we most love in order to gain power and energy. Awareness of avoidance of service to self sexual energy is imperative when choosing a sexual partner. These beings can be devious and can use forms of trickery to lure a person in by pretending to be “in love”.
The importance of sex organs to a dying race
The Greys had a whole lot of sex at one time in their evolution. They mated with many different partners and spent a lot of their time doing so. The population on their planet began to grow and they began to overpopulate their planet to the point of not being able to sustain the health of the population. They were living in their own filth and could not grow enough food to feed the growing numbers of beings. This affected them psychologically and they began to blame the demise of their race on their sexual organs.
They began to genetically castrate themselves by genetically manipulating their DNA. Children were born by test tube instead of by sex and this caused a lack of emotional response as it affected more than just the sexual energy of their species. They became more and more like robots with no sexual emotional drive and over time began to realize what a mistake they had made.
This is the cause for the abductions that our governments allowed them to carry out beginning in the 1950’s, and in return the Greys agreed to share advanced technologies, including DNA manipulation and space craft blueprints. Most of the people who were uplifted into a spaceship for examination and perhaps insemination or semen extraction had an agreement with that person’s subconscious or higher self. These agreements were made on a higher level out of compassion for them as a dying race and those souls who have helped them with hybrid human/grey children were happy to help a future race of highly evolved beings be able to continue to exist in a physical body.
Just as with any race of ET beings, there are also desperate, service to self groups of Greys who continued to abduct humans beyond the agreement made with our governments. These beings will have to atone for what they have done or will not be able to exist in this reality as the planet shifts higher in vibration.
The Pleiadians are teachers of the love frequency
Planet Earth is the densest place one can incarnate in our galaxy. When Earth and its inhabitants raise their vibration to a fifth dimensional frequency, the reverberations will be felt through the cosmos. This will positively affect the frequency of all beings within our cosmos who are in alignment with the light frequency.
The Pleiadian groups who are in service to others out of love and light are helping humanity to be loving through teaching the power of human sexual energies. Most of humanity on the planet at this time has some ties to Pleiadians through DNA genetics. Although Pleiadians are not the only species of extraterrestrial beings involved in the stewardship of humanity, they are one of the closest to our likeliness and can communicate with us with great ease.
The Pleiadians have increased their presence on our planet with ships that are cloaked in our skies and have made themselves known to many people who have raised their frequency enough to receive their communication. They have also infiltrated humanity from within by incarnating into human bodies. They adhere to the Universal Laws by guiding us rather than rescuing us. Their guidance is based on living from the heart and “be-ing” love. The Pleiadians openly encourage sexual relations out of love and have spread their teaching through books such as Barbara Marciniak’s The Path to Empowerment and The Pleiadian Agenda, and Barbara Hand Clow’s The Liquid Light of Sex.
Loving sex helps Earth evolution
Planet Earth is shifting into higher frequencies through the help of humanity. As humans begin to wake up, they are bringing more light into their bodies and changing them from carbon based to crystalline light based. The more light humans can anchor, the more light Earth has access to. Full bodied chakraorgasms allow for the chakras to be opened and for more light to be brought into the body to be anchored into the planet.
As long as we are here, we will be helping the planet raise her vibration. When we shift to the fifth dimensional vibration, we will continue to help Mother Earth shift into higher and higher frequencies. In turn, she provides the vehicle made of her substance that will allow sexual energy to be propelled into the Universe.
Sex and life go hand in hand. You cannot avoid the sexual urges that are present in the human body. Your use of sexual energy is a mirror of who you believe you are as well as your worth as a human being. Recognition of your beliefs and correction of these beliefs is an important part of evolution as a human being.
Tantric sex is a way of working together with your partner to consciously direct energy flow through the use of breathing techniques and intention. However, sex can be a masterful tool simply by experiencing a loving, trusting relationship based on energy exchange and merging. It does not matter the sex or race of your partner as long as love, trust, honesty, and integrity are present.
Love originates in the heart and is the seat of the soul. Sexual union can open doors because love is the key to exploring the Universe and beyond. Sexual energy is a powerful tool and must to be used responsibly. The misuse of service to self sexual energy can cause repercussions and pain in our bodies. Preparation for attracting a sexual energy creation partner begins with loving yourself and clearing emotional energies. By creating responsibly with love, you can be in service to others by lighting up the planet with sexual energy which will benefit everyone.
by Michelle Walling, CHLC
Have you recently had a strong desire to find or maintain a loving sexual relationship? Human sexual energy is a very powerful creativeenergy that is sought after by many beings in the Universe. Humanity has the perfect sexual organ system needed to produce a massive amount of energy that be directed out into the universe under the right circumstances. In the wrong context, sexual energy can be used to produce powerful negative and destructive energies. Making sure that you are in a sexual relationship for all the right reasons is an important part of responsible creation.
Sex as a tool for consciousness expansion
As humanity begins to wake up to who and what they are, they begin to become aware of the need to cleanse their bodies of negativity in order to raise their consciousness. Awareness of energy and the realization of the power of the human body’s ability to cleanse energies through the emotional body is becoming more prevalent on the planet today. The human sexual organs can be used to clear the body of negative energies in concert with the emotional body.
Spiritual sexual energy can be used to fulfill the hole that is created when we were separated from our twin flame. Until we are able to reunite with that part of us that seems to be missing, the loving experience of sexual energy can bring us the closest to the feeling of being whole again. Creating sexual energy between two humans is not only a temporary “fix” until we eventually are able to join our other twin flame in union once again. It is also a way to experiment with the energies that will be able to create the light body needed to return home to our twin flame in an ecstatic reunion.
After a round of sex, the emotional body is triggered which is the body’s natural way of bringing up energies that need to be cleared.
Therefore, sexual energy is a key tool in balancing the emotional body, which is important in keeping the body clear of lower vibrational energy. Mastery of the emotional body through sexual energy allows for a more healthy and happy body. Sex is also valuable in the aspect of loving yourself, which is an important part of raising your vibration. Hidden beliefs about love and your body can be transmuted through the loving act of sex with the right partner.
Finding the right partner
As you evolve on the path of ascension, finding the right partner is usually one of the things you innately begin to manifest. Deep down you desire someone on your same vibration level that can mirror your blocks back to you. You also desire to fulfill all of contracts with your soul mates by mirroring blocks back to them so all can move forward. Sometimes you have to have several partners to see the many lifetimes of energies that needed to be cleared.
Although we are always evolving, if you have done your clearing homework the reward is a sexual partner that will allow sexuality to move to another level of creativity. If you were a prominent student over lifetimes, you may have resolved all of your karmic and emotional energy in past lives and came into this lifetime to spend the whole time with one soul mate. Most people, however, have had several relationships in this lifetime that were set up in order to resolve past life energies and are now searching for a perfect mate who can spark the creative fires within them.
Manifestation of the perfect sexual partner begins with heartfelt intention and prayer. This is the way you create the vibrations that will attract the appropriate vibration to you by the Universal Law of Vibrational Attainment. Until you are aware of your thoughts, beliefs, and mannerisms in a relationship, you will continue to attract the same kind of partner over and over. This is meant to finally get your attention to what you do not want by correcting the thoughts which attracted that kind of relationship in the first place.
Loving yourself is the biggest part of attracting the right sexual partner. If you do not love yourself, you will not attract someone who truly loves you for who you are. Clearing the negative societal programmingabout loving yourself is an important step. When you love yourself, you exude energy that is attractive to another person of the same vibrational level. Therefore, you will only attract someone that loves themselves as much as you love yourself. This magic creates the recipe for a healthy relationship that can grow into the creative manifestation of sexual energy that can help you expand in many ways.
When you do connect with the partner that you manifested, all may not seem peaches and cream while the relationship is established. Trust has to be imminently present as two people get to know each other. A relationship built on love, trust, honesty, integrity, and moral values is the key to the proper use of the sexual dynamo machine called the human body.
The last remnants of past life energies will be cleared as you both test the waters with how far your comfort zone is with each other. Once this period of adjustment is over, the two partners will begin to emit a frequencytogether that reflects the combined energies of a balanced yin/yang vibration. Trust lets your guard down in order to take on your partner’s energy field and vice versa.
By merging energy fields, life becomes more tolerable and enjoyable and laughter triggers the emotion of the day.
As experimentation with sex leads to more and more orgasms, the building energy between the two begins to morph into higher and higher realms. The playground of emotion between two people vibrating in love at the same frequency allows each person to break through blocks in the chakras as kundalini energy snakes up the spine and out through the crown chakra.
Although sexual energy can be magnified by two people in a relationship, sexual energies can also be directed through masturbation and loving yourself until a relationship comes together. Although some people believe in “holding the seed” within for spiritual reasons, masturbation with orgasm is a personal choice and should not be judged as a “bad” thing as long as the intentions in alignment with love, healing, and self expansion.
The various types of orgasms
Introductory sex between two people usually brings about a localized sexual organ orgasm where the sex organ sensations cause the sexual chakra to buzz with energy and to spin freely. The cells in our bodies are mostly made up of water. Triggering an energy vibration form our root and sexual chakras sends out waves on energy throughout the cells in the body.
This orgasmic experience revitalizes and reorganizes the cells of the body with these waves of energy. The intensity of the orgasm, the awareness of directing the energy, and the energy blocks within the body determine how far the energy will travel through the cells.
As the two people to blend their energies and begin to explore their love for each other deeply, orgasms may begin to trigger a heart chakra orgasm or a healing orgasm may trigger a sacral chakra orgasm. A “far out” orgasm in the crown chakra alone may be triggered, or one may see “stars” or galaxies with their eyes closed in a third eye orgasm. The throat chakra can be cleared with vocalizing pleasure. These kinds of orgasms are localized orgasms meant to open certain chakras in preparation for a full bodied orgasm.
Once you explore these different types of orgasms you can move into a comfortable state of arousal of trust with your partner where the mind gets switched to the “off” position and your conscious hold on reality begins to disintegrate. This allows your cells to trigger the parts of your DNA that are more in alignment with who you really are as a creator of energy. As you let go of thoughts about how your body looks or how long you can maintain, you begin to become more in alignment with each other.
This creates the comfortable space which allows for longer and more intense full bodied orgasms as you begin to let go of blocks that may have kept you from this way of being in love.
Intentional direction of energy from the root chakra into the sexual chakra and then merging with the sacral chakra is a powerful way to build up energy for a longer orgasm.
The full chakra orgasm can catapult your kundalini from the base chakra all the way up through the crown chakra.
This can open up doors to multidimensional realities. Your psychic sense can be opened wide up and you can begin to recall past lives and living on other worlds. This is just a taste of the possibility of travel with human consciousness once we embody light and higher consciousness.
Furthermore, by opening the door to multidimensional energies, you can bring that energy back down into your body and settle in the heart. By grounding yourself you are opening up the desired flow of the torus where energies are coming in from the earth through the root up to the heart to meet the multidimensional energies coming in through the crown into the heart. This continuous flow of energy is the desired use of the human body and is what will trigger themerkaba light vehicle when the vibration of the planet reaches zero point magnetism.
Sexual orgasmic energy may be seen as bursts of light across the planet that help all of humanity as well as the planet as we all raise our vibrations. The conscious and responsible use of creative and expansive sexual energy is the way sexual relationship can help humanity evolve into higher aspects of multidimensional awareness.
Maintaining your sexual relationship
Most of the problems you see as issues in your relationship are seated within you and your thoughts. All issues are simply triggers of what you need to look at within yourself. Relationships are such good mirrors that identifying what you can do to change yourself will usually change the situation within your relationship.
This is where being the observer, not taking things personally, and learning how to master your emotions become imperative.
Sometimes relationships are a revolving door until you learn that you are completely responsible for what happens in the relationship by mastering your actions and reactions. When you do this for yourself, you also help to do this for your partner. If your partner discontinues the effort to be your mirror and decides not to do the same kind of inner work, then it is best to move on to bigger and better experiences.
When you do find a partner that is willing to continue to grow at the same pace as you, sometimes fear will creep in as you begin to wonder if you are “good enough” to keep them or if they love you enough. Again, these fears will need to be dismissed as they are only your ego’s way of trying to help you realize just how important you are in the humanity experience.Transmuting this fear is just another step up the evolutionary ladder.
A good rule of thumb in maintaining a relationship is to first realize that if there is a problem it is yours and you must analyze the problem to see what kind of message it is bringing you. Once you have done your work on resolving that problem, if the energy still exists then you can analyze whether it is still stuck within your partner, and help them to resolve the issue. Sometimes the pull of the existing dark energy forces on the planet are so strong that it is impossible to help someone else help themselves. We can only be ultimately responsible for ourselves because of the Law of Free Will, so we must respect everyone else’s journey and level of evolvement without judgment.
The dark side of sex
There are species of Reptilian or Draconian beings on the planet who use sexual energy in a negative and destructive way. These beings have cut themselves off from the infinite energy source that they were created from. They feed off of other people’s energies in order to survive. One of the ways they siphon energies is through domination and control of sexual energy.
Pornography is an example of a tool the reptilians use to prepare a person for invasion or overlay of their body onto another persons body. This can only occur with the consent of the person by watching sex that is acted out in recreation from a self serving, lustful energy standpoint. The energy created by masturbating to porn or by having sex aroused by porn can be siphoned off by lower astral beings who need other people’s lower vibrational energy on order to survive.
Sex trafficking and slavery is a hot commodity amongst these beings. They will pay for the use of a human body in order to siphon energy. Sex with children and sacrifices are a high level of energy extraction for these heartless beings.
A sexually active person who may not be aware of the power of their own sexual energy may attract many partners who wish to suck their energy right out of them. Unaware victims may also be attacked when these beings integrate with their husband, wife, or long time partner who may be unaware of how to defend against such infiltration. These beings will do anything to survive including overlaying and influencing the ones we most love in order to gain power and energy. Awareness of avoidance of service to self sexual energy is imperative when choosing a sexual partner. These beings can be devious and can use forms of trickery to lure a person in by pretending to be “in love”.
The importance of sex organs to a dying race
The Greys had a whole lot of sex at one time in their evolution. They mated with many different partners and spent a lot of their time doing so. The population on their planet began to grow and they began to overpopulate their planet to the point of not being able to sustain the health of the population. They were living in their own filth and could not grow enough food to feed the growing numbers of beings. This affected them psychologically and they began to blame the demise of their race on their sexual organs.
They began to genetically castrate themselves by genetically manipulating their DNA. Children were born by test tube instead of by sex and this caused a lack of emotional response as it affected more than just the sexual energy of their species. They became more and more like robots with no sexual emotional drive and over time began to realize what a mistake they had made.
This is the cause for the abductions that our governments allowed them to carry out beginning in the 1950’s, and in return the Greys agreed to share advanced technologies, including DNA manipulation and space craft blueprints. Most of the people who were uplifted into a spaceship for examination and perhaps insemination or semen extraction had an agreement with that person’s subconscious or higher self. These agreements were made on a higher level out of compassion for them as a dying race and those souls who have helped them with hybrid human/grey children were happy to help a future race of highly evolved beings be able to continue to exist in a physical body.
Just as with any race of ET beings, there are also desperate, service to self groups of Greys who continued to abduct humans beyond the agreement made with our governments. These beings will have to atone for what they have done or will not be able to exist in this reality as the planet shifts higher in vibration.
The Pleiadians are teachers of the love frequency
Planet Earth is the densest place one can incarnate in our galaxy. When Earth and its inhabitants raise their vibration to a fifth dimensional frequency, the reverberations will be felt through the cosmos. This will positively affect the frequency of all beings within our cosmos who are in alignment with the light frequency.
The Pleiadian groups who are in service to others out of love and light are helping humanity to be loving through teaching the power of human sexual energies. Most of humanity on the planet at this time has some ties to Pleiadians through DNA genetics. Although Pleiadians are not the only species of extraterrestrial beings involved in the stewardship of humanity, they are one of the closest to our likeliness and can communicate with us with great ease.
The Pleiadians have increased their presence on our planet with ships that are cloaked in our skies and have made themselves known to many people who have raised their frequency enough to receive their communication. They have also infiltrated humanity from within by incarnating into human bodies. They adhere to the Universal Laws by guiding us rather than rescuing us. Their guidance is based on living from the heart and “be-ing” love. The Pleiadians openly encourage sexual relations out of love and have spread their teaching through books such as Barbara Marciniak’s The Path to Empowerment and The Pleiadian Agenda, and Barbara Hand Clow’s The Liquid Light of Sex.
Loving sex helps Earth evolution
Planet Earth is shifting into higher frequencies through the help of humanity. As humans begin to wake up, they are bringing more light into their bodies and changing them from carbon based to crystalline light based. The more light humans can anchor, the more light Earth has access to. Full bodied chakraorgasms allow for the chakras to be opened and for more light to be brought into the body to be anchored into the planet.
As long as we are here, we will be helping the planet raise her vibration. When we shift to the fifth dimensional vibration, we will continue to help Mother Earth shift into higher and higher frequencies. In turn, she provides the vehicle made of her substance that will allow sexual energy to be propelled into the Universe.
Sex and life go hand in hand. You cannot avoid the sexual urges that are present in the human body. Your use of sexual energy is a mirror of who you believe you are as well as your worth as a human being. Recognition of your beliefs and correction of these beliefs is an important part of evolution as a human being.
Tantric sex is a way of working together with your partner to consciously direct energy flow through the use of breathing techniques and intention. However, sex can be a masterful tool simply by experiencing a loving, trusting relationship based on energy exchange and merging. It does not matter the sex or race of your partner as long as love, trust, honesty, and integrity are present.
Love originates in the heart and is the seat of the soul. Sexual union can open doors because love is the key to exploring the Universe and beyond. Sexual energy is a powerful tool and must to be used responsibly. The misuse of service to self sexual energy can cause repercussions and pain in our bodies. Preparation for attracting a sexual energy creation partner begins with loving yourself and clearing emotional energies. By creating responsibly with love, you can be in service to others by lighting up the planet with sexual energy which will benefit everyone.
"Technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change", said the fictional chemist Walter White on the hit television show Breaking Bad.
"Electrons change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements combine and change into compounds. But that's all of life, right? It's the constant, it's the cycle. It's solution, dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation". Walter White's words paint him as much a latter-day alchemist, ruminating on the mysteries of life and metamorphosis, than as the criminal crystal meth technician that he was.
His words also serve as a succinct description of the questions that drove real-life drug chemist, Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin, who entered the state of physical dissolution at around 5pm on June 2nd, 2014, just a couple of weeks short of his 89th birthday. Shulgin too was fascinated by the study of change - in his case, how the mind and consciousness could be modified so profoundly through interactions with the most nuanced changes to molecules.
"I was always interested in how, if you move one carbon atom, for example, on amphetamine, you can change it from being a strong stimulant to a psychedelic," he once told a reporter. "How is it that the difference of one atom produces such a dramatically different result in the human? The answer is, nobody knows."
Shulgin though, was no Walter White. His concern was not with power or making money (so much so that wife Ann once quipped that a little money would have been nice), and for the most part his experiments synthesizing new drugs were done on the right side of the law (he held a Schedule 1 license until 1994). It was always that question, about the change in consciousness produced by chemical modifications, that drove him throughout his life.
And as such, the test subject for the synthesized psychedelics that he invented was always, primarily, himself (as well as another willing subject, wife Ann). Their seminal books TiHKAL and PiHKAL('Tryptamines/Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved') provide a permanent record of their bio-assay experiments; a typical entry, such as that for the tryptamine DIPT, includes the chemical procedure to synthesize the drug, followed by comments on the qualitative aspects and duration of the experience (18mg: "Wild effects noted in an hour. Remarkable changes in sounds heard"; 250mg: "Shortly after I ingested the substance I heard a spirit say, 'Once in a lifetime.' She encouraged me to believe that I would have more life after the experience. But, there was a feeling of foreboding").
Each entry finished with a personal commentary, which might touch on anything from chemistry notes to possible applications of the drug. Not all experiences were interesting or enjoyable though, as one might expect when experimenting with the effects of newly designed chemicals — the Shulgins suffered, on various occasions, nausea, periods of unconsciousness, and terrifying psychological symptoms.
This combination of precise chemistry skills with the drive to self-experimentation and self-exploration evokes the label of 'alchemist' all too easily. And Sasha Shulgin's physical appearance (he stood 6'4, and for much of the latter half of his life wore the white beard and hair of a wizard), as well as that of his laboratory, could easily have lent even more weight to that persona. But it was certainly not one that he cultivated himself…rather than wearing the robes of a magus, Shulgin instead looked more like a Florida retiree in his sandals and cotton button-up shirts.
Sasha was born Alexander Shulgin on June 17th, 1925, the son of Theodore Shulgin, a Russian immigrant, and Henrietta Aten, from Illinois. He was a precocious polymath — he spoke English, French and Russian, mastered violin and piano, and entered Harvard in 1942 on a full scholarship aged just 16.
His time there was not a happy one though, largely as a result of the difference in his age and social status to other students. "It was a total, total disaster," he once recalled. "The people around me were sons and daughters of important people, with money and property, position and stature. I was not, and there was no social blending at all."
America's entry into World War II provided Shulgin with the excuse he needed: he dropped out of Harvard and joined the Navy. During his service, in personal time he sat in his bunk and memorized a chemistry textbook, a hobby that turned out to be an advantage when he pursued a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Berkeley after the war.
Landing a job at Dow Chemical, he proved his skills quickly. Asked to find chemical applications for the company's excess inventory, he scribbled a formula on the back of an envelope — as it turns out, he had just created the world's first biodegradable pesticide, Zectran. The chemical would be one of the reagents which would combine to transform his life — with the profits rolling in from his invention, Dow gave him a lab and the freedom to work on any project he wanted to.
The other reagent was his introduction in 1960 to the psychedelic chemical found in some species of the cacti family: mescaline. "I saw a world that presented itself in several guises," he later wrote about this first trip. "It had a marvel of color that for me was without precedent... I could see the intimate structure of a bee putting something in its sack on its hind leg to take to its hive, yet I was completely at peace with the bee's closeness to my face... I had found my learning path."
Despite initial interest, Dow got cold feet about Shulgin's pursuit of research into psychedelics, and he left the company in 1966. He continued working on the subject in his home laboratory for the rest of his life though, and over the years has synthesized hundreds of psychoactive molecules, including many that have rised to prominence such as DOM ('STP'), 2CT7, and 2CB. Ironically, he is most associated with a drug he didn't actually invent: MDMA, better known as Ecstasy.
First synthesized in 1912 by the pharmaceutical company Merck, the drug was later used in tests on animals by the U.S. government to see if it might be an effective chemical warfare agent. After falling into obscurity though, Shulgin resynthesized MDMA after hearing about its effects from a student at San Francisco State University.
As a result of his usual self-testing, Shulgin introduced it to a psychoanalyst friend, and as word spread a large number of therapists began using it with patients during counseling sessions. But then, the drug 'escaped' into the wild, first appearing in a Texas nightclub before expanding into the dance club drug of choice across the nation, and the world.
Like LSD before it, the underground notoriety of MDMA soon landed it on the list of Schedule I prohibited substances. Shulgin was dismayed — many therapists had told him how impressed they were with MDMA as a psychiatric tool, but now it had been banished from reputable usage. He even disliked the name it now had — he had called it MDMA, and therapists had begun calling it 'Empathy' due to the effect it had on patients, but now the street name had taken over. His medicine had become a party drug.
MDMA was not the only drug to slip away from his lab though, and because of this his reputation seems to exist in two parallel realities: as a saint to neo-shamans and psychonauts; a dangerous criminal to those with an anti-drug stance. A story about Ecstasy in Britain's Daily Mail named Shulgin, under the headline "Has This Man Killed 100 British Teenagers?" As Wired Magazine once said, to anti-drug proponents Shulgin is "a Frankenstein who has loosed frightening pharmacological monsters on the youth of the world".
But nearly all inventions come with inherent dangers when used incorrectly — from cars to 'safe' pharmaceuticals — and man would argue that on balance, Shulgin has done more good for people than bad.
And even conspiracy theorists have joined the fray, citing his membership of the elite Bohemian Club, and the strange manner in which he seemed to evade prosecution throughout his life. But those suggestions ignore the fact that three years after the self-publication of PiHKAL, the government raided his house (20 years to the day before his death, on June 2nd 1994), alleging that he had violated the terms of the Schedule I license that he held, resulting in a $25,000 fine and the loss of that license.
And as another psychedelic activist Rick Doblin points out, Shulgin had cultivated friendships throughout the years with many people that were or became influential. "He has tripped out with those captains of industry, Doblin said, "so if you want to know why he got raided and not arrested, I think that's the answer." And even among those in the DEA, Shulgin's chemistry prowess has bestowed him a status beyond a mere criminal — after the raid, some have reported that one of the agents pulled out a copy of his book and asked for his signature.
Personally, I see Shulgin not in terms of good or bad, but as what he was — one of those knowledge seekers in the long tradition of alchemy and other secret and (in their times) heretical sciences. A modern Prometheus, birthing new molecules that nature didn't give to humanity (["I feel an incredible tingle when I look at a white solid I've just synthesized that I know has never existed anywhere in the universe before this moment…and I'll be the first to know what it does"), Shulgin saw chemistry more as an art form than a science: "It has nothing to do with split atoms and molecules and mathematics and kinetics and all that nonsense. It's an art form. It's like writing a piece of music. It is pure imagination."
But beyond mastering the art and alchemy of molecular manipulation, Shulgin was also one of the great psychonauts - an intrepid explorer and experimentalist of the mind who knocked on as many of the doors of perception that he could during his stay on Earth.
His conclusion was that psychedelics open us up to a vast repository of knowledge: "I am completely convinced that there is a wealth of information built into us," he once wrote, "with miles of intuitive knowledge tucked away in the genetic material of every one of our cells. Something akin to a library containing uncountable reference volumes, but without some means of access, there is no way to even begin to guess at the extent of quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world, and insights into its nature".
But he also lamented the way in which modern laws have slammed those doors shut, and locked and bolted them, making it a crime to access them. "Our generation is the first ever to have made the search for self-awareness a crime", he noted, "if it is done with the use of plants or chemical compounds as the means of opening the psychic doors".
As Sasha Shulgin moves beyond growth and decay, into the state of transformation, I can only quote W.B. Yeats as parting words (I hope you'll forgive the apt, though unintended pun):
I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God.
Our thoughts go out to Ann Shulgin and the rest of the Shulgin family at this time. Please see the 90 minute documentary 'Dirty Pictures', embedded below, for a more in-depth look at the life and legacy of Sasha and Ann Shulgin.
"Electrons change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements combine and change into compounds. But that's all of life, right? It's the constant, it's the cycle. It's solution, dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation". Walter White's words paint him as much a latter-day alchemist, ruminating on the mysteries of life and metamorphosis, than as the criminal crystal meth technician that he was.
His words also serve as a succinct description of the questions that drove real-life drug chemist, Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin, who entered the state of physical dissolution at around 5pm on June 2nd, 2014, just a couple of weeks short of his 89th birthday. Shulgin too was fascinated by the study of change - in his case, how the mind and consciousness could be modified so profoundly through interactions with the most nuanced changes to molecules.
"I was always interested in how, if you move one carbon atom, for example, on amphetamine, you can change it from being a strong stimulant to a psychedelic," he once told a reporter. "How is it that the difference of one atom produces such a dramatically different result in the human? The answer is, nobody knows."
Shulgin though, was no Walter White. His concern was not with power or making money (so much so that wife Ann once quipped that a little money would have been nice), and for the most part his experiments synthesizing new drugs were done on the right side of the law (he held a Schedule 1 license until 1994). It was always that question, about the change in consciousness produced by chemical modifications, that drove him throughout his life.
And as such, the test subject for the synthesized psychedelics that he invented was always, primarily, himself (as well as another willing subject, wife Ann). Their seminal books TiHKAL and PiHKAL('Tryptamines/Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved') provide a permanent record of their bio-assay experiments; a typical entry, such as that for the tryptamine DIPT, includes the chemical procedure to synthesize the drug, followed by comments on the qualitative aspects and duration of the experience (18mg: "Wild effects noted in an hour. Remarkable changes in sounds heard"; 250mg: "Shortly after I ingested the substance I heard a spirit say, 'Once in a lifetime.' She encouraged me to believe that I would have more life after the experience. But, there was a feeling of foreboding").
Each entry finished with a personal commentary, which might touch on anything from chemistry notes to possible applications of the drug. Not all experiences were interesting or enjoyable though, as one might expect when experimenting with the effects of newly designed chemicals — the Shulgins suffered, on various occasions, nausea, periods of unconsciousness, and terrifying psychological symptoms.
This combination of precise chemistry skills with the drive to self-experimentation and self-exploration evokes the label of 'alchemist' all too easily. And Sasha Shulgin's physical appearance (he stood 6'4, and for much of the latter half of his life wore the white beard and hair of a wizard), as well as that of his laboratory, could easily have lent even more weight to that persona. But it was certainly not one that he cultivated himself…rather than wearing the robes of a magus, Shulgin instead looked more like a Florida retiree in his sandals and cotton button-up shirts.
Sasha was born Alexander Shulgin on June 17th, 1925, the son of Theodore Shulgin, a Russian immigrant, and Henrietta Aten, from Illinois. He was a precocious polymath — he spoke English, French and Russian, mastered violin and piano, and entered Harvard in 1942 on a full scholarship aged just 16.
His time there was not a happy one though, largely as a result of the difference in his age and social status to other students. "It was a total, total disaster," he once recalled. "The people around me were sons and daughters of important people, with money and property, position and stature. I was not, and there was no social blending at all."
America's entry into World War II provided Shulgin with the excuse he needed: he dropped out of Harvard and joined the Navy. During his service, in personal time he sat in his bunk and memorized a chemistry textbook, a hobby that turned out to be an advantage when he pursued a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Berkeley after the war.
Landing a job at Dow Chemical, he proved his skills quickly. Asked to find chemical applications for the company's excess inventory, he scribbled a formula on the back of an envelope — as it turns out, he had just created the world's first biodegradable pesticide, Zectran. The chemical would be one of the reagents which would combine to transform his life — with the profits rolling in from his invention, Dow gave him a lab and the freedom to work on any project he wanted to.
The other reagent was his introduction in 1960 to the psychedelic chemical found in some species of the cacti family: mescaline. "I saw a world that presented itself in several guises," he later wrote about this first trip. "It had a marvel of color that for me was without precedent... I could see the intimate structure of a bee putting something in its sack on its hind leg to take to its hive, yet I was completely at peace with the bee's closeness to my face... I had found my learning path."
Despite initial interest, Dow got cold feet about Shulgin's pursuit of research into psychedelics, and he left the company in 1966. He continued working on the subject in his home laboratory for the rest of his life though, and over the years has synthesized hundreds of psychoactive molecules, including many that have rised to prominence such as DOM ('STP'), 2CT7, and 2CB. Ironically, he is most associated with a drug he didn't actually invent: MDMA, better known as Ecstasy.
First synthesized in 1912 by the pharmaceutical company Merck, the drug was later used in tests on animals by the U.S. government to see if it might be an effective chemical warfare agent. After falling into obscurity though, Shulgin resynthesized MDMA after hearing about its effects from a student at San Francisco State University.
As a result of his usual self-testing, Shulgin introduced it to a psychoanalyst friend, and as word spread a large number of therapists began using it with patients during counseling sessions. But then, the drug 'escaped' into the wild, first appearing in a Texas nightclub before expanding into the dance club drug of choice across the nation, and the world.
Like LSD before it, the underground notoriety of MDMA soon landed it on the list of Schedule I prohibited substances. Shulgin was dismayed — many therapists had told him how impressed they were with MDMA as a psychiatric tool, but now it had been banished from reputable usage. He even disliked the name it now had — he had called it MDMA, and therapists had begun calling it 'Empathy' due to the effect it had on patients, but now the street name had taken over. His medicine had become a party drug.
MDMA was not the only drug to slip away from his lab though, and because of this his reputation seems to exist in two parallel realities: as a saint to neo-shamans and psychonauts; a dangerous criminal to those with an anti-drug stance. A story about Ecstasy in Britain's Daily Mail named Shulgin, under the headline "Has This Man Killed 100 British Teenagers?" As Wired Magazine once said, to anti-drug proponents Shulgin is "a Frankenstein who has loosed frightening pharmacological monsters on the youth of the world".
But nearly all inventions come with inherent dangers when used incorrectly — from cars to 'safe' pharmaceuticals — and man would argue that on balance, Shulgin has done more good for people than bad.
And even conspiracy theorists have joined the fray, citing his membership of the elite Bohemian Club, and the strange manner in which he seemed to evade prosecution throughout his life. But those suggestions ignore the fact that three years after the self-publication of PiHKAL, the government raided his house (20 years to the day before his death, on June 2nd 1994), alleging that he had violated the terms of the Schedule I license that he held, resulting in a $25,000 fine and the loss of that license.
And as another psychedelic activist Rick Doblin points out, Shulgin had cultivated friendships throughout the years with many people that were or became influential. "He has tripped out with those captains of industry, Doblin said, "so if you want to know why he got raided and not arrested, I think that's the answer." And even among those in the DEA, Shulgin's chemistry prowess has bestowed him a status beyond a mere criminal — after the raid, some have reported that one of the agents pulled out a copy of his book and asked for his signature.
Personally, I see Shulgin not in terms of good or bad, but as what he was — one of those knowledge seekers in the long tradition of alchemy and other secret and (in their times) heretical sciences. A modern Prometheus, birthing new molecules that nature didn't give to humanity (["I feel an incredible tingle when I look at a white solid I've just synthesized that I know has never existed anywhere in the universe before this moment…and I'll be the first to know what it does"), Shulgin saw chemistry more as an art form than a science: "It has nothing to do with split atoms and molecules and mathematics and kinetics and all that nonsense. It's an art form. It's like writing a piece of music. It is pure imagination."
But beyond mastering the art and alchemy of molecular manipulation, Shulgin was also one of the great psychonauts - an intrepid explorer and experimentalist of the mind who knocked on as many of the doors of perception that he could during his stay on Earth.
His conclusion was that psychedelics open us up to a vast repository of knowledge: "I am completely convinced that there is a wealth of information built into us," he once wrote, "with miles of intuitive knowledge tucked away in the genetic material of every one of our cells. Something akin to a library containing uncountable reference volumes, but without some means of access, there is no way to even begin to guess at the extent of quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world, and insights into its nature".
But he also lamented the way in which modern laws have slammed those doors shut, and locked and bolted them, making it a crime to access them. "Our generation is the first ever to have made the search for self-awareness a crime", he noted, "if it is done with the use of plants or chemical compounds as the means of opening the psychic doors".
As Sasha Shulgin moves beyond growth and decay, into the state of transformation, I can only quote W.B. Yeats as parting words (I hope you'll forgive the apt, though unintended pun):
I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God.
[video=youtube;B--z9YIr9Bk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B--z9YIr9Bk[/video]
Tin Man
"a respectable amount of screaming"
"Technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change", said the fictional chemist Walter White on the hit television show Breaking Bad.
"Electrons change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements combine and change into compounds. But that's all of life, right? It's the constant, it's the cycle. It's solution, dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation". Walter White's words paint him as much a latter-day alchemist, ruminating on the mysteries of life and metamorphosis, than as the criminal crystal meth technician that he was.
His words also serve as a succinct description of the questions that drove real-life drug chemist, Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin, who entered the state of physical dissolution at around 5pm on June 2nd, 2014, just a couple of weeks short of his 89th birthday. Shulgin too was fascinated by the study of change - in his case, how the mind and consciousness could be modified so profoundly through interactions with the most nuanced changes to molecules.
"I was always interested in how, if you move one carbon atom, for example, on amphetamine, you can change it from being a strong stimulant to a psychedelic," he once told a reporter. "How is it that the difference of one atom produces such a dramatically different result in the human? The answer is, nobody knows."
Shulgin though, was no Walter White. His concern was not with power or making money (so much so that wife Ann once quipped that a little money would have been nice), and for the most part his experiments synthesizing new drugs were done on the right side of the law (he held a Schedule 1 license until 1994). It was always that question, about the change in consciousness produced by chemical modifications, that drove him throughout his life.
And as such, the test subject for the synthesized psychedelics that he invented was always, primarily, himself (as well as another willing subject, wife Ann). Their seminal books TiHKAL and PiHKAL('Tryptamines/Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved') provide a permanent record of their bio-assay experiments; a typical entry, such as that for the tryptamine DIPT, includes the chemical procedure to synthesize the drug, followed by comments on the qualitative aspects and duration of the experience (18mg: "Wild effects noted in an hour. Remarkable changes in sounds heard"; 250mg: "Shortly after I ingested the substance I heard a spirit say, 'Once in a lifetime.' She encouraged me to believe that I would have more life after the experience. But, there was a feeling of foreboding").
Each entry finished with a personal commentary, which might touch on anything from chemistry notes to possible applications of the drug. Not all experiences were interesting or enjoyable though, as one might expect when experimenting with the effects of newly designed chemicals – the Shulgins suffered, on various occasions, nausea, periods of unconsciousness, and terrifying psychological symptoms.
This combination of precise chemistry skills with the drive to self-experimentation and self-exploration evokes the label of 'alchemist' all too easily. And Sasha Shulgin's physical appearance (he stood 6'4, and for much of the latter half of his life wore the white beard and hair of a wizard), as well as that of his laboratory, could easily have lent even more weight to that persona. But it was certainly not one that he cultivated himself…rather than wearing the robes of a magus, Shulgin instead looked more like a Florida retiree in his sandals and cotton button-up shirts.
Sasha was born Alexander Shulgin on June 17th, 1925, the son of Theodore Shulgin, a Russian immigrant, and Henrietta Aten, from Illinois. He was a precocious polymath – he spoke English, French and Russian, mastered violin and piano, and entered Harvard in 1942 on a full scholarship aged just 16.
His time there was not a happy one though, largely as a result of the difference in his age and social status to other students. "It was a total, total disaster," he once recalled. "The people around me were sons and daughters of important people, with money and property, position and stature. I was not, and there was no social blending at all."
America's entry into World War II provided Shulgin with the excuse he needed: he dropped out of Harvard and joined the Navy. During his service, in personal time he sat in his bunk and memorized a chemistry textbook, a hobby that turned out to be an advantage when he pursued a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Berkeley after the war.
Landing a job at Dow Chemical, he proved his skills quickly. Asked to find chemical applications for the company's excess inventory, he scribbled a formula on the back of an envelope – as it turns out, he had just created the world's first biodegradable pesticide, Zectran. The chemical would be one of the reagents which would combine to transform his life – with the profits rolling in from his invention, Dow gave him a lab and the freedom to work on any project he wanted to.
The other reagent was his introduction in 1960 to the psychedelic chemical found in some species of the cacti family: mescaline. "I saw a world that presented itself in several guises," he later wrote about this first trip. "It had a marvel of color that for me was without precedent... I could see the intimate structure of a bee putting something in its sack on its hind leg to take to its hive, yet I was completely at peace with the bee's closeness to my face... I had found my learning path."
Despite initial interest, Dow got cold feet about Shulgin's pursuit of research into psychedelics, and he left the company in 1966. He continued working on the subject in his home laboratory for the rest of his life though, and over the years has synthesized hundreds of psychoactive molecules, including many that have rised to prominence such as DOM ('STP'), 2CT7, and 2CB. Ironically, he is most associated with a drug he didn't actually invent: MDMA, better known as Ecstasy.
First synthesized in 1912 by the pharmaceutical company Merck, the drug was later used in tests on animals by the U.S. government to see if it might be an effective chemical warfare agent. After falling into obscurity though, Shulgin resynthesized MDMA after hearing about its effects from a student at San Francisco State University.
As a result of his usual self-testing, Shulgin introduced it to a psychoanalyst friend, and as word spread a large number of therapists began using it with patients during counseling sessions. But then, the drug 'escaped' into the wild, first appearing in a Texas nightclub before expanding into the dance club drug of choice across the nation, and the world.
Like LSD before it, the underground notoriety of MDMA soon landed it on the list of Schedule I prohibited substances. Shulgin was dismayed – many therapists had told him how impressed they were with MDMA as a psychiatric tool, but now it had been banished from reputable usage. He even disliked the name it now had – he had called it MDMA, and therapists had begun calling it 'Empathy' due to the effect it had on patients, but now the street name had taken over. His medicine had become a party drug.
MDMA was not the only drug to slip away from his lab though, and because of this his reputation seems to exist in two parallel realities: as a saint to neo-shamans and psychonauts; a dangerous criminal to those with an anti-drug stance. A story about Ecstasy in Britain's Daily Mail named Shulgin, under the headline "Has This Man Killed 100 British Teenagers?" As Wired Magazine once said, to anti-drug proponents Shulgin is "a Frankenstein who has loosed frightening pharmacological monsters on the youth of the world".
But nearly all inventions come with inherent dangers when used incorrectly – from cars to 'safe' pharmaceuticals – and man would argue that on balance, Shulgin has done more good for people than bad.
And even conspiracy theorists have joined the fray, citing his membership of the elite Bohemian Club, and the strange manner in which he seemed to evade prosecution throughout his life. But those suggestions ignore the fact that three years after the self-publication of PiHKAL, the government raided his house (20 years to the day before his death, on June 2nd 1994), alleging that he had violated the terms of the Schedule I license that he held, resulting in a $25,000 fine and the loss of that license.
And as another psychedelic activist Rick Doblin points out, Shulgin had cultivated friendships throughout the years with many people that were or became influential. "He has tripped out with those captains of industry, Doblin said, "so if you want to know why he got raided and not arrested, I think that's the answer." And even among those in the DEA, Shulgin's chemistry prowess has bestowed him a status beyond a mere criminal – after the raid, some have reported that one of the agents pulled out a copy of his book and asked for his signature.
Personally, I see Shulgin not in terms of good or bad, but as what he was – one of those knowledge seekers in the long tradition of alchemy and other secret and (in their times) heretical sciences. A modern Prometheus, birthing new molecules that nature didn't give to humanity (["I feel an incredible tingle when I look at a white solid I've just synthesized that I know has never existed anywhere in the universe before this moment…and I'll be the first to know what it does"), Shulgin saw chemistry more as an art form than a science: "It has nothing to do with split atoms and molecules and mathematics and kinetics and all that nonsense. It's an art form. It's like writing a piece of music. It is pure imagination."
But beyond mastering the art and alchemy of molecular manipulation, Shulgin was also one of the great psychonauts - an intrepid explorer and experimentalist of the mind who knocked on as many of the doors of perception that he could during his stay on Earth.
His conclusion was that psychedelics open us up to a vast repository of knowledge: "I am completely convinced that there is a wealth of information built into us," he once wrote, "with miles of intuitive knowledge tucked away in the genetic material of every one of our cells. Something akin to a library containing uncountable reference volumes, but without some means of access, there is no way to even begin to guess at the extent of quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world, and insights into its nature".
But he also lamented the way in which modern laws have slammed those doors shut, and locked and bolted them, making it a crime to access them. "Our generation is the first ever to have made the search for self-awareness a crime", he noted, "if it is done with the use of plants or chemical compounds as the means of opening the psychic doors".
As Sasha Shulgin moves beyond growth and decay, into the state of transformation, I can only quote W.B. Yeats as parting words (I hope you'll forgive the apt, though unintended pun):
Our thoughts go out to Ann Shulgin and the rest of the Shulgin family at this time. Please see the 90 minute documentary 'Dirty Pictures', embedded below, for a more in-depth look at the life and legacy of Sasha and Ann Shulgin.
I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God.
[video=youtube;B--z9YIr9Bk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B--z9YIr9Bk[/video]
There was a study carried out in the UK (unfortunately I'm unable find it) which documented the most damaging addictive substances. Alcohol and nicotine, two drugs easily acquired were at the top with heroin and crack cocaine, while Ecstasy was near the bottom with only a 30 percent dependence rate and yet it's demonized.
There even studies going on right now showing the benefits of using it during marriage counseling. So far the results have been very good!
They developed a MDMA nasal spray for the study and when either partner feels angry or annoyed by their partner…they are to use the drug.
Surprise, surprise…the majority of the couples are not having troubles anymore and feel closer than they have since they first fell in love.
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What Happens to the Brain During Spiritual Experiences?
The field of neurotheology uses science to try to understand religion, and vice versa.
LYNNE BLUMBERG
The field of neurotheology uses science to try to understand religion, and vice versa.
LYNNE BLUMBERG
A devotee in a state of trance is calmed by volunteers at a Buddhist temple in Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand. (Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)
“Everyone philosophizes,” writes neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg in his latest book, The Metaphysical Mind: Probing the Biology of Philosophical Thought. We all speculate about the meaning of all kinds of things, from everyday concerns about dealing with a co-worker to our ultimate beliefs about the purpose of existence.
Accompanying solutions we find to these problems, there’s a range of satisfied feelings, from “ah-ha” or light-bulb moments upon solving an everyday problem to ecstatic feelings during mystical experiences.
Since everyday and spiritual concerns are variations of the same thinking processes, Newberg thinks it’s essential to examine how people experience spirituality in order to fully understand how their brains work. Looking at the bigger questions has already provided practical applications for improving mental and physical health.
When practitioners surrender their will, activity decreases in their frontal lobes, suggesting that speech is being generated from some place other than the normal speech centers.Newberg is a pioneer in the field of neurotheology, the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences. In the 1990s, he began his work in the field by scanning what happens in people’s brains when they meditate, because it is a spiritual practice that is relatively easy to monitor.
Since then, he’s looked at around 150 brain scans, including those of Buddhists, nuns, atheists, Pentecostals speaking in tongues, and Brazilian mediums practicing psychography–the channeling of messages from the dead through handwriting.
As to what’s going on in their brains, Newberg says, “It depends to some degree on what the practice is.” Practices that involve concentrating on something over and over again, either through prayer or a mantra-based meditation, tend to activate the frontal lobes, the areas chiefly responsible for directing attention, modulating behavior, and expressing language.
Dr. Andrew Newberg/The Atlantic
In contrast, when practitioners surrender their will, such as when they speak in tongues or function as a medium, activity decreases in their frontal lobes and increases in their thalamus, the tiny brain structure that regulates the flow of incoming sensory information to many parts of the brain. This suggests that their speech is being generated from some place other than the normal speech centers.
Dr. Andrew Newberg/The Atlantic
Believers could say this proves that another entity is speaking through the practitioner, while nonbelievers would look for a neurological explanation. Newberg takes into account both perspectives. When he defines neurotheology in his book, Principles of Neurotheology, he writes, “An ardent atheist, who refuses to accept any aspect of religion as possibly correct or useful, or a devout religious person, who refuses to accept science as providing any value regarding knowledge of the world, would most likely not be considered a neurotheologian.”
Newberg believes everyone can benefit from some type of meditation practice. If one practice isn’t working for an individual, she should try something else. As a general rule, these practices lower depression, anxiety, and stress. He adds that at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where he is director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine, researchers have found that meditation can improve memory and concentration.
It’s debatable whether these practices are more effective when founded on religious or spiritual beliefs. Dr. Dean Hamer, author of the book, The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes, discovered that research subjects with a particular variation of a certain gene were more susceptible to self-transcendent, spiritual experiences.
A meditator may experience a sense of oneness with all living things because of reduced activity in the parietal lobes, which results in a blurring of the perceived lines between the meditator and other objects.In a lecture given at Marlboro College titled, “Gays, God, and Genes,” Hamer compares the effects of this variation to an enhanced capacity for natural highs. This spiritual tendency also depends on a person’s environment, according to Hamer, which can direct their innate spirituality to particular religious beliefs, and/or steer them away from religion altogether. He says that science will never replace spirituality because a reliance on facts will never have the same emotional appeal.
Newberg agrees that spiritual beliefs are influenced by a person’s genetics and environment, and that meditation practices are more effective when they reinforce a practitioner’s belief system. However, he says researchers are still investigating whether religious beliefs in general make healthier and happier people. He considers atheism to be a belief system as well, and says that a possible a mental health benefit of belonging to a religious denomination could be not just belief, but the built-in social network.
If the euphoria a person experiences during a meditation practice can’t be integrated into their preexisting belief system, these feelings may become disturbing. Newberg gave as an example a meditator who sought out a clergy member to talk about his practice and felt a bit brushed off by the cleric. When meditation practices enhance a rigid, authoritarian belief system, Newberg said they can lead to more intolerance and violence towards those of different beliefs.
In the book he co-authored with Mark Robert Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe, he writes that due to some overlap between spiritual beliefs and psychological disorders, patients with obsessive compulsive disorders often develop rigid religious beliefs.
Newberg had always wanted to be a medical doctor, but didn’t realize he could combine that with his interest in searching for answers to metaphysical questions until he attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and worked with Dr. Eugene d'Aquili, a psychiatrist whose research focused on religion.
Newberg has studied Eastern and Western thinkers to understand their differing perspectives on whether or not an objective reality exists outside of human perception. What fascinates him about mystical experiences–the goal of many meditation practices–are the reports of experiencing a higher reality that is “more real” than everyday perceptions.
Newberg said it’s “the only description that I’ve ever seen where somebody will say ‘I got beyond my brain, I got beyond my ego self, I got beyond the subjective and objective nature of the world;’ and then they see the universe, and they experience the universe in a very, very different kind of way.”
He added, “I think these experiences need to be taken very seriously. I think they tell us something about the nature of reality and how we perceive that reality.”
When Newberg scanned the brains of nuns and Buddhists undergoing mystical experiences, they reported feelings of timelessness, spacelessness, and self-transcendence.
Newberg believes a cause of these feelings is the reduced activity he saw in their parietal lobes, the orientation area of the brain responsible for perceiving three-dimensional objects in space. A meditator may experience a sense of oneness with all living things or unity because the reduced activity blurs the perceived lines between the meditator and other objects.
When the parietal lobes are damaged, patients have distorted beliefs about their own bodies and are sometimes confused about their spatial orientation to outside objects. In an example from Why We Believe What We Believe, patients think one of their own legs is not theirs, and have been found trying to throw this other leg out of their bed. In his new book, Newberg cites a study led by Dr. Brick Johnstone that found that damage to the right parietal lobe caused patients’ self-transcendent experiences to increase.
Newberg suggests in his new book that mystical experiences are described as blissful or ecstatic because they share many of the same neural pathways in the parietal and frontal lobes that are involved in sexual arousal.
To take his scans, Newburg uses functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), and single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) imaging. The bookBrainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, lists their technological limitations. The authors, Drs. Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld, write that one limitation of brain imaging is that researchers can’t make a neat map of the brain centers for different activities like phrenologists once did.
Even if most people process language expression in one particular area, this processing is highly dependent on connections to other brain activities. The brain is also plastic, so if the usual area for speech is damaged, other areas in the brain may reorganize and take over the function.
While locating the appropriate brain centers, researchers must also break down the steps involved in a seemingly unified mental task. The authors provide a simple arithmetic problem as an example. Researchers must consider that one section of the brain enables a person to visually recognize the numbers, another section registers the magnitude of the numbers, and a third section computes the sum.
If neuroscientists are trying to understand attitudes or emotions, they have to take into account more complicated steps. Furthermore, the technology isn’t advanced enough to pick up all the rapid neural changes that occur during a mental process.
A challenge has been figuring out precisely what interviewees mean when they use concepts like God or spirituality. Everyone defines God differently, even when they belong to the same religion.When e-mailed to comment specifically on Newberg’s work, Satel responded that today’s imaging is enabling researchers to make clinical inroads into dementia and other major mental illnesses, but she’s skeptical that knowing a person’s neurochemical and other physical processes will ever provide a detailed understanding of someone’s subjective beliefs.
Even with advances in technology, “we can’t predict the real world contexts in which perceptions, cognitions, or emotion will manifest. The interaction of these dimensions with environment is crucial to understanding behavioral outcomes.”
Asked about the technological challenges, Newberg said that “it’s not easy doing this research.” However, “up until the last 20 years, we’ve never been able to see anything. So it’s certainly a vast improvement over nothing, but it’s still not nearly as ideal as what we would like.”
Supplementing the scans, Newberg and his team interview meditators about their subjective experiences in order to get a better understanding of what is happening to them physically. For this method, a challenge has been figuring out precisely what interviewees mean when they use concepts like God or spirituality.
Newberg has found that everyone defines God a little bit differently even when they belong to the same religion.
When describing spiritual experiences, some report that these experiences enhance their religious beliefs, and others turn away from religion and engage in individual practices.
Given the challenges of the technology and the multitude of beliefs and practices, I asked Newberg if he ever gets overwhelmed.
"It's a little overwhelming. You sort of take one thing at a time and just proceed slowly, and I try very hard not to get too far ahead of myself or too ahead of the data," he said.
"But I guess it's somewhat of a calling for me. I've always felt like I've got to go down this path, and I'll keep going down it, and maybe someday I'll figure something out that will really be helpful to everybody."
Religion as a Product of Psychotropic Drug Use
How much of religious history was influenced by mind-altering substances?
RICHARD J. MILLER
Wikimedia
How much of religious history was influenced by mind-altering substances?
RICHARD J. MILLER
Wikimedia
The notion that hallucinogenic drugs played a significant part in the development of religion has been extensively discussed, particularly since the middle of the twentieth century. Various ideas of this type have been collected into what has become known as the entheogen theory. The word entheogen is a neologism coined in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanists (those that study the relationship between people and plants).
The literal meaning of entheogen is "that which causes God to be within an individual" and might be considered as a more accurate and academic term for popular terms such as hallucinogen orpsychedelic drug. By the term entheogen we understand the use of psychoactive substances for religious or spiritual reasons rather than for purely recreational purposes.
Perhaps one of the first things to consider is whether there is any direct evidence for the entheogenic theory of religion which derives from contemporary science. One famous example that has been widely discussed is the Marsh Chapel experiment. This experiment was run by the Harvard Psilocybin Project in the early 1960s, a research project spearheaded by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.
Leary had traveled to Mexico in 1960, where he had been introduced to the effects of hallucinogenic psilocybin-containing mushrooms and was anxious to explore the implications of the drug for psychological research.
What is the true identity of the drug used by the gods in the Hindu Vedas, or the "drug of forgetfulness" in The Odyssey?On Good Friday 1962, two groups of students received either psilocybin or niacin (a nonhallucinogenic "control" substance) on a double-blind basis prior to the service in Boston University's Marsh Chapel.
Following the service nearly the entire group receiving psilocybin reported having had a profound religious experience, compared to just a few in the control group. This result was therefore judged to have supported the entheogenic potential of hallucinogenic drug use.
Interestingly, the experiment has subsequently been repeated under somewhat different and arguably better controlled circumstances and the results were substantially the same.
***
It may be easy for some to accept the idea that entheogenic substances played a role in the genesis of religion. However, when we move from generalities to specifics we are on less firm ground.
There has been a great deal of speculation concerning the actual identity of drugs used for religious purposes in the ancient world. For example, what is the true identity of the drug soma used by the gods in the ancient Hindu Vedas?
Or the identity of nepenthe, the "drug of forgetfulness" mentioned in The Odyssey? Although it is impossible to answer such questions in a definitive scientific sense, one can speculate about the various possibilities.
For example, consider the work of R. Gordon Wasson and the story of Amanita muscaria, the "fly agaric"–certainly the world's most famous mushroom. Wasson made several journeys to Mexico to research the Mazatec people and write about the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in their ancient rituals, but his experiences there led him to tackle a different subject–the identity of the drug soma.
To understand the significance of soma one must consider some of the oldest religious texts known to man. These are the ancient Vedas, Sanskrit texts that represent the oldest Hindu scriptures.
The most ancient of these texts–the Rigveda, a collection of over a thousand hymns–was compiled in northern India around 1500 BC. A parallel but slightly later development in ancient Persia was the composition of the religious texts of Zoroastrianism, the Avesta.
People who understood the identity of the plant soma could use it to empower themselves and to communicate more effectively with the deities.In both the Rigveda and the Avesta there is frequent mention of soma (or haoma in the Avesta).
In these episodes soma is described as a plant from which a drink or potion could be produced that was consumed by the gods, giving them fantastic powers which aided them in their supernatural feats. People who understood the identity of the plant soma could use it to empower themselves and to communicate more effectively with the deities.
Consider the following from the Rigveda:
We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the
Gods discovered.
Now what may foeman's malice do to harm us? What, O Immortal, mortal man's deception?
Heaven above does not equal one half of me.
Have I been drinking Soma?
In my glory I have passed beyond earth and sky.
Have I been drinking Soma?
I will pick up the earth and put it here or there.
Have I been drinking Soma?
But what actually was soma? Have I been drinking Soma?
In my glory I have passed beyond earth and sky.
Have I been drinking Soma?
I will pick up the earth and put it here or there.
Have I been drinking Soma?
There were suggestions that it was ephedra or possibly cannabis, but Gordon Wasson concluded that it was Amanita muscaria. Amanita muscaria or the "fly agaric" is a large mushroom that is instantly recognizable.
This is due to its strikingly attractive appearance and its wide use in popular culture. It has often appeared in animated films (such as the Nutcracker scene in Fantasia, or in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), as well as being used in numerous types of kitschy household products and for illustrations in children's stories.
There are numerous details provided in the Rigveda suggesting how soma was prepared and used, which Wasson interpreted as indicating that Amanita muscaria was the true source of the drug. However, the most interesting and influential evidence that he considered originates from reports concerning the use of Amanita muscaria in the eighteenth century.
In particular, in 1736 a Swedish colonel named Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published an account of the behavior of the Koryak people living in the Kamchatka region of Siberia. Von Strahlenberg had fought in the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia, was captured by the Russians, and was incarcerated for twelve years.
It was observed that the drinking of drug-containing urine could continue for up to five cycles passing from one individual to another before the urine lost its capacity for intoxication.
Among other things he described the use of Amanita muscaria as an intoxicant by the local people. He also noted the following unusual behavior: "The poorer Sort, who cannot afford to lay in a Store of these Mushrooms, post themselves, on these Ocassions, round the Huts of the Rich, and watch the Opportunity of the Guests coming down to make Water; And then hold a Wooden Bowl to receive the Urine, which they drink off greedily, as having still some Virtue of the Mushroom in it, and by this way they also get Drunk."
Von Strahlenberg's observations on urine drinking and other behaviors were considered extremely sensational when they were published in Stockholm and soon thereafter in other parts of Europe. Indeed, they were used to satirical effect in the writings of the English playwright and novelist Oliver Goldsmith who imagined the consequences of introducing such habits into London society.
The use of Amanita muscaria by numerous Siberian tribes, as well as their habit of urine drinking to conserve the mushrooms' effects, was subsequently confirmed by other numerous travelers over the years.
Several 18th-and-19th-century reports described the use of Amanita muscaria by different Siberian tribes, and particularly by witch doctors or shamans who used it to achieve "an exalted state to be able to talk to the gods." Interestingly, it was observed that the drinking of drug-containing urine could continue for up to five cycles passing from one individual to another before the urine lost its capacity for intoxication.
This was apparently often done because of the relative scarcity of the mushroom, and so preserving its hallucinogenic properties in this way had important practical benefits.
The use of hallucinogenic mushrooms, presumably Amanita muscaria, by the inhabitants of Siberia appears to be a very ancient practice.
This is suggested by the discovery of several Stone or Bronze Age rock carvings (petroglyphs) in 1967 in northern Siberia near the Arctic Ocean. These seem to represent mushrooms and women with mushrooms growing out of their heads. This is an area inhabited by the Chukchi people, who were one of the subjects of the 18th-and 19th-century reports on Siberian mushroom use, so it may be supposed that they had used mushrooms continuously over many years.
Indeed, the use of Amanita muscaria for its hallucinogenic actions continues in Siberia to this day, in spite of attempts by the previous communist government to stamp it out by resorting to measures such as dropping shamans out of helicopters.
Wikimedia
The precise psychological effects produced by Amanita muscaria are reported to vary a great deal depending on the individual and the social context. However, one interesting property noted in these early reports was a tendency to disturb the scale of visual perceptions so that a tiny crack in the ground might appear like a giant chasm.
In particular, this was noted by the British mycologist and writer Mordecai Cubitt Cooke. Although he was responsible for writing books with riveting titles such as Rust, Smut, Mildew and Mold, Cooke also wrote one of the earliest books on psychotropic drugs, The Seven Sisters of Sleep, in which he described some of the properties of tobacco, opium, hashish, betel, coca, belladonna, and the fly agaric.
Such books and observations were widely read and discussed in Victorian society. One story is that the book was read by the Reverend Charles Dodgson–better known to the world as Lewis Carroll–and so appeared as the mushroom which Alice could eat to alter her size at will in Alice in Wonderland.
***
The influence of Wasson’s writing can be seen in the subsequent development of an entire sub-genre of entheogenic literature, much of which has little to recommend it from a scholarly point of view. The idea is that if Amanita muscaria is identical with soma, which had a strong influence on the development of Hinduism, then why not every other religion as well?
Pride of place here goes to John Marco Allegro's 1970 publication, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.
Allegro considered the possibility that ancient peoples would have been particularly concerned with two things–procreation and the supply of food. He suggested that they may have viewed rain as a type of heavenly semen that then impregnated the earth, allowing the growth of crops and the success of the harvest. Plants absorbed this holy semen–and some plants more than others. Amanita muscaria was such a plant that, when consumed, allowed a person to commune more closely with God.
According to Allegro, the Bible is really just a series of myths that describe the secrets of the Amanita muscaria fertility cult rather than real people.Allegro also suggested that the information concerning the use of Amanita muscaria as a religious fertility sacrament was subject to great secrecy, the provenance of a priestly sect.
He speculated that these practices developed very early on in human history, even prior to the time when writing first came into existence during the ancient Sumerian civilization. He further suggested that the existence of the mushroom was secretly encoded in the use of particular Sumerian word roots.
This secret encoding of the mushroom fertility cult down through the ages eventually led to the development of the concept of Jesus to encapsulate the identity of Amanita muscaria around the time of the sacking of the second temple by the Romans.
Thus, according to Allegro, Jesus never actually existed. He purported to demonstrate, using philological analysis of the structure of the ancient Sumerian language, that the name Jesus actually meant something along the lines of "semen" and that Christ meant something like "giant erect mushroom penis." According to Allegro, the Bible (and the New Testament in particular) is really just a series of myths that describe the secrets of the Amanita muscaria fertility cult rather than real people.
However, as fate would have it the stories caught on in a big way and their mythical origins were forgotten. The "Jesus myth" rapidly spread and became Christianity. Although Allegro's reasoning was mostly philological, he did occasionally refer to the other types of evidence such as the famous fresco in the Abbaye de Plaincourault in France that appears to show Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with the serpent coiled around a giant Amanita muscaria.
It was reasoned that this fresco, painted around 1290, gives credence to the idea that the secret mushroom fertility cult was still in existence in the Middle Ages.
Allegro's hypotheses were very interesting and his arguments were certainly consistent. However, they were not well received.
Many Christians took exception to the fact that he believed that Jesus never existed and was really just a code word for a giant phallus-shaped magic mushroom. Allegro was generally excoriated in the press and in many academic circles.
Nevertheless, his work did strike a chord with some individuals and many subsequent publications have endeavored to describe the role of Amanita muscaria in the genesis of virtually every religion known to man.
I'm paranoid about that stuff though ever since I was in the sleeper compartment of a moving truck and we were smoking it out and somebody gave me some unknown 'candy' and I was dumb enough or too stoned to worry about it. Holy shitballs never been so high in my life.
The Science of Energy and Thought. Subconscious Mind Power
A scientific approach explaining the power of thought. We have all heard before, 'Your thoughts create your reality'.
Well, new quantum physics studies support this idea.
[video=youtube;FeFuc-qFKoA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FeFuc-qFKoA[/video]
Learn about recent research about how the mind can influence the behavior of subatomic particles and physical matter. If you enjoy the video, please pass it on to friends and family. The power of our thoughts and feelings allows us to manifest our desires.
The challenge is in harnessing our ever shifting perspectives so that we can focus upon the thoughts that can make a positive difference. Working with our thoughts consciously allows our awareness and experience of life to unfold its potential.
The key is to be open to change and express ourselves from a higher perspective on life. Our past is but a memory and the future is in our imagination, right now in the present moment is our true point of power.
Dr. Joseph Murphy's book on the power of the Subconscious Mind is a practical guide to understand and learn to use the incredible powers you possess within you.
[video=youtube;DZGINaRUEkU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DZGINaRUEkU[/video]
“By choosing your thoughts, and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the quality of your Light. You determine the effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experience of your life.” -Gary Zukav
A scientific approach explaining the power of thought. We have all heard before, 'Your thoughts create your reality'.
Well, new quantum physics studies support this idea.
[video=youtube;FeFuc-qFKoA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FeFuc-qFKoA[/video]
Learn about recent research about how the mind can influence the behavior of subatomic particles and physical matter. If you enjoy the video, please pass it on to friends and family. The power of our thoughts and feelings allows us to manifest our desires.
The challenge is in harnessing our ever shifting perspectives so that we can focus upon the thoughts that can make a positive difference. Working with our thoughts consciously allows our awareness and experience of life to unfold its potential.
The key is to be open to change and express ourselves from a higher perspective on life. Our past is but a memory and the future is in our imagination, right now in the present moment is our true point of power.
Dr. Joseph Murphy's book on the power of the Subconscious Mind is a practical guide to understand and learn to use the incredible powers you possess within you.
[video=youtube;DZGINaRUEkU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DZGINaRUEkU[/video]
“By choosing your thoughts, and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the quality of your Light. You determine the effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experience of your life.” -Gary Zukav
[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION]
Check this out...
http://thespiritscience.net/2014/06/06/website-made-to-induce-meditation-and-its-free/
Check this out...
http://thespiritscience.net/2014/06/06/website-made-to-induce-meditation-and-its-free/
ASCEND ACADEMY: THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF REALITY
Welcome to the first issue of Ascend Academy.
Brace yourselves, we are about to delve into the mother load of all spiritual concepts.
This article reveals the meaning behind the 7 Hermetic Principles of truth, directly from their source, The Kybalion.
I am about to present some very powerful information to you that may stir up a lot of discussion, and possibly opposition.
These seven principles are considered to be ABSOLUTE TRUTHS, and many ancient and current hermeticists, mystics, philosophers and so called enlightened beings regard it’s application to be THE Master key path to understanding the self and it’s relation to all that is.If you feel within yourself that you are not ready to handle this information, feel free to come back and read when you are.
These teachings have been kept secret for thousands of years by the Hermetic tradition, only being passed between master and initiate of countless different occult societies across human history. This was out of fear that this information would be used by those who did not quite understand it’s significance, or who had selfish intentions and lack of wisdom.
In 1912, it was published by an anonymous entity known as the Three Initiates(?) and has since been put into public domain, now widely available online.I believe that this knowledge should be widespread so that we can begin implementing and spreading it’s profound wisdom and applications for the ascension of mankind as a whole.It is clear that the ancient masters did not wish for these principles to be ‘crystallized into creeds by any country or religious sect’.
So while viewing this information, HAVE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE, and consider this to be a pragmatic philosophy for understanding the spiritual reality.The dense quotations I’ve placed describing these principles are directly from the kybalion.org and I suggest you give that a read after viewing this article if you wish to go even deeper. I will also try to break down what each principle means to us in our day to day lives as well as in relevance to our spiritual practice.
I hope this knowledge resonates! (THIS ARTICLE IS QUITE LONG; Taking breaks in between every other principle is recommended!)
THE 7 HERMETIC PRINCIPLES
“The Principles of Truth are Seven; he who knows these, understandingly, possesses the Magic Key before whose touch all the Doors of the Temple fly open.” -The Kybalion
THE PRINCIPLE OF MENTALISM.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE.
THE PRINCIPLE OF VIBRATION.
THE PRINCIPLE OF POLARITY.
THE PRINCIPLE OF RHYTHM.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT.
THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER.
The Principle of MentalismTHE PRINCIPLE OF MENTALISM.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE.
THE PRINCIPLE OF VIBRATION.
THE PRINCIPLE OF POLARITY.
THE PRINCIPLE OF RHYTHM.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT.
THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER.
‘This Principle embodies the truth that “All is Mind.” It explains that THE ALL (which is the Substantial Reality underlying all the outward manifestations and appearances which we know under the terms of “The Material Universe”; the “Phenomena of Life”; “Matter”; “Energy”; and, in short, all that is apparent to our material senses) is SPIRIT, which in itself is UNKNOWABLE and UNDEFINABLE, but which may be considered and thought of as AN UNIVERSAL, INFINITE, LIVING MIND.
It also explains that all the phenomenal world or universe is simply a Mental Creation of THE ALL, subject to the Laws of Created Things, and that the universe, as a whole, and in its parts or units, has its existence in the Mind of THE ALL, in which Mind we “live and move and have our being.”‘ — The Kybalion
It also explains that all the phenomenal world or universe is simply a Mental Creation of THE ALL, subject to the Laws of Created Things, and that the universe, as a whole, and in its parts or units, has its existence in the Mind of THE ALL, in which Mind we “live and move and have our being.”‘ — The Kybalion
The All, or the Universal Infinite Living Mind is the notion which we consider God or Source Consciousness, and because we are within this infinite mind, it pervades the entirety of every single space, physical or non physical.
In essence, each person or form of consciousness is equivalent to a dream figure in the lucid dream of God. I understand this is a large concept to swallow, bear with me!
If you have ever lucid dreamed, you would know that when you ask a person in your dream who they are or what they represent, they will actually tell you that they are some facet of your consciousness. You would also know that a lot of times your dream figures will tell you that their experience is not a dream at all. Some are more or less aware of their roles in your psychological make up.
Likewise, each one of us is an aspect of God’s mind in that same way; a symbol of a complex concept being expressed in a microcosmic form. For those who have not lucid dreamed, think of it as this whole universe is an organism, matter and energy are the cells, and we as forms of consciousness are the neurons.
Coming into this knowledge is the most fundamental key to understanding and expanding our consciousness as well as traversing the higher planes of reality.
We must understand that we, and literally everything and everyone else, IS Spirit, or fractal facets of it’s consciousness.
It is important that we apply this understanding in our daily interactions with others, understand that all other beings are simply another aspect of an infinite, complex, and extremely variant consciousness, and are just as much of an expression of it as you are no matter what form they take. Allow yourself to be without judgement towards others with this understanding.
Eventually this will cultivate a mindset of unconditional love towards all life.
The Principle of Correspondence
‘This Principle embodies the truth that there is always a Correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of Being and Life.
The old Hermetic axiom ran in these words: “As above, so below; as below, so above.” And the grasping of this Principle gives one the means of solving many a dark paradox, and hidden secret of Nature.
There are planes beyond our knowing, but when we apply the Principle of Correspondence to them we are able to understand much that would otherwise be unknowable to us. This Principle is of universal application and manifestation, on the various planes of the material, mental, and spiritual universe – it is an Universal Law.’ — The Kybalion
With this principle we become aware of the fractal nature of the universe in which a similar pattern of phenomena repeats across all scales of existence.The old Hermetic axiom ran in these words: “As above, so below; as below, so above.” And the grasping of this Principle gives one the means of solving many a dark paradox, and hidden secret of Nature.
There are planes beyond our knowing, but when we apply the Principle of Correspondence to them we are able to understand much that would otherwise be unknowable to us. This Principle is of universal application and manifestation, on the various planes of the material, mental, and spiritual universe – it is an Universal Law.’ — The Kybalion
This phenomena can be synonymous with the musical note octaves on a piano, in that each note is repeated in the next set or dimensional plane with the same vibrational quality but on a higher frequency.
Usually, interaction with one element may cause a resonant reaction on higher or lower planes, as certain qualities in parallel planes correspond to one another like musical chords. This applies to sound, color, thoughts, emotions, chakras, and all forms of spectrums that exist throughout the universe. This is a great segue into our next principle:
The Principle of Vibration
‘This Principle embodies the truth that “everything is in motion”; “everything vibrates”; “nothing is at rest”; facts which Modern Science endorses, and which each new scientific discovery tends to verify.
And yet this Hermetic Principle was enunciated thousands of years ago, by the Masters of Ancient Egypt. This Principle explains that the differences between different manifestations of Matter, Energy, Mind, and even Spirit, result largely from varying rates of Vibration.
From THE ALL, which is Pure Spirit, down to the grossest form of Matter, all is in vibration – the higher the vibration, the higher the position in the scale. The vibration of Spirit is at such an infinite rate of intensity and rapidity that it is practically at rest – just as a rapidly moving wheel seems to be motionless.
And at the other end of the scale, there are gross forms of matter whose vibrations are so low as to seem at rest. ‘ — The Kybalion
Understanding vibrational frequency and it’s application in our spirituality is crucial.And yet this Hermetic Principle was enunciated thousands of years ago, by the Masters of Ancient Egypt. This Principle explains that the differences between different manifestations of Matter, Energy, Mind, and even Spirit, result largely from varying rates of Vibration.
From THE ALL, which is Pure Spirit, down to the grossest form of Matter, all is in vibration – the higher the vibration, the higher the position in the scale. The vibration of Spirit is at such an infinite rate of intensity and rapidity that it is practically at rest – just as a rapidly moving wheel seems to be motionless.
And at the other end of the scale, there are gross forms of matter whose vibrations are so low as to seem at rest. ‘ — The Kybalion
When we are dealing with negative thoughts, emotions, and beliefs, we must grasp that these things are dense vibrations within our minds, keeping us in a low vibratory rate of consciousness.
If they are vibrating, they are emitting sound, light, or rippling out in some form of wave. If we are constantly emitting these sorts of vibrations, our outside world, which is essentially still MIND, will resonate with our mental experience, causing those same sorts of low vibrational experiences to manifest physically.
In the same way, if we are radiating positive, loving, and blissful forms of vibration, our reality will follow suite.
Essentially, everything in existence interacts with it’s components through rates of vibration.
Dimensions, in a simplistic way of understanding, are different octaves of vibration, in which the consciousness inhabiting those octaves perceive things relevant to their mental state, perspectives, beliefs, and level of awareness.
This is why many of us cannot see the astral plane or things like ghosts, auras, and spiritual entities, because we are not vibrating at the same rate as them and cannot resonate with those experiences.
Our minds are like radio tuners for different channels of experience.
We can turn the dial by shifting our attention and intention towards different actions, different thoughts, different mental states and different beliefs about our reality. Reading this right now is essentially tuning you to the frequency of these higher planes, expanding your awareness to allow your mind to resonate with their concepts, and thus allowing you to hold consciousness within them.
The Principle of Polarity
‘This Principle embodies the truth that “everything is dual”; “everything has two poles”; “everything has its pair of opposites,” all of which were old Hermetic axioms.
It explains the old paradoxes, that have perplexed so many, which have been stated as follows: “Thesis and anti-thesis are identical in nature, but different in degree”; “opposites are the same, differing only in degree”; “the pairs of opposites may be reconciled”; “extremes meet”; “everything is and isn’t, at the same time”; “all truths are but half-truths”; “every truth is half-false”; “there are two sides to everything,” etc., etc., etc.
It explains that in everything there are two poles, or opposite aspects, and that “opposites” are really only the two extremes of the same thing, with many varying degrees between them. To illustrate: Heat and Cold, although “opposites,” are really the same thing, the differences consisting merely of degrees of the same thing. Look at your thermometer and see if you can discover where “heat” terminates and “cold” begins!
There is no such thing as “absolute heat” or “absolute cold” – the two terms “heat” and “cold” simply indicate varying degrees of the same thing, and that “same thing” which manifests as “heat” and “cold” is merely a form, variety, and rate of Vibration. So “heat” and “cold” are simply the “two poles” of that which we call “Heat” – and the phenomena attendant thereupon are manifestations of the Principle of Polarity.
The same Principle manifests in the case of “Light and Darkness,” which are the same thing, the difference consisting of varying degrees between the two poles of the phenomena. Where does “darkness” leave off, and “light” begin? What is the difference between “Large and Small”? Between “Hard and Soft”?
Between “Black and White”? Between “Sharp and Dull”? Between “Noise and Quiet”? Between “High and Low”? Between “Positive and Negative”? The Principle of Polarity explains these paradoxes, and no other Principle can supersede it.’ — The Kybalion
It explains the old paradoxes, that have perplexed so many, which have been stated as follows: “Thesis and anti-thesis are identical in nature, but different in degree”; “opposites are the same, differing only in degree”; “the pairs of opposites may be reconciled”; “extremes meet”; “everything is and isn’t, at the same time”; “all truths are but half-truths”; “every truth is half-false”; “there are two sides to everything,” etc., etc., etc.
It explains that in everything there are two poles, or opposite aspects, and that “opposites” are really only the two extremes of the same thing, with many varying degrees between them. To illustrate: Heat and Cold, although “opposites,” are really the same thing, the differences consisting merely of degrees of the same thing. Look at your thermometer and see if you can discover where “heat” terminates and “cold” begins!
There is no such thing as “absolute heat” or “absolute cold” – the two terms “heat” and “cold” simply indicate varying degrees of the same thing, and that “same thing” which manifests as “heat” and “cold” is merely a form, variety, and rate of Vibration. So “heat” and “cold” are simply the “two poles” of that which we call “Heat” – and the phenomena attendant thereupon are manifestations of the Principle of Polarity.
The same Principle manifests in the case of “Light and Darkness,” which are the same thing, the difference consisting of varying degrees between the two poles of the phenomena. Where does “darkness” leave off, and “light” begin? What is the difference between “Large and Small”? Between “Hard and Soft”?
Between “Black and White”? Between “Sharp and Dull”? Between “Noise and Quiet”? Between “High and Low”? Between “Positive and Negative”? The Principle of Polarity explains these paradoxes, and no other Principle can supersede it.’ — The Kybalion
With the concept that extreme opposites are simply the poles of the same thing, we can cease to have a dualistic perspective and instead view these phenomena as spectrums or sliding scales of vibration. Once we understand that, we can begin to use what is called Mental Alchemy or Mental Transmutation.
Unlike the traditional view of Alchemy in which you change different base or undesirable metals into Gold, we polarize the negative thoughts, emotions, and mental states into positive ones (The prior definition being a hidden allegory for the true meaning).
This is one particular field that I will be continuing to study and give you my interpretation of so that you can all benefit. It will probably be one of our last topics discussed in this series, as it can profoundly change our perspective and our experience and must be used with sufficient knowledge.
The Principle of Rhythm
‘This Principle embodies the truth that in everything there is manifested a measured motion, to and fro; a flow and inflow; a swing backward and forward; a pendulum-like movement; a tide-like ebb and flow; a high-tide and low-tide; between the two poles which exist in accordance with the Principle of Polarity described a moment ago.
There is always an action and a reaction; an advance and a retreat a rising and a sinking. This is in the affairs of the Universe, suns, worlds, men, animals, mind, energy, and matter. This law is manifest in the creation and destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; in the life of all things; and finally in the mental states of Man (and it is with this latter that the Hermetists find the understanding of the Principle most important).
The Hermetists have grasped this Principle, finding its universal application, and have also discovered certain means to overcome its effects in themselves by the use of the appropriate formulas and methods. They apply the Mental Law of Neutralization.
They cannot annul the Principle, or Cause it to cease its operation, but they have learned how to escape its effects upon themselves to a certain degree depending upon the Mastery of the Principle. They have learned how to USE it, instead of being USED BY it. In this and similar methods, consist the Art of the Hermetists.
The Master of Hermetics polarizes himself at the point at which he desires to rest, and then neutralizes the Rhythmic swing of the pendulum which would tend to carry him to the other pole.’ — The Kybalion
There is always an action and a reaction; an advance and a retreat a rising and a sinking. This is in the affairs of the Universe, suns, worlds, men, animals, mind, energy, and matter. This law is manifest in the creation and destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; in the life of all things; and finally in the mental states of Man (and it is with this latter that the Hermetists find the understanding of the Principle most important).
The Hermetists have grasped this Principle, finding its universal application, and have also discovered certain means to overcome its effects in themselves by the use of the appropriate formulas and methods. They apply the Mental Law of Neutralization.
They cannot annul the Principle, or Cause it to cease its operation, but they have learned how to escape its effects upon themselves to a certain degree depending upon the Mastery of the Principle. They have learned how to USE it, instead of being USED BY it. In this and similar methods, consist the Art of the Hermetists.
The Master of Hermetics polarizes himself at the point at which he desires to rest, and then neutralizes the Rhythmic swing of the pendulum which would tend to carry him to the other pole.’ — The Kybalion
Rhythm is a direct result of the nature of vibration, as the oscillation between two poles in any given scale provides an environment in which energy can shift from one state to the next and back again with equal proportion.
This teaches us of the importance of balance in the universe, because without rhythmic proportion, we are unable to measure and identify the different states that energy can move between and how they directly relate to one another.
Another way to look at it is that this principle recognizes the heartbeat or the symphony of the universe. If we learn to ride these innate universal rhythms consciously, we can begin to work in harmony with the universal energies rather than have them work against us, being apart of the music or flowing with the current to achieve our conscious expansion.
I have personally understood and used this principle to polarize into my higher self for long periods of time while denying my ego self reign over my thoughts, but this is far from mastering the principle. As we delve deeper into the series, we will explore this principle’s application together and maybe new ways of ‘rhythm riding’ can be unearthed.
The Principle of Causation
‘This Principle embodies the fact that there is a Cause for every Effect; an Effect from every Cause.
It explains that: “Everything Happens according to Law”; that nothing ever “merely happens”; that there is no such thing as Chance; that while there are various planes of Cause and Effect, the higher dominating the lower planes, still nothing ever entirely escapes the Law.
The Hermetists understand the art and methods of rising above the ordinary plane of Cause and Effect, to a certain degree, and by mentally rising to a higher plane they become Causers instead of Effects. The masses of people are carried along, obedient to environment; the wills and desires of others stronger than themselves; heredity; suggestion; and other outward causes moving them about like pawns on the Chessboard of Life.
But the Masters, rising to the plane above, dominate their moods, characters, qualities, and powers, as well as the environment surrounding them, and become Movers instead of pawns. They help to PLAY THE GAME OF LIFE, instead of being played and moved about by other wills and environment.
They USE the Principle instead of being its tools. The Masters obey the Causation of the higher planes, but they help to RULE on their own plane. In this statement there is condensed a wealth of Hermetic knowledge – let him read who can.’ — The Kybalion
I think that this principle is common sense for most, but many are not aware that it applies on and connects all dimensions of reality.It explains that: “Everything Happens according to Law”; that nothing ever “merely happens”; that there is no such thing as Chance; that while there are various planes of Cause and Effect, the higher dominating the lower planes, still nothing ever entirely escapes the Law.
The Hermetists understand the art and methods of rising above the ordinary plane of Cause and Effect, to a certain degree, and by mentally rising to a higher plane they become Causers instead of Effects. The masses of people are carried along, obedient to environment; the wills and desires of others stronger than themselves; heredity; suggestion; and other outward causes moving them about like pawns on the Chessboard of Life.
But the Masters, rising to the plane above, dominate their moods, characters, qualities, and powers, as well as the environment surrounding them, and become Movers instead of pawns. They help to PLAY THE GAME OF LIFE, instead of being played and moved about by other wills and environment.
They USE the Principle instead of being its tools. The Masters obey the Causation of the higher planes, but they help to RULE on their own plane. In this statement there is condensed a wealth of Hermetic knowledge – let him read who can.’ — The Kybalion
With this in mind we can begin to see how the universe came into being.
The first cause,the Infinite Living Mind or Source, created a set of causes via VIBRATION to allow many ripples of subsequent events to intertwine and unfold. The causes on higher planes began manifesting effects on the lower planes, and our physical universe eventually unfolded in this way.
It is easy to now view the phenomena of this world as having specific serendipitous purpose, even if we are not able to understand what exactly causes them. Synchronicity is a prominent example of higher plane causation in action, where almost divinely timed experiences manifest in peculiar patterns.
This principle is symbolically (as well as mathematically) represented in the construction of the Flower of Life geometry and it’s successive forms, as these are higher dimensional blueprints for the denser manifestations of matter to use as templates.
Throughout the series, we will begin to work in accordance with these causes of higher planes, and create our own, rather than be subjected to the causes of this one.
This is so we may become Movers rather than Pawns in this so called Chessboard of Life. In our next issue, we will dive further into this topic, exploring sacred geometry and it’s use as a form of mental causation and manifestation.
The Principle of Gender
‘This Principle embodies the truth that there is GENDER manifested in everything – the Masculine and Feminine Principles ever at work.
This is true not only of the Physical Plane, but of the Mental and even the Spiritual Planes. On the Physical Plane, the Principle manifests as SEX, on the higher planes it takes higher forms, but the Principle is ever the same.
No creation, physical, mental or spiritual, is possible without this Principle. An understanding of its laws will throw light on many a subject that has perplexed the minds of men. The Principle of Gender works ever in the direction of generation, regeneration, and creation.
Everything, and every person, contains the two Elements or Principles, or this great Principle, within it, him or her. Every Male thing has the Female Element also; every Female contains also the Male Principle. If you would understand the philosophy of Mental and Spiritual Creation, Generation, and Re-generation, you must understand and study this Hermetic Principle.
It contains the solution of many mysteries of Life.’ — The Kybalion
This is true not only of the Physical Plane, but of the Mental and even the Spiritual Planes. On the Physical Plane, the Principle manifests as SEX, on the higher planes it takes higher forms, but the Principle is ever the same.
No creation, physical, mental or spiritual, is possible without this Principle. An understanding of its laws will throw light on many a subject that has perplexed the minds of men. The Principle of Gender works ever in the direction of generation, regeneration, and creation.
Everything, and every person, contains the two Elements or Principles, or this great Principle, within it, him or her. Every Male thing has the Female Element also; every Female contains also the Male Principle. If you would understand the philosophy of Mental and Spiritual Creation, Generation, and Re-generation, you must understand and study this Hermetic Principle.
It contains the solution of many mysteries of Life.’ — The Kybalion
The reason the Masculine and Feminine Principles are so integral to creation is because Source itself is a perfect union of these two concepts.
All created things are but variations of expression, intensity, and vibration between these two forms of consciousness. The Male principle is the notion of Subjective Self or the internal, causal, and intangible nature. The Female principle is the notion of Objective Self, or the external, receptive, and form of that inner nature.
Male is also the force of giving or push, and Female subsequently is the force of taking or pull. Do not confuse these definitions with gender discrimination. We as human beings are also a union of these two principles, as we possess an internal nature and an external form. Even our minds are split into conscious (male) and subconscious/unconscious (female) and our brains into left brain (male) and right brain (female). For more on this check out Spirit Science episode 4.
You’re probably wondering why Jordan says that Male energy is Focussed and that the Female energy is Creative/Random. That is just another way this principle manifests in the human psyche, and there are a multitude of others. There is an even deeper level of understanding for the principle of Gender that will be revealed in the coming articles, so stay tuned.
Now, if we wish to ascend as human beings, the goal is to balance these energies within ourselves, allowing us to resonate with that same balance present in the Infinite Living Mind, giving way to conscious freedom. This balance is largely achieved through, you guessed it, Unconditional Love, as this is an energy of freely giving and taking with all life through understanding that, as a fractal of Source consciousness, the external universe is also YOUR external form.
And there you have it, the 7 Hermetic Principles. Study and Mastery of these fundamental laws will bring great wisdom as well as unbelievable power and freedom.
UPDATED: 300 Documentaries To Expand Your Consciousness
(by clicking the above title it will take you to more as well)
[1] LIFE IN THE BIOSPHERE
Explore the wonder and interconnectedness of the biosphere through the magic of technology.
Home
How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth
The Magical Forest
Ants: Nature’s Secret Power
Mt. Everest: How It Was Made
Mariana’s Trench: The Deepest Spot On Earth
Natural World: The Andes
Shining Mountains: The Rockies
Grand Canyon: How It Was Made
The Intelligence of Plants
[2] CREATIVITY AND DESIGN:
Learn about all the amazing things that people create with their imaginations.
Everything Is A Remix
The Creative Brain: How Insight Works
Design: The New Business
PressPausePlay: Art and Creativity in the Digital Age
Infamy: A Graffiti Documentary
Influencers: How Trends and Creativity Become Contagious
RIP: A Remix Manifesto
Design: e² – Sustainable Architecture
The Genius Of Design
[3] THE EDUCATION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX:
The modern school where young minds are moulded into standardized citizens by the state.
The College Conspiracy
Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk
The Forbidden Education
Default: The Student Loan Documentary
College Inc.
Education For A Sustainable Future
Networked Society: The Future of Learning
The Ultimate History Lesson With John Taylor Gatto
The Education System in Communist China
The War On Kids
[4] THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION:
The Internet is now the driving force behind change and innovation in the world.
The Age of Big Data
Resonance: Beings of Frequency
Life In A Day
Networked Society: On The Brink
Us Now: Social Media and Mass Collaboration
WikiRebels: The WikiLeaks Story
The Virtual Revolution: The Cost of Free
How Hackers Changed the World
[5] A NEW CIVILIZATION:
We are at the dawn of a new golden age of human inventiveness.
THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take?
Zeitgeist III: Moving Forward
Paradise or Oblivion
2012: Time For Change
The Crisis of Civilization
The Collective Evolution II
The Quickening: Awakening As One
2012 Crossing Over: A New Beginning
Collapse
The Awakening
[6] POLITICS:
Explore the politics of power and control and how it affects your life.
Owned and Operated
UnGrip
The Power Principle
The True Story of Che Guevara
Earth Days
Capitalism Is The Crisis
WikiLeaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower
The Putin System
The War On Democracy
Rise Like Lions: Occupy Wall Street and the Seeds of Revolution
[7] BIOGRAPHIES OF GENIUS:
The biographies of modern geniuses who pushed humanity forward.
Isaac Newton: The Last Magician
The Unlimited Energy of Nikola Tesla
The Missing Secrets Of Nikola Tesla
Richard Feynman: No Ordinary Genius
How Albert Einstein’s Brain Worked
The Extraordinary Genius of Albert Einstein
Leonardo Da Vinci: The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything
[8] WAR:
War is history’s oldest racket for stealing from the powerless and redistributing resources to the powerful.
Psywar: The Real Battlefield Is Your Mind
The Secret History of 9/11
Robot Armies in the Future
The Never Ending War in Afghanistan
Shadow Company: Mercenaries In The Modern World
Why We Fight
The Fog Of War
The Oil Factor: Behind The War On Terror
[9] ECONOMICS:
Learn about the financial system works and how people and societies are enslaved through debt.
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of The World
The One Percent
Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street
The Last Days Of Lehman Brothers
The Four Horsemen
Inside Job: The Biggest Robbery In Human History
Capitalism A Love Story
Money and Life
[10] DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
Profiles of the entrepreneurs who used technology to change the world.
The Life Of A Young Entrepreneur
Profile: Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Profile: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
Starting-Up in America
Steve Jobs: One Last Thing
Steve Jobs: The Billion Dollar Hippy
Elon Musk: Risk Takers
The Story of Twitter
[11] SPORTS:
Watch the inspiring stories of amazing athletes.
Fearless: The Jeb Corliss Story
Carts of Darkness
Usain Bolt: The World’s Fastest Man
Wayne Gretzky: The Life and Times
Mike Tyson: Beyond the Glory
Birdmen
The Legacy Of Michael Jordan
We Ride: The Story of Snowboarding
[12] TECHNOLOGY:
Find out more about the impact of exponential growth and the approaching Singularity.
Ray Kurzweil: The Transcendent Man
How Robots Will Change the World
Human 2.0
Trance-Formation: The Future of Humanity
The Venus Project: Future By Design
Bionics, Transhumanism And The End Of Evolution
The Singularity Is Near
Car Technology Of The Future
[13] ORIGINS OF RELIGION:
Explore the original religious experience of mankind at the dawn of civilization.
Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within
Manifesting the Mind: Footprints of the Shaman
Ancient Egypt and The Alternative Story of Mankind’s Origins
The Hidden Knowledge of the Supernatural
Re-Awaken: Open Your Heart, Expand Your Mind
Shamans of the Amazon
The Root of All Evil: The God Delusion
Ancient Knowledge
The Naked Truth
Before Babel: In Search of the First Language
[14] WESTERN RELIGION:
The fascinating history of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Secret Quest: The Path of the Christian Gnostics
The Secret Gate of Eden
Forbidden Knowledge: Lost Secrets of the Bible
Banned From The Bible: Secrets Of The Apostles
The Road To Armageddon
Muhammad: The Legacy of a Prophet
A Complete History of God
Gnosis: The Untold History of the Bible
[15] EASTERN RELIGION:
Expand your mind by also studying the entirely different religious worldviews of the East.
Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds
The Life Of The Buddha
The Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World
Mysteries of the Cosmic OM: Ancient Vedic Science
Where Science and Buddhism Meet
The Yogis of Tibet
Taj Mahal: Secrets To Blow Your Mind
Light at the Edge of the World: Tibetan Science of the Mind
Myths of Mankind: The Mahabharata
Ayurveda: The Art of Being
[16] CONSCIOUSNESS:
Learn about the basic unity of existence and the miracle of consciousness.
Athene’s Theory of Everything
Theory of Everything: GOD, Devils, Dimensions, Dragons & The Illusion of Reality
The God Within: Physics, Cosmology and Consciousness
5 Gateways: The Five Key Expansions of Consciousness
Return to the Source: Philosophy and The Matrix
The Holographic Universe
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
Kymatica
Neuroplasticity: The Brain That Changes Itself
[17] MYSTERIES:
Indiana Jones-style explorations into the unsolved mysteries of the past.
Alchemy: Sacred Secrets Revealed
The Day Before Disclosure
The Pyramid Code
The Secret Design of the Egyptian Pyramids
Decoding the Past: Secrets of the Dollar Bill
Origins of the Da Vinci Code
Forbidden Knowledge: Ancient Medical Secrets
Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings: The New Atlantis
Secrets in Plain Sight
[18] MASS CULTURE:
Learn about how our thoughts and opinions are influenced by mass culture.
The Century of the Self
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
The Power Of Nightmares
Starsuckers: A Culture Obsessed By Celebrity
Human Resources: Social Engineering in the 20th Century
Obey: The Death of the Liberal Class
Motivational Guru: The Story of Tony Robbins
Bob Marley: Freedom Road
Radiant City
[19] CORPORATE MEDIA:
Discover how the mass media and advertisers channel our irrational impulses.
Weapons of Mass Deceptions
Secrets of the Superbrands
Orwell Rolls in his Grave
The Esoteric Agenda
Propaganda
The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
Symbolism in Logos: Subliminal Messages or Ancient Archetypes
Edward Snowden: A Truth Unveiled
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism
[20] ART AND LITERATURE:
Explore the lives of famous artists and how art opens people’s minds.
Cosm: Alex Gray’s Visionary Art
Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop
New Art and the Young Artists Behind It
Salvador Dali: A Master of the Modern Era
The Day Pictures Were Born
Off-Book: Digital Age Creativity
This Is Modern Art
[21] HEALTH:
Explore issues in health, how our bodies work and the incredible power of our brains.
The Human Brain
The Truth About Vitamins
How To Live To 101
America’s Obesity Epidemic
The War On Health
The Beautiful Truth
Food Inc.
The Truth About Food
The Living Matrix
[22] DRUGS:
Documentaries on the effect of drugs — legal and illegal — on the body and mind.
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
The Drugging Of Our Children
How Marijuana Affects Your Health
Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging
Clearing the Smoke: The Science of Cannabis
LSD: The Beyond Within
The War on Drugs: The Prison Industrial Complex
Are Illegal Drugs More Dangerous Than Legal Drugs?
The Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic
Run From The Cure: The Rick Simpson Story
[23] ENVIRONMENT:
Thought-provoking documentaries on the environmental movement and the growing threats to our biosphere.
Earthlings
Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Shift: Beyond the Numbers of the Climate Crisis
All Things Are Connected
The Fight For Amazonia
Flow: For Love Of Water
Here Comes the Sun
The World According To Monsanto
The Story of Stuff
[24] COSMOS:
Expand your mind by exploring our indescribably large and beautiful Cosmos.
The Search for Planets Similar to Earth
Cosmic Journeys : The Largest Black Holes in the Universe
The Mystery of the Milky Way
Fractals: The Hidden Dimension
Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking: The Story of Everything
Pioneer Science: Discovering Deep Space
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
The Strangest Things In The Universe
[25] SCIENCE:
The history of scientific discovery and how scientific instruments expand our perception.
The Complete History of Science
Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell
Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time
Quantum Mechanics: Fabric of the Cosmos
The Light Fantastic
DNA: The Secret of Life
Parallel Universes, Alternative Timelines & Multiverse
What Is The Higgs Boson?
Infinity
[26] EVOLUTION:
The story of our evolution and the emergence of self-aware human beings.
The Origin of Life
Homo Sapiens: The Birth of Humanity
Beyond Me
The Global Brain
Metanoia: A New Vision of Nature
Birth Of A New Humanity
Samsara
Ape Man: Adventures in Human Evolution
The Incredible Human Journey
The Human Family Tree
[27] PSYCHOLOGY AND THE BRAIN:
New research is shining a spotlight on how we can improve our brains.
How Smart Can We Get?
The Science of Lust
The Secret You
What Are Dreams?
A Virus Called Fear
Beyond Thought (Awareness Itself)
The Human Brain
Superconscious Mind: How To Double Your Brain’s Performance
How Does Your Memory Work?
Secrets of the Mind
[28] MODERN HISTORY:
The story of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the modern world.
History of the World in Two Hours
The Industrial Revolution
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The French Revolution
Big Sugar
The American Revolution
[29] PRE-MODERN HISTORY:
The story of the Americas and European history in the pre-modern world.
Socrates, Aristotle and Plato
The Medici: The Most Influencial Family In The World
A History of Celtic Britain
The Crusades: Victory and Defeat
The Vikings: Voyage To America
Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution
[30] CURRENT EVENTS:
Become more informed about current events that are shaping the world.
Syria: The Reckoning
Empire: Putin’s Russia
The New Arms Race
The Killing of Yasser Arafat
Egypt In Crisis
Inside Obama’s Presidency
The Untouchables: How Obama Protected Wall Street
Behind The Rhetoric: The Real Iran
A History of the Middle East since WWII
Climate Wars
[31] ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS:
Fascination explorations into the ancient civilizations of our past.
The Persian Empire : Most Mysterious Civilization in the Ancient World
What The Ancients Did For Us
What the Ancients Knew
Egypt: Beyond the Pyramids
Secrets of the Ancient Empires
Graham Hancock’s Quest For The Lost Civilization
Atlantis: The Lost Continent
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
(by clicking the above title it will take you to more as well)
[1] LIFE IN THE BIOSPHERE
Explore the wonder and interconnectedness of the biosphere through the magic of technology.
Home
How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth
The Magical Forest
Ants: Nature’s Secret Power
Mt. Everest: How It Was Made
Mariana’s Trench: The Deepest Spot On Earth
Natural World: The Andes
Shining Mountains: The Rockies
Grand Canyon: How It Was Made
The Intelligence of Plants
[2] CREATIVITY AND DESIGN:
Learn about all the amazing things that people create with their imaginations.
Everything Is A Remix
The Creative Brain: How Insight Works
Design: The New Business
PressPausePlay: Art and Creativity in the Digital Age
Infamy: A Graffiti Documentary
Influencers: How Trends and Creativity Become Contagious
RIP: A Remix Manifesto
Design: e² – Sustainable Architecture
The Genius Of Design
[3] THE EDUCATION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX:
The modern school where young minds are moulded into standardized citizens by the state.
The College Conspiracy
Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk
The Forbidden Education
Default: The Student Loan Documentary
College Inc.
Education For A Sustainable Future
Networked Society: The Future of Learning
The Ultimate History Lesson With John Taylor Gatto
The Education System in Communist China
The War On Kids
[4] THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION:
The Internet is now the driving force behind change and innovation in the world.
The Age of Big Data
Resonance: Beings of Frequency
Life In A Day
Networked Society: On The Brink
Us Now: Social Media and Mass Collaboration
WikiRebels: The WikiLeaks Story
The Virtual Revolution: The Cost of Free
How Hackers Changed the World
[5] A NEW CIVILIZATION:
We are at the dawn of a new golden age of human inventiveness.
THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take?
Zeitgeist III: Moving Forward
Paradise or Oblivion
2012: Time For Change
The Crisis of Civilization
The Collective Evolution II
The Quickening: Awakening As One
2012 Crossing Over: A New Beginning
Collapse
The Awakening
[6] POLITICS:
Explore the politics of power and control and how it affects your life.
Owned and Operated
UnGrip
The Power Principle
The True Story of Che Guevara
Earth Days
Capitalism Is The Crisis
WikiLeaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower
The Putin System
The War On Democracy
Rise Like Lions: Occupy Wall Street and the Seeds of Revolution
[7] BIOGRAPHIES OF GENIUS:
The biographies of modern geniuses who pushed humanity forward.
Isaac Newton: The Last Magician
The Unlimited Energy of Nikola Tesla
The Missing Secrets Of Nikola Tesla
Richard Feynman: No Ordinary Genius
How Albert Einstein’s Brain Worked
The Extraordinary Genius of Albert Einstein
Leonardo Da Vinci: The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything
[8] WAR:
War is history’s oldest racket for stealing from the powerless and redistributing resources to the powerful.
Psywar: The Real Battlefield Is Your Mind
The Secret History of 9/11
Robot Armies in the Future
The Never Ending War in Afghanistan
Shadow Company: Mercenaries In The Modern World
Why We Fight
The Fog Of War
The Oil Factor: Behind The War On Terror
[9] ECONOMICS:
Learn about the financial system works and how people and societies are enslaved through debt.
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of The World
The One Percent
Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street
The Last Days Of Lehman Brothers
The Four Horsemen
Inside Job: The Biggest Robbery In Human History
Capitalism A Love Story
Money and Life
[10] DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
Profiles of the entrepreneurs who used technology to change the world.
The Life Of A Young Entrepreneur
Profile: Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Profile: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
Starting-Up in America
Steve Jobs: One Last Thing
Steve Jobs: The Billion Dollar Hippy
Elon Musk: Risk Takers
The Story of Twitter
[11] SPORTS:
Watch the inspiring stories of amazing athletes.
Fearless: The Jeb Corliss Story
Carts of Darkness
Usain Bolt: The World’s Fastest Man
Wayne Gretzky: The Life and Times
Mike Tyson: Beyond the Glory
Birdmen
The Legacy Of Michael Jordan
We Ride: The Story of Snowboarding
[12] TECHNOLOGY:
Find out more about the impact of exponential growth and the approaching Singularity.
Ray Kurzweil: The Transcendent Man
How Robots Will Change the World
Human 2.0
Trance-Formation: The Future of Humanity
The Venus Project: Future By Design
Bionics, Transhumanism And The End Of Evolution
The Singularity Is Near
Car Technology Of The Future
[13] ORIGINS OF RELIGION:
Explore the original religious experience of mankind at the dawn of civilization.
Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within
Manifesting the Mind: Footprints of the Shaman
Ancient Egypt and The Alternative Story of Mankind’s Origins
The Hidden Knowledge of the Supernatural
Re-Awaken: Open Your Heart, Expand Your Mind
Shamans of the Amazon
The Root of All Evil: The God Delusion
Ancient Knowledge
The Naked Truth
Before Babel: In Search of the First Language
[14] WESTERN RELIGION:
The fascinating history of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Secret Quest: The Path of the Christian Gnostics
The Secret Gate of Eden
Forbidden Knowledge: Lost Secrets of the Bible
Banned From The Bible: Secrets Of The Apostles
The Road To Armageddon
Muhammad: The Legacy of a Prophet
A Complete History of God
Gnosis: The Untold History of the Bible
[15] EASTERN RELIGION:
Expand your mind by also studying the entirely different religious worldviews of the East.
Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds
The Life Of The Buddha
The Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World
Mysteries of the Cosmic OM: Ancient Vedic Science
Where Science and Buddhism Meet
The Yogis of Tibet
Taj Mahal: Secrets To Blow Your Mind
Light at the Edge of the World: Tibetan Science of the Mind
Myths of Mankind: The Mahabharata
Ayurveda: The Art of Being
[16] CONSCIOUSNESS:
Learn about the basic unity of existence and the miracle of consciousness.
Athene’s Theory of Everything
Theory of Everything: GOD, Devils, Dimensions, Dragons & The Illusion of Reality
The God Within: Physics, Cosmology and Consciousness
5 Gateways: The Five Key Expansions of Consciousness
Return to the Source: Philosophy and The Matrix
The Holographic Universe
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
Kymatica
Neuroplasticity: The Brain That Changes Itself
[17] MYSTERIES:
Indiana Jones-style explorations into the unsolved mysteries of the past.
Alchemy: Sacred Secrets Revealed
The Day Before Disclosure
The Pyramid Code
The Secret Design of the Egyptian Pyramids
Decoding the Past: Secrets of the Dollar Bill
Origins of the Da Vinci Code
Forbidden Knowledge: Ancient Medical Secrets
Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings: The New Atlantis
Secrets in Plain Sight
[18] MASS CULTURE:
Learn about how our thoughts and opinions are influenced by mass culture.
The Century of the Self
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
The Power Of Nightmares
Starsuckers: A Culture Obsessed By Celebrity
Human Resources: Social Engineering in the 20th Century
Obey: The Death of the Liberal Class
Motivational Guru: The Story of Tony Robbins
Bob Marley: Freedom Road
Radiant City
[19] CORPORATE MEDIA:
Discover how the mass media and advertisers channel our irrational impulses.
Weapons of Mass Deceptions
Secrets of the Superbrands
Orwell Rolls in his Grave
The Esoteric Agenda
Propaganda
The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
Symbolism in Logos: Subliminal Messages or Ancient Archetypes
Edward Snowden: A Truth Unveiled
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism
[20] ART AND LITERATURE:
Explore the lives of famous artists and how art opens people’s minds.
Cosm: Alex Gray’s Visionary Art
Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop
New Art and the Young Artists Behind It
Salvador Dali: A Master of the Modern Era
The Day Pictures Were Born
Off-Book: Digital Age Creativity
This Is Modern Art
[21] HEALTH:
Explore issues in health, how our bodies work and the incredible power of our brains.
The Human Brain
The Truth About Vitamins
How To Live To 101
America’s Obesity Epidemic
The War On Health
The Beautiful Truth
Food Inc.
The Truth About Food
The Living Matrix
[22] DRUGS:
Documentaries on the effect of drugs — legal and illegal — on the body and mind.
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
The Drugging Of Our Children
How Marijuana Affects Your Health
Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging
Clearing the Smoke: The Science of Cannabis
LSD: The Beyond Within
The War on Drugs: The Prison Industrial Complex
Are Illegal Drugs More Dangerous Than Legal Drugs?
The Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic
Run From The Cure: The Rick Simpson Story
[23] ENVIRONMENT:
Thought-provoking documentaries on the environmental movement and the growing threats to our biosphere.
Earthlings
Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Shift: Beyond the Numbers of the Climate Crisis
All Things Are Connected
The Fight For Amazonia
Flow: For Love Of Water
Here Comes the Sun
The World According To Monsanto
The Story of Stuff
[24] COSMOS:
Expand your mind by exploring our indescribably large and beautiful Cosmos.
The Search for Planets Similar to Earth
Cosmic Journeys : The Largest Black Holes in the Universe
The Mystery of the Milky Way
Fractals: The Hidden Dimension
Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking: The Story of Everything
Pioneer Science: Discovering Deep Space
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
The Strangest Things In The Universe
[25] SCIENCE:
The history of scientific discovery and how scientific instruments expand our perception.
The Complete History of Science
Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell
Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time
Quantum Mechanics: Fabric of the Cosmos
The Light Fantastic
DNA: The Secret of Life
Parallel Universes, Alternative Timelines & Multiverse
What Is The Higgs Boson?
Infinity
[26] EVOLUTION:
The story of our evolution and the emergence of self-aware human beings.
The Origin of Life
Homo Sapiens: The Birth of Humanity
Beyond Me
The Global Brain
Metanoia: A New Vision of Nature
Birth Of A New Humanity
Samsara
Ape Man: Adventures in Human Evolution
The Incredible Human Journey
The Human Family Tree
[27] PSYCHOLOGY AND THE BRAIN:
New research is shining a spotlight on how we can improve our brains.
How Smart Can We Get?
The Science of Lust
The Secret You
What Are Dreams?
A Virus Called Fear
Beyond Thought (Awareness Itself)
The Human Brain
Superconscious Mind: How To Double Your Brain’s Performance
How Does Your Memory Work?
Secrets of the Mind
[28] MODERN HISTORY:
The story of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the modern world.
History of the World in Two Hours
The Industrial Revolution
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The French Revolution
Big Sugar
The American Revolution
[29] PRE-MODERN HISTORY:
The story of the Americas and European history in the pre-modern world.
Socrates, Aristotle and Plato
The Medici: The Most Influencial Family In The World
A History of Celtic Britain
The Crusades: Victory and Defeat
The Vikings: Voyage To America
Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution
[30] CURRENT EVENTS:
Become more informed about current events that are shaping the world.
Syria: The Reckoning
Empire: Putin’s Russia
The New Arms Race
The Killing of Yasser Arafat
Egypt In Crisis
Inside Obama’s Presidency
The Untouchables: How Obama Protected Wall Street
Behind The Rhetoric: The Real Iran
A History of the Middle East since WWII
Climate Wars
[31] ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS:
Fascination explorations into the ancient civilizations of our past.
The Persian Empire : Most Mysterious Civilization in the Ancient World
What The Ancients Did For Us
What the Ancients Knew
Egypt: Beyond the Pyramids
Secrets of the Ancient Empires
Graham Hancock’s Quest For The Lost Civilization
Atlantis: The Lost Continent
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World