Graham Hancock

LC Vincent said:

If Magick can be defined as "The Art and Science of causing change (in our world) to occur in conformity with Will" , then the Illuminati, who know with a certainty that the spiritual realm exists as a part of our "ordinary" sensory reality, have also learned how to bend, shape and manipulate that reality and the people within it to affect change which will benefit them.

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CATASTROPHIC TERRORISM: ELEMENTS OF A NATIONAL POLICY said:

"the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently."

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Tree said:

I find this pertinent to the discussion because it almost seems that humans are systematically being cut off (by force or "contamination") from their connection with the unseen world of spirit and energy by the PTB. Hmmm... if the Illuminati have retained the ability to connect with and "use" the unseen powers of our world, while systematically stamping out this possibility in cultures throughout the world through colonialism, evangelism, environmental & cultural destruction, impoverishment, slavery, etc., then they wouldn't have much competition, would they? I don't know for certain that the PTB are in fact using black magic, but if they are, it would make sense that they have been doing their best to destroy this ability in any that would oppose them.

Tree

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pg73 said:

To the Tonkinese, the village was a most important institution. In the village the clans were strong, and the basis of the veneration of ancestors, which ensured strong attachment to the village and to the land. Each village had a shrine-the "dinh"-which contained the protective deity of that village. The cohesive force of the village was a sense of being protected by those spirits of the soil. Village affairs were in the hands of a council of elderly notables, but there was a considerable degree of autonomy. It was said, "The power of the emperor stops at the bamboo fence."
The village did pay a tax to the higher authority and did provide young men for military service. In Vietnam, however, law was not based on authority and will but on the recognition of universal harmony. As in all parts of the world, the basic object of rural government was to provide security. As a result, in Vietnam the traditional demand was not for good laws so much as for good men. Law was deemed less important than virtue.

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pg 79 said:

The next stage of the Americanization of Vietnam was being set. The plan was to destroy the ancient villages and replace them with all the advantages of the Western way of life. [...]
There is, and has been for centuries, in the highest-level power structure, a determination to destroy mankind's traditional way of life, that is, that of the village. Traditional village life is effective, timeless, and impregnable. It is above all, self-sufficient, something that American urbanization is not. [...]
But Indochina was slated to be the next area for Malthusian destruction, and the Americans and the Vietminh knew how to do it.

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pg 249 said:

This is an old idea; in fact, one of the underlying, unstated objectives of the thirty-year was in Indochina was to bring about the breakup of this ancient and traditional communal style of living.

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Tree said:

... I'm only relating this so that maybe you'll trust me when I say: Be patient. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Gathering knowledge and working on yourself is just as powerful in the meantime, and you will be even more prepared to receive any teachings if the opportunity arises.

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My primary motive, unabashedly, was research. I had deliberately submitted myself to this ordeal as part of a wider, longer -term investigation into a mysterious "before and after moment" that took place in human prehistory, perhaps as recently as 40,000 years ago. Before it, other than a very few widely scattered and isolated examples, there is nothing in the archaeological record let by our ancestors that we would instantly recognize as modern human behavior. After it the signs that creatures exactly like us have arrived are everywhere, most notably in the first definite evidence for beliefs in supernatural realms and beings - evidence, in other words, for the birth of religion. ....

An ingenious explanation for the bizarre appearance of these beings.... has been put forward by a prestigious group of anthropologists and archeologists. The essence of their argument is that the cave are expresses mankind's first and oldest notions of the supernatural, of the "soul," and of realms of existence beyond death - notions that took shape in "altered states of consciousness" most likely brought on by the consumption of psychoactive plants. Although not to the liking of some scholars, this has been the most widely accepted theory of cave art since the mid -1990s. It is therefore an embarrassment that none of the experts currently advocating it have ever actually consumed any psychoactive plants themselves; nor do they have any first-hand ideas of what an "altered state of consciousness" is, or any desire to experience one. To give fair consideration to their arguments, and to the views of their critics, I felt I needed to be able to judge on the basis of personal experience whether plan-induced visions could be made of strong enough stuff to have convinced early humans of the existence of supernatural realms and of the survival after death of some essence of deceased ancestors.

This, in a nutshell, was why I had taken ibogaine - for sound, solid, common-sense research reasons. But I have to acknowledge that there was another, much more personal motive as well. It had to do with my own father's painful death from bone cancer the previous autumn and my inexcusable failure to be at his bedside during the last few days of his life. Part of the appeal of this slightly risky experiment with ibogaine was undoubtedly its promise of "encounters with the ancestors," and - however tenuous - the possibility of closure and quietus that it seemed to offer.

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"December, 1987 - About the 'Journey Into the Light' tape you sent - it was very interesting and not unfamiliar or dissimilar to previous personal experiences of my own. But, I want to comment that, years ago, I interviewed a number of people who had taken mescaline. It seems they had all experienced fantastic "inner voyages". It is, it seems, a total alteration of perception; they 'see' sounds and 'hear' colors and movement. Most of them described, laying over the whole experience, 'waves of reality.' They traveled into 'other realms' and perceived other beings - even very frightening areas of darkness and despair. They describe a disintegration of reality that includes the self. For most of them, this 'loss of identity' is terrifying.

"In my own experiences with meditation, I have experienced 'transfer of information,' most of which is kept buried and which I have never shared with anyone. Until I can find confirmation of it in some other source, I will continue to hold it inside.

"The point is: the mescaline experience - including other hallucinogens - is purely chemical - or, at least, chemically induced. Since the brain is capable of such incredible 'voyages' as a result of chemicals, how can we assert with absolute certainty that similar self-induced 'flights' or even acts of 'channeling' are not also merely chemical reactions within the physical brain? How do we know we are not merely manifestations of the imagination of some slumbering Cosmic Being? Or the toys or whatever of a group of celestial adversaries? (For I cannot doubt some foundation for our existence other than mere accident).

"Now, I suppose that what has happened to me is that my faith - once so strong and impervious to external assault - has succumbed to a sort of 'devil's advocate' mode of thinking. For so long I maintained the 'proper' attitudes - performed the proper acts - to 'create' a reality more in line with what I felt would provide the environment for creative productivity and simple happiness...

"Well, hope springs eternal, as they say. I will continue to do those things which should lead to 'enlightenment.' I will water the shriveled plant of my faith and withhold judgment. But I cannot lie and pretend all is at peace in me or that I find my life, up to this point, at all what I would have hoped.

"I am now at the age you were when I met you. You are now past 50 - and so little time has passed! I thought we would be young and adventurous and carefree forever, or at least until we died. As Rose said: I expect to be dead someday, but I don't plan to spend any time dying. Yet, my mortality has never weighed so heavily upon me as now. Maybe I'm going through "the change". I feel crazy as hell sometimes..".

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Even in my state of doubt, I continued to meditate. I had the idea that if I could produce the required changes in myself - even if it was only acceptance - that would enable me to pass through this rough period. Most particularly, I wanted a change in my marriage. I needed {my ex-husband's} acceptance of me as a questioning, intelligent human being - not merely a cook, housekeeper, sex object, baby-sitter and doormat. I knew that he had been wounded, that he had insecurities, that perhaps his behavior was simply designed to drive me away, to manifest some self-fulfilling prophecy he had about himself that no woman could love him or stand by him. I knew that, if anybody could do it, I could. And the goal was, of course, to heal myself so that {my ex-husband} would be healed. Then, if we were both "en rapport," our children would benefit, and all would be right with the world!

My meditation practice rapidly progressed. After only a few months of practice, I found myself "zoning out" for up to three hours at a time, coming to myself feeling as though no time at all had passed. The only problem was: I never seemed to bring anything back with me. I had no idea what had been going on, where my mind had been. I did note that I was far more peaceful and able to cope with the difficulties of my life, but it was still frustrating not to obtain something a bit more "concrete" from all of this endeavor.

As a matter of practicality I generally meditated lying on the bed. Some people cannot do this because they tend to fall asleep, but that was never a problem for me. I could "zone out" in meditation, "come to" some time later, and then go to sleep easily at night. I was generally so uncomfortable in any position, that getting to sleep was problematical if I didn't meditate first.

So, I went to bed and waited for Larry to go to sleep. If he thought I wanted quiet for meditation, he would manage to just "have" to make some sort of noise or disruption, apologize, and then do it again.

After he was asleep, I began my breathing exercises. This part of the process I had borrowed from my hypnotherapy training and was extremely useful. Of course, I later learned that it had been "borrowed" for hypnotherapy from certain meditation systems.

At this point, I don't know what happened. All I remember is starting the breathing phase, which came before the contemplative phase of the exercise. But then I made some kind of big "skip".

The next thing I knew, I was jerked back into consciousness by a sensation that can only be described as a "boiling turbulence" in my abdomen. It was so powerful that, at first, it felt actually physical - like there was a boiling agitation in my organs that was going to erupt upward in some way.

I was frantically holding my throat, because I could feel a tightening of the muscles in the throat area, as wave after wave of energy blew upward like the precursors of steam blasts from a volcano before it erupts. I struggled out of the bed, holding the wall with one hand and my throat with the other, clenching my teeth so whatever it was would not come gushing out of me and disturb Larry or the children. For all I knew, I was just going to be violently sick!

I rushed outside to the porch Larry had recently built onto our little house, where there was a lawn sofa, and collapsed onto it just as the outpouring began.

I wish I could describe this in better words, but there are simply none that apply other than to use ordinary descriptions that don't come close to the essence and intensity of the event. What erupted from me was a shattering series of sobs and cries that were utterly primeval and coming from some soul-deep place that defies explanation. Accompanying these cries, or actually, embedded in them, were images - visions - complete scenes with all attendant emotional content and implied context conveyed in an instant. Again, it was like the idea of "your life passing before your eyes".

But, in this case, it was not scenes from this life. It was lifetime after lifetime. I knew that I was there in every scene, in these vignettes of other lives. I was experiencing myself as all these people.

And the tears! My god! The tears that flowed. I had no idea that the human physiology was capable of producing such copious amounts of liquid so rapidly!

Now, if this had been just an hour-long crying jag or something like that, it would have to pass into history as "just one of those things," maybe like PMS. But, this activity had a life of its own! It went on, without slowing or stopping, for more than five hours! If I attempted to slow it down, stop it, or "switch" my mind in another direction, the inner sensation of explosive eruption rapidly took over, all the muscles in my body would begin to clench up and I was no longer in control. I could only sit there as a sort of "instrument of grief and lamentation," and literally sob my heart out for every horror of history in which I had seemingly participated or to which I had possibly been a witness. I think that there were even some that I was simply aware of without my direct participation. And some were truly horrible scenes.

Plague and pestilence and death and destruction. Scene after scene. Loved ones standing one moment, crushed or lying in bloody heaps the next. Rapaciousness, pillaging, plundering; rivers of blood and gore; slaughter, carnage and butchery in all its many manifestations passed before my eyes; holocaust and hell. Rage and hot anger, bloodlust and fury, murder and mayhem, all around me, everywhere I looked. Evil heaped on evil like twisted, dismembered bodies. And the grief of centuries, the unshed tears of millennia, the guilt, remorse and penitence, flooded through me; melting, thawing and dissolving the burdensome shell of stone that encased my petrified heart; washing away the pain with my tears. An ocean of tears.

As this release of the worlds of accumulated guilt and grief of many lifetimes went on, the "voice-that-was-not-a-voice" in the background, ever soothing, ever calming, repeated:

"It's not your fault. There is no blame. It's not your fault. You didn't know."

And I came to understand something very deep: I understood that there is no "original sin". I understood that the terrors and suffering mankind experiences here in life on earth is not caused by some sort of "flaw" or "error" or aberration from "within". It is not punishment. It is not something that one can be "saved" from.
I understood that every scene of terrible suffering and heart-rending cruelty was the result of IGNORANCE. And each experience was the gaining of knowledge.

It is easier to see this idea when you consider the Crusades or the Inquisition. You can trace the path of twisted reason, leading from the idea of the Love of God to imposing that view on others "for their own good, " ending in torture and mass murder. Forget for a moment about those who just viciously used such philosophies for their own gain and political maneuvers. Think for a moment about the sincerity of the philosophies behind such events. But it is based on IGNORANCE.

Those who were seemingly out for gain and self-aggrandizement were operating out of ignorance - fear and hunger of the soul that cannot be satisfied. It is only a matter of degrees, but in the end, it is only ignorance.
When the flow of energy, images and tears finally began to subside, I felt a sensation of warm, balmy liquid, almost airy in its lightness, and so sweet that to this day, I can still remember the piercing quickening of the fire of love for all of creation. It was ecstatic, rapturous and exultant all at the same time. I was lost in wonder, amazed and at the same time bewildered at this vision of the world.

Well, the result of this event was a state of prolonged "elevation," or "loving peace" that persisted for a very long time. You could even say that the effects reverberate to the present. Never again was I able to condemn (act against with intent to destroy what they choose to believe) another, no matter how wicked their deeds. I could see that all so-called "evil" and "wickedness" was a manifestation of ignorance. No person, no matter how holy and elevated they may think they are in this life, has not reveled in the shedding of another's blood in some other time and place. And no person who chooses ignorance and wickedness and destruction in this life is "wrong". Yes, I had the right to avoid them, to defend myself against them, to understand what they were doing. But it was not my place to go on a campaign to "change their mind".

The significant point is: Ignorance is a choice, and one made for a reason: to learn and to grow.

And that realization led to another: to learn how to truly choose. To be able to learn, at this level of reality, what is and isn't of ignorance, what is of truth and beauty and love and cleanliness. I understood the saying of Jesus that some things are bright and shining on the outside, but inside they are filthy and full of decay. And I don't mean that I was seeing this negativity as something to be judged. I clearly understood its reason and place as modes of learning, but I was deeply inspired to seek out all I could learn about this world to best manifest what was of light.

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I fell into a dream state for what seemed like a very long time, and as with most dreams I now find it hard to remember the details. All I can confirm is my absolute certain conviction that something happened - something of lasting importance to me.

{page 10} As well as these tantalizing recollections of my father, I've managed to dredge up a few other broken images from those hours of fevered dreams, which add to my sense that something momentous occurred. {etc. etc}

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We had suffered so much bad weather that half a dozen working trips in a row had cost more than double what we made. We had also experienced more than usual mechanical breakdowns, and the repair costs had eaten up all our reserves. I knew we were dancing close to the edge of disaster, but we really had no options. Mother was demanding money, our creditors were demanding money, we needed to pay the tuition on my daughter's private Christian pre-school, and, at the most basic level, we needed to keep food in the house.

I prayed long and hard over the matter, we consulted with our pastor, and the consensus was that God was just testing our faith. So, faith it was. We used our credit to cover our expenses and made arrangements for the next working trip.

As a rule, when we took the boat out, we would be gone for up to a week at a time. We worked at night and slept during the day. It was a rough schedule to keep, since even when you sleep on a boat, you can't really relax because there are all kinds of electronics that have to be regularly checked to make sure everything is running right.

This trip was the disaster of all disasters.

On the first day out, I was just sitting there steering the boat when I noted a strange "wallow" feeling when I moved the wheel even slightly. I called Larry and asked him to check the bilge pump, and nearly died when he shouted at me to throw the engine into neutral and help him bail. The water was halfway over the engine which, thankfully, continued to run. The bilge pump wires had been corroded by the salt water and we had been running for God only knows how long with no pump. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been a problem, except that a fitting on the propeller shaft had vibrated loose. The shaft had begun to slide out, taking the fitting (called a packing gland) with it, unsealing a hole about three or four inches in diameter at the bottom of the boat. The wobbling of the shaft was what I had felt as a "wallowing" feeling when adjusting the wheel.

We bailed with five gallon buckets like crazy until we were no longer in danger of sinking. Larry had to make the repairs while I kept bailing on my own. I was rapidly exhausted but, under such circumstances, exhaustion doesn't even bear consideration. You perform or you die.

It was not an auspicious beginning to the trip, to say the least. Well, my point of view was that we had managed to overcome this difficulty, so we had experienced all the bad luck for the trip in one fell swoop. Things could only get better, right?

Wrong.

The weather had been a bit iffy, which was normal for March in the Gulf of Mexico. "Iffy" was soon to change to downright dangerous.

After a night of modestly successful trawling, we anchored out. We had been in contact with a friend by radio during the night, and agreed to have breakfast together. They anchored a few hundred yards away from us in the darkness, and we all stowed our equipment and turned in for a few hours of sleep. It was a huge relief to shut down the eternally thrumming diesel engine and take a shower in the cabin and collapse in the bunk to be rocked and lulled to sleep by the gentle swells and waves lapping at the sides of the boat.

I woke up after being asleep only a short while and immediately felt that something was wrong. It took me a few minutes to figure out what the problem was: it was utterly silent outside. There were no lapping waves, there was no rhythmic rolling of the boat with the swells; just preternatural silence and semi-darkness at a very late hour.

I got up and looked outside: thick, pea-soup fog everywhere. It was even impossible to see our friends only a short distance away. I got on the radio to see if I could raise them, and soon they cranked their engines and began to move slowly toward us. When they emerged from the fog, Larry caught their lines and held the two boats close while they climbed onboard.

They were a younger couple who ran their own boat together the same as we were, trying to make the business work against the high expenses, the weather, and the newly imposed fishing restrictions mandated by the state and federal management agencies. The fellow took the lines from Larry as soon as he was onboard, and tied them off on a cleat at the stern. For some reason, the fact that he allowed a long section of the rope to dangle in the water caught my eye and bothered me, but since I was no expert on these matters, I said nothing. I went into the galley to fry the bacon and whip up some pancakes.

As I was cooking, I noticed we were beginning to roll in such a way that the fat in the pan moved slowly from one side to the other to the point of danger that it would spill over the side. I couldn't really feel any waves or swells because they were so long and slow, so I didn't think in terms of danger. I just finished cooking and we all sat in the main cabin to eat.

We noticed that the wind was picking up rather quickly, and the swells were no longer so long and gentle, but were becoming higher and shorter. Larry commented that we had better finish up and batten down the hatches. It looked like it was going to blow.

We didn't have time to finish eating.

A terrific gust of wind hit us almost like a tornado. In almost no time at all, the swells had become huge, crashing waves. A window in the main cabin suddenly blew open so violently that it was nearly torn off its hinges. At the same instant, our boat lifted on the crest of a huge wave. The other boat tied up at our rear dropped its bow underneath our stern, and the dangling rope caught around our propeller.

I grabbed all the plates and stowed them, syrup and all, in a pan in a locker. Every unsecured item in the cabin went flying through the air as we pitched and tossed. Larry rushed out with our friends to take care of the disaster in progress.

The wind was actually roaring by now. In the next moment, another massive wave rolled under us. This time, it lifted our friend's boat up, straining the rope wrapped around our propeller to the max. The bow came crashing down on our stern, knocking a hole in their boat about the size of a dinner plate.

Something had to be done quickly to separate the two boats. I clung to the side rail and watched in horror as Larry barked instructions. Our guests scrambled onto the bow of their boat, barely missing being dumped in the water. Larry stripped off his pants and shoes and, clenching a knife in his teeth, went over the side, holding onto the rope that yoked the two boats together. I was certain that in the next moment he would be crushed between them.

The next wave crashed under us, lifting the other boat high on its crest. Larry, still holding on the rope, was lifted up with it. When the bow of the other boat dropped, Larry was plunged back into the water.

I could barely breathe, and my heart was pounding from the adrenaline flowing.

Nothing I could do but watch helplessly, sure that I was about to become a widow.

Somehow he did it. Larry cut the rope and the other boat was free. By this time, our friends had their engine running and, when they saw that the rope was cut, they slammed it in reverse and backed away rapidly. I tried to get to the back of the boat to help Larry get back in, but another crashing wave made it more of an airborne maneuver than actual walking. We managed to get him in, and both of us set about tying all the equipment down to ride out the storm.

The wind kept building in force. We were anchored in sandy bottom, being blown backwards toward the coastal rock piles and islands.

Larry put the boat in gear and we kept accelerating the engine with our bow in the wind. Soon it was clear that even that was not going to work. We were still being blown backward, dragging our anchor. We kept hoping the anchor would catch in rocks.

A quick check of the charts didn't give us hope for a rocky bottom between us and disaster.

I decided to try to find out what I could about this freak storm on the radio. It seemed that it had struck at a very bad time when there was a sort of regatta a few miles up the coast and many boats were being swamped and the Coast Guard was out in force hauling people out of the water. This news came from another friend who happened to be out at the same time, and he was getting it from the television he had in his cabin. I explained our situation and he suggested that we ought to come over to his anchorage and tie up behind him. His boat was so big that he anchored with a big ship anchor on a chain and he was sure he could hold both of us to the big rock pile he had found for the purpose.

It was a tricky maneuver in that storm to find him, then approach with our bow in the wind in exactly the right way. Then I could step from our boat onto the bigger one in a sort of "eye" of stability. Somehow, I managed, and Larry and our friend got the lines fixed so our boat was securely tied.

Actually, at that point, I wouldn't have cared if it had broken free and disappeared in the crashing waves!

On this truly huge boat, it was almost a different world. With its broad beam construction, the bow in the wind, anchored to a rock pile, we hardly noticed the storm raging outside. We sat in the lounge and watched television and wondered how there could be so drastic a difference between the weather a few miles offshore, and what was being experienced on land as depicted by a smiling, perky weather girl.

It gave me a deep insight to the differences between what is real and what is on the news. Yes, there was coverage of the disaster of a regatta to the north. But no one seemed to be really talking about the storm as we were experiencing it at that very moment.

While we looked at the full color weather maps on television, a Coast guard rescue helicopter hovered directly overhead in the wailing wind, illuminating our decks with their searchlights. The radio crackled to life with an inquiry from the crew over our head as to whether we were secure. Larry and the captain waved them off to rescue somebody who needed it.

The wind blew for about 20 hours. A day and a night. To this day, I cannot explain that storm. At one point, the anemometer on our friend's boat was buried at 80 knots. On the television weather report, another reality prevailed. "Marine warnings were in effect," because of "rough weather" out in the Gulf.

They never reported how rough.

By afternoon the next day, the gale had calmed down considerably. I knew that we could not simply toss this trip and go back in. We still had our ice, we still had a partial catch, and we still needed the money. We needed a big catch to get out of the hole.

Larry had always wanted to try the fishing grounds up to the north where the regatta had met such a bad end the previous day. He conjectured that the storm would have stirred up the muddy bottom and the shrimp would have moved into those deeper waters to avoid being swept hither and thither. It sounded like a plan to me, even though I knew it would take the rest of the day to get there. We got out the charts, figured our position, calculated running time, and got underway.

We reached the designated fishing grounds not long after dark and dropped our nets. For several hours things went fine. Then the wind began to pick up again, now accompanied by rain falling in torrents that were actually sheets blowing sideways. Larry decided to anchor a couple miles up the ship channel that ran between a series of islands due east. If we could get on the lee side, at least the wind would be less violent even if we couldn't do anything about the rain. So we pulled in the nets, tied down the equipment, and headed to safe anchorage.

While we were running, since things seemed to be under control, I decided to take a shower and be ready for sleep when we dropped the anchor. After my shower, I put on my nightgown and a sleeveless, quilted jacket liner over it. The liner had button holes all around the edges that were used to secure it in a larger, heavier garment. When we reached the anchorage point, Larry pointed the bow in the wind and I went up the ladder, through the hatchway, and out on the front deck to slide the anchor over the side.

Just as the last of the chain portion of the line was sliding through my hands to the right, a big gust of wind blew the lower left flap of the jacket liner forward to catch on the clevis pin at the end of the chain. In the same instant, a big wave washed the boat.

I was thrown face down on the deck, right on the edge, with the huge anchor dangling from my jacket, pulling it tight around my throat, choking me. The length of rope behind me wrapped around my leg. As the bow of the boat dipped down, I slid on the wet deck forward. My head was over the edge and I was looking down into that black, icy water. I knew from the charts it was very deep. The only thing that kept me from being pulled completely over the side was a rope cleat on the edge of the deck against which my pelvis was painfully jammed.

There was nothing but wet deck in reach of my left hand. I tried to catch the anchor chain with my right arm, dangling over the side. I was just barely able to slip the heavy anchor over the side with both hands under ordinary circumstances. So it was a certainty that if I tried to pull it back in with one hand, the effort would do nothing but launch me into the water for sure. If I was pulled over with the rope around my ankle, even if I could shuck myself out of the jacket, I would be pulled very rapidly straight to the bottom with the anchor. Would I have sufficient air in my lungs to be able to disentangle myself and make it back to the top? How would I manage it in the dark when I couldn't see anything at all?

The odds were not good, to say the least.

My jaw was jammed against the deck by my resistance to the chokehold of the weight of the anchor pulling on that wonderfully made Army-issue jacket liner. Even if I could have made a sound, Larry wouldn't have heard me shouting over the sound of the wind and the engine.

The boat lifted and plunged a couple more times, and each time, I braced myself against that life-saving cleat pressing so painfully into my hip. And each time I felt my body rolling right to the point with just a hair's more force I would simply roll over the clevis and into the water, wrapped in the fatal spider's web of 300 feet of anchor line.

Fortunately, by this time, Larry had figured out that I wasn't just lying there on the deck to pass the time of day while gazing soulfully into the water. We were in a precarious position. Without forward motion into the wind, we had no stability, but with forward motion and no one there to hold the wheel, we could instantly swing broadside to the wind and roll over completely with the top heavy trawls tied to their metal frame bolted to the deck.

Larry put the engine in neutral, ran down the stairs from the steering cabin, through the main cabin to the ladder, up the ladder and out onto the deck where I was trapped by the anchor. He grabbed me, pulled me back enough that I was no longer dangling half over the side, and slipped the coils of rope from my leg. He then unhooked the anchor from my jacket, and let it go over the side. I slid myself backward to the hatch cover and backed down into it, waving my feet around to catch a rung of the ladder. Just as I did, another wave hit and I dropped through the hatch with my elbows spread out on either side like wings. I could almost hear the muscles tearing away from my shoulder blades. I nearly went unconscious from the pain.

Well, the rotator muscles in my shoulders had been torn. I was to be plagued for years with pain from this injury. We were sitting at anchor for two more days in the most miserable weather of my life. Nothing but wind and rain. Everything in the boat was damp and there was no way to get warm and dry. I was in pain, but I had to keep going because there was no way Larry could manage everything alone.

When the wind died down enough, Larry thought we might make it back to the docks. We headed out. Because we had used so much of our fuel just holding our position, and keeping the electronics charged up, we had to make the run as directly as possible. This meant that we had to run "quarter" with the waves, an iffy prospect at best. I can tell you there were waves that were so tall they were like big buildings. They would come up at an angle to us in the rear, looking for all the world like they were going to swallow us whole. It was always a miracle when, instead of being swamped, the boat would lift up onto the wave, roll and plunge down into the trough, slamming violently against the water.

But this was a hard way to run. Over time, it could tear the boat apart. We had several hours of running before us. Larry decided to drop the trawls just barely into the water to stabilize the boat, to prevent the "slam dunk" of every wave. When they were up and out of the water and locked onto steel frame, it made us too top-heavy. But to run this way, under these conditions, Larry had to stay on deck to see to it they didn't slam against the side of the hull and smash a hole in the boat when we "hit bottom". This meant that I had to steer the boat.

I was alone in the cabin with nothing but the red glow of the instrument panel and the low rumble of the diesel engine under the floor, and my terror. I knew that, after this trip, I would never set foot on a boat again. This was sort of an admission that all was going down the tubes. I was struggling with my hurt and anger and bewilderment, praying fervently for understanding and compassion and love to fill my heart in spite of the apparent hopelessness of the situation. I wanted to be filled with the Love of God. I wanted to subsume all of the experience into that single pointed devotion that brings the "peace that passes understanding". Over and over again I was repeating "Help me oh Lord! help me!" The agony of the struggle was deeper than the mind can fathom or words can express.

The Apostle Paul describes it in Romans 8: "...for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance.”[vs. 26]

What we were experiencing had brought me face to face with just exactly what it was we were risking following this venture ... In the face of death, all I could think about was my babies and how much I wanted to be there for them, to see them, to hold them, and to look after them and watch them grow. And how foolish it was to go after money so assiduously that not only were we never home with them, when we were, we were too exhausted to enjoy them. And when we were away from them, it was always a serious question whether we would even return. Every time we went out in that boat, our children were in danger of being orphaned. Now we were in danger of losing everything we had worked so hard for.

If living by faith was not working as it was claimed to work, what, exactly, was I doing wrong?

Well, the beginning of the verse in the book of Romans says: "So too the Spirit come to our aid and bears us up in our weakness..."

What happened next was a sensation of growing heat in my solar plexus, accompanied by a buzzing sound in my ears that soon became a sort of inaudible roaring which terminated in a resounding inner explosion: BOOM! Like being stone deaf and standing between two huge Chinese gongs while they were being struck simultaneously. It was soul-deep and resonated to a long, slow and rhythmic internal oscillation that drew me in and enveloped me like a warm, comforting cloud.

Then there was the voice.

It was not audible, and not really in my head exactly, but it was a voice nevertheless. It emanated from some interior organ of spiritual hearing, rich and rapturously tender. This voice had the odd characteristic that it conveyed information more in the sense of concept than distinct words, though there seemed to be a process of translation going on in my mind simultaneous to receiving the "soul voice".

"You KNOW that I LOVE you, my child," the voice both said and conveyed in waves of ecstatic inner sound. "But until you remove the darkness from between us, I can do nothing."

The words vibrated and penetrated every cell in my body from a depth of being that is impossible to describe. The transference of the impression, of the idea of "love" as expressed from this source, rocked me to my very core. I understood there was no way that I, in this human body, could plumb that Love. I was aware that to attempt to experience it in my flesh would result in instant death, because the human organism simply was not capable of carrying such energy. "Tasting" was all that humans could experience, and even that tasting carried risks of overwhelming the circuitry, like plugging a 110 volt appliance into a 220 volt outlet. In the same way, the term "darkness" was also unfathomable in its breadth and meaning.

My mind raced through all the aspects of my life. Like the proverbial moment before death when all of a person's deeds pass before their eyes, I reviewed my existence, enumerating all the ways I yearned to seek only to do the will of God. I couldn't find a single breach in this contract where one could think that evil would enter the picture. I enumerated all the ways in which I was living a Christian life as explicated in the terms of Fundamental belief. I pointed out that we didn't just go to church and tithe, we made dedicated efforts to live the life fully and completely every moment of every day. And, I added, we did it in the face of often tremendous opposition! What more was there than living the life, building the faith, and teaching it to our children? "Just what," I demanded to know, "are we doing wrong?"

At this point, a response came, though not in words. It was like a holographic or experiential movie being run in my mind, soul, and awareness. I was shown my children in a series of vignettes that brought up the deep love and devotion I had for them. I was to understand that my love for my children, as great as it was, was merely a human love and could, in no way, equal the love of the Creator for his creation. I was being infused with this love in small, incremental amounts. It was consoling and warmly caressing to a level that is impossible to express with words. I was so lost in this feeling that I could have drifted in the waves of love washing over me forever. But the Voice had other plans.

The scene changed and I "experienced" myself admonishing my children to not play in ant beds. Fire ants were a big problem in our yard, and it was a common event that I pointed these places out to the children, warning them not to be tempted by the quiet and attractive exterior of the anthill. Inside, it was a boiling mass of stinging insects that could, under certain circumstances, kill a small child.

In the little "experiential movie" I was being shown, I saw that my children, as children will, did not listen to what I was saying. Their curiosity about the anthill led them to it, to observe and examine its perfect symmetry of structure, and peaceful aspect of industry. Their lack of direct knowledge of ants coupled with their foolhardy, naive bravery caused them try to "play with the ants," to force open the hill and see what was inside, how it was constructed, and what went on beneath that fascinating exterior.

The result was that they suddenly were covered with ants, biting and stinging them, and they were running to me, screaming for relief from the ants. And there I was, soothing them and brushing away the ants, and explaining that I could get rid of the ants, and I could put salve on the bites to soothe the pain, but it would do no good if they hadn't learned something from the experience about ants.

Sounds like a pretty simple little example, yes? I certainly didn't see how my life related to children playing in an ant bed! "What are the ants?" I asked. "What is the evil in my life?" And the voice came again, this time with overtones of regret and sorrow:

"Learn!"

The word "Learn!" reverberated away into inner silence as the sound of crashing waves and the diesel engine began to penetrate my awareness. I was floating on the sensation of the great infusion of love that had come with the first part of the "interaction". I call it that, because it was hardly a vision in strict terms, though something happened of an internal visionary nature.

Even though the intensity of the experience could not be denied, I was uncertain as to its nature. Was this how God spoke to people? Is this what I had been hearing about all my life? If so, if God spoke to people in this way as regularly as they claimed, then they must be very powerful and lofty individuals to sustain such experiences on so regular a basis as their claims suggested.

I was very anxious to share this event with the pastor of our church. I was certain that God had given me a message that I should share, that we should study and learn to navigate through our lives. Things were not what they appeared to be on the surface. Deeper meanings must be sought. Things seeming attractive and symmetrical and safe from the outside may not be so at all.

The voice had not said "Have faith," it had said: "Learn!"

Well, I should have been prepared for the reaction of the pastor. I was told that it was impossible for God to speak to me because I hadn't received the Holy Ghost - I hadn't spoken in Tongues. Besides, if I wanted to know about the Love of God, all I had to do was come down to the altar at church on Sunday. And yes, God wanted us to learn: that's why they had Thursday night Bible class and preachers to tell us what we needed to know!

I was a bit nonplussed by this response. But it didn't diminish the inner sensations of expanding, rhythmic waves of love flowing through me endlessly. For weeks I was sustained by this love, and I certainly was going to need it.

By the time we made it to the dock, I never wanted to set foot on that boat again.

And I never did. {...}

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After my regular meditation exercises, I would sit up in bed, surrounded by piles of books and notebooks, reading and writing notes on what I read. As I did so, I would stop and think about questions that occurred to me as I read. The instant these questions were framed in my mind, thoughts would simply pour into my head so fast that I was mentally leaping and jumping just to follow them. These thoughts always and only came in response to the questions that I would pose mentally about whatever I was considering at the moment in my studies. The urge to write these thoughts down was so overwhelming that I spent literally hours a day, filling page after page in longhand, until I felt completely drained mentally and physically. I still have these notebooks. Because these questions had little to do with matters of faith or religion, it didn't occur to me that I was "channeling" at the time. I was just "thinking".

But, there was a curious thing about this "thinking". If I didn't write the thoughts down, they would stay there, backing up like dammed-up water. As soon as I started to write again, it was as if there had been no break in the flow of thoughts whatsoever. They picked up right where they left off.

At some point, I decided that I must find out if these ideas that were coming to me had any basis in fact whatsoever. I most definitely needed more input! So the answers that "came to me" pointed me in the direction of certain studies that otherwise might not have been part of my experience. I was compelled by my rational and reflective nature to research each concept to discover if there was any way it could be supported scientifically and objectively.

I subscribed to a library service by mail, and soon began ordering and reading book after book on subjects that ranged from geology to physics, from psychology, to theology, from metaphysics to astronomy. As I read, I found many pieces that fit in the framework of the information that was pouring into my head relating to these very subjects. I was both surprised and energized to find that the ideas I was getting weren't so crazy after all!

While assembling my notes and ideas, I included notes from more "mainstream" sources that supported what I had written, or expanded the idea, or, at the very least, gave it plausibility. If the "idea" I had was not supported by observation or scholarly opinion, if only indirectly, it had to be discarded. As it happens, the whole series of information streams did turn out to have a wide array of support, and I was forced to severely limit what I included for the sake of brevity.{...}

At this point, I was still struggling to work within my faith, with a strong Christian perspective. I wasn't quite yet able to let go of the crutch of the church. That was soon to change, however.

One Sunday, after I had recovered most of my mobility, I was sitting in church during the Pastoral prayer. I was praying hard along with the minister that God would send the Holy Spirit to me to help me understand all that I needed to understand. Suddenly, I heard a buzzing noise, or a crackling sound, similar to the sound of bacon sizzling in the pan. The voice of the pastor and the resonant "Amens" from the congregation became very far away and metallic sounding, exactly as if I were hearing them broadcast from a loudspeaker under water.

This shocked me and my eyes snapped open to see if my vision was impaired. I thought I might be having a stroke or something. I was completely dismayed to see the minister, standing at the podium, gripping the stand with both hands, eyes closed and head thrown back in the profound drama of his praying, was overlaid with a shimmering, living image of a WOLF!

The image of the wolf, in full color, was a sort of alter ego. All the expressions of the pastor were corrupted and twisted by the matching expressions of the wolf. When the minister moved his hands or shook his head, so did the wolf. Every move of the minister's mouth was exactly matched by the gaping jaws of the toothsome figure from Hell! Not a solid figure, it seemed more like a "projection of light," so to speak.

I quickly looked around the sanctuary to see if this was a complete delusion, and was shocked to see similar "overlays" on all the people there. Many of them were sheep, but there were also pigs and cows and other creatures represented.

I was HORRIFIED! Considering the fairly recent experiences with the haunting and the demoniac woman at church, I was sure that the Devil had me now! Here I was, in the middle of church, seeing our beloved Minister in the guise of a WOLF!

This was damnation for certain!

I closed my eyes and prayed harder. The sound anomaly continued. I opened my eyes to peek again. The wolf was still there, dramatizing the mellifluously intoned pastoral prayer.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and prayed and rebuked Satan and finally began to just repeat the Lord's prayer to drive this image from my reality. Soon, it began to taper off and die away. When I opened my eyes again, the wolf was gone.

I was extremely relieved to win this battle with Satan.

A couple of Sundays later, we arrived a little late, expecting the services to be already started. We were surprised to see the congregation all gathered outside the church door, milling about like lost sheep. We discovered that our beloved pastor, the shepherd of the flock for a number of years now, the respected and erudite minister of the golden voice, along with his musically talented family had done a "midnight flit," so to speak. Not only that, but they had left the church in a bad way, having embezzled a huge amount of money from funds to pay the bills. There was even a bill for dock rent for a rather large yacht that the church was also paying for, unbeknownst to all. The expensive furnishings of the luxurious parsonage were gone, the mortgages on both buildings were on the verge of foreclosure, the electricity was about to be shut off... and the pastor and his family were gone to parts unknown.

I was stunned. I realized that my "vision" was exactly what I had been praying for: the Holy Spirit revealing the "truth" to me. I had rebuked it and cast it away!

The implications of this event were profound. When I put it together with all the other things that had occurred over the past few years, I saw a picture that was not pleasant to acknowledge.

There are those who would say that it didn't matter about the pastor being a fraud, that it is the faith of the individual and their own interaction with God through Jesus that really counts. And, I will agree. That is, in fact, my point. Because, in the end, following the prescribed pathway of a "standard" religion, praying in sincerity and faith, conducting my life in all the ways predicated upon being "born again," I was given a certain mandate to "learn". In the process of trying to implement this mandate within my faith, I was then given a vision that proved correct. It was only reasonable to think that I was moving in the right direction.

This resulted in shift in my faith in my own ability to be "in touch" with God, or whoever was in charge of this Universe. Clearly, I had been shown the truth under the surface, and my self-doubts and belief in the authority of others had interfered with my communion with Holy Spirit. This gave my studies a little boost. I understood an essential thing: if you truly pray for guidance, deeply and sincerely, that guidance will come. But it may not be what you want to hear or believe and may go against what others say or teach. And in later years, this ability to "see" the reality of individuals, the force behind them, has saved me from terrible mistakes, even if very often, I am "fooled" at the beginning. I have accepted many people at their word, and when certain observational discrepancies begin to appear, I will "ask the question," and always, what I see proves to be correct. But it only works when the question is asked. At this point in my life, the time of writing, I am finally learning to "ask the question" before I become involved with wolves in sheep's clothing.

I had faith, I prayed diligently and fervently, I struggled and strove for that love, that subsuming of all other emotions into an all-pervasive, comprehensive Love of God - and it surely did something!

But this, of course, raises another question: If a number of people are claiming that the Holy Spirit is giving them revelations, and these revelations are contradictory to one another, how do we know who is being misled and who is truly receiving Divine Revelation?

Again, the answer was "Learn!"

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In the early days of 1986 I was greatly troubled by a dream.

I found myself in a cold, barren, landscape, accompanied by my children. We were viewing what seemed to be a most peculiar tornado at a great distance. It was a loosely curled cloud of smoke, more like a stretched-out bedspring than a funnel. I was puzzled because it did not touch the ground, yet I knew it was killing people. I felt very sad in the dream and I was overwhelmed by the bleakness of the landscape. In the dream, I was reminded of Poe's story, "The Fall of the House of Usher". In the dream, I told my children there was no possibility of the tornado coming our way, but that we must pray for those we were seeing die.

On numerous other occasions during these years, I had dreamed flashes of disasters only to awaken and discover that something bearing strong similarity had occurred during the night somewhere around the globe.
I expected to hear of a tornado striking somewhere and killing people, so I turned on the radio to catch the news. But, apparently I was wrong. There were no disasters during the night, but I was pleased to hear that my urge to turn on the radio had informed me that I was up in time to view the shuttle launch.

The children and I trooped out into the cold with binoculars and began to search the sky over the tops of the winter bare trees in the woods surrounding our house. We saw a bright flash which we assumed to be the staging of the rocket and I focused the glasses on that area of the sky. What I saw was the peculiar cloud of my dream. At that moment I experienced an appalling sensation of sadness that I tried to shake off as silly, even though I had suddenly become aware of the likeness of the moment to the events of the dream.
I kept my eyes on the dissipating smoke as I listened to the radio announcer saying that some sort of problem was being experienced. We soon learned that the Challenger had exploded and all aboard were lost.

The only discrepancy between my dream and the actual event was the interpretation. I had interpreted my dream in terms of familiarity: a tornado, although I had been puzzled by the peculiar antics of this dream tornado. I had seen a powerful, moving, death-dealing force in the sky -- with cloud-like effects - which did not make contact with the ground, and which did not threaten me or my household. What I saw was, in fact, what I got! But, I had never seen a rocket blow up - or, at least, did not consider that to be a possibility.

And, I might add, the central issue in the Poe story of the Usher family is Premature Burial! That element of the dream has always haunted me. Did our astronauts go to their watery tomb alive?

But even if I had understood the symbols of the dream and had rightly interpreted them, so what? What was I going to do? Call NASA and say, "Hey folks, I had this really weird dream..." Of course they would pass me off to the Nutcase desk or put me on permanent hold with Muzak. What about all the other purported "prophecies" which are sort of "close," or "stunningly accurate," or complete failures? What is the real principle behind this? {...}

These little "support events" that transpired through my seeking for answers showed me another thing about "asking". If a question is asked of the Universe, if it is asked deeply and honestly, the actual events of one's life begin to shape themselves to provide the tools with which one is enabled to obtain the answer. It's not free; it takes work. But for those who ask and keep on asking, those who knock and keep on knocking, it seems the door does, indeed, open.

I realized I was being taught a language of symbols and how God speaks to us in these symbols, and these symbols are our reality. Symbols reflect actual potentials - even though our interpretations may be skewed by personal experience. I began to realize that it must be in such terms that the ancient prophets and writers of religious myths understood the world. In highly allegorical and culturally biased terms they described their visions and experiences. Thus heavenly bodies became angels, archangels; cataclysmic events were deliberate "acts of God", and stupefying groanings and thunderings of nature became the voice of God. And, all things considered, who are we to say this perception of celestial beings and divinely inspired events are not more accurate than one would initially suppose!

As I pulled on the thread of Ariadne, it seemed the entire fabric of my religion, as it was taught, unraveled and there, concealed behind the metaphors of the Bible, supported by facts and ideas of science, was an idea so amazing that it took my breath away.

The idea was Cosmic Metamorphosis in Quantum terms.

How did I come to this when I started out trying to discover the Noumenal existence of Love and good and evil?

Well, actually, it's quite simple. As I followed the thread through the labyrinth, going from the very large to the very small, it became clear to me that the Hermetic maxim "As Above, So Below" could be applied in any number of useful ways. In the end, the search for the true meaning of Love was the same as the search for Salvation and Faith and, ultimately, the search for the meaning of Eternal Life. {...}

As I typed, I began to have some very strange impressions. I could "sense," or "see with the mind's eye," a couple of very funny old men looking over my shoulder as I wrote, consulting with each other, telling me where I needed to make corrections or additions, and even chuckling with glee when I wrote certain comments. I knew that one of them somewhat resembled Albert Einstein, but it wasn't until quite a number of years had passed that I saw a photograph of Immanuel Velikovsky and recognized the other old gentleman.

To this day, I am not sure if they were simply figments of my overworked imagination, or if it was an actual experience with some form of discarnate "guidance". All I know is they were hysterically funny in their remarks to one another as they oversaw my project, and they jovially clapped one another on the shoulder when I would finally "get it" in regard to a particular point.

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p. 10: Towards morning, with light beginning to filter through gaps in the curtains, I was not surprised to go through a mild out-of-body experience. These are common amongst Bwiti initiates under the influence of iboga, and I wasn't completely new to the phenomenon myself. The last time it had happened to me was when I was 16 years old and was nearly killed by a massive electric shock. ... etc.

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Little by little, my garden became one of the few truly enjoyable aspects of my life. Of course, Larry very subtly demeaned it as useless and a waste of time. Growing flowers didn't produce "food" for the table. Well, that was true, but when I'd helped him start a vegetable garden, there was so much conflict and criticism that I left him alone with his beans and squash. What's more, if we were going to sell the place, making sure it looked attractive was productive work to my way of thinking.

So I ignored his rants about the time I was wasting on grass and flowers. I took three Tylenol three times a day and worked away in the garden. Pain was easier to bear in summer air with the plants, seeing them grow and respond to my care in ways that clearly didn't work with my family. Eventually, even Larry appreciated my efforts after other people complimented me on my glorious roses and beds of giant marigolds. It was there that I prayed and "talked to God".

One day, crawling around on all fours pulling weeds, I realized suddenly exactly where I was and what I was doing. With startling clarity, I saw that nothing I had ever thought about my future had come to pass.
We were in no position to send our children to college, they had never been to a summer camp, had very few friends and even fewer material comforts.. I sat back against a tree and looked up at the sky and asked "Why?"

I wanted God to tell me: Why create a mind with the spirit of a mystic and the will of a bulldog, only to confine me to the prison of poverty and total obscurity?

By this time, I'd learned how to "hear the voice of God" in the world around me. I saw all my glorious flowers, I saw my beautiful children playing across the yard. I realized the only thing that would matter in a hundred years was the satisfaction I'd experienced in growing my roses and loving my children. Maybe the only thing that existed eternally was the love we give away. Imperfect as I was, God only knows, I loved deeply and fully, with all my being. Those I loved I would gladly give up my life for.

And perhaps I had. "Okay, God," I sighed. "I get it. I'll grow where you've planted me. Just show me what to do next."

Not very long after this, in a rather comical way, I had an out-of-body experience for the first time.
Meditating before going to sleep on a very warm night, I'd pulled my nightgown up to my hips and was lying on the bed without even a sheet to cover me so I'd be cool as possible. I began my breathing exercises and suddenly heard a sort of crackling or buzzing sound in my head. Then there was a sort of "whooshing" sound like an internal Cosmic Whisper effect, and a word reverberated through me: "Shekina!"

Well, I quickly ran through the memory banks and pulled up the notion that this was a word that meant "Forerunner of the Presence of God".

Wow! That was heavy!

My reaction to this was a sort of panicked feeling that I was "indecent" and that I ought to pull the sheet up to be more modestly arranged for whatever was going to happen now.

I reached down and tugged my nightgown down decorously, pulled the sheet up, and folded my hands prayerfully.

Next thing I knew, I had to go to the bathroom really, really bad! So, I rolled to my side and reached out to brace myself as to stand up.

My hand went right through the wall!

Well, that was startling, but I really had to go, so I leaned forward to sort of lunge out of bed, and the upper half of my body went right through the wall into the bathroom!

Whoa! I stopped moving and looked around me. I realized with a start that I now had 360 degree vision! Not only that, I could see through everything! It wasn't that things were transparent, but rather that they were like living colored light.

Everything was alive! And so colorful! I thought quickly about the children, and instantly I was "there," seeing them in their beds as they slept.

That was cool! So, I decided to try thinking about something a few miles away. I thought of the Farm. Whoosh! There it was! A thought of anything brought me in direct contact. At the same time, focusing on any single thing did not eliminate the view of everything else around me in all directions at once.

Then I suddenly wondered: "What if I'm dead!?" I panicked at the thought of leaving the children unprotected.
The instant I felt this panic, I snapped back like a rubber band. It was almost painful! Like a sharp sting I realized I was in my body, the sheet was still down, and I had never arranged my nightgown as I was sure I had.

Whatever had happened to me, wherever I had been, it had begun with the Cosmic Whisper. Everything after that had been in another "realm".

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... experiments with hypnosis ...

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Laura said:

Now, I haven't really commented on the idea that shamanic visions may have been at the root of the emergence of modern man, but I have compared my non-drug induced shamanic experience to the drug-induced ones that Hancock describes in the book. I think that the attentive reader can see the difference. It seems that drug induced experiences do indeed open the door to other realms, but they are generally lower realms, where one would not wish to remain for any period of time.

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Laura

Now, I haven't really commented on the idea that shamanic visions may have been at the root of the emergence of modern man, but I have compared my non-drug induced shamanic experience to the drug-induced ones that Hancock describes in the book. I think that the attentive reader can see the difference. It seems that drug induced experiences do indeed open the door to other realms, but they are generally lower realms, where one would not wish to remain for any period of time.

More later.
-------
What I am trying to show here are the experiences of natural shamanism that is NOT related to being in a "trance" and which manifests almost continuously in daily life. A shaman who has to take a drug to access other realities IS NOT A SHAMAN.

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from Hancock's "The Supernatural" said:

I lay on a couch in the darkened drawing room of a 200-year-old townhouse in the English city of Bath. The streets outside were deserted and offered few clues to remind me of the familiar world. It was reassuring to find that I could still read the luminous dial of my wristwatch if I held it in front of my eyes. Ten minutes passed, then 20, then 35. I began to feel bored, restless, even a little blasé. After 45 minutes I closed my eyes and directed my thoughts inwards towards contemplation, still noticing nothing unusual. But at the end of the first hour of my vigil, when I tried to stand up and walk around, I was amazed to discover that my legs would not work. Out of nowhere an enervating feebleness had ambushed my limbs, the slightest physical effort set off uncontrollable tremors and stumbling, and I had completely lost my sense of balance.

A wave of dizziness and nausea washed over me, and I fell back exhausted on the couch, drenched in cold sweat. I remembered with a shudder of finality that I could not change my mind, because there was no antidote. Once it was underway, the process I was going through could not be stopped and would simply have to be endured.

My hearing was the next faculty affected. At intervals, there would be a tremendous ringing and buzzing in my ears, blotting out all other sounds. My eyesight also rapidly deteriorated, soon becoming so obstructed at the edges with strange black lines, like fence-posts or gratings, that I could no longer see my watch and had to abandon all control of time. For what felt like a very long while, the poison remorselessly tightened its grip, and I fell prey to indescribable sensations of physical and psychic unease. There was a great deal of pain, weakness, and discomfort. It was as if my body were being slowly and systematically smashed and dismembered, and I began to feel that I might never be able to put it back together again.

In a moment of stillness when my eyes were closed, a vision popped up - a vivid moving tapestry of intertwining branches and leaves, elaborate arabesques and Celtic knotwork. I blinked my eyes open. Instantly, the writing patterns vanished and the darkened drawing room returned. But as soon as I closed my eyes the patterns came back.

More unmeasured time passed while the patterns continued to expand and multiply. Then another great gust of dizziness hit me, and I winced at the terrifying new sensation it brought of balancing on a swaying tightrope over a bottomless abyss. I found that if I lay on my back, looked straight up at the ceiling, and stayed absolutely still, I could minimize these uncomfortable effects. But all it took was the slightest movement of my head to left or right to bring on another spectacular surge of vertigo.

When at last I closed my eyes again, the sinuous intertwined patterns reappeared with renewed intensity, and then were abruptly overwritten by a profile view of a heavily built blond young man with his eyes turned towards me in a glare of reproach. He appeared right at my side, startlingly close. His skin was pallid and his brow blotched with patches of green mold. {…}

I’ve probably given the impression up until now that I was alone during my vigil in Bath, but this wasn’t the case. The psychoactive dose of ibogaine that I consumed was administered by an experienced and reputable healer who remained on hand the whole night, my wife Santha was also in the room, and we had a medical doctor present as well. At first I’d been acutely aware of all three, but as the malaise and paralysis deepened they faded into insignificance and I seemed to see them – if at all – through panels of thick glass. The same old disconnection applied to the bowl I’d been given to vomit in. I was able to hold onto it and retch over it, but I was in one place and it was in another.

As the night wore on, I could feel my couch undergoing an insidious process of transformation, until eventually it had become a stone sarcophagus within which I was laid out. I experienced a strong sense of constriction and immobility, as though a great weight were pressing down on my chest, and wondered: Is this death? At the same instant the room became very full of people – not the healer, my wife, and the doctor, who might as well have been locked away in a soundproof capsule, but a large and somehow threatening crowd of uninvited guests. They did not vanish when I opened my eyes, as my earlier visions had done, but stayed firmly in view for the most part anonymous and shadowy, shoulder hunched, heads down. A few showed their faces, but like the young blond man I’d seen earlier, with his mildewed skin, they had the look of the grave.

I grew conscious that someone was watching me from far back in the jostling crowd. Lean and middle-aged, with a solemn manner, he was dark-skinned and his features were unmistakably African. His eyes were huge and black as obsidian. He was not old and gray as was usually the case in the visions of the Bwiti, but the thought came to me that this might be the legendary “Spirit of Iboga,” here to abduct my soul:

Iboga is intimately associated with death; the plant is frequently anthropomorphized as a supernatural being, a “generic ancestor” who can so highly value or despise an individual that it can carry him away to the land of the dead.

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I fell into a dream state for what seemed like a very long time, and as with most dreams I now find it hard to remember the details. All I can confirm is my absolute certain conviction that something happened – something of lasting importance to me. Did I hallucinate an encounter with my father? I don’t remember clearly enough to be absolutely sure, but I get flashbacks of that night in which I see him amongst the crowd of phantoms gathered round me. Sometimes the flashbacks are so poignant and intense that I can almost believe is must really have been out there, walking by with dignity and pain as he did when he was fighting his cancer.

As well as these tantalizing recollections of my father, I’ve managed to dredge up a few other broken images from those hours of fevered dreams, which add to my sense that something momentous occurred. At one point I felt very strongly that I had awakened. I opened my eyes, expecting to see the familiar outlines of the darkened drawing room. Instead I found myself in a very strange place that I had never seen before, with billowing draperies hanging from the walls, trees growing within, and a ceiling transparent to the stars. It seemed like some exotic temple, part sanctuary, part palace, part desert tent. To one side, absorbed in the motions of a dance, I could see a giant figure dressed in flowing white robes with black vertical markings.

Was I dreaming, or awake? Was what I was seeing real in some way – as it very convincingly seemed to be – or was it all just a grand illusion? And did the spirit of my father still survive in some other dimension or reality? {…} I remembered the overwhelmingly eerie sense I had experienced for much of the night of crowds of the dead gathered round me – crowds of ghosts, crowds of my forebears. {…}

Towards morning, with light beginning to filter through gaps in the curtains, I was not surprised to go through a mild out-of-body experience. These are common amongst Bwiti initiates under the influence of iboga… Now, as then, my consciousness seemed to float near the ceiling of the room for a few moments, looking down on my own body. Now, as then, I felt detachment and curiosity, certainly not fear, and reveled in the lightness of being and freedom of flight I seemed to be able to enjoy in the disembodied state. Now, as then, the hallucination – or whatever it was – rapidly faded and the out-of-body view was quickly lost….

For more than 12 hours after the visions ended, I remained violently ill and was unable to walk. It was not until the second night that my strength began to return, the muscle tremors stopped, and I recovered my sense of balance. By the following morning I felt completely better and ravenously hungry, and went through a long active day without any sense of fatigue.

{…} But what was miraculous nonetheless was the dramatic turnaround in my mood that I benefited from after my ibogaine session. For months beforehand I had been intensely depressed and irritable, filled with morbid thoughts and gloomy anxiety. My guilt at what I perceived as my dismal failure of my father, and my grief at his loss, had been compounded by feelings of worthlessness and anguish so deep that I frequently saw no pint in taking any further initiatives in life. It was better by far, I had persuaded myself, to withdraw from the world, abandon research, and avoid all new intellectual challenges – which, anyway, I would certainly fail.

I hadn’t expected ibogaine to make a difference, but id did. From the moment I woke up with my strength recovered, I knew that it had flipped some sort of switch in me, because I was no longer able to see anything in the world in the same negative an nihilistic way as I had done before. From time to time a morbid thought would still stray across my mind and try to drag my mood down; previously I would have dwelt on it obsessively until it made me miserable; now I found it easy to dismiss it and move on. I didn’t feel so bad about my dad wither. I’d not been at his bedside, and I couldn’t change that. But somehow, now, I no longer ached so much.

Whether this healing was achieved through contact with the spirit world, or whether it was just a beneficial side-effect of shaking up my brain chemistry, I felt grateful to ibogaine. Regardless of the explanation or the mechanism, it had put me through something I would never forget – something very much like a religious experience. It had swept away the cobwebs of ingrained bad habits and moods. And it had most persuasively demonstrated the worth of a hitherto neglected line of research into the spiritual life of the ancients.

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Laura said:

Also, those of you who have read "Operators and Things" might want to compare some of these experiences to the rather fascinating description of the schizophrenic world in that book.

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THE RAPE OF THE MIND: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D.,

The Common Retreat from Reality

This excusion into the world of pathology is not a description of a merely coincidental resemblance between a disease and a political system. It should serve to point up the fact that totalitarian withdrawal behind official justifications and individual fantasy is something that can occur either in social life or inside the individual mind. And many scholars believe in a relationship between cultural deterioration and schizophrenic withdrawal.

Let us briefly explain the individual schizophrenic's reaction of complete inner automatization and mental withdrawal as a personal failure to adjust to a world experienced as insecure and dangerous. Often rather simple emotional incidents may lead to such schizophrenic retreat -- for instance, the intrusion of schedules and habits forced on the mind during infancy or a sly hypersensitivity to our overactive and oververbose culture. Many a child is forced into schizophrenic withdrawal by an overcompulsive parent. Sometimes lack of exteernal contact may drive a man into a state of utter loneliness and isolation, sometimes his own preference for solitude. A certain tendency to so-called schizophrenic withdrawal has been proved to be inborn. Yet it an be provoked in everybody.

Whatever the cause, the schizophrenic patient becomes a desocialized being, lost in loneliness. Conscious and unconscious fantasly life begins to become dominant over alert confrontation of reality. In the end his weird fantasies become more real for the schizophrenic than the actual world. He hides more and more behind his own iron curtain, in the imaginary dreamland and retreat he has built for himself. This is his nirvana, in which all his dream wishes are fulfilled. Inertia and fanaticism alternate. The patient regresses to an infantile, vegetative form of behavior and rejects everything that society has taught him. In his fantasy, he lives in a world which always obeys his commands. He is omnipotent. The world turns around according to his divine inclinations.

Reality, requiring as it does, continual and renewed adjustment and verification, becomes a persecutor, attacking his illusion of divine might. Every disturbing intrusion into his delusional world is encountered by the schizophrenic either with tremendous aggression or with the formation of secondary delusion to protect the first delusion, or with a combination of both. The schizophrenic displays tremendous hostility toward the real world and its representatives; reality robs him both of his delusions of omnipotence and his hallucinatory sense of being utterly protected, as he was in the womb.

Clinical experience has shown that the disease of schizophrenia often begins with negativism -- a defense against the influence of others, a continual fight against mental intrusion, against what is felt as the rape of the oversensitive mind. Gradually, this defensive attitude toward the world becomes a hostile attitude toward everything, not only toward influences from the outside, but also toward thoughts and feelings from the inside. Finally, the victim becomes paralyzed by his own hostility and negativisms. He behaves literally as though he were dead. He sits, unmoving, for hours. He may have to be force-fed, force-dressed. The schizophrenic moves like a puppet on a string, only when someone compels him to. Clinically, we call this catatonia -- the death attitude.
Source: _http://www.lermanet.com/scientology/index.htm OR
_http://www.lermanet.com/scientology/mc-ch1.html

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Hancock's "The Supernatural" said:

I fell into a dream state for what seemed like a very long time, and as with most dreams I now find it hard to remember the details. All I can confirm is my absolute certain conviction that something happened – something of lasting importance to me.

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Hancock's "The Supernatural" said:

But what was miraculous nonetheless was the dramatic turnaround in my mood that I benefited from after my ibogaine session. For months beforehand I had been intensely depressed and irritable, filled with morbid thoughts and gloomy anxiety. My guilt at what I perceived as my dismal failure of my father, and my grief at his loss, had been compounded by feelings of worthlessness and anguish so deep that I frequently saw no pint in taking any further initiatives in life. It was better by far, I had persuaded myself, to withdraw from the world, abandon research, and avoid all new intellectual challenges – which, anyway, I would certainly fail.

I hadn’t expected ibogaine to make a difference, but id did. From the moment I woke up with my strength recovered, I knew that it had flipped some sort of switch in me, because I was no longer able to see anything in the world in the same negative an nihilistic way as I had done before. From time to time a morbid thought would still stray across my mind and try to drag my mood down; previously I would have dwelt on it obsessively until it made me miserable; now I found it easy to dismiss it and move on. I didn’t feel so bad about my dad wither. I’d not been at his bedside, and I couldn’t change that. But somehow, now, I no longer ached so much.

Whether this healing was achieved through contact with the spirit world, or whether it was just a beneficial side-effect of shaking up my brain chemistry, I felt grateful to ibogaine. Regardless of the explanation or the mechanism, it had put me through something I would never forget – something very much like a religious experience. It had swept away the cobwebs of ingrained bad habits and moods. And it had most persuasively demonstrated the worth of a hitherto neglected line of research into the spiritual life of the ancients.

Click to expand...

Hancock's "The Supernatural" said:

I grew conscious that someone was watching me from far back in the jostling crowd. Lean and middle-aged, with a solemn manner, he was dark-skinned and his features were unmistakably African. His eyes were huge and black as obsidian. He was not old and gray as was usually the case in the visions of the Bwiti, but the thought came to me that this might be the legendary "Spirit of Iboga," here to abduct my soul

Click to expand...