Metaphysical Experiences: Are They Real? by Headline Books / Zoom Into Books

METAPHYSICAL EXPERIENCES: Are They Real?

Metaphysical (parapsychological) experiences are the source of considerable controversy, especially about whether or not they are “real.” While the experiences are undoubtedly subjectively real for the experiencer, the reality status of the objective phenomena is another matter. Scientists usually accept something as being real if its existence can be proven by scientific methodologies. Laypeople usually accept something as being real if it can be perceived by their senses. In common practice, “reality” is generally determined by consensus, and metaphysical experiences are not commonplace. Metaphysical experiencers, however, may have perceptual capabilities that transcend those of non-experiencers—perhaps because of neurological structuring or states of consciousness variables. In any event, their experiences cannot simply be dismissed as illusory. These issues are covered in the first part of the book, which then goes on to discuss the nature of the various types of experiences and present striking first-hand accounts of specific individuals’ experiences.

METAPHYSICAL EXPERIENCES Are They Real?

David Ritchey

Metaphysical Experiences Are They Real?

David Ritchey Headline Books, Inc. Terra Alta, WV

Metaphysical Experiences Are They Real? by David Ritchey ©2020 David Ritchey All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any other form or for any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage system, without written permission from Headline Books, Inc. To order additional copies of this book or for book publishing information, or to contact the author: Headline Books, Inc. P. O. Box 52 Terra Alta, WV 26764 www.headlinebooks.com Tel: 304-789-3001 Email: mybook@headlinebooks.com ISBN: 9781946664969 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019950872

P R I N T E D I N T H E U N I T E D S T AT E S O F A M E R I C A

To those, and especially to Elizabeth, who, over the years have helped me to see the potentials.

Acknowledgement Thanks to my friend and colleague, Ellen Meyer, for her ongoing support and superb editing assistance.

Contents Chapter 1: Early Metaphysical Experiencers...........................7 Chapter 2: Debunking of Metaphysical Experiences.............13 Chapter 3: Different Brains, Different Minds........................18 Chapter 4: An Overview of Metaphysical Experiences ��24 Chapter 5: Individuals’ Experiences......................................41 Chapter 6: Physics and Metaphysical Experiences................86 Chapter 7: And What About the Future?................................91 Bibliography........................................................................105 Index....................................................................................109 Books By David Ritchey.....................................................111 About The Author................................................................128

Chapter 1

Early Metaphysical Experiencers Metaphysical experiences—also called “mystical,” “spiritual,” “transcendent,” “supernatural,” “paranormal,” “parapsychological,” or “transpersonal” experience—are those experiences that have to do with a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses, experiences that transcend the universe or material existence. In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 65% of Americans admitted to believing in the supernatural, and 49% said they themselves have had a religious or mystical experience. However, one would not be inclined to think the percentages were so high, because many people will not publicly admit to such beliefs or experiences because of fear of ridicule. Throughout this book, I will be addressing the subject of people who say they have had metaphysical experiences, and I will henceforth refer to them as “experiencers.” People have presumably been having metaphysical experiences for as long as humans have been in existence. In early historical times and in various indigenous groups today, those who had special facility at managing their states of consciousness have been recognized and acknowledged as sorcerers, witches, witch doctors, medicine men, and seers. In 7

referring to such individuals, modern anthropologists generally use the term “shaman” to encompass all the other terms, because it lacks their prejudicial overtones and conflicting meanings. Shamans are different from priests in that a shaman journeys and otherwise works in another reality while in an altered state of consciousness, whereas a priest works basically within the framework of consensus reality. A shaman is inspired, rather than possessed, by the spirits. In a shamanic experience, while the experiencer communicates with the spirits and may allow them to speak through her/ him, the experiencer remains in control. There are many vaA Traditional Shaman rieties of shamanism throughout the world, but several common beliefs are shared by all forms of shamanism. Among those beliefs are that shamans: • know that spirits, both benevolent and malevolent, exist and that they play important roles in individual lives and in human society;

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can communicate with the spirit world;

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can have their minds leave their bodies and enter the supernatural world in search of answers;

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can treat sickness caused by malevolent spirits;

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can employ trance-inducing techniques to stimulate visionary ecstasy;

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can evoke animal images as spirit guides, omens, and message bearers;

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can foretell the future, scry, throw bones/runes, and perform other varied forms of divination.

The traditional shamans were, first and foremost, healers. They were visionaries and mystics who could communicate with nature, gods, and spirits. They were able to perceive things that others could not, and to make meaningful connections between objects and events separated by both time and space. They were keepers of knowledge, both sacred and secular. They were artists, poets, singers, and dancers. They were psychologists, social workers, consultants, and mediators. They were masters of ecstasy and masters of death. Often the circumstances under which the call to a shamanic vocation was revealed involved an acute physical, mental, or emotional crisis. Any close encounter with death from which the individual emerged with knowledge of what transpired (and perhaps with a specialized immunity as well) was considered to be a clear calling to the role. Refusal of a call to shamanism was no small matter—it was said to put the individual at great risk for illness, insanity, or even death. The function of the health system in any society is ultimately tied to the beliefs that the members of a society have about the purpose of life itself. In shamanic Health that mocks the doctor’s cultures, that purpose rules, knowledge never learned is seen as being one in schools. of spiritual develop—John Greenleaf Whittier ment. For those people, health is perceived as one’s being in harmony with the society’s worldview—having an intuitive perception of the universe and all of its inhabitants being different manifestations of a single, unitary whole. Avoiding death is not the purpose for the practice of medicine in the shamanic traditions. For the shaman, healing is a spiri9

tual practice, the primary purpose of which is to nurture and preserve the soul. The roots of Western shamanism are said to lie in the practices of the “wise women,” the priestesses of early AngloSaxon times. As spiritual leaders, they helped their people to understand and to live within the framework of a worldview that was called wyrd and which suggested that: • all things and all events are intimately interconnected, as if by a seamless web, on all levels of reality; •

objects that are perceptible to human senses are nothing more than local manifestations of larger energy patterns;

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that which is imperceptible to human senses is just as important as that which is perceptible;

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any event, anywhere, affects everything else, everywhere, as a result of vibrations transmitted throughout the web;

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everything, everywhere, is alive—that is, consciousness is all-pervasive;

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body, mind, and spirit are all one; and

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the entire universe is sacred and has purpose and meaning.

In the Anglo-Saxon culture, a dynamic and pervasive world of spirits coexisted with the material world. Those spirits, manifestations of forces pertaining to wyrd, were not perceptible to most humans, despite their playing a prominent and superstitious role in the everyday lives of the AngloSaxons. Those spirits were, however, perceptible to the shamans, because shamans were people who were naturally endowed with perceptual abilities far beyond the norm. Early exploration into metaphysical experiences began in the 19th century and focused primarily on the possibility 10

of post-mortem survival. The most common approach was that of utilizing experiences of mediumship to contact spirit guides. It didn’t take long for investigators to recognize that such a method did not lend itself to replication using scientific methods and that most results could be explained as instances of telepathy. This realization then led to studies using scientific methods that were designed to explore evidence for the existence of telepathy. Many of those experiments involved the use of a specially designed deck of cards from which a card was drawn at random by a telepathic sender, who would then attempt to transmit the image on the card to a telepathic receiver. It was soon determined that similar results could be obtained without the involvement of the telepathic sender, thus suggesting clairvoyance rather than telepathy as the operative mode of perception. No experimental design has yet been developed that will unequivocally differentiate pure telepathy from pure clairvoyance. One tentative approach to making that differentiation involved the use of purely mental targets. The problem was that the target eventually had to become objectively known upon recording of the results of the trial. As soon as that happened, the possibility then arose of precognition being the operative mode of perception. No experimental design has yet been developed that will unequivocally differentiate pure clairvoyance from pure precognition. Theoretically, it can be argued that in instances of pure clairvoyance, the boundaries of space become blurred, whereas in instances of pure precognition the boundaries of time become blurred. Practically, however, the differences between telepathy, real-time clairvoyance, and precognition are purely semantic and have nothing to do with the fundamental properties of metaphysical perception. It was by way of acknowledging the artificiality of the distinctions that J. B. Rhine of Duke University coined the umbrella term “extrasensory perception” (ESP) to refer to instances of perception 11

that are bounded by neither space nor time. “Psi,” the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet and the first letter of the word “psyche,” is the term parapsychologists use to generically refer to experiences of metaphysical perception (ESP) and experiences of metaphysical influence collectively.

Chapter 2

Debunking of Metaphysical Experiences Many people, and many institutions as well, are committed to debunking or ridiculing the concept of all metaphysical experiences and excluding the study of such things from the mainstream of modern science. Theirs is definitely not a position of objective scientific neutrality, but rather seems to be driven by deep-seated, Great spirits have always perhaps unconscious, encountered violent opposition emotion—and all from mediocre minds. indications are that —Albert Einstein the operative emotion is fear. Metaphysical experiences such as shamanic healing, postmortem survival, spirit guides, telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition are unusual, and in the realm of human emotion, “unusual,” “different,” “abnormal,” and “weird” all have similar connotations. Differences establish “otherness,” and absent an Where there is other, there is fear. —Ancient Indian Upanishads encompassing accepted theory, the data are likely to be rejected, discounted, or ignored. Moreover, human nature being what it is, those who find themselves in the uncomfortable position 13

of being confronted by data that undermine their theories will often use disconfirming evidence to actually strengthen their beliefs—and create rationalizations for the inconsistencies. Discomfort of this sort is called “cognitive dissonance.” There are three basic strategies for dealing with such cognitive dissonance: (1) change one’s beliefs; (2) apply pressure to those who present information that challenges one’s beliefs; and (3) devalue those who present such information. History has shown that scientists rarely adopt the first strategy. Paradigm shifts generally occur only after the adherents of the old belief die off and those who are promoting the new belief move into Science advances one obituary at a time. positions of power. That leaves only —Max Planck options (2) and (3), and the tactics (Paraphrased) used in applying those options can be most unsavory … ridicule, ostracism, ad hominem attacks, and deception, among them. As irrational and unreasonable as such tactics might sometimes appear, they are usually quite effective—they instill fear in those who would challenge the status quo, and fear is a very effective weapon. The existence of metaphysical experiences directly challenges the prevailing world view that is based on: • Anthropocentrism – humans are the most significant entity in the universe; “The discovery of the truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance of things present which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.” —Arthur Schopenhauer

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Humanism – the human capacity for self-realization through reason is the basis for ascribing value, meaning, or purpose;

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Rationalism – reason is, in itself, a source of knowledge superior to, and independent of, sense perception;

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Mechanism – natural processes (as in life) are mechanically determined and capable of complete explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry; and

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Materialism – physical matter is the fundamental reality, and the highest values lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress.

Experiences such as those mentioned above lie far outside the boundaries of the paradigm defined by these criteria, and those who are wedded to the prevailing worldview are consequently likely to experience fear when confronted with such things. One’s worldview is not just a casually held philosophical principle; it is a core element in an individual’s self-image and, in some cases, it is the underpinning that holds the mind together. World views are not easily relinquished, and strong institutional support exists for maintaining the status quo. People who report experiences, or present ideas, that challenge the prevailing worldview, are punished. In the past, when the Church was One must not mistake society’s dominant belief-shaping majority for truth. institution, the punishment it meted —Jean Cocteau out was loss of life by burning at the stake. It is comforting to think that all that is in the past, a time when the Church was the dominant belief-shaping institution and people were emotional, ignorant, and superstitious. It is reassuring to believe that today things are different, that science is the dominant belief-shaping institution, and that people are now civilized, logical, rational, reasonable, and in control. In truth, however, when confronted with things that are non-logical, non-rational, non-reasonable, and non-controllable—things like metaphysical experiences— “civilized” people quickly revert to emotionality, ignorance, 15

and superstition. Human beings are, by nature, emotional creatures. Many who are scientifically oriented would prefer to deny their own inherent emotionality and are likely to insist that they do not fear the unknown; but denial is a commonly used, very powerful, often unconscious psychological defense mechanism. Science has clung tenaciously to the worldview it was responsible for creating and has used its authority to suppress major paradigm shifts. Scientists fill the roles of the experts who know the truth about the way things “really are,” and, for many, the possibility that they could be wrong is unthinkable. Not only do they share (often without admitting so) all the fears of the common folk, they also have too much else at stake— “the 4Ps”: power, prestige, position, and pelf (money)—to countenance change. More than a few scientists are inclined to be driven by theory rather than by data. Data make them uncomfortable unless those data conform to an existing theory. Such an approach, however, can lock Don’t believe the results of them into a most disquieting experiments until they’re pattern of circular reasoning: confirmed by theory. “The phenomenon in question —Sir Arthur Eddington doesn’t exist because our (said with irony) theories show that it can’t exist … but the data demonstrates that it does exist … but the data must be wrong because we know that the theories are right … but we can’t find the problem … but ….” Some historical “facts” that have fit this pattern are: The Earth is flat; the Earth is the center of the universe; rocks (meteorites) cannot fall from the sky (because there are no rocks in the sky); gorillas and pandas don’t exist; germs don’t exist (so hand-washing by surgeons is unnecessary); heavier-than-air flight is impossible; and humans are physiologically incapable of running a 4-minute mile.

Scientists Can “Prove” Many Things

Chapter 3

Different Brains, Different Minds A few people have a lot of metaphysical experiences, a lot of people have a few, and a lot of people have none whatsoever. The question of why this is so has been around for a long time. I believe the answer can be found in my own research† and the supporting research “Genius is the capacity to see of others. The answer apten things where the ordinary pears to be that different man sees one, and where the people have different neuman of talent sees two or three, rological structuring and plus the ability to register hence have different cognithat multiple perception in the tive functioning. As a result, material of art.” they have different percep—Ezra Pound tual capabilities. While the experiences themselves can be very real in the subjective reality of the experiencer, that does not necessarily mean that the phenomena that are experienced are objective real in consensus reality. For most people, most of the time, there is only one reality, that being “consensus reality” in which almost everybody agrees about the reality status of those things that are being †

See my 2003 book The H.I.S.S. of the A.S.P.

perceived. A Consensus Reality Control Commission has yet to be established, but perhaps that day will soon be upon us. Given that observation with one’s own senses is the basis for

A Meeting of the Consensus Reality Control Commission

the empirical definition of “subjective” reality, however, it can be seen that reality determination is not always necessarily consensus-based, but it can be a function of one’s state of consciousness. An individual in an altered state of consciousness (that might be called “metaphysical consciousness”) can experience mental imagery that All knowledge of reality starts is so strong and so vivid that from experience and ends in it. it becomes their basis for re—Albert Einstein ality determination. While that which is experienced as “real” by an individual in a metaphysical state of consciousness might appear illusory to an individual who is in an ordinary state of consciousness, the converse is also true—that which is experienced as “real” Bumper Sticker

by an individual in an ordinary state of consciousness might appear to be illusory to an individual who is in a metaphysical state of consciousness. Both would be correct from the perspective of their particular states of consciousness. To date, no one has yet proven that there is only one state of consciousness that is valid for firsthand observations. It is an absurd prejudice to suppose that existence can only be physical. As a matter of fact, the only form of existence of which we have immediate knowledge is psychic [i.e., in the mind]. We might as well say, on the contrary, that physical evidence is mere inference, since we know of matter only in so far as we perceive psychic images mediated by the senses. —Carl Jung A number of writers have offered lists of the traits and characteristics common to those people who are unusually sensitive to various stimuli including physiological, cognitive, emotional, altered states of consciousness, and metaphysical. Each list has its strengths, and each has its weaknesses. Synthesizing those lists, it can be said that these people exhibit: • Sensitivity – perceptiveness; awareness of, and responsiveness to subtle stimuli; emotional acuity; ability to transcend the content and meaning of perceptions. •

Independence – ego strength; an internal locus of evaluation (the ability to shape personal beliefs and values without reference to consensual norms); a subjective sense of psychological freedom; a willingness to take risks.

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Cognitive Complexity – fluency, flexibility, and rapidity of thought; the ability to hold numerous ideas simultaneously; the ability to toy with, analyze, and reorganize multiple concepts.

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Openness – flexible, permeable boundaries in concepts, beliefs, and hypotheses; receptivity to the original, the novel, and the unfamiliar; ability to tolerate conceptual ambiguity without forcing closure.

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Non-rationality – holistic, aggregative, visual style of thinking; facility at accessing altered states of consciousness; ability to transcend self/not-self differentiation; ability to access primary process motivations and imagery; intuitive and spiritual orientation.

The evidence suggests that the neurology responsible for this type of functioning has to do with a greater than normal participation of the right cortical hemisphere in the operation of the brain, which allows for a greater than normal participation of the old brain limbic system as well because of the strong connections that exist between the limbic system and the right temporal lobe. Emotions arise in the limbic system, and those people who have a greater than normal involvement of the limbic system in their cognitive processes are more likely than the norm to have their perceptions and behaviors be guided by subjective emotional evaluations rather than objective, rational ones. While the cortex may contain an individual’s model of reality, it is the limbic system that determines the relevance of that model. At the level of the limbic system, cognition deals with both externally stimulated perceptions and internally generated imagery, both by way of the same neuronal components, and it is therefore unable to distinguish between them. Moreover, the limbic system functions as the conduit through which information from the brain’s central core is channeled to the cortex. What all of this appears to imply is that the limbic system functions as the regulator of the cortex. 21

When an individual is in a metaphysical state of consciousness, the cortex can be thought of as idling. With cortical idling, the limbic system is free to create vivid imagery in all sensory modalities and to project that imagery out into the environment. In the absence of cortical reality judgment, these extremely vivid images are perceived as “more real than real,” that is, they assume the status of perception, not just that of imagination or fantasy, and they are powerfully impressed upon awareness. This process, called the “Perky Effect,” is named for psychologist C. W. Perky, who performed experiments along such lines in 1910. Perky’s work demonstrated not only that human brains construct perceptions, but also that perceptions and internally generated images both utilize the same mental mechanisms. Thus, the differentiation between imagery as an internal event and perception as an internal representation of an external event becomes confounded— and the consolidation process for memory does not distinguish between them. Absent definitive cortical reality judgment, perception and imagery are remembered as being equally real. Those who would debunk the reality of metaphysical experiences argue that these internally generated perceptions are hallucinations and have nothing to do with reality. Ghasi Asaad, in his 1990 book, Hallucinations in Clinical Psychiatry, defines hallucinations as “perceptions that occur in the absence of corresponding external stimuli.” On the surface, that definition appears to Physical concepts are free be clear-cut and simple, but creations of the human mind, since the central issue in this and are not, however it may discussion is whether or not seem, uniquely determined by metaphysical experiences the external world. are “really real,” it warrants —Albert Einstein closer examination. At issue is the question of what is meant by “external stimuli.” Most people would agree that “external stimuli” are those stimuli that are said to exist in the world of objective reality. Most people would also agree that the “objective reality” status of 22

such stimuli is a function of their being able to be quantified and/or qualified by objective scientific methodologies. The assumption underlying such thinking, however, implies that “reality,” as such, does not exist beyond the boundaries of current scientific thinking. It wasn’t too long ago, however, that germs, viruses, and atoms (let alone such things as quarks, gluons, and mesons) did not qualify for “objective reality” status. Carrying this line of thinking a step further, one has to wonder about the current reality status of something as simple as the feeling of love. From a scientific perspective, love is neither quantifiable nor qualifiable, yet most reasonable people would agree that love is “really real”—that it is not hallucinatory. In common practice, reality status is generally determined by consensus. If the majority of people agree that something is real (whether objectively so or not), then it is real; if the majority agrees that it is not real, then it is not. For our purposes, then, a more useful definition of “hallucinations” would be: “perceptions that occur in the apparent absence of corresponding stimuli in consensus reality.” This definition of “hallucinations,” then, means that they are not part of consensus reality, but it does not necessarily mean that they are not “really real.”

Chapter 4

An Overview of Metaphysical Experiences It is inevitable that the unusual will sometimes occur. —Aristotle Over the years, various researchers have listed scores of different metaphyseal experiences, often with only very subtle distinctions between them. When all is said and done, the number can probably be reduced to the 18 different basic types in three categories that I present here in tabular form: Experiences of Metaphysical Perception Déjà Vu Synchronicity Psychic Dream Clairvoyance Precognition Telepathy

Experiences of Metaphysical Influence Psychokinesis Electrical Psychokinesis Psychic Healing

Experiences of Metaphysical Manifestation of Mind Apparition Contact With Spirit Guides Mediumistic Episode Past-Life Recall Out-Of-Body Experience Spirit Possession Near-Death Experience UFO Sighting Alien Contact

Types of Metaphysical Experiences 24

Metaphysical experience, collectively, can be defined as: “experiences that occur beyond the ordinary differentiated boundaries of ego, space, and time; experiences that suggest the essential interconnectedness (and/or absolute unity) of all that ever was, is, or will be; experiences that imply the existence of mind (as distinct from brain), of spirit, of soul.” A brief explanation of each type of experience is provided below. •

Experiences of Metaphysical Perception Déjà Vu – the strong feeling that some person, place, or situation has been experienced before, even though the experience is apparently occurring for the first time.

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Synchronicity – the occurrence of a pattern of significant events, apparently causally unrelated, the connections among which seem to be too meaningful to be mere coincidence.

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Psychic Dream – a dream that matches in detail an event the dreamer did not know about, or have reason to expect, at the time of the dream.

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Clairvoyance (including clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance) – accurate awareness of events that are not available to usual sensory impressions.

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Precognition – accurate knowledge of an event that will take place in the future and that could not be predicted by logical means.

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Telepathy – transmission and/or reception of thoughts with another person without normal communication or clues.

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Experiences of Metaphysical Influence Psychokinesis (PK) – the causing of changes in the location or state of a physical object (metal bending, fire-starting, things falling to the floor, etc.) through no “natural” physical means.

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Electrical Psychokinesis – the influencing of electrical and/or electronic equipment (causing lights to go on and off, causing malfunctions in watches, calculators, computers, etc.) through no “natural” physical means.

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Psychic Healing – healing of an injury or illness through non-physical means such as prayer, meditation, laying on of hands, therapeutic touch, etc.

Experiences of Metaphysical Manifestation of Mind • Apparition – a vision, while awake, of another person, living or dead, who is not physically or objectively present.

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Contact with Spirit Guides – mental contact with “spirits” or “higher beings” in which the individual receives information or guidance while remaining aware of what is happening.

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Mediumistic Episode – communication of information or guidance by a “spirit” using the voice (trance channeling), or hand (automatic writing), of the experiencer, who is in an altered state of consciousness and has little awareness afterwards of what was communicated.

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Past-Life Recall – the recollection of details and/or emotions of what apparently was another lifetime occurring before the experiencer was born into her/his current physical body.

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Out-Of-Body Experience (OOBE) – the sense that one’s awareness or mind has moved outside the physical body to a different location and the body can actually be seen from that location—other than during a Near-Death Experience (covered below).

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Spirit Possession – the feeling that another mind (demon, spirit, soul of someone living or dead) is attempting to take (or has taken) over control of the experiencer’s body and will.

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Near-Death Experience (NDE) – coming very close to death (actually dying according to clinical criteria) and experiencing such classical NDE events as leaving the body, journeying through a tunnel, entering a world of light, perceiving a presence, etc., but ultimately surviving.

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UFO Sighting – the observation of an Unidentified Flying Object (“UFO,” “flying saucer,” etc.) and/or its occupants without actual contact taking place.

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Alien Contact – actual contact with (what are often called) “extraterrestrial” beings (sometimes involving being taken aboard a UFO, frequently against the experiencer’s will).

I consider some of these experiences to be “major,” and some to be “minor.” A “major” metaphysical experience, such as the near-death experience (NDE), the mediumistic experience, the spirit possession experience, the alien contact experience, or the psychokinesis experience, is one where the experiencer reports also having many of the other experiences. A “minor” metaphysical experience, such as the telepathy experience or the synchronicity experience (both of which are relatively commonplace), is one where the experiencer reports having few of the other experiences. The remaining 11 27

experiences fall somewhere in between the major ones and the minor ones with respect to their relative importance. Notwithstanding the terminological distinctions, most of the metaphysical experiences, and certainly all of the major ones, appear to arise out of the state of metaphysical consciousness. Out-of-body experiences closely parallel NearDeath Experiences except for the element of the imminence of death. NDEs seem to be the most major, the most impactful, of all the metaphysical experiences. They appear to represent a brief but powerful involuntary thrust into a higher state of consciousness, into a realm of profound spiritual illumination. An orderly classification of the sort presented here suggests clear boundaries and distinctions, both between the categories and between the individual experiences themselves—but those distinctions are mostly illusory. The reasons for this should become clear in the bulleted discussion points below: • The most significant difference between clairvoyant/ precognitive experiences and psychic dream experiences is the prevailing state of consciousness (SOC) in which the respective experiences occur. The former appear in a nominally prevailing waking state of consciousness, while the latter appear in a nominally sleeping state of consciousness. More than half of all spontaneous metaphysical experiences occur while the experiencer is in what is nominally a prevailing dreaming SOC—a fact supporting claims that the likelihood of occurrence of such experiences is enhanced by the condition of a quiet mind. A quiet mind can also be fostered by hypnosis, meditation, sensory deprivation, and other similar techniques. •

There is some difficulty in determining the appropriate taxonomic placement for synchronicity. Some people might claim that synchronicities are experiences of metaphysical influence rather than of metaphysical perception, but synchronicities are, by definition, apparently acausal and thus, at least semantically,

seem to belong in the perception category. What appears to be most important about synchronicities is the experiencer’s perception of the meaningfulness of the relationships between the events. •

In thinking about the items in the category of experiences of metaphysical influence, it becomes apparent that both psychic healing and electrical psychokinesis can be considered to be subsets of “ordinary” psychokinesis (PK)—it’s all a matter of what it is that is being influenced. Technically, psychic healing involves the influencing of living objects; electrical PK involves the influencing of electrical or electronic non-living objects; and ordinary PK involves the influencing of other non-living objects.

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To date, most formal laboratory experiments dealing with PK have employed unstable random systems (dice, random-number generators, etc.). There are anecdotal examples of what appear to be pure cases of PK involving stable objects that do not fluctuate spontaneously—the bending of spoons or the moving of individual small objects, for example; but no systematically controlled replications by multiple investigators have yet been conducted. While PK experiences appear to involve an active intention, in contrast to passive perception, it may be that the experiencer actually precognitively perceives the results of the event that s/he is supposedly influencing (i.e., simply selecting a favorable moment for interacting with the system through passive perception). No experimental design has yet been developed that will unequivocally differentiate pure precognition from pure psychokinesis. Of note is that electrical PK occurs considerably more frequently than does PK involving non-electrical objects—most likely because electrical and electronic equipment are inherently unstable systems. 29

•

The subset of psychic healing is another issue entirely because it involves living objects and, at least in the case of humans, the possibility for the occurrence of the placebo effect. It can, nevertheless, still be considered a subset of psychokinesis. Moreover, the qualifier “living” implies at least the possibility of awareness and, where awareness is involved, telepathy might also be involved. As has already been suggested, however, telepathy might not be telepathy at all, but rather clairvoyance … and clairvoyance might not be clairvoyance at all, but rather precognition … and precognition … Well, the point is that there is much more to be gained by exploring the similarities among psi experiences (metaphysical perception and metaphysical influence) than there is by emphasizing their differences.

Because psi experiences can be independently verified, over the years, an immense amount of scientific evidence has been accumulated that affirms their legitimacy. The question no longer is one of whether or not there is adequate evidence of the existence of psi; it is now one of how to evaluate the abundance of evidence that is on hand. The authenticity of these experiences is so well established that many psi researchers no longer conduct experiments There are no unnatural or of the proof-oriented varisupernatural phenomena, ety. Their focus has shifted only very large gaps in our to process-oriented experiments that are designed to knowledge of what is natural, particularly regarding determine what factors inrelatively rare occurrences. fluence psi performance and —Edgar Mitchell how psi works. Meta-analysis of data from a multitude of psi experiments shows that the odds against the observed results occurring by chance alone are generally greater than 1 million to 1. Such odds don’t actually prove the genuineness of psi, but they do make it clear that chance definitely can be 30

ruled out as an explanation for whatever it is that is happening. Disagreements over what “it” is continue to exist, but there is no question that an interesting effect has been scientifically demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt. The story with respect to experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind is somewhat different. Unlike psi experiences, these “psi-related” experiences cannot be independently verified. They do not lend themselves to laboratory research using standard scientific methods, and they have been studied mostly on an anecdotal basis. They are, however, sufficiently “far out” that they make for great tales, provoke considerable controversy, and sell lots of books. From an experiential perspective, the most important difference between psi experiences and psi-related experiences is the different way in which mind appears to manifest in the two contexts. In psi experiences (experiences of metaphysical perception and metaphysical influence), it appears that there is only one mind (that of the experiencer) involved in the perceiving or the influencing. In psi-related experiences (experiences of transpersonal manifestation of mind), it appears that there are other minds involved as well. Simply put, appearances shape perceptions, perceptions shape thinking, and the appearance of there being more than one mind involved shapes thinking about experiences of metaphysical manifestations of mind. That said, it can then be seen that the only substantive difference between psi experiences and psi-related experiences has to do with the consciousness status of that being perceived and/or influenced. Consider that: • psi/psi-related experiences involve the appearance of the experiencer’s mind being able to perceive and/or influence from a perspective that is bounded by neither space nor time; •

if there can be one experiencer, there can be other experiencers simultaneously having similar psi/psirelated experiences; 31

•

if the one experiencer’s mind can metaphysically perceive and/or influence, so too can the other experiencers’ minds;

•

each of those apparently differentiated minds can perceive and/or influence the others; and thus

•

in a state of metaphysical consciousness, mind not only can perceive and/or influence metaphysically, it can also be perceived and/or influenced metaphysically.

From this perspective, then, those minds that are perceived and/or influenced by an experiencer in a nominal state of metaphysical consciousness have the same reality status as the mind of the experiencer. What this implies is that ghosts, apparitions, poltergeists, spirits, demons, aliens, and the like—often collectively referred to as “entities”—might be other minds that also happen to be functioning in a state of metaphysical consciousness. Whether or not those minds are human minds is quite irrelevant. What is important is that the experiencer’s mind perceives another mind and assigns to the appearance of that other mind a subjective interpretation, which then becomes a linguistic label serving to separate and differentiate that specific metaphysical experience from other possible metaphysical experiences. An experience of this sort is classified as a “psi-related experience of metaphysical manifestation of mind,” rather than as a “psi experience of metaphysical perception,” specifically because it involves entities (that is, other minds). Because such entities are generally considered to be purely subjective constructs of the experiencer’s individual mind and because, as such, they are said to be not a part of consensus reality, such experiences are held to be unverifiable. Given the definition of metaphysical experiences—“… experiences that suggest the essential interconnectedness [and/ or absolute unity] of all that ever was, is, or will be …”—the idea of “other” minds in the metaphysical realm is, however, 32

rendered oxymoronic. From a theoretical perspective, however, a pure experience of the metaphysical realm is dependent on the experiencer being in a pure state of metaphysical consciousness—and metaphysical consciousness is, itself, only a theoretical construct and seldom (if ever) occurs in its pure form. Practically speaking, then, from the perspective of a specific experiencer’s perception, appearances would lead to the belief that other minds are much more a part of experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind than they are of experiences of metaphysical perception or experiences of metaphysical influence. Since the experiencer’s perception is of utmost importance in understanding experiences (as opposed to phenomena), the ensuing discussion of experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind will be framed in terms of the appearance of “otherness.” • Different types of entities are perceived in different ways. Apparitions are generally perceived through the visual sensory modality; spirit guides are generally perceived through the auditory sensory modality; poltergeists are generally perceived through the … well, poltergeists (“noisy ghosts”) are a special case. Poltergeists do things—they make noise, they move objects, they generally wreak havoc. Poltergeist experiences have a lot in common with psychokinesis experiences (experiences of metaphysical influence)— spontaneous and unwitting PK, admittedly, but PK, nonetheless. This explanation is so commonly accepted by researchers that the poltergeist experience is often referred to as “recurring spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK).” Poltergeist activity has been found to be associated with individuals—primarily adolescent females—who are experiencing significant stress. The poltergeist experience thoroughly confounds the neat categories of metaphysical experiences (it wasn’t even included in the taxonomy).

•

A spirit guide is an entity that remains as a disincarnate spirit to watch, teach, heal, and help people on their physical journey into higher consciousness. Spirit guides are not always of human origin. Some spirit guides live as energy, in the cosmic realm, or as light beings, which are very high-level spirit guides. Some spirit guides are persons who have lived many former lifetimes, paid their karmic debts, and advanced beyond a need to reincarnate. Other types of spirit guides include The Great Spirit (God), one’s higher self, ancestors, angels and archangels, nature spirits, power animals, and totems. Generally, during contact with spirit guides, the experiencer remains alert and aware, able to remember what transpired. If the experiencer goes into trance, leaves their body, and allows a spirit guide to speak through them, the experience then becomes a mediumistic episode.

•

The entities involved in mediumistic episodes seem to be much more closely associated with the experiencer’s mind than are the entities involved in apparitional experiences. Great trance mediums have much in common with great artists. Just as many of art’s finest masters have a seemingly differentiated “creative self” to whom they attribute their abilities, so too do mediums have a seemingly differentiated “knower” to whom they ascribe their talents. In both cases, sensitivity to altered states of consciousness appears to be operative.

•

After-the-fact reports on the characteristics of the conventional death experience are hard to come by, but the recollection of a death in a previous lifetime offers the opportunity for some insight. If the past-life recall experience is truly the recollection of a former life (and death)—one that was specific and exclusive to the experiencer—then other minds need not necessarily be

involved (except, perhaps, in supporting roles). Such an explanation implies the veridicality of reincarnation and can thus account for many of the phenomena (birthmarks, memories, unusual behaviors, phobias, and exceptional abilities) associated with past-life recall. Absent other minds, however, such an experience could be accounted for by retro-cognition (the temporal mirror image of precognition) and would thus be an experience of metaphysical perception rather than of metaphysical manifestation of mind. There is, on the other hand, an alternative explanation—one that implies that the terms “past-life” and “recall” are being used erroneously. Perhaps, rather than recalling one’s own past life, the experiencer is metaphysically perceiving a very real life of a very real (other) person that occurred during a time frame that, by convention, is said to be “in the past.” As an experience that clearly involves an other mind, it would appropriately be categorized as an experience of metaphysical manifestation of mind, and the question of reincarnation would then be rendered moot. •

†

The definitions of “mediumistic episode” (“… a ‘spirit’ using the voice … or hand … of the experiencer …”) and “spirit possession” (“… another mind … attempting to take [or having taken] … over control of the experiencer’s body or will”) are quite similar.† A mediumistic episode is generally voluntary and shortlived, whereas a spirit possession experience is neither; but both experiences (as well as most other experiences

There are those who would argue that the experiences are very different— that mediumistic entities are non-invasive (and therefore “good”) and that possessing entities are invasive (and therefore “bad”). While such may be the case, an individual in a state of metaphysical consciousness by definition loses the ability to differentiate and is therefore extremely vulnerable to disruptive psychological influences. Moreover, possessing entities are infamous for their disingenuousness. Anna Wickland, one of the all-time great trance mediums, spent the later years of her life in a mental institution.

of metaphysical manifestation of mind) involve the experiencer’s mind interacting metaphysically with other minds. The theoretical distinction between possession and other experiences of transpersonal manifestation of mind might be framed this way: If an other mind appears to have been incorporated within the apparent boundaries of the mind of the experiencer, that qualifies as possession; if it hasn’t, then it doesn’t. That distinction, however, is mostly semantic and the notion of possession is key to any thinking about experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind because of its implications vis-à-vis personal boundaries, free will and such. •

Experiences of “aliens,” “grays,” “space brothers,” “extraterrestrials,” “UFOnauts”—and their mode of transportation, i.e., “unidentified flying objects” (UFOs)—probably generate more controversy than do all the other metaphysical experiences combined. Most likely that’s because so many people argue that these subjective experiences qualify as objective phenomena. In keeping with the theme of this book, however, the ensuing discussion of alien contact and UFO experiences (UFOEs collectively) is experientially, rather than phenomenologically, based. From the perspective of experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind, it can be argued that a UFOE is an experience in which the mind of the experiencer metaphysically perceives another mind (not necessarily Earth-based or human)—and that something about the appearance of that other mind causes the experiencer to ascribe to it the interpretation of UFO (whether vehicle, or occupant, or both). In other words, UFOs need not be saucer-shaped (indeed, many reports suggest otherwise) structured craft of extraterrestrial origin; they may simply be a conditioned perception that arises out of cultural suggestion. Further

illustrating the ways in which the supposedly discrete metaphysical experiences overlap one another are findings of UFO occupants (aliens) functioning as possessing entities. William Baldwin, in his 1998 book CE-VI: Close Encounters of the Possession Kind, discussed numerous clinical cases in which possessing entities were found to be alien or extraterrestrial in nature. UFOEs also have many marked similarities to out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences.

An Alien Encounter

There are some experiences in which the mind appears to separate itself completely (or almost completely) from the brain—the “conventional” death experience, the near-death experience and the out-of-body experience, for example. While none of these experiences necessarily involves the manifestation of an other mind, they often do. When they do not, such experiences can be accounted for by clairvoyance (an experience of metaphysical perception rather than of metaphysical manifestation of mind)—even though that which is perceived clairvoyantly may have little in common with consensus reality. 37

•

An out-of-body experience (OOBE), as previously discussed, is an experience in which a person seems to perceive the world from a location outside their physical body. An OOBE begins when a person loses contact with sensory input from the body while remaining conscious. OOBEs can be induced—intentionally or unintentionally—by triggers including brain traumas, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep, and electrical stimulation of the brain. One in 10 people have an OOBE once, or more commonly, several times in their life. Most OOBEs occur under conditions of very low arousal. Those experiencing OOBEs sometimes report a preceding and initiating lucid-dream state. In most of these cases, subjects perceive their minds as being awake and their bodies as being asleep; about half of them note a feeling of sleep paralysis. By contrast, a substantial minority of other cases occur under conditions of maximum arousal, including traumatic incidents such as a rock-climbing fall, a traffic accident, or childbirth, and even under conditions of extreme physical effort during activities such as high-altitude climbing and marathon running. Sleep can supervene as a reaction to extreme stress or hyper-arousal. In paranormal contexts, out-of-body experiences are often referred to as “astral projection.”

•

A near-death experience (NDE), also previously discussed, is a personal experience associated with coming very close to death (and actually dying according to clinical criteria). NDEs can be either positive or negative experiences. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of subjective sensations including: detachment from the body; feelings of levitation; transcendence of egoic and spatiotemporal boundaries; traveling through a dark tunnel; rapid movement toward and/or sudden

immersion in a powerful light (or “Being of Light”), which communicates with the individual; and an intense feeling of unconditional love and acceptance, serenity, security, and warmth. When negative, such experiences may include sensations of torment and torture. Eventually, the experiencer receives a life review, commonly spoken of as “seeing one’s life flash before one’s eyes.” This is followed by approaching a border or a decision by the experiencer or others to return to one’s body, and is often accompanied by a reluctance to return. Finally, there is a return to the physical body. Kenneth Ring has found that after an NDE, there was a consistent set of value and belief changes for people who had such experiences. They had a greater appreciation for life, higher self-esteem, greater compassion for others, less concern for acquiring material wealth, a heightened sense of purpose and self-understanding, a greater desire to learn, elevated spirituality, greater ecological sensitivity and planetary concern, and a feeling of being more intuitive. If an NDE is, in fact, exactly what it appears to be to the experiencer, it would then represent evidence of the supposedly immaterial existence of a soul or mind that leaves the body upon death, and would provide information about an immaterial world where the soul would journey upon ending its physical existence on Earth. There are, however, other more prosaic interpretations. Some, with a psychological bent, argue that the experience is a form of dissociation and depersonalization brought on by extreme stress. Others, who are physiologically oriented, suggest that the experience arises out of cerebral hypoxia, anoxia, and hypercapnia; endorphins and other neurotransmitters; and abnormal activity in the temporal lobes, or, alternatively, by the drugs used during resuscitation. In either of those cases, the events experienced during an NDE would be considered to be hallucinations. 39

The above material helps to elucidate the many similarities among the supposedly differentiated metaphysical experiences, and suggests the possibility that perhaps all of them (both psi and psi-related) should be considered to be different facets of a single meta-experience. It’s not that some people are especially sensitive to experiences of metaphysical perception, others to experiences of metaphysical influence, and others to experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind; it’s that some people are especially sensitive to the entire spectrum of metaphysical experiences.

Chapter 5

Individuals’ Experiences The information about metaphysical experiences presented in the previous chapter offers an understanding of them as abstractions, but for those who have not had such experiences, getting a better “feel” for them requires the presentation of specific individuals’ experiences. This chapter is intended to do just that. I’ll start with some information about a friend who I will call “Claire.” Claire is more solidly grounded in metaphysical realities than any individual I have ever known. Despite frequently hav- What does a fish know ing experiences of metaphysical about the water in which it swims all its life? perception—déjà vu, synchronic—Albert Einstein ity, telepathy, precognition, psychic dreams, and clairvoyance/ clairaudience/clairsentience—they were of little import to her. She just took them for granted. As she told me, “That’s just the way things work for me.” Similarly, she thought of her experiences of metaphysical influence as being “no big thing.” With respect to psychic healings that she had performed, she said, “It’s just little stuff, nothing especially grand or dramatic.” While she often influences light bulbs and electrical/electronic equipment, she said, “That’s not something I do; it’s just something that happens when I’m around.” Some of her 41

experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind, however, were sufficiently anomalous to get her attention. She told me: As I child and into my 20s, I was able to observe things from locations outside my body. From those locations, I could see both my body and other things elsewhere—things that were unobservable from the position of my body. It was like having a special kind of periscope. These experiences weren’t necessarily related to stressful situations. They were more likely to be driven by curiosity than anything else. Also, as a child, I frequently thought I was making myself invisible. I would just “go somewhere else” and, as long as I stayed there, I believed I couldn’t be seen. I have no objective evidence of truly becoming invisible, but from my subjective point of view, that certainly seemed to be the case. Spirit guides were a regular part of my childhood. I usually encountered them in the woods—sometimes they were people, sometimes they were animals. When I was 18, a well-known psychic told me that I was very psychic and that I had spirit guides with me all the time. While I was somewhat surprised to hear that I was psychic, I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear about the spirit guides. They were just a part of my ordinary, everyday reality. In a way, that’s still the case. It’s hard to put into words, but there is a sense of people at a distance, or people who are no longer alive, or people who have yet to be born, being a part of my “perceptual field.” It’s always people, never anything like extra-terrestrials, ancient entities, or the other forms of spirit guides that are currently in vogue. There’s no real sense of separateness from these spirit guides—there’s more a sense of there being one big collective spirit that expresses through different people, different animals, or different imaginary companions. The nature of the communication, of that 42

which is expressed, can vary. Sometimes it’s insight, sometimes it’s information, sometimes it’s suggestions, and sometimes it’s a feeling of being supported. There have also been times when I have experienced apparitions, or spirits that were distinctly separate from me—the most memorable being Emma Doyle.† Emma was the daughter of the man who originally built the house I lived in when I was a young mother. Shortly after moving into the house, I began seeing the figure of a woman near the fireplace. When I mentioned it to an elderly neighbor who had known the Doyles, she said, “Oh, yes, that’s Emma. She always appears next to the fireplace.” Also, the proprietress of my daughter’s nursery school told me that the woman who lived there before me had likewise reported seeing the image of a woman near the fireplace. A teenage boy, who was then living with us, said he saw the figure regularly. One day, when he was walking up the stairs, she appeared and he said, “Emma, I don’t believe you’re real”—then something tripped him. Also, my son, who was about 5 years old at the time, would sometimes reach out as if to take Emma by the hand and say, “Let’s go upstairs now.” ~~~ In contemporary times, evidence has been emerging that people can be taught metaphysical perception—they don’t have to be “natural born” psychics. Interestingly, this is thanks to the US military. In the 1970s, the US military intelligence community established a psi-based intelligence-gathering program using a methodology spoken of as “controlled remote viewing (CRV).” That is another name for clairvoyance (with its various sub-categories) performed under controlled conditions using stringent, structured protocols. When the †

Pseudonym

existence of this program became public knowledge, its sponsors claimed that it had proven to be ineffective and was being disbanded—this after 20 years and the investment of more than $20 million. Well … maybe … but having trained in CRV, having had first-hand subjective experience doing CRV, and having analyzed the statistics on the results of CRV, there is little question in my mind about its efficacy. Most likely, the intelligence community’s disclaimer was necessitated by security considerations and/or a desire to avoid the opprobrium of the “giggle factor.” In the 1990s, I was taught CRV by Lyn Buchanan, a retired army sergeant who had been one of the original members of the army’s CRV unit. In the training, the instructor would randomly select a “target” from a stack of images, assign a number (usually including the day’s date) to it for reference purposes, and then direct the student to describe or draw a depiction of the (hidden) target picture. I won’t go into all the various protocols involved in CRV, but probably the most important was that the viewer was to avoid naming or guessing the target. Doing so would engage the viewer’s conscious mind (whereas the process required accessing subconsciously perceived details), and would invariably take the viewer’s attention away from the actual target. From time to time, Lyn would reverse the roles, with him becoming the viewer and me becoming the monitor. His demonstration was flabbergasting! While, of course, he wasn’t 100% accurate, his description or drawing provided an identifiable approximation of the target, and for about half of those, he was “spot-on.” After a while, it occurred to me that I was looking at the target after I took it from the stack and that perhaps he was “just reading my mind.” When I tested him on targets I had not seen, his success rate did not change. Trying my hand at it, I began to get reasonably comfortable with the process after about 10 targets, and after a few dozen (what with homework and all), I was doing reasonably well. My success rate eventually became such that the odds were 44

about 10,000 to 1 against my being able to get so many “hits” strictly by chance. I kept at it for about a year, and then one day I started failing abysmally. Reviewing what had happened, Lyn and I realized that I had fallen into the “naming and guessing” trap, and try as I might, I could not prevent myself from doing so. Taking stock, I decided that the extraordinary meticulousness required and the amount of time the project consumed were not to my liking, so I stopped doing CRV myself, but have never lost interest in it. During this time frame, my ongoing regular research had to do with determining the distribution of various types of sensitivities throughout the population, with particular attention given to sensitivity to metaphysical experiences. Working with a reference group of 300 people—all of whom completed a 221-item questionnaire that I had developed—I determined that there were certain factors attributable to nature (biological), nurture (trauma and abuse), and personality (temperament type preferences) that predisposed people to exhibit indicators of their levels of a variety of sensitivities, among them physiological, cognitive, emotional, altered states of consciousness, and metaphysical experiences. I also determined that there were very high correlations between the scores for the different types of sensitivities. I had a comparison group of 30 CRVers also complete the questionnaire, assuming that significant differences in mean scores, if there were any, could provide a great deal of insight into the process of CRV. There were, indeed, significant differences in mean scores, and the implications were most interesting. At the broadest level, with respect to the reference group, the CRVers levels of predispositions toward sensitivities were low, while their levels of indicators of sensitivities were high, to a noteworthy degree. Those two levels would normally be expected to differ from those of the reference group in the same direction and by approximately the same amount. The fact that they didn’t, combined with the degree to which they didn’t, was very noteworthy. Among the predispositions toward sensitivities, 45

in the biological category, the CRVers had very low scores; in the trauma and abuse category, their scores were low; and in the personality category, their scores were relatively high. Among the indicators of sensitivities, there were no noteworthy differences in scores in the physiological and cognitive categories; in the emotional category, CRVers scores were high; in the altered states of consciousness category, their scores were high; and in the metaphysical experiences category their scores were high. This information is of some interest in so far as it goes, but the really important findings can only be unearthed at a deeper level, within the subscales of those major categories. Significant differences in scores between the CRVers and the Reference Group can presumably be attributed to some exogenous variable. The most likely factor in this case is, of course, their training in Training is everything. The controlled remote viewpeach was once a bitter almond; ing. The indicators of sensitivities in which the cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. CRVers had high scores —Mark Twain were the categories of emotional sensitivities, altered states of consciousness sensitivities, and metaphysical sensitivities. In the emotional category, while there was no noteworthy difference in the scores on the intrapersonal subscale, the CRVers’ scores on the interpersonal subscale were very high. Interpersonal emotional sensitivity can be thought of as a form of claircognizance, and therefore an experience of metaphysical perception. While the CRVers’ scores in the altered-states-of-consciousness category were, on balance, high, no especially useful information can be garnered by examining its subscales. In the metaphysical experiences category, a breakout into the subscales of psi (experiences of metaphysical perception and experiences of metaphysical influence) and “psi-related (experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind) showed a very significant dichotomy, one that could 46

be anticipated. The CRVers’ scores on the psi subscale (which includes such things as clairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy) were very high, almost across the board. There’s no surprise there because CRV is a psi experience. On the psi-related subscale, there were no noteworthy differences for almost all of the included experiences. The one exception was for the near-death experience, where the CRVers had high scores; but then, most of them were soldiers and presumably a number of them had been seriously injured in training and/or combat. One finding that did come as something of a surprise was the CRVers’ very high scores on the introversion, and high scores on the intuition subscales of the personality (temperament type preferences) category. Theoretically, personality is a predisposition to, not an indicator of, sensitivities. It is, however, potentially subject to change by an exogenous variable, even in adult life. With respect to CRV, introversion contributes to independence from societal pressures toward conformity, and intuition contributes to inspiration, insight, and creativity. Note that all of those areas in which CRVers had high scores contribute to the efficacy of CRV. While these data say

The CRVer is Not “Just One of the Herd” 47

nothing about the objective reality of psi experiences, they say a great deal about the subjective realities of the subjects. Clearly, CRVers have a very different perspective on reality than that of the average person. I’ve always had a secret fascination with conspiracy theories. It’s not that I necessarily believe in them, but I enjoy checking them out in some detail, both for the titillation factor and in the hopes of obtaining some insight into the minds of their creators. One conspiracy theory that especially stimulated my imagination was that of what ultimately became known as “The Montauk Project,” because of its location in Montauk, Long Island. According to the legend, the project was originally located at the Brookhaven National Laboratories, also on Long Island. It began in the early 1950s, or perhaps in the late 1940s, and was then known as “Project Phoenix.” What was then called “Project Rainbow, and is now known as “The Philadelphia Experiment” was, in the 1930s and 1940s, a precursor to the Montauk Project. In the early 1930s, the US military began working to develop technology that would make large objects, such as aircraft and warships, invisible to radar and, putatively, to the human eye as well. Ultimately, the achievement of radar invisibility was successful, as evidenced by today’s military use of “stealth” technology, but credible reports about the success or failure of optical invisibility are not to be found. The work involved the manipulation of very large electrical and magnetic fields, and was grounded in the concepts of the “Unified Field Theory” in which the force of gravity plays a central role. A full-scale test of Project Rainbow’s technology was conducted on August 12, 1943, with the U.S.S. Eldridge (DE 173) and her crew, in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The Eldridge completely disappeared, and showed up briefly in Norfolk, Virginia. When the ship was teleported back to Philadelphia, the results proved to have been disastrous. Some crew members had their bodies embedded in the steel bulkheads of the ship, several men had burst into flames, and 48

many had become mentally deranged. Two brothers, Duncan Cameron and Edward Cameron, who were the technicians running the experiment’s equipment, escaped injury because they were located deep within the bowels of the ship, and thus protected by multiple layers of steel. When Project Phoenix (later the Montauk Project) began at Brookhaven in the early 1950s, it essentially had three primary components: (1) invisibility, (2) time travel/teleportation, and (3) electromagnetic mind control. The invisibility component was spun off into a separate project run solely by the Air Force. While the mind-control work (presumably connected with the CIA’s notorious Project MK-ULTRA) and the time travel/teleportation work were acknowledged to be separate components, the technology utilized in both was quite similar, and those two components remained closely interconnected. The technology required for weather control was also quite similar, and experiments in that realm were included in the package as well. It was soon realized that the project would require a large radar antenna, and fortuitously, the Air Force had a decommissioned base with a complete SAGE radar installation at the Montauk Air Force Station, which was surrounded by the Army’s Camp Hero, and fit the project’s requirements perfectly. It was large, it was remote, and water access allowed equipment to be moved in and out undetected. In the late 1960s, the necessary gear was moved into underground bunkers beneath the base, and the Montauk Project was up and running. They began with experiments with the radar to determine which frequency and which pulse duration created which emotions in the people on whom the energy was focused while they were enclosed in a small room. Initially many of the subjects died, but the researchers treated that with callous disregard because the test subjects used at that stage of the experiments were homeless people who had been abducted off the streets by project personnel, and nobody would miss them. Their bodies, perhaps hundreds of them, were said to have been buried on the grounds of the base. 49

Eventually, the scientists were able to resolve the problem of radiation toxicity, and they then began a series of tests having to do with controlling people’s thoughts and behaviors in addition to their emotions. In 1973, the project scientists began to experiment with influencing large groups of people, changing their moods, thoughts, and behaviors en masse, and monitoring the results. When the technology had become reliable and relatively safe—at least for the operators—the project scientists turned to the ITT Corporation to develop a device that would allow for precise manipulation of targets. Assistance with the new technology for this equipment was said to have been provided by “aliens” from the star system Sirius. (Seriously, that is what has been claimed.) The device, which went online in 1974, came to be known as “The Montauk Chair,” and Duncan Cameron (said to have also been involved in Project Rainbow) became the primary test subject. Initial experiments in mind reading soon evolved into experiments in precision mind control after some modifications to the gear. Glitches in the process were attributed to disruptions in the flow of time because the psychics in the chair projected realities that differed from consensus reality. The Montauk researchers redesigned and rebuilt the chair using multiple coils to generate the energy fields necessary to stabilize time. The second chair was brought online in 1976. After about a year of testing, the Montauk Chair proved to be functioning flawlessly. The researchers then decided to try something new: instead of just transmitting thoughts, they decided to attempt to create and transmit solid objects. The idea was for Duncan to visualize an object and, provided there was sufficient transmitting power, cause that object to materialize somewhere on the base. Results were less than perfect. Some objects remained intangible, while others disappeared as soon as the power was turned off. However, if sufficient power were available, Duncan could often create permanent objects.

Another set of experiments had to do with what was called “The Seeing Eye.” While in the chair, Duncan was given an object—a lock of hair, for example—that was closely associated with an individual, and that could serve as an anchor or a reference point. He could then see and hear everything the target person could see and hear, no matter where that person was located. Those experiments led to further work on controlling what an individual was thinking and doing. By actively projecting his mind into the mind of another person, Duncan could cause that person to do whatever he directed. Further experimentation demonstrated that this technique could be used on large groups of people as well as on individuals. Having learned that the experiments could influence the structure of time, and also having learned how to stabilize time, the researchers came to believe that they could actually harness and accurately control the flow of time. In 1979, it was determined that more power would be needed to be able to bend and shift time, and work began on developing the necessary equipment. In this, assistance was provided by a different group of aliens, this one from the Orion constellation. The end result of this collaboration was the “The Orion Delta T” antenna. So now, according to the legend, there were two groups of aliens, not just one, involved in the project. Duncan began training with the Orion Delta T antenna, and it was found that, indeed, he was able to influence time. He could cause temporal portals to open to almost any specified time by concentrating on the target date. Initially, the portals tended to drift and the time travelers were sometimes unable to locate the portal for the return trip. By 1981, the equipment had been properly recalibrated, and Duncan had been adequately trained to keep a portal stable. The work also included spatial, as well as temporal, stabilization, so that portals could be created to specific places as well as to specific times. Once the researchers were able to successfully stabilize the portals, the nature of the Montauk Project changed yet again. The majority of project personnel were dismissed, the military departed, 51

and new logistical and technical teams were brought in to run the operation. From 1981 to 1983, the primary objective of the project became that of exploring the nature of time itself. In 1983, the tale takes another really strange and convoluted twist. The year 1983 was very important because it was a “time vortex”—as were the years 1903, 1923, 1943, 1963, and 2003—in the Earth’s 20-year biorhythm cycle, and served as an anchor or focal point in the time-travel experiments. Also significant was the date of August 12, the mid-point between July 23 and August 23, the “Dog Days of Summer”— the reference being to Sirius, the “Dog Star,” which was historically believed to be responsible for the high level of heat in the Northern hemisphere during that time frame. For many centuries, it has been believed by some that during those Dog Days of Summer, there was a special occult connection between Sirius and Earth. Perhaps not surprisingly at this point in the story, it should be noted that it was aliens from Sirius who provided the technology for the Montauk Chair. Quite a lot happened on August 12, 1983—in fact, more than one would imagine could possibly happen in a single day. This paradox can be at least partially resolved if one understands that in a time travel/teleportation scenario, “parallel realities” are operative. An individual can be located in multiple different places, times, or place/times simultaneously. The aliens from Sirius had coerced the Montauk researchers into opening a time tunnel between Montauk on August 12, 1983, and the hole in the space/time fabric that had been created by the Philadelphia Experiment on August 12, 1943. This link created a portal through which the Sirians could establish their physical presence on Earth. After Duncan Cameron (of 1983) took his place in the chair, he proceeded to open the time tunnel as directed. While the USS Eldridge, of the Philadelphia Experiment, was held in hyperspace, Duncan and Edward Cameron (of 1943) leapt overboard. They, along with a UFOs that had been observing the Philadelphia Experiment, were drawn into the time tunnel, 52

and ended up in Montauk in 1983. There they were met by the scientist John von Neumann, who was said to have died in 1957. Von Neumann told them that the hole in the space/time continuum was locked into the equipment on the Eldridge and that they would have to go back to 1943 to destroy that equipment, lest the hole expand and trap the entire planet in hyperspace. The Camerons did, indeed, go back, and successfully demolished the equipment. Edward Cameron then stayed in 1943, while Duncan Cameron (of 1943) returned to Montauk of 1983. Because he was not grounded in a stable time reference, he aged extremely rapidly and was dead of old age within three days. While his body was dead, the researchers were able to recover his soul and keep it in storage until it could be retroactively installed in the body of the new Duncan Cameron in 1963. While all of this was going on, a group of people on the Montauk team, believing that things had gone too far, set about destroying all of the equipment on the Montauk end of the project. Preston Nichols cut wires and smashed gear. Duncan Cameron (of 1983), while in the chair, manifested from his subconscious mind an out-of-control, large, hairy monster that smashed its way around the base, destroying and eating just about everything it could find. When the transmitter finally powered down, this beast faded away. After the disaster of August 12, 1983, the Montauk Project was shut down. The base was emptied of people and equipment, and all extraneous personnel were brainwashed to forget everything that had happened there. In 1984, a group of “Black Berets” entered the base with orders to shoot anything that moved. They purged the base for a second team that removed all equipment deemed to be too sensitive to be abandoned. After that, the access points to the underground complexes were sealed off with many tons of concrete. The gates of the base were locked closed, and the base was abandoned. Are you skeptical? After learning of this tale, I certainly was. For the most part, I thought it was ridiculous … and yet 53

… and yet, there were enough potentially veridical fragments to it that I wanted to learn more. I read everything relevant to it, of which there was a great deal, that I could get my hands on, and finally decided I had to check it out for myself. But how to do that? Obviously one or more site visits were required, but of what value could they possibly be unless I were equipped with the latest highly calibrated bullshit detector? Well, Radio Shack had sold out of those devices, so instead I turned to my second-best option. That was my colleague, Cassandra, who I considered to be a world-class psychic, and I asked her to come to Montauk with me. She was willing to do so, but said she thought she would be of very little, or no, help to me because she knew absolutely nothing about the Montauk Project. I explained to her that that was exactly what I wanted—that I was looking for her subconscious, or psychic, perceptions, uncontaminated by input from her conscious mind. When Casandra and I first got together to begin our adventure, I spent some time discussing with her some of the protocols of controlled remote viewing that would help to keep her on track while we were working. I then explained that we would approach our inquiry from two different perspectives. First, I would take her to various locations on Long Island that might be important and see what she had to report about them. Second, I would present her with lists of names—names of people, names of places, names of things, etc.—that might, or might not, be relevant. Her task would be to rate them in terms of relevance, and then to tell me what she could about those that resonated for her. In all, we would end up having three working sessions, each spread out over a couple of days—in July 1995, September 1995, and January 1996. During our various verbal cuing sessions, the words I presented her with came from my research, from information that had arisen during our site visits, and, of course, included some “red herrings” that were intended to prevent my leading her by suggestion, and also to serve as a check on her accuracy. She quickly dismissed the red herrings, and handled the others 54

with a most satisfactory degree of accuracy. The names of people that she said were relevant to our research included those of Preston Nichols, Alfred Bielek, Edward Cameron, Duncan Cameron, William Randolph Hearst, Charles Lindbergh, Aleister Crowley, and Nikola Tesla. Project names that she identified as relevant included Project Phoenix, Project Rainbow, Project Moon Beam, and Project MKULTRA. Important years she identified included 1923, 1943, 1963, and 1983—each of which, according to the legend, was a time vortex in the Earth’s 20-year biorhythm cycle. While this portion of our work was useful for verification purposes, the really important information came from our site visits.

Map of Montauk, Long Island

Our first set of site visits, in July of 1995, was to the town of Montauk and to the lighthouse at Montauk Point. As we were driving toward the town from the West on Montauk Highway, Cassandra’s first comment was, “This is odd. I’m experiencing a collapsing of the structure of time. Past, present, and future are all collapsed into ‘now.’” Given her ignorance of anything having to do with the Montauk Project, this comment was particularly striking because she did not consciously know that one of the primary objectives of the project was experimenting with methodologies for the manipulation of time. While we

were in the Montauk area that day, she made several other comments about her temporal disorientation. We continued into town and parked near the Montauk Tower, a chunky, rectangular eyesore. Cassandra said, “There’s a Navy connection to that building—big brass, command and control, and all that. I can’t sort out whether it’s in the past or in the present, but it seems to be both, and it is much stronger in the past. It seems to be especially relevant in the 1930s to 1950s.” When we got out of the car, she said, “This place gives me the creeps! The moment I put my feet on the ground, I had the impression of ‘evil.’ There’s something wrong with the ground, or, more specifically, there’s something wrong under the ground.” My previous research had indicated that the Montauk Tower had, indeed, been used for command and control purposes in the past. It also suggested that there were vast underground complexes and tunnels, especially at Camp Hero, but extending to the Montauk Tower, and beyond to Brookhaven National Laboratories. Our next stop was the Montauk Point Lighthouse. While we were sitting in the car in the parking lot, Cassandra stated, “There is something very ‘evil’ here that makes me feel ill. I don’t want to stay here long, and I do not intend to get out of the car. Now, over there [gesturing to the south, toward Camp Hero], it has a very ‘high tech’ feeling. There’s an extremely large underground complex there in which a whole lot has been hidden. I’m also getting something about a very large ‘eye.’ It seems to be a huge eye with several things like jewels in it. But it’s not just decorative—there’s more to it than that— as if it’s somehow related to a function. Again, I’m having difficulty staying oriented in my sense of time.” I knew from the legend that the technological aspects of the project were housed in a huge complex of underground bunkers. What makes Cassandra’s comments especially fascinating is her reference to the “very large eye,” that eye being an important detail in the legend. Today, the most notable depiction of such an eye is in the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, as 56

it appears on the US one-dollar bill. In occult symbolism, the eye represents “The Unseen” powers that control everything, and it is a feature in the symbology of both the Freemasons and the Illuminati. As a seeming aside, Cassandra said casually, “Oh, there’s something else that comes in here having to do with Philadelphia and some place in Virginia, like Norfolk.” Given those particular places, it would appear that she was making a subconscious connection between the Montauk Project and the Philadelphia Experiment. During our second set of site visits in September of 1995, we entered Camp Hero on foot through its East Gate and, about ¼ mile in, found what appeared to be old anti-aircraft gun emplacements and an underground ammunition bunker. All entrances to the underground facilities had been sealed with what appeared to be relatively new concrete, and one of them bore the inscription, “Gerald 11/18/83.” Cassandra commented that, “There were deals of the ‘weapons-for-drugs’ sort taking place here. This bunker was being used at times for storage of stuff other than ammunition.” The road on which we were walking merged with another road that appeared to be the aging remnants of the Old Montauk Highway. On the south side of that road, about a mile in from the gate, we found a strip of asphalt about 12 feet wide, laid down in a circle with a diameter of approximately 200 feet. According to my research, this is said to be evidence of a particle accelerator, or cyclotron, that was presumably fed by a larger cyclotron at Brookhaven National Laboratories. Cassandra had quite a bit to say about all of this: “There’s something here having to do with nuclear experiments. ‘Heavy water,’ perhaps? It’s not necessarily about explosions; it’s more like the opposite of explosions—a coming together rather than a breaking apart. When I say ‘nuclear,’ I don’t necessarily mean like an atom bomb; what I mean is extraordinary amounts of energy. I keep wanting to say something like a ‘freeze technology.’ There’s an association with movement 57

and the stopping of movement, specifically in people.” Despite my ever-increasing awareness of Cassandra’s extraordinary abilities, after I had done my homework, I was dumbfounded that she had managed to come up with the expression “freeze technology.” I had never heard that term until she mentioned it, but sure enough, when I did further research, I discovered that she was, once again, spot on. As it turned out, freeze technology apparently had its origins in the work of Nikola Tesla with what is known as the “Schumann Resonance Frequency.” Freeze technology can be viewed from two different perspectives: 1. Powerful ELF electromagnetic radiation apparently can create electrical interference in the motor neurons of the brain, causing them to malfunction in such a way as to create muscular paralysis. This condition, known as “akinesia,” would render all personnel in the target area helpless and immobile. 2. This perspective has to do with what has been dubbed Tesla’s “Death Ray,” and involves draining enormous amounts of energy from one location and transmitting it to another location. The result of such an energy transmission is a “cold explosion” that can be enormously destructive. It has been said that a single shot of such a weapon could almost instantly freeze all personnel in the target area into a block of ice. Cassandra continued: “This whole thing has to do with very sophisticated psychological experiments, especially during the 1930’s and 1960’s. There was some sort of interruption of things in the 1940’s and the 1950’s. Drugs and experiments. Hallucinogens and heroin. The hallucinogens were used in the experiments; the heroin was used to finance the experiments. In addition to the military involvement, there was also the involvement of the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Hell’s Angels. The mind control experiments began elsewhere in the 1920’s or 1930’s before they moved out to Montauk 58

Point. The heroin trade was used to finance the experiments. In the 1980’s, the experiments went really ‘high-tech’ with this ‘freeze technology’ stuff, whatever that is. Also, thought surveillance techniques. In the big picture, all of this had to do with ruling the world.” It is startling to note how closely Cassandra’s comments paralleled what I found in my own research on the same subject. During our third set of site visits, in January of 1996, we didn’t actually go to Montauk, but instead focused our attention on a number of associated locations. In Shoreham, Cassandra said, “There was something evil here that could cause a lot of deaths. I’m not talking about the nuclear power plant; I’m talking about something on a smaller scale that could intentionally be used to kill people.” Presumably, she was referring to Wardenclyffe Tower, a research facility used by Nikola Tesla, where he was purportedly working on the development of his so-called Death Ray mentioned above. Due to financial problems, Wardenclyffe was shut down before it could become fully operational. In Center Moriches, we bought take-out lunch, and then parked near the shore of Moriches Bay across from Moriches Inlet. Cassandra said, “My curiosity level is extremely heightened. Why do I keep getting visual images of scuba divers? I’m envisioning something very large and metallic crashing into the water. There’s debris everywhere, lots of debris, and any number of bodies. Also, there’s something that goes underwater from there [Moriches Inlet, across the bay] to there [Tuthill Cove, in East Moriches]. If this has to do with UFOs, then you also need to check out Mount Kisco, New York. There’s some sort of connection.” I had a vague recollection of reports to the effect that a UFO had crashed in the area some years earlier, and several weeks later, after digging through the literature, I discovered a treasure trove of well-researched information about the crash of a UFO mothership in Moriches bay on September 28, 1989. The incident was said to have been the culmination of a carefully 59

planned and executed operation, six months in the making and well-rehearsed, in which military special operations and intelligence services shot down and retrieved from the waters of Moriches Bay a very large, mysterious, boomerang-shaped flying object that had frequently been observed flying over the Hudson River valley in New York. In the aftermath of the crash, 18 government personnel were killed by the alien occupants of the craft, employing an extremely low-frequency weapon, capable of destroying the molecular coherence of all known matter. Some of those killed were psychics who were there for the purpose of communicating with alien survivors, if needed. Despite our having discontinued our explorations, the biggest surprise of all was yet to come. At 8:31 PM on Wednesday, July 17, 1996, approximately 11 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, TWA Flight #800, a Boeing 747, en route from New York City to Rome via Paris, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean from an altitude of 13,700 feet, killing all 230 people aboard. What makes this crash especially relevant to our story is that it occurred just off of Moriches Inlet on the south coast of Long Island. That was precisely the same area that we had been checking out during our site visits of January 1996, fully six months earlier, and where Cassandra had said, “Why do I keep getting visual images of scuba divers? I’m envisioning something very large and metallic crashing into the water. There’s debris everywhere, lots of debris, and any number of bodies.” That certainly sounds as if Cassandra were precognitively describing the crash of Flight #800. At the time of the site visit, however, I had assumed she was speaking of something that had happened previously, and that’s when I found the reports of the crash of a UFO mothership in Moriches Bay on September 28, 1989. Which event Cassandra had actually been speaking of, we will never know with certainty, but the similarities between them are definitely striking.

Map of Moriches Bay, Long Island

Psychokinesis (PK) is the causing of changes in the location or state of a physical object (metal bending, fire-starting, things falling to the floor, etc.) through no “natural” physical means. To date, most formal laboratory experiments dealing with PK have employed unstable random systems (dice, random number generators, etc.). There are anecdotal examples of what appear to be pure cases of PK involving stable objects that do not fluctuate spontaneously—the bending of spoons, or the moving of individual small objects, for example, but no systematically controlled replications by multiple investigators have yet been conducted. Magicians have successfully simulated some of the effects of psychokinesis, such as object movement, spoon bending, levitation, and teleportation. Metal objects such as keys or cutlery can be bent using a number of different techniques, even if the performer has not had access to the items beforehand. Psychics have also claimed the psychokinetic ability to bend metal. Uri Geller was famous for his spoon-bending demonstrations, allegedly by PK, but was caught many times using sleight of hand, and all his effects have been recreated using conjuring tricks. There are a number of ways to fake psychokinetic metal bending, including switching straight objects for pre-bent duplicates, the concealed application of 61

force, and secretly inducing metallic fractures. Research has also suggested that apparent metal-bending effects can be created by verbal suggestion. Believers in the paranormal are significantly more likely than the norm to misinterpret the demonstration of an effect as being PK, and are more likely to misremember crucial details of the presentation. This suggests that confirmation bias affects people’s interpretation of PK demonstrations. “PK parties,” where groups of people were guided through rituals and chants to awaken metal-bending powers, were a cultural fad in the 1980s. They were encouraged to shout at the items of cutlery that had been provided, and to jump and scream so as to create an atmosphere of pandemonium—a situation that creates states of heightened suggestibility. Critics were excluded and participants were told to avoid looking at their hands. Thousands of people attended these emotionally charged parties, and many became convinced that they had bent silverware by paranormal means. I, myself, attended one of these “spoon-bending” parties and it was exactly as described above. I successfully bent both a spoon and a fork into spirals with seemingly no effort or discomfort whatsoever. (Both are today fastened to the bulletin board above my office desk.) Skeptic and trained hypnotist that I am, however, I believed that I had been in an altered state of consciousness wherein I experienced increased muscle strength and decreased sensitivity to physical discomfort. Shortly thereafter, I shared my experience with a friend who was a “true believer.” He challenged me to do a repeat performance on the spot. I took a few moments to put myself into the appropriate altered state of consciousness, and again it was easy. My friend suggested that the utensil he had given my might be of flimsy construction and told me to try and bend another without going into trance. I was able to do so, but not without a great deal of discomfort, and was only able to make a single bend, not a spiral. Electrical psychokinesis is the influencing of electrical and/or electronic equipment (causing lights to go on and off, 62

causing malfunctions in watches, calculators, computers, etc.) through no “natural” physical means. Electrical psychokinesis can be considered to be a subset of “ordinary” psychokinesis (which involves non-electrical objects). Apparent electrical psychokinesis occurs considerably more frequently than does ordinary PK—most likely because electrical and electronic equipment are inherently unstable systems. Army Sergeant Lyn Buchanan, who, after retiring from the military, trained me in controlled remote viewing. He was assigned to the US Intelligence Field Station in Augsburg, Germany, where he was utilized as a systems designer and programmer for the many and varied US- and foreignmanufactured mainframe and mini-computers that were used at the base. Lyn had been plagued throughout his life with psychokinetic events. In 1984, he experienced one such event, parts of which are still classified, that brought about official recognition and record of his “ability.” He had spent several weeks writing a computer program that would tie together the work of the 12 different countries that used the field station, and they would then be able to share intelligence and not duplicate each other’s work. There was another sergeant who had wanted the programming job, and who was jealous because Lyn got it instead. When it came time for Lyn to demonstrate the program, the most senior officers from each of the 12 countries were in the room. He gave his introduction, turned to the mainframe computer terminal, and hit the enter key. The screen went dead and everyone started laughing. He turned and saw the other sergeant standing at the door. The man pointed his finger at the computer, then at Lyn, and mouthed, “Gotcha!!” Lyn was enraged, but did not direct his fury at him because, being aware of his psychokinetic abilities, he knew he might seriously harm him. He quickly turned back to the computer, and the computers all over the station burned out. Shortly thereafter, the commander of the US Intelligence and Security Command decided, because of Lyn’s abilities, to transfer him to the special “psychic spying” unit at Ft. Meade, 63

Maryland, where he planned to have him develop a program to influence and/or destroy enemy computer systems. This plan was aborted, because Congress decided that it was too much like mind control, and refused to fund it. Instead, Lyn became one of the unit’s controlled remote viewers. Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK) is generally spoken of as “poltergeist activity” by laypeople. It is the idea that the human mind might be actually causing PK-like events to occur without the subject’s even knowing they are source of the activity. The term RSPK is preferred because it is a more neutral and descriptive label that does not imply that the phenomena are necessarily due to the activity of “spirits.” Poltergeists do things—they make noise, they move objects, they generally wreak havoc. Poltergeist activities are believed to be psychokinetic in nature—spontaneous and unwitting PK, admittedly, but PK, nonetheless. RSPK has been found to be associated with individuals—primarily adolescent females — who are experiencing significant stress. Poltergeist events includes moving or throwing small or large objects, opening/ closing/banging of doors or windows, creating graffiti or writing (e.g., on walls), causing electrical disturbances and mechanical failures, and producing noises or smells. Poltergeist cases are most commonly domestic affairs, with the phenomena primarily affecting the home and immediate family. Typically, one family member seems to be the focus of poltergeist activity—i.e., this person is present when the phenomena occur, and appears in some way to trigger their occurrence. Teenage girls are the most likely individuals to be the agent. In many poltergeist cases, there are complex and emotionally conflicted family dynamics. One widely accepted theory is that poltergeist phenomena are a psychokinetic manifestation of the agent’s intense repressed anger at another, more powerful, family member, who may, directly or indirectly, be the target of the activity. Sometimes the anger seems to be directed at the self, so that the poltergeist agent becomes the victim and suffers physical harm. 64

My daughter, Elizabeth, as an adolescent, appears to have been a poltergeist agent. During a period when she was experiencing extreme stress, whenever she was in the house, an enormous number of unexplained phenomena would occur. Doors would swing open and slam closed, pictures would fall off the walls, and lightbulbs would blow out with astonishing frequency. While we were somewhat bemused, we didn’t give it too much thought because all of these incidents could potentially be explained by natural causes. One day, when my wife and I were having coffee at the kitchen table, an event occurred that really caught our attention. The table was located about 12 feet from the kitchen sink, where I had finished doing the dishes about 10 minutes earlier. Elizabeth walked into the kitchen and headed toward the table. As she passed about eight feet away from the sink, a glass flew out of the dish drainer and smashed on the floor. Elizabeth had been too far away from the sink to have physically caused that to happen, and no “natural” explanation seemed to fit. It couldn’t have been the result of vibrations caused by her footsteps on the floor because the floor was brick set in concrete; it couldn’t have been a gust of air through a window because it was cold outside and the windows were closed; and it couldn’t have been a gust of air from the heating system because that was not forcedair, but rather radiant heating embedded in the floor. The only explanation I could come up with was that of real honest-togoodness RSPK. During this time, Elizabeth suffered from quite a variety of medically confirmed but unexplainable physiological problems. This too might have been a consequence of RSPK wherein she had turned her anger inward and destructive energies on herself. A Mediumistic Episode is an experience involving the communication of information or guidance by a “spirit” using the voice (trance channeling), or hand (automatic writing), of the experiencer, who is in an altered state of consciousness and has little awareness afterwards of what was communicated. 65

Perhaps the best-known contemporary trance channeler is J. Z. Knight, who claims to channel the spirit of “Ramtha,” a Lemurian warrior who, leading an army over 2.5 million strong, defeated the Atlanteans over 35,000 years ago. (Never mind that the total population of the world at that time was only half that, or that the existence of the two locations is considered of legendary nature, and neither has been found.) Knight claims that Ramtha possessed clairvoyant, telepathic, telekinetic and other ESP abilities. One of Ramtha’s primary assertions was that every person can learn to create their own reality. When Knight says she is channeling Ramtha, she speaks mostly in English in what sounds like an accent from the Indian Raj, sometimes in a simplistic way. She also speaks in a deeper and sterner voice, and behaves a bit differently. Knight is president of JZK, Inc., and Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, located near the town of Yelm, Washington. Her teachings appear to be a mixture of Jungian philosophy, Western occult traditions, and contemporary positive-thinking attitudes (such as New Age beliefs), and have yet to stand against elementary skepticism or scrutiny. Predictions she has made in the name of Ramtha have generally failed to come true. A central theme of her teachings involves the internalization of divinity (“God is in Us”, “You are God, Behold God”). During the 1980s, I was involved in a parapsychology study group, the leader of which was a trance channeler herself. Her performance was quite impressive, and she created an atmosphere in which it seemed that trance channeling was a normal behavior and easy to learn. I decided to try my hand at it, and put myself into an eyes-closed altered state of consciousness with the intention of encountering an entity who was will1880s Barmaid 66

ing to work with me. It didn’t take long. The entity who came introduced herself to me as “Flo,” and told me that she had been a redhead who had been a barmaid in Kansas City in the 1880s. Feeling rather foolish, and concerned that I would be ridiculed, I nevertheless decided to allow her to speak through me to the group. Well, Flo was definitely not shy! She jumped right in and, in a low-pitched ill-educated female voice with a strong Midwestern twang, began with something like: “Hey y’all. I’ve been waitin’ a long for a chance like this, and I’m willin’ to tell you just about everything I ever knowed, so ask away with your questions. When I was alive, I weren’t very smart and didn’t get no school learnin’, but I’ve learned lots since I passed on to the other side.” Over the course of several sessions, Flo answered a variety of questions, did a couple of readings for individual students, and generally addressed herself to issues of metaphysical philosophy. At one point, I was handed a ring and asked if Flo could do a psychometry reading (make relevant observations about an object or person associated with that object through physical contact with it) on it. Flo was quick on the uptake and stated that it was a woman’s ring about five years old, that it was associated with an event of great joy, and that it had been a gift. Later the owner of the ring claimed that Flo was off target because she had bought it for herself (five years ago when her daughter was born). I’ve often wondered if that woman knew nothing of the concept of “self-gifting.” While I was entirely satisfied with Flo’s level of accuracy, I was skeptical about the likelihood of her being a discarnate entity. An altered state of consciousness can, by itself, contribute significantly to one’s insight and intuition, and I suspected that “Flo” might have been a creation of my subconscious mind who was just going along for the ride because of the set and setting. This was, after all, a parapsychology group, and the attendees were surely much more interested in discarnate entities than they were in the left-brain (conscious) versus right-brain (subconscious) neurological dichotomy. I know I 67

wasn’t deliberately play-acting or attempting to deceive, but including Flo just seemed like the right thing to do, so I just let it happen. I strongly suspect that the results would have been equally satisfactory if I had just been in an altered state of consciousness without the inclusion of Flo. Many people seem to think that just because the entity addressing them lived 150 years (or 35,000!) ago, that entity is almost omniscient. I believed that to encourage people to believe such things about Flo, especially since I didn’t believe them myself, was a form of deception—passive deception, perhaps, but deception nonetheless. Therefore, in order to preserve my integrity, I opted to discontinue doing trance channeling work. Today, if I want to access occult (hidden) knowledge, I take myself into a slightly altered state of consciousness (often surreptitiously) and take full personal responsibility for what I have to say. Past-Life Recall is the recollection of details and/or emotions of what apparently was another lifetime occurring before the experiencer was born into her/his current physical body. If the Past-Life Recall experience is truly the recollection of a former life (and death)—one that was specific and exclusive to the experiencer—such an explanation would imply the veridicality of reincarnation and can thus account for many of the phenomena (birthmarks, memories, unusual behaviors, phobias, and exceptional abilities) associated with past-life recall. Without other minds in the scenario, however, such an experience could be accounted for by retro-cognition (the temporal mirror image of precognition) and would thus be an experience of metaphysical perception rather than of metaphysical manifestation of mind. There is, on the other hand, an alternative explanation that implies that the terms “past-life” and “recall” are being used erroneously. Perhaps, rather than recalling one’s own past life, the experiencer is metaphysically perceiving a very real life of a very real (other) person that occurred during a time frame that, by convention, is said to be “in the past.” As an experience that clearly involves an other mind, it would appropriately be categorized as an 68

experience of metaphysical manifestation of mind and the question of reincarnation would then be rendered moot. For our purposes, however, let’s go with the traditional explanation. In the middle 1970s, several years before I really knew anything about metaphysics, I was a therapy client with a relatively traditional pastoral counselor. We came up against a roadblock to our progress that he believed was something that may have occurred when I was about 3 years old. He asked if I was willing to be hypnotized and age-regressed to see if we could find a way around it. Having read a bit about hypnosis, I was willing to give it a try. He then hypnotized me and, during the regression, made the fateful suggestion that I “go back to the time when the issue we are exploring first began.” I went back, all right, but not the 30 or so years he anticipated. It was more like 400–500 years. Much to his consternation, because he had never encountered such a thing before, I began to speak with some sort of ersatz European accent. He rose to the occasion, cancelled the rest of his appointments for the afternoon, and settled in for the long haul. I told him my name was Hans Treiner, and that I had been a minor leader in the Dutch Reformation during the late 1500s and early 1600s. I was speaking out against the Catholic church, claiming that man has the ability to communicate personally, individually, and directly with God—that he doesn’t have to go through the hierarchy of the priest, the bishop, the cardinal, and the pope. This was considered to be heresy, and for that I was burned at the stake. From the beginning of my outspokenness, I knew what lay in store for me, but to respond to what I perceived as the manipulative, deceptive, control of the Church with silence would have been a violation of my code of integrity. I had an “inner knowing” about the “Universality of Consciousness.” In our modern-day context, communicating directly with God is what the mystics or the psychics are said to do. The most impactful past-life recall experience I ever had occurred during a private regression session in 1989. At the beginning of the session, the therapist advised me that since 69

his office was in a regular office building with relatively poor sound insulation, we would have to keep the noise level down. He then regressed me, I opened my mouth as if to speak, but remained silent. After a few moments, he asked me why I wasn’t speaking and I replied that what wanted to come out was very loud, and I knew that was prohibited. He told me to forget the guidelines and go ahead. Well, what came out was indeed loud—it was a blood-curdling scream that lasted for at least 30 seconds. It turns out that I had entered the lifetime at the very moment of a gruesome and horribly painful death. It was my 13th birthday and the year was 969 AD. I was in Teotihuacan, Mexico, atop a high pyramid with a young priestess to whom I had been indentured as a ritual sex object from the day of my 12th birthday. We were surrounded by several priests who were preparing to sacrifice me to the Sun God. When the moment of sacrifice came, a shaft with a crystal attached to its end, was driven through my throat. My body, in its death throes, was laid over a stone altar and my blood was drained into a gutter leading down the side of the pyramid to the ground. The therapist, wanting to find out why I had been selected for this “honor,” determined that I had been an exceptionally gifted psychic in a society where most people were psychic to one extent or another. I had regularly been surrounded by other consciousnesses that existed without form, only as bright points of light that were my guides, my teachers, my companions. Because of my gifts, the priests had believed that I was an ideal candidate for ritual sacrifice to propitiate the gods. Over the course of 15 or so years, I experienced scores of past life regressions and, during much of that time I was functioning as a past-life therapist myself. I checked out the places, dates, and events I had reported for many of those experiences using readily available resources, and, for the most part, the information I had provided appeared to be quite accurate. I did not, however, do in-depth research on any one of them. While the experiences certainly seemed to be 70

subjectively very real, it did occur to me that since I was quite well read, I may have simply been exhibiting cryptomnesia (the return of a forgotten memory with no awareness of its previous origin). Clairaudience (literally “clear-hearing”) is the ability to hear sounds and/or voices said to exist beyond the reach of ordinary experience or capacity. To the best of my knowledge, I have had only one clairaudient experience, but it was quite remarkable. In the early 1980s, I was participating as a subject in a brainwave biofeedback research project. By design, I was the only subject for five straight days, and the hours were long— we started at 9 in the morning and continued until I had had enough for the day. By the fourth morning, I was exhausted when I came into the laboratory. As I was settling into the isolation booth, it seemed cold even though I was wearing a sweater. That was unusual because I almost never get cold, but I asked for a blanket. After about 20 minutes of working, I was settling into the rhythm, but I felt even colder and asked for a second blanket. As I was approaching the brainwave pattern goal, I became aware of a presence and asked who was there. The reply I heard inside my head was “Igor,” spoken in a deep, gravelly voice with a (presumably) Russian accent. That was rather disconcerting because, while I knew the voice was not external, it was quite clear, and it certainly didn’t sound like my own voice. I asked “Igor” what he was doing there, and he snarled back at me, “No! That’s not the correct question, you fool! The correct question is ‘What are you doing here?’You have invaded my space and I have come to get rid of you.” Maintaining my composure, I responded, “You have no ‘space,’ Igor. You are only a hallucination whereas I am substantively real, and I want you to leave.” Igor growled, “You don’t get it, do you, asshole? I’m every bit as real as you, and I will be sending you away to a place from which you will never return.” With that, my hair stood on end and I broke out in a cold sweat. 71

With the appearance of these physical sensations, I lost my cool and decided to call it quits. I disconnected myself from the biofeedback equipment and immediately left the isolation booth. It took me about 20 minutes to warm up again, and I was still sufficiently frightened that I informed the researchers that I wanted to discontinue our work for the rest of the day. Igor did not return during the fifth day of our work, nor has he returned at any time since, so I have no idea as to who or what he really was. It occurs to me, however, that this clairaudient experience could potentially have been the precursor to a spirit possession experience. An Out-Of-Body Experience (OOBE)—as described in Chapter 4—is the sense that one’s awareness or mind has moved outside the physical body to a different location and the body can actually be seen from that location. As far as I know, I’ve only had one out-of-body experience, but that one took place under very stressful circumstances and was highly memorable. In late 1969, as a young Navy lieutenant, I was commanding a liaison unit in Vietnam, just across the border from the Parrot’s Beak area of Cambodia, an enemy stronghold. Our job was to assist in coordinating operations between the Navy, Army, and Air Force. One night, one of our boats, hiding in ambush along the river that paralleled the border, was hit by enemy fire and sunk. The commanding officer for the area’s naval forces, who considerably outranked me, ordered the two nearest boats on the river to proceed to the site, provide assistance, and engage the enemy. He also ordered me to request all Army and Air Force units with whom I was in contact, to converge on the site and join in the “battle.” This struck me as unnecessary because a recoilless rifle (the type of weapon presumably used in the attack) only requires a crew of two to four men to handle it. I also believed it was highly inadvisable because the concentration of our forces left a large portion of the river unguarded, and the enemy, knowing how we would react, probably initiated the attack as a distraction to draw our attention away from a major border crossing. But orders were orders. 72

Imagining scores, if not hundreds, of VC and NVA headed our way, I became more and more concerned. As my tension mounted, I wished I could see what was going on so that I would be able to request assistance. Then, much to my surprise, I became aware that a portion of my consciousness seemed to be flying through the air toward what I suspected was the border-crossing area. When I got there, sure enough, I perceived a large number of sampans making their way through the shallow water and reeds. That was enough to convince me, and I managed to bring my consciousness back to my body. I then contacted an Air Force pilot friend of mine, explained the situation to him, and asked if he would be willing, on his own initiative, to take up his spotter plane “just to see what was going on,” and to avoid mentioning my involvement (since I was, in fact, disobeying orders). He agreed. When he arrived on site, he observed what he described as “at least 100 sampans” and, through Air Force channels, requested a large artillery fire mission. Shortly after the first rounds began falling, the enemy sampans turned around, en masse, and crossed the border back into Cambodia. And that was it … at least for the time being. Spirit Possession is the feeling that an other mind (demon, spirit, soul of someone living or dead) is attempting to take (or has taken) over control of the experiencer’s body and will. When I read William Baldwin’s 1992 book, Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Technique Manual, which was essentially about “clinical depossession”—getting possessing entitles to move on and discontinue their attempts to dominate individual humans—I thought the whole idea was absurd. I therefore decided to attend one of his trainings so as to gather information that would support my position. The training took place in an old hotel in the middle of a Civil War Cemetery located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay. When I arrived, I thought it only fair that I tell Bill and his wife Judith what my agenda was. They were unfazed, and asked that I give them a full report at the end of the training. 73

About an hour into the first evening of the training, Bill asked for a volunteer with whom to demonstrate the procedure. Judith immediately volunteered me, and I agreed since I figured I might as well jump in with both feet. Bill guided me into an altered state of consciousness, and what followed was right out of the book. Bill began the process by telling any attached entity to make itself known, and immediately a fellow named “Joe Cimonne” spoke up using my voice. Joe had been a US infantryman who had died in 1968 after falling into a “punji pit”†† on a forest trail in Vietnam. After his death, he was frightened and lonely; he didn’t know where to go or what to do, and spent his spirit spent months wandering around looking for sanctuary. Then one night, he noticed an “energy trail” in the sky and followed it to its source—which turned out to be me while my consciousness was out of body. Joe said he hadn’t meant any harm, but that joining with me seemed like a better option than wandering around by himself. Bill explained to him that, while it was indeed a better option, there was another option that was even better, and that was to “go to the [spiritual] light,” which is where he belonged. Joe was amenable, so Bill guided him out of my body and to the light. That was it. Afterward, I felt as if I had been freed of a sense of oppression that had been with me since my time in Vietnam. While that “releasement” didn’t convince me of the objective reality of spirit possession, it did convince me of the subjective reality of the experience and the efficacy of spirit releasement therapy. This scenario is indicative of an overlapping of the spirit possession experience with the out-of-body experience. The next afternoon, Bill said it was time for us students to practice doing spirit releasement therapy ourselves. He divided us into two groups and appointed one student in each to be the “therapist.” I was one of them. Judith assumed the role of “coach” in my group, and Bill assumed that same role in the other group. Judith asked who would like to be the “client,” and ††

A punji pit is a deep camouflaged hole in the ground at the bottom of which are sharpened upright bamboo stakes coated with human excrement.

a fellow named Dan raised his hand. Dan explained, however, that he had a serious heart condition and was afraid that the stress of the experience might prove to be problematic for him. Judith resolved the issue by saying that she would take on the role of “surrogate client” and would function in a mediumistic capacity whereby any entities attached to Dan could speak through her. Following the protocols, and speaking to Judith, I asked that any discarnate entity present reveal itself. Soon, what I can best describe as “the quintessence of evil” presented itself. This entity, whose dialog was laced with obscenities, exuded rage and claimed that it was a minion of Satan. Taken aback, I nevertheless continued the process, only to be met with resistance, hostility, and threats. As a demonstration of power, it told me to watch Judith’s head and, as I did so, her head began slowly to rotate to the side. When it had turned about as far as I thought a human head could safely turn, the entity said, “If I want to, I can break her ‘f…ing’ neck any time I want to.” That was too much for me and I yelled to Bill for assistance. When he joined us, realizing that we had brought forth a demon, he took over from me. While he was proceeding cautiously with the procedure, I looked over at Dan who had turned “white as a ghost,” was perspiring heavily, and was trembling with fear. I went and sat closely next to him and began whispering soothing, hypnotic words into his ear. Dan began to settle down while Bill continued working with the demon. When Bill mentioned the power of the light, the demon responded, “You and your ‘f…ing’ light have no power at all. I have all the power here. Watch this …” At which point all the lights in the room went out. Bill kept his cool and, not to be outdone, raised his hands toward the ceiling while intoning, “as the good Lord said, ‘Let there be light’” At which point, the lights in the room came back on. Now admittedly, while this was going on, there was a thunderstorm occurring outside, and it may have all been a matter of coincidences, but … The demon, apparently realizing that it had met its match, backed off from its bluster and braggadocio, and engaged Bill in a 75

dialog. Bill finally prevailed and was able to send the demon on its way to the light. We were all exhausted, and Bill called for a snack break. After a while, both Dan and Judith appeared to have fully recovered from their respective ordeals. As mentioned previously possessing entities can come in all sorts of different forms. One of those forms can be aliens or extraterrestrials. In 1998, Bill published the book CE VI: Close Encounters of the Possession Kind. Possession by aliens is another example of the overlapping of different metaphysical manifestations of mind. A UFO Sighting is the observation of an Unidentified Flying Object (“UFO,” “flying saucer,” etc.) and/or its occupants without actual contact taking place. Alien Contact is actual contact with (what are often called) “extraterrestrial” beings (sometimes involving being taken aboard a UFO, frequently against the experiencer’s will). These two experiences—both of which are mentioned in Chapter 4—are often collectively referred to as “UFO Experiences (UFOEs).” Alien contact probably generates more controversy than do all the other metaphysical experiences combined. Most likely that’s because so many people argue that these subjective experiences qualify as objective phenomena. In keeping with the theme of this book, however, the ensuing discussion of alien contact and UFO experiences (UFOEs collectively) is experientially rather than phenomenologically based. From the perspective of experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind, it can be argued that a UFOE is an experience in which the mind of the experiencer metaphysically perceives an other mind (not necessarily Earth-based or human), and that something about the appearance of that other mind causes the experiencer to ascribe to it the interpretation of UFO (whether vehicle, or occupant, or both). In other words, UFOs need not be saucer-shaped—indeed, many reports suggest otherwise— structured craft of extraterrestrial origin; they may simply be a conditioned perception that arises out of cultural suggestion. For our purposes, probably the most illustrative UFOE that 76

appears in the literature is that of Barney and Betty Hill, who were allegedly abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural area of New Hampshire in 1961. The Hills were an American interracial couple at a time when that was particularly uncommon in the United States; Barney was African American and Betty was European American. At around 10:30 PM on September 19, 1961, they were driving on a lightly traveled road, going home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after a vacation in Canada, at which time Betty claimed to have observed a bright point of light in the sky that moved erratically and grew bigger and brighter. She urged her husband to stop the car for a closer look, as well as to walk their dog. Through binoculars, Betty observed an “odd- shaped” craft flashing multi-colored lights, and thought it might be a flying saucer of the sort that she had heard about some years previously. Also, through binoculars, Barney observed what he assumed was a commercial airliner, but soon decided it was not an ordinary airplane, because without looking as if it had turned, the craft rapidly descended in his direction. They continued driving on the isolated road, moving very slowly in order to observe the object as it came even closer to them. Betty concluded that it was at least 40 feet long, and noted that the object seemed to be rotating. The object rapidly descended toward their vehicle, causing Barney to stop directly in the middle of the highway. The huge, silent craft hovered approximately 80–100 feet above the Hills’ car. Barney, carrying his pistol in his pocket, stepped away from the vehicle and moved closer to the object. Using the binoculars, he claimed to have seen about 10 humanoid figures peering out of the craft’s windows, seeming to look at him. When the others moved away from the windows, one figure remained and continued to look at Barney, communicating a message telling him to stay where he was and keep watching. Barney recollected observing the humanoid forms as wearing glossy black uniforms and black caps. Red lights on what appeared to be bat-wing fins began to telescope out of the sides of the craft, and a long ramp77

like structure descended from its bottom. The silent craft approached to within 50–80 feet overhead and 300 feet away from him. Barney quickly stopped looking through the binoculars and ran back to the car. In a near hysterical state, he shouted to Betty, “They’re going to capture us!” The craft again shifted its location to directly above the vehicle, and Barney drove away at high speed. Almost immediately, the Hills heard a rhythmic series of beeping or buzzing sounds. The car vibrated, and a tingling sensation passed through their bodies. They said that at this point in time, they lost awareness of what was happening. A second series of beeping or buzzing sounds returned the couple to full consciousness. During the interval between the two sets of beeping sounds, they found that they had traveled nearly 35 miles south, but had only vague, spotty memories of the section of road they had traversed. They did, however, recall making a sudden unplanned turn, encountering a roadblock, and observing a fiery orb in the road. The Hills said that after arriving home about dawn, they experienced some odd sensations and impulses they could not readily explain: Betty insisted their luggage be kept near the back door rather than in the main part of the house; both of their watches had stopped and would never run again; Barney said that the leather strap of the binoculars was torn, though he could not recall that happening, and that the toes of his best dress shoes were scuffed; Betty said that her dress was ripped and covered with a fine powder. The next morning, they found shiny, concentric circles on their car’s trunk that had not been there the previous day. They did some experiments with a compass, noting that when they moved it close to the circles, the needle would whirl rapidly, but when they moved it a few inches away, the spinning would stop. On September 21, Betty telephoned Pease Air Force Base to report their UFO encounter, though for fear of being labeled “mentally unbalanced,” she withheld some of the details. She was told that she had probably misidentified the planet Jupiter, and the Air Force showed no further interest. 78

Ten days after the alleged encounter, Betty began having a series of vivid dreams, which continued for five successive nights. Never in her memory had she recalled dreams in such detail and intensity, but they stopped abruptly after five nights and never returned again. When she finally mentioned them to Barney, he was sympathetic, but not too concerned, and the matter was dropped. Betty did not mention them to Barney again. In November, Betty began writing down the details of her dreams. In one dream, she and Barney encountered a roadblock and men, who surrounded their car. After losing consciousness and struggling to regain it, she realized that she was being forced by two small men to walk in a forest in the nighttime, and that Barney was walking behind her, in what seemed to be a state of trance or sleepwalking. The men stood about 5 feet to 5 feet 4 inches tall, and wore matching blue uniforms, with caps similar to those worn by military cadets. They appeared nearly human, with greyish color skin, black hair, dark eyes, prominent noses, and bluish lips. In her dreams, she, Barney, and the men walked up a ramp into a disc-shaped craft of metallic appearance. Once inside, the couple were separated. She protested, and was told by a man she called “the leader” that they were going to be examined and, if they were examined together, it would take much longer to conduct the exams. She and Barney were then taken to separate rooms, and a new man entered to conduct her exam with the leader. The examiner told Betty that he would conduct a few tests to note the differences between humans and the craft’s occupants. Eventually, she and Barney were taken off the craft and to their car, where the leader suggested that they wait to watch the craft’s departure. They did so, and then resumed their drive. On October 21, the Hills met with members of NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena). In a six-hour interview, they related all they could remember of the UFO encounter. Barney asserted that he had developed a sort of “mental block” and that he suspected there were some 79

portions of the event that he did not wish to remember. He described in detail all that he could remember about the craft and the appearance of the humanoid figures, but very little about the events that took place aboard the craft. NICAP’s position was that the incident probably actually happened much the way the Hills reported it. On November 25, the Hills were again interviewed at length by NICAP members. Although the Hills had noted that they had arrived home later than anticipated, they did not realize that there were three hours of time unaccounted for. Despite all their efforts, the Hills could recall almost nothing that happened in the interval between the two sets of beeping sounds during which they had driven 35 miles. Both, however, did remember an image of a fiery orb sitting on the ground, with Betty’s recall being somewhat fuller than Barney’s. The subject of hypnosis for memory retrieval came up, and the Hills were referred to Benjamin Simon, MD, a psychiatrist in Boston who practiced hypnosis. The Hills first met Simon on December 14, 1963. Early in their discussions, Simon determined that the experience was causing Barney far more worry and anxiety than he was willing to admit. Though Simon dismissed the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis as impossible, it seemed obvious to him that the Hills genuinely thought they had encountered a UFO with human-like occupants. Simon hoped to uncover more about the experience through hypnosis, so he began a series of hypnosis sessions with the Hills on January 4, 1964. He hypnotized Betty and Barney several times each, conducting the sessions on Barney and Betty separately, so they could not overhear one another’s recollections. At the end of each session, he reinstated amnesia. Simon hypnotized Barney first. His recall of witnessing non-human figures was quite emotional, punctuated with expressions of fear, emotional outbursts, and incredulity. Barney said that, due to his fear, he kept his eyes closed for much of the abduction and subsequent physical examination. Barney recalled driving the car away from the initial encounter 80

with the UFO, but he then felt irresistibly compelled to pull off the road and drive into the woods, where he sighted six humanoids standing in the path. When the car stalled, three of them approached the car and told Barney to not fear them. He was still extremely anxious, however, and reported that the beings frequently stared into his eyes with a terrifying, mesmerizing effect. Barney related that he and Betty were taken onto the disc-shaped craft, where they were separated, and he was escorted to a room by three of the beings who told him to lie on a small rectangular examination table. Barney said that the few times they communicated with him, it seemed to be by way of what he called “thought transference.” Even under hypnosis, he remembered almost nothing of the exam itself, in part because, in his fear, he had kept his eyes closed. He then recalled being escorted from the ship, taken to the car, and, in a daze, watching the ship leave. Under hypnosis, Betty’s account was very similar to the events of her five dreams about the UFO abduction, and she filled in many details that were not in her dreams. But there were also notable differences. Interestingly, Barney’s and Betty’s memories in hypnotic regression were consistent with each other, but they contradicted some of the information in Betty’s dreams. Betty exhibited considerable emotional distress during her capture and examination. Simon gave Betty the post-hypnotic suggestion that she could sketch a copy of the “star map” she had been shown while aboard the craft and which she later described as a three-dimensional projection similar to a hologram. She said that the map she had been shown had many stars, but she drew only those that stood out in her memory. Her map consisted of 12 prominent stars connected by lines and three lesser ones that formed a distinctive triangle. When their hypnosis sessions had been completed, Barney was willing to accept that they had, indeed, been abducted by the occupants of a UFO, though he never embraced the reality of it as fully as Betty did. Though the Hills and Dr. Simon disagreed about the nature of the case, they all concurred that 81

the hypnosis sessions had been effective because the Hills were no longer tormented by anxiety about their UFO encounter. The UFO experience is something that, to the best of my knowledge, I have never had. I did, however, get a secondhand close-up of one through Lyn Buchanan, my CRV trainer. During the time that Lyn was assigned to the controlled remote viewing unit at Fort Meade in the late 1980s, he began to recover fragmentary memories of what he claims to believe was an alien abduction event that happened to him some 25 years prior, during the 1960s. He described himself as having long suffered from nagging feelings that he was forgetting something, and he repeatedly checked his house for forgotten items whenever he was leaving. One Sunday in the 1980s, as he and his wife were leaving to go to church, he had gone back into the house several times to check on things, after which his wife chided him, saying, “Did you check the basement? Did you check the lights? Did you check the back yard?” The minute she said “back yard,” he was overwhelmed by partial recollections of what had happened during his abduction. Lyn, who was a Methodist minister in the 1960s, was involved in the process of moving from one parsonage to another. His family was already at their new home, and he was cleaning out the old one. It was late at night and he was tired, so he put a pallet down on the floor and lay down to take a nap before driving to the new house. The parsonage was way out in the country, about a half mile from the nearest road, so it was totally isolated. He heard something land on the ground in the backyard and tried to get up to see what it was, but was frozen in place. He thought that it could be a “flying saucer,” and concluded that he could go out back and take a picture of the ground the next morning to prove it. But right then, he couldn’t move. He then heard some “people” coming around the house to the front. The next thing he knew, it was morning and he was wandering around the house in a total daze. When he finally got himself oriented, he picked up the pallet, threw it into the U-Haul and drove away. From that time on, he kept having the feeling that he had forgotten something. 82

He discussed his memories in general terms with some members of the remote viewing unit, and they were inclined to think there might be something to all of it. One of the unit members passed the information up the chain of command to “the powers that be” and this resulted in Lyn’s being formally questioned. He was required to meet with “the men in black” (who are just interrogators, not aliens), and the nature of their questions suggested to him that his experience might have been quite real. After extensive rumination, he concluded that the beings had, in fact, come into the house and had taken him aboard their ship. He wanted to know more, but he kept his own counsel for fear that if his experience became common knowledge, it would negatively affect the rest of his career and/or his upcoming retirement. After he retired from the military in 1992, Lyn felt freer to explore the event further. That’s when we met. After getting to know me, and being aware that I was a certified hypnotherapist as well as having had access to Top Secret information while I was in Vietnam, he asked me to hypnotize him and regress him to the abduction event so that he could develop a more complete understanding of what had transpired. He was adamant that I was to tell no one about what he reported. Lyn was an extremely difficult subject to hypnotize, as most very intelligent people are. My solution was to guide him in hypnotizing himself so that he could feel that he was still in control. Once under hypnosis, Lyn moved directly to the time of his being taken aboard the alien craft. They seated him in a compartment with rows of seats, a few of them filled by other people. Intensely curious, when an extremely tall humanoid passed near him, Lyn asked if he could move to a seat by the window. This frightened the being because Lyn was supposed to be hypnotized, but he obviously was not. He returned a few moments later with a diminutive alien of the type known as “Grey,” who attempted to put Lyn back under, but without success. Saying that he had work to do, he told Lyn to come to the cockpit with him so he could keep an eye on him. The 83

grey was the pilot of the ship, and Lyn knelt down beside him as he repeatedly powered the craft off the ground, set it down at another location, told the tall one to bring aboard another human, and took off again. Lyn was asking many questions, and the grey answered each one of them. They then took off on a longer journey that lasted about 30 minutes, and Lyn asked if he might be allowed to try flying the ship under close supervision. The grey said that would be impossible because human hands were too small for the control panel, but when Lyn showed him that their hands were the same size, even though the grey was only 3 ½ feet tall, the grey agreed to let Lyn fly the craft while monitoring him very closely and providing instructions every step of the way. When they got where they were going, it was definitely not on the planet Earth. The grey sent Lyn back to the compartment with the other people and they were disembarked as a group, forming a line as they walked along a path that traversed a hillside. The grey pulled Lyn out of the line to talk to him while the others went on their way under the supervision of the tall humanoid. Lyn asked what they were doing in that place, and the grey explained that their purpose was a medical one. They were implanting diseased tissues into the humans, who they would abduct again later to obtain antibody samples with which they could create medicines and antidotes for their own people. Meanwhile, the other humans were coming back down the hill and lining up to reboard the ship, and the grey again went about his business. They had to wait for a while, and the grey once more took Lyn aside to talk. Lyn remembers asking that he be allowed to remember everything and the grey’s responding, “Well, you won’t.” But Lyn did remember … with some help. The next thing he recalled was waking up, wandering around the parsonage, where he had been cleaning and packing, and not knowing who he was or what he was doing. It was the next day, so he drove to be with his family in their new home. But the story doesn’t end there. After Lyn retired from the military, he retained his Top Secret clearance and occasionally 84

functioned as a consultant to the military, generally on computer-related matters. During one project, he encountered a man with whom he had been friends in the military several years earlier. They got to talking and Lyn asked what he was currently doing. After confirming the status of Lyn’s security clearance, he said he would show him. His friend took him to the facility where he worked. It was a very large building, much like an airplane hangar, and inside, the floor was covered with debris. They were involved in the reconstruction of the debris field having to do with a plane that had crashed. As they were walking along, his friend was describing to him how the nature of a crash was reconstructed from the debris. His friend happened to stumble over one large piece of debris and Lyn blurred out: “Oh, that’s out of the UFO, isn’t it?” No mention had previously been made of the plane having crashed because it collided with a UFO. A Colonel came rushing over, ordered them out of the building, and threatened Lyn with severe consequences if he were ever to mention what he had seen. For Lyn, this was another confirmation of his UFOE. The next day, Lyn was escorted into a Defense Intelligence Agency interrogation room, where there again were two men in black. The standard protocol is for one man to do the interrogation while the other sits silently off to the side and observes. Quite often, the second man is not a professional interrogator, but rather an expert from the unit that needs the interrogation done. That was evidently the case in this situation. The interrogators were especially interested in how the control panel worked and asked about it several times in a variety of ways. Each time, Lyn gave the same explanation, and then the second man slapped his knee with his hand and exclaimed, “So, that’s how it works! Now I finally know what I need to know.” This response clued Lyn in to the likelihood that the man represented a unit that had one of the craft but didn’t know how to fly it. It wasn’t long before Lyn’s story became public knowledge (but not through my doing) and was picked up by the media. 85

Chapter 6

Physics and Metaphysical Experiences It has long been a tenet of Eastern philosophies that time, space, separateness, and causality are merely mental constructs linked to particular states of consciousness and have little relevance in accurately describing reality. Only in the 20th century has this idea begun to make some inroads into Western thinking—interestingly, this is primarily through the work of physicists. Perhaps the two most important concepts in contemporary theoretical physics are the theories of relativity (both general and special) and the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity deals with the large-scale structures of the universe; quantum mechanics deals with the small-scale structures of subatomic particles.† Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity posits that Time and space are modes space is curved and that the by which we think, and not influence of mass bends space conditions in which we live. in proportion to the amount of —Albert Einstein the mass’s gravitational field. †

Relativity and quantum theory are both complementary and contradictory to one another. Each is useful in its own realm, but not in the realm of the other. Scientists are continuing their efforts to reconcile the two and to develop a “Unified Field Theory (UFT),” or a “Theory of Everything (TOE).”

His theory of special relativity suggests that the traditional notions of space and time are inadequate and that space and time together form a static four-dimensional space-time continuum in which space and time are integral functions of one another. What pertains in the special theory also pertains in the general theory, so it follows from the positing of the spacetime continuum that a curvature of space implies a curvature of time. The general theory of relativity also allows for the theoretical existence of “wormholes”—shortcuts between two different points in space-time, thus permitting seemingly faster-than-light travel. Kurt Godel, a colleague of Einstein’s, went so far as to suggest that there is sufficient mass in the universe to curve space-time completely around on itself. Such a picture of time implies that everything that ever was or will be now is, that movement through time, both forward and backward, is possible and that the future is every bit as determinable as the past. Besides showing that the space-time continuum is affected by the presence of matter, Einstein’s theories also indicate that matter has nothing to do with substance but is, rather, a form of energy. In other words, there is nothing but space-time and energy and they are the same thing! Another major piece of this puzzle is Bell’s theorem (ultimately proven in 1982††), which states that two particles, originally in a unitary state, retain their interconnectedness (“quantum entanglement”) no matter how far they are separated in space (the quantum “Principle of Nonlocality”), and such particles are able to communicate with each other instantaneously. Instantaneous communication means one of two things: (1) either objective, differentiated reality does not exist and it is meaningless to speak of matter as having any ††

Alain Aspect and others from the Institute of Optics at the University of Paris produced a series of twin photons by heating calcium (Continued on the bottom of the next page.) atoms with lasers. They then measured the polarization of the photons as they traveled through space in opposite directions. After ruling out the possibility of communication between the photons by any known physical process, the correlations they found in the results were such as to confirm Bell’s Theorem.

reality beyond the mind of the observer, or (2) instantaneous (not just faster-than-light) communication with the past and the future is possible. These are not just hypothetical assertions. The confirmation of Bell’s theorem has proven that one or the other of these statements must be true. The weight of the evidence points toward the first option being the more likely, thus leaving one to struggle with the implications of all reality being a function of mind. What is more, since all of this occurs in transcendence of the ordinary differentiated boundaries of space and time, any notion of causality in the process is rendered meaningless (the quantum “Principle of Synchronicity”). In light of the definition of metaphysical experiences— “Experiences that occur beyond the ordinary differentiated boundaries of ego, space and time; experiences that suggest the essential interconnectedness (and/or absolute unity) of all that ever was, is, or will be; experiences that imply the existence of mind (as distinct from brain), of spirit, of soul”—it can be seen that the implications of the above material are central to everything this book is about. These findings, in hard physical science, point to an intimate interconnectedness between mind and matter, the observer’s mind having a fundamental role in the manifestation of matter. In quantum theory, then, the physical world is not a structure built out of independent entities. It is, rather, an interconnected web of probabilities of relationships between entities (which are, themselves, interactions between energy fields) whose meanings arise solely as a result of their relationship to the whole. Everything in the universe that appears to exist independently is actually part of a single all-encompassing organic pattern, and nothing is separate from that pattern or from anything else. In other words, if the universe is non-local at a sub-quantum level, then reality is seamless and unitary, and any attempt to partition it into discrete entities is based on false premises. There is no longer a clear distinction between what is and what happens between the observer and the observed 88

because they are all part of an interconnected whole. In the microcosm of the atom, location, separateness, and causality simply have no meaning whatsoever. From a quantum perspective, it can be said that it is because of the essential unity, the essential oneness of all things, that the brain is not always able to distinguish between consensus reality and metaphysical reality, between what is consensually agreed to be “out there” and what is subjectively perceived to be “out there.” In a quantum reality, not only is there no difference between the way perceptions and mental images are processed by the brain, there is no inherent difference between the perceptions and the images themselves. All experiences, whether “consensual” or “metaphysical” are reduced to the same common language of holographically organized waveforms. The only reason some realities are experienced as external and others are experienced as internal is because that is where the mind (perhaps in part as a result of cultural conditioning) happens to locate them when it generates the internal hologram that is experienced and referred to as “reality.” Ultimately, that which is thought (self) and that which is not-thought (not-self) cannot be separated. For the purposes of practical functioning in consensus reality, however, it is necessary for the brain to make at least a provisional differentiation. Some brains, namely those that have a greater than normal participation of the right cortical hemisphere in their functioning, do this less effectively than other brains. Both the weaknesses and the strengths inherent in the anomalous perceptual style of metaphysical experiencers arise out of their brains (and hence the interpretation of perceptions by their minds) being less differentiative—and thus less oriented to ego, space, and time—than the norm. Given that mind can range throughout the totality of all that is and can influence, as well as be influenced by, everything else, it is presumably not only possible for it to experience all manifestations of the holographic reality, but also to play a part in changing those manifestations, including the manifestations 89

of physical (consensus) reality. In short, mind is involved in the process of bringing physical realities into existence. Because the experiential matrices of all realities are holographic in nature, metaphysical experiences are available to mind, and mind participates in shaping the realm of appearances in which physical existence is organized. Quantum theory can be seen to allow for the presence of mind, at least in some elementary form, in the most fundamental entities of creation. On that basis, experiences of metaphysical perception and experiences of metaphysical influence can appropriately be considered to be experiences of metaphysical manifestation of mind. There is, then, no inherent difference, vis-à-vis consciousness, between psi experiences and psirelated experiences, because (seemingly) “other” minds are present in all experiences of both types. In other words, mind is present in everything, and just as minds that are normally manifest in the consensus realm may, under the appropriate conditions, be able to range into the metaphysical realm, so too may minds that are normally manifest in the metaphysical realm be able to range into the consensus realm—and, because of the essential interconnectedness and/or absolute unity of all minds, this “ranging” is not something that “happens,” it is, rather, simply a manifestation of what “is.” If we do discover a complete [unified] theory [of the universe], then we shall all be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reasoning—for then we should know the mind of God. —Stephen Hawking

Chapter 7

And What About the Future? In early historical times, those who exhibited extraordinary metaphysical abilities (and who we now speak of as “shamans”) were treated with deference and respect and held prominent positions in their societies. In those early societies, even if such an individual lacked the aggression, coordination, and physical health to join in the hunt (i.e., “to earn a living”), their intuitive abilities were recognized as being vital to the survival of the tribe and they were cared for accordingly. It was the shaman who knew where to find water, how to locate game, what weather to expect, and how to attend to the injured and the sick. The Church then got into the act in the 12th century and increased their efforts to eliminate the competition and take control of people’s beliefs, presumably in an effort to also take control of their souls. Up until the early 15th century, there was little association of witchcraft with Satan, but after that association was made, organized witch-hunts began in earnest, as did individual accusations of sorcery. There were trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a major issue again and peaking in the 17th century. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed supernatural abilities (which were sometimes used to protect people) now was seen as a sign of 91

a pact between the people with such abilities and the devil. Witch-hunts also took place during the 17th century in the American colonies, beginning in 1647 and culminating in the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693. More than 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally charged by the authorities. All told, 29 people in the US were convicted of the capital felony of witchcraft. Of these, 19—14 women and five men—were hanged, and one man was “pressed to death.” Five of those convicted died in prison. In England and Scotland between 1542 and 1735, a series of Witchcraft Acts enshrined into law the punishment (often death) of individuals practicing or claiming to practice witchcraft and magic. The last executions for witchcraft in England had taken place in 1682. The final Act of 1735 led to prosecution for fraud rather than witchcraft, because it was no longer believed that the individuals had actual supernatural powers or trafficked with Satan. The 1735 Act continued to be used until the 1940s to prosecute individuals such as spiritualists and gypsies. The act was finally repealed in 1951. Although it is not possible to ascertain the exact number, modern scholars estimate that between 1450 and 1750, the number of people executed for witchcraft was in the range of 40,000 to 100,000. Common methods of execution for convicted witches were hanging, drowning, and burning. The total number of witch trials in Europe known to have ended in executions is around 12,000. The vast majority of those accused were women. The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason and the Age of Scientific Revolution), which spanned the 18th century, included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of knowledge, and was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy. During that period, scientific authority began to displace religious authority, and science replaced the Church as the dominant 92

belief-shaping intuition. The concepts of witches, warlocks, demons, and devils fell into disfavor, and those who exhibited metaphysical abilities were no longer executed. One scientific specialty, psychiatry, stood ready to pronounce a new “reason” for metaphysical experiences: mental illness. An individual in a state of metaphysical consciousness can experience mental imagery that is so strong and so vivid that it becomes their basis for reality determination. Since hallucinations have been defined as “perceptions that have the qualities of real perceptions, but occur in the absence of corresponding external stimuli,” it could then be argued that metaphysical experiences are hallucinations that have nothing to do with reality. The implication, then, is that these people were psychotic, and, from a mental-health perspective, could be seen as suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, “hysterical” dissociation, or other similar conditions. That being the case, sometimes psychiatrists would jump to the conclusion—occasionally without even determining the degree to which the experiences interfered with these “patients’” everyday functioning—that these “mentally ill” individuals needed to be institutionalized both for their own sake and that of society. While there were earlier institutions that housed the “insane,” the conclusion that institutionalization was the correct solution for treating people considered to be “mad” became part of a social process in the 19th century to seek solutions outside families and local communities. Living conditions in the early “lunatic asylums,” at least in the publicly-funded ones, were usually horrendous, and the treatment of the “inmates” was sometimes very brutal and focused on containment and restraint. At the beginning of the 19th century, there were only a few thousand so-called lunatics housed in a variety of disparate institutions; but, by the beginning of the 20th century, that number had grown to several hundred thousand. The rise of the “lunatic asylum” and its gradual transformation into, and eventual replacement by, the modern psychiatric hospital, 93

coincided with the rise of organized institutional psychiatry. Defining someone as insane was a necessary prerequisite for their being admitted to a facility. A doctor was only called after someone labeled “insane” on social terms had become socially or economically problematic. As is often the case, however, a doctor’s prognostication could be swayed by someone who was wealthy or had powerful connections. People who were a source of embarrassment to their families were often conveniently disposed of in asylums with the willing connivance of the psychiatric profession. In the mid- to late-1800s, a time when they were expected to behave according to society’s expectations—women were expected to be dutiful, subservient housewives who stayed home to do little other than take care of the children and keep order in the house. As such, they had almost entirely no input on decisions concerning their lives, especially in regards to matters such as their mental health. It was the men who made all the decisions in the household; women were, in accordance with the archetype, simply expected to listen and obey. If a woman behaved in a way that opposed the views or opinions held by her husband, the husband would then declare the wife insane and have her sent to an asylum. Thus, even many women Women in a Lunatic Asylum – Late 1800s who would now be considered to be mentally healthy ended up in the asylums. A number of well-intentioned reform efforts were undertaken, but by the beginning of the 20th century, everincreasing admissions had resulted in serious overcrowding, where asylums would commonly take in double their maximum 94

capacity. The pressure on the institutions from this increase was taking its toll on them and psychiatry as a specialty. Asylums were again turning into nothing more than custodial facilities, and the reputation of psychiatry in the medical world hit an extreme low. Funding was often cut—especially during periods of economic decline; and during wartime in Europe and Asia, many patients starved to death. As the 20th century progressed, with successive waves of reform, and the introduction of effective evidencebased treatments, most of these so-called “lunatic asylums” began to make some progress toward the goal of becoming modern psychiatric hospitals with a primary emphasis on treatment using a combination of medical interventions and psychotherapy. Malarial therapy† was introduced in 1917 and was followed in 1920 by barbiturate-induced deep-sleep therapy to treat dementia praecox (schizophrenia). In 1927, insulin shock therapy was introduced, and in 1934, Cardiazol (Metrazol) shock therapy was introduced. It was the first convulsive therapy for a psychiatric disorder, and was based on the theoretical notion that there existed a biological antagonism between schizophrenia and epilepsy, and that therefore inducing epileptiform fits in schizophrenic patients might effect a cure. It was superseded in 1938 by electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In 1935, prefrontal lobotomies began to be used on a regular basis, but from the beginning, the procedure was controversial because the improvements achieved often came at the cost of creating other serious impairments. In modern times, insulin shock therapy and lobotomies are viewed as being almost as barbaric as the treatments at what †

In 1917, it was fortuitously discovered that many schizophrenics would regain their sanity after experiencing a high fever. Physicians then began to deliberately infect their schizophrenic patients with malaria to induce fever. This new method, dubbed pyrotherapy, quickly became the standard treatment for schizophrenia. Today, while the idea of intentionally infecting mentally ill patients with malaria parasites seems horrific—and indeed, about 15 percent of patients treated with the fever cure died from the procedure— at least malaria was treatable with quinine, a cheap and abundant extract of tree bark. Pyrotherapy represented the very first effective treatment for severe mental illness.

is considered to be London’s most notorious “insane asylum,” Bethlem Royal Hospital—nicknamed Bedlam, a word that became synonymous with chaos, mayhem, and confusion. However, insulin shock therapy was seen as the only option that produced any noticeable effect on patients, and ECT is still used in the West, mainly as a last resort for the treatment of mood disorders and is now administered much more safely than in the past. The 20th century saw the development of the first effective psychiatric drugs. The first antipsychotic drug (neuroleptic or major tranquilizer), chlorpromazine (Thorazine) was originally synthesized in France in 1950. Other antipsychotics, including Reserpine, also appeared in the 1950s. These first-generation drugs, were known as “typical antipsychotics.” Most secondgeneration drugs, known as “atypical antipsychotics,” have been developed more recently; the first atypical antipsychotic, Clozapine, was discovered in the 1960s and was introduced clinically in the 1970s. The goals of maintenance therapy with antipsychotic drugs are to maintain suppression of symptoms, prevent relapse, improve quality of life, and support engagement in psychosocial therapy. The long-term use of antipsychotics is associated with adverse effects such as involuntary movement disorders, male breast enlargement, impotence, weight gain, and metabolic syndrome. In 1955, the number of patients in public mental health hospitals suffering primarily from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe depression reached a record high of 558,000. A process of deinstutionalization then began as a result of three societal and scientific changes occurring: (1) The development of psychiatric drugs treated many of the symptoms of mental illness. (2) Society accepted that the mentally ill needed to be treated instead of just locked away. (3) Federal funding such as Medicaid and Medicare was directed toward community mental health centers instead of mental hospitals. Yet, deinstitutionalization has not worked out as well as hoped on any of the three fronts: People with severe mental illness 96

can still be found in deplorable environments; medications have not successfully improved functioning in all patients— even when they improve symptoms; and the institutional closings have overwhelmed underfunded community services with new populations they are ill-equipped to handle. Between 1955 and 1994, roughly 486,000 mentally ill patients were discharged from state hospitals. That lowered the number of on-site patients to only 72,000. States closed most of their hospitals, permanently reducing the availability of long-term, in-patient care facilities. By 2010, there were only 43,000 psychiatric beds available. This equated to about 14 beds per 100,000 people (as compared to the estimated need of 50), and was the same ratio as in 1850. About 200,000 of those who suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are homeless. That’s one-third of the total homeless population. More than 300,000 are in jails and prisons. Sixteen percent of all prison inmates are severely mentally ill. There are more than three times as many seriously mentally ill people in jails and prisons as there are in hospitals. When these “patients” were not closely monitored and supervised, their compliance with medication dosing instructions, as might be expected, declined significantly. For many, Perhaps the only limits to their symptoms worsened and the human mind are those they ended up back in a psywe believe in. chiatric hospital, in jail, or —Willis Harman homeless. However, while their “symptoms” may have returned, some of these former patients did not consider them to be seriously problematic. In fact, a number of them who realized that they probably had been misdiagnosed, welcomed the return of their “metaphysical abilities,” and chose to explore them more fully. Understanding that metaphysical experiences are facilitated by altered states of consciousness, they pursued various methods for modifying their consciousness such as:

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staying quietly in bed in the morning after awakening to monitor their hypnogogic sensory experiences;

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practicing meditation and yoga, the most popular forms of consciousness alteration;

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inducing full-body relaxation by such means as listening to the purity of the sound of a Tibetan bowl;

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ingesting natural mind-altering substances from plants such as peyote, salvia, cannabis, and ayahuasca;

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floating in an isolation tank to bring on sensory deprivation;

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listening to two different sounds that create a binaural beat resulting in brainwave entrainment, with the target beat generally being 4.5 beats per second (the low Theta brainwave state);

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using EEG Biofeedback equipment to monitor brainwaves (neurofeedback) and train the brain to function at certain specific frequencies.

Once they have learned how to regularly access the appropriate state of consciousness, they then practice, practice, and practice to develop their metaphysical abilities. To most psychiatrists, however, that is all a bunch of malarkey. For them, a hallucination is still a hallucination and a delusion is still a delusion. Many will continue to make diagnoses within the confines of their science, excluding any other possibility, while assuming that psychiatry has an answer to everything. They will propose medications to sedate the patient and reduce symptoms. Most often, the possibility of looking for a solution beyond psychiatry will not even cross their minds. In the current environment, a schizophrenic diagnosis is likely to be controversial, but the psychiatrists still have an out: They can now claim that these people are suffering from schizotypal personality disorder, a condition 98

that historically has not been amenable to treatment, either by way of drugs or psychotherapy.††

Madness or Enlightenment?

Despite still being regularly stigmatized and marginalized, metaphysical experiencers are now pretty much free to go on their merry way and to do their own thing—including adopting a metaphysical (shamanic) world view grounded in the beliefs that: ††

In the late 1980s, when I was a practicing hypnotherapist specializing in metaphysical experiences (with a focus on Past-Live Regressions), in order to keep my own psychological slate clean, I began psychotherapy with a traditional psychiatrist. Long about our fourth session, he announced his readiness to give me a diagnosis. He said something to the effect of, “Your belief in past lives is definitely delusional and, to make matters worse, you’re imposing your delusion on your clients. A diagnosis of ‘schizotypal personality disorder’ is clearly appropriate.” I nearly rolled off his couch onto the floor laughing and, when I had recovered, I told him I thought it was best that we discontinue our therapeutic relationship. We did, however, maintain occasional contact in a professional capacity. Shortly thereafter he told me of an upcoming “breathwork” workshop and asked me to attend it with him. After the workshop, his curiosity was piqued and he frequently asked me for information about a whole range of alternative therapeutic modalities. A couple of years later, he took down his “psychiatrist” shingle and hung up a “yoga therapist” shingle. I consider that to be one of my best therapeutic interventions, even though the only money that ever changed hands was from me to him.

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all things and all events are intimately interconnected, as if by a seamless web, on all levels of reality;

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objects that are perceptible to human senses are nothing more than local manifestations of larger energy patterns;

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that which is imperceptible to human senses is just as important as that which is perceptible;

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any event, anywhere, affects everything else, everywhere, as a result of vibrations transmitted throughout the web;

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everything, everywhere, is alive—that is, consciousness is all-pervasive;

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body, mind and spirit are all one; and

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the entire universe is sacred and has purpose and meaning.

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This worldview, of course, directly challenges the prevailing world view that is based on:

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Anthropocentrism – humans are the most significant entity in the universe;

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Humanism – the human capacity for self-realization through reason is the basis for ascribing value, meaning, or purpose;

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Rationalism – reason is, in itself, a source of knowledge superior to, and independent of, sense perception;

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Mechanism – natural processes (as in life) are mechanically determined and capable of complete explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry; and

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Materialism – physical matter is the fundamental reality, and the highest values lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress.

Because of the cultural conditioning to which we, as adults, have been subjected over decades and to which we, as a society, have been subjected over centuries, adoption of a shamanic worldview may prove to be a very difficult undertaking—one that requires much in the way of introspection, reevaluation, attitudinal shifting, and courage. To conquer fear is the From a societal perspective, the beginning of wisdom. process can be accelerated by —Bertrand Russell focusing on our children before they have succumbed to the denigration, pathologizing and suppression of things shamanic and metaphysical that have been so much a part of our own experience. If we permit (or better yet, actively encourage) our children to do what they know how to do instinctively and naturally and also listen to what they have to tell us and internalize the wisdom inherent in their experiences, the prospects for their future (and presumably ours as well) might be greatly enhanced. Such an outcome can be thought of as (borrowing a phrase from Kenneth Ring) “the shamanizing of modern humanity.” Several years ago, I met a young girl who presented herself in such a way that I could not help but imagine that she would grow up to become the quintessence of a neo-shaman. That encounter resulted in my writing an article about her in 1992 for the Bulletin of Anomalous Experience. It is reproduced below. Of Lizards and Wizards Magic! I’ve always been enchanted with magic. In junior high school I used to perform magic shows at birthday parties for the “little kids.” In college I read everything I could find about hypnosis. When NeuroLinguistic Programming first came on the scene, I 101

knew I had to take the training, if for no other reason than that its developers had written books with titles like The Structure of Magic and Frogs into Princes. As a boy, I wanted to grow up to be a magician. Today, in the guise of a hypnotherapist, I’ve secretly realized that boyhood wish. It is probably no coincidence that at the medieval faire, presented at my children’s grammar school each fall, my role is that of Merlin the magician. Decked out in conical hat and purple robe with gold trim, I make my way through the crowds handing out “magical Merlin stones” (tumbled amethysts) and telling tales of enchantment to the little ones. Boys and girls greet me with cries of “Wizard, Wizard” and quickly form an entourage, following in my wake as I make the rounds. Supported by the full authority of the set and setting, it is easy to perform numerous dramatic feats of “instant therapy” with these young “clients”—healing the hurt of a bee-sting here, improving sibling relationships there, and validating the “princes” and “princesses” who seek acknowledgment. Toward the end of this year’s faire, a 2 ½ year old girl, with baby-sitter in tow, tracked me down because she had something important she wanted to share. After directing me to sit on the grass, she launched into a description of what it had been like when she was “in her mommy’s tummy.” She reported that it had been dark and wet, but that the wetness had been warm and she had been comfortable and that it wasn’t wet anymore when she had come out into the sunshine. With great delight, I listened to her narration of this charming tale. She also stated that, while inside, she had been visited several times by a “lizard.” Being a bit nonplussed by this assertion, I didn’t know whether to think of her experience in terms of sensory perceptions or archetypal imagery. In any event, we completed our 102

conversation, introduced ourselves by name and went our separate ways. After the faire was over, while driving away, I was reflecting on this encounter and then recalled that, whereas the other children had called me “Wizard,” she had persisted, despite being given a couple of gentle corrections, in calling me “Lizard” … and she had also talked about being visited by a “lizard” when she was in her mommy’s tummy. I wondered if there was something about me that stimulated for her the recall of some in utero experiences. Thinking more about our visit together and recalling her beautiful and unusual name, I was amused by the coincidence of its being the same name as the daughter (whom I had never met) of a former client who had sought assistance in preparing for natural childbirth supported by hypnosis. Much of my time in those sessions had been spent talking directly to the fetus—offering love, caring, support and guidance. The possibility that the meeting at the faire was something more than mere coincidence was fascinating! Upon arriving home, I rushed to the telephone, called my former client and discovered that her daughter had, indeed, been at the faire with a baby-sitter … and had come home with a glowing report about her conversation with a “lizard.” We had a good laugh about the “coincidence,” and allowed for the possibility that it might be an example of “synchronicity” at work. After hanging up the telephone and allowing myself some time to mull over the implications of the encounter, I concluded that it proved nothing … other than that little children can bring a lot of magic into our adult lives if we allow them to do so.

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A Shaman in the Making

While that experience did, indeed, prove nothing, it may, perhaps, have suggested a great deal about the way things might be. Through the grapevine, I was able to follow this child’s development until she was about 5 years old—hearing reports of her “chats with angels,” of her tales about “the time when she was big and her mommy was little,” of her predictions (eventually validated) of future events, and of her perceiving and reporting illnesses in others prior to their diagnosis by physicians. Admittedly, this is just one anecdote, and I don’t know if she retained her apparent abilities into adulthood as I had imagined, but it effectively serves to illuminate the potentials inherent in neo-shamanism. Perhaps we are a lot closer to the “shamanizing of modern humanity” than anyone realizes. Whether we think of metaphysical experiences in terms of wyrd, altered states of consciousness, or quantum physics, maybe, just maybe, a transformation is poised and waiting to happen tomorrow … or the next day … or the day after that. listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go. —e. e. cummings 104

Bibliography Achterberg, J. 1985. Imagery in Healing — Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston. New Science Library. Allison, R. 1980. Minds in Many Pieces. New York. Rawson Wade. Baldwin, W. J. 1992. Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Technique Manual. Terra Alta, WV. Headline. 1998. CE-VI: Close Encounters of the Possession Kind. Terra Alta, WV. Headline. 2003. Healing Lost Souls. Newburyport, MA. Hampton Roads Buchanan, L. 2003. The Seventh Sense. New York. Pocket. Bates, B. 1983. The Way of the Wyrd. San Francisco. HarperCollins. Crabtree, A. 1985. Multiple Man. New York. Praeger. Frankel, F. H. 1976. Hypnosis: Trance as a Coping Mechanism. New York. Plenum. 105

Greer, S. M. 1999. Extraterrestrial Contact. Afton, VA. Crossing Point. Grof, S. 1985. Beyond the Brain. Albany, NY. SUNY Press. ______ and C. Grof, (Eds.). 1989. Spiritual Emergency. Los Angeles. Tarcher. Harner, M. 1980. The Way of the Shaman. San Francisco. HarperSanFrancisco. Jamison, K. R. 1993. Touched With Fire. New York. Free Press. LeShan, L. 1966. The Medium, The Mystic and The Physicist. New York. Viking. Locke, S. and D. Colligan. 1986. The Healer Within. New York. Dutton. Narby, J. 1998. The Cosmic Serpent. New York. Tarcher/ Putnam. Pearce, J. C. 1971. The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. New York. Julian. Pelletier, K. R. 1977. Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer. New York. Delta. Persinger, M. A. 1974. The Paranormal: Part II. New York. MSS Information Corp. ________ 1987. Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. New York. Praeger.

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Putnam, F. W. 1989. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York. Guilford. Radin, D. I. 1997. The Conscious Universe. New York. HarperCollins Ring, K. 1980. Life at Death. New York. William Morrow & Co. 1984. Heading Toward Omega. New York. William Morrow & Co. 1992. The Omega Project. New York. Morrow. Ritchey, D. “Of Lizards and Wizards.” In Bulletin of Anomalous Experience, Vol. 4, No. 6 (December, 1993). _________ 2003. The H.I.S.S. of the A.S.P. Terra Alta, WV. Headline. 2013. Reviewing the Montauk Legend. Terra Alta, WV. Headline 2013. Understanding the Anomalously Sensitive Person. Terra Alta, WV. Headline. 2014. Those Who Know the Wyrd. Terra Alta, WV. Headline. 2017. Noteworthy UFO Cases. Terra Alta, WV. Headline. 2018. Everybody Loves Conspiracy Theories. Terra Alta, WV. Headline.

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Rogo, D. S. 1986. On the Track of the Poltergeist. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice-Hall. Samuels, M. and N. Samuels. 1975. Seeing With the Mind’s Eye. New York. Random House. Shealey, N. 1999. Sacred Healing. Boston. Element. Spencer, J. and A. Spencer. 1996. The Poltergeist Phenomenon. London. Headline. Talbot, M. 1986. Beyond the Quantum. New York. Bantam. ________ 1991. The Holographic Universe. New York. HarperCollins. Taylor, S. E. 1989. Positive Illusions. New York. Basic. Walsh, R. 1990. The Spirit of Shamanism. Los Angeles. Tarcher. Weiss, B. 1988. Many Lives, Many Masters. New York. Simon & Schuster. Zohar, D. 1983. Through the Time Barrier. London. Paladin . ________ 1990. The Quantum Self. New York. Quill. Zukov, G. 1979. The Dancing Wu Li Masters. New York. Bantam.

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Index A alien 27, 36, 37, 60, 76, 82, 83 altered state 8, 19, 26, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74 asylum 93, 94, 96 B Baldwin, William 37, 73, 105 Buchanan, Lyn 44, 63, 82, 105 C clairaudience 25, 41 consciousness 7, 8, 10, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 45, 46, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 73, 74, 78, 79, 86, 90, 93, 97, 98, 100, 104, 111, 112, 114 consensus 8, 18, 19, 23, 32, 37, 50, 89, 90, 120 conspiracy 48, 122 Controlled Remote Viewing [CRV] 43, 44, 45, 47, 82 D death 9, 27, 28, 34, 37, 38, 39, 47, 68, 70, 74, 92, 95 déjà vu 41 dream 25, 28, 38, 79 E Einstein, Albert 13, 19, 22, 41, 86, 87 energy 10, 34, 49, 50, 57, 58, 74, 87, 88, 100, 120 ESP 11, 12, 66 evidence 11, 14, 20, 21, 30, 39, 42, 43, 57, 88, 95 G ghost 75

H hallucination 71, 98 heal 9, 13, 26, 34, 29, 30, 91, 93, 94, 96, 102 hologram 81, 89 hypnosis 28, 69, 80, 81, 82, 83, 101, 103 I influence 12, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 40, 41, 46, 51, 64, 86, 89, 90 L lunatic 93, 95 M matter 9, 15, 20, 29, 51, 60, 75, 79, 87, 88, 101, 120 meditation 26, 28, 98 mediumistic 27, 34, 35, 75 mental illness 93, 95, 96, 119 mind 10, 15, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 58, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 76, 88, 89, 90, 97, 98, 100, 112, 114, 124, 125, 127 Montauk 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 107, 112 N NDE 27, 38, 39 near-death 27, 37, 38, 47 neurology 21, 128 O objective 13, 18, 21, 22, 23, 36, 42, 48, 52, 74, 76, 87, 113, 124 OOBE 27, 38, 72 out-of-body 37, 38, 72, 74

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P past-life 34, 35, 68, 69, 70 perception 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46, 68, 76, 90, 100, 121 Perky Effect 22 personality 45, 46, 47, 98, 99, 111 PK 26, 29, 33, 61, 62, 63, 64 poltergeist 33, 64, 65 possession 27, 35, 36, 72, 74 precognition 11, 13, 29, 30, 35, 41, 47, 68 psi 30, 31, 32, 40, 43, 46, 47, 48, 90 psychiatrist 80, 99 psychiatry 93, 94, 95, 98 psychokinesis 27, 29, 30, 33, 61, 62, 63 psychology 128 psychotic 93 Q quantum 86, 87, 88, 89, 104 R reality 7, 8, 10, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 32, 37, 42, 48, 50, 66, 74, 81, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 100, 101, 114 relativity 86, 87 Ring, Kenneth 39, 101, 107 RSPK 33, 64, 65 S schizophrenic 95, 98 schizotypal 98, 99 shaman 8, 9, 91, 101 space 9, 11, 12, 25, 31, 36, 52, 53, 71, 86, 87, 88, 89, 126 spirit 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 25, 26, 27, 33, 34, 35, 42, 65, 66, 72, 73, 74, 88, 100, 114 110

subjective 18, 19, 20, 21, 32, 36, 38, 42, 44, 48, 74, 76 synchronicity 27, 28, 41, 103 T telepathy 11, 13, 27, 30, 41, 47, 66 time 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 25, 31, 35, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 103, 104, 112, 116, 118, 125, 127, 128 U UFO 24, 27, 36, 37, 59, 60, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 107, 118 W witch 7, 91, 92 worldview 9, 10, 15, 16, 100, 101, 114 wyrd 10, 104, 113, 114

Books by David Ritchey (Note: * = literary award)

The H.I.S.S. of the A.S.P. (2003) An “Anomalously Sensitive Person (ASP)” exhibits high levels of sensitivity, not only in the emotional realm, but in the physiological, cognitive, altered states of consciousness, and transpersonal (“metaphysical,”) realms as well. The traits of the ASP, which originate in the structure and chemistry of the brain, have important psychological, medical, educational, and social implications. This book investigates the links between a person’s sensitivities and a host of other factors related to biology (“nature”), history (“nurture”) and temperament (“personality”). The Magic of Digital Fine Art Photography (2010) This book is a collection of fine art photographs created by David Ritchey. Fine art photographs are those that are created to fulfill the creative vision of the photographer, to express her/his artistic perceptions and emotions. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, commercial photography, and snapshots. 26 Card Tricks (2011) Written specifically for the intermediate level magician who wants to add some new card tricks with a standard deck to his repertoire, this book presents 26 Card Tricks in clear, precise, easy-to-follow detail. It also provides refreshers for the techniques required to perform all of those tricks and offers suggestions for creating new routines. Something About SCRABBLE™ (2011) This book is written for the average-level living room Scrabble player who generally scores about 250 points per game, and who would like to become a strong living room player (or a competent club player) with an average score of 300 - 350 111

points per game. It includes concepts and word lists mandatory for excelling at the game as well as an invaluable pullout “cribsheet.” Why We Are Fascinated by Dogs (2012) Most people, when they interact with dogs, do so as if dogs have consciousness, and deal with the world in much the same way that humans, at least small children, do. Moreover, many dog lovers believe that their dog thinks of her/himself as being human. This book asserts that dogs are wonderful, loving, social beings who are conscious, intelligent, and capable of exhibiting extraordinary abilities — much like the best of human beings; it is full of fascinating anecdotes that serve to enhance our love and admiration for our canine companions. A Sense of Betrayal (2012) In the year that he spent as a young naval officer in Vietnam, David Ritchey was frequently a first-hand observer of the ubiquitous corruption — not just on the part of the Vietnamese, but on the part of the Americans as well. Because senior officials cared primarily about their own power, prestige, position, and pelf (money), the lives of many young Americans were needlessly sacrificed. Ritchey writes about the Kafkaesque nature of his own experiences, and vividly illustrates how the dynamics of war can shake anyone’s faith in civilization. Reviewing the Montauk Legend (2013) ** The Montauk Legend, has to do with UFOs, invisibility, time travel, teleportation, mind control, weather control, conspiracies, and other similarly esoteric subjects. The legend was sufficiently bizarre that David Ritchey decided to dig deeper in an attempt to determine which elements, if any, were factually based. He enlisted the assistance of a psychic colleague to find out what she said “really” happened there, and the results of their explorations make for fascinating reading.

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Presidents in The Crosshairs (2013) * Of the 44 Presidents who have served this country, 4 have been shot and killed while in office — that’s one in eleven. By way of comparison, one in 57 Americans who served in uniform in Vietnam were killed in combat. These numbers suggest that an individual is five times more likely to be violently killed as President of the United States than as a member of the U.S. military serving in a war zone. Those Presidents who have been shot and killed by assassins are: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John Kennedy. Those Presidents who have been shot and wounded by would-be assassins are: Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. Understanding the Anomalously Sensitive Person (2014) ** Not only are “Anomalously Sensitive Persons (ASPs)” different from the norm in having heightened levels of sensitivities, they are also likely to be different in purely objective criteria — such things as hypopigmentation, Non-Right-Handedness, and having been born as one of a multiple birth. Once they have mastered the challenges of their uniqueness, however, they are positioned to become modern day shamans who help others to understand, and to live within the framework of a life-enhancing world view that, in early times, was known as “wyrd.” Descended from the Gods? (2014) **** In his quest to comprehend the early origins of “Anomalously Sensitive Persons (ASPs)” — those who are unusually sensitive in a variety of realms — David Ritchey found that the theory of creationism and the theory of evolution both had serious shortcomings. He decided therefore, to pursue his inquiry from the perspective of the theory of interventionism as espoused by the ancient Sumerians, which suggests that about 450,000 years ago, a group of advanced beings (who the Sumerians called the “Anunnaki”) arrived on Earth and intervened in the development of humans by undertaking 113

an ongoing series of genetic experiments using humans as subjects. Today’s ASPs might well be direct descendants of the Anunnaki’s test subjects. Those Who Know the Wyrd (2014) * Given the current state of the world, the survival of humanity may well depend on our adopting the worldview of wyrd that was central to the practices of the early Anglo-Saxon shamans. Wyrd is based on the premises that: all things and all events are intimately interconnected on all levels of reality; any event, anywhere, affects everything else, everywhere; everything, everywhere, is alive — that is, consciousness is all-pervasive; body, mind and spirit are all one; and the entire universe is sacred and has purpose and meaning. Tales from the Depths (2014) * The Great Lakes cover approximately 800 miles from east to west and 500 miles north to south and contain 21% of the world’s surface fresh water. Storms on the Great Lakes are every bit as powerful as storms on the world’s oceans, but mariners on the Lakes have little maneuvering room, and shipwrecks have been a common occurrence. People generally estimate the number of shipwrecks on the Great Lakes to have been 100 - 500 over the years rather than the actual number of 6000+ with the loss of 30,000+ lives. On Conflict (2015) The existence of conflict is an ongoing part of the human condition. Instances of conflict can be resolved peacefully, often with constructive results, or they can escalate into aggression and violence, generally with destructive results. This book looks at how conflict generally manifests in the different stages (age groups) of a person’s life with the final chapter focusing on the currently declining rates of conflict and efforts being made to continue that trend.

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Keep the Colors Flying (2015) * While a significant naval presence on the Great Lakes (and Lake Champlain) was relatively short-lived — from the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 to the end of the War of 1812 in 1815 — several noteworthy naval battles took place there. In those actions a number of U.S. Naval heroes were recognized. Among them were Benedict Arnold on Lake Champlain during the Revolutionary War, Thomas Macdonough on Lake Champlain during the War of 1812, and Oliver Hazard Perry on Lake Erie during the War of 1812. The Deadliest Pandemic (2015) * The 1918 avian influenza pandemic killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century; it killed more people in 25 weeks than HIV/AIDS killed in 25 years. A new strain of flu, labeled “H5N1,” has recently emerged. H5N1 is good at killing — having a mortality rate in excess of 50% —but it is not yet good at spreading. Given that this virus is at least 10–20 times more deadly than the 1918 strain, if it mutates to the point of becoming equally contagious, it could then rival the ferocity of some strains of Ebola and be as contagious as the common cold — in which case, at a minimum, it would kill 500 million people worldwide. Locked and Loaded (2015) * In a representative year, total deaths by firearms in the U.S. (32,774) were approximately 12 times higher than in a sample of seven other developed countries with a collective population of roughly the same size. Gun control advocates suggest that the cause is the high prevalence of firearms in the United States, which is seven times more per 100,000 residents than it is in the comparison countries. Gun rights advocates suggest that “the right to keep and bear arms,” as specified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 115

is of paramount importance, and that firearms deaths would actually be reduced if more American civilians carried guns. From Aardvarks to Zyzzyvas (2016) * Word games can be beneficial to us in a number of ways, most especially, perhaps, because they promote social interactions and increase time involved with family and friends. They are also an absorbing way to spend our solitary time, and while they are generally engaged in for their entertainment value, they serve an educational purpose as well. There are scores, if not hundreds of types of word games available, and this book focuses on several of those that are the most popular or most well-known. Pyramidal Mystique (2016) * There are many hundreds of pyramids around the world, having been built by a variety of different cultures in a number of different eras. Those that appear to be either the most important or the most representative show up in North America, South America, Central America, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China, but there are multiple other analogous structures located elsewhere. This book looks closely at a few of those pyramids, with an emphasis on their descriptions and histories, their construction and their purpose. The Enigma of Baalbek (2016) In Baalbek, Lebanon, the ruins of the monumental temple complex are one of the most extraordinary and enigmatic holy places of ancient times. Most conventional researchers claim that all of the structures were constructed by the Romans, primarily in the time frame from 100 BC to 200 AD. Alternative researchers, however, suggest that the underlying platform (with many stones much larger than those used in the Great Pyramids of Giza) on which the visible structures were built, was constructed at a much earlier date, perhaps

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as early as 10,450 BC — and that it was built by a race of technologically advanced ancient beings. American Demagogues (2016) A demagogue is person, especially an orator or a political leader, who gains power by arousing people’s emotions, passions, and prejudices rather than by using rational arguments. Democracies are instituted to ensure freedom for all and popular control over government authority, but demagogues exploit that freedom to gain a level of power for themselves that overrides the rule of law, thereby undermining democracy. Invitations to War (2016) When war is likely to break out, most civilized countries try to make it appear that they are not the aggressor, but rather the innocent victim. In that role, the country is more likely to garner support from its populace and the rest of the world. Any number of maneuverings can be used to push the opposition into attacking first. That has happened in a number of wars in which the United States has become involved, and a brief. synopsis of each of those wars is presented in this book. Enduring American Mysteries (2016) Countless mysteries are available to us and, if we choose, we can become quite engrossed in trying to figure out some of them. This book provides four such mysteries for consideration: (1) America’s Stonehenge — a site in New Hampshire with numerous stone structures and astronomical alignments; (2) Cahokia Mounds — a vast complex in Illinois containing many large earthen mounds; (3) Roanoke Island — an English colony in (then) Virginia that was founded in the late 1500s and disappeared shortly thereafter, and (4) Newport Tower — an old circular stone tower in Rhode Island.

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Pyramids of Fire (2016) * Volcanoes have done much to shape the face of the planet, alter climatic conditions, and change the course of history. The most powerful of them, Supervolcanoes have lifetimes and eruption cycles that are so long that there have been no major supervolcano eruptions during the course of recorded human history. Nevertheless, the eruptions of active lesser volcanoes on Earth today can have significant consequences. This book looks at the origins of volcanoes, the nature and history of major eruptions, the world’s most famous and the world’s most dangerous volcanoes, the USA’s most dangerous volcanoes, and the supervolcano, the Yellowstone Caldera. Noteworthy UFO Cases (2017) * The Universe is so old and so vast, and there are so many potentially habitable planets contained within it, that statistically it is almost a foregone conclusion that sentient life exists elsewhere — not just on Earth. According to the Drake Equation, there are likely to be approximately 10,000 active, communicative, extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. The odds are that any number of these beings are traveling around the cosmos in their spacecraft, and from time to time they visit the planet Earth. This book is about earthly UFO sightings, which may be manifestations of those visitations, and sixteen of them are closely examined. The presence of Extraterrestrials on Earth has enormous socioeconomic implications for our future, and this is discussed in some depth. One At Time Or All At Once (2017) * Because of the media frenzies that surround multiple murders, most adult Americans have at least a vague awareness of the serial killers, spree killers, and mass murderers that have operated in our midst in recent history. This book profiles some of the more infamous perpetrators in each category and delineates their actions forthrightly and concisely so that 118

the reader can fully understand what was involved in each situation. Spies Uncovered (2017) * A spy who has been uncovered can no longer continue to be a spy. The nature of spying is such that a spy, in order to be successful, must remain an unknown entity. The uncovering of a spy usually occurs when he has been captured and his captors reveal his identity, but some spies, albeit very few, reveal their own identities after they have retired. In this book, eight uncovered spies have been profiled, each with his own unique story. However, because they have been uncovered, and because of the omnipresent deception and misinformation in the field, they should not be perceived as being representative of spies in general. Geniuses Among Us (2017) * A normal or average I.Q. is 100, an I.Q. of 130+ is considered to be in the “gifted” range. and an I.Q. of 145+ is considered to be in the “very gifted” (or “genius”) range. In the 1980s, researchers began to recognize that there was more to giftedness than just the linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences measured by I.Q. tests. Other intelligence included: musical, visuo-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, inter-personal, and intrapersonal. While an individual may qualify as a genius in one of these other intelligences without an I.Q. of 145+, statistical precision is lacking. Most geniuses are introverted intuitives with a high level of creativity and a high level of mental illness, particularly mood disorders. In this book a number of geniuses are profiled: 8 with mental disorders, 11 from the historical past, and 12 contemporary. Pumped Up (2017) Just about anything that is inflatable can qualify as a “balloon.” “Inflatables” can be utilized for a broad variety of purposes. In addition to regular ol’ balloons, there are aeronautical 119

balloons (either hot air or gas, or a combination thereof); there are airships (such as blimps, dirigibles, and zeppelins); there are inflatables that are used by the military and the scientific community; there are inflatable medical devices; there are inflatable recreational devices; there are inflatable safety devices; there are comfort-related inflatable devices; there are inflatable buildings; and there are a host of other miscellaneous inflatable devices. Example of all of these are discussed in this book, and you are likely to find the subject matter much more interesting than you might have suspected. A Brief History of Hurricanes (2017) Tropical storms formed in the North Atlantic Basin with winds in excess of 74 mph are spoken of as “hurricanes.” Hurricanes derive their energy through the evaporation of warm water from the ocean surface, which ultimately recondenses into clouds and rain when moist air rises and cools to saturation. In addition to strong winds and rain, hurricanes are capable of generating high waves, damaging storm surge, and tornadoes. Between 1900 and 2016, there were 633 hurricanes in the North Atlantic Basin that collectively caused 103,000+ fatalities and were responsible for $392+ billion (USD not adjusted for inflation) in damages. Twentyfour of the most noteworthy of those hurricanes are profiled in this book. Those 24, combined, caused 65,000+ fatalities and were responsible for $492+ billion (adjusted for inflation to 2016 USD) in damages. What Is Truth? (2018) When Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate more than 2,000 years ago, Pilate asked of him the question, “What is truth,” but would not stay for an answer. Today, in the 20th century, that question has more relevance than ever before, because truth appears to have lost its “absolute” status, and is now held to be something that is only “relative.” Lack of consensus about truth can only lead to chaos and confusion. 120

This book examines the historic perception of truths, fallacies, and untruths; it looks at the tenuous status of truth in today’s US political environment; and it explores the underpinnings of the current “post-truth” environment. Transportation Disasters (2018) A disaster can be thought of as a serious disruption in the functioning of a community or society involving widespread human, material, economic, or environmental losses and impacts, which exceed the ability of those affected to cope using their own resources. Disasters can occur in all of the four major transportation categories — aviation, maritime, railway, and roadway. “Pseudo-disasters” can also be created by the media, which, by deftly hyping a relatively minor incident, can hold the public spellbound for months. With the scale of transportation rising, the sizes of airplanes, ships, and other means of carrying people and cargo from one point to another escalating, the likelihood of significant disasters continues to increase with the numbers. In this book, a number of disasters in each major transportation category are profiled. Up to The Eaves: Major Snowstorms (2018) * Snowstorms occur when tiny supercooled cloud droplets freeze and fall through the Earth’s atmosphere to the ground. Once on the ground, nature moves the fallen snow around, usually by blowing it into drifts, and less commonly by avalanches on steep slopes, or by glaciers which develop after accumulated snow has metamorphosed into glacial ice. Snow affects such human activities as agriculture, transportation, winter sports, and warfare. It is also an important factor for consideration of loads on structures. Just about anyone who has experience snowstorms has one that s/ he recalls as “the big one.” One person’s “big one,” however, may be run-of-the-mill for someone else. Throughout the history of this country, there have been any number of “big ones,” and this book profiles 20 of those that objectively seem 121

to merit the appellation. Everybody Loves Conspiracy Theories (2018) ** There probably exist thousands of conspiracy theories about hundreds of subjects, but a broad overview of them can be attained by grouping them into categories and explicating representative examples within each category — as has been done in this book. In the era of the Trump presidency, conspiracy theories have become writ large in ways that we could not have imagined as recently as three years ago, because his continual espousal of such theories, has pushed them into the mainstream. Whereas conspiracy theories have always been part of American politics, they’ve tended to appeal only to fringe audiences, but they now seem to dominate the mainstream debate. The Automobile: An American Cultural Icon (2018) * The year 1886, regarded as the birth year of the modern car, German inventor Karl Benz built the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, a simple vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine. Today’s automobiles are much more complex, having a host of controls for driving and parking, as well as other controllable devices for safety and comfort. Controls continue to evolve in response to new technologies, for example the electric car and the integration of mobile communications. Rapidly increasing oil prices, concerns about oil dependence, tightening environmental laws, and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions are propelling work on alternative power systems for cars. This book takes a look at the historical development of cars, and speculates about the nature of the automobiles of the future. Are We Ready for Artificial Intelligence? (2018) The contemporary field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research was founded in 1956, and since then ever more sophisticated AI agents have been developed, resulting in Artificial Intelligence 122

now being a part of our everyday lives. In all likelihood, human-level artificial intelligence will be achieved before the end of the 21st century, and once that occurs, a superintelligent system is likely to follow very quickly thereafter. Sufficiently intelligent software would be able to reprogram and improve itself, and through a process of recursive self-improvement would soon completely surpass all human capabilities. A significant concern is that such exceptional abilities might manifest in ways that pose a threat to humans. The worst-case scenario is that the AI agent might decide that it is not in its best interest to support the continued existence of humanity, and that could spell the end of homo sapiens. Clearly, the problem of control must be made a top priority, and it must be completely resolved before superintelligence is brought into existence. They Say It’s Impossible (2018) The beliefs that certain things are impossible have prevented, or at least significantly delayed, many potential accomplishments. Many of our great advances can be attributed to those who “did not know it was impossible, so they did it.” Chapter 1 of this book looks at mistaken beliefs that were often held for several centuries simply because people did not believe that any proffered alternative was possible. Chapter 2 explores a number of situations in which it was generally believed that something could not be accomplished, but somebody pushed forward anyway, and by doing so ultimately changed the lives of us all. Chapter 3 discusses things that are currently considered impossible and speculates about ways in which they might be proven to be otherwise. Noble New Nation (2019) This book is a dystopian political satire written by two different narrators, about a highly charismatic, yet extremely controversial, politician who was elected to the presidency of the Nation in 2016. The first narrator is a devotee of the man 123

he speaks of as “Our Illustrious Leader” (as do other devotees) and writes from the perspective of one who believes his subject can do no wrong. The second is a PhD candidate in political science who is researching his dissertation on “the strategy and tactics of a political ‘outsider’.” He attempts to tell the story from a purely objective, academic perspective. The two perspectives are strikingly dissimilar. The story ends abruptly when “the leader” is assassinated on August 21, 2018. Confronting the Earth’s Tribulations (2019) Since the beginning of its existence, the Earth has been subjected to countless trials and tribulations. The planet was formed in an environment of chaos and destruction involving astronomical collisions, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Since taking shape, the Earth’s mettle has been tested again and again by these forces as well as ice ages, blizzards, floods and tsunamis, cyclones, wild fires, man-made pollution, and human-caused climate change. I decided on six subjects about which to write, and have organized them into sections herein, namely: Cosmic Billiards (astronomical collisions), The Last Ice Age (ice ages), When the Earth Shudders (earthquakes), Big Waters Rolling (floods and tsunamis), Infernal Wild Fires (wild fires), and Killing Her Slowly (pollution and climate change). Coming to our Senses (2019) Our senses permit us to perceive and function in the world in which we live. There are five primary senses that are traditionally recognized by western science: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. In some Asian cultures, a sixth sense, that of the mind and the mind objects it perceives is also recognized. Other sensory modalities are known to exist—including temperature, kinesthesia, pain, balance, and vibration—but are not widely recognized. Most animals have sensory systems analogous to those of humans and some have others as well, including the ability to sense electric fields, 124

magnetic fields, and environmental moisture. The mind serves to determine the utility of sense perceptions, so intelligence plays a significant role in modulating the senses. Popular Primary Pets (2019) Hundreds of millions of animals are kept by humans as pets. They run the gamut from large mammals such as dogs, cats, and horses to fish, reptiles, and arachnids (such as tarantulas). Most pet owners are fiercely loyal to their animals and tend to think of them as being the best type of pet one could have. Generally, though, when people think of pets, they are most likely to first think of dogs, cats, and horses. It is about these three types of animals that this book is written. Whether you are a “dog person,” a “cat person,” a “horse person,” or just a person who has a passing interest in one or more of these animals, I hope you will find what I have to say both informative and fun to read. Interesting Numbers for Interested Folks (2019) I’m not a mathematician, nor do I qualify as being a scientist, but I am a very curious person, and there’s lots about numbers to stimulate one’s curiosity. For example: Why is the length of a mile 5,280 feet? What is the “Golden Ratio?” Why is time based on units of 60 rather than on units of 10? What is the largest meaningful number that exists? Why is the number 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 important? If questions such as these stimulate your interest, this book is for you. If not, there are lots of incurious people in the world and you have plenty of company. In this book, Chapter 1 is about numbers in general; Chapter 2 covers memorable numbers; Chapter 3 deals with weights and measures; and Chapter 4 discusses extraordinary numbers. Seeking the Earth’s Treasures (2019) Modern humans, had their origins in Africa about 250,000 125

years ago and began to migrate elsewhere about 100,000 years ago, presumably exploring their environs wherever they were. The earliest explorations were by land, and these were followed by explorations by sea. Once the continentsand major islands had been discovered by sea, there was still a lot of exploring to be done inland from the coasts. Of particular interest were those discoveries that were superlatives—i.e., the biggest or smallest, the highest or lowest, the longest or shortest, the heaviest or lightest, the hottest or coldest, the fastest or slowest, etc. Categories in which superlatives have been noted include waterbodies, landforms, plants, animals, humans, and natural events. Since the 1950s, the innate drive to explore has led humans beyond Earth and into space. Unmanned exploration of Deep Space is currently underway, and the United States’ spacecraft, Voyager 1, is now about 13.23 billion miles away from Earth. Looking for a Few Good Critters: Marine Mammals (2019) Most people, when asked to name ten mammals off the top of their head, are likely to list only terrestrial mammals and don’t think to include marine mammals. It seems that we humans have an unconscious bias toward thinking of mammals as being terrestrial rather than maritime, perhaps because we ourselves are mammals, the dominant terrestrial mammals, and the other terrestrial mammals seem more like us than do the marine mammals. This is a book about all the marine mammals, and is divided by chapters into the four commonly recognized sub-groups: cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises), sirenians (manatees, dugongs), pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, walruses), and fissipeds (polar bears, sea otters). It’s About Time (2019) Time, always there, is a major element in the lives of most people in the civilized world. We’ve gotten used to it, we accept it, we adapt to it on leap years and such, and we go about our daily business without giving it much thought. Some 126

people, however, do think about it, and they have asked quite a few questions about it, some of which have been satisfactorily answered, some of which haven’t. For example: When did people start keeping track of time and why? By what means have people measured time? When did time begin? What exctly is spacetime? What role does the human mind play in time? Is time travel possible? Perhaps the most important question of all is, “What exactly is time?” These and other questions about time are addressed in this book.

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About The Author David Ritchey’s vocations have included: naval officer, businessman, fine art photographer, psychotherapist, researcher, and writer. His avocations have included: scuba diving, sailing, skiing, tennis, golf, gardening, woodworking, dogs, magic, bridge, and SCRABBLE™. After being educated in economics at Yale University, he served for five years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, including a year in Vietnam. Back in civilian life, he initially became a businessman, but shortly thereafter followed his true inclinations and became a fine art photographer. While immersed in the art world, he became fascinated by the psychology/neurology of creativity, and returned to school to train as a psychotherapist. During his 15 years of clinical practice, specializing in hypnotherapy, he became especially interested in the psychodynamics of those clients who reported having had transpersonal (“metaphysical”) experiences, and undertook a twelve-year project of researching and writing about such people, who he speaks of as “Anomalously Sensitive Persons.” Later, he became his daughter’s business manager at her art gallery on Cape Cod, and spent a few years involved simultaneously in the worlds of both business and art. Now “retired,” he spends his time writing about a wide range of subjects that are of special interest to him. Information about his books can be found at www.davidritchey-author. com. He currently lives in historic Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He has two grown children, Harper and Mac, and a grandson, Brendan. 128

METAPHYSICAL EXPERIENCES: Are They Real?

METAPHYSICAL EXPERIENCES Are They Real?

David Ritchey