Category: Meditation

You Perform Miracles Everyday–If You Didn’t You’d Cease to Exist

May 20, 2018

One of the timeless claims of religions is that many saints, sages, and saviors can, seemingly, defy the laws of matter: change water into wine, cure the sick, raise the dead, walk on water, levitate, or manifest objects out of thin air.

But, according to the saints and sages themselves, those who have been described by thousands of people to have worked such miracles, we have the same ability that they do—we just don’t realize it (yet). In fact both the saints and science tell us that, without knowing how we do it, or even that we are doing it, we perform an astonishing miracle every moment: we continuously create our own physical body.

The saints and sages tell us that the dramatic miracles they work are but the conscious and deliberate extension of the same hidden laws of energy and thought that we use—without knowing how we use them—every day, every moment, to manifest our physical form.

We tend to think of our body as a fixed physical entity that exists regardless of anything we do. We might think that we can influence our body, for better or worse, by diet, exercise, and even by our thoughts and feelings, but we are pretty certain that birth—not a miracle—takes care of creating our body.

One certainly doesn’t see people routinely popping miraculously into or out of existence. Our bodies give every appearance of being fixed in their reality—especially when we, ah, try to lose weight—and the effects of any “normal” methods we use to change our body unfold very, very slowly.

You might be surprised to discover, then, that there are people—who are not saints or sages—who routinely undergo instantaneous physical change.

Instantaneous Physiological Change Among Multiple Personality Disorder Sufferers

As you probably already know, multiple-personality disorder (MPD) causes the sufferer to express many different personalities. Each personality is distinct. Each personality has particular characteristics and tendencies. Each personality has a unique set of memories. Different personalities often respond to different names. Some have talents, such as being able to play a musical instrument, that the other personalities do not have. Some personalities can even speak foreign languages that the others cannot.

Less well known is that each personality also undergoes distinct physiological changes—some quite dramatic—when transitioning (in a time period ranging from seconds to minutes) from one personality to the next. Dr. Philip M. Coons, who compiled the results of over fifty studies regarding physiological changes among MPD sufferers, documents that the rapid physiological changes of MPD sufferers have been measured using modern medical devices and techniques including electroencephology, visual evoked responses, galvanic skin responses, electromyography, regional cerebral-blood-flow monitoring, voice spectral analysis, brain electrical activity mapping, and electrocardiography. Measurements taken using these instruments as well as systematic observational methods leave no doubt that physiological changes do emerge when one personality changes to another. In other words, what you are about to read are not unfounded claims. These phenomena are well-documented and were measured using sophisticated scientific instruments.

Voice spectral-analysis reveals one’s unique voice fingerprint or voiceprint. Even exceptional mimics, who can sound convincingly like many well-known people, cannot fool voice spectral-analysis—their underlying voiceprint remains unchanged regardless of the imitation they are performing, just as an actor playing many parts always has the same fingerprints. On the other hand, MPD personalities can have unique voiceprints for different personalities.

According to the conventional biochemical model, our genes determine the physical structures that give rise to our unique voiceprint. According to the logic of the conventional biochemical model, for a MPD personality to have its own unique voiceprint, that MPD personality would have to be manifesting a unique gene expression—perhaps even unique genes. MPD personalities have been observed to write with different hands i.e., the left or the right. Handedness is conventionally considered to be genetically determined. What the observed facts indicate is that MPD sufferers manifest physiological changes that can only be explained as arising from instantaneous genetic changes.

One personality can suffer from allergies, such as to bee stings, while the individual’s other personalities do not. One personality can be diabetic, a condition that takes years to develop and insulin to manage, while the others are not. Each MPD personality can have different visual characteristics. MPD sufferers have been measured carefully by ophthalmologists for refraction (by measuring refraction errors or astigmatisms), visual acuity (by measuring focal ability, e.g. 20/20 vision), ocular tension (by measuring the intraocular pressure), keratometry (by measuring the curve of the cornea), and color vision (by measuring how accurately colors are detected).

In one particular study, a MPD sufferer moved through ten personalities in less than an hour. An ophthalmologist was on hand to do a complete set of measurements for each personality. Once the results were examined it was found that the eyes ofeach of the ten personalities had significantly different characteristics from the other nine. These are not the normal physiological changes that anyone’s eyes might go through over a period of time—however long. It is as though the eyes of each personality belong to an entirely different body. In other studies, some personalities are colorblind for blue and green while the others are not. One personality has an astigmatism while the others do not. One personality even has an iris colored differently from the irises of the others.

One MPD sufferer would manifest needle tracks on his arms only when the personality emerged that believed he was a drug addict—even though no drugs had been injected. Rashes, moles, scars, and other skin conditions emerged and vanished as personalities came and went. A personality of a young boy reacted to poison ivy, including having fluid-filled blisters on his skin. On switching to another personality, the blisters vanished in minutes.

The fascinating list of physiological anomalies found among MPD sufferers goes on and on. But all the strange and unusual clinically-observed phenomena have one thing in common—they are all impossible—at least according to the conventional biochemical model of how our bodies work. The body-as-a-biological-machine concept provides no explanation for how any of these phenomena could have happened. According to the conventional model, none of these changes should have been able to take place with the rapidity they have, and many of these changes, such as different voiceprints, handedness, eyesight, colorblindness, or iris color should not be able to occur successively in one body—period—because they would require the presence of different genes.

The Power of Deeply Held Conviction

So how and why does this happen?

One thing we know is that the different personalities of an MPD sufferer are quite convinced of their own unique identity—there’s often no awareness by one personality of there being any other personalities at all. Many MPD sufferers are discovered because they come to doctors complaining of amnesia. They know they are missing large segments of memory but have no idea that another personality, or other personalities, are living their lives during the times of their memory loss.

You could say that each personality has its own subconscious mind that contains its own unique memories, habits, abilities, and, most importantly fundamental mental convictions about their body shape and health. As each personality emerges with its unquestioningly held, deeper-than-conscious convictions about that personality’s appearance, state of health, and physical abilities, each personality’s body immediately changes to conform to those convictions. Once MPD sufferers shift into new personalities, each personality has the absolute conviction that its body will be as it expects that body to be—the drug-user personality expecting to see needle tracks on his arms, or the woman expecting to see green eyes looking back at her in the mirror, even though all the other personalities that share that body have brown eyes.

Because nearly all of us have only one personality, one subconscious mind, one cohesive set of fundamental mental convictions about our body shape, appearance and health, we don’t see such rapid changes of form as do MPD sufferers—but the mechanism that causes physical changes to instantly manifest in MPD sufferers is the same mechanism that we use to continuously manifest our same familiar physical form.

We Have Two Bodies

So what is this mechanism?

Saints, sages, and near-death experiencers tell us that we each have our own personal energy template, or energy body. From this energy body our physical body continuously manifests, and the energy body determines, moment by moment, everything about our physical body. Our high-frequency energy body is variously called by the saints and sages the astral body, the subtle body, the spirit body, or sometimes, the etheric body.

There is support for this concept of a template-like subtle body in M-theory, the most accepted branch of string theory. M-theory’s mathematics suggest that there exists a vast two-dimensional energy realm, which they refer to as the “bulk” or, as I prefer to call it, the energy-verse. M-theorists posit that our entire three-dimensional physical universe is submerged in the energy-verse, like a bubble surrounded by water, yet more like a sponge in water than a bubble because the physical universe is thought to be interpenetrated at every point with the high-frequency two-dimensional energies of the energy-verse.

(According to M-theory not only our physical universe arises from the energy-verse: The energy-verse as envisioned by M-theory is so vast that it could contain and sustain virtually unlimited numbers of other three-dimensional bubble-universes.)

The high-frequency energies of the energy-verse are impossible for us to detect with physical instruments but, according to M-theory, without the interpenetrating energies of the energy-verse, the physical universe could not exist. Further, M-theory posits that our three-dimensional universe is itself a holographic projection which is continuously projected in all its minute detail from a two-dimensional hologram that exists in the energy-verse.

This brings us back to having two bodies: By extending the idea that the universe is a holographic projection, our three-dimensional body, like the universe, must also be continuously projected from a two-dimensional hologram. Our physical bodies are not fixed—they are continuously created holographic projections—they are energy masquerading as matter and they cannot exist independently of our two-dimensional hologram residing in the energy-verse.

If our senses were able to reveal all of the vibrating sea of energy in which we exist, we’d know that no atom has inherent, enduring, independent properties. It is simply energy; energy that can take any form. M-theorists add that the apparently independent objects that make up our sensory experience are the super-high resolution, three-dimensional images of a holographic projection. Just as the images on our TV screen appear to be separate and independently existing three-dimensional objects, they are in fact interconnected, two-dimensional light images. So, too, the world around us, and indeed our bodies, are holographic projections of energy—not separate, independently existing three-dimensional objects. Neither the tiniest bit of matter nor the largest star has an independent reality. All matter is projected from, interconnected with, and dependent on, the interpenetrating, nonlocal, two-dimensional energy-verse.

Our holographic energy body is made of coordinated energies vibrating at frequencies impossible for physical instruments to detect. Our physical body, on the other hand, is composed of detectable lower-frequency energy masquerading as matter; this lower-frequency energy is held in organized patterns by the interpenetrating higher-frequency holographic energy body.

“The visible world is the invisible organization of energy.”—Heinz Pagels, Former Executive Director, New York Academy of Sciences

Back to Miracles

The moment change occurs in our holographic energy body is the moment change occurs in the holographic projection we know as our physical body. And any change that occurs in our holographic energy body is brought about by a change in our fundamental convictions about our body shape, appearance and health.

MPD sufferers’ bodies change instantly—and seemingly miraculously—when their fundamental convictions change with each emerging personality, because their change of convictions changes their holographic energy body every time a new personality comes into conscious control of the body.

The instantaneous physical changes of MPD sufferers reveals the ongoing miracle that we are all constantly performing. Our bodies are the result of the power of our own mind working through our subtle energy body: If we developed the ability to immediately change our deeply held thoughts, we could immediately change our physical bodies at will.

That is the difference between the saints and sages and us: they have developed the ability to change not only their deeply held thoughts about their own bodies but about all physical forms.

Everyday Miracles

It helps us appreciate our power, I think, when we understand how that power is demonstrated in the placebo effect.

In 1968, researchers Luparello and Bleeker conducted a medical trial for asthma inhalers. Forty actual asthma sufferers were given inhalers which they were told contained an irritant. In fact, the inhalers contained nothing but water vapor. Nonetheless, after using the inhaler almost half of the test group experienced such asthmatic symptoms as restriction of their airways, and about 30 percent suffered full asthmatic attacks. The researchers then gave each asthma sufferer a new inhaler, which they were told contained a medicine that could relieve their symptoms. These inhalers, too, contained nothing but water vapor. Nonetheless, every asthma sufferer recovered.

A 1976 drug trial for a potential chemotherapy treatment for gastric cancer was conducted by the British stomach-cancer group. The results of the study were published in the May 1983 World Journal of Surgery. Four hundred and eleven patients participated. During the course of the study, which lasted several months, of the patients given only a placebo saline drip with no active ingredients, 30 percent lost all their hair.

The placebo testing method has been used even for surgical procedures. The placebo patients are given a sham surgery—rolled in to the operating room, given anesthesia, incised, sutured back together, and then given post-operative care—all with no actual procedural surgery having been performed. In these cases also, a high percentage of the trial patients who have had the sham surgery become cured of significant preexisting physical problems.

As these examples show, people who have received placebos or placebo treatments—yet believed they were getting a trial drug or a new surgical procedure—manifest significant physiological changes. Nor is it only a small percentage of the placebo group who respond. Placebo takers consistently have over a 50 percent positive response rate for the condition for which they thought they were being treated.

Simply the thought that one is receiving a potentially effective trial drug or trial surgery can change one’s convictions about one’s state of health. As in the cases of MPD sufferers, when the conviction changes, so does the physical body. Placebo-induced change can sometimes happen immediately (as with the placebo inhalers); but it generally unfolds more slowly than do the dramatically rapid changes of MPD sufferers, because the speed of change occurs in accordance with the mental expectations, i.e., the convictions of the placebo takers. If, for example, there is a deep conviction that they will gradually lose all their hair, then so they do.

The Take Away

We may not yet be able to deliberately make instantaneous and dramatic changes in our bodies by altering our deeply held convictions—but we can and do make significant changes all the time. The body is far more responsive, and more thoroughly responsive to our thoughts than we tend to realize.

Any positive (or negative) thought makes a change in our hologram energy body and sets in motion physiological changes. We tend not to realize this because our habitual patterns of thought regarding our body and health don’t vary that much from day to day—our usual mix of positive and negative thoughts remains fairly fixed, leaving us with a relatively consistent state of health, whether good or bad.

We can deliberately shift our mix of thoughts to the positive in a variety of ways—affirmations, choosing positive books and media, keeping good company, etc.—but the single most effective way to shift the balance of our thoughts is to meditate.

Meditation, simply defined, is the disciplined shifting of our awareness from the physical body to our subtle astral body. Sitting in stillness, we become less and less aware of the physical body and naturally and effortlessly become more and more aware of our subtle energy body. As we become more aware of our subtle energy body we are filled with the peace, love, and joy that is inherent to it. As we become more aware of our subtle energy body we feel our selves to be less material and more energetic; less defined and more connected; less matter and more Light.

Intellectual belief in our higher potential, our divine nature, is a starting point, but such belief is not enough to change deeply held convictions. Direct inner experience attained through practicing meditation, on the other hand, will transmute those deeply held convictions by enabling us directly to experience the subtler, interconnected, nonmaterial reality of energy and thought.

The saints and sages, who are just as aware of their subtle divine nature as we are aware of our physical bodies, know that their hologram energy body, and the thoughts that shape it, have an independent reality from the physical body. Theirs is not belief, it is knowing. And with knowing comes their ability to shape the thoughts that shape physical form—the ability to perform what most people think of as “miracles.”

“[One] who through perfect meditation has merged his consciousness with the Creator perceives the cosmical essence as light; to him there is no difference between the light rays composing water and the light rays composing land. Free from matter-consciousness, free from the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time . . . he sees the universe as an essentially undifferentiated mass of light. Through a master’s divine knowledge of light phenomena, he can instantly project into perceptible manifestation the ubiquitous light atoms. The actual form of the projection—whether it be a tree, a medicine, a human body—is in conformance with [his] powers of will and of visualization.”—Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi

Such control hardly comes overnight, alas. But the good news is that even a little direct experience of our subtle energy nature, of Light and Love, makes our deeply held thoughts a little more malleable, allowing us to insert new, more positive convictions about our health and happiness, deliberately effecting the miraculous holographic mechanism of continuous creation for a new outcome.

You continuously work miracles every day: Perform your best miracle possible!

 

 

Heaven is a Hologram

March 25, 2018

These days we often read that our universe is a holographic projection. One’s first encounter with the idea that our universe is a holographic projection can engender bemused disbelief or outright skepticism.

We also read various takes as to the origin of the holographic projection. String theorists, who popularized the notion, tell us, somewhat confusingly, that the holographic information that determines the behavior of the three-dimensional volume of space we call the universe is “pasted on” the “boundary” between our three-dimensional universe and a two-dimensional energy realm.

Other explanations range from the wildly imaginative to the darkly sinister and often involve technologically advanced aliens and Matrix-style computer simulations. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not ready to go there.

Rather, I’d like to suggest another origin for the holographic projection that we call the universe, one that fuses string theory with spiritual teachings: Simply put, I believe heaven is a hologram.

My suggestion is based on theories of science, such as string theory (and its most accepted branch, M-theory, in particular), but also religious tradition and, especially, the testimony of the saints, sages, and near-death experiencers who have had direct transcendent experience of heaven.

Not everyone accepts the idea of heaven, but it is common to every religion. And most descriptions of heaven include the metaphysical concept, “as above so below,” that is congruent with my suggestion that heaven acts as a holographic template for the physical universe. The Hindus and Buddhists describe multi-leveled heavens with as many as ten levels. The level above always defines the level below. Interestingly, the Hindus and Buddhists do not separate the heavens from the earth—the earth is just one more level of creation that has its own particular qualities determined by the level above.

The idea that heaven can be real and could have a direct connection with our physical world is easier to accept, I think, from the direct testimony of relatively more contemporary sources who base their descriptions on direct transcendence experience.

“In a word, absolutely everything in nature, from the smallest to the greatest, is a correspondence. The reason correspondences occur is that the natural world, including everything in it, arises and is sustained from the spiritual world, and both worlds come from the Divine.”__ Emanuel Swedenborg, Christian mystic

“Material existence is only a shadow of that higher, finer dimension of reality. This world is the result of the astral world. The blueprints of everything in the physical universe have been astrally conceived—all the forms and forces in nature, including the complex human body, have been first produced in that realm where God’s causal ideations are made visible in forms of heavenly light and vibratory energy.”—Paramhansa Yogananda, yoga master

“Everything was created of spirit matter before it was created physically—solar systems, suns, moons, stars, planets, life upon the planets, mountains, rivers, seas, etc. I saw this process, and then, to further understand it, I was told . . . that the spirit creation could be compared to one of our photographic prints; the spirit creation would be like a sharp, brilliant print, and the Earth would be like its dark negative. This Earth is only a shadow of the beauty and glory of its spirit creation.”—Betty J. Eadie, near-death experiencer

Until the advent of string theory and the holographic principle in the 1960s, there had been no persuasive scientific framework to support how such transcendent testimony, describing a dynamic connection between our physical world and a subtler purely energetic one, could possibly be reconciled with science.

M-theory, string theory’s most well-known version, posits that vast amounts of pure energy exists in extra dimensions beyond the four dimensions with which we are familiar (three dimensions of space and one of time). These dimensions and the high-frequency energies they contain are beyond our senses’ and our finest instruments’ ability to detect. In M-theory, the three dimensions of our already almost incomprehensibly large physical universe are the smallest dimensions in the cosmos.

Our three-dimensional universe could be described as being like a saturated sponge submerged in an ocean of high-frequency energy. The string-theorist’s name for this vast ocean of energy is the “bulk,” as in, “the bulk of the cosmos.” I prefer to call it the energy-verse as the word bulk is so poorly descriptive of the reality to which it refers.

Counter-intuitively, the energy-verse, as posited by M-theory, is two-dimensional. The energy-verse is completely nonmaterial, that is to say it contains no three-dimensional space in which there could be three-dimensional material. It is composed of pure energy that vibrates in two-dimensions.

The energy-verse is, I believe, the location of the heavens or astral regions of all religious traditions. The essential qualities of the energy-verse—that it is nearly infinite, that it exists “beyond” the physical universe, and that it contains only nonmaterial, two-dimensional, high-frequency vibrating energy, matches uncannily well the descriptions of the heavens, or luminous astral regions, given by hundreds of saints, sages, and near-death experiencers.

“Just as persons on the cinema screen appear to move and act through a series of light pictures, and do not actually breathe, so the astral beings walk and work as intelligently guided and coordinated images of light.”—Sri Yukteswar, yoga master

“Heaven is a world much like our own except there is no time nor space as we think of them here. Heaven exists in a higher dimension of energy. The higher realms are a world of inexpressible beauty.”—Nora Spurgin, near-death experiencer and researcher

“Time as I had known it came to a halt; past, present, and future were somehow fused together for me in the timeless unity of life. I learned that all the physical rules for human life were nothing when compared to this unitive reality.”—George Rodonaia, near-death experiencer

“But if prophets down the millenniums spake with truth, man is essentially of incorporeal nature. [Man] is only temporarily allied with sense perception.”—Paramhansa Yogananda, yoga master

Not only did M-theorists unknowingly provide a location for heaven, but, by making the mathematics of holography an integral piece of their theory, they also provide the key mechanism by which heaven can be understood to function as the template for the physical universe.

The holographic principle, as it is used in string theory, states that the behavior of the three-dimensional volume of space, time, and matter that we call the universe is governed by information existing outside the universe. Put another way, high-frequency light-energy, interacting with the information contained in a two-dimensional hologram in the two-dimensional energy-verse, results in the creation and unfolding of the colossal three-dimensional holographic projection we call the universe. Or put yet another way, in the language of M-theorists, the holographic information that determines the behavior of the three-dimensional volume of space we call the universe is “pasted on” the “boundary” between our three-dimensional universe and the two-dimensional bulk.

A missing piece of any of these scientifically couched descriptions of the holographic mechanism is the explanation of where the information in the hologram comes from in the first place.

In our physical world, a hologram is a flat, two-dimensional film with which light can be made to interact to project a three-dimensional image. Using today’s technology, the creation of the two-dimensional hologram requires starting with digitized images either of an actual three-dimensional object or one generated by a computer. Then the information in those digitalized images of three-dimensional objects is encoded into a two-dimensional hologram.

Thus in our physical world the information for the hologram comes either from imaging an existing form or from the creative mind of a designer.

Where, then, in the vast ocean of high-frequency energy in the energy-verse, do the original forms, the original templates, the original intelligently and creatively ordered information that encodes the universe, come from? Information complex enough that it can project the universe into being in all its intricate detail from the stars to subatomic particles?

It’s not enough that such information contain only the physical laws that govern the birth and behavior of our universe. Inherent in the very principle of holography is that the physical universe can’t simply have been started and left to its own evolution. It wasn’t created once and left on its own. The holographic principle suggests that our universe is being continuously projected in dynamically and rapidly evolving detail down to the tiniest sub-atomic particle.

You may be surprised to learn that saints and scientists alike concur on this point:

“God is creating the entire universe, fully and totally, in this present now. Everything God created . . . God creates now all at once.”— Meister Eckhart, Christian mystic
“The universe emerges out of an all-nourishing abyss not only twelve billion years ago but in every moment.”—Brian Swimme, physicist

“My solemn proclamation is that a new universe is created every moment.”— D. T. Suzuki, Zen teacher

“We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves; whirlpools of water in an ever-flowing river.”—Norbert Wiener, physicist

“The Tao is the sustaining Life-force and the mother of all things; from it, all things rise and fall without cease.”—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

A continuously and dynamically evolving holographically projected creation requires a continuous and dynamically evolving source of holographic information. The saints, sages, and near-death experiencers tell us that the information source is a luminous, heavenly counterpart to our universe: the “sharp, brilliant print,” as was described by near-death experiencer Betty Eadie, or as explained by Yogananda, “all the forms and forces in nature, including the complex human body, have been first produced in that realm where God’s causal ideations are made visible in forms of heavenly light and vibratory energy.”

Not only is the universe around us a holographic projection, we, ourselves, inhabit holographically projected bodies, projected from our own personal luminous “astral body” hologram. Living through both our bodies, we interact with the complex reality that is the cosmos on many levels. We are both actors and directors in an Intelligently created cosmic movie.

“We are beginning to see the entire [cosmos] as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self-referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time.”—Ervin Laszlo

Our astral hologram, the perfect luminous counterpart to our physical body, is not distant from us, rather it interpenetrates our physical body at every point. Just as the physical universe is like a saturated sponge submerged in an ocean of high-frequency energy so, too, is our physical body. According to M-theory, this energy vibrates at such a high frequency that it is detectable neither by our senses nor by physical instruments.

Despite not being able to perceive the interpenetrating subtle energy with our five senses, to one degree or another we are all aware of it. The experiential religious traditions of the world—from yoga to Sufism, to charismatic Christianity, to tai chi—call these subtle energies life force. An abundance of life force puts a bounce in our step and a smile on our face. It tingles through our being when we feel delight and knots our stomach when we’re stressed. It warms our hearts when we feel love and tenses the body when we feel fear. It gives us an upward “rush” when we feel excited or inspired and drags us down when we are fatigued or depressed. It keeps the heart pumping, the lungs breathing, the digestion working, and it animates the myriad processes taking place in our trillions of cells. Without knowing precisely how we know, we are all aware of the presence of life force within us.

In fact, according to the healers, psychics, seers, mystics, and saints who have highly developed intuitive perception, most of what we experience, most of what fills our awareness, most of what matters to us—our vitality and life force, our feelings, our creative will, our personality and character, and our experience of happiness, love or joy—actually originates from our interpenetrating subtle energy body, and does not exist in the physical body at all.

More significantly yet, the mystics tell us that when we die these essential aspects of who we are continue to exist as they have always existed—in our non-physical, interpenetrating, energy body. The person we are today is very much the person we will be after death—only we will find ourselves existing solely in our more perfect energy body in the heavenly freedom of an unconstrained energy world.

It is fair to say, then, that we are already in heaven. When we die we no longer have the input from our physical senses that distract most of us from being fully aware of the spirit body that’s been with us all along.

“In this way, our lives in this plane of existence are encompassed, surrounded, by the afterworld already. . . . The body dies but the spiritual quantum field continues. In this way, I am immortal.”—Dr. Hans-Peter Dürr, former head of the Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich

“You don’t die when you die. You shift your consciousness and speed of vibration. That’s all death is . . . a shift.”—P. M. H. Atwater, near-death experiencer, NDE researcher, and author of Beyond the Light

But we don’t need to wait until we die to experience our subtle energy body more deeply—we can meditate and tap into it in the here and now.

“Since my return [from my near death experience] I have experienced the light spontaneously, and I have learned how to get to that space almost any time in my meditation. Each one of you can do this. You do not have to die to do this. It is within your equipment; you are wired for it already.”—Mellen-Thomas Benedict, near-death experiencer

Meditation is a supremely effective tool for tapping into our energy body because—through relaxation, breathing, concentration, and stillness—meditation methodically turns our attention away from the physical body and allows us to experience our subtle energy body more and more fully.

Meditation doesn’t create calmness and joy: it allows us to experience the calmness and joy natural to our subtle energy body. In practicing yoga postures, it is not the act of relaxing the physical body through stretches and breathing that creates calmness and joy. Rather, the physical tension that was keeping us focused on the physical body has been released, allowing us to feel our natural state. Concentration and stillness similarly are effective, because they get us beyond our stream of thoughts and body sensations, freeing us to become aware of our energy body’s natural state of joy.

When Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” he meant it literally. The more our awareness becomes centered in our subtle energy body, the more happy, fulfilled, loving, compassionate, energetic, and calm we feel.

Expand your awareness of your subtle body. It’s the secret to health and happiness. Breathe in energy from your subtle body, then relax and feel. Concentrate on your calm, still, center.
Be in heaven now.

Originally published in Science and Nonduality Dialogs

Review of The Physics of God on Spirituality Today

October 3, 2017

Almost one hundred years ago mankind rather unwittingly discovered that that light can behave either as a particle or a wave. What was most astounding about this discovery was that scientists realised that light only behaves like a stream of particles in the presence of an intelligent observer. The result of this revelation has come to be known as ‘quantum physics’ and is the first quantifiable bridge between the world of physics and spirituality.

In his book The Physics Of God writer and teacher Joseph Selbie investigates the intersection of scientific theory with religious practice and argues the case for a new interpretation of many well-documented religious experiences; including miracles, the existence of God, heaven, and transcendent awareness.

All of these, he believes, are compatible with many new fields  of scientific endeavour and in particular with those related to relativity, quantum physics, medicine, M-Theory, neuro-science and quantum biology. The point of interception between these dynamics and consciousness is, according to the author, the frontal lobe area of the human brain.

Drawing upon the teachings of spiritual luminaries such as Jung, Besant, Leadbetter, Swedenborg, and Steiner, Selbie cites multiple examples of mystical teachings that point to a clear lineage of metaphysics; ideas regarding the composition of our physical reality that predates the discoveries now being heralded as the great new frontiers on scientific thinking.

Twin Worlds

Later on in his book Selbie expands upon another core principle to quantum physics, namely that a particle can be in two places at the same time, into the world of metaphysical principles by considering the possibility that as individuals we live ‘simultaneously in the two-dimensional energy-wave’.

Following on from this he considers the possibility that we are living in some form of holographic ‘energy template’ which he explains interacts “with the energy-verse’s Higher Frequency energies, like light being shown through film in a projector.”

The consequence of these considerations then leaves the author to postulate on the probability that we are Gods in our own right. More specifically he maintains that the following principles apply to the human experience.

Most of what we are exists beyond the physical universe

We cannot truly die

What we think-we become

Our deeply held thoughts are powerful

We make the world we live in

As he sums up in his concluding summarisation “We are one with the infinite intelligent consciousness that creates reality. The cosmic movie was made for us, Without us, without our attention, the cosmic movie will not play.”

Our Review of The Physics Of God By Joseph Selbie

The fact that so few scientists have actually formed a consensus view on the nature of reality and its composition should prove to us all that we truly live in a construct of consciousness formed by our own concepts and beliefs. It seems that the option to either follow a scientific or mystical interpretation of our world is one that is fast disappearing as both paths increasingly lead mankind into the same arena.

Until that day when both science and meta-science do completely converge there are still grey areas in our understanding which need a language to explain.  As one might suspect, Selbie comes firmly down on the side of the transcendent experience as the only truly authentic way of understanding, and manipulating, the fabric of our physical reality – one which clearly holds its core structure within higher states of energy and therefore, consciousness.

Nowhere within his book is he able to supply imperial evidence that this is the case – but then this is somewhat the point, for our current scientific language fails to accommodate a deeper understanding of a level to physics to which many ancient teachings refer but which science is increasingly working towards. If, as a reader, you are able to accept this limitation and the fact that this bridge has not yet been completed then this book goes a long way to establishing a groundwork upon which much religious and spiritual thinking is based.

As a book The Physics Of God is an insightful and stimulating work – one which will be enjoyed by many who are interested in the field of human consciousness and psychic exploration. Throughout its pages the author does a creditable job of laying the basis upon which readers may well find a stronghold for a deepening of their own religious values.

For the more scientifically oriented the book should provide many avenues of opportunity for expanding the framework upon which to evaluate the strangeness of the new sciences; ideas that are pushing us into a new transcendent mode of thinking.

The Physics Of God is an impressive and thought-provoking work which should be regarded as an important commentary regarding the metaphysical mysteries of life, physical reality, and human consciousness.

Highly recommended!

Our Rating

5/5

Science Confirms Ancient Spiritual Teaching—We Live in Two Bodies

October 3, 2017

By Joseph Selbie

Have you ever seen a glow of light around someone? It can happen when the ambient light is not too bright and especially when you are in a calm and mellow mood. Have you ever felt a shared electric thrill pass through you at a concert when everyone rises to their feet? It often happens when a crowd-pleasing piece is played. Have you ever been moved by sound that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere? It can happen when we are alone and in a quiet space.

If you have, you’re not crazy. The light you see is real. It’s not some afterimage like one caused by a camera flash. And what you feel is real. You really are sharing the feelings of other people, they aren’t just your own. Those sublime sounds you hear are real as well—unless it’s Elvis thanking you for writing all his best songs, in which case, yes, you need help.

For those of us not hearing from Elvis, the mystics explain these experiences as evidence of our subtle energy body. According to them we live in two bodies. One is our physical body, which our senses reveal to us, and the other is a subtle energy body, or astral body, that our intuitive perception reveals to us.

The mystics go further and say that the physical body is created, sustained, and controlled by the subtle energy body; that the physical body is the sock of a sock puppet and the subtle energy body is the hand inside the sock. Without the hand, the sock puppet is just a lifeless, well, sock.

You might think that science can give no support to the reality of such woo-woo concepts, but string theory, especially the branch of string theory known as M-theory, gives us a scientific framework to help us understand how such subtle energy can exist. M-theory suggests that we continuously and simultaneously exist in two realms—in our three-dimensional physical universe, and in a vast, hidden-to-the-senses, two-dimensional, pure-energy realm they call the “bulk” (as in, “the bulk of the cosmos”).

According to M-theory, the bulk, or energy-verse as I like to call it, is inconceivably vast—dwarfing the physical universe. In fact M-theory suggests that an almost unlimited number of other physical universes could also exist in the energy-verse. The energy-verse is filled with super-high frequency vibrating rings and strings from which string theory gets its name. These rings and strings vibrate at frequencies too high for either our senses or scientific instruments to detect. Further, M-theory suggests that this ocean of high-frequency energies invisibly interpenetrates the physical universe at every point, like water saturating a sponge. Thus the rings and strings are invisible to our senses and yet surround and interpenetrate our physical body and world at all times.

This is pretty much exactly the way astral or subtle energy is described by the mystics: we are surrounded by and interpenetrated with subtle energy. They tell us that our subtle energy body is the source of the light seen as our aura, our feelings, and much more.

More significantly yet, M-theory also suggests that our entire physical universe is a holographic projection—and that the hologram from which it is projected exists completely, and only, in the vast ocean of the energy-verse.

In our physical world, a hologram is a flat, two-dimensional film with which light can be made to interact to project a three-dimensional image. According to M-theory, our universe’s hologram is a two-dimensional, light-template with which the high-frequency energy of the energy-verse interacts to project our entire three-dimensional physical universe into being.

Got that? I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t. It takes getting used to. Try this: The hologram from which the physical universe is created exists as coordinated images of high-frequency light in the energy-verse. The high-frequency energies of the energy-verse then continuously interact with those coordinated light images to holographically project the physical universe into being.

Again, this is pretty much what the saints and sages have been telling us for millennia: the physical universe is created and sustained by subtle energy.

Everything was created of spirit matter [Intelligently guided high-frequency energy] before it was created physically—solar systems, suns, moons, stars, planets, life upon the planets, mountains, rivers, seas, etc. I saw this process, and then, to further understand it, I was told . . . that the spirit creation could be compared to one of our photographic prints; the spirit creation would be like a sharp, brilliant print, and the Earth would be like its dark negative. This Earth is only a shadow of the beauty and glory of its spirit creation.—Betty J. Eadie, near-death experiencer and author of Embraced by the Light

From the chapter, “An Experience of Cosmic Consciousness”: All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick motion pictures. My body, Master’s, the pillared courtyard, the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of creation. –Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

And not a few scientists have said the same thing:

We must liberate man from the cosmos created by the genius of physicists and astronomers, that cosmos in which, since the renaissance, he has been imprisoned. We now know that we . . . extend outside the physical continuum. . . . In time, as well as in space, the individual stretches out beyond the frontiers of his body. . . . He also belongs to another world.—Dr. Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize winner

Our second body is far more that a scientific novelty, however. It’s not just an amorphous cloud of energy. Our energy body is the “sharp, brilliant print” that produces our particular physical body and it animates, controls, shapes, and continuously sustains the holographic projection our senses perceive as our physical body.

More importantly, most of who and what we are, in every moment, is not contained in the physical body. We are much more the (luminous) hand in the sock puppet than we are the (physical) sock.

In fact, according to the healers, psychics, seers, mystics, and saints who have highly developed intuitive perception, most of what we experience, most of what fills our awareness, most of what matters to us—our vitality and life force, our feelings, our creative will, our personality and character, and our experience of happiness, love or joy—is actually seated in our interpenetrating subtle energy body, not in the physical body at all.

More significantly yet, the mystics tell us that when we die these essential aspects of who we are continueto exist as they have alwaysexisted—in our non-physical, interpenetrating, energy body. The person we are today is very much the person we will be after death—only we will find ourselves existing solely in our luminous energy body in a luminous energy world—what most people think of as heaven or the astral regions.

The astral kingdom is a realm of rainbow-hued light. Astral land, seas, skies, gardens, beings, the manifestation of day and night—all are made of variegated vibrations of light. Oceans heave with opalescent azure, green, silver, gold, red, yellow, and aquamarine. Diamond-bright waves dance in a perpetual rhythm of beauty.—Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi

In this way, our lives in this plane of existence are encompassed, surrounded, by the afterworld already. . . . The body dies but the spiritual quantum field continues. In this way, I am immortal.—Dr. Hans-Peter Dürr, former head of the Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich

You don’t die when you die. You shift your consciousness and speed of vibration. That’s all death is . . . a shift.—P. M. H. Atwater, near-death experiencer, NDE researcher, and author of Beyond the Light

Since much of who we are lives on after death, you might think there would be little difference between what we experience now and what we will experience after we die. There is, however, a profound difference. Our subtle body is innately closer to the experience of our full Divine potential. The saints and sages tell us that our natural state is Joy beyond imagining.

[During my near-death experience] I became more blissful, more rapturous, more ecstatic. I was just filling and filling with this light and love that was in the light. The dynamics of this light are not static at all. They are so dynamic and so much going on in there of love and joy and knowledge. As you take it into yourself, or as it goes into you and you receive it, your ecstasy level just becomes tremendous …—Jayne Smith, near-death experiencer

But we don’t need to wait until we die to come closer to experiencing our higher potential—we can meditate and tap into it in the here and now.

Since my return [from my near death experience] I have experienced the light spontaneously, and I have learned how to get to that space almost any time in my meditation. Each one of you can do this. You do not have to die to do this. It is within your equipment; you are wired for it already.—Mellen-Thomas Benedict, near-death experiencer

Meditation is a supremely effective tool for tapping into our joy-filled, peace-filled, and love-filled energy body because—through relaxation, breathing, concentration, and stillness—meditation methodically turns our attention away from the physical body and allows us to experience our subtle energy body more and more fully.

Meditation doesn’t make us calm and joyful: it allows us to experience the calmness and joy natural to our subtle energy body. In practicing yoga postures, it is not the act of relaxing the physical body through stretches and breathing that makes us become calm and joyful. Rather, the physical tension that was keeping us focused on the physical body has been released, allowing us to feel our natural state. Concentration and stillness similarly are effective, because they get us beyond our stream of thoughts and body sensations, freeing us to become aware of our energy body’s natural state of joy.

When Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” he meant it literally. The more our awareness becomes centered in our subtle energy body, the more happy, fulfilled, loving, compassionate, energetic, and calm we feel.

Expand your awareness of your subtle body. It’s the secret to health and happiness. Breathe in energy from your subtle body, then relax and feel. Concentrate on your calm, still, center.

And whatever you do, if you hear from Elvis, don’t believe everything he’s telling you…

Originally published on Science and Nonduality (SAND)