EARTHLING
I found this yogi's video on You Tube recently. He is a trained physician who explains how he turned from medical practice to meditative practice. Interesting. I think meditation is indeed a wonderful exercise of consciousness.
This yogi is not anti-scientific. But he is determined to attribute The Universe's existence to some singular intelligent design. That is where we part ways. I think it is far more complicated. Let me tell you why.
This yogi is not anti-scientific. But he is determined to attribute The Universe's existence to some singular intelligent design. That is where we part ways. I think it is far more complicated. Let me tell you why.
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Almost fifty years ago I frequently sat in a room with a dozen people of all ages and backgrounds on the top floor of a large Victorian house in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The large parlor was barely furnished. Folding chairs were optional. Most of us sprawled on the carpet.
Our hosts was a gay man, a friend of my domestic partner at the time. His name was Stephen. He died in 2017. Stephen was a projectionist at an artsy movie theater in Boston's Back Bay. The theater occupied the former First Spiritualist Temple of Boston. Its trustees, Viola and Florence Berlin, were the elderly maiden heirs of that institution. They lived in a rambling apartment on the building's top floor. The theater closed in 1974. It was sold in 1977 and eventually gutted for commercial use. It still stands.
Stephen, a physically unimpressive man eight years older than me, was a trance medium. He had been certified as authentically clairvoyant by various spiritualist groups, including the Edgar Cayce Association. Cayce (1877-1945) was a famous southern American psychic.
There is little general knowledge of trance mediums today. In the 1970's in coastal America, a resurgence of interest in psychic phenomena accompanied the cultural revolution. Jane Roberts, also a trance medium, had a 1970 bestseller, Seth Speaks.
Stephen's "sittings" were attended by invitation only. They were not in any way involved with money. My first love, James, had been involved with Stephen several years before we met. James and our close friend, David, were part of Stephen's inner circle. My attendance at the sittings was more or less expected, despite my deep skepticism about the whole business. I had recently completed my degree in Cellular Biology with a minor in Chemistry.
The evening consisted of Stephen going into trance while seated on an old kitchen chair at one end of the room. Someone stood by him protectively the whole time, because he sometimes jerked violently or slid off to one side. His earlier trance experiences had led to some minor injuries from falling on the floor.
Enter Alexius. Alexius was the self-identified spirit who channeled through Stephen most regularly. He had a robust bass voice with an internationally accented English, not unlike today's Brussels diplomats. This voice was as different from Stephen's rather bland and slightly lisping voice as one could imagine. It was a shocker to most first-timers, who often flinched when Alexius took over.
Alexius reminded me of some of my more outstanding Jesuit professors at Boston College. He lectured for about ninety minutes effortlessly. I have encountered only a handful of people who could pull together various strings of science, literature and philosophy into a coherent and fascinating talk. Alexius would have been a TED-Talks sensation.
But we were staring at chubby Stephen, a theater projectionist whose 6th-grade education was quite evident in casual conversation. My scientific arrogance was shaken by him and by Alexius. Alexius could bounce between several languages effortlessly. Stephen's English was working-class vernacular.
I kept going back without coaxing. My regular social group, to which Stephen did not belong, spent many hours discussing what Alexius revealed. It stimulated our reading of science, philosophy, psychology and history. My motivation was to catch the lie, to somehow discredit this disembodied voice's accuracy with dates or published concepts. I never succeeded.
One night listening to Alexius profoundly changed my perception of conscious existence.
Alexius was in a particularly playful mood that evening. He occasionally taunted a grumbling newcomer, who might have been dragged to a sitting by a friend as a lark. That deep voice would call out the person's name and gently read the person's mind with stunning effect.
Something along the lines of "Jane, if you had gone to Betsy's party instead of coming here, you might have had a better time but you wouldn't have learned anything." Jane, who may have come late and not spoken a word to anyone in the room, would sit slack-jawed and red-faced for the rest of the evening while hanging on every word.
The lecture commenced with the usual mind-numbing anecdotes of Alexius' travels through time and The Universe. That evening he gave an eyewitness account of the building of The Great Pyramid at Giza, which I visited fourteen years later as Alexius had predicted. (His description of the engineering of that project was later corroborated by a documentary I watched decades later on The History Channel.) Then the subject of reincarnation came up, as it sometimes did.
Alexius took a long pause. He launched into an explanation of his existence as consciousness. In other words, he explained that he was voluntarily visiting us as consciousness from a state in another dimension of The Universe which we human beings could not perceive. He then detailed the combined experiences of his consciousness (his awareness of being) throughout time and space. For example, he explained that he had once resided in the form of a tree in a primeval forest for several hundred years without ever sensing a human being.
Alexius described his experience as part of other life forms of all kinds. Cold-blooded, warm-blooded, sub-cellular. He colorfully described other planets he had lived on or visited. He asserted that there are many other conscious life forms throughout The Universe. Some more advanced than humans, some not. He said we are frequently observed by more advanced conscious beings from other planets. So far, he chuckled, most have decided wisely not to visit Earth's surface after their remote observations.
My background in science increased my fascination and belief that I was indeed listening to information coming from beyond human scientific understanding. It was the stuff of smart current-day science fiction being spoken fluently almost fifty years ago.
The core of Alexius' message that evening was simple: The electromagnetic nature of human consciousness is a tiny elementary step to the greater consciousness which exists in The Universe. However, even our elemental consciousness is tied to the greater whole of The Universe's bank of evolved consciousness. We are part of The Universe's consciousness super-computer, to put it crudely.
+++++
Stephen, a physically unimpressive man eight years older than me, was a trance medium. He had been certified as authentically clairvoyant by various spiritualist groups, including the Edgar Cayce Association. Cayce (1877-1945) was a famous southern American psychic.
There is little general knowledge of trance mediums today. In the 1970's in coastal America, a resurgence of interest in psychic phenomena accompanied the cultural revolution. Jane Roberts, also a trance medium, had a 1970 bestseller, Seth Speaks.
Stephen's "sittings" were attended by invitation only. They were not in any way involved with money. My first love, James, had been involved with Stephen several years before we met. James and our close friend, David, were part of Stephen's inner circle. My attendance at the sittings was more or less expected, despite my deep skepticism about the whole business. I had recently completed my degree in Cellular Biology with a minor in Chemistry.
The evening consisted of Stephen going into trance while seated on an old kitchen chair at one end of the room. Someone stood by him protectively the whole time, because he sometimes jerked violently or slid off to one side. His earlier trance experiences had led to some minor injuries from falling on the floor.
+++++
Enter Alexius. Alexius was the self-identified spirit who channeled through Stephen most regularly. He had a robust bass voice with an internationally accented English, not unlike today's Brussels diplomats. This voice was as different from Stephen's rather bland and slightly lisping voice as one could imagine. It was a shocker to most first-timers, who often flinched when Alexius took over.
Alexius reminded me of some of my more outstanding Jesuit professors at Boston College. He lectured for about ninety minutes effortlessly. I have encountered only a handful of people who could pull together various strings of science, literature and philosophy into a coherent and fascinating talk. Alexius would have been a TED-Talks sensation.
But we were staring at chubby Stephen, a theater projectionist whose 6th-grade education was quite evident in casual conversation. My scientific arrogance was shaken by him and by Alexius. Alexius could bounce between several languages effortlessly. Stephen's English was working-class vernacular.
I kept going back without coaxing. My regular social group, to which Stephen did not belong, spent many hours discussing what Alexius revealed. It stimulated our reading of science, philosophy, psychology and history. My motivation was to catch the lie, to somehow discredit this disembodied voice's accuracy with dates or published concepts. I never succeeded.
+++++
One night listening to Alexius profoundly changed my perception of conscious existence.
Alexius was in a particularly playful mood that evening. He occasionally taunted a grumbling newcomer, who might have been dragged to a sitting by a friend as a lark. That deep voice would call out the person's name and gently read the person's mind with stunning effect.
Something along the lines of "Jane, if you had gone to Betsy's party instead of coming here, you might have had a better time but you wouldn't have learned anything." Jane, who may have come late and not spoken a word to anyone in the room, would sit slack-jawed and red-faced for the rest of the evening while hanging on every word.
The lecture commenced with the usual mind-numbing anecdotes of Alexius' travels through time and The Universe. That evening he gave an eyewitness account of the building of The Great Pyramid at Giza, which I visited fourteen years later as Alexius had predicted. (His description of the engineering of that project was later corroborated by a documentary I watched decades later on The History Channel.) Then the subject of reincarnation came up, as it sometimes did.
Alexius took a long pause. He launched into an explanation of his existence as consciousness. In other words, he explained that he was voluntarily visiting us as consciousness from a state in another dimension of The Universe which we human beings could not perceive. He then detailed the combined experiences of his consciousness (his awareness of being) throughout time and space. For example, he explained that he had once resided in the form of a tree in a primeval forest for several hundred years without ever sensing a human being.
Alexius described his experience as part of other life forms of all kinds. Cold-blooded, warm-blooded, sub-cellular. He colorfully described other planets he had lived on or visited. He asserted that there are many other conscious life forms throughout The Universe. Some more advanced than humans, some not. He said we are frequently observed by more advanced conscious beings from other planets. So far, he chuckled, most have decided wisely not to visit Earth's surface after their remote observations.
My background in science increased my fascination and belief that I was indeed listening to information coming from beyond human scientific understanding. It was the stuff of smart current-day science fiction being spoken fluently almost fifty years ago.
The core of Alexius' message that evening was simple: The electromagnetic nature of human consciousness is a tiny elementary step to the greater consciousness which exists in The Universe. However, even our elemental consciousness is tied to the greater whole of The Universe's bank of evolved consciousness. We are part of The Universe's consciousness super-computer, to put it crudely.
+++++
I was twenty years old then. I had just started living among sophisticated urban gay men. I wanted to be noticed and respected for my intelligence.
Alexius often ignored my outbursts during sittings. I would attempt to ask questions about various periods in history or specific events. One evening he had had enough. "Oh, Mr. Paul, you think you are so smart!" he began. My lover, James, gripped my hand tightly. He knew what was coming. Alexius continued without Stephen's blank expression changing. "The ancient consciousness you share in is polluted by evil and religion. You have a great deal of travel ahead of you to change that."
This disembodied voice then shared his own experience of me in ancient Egypt, where he said I was a vicious priest who used religion to persecute my enemies and slaves. "Your acts were too evil to share here. Your lust for power was insatiable. You lived long. You murdered many who got in your way. You have much to consider, much to think about ... in silence."
I was devastated for days after that sitting. Stephen called after James told him how upset I was. He explained that he was unaware of what had been said, and he was sorry. Stephen never listened to his own sittings, even though people always offered to tape them for him. What others saw as a gift, Stephen seemed to view as a burden which he felt compelled to bear for the greater good.
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The one central thing I took from Alexius was this: I am one life form of many on one tiny planet of many in a vast Universe. Beyond this conscious existence there is an existence of pure consciousness in The Universe which is imperceptible to me as the life form my consciousness now inhabits.
I am an Earthling, along with bees and elephants and snakes and alligators and trees and amoebas. I am not at the center of any other universe but my limited one. And the further away I can get from thinking any grander than that about my own life form as an Earthling the more likely I am to continue to learn about consciousness. The Universe is beyond my comprehension, but my consciousness is part of something in The Universe much greater than my current being.
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