When I consider the prodigious output of
Vitvan/RMDB I am humbled. I struggle to squeeze out a few cogent
paragraphs. His lifetime output is daunting by comparison;
overwhelming in fact. There is so much information that flowed
through him that it is a treasure to data-mine. Thank goodness for
digital search and compilation programs. When he says he painted
with a “broad brush” he might have added that he used an industrial
size sprayer!
He also said that others who followed would
“fill in the details.” There’s an old saying: “the devil is in the
details.” Sometimes there is just too much information. Starting
with this article we are going to explore the main theme that forced
the creation of these sister sites: the beneficial use of
psychoactive plants and substances in the Great Work; the legitimate
and validated historical use of the Medicine Path (known as
vajrayana, no matter what any Buddhist obscuritanist might say to
the contrary, which in itself built upon older shamanic traditions
as continued by Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava) buttressed by modern
studies into the value of psychedelics, empathogens, etc., which
increasingly reveal the harmonic connection between states of
conscious awareness and nootropic doping of the neural net.
“Forced the creation?” Yes, if the Old Guard
at SNO had been more open to new information, had been more
inclusive or curious, had in fact, acted like an actual school of
learning, my sharing of what I have come to discover on my path
might have remained a footnote to one of their seminars. Unlike the
teacher they claim to revere, RMDB whose thirst for knowledge was
unquenchable, these timid souls preferred adding bird watching and
water colors to their seminars instead of topics such as we will now
present.
If you’re reading this, and you know who you
are, let me quote from Saint Vitvan:
Here-Now
September 1952
SEMANTICS IN PRACTICE
For the
ACHIEVEMENT OF EMOTIONAL MATURITY
2 –
Treat your own opinions as relative to the
synthesis of your own unconscious assumptions.
8-
Always be interested, investigative, etc., regarding new
ideas
(emphasis added)
20 –
Do not try to be consistent, particularly in respect to your own
opinions, for the changing context of any given situation alters
the factors upon which opinion is based.
I think we get the idea. All presentations of
information are subject to being amended, including what follows. I
intend to be provocative, to ask the reader to think and consider
ideas perhaps new to him. No one is saying that there is only one
path; feel free to keep your own, but I cannot help but lose respect
for anyone on a so-called spiritual path who does not defend that
the basis for spiritual advancement, for personal liberty and
increasing self-awareness is the fundamental right to do as you will
with your own body and mind, as long as you do no harm to others.
This right, still not achieved and protected under rule of law,
remains the goal so long and hard fought for over the millennia by
freedom seekers and fighters (visit
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org). There are those who would fly
around the world to help suffering women in foreign lands, yet fail
to protect the legal and civil rights of one in their own back yard.
O ye pseudo-liberals, chose ye this day whom ye shall serve.
The Thalamic Valve
“Thalamic development is the key to the new and higher orientation in
the fourth dimensional state or in the energy-
world.” Vitvan, Lesson 13
Conscious Abstracting
In
moving from a mystical approach (Sacred Science) to a science
oriented expression of the wisdom teachings (SNO) Vitvan endorsed
the concept that our perception of Reality is a construct, with its
foundation based in our biology, our neurological filtering of the
data from our senses (plus our psychic evaluations). Just on this
basis alone it is astounding that so-called students in this school
could be so obstructive to further learning about how states of
consciousness are modulated by chemical neurotransmitters (if I call
them “units of light in structure-function-informational order” will
you be less afraid?).
A popular movie a few years back, What the
Bleep **, had a section by Candice Pert in which she
demonstrated that our emotions are created by chemical peptides from
the gut and brain. If such “psychic” states have a chemical linkage,
then why is it so taboo to discuss that our inner meditative states
may also be directed, affected, and tuned resonantly by “chemicals?”
However, RMDB, a channel and vehicle for the
Blessed Ones was conditioned by the events and ideas of his own
milieu, and showed some prejudice himself regarding psychoactive
“units of light” which we will comment on later. His studies of the
Eleusinian Mysteries (link) which he said he spent years looking
into, is completely devoid of commentary upon the Kykeon, the
psychoactive drink at the heart of the Mystery. With the great
respect I have for him as one ever open to learning, I suspect
strongly he would have modified his position.
And while we are
on the subject of RMDB and his milieu, let me put out a
request to those who would bowdlerize RMDB by editing his dialog
according to their PC standards. Please, respect source materials
for future generations who will not share your personal concerns
about looking good in the eyes of your Aristotelean neighbors. If we
can allow the literature of Mark Twain to say “nigger Jim,” then
leave RMDB’s writings and taped lesson talks alone too. Be a bigger
person. There’s no need for you to edit Reality to your standard.
Now back to the thalamus.
In Lesson 13 of a lesson course called either
Semantics or Conscious Abstracting (first published on the SNO
website) Vitvan discusses the “old” brain, or thalamus, and its
relation to the “new” brain or cortex. I paraphrase and combine what
he said in various places (for the complete text see
http://www.sno.org/sno/semantics_13.htm)
In the pre-rational period, our conscious
awareness was open to the psychic world and the inner world helpers
(“angels”) [UPN lesson 13]. Since that earlier time, approx. 350-400
BC [see Yuga Cycles (link)], occidental culture has shifted to the
evolution of the cortical and mental abilities. This effected a
“line of demarcation” in our psyches wherein we have been cut off
from open access to conscious awareness of the content of our
psyches, and guidance from the “angels” or Blessed Ones. We shifted
from thalamic processing to cortical.
The information our brain receives from the
senses is equivalent to Level 1 or 1st Order on the
Structural Differential (http://www.sno.org/sno/semantics%203.html).
The is the “full data set” of the information (wave-frequencies) our
nervous systems can tune into from the environment. This is as close
as we (the spiritual being or viewer) can get to perceiving Reality
via the senses in the biological organism, although we also
have finer senses.
The ability to perceive from the 1st
Order level is soon lost as we develop language and begin naming and
categorizing. Once the mentalizing process of abstracting starts
developing, it is difficult to turn it off in order to perceive the
world again as a baby does, fresh and as if born anew. This level of
perception was disparagingly called “copying animals” by some of the
wonks in GS, but as we will relate later in the Adventures of BK
(link) to re-experience “copying animals” is like returning to the
Garden of Eden.
The phrase “stopping the mind” refers to the
ability to stop the abstracting mentalizing process and to
re-experience the root level of perception at the 1st
Order.
Once access to this root level is re-opened we
begin what is called the First Crossing, wherein our actions are
determined by responding to what is happening in the NOW, not
reacting to abstractions in our private world of events that have
happened in the past.
Some people are born with the ability to “stop
the mind” and are referred to as shamans. Others can learn to do
this through practice. Cultures all over the world have developed a
variety of techniques to do this, which we can explore in the
section “Your Shamanic Nervous System” (link).
In the pre-cortical phase we were highly
psychic and intuitive, but less self-aware, and more so subject to
uncontrollable emotional forces in the group psyche. To control this
Vitvan speculates that the Power-to-be-conscious (P2BC) developed
the cortical abilities to act as directing “rudder.” But this
resulted in loss of our intuitive abilities and connectivity to the
energy world and ability to harmonize with its flows (“right
action,” “feel-knowing”).
Now that we have developed the cortex (even
over-developed it) we need to re-integrate its conscious function as
organizer-abstractor with the broad unfiltered view through the
thalamus.
Pre-Aristotelian = thalamic
Aristotelian = cortical
Post-Aristotelian = cortex+
thalamus
But the cortex can only process whatever data
the older “lower” brain centers such as the thalamus pass on to it.
Just as the CEO of a corporation or the President can only act on
the information that his advisors bring to him. If they have
ulterior motives they can control him. If the thalamus and its bank
of information has been injured by shock or traumatic mis-correlations
(false identities) on the pre-verbal “engramatic” level, then
distorted data will be sent onto the cortex for processing.
“All incoming nerve currents must pass through the thalamus in order to
reach the cortex. As yet the cortex has no direct connection with
the ‘external world’ or the surround. it must operate by the
afferent and efferent nerve channels through the thalamus. The
cortex is, as it were, a prisoner of the thalamus by reason of the
fact that it has no ingress or egress to the external world except
through the thalamus.”
Now follows Vitvan's description of
what we call the Thalamic Valve,
“...the nerve
energy flowing into the thalamus ... gradually decreases as it
proceeds in the well-balanced and cortically developed individual.”
Frankly Vitvan’s
explanation could be better stated. He says the much of the nerve
current (i.e., data or information from the senses) is not passed up
to the cortex in sub-mental emotional types (his so-called “Delphic”
type), but my experience shows that it is especially the mental type
who filters out much of the available data through abstracting and
repression. A
release of the “thalamic reducing valve” opens perception to a
richer, more detailed and more beautiful world
(see video link). Unprocessed or repressed data-as-energy builds
up into subconscious complexes that distort clear thinking and
direct perception.
He goes on:
“In previous
lessons we have mentioned that the consciousness of the
pre-Aristotelian orientation will be recovered and lifted to the
higher level of consciousness in the non-Aristotelian orientation.
Here in thalamic functioning we have the neurological key to that
revival in the Aristotelian orientation - that is, in identity -
consciousness was drawn from the thalamus to the cortex and
conscious unity and participation were lost, but now with the return
of consciousness to the thalamus and with the added objective
self-conscious functioning of the cortex as adjunct thereto,
consciousness of unity and participation will be recovered and. at
the same time lifted to the level of intuitional conscious
awareness.
Thalamic
development is the key to the new and higher orientation in the
fourth dimensional state or in the energy- world.”
----- Lesson 13 Conscious Abstracting
This brings us to the gist of our position.
HOW are we to re-integrate cortex and thalamus? RMDB proposes
various “thalamic” exercises such as watching the breath, or walking
meditations. Frankly these are tedious, slow to give result, and
rather shallow in effect. In my opinion as an observer of students
of many years within this School, as well as compared to methods
used in other practices (see details of other schools studied
[link]], Vitvan offered a set of exercises that were either too
difficult to succeed with, or relatively gutless.
However, if you are not part of the 2% he was
searching for (link), then such homeopathic practice is for you. As
related in the section on
comments of Fred
Hess strong medicine is generally needed for those with
highly developed mentalizing skills, such as Reichean bodywork. And
for the dedicated student and initiate, a daily practice combined
with the secret ancient use of psychedelics can be the E-ticket
ride. We make no bones about this, and will provide a basic
introduction for the student who is ready and feels the Urge.
The “medicine path” is not only for the ones with highly developed
cortical functioning, but has been used traditionally and especially
in the pre-Aristotelean (so-called “primitive” societies) Golden Age
periods, when no false-to-facts perception between the inner worlds
and “outer” environment (in which we have ever been embedded) cut us
off in separation from our place as living aspects of Light Mother
Gaea. The medicines are in fact the “mother’s milk” given us for our
nourishment in Light.
It is our opinion that this revival and
“rediscovery” of the ancient honored method is in fact part of the
New Cycle teaching offered by the incoming Hierarchical
administration, and was not known to RMDB and the teachings given to
him for his day and culture by the outgoing Hierarchical
administration of the Old Cycle.
Read Lesson 13 to see his hopes that by more
mentalization about how you mentalize, it will somehow effect a
breakthrough. He says in Lesson 17 “Perhaps if we talk around and
about it enough our intuitional awareness will “wake up” and see the
truth of reality.” I’m sorry but I have to quote him back to
himself:
“Therefore, it has been said: Who
by taking thought can add. one cubit unto his stature" in the Real
World? Not by cortical activity or cortical understanding can
consciousness be developed or expanded to a higher degree of
Self-awareness, or into orientation to the energy-world.”
Nope. We repeat again his summary and secret to
the next step:
Thalamic development is the key to
the new and higher orientation in the fourth dimensional state or in
the energy- world.”
BUT HOW?
Take a look at the video clip below, from a
90’s TV series on the brain. Those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear....
And do not forget that by opening broader the
exchange between the thalamus and the cortex that the Purificatory
Process will be accelerated. This will link us to the undeveloped
Step 2 of the Raison d’Etre of SNO, and an outline of the various
techniques the Field enrolled me in over the decades away from SNO,
that I might bring it back to share.
The 2nd video is a beautiful rendering of how even
ordinary Joe Six-Pack can access the inner worlds
of beauty and connectedness in the Oneness of our own current
Selves. It's already within you NOW.
And Bill's little riff on what a positive acid experience is like at
the end, well, I know many longtime
students in a so-called sacred science who have never come close to
such a realization,
but you can count on them to turn their snoots up at being offered
such Grace.
"I guess we haven't suffered enough," one of them was heard to say
recently,
in explanation for why the veil in their psyche was still as
impenetrable as ever.
