• Meditation
  
  
• Dreams
  
  
• Hypnosis
  
  
• Sex
  
  
• Contemplation of art (music, painting, prose, poetry, drama)
  
  
• Contemplation of nature
  
  
• Psychedelic drugs
  
  
• Brain stimulation and bio-feedback

     Meditation has been used for centuries by spiritual practitioners to achieve non-ordinary states of consciousness. Dreaming, especially lucid dreaming in which the dreamer controls the dream activity, is a particularly powerful means of entering an altered state of consciousness. Hypnosis induced by an informed hypnotist or by oneself can enable us to enter into non-ordinary states of consciousness wherein we are able to gain enhanced control of our mental and physiological activities. Sex, within the proper context, enables us to achieve altered states.

Contemplation

     Contemplation of art or nature can lead to epiphanies. The meaning of "epiphany" has expanded beyond its Greek origins--the manifestation of a god--to include special and sudden raptures. In this chapter I'm using the term epiphany to refer to an episodic mystical experience. These raptures occur to men and women from virtually every nation and culture. Throughout the ages, humans have undergone harrowing experiences, braved drug intoxication and risked madness to experience intense altered states of consciousness.

     Until recently, only mystics have described these encounters with another order of reality. If they talk about their experiences at all, mystics use words like ecstasy, illumination, and exaltation--after confessing that words fail them. Protesting all the while that their sensations cannot be explained, mystics, psychedelic explorers, meditators, and contemplatives of all stripes describe experiences of inspiration, peace, serenity, and all-rightness with the universe; of moving into another order or dimension of consciousness; of fusing in oneness with God, the universe, others, everything, eternity; of transcending time, space, and ego; of being infused with knowledge, recognition, awareness, insight, certainty, illumination; of having a sense of endowment, of gaining more from the experience than they can intellectually understand.

Mind-Altering Substances

     With the proper set and setting, psychedelic drugs can produce an altered sense of reality. Such experiences of altered consciousness usually last from one hour to several days. Though alcohol is often used in a negative "setting" such as at a bar or a party, where the expectation is aggressive behavior, with the proper set and setting alcohol can promote a heightened state of awareness.


     One of the great mysteries of human life, as Michael Pollan explains, is that "there are plants in the garden that manufacture molecules with the power to change the subjective experience of reality we call consciousness." ⁶

"In ancient times, people all over the world grew or gathered sacred plants (and fungi) with the power to inspire visions or conduct them on journeys to other worlds; some of these people, who are sometimes called shamans, returned with the kind of spiritual knowledge that underwrites whole religions."

     At the beginning of most of the world's religions we find some kind of psychoactive plant or fungus: the peyote cactus, the Amanita muscaria and psilocybin mushrooms, the ergot fungus, the fermented grape, ayahuasca, and cannabis. Ancient people experimented with these psychotropic (mind-altering) substances to achieve a heightened state consciousness.

     Some of the most important Greek thinkers--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Euripides, and others--participated in the Mysteries of Eleusis. The Mysteries consisted of initiation rituals in which the participants ingested a powerful mind-altering potion--probably an alkaloid produced by a fungus (ergot) that closely resembles LSD in its chemical makeup and effects. The ecstatic ritual was so powerful that those who participated kept their vow never to reveal its nature.

     Under the influence of psychotropic substances, humankind has invented or evolved new ideas and paradigms--new ways of viewing the world. The human mind, we have now discovered, has a built-in receptivity to a particular plant: marijuana. The evolution of this discovery is fascinating.

     In the 1960s an Israeli neuroscientist named Raphael Mechoulam identified the chemical compound responsible for the mind-altering effects of marijuana. He named it delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, a module with a structure unlike any found in nature before or since.

     Then in 1988 Allyn Howlett, a researcher at the St. Louis University Medical School, discovered a specific receptor for THC in the human brain--a kind of nerve cell that THC binds to as if it were a molecular key fitting into a lock. When this binding takes place, the nerve cell is activated.

     The brain has a number of neuronal networks involving compounds such as dopamine, serotonin, and the endorphins, among others. Howlett discovered a new cannabinoid receptor network in the human brain which triggers mind-altering effects when THC is present.

     Thirty years after his discovery of THC, Raphael Mechoulam--working with collaborator, William Devane--found that the brain produces its own THC-like substance which he named anandimide, from the Sanskrit word for "inner bliss."

     We have to wonder why a plant such as marijuana evolved in exactly the way it has so that it produces an altered state of consciousness in humans. Among many other reasons is surely that this has resulted in humans having an intense and abiding interest in it, to make sure that it evolves in the direction of enhanced power to alter human mind states.

     The U.S. government's hysterical, criminal warfare against marijuana involves taking away civil liberties through property confiscation, incarceration resulting from suspicion only, and using military personnel in contravention of the posse commitatus act. Along with its struggle to keep marijuana an illegal drug--so the power elite can reap huge profits from its sale on the black market--there may also be a subliminal realization of the strange and powerful connection the human brain has to THC. As the number of people using marijuana continues to grow, the old, violence-prone ways of thinking may be challenged and replaced by more positive ways of viewing the world.

     The important factor in all of these approaches is whether or not the techniques or substances assist us in achieving a positive altered state of consciousness which provides an insight into deeper spiritual dimensions within us. The insights William James gained from his experiments with psychedelics provide an illustrative case.

"Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better one, is itself the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself."

William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience

      In regard to altered--not necessarily higher--states of consciousness through the use of psychotropic drugs, we gain insight from Patanjali's admonishment:

"Psychical powers may be gained by drugs, as poverty, shame, debasement may be gained by the self-same drugs. In their action, they are baneful, cutting the man off from consciousness of the restraining power of his divine nature, so that his forces break forth exuberant, like the laughter of drunkards, and he sees and hears things delusive. While sinking, he believes that he has risen; growing weaker, he thinks himself full of strength; beholding illusions, he takes them to be true. Such are the powers gained by drugs; they are wholly psychic, since the real powers, the spiritual, can never be so gained."

The Yoga Sutras

Brain Stimulation and Bio-feedback

     Neurologists and psychologists for decades agreed that there were specific facts about the brain and intelligence that were unchanging:

• intelligence is genetically determined
  • people with high intelligence are born that way
  • experience can't increase or decrease innate intelligence; experience can't change the structure of the brain
  
  
• growth in the total number of brain cells we have is completed by age two; neurons cannot reproduce themselves

     However, psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted studies ⁷ which were to turn the world of brain and intelligence research upside down. They discovered that:

• rats showed higher levels of AChE (the brain enzyme related to learning and memory) when placed in "enriched environments" (well-lit, multilevel cages filled with swings, slides, ladders, bridges, an assortment of frequently changing stimuli, and a variety of challenges)
  
  This meant that intelligence could be increased.
  
  
• the brains of rats placed in "enriched environments" increased in weight
  
  Stimulating experiences had caused the rats' brains to grow.

     Neuroanatomist Marian Diamond proved that rats raised in "enriched environments" showed:

• increased thickness of the cerebral cortex or "gray matter"
• a 15 percent increase in the actual size of individual neurons in the cortex
• increases in protein in the brain paralleling the increases in cortical weight, proving that the growth effect was on tissue and not just on fluid content of the brain
• an increase in the amount of dendritic branching (dendrites are the hairy branching fibers which project in large numbers from the body of each neuron and which receive inputs from other neurons and conduct them to the cell body, thus, an increase in branching means a greater amount of potential information available to each neuron)
• an increased number of dendritic spines per unit length of dendrite (spines are the small projections that cover the surface of dendrites)
• increases in the number of synapses and in the size of synaptic contact areas (synapses are the spots where different neurons are connected and by means of which communication among neurons takes place)
• an increase in the ratio between the weight of the cortex and the weight of the rest of the brain (thus the enriched environment does not simply stimulate and trigger generalized growth throughout the entire brain, but is specifically beneficial to that area of the brain devoted to thinking, learning, and memory)
• a 15 percent increase in the number of glial cells, the "glue" cells that are the most numerous cells in the brain and which hold together, support, and nourish the brain neurons, act as guides for neural growth, assist in learning, and seem to form some mysterious communicating network of their own

      Later studies ⁸ showed that significant structural changes in the brains of rats in "enriched environments" can take place almost instantaneously.



     The human brain is about five times as large as that of a chimpanze, yet contains only about 30 to 50 percent more neurons. The difference between humans and chimps comes from the development of cerebral cortex and the larger number of glial cells. ⁹ The cerebral cortex is a layer of nerve cells forming a convoluted outer shell over the brain, the "thinking cap" or "gray matter" atop the brain, in which much of the thinking or higher intellectual activity of the brain takes place.

      All these studies focused on one conclusion: increased brain stimulation in an enriched environment produces not only a growth in size and weight of the cortex but completely alters and enriches the quality of the entire cerebral cortex. ¹⁰

Stimulating the Brain and Mind

      Human performance in all areas can be deliberately improved through environmental, biochemical, and psychophysiological manipulation of the brain and mind. One way this takes place is by using machines designed by researchers to stimulate the human neocortex through exposure to experiences which are novel, changing, and challenging, and which provide the brain and mind an opportunity to exercise themselves by means of self-observation and self-transformation.

     The brain is an electrically powered and electricity- generating organ. Composed of an estimated one hundred billion neurons, each neuron produces and transmits electrical impulses which travel from the cell body down long fibers called axons until they reach a junction, or synapse, with another neuron. At the junction point the electrical impulses fire chemical messengers, called neurotransmitters, across the synaptic gap to receptors on the next cell. Having received the message, that neuron then generates its own electrical impulse and sends it to other neurons to which it is connected. Each neuron can be connected to thousands of other neurons, each simultaneously sending and receiving impulses to and from thousands of other neurons--so one neuron can electrically alter millions of other neurons.

     To get an idea of how complex this electrical system is, the National Academy of Sciences estimates that "a single human brain has a greater number of possible connections among its nerve cells than the total number of atomic particles in the universe."

     In our ordinary waking state, we primarily experience beta brain waves (which vibrate at a frequency ranging from about 13 to 30 hertz or cycles per second). During deep relaxation, we move to alpha waves (8-13 Hz) and we ordinarily only experience theta waves (4-7 Hz) in those brief moments between waking and sleeping. The ultra slow delta waves (0.5-4 Hz) occur during sleep.

     Scientists have found that when meditators reach a state of deep awareness and internal mental serenity the two hemispheres of their brain--which ordinarily generate brain waves of different frequencies and amplitudes--become synchronized, both hemispheres generating the same brain waves.

     In 1956, James Olds reported on research in which he had electrically stimulated the brains of rats. Implanting electrodes in rats' pleasure center of the brain, he attached a device that allowed the rats to activate the electrical impulse. He found that the rats would become so obsessed with self-stimulation that they would literally starve themselves to death.

     The human body has its own chemical self-stimulants, endorphins. Naturally produced in our bodies and brains, this group of molecules called endorphins reduces pain, alleviates stress, gives pleasure, enhances or suppresses memories, and determines what information we allow into our brains.

     Dr. Robert Heath, head of the neurology/psychiatry department at Tulane University School of Medicine was the first to implant electrodes in the human brain. He found that each brain stimulus--pleasure or pain--is capable of overwhelming or inhibiting other stimuli. Thus, pleasure can overcome depression or pain and vice versa.

Biofeedback

     Biofeedback is the use of mechanical means to amplify certain internal cues, make us aware of them, and make it possible to control mental and brain states. Extensive research has shown that what were thought to be "involuntary" psychophysiological states, such as blood pressure, body temperature, etc., are in fact controllable through the use of biofeedback.

"Biofeedback means getting immediate ongoing information about one's own biological processes or conditions, such as heart behavior, temperature, brain-wave activity, blood pressure, or muscle tension. Information is usually fed back by a meter, by a light or sound, or subjects simply watch the physiological record as it emerges from the monitoring equipment. Biofeedback training means using the information to change and control voluntarily the specific process or response being monitored." Elmer Green, Beyond Biofeedback

     In 1958, Joe Kamiya, a psychologist teaching at the University of Chicago, began experiments on brain wave frequencies. Kamiya attached a sensing electrode to the left side of the back of the subjects's head--the left occiput, where alpha brain waves are more evident. When a tone sounded, the subject was to guess whether he was in alpha. Kamiya was able to tell if the subject's guess was correct from the EEG (electroencephalograph) readings and answered "correct" or "wrong." The first subject Kamiya worked with, Richard Bach, reported correctly 65% on the second day of testing, and on the fourth day was able to report correctly 100% of the time. In a second experiment, the subject was able to enter the alpha state or not enter the state on a specific cue. It was thus established that people could control brain waves which had been thought to be involuntary states. This was the beginning of brain wave biofeedback. Psychology Today did an article on Kamiya in 1968 and the field exploded.

     The first meeting of biofeedback professionals occurred as part of the 1968 International Brain and Behavior Conference in Colorado. The following year the first specific meeting of biofeedback researchers was held in Santa Monica, California, with 142 persons attending. It was at this meeting that the group decided to name their group the Biofeedback Research Society, later changed to Biofeedback Society of America and then to the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.

     One of the early researchers, Elmer Green of the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, used biofeedback instruments to study Eastern yogis. He discovered that certain yogis could control their internal states merely through meditation and thought.

     Maurice "Barry" Sterman, a professor emeritus in the departments of Neurobiology and Psychiatry at UCLA, began an experiment in 1965 on brain wave states in cats. He accidentally discovered a specific EEG rhythm state during which the cat, waiting for a reward of food, became absolutely still, though extremely alert. Sterman named this frequency "sensorimotor rhythm" (SMR). He isolated the 12 to 15 hertz frequencies (SMR) in the EEG of the experimental cats and operantly conditioned them to create this state. Sterman then worked with a human subject, a young lady who suffered from epileptic seizures two or more times per month.

     Epilepsy is accompanied by an invasion of unwanted theta wave frequency in the brain. The subject was connected to the EEG equipment and was tasked with keeping a green light on (presence of SMR) and a red light off (presence of theta waves). The subject was able to create SMR for long periods and her seizures reduced in number and intensity. She remained seizure-free after the experiment for a number of months.

     Other researchers replicated Sterman's results with epilepsy and in 1982 Sterman received a research grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH). However, the disparity between biofeedback and ordinary medical procedures was becoming a major issue in the health care field and NIH pulled Sterman's funding. Ordinary medical procedures involve something being done to the "patient," the application of a drug, the use of surgery, etc. Biofeedback involves persons taking responsibility for their own conditions and actively participating in their therapy. Plus, biofeedback had arisen within psychology, not medicine.

"Occassionally I had heard half-joking remarks about researchers in biofeedback sounding like snake-oil salesmen. It didn't bother me until one of our own doctors cautioned against the concept of biofeedback as a panacea. Then I gave it serious thought. Why did biofeedback prove helpful in the treatment of so many and varied disorders? Suddenly I realized that it isn't biofeedback that is the 'panacea'--it is the power within the human being to self-regulate, self-heal, re-balance. Biofeedback does nothing to the person; it is a tool for releasing that potential." Alyce Green, Beyond Biofeedback

     The medical establishment began deriding biofeedback as an unproven, unscientific fad. The research of Sterman and others followed the most rigorous experimental requirements, but the medical mafia was intent on destroying this upstart phenomenon.

     In the 1970s and 1980s, biofeedback research languished, though a few brave persons pushed forward and today there is a resurgence in the field. Margaret Ayers, whose graduate training was in clinical neuropsychology, uses biofeedback therapy with different kinds of medical problems: drug addiction, alcoholism, head injury, stroke, cerebral palsy, and coma. Coma is the condition of a brain which is accompanied by dominant theta wave activity. The biofeedback equipment used with coma patients trains them to inhibit theta wave frequencies. A number of Ayer's coma clients have regained a great deal of their normal functioning. Siegfried and Sue Othmer, Ross Quackenbush, Eugene Peniston, Roger Werholtz, Lester Fehmi, Bob DeBoer, and others are using similar biofeedback procedures on clients with a diversity of medical or psychological problems.

Higher States
     Dr. Gerald Oster, a biophysicist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City discovered that pulsations called binaural beats occurred in the brain when tones of different frequency were presented separately to each ear.

     Robert Monroe claimed to have developed tapes which send signals separately to each ear--signals of 400 and 404 hertz, for example--resulting in the sounds blending inside the brain and setting up a binaural beat frequency of 4 Hz (theta waves), producing a state of brain hemisphere equilibrium and altered states. At his Institute of Applied Sciences in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia, institute employees claim to train people in achieving altered states using Hemi-Sync tapes. Some of the trainees feel they achieve out-of-body experiences, but this may very well be fantasy. At present, a week's training session costs $1695 at the Institute, plus, of course, transportation to the Institute and back.

     Some brain state researchers are critical of Monroe's methods. Dr. Lester Fehmi, director of the Princeton Behavioral Medicine and Biofeedback Clinic, says that Monroe's effect is real, "but it doesn't teach you how to get there." Dr. Elmer Green of the Menninger Foundation agrees. "It's only when the volition is involved, and you want to do something, either to escape or to accomplish something, that you really learn something." The hypnogogic image states which Green discovered in his research sometime involve extra-sensory perception (ESP) and precognition. It may be that these states are the same as those which Monroe clients experience, which Monroe trainers interpret as out-of-body states but Green interprets as hypnogogic imagery.

     The Monroe Institute demands (yes, demands, not merely recommends) that a person purchase its seven different training CDs in sequence. This allows them to demand that a person interested in their training material buy each of the CDs for a total of over $800--an exhorbitant amount. I personally know two persons who were hired as trainers in the Monroe techniques--and it's clear that neither of them received any lasting beneficial effect from their training and their work with clients. I would recommend that no serious seeker waste their money on Monroe Institute training sessions or products.

     There is a thriving biofeedback industry, with pricey training programs and pricey machines. Some of the machines run as high as $7,000 and one wonders why someone doesn't produce a reasonably-priced biofeedback machine for the average consumer who is also a serious student of altered states of consciousness.

States of Consciousness
Reality Dimension	State of Consciousness	Activities Leading to the State
Higher Dimension of Reality	Higher State of Consciousness	Spiritual contact
Non-Ordinary Dimension of Reality	Non-ordinary State of Consciousness	Meditation Dreaming Psychedelic Drugs Sex Hypnosis Contemplation of Art Contemplation of Nature
Consensus Reality	Ordinary State of Consciousness	Physical activity, mental activity

     The state of ordinary consciousness, wherein we assume the physical world is the only reality and have no interest in deeper aspects of reality, is the norm in the United States and the world. In the early days of our history, American citizens were interested in understanding what was happening in the world. As a nation of informed citizens, we were able to maintain a form of government which followed the ideal of democracy. That situation continued through the middle part of the twentieth century. Beginning even as early as the 1910s, the rulers of the United States began to change our educational systems so that citizens were no longer capable of or interested in understanding what was happening about them.

Ordinary State of Consciousness: American Citizen
Time Period	Major Paradigms	Major Activities	Political Structure
1750 to 1950	Attempting to understand the real nature of the physical world and the spiritual world	Informed reading and listening Appreciation of higher values (art and nature)	Some features of republican democracy within the general structure of plutocracy (rule by the wealthy)
1950 to 1990	No genuine attempt to understand the real nature of the physical world or the spiritual world	Non-education leading to incapacity to read or listen	Plutocracy: rule by the wealthy buying politicians
1990 to 2003	No interest in understanding the real nature of the physical world or the spiritual world Splatter "reality" Incoherence	Conditioning leading to incapacity to read, write, listen, understand, appreciate higher values Splattering of images and sounds Creating incoherent pastiches: e.g. TV commercials with incoherent image flashes Movies with superimposing dialogue, music, and images: e.g. Magnolia	Globalism: imperialistic plutocracy Two distinct economic classes: the rich and the poor Anti-nationalism: fostered by the highest rate of immigration in U.S. history, resulting in ethnic and religious "balkanization" (splintering of the population into divisive, competing units)

     The majority of U.S. citizens is currently devolving to lower states of consciousness. The best way to "hear" this devolution is to listen carefully to the atavistic tone of the laughter of American audiences as they watch movies and TV sitcoms involving characters who are murderers but are made to appear sympathetic, persons who delight in mindlessness, etc. Even so, it is possible for interested persons to learn to use Perennialist procedures which can lead to higher states of consciousness as described in this book.

Counterfeit States of "Religious Consciousness"
     As we saw in chapter two, there have always been persons who pretended to be participants in the Perennial Tradition who were decidedly not. The same is true in regard to Higher States of consciousness: there are people who experience counterfeit states and try to fool themselves and others that these are genuine.

      Occurring within all religions, the phenomenon called "conversion" is actually nothing more than mind-control, programming, or brainwashing-- frightening a repentant, submissive person or group into a state of terror and subsequent release. Counterfeit "conversion" experiences were, for example, widely experienced in nineteenth century America, especially in what were called "revivals." Even today, "revivals" of one form or another are used by all so-called Christian faiths in gaining obedient followers.

     "Conversion" is an artificial, deleterious state induced in a submissive person by a self-serving religious leader. As the basis of his 1914 book entitled The Psychology of Religion, Dr. Edwin D. Starbuck examined a significant number of persons who had undergone the "conversion" experience. He found that

"conversion does not occur with the same frequency at all periods in life. It belongs almost exclusively to the years between 10 and 25. The number of instances outside that range appear few and scattered. That is, conversion is a distinctively adolescent phenomenon."

     Starbuck also discovered that imagination and social pressure were the two dominant factors in "conversion," and he was able to determine what "a small part rational considerations play in conversion as compared with instinctive." Surrender to the religious authority figure (minister or priest) is necessary for "conversion" to occur and results in the subject's ego being "lifted up into new significance."

     The essence of "conversion" is the induction of a state of mere feeling which, when it has passed, leaves no spiritual improvement and often results in the subject feeling like a victim. Frequently the experience is so humiliating after the fact that the subject rejects not only the "conversion," but anything having to do with religion.

     Starbuck discovered that the forces working in revivals are identical to suggestion and hypnosis--what we today would call brainwashing. The negative aspects of "conversion" are primarily caused by the self-serving religious leaders.

"An unwise and unfortunate use of revivals is that they take certain social standards and attempt to force them indiscriminately on all persons alike. The notion is formed, and, doubtless, rightly, that the only means of escape for one whose evil habits are deeply ingrained is through repentance, a definite regeneration and conversion. There seems to be practical ignorance of the other type of conversion, i.e., sudden awakening following the sense of imperfection, and still greater disregard of the fact that it is not natural for certain temperaments to develop spasmodically, or even to exhibit marked stadia in their growth. Consequently, the normal means of regeneration for the wayward and for hardened sinners becomes a dogma, and is held up as the only means of escape for children, for natures spiritually immature, for the virtuous, and for those temperamentally unfit. A certain competition for supremacy among churches, and for success among individual workers, exaggerates the evil. Each new convert is sometimes vulgarly called by revivalists another star in the crowns which they will wear in the future life. If there were only power of discrimination, they would see that their success in dragging many so-called converts into the whirl of excitement, hypnotising them, and leaving them empty afterward, is more fitly likened to the triumph of a man of prowess who wears scalps of victims as trophies."

     The psychological manipulation of Christian believers has a long history. Leaving aside the peculiar mind manipulation practiced by Roman Catholicism, we can see that the basic tenets of Protestantism, from the time of Luther, were particularly well-suited to inducing terror in a submissive penitent.

"God," says Luther "is the God of the humble, the miserable, the oppressed, and the desperate, and of those that are brought even to nothing; and his nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfort the broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very desperate and damned. Now that pernicious and pestilent opinion of man's own righteousness, which will not be a sinner, unclean, miserable, and damnable, but righteous and holy, suffereth not God to come to his own natural and proper work. Therefore God must take this maul to hand (the law, I mean) to beat in pieces and bring to nothing this beast with her vain confidence, that she may so learn at length by her own misery that she is utterly forlorn and damned. But here lieth the difficulty, that when a man is terrified and cast down, he is so little able to raise himself up again and say, 'Now I am bruised and afflicted enough; now is the time of grace; now is the time to hear Christ.' The foolishness of man's heart is so great that then he rather seeketh to himself more laws to justify his conscience. 'If I live,' saith he, 'I will amend my life: I will do this, I will do that.' But here, except thou do the quite contrary, except thou send Moses away with his law, and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon Christ who died for thy sins, look for no salvation. Thy cowl, thy shaven crown, thy chastity, thy obedience, thy poverty, thy works, thy merits? what shall all these do? what shall the law of Moses avail? If I, wretched and damnable sinner, through works of merits could have loved the Son of God, and so come to him, what needed he to deliver himself for me? If I, being a wretch and damned sinner, could be redeemed by any other price, what needed the Son of God to be given? But because there was no other price, therefore he delivered neither sheep, ox, gold, nor silver, but even God himself, entirely and wholly 'for me,' even 'for me,' I say a miserable, wretched sinner. Now therefore, I take comfort and apply this to myself. And this manner of applying is the very true force and power of faith. For he died not to justify the righteous, but the un-righteous, and to make them the children of God.'"

Commentary on Galatians

     In the nineteenth century this Protestant dogma so suitable to psychological manipulation was refashioned by revivalists such as Jonathan Edwards. His tormented parishioners left their nail marks as they gripped the church pews in paroxysms of terror while listing to Edwards rail about "Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God."

     In the Perennial Tradition, regeneration is the genuine state of higher consciousness achieved by the sincere seeker, of which "conversion" is the counterfeit.

"Hermetism. . . was in its primary intention and office the philosophic and exact science of the regeneration of the human soul from its present sense-immersed state into the perfection and nobility of that divine condition in which it was originally created." M. A. Atwood, Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, 1850

     Starbuck, Coe, and other researchers into the phenomenon of "conversion" discovered that it was essentially an experience of compliant adolescents, men and women who had not yet developed the ability to think and act for themselves. In the Perennial Tradition, candidates for "regeneration" must be mature philosophers--lovers of wisdom--in the sense that Pythagoras and Plato would have understood the term.

"Candidates for the regenerate life, moreover, were such as were prepared, as how few of to-day are?, to renounce and transvalue all the world's values, to step entirely out of the world-stream by the current of which the majority are content to be borne along, to negate the affirmations of the senses and natural reason which for the multitude provide the criterion of the desirable and the true, and generally to adopt towards phenomenal existence an attitude incomprehensible to the average man to whom that existence is of paramount moment. They were animated by no motives of merely personal salvation or of spiritual superiority over their fellows; on the contrary they will be found to have been the humblest, as they were the wisest, of men. They had advanced far beyond that complacent stage where religion consists in fidelity to certain credal propositions and in 'being good' or as good as one can, and where sufficiency and robustness of faith are represented by the facile optimism of 'God's in His heaven; all's right with the world.' Their philosophic basis was rather that 'the world is out of joint' and all men with it, and in a condition sorely needing saviours and co-operators with God to reduce and adjust the dislocation."

M. A. Atwood, Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, 1850
     We must understand that "regeneration" is an actual fact within the Perennial Tradition, no mere allegory or metaphor. As we have been "generated" in the physical world, so we can--through the proper preparation and knowledge--experience "regeneration" into a Higher Consciousness. Even though we have become entranced by the physical world, there still abides in us, though in a state of atrophy, a residual germ of the divine principle which can be stimulated into activity to raise the personal consciousness to the point of unity and identity with the Universal Mind. [Regeneration is explored in more detail in chapter twenty.]

The Evolutionary Function of
Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness
      A number of modern Perennialist teachers have pointed out that the next phase of human evolution will involve higher states of consciousness involving superseding of the old structures of time, space, and false consciousness.

      Olga Kharitidi's book, Entering the Circle: Ancient Secrets of Siberian Wisdom Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist, contains a most interesting passage in which she encounters a spiritual being while using a special apparatus to achieve an altered state: