VISUALIZATION
Creating Your Own Universe
An Overview of Human Potential
by
Stanislaw Kapuscinski
SMASHWORDS EDITION 2010
ISBN 978-0-9813015-0-1
Copyright © 1999, 2004, 2010
Stanislaw Kapuscinski
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Whatever is received is received
according to the nature
of the recipient
Thomas Aquinas
CONTENT
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Chapter 1. Visions
Chapter 2. Myth and Reality
Chapter 3. Politics and Society
Chapter 4. Religions and Science Fiction
Chapter 5. Groups and Traditions
Chapter 6. Medical View
Chapter 7. Scientific Perspective
Chapter 8. Visualizing Infinity
Chapter 9. Apports and other Phenomena
THE PROCESS
Chapter 10. Universal Laws and Chaos
Chapter 11. The Problem with Karma and Reincarnation
Chapter 12. Aging and Longevity
Chapter 13. Art and Creativity
Chapter 14. Health and Healing
Chapter 15. Visualization in Sports
CREATING YOUR OWN UNIVERSE
Chapter 16. Re-defining Self
Chapter 17. Reviewing the Elements
Chapter 18. Duality and Oneness
Chapter 19. Relaxation
Chapter 20. Creative Process
Chapter 21. Programming
Chapter 22. Negative Programming
Chapter 23. Reverse Effects of Visualization
Chapter 24. The Universal and the Particular
Chapter 25. Creating Your Own Universe
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“….a man should leave the world a better place
than when he came into it.
For no other reason was he born,
for no other reason does he die.”
Sai Baba
PREFACE
“I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the string that ties them.”
As the above words of seigneur de Montaigne imply, there is nothing here that you don’t already know. But if you are anything like I am, indeed—like most of my friends, then you seldom find time, or take the trouble, to reach within deep enough to become aware of your knowledge. I hope this book will help you to know yourself better.
What follows is not intended as a scientific dissertation. Nor is it an attempt to impose my views, nor influence your thinking in any way. What I am offering is a compendium of my observations which may motivate you to begin observing the world through your own eyes a little more diligently. You might call it my vision of the world I live in. To protect myself from an egocentric viewpoint, I took great pains to share with you also the visions of many men throughout history, many men and women who are making history today, and some lesser visionaries whose views I find particularly attractive. Your vision, the program that controls your views and therefore your life, will forever remain your own. I wish to stress, however, that you must have a vision or else remain no more than an effect of your subconscious.
I am not concerned with the visible universe.
Once the universe becomes detectable to our senses, it is too late to change it. The book will show that we have our being within a continuous process of creating the reality we live in.
I am fascinated by the process itself. There are excellent popular books on the subject of how to procure results. Here, we shall concentrate on the cause. Although we shall not ignore the results, neither physics nor astrophysics need concern us here other than to broaden our perspective. What we shall discus principally is the “Visual Universe”. The universe which we do or can visualize and, in the process of doing so, we shall give it reality. The tangible universe thus becomes the result of our quest, not the quest itself. What we are after is the process. The Creative Process. The methods which empower us to be as gods.
From the hoary days of history in which we, humans, became aware of ourselves, of our distinctiveness, we have been engaged in doing just that. Every single one of us has been creating his or her subjective realities. We made our beds and we must sleep in them. We created our heavens and our hells. We did it all unwittingly. We had no idea that it had been up to us what world we chose to live in. We became adept at blaming the stars, the governments, schools and educational systems, and finally our parents. It may be that all these elements had some peripheral influence on the universes we live in. But the degree to which we permit external conditions, or the environment, to influence us has always been up to us. Up to our free will. Up to our ability to lead a Conscious Life.
It is time to stop being a result. It is time to stop bobbing up and down like a cork cast by some whimsical deity on the vast oceans of life. We are the architects of our destiny. We are gods.
It is time to learn to be the Cause.
In the course of this book, I shall prove that neither you nor I, nor the universe around us really exists. At least, not as we perceive it with our senses. We shall have to learn to probe it with our mind, to visualize it with our inner vision. I shall also show how an individual vision can and did change the course of history.
Perhaps now, it is our turn.
An apology is due to my readers who decide to join me on my meandering through various subjective universes. There will be a lot of repetition when dealing with certain aspects of the creative process. The reason is that for thousands of years we have been conditioned to think in a particular way, which I consider false. I shall show that I am not alone in my opinion. Unfortunately, there are very few who will agree with me. Those who do, however, shall in time become masters of their domain.
To prove my point, I shall draw upon myths, history, politics and science, as well as philosophies and the more esoteric interpretations of some ancient and modern religions. I shall attempt to show that the truth had always been available to us under different guises. I shall also show why it is only now that we are in position to dive headlong into the ocean of infinite possibilities—an ocean which heretofore had been accessible only to the few.
***
Finally, I must stress that this is not yet another self-help book to add to the countless others adorning the bookshelves of your local book-merchant. Rather, it is a book that will enable you to write your own set of rules that will, in turn, govern your own personal universe. It is a book that, I hope, will help you to stand on your own feet with such confidence that nothing will ever upset your balance again.
And you will do so whatever others do.
***
Only those who have faith in themselves
shall have faith in God
Sai Baba
INTRODUCTION
My dharma, my purpose, became evident early in my life. However, just as most of us, I remained blind to it. Yet even as all roads lead to Rome, all events in our lives lead to the fulfillment of our dharma. Dharma is our raison d’être. If we die accidentally before realizing it, we merely continue where we left off in our future incarnation.
My purpose is to help people fulfill their own dharma.
In order to fulfill our personal purpose we must first discover what it is and then have the means to carry it out. No one can help us with the first part. To discover one’s true calling is often a long process of growing up, of keeping one’s eyes and ears wide open, and most of all, in keeping an open mind. Each time we shackle our imagination with any restrictions, each time we impose limitations on our innate potential, we delay the discovery of our true purpose.
And discover our purpose we must. As the great Indian mystic Sai Baba once said: “When a cat or a dog dies he leaves the world the same as before he lived in it, but a man should leave the world a better place than when he came into it. For no other reason was he born, for no other reason does he die.”(1)
If we fail to discover our specific purpose in life, we shall continue to reincarnate ourselves in an endless cycle of Awa Gawan, treading water on the eternal mill, hardly advancing, hardly being alive. Two thousand years ago Jesus called such people dead. “Let the dead bury their dead”, he admonished when a man wanted to serve tradition rather than fulfill his true calling.(2) Perhaps, as you read this book, you will gradually come to realize that contrary to the mores, customs and traditions of this world, contrary to the tens-of-thousands of laws, rules and regulations designed to limit our freedom—we can be free. We can be free here, on earth; we do not have to die to go to heaven, we can become masters of our kingdoms, our universes—right now.
There are many ancient truths that reverberate throughout the ages guiding mankind towards fulfillment. There are also truisms that gather the quintessence of those truths as they pertain to an individual. The ancient king David had enunciated one such axiom in one of his psalms.(3) This great visionary left us a legacy, which proclaimed that we must shrug off all limitations. Few of his contemporaries understood David’s words. Today, some 3000 years later, we can no longer plead ignorance. We are no longer ignorant plebes unable to read or write. The ancient knowledge is available to all that yearn for it.
To all who take the trouble to look.
Those who do, soon discover that a great part of that which enables us to claim our heritage is lying dormant in the realm of our imagination. Imagination fosters a vision that constitutes the first step.
How many of us realize that practically every effort, every creative act we perform is preceded by an act of visualization? We ‘imagine’ what it would be like if such-and-such a thing, condition, or dream were to come true. We dream, we hope, we envision, fancy, idealize. All these mental acrobatics form an integral part of the great realm of ‘virtual’ universes. Universes which, nevertheless, are real to our subjective consciousness, but not yet manifested in the physical realm. They are part of the endless ocean of infinite possibilities. They are part of a realm whence nothing is impossible, nothing too difficult, where the joy of being, of success, takes precedence over all other considerations. This realm is our true kingdom. It is also the kingdom of God, or perhaps, the kingdom of the gods. It is the kingdom of heaven.
A great deal has been written on how to enter this kingdom. We have inherited a magnificent treasury of information on this subject, a veritable road map to its most intricate byways. The incredible storehouse of knowledge offered in the scientific document called the Bible has been perverted by many into a means of controlling people. We have been told that we can only ‘go’ to heaven after we die. What insidious palter! The Bible teaches us how to live, not how to die. Heaven is a state of consciousness that does not tolerate limitations. It is the realm of all people that identify with such awareness. Until we learn to study the ancient scriptures with this attitude we shall fall prey to many who will exploit those very same inspired writings to subject us to their will, to their need for power, to their desire to wield the carrot and the stick of heaven and hell over our gullible heads.
There are other ancient documents outlining different methods of arriving at the desirable state of awareness. Regrettably the various scriptures of whatever religion are so shrouded in the mists of yore, so protected by stalwart ramparts of symbolism, that few manage to uncover their teaching. Once, such safeguards had been necessary to protect the many from the abuse by the few. Yet for over two millennia those safeguards only partially succeeded in protecting us from the manipulations of fierce religious oligarchies.
Now, as we enter the Age of Aquarius, the heretofore secret knowledge is laid open to us all. Not because we are so much smarter or manifest a higher moral or ethical level, but because finally the critical mass of people capable of achieving the understanding has been attained. Finally we can all reach out for the watering can and begin tending our own gardens. With the introduction of electricity to the homes of masses, we have entered the new age. This magnificent period shall take us, over the next 2000 years, into unprecedented heights of individualism. We shall no longer impersonate sheep led by our not-so-noble leaders, no longer rely on the security offered by our primitive herd instinct manifested in the allegiance to groups such as nations, political systems or even various religions. We shall rise above all such traditional needs, spread our wings and soar into celestial heights of the kingdom itself.
We shall give credence and substance to the ancient King David’s words: “Ye are gods”.
***
I often wondered why various events led me to become an architect; to specialize in design above all other professional disciplines, when my primary interest has always been the “inner realm.” This primary interest took many forms, but more than anything I have always been preoccupied with uncovering the scope of human potential. It is now apparent that the art of designing was the necessary training ground for the work that I started on completion of my forty-year internship as an architect.
In my professional capacity I had no choice but to visualize every project in its entirety, before putting a single line on paper. No architect can begin the fascinating process of design without envisaging the needs of his client, visualizing the specific characteristics of the site: slopes, aspect, prospect, context water level, bearing capacity of subsoil, the time, space, construction, and costs parameters. To this already complex vision an architect must add the analyses of general climatic conditions: annual snow/rainfall, the temperature ranges and variations, exposure to prevailing winds/sun. Then, before we begin to visualize the internal and external spaces, we must picture the parameters of the program. Since few people are trained in the art of visualization, it behooves an architect to guide his client through the maze of function/uses, spaces, horizontal and vertical circulation, access and egress, masses of controlling bylaws, conditions arising from all the previous items. When finally a preliminary plan, a horizontal projection of the vertical components can be put on paper, an architect must visualize the requirements of the eventual structural integrity, of mechanical and electrical requirements and constraints, before the specialists are called to the conference table.(4) I have often been told by my staff of many ‘specialists’, that is architects, engineers and draftsmen combining into a team to work on buildings of my design, that I have allowed for all the succeeding functions before they were even converted into detail plans. In other words, I became competent in the art of visualization. It took me another ten years to realize that what is true of the architectural profession is true of all aspects of life.
Of course, the process of visualization is not limited to architects. Before my own ideas could germinate, my prospective client must have gone, at least partially, though the creative process himself. He or she must have had an idea, “slept on it”, let it grow into a coherent outline, develop this vision into a plan of action, part of which was selecting an architect. And so it is with all visions. They are precursors of all thoughts, actions, and manifestations in the physical reality.
Nothing in this world happens by chance.
But I was lucky. We all are. A review of my past led me to believe that all events in my life had been arranged by some as yet unknown powers to guide me inexorably towards the fulfillment of my destiny. A broader examination of my environment confirmed that what had been true of myself is also true of other people, perhaps all of us, and even families, nations and races. Einstein’s expression: “God does not play dice with the universe,” comes to mind. Only whereas Einstein was referring to the workings of the universe, I noticed that the same maxim applied to the human condition.
In my early life fate played in yet another way into the unfolding arms of my dharma. I was a “war child”. The Germans invaded Poland when I was merely six years old. For the next five years I was forced to visualize countless toys which today’s child picks up in Toy-o-Rama or other emporium bent on destroying a child’s innate imagination. In my childhood we all learned imagining that stale bread is tasty, that inner walls covered with hoarfrost made the room acceptably warm, that the Gestapo barging into our meager quarters in the middle of the night did not come merely to shoot us, that eight people living and sleeping in one room gave us plenty of space, that carrying water from the nearest public hand-pump a kilometer away would not freeze solid on the way home, that tomorrow would, ultimately, be a better day.
And it was.
The art of visualization helped us all to survive, remain reasonably healthy in mind and body, without today’s inevitable daily doses of vitamin supplements, without meat, butter, and fruit, without most of the victuals. We have all learned that it is indeed true that it is not what we put into our mouth that sustains us, but that which comes out of it.(5) Words of hope, of good cheer, of love, compassion, understanding and tolerance helped to visualize a better world. Those words of hope came “out of our mouths.” Our dreams had been so intense that finally, after five years, they came true. As all dreams do.
If you know how to dream.
***
Surely, it is better to visualize one’s needs, one’s actions, before they occur and be ready for their consequences. The boy-scouts motto “be prepared” is the motto underlying the process of visualization. Though it may sound like an oxymoron, eventually we become fully prepared for the unknown. But more than this. Often without conscious participation, a process of visualization at some level of our consciousness precedes most if not all of our actions. We may have daydreamed, we may have fantasized with half-closed eyes reclining in our favorite armchair, or we might have dreamt in the fullness of the night. One way or another, every action, every deed is the result of previous thoughts and thoughts are the structural elements of the process of visualization. We can learn to build houses, complex structures, we can also learn to build our bodies, our health, and our mental acuity. We can build favorable conditions for our lives, our marriages, our artistic endeavors, our wealth. We can build anything we want—if we have enough faith that we can. The techniques will be outlined below.
The rest will be up to every one of us.
There is a catch.
NO ONE CAN DO IT FOR US.
We cannot hire an expert to make us healthy. We cannot hire a master to make us a concert violinist or a champion golfer. They can offer help, assistance. But the work, the visualization, must be done by us. We must learn how to play our parts ourselves. It is our universe we are building. We alone can be sovereign in our own kingdom. We cannot delegate the rod of power. It is always tailor-made for the individual. To walk in someone else’s footsteps is to play second fiddle, to be second best. Such a position is unbecoming to gods.
But having said that, we mustn’t take objective life too seriously. In the physical universe, all we do is play our part, as well as we possibly can, enjoying it to the utmost—but never forgetting that our true kingdom is not of this world.
FOOTNOTES
(1). BABA by Arnold Schulman, [Simon & Shuster, Canada]. Born Sathia, a Brahmin, in Puttaparthi, on November 23, 1926.
(2). Matthew 8:22
(3). Psalm 82:6
(4). I am forced to admit, with considerable regret, that I had colleagues within my profession who did not follow the route I've outlined above. Many design steps are often bypassed for the sake of expediency, at the expense of quality and professional ethics.
(5). compare Matthew 15:11
All the world is a stage and the men players.
The life is a tale told by an idiot
Full of sound and fury, saying nothing.
Shakespeare
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Chapter 1
All visions are subjective.
Subjective religious visions are called Revelations. Subjective non-religious visions (unless held by famous people) are often referred to as Hallucinations. Hallucinations can be subdivided into artistic, political, social, idealistic, and a whole array of inspired non-religious fantasies, delusions or insights. Revelations fall essentially into two categories, the pragmatic (aimed at organizing people) and the prophetic (aimed at scaring people). Both deal with influencing others directly. There has never been a prophecy of a carrot that was not accompanied by a stick. The prophetic visions are usually symbolic in nature, i.e. misunderstood by all that attempt to give them a fundamentalist interpretation. There is a very basic characteristic of all visions. They can never really be shared. People who claim allegiance to a vision of another human being become followers, never those who implement the original vision.
They follow what they think the vision was, never what it was de facto.
The same is true of all visions.
No more can the vision of a mystic be fully shared with another person than an artist’s vision with his audience. The artist and the mystic attempt to convey their singular, subjective insights, which we then receive and examine at our own subjective level. Each one of us receives or experiences differently the very same Beethoven’s symphony, the same Mendelssohn’s violin concerto or Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. In spite of copious examples, we each have a different interpretation of Jesus’ Kingdom of Heaven. No two people agree precisely on Buddha’s vision of the middle path, fewer still will fall in step on Lao Tzu’s Tao. Not even ‘interpretations’ are alike. We can only wonder at what the artist or mystic really had in mind. The original visions remain subjective and inimitable. Other peoples’ visions can be aspired to, even exceeded, but never equaled.
I recall an elderly lady asking Picasso who was attending his first exhibition in London, England, what a particular painting of his represented. The inscrutable master took it off the wall, turned it sideways, upside-down, pondered it for a while and replaced it on the wall. “To you, Madame, this painting can represent anything you want,” he said, “to me, it represents £10,000.”
To repeat, all visions are by definition subjective.
The prophet and the crank both respond to energies beyond their intellectual or mental understanding. To protect his sanity, the prophet escapes into the realm of the ‘divine’. He (or she) blames or praises God for his (or her) visitation. Today, unless the non-religious visionary can channel his vision into an artistic or pragmatic application, they are compelled, and often do, escape to the psychiatrist. Few do justice to their experience. All deal with the unknown. The degree of their sanity is directly proportional to their ability to recognize the process of visualization.
There is a byproduct of the visionary process, which must be recognized but never confused with the vision itself. When an astrophysicist translates his or her vision into a theorem, backs it up with adequate equations for the vision to be ‘testable’, it is then called a prediction. Yet what we test is not the vision, but an interpretation of a vision; rather like a painting is a two-dimensional representation of artist’s holistic or gestält vision, or a religion an interpretation of an avatar’s vision.(1) Predictions ensue from visions, but they are initiated at the consciousness level.
Visions have their origin in the Ocean of Infinite Possibilities.
In the absolute unknown.
To understand Picasso’s painting we must enter his studio, insinuate ourselves into his thoughts, with luck into his heart, soul, examine his stream of consciousness and then perhaps, just perhaps... we might share in his vision. The same is true about the products of all artists, composers, visionaries. Asking an artist what does his or her painting, or sculpture, or a musical composition represent is equivalent to an open admission of total inability to understand the answer. Unless the visionary is a writer or a gifted orator, that which he or she conveys is not meant to be conveyed with words. It must be felt, appreciated or even understood at a higher level.
The greatest offenders in this field are the, so-called, experts or critics. They are like Pharisees who do not enter the Kingdom yet bar others from doing so themselves. They build walls between the visionary and the recipient. They insinuate their own version of the interpretation in lieu of the original experience. Whether a vision is religious or not, it must be experienced, never interpreted—unless the interpretation is made by the experiencer himself for himself. Then, and only then, the interpretation remains subjective and thus true at the personal level. At best, a subjective interpretation may be offered, never imposed. It may be offered as an illustration attesting to the richness of the original vision, never as a substitute of the vision itself.
The same is true of all ‘hallucinations’ and of all ‘revelations’.
There are no exceptions.
Ultimately, those who attempt to share their subjective Revelations become exploited by those who wish to benefit from other people’s insights. This has never yet proven successful. The dismal failure of major religions to implement the precepts underlying the visions on which the various religions purport to have been based attest incontrovertibly to this thesis. Those who suffer from Hallucinations (capital H implies great visions) are luckier, as they become known as scientists, artists, poets, leaders or philosophers. The non-religious visionaries do not require followers for their implementation (though there are obvious financial benefits if there are such). There are also those who as a result of their visions lose contact with objective reality. There are dangers in crossing the road—there are dangers inherent in visions.
More often than not, a vision is inspired by desire.
A prophet, a scientist or an artist does not imagine receiving a revelation. They condition their unconscious mind to respond to whatever inputs are available and feed such information to their conscious awareness. The process is often automatic, the condition—sensitivity and willingness to face the unknown. The desire to achieve, when strong enough and directed towards altruistic ends, will result in a surprising response from the Source of all inspiration. The word altruistic is very important. The late mystic and writer Paul Twitchell once said that altruism is not a virtue but an act of self-preservation. Roger Buckminster Fuller, the gentle giant, observed that only when he committed his efforts towards the good of the greatest number, the results exceeded the norm. At the age thirty-two, he noted:
“In 1927 I also committed all my productivity potentials toward dealing only with our whole planet Earth.... This decision was not taken on a recklessly altruistic do-gooder basis, but in response to the fact that my Chronofile clearly demonstrated that in my first thirty-two years of life I had been positively effective in producing life-advantage wealth—which realistically protected, nurtured, and accommodated X numbers of human lives for Y numbers of forward days—only when I was doing so entirely for others and not for myself.” (2)
Mr. Fuller further adds that the larger the number for whom he worked, the more positively effective he became. This is the evidence of a man whose vision encompassed the whole “Spaceship Earth.” We can safely assume that the prerequisite to a successful vision is the benefit of the largest possible number of people, or the greatest common good. This dictum is no longer a religious rhetoric, but a sound scientific observation.
The question remains: What is the source of visions? While the process of visualization can become a controlled technique, the actual energy which manifests visions is still lost in religious jargon. We hear of God whispering in one’s ear, of angels conveying messages, and such other esoteric projections as of ghosts or spirits tapping on ouija boards. The problem seems to lie in our inability to combine human resources. The mystics refuse to submit to rigorous scientific examination, while the scientists—usually skeptics—refuse to recognize the evidence of their eyes, just because it does not fit in with their pragmatic experiments. The same Doubting Thomases cannot reproduce a bolt of lightening, but they do not deny its existence. Yet a vision of an unknown origin vastly outperforms the effects of a lightening. In the chapter on Politics and Society we shall see how visions of individual men leave indelible imprints on humanity for centuries to come. Both categories of visions are the result of emotional stimulation. The first is the consequence of the mystic’s preoccupation with the ‘divine’ properties or characteristics of their ‘messages’. A mystic is so committed to his vision that he’ll often choose to lose his life rather than deny his vision. Early Christianity offers ample evidence of this thesis. On the other hand, contrary to popular belief, a scientist would often choose to remain in the dark ages then submit to any new ‘revelation’ which would undermine his or her established status quo. There are exceptions, but the manner in which Socrates, Galileo, Bruno, and more recently Einstein had been treated in Greece, Italy, Germany and France respectively, may well justify other scientists’ and even philosophers’ reticence to tread on unproven grounds.
Nevertheless, there are quanta of energy which, while as yet non-measurable, leave an ample trace of their influences, rather like the invisible, non-measurable quarks do on the screen of a cyclotron.(3) While the energies stimulated by the process of visualization cannot be measured, they leave a very visible, observable and measurable trace on the health, wealth and general well-being of the participants in the pragmatic experiment.
The fact that a particular energy is regarded as ‘non-physical’ means that our scientists have not yet learned to identify it with their instrumentation. Our ignorance, however, does not preclude its existence, or its effect on the physical reality. We can neither detect with our senses nor measure the intensity of the energy of love. Yet all who experienced love, are as sure of its existence as they are of their physical environment. There are those who relegate love to their hormonal influxes or to the dictates of our instinct of self preservation, but such would never explain love based on indisputable altruism. And even our most recent history is rich with examples of such impersonal “energy”. The late Mother Theresa comes to mind. Conversely, the human eye cannot detect photons outside a very small spectrum.(4) Yet none would dispute the existence of radio, radar, TV, or ultraviolet rays which can burn blindness into the human iris. Since human mind invented the instruments necessary to record that which is invisible, it is safe to assume that, in time, it will increase its scope to experience, scientifically, that which to-date is not as yet understandable. To draw on the Revelation part of visions, I am reminded of a phrase: For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest: neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.(5) I cannot think of any scientist who would not gladly subscribe to the above statement. It sounds more like Einstein talking rather than a man recognized by most as a “religious visionary”, though, as already mentioned, it was the very same Einstein who affirmed (perhaps wistfully) that God does not play dice with the universe.
In the meantime, under the overwhelming evidence of countless witnesses, we must accept that such energies exist. The visualization of events at a distance, or those taking place in the past or the future, are easier to recognize once we accept the assurances of our physicists that time doesn’t really exist. Although both Aristotle and Newton believed in absolute time, later scientists put dents in the previous theories. First Einstein showed time’s relativity to movement (velocity) and space, and later, the best known theoretical physicist living today, Stephen Hawking, elaborated on its fluctuations and other disturbing properties.(6) Einstein’s own visions are reviewed in the chapter on Scientific Perspective.
I would suggest, however, that at the present level of our ability and knowledge, the key to understanding this phenomenon is the acceptance that Soul, or the individualized awareness manifesting through the medium of a human mind and body, has its being outside the constrains of time and space. The next step would be to identify with this awareness. To say: “I am aware of myself therefore I am.” Self-awareness implies the awareness of Self.
The Self will be discussed at length in the chapter on Re-defining Self.
If the premise is correct than it follows that we, today, are everything that we ever have been, or ever shall be. At the very least, we are endowed with an inner awareness of all our experiences. I am reminded of Socrates suggesting a similar premise to Meno:
“The soul, then, as being immortal... and having seen all things that exist... has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection...” (7)
What changes is not the reality of the world but our awareness of it. As we grow and mature, we become more and more aware of our true nature, which while residing within the physical envelope of the body, it is not the body as such. In this context, visions would be momentary insights into the totality of knowledge latent in our own timeless selves.
Nevertheless, for the present, most of us shall probably associate the origin of visions with various myths. Yet it is from visions of individual men that we inherited insights which influenced the course of history. Paul of Tarsus promulgated the Christ’s vision of Good News (ignored by close to one billion Christians). Muhammad gave us a wonderful vision of submission of our Self to the Highest Being (Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate), only to lose heart and reinforce it with a stick and carrot philosophy which is responsible to this day for mass-murder and other bloodthirsty perversions. Perhaps the Moslem had been (and still are) inspired by the Christian deviations which came into being during the days of the Crusades or the unHoly Inquisition. While the Christians and the Moslem declare periodic mutually beneficial truces, the Moslem continue to extend their struggle against the Hindus who, in turn, enjoy slaughtering the Christians, all in the name of the All Merciful and Compassionate Allah. Not to be left behind, the Christians, presumably in the name of the Prince of Love, excelled in butchering the Moslem in ex-Yugoslavia’s Kosovo.
In another and very different example of the distortion of the original visions, it is to the Hindu vision that we owe the most numerous Pantheon, much broader in scope and complexity than the Greek or the Roman aggregations, yet, amazingly, also springing from a monotheistic origin! It is India that gave us the concept of Brahma, “who engineered the entire universe, down to the insignificant ant” yet, in the words of Swami Prabhupada: “Brahma is not the ultimate creator... the supreme intelligence behind all creations is the Absolute Godhead, Sri Krishna.”(8)
It is indeed of some considerable disdain that, in all cases I came across, the misinterpretation of the original vision brought about more harm than good to humanity. Since the masses had always been taught that they must be told what is best, the leaders of the various religions must bear the burnt of responsibility for the crimes committed in the name of the various visions. To protect ourselves, we must enter, once again, into the no-man’s land where Truth or God is, in the words of Jalal ud-Din Rumi, beyond the realm or ideas of doing right and doing wrong. The degree of love advocated by Christ is in direct opposition to the degree of hatred generated by the Crusades, Inquisition, fundamentalism, egoism and particularly indifference. The Krishna vision is in direct opposition to the burning of temples, slaughter of members of opposing sects, or debasing exploitation including the maiming of children so that they might be more successful at procuring alms.
The euphoric love sang of Muhammad, as heard by the Sufis, does not resonate with the willful maiming of beggars who have their hands, arms and feet cut off for theft—all in the name of the Koran. The word Islam means submission, not imposition. Submission to Allah, the source of all good not submission to vengeance devoid of love, compassion or mercy. Since Koran claims that Allah is all merciful, how come his henchmen are all vengeful? ‘God’ is suspended somewhere in the middle, where the opposites meet. One can but wonder if the world would not be a better place if neither prophet nor savior nor any avatar attempted to share their vision with us, lest we would have no vision to pervert.
We have been warned: “...neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”(9)
Apparently there is a very good reason for this warning. I recall a story told me by another seeker for truth. A man had been sitting at the feet of his Master. He had been told to love his enemies. The man became very sad, but accepted humbly the admonition. Suddenly his face lit up. He got up and went outside. Returning some minutes later, he seemed filled with joy. “Why are you so happy?” asked the Master. The man smiled. “I had no enemies, Master,” said the man. “When you told me to love them, I was sad. But now I am joyful.” “How come?” asked the Master. “I went out and hit the first man I met in the face. He now hates me. I now have an enemy I can love.”
Although I feel that any of the major religions, if understood properly, would raise mankind to a higher level, the sad part is that even the most noble of visions at their very source are confined or diluted by the limitations of the human language. In 1962 Mahatma Gandhi, best known as the father of modern India, wrote:
“While I believe that the principal books [scriptures] are inspired, they suffer from a process of double distillation. Firstly, they come through a human prophet; and then through the commentaries of interpreters. ...as [God’s] message is received through the imperfect human medium, it is always liable to suffer distortion in proportion as the medium is pure or otherwise.”(10)
To the proud Christians who deign to rise above the “imperfect human medium” by deifying Christ, let me quote the words of their Lord: “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God...”(11) Was their Master wrong?
Alas, distilled of not, we cannot put a genie back into the bottle. A vision once brought into the world, remains part of the human heritage. No matter how misunderstood, how misapplied, mishandled or misused—it is ours to deal with. It may be promulgated publicly, to all nations, but its fulfillment will always be an individual task. Never that of a group or organization. The organizations were not created “unto the image and likeness” of God. You and I are. And we must balance prudence with courage. Heaven is not for the cowardly or the weak. It also not for fools.
***
And then we have the ‘lesser’ visionaries; and the lesser are all too often the blind bent on leading the blind. Today I’ve read in my local paper that a Rev. Jerry Falwell, a chancellor (sic!) of a university, claims that antichrist is alive and well, walking the earth this moment. The pompous preacher also pushes his presumption that since Christ was Jewish, therefore the antichrist must be Jewish.(12) By this inscrutable logic one can only wonder what nationality were Adam and Eve. Eden(13) is reputed to have been at the environs of Tigris. That would make the First Couple Iraqi or Syrian. But surely, as such a nationality would be highly offensive to the Jews and Falwell, we might be wiser to assume that Adam and Eve were simply displaced Fundamentalist Baptists from the Bible belt of Southern United States.
Each to his vision—chacun a son goût.
And then there are those who expect the world to end any minute and/or after the good guys get whisked up into heaven (rapture)(14), while the remaining population, after a perfunctory decimation, will spend the next 1000 years in the goody-goody land, with the reincarnated Jesus on the throne of Jerusalem. In this vision the world will last a millennium longer.(15) Voilà, another vision. Hasn’t Jesus done enough for those people? He offered us his vision; he gave us his life. What else do they want? I am told that the local psychiatric institution can supply us with volumes of other visions, equally as imaginative and equally devoid of any contact with reality.
Yet visions have always preoccupied the human mind.
The ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and the later prophets ranging from Nostradamus (1503-66) to Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), all visualized their gods as powerful beings outside and beyond their influence. They created their gods so real that many of them committed whole lives to their service. Throughout history man suffered from a great need to serve some higher Being, if not ‘spiritual’ then at least of heroic stature. The global myths of all religions are filled with man’s search for heroes to worship; filled with men of Herculean proportions. Little has changed to this day. The bourgeoisie of various nations take vicarious pride in their composers, artists, historical notables, dignitaries, eminencies, heavyweights, leaders, luminaries, ‘somebodies’... as if they, themselves, actually contributed to the achievements of such allegedly superior people. My own ‘hero’, the late Joseph Campbell identifies this need for hero worship with a subliminal desire to identify with the hero’s individuality.(16) It seems much easier than striving to become a hero oneself—much easier than to aspire to one’s own vision.
Leaders of various faiths amply exploit this apparently inherent inner need. The adherents of most major religions, including the Hindu, the Christians, and the Moslem, are as manipulated today as they have been for centuries. All in the name of some ‘externalized’ heavenly, inaccessible deity, who apparently commissioned the few to rule over the many. The need to externalize one’s potential is all the more enigmatic when examining the various scriptures. The Bible offers many examples of attempts by the more advanced minds, the prophets, to explain to their followers that God-within and God-without are One. Even the biblical names such as Eliah or Elijah seem to imply that the El and the Jah are one and the same. In biblical context, El is established as the hero within—the Divine Presence within us, and Jah, an abbreviation of Jehovah or YHWH—the ancient tertragrammaton representing the universal male and female principles, are one and the same.(17) Jesus has reiterated this same thesis in his statement “I and my father are one.” The prophets, including Jesus, refuse to identify any power outside their own being as being superior in quality to that which governs their own consciousness. They submit to the scope, or the magnitude differential, but not to the attributes per se. In other words, they recognize that macrocosm is greater than microcosm, but in size only, not in quality.
A similar principle is voiced by the Hindu teacher Swami Prabhupada, who basing his knowledge on the authority of the Srimad-Bagavatam (the Hindu scripture) explains: “...the transcendentalists affirm that the soul and the Supersoul are two different identities, qualitatively one but quantitatively different.”(18) This view might well have been also espoused by Teilhard de Chardin in his vision of the Noosphere.(19) Such visions, however, have been enunciated long before the vast majority of people were ready to receive them. The pearls had been cast before swine. It is apparent that only visions which lend themselves towards the exploitation of people, of keeping the masses in ignorance and thus easier to control, met with success. The opium of the masses had to be carefully handled, lest the proletariat would suspect that the original vision in no way resembled the sociopolitical version fed to them. Only recently the ‘masses’ appear to raise their ugly heads. Perhaps they are beginning to suspect that they have been lied to for centuries. Perhaps we are just getting ready—today.
Perhaps we are reaching a critical mass.
There are those amongst us who might consider it blasphemous to regard ourselves as “gods in waiting”, rather than as incorrigible sinners. This book is not for them. It is not that they are wrong in their view. It simply means that they (still) live in a relative world, best explained in Srimad-Bagavatam quoted below:
“In the relative world the knower is different from the known, but in the Absolute Truth both the knower and the known are one and the same thing. In the relative world the knower is the living spirit or superior energy, whereas the known is inert matter or inferior energy.”(20)
To accept this version of reality, this vision, all we must do is to change our point of view. Those who externalize their God shall come, in time, to internalize Him as did Christ, in whose steps his believers claim to be following. The same teacher affirmed that while he and his father are one, he and we are one. By a process of simple mathematics, we appear all to be One. A sentiment to which all the great Myths subscribe fully.
Another mystic offers a different but reinforcing vision from India whom Dr. Chopra quotes in one of his lectures:
“You are where your attention takes you. In fact, you are your attention. If your attention is fragmented, you are fragmented. When your attention is in the past, you are in the past. When your attention is in the present moment, you are in the presence of God. And God is present in you.”
If we substitute the word vision for attention, we shall cross oceans of time to arrive at the present moment of great realization. In order to become One, we must not dwell in the past, we must have our attention in the present.
There are assuredly others, who may think it blasphemous to betray their version of the exclusivity of the Christian creed. For them I quote John’s vision in his Apocryphal Acts: “A lamp am I to you that perceive me, a mirror am I to you that know me”.
In all these propositions we deal with visions of reality. To some they are mired with good and evil, a dichotomous existence, devoid of freedom, resigned to one’s fate written for them in the stars. Yet “It is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.”(21) Their hearts and minds are encumbered and bound with traditions, with interpretations of other mentors, of other scriptures, of other people’s visions. To them I quote a Sufi poet, Jalal-ud-Din Rumi: “Beyond the ideas of doing right and doing wrong there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” There we find a God who embodies that which the opposites have in common. There and only there we find singularity of Life.
To those who share this vision, life is an open-ended opportunity in which we can visualize a reality in which everyone of us can and will create his and her own universe.
One other aspect of visions seems to escape some scholars or commentators on the subject of reality. People who have visions, be they religious or lay prophets, invariably translate the expected fate of their own (i.e. subjective) universe to be that of other people’s, or the objective reality. It is a common error not necessarily of the seers as such but certainly of a vast majority of interpreters. One of the best known examples are the prophesies of Jesus Christ, who is reported to have had a number of visions pertaining to his own future. This is perfectly understandable. A man with universal vision is capable of experiencing the totality of his existence or being. By this I mean that since our spiritual awareness has it’s being outside the matrix of time and space, we can, theoretically, experience our distant past as well as our distant future at any time of our journey. What we cannot normally do is to assign a chronological factor to such experiences. We can predict what will happen, we cannot say when. No one can. The factor of unpredictability controls our reality. The variables are simply too great. The science of quantum mechanics shed some light on this problem (see chapter on Scientific Perspective). The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, mentioned before, writes:
“The fourth dimension, time, is also finite in extend, but it is like a line with two ends or boundaries, a beginning and an end. ...when one combines general relativity with the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, it is possible for both space and time to be finite without any edges or boundaries.”(22)
To me, this sounds very unfortunate. It sounds like a vicious circle. Like walking in a circle. At best a sphere. Round and round in ever repeating patterns, depressing like Nietzsche’s Nihilism. I greatly admire Stephen Hawking, but I don’t like his vision. Perhaps this is what happens when one tries to contain the universe in a few simple equations. The scientists claim to have evolved past the mechanical view of the universe. I wonder... But there is another problem. The theoretical physicists seem to equate the Big Bang with the Big Cause. No wonder they walk in circles.
Rather like serpents swallowing their own tail.
I can predict, here and now, that most people, perhaps all, will eventually stop walking in circles. That eventually we shall all achieve a greater awareness of our Higher Self, of our true nature. That we shall be in this universe but not of this universe. That we shall gradually come to an understanding that the source of our being lies within our own awareness. What I cannot say, is when will this happen. Nor can anyone else.
Returning to Jesus. When he predicted the end of the world, he was asked when would this (event) take place. He replied: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”(23) This admission is preceded by a long and detailed account of what takes place in human consciousness before the spirit is liberated from its earthly embodiment. The whole prophetic monologue is, of course, steeped in symbolic language. In my DICTIONARY OF BIBLICAL SYMBOLISM,(24) I attempted to empower everyone interested in the inner meaning of the Bible to draw his or her own conclusions. (Not my, but their own).
The same is true of the Biblical prophets who gained awareness of the progression and evolution of their own psyche, their own nephesh or animal soul, which today we can best refer to as the subconscious. The religious fraternities quote the various seers to substantiate their claim and to prop up their speculations regarding the past and/or future events which had or are going to occur in the objective reality. Since in the course of human events all things will happen, sooner or later, their speculations regarding the past cannot fail. The same is true of the future. The question is when. We are on much safer ground if we interpret all the prophecies, of all the prophets, as pertaining to their own, particular, individualized psyche. The fact that the various biblical prophets did experience similarities in their visions only proves that, sooner of later, we shall all experience the events described or prophesied in our own realities, in our own subjective universes which we have created over countless millions of years. If we do accept this thesis, then at least we shall go down (or up!) informed, and therefore prepared.
I feel I must stress the futility of attempting to tie in the time factor to one’s visions.
In addition to Jesus’ example quoted above, throughout history various people predicted successive “ends of the world.” Have you notice that we are still here? Even partial destruction of our mother earth did not come about. I am sure it will—though—some day... Some day the sun will burn out its nuclear fuel, it will shrink, collapse, and then expand to become a red giant, many times it’s present diameter. The earth, with or without us, shall be cooked to cinder. Some day all prophecies shall come true.
Only, please, don’t hold your breath.
Edgar Cayce who succeeded, with his extraordinary powers, in helping thousands of his contemporaries with their mental and physical troubles, failed completely as regards the chronology of his ‘cataclysmic’ predictions. While his projection of trends affecting humanity had been fairly accurate, his prophecies regarding global geological upheavals failed to materialize.(25) The same can be said of Jeffrey Goodman Ph.D., who in his book We Are The Earthquake Generation researches an impressive list of prophets ranging from Nostradamus, through the abovementioned Cayce to an array of contemporary seers, to give us a pessimistic but completely false image of our future, ahm... present, or perhaps even the past.
According to Goodman’s checklist of major events predicted by various psychics, by the year 2000 we shall have experienced major subsidences on East and West coasts of the U.S.A., major section of Western United States shall have fallen into the ocean as coastline moves from its present position to Nebraska and Kansas; large portions of Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois will have dipped into the expanded Great Lakes, and similar inundations will have taken place in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, China, USSR (which no longer exist but the psychics failed to predict its demise) as will part of the British Isles, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, as will most of Japan and Hawaii, etc., etc., etc.... While, as of writing the first draft of this book, we still have nine months (out of the 1990-2000 period) for the prophesies to be fulfilled, I am not holding my breath. Perhaps I am discouraged by previous predictions in the same book according to which we have already witnessed (inter alia) Palm Springs sink under water; San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco destroyed; California coastline pushed back to Bakersfield, Fresno and Sacramento; land rising in the Bering Strait creating a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, etc., etc., all this by 1980-85. And furthermore, by the year 1990 New York City was to have been completely broken up, land was to have risen between Gibraltar and Morocco closing off the Mediterranean sea from the Atlantic, the earth’s axis of rotation was to have tipped a few degrees and all this to the horrendously clamorous accompaniment of unprecedented earthquakes all over the world.
Ooops....
With such dismal record, even with best intentions, the seers could never make a believer out of me.
A projection (as against a prophetic prediction) is an intelligent and knowledgeable person’s estimate of future development, based on the data available today. Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock offers very perceptive analyses of possible social development, Basil Booth’s & Frank Fitch’s Earthshock examine probabilities of future disasters by reviewing the best available scientific data from the past, or John Naisbitt’s & Patricia Aburdene’s Megatrends and Magatrends 2000, which extend and implement the work started by Toffler. The books are among the best examples of such projections. They cover as wide a range of our (immediate) future as can be. But none of them have anything to do with prophecy. Their projections have an excellent chance of coming true.
It has been said that prophesying is the second oldest profession in the world. We all know what is the first.
***
FOOTNOTES
(1). The word ‘holistic’ should perhaps be spelled with a ‘w’, i.e. wholistic, implying a completeness which is the derivative if the word holy or saintly.
(2). Fuller, R. Buckminster CRITICAL PATH, St. Martins's Press, New York 1981; pg.125
(3). A subatomic particle accelerator, also called atom-smasher.
(4). Visible light (violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red) is flanked with ultraviolet on one side and infrared on the other. Its wavelength varies from 0.000076 centimeters to 0.000038 centimeters at the violet end. Until 1800 other photons were unknown to man.
(5). Luke 8:17. See also Kapuscinski, S., BEYOND RELIGION, VOL. 2, Mystery (Inhousepress 2000) Hereafter my books of essays are referred to as BEYOND RELIGION, Vol. 1 or 2.
(6). Hawking, Stephen W., A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME Bantam Books 1988.
(7). DIALOGUES OF PLATO, Random House, New York 1937, pg.360
(8). SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM interpreted by A.C. Bhaktivendanta Swami Prabhupada; The Bhaktivendanta Book Trust. Los Angeles, California; pg. 48-9.
(9). Matthew 7:6.
(10). Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, ALL RELIGIONS ARE TRUE, (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay 1962)
(11). Matthew 19:17
(12). Falwell's opinions have been reported by Associated Press, in the Montreal Gazette, on January 16, 1999, pg. A 17. If anyone wishes to contest my views on the subject, I refer them to BEYOND RELIGION. Vol. 2, essay entitled “Antichrist” (Inhousepress, Montreal 2000: Smashwords Edition 2010]
(13). Eden, Hebrew word for "delight" is a state of consciousness; as is heaven and hell, and all states in between. See BEYOND RELIGION Vol 2. “Heaven” [Inhousepress 2000]
(14). 1 Corinthians 15:50-53 and 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18
(15). This or a very similar version, putatively based on the Bible, has been presented by Hal Lindsey in his bestseller: THE 1980's COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON (Bantam Books 1981)
(16). Campbell Joseph THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, (Princeton University Press, 1973)
(17). refer to Kapuscinski, S., DICTIONARY OF BIBLICAL SYMBOLISM, (Inhousepress 2001; also available as eBook with Part One free download)
(18). SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM, First Canto, text 21, interpreted by A.C, Bhaktivendanta Swami Prabhupada; (The Bhaktivendanta Book Trust. Los Angeles, California) pg. 120.
(19). de Chardin, Teilard, THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, (Harper & Row, New York, 1965)
(20). SRIMAD-BAGAVATAM. The quotation is from the First Canto “Creation”, Text 11, page 104.
(21). Shakespeare, William, JULIUS CAESAR.