SOCIETAS ROSICRUCIANA IN ANGLIA

THE SEVEN STEPS OF WISDOM - STEP 5

This step might well cause some of you to stumble, because it looks in rather more detail at how science and esotericism are moving closer together. We can't avoid talking about some things which will be challenging to those brought up in the materialistic science surrounding all mainstream thought in the 20th century and still accepted by a majority in the first decade of the new century.

Most Scientists would find Esoteric Ideas Totally Unacceptable

Probably. A majority of scientists outside the field of quantum physics react to the discoveries of scientists working within the scope of the subject by assuming (without justification) that quantum behavior only applies to sub atomic particles and that 'orthodox' physics applies to everything else. Biologists and biochemists react by assuming (against a growing body of evidence) that quantum behavior only applies to lifeless matter. Mainstream science generally ignores evidence that doesn't fit with the materialistic version of reality, which we inherited. Do you? (Ignore or look askance at evidence that challenges your existing mindset) The evidence gathered over the last 20 - 30 years is vast and growing.

Prediction and Mind Over Matter

In 1965 an aircraft engineer called Helmut Schmidt, originally German from Cologne but by then employed by the aircraft manufacturer Boeing in the USA, designed a machine which used the decaying of radio-active strontium 90 (about the most random thing in the universe) to light at random one of four lights in turn. Individuals who appeared to be (or claimed to be) psychic were invited to both predict which light would light up next and, in other tests, to try and cause a particular light to light up next. The results over thousands of trials were statistically highly significant - psychics could do it!.

In the early 1970s Schmidt's machines and experimental data were taken up by a student at Princeton University doing some postgraduate work. Interested in her results, Robert Jahn, the Dean of the Engineering Faculty, set out to test whether these results could be reproduced on an even wider scale, using people who were not psychic. He set up the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) mentioned in Step 4. This is a highly scientific study, which has accumulated evidence for more than 18 years in millions of statistically significant runs of a series of machines set to randomly generate 0s and 1s (those of you who are IT literate will see that this is a computerized version of tossing a coin). Participants were asked to do runs producing more 1s than 0s, runs producing more 0s than 1s and control runs when they did neither. The results show that:

a. Most people can do it, even those who unaware that they have the skill. The only exceptions seem to be a few of those who are convinced that the possibility does not exist;

b. While two randomly matched pairs show no particular improvement over the scores they achieve alone, bonded couples working together can achieve more than either one on their own.

c. That men perform better when concentrating only on the task in hand but women do better when doing something else as well.

With respect t (b) Recall the biblical phrase 'whenever 2 or 3 are gathered in my nameÉ'? This supports the centuries-old occult idea that a group can achieve more power than an individual working alone! We are reminded of one of those who wrote this course going to a week-long management course at Bristol University. They were given questions to answer and then asked to answer them in groups of six. When the questions were marked the groups all scored higher than the individuals.

OK - Scientific Proof: What does the SRIA say?

Unfortunately, a significant proportion of members of the SRIA either assume a conventional doubt of the existence of such powers or simply are uninterested (or both.) A majority of those members who know these psychic skills from personal experience tend to be unaware of the extent to which such things have been proved. There have been attempts to experiment from time to time in small groups within the SRIA, but it is a difficult business to design an experiment which is interesting, rigorous, doesn't take too long and isn't boring.

One interesting trial carried out within the SRIA involved a test of the claims made for quartz crystals. As you will know they are widely used in clocks and watches because they vibrate with absolute reliability (32,000 times a second) when a small electric charge is passed through them. Quartz crystals are also used in piezoelectricity, because the reverse is also true: if you put them under sudden pressure you generate enough electricity to get a spark.

Other powers are claimed, such as helping plants to grow. A few years ago we bought some potted plants and set them up in the library at our headquarters in Stansfield Hall, the pots were clearly numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. Peter Dudley, the then Secretary of the Met. Study Group buried a quartz crystal in one pot, wrote down a note of which pot had the crystal, sealed the note in an envelope and gave it to the then Senior Substitute Magus, Andrew Stephenson. For rather more than three months the plants were treated equally as to watering, sunlight etc. At the end of 3 months, Study Group members all said which pot they thought had the quartz crystal, on the basis of which plant was healthiest. It was winter and Stansfield Hall was too cold and too deficient in light for houseplants to do well. One plant died, the rest were scruffy specimens - except for the one with the crystal. Last we heard (about a year ago), one of the Study Group still had it.

The experiment was on too small a scale to scientific, the more materialistic members of the Society are uninterested (partly because it would upset their materialism) and most of the rest of the Society has never heard of that or several other experiments.

So What has the Rest of the Western Mystery Tradition to Say?

It has very little to say really. Most scientists find excuses not to look closely at the evidence and the esoteric fraternity tends towards the view that We know that (or we believe that) anyway, so what is the interest?

It is interesting to read from the writings of Rev Anne Davis (a former head of Builders of the Adytum) from more than thirty years ago. [The quote is from a private BOTA communication, but the two quotes are very short and used only to make a point, so we're sure they won't mind]:

In essence, subconsciousness is the universal substance in which we move and have our being. Inasmuch as it is the Universal Substance it actually contains the underlying pattern for that self-conscious livingness which we discussed ...

and

... Subconsciousness, then, cannot be said to be something separate and particular to any one person. It is a universal fluidic flow, and it is this part of consciousness that we must shape in order to experience self-conscious [ness].'

Compare that with Lynn McTaggart writing of the zero point field:

As the pioneers of quantum physics peered into the very heart of matter, they were astounded at what they saw. The tiniest bits of matter weren't even matter, as we know it, not even a set something, but sometimes one thing, sometimes something quite different. And even stranger, they were often many possible things at the same time. But most significantly, these subatomic particles had no meaning in isolation, but only in relationship with everything else. At its most elemental, matter couldn't be chopped up into self-contained little units, but was completely indivisible. You could only understand the universe as a dynamic web of interconnection.

and

Some [quantum] scientists went so far as to suggest that all of our higher cognitive process result from an interaction with the Zero Point Field ... If living things boil down to charged particles interacting with a field and sending out and receiving and sending out quantum, where did we end and the rest of the world begin? Where was consciousness - encased inside our bodies or out there in The Field? Indeed, there was no more 'out there' if we and the rest of the world were so intrinsically interconnected.

It was this interconnectedness that John Dunne sensed when he wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.

The bell is the funeral bell. Dunne was a Church of England cleric, a metaphysical poet and something of a mystic, rather than having an interest in the esoteric and the occult, but he shows an awareness of what all mystics have always known instinctively - that the universe is an undivided whole and that materialist science was wrong about dividing it into ever smaller particles. The material universe is an illusion.

What do you mean About the Material Universe being an Illusion?

If a single atom were the size of a football stadium - say, Anfield or Old Trafford - or of St Paul's cathedral, the nucleus, which is the largest part would be smaller than a football - more like a tennis ball or a golf ball - and the smaller sub-atomic particles would be smaller than the studs on Wayne Rooney's boots or a small fly. The atom is mostly empty space yet that atom gives the illusion of being solid (or liquid or gas, of course) because the nucleus is vibrating so fast it fills the space. Physics measures the height and width and depth of the illusion. Physics weighs the illusion. Physics measures the melting point of the illusion or the temperature at which the illusion bursts into flames and converts into some other form of energy or the pressure of the illusion ... but physics can tell us nothing about the reality, only about the illusion.

When we want to study the reality we need traditional esoteric wisdom, to which quantum physics is moving ever closer and which more and more experimental data is confirming.

Meditation and Study

Reading

We have suggested three titles so far, and asked you to read specific extracts of some of them. To recap they are:

The Rosicrucians by Christopher McIntosh; Samuel Weiser; 1997

The Field by Lynn McTaggett;; Element; 2003

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot; Harper Collins; 1996

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

If you're a reader you've probably read these already: if you're not you may not have acquired any of them yet! If you have decided already that the SRIA is for you, you might like to look at a couple of the books suggested by Director General of Studies of the SRIA, John Paternoster, in his notes for the Zelator: Try:

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances Yates

Qabalah by Joihn Bonner

Meditation Topics

The Golden Dawn required members of the Order to make their own magical tools and the present day Order has the same requirement. This is because the time and thought devoted to the work pays an important part in imbuing them with power, and several esoteric orders require you to draw and/or colour various images. It is a fact that doing something practical enhances learning and understanding.

We would like you to print out this black and white Kabbalistic Tree of Life and then colour it in and add the names. This will stand you in good stead and make an understanding easier at the appropriate time. You could copy it into another file and colour it with your favourite computer printer programme,

Continue with the daily visualization exercises of Step 4 - next Step we'll ask you to do something which assumes you've had a little practice in visualization.

Diary

Record you progress in your diary. Include mention of the time you did your visualization, reading and other study and any striking results.

Questions for contemplation

1. Why did John Dunne (like other mystics and esotericists) feel that ‘No man is an island’?

2. What is the point of colouring in a labeling the Tree of Life?

3. Do you agree that the material universe is an illusion? What are some of the implications of this? Write some of them down in your diary, so that you can refer back to them later and see whether your views have changed.

4. How do you react to the evidence mentioned at the beginning of this Step (or set out in The Field). How do mainstream scientists and mainstream non-scientific thinkers react. How do reactions differ?

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