Quest Magazine

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Applied Science." Quest 98. 2(Spring 2010): 48.

In 2002 at fourteen years of age, William Kamkwamba could not return to school because of extended drought and impoverishment in his small village in Malawi, Africa. Discouraged but not defeated, this entrepreneurial boy continued his education in the local library whenever his chores permitted. Some spark of hope prompted him to dream about using ideas he read about to solve problems for his family and village. He began collecting scrap plastic, bicycle and machinery parts, and scouring the dump for all sorts of odd pieces of junk.

As the villagers scoffed, his contraption grew into a sixteen-foot high curiosity—which he called his "juju" or magic. Ridicule turned to amazement when he was able to power a light bulb from the power generated by his improvised windmill. From this humble beginning, his project grew to power all the needs for his family's meager household and to pump precious water for his and other families' needs. Following the law of attraction, the more successful he was with his project, the more visitors and benefactors contributed to help his efforts. Now at twenty-three, Mr. Kamkwamba has collaborated with journalist Bryan Mealer for the 2009 publication of his story, titled The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, and has traveled extensively for speaking engagements. He is continuing his education through a number of unique opportunities.

What began as a defeat was transformed into a heartwarming success story not because of outside help, but because this young man determined to make use of all the knowledge and opportunities he had at hand. He opened his eyes and saw the possibilities, and then committed all of his energies to developing the possibilities into realities. There was nothing earthshakingly new about what he did, but for him it was a major accomplishment. He absorbed all the knowledge at his disposal, internalized it, and acted on it in order to address his problems.

This is one of the reasons we are so fascinated with science. It provides a way of looking at our world as it is in order to understand it more fully, and by understanding to see windows of opportunity more clearly. However, factual knowledge by itself is no more than a temporary relief for an obscure mental itch unless it is transformed into usefulness through analysis, synthesis, or analogy. Without some application it will just be buried in the seas of time. We are responsible to make the best use of whatever knowledge we have available to us. It is not sufficient just to let information pass through our brains, unused, on the way to the oblivion of uselessness.

Consider how little funding is currently available to explore ways to treat chicken pox now that the vaccine has all but eliminated it—or to develop better iron lungs for polio victims—or to develop quieter typewriters now that they have been displaced by computers. Although these developments were important at the time, once their usefulness is over, they fall by the wayside. On the whole, funding for research and development follow the threads of applicability. We want to understand so that we have better control. Science is valued because it delivers facts that can make a difference in feeding the hungry, curing ills, or inspiring the dreams of possibilities in young minds.

Because in a world of measurable things, people will believe and abide by measurable things—even to the degree of hand washing and use of seatbelts. If statistics or research indicates the efficacy of a practice, we will tend to abide by those findings. Otherwise we are not convinced, nor do we change our behavior. Perhaps this is part of the reasoning behind KH's statement, "Modern science is our best ally" (Mahatma Letters, no. 65). Most of us want tangible proof. Science can convince us of deep spiritual truths if nothing else can.

Since the time that statement was written, KH's statements "that we recognize but one element in Nature (whether spiritual or physical) outside which there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself . . . and that consequently spirit and matter are one" (ibid.) have been vindicated time and again. He was saying that unity and interrelatedness permeate the universe and that universe is an interrelated whole of "spirit-matter" at every level of existence. Although such ideas seemed an impossibility at the time, through science we have come to accept that energy and matter are convertible, the consciousness or spirit of an observer influences the physical outcome of an experiment, and action on one atom can affect another, no matter the distance between them. Every day science confirms the seamless nature of our universe, and realizing this she convinces us of this reality.

These insights are not idle fancies to tickle our intellect. They have implications that translate to the personal responsibility of each one of us to recognize our innate unity with all, and in doing so we have the basis for applying altruism to every aspect of our lives. This knowledge of the unitive nature of the universe should convince us to apply these principles in active altruism. If we are so connected in every fiber of our being, then whatever we do or think impacts all others, since in the deepest sense they are not separate from us.
As Madame Blavatsky wrote in The Key to Theosophy (section 4):

The one self has to forget itself for the many selves. Let me answer you in the words of a true Philaletheian, an F. T. S., who has beautifully expressed it in the Theosophist: "What every man needs first is to find himself, and then take an honest inventory of his subjective possessions, and, bad or bankrupt as it may be, it is not beyond redemption if we set about it in earnest." But how many do? All are willing to work for their own development and progress; very few for those of others. To quote the same writer again: "Men have been deceived and deluded long enough; they must break their idols, put away their shams, and go to work for themselves–nay, there is one little word too much or too many, for he who works for himself had better not work at all; rather let him work himself for others, for all. For every flower of love and charity he plants in his neighbour's garden, a loathsome weed will disappear from his own, and so this garden of the gods—Humanity—shall blossom as a rose."

 Let us be like the young man who took advantage of every piece of information available to him and apply that practice to our life issues. If something is missing in our spiritual life, if life seems meaningless, or if we simply wonder what it is all about, then perhaps the elixir resides in putting into practice those things we already know. If we accept the scientific reality of wholeness, of our intrinsic relationship with all others, then we need to begin applying the resultant implications. If unity is a universal law, then brotherhood/sisterhood is its logical application.

Take the parts and pieces of understanding we find in our minds and hearts and use their full range of possibilities. Begin the process of building altruism into every thought and action—even if it seems out of step with the rest of our culture. Our mandate as Theosophists is altruism. Through its practice we will be able to harness untold power for the benefit of all, one flower of love and charity at a time.

By Thomas Walker

Originally printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Walker, Thomas. "A Path with Heart." Quest  98. 2(Spring 2010): 54-59.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking, breathlessly.
—Don Juan (Castaneda, 11)

The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with life after death. Of course it could be said that all of us are to a point, but the Egyptians really went extra lengths to ensure a proper passage from the world of the living to the plane of the afterlife. Their texts are filled with detailed instructions about the proper preparations for the journey. They even prepared a book about it, a kind of owner's manual and travelogue rolled into one called The Egyptian Book of the Dead. But what really demonstrates their commitment is the thing Egypt is best known for, the one romantic notion that is known around the world, the stuff of Hollywood feature films and ancient legends . . . mummies!

Even today, with all the technology we're so proud of—with advanced knowledge of chemistry, magnetic resonance imaging, gas chromatography, and the like—we still aren't sure exactly how the Egyptians achieved mummification. Their climate helped: hot, dry conditions go a long way by themselves toward making mummies. However, there's more to it than that; by all accounts, the process was complicated and carefully crafted. After the body was ritually washed and perfumed, the internal organs were carefully removed for special processing. These precious tissues were placed in their own containers—solid gold jars in the case of the elite—and were arranged within the burial chamber with extra care.

The human heart was given exceptional attention, as a mark of the respect due to the organ the Egyptians felt was not only the center of emotion, but, more importantly, the center of reason and thought as well. Regarding the brain, that unimaginably complex mass of neurons and supporting tissues, the Egyptians were rather blasé. For this legendary human organ, the Egyptians had no special plan, no golden chalice. Instead, the squashy mass was unceremoniously yanked through the nostrils and—without pomp, circumstance, or ceremony—dumped into the trash. The brain wasn't given a second thought. It was the heart that was held in high regard. In that respect, the Egyptians may have been on to something big, something we are just now beginning to rediscover.

Neurochemicals have now been found throughout the tissues of the human body. Why? The short answer is that "thinking" occurs in many places in the body besides the brain. And if cells can "think," then are they also aware? Preposterous, you say? Maybe not. Memory also appears to be a function found throughout the tissues of the body, all the way down to the cellular level. Interestingly, the heart seems to be of special importance.

For eons, people have placed special significance on the heart as the seat of emotions. Science tells us the opposite: that emotion all takes place in the brain, that the heart is just a dual-action, four-chambered pump, nothing more. Yet all of us, at one time or another, have felt our own heartstrings plucked (there really are strings in the heart—the chordae tendineae, connective tissues that keep the mitral and tricuspid valves from prolapsing, at least most of the time). We have all experienced feelings of profound joy or sorrow and felt them exactly, precisely . . . in the heart.

Spiritually inclined people attribute this sensation to the heart chakra, which connects us to our higher energy bodies. Now we have some scientific evidence to corroborate this experience. We need briefly to examine the work of Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., a pioneer explorer of the world of "energy cardiology."

For starters, the human heart is unique in several ways. It is composed of its own special type of muscle tissue, which is called, appropriately enough, cardiac muscle. In addition to its own unique anatomical structure, the heart also has something other tissues don't have—an innate, inherent ability to beat, a capacity entirely independent of the brain or of any other portion of the nervous system.

A heart completely disconnected from the body and placed in a nutrient solution will continue to beat for a long time. Even more interesting is that if two hearts are placed in separate containers close together, in short order their beats will become synchronized, regulated by some unseen energy present in the tissues. If we find this phenomenon unusual, what are we to make of the recent reports from heart transplant patients who suddenly find themselves experiencing their donors' memories? Is this all just fantasy?

After working as a psychologist for hundreds of such cases, Paul Pearsall doesn't think so. Taking the lessons gained from years of working with heart transplant patients, he searched out others who were working with subtle energy and energy cardiology. He soon came upon the work of Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek. Schwartz is a professor of neurology, psychology, and psychiatry at the University of Arizona and director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health there. At the time Russek, who formerly taught at Harvard, was his assistant. The two scientists feel that, given the great complexity of living things, informational systems of some kind must be at work in biology, systems that modern science has failed to recognize. As a result, they have advanced their view of "info-energetics," the belief that biological energy is itself a form of information.

After combining modern biological concepts with the new findings of subtle energy and quantum mechanics, Schwartz and Russek concluded that the heart is an important center of energy in the body, and that this energy is a vital source of bioinformation. They developed their concept of energy cardiology into what they termed the "dynamic systems memory theory," which Pearsall describes as "the idea that all systems are constantly exchanging mutually influential energy, which contains information that alters the systems taking part in the exchange" (Pearsall, 13–14). The theory is based upon four central hypotheses:

1. Energy and information are the same thing. Everything that exists has energy; energy is full of information; and stored info-energy is what makes up cellular memories.
2. What we call mind or consciousness is really a manifestation of information-containing energy.
3. The heart is the primary generator of info-energy.
4. Because we are manifestations of the info-energy coming to, flowing within, and constantly being sent out from our total cellular systems, who and how we are is a physical representation of a recovered set of cellular memories. (Schwartz and Russek, 4–24)

Whether or not the heart is the major center of informational energy is subject to debate, but one thing that has been demonstrated is the concept of cellular memory. Dr. Candace Pert is a former researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and the author of Molecules of Emotion, and has been featured in the film What the Bleep Do We Know? She is also a world-renowned authority on neuropeptides, short protein strands that are active in the central nervous system and are at the very neurological core of memory. She is among the first to demonstrate that these chemicals are active in the brain during emotional experiences. However, further study showed something that came as a shock.

These special chemicals did not exist within the brain alone. Rather they were found throughout the blood circulation system, floating to all areas of the body. But without the specialized receptor cells in the brain that the neuropeptides activate, it looked as though the neuropeptides were of no functional use to the organism as a whole. At least that was the thinking until receptors were found to exist in many places throughout the body, including the heart (of course), the immune system, and even the gastrointestinal tract. Dr. Pert commented:

In the beginning of my work, I matter-of-factly presumed that emotions were in the head or brain. Now I would say they are really in the body as well. They are expressed in the body and are part of the body. I can no longer make a strong distinction between the brain and the body. . . . the more we know about neuropeptides, the harder it is to think in the traditional terms of a mind and a body. It makes more and more sense to speak of a single integrated entity, a "body-mind." (Pert, 9)

Later, when Pearsall discussed some of his ideas about memory transfer in connection with heart transplants, Pert was not at all surprised. Pearsall recalls, "She pointed out that, since the cells in the heart are loaded with molecules that necessarily contain at least some form of memory, these memories could well come along with the heart to join with the new body and brain" (Pert, 12).

Almost from the very start of heart transplantation, strange things began to be reported. Granted, heart transplant patients go through an extremely stressful, challenging ordeal; but even allowing for that reality, something profound seemed to be happening. One of the most unusual cases was related to Pearsall by a female psychiatrist who was attending an event where Pearsall was the keynote speaker. After the presentation, the psychiatrist approached Pearsall and began relating the event to him. In short order she began to cry gently and had difficulty discussing her experience, and within a few moments Pearsall understood why. As the psychiatrist described the event:

I have a patient, an eight-year-old little girl who received the heart of a murdered ten-year-old girl. Her mother brought her to me when she started screaming at night about her dreams of the man who had murdered her donor. She said her daughter knew who it was. After several sessions, I just could not deny the reality of what this child was telling me. Her mother and I finally decided to call the police and, using the descriptions from the little girl, they found the murderer. He was easily convicted with evidence my patient provided. The time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he wore, what the little girl had said to him . . . everything the little heart transplant recipient reported was completely accurate. (Pearsall, 7)

In another instance, a family physician named Glenda had been involved in a tragic automobile crash resulting in the death of her husband. Some years later, perhaps to bring things to a close, she sought to meet the young man who had been the recipient of her husband's heart. Pearsall made the arrangements and waited in the hospital chapel with Glenda for the appointment. After a half hour had elapsed, Pearsall suggested they leave, but Glenda was hesitant. Saying she "knew" her late husband's heart was nearby, she exclaimed, "Oh no, we have to wait. He's here in the hospital. I felt him come about thirty minutes ago. I felt my husband's presence. Please wait with me."

Glenda was correct. Almost immediately a young Hispanic man and his mother hurried into the chapel, explaining that they had had difficulty finding the room and had searched for half an hour. After introductions Glenda asked to feel her husband's former heart, and as she did so, she softly said a prayer to her late husband with the words, "I love you, David. Everything is copacetic." The mother and son were shocked. That word, copacetic, was the very first one the young man had uttered after awaking from anesthesia with his new heart!

Within the next few moments, they related how the young man's tastes had changed in other ways as well. It seems, for instance, that while he had once been a practicing vegetarian, he now craved junk food. While he was formerly a heavy-metal rocker, he now only listened to vintage rock and roll. Moreover, he was frequently plagued with dreams of an automobile collision, with bright headlights getting closer and closer until a horrendous crash occurred. By the time Glenda verified that these characteristics all belonged to her late husband, everyone was in tears. Glenda frequently experienced the very same dream. Although she was a highly trained physician, with all the science background that entails, she now became a believer in the phenomenon of cellular memory transference. She knew in her heart that it wasn't all just a matter of coincidence.

In another instance, a woman received a heart transplant and almost immediately began to complain of sharp, shooting pains in her lower back. The doctors explained the pain away as a response to surgery. Years later, however, she still suffered, awakening suddenly at night with shooting pains in her lumbar area. What's more, her husband noticed a significant change in her personal tastes; she now chose very feminine attire over the casual, unisex styles she had preferred before her surgery. And once they were able to resume sex, the wife seemed preoccupied with gay fantasies, asking her husband if he ever experienced them, which came as a shock to him. This went on for three years, at which time the woman met with the parents of the donor. He had been a young gay artist who had died during a robbery. He was killed by a gunshot wound to the lower back.

Pearsall mentions that other organs besides the heart seem to demonstrate the same odd capacity to transmit memory. Although the stories of heart transplant patients are often more dramatic than others, he states: "I have never spoken to a transplant recipient who did not have a story to tell" (Pearsall, 83).

Besides the exciting stories of cellular memories and changing personalities, the heart seems to be of supreme importance in other ways as well, particularly as a source of vitally important energy and information. We may forget that the heart is an organ of considerable power. A wonderfully designed hydraulic pump, it sends the fresh, nutrient-laden blood from the lungs throughout the miles of tubes that constitute the vascular tree, contracting about once per second for every moment of our lives—sometimes a bit slower, sometimes a bit faster, but continuing with its job until it finally stutters to a stop and life itself stops with it.

There's a lot of kinetic energy associated with all this pumping, but what we're concerned with at the moment are the other forms of energy generated by the heart. For one thing, the heart is also an organ of profound electromagnetic energies. We all know of the legendary electrical activity of the brain, the wave patterns that are measured and evaluated with EEGs, but compared to the heart, the brain is an electromagnetic pipsqueak.

Only in recent times have the electromagnetic fields of living things been generally recognized. Now we know that electromagnetism is an essential part of living things, as important as genetics, cellular respiration, or any of the dozens of processes that make up life (Laszlo, 157). And the heart is an organ of powerful electromagnetic activity, operating at a level five thousand times higher than that of the human brain (Clarke).

Like so many before him, Pearsall became intrigued with the question of what coordinates the massive amounts of energy present in the human body. We know the brain does some of it, and the instructions from DNA are a major player, but part of the puzzle appears to be missing. Pearsall commented on the known energies at work, starting with the source of all cellular energy for living things, the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which fuels everything from elephants to E. coli:

A very powerful, sensitive, centrally located instrument is required to coordinate the immense energy and information generated by the billions of cellular vibrations taking place every second of our life. Multiply two million vibrations of ATP molecules by 75 trillion cells, multiply that number by the 51 to 78 billion cycles per second at which human DNA resonates and conveys its information within each cell, and multiply yet again by the energetic vibrations of the sixty or so neuropeptides that are the biochemical means by which our emotional state is manifested throughout our body. The total number would be a very rough low estimate of the energy surging within you as you read these words. (Pearsall, 103)

From his years of experience and from the work of Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek, Pearsall believes that the heart is the primary organizer of the body in ways that are just now being understood. He comments:

Every cell is literally a mini-heart humming with the energy. The ultimate biomedical illusion has been the view that the body is made of solid matter with fluid pumped through it by an unconscious heart and a powerful conscious brain that is the primary controller of the entire system. Energy cardiology suggests, however, that the heart and not just the brain is what holds this system together by a form of spiritual info-energy, in a temporary and ever-changing set of cellular memories we refer to as "the self." This "self" is the dynamic gestalt of information that might be considered the code that constitutes our soul. (Pearsall, 101; italics added)

Yes, Paul Pearsall strongly believes in the Force. He chooses to call it "L" energy, as in "life energy," but the meaning is the same. At other times he refers to it as the "fifth force," the other four being the primary forces of the universe recognized by modern physics: electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak forces of atomic attraction and decay.

The heart is also important within the context of these primary forces, particularly in terms of Pearsall's preference for following one's heart rather than one's brain. As he states, "the heart has its own form of wisdom, different from that of the rational brain but every bit as important to our living, loving, working and healing" (Pearsall, 73). It is my personal belief that there are indeed two centers of focus in the body—the brain and the heart—but even if we take the idea of the heart as the center of consciousness simply as a metaphor, it still provides us with another perspective on life.

It is particularly interesting that Pearsall discusses heart problems, because cardiovascular disease has become the number one killer in industrialized nations in just a few generations. At the beginning of the twentieth century, infectious diseases were still the primary cause of death. Halfway through the century, they were replaced by cardiovascular problems—strokes and heart attacks. The traditional explanation for this change is the lack of exercise and activity resulting from the use of modern conveniences and the increased rate of atherosclerosis resulting from modern, high-fat junk diets. But there might be a little more to the picture.

In modern medicine the list of risk factors for heart disease includes high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, and obesity. Yet half of the people who experience their first heart attack exhibit none of these factors. And 80 percent of those with at least three of these factors never experience a heart attack. How do we explain these discrepancies? It would appear that some other dynamic is at work.

Pearsall discovered something interesting in the years he has worked with cardiovascular disease patients. He began to inquire about . . . sex. In many cases the victims of heart disease had been celibate for long periods of time. Again and again he found that the patients had gone for a year or more without being intimate, even though most were married.

Pearsall had also worked for years as a sex counselor. He had been a director at the Kinsey Institute, had trained at the Masters and Johnson Institute, and had founded and directed a sexual dysfunction clinic in Michigan for several years. He knew a lot about human sexuality, and he was struck by the fact that so many victims of heart disease showed few of the traditional risk factors, yet had little if any sexual contact.

Pearsall immediately thought of the importance of sex to the flow of "L" energy. He became convinced of the relationship, and he felt even more confident when he discovered current research that backed up his hunch. More than 50 percent of heart attack patients had had no sexual contact of any kind for the entire year preceding their attack! This finding was published in 1996 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (DeBusk), yet the medical establishment ignored it.

Another thread in the weave comes from Dr. Dean Ornish, a leading authority on heart disease. He appears frequently on television as a guest discussing the near epidemic of cardiovascular problems in the industrialized world. Ornish has found that anger is a major factor in cardiovascular disease. Ornish is a cardiologist and a proponent of a change in lifestyle for heart patients, including diet and exercise, but he also advocates anger management and a gentler style of interacting with others.

Ornish's research has shown that reducing stress and anger, along with other lifestyle modifications, can reduce arterial clogging without the need for invasive surgery. He is convinced that in many cases this is the road to take. Of course, many people are unwilling or unable to comply with significant lifestyle changes, and consequently the medical profession can continue to emphasize bypass surgery and other invasive techniques as standard treatments.

Sexual abstinence in adults may impede the vital energy flow, as do anger and stress. All these states have a common result: they cause our muscles to tense. The result is a condition recognized both in ancient times and today; the Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich called it "muscular armoring." What we need is a change of heart; perhaps most of all, we need to decide to follow our hearts. A path with heart is one of meaning; it is a choice to pursue worthwhile things in life rather than to lust after money, power, and material objects.

Our wondrous human brain has devised heaps of modern technology to make life "easier"—things like microwaves, cable TV, computers, push-button windows, heated car seats, cell phones, Internet banking and shopping and socializing and what have you—yet people report that they are busier and more stressed out than ever. They are working more hours than people did just a generation ago. Families hardly see each other during the course of the day. Fast food has become the dietary staple; the obesity and other health problems that result have become, sadly, a worldwide phenomenon. In a typical American marriage both partners work, yet they're in hock up to their necks as they go crazy accumulating more and more "things," while the children are allowed to raise themselves.

Now more than ever, as Castaneda's don Juan recognized, "we need a path with heart."

References

Castaneda, Carlos. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. New York: Pocket Books, 1968.
Clarke, John. "Squids," Scientific American, (August 1994): 46–53.
DeBusk, Robert F. "Sexual Activity Triggering a Myocardial Infarction: One Less Thing to Worry About," Journal of the American Medical Association 275 (1996): 1447–48.
Pearsall, Paul. The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy. New York: Broadway, 1998.
Laszlo, Ervin. Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything. Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2007.
Pert, Candace. "The Wisdom of the Receptors: Neuropeptides, the Emotions, and BodyMind," Advances 3 (1986).
Schwartz, Gary, and Linda Russek. "Energy Cardiology: A Dynamic Energy Systems Approach for Integrating Conventional and Alternative Medicine," Advances: The Journal of Mind-Body Health 12 (1996): 4–24.

Thomas Walker, D. C., is a chiropractic physician, master-level martial artist, professor of natural science, and former Green Beret. This article is adapted from his book The Force Is with Us: The Higher Consciousness That Science Refuses to Accept, published in 2009 by Quest Books.

By Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "What Is Consciousness?." Quest  98. 2(Spring 2010): 70-71.

One of the most basic and yet most elusive teachings of Theosophy is that consciousness is everywhere. "Everything in the Universe, through all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. . . . There is no such thing as either 'dead' or 'blind' matter, as there is no 'Blind' or 'Unconscious' Law." (Secret Doctrine, I, 274).

Nevertheless, as this passage suggests, it is very hard to characterize consciousness without resorting to some sort of circularity: to be conscious is to be "endowed with consciousness." The problem remains if we define consciousness in terms of awareness, perception, or some similar term. What is consciousness? Awareness. What is awareness? Perception. What is perception? Consciousness.

The circle can be difficult to break. Yet if consciousness is to be placed at the center of existence, it behooves us to say in clear terms what it is. Let me propose an extremely simple but, I believe, extremely fertile definition: consciousness is that which relates self to other. In terms of human cognition, this seems obvious. The sense of a self, an I present here versus an other present there, is central to the concept of consciousness. Knowing that I am present in my study, sitting at a desk in front of a computer, is essential to my being conscious here and now. If I were utterly oblivious to these things, I could not be said to be conscious at all, as, for example, during a state of dreamless sleep.

As soon as we've said this much, we realize that consciousness admits any number of degrees. When you're dreaming, you are not aware of the physical world, but some awareness still remains: there is the self that is a character in the dream, set off against other characters and settings and objects that also appear. This is not waking consciousness, but still it is consciousness of a kind. If we go further into dreamless sleep, there is apparently no consciousness at all—and yet below the surface the distinction of self and other does remain. After all, one of the most universally prescribed remedies for illness is sleep. Sleep, even and perhaps especially in its dreamless form, helps the "self" of the body fight off the "other" of the pathogens.

We can go further still. Anyone with even the slightest experience of animals knows that they too are capable of relating self and other. Dogs and cats cannot reason except in the most rudimentary sense, and yet they have emotional lives that are enough like our own to be more or less understandable. Can we, then, say they are conscious, not as we are, but conscious nonetheless? Or should we say, with René Descartes, that they are mere automata? Not many thinkers have wanted to agree with the great philosopher on this point. What about more primitive creatures, going down as far as plants and even protozoans? We may be fairly sure that they don't engage in Cartesian introspections, but their fierce attachment to life, to perpetuating their own existence, indicates that they too have some sense of themselves over and against an external world.

Like so many of the discoveries of the past few centuries, this insight would seem to erode the human sense of uniqueness and privilege in being the sole possessor of the magnificent gift called consciousness, but it has its consolations. The problem of human consciousness becomes less confounding if we see it not as something sprung mysteriously out of nowhere but as rather a stage on a continuum. Moreover, if it is taken to heart, this outlook may even help mitigate the feeling of isolation and separation from the natural world that is the unhappy side-effect of our arrogant sense of uniqueness.

Where, then, do we draw the line? At inanimate things? That apparently inanimate objects contain a rudimentary form of consciousness has long been known to esoteric thought. It appears elsewhere as well, sometimes in unexpected places. Here is an excerpt from an 1890 interview with Thomas Edison by the American writer George Parsons Lathrop:

"I do not believe," [Edison] said, "that matter is inert, acted upon by an outside force. To me it seems that every atom is possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousand of ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements, forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this without intelligence? . . . Gathered together in certain forms, the atoms constitute animals of the lower orders. Finally they combine in man, who represents the total intelligence of all the atoms."

"But where does this intelligence come from originally?" I asked.

"From some power greater than ourselves."

Restating the point, we could say that a hydrogen atom "knows" how to recognize an oxygen atom and, under certain circumstances, how to combine with it to form water. It can perceive and relate to something outside of itself; it is, in a very rudimentary sense, conscious. If the atom could not, as it were, take a stance in the physical world and draw some kind of line between itself and what is not itself, it could not exist. Perhaps this is the secret of those tenuous submolecular particles about which today's physics speculates so imaginatively. They seem to flash in and out of existence, or, in certain instances, not to exist at all unless they are observed. It is as if their sense of themselves is so frail and ambiguous that it takes an external perceiver to bring them into being, much as the eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley claimed that the universe would vanish if God were not there to perceive it.

In the language of The Secret Doctrine, "every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind" (Secret Doctrine, I, 274). We could say that even before any motion or act is possible, there must be a sense of self and other that underlies and is prior to it.

None of this, by the way, presupposes a particular worldview—Newtonian, Einsteinian, or for that matter esoteric. After all, to speak of an object of any kind is to delineate it from the background of the rest of the world, to set it off as itself and not something other. And if things are to exist objectively and not merely as subjective impressions in someone's head, they must stake out their own place in relation to the universe. That is, they must take a stance as self as opposed to the other that constitutes the rest of reality. So they are endowed with consciousness, however unlike our own it may be.

If we see consciousness in this way, many of the conceptual difficulties that appear to surround it begin to diminish. Consciousness is now revealed as being present anywhere and everywhere in the universe; our own consciousness is simply one particular and not necessarily privileged form of it.

These forces have been given many names in various esoteric traditions. The Hindu Samkhya—the most ancient of all known philosophical systems—refers to self or "I" as purusha; the other, the world, is known as prakriti. These are the forces that make us up; without them we would not be what we are; we would not exist.

These observations lead to another: nothing in manifest existence is absolutely a self or an other. They are merely matters of perspective. As H. P. Blavatsky puts it, these forces are the "two poles of the same homogeneous substance, the root-principle of the universe" (Secret Doctrine, I, 247). A hydrogen atom has some consciousness in being able to recognize an atom of oxygen and interact with it under certain circumstances to form water and other compounds. From its point of view, it is a self and the oxygen atom is the other. To the oxygen atom, exactly the opposite is the case: it is the hydrogen atom that is other, just as I am other to you and you are other to me. This fact indicates that the relation between self and other, between "I" and the "world" outside, is a constant, dynamic interplay for all entities at all levels of scale and complexity.

As a metaphor, you might think of the game known as Othello or Reversal, which uses disks that are black on one side and white on the other. Each player takes turns setting them down on a grid, and the player who has more disks of his own color on the board at the end of the game wins. If, say, you are the black player and you manage to cap a line of white disks with your own black disks at both ends, the whole line of white disks flip over to black. Thus in the course of the game, whole lines of disks flip from white to black and back again. This process gives a hint of the ever-shifting reversal of self and other that prevails in the universe at all levels.

This sense of self versus other in ourselves is subtler and more profound than we may often imagine, and if we investigate it, it can lead to some striking insights. Consider your own experience now. Most likely you are not aware of yourself, except in a vague background sense. But if you bring your attention to it, you can feel yourself as an "I" having experiences. Many of these are sensory: this room, this chair, this book. You can go still deeper. You can be aware of your thoughts and feelings as they pass over the screen of your awareness (which is generally easier to do if you close your eyes). If you can be aware of even these most private and intimate thoughts as somehow "other," then where is the "I"? Who or what is it? It has no attributes as such, no qualities; it simply sees. Hence the Hindu sage Sri Ramana Maharshi said that the question "Who am I?," taken far enough back, will lead to enlightenment.

This article is adapted from Richard Smoley's book The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe (New World Library). Copyright © 2009 by Richard Smoley.

Originally printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Editor's Desk - Spring 2010." Quest 98. 2(Spring 2010): 42.

One of the best-known horror movies of recent decades is the 1976 film Carrie, based on Stephen King's tale of a lonely and misunderstood pubescent girl. While the movie pioneered in offering buckets of blood for the audience's delectation (thus creating a highly durable cliche for the genre), in many ways the most terrifying part of the film involves Carrie's relationship with her religion-obsessed mother, who at one point locks her into a closet with a sinister crucifix.

While the portrait painted in Carrie is a lurid and sensational one, the film became a classic in its genre partly because it hit a nerve in the collective psyche. Carrie is the one of the mass media's first portrayals of religious abuse, a problem that has inflicted huge damage on our society.

The form of religious abuse to gain most attention of late is sexual molestation by Roman Catholic priests. According to a 2002 report by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, nearly 4400 priests—4 percent of all those who had served in the previous fifty years—faced some kind of sexual abuse allegation.

But religious abuse is not limited to Catholicism or to Christianity. Over the past generation we have seen it any number of times in Hindu, Buddhist, and New Age contexts. It can also take many forms. Sometimes it involves the misuse of spiritual authority to humiliate and manipulate people, or to extract money or sexual favors from them (adults are susceptible to this as well as children).

All these forms of abuse are, sadly, both familiar and obvious. Today we may need to ask if religious wounding extends still further. Is it abusive to expose children to lurid images of hell and the devil, to tell them that they risk eternal damnation for the smallest of sins, to force them to live in terror of a vindictive and sadistic God? I believe it is. It is one thing to teach children that their actions have moral consequences and quite another to instill a profound, nameless, and unquenchable sense of guilt in them. Many women feel that religion has inculcated a sense of inferiority and even sinfulness in them simply because of their gender. Still others have been ostracized because of their sexual orientation.

To these cases we can add religious wounding in a milder form—when it is not a matter of victimization but of loss of faith, of disillusionment with spirituality as a whole. If all human beings have a spiritual aspect to their natures, this disillusionment amounts to an alienation from a profound and essential part of the self. Whether or not they recognize it, these individuals too have suffered religious wounds.

No matter what background we may come from, it is time for us to begin recovering from this damage. With this idea in mind, the Theosophical Society has organized a conference entitled "Healing Our Religious Wounds," to be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Glen Ellyn, Illinois (about a ten-minute drive from our national center at Olcott), on April 23-25, 2010. The keynote speaker will be John Shelby Spong, who served as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey for twenty-four years until his retirement in 2001. Dr. Spong's best-selling books include Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, A New Christianity for a New World, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Here I Stand. His most recent book is Eternal Life: A New Vision. He will speak on the topics "Religious Wounds: The Power of Guilt" and "Religious Healing: The Power of Wholeness."

Another powerful presenter at the conference will be spiritual counselor Maurice Proulx, a former Catholic priest who himself suffered sexual abuse by a priest when he was a child. Mr. Proulx will address the topic "Journeying beyond Childhood Sexual Abuse."

Christopher Bamford, senior editor of Parabola and author of The Voice of the Eagle, will also speak. Those of you who came to our October 2008 conference on esoteric Christianity will remember his inspiring presentation "Before Abraham Was, I Am." For this conference, his topic will be "Reclaiming Revelation: A Necessity for Our Time." TS president Betty Bland, TS vice-president Tim Boyd, and Olcott staffer John Cianciosi, a former Buddhist monk and author of The Meditative Path, will lead meditations. Ben Furman, another Olcott staffer, who has many years experience teaching chi gong, and John Guarrine of the Chicago area organization Play for Peace will begin morning sessions with gentle movement practices to help participants to ground and balance themselves.

Just as importantly, the conference will include one-on-one and small-group discussions in which participants will be able to share and discuss their own experiences and to move toward healing.

"Healing Our Religious Wounds" is intended neither to restore religious faith nor to destroy it. It is intended to heal some of the psychological damage, whether mild or severe, that may have come from our religious backgrounds and to help us move toward greater wholeness and integration. For those who do not feel that they have been damaged by religion, it will offer ways of avoiding spiritual pitfalls and deepening their understanding of the truths that underlie all faiths.
I look forward to seeing you at the conference here in April.

—Richard Smoley