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Psionics, Adepts and Techno-Shamans
This paper was delivered to Metropolitan College in
June 1998 and to Michael Penrose College a month later. An edited version
appeared in the journal of the Ordre Martiniste S.I., Autumn Equinox
1998 edition. Since the original version is quite short I have used
that here. Members of the SRIA would do well to recall the remarks of
the Senior Substitute Magus, Andrew Stevenson, after I had finished
the Metropolitan College delivery, to the effect that overlooking is
a very dubious practice with unforseen (and unforseeable) results. He
was most spefic in advising against it. Additionally, he recounted to
me an anecdote from his own experience, reinforcing his point.
For millennia men have been inventing steadily more complex machines
to make life easier for themselves, but only now, in the late 20th century,
have we turned to exploration of the mind and the development of 'mind
machine'. New Age developments have taken this from something clearly
scientific in the 19th and 20th century sense of the term, into totally
new directions ... or are they really so new?
'Psionics' is easier to define than 'Techno-Shaman', but it is just
as hard, or even harder to pin down exactly what it is. 'Psionics' is
the science of mind machines, but what is a mind machine, in the sense
of a psionic device?
I have a 'mind lab': a device which uses a variable speed beeping sound
and a synchronised flashing strobe, designed to adjust brain waves to
a pre-determined level, in order to achieve mental effects such as relaxation,
visualisation and self hypnosis. Established psychology agrees that
brain waves do readily follow such stimuli and experimental proof of
telepathy includes the transmission of patters induced in this way from
a sener to a receiver in another building and tracing the results on
an EEG. My mind lab is, without doubt, a working mind machine. It is
equally certainly not prionic, at least as the term is usually used.
Another scientifically understandable and readily available electronic
mind machine is the one intended to develop lucid dreams. (a 'lucid
dream' is one in which the dreamer knows that s/he is dreaming.) While
the subject sleeps, a scanner looks for rapid eye movements - a reliable
sign of dream activity - and, when they occur, a strobe breaks into
the consciousness of the user without waking him/her. Variations are
marketed by a couple of different importers and at least two small UK
companies manufacture and sell them. Now the device does work ... at
least it works electronically - you'd have to ask a serious user whether
it actually develops lucid dreaming. Again, however, I doubt whether
one could call this a psionic device.
We are all, I think, accustomed to the idea of dowsing rods and pendulums.
They approach closer to what is meant by 'psionic' and one might even
call them that. However, the function of a pendulum or rods is to access
information already in (or at least available to) one's inner mind,
and I wonder whether this is true of every case of those instruments
and machines commonly called psionic. Possibly it is.
As an example of what is really meant by psionics, consider the 'psionic
black box' (so called because the prototypes were cased in black plastic
boxes - the colour may be immaterial, except that 'black box' hints
atmystery and power, and that may in itself be significant.) The electronic
circuitary of most does not make any sense scientifically. There is
usually no power source and often not even a complete circuit. It consists
of a flat copper plate about 8 or 10 cm square (called a 'witness plate')
connected by a wire to the box. There is also a copper headband with
button magnets, likewise attached by a wire. The box itself has a number
of dials and knobs, usually about four, and a rubber or plastic 'thumb
pad'.
The idea is to:
1. Place on the 'witness plate' something appropriate (eg: a photo of
the person you seek, grid reference of the place you wish to visit telepathically;
2. Put on the headband;
3. Turn the first dial, at the same time rubbing your thumb across the
'thumb pad' until your thumb 'sticks', and stop there. (Nothing can
prepare you for the first time your doesing rods swing across or twitch
of their own volition - likewise nothing can prepare you for the first
time your thimb 'sticks' ... but you'll know exactly when it happens
to you.;Repeat for the other dials/knobs;
4. Having set the dials, relas (with the aid of a mind lab if you like)
and visualise. One often successful trick is to imagine yourself outside
your own front door. See it in every detail. Imagine yourself floating
up. See over your roof and take in the view. Drift into bluesness and
then start to come down to earth ...
Now, what part does anything scientific play in all this? The answer
is, I suggest, 'not much'! Appearance seems more important - it should
look as if it works: for an individual of the late 20th or early 21st
century, science, electronic circuitary. knobs and dials, all serve
the same function as special robes, the right colours, music, gems and
incense play for the adept.
One of my sons is building a psionic back box with a more complete circuitary,
using crystal diodes, like a crystal radio set, and variable capacitors
- whether it works any better remains to be seen. Amongst the bigger
names in psionics is Charles W. Cosimano. Searching 'psionics' on the
Internet one runs across his name repeatedly. He wrote a specialised
book called 'The Psionic Magician's Gadget Pattern Book" in which
maintained that the circuitary is totally unimportant. He suggested
cutting Patterns from cardboard and covering the card with aluminium
cooking foil. Cosimano insisted that everything (except the magnets
on the headband) were just props, though the same proceedure had to
be followed in use as if the device 'worked' (in scientific terms.)
You will probably see a parellel here with magical working, where the
whole of an operation can be carried out inside the head of an adept
visualising each step.
The book Psychic Warrior by David Morehouse describes experiments in
psychic distant viewing run, he claims by the US Military and in which
he was personally involved. The book appeared on one of the book club
lists in the UK last year and the reader might be forgiven for thinking
it fiction, but for a CIA Press Release of September 1995, admitting
that such experiments took place. The September release played down
the importance of such tests, but one dated December 1995 came from
one of the remote viewers and gave rather more detail. This later press
release makes it clear that:
(a) Such experiments were successful to an un expectedly high degree
and;
(b) The ability is latent in most people, and;
(c) Most people can be trained to develop it.
This technique was said in the December 1995 Press Statement to be 'psychotronic'
and that the word is of Russian origin. Apparantly, psychic research
spending by the Soviets rose year on year throughout the late 1960s
and the 1970s, to the extent that CIA realised that the Soviets were
getting results. This was, don't forget, the height of the Cold War
and the CIA was worried. American research was first into what the Russians
were studying - Western Science was so sceptical about psi abilities
that the CIA was too saheepish to indulge in original research itself.
However, Soviet spending on psi skills rose from 60 million roubles
in 1970 to 300 million roubles by 1975 and the CIA began to panic. They
concluded that Russians must be getting results to invest such large
sums, and they seem to have feared ridicule less than the prospect of
being left behind. They initiated their own programme ... David Morehouse
was involved in this work.
The book Mind Trek is by Joseph McMoneagle, who was the US military's
foremost 'Remote Viewer' from the mid-1970s to his retirement in the
the late 1980s to continue his experimental work and to found an enterprise
remote viewing commercially. A 1980s edition of the book described his
participation in the Stanford Research Institute experimental programme
and how he learnt to do remote viewing. After the CIA programme ended,
the book was revised and described (as far as was possible without giving
away official secrets) the CIA programme and his part in it. One of
the more interesting claims he makes is that most of the elusive Scud
missiles hit during the Gulf War were found by remote viewers, not satellite
observations. The book does, incidentally, indicate a training methodology.
McMoneagle tries to distance himself from anything occult, to make his
experiences 'scientific' and to introduce a whole new vocabulary to
his work - but you would see some very traditional ideas behind his
words. A major theme in a paper of mine to Metropolitan Study Group
last year was that science (or at least the leading edge of it) is now
saying much the same as we Rosicrucians have always said about reality
and related issues. I suggest that much of psionics involves re-inventing
the wheel and giving it a new name for the new millenium. Psionics and
psychotronics appear to be describing different aspects of the same
thing. At the risk of upsetting techno-shamans, the CIA, the US military
and Joseph McMoneagle, all appear to cover the same ground as the adept
does in the practice of magick!
Another major tool in the psionic tool kit is the crystal healing rod.
You take a length of copper piping about 30 cm long, cap one end, stick
a quartz crystal in the other end, then wind a thin strip of leather
round it to insulate it, decorating to taste. This is the basic psionic
tool. Its builders and proponants claim variously that it was widely
used in Atlantis and that it is a psionic particle accelerator. The
rod is aimed at the place where healing is needed and the user visualises
a beam of white light projecting from it. The argument is that the 'machine'
is operated by the mind of the operator.
A techno-Shaman uses psionic tools, but functions in traditional shamanic
ways. If one is to take such writers as Carlos Castanada seriously,
some of the present day shamans use mind-altering drugs, as shamans
have traditionally done. Generally those used are the naturally occurring
ones, like the seed 'buttons' of the peyote cactus or 'magic mushrooms',
but the couple of people I know who use a shamanic approach appear to
do so without resort to drugs at all.
There is an overlap between Psionics and New Age 'religion', but the
borders are blurred. Some of the UFO interest groups use psionic devices,
but I find it difficult to take the written explanations of their interest
seriously. In general they have no point of contact with New Age Shaman,
who might well use crystals generally and the healing rod in particular,
channeling, drumming, dance, meditation and one of the New Age Tarots
or similar divinatory systems, like runes.
For many on the traditional path, the ritual robes, the Waite-Rider,
Golden Dawn or Hanson-Roberts Tarot Decks and the right incense, the
right images and guardians on the right path to the correct Sephira
with the appropriate God-Form ... these are the kind of correspondences
which tune the mind in to the objective, whatever that might be. I can
make some psionic tools work, but I tend naturally towards the established
path of the Western Mystery Tradition. For many others, brought up in
the shiny world of technology and computers, the need is for the electronic
gadgetry of the world they know, rather than what they see as medieava
superstition. Maybe it will work for them - the evidence of psychotronics
and the Stanford Research Institute and the CIA programme appears positive.
NOTES:
There are no direct quotes, but I have drawn from the followuing:
Crystal Warrior; Michael G. Smith & Lyn Westhrop; Llewellyn Publications,
St. Paul, Minn; 1992
Mind Trek - Exploring Consciousness, Time and Space Through Remote Viewing;
Joseph McMoneagle; Hampton Roads Publishing, Virginia; 1997
Press Release of Ingo Swann; 1 December 1995 (available on the Internet)
Psionic Magician's Gadget Pattern Book; Charles W. Cosimano; International
Guild of Advanced Sciences; California; 1994
Psychic Warrior; David Morehouse; Michael Joseph, London; 1996
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