I N D E X
• A • B • C • D • E • F • G • H • I • J • K • L • M • N • O • P • Q • R • S • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z •
Return to GLOSSARY main page

CANDLES have cast light on human progress for centuries, but little is know about their origin. We do know that they were used as early as 3000 BC in Egypt, but it is the Romans who are credited with developing the wick candle to light home and places of worship at night.

For thousands of years candles have been used in burial ceremonies to dispel evil spirits and superstitions about candles abound - from ancient Egyptians using candles to interpret dreams to all of us asking for a wish to be granted when we blow out our birthday cake candles.

It is said that the seventeenth century treaty hunter Captain Kidd believed that carrying lanterns containing consecrated candles would conjure up the ghosts of the dead to help him in his quests. Meditation using candles is a very useful and easily accessible technique.

From an energetic point of view candles are lit and placed near the dead person in order to absorb the etheric energy that remains after death. This is the same process with flowers which are placed near the body in order to absorb energy which would link with those who are close and living - both, in essence, operate as a form of energetic boundary.

LEWIS CARROL 1832-1898 Lewis Carrol [real name Charles Dodgson] best remembered as the author of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' and 'What Alice Found There' was a celebrated poet, mathematician, logician, photographer and paranormal investigator. As one of the original members of the Society for Psychical Research, Carrol was interested in ghostly phenomenon. He was also fascinated by psi abilities such as telepathy and convinced that they would one day become accepted and valued by the scientific community. In a letter dated 4 December 1882, Carrol wrote on this subject to his friend James Langton Clark:

I have just read a small pamphlet, the first report of the Psychical Society on 'thought reading'. The evidence, which seems to have been most carefully taken, excludes the possibility that unconscious guidance by pressure will account for all the phenomena. All seems to point to the existence of a natural force, allied to electricity and nerve-force, by which brain can act on brain. I think we are close on the day when this shall be classed among the known natural forces, and its laws tabulated, and when the scientific skeptics, who always shut their eyes till the last moment to any evidence that seems to point beyond materialism, will have to accept it as a proved fact in nature.

EDGAR CAYCE 1877-1945 A psychic reader and ESP researcher who arguably did the most in the twentieth century to advance psychic knowledge. Born in rural Kentucky, Cayce was close to his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Cayce, who was said to be psychic. One day tragedy struck; Cayce witnessed the horrific death of his grandfather in an accident with a horse. After the accident, and encouraged by his mother and grandmother, the young Cayce claimed to visit his grandfathers spirit in the barns.

Cayce experienced other traumas in his youth. At 15 he was hit from behind by a baseball and began to feel dizzy. His father sent him to bed, and he entered into a hypnotic trance, telling his father exactly what needed to be done to make him better. Cayce recovered within a day, when he was in his early twenties he lost his voice. Helped by traveling hypnotist, Cayce again entered into a trance. While in the trance he was once again able to diagnose a cure. He coughed up some blood and his voice returned.

In 1901, Cayce started to give psychic readings to clients, and over the next 40 years he gave and recorded in writing over 12,000 readings on health, past lives, ancient mysteries and predictions of the future. These readings are still being studied today.

In 1933 Cayce and his supporters formed in Virginia Beach [where it still remains] the Association for Research and Enlightenment for the purpose of studying, researching and providing information about ESP, as well as life after death, dreams and holistic health. Three other programmes or organisations were also established around Cayce's work: a masters degree in transpersonal studies at Atlantic University, Virginia Beach, was set up in 1930: the Edgar Cayce Foundation, also at Virginia Beach, was set up in 1948 to provide custodial ownership of the Cayce readings and documents; and a diploma in preventive health care based on Cayce's readings was set up in 1986 at the Harold Reilly School of massotherapy.

Cayce was a remarkably gifted psychic with an incredible intellect. It is said that he could sleep on any book, paper or document and remember its contents when he awoke. He was able to use his psychic abilities in four ways: precognition, retrocognition, clairvoyance and telepathy. That is, he could see into the future and predict events to come; he could look into a persons past to find the origins of an existing health problem; he could se insides the human body and see through objects; and he was able to enter another persons mind to discover what they were thinking.

Called the 'Sleeping Prophet'. Cayce practised absent healing for several years, helping to cure people all over the world, even though he had no formal education and never went to medical school. Receiving a name and address, Cayce would enter a trance state and then read the persons condition and prescribe cures and treatments, which were, reportedly, 90 per cent accurate. His success was so great that thousands sought his help. Cayce's ability to diagnose accurately and name body parts astonished some medical experts, although others dismissed his readings on account of his lack of formal training.

In August 1944, with three to four years backlog of mail, Cayce collapsed with exhaustion. He was aware that doing more than two readings a day was too much for his body and mind, but over the years he had been so moved by the suffering of others that he was doing far in excess of this number. He retired to the mountains re recuperates, returning home in November 1944. On 1 January he told his friends he would find healing on the 5th, and they prepared for the worst. On 5 January, Cayce died peacefully at the age of 67.

Cayce spent much of his life trying to understand what he did when he entered a trance. He spoke about unknown civilizations where the soul could travel without the restriction of gravity and communicate through thought. He attributed poor health to harmful deeds in a past life, and many of his readings concerned karma and reincarnation. The chief difference between Cayce's suggested treatment and conventional medicine was that Cayce sought to heal the whole body by treating the causes rather than the symptoms of a patient's problem. The patient, however, needed to have faith and hope in the reading for it to work. Mind is the builder, Cayce would always say, and he firmly believed that the body responded to commands from the mind.

Cayce maintained that we all have psychic ability and that experiences such as dreams and intuition are proof of that. He also believed that if a person had good intentions and love in their heart they would have a steady supply of psychic power to tap into.

CHAKRAS Chakra is Sanskrit for 'wheel' and in Hindu and Buddhist yogic literature the charkas are through to be energy vortices, shaped like petals or spoked wheels that whirl at various speeds. They penetrate the body and the body's aura, and it is through that through them various energies, including the universal life force, are received and distributed throughout the person. You cannot see charkas physically, only psychically.

There are seven major charkas, which are most directly concerned with physical health, and hundreds of minor ones. The universal life force is thought to enter the aura through the chakra at the top of the head and filter down along the spinal column to other charkas. The higher the position on the spinal column the more complex the chakra.

Each chakra has its own colour and speed of rotation, and each is associated with a major endocrine gland, a major nerve system, a major physiological function and a psychic function. The charkas are connected to each other through thousands of channels of energy called nadis. Three of the most important nadis include the shushuma, which processes energy coming in, and the ida and ingala, which are concerned with the outflow of energy.

There isn't any accepted scientific and medical evidence that charkas exist, but recently they have begun to acknowledge in the West in alternative medicine. Clairvoyants say that they can diagnose the health of charkas by energy scans with the hands and that health problems often show up in charkas months or even years before they manifest in the body. When the charkas are balanced and healthy, their colours are clear and their rotation smooth, but in poor health they become cloudy and irregular in rotation. Blocked charkas are though to cause health problems, and in alternative healing therapies there are various techniques for clearing chakra blockages, including visualisation, colour therapy, acupuncture and energy healing.

CHANNELLING The process by which a medium communicates information from spirits and other non physical energy beings by entering a state of trance or some other altered state of consciousness. In primitive cultures communication with disincarnate beings by priests, shamans or medicine people is well documented. The ancient Egyptians and Romans as well as the early Chinese, Babylonians, Tibetans, Assyrians and Celts, all channelled spirits and entities and holy men and women of Judaism,, Christianity and Islam received divine guidance.

Divination and healing are forms of chanelling, and different mediums have different forms of chanelling. Sometimes it happens when the channeller falls into a sudden trance like state, or it can be induced. Methods to induce chanelling include meditation, prayer, hypnosis, fasting, chanting, dancing, breath exercises, sleep deprivation and taking hallucinogenic drugs.

Many psychics believe that channelling is a skill anyone can learn and that it shouldn't just be the preserve of professional mediums. It is important to remember that everyone will have a different experience of channelling and insights received may come in any number of different forms and it is up to the individual to translate and interpret in a balanced way.

CHANTING The frequent repetition of a word, phase or mantra as a part of meditation or a religious or magical rite. Some people believe that chanting is a way to achieve an altered state of consciousness so that psychic power or energy can be raised for the purpose of healing or energy ritual. Others believe helps them commune with the divine.

Chanting can be done alone or in a group. It can be accompanied by hand clapping, drumbeats, musical instruments or dancing. Sometimes chanting is a melodious; sometimes it is monotone.

In all major religions the most powerful chants are the names of God. In primitive tribal societies chanting was used to raise psychic energy and appease supernatural powers and bring blessings. It is thought that rhythmic chanting sends out waves of energy that help the priest or person who is coordinating this energy.

CHAOS THEORY A principle from quantum physics that suggests that chaos or lack of order does in fact obey particular laws or rules and only appears to be random. The theory was first brought to public attention with the butterfly effect discovered by Edward Lorenz in 1961 [a theory whereby the flapping of a butterfly's wings might, through a series of events involving climate and location, cause a storm on the other side of the globe]. The idea contradicts the traditional Newtonian principles of physics, which states that unseen effects can be predicted through precise measurements, as according to chaos theory even tiny errors can result in enormous unpredictability, far out of proportion to what would be expected mathematically. In a nutshell, what chaos theory means is that anything is capable of affecting anything else - a principal belief of new age and holistic thinking.

CHILDREN It is general through that psychic ability, often referred to as intuition or gut feeling, is natural in childhood, but as children get older they tend to lose that instinct and are taught to record psychic experiences as imagination and superstition. Children's minds can easily accept the existence of the nonphysical, but don't yet have boundaries of space and time and other models of perception that develop when they become adults. Their imagination is a reality to them, and they can see and comprehend things that adults no longer can do. They can cross the line into fantasy world that adults have long since forgotten and exist in altered state of reality that Edgar Cayce called unmanifest reality.

Anyone wanting to develop their psychic ability must start by returning to that childlike, dreamy state of mind where imaginary friends, gut instinct, make believe, fantasy, aware of the amazing world we live in and the endless possibilities of our inner world are natural and real to us.

There are those who believe children are our real teachers and that their first task on earth is to teach adults about aspects of life they are neglecting. It may be something as simple as unconditional love or as complicated as resolving complex situations from the past. Unfortunately, many adults ignore the demands and idle chatter of children and don't grasp this opportunity to get back in tune with themselves, missing a fabulous opportunity to lean and grow up again.

CIA STAR GATE PROGRAMME In 1972 the CIA, concerned by reports that the Soviet Union was dedicating substantial resources to what it called psychotronics - research into potential military applications of psychic and fringe science phenomena - began Project STAR GATE, a programme of psychic spying, or remove viewing. The project cost $20 million [£12 million] and last 23 years until the US military shut it down in September 1995.

The aim of the programme was to close the Cold War 'psychic warfare gap' and discover how serious a threat there was from Soviet psychotronics. Parapsychologists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ of the Stanford Research Institute were asked to look for repeatable psychic phenomena that might be useful to military intelligence. Working with psychic Ingo Swann, the duo developed what they called 'a perceptual channel across kilometer distances', in other words, the ability to witness objects, people and events at a distance: remote viewing.

Initially called SCANATE, meaning 'scan by coordinate', the project required the viewer to describe what they could see at map grid reference provided by the CIA. Early signs were encouraging, and the programme expanded. Also known as SUN STREAK, GRILL FLAME and, finally, STAR GATE, the programme was used to help many US military and intelligence-gathering operations over its 23 years. There were a few successes, but more than a few failures.

The team is said to have located Soviet weapons and technologies, such as a nuclear submarine in 1979, identified spies, helped find lost SCUD missiles in the first Gulf War and located plutonium in North Korea in 1994. All in all, more than 20 psychics were employed. With lives at stake, many of them found the work traumatic, some ending up in psychiatric hospitals.

The project was closed down in 1995, probably because the Defense Department lost confidence in it, but even today some psychics continue with police and government work; one assisted the FBI - clearly unsuccessfully - during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in late 2001.

CLAIRVOYANCE Parapsychologist consider clairvoyance to be one of the three classes of psychic perception or extrasensory perception [ESP] along with telepathy and precognition, although there is overlap among the three. The word clairvoyance comes from the French, meaning 'clear seeing', and refers to the power to see an event or an image in the past, present or future. This type of sight does not happen with your physical eyes, but with your inner eyes. A person with clairvoyant ability can receive information in the form of visual symbols or images. Some clairvoyants describe it as a bit like having a movie screen in your head with images moving across it. Other clairvoyants may see symbols that they learn to interpret.

Psychic visions typically appear internally, through the minds eye, and this is called subjective clairvoyance, but in rare cases they can also appear externally, in the environment around them as if they were real, and this is called objective clairvoyance. Many people think of the term 'inner eye, as a figure of speech, but the yogic tradition uses the term. According to Eastern tradition, the third eye or sixth chakra is the seat of clairvoyance. Located in the centre of the forehead, it is the screen that receives clairvoyance, whether in the form of visions or imagery. In mediumship, clairvoyance may account for the ability of mediums to provide unknown information at séances.
There are several different types of clairvoyance, including the ability to see auras [auric sight], to see into the past [retrocognition] or into the future [precognition]. Different states of clairvoyance also include the ability to see through objects [X-ray vision], the ability to see health conditions in other people or animals [body scanning], the ability to see things from far away [traveling clairvoyance], the ability to experience visions in dreams [cream clairvoyance], the ability to see things that transcend time and space [spatial clairvoyance], and the ability to see astral, etheric and spiritual or divine planes [astral and spiritual clairvoyance].

Throughout history clairvoyance has been used and cultivated by prophets, fortune-tellers, witches, and seers of all kinds. Some were gifted naturally with clairvoyance while others learned how to develop it through training. In the 1830s the first scientific experiment to study clairvoyance was conducted on psychic Adele Maginot, and impressive results were achieved. Tests for clairvoyance of concealed cards began in the 1870s with French physiologist Charles Richet, and Richets work has taken further in the 1930s by American parapsychologist J B Rhine. Rhine developed a special deck of symbol cards to conduct tests. In the years since considerable evidence has been accumulated to suggest that clairvoyance exists in both humans and animals although sceptics disagree.

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS The collective or universal unconscious was a concept developed by psychiatrist Carl Jun [1875-1961] and later supported by Joseph Campbell in his study of world mythology. It refers to the part of the mind that is 'inborn' or determined by heredity and that shares memories, mental patterns and images with all humans. Prior to Jung, the prevailing view of the unconscious had been that of Sigmund Freud, who believed that it was the product of repressed childhood traumas.

June affirmed that a personal unconscious of repressed or forgotten material existed but that the collective unconscious consisted of patterns of instinctual behaviour, called archetypes. The word archetype comes from the Greek arche, meaning first, and type meaning imprint or pattern. Psychological types are thus patterns that form the basic blueprint for human personality. For June archetypes pre-exist in the collective unconscious of humanity and determine how we both perceive ad behave. These patterns are inborn - part of our inheritance and psychological life as human beings. They are both inside us and outside us. We can meet them by turning inwards to our dreams or imagination, and by turning outwards to our myths, legends, literature and religions.

COLOURS Every colour is believed in addition to the wavelength a vibration to have its own energy at a non physical level and to have specific effects on different individuals. Seven colours in particular - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, the colours of the rainbow - have carried religious, mystical and healing meanings since ancient times.

Red, which has the longest wavelength, typically represents the physical and material, while violet, the shortest wavelength, represents spirituality and enlightment. White, the combination of all colours, is usually associated with divinity and purity, whilst black, the absence of all colours, is usually associated with evil but in reality provides protection and comfort, like the warm darkness of the summer night. Traditionally, the body is associated with red, the mind with yellow and the spirits with blue.

Healing with colour has a long traditional dating back to ancient times. However despite the fact that colour healing has been in use for centuries it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that it began to received attention in the West. In 1878 Edwin Babbit published 'The Principles of Light and Colour' reaffirming the Pythagorean correspondences of music, colour and sound and by so doing drew attention to the potential for colour healing.

Modern science is able to provide evidence for some of the ancient claims about colour. In the 1970's and 1980's it was shown that coloured light triggers biochemical reactions in the body. Later research confirmed that blues and greens have a soothing effect and help lower stress, brain wave activity and blood pressure. Warm colours such as orange and red have been shown to have stimulating effect. Pink has been shown to have a relaxing effect in the short term, although in the long term it can trigger irritability.

CONSCIOUSNESS A function of the mind, generally thought to incorporate qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment.

In popular language the term 'consciousness' denotes being awake and responsive to ones environment; this contrasts with being asleep or being in a coma. The term 'level' of consciousness' denotes how consciousness seems to vary during anesthesia and during various states of mind such as daydreaming; lucid dreaming; imagining, etc. Esoteric techniques such as meditation and path working and shamanic techniques such as chanting, rhythmic drumming or dancing, as well as experimental techniques such as sensory deprivation and narcotics to induce hallucination all involve altered state of consciousness. Non-consciousness exists when consciousness is not present. There is speculation, especially among religious groups as well as occultists, psychics and spiritualists that consciousness may exist after death or before birth.

Consciousness is notoriously difficult to define or locate. Many cultures and religious traditions place the seat of consciousness in soul, separate from the body. Conversely, many scientists and philosophers consider consciousness to be intimately linked to the neural functioning of the brain.

CREATIVE VISUALIZATION is the process by which the creation of a visual image is believed to promote the desired outcome.

Creative visualisation is built on the ancient belief in the power of the mind to create what you want in your life. If you think about what you'd like to achieve in your, you can do just that, as positive images and thoughts attract positive energy. Creative visualisation is widely used in business, sport, art, psychotherapy, psychic development, mystical and occult arts and personal self-development.

Imagination has powerful influence on self-image, and a poor self-image can often mean the difference between success and failure in life. Creative visualisation, which seems to be most effective when practised in a relaxed state, can be used to feed your mind positive images to create a better self-image and improve your personal experiences. For example, if you want to develop your psychic awareness, you need to image being psychic. If you want to pass an exam, you imagine yourself passing it. Those who practise visualisation say it's important to fill in all the details of your experience so that the image is as real to the mind as possible.

BILOCATION The appearance of a person or animal in two places at the same time. What exactly occurs in the phenomenon of bilocation is uncertain, but one theory is that a person's double or doppelganger is somehow projected elsewhere and becomes visible to others either in solid physical form or ghostly form. Generally the double remains silent or acts strangely. In folklore, biolocation sometimes presages or heralds the death of the individual seen.

Bilocation allegedly has been experienced and practiced at will by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, holy persons and magical adepts. Several Christian saints and monks were skilled at bilocation.

Reports of bilocation were collected in the nineteenth century by the pioneering psychical researcher Frederick Myers, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in England. Myers published his reports in 1903 in 'Human Personality and Its Survival after Bodily Death', but the phenomenon has received little interest in modern times.

BIOENERGETICS Like acupuncture and acupressure, assumes that existence of a universal life force that affects health and wellbeing, and a capacity for self-healing within everyone. It is a form of psychotherapy that involves a high degree of intuitive awareness on the part of the therapist, and patients have been known to report psychic experiences, such as episodes of clairvoyance, as a result.

Bioenergetics works with the physical, emotional and mental patterns of men and women to reduce emotional stress and help with the challenges of living. It is a way of understanding personality in terms of the body and its energetic processes.

According to bioenergetic theory, repressed emotions and desires affect the body by creating chronic muscle tension and loss of wellbeing and energy. The theory is based on the premise that there is no fundamental separation between the mind and the body: that psychological stress reflects and creates what is happening physically, and physical or somatic events both reflect and create mental and emotional state. Emotional stress from many areas - relationships, family crisis, jobs, health - produce tension in the body. Contractions in the muscular system are often the result of carrying unresolved emotional tension. These contractions can have a direct effect on the energy level of the individual, on the capacity for spontaneous and creative self-expression, and feelings of well-being.
Bioenergetic analysis seeks to bring about the conscious integration of mind and body. Therefore, the focus is on both the psychological issues presented and the manifestation of these issues as shown in the individual's body, energy and movement. Bodywork is combined with psychoanalysis of dreams and childhood experiences.

BIOFEEDBACK Is the measuring of vital bodily functions that are normally unconscious, such as breathing, brain wave rhythms, heart rate and blood pressure, through information provided by electronic devices. This information is then used to help control these processes. Biofeedback is a relatively new field, emerging only during the 1960s. Since that time biofeedback has been used in parapsychology for psi testing.

Originally biofeedback was applied to brain waves. Brain waves were the first discovered in 1924 by Hans Berger, but it wasn't until the 1950s that it was thought possible to control them at will - in 1958, researcher Joe Kamilya was able to help college students control their alpha brain waves. By the early 1970s the attention of researchers turned to how biofeedback could help one achieve altered state of consciousness, such as those achieved in meditation, and how in meditation bodily processes could be changed. Other experiments concentrated on training subjects to alter involuntary processes, such as blood pressure.

To monitor physiological processes, biofeedback electrodes, which look like stickers with wires attached to them, are placed on the clients skin. The client is then instructed to use relaxation, meditation or visualisation to bring about the desired response, whether it is muscle relaxation, a lowered heart rate or lower skin temperature. The biofeedback device reports progress by a change in the speed of beeps or flashes, or pitch or quality of the tome. The results of biofeedback are measured in the following ways:

• Skin temperature
• Electrical conductivity of the skin, called the galvanic skin response
• Muscle tension, with an electromyography [EMG]
• Heart rate, with an electromyography [EMG]
• Brain wave activity with an electroencephalograph [EEG]

Biofeedback demonstrates the connection between mind and body by teaching subjects to use thoughts and relaxation to control bodily processes, and as a result it is typically used as an alternative medicine technique to treat health problems ranging from stress related disorders to raised blood pressure, chronic pain, addiction and asthma. Biofeedback can also teach people how to increase their alpha brain waves. The alpha state is not necessary for psychic experience, but studies have shown it is conducive to it, since subjects who can slip easily into alpha states tend to score high in psi testing.

BLACK MAGIC The use of supernatural and psychic power for evil ends, the opposite of white magic, which is concerned with healing and promoting what is good.

The term 'black magic' has been used with a wide variety of meanings and evokes such a variety of reactions that it has become vague and almost meaningless. It is often synonymous with three other multivocal terms: witchcraft, the occult and sorcery. The only similarity among its various uses is that it refers to human efforts to manipulate the supernatural with negative intent and the selfish use of psychic power for personal gain. Workers of black magic are thought to have but one goal: to satisfy their own desires at whatever cost to others.

Magic, good or evil, is universal, with no ethnic or racial association, and it is unfortunate that not just in the Western civilisation but many cultures around the world, good and evil have for centuries been denoted as white and black. White often designates healing, truth, purity, light and positive energy, while black is darkness, falsehood, evil and negative energy.

In modern times probably the most popular synonym for black magic is the occult. Originally the term meant hidden, hence mysterious, and was routinely used by classical and medieval scholars to refer to 'sciences' such as astrology, alchemy and kabbalah but from the late nineteenth century when magical sects such as the Order of the Golden Dawn emerged, the term began to take on the meaning of evil or satanic. Perhaps best known occultist and black magic practitioner was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who dubbed himself the Antichrist. More than any other person Crowley gave the occult an evil connotation.

WILLIAM BLAKE 1757-1827 William Blake was a mystic, poet, artist and engraver whose visionary art was much misunderstood by his contemporaries. He published his first set of poems when he was 26, and six years later, in 1789, be printed the 'Songs of Innocence', which he also engraved and illustrated. In his forties he wrote his more symbolic epic poems, 'Milton and Jerusalem', and his best-known illustrations of the 'Book of Job and' Dante's 'Divine Comedy' were created in the last few years of his life.

Blake lived and died in relative poverty. He received little formal schooling, which makes his visionary interpretations of the Bible and the classics all the more remarkable. From a young age he experienced visions; when he was ten he told his father he had seen hosts of angels in a tree, and when his brother, Robert, died at the age of 20 he saw his soul ascend heavenward clapping its hands for joy. Throughout his life Blake drew his strength from the spirit world. He believed deeply in the human imagination - indeed, that it was the only reality - and he often spoke with apparitions, angels, devils and spirits that he drew and engraved in his work. His interest in the spirit world brought him into contact with many of the visionaries and writers of his time.

MADAME BLAVATSKY 1831-1891 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, daughter of Russian Aristocrats, was a key figure in the nineteenth century revival of occult and esoteric knowledge. A highly intelligent and energetic woman, she helped to spread Eastern philosophies and mystical ideas to the West and tried to give the study of the occult a scientific and public face.

Blavatsky became aware of her psychic ability at an early age. She travelled through the Middle East and Asia learning psychic and spiritual techniques from various teachers, and she said that it was in Tibet that she met the secret masters or adepts who sent her to carry their message to the world.

In 1873 Helena immigrated to New York, where she impressed everyone with he psychic feats of astral projection, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairsentience and clairaudience. Her powers were never tested scientifically, but her interest was always more in the laws and principles of the psychic world than psychic power itself. In 1874 Helena met and began a life long friendship with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer and journalist who coveted spiritual phenomena, and a year later they founded a society 'to collect and diffuse knowledge of the laws which govern the Universe.' They called this society the Theosophical Society, from theosophy, a Greek term meaning 'divine wisdom' or 'wisdom of the gods'.

Traveling to India, Blavatsky and Olcott established themselves at Adyar, near Madras, and a property they bought there eventually became the world head quarters of the society. They established a nucleus of the movement in Britain and founded no fewer than three Theosophical Societies in Paris.

Throughout her life Blavatsky's powers were dismissed as fraud and trickery, but this do not stop the Theosophical Society from finding a home among intellectuals and progressive thinkers of her day. The society was born at a time when spiritualism was popular and Darwin's theory of evolution was undermining the Church's teachings, so the Society's new thinking flourished. Many people appreciated the alternative it provided both to church and dogma and to a materialistic view of the world.

Blavatsky's two most important books are Isis 'Unveiled' and her magnum opus, 'The Secret Doctrine', published in 1888. She drew her teachings from many religious traditions: Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Platonic thought, Jewish Kabbalah and the occult and scientific knowledge of her time. Although they influenced many people, her books are extremely difficult to read. Nevertheless, her teachings were absorbed by many people and then simplified into a worldview that was taken up by many later New Age groups. This worldview includes a belief in seven planes of existence; the gradual evolution and perfecting of spiritual principles; the existence of nature spirits [divas] and belief in secret spiritual masters or adepts from the Himalayas, or from spiritual planes, who guide the evolution of humanity. All these beliefs are derived from Balvatsky's Theosophy.

BLOCKED ENERGY Energy is believed to be the basis of all matter, and psychics and alternative medicine practitioners believe that a field or energy, called an aura, surrounds your body and a flow of energy [chi] exists within it. If these energy forces are interrupted for some reason the energy becomes blocked and will not flow freely. Charkas are an essential part of this energy flow. If one or more of them is closed, then the energy is blocked at these points.

It is through that blocked energy which is not cleared can lead to serious consequences, affecting your mental, physical and spiritual health, and impeding your spiritual and psychic development.

BODY SCANNING The ability to look psychically into and around a human body in order to determine the person's health and state of mind. Body scanning can be experienced through any of the five senses.

A medical intuitive can psychically read a body and come up with a diagnosis in actual medical terms. Each intuitive works differently; for example, some read auras whiles others read energetically the insides [organs, blood, glands]. Intuited information can then be provide to the clients medical doctor and/or health care professional for further evaluation and discussion of possible treatments. Many medical intuitives work with, or are, medical doctors themselves.

BOOK TEST The book test is a way for the deceased to communicate with the living and provide evidence of their survival after death. It was developed in the early twentieth century by English medium Gladys Osbourne Leonard and her spirit control, Freda.

In the book test the deceased communicates through a medium and provides the title of a book not known to the medium. The deceased gives the books exact location and then specifies a page number, which is supposed to contain a message from the deceased. Leonard's book tests were very successful, and almost always the passage selected contained personal messages.

Paranormal factors may well figure in some books tests, but this does not necessarily imply that there is life after death, as book tests can be easily explained by the idea that the medium himself or herself is picking up psychic information. Another problem with book test as proof of life after death is that on almost any page of a given book some passage may be interpreted as a message.

BRAIN/BRAIN WAVES Although it is possible that psychic power is a bridge that connects your brain to a higher mental or spiritual force, some experts believe that psychic ability should be treated as another aspect of brain function. They regard psi as an additional sense that is somehow located in our brains, and believe that understanding psi can help explain how we perceive and process information.

One of the most amazing discoveries in medicine was made by Roger Sperry in the 1960s, who revealed that the right hemisphere of the brain, responsible for intuition and creativity, makes an equally valuable contribution as the left hemisphere of the brain, responsible for reason and logic and previously thought to reign supreme. Opinions differ on what part of the brain psi function exists in, but many believe that the ability to connect to intuitive information is housed in the right side of the brain and that for optimal brain function both the right and left sides of the brain need to work together.

Some scientists suggest as well that brain waves need to work together. Brain waves are electrical impulses our brains constantly release, and they are measured in hertz, or cycles per second. There are four major stages of brain wave activity, beginning with beta, the shortest and fastest waves, and moving through to delta, the strongest and slowest.

When the brain is emitting beta waves, the individual is active, awake and conscious, with his or her eyes open. Alpha brain waves operate just below waking consciousness, as state that is attained in meditation and relaxation. The average person can maintain awareness in this state. Typically, eyes are closed and the body is relaxed, but alpha waves are also produced during daydreaming with eyes open. The alpha state is not essential to achieve success in psi testing result, but studies show that it is conducive to psi. Theta brain waves are achieved during deep relaxation. The average person cannot maintain awareness in this state, but some mediators claim that they can. The final state, delta, is one of sleep or unconsciousness.

Some scientists maintain that the blending of all four brain waves create a brand new brain wave. Some followers of Eastern philosophy propose that the awakened mind, which occurs when a person is more aware of their spiritual existence, is a state that combines all four brain waves at once.

BURIAL RITES The idea of a journey to the afterlife is evident in every culture and ever age, and it has always been considered a duty of the living to set the dead on their path to the other world. In primitive times symbols were carried to rocks and implements and weapons were buried with the dead to help them in the next life. In Greece a gold coin was buried with the dead to pay the ferryman to take them across the River of Death. The Egyptians had the most elaborate burial rituals which lasted for days. Today the idea of a journey can still be said to exist when we lay flowers on graves to provide beauty and peace in the hope that the spirit will find it on the other side.

As well as preparations for the journey to the afterlife, the other important part of ancient burial rites was to make sure the spirit found peace and did not return to haunt the living. Some ancient cultures maintained contact with the dead, keeping artifacts of the deceased so that communication could take place with the help of a go-between. In many places in the world ancestral spirits and ancestor worship still play an important role and burial rites create a doorway from this world to the next.

Generally burial rites in the West have taken on the idea of paying respect to the person and his or her family and the ritual has become a way to say good-bye. It is an important time because, according to psychics, the bereaved need to let go of the spirit so it can go on its way, and the spirit needs to let go of the bereaved. Burial rites therefore still represent a bridge between physical life and spiritual life.

ONLINE DISCUSSION GROUPS
The General Discussion Group was created for people who have read, attended courses or worked with Steven and his colleagues. It is ALSO open to people who have not attended courses or read written resources and will encourage them in their personal as well as professional life. To explore and, if it appeals for you, join the general discussion group

The Professional Discussion Group . Some of Steven and his colleagues have created an online resource to support them in their work given that due to the nature of their international contacts the Internet offers an excellent way of easily keeping in contact and up to date. If you would like to explore and if it relates and will support your professional work

Subscribe to Stevenwarrenprofessionaldiscussiongroup
Powered by tech.groups.yahoo.com