One cat of mine, a wonderful black cat but for obvious flatus reasons named "Stinky", was hit on the head by a car. After the blow it raised itself up on its legs and, due to a ponderous electrical discharge, it jumped up as high as one meter above the asphalt and fell down dead.
Years ago I was by the death bed of a relative, hit by a stroke. She was for two days in apparent deep coma (although deep coma implies a flat EEC response; no electroencephalography was available in that hospital), however strong electrical discharges in the irremediable damaged brain caused her recurring violent convulsions which brought the dying person, in presumably irreversible coma, even to a sitting position and, with totally impaired muscular coordination, unbelievable facial expressions.
Back for a moment to my "electrified arms". For all that I know I can suppose that it might have been even sudden death, were it not that the violent - in itself possibly not far from lethal - blow on the head, right between ear and neck, resulting from the fall in the bath tub stopped or reversed the process. I will say a little more about personal electricity, but first let us give a cursory look at the brain's powerhouse.
A brain's neuron has a resting potential of -6 mv (millivolts)
which can raise to +6 mv due to muscular action, all in all a measurable
peak voltage of 12 mv across the dividing line if we look at this voltage's
display on an oscilloscope. We can think of it as a micro-condenser
or a micro-battery with a specific resonant frequency.
Since we have over one hundred billion neurons within our bony shrine,
suppose for a while that they are all quiet at their resting potential
so that we can say: "My brain, the whole of it, has a resting potential
of -6 mv" and that amounts to all but a remarkable electrical voltage.
Suppose that these one hundred billion neurons could be connected, one
by one from the first to the last, observing the right polarity as we
do with the batteries of our transistorized radio, in series, one after
the other like beads on a very long string: then we have one hundred
billion linked cells, it means one hundred billion multiplied by six
millivolts. If we measure the voltage at the two terminals of this indeed
long chain of neurons we get a reading of (100,000,000,000/1000x6) =
600 million volts! A voltage which can set up monstrous atomic reactions
in a cyclotron. A voltage high enough to enable us to be propelled in
sidereal space without a rocket and not even a space suit.
If on the other hand we connect these one hundred billion neurons in
a suitable series-parallel way and we feed the output to a large copper
coil wrapped around a suitable iron rod we can get an electromagnet
capable of pulling up of tons of iron. And all this energy is hidden
within a lump of about one and half pound of greyish-pink soft tissue!
Keeping up with our fantastical experimental work, now suppose that
this brain as a whole is in its normal physiological working condition
but, since every cell has a distinct resonant frequency, with some sort
of psychophysical exercise we can tune it to some preselected resonant
frequency of our choice so that it can, at will, interact with the environment's
resonant frequency with a predetermined aim and result. What then? Why
do we use phrases like:" in tune with the infinite", or, "I am not in
the right tune today" and so on?
 |
Together with my travel
companions I am hostage of the Afar's Rorom tribe, in the hottest
and one of the most desolate spots on the planet earth in the
heart of the African Rift Valley. We are by the lifeless Lake
Afrerà, a salty lake second only to the Dead Sea's depression,
with a small island in the middle - taboo for the region's inhabitants
- in the heart of Dankalia at 120 meters below sea level. The
lake is a beautiful azure with foamy white waters by the banks,
and it is fed by thermal waters which form hot pools (click
the picture to enlarge) under Dum palm trees. The Afar
are a fierce nomad population and survival in such an environment
easily turns them into ferocious predators; we won't be set
free unless the Rorom get food and medicines from us. |
| This place within a terribly barren wasteland of deserts, black lava and active volcanoes for me is an angle of paradise. It is December 1972 and this time it is not a dream or psychical perception. In the middle of the night, under a full moon I walk to one of those crystal clear pools gently carved into the rock by a hot spring. But I am not alone since two Afar, both armed with a rusty '91' Italian rifle which, I doubt, can hardly shoot, follow me and sit on the pool's opposite side. The Afar are mostly Moslem and animist and for some unknown impulses I recite, loudly in Arabic, the opening verse which appears in each (but one) suras of the Koran: "In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful". At this moment, in that most suggestive place under the moon, a strong but gentle current - hard to define - envelopes, completely, my whole being. In unison with the cosmos I feel transported to another world. The experience last a few seconds and cannot be aptly described. [1] About ten years go by and I enter in a small but beautiful church in Parma, Italy, just to visit it like the other people who are inside, mostly tourists. As soon as I cross the threshold the same current which I experienced by the Afrerà Lake envelopes me, but this time it is much more intense and, this time too, it lasts only a few seconds and, once more, I return to the world wondering at this marvelous phenomenon. While I tried, unsuccessfully for the time being, to willingly reproduce the recent 'turned around compass' experience, so far I have not tried to reproduce, with some sort of meditation exercise, this 'enveloping current' experience: why? Possibly because the only thing I am afraid of, as previously stated, is myself and I consider the risk involved into such an exercise in terms of not being ready to confront the experience. It could possibly be like forcing Kundalini Yoga [2] in my surviving cats, or Pho-Wa [3] (consciousness-transference yoga ) to a flatworm. Little do I doubt that we have tremendous untapped powers which can be released for good or for worst; this, however, does not mean that I blindly believe in a flying Padma Sambhava, [4] a flying Milarepa, [5] or other mythological and historical characters performing similar feats, while I might change my mind if I should ever succeed in levitating. We know that we use only about ten percent of our marvelous brain and the rest is unaccessible to us, we also know that tampering with psychical powers without a clear knowledge of what we are doing, i.e., releasing risky psychical processes which we cannot support, can be disastrous in terms of mental sanity. This means, by way of analogy, that if while driving a nail into the wall where to hung my best picture I hammer my finger I can still get the picture on the wall, while if I psycho-hammer my brain with some hazardous psychic experiment I risk loosing reliable pictures of - or, worst, from - the world around me. And if I look at these facts with in mind the concept of the electrical brain mentioned above, and my physio-electric experiences, little doubt remains that we can be demigods. Back to the brain's powerhouse, [6] very likely it is not the voltage distribution in the brain - besides all the biochemical exchange taking place all along - but the frequency is the important side of psychic experiences. The word frequency implies both undulating, or wavelike motion, and propagation into some medium, or in other words, some sort of vibration be it mechanical, or musical, or electromagnetic or others, known and unknown. In the case of psychic experiences we do no know what sort of vibrations are set in motion nor the relative frequency (even if voltage variations with a certain frequency - namely electrical frequency - can be observed with an electroencephalogram apparatus which records the brain's electrical activity) and hence the difficulty - since the objective plausibly is to get in tune with some sort of baffling cosmic tuning fork whereby, metaphorically, the sky opens and the light is perceived. It is just like tuning the radio to the desired transmitting station but with the brain we cannot, as a rule, freely achieve it. However this possibly is the source of all siddhis - or extraordinary powers which just a few gifted humans can willingly acquire. Obviously, these psychical powers won't come effortlessly and, surely, it is not really necessary, as most believe, to be an hermit in the Himalayan heights, or a self-flagellating fakir, or a trappist monk to achieve particular gifts which, all in all, belong to our nature. The hindrance is our materialistic civilization pushed to the extreme, the substitution of genuine human and religious values with that banknote-god which may appear hard to come but possibly very rewarding if it does since it can answer many of our prayers, the warmongering attitudes leading to pillage and destruction, the do unto others all that which you would not do unto yourself. NOTES [1] "There
can be no perception without a perceiver; and contemplatives
retain their selves enough to perceive as they rejoice."
Renée Haynes in Arthur Koestler's "The Roots of
Coincidence" - Richard Klay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd.,
Bungay, Suffolk - 1972. |
The
Bi-dimensional Being
Preface
Introductory
Chapter 1 •
The Mind
Chapter 2 •
The Image
Chapter 3 •
The Domain
Chapter 4 •
Rational and Irrational
Chapter 5 •
The Rational Being
Chapter 6 •
Symbols
Chapter 7 •
The Bi-dimensional Being
Chapter 8 •
Memories of the future
Who did it
1]
Man's necessity and longing for myths
2] Myth's
use of psyche and psyche's use of myth
3] The
Battle of the Titans
4] Do
we need a mind?
5] How
do we ?
