OPEN MOUTH, OPEN MIND: AN IMPRESSIONISTIC ATTEMPT AT A TRANSPERSONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY PART 1. "ENERGIES" AND STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

T. R. SOIDLA

INSTITUTE OF CYTOLOGY ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

One cannot resist the temptation of seeing some order and even some lessons in one's life ("experiential background"). I can only hope that as a proto-scientific human being, partially naive and partially brainwashed in Marxist, Christian, and materialistic science waters, I can offer something of interest to my transpersonal colleagues-some vision born from no teacher, chaotic reading, and quite controversial aspirations. As I want to keep this paper as short as possible, I'll first relate some seemingly most important "core" stories. An attempt at theorizing will follow with some additional stories.

Story 1. Early morning in Stary Peterhof (a suburb of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg). Bright Sun makes a promise of heat, but it is still quite cool. I, bearded and with long hair in the best traditions of a young intellectual of the '60s, leave my home just to meet three personalities in a hopeless search for some alcohol (it is clearly too early for this by Soviet standards of these years). One of them raises his a bit reddish eyes to me, and finding hardly enough power to speak, nevertheless cannot help saying some words that sound almost unbearably tender, "You fucking ape, why are you here?" Something like this. It was much better in Russian (one can tell a lot of things better in Russian), but I beg you to believe the feeling of most compassionate, loving kindness, of almost superhuman tenderness. One can caress a fresh wound this way, possibly. Something like this would reduce Nietzsche to a young innocent schoolboy. Maybe something like this Omar Khayyam was able to communicate to his compatriots.

You can well guess the following. I tried to ape (sorry for this masochistic play of words) the message that was communicated to me. I understood the main role of the intonation: a kind of most sacrilegious loving kindness. I understood the people in the streets speaking exactly this seemingly nasty and wasteful way. Indeed, it seemingly gave the power to resist the almost unbearable pressure of life. I started applying it now and then, mostly outwardly silent (it worked this way also). And then, as if told by some ultimate authority, I stopped it. Everything was clear once more. Here was a kind of pay one had to give away for this kind of help. And I realized, that at least for me, the pay was unquestionably too high. And I stopped it. It is easy to label it an illusion of some kind, colored in Christian tones. Indeed I believe--or pretend-to be a Christian of a kind. I cannot be sure that all this is not an illusion, indeed, I feel quite ready to agree . . . one day. But here I would better like to be involved in a game of searching for some reality behind this "illusion," and for that I need a comparison with some more stories.

Story 2. Here I am to introduce a personality who is of much greater scale than myself, generally friendly, towering over my problems and ideas, and so even if this story is about something important, it is narrated from a Lilliputian point of view. To protect his privacy I'll denote him simply A.V. Anyway, forgive me, A.V., please! I'll begin! Maybe 20 years ago I was introduced to a young cabbalist who turned out to be two heads above my intellectual level, to say nothing about spiritual, where even an attempt of comparison would have been just ridiculous. Maybe most important was that at this time he had obviously also overgrown the limitations of Cabbala, but I would say some old powers were still present. In these old days A.V. ignored, in a most civilized and friendly manner, my silent and not fully conscious yearning to learn some esoteric ways. His attitude was curiously complemented by my own mixture of vulgarity, cowardliness, and deep reverence towards him and many of his close friends. (It is, of course, different now: some useful intellectual tricks and possibly also some acquired illusions have changed me to a point where it is just strange and exciting to recall the memory of a provincial youngster entering an elaborately ritualized world of the former Russian capital inhabited by young proud intellectuals and most civilized cranks.) But in these days I spent many evenings in a small company around A.V. On the social and most tangible level He was brimming with various teaching stories. What is important here is that I just could not help imitating Him in many minute details, sometimes even forgetting the obvious hazard of being caught as a plagiarist. I do not know why, but some few seemingly not so important things I could not resist attempting to copy. There was something special in them. One such thing was a very special laughter of His. Even more specifically—there was one very special tone in his most civilized paroxysms of impersonal almost cosmic intellectual superiority I just could not resist trying to apply towards some younger friends of mine. It worked! And how! I was ready for a small successful intellectual theft. But what really happened was that I was converted to a channel of a cold unearthly intellectual wind that not only almost effortlessly pierced any problem, but was also beautiful as a work of great art. Left for me was just to keep the right tone and to collect some emotional (most pleasant) tax for the channeling. And then I understood once more: I am to stop it. It was much more difficult than in my first story and sometimes I still feel myself if not exactly using this channel then bathing intellectually in some seemingly more innocent (and still quite powerful) side currents of this intellectual presence. And once more I must insist—the truth about this story must really be something different than what our poor words "illusion" or "presence" or "energy" or "channeling" (one is tempted to use with a story like this) would allow to express.

Of course, A.V. I can consider in this story as a "superpsychocatalyst" (forgive the most ugly word, please), who did not even change as a result of the above story (that is typical for catalysts), and certainly does not bear any responsibility for anything that happened to me.

Story 3. Here I must confess (and this can sound most suspicious) that I have really forgotten most of the prototype story of this last one of my core material. What has remained in memory looks not too reliably like a kind of composite portrait by Galton at best (see Sheldrake, 1987). At the same time I have a definite feeling (or is it an illusion) that most readers have some experience with stories like this. So, let's try the reconstruction. I was twice or so in a situation in my former marriage where a lot depended on only one sentence or so, of something very simple and . . . seemingly impossible to do. My one sentence could make it all right, but it meant to admit openly something I could not confess even to myself, or so it seemed. Maybe what was needed even felt like a kind of coming Ego death (or is one allowed to make a joke about a foretaste of Ego fainting?). Excuse me, I really do not know, there are situations when the right thing to do means making a most "counter-realistic" step forward-through an invisible but impenetrable barrier. And then--I do not know how--indeed it happened that I told what was needed of me and then everything was converted to a pure celebration of heavenly cool happiness and peace. I had suffered, I had died, but I was resurrected now. As a result everything was O.K. (but it had looked so hopeless—my incapacity to cope with the situation had been so obvious). In a way I was in a situation of Ultimate Creativity. (Warning! I seem to have gotten trapped in rhetoric.) But some cold water is to follow. It is so easy, so soothing to tell this story that I would like to repeat it again and again. But I really cannot, at least I have never managed to do it once more in my real life during all the years after the last one of these stories. Maybe I stop at the barrier of ego damage. Possibly my psychological "satellite service" helps me to keep far away from most situations of this kind. I guess there are other instant emergency strategies saving me (as a comic strip hero) from being really involved. So my last story carries certainly some marks of a Liar's story, yet I ask you to believe it.

Some analysis at the face level. Hesitation, some insights, a general confusion. At first level this is just once more a story of trapping "cosmic" energies in a real life situation. Something for a small exchange with my subculture partners on a level of some group work ... or a short letter to a (quasi) mystical newspaper. Is there anything really worthy of discussion in these experiences of mine? Of course, any experience with "subtle energies" one can just label "neurotic" and this would be the very end of the story. But one can suppose that most valuable facts for a tomorrow's science lie in today's science waste-basket. Let's suppose that energies are just energies. Then, consulting, for example, a paper by Green and Green (1971), it is easy to see that the energy level of the dirty talk story described here most likely corresponds to the etheric or astral levels of esoteric metaphysical systems. The seemingly disgusting aftereffects and the very stylistic feeling of dirty talk seem to point to a lower astral (emotional) level. There are many lines of thinking about why lower astral is not the best realm for a permanent contact. I would rather not subscribe to any concrete explanation: my experience seemingly involves too few details to allow much speculation (but also see below some additional material about the "third eye" training and obviously much higher intensities of energy flow that resulted in some more dramatic developments). What is possibly not so trivial is the seeming contact with energies using "feeling-tone" (Gray, 1979; LaViolette, 1979) that seems quite naturally to mark some "source" that is "feeding" (sustaining) the particular type of real life situation. Following this tone seems to allow to tap this source, the "well-spring" of this energy. One feels also tempted to create a catalogue of such patterns (of real life "type" situations). We still do not have a science of description of human life as a succession of a limited number of "patterns" that would be most helpful, for example, for discussing human dimensions of all the ill-defined changes of life-style we are supposedly to undergo in future and related problems. What we need seems to be a kind of modern variety of the Chinese "Book of Changes" (I Ching), Maybe the controversial perceived energies and their aftereffects can be of some help in creating such a "periodical system"? Would not such an energy-based classification be more predictive in discussing our future? My rather limited experience discussed in this paper seems to say that this is possibly worth trying.

About the other stories of my "starting material," they possibly promise more sense (or anyway better reading) in Christian fundamentalist coordinates. (Maybe saying this I am playing some rhetorical games once more.) Anyway, I start again with Green and Green (1971). Let's take things once more at their face value and then my flow of seemingly mental energy seems to be fed from a source at the mental or even at the causal or intuitional level, from a region where personal and transpersonal meet: maybe from the Lotus part, but what I really felt was a cold cosmic breeze . . . to speak a bit too metaphorically perhaps-blowing around some (psychical) bridge (adding more and more metaphors—or are these terms I am just not quite at home with 7—some concepts like black Lotus, pseudo-Nirvana, etc., seem to be in some way connected with this experience). Here I certainly must also refer to a kind of fundamentalist interpretation. In this black/white world view (maybe it is the right world view, I don't know!), I was seemingly involved in a contact with a demonic intellect (which possibly means that this phenomenon was well known to the humanitarian culture of the "Dark" ages. These ages seem to have been so productive in creating fundamentalist texts . . . maybe being more sensitive to the dualistic dimension of our existence . . . but cannot one also refer to traditions, social institutions, and intellectual market values?). And once more, below, I'll relate some more stories with visualizations and higher energetic levels telling about both some more dreams and feelings of mine connected with A.V., and about a visualization almost unquestionably related to the traditional demonic realm and of transmutations between positive and negative energy that convinced W. Blake and confused me. I'll leave it to you to make your conclusions.

The third story is of course to be interpreted as occurring on the higher, transpersonal levels of Green and Green (1971). I have a feeling that the third story possibly gains more depth in a theoretical (maybe heretical) framework centered around the word LOGOS. Indeed, around the concept of Logos are grouped concepts of ultimate suffering, death, resurrection, ultimate creativity and the Quest for Holy Spirit. Heretical can seem indeed the concept of having a glimpse of this complex by a lay person, but maybe it is just a question of finding a terminology both exact and humble enough. At least my own eclectic metaphysical belief system, together with some very deeply rooted "spiritual instincts," suggest "simply" to abandon the levels of the first two stories and to follow a compass of the energies of the third story. There is possibly nothing wrong with the lower (but unique?) levels, at least healing in Russian folk tales needs not only the highest healing principle: "the water of life." It always starts at a lower level. "The dead water" and a magical formula are to be applied first and only then the water of life can be used. A (w)holistic attitude, indeed. But it is possibly also true, that one cannot just pour more and more tea; one must also empty one's cup, as a Zen story tells us. Anyway, maybe one would be justified to summarize that the energies of my three stories seem to circulate at (and possibly stabilize) the astral-emotional ("dead water," the principle of FORM), mental-causal ("magical formula"), and above causal ("water of life") levels of reality as described in the traditional esoteric metaphysical systems.

I would like to suppose that these levels are made explicit by stabilizing corresponding types of real life situations (behavioral patterns). I have speculated on memory as a result of editing some inherited proto-human life story (Soidla, 1992, 1993a, 1993b). In terms of this hypothesis, the perceived energies of stabilization of these behavioral patterns (life situations) are related to mechanisms of creating different classes of high abstraction level associative memory engrams. We perceive energies when our memory recording mechanism feels it worth to record (to repeat recording) something in our high hierarchical level associative memory engrams. Such engrams are according to my hypothesis themselves active in further memory recording. What we have done with our life (what we have attained) yesterday determines what we'll see (what we'll record in our memory) tomorrow. We perceive as energy something that determines the world that is "waiting for us." I would even suppose that the state of high abstraction level associative memory engrams change (pre-edit) the inherited human life story, donating (excising) certain repetitive patterns—so easy to do according to the biochemical bases of editing-like processes (Soidla, 1993a, 1993b). This creates some almost imperceptible (but incessant) pressure to live through special kinds of situations, a feeling of changing the patterns, the "meaningful coincidences flow" in one's life. We 'II see below some illustrations/or this possibility. Anyway, my main point here is simply that the energy levels of traditional metaphysical systems (rather than being pure theoretical constructions) seem to be easily contacted in real-life situations and to be able to serve as useful guides for handling some practical everyday psychological problems. I propose my three stories to mark three major levels of this kind.

Some More Stories. How to start bad trips in the "lower astral." Conversion of energies. Two initiations in dreams (cunning energies and a half-forgotten exchange in a "secret" room of a Spanish style Church). Just sitting. A midsummer Nightmare. "Quite Holy." she told me. "You have never been a good man. except . . . ." The "currency exchange" with everyday life. Many systems of inner cartography are available to organize one's "occult" and mystical experience, constituting a challenge for the self-made-psychic who is never quite ready to subscribe to any tailor-made system (at least without some independent personal confirmation).

Is there really an astral world lurking for us (say, somewhere behind the etheric delights)? I am not quite sure about occult topography, but with some horrific experience of this kind I had indeed to make acquaintance with. I tried a certain technique to develop my "third eye" (Sakharov, 1993) based on a concentration on an imaginary line between the pineal gland and a point between one's eyebrows. (I was also involved in some other equally "esoteric" activities so this is by no means anything like an experiment, when one is aware of what is kept constant and what really varies.) The first signs of some success were dreams with intensified color, then geometrical figures entered, and then I began to have some difficulty leaving the special fluorescent image-laden states even being awake. Instead of the innocent geometry I started with, now pseudobiological forms emerged with typical surrealistic distortions and dizzying ways of mimicking biological movement. I learned several things: first and maybe most important among them was that upward direction is indeed quite special and leads away from the most "hellish" complex of feelings. So it occurred to me that the upward and downward directions ascribed to metaphysical "heaven" and "hell" (or the spatial component of the technical term "lower astral") correspond indeed to some realities--at least to the ones of our psychical space and that this knowledge must be considered most important--and practical. I did not like this experience (happily I succeeded a bit in taming the most exotic antics of this "level").

I was scared and impressed by a coincidence of some especially malicious imagery of this kind with a real serious epileptic fit of my son one night. For me the feeling of being in the lower astral level seemed to be only too real during this story. Alas, I cannot report any evidence in favor of the dirty talk images energy in my first story being related to the same level. Maybe I can count as a connection some feeling of pure stylistic ties between the dirty talk imagery and quite direct experience of the "realities" of the lower astral level. Maybe, they are different, but close levels? Remember old fashioned Science Fiction and the idea about an electromagnetic "echo" between neighbor coils of magnetic tape of one's fate prerecording? Maybe we would do better to subscribe to something like this? Who knows? ... but let's (for the sake of consistency, at least) follow the main line of argumentation of this treatise. What was most important for me practically (but also created a source of some philosophical doubts), was learning to transmute negative energy to positive energy. After some time, when hypnagogic and hypnopompic lower astral imagery grew just maddening, I got the necessary help from a paper by Crampton (1974). I learned just to cease resisting and to assume a friendly, accepting feeling towards everything that was to happen. As a result, the maddening xenophobic feelings and imagery (N.B.! UFOlogists!) changed to a celestial scene of abstract cosmic beauty. (Circular opening to a cloudless deep blue sky (?) with no "fish-eye" distortions, with a fence of bright-colored a bit Mondrian-style rods.) W. Blake (1964) confronting the same phenomenon in his famous "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" changed the hair-raising view of the Leviathan to a rather bucolic scene and came to the conclusion that everything depends on one's point of view and that the Hell is not so bad a place at all. (In a way this is, of course, an oversimplification of Blake's powerful metaphysics. Obviously I express a bit different—more "Blakean"-view of the problem in my own molecular model at the very end of this paper.) Here I just want to confess a great difficulty in accepting a world-view with hierarchies of negative energies.

With some feeling of confusion, I would suppose that the apparent "negative energy" is just an excess of energy plus a painful block for the energy flow. Then my experience of "transmuting the energies" shows nothing else than freeing oneself from the fears (and clinging) of ego and as a result-removing the block. This unblocking is experienced as "tunneling" to the apparent positive (or "upper") realm of energies with a feeling of having reached our natural "home" (no wonder, one has experienced an ultimate relaxation, as a reductionist in me intervenes). Any colorful details show one's ability to simulate a world (or is something like collective unconscious [Great Mind, Consciousness unlimited] really involved ... or reached?). I am ready to admit that possibly my experience is not so easily explained by the standard Seven or so Levels Model (SLM), but (maybe being scared by too radical alternative possibilities of hierarchies of energies with different signs [charms, colors], or of trans-personal blocks for energy flow) I prefer to tolerate some contradictions and to remain at least in this paper in the realm of SLM as discussed by Green and Green (1971). You have possibly noticed, that with me it is a heavily Christianized SLM.

Now I'll add some more material relevant to the second story. Some literature popular in the early '60s resulted in my subconscious expectations towards A.V. as a Magus figure, so, no wonder, one night I dreamed about a spirit tamed by A.V. and used in various household tasks. In the dream A.V. told me the necessary magical words (quite like in a typical fairy tale, or a Gothic story) to become a master of the spirit. There was some break in time, then I found myself alone, tried the words, and lo, I was the master. But an absolutely unexpected thing for me was that the mastery was not. something abstractly or mechanically connected to me; it was my state, a state of very high energy, brimming with potentiality for performing anything. The feeling of capability for unusual feats was not external for me; it was an inseparable part of myself But at the same time the energy had an intellect of its own and almost the first thing it performed was to tell me some words to summon a much more powerful spirit. I uttered the words and then at the very same moment a surge of tremendous energy shot through me—meeting no resistance and leaving a feeling of partial amnesia, physical signs of ejaculation, and as an afterthought--a shameful feeling that I am not ready yet for real magic. I must stress here, that almost everything I learned this night was new for me, starting with the very feeling of high energies and especially their intimate connection both with me and at the same time with some separate intelligent (cunning) entities.

The other story I want to relate here has almost faded in my memory leaving just some bleak images and at the same time some insistent feeling of importance. A.V. was not personally present, but the story seemed to be one way or another connected with him. I had a feeling of being present in a some way secret room of a Spanish style church (?) that seemed to be not quite unknown to me. An old man clothed in a way that I was not able to classify (it seemed not to be anything like the usual clothes of the clergy, rather of a kind of an ancient Master-in a quite prosaic sense) was sitting on a bench facing me. There seemed to be nothing forceful and fierce in his behavior; he was speaking with me (in not too many words, possibly) and performing a ritual of some kind I also did not understand but felt to be in a way-decisive. It seemed that I was neither elated nor scared. But the memory of this seemingly not too significant dream kept returning and returning to me. I never discussed anything about these experiences with A.V. I still prefer to think of him as a superpsychocatalyst, who was not even aware of these events, that, nevertheless, most likely had some connection with Him. But, of course, this is a kind of most unscientific, non-falsifiable speaking. By the way, later I learned, by a chance (?) experience, that sitting in half-lotus position (I have never been able to reach full-lotus) enables one to contain considerable energy. But most natural for this state turned out to be "just sitting." (These words I learned a bit later and they immediately made sense to me.) To return to the dream stories, what looks quite silly is that I cannot answer the question whether or not I am initiated into any esoteric tradition. One more "initiatory" story. During some years when I was having pen contacts with followers of Dr. G. Bennett, a large hairy bee once hit my lips, doing no harm. This was a synchronicity (these days I was thinking of Beelzebub as the Lord of the Bees, and afraid of my own metaphor), and very powerful as an experience: I was most scared and at the same time exhilarated. For several months if not longer I was living in a new world colored by this experience. Maybe one can introduce the expression "seed initiation" for experiences of this kind that with favorable conditions would have grown into something most valuable.

Earlier I suggested a concept of demonic intellectual energy in the context of my second story and even a most fundamentalist "diabolic" was certainly assumed. My experiential background does not enable me to be quite definite in this point, but I have some more stories to tell, that indeed seem to point towards the extremely negative metaphysical pole. At least my visualizations of some forces were so special--at least psychologically--as indeed to deserve this ancient label, or, to put it another way, as never to be mistaken for anything else. But of course, seeing both with our physical eyes or, say, with "eyes on some next levels" (according to the hierarchy by Green and Green), one is hardly to dare to claim of seeing directly, at least in the well-known Biblical sense. To say it still another way: our ability to be misled by all kinds of illusions, on any levels, seems to be unquestionably limitless.

With all these reservations, a report of an encounter "with forces of evil" near summer Solstice follows. It was certainly a magical point to the North from St. Petersburg. I was already happy with some control over third eye functions in these days. The story took place during a very special day and night: messages of Nature seemed to keep passing us—a quickly swimming serpent, as if carrying out a special mission, and sea gulls that started circling over a cloud of mist at the water-mill after midnight. In a special place-two trees growing together--I hoped to see, using my recent abilities, something romantic. What I really saw this midnight was something of rural lore, dizzying monstrous creatures, maybe very ancient peasant culture "astral companions," something extraordinary even when compared with my previous "lower astral" experience . . . and as if this was not enough, in a way there was a "bottom" of my strangely "many-layered" view and in this bottom something absolutely 2-dimensional was in a constant movement that felt much worse than all the "ancient rural" monstrosity. The feeling of a very special panic, close to vomiting, and the most real experience of a 2-dimensional state of something that unquestionably felt like an extreme form of evil are still most alive in my memory. (Before this experience anything like this was only an abstract idea, a strange mental construction for me.) This memorable night, repeating and repeating the Jesus prayer (a most helpful remedy one must not hesitate to use in the case of a "metaphysical" danger), very slowly restored me to our consensus world. There is one more thing about this story, a physical after-effect (maybe an illusion, in fact a story of miraculous saving of my life) that I am possibly to relate in a different place discussing a possible connection between states of consciousness (energy states) and a concept of "coincidences flow intensity," that I'll introduce in the last part of this paper.

Now some brighter stories follow that comment on my third story. I want to tell about the very special feeling after overcoming all the limitations ... at least for a short time this was something very special. First glimpse of this world was provided by a woman who passed from yoga through occult to orthodox Christianity. It is a story from her "occult period." When holding her hands near an old orthodox Christian Icon she said: "Quite Holy, indeed." This sacrilegious expression had a reality behind it and I discovered afterwards that this feeling like a cool stream, as if a life-restoring slight cool wind around an old Icon, and the feeling after overcoming one's ego (when it is done the "right way," with a right purpose?)--are very closely related if not the same.

My own story is a bit longer, but I'll attempt to be as concise as possible. With several young men we were playing fortune telling, maybe just (alas!) having a good time with a Bible. Texts that fell to other people were more or less normal, but for me only very harsh expressions followed one another. Young men looked to each other with some surprise, nothing more, but I felt that I had been waiting for this moment all my life and that by now my world, in a way, had collapsed. This was the end. This was the Final Judgment. When other people turned to other activities I quite mechanically, so I felt, took an old Icon, that was brought by a young man, who started the game. I had a feeling that my inside in a way does not exist, that I am an absolutely hollow man (hopelessly hollow). And then a very cool life-providing current started passing me, from the Icon, through my hands holding it—like a current of Water of Life in fairy tales (and like the stream of energy resulting from overcoming ego resistances, or was this correspondence an illusion created by my concepts ?).... No hope emerged, but I was just sitting and sitting with no thoughts and the current just passed and passed through me. I returned to my home afterwards and I cannot remember any special" reactions of mine towards my family. My son is epileptic with very serious mental retardation. I talked with him, played a bit, but I don't remember doing anything special for him. A lot of time passed. And then, during a serious quarrel, my (former) spouse told me: "To tell You the truth you are a very bad human being, only once in your life have you been good ..." and she named the day I am writing about here. (Her information about all the story was minimal.) A quarrel possibly sometimes can help one to spot an ultimate truth. And I understood that to be really good one needs to do nothing, that it is the quality of being that makes the difference, and at the same time, that two different cases of doing nothing special can be as different as heaven and hell.

Alas, I have lost almost all the positive results of the above stories. The first way to lose the fruits of one's "right deeds" to use a Christianized expression from Buddhism is so simple, so trivial, so fantastic (and so ridiculous). We trade our spiritual achievements, "giving away" some spiritual potential of ours to get rid of some real trouble or even for small comfort. (It is easier than to give away a small coin.) I, for example, was very seldom able to resist a chance "to stop" a bus so as to be the first one to enter. Quite often I seemed to succeed and certainly from event to event, step-by-step (a small coin after small coin) I gave something valuable away. At least this way it is recorded in my memory. (In most cases I am not able to do it any more-no more "coins". . . or am I now less neurotic (psychotic?), or simply try too hard now?) Of course, you must know Leningrad's public transportation (and preferably also to be able to believe some obvious crap) to understand me fully ... (I would be most happy if this all would turn out to be nonsense, indeed!). But, illusion or not (almost certainly in a "physical sense" it is), it certainly speaks of a process of some kind of loss of my "spiritual attainment," as recorded in my memory. And also, there are stories made of seemingly weightless material of coincidences, but they seem to measure your spiritual growth . . . they put you on trial and after more and more stories of the same kind you can only give up (as I did). Indeed, there seems to be a kind of spiritual law of conservation. (See works of Paracelsus for some magical laws of conservation to understand the variety once felt commonplace.) But this is possibly a theme of a separate treatise. In the next two papers of this series (Soidla, 1995a, Soidla, 1995b) I'll attempt telling of what has still remained with me. This is a rather different kind of story.

Returning to theory. Are we to take energy out of the concept of energies? The laws that (possibly) shape our lives (nuovo cemento). Intensity of coincidences flow. Heaven and Hell Revisited. They belong to large non-local systems of membership. Stable and unstable "molecular antennae." An attempt to name some reasonable numbers. What one is to get ready before one's Death (and almost never succeeds). There are serious doubts about the metaphor of energy in all the above speculations. I think that Professor Zbigniev Wolkowski from The University of Paris VII was the first personality to shatter my naive belief about the psychical energies as quite related to our concepts of physical energy. (He certainly bears no responsibility for the ideas presented in this paper of mine.) Alas, it is rather difficult to formulate any positive concepts in this proto if not pseudoscientific (Soidla, 1993a) field. My personal working hypothesis is that what we feel as different energies within our body has something to do with a (seeming) potential (or intensity) of flow of coincidences, maybe with a "master-of-coincidences"—a formative force {or a family of formative forces) that shape our lives (if not to use the old-fashioned word fate). One can suppose that this is something that as a rule (at low intensities?) seems not to interfere with the stochastic "normal science" world-devoid of any "meanings "-where it is reasonable to suppose that A and В meet, and С sinks on the "Titanic," by chance only. I would like to name this formative force as "nuovo cemento," but I do know that specialists in physics do not like this kind of joke. (Anyway, I already noted that certainly we have no science of objective description of patterns of human life story even to attempt a serious study of these kinds of synchronicities, illusions, self-fulfilling prophecies, or what?) But there is the powerful metaphor of our nervous system! (Don't we have an intuition that the "implicate order" of our reality is some way nervous-system-like?) We have, or at least can develop, some feedback of neuron firing, including the will-driven one, when individual neuron firings are quite obviously no more independent. For a short period the world of neuron firing is no more stochastic! It can be so even in the absence of any physical activity! (Of course, different groups of neurons can provide quite different kind of feelings one can learn to recognize.) As in a human body, in a world with will and love and prayer and meditation, there are periods when in the background of stochastic combinations of events some special, meaningful, at least for a given personality, obviously more than just stochastic coincidences turn out to be possible. (I know the human power to perceive some kind of apparent order in a quite stochastic field, to read some kind of post-factum order into one's data. I have caught myself in these kinds of mistakes when working in my field of science. We are so used to taking the stochastic hypothesis when the system looks too complicated (and seemingly not worth) to be analyzed, like a human life story. Do You remember the words : "Mere coincidences ? Maybe. But I do know, that when I pray they do occur, and when I don't—it seems they don't." (Sorry, I forgot the source.) Certainly, some more people than the author of these words can subscribe to this illusion. A mere illusion? Maybe all this is worth a second look?)

Is one allowed to suppose that different "planes" like astral, mental, causal, etc., have some reality behind them—and some forces (of a psycho-physical world) stabilizing these "planes"? Maybe building special associative memory engrams by different repetitive patterns of our behavior we build our "bodies" for action in these abstract realms. Can it be so that our "fate," our remembrance of future things, our unedited memory, is in fact pre-edited by our high abstraction level associative memory engrams? Then "coincidences" are real bits of new patterns of our recently rewritten new chapters of life story and this rewriting function for more or less distant times to come is a kind of creator of our "karma." This means that some generalizations of our actions are possibly quite literally written down in our associative memory creating a weak but stable (never ceasing) pressure (almost?) inevitably influencing our future actions (life situations that we are likely to confront). Can these "seeds" of our karma, the simple repetitive structure memory engrams even communicate through the spatial and temporal borders (Soidla, 1993с)? Is one allowed to suppose a dualism of memory and consciousness mirroring causal connections so that compulsive (vicious) circles of consciousness created by one's actions are crystallized to memory creating new circles of consciousness to create new memories ? Are there even some extra possibilities of connection between the spatial "cells" of our Universe (say, Quarks) so that they can behave like neurons in some cases that our organism can understand? Do there exist the rules of morphic resonance brilliantly defended by R. Sheldrake (1987) ? I don't know! (Illegitimate questions, irresponsible answers . . . returning and returning.) And still I am rather sure that we have some extra-corporeal substitute for neuron firing pattern biofeedback working both locally and in non-local ensembles. Maybe it is some sensitivity to any aspects of nearby molecular interaction patterns, for lower level "psychical fields"; possibly we can speak of "feeling tone guides" connecting us with these patterns (Gray, 1979; LaViolette, 1979). Maybe it would be useful to speak of the STYLE of our invisible non-local ensemble. (We do know how sensitive we are to the style and mode aspects of social life on a common level!) . . . . N.B.! The above does not necessarily have anything to do with a capacity to perform any gross physical actions. It can be just an ability to make quiet and peaceful some region around a body, to participate in a surge of love and ecstasy at Christmas, etc. . . .1 might add, that quite traditionally "lower" energies are considered not to be limited by a physical body, but nevertheless, to be mostly local, of a form of "sheaths." Starting with the really transpersonal levels, "the energy fields" obtain the possibility to operate with non-local ensembles. Starting with this level we are not the sole operators of these forces, rather voices in a Chorus. According to a most popular belief, indeed, all of us belong to one of the non-local bodies of collective action. (Maybe one would prefer another word, say, system.) Membership in these bodies of a psycho-physical world is determined by our behavior: by our free will actions, love, etc. (but a short-term membership mediated by words or even certain chemicals is also possible). I have argued in a different place

that this membership is physically mediated by short repetitive RNA molecules (associative memory engrams) in our nervous system as a result of certain actions (Soidla, 1993a, 1993с).

To return to the membership bodies, certainly Heaven and Hell can be names of two of these bodies, but possibly we can attempt other (dualistic or non-dualistic) ways of counting and naming. One can suggest a model according to which four different all-pyrimidine dinucleotides UU, CC, UC or CU can be followed by oligoC or oligoU sequences. One can consider repetitive triplets consisting of pyrimidines only. In both cases one gets 8 different repetitive RNA molecules that can correspond to the 6 realms of existence of Buddhism plus, say, a Buddha realm (plus a Mara realm?). Eight different high abstraction level associative memory engrams is also enough to allow membership in 7 "planes" (+ 1 extra one) according to the SLM model discussed earlier in this paper. In addition some other small molecules can be reversibly added to any of these near-homopolymeric RNA molecules that determine our membership in the above mentioned cosmic (if one likes this word) bodies. For example, two different "caps" (modified nucleotides in the beginning of the molecule) can provide reversible negative or positive color to one's experience. Of course, these are only some possible realizations of our principal model (Soidla, 1993b), an example of possible "molecular games" opened by the model. (For more serious consideration of the biochemistry involved one can consult (Watson et al. [1987]). As many traditions tell us, one of the above mentioned realms (according to the accumulated "karma") is to be the Reality we are to wake into after finishing our existence here in our consensus reality; at the same time this everyday reality of ours can be considered as a still non-obligatory, dream-participation in these membership bodies. Many readers of this paper can possibly share with the author a feeling of some fundamental mistakes in our attitudes towards the precious gift of our life as human beings. Maybe You also feel that we are possibly near some "waterfall," I do not know how to name it, and after passing it we 'II have no control, but maybe we can still retain emotions and some intellect. It feels so different from the less personal statement on the same effect above. I would ask readers to share some silence with me having followed me to this point. There are some more words in the synopsis of this section. But I feel that I cannot continue any more. I leave it to You to find better words to end this paper. I feel that finding these words is a most important task for us. We are all living together in the world these days with some most important unfinished business.

Some final remarks. I must certainly add that some ideas along the lines of the previous section have been proposed earlier (Greidanus, 1972, 1975). Also I must admit that my model (Soidla, 1992, 1993a, 1993b) is possibly good only for showing that transpersonal considerations can serve as guidelines to predict something tangible, something that can be possibly found and studied in a living cell one day. For me it is also a friendly nightmare of a contemporary King Midas in whose hands even transpersonal material is transformed into a molecular model. Nevertheless, I hope that the readers of this treatise have noted that I tried to share not only self-confident attempts of answers, but also some inquisitive questions of mine. Maybe I should also add that some lines of this article are to be further developed in the second and third parts of this paper (Soidla, 1995a, 1995b).

There is a popular mystical idea of the world being contained within the mind (as an illusion) or of a world as construction or simulation. These ideas allow one to take at its face value what I have said about the coincidences flow, but possibly these metaphors

are too powerful and one is to pay too much for subscribing to these ideas; too much seems to be possible in a world like this. Is there anything that has remained limited and predictable? Or is one to learn more, if not rules then rules of rules (including rules of conservation) in psychology? Is the World really an illusion of the Great Mind—or a kind of Memory of this Mind? Can studying Memory tell us something important about the most general properties of our world (or even properties common to our world and some other realms of existence)? A too romantic idea, to say the least, but who knows, one day. . . .

To sum up: what is the main attempted message of this paper, of all these personal stories and speculations? I would ask you to ponder once more on the old hypothesis, that I would formulate the following way: Real life situations have a complementary description in terms of "energies" (of different "levels" and/or connected with different "planes") that are perceived by a majority of people, but most often subliminally, and in this case they have a basis in our addiction to some kind of situations, to some quite irrational ways of behavior. At the same time, conscious attention to these "energies"—as to something quite real-can help one to better handle some kinds of (at least psychologically) dangerous real life situations. Maybe one is even allowed to suppose that some special associative memory clusters (and corresponding associative memory engrams) can be involved as a basis of experiencing these energies. A feeling of a kind of natural hierarchy of these energies can then lead one to suppose a corresponding hierarchy of associative memory clusters and a hierarchy of real life situations (and one's ways of behavior in these situations), a rather direct perception of a possibility of one's life story ascending towards transpersonal dimensions.

"What am I really longing for . . . for a fruit of science, or for a flower of spirit? I want to pick the flower, but end with empty hands; there is really no flower, only a flow of something I cannot name. NO FLOWER, NO FRUIT, ONLY A FLOW THROUGH.

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OPEN MOUTH, OPEN MIND:

AN IMPRESSIONISTIC ATTEMPT OF A TRANSPERSONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Part 2. Living and losing with high energies

T. R. Soidla

St. Petersburg

RUSSIA

A very personal introduction. This is once more a collection of stories of the kind one usually does not speak about.

My stories are generally rather simple and describe everyday life situations, only a bit shifted (and maybe “enhanced”)

by my attempts at esoteric consciousness training [and maybe also “edited” by the labors of recollection].

Most likely they make more sense in a metaphysical than in a physical framework. My certainly quite controversial

point is that “usually never narrated stories” like these can provide some material for pondering over possible

outlines of a “psycho-physical” science of tomorrow. Here I attempt some preliminary classification, and try to

discuss some most obvious ties of this “suppressed” realm of experience with traditional “transpersonal psychologies”

and metaphysical systems. As a result, these papers of mine are just a bit pre-selected garbage heaps (or

would you prefer an image of a stand of an old man selling various kinds of old crap on a street) for people who

prefer to search for some valuable things in places like these. In other words, this is some quite raw material

presented here in search for a real author to discover the meaning of all this (and to tell me). This second heap of

stories is mostly concerned with physical manifestations of different states of consciousness, from rather subtle to

rather gross ones, much more controversial material than my first selection that was concerned with experiencing

different “energies.” Once more I would like to stress here my conviction, that a garbage heap (made of of all the

personal stories one does not usually tell to other people, of laboratory lore and irreproducible results in science,

of irrational behavior, etc.) is quite likely a better place to find some (alchemists’) Gold than a regular mine (of

raw data). It is my opinion, that a garbage pile company has usually saved a lot of most interesting things (that

possibly lie behind a silent service gate somewhere in the next corridor after the last door kept open for lay visitors--

the door for cartoonists, keepers of Peter’s Principle, and other brave jokers at the Wall of Unknown). It is

with these risky metaphors in mind that I give you a friendly offer of all the personal stories in this paper (smelling--

if not foul--then certainly a bit “fool”). I must to stress here also that there is one line of argumentation that

occupies a rather special place with me. My attempts at “transpersonal” papers may be sometimes a bit autobiographical,

even a bit “[pseudo]science-like,” but what is a “must” for all of them is not a theory (or practice) of

consciousness (as some titles would probably suggest), but rather a series of speculations about the bearing of

some not well understood Dance(s) of Consciousness--including Memory, Mystical states, Transpersonal

experience(s) etc.--upon the Structure of Macromolecules. Maybe you just do not like to speak of molecules,

especially macromolecules, when Spiritual matters are considered? O.k. But do you agree, that the macromolecules

are the building blocks you and I and all other human beings are made of? If o.k., then can you feel yourself

a Chief of a Tribe of Macromolecules? Not? It is still o.k. Such exotic feelings are not needed to agree with me,

although the above is possibly a good spiritual game. But You know, that in the world, where we speak, teach,

preach, read spiritual texts (for example on Zen koans), a written text can carry (and communicate) meaning--

sometimes even an uncommunicable one. And now remember the genetical information written down in our DNA

(more than 109 symbols are needed for this). Can You be sure that special macromolecules carrying (and mediating)

spiritual values are not a most natural way even for our transpersonal level book-keeping? Another question is

how to make the book-keeping safe for both Time and Eternity. I have noted that a process like the most controversial

morphic resonance (Sheldrake, 1987) one is possibly a complementary factor needed for this. These macromolecules

. . . . Of course, represent a kind of primitive materialism (not to mention about the dialectical variety

that has mostly damaged our country), an orientation that has done a lot to make it disgusting to think along these

lines. But there were times when theological thinking grew directly into physical theories that at least by now seem

so very materialistic. And so it is: If Metaphysics escapes being caught by our Scientific Method nets, it keeps

playing with us, inspiring and often communicating profound metaphysical truths in shockingly materialistic

forms. “Molecules of heredity” were a shock for many clever people . . . We are right to repeat, that Eternity is in

love with the productions of Time, that at least the Individual Consciousness is (in our consensus reality) certainly

in love with the Material World (or purusha with prakriti, if one prefers it this way), that Jesus loved not only

Mary, but also her sister Martha. But, to return to my own experience, of course, a Love story is not often a story of

happiness (You have only to ask Your grand-grandmother!). This story is about Failure.

Living with failure is not easy, but it can be quite a rewarding experience. This paper is certainly intended to

discuss the rewards, but the hazards involved are also to get a fair (some of you may well think an exaggerated)

treatment. If I can keep following the Feeling Tone that seems to reach me time and again this is to be mostly a

paper about HOPE.

Meaning or manipulation, an important choice. The psycho-physical worlds: Making a XXth century Mystic.

Integral (feedback) evaluations of coincidences flow as a “feeling tone.” Possibly there are only few bodies operating

with coincidences (or is it better to speak of “styles”?). How to live in the speaking (beating, biting . . . etc.)

world? Teaching stories of the everyday life. Of a realistic attitude towards (some) very negative experience. The

Boeing taking off, or “in extreme situations one knows better, maybe . . . .” Not too often one seems to notice a

basic existential choice: to get meaning or to manipulate. One can read his or her life story (or at least some key

episodes of it) as a personal book of teachings. This is labeled by many of us as a passive, Eastern, and certainly

quite an old-fashioned attitude. Or one can take an alternative (active, Western, and still modern) attitude of “making”

one’s own life story, of predicting and manipulating the stream of events. This is as true for esoteric studies as

for any other human activity. Sometimes it feels that the real alternative is: to be manipulated [as if manipulated]

by a kind of Numinous source (Great Mind, Collective [un]consciousness--and to get MEANING, or to manipulate--

and to get the FRUIT of one’s action. Maybe any [both individual or even civilization-wide] forcing or

blocking of the natural flow of meaning can result in the “dark night of the soul” or in being taken aback by a

sudden painful torrent of teaching [of meaning] one day. This hypothetical dynamics of meaning and manipulation

is implied as a general background of this paper of mine.

There is a story in one of the huge novels by Dumas about an incredible chain of coincidences that results in a

death that no one is seemingly guilty of. The last words of the story make the point: here in the East we are Masters

of Coincidences. Most of my readers know that J. Lilly (1973) and J. Greidanus (1961, 1972, 1975) have included

coincidences as a part of a unmistakably Western (albeit controversial) World View. For me a most important thing

is that the philosophy of the two twentieth century thinkers is individualistic, not too optimistic, and not manipulative.

(Nothing like the very sense of adventure pursued by Dumas and possibly culminating at the first decades of

our century.) Here History itself seems to have (once more?) entered the field of Esoteric and modified it. I have a

feeling that the two world wars (or is it the rise and fall of totalitarian states) have closed a certain technocratic line

in high quality European esoteric thinking. We had enough “charismatic murderers” as leaders of the most powerful

countries to realize at least some fatal limitations of a certain variety of a mystical approach. What was left was

Individualism looking wide-eyed to the still seducing but quite different dances of “energies” (or is one to say

prakriti?). I have a feeling that mystical experience, at least among intellectuals (philosophers) is coupled now

with an astute sense of needing a personal failure, that must not be dramatized, that must be integrated, etc.--but

that must be present. (Maybe it was quite consciously taken as coupled only from WW1 to some time after WW2,

now it seems to be changing, but still working... below the surface. Of course, a statement like this is difficult to

prove. To get some feeling of what I mean, one can compare the enchanting autobiographical papers and books of

the Heroes of the transpersonal scene of ’60s with their subsequent life stories, raising no more feelings of reverent

reverie but just some surge of compassion and understanding!). So I am talking about some implicit sense that goes

contrary to almost any accepted psychological theory of the last decades. Maybe there is a better way to tell it, but

there is something one has to pay from the totality of his or her life (in most cases one is not ready, one is

forced...but one must be able!). Anyway, following--volens nolens--this new thread some very refined powers,

some “masters of coincidences” entered the life of the heroes of our time and taught remarkable, albeit in longrange

maybe quite unexpected lessons. My one failure is considered in a rather abstract form here. For more

concrete details see the following part of this paper (Soidla, 1995b). Here I would add some more words about a

most remarkable man whose name I just used. (I would prefer seeing him as one of the “Judges Penitent” of this

century who received a rare gift of some basic very clear formulations. I should not perhaps repeat his name here

to allow for some “creative uncertainty”). Alas, maybe part of his specific failure is that no one seems to want to

listen to what he is saying. From this point I’ll try to follow a risky path. My guess is that my particular (“permanent”)

failure is being forever a pseudo-specialist (in spite of my formally quite normal professional reputation in

my country). The question is, if I can be of any use in the search for truth even as a pseudo (that can, of course, be

just a kind of special illusion for personal use hiding an even more serious problem). Whatever the problem in my

case, I love the story about cunning invalids: the one with no legs sitting on a shoulders of the one with no eyes,

etc., etc. Maybe these “transpersonal” papers of mine are an attempt to find some people of my own fate and to try

myself the invalid trick of the above teaching story. Maybe even it is the very time for some other “mystical invalids”

of my generation to start attempts of reaching together the new truth that is not available for us as individual

beings. Maybe “bootstrapping” in physics is a concept related to this . . . . Anyway, one cannot resist the temptation

to make newer and newer attempts towards reaching the “wholeness mind” to integrate subjective and objective

experience (Rudhyar, 1983). Isn’t this quite natural, quite human?

In one of his first transpersonal related works, Greidanus (1961) tells of a beautiful imaginary experiment with an

observer in a nervous system, who most of the time has a feeling of a very materialistic, predictable world around.

Background level firing of neurons is low, and what is most important--quite stochastic. And then the Giant man

comes to making a decision--for example--to raise his hand. For the imaginary inner observer (who sits favorably

in the part of CNS involved) this is a moment of Singularity--firing of different neurons is no longer stochastic,

showing definite, very intricate patterns linking distant events--and then it is once more a quiet, predictable stochastic

World. And a main idea behind all that was told is that we see in the above story just antics of Consciousness,

and even more, that possibly Consciousness is not connected with the nervous system only, but with any

system that is complicated enough. Greidanus presented the idea of his “psycho-physical world” afterwards in a

better, more adequate way. But in a way the original story and first formulations contained some trace of future

science that was possibly lost in more refined and more “normal” later attempts. What I take from this story is just

the possibility of unpredictable (for the observer--certainly irreproducible), sometimes rather large scale (and most

often quite short time) violations of stochastics with no visible connection to any human reach. They are due to

Consciousness organizing ensembles of events linked with channels that look rather fantastic for our conditioned

mind. [Maybe even the Plenum of World(s)--that are ultimately contained in our consciousness/memory--has been

“formatted” to allow for some special effects of the above kind--a most crazy remark, and to remain a crazy

remark for at least many tens of years, but maybe not forever?] Is it not a common intuition, that we have (or can

be trained to have) “biofeedback” for this extra-corporeal action of consciousness, that we can be trained to feel a

consciousness (or special consciousness level) flow in a Space connected this way or other with our Mind/Body

(including even “nonlocal ensembles”) as a certain Energy? We can feel both “intensity” and some characteristics

(“level”) of this consciousness as different levels and grades of “energy.” This means, that my idea, that perceiving

“energies” is really a perception of an intensity of coincidences flow (Soidla, 1995a), is not so different from the

concept of Tart (1975) of awareness/ attention as “energy.” Here I have called your attention to the fact that focusing

awareness/attention means changing synaptically regulated neuron firing (“coincidences”) patterns in CNS

(that is possibly what we really perceive) and that maybe we can extend this idea to some other (say, still hypothetical

but seemingly promising microtubule computing [Hameroff, 1987]) levels in both the human body, and

maybe even to the world at large. Once more, in some cases, as we know about biofeedback, we can use our will to

influence the outcome. This means, of course, that we automatically take responsibility for our action at both trivial

and possibly also some “profound” level. This last step--from CNS to the world behind body limits--is exactly

what we are not allowed to do by our contemporary scientific world view, but let’s pretend that the border is not

here--just to push the metaphor to its extreme limits, where it seems at least to grow rather helpful for organizing

one’s personal experience. Maybe we must not be even too scared doing this: not all of the “sacred borders”

remain constant during the history of science. But certainly we must be conscious of doing a really “forbidden

thing”! It may feel rather wild to ask HOW MANY different MASTERS OF COINCIDENCES govern (or can

enter) our life. Really, most spiritual traditions have asked just this question, but in different wording. In the above

example, for the observer, there exists one source of coincidences--the Giant Man. This was a specially constructed

example, of course. Christian thinking would also suppose one main source of coincidences--the GOD, who is

counteracted by, in a way weaker, but practically most active and troublesome negative contradictor(s). There are

dualistic religions (like Manicheanism) that seem to propose two main sources. I should like to propose, that there

are impersonal sources of coincidences and that the Buddhistic six realms are quite real attractors--masters-ofcoincidences

governing one’s life. Are these realms a kind of dream state after death, if one of them has grown

sufficiently predominant in your Psyche, as even Hamlet (and Shakespeare) seem to suggest? Who knows . . . . In a

previous paper of mine (Soidla, 1995a) I have noted that possibly there exist eight different near-homopolymer

RNA molecules--small very fundamental associative memory clusters created by our actions that link us to nonlocal

bodies of spiritual nature, invisible collectives, that act as attractors for corresponding levels of coincidences

flow. If my counting is reasonable, I suppose that 6 bodies are given to 6 realms of existence--some reasonable

approximation to the Buddhist realms. Of the two remaining ones--ONE that is most difficult to reach leads to the

GOD/G-d/Buddha realm (One is said to be able to reach Buddhahood in any of the six realms. Buddha is different

and above these 6 realm-attractors). And one more of the 8 bodies possibly belongs to the negative Legion/Mara,

to a [collective] Negative God, or something like this maybe the image in Christianity is contaminated by some

minor (for us), alien, bee-swarm-like attractor converted to Negative by our xenophobia. Any speculations like the

above one are highly intuitive, to say the least. I can only hope, that the molecular metaphor advocated here can be

of some use to further discussions on metaphysical and transpersonal “cartography.” What one must certainly

remember is that the concept of seven chakras is only indirectly linked to the above “molecular ethics” (of course,

I must stress once again that such arguments are on an intuitive level).

The following is about PRACTICE . . . and certainly is to sound rather controversial to put it quite mildly. But it is

something bearing on the core message of this paper. Just an illusion? Possibly yes . . . . One can read meaning into

stochastic events! But at the same time the controversial “mind-over-matter effects,” physical anomalies related to

consciousness, are materialized just in stochastic processes, as the most careful numerous experiments by Jahn and

Dunne (1987) seem to tell us. And then, maybe it is your illusion also? Have you passed days and weeks when

seemingly all the world is speaking with you? And the feeling of unique “style” and high intensity of all the coincidences

. . . . You need not even ask questions in any articulated form. You just think of something and everything in

the Nature seems to be eager to answer you. In a city you can have a secret code of passing cars’ number plates.

You can ask any book--even a dictionary. You invent the rules of asking the question. Nature is answering the

question and when you repeat the question you can get the same, often shocking answer in different “wording.”

Your everyday explanation-away habit seems to be overloaded and paralyzed. Are these indeed the days of high

density coincidences flow? I would like to say something like this, but obviously one is not to take one’s first

opinion too seriously. (I hope to be able to write down my own experience along these lines in more detail one day.

Of course, it is difficult to communicate the most elusive meaning of one’s games with car numbers, how could it

continuously grow so convincing . . . a continuous real-time Rorschach test with feedback, possibly, but sometimes

SO elaborate and convincing. Or some years of companionship with a Japanese dictionary . . . . I converted

Russian names of my friends to Japanese syllables, combined them in to short “words” and searched for a meaning

in a dictionary. I was careful to consult the dictionary only when I needed some help, some guidance with my

relationships. The answers were cynical and up to a point, a Rorschach on the level of interpretation once more,

possibly, but so cutting through my problems, sometimes. With one quite elaborate answer, nevertheless, I never

could really agree, alas, I must admit, that I certainly enjoyed it. For a man whom I most admired I got a “diagnosis”:

a hollow man. I tried once more with different combination of syllables and got “INDEED, ONLY a straw.”

All this was personally impressive, but certainly a bit ambiguous concerning the LEVEL of communication. The

“dialogue” felt rather intelligent [clever], friendly [not aggressive], was never really predictive [by the way, the

rather “transparent” straw=Cain symbolism also never worked], but left a feeling of important [pleasant, a bit

“astral club talk”-like] exchange.) And, indeed, one is likely to grow most interested if not exactly in WHO is

speaking to him, then at least about the LEVEL of the dialogue. Suppose that you discover that the answers seem

to be painful, give rise to negative emotions. Then you can suppose that you are crazy . . . or that you have contacted

“lower astral,” or “demonic forces,” something like this, and most likely after some time you’ll think only

about leaving the game. But can you be sure that any higher level dialogue must sound emotionally neutral and at

least not to be painful? C. S. Lewis has noted that pain is a megaphone of God. If you find some truth in this (and a

Christian is most likely to be inclined to agree) You must be able to tell involvement from manipulation. By the

fruits You’ll know Him. Also You must be very careful about your own hidden motives. Did you really need an

answer, or did you just want to be scared. Certainly you could just get what you were asking for . . . . It can need

all your life to be able to discriminate some intricate illusion. But there can be rather simple cases, say, the above

mentioned “lower astral” level of Mind (Green & Green, 1971) that aims at maximal emotional response and

leaves you in a worse and worse condition, or all the “answers” being boring and primitive. Then indeed it is

better to search for some help, maybe even medical help (by the way, my rather limited personal experience tells

me that common sense and sense of humor can be best helpers in even most “crazy” situations.) But suppose that

it is not so and you feel perhaps some personal growth, some increase of meaning in your life. Nice. But at least I

would discourage any attempts of obtaining practically useful information this way. Your “partner” [acting in or via

your Mind] even in the best case has His/Her/Its own concept (algorithm) of these contacts. In practice you can

have some 100% correct predictions followed by a splendid (that, alas, means most shocking) failure. It is not a

game to satisfy your appetites! And after some more attempts, possibly you return to religious prescriptions as a

more practical thing. In the best case you will be growing to begin seeing in Your exchange with Nature (“Great

Mind”) not some informative but some other--possibly Generative purposes. There can be special cases, but I

suppose I am speaking here of the usual scheme of these contacts at the masters of coincidences level.

Am I to add that the world seems to be not only speaking with you but also beating or even biting in a rather

meaningful way. Many of my readers certainly have some experience with “transpersonal” lovely hitting--when

needed. Of course, when one’s thinking is obsessed and starts going round and round in circles, one gets insensitive

to the real environment and quite easily can slip or stumble against a piece of furniture or hit one’s head. A

good piece of feedback, often helping to return to normality, but one needs no Great Mind to explain this. But

sometimes a setting of these kind of experiences is so elaborate as to make one sometimes doubt any simple

explanations. I was much impressed by the following story. I had a nasty thought about Shambhala and suddenly

had a feeling that THIS TIME the precious GIFT of PUNISHMENT is to follow very soon. (It was a time of some

Spiritual Ascent with me these years and many of you know [or have an illusion] that it means also quick physical

punishment feedback when needed.) I left home with my epileptic son for a short walk. A dog approached us

quickly. Carefully passing my son he silently bit my leg and left the scene. I had a feeling of looking to all this as if

from some distance. It occurred in a context of “magical time” when meaningful coincidences seemingly kept

piling up. Whatever the mechanism of these coincidences, they certainly can create a situation of personal and

transpersonal growth. The Indian notion that sometimes everything can function as one’s Guru seems to be relevant

here. If a teaching situation is created, then every triviality seems to be involved in teaching you. Would it be

wiser to label it an illusion and to waste these unique opportunities? Certainly, one is not likely to refute the

baseline (stochastic) explanation with experiences like these. But the baseline concept (like the “nothing-butness”

noticed by Frankl, 1969) itself is quite mobile, as the history of science teaches us, and certainly this concept

already feels quite different in at least some altered states of consciousness (say, when all the world seems to be

your Guru). The following story of the world as a teacher sounds a bit like the “hunches” in the charming book by

Heywood (1966). A minor but quite important difference is that if hunches are perceived as a kind of warning to

help me or other people (I have also experienced something like this several times), the following story was perceived

in a unmistakable teaching context. I was sitting in a bus and suddenly I had a very insistent feeling that I

am to stand up. It looked crazy, everyone was sitting on his seat, no one seemed to need this gesture of mine. And

then a very old woman quickly stood up to mark her ticket, the bus turned and she tried to grab for some support in

vain. It was a wonder, that she was not injured as a result. Had I been standing, my hand would have saved her

from some moments of most intensive panic, of unnecessary suffering (and maybe, I could have paid an important

“karmic debt”, to tell it even more unscientifically, but--for many of us--rather meaningful way). Here I am to note

that when speaking not of other creatures but of oneself, even the most painful and negative experiences are not of

an Absolute nature . . . in a sense that they can be converted to positive ones. In a previous paper of mine (Soidla,

1995a) I related two stories, one from W. Blake (most likely based on his own experience) and the other one by

myself. It needs some special in-depth consideration, but as a working hypothesis I suggested in the paper that the

negative and positive character of one’s experience (if not always, then at least often) is not immanent to the

experience, but added independently as a label. This stresses a role of memory in painful experience and possibly

not a basic but rather applied role of most negative (maybe even of extremely painful) and positive (maybe including

most forms of ecstatic) experience. In various traditions, teachers warn against taking ecstatic experiences as a

proof of real spiritual growth. Most likely, at the transpersonal level, both NEGATIVE and POSITIVE are an aid to

Memorize, to express Importance, rather than to classify experience as metaphysically GOOD or BAD (not to say

anything more here about occasional and even misleading labels). But this is a working hypothesis only, and one

that I would not hurry to put to extensive test in my own life. There is a lot of first-class philosophy around this

problem. Transpersonal psychology has been often accused in taking a rather one-sided, only positive experience

oriented stand as far as all the existential problems (on the very border of suicide) are concerned. I would like to

deny some of the most grim varieties of philosophy--together with transpersonalists and on the basis of my own

experiences. I don’t need to subscribe to a framework that allows one to see all the most pessimistic dimensions

and applications of one’s life experience, a nice game, but . . . . But I feel that it is better not to be too categorical

with all the stories and hypotheses of mine . . . taking into account my beginner’s level of spiritual development

(including my own most limited ability to cope with negative experiences; they are so easy to forget in quiet intervals,

but, in a sense, are still here, just around the next corner) and, certainly, the gross humiliating lessons of the

XXth century.

By now I have told quite a lot about something surfacing that seems not to be usually [constantly] present in our

lives. I have a metaphor for this. Air is so thin, so intangible, that most of the time we just do not think about it.

(What is also true is that our life is impossible without this intangible presence.) And now some athletics. Quicker,

quicker . . . now you feel air as something more and more solid. And at something like 500 m.p.h. the thin air as a

roaring Genie is carrying a 400,000 kg plane (maybe also a copy of this paper of mine). Frankl (1969), in his most

remarkable book about the concentration camp, told about inmates’ fear of making decisions, of their obsession of

letting fate take its own course. It seems that the concentration camp prisoners had an overwhelming feeling of

being a part of a larger context, of a reality of ones’ fate, of some personally meaningful fatal coincidences flow

having its own rules and logic. Was it really only an illusion created by the pressure of only too real hazards, or

just a penetration to the very rules of human life made clear and tangible in these extreme conditions?

Some speculative thoughts about CHAKRAS as devices connecting us with different extra-corporeal “ensembles.”

A rather doubtful story of Macromolecules articulating their Philosophy: My carte blanche. Real speaking is silent

even with plants. On “levels” and men. Hands at controls: Colors and syllables. Close encounters at the controls of

the WORLD: Your gift is your test . . . or so it feels. The Helicopter Metaphor. Of the ultimate hazard. Beyond the

Boeing and Babel metaphors. Possibly “mutations” at the “psychical energy levels” can teach some lessons. For

me it seems sometimes quite ironical that Mandalas and Chakras (Arguelles & Arguelles, 1972; Green & Green,

1971; Leadbeater, 1971) have not found any place in mainstream science so obsessed by symmetries. Maybe

“soft,” psychology-mediated symmetries seem to be of a different world and so devoid of the intellectual challenge

of tangible crystals or of solid fact and good mathematics based theoretical constructs. Every one really has what

he or she wants. I have some most controversial and still quite nebulous general ideas about this point. I consider it

most likely that our brain contains rather a small number of types of memory retrieval complexes (Soidla, 1993b)

that differ by their symmetry, one type for every main region of the brain. So I suppose that traditional forms of

chakras can rather accurately represent the overall symmetry of a memory retrieval apparatus in the corresponding

regions of the brain. (I do not consider here any possible direct effects connected with the traditionally alleged loci

of Chakras and the corresponding areas of the physical body. They may exist, perhaps, as a further development of

the most hypothetical “model.”) At the same time, our mind seems to be connected to several but not too many

systems [levels] of extra-corporeal coincidences flow that seem to grow from something quite imperceptible (in our

usual state) to rather tangible, then real and then overwhelming in the worlds of intensive experience--as discussed

with the Boeing metaphor. These systems of extra-corporeal coincidences flow one can feel to be related to various

associative memory clusters--different near-homopolymer RNAs of the brain. So different levels of coincidences

flow seem to be connected to different chakras.

And now, some most controversial “practical” notes that are to resonate with different parts of this paper, and

which lead to an important point I need to make. Up to some level, mastery of coincidences is backed by some

kind of mechanical devices (we can also say by inflexible rules). The problem of the magical use of this mastery,

that was possibly discovered a very long time ago seems, to lie in the holistic character of these rules. The Magician

himself or herself is involved in the process he or she starts, and the totality of the by-effects including the

ultimate, metaphysical level seems to be quite unpredictable. Laws of the conservation of ethical consequences of

one’s magical actions seem to have forced someone to attempt “paying in advance” (sacrifice). Ritual purification

seems to be in the same class of strategies. A widely believed “mechanical” nature of the Rules has stimulated

some people to try ingenious tricks to circumvent the unwanted consequences of magic acts. Maybe one is forced

to come to the conclusion (sooner or later) that these tricks do not work in the the long run. The famous Inner

Castle is turning into a labyrinth in which we feel more and more hopelessly caught--if not by attempts of some

major Magick, then at least by everyday Magic every one of us practices. (I hope to be able to speak about this in

more detail in a different place.) In a way, many of us feel cornered (Soidla, 1995b) and in need of some

superholistic (a word I specially coined for this case along the lines of my hypotheses) help. One seems to be

forced to come to the conclusion that only real Spirituality (would you like to say Religion?) can cut through the

labyrinth in which we are imprisoned--and in some level of Reality even to restore the original purity, the Original

Luminous Inner Castle of ours.

Now I return once more to some reminiscences. I had a sleepless night once trying to articulate a possibly meaningless

proposition about a way to eternal life for macromolecules. I was telling myself more or less the same thing

all the night: one has just to give up false pretensions for eternity via interactions with other macromolecules. If

this is a meaningful message (to Macromolecules? and from the Great Mind??) I can probably never learn, at least

in the “baseline reality” of ours. As a metaphor for myself...well, I am also not too sure. Of course, there remains a

romantic possibility that something, possibly dangerous, but real TRUTH is to reach my fellow citizens (my fellow

macromolecules) one day through these notes of a man (now I try to be more serious), who is not very sure, but

once again and again makes attempts to spell out something, that--in turn--seemingly uses my strange combination

of experiences (and my commitment to a kind of pseudoscience) to surface. Anyway, I feel that this story is one

more, but certainly not a most serious, justification for me to fool around with the idea of macromolecules mediating

spiritual values. And now, after all the stories of everyday life as a teacher, a more personal story of “speaking”

with plants follows. This is a very simple story that I remember as one of most beautiful experiences of my life.

Once near Dushanbe (in Tadjikistan), a friend of mine (maybe with some of my assistance?--I don’t remember)

took a lot of blooming Almond boughs to his car. What followed on our way back was a most intense communication

between me and some Presence that I identified as something related to the boughs. It was a “communication”

that was incredibly rich and unearthly “sweet” emotionally; on our way back all the “realistic” details were

merged in a grey mist. What is most surprising is that, indeed, nothing of the real world, of real time seemed to

enter the communication. It was a kind of pure intensity of some emotion... and yet more than emotion, dynamic,

but objectless, and at the same time in a sense very individual. It ended when we arrived. During the following

years I did not search for a way back to any experience like this. Possibly, it felt like something that one needs not

more often than once in a lifetime. And maybe the story has more to do with some ancient Fairyland than with any

real plants of our consensus reality. Anyway, the story tells me how rich and noble my experience on this planet

can be. Are these contacts, fleeting by their very nature, something that is not to last long with human beings?

Some strange intuition tells me “yes.” Another Room in the House of our Father, possibly. If not just some

overimagination of mine. And here is one more a problem. Chakras are traditionally considered as connected with

the metaphysical “levels” of experience. I accepted the model (“SLM”) in a previous paper of mine (Soidla,

1995a). But when one tries to remember more stories it is increasingly difficult to classify all of them. I had the

“high level” stories of healing my very being by an icon, after “ego fainting,” stories of overcoming ego resistances

that seem to belong to the same level. At the same time, the story about being saved after a summer solstice

nightmare feels also “high level” and yet at the same time quite different. And “where” did I have my most memorable

“high” talk with flowers? I cannot think of these experiences as marking three major metaphysical levels

beginning with the causal (too high, certainly too high), so maybe each “level” consists of many smaller “bands”

that are not related hierarchically? Certainly my quite limited experience doesn’t allow any fine mapping . . .

(Quite possibly I take the SLM and the chakra system metaphor a bit too literally here.)

And now once more--back to the Chakras. Formulating in biochemical terms my new hypothesis for memory, I

was rather hesitant about any mechanisms of retrieval (Soidla, 1992, 1993b, see also Appendix). Here I would like

to make a risky parallel that helps me to visualize one possible mechanism. As even the starting point is most

controversial, the terms introduced are most likely mainly of mnemonic significance and the conclusions reached

(even in the best case)--just some raw material for future better models. What I really need is to draw your attention

to the importance of symmetry in the hypothetical complexes involved--whatever the real molecular mechanism,

these considerations seem to hold--within the limits of my main hypothesis, of course. Let’s suppose that in

various parts of the Brain the reading of the hypothetical associative memory RNAs including the “mystical” nearoligomer

RNAs is conducted by RNA-chaperone molecules able to pass RNA filaments at great speed through a

central channel (let’s use this word, bearing in mind that the word chaperone does not imply any connection with

the real properties of protein chaperone molecules and, of course, does not make the structures less hypothetical).

Several RNA-chaperone molecules serving different parts of RNA can unite with extra RNA looping out. Also the

number of (major) associative memory RNAs to be used in reading/editing processes in different parts of the brain

can be different. The information read is possibly even to be summed up according to some parameters. Do You

remember--in Part 1 of my presentation--the Occultist remarked about an Icon: “Quite Holy, indeed” (Soidla,

1995a)? Maybe some summation of the message of DIFFERENT RNA molecules is also performed? Anyway it is

quite natural to visualize the editing-reading complex (“RNA-chaperone”) molecules as symmetrical structures

with a different number of RNA-reading “petals” in different parts of the brain. For me this is a most attractive

model of chakras. Being a part of retrieval mechanism for the small homopolymer RNAs, chakras are part and

parcel of the mechanism revealing and expressing one’s spiritual growth, linking one’s progress along these lines

to various “styles” of coincidences flow. The link can even be supposed to be via “antennae”-properties of the

small repetitive RNAs (Soidla, 1992, Soidla, 1993a, 1993b, 1993c), interacting via a space [and time?] independent

Morphic resonance-like link (Sheldrake, 1987). This is certainly a most controversial idea, to say the least, or

rather an attempt to show a possible connection between two controversial ideas. In a way, the two other, more

basic things this speculation aims to bring together is, first, the “traditional” idea of Chakras as symmetrical

structures mediating reality levels and, second, the idea of integrating different sets of high level repetitive associative

memory engrams in different parts of the [central] nervous system. N.B. I suppose ancient traditions to be

right not in every detail, but certainly ancient Yogis were well-trained observers for (and certainly not motivated/

biased against) noticing constant patterns connected with non-consensus realities.

The traditional chakra images are also connected with specific syllables and colors. I do not discuss any mechanisms

here--they would be highly speculative. (Also about this point we seem to note more controversy between

different sources.) Anyway, my own experience has taught me that manipulations with the sound-syllables traditionally

connected with different chakras can make drastic changes in the, say, “style” of coincidences flow in

one’s life. It can feel as living a new life, more and more demanding, too intensive in testing one’s Ego, something

to be dis-continued before too late. My experience has told me this about the syllables, and I suppose the colors

traditionally connected with chakras are likely to have the same effect, (in the hands of a “wild” experimenter, at

least). I attempted Chakra meditation together with a Christian Our Lord prayer. As a result my life seemingly

exploded with very negative experience. Maybe, to explain my possible mistake, one can visualize two parties

determined to reach a summit, one by helicopter, and the other one by climbing the mountain [as Alpinists]. The

learned adaptive reactions of both parties are useless in the wrong context: helicopter piloting and rock climbing

are two very different skills. Hanging by one hand over the precipice, one must not be so crazy as to try forcing the

engine of a some imaginary helicopter [both the helicopter and its engine “do not belong to Alpinist’s reality,” and

his hand in the hypothetical situation can take hold of, say, a tree branch, but he certainly must not mistake it for

the controls in a hallucinated helicopter cabin]. So one must possibly not mix core techniques of different traditions,

especially in the realm where a thought is already an act? Or was my inability to meet the demands created

by the practice just a part of my total Failure and in a way almost inevitable? Maybe. Or was as it even a kind of

gift of energies (materialized as a corresponding coincidences flow) that I could not match and blocked that gave

me the overwhelming negative feeling of this period (the coincidences themselves were . . . a bit too demanding, to

say the least). Possibly I was just about to drastically better my RNA level but was too scared to persist . . . . But I

certainly must also report some positive changes [after-aftereffects?] that became obvious afterwards: a feeling of

quicker “karmic” feedback of my own actions, as in the story with the “Shambhala dog” related here. It certainly

felt like a stream of continuous teaching that I greatly appreciated. Maybe I got exactly the lesson I needed? Better

not to try too hard in guessing . . . !

You cannot interfere with some Global (Cosmic) level of truth (“I AM THE TRUTH”, so it was told). “You cannot

cheat [fool, mock] the GOD... in the long run,” would be a more fundamentalist expression of the same sentiment

(but one must still remember that God is not only NOT MOCKED, but also NOT UNDERSTOOD as Huxley

[1970] noticed). I tried the combination of words “Schroedinger’s Cat” and “Pandora’s Box” to approach the

mechanism of the “God’s feedback” (Soidla, 1992). Alas, I had only some feeling, not any clear idea how it can

work on physical level. I hope to be able to return to the important topics touched upon here one day [but see also

Soidla 1995c]. Anyway, I would prefer never to see the new brave attempts of molecular manipulating mystical

matters--this time on the memory engram level. Alas, too many people are “Materialists.” Their life (they suppose)

is not an encounter with a personal Thou, but only with some substance that being a Mother-principle indeed

exhibits qualities of a Good European Mother of a Bad Boy (someone clearly inferior to them, and at the same

time basically good-wishing, good-tempered, and, of course infinitely exploitable). AS A RESULT THE VERY

IDEA OF FEARING THE NUMINOUS (AND HENCE RESPONSIBILITY) SEEMS TO BE MOST RIDICULOUS

FOR OUR GENERATION. WE ARE IN A WAY THE MOST IRRESPONSIBLE PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVER

LIVED ON THE PLANET EARTH. My concepts of feedback, of safeguards and regulations operating on the

Consciousness level in this world we live in are colored by “old-fashioned” Christian religious vocabulary, but

this means that I prefer to speak in terms of not only the Mother, but also the Father principle (archetype). I must

confess to feeling most uneasy to write it this way. (Am I also one of the Bad Boys who prefer not to hear, much less

to write about some remote Father?) If we follow these ideas to the level of “spiritual macromolecules” I discuss

in my papers and try to manipulate them I am sure the results would be catastrophic, releasing one day the powerful

unerasable Father, fierce [local] gods, Dharma guards archetype(s) of Memory/ Mind (that creates the world

we live in). I would say, even the phrase “Babel feedback” would be a very weak expression. One can still retain

some hope to erase these archetypes this way or another, say, at the molecular level, supposing any idea of objective

[“world-like” or even “meta-world-like”] reality of these figures just to be a superstition (or a superego created

fantasy figure, if you wish to put it this way). What I say now can sound hopelessly fundamentalist and against the

very spirit of Western science. But maybe, indeed, “the one who created the World knows better . . . .” (Does this

make any sense for you?) Anyway, enough of it here!

Together with the Failure, I acquired some health problems that seem to resist any treatment. In the place of the

roaring flow of coincidences, they teach me now, slowly, yes!, but it seems to be an adequate pace for my age and

abilities. Is this an illusion to see my chronic ailments in some better context? Maybe, anyway I am almost sure I

have been taught to be more humble. And this is lesson worth many not too pleasant lessons of any origin. I suppose

. . . that to have a total failure presents one more result. Study of mutations (molecular mistakes) created

molecular genetics. My mistakes (maybe also a kind of “mutations of memory RNAs,” but this is not important)

have taught me something of the workings of the “occult” levels of psychology, maybe even revealed the very

possibility of “occult” molecular biology.

Psychosomatic phenomena and “materializations.” Some contacts with a developing “poltergeist”: instant stilling

of a vortex of Mind (sometimes one is in position to succeed). Guards, real life dangers and the Help. When

pushed to its limits, the metaphor of Greidanus helps us to see the obvious step from psychosomatic phenomena

we are all more or less used to (N.B.! our experience is most often negative)--to “materializations.” A simple

visualization, only, that certainly leads us from the realm of Science to some kind of Science-fiction, if not of

Philosophy-fiction. But we are speaking of concepts that can serve as practical guidelines in our everyday world

when science only too often fails; of concepts, that would help us to organize our personal (and trans-personal)

field of experience (Krippner, 1972). Science and the officially acceptable part of religion are still of not great help

here for many of us, with too many intuitively important details just left out. Certainly transpersonal scholars have

a rather high level of self-censure. What one needs is possibly a protective label to allow for a global re-invention

of pseudo and unscientific concepts and to create a useful discipline to work with some more materials from our

spiritual vacuum-cleaner. Of course, most contemporary concepts seem to be on a low level by some [rather

vague] intuitive criteria. Possibly it would be of value one day... if we dare openly to stimulate (or just protect) an

effort to develop an honest not dogmatic, open, and developing Pseudoscience and even Un-science, say, under a

label of something like Alternative Sciences?

Once more a very short story follows. I developed a real poltergeist that troubled me when I was reading the daily

Bible many years ago. The reading soon turned to questioning of a nasty Oracle/”Priest.” Coming through passages

that could be interpreted as very negative about me, I was accompanied by sounds in my room, the reactions of the

“entity” to my reading grew more and more violent, and once with an especially nasty passage, an electrical bulb

exploded over my head. This was the end of the story. I don’t know why and how, but I felt a really overwhelming

surge of compassion towards the rather youngster-like “entity” and realized the humorous side of the situation. I

broke into friendly laughter. This was the end of the story. The “poltergeist” troubled me no more.

One almost certainly has had some contacts with a quite different kind of influences--the “Guards.” They can save

Your life, as they saved mine. (You already know the beginning of the story, that took place near the old mill at

Vuoksa river in Karelia during a near Summer Solstice midnight. The Jesus prayer slowly took me out of staring

at the nauseating “Hellish” seemingly two-dimensional World encircled by a legion of champions of something

like a rural life attached lower astral world [see Soidla, 1995a].) And then it needed a real wonder to save my life

this very night, after a half an hour or so. Repeating and repeating the Jesus prayer I very slowly returned to what

seemed to be my usual self. Some parts of my Mind seemed to be emptied and then filled by some pure and very

soft energy. It took some hours. I was part of a small group and other people seemed not to be aware of anything

unusual with me. (We were much younger and benignly tolerant to rather high levels of somewhat eccentric behavior.

Really I was just rather silent and walked at my own pace, nothing too exotic). Then we went to find a ladder

to penetrate the second floor of a locked house we were living in. We carried a ladder and then suddenly I was

hanging over a large deep cavity full of rocks. The ladder somehow created a seemingly almost impossible oblique

bridge carrying me. In a way I felt quite sure that a painful (if not lethal) fall to this cavity would have also been a

metaphysical fall to an abyss for me. But now I was saved, both on the physical and metaphysical level. Many

people know the most fundamental fact about the Guards: most important [in the long run] is just the very feeling

of being in touch.

The Game and its Rules. Fabrication of Forms and its Feedback. “One is needed”--towards Great Dissolution.

Guessing about the Two-dimensional Time. Most--if not all--people speaking about the rules of the Game seem

just to be fooling themselves. Fabrication of forms before your mind’s eye (prakriti dancing) is feverish when you

try to concentrate for Meditation or Prayer. You are to dissolve them lovingly and knowing their emptiness. But is

it all the Game? There remains the material stuff.

In a “Strange life of Ivan Osokin,” Ouspensky proposes a most attractive model of two-dimensional time. Our life

is repeated once more . . . and once more . . . and once more . . . an ordinary man only supposes that he is free, in

reality he is doomed to repeat and repeat the same dull chains of events. He repeats mechanically all his “decisions.”

But one can grow to very important moments of real freedom--when one is able to change the next repetition.

I think most people have some feeling of this real freedom (Christian narrow path) and also the intuition that

Eternity stands next to every second of their life. Here I must certainly add another story. When I was ten years old

or so, I had a powerful experience on my way home. I really hated my school, all the cold and hostile world outside

my room. Only my home was a real refuge for me. But even this comfort was in a way uprooted when once, at

ten minutes walking distance from my door, I suddenly realized that my coming home after some minutes will make

no difference, that this small tearful schoolboy on the snowy deserted street will stay in the hostile “now and here”

(in a way) forever and that the happy little boy who will enter my home’s door after some minutes will be a quite

different person (a different “me”). This feeling [of having contacted an abysmal “other dimension of time”

expanding some “special” seconds to almost an entire lifetime...or even more] is still with me after so many years.

What Ouspensky has done is just providing a good teaching story, an impressive metaphor, and maybe even a

vestige of a formal model of these traditional intuitions. (Maybe in the form they are written down in some parts of

the “Hellish Bible” W. Blake did not cite in his “Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”) Here I would like to note some

quite obvious (and certainly most controversial) Apocalyptic implications. Our moments of de-automatization [of

“Real free Choice” not conditioned by our Ego] in a way open us to Eternity and give us a possibility to start a

most painful process of making free every other moment of our life story. (Do you know the feeling of drawing dry

surgical gauze from the half-healed wound . . . Maybe Western contemporary medicine has robbed You of this

possibility of instant understanding of the Metaphor involved.) And when you are free with every second of your

life--only then can you leave the world that is to be consumed by the Fire of Final Dissolution. In a way this

possibility depends of how much spiritual materialism one has in store . . . in his or her RNA molecules.

This paper turned out to be mostly about my speculations. The main hypothesis involved possibly is that living

through quite trivial everyday life experiences we literally write down not only some more pages of our personal

story, but also add some shorthand notes to various summaries of different aspects of our spiritual attainment (that

are written down as special associative memory clusters). Both these high abstraction level “spiritual” texts and

various inherited mythological texts are involved in editing (rewriting) of an abstract human life story (that is

“given to us”) to an individual memory text. The texts working as editors can be modified themselves during

writing down some relevant material. When writing down the text that is possibly to modify some levels of the

editing/ memory reading complex (and hence to modify the very world we live in) we experience this as flow of

energy (of different levels according to what levels of our “editorial” texts are being modified.) I am not proposing

here any really new ideas about the more fundamental psycho-physical level. For me it seems to be as if we have

the reproducible, scientific, normal “baseline” world--for most of the time; but possibly, for rather short periods,

quite uninvited, quite unexpected, an irreproducib le, singular, unscientific world sucks us in, to release after some

time often a quite new personality (with different MEANING), at least with memories one can no more forget,

pondering on them again and again, or with important insights to change the course of one’s life. As entering the

world(s) of singularity (seemingly by chance, or along the lines of some spiritual traditions) involves “changing

one’s mind”--all the process is usually considered just in psychological terms. The intuition that the process involved

is really psycho-physical seems to most of us quite unacceptable at least on practical grounds. There certainly

are no obvious ways towards a new psycho-physical paradigm, the pressure to get involved with something

like this is mostly only connected with a very personal sacred world of experience one prefers not to discuss--at

least in hard science terms--with other people. Does one really need to gain fame as a scientific Don Quixote (if

not madman)? No . . . no! The tasks facing the hopeful madman would be immense. The world with Fate, with

Flow of energies, with Father archetype, calls for new scientific experimental methodology, new baseline hypotheses,

new axioms for deductions . . . to name just few points. So this paper is not even an attempt at any comprehensive

and consistent set of suggestions for creating a new Science of Singularity, not even a discussion of possible

key points. Here it is only a Dream of the new science of the world when the Great Man awakens, but certainly,

for me this is a significant dream (as some dreams are)--and sometimes I even suppose that the new future

science will bear some resemblance to some fragments of this dream of mine, but certainly in quite different combinations

. . . and possibly only in the clear light of seeing at last face to face the Great Thou (our real self?). You

know what I mean . . . . Let’s return to the more personal “level.” About the “high energies,” they seemed to be

present during most of the period covered by the autobiographical material of this presentation and to determine

the overall half-crazy air of most of my stories. During writing this paper the altered states of consciousness [of

past years?] kept returning to me. Maybe you can even feel this, when reading certain passages of the text (that are

not touched by later [ordinary state] revisions), mostly as a “blinking” of definite [feeling]tones...or as a kind of

“background music,” but sometimes even as a demanding “melody” leading the very narrative. But really the

subject still needs a special treatise (as well as the line of Failure). I am looking forward to be able to write down

such material one day. But what about the Hope? I certainly felt it when I started writing this paper. But then the

sense of Hope began to flutter, together with a realization that I was telling some things that make this text suitable

to no one in the scientific community (including transpersonalists), even as a kind of belief exercise, or as a game

of new Geometries of Meaning. I do not think that I am being overcritical, telling it this way, and finishing this one

more attempt of mine, I feel a bit tired and sad. And still the Hope, not supported by any real chance to communicate

my intuitions to my fellow scientists (who would be shocked, or, even in the best case, certainly demand much

stronger arguments to change their mind) still persists. Maybe I am not right in supposing that any success of my

undertaking would be a matter of real importance . . . even for me? Nevertheless, I feel that I need to persist, to work

more. Maybe I must learn of Hope with No Object (besides Being in Touch). One day I’ll understand, maybe . . . .

Illusions, “real” coincidences, possible mind-over-matter effects have merged into a flow of teaching that I sometimes

seem to enter or leave as if of some passive will of mine. (The Numinous is always with me, it is I who cannot

be with the Numinous.) Does science turn into Wisdom or Folly (or both) when the succession of life events turns

into Flow of Teaching? I still don’t know . . . .

APPENDIX

THE BASIC HYPOTHESIS: AN EDITING MODEL OF MEMORY (Soidla, 1993a, 1994b, 1994c)

MEMORY RECORDING IS BASED ON EDITING OF AN INHERITED HUMAN LIFE STORY TEXT. Firing/rest

patterns of neurons are registered at CONSTANT SPEED (pulse rate <50 Hz, most likely around 40 Hz). The

Plenum of no less than 104 memory recording cells is needed for full memory reconstruction. The daily memory

information is transferred to a different cellular compartment (or a different cell contacting the primary memory

recording neuron) for permanent storage in the form of a stable master memory engram--as a rule, during sleep

time. This information transfer is connected with multistage EDITING of an pre-existing (INHERITED) Universal

Human Life story engram (or maybe an individualized and neural pathway [or neuron map] specific version of it

created by combination of hypervariable blocks) using as molecular tools the Universal Myth/ Archetype engrams

(that are also INHERITED). The editing process results in creating a new enlarged edition of the master memory

engram. The master memory engram is most likely a giant macromolecule that uses 2 different building blocks

(monomers) to register the firing/rest pattern of a given neuron [neural map], some (most likely 2) other chemically

different monomers are used to “comment” upon the major message and are added during the editing process.

This engram includes a constant part containing a set of basic service signals and at least two variable parts:

(1) a full almost life-long linear record of firing-rest patterns of a given neuron; (2) some more general additional

information (“comments on living”). Variable (“IN-TIME”) part 1 is punctuated by clock signals (providing guide

marks for synchronization of the time-dependent memory retrieval mechanism). Variable (“TIMELESS,”

“MYTHOLOGICAL”) part 2 is most likely situated within a special class of larger synchronization (“clock”)

signals (“filled commas”) and contains guide marks for an associative memory based retrieval mechanism and

other variable service signals. The memory reading device of unspecified nature is placed in the membrane between

memory recording and memory storage compartments (cells) and can partially overlap with the editing

complex and possibly also with a focus of Consciousness on the molecular level. At least the permanent storage

memory engrams are likely to be RNA molecules in sum total reaching Lilium genome size (that also roughly

equals the summary stable RNA length in a typical eukaryotic cell). Another product of the editing reaction is a

growing set of separate associative memory engrams (containing excerpts of a master memory engram and/or

recognition sequences of an associative memory cascade). A special class of associative memory engrams (they

are likely to be among the more slowly growing ones) interacts with the Universal Myth engrams [that are inherited,

but grow & develop with accumulating experience and personal growth] to make the active editing complex--

a dynamic structure capable for considerable development during human lifetime. Both the Associative Memory

and the Mythological Heritage are INSTRUMENTAL in the very process of the master Memory record creating.

This means, that in the process of Memory recording, TEXTS ARE EDITING TEXTS. Both sets of associative

memory and Universal Myth Engrams are organized hierarchically according to: (1) successive editing steps; and

(2) growing abstraction levels of associative memory engrams. The HIGHEST ABSTRACTION LEVEL associative

memory engrams (whose very slowly growing variable parts consist of a simple repetitive structure) register

qualities like unconditional love or moments of real free will [overcoming ego resistance] and are likely to provide

unique opportunities for ultimate steps of personal growth and self-actualization and can be even supposed to be

involved in non-local interactions of a novel kind. Some ultimate metaphysical questions are likely to be related to

properties of the most simple biological “texts” of these small engrams of repetitive structure. One can even

suppose that every Memory recording cell contains two editors, the first one, that is related to individual consciousness,

being concerned with editing the IN-TIME parts of Memory engram, the other one, related to

supraindividual Consciousness editing TIMELESS parts of Memory engram. A hypothetical highest aim of human

development can then be related to uniting these editing complexes [as a result of fulfillment of a human need to

write down a “right” set of associative memory texts]. This operating union of individual experience and timeless

[“mythological”] wisdom possibly opens new perspectives and possibilities not limited to our [usual] human

condition, that certainly lie beyond the scope of this hypothesis.

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OPEN MOUTH, OPEN MIND: AN IMPRESSIONISTIC ATTEMPT AT A TRANSPERSONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

PART 3. TRANSPERSONAL FOX SPEAKING IN A TRAP OR HOW I WAS CORNERED BUT MANAGED NOT TO MAKE THE PROPER CONCLUSIONS

T. R. SOIDLA

INSTITUTE OF CYTOLOGY ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

Introduction. Having passed 56 years on a path toward a personal Omega hour [a perfectly natural but personally so significant an event] one is inclined to re-vision and revise the Mystery of one's life, to look once more through the list of questions that seems to be growing and growing (at least it is there in spite of all the lifelong science and philosophy-backed attempts of authoritative answers). As the final Step seems to grow more and more real, one feels more and more free of the taboos of Western thinking. The taboos are reasonable, certainly, but there are also reasons not to keep being only reliable and reasonable. At the same time, reasons to ask some forbidden questions remain with me, but it is not I who is supposed to [really] answer them. [Almost all] the speculations here count just as surrogate answers, something just "to keep the ball [of thought] flying." There is a power in forbidden mind-games and questions. Maybe this paper will persuade or [re]hypnotize—who cares?—some readers of this text to search for Adamic fresh answers. So let's ponder together over these old "illegal" questions—suggested by some stuff that is usually ignored—hidden in the personal garbage of everyday life artifacts. Need we to be bothered that some of them seem to be meaningless in the coordinates of scientific thought and others seemingly well-answered a long time ago? Possibly one can feel with one's guts (can you handle such an argument?) that they were possibly TOO well answered? Indeed, there are things one seems to be afraid to give a second thought to, so some remain just what they are—quite possible—but no more than just POSSIBLE—reductionistic answers.

Need I add that there are other much better planned and executed attempts to reconsider, to revise the "obvious"? Here I would mention the transpersonal studies in toto--is it not so?--(Walsh, 1993; Walsh & Vaughan, 1993), the brilliant ideas of Sheldrake (1987, 1994), the breathtakingly new and powerful ways of blending Western philosophy/science with Buddhist wisdom by Guenther (1989), or the most impressive experimental hero's journey by Jahn and Dunne (1987). Still isolated from the mainstream of science, some of these approaches will lead Western science to a real breakthrough one day, I hope & await. My own papers are a bit different. Approaching final personal questions must be of ultimate practical value, and this is why [again and again in human history] one cannot be limited to either contemporary science or philosophy, not even to a limited concept of "personal" (hence my papers are submitted to a journal of transpersonal studies). Being a scientist, I use some scientific terms—I am used to this kind of language, but certainly in a manner that attempts to transcend their essentially limited scientific usage. At the same time (as science is developing towards including the whole range of human experience, and as "there are many rooms in the home of my father". . . and possibly also many routes towards this home), I would suppose that there will be some place for my not scientific, but still maybe science-related attempts—possibly adding some missing color, odor, or shade to ideas and terms to be used one day in both a responsible and adequate manner.

Leningrad kitchens in the '60s. A meeting I did not enjoy. A kind of post-hypnotic suggestion ... or what? Some more words on high energies. How I was cornered. How I left the Path Г?] Some more words about the Failure. There is time for both high-energy and post-high-energy worlds. "Guilt is the teacher, love is the lesson" (indeed they are). On teaching stories and "learning stories." On speaking with EGO and with Alter Ego [Altered States of Consciousness Egos]. On programming, metaprogramming. and on texts—"transpersonalizators." This paper is intended to continue, and possibly even to finish, some lines of the two previous "autobiographical" papers of mine (Soidla, 1995a, 1995b). I'll start with the Leningrad kitchens in the '60s. This is really not the beginning of the story. But who knows what is the Real beginning of one's story? So why not a kitchen? In the '60s and '70s, a great number of very interesting people in our city worked as stokers, street-sweepers, etc. One could have a most stimulating intellectual exchange in quite an unexpected place (and time). But kitchens were something really special. With no telephone (the Ear of the State) nearby, and with a cup of tea or a glass of dry wine ... or vodka in one's hand—this seemed to be the freest place in the world (possibly it really was!). For me it was all O.K. this way. For example ... (I wrote these words: "for example" and understood my mistake. I had to take this story with the same ultimate seriousness and attention as some other ones I relate here. So the following lines are an attempt to give this story its proper due). O.K. I was introduced to a man all in gray . . . "Yes, I am a street-sweeper," or something like this was his casual remark, and then he demonstrated some apparently brilliant knowledge of several occultists of the past (my reading about them was most superficial). Then followed something about the Sphinx . . . that I hope to recollect one day. His words remained alive in me for many years, though I did not pay them the full attention they probably deserved. I was deluded by the easy-going manner of this conversation; I felt myself being at least equal to him (why?). By now I see I have lost something most valuable. "Sphinx" seems to have been one of the keywords of my life, but this is mostly a kind of post factum feeling. The word is not instrumental; it does not really help me. But it could ... I suppose. A gift half-received and almost completely lost. No wonder that after some time I had another meeting. The God's "megaphone" of painful experience, as discussed by C. S. Lewis (1991), was present this time (but used in a most gentle way).

I was visiting a very humanly, mature, nice old woman, an occultist working with handicapped children, who certainly was undeservedly kind towards me, an arrogant and cowardly spiritual "foreigner." She was waiting for a friend to visit her and was talking about him in a most reverent way. I, of course, knew better, living with an illusion that I had seen quite enough of what Leningrad (St. Petersburg) could offer along these lines (N.B.! Kindly remember that I am not Russian, but Estonian by origin . . . nevertheless I had lived in Leningrad for more than 10 years at the time). He arrived and among first things asked for some cheap red wine (I remember it this way, but maybe I am wrong). She left to buy it in a nearby shop. I felt some revulsion towards the whole situation, but I got involved in some social exchange. I told him about my definition of materialists which I was rather proud about (Soidla, 1995b). He answered with some lazy compliment to my "European" brains. I attempted adding something about Tantra, a topic I am rather ignorant about, but certainly have some "bright" ideas of "how it all works." In his answer he mentioned the Kalachakra Tantra as a most popular one in our country. My inner reaction was fantastically silly, albeit maybe typical for me. I did not know anything about the Kalachakra, but I was European (was there some irony in his intonation? Probably, yes. Forget it!) so any limitations of all these Russians did not apply to me. I don't remember my answer but I suppose that all these reactions of mine found some way, if not to the final message, then at least to the corresponding intonation. And now it was his time to hit back (or at least this was the way I interpreted the situation). He drank some wine, then some more wine . . . and then it began! Can I answer, please, why Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed did what they did? I had not the slightest idea. I did not like the situation at all. He: "Because they were cornered. " Me (silently): How! Why! How can this too human idea be The Answer? Aloud: " O.K.., it is most interesting, but unfortunately it is the very time for me to leave" (immediately!). He is looking at his wrist-watch. Can I stay 40 minutes longer? This Is Very Important. (NO!!!) Unfortunately I could not. I left in a hurry and took an electric train to the suburb where I lived during these years. What followed was not surprising for me. I was ready to meet up with something like this. At my stop I just could not leave the train car. (I was sitting in my place and wondering why I am not leaving the train.) ... I left the train next station and just walked back. When at last I entered the door to my flat I looked (quite automatically) at my watch. I was exactly 40 minutes late. "This means nothing. Maybe a kind of post-hypnotic suggestion. Even if it was a real paranormal feat, this means nothing. I know several sons-of-bitches with obviously real paranormal abilities." (Really!) In a kind of aggressive but passive mode I thought: "So, what?" This last question I can answer by now. During the past 15 or so years after this memorable meeting, I have felt more and more cornered and this grew into a dominant feeling in my life. There are some important details. Just a few years ago—the corner, as if miraculously, expanded. Still, in a way the feeling of being cornered is here, elusive and important—as some dreams seemingly not related to anything serious in our life still feel important. And sometimes— as if having converted the negative energy to positive (as discussed in Crampton, 1974; Soidla, 1995 a, 1995b), or having reached a kind of comer plateau state (a not too serious term coined after Maslow (Krippner, 1992) or maybe having recognised & accepted my fallen state—I perceive being cornered as a most comfortable and natural position.

Many years ago I was intoxicated about high energies. I could just sit in half-Lotus position and a flow of energy would pass through my body. I had a feeling that I could accomplish anything but I wanted just to sit (so far so good) and to watch on some inner screen the heads of my friends exploding with the energy gifts I sent in every direction. (An illusion, of course, but I still feel that it was a most peaceful and friendly illusion.) I had developed my "inner eye" and reached some sensitivity to thoughts of my fellow humans. Of course, there was a lot of idle talk and certainly I had not succeeded in any real purification of my "everyday mind." My state at the time seemed to be a rather common combination for a half-mature seeker. The end of this period was personally frustrating, but theoretically, I suppose, quite revealing. In a half-instinctive search towards some new horizons, I attempted combining my evening prayer (I identify myself as a Christian, a bad Christian, certainly) with some work on chakras. A quick answer I got was a seemingly global change of coincidences pattern in my life. Possibly it was a gift of a powerful challenge, an exercise in negative and positive energies. Being a coward (I must admit this) I did not even attempt to meet the new demands. I discontinued my new practice. Did I leave the Path this way? Possibly, yes. Often I have a definite feeling that I missed a unique possibility to take the athletic MOUNTAIN PATH that opened to me during these years. I also have an alternative view of this lost labors story. One can reach a mountain peak as an alpinist or as a helicopter pilot. Both ways are legitimate, but one cannot thoughtlessly combine these two routes. An alpinist hanging over an abyss cannot help himself or herself thinking in terms of accelerating, as I noted in an earlier part of this paper (Soidla, 1995a). (But maybe the last metaphor underestimates the holistic, conscious, and compassionate aspect of our world.) Anyway, I have a definite feeling that I did not return to my starting point. In a way, the Story still continues (or do I have a bit different eyes now?) and a Failure was an integral part of my story, an alternative, or possibly the main Gift. With me the post-high energy world seems to be a world of purification. Maybe the above said is once more a kind of illusion and maybe I am on a sure way to see in my after-death dreams that I have "died as a dog." Who knows? The feeling of his Master's hand keeps a dog sure that everything is O.K.

Many people seem to have realized that texts which are created in an altered state of consciousness seem to help one to return to the ASC when reading them. What is possibly even more interesting is that these texts seem to bring other people to an ASC of the same or of a different kind [something to be studied one day?]. Questions addressed to the reader, key words and hidden mantras, rhythms, sound patterns, the logic & grammar of the text, to sum up: all these items related to the very essence of LITERATURE can be [and are] suspected of being involved. Is this really a kind of transpersonal brainwashing, programming and meta-programming of one's "biocomputer"? A really transpersonal stand must be open and unmanipulative—just to be called transpersonal. And still there is no real border between true texts-transpersonalizators, skillful means of subtle manipulation to help us, friendly brainwashing, planting positive attitude . . . one can continue towards an authoritative heavily manipulation-based end of this continuum.

Is it possible to speak about "transpersonalizators" and not to mention W. Blake once more and once more? His "The angel rolling the stone away from the Sepulchre" creates such a profound feeling of inner silence—possibly to repeat the silence and concentration of the author himself when he finished the water color. There seems to be something special with Silence. Why are simple psychosynthesis exercises (Williams, 1980) aimed to create inner silence so powerful? We must have an immense innate ability to create the inner silence states. Whatever the relationship of this "silencability" to hypnotizability, it seems to be almost not used by our Western civilization—but here it is, "behind the filmiest of screens." And still, this is only one entrance to a most complex "inner building." Subtle and manifold are the means of a true transpersonalizator. One has just to ponder on the works by Blake: "Jerusalem" (plate 76), "Jacob's dream," and many others.

But do I have a pleasant illusion of my texts being in a way "transpersonalizators"? In a way, possibly, yes—but of course not real transpersonalizators, rather some altered states of consciousness [ASC] facilitators—certainly it is for You to recall & decide after reading the first two parts of my texts. Anyway, I have not used any cunning devices, simply texts written in ASC seem to help one to reach [some?/the same?] ASC—possibly because it would be painful to follow state-specific logic and metalogic in a too different state of consciousness, so one is left with a dilemma: (1) to deny the text; or (2) in the case of certain fluency of inter-states of consciousness "travel"--just to shift her/his state. I have tried to leave parts of texts written in alleged ASCs in their original form and use them as building blocks of my compositions, but it is difficult to leave them so in all the chefs-d'oeuvre of state-specific thinking. One either has to disclose [and more or less spoil] his trick or sacrifice some sentences to allow the text to survive—to pass [self] censure by ordinary [baseline] consciousness and subsequent even most friendly editing. My friend and "second editor" S.S. has been ruthless about grammar, but most sensitive towards individual style and tolerant towards ASC logic, so I had to execute my own self-censoring faculties at different stages of the editing process (it is not an easy thing to de-hypnotize oneself in a situation like this). The result is a certain compromise, still too crazy for many readers, but certainly not too radical for other ones, and certainly falling short of reaching a demonstration of any approximation of the full power of a possible "glass bead game" [Hesse, 1969] with ASC materials that I intuitively seem to perceive. A task for other, future authors [of this "hypertext"—who are in a way more "real" than me], possibly.

My second Apology about Pseudoscience. From Apology to Apotheosis[?] Allosophia and Al-pan-sophia. Can one be productive and honest being pseudoscientific? "Maybe we lack the very culture of pseudo-science." On "romantic" science. "Wrong is beautiful." On the romantic and other traps on the "wrong way." "Reasonably" overstrained scientific statements versus "romantic" statements. A bush and a butterfly. On the first, second and third attempt(s) [that are supposed (1) to reveal. (2) to confuse, and (3) to tell a lie] according to the "I Ching." On the logic of spiritual realms of Mind. Sclerotic delights, "many world interpretations, "resurrection by memory repair, or what? On an alternative, not "romantic" but "ascetic" ["sentimental," "melancholic"] science [science-like activity] of humility and hope. [sometimes of shameless humility, maybe . . . ]. I cannot have a clear vision of my position without attempting to ponder over the term "pseudoscience." I have always been a bit too "psi-positive" to be a normal scientist. What is left for me? Two main possibilities are: to Imitate or to Understand (this is the way I see my position). I would like to share some most doubtful information here. Any "dialogues" with nature spirits, one's "genius," higher consciousness, etc., are quite suspect a priori, as one has only minimal (if any) information of one's partner in dialogue, who is in the best case least likely to tell platitudes in the form of plain truth as we see it. Anyway, by "creative" use of one particular Japanese-English dictionary, I was always able to come to some cynical but generally quite trustworthy expressions concerning my friends (Soidla, 1995a). Of course, this is just something for one who likes these kinds of things. What seems to be most important now is the feeling that the very procedure both gives . . . and takes something. I have not played this game for many years. What is important to be mentioned in this part of my paper is that my own name elicited an answer "pseudo-scientist"--something I have been sure about for a long time. But what does it mean? Due to the most important principle of "Ockham's razor" one can develop scientific concepts by small steps only. Even the greatest breakthroughs still remain connected with the main body of facts and concepts, and even in the most remarkable cases when they open an entirely new field of inquiry, these new domains are still to be exploited in the same most conservative manner. Science can be compared with a growing bush in the sense that new additions must be connected with the main body. According to this metaphor, science is a small bush in a corner of multidimensional space of possibilities that attempts to organize this huge space. [It must still grow perhaps millennia to turn into a real Tree of World filling the space.] As human beings we find it difficult to limit ourselves to this very complex but in a way still tiny compartment of the space. We can reach the vast realms of it directly using contemplation, intuition, most likely one needs better to fill in here some unnamed human faculties. These flights above the bush of science remind me of merry butterflies. Isn't it so that supposing them to be tired of space the butterflies periodically want to return to safe branches of the bush of science? Must one feel anxious about the very possibility of flights above the bush, or of the feeling that suggests returning to the safe branches? Anyway, it seems that one must be able to tell the bush from butterflies! Maybe one would prefer a different picture--of slime molds—that in amoebic forms are individually exploring the space but are also able to gather to make a mock multicellular organism, even a fruit body. Anyway, the last one seems not to be a picture of contemporary science, maybe an alternative possibility to be realized one day. I have a feeling that contemporary scientific method itself is something to be overcome one day (Soidla, 1993a).

Many people have possibly confronted something like a "beginner's luck." There are also the well-known "decline effects" in parapsychology. Some people (and I among them) can even feel the "decline effects" being a kind of "signature" of their predominant life situations pattern. If the reality of all these effects, like the one of parapsychological phenomena in general, is an open question, there are even more specific suggestions in age-old texts like the "I Ching": "First time I'll reveal, second time I'll confuse, third time I'll tell You a lie." (Is the expression really there? This is a formulation given by a most creative friend of mine [F.R.]. But my one attempt to locate this expression in the "I Ching" led to the discovery of shorter related formulas, not the above one. But this way or another, the formula seems to exist in some of the I Ching spaces, in some branches of the I Ching hypertext," in our I Ching consciousness. I just cannot let go of this beautiful formulation.) In my experience with oracles of different kinds, including the "I Ching" and "The Golden Oracle," I have found it astonishingly true. Here it would be difficult to suppose a chance hit followed by many misses even in real life situations. I have consulted the sources not so often—just in several crisis situations. And the first astonishingly penetrating answer is not to be diluted by repeated questioning. Indeed, second time—confusion, third time, a lie. I have made the same mistake of repeating my question several times. But after a considerable time span everything seems to work well once more. It seems that the test will surprisingly easily resonate the predominant pattern of Your "life type situation"—just ask, please. We have a strangely deep fear of being "boring" in our very essence, a "crystallized" experience of our former contacts with the "fate forming factors," an intuitive fear of questioning Moiras, or impossibility to reach twice some pattern-making factors of our memory. Any repetition can interfere with the works of timeless [repetitions-based] editing factors [?]. Maybe the problem is even much wider. One knows, how easily an unselfish act—by a self-congratulating pathway or some other related ways—turns into a most egotistic activity. The trap of ego-related spirituality, of "spiritual materialism," is open to every one of us (Trungpa, 1987). I suppose that our high abstraction level associative memory engrams are not fooled, and they register an unselfish act only when a real unselfish act is performed. We are aware of a point of consciousness that is not fooled by "spiritual" ego games of ours. Maybe the oracle rules provide one more keyhole to see how such an inner witness really works, to the very logic of spiritual realms of Mind.

Related to this can be another type of story that I have experienced several times in different contexts. What follows is a rather abstract "skeleton" of this "one cell of a human life story": You gave something valuable away [even if it is just some money to a beggar] and--performed surprisingly well [or had a piece of good luck]. Second time you give some money away EXPECTING some good luck [good performance] and the result is more or less positive once more [but you could have noticed that this time it was in a way a bit confusing—maybe in small details]. Third time you feel pretty sure giving out your "piece of mammon" (as if directly paying to the fate-[per]forming-forces), and FAIL. But this is not quite the end of the story. One quickly learns the trick of expecting and at the same time of not expecting. (A kind of cheating Mr. God, maybe?) But it turns out not to be quite a trick (or gets the trickster himself in a way to be tricked?). Anyway, as a result of playing this "game of consciousness" one grows aware of a greater picture: one cannot enjoy full being in the world without personal involvement [or is one better to say—without involvement of his/her very personality] in a FLOW OF LETTING GO/of giving away—of things, possibilities, dear ones. This is a middle way, and intertwined with it [as ida and pingala with sushumna in Kundalini yoga] are possibly the pathways to creative failure and fossilizing success. [The very logic of the fossilizing/"spiritual narcotic dependence generating"/"fundamentalizator" pathway would certainly deserve some special intuitive/historical study.]

By the way, returning to the I Ching hypertext metaphor: possibly due to some sclerotic changes in my brain I quite often have a feeling of tunnel-walking from world to world in a branching many-world cosmos. In the realm of peripheral mental vision, in the Mind room where everything is a bit out of focus, concepts and even citations I supposed to know by heart seem suddenly to change one day; what seems to be in a way most disturbing, people who—I know—must be dead, happily pop out, healthy and alive [by the way, isn't this a quite nice side of the story?]. Is it a result of some repair ["undelete"] in cosmic memory and just my noticing this is a mistake of the memory apparatus? A most crazy remark of mine, but have You not experienced something like this yourselves, a different variety of deja vu, maybe? Certainly, this attempt to extract a theory out of doings or un-doings of one's sclerotic brain/mind sounds even more unacceptable than any other extravaganzas of mine. It is as if at a dinner table I asked my neighbor: "Why really do people wash their faces every day, and never—their feet?" (to repeat a popular Russian joke). But still I feel that I had to take this particular piece out of my personal Memory garbage can and to present it to you with a friendly but absolutely mad smile. But if you did not react to the above story like to something alarming and "impossible," I must both congratulate and warn you—a transpersonalizable, creative New Age personality, my sister or brother: the barriers of Your baseline reality have grown [semi]permeable. This is almost certainly a future next step for humanity, but often still remains a real disaster for a concrete Western individual of the XXth century.

If "romantic" science not only allows irresponsible remarks in metaphysical matters, but also gets involved in some more or less loosely related experimentation, e.g., behaves in a most youngster-like, over-enthusiastic way—then can we also imagine a complementary deviation, an old-man way of reacting to the possible real existence of a mysterious part in human existence and in the world: some humble restriction of one's ways of behavior, some ascetics of no aim, and openness to what will come to you? Alas, I rather understand the power of ascetic achievement, but even this paper still belongs to the realm of romantic preparatory rite. A kind of baby-talk, a kind of preliminary exercise, just training—controlled by the Great Mind part of us like the playful activities of puppies. Possibly a right thing to do, but one most not feel too proud for all this. (For this romantic science-like babbling that is to give way to discipline, silence and possibly—achievement one day.) For an outsider, both romantic and melancholic science would not be a science at all. When attempting to avoid emotional labels [but still being attached to the very game of Science] one would possibly adopt a wording like "science-related activity." This would certainly be a better term to describe the genre of my recent papers.

Some thoughts behind the Pandora's box. On Eternity and on the Productions of Time (some more of the Love Story, or maybe better, of being in Touch). On a doggy or on the lemurs of Madagascar intoning towards a rising Sun. The very idea that there exists a SPECIAL BLACK BOX and that the very attempt of looking into this box brings most disastrous developments to one's life story seems most important: kinds of perennial intuitions just awaiting their hour.

I have always been possessed by the idea of some achievement, of some fundamental understanding. Years pass, a former understanding has shown its backside of sheer comic illusion, and still I have a feeling that I understand something fundamental, but of a different kind. Of course, the passing years have taught me something of the REAL WORLD, but the basic illusion possibly marked by the very feeling of [intellectual, and . . .] understanding is certainly still with me. At the same time, how expressive, powerful, often violent but multidimensional, was the flow of teaching when I was younger. At least for me it still makes a better story than the following milder and more subtle flow of teaching.

There are metaphors that seem to live a life of their own, maybe being the very guests of our brains from the Great Mind realm of collective unconscious. One of these was implied in the words of a strange rather crazy artist. He told me how he feels that the sole REAL music in our planet is what lemurs on Madagascar sing at dawn. And, yes, his lemurs have in a way awakened my lemurs by now ....

A Russian madman or the Confessions of a Baltic crackpot. CP and some more names. "My number" 66 and the rotating pentagram. The countless often quite intricate ways to organize one's life story. Some memorable Yoga practitioners. Bleeding nose. pressure on head. On one's [[un]ability to draw a perfectly evil face. Empty cup and spiritual bullshit. Gurus and followers (devotees). Doesn't the I of I-Thou have no head? Of many shameful memories of the years that have passed, this is most likely a most painful, a most shameful one, a horror that grew out of seemingly nothing to make a living hell of so many years of my life. As a result of a silly joke of mine I was called a crap-pot [or something like this, am I to add that this is only one possible English translation of the original Estonian pun?], a label that stuck to me for so many years making me feel damned because of some basic sinfulness, some dark rotten stuff permeating the very ground of my personality, some infinite wrongness growing from a level that one is never able to change. A lot of later humiliating stories added to this cluster. As a result, the feeling of being cornered, the experience of being in a non-exit situation (plus the whole bundle of related negative feelings), has been with me almost as long as I can remember. I only managed to forget it now and then, but it kept returning as if a most potent personal negative reward in the games that various emerging consciousness structures played--maybe attempting to teach me, maybe wanting to gain some ephemeral life [in me]. During my last days in the University, my former roommate (now a VIP in one of the independent Baltic states) got drunk and found the following words to tell me: "Really, you are a crapjack, maybe you suppose that you are a nice guy, but for me you are just a crapjack." (He certainly did not know about the specific Achilles' heel of mine, but altered states of consciousness somehow allow one to read the forbidden records. N.B.! One must remember that this is only an attempt to translate the original Pun of Fate.) And after so many years I can only guess what my recent [sorry] rectal troubles can mean. Is some "psychical entity" communicating something important to me, or trying just to manipulate me? And what is also important: is the sensitivity of these earlier years really gone, or is it still here, "behind the filmiest of screens"? Or was it all just a Great Gambit to prepare me for my real Ultimate Failure, for the growing metaphysical understanding of being Really cornered just as a result of being human? (This melody of failure is tempered by rare mad bangs of remembering the Zen words about Buddha as a shit stick, but well, [at least before the final enlightenment] I am certainly not to appear in the still cryptic pure and luminous side of this timeless picture . . . keeping being repeated again and again in different humiliation scenes in some middle abstraction level associative memory engram.) Anyway, the very being of a Russian madman (or Baltic crackpot if you prefer it this way) often blocks my attempts to TEACH, to "preach" seriously anything SPIRITUAL. "Would You like some teachings of a Crap-pot"?--"Oh, boy ... I see! I'll think about Your kind offer . . .!" As a result, my position can be only very weak, lacking some basic authority; it can even seem that I can only share, maybe search for auditors and at the same time real [responsible] authors of the ideas that have [literally] come to me, but never pretend to be an author/source [at least of anything spiritually important] of my own. And this is beautiful!! Thanks to the youngsters who bullied me. Due to these guys I am more useless, due to them my boat sometimes even seems to be almost empty. (Does it mean that I hid my talent in the ground? I don't think so [but, well, the orchestration of the main themes of our life seems often to be so incredibly rich].)

There is another aspect of this story. Indeed, a large growing associative memory cluster brings together all these episodes. Must one call this any wonder? There are aspects with stories like this one could call self-constellating constellations of events [coined after self-fulfilling prophecies]. And given all this is why I feel so sure that a kind of intelligence was acting through all this half psycho-mechanical instrumentarium that one can describe in both western or eastern terms [like "karma" and "vasanas"]. An illusion possibly, but maybe also an intelligence of my own soul being able to use any crap for the multi-stage process of self-building. [But now the question emerges that Ramana Maharshi asked: Who is the I [Self] of my I [Ego]? Where is the source of the I-thought?] And from the other side, to see a kind of scientific problem behind all this--certainly not a problem of XXth century science-one needs a still not existing science of patterns of human life, a new I Ching. Or what?

Yes, strange labels have emerged seemingly from nowhere to organize my experience (as if some greater mind indeed was aiming to reveal to me some so far hidden sense of my life) and then to disappear one day (and the sense of meaning will return to its source). The resulting feeling is that just anything can be used to organize one's experience, often with a seemingly fantastic degree of elaboration.

During my student years I was once told that I am like a song "66." This was a kind of subtle insult. I do not remember this song any more, but the number has been in my memory during all these years. I learned a seemingly rather strange kabbalistic astrological system of 72 genii. Due to the Gregorian/Julian calendar shift, it was certainly not calibrated for use in the 20th century. Not trying to find out the astronomical exact shift, I just ascribed MY NUMBER 66 to my birthday. What followed was that as if magically almost any other important dates took a most meaningful pattern. My son was assigned 33, my former wife got 6 (complementary to 66 to reach the plenum of 72); numbers derived for some other dates important for me were multiples of 11 as my own number [You possibly noticed a shadow—not real emergence—of the apocalyptic "666" in the above numbers. One is constantly to remember his/her dualistic teacher!]. Among my relatives, children almost exactly repeated one of the grandparents etc., etc. I tried some further calculations and more and more seemingly important coincidences emerged. Everything was suddenly speaking to me in this new language. I found an incredibly powerful desk-top organizer for my life during many years and then it slowly started to fade. A crazy system indeed. Maybe not so crazy if we visualize a pentagram, symbolizing the human condition, rotating in a circle (or circumambulating the Sun) to make five 72 day cycles per year. This is certainly not the place to discuss any subtleties of this scheme; let it be just one more way to be in a dialogue with the Greater Mind. My experience tells me that one does not need to use some very esoteric ancient system to get involved in the Dialogue. If one is ready, an adequate amount of teaching seems to be transferred this way or another. Indeed, everything seems to be ready to be one's Guru, or would you prefer to formulate it in terms of selective attention? Practically, it makes no great difference, but there seems to be no threshold in the coincidences flow between the "scientific" and "trans-scientific" [unbelievable, life-changing coincidences] realms.

I often felt contacts with younger yoga practitioners in Russia to be a real disaster. Quite likely this was partly a result of great but poorly control led/[mis-directed] powers they had, but possibly 50% or so of it was of a different variety—a real problem of my generation in our country. The problem was that with some of them I was almost never able to "open" myself enough and this was certainly due to the "paranoia" of these years that seemed to be in the very air—everyone had some grounds to suppose that his or her partner will report the very content of their conversations to "power structures" [possibly not without some nasty exaggerations]. This transmuted one's life to a fabulous spy story, but as a result, contacts between people who did not know each other well often turned into a kind of most crazy social game of a totalitarian variety. A good schooling for some basic artistry hidden in every one of us, and so I suppose that quite a lot of people had a lot of fun playing these games. Alas, in the case of my contacts with powerful Yoga practitioners—along the same paranoiac social games lines—the result could not be different from what they turned out to be: blocking the more than usually powerful flow, and as a result—a feeling of tremendous pressure in the head, sometimes even a bleeding nose.

In a hyper-dualistic & fundamental dualistic black/white world [especially in a variant of this world created by mass media], one would find it quite easy to consider the above mentioned yoga practitioners as carriers of some metaphysical evil. Transpersonally inclined scholars usually take quite an opposite stand. Watts (1963) told of his inability to draw a perfectly evil face. I don't doubt that in his personal world it looked so. But for a dualist, Watts himself seems to be like one of the angels of heaven, who according to Jakob Boehme cannot see the angels of hell because their realities do not overlap (Rainer, \991)--according to the last stand obviously a non-dualistic state is an illusion. This view certainly contrasts with the one by Watts. I can only envy his baseline state of consciousness. My baseline reality is separated from the "negative chain of realities" by a "filmiest of screens" that is quite permeable. One needs only to look at the "Good and Evil Angels" by Blake to feel both the invisible barrier and its semipermeability! As for me, not only have I made acquaintance with the "lower astral reality" but I performed exactly the task Watts was unable to do. I scribbled in a semiautomatic manner and suddenly a most metaphysically evil face appeared on the paper, lively and powerful. As if something evil was ready to penetrate to our consensus reality, in a rather silly fraction of a second, I protectively destroyed the drawing. Certainly I am quite sure that Watts would not have recognized this face as anything particularly evil. My own experience tells me that a best defense against these painful extreme states of a "super-dualistic" world is just to be guided/attracted by a virtual sense of the comical in situations like this and to shift—like in the case of conversion of energies (Crampton, 1974; Soidla, 1995a, 1995b)—to an alternative ASC where EVIL seems not to exist and the evil face looks just funny. But consensus realities of most people almost certainly will include the possibility to reach both the negative and positive worlds. The very negative state in some superdualistic world is just an experience waiting for every one of us behind some ill-defined corner of consciousness even after periods of seeming triumphs over the [extremities of] black/white, good/evil world view. I can only repeat that the vicious circle of supportive feedback for negative states that was operating in me these years was [to a certain degree?] a kind of illusion, something that I [sometimes] was able to destroy by seeing a humorous side of the situation (Soidla, 1995a, 1995b). And still negative stories/situations/states keep returning to me (see the "man in the water" story below). To destroy the very seeds of these experiences is a most difficult task. The negative states seem to be always ready to pop out once more. Could we receive a collective resistance to these negative worlds, if not for an apocalyptic 1,000 years then at least for 50 or so [say, "new age"] years, at least as in the case of nearly two decades during which the hypnotic analgesia and other hypnotic phenomena seemed to lose their power (Murphy, 1992)?

Will an individual or collective "new age" achievement still work in the world of after-death dreams? If not--must one really worry? Possibly our human condition of pleasure and pain is indeed a unique opportunity [even if the condition of metaphysical good and evil is a dangerous "super-dualistic" over-reaction?]. Maybe [perceived] dualism is a [perfect] teacher, non-dualism--the [final] answer? I don't know. Anyway, one must be realistic enough to feel the proper place & scale of negative experience in our real human condition and not to deny [after centuries and decades of alternating different biases—the virtual dimensions of] negative experience—as not to deny the wholeness/plenum of consciousness. Maybe we are in a process of slowly reaching some truth along a spiral of alternating dualistic and non-dualistic illusions of various levels almost infinitely behind those who have "tunneled" to the end-point in no time at all. But I can only admit that among the almost limitless human powers, a power of illusion is possibly a most remarkable one. I would admire the Great Souls, would happily accept some seconds or minutes of seemingly absolute certainty—and still keep open to possible alternatives. [This is a position of this very moment of time—certainly to change after some minutes, hours, days?—I don't know.]

One must empty his/her cup to receive some new "spiritual tea." I am ready to accept it this way—be it due to some half-mechanical conservation laws of collective unconscious or otherwise. Gawain (1982) is quite right suggesting "outflowing," giving away, as a part of the practice of "creative visualization." As the means of local [not global] solution this book seems to be admirable. For global solution—well, for global solution one possibly needs to be cornered [not only to be cornered, but also "to make the proper conclusions," not really to make the proper conclusions, but to pass through the needle's eye of METANOIA].

But why is the empty cup burning? Don't You feel the powerful burning sensation, don't You see the clear terrifying light of the possible METANOIA to come? Well ... but where is the spiritual bullshit? Possibly I'll get some this very minute as a result of a strange attempt to polish a mirror on an open street ... or am I a bit more realistic just attempting to better a [mock-] Persian carpet by laying it in your way?

I have often been surprised how members of rather totalitarian, half-mad sects, or pupils of dangerous, seemingly most ego-tripping teachers, can be pure, almost as emitting a kind of spiritual light. A mistake of mine concerning these sects and spiritual teachers? Or is it that just everyone will get the fruits he/she deserves, both the teachers, and the devotees? A kind of economy of Great Mind—happily giving pure teachings even via evil intellects—as if their not so pure intentions did not exist at all. An impressive picture, if one likes this kind of devotional metaphors. I do ... quite often!

During recent years, two authorities had a great influence on me: Buber (1958) who taught me to see properly and feel the highest value of the I-Thou relationship, and Harding (1972), who taught me [let's say] that we have no head (would you like to suppose this to be a koan or what?). These were two bright spots in the field of my rather dim spiritual understanding. A bit subliminally painful situations, but separate they remained. And then one day I understood that the "I" that has no head is the "I" of I-Thou relationship. And the ratio-dominated human ground of "I-with head" is just the "I" of I-He/She. Not a great achievement, but possibly encouraging?

Two memorable Utopian dreams: Hyperborean Shambhala and Hotel Europe. A black sea gull dream. The emerging (difficult to resist) formulations of other people's problems (of these painful vicious circles of mind). There is an answer for everyone. Conditioning of Purusha. Prakriti charming and dancing. "The man in the water" story. A Megaphone Solo. On Tantric gifts. On intensity of preventive coincidences flow. Some personal words on the [painful] ugliness of being a sinner. Looking at the Sky together. (La-la. Ha-ha [by the man in the street . . . and by Buddha-Heruka] and Al-Ah [of prayer]. Ya-ha-av-[aaa]h . . . "La-bo-ra": ascending by descending steps, a powerful paradox possibly feeding the very Western civilization we are so used to. Towards some future schou-roum-bouroum: "al-ab-ar-{ay-ah}-au[m].") On responsibility. The Logic [Locus. Lotus] of Timeless. When I started my "third eye" training (Sakharov, 1993), the very first effects—before some dramatic developments I told about in parts 1 and 2 of this paper (Soidla, 1995a, 1995b)—were related to activating my dream life. Dreams were memorable, colored bright; the plot was usually quite soap-opera level, but some feeling of importance was certainly added, as if all the trivialities were seen for the very first time with most fresh, child-like eyes. On this background, some dreams nevertheless were felt as something "special." One of them started in a beautifully silent cosmos. Our "cosmoplane" was damaged in a Star Wars-like incident (this was the last vestige of something like a plot) and we started descending back to Earth. What followed was a most majestic view of future Earth that I was seeing with unmistakably XXth century eyes of surprise. All the territory of the USA was covered with a giant roof, having been turned into a production plant, as a silent voice seemed to tell me. All Europe was a giant hotel. Our hotel room windows were one mile high above a blue Mediterranean sea, but from my bathroom I had a direct path to the Arctic ice. I was well conscious how breathtakingly impossible and new it was. The Arctic that I saw was rather special, maybe really a border between "real" and mystical realms, a Hyperborean Shambhala-like world (Bernbaum, 1980). Another dream of mine took me a bit further along these [or some quite independent?] lines. It started at something like an Arctic ocean shore with rainbow-colored, glittering small ice crystals everywhere in the air above the white snow-covered coast. (Possibly this world—at least some parts of it—was a psycho-physical world of absent or suppressed white color synthesis as discussed in Tart, 1975.) But the ocean seemed to be quite strangely not covered by ice. After a blank I saw an island, in some not quite specified way related to the previous scene. The very special glittering quality of the arctic air of the dream was still present, but it was quite warm and the center of the island was occupied by a lake of almost tropical warm blue tint. A kind of old-fashioned [not futuristic, strange, but in a way familiar] hydroplane was landing on the lake. Some strange direct inner knowledge [the strangeness of this seemed to be perceived even in the dream] told me of large underground laboratories; they emerged, also a bit old-fashioned and at the same time familiar, then the image faded. Some special "nourishing" quality of these dreams, especially of the last one, remained with me. Was some "Shambhala archetype" behind all these dream-experiences, as well as behind the Shambhala-dreams reported by Bernbaum (1980)?

Sometimes dreams seem to be closely related to some following event, in a way preparing one for a coming emotional turmoil, providing a new "feeling-tone" beforehand. This feels like that in a way opposite to normal memory recording . . . something pre-recorded [inherited] and still virtual in a not edited part of memory engram first starts with clothing into personal mythological and associative memory stuff [as witnessed in dreams], and only after this preparation stage appears as a full-grown real physical event. It was so with the man in the water story. (This story will follow soon.) It was also so before the magical and hazardous summer solstice events at Vuoksa I wrote about in the earlier parts of this paper. I had a dream of flight, but this was a rather special flight. I was flying in slow large circles with some tens of fellow-birds, that seemed to be sea gulls judging by the pattern of their flight. I remembered a strange half-darkness—as if during white nights—a not so usual kind of light during dreams. When seeing the sea gulls circling above the water mill at Vuoksa at midnight I recognized the scene. Later, after being in a situation of ultimate—both metaphysical and physical—hazard, I had some grounds to perceive all this as a kind of an alternative future (say, of having been killed, and "reincarnated" as a sea gull) that had been waiting for me (or, more realistically speaking, exists just as an extra dimension of my life story—in the experiential realm of dreams, synchronicities, psychic episodes, physically possible in some "hybrid" half-personal/half-mythological associative memory engram): A kind of imaginary alternative future, unreal, and at the same time in my memory seemingly so real, as a kind of construction that is made in a way my brain is so used to applying, say, in reconstructing a time dimension of evolutionary history I use in my lectures on molecular evolution. A friend of mine (let's name her G.M.) after listening to this story many years ago asked me, after seemingly having a kind of inner fight—to ask or not to ask—and what was the color of these sea gulls? This question surprised me, but immediately I knew the answer: they were black (dark). So possibly these sea gulls existed both as a figure of collective unconscious (one level of truth) and as a personal message (or insight) of mine (another level of truth). Certainly one never can be sure with anything like this, but there is possibly some sense in trying to collect the trivial everyday stories of this kind—seemingly pointing towards something—to fill a wastebasket for some possibly successful treasure hunters of tomorrow (see Soidla, 1995b). The very kind of painful expression on the face of G.M. when asking me the question about the color of the sea gulls of my dream reminded me of the same expression of G.G., a former occultist, now orthodox Christian (this has been the path for many people involved in the transpersonal and the spiritual here in Russia). Several times I witnessed how she was involved in some social or spiritual exchange, but with a growing expression of some pain [possibly just because of the very impossibility of not telling until now something quite odd]--and then she told It! Usually this was some painful thing—an isolated train of recurrent thoughts I [or other people in the room] had in mind but were not inclined to tell anyone. I must admit, that I tried no formal experiments with this ability of hers.

According to Evans-Wentz (1960), a Buddha-Heruka will approach us in the "Bardo of becoming" singing something like La-la and Ha-ha. These may seem to be most silly syllables from a fierce deity [but certainly one must see it himself/herself before coming to any conclusions]. Or one can suppose that these "words" [seed-syllables] are just the right ones to attack our very Being—[La] and Speech/[Mind]—[Ha], taking into account that these syllables correspond to the "seeds" traditionally connected with the root [Muladhara] and throat [Visuddha] chakras (Leadbeater, 1971; Woodroffe, 1928/1972). For the man in the street [like me] La-la seems certainly to be connected with a complex of feelings related to some basic joy-energy of life [something possibly reached by a loving & kind variety of "dirty talk"] and Ha-ha to a feeling of seemingly limitless [verbal] intellectual power [superiority]— see the two first stories in the very beginning of the first part of this paper (Soidla, 1995 a). One can try to feel a difference between these La-la and Ha-ha and of the same letters in a bit different order as Al-ah. The last word feels just by itself as a most sincere prayer to something much higher than Humankind. [Do you feel it?] One can try to feel the in a way descending, "materialistic" overtones in the syllables la-ba-ra-ya-ha-mo and correspondingly ascending and "overcoming" in the mirrored syllables al-ab-ar-ay-ah-om—in a way connected with the 6 chakras from mula to ajna (Leadbeater, 1971; Woodroffe, 1928/1972). Are not these syllables internalized in the Indo-European languages giving the basic WORK: la-bo-ra [ay] (as in "laboratory") for the curious western activity of trying to ascend by descending steps? The dramatic realm of chakras is possibly not so exotic and unrelated to Western mentality. In "The Last Judgment" world by Blake one sees the 4 lower chakras along the central line (sushumna): Mula (the cave of Dragon with seven heads), Swadisthana (Harlot), Manipura (Angels of Glory) and Anahata (Christ) between the channels of Ida and Pingala: ascending flow of resurrection of the just (right side) and fall of the wicked (left side). Upper chakras obviously belong to an after-last-judgment world. To feel the "dialectics" of the basic ascending and descending steps can help with personal spiritual exercises, but certainly these possible ancient overtones are powerful enough to amplify our unreadiness, misconceptions, maybe even magnify the dust on the inner mirror to become seemingly real rocks to fall on us. Happy are those who know that there is no mirror, no dust. Others must better polish the mirror. It is one of the last mentioned ones—like me—who is better to remember about not mixing the traditions [techniques] (Soidla, 1995a) of all the so often neglected ABCs of spiritual development [exemplified by the first two "limbs" of the Ashtanga Yoga (Taimni, 1974)]. Anyway, if one is not carried away by egotistic [and naive] magic aspirations, he or she can well benefit by activating one's innate sense of language as a powerful sacred realm.

During recent years the number of my powerful negative experiences has possibly decreased a bit. The following is an example of one of the "late negative stories" of mine. What makes the story rather interesting--at least for me--is a long period of "foretaste" of some coming horror and the involvement of both my wife and I—and indirectly also S.S.—in this story. There is a small pool near our Institute, a rather dirty, but, in a way, "magical place" in some very loose sense (one sometimes seems to catch a strange expression on the faces of people, some tension seems sometimes to be in the very air). It was a typical St. Petersburg autumn, a time of cold winds and first ice at the shore. I had a night of hectic dreams and half-nightmares. Morning felt strangely ominous and at the same time there was a sense of rather tense alertness. My wife and I passed the pool and then we noticed a strange man drinking water ... or what? His head was in the water, but his legs were moving in a strange way. We passed him, but a backward glance confirmed that he still had his head in water. We took his legs and pulled him to a dry place: he felt strangely very light, as if not quite a real human being. We called for medical first aid. The feeling that something ominous, unreal, special, was with us and persisted during all of this story. And then, in my Institute after 2-3 hours I got a package from S.S. Several photocopies, and among them some pages and title of a book by Rosenblatt (I994):

"The Man in the Water." A synchronicity "prepared" by a foretaste of ominous energies, by a kind of "echo" of the event to come. A kind of singularity-to be followed by quite "normal" days and months—that is obviously still with me as a kind of possibility of future stories along the same lines, in the after-final dreams, maybe.

Retracing my own steps. Childhood: fears, visions, black worlds. Magic that seemed to work in the classroom. One must pay for everything. In search of the Leading Edge. The experiment that really works: Molecular Genetics. Science and Spirituality. An arrogant youth. A story of Monkey Art. Transpersonal Studies—how exciting! Meeting A.V. In the healer's room. A photo of Bhagavan, On having entered the Stream. All this is a part of a life story. One never returns. This is an attempt to scan quickly for some key moments of my life. I remember that my childhood was rich in religious sentiments, mostly due to my grandmother. They disappeared after some years seemingly leaving no trace. But I remember frightful appearances in the night and hot childish prayers to keep them away. At the same time fantasies of being guilty in some mystical sense, even of being damned, started haunting me. I never thought of myself as a demonic hero:

no pride of being damned, only the horror of it. Also I noticed—or imagined--surges of ill feelings during religious holidays. This was a kind of materialization of my mixture of childish religiosity with strong archetypical shadow components, that grew even stronger with first sexual fantasies and corresponding feelings of guilt—and were a dominant feeling during so many years. Maybe connected with this were fantasies of living in black worlds that were perceived as a kind of return to Home (Womb?). Anyway I was inclined to interpret all this also as a part of my congenital metaphysical defect, something that I was never able to change, of being a child of darkness [that I did not like at all]. At quite a young age I started reading books about science, and soon I felt most

rationalistic, hostile to anything spiritual, but at the same time quite open to negative mystical fantasies. I remember a seemingly not too significant story that exerted—against my own will—a rather deep impression. An old man, a relative of our neighbors, asked me where the Solar system came from and who sends us dreams, if there is no God? I answered these simple questions with all the possible arrogance of book-learning, and then he neared his dark almost toothless mouth and with drops of saliva presented a secret most important message: "You can tell any stories like this, but I know that God appeared before me as a White Wall." I was dumbfounded. I attempted to wear it off, to ridicule this experience of mine by retelling it to my friends. (No exaggeration was really needed.) But this experience is still with me, a challenge I could not meet, an unhealed wound. In school I was rather rationalistic, but certainly naive, awkward and often beaten by my schoolmates. At the same time I had a definite feeling (most likely an illusion, a childish fantasy, but maybe not 100% so) that I am able to manipulate my teachers to question me only when I really know what to say. This way or another, I was rather successful in school, but with a definite feeling that it all was undeserved and that the beating I got from my peers was in some mystical way related to my Guilt, that Nature itself was involved in executing me according to some all-knowledgeable and just High Court decision. As a result I spent all these years with a feeling that I have no right to be successful and tried never to learn how to be rationally manipulative. (I manipulated people, but this was always an irrational, repressed, and "forbidden" activity.) I lived with a heavy hand of the Collective Unconscious on the back of my head.

After a long illness that I badly needed, I continued on at school with different classmates, and in place of the former feedback stabilized Hell, it was a rather normal life, if not to count being too involved in daydreams (both sexual and concerned with my future fame) instead of working hard. But formally I was rather successful and in a way quite a happy schoolboy. The same is true about my University years. Certainly, I was awkward, only very slowly growing out of my provinciality (I have not quite succeeded with this even now, after 45 or so years, but I never allowed myself to try seriously getting rid of it—on a rational level). I was rather late realizing that I really want to be at a Leading Edge, not only in my fantasies, but in real life. The very choice of molecular genetics for my graduate studies was dictated by this wish, but also by a wish to be in a kind of "legal opposition": when I started my graduate studies in 1963 Trofim Lysenko and his "Mitchurinist genetics" was still a dominant force in our country. What I discovered soon was even more valuable. Genetics provided a way of making experiments that really worked, were repeatable and allowed interpretation in terms of simple molecular models. The rationalist in me could not ask for anything better than this. Nevertheless, I always longed for some quite different field of inquiry (but maybe—of experience?). So I gathered my fellow geneticists to discuss a recent book by Desmond Morris (1962) on apes' drawings. These were the years of ideological thaw in our country, nevertheless, my seminar created some problems for the head of my department. Years later I was told, that the incident was discussed at a communist party district committee level.

After some years I noticed a "leading edge" topic that later turned out to be not just one more topic of this kind, but something really alternative--complementary to my involvement with a "real" science like genetics. This was the field of transpersonal psychology that came to my attention in the early '70s. I perceived transpersonal texts as something most nourishing for some part of my personality that had been dormant for so many years, but this interest seemed still to be dominated by my mind, still to be not connected with my total being [to wholeness of my being]. But somewhere, under the surface of the intellectual level, a process of metamorphosis, something much more basic than I could imagine during these years possibly started unfolding. I made the acquaintance of A.V., a Kabbalist and Magus. The very way his Mind worked was a surprise for me. Even more important was that what started as a quite innocent superficial imitation of some seemingly pure artistic traits of him taught me some badly needed basic lessons of "esoteric psychologies" (see Soidla, 1995a). Being a psycho-catalyst of my metamorphosis he was never really touched by my problems (that, by the way, I never told him). It was also during these years that I came across a portrait that created a strange feeling of being—in some irrational way—most important for me. This was a portrait of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi (see Cohen, 1974). I have never succeeded in mastering Bhagavan's system of self inquiry, but his beneficial subtle influence has been with be for 20 years or so (and has now taken quite tangible form through classes led by a most remarkable yogi, Oleg Mogilever—that I am more or less regularly attending). If A.V. was—in a way—a source of inner knowledge and energy (maybe I still miss some important point), then Ramana certainly was a catalyst of purification, of peeling away layers of dead spiritual tissue. Of many other important challenges of these years I would like to mention here some meetings with Mr. Linnik, a St. Petersburg healer. He was not only most devoted to his noble task, but also has managed to create a subtly impressive environment with violins in different stages of completion and with a dark far corner with icons and healthy green plants that seemed to feed on spiritual energy.

I was not conscious of having entered a "stream," but here I found myself, more and more aware of its powerful spiritual flow (N.B. What a productive metaphor the taoist-like "flow" has become during the last 10 у ears or so [Csikszentmihalyi, 1990]), but also--of having made one mistake after another, having been stopped by one rock after another (hence the increase of awareness about the flow?)--with a more and more insistent feeling of total failure. [A "punctuated flow" it has been.] And at the same time there was no way back. I was certainly searching for something quite different (some romantic "spiritual happiness," maybe). But there is no way back and this is good. Maybe better to say: this is right, this is something Real.

Barely visible Paths of Help. Some more Hope. Sri Bhagavan and OM. The gift of Rainbow. A remarkable man. The story continues. Space, spirituality and developing of Siberia. Transpersonal geopolitics. "Power structures" as street gangs: in a civilized world one usually does not get involved in their problems. The dimensions of Paranoia Unlimited. The Past of the Mind (= MEMORY) is the Future of the Body. On Pluralism, on the Truth above the concept of One Truth, on our inability to conceive the One Truth and how a toilet spat upon my face to answer this philosophy of TRUTH, or—even a contemporary prophet [S-n] is not mocked. [Or even: on clearing the mirror/on washing one's face. Who makes the attempt?]

What has been my practice here during recent years? Alas, even no "formal" churchgoing. A passage of Bible [almost] every evening + a prayer, and notably 15 or so evenings with Sri Ramana devotees guided by a remarkable Yogi, the translator and poet Oleg Mogilever (OM). And a constantly returning feeling that every small step of mine counts in one way or another.

To continue my story—in 1994 I had a fantastic—a? least for me—trip to Hawaii to my old transpersonal friend, S.S. Possibly, some day we'll attempt a detailed comparison of our experiences during this time and maybe even to write down some crosscultural [transcontinental] pages about these days. Here I would attempt telling the following story. I visited a HEIAU (ancient Hawaiian sacred ground) at the North Shore part of Oahu. It was a place to shatter my conceptions of sanctity and spirituality, at least showing how limited is my understanding. The Heiau was radiating a most improbable fiery energy reminiscent of stories of the volcanic goddess Pele—but not as a kind of nice story, but powerful, superhuman, both ultimately dangerous and ultimately kind—in a strange unbelievable way;

something so absurdly and clearly beyond our human capacities and limits and so real, real, real as I stood at the stone platform. The force behind the HEIAU seemed to be impersonally all-powerful [on the Hawaiian Islands], and at the same time a kind of personality, but a much greater personality than I, beyond any comparison. [How pale all these words are to describe the most intensive flow of experience during these few minutes.] I had the freedom to make a decision— and to face the consequences. I offered a small item in a ti-leaf as D.L.—my guide into the Hawaiian life—suggested, and felt that Asking for something this very moment needs all my responsibility. To ask something FOR ME felt a bit out of the question. I was only a guest—and I had to behave like a guest. So in my thoughts I attempted just to communicate my best wishes to the islands, asking just to be accepted. Immediately a feeling emerged [and slowly started growing] that in a way I had acted more or less appropriately. I still felt that every thought and step of mine must be very careful, but in a way I was accredited. Now up to this day I had still not seen rainbows, so famous in Hawaiian skies. It was not a surprise but a kind of opening of my soul towards a long awaited benign sign when on my way back I saw a display of a rainbow formed first as a bubble in the distance and then slowly taking form. In the next days double and triple rainbows followed. It was not only a beautiful welcome to a now accepted guest, seeing all this was also in a way a sign of high permission to be really there.

Many parts of my own country seem to be very beautiful, spiritual places. Take, for example, Lake Baikal and Angara River. It seems to be incredible--these powerful masses of purest water, as if some sources of original purity have opened in one's heart. The humble, glorious, one almost says "waiting" space of Siberia seems to be ready to accommodate huge communities of different kinds of spiritual seekers-like the many rooms in our Father's house. Spiritual compartmentalization could be a slogan for our country in the XXIst century to tap new energies, to open totally new ways toward a future non-antagonistic and creative Russia. Most likely a dream only, due to all the pressing "political realities." These energy draining dangerous "realities" are a kind of political paranoia of these days, something that one would better not to be involved in--as one is usually not involved in battles between street gangs. (Adults usually manage not to identify with any of them.) Mature spirituality is the only geopolitics that would really work in Russia. This is one of the few basic things I believe.

In a real life situation, any speculations have an additional dimension, a kind of commentary [that can teach, confuse or tell a lie according to the most wise "I Ching." But one seems to be able to tell one from another when he/she wants it!]. Political passions are high in Russia. So one day I found myself in a conversation—in my mind—with a Russian Nobel prize winner and former dissident—S-n. He has said in his most controversial recent paper that all the Western ideas of pluralism are just crazy. There is only one truth, the truth of God; one must try to reach this one truth and not to search for pseudo-conceptions like pluralism. Something like this. Certainly it is difficult to read things like this and continue to remain in inner calm. [So maybe really it was not an inner conversation, possibly just a quarrel?] I started this "inner discussion" with rather primitive newspaper-level arguments, then some subtler ones came. After getting to a concept of TRUTH above a concept of one truth (something non-dualistic), I, in a way, congratulated myself—and now I must confess that I was involved in this hot philosophical argumentation in my toilet room (possibly one of the best places for philosophical exercises)—and exactly at the very second of my self-congratulations, my toilet—as possibly only Russian toilets can do—spat back in my face something not too pure. What a powerful answer to my arguments! I was "stopped" (Castaneda, 1974). Need I to add that even contemporary saints are certainly not to be mocked--even if they talk about some seemingly damned demagogic things. Sorry. But what is more important is the "spiritual aftertaste" of such a story. Not a knowledge, certainly, something more tangible. Something that all my body seems to know[?], maybe something that is with my very Self, something that possibly has always been there but only now is allowed to be partly open for me . . . .

Here I would relate one other story about the mysterious ways of spiritual materialism and of the forces [of consciousness, of the Great Mind] helping one to overcome .... I was thinking about some formulations for this paper on my way home. "How beautiful are the faces of people who fail." I thought of a colleague of mine whose life seemed to be a collection of strange stories of failure. Well, I would better say "How beautiful are often . . . ." This very moment the package in my hands burst and the bag with products worth my half-week salary was at my feet, in dust. Whoops! How beautiful it is to learn from scenes like this. What a Comedy of Consciousness! Possibly I would name my new paper this way: "Whoops! What a Clownery of Consciousness!"

I would add one more short story that in my associative memory engrams seems to be related to the above incident. On the very evening after writing down the above story, my wife and I noticed a large beetle on our wall. I tried to find some glassware to take the beetle out of the room. Whoops! It smashed to nasty smallest pieces! And the beetle slowly found its way to some safe and quiet place. "You see, as a mock Zen teacher I expressed my opinion . . ."— "about the beetle" my wife quickly finished the sentence for me. (Am I to add that we almost never speak about "spiritual matters"?)

Learning to live with one's madness. Painful attempts of articulating. Am I not a madman? Certainly I am, at least during some special hours [minutes, seconds]. In a way I have been a madman all my life with some oscillations around my [rather biased] baseline. In a way this is what one pays for the rare glimpses of transpersonal realities. How is one to survive among the onslaughts of one's madness? From one side there stands a rule of Solzhenitsyn, a distillation of his forced labor camp survival experience: don't expect [hope], don't trust [believe], don't ask [for anything]. But one must not take the comedy element out of the "black comedy" of a madman's [human] life. Seeing the funny humorous side of the action cuts through invisible threads of the puppet show [and even in the worst case gives some extra time before the next act of the play].

Here follow some painful attempts of articulating. A [feeling-tone of the] "glass bead game" (Hesse, 1969) allows one not to take either the current scientific world-view or the views suggested by alternative sciences too seriously. Later postmodernism theories seem—from my point of view—to have added a touch of young over-enthusiasm and at the same time of gravity to this possibility that was so graciously opened by Hesse. Younger people cannot be quite organic in the old-man-world like this that is no more safely reality-anchored but seems to balloon—now popping in and now popping out of the picture—in a kind of spiritual thin air.

Being "psi-positive" I have always been better with the spoken word than with the written one. Quite recently I learned that possibly I have grown able to communicate some "energy/thought packets" in written form.

There are minutes when even the best real attempts at holistic descriptions (e.g., Bohm, 1980) seem to have "fixed some parameters" with the effect of blocking the flow. The holistic—that one is often longing for—may be even describable, but certainly seems not to have been described so far. Maybe waiting for some better future languages, indeed, it is nevertheless communicated by "meta-linguistic means" via consciousness altering ("poetical") texts, parables, teaching stories, and almost certainly also by the books of Bohm that I do not quite comprehend.

Are not we--scientists [implicitly] trained to "bracket" the wholeness to be able to work with local causal effects of our experiments? Doesn't "scientific"—for most of us these days--really mean "not holistic" [not transpersonal]?

Why does the practice of the first steps of Patanjali (Ashtanga) yoga help lifting one above his/her personal Pandora box effect (of [w]holistic transmutation of one's [mis]attempt of spiritual practice to a Job-like "spiritual punishment")? Maybe one needs to consider the possibility that the first and second editors (Soidla, 1995b, 1995с, 1995d) are now-if not united-then at least acting in accord.

If dreams are hybrid structures between mythological stuff and one's personal life story, then these hybrids [revealing the structure of underlying hybrid associative memory engrams] are as if specially designed to demonstrate the logic of memory editing and the components involved. For a beginning one must possibly add middle and high abstraction level associative memory engrams to the picture. (For one's [half-] waking state learning stories one certainly must add a feedback loop from the realm of one's high abstraction level—spiritual achievement—associative memory engrams [Soidla, 1993b, 1993с, 1995а, 1995b].)

The teaching and learning cycle seems to be just here in this world as a pattern of the unedited memory engram. This pattern apparently brings forth some kinds of situations and events, even with great souls, when unfolding THEIR prerecorded LIFE STORY TEXT. One needs only to read the stories on Zen and Taoist masters to recognize this. This [part of] personal karma has its own logic that one usually cannot [and then need not] interfere with—when being still in his/her human body. It just occurs.

If one needs some teaching she/he gets it! Only he/she must be attentive to read the text of coincidences ("events and things") written by [Great] Mind [in his/her mind]. This seems to be a result of selective [creative] attention plus something very personal (there is a feeling of some [Great] one being present day and night).

In a way there seems to be a HELP function in every INDIVIDUAL LIFE computer game program.

A daydream image: tiny people between giant mountains of Memory [of the collective unconscious/collective experience?].

One can build one's soul only after having surrendered. If not—one builds something quite different—one's EGO [say, like a Pharisee]. In other words, this small difference possibly determines what kind of high abstraction level associative memory engram one builds. But maybe it is not a simple biochemical decision, rather a kind of particle/wave complementarity "collapsing" when observed at the last judgment [when the high abstraction level associative memory engrams get a final label]. Hence the Great Sinner/Great Saint builds "something" that will get its proper name, its resolution, only when time and eternity meet, maybe in one's memory/consciousness with its first and second editor, maybe in a moment of singularity of human history, maybe both.

The book of Chuang Tzu fell down and—as if by itself—opened on the floor. I wanted to learn what Chuang Tzu was kindly trying to communicate to me. I lifted the book. It was open at two blank pages.

A tremendous amount of everyday work is needed even to build a criminal, evil soul.

Humor (comic spirit, crazy wisdom) tests any identification, cuts through [non-mature] [mis] identifications. What does one need to cut through? Possibly not everything (by the way, would one REALLY succeed with a task like this?). Anyway, one is better to test some most important things him/herself—if not for any other reason then to be ready for the after-death final testing [by collective unconscious, Great Mind, . . .]. Of course, one seems not to have any need for this kind of apology of Humor--via a feeling of the presence of Death-in our days. (Possibly what one needs is just the opposite--a kind of apology of Death via Humor? Not considering Humor as a way to live in the [perceived, remembered] presence of one's Death, but Death as a final way to work with some basic Cosmic Humor of existence?) But . . . who really knows?

The same current coincidences flow pattern [like a fractal geometry pattern] penetrates every activity. When the pattern changes, it is like the very world one lives in undergoes a dramatic change. One can probe the pattern by divination. One can be very sensitive or get used to the change. The change can be along the lines of developing "one's fate" and be written down in the unedited part of one's memory and/or in astrological constellations, and/or in the lines of one's hand. Then the change is anticipated by one's unconscious and one needs a higher power of awareness to notice it. One's really free actions make drastic, only too often most unexpected changes, so well known to [many] spiritual practitioners.

Unedited memory is a part of unconscious sharing of this "compartment" with some repressed edited memory, memory-like service texts and other similar "dynamic structures." Unedited memory uses the same pathways [service functions, "psychic energy," dream realm] as other unconscious stuff to communicate with and to condition conscious parts of one's Psyche.

It is important to listen to people who make mistakes, who are [almost] wrong—at least to see the emerging patterns of collective unconscious.

Mistakes are something that one sees [with "soft eyes" (Leonard, 1978)?] immediately, at very first glance, obviously not having [consciously] read the text.

Transpersonal is a label for a certain spiritual travelers' club or—in the best case--for a not quite responsible but friendly travel bureau. Spiritual travel itself is beyond any labels like this.

Possibly I am not only cornered but rather trapped in the classical alchemic tower of 49 [or was it 50?] entrances and no exit. What is left is a spiritual vertical axis, ascending or descending. One can prefer speaking about transmuting the very substance of one's dream so that no tower confining one's experience remains: just expanding space of some Vita Nuova, strangely familiar and yet brand new, possibly.

As we are so far from the final Synthesis [at some Omega point], the human [not machine-like] nature of ours is best served rather by the art of breakthroughs towards the final shining Reality than by the science & philosophy of creating new and better but still so dim and awareness-limiting systems?

For a scientist's aspect of myself, all the parts of this text of mine that were originally written in different [but not essentially discrete/major] states of consciousness have been a source of constant amusement [and I myself—the "hero" of this story—have in a way been an ultimate bug to be studied]. Something of this attitude I certainly accept and have attempted to share here. But the "whole me" denies the extremities of this view and has even allowed to make the text more "coherent" at the expense of some too exotic statements that were censured during the preparation of this paper. The result is exactly what it is: a collection of perennial/personal interface stories & symbols. I have also shared some most controversial moments of attempting to touch the collective master picture of reality with my brush for some changes of shape & shade. Here you have the result of all this—a text that is living with me as a kind of parallel life story; anyway, not a skeleton, but a body, maybe even a Being fighting, say, homewards, sometimes with my help, but often seemingly as if by itself.

Fasting and Prayer. On spiritual fasting. The watch stopped. WHO teaches the science of Silence? Reaching the Great Step. The End and its Dreams. Some very simple things: leaving, arriving, staying. The Rest is—Silence? I am really not good at fasting and my prayer is certainly not what it must and can be. But certainly fasting and prayer are among the best, most powerful things one can have in his/her/its life [maybe, indeed, even "its"?—if one remembers the feeling of the "prayer of mountains, prayer of holy spots"].

Soon only my past, only the 1st [1,001st?] time edited life story will remain for me with a few seeds of possible future changes. Keeping all this almost constantly in mind I have not grown any better as a human being [a bit more thoughtful? maybe]. It seems to be strange, but maybe even not too strange. There are other, more notable effects, apparently not depending on my awareness/effort. One day I realized my being in a process of curious comical descending towards the final Step with a flock of early slips of the tongue & memory, everyday reminders of my state, sclerotic local stops of mind, and new difficulties in formulating. This means that I have already started shifting towards the ultimate dream reality where I'll possibly roam much more helpless, regardless of all my seemingly unhesitant readiness to study the unreductionistic patterns of my life & mind during these years. Maybe this bold understanding is still better than an illusion of being able to continue without any Help? (Maybe not.) But will I ever continue? I have learned some seemingly rather spiritual and profound answers, I have read [and, alas, spoken] a lot about the survival research, out-of-body experience, books of the dead. And still I don't know. I seem to trust in the basic underlying silence responsive to every action and thought of mine . . . but once more I don't know how deep this sometimes seemingly total trust of mine is. Most of the time I am not in command of my dreams and my dream "I" seems to be as uneducated as many years ago before my transpersonal journey started. How will it be in the [post-] final dreams of mine? Again and again, I don't know. Anyway, this way or another, it's rather likely that I'll soon taste the fruits of consummation—of my folly in this lifetime. I cannot say that it all could not have been different .... How tired I feel quite often during these last years. Is there a rest? I don't know . . . [The] REST IS

Mr. Biochemistry [the very logic of the biochemistry of memory editing] warns:

there MUST be a periodic function that is not written down in the in-time part of Memory, that must be in a way TIMELESS. (The same can be true for the ["guide," "mythological"] memory texts interacting with the timeless parts of the master memory record. Most likely they bridge the in-time and timeless parts. ) And now some more words about my hypothesis of memory. First, the ideas that I develop are not really an alternative to other hypotheses/[almost] theories on synaptic strength modification, neuronal groups training, etc., up to "global mapping"--"neural Darwinism" (Edelman, 1992; Stryker, 1990). What I want to say here is that one must be open to the possibility that there exists a mechanism of creating macromolecular [RNA?] records of neuron activity patterns operating with two main symbols [nucleotides; 1-2 additional symbols -nucleotides functioning as periodic "commas" = synchronization signals] at constant rate--at speeds ca. 40Hz--and conjugated with a mechanism of post-syn-thetic editing—filling in the "commas" with additional repetitive material (Soidla, 1993b, 1993с, 1995а, 1995b, 1995с, 1995d). This mechanism is important during short-term memory recording and possibly predominant during long term memory creating but in both cases it is certainly just one component of a much more complex apparatus [just a missing link—to make the models really work].

On the metaphysical and transpersonal levels I would like to stress that at least the "compartments" of memory and consciousness seem to overlap [I would not like even to attempt to discuss some high level theory necessary to discuss the connection on any deeper level]. What I want to note here is that the repeated synchronization signals in short-term memory record and/or repeated elements in the inherited "human life story" record are also biochemically needed to allow the editing mechanism to work—as one needs to provide some universal "signals" recognized by editor ["guide"] memory [RNA] molecules. This means that the very logic of memory editing leads to the existence of two different—in-time and timeless-parts of memory record [the last, timeless, ones being situated within synchronization signals]. Maybe one is allowed to suppose that in-time and timeless editing were uncoupled at some important point in history—weakening the timeless memory/consciousness control over [or better: integration with] human mind/behavior, introducing a [quasi-] dualism for our very being. Then our aim would possibly be ... to reach a [Kingdom of a new] link between in-time and timeless parts of our memory/consciousness via making (or better—using some subtle timeless guidance by Great Mind in us [by the very Quality of our being in the world] for creating) the high abstraction level associative memory texts that will get involved in memory editing in such a way as to make a new bridge between the in-time and timeless in [and outside of] us.

Fruits, flowers, no time. flow. space, silence. Faces made of flowers and fruits. Fruit landscapes in a flower space. No bang, no whimper. It still flows. It is still a flow here. It flows. No rest, no silence, rest is, silence is.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I would like to thank Sam Shapiro for a most sensitive and compassionate editing of all three parts of this manuscript, and my wife, Olga, for sharing important metaphors and questions. I must also thank Jim Fadiman for his encouraging and revealing comments on the first draft of parts 1 and 2 of this paper. Jack Grant for opening my eyes and ears to some seed dimensions of the English language, and A.V. for his friendship. Certainly none of the above bears any responsibility for the extravagant views expressed in my paper.

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Author's address: T. R. Soidla, Institute of Cytology, Tikhoretsky Avenue 4, St. Petersburg, 194064, RUSSIA.