spiritual4u

The Library Of Spiritual Science

How can I have a Lucid Dream?

Dreams are mostly a reflection of your thoughts throughout your day. Therefore, thinking of Dreams during the day, asking yourself if you are Dreaming and wanting to have Lucid Dreams when you are awake might be helpful. The wishes might reflect themselves in your dreams. Remaining conscious until you start dreaming is one way. And seeing cues in your dream that reminds you that it is a dream is also helpful. There are also drugs and herbs that cause you to be more consciously aware, and therefore also increase the possibility for a Lucid Dream.


Does Reality Testing (RT) work?

Yes. Reality testing is simply asking yourself if you are dreaming. Finding that out isn't always easy in a dream. But usually is it quite obvious if you are dreaming or not. You may find yourself on an unfamiliar place or doing/seeing something that will not likely happen in reality. But sometimes can you find yourself in your bed, and everything looks as it is suppose to be. You can try to read something, look away, and see if the same text is there the second time you read it. You can try changing colors on something or try to fly. If you have a digital clock you can try looking at it, looking away and looking at it again. If something unusual is happening are you probably dreaming. But every reality test may fail; if that happens, don't try jumping out the window or something else that might harm you. Reality tests should be done every hour throughout the day, or more frequently. And especially before going to sleep and if you wake up in the middle of the night. Waking up after 5-6 hours, do some reality tests and go to sleep again may help.

How does the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD) technique work?

It works by setting your intention to remember to recognize you are dreaming. Stephen LaBerge from the Lucidity Institute developed it while he was trying to increase his Lucid Dreams frequency. A good approach is waking up after 5-6 hours, remember a dream and tell yourself: "Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming." You need to really mean it. Concentrate on this thought only, if you find yourself thinking on something else, just let the thought go and return to your intention. Also try to imagine that you are back in the dream, but this time you recognize that you are dreaming. Look for unusual things that suggest you are dreaming and tell yourself: "I must be dreaming!" Do this with all the unusual things you see from the dream you remember. Continue with this until you fall asleep.

How does the Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream (WILD) technique work?

It works by remaining conscious until you start dreaming. The Lucidity Institute also first presented this technique, but it is not easy if you don't have a clue what to do. But it is quite easy and effective if you do it right. Again, you need to sleep 5-6 hours before trying this. This is because you don't dream much the first 5 hours, it is mostly non-REM sleep. You enter REM a lot faster after 5-6 hours with sleep, and you don't go down to stage 3 and 4 as you do when you first go to bed.

The problem is remaining conscious until your dream start. Many strange things may happen when you remain conscious until the REM-period starts. The first thing you see may be Hypnagogic Imagery. It is a pattern, like the one you see when you press your fingers against your closed eyelids. Remember that this is hypnotic, and getting too involved with them will induce unconsciousness. Just let it flow, don't get too involved and don't suppress them either. The next thing you may experience is Hypnagogic Sounds. It may be as real as the sounds you hear in waking reality, but they are nothing to be afraid of. It is a good indicator that the REM-period is right around the corner. Just don't let these sounds scare you. If you start to experience Abstract Thoughts, the logical part of your brain is falling asleep and you are not far from losing consciousness. You might be lying in bed thinking about a friend and the hypnagogic imagery starts and you see your friend's face. You have also worked a stressful day so you start to remember stocking the shelves at work. Soon you are thinking that you are putting cans of food on the shelves with pictures of your friend on them.

All this might seems perfectly normal. But it's not logical. What you need to do is try thinking logical, do some math or start over again. Tactile Sensations can feel like you are paralyzed and high-voltage painless electricity is jolting through your body. You may experience these vibrations and find yourself leaving your body or having a Lucid Dream. But remember that all this is nothing to fear, it happens every night, whether you are consciously aware of it or not. Now that you know what you might experience when trying to consciously enter the REM-period there is another problem we need to conquer. And that is losing consciousness, a very common problem that is rather easy to overcome. A good solution is Caffeine and Theobromine. Caffeine is found in Coffee, Tea, Coke, Chocolate and Pills. Theobromine is found in Chocolate. The problem is finding out how much Caffeine works for you. A lot of experimenting has to be conducted.

A good place to start is with 0.5 liter Coke, a cup of Coffee or Tea, half a pill or a chocolate bar. If you take too much you will not start to dream at all, if you take too little you may lose consciousness. But drinking 0.5 liter Coke is not very wise, it has a very disturbing side effect. You should also stay up for about 30-60 minutes after waking up after 5-6 hours with sleep. This because it takes about 45 minutes before the Caffeine reaches its full effect. You might experience a DILD if you go to sleep right after some caffeine intake. Another way for keeping the mind active and to bring on the hypnagogic images is to imagine doing something that involves imagery, audible and tactile sensations. Like driving a car, imagine the car and the road, hear the engine-/radio and feel the steering wheel. Remain focused on what you are doing and avoid thinking about anything else than driving that car. Or you might include smell and taste, by imagine a good meal. This works best in combination with NILD, it takes far more time when done as you go to sleep for the first time. But done with NILD can you find yourself in a dream in as little as 5-10 minutes. Or you can try lying on a 30 degree incline mattress (can be done by stuffing pillows under it). And keep the room as dark as possible. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing, the slower the better. Breath with your stomach, making an "Ahhh" sound at the end of the exhalation, that will help your mind to stay awake while your body fall asleep.

With time may you notice mild vibrations and that your body becomes paralyzed. At that point will you notice that you no longer have any problem concentrating, everything becomes clear. In this state stop concentrating on your breathing and just be aware of your surroundings. If you begin to loose consciousness, start paying attention to any light in your vision or any internal sound. Some time later will you begin to experience the second vibrations. It will quickly rush throughout your body, sometimes accompanied by various sounds and then end. This is your astral body being released. Dream images will start to form. You can go with these images and enter a Lucid Dream, or you might just sit up and walk away from your physical body.

How does the Nap Induced Lucid Dream (NILD) technique work?

It works by staying up for an hour or two after waking up before going to bed again. This has proven to be a very effective technique, maybe the most effective around. Sleep for about 5-6 hours, then stay awake for about 1-2 hours and go back to sleep. Maybe doing some MILD a few minutes before falling asleep. Or try staying conscious (WILD) until the dream starts. This will in many cases cause you to have Lucid Dreams. Also a good way to have vivid dreams, or will at least make dream recall easier. Staying awake for 90 minutes seems to work better than 60 minutes, though 60 minutes seems to be effective enough in most cases. And sleeping for 6 hours seems to be better than 5 hours, though it might be harder to fall asleep again. The time spent awake should be used thinking or reading about dream related issues.

Do Lucid Dreaming induction devices work?

Yes. Your senses never rest. So what your senses pick up are usually incorporated into your dream, unless it wakes you up. You dream most vividly in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage. A device can detect these eye movements and give you cues. Cues mostly used are flashing lights and sound. The problem with these cues is that they don't tell you that you are dreaming. They usually appear in the dream as something else, like carlights. You have to train yourself to recognize these cues as dreamsigns that are trying to tell you that you are dreaming. But these devices are good at causing false awakening, you will think that the device woke you up and try to get to sleep again. But you should do a reality test if this happen, because false awakening is quite normal. Once your reality test fails, you can continue doing whatever you want in the dream. An even more effective approach are verbal cues. Like hearing "This is a Dream" or "You are dreaming" in your dream is a good cue to make you do a reality test. The only problem is that such a solution is very expensive if you want to buy a device like this.

try getting some caffeine into your system before going to bed or after 5-6 hours. If you are a light sleeper, so that the cues wake you up, then cut every use of caffeine and chocolate containing products. And try to increase your uptake of the amino acid Tryptophan.

Can Drugs and Herbs induce lucidity?

Yes. You will find most herbs, vitamins, amino acids, minerals and drugs that help you dream more and recall your dreams better. They might even cause you to have a Lucid Dream. To summarize; herbs like Valerian, Mugwort, Mullein, Kava Kava, Dittany of Crete, St. Johns Wort, Calea Zacatechichi, Salvia Divinorum, Scutellaria Indica, Licorice Root, Vervain, Jasmine, Honeysuckle, Datura, Bee Pollen, Catnip, Hops, Scullcap, Mimosa, Lavender, Damiana, Withania Somnifera, Passionflower, Chamomile, Cardamom, Gotu Kola, Ginkgo Biloba, Ibogaine, Verbena, Rose, Cinnamon, Marigold, Nutmeg, Peppermint, Holly, Yarrow and Anise may help you dream more, recall more or even have a Lucid Dream.

Make sure you know more about these herbs before you use them: some are to be used in pillows, some are to be smoked, some are to be used in tea, etc. Many B-vitamins may help you have more vivid dreams and even Lucid Dreams. Sedative drugs like Melatonin may help, and drugs like caffeine may help you with WILD and also make it easier to recall dreams. And finally, we have psychedelic drugs like DXM that may induce Lucid Dreams. Some of the drugs and herbs can be addictive, and be poisonous if taken in too large doses.

How can I prevent premature awakening?

A common problem for beginners is remaining in the dream after becoming Lucid. They become so excited once they realize that they are dreaming that they wake up right away. There are many reasons for being excited, but it will only work against your goal. You need to suppress that feeling. If your dream show signs of ending, maybe loss of detail or your dream just go black, then spinning may help bringing the dream back. Before you feel your physical body you should spin your dream body. That is going round and round. Also remind yourself that the next scene will be a dream. To ensure that it is a dream should you do a RT. Just moving, running or jumping can prolong your Lucid Dream, you might also want to try spinning out in the gravity-free universe. When you open your eyes you may be surprised to find yourself in the most beautiful environment with stars, galaxies and planets. Another technique is saying out loud: "Clarity now!". Just stating out loud your desire and intention may do incredible things to your dream. You might want to try other commands like: "Increase lucidity now!", "Create visuals now!" and "Stay calm!". Theta training may make it easier for you to stay in the Dream, it will also make it easier to induce WILD and recall Dreams.

How can I change Lucid Dream scenery?

This can be done in many ways, but the most common technique is spinning. If you want something to appear, then expecting it around the corner or behind you is quite effective. You can find a big TV and a remote, and start changing the channels to a scene you like, then just jump in the TV. If you want a special scene can you expect that to appear when you change the channels. You might also try finding a bridge, were you see a lot of scenes flowing by. If you find you like, just jump. You might try asking a dream character where you might find what you are seeking. You can try finding a door and imagine a person/place on the other side. And you can give slow morphing a try. You can also try closing your eyes and imagine the scene forming around you. But the key is to expect things to happen.

What is DILD (Dream-Initiated Lucid Dream)?

This is a name for every Lucid Dream where you become aware that it is a dream in the dream. Meaning that you are unconscious before you become Lucid. Most Lucid Dreams are DILDs.

What is CILD (Chakra Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique works by focusing on your Third Eye Chakra that is located slightly above and between your eyebrows. Set your alarm clock so that you will wake up after 6 hours. Look up and at the center of your Third Eye before closing your eyes. Keep your eyes in this position as you close them. Give yourself appropriate affirmations until you fall asleep and visualize yourself having a lucid dream or leaving your body. If you haven't fallen asleep within 3 minutes, move your eyes back to normal position and try to fall asleep. When the alarm clock wake you up, go to the bathroom and fresh up. For the next hour read some material on Lucid Dreaming or Out of Body Experiences. After reading for an hour go back to bed; roll your eyes back to your Third Eye. State your intentions for 3 minutes or until you fall asleep. One of three things will most likely happen. You will have a Lucid Dream, have a false awakening or wake up paralyzed that you might use to leave your body. At the very least should you experience vivid dreams.

What is PILD (Punishment Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique works by punishing yourself every time you fail to realize that you were dreaming. While going to sleep, tell yourself that you MUST become Lucid this night OR you will be punished in the morning. Various types of punishment may be a cold shower or maybe an electric shock. A 9 volt battery against your tongue maybe. This technique should be used in combination with MILD. The point is to increase your intention, and it works.

What is RILD (Reward Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique works by rewarding yourself every time you succeed in having a Lucid Dream. Various types of rewards may be eating a chocolate bar, or anything else that you like doing/eating. Have the things you want to reward yourself by your bed, or ready to use. It will increase your intention. This technique should also be used in combination with MILD.

What is TILD (Thirst Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique works by cutting out everything called drinking for so long that you can really feel that you are thirsty. Go to bed as normal and sleep off that deep delta sleep, wake up after 5-6 hours and go to the bathroom. Fill a glass with tempting, fresh cold water. Try to think of water and doing a RT when you drink. To make the experiment more successful you should fill your mouth with salt so that you really feel like you need to drink something. Set the glass of water on your night table and while you fall asleep, think on drinking the water and at the same time doing a Reality Test. You will not drink anything in the real world, so if you find yourself drinking something, then it must be a dream. If you want to increase the feeling of thirst even more, you should try eating some pepper or chili before going to sleep again.

What is UILD (Urinate Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique is a bit risky. It works by remembering to do a RT every time you go to the bathroom. So prior to going to bed should you drink A LOT of water. You will maybe dream of going to the bathroom, and hopefully will remember doing a RT. It's not the best and safest technique available. But it works.

What is SILD (Sexual Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique works by remembering to do a RT whenever you think about sex, lovers, partners, love etc. So that whenever you think about your boyfriend/girlfriend or sex in a dream will you remember to do a RT. There is also a few approaches you can take to make the dream more sexual-related. The B3-vitamin Niacin increases your production of sexual hormones. Taking Melatonin, Serotonin and/or Tryptophan will also help. This is because the amino acid Tryptophan is metabolized into Serotonin and Niacin. (Serotonin is converted into Melatonin when you sleep). If you already have a lot of Melatonin/Serotonin in your system more Tryptophan will be converted into Niacin. And your sexual hormone production will increase. Chocolate contains Phenylalanine in large quantities, that are converted into Tyrosine that is again metabolized into the love hormone Dopamine. So Chocolate may also give more dreams with sexual content. Chocolate has also Choline that will help you dream more, Caffeine that will let you remember dreams easier and more.

What is LILD (Letter Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique uses a letter or symbol to induce lucidity. Day-memories are often incorporated into the dream, especially memory from the evening. So it is quite likely that some of what you experience after waking up after 5-6 hours and stay up for about an hour is incorporated into the dream. This is how this technique work. You concentrate on a letter, A for Awareness during that hour. Visualize yourself many times seeing that A and suddenly remember to do a RT. Think about this for about an hour and remember to do a Reality Test whenever you see an A. This should also be done during the day, do a RT every time you notice an A. Writing a word or a letter in your hand, and frequently check it might help. Just hope that you will remember to do a RT if you see a big A in the middle of the road. The symbol in this technique can easily be changed to your dog, a friend, a place or an activity.

What is OILD (Orgone Induced Lucid Dream)?

This technique uses orgone energy to induce lucidity. Crystals and magnets have been found to send out orgone energy. But each type of crystal send out their own frequency, various orgone energy types that do various things to our body and mind. A few crystals that might induce Lucid Dreams, or increase dream recall, clarity and vividness: Herkimer Diamond, Apophyllite, Kyanite and Amethyst. The crystals should be used in correlation with your chakras, preferably your third eye (forehead). Magnets can work by other means than sending out orgone energy, the pineal gland also responds to magnetism. A steady state magnetic north pole field will stimulate the production of Melatonin as long as field strength in the vicinity of the pineal is in the 400 mgauss range. But more is not better. So be careful. Pulsating magnetic field will shut down the production of Melatonin, just as light will. If you have trouble sleeping might it be wise to check the magnetic field around your bed.

How can I have Shared Lucid Dreams?

Once you get experience in the field of Lucid Dreaming, have good control over your dream environment and can stay Lucid for a long time is it time to move on. Or if you are an experienced Lucid Dreamer that wants to try something new, then Shared Lucid Dreaming is an interesting approach. Intent is an important key for Sharing a Dream. When you lie in bed trying to fall asleep you need to program this intent to Share Dreams with those you desire, and then when you are in the Dream, you have to recall that intent and attempt to fulfill it. Give yourself appropriate affirmations while you are waiting for the hypnagogic imagery to start. A good way of finding those you desire is imagine them and let the hypnagogic imagery fill out the rest of the details. Once you are in the Dream, make sure you are fully conscious. Check all your senses and do some logical tests. Recall your intent and try a few other techniques if your friend isn't in your dream. You can phase to that person, or imagine a door and talk out loud your desire to meet that person, then open the door. You can also shout and yell for them until they come along.

Once you find them comes the big question. Are your friends Lucid? Ask a few simple questions, be friendly and patient. If you know their interest, create them. And try to make them understand that they are dreaming. Do things that normally don't happen in the physical world. When they understand or if they know that they are dreaming, make sure they are fully conscious and that all their senses are working. Once it is established that both of you are dreaming should you point out details in the dream, for later verification. You might also try to bring more people into the dream. When you wake up you should write down everything you could remember, especially the details that were pointed out. A phone call right after awakening may help on the recall.

How can I have Precognitive Lucid Dreams?

When you have some successful experience with Shared Lucid Dreaming you can give Precognitive Lucid Dreams a try. Intent is also an important key to have Precognitive Lucid Dreams. When you lie in bed trying to fall asleep you need to program this intent to have a Precognitive Dream, and when your Dream starts do you have to recall that intent. You should give yourself appropriate affirmations while you are waiting for the hypnagogic imagery to start. When the dream starts do you need to check your level of consciousness. Do all the tests and make sure your logical mind is working. The next thing you need to do is fully focus on your intent. Make it perfectly clear, shut your eyes, shut down all signals from the dream and let go. Move into the field by intuitively driving yourself with the desire to go there. Let go and fell yourself moving towards your desired source. Let time and space go, just flow with your intention. You may feel a melt down for a second until before you arrive there. Wherever you are in time or space will happen later in the physical world. Just observe whatever happen and enjoy it. Remember to write it down when you wake up, for later verification.

How can I use Dreams to affect physical matter?

This can be done in the Precognitive field. When you are in a Precognitive Lucid Dream, all you need to do is try to move objects around, or make various marks on other people. Not only do you have the ability to move matter, you can also create electricity, magnetic fields, light, heat, sound and matter. You can also form and dissolve matter. You can do this on the lowest plane, the physical plane in the precognitive field. Being in the physical plane is usually called OOBE (Out of Body Experience). But you don't need to be in the precognitive field to affect matter, being in the physical plane is enough.

How can I have Shared Precognitive Lucid Dreams?

When you feel that you have good control over Shared Lucid Dreams and Precognitive Lucid Dreams you can give Shared Precognitive Lucid Dreams a try. What you need to do is find the person you what to Share the Dream with. After all the usual tests are done and both of you are fully conscious, do you need to agree on the same intent. Agree on the time and space and do the same as you were trying to have a Precognitive Lucid Dream. Holding hands may make it easier for you to stay together. Since you are two or more will you most likely have more success affecting the physical world, since more energy is concentrated. As always, write down your experience for later verification.

How can I stop real time in my Lucid Dreams?

Stopping real time in your Lucid Dreams means making the Lucid Dream last far more than the time passed by in the physical world. Like having a dream that last a few minutes in real time, while you might experience it as a few days in the dream. By doing this can you enjoy the dream scape a lot more, since you can spend days in the dream while it really just last a few minutes. Robert Monroe even reported experiencing 100 years in a 2 hours OOBE. But to experience this might be difficult, little research have been done on this area. And those that experience it don't consciously try to have them. Still, there are a few techniques you might try. First of all, set your intention to stop real time. Have that intention in mind while having your Lucid Dream. Picture yourself being in the dream for days, maybe even weeks before you wake up. You might try to saying out loud: "Stop time now!" You can try looking at your clock in the dream, and imagine that the clock slow down and stop. You might try to expect the dream to last for days. You might try visualize two pyramids, connected at their bases counterrotating. And maybe visualize multiple pyramids rotating inside each other all rotating. This is something worth going for, as it may give you incredible long Lucid Dreams.

How can I leave my body from a Lucid Dream?

As you may have understood by now dreams take place outside your body. They are happening in the mental plane where you might meet other people or easily go down to the physical plane and travel in time and space. Being in a reality where you can do whatever you want is much more fun than being stuck in the physical plane. But exploring the physical world can also be fun, and many different and useful things can be done on the physical plane. One technique is imagine a door and talk out loud your desire to enter the physical location when you go through that door.

As you may have understood by now dreams take place outside your body. They are happening in the mental plane where you might meet other people or easily go down to the physical plane and travel in time and space. Being in a reality where you can do whatever you want is much more fun than being stuck in the physical plane. But exploring the physical world can also be fun, and many different and useful things can be done on the physical plane. One technique is imagine a door and talk out loud your desire to enter the physical location when you go through that door.

In a dream that was at the time perceived as waking life, I was in a music studio on a plane, hovering a few hundred feet above the ground, in a sudden change of experience, the plane began to free fall and spiral down towards the earth. I caught a glimpse out of the window of the ground drawing nearer, and instantly closed my eyes to try gain a form of meditation empty spiritual consciousness and accept the fate of the moment.

I had no perception of timing and did not know the moment when the plane would hit the ground. In this closed eye silent moment I felt a powerful explosion from within, with only the smallest burning overwhelming which flowed into a wave of quiet modest peaceful bliss. In the moment of change from burning to peaceful bliss I felt no understanding of time or space and did not feel my body from the moment I closed my eyes, as the explosion settled into the peace.

I cannot describe but can very intensely remember the moment that followed, it was one of no thought or sensory perception, just nothing but I felt half aware of this moment but not aware in any understandable sense. I did not question or think, just waited, after a short time I felt a growing feeling spout, from this moment I could not understand or expect to understand. I then awoke into the remains of the crash where ambulances were bagging bodies and locking them in a van, I then shouted that we were still alive and that is all I remember.

If a dream is in your mind, then it is no less real than any other part of your life, and when dreaming a dream that you think is real, like many, until you wake up, they play deeply into your emotions and can change you just like all other experience.

I don't know whether I experienced death, however I feel that I died for real as every moment was real. I have been having spiritual experiences for a long time and have been meditating daily for a few months. This experience has not yet played a significant role in my life however it remains as significant in my mind as any other memory and I can remember the physical explosion from inside of power and force and heat to a silent peaceful bliss which felt almost feather light in comparison to the heaviness of the burning, it was a complete fade from the 2 extremes in a short time.

I cannot explain the inexplicable. Anyone else died when they had vivid dreams?


Source: Spiritual4u.com

Seth: "Humanity dreams the same dream at once, and you have your mass world. The whole construction is like an educational play in which you are the producers as well as the actors. There is a play within a play within a play. There is no end to the "within" of things. The dreamer dreams, and the dreamer within the dream dreams. But the dreams are not meaningless, and the actions within them are significant. The whole self is the observer and the participator in the roles. "
"When you dream of others, they know it. When they dream of you you know it."

"(Seth-Jane leaned forward, whispering and smiling, as if telling a joke.) In dreams you are so "dumb" that you believe there is a commerce between the living and the dead. You are so "irrational" as to imagine that you sometimes speak to parents who are dead. You are so "unrealistic" that it seems to you that you visit old houses, long ago torn down, or that you travel in exotic foreign cities that you have actually never visited."

"In dreams you are so "insane" that you do not feel yourself locked in a closet of time and space, but feel instead as if all infinity but waited your beckoning."

"If you were as knowledgeable and crafty when you were awake, then you would put all religions and sciences out of business, for you would understand the greater reality of your psyche. You would know "where the action is."

"Your dead relatives survive. They often appear to you in the dream state. You usually interpret their visitations, however, in terms of your own station of reality. You see them as they were, confined to their relationship with you, and you usually do not perceive or remember other aspects of their existences that would not make sense in terms of your own beliefs."

"Throughout the ages, some have recognized the fact that there is self-consciousness and purpose in dream and sleep states, and have maintained, even in waking life, the sense of continuity of the inner self. To such people it is no longer possible to completely identify with the ego consciousness. They are too aware of themselves as more. When such knowledge is gained, the ego can accept it, for it finds to its surprise that is is not less conscious, but more, and that its limitations are dissipated."

"A man's thoughts and dreams are more far reaching than he knows. They exist in more dimensions; they affect worlds of which he is unaware. The are as concrete, in effect, as any building....The dream world is constructed within a field that you cannot physically perceive, but it has more continuity than the world you know."

"When you are manipulating within physical reality, you have a fairly simple set of rules to serve you. Within dream reality there is greater freedom...Each dream begins with psychic energy which the individual transforms into a reality which is just as functional and real as physical reality."

"Through our dreams we change physical reality, and our physical daily experience alters our dream experience. There is constant interaction. Our consciousness is simply directed in a different kind of reality when we dream, a reality as vivid as waking life."

"On one level the personality attempts to solve problems through dream construction....Dream action CAN be turned toward fulfilling constructive expectations, which will effect a change for the better!"

"Dreams can be utilized creatively to improve health, gain inspiration, restore vitality, solve problems and enrich family relationships. You can have a pleasant and joyful dream that will completely restore your good spirits and vitality."

"In our dream life we also visit other levels of existence, and gain needed skills."

"The ego is not present in dream reality. The waking consciousness is not the ego. The ego is only that portion of waking consciousness that deals with physical manipulation. Waking consciousness can be taken into the dream state, but the ego cannot, as it would falter and cause failure there. When you take your consciousness into the dream state, you will meet with various conditions, some you can manipulate, some you cannot. Some dream locations will be of your own making, and others will be strange to you because they belong to other dimensions of reality."

"As the personality is changed by any experience, it is changed by dreams. We may forget our dreams, but they are always part of us. The dreams experience is felt directly by the inner self. Dreams have their own actuality, they not only exist independent of the dreamer, but they also have tangible form, though not in the form of matter as you are familiar with it. They are forever contained as electrically coded data within the cells of the physical organism."

"The dream universe possesses concepts which will someday completely transform the physical world, but the denial of such concepts as possibilities delays their emergence."

"There are also shared or "mass" dreams. In these mankind deals with problems of his political and social structure. In these man dreams individually and collectively of ways in which change about could occur. These dreams actually help bring about the resulting change. The very energy and direction of these dreams will help change the situation. The solutions reached are not always the same as those he accepts in the physical world."

"The energy behind a 'bad dream' is the energy of hidden fears, which could be formed by anyone, since there are fears in anyone. ... Fear directs your conscious energy into the realm of reality of that fear, and you then must deal at that level. The words 'May peace be with you' will get you through any difficulty in other layers of reality."

"In a dream, I have said, you can experience many days while no corresponding amount of physical time passes. It seems as if you travel very far in the flicker of an eyelash. Now, condensed time is the time felt by the entity while any of its given personalities live on a plane of physical materialization. To go into this further, many have said that life was a dream. They were true to the facts in one regard, yet far afield as far as the main issue is concerned."

"The life of any given individual could be legitimately compared to the dream of an entity While the individual suffers and enjoys his given number of years, these years are but a flash to the entity The entity is concerned with them in the same way that you are concerned with your dreams. As you give inner purpose and organization to your dreams, and as you obtain insight and satisfaction from them, though they involve only a portion of your life, so the entity to some extent directs and gives purpose and organization to his personalities. So does the entity obtain insights and satisfactions from its existing personalities, although no one of them takes up all of its attention."

"And as your dreams originate with you, rise from you, attain a seeming independence and have their ending with you, so do the entity's personalities arise from him, attain various degrees of independence and return to him while never leaving him for an instant."

"You are familiar through your reading with so-called secondary personalities. Now, this idea comes close to the relationship between the entity and its personalities. They are independent to various degrees, and they operate on various planes of existence for purposes of overall fulfillment and development."

"To a lesser degree, you function along these lines in varying roles when you exist simultaneously as a member of a family a community and a nation and as an artist or writer. As you attempt to use your abilities, so does the entity use its abilities, and he organizes his various personalities and, to some extent, directs their activities while still allowing them what you could call free will . . . "

"Your own dreams are fragments, even as you are fragments of your entity An unrecognized unity and organization lies within all of your dreams, beneath their diversity And your dreams, while part of you, also exist apart."

"The dream world has its own reality its own 'time' and its own inner organization. As the entity is only partially concerned with its personalities after setting them into motion, so you are unconcerned with this dream world after you have set it into motion. But it exists."

"To a different degree, it is filled with conscious semi-personalities. They are not [as a rule] as developed as you are, as you are not as developed as your entity is. That dream world experiences its own continuity. It is not aware of any break, for example, when you are waking. It does not know if you sleep or wake. It merely exists to a fairly vivid degree while you dream or sleep, and it sleeps but does not 'die' when you waken . . . "

"The entity itself does not have to keep constant track of its personalities because each one possesses an inner self-conscious part that knows its origin. This part, for now, I will call the self- conscious beyond the subconscious . . . I mentioned that some part of you knows exactly how much oxygen the lungs breathe, and this is the part of which I spoke. It also receives all inner data."

"This portion of the personality translates inner data and sifts it through the subconscious, which is a barrier and also a threshold to the present personality. I told you also that the topmost layers of the subconscious contain personal memories and beneath—racial memory. The personality is not actually layered, of course, but continuing with the necessary analogy beneath the racial memories you look out upon another dimension of reality with the face of this other self- conscious part of you."

"This portion is 'turned toward' the entity. When such abilities as telepathy are used, this function is carried on continually by this other self-conscious part of you. But as a rule, you act upon such data without the knowledge of the ordinary conscious self."

"There is also a corresponding, but 'lesser' self-consciousness that connects your present personalities with the dream world, which is aware of its origin and communicates data from you to dream reality....

What I hope to do this morning is to give you a brief glimpse into the quantum mechanical body-mind, to at least attempt to understand the exact nature of what the human body is like and also the exact nature of what the Cosmic Body is like.

We use terms like mind and body and universe, but what really is the exact nature of these things? What is the mind, what is the body, what's the exact nature of physical reality? As children, we always had questions like, "Where was I before I was born? What am I doing here? What happens after death? Am I confined to my physical body? Am I just a skin encapsulated ego in a bag of flesh and bones? What really happens to me? Do I have a local address? Where do I live in this universe?"

And it's interesting that science today is beginning to ask the same questions. After all science is the quest for the truth and if you're a real scientist, these are the questions that are most critical to us.

One of the interesting things that science has found, this should have been obvious all along, is that what we call perception, what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, is really the least reliable test of what reality really is. We cannot trust our senses at all!

After all, the senses tell us that the earth is flat and we don't believe that anymore. The senses tell us that the ground that we stand on is stationary and we know it's spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through outer space at thousands of miles an hour. The senses tell us things have a certain taste, smell, size, texture. Maybe that's not the way they really are.

There was an experiment done at Harvard Medical School about 20 years ago. A group of scientists took some kittens and brought them up in a room that had only horizontal stripes. All the visual stimuli in the room were horizontal. Another group of kittens was brought up in a room that had only vertical stripes. And when these kittens grew up to be wise old cats, it turns out that one group of cats could see only a horizontal world. The other group of cats could see only a vertical world. And this had nothing to do with the belief system of these cats.

It's a phenomenon that psychologists call Premature Cognitive Commitment. Premature, because we make it at a very early stage of our development. Cognitive, because that's how they cognize or see the world. And commitment, because it fixes us to a particular reality, it imprisons us in a fixed mode of perception.

There are many variations of these experiments. In India, when they train elephants, they take the baby elephant and tie it with an iron chain to a huge tree. Then they start cutting the size of the chain and the tree. Ultimately you can tie the elephant which a big animal now, with a flimsy rope to a green plant but the elephant is unable to escape. It's made a commitment in its body-mind that it's in a prison!

Or you can do another simple experiment. Take some flies and put them in a jar. After a while remove the lid from the jar and you'll find that most of the flies, except for a couple of pioneers, will not be able to escape. They make a commitment in their body-mind that they're in a prison.

People will tell you who work in aquariums that you can separate fish from each other. They're in big glass tanks and the separations are transparent glass partitions. You can remove the glass partition after a while. The fish will swim to the edge of where the partition was and return . They made a commitment that that's as far as they can go.

All these experiments, and there are many variations of these, are pointing to a very crucial fact as far as the mechanics of perception is concerned. And that is that our initial sensory experiences and how we interpret them or how they are interpreted for us actually structure the very anatomy and physiology of our nervous system in such a way that ultimately the nervous system serves only one function: to keep reinforcing the initial interpretation. Anything that doesn't reinforce the initial interpretation doesn't even get into the nervous system. So if you don't have a concept or a notion or an idea that something exists, then your nervous system won't even take it in.

That's a very peculiar fact because it tells us that with bits of sensory experience, we'll never be able to comprehend the whole. We never will be! After all the human eye can see only between 380 and 500 billionths of a meter. There's nothing sacred between 360 and 370. It doesn't exist for us.

And so too for the other senses. This is true not only of the human species but of all species. A honeybee, for example, doesn't have the apparatus to see the usual wavelengths that you and I perceive. It senses ultra-violet. When a honeybee looks at a flower at a distance it doesn't see a flower. It sees honey from a distance but it misses the flower altogether. A snake would experience the same thing as infrared radiation which means nothing to you and me. A bat would experience that as the echo of ultra- sound which also means nothing to you and me. And a chameleon's eyeballs swivel on two different axis. You can't even remotely imagine what this would look like to a chameleon.

So what's the real nature of the world? What's it really like? We can't trust the senses. They give us a very distorted view. They break up that wholeness into a small fragment and we call it reality. We happen to agree about it. We even call it "objective reality" and we have a whole methodology that we call "science" to explore that . If you really understand what science is, then science at least until now has not been a method for exploring the truth. Science has been a method for exploring our current map of what we think the truth is. And the map is not the territory. The territory that we explore is really an extension of the map we have. If we don't have the complete map then we will not explore the territory that is not within the framework of that map.

Sir John Eckles who won the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine several years ago made the statement, "I want you to understand that there are no colors in the real world. That there are no textures in the real world. There are no fragrances in the real world. There is no beauty, there is no ugliness. Nothing of the sort. Out there is a chaos of energy soup and energy fields. Literally. We take that and somewhere inside ourselves we create a world. Somewhere inside ourselves it all happens."

It's not out there at all! Go to a physicist and ask him what's this made up of? And he'll tell you there are just four basic forces: gravity, strong interaction, weak interaction and electromagnetism that make up everything that exists. Gravity is that which holds us to the ground, makes the planets move and holds them together. The strong interaction holds the nucleus of an atom together. If you disrupt it you get a nuclear explosion. The weak interaction is a force that is responsible for transmutation of elements and radioactive decay. And electromagnetism is that which we experience as light, heat and electricity.

Ask a scientist, "Is there anything else?" and they'll say, "No, there isn't anything else. Everything that exists out there is made up of these forces." And ultimately even these forces come from one unified force which scientists today call the Unified Field. And everything that is there, all stars, all galaxies, all flowers, all human beings, everything that exists is just these forces of nature.

So what is the material world then? The material world is a cord that comes out of these forces and the cords of intelligence that structure particulate matter in fact exist inside us. We are the creators of this world. Literally.

There was an interesting conversation I once heard between a spiritual master and his student in India. At one point the student looked at this master and he said, "I don't know about you. You must live in a different world." And the master said, "No. We live in exactly the same world. The only difference is you see yourself in the world, and I see the whole world in myself. It's a minor perceptual shift that you need to make."

So let's talk about this minor perceptual shift. Because our current understanding is that this world is made up of matter that exists in space and time. That even human bodies are nothing other than bits and pieces of matter. That the human body is a physical machine that has somehow learned to think. That it's the dance of molecules that creates the epi-phenomenon of consciousness: thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, concepts, ideas, philosophies, dogma, religion. All these. Poetry is the expression of the dance of molecules. Somehow these molecules move around and we get this epi-phenomenon called thought. We have physical machines that have learned how to think.

And of course this superstition is very pervasive in the world of contemporary medicine also. We are basically bogged down in the superstition of materialism which says that sensory experience is the crucial test of reality. Therefore, all our healing methodologies are also based on this superstition. We have magic bullets for the treatment of illness. And we have the expressions like, "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is." Or if you can't believe you ate the whole thing you can have a couple of Alka Seltzers. If you can't sleep at night there's a sleeping pill. It will cure insomnia. You're feeling anxious? There's a tranquilizer. It will give you tranquillity. You have an infection? Take an antibiotic. It will cure the problem of infection. You have cancer? There's chemotherapy, radiation, surgery. If you have chest pain, you can pop some nitroglycerin. Better still, have a bypass operation.

These are the magic bullets that are supposed to get rid of disease and improve our health but in fact all these magic bullets are symptomatic approaches. They relieve symptoms or at best mask symptoms while the underlying process remains unchanged. Sometimes they interfere with mechanisms of disease. And mostly scientific research today is basically elucidating mechanisms at disease. So if we know how bacteria multiply, we can kill them and then we'll get rid of infection. If we know how cancer cells multiply, we can kill them and then we'll get rid of cancer. It doesn't work because mechanisms of disease aren't origins of disease. We can interfere with mechanisms of disease and disease finds an alternative way of expressing itself.

For example, one of the leading causes of death is not the AIDS virus or HIV disease but from antibiotic resistant organisms that are acquired in hospitals. Several years ago, the California Medical Association did a study which revealed that over 100,000 people die in the United States from antibiotic resistant organisms acquired only in hospitals. The number one cause of drug addiction in the world is not the street drugs of Colombia, but legal medical prescriptions. And despite the fact that more people have done research on cancer in this country than have cancer, despite the fact the incidence of cancer in fact has increased in the last 3 decades, anywhere from 30-300%, depending on the type of cancer you're talking about. 36% of all patients in a university hospital, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were suffering from iatrogenic disease which means disease as a result of biotechnical medical intervention: disease a patient had because they happen to see a doctor.

So something is wrong. Something is wrong. I don't mean to really give the impression that biotechnical medical intervention is not useful. It's extremely useful in acute illness. But it does not alter the overall expression of disease in a population. It merely changes its expression. We no longer have epidemics of polio, tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria and smallpox. But in their place we have higher incidence of cancer, heart disease, degenerative disorders and obesity. The overall picture hasn't changed because the model that we've structured of the human body is not the correct model. The human body is not a frozen sculpture fixed in space and time. The human body is a dynamic bundle of energy, information and intelligence that constantly is renewing itself and is in exchange with the larger field of energy, information and intelligence that we call the universe. That in fact if we could really see the human body as it is, not through the artifact of sensory experience, you would see it to be much more exciting.

The Greek philosopher Heraculutus compared the human body to a river. He said a river is a very mysterious thing. When you look at a river it looks the same to you in every second of its existence but in fact it's not the same river. He said you cannot step into the same river twice because new water flows in all the time.

And it's true also of the human body. If you could understand your body as it really is, you would see that the real you cannot step into the same flesh and bones twice because in every second of your existence you're renewing your body, changing it more rapidly, more effortlessly, more spontaneously and more easily than you can change your clothes. We can take a number of processes: eating, breathing, digestion, metabolism, elimination, but most fundamentally the movement of consciousness which expresses itself as these processes, and you would see how effortlessly, how easily you can change your body and in fact are doing so all the time.

The physical bodies that you're using to sit on these chairs, for example, aren't the ones that you walked in with a little while ago. Even with one breath you take in 10 to the power of 22 atoms. An astronomical amount of raw material that ends up as your heart, brain and kidney cells, your neurons, your DNA. With each breath you breathe out 10 to the power of 22 atoms. It's an astronomical amount of raw materials that is coming from every bit of your body. You are literally breathing out bits and pieces of your brain tissue and heart and kidney. Actually, technically speaking, we are intimately sharing our organs with each other all the time.

The American poet Walt Whitman said, "Every atom belonging to you as well belongs to me." And this isn't a metaphorical statement at all. "Every atom belonging to you as well belongs to me." I can't even call my personal body my own. And I try calling everything else my own. I can't even claim a copyright on my own physical body. Right this moment in your body you have a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ. Based on radioactive isotope studies and mathematical computations it can easily be shown that in this moment of your existence you have a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, in the body of Gautama Buddha or Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo or Mr. Saddam Hussein. You can't separate yourself from anything physically or anybody that has ever existed.

In just the last 3 weeks, a quadrillion atoms, 10 to the power of 15 atoms have gone through your body that have gone through the body of every other species on this planet. And if you do radioactive isotope studies which have been done very elegantly, you can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that you replace 98% of all the atoms in your body in less than one year. You make a new liver every 6 weeks, a new skin once a month, a new stomach lining every 5 days, a new skeleton - it seems so hard and solid, but the skeleton you have now you didn't have three months ago. Even the brain cells that you think with as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, as those basic elements, they weren't there one year ago. And the DNA that holds memories of millions of years of evolutionary time, in fact hundreds of millions of years; the actual raw material of it comes and goes every six weeks. Those atoms drift in and out like migratory birds every six weeks.

And if you want to be a real stickler about it and account for the last atom and every little sinew and collagen and cartilage, then in less than two and a half years you replace every atom in your body down to the last single atom. So if you think you are your material body then you certainly have a dilemma. Which one are you talking about? The 1991 model is not the same as the 1990 model or even the one from a few months ago.

So here I stand before you with my l991 model and yet I don't feel that I wasn't here last year. Yet I don't feel that I wasn't here 2 years ago. Maybe there's a deeper reality to the physical body. Maybe the physical body is what the Rishis of India call maya, illusion, that which gives us the appearance of something but in fact there is something else behind the mask of mortality. Behind that facade of mortality there's something else which outlasts the physical expression of the physical body.

I stand here with a physical body but I have memories and hopes and aspirations and ideas and dreams that were there last year, that were there 2 years ago. They also change but not so rapidly as my physical body. The shelf life of my emotions is a little longer than the shelf life of my molecules.

So maybe the body is merely the place my memories are calling home for the time being. Maybe the DNA is also just that place that my evolutionary memory is calling home for the time being. Maybe I'm not physical molecules that have created the machine or created the epi-phenomenon of consciousness. Maybe I'm consciousness itself that has learned how to create the physical machine. Maybe I am a force of intelligence coming out of that same unified field that makes stars and galaxies and rain forests. Maybe I come from that same place too. And maybe that place was never born and never died and in fact was always there. I've just forgotten for the moment.

And this is exactly what scientists are beginning to see. Scientists are beginning to see that it is not thoughts which are a product of molecules, but in fact molecules are structured out of fluctuations of information in a field of infinite information. That it is consciousness which is the phenomenon and matter which is the epi-phenomenon. It is consciousness which conceives, governs, constructs and actually becomes physical matter.

In the last few years we've seen some extraordinary research in this field coming out of prestigious universities and medical schools and places like the National Institute of Health. About 20 years ago it was discovered, for example, that our thoughts and our feelings have physical substrate to them. When you think a thought you make a molecule. To think is to practice brain chemistry. And in fact these thoughts are translated into very precise molecules known as neuropeptides. '"Neuro"' because they were first found in the brain. And 'peptides' because they're protein-like molecules. And thoughts, feelings, emotions and desires translate into the flux of neuropeptides in the brain.

You can think of these neuro-peptides like little keys that fit into very precise locks called receptors on the cell walls or other neurons. So the way this part of the brain speaks to another part of the brain is not necessarily in English with an Indian accent, but in the precise language of these neuropeptides.

What was found subsequently, which was absolutely fascinating was that there were receptors to neuropeptides not only in brain cells but other parts of the body. So when scientists started looking for receptors to neuropeptides in cells of the immune system, for example: T cells, B cells, monocytes and macrophages - when they started looking at them, they found that on the cell walls of all these there were receptors for the same neuropeptides which are the molecular substrate of thought.

So your immune cells are in fact constantly eavesdropping on your internal dialogue. Nothing that you say to yourself, which you're doing all the time, even in sleep, escapes the attention of the immune cells. Not only that, the immune cells, it was subsequently discovered, can make the same peptides that the brain makes when it thinks. Now here we come to a startling finding, because if the immune cell is making the same chemicals that the brain is making when it thinks, then the immune cell is a thinking cell. It's a conscious little being.

In fact, the more you look at it, the more you find that it behaves just like a neuron. It makes the same chemical cords that the brain uses for emotion, thought, feeling and desire. An immune cell has emotions. It has desires. It has an intellect. It knows how to discriminate and remember. It has to decide when it sees a carcinogen, "Is this a carcinogen? Should I go after it? Should I leave it alone? Is this a friendly bacteria? Should I go after it or leave it alone?" It has to remember the last time it encountered something. In fact it remembers the last time somebody else encountered the same thing.

Your immune cells can immediately recognize anything that has ever been encountered by any living species. If you are exposed to pneumococus for the first time in your life, your immune cells still remember the last time somebody somewhere in prehistoric time encountered a pneumococus and knows how to make the precise antibody to it. It's not only a thinking cell but it remembers way back into the evolutionary history of not only the human species but other species as well. So you ask a good neurologist the difference between an immune cell and a neuron and they'll say there isn't any. The immune cell is a circulating nervous system.

Now if that wasn't enough of a startling discovery, the subsequent discoveries in science have been even more interesting, because when scientists started looking elsewhere in the body they found the same phenomenon. When they looked at stomach cells and intestinal cells they found the same peptides. The stomach cells make the same chemical cords that the brain makes when it thinks. Of course they're not verbally as elite as the brain, in that they don't think in English or Swahili, but nevertheless, they are thinking cells. When you say, "I have a gut feeling about such and such," you're not speaking metaphorically anymore. You're speaking quite literally because you're gut makes the same chemicals as the brain makes when it thinks. In fact your gut feelings may be a little more accurate because gut cells haven't yet evolved to the stage of self doubt.

What science is discovering is that we have a thinking body. Every cell in our body thinks. Every cell in our body is actually a mind. Every cell has its own desires and it communicates with every other cell. The new word is not mind and body connection, we have a body-mind simultaneously everywhere.

So when you say, "I have a sad heart," then you literally have a sad heart. If a scientist was looking inside the heart, he'd find it heavy with sadness. He'll find it heavy with sad molecules. If you say, "I'm bursting with joy," a scientist could look at your skin. He'll find it loaded with emipramine which is an antidepressant which in fact, has been used in the treatment of depression by psychiatrists. If you say, "I feel exhilarated, unbounded and joyful," and I was to examine your blood, I would find high levels of interluken and interferon which are powerful anticancer drugs.

About two years ago, interlukens and interferons were released for the treatment of kidney cancer and melanoma. The only problem is they're extremely expensive. An initial course of interluken can cost you something like $40,000. But you could take a joyride on "Magic Mountain" and make a few million dollars of interluken too. Of course, if that was your idea of fun. In fact it isn't the joyride at all, it's your interpretation of it. Because if you panicked on that joyride you wouldn't make interluken, you'd make cortisol adrenaline which is completely the opposite. It destroys the immune system.

When you have the experience of tranquility, you're body makes Valium and it's identical to the Valium that Hoffman LaRouch makes except it's made in precise doses for the right target organs. It doesn't make you feel like a zombie. It is an immuno-modulator. It modulates the activity of the immune system. Even little white cells know how to make Valium. If you are jittery then your body makes jittery molecules, adrenaline, more adrenaline, cortisol. And they're not made just by the adrenal glands. They're made everywhere in the body. Little platelets make adrenaline and they huddle together in their fright. That's how the clotting cascade starts.

So I think the first major breakthrough in medicine, if that's what we're going to call it, is that the mind has escaped the confines of the brain. It's not confined to the brain, it's everywhere in our body. And if that wasn't enough, it seems that now it's breaking the confines of the body - out there. Our mind is not even imprisoned in our body. It's completely non-local. It's everywhere in space and time. In fact, our mind is part of a non-local field of information that we can only call the cosmic mind.

The German philosopher Nietzsche said, "We live on the presumption that we think when it's equally possible that we are being thought." And, there may be something to that. What we call our Cosmic Body of the universe may be in fact a projection of our collective consciousness. We've learned to create that too. Just like we've learned how to create the body, we've learned how to create the universe.

A few years ago, scientists got interested in a group of hormones called pheromones that were produced by plants. So if you infect a plant, for example, with gypsy moth, the plants will give off hormones into the atmosphere called pheromones that immediately inform the rest of the forest that there's gypsy moth around - be careful. And the rest of the forest will immediately make the appropriate antibodies to protect itself. A plant is aware. It's got a mind. it informs the others, "This is what's happening. Watch out!"

Insects communicate through pheromones too. You've seen termites build perfect columns in the dark with arches that meet at the top, perfect architectural designs. How do they do it? They communicate through pheromones. Sexual and mating behavior is influenced through pheromones.

But recently it's been found that these pheromones in fact may also be the molecular substrate of our emotions. An experiment was done at Stanford, a particularly cruel experiment, where mice were taken and were given electric shocks. After a while the mice were removed from the room. Other mice are brought into the room and as soon they enter the room they panic. They release stress hormones and cortisol because they have inhaled the pheromones of fear.

And now it's known that in fact for every single emotion that we have there is a counterpart, a molecular event that happens not only inside our body but in fact we release those pheromones as information substrates into the environment. So now when you say, "l went into this room and I felt that the atmosphere was really tense." That's physiological. When you say, "I went to this holy shrine and I felt peace, love and compassion." That's completely understandable from a physiological point of view. You say, "I don't know what it is about this chap, but he certainly gives me the creeps." That's also completely understandable.

Emerson, the philosopher, said, "Who you are shouts so loudly in my ears, I cannot hear what you're saying." And he was making a physiological statement, completely understandable from the dynamics of how neurobiology operates. What we will call the universe is in fact a Cosmic Body that we have created in exactly the same way that we have created our physical body.

And in fact, even though the artifact of sensory experience said, "There's a world out there separate from me and there's something here that's my body that's separate from that," that's not physiologically true. We are not skin-encapsulated egos confined to a bag of skin and bones. We may be the Universal Mind itself. There 's a Universal Body that we have, there's a Cosmic Body that we have and we share our personal body and our Cosmic Body with each other all the time. And we have learned to create both in exactly the same way, and our Cosmic Bodies are as crucial to our survival as our personal bodies. They're equally our own.

So, this is the teaching that comes to me, at least I can't take any credit for this incidentally. I'm just a messenger of a very ancient form of teaching that is known as the Veda, and Ayurveda is the part of Veda that deals with health, the health of nature. And Veda says that if you just remember who you are, you'll suddenly recognize that you, in fact, are the Creator.

At one time a fundamentalist preacher met a Vedantist, and the two were talking for a while. After a while the fundamentalist looked at the Vedantist and he said, "It seems to me that you're an atheist." And the Vedantist looked back at the fundamentalist and he said, "I used to be one until I realized I was God." And of course this offended the fundamentalist who said, "Are you denying the divinity of Jesus Christ?" And the Vedantist said, "Heavens! I've never denied anybody their divinity. Why would I do it to Jesus Christ ?"

This is the essential teaching of the Vedic tradition, and it has very practical applications. The Veda says, "As is the atom, so is the universe; as is the microcosm so is the macrocosm; as is the human body, so is the Cosmic Body; as is the human mind, so is the Cosmic Mind." And if you feel uncomfortable with the word "Cosmic Mind," we can simply call it a "non-local field of information with self referral cybernetic feedback loops." I give talks these days at medical schools and people are very comfortable with that definition.

Our bodies are literally the music of nature. We have here a symphony which is part of a symphony that has been there forever. The Veda says, "Behind the mask of mortality is that quantum mechanical body, that subtle Causal Body, it's something you always had. You always had that. Fire cannot burn it. Water cannot wet it. Wind cannot dry it. Weapons cannot cleave it. It was never born and it never dies."

Is there any basis for that? Today we are seeing that in fact there is basis. If you could see the body again as a physicist could see it, all you'd see is atoms. And if you could see the atoms as they really are, not through the artifact of sensory experience, you'd see these atoms of particles that are moving at lightning speeds around huge empty spaces. These particles aren't material objects at all. They are fluctuations of energy and information in a huge void of energy and information. If I could see your body not through this sensory artifact, I'd see a huge empty void with a few scattered dots and a few random electrical discharges here and there 99.999999% of your body is empty space! And the .000001% of it that appears as matter is also empty space.

So, it's all empty space. The question is what is this empty space? Is it an emptiness of nothing or a fullness of non-material intelligence? In fact it is a fullness of non-material intelligence...or information that influences its own expression. And with that definition, it's very obvious that this empty space is not an emptiness of nothing but a womb of creation. And nature goes back exactly to that same place, to fashion a galaxy and a rain forest, as it goes to fashion a thought. It's the same place. And it's inside us, it's our inner space which gives rise with amazing fertility to all these things that are so crucial to us: right, wrong, God, Heaven, sin, salvation, damnation, grace. All this comes from the same place. We are it! It's right there.

Bringing that to quantum healing, bringing that whole perspective to quantum healing, we can see how practical it can become. Because we have to begin to understand the body is really, ultimately, just a field of ideas. And the universe is just a field of ideas, literally a field.

A scientist by the name of Herbert Specter did an experiment about 20 years ago. He was at the National Institute of Health, head of Molecular Biology. In this particular experiment he gave mice an injection of a chemical called Polyisee which stimulates the immune system. He had the mice smell camphor at the same time. After a while the mice would smell camphor and it would stimulate the immune system. He took some other mice and gave them psychlophosphamite which is a chemical that destroys the immune system and had them smell camphor at the same time. And they smell camphor and they destroy the immune system. Here's 2 groups of mice now. One that smells camphor and stimulates the immune system. One that smells camphor and destroys the immune system.

In one group of mice if you give them pneumococcide they get pneumonia and die of it very quickly. If you give them carcinogens, they get cancer and die of it very quickly. In the other group nothing happens. And what's the crucial difference between survival and death in these mice? It's the interpretation of the memory of the smell of camphor.

Is this relevant to us? You bet it is. Because like those mice, we too have conditioned ourselves to respond to memories in a certain way. We link stimuli to certain memories and every time we're exposed to those stimuli we reinterpret the universe and ourselves according to the memories. We become the victim of the stale repetition of outworn memories.

It's estimated that the average human has 60,000 thoughts a day. This is not surprising. What is disconcerting is that 90% of the thoughts you have today are the ones you had yesterday.

So through the same mechanics we keep creating and become bundles of conditioned reflexes and responses constantly being triggered by people and circumstance into the same predictable biochemical responses and ultimately into the same behavioral responses and ultimately into the same patterns of disease, aging and death. We take our sensory experiences to be real. The sage, the seer Audishankra, who lived a long, long time ago in the Vedic tradition of India said, "The reason we grow old and age and die is we see other people growing old, aging and dying. And what we see we become." What we see, we become - because we hold that to be true. We cannot see the world again with fresh eyes.

In the Shiva Sutras, which are again thousands of years old, the yogi of all yogis, Shiva himself, says, "If you want to recreate the world, then look at it with fresh eyes." The way it really is. Look at it without the camouflage of your own memories. A true yogi says, "I use memories but I don't let memories use me."

In the Shiva Sutras, again, Lord Shiva says, "Look at a beauteous person or an ordinary object as if for the first time." How many people can do that? Because they've forgotten to get in touch with the one who is seeing. We are just a bundle of conditioned reflexes. The outcome of our thoughts and feelings. But who is having these thoughts and feelings? The one who's having these thoughts and feelings is not the thought. The one who is having these feelings is the silence between the thoughts. The one who is having these feelings is consciousness itself. But consciousness itself is not thought, it's the source of thought.

Recently I had a patient with a very dramatic outcome. I just want to go over a couple of case histories to show how relevant this is. In fact, how relevant this is to not only our survival as a species, but the survival of our own planet.

This young patient that I had, (he was in fact from this area) - he was one day repairing an antenna on the roof and he picked up a wire, but it happened to be live and had 12,000 volts in it. He was immediately electrocuted. The mechanism of death for this is ventricular fibrillation which is an electrical event in the heart.

He fell from the roof 15 feet to the ground and as luck would have it he fell with the right impact at the right place with the right location of his chest with the right amount of angularity to restart another current and defibrillate. So it's as if God called him and then changed His mind.

And you ask him, "Bob, what happened?" He says, "I went into the gap." I say, "What was there in the gap?" He says, "It was sheer unbounded joy. It was absolute, total bliss." You ask him, "Were there any thoughts there?" "No. I didn't have a mind." "Did you have a body?" "No. I didn't have a body." "So what was there?" He said, "l was just aware. " You ask him, "What were you aware of?" "I was aware that I was aware. But it was pure wakefulness. I was grounded totally and completely in the experience of my own immortality."

So much so, that he now doesn't know what the meaning of fear is. In fact, not only was he lucky to have this experience, but like a true scientist, he started experimenting in this field of pure awareness. He would go into the gap. Now he knew how to slip into it, and from there he would put his attention on his leg which had completely burned. There was no muscle - nothing. His femur was exposed to the atmosphere. Over the course of 2 years, by diving into the gap, projecting his awareness from there, be has actually regrown a new lower extremity. Because he found that place from where everything was created. It's his own Self. It's his own Self.

And where is the Self? Is it in the brain? Is it in the body? Where is it? Because this is really the only important experience as far as the Vedic teaching of India is concerned. It's the only important experience. The Rishi says, "All your problems exist because you never paid attention to yourself, only to your experiences." And you're not your experiences. You're the one who's having those experiences. Enlightenment is not another experience. It's the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience. And who's that timeless factor? It's you!

Where is the Self? Scientists have been looking for it for a long time. Dr. Penfield the neurophysiologist and neurosurgeon in Canada, also a Nobel Laureate, when he operated on patients, he would cut open the skull and look inside. During operations, he'd take an electrode and stimulate different parts of the brain.

So he'd stimulate some part of the motor cortex and the patient's arm would start going up. That's the part that controls movement. He'd ask what's happening to the patient. The patient would say, "My arm is moving up." And then he'd say, "Are you moving your arm?" The patient would say, "No. It's moving up." Then he'd say, "OK. Now you move it." And the patient would move the arm up.

No matter where you look you'll never find the decision maker in the brain You'll only find the execution of those decisions. The motor cortex, for example, in the brain, it's that place that executes the commands. But where is the commander? You cannot find it. It's not local. It's everywhere or nowhere depending on your perspective. It's everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And that's who you are! That's who you are. You're everywhere and nowhere at the same time. You don't have a local address.

And you're not confined to your physical body either. The Rishi when he finally understands his from his own experience of immortality, he says, "When I'm in this state, I know for sure that my real state is this Bliss Consciousness. This bliss that follows me wherever I go. It's closer to me than my body, and there is no past because what I'm seeking is so near, there is no room for a past. What I'm seeking is the one who's doing the seeking. It's closer to me than my body, closer to me than my mind. It follows me wherever I go And when I know this then I'm in bliss."

This is not happiness. Happiness has reasons for it. You're happy because of a reason. But when you're happy for no reason whatsoever, then you're in bliss When you're grounded in this bliss then you recognize that you're not in the body, the body is in you You're not in the mind, the mind is in you. You're not in this universe, the universe is in you. Body, mind, universe just happened to you because you find them interesting. That's all.

This is ultimate Quantum Healing that gets rid once and for all of the maya of mortality, of the facade and superstition of materialism. When people get grounded in this experience then they lose all fear, including the fear of death.

The poet Tagor said, "This is just a remembering." And it, again, comes not by going outside. It comes by going inside, by doing that inner work, by going inside, by remembering. It comes by remembering that Silent Witness that was with us. There's a part of you that was with you when you were born. It was with you when you were a child. It was with you during adolescence. It's there right now listening. It's independent of all the experiences. It's that Silent Witness inside.

Tagor, in one of his celebrated poems, he says, "I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was that power that brought me into this world in the middle of the night like a little bud that opens up in the forest at midnight. And yet in the morning when I looked upon the light, I felt that I was no stranger in this world. That the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its own arms like my mother. Even so, in the moment of death I will step into the same unknown that has been ever known to me "

What you need to be afraid of is not the unknown, because that's where we live all the time. What we need to be afraid of, if anything, is the known! Because the known is the rigid patterns of past conditioning that imprison us in a prison of space, time, and causation - squeeze us into the volume of a body in the span of a lifetime. When that's not the way it really is.

He says, "Because l love this life I know I can never fear death. The child cries out when it's mother takes it from the left breast only to find in the very next moment consolation in the right one. Space, time, matter, energy are similarly engendered by frequencies of self interaction. Curving back within myself, I create again and again. Ultimately I'm not all of this, I'm the field itself."

In the Gita, Lord Krishna, speaking to Arjuna says, "Know yourself as the field and the knower of the field." The poet Rumi says, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there."

So I'd like to end with a little quote from Franz Kafka, whom everyone remembers as more or less a writer whose literary reputation rests on his portrayal of acute suffering. But he said something which is a brilliant affirmation of the path to enlightenment. He said, "You do not need to do anything, just remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, just wait. Do not even wait, just be quiet, still and solitary, and the universe will expose itself to you. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet." In those words, one feels the breath of reality because they speak to us without disturbing their own stillness. And if we really want to know what they whisper to us, then we must learn to be equally still ourselves. Thank you very much.

No matter what kind of limitations we live with or create, the labeling of these as failure diminishes the intrinsic respect that needs to be given not just to the outcome of our efforts to improve ourselves and change our lives, but also to the ways in which we strive to overcome what stands in the way. The process of overcoming limitation is a spiritual practice in itself, worthy of respect and dignity, worthy of being viewed as an essential part of the journey toward greater wholeness.

Many people judge themselves because they are not further along on a spiritual path or because they have emotional residues of the past that they carry with them that cannot yet be put down. Often, there is a part of the self that refuses to let go, and a part that wants to embrace the new. This state of tension between the two must be considered not only as a handicap, but also as a productive arena in which a new balance and equilibrium is being worked out within the self that will produce a different assessment of what that self needs. Such a re-balancing cannot be hurried. It has to happen in its own way and in its own time, for this is the nature of purification - the bringing of all limitation and darkness to the light - and of healing, the eradication of symptoms and patterns of behavior that do not represent who we are and who we wish to be.

What needs to be remembered is that ‘failure’ is not the opposite of success. Rather, the opposite of success is indifference. For indifference places one on a road of unconsciousness where the striving to reach toward a new and for the moment unattainable goal does not matter. It is not given importance. And so there is a kind of retreat into the comfortable and the familiar, rather than a movement forward toward a goal that is just beyond reach. If the goal is just beyond reach and we are trying with all our might to reach toward it, then success lies in the process, in the reaching itself, in the integrity with which body, heart and mind are joining to pursue an aim that is wanted by all three.

In relation to spiritual growth, we cannot judge progress along a spiritual path by the amount that yet remains to be accomplished. For we have no way of knowing how many lifetimes have been spent preparing us for the one particular challenge that we must meet today, a challenge that though it looks easy, is actually quite hard and represents a significant step in the maturing of our soul’s expression upon the earth. Certainly, we cannot know how far along we are on a spiritual path based on how far along someone else is. The reason is quite simple: it is that the person whom we observe as being able to accomplish things that we cannot may have significant difficulties in other areas that we know nothing about. Because they are invisible, we assume that they are not there. This is never the case. Every being at every level of development is overcoming something and moving forward toward something in a movement from level to level of spiritual truth and light. There is no other path of growth within the universe than this. It is not given. It is attained. And it is not attained by virtue of a simple mental decision to attain it. It is attained through the experience of the soul as it grows in the soul-qualities that are necessary for movement to the next level.

What are the levels of transition from failure to success? They are the levels which constitute the maximum amount of freedom from limitation in a particular area. This doesn’t mean that success look like a particular outcome according to the world’s standards. It means that success represents the outcome of being true to oneself; the outcome of being free to become exactly who we are and to express as exactly who we are in our deepest self. Success that looks like the same in the world’s eyes has more to do with popularity and less with truth. What is currently popular in a culture or society is awarded a label of success. In the next moment, the next year, the next generation, or the next phase of spiritual evolution, it will no longer be considered success. But the expression and expansion of the truth of who we are will always be a measure of success because it is a measure of truth, and this truth can only move from freedom to greater freedom, from light to greater light.

Spiritual purification is not an intellectual process, but one that is initiated by the creative power of light - the very force of Creation that was manifested at the beginning of time and that furthers Divine intention throughout time.

Spiritual light travels across all dimensions of reality, both physical and non-physical, affecting one's body as well as one's consciousness. This is particularly true for those who are already more light-filled and more sensitive to energies. But it is also true for those who are less sensitive.

While some people, today, are making a deliberate effort to purify, there are many more for whom this development is taking place without conscious intention, due to the intensification of spiritual light on the Earth. As those aspects of consciousness that are not aligned with light are uprooted from body, mind, and emotions, they begin releasing into awareness, bringing new understandings and experiences on all levels of being. Some of these experiences are uplifting, some difficult to sustain. The process of clarifying and releasing on all levels, based on the action of light, allows the soul greater access to the outer personality-self, and forms the foundation and fundamental process of purification.

Light is also the Intelligence of God, conveying truth, love, and inspiration to the consciousness of mankind. Its purpose, to reveal a new vision and awareness of sacred reality to humanity so that mankind can live in direct and conscious relationship with the Source of life.

Though the purification process follows certain general principles, it is unique to each individual and can be entered into with different degrees of depth and commitment. Though it is meant to touch every level of human experience, its particular focus will be determined by the areas in need of healing in individuals.

For example, some may experience spontaneously arising intuitions of dietary changes that are needed to promote health. Unlike intellectual knowledge, these can come suddenly into consciousness, without prior intention or study in this area. Behind such intuition lies the intelligence of light and of the soul, conveying to the psyche which foods will promote greater healing and growth and which will not. Also, on a physical level, unusual symptoms may occur for a period of time that are undiagnoseable, caused by the movement of energy that is rearranging and opening pathways within the body.

In other instances, attention to mental process may become a central focus of purification, with greater light illuminating tendencies of mind that may be disturbing but that nevertheless influence behavior. Here, the striving toward separation from unwanted mental influences, and movement toward positive states of mind, become central to the purification process.

Emotional purification is a significant area of healing for most people, and as an effort is made to engage with this level and to become more conscious and responsible for the emotional energies one carries, undesirable ways of feeling and perceiving that may have seemed intractable in the past can finally be set free.

In the most basic sense, purification has to do with purity - with the aspiration toward cleansing the body, mind, and emotions of all that is separated from God's light and love. This cleansing results in a return to one's spiritual roots and identity. As the process unfolds, it deepens the desire to place one's spiritual life in the center of life, and to allow the rest of life to be shaped around this.

The level of commitment to the purification process grows as authentic experiences of spiritual reality take place, and also as the heart opens to greater truth. When these two developments are present in a powerful way, commitment can happen simply and with an absence of conflict. When they are less present, fear or resistance may be experienced by that part of the self that wishes to continue with habits that do not serve the wholeness of one's being. Such fear can gradually be absorbed by light as one continues with the process. However, it can also cause a turning away if one feels unready to deal with underlying issues.

In the end, the depth of purification will be determined both by light-conditions on the Earth which accelerate and deepen the process, and by the nature of the soul and the degree to which it has begun to communicate with the outer self.

As light increases on the Earth, the tendencies of mankind will naturally gravitate toward the development of a spiritual life, one in which the desire for the sacred arises spontaneously from one's heart, and in which nothing that is physical is separated from one's spiritual identity and core. In this way, all of life will become sanctified, and mankind will finally be able to open doors of perception and knowledge that have long remained closed to ordinary human experience.

What does the Bahá'í Faith see as the purpose of human existence? What is the true nature of human beings and what role does religion play in our spiritual development? What is "good" and what is "evil" ? What are man's responsibilities to God and what is the spiritual meaning of life?

Many people live their lives without ever reflecting on life itself or its meaning for them. Their lives may be full of activities. They may marry, have children, run a business, or become scientists or musicians, without ever obtaining any degree of understanding of why they do these things. Their lives have no overall purpose to give meaning to separate events, and they may have no clear idea of their own nature or identity, of who they really are.

Bahá'u'lláh taught that only true religion can give purpose to human existence. If there were no Creator, if humans were simply chance products of a thermodynamic system, as many in the world today assert, there would be no purpose in life. Each individual human being would represent the temporary material existence of a conscious animal trying to move through his or her brief life with as much pleasure and as little pain and suffering as possible.

It is only in relation to the Creator, and the purpose which that Creator has fixed for His creatures, that human existence has any meaning. Bahá'u'lláh described God's purpose for man in the following way:

The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence. To this most excellent aim, this supreme objective, all the heavenly Books and the divinely-revealed and weighty Scriptures unequivocally bear witness.

Life should be seen as an eternal process of joyous spiritual discovery and growth: in the beginning stages of earthly life, the individual undergoes a period of training and education which, if it is successful, gives him or her the basic intellectual and spiritual tools necessary for continued growth. When individuals attain physical maturity in adulthood, they become responsible for their further progress, which now depends entirely on the efforts they themselves make. Through the daily struggles of material existence, people gradually deepen their understanding of the spiritual principles underlying reality, and this understanding enables them to relate more effectively to themselves, to others, and to God. After physical death, the individual continues to grow and develop in the spiritual world, which is greater than the physical world, just as the physical world is greater than the world we inhabit while in our mother's womb.

This last statement is based on the Bahá'í concept of the soul and of life after physical death . According to the Bahá'í teachings, the true nature of human beings is spiritual. Beyond the physical body, each human being has a rational soul, created by God. This soul is a nonmaterial entity, which does not depend on the body. Rather, the body serves as its vehicle in the physical world. The soul of an individual comes into being at the moment the physical body is conceived and continues to exist after the death of the physical body. The soul (also called the spirit) of the individual is the seat or locus of his or her personality, self, and consciousness.

The evolution or development of the soul and its capacities is the basic purpose of human existence. This evolution is towards God and its motive force is knowledge of God and love for Him. As we learn about God, our love for Him increases; and this, in turn, enables us to attain a closer communion with our Creator. Also, as we draw closer to God, our character becomes more refined and our actions reflect more and more the attributes and qualities of God.

Bahá'u'lláh taught that this potential to reflect the attributes of God is the soul's essential reality. It is the meaning of human beings being created "in the image of God." The divine qualities are not external to the soul. They are latent within it, just as the color, the fragrance, and the vitality of a flower are latent within the seed. They need only to be developed. In the words of Bahá'u'lláh:

Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He [God] hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favour, so enduring a bounty.

The Bahá'í writings refer to the gradual evolution or development of the individual soul as "spiritual progress." Spiritual progress means acquiring the capacity to act in conformity with the Will of God and to express the attributes and spirit of God in one's dealings with one's self and with other human beings. Bahá'u'lláh teaches that the only true and enduring happiness for human beings lies in the pursuit of spiritual development.

A person who has become aware of his or her spiritual nature and who consciously strives to progress spiritually is called a "seeker" by Bahá'u'lláh. Bahá'u'lláh described some of the qualities of the true seeker:

That seeker must, at all times, put his trust in God, must renounce the peoples of the earth, must detach himself from the world of dust, and cleave unto Him Who is the Lord of Lords. He must never seek to exalt himself above any one, must wash away from the tablet of his heart every trace of pride and vain-glory, must cling unto patience and resignation, observe silence and refrain from idle talk. For the tongue is a smoldering fire, and excess of speech a deadly poison. Material fire consumeth the body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul. The force of the former lasteth but for a time, whilst the effects of the latter endureth a century. That seeker should, also, regard backbiting as grievous error, and keep himself aloof from its dominion, inasmuch as backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul. He should be content with little, and be freed from all inordinate desire. He should treasure the companionship of them that have renounced the world, and regard avoidance of boastful and worldly people a precious benefit. At the dawn of every day he should commune with God, and with all his soul, persevere in the quest of his Beloved.... He should not wish for others that which he doth not wish for himself, nor promise that which he doth not fulfill.... He should forgive the sinful, and never despise his low estate, for none knoweth what his own end shall be. How often hath a sinner attained, at the hour of death, to the essence of faith, and quaffing the immortal draught, hath taken his flight unto the Concourse on high! And how often hath a devout believer, at the hour of his soul's ascension, been so changed as to fall into the nethermost fire!

Our purpose in revealing these convincing and weighty utterances is to impress upon the seeker that he should regard all else beside God as transient, and count all things save Him, Who is the Object of all adoration, as utter nothingness.

These are among the attributes of the exalted, and constitute the hallmark of the spiritually- minded.... When the detached wayfarer and sincere seeker hath fulfilled these essential conditions, then and only then can he be called a true seeker.

Bahá'u'lláh explained that the fundamental, spiritual role of religion is to enable people to achieve a true understanding of their own nature and of God's will and purpose for them. The spiritual teachings sent down by God through the Messengers or Manifestations of God serve to guide us to a proper comprehension of the spiritual dynamics of life. These principles enable us to understand the laws of existence. Moreover, the very efforts we must make to conform to the teachings of the Manifestations serve to develop our spiritual capacities. For example, when one makes an effort to rid oneself of prejudice and superstition in response to the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh, the result is an increased knowledge of and love for other human beings, and this, in turn, helps the individual to live life more effectively.

Bahá'u'lláh stressed that, without the coming of the Manifestations and their revelation of God's laws and teachings, we would not be able to grow and develop spiritually. The spiritual meaning of life would remain hidden from us, even if we made great efforts to discover it. This is why revealed religion is seen by Bahá'ís as the necessary key to successful spiritual living.

Speaking of the Manifestations, and Their influence on human spiritual development, Bahá'u'lláh said:

Through the Teachings of the Day Star of Truth [i.e. the Manifestation] every man will advance and develop until he attaineth the station at which he can manifest all the potential forces with which his inmost true self hath been endowed. It is for this very purpose that in every age and dispensation, the Prophets of God and His chosen Ones have appeared amongst men, and have evinced such power as is born of God and such might, as only the Eternal can reveal.

Since religion has a social dimension, Bahá'ís feel that prolonged withdrawal from the world and from contact with society and one's fellow human beings is usually not necessary or helpful to spiritual growth (although a temporary withdrawal from time to time may be legitimate and healthy). Because we are social beings, our greatest progress is made through living in association with others. Indeed, close association with others in the spirit of loving service and cooperation is essential to the process of spiritual growth.

Bahá'u'lláh related God's purpose for us to the two aspects of religion, the spiritual and the social:

God's purpose in sending His Prophets unto men is twofold. The first is to liberate the children of men from the darkness of ignorance, and guide them to the light of true understanding. The second is to ensure the peace and tranquillity of mankind, and provide all the means by which they can be established.

In other words, humankind's social development, if properly carried out, should be a collective expression of our spiritual development. All human beings, Bahá'u'lláh states, "have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization. The Almighty beareth Me witness: To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man. Those virtues that befit his dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth."

In summary, the spiritual reason for our life on earth is to provide us with a training ground; our life is a period of growth during which we focus on the development of our innate spiritual and intellectual capacities. Because these capacities are faculties of our immortal soul, they are eternal, and we must make great efforts to develop them. But such efforts are worthwhile, since the soul is the only part of us which endures. Whatever promotes our spiritual development is good, and whatever hinders it is bad.