Some Speculations

Chapters 3 to 15 were designed, like the Mind Control course, to help you use more of your mind in special ways to solve the problems that beset every human life.

It stems from my over 30 years of study and experiment. I have kept my work on a very practical level because I was born very poor and life presented me with practical problems from the start.

Along the way, however, it seemed only natural to speculate on the many discoveries that amazed me.

I have been influenced by:

• a lot of reading
• learned associates
• most of all by the very rich tradition of Christianity.

I was amazed that nothing I discovered to be truly workable conflicted in any way with my religious convictions.

For centuries, there has been an uncomfortable relationship between science and religion. I have never experienced this personally.

What amazed me even more is that my findings did not conflict with any other religion or with any established world view.

Among our enthusiastic graduates are atheists, Protestants of every denomination, Catholics, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, and Hindus, along with scientists and scholars of a wide spectrum of disciplines.

Does this mean that there are no values inherent in Mind Control?

Are the techniques I developed neither good nor bad, like the multiplication table?

I would deal with speculations here.

I have some firm convictions which are logical. Let me express these in a kind of catechism:

1. Does the universe have laws? Of course—science is discovering them.

2. Can we break these laws?

No. We can jump from a building and die, or make ourselves sick, but the laws are not broken; we are.

3. Can the universe think about itself?

We know that at least one part of it can: we ourselves. Is it not reasonable to conclude that the whole can?

4. Is the universe indifferent to us? How could it be? We are part of it, and it responds to us.

5. Are we fundamentally good or bad? When we are in closest touch with ourselves—in meditation—we are capable of no harm at all and a vast amount of good.

Were it not for my experiments which prove out number 5, I and my view of reality would be vastly different.

The best definition I ever heard of reality is that it is the one dream we all share.

We have only the faintest hints of what it actually is. What we perceive, the way we see things, is largely for our own convenience.

Things at a distance are not really smaller, and solid things are not really solid.

Everything is energy. The difference between a color and a sound, between a cosmic ray and a television picture, is frequency, or what energy is doing and how fast.

Matter is energy, too, as we learn from E = M C2.

It is energy doing something else, being in another state.

An interesting thing about energy—in a world of opposites: up and down, black and white, fast and slow—is that there is no opposite for energy.

This is because there is nothing that is not energy, including you and me and everything we think. Thinking both consumes and creates energy, or, to be more accurate, it converts energy.

You can see now why I find little separation between a thought and a thing.

Can thoughts influence things? Of course; energy can.

Can thoughts influence events? Of course; energy can.

Is time energy? I have only the most tentative speculations on this because time presents so many different faces to us. Look at it one way and we think we see it clearly, then look at it another way and it seems altogether different

To tie our shoelaces or cross a street we had better think of time as running in a straight line from past through the present into the future. We must think of it this way in order to get through the everyday job of living, just as we still conveniently think of the sun as rising and setting, as if the old astronomy of Coper- nicus had never been proved wrong.

From this perspective, we can remember the past experience the present, and look uncertainly, if at all, into the future.

Not so from another perspective.

In Alpha and Theta we can look into the future as well as the past Coming events do cast their shadows before, and we can be trained to see them. This ability is known by the now-respectable word “precognition.”

It was far less respectable when I won the Mexican lottery.

If in Alpha and Theta the future can be seen here and now, it must send ahead some kind of energy, which we can tune in to.

For time to send any kind of energy anywhere, it must be an energy itself.

I discovered something rather strange about how we perceive time many years ago when I was experimenting with hypnosis. When I put two of my children through age regression—taking them back in time—if the change of scenery from present to past started too abruptly, they would lurch to their right just as when we are moving forward on a bus and it stops abruptly, we lurch forward.

The children felt that in traveling backward in time they were traveling to their right When I returned them to the present and stopped, the reverse would happen;

they would lurch to the left Many of my early experiments with different subjects confirmed this.

Later, when I abandoned hypnosis for controlled meditation, I wanted to learn how, subjectively, to move backward and forward in time. I faced east because Oriental disciplines specify facing in that direction and east seemed as good a direction as any.

Then I wondered if I would be able to move around more freely in time if, taking a cue from the hypnosis experiments, I put the future on my left and the past on my right On this planet the sun brings the new day from the east and carries it to the west If I faced south during meditation, east would be on my left and west on my right and I would thus be oriented to the planetary flow of time.

Whether or not I really discovered the direction in which time flows on earth, I do not know; I do know that once I began facing south I felt better oriented in time and could move around in it more easily.

Now let us deal with a larger question. I have mentioned Higher Intelligence a number of times in past chapters. Is this some noncommittal way of mine of referring to God? I cannot prove what I am about to say; I must speak from faith. My answer is no, by Higher Intelligence I do not mean God. I use capitals for the words because I am so respectful of it but to me it is not God.

The universe seems to do what it does with remarkable efficiency—without a scrap of waste. When I put one foot in front of another, I cannot believe it is one of God’s preoccupations to see that I do not trip, nor, for that matter, is it a concern of Higher Intelligence; it is mine. I was genetically programmed to learn to walk; that was God’s work. Now that I have learned, the routine steps are up to me.

However, some steps in life are not routine, and I may need information not available through the five senses to make a decision. For this I turn to Higher Intelligence. Sometimes I need overall advice of transcending importance. For this I turn to God. I pray.

I see various levels of intelligence as a continuum, going from inanimate matter to the vegetable to the animal, then to the human and to Higher Intelligence and finally to God. I believe I have scientifically found ways of communicating with each level, from the inanimate to Higher Intelligence. I have conducted experiments under controlled conditions and proved them out through repetition, and anyone who follows the instructions in this book or takes the course in Mind Control can reproduce them. This is what I mean by “scientific.” Much of the rest is speculation and faith; not this.

Just one more of my speculations: In the perspective of our long history, we humans have just recently completed an evolutionary stage. This was the development of our brain. This is now over with and done; we have all the brain cells we are going to get. The next stage is already in progress: the development of our mind.

Soon what are now considered special psychic abilities will be commonplace for all of us, as they are today among Mind Control graduates and those readers who follow the steps I have outlined in this book.

You can see from these speculations that I have a certain view of the world and of what constitutes truth and reality. Now it is fair for you to ask, “Do Mind Control graduates emerge from their experiences with views similar to these?” No, far from it Let me give you an example.

Among those who remain closest to Mind Control practices, an amazing number become vegetarians.

Harry McKnight, who works closest with me, did this recently. I enjoy a good steak.