Excerpt
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Introduction
This is a book about the hidden potential of the human mind. In this book, I will introduce you to ancient mind-training techniques that will allow you to access the wisdom and guidance of your own soul.
These techniques come from a body of knowledge called the Ageless Wisdom. These teachings, also known as the esoteric—or mystery—teachings, have been described as “mankind’s most sacred treasure . . . the knowledge which will allow us to access the powers that lie dormant in the human mind.” Once taught in the ancient mystery schools of Egypt, Greece, Babylon, and India, these teachings were first put into book form by the Hindu sage Patanjali, author of The Yoga Sutras.
In this classic book, Patanjali taught a system of mind control called raja yoga, which focused on the higher potential of the mind. Patanjali taught that the mind has two levels—the lower or rational mind and the higher or intuitive mind. The soul, our gateway to the higher worlds, is the link between our higher and lower minds. When we train the lower mind to make contact with the soul, the soul transmits information from the higher mind to our brains. We then have direct access to the subtle worlds where information on all subjects can be found.
When we build our bridge between the lower mind and the soul, we become pioneers in the next stage of human development—the soul-aligned human being. The soul-aligned human has a mind trained to “see” in two directions: outward into the physical world or upward into the subtle worlds of spirit. A new level of awareness becomes possible as our focus shifts from the physical to the subtle planes. We find our place within the greater whole and experience the oneness of all life. We move from the personal to the universal, from “me” to “we.”
The catastrophic problems we face today are speeding up the usual slow pace of evolution and calling forth this expansion in human consciousness. With our social and ecological systems in crisis, our very survival is dependent on our ability to shift from self-interest to serving the greater good of the entire human family.
When we build our bridge to the soul, we become part of a growing army of “practical” mystics; our feet are on the ground, but our minds are trained to access the subtle realms, where higher levels of wisdom and knowledge can be found. At this time of upheaval and change, we need access to these higher sources of wisdom and guid- ance as never before. As Albert Einstein famously said, the problems in our world cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that cre- ated them. The catastrophic problems we face today require a higher level of wisdom and insight.
When we make contact with the soul, our life purpose, our service to humanity, becomes clear. Each of us has a task, a contribution to make to the world, and, at this critical period, we are all urgently needed. As I will show you in this book, our most celebrated creative thinkers—those people we call geniuses or visionaries—have all had the ability to access the higher worlds. But it’s not just the famous; I will also introduce you to “ordinary” people who have gained access to that universal wellspring of creativity and inspiration—people who are living a life of spiritual purpose and service.
Since the information we receive from the subtle worlds, on all levels, is always telepathic, this experience is called spiritual telepathy. It was an experience of spiritual telepathy that led to the launch of Intuition magazine in the late 1980s. In 1988, after working in alternative magazine publishing for several years, I was between jobs and pondering my next move. I was living in San Francisco, which at that time was not known as a place to pursue a career in magazine publishing. Since most of the publishing jobs were in Los Angeles, New York, or Boston, I was lucky to have found three back-to-back jobs in the Bay Area. But now, with no job offers in sight, my luck seemed to be running out.
My days were spent researching new magazines, sending out resumes, and worrying about my rapidly diminishing bank account. I was also worried that I might have to leave San Francisco, a city I loved. One morning, I decided to treat myself to a worry-free day outdoors, working in my backyard garden. I enjoyed the sunny October day as I weeded the flower beds, planted tulip bulbs, and raked leaves. I was standing with the rake in my hand when a thought suddenly flashed through my mind: The Center for Applied Intuition. This wasn’t the familiar type of intuitive experience—the subtle emotional or body-based sensation of knowing—but a purely mental experience. The name had simply appeared, fully formed, as though someone had dropped the words directly into my brain. I immediately knew it wasn’t my thought, and it certainly made no logical sense. I knew about the center and had met its founder, a former scientist from the Stanford Research Institute named Bill Kautz. I knew the center sponsored intuition development trainings and conferences; I also knew they had a team of expert intuitives who provided consultations to individuals and business owners. Since I knew Bill had a two-room office and a very small staff, I didn’t see the point  of contacting him. I was looking for a magazine job, not an administrative position.
I mulled it over for a few days and then called Bill to ask for infor- mation about the center’s activities. A few days later a large manila envelope arrived. Inside, I found several brochures and a simple, typewritten journal called Applied Psi, the quarterly publication Bill sent to the center’s two hundred members. The journal, devoted to the development of intuition and creativity, was fascinating. As I flipped through the pages, I suddenly had an idea: with a different format and a new name, this could be a real magazine, one that would appeal to an audience far beyond the center’s small membership.
I called Bill and made an appointment to speak with him the following week. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I had long studied the intuitive arts, and this project would be the perfect marriage of my interests and experience.
When I arrived at the center, I explained my idea to Bill. He immediately lit up and told me he had always dreamed of turning Applied Psi into a real magazine, but the right person had never come along. I went home and banged out a proposal, came back the next day, and Intuition: A Magazine for the Higher Potential of the Mind was born.
From the start, it was my baby. Since the center had such limited space, I set up shop at my dining room table. I cajoled writer friends into contributing free articles, sold advertising space to pay for the printing, and set up local bookstore distribution. When all the cop- ies sold out, I knew my hunch had been right. I set up a national newsstand distribution network and started work on the second issue. When Bill decided to close the center, he signed the rights to Intuition over to me. I later received a grant to set up an office and  hire a staff. During the seven years I published the magazine, the circulation steadily grew, eventually reaching a readership of over sixty thousand.
When I started the magazine, there were only two popular books on the subject: Frances Vaughan’s Awakening Intuition and Philip Goldberg’s The Intuitive Edge. In the years since, there has been a seemingly endless stream of books published on this topic. Intuition, it seems, is now a household word. No longer just the province of women and creative artists, intuition is now a part of daily life for a wide range of people—from businesspeople to politicians to police detectives. Now that the practice of intuition is an accepted part of our culture, it’s time to take the next step and explore a more advanced form of spiritual perception.
It is now commonly accepted that we have ways of knowing and accessing information beyond the range of our five senses. These senses—hearing, touch, taste, sight, and smell—have allowed us to experience the physical plane. But, as the Wisdom teachings tell us, we have other planes to discover and more subtle senses to unfold. These teachings tell us that our true sixth sense is the mind. Once trained, the mind becomes our “telescope,” the tool we use to peer into the subtle worlds.
Our personal intuition provides us with guidance about our work, our relationships, and other aspects of our day-to-day lives. When we build our bridge to the soul, we have the ability to register thoughts and ideas from a much higher source—the universal, or divine, mind—the storehouse of all wisdom and knowledge.
I didn’t have a name for my intuitive experience until I was introduced to the subject by a friend and colleague many years later. Soon afterward, I began to study the Wisdom literature, reading my way through the works of Alice Bailey and many other authors. Although the Bailey books had been highly recommended, I had resisted reading them for years. Always on the go, I was intimidated by their density and length and felt more than a little skeptical about this kind of material.
In these books I found a Wisdom teaching that dates back to the earliest days of humanity—a universal doctrine that forms the core of all our great religions. These teachings have appeared in different forms in various places throughout history, each in a form suitable to its time and place. In the West, these teachings were passed along by a “golden chain” of adepts that included Pythagoras and Plato. What had once been a secret teaching given only to initiates was first presented to the public in a series of books in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These books—The Secret Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and the book series by Alice Bailey and Helena Roerich—educated a new generation of spiritual seekers.
I was particularly intrigued by the information on spiritual telepathy. I have always felt deeply touched—and envious—when reading of those able to communicate with the spiritual world. I loved the story of Joan of Arc and the divine voices that urged her to save France from English domination during the Hundred Years War. I loved reading about Eileen Caddy and the divine guidance that led to the founding of the Findhorn community; I also enjoyed reading about the botanist George Washington Carver, who walked in the woods each morning to talk to God. I’ve always wondered, is it only special people—people more evolved than I am—who can have these experiences? Are they somehow preordained? Do we have to enter a monastery like the early Christian mystics did and devote our entire lives to spiritual practice? 
As I studied this topic, it became clear that not only are such expe- riences possible for every one of us, they are our evolutionary destiny. Many spiritual leaders, philosophers, and scientists tell us that we are poised on the brink of an evolutionary leap, one as profound as our emergence from animal to human. When we link the lower mind with the soul, we take our first steps into the subtle worlds and cross the boundary from human to superhuman development.
The need to harness the untapped power of the mind is the under- lying theme in Dan Brown’s novel The Lost Symbol. In this book, Brown tells us that “mankind’s disparate philosophies have all con- curred on one thing . . . that a great enlightenment is coming . . . and the result will be the transformation of our human minds into their true potentiality.”
The Ageless Wisdom teachings have long provided the disciplines necessary to move us along this evolutionary path. These teachings add the mind to the heart-centered way of the mystic. According to Bailey, esotericism is a science: “the science of the soul—with its own terminology, experiments, deductions and laws.” The “high prize” of esoteric work is to become sensitive to the subtle worlds, to tap in to universal truths and knowledge and to bring down these divine ideas to help others—and the world.
At an earlier point in our history, knowledge of the outer world was paramount to our survival. In the past four centuries, our focus has been on the development of the rational mind. Our educational system has made it possible to develop our rational minds to the very peak of their power. But as many spiritual leaders tell us, our next evolutionary frontier is the conscious use of an even higher mental faculty—a purely intuitive means of accessing information. We are hovering on the borders of new knowledge, and it is our privilege to be the pioneers.
In my adult life, I have seen the step-by-step evolution of this field. In the 1970s, our focus was on psychic development, and a flood of psychic development courses, books, and schools appeared. Many of us had our favorite psychics on speed dial, asking for information and guidance on subjects both cosmic and mundane. Channeling became popular in the ’80s. We were still relying on outside sources for wisdom and guidance, but now the information came from discarnate entities both great and small. By the ’90s, the focus had shifted to intuition as we learned to access our own innate, inner wisdom.
By the turn of the century, there was an explosion of interest in the “extended,” or “nonlocal,” mind. After the release of the classi- fied documents on Project Stargate—the secret, CIA-funded “remote viewing” experiments—a flood of books, articles, and trainings appeared on this topic. The work of pioneering scientists such as Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, and Russell Targ has shown us that the mind is not confined within the brain. Their many experiments have provided evidence that the nonlocal mind can reach beyond the brain to gather information and affect people at a distance.
As the Wisdom teachings tell us, the mind has an even higher function: it can also be trained to extend “vertically” to register and record the wisdom found in the higher planes. When we link our higher and lower minds, traditional forms of channeling and mediumship become obsolete. Once trained, the mind becomes our own internal search engine; it extends out into the cosmos, gathers information, and then “downloads” that information directly into our brains.
To illustrate the universal nature of these teachings, I’ve included information on a wide range of cultures and spiritual traditions, both ancient and modern. I will also show you the ways in which science is now validating this ancient wisdom. It has been said that only when science and mysticism meet will we have a true picture of reality. The recent discoveries in quantum science have moved these two worlds closer than ever before. Quantum scientists have discovered that a sea of interactive, interconnected energy underlies the physical world. They have also provided us with evidence that suggests that we, too, are part of this energetic field. What they haven’t—and can’t—tell us is exactly how this occurs. The answer, according to the Wisdom teachings, is to be found in the subtle, not the physical, worlds. Science can measure and map the physical world, but until we have more sensitive scientific instruments, we can only explore the subtle worlds with our own inner “instrument”—the trained mind.
The former astronaut Edgar Mitchell is one scientist who believes that inner exploration is necessary to give us a complete picture of our world. In his book The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey through the Material and Mystical Worlds, he writes:
As I studied the beliefs of mystics . . . it became absolutely clear to me that first-person experiences, the subjective, with all its potential for misinterpretation, was just as important to understanding reality as the third-person observations of science. Nature has provided a broader range of mental capabilities than can be captured within the norms of Western cultural tradition.”
To bridge the gap between the physical and subtle worlds, we need more “inner scientists” trained to explore and chart this territory. In the past, we’ve had only the testimony of “special” people— the saints, mystics, and founders of our great spiritual traditions—to tell us about the subtle worlds. The tide of evolution has brought us to the point where many of us can open to the subtle worlds—without spending years in a monastery. It takes only the willingness to commit to a daily spiritual practice.
Most of the books on this topic are written in dense and arcane language. My goal is to make these teachings accessible to a wider audience and to provide you with a step-by-step method for linking your lower mind with the soul. During the ten years that I studied this subject, I read widely, became a student in the Arcane School, a multiyear esoteric training program, and interviewed many practitioners of the Wisdom tradition. I will share my personal experiences as I explored these teachings and introduce you to others who have also used these practices.
These practices have had a profound effect on my life. I have a deeper connection to my soul, a more consistent source of guidance, and a greater understanding of the contribution I can make to the world. The experience that led to the launch of Intuition magazine was spontaneous, but it is possible for each of us to build our bridge to the soul and register information from the higher worlds at will.
The meditations you’ll find here are the most important part of this book. A regular meditation practice is essential for anyone who wants to access the higher worlds. It is only after we learn to quiet our minds and emotions that the brain can register the wisdom of the soul. This is a subtle process that comes about over time, through consistent daily practice.
In the first three chapters, I will take you on a Magical Mystery Tour as I explain the key principles of the Wisdom teachings. These chapters provide a foundation for the practices you’ll find in this book. These chapters will give you an overview of our subtle anatomy and describe the ways we both send and receive telepathic information. I will also describe the differences between the three aspects of the mind and show you how this teaching appears in other spiritual traditions.
In chapter 4, I describe the three types of telepathy: instinctive, mental, and spiritual. In chapter 5, you will learn how to prepare your physical, emotional, and mental bodies for the influx of higher energies. In the remaining chapters, you will learn how to build your bridge to the subtle worlds and access the wisdom of your soul. I’ve also provided meditations that will help you to understand your higher purpose and individual avenue of service.
Those of you who build this bridge are the pioneers who will lead the way to a new civilization. And each of you who takes this step will make it easier for those who follow. When we build our bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, we are, literally, bringing heaven down to earth. As more and more of us open to the subtle worlds, we will bring an ever-increasing flow of divine ideas and inspiration to the world. Together, we can usher in a new era of unity, cooperation, and peace.