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In search of the Historical Jesus.

By RICHARD HEINBERG

As you want people to treat you, do the same to them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even tax collectors love those who love them, do they not? And if you embrace only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Doesn’t everybody do that? If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even wrongdoers lend to their kind because they expect to be repaid. Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend without expecting anything in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of God.
— The Book of Q

[Jesus’s] ecstatic vision and social program sought to rebuild a society upward from its grass roots but on principles of religious and economic egalitarianism, with free healing brought directly to the peasant homes and free sharing of whatever they had in return. The deliberate conjunction of magic and meal, miracle and table, free compassion and open commensurality, was a challenge launched not just at Judaism’s strictest purity regulations, or even at the Mediterranean’s patriarchal combination of honor and shame, patronage and clientage, but at civilization’s eternal inclination to draw lines, invoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations. It did not invite a political revolution but envisaged a social one at the imagination’s most dangerous depths. No importance was given to distinctions of Gentile and Jew, female and male, slave and free, poor and rich. Those distinctions were hardly even attacked in theory; they were simply ignored in practice.
— John Dominick Crossan, The Historical Jesus
In this essay I intend to convey some thoughts about the origins of Christianity and the historical Jesus. But before doing so I should first confess that for me this subject carries no slight emotional charge. I grew up in a Midwestern Protestant household and attended church throughout my youth (though at about age twelve I began to question the religious teachings with which I was being indoctrinated); meanwhile, the rest of my family was beginning a slow drift toward evangelical fundamentalism. For years afterward I was torn between the desire to escape the tight-lipped Puritan ethic and unreasoning faith of my parents, and the need to validate at least a fragment of their beliefs in order to maintain a thread of connection with them and to feel that there was something right about the spiritual context in which I had been raised.
This latter need led me to embrace, for many years, a New Age version of Christianity that regarded Jesus not as the only son of God, but as the spiritual point of focus for our particular planet, a significant member of a cosmic hierarchy of god beings. Increasingly, however, I’ve felt compelled to examine even these liberalised beliefs in the light of reason and experience: before I regard Jesus as the spiritual point of focus for myself and for the world, should I not put forth some effort to learn whatever facts exist concerning his teachings, his life, and how various beliefs about him originated?

At the same time, my ongoing study of the history of civilisation has led me to conclude that in very many cases Christianity has exerted a force in the direction of intolerance, the concentration of power, and the suppression of free thought. This is certainly the case in America today, where the Christian Right is villainising gays, feminists, environmentalists, and “godless humanists,” while working to protect and expand the rights of powerful corporations to undermine traditional cultures and to pillage ecosystems. The fundamentalists plead for “family values” while promoting ideas and institutions that are actively destroying the cultural medium in which healthy communities and families thrive. What is worse, I see my own relations enthusiastically contributing (by way of the evangelical ministries of Pat Robertson and his brethren of the TV pulpit) not only to hatred and atrocities in the world today, but to what will almost surely be a biological catastrophe of unprecedented scope in the century ahead. For me, this painful personal circumstance only intensifies the importance of determining, to whatever extent is possible, the truth of Jesus.

Decoding the Gospels

The search for the historical Jesus has been going on for more than a century now, and anyone who embarks on even a cursory study of the findings of New Testament scholars quickly discovers a glaring disparity: while the scholars have been making important discoveries about the gospels, their sources, and the history of first-century Palestine, the average church-going layman knows virtually nothing at all about these findings. It is easy enough to find parties to blame for this situation — the clergy, for wishing to spare their parishioners the possibility of confusion or loss of faith; the flock themselves, for preferring comfortable beliefs over unfamiliar new information; and the scholars themselves, for maintaining an aloof position that says to the layman, “You have no right to an opinion about the historical Jesus because you have not acquired the necessary intellectual tools; only specialists are entitled to pass judgment in this matter.” And so we have two groups growing ever further apart as time goes on: on one hand, millions of faithful Christians for whom evidence is irrelevant and faith is everything, of whom many regard every word of the Bible as historically accurate; and on the other, a small coterie of academics, and their readers, who are intent on following the evidence wherever it leads regardless of its agreement or disagreement with received teachings.

The scholars (who include historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, and literary experts) have approached the New Testament the same way they would any other piece of ancient writing, directing their efforts simultaneously along two lines: first, the literary analysis of the gospels and of related texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi scrolls (What do they have in common? In what ways are they different? When were they written and by whom? What sources did the authors draw upon?); and second, historical studies of events and characters and anthropological research into their cultural context (What religious ideas, philosophies, and myths were current in the Near East during the first century? What was the political and social situation in Palestine? What were the cultural backgrounds of the people mentioned in the narratives?).

Today most textual analysts agree that the earliest stratum in the Jesus literature is comprised of the genuine sayings of the master. The Jesus Seminar — an ongoing collaboration of eminent New Testament scholars seeking to determine the most probably authentic teachings of Jesus — has helped somewhat to clarify the conclusion that most independent investigators had already reached: that the authors of the canonical gospels (which were written several decades after the events they describe, and almost certainly not by the individuals to whom they are attributed) each drew upon a lost so-called sayings gospel. Known by the scholars as “Q” (for Quelle, German for “source”), this text was recently reconstructed and published by Burton Mack of Claremont College in his popular book The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins. Scholars may still dispute the authenticity of individual sayings, but the gist of Jesus’s original message, which we will explore below, seems clear enough.

The narrative biography of Jesus contained in the gospels is another matter, however. Clearly, some elements were derived from mythical sources. We know, for instance, that Mithras (a Syrian hero-god whose cult was popular throughout the Roman Empire during the first century) was believed to have been born in the company of shepherds and to have shared a last supper with his followers, later commemorated by them in a communion of bread and wine. Mithraism also taught the immortality of the soul and a future judgment and resurrection of the dead. The idea of a god who dies in order to save, redeem, or give life to the world had antecedents not only in the mythic biography of Mithras, but those of Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and Tammuz as well. Even the ascension story easily fits a mythic type well known during this period: all admired Roman emperors were said to have ascended to heaven after their deaths; as Morton Smith (author of The Secret Gospel and Jesus the Magician) tells us, “By the early second century there was a regular ritual to assure the ascension. Augustus’s ascension was attested to the senate by the sworn witness of a Roman Praetorian.”

But there is disagreement over just how much of the biography is history and how much is myth. Burton Mack argues that we must assume that everything but the sayings is myth; he writes: “The first followers of Jesus did not know about or imagine any of the dramatic events upon which the narrative gospels hinge. These include the baptism of Jesus; his conflict with the Jewish authorities and their plot to kill him; Jesus’ instruction to the disciples; Jesus’ transfiguration, march to Jerusalem, last supper, trial, and crucifixion as king of the Jews; and finally, his resurrection from the dead and the stories of an empty tomb. All of these events must and can be accounted for as mythmaking in the [early] Jesus movements....” On the other hand, Morton Smith and John Dominick Crossan (author of The Historical Jesus and Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography) accept at least some of the narrative material as factual; Smith contends, for instance, that the miracle stories resemble reports of the works of itinerant magicians known to have flourished throughout the Near East during the time in question, and proposes that Jesus was merely an example of the type.

Who Was Jesus?

Which brings us to the question, Who was the utterer of these sayings on which so great a religion was built?

One of the most radical interpreters of the evidence, G.A. Wells of the University of London, argues that Jesus did not exist as a historical person, but was invented by a group of first-century proto-Christians who merely expanded upon certain passages in 2 Isaiah and the Wisdom of Solomon describing a supernatural entity sent by God into the world as a man. However, most scholars dispute this interpretation, concluding instead that the number and character of early references to Jesus establish his historicity beyond doubt. And most agree that the evidence portrays him as a remarkable, charismatic individual.

But to grasp, to any significant degree, how Jesus’s cont-emporaries viewed him, we must first try to understand the context of the place and times in which he lived. During the first few decades of the first century, Palestine was a centre of religious and political ferment. The Hellenistic culture that had come to dominate the eastern Mediterranean region during the previous three hundred years had also profoundly affected Jewish society, and foreign myths, cults, and philosophies were current in the land. Politically, Palestine was under Roman domination, and the Jews were a repressed and exploited people whose aspirations for independence would erupt in the war of 66-73 c.e.

Anthropologists and historians agree that revelatory world-views tend predictably to spring from situations of intense social conflict and crisis. Such revelations take forms appropriate to the unique circumstances of time and place. In the case in point, according to Mack, “One important phenomenon of the Greco-Roman age was the appearance of the religious and philosophical entrepreneur, sometimes called the divine man, sometimes the sophist or sage. The entrepreneur stepped into the void left vacant by the demise of traditional priestly functions at the ancient temple sites and addressed the confusion, concern, and curiosity of people confronted with a complex world that was felt to be at the mercy of the fates.” In addition to freelance visionaries and prophets, the eastern Mediterranean during the first century was also home to magicians, protesters, bandits, messiahs, and revolution-aries. Jesus seems to have fit well into this milieu.

As we have already noted, Morton Smith sees Jesus primarily as a magician or miracle worker. Smith cites magical texts of the period, in which not only the major elements but even many minor details in the gospel stories find parallels. For example, he sees the eucharist as “a variant form of an attested magical rite for binding the celebrant and the recipient together in love; a number of other forms are found in magical papyri; the verbal parallels are unmistakable.”

In The Messianic Legacy, authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln argue that Jesus was in fact the rightful heir to the throne of David — hence his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and Pilate’s insistence on having the inscription “King of the Jews” affixed to the cross. They also emphasise Jesus’s role as a political agitator: Why, after all, would Pilate have dispatched (according to the Vulgate translation) a cohort of five or six hundred soldiers to the garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, unless he anticipated a civil disturbance? Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and driving of the moneychangers from the Temple can likewise be seen as acts of an insurrectionist.

Burton Mack, who puts more weight on Jesus’s sayings and less on the details of his biographies, tends to view him as a wandering wisdom teacher in the tradition of Diogenes the Cynic. The Cynics taught the renunciation of desires and appetites imposed by civilisation, equality among people, and the virtue of a natural life free from social conventions and possessions. In modern parlance, the term cynical is fraught with negative connotations; these, however, can be traced to an unfair caricature of a school of courageous philosophers known, in Mack’s words, for “voluntary poverty, renunciation of needs, severance of family ties, fearless and carefree attitudes, and troublesome public behavior.” Cynicism, according to Crossan, “involved practice and not just theory, life-style and not just mind-set in opposition to the cultural heart of Mediterranean civilization, a way of looking and dressing, of eating, living, and relating that announced its contempt for honor and shame, for patronage and clientage.” Jesus’s sayings closely parallel Cynic teachings; and, in the Hellenistic era, the philosophy of Diogenes would likely have been well known in Galilee. But Jesus, as a Jewish peasant Cynic, seems to have added a unique and significant twist to the established tradition: unlike the urban Greek Cynics, he advocated the formation of a rural social movement.

So, whence comes the image of Jesus as the only Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, forgiver of sins, hearer of prayers? Was this how Jesus thought of himself? Was it how his first followers viewed him? The historical and textual evidence gives us no reason for thinking that it was, and offers instead an account of how and why these ideas came into currency decades or centuries after the period in question.

But what of millions of people’s dreams, visions, and NDE encounters with Jesus; what of miraculous conversions and healings, of prayers answered and lives changed? Perhaps these should be accorded precisely as much legitimacy and significance as, for example, an Australian native shaman’s experience of totemic ancestral spirit-beings; an early Egyptian’s experience of Osiris; or a West African peasant’s experience of Legba. Which is to say: the experience is no doubt real, and in many cases the healings and miracles may also be real — all products of the human mind’s extraordinary need for symbols of transcendence, and of its ability both to generate meaningful and internally consistent world views, and to alter its own perceptions and the physical body’s abilities and state of health and vigour in order to fit those views.

The Teachings of Jesus

Now we arrive at a central question: What was the message that Jesus sought to convey? Burton Mack summarises some of the significant themes in the reconstructed sayings gospel:

? Voluntary poverty
? Lending without expectation of return
? Critique of riches
? Etiquette for begging
? Etiquette for troublesome encounters in public
? Nonretaliation
? Rejoicing in the face of reproach
? Severance of family ties
? Renunciation of needs
? Call for authenticity
? Critique of hypocrisy
? Fearless and carefree attitude
? Confidence in God’s care
? Single-mindedness in the pursuit of God’s kingdom
Again and again, Jesus exhorts his followers to seek the kingdom of God — a metaphor for an alternative social order in which people live according to nature, free and equal. The idea of God in the earliest core of sayings is of a universal power — or “father” — that “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good,” that “sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” “Be merciful even as your Father is merciful”; “If God puts beautiful clothes on the grass ... won’t he put clothes on you? Your father knows that you need these things.” Jesus was, according to Crossan, “neither broker nor mediator but, somewhat paradoxically, the announcer that neither should exist between humanity and divinity or between humanity and itself. Miracle and parable, healing and eating were calculated to force individuals into unmediated physical and spiritual contact with God and unmediated physical and spiritual contact with one another. He announced, in other words, the brokerless kingdom of God.” Most scholars agree that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus are later additions; these include apocalyptic warnings about the Final Judgment, pronouncements against the Pharisees, pronouncements against towns that reject the movement, congratulations to those that accept the movement, the lament over Jerusalem, and the story of the temptations in the wilderness.
It is possible to trace, via shifts in discourse in the added material, just how the early Jesus community developed. At the earliest layer, according to Mack, “the discourse ... was playful and the behavior public. Individuals were challenging one another to behave with integrity despite the social consequences. ... If we ask about the character of the speaker of this kind of material, it has its nearest analogy in contemporary profiles of the Cynic-sage.” Then, in the next layer of sayings, “selected imperatives were elaborated as community rules ... Jesus’ voice was now that of a founder-teacher giving instructions for the manner of life that should characterize his school.” We see the beginnings of social conflict surrounding the movement. By degrees, the voice of Jesus is made to utter things that only the wisdom of God could have known. The last layer of sayings dates from immediately after the Roman-Jewish war. According to Mack, “A retreat took place from the vigor with which these people had engaged their social environment to a kind of resignation, an acceptance of the fact that the rule of God was a matter of personal and ethical integrity. An amazing accommodation seems to have been made with a Jewish piety against which earlier battles had been fought. And Jesus was heard quoting the scriptures even though he was now imagined as the son of God whose kingdom would only be revealed at the end of time.”

In the earliest level of sayings we hear Jesus preaching, “How fortunate are the poor; they have the kingdom”; “Everyone who glorifies himself will be humiliated, and the one who humbles himself will be praised.” He is proposing a social experiment — a classless society in which all are equal in the sight of God. It is a society governed not by power and wealth, nor by rigid laws, but by charity and kindness.

An Unholy Alliance

Jesus’s egalitarian social philosophy has special relevance for us now, living as we do in one of the most polarised and stratified societies in history. Indeed, today’s multinational corporate-dominated industrial system owes much to institutions and practices pioneered by the Roman empire. Like twentieth-century America and Europe, first-century Rome was at a pinnacle of economic and technological “progress.” It was a colonial power, the centre of a far-flung trade network. It was also an urban centre in which extremes of wealth and poverty coexisted. Like the European colonists of the past five centuries, the Romans were destroyers of indigenous cultures and voracious consumers of natural “raw materials” (such as forests); and like us, they relied upon unsustainable, soil-killing farming practices. While the earliest reconstructed collection of Jesus’s sayings does not mention Satan, it does suggest the idea that the pursuit of power and glory is at the heart of social evils. And in later additions to the sayings gospel, in which the devil (literally, “the accuser”) makes his first appearance, he clearly serves as the personification of institutionalised social dominance.

The new scholarship portrays the historical Jesus as an anti-authoritarian, a primitivist, and an anarchist. According to Crossan, the earliest Jesus people were the equivalent of “hippies among the Augustinian yuppies.” Jesus’s message was a challenge to social power in all its manifestations. Yet within only a few generations that message had been twisted and co-opted almost beyond recognition. Through a gradual process of subversion, Christian teachings were first mythologised and then appropriated by the ruling elite of the Empire. As a result, Christianity has become a kind of time capsule in which are preserved fragments of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern myths and philosophies, the theologies of Paul, Constantine, and Augustine, and the imperialist social program of ancient Rome. It is surely fair to say that most of this is virtually the opposite of what Jesus originally had in mind.

Of course, through it all the words of the Galilean sage have continued to shine: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” And, where individuals or groups have drawn inspiration from this earliest layer of teachings, a St. Francis or a St. Clair has come forward to propose the sort of “liberation” or “creation” theology that Jesus himself might have embraced. But as an institution, Christianity eventually became the handmaiden of the capitalist industrial state, supplying the theological justification for colonialism and a work ethic for the factory system. Today, “fundamentalists” claiming to represent the true teachings of the Galilean promote an anti-environmental, anti-feminist, anti-gay, pro-corporate, pro-technology agenda utterly opposed to the message of modern-day prophets of social justice and voluntary simplicity. Surely this constitutes one of the bitterest ironies in all of history.

A New Church?

At the end of the twentieth century we stand on the brink of a global civilisation whose might and sophistication would have delighted a Roman emperor to no end. The wealthiest one percent of the world’s population live in unimaginable opulence while hundreds of millions exist near the point of starvation. If we are to understand the devil as being not an otherworldly malevolent being, but as the tendency toward the accumulation of political and economic power, then it appears that in our generation virtually the whole world is coming to be possessed by the devil.

In such circumstances, one cannot help but yearn for a new Christianity that would pay attention to the discoveries of the scholars and focus its interest on the lifestyle and social program that Jesus taught and exemplified, rather than the theology his later followers adopted. Such a denomination or church could serve as a foil for the fundamentalists and as a haven for critics of the power system who are increasingly vulnerable to attacks from the neo-fascist Right.

And yet, seeing how easily ideologies and organisations are subverted, perhaps a new church is precisely what we do not need. It’s probably safe to say that Jesus did not wish to create a church of any kind. He seems to have envisioned instead a community of spirit. But when even well-intentioned attempts to form such a community result in the building of any sort of formal organisation, then the corrosive, hierarchical influence of civilisation seems nearly always to intrude. Moreover, a new Christian denomination could not help but focus much of its attention on the past, and on the person of Jesus. Again, this is probably not what he had in mind: it was only the later generations of his followers who insisted on uniquely divinising him. And hero worship, even given the best of heroes, tends to demean the worshipper. Jesus has not been the only individual in history to teach love, tolerance, equality, simplicity, voluntary poverty, generosity, and freedom from social conventions, and there are plenty of advocates of these ideals alive today who could benefit from our respect and support.

No, it is not a new church or denomination that we need. I suspect that one of the ideas that Jesus was seeking to convey was that true spirituality is not represented by a book or a hero or even a teaching. It may be expressed by means of a community of support, but it is not the community itself. It is a way of being. Those with some experience of that way of being may find it helpful to know that one of the most revered individuals in history taught and exemplified it. And the existence of people following that path today may somewhat vindicate that pivotal individual’s actual message (rather than the theology that conceals it). But the path itself is the point.

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Richard Heinberg is the author of Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age (Quest Books: 1995), Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms Through Festival and Ceremony (Quest Books: 1994), and A New Covenant With Nature. He also publishes Museletter, an excellent monthly newsletter exploring issues in cultural renewal. Subscriptions are US$18 per year. Send to: 1433 Olivet Rd, Santa Rosa, CA 95401, USA. The above is from A New Covenant With Nature (available from Sydney Esoteric Bookshop, 408 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Tel: 02 92122225 for $40) and originally appeared in Museletter No. 34 (October 1994).

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The Out-of-Body Experience
As Dimensional Translocation

By Jim Dekorne

Pause for a moment and try to imagine four-dimensional space. It is right next to you, but in a direction you can’t point to. No matter how well hidden you may be, a four-dimensional creature can see you perfectly well, inside and outside.
– Rudy Rucker, The Fourth Dimension

How might these beings be even dimly aware of our presence, if we normally don’t have an inkling of theirs? Once more, we’re treading on extraordinarily thin ice by even thinking about explanations for this phenomenon. The mere need to attempt an understanding shows us how far afield our thinking has come.
– Rick Strassman, M.D., DMT, The Spirit Molecule

If these men are correct, then physics is the study of the structure of consciousness.
– Gary Zukav,The Dancing Wu Li Masters

Consensus reality in the “real world” is founded upon corporeal entities beholding three-dimensional space. When out-of-body explorers or UFO abductees claim that they passed through solid walls during their experiences, they are contradicting perhaps the most fundamental perceptions of human observers.

Scientism condemns such assertions as either fraudulent or hallucinatory because if they were accepted as legitimate, our entire conception of reality would collapse – an appalling prospect, challenging the credibility of all self-appointed official observers. Nevertheless, when faced with such an abundance of anomalous data any fearless spectator might suggest that our concepts of dimensional location need to be re-evaluated and clarified.

At its simplest, the experience of three-dimensional space is the awareness of three perpendicular axes: North-South, East-West and Up-Down (e.g., a cube). Two-dimensional space (a flat plane) contains only two of these axes, and one-dimensional space consists of only one axis – a single line.

Time is also a dimension, though not a spatial one; however, it is a necessary extension to our awareness of space, and so we normally describe our reality as three dimensions of space, plus one dimension of time – the so-called “four-dimensional space-time continuum.” Even small children can understand this because we spend all our lives living within its confines: it’s an experience so commonplace and taken-for-granted that we never really think about it. (It is, after all, our consensus reality).

From Descarte's Traite de l'Homme (1667). The pear-shaped image inside the head (labelled "H") is the pineal gland which Descartes hypothesised was the gateway to the soul.

Four-dimensional space, on the other hand, though mathematically describable, is a concept virtually impossible to visualise. That’s because progression from one spatial dimension to another follows a logical sequence of perpendicular extension: a plane is merely the extension of a line in a direction at right-angles (“perpendicular”) to that line’s axis; a cube is created when a plane is extended at right-angles to that plane’s axis. This is easy enough to portray as long as we’re dealing with three dimensions or lower, but in what perpendicular direction would a cube have to move to create four-dimensional space? Even if you know the secret, the mind boggles and goes into spasms while trying to visualise it.

The reason for this is because we are multi-dimensional entities “serving time” in a three-dimensional spatial prison and brainwashed into believing it’s a life sentence without parole or any hope of escape.

To switch metaphors, consider for a moment a Zen Koan – an existential test of your ability to transcend your perceptual situation:

You are standing on a spot where (judging by the rumbling sounds and trembling beneath your feet), a volcano the size of Krakatoa is just about to erupt. Immediately above your head an enormous fireball, a meteor as big as Manhattan, is only seconds away from crashing exactly where you’re standing. A few metres to your front, a tidal wave (over a kilometre high!) is cresting and about to break. Six metres behind you (at Ground Zero), a hydrogen bomb test is in its final few seconds of countdown; to your immediate right, the entire Nazi army from World War II is bearing down upon you with distinctly murderous intentions. And finally, coming up fast on the left, a charging herd of ten thousand enraged bull elephants is about to stomp you into the dirt.

Koan: In what direction lies escape? (Hint: it’s the only “perpendicular” direction available to you, and given the above circumstances you are about to take it whether you want to or not!)

There are other ways of visualising this: consider the “black hole” or “singularity.” A black hole is created when a largeish star (about 50 times bigger than our sun) consumes all its nuclear fuel and implodes into its own intense gravity. Anything, including light, approaching within a given critical distance of a black hole is sucked into its whirlpool, never to be seen again. Physicists postulate that such imploding singularities depart from our own space-time to create new parallel-universe/space-time dimensions. (The connections between them constitute the familiar “worm holes” so necessary for Captain Kirk’s navigation of the Starship Enterprise.) What appears to us as a black hole implosion in this universe becomes a “white hole” explosion somewhere else – creating a whole new universe, a whole new dimensional reality:

“Relativists realized that there is nothing to stop the material that falls into a singularity in our three dimensions of space and one of time from being shunted through a kind of space-time warp and emerging as an expanding singularity in another set of dimensions – another space-time. Mathematically, this 'new' space-time is represented by a set of four dimensions, just like our own, but with all the dimensions at right angles to all the familiar dimensions of our own space-time. Every singularity, on this picture, has its own set of space-time dimensions, forming a bubble universe within the framework of some 'super' space-time, which we can refer to simply as 'superspace'.”1

Notice that the rule of perpendicular extension is maintained in the creation of these new universes and that any observers within them would perceive an analogy of our own familiar four-dimensional space-time continuum. (Should they be practitioners of Scientism, let us forgive them for believing that theirs is the only reality that exists!)

Now imagine that you are standing outside on a clear summer’s night – all the stars above the horizon are visible to your sight. Assume (for the purpose of illustration) that the hypothetical XYZ-123 galaxy (one-hundred million light years from Earth) is shining brightly. The photons (waves or particles, take your pick) which were emitted from the XYZ-123 galaxy during earth’s dinosaur days, are just now arriving on our planet; they implode through the pupils of your eyes to explode within your brain: “Ah-ha – yes, there it is! Just above Orion, the familiar old XYZ-123 galaxy,” says your mind-observer.

Koan: Where do these photons (after their exhausting one-hundred million year journey through interstellar space) go upon entering your own personal black holes (eye-pupils)? The radiation from an entire galaxy registers on your brain, is interpreted by your mind, and then what? And then where? Surely those photons can’t just “wink out” after going to all that trouble to get here! Can they?

“The matter [falling into a black hole] cannot escape back into the universe we know, yet if it does not disappear at a singularity it must pass into a region of spacetime that we do not know. Sometimes such unknown regions are called other universes, the effect of gravitational collapse being to establish a bridge or tunnel into these enigmatic 'parallel' worlds. The collapsing star, or whatever matter falls in after it, falls on through the tunnel and out into, presumably, a cosmos much like our own.”2

Look at it another way: Imagine a point existing in some kind of pre-spatial “void” – the Tao, perhaps (whatever that is). Mathematically, a point has zero dimensions, but it exists anyway because consciousness defines it that way. A zero-dimensional point existing in “non-space” probably comes as close to “nothing” as we can imagine, but quantum cosmologists say that our universe was created out of just such a “singularity.” They also tell us that nothing can take place without an observer:

“The universe is supposed to be everything that there is, and if all is quantized, including spacetime, what can collapse the cosmos into reality without invoking consciousness?”3

The implications of this concept are astounding! If the zero-dimensional point is all that exists, and if it “decides” to “extend itself” and become the universe, by the rules of quantum physics it can’t be anything but Consciousness itself! Some might be tempted to define this Primordial Awareness as “God,” but let’s not, since Scientism insists (regardless of the implications of quantum theory), that the concept of “God” is unnecessary to explain the Cosmos. (Whether you regard this as a non sequitur or not depends on which belief system you use to define your illusions.)

Anyway, the rules of dimensional extension tell us that movement in any direction from a point is perpendicular, so one dimension (a line) is created if the point moves at all. Should it turn from there, two dimensional space is defined; and of course all it has to do next is make one more right- angle turn and we have three spatial dimensions. Should all of these movements happen simultaneously, we have a passable description of an explosion:

“The evidence suggests that the Universe was born out of a singularity – a point of infinite density occupying zero volume – and that in the first split second the tiny seed containing all the mass and energy in the observable Universe went through a period of exponential expansion, known as inflation.”4

This “inflation” is the Big Bang that became our universe – a point of infinite density occupying zero volume (a mind-numbing concept!) “explodes,” creating space, time, matter, energy, and anything else we haven’t discovered yet. Unfortunately, when most people imagine the Big Bang they visualise it as a three-dimensional event, forgetting that all other possible dimensions must also be factored into the equation. Which is to say: the primordial point explodes (the Big Bang), but because this is a multi-dimensional affair, it is also imploding (the Big Whimper, perhaps), creating all of multidimensional space in one event. If our point is indeed conscious, as quantum theory demands, it follows that consciousness is a priori to any and all phenomena, and anything created by it is by definition part of it: hence everything that exists is in some way conscious, just as the Theosophists tell us. (More about them later.)

Our point’s simultaneous explosion/implosion would create a bare minimum of six spatial dimensions: three of space and three of hyperspace, and certainly many more than that. What would they look like “objectively?” Wouldn’t dimensions created out of Consciousness have to be “Mind Stuff” – perhaps a Super Collective Unconscious at least as infinite as the physical universe? Out-of-body shamans do indeed describe Locale-II (hyperspace; see previous parts of this article) as a kind of Supermind, a realm where thought (consciousness) creates mass and energy out of itself:

“Superseding all appears to be one prime law. Locale-II is a state of being where that which we label thought is the wellspring of existence. It is the vital creative force that produces energy, assembles 'matter' into form, and provides channels of perception and communication. I suspect that the very self or soul in Locale-II is no more than an organized vortex or warp in this fundamental. As you think, so you are.”5

This empirical out-of-body observation is echoed in quantum theory, which of course is based upon solid, self-consistent, repeatable, scientific experimentation:

“To the naive realist the universe is a collection of objects. To the quantum physicist it is an inseparable web of vibrating energy patterns in which no one component has reality independently of the entirety; and included in the entirety is the observer... In the absence of an observation a quantum system will evolve in a certain way. When an observation is made, an entirely different type of change occurs. Just what produces this different behavior is not clear, but at least some physicists insist that it is explicitly caused by the mind itself.”6

Physicists describe matter at the subatomic level as a “wave function,” and tell us that it is more “idea-like” (i.e. related to awareness) than it is “matter-like.” In fact, at the subatomic level, there is no substantive physical world at all – it’s just a vibrating dance of energy, or Consciousness, which must in some sense be the same thing! We can deduce this as follows:

Einstein’s famous E = MC squared equation demonstrates that matter and energy are two versions of a single phenomenon. Unfortunately, Einstein left himself (as observer) out of his equation. It might more accurately be written as: E = MC squared, divided by X – “X” symbolising consciousness (i.e., an observer) which is demanded by quantum theory for anything to exist. If this is at all accurate (and the implications of quantum physics seem to require it), then the lowest common denominator to which reality can be reduced is Consciousness itself.

If Consciousness (what else?) created an infinity of four-dimensional space-time “bubble” universes, each of which is perpendicular to (i.e. “perceived by”) that Consciousness, then Consciousness has to be the “Super-Space” surrounding and permeating them all. Since time and consciousness can’t be separated from each other without logical absurdity, time could be thought of as a one-dimensional function of Consciousness projected into three-dimensional space. (Thus, the four-dimensional space-time continuum, since without duration, space would be, if not unperceivable, at least very boring.)

This time-consciousness interface is what sets space “in motion” and is the only way a differentiated point-of-view can experience dimensional reality. Outside of the dimensional bubble-universes (i.e. in the superspatial realm of Consciousness-without-an-object), time does not exist, a fact attested to by psychonauts and mystics since “time out of mind.” (Pun intended.)

Each differentiated point is a potential “free agent” which may be arbitrarily assigned to any position in any dimension. Being conscious, they become attitudes or points-of-view within multidimensional space (“God’s observers,” if you will). Your individual human consciousness is essentially the interface of a point-singularity (“you”), linking our particular spacetime bubble with Super-Space, or perhaps more accurately, the Objective Psyche: which is Jung’s revised, much better, label for the “Collective Unconscious.”

“What Jung calls the objective psyche may then be likened to an encompassing energy stratum from which arise varying field activities discernable to the experienced observer through the patterning of image, emotion and drive configurations. These psychic field expressions Jung has called complexes and archetypes of the objective psyche... The objective psyche exists independently of the ego, but can be experienced and comprehended to a limited extent by the ego.”7

These complexes and archetypes within the Objective Psyche have traditionally been regarded as “gods,” but not as “God” (i.e., as the Objective Psyche per se). The difference between you (or any other differentiated point-of-view) and the Objective Psyche, as such, is the difference between man and “God.” The purpose of our incarnations as “points-of-view” is to return to the pool from which we emerged with full gnosis of where we’ve been and what we’ve done. (We’ll examine the traditions informing this concept in our next article.)

Because our unconscious mind is a two-way wormhole connecting subjective perception with the infinite realms of the Objective Psyche, it is not uncommon for profound insights to emerge from those dimensions into human awareness – often before their time. Figure 1 is taken from Rene Descartes’ posthumous 1667 work, Traite de l’Homme, which illustrates his theory of perception. He regarded the pineal gland as the “gateway to the soul,” and in this drawing he hypothesises how visual perception is concentrated therein. Most of Descartes’ theories have been disproved by modern research, but his fundamental intuition in this case is still valid. All that is missing is the concept of the DMT-synthesising pineal gland (discussed in our last article) as a singularity linking spacetime awareness with the Objective Psyche to complete the hypothesis being proposed here.

And I hope my hypothesis is beginning to make sense: Since we experience ourselves as a conscious centre (a “point”) inhabiting a physical body, which perceives itself as part of a three-dimensional “outside” reality, it is obvious that all external sensory input is perpendicular to our subjective awareness. Which, if you follow the right-angle rule, is to say that consciousness itself must be in some sense dimensional! The only direction of escape in Koan-1, then is within. The only place that the radiation from the XYZ-123 galaxy can go after entering the black-holes of your eyes is inside. This mandates that both Locale-I and Locale-II are inner dimensions which to varying degrees mirror our familiar, externalised space-time. We have the empirical testimony of out-of-body explorer William Buhlman that this is so:

“For two years I had believed that I was moving laterally from one area to another within the same dimension, but now the startling truth was apparent. I was not moving laterally but inwardly within the universe from one energy environment to another.”8

Buhlman goes on to describe what can only be a kind of singularity of consciousness imploding into itself, into a dimension of many dimensions. Here he is, out-of-body, in the Locale-I version of his bedroom, about to enter a typical Locale-II environment, perhaps one of Robert Monroe’s “upper rings”:

“Feeling centered, I stand at the foot of my bed and say aloud, 'I move inward.' I feel an immediate sensation of rapid inner motion – I’m being drawn into a vacuum deep within myself. The sensation of motion is so intense that I shout 'Stop!' Instantly I stop moving and realize that I’m in a new environment. I am outdoors in a beautiful parklike setting.”9

Although admittedly rare, this perception is neither new nor unique. The Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us explicitly that all of the bardo realms are “inside of us”:

“O nobly-born, these realms are not come from somewhere outside [thyself]. They come from within the four divisions of thy heart, which, including its center, make the five directions. They issue from within there, and shine upon thee. The deities, too, are not come from somewhere else: they exist from eternity within the faculties of thine own intellect.”10

Although the idea that “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” is a cliche familiar to everybody, when entertained at all, it is usually understood metaphorically. Seldom do we perceive “inside” literally: as a real, honest-to-god dimension of reality. Here’s another version of this ancient idea from the Vedic tradition of India:

“The seat for the Gods is indeed within, in the inner being which is wider and far greater and subtler and supple and enlightened and distinguished from the physical being.”11

Come on! Gimmie a break! (The logical mind wants to know how a vessel can be smaller than its contents.) Although an impossibility in any three-dimensional context, four-dimensional space is obviously not bound by such provincial illusions. Actually, instead of an absurdity to be dismissed out of hand, initiated awareness recognises immediately that it is dealing with a legitimate dimensional interface when such “impossibilities” are depicted. For example, it is not at all uncommon for UFO abductees to describe the inside of the spacecraft as much larger than the outside:

“As strange as it sounds, this bigger-on-the-inside-than-out impression is exactly what a three dimensional creature like... any one of us might expect to experience when confronted with a four dimensional space. An analysis of the geometry by Stan Kulikowski in the MUFON UFO Journal concluded: 'Whether this inside-too-big phenomenon is actual alien technology or deliberate fraud or a subconscious psychological trick of perception, it is nevertheless based on good mathematics and related to the fundamental physics of our universe'.”12

All of the confusion surrounding OOBEs (Out-Of-Body Experiences), NDEs (Near-Death Experiences), alien abductions (and life itself, for that matter), is directly attributable to the difficulty that a consciousness hypnotised by three dimensions has in perceiving “beyond” that illusion. Thus, we project these spaces “outside” of ourselves, and regard our bodies as “vessels” which must be “gotten out of” in order to “ascend” to “higher” realms. (Notice that we can’t even discuss the subject without using three-dimensional, “external” concepts.)

Because the imploded dimensions are generally believed to be difficult to visualise, authentic mystical (i.e. hyperdimensional) awareness is greatly handicapped in its attempt to translate what it experiences into terms that three-dimensional chauvinists can understand. Here’s another description of this interior reality from the Chandogya Upanishad. Note that it describes the “heart” as the centre of awareness. That could be poetic license – the pineal gland might make a better candidate:

“As large as the universe outside, even so large is the universe within the lotus of the heart. Within it are heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, the lightning, and all the stars. What is in the macrocosm is in this microcosm.”13

This is an unambiguous description of consciousness as four-dimensional space! If we superimpose our observation of the hypothetical XYZ-123 galaxy onto this picture, we have photons imploding from spacetime into mindspace: inner and outer galaxies connecting, interacting and evolving within the matrix of Consciousness itself. Since we know that the pineal gland (a singularity within the human brain) is associated with out-of-body perception, it’s a fair hypothesis that some kind of eye-pineal connection constitutes the focal “point” linking these two realms. “External” images implode into our “eye-pupil-wormholes” to instantly explode via the pineal singularity into interior dimensions of infinite Mind Stuff.

“The eye is [the Self’s] dwelling place while we wake, the mind [pineal gland?] is his dwelling place while we dream, the lotus of the heart is his dwelling place while we sleep the dreamless sleep.”14

I won’t quarrel about where the pineal gland fits into the above scheme, because if Descartes is correct in his intuition, the pineal is the dimensional aperture that processes sensory input from everywhere in the body. In connection with this, it is highly significant that theorists studying our spacetime universe postulate the existence of tunnels, tubes, or wormholes, yoking the dimensions together (see Figure 2).

“Cosmologists have even proposed the startling possibility that our universe is just one among an infinite number of parallel universes. These universes might be compared to a vast collection of soap bubbles suspended in air. Normally, contact between these bubble universes is impossible, but, by analyzing Einstein’s equations, cosmologists have shown that there might exist a web of wormholes, or tubes, that connect these parallel universes... The Einstein-Rosen bridge acts like a tunnel connecting two regions of space-time; it is a wormhole.”15

By now it shouldn’t surprise us that the experience of passing through a “tunnel” is one of the most universally reported characteristics of out-of-body travel. Later in his career, Robert Monroe founded The Monroe Institute, a non-profit corporation, to scientifically study and induce the out-of-body experience in a wide-range of subjects. Here’s one of the first things he found:

“As the induction of the OOBE state was examined further, one key element did repeat consistently... In slow motion it 'felt as if one were going through a tunnel to get to the light,' a classic description that has been brought forth by many who performed the OOBE inadvertently or in a near-death situation.”16

Einstein-Rosen bridge connects two universes.

“Classical description,” indeed! Can there be any doubt that the following accounts are portrayals of interior-dimensional “wormhole-analogs” which mirror their spacetime counterparts? Here is Oliver Fox, describing a visit to some indeterminate realm in Locale-II:

“And now it seemed to me there was a sort of hole or break formed in the continuity of the astral matter; and through this, in the distance – as though viewed through a very long tunnel – I could see something indistinct which might have been the entrance to a temple, with a statue still further away showing through it... I was falling, with seemingly tremendous velocity, down a dark, narrow tunnel or shaft.”17

Subjects undergoing a DMT-induced out-of-body experience commonly describe an identical phenomenon. (DMT: N,N-dimethyltriptamine, a product of pineal synthesis, was discussed in the previous article of this series):

“First I saw a tunnel or channel of light off to the right. I had to turn to go into it. Then the whole process repeated on the left. It was intentional that way. It was as if it had a source, further away. It got bigger farther away, like a funnel. It was bright and pulsating... I had a sense of great speed. Everything was unimportant relative to this. Things were flashing, flashing by, as if from a different perspective. It was so much more real than life. The left and right tunnels joined in front of me.”18

Dr. John Mack, in his study of the UFO Abduction Syndrome, also describes the tunnel as a common experience among his abductee-informants. These are apparently inter-dimensional doorways through which the Aliens both enter our space and convey their victims into hyperspace.

“A forty-one year old health care executive spoke to me of large tubes through which he passed during one of his abductions 'into the next plane where there was this light'... Catherine [another abductee]... also spoke of a tube or tunnel through which she and others passed from a spirit plane outside space/time back to the embodied physical state on earth.”19

Then of course, there is the Near-Death Experience (NDE) as described by Dr. Raymond Moody, the pioneer investigator of this unique form of out-of-body projection. In fact, the “tunnel phenomenon” is so ubiquitous that he lists it as one of fifteen symptoms considered definitive of an NDE.

“Often concurrently with the occurrence of the noise, people have the sensation of being pulled very rapidly through a dark space of some kind. Many different words are used to describe this space. I have heard the space described as a cave, a well, a trough, an enclosure, a tunnel, a funnel, a vacuum, a void, a sewer, a valley, and a cylinder. Although people use different terminology here, it is clear that they are all trying to express some one idea.”20

In a later article we will examine the phenomenon of “Remote Viewing,” a tactic used by both United States and Soviet intelligence agencies to spy on each other during the Cold War. We will then determine if these specially-trained psychics were actually “out-of-body” travellers in the classical sense of the term as we’ve defined it so far, but for now it is instructive to examine some representative descriptions of Remote Viewing in light of the tunnel phenomenon under discussion. Here are some excerpts from the remote viewings of Captain David Morehouse:

“My phantom body fell through the tunnel of light again... I began plummeting down the tunnel of light... I made the long fall down the tube of light and passed through the membrane into the target area... The fall through the tunnel seemed longer this time and I never hit the membrane at all... I found myself falling into a tunnel of light and passing into another world.”21

Here is a description by Captain F. Holmes Atwater, the Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) officer who founded the US Army’s Remote Viewing unit at Fort Meade, Maryland. (As described in his book, this particular event was almost certainly a classic “astral projection” OOBE):

“My kinesthetic sense of motion (like the feeling you get when flying in an airplane) was accompanied by a strange visual perception. I seemed to be moving through a white tube or tunnel, its walls lined with crystalline forms.”22

And finally, here is another observance by William Buhlman, the out-of-body explorer who (even more than Robert Monroe), defined his experiences within the context of modern quantum theory:

“The tunnel experience is much more significant than most people recognize. Not only does it provide substantial evidence of a logical transitional method for consciousness after physical death, but it directly relates to the modern physics theories concerning parallel universes and energy wormholes, as well as to my observations concerning the multidimensional universe.”23

Yeah, but what about Locale-I (the Sidpa Bardo), which Monroe describes as our own familiar world, though perceived while out-of-body? How could that be regarded as an “inside” dimension?

Imagine consciousness as a dimensional “double mirror” with back-to-back reflective surfaces: one facing outward to space-time, the other facing inward to hyperspace. The evidence suggests that when someone goes “out-of-body” into Locale-I, they are not actually interfacing with the physical world that we touch when “in-body,” but with the “etheric double” of the physical world on the other side of the mirror. (Technically, of course, we’re not going “out-of-body” at all, but “in-our-body,” but for now at least, let’s not complicate the nomenclature.) Here’s Buhlman again:

“Slowly I came to understand that the environment I was observing was not the physical world, as I had assumed. I realized that the structures I normally observed when out-of-body were nonphysical structures... Now I finally understood why there were slight variations between the nonphysical and physical furniture and other objects. For example, the nonphysical walls were often a different color, and the shapes and styles of some of the furniture and rugs were different. Much of this was minor but nevertheless noticeable... It appears that we are not observing the physical world from a different perspective, as many believe, but are interacting in a separate but parallel dimension of energy.”24

In the spring of 1902, Oliver Fox had his first out-of-body experience when his consciousness “woke up” within what he called a “dream of knowledge,” but what would today be labelled a lucid dream. It was an anomaly such as Buhlman describes above that shifted his awareness from semi-conscious dreaming to conscious perception of Locale-I:

“I dreamed that I was standing on the pavement outside my home... Now the pavement was not of the ordinary type, but consisted of small, bluish-grey rectangular stones, with their long sides at right-angles to the white kerb. I was about to enter the house when, on glancing casually at these stones, my attention became riveted by a passing strange phenomenon, so extraordinary that I could not believe my eyes – they had seemingly all changed their position in the night, and the long sides were now parallel to the kerb! Then the solution flashed upon me: though this glorious summer morning seemed as real as real could be, I was dreaming!”25

If Locale-I is the other side of our spacetime looking glass, then further extension of consciousness into Locale-II with its hierarchies of astral and mental matter is even more difficult to visualise except perhaps as a funhouse hallway of imploding-exploding, wormhole mirrors. For the sake of comprehension it is not improper to retain familiar three-dimensional terminology (e.g., “rings,” “planes,” etc.) as long as we remember that it is probably only accurate in a metaphorical sense. Since OOBE explorers perceive these other realms in “external” three-dimensional terms we can assume that any inner differentiated realm appears to awareness as a three-dimensional construct.

What seems clear is that the out-of-body experience is the projection of a subjective observer into the Objective Psyche: mind imploding into Mind. The perpendicular rule of dimensional progression mandates that realms numerically “higher” than the observer are always perceived as “inside” – which is to say, related to “Consciousness” rather than to “matter” (whatever that is). This explains why entities existing in numerically higher dimensions can always observe those in numerically lower realms, though normally not the other way around – unless the observer is “out-of-body.”

For example, we could easily contemplate two-dimensional beings dwelling in a plane. (Imagine flat creatures moving back and forth within a sheet of cellophane.) To them, however (if they became aware of us at all), we would seem to be “supernatural” entities appearing magically within their midst. (Touch the sheet with your finger: they’d regard it as the sudden apparition of a mystery out of “nowhere.” Remember, our concept of “above” can only be comprehended by them as “within.”)

If this rule holds, we can hypothesise with reasonable certainty that dwellers in numerically higher dimensions are normally experienced by dimensionally lower entities as inner ephemera: as voices in the head, spirit guides, channelled entities, and so-forth. (The possible exceptions would be temporary fourth-dimensional “holographic inserts” or “shamanic projections” into three-dimensional space – such as UFOs, apparitions, ghosts, etc.)

Although seemingly ghost-like or discarnate to us, there is no reason to believe that these ephemeral beings don’t experience themselves as anything but “physical” within their own space. Since quantum physics tells us that our own seemingly solid reality is actually energetic or “idea-like,” it should come as no surprise that the higher dimensions must also be experienced by their inhabitants as “physical.” That means that what we regard as “thought” is perceived as “matter” in the higher dimensions.

As Robert Monroe and other out-of-body explorers have attested, the “non-material” realms have an ascending order of abstraction which can be divided into an indeterminate number of levels, planes, rings, spheres, or bubbles. Those closest to our physical Earth are most like Earth: those further removed fade off into zones so ethereal that they become almost impossible to portray. Denizens of the nearest realms are described as experiencing their environments pretty much the same way that we experience our physical space-time dimension – some are even said to believe that theirs is the only reality: for them, Earth cannot exist.

When we read the monotonously repetitive data on UFO abductions – how abductees are routinely transported through solid walls, beamed into spaceships, communicate telepathically with aliens, etc., we have to ponder what kinds of dimensional interfaces must be involved. Almost all serious researchers are now in substantial agreement that the UFO phenomenon is transdimensional in nature, though how higher-dimensional entities can “physically” introject themselves into three dimensional space remains maddeningly unresolved.

“I believe that the UFO phenomenon represents evidence for other dimensions beyond spacetime; the UFOs may not come from ordinary space, but from a multiverse which is all around us, and of which we have stubbornly refused to consider the disturbing reality in spite of the evidence available to us for centuries... The UFOs are physical manifestations that simply cannot be understood apart from their psychic and symbolic reality. What we see here is not an alien invasion. It is a spiritual system that acts on humans and uses humans... They are part of the environment, part of the control system for human evolution. But their effects, instead of being just physical, are also felt in our beliefs. They influence what we call our spiritual life. They affect our politics, our history, our culture.”26

Everything we have examined so far suggests that these intruders from a fourth-spatial-dimension constitute the “angels, devils, fairies and elves” who’ve been interfacing with humankind since the dawn of time. The fact that they accommodate themselves to prevailing cultural illusions tells us immediately that (just like us), they are Ideas (spirits, points-of-view) evolving on some frequency within the Objective Psyche. They and we may even be co-creations – when fairies fade from credence in spacetime, the ideas they represent morph into space aliens to keep pace with current belief systems. Who creates whom?

By now it should be clear that the out-of-body experience (including its near-death variant) and the UFO Abduction Syndrome are but two linked components of a larger underlying reality, the structure of which is quite “alien” to anything granted by general cultural consensus. We are now ready to examine these concepts as they are described by the “traditional counter-culture” – that ancient body of wisdom comprising what is known as the Perennial Philosophy. This will be covered in the next instalment of this series.