written 28 April 2024
published 5 May 2024
Throughout the ages, people have experienced inspiration, often considering it communication from a transcendent divine. This is so universal that I am offended when someone claims they have the "one and only" communication from God. This is as foolish, narrow minded, and insulting as the materialist proclamations that matter is dead, consciousness is a biochemical artifact of brain complexity, and life is meaningless.
Dating back thousands of years, in cultures all over the world, the "shaman" are individuals who are more sensitive to information beyond the ordinary safe and familiar areas of the culture. Through inspiration, ceremony, and drugs, the shaman is vital to the survival of the tribe, directing where to hunt or how to heal the ill, validated by feedback from the real world.
All three major western religions describe individuals hearing the voice of God. In Judaism, from Abraham through Moses, the burning bush, and the instruction of the ten commandments at Mount Sinai, communication from God is central. Christianity is founded on the teachings of Jesus, who had numerous communications with God. The entire Quran, the holy document of Islam, was transcribed by Muhammad, directed by the voice of God.
More recently, the American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, who died in 1945, left over 14,000 medical readings, all transmitted while Cayce was in a sleeping state. These have been curated by the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Cayce did readings on people at a distance, stating all consciousness is united beyond time, and his subconscious was able to access information from this timeless source. While Cayce has numerous critics and sceptics, the testimony of his thousands of successful healings is difficult to ignore. Before his death, he had achieved a worldwide following. ARE study groups are located around the world to this day.
When I was younger, living in San Diego, my friends and I were exploring metaphysical subjects, and discovered a local ARE study group. The woman leading the group was a clairvoyant channel, and gave readings to new people, to give information before getting to know the person. I had questions, and decided to test her validity by listening to hear her answer them, without my actually asking them. On the ride home afterward, I was deeply disturbed, because she had passed my test, and I had to rebuild my entire world view. Within a year, I had quit my engineering job and moved to the Mendocino coast.
The Berkeley Psychic Institute, in Berkeley, California, was founded in 1973, dedicated to training clairvoyant readers and healers. In the mid 70's an Institute graduate moved to the Mendocino coast and began giving readings and classes. I took a few classes, and demonstrated to myself that any complete theory of the world had to include a psychic component, even though I wasn't drawn to becoming a reader or healer. However, a good friend of mine did pursue that path. She had deep sensitivity, which she experienced as disturbing nightmares before she encountered the psychic framework of life. She has been making her living as a medical intuitive for almost half a century.
The advent of quantum mechanics pushed consciousness front and center in the world of physics. The act of observing affects what is observed, opening the door for considering that the ground of reality is not matter, but consciousness. Non-locality, the transcendence of space and time, is now well demonstrated for both matter and consciousness, despite appearances to the contrary. This truth challenges our traditional view of reality. Even though hardware based in quantum physics (such as nuclear weapons, computers, lasers, LED's, and solar panels) repeatedly validates the theory, and has radically transformed our society, we still live in a culture of obsolete Newtonian billiard ball thinking.
Every individual has access to non-local consciousness, which we experience as empathy, intuition and inspiration. This is intensely personal, completely independent of outside control, despite centuries of religious and cultural structures which teach we are all separate. One of the ways to understand the social upheaval of our times is to see we are awakening from that illusion, beginning to experience our fundamental connection. This is frightening to people who want to be told what to believe, or have gathered fortune and power by telling others what to believe. But that world is falling apart as more people feel their innate connection with life.
