1 = strong will; unity, purity
2 = duality, harmony (Yin/Yang)
3 = magic, intuition (Holy Trinity)
4 = stability, grounded (nature)
5 = travel, adventure, journey
6 = Sincerity, love, truth
7 = magic, mystery, enlightenment

I have always believed that meaning is defined within the context of a person experience. So although 7 might mean good luck to you, it may mean hate and lust to me because of my experiences with that number.

Each culture attributes meaning to numbers: Chinese numerology

Biblical numerology

Vedic numerology

More examples of spiritual meaning of numbers
THE NUMBER 7 IS EVERYWHERE

NUMEROLOGY:
Life path number – signifies intellect and an introspective, analytical mind. Considered to be a spiritual, sacred, and this is evidenced by the fact that there are seven days in the week, and ancient texts propose that the earth was formed in seven phases.
BIBLE:
In the Hebrew, seven ([b’v, – Sheh’-bah) is from a root word meaning to be complete or full.
It is known as the number of God’s seal.
Example: in Revelation 1:16 — “and He had in His right hand seven stars, ” alluding to the seven churches of Asia.
It is used throughout the Old and New Testament repeatedly with deliberate pattern.

The metaphysical use and meaning of numbers are completely at the mercy of interpretation. As such, it is all over the place with little practical application. That is a shame (as with all metaphysics) its talks around some of the most critical aspects of reality but fails to nail anything down. It is easy to see the influence of culture on the meaning attributed to numbers. The tragedy is that the imposed meaning ends up telling us more about the people and/or culture than the subject they are talking about. Here is a new system that relies less on prescribed meaning, focuses exclusively on the actual perspective of the person which in turn give meaning an absolute path.

Here is an Entirely Different Take on the Spiritual Meaning of Numbers.

We are the numbers. Our point of view, our perspective is the equation, the function through which constant values are passed to produce various results, or meaning.

Essentially, meaning is relative to perspective.

Out of western psychology, eastern spirituality and postmodern philosophy there is a new way to use numbers as a way to navigate awareness itself, the cradle of meaning. How much more enhanced is our meaning if we know its source? Its called Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives. To be fair, it less about numbers than it is about perspectives, so numerology is forever safe.

Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives

Oversimplified description:
Created by philosophical genius Ken Wilber, Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives, we’ll call it integral mathematics, is a comprehensive method of referring to natural points of view that we all have. For example, my first-person perspective would be written as 1p (1-p). 1p = my, 1-p = first-person perspective, but there are other perspectives that I can have from my point of view: 2p = your perspective, 3p = his/her/it perspective.

So, from my perspective, I see that you have a first-person perspective:
1p(1p) x 2p(1-p)

I can also be aware of you from a third person perspective:
1p(1-p) x 1p(3-p) x 2p(1-p)

This means I’m observing your from an objective perspective, this could mean I’m using some theory or some measure or book like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) to evaluated you.

Pathology: Perspective Mathematics

Consider multiple personality disorder (aka Dissociative Identity Disorder). This would be me objectively looking at your multiple personalities:

1p(1p) x 1p(3-p) x (2p(1-p)/n)

n = number of personalities
This may be written wrong, but what I’m trying to express is my first-person perspective (1p(1-p)) view of an objective perspective (1p(3-p)) of your first person view that is (2p(1-p) that is divided by “n” personalities. The slash maybe wrong because Wilber uses “/p” to define something else. By interacting with each of the fractional parts of your first perpective, I can better understand why it has been partitioned. What are you protecting yourself against? What is the common ground of the personailities? One can also explore each personalities perspectives on itself and relationships to the world around it. The end equation could end up looking like the most beautiful monster you have ever seen.

Lucid Dream & Altered States: Integral Math

I had a lucid dream in which I was trying to fly years ago. Once I was aware of my being in a dream, I became peripherally aware of my body. I was able to hold the heavy feeling of my body at bay while I continued my lucid dream. In integral mathematics I would describe it like this:

1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p(3/p)

I (1p(1p)) had a first person perspective (1p(1-p)) of my body (3p(3/p)). The equation strip away my personal meaning and allows you to put it in your own contexts although you can still understand the mechanics of the perspective. I’m seeing the body as a separate object the same way I might see a tree or my coffee cup, but perhaps (since the body actually holds the perspective) it should be written like this:

1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p{(1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p {…}}

Which is to say, I had a first person perspective of my body which contains a my first person perspective of my body which has a first person perspective of my body…. And so on. So it becomes like two mirrors facing one another. The only way to maintain the stability of my lucid dream perspective was to minimize my awareness of my body.

Out of Body Experience

In his book, Astral Dynamics, Robert Bruce talks about similar experiences. But he takes it a step further because his theory is that the body itself continues to dream and have its very own perspectives while the subtle body has its very own experiences. He attributes the relatively low number of the phenomenon to loss of memory caused by the body “overwriting” the “shadow memory” of the subtle body.

So it would look like this…

Sleep & Dreaming mind/body seeing objects in the dream: 1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p(3-p)

Subtle body experience/altered state of consciousness seeing the sleeping body: 1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p{1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p(…)}
Traditional science tends to attribute OBE to some sort of brain anomoly hallucination (despite actual evidence of nonlocal consciousness), but for the purposes of this post we are only concerned with perspective. And the perspective is my first person perspective of the body with a first person perspective of the body… Whatever meaning that Robert Bruce, you or I attribute to this phenomenon should be put in its “own box” so to speak. And with Intergral math, that is easy to do.

stillness vs witness

I’ve read a few books (meditation by OSHO, Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber and others) that mention the importance of witnessing while meditation. This is quite effective because many times the more I try to suppress my thoughts the more thoughts arise. Sometimes, its like squirting gasoline on a flame.

Stillness seems present already when I simply witness the thoughts and emotions that arise. I let them come without aversion of clinging to them. I notice the tendency to want to add or subtract from the thoughts, but its important to just let the thought be what they are and fade away on their own.

Integral Padre Pio

PADRE PIO
Ethical Development: Ethnocentric (i.e. HATED Pentecostals, saw them as “enemies of the church”)
Spiral Dynamic: Blue/Transpersonal – Absolutistic-obedience mythic order—purposeful/authoritarian
Stage of Moral Development: Level 2/Conventional
Political Ideology: Democratic (did not approve of Mussolini’s socialist, was happy when the Allies won, praised the Americans he met, voted democratic, was hated by communists)

I’ve been reading Bernard Ruffin’s Padre Pio: The True Story and (though it is almost as boring as the Bible) it has extremely interesting content (if there can be such a contradiction of qualities in a book, you’ll find it in these 319 pages).

Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar. Capuchins are Catholic fundamentalists not to be confused with monks. Capuchin are a branch of the Franciscan Order. It is a level of discipline and dedication that few of ANY faith can muster. They live with no possessions giving up EVERYTHING including will to the Catholic church. They live a life of complete abstinence, austerity and piety. They are as far beyond secular priests as priests are beyond everyday Catholics.

That being said, Padre Pio was the cream of the crop. His level of dedication afforded him a following that spanned the Western world. Bernard’s book talks about many of the miracles that 1st, 2nd and 3rd hand witness’ claimed he did. I don’t have any doubt that Pio was a conduit for some incredible force of nature (divinity?), but he was also surrounded by fanatics and superstitious country folks whose minds were still in medieval Europe even though it was the late 1800′s – mid 1950′s. One example of this archaic mind set is that the people of his local township, San Giovanni Rotondo (southern Italy) threatened to beat or even kill anyone who would dare take their blessed saint. Their passionate wrath is both amazing and sad, but I guess such possessive attitudes over local saints was common in that part of the world in that era. At one point the Mayor himself Mocaldi told the officials of the Holy Office that if they took Padre Pio away he would shed his title and join the mob himself. A local brick layer even pulled a gun on Pio and told him he was staying “dead or alive”!

Padre Pio, though cut from the same cloth as his beloved townsmen, was frustrated with their behavior. He was down right mean to those that gave him the glory instead of God. The most impressive thing to me about Padre Pio was not his miracles (these were amazing feats, no doubt) but his humility, compassion and dedication that for me made him a true saint. These (his level of submission to God) seemed to be the conditions that allowed him to be a vessel for such miracles. Ultimately, it is his love that converted so many.

His miracles included:
bi location, stigmata, healing, predictions, telepathy, the ability to know languages he’d seemingly never studied and virtually all the miracles that were performed by the Apostles in Acts.

Bernard’s book is worth reading if only to see the wealth of anecdotal evidence of Padre Pio’s works. If you are researching Pio’s life, look no further than Padre Pio: The True Story.

Dream of Prison (questioning reality)

I dreamt that I was in prison.

I was in prison for a terrible crime which I did not commit (reminiscent of a real life situation that has happened to my cousin). The emotions in this dream were absolutely real. When I woke up in my comfortable bed, I was very relieved that it was not real, but then I started to ask myself: how do I know that this bed is real? How do I know that my so called “waking life” is real?

Why do we so willingly accept our present situation as absolutely real? In my dream, I didn’t question the reality of my situation just as I do not typically question my waking life. How do any of us know what we see as “real” is not a dream?

Perhaps our minds makes this place real and conveniently misses the discrepancies of our reality such that we have no need to question it.

Neo: I thought you said it wasn’t real
Morpheus: Your mind makes it real
- the matrix

I’ve been reading a Padre Pio book. Padre Pio was a great Catholic Friar with remarkable dedication. At his level of dedication and devotion, he would pray for Jesus let him to help bear his cross. In essence we was asking for unimaginable suffering.

I am perplexed at the positive light given toward suffering. Catholic saints such as St. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Mother Teresa revered suffering as it was an emulation of christ’s suffering on the cross (his suffering is considered a sacrafice to save the souls of all mankind – John 3:16 KJV Bible, for those who what more info). But if this world is illusion, what good is suffering? Why not just pass through never to return? Or come and go as one pleases and collect knowledge to become like a god. In the Bible the Devil “tempts” Jesus with something like this, to which Jesus replies, “Get behind me Satan.” No matter how good it looks, its still illusion.

In his book, The Yogas of Dreams and Sleep, Tenzin Wangyal mentions rising above both pleasure and suffering as they are each of Samsara, part of the great illusion of this world. In Hinduism, this is called Maya, the illusion of our self being separate from everything else.

The word Islam actually means “submission to God” in Arabic. All these religions address suffering as something that should be submitted to or allowed to happen not resisted but observed and in some cases even honored.

SUFFERING SUCKS
I don’t know about you but Suffering really, really pisses me off and I suppose that is not very holy of me. I am just saying how I truly feel at times. I hate seeing people around the world suffering (especially children). It makes me mad at humanity and mad at god. Sometimes I can’t help but think that a lot of it is just not necessary.

We don’t really have to suffer…

SUFFERING = GOOD/EVIL
But the more I learn about what science has discovered about physical reality, the more I realize that suffering really is apart of this reality. The duality of this reality (good/evil, light/darkness, valley/mountain) is why there must be suffering. It is in the fabric of everything here and there is nothing we can do about it but suffer. And I suppose that is why the saints embrace it and why sages of the east don’t resist it any more than they praise pleasure. Because it is an illusion (as a dream) compared to a truer more holistic place that is not afflicted with duality. These saints and sages see all physical reality as a type of dream for preparation of a greater here and now.

I attribute all suffering to ignorance (not knowing our true nature not so much stupidity). I believe it is the greatest atrocity humanity will ever have. Ignorance of our physical, subtle and spiritual true selves. Perhaps that is why we are here, to graduate from ignorance.

… YEAH BUT
Why doesn’t an omniscient/omnipotent God simply instantly give us a deliverance from ignorance and its symptom, suffering, rather than growing into some greater realization?

A: If a rose never blooms, can it still be considered a rose? Perhaps, we are here to experience the blooming of humanity.

Padre Pio: The True Story

I was talking to one of my Catholic co-workers about Padre Pio’s miracles and he ended up giving me a book called Padre Pio: the true story. 

It is so far pretty dry as it goes into Padre Pio’s parents life to start with.  I first read about Pio in a book called Holographic Universe, by Mike Talbot.  Talbot talked about Pio’s stigmata and ability to bi-locate.  Bi-location is something that his followers experience.  For example they claim that he actually appears before them and guides them through a tough time even when Pio himself has no knowlege of the event.  This is some that Faqir Chand and other Indian mystics and followers experience.  Although this is easily explained away by skeptics, I believe such a widespread phenomenon deserves some attention.

But so far I haven’t gotten to his miracles in the book.

Religions Affects on Altered States on Consciousness

I have been studying religions and mystical experiences for years seeking “truth”.

The pinnacle of what I have come across so far is Ken Wilber’s Integral Spirituality. Although I don’t yet fully “grok” his stuff on metaphysics, his ideas on religions, science and states of consciousness are GROUND BREAKING!

For one thing he has what is known as the Wilber-Combs Lattice

The Wilber-Combs Lattice is a matrix that maps states of consciousness with types of religious belief.

I’ve written a little blurb about this on my post “What is an Empirical Spiritualist”
I have been in several religions, faiths and/or societies (but currently hold no allegiance to any one organization). I have had experiences with almost all. Each of these experiences have been colored by the culture, beliefs, dogma of the organization I was in at the time.

Here are some examples of religions that influenced by spiritual experience:

Christian - as a penecostal I was worshiping Jesus surrounded by some of the praising, shouting congregation and I felt an energy bolt going through my body. A penecostal might call this the holy ghost (aka Holy Spirit).

Eckankar – I was in a state of great peace and saw/felt a blue light shine down on me. Eckist call this one part of the “Light and Sound of God” (aka Holy Spirit)

Integral Spirituality – After a session with a Zen Buddhist Genpo Roshi conducting what is called a Big Mind exercise I felt a profound (overwhelming) oneness with anything I looked at.

Each experience has been shaped and interpreted by the culture/religion/faith I was apart of at the time. This in NO WAY INVALIDATES the phenomenon. It did happen. They were very real and in some cases have changed the course of my life.

The religion/culture/society in which I live gives me the language to explain what has happened and simultaneously shapes the experience.  Sometimes the language is to crude to give an effective account.  I believe that many times the original message gets “lost in translation”.  Many religions have been founded and shaped on these crude interpretations of real experiences.

The source of the phenomenon is a different kind of discussion. While we might agree that the phenomenon happend in the brain (or perhaps merely recorded there) from the ‘mind’ we may disagree on whether the source was from subtle energies and/or spirit. We can only theorize and assume what the source of my phenomenon is.  And we can only prove the orgins to ourselves as we can not share PHYSICAL evidence of anything happening with electroencophalographs and other tools used to measure the activity of the brain. Those tools are too crude to tell us anything beyond the brain. Whatever we believe the hows and whys are, it is very important to realize the context to which these phenomenon occur. For example, if I was scitzoprenic and my dog was telling me to kill my landlord, that experience may be real to me, but the phenomenon occuring is dangerous and more than likely pathological.  The best way to make a clear judgment  on  any interpretation is to look at all (or as many as possible) sides: physical history, cultural background, stage and state of consciousness.  All are important factors in examining an inner experience.  AQAL is a perfect map for such an examination.
Language/Semantics/culture/religion and their contextual meaning shape not only altered states of consciousness but “normal” states as well. As in a dream, we construct the meaning as well as the happenings of the experience consciously, subconsciously and/or unconsciously.

I suspect that our perspective is completely relative to our constantly shifting meaning. Ego, states of consciousness, and stages of conscious experiences do have some level of reality and so they do deserve our attetion and management but the only *absolute is Being, Here, NOW. All else is real ONLY relative to something else. The “suchness” of the moment is really all there is.

*The only absolute is being, here now (nowness, the suchness of this single moment – or perhaps the only absolute is NO-absolute or as Wilber says the combination of Form & Emptiness – nondual).

Occult vs. Wilber (part 1)

There seems to be not only disagreement, but some strong dislike between occult, magick followers and Ken Wilber’s tight knit group.  Wilber is constantly using the strongest words possible to distance himself from the “What the Bleep” “theSecret.tv” “create your own reality” crowd, but he also sends some strong oppinions in the direction of the occult/magick groups. 

The “create your own reality” groups are not bothered by Ken Wilber because most of them have no idea who he is, because many of them are new to subtle energies, spirituality and the like.  But this is not so for the occult/magick folks.  They seem very well informed and some even very well read.  They know exactly who Ken Wilber is and they shoot back.

I’ve decided not to participate in the “hurt ego” crying game between Wilber and the Visser/Occult folks but if your interested, you’ll find them somewhere in here and here.

I don’t share the hate and disdain of either group (Intergral Spiritual or Occult groups) because it does not serve me.  Instead, I am a fan and reader of both.  I believe that there is some truth in the most sincere parts of religions and esoteric groups.  I sift through all the cruft, dirt and silt like a 49er panning for gold.  If there is a nugget to be found in a river, I don’t care how filthy the water is from egos making waves.

I believe that occultist/esoteric teachings have an very important bit of truth and I would not call it entirely pre-rational as Ken does putting them on par with a belief in Santa Claus or the tooth fair.  And Ken is of course on to something that could change the world in a good way.

Nazis: Occult Conspiracies

Imagine mythos, ancient sacred symbols and stories of humanity and the power of various states of consciousness being used to uphold ethnocentrism. Imagine great technology and the most cutting edge of science in the hands of a blood tribe. This tribe believes that the blood in their veins makes them direct descendents of gods and all other bloodline in the world must be subjegated or destroyed.  This tribe was known as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Nazis.
 

“I highly recommend that you get a copy of the Discovery Channel documentary video Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy. Hitler and his inner circle… were deeply into the practice of mysticism and mystical stares of consciousness.” Integral Spirituality pg 294

“That’s exactly what you get when you promote horizontal stares and not also vertical stages (particularly in ethics, cognition, and interpersonal perspectives).”

Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy (Part 1) (Part 2)

Lanz von Liebenfels was one of Hitler’s greatest inspirations.  Lanz was a monk in the Cistercian order.

In 1894, Lanz claimed to have been “enlightened” after finding the tombstone of a knight templar, and began developing his theories of “blue-blond aryanism” and “lower races“.

His theological philosophy was base on the divine blood of the master race, the Aryans.  Some believed that they were the dependents of godmen that evacuated Atlantis.
The Nazi’s used occult powers, advanced technology and altered states of consciousness in order to satisfy their goals.  Its amazing to me that people with their minds set on nothing less than world domination and genocide could experience other states on consciousness and still be completely immoral.

Ken Wilber attributes this to the psychological de-evolution of 1940s Germany caused by the take over of ethnocentric extremists:

Auschwitz is rationality hijacked by tribalism, by an ethnocentric mythology of blood and soil and race, rooted in the land, romantic in its dispositions, barbaric in its ethnic cleaning… These are not rational desires by any definition of rational; these are ethnocentric tribalism commandeering the tools of an advanced consciousness and usingg them precisely for the lowest of the lowest motives. Pg 152, Integral Psychology

The history of the Nazi’s (and many other take overs by ethnocentric extremists using altered states) emphasized the important reinforcing the occult phenomenon, altered state of consciousness with some attention given to STAGES of consciousness [psychological mind set and development].  This can be done with psychotherapy, an outside look at the ego and techniques like Integral Life Practice.

Written by elamb · Filed Under mystical experiences, wilber 

Mind-Split and the Mystic Light Body

April 5, 2007

In his book Astral Dynamics, Robert Bruce talks extensively about the “Mind-Split” which is his theory of where the consciousness goes during and out of body experience. Some earlier OBE researchers such as Muldoon, suggest that the body is empty upon OBE. Bruce’s theory is that a copy of of consciousness is “downloaded” into the projected double. If you have never had on OBE then this is will all sound completely insane. All I can say about the typical skeptic is that this is all anecdotal evidence (meaningless for you), if your truly curious go have an OBE.

I have been studying my dreams and altered states of consciousness since ’87 and I have to say that mind-split may explain some things that have happend to me. The mind-split theory might explain some strange dreams in which I seem to have dreamt of several things at the same time. I will wake up and write down what I think is one very strange dream but then realize that it is three completely different dreams I had at the same time. These dreams remind me of a stegograph in which data can be hidden with a picture or even and what is called an Alternate Data Stream in computer security, in which data (usually malware) can be hidden in other applications.

Also, his mind-split theory goes into detail about the physical bodies memories being “copied” over the memories gathered in the subtle body (astral body for example). This might also explain why many saints and mystics (Padre Pio for example) are seen by people (in some cases by people who’d never even heard of them until much later.. this is world wide phenomenon called bilocation) but when the mystic/saint/sage is approached they can not remember seeing these people. Skeptically, this is an easy one “hallucination, fantasy, a dream…” but to those it actually happens to, it can not be explained away so easily.

Saint Faqir Chand was called the “Unknowing Sage” because he admitted to not knowing the subtle body visits of his followers while others claimed that they did.

Written by elamb · Filed Under astral dynamics, faqir chand, metaphysics, mystical experiences, subtle energies 

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