Alexandra David-Neel explores the Mystery of Tibet

 

Magic and Mystery in Tibet – Alexandra David-Neel (1929)

            It is difficult to imagine that just 100 years ago the ancient land of Tibet located between China, India, and Mongolia was as little understood by the Western world as the surface of the Moon.  Its seclusion among the massive Himalayan mountain range led to many fantastic and seemingly supernatural stories regarding the people and gods that inhabited Tibet.  Rumors of forbidden cities, mystical monks, and ever-present deities could not be verified, or proven false, due to the inability of westerners to visit the country.  In the early 20^th century, one indefatigable woman, having studied esoteric religions in India and Japan, sought to visit the “Lamaists” as she calls them. These “Lamaists” are the Tibetan followers of Buddhism, a philosophy more than a religion, which was brought to Tibet from India.  Purely through her devotion to learning and her bravery in the face of the unknown, Alexandra David-Neel managed to not only visit Tibet, but also live and study among the monks and Lamas for years.  Amazingly, she did this in her mid-40’s. This book recounts her experience with the magical/mystical side of Tibet and is one of many she wrote on the subject.

            Before digging into the contents of this book, it is good to remember the context of its creation.  The late 1800’s to the early 1900’s saw a huge increase in “spiritualism” and the idea that the dead could be contacted by the living.  Thousands of scam artists and crooks used this to fleece good, although gullible, people out of their hard-earned money.  Many organizations, such as the Theosophists, were created to push the exploration of esoteric thought, and the attempt to gather ancient knowledge forgotten by the “western” world.  Alexandra David-Neel was one such woman.  She explored many facets of spiritualism, theosophy, freemasonry, Hinduism, and finally Buddhism.  As an educated woman, she also understood the role psychology and the workings of the human mind had in determining the experiences we have as we live our lives.  Ms. David-Neel, after traveling through northern India, felt drawn to visit forbidden Tibet, and she succeeded in doing so.  After years of travel in the Orient, she began to write about her experience.  These books, of which Magic and Mystery in Tibet is the second one, were the first non-sensational accounts of Tibet and its people that reached the Western world.  While initially the critics doubted her experiences in Tibet, these books and the ideas contained within helped shape much of the counterculture and metaphysical world that arose in the 20^th century.

            My favorite aspect of this book is that it reads not like a travelogue but more like a personal diary of Ms. David-Neel’s experiences and her reflections upon those experiences.  She shares the stories told to her by the many people she meets and explores the development of Tibetan Buddhism as a separate growth of Indian Buddhism.  Her acceptance of those she meets, and the respect and wisdom she brings to those meetings, make a large impression on the monks and Lamas she discourses with.  They accept her automatically as a student who wishes to learn.  This openness is not a result of Ms. David-Neel’s efforts, but instead comes directly from Tibetan Buddhist belief that anyone who wishes to can join a monastery and look for a spiritual teacher/guide. 

            David-Neel describes the ways a Buddhist monastery differs from the western idea of a monastery.  In a Catholic monastery, for instance, everyone is taught the same ideas, and are expected to accept them as literal truth solely because of the authority of “god.”  In Buddhist monasteries, it is up to the individual to determine if teachings have value to them, if they truly “believe” something, or whether they will proceed with the education.  Many regular people join monasteries but keep their esoteric learning to a minimum.  Others go deeper and deeper into the mystic truths of Buddhism, led only by their curiosity, and their master’s individual guidance.  It is truly an individual pursuit, attempting to accomplish a universal goal of oneness with existence.  As many Buddhists believe in the near-eternal cycle of death and rebirth, there is no pressing urgency to proceed with one’s education.  If a student spends all their life pondering basic ideas, it is because he needs to do so to prepare for a future life where larger ideas or more immersive theology will begin to make sense to the student.  The ultimate goal is to stop this round of death and re birth, and to successfully and completely dissolve one’s ego so that, upon death, you join the energy of the Universe, instead of being re-born.  This is called Nirvana.

            Alexandra David-Neel explains that many in the West think that one must endure nearly endless cycles of birth and rebirth before one can achieve Nirvana.  However, learned Lamas do not think this.  They say that everyone, regardless of your spiritual training, has an opportunity after death to go into the light and enter Nirvana, dissolving one’s ego.  Most people, according to the Lamas, see the light and are faced with this decision after death but they experience only fear and doubt.  This drives them to avoid the light and instead head back to our “sphere” and be re-born again.  Part of the spiritual training given to these monks is how to be peaceful and calm so that, upon death, they can dissolve into Nirvana. 

            There is so much more explored in this book.  From describing the day-to-day lives of regular Tibetans, to sharing personal anecdotes of Ms. David-Neel’s psychic explorations, to the descriptions of the beautiful Tibetan countryside, this book has provided me with countless ideas to think about.  I will seek out Alexandra David-Neel’s other works, as I enjoyed this one immensely.  There is nothing quite like a first-hand account from a place strange to me to get my mind flowing.  I would love to visit Tibet one day.  For now, Ms. David-Neel’s books will be my travel.

(This book is available for download as a PDF here: https://www.theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/magic-and-mystery-in-tibet1931.pdf )

The Spirit Molecule and the Possibilities of DMT

DMT: The Spirit Molecule – A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences – Rick Strassman, M.D. (2001)

            There are a few fields of human scientific exploration where the amount we know is far outweighed by the vastness of what we do not know.  The study of consciousness, of how or why a nervous system and a collection of neurons embedded in fat tissues results in what we experience as self-consciousness, or awareness, has been explored for ages by theologians, mystics, and recently by scientists.  It is a very difficult field of study since we are using the same mechanism we are studying to make sense of what we are studying. How can the brain analyze itself, if our reality is but a construct of that same brain?  How do people experience consciousness outside of their bodies, whether through trauma, near-death-experiences, mystical states, or psychotropic chemicals?  These are huge questions, and we are just beginning to truly delve into them.

            One of the many ways that humans have expanded their innate consciousness and connected with what they felt was the eternal divinity, has been through the ingestion of intoxicants.  Many different things have been used, from herbs, to alcohol, to hallucinogenic plants and animals.  For many humans throughout history, this was the way they connected with the spirits, with the powers that they felt created and controlled the world around us.  Scientists have a hard time studying these experiences, as they are usually very subjective, and one person’s inner truths and revelations may not make much sense to another.  It is hard to get any definitive data.

            Dr. Rick Strassman, through his research into the compounds created by our brain to regulate body functions (serotonin and melatonin for example), was drawn to what is still a mystery in our brains. This mystery is the pineal gland.  In many species, what is our pineal gland is a third eye of sorts, capable of detecting light and dark and situated above and between the two regular eyes of primitive creatures like snakes and lizard and turtles.  In humans however, this gland is located in between the two halves of our brain.  It is not part of the brain per se.  It grows from the roof of our mouths, our palettes, and rises up into the brain sometime after the first month of conception.  What drew Dr. Strassman to the pineal gland was a synchronicity he experienced while researching the pineal gland.  He read that, around the 49^th day after conception, the pineal gland secretes a large amount of Dimethyltriptamine, or DMT, a very simple molecule that has profound effects on our brains and consciousness.  DMT is naturally occurring in much of the plant and animal life on Earth.  At the same time, Dr. Strassman was engaged in a long personal exploration of Buddhism, and he read that the Buddhists believe that the 49^th day after conception is when the soul enters the fetus, reincarnating into its next form.  Knowing of the effects that DMT can have on the brain, this coincidence sparked a desire to understand in Dr. Strassman.

            There are a lot of situations where the pineal gland secretes vast amounts of DMT directly into the brain.  These are usually trauma events, such as when a woman gives childbirth, in a baby when the baby is actually born, and also when we are about to die.  People who have taken DMT as a drug experience something that is so fast-acting, so otherworldly, so rife with a deeper consciousness than they ever knew existed, that it begged the question of why our body floods our brain with such a chemical during high levels of stress and trauma.  Dr. Strassman wondered if the chemical DMT could not be referred to as the “spirit” molecule, for it seems to be the compound that allows our consciousness to either connect or travel to, an elevated level of existence.

            Dr. Strassman details his efforts in getting this study to take place, the hardships that took years to grind through, and the experiences he had with his test subjects.  Some of the chapters cover the clinical aspect of the experiments.  Others deal with the variety of experiences that the test subjects related to Dr. Strassman upon the completion of their DMT doses.  Some subjects felt they were pulled to a higher state of reality.  Others, many others, felt they were being guarded/watched/taught by entities they encountered after taking the DMT dose.  Many described it as being aware of the oneness of consciousness, of the infinity of consciousness, of the futility of fearing death, for they saw how consciousness just transitioned from the physical to the metaphysical easily.  Many no longer feared death because of their experiences with DMT.

            Dr. Strassman tried to see how beneficial or therapeutic these sessions could be, but as with all things, it was more dependent on the mindset of the test subject and the setting they were in when they took the DMT. Some people were ready to explore such a vast experience.  Others shied away from it and feared for the loss of their “self.”  As with any powerful experience, what we get out of it is dependent upon what we bring to it.  He was unable to continue his studies on DMT, partly because of these set and setting issues, and partly because of the increasing pressure from the government to curtail all research into mind-altering chemicals, even the ones which showed promise as therapeutic drugs in psychiatry. What is evident is that more research needs to be done, and that there is likelihood that DMT could be the way our body creates a connection to the eternal/divine.  It is worth exploring more, as it seems to correlate with what much of the world’s mystics and shamans and saints have been trying to tell all of us.  Humanity is not separate from nature.  Our individual consciousness is but a small part, a shadow of the eternal consciousness of the multi-verse.  Most of the DMT test subjects experienced the deepest and most profound sense that the connecting tissue of existence is love, pure and simple.  Love.  Love is all you need.  It may be all there really is.

(This book can be downloaded and read in PDF format here: 
http://www.organiclab.narod.ru/books/DMT-The-spirit-molecule.pdf )

The development of humanity's myths continues!

Masks of God: Occidental Mythology – Joseph Campbell (1958)

This book is the third in a series of four books in which Joseph Campbell created and crystallized the modern science of comparative religion and ethnographic mythology.  The vast amount of research and scholarship involved in this is staggering to imagine, but it reflects upon Mr. Campbell’s lifelong fascination with humanity’s belief systems and the shared themes found within all of these mythologies.  The first two books in this Masks of God series, Primitive Mythology, and Oriental Mythology, explore the deep mythological source materials from humanity’s earliest tribal times in the former, and then investigates the development of these primal themes and ideas as they coalesced into organized religion during humanity’s first great civilizations in the latter.  This volume, Occidental Mythology, details the evolution of these myths as the Eastern (Vedic and early Buddhist) and Western (Greek and Hebrew) ideas combined to form what were the first "World” religions, such as Christianity and Islam.

Early mythology created tribal cults, mainly concerned with worshiping the life impulse evident all around in the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration seen by all humans in the past.  The waxing and waning Moon, the rising and setting Sun, the coming of life in Spring and Summer and the decline of it in the Fall and Winter, all became signs which humanity saw fit to sacrifice to, and worship as divine.  Death brought Life.  Life brought Death.  It was a never-ending cycle which is reflected in the oldest religions still around in our modern world.  These are mainly found in the Eastern religious thought, where life/existence has no beginning and no end, instead cycling endlessly from high to low and back again.  The end goal of these religions is to remove the trappings of self, of placing value in things which are transient at best and illusory at worst.  This leaves the devotee to experience a unity with the divine which is in all, surrounds all, and is ever-lasting.

These religions detailed in Primitive Mythology did not focus on good versus evil, for those were just two poles of an ever-varied existence.  The religions that developed out of and after these original family religions were different in that they explored the source of Evil in the world.  Many, like Zoroastrianism, proposed a Universe in which the personification of Good and of Evil are constantly at odds, and that only through the good works of humanity would Evil finally be vanquished by Good, leading to everlasting peace on Earth.  Many religions followed this example.  Others, like the religion of the tribal peoples that became the Hebrews, posited that the world is full of sin, due to Man’s disobeying God/Yahweh, but that only God’s Chosen People (of course it is the Hebrews) would be able to bring about an end to evil when they finally are able to join all together and worship their god in unity.  This was drawn from the idea that God created the world but is not immanent in the world, that not everything is divine, and that this world we currently live in is but a shadow of the true existence of divinity.  That is a big difference from the earlier tribal, and current Eastern, belief that one can find god by looking within themselves just as easily as one can find god by looking without.  The Hebrew Messiah is described as someone who would be a political, as well as spiritual leader, who would finally unite all the Hebrew nation and bring about God’s will.  This was still a “national/tribal” religion, not meant to include the world population at large.  Yahweh was specifically the god of the Hebrews, proclaiming himself the mightiest of gods.

The Western world developed what are termed “World” religions, Christianity and Islam, out of the basis provided by the original Hebrew faith.  Christianity slowly moved away from the vengeful, petty, nationalistic god of the Bible’s Old Testament that required constant sacrifices to appease, towards a conception of god as love, whereas all the evil in the world was caused by Satan, who sought to destroy and ruin God’s perfect creation, Man.  To do this, the example of Jesus of Nazareth was used, and mythologized, to be able to spread this idea to all corners of the Earth.  The New Testament speaks of Jesus teaching his followers that any and all are to be welcomed into the “flock,” even those who religion normally turned away, such as the very poor, the sick, the leprous, the prostitutes, basically the lowliest of the low.  It brought a dignity in being human that was to be respected by all.  At its core, Islam also teaches this.  All humans are capable of being good Muslims, or good Christians.  Your membership in these belief systems are not dependent on your birth, nationality, race, etc., but solely upon your personal desire and dedication to live the Christian/Muslim life.  This has been codified into widely differing dogma by religious groups, but the core message is the same.

The Eastern system of Buddhism does the same thing, in terms of being a World religion, and seeks to instruct all mankind in the ways of living a proper life, so that anyone can be one with the divine, which is in us, around us, and always available.  In this sense it is different from Christianity and Islam, for the Buddhist is not taught that the Buddha was the only son of god, or that the Buddha is the only prophet that is valid, or that only by worshiping the Buddha will you attain Heaven/union with the divinity.  Anyone can, through good works, good thoughts, and good living, become an enlightened one, a Buddha.  The focus in the East is never on the tribe or the nation or the group, but on the individual mind/soul and its connection to the divine.

You can never go too deep

It is amazing how Mr. Campbell draws in the seemingly infinite threads of world myth and shows how the basic core ideas are transformed from one era to the next.  He details how the Trinity in Christianity has endless predecessors in the nature cults and early religions of the Middle East.  He describes how the concept of worshiping the Female aspect of Life as Life’s very creator was twisted around to benefit a patriarchal society, to the point where in Christianity, God is the Father, Son and Holy Ghost all himself, with no feminine entity to provide Life.  This is something that changed even the very early story of Adam and Eve, as can be seen in the Bible’s two different versions of creation, where in one God creates Adam and Eve together, and in the later addition, God creates Adam, and then, from Adam, creates Eve.  This is essentially a denial of the life power of the Female, and it is still used to this day to keep women down, in both Christianity and Islam, for they seem Woman as the cause of the Fall of mankind.  Horrible huh?  It seems inherently anti-nature.

(Within Catholicism, the cult of the Virgin Mary has essentially refocused humanity’s original worship of the Female as the giver of all Life into the worship of one perfect Female who was used by God to bring humanity’s savior into existence.)

There is so much more in this book, so much I wish I could get into, but it would make this review exceedingly long.  One thing that is evident from Mr. Campbell’s writing is that he feels that while there is evidence that Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, and other “saviors” like Osiris in Egypt were actual historical people, their ideas and lives were elaborated and developed into cosmological mythologies.  Joseph Campbell states that this MUST be so, in order to progress from tribal ideas to truly universal ideas with the power to change the entire world.  That is the beauty and power of myth, that it touches upon something deep within all of us, allowing our consciousness to comprehend and appreciate the resonance between us and every other aspect of creation.  That is a very valuable thing, and will go on whether or not individual religions come and go.

(You can read or download this book as a .pdf here: http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_13907.pdf )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

Joseph Campbell takes us on a tour of Eastern religious thought, and it rules.

Masks of God: Oriental Mythology – Joseph Campbell (1962)

            Having read Campbell’s Mythic Image, and Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, I was very excited to dive headfirst into this volume of the Masks of God series.  Whereas the Primitive Mythology volume dealt with the myth systems of ancient humans, as can best be determined through rigorous archaeology, this volume explores the continued development of religious/mythical ideas in the East.

            Human mythological content was of a kind until around 4000 B.C., where a split in thinking occurs.  The Western world proceeded towards a mythology based on the individual, his separation from divinity, and the efforts to connect back to that divinity.  In the Eastern world, the mythology was focused on the eternal, all-encompassing divinity of all creation and how man can remove all the superficial trappings of daily existence and experience a direct communication with the divine, something which is a part of all of us, but which most of us do not register due to the nature of our mortal lives.

Once our heads are on a pike, maybe we will understand.

            These are two very different ways to view the world and man’s place in it, and it is only in the past 100 years or so that the two world-views have been mingling.  Out of the Eastern world, religious and philosophical doctrines developed which promised a way to escape the daily world.  Taoist teaching focuses on following the “Way” of things in life, and not on the individual choices.  Buddhism teaches that following a “middle way” one can achieve a complete disconnect from desire and pain, achieving a state of perfect stillness, beyond pain or bliss, which is called Nirvana.  In essence, the focus of eastern religion is to wipe away illusion and to experience the eternal. 

            This differs greatly from the western world, where Greek Ideals and ideas of Monotheism created religions which sought to redeem a fallen man, or to help an inherently sinful and evil world become a godly and devout one.  What Joseph Campbell does best is show how the evidence points to constantly evolving ideas, which sprout from the same soil.  He explains in excellent detail the various early forms of myths and their symbols and how they developed along the paths mentioned above to become world-changing religions. 

            There are many things I did not understand about Eastern religions, mainly because I am a product of Western religious systems.  Most of the time the information I could get on Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, etc., was tainted by the writer’s Western bias.  Joseph Campbell not only explains the factual details but he does an amazing job of describing just why these ideas are what they are.  He puts the myths into their historical context which allows me to better grasp the mindset of the people who tweaked these ideas into new religions.  It also puts into context many of the myths I had read and studied earlier.

This is an excellent book, as are all of Mr. Campbell’s writings, and I recommend it very highly to anyone wishing to explore not just one religion, but how humanity as a whole has dealt with the big issues that require religion and myth to explain.  The next volume is Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, which will likely blow my mind.  I cannot wait!

(This book can be downloaded in .pdf form here: http://minhateca.com.br/Herz/Joseph+Campbell+-+Masks+of+god/Joseph+Campbell+-+The+Masks+of+God+-+Vol.+02+-+Oriental+Mythology,59309647.pdf )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

One man's journey to escape the Bolshevik revolution leads him to wisdom and experience he could never have imagined.

Beasts, Men and Gods – Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski (1922)

            This is another book that I had read mention of in many other texts and decided to go ahead and hunt it down.  It is the account of one Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski, and his escape from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia through the remote areas of Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet and China.  Like with most revolutions throughout history, the Bolshevik revolution was a purge, where countless families died because a member was once a Czar supporter, or an intellectual, or someone the communists labeled as an “enemy of the state.”  If they did not get executed outright, they were kidnapped and sent to Siberian work camps, or just taken into the empty wilderness never to be seen again.

            Mr. Ossendowski was an intellectual, a professor in Universities, and found himself out in a remote Russian country town when the 1917 revolution began and word spread that people were being rounded up.  With only a rifle, and a few supplies, he headed for the woods.  Nearly a year passed between this time and the time that Mr. Ossendowski was able to escape to the USA.  During that time, and with the help of many people, he managed to travel through parts of the world that at the time were so remote as to be nearly unknown to the rest of the world.  Interspersed between his stories of survival, near capture and gun battles, are amazing descriptions of the country he traveled through, the many people he met, the lamas, and the Buddhist temples and the Mongolian shepherds and the Tibetan chieftains and medicine men.  He was able to see things because of the friendships he made with high ranking Lamas that no westerners had ever glimpsed.  He wrote this account of his experiences 5 years later and the resulting book was the first time that real, eye-witness accounts from Mongolia and Tibet and upper China were available for everyone to read about. 

            Mr. Ossendowski’s escape took many months, and in the meantime the learned man changed into a rugged outdoors man, a fearless gunfighter, a skilled negotiator, and a Tibetan wise man.  It is amazing how quickly one can change and grow when the situation forces it.  The man that started this trip is not the man that ended it, and I am grateful he did, not only for the amazing information on Tibet and Mongolia and its proud peoples, but because he included all the horrors that came along with that revolution.  Traitors, informers, double agents, murderers, hired assassins, mysterious troops, wholesale warfare, massacres, and more are discussed.  It is too easy for the ugliest parts of history to be washed over by the details, but that is something Mr. Ossendowski does not allow.  He includes it all, and it all seems like more than one man could possibly undertake, but it is all true.  Some of the mystical experiences he experienced are described in a very matter-of-fact manner, but they nevertheless inspired many seekers to look for wisdom and knowledge in the high desert mountains of the far East.

This is what Mr. Ossendowski's mind looked like when he met the King Of The World

            Books like this are very important to me, as they allow a relatively unfiltered look at historical events that would otherwise be unavailable, or willfully obscured.  It is an engrossing read.  As the story goes along Mr. Ossendowski gains an inner strength, an ability to absorb the horror he experiences, and a deeper sense of wonder at the magic in the world.  Not only that, but he becomes a straight killer, ready to fight for his life at a moment’s notice.  This duality is mirrored in what he experiences in Mongolia and Tibet.  The people there live everyday understanding that the inner peace and wisdom of a monk can reside in the same body as the killer spirit of a warrior, and nature itself calls for this.  It is very interesting to see, especially as we live in a society that pretends to be all good, or that pain and hurt and war have no place, yet we kill each other, our cops murder children, and people live in fear.  Perhaps it is our unwillingness to accept or understand the darker side of human nature that keeps us enslaved and in fear of those that seek to hurt us. 

(This book is available in .pdf format here: https://ia902604.us.archive.org/20/items/beastsmengods00osseiala/beastsmengods00osseiala.pdf )