The Sunday afternoon podcast with Greg Reese

During the late 1800s, hundreds of thousands of orphan children were trafficked in America on trains and sold at fairs. Some of these children were taken from their parents, some were taken off the street, and some were born into Masonic communities, birthed within a vast network of privately run orphan asylums and foundling hospitals which were managed by a branch of Freemasonry known as the Odd Fellows.

The Odd Fellows is a masonic fraternity dating back at least three hundred years. Their charge is to “visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead and educate the orphan.” And the orphan business was definitely their specialty. The Odd Fellows had their own palatial institutions all over the world to birth, raise, and educate these children. Several Odd Fellows themselves were orphans raised in these masonic asylums. Including the founder of the American Odd Fellow lodges.

The children brought to these asylums had their names changed, siblings were split apart, and their histories re-written. And the conditions were so bad that half of these children died. Once delivered throughout the country via train, older kids were sold as indentured servants, and infants were displayed in incubators and sold for adoption. For 30 years, incubator babies were being put on display and sold. Celebrities were even interviewed in print media about the babies they bought.

The world’s first narrative film, The Fairy of the Cabbages, was directed in 1896 by Alice Guy. In the film, babies are grown on a farm in heads of cabbage and given away by the cabbage fairy. And there were hundreds of postcards with baby farm themes that were being distributed during this time.

Practically every US President during this time was a Freemason. And many of them were Odd Fellows. The central character in Freemasonry is Hiram Abiff, known as the Widow’s son; an orphan. Phillip Eugene de Rothschild has said that the Rothschild family has privately bred over a hundred thousand offspring throughout the world.

The official explanation for this is simply that there were lots of orphans at the time who needed homes, but the 1800s are full of mystery and many researchers speculate that the orphan trains was a re-population effort that followed some sort of catastrophic reset event, or it was Great Britain’s secret restructuring of America after winning back control of the states via the Civil War.

Another bizarre mystery of this time was the World Fairs and the Great Fires that leveled so many large American cities. New York City, Charleston, St. Louis, Portland-Maine, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Jacksonville-Florida, Baltimore, and San Francisco. This era is described as “the golden age of great fires,” and the official explanation is a lack of building codes. There are only a few instances where photographs were taken and the old world that was lost to fire looked to be old, big, and expansive.

The World Fairs hold an even bigger mystery. Officialy we are told that the buildings and structures of these world fairs were made out of wood, plaster, and linen, built to last only a few months with the intention of destroying them all once the fair closed. It was in the contracts. And while some of these buildings look to be made of temporary wood and plaster, most appear to be made of marble, granite, and other stone. Several of them broke world records for their size, and the attention to detail beats most of what we see today.

Immediately after the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago closed in 1893, it burned in a mysterious fire, followed shortly after by a larger, more infamous arson fire that leveled most of the remaining fairgrounds. And finally, an 1895 fire that finished it off. After the St. Louis fair of 1904 closed, its 1,500 buildings were mostly torn down by wrecking crews, and the rest were burned down by a suspicious fire that was never investigated.

To make matters even more mysterious, most of our State Capitol buildings were built with a mysterious form of waterproof natural cement that was unknown until being re-discovered in 2004. This cement is far superior than modern Portland cement. And too expensive to produce today.

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Reincarnation philosophies are most developed in the Indian religions but are prevalent throughout all of world history. The various Indian religions differ on the details but all share a doctrine of karma, the law of cause and effect, and believe the birth-death cycle ultimately ends when the individual self achieves union with God. Meaning that liberation is an internal process, and a choice that only the individual can attain for themselves.

The mainstream monotheistic religions reject reincarnation, teaching there is only one earthly life. But several other groups have always embraced reincarnation. This includes the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, and just about every Western Occult tradition. Reincarnation was documented in Ancient Greece by Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. And it exists in varying forms among indigenous peoples everywhere. A common thread across most traditions is that our Earth reality exists for souls to learn from human experience, and a single life isn’t long enough to learn what a soul needs to learn.

In the 19th-century, Albert Heim collected the near-death accounts of mountain climbers, soldiers, and people who’ve drowned. But modern NDE research began with Raymond Moody’s 1975 book, Life After Life, which coined the term, Near-Death Experience. A near-death experience, NDE, is a profound, vivid and conscious event that people experience when clinically dead, close to death, or facing a severe crisis. Some researchers think the NDE is a surge of brain activity caused by the brain failing, but there is no proof of that, and it is mostly still a mystery.

What’s most interesting is that within these NDEs there is a consistent cluster of elements across all cultures: detachment from the body, levitation, a sense of traveling through a tunnel, entering into either a space of bright light or of comforting darkness, total serenity, Nirvana, and a sense of “returning.” The person then typically finds themselves in a “life review” space which includes feeling the emotional impact that your actions had on others over the course of your life. Present witnesses to your life review are often deceased relatives or other spiritual beings who seem to recognize and love you.

Many NDEs involve hovering above their own body, and studies show that people having NDEs can have accurate awareness of what was happening in the room during the time they were technically dead. In some cases, NDEs have shown no measurable brain activity but have nonetheless become dramatically life-changing. They are a mystery perhaps on par with death.

The classic Gnostic texts say that a delusional, jealous creator named, Yaldabaoth, created the causal order of reality as we know it as a soul trap to feed off the people’s fear, anger, and obsession, and designed the cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation as a way to keep us in the trap. Escape only comes through gnosis, which means, direct experiential knowledge of one’s true self. Realizing one’s spiritual nature a midst the clamor of the human ego.

This is a very similar philosophy as you’ll find in much of Tibetan Buddhism, where the cycle of birth and death is seen as a trap that can be escaped through spiritual knowledge. The main difference is that the Tibetan Buddhist sees the rebirth as the natural consequence of craving and ignorance, and does not recognize a villain like Yaldabaoth and the Archons. To the Tibetan Buddhist, once you free your self of ignorance, enlightenment is achieved and the cycle of rebirth ends. Tibetan dream yoga is designed as training for the after-death state. If you can become conscious while inside a dream, you can more likely become conscious in the after-death state and avoid getting swept into another rebirth, or choose your next rebirth with conscious intention.

The Russian Orthodox philosopher, Nikolai Fyodorov, is widely regarded as the precursor to transhumanism. He argued that humanity could use technological progress to resurrect the dead and achieve immortality. Transhumanism today denies that there is a soul connected to a divine source, but believe there is an identity which can live beyond its mortal vessel. They believe that the individual is essentially a code that can be moved from a human body to a hard drive, and will somehow continue to live on as it does in the human body.

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In his 1979 book, Messengers of Deception, Jacques Vallée warned that UFO cults and “disclosure” narratives were being manipulated by psychological warfare units to shift human belief systems toward authoritarianism. In his recent book, Volume 6, he shares his journals documenting his interaction with today’s disclosure movement groups, and he is highly skeptical.

Vallée has long argued that if a hidden group, either human or non-human, wanted to control human society, they would project a myth, a cover story to hide the truth. And the Disclosure movement is being groomed by the military with the Nazi-Occult-Alien narrative, which is mostly lore with a little bit of historical truth. The story goes like this:

The Thule Gesellschaft and the Vril Society were two German secret societies that officially joined together in 1919. That same year, a small group of them met in a secluded lodge with psychic mediums, Marie Orsic, and a woman known as Sigrun, who received visions in an unknown language for the construction of a flying machine. They believed the visions were coming from the Taurus Constellation. The unknown language turned out to be a secret German Templar script. It was translated and given to German engineers. According to the RA Material, the Germans formed an alliance with a reptilian species known as the Orion Group. And this would have been their first recorded contact.

In 1923, Hermann Oberth published a book about spacecraft development entitled “The Rocket to the Planetary Spaces.” And founded the Society for Space Travel in 1927. Hermann Oberth claimed that he and his team were helped by people from other worlds. The RFZ-1, Germany’s first circular disc aircraft prototype, was designed in 1937.

Continued contacts with the Orion Group led the Germans to explore Antarctica in 1939. Where they expected to find Shambhala, the Aryan homeland, and a passage to the inner earth, known as Agartha. Months later they invade Poland, and World War Two began.

During the war, UFO’s that became known as Foo Fighters were photographed by allied forces. These Foo Fighters were reported by several combat pilots as balls of light that would follow and out maneuver their aircraft. In 1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, UFOs were seen over Los Angeles and were heavily fired upon by the military with no effect.

Documents found after the war suggest that the German’s were developing a device known as, Die Glocke. A four-by-three meter bell-shaped machine comprised of two counter-rotating cylinders that seemed to effect the spacetime field around it. The descriptions of Die Glocke were very similar to the ancient Vedic descriptions of the Aryan Vimana space craft. And both were fueled by a metallic liquid that included Mercury.

In 1945 two German submarines were captured off the coast of Mar del Plata heading to Antarctica. According to Russian military historian, Dmitry Filippovykh, an operation began in 1942 to transport thousands of personnel including top German scientists and engineers to an underground base in Antarctica known as Station 211. An estimated hundred and twenty German U-Boats were unaccounted for after the war. Classified maps were found with instructions to the underground base which was referred to as Agartha.

If this becomes the official narrative, then it is certainly a Psychological Operation. Vallée argues that the UFO phenomenon is a consciousness-altering force that has shaped human culture over millennia through symbols, absurd theater, and psychological manipulation. And if you tell people an alien shared a UFO schematic via occult séance with German engineers during WWII, and everything we’ve seen since is the result of their breakaway civilization, it interlaces the UFO subject with a socially toxic one, disabling critical thought, and it ignores the data showing this bizarre interdimensional force has been manipulating human consciousness since the dawn of history.

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Officially we are told that humans have never made contact with those commonly called, Aliens. But the historical record is full of accounts that say otherwise. From the earliest known writings of Sumer, which describe a time when a superior non-human species was ruling over humanity, through Moses’ ‘burning bush,’ Joseph Smith’s ‘pillar of light,’ the giants of the past, and all the friends of George Adamski and Howard Menger who were allegedly having encounters during the 1950s — human history is full of close encounters of the 3rd and 4th kind.

In 1952 the White House was swarmed by UFOs two weeks in a row. And evidence shows on the night of February 20th, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower was taken to Edwards Air force base where he was rumored to have had a meeting with non-humans. According to Whistle blowers, this led to the ‘Greada Treaty’ which stipulated that the US Government would allow the aliens to abduct humans on a limited basis in return for advanced technology. And whether or not this is true, starting in the 1960s, the friendly Contacts of the 1950s were replaced with violent abductions.

The first reported alien abduction was arguably in 1961 with Betty and Barney Hill. While driving through Canada they saw a light in the sky, pulled over to get a better look, and woke up a couple hours later without any recollection of what happened. After having nightmares about traumatic medical examinations, Betty and Barney went to a psychiatrist and both recalled being taken aboard a ship by men with large heads, big eyes, and gray skin. They were placed on a table and their bodies were examined as if they were live stock.

This has become known as the alien abduction experience. Harvard Psychiatrist John Mack, at first a skeptic, met with hundreds of people who had the same bizarre memory. In the typical alien abduction experience, the victim is taken aboard a ship. They are examined on a table where sperm and ovum are often taken. Many keep getting taken repeatedly and are shown children aboard the ships that they believe to be their own. Budd Hopkins researched hundreds of cases and concluded the majority of abductees have been abducted several times, starting from childhood.

Doctor Roger Leir has removed small objects made of unknown material from over a dozen alien abductees, these have become known as, ‘Alien Implants.’ Abductee, John Salter, claims that his implant has the beneficial side effects of better eyesight, faster healing, and accelerated growth. Abductee, Whitley Strieber, has come to appreciate his implant as well.

Whitley Strieber has also said that some of these abductions include characters who appear to be human soldiers, and that they could be happening in another dimension. While there is plenty of physical evidence, the alien abduction experience most definitely involves hidden dimensions as well. Dimensions where time is very different. It is not unheard of for abductees to be taken and returned in broad daylight while nobody around them notices. And the similarities to Sleep Paralysis here are noteworthy.

Sleep paralysis is when you can’t move right before falling asleep, or in the middle of the night after waking up. Almost half the population experiences sleep paralysis and a large amount of experiences are labeled by Psychologists as “Intruder” episodes that involve the sounds of voices and footsteps, shadow figures seen in the room, with many times a shadow figure in charge who wears a hat. Some episodes involve chest pressure, choking, and being pinned down. Some include floating and leaving the body, and nearly all of them come with an overwhelming sense of a nearby intelligence.

Whatever it is, there seems to be a connection between sleep paralysis and the alien abduction experience. And the overall historical record says that these creatures, whoever they are, have been closely involved with mankind since its start.

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The Default Mode Network, or DMN, is a network of the brain that lights up during self-reflection. These are the neurons that create the ego-story. Neuroimaging studies have shown that experienced meditators are not firing the ego-story neurons as much as non-meditators, and are accessing other parts of the neural network more. Scientific studies confirm that the narrating ego is a construct of the mind, and conscious awareness is a measurable neural condition.

The philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims that beyond the biological organism there is no separate entity that qualifies as a “self,” and that our sense of identity is generated in the mind. The work of Zahavi and Blanke portray the self as a construct the brain must embed into its model of the physical world so it can behave properly. This is the ego mind we will be discussing now, and it is what most people identify as.

Tony Robbins and others in the motivational-speaker field work almost entirely with the egoic mind. Their main toolkit, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is based on re-scripting the identity. This type of work strengthens ego-identification, which is practically the opposite goal of spiritual evolution, but sometimes must precede it. It is good to first stabilize a chaotic mind, re-scripting the ego can be useful and often necessary for investigating the self deeper.

Spiritual growth is universal. Nearly every ancient tradition across the world describes an evolutionary path from the material animal up through subtle dimensions to something divine. And it begins with self examination. There are many ways to do this, today we will look at a way of the Yogic tradition:

The “Silent Witness” practice, known in Sanskrit as Sakshi Bhava, is a pillar of Vedanta and classical Yoga, and it teaches how awareness itself is categorically different than the ego and the thoughts of the mind. The “Witness” represents the unchanging, eternal core of reality that observes everything but remains entirely untouched by it. Many argue that this is the true self, and the purpose of yoga is to liberate it by no longer wrongly identifying with the ego mind. The Silent Witness practice is one of the shortest pathways to recognizing non-duality and abiding in one’s true nature. And it is seen as an ideal tool to bridge formal meditation with everyday living.

The Silent Witness practice is used to end psychological suffering caused by false identification. Once you realize you are not the temporal narrative, you are not the mental voice, and you are not the physical shell, then your awareness moves to the observer. Instead of automatically reacting out of emotion, you observe the emotion arising, which then naturally loses its grip over you. The parasympathetic nervous system is activated, and the mind naturally quiets.

The Silent Witness practice can be practiced both as a formal seated meditation and as a continuous state of mind throughout the day. For the seated meditation, you would first come to a comfortable seated position, with your spine straight, shoulders relaxed, and eyes closed. With your senses, become aware of your body. Release all the tension in the body, relax. Then become aware of your breath. Don’t control it, just be aware of it, witness it. Notice the rise and fall of the abdomen and chest as you breath in and out. Feel the air flowing through your nostrils. Become aware of the brief moments between the inhale and exhale.

Next, turn your attention inward to your thoughts and feelings. As thoughts pop up, do not fight them or get pulled into them. Simply label them objectively: memory, impression, conversation, or thinking, and let it go. If the mind is highly chaotic, you can use a mantra to train it to be more quiet.

Finally, become aware of the thing that is aware. Witness the witness. Focus your awareness on the source of awareness, and you shift your identity. You can train the ego with words, instead of saying, “I am angry,” shift to, “I notice anger present in the mind now.” This instantly detaches your identity from the ego generated emotion.

This practice provides more control over the person. Like an untrained ego, having a big untrained dog as a pet can lead to a chaotic relationship. And if you take the time to restrain and train the dog, it will serve you both.

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The autonomic nervous system has two main divisions: The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. They work together to help keep your body balanced and alive. The Sympathetic nervous system is known as the fight-flight-or-freeze mode and you can think of it as an alarm system that switches on in states of emergency. It releases adrenaline and cortisol, raises heart rate and blood pressure, regulates blood to large muscles, and suppresses non-essential functions like digestion. The Parasympathetic nervous system is known as the rest-and-digest mode. It conserves and restores energy. It lowers heart rate, supports digestion, deepens breathing, and promotes healing and immune function. Its main nerve is the vagus nerve, and is the most beneficial mode to be in most of the time.

These two branches are not strictly one or the other, they are both always active to varying degrees. Autonomic flexibility is the optimal goal here. It allows you to operate in what people call, “the zone,” or, “flow-state.” This involves maintaining a calm baseline in the parasympathetic mode and having the ability to spike the sympathetic system when needed, being able to then rapidly down-regulate back into the parasympathetic.

News, marketing, and political media keep people in a more sympathetic activation state. They deliberately use fear and scarcity to keep the viewer feeling threatened. A person who is stressed and stuck in fight-flight-or-freeze for hours is getting poor digestion, immune suppression, anxiety, and impaired higher-order thinking. It reduces analytical thinking and increases reliance on external authority. Kept under the sway of the sympathetic system for too long, people will look for quick answers and trusted authorities rather than scrutinizing information carefully.

The Yerkes-Dodson law, written in 1908, says that a properly balanced level of arousal produces optimal performance. Low arousal leads to boredom and poor results, moderate arousal boosts focus and efficiency, and excessive arousal leads to stress and mistakes. The flow-state, where you lose track of time and produce your best work, lives right at the peak of the Yerkes-Dodson curve.

For humans that want to heal their body and enter the flow-state at will, there are the simple practices of pranayama, controlled breathing, which have been taught for millennia.

Pranayama exercises utilize breath retention and slow prolonged exhales to shift the body into a parasympathetic state primarily by stimulating the vagus nerve and overriding the brain’s automatic stress responses. Controlled breath works to override “fight-flight-or-freeze” mode and induce a state of biological relaxation.

Deep inflation stretches the lung tissues and the diaphragm. This stretching triggers the body to send signals to the brain of complete safety, actively suppressing the sympathetic nervous system and slowing down heart rate and blood pressure.

Holding your breath causes carbon dioxide to build up in the bloodstream. This causes a slight drop in blood pH, which optimizes oxygen delivery to the brain. Holding the breath at the top of an inhale maintains prolonged pressure on the vagus nerve that has a calming effect. This balance stimulates theta brain waves, associated with deep meditation and creativity.

Making the exhale longer than the inhale utilizes a natural cardiovascular phenomenon called Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA). Prolonging the exhale directly extends the body’s chemical process of heart rate regulation, and will relax the body into the parasympathetic.

Box Breathing is a breathing practice where you inhale, hold, exhale, and hold in equal ratios. The equal segments maintain stable, healthy levels of CO2 in the blood. The precise counting blocks the amygdala from focusing on perceived threats, and breaks the loop of anxious thoughts. The equal balance of inhales, exhales, and holds, trains the autonomic nervous system to stay steady, composed, and highly adaptable under pressure.

The more you practice in calm conditions, the more automatically it activates in stressful ones.

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In the first chapter of the Hebrew Bible, it says that “God created man in His image.” In Hebrew, this is written as tzelem Elohim, and some rabbinical interpretations hold that humans can function as icons that draw God’s presence into the world—similar to the murtis in Hinduism.

Christianity builds on this foundation, teaching that every person has high value and the potential for transformation through Christ.

According to the Bible, humans are made in the image of God, are given free will, and possess the ability to bring new human life into the world. Because these gifts are not shared with the angels, the angels hold an intense interest in human salvation. Biblical scripture speaks of a deep, reverent desire of the angels to understand God’s plan of salvation. The New Testament also suggests that, through Christ, God elevated humanity to a special, redemptive relationship that the angels do not share.

The Zoroastrian scripture of ancient Iran says that while the supreme God is formless and cannot be represented by a physical image, “His material sign is the righteous man.” This means that a human being who lives righteously functions as a living symbol of God on earth.

According to ancient Yoga teachings, human birth is an incredibly rare and auspicious opportunity because being human provides a unique chance for spiritual liberation that is unavailable to other beings. The primary reasons are human self-awareness and free will. Only a human can make the conscious choice to break free from the endless cycle of birth and death.

The human is uniquely considered the “Karma Yoni”—the only state of existence where one has the conscious will and intelligence to perform actions that can free them from the cycle of illusion. All other life forms, including animals and even celestial gods, are said to be in the “Bhog Yoni” states of existence where one only experiences the results of past actions and lacks the ability to make new spiritual choices. Like the angels of the Bible, these celestial gods are envious of human birth. They cannot choose to act against their nature and are bound to the wheels of cause and effect. They have no power to change their destiny.

Human life is seen as the singular gateway to liberation, making it the most precious and significant of all births. While being born human is the first great fortune, the rarest fortune is when a human becomes aware of the soul’s existence and begins to consciously align their life with its deeper purpose. Obtaining a human birth is like finding a rare jewel, but to know your soul and pursue its liberation is to realize its true priceless value.

In the Yoga tradition, this is called vichara shakti—the power of discrimination and conscious choice. Unlike the animal or the god, a human can look at any situation and ask, “Is this right or wrong? Will this lead me toward freedom or toward more suffering?” A human can choose to act against their own instincts, habits, and programming. This is the essence of spiritual practice: one can choose to forgive, seek revenge, become disciplined, or be lazy. Without free will, you are like a leaf being carried down a river, going wherever the current takes you.

Because of this free will, human life is described as a double-edged sword. The same free will that allows you to transcend also allows you to fall deeper into ignorance. You are completely free to waste your precious life on greed, anger, and sensory pleasure.

Free will alone is not enough; self-awareness is essential. You have to know that you have a soul and know that your choices have spiritual consequences. This awareness is what transforms ordinary free will into the power of transcendence. According to these ancient traditions, the deliberate choice to align your life with your highest spiritual purpose is what breaks the cycle of reincarnation and liberates the soul from samsara—the ongoing illusory cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

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Trained in Rosicrucian philosophies, Rudolf Steiner taught that humans have several bodies: the physical body, the etheric body — which animates the physical body, the “I” or the ego, and the astral body. According to Steiner there are three different dimensional worlds existing together, the physical, the astral, and the spirit. He claimed that when you fall asleep, your astral body separates from the physical and drifts into the astral world, a realm that the astral body is native to, and that death is a complete version of this separation, followed by a retrospective review and ascension. He also taught that a person skilled at out-of-body states could enter into the astral realm at will.

In Tibetan Buddhist traditions there are six different dimensions of existence called Bardos, and because the Bardo of death and the Bardo of dreams are functionally identical, dream yoga is considered the ultimate rehearsal for death. If you can maintain lucidity within the chaos of your dreams, then you will have more clarity during the chaotic transitions of death. If you can master waking up in the Badro every night, what the West calls the astral realm, so that you are no longer a character in your dreams but fully awake, then when you die you’ll be able to awaken in the Bardo and avoid being unconsciously swept into another rebirth.

Born as Violet Firth, Dion Fortune was a practicing occultist and self-described psychic combatant.

She was trained in the Golden Dawn Hermetic traditions, and later founded her own order, the Society of the Inner Light. The core idea she taught was often summarized as, “as above, so below.” Reality is arranged in a hierarchy of planes and causation flows down, not up. Ideas, intentions, and archetypal forces take shape first on subtler planes, the astral plane being just before the physical. And so what we see in the physical world is a crystallization of processes that came from realms above. When you shift something in the astral world, it will manifest in the physical world.

In her 1930 book, Psychic Self-Defence, she describes serving with the forces of good in an endless fight within the astral realm against hostile occultists using their will in the dream world to manipulate physical reality. She wrote that the astral realm is a contested space that you can act in, and that your actions have a direct effect on the lower physical plane.

In the ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn, the premise is that “thoughtforms” constructed in the astral plane will precipitate corresponding change on the physical plane. According to Theosophical beliefs, focused repeated thought can build stable astral structures that can then influence events and/or the minds of others. And a skilled clairvoyant can see these man made astral objects in the physical realm.

In Qabalah, causation is mapped through the Tree of Life, descending from Kether, the most high, down to Malkuth, the physical Earth realm. Mind and imagination operate on a plane causally upstream of matter, and disciplined imaginative focus, or acting out rituals, is how to intervene in physical outcomes before they happen.

The New Thought movement of the mid-1800s took all this knowledge, stripped out the ceremonial aspect, but kept the causality claim that thoughts become things. Neville Goddard taught that the world within, or the imaginal realm, causally precedes physical reality. By doing this he created both a secularized and Christianized version of “as above so below.”

Sleep-state affirmation/hypnagogic scripting is one of the most powerful principals that came out of the New Thought movement. Sleep and the hypnagogic threshold are treated as privileged access points to the “upstream” plane, whether that’s called the subconscious, the imagination, the astral, or the bardo. It is a plane where the ordinary waking mind, which might resist or doubt, is least active. The state you are in just before sleep is considered to be one of these access points, and so is the dream space.

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Mysterious crop circles have been documented since the fourteenth century. Project Blue Book tells us the US military began investigating them in the 1950s. By the mid 1980s, several photographers began documenting them from above, which is obviously the intended view, these formations have stunning symmetry and detailed geometry. The East Field Pictogram, hundreds of feet long, was discovered on July 12th of 1990, and Led Zeppelin used it on the cover of their new Remasters release. Crop circles were about to go mainstream.

But within weeks, crop circle investigator, Colin Andrews, was approached by the BBC and the British military to host, Operation Blackbird, wherein a field owned by the government was staked out to capture a crop circle being formed. When the sun came up on the second night, a man-made crop circle was waiting for the cameras. Colin Andrews later claimed he was setup by the British government and the CIA.

The next year, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley went public with the claim that they created hundreds of crop circles over the course of a decade. This story made international news. But Doug and Dave were not able to produce a symmetrical formation, they kept changing their story, and when asked how they avoided leaving foot paths, they claimed they pole vaulted through the fields.

The crop formations created by man are done so by bending and breaking the crop, but in the other ones, the physical properties of the crops have somehow been altered. They are bent over as well, but appear as if they were bent over by an internal force within the stem. The water content inside the nodes seems to have been blown out due to internal pressure. And the crops often appear to be elegantly woven together.

When these crop circles occur in mature plants with fully formed seeds, those seeds are found to produce more protein content and have five times the growth-rate of control seeds.

When the soil is analyzed, spherical magnetic particles are found which are microns in diameter. They are often found adhering to the soil within a melted glaze of the same magnetic material.

Many crop circles won’t go away for years. Ghost formations are seen the following season. Many of these formations appear in less than an hour.

On August 11th, 1996, near Oliver’s Castle in England, a man captured a video of orbs flying over a field and a crop formation materializing beneath them. The formation he caught being formed was discovered by the public hours later.

No matter how much big corporations spend on creating them, nobody has been able to recreate these anomolies, or demonstrate how they are made within a few hours of darkness. Dozens every summer, all over the world. Many are encoded with precise astronomy and mathematical concepts. One formation was found to be a geometric representation of PI accurate to ten decimal places.

The Arecibo radio message was broadcast into space in 1974. Data that shows the numbers one to ten, the atomic numbers of the elements and formulas that make up the nucleotides of DNA, the number of DNA nucleotides in the human genome, the average dimensions of a human, a graphic of the Solar System indicating where the message is coming from, and a graphic of the radio telescope used to send the message. Twenty-seven years later near the Chilbolton radio telescope in Hampshire, UK, a formation appeared that seems to be an answer to the Arecibo message. It reflected the original message, but with a different planetary origin, different DNA and a different physical appearance. And instead of a radio telescope, there was an image of a crop formation that appeared in the same field one year prior.

The purveyors of these mysterious crop formations may be mischievous, but if they are human, they are some of the most impressive artists of all time.

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