Nikolai1

Hi Captain, Well I'd like it if you gave it a go. Start a thread on it? Well thankfully I know I'm more than sane. Actually, I have theories on schizophrenia that ties in to some of this, I might start a thread on it!

Hi BES Regular science both acknowledges and explores the placebo. Some have made it their life's work to understand it better - Fabrizio Benedetti is the obvious example. It is only misunderstood because everybody refuses to confront the obvious hypothesis: That there is an ingredient at work in the placebo pill that is also at work in the active pill. And the same ingredient is at work in the complementary therapies like acupuncture; in the healing arts like medical qigong, and is at work in the miraculous actions of the Christian relic, and the powerful effects of the voodoo curse. So what is this ingredient? I call it the power of belief, the power of expectation. Events will unfold as we expect them to unfold. The more powerful our sense of expectation, the more likely the expected subsequent events will be. Modern medical science has massive punching power in this regard. It is the default worldview of the modern mind. There is a great deal of worldwide belief in the laws of biochemistry, and in those fine minds who study them and tell us what they've found. This raises our level of expectation to an extremely powerful pitch. Those who doubt modern medicine, (and there is ample reason to be cynical if you care to look), will instead revert to a belief in the complementary therapies, and they will subsequently work for them. But all this switching between belief systems brings you little positive benefit. It is a step sideways, not forwards. On this website I read many stories of healing through qigong and the positive energy it harnesses which I believe and find plausible. But there is also a lot of concomitant talk about the existence of negative energies - either locked in the self or radiating from people, places, buildings. And this is no different to the stove vent leaking carbon monoxide! The only true healing comes when we realise that the common denominator is within us. it is our consciousness itself, a form of energy that has no opposite. This consciousness - this powerful and primal subjectivity - is the thing we can take refuge in. Allow yourself to be taken in by all these belief systems - medicine, alternative medicine and the rest - and you make yourself vulnerable to sickness because they always contain the anti-healthful concept, the pathogen. To know yourself is the highest healing art, superior to all systems. Anyone, who develops a stable spiritual practice will start to increase the knowledge of true self. And you will get sick less often, and when you do get sick it will be less severe. It is subtle, gradual and authentic. Compared to this, taking a pill is superstitious and vulgar, and intellectually retrograde. Nikolai

Hi BES, I totally agree with this, which is why in post #13 I said: "But anyway, let's not get critical of big pharma because they are the vehicle of helping that we as a whole society create, believe in and therefore need. " In a sense I'm not talking about nomothetic truths, and what we should all believe. I am talking about the title of this thread - recognising the deep significance of the placebo effect. There are many people who, by understanding the existence of other forms of healing, have transcended the naive faith in western medical science. I am saying that even within the paradigm there is clear evidence under our nose of mysterious healings that are based on belief systems, not biochemistry as we know it. Clearly, I wouldn't talk like this down at my local doctors clinic. My attitude is what I said in #13: "Placebos are real and effective treatments and are exactly the thing that most people need" But at the same time, I am hoping to expand the mindset of those on this website who I assume are less invested in conventional viewpoints. There is such a thing as intellectual morality, and it involves three things. Firstly, the ability to identify dissonance in the conventional viewpoint. This is by far the hardest thing and like I said in post #39: "There is no easy way of getting past the conventional perspective, but certainly direct experiential knowledge of the universal ground of our being is enough to snap us out of the idea that the only level of consciousness and agency is the familiar human level." I wouldn't be able to understanding the radical primacy of the subjective consciousness of the material world, were it not for my own practice and the experiences that I've had. It has put me into a higher level of understanding reality, and I would not like to unsettle others with my conclusions unless I had hope they had experienced similarly. This website IS the place to discuss such matters, and God knows, for me the only place! I'm sorry if that sounds elitist, but that's what it is. The second aspect of intellectual morality is the drive to move past the dissonance and develop theory that includes all the evidence. The instinct towards parsimony unites all thinkers, and is the same as the instinct to pass beyond plurality into unity. It is this effort that I think Brian is reneging on, and you also. Thirdly, intellectual morality is recognising that people are only capable of some truths and it takes judgement to what to say to whom. After your child has spent the last three hours wring to Santa Claus, drawing pictures, buying a stamp from their pocket money and posting it - it is not the time to tell him that Santa is unreal. It is unethical to disabuse people of their faith in medicine without offering something in return.

Hi Brian, First of all,that comment about nettles and dockleaves was an allusion (for the Europeans among us) to the famous poison ivy experiments I talked about in post #4. I studied it as a psychology major, and its a medical classic that is known to many doctors. Just google Ikemi & Nakagawa (1962) and you'll see that it is as discussed as much now as ever. I'm like you in that I prefer to leave mental health (ie anxiety) out of discussions on placebo because there is no medical markers whatsoever. Pain I allow because there are measurable changes in endorphin levels. J.D. Levine et al. (1978) found that placebo lessened pain in most patients who had had their wisdom teeth removed. Interestingly, when he gave the patients nalaxone, which chemically blocks the receptor sites for both morphine and endorphin, the patients pain returned. The first was published in the Lancet, the follow up in Nature itself, perhaps because this found the placebo operating at a level deeper than just subjective well-being. The most measurable illnesses are those that involve invading microbes. These microbes are easy to count and shouldn't, in healhty conditions, be there. But at the same time these illnesses are less woven into the fabric of our physicality than those involving endocrinal or neurocchemical imbalance (like pain). To accept placebo to remove other self-directed organisms is halfway there to expect placebo to remove the vermin from our backyard. Our level of belief in the possibility of healing is reduced as we expand out from our core. But it is still the case that some pretty extraordinary things are achieved through the power of belief. The surgeon I wrote about in post #1 was Henry Beecher- performing surgical operations on jabs of salty water. Google him, and you'll see that he was one of the main lobbyists for the double-blind condition in clinical trial design. Others thought it unnecessary, but he saw that there are processes at force that are almost miraculous. I asked you how you explain all this and all i got was this: I don't see how they go together nicely. Studying how morphine operates at the synapse in the same way as endogenous endorphins because of their biochemical similarity gives us an explanation for the improvement we observe in the pain racked patient. And then the placebo undermines everything! Because there is no morphine, there is only salty water which bears no chemical resemblance to endorphin whatsover. All we have in addition is some comforting thoughts by a nurse. What's the chemical structure of a nurse's word then?. Is it similar to endorphin? What i am doing in this thread is to raise our analysis to a level in which the drug and the placebo are made comparable. I am taking a perspective that recognises that the drug and the placebo are just varieties on the same healing theme. Despite your claims, you are doing no such thing. You can say its a false dichotomy and I agree with you. But why is it false? What is the science that unites chemistry and belief. I'm genuinely interested to know your thoughts? Accepting that the placebo exists, as you do, is not the same as understanding why it works. I don't need to be told that the placebo effect is real, I want to know why!

Hi BES I remember once in meditation hearing a cosmically deep, rythmic booming sound. For a while I was simply attending to it, but after a while the monkey mind kicked in and asked: "what is it?" My first theory was that a car was parked somewhere outside and had music playing extremely loud, but I could hear only the bassline. Then I realised it was my own heart beating, and then I felt satisfied and didn't question it any further. The point is, whenever we start to really go deep in meditation we start to hear new sounds. You will hear all sorts of theories, and these include inside and outside sources. Our homes are much creakier than we realise in our normal unconcentrated state (outer source, rational) Your concentration is generating an energy field that causes smal corrections in the building structure (outer source, esoteric) Fluid in your ears is settling due to your motionless state (inner source, rational) Chakras in your head are unblocking due to your energy work(inner source, esoteric) and so on... If you are unintelligent you will attach yourself to one of these theories and it will satisfy you, just as I was satisfied by the heartbeat explanation. The deeper truth lies in recapturing the moment of the sound and realising that the sound, along with all experience, actually defies explanation and exists in a state of mind where terms like inner and outer no longer obtain. You are right to be encouraged by the phenomenon - the fact that it mystified you is a sign of progress - just don't let it drag you down into unnecessary intellectual explanation. Nikolai

Thanks spotless - I didn't know Merrell-Wolff but I've Ben reading him and it's awesome. Very philosophical/ intellectual which is how my path has been. The books you must pay for but it seems they are worth it!

Hi Brian I'm sure the more this conversation continues the more you feel you are getting into bizarre territory and I certainly feel uncomfortable with the things I'm saying - not least because I can see how prone to misunderstanding they are. Perhaps I should lay out my basic assumptions: Firstly, when I talk about any human behaviour, whether belief or purposeful action, I take it as axiomatic that this behaviour is fundamentally an action from the ultimate ground of being. Any distinction between the two is fundamentally an illusion. One might say that Gods will and the individual will are one and the same thing. From this is follows that any human behaviour undertaken by the individual is inn a sense shared with all individuals; it is shared at the level at which we all united; and this level is the fundamental level of truth and any notion of separation is a kind of optical illusion, to quote Einstein. We've talked a lot about how beliefs have the power to shape material reality. The placebo is an uncontroversial support for this. If I am blindfolded then told my skin is being stroked by nettle leaves then I will come out in a rash, even if it were really dock leaves. I am simply pointing out that this common phenomenon, that beliefs shape material reality, can account for all created reality - if we have the eyes and the intellectual system to see how. Now clearly it sounds pretty preposterous to suggest that our arbitrary human beliefs make carbon monoxide toxic. But it only sounds so silly if you are too fixated on conventional notions of conscious agency. And by conventional, I mean the supposition that all conscious agency is of the everyday thinking, pondering, prevaricating human variety. There is no easy way of getting past the conventional perspective, but certainly direct experiential knowledge of the universal ground of our being is enough to snap us out of the idea that the only level of consciousness and agency is the familiar human level. Actually, and this brings me back to the central purpose of the OP, it doesn't really matter how you understand how carbon monoxide became toxic. All that is required is that whatever way you use is wholehearted. Either 1) believe totally in a deterministic universe where human belief (and therefore the placebo) is falsehood and an illusion 2) believe that beliefs create everything or 3) realise that these two perspectives are actually the same. The sure fire recipe for delusion is what you are doing which is thinking that the placebo effect accounts for some of a drugs efficacy, and that independent laws of biochemistry account for the rest. This position is not only logically untenable, but results in the dualist conception of reality which from a spiritual perspective is hell itself. That said, I would be interested to know how you would explain the famous nettle rash phenomenon. What exactly is going on? What is the science behind it? And blue eyed snake, if you're reading, I would ask you he same question?

Hi spotless -could you recommend a good representative book from the theosophists? Thanks

Hi Donald, I'm sure you and I wold have an immense amount to agree on, although you are right that taobums is not always the best place but a long afternoon and a large pot of coffee would be. What we are calling analysis, I always view as a means to an end, it is a phase we must all go through, but it is a project that is possible of completion. To question is to be in error and analysis cures of our need to ask question. Ramana Maharai said that beyond science lies philosophy,and beyond philosophy is where true religion starts. This is quite a hard statement to understand if you equate religion with such things as bible study, theodicy etc. But even so, this is the perspective which views the examined life as only the beginning of the life that is really worth living. My OP here explains myself quite well http://thetaobums.com/topic/30902-the-philosophers-tao/

Some questions that have always puzzled me: 1) Why is it that some people never seem to learn from their mistakes? Over and over you see people choosing the same bad situations, partners, jobs and don’t get it that they have to move on try something else. 2) Why is that aging so often doesn’t lead to people becoming wiser, kinder and more compassionate? Why is it that some people are angry, bigoted and mindlessly causing trouble and hurt to those around them even into their seventh and eighth decades? 3) Why are some people unable to look at themselves in the mirror and see that they are contributing to their own problems? Why are they always so keen to blame other people and the world rather than face the possibility that their own interpretations might be skewed? 4) Why do some people some to grow fuller and richer in their characters, whereas as others seem the same at 25 as they do at 65. What makes it more confusing is that so often these things do get better as people grow older. It seems that wisdom and spiritual maturity do grow as people age chronologically, but it is still the case that some 18 year olds are wiser and more skillful at living than others ever achieve. Despite all the many theories of personality, I have never come across one that addresses and explains this extremely important dimension on which we all vary. If people are angry, or anxious, it is usually explained vaguely through genetics or nurturance and is not addressed directly. Well this week I came across a system of personality that directly addresses all the questions above. http://www.michaelteachings.com/soul_age_index.html No system of personality explains things ultimately. But what is so wonderful is that this one puts in central place a dimension that no other system acknowledges. Reading it has been so useful for me. I would love to hear some of your reactions! Best wishes, Nikolai

It is a bit off topic but interesting anyway. Everyone knows the placebo effect, everyone knows that doctors use it. The error is the understanding that the placebo is somehow less ethical than the drug. I started this post because the placebo effect is a kind of bridge between modern science and the deeply radical truths expressed by the great mystics.

Many people consciously understood the danger of the carbon monoxide. This is a widepsread pattern of belief and is therefore very powerful. No-one had any conscious beliefs about the vent, not even the parents. If they did, then they would not have lit the stove unless they were wanting to poison themselves.

I think Ken Wilber's Integral system does precisely this, and yet when I read it I am left with an overwhelming 'so what?' feeling. To have the ability to be truly holistic in your thought is simultaneously a transcendence of thought systems in general. The ability to be holistic is the ability to live without the need for analysis to shape our actions. Those who need analysis will inevitably revert from one restrictive paradigm to the next. Before scientific materialism was a restrictive Christian deism. I agree with the OP that a certain panpsychism may return. It is consistent with the deep ecology that is now firmly mainstream, and is starting to shift from the merely intellectual to the ethical realm. To make environmentally ethical choices is now shaping human behaviour at every level of society. We run our households differently, we consume differently and our industrial actions are different. Gaia theory which sees planet Earth as an organism like a an animal or a person is still a bit avant-garde but will percolate into the hearts and minds of all. And when all this takes root, those few humans who are truly transcendent thinkers will lament the restrictiveness of the new paradigm that everyone else thinks is ancient and inviolable.

There's a lot of talk about fear. The fear to grow, the fear to challenge, the fear to be different, the fear to be mature. But fear doesn't ultimately explain things. It just begs the question: why do some people feel the fear? Why do others not feel the fear? Why do others feel the fear, but confront it anyway? The classification of personality that I posted is extremely useful, but it is not explanatory - not ultimately. Its usefulness, is that it provides with a pause for thought when we might have been tempted to judge a person negatively for their behaviour. It stops us from thinking 'oh, why can't you just grow up'. It also makes you realise that if you want to be truly compassionate to everyone, even those infant souls who do nothing but selfishly cause trouble, we have to transcend what happens here on earth. If we stay earth bound then all we see is their negativity compared to other kinder people. But when we transcend earth we see that everyone is at different stages and that the small bud on the tree is as important and as significant as the apple it later becomes. if we're stuck here on earth then all we're interested in is the apple, it is the only good that we perceive in the tree. The only function of the tree. To think that we are here to be good and nice is actually quite an intolerant attitude if we start expecting it from others.

Both are perfectly ethical and the good doctor will be able to modify their methods according to the needs of the patient. Some people will surely be best convinced by the objectivity of the evidence base. Another will be best convinced by the feeling that the doctor is responding in a bespoke fashion to their own individuality. A good doctor needs to be abreast of the research, but at the same time cultivate their individuality in a way that borders on the eccentric. It is all for show of course, but it is well to emphasise the importance of individuality. Unusual bow-ties, or very bright socks, and unusual trinkets in the cabinets - even skeletons - are all excellent ways of enhancing the patients faith and are extremely common as I'm sure we've all noticed. The doctor becomes unethical only when he makes the wrong judgement. He might adopt the language of the clinical trial: "There is a new drug and although entirely safe, has proved equivocal in terms of actual efficacy. We can try it and see what happens...?" For some people this is far too experimental and not at all directive enough. He would have been better off peddling a snake oil (prepared with that person in mind) with absolute conviction and therefore was unethical, or rather medically negligent.

Hi Brian Really good question! The key word here is 'unsuspecting'. In reality there is no such thing as unsuspecting, if something is consciously known by one then all is unconsciously known by the rest. At a deep level, all the students knew that they were taking coffee with LSD. This deep level of knowing and its expression is only disrupted by our belief in empirical information. If we believe that we are capable of ignorance, and need to acquire truth through experience, then that belief will obscure our original reaction. In fact, the belief in the possibility of ignorance is the same as the belief in external processes that occur regardless of us. The belief in the active ingredient that obeys laws of chemistry regardless of psychology is therefore failure to understand our own perfect knowledge. This is pure ignorance, sorry Brian. The placebo effect always operates at the conscious level, the level that clouds and distorts pure knowing. If we consciously take a pill then it will operate according to our own expectations. if the pill is taken unsuspectingly, the pill will operate according to the expectations of those who consciously administered it. This is why blinded, double-blinded and now triple-blinded research designs have been deemed necessary. Unfortunately, all the blinding in the world can't remove the placebo effect, if even one person believes in the drug. if the LSD were swallowed without anyone and anything having any conscious expectation then the effects would be void. It would be like breathing air, so to speak. So where did the belief in LSD (or any drug) start? This brings us back to the OP when I talked about the role of revelation. If there is a belief in the possibility of our own ignorance then the aspect of us that knows there is no ignorance will grant us glimmers of compensatory 'truth'. The recipient of the revelation knows in a way that is so powerful and direct that it is enough to influence the whole of humanity. they are creatively inspired. The whole rigmarole of clinical trials are just the modern way of convincing ourselves and spreading the word. They've never been necessary in the past and they are necessary now only because we believe they are necessary - in fact they are nothing more than a kind of show. Those who understand their own perfect knowledge and are not in ignorance have no need for potions and lotions. They don't need to place the healing agent outside of them because they are themselves the healing agent as far as others are concerned.

The art of being a physician is the art of maximising the placebo effect at all stages in the consultation. The drugs are just the icing on the cake and will not be effective if the doctor hasn't first endorsed them. Of course the opposite is also the case. In the Nocebo Effect a doctor may inadvertently give his patient an illness through a wrong diagnosis. The medical literature is full of these cases.

Using life experiences to explain current presentation is of course valid. But all that thinking is familiar and always failed to satisfy me. Why do some people survive severe trauma unscathed and why are some debilitated for life by seemingly minor setbacks? These questions are directly addressed by the concept of spiritual maturity. The spiritually mature person is more detached from their own ego and therefore sees trauma as less significant. It therefore harms them less. There is nothing more traumatic than the belief in traumatic events. But to say such a thing to a spiritually immature person is shocking and highly insensitive.

Thanks for that de paradise! The two systems do look similar I agree. I'll check it out more, because they both chart a very interesting notion of maturity.

There is no need to turn this into a criticism of big pharma. Placebos are real and effective treatments and are exactly the thing that most people need. The science of creating medicines is nothing other than the art of getting people to be convinced. The supposed clinical difference between the placebo and the active ingredient is a benign illusion that is based on several factors. Firstly let's not forget that the two pills are different. They are different colours, shapes, and most importantly they taste different. A pill made of corn starch or sugar will not inspire a persons belief as readily as a pill that tastes bitter or foul in some other way. Since time immemorial people have instinctively know that a medicine is best if it is foul tasting. This perhaps feeds into peoples atavistic notion that for healing to occur there must be a sense of sacrifice or pain. Nowadays, the same effect is achieved through subtle side effects such as digestion issues, skin outbreaks or psychotropic sensations such as feeling 'spaced out'. And trust me, inventing a drug that is simultaneously benign yet capable of creating bodily feedback is no easy matter. The side effect and the main effect are one and the same thing. Beyond this, there are political issues that allow a drug to seem clinically different to placebo. This is today with subtle manipulation of participant recruitment, data processing ,selective publication of positive results, and finally plain chance. A one in a hundred outcome is considered statistically and clinically significant. But anyway, let's not get critical of big pharma because they are the vehicle of helping that we as a whole society create, believe in and therefore need.

All theories are nonsense. But they are either conventional nonsense or esoteric nonsense. I think having more theories to hand allows greater compassion in more situations. Especially when you're an 'old soul' like me and are often considered a bit useless by all those energetic ambitious materialists! It's good to affirm and accept yourself, even when you go in a totally different direction to nearly everyone else.

Your theory Is one of those Ive always used myself and it was inspired by my reading of buddhism. The trouble is that it doesn't Explain things at the level of biography. Some people stay angry and judgemental all their life and it manifests in obvious dramatic ways in their social life. For others, anger is nothing other than an occasional and wholly internal experience. But you're right, both become anger iteir own ways.

Hi Nungali The important ingredient is the belief that the pill you are about to take will help. If the researcher says, as they did in the study you cited, "what we are giving you is a placebo", your own prior understanding in the power of placebo will heal you as much as a medicine. If the researcher had said, "this is is just a sugar pill, it cannot and will not help you" then that will prevent the pill from working, even if it has the a supposed active ingredient. Medical ethics will prevent this from being tested. The question I posed in the OP was about those people who understand that it is the belief that is the important thing. Those people who 'know' that the placebo and the active ingredient are identical and only have as much power as our beliefs give them. Such people are left beliefless, and therefore with the burden of consciously choosing their outcome. They become immune to all suggestions given by the medical profession, they have transcended it. Their health must therefore be maintained through their own suggestions. I propose that these suggestions come in the form of revelation, and feel to originate from a transcendent source. I remember watching a documentary about a native Amazon Indian tribe who knew what plants were medicinal because the plants 'spoke' to them. A similar intuitive understanding is the only method available to those highly intelligent members of our society who have transcended the superstitions of modern medicine. When I talked about mind over matter I meant intellectual belief creating changes in the physical body. A blindfolded person who believes their skin is stroked from poison ivy will come out in a rash. Sugar pills restore the body to health through the reduction in whatever pathogens cause the disease. If you accept that belief can change the physical body then you start to open up the possibility that mind has primacy over matter and is the progenitor of all that manifests physically. The more this conviction grows the more will the mind's sphere of influence grow on the world. The only evidence for this is that those spiritual geniuses who preach this message are so often surrounded by seemingly miraculous occurrences.

You are sat on the shores of a lake. It is evening, a breeze is blowing and the reflection of the moon is dancing on the ripples of the water. You look closely at these ripples. You see that the moon is not reflected as a disk, but as an infinitude of individual shards of light. As the waves on the water pass, each shard flashes into existence, endures for a moment or two, and then vanishes. The moon is above you in the sky shining brightly and constantly, but its reflection has been split into a myriad of distorted moons - each one ephemerally existing. This is how the sage views the world. There is both the Light, and there are the reflected shards of light passing in and out of existence. You, I, and all the manifold things of this word are in fact nothing other than shards dancing on the reflective surface. We who are not sages see each shard of light as an existing entity in its own right. We are concerned when one flashes into existence, and concerned when the same vanishes. Worst of all, we see ourselves as one of the shards. We think we are a fragment, looking out at other fragments like us. We cannot be the eye that sees all as reflection, ourselves included. Practice is learning to see the world as a mere play of light. It is allowing each moment to pass into existence, and then allowing it to be annihilated forever. Practice is being detached from the play of light, while simultaneously allowing yourself to be one of the shards of light participating as fully in the play as the next shard. How you ripple and dance about is hardly your concern, it is enough to be docile to life and responsive to the moment. The choreography can be left to God, you can delegate the task to him. But be courteous enough to enjoy the show and to keep your criticism to yourself. Pass judgement on yourself, or on any of the others shards of light, and God will refuse his role. How tedious for you, that you now have to fret about what you were free to enjoy: the lake, the moon and the light.

Hi guys, There are several methods of seeing the Light but, unlike others, this method uses the intellect. As the intellect is a dualistic instrument, we therefore need to use the natural everyday light as a backdrop. It is against this everyday backdrop that the Primordial Light can be dualistically contrasted. 1) First we need to understand what we are dealing with. The source of the everyday light is the sun. The sun as we understand it has three characteristics relevant to our purposes. Firstly it is a single object: the source of all light. Secondly, it is constantly shining, and has not extinguished since its creation. Thirdly, it is stable relative to our own movement. 2) When the intellect first conceptualizes the primordial light it will need to sharply contrast it with the above characteristics. 3) The primordial light will therefore first present itself as a multitude of tiny lights, innumerable, even infinitesimal. 4) The primordial lights will be highly ephemeral each tiny light illuminated for the briefest possible instant. 5) The primordial lights will be in constant, rapid motion, and shall be clearly discernible against the stable background of things in everyday light. Next follows some rather counterintuitive facts. 6) The primordial light is not seen best against a backdrop of darkness. Rather it needs to be seen against a backdrop of everyday light. 7) A very bright everyday light source is best, although staring directly at the sun is risky to beginners. The best backdrops in order are sunlight reflected against something shiny (but not a mirror); sunlight reflected in water; snowy fields in bright weather; a clear blue sky when the sun is up and shining. Now some techniques and what you shall see. 8) Although the intellect is informing perception of the primordial light through the use of contrast, it is important we modify the acuteness somewhat. Otherwise we will remain in everyday vision. 9) The intellect directed vision is the direct gaze. We must therefore distance the intellect by softening our gaze and our focus. This will naturally direct the two eyeballs towards each other and in the middle distance. 10) Slowly, often one by one, tiny bright white squiggles shall appear. They appear at first rather like sperm or tadpoles a dot followed by a tail. As your gaze intensifies youll realise that these tails are actually just an effect. Rather like waving a flaming torch on a dark night produces a circle in the air. 11) The more you concentrate the more squiggles shall appear. 12) Eventually they will fill your entire visual filed with profusion and depth, and the everyday backdrop will feel to you like something secondary and unimportant. This is the primordial light, as first conceived by the intellect. It is an easy and accessible way of getting a sight of the transcendent realm and an introduction to some of the feelings it brings. Indeed, there are many people who can relate to the above without realizing what it means. If you understand the vision and take it seriously you will naturally become more and more fascinated with it. In the next post Ill discuss what happens as the intellect starts to depart from the scene and the need for contrast with the sun disappears. Best wishes, Nikolai