Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century
Trance has long mesmerized scholars and laymen alike-especially the experiencers of this complex set of "spooky" phenomenon. Nonetheless, from the ecstatic states of mind of the saint to the erotic ones of the shaman, there is clearly something to this condition that is connecting the participants to a greater source of intelligence, a Mind at Large. In this book, the author goes beyond the known aspects and explores the deepest meaning to trance that speaks to our pending species-wide link-up to our own supreme centers of consciousness-our Earth, Sun, and Milky Way Galaxy. He explains that what is happening to us is our transition from our lower self of man to our Higher Self of God, and does so employing the physics of metaphysics, what he knowingly calls the science of soul. However, John Jay Harper not only explores this topic from an objective scientific and religious perspective but from a subjective one as well. For you will see why he began to investigate trance in the first place-it was only after he had a close encounter with a "deceased" colleague and friend, George Sebastian Viguet III, previously an optics physicist with the U.S. Department of Defense-while he was in an altered state of mind himself. Clinical Hypnotherapists call this state hypnopompic, meaning simply not quite awake yet.
Ultimately, Dr. Harper concluded that none of us are truly awake yet either and then shares his own mind-opening experiences from his practice of therapeutic hypnosis. Fascinatingly, he believes that trance will, in fact, become the "normal" state of mind for all of us as we now rapidly take that literal quantum leap into the next "fifth dimensional" stage of cosmic consciousness evolution on this planet-into what the Australian Aborigines call Universal Dreamtime. That is, we are indeed witnessing "the shamanizing of humanity" as put forth so eloquently by psychologist Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., in his book The Omega Project: Near-Death Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large. Now, Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century will challenge your conventional wisdom in every way imaginable, and hopefully for many, unimaginable, as to our origin, our destiny, and our human potentiality. Through examining such diverse topics as alien abductions, UFOs, mysticism, shamanism, and NDEs, Harper claims the pure intent of our conscious, loving universe will emerge. More so, this book was written for those readers who will want to learn how to use their brains in concert with their hearts to optimize their tranceformation in the decades ahead. This is a true-no doubt long overdue-Owner's Manual for Human Beings.
About The Author
Dr. John Jay Harper is a graduate of Central Washington University in Psychology, California College for Health Sciences in Health and Human Services, and the American Institute of Hypnotherapy in Clinical Hypnotherapy. In addition, he completed extensive undergraduate and post-graduate studies at the University of Alabama and at the Florida Institute of Technology, respectively. He was employed full-time with the United States Government for over two decades as a senior electronics engineer and computer specialist working in Alabama, California, Georgia, and Washington, retiring early on June 1, 1993. He is also a disabled veteran of the U.S. Army, having served as a Land Combat Support System specialist in Nuremberg, Germany, during the Vietnam War Era (1968-1972). In August 1994, the author created the non-profit corporation, American Delphi Academy, to conduct health education research and seminars in energy medicine. Specifically, he focuses on the use of altered states of consciousness and organic nutritional regimens in the treatment of physical, mental, and spiritual health disorders. John and his wife Connie have been married for 30 years. They have three grown children Michelle, Kimberly, and Jayson; plus seven "above average" grandchildren Kathryne, Brittney, Jessica, Joshua, Jacob, Kyle, and Meghan. They reside in the "City of the Sun," Spokane, Washington.
DEDICATION
George Sebastian Viguet III
(1947-1987)
COSMIC HUMAN BUTTERFLY
Birth after birth I walk the Earth
always my goal is the same.
Yearning for learning, looking, unhooking,
attempting to master the game.
Walking and talking, at times even stalking,
the Truth that I know is here.
Then struggling to dance, ever flirting with chance,
knowing much on life's path is a dare.
Again, I come to the ridge that has no bridge,
to the place God's calling me to be.
Yet, my body still falters at Nature's altar,
though in deed the Christ set it free.
Yes, I've been here before on this very shore,
trying to manifest the freedom implied.
But now there is peace, soul powers released,
so I don't take that last step . . . I f-l-y!
-Rev. Hilda Kellis and John Jay Harper
TRANCEFORMERS: SHAMANS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Indeed, if we were to make extensive use of trance procedures in therapeutic, pedagogical, and psychological applications, it could lead to a resurrection of the powers latent in our consciousness. A scientific renaissance in which broader forms of perception would advance our research, our knowledge, and our ability to solve problems by leaps and bounds . . . [because] the trance state is actually the real perception of mankind. It is just that it has been consigned to oblivion by a grand-scale cover-up strategy.
-Holger Kalweit, Psychologist
Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men (1987)
PROLOGUE
The story you are about to read is true.
"John," the voice on the phone said, "I have some very bad news."
George Sebastian Viguet III died in Huntsville, Alabama, of a massive heart attack on November 9, 1987. Born in White Castle, Louisiana, January 24, 1947, he was a young man of 40 when his life ended, officially at 9:30 A.M. on that Monday morning. In fact, my best friend George drew his last breath in the medical clinic of his family physician located right next door to Huntsville Hospital. So, I guess when your time is up, your time is up. I mean if your doctor can't save you from the grip of death even when you walk in to see him under your own power, it's got to be your time to go. That is fate it seems to me.
I had known George for 18 enjoyable years.
He and I met in 1969 while serving as soldiers in the U.S. Army. We-with a few dozen other men-were assigned to the same military unit, the 116th Ordnance Detachment, at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. All of us were being trained and prepared for deployment to a unique missile unit then forming in Nuremberg, West Germany. Our unit was given orders to set up an electronics repair shop at the old historic base called Merrell Barracks, previously one of Adolf Hitler's strongholds during WWII. Thus, on January 28, 1970, a planeload of us flew to Europe to help bring this elite outfit to full operational life. It was an exciting time. We settled into our living quarters on base quickly and began establishing daily routines, and the married guys began counting the days until our wives would arrive. In our case, George married Kathy, and I, Connie, only a couple months before we shipped out.
Naturally, those early days of separation dragged on for us newlyweds. But after our wives arrived in Germany in mid-April, we made up for lost time. George, Kathy, Connie, and I had a lot of fun together. We began touring the medieval castles of Bavaria and partying with members of our detachment at the NCO clubs and the German Beer and Wine Festivals, too. I have extremely fond memories of those huge beer tents-and huge beer mugs-swaying to the native songs that were usually sung by hundreds of townsfolk in unison. I recall holding a few of those mugs to my lips! Not surprisingly, I don't remember ever going to work. Indeed, before we knew it, we were being discharged from active duty and returning stateside. I got an "early out" to attend the University of Alabama in Huntsville under the GI Bill-and George did the same a few months later. I began my studies in electronics engineering and psychology, while he pursued a curriculum in optical physics and mathematics.
My friend was born to be a scientist.
George was bright and introverted. I was not that bright in those early days, and extroverted. However, our paradoxical blend of personalities yielded some fairly witty conversations over hotly- contested chess games and cold beer. We had many deep, philosophical conversations, some of which were on life after death. George believed that when you were dead, you were dead and gone. Although I could not prove to him otherwise, I told him I remained open to the possibility of an afterlife (based upon a childhood experience that I did not tell him about then but one I will share with you in Part One). So, though terribly shocked to hear of his death that fateful day in a phone call from his wife, I put on my stoic face of acceptance. But later that week at his elaborate Catholic funeral, where I was a pallbearer, I stared at that metal casket in front of me and asked myself: "Where is my friend this morning?" I mean, his body was lying there in that overpriced metal box, yet where is the "soul" that I know as George?
This line-of-thought turned out to be prophetic.
For I was about to learn that George was not, I repeat, not dead-and that would keep me up nights for years writing this book-but more about that shocker in a minute. Immediately after George's burial in a mausoleum at Valhalla Cemetery near the campus of Alabama A&M University, I became obsessed with death. I was consumed by the question: Why do people have to die? Oh well, I sighed, this is one equation I will never figure out: too many variables and no constants. Thinking a change of pace and place might help end my grieving, I applied for a new federal job at the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, Washington. The response came in a couple weeks and was positive: they had a vacancy for a computer software engineer and I was very happy to fill this position for them. You see, this was my hometown, where my elderly parents, my three siblings, and a couple of my old high school buddies still lived.
So, despite the difficulty, we moved west to the Olympic Peninsula.
It was an emotional and stressful event. We had to leave my wife's large loving family behind in Alabama, as well as our friends and co-workers with the U.S. Army Strategic Defense Command, known to the media as "Star Wars." Nonetheless, Connie and I did move our three children, Michelle, Kimberly, and Jayson, to Silverdale, Washington, on March 29, 1988. Little did I know then that seven months after I helped bury him, I would have an up-close and personal encounter with George. Now, specifically, while in bed that early June morning in 1988 around four A.M. in an altered state of mind we hypnotherapists call hypnopompic, which means not quite awake, I saw him. I mean I saw my friend as clearly as we can see anyone anywhere. (For a more complete treatment of these powerful states-of-mind that precede our waking from or entry into sleep, refer to the new book by Harvard University psychologist, Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving-and How You Can Too (2001).)
George looked the same, except his body was new.
Spontaneously, this question came to my mind: "Is George made of liquid ice?" That was because his body appeared to be made of pure glass now. Even more so, his "skin" looked pretty much like that clear, free-flowing saltwater creature that was portrayed in the Hollywood movie The Abyss (1989): crystallized, life-like and watery. I kept staring at him with a "deer in the headlights" look of utter amazement. I could still see every minor detail in his face, including the vestiges of acne from which he suffered as a teenager. Furthermore, and equally startling, George was wearing a loose fitting bright, multi-colored Hawaiian shirt with a white beachcomber hat, and he had a couple of flattened metal "beer cans" stuffed on the inside of its headband. No doubt, this Cajun was ready to party! Yes, I could accept that interpretation, but there was a deeper meaning for his bizarre mode of dress: It was a form of sign language, a symbolic gesture to me.
Upon reflection, I saw that he was communicating ideas through mental imagery.
For when I leaned over his newly-installed casket at the front of the funeral home in Alabama, my first words to him-spoken softly under my breath so as to not appear disrespectful-were: "George, a joke is a joke. Let's go get a beer!" That is, he was showing me by his party attire that he had truly been conscious and "present" seven months previously. In short, he never really died. (Thus, this book hopes to make the traditional concept of death as obsolete as a flat Earth.) Anyway, this particular morning, George looked at me, smiled, and telepathically conveyed to me that, in fact, death is not our fate. Rather, death is the dive into the depths of the ocean of space itself that our mystics often call the "void." This void is not empty, however, but full of life. This cosmically conscious living space is the boundless state of being that includes an infinite set of four-dimensional space-time worlds within it. Fourteenth-century German mystic John Tauler suggested this is where, "All things are gathered together in one with divine sweetness, and all man's being is so penetrated with the divine substance that he loses himself therein, as a drop of water is lost in a cask of strong wine." It is the space of our Mind at Large-God. I call it a fifth dimension. It is this space where they, "the dead" and we, "the living," are vibrating at different frequencies of light. Carl Jung more than hinted at this idea when he wrote in the foreword to Stewart Edward White's classic book The Unobstructed Universe (1948):
The "Invisible" further assert that our world of consciousness and the "Beyond" together form a single cosmos, with the result that the dead are not in a different place from the living. There is only a difference in their "frequencies," which might be linked to the revolutions of a propeller: at low speeds the blades are visible, but at high speeds they disappear. In psychological terms this would mean that the conscious and the unconscious psyche are one, but are separated by different amounts of energy.
In plain terms, mind and matter are made of one substance-a "space" made of light.
Renowned modern investigator of the Australian Aboriginal culture, language, and trance rituals, Robert Lawlor, shared in his book Voices of the First Day: Awakening in Aboriginal Dreamtime (1991): "In both physics and psychology, these prematerial, preformative patterns exist beyond the representational power of both matter and mind. The Aborigines also have a concept similar to these immaterial symmetries and potentialities. . . . It was the highest metaphysical duality: the All-Father/All-Mother. Its place of existence was the sky, and it is characterized by an invisible geometric lattice, like that of a quartz crystal or the recently discovered crystalline clarity of pure water" (pp. 348-9). That is what the Egyptians knew and captured in myth too. Whatever, I wasn't prepared for this experience, and it overwhelmed me. I started questioning everything. Since I saw for myself that reality is not physical, but rather metaphysical, my science-trained left-brain orientation to the world around me evaporated: It went p-o-o-f.
Even though I hadn't died and revived like millions of these near-death experiencers (NDErs) the effects on me were nearly the same. Suddenly, I also saw how "loose as a goose" reality is and how deeply connected we all are to one another both here and hereafter. I mean, you can peel layers of reality off like an onion in these altered states of mind: matter is made of myriad mental images. Struggling to grapple with my experience became difficult; it was increasingly frustrating, nerve-racking, and upsetting to my ego's rigid frame-of-reference to "know" that we live in a multi-dimensional cosmos. Thus, in July 1988, a month after I saw George, I decided to attend a spiritual retreat with the Community of Christ-on Samish Island, Washington, near the Straits of Juan de Fuca, with my whole family.
I was not sleeping well and I was confused.
My friend was still alive and could go from "there" to here, and I wanted to know how that was possible, and, moreover, why my interaction with George occurred while I was in a state of trance. That really puzzled me: why trance? Trance seemed to be a conduit, a pipeline, or a tunnel-maker into what we call eternity. Later I came upon the words of Dr. Michael Newton in Journey of Souls (1994): "When souls travel to planets intergalactically or interdimensionally, they measure the trip by the time it takes them to reach their destinations through the tunnel effect from the spirit world. . . . If I could stand back and take apart all these alternate realities seated in the minds of my cases, it would be like peeling an artichoke of all its layers down to the heart at the core" (p. 197). Yes, in fact, I would say it would be like taking an infinite series of dreams apart, one person and their world-view imagery at a time-one life review scene peeled-off the stack of all others-until we uncovered the heart and soul of the Supreme Dreamer: God.
Ultimately, I came to realize that trance was the way one creates a tunnel to transport oneself in and out of eternity. Indeed, trance kept resurfacing in my studies as the single most important topic. I recalled references to trance in the Bible, too-like this one of Saint Paul: "I was in the city of Joppa praying: and in a trance I saw a vision, . . ." (Acts 11:5). Of course, I knew that prayer was the way to contact God with our questions, but trance was the way the ancients tuned themselves up to "listen" for God's answers, it seemed. As mythologist Richard Heinberg reminded us in his book Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age (1989): "Perhaps our most useful new clue to this lost state of being is contained in the modern study of altered states of consciousness and, in particular, of the near-death experience. The essence of Paradise is, as we have seen, equivalent to what various traditions have termed nirvana, ecstasy, divine union, and cosmic consciousness. It is the condition of the absence of the separate human ego with all its defenses, aggressions, and categories of judgment" (p. 254).
Can we learn to do the same: go into the silence of the non-ego "oneness" realm?
"Silence," claimed Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk, "is the language God speaks," while thirteenth-century German mystic Meister Eckhart revealed: "Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness." Is it possible that we talk too much and don't listen enough today? I know I do. Fortunately, this retreat I went to focused upon the power of prayer, so I prayed long and hard for powerful answers to my powerful questions. Guess what? My prayers were answered. When I awoke the very next morning as the first beams of light shot through my family's cabin window, I felt this urgent need to get some writing material-and leave. Grabbing a notepad and pen out of my briefcase, I slipped out of our sleeping quarters and went to sit at the seashore just a few yards away. Trying to recreate the state-of-mind I had when I saw George, I became quiet, ignored my nagging thoughts and troubled feelings and went deeper and deeper and deeper into the center of myself.
Then, like a bolt of lightning splitting apart a stormy summer night's sky, these three commandments flashed-lit up-within my mind's eye: 1) Investigate the physics and metaphysics of light; 2) Investigate the mystical schools of world religions; and, 3) Investigate the process of human creativity, discovery, and invention. So it was this epiphany that led me to later doggedly pursue the ten-years of research that led to the writing of my book. Though I now admit this book wrote me as much as I wrote it. That is, I see that we are acted upon from The Other Side via altered states of consciousness, specifically states of reverie (trance). Also, I came to wonder if trance itself wasn't a Rosetta Stone of sorts that would unlock the deepest mysteries of our soul. New York psychotherapist Dr. Nandor Fodor stated this much in his treatise Mind Over Space (1962): "For such a working hypothesis essentially admits that the force must be inherent in the unconscious of the living and that the state of trance . . . whereby it is freed from whatever keeps it dormant" (Italics mine, p. 94).
Our "unconscious" minds, in fact, link-up with the superconscious Mind of God in trance. "In all traditions, as Eliade points out, the longing for Paradise is first and foremost the longing for the immediate communion with Deity: The nostalgia for origins is a religious nostalgia. Man desires to recover the active presence of the gods" says Richard Heinberg (Ibid., p. 98). Along these lines, psychiatrist Rick Strassman, M.D., has just published his own U.S. Government-approved clinical research into the use of the psychedelic dream-inducing substance DMT (N, N-dimethyltryptamine) and which was conducted at the University of New Mexico from 1990 to 1995 with sixty volunteers. In his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, subtitled A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences (2001), he makes it clear that while drugs may put us in touch with God, that, in and of itself, does not mean we will be able to benefit from the encounter. It can just as well throw us into a spiritual crisis depending upon our belief systems. Indeed, there may even be sinister forces at work in the cosmos involved in our use of these types of drugs. Not to get melodramatic nor preachy here, but the reader will walk away from this highly-readable medical report knowing that our universe is teeming with life of all kinds-and "it" has its own agenda. Additionally, I would say that credence should be given now to the findings of Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack as well as to the equally-maligned research conclusions of Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, and Whitley Streiber. With respect to Dr. Strassman's courageous and monumental work, his concept of "space" gives me a lot more confidence to boldly declare to you today that what the state of trance tunes into is the silent "void" of pure awareness-where subject-object are oneself (cosmic consciousness):
In between TV channels, is "snow," the white noise and images associated with what is "between" the various stations' programming material. What is there if we look and listen carefully? It is the very nature of the activated television itself, electricity coursing through it, energizing and driving it to display something, but that something seems like nothing to the pattern-seeking everyday mind.
In this case, the best analogy might be that DMT has reconfigured the brain's receptive qualities to now stop receiving "outside" information. It is only aware of its own existence, its own intrinsic nature. It displays its own consciousness or resonating frequencies, which have no particular content. Nevertheless, it is the ground upon which all of the programs depend for support-the space that the channels fill.
This space between channels, or the absence of channels, is not empty; rather, it is itself full. The content of the programs replaces this perfect emptiness with their busy fullness. Neither is its nature necessarily "potential." Rather, it is complete unto itself. It needs nothing to exist as it is. But it needs something in order to take shape or form, to manifest. (pp. 323-4)
What does this "empty space"-that is not empty-need to take shape?
Space needs a body that is saturated with mind! Indeed, switching back and forth from inner mental space to outer "physical" space, spiritual body blueprint to physical body imprint, respectively, is what Jesus, in fact, did do, in my opinion. "And was transfigured before them: and his face shone as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light" (Matthew 17:2). Mythologist Joseph Campbell said it best in Diane K. Osbon's book, Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion (1991): "In other words, . . . ; outer and inner space are the same [space]" (p. 140). The implication here being that mind and matter differ only in "density" of space: matter being the more condensed form of mind. Now, could that transfiguration "process" that Jesus performed be effected simply by sinking more deeply into our own mind's eye in a state of trance? Well, I think that is exactly what our holy people have been doing for centuries through meditation. In his book Frontiers of the Soul (1992), Dr. Michael Grosso comments on the shapeshifting powers of Italian priest Padre Pio: "Theology calls this process transubstantiation; we might call it an evolutionary quantum jump. . . . Dr. Giuseppe Gusso [a medical doctor in charge of a hospital founded by Padre Pio] said, 'there are mysterious and unknown relations that exist between body and soul in the mystical state.'" So, where do these miracle-workers go to initate themselves into the mystical state-into the silence of space.
Dr. Strassman realized: "For some volunteers, DMT's ripping away of consciousness from the body was the stimulus to seek that space between the various levels of perceived reality. They went straight to that empty totality underlying their sense of themselves and the outside world, no longer supported by the body. As Freud commented years ago, 'The ego is first and foremost a body-ego.' With no body, what's left?" (p. 324). What is left when our physical dark body melts into our spiritual light body is the "void"-the omnipresent Mind of God. However, this does not mean that our physical body is superfluous to our spiritual evolution. On the contrary, our physical body is our "soul's" solar battery: It stores the sunlight that our soul needs to manifest-project-our body image into the world. In fact, we shall learn that our human and planetary body, individually and collectively, is the "Body of Christ-Light" as Earth. In his book, Quantum Mind: The Edge Between Physics and Psychology (2000), MIT-trained physicist and founder of the process-oriented school of therapy in psychology, Arnold Mindell, Ph.D., reminds us that "According to myths, our mathematics and the physical universe are not creations ex nihilo, out of nothing, but are created by the goddesses and gods who are themselves unlimited space. . . . Around the tenth century, Christian mystics envisioned Christ as a part of the universal space consisting of four circles. . . . Christ was considered to be a geometer" (pp. 340-1). (Please refer to Appendix B, Geometry of Divinity by Frederick O. Mills.) Now, even more towards supporting the thesis of my own book, Mindell declares:
It is my firm belief that each of us is, potentially, a "modern shaman." That means we must be able to personally experience the theories and ideas in these sciences. Only then can we participate in the future of physics and psychology. They depend upon our exploration of the mysteries of shamanistic perception and the ability to move between worlds. When this exploration is complete, we shall use the shaman's awareness not only to transform personal and community life, but also to co-create the physical universe. This is the essence of modern shamanism, which is also a journey home, to a true understanding of the nature of the universe and our proper place in it-modern shamanism is our natural birthright. (Ibid., p. 31)
Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century is my feeble attempt therefore to share with you the meaning of all these "strange" ideas that I have been exposed to because of this life-changing encounter with my deceased friend. Though I would rather simply keep quiet and live my life in peace, it is clear that more of us need to speak out with the true picture of reality and its deeper purpose-to give birth to our dreams, not our nightmares. We need to wake to the world as magic! The "old-time" religion and the New World physics are wrong: God, Man, and Nature are not separate beings; thus, matter is not dead. Matter is minded. Our cosmos is one living being who at the deepest level of reality is-us. Trust me, what I've uncovered is not due to my intellect; it is due to my strong passion for following my bliss. My book is the result of paying extremely close attention to a lengthy series of synchronicities. Synchronicites are these "coincidences" in life that we all have happen to us sooner or later when we set out to find truth. They are what psychotherapist James Redfield said would become commonplace in his best seller The Celestine Prophesy. In my case, while collecting my insights into life after death, I would walk into a public library or bookstore somewhere in the state of Washington from Silverdale to Seattle to Spokane, and a relevant textbook would nearly leap into my hands. I still get a thrill from these little miracles, and since I see this benevolence as proof positive of a conscious, loving universe looking after me, I thought I ought to write some of them down for your consideration. But, if you are simply t-o-o busy to read my book, let me sum up its major theme: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" (John 1:1).
WE ARE THE WORDS OF GOD (DNA) MADE FLESH
ADVANCE BOOK ORDERS NOW BEING ACCEPTED;
CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT; JJAYHARPER@MSN.COM