In an earlier blog essay, “Preparing for the Great Attunement,”[1] I noted how I had a dream on November 4th, 2011, telling me to create a program on preparing for the great attunement. Following that directive dream led to the creation of a conference held over 9-11 November 2012, and this blog essay is an amplification of the opening talk I gave to that assembly on November 9th.
“The great attunement” means, I think, the shift that is underway now as the world moves from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. Since we have no exact date as to when the Age of Pisces began, we don’t know exactly when the Age of Aquarius is to begin, but the end date of the baktun of the Mayan calendar—December 21st, 2012[2]—is suggestive. Whether there will be some notable event or felt shift on or around that date—now just a few weeks away—remains to be seen.[3] What is obvious, from an historian’s perspective, is what Jung recognized: that we, the human race, have been preparing for the new age for many centuries.
Societies and cultures do not change overnight. Major shifts take many generations, and the change is incremental, being barely noticeable at first, then becoming somewhat more obvious, until the breakdown of the old is visible (and a source of anxiety) to almost everyone.[4] At the same time as we can spot the breakdown of the old we can identify elements of the new age. In this essay I am going to focus on some of the key historical antecedents that have been helping to prepare us for a new, more viable and positive future.
Key Antecedent #1: the concept of the anima mundi or Gaia
The earliest of these goes back to the time during the shift from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces, in the 1st century B.C., when Gnosticism arose and later influenced the mystical Neoplatonism of Plotinus, with his concept of the anima mundi, or “world soul.”[5] This concept posits an Earth that is alive, and this idea has gotten some scientific credibility as we have developed powerful supercomputers that can process massive amounts of data, to reveal the amazing interrelationships and interdependencies that make up the “web of life.” This sort of work in ecology has led people like James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis to speak of “Gaia,”[6] borrowing the ancient Greek word for the goddess Earth, the living being upon whom all life on our planet depends.
Key Antecedent #2: the concept of cycles of time
Around the same time that the Gnostics and Plotinus were articulating the concept of the world soul, on the other side of the world the peoples of Mesoamerica were making detailed astronomical calculations that led to sophisticated time systems. The most refined of these was that of the Mayans, who developed several types of calendars. One was based on cycles of 260 days; another calendar had a 365-day solar year; a third type involved the planet Venus and had a cycle of 584 days, and another was a lunar calendar of 13 months. The Mayans also developed a “Long Count” calendar that began in what would be the Western year 3,114 B.C.[7] The end of this calendar is soon upon us: December 21, 2012. While the media are milking this date to sell as many magazines, newspapers, movies and other stuff as they can, with all the sensationalism and fear-mongering they can muster, contemporary Mayan elders assure us that this date will not be the “end of the world,” but simply the end of the baktun, or interval within the Long Count. The Mayans view this date as a time to celebrate, not to be anxious. We celebrate and can look forward to the beginning of another whole cycle of time.[8]
Key Antecedent #3: the concept of ages
The Mayans were not the only people to have a sense of time in ages or intervals. Another figure, much later in our history than the Mayans, was the 12th-century Italian monk, Joachim of Flores. The founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore, Italy, Joachim was born around 1132 and, fortunately for him, he died in 1202,[9] before his books were declared heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. He was ordained as a priest in 1168 and served as abbot of his monastery, but as a theologian, mystic and esotericist, his heart really lay, not in ecclesiastical administration, but in Biblical scholarship, and in particular, in uncovering the arcane meaning in Scripture. Joachim’s special interest was that most enigmatic New Testament text, the Book of Revelation.[10]
Many a reader of this book has found inspiration in it, and many have drawn from it predictions about the future. Joachim was one of these. From Revelation 14:6-13, which is an account of 3 angels, Joachim came up with the concept of 3 Ages: the first, the Age of the Father, representing the age of the Old Testament and Judaism; the second, the Age of the Son, representing the age of the New Testament and Christianity; and the third, the Age of the Holy Spirit, when mankind would come into direct contact with God. Joachim predicted that this personal contact with the Divine would bring about a new dispensation of universal love and a new form of religion in which the church would no longer be necessary as an intermediary between God and man.[11] Finding this idea unpalatable and certainly threatening to their domination, the Church branded Joachim a heretic.
Some 700 years later, Jung drew upon Joachim’s idea of the 3 Ages to support his sense of the shift that is underway from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.[12] While the Mayans date the end of their baktun in 2012, Joachim claimed the third age would begin in 1260 A.D. (based on Revelation 11:3 and 12:6, which speak of 1,260 days).[13] Jung recognized that such major transitions take many centuries, and between 1260 and 2012 there have been many other key antecedents.
Key Antecedent #4: groups that kept esoteric wisdom alive, 13th-18th centuries
From the time of the medieval figure Joachim of Flores to the 19th century, there were a variety of organizations—most of them secret societies working clandestinely—that kept alive the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and other early traditions. Notable here are the cabalists, practitioners of a mystical form of Judaism, in medieval and early modern Spain, Europe and Palestine;[14] the alchemists of the 8th through the 16th centuries, in medieval Arabia, Spain and Europe;[15] the Rosicrucians, or members of the Society of the Rose Cross, in Renaissance and Baroque Europe (with some legacy societies still active in the Western world, including the United States);[16] and the Freemasons, still present in the United States and Europe as groups of “Free and Accepted Masons.”[17]
Certain individuals stand out here: Isaac Luria, the Spanish cabalist;[18] Paracelsus, the Swiss alchemist;[19] John Dee, the English physician, Rosicrucian and esotericist;[20] Franz Mesmer, the 18th century student of “animal magnetism,” from whom we get our English adjective “mesmerizing;”[21] and Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th century founder of Swedenborgianism, a precursor of the 20th-century New Thought movement.[22] Both Mesmer and Swedenborg experienced resistance to their ideas in their own day, as the direction of their work, and the nature of their insights ran counter to the general tenor of the Enlightenment, with its focus on “science,” objectivity, rationalism and the investigation of the material world.[23]
Key Antecedent #5: the spiritualists of the 19th and early 20th centuries
Materialism became a buzz word and major feature of Western culture in the early 19th century, with the rise of industrialism, socialism, communism, positivism and a host of other “-isms” that Jung found so distasteful.[24] This was the interval when the focus of society turned away from the transcendental to the mundane, from a concern for soul to a concern for money. Fortunately, for our purposes, not everyone went along with this trend. From the New England transcendentalists—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and others[25]—to the Spiritualism of Andrew Jackson Davis[26] and the Fox sisters[27] and the Romantic poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we see a sharp reaction to the soul-deadening qualities of the factory system and modern science.
John Chapman, aka “Johnny Appleseed,” went around America spreading Swedenborgianism as he planted apple trees.[28] Phineas Quimby’s transcendentalism inspired Mary Baker Eddy to found Christian Science and promote healing via non-material means.[29] Out of the Christian Science Theological Seminary grew the Unity School of Christianity, still a flourishing organization today.[30] The Harvard psychologist William James (brother of the novelist Henry James) joined with others to create the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882,[31] and did the same in New York in 1884, to create the American Society for Psychical Research (still a going concern).[32] These are just a few of the historical figures that were significant in keeping alive the ideas, values and principles that help us prepare today for the change of era.
Key Antecedent #6: the melding of Eastern and Western wisdom traditions
This is one of the most significant and notable components of the history of our preparation, and there are several important figures we must mention. One of the earliest is the Russian esotericist Mme Helene Blavatsky. Writer, traveler and co-founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875, Blavatsky was born in 1831 and died in 1891.[33] Traveling widely in the East, she got to know many of the yogis and gurus who introduced her to Eastern thought, and in her books—The Secret Doctrine, Isis Unveiled, The Key to Theosophy and The Voice of Silence—she played a key role in introducing Eastern ideas to Western readers.[34] In founding Theosophy, she influenced Annie Besant, Alice A. Bailey and Rudolf Steiner, who built his Anthroposophy on theosophical foundations.[35] Blavatsky also fostered interest in yoga and Buddhism among Europeans and Americans.
In 1893, the city of Chicago hosted the Parliament of World Religions. This proved to be a momentous event because, with the attendance of Swami Vivekananda, it introduced Eastern thought to the American heartland.[36] Thereafter, in the first decades of the 20th century, multiple Eastern masters came to the West, spreading interest in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism and other Eastern forms of spirituality, e.g. Paramahansa Yogananda,[37] D.T. Suzuki (a Buddhist master),[38] Chögyam Trungpa (founder of Naropa University),[39] and Krishnamurti (whom Annie Besant felt was an avatar, a label Krishnamurti rejected).[40]
While Eastern masters were making their way to the West, another Russian, G.I. Gurdjieff, was traveling around Central Asia, meeting with—as he called them—“remarkable men:”[41] monks and other men notable for their wisdom, who taught him about occult and spiritual truth. His experiences in these years led him to formulate a philosophy based on personal life experience. Gurdjieff began teaching Westerners in 1912 and came to be regarded as a guru by many of his students, a label he resolutely rejected.[42] His concern was to get his students to break out of the “crust” of intellectual and emotional patterns and get wise to the “consensus trance”[43] within which we live in Western culture. His call to us to “wake up” has been an inspiration to many contemporary authors, like the California psychologist Charles Tart[44] and the author Jacob Needleman.[45]
Key Antecedent #7: Edgar Cayce and the Association for Research & Enlightenment (ARE)
Known as “the sleeping prophet,” Edgar Cayce was born on a farm in Hopkinton, Kentucky in 1877; he died, from overwork, in 1945.[46] As a young man, Cayce was a photographer and it was in this early interval that he discovered he could go into a sleep-like trance and know all sorts of things that he had no familiarity with at all when awake. This led, in time, to his life’s work: 14,306 readings he gave to thousands of people, on health, diet, dreams and dream interpretation, ESP and psychic phenomena, philosophy and reincarnation, spiritual growth, meditation, prayer, and general advice on life issues. He also made predictions about planet Earth and the future of humanity.[47]
Becoming quite well-known in the 1930’s, Cayce made the terms “akashic records,” “aura,” “soul mate” and “holism” household words, and his readings gave great comfort to many families after World War II began and their relatives were fighting and, in some cases, dying in the War.[48] As it became obvious that the information in his readings was valuable, Cayce and his circle of associates founded the A.R.E. in 1931.[49] A thriving organization now in its 81st year, A.R.E. supports the spiritual growth and enlightenment of thousands of people, as well as sponsoring research that draws on the readings Cayce gave. His predictions about the future echo many of the predictions we have from native peoples, as well as very recent discoveries in science, e.g. that the medicine of the future would be based on sound, or vibrational healing.[50]
Key Antecedent #8: quantum physics and its vision of the nature of reality
Cayce’s vision of reality parallels closely the world of the quantum. Thanks to the research of people like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, David Bohm,[51] John Bell, and Wolfgang Pauli (who worked with and analyzed with Jung),[52] and the writings of popularizers like Fred Alan Wolf[53] and Gary Zukov,[54] we are becoming familiar with a set of concepts that challenge the conventional paradigm of Newtonian physics.[55] As neither disciplinary nor societal paradigms change quickly, it has been only in the last few decades that we have begun to see the implications of quantum reality seep into our collective consciousness.
What do I mean in saying that Cayce’s vision of reality parallels the world of the quantum? Cayce maintained that we—human beings—are basically vibrating systems: all of our cells are vibrating all the time. We live in a world of uncertainty, paradox, interconnectedness and subjectivity—a world in which “non-local action at a distance” is possible.[56] What “non-local action at a distance” means is that we are all entrained, to a greater or lesser degree, so that a mother in Iowa can wake up at 2 A.M. certain that her soldier son fighting on the other side of the planet has been hurt. Several hours later she gets a phone call that confirms this.
Key Antecedent #9: the rise of “New Age” movement
Jung is commonly regarded as the father of this movement,[57] for his articulation of the shift that he saw underway from the old age of the Fishes to the new one of the Water-Bearer. Marilyn Ferguson picked up on Jung in her seminal 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy,[58] which both described the New Age movement and gave it an additional boost in range and scope.
Under the rubric “new age” we might include such disparate people and phenomena as: Jane Roberts, author of the Seth series(1970s),[59] Ram Dass (1970s),[60] the East/West Journal (began publishing in 1971), the Course in Miracles (1975),[61] Michael Harner and the rise of shamanic studies (1980’s),[62] Shirley MacLaine,[63] the Harmonic Convergence (1987),[64] Shakti Gawain (1990’s),[65] and the popularity of channeling, crystal power, Native American spirituality, astrology, reincarnation, the mantic arts (e.g. Tarot, I Ching, angel and medicine cards), “prosperity consciousness” and the principles of manifestation, Wicca, goddess worship, open discussion of NDEs and OBEs (near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences),[66] and the growth of intentional spiritual communities.[67] All of these have helped bring us to this time and place, and to attune to the shift of energies that is underway.
Key Antecedent #10: the Holistic Health movement
In the old paradigm of science, on which modern allopathic medicine is based, if you want to understand or work with a complex system, you reduce it to its constituent parts and analyze each part. A century ago, the South African Jan Smuts understood that this whole approach doesn’t work for living systems, like ecosystems and human bodies.[68] This is because such systems have “emergent properties,” meaning that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and one could never hope to accurately understand a complex system via reductionism.
Over the last hundred years, Smuts’ insight has been carried over and applied to what has come to be called “holistic” medicine,[69] in the movement toward a holistic health system, some major components of which include: self-help (personal care and concern for one’s health, with support from health professionals to keep you well, rather than on disease-care, to patch you up after you fall sick); natural living (avoiding the chemicals, additives and other forms of pollution endemic in our current world); vegetarianism (eating lower on the food chain, often from compassionate concern to alleviate the suffering of animals);[70] body work (various modalities to clear the body of both physical and energetic blocks); vibrational medicine (the clinical use of sound to heal disease and promote well-being);[71] and “quantum healing” (associated with the ayurvedic philosophy of Deepak Chopra).[72] As the name implies, Chopra’s system of health care draws on some of the insights of quantum physics.
But Chopra is not the only health care practitioner or researcher to find quantum discoveries interesting. Biologists like Candace Pert[73] and Bruce Lipton[74] have dipped into the quantum well and come up with discoveries like PNI (psycho-neuro-immunology) that present stark challenges to our contemporary allopathic model of health- (or, more accurately, disease-) care. PNI reminds us that the old body-mind dichotomy that goes way back to the 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes is erroneous. In fact, when we understand the “biology of belief”—how our minds have such a powerful impact on our bodies—we begin to sense just how vast is our human potential. Which brings us to another key antecedent.
Key Antecedent #11: the Human Potential Movement
This movement grew out of a development within the field of psychology. The earliest psychologists were the depth psychologists[75]—Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and, in his early years, Carl Jung. Thereafter came the behaviorists in the 1950’s: B. F. Skinner and others.[76] Both these camps dealt with the mentally ill, people with mental problems, and their theories were built on the contacts clinicians and researchers had with the sick. In the late 1950s a college professor of psychology, Abraham Maslow,[77] stood this system on its head, when he ventured to ask himself what might happen if psychology were to investigate not the sick but the well: those persons whose lives showed exceptional mental health, rather than disease. Thus was born the beginnings of the Human Potential movement, a phenomenon that swept over both psychology and American culture in general in the 1960’s and 1970’s.[78] Maslow was joined by other “humanistic” psychologists, like Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Rollo May, Roberto Assagioli, and later, by “transcendental psychologists,” like Charles Tart and June Singer.[79]
The Human Potential movement put stress on epistemological individualism: Every person has the responsibility for working out his/her own philosophy and way of coming to truth. Also stressed is transformation—not superficial change but deep personal shifts that alter life in fundamental ways. Learning plays a big part in the movement too, since our potential is rarely realized unless we are open to learning in its many forms and venues.
Key Antecedent #12: the rise of the “frontier sciences”
By “frontier sciences” I refer to the array of avenues of research that stray outside the parameters of conventional science.[80] These include such things as psi and parapsychology,[81] the crop circle phenomenon,[82] acoustic science,[83]the noetic sciences[84] (concerned with consciousness and its impact), and the investigations of Ufos and alien abductees.[85] Investigators who venture into the “frontier sciences” are truly intrepid and either are independent figures, like Beverly Rubik[86] and Freddy Silva,[87] well-established tenured professors, like Willis Harman[88] and William Tiller,[89] or have “name recognition,” like Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut and founder of the Institute of the Noetic Sciences, or IONS.[90] Pioneers here included William James, whom we mentioned above, J.B. Rhine in the 1930’s, based at Duke, commonly regarded as the father of American psi research (who corresponded with Jung),[91] and Robert Jahn, who set up and ran the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab for many years.[92]
These and other courageous researchers are demonstrating how we live enmeshed in the “web of life,”[93] in a participatory universe, a universe that is full of synchronicities. They have shown in incontrovertible scientific experiments that we have tremendous powers of mind that can affect matter. Candace Pert and Bruce Lipton, mentioned earlier, describe how we can apply our mental intentions to affect and heal our bodies. They have done so at peril of their careers and reputations,[94] because the “frontier sciences” are outliers, and their practitioners risk ridicule, the loss of funding, challenges by skeptics, even harassment from debunkers.
Nowhere is this moreso than with the investigation of the Ufo phenomenon. This was a strong interest for Jung in the last decade of his life.[95] Jung applauded the courage of Donald Keyhoe, who challenged the American military’s denial of the reality of Ufos.[96] While Jung never stated that Ufos had a physical reality, he was certain they had a psychological reality, i.e. by the widespread reports of the phenomenon and the public’s desire for them to be real, Jung knew the Ufo represented something very real in the collective psyche of the time.[97]
It fell to another psychiatrist to pick up Jung’s investigation. This was John Mack,[98] a Harvard doctor who worked with over 100 persons who claimed to have been abducted by aliens from outer space. Mack put some of these people through a barrage of psychological tests and had no cause to suspect any of them of mental illness or instability. His work over more than a decade led him to believe that Ufos were real, that the abductee phenomena was real and that visitations by “star beings” was meant to help us prepare for the Earth changes that these beings tell us is underway. According to various reports from abductees, the visitors from other star systems want us to wake up to the reality of what we are doing to the earth, to wake up to our true human potential, to get us to change the paradigm of Western culture, so as to avert a disaster that could happen, if we choose to go on as we have been. This brings us back to Jung.
Key Antecedent #13: Jung the visionary
Much like the reports from abductees, Jung also warned about massive Earth changes. On his deathbed he had a vision of a devastated Earth, but told his daughter (who was taking notes) that it did not include the whole Earth.[99] Earlier in his life Jung had written about the inevitability of the apocalypse[100]—that interval when what had been concealed would be revealed. We tend to hear the word “apocalypse” and think “Earth-destroying cataclysm” but that is not the true meaning of the word. Jung knew Greek, and so knew what the word really meant: the uncovering of the hidden, or the exposing of what had been kept a secret.
He also understood that the archetype “apocalypse,” like all archetypes, has intent:[101] An apocalypse wants to clear away the old, the outworn, what no longer serves us, so as to allow new, more appropriate energies and realities to be born. After every apocalypse comes the “apocatastasis,”[102] the time of restoration of a better condition or situation. All of this Jung foresaw as part of the shift of the ages.
Now I would like to suggest to you that, in this conference, and in our individual and collective endeavors in the months and years ahead, we are going to be experiencing this shift that Jung, and the Extra-terrestrial beings, foresee. Already we have witnessed elements of the apocalypse—in the Wikileaks phenomenon, in the revelations about the duplicity within Goldman Sachs, in disclosures about government malfeasance. We will hear more such things in the future, all toward clearing out old stuff that no longer serves our growth and development. We will see such things—governmental systems, economic systems, social systems—fall apart, so that new, more appropriate systems can evolve that promote a positive future.
So I think this is what our “preparing” is about. Here, in this conference, and in the future we are making ourselves ready—readying our minds, our bodies, our attitudes and the configuration of the reality we live within. We are becoming aware of how we are, or are not, in attunement with our bodies; how our world needs re-attuning;[103] how we can work to attune ourselves to the Self, the Divine core that lives within each of us. Jung would remind us that “attunement” does not mean we go in search of a guru to look up to, and try to attune to him/her. Not at all! Rather than look without, we must look within, to find our own true tune, our own unique note, how we are meant to express our truth to the world. The answers, and attunement, lie within.[104]
Remember Jung’s words of advice, “Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes…”[105] In this time of major challenges and exciting changes, we must not look outside, lest we get distracted, pulled out of our own truth and caught up in the illusion that is physical reality. Rather, we must look within, inside, into our depths, touch into our soul, connect to the Self, and in so doing, awake.
Sue Mehrtens is the author of this essay
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Schaya, Leo (1971), The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, trans. Nancy Pearson. Baltimore: Penguin Books.
Scholem, Gershom (1941), Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books.
________ (1960), On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. New York: Schocken Books.
Sharf, Richard (1996), Theories of Psychotherapy and Counseling. New York: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co.
Silva, Freddy (2002), Secrets in the Fields: The Science and Mysticism of Crop Circles. Charlottesville VA: Hampton Roads.
________ (2010), Common Wealth. Portland ME: Invisible Temple.
Stearn, Jess (1967), Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet. New York: Bantam Books.
Stevens, Anthony (2003), Archetype Revisited. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Storer, John (1956), The Web of Life. New York: New American Library.
________ (1968), Man in the Web of Life. New York: New American Library.
Sugru, Thomas (1970), There is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce. New York: Laurel Books.
Suzuki, D.T. (1972), What is Zen? New York: Harper & Row.
Tart, Charles (1987), Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential. Boston: Shambhala.
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Yogananda, Paramahansa (1974), Autobiography of a Yogi. n.p.: Self-Realization Fellowship.
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Zukav, Gary (1979), The Dancing Wu Li Masters. New York: Bantam Books.
[1] Posted to this blog site in February 2012 and archived there now.
[2] Jenkins (19980, 15.
[3] Possible future scenarios for the December 2012 interval are discussed in Pinchbeck (2006), 238-248.
[4] George Land and Beth Jarman describe the “breakdown that makes possible the breakthrough” concept in Land & Jarman (1992).
[5] Finney (1973), 392.
[6] Lovelock (1979); cf. Allaby (1989).
[7]Jenkins (1998), xxxiv.
[8] Barrios (2009).
[9] For information on Joachim of Flores, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/joachim_of_Fiore. I say Joachim was fortunate to die when he did because by dying, he escaped being burned as a heretic.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Collected Works, 9ii, ¶s 137-139.
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/joachim_of_Fiore
[14] On the cabala, cf. Ariel (1988), Epstein (1959), Hoffman (1992), Schaya (1971), Scholem (1941) & (1960), and Zohar (1949).
[15] On alchemy, cf. Edinger (1985) (1994) (1995) & (1996), Jung CW 9ii, 12, 13, 14 & 16; and von Franz (1980).
[16] On the history of the Rosicrucians, see Barrett (1999), 18-83; for their modern society and its American activities, see Heindel (1973) or Google “The Rosicrucian Fellowship, Oceanside CA.”
[17] The history of the Masons is recounted in Barrett (1999), 104-117.
[18] Luria’s contribution to cabala is described in Scholem (1941), 251-287.
[19] Jung wrote two essays on Paracelsus; CW 15, ¶1-43.
[20] For a biography of John Dee, see De Salvo (2010), 70-87.
[21] Melton (1991), 5, 28-29.
[22] Ibid., 4.
[23] For a review of the features of modern science, see Mehrtens (1996), 9-17.
[24] CW 8, ¶s 366,405,425,427; CW 9i, ¶s 125,617; CW 10, ¶s 103,469.
[25] Melton (1991), 5.
[26] For information on Andrew Jackson Davis, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson_Davis
[27] For information on the Fox sisters, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_sisters
[28] For information on John Chapman, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed
[29] Melton (1991), 6.
[30] For information on Unity, contact them at: 1901 NW Blue Highway, Unity Village MO 64065, or go to their Web site: www.unity.org
[31] Melton (1991), xi,17.
[32] Ibid., 17. The American Society for Psychical Research is based in New York (5 West 73rd St., New York NY 10023); their Web site is www.aspr.com
[33] Ibid., xi.
[34] Ibid., 16-18.
[35] Ibid., 30-31.
[36] Ibid., xi.
[37] For Yogananda’s autobiography, see Yogananda (1974).
[38] For the text that played a major role in introducing Buddhism to the West, see Suzuki (1972).
[39] Tough (2004), 4.
[40] Melton (1991), 16.
[41] Meetings with Remarkable Men is the title of Gurdjieff’s autobiography; Gurdjieff (1974).
[42] For information on Gurdjieff, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff
[43] Tart (1987), 85-106.
[44] Ibid.
[45] For Needleman on Gurdjieff, go to www.gurdjieff.org/needleman2.htm
[46] Sugrue (1970) is the standard Cayce biography. In several of his trances, Cayce was warned not to hold so many sessions in response to the deluge of mail he got from worried families of servicemen at war, but Cayce was too compassionate to cut back.
[47] Cf. Carter (1968) and Stearn (1967).
[48] Sugrue (1970), 303.
[49] Ibid., 273.
[50] Brodie (1996), 132.
[51] On Bohm’s contribution to quantum physics, see Friedman (1994).
[52] The Jung-Pauli correspondence is edited and annotated by Meier (2001).
[53] E.g. Wolf (1984) & (1991).
[54] E.g. Zukav (1979).
[55] This paradigm stresses materialism, positivism, objectivity, reductionism, mechanistic models and replicability.
[56] Non-local action at a distance is the focus of Bell’s theorem; Wolf (1984), 49-50.
[57] Boynton (2004), 8.
[58] Ferguson (1980).
[59] Roberts/Seth was very prolific, producing dozens of books; cf. Roberts/Seth (1970) (1974) (1977) (1979) (1981) & (1986).
[60] Melton (1991), 349-350.
[61] Put out by the Foundation for Inner Peace (1975).
[62] Noel (1997), 91-94. Noel considers Harner one of the founders of “New Shamanism.”
[63] MacLaine has been a prolific author presenting a “new age” point of view; cf. MacLaine (1983) (1985) (1987) (1989) (1991) & (1995).
[64] Melton (1991), xvi.
[65] Gawain (1978).
[66] Raymond Moody Jr. was the pioneer in publishing on Near-Death Experiences; Moody (1975).
[67] Melton (1991), 402-404.
[68] Sharf (1996), 251.
[69] Pelletier (1977) & 1979).
[70] Melton (1991), 264-265.
[71] Leeds (2010), 162-3, 193-199.
[72] Chopra (1989) & (1990).
[73] Pert (1997).
[74] Lipton (2005).
[75] For a good history of psychology, see Ellenberger (1970).
[76] Sharf (1996), 294-295.
[77] See Maslow (1964) (1968) & (1971).
[78] Anderson (1983), 64-72, 79-100.
[79] Cf. Rogers (1961) & (1980) and May (1969). June Singer was a Jungian analyst who recognized that the transpersonal movement does not preclude a Jungian approach.
[80] The term “frontier science” is Beverly Rubik’s; Rubik (1992) & (1996).
[81] Mitchell (1974).
[82] The best book I have encountered on the crop circle phenomenon is Silva (2002).
[83] The best book on the science and applicability of acoustics, I think, is Leeds (2010).
[84] “Noetic” comes from the Greek nous and refers to “consciousness.”
[85] Mack (1994) & (1999).
[86] See Rubik (1996).
[87] Silva (2002) & (2010).
[88] Harman (1979) (1984) & (1988).
[89] Tiller (1997).
[90] Mitchell (1974); for more information on the Institute of the Noetic Sciences, check out their Web site: www.noetic.org
[91] See Jung, Letters, I, pp. 180-2, 190, 321-2, 378-9, 393-5 and 495.
[92] Jahn & Dunne (1987).
[93] “Web of life” is the title of Storer (1956); cf. Storer (1968).
[94] For an especially eloquent description of this, see Pert (1997).
[95] Jung wrote an essay on Ufos; CW 10, ¶s 589-824.
[96] CW 18, ¶s 1447-1451.
[97] CW 10, ¶609.
[98] Cf. Mack (1994) & (1999).
[99] Wagner (1998-99).
[100] See the blog essay “Jung and the Archetype of the Apocalypse,” archived on this blog site.
[101] Stevens (2003), 86.
[102] See the blog essay “The Apocatastasis of Global Civilization,” archived on this blog site, for an in-depth treatment of this concept.
[103] We have clear evidence that our world needs retuning in all the wars, conflicts, diseases, pollution, species extinctions, global climate changes, drug use, social and economic inequities, etc.
[104] CW 16, ¶227; CW 7, ¶264.
[105] “Letter to Fanny Bowditch,” 22 October 1916; Letters, I, 33.
