The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce Read Free Book Online

loose on earth is loosed in Heaven."

The hypnagogic form of the autistic state, though happening as a rare

and fleeting otherness to most of us, can be developed by care and

discipIine. The price is suspension of the ordinary world view. If the

ordinary categories which hold our world together can be bypassed,

anything capable of being thought of can be "true." Sometimes the

hypnagogic state happens to a person as a kind of "empty category." There

are rare half-sleep moments when we suddenly realize that we are in this

pseudo-dream state. At those times the first flicker of thought can

be instantly "made real" in the dream state and directed by conscious

desire and volition. The erotic dream is occasionally a form of this.

The "little lizard" divination rite of the Yaqui Indian sorcerer, don

Juan (of whom more later), created a form of this "empty category." And

the divination would answer the first question asked. It would succeed,

however, only if the question were presented without confusion or

ambiguity. Paul Tillich wrote that the "hidden content" of prayer was

always the decisive factor, which is another expression of the same

function, and a point to which I will return. The real assumption of

our underlying beliefs is the determinant in our lives. Surface verbal

plays of mind are often only forms of wishful thinking posited against

the deep strata of a belief to the contrary. But the deep strata are the

determinant in the reality event because of the nonambiguous nature of

this level of thought. Jesus' "prayer in the secret place" refers to this

level of certainty that underlies all the contingencies of any reality.

Ambiguous confusion, lack of an "ultimate desire" or basic motivation,

fragments and dissolves the autistic-hypnagogic possibilities, should they

occur to a person's mind. Seven centuries ago, Roger Bacon recognized

that mathematics would be the gateway to the sciences. This is because

of the nonambiguous nature of mathematics. An idea that can be expressed

mathematically is one that can be represented unambiguously, and anything

which can be represented and believed in non-ambiguously tends to be

expressed in reality. Mathematics serves as a projection device giving

objective certainly, just as the god Kataragama does for the Hindu,

for instance.

The Tibetan Yoga spends years developing a state of mind that bears,

from written reports, direct relation to the hypnagogic. The Yoga

cultivated, practiced, and finally "entered into" the potential of his

autistic mode of thinking. The state he brought about was a subset of

his ordinary reality, organized along specific and controlled lines, as

found in hypnotism. By a subset I mean that he drew on his background

experience in selective ways, setting up a world within a world, the

equivalent of a concretized dream state under direct conscious control.

(Later, the similarities between this Hindu activity and the Path of

Knowledge outlined by the sorcerer, don Juan, will become apparent.)

One Yogic activity was the production of a 'tulpa,' a phantasm, or

imaginary person. The production was a slow development which could

itself only be undertaken in a mature stage of training. Eventually the

'tulpa' creation would begin to form and take on aspects of reality for

the subject-creator. Fleeting glimpses, peripheral and insubstantial,

would become more stable, until a full and permanent image could be

brought to focus. A 'tulpa' became responsive to speech and the whole

sensory range of the subject. 'Tulpas' developed definite personality

traits and full capacities for ordinary human response. Occasionally a

'tulpa' would take on strong enough reality aspects to be glimpsed by

other people, people who had no knowledge of the production-project

itself. 'Tulpas' were known to display the same passionate adherences

to their developed personalities as would a real person (bringing to

mind the strange tenacity of the